Environment and settlement

An aim of the excavation project at Vik was to gain a coherent understanding of the relationship between landscape development, vegetation history, climatic change and settlement at Vik from the Late Bronze Age to the early medieval period. The flat profile of the Ørland peninsula and the postglacial land upheaval have caused a profound transformation of the landscape since the peninsula rose from the sea c. 600+/-100 BC (Romundset & Lakeman, Ch. 2). A sheltered bay formed a safe harbor during the period from c. 400 BC to AD 600, when the bay eventually dried out and left the settlement at Vik in a less strategic position. An extensive pollen analysis provided data on vegetation history, and also on effects of climatic change (Overland & Hjelle, Ch. 3). A generalized interpretation of archaeological and botanical data from Vik suggests periods of intensive settlement and agriculture in the Pre-Roman Iron Age and Roman Iron Age, while the Migration Period was a period of decline. Settlement and agriculture nearly disappeared in Vik during the Merovingian and Early Viking periods, coinciding with the re-vegetation of the landscape after the global climatic catastrophe of AD 536. Vik was re-settled very late, not before c. AD 950, possibly because of the extinction of the bay and the harbor due to land upheaval. In this paper, land upheaval, vegetation history and settlement development at Vik are combined in a scheme of ten phases. The phasing provides an introduction and a chronological and interpretational framework to the papers in this book.