Sammendrag
Bjørn Myhre played a key role in the establishment Norwegian Archaeological Review (NAR). All in all, 17 of the 40 volumes of NAR are produced under his two periods of editorial leadership (1968–1978 and 1985–1990). Bjørn Myhre is born in Stavanger, and finished his degree at the University of Bergen (1964). He has been engaged in research, editing and publishing, culture heritage management, large-scale excavations, teaching and administration – in Stavanger, Bergen and Oslo. The Iron Age society has been focal points in his research, often with an epicentre in southwest Norway. He has also produced important prehistoric overviews in Norges Historie bd 1 (Norway’s History Vol. 1, 1976) w. Bente Magnus, Agriculture, landscape and society ca 4000 BC – 800 AD (2002a/2004), as well as his contribution in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia (2003). After his education in Bergen, Bjørn Myhre returned a short period to Stavanger and Stavanger museum, before he was back in Bergen again in 1968 as a conservator with responsibility for culture heritage management. Of several important excavations, his work with the Iron Age farm site Ullandhaug in 1967 and 1968 was fundamental for his research in the years to come. For three decades he explored different aspects of Iron Age Farms in Southwest Norway as agrarian development and settlement history, house construction and structure, presented in a number of articles and books, e.g. Iron Age farms in Southwest Norway (1973), and Agrarian development, settlement history and social organization in Southwest Norway in the Iron Age (1978). Discussions on social and political development were evolved and incorporated in his studies, and this resulted in articles of significant importance, e.g. Boathouses as indicators of political organization (1985a), Chieftains' graves and chiefdom territories in South Norway in the Migration Period (1987), The archaeology of the Early Viking Age in Norway (1998), and The significance of Borre: necropolis of national or foreign rulers (2002b). Already in the 1960s Myhre addressed discussions on methodology and theory, issues that were always an integral part of his studies, but became a focal point as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1985, with the articles Trends in Norwegian archaeology (1985b) and Theory in Scandinavian archaeology since 1960 (1991). In 1993 Bjørn Myhre returned to Stavanger as a Director of Museum of Archaeology. In 2008 he formally retired, but is still a very active debating and writing archaeologist. The present Editors of NAR take this opportunity to thank Bjørn Myhre for his all-encompassing and never-ending efforts for the journal. Initially, this was an invitation to NAR’s first Managing Editor to write an article about the establishment and first developments of the journal. Subsequently, this was changed to a dialogue text based on questions and answers communicated by email during the fall of 2007. As a basis for questions and replies, Myhre was presented to a selection diagrams that display trends in the 40 volumes of NAR – that was prepared for the Editorial of this issue.
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