Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 40

Þóra Pétursdóttir
they in tandem composed the identity of
both.
To conclude
It is my belief that the assumed poorness
of Icelandic Viking Age graves is more a
result of the way they have been per-
ceived than of their actual nature. The
fact is that the graves themselves have
rarely been the focus of research, and
hence the lack, I argue, is not in the mate-
rial but in its interpretation. The signifi-
cance or richness of a grave does not
emerge from its distinct parts - things,
bodies or animals in isolation - but from
their collective and entangled material
presence. The way the graves have usu-
ally been handled, split up and sorted out,
has therefore prevented one from seeing
their immediate complexity and interpre-
tive potential. Furthermore, the focus on
parallelism and questions concerning
“other things”, as settlement and origin,
has caused a lack of consideration given
the material itself. However, the graves
were not constructed as “time capsules”,
capturing and reílecting a moment in a
certain past. They came into being
through complex and dynamic ritual per-
formances, involving interaction between
things and humans, the living and dead.
In order to say something about the value
and character of the material we need to
reorient our focus to what it actually
comprises and engage with the graves as
they appear - as entangled collectives,
“simple”, “poor” or whatever, and then
try to “read” or rework the relations dis-
played.
There is, as mentioned by Gerd
Aarsland Rosander (1992, 15), a “secret
world” between people and things, which
we are not able to penetrate directly.
However, these graves and their entan-
gled parts do give us reason to infer. A
change of focus may furthermore empha-
size how things that may seem trivial and
ordinary can also be socially integrated
and important - as on closer look the
affluent or spectacular is not always what
counts but what actually is there.
Note: This paper is based on the anthor ’s
MA thesis: Þóra Pétursdóttir (2007)
„Deyr fé, deyja frændr“. Re-animating
mortuary remains from Viking Age
Iceland. MA-Thesis in Archaeology.
Department of Social Science, University
of Tromso. Retrievable at: http://www.
ub. uit. no/munin/bitstream/1003 7/1165/3/
thesis.pdf
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