Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 25

ICELANDIC VlKING AgE GRAVES: LACK IN MATERIAL - LACK OF INTERPRETATION?
further examination or excavation dis-
turbed this relation. The intention was
in essence not to seek new knowledge
but to confírm and illustrate the already
existing historical record.
An eminent figure in archaeological
research at the end of the 19th century
was philologist Kristian Kálund. He trav-
elled around lceland between 1872 and
1874 gathering information on Saga sites
which became the bulk of his book
Bidrag til en historisk-topografisk Beskri-
velse af Island a few years later. In 1882
Kálund published his article “Islands
Fortidslævninger” in which he catalogued
all the known Viking Age graves and
grave goods in Iceland. His work is a
mere description of the known graves
and although detailed information is pre-
sented, interpretation of the finds rarely
follows. Neither does Kálund seem to
have been very impressed by the Icelandic
material corpus;
Island, der ved sin ældre litteratur har
sá stor betydning for studiet af Nordens
oldtid, yder med hensyn til oldsager
og andre fortidslævninger langtfra
noget tilsvarende; og i henseende til
fundenes mængde og de bevarede
genstandes antal vil dette land vel altid
stá betydelig tilbage for de fleste andre
egne af Norden. [Iceland, which
through its ancient written sources
achieves such an important role in the
study of Nordic antiquity, yields far
from an equal share when it comes to
antiquities and other archaeological
remains; and in terms of the quantity
of the fmds and the number of preser-
ved artifacts, this country will proba-
bly always stand far behind most other
Nordic regions.] (Kálund 1882, 57;
author’s translation).
This scepticism towards the potential of
material culture, apparent in Kálund’s
statement, was to become a tenacious
perception within Icelandic archaeology
and even an inhibiting factor in the field’s
development. The root of this scepticism
is in essence twofold. On the one hand it
is based in the continuous association of
material culture and the historical record
or Saga heritage. On the other hand it can
be traced to the inclination of contrasting
the Icelandic material corpus with that of
other Nordic countries, without any con-
sideration given to the integrity of such
parallelism.
A similar attitude is found in an article
written by the Norwegian archaeologist
Haakon Shetelig who visited Iceland in
1936 to study the collection of Viking
Age artefacts in the National Museum in
Reykjavík. Shetelig analysed the arte-
facts by means of typology and came to
the conclusion that they confirmed the
known historical chronology of the set-
tlement, as well as the predominant
Norwegian origin of the settlers (Shetelig
1939, 10). At the same time Shetelig was
very concemed with how the Icelandic
burial tradition deviated from the
Norwegian, for example in the absence
of cremation burials and the “poor” and
generally “unprepossessing” appearance
of the graves. The Icelanders, Shetelig
claimed, have in this sense been entirely
devoid of any ambition, as it is the simple
and modest type of burial that character-
izes the period (Shetelig 1939, 8).
This “poorness” of the graves,
described by both Kálund and Shetelig,
has since engaged most scholars address-
ing the Icelandic pre-Christian grave
material. Through parallelism with
(mostly) the Norwegian material, empha-
sis has been on explaining, by reference
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