Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Qupperneq 24

Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1991, Qupperneq 24
28 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
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