Cattle, cooperation, and the co-settlement of Iceland

When Iceland was settled in the ninth century, primarily from Western Norway and the British Isles, it was co-settled by humans and animals. Among the livestock kept by Scandinavians at this time, cattle had particular social, economic, and cultural importance and this importance was retained and developed in new ways in early Iceland. The memory of cattle as co-settlers of the island, and the continued importance of cattle to the agro-pastoral communities on Iceland is reflected, perpetuated, and perhaps reinvented in twelfthand thirteenth-century literary texts, especially Landnámabók and the Íslendingasögur. This paper explores cattle-human relationships in early Iceland through archaeological and textual sources and suggests that the ideal of bovine cooperation and human care for cattle in the establishment and continued success of communities permeates the later narratives as a testament to the importance of animal-human cooperation and mutual care during the settlement of a new land.