A Dane and the Dawning of Faroese Archaeology: Ein Dani og Byrjanin til Føroyska Fornfrøði

Abstract

In October 1932, on his way home from field-work in Greenland, Gudmund Hatt, professor of Human Geography at University of Copenhagen, and his wife Emilie Demant Hatt, an artist painter, visited the Faroe Islands for six days. Besides being a human geographer Hatt was also a leading authority in the field of the archaeology of buildings. Hatt was particulariy interested in farming systems but during his stay in the Faroe Islands he also took part in a small archaeological excavation of a house site near Tórshavn, eonducted by the Antiquarian Society of the Faroe Islands. The antiquarian and archaeological environment which Hatt eneountered in the Faroe Islands in many respects reflected the dawning of Faroese archaeology.