Irrigation at Garðar, SW Greenland, and its North European context.

Southwest Greenland was settled, largely from Iceland, at the end of the tenth century. Agriculture, based upon secondary products from domestic animals, lasted until the fifteenth century when the last farms were finally abandoned. From the twelfth century, the inhabitants had their own bishop and cathedral at Garðar in the more southerly Eastern Settlement and this, with several other sites, shows evidence of agricultural innovation in the use of irrigation as well as manuring of hayfields. This paper attempts to place the Greenland irrigated fields in their Icelandic and North European context, suggesting that their origins lie in the reorganisation consequent upon the arrival of the first resident bishop from Scandinavia in 1126 and his ability to call upon labour beyond that available on the episcopal farm.