The Swedish Cyprus Expedition and the Contemporary Media Coverage

Christian Göransson sets the Swedish Cyprus Expedition of 1927 to 1931 within the wider history of Swedish archaeological fieldwork abroad during the 1920s and 1930s, before turning to how the expedition and its finds were covered in the Swedish press. Throughout the talk, he highlights the role of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, who studied archaeology at Uppsala University and chaired the fundraising committees behind most of Sweden's overseas excavations.

The first half of the paper surveys those other projects. Starting with the 1894 excavations at Kalaureia on Poros by Sam Wide and Lennart Kjellberg and Kjellberg's 1902 work at Larisa in Aeolis, Göransson traces the expansion of Swedish fieldwork in the 1920s under Axel W. Persson at Asine, where both Einar Gjerstad and Nathan Valmin worked before moving on to Cyprus and Messenia, and later at Dendra, Midea, Berbati and Asea. He outlines the founding of the Swedish Institute in Rome in 1925 to 1926 under Axel Boëthius, Johan Gunnar Andersson's work in China and the creation of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Ture J. Arne's expedition to Shah Tepe in Iran, and Pehr Lugn's excavations at Merimde-Abu Ghalib in Egypt.

Turning to Cyprus, Göransson shows how the expedition was reported in Sweden through newspaper clippings from the expedition archive at the Medelhavsmuseet. While the team was in the field, coverage in Dagens Nyheter, largely written by Gjerstad himself and later collected in his book Ages and Days (published in Swedish in 1933 and in English in 1980), was enthusiastic, supplemented by articles in the Illustrated London News and a Svensk Filmindustri newsreel filmed by John Lindros. In 1930 the Crown Prince visited Cyprus, dug at Stylli near Famagusta, and negotiated with Governor Sir Ronald Storrs the division of finds that sent 771 cases from Famagusta port to Stockholm.

Once the collection arrived in Sweden, press coverage turned critical of the unheated storerooms where Erik Sjöqvist and his colleagues worked. Newspapers quoted Hetty Goldman, who abandoned a 1939 study visit because of the conditions, and Alfred Westholm, who contrasted the modernized museum in Nicosia with the embarrassing situation in Stockholm. Temporary exhibitions in 1933 and 1941 to 1942 were praised, and sustained press criticism led to a small permanent gallery in the Museum of History in the 1940s, before the Cyprus collections moved to their permanent home in the Medelhavsmuseet in 1982.