Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1949, Side 68

72
S. Þ. nú, en er þó búinn að gefa skýringu á þessu öllu saman í Tefro-
kronologiska studier (bls. 74—76), og smekklegra hefði verið af
honum að geta Ólafs Lárussonar í þessu sambandi. Eftir allt þetta
endar svo S. Þ. umrædda grein á „að hvatki það, er missagt er
í þeirri fræði (þ. e. tefrokronologiunni), þá er skylt að hafa það, er
sannara reynist“. Vonandi er þetta upphafið að því, að S. Þ. gerist
handgengnari starfsaðferðum Ara fróða en verið hefur.
Reykjavík, 15. sept. 1949.
SUMMARY
Þjórsárdálur Once More.
In the first part of this article the author adduces further proof in sup-
port of his opinion that the number of skeletons in the churchyard at
Skeljastaðir in Þjórsárdalur indicates that it was not long in use and
certainly not for 300 years, as one would be forced to conclude if Þjórsár-
dalur was devastated in the year 1300 as has been maintained by S. Thor-
arinsson. He stresses the fact that the investigation of the churchyard
indicates rather that it must have been in use for ca. 50 years and that
the district must have been devastated in the llth century rather than
about 1300. The author has treated this matter earlier in Forntida, gárdar
i Island and in Skírnir 1946, but restates his arguments here in answer
to the criticism (published in the last issue of Árbók) of S. Thorarinsson,
who was the first to ascribe the devastation of Þjórsárdalur to the year
1300 by tephrochronological methods. In the author’s opinion this criticism
fails to carry its point.
There follows a general criticism of Thorarinsson’s tephrochronological
investigations. According to the author the principal weakness of Thorar-
insson’s method is that instead of dating the ash layers by archaeological
remains, he based his dating too exclusively on annals, and the archaeo-
logical remains were in turn (e. g. by Koussell in Forntida gárdar i Island)
dated by the ash layers. The author thinks that various facts connected
with the study of the ash layers have from the first indicated that the
so-called „white layer“ in Þjórsárdalur dates further back than to the
year 1300, and that Thorarinsson’s preoccupation with an eruption of
that year is due his overestimating the value of the accounts of eruptions
found in the annals.