Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2015, Page 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.
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