Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 115

Gröf - Methods and Interpretations
ferent methods. The term interpretation
is used here broadly; apart from post-
excavation interpretation, it covers the
idea of research questions and motives
behind a certain project.
At the beginning of the 20th century
and well into the middle of it, archaeolo-
gists (or even antiquarians) thought they
were being purely empirical - but today
we can see their theoretical bias.
Icelandic archaeology was then fighting
the Romantic (or plain Nationalistic)
view where antiquarians did fieldwork
with copies of the Icelandic sagas in their
saddle bag and read the landscape and
sites according to where this hero had
killed some other Viking and where the
parliament was and so on; the only
debates revolved around how some par-
ticular saga was interpreted. The data; the
sagas, constrained them. Icelandic
archaeologists were still fíghting this atti-
tude fifty years ago and their response
was somewhat down to earth, and as they
saw it, ultra-realistic; but today we have
leamed that their own view too, was
somehow twisted, Realistic (as far as that
is possible) yet Romantic at the same
time.
Excavation at Gröf 1954-57
A curator of the National Museum, Gísli
Gestsson (1907-1984) excavated Gröf
between 1955 and 1957. Gestsson had
considerable experience in excavation, at
least by Icelandic standards. The report
that Gestsson published in 1959 is 82
pages long and is considered especially
good and a professional piece of work
(Gestsson 1959).1 The stmcture of it is as
follows: first, the site location is intro-
duced with a general description of the
soil of the area and a short summary of
the excavation. This is followed by a
detailed description of each house, where
a fairly thorough, comparative analysis is
presented and the site is put in the context
of Icelandic cultural - mostly architectur-
al - history, making use of the Icelandic
sagas and other written sources such as
annals (Gestsson 1959, 44). Towards the
end there is a short summary and then a
list of artefacts and samples retrieved.
There is also a short English summary at
the end.
The farmstead Gröf is thought to have
been devastated by a volcanic emption in
Öræfajökull in the year 1362 AD. The
whole region is considered to have
become temporally uninhabitable as a
result of this eruption, with some farms -
like Gröf - never to be occupied again. A
thick layer of white pumice lay over the
mins and that layer was dated to the year
1362 by the geologist Sigurður
Þórarinsson (Gestsson 1959, 45).
Þórarinsson developed a dating method
by using volcanic ash layers as a measure
of time: tephrochronology (Þórarinsson
1943). Not many diagnostic objects were
found but some indicated that the 14th
century was a likely date for the aban-
1 This article is based on a presentation I did for a course called "Excavations of Icelandic farms" at the
University of Iceland. While preparing the presentation I went to the National Museum hoping to fmd some
of Mr. Gestsson's field notes, some drawings and etc. I didn't find any documents that were not in the pub-
lished final report.
113