Negotiating narrative in a newly settled Norse landscape: An emic perspective on Norse reuse of ancient monuments on the Northern Isles of Scotland

The practice of repopulating ancient burial grounds is something the Viking Age Norse settlers brought with them when they shaped their new environments on the Scottish Isles in the 9th century. In the context of colonization, this can be understood as a way of legitimizing presence, linking to existing traditions and inscribing your own history on a foreign landscape - evidenced as a material reinterpretation of the past. Thus, it has been argued, the Norse manipulated the Scottish landscape to forge for themselves a place in history. However, such a secular interpretation of Norse interactions with their landscape disregards the animistic mindset of the Norse belief system, and it fails to take into consideration the very nature of Viking Age archaeological remains in Orkney.
In this chapter, I argue that the burials function is active mnemonic nodal points in a sentient narrative landscape, where practice links present to past and creates memory for the future. If we allow for an emic perspective on Norse interactions in Scotland, these practices appear not so much a manipulation of landscape as an active negotiation of place with foreign entities - past and present. The focus of my discussion is the Westness burial ground on Rousay, Orkney.