Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Side 78

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LE NORD
in the American excavations at Zygouries in 1921 and in the
English excavations at Mycenae* * 3 in 1921—22, but not until 20
years after Kjellberg’s investigations at Larisa, in 1922, a Swedish
expedition to Greece was started. This was the Asine Expedition,
which was inaugurated on the direct initiative of our Crown
Prince under the leadership of O. Frödin, Keeper of Stone Age
and Bronze Age Antiquities in the Historical Museum of Stock-
holm, and Professor A. W. Persson. So the gates to classical ter-
ritory were thrown wide open to a whole generation of young
scholars, who have later in various places carried on the work.4
The organization of the Asine Expedition is very charac-
teristic of Swedish work on foreign soil. A committee was set
up with the Crown Prince as President and counting as its other
members some of our best known archaeological scholars, among
them first of all Martin Nilsson, and some interested laymen.
The purpose of this committee was that of forming an advisory
board and an economic support to the work in the field, a sub-
stitute for the permanent institutes of research kept up by the
greater nations in Greece and Italy. Similarly also other expedi-
tions have had their committees as points of support in the home-
country, as a rule with the Crown Prince as active leader. The
Asine Committee was not dissolved until 1938, when the final
scientific publication appeared. The Cyprus Committee, which
was set up in 1927 for the Cyprus Expedition, on which more
below, is still functioning, in spite of the fact that the field-work
of the expedition was finished in 1931. As regards the excavations
in Italy, conditions are somewhat different, as the Swedish Insti-
tute was formed already in 1925.5 6 As for the field-work in Italy
8 In the final publication on the excavations Boethius dealt with the
remains of the Hellenistic settlement at Mycenae, Boethius, Hellenistic
Mycenae, in The Annual of the Brit. School at Athens XXV, p. 408.
4 The importance of the excavations at Asine for the training of Swedish
archaeologists cannot be over-estimated. Amongst other things it ap-
pears from the fact that in the 1920es more than 20 young archaeologists
here for the first time came into contact with work in the field in
Greece.
6 The Swedish Institute was founded on the initiative of Professor
Martin Nilsson of Lund. Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf immediately
gave his full support to the matter, which means that he entered as
Chairman of the committee. To begin with the economy was secured
by private donators. In 1938 the Institute was taken over by the Swe-
dish Government, and funds for the present building in Valle Giulia
later were donated by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.