Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.1998, Page 150

Ritdómar
time pottery specialists from foreign
countries are given the chance to
participate in scientifically exploring
pottery imported to Iceland. It is up to
us, the foreign archaeologists, to
encourage the Icelandic scientists to
carry on with their research —
archaeologists from abroad are indeed
interested in Icelandic archaeology!
And we are grateful for the English
version of the text, which aims to al-
low Icelandic research to become much
more international. Guðrún Svein-
bjarnardóttir makes an important
contribution to the exploration of
pottery in northern Europe.
References:
Madsen, P. K. & Schi0rring, O. (1981) „En
udgravning i Ribes „nye grav” og et fund af
keramik fra 1500- og 1600-árene", Hikuin 7,
209-254.
Molaug, P. B. (1981)' „Blyglaseret leirgods",
Schia, E. (ed.) Fra Christianias Bygrunn
(Arkeologiske utgravninger i Revierstredet
5-7. Riksantikvarens Skrifter 4), 53-110.
0vre Ervik.
Natascha Mehler
GUÐRÚN ÁSA GRÍMSDÓTTIR
(ed.) UM LANDNÁM Á ÍSLANDI.
FJÓRTÁN ERINDI. Vísindafélag ís-
lendinga (Societas scientarium Island-
ica) Ráðstefnurit V. Reykjavík 1996,
200 pages, illustrations and maps.
In 1990 the Icelandic Science Society
hosted a one day conference on the
settlement (landnám) of Iceland. 17
scholars presented 15 talks on this
subject from a wide variety of view-
points. Six years later 14 of the talks
appeared in a volume edited by Guð-
rún Ása Grímsdóttir who is also one of
the authors. The delay in publication
means that even though some of the
articles have been updated by the aut-
hors the volume is already somewhat
obsolete.
It is probably not a coincidence that
the conference was held shortly after
the publication of Margrét Hermanns-
Auðardóttir’s Islands tidiga bosattning
where she claimed to have found
evidence for landnám in the Westman
Islands dating back to the 7th century,
or more than two centuries earlier than
the traditional date for the start of the
settlement. In 1990 there was heated
debate about Hermanns-Auðardóttir’s
hypothesis in Iceland. In particular,
attention was paid to the many differ-
ent sorts of evidence which can be
brought to bear upon this subject. It
seems that the organisers of the confer-
ence wanted to present all the different
disciplines and methodologies that are
relevant to settlement studies rather
than different viewpoints regarding
the landnám or its dating. It is
difficult to resist the idea that the or-
ganisers also wanted to present a sort
of no-nonsense consensus about the
landnám which would fírmly and aut-
horitatively put Hermanns-Auðar-
dóttir’s ideas in their place.
The collection of articles can there-
fore be seen as a sort of broadside of
traditional Icelandic scholarship, with
150