Debate and commentary

Mikael Venge, Fra åretold til toldetat. Middelalderen indtil 1660. Dansk Toldhistorie (From Our Toll to a Customs Service. The Middle Ages up to 1660. Danish Toll History), vol. 1 (The Society for Toll History, K?benhavn, 1987), 314 pp., ISBN 87 87796 08 2.

Birgit Bjerre Jensen, Udnævnelsesretten i enevældens magt bolitiske system 1660–1730 (The Right of Appointment in the Power Politics of Danish Absolutism 1660–1730) Administrative‐historical Studies no. 12, The Royal Archives (Gads Publishers, 1987), 376 pp., ISBN 87 7497 103 4.

Niels Finn Christiansen, Arbejderbevægelsens forhistorie (The Pre‐History of the Danish Labour Movement. Traits of the Early Danish Labour Movement's Political and Social Development 1848–1880). SFAH's publications series no. 18 (1986), 188 pp., ill., ISBN 87 87739 216, 120 Dkr. (member's rate 100 Dkr.).

Anders Berge, Sakkundskap och politisk rationalitet. Den svenska flottan och pansarfartygsfrågan 1918–1939 (Expertise and Political Rationality: The Swedish Navy and the Armoured Ship Issue 1918–1939), Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist &; Wiksell, 1987), 246 pp., ISBN 91 22 00883 7.

Olav Riste, (ed.), Western Security: The Formative Years. European and Atlantic Defence 1947–1953 (Oslo; Norwegian University Press, 1985), 333 pp.     

Editorial

In this article it is argued that men and women have been considered as "too old" in the labour market at an earlier age than people in general have been considered old, irrespectively of the actual biological life expectancy. The article discusses, first, farm servants in the old peasant society on the basis of the Swedish Hired Labour Acts, and, second, the migration restrictions imposed on elderly servants. The third point of discussion concerns age composition and wage by age of industrial workers in Finland at the turn of the 20th century, while the fourth point covers long-term unemployment in the 1930s and the introduction of old-age pension schemes. Some tentative explanations for the variation in the incidence of age discrimination over the past two centuries are suggested.     

Språkforsking og språkplanlegging i det samiske samfunnet

Sammendrag

Focusing on ?Linguistics and Language Planning in the Sami Community?, this paper gives an outline of the institutions involved in Sami language care, and inter alia poses the question of ?which institutions should be, and are capable of taking on the responsibility of the Sami Community, with regard to the supposed interaction between this community and Sami language care?? ‐ Sami language care is characterized as suffering from two main deficiencies: a) lack of resources, and b) lack of organisation.

Relating to the work and discussions of the ortographical reforms (Southern Sami 1976–78, Lule Sami, and Northern Sami 1983); the author enumerates various lines of reasoning, each emphazising various concerns and considerations, as: 1) Accuracy and system, 2) Tradition, 3) Due concern to own premises, 4) Due concern to different dialectical realisations, 5) The demand for ?naturalness? and ?simpleness?, 6) Pedagogical concerns, 7) Historical foundations and 8) Internationality and technical considerations. ‐ The author points out how these considerations are interconnected; partly contradicting each other and partly pointing in the same direction.

Finally the author emphazises the minority situation of the Sami language, and stresses the need for viewing language planning in light of its interconnections with the surrounding society.     

Interpreting cultural remains in airborne laser scanning generated digital terrain models: effects of size and shape on detection success rates

In this study, detection success rates were evaluated for cultural remains that were detected manually based on interpretation of digital terrain models (DTM) derived from airborne laser scanning data and with a resolution of 1, 5 and 10 points m⁻². The group of cultural remains included charcoal kilns, charcoal pits, hollow-roads, various pits, house foundations, tar kilns, grave mounds and pit-falls. The effects on the interpretation success of different types of cultural remains and their physical properties were studied: size, shape and elevation difference showing that the detection success rates varied considerably. The main tendency was that large cultural remains with clear geometrical shape (ovals and circles) and large elevation difference were much more successfully detected and classified compared to the smaller ones, especially those without a clear geometrical shape. The study also showed that it was the identification of the larger structures which profited most from an increased resolution of the DTM, and it was of no help to increase resolution in order to improve the identification of the irregularly shaped cultural remains.     

The Norwegian 9/11: In the Church Without a Bible

The article identifies roles and conditions for the Bible within modern politics in the West. By comparing the official Norwegian response to the terror attack in Oslo July 22, 2011, with the similar response in the US on September 11, 2001, it is explained why the Bible is nearly absent in the official discourse of Norwegian Prime Ministers. While religion resurfaced in the process of national recuperation with the Cathedral of Oslo as a center for mass ritualization and national grief, the biblical legacy played no part in the Prime Minister's speech. The primary political leader of the Norwegian state has rarely bolstered his argument with the Bible, although this state has officially adhered to a Protestant confession from its Constitution in 1814. The Liberal Bible that appears to be operative in US presidential discourse is not playing a major role on a comparable political level in Norway.     

Interpretation of archaeological small-scale features in spectral images

The paper's focus is the use of spectral images for the distinction of small archaeological anomalies on the basis of the authors work. Special attention is given to the ground truthing perspective in the discussion of a number of cases from Norway. Different approaches to pattern-recognition are considered in the light of the increasing availability of hyperspectral images that are difficult to analyse using visual inspection alone.