Gaman Av Drømmer

Less of a rant this time, I promise. Well, actually I'm not in a great mood so it may get ranty. Just to warn you. Despite it nearly being the first day of summer (this Thursday, in case you were wondering...) and having had a relatively dry winter, the ground water started rising in Area C at a distressing rate. It was like a flood of biblical proportions, furniture and driftwood were floating past as were attempted to trowel off more dumping layers. Two people were lost at sea, feared drowned, so something had to be done.

Area C, yesterday

The solution was this, dig a hole in the corner of the site with the machine and shove a pump in. This worked a treat until we realised we were actually pumping out the Tjörnin pond, in the centre of Reykjavik. Ducks were standing about on newly formed muddy islands. Also the bottom end of the site was being flooded even worse than the top end. Until someone shoved the pump outflow into one of the many conduits we can see on the edge of site. This seemed to work, the ground water dropped, nobody mentioned to anyone else about the drop in the level of the pond and somewhere in Reykjavik a Primary school had it's basement flooded with stagnant pond water.

Also yesterday we had a Norwegian Iron Working Expert come all the way from Norway to tell us the iron slag that we had found on site that was produced in iron working, was in fact, iron slag produced from iron working. I wish I had a job like that. Anyway he gave a lecture in the evening which I didn't attend. I have never in nearly ten years of Field Archaeology attended a lecture given about a site on which I have been working and I don't intend on starting now. First War Aeroplanes? First in line. Archaeology? Running screaming.

Viking Age Iron Working from Hals. as dull as it looks...

The arrival of a Norwegian Expert on Iron Working caused quite a stir in Iceland and the TV sent out their finest reporters to cover the story. Here is the report, unless you speak Norwegian or Icelandic there is little of interest until later on where you can see the kind of shit we get up to in Area C (when there is no water...) and the Spindle Whorl that I found and that caused so much hatred on Facebook:

New Report

One final thing, for those of you still unsure as to whether John Clay is a thoroughly nasty man or not, I allow you to be your own judge on this picture, taken before Clay attended his friend's Bar Mitzvah, I think the girl on the left is Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.

Photo removed due to Fascists.