Bone was an important resource to the vikings in the islands off Scotland, like Orkney, the Shetland Isles, and the Hebrides.^[2] Because of their easy accessibility, the Scottish Isles were easily settled by the Norse and offered a natural stepping-stone on their way between Scandinavia and Ireland, so there was a lot of viking activity in the area.^[3]

After the vikings were expelled from Ireland, they not only settled in northern Wales but Iceland as well. After leaving Ireland, the Scottish Isles where bone items were so popular would have been an obvious stopping point before reaching Iceland. Perhaps Norse from Dublin passed through the Scottish Isles to resupply and obtained this and other bone materials to bring with them or learned the practices of making the bone items and applied them to their own materials.

The large range of items found in the excavation indicates settlement behavior rather than simply raiding, and that a lot of different people had moved to Iceland in a boat for different reasons. There was evidence of domestic activities as well as martial. Perhaps this was a boat coming from Ireland to Iceland, bringing with it many displaced Scandinavian families who brought their home necessities with them as well as their weapons. This dates the bone pin after the early 900s when this migration began.

On the other hand, many Icelandic Sagas, including Njal’s Saga and the Laxdale Saga, suggest that there was a lot of interactions between the Icelandic vikings and Orkney and even Ireland. Many times in the sagas, people travel to all of these places, meaning they were easily accessible to each other.^[4] Perhaps the bone pin and the other things didn’t come from a boat running away from Ireland, but simply a boat traveling between Iceland and Orkney. Either way, the bone pin indicates interaction and trade between the two places and the uniformity of Norse dress and craft practices as they migrated throughout the viking world.