Einar Nilson Gjerstad

In October 1930 Einar Gjerstad, Menelaos Markides and Rupert Forbes Gunnis drafted in Nicosia the division of nearly 18,000 finds from Gjerstad's own expedition between the Cyprus Museum and Sweden. The Swedish share went to Stockholm^1,2.

An invitation from a railway station

Gjerstad was born in Örebro on 30 October 1897, the son of a merchant and local politician, and went to Uppsala in 1917. There he studied under Axel W. Persson and became his assistant when the Swedish excavations at Asine in Greece began in 1922¹⁸. By Gjerstad's account Persson met Luke Zenon Pierides, the Swedish consul at Larnaca, at a railway station in the Balkans, lent him money, and heard him urge a Swedish expedition to the island. Persson passed the invitation to his student^1,2.

Gjerstad landed at Larnaca in October 1923 with his wife and stayed some sixteen months^1,18. Markides, then curator of the Cyprus Museum and ill with Parkinson's disease, left him his Bronze Age tomb material to study, and Gjerstad added soundings at Phrenaros, Alambra, Kalopsidha and Nikolidhes. He published the lot as Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus, the Uppsala dissertation for his doctorate of 1926^1,2. From 1926 to 1935 he held a post at Uppsala as docent in classical archaeology and ancient history¹⁸.

The expedition, 1927 to 1931

The Swedish Cyprus Committee was formed in 1927 at Gjerstad's instigation. Members included the Crown Prince, later Gustaf VI Adolf, as chairman, Johannes Hellner, Martin P. Nilsson, Sigurd Curman and Persson, and the preface to the first volume lists state grants of 35,000 and 50,000 kronor beside private gifts^1,3. Smith records that Curman applied for a permit in 1926 and that obtaining objects for Swedish museums was a stated aim⁹.

Before 1927 the Cyprus Museum kept everything found on the island. Gjerstad says the law was changed so that the Museum could cede part of an expedition's finds, and that Pierides introduced the amendment as a member of the Legislative Council. Thomas Kiely dates the amendment of the 1905 law to 1927 and says it was made at Pierides's request on behalf of Gjerstad and his colleagues^1,8. With Antonios Papapetrou and Pierides, Gjerstad then won the consent of landowners at Lapithos and Karavostassi (Soli) before the High Commissioner issued the permit¹.

Digging began at the end of September 1927 and ended in February 1931. The party included Gjerstad, his wife Livia Gjerstad, their two sons, Gudrun Atterman, the architect John Lindros, who drew and photographed, and the archaeologists Erik Sjöqvist and Alfred Westholm, who ran the sites in parallel^1,3. Gjerstad directed the work and dug the Lapithos settlement himself in October and November 1928². Göransson counts 21 sites in all². After a Polis workman died in a tomb collapse, Sjöqvist and Gjerstad gave a dowry to his daughter⁹.

Sanne Houby-Nielsen reports a letter of 21 August 1928 in which Gjerstad told the Crown Prince that he had complete mistrust of Ronald Storrs and Gunnis. In her account Storrs disliked Gjerstad's reading of finds as Greek, and Gjerstad wrote that he sided politically with the English but asked that excavations not be politicised⁴. The preface to the first volume (1934) nonetheless thanks Storrs, Gunnis and Markides, and credits Storrs's generosity for a considerable number of finds allotted to the expedition³.

The division of October 1930

On the Crown Prince's advice, a "lower court" of Markides, Gunnis and Gjerstad drafted the proposal. Points they could not settle went to a "high court" of the Crown Prince, who was in Cyprus to dig at Stylli, and Storrs. The final proposal was ready on 26 October and the Museum Committee adopted it the next day^1,2. Its principles were that tomb groups and deposits were not to be split, that Sweden should receive a representative series, and that "unique" objects stayed in Cyprus, a term interpreted broadly¹.

The whole Vouni treasure stayed in Cyprus except for half the coins. Sweden received 30 per cent of the remaining gold, one large statue from Ayia Irini, most of the other sculptures, the Vouni Kore, a Mycenaean faience vessel in the shape of a goat's head, and large amphorae from Enkomi. The finds from Stylli went wholly to Sweden. The roughly 2,000 Ayia Irini terracottas were divided despite the rule about deposits; casts of the gold objects went to Stockholm^1,2. Gjerstad gave the Swedish share twice. In 1932, as Göransson quotes him, it was about two-thirds of nearly 18,000 finds². The 1980 English edition of his Ages and Days in Cyprus says "more than half"¹.

On 5 March 1931 the expedition left Cyprus. Its 771 cases went by special train to Famagusta and sailed on the Gotland^1,2. The main body of finds went to the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm. In 1934 some were also sent to museums in Malmö, Lund and Uppsala^2,19.

Publication, Rome and Cyprus again

Gjerstad edited the first three volumes of The Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1934 to 1937) and wrote much of them, with Sjöqvist, Westholm and Lindros signing their own parts^2,3. Volume IV, in six parts published between 1948 and 1972, is his synthesis of the Cypriot sequence; IV:2 (1948) deals with the Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical periods⁵. His popular account of the expedition, Sekler och Dagar (1933), appeared in revised English translation as Ages and Days in Cyprus in 1980, translated by Patricia Wetterberg and published by Paul Åström; it is dedicated to Pierides¹.

In 1935 Gjerstad left for Rome as director of the Swedish Institute, and in 1940 he became professor of classical archaeology and ancient history at Lund^5,18. After the war he turned to early Rome. From 1949 he argued in a long series of articles and books for a lower date for the city's foundation, c. 575 BC in place of the traditional 753 BC¹⁸. In 1957 he gave up his chair for a personal professorship, which he held until 1972¹⁸.

In retirement he returned to Cyprus as well as Rome¹⁸. In 1972 President Makarios set up a stele at Vouni to Gjerstad and the expedition¹². Greek Geometric and Archaic Pottery found in Cyprus (1977) has contributions from Yves Calvet, Marguerite Yon, Vassos Karageorghis and J. P. Thalmann¹³. From 1977 he and his wife wintered on the island each year, and he and Karageorghis were friends¹⁰. Gjerstad died in Lund on 8 January 1988¹⁸.