Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2002, Side 28

26
A DANE AND THE DAWNING OF FAROESE ARCHAEOLOGY
Fig. 16. The higger ruin at ‘Fransatoftir’ after excavation on October 21st 1932. Photo: Gudmund Hatt. Private,
the author.
Fortunately, however, there was some-
body else who took photographs on the site.
A few years ago a number of negatives
came into the possession of the author, and
they turned out to derive from the Hatt cou-
ple’s visits to respectively Greenland, Ice-
land and the Faroe Islands in 1932. Ac-
cording to Hatt’s notebook he took two
films each of twelve photographs [8]. The
photographs represent Hatt’s main interests
during his stay, i.e. landscape, settlement
and farming. But among the preserved pho-
tographs are also four from the excavation
of the ‘Fransatoftir’ near Hvítanes. The
photographs demonstrate what seems to be
have been a professionally executed exca-
vation (Fig. 14-15). So what was actually
going on those October days in 1932?
On October 22nd 1932 the Faroese
newspaper Dimmalætting brought an arti-
cle on the Hatt visit with the headline ‘Pro-
fessor Gudmund Hatt and Wife’. The arti-
cle gave a presentation of Gudmund and
Emilie and al'ter having described the exca-
vations in Greenland that summer il stated:
‘This year the Parliament has granted 300
kroner to excavations at the site Gerðatoftir