Skáholt 2002 - Nabo

och, North Ronaldsay and the Celtic bell from the Saever Howe settlement mound,
Birsay (Lamb, 1983). It would certainly seem possible that Cormac and his successors
were aware of land management techniques and were integrated with the local
population. Were their land management practices different from the practices they found
in the Northern Isles and if so, did they introduce new methods that were adopted by the
local population
Later monastic communities have also been linked with new and more intensive
agricultural land management methods. Monastic communities in Scotland, of many
different orders, have been considered as major modifiers of landscape and innovators of
agricultural development as a result of their rules of handiwork and agricultural
endeavour (Coulton, 1933; Wilkinson, 1980). Gilbert (1983) and Romans and Robertson
(1975) identify the role of the Scottish Borders monasteries in changing ‘waste’ land into
arable and ‘improved’ grazing land, while Romans (pers. comm.) has identified extensive
areas of anthropogenic soils associated with intesive arable production in the vicinity of
Fearn Abbey, Easter Ross. Romans considers these soils to have commenced formation
during the monastic period and argues that similar soils are found at Insch,
Aberdeenshire, (Glentworth, 1944) and in Strathmore. Deep anthropogenic, cultivated,
soils resulting from ‘plaggen’ manuring processes have also been identified in the West
Mainland of Orkney, and dating from just after the founding of the monastery at Birsay
during the late 1000s and early 1100s A.D (Lamb, 1983; Simpson, 1993). Adding weight
to the link between the monastery at Birsay and the anthropogenic soils of West
Mainland Orkney is the monastic connection of Birsay with Hamburg and Bremen, towns
located in extensive areas of north-west European anthropogenic (plaggen) soil
formation.
Although clearly requiring further analyses, these observations are suggestive of major
ecclesiastical contributions to innovative and intensive land management practices,
certainly within a Scottish context. On this basis it is entirely possible that the various
ecclesiastical settlements in Iceland also contributed innovative land management
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