Abstract
This article surveys the changing pattern of farm occupation and abandonment in two areas of Iceland, a southern coastal area and an inland area in the east, and examines the causes of change on the basis of documentary, archaeological and tephrochronological evidence. The two areas differ considerably in physical character, which is reflected in their different settlement patterns. Two main causes of abandonment are however evident in both areas, since both contain sites which have suffered from erosion, the most common cause of early abandonment, and sites known in later times to have been abandoned for economic and social reasons. The general pattern in both areas is for settlement to move away from the far inland. In the southern region, coastal erosion has also driven settlement away from the coast. In the past farm abandonment was commonly attributed to simplistic causes. A warning is issued against such generalisations.
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