Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1974, Page 87

BERGRISTUR Á HVALEYRI
93
SUMMARY
Inscriptions on rocks at Hvaleyri.
The present article deals with some inscriptions at Hvaleyri in the vicinity
of an old trading post near the town of Hafnarfjörður in Southwestern Iceland.
The inscriptions, found on four separate rocks, somewhat damaged in World
War II, probably date from the 17th and 18th centuries.
An account is given of earlier studies dealing with the inscriptions. According
to some versions of Landnámabók the viking Hrafna-Flóki, one of the alleged
discoverers of Iceland in the 9th century, found on Hvaleyri a lost member of
his crew. This led the romantic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson to search for the
names of Hrafna-Flóki’s companions in some rune-like marks when he examined
the inscriptions in 1841. In the 1870s the Danish antiquarian Kr. Kálund dis-
illusioned the romanticists by drawing attention to the dated inscriptions, most
of which are from the second half of the 17th century. In 1933 when the historian
Sigurður Skúlason dealt with the inscriptions he was mainly interested in the
dates.
Thus interest has been confined chiefly to rune-like marks on the one hand
and the dates on the other. A more reasonable approach is, however, to attempt
to place the inscriptions in their entirety in the context of cultural history.
Some of the marks on the rocks show a clear resemblance to German and
Scandinavian Hausmarken or bomærker, Icelandic mark, pl. mörk, or einkunn,
pl. einkunnir. It is of interest that some of the marks resemble runes and
a priori it is likely that they are older than the others. The inscriptions are
compared with Icelandic seals as studied by Jón Sigurðsson. Runic mai'ks are
found on seals but they almost disappeared by the middle of the 17th century.
After that Latin initials forming a monogram become common on seals, e. g.
S. M. S. for Skúli Magnússon.
In the 17th and 18th centuries mörk or einkunnir become less frequent and
one of the reasons for this may be the increased use of written documents in
the 17th century. In 1705, for example, it was decreed that all leases should be
drawn up, whereas before that oral agreements between landowners and tenants
in the presence of tvo witnesses had been common practice.
The Hvaleyri inscriptions suggest a development similar to that found on
seals from the period. However, it must be stressed that the limited material
from Hvaleyri does not permit definitive conclusions.