Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir

1. Introduction Fourteen monastic houses operated for varying lengths of time in Iceland during the Middle Ages. Four of them were dissolved early on, mainly because of the political disputes that arose in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries between the island’s secular and ecclesiastical powers. One was moved and reestablished in a new location under a new name. Eight of the monastic houses became highly prosperous, operating for centuries under either Benedictine or Augustinian customs.

Abstract : In 2014, as part of the Kortlagning klaustur á Íslandi (Mapping Monasticism in Iceland) archaeological project, bulk samples retrieved from various archaeological sites associated with Icelandic monasticism were subsampled for pollen analysis.

Open AccessArticle by Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir 1,* and Guðjón Þór Erlendsson 2 1 Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland 2 National Planning Agency of Iceland and Thor Architects, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.