To the devs: About 769 Iceland

[Harassercat]

I certainly don't have your credentials and I don't really believe in being tightly conservative with my opinions. Before I begin, I want to make it clearer on what I was talking about. Large scale settlements, starting with Ingólfur Arnarson, begin what I would consider the start of organized settlement in Iceland. But, before that, we have:

1. Dicuil, Irish monk and geographer. His "De mensura Orbis terrae" is a geographical work that mentions a place called "Thule" in the north. While Thule has been used to describe any number of places beyond the known borders of the world, I strongly suspect Dicuil's Thule was truly Iceland. The Faroe Islands were already settled by his time and I don't believe his expedition stopped at only at the Faroes. The Faroes were clearly not "Thule" in his mind, not with what knowledge he had of the islands. An assumption. I do a lot of that.

2. Kverkarhellir Cave would be the location of those crosses you mention. Radiocarbon dating gives the small, probably monastic settlement, a vague guess of "around 800". It could be much later or much earlier than that. I've read about more radiocarbon dates being pushed back rather than pushed forward, so another assumption for sure, but not a completely blind one. Not that much of a stretch to think that monks living on the Faroes traveled further north, probably with or after other small groups.

3. Recent digs at Hafnir give a date anywhere from 770 to 870 for what was a singular cabin. Another wide margin of error in time but between even between what was lost to the ages and what was built over, we can make some well founded assumptions.

Iceland was known to some people in the south. Those living in the Faroes surely must have known about another, larger island to the north. Probably known to some in Ireland and Scotland as well. I don't see why there couldn't be small scale, singular attempts to settle the island. Not a true settling like the Norse did in the 800's but something more sporadic, often temporary. I expect that further digs in Iceland would slowly start to add more and more evidence for earlier, smaller, attempts to live there.

Thank you, now we are close to being on the same page on this.

That Iceland was occasionally visited and vaguely known by the Celtic inhabitants of Britain seems like a reasonable guess to me. Also that there may consequently have been occasional short-lived attempts to settle the island. Maybe Iceland really was Thule. Archaeology may eventually stumble upon something that will confirm this. That would be a very interesting discovery.

There is another kind of scientific evidence which would seem to rule out major settlement of Iceland before the late 800's: pollen studies from soil samples. This involves analysing the type and number of pollen from plant species present in each layer in the soil. The chronology is determined by ash layers -- they are identifiable layers from specific volcanic eruptions that have been dated by geologists. Icelandic pollen studies indicate clearly that until the late 800's it's "business as usual" for the vegetation on the island but after that there is a sudden change towards sharp reduction of forest and increase of grass. The obvious explanation is human settlement. If there were people living on the island before this then their presence had very limited environmental impact, meaning that it could only have been small-scale habitation.

But regardless of when the island was first settled and by whom, it's clear that the eventual settlement involved lots of people of British celtic origin. Modern genetic research of Icelanders has confirmed this and heck, with all the redheads here it's pretty hard to deny it

 

[klopkr]

Now with depopulation can Iceland have story events that keep it depopulated until it was historically colonized and be under the control of a few monks?

 

[Thorkel the Tall]

As a trained a trained archaeologist, and one that have worked with many scholars within Iceland, I got to agree with Harassercat. IThere are no evidence of Irish monks on Iceland before the norse settlement

here is enough evidence through archeology for two separate settlements, one dating back to around the 800's and the other a more generous dating of anywhere from 770-880 (I opt for an earlier date as a general rule).

No there is no such evidence. Going by the earlier date as a general rule is wrong. That is not how C14 works at all. It would get a bit technical if I had to explain all the details of why here. Now we must also discuss what has been dated (which is typically the biggest source of error): in most cases it is stuff which has grown and then been preserved and thus 'stored' carbon from the atmosphere. Thus what we are dating is when that entity (tree, cereal, fish etc) has grown. This will almost always be prior to the event we date, in the case of cereal likely just a few years earlier, for trees they have grown for centuries (and for saltwater fish there is a 200-400 year lag as they are marine reservoir effects).

Irish/Scottish monks were in the Faroese and Iceland before the Vikings.

To my understanding, the problem isn't just the numbers, it's that there weren't actual Irish settlements in Iceland (don't know about the Faeroes), just monastaries.

IF (and that's a very big if) there where irish monks there it would not even be monastaries as we understand them, but a few hermits living on ICeland.

1. Dicuil, Irish monk and geographer. His "De mensura Orbis terrae" is a geographical work that mentions a place called "Thule" in the north. While Thule has been used to describe any number of places beyond the known borders of the world, I strongly suspect Dicuil's Thule was truly Iceland. The Faroe Islands were already settled by his time and I don't believe his expedition stopped at only at the Faroes. The Faroes were clearly not "Thule" in his mind, not with what knowledge he had of the islands. An assumption. I do a lot of that.

Thule is always in the north. It is a christian topoi. In the Roman literature Thule lies north of Germany for example, later sources have it north of either Iceland or Norway.

The faroes was not "settled" it had been 'visited by hermits for hundreds of years' or something along those lines. this is an important note, not only are there very few people onm the first Islands, there are even fewer on "Thule", and it coulad simply be the southern and northern parts of the Farao Islands.

2. Kverkarhellir Cave would be the location of those crosses you mention. Radiocarbon dating gives the small, probably monastic settlement, a vague guess of "around 800". It could be much later or much earlier than that. I've read about more radiocarbon dates being pushed back rather than pushed forward, so another assumption for sure, but not a completely blind one. Not that much of a stretch to think that monks living on the Faroes traveled further north, probably with or after other small groups.

I have rarely heard of C14dates being pushed "backwards"- As noted above there are many sources of error and they all tend to make the measured sample OLDER than the activity they want to date, often buy a good margin. So all we can say is that at some point AFTER 800 there were activity in the Kverkarhellir cave.

3. Recent digs at Hafnir give a date anywhere from 770 to 870 for what was a singular cabin. Another wide margin of error in time but between even between what was lost to the ages and what was built over, we can make some well founded assumptions.

See above (can you link some information on the date, what they dated etc, charcoal for example can be old trees, driftwood etc).

There exist a lot of sensationalist interpretation of old C14-dates, most of them is based on wishful thinking and misinterretations of the samples "own age".

Now I agree that Iceland shouldn't be 'de jure' Norway as it was first part of Nowway 1262. It is annoying that it is often one of the first parts conquered in the "unification" of Norway in CK2.

Also Iceland should be a republic (but then again we need more varied republics in the game).

 

[Woifee]

To my understanding, the problem isn't just the numbers, it's that there weren't actual Irish settlements in Iceland (don't know about the Faeroes), just monastaries. The monks went there to get away from any females that might present them with temptations of the flesh, so no women, therefore no self-sustaining community there. Even putting a temple holding there isn't really accurate. If you're going to have Iceland in the game at all (and I can see a definite justification for leaving it out), the current approach of showing it as Norse ahistorically early is probably the best compromise. The problem is the requirement that every county starts as a de jure part of a duchy, and every duchy is de jure part of a kingdom. Much the same problem happens with Venice; it's portrayed as a de jure part of the Byzantine Empire, and in almost every one of my games, it ends up being conquered by the Byzantines at some point--something that never happened historically. It shouldn't be a de jure part of anything unless it stays conquered for 100 years and drifts, but the engine apparently doesn't allow that.

Just put Venice in the Empire of Italy. It usually get formed by human players and then nobody cares if he eats it.