Halinen, Petri

Olsen, Bjørnar J.

English

Journal.fi

Iskos 22. In search of hearths – a Book In MeMory of sven-DonalD heDMan 5Sven-Donald Hedman, Archaeologist  and FriendThis book is dedicated to the memory of Sven-Donald Hedman, a Swedish archaeologist whose professional interests were mainly in the north. Sven-Donald collaborated closely with Norwegian, Finnish and Russian archae-ologists, and also with colleagues in Canada and the United States. His fieldwork trips were dedicated to the forest and mountain areas of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia – to al-most every corner of Sápmi. The urge to find answers to new questions inspired him to head off the beaten archaeological track. Likewise, Sven-Donald’s interests in archaeology were not confined to any narrow time span but ex-tended from the time of Fennoscandia’s first settlers to 20th-century archaeological sites.Petri Halinen & Bjørnar J. OlsenFigure 1. Fieldwork in Russia in 2014. Sven-Donald in the camp on Sredniy Peninsula, Murmansk Oblast. Photo: Bjørnar Olsen.Iskos 22. In search of hearths – a Book In MeMory of sven-DonalD heDMan6PetrI halInen & Bjørnar j. olsen This collection includes seven articles closely related to Sven-Donald’s main field of research, written by authors with whom he collaborated over several years. Most of the papers focus on the so-called hearth-row sites, which can be dated to the Late Iron Age and the early medieval period. Sven-Donald directed and took part in several of the in-vestigations discussed here, most notably at the two Pasvik sites, Brodtkorbneset and Steintjørna. In other projects, he was a high-ly valued collaborator. The volume is based on the proceedings of a seminar dedicated to the memory of Sven-Donald, held 4 March 2016 at the Centre for Sámi Studies of the University of Tromsø – The Arctic Univer-sity of Norway. The seminar was very well attended, with Sven-Donald’s family as spe-cially invited guests. Talks and discussions took place in a pleasant atmosphere and thus well in his spirit as a scholar and person.  The authors remember Sven-Donald as a gener-ous and immensely gifted colleague, a person who always had a smile for you even in the toughest field conditions.Sven-Donald Hedman was born 1953 in Arjeplog, Northern Sweden. His interest in archaeology began early. He was only 12 years old when he found his first stone ar-rowheads on the lake shore near his home in Stensund. He handed the finds over to the local museum (Silvermuseet) in Arjeplog and continued to search for more finds and sites. Already as a teenager he took part in several archaeological excavations near Arjeplog. His path to academic archaeology, however, was longer than for most of us. He had chil-dren as a young man and worked for several years as a carpenter in order to secure the economy of his family. Nonetheless, he never gave up his dream of ultimately becoming an archaeologist, and at the age of 30 he began his studies in archaeology at Umeå Univer-sity. These studies were crowned by his doc-toral thesis in 2003, Boplatser och offerplat-ser. Ekonomisk strategi och boplatsmönster bland skogsamer 700-1600 AD. It is based on material from numerous hearth and hearth-row sites, several of which he had ex-cavated himself. Its main topic was the emer-gence of reindeer husbandry and whether there was a connection between changes in settlement pattern and transitions in the reindeer economy. One of Sven-Donald’s conclusions was that the new environmen-tal preferences characterizing the location of the hearth-row sites from the Late Iron Age onwards could be explained by new needs for pasture in a reindeer herding economy (Hedman 2003).Sven-Donald was deeply engaged in Sámi archaeology, broadly defined. He carried out extensive fieldwork in the boreal forest zone, where also quite young sites drew his atten-tion – sites that still were on their way to becoming what we traditionally think of as archaeological sites. They  included so-called culturally modified trees, including traces of the removal of pine inner-bark for food but also drawings and other depictions – some of them from the 19th century, but also younger. Sven-Donald was interested in the diversity of traces left by humans in the past, irrespec-tive of age, and he was a master in finding them. Together with his soil sampling probe, which always accompanied him, he was a fa-miliar sight in both the forest and mountain regions. While hearth and hearth-row sites in the forest region probably were his foremost field of interest and expertise, the so called stállo sites in the mountain areas were also close to his heart. He surveyed extensively in high mountain areas to find and record new sites, in both Sweden and Norway, and above all in the Saltfjell area (Hedman 2015).As an archaeologist Sven-Donald worked in the early 2000s at the Norrbotten Muse-um, where he headed the project Skog och historia (Forest and History) and gained wide experience of all kinds of ancient mon-uments in the forest areas, skills that became important for his later projects. In 2007, he was appointed to a post-doctoral position at the University of Tromsø as part of the re-search project Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North (HHH) (Anderson et al. 2013). This was a large international project with subprojects in the United States, Iskos 22. In search of hearths – a Book In MeMory of sven-DonalD heDMan 7sven-DonalD heDMan, archaeologIst anD frIenDFigure 2. Inspecting a newly found weight. Sven-Donald and Petri Halinen at Steintjørna, Pasvik, 2012. Photo: Bjørnar Olsen.Figure 3. Taking a break on  a sunny afternoon on the shores of Lake Lovozero. Sven-Donald and Anton  Murashkin, Lovozero, Russia, 2007. Photo: Petri Halinen.Iskos 22. In search of hearths – a Book In MeMory of sven-DonalD heDMan8PetrI halInen & Bjørnar j. olsen ReferencesAnderson, R. Wishart and V. Vaté (Eds.) 2013. About the Hearth – Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.Halinen, P., Hedman, S.-D. & Olsen, B. 2013. Hunters in Transition: Sámi Hearth Row Sites, Reindeer Econo-mies and the Organization of Domestic Space 800-1300 A.D. In D. G. Anderson, R. Wishart and V. Vaté (Eds.) About the Hearth – Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North: 152-182. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.Hedman 2015. Stállotomter från kusten och upp till högfjällen, vad berätter de? In B. Evjen and M. Myrvoll (Eds.), Från kust til kyst – ÁhpegáttestÁhpegáddáj. Svolvær: Okrkana Akademisk Forlag, pp. 29-50Hedman, S.-D. 2003. Boplatser och offerplatser. Ekono-misk strategi och boplatsmönster bland skogssamer 700–1600 AD. Studia archaeologica universitatis Umensis 17. Umeå: Umeå University.Hedman, S.-D. & Olsen, B. 2009: Transition and Order: a Study of Sámi Rectangular Hearths in Parvik, Arctic Norway. Fennoscandia archaeologica XXVI: 3-22. Helsinki: The Archaeological Society of Finland.Hedman S.-D., Olsen, B. & Vretemark, M. 2015. Hunters, herders and hearths: interpreting new results from hearth row sites in Pasvik, Arctic Norway. Rangifer, 35, (1), 2015: 1-24.Jerand, P., Linderholm, J., Hedman, S.-D. & Olsen, B. 2016. Spatial Perspectives on Hearth Row Site Organisation in Northern Fennoscandia through the Analysis of Soil Phosphate Content. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 5: 361–373.Røed, K., Bjørklund, I. & Olsen, B. 2018. From wild to domestic reindeer – genetic evidence of the non-native origin of reindeer pastoralism in northern Fennos-candia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2018, Vol. 19: 279-286.Canada, Alaska, Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and Sven-Donald fitted eas-ily into the international atmosphere of the large research group. His extensive knowl-edge of dwelling sites and the environment was very important for the success of the project. The discovery and first excavations of the rich hearth-row sites in the River Pas-vik area in Eastern Finnmark, Norway, took place as part of  the HHH project and be-came a milestone in Sven-Donald’s research career (Hedman and Olsen 2009, Halinen et al. 2013).In 2012, he became the leader of the project Hunters in Transition, financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sci-ences). This project continued earlier studies of the hearth-row sites in the River Pasvik area, now focusing on the Steintjørna site, which was excavated in 2012 and 2013. It also included the excavation of a hearth-row site at Östra Hobergträsk, Västerbotten, Sweden. This project was multidisciplinary, utilizing the methods of environmental ar-chaeology, metallurgy, osteology and genet-ics. Its results were important for Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish archaeology, and, needless to say, very important for Sámi ar-chaeology. The last article of the project was published in Rangifer (Hedman et al. 2015), slightly more than a month before Sven-Don-ald passed away – and more was to come (Jerand et al. 2016). The research group has continued to publish articles in which Sven-Donald’s impact and research are still highly visible (Røed et al. 2018). This impact con-tinues with the publishing of this volume.Sven-Donald was a very social person, a person with a big heart. In the field, he of-ten brought an additional heart with him, a smoked and dried reindeer heart. He carried it with him for that irresistible treat during breaks – coffee breaks, lunch breaks, chat-ting breaks, whatever breaks. Wherever we dug or surveyed he generously shared both of his hearts. It was always enjoyable to discuss, talk – or just be silent with Sven-Donald. In the midst of the northern wil-derness, deep in the forest, just being with him – in search of something interesting. A pit, a marked tree, a dwelling, a hearth. Two hearths, then a hearth row. If it was there, he would find it.

Sven-Donald Hedman, Archaeologist and Friend

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Sven-Donald Hedman, Archaeologist and Friend

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