Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Page 10

Orri Vésteinsson
fellow modernists it seemed more impor-
tant to react to their insistence that ‘Ice-
land has no prehistory’ (‘ísland hefur enga
forsögu - the title of an interview with
Kristján Eldjárn published in Tímarit Máls
og menningar 27(4), 352-65 in 1966) and
claim that indeed the pre-1100 phase of
Icelandic history was prehistoric. As one of
those who not so long ago felt that it was ex-
tremely important to emphasise the prehis-
toric nature of the earliest phase, seeing it
essentially as a reservation for the practice
of “real” archaeology, I am no longer con-
vinced about the significance of this. It is
logical to a degree: there are no contempo-
rary written sources about Icelandic histo-
ry from before 1100 while they increase in
volume thereafter. If the end of prehistory
and the beginning of history has to be put
somewhere it should therefore be placed
around 1100 in the Icelandic case. But this
is really only a technicality. Archaeology
has changed and progressed since the time
of Gordon Childe and Icelandic archaeol-
ogy has changed and progressed by leaps
and bounds. Looking through this and
the previous 10 volumes of Archaeologia
islandica it is obvious that the divides that
once existed - between prehistory and his-
tory and between prehistoric and historical
archaeology are no longer as profound as
they were when Björn Þorsteinsson inter-
viewed Gordon Childe in 1956.
Ihe papers of this volume demonstrate
methodological breadth and a diversity of
interests and topics that would have been
unimaginable in 1956. None deal primar-
ily with the prehistoric part of Iceland’s
past but all employ approaches familiar
to prehistoric archaeologists while at the
same time making judicious use of writ-
ten sources. The archaeologists contribut-
ing to this volume are all confident in their
handling of historical evidence and in all
cases such evidence is an integral part of
the argumentation. Yet the concerns being
addressed are not those of traditional his-
torical scholarship, but questions of wholly
archaeological nature. Even this distinction
now seems unnecessary and I think it is
possible to declare that a point of synthesis
has been reached: the worries of Icelandic
archaeologists of the 1980s and 1990s that
“real” archaeology could not be practiced
on a past brimming with texts have turned
out to be unfounded. There can be no sus-
picion that the authors of the papers in this
volume are serving as the hand-maidens
of some historical housemasters. What has
in fact happened is that real archaeological
discourses have been developed and vigor-
ous debates are on-going exploring aspects
of the past which historians and prehisto-
rians of the 1950s would have been hard-
pressed to imagine.
These debates are not hampered or di-
luted by the historical evidence; on the con-
trary such evidence is widening the debate
and making it richer.
In this volume Joris Coolen and
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