Artifacts recovered from Hofstaðir include several silver, copper, and bone pins, combs and dress items; spindlewhorls, loomweights, and whetstones, and 23 knives. The site appears to have been occupied between the 9th and mid-11th centuries AD, with a fairly robust number of people occupying the site during the spring and summer and fewer people living there during the rest of the year.
Ritual and Hofstaðir
The site's largest building is a hall, typical for Viking sites, except that it is twice as long as an average Viking hall--38 meters long, with a separate room at one end identified as a shrine. A huge cooking pit is located in the southern end.
The association of the site of Hofstaðir as a pagan temple or a large feasting hall with a shrine, comes from the recovery of at least 23 individual cattle skulls, located in three distinct deposits.
Cutmarks on the skulls and neck vertebrae suggest that the cows were killed and beheaded while still standing; weathering of the bone suggests that the skulls were displayed outside for a number of months or years after the soft tissue had decayed away.
Ritual at Hofstaðir
The cattle skulls are in three clusters, an area on the west exterior side containing 8 skulls; 14 skulls inside a room adjoining to the great hall (the 'shrine'), and one single skull located next to the main entry way.
All of the skulls were found within wall and roof collapse areas, suggesting that they had been suspended from the roof rafters.
Radiocarbon dates on five of the skulls the bone suggest that the animals died between 50-100 years apart, with the latest dated about AD 1000.
Excavators Lucas and McGovern believe that Hofstaðir ended abruptly in the mid-11th century, about the same time a church was built 140 meters away.
Archaeology and Hofstaðir
Hofstaðir was excavated by Daniel Bruun in 1908; by Olaf Olsen in the mid-1960s, and by Gavin Lucas and Thomas McGovern in the early 21st century.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the Vikings, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology. Any mistakes are the responsibility of Kris Hirst.
Lucas, Gavin, ed. 2003. Hofstaðir 2002: Interim Report. Fornleifastofnun Íslands, Reykjavík. Free pdf download.
Lucas, Gavin and Thomas McGovern 2007 Bloody Slaughter: Ritual Decapitation and Display At the Viking Settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland. European Journal of Archaeology 10(1):7-30.
