Ole Klindt-Jensen, 60 years

Abstract

OLE KLINDT-JENSEN · 60 YEARS

Archaeology is a multifarious discipline, but few manage to make an active contribution in more than one or two of its main fields. Professor Ole Klindt-Jensen is one of these few.

Apparently effortlessly, Klindt-Jensen has made his mark as an excavator and writer, professor and museum director.

In his younger days, he attracted young archaeologists from Scandinavia and other countries to his extensive excavations, first and foremost on Bornholm, and many of us have happy memories from this period of hard work and good fun. The investigations concerned the strongholds, farms and cemeteries of the Iron Age and were published shortly after in the inspiring work Bornholm i Folkevandringstiden (" Bornholm in the Migration Period"). Klindt-Jensen's prolific production ranges from Ice Age art to the Viking Period, but a penchant for Celtic art, the Viking Period and the history of archaeology is apparent.

Klindt-Jensen's ability and diligence are not confined to his writing, however. When he came to Århus in 1961 from his post as assistant curator at the National Museum to the chair of Prehistoric Archaeology and later as curator of Prehistoric Museum, it fell to his lot to realize Professor Glob's vision of a museum of a new kind at Moesgård. He directed the restoration, new building and arrangement of the museum while his institute simultaneously underwent an explosive development with respect both to numbers of students and lecturers and to fields of activity. In the course of a few years Moesgård developed a research capacity for prehistory, ethnography and medieval studies, in which the museum and institute supplement each other to mutual advantage.

lnternationally, Klindt-Jensen is well known, both for his published work and personally from numerous visits all over the world, in recent years as general secretary of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (U.I.S.P.P.).

The many tasks are carried out in a relaxed manner and with and ever open door. How he copes is Klindt-Jensen's secret!

Poul Kjærum