The Border of Farming and the Cultural Markers - Nordlige Verdener

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Northern Norway
The northernmost
Bronze Age Farms
One of the most spectacular finds is the
Bronze Age house from Kveøy, Troms
County (fig. 3). It was excavated
in 2008 and 2009 (Arntzen and
Sommerseth eds. 2010). The
house was partly disturbed
by a road, and only traces
of six post holes were left.
It was not possible to establish
the length or how broad
the house structure originally
had been, and no
traces of the walls had
survived, but it is estimated
that the
house originally
must have been longer than
12 m and might have been c.
5–7 m wide (fig. 4).
The house remain is dated by a radiocarbon
date from charcoal from one of
the postholes, and gives the date between
900-770 BC or the Late Bronze
Age. The construction is just like the
Bronze Age houses further south, which
clearly shows the connections with the
traditional Nordic Bronze Age societies
from Rogaland and South Scandinavia.
Furthermore, the nearest house remains
dated to the Bronze Age are laying c.
1000 km South of Kveøy near Trondheim!
Near the house remains at Kveøy an
old cultivation layer was excavated, dated
to the Late Bronze Age and containing
grains of barley and wheat presumably
showing what had been cultivated
in the area.
Fig. 3:
Sites with
Bronze Age
house remains
mentioned
in
the text.
Fig. 5: Torgårdsletta, Sør-Trøndelag County before
the archaeological excavation during 1998. A
large gravel pit has disturbed most of the archaeological
site, and only a small area has been left
for later excavation. Courtesy Solheim 1999.