Nordic Networks and the Völkisch Turn in Irish Archaeology

Contribution to Session #265 - CONNECTING PEOPLE AND IDEAS: NETWORKS AND NETWORKING IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Under British colonial rule, archaeology in Ireland had been dominated by a small, largely Anglo-Irish, elite. Following the establish¬ment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Swedish folklorist Professor Nils Lithberg was engaged by the Department of Education to oversee the reformation of the National Museum of Ireland (NMI). Lithberg’s appointment followed many years of academic co-operation between Irish folklorists and Celticists, and their counterparts in northern and central Europe—particularly Germany and Scandinavia.

Archaeology in Ireland took a decisively völkisch turn following Lithberg’s recommendation that a new folklife collection be acquired by the NMI for display alongside material from Ireland’s pre-colonial Golden Ages. This would serve to emphasise cultural continuity from deepest antiquity to twentieth-century Gaelic Ireland. British imperial artefacts in the museum’s collections were to be replaced with comparative material from Continental Europe, emphasising historic and prehistoric Celtic connections.

The implementation of Lithberg’s recommendations fell to the Austrian archaeologist Adolf Mahr, who was appointed keeper, then director, at the NMI. Mahr, a fervent Nazi, was a keen proponent of völkisch-inspired settlement archaeology. He used his network of contacts to organise training for the archaeologists that would go on to dominate the discipline in Ireland during the post-war period. Almost all the senior archaeologists of that generation in Ireland received advanced archaeological training in Germany.