Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2002, Page 31

EIN DANI OG BYRJANIN UL FØROYSKA FORNFRØÐI
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ty to have the opinion and advice of Hatt,
probably the leading authority in this tield
at the time, was a chance not to be missed
in order to push archaeology and the Muse-
um into a more prominent position in the
Faroe Islands (Fig. 18).
The corporation obviously was a suc-
cess, which Jacobsen seems to have been
keen to follow up on. Thus, in the previous-
ly mentioned Christmas letter of December
15th 1932 to Hatt, Jacobsen wrote: ‘I do
hope that you and your wife will have the
opportunity to visit us again next summer.
Then we could carry out excavations, for
instance at the site / Korndali in Nolsoy,
and maybe elsewhere too’ (author’s trans-
lation from Danish) [9].
Hatt, however, as mentioned above, nev-
er returned to the Faroe Islands. The site I
Komdali on Nolsoy was never excavated
but there was a very satisfying solution to
Jacobsen. The people of Nolsoy, encour-
aged by the Museum, decided voluntarily
to schedule the site so that only the Muse-
um was allowed to excavate there. In prac-
tice this meant that the site was protected
and thereby preserved for the future
(Djurhuus, 1944: I 17).
The dawning
Nowhere does Jacobsen or Hatt mention
other earlier excavations of house struc-
tures in the Faroe Islands. The excavation
of the ‘Fransatoftir’ near Hvítanes thus
seems to have been the first excavation un-
dertaken by a Faroese institution and it
formed the fírst step in a strategy formulat-
ed by Jacobsen the same year.
It appeared in an article titled ‘Fornlutir’
(English: Artefacts), which was published
in a Christmas magazine called Jól í
Føroyum (English: Christmas in the Faroe
Islands), which at the time was edited by
Niclasen and Jacobsen himself. In the arti-
cle Jacobsen presented a selection of the
items in the collections of the Museum. He
concluded: ‘All these items which have
been uncovered, ol'ten incidentally, are of
course of highly scientifíc value. They tell
us about ancient times, about the people,
about living conditions and daily life, and
thereby they are of general interest in con-
nection with the overall history of Scandi-
navia. It is therefore extremely important
that they are preserved, and the main task of
the Museum is, of course, to take care of the
objects and to make sure that archaeologi-
cal excavations are carried out in this coun-
try’ (Jacobsen, 1932: 44; author’s transla-
tion from Faroese). What Jacobsen demon-
strated here, in 1932, in theory as well as in
practice, was indeed the dawning of
Faroese archaeology.
Arne Thorsteinsson, in an article on the
early history of antiquarianism in the Faroe
Islands, states that even though several of
the actors in the antiquarian environment
before the outbreak of the World War II had
excavated in house ruins, these investiga-
tions could hardly be regarded as profes-
sional archaeological excavations (Thor-
steinsson, 1975: 7). This may be a correct
statement but the events in 1932 certainly
demonstrate that the visions and the will
were there.
After having studied theology at Univer-
sity of Copenhagen since 1928, Sverri Dahl