SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
found in Arbok: hins islenzka fornleifafelags and elsewhere, will
know how well Dr Eldjarn and his colleagues are maintaining the
traditions of scholarship and museum organisation established by
Dr Matthias I:>or6arson.
But the bulk of the book is made up of one hundred excellent
plates, ninety-two of them from photographs taken by Gisli
Cestsson, a member of the Museum staff, with on each facing page
an article of 500-600 words on the object illustrated. Dr Eldjarn
has solved the problem of selection in an unusual way, by taking
ten items from the accessions of each of the ten past decades.
This chronological order dictates the order in which the plates
appear, and since the book celebrates the centenary of the Museum
one cannot quarrel with it. Indeed, the result is to emphasise
the great variety of the Museum's interests and to provide an
excellent cross-section of its contents and responsibilities,
illustrating both some of those antiquities that are outstanding in
their artistic or historic significance and other humbler objects
which have played their workaday part in the lives of past
generations. A few random titles will suggest the scope: the
contents of the tenth-century grave at Baldursheimur, the first
gift the collection ever received; a cross-stitch coverlet from about
1700, with motives of much older origin, a design which remains
an inspiration for Icelandic handwork of today; the ruins of the
eleventh-century farm at Stong in I:>jorsardalur; Viriimyrarkirkja,
completed in 1836; an early eleventh-century coin hoard from
Gaulverjabser : a loom of the old traditional pattern; sharkcatching
gear; the gravestone of the Rev. Jon I:>orsteinssotl.
murdered by Algerian pirates in Vestrnannaeyjar in 1627;
a beautiful snuff-box (baukur) of walrus ivory from the late
eighteenth century.
People who have read Dr Eldjarrr's essays on antiquities and
art history in his books Gengio Ii reka (1948) and Stakir steinar
(1959) will know that he combines great historical and philological
knowledge with his more specialised abilities as archaeologist and
keeper of antiquities. They will know too that he writes with
great clarity, perception and imagination, and that he can evoke
an atmosphere of the living past without any affectation or
preciosity of language. These gifts find new expression in this
most worthy centenary volume.
PETER FOOTE