Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Page 24

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PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT
come known his work has constituted the
basis for historians in the question of the
first settlement in the Faroe Islands.
At least to me, as far as Dicuil is concer-
ned, all methodological instruments
should give the same result: We are con-
fronted with a reliable historical source.
I am fully convinced that the statements
of Dicuil are reliable. His compilation of
the highest knowledge of traditional geo-
graphy, his personal addition about the is-
lands to the north of Britain, especially of
those which must be the Faroe Islands, is
original information which he, who ot-
herwise only refers to established authori-
ties, has never seen or heard of amidst
»authorities«.32
When we remember that Dicuil wrote
his work, far from his native lands, per-
haps after 30 years of voluntary physical
and intellectual exile,33 there should be no
insuperable discrepancy as to the chrono-
logy. It must be important that in the Bi-
bliotheque Nationale in Paris the oldest
preserved version can be dated back to
about 845, i.e. not very many years after
the death of Dicuil. The fate of other man-
uscripts are to be found elsewhere.34
The Archaeologists
I have chosen to put Sverri Dahl under this
headline, having already presented him to
history, because he was as much a histori-
an as an archaelogist.
Sverri Dahl was a devout believer in an
early Irish settlement and used the term
»Papa Age« (Papatid) in his historical
periodisation about the »time« that to him,
at least in 1968, preceeded the Norse
settlement, even if he had never found any
concrete evidence of Irish settlement in
the Faroe Islands.35 Nor have his younger
successors succeeded. The Icelanders have
faced the same problem. We meet here
the classical problem of »e silentio« - evi-
dence, not in its historical, but in its arc-
haeological sense.
In his work as an archaeologist Sverri
Dahl tried to unite the results of archaeo-
logical research with historical evidence
and more visionary concepts or beliefs in
a pre-Viking Irish settlement.36 This »
Holy Historical Trinity« was an intellectu-
al reality to him, even if not objectively
proven.
Gravestones with engraved »sun-cros-
ses«, showing Irish features, found at the
village of Skúvoy, where, according to
Færeyinga saga, the first Christian church
was built and the first Christians buried; or
mystical cornfields (»akrar«) on the island
of Mykines (and in some other remote
places in the islands), to him offering some
resemblance with Irish phenomena, more
than indicated to him a pre-Viking Irish
settlement, as related by Dicuil. As will be
known, the next generation of archaeo-
logists are far from convinced in his opti-
mistic view of historical interpretation.
The most cautious and sceptical response
so far has been made by Símun V. Arge,
stating the archaeological fact that human
settlement cannot be proven farther back
than the middle of the lOth century, thus
being close to old Icelandic tradition,37 and
Arne Thorsteinsson in various articles.38
Dicuil may not be a problem for the
archaeologists since they have not been
able to find any settlement confirming his
story. From his excavation of the stately
Viking Age farm at Leirvík (Toftanes)
Steffen Stummann Hansen has drawn the