The Iron Age Settlement of Arctic Norway: A Study in the Expansion of European Iron Age Culture Within the Arctic Circle. Vol. 1. Early Iron Age (Roman and Migration Periods)

Many years have elapsed since the first beginnings of this work, many more, in fact, than I like to recall. The start was made in 1946, soon after I had taken over the office of Curator of the Archaeological Department of the Tromsö Museum. At that time, as a result of war-time disturbances, the situation at the museum was rather chaotic and a good deal of my four years in Tromsö was spent in putting the department in order. In addition to this, the summers had to be used in travelling and excavating in the district, causing interruptions of several months’ duration every year in my Iron Age studies. When I left Tromsö in 1950, I had acquired a fairly good knowledge of the Iron Age finds. The collection of material was completed, and the first rough sorting of it drafted, but there had been no opportunity to make a real study of it. In the years which followed, I also had very little time left for this work. Other tasks claimed my attention, and the progress of my Iron Age studies was painfully slow, with many and long interruptions. After some years, when some work had really been done, I felt a growing need to renew my contact with the Tromsö material. Many problems had emerged which could not be solved with the help of the notes, sketches and photographs which I had brought from Tromsö, or by means of my general knowledge of the material. A grant from 'Fondet for Norsk Kulturgransking' enabled me to go to Tromsö in the spring of 1955 and stay there for three weeks, studying the Iron Age material. In addition to numerous notes and sketches I brought with me from this trip about 600 photographic negatives, c. 500 of them being on 35 mm film. Many of the plates illustrating this book have been made from these negatives.