Studies of Viking Age economies and settlements in the North Atlantic have been under way for decades. Collaborative projects between international researchers have opened the path for broad-scale investigations spanning from Norway to Greenland. Yet, Scandinavian researchers and ‘English’ speaking researchers have not always communicated and collaborated effectively. In Great Britain, this led to the idea that Viking Age economic history remained to be written, since very few publications dealt with that topic. The same goes for the availability of primary sources, which are mainly in Old Norse, although there are Latin transcripts and modern Norwegian translations. With regards to Iceland and to a lesser extent the Faeroes, past studies of the settlements and economic systems of the Scandinavian colonists claimed that they transposed their traditional modes of pastoral and agricultural economic activity to their new homelands, regardless of the geographic and environmental differences between Norway and those islands. Some historians have suggested that the political situation in Norway during the ninth century, together with the lack of lands, pushed Norwegians to rebel against their king and to flee to new countries such as the Northern Isles of Scotland, Iceland and the Faeroes. However, it has been stressed that it was the ‘later generations’ who thought that their ancestors moved to Iceland to flee the increasing power of the Norwegian kings. Although political struggle might have played a role in the motive behind the migration, on the other hand and as proposed in this thesis, other factors, such as demographic growth, new farming technologies, a need for more cultivable lands, and year round access to abundant fishing grounds were factors which pushed Norwegians to migrate. There were several ‘Viking’ waves, some landing in the British Isles, especially Orkney and Shetland, Ireland, and others to Iceland and the Faeroes. In Orkney and Northern Scotland, the work of James H. Barrett highlighted dietary and economic patterns specific to Scandinavians ‘[…] the implication of changes in fishing strategies at the Iron Age/Viking Age transition is particularly striking. It is possible that the Norse colonization of Northern Scotland involved fundamental economic changes more consistent with large-scale migration of primary producers than the integration of two cultures or superficial elite dominance’.