Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
In the beginning of the 2022 field season the team opened a large area to excavate animal houses. One large, curved wall appeared, then another and very soon the team realized that this was no animal house but a Viking era longhouse!
The longhouse dates from 940 – 1150 AD (?) and is roughly split into two (three phases?). The first phase is the original longhouse (shown in green) constructed shortly after 940 and the second phase when the longhouse is lengthened in the north end sometime after the year 1000. Then two additional rooms are added on the western side of the house, a weaving room and a possible storage room.
The longhouse is a classic Viking age construction. It is a simple wood framed building with thick, curved walls made of turf. Along the walls are benches were people worked, ate and slept. One entrance is into the house from the far eastern end. The entrance is a short tunnel with two doorways to minimize draft. In the middle of the longhouse is the hearth.
This means a landslide hit the longhouse and there were enough survivors to re-enter the longhouse by digging the landslide out of the main room but leaving the additional rooms. This theory coincides with artefacts from the midden that were still usable at the time of discard and artefacts laying in situ in and along the benches of the house.
One day, sometime in the 11th century, a landslide from mount Bjólfur hit the longhouse. The team observed that the landslide covered the walls on the western side of the longhouse (facing the mountain), completely covered the two additional rooms, but was not present in the main dwelling of the longhouse.
Usable items discarded into the midden are likely a result of people digging the landslide out of the house, throwing it into the midden accidentally discarding usable tools and other items. It must have been hard enough digging the landslide out of the longhouse since they did not bother to do so with the additional rooms.
The smaller of the two additional rooms is a possible storage room. The room was badly damaged by the landslide which removed the northern part of it. The walls of the room are turf and the floor is paved with natural stone slabs. An intact whalebone stool was discovered next to a wall, frozen in time right where someone left it a 1000 years ago.
Corner hearths are common in additional rooms or buildings like this in the Viking Age but two are uncommon. This points to the room being heavily used and domestic production is being scaled up to have two hearths going at the same time. For example, one hearth is used to make dye for textiles while the other one is being used to clean textiles in hot water at the same time.
On the south-western side of the house is a weaving room. It is built of turf and has not one but two small hearths in the corners of the room. The floor of the room has small, circular holes in the tens (possibly hundreds) that were possibly used to hold die staffs and/or looms. Benches are along the walls were people not only sat and worked but also slept, just like in the main room.
The two most common artefacts found in the weaving room are loom weights and spindle whorls. The loom weights hold the strings down while something is woven on the loom. The spindle whorls are weights used to spin yarn on a spindle.