Chapter 6

Icelandic Archaeology and the Ambiguities

of Colonialism
Gavin Lucas and Angelos Parigoris

Iceland, the Colonial Project and Crypto-Colonialism

Iceland was not directly involved in the colonial project, except on an individual
basis as in the example of Jn lafsson, a farmers son from the Westfjords, who
joined the Danish East India Company in the early seventeenth century and sailed
the world, recording his exploits in a memoir many years later in 1661 (lafsson
19081909). Nonetheless Iceland did directly benefit from the colonial project
through the acquisition of goods produced and traded in the overseas colonies, such
as sugar, coffee and tobacco, which entered Iceland in increasing amounts over the
eighteenth century (Jnsson 1997). Archaeologically, finds of clay tobacco pipes
and new ceramic forms, as well as oriental porcelain, are the most obvious indication of such influences from the colonial enterprise and occur on archaeological
sites in Iceland from the seventeenth century onwards, especially on settlements of
the elite. The details of this process however remain obscure; that is, quite how this
influx of new goods and materials from the colonies effected existing lifeways is
unknown although archaeology remains one of the best means for examining such
a process.
One of these effects must have been the awareness of a very different cultural
aesthetic as exemplified, for example, through Chinese porcelain. The popularity of
the Chinese style or chinoiserie in European culture during the eighteenth and early
nineteenth century, conveyed especially well through ceramics, is not of course
about Europeans wanting to imitate or adopt Chinese identity. Rather, it speaks of a
more general desire for otherness and novelty, the characteristic hallmarks of a
modernist outlook. Yet the significant element here is how China, as the alien or

G. Lucas (*) A. Parigoris

Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland,
Smundargata 2, Reykjavk 101, Iceland
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
M. Naum and J.M. Nordin (eds.), Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity:
Small Time Agents in a Global Arena, Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology 37,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_6, Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

89

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G. Lucas and A. Parigoris

Fig. 6.1 Glass bottle for sun

tanning lotion found at a farm
in southwest Iceland (Photo
by Gurn Gsladttir)

foreign other, becomes the means of expressing this modernity. We can explore
this through an even more recent phenomenon. In 2006, archaeologists working at
a site in the southwest of Iceland found a small but complete green glass bottle dating to the 1930s1940s (Fig. 6.1). Embossed lettering on the bottle indicated that
this held a commercial product called Pigmentan, manufactured in Germany, which
was used to both tan and protect the skin from the sun (Gsladttir 2006:22). Skin
tanning became in vogue in Europe during the late 1920s, but especially from the
1940s; prior to that, tanned skin was often perceived as a lower- or working-class
trait. Indeed the darkness of skin tone in general was used as a material signifier of
racial and cultural hierarchy, especially during the late nineteenth century (Young
1995:35). Kristin Loftsdttir has written much on the ideology of whiteness in
Icelandic identity formation, linking it to wider European discourses on race and
specifically on how the emergence of nationalism in nineteenth-century Iceland
drew on such a colonial discourse to legitimate its claims (Loftsdttir 2008, 2011;
also see Loftsdttir and Plsson, this volume). What is interesting about this bottle
though is how, like the example of the Chinese porcelain, it testifies to the adoption
or incorporation of the foreign otherrather than its separation, as a signifier of
modernity. Even so, it works in much the same way as Loftsdttir has suggested
about the Icelandic discourse on Africa: it aligns Icelanders with the colonisers
rather than the colonised.

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However, the connection of Iceland to colonialism is rather more complex than

this initial discussion suggests, for two reasons. First, Iceland has only been an
independent nation for less than a century; prior to that it was part of the Danish
kingdom and scholars have argued over whether Iceland was in fact itself a colony.
Second, Iceland wasand arguably still isa marginal nation in global and
European politics and culture and its very ambiguous status as a former colony connects well with Michael Herzfelds concept of crypto-colonialism (Herzfeld 2002).
Crypto-colonialism refers to the effect of colonialism on those regions or countries
which were never directly annexed through the colonial project, and thus being
neither coloniser nor colonised, fall between the cracks of western discourse.
Herzfelds arguments which focus mainly on Greece apply equally well to Iceland
insofar as they display a doubled absence in contemporary discourse. On the one
hand, Iceland is conspicuously marginal in broader discussions of European history
and archaeology; on the other hand, even when it does receive attentionas in the
case of Viking Agethis masks a more furtive absence insofar as the actual contribution of Iceland to European historiography remains rather invisible. Iceland barely
registers in histories of archaeology compared to other nations.
One could argue that this reflects a real deficit: Iceland simply had/has little to
contribute. But as Herzfeld reminds us, the core issue with crypto-colonialism is the
distribution of cultural significance and who decides what is of value. This is a
theme we will return to at the end of our chapter, but first, we want to unpack the
first part of this complex question: was Iceland a colony?

Was Iceland a Colony?

Iceland was settled in the late ninth century by Vikings from Norway and the British
Isles and after a brief period of independence became politically united with Norway
in 1262. When the Norwegian and Danish crowns united in 1380, Iceland became a
part of the Danish kingdom to which it remained connected for the next 5 centuries.
Nationalist and independence movements began in the middle of the nineteenth
century and through a series of legislations, Iceland became a fully independent
nation in 1944 (e.g. see Hlfdanarson 2001). The status of Icelands relation to
Denmark, and particularly its designation as a colony, has been a recurrent theme of
heated discussion among Icelandic historians, most recently in a discussion in 2011
on the listserve associated with the website of the Icelandic historical society (http://
www.sagnfraedingafelag.net/gammabrekka/). Most historians have tended to reject
the idea that Iceland was a colony; one of the first points usually made being is that
the word for Icelands political status was that of a dependency (hjlenda) not a
colony (nlenda). However, it is no coincidence that the adoption of this word was
promoted by the leading figure in the Icelandic nationalist movement in the middle
of the nineteenth century as a deliberate strategy in the call for independence
(Ellenberger 2009:100). Discussion of the colonial status of Iceland is in fact only
obscured by such simple terminology, as a recent review paper by ris Ellenberger

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makes very clear, for there are actually multiple facets to the issue of colonialism
and Iceland, including the political, economic and ideological, which do not necessarily paint the same picture (Ellenberger 2009). Indeed, in many ways the debates
in Iceland echo similar discussions in Irish history, and while the particular relations
between England and Ireland exhibit many differences to Denmark and Iceland (not
least the absence of major plantations of Danish settlement), some of the broader
themes are very similar (see papers in McDonough 2005; also in relation to archaeology, see especially Horning 2006, 2011).
Those scholars who have seen colonialism as a political phenomenon argue that
Iceland did not occupy the same political position as the de jure colonies of the
Danish monarchy but rather held a special status within the realm. Agnarsdttir
(2008) traces the special status of Iceland within the Danish state in the relative
autonomy of the Icelandic officials, the possible economic benefits that emanated
from that status and the common heritage that linked Icelanders and Danes alike.
Along the same lines, Hlfdanarson had earlier (2001:3) added the dimension of
distance as a crucial factor in preventing the construction of a coherent administrative
policy for Iceland. It limited the influence of Copenhagen in the Icelandic home
affairs and the role that Iceland might have played in the affairs of the Danish state.
It is true that a number of administrative representatives within the Danish realm
from the eighteenth century onwards were of Icelandic decent and that the official
language of the law courts and the church was Icelandic. The latter carries a further
significance at a political level as under the influence of the national revivalists and
romantic philosophy, Icelanders based their demands for national emancipation on
the claim that they spoke the original language of the Nordic people. An additional
cultural capital was also placed in the re-establishment of the ancient assembly of
the Alingi in 1845 and its eventual limited legislative authority at the time when
Iceland acquired its constitution in 1874. It is argued therefore that Iceland did not
share the same position as the other Danish colonies which held no representative
positions and were often subjected to civilising missions. On the contrary both the
Danes and Icelanders subscribed to a common mythology for achieving their own
separate national inspirations. The Danes in this framework viewed the Icelanders
as guardians of their common heritage and thus not in the same way as the colonial
subjects of Greenland and the West Indies (the Faroe Islands occupying a somewhat
more ambiguous status). Arguments against the position of Iceland as a non-colony
vary. It is quite usual in this context to refer to the Icelandic officials as a virtual
oligarchy (Ellenberger 2009:102) who did not fully represent Icelandic interests,
while the issue of distance from the metropolis of Copenhagen is often viewed in
comparison to the distances that had to be covered by other colonial empires for
the tight control of their colonies. Moreover, the fact that Icelanders spoke the language of the Danish ancestors, the eventual appearance of a discourse of the past
and the primitive Icelandic conditions of living met by Danish officials and
European travellers alike (sleifsson 1996) reinforced the view of Iceland as static
and therefore not adequately fit to be perceived as a progressive, civilised nation.
However, the most extraordinary fact when considering Icelands position within
the context of political colonialism is that the arguments of distance, language and

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the autonomy of Icelandic officials are used to explain both the submissiveness and
eventual national awakening and struggle of independence (see Hlfdanarson 2001).
The factor that has driven Icelanders from subjects of an empire to desiring an
autonomous status appears to be the appearance of the ideology of nationalism.
The failure to grasp the complexities of the national phenomenon and the colonial
venture both in the metropolis and the colonies or dependencies for that matter is
closely associated with the Danish historical discourse concerning Denmarks status as a proper colonial empire or rather a conglomerate state as a subcategory of
empire (Gustafsson 1998). Opinions on the issue do vary, yet it is not the scope of
this chapter to go into full detail (for details, see Brengsbo and Villads Jensen 2004;
Gustafsson 2005) However, it is worth noting that the denial to consider nineteenthcentury Denmark as an empire despite the possession of numerous colonies clearly
illustrates an unwillingness to equate Denmark with those empires that have been
associated with oppression and exploitation of their colonies. However reductionist
this form of thinking might be, it clearly manifests the attempt of Scandinavian
states to disassociate themselves from the colonial legacies of oppression and
racism and be linked to a national mythology that speaks of welfare states, rationality and modernity.
A more pragmatic approach is taken by Icelandic historians such as Gunnar
Karlsson and Sigfs Haukur Andrsson who speak of Iceland as a proper colony.
For Andrsson (1997, 2001), the trade monopoly of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries is a clear example of Danish oppression and describes the eventual abolition of the trade restrictions in 1787 and the succeeding commercial autonomy in
1855 as colonial arrangements (nlendufyrirkomulag). Similarly, Halldr Bjarnason
(2001) supports the view that Iceland has been an economic colony since the midseventeenth century due to Denmarks dominance over the Icelandic economy and
the resulting unequal relations of power prevalent in the contexts of informal imperialism and colonialism. For Bjarnason the entanglement of colonialism and mercantilism is responsible for the poor fate of Icelands economy and argues that
Iceland had been a capitalist colony since 1886 and up to the early twentieth century. Gunnar Karlsson (1995), on the other hand, utilises Hechters (1975) notion of
internal colonialism and speaks of the tensions between metropolitan Copenhagen
and peripheral Iceland that stem from their unequal power relations. Within this
framework, he argues that the Icelandic nationalist movement was the vehicle upon
which an underdeveloped peripheral state expressed its reaction to the economic
progress and modernisation of the metropolis.
It is quite clear that the above approaches bound the colonial experience to the
very specific spheres of politics and economics. Within this framework, colonialism
appears to be treated as a top-down political programme implemented by politicians
and intellectuals and executed by the colonial subjects. The colonial experience however is a more complex and dynamic process. It is an ontology that continuously
constructs itself and its social agents (Hamilakis 2007), defines peoples place in
society and guides their social interaction (Anderson 1983/1991; Herzfeld 1992;
Gourgouris 1996). Its influence can only be measured partially when dealing with the
political and economic contexts alone. Andersons (1991) statement that nationalism

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has to be seen as a cultural system rather than a political programme is therefore

applicable to colonialism both by extension and by the fact that colonialism and
nationalism have developed in parallel trajectories. Perhaps one of the serious transgressions of the above theories in this context is the failure to recognise the entanglement of colonialism and nationalism which has resulted in the polarisation of such
terms as the nation and colony, the colonised and coloniser and therefore
the self and other. For some, the failure to identify the intersection and entanglement of nationalism and colonialism reveals the lasting effects of colonialism in
Icelandic academia after the decolonisation of the country, whether this is perceived
as economic, political or cultural (orgrmsdttir 2006). In the next section, we
explore this entanglement through a consideration of archaeological evidence.

The Archaeology of Danish Presence

The material presence of the Danish state in Iceland is marked in somewhat ambiguous ways, but linked both to Danish administrative functions and the trade monopoly. Architecturally, a number of new building forms appeared in Iceland during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including merchants timber houses at the
trading stations scattered around the island (e.g. at Eyrarbakki, a station on the south
coast), and the more grand, stone houses of administrative officials (e.g. Vieyjarstofa,
Nesstofa, both in the environs of Reykjavk, the former being the treasurers residence, the latter that of the director of public health). The apex of the administrative
hierarchy was the colonial governors residence at Bessastair (now the official
home of the president of Iceland), which in the seventeenth century was remodelled
along the lines of a courtyard complex known as Konungsgarur or the Kings
Manor. Part of this complex was excavated in the 1980s and 1990s revealing a
brick and timber structure associated with the seventeenth-century rebuilding
(lafsson 1991). The uses of dressed stone, timber and brick were all alien building
methods to the Icelandic architectural vernacular which used turf or turf and
undressed stone as their primary building materials. The internal spatial organisation of these new buildings was also a novelty.
Besides these alien architectural forms, there are imported commodities, which
came either as legal trade through Danish merchants, as personal cargo or through
illicit trade. Such goods, which included all ceramics, glassware and a great deal of
metalware, make up an increasingly large proportion of archaeological assemblages
in Iceland between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. However, many of the
imported objects were not Danish; German stonewares and Dutch clay pipes are
extremely common on Icelandic sites, alongside lesser amounts of oriental porcelain,
although it seems likely that most of the more utilitarian red earthenwares were of
Danish manufacture, based on compositional analysis (Sveinbjarnardttir 1996).
Similarly, many of the timber houses mentioned above would have been built by
German or Norwegian merchants, especially before the trade monopoly was
instigated. Nonetheless, even though many such goods and buildings may not have

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been manufactured in Denmark or designed/constructed by Danes, the crucial

question in this context concerns how they were perceived.
Christina Folke Ax (2009) has pointed out that for Icelanders, Danishness was
almost synonymous with foreignness insofar as everything that was not Icelandic
was often simply called Danishsometimes pejoratively, sometimes admiringly.
However, arguably such an association may have been strongest during the nineteenth century as the nationalist movement took hold, a point well exemplified in
the case of alcohol. Alcohol had been consumed in Iceland since the settlement of
the island in the ninth century, but at the start of the twentieth century it was frequently referred to as a foreign or Danish vice and a malevolent influence on
Icelanders. Although alcohol was produced locally, a great deal was also imported,
especially wine, beer and spirits. This othering of alcoholand in particular,
associating it with the Daneslinked the temperance movement directly to the
nationalist cause (sleifsson 2007). In 1915, prohibition went into effect in Iceland
and was only partially repealed in 1935 as spirits became exempt; beer however
remained illegal until 1989. At least for the early period, prohibition thus became a
form of independence by other means, while those who indulged in alcohol consumption were underlining their subservience not only to the bottle, but to Danish
culture and the Danish state. To see how such a perception could have been maintained at a very concrete level, let us take an archaeological example.
Recent excavations by one of the authors of this chapter at an early industrial
fishing village which was occupied between 1907 and 1943 in the bay of Reykjavk
uncovered fragments of an embossed flask which held a blended whisky from a
New York distillery called Littlemore operating between 1907 and 1936 (Fig. 6.2).
Given these dates, its presence on this site suggests a flouting of the prohibition, an
activity that is known to have occurred from contemporary newspaper sources. One
story in particular is worth telling because of the explicit associations with nationalism. In 1917, a fishing trawler r docked at Viey and unloaded an illegal cargo of
alcohol, which everyone in the village seemed to know about and take advantage of.
Despite the villagers keeping quiet about it, the authorities heard of it and impounded
what remained of the liquor. One of the few villagers who were against the cargoa
schoolteacherwas later accused of tipping off the authorities. She promptly wrote
a letter to the national paper, Morgunblai, denying this charge but openly confessed her dislike of alcohol in flagrant nationalist terms:
I find [alcohol] to be a powerful enemy which makes war against my country, and what is
more, consider it treason to join up with it, or to tolerate its arrival unhindered as it could do
even more harm here than in other places.
I believe it should be the duty of all good men and true Icelanders to fight against it, not
the least my duty as a member of the temperance movement.1
Morgunblai, 22nd March 1917, p. 2, col. 3 (authors translation).

1
Mr fanst hann vera flagur vinur sem vri a herja landi mitt, og a a, vru furlandssvik a ganga li me honum, ea la honum a komast hindra fram og gera ef til vill enn
meira ilt af sr annars staar. A a vri skylda allra gra manna og sannra Islendinga a berj
mti honum, og ekki szt skylda min, sem var templari.

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Fig. 6.2 Fragment of a

whisky flask found during the
excavations on Viey (Photo
by Gavin Lucas)

The quote illustrates the clear links between nationalism and the temperance
movement through its language and words used. But what is doubly interesting
about this particular case is that the fishing village and associated factory was established by a joint stock company based in Copenhagen and that Danish personnel
and companies were a key part of operations, even if most of the workers
were Icelandic. Given the close relationship between the Icelanders living in the
village and the Danish companies working there, the flouting of prohibition in the
village seen both in documentary and archaeological sources would have appeared
to the temperance movement as a confirmation of the ideological links between
alcohol consumption and political subservience. How the villagers and workers saw
it however is another matter.

Nationalism, Colonialism and Archaeology

The entanglement of nationalism and colonialism discussed above needs further
elaboration in the context of Iceland. Since the nineteenth century, Iceland has been
perceived as a place to escape from the corruption of modernity, with its pristine
nature and simpler way of life, and as static and primitive. By European standards,
it carried both an exoticism and a familiarity. The familiarity was manifested in
history, religion and literary tradition, the latter evident in the nineteenth-century

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glorification of the sagas, whereas Icelanders were considered the custodians of

the Danish national (or even pan-Scandinavian) heritage, linguistic and cultural.
At the same time perceptions of Iceland and Icelanders by other Europeans during
the nineteenth century were often not very favourable. In stereotypical fashion,
Iceland was often portrayed as a backward, uncivilised place by the increasing
number of tourists and scientific expeditions who went there from the mideighteenth century (sleifsson 1996, 2007). At the same time, Icelandic elites and
intellectuals tried to distance themselves from this image through participating in
the same colonial discourse of non-western peoples. Such a discourse was a deliberate attempt to counter foreign perceptions of Iceland which might have aligned
the island with non-European others and instead situate Iceland emphatically within
the European core.
Although the colonial project was undoubtedly enfolded in such discourses, one
has to bear in mind that this perception of Iceland was not simply about Europeans
and others. Within Europe itself, the urban middle classes were increasingly using
the same language to describe the European peasantry and working classes as they
applied to Africans and other non-European peoples. The nineteenth-century
descriptions of Swedish peasantry as backward and uncivilised by the Swedish
middle classes are not substantially different to those of Iceland by foreign visitors
(Frykman and Lfgren 1987:174220). Of course there is an inevitable connection
between the colonial and class discourses (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991;
Ahmad 1992), but what is especially interesting about Iceland is how it straddles
both of these. The European perception of nineteenth-century Iceland as backward
was ambiguously both a colonial and a class issue.
This ambiguity about how Iceland is viewed in western discourse can be also
linked to its perception as a geographical and historical marginal part of Europe
and European culture since the late Middle Ages (Durrenberger and Plsson 1989;
Plsson and Durrenberger 1992; also see Wolff 1994). However, such ambiguity
within Iceland itself probably only became manifest in the nineteenth century during the rise of nationalism and demands for independence from Denmark and was
especially felt over Icelands equivocal status as coloniser/colony (Loftsdttir
2010). That is, the extent to which Iceland identified itself with the European imperial core as opposed to being perceived as a colony of the metropole. Iceland thus
presented an anomaly in the dualities inherent in the colonialist, imperialist and
nationalist rhetoric which distinguished the civilised from the uncivilised. It occupied an in-between position on the borderland between the civilised and the uncivilised nations of the nineteenth century (Oslund 2011). These politics of simultaneous
exclusion and inclusion, the tensions between cultural greatness and savagery,
modernity and primitiveness, which ultimately translate into concurrent feelings of
cultural superiority and economic and technological inferiority, have had a deep
effect in Icelandic society.
This is well illustrated in the World Fair of 1900 in Paris and the Danish colonial
exhibition in 1904. The former was organised by one of the famous and still largely
quoted antiquarians of the time, Daniel Bruun. The exhibition went by the name
Northern Dwellers and was held at the Colonial Pavilion. The intention of Daniel

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Bruun as an antiquarian and chief curator of the exhibition was to illustrate the
cultural connections of the northern colonies/dependencies with Denmark through
religion. Even though it was acknowledged that Iceland and the Faeroe Islands
were dependencies with political representation within the Danish kingdom, they
were placed alongside the colony of Greenland in order to provide a better comparative approach between their material culture and justify cultural connections
along the North Atlantic (Mogensen 1997). The classification of Iceland alongside
the primitive Greenlanders instigated various objections among the Icelandic
elites. Similarly, the latter exhibition regarding the Danish colonies in 1904 was
strongly opposed by Icelandic students residing in Copenhagen. The protesters
considered that the participation of Iceland in the exhibition automatically meant
the reduction of Icelands status to that of a colony. Even though the intention of
the exhibition was to focus on Icelands history and nature, placing Iceland alongside the colonies of Greenland and Africa prompted major reactions and comments
declaring that Iceland was being posed along with uncultured savage ethnicities
(silausum villijum) [] to disgrace us in the eyes of the cultivated world
(Sveinsson, quoted in Loftsdttir 2008:183).
The above displays can be taken as evidence of the paternalistic role that the
Danes had assumed towards their colonies/dependencies and reflect the implicit
responsibility of bringing civilisation to those faraway isolated territories. Iceland in
this respect resembled the core of the Danish monarchy through the Christian religion yet not those aspects of modernity so as to be equated with the other civilised
nations. Greenlands position, on the other hand, was at the bottom of that hierarchy
of civilisation. What is of greater importance however is the fact that both exhibitions clearly show that colonialism and nationalism do not just simply use the same
set of criteria for identification but that they fundamentally share the same worldview in matters of civilisation, race, history and the past. The point of departure of
nationalism is akin to the colonial discourse.
Postcolonial critique has not only taught us that the coloniser and the
colonised need each other in order to constitute themselves (Bhabha 1994), but
also that their relationship involves such heterogeneous networks of power that it
becomes impossible to contain them in one uniform and articulate narrative
(Spivak 1988). Nationalism as an ontological apparatus and a frame of reference
is a hybrid construct that does not connote a culturally bounded whole (Stewart
1999). It stems from a reworking and at times forceful combination of previously
existing cultural elements and not from the simple stratified combination of distinct cultural forms (Bhabha 1994). It is a product that is stemming from the
ambivalence inherent in colonial situations. For Partha Chatterjee (1986) nationalism is a derivative discourse of colonialism within which anti-colonial sentiments create an illusory antithesis between nationalism and colonialism. National
emancipation and resistance to colonial dominion therefore is not necessarily
an oppositional act of political intention, nor is it the simple negation or exclusion of the content of another culture It is the effect of an ambivalence produced within the rules of recognition of dominating discourses as they articulate
the signs of cultural difference and re-implicate them within the deferential

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relations of colonial powerhierarchy, normalization, marginalization and so

forth (Bhabha 1994:11011).
In this framework, Icelandic and Danish antiquarians participated actively in the
production of a colonial-cum-nationalist discourse, although it manifested itself in
a rather unusual way. Part of this must relate to the historical role archaeology
playedor rather did not play in the independence movement in Iceland. Unlike
many other countries, the role of archaeology was minimal in nationalist discourse;
far more important was the literary and linguistic heritage (Byock 1992; also see
Hlfdanarson 2005). Why was this? In part, it relates to the way in which the literary heritage attested to a degree of modernity or civilisation that none of its monuments or ruins could ever do. Icelands medieval literary heritage was a far more
powerful tool in the fight for independence than archaeology because it demonstrated Icelands right to be counted as a modernising and advanced nation. In contrast, its archaeological remains were often non-descript and certainly unimpressive
when compared with the archaeology of Denmark or indeed other European countries. In fact, it was much easier and less contentious to subsume the archaeological
record of Iceland within a broader pan-Scandinavian cultural tradition, which is
how it was perceived in many ways, by both Icelandic and Danish antiquarians
during the late nineteenth century.
Nonetheless, archaeology was conscripted to the nationalist/colonialist cause
and was done so by aligning it to the more potent literary heritage which acted to
turn such non-descript sites into monuments (Fririksson 1994). Along these lines,
the Icelandic member of the Danish Royal Commission for the Preservation of
Antiquities, Finnur Magnsson, undertook a systematic survey of all the visible
monuments in Iceland in 1816. His Udsigt over mrkelige oldsager i Island (Survey
of Remarkable Antiquities in Iceland) was comprised of reports sent by each
Icelandic parish and constituted the basis upon which the first preservation order
was put in 1817. Similarly, the Icelandic Literary Society attempted to complete a
total description of Iceland in the mid-nineteenth century. Part of this project was to
locate ancient monuments and involved such figures as poet, natural philosopher
and early nationalist, Jnas Hallgrmsson (18071845). On both occasions, ancient
ruins were associated to saga events and historic figures. Early antiquarians such as
the Danish scholars Kristian Klund (18441919), Daniel Bruun (18561931), the
Icelandic Sigurur Vigfsson (18281892) and Brynjlfur Jnsson (18381914) all
contributed in their own ways in recording ancient monuments, legends and folklore, describing landscapes and making literary analogies to the medieval sagas.
They were partners in creating the modern structures of professional archaeology as
seen in the establishment of the Collection of Icelandic Antiquities in 1863 and the
Archaeological Society in 1879.
The search for sites and especially for those types that were believed to be associated with the civilised world, such as temples and law courts, was very much a
preoccupation of both the local and foreign early antiquarians in Iceland. Such work
turned sites into monuments. As Fririksson comments on the work of Olaf Olsen:
Olsen compared the topographic literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
and discovered a marked increase in ruins identified as temples in the latter half of

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the nineteenth century. While only a few temple ruins are mentioned in the Land
Register from 1703 to 1712, and numbered a mere 14 in the parish archaeological
reports of 18171823, they rise to about 100 at the turn of the century (Fririksson
1994:73). Similarly, court circles and law courts also reappear in abundance in the
literature of the nineteenth century. Olsen explains the above as a reflection of the
growing interest in antiquities inspired by national romanticism in Iceland. However,
the conviction that language, race, religion and in our case ancient monuments can
measure the civility and cultural superiority of a nation is shared by both the nationalist and colonialist discourse. As fundamental ideologies of western modernity,
they create a civilising discourse within which national entities and colonial empires
are entangled in a race to top the hierarchy of the civilised, modernised world.
The participation of the Icelandic nationalists in this race is clearly illustrated in the
words of one of the most influential Icelandic nationalist historians, J.J. Ails, written at the beginning of the twentieth century: Iceland was so rich and beautiful
and great that such greatness had not been witnessed before, apart from the Ancient
Greeks at the highest level of maturity , Icelanders would gain excellent
fame for courage and deeds, strength and honesty wealth and prosperity grow
at home, fame and reputation abroad (Ails 1903:2389, quoted in Fririksson
1994:56).

Transcending the Colonial Dichotomy

and Crypto-Colonialism
The ambiguity of the colonial status of Iceland alluded to earlier in this chapter
ultimately impacted on the nature of Icelandic nationalism. Insofar as Iceland
struggled for independence from Denmark, its shared cultural heritage meant that
any such separation was bound to be equivocalif not politically, at least ideologically. Paraphrasing Herzfeld (2002), one might suggest that for a country like
Iceland, the need to establish a nation equal to those of others and the creation of a
stable national identity involved a sacrifice. Not so much of economic dependence
as Herzfeld argues, but of cultural dependence. Just as nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century archaeologists often portrayed Icelandic material remains in
terms of a pan-Scandinavian heritage, so a common contemporary refrain in academic discourse is the situating of Iceland within a broader, supra-entityof yet
another imagined community to which Iceland belongs. If not Scandinavia, then
the North Atlantic or the Arctic. The parade of invented terms such as Scandinavian
orientalism (Jhannsson 2000), arcticality (Plsson 2002) and borealism
(Schram 2011) even though constructed to counteract the modern essentialist discourses that pervade Icelandic society through tourism, nationalism and discourses
of globalisation, only succeed to connote the anxiety to be included within some
larger cultural entity or a wider community of the North that accepts Iceland as
an equal partner and contributor.

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101

We would suggest that while the generation of the above terms is an attempt
to transcend the ambivalence of Icelands former colonial status or indeed the
colonialist/nationalist dichotomy, they do so at a cost. This cost is an accentuation
rather than diminution of anxiety about cultural identity for Icelandersan anxiety
of belonging and a place in the world. On Wednesday, 19th October 2011,
Frettablai, a daily free national newspaper distributed over most of Iceland,
reported that Icelandic horses were to be used in shooting the new film The Hobbit.
Articles of this kind occur regularly in this newspaper and seem to encapsulate this
anxiety about national self-identity. On the one hand, they explicitly express a
pride in how Iceland and its citizens (human, equine or otherwise) are playing a
role in the international arena. On the other hand, the very fact they report on what
are often fairly trivial matters is an implicit acknowledgement of a deep fear of the
very opposite: how unimportant Iceland is to the world. In searching for a place,
for cultural significance in a global arena, the very ambiguity of Icelands former
colonial status still resounds today.
And this brings us back to the point we began and Herzfelds concept of cryptocolonialism. Iceland may not have been a coloniser and it may not even have been a
colony, but it is precisely because it does not neatly fall into these categories that it
demands close attention. For, like other crypto-colonies, it raises questions over the
distribution of cultural significance and who decides what counts as important.
It exposes the prejudices of our terms and the master narratives of colonialism and
nationalismand indeed of modernity itself. In many ways, the issue can be condensed to a spatial one, concerning cores and margins; such a political geography
will always create an uneven space and one in which the terms of debate remain the
same. Iceland will either be viewed as marginal or it will argue for core status.
The only way forward is to neutralise such political geography. One way has been
the construction of new supra-entities or regional communities like the North, but
we suggest this only creates the possibility of new spatial hierarchies at a higher
level. A better solution is to abandon any pretence at a scalar approach to space
(regional, national or supranational) and rather consider the situated nature of existence. Space looks different depending on where you are standing. For archaeology,
this means attending to the obvious fact that one is always working at a particular
site or within a particular landscape; the core is thus wherever you happen to be and
the periphery, the limits of your sites network. The problem is archaeologists all too
often make the leap from their concrete site to a larger, abstract community (e.g. a
cultural region) and in doing so immediately submit their archaeology to a political
geography of cores and margins. What if we stay grounded and what if we follow
objects and connections between places suggested by objects and in doing so move
our perspective with them? This is not about denying the unequal power relations
between places or the role that nationalist and colonial ideologies play in this network, but rather about exploring the paths and networks along which these power
relations flow. In doing this, questions of cores and margins become more fluid and
contingent and the ambiguities of colonialism and nationalism, which before seemed
so problematic, now appear quite inevitable.

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