Stability and change in transhumant practices during the Iron Age and Medieval period: new pollen evidence from Møre and Romsdal, western Norway

Abstract This study explores the complex development of transhumance, shielings and summer farms in Norway, emphasising how patterns of stability and change varied across time and space. It draws on three case studies across Møre and Romsdal: Setersetran, Sandnessetra and Søstølen. At Setersetran, there were recurrent woodland clearances and human activity in four phases: the Pre-Roman Iron Age, the Migration Period, the Viking Age–Early Medieval Period and from the early modern period onwards. More profound and sustained landscape changes occurred after ad 900, suggesting the establishment of a more stable transhumant system, but there is no evidence of settlement until the early modern period. Sandnessetra experienced continuous grazing and human activity from the Roman Iron Age, and this was intensified in the Viking Age–Early Medieval Period. At Søstølen, there is archaeobotanical evidence of grazing and human activity from the end of the Early Iron Age. Despite intermediate periods of abandonment and regrowth of woodland, the site may have been settled in the Viking Age and its most intensive phase of land use was in the High Middle Ages before it was abandoned and never resettled. These findings reveal how various transhumant systems in the region emerged, marked by alternating phases of expansion, maintenance and decline. Notably, however, the transitional period between the Viking Age and the Early Medieval Period stands out as a period of significant transformation across all three sites, most probably linked to the major demographic and socio-economic changes at the time.