Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 14

OSCAR ALDRED
knowledge. It has been argued that these
helped to fuel the beginnings of national-
ism and a romantic perspective on the past
that eventually led to Iceland’s claims for
independence later in the nineteenth cen-
tury (FF, xxxv). A local identity created
by a sense of place and in some instances
contextualised within a landscape set-
ting partially reflects an intended land-
scape perspective, one that is based on
its archaeology. The landscape perspec-
tive was an important one in these initial
reflections of past landscapes. If land-
scape archaeology is conceived as a study
based on overviews and broad scales of
perspectives along with other types of
source material found in literature, his-
tory and geology, these surveys by local
people are well placed to view landscape
as an important part in the development of
archaeology in Iceland. This is perhaps in
opposition to the concept of landscape in
its modern usage. Today it means some-
thing purer and less integrated as a study
of culture per se, but in the nineteenth
century landscape was a holistic entity
that included its topography, vegetation
as well as its culture through history and
archaeology. The landscape perspective
of Iceland’s heritage (society, culture and
nature) that was initiated by Finnur Mag-
nússon’s Survey and the Icelandic Liter-
ary Society, was one understood by local
people whose histories, lives, routes and
geology were tied to the landscape.
The foreigners
Kalund’s survey of the history and topog-
raphy of Iceland between 1872-1874 Bid-
rag til en historisk-topografisk Beskriv-
else af Island is an attempt to synthesize
the historical information from the Sagas
in relation to the topography of Iceland
(Kristian Kalund 1877, 1879). It is sys-
tematically arranged by county (sýslurj
then by place. The relationship between
landscape, through geography, and histo-
ry is an important one which is provided
by a traditional ideology more objectively
than Finnur Magnússon’s survey in 1817
and more systematically than the Ice-
landic Literary Society. Kalund’s lesser
connection to the Icelandic landscape
through the Sagas allowed him to perhaps
characterise in general the archaeology
and topography more objectively than the
earlier antiquarians.
Daniel Bruun’s contribution to
landscape during his excursions and field-
work in Iceland in the period of 1896 to
1910 were mainly derived from the meth-
ods he employed to investigate the archaeo-
logy of Iceland: survey and excavation
work through a visual record. In doing
so he captures the relationships and spa-
tial dynamics between different elements
on sites and between them, along with
the natural topography. Many of the sites
he visited have detailed descriptions of
monuments he encountered and almost
all have some kind of pictorial representa-
tion, either as a sketch, a measured plan
or photograph, and on many of his meas-
ured sketches differences in land cover
are marked; for example lava, grass land,
water and sand indicated on the plan of
Þingvellir (Brunn 1928, 89). His is an
important contribution to understanding
the archaeology from a landscape per-
spective. Bruun's approach was an impor-
tant break from the research tradition of
the nineteenth century. He paid much less
attention to Saga sites, and understood the
real archaeological potential in all the well
preservedruins in Iceland, from all periods.
As his work was largely based on single-
site analysis, he did not provide regional
perspectives, although many of his sketch-
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