Through the ages, fish has represented a source of food and wealth for many people. In Scandinavian countries, its exploitation is dated from prehistoric times onwards. It has been argued, for example, that in Iron Age Norway (500-1000 AD) ‘intensive fishing and the use of preserved fish’ played a key role in the development of ‘a multi-faceted political economy’ resulting in the ‘focus and scope of the activity as well as the nature of the controlling elements’. Indeed, the settlers inherited from past generations knowledge of the sea and its living creatures and as may be expected, Iceland and the Faeroes’ settlers possessed de facto this economic, social and cultural heritage which they imported into their new settlements. In that context and with regards to those developing an economy based on the exploitation of aquatic resources, their economic successes depend not only on the resilience of the resources but also on the ‘economic and biological rationality’ of those involved in such economies. The driven forces behind the rationality here has to be understood as either ‘survival or enabling success’ since it appears that ‘enabling success’ needs a human's decision while survival belongs more to the life-cycle of non-human species. In any case, the survival and resilience of the renewable resources exploited are parameters that had to be taken into consideration in strategies for the extraction of surpluses from which to derive trade for internal and overseas markets, such as those in wider Europe.

Understanding of Iceland and the Faeroes’ Norse settlements has been fuelled by the conventional narrative which has imposed its stricture on research: both the Faeroes and Iceland were colonized by Norse supposedly fleeing political conflicts and seeking lands for cultivation and livestock and it seems that part of the Norwegians who settled Iceland came from the south-west areas of Norway, Sogn and Agðir, which were known for their agrarian communities.

Norse settlement in the Faeroes is dated from 1270±60 BP (c. AD 820±5), using AMS techniques on terrestrial plant macrofossils with, in all probability, an earlier Irish community dating from the seventh century (as will be discussed below); Iceland was colonized by the Norse in c. 870±4, with again the possibility of a small Irish community pre-dating the Norse.