Cultural Paternity in the Flateyjarbók Óláfs Saga

Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

Cultural Paternity in the Flateyjarbk lfs sagaTryggvasonar

alvssml 8 (1998): 328

Flateyjarbk is the name given to Gks 1005 fol., the largest and certainlyamong the most beautiful of all extant medieval Icelandic manuscripts,containing a number of exceptionally fine historiated initials and marginaldrawings. The manuscript was given to Brynjlfur Sveinsson, bishop ofSklholt, by the farmer Jn Finnsson of Flatey in Breiafjrur, whence its name.Brynjlfur presented it in turn to the king, Frederik III, and it subsequently passedto the Royal Library in Copenhagen, where it remained until being transferred toIceland in 1971. Originally commissioned by Jn Hkonarson, a wealthy farmerwho lived at Vidalstunga in the Hnavatn district in the north of Iceland,Flateyjarbk was undoubtedly written somewhere in that area, either at Vidals-tunga or at the nearby monastery of ingeyrar, or possibly to the east of Hnavatn,in Skagafjrur. It was begun by the priest Jn rarson in 1387; his hand beginson folio 4 verso, originally the verso of the first leaf of the manuscript, and contin-ues through the next-to-last line of the first column of folio 134 verso. On thesepages he copied Eirks saga vforla, lfs saga Tryggvasonar, and virtually all oflfs saga helga. Jn rarson evidently left Iceland for Bergen, Norway, in thespring of 1388, and the work of continuing Flateyjarbk fell to another priest,Magns rhallsson, whose hand begins on the last line of the first column offolio 134 verso and goes on until the end of the manuscript (apart from 23 leaves,now folios 188210, which were added by orleifur Bjrnsson in the second halfof the fifteenth century). Magns also added three leaves to the front of the manu-script, leaving the new folio 1 recto blank, centering a brief foreword in the middleof folio 1 verso, and beginning the two-column format on folio 2 recto. On thesepages he copied the poems Geisli, lfs rma Haraldssonar, and Hyndlulj,followed by an excerpt from a translation of Adam of Bremens Gesta Hamma-burgensis ecclesiae pontificum, the short narratives ttr fr Siguri konungislefu and Hversu Nregr byggist, and a genealogy of the kings of Norway. Afterfinishing lfs saga helga for Jn rarson, Magns rhallsson copied Sverrissaga, Hkonar saga gamla, excerpts from the lfs saga helga by Styrmir fri,Grnlendinga ttr (also known as Einars ttr Sokkasonar), Helga ttr ok

4 Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

lfs, Jtvarar saga, and an annal he compiled himself. The annal seems to havebeen written continuously until its end in 1390, although there are fragmentaryentries for 1391 through 1394, the year Jn rarson returned to Iceland.Magns was also responsible for the illuminations in the manuscript.

lafur Halldrsson (1990b) speculates that Flateyjarbk was originally in-tended as a gift for the young king of Norway, Olaf Hkonarson, and was sup-posed to contain only Eirks saga vforla and the sagas of Olaf Tryggvason andSt. Olaf. He shows that there was a connection in the popular mind between theking and his holy namesake, and he cites a contemporary story that St. Olaf ap-peared to Queen Margareta when she was in labor, declaring that she would notbe delivered until her husband swore to uphold the laws that St. Olaf had held.The fact that Flateyjarbk contains all the sagas that were available about all thetributary countries under the power of the Norwegian king apart from Icelandstrikes lafur Halldrsson as significant; he also reads Jn rarsons afterwordto Eirks saga vforla, in which wise men are said to praise above all others thosemen who advance the cause of the church, as advice directed at the king. Whenthe king died later that year, Flateyjarbks original purpose as a gift to him lostits point. lafur Halldrsson conjectures that Jn rarson thus became unem-ployed and decided to go to Norway, and that Jn Hkonarson later brought inthe priest Magns rhallsson to finish the manuscript.

lafur Halldrssons hypothesis is an attractive one, and easy to elaborateon. If the first part of Flateyjarbk is an appropriate gift for a king named Olaf, itis also a gift with an implied purpose, that of encouraging the king to follow theexample of his revered namesakes. Icelanders had presumed to advise a youngking before; in chapters 1516 of Magnss saga ga in Heimskringla, Snorritells how the vengeful behavior of King Magns lfsson ended when his god-father, the Icelandic skald Sigvatr rarson, recited a poem, the Bersoglisvsur[Plain-speaking verses], in which he praises the laws of Jarl Hkon and urges theking to treat his people more mercifully. As it happens, Magns rhallssonshand appears in the manuscript named Hulda, which contains this saga. Thisleads Jonna Louis-Jensen (1968, 1415) to suggest that Hulda was owned by JnHkonarson. Assuming that this manuscript had come into Jn Hkonarsons pos-session by 1387, when Flateyjarbk was begun, Jn would have owned and beenfamiliar with this account of an Icelanders use of literature to influence his Nor-wegian king towards a greater respect for the law. Perhaps it even provided himwith the idea for Flateyjarbk.

This article considers the nature of the advice that can be discerned betweenthe lines of Flateyjarbk, particularly as it appears in lfs saga Tryggvasonar. Itbegins by surveying the places in which this advice might be manifested, namely,the texts that Jn rarson added to his exemplar, and the introductions andconclusions that he himself is believed to have written.

A word should be said about the assumption that it is Jn rarson rather

Cultural Paternity 5

than Jn Hkonarson who is the author of this advice. Insofar as the advice ispolitical, concerning the relationship between the Norwegian king and his Icelan-dic subjects, it might seem that the landowner is a more probable source than themonk. However, as will be demonstrated, the political message is presented interms of salvation history, typology, and the religious connection between the twocountries, so that it seems quite reasonable to ascribe the advice to the monkrather than the landowner. This argument holds true if Jn rarson createdthe message merely by selecting certain preexisting sagas and ttir and interpo-lating them unchanged into his copy of his exemplar. If he actually revised his ad-ditions, as in certain cases is at least possible, then this assumption becomes moreplausible still.

In compiling the Flateyjarbk redaction of lfs saga Tryggvasonar, Jnrarson simply continued the techniques of his predecessors. The so-calledLongest Saga of lfr Tryggvason (ca. 1300) takes the lfs saga from Heims-kringla and expands it with loans from lfs saga helga, the lfs saga Tryggva-sonar of the monk Oddr Snorrason, and the following texts: material on the kingsof Denmark, Jmsvkinga saga, Orkneyinga saga, material on the settlement ofIceland, orvalds ttr vforla, Kristni ttr, Rognvalds ttr ok Raus, Hall-frear saga, Laxdla saga, Ogmundar ttr dytts ok Gunnars helmings, Fr-eyinga saga, orvalds ttr tasalda, Sveins ttr ok Finns, iranda ttr okrhalls, material on Greenland (from Eirks saga raua, Landnmabk, andHeimskringla), Svaa ttr ok Arnrs kerlingarnefs, rhalls ttr knapps,Eindria ttr ilbreis, and Gauts ttr. This list is taken from the redaction inAM 61 fol. (Halldrsson 1982, 30), but in fact the redaction Jn rarson isthought to have used is more closely related to the one in AM 62 fol., whichabridges Freyinga saga, Hallfrear saga, Jmsvkinga saga, and the materialfrom Landnmabk, uses Gunnlaugrs Latin account of Olaf Tryggvasons mis-sionary activities to expand some of the sections about the adoption of Christian-ity, and adds Helga ttr rissonar and Norna-Gests ttr. Jn expands thisbase text with still more ttir and excerpts from the lives of Olaf by the monksOddr Snorrason and Gunnlaugr, and he copies the sagas in unabridged form fromindependent manuscripts. According to Finnur Jnssons comparison of Flateyjar-bk with AM 61 fol. and AM 62 fol. (Jnsson 1927, 14969), Jn rarson addedEirks saga vforla, orleifs ttr jarlasklds, orsteins ttr uxafts, Sorlattr, Hrmundar ttr halta, orsteins ttr skelks, the end of chap. 406 oflfs saga Tryggvasonar (which he wrote himself), and Orms ttr Strlfssonar.He also added a sentence or two here and there, shortened some passages, andreordered many sections of his exemplar, evidently with a view towards improvingthe chronology.1

1. In his overview of Flateyjarbks composition and history, lafur Halldrsson provides his own listof the texts that Jn added to the two Olaf sagas (1990a, 205). Although the article was written for ageneral audience and therefore lacks a detailed argument and supporting evidence, lafurs list serves as


The textual history of these narratives would appear to corroborate FinnurJnssons conclusions, as five of the ttir (orleifs ttr jarlasklds, orsteinsttr uxafts, Sorla ttr, Hrmundar ttr halta, and orsteins ttr skelks)are found only in Flateyjarbk. The Flateyjarbk version of Eirks saga vforla isthe oldest preserved descendant of the A-branch archetype (Jensen 1983, lvlvi).Orms ttr Strlfssonar is only found in two other manuscripts, both of whichare derived from a lost manuscript closely related to Flateyjarbk (Faulkes [1968],3940). Apparently there was no prior association between Orms ttr and lfssaga; Faulkes thinks it likely that the ttr was originally a separate story([1968], 40).2

Finnur Jnsson states that the version of lfs saga helga closest to the onein Flateyjarbk is that in AM 61 fol.; it might be hazarded that if the lfs sagahelga of AM 62 fol. were extant it would be closer still, as is the case with lfssaga Tryggvasonar. According to Finnur Jnssons comparison of Flateyjarbkand AM 61 fol. (Jnsson 1927, 16980), Jns additions to lfs saga helga in-clude excerpts from the life of St. Olaf by Styrmir fri, the preface to chap. 9(which he wrote himself), Styrbjarnar ttr Svakappa, Hra ttr heimska,Eymundar ttr hrings, Tka ttr Tkasonar, Eindria ttr ok Erlings, Fst-brra saga (the introductions and endings of the inserted sections of the saga hewrote himself), chap. 169, chap. 187, and the beginning of chap. 198 (all of whichhe wrote himself), the little story of the fisherman in chap. 224, the beginning ofchap. 255 (which he wrote himself), Volsa ttr, and the beginning of chap. 305(which he wrote himself). He also adds a few sentences here and there, revises theitinerary of Olafs Viking years, and deletes material about the Icelander BjornHtdlakappi. Johnsen and Helgason note that Jn also changes the material thatserves as an introduction to lfs saga helga, omitting everything that looks likea repetition of the introduction to lfs saga Tryggvasonar (1941, 1031). Hispractice stands in contrast to AM 61 fol. and Bergsbk (Stock. perg. fol. no. 1),where the introductions to the two sagas are substantially the same. Johnsen andHelgason point out that in a number of places, Jn has expanded the last sentence

an effective reminder that the complex textual history of Flateyjarbk is still far from clear. Jn evidentlyincluded texts of all lengths and degrees of historicity as relevant to the two Olaf sagas. The restriction ofthis article to a consideration of only the ttir is thus a doubly arbitrary one. Nonetheless, certain pat-terns can, I believe, be discerned in Jns additions, even if the lines of demarcation are less definite thanone might wish.

2. The narratives themselves are considered to be at least a quarter of a century older than the manu-script. Eirks saga vforla is from the first half of the fourteenth century (Jensen 1983, xiv); orleifs ttrjarlasklds is from the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth century (Vries1967, 429; Kristjnsson 1956, xciv); orsteins ttr uxafts is from ca. 1300 (Jnsson 1923, 75657);Sorla ttr is from the first half of the fourteenth century (Jnsson 1923, 830); Hrmundar ttr halta isfrom the beginning of the thirteenth century (Vries 1967, 412); orsteins ttr skelks is from ca. 1300(Jnsson 1923, 75253); Orms ttr Strlfssonar is dated by Finnur Jnsson (1923, 758) to ca. 1300, butAnthony Faulkes ([1968], 41) puts it in the second or third quarter of the fourteenth century. For synopsesof these ttir, see the appendix of this article (2426).


of a chapter by a few words in order to fill out the line and ensure that the spacefor the next chapters rubric is not too large (1941, 1033). While these revisionsfulfill a merely decorative purpose, Johnsen and Helgason judge that Jns manyinterpolations, omissions, and shifts requiring new transitional sentences, whichin places expand into longer statements praising St. Olaf, result in a redaction ofthe saga that is substantially different from the others, even though most of thesaga is the same (1941, 1033).

Not surprisingly, Jn rarson does not address his putative royal audiencedirectly in any of his additions. What is unusual in an Icelandic scribe is that someof those additions explain the inclusion of certain texts and genres. For example,Jn copied Eirks saga vforla into the manuscript before lfs saga Tryggva-sonar, and in his afterword, Jn says he added it because it teaches a valuablemoral lesson (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:3738). In his introduction to Fstbrrasaga, Jn says he added it because the story of St. Olafs relationship with two ofhis Icelandic retainers illustrates the kings grace and good luck [gzku ok giftu](Nordal et al. 194445, 2:170). In his introduction to sbjarnar ttr Selsbana(a ttr found in Jns exemplar of lfs saga helga), Jn takes the opportunity tocomment on the presence of ttir in the kings saga at all. Even though in thebeginning the relevance of a story (vintr) may not be clear, in the end they allcome to touch on the honor and glory of St. Olaf (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:322).Apparently Jn thought that his choice of texts as appropriate additions to thesagas of the two Olafs might not be intelligible or self-evident. Jns felt need forjustification seems rather odd, in light of the fact that the sagas he was copyinghad been repeatedly expanded over the years. Yet his defensiveness turned out tobe warranted, for the strikingly different editorial practices of Magns rhallssonin his portion of Flateyjarbk are carried out in direct response to and thus canbe said to constitute a critique of Jns work.

As has been shown, Jn favors ttir and vintri as genres that could beunderstood tropologically as well as literally, and he has no compunctions aboutinserting such texts (and even entire sagas) into the kings sagas he copies. Incontrast, Magns refrains from adding ttir and sagas to Sverris saga and H-konar saga. Given his inclusion of the Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae ponti-ficum and Icelandic church annals conflated with a world chronicle, he seems totend towards annalistic rather than typological historiography, and he apparentlyprefers religious texts such as Geisli, which are more edifying than entertaining.More importantly, Magnss contribution seems to respond to Jns, rather thansimply following or continuing it. Not only does Magns surround Jns work withtexts intended to preface and supplement it, but nearly every one of these addi-tional texts corresponds to one of Jns interpolated ones. For example, eachscribe provides a Grnlendinga ttr, ttartolur, and a saga of a royal saint.Magnss purpose seems to be to provide a rereading and a reversal of Jns histo-riographic project: whereas Jn depicts the conversion of western Scandinavia


typologically, as a reenactment of world history in parvo, Magns attempts tointegrate the history of the region into the larger context of European history.

Eirks saga vforla tells of a Norwegian prince who travels to Miklagarr,where the king of the Greeks instructs him in the faith and persuades him toaccept baptism. The prince travels onward and, arriving at the earthly paradise,comes to a tower in the air. He dreams of an angel, who lets him go back to Nor-way and tells him to tell people of his experiences, so that when the time comesfor conversion, they will believe more readily. Jn is explicit about what he wantsthe reader to learn from Eirks saga vforla: the one who wrote this book . . .wishes each man to know that there is no true faith except in God and that there-fore those who fought for Christianity have accomplished better things and havereceived a better reward than pagans, whose reward of earthly fame is paltry com-pared to the Christians reward of eternal life in heaven.3 Jns emphasis on thecontrast between pagans and Christians seems anachronistic, coming as it doesfrom the end of the fourteenth century, when Iceland had been Christian fornearly four hundred years. If lafur Halldrssons hypothesis about Flateyjarbkbeing intended as a gift for King Olaf Hkonarson is correct, we must consider theimplications of this moral being addressed to the young king.

Although it is tempting to try to read a contemporary allusion into Jnsvalorization of those who fight for the freedom of the church, it does not seemlikely that Jn would suggest to King Olaf that the Icelandic church should befreed from the foreign bishops appointed by his mother, Queen Margareta, espe-cially considering that Jn seems to have enjoyed a good relationship with thesebishops.4 Rather, the lesson to be learned from Eirks saga vforla seems to have

3. Here is the complete text of Jn rarsons afterword to Eirks saga vforla: En v setti s ettavintr fyrst essa bk, er hana skrifai, at hann vill, at hverr mar viti at, at ekki er traust trtt nemaaf gui, v at at heinir menn fi frg mikla af snum freksverkum, er at mikill munr, er eirenda etta hit stundliga lf, at eir hafa tekit sitt verkaup af orlofi manna fyrir sinn frama, en eigu vn hegningar fyrir sn brot ok trleysi, er eir kunnu eigi skapara sinn. En hinir, sem gui hafa unnat okar allt traust haft ok barizt fyrir frelsi heilagrar kristni, hafa af hinum vitrustum mnnum fengit meiralof, en at at auk, at mest er, at er eir hafa fram gengit um almenniligar dyrr dauans, sem ekki holdm forast, hafa eir tekit sitt verkaup, at er at skilja eilft rki me allsvaldanda gui utan enda semessi Eirekr, sem n var fr sagt [The one who wrote this book set this tale in it first because he wishesthat each man should know that there is no true faith except in God, because although heathen men mayget much fame from their deeds of valor, there is a great difference when they end the life of this world,since they have then taken their reward from mens praise for their accomplishments, but then they havethe expectation of punishment for their violations and faithlessness when they knew not their creator. Butthose who have loved God and had all faith and fought for the privilege of holy Christianity have never-theless received greater praise from the wisest men. And this, too (which is greatest), that when they havegone forward through the common door of death, which the flesh may not escape, they have taken theirreward, that is to say, the eternal kingdom with Almighty God without end, like this Eirkr, as was just de-scribed] (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:3738).

4. Very little information exists about the scribes of Flateyjarbk, apart from their work for JnHkonarson. However, the evidence suggests that Jn rarson was a supporter of Bishop Jn skalliEirksson. (Bishop of Hlar from 1357 to 1390, he was the first bishop to be consecrated at the popesinitiative. Named bishop of Greenland, he asked the pope to change his see to one in Iceland. Half thepriests of northern Iceland protested, claiming that his identification documents were suspicious, and he


been simply that those who fought to establish Christianity in the North, like thetwo Olafs whose sagas followed, were greater heroes than Sigurr Ffnisbani orHelgi Hundingsbani. From there it is a short step to presume that Jn compiledthe sagas of the two Olafs as he did not only in order to acquaint the king with thegreatness of his forebears of the same name, but also to encourage him to emulatetheir example and avoid that of such evil pagans as Jarl Hkon of Hlair. As weshall see, the desired royal behavior combined spiritual greatness with a certainperspective on the relationship between Norway and Iceland.

This relationship is the focus of Jns introduction to Fstbrra saga:

Gu drottinn, Jesus Christus, s til ess rf vra allra Normanna at velja oss slkan for-mlanda sem sv kostgfi me mikilli gfsi vra nausyn sem essi sknandi geisliok lsanda ljsker, hinn heilagi lfr konungr Haraldsson, hverr at eigi at eins elskaisinn undirgefinn l Noregi, heldr ok jafnvel , sem slandi byggu, sem sttuhans tign ok viring, prandi hvern eftir v me veraldar viringu, sem hann fann tilfelldan, suma me fgjfum, en suma me nafnbtum. Gfust ok r raunir , at eirfengu mesta st ok elsku af lafi konungi, sem gu elskuu framast. lafr konungr unnimikit hirmnnum snum ok tti sr v mjk misboit, ef eim var me fund mis-yrmt, ok eim llum framast, er honum tti mestr mar . ykkir af v tilheyriligt atsetja hr nokkurn tt af hirmnnum hans tveimr, orgeiri Hvarssyni ok ormiBersasyni, er lengi vru me honum mrgum mannraunum, at eirra s eigi jafnanvi getit sjlfri lafs sgu. M af slku merkja gzku ok giftu lafs konungs, at hannveitti at athald sv miklum eirarmnnum sem eir vru fstbrr, at eir elskuukonunginn yfir alla menn fram. Uru eim ok san sn verk ll at frg ok frama, ausem eir unnu heir vi konunginn, ok sndu af sr gta vrn, d ok drengskap, reir enduu sitt lf ok erfii essarar veslu veraldar. (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:170)

[The Lord God, Jesus Christ, saw our need the need of all Northmen to choose forus such a intercessor as thus with great goodness strove with our need, as this shiningbeam and light-shedding lantern, the holy King Olaf Haraldsson, who not only loved hissubjects in Norway, but also equally those who lived in Iceland, those who sought hisfavor and esteem, decorating each one with worldly honors as he thought appropriate,some with gifts of money, some with titles. Experience also showed that those who lovedGod the most received the greatest affection and love from King Olaf. King Olaf lovedhis retainers dearly, and he took it very ill if they were treated maliciously, especiallythose whom he thought the most highly of. Because of this, it seems proper to set downhere a certain ttr about two of his retainers, orgeirr Hvarsson and ormrBersason, who were with him for a long time and in many perils, although they are not

was sent back to the pope for better authorization. The case took thirteen years to be straightened out.)For one thing, Jn was associated with the see of Hlar over a long period of time: he is mentioned in twoletters from Hlar, one dated 1377 and the other dated 1396. It is likely that he is the same Jn rarsonwho was rsmaur (manager) of the Reynistar monastery in 1383, a position perhaps controlled by thebishop. Finally, Jns six-year transfer to the Church of the Cross in Bergen which ended when he re-turned to Iceland on the same ship that brought Bishop Vilchin to his new see of Sklholt suggests thathe was known to the bishop of Bergen, perhaps because Jn had been trained in Bergen or had servedthere previously. In any case, Jns Norwegian connection seems to have been a positive one, implyingthat his long relationship with the Norwegian and Danish bishops of Iceland was equally so. See Wester-grd-Nielsen 1976, 44041, and the sources cited there; also Halldrsson 1990a, 2078. For general sur-veys of the Icelandic church at this time, see Helgason 1925; orsteinsson and Grmsdttir 1990.


always mentioned in Olafs saga itself. From this one must notice the grace and goodluck of King Olaf, that he showed that restraint to such terribly unruly men as thosesworn brothers were, who loved the king above all other men. Also, all their deeds,which they performed in honor of the king and which showed their excellent defense,valor, and courage, afterwards brought them fame and renown before they ended theirlife and suffering of this wretched world.]

I do not think it is reading too much into this passage to suggest that the unrulysworn brothers synecdochically represent all of Olafs Icelandic subjects. If so,then although Jn appears to be celebrating the grace and good luck [gzku okgiftu] of St. Olaf, he is simultaneously suggesting that young King Olaf take a leaffrom his namesakes book and reward his loyal (if unruly) Icelandic subjects,some with gifts of money, some with titles.5

The double theme of religion and the relationship with Iceland observed inJns introduction recurs in the ttir he adds, where the importance of Christian-ity is rendered in a typological view of Scandinavian history. Scholars of OldNorseIcelandic literature began in the 1980s to consider the conversion as cen-tral to our understanding of the medieval Scandinavian understanding of history(Ciklamini 1981; Weber 1981, 1986, 1987; Harris 1980, 1986). That is, it was real-ized that medieval historians understood the secular history of Norway and Ice-land as patterned on the model of salvation history. Just as salvation history isdivided into two ages by the Incarnation of Christ, so was Scandinavian historydivided into a pagan age and a Christian age by the conversion around the year1000. And just as events and people from the time of the old law could be under-stood as prefiguring the events and people of the time of the new law, so too couldpagan Scandinavians be understood in a variety of ways as pre-Christians. Forexample, orsteins ttr uxafts prefaces the narrative of orsteinns conversionwith the Landnmabk account of how lfljtr went to Norway and broughtback the first laws of the Icelandic commonwealth. Critics have dismissed thisaddition (which possibly was made by Jn rarson himself) as irrelevant andpointless (Vigfsson and Powell 1905, 582; Jnsson 1923, 756), but it can beargued that whoever changed the ttr was trying to present lfljtrs new law-code as a pre-Christian one by associating it with the new law of Christ that or-steinn adopts in his conversion. The description of the Icelandic heathen law-code emphasizes its legal aspects, rather than its religious ones, and the templetoll is compared to a Christian church tithe, thus suggesting a typological relation-ship of prefiguration and fulfillment.

As Gerd Wolfgang Weber points out, the use of salvation history as a modelfor the pattern of secular history is not sacrilegious: There is, according to St

5. Jn drops a hint again in his introduction to the second interlaced section of Fstbrra saga:Konungrinn lafr var harla vinsll af snum mnnum sakir rleiks ok allrar atgrvi, eigi at eins Nor-egi, heldr llum hans skattlndum ok va annars staar [King Olaf was very popular with his menbecause of his liberality and all his accomplishments not only in Norway, but also in all his tributarylands, and widely in other places] (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:234).


Augustines irrefutable authority in these matters, no such thing as profane his-tory. All historia occurs within the tempus [i.e., the period of time from the Fall ofAdam to the Last Judgment] and thus forms part of Gods divine plan (Weber1987, 98). The uses of such a view of history are obvious. Not only does it provideChristian Scandinavians with a meaningful history despite their geographic mar-ginality, it provides a way to redeem their heathen heroes and ancestors from hell,where they would otherwise be suffering because of their ignorance of theirmaker. Moreover, the reinterpretation of certain signals from the older heroic tra-dition that allowed for this projection of contemporary in this case, Christian concerns onto the past was itself a mechanism that could be employed in the ser-vice of other types of concerns, as is argued below.

The generic affiliations of the ttir that Jn adds are for the most part deter-mined by such typological thinking, and some entirely so. Jn draws particularlyon two closely related subgenres, which were first identified by Joseph Harris(1980, 1986).6 One, which Harris left unnamed but which could be called pagancontact ttir, includes Sorla ttr, orsteins ttr uxafts, and Tka ttr, aswell as Norna-Gests ttr and Albani ttr, which were already in Jns exem-plar.7 These ttir emphasize the historical gulf between the Old and New Dis-pensations (Harris 1980, 166) by means of the supernaturally lengthened life ofthe visiting stranger (Norna-Gestr, Tki) or the supernaturally lengthened battlebetween Heinn and Hogni (the Hjaningavg), which enables Christian men togain first-hand knowledge of the past.8 The second subgenre, which Harris callsconversion ttir, includes Volsa ttr, as well as Rognvalds ttr ok Raus,Sveins ttr ok Finns, Svaa ttr ok Arnrs kerlingarnefs, rhalls ttrknapps, and Eindria ttr ilbreis, which were also in Jns exemplar. Conver-sion ttir comprise as their central narrative moment a conflict or opposition ofChristianity and paganism (Harris 1980, 162).

lfs saga Tryggvasonar was a particularly fertile ground for typologicalnarratives, since King Olaf, who began the process of converting Iceland and Nor-way, had been understood at least since the days of Oddr Snorrason as prefigur-

6. Of Jns other additions, Harris groups Hrmundar ttr halta with the ttir that take place inIceland and resemble miniature, feud-structured family sagas, orsteins ttr skelks with the large andwell-known group of king and Icelander ttir (see Harris 1972, 1976), orsteins ttr uxafts andOrms ttr Strlfssonar with the short biographies of Icelandic heroes comparable to the mytho-heroicsagas. Styrbjarnar ttr Svakappa, Hra ttr heimska, Eymundar ttr hrings, and Eindria ttr okErlings have not been identified with any subgenres.

7. Harris does not include orsteins ttr uxafts with the pagan contact ttir, but it obviouslyforms part of this group. For an early argument that orsteins ttr is a highly propagandist Christiantale, see Binns 195357. The case of orsteins ttr and Sorla ttr illustrates some of the problems withthe traditional definition of the mytho-heroic sagas. For all the narrative and thematic parallels betweenthem, Sorla ttr is called a mytho-heroic saga and orsteins ttr is not, simply because the latter has anIcelandic protagonist. It would be preferable to have the primary designation of both be pagan contactttr.

8. For a detailed analysis of the Hjaningavg and of Sorla ttr, see Rowe 1989, 3086.


ing St. Olaf (who finished the conversion) in the same way that John the Baptistprefigured Christ. More accurately, we may say that typological narratives becameinterpolated into the history of the conversion precisely because this was the eventthat justified typological historiography in the first place, and not merely becausethe central figure of the saga was deeply imbued with typologically derived mean-ing. When the Flateyjarbk version of lfs saga helga is discussed at the conclu-sion of this paper, it will be argued that the thematic focus of the ttir Jn addsis nearly entirely on the workings of the new law, rather than on the differencesbetween the old law and the new.

Jns exemplar of lfs saga Tryggvasonar thus contained many ttir in-formed by Christian themes and structures, such as Kjartans ttr lfssonar andNorna-Gests ttr. Whether consciously or not, Jns choice of ttir with whichto expand the saga further seems to have been influenced by a similar typologicalorientation, with the result that these six texts which he added can best be under-stood within the context of lfs sagas typological history. The first one, orleifsttr jarlasklds, takes place in the days of the pagan Jarl Hkon of Hlair, whenthe release of the Scandinavians from the devils power is not even a possibilityglimpsed on the horizon. The second and third ttir, orsteins ttr uxafts andSorla ttr, serve to introduce the conversions of Iceland and Norway respec-tively, and accordingly show the pagan afterlife to be like hell before the harrow-ing containing both good and evil spirits, with the good ones in need of a Chris-tian to free them from their oppression. The fourth, fifth, and six ttir that Jnadded (Hrmundar ttr halta, orsteins ttr skelks, and Orms ttr Strlfs-sonar) take place after the conversion and demonstrate the extent to which thisevent has changed the nature of reality in Iceland and Norway. Hrmundar ttr(which takes place in Iceland) does not deal with the supernatural at all. orsteinsttr skelks (which takes place in Norway) shows how Olaf protects those whotrust in him from the devil. Orms ttr (which ranges throughout Scandinavia andincludes a pilgrimage to Rome) contains both helpful and harmful monsters, butnothing of the pagan deities. In the Christianized world of these ttir, inn andthe rest of the gods have vanished completely, and the dead are now depicted asinhabiting heaven or hell, rather than the magic islands, mountains, stones, andgrave-mounds of pagan belief.

Medieval historians do not seem to have thought that the old dispensationwas populated solely by virtuous pagans; rather, this period was often viewed withambiguity and depicted in such a way as to show the happy necessity of theconversion. Gerd Wolfgang Weber thus understands the red- and blue-clothedjarbar of orsteins ttr uxafts as the spiritually positive and negative aspectsof the heathen age (Weber 1986, 310), an interpretation we may extend to the twopagan heroes in hell that we learn about in orsteins ttr skelks, where thegood pagan hero Sigurr endures his sufferings well, while the bad heroStarkar shrieks and bellows in pain (Harris 1976, 14; Lindow 1986, 26667).


orsteinns liberation of the good jarbar is the first step of freeing pagan manfrom the earthly tyranny of the devil; not until baptism can man be redeemed inthe spirit. The synchronic representation of the positive and negative aspects ofpagan man by the two jarbar brothers has its diachronic counterpart in the rep-resentation of the succession of paganism by Christianity in the successive genera-tions of a family, as Paul Schach (1977) and Joseph Harris (1986) have pointedout. In orleifs ttr jarlasklds, orleifr and his siblings are the ill-fated oldergeneration. His brothers inability to avenge him is historically controlled; itis explained that they fail because [Hkon] hafi enn eigi llu illu v framfarit, sem honum var lagit sr til skammar ok skaa [Hkon had not then yetaccomplished all the evil that was fated for him for shame and scathe] (Nordalet al. 194445, 1:237), i.e., the time had not yet come for the old law to be over-turned. orleifr, whose poetry brings death to himself and others, is contrastedwith the younger Hallbjorn, whose poetry brings him wealth and a high reputa-tion. In orsteins ttr uxafts, Brynjarr the jarbi is succeeded by his Christiannamesake Brynjarr orsteinsson, and the proud varr is contrasted with his hum-bler and more spiritual son. In Sorla ttr, even Hogni, who at first seems pitiablyvictimized by the gods, appears in battle as a figure of wrath crowned with a helmof terror. Heinns sincere attempt to bring about a reconciliation surely markshim as the improved younger generation.

The placement of these ttir in salvation-historical time also governs theiruse of the imagery of hell. orleifrs n seems to turn Hkons hall into hell onearth: it is dark, weapons terrifyingly fight by themselves, and men experiencephysical torments. We may compare this with the dkk dflissa dligra kvala meeymd ok nau utan enda [dark dungeon of bad torments with misery and op-pression without end] (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:229) of hell, to which Jn rar-son condemns Hkon eternally in the preface; it is as if orleifr were revealing thetrue nature of Hkons hall. When the purely pagan world of orleifs ttr yieldsto the pre-Christian world of orsteins ttr uxafts and Sorla ttr, hellishplaces are limited to geographical sites associated with the pagan afterlife, suchas the grave mound of Brynjlfr and his brother, or the island where the dailyrenewal of the battle between Heinn and Hogni seems to parody life in Valhalla.However, the pagan characters trapped in the anti-Valhalla on Hey are notsavoring the barbaric joys of eternal mayhem. With a grave, anxious face (hyggju-svip), Heinn complains of the great atkvi (spell or judgment) and nau(oppression) which they suffer, and speaks of lifting inns curse in terms ofundanlausn (release or redemption). The ttr-author reinforces the hellishnessof the Hjaningavg by referring to the curse as felli (damnation) and skapraun(trial, tribulation). In the entirely Christian world of orsteins ttr skelks, hell isidentified as such and appears to occupy its proper cosmographical position.

The operation of spiritual grace is similarly historically controlled. As CarolClover has pointed out, the words for (good) luck or (good) fortune (gfa,


gipta, hamingja), were by the thirteenth century fully harmonized with the Latincomplex of terms and notions referring to grace (gratia, donum, munus)(Clover 1985, 266). While Peter Hallberg has drawn attention to the fact that thefortune-words are very infrequent in specifically Christian texts and that whenthey do occur there, they have no special spiritual overtones (1973, 16266), thereverse seems to be true for texts such as the added ttir, i.e., those which arenot overtly didactic. Hermann Plsson, in attempting to distinguish betweenpagan and Christian concepts of gfa, lists five examples of kings endowing menwith their own hamingja (Plsson 1975, 141n18). In the ttir added to lfssaga Tryggvasonar, we most definitely have further examples not only of a kingwhose luck can be extended to one of his men, but of one whose luck cannotbe anything other than synonymous with Christian grace. Attention is even drawnto the converse the old-dispensation orleifs ttr notes that King Sveinntjguskegg of Denmark has no gipta to protect his protg orleifr. As will beargued below in the discussion of lfs saga helga, the situation described inorleifs ttr, in which a Danish king cannot protect an Icelander from the hostil-ity of the ruler of Norway, is the negative pagan inverse of the situation inAuunar ttr vestfirzka, in which an Icelander who has had a run-in with theNorwegian king finds that his luck has turned for the better once a ChristianDanish king takes him under his wing.9 The case of Orms ttr, whose protagonistdoes not derive his luck from King Olaf, will be dealt with shortly.

Recognition of the use of typology, conversion stereotypes, and Augustiniannotions of salvation history in Old Norse literature has led to the further recogni-tion of the joint nature of religion and politics in the Middle Ages a particularproblem for Iceland, which for several centuries was a nation without a king(Harris 1986; Weber 1987). In the added ttir, Jns emphasis on Olaf Tryggva-sons power over pagan gods and evil demons joins religion and politics in twoways. The first way has to do with these texts equation of economic oppressionwith the spiritual oppression of sin. Although salvation was viewed in economicterms throughout the Middle Ages, chiefly in the notion of Christs paying offmankinds debt of sin by means of the Crucifixion, four of Jns six added ttircharacterize paganism as involving the forced payment of a tax or tribute. Forexample, in the purely pagan milieu of the jarbar of orsteins ttr uxafts, thespiritual oppression of the good pagans is represented by their economic oppres-sion by the bad ones. Each night Brynjarr and his fellows must pay his evil brothereither one mark of gold, two of silver, or a treasure of equivalent value. Brynjarrsays of his brother, Hann veitir mr ungar bsifjar [He is a bad neighbor to me]

9. The modern Icelandic emendation of the Flateyjarbk title of this text, orleifs ttr jarlasklds[The tale of orleifr Earls-Poet] to orleifs ttr jarlssklds [The tale of orleifr Earls-Poet], on thegrounds that there is no reason to believe that the historical orleifr ever composed poetry for any otherearl but Jarl Hkon misses the point of the narrative. See the discussion of Hra ttr heimska, p. 23.


(Nordal et al. 194445, 1:280). In the same ttr, spiritual redemption immediatelyleads to economic redemption; orsteinn is rewarded with twelve marks of silverand a magic piece of gold for freeing Brynjarr from the tyranny of his brother, andthe first thing he does afterwards is to give the silver to his thrall companion topurchase his freedom with. The phrase He is a bad neighbor to me recurs inOrms ttr, when the friendly half-troll Menglo says it of her monstrous halfbrother, Brsi (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:10). She is explaining to Ormr how Brsirules an island that is better than her island, which she might be forced to leave.After Ormr kills Brsi and Brsis mother, he gives the islands and most of thetrolls treasure to a grateful Menglo, taking the less valuable part for himself.

Two of the added texts do not simply make a general equation between thetwo kinds of oppression, but specifically combine the spiritual burden of paganismwith the particular economic oppression of Icelanders by Norwegians, thus hint-ing at the fourteenth-century Icelandic resentment of the Bergen merchantsmonopoly on trade with Iceland. Icelandic ships were three times seized in Nor-way for contravening the monopoly (orsteinsson and Jnsson 1991, 136). In1362, the royal agent in Hlogaland arrested orsteinn Eyjlfsson and his com-panions who had come to plead a suit before the king for contravening themonopoly, and he seized their ship and goods (Storm 1888, 279.16, 408.1216).Like orleifr in his ttr, orsteinn had set off from Iceland once before and wasdriven back by a storm, only reaching Norway on his second try (orsteinsson andGrmsdttir 1989, 241; Arnrsson 194953, 2930, 30n2). The fate of orsteinnsship and goods is only slightly exaggerated in the Flateyjarbk version of orleifsttr, where Jarl Hkon hangs orleifrs crew, confiscates his wares, and burns hisship when orleifr refuses to let him determine to whom and for how much hewill sell the goods he brought from Iceland. Judging from the texts mentioned byJnas Kristjnsson in the introduction of his edition of the ttr, these details donot seem to be original (Kristjnsson 1956, xciv). The earliest explanation of whyorleifr composed the n is found in the S-version of Oddr Snorrasons lfssaga Tryggvasonar (Stock. perg. 4 no. 18, fols. 35r54v), which is dated to circa1300 and thus predates the monopoly (Degnbol et al. 1989, 475). This text speci-fies only that Hkon burned orleifr's ship (Jnsson 1932, 71.2729). There is nomention of the fate of the crew or the trading goods, as there is in Flateyjarbk,and I suspect that orleifs ttr was deliberately revised in order to create a paral-lel with the 1362 incident.

The ttr-redactor carefully makes orleifrs revenge fit Hkons crime: or-leifr pretends to eat greedily as a punishment for Hkons greed in stealing hiswares, and his spell making the weapons in Hkons hall fight by themselvesresults in the death of some of Hkons men, just as Hkon caused orleifrs mento be killed. The parallelism between Hkons and orleifrs deeds is emphasizedby the use of the word vegsummerki (traces of a [bad] deed) with regard toboth (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:230.24, 234.6). But whereas the vegsummerki of


Hkons deed leave orleifr unscathed, the vegsummerki of orleifrs deed appearon Hkons body. To use the language of kennings, we may say that Hkonsburning of orleifrs ship is punished by orleifrs damaging the ship of Hkonssoul. This is not the only punishment Hakon will receive, of course; we knowfrom Jns preface to the ttr that Hkon will go to hell when he dies. His dam-nation not to mention the humiliation that he suffers from orleifrs n maywell have struck late-fourteenth-century Icelandic audiences as particularly satis-fying and deserved. Certainly Hkon, who combines apostasy with hostility to-wards Icelanders, functions as the antithesis of King Olaf.

The same audience might also have felt sympathetic sorrow when hearingof orleifrs death at the hands of the wooden golem that Hkon sends to Icelandto avenge that humiliation. Unlike Egill Skallagrmsson, another Icelander whodeclared n against the ruler of Norway, orleifr and the audience of Flateyjar-bk did not find Iceland to be a refuge from the long arm of the Norwegianking. A fourteenth-century audience might well have associated the Terminator-like assassin from Norway, who ignores the sanctions against killing at the Al-ingi, with the hirstjrar and sslumenn, the kings representatives in Iceland,who abused their power with violence and extortion.

The figure of the confiscating Norwegian official is metamorphosed into thatof the thieving Norwegian bully in Hrmundar ttr halta, in which the Norwe-gian traders are suspected of being Vikings or robbers trying to sell their loot.Hrmundar ttr may even have been reinterpreted by its fourteenth-centuryaudience as a kind of allegory of Norwegian imperialism. Under duress, an Icelan-dic farmer agrees to give the Norwegian traders winter lodgings only if they swearan oath to obey the laws of the land, avoid aggressive behavior, and commit nocrimes. They will receive shelter, but no food. (This last stipulation may have trig-gered memories of the lengthy Icelandic efforts to halt the export of food productsduring times of famine.) Instead, the Norwegians leader seduces the farmersdaughter and is suspected of stealing and slaughtering a herd of horses to feed hisparty.10 The Norwegians are outlawed, but on their way out of the country, thetwelve burly Vikings attack the family of the man who accuses them Hrmundr,his two sons, and his fifteen-year-old grandson who defend themselves withfarm implements and pieces of wood. The Norwegians difficult behavior may wellhave struck a chord in Jn Hkonarson, who undoubtedly knew that in 1313 hisgrandfather, Gizurr galli, had run into some trouble with Norwegian traders at themarket-harbor of Gseyri, and was wounded so severely that it took him a yearto recover. In 1315, he like Hrmundrs surviving son, Hallsteinn traveled toNorway, presumably to seek justice from the king (see Jhannesson 1958, 3028and the sources cited there).

10. A similar motif is found in orsteins ttr uxafts, in which the Norwegian varr ljmi comes toIceland on a trading voyage and seduces the sister of the man who provides him with winter lodgings.


The second way in which Jn rarsons additions to lfs saga Tryggva-sonar unite the issues of religion, politics, and economics lies in their treatment ofthe question of cultural paternity. Since the foundation of their country, Iceland-ers had been concerned with genealogies and the deeds of their ancestors, in partto answer charges that the first settlers were the descendants of slaves. The Ice-landers anxiety about their origins led them to create a large body of texts estab-lishing Iceland as the legitimate and even noble child of Norway. By the timeFlateyjarbk was being written, however, the relationship between Iceland andNorway no longer seemed as natural or inalienable as it had in earlier centuries.King Magns Eirksson reserved the rule of Iceland for himself in 1355, and thesubsequent association between Iceland and Sweden lasted until 1374 and loos-ened the formal ties between Iceland and Norway. The oath of homage to OlafHkonarson in 1383 was retrospectively felt to have begun the long attachment toDenmark. Even when the sovereign of Iceland was once more the same person asthe ruler of Norway, the decline of Norwegian power and prosperity might wellhave filled Icelanders with a new sort of anxiety, a fear that the parent countryhad lost interest in or was abandoning its offspring.

A kings saga lends itself well to the treatment of such themes, as one medi-eval political metaphor represented the king as the father of his people. In the caseof lfs saga Tryggvasonar, the Christian content adds a further dimension; inimitation of Christs command that Christians leave their parents to follow him,protagonist after protagonist leaves (or loses) his natural father to serve his spiri-tual father, King Olaf. Moreover, the narrative structure of the ttir specificallycasts the acquisition of the spiritual father and the concomitant privilege ofgiving ones life for him as the compensation for worldly injuries suffered or thereward for feats of valor. For example, in orsteins ttr uxafts, orsteinns re-ward for slaying the trolls is not a gift of gold, land, a title, or the kings daughter,but the privilege of being able to follow King Olaf all his life and to die defendinghim at the battle of Svoldr. In Sorla ttr, varr similarly receives no reward forending the Hjaningavg, except for Olafs praise and the opportunity to die in hisservice. In Hrmundar ttr halta, Hallsteinn receives no compensation for theslaying of his father and brother but the privilege of becoming King Olafs manand dying for him on the Long Serpent. In short, all these texts confound our ex-pectations for their genres. In the case of the two ttir that resemble folktales ormonster-slayer stories, we would expect the narratives to end with the hero beingrewarded with treasure and a wife. In the case of the ttr with an Icelandic-fam-ily-saga plot, we would expect the narrative to end with the restoration of socialbalance the deaths of the kinsmen will be compensated for with money, or thesons of the feuding protagonists will respect each other and keep the negotiatedpeace settlement. With either genre, we would expect a picture of a functioning,continuing society. Instead we see a group that essentially commits mass suicide atthe battle of Svoldr. The reward that Jn rarson holds out is truly the Christian


vision of the redemption of the individual soul, rather than the secular vision of asociety harmoniously reproducing itself.

Jn and the ttr-authors he uses do not neglect the political aspects of thenotion of paternity. While Jns exemplar included accounts of Norwegians leav-ing their fathers (e.g., Sveins ttr ok Finns), his own emphasis on Icelandersleaving their fathers for King Olaf foregrounds the relationship between the twocountries. In orsteins ttr uxafts, the acknowledgment of the illegitimateorsteinn by his natural father coincides with his baptism and acknowledgment byhis spiritual father, King Olaf. The picture of the illegitimate Icelandic son forcingthe proud Norwegian father to acknowledge him (both because of his accomplish-ments and because the point of orsteinns sword is aimed at varrs chest) musthave been a satisfying one for Icelandic audiences in the fourteenth century.

The fantasy of paternal acknowledgment undergoes a further development inJns next addition, Sorla ttr, which deals with the same characters as orsteinsttr uxafts. This text depicts the recuperation of the natural father. That is, onceorsteinn has proven himself, as related in his ttr, it is his fathers turn to do sonext. Armed with the sword his son had once threatened to use against him andprotected with the good luck of his king, varr ljmi puts an end to the Hjan-ingavg, lifting inns curse and earning Olafs praise. Jns second and thirdadditions to lfs saga Tryggvasonar thus reaffirm the filial relationship betweenIceland and Norway through the agency of Olaf Tryggvason. The fourth throughsixth additions to lfs saga restage the progression outlined above. Hrmundarttr relates another story of the loss of the Icelandic natural father and hisreplacement with King Olaf; orsteins ttr skelks demonstrates the benevolentcoexistence of Olafs paternalism and the Icelanders self-will; and the remarkableOrms ttr transcends the power of Olaf altogether.

This last addition of Jns to lfs saga Tryggvasonar depicts an Icelanderwho is not only a greater fighter than the champions of the Long Serpent we havemet in the earlier added ttir orsteinn uxaft, varr ljmi, Hallsteinn Hr-mundarson, and orsteinn skelkr11 but who has also outgrown the role of sonof the Norwegian father. Ormr proves himself to be stronger and luckier than hisDanish sworn brother, successfully calls on God and St. Peter rather thanOlaf to aid him against monsters, is said to have hamingja that is not attribut-able to the king, and he misses the battle of Svoldr because he was on a pilgrimageto Rome. After Ormr demonstrates to Jarl Eirkr how he would have defended theLong Serpent had he been on it, the jarl concludes that in that case, the ship neverwould have been captured. The implication is that Ormr could have saved Olaf

11. In addition to his general prowess, Ormr specifically surpasses two of the champions in their spe-cialties: he outdoes orsteinn uxaft in using a ships boom, and he handles Einarr ambarskelfirs mightybow as if it were a toy. Faulkes comments that the Einarr episode seems a little tame, coming after Ormrsother exploits ([1968], 30), but it is conceivable that Jn added this episode to show how Ormr surpassedthe Norwegian champions as well as the Icelandic ones.


from defeat, or in other words, that an Icelander no longer characterized as ason, as he was baptized in Iceland, not in Norway by Olaf has the power tosave the agent of spiritual salvation himself. Sorla ttrs recuperation of the natu-ral father is thus paralleled and expanded in Orms ttr into at least the possibilityof the recuperation of the spiritual father. Orms ttr is also generically expanded;unlike most ttir, which usually treat a single episode of a mans life, Orms ttrresembles the family saga in its chronological range, beginning in the days ofHaraldr hrfagr and ending after the reign of Olaf Tryggvason.12 In terms of theIcelandic abandonment anxiety hypothesized above that the parent country hadlost interest in its offspring Orms ttr offers a reassuring vision of an Icelandthat has grown out of its childhood dependence on the fatherland and that cannow assume its proper adult position as a member of European Christendom.

Jn rarson seems to have chosen or (possibly) revised these six ttir toform two linked groups or cycles of three. orleifs ttr jarlasklds, orsteinsttr uxafts, and Sorla ttr form one sequence that moves from the time of pa-ganism through baptism to the post-baptismal defeat of pagan gods and monsters,and the erasure of the signs of their presence. There is an escalation of evil from awooden man to trolls and finally to inn himself, and a corresponding escalationof the role of Olaf Tryggvason, from complete absence to a distant benevolence,and finally to a close presence that even through an agent is stronger than inn.Hrmundar ttr halta, orsteins ttr skelks, and Orms ttr Strlfssonarform a similar sequence. The role of Olaf Tryggvason again completes the trajec-tory from absence to a close presence, ending in Orms ttr by being transcendedaltogether. Both groups of ttir enact the progression from the loss of the naturalfather and his replacement by Olaf as spiritual father to the recuperation of thenatural father, which in Orms ttr is superseded by the possibility of the rescueof the spiritual father.

The similar dynamics of the two groups of ttir are set up by the parallelsbetween the pairs of beginning and middle ttir. The pair of ending ttir con-tains fewer parallels; instead, these texts demonstrate what the conversion has andhas not changed. The ttir that begin their respective sequences orleifs ttrand Hrmundar ttr both depict the wretchedness that prevailed in OlafTryggvasons absence. Their plots describe Icelandic resistance to the economicoppression of evil Norwegian pagans and the unjust suffering that results from it.In both narratives, compensation is merely hinted at, and that only for the next

12. Orms ttr Strlfssonar also comments on saga genres in its many borrowings and loans, as thettr-author seems to be trying to paint Ormr as surpassing heroes such as Orvar-Oddr, Grettir s-mundarson, and Egill Skallagrmsson. The imitation of Orvar-Odds saga becomes unintentionally ironic,for Oddr is depicted in his saga as a pre-Christian hero, which makes Ormr a post-pre-Christian. Again,it is possible that Jn noticed this aspect of Orms ttr and was inspired to rework it so that Ormr wouldbe depicted as surpassing the Long-Serpent champions as well as the other heroes. The historicization ofthe first part of the ttr with loans from Landnmabk resembles the first part of orsteins ttr uxa-fts, whose account of lfljtr is also drawn by Jn? from Landnmabk.


generation: the shepherd Hallbjorn gains the gift of poetry on orleifrs grave-mound, resulting in good and goods, and Hallsteinn Hrmundarson joins thecourt of Olaf and dies defending him on the Long Serpent. Both ttir depictthe figure of Mifjarar-Skeggi as the protector or teacher of the protagonist.The pagan-age orleifs ttr has Mifjarar-Skeggi help orleifr by teaching himmagic, but Hrmundar ttr, inserted into lfs saga after the account of theconversion, has Mifjarar-Skeggi use the laws of Iceland to exile those who robhis countrymen. The two middle ttir both recount the experiences of good andbad pagans in the afterlife. In the prebaptismal section of orsteins ttr uxafts,the evil pagans oppress their good brothers and demand tribute from them, a prac-tice that the designated pre-Christian orsteinn is able to end. In the postbaptis-mal orsteins ttr skelks, good and bad pagans alike are discovered to be suffer-ing in hell. Both orsteinns are saved from danger by their faith in Olaf and hisreligion, and both are rewarded by being privileged to serve Olaf for the rest oftheir lives and to die for him on the Long Serpent. In addition to the similarity ofnames linking the two narratives, part or all of both take place on the Norwegianfarm called Reina. The two final ttir tell how Christian heroes make use of theirgood luck to put an end to a conflict between monstrous pagans in an island set-ting. varr ljmis luck comes from Olaf, and like the other Long Serpent heroes,he is privileged to live and die with him. Ormr, never a retainer of Olafs, calls on

ttartolurJmsvkinga s.*

Freyinga s.*

Orkneyinga s.*Albani .

Landnma .Kristni .

Hallfrear s.*Rognvalds . ok Raus

orleifs . jarlaskldsorsteins . uxafts

Sorla .

Eirks s. vforlaTexts added by Jn rarson

Texts already interpolated in Jns exemplar of lfs saga Tryggvasonar

First cycle Second cycle

Hrmundar . haltaorsteins . skelks

Orms . Strlfssonar

iranda . ok rhalls

Svaa .

Eirks . raua

Fig. 1. Texts interpolated into the Flateyjarbk lfs saga Tryggvasonar. Asterisks indicate the first andlast segments of the independent sagas that are interlaced with the chapters of lfs saga Tryggvasonar.Note that Orkneyinga saga and Freyinga saga do not end in lfs saga Tryggvasonar but continue intolfs saga helga. For Kristni ttr and Kjartans ttr lfssonar, only the first of the interlaced seg-ments is indicated.

Hallfrear s.*

Freyinga s.*Orkneyinga s.*

Gauts .Jmsvkinga s.*

Grnlendinga .*Grnlendinga .*

Kjartans .Ogmundar .Norna-Gests .

Helga . rissonarorvalds . tasalda

Sveins . ok Finns . Eirks HkonarsonarSigurar . biskups

Halldrs . Snorrasonar

rhalls . knappsEindria . ilbreis


God and St. Peter, and while he is not present at the battle of Svoldr, it is judgedthat if he had been there, the Long Serpent would not have been captured. Thedifferences between Sorla ttr and Orms ttr are partly those of their respectivetypological ages: the pagan gods have been replaced by monsters, and the combi-nation of factors working towards the oppression of the Icelanders has lost itsspiritual component. However, further differences between these two ttir sug-gest that the meaning of Olaf Tryggvason for the Icelanders is more than just reli-gious: at the end of the first cycle, Olaf Tryggvasons power is shown to be greaterthan that of inn himself, but at the end of the second, Olaf Tryggvason hasbeen eclipsed as a source of power the protagonist calls on God and St. Peterinstead. And the protagonist, too, is radically changed; in Sorla ttr he is theNorwegian father whose achievements equal those of his Icelandic son, but inOrms ttr he is the Icelandic son who surpasses the retainers of Olaf in his physi-cal accomplishments and who has no need for Olafs spiritual aid.

The structural parallels and thematic development of the added ttir sug-gest that they were carefully chosen and perhaps reworked to convey theirmorals as emphatically as possible. Jns placement of these six texts within lfssaga Tryggvasonar seems equally purposeful; see figure 1.

orleifs ttr is inserted well ahead of the first ttr in Jns exemplar andserves to introduce Olafs defeat of Jarl Hkon and conquest of Norway. Signifi-cantly, it is the first embedded narrative with an Icelandic protagonist; this notonly emphasizes by example Hkons evilness, but also suggests that the religious-economic relationship that inextricably links Iceland and Norway is nearly as oldas Iceland itself. orsteins ttr uxafts and Sorla ttr occur close together andquite a bit later in the saga. As is discussed above, they are themselves a pair oflinked ttir, partly as a result of their function of introducing the two conver-sions. The second cycle of ttir forms a chiasmus with the first cycle. Hr-mundar ttr and orsteins ttr skelks occur one chapter apart in the secondhalf of the saga. Like orleifs ttr at the beginning, Orms ttr is placed almostat the end of the saga; it and the end of Hallfrear saga vandrasklds form theIcelandic reaction to the fall of King Olaf.

As Joseph Harris observes in his discussion of Icelandic typological perspec-tives, The categories of secular and sacred turn out to be at very least intricatelyinterwoven (1986, 200). This is certainly true for Jn rarson. His dependenceon Christian doctrine and his particular belief in the spiritual power of OlafTryggvason turn out to be inseparable from his Icelandic perspective, whichincludes a strong sense of Norway as the fatherland. In lfs saga Tryggvasonar,he establishes the basic difference between the old dispensation and the new pagan rulers demand tribute, but Christian kings bestow grace in terms of therelationship between Iceland and Norway. When his examination of the economicoppression of sin yields in lfs saga helga to the exploration of the economics ofcharity, the political context remains the same. As noted above, Jn rarsons


revisions to lfs saga helga are more extensive and complex than his additionsto lfs saga Tryggvasonar, so limits of space preclude a full-scale analysis here,but a brief look at the first two ttir added to lfs saga helga will serve to illus-trate this theme.

Styrbjarnar ttr Svakappa and Hra ttr heimska are a pair of ttirinserted into the account of Olaf Haraldssons suit for the hand of the Swedishprincess Ingigerr. Their purpose seems to be to illustrate the nature of the Swed-ish court and introduce orgnr the law-speaker, who will persuade the Swedishking to accept the Norwegian king as his son-in-law. However, these texts also tiethe sagas of the two Olafs together, for they pick up the themes introduced insome of the ttir added to lfs saga Tryggvasonar and develop them further.

Styrbjarnar ttr Svakappa (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:14649) tells of an unpleasantyoung Swedish prince who becomes the leader of the Jomsvikings. He makes war on theDanes, which the Danish king Haraldr Gormsson settles by promising the young manone hundred ships and the hand of his daughter. However, Styrbjorn shows up with avast fleet and forces the king to give him two hundred ships and himself as a hostage.Styrbjorn leads his army back to Sweden, where he intends to challenge his uncle, theking. He has sacrificed to rr for victory, but his uncle has sacrificed to inn and haspromised ten years of his life if he wins. When the Swedish king casts the spear innhas given him over the opposing army, crying inn has you all, Styrbjorn and hismen are destroyed by a landslide. Haraldr Gormsson and the Danes escape.

Hra ttr heimska (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:14958) makes major characters out ofwhat were supporting roles in Styrbjarnar ttr: orgnr the lawman, and three brotherswho are the unpopular advisors to the Swedish king. Hri is a Dane who is much betterat making money than he is at keeping it. He goes to King Sveinn Haraldsson and pro-poses that they form a trading alliance, since the kings good luck is sure to outweigh hisown bad luck. The king agrees, and Hri soon becomes a rich man. Eventually Hriis desirous of testing his luck again, and he breaks off the partnership with Sveinn,although the king advises against it. Hri takes a ship full of his own cargo to Sweden,where one of the kings advisors soon gets the best of the deal, and the other two bringunfounded charges against him. Hris one friend is the daughter of orgnr, who tricksher father into providing Hri with advice. When the case against Hri is brought beforethe king, Hri is able to turn his opponents arguments against them and have two ofthem put to death and the third exiled. Hri marries rgnrs daughter, returns to Den-mark long enough to present many valuable gifts to King Sveinn, and lives out his daysin Sweden.

In structure and theme, this pair of ttir closely resembles such texts asGautreks saga and Auunar ttr vestfirzka, in which caritas leads to profits,and spiritual grace bestows secular good luck (for a detailed argument, see Rowe1998). The juxtaposition of the pagan sacrifices in one ttr and the metamorpho-sis of the farmers foolish son in the other particularly recalls the interlaced narra-tive threads of Gautreks saga, which contrast the cost of gifts from inn withthe rewards of the gift of grace. As the first of the added ttir of lfs sagahelga, these ttir also beg to be compared with orleifs ttr jarlasklds and


Hrmundar ttr halta, the first texts of the two ttir-cycles added to lfssaga Tryggvasonar.

At first glance, these pairs of ttir do not seem to have much in common.orleifs ttr and Hrmundar ttr deal with the injustice of Hkon Hlaajarland the Norwegian economic oppression of the Icelanders, whereas Styrbjarnarttr and Hra ttr deal with conflicts between Swedes and Danes. Salvationhistory no longer seems to be controlling the action; the two later ttir takeplace when Denmark is Christian and Sweden is still pagan. However, orleifsttr and Hra ttr do display a number of parallels. For one thing, the paganDanish king Sveinn cannot change orleifrs bad luck, but the Christian one canchange Hris. For another, both orleifr and Hri lose their cargos, but Hri getshis back, and the goods of his enemies to boot. Third and most important arethe lawspeakers, Mifjarar-Skeggi and orgnr. Mifjarar-Skeggi does his bestto help his compatriots with his knowledge of magic and the law, but in a paganage little avails. orgnr, although in a pagan country, enjoys better success.Conversely, Hra ttr points out the geographical limitations of gipta, as KingSveinn cant guarantee Hris luck in another country. What these texts seem tobe saying is that for justice to prevail, both grace and law are necessary. For pros-perity to flourish, kings must be generous to their subjects, who will then repaythem ten-fold. This, then, is the lesson for the young king of Norway. The ttiradded to lfs saga Tryggvasonar had emphasized the process of salvation his-tory, the redemption from the burden of sin, the souls reward in the next world,and the familial relationship between king and Icelander. With the most importantissue, the conversion, taken care of, the first two ttir added to lfs saga helgachange their focus to the relationship between king and subject in this world.

Like the depictions of the afterlife and the operation of grace, the depictionof the economic component of this relationship is historically controlled. Asargued above, paganism literally takes its toll from the Icelanders. In the age ofthe new law, however, oppression is converted to its opposite, generosity. Whileroyal officials are still practicing barely disguised theft, the essential goodness orevilness of the kings themselves manifests itself as generosity or niggardliness. Forexample, the Flateyjarbk version of Fstbrra saga (another of Jns additions)contrasts ormr Kolbrnarsklds treatment at the hands of the miserly KingKntr with his reception by St. Olaf, who judges that the poet will not turn out tobe an gfumar after all (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:296) and rewards his retainerswith titles and money. Compare this with the heavenly rewards of orsteinnuxaft and varr ljmi; as the spiritual sons of Olaf Tryggvason, they certainlybenefited materially, but their ttir pass over this aspect of their experience.13

13. For a survey of all the ttir in Flateyjarbk and an alternative interpretation of Jn rarsonsversions of the sagas of the two Olafs, see Wrth 1991.


The suggestion I made that Jn rarson wanted King Olaf to take a leaffrom his namesakes book was not idle linguistic play; when one considers theprecarious position of the Norwegian ruling dynasty, which died out in the maleline with Hkon hleggr in 1319 and was to end with the young King Olaf, it isimpossible not to draw a connection between the theme of Jns added ttir the redemption of the Norwegian father by the Icelandic son and Jns own actof saving on vellum the history of the Norwegian kings, which is silently setagainst the contemporary context of the rule of that non-male, non-Norwegian,Queen Margareta. And this might account for one of the mysteries of Flateyjar-bk the use of Eirks saga vforla as a preface. It is unlikely that Jn wouldhave identified with one of his warrior protagonists, such as orsteinn uxaft orOrmr, but he might have seen himself in the figure of Eirkr, whose stories abouthis travels to the earthly paradise enable the message of Christianity to beaccepted more quickly by the Norwegians. Eirkr helps prepare Norway for theprocess of conversion and thus can be said to prefigure Olaf Tryggvason. Jn,another teller of moral adventure tales (vintr), might have seen himself as theIcelandic heir of this particular father of Norwegian Christianity.

Appendix

For convenience, synopses of the six ttir added by Jn rarson to his copy of lfs sagaTryggvasonar are provided below:

orleifs ttr jarlasklds (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:22837) tells how orleifr sgeirs-son, a foster son of Mifjarar-Skeggi, was outlawed from Iceland for his part in a killing. Thefirst time he tries to leave Iceland, his boat is driven back by a storm, but the second time heequips himself with trading goods and manages to reach Vk in Norway, where Hkon Hlaa-jarl is. The jarl offers to buy his wares, but when orleifr wants to set his own prices, the jarl isangered. The next day, when orleifr is out at the market, Hkon has all his wares seized, hismen hanged, and his ship burned. When orleifr discovers what has happened, he travels toDenmark. There his poetry wins him the favor of King Sveinn, who eventually allows him toleave for Trondheim. orleifr disguises himself as a beggar and is admitted to Hkons feast.He pretends to eat greedily (by hiding the food in a bag under his false beard), and afterwardspersuades the jarl to listen to some verses. The verses begin by praising Hkon, but soon theycause him to itch, and then they cause the hall to go dark and all the weapons in it to fightby themselves, resulting in the death of many of the jarls men. orleifr escapes, even thoughthe doors are closed. After the mess is cleaned up, Hkon guesses who is responsible. orleifrreturns to Denmark and tells King Sveinn the whole story. The king gives him the nicknamejarlaskld and a ship in which to return to Iceland. Hkon takes his revenge by calling onorgerr Horabrr and her sister Irpa to animate a wooden man. The golem travels to Ice-land and kills orleifr at the Alingi. After his death, orleifr grants the gift of poetry to ashepherd named Hallbjorn who sleeps on his grave-mound. orleifrs brothers try to avengehim, but they only succeed in burning some of Hkons temples.

orsteins ttr uxafts (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:27490) begins with a description ofhow Iceland adopted its first set of laws while the country was still pagan. It then relates theconception of its hero. varr ljmi, a haughty Norwegian of good looks and high estate, comes


to Iceland on a trading voyage. His host for the winter asks his sister to serve their guest, andshe becomes pregnant. varr denies that the child is his and returns to Norway. The bastard isnamed orsteinn and is raised by his mother and uncle. During his youth, orsteinn dreamsthat he is invited inside a grave-mound by its friendly, red-clad inhabitant, a man namedBrynjarr. Once inside, he sees two groups of men sitting along the walls. The group to his rightis Brynjarrs men, who are also pleasant-looking and dressed in red. On the left are the men ofBrynjarrs brother Oddr. They and their leader look unpleasant and are dressed in blue. Oddrlords it over the others, demanding payment of some kind from them. Everyone pays upmeekly except for orsteinn, who rewards Oddr with a blow from his axe. A fight breaks outbetween the two groups, and orsteinn notices that the jarbar he kills remain dead, but theones struck by their fellows soon heal. orsteinn manages to slay all the blue-clad men, andBrynjarr, left with control of the grave-mound, rewards him and makes prophecies. orsteinnmust go abroad and accept the change in faith. Brynjarr explains that the new faith is muchbetter for those for whom it is fated, but that it is more difficult for those who were not createdfor it, such as jarbar like himself or his brother. He also asks orsteinn to have a son of hisbaptized with the name Brynjarr. Eventually orsteinn travels to Norway, decides to convertto Christianity, accomplishes such great deeds that varr is forced to acknowledge the pater-nity claim, and is baptized by Olaf Tryggvason. Later he proves his strength by tearing a leg offa living ox, thus acquiring his nickname. He marries and has a son whom he names Brynjarr,but he returns to Olaf and dies with him on the Long Serpent.

Sorla ttr (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:30413) falls into three parts. The first describeshow Freyja acquires a gold necklace from four dwarves, and how inn commands Loki tosteal it. inns condition for the return of the necklace to Freyja provides the motivation forthe second part: she must arrange for two kings with a following of twenty kings each to fightwith one another, and the battle must be enchanted in such a way that as soon as a fighterfalls, he rises up and fights again. The motivation for the third part is provided by the last ofinns stipulations: the battle will continue until a Christian who is both brave and giftedwith the luck of his liege lord slays the fighters with his weapon. The second part of the ttrdescribes how Sorli the Viking seizes the dragon-ship of King Hlfdan and becomes the swornbrother of Hlfdans son, Hogni. After Sorli is killed, Freyja (in disguise) persuades a princenamed Heinn to seek out Hogni and test himself against him. The two, who each have a fol-lowing of twenty kings, become sworn brothers. Freyja gives Heinn a magic drink and sug-gests that he kill Hognis queen and steal both his daughter Hildr and the dragon-ship. Heinndoes so, Hogni sets off in pursuit, and when he catches up with the younger man, they fight.This battle, known as the slaughter of the Hjanings (Hjaningavg), is the enchanted onerequired by inn. The third section of the ttr describes how, one hundred and forty-threeyears after the Hjaningavg began, King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway lands at the island wherethe battle is taking place. His ships watchman, varr ljmi, is approached by Heinn, whoasks him to slay the combatants and end the battle. varr does so and returns to the ship,where the king praises the deed.

Hrmundar ttr halta (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:45560) tells how an Icelandic familyof undistinguished background is taken advantage of by a band of Norwegians. Hrmundr is alarge, good-looking man who is lame from a battle wound; he has two sons, orbjorn andHallsteinn, and a teenaged grandson. One summer, a shipload of Norwegians arrive to dosome trading. They dont get much business, as they appear to be Vikings disposing of theirloot, but orbjorn and his brother-in-law rir visit them, and their leader persuades rir toput them up for the winter. rir is reluctant, and he makes them promise to obey the law.During the winter, the Norwegian persuades rir to let him marry his sister. Then five fat


studhorses belonging to Hrmundr disappear, and he suspects that the Norwegians haveslaughtered them for food. The Norwegians deny it, and Hrmundr has them summonsed fortheft. He doesnt go the the Thing himself; instead, he stays home and fortifies his farm.Mifjarar-Skeggi prosecutes the case for him, and the Norwegians are found guilty. Theyintend to sail away, but they stop at Hrmundrs farm first. Their attack is repulsed byHrmundr and his sons and grandson, who between them manage to kill six of the Norwe-gians. Only Hallsteinn and the grandson survive, Hallsteinn to leave Iceland and become OlafTryggvasons man, and the grandson to inherit the farm.

orsteins ttr skelks (Nordal et al. 194445, 1:46264) recounts how one night, OlafTryggvason orders his men not to go to the outhouse alone. When the need arises, the Ice-lander orsteinn cant awaken a companion, and he goes out to the privy by himself. As hessitting there, a demon appears through the seat farthest away. orsteinn asks the demon abouthell and its tortures, and the demon reveals that the hero Sigurr Ffnisbani endures his tor-ments most bravely, while Starkar endures his the worst. orsteinn asks what that soundslike, and the demon emits the most hideous cries. The noise awakens the king, who has thechurch bells rung, thus driving the demon away. The next day Olaf asks which of his men dis-obeyed his orders, and orsteinn confesses. The king asks if he was afraid. orsteinn repliesthat he doesnt know what it is to be afraid, but that the demons third cry did cause a shudder(skelkr) in his breast. The king gives him this as a nickname, and orsteinn becomes hisretainer and eventually dies with him on the Long Serpent.

Orms ttr Strlfssonar (Nordal et al. 194445, 2:114) begins with the genealogy ofthe Icelander Ormr, who is descended from orkell Naumdlajarl and Ketill hngr fromHrafnista. As a boy, Ormr uses his amazing strength in ways calculated to annoy his father,but eventually their relationship improves. Ormr takes passage to Horaland when he is thirty,and there he becomes sworn brothers with a Dane named sbjorn, who is visiting hismothers family. During a trip to Mrr, they hear of some islands occupied by monsters, butOrmr dissuades sbjorn from taking them on. Instead they spend several years as Vikings andthen amicably part ways, with Ormr returning to Iceland and avenging his father, who hadbeen killed in his absence. sbjorn returns to the haunted Norwegian islands, where themother monster easily dispatches him. Ormr learns of this and sets off to avenge his swornbrother. He is aided by the monsters sister, who has been exiled by her half brother to thesmaller and less desirable of the two islands. However, he cannot overcome the monster andhis mother until he prays to God and St. Peter for victory, swearing that he will undertake apilgrimage to Rome. After destroying the monsters, he spends the winter in Trondheim andleaves for Rome the next summer. He returns the autumn after the battle of Svoldr and be-comes the guest of Jarl Eirkr. Ormr is rather quiet, but one day he mentions that it would havetaken even more time than it did to clear the deck of the Long Serpent if he had been on it.Eirkr tests his claim in various ways and judges that the ship never would have been taken ifOrmr had been on it. On another occasion, Ormr proves himself to be as mighty a bow-benderas Einarr ambarskelfir, and on a third he manages to carry the mast of the Long Serpent forthree feet. (It took sixty men to lift it to shoulder height.) Ormr dies of old age in Iceland, hav-ing kept his faith well.

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Cultural Paternity in the Flateyjarbók Óláfs Saga

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