Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Side 129

EXPEDITION TO ICELAND IN 1939
123
countries just as the war broke out. It was arranged that Dr.
Stenberger was to be editor of the publication of the results of
the investigations, and it is due to his energy that, in spite of all
difficulties, it became possible in the summer of 1943 to publish
a stately book, Forntida gardar i Island, written in Swedish and
Danish, and with an English summary. In this work the members
of the expedition work up their results and discuss them in re-
lation to the investigations of houses of the rest of Scandinavia,
while special experts deal with the material of bones from a
cemetery excavated and with the animal bones found.
Icelandic archæology is highly simplified by the fact that
the fcountry was unsettled in prehistoric antiquity. The first
people to arrive in Iceland, were Irish monks, who in the latter
part of the 8th century established a small colony there. But
for very good reasons it had no possibility of development, and
the monks were soon driven away when the Norsemen appeared
nearly a hundred years later.
The Scandinavian expansion during the Viking Age is one of
the most interesting chapters of the history of Scandinavia. Besides
the viking raids proper, made for the purpose of sheer piracy
— but on which the vikings, involuntarily it is true, collected
a certain knowledge of the culture of the foreign countries which
in the long run was of a materially greater value than the gold
and the casks of wine — there was a systematic and comparatively
peaceful emigration from the mother-countries. It was a move-
ment which only compares with the great emigrations to America
during the latter part of the last century, and the background of
which was fairly the same, viz. the fact that a rise in material
culture had produced a surplus population which was not quite
without means and in other climates sought an outlet for its
urge for action. The first district of operation was the islands
in the Atlantic north of Scotland. In the opinion of modern
Norwegian historians this was a peaceful settlement by peasants
in search of land, who were only too glad to discover that the
islands already in part were under cultivation. This point of
view is sharply opposed by local scholars, who are proud of their
viking ancestors and effectively maintain that in each of the
graves of these peaceful peasants a sword has been found.
The busy, but rather insecure navigation between the islands
and the mother-country one fine day resulted in the discovery
of Iceland, and, the first visitors having offered a number of
9*