Íslendingabók
Encyclopedia
Íslendingabók, Libellus Islandorum or The Book of Icelanders is an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history
. The author was an Icelandic priest, Ari Þorgilsson
, working in the early 12th century. The work originally existed in two different versions but only the younger one has come down to us. The older contained information on Norwegian kings, made use of by later writers of kings' sagas
.
The priest Jón Erlendsson in Villingaholt (died 1672) in the service of bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson made two copies of Íslendingabók (now AM 113 a fol and AM 113 b fol at the Árni Magnússon Institute), the latter one because the bishop was unhappy with the first copy. The original copied from is assumed to have dated to ca. 1200. It was lost in the course of the late 17th century, and when Árni Magnússon
was looking for it, it had disappeared without a trace.
he takes pains to establish the reliability of his sources and mentions several of them by name. He avoids supernatural material and Christian
bias. The prologue of the book explicitly states that whatever might be wrong in the account must be corrected to "that which can be proven to be most true". Due to these qualities of the work and the early time of its writing historians consider it the most reliable extant source on early Icelandic history.
by immigrants from Norway
. The first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson
, arrives in Reykjavík
. Previous inhabitants, a few Irish
monk
s, known as the Papar
, leave since they don't want to live with heathen Norsemen. As the first settlers arrive Iceland is forested "from the coast to the mountains".
becomes the first man to bring laws there from Norway. Another man, Grímr Goatshoe, investigates all of Iceland before Alþingi
can be established. Ari's text is somewhat unclear here. Presumably Grímr explored the country to find a good meeting place.
, which becomes public property. After 60 years the settlement of Iceland is complete. Ulfljótr becomes the first Lawspeaker
becomes unwieldy and a need is felt for standardization. A man named Þórðr gellir describes to Alþingi his recent difficulties in prosecuting a certain case in a local assembly. He suggests that the country should be split into judicial quadrants, each of which should contain three assemblies. Each quadrant, then, should contain a special assembly for appeals. The motion passes with the amendment that the northern quadrant should have four assemblies, since the northerners couldn't agree on any three.
is discovered and settled from Iceland around 985. Erik the Red
gave the country its pleasant name to encourage people to move there. The Norse settlers find remnants of previous human habitation and deduce that the people who lived there were related to the skræling
jar of Vínland
.
sends the missionary priest Þangbrandr
to Iceland to convert the inhabitants to Christianity
. He has some success in baptizing chieftains but also meets opposition and ends up killing two or three men who had composed libellous poetry about him. He returns to Norway after one or two years with a litany of complaints and tells the king that he has little hope that the country can be converted. The king is furious at hearing the news and threatens to hurt or kill Icelanders in Norway. Two of the Icelandic chieftains previously converted by Þangbrandr meet with the king and pledge their aid in converting the country.
In the summer of 999 or 1000 the issue of religion reaches a crisis point at the Alþingi. The Christian faction and the heathen faction do not want to share the same laws and the Christians choose a new lawspeaker for themselves, Hallr á Síðu. He reaches an agreement with Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði
, the heathen lawspeaker, that Þorgeirr will find a compromise acceptable to everyone.
Þorgeirr goes to his camp and stays under a skin for the remainder of the day and the following night. The day after he gives a speech at Lögberg
. He says that the only way to maintain peace in the country is for everyone to keep to the same laws and the same religion.
Before reciting the compromise he has come up with Þorgeirr gets his audience to pledge themselves to a solution with one set of laws for all the country. Þorgeirr then decrees that everyone not already baptized must convert to Christianity. Three concessions are made to the pagans.
Some years later those concessions are abolished.
History of Iceland
-Early history:In geological terms, Iceland is a young island. It started to form about 20 million years ago from a series of volcanic eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge...
. The author was an Icelandic priest, Ari Þorgilsson
Ari Þorgilsson
Ari Þorgilsson was Iceland's most prominent medieval chronicler. He is the author of Íslendingabók, which details the histories of the various families who settled Iceland...
, working in the early 12th century. The work originally existed in two different versions but only the younger one has come down to us. The older contained information on Norwegian kings, made use of by later writers of kings' sagas
Kings' sagas
The kings' sagas are Norse sagas which tell of the lives of Scandinavian kings. They were composed in the 12th to 14th centuries in Iceland and Norway....
.
The priest Jón Erlendsson in Villingaholt (died 1672) in the service of bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson made two copies of Íslendingabók (now AM 113 a fol and AM 113 b fol at the Árni Magnússon Institute), the latter one because the bishop was unhappy with the first copy. The original copied from is assumed to have dated to ca. 1200. It was lost in the course of the late 17th century, and when Árni Magnússon
Árni Magnússon
Árni Magnússon was an Icelandic scholar and collector of manuscripts. He assembled the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection.-Life:...
was looking for it, it had disappeared without a trace.
Style and sources
Íslendingabók is a very concise work. It relates the major events of Icelandic history in terse prose. While the author is forced to rely almost exclusively on oral historyOral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
he takes pains to establish the reliability of his sources and mentions several of them by name. He avoids supernatural material and Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
bias. The prologue of the book explicitly states that whatever might be wrong in the account must be corrected to "that which can be proven to be most true". Due to these qualities of the work and the early time of its writing historians consider it the most reliable extant source on early Icelandic history.
Content
Apart from a prologue and a genealogy at the end, Íslendingabók is split into ten short chapters. A brief summary of each follows here.1. Settlement of Iceland
Iceland is settled in the days of Harald I of NorwayHarald I of Norway
Harald Fairhair or Harald Finehair , , son of Halfdan the Black, was the first king of Norway.-Background:Little is known of the historical Harald...
by immigrants from Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
. The first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson
Ingólfur Arnarson
Ingólfr Arnarson is recognized as the first permanent Nordic settler of Iceland. According to Landnáma he built his homestead in Reykjavík in 874...
, arrives in Reykjavík
Reykjavík
Reykjavík is the capital and largest city in Iceland.Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay...
. Previous inhabitants, a few Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
s, known as the Papar
Papar
The Papar were, according to early Icelandic historical sources, a group of Irish or Scottish monks resident in parts of Iceland at the time of the arrival of the Norsemen...
, leave since they don't want to live with heathen Norsemen. As the first settlers arrive Iceland is forested "from the coast to the mountains".
2. Bringing of laws from Norway
When Iceland had largely been settled a man named UlfljótrÚlfljótr
Úlfljótr brought law to Iceland and is regarded by some as Iceland's first lawspeaker. In around 927-930 AD Úlfljótr was sent to Norway by a group of chieftans to study law and cuture and bring back to Iceland sufficient understanding to help establish Iceland's legal framework and form of...
becomes the first man to bring laws there from Norway. Another man, Grímr Goatshoe, investigates all of Iceland before Alþingi
Althing
The Alþingi, anglicised variously as Althing or Althingi, is the national parliament of Iceland. The Althingi is the oldest parliamentary institution in the world still extant...
can be established. Ari's text is somewhat unclear here. Presumably Grímr explored the country to find a good meeting place.
3. Establishment of Alþingi
The Alþingi is established on ÞingvellirÞingvellir
|Thing]] Fields) is a place in Bláskógabyggð in southwestern Iceland, near the peninsula of Reykjanes and the Hengill volcanic area. Þingvellir is a site of historical, cultural, and geological importance and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland. It is the site of a rift...
, which becomes public property. After 60 years the settlement of Iceland is complete. Ulfljótr becomes the first Lawspeaker
4. Fixing of the calendar
The wisest men of Iceland notice that the calendar is slowly moving out of sync with the seasons. The problem lies in the fact that the calendar in use had 52 weeks to the year, only 364 days. As people come to the conclusion that something like a day is missing they are still reluctant to use a year which doesn't contain a whole number of weeks. A man named Þorsteinn surtr comes up with an ingenious solution - a whole week should be added once every seven years. The proposal is enacted into law by the assembly.5. Partition of Iceland into judicial quadrants
The system of ad hoc local judicial assembliesThing (assembly)
A thing was the governing assembly in Germanic and introduced into some Celtic societies, made up of the free people of the community and presided by lawspeakers, meeting in a place called a thingstead...
becomes unwieldy and a need is felt for standardization. A man named Þórðr gellir describes to Alþingi his recent difficulties in prosecuting a certain case in a local assembly. He suggests that the country should be split into judicial quadrants, each of which should contain three assemblies. Each quadrant, then, should contain a special assembly for appeals. The motion passes with the amendment that the northern quadrant should have four assemblies, since the northerners couldn't agree on any three.
6. Discovery and settlement of Greenland
GreenlandGreenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
is discovered and settled from Iceland around 985. Erik the Red
Erik the Red
Erik Thorvaldsson , known as Erik the Red , is remembered in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first Nordic settlement in Greenland. The Icelandic tradition indicates that he was born in the Jæren district of Rogaland, Norway, as the son of Thorvald Asvaldsson, he therefore...
gave the country its pleasant name to encourage people to move there. The Norse settlers find remnants of previous human habitation and deduce that the people who lived there were related to the skræling
Skræling
Skræling is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the indigenous peoples they encountered in North America and Greenland. In surviving sources it is first applied to the Thule people, the Eskimo group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century...
jar of Vínland
Vinland
Vinland was the name given to an area of North America by the Norsemen, about the year 1000 CE.There is a consensus among scholars that the Vikings reached North America approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus...
.
7. Conversion of Iceland to Christianity
King Olaf I of NorwayOlaf I of Norway
Olaf Tryggvason was King of Norway from 995 to 1000. He was the son of Tryggvi Olafsson, king of Viken , and, according to later sagas, the great-grandson of Harald Fairhair, first King of Norway.Olaf played an important part in the often forcible, on pain of torture or death, conversion of the...
sends the missionary priest Þangbrandr
Þangbrandr
Þangbrandr was a missionary sent to Iceland by king of Norway Óláfr Tryggvason to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. Snorri Sturluson described him as follows:-Origins:...
to Iceland to convert the inhabitants to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. He has some success in baptizing chieftains but also meets opposition and ends up killing two or three men who had composed libellous poetry about him. He returns to Norway after one or two years with a litany of complaints and tells the king that he has little hope that the country can be converted. The king is furious at hearing the news and threatens to hurt or kill Icelanders in Norway. Two of the Icelandic chieftains previously converted by Þangbrandr meet with the king and pledge their aid in converting the country.
In the summer of 999 or 1000 the issue of religion reaches a crisis point at the Alþingi. The Christian faction and the heathen faction do not want to share the same laws and the Christians choose a new lawspeaker for themselves, Hallr á Síðu. He reaches an agreement with Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði
Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði
Þorgeir Þorkelsson Ljósvetningagoði was an Icelandic lawspeaker in Iceland's Althing from 985 to 1001.In the year 999 or 1000, Iceland's legislative assembly was debating which religion they should practice: Norse paganism, or Christianity...
, the heathen lawspeaker, that Þorgeirr will find a compromise acceptable to everyone.
Þorgeirr goes to his camp and stays under a skin for the remainder of the day and the following night. The day after he gives a speech at Lögberg
Lögberg
The Icelandic Althing is the oldest parliament in Europe. The original Althing was gathered at Þingvellir. The center of the gathering was the Lögberg, or Law Rock, a rocky outcrop on which the Lawspeaker took his seat as the presiding official of the assembly....
. He says that the only way to maintain peace in the country is for everyone to keep to the same laws and the same religion.
|
"It will prove true that if we tear apart the laws we will also tear apart the peace." |
Before reciting the compromise he has come up with Þorgeirr gets his audience to pledge themselves to a solution with one set of laws for all the country. Þorgeirr then decrees that everyone not already baptized must convert to Christianity. Three concessions are made to the pagans.
- The old laws allowing exposure of newborn childrenInfanticideInfanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
will remain in force. - The old laws on the eating of horsemeat will remain in force.
- People can make pagan sacrifices in private.
Some years later those concessions are abolished.
External links
- Guðni Jónsson's edition of Íslendingabók
- Wikisource translation of Íslendingabók