Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Side 81

Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Side 81
An Interview With Gordon Childe: Iceland, 1956 writings, but it will be pointed out that The Dawn of European Civilization is a pioneer- ing work, which, perhaps, has made the au- thor most famous among scholars, but the three texts4 mentioned above, have gained him the most popularity. But Professor Chil- de is not only a world famous scholar of ar- chaeology, he is also a philosopher, who has contributed mightily to securing the foun- dations of historical materialism and will in the future always be considered among the pioneers of this movement. Orkney climate, cars and archaeological remains Honours and great fame has not gone to Professor Childe’s head, he is the most friendly and attentive of men and received the reporter of Þjóðviljinn warmly the oth- er day and sat with him long into the eve- ning. The rough southerly weather greeted us, as we stepped outside the front door of Hotel Garður and Childe wrapped himself in his raincoat: “I expected this - the cli- mate is like the Orkneys - and lots of cars”. He looks over Hringbraut5. “I think that every single farmer in the Orkneys owns a car”. But there is no further comparison between Orcadians and Icelanders, as Childe says he has not got to know the lat- ter to any degree. The only thing he had heard was that the Icelanders lived mainly on fish and vitamin pills. I learnt that the professor was born in Australia in 1892 and studied classical languages there, becoming fascinated by Greek Antiquity, and started to study archaeology in order to investi- gate the origins of the ancient nations, to solve the so-called “germanische Frage“6. At twenty one years of age he went to England to study archaeology at Oxford, followed by various jobs, especially in archaeologi- cal research. But what is the answer to “the Germanic question”? I have given up on that a long time ago. Various other puzzles are more interest- ing. How did society develop in Europe in ancient times? One thing is certain: it was very different from the East. You have excavated in many places for such knowledge? In the ground especially in Scotland, but I should mention the archaeological 4 Referring to What Happened in History, Man Makes Himself and History. 5 A thoroughfare in Reykjavík. 6 It is unclear what the interviewer Björn Þorsteinsson is referring to here; the phrase usually pertains to the Germanic migrations in late Antiquity, but Childe’s earliest work was largely about Germanic migration in prehistory, specifically the role of Germanic or Aryan language and culture as the ancestor of Indo-European culture in Europe; Childe published a book called The Aryan: A Study of Indo-European Origins in 1926, which he largely disowned soon after, because of the way such ideas were connected to Nazism. 79

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