Mobile Communities: The Gathering and Sorting of Sheep in Skútustaearhreppur, Northeast Iceland

This paper concerns the mobilities associated with the gathering and sorting of sheep within the community of Skútustarearhreppur, northeast Iceland in the recent historic period. It examines the relationships between people, animals, and landscape in terms of their movements. It presents an argument based on examining the mobilities on the surface and in the depths of a continual, in-the-making landscape, and considers the dwelling of farmers and their movements in attending to sheep as both place-forming and identity-forming processes. I present a hypothetical gathering and sorting of sheep based on historical and archaeological sources and explore the relations that are formed on-the-move.