Fornvännen's Summer Issue On-Line

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Fornvännen's summer issue (2010:2) is now on-line and available to anyone who wants to read it. Check it out!

  • Kalle Sognnes looks in commendable detail at a rock art site in wooded central Sweden and demonstrates that contrary to previously voiced opinions, it does not much resemble Norwegian rock art in its style. He suggests that hunting bands at the time kept their holy places secret from each other, thus preventing the spread of stylistic traits.
  • Morten Axboe & Lars Lagerqvist publish a Migration Period gold bracteate found unexpectedly in a large & venerable coin collection that was recently put up for auction.
  • Claes Pettersson presents a cache of coins and small metalwork from an urban dig in 17th century Jönköping that suggests the presence of a historically undocumented group of war refugees from the area of the current Baltic states.
  • Leif Häggström discusses whether sites in poorly explored woodland regions should be evaluated using the same high standards as sites in well-known agricultural regions.
  • Henrik Thrane has an essay on the completion of the "Neue Hoops", a multi-volume archaeological encyclopedia for Northern Europe. The piece is interesting not least because it features a picture of professor Herbert Jankuhn, one of the few Nazi archaeologists (he was in the Waffen-SS!) whose careers survived 1945, being chummy with Danish and German colleagues in 1969.
  • Magnus Källström reports from a runology conference and Staffan von Arbin from a maritime archaeology conference.
  • Bodil Pettersson reviews two big new permanent archaeology exhibitions in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

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Beware! You-know-who is off his meds and trolling all over Scienceblogs again. A good argument for government-sponsored medicine, BTW.

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"professor Herbert Jankuhn, one of the few Nazi archaeologists (he was in the Waffen-SS!) whose careers survived 1945, being chummy with Danish and German colleagues in 1969"

If he was in the Waffen-SS, he may not have been quite as big a freak as the creeps of SS-Ahnenerbe.
The specialist mountain soldiers (division "Heydrich") that fought in North Finland were apparently pretty much like ordinary Wehrmacht units, but it varied much between different Waffen-SS units. "Totenkopf" was, for instance, formed by concentration camp guards. Anyway, nazi scientists should be considered guilty until proven innocent, considering Abderhalden and his "abwehrfermente" hoax.

By Birger Johansson (not verified) on 18 Jan 2011 #permalink

Jankuhn did fine work as a professor after the war, and accounts vary as to whether he was a psycho murderer or just a politically opportunistic young academic. I don't know, myself.

From what I've read, Jankuhn was member the SS-Ahnenerbe, not the Waffen SS. About the only bad thing he was involved with was Himmler's claim that a Norwegian sword was of "Germanic" origin. Himmler wanted Jankuhn to obtaint the object for his museum. A Norwegian archaeologist refused, and wound up in the Camps.

Reading about the Nazi involvement with archaeology is fascinating stuff, even if it is disturbing.

By Steven Blowney (not verified) on 18 Jan 2011 #permalink