Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2002, Page 79

Brattahlíð reconsidered
von Eggers, who in 1793 published Om
Grenlands Osterbygds sande
Beliggenhed (On the true position of the
Eastern Settlement of Greenland).
Eggers was using the material from the
fírst large scale surveys of the Norse ruin
sites in this region, carried out only a few
years earlier by Aaron Arctander and
Andreas Bruun (Arctander 1793,
Ostermann 1944). This material correlat-
ed well with the information known from
the historical records about the Eastem
Settlement, and an attempt was made to
identify the farms and fjords mentioned
in the old records.
Even though the identifícations were
generally correct, Eggers made one mis-
take, placing Brattahlíð in modern
Igaliku, where the largest farm site
known at that time had been found. The
site has later proved to hold the remains
of the Episcopal seat Garðar, but it took
researchers almost a century to unravel
the mistake made by Eggers.
The research of the 18th century was
dominated by two periods of intense sur-
vey activity. In the 1830s and 1840s,
Danish officials living in the region car-
ried out investigations of the Norse
farms. All of this material was included
in the all-embracing work Granlands
Historiske Mindesmœrker (Historical
Monuments of Greenland) - GHM
(1838-45), published by the Danish liter-
ary commission, the Kongelige Nordiske
Oldskrift-Selskab. This was the first time
almost all of the known historical and
archaeological material regarding the
Norse settlements in Greenland was
made available to the public.
Still, the knowledge of the farm sites
themselves was by far incomplete, and in
1880 it was decided to continue the sur-
veys. The newly established Commisionen
for Ledelsen af de Geologiske og
Geografiske Undersogelser i Gronland
(the Commision for the Direction of the
Geological and Geographical Investiga-
tions in Greenland) sent out a team, lead
by Lieutenant Gustav Holm, in order to
investigate the many farm sites (Holm
1884). The surveys were continued in
1894 by Lieutenant Daniel Bruun (1895)
resulting in descriptions of almost 100
sites in the Eastern Settlement.
At that time, it was also discovered
that Eggers location of Brattahlíð was
wrong. Herman Schirmer (1886) and
Finnur Jónsson (1898) suggested that the
farm site in Igaliku should be interpreted
as the remains of the Episcopal seat at
Garðar, and so Brattahlíð had to be situ-
ated somewhere else. Using the new
material made available by Holm and
Bruun, Jónsson suggested that Brattahlíð
might be found among the ruins in
Qassiarsuk, in the Tunulliarfik ljord.
Jónsson argued that “...Kagsiarsuk
(sic.)... is the only place in Eriksfjord
(Tunulliarfik) which has such a settle-
ment and the ruins of such a major farm,
as should be expected..” (author's transla-
tion from Jónsson 1898, 293).
Interestingly, this had already been
suggested by Reverend Jorgen Frederik
Jorgensen in 1840 in a letter to Oldskrift-
Selskabet (Jorgensen 1841). This theory
was apparently not taken seriously at the
time, and was not included in the GHM
III in 1845.
In 1921, the responsibility of Norse
research in Greenland was given to
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