Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Page 76

Gavin Lucas
he was simply invited. Research into his
personal papers may give further insights
into the events surrounding his visit but
no further consideration of this issue will
be given here. One thing we do know is
that Childe’s tenure as director of the In-
stitute of Archaeology in London was
coming to a close; at the end of that same
summer of 1956, Childe retired from the
post of director, and in a sense, also from
archaeology, returning to his native Aus-
tralia the following year where he took his
own life. Childe’s trip to Iceland and the
Viking Congress was then, one of his last
academic trips. Childe was one of several
delegates from the United Kingdom, and
did not give a paper, but rather acted as a
chair in one of the sessions dealing with
place names. The congress ran for a week
between July 20th and 27th and included the
usual mix of excursions and paper sessions
(Gestsson 1958). It was during the Con-
gress that Childe was interviewed by Björn
Þorsteinsson (b. 1918 - d. 1986), an Icelan-
dic historian who had stood as a candidate
for the socialist party in 1953 and later be-
came president of the Historical Society
and editor for the leading Icelandic histori-
cal journal Saga. Throughout the interview,
Björn rather humbly describes himself as a
reporter. He was a specialist in late medi-
eval history and the torch bearer of Marxist
historiography in Iceland during the mid-
20th century. His materialistic conception
of history made him particularly interested
in archaeological approaches and he was
the first Icelandic historian to place the
prelude to the colonisation of Iceland in an
explicitly prehistoric context (Þorsteinsson
1953, 1980; on Björn Þorsteinsson’s views
see Þorláksson 1988).
The interview took place at Björn’s
home, a short distance from Hotel Garður
where Childe lodged along with other Con-
gress delegates. It was a hall of residence for
students over the winter but was used as a
hotel during summer, as it still is today. The
interview was published on July 26* in the
left-wing newspaper Þjóðviljinn, which was
a mouthpiece of the former communist,
then socialist party before it became the pa-
per of the People’s Alliance in 1956, the year
of Childe’s interview. Björn Þorsteinsson
later re-published the interview, unaltered
except for one minor change (see foot-
note 3), in a collection of his works (Björn
Þorsteinsson 1978). The interview, which
has been translated into English below
for the first time, covers many of Childe’s
well-known characteristics; prolific writer,
especially for lay readers; commitment to
historical materialism; and his broad vision
of history in terms of social evolution (via
Morgan and Engels). However, while the in-
terview does not capture well the subtlety or
sophistication of Childe’s view of social evo-
lution or indeed his contribution to archae-
ology in general, it does do a much better
job at expressing his political perspicacity.
It reveals his recognition of the collusion of
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