Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland

EARLYMEDIEVAL

EUROPE

E d i t e d b y

Julia Crick

Catherine Cubitt

Paul Fouracre

Helena Hamerow

Sarah Hamilton

Matthew Innes

Antonio Sennis

Danuta Shanzer

VOLUME 14 NUMBER 3 2006

EA

RLY

ME

DIE

VA

L EU

RO

PEV

OLU

ME

14N

UM

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2006

E A R L Y M E D I E VA L

E U R O P E

CONTENTS

Is Robert I in hell?Geoffrey Koziol

The use and abuse of hostages in later Anglo-Saxon EnglandRyan Lavelle

Reconstructing the past in medieval IcelandChris Callow

Book reviews

Announcement

This journal is available online at BlackwellSynergy. Visit www.blackwell-synergy.comto search the articles and register for tableof contents e-mail alerts.

emed_v14_i3_ofbcover 6/30/06 13:28 Page 1

Early Medieval Europe

(

)

–

©

The Author. Journal Compilation ©

Blackwell Publishing Ltd,

Garsington Road, Oxford OX

DQ, UK and

Main Street, Malden, MA

, USA

Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland

C

C

Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. Thispaper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, whichare concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century events, and the contem-porary sagas of the mid-thirteenth century. Drawing upon models fromanthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these histor-icizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures aroundwhich the past is remembered. The many political relationships whichoccur in

Laxdæla saga

are analysed in relation to those from contempo-rary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears thatthere is relatively little in common between the political situationsdepicted in

Laxdæla saga

and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas,it is likely that

Laxdæla saga

and the contemporary sagas were actuallywritten down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagasof Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than isusually suggested.

The dating and contextualizing of medieval texts is an activity whichhas had a long and important history. For generations of scholars,whether literary critics or historians, knowing when and where a textwas produced was of fundamental importance for understanding whatthat text could tell us, either about literary culture and development, orabout social change. For saga scholarship, particularly for scholars of Sagasof Icelanders

(

íslendingasögur

), the locating of texts’ origins was perhapsof even more significance. While the development of Icelandic societywas once thought to be traceable through the analysis of these texts,

1

* This article is based on part of my Ph.D. thesis, ‘Landscape, Tradition and Power in a Regionof Medieval Iceland. Dalir

c

.870–

c

.1262’, University of Birmingham (2001). I am very gratefulto Chris Wickham, Matthew Innes, Paul Fouracre, Orri Vésteinsson and an anonymousreviewer for


, for comments and improvements on the thesis and/orversions of this paper. I am also grateful to Harry Buglass who drew the maps.

1

Bogi Th. Melste

∂

,

Íslendinga saga

, 3 vols (Copenhagen, 1903–30).


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)©


Blackwell Publishing Ltd

298

Chris Callow

saga scholars increasingly saw them only as literary fictions.

2

Thescepticism about sagas’ historical value seems only to have intensifiedthe debate as to how and when sagas came to be composed. Themid-twentieth-century editors of the

Íslenzk Fornrit

series of standardeditions of saga texts provided a detailed account of these debates. Inmany cases the discussion about particular sagas’ origins has moved onvery little.

The approaches used by literary historians of Iceland to date textshave remained essentially the same; they are also remarkably insular inthat they have been little influenced by work on England or continentalEurope. For some, however, the issues have changed, especially sincethe 1980s, in the face of two related developments. First, the dating ofsagas has been more fully recognized for the difficult and inconclusivetask it is. For many scholars the debate has worn itself out. Second,some historians have recognized that it is possible to write a history ofmedieval Iceland without recourse to detailed arguments about howsociety might have changed from colonization, to the ceding of author-ity to the Norwegian crown in the 1260s. Such changes, they wouldclaim, you cannot detect anyway.

3

As early as the 1950s van den Toorn

4

chose to write about ethics in Sagas of Icelanders; Jesse Byock andWilliam Miller have produced masterful accounts of the social processeswhich Sagas of Icelanders and contemporary sagas (

samtí

∂

arsögur

)record.

5

These works represent the application of ideas from scholarsworking on other parts of the world and, originally, by historians in anon-Icelandic milieu. They recognize the difficulty of making detailedconclusions about social and political developments when the originsand, more specifically, the dating of our sources are so difficult to pindown.

Given the problems inherent in dating and placing the origin ofsurviving versions of Sagas of Icelanders, does this mean that we reallyshould stop trying to contextualize them or understand how they werecreated? Some scholars argue we should not. Following the older tradi-tion, which emphasizes the ability to locate the origins of texts in timeand space, there have been refinements and new ideas. Miller and

2

For critiques in English see generally, T.M. Andersson,

The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins:A Historical Survey

(New Haven, 1964); J. Byock, ‘Saga-Form, Oral Prehistory and theIcelandic Social Context’,

New Literary History

16 (1984), pp. 153–73.

3

W.I. Miller,

Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland

(Chicago,1990), pp. 49–51.

4

M.C. van den Toorn,

Ethics and Morals in Icelandic Saga Literature

(Assen, 1955).

5

J.L. Byock,

Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas and Power

(Berkeley, 1988) and

Viking Age Iceland

(New York and London, 2001); W.I. Miller, ‘Justifying Skarphe

∂

inn: Of Pretext and Politicsin the Icelandic Bloodfeud’,

Scandinavian Studies

55 (1983), pp. 316–44 and

Bloodtaking andPeacemaking

.


(

)©


Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland

299

Andersson have re-examined the relationships between the differentversions of

Ljósvetninga saga

and other sources, and suggested that thatsaga dates from ‘around 1220’;

6

Magerøy saw the text as originating in

c

.1260.

7

Bjarni Gu

∂

nason, looking at the origins of

Hei

∂

arvíga saga

,suggested a late thirteenth-century date for its composition, arguingit showed the influence of theological issues pertinent to that date.

8

Previously an earlier origin had often been seen as the reason for its‘awkward’ style.

9

It is the contention of this article that trying to date and locate textsis still an important, if not very easy, task. For historians, contextualiz-ing Sagas of Icelanders is something which is necessary if we are to gobeyond the generalized views of the functioning of early Icelandic soci-ety set out by the likes of Miller and Byock. This is not to deny thedifficulties in identifying sagas’ origins and purposes but rather to tryto move the debate on, to see what light Sagas of Icelanders can shedon attitudes to the Icelandic past and how this relates to the time inwhich individual texts were written. In other words what follows is notan argument for seeing the sagas as ‘historical’ texts in the positivisttradition of much earlier saga scholarship, but to see them as textsmeaningful for the people who constructed them. It will be argued thatthe meaning which these texts had was not only an abstract messageabout morals or conduct, but one about local political relationships.The local political detail in the sagas had a function for contemporaryaudiences and contained the ideas of more people than simply theircompilers. An understanding of social memory, as it is now oftencalled,

10

in this case shaped by genealogy and geography, may well holdthe key to understanding the interrelations, or lack of them, betweenthe images of the past in Sagas of Icelanders, which describe tenth- andeleventh-century events, and those in the contemporary sagas, whichcover the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is this, a re-examinationof the relationship between Sagas of Icelanders and the time in whichtheir authors lived, which might improve our understanding of localpolitics and social change in medieval Iceland.

11

6

T.M. Andersson and W.I. Miller,

Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland: Ljósvetninga sagaand Valla-Ljóts saga

(Stanford, 1989), p. 84.

7

H. Magerøy, ‘Ljósvetninga saga’, in P. Pulsiano and K. Wolf (eds),

Medieval Scandinavia: AnEncyclopedia

(New York, 1993), pp. 393–4, at p. 394.

8

Bjarni Gu

∂

nason,

Túlkun Hei

∂

arvígasögu

, Studia Islandica 50 (Reykjavík, 1993).

9

P. Schach, ‘Hei

∂

arvíga saga’, in P. Pulsiano and K. Wolf (eds),

Medieval Scandinavia: AnEncyclopedia

(New York, 1993), pp. 275–6, at p. 275.

10

J. Fentress and C. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992).11 In terms of general approach I think this is not too dissimilar to the statement on methodo-

logy by Walter Pöhl in ‘History in Fragments: Montecassion’s Politics of Memory’, EME 10(2001), pp. 343–74, at pp. 343–54.

Early Medieval Europe ()© The Author. Journal Compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd

300 Chris Callow

The idea that contemporary ideas permeate historicizing texts ishardly a new one, but it is one which has not been explored in sufficientdetail in relation to Sagas of Icelanders. In particular it is the ways inwhich sagas might express ideas about the local politics of their timethat still needs to be assessed. It will be argued below that the work ofanthropologists and analysts of traditional literature in some modernsocieties, suggests that genealogy and geography act as important struc-tures through which the past is remembered and revised in terms ofthe present. In other words, geo-political relationships in the present canbe replicated in accounts of a community’s past. A related issue is thesignificance of genealogy for saga origins, in that it is a key to under-standing the period in which a particular text was given its preservedwritten form. A brief appraisal will also be made of past attempts todate and locate sagas, including an assessment of the relative merits ofthe various techniques that have been used. Last, the example ofLaxdæla saga will be used to apply the ideas being proposed and tohighlight their limitations as well.

Genealogy

It is undeniable that genealogy was important to medieval societies andto none more so than medieval Iceland. Genealogy forms a significantpart of most Sagas of Icelanders: major characters are usually ‘placed’genealogically with a brief sketch of their ancestors and some containgenealogical epilogues which link characters taking part in actiondescribed in the saga to more recent generations. Likewise minor,negatively portrayed characters are not given a genealogy at all. Fur-thermore the existence of a vast text concerned almost entirely withgenealogy, The Book of Settlements (Landnámabók), suggests that peoplewere prepared to go to great lengths to record it. Some genealogy wasclearly invented, such as the patrilineal line (langfe∂gatal ) constructedby Ari Thorgilsson12 to trace his ancestry to Yngvi Tyrkjakonungr.13

Other simplistic lines of patrilineal and matrilineal descent in variedlocations might also be complete fiction, such as those doubtless createdto fill out Landnámabók.14 In contrast, it is remarkable how varied and

12 For the sake of comprehensibility for readers unfamiliar with Icelandic characters, theIcelandic character ‘p’ has been replaced by ‘Th’ in all Icelandic names in this article exceptfor those in the titles of primary or secondary works.

13 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, Íslenzk Fornrit, I (Reykjavík, 1968),Íslendingabók at p. 27; A. Faulkes, ‘Descent from the Gods’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 11 (1978–9, publ. 1982), pp. 92–125.

14 Adolf Fri∂riksson and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Creating a Past: A Historiography of the Settlementof Iceland’, in J.H. Barrett (ed.), Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: The Norse Colonization ofthe North Atlantic, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 5 (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 139–61.


Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland 301

‘organic’ most genealogy is, both in Landnámabók and Sagas of Iceland-ers more generally. Varied kinds and shapes of genealogy are accordedto saga characters, recording varying numbers of ancestors or contem-porary kinsmen, sometimes for reasons which are not immediatelyobvious. It is hard to imagine that this information did not have moremeaning in these texts than simply as historicizing ‘filler’, or as an overtattempt at aggrandizing the individuals concerned. Instead it makessense to think of this information as being of the kind that was knownby a fairly large number of people. This is especially likely to have beentrue in a society which needed to place more stress on kinship than manyother medieval societies: social hierarchies were relatively fluid and sothere was, in effect, no way of framing the past except through familyhistory. Family connections, often very tenuous, were clearly of significancefor people in medieval Iceland in their everyday lives, as both Sagas ofIcelanders and contemporary sagas bear out. In legal disputes protagon-sists drew on supporters wherever they could, but the first place to seeksupport was from one’s kin.15 Thus genealogy was more than a kind offramework for literary construction: it mattered in real life.16

Anthropological literature gives further credence to the idea thatkinship – and therefore genealogy – matter in reconstructing the pastfor some societies. What these studies tell us is first and foremost thatgenealogies structure people’s memories of the past and that they relatethe present to the past. As a result, genealogies get transmitted overtime, whether consciously or subconsciously, to explain existing polit-ical situations as people observe them. This is particularly true of themore distant parts of genealogies. In societies in which knowledgeabout the past is transferred almost exclusively by the spoken word, asin medieval Iceland, traditions change as people try to reconcile theirhistory with their present. The classic case study is Laura Bohannan’sanalysis of Tiv genealogies in Nigeria.17 The Tiv groups studied byBohannan reconstructed their past primarily by discussing the relation-ships of people in a genealogy. In these genealogies the positive andnegative relationships of the ancestors of contemporary groups were setout. Bohannan concluded, however, that these genealogical historieswere flexible: ‘The way in which Tiv learn genealogies and the lack ofwritten record allow changes to occur through time without a generalrealization of the occurrence of that change; social change can exist with

15 Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, esp. pp. 139–78.16 M. Clunies Ross, ‘The Development of Old Norse Textual Worlds: Genealogical Structure

as a Principle of Literary Organisation in Early Iceland’, Journal of English and GermanicPhilology 92 (1993), pp. 372–85.

17 L. Bohannan, ‘A Genealogical Charter’, Africa 22 (1952), pp. 301–15. See also E. Peters, ‘TheProliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin in Cyrenaica’, Journal of the RoyalAnthropological Institute 90 (1960), pp. 29–53.


302 Chris Callow

a doctrine of social permanence.’18 Bohannan discovered that the samegenealogical specialist in a Tiv tribe told the history of that tribe indifferent genealogical terms at two different recordings several yearsapart. In between her two recordings Bohannan noted that the politicaland geographical relationships of the sub-groups whose ancestors madeup the Tiv genealogy had changed. These changes were reflected in thegenealogy, when on her second visit, she asked again about the historyof the tribal subdivisions. Newly formed alliances were reflected in thecloser genealogical ties of these groups’ ancestors; recently broken polit-ical ties in the present meant that the Tiv reconfigured the genealogyto create a more distant relationship between two groups’ ancestors; themerging of two former subdivisions meant that the ancestor of onegroup disappeared from the genealogy; and the uprooting and resettlingof a group nearer or further away could mean that their ancestorsmoved from one branch of a genealogy to another. Accompanying themaster genealogy of the Tiv were stories which explained how the rela-tionships of those ancestors were formed. Bohannan coined the term‘genealogical charter’ to describe the phenomenon whereby the genea-logical memory served present political purposes. The genealogieschanged so much precisely because of their central role in Tiv society.Change over time in the genealogies, and in the associations which thestory tellers made between the people and places in them, could be seenas a way to date the genealogical charter, the picture of the past.

The society of the early twentieth-century Tiv certainly cannot beseen as entirely parallel with that of medieval Iceland. But, significantly,they shared a reliance on spoken communication rather than writing,and family relationships formed the basis of socio-political organizationin the absence of some form of a non-kin based state system. Knowingthat genealogies inform narratives and may well change over time isan alternative to the fruitless arguments which once went on in theIceland-related secondary literature about whether or not saga X wascorrect in identifying character Y as the father of person Z. Rectitudeis not what is of importance here: the genealogies inform a narrativewhich made sense to whoever was writing it down. What we can do,however, is examine these differences to see if it is possible to explainhow they came about. We can piece together the political affiliationssuggested by the genealogies and stories in íslendingasögur and, by com-paring them with the patterns portrayed in the contemporary sagas, wecan at least suggest whether or not they represent thirteenth-centurypolitical patterns. Where the genealogy-derived patterns do not matchthe thirteenth-century ones, then we could reasonably conclude, as we

18 Bohannan, ‘A Genealogical Charter’, p. 314.



shall see, that the genealogical sources reflect different, potentially earlier,political groupings.

To sum up, the process by which Sagas of Icelanders were con-structed is imagined as something like this: early generations of Ice-landers told stories about the past, probably a mixture of stories aboutlocal events and ‘national’ events. These included all of the kinds of storywe find in sagas – about the initial settlement of Iceland, feuds, killings,marriages, hauntings, the arrival of Christianity, visits to royal courts inNorway, etc. The order in which these stories took place, where theytook place, whom they involved and the outcomes of the stories wereopen to change as part of an unwritten tradition. The ‘rules’ by whichthe stories changed, however, were dictated by the political and socialcircumstances under which they were being told. Present circumstanceswould have affected the views of the community’s past so strongly, thatthe stories of a succeeding generation might retain little but some of thenames and places. Events might move from one generation to another,remembered as happening before or after another story, or be associatedwith one farm rather than a neighbouring one, according to currentcircumstances. The view of saga construction put forward by CarolClover, of an ‘immanent saga’ – whereby related oral tales were com-monly known but not properly ordered into a single story until theywere written down – is helpful here.19 It would have been this writingprocess which helped, to order and place, literally, the stories accordingto the current perceived ‘genealogical charter’, to use Bohannan’s term.Lastly, it needs to be stressed that the firm association of saga characterswith particular farms at particular times and those character’s localpolitical dealings were of great significance. It has been suggested above,and will be argued for in more depth below, that it would only makesense to portray people in a place in a certain way if this was fairly closeto the way that that place was perceived at the time of writing. Ratherthan allowing the saga author free reign with his material it is imaginedthat social memory dictated much of what was written down.

The only way to test this set of ideas is to look at an example where,for a particular region, we have coverage of politics by both a Saga ofIcelanders and contemporary saga. Laxdæla saga, a saga which coversparts of western Iceland, will be examined below. The northern valleysystems, Eyjafjör∂ur and Skagafjör∂ur, or parts of the southern plaincould also feasibly be studied in the same way, but the detail for thewest of Iceland is better. What follows, therefore, is an analysis of themany political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga and then ofthose in the contemporary sagas for the same region.

19 C. Clover, ‘The Long Prose Form’, Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 101 (1986), pp. 10–39.


304 Chris Callow

Applying the theory: Laxdæla saga

Laxdæla saga, one of the best-known Sagas of Icelanders, recounts thehistory of Dalir, an area of mid-western Iceland, and in particular ofLaxárdalur, from colonization (landnám) to the time of Snorri go∂i(chieftain) Thorgrímsson in the eleventh century. The following pottedsummary, along with Figures 1 and 2, will be useful for making senseof the analysis of the text’s politics.

The saga begins with the story of the flight from Norway of Ketillflatnefr’s (Ketill flatnose) family due to the dominance of Haraldr innhárfagri (Harald finehair). Across Chapters 5 to 7 is the famous accountof the landnám of Unnr in djúpú∂ga Ketilsdóttir (Unn the Deep-Minded), who settles at the farm of Hvammr, and her ship’s crew towhom she gives part of her landnám in inner Dalir (Chs 6–9). Unnrdies and her grandson Óláfr feilan takes over at Hvammr. Óláfr’s kin-ship with Dala-Kollr, who is set up as the most illustrious of Unnr’screw and who settles Laxárdalur, is recounted. Thereafter for most ofthe saga the action takes place in Laxárdalur or it involves its inhabit-ants.20 Next we hear about relations between Höskuldr Dala-Kollsson

20 See Fig. 2.

Fig. 1 The main setting of Laxdæla saga. The area in the inset box is shown in more detail fig. 2



and his half-brother Hrútr Herjólfsson, who at first contest their inher-itance but eventually come to terms (Ch. 19). Höskuldr’s sons are at thecentre of the next action; one son, Óláfr pái (Olaf the Peacock), movesto Hjar∂arholt and his line comes to the fore but not until he hasargued with his half-brother, Thorleikr. To patch up the Höskuldsson’sdisagreement, Óláfr fosters Thorleikr’s son Bolli. Bolli and his fosterbrother Kjartan Óláfsson emerge as great friends and promising young

Fig. 2 The location of farms in and around Laxárdalur


306 Chris Callow

men. Their relationship is eventually soured, however, when Bolli takesthe opportunity to marry the woman Kjartan loves, Gu∂rún Ósvífrsdóttir(Ch. 43). Kjartan marries another woman, Hrefna, but tension arisesbetween the two couples. The theft of precious objects from Kjartan andHrefna’s home (Hjar∂arholt) is attributed, with good reason, to Bolliand Gu∂rún’s household at Laugar. The dispute escalates from Kjartanhumiliating Bolli’s household by trapping them indoors without accessto a privy, into a dispute over the farm of Sælingsdalstunga, to Kjartan’smurder, to Bolli’s murder, and in turn to the killing of one of Bolli’smurderers. Eventually, after Bolli’s death, Gu∂rún moves out of the dis-trict of Hvammssveit altogether because of the intensity of the dispute(Ch. 56). She actually swaps farms with Snorri go∂i who emerges as herfriend and ally in exacting revenge on Kjartan’s brothers. Gu∂rún andSnorri also manage to manipulate other inviduals into carrying out thekilling of Helgi Har∂beinsson (whom they had chosen as their victimafter Helgi had taken part in Bolli’s killing rather than one of theÓláfssons). The saga’s last chapters see the peaceful end to the feud andconcentrate on Gu∂rún (now living at Helgafell, Snorri’s former farm)and her descendants, including Bolli Bollason. Gu∂rún remarries buther last husband – Bolli had been her third husband – dies at sea.

Twentieth-century views

Before moving on to discuss the way the idea of a genealogical charter liesbehind Laxdæla saga it is worth exploring previous approaches to its dating,context and meaning. Laxdæla saga contains such a detailed account oflocal geographical and topographical details of its western Icelandicsetting that it is often considered to have been told and written down bypeople who were from around Dalir.21 If Clover’s theory of an ‘immanent’saga is correct, however, then we need not expect one person to carry aroundall the knowledge of the landscape of the areas covered by the saga.Given the evidence for a highly mobile Icelandic elite in the contem-porary sagas (which record twelfth- and thirteenth-century conditions)the writer might actually have been born and raised somewhere entirelydifferent and acquired their knowledge of the landscape later in life.

Discussions of this saga, as with many other Sagas of Icelanders, haveusually focused on determining the author of the saga rather thanassuming that it is predominantly the product of an oral tradition.Different critics’ concerns have led to several thirteenth-century authors

21 ‘Formáli’, Laxdæla saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík, 1934), p. xxiii. All subsequentcitations of this standard edition which use Roman numerals as page references are toSveinsson’s introduction.



being proposed: Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), Óláfr hvítaskáld Thór∂arson(d. 1259) and Sturla Thór∂arson (d. 1284) are the most prominent amongthem. The issue of dating the written version of Laxdæla saga has beenlinked with concerns to attribute authorship to one or other of thesecandidates: in that context it has been most often dated to somewherebetween about 1230 and 1280. Superficially scientific attempts have beenused to place Laxdæla saga in space and time and thence to identify itsauthor. Comparative statistical analyses of the language of Laxdæla sagaand other saga texts have been used to suggest that the author was Óláfrhvítaskáld Thór∂arson (see Fig. 3)22 but this identification is hardlyconclusive. The case for Snorri Sturluson’s authorship is far less con-vincing than for other sagas with which he has been associated and ithas been made far less often.23

22 See Fig. 3.23 For the authorship debates see P. Hallberg, Óláfr pór∂arson hvítaskáld, Knytlinga saga och

Laxdæla saga. Ett forsök till språklig författarbestämning, Studia Islandica 22 (Reykjavík, 1963)and, after fifteen years of debate between Hallberg and Rolf Heller across more than onejournal, a later response of Hallberg’s, ‘Ja, Knytlinga saga und Laxdæla sind Schöpfungeneines Mannes’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 11 (1978–9, publ. 1982), pp. 179–92. Heller’s contri-butions, contra Hallberg, included ‘Laxdæla saga und Knytlinga saga. Studien über dieBeziehungen zwischen den beiden Sagas’, Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 80 (1965), pp. 95–122;‘Knytlinga saga und Laxdæla saga: Schöpfung eines Mannes?’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 11 (1978–9, publ. 1982), pp. 163–78. M. Mundt, Sturla pór∂arson und die Laxdæla saga (Bergen, 1969)and H. Magerøy, ‘Har Sturla pór∂arson skrivi Laxdæla saga?’, Maal og Minne (1971), pp. 4–33 discussed another potential author. For full references to the debates up to the mid-1980ssee C. Clover, ‘Icelandic Family Sagas (Íslendingasögur)’, in C. J. Clover and John Lindow(eds), Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, Islandica 45 (Ithaca, NY, 1985),pp. 239–315, esp. pp. 245–6, 289–90. Despite Heller’s criticisms of Hallberg’s data, some intri-guing similarities exist between Laxdæla saga and Knytlinga saga with which Óláfr Thór∂arsonhas also been associated but their real significance is unclear. M. Madelung, The Laxdæla saga:Its Structural Patterns (Chapel Hill, NC, 1972) took Laxdæla saga’s depiction of Snorri go∂i’swiles to imply that Snorri Sturluson was playing some kind of game with his readers and infact complimenting himself. The comments on Snorri go∂i’s political sleight of hand are,however, ambiguous. Using the evidence which Einarr Ól. Sveinsson used in his introductionto the Íslenzk Fornrit edition of the saga, Madelung also narrowed down the dates withinwhich the saga might have been written. By a tendentious line of argument based around thesupposed symbolic repetition in the saga of the numbers twelve, three and two, she deducedthat Laxdæla saga was written in 1232.

Fig. 3 The Sturlungar


308 Chris Callow

Laxdæla saga has also attracted the attention of critics who have seenthe interests of a female author emerge because of its inclusion of a lovetriangle as a major plot element, its recording of a female primarysettler, Unnr in djúpú∂ga, and its special interest in characters’ feelingsand clothes.24 For similar reasons the saga has been seen as being moreheavily influenced by foreign romance literature than have other Sagasof Icelanders. Laxdæla saga is also thought to have textual relation-ships or debts to Landnámabók, other Sagas of Icelanders (includingEyrbyggja saga, Hei∂arvíga saga, Egils saga, Færeyinga saga) as well asSnorri Sturluson’s Ólafs saga helga – with all of which it does share occa-sional similarities of content or style.25

Arguments have also been made for a fairly active literary shaping of thetext. Themes and literary borrowings have been identified but the proposedschema can be criticized either for being so elaborate as to test what wemight expect of any medieval author or, at the other extreme, simplycommon elements of oral storytelling.26 Andrew Hamer’s recent attemptto connect Laxdæla saga with Augustinian theology is much more con-vincing but the connection may still be indirect.27 Overall, attempts toprove Laxdæla saga’s literariness have not been very successful. The bulkof Laxdæla saga can still be regarded as being fairly closely derived fromoral stories which could easily have been put together without toomuch moulding from a writer if they were not already regarded as asingle saga. This was most likely done before c.1220 and perhaps earlier.

Abbot Ketill Hermundarson

Laxdæla saga consists of seventy-eight chapters and 248 pages in thestandard Icelandic edition. Seven pre-Reformation vellum manuscripts

24 Helga Kress, ‘Meget samstavet må det tykkes deg: Om kvinneopprör og genretvang i Sagaenom Laksdölene’, Historiskt Tidskrift 3 (1980), pp. 266–80; R. Cook, ‘Women and Men inLaxdæla saga’, Skáldskaparmál 2 (1992), pp. 34–59; A. Finlay, ‘Betrothal and Women’s Auto-nomy in Laxdæla saga and the Poets’ sagas’, Skáldskaparmál 4 (1997), pp. 107–28.

25 B.M. Ólsen, ‘Landnáma og Laxdæla saga’, Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie 1908,pp. 151–232; Laxdæla saga, pp. xxxix–xl; Jón Jóhannesson, Ger∂ir Landnámabókar (Reykjavík,1941), pp. 213–16; Björn Sigfússon, Um Íslendingabök (Reykjavík, 1944), pp. 66–71.

26 Rolf Heller was the most vigorous espouser of Laxdæla saga’s dependence on other writtensources, see especially, ‘Laxdæla saga und Knytlinga saga’ and Die Laxdæla saga: Die literar-ische Schöpfung eines Isländers des 13. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1976) and more recently ‘Laxdælasaga und Færeyinga saga’, Alvíssmál 11 (1998), pp. 85–92. For other links see P. Conroy,‘Laxdæla saga and Eiríks saga rau∂a: Narrative Structure’, Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 95 (1980),pp. 116–25; P. Conroy and T. Langen, ‘Laxdæla saga: Theme and Structure’, Arkiv för NordiskFilologi 103 (1988), pp. 118–41. For literary structure see, for example, H. Beck, ‘Laxdæla saga– A Structural Approach’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society 19 (1977), pp. 383–402.

27 A. Hamer, ‘Laxdœla Saga: Shipwreck and Salvation’, unpublished paper; idem, ‘Laxdæla Saga:Kjartan Ólafsson’s Baptism and Death’, Paper given at the International Medieval Conference,University of Leeds, 14 July 1999. I am very grateful to Andrew Hamer for allowing me tosee his work in advance of publication.



preserve at least part of the saga but only Mö∂ruvallabók, dated to theearly fourteenth century, preserves the whole text and so forms thebasis of the standard text.28 Despite the attempts at dating the writingdown of Laxdæla saga, it cannot be done with any great degree ofcertainty. A fairly final version of the text, which must have been widelycopied for us to have so many surviving manuscripts (or fragments)which are almost identical, can, however, be given a terminus post quemof about 1200 to 1220. This information is provided by the saga’sgenealogies. The manuscripts that preserve the sections of the sagawith the latest genealogies in them have genealogies reaching into theearly thirteenth century. While most of the genealogies focus onthe tenth century, the chieftain Thorvaldr Snorrason (d. 1228) and thesons of Hermundr Ko∂ránsson (d. 1197), including Abbot KetillHermundarson of Helgafell, are the last people to be mentioned in theextensive genealogies at the end of the saga (see Fig. 4).29 The versionwe have must have been written up after the aforementioned chieftain(höf∂ingi ) Thorvaldr Snorrason became worthy of note in Brei∂afjör∂ur,i.e. not before about 1209.30 This is all the internal dating evidencethere is.

A good case can be made for the genealogical information con-tained in Laxdæla saga pinpointing Abbot Ketill Hermundarson’sdescendants as responsible for writing down the surviving version of

28 Laxdæla saga, pp. lxxvi, lxxx.29 Laxdæla saga, pp. 83, 226.30 Sturlunga Saga, eds Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols

(Reykjavík, 1946), I, pp. 250–1.

Fig. 4 Bolli Thorleiksson’s descendants recorded in Chapter 78 of Laxdæla saga


310 Chris Callow

the saga rather than the Sturlungar or anyone else. This was theconclusion reached nearly a century ago by Hannes porsteinsson31

but the idea has probably not met general acceptance because thefamily concerned figures very little in the contemporary sagas. Thegenealogy in the saga’s final chapter has a very particular focus: it isremarkable for the detailed account of descendants of Bolli Bollasonand his wife Thórdís, the daughter of Snorri go∂i. It extends forwardin time in the kind of detail otherwise not covered in the saga’s genea-logies, except for two very simple lines traced down to two other localfamilies whose inclusion seems far less obvious.32 The commissioners orwriters of the text would appear to have been responsible for what looklike additions to an earlier text, in particular what can reasonably beassumed to be one person’s knowledge of their family and connectionswith two major saga protagonists in Bolli Thorleiksson and Snorrigo∂i.33

Despite the argument based on the genealogies, which might lead usto expect a heavy influence on the text from Abbot Ketill’s family, thisis hard to detect beyond the genealogy. Based on the evidence of thecontemporary sagas, it is anyway difficult to know what the family’sview of the past might have been. They were prominent in the twelfthcentury, and were still seemingly so as late as about 1230, but thenby the 1250s had lost their chieftaincy at which point a member ofthe Sturlungar was controlling it. The fact that two women fromKetill’s family were also the concubines of leading figures like SnorriSturluson and Gizurr Thorvaldsson suggests that they still had tiesto the most important people in Iceland, but the nature of those ties is

31 Hannes porsteinsson, ‘Nokkrar athuganir um íslenzkar bókmenntir á 12. og 13. öld’, Skírnir86 (1912), pp. 126–48.

32 In these instances it is not clear that this represents the intervention of anyone connectedwith Abbot Ketill’s family or from Helgafell, the monastery over which Abbot Ketillpresided. Both genealogies are ‘simple’ in that they are single lines of descent traced throughthe male line only (Icelandic langfe∂gatal ) and they each end with a relatively wealthy andinfluential western Icelandic secular leader who flourished in the late twelfth century and earlythirteenth century respectively: Ari inn sterki Thorgilsson, who had lived at Sta∂arsta∂uron Snæfellsnes (d. 1190s), and Thorvaldr Snorrason (d. 1228) from Vatnsfjör∂ur (Laxdælasaga, pp. 83, 228; Lú∂vík Ingvarsson, Go∂or∂ og go∂or∂smenn, I–III (Egilssta∂ir, 1986–7), III,pp. 26–33.

33 See Fig. 4. Within this genealogy there is a bishop, an abbot of Helgafell, the man who setup the church farm at Húsafell (Orri Vésteinsson, The Christianization of Iceland: Priests,Power and Social Change (Oxford, 2000), pp. 102, 107) and a priest. The saga identifiesÚlfhei∂r, the wife of Hermundr Konrá∂sson, as the granddaughter of Bishop Ketill of Hólar(1122–45) and Ketill Hermundarson as abbot of Helgafell. Ketill Hermundarson was theabbot of Helgafell for four years, 1217–20 and probably died in 1220 (Islandske Annaler indtil1578, ed. G. Storm (Christiania, 1888), pp. 185, 187). The addition of the genealogy here andthe occurrence of Bolla páttr, the short story about Bolli Bollason’s adventures, at the end ofLaxdæla saga in Mö∂ruvallabók would seem to be part of the same attempt to tailor theoriginal text and manuscript for this family.



unclear.34 The likely form of any influence of Ketill Hermundar-son’sfamily on Laxdæla saga is, therefore, also unclear, even if we assumethat writers consciously changed sagas. The saga certainly does nothave an obvious pro- or anti-Sturlungar slant, or favour other leadingfamilies. Even Bolli Thorleiksson’s family is not altogether positivelyportrayed. And it must be remembered that Bolli and Snorri go∂ihad a significance for the history of many more people than KetillHermundarson’s family or the Sturlungar as is shown, for example, bythe interest in northern Icelandic events in Bolla páttr.35 Bolli Thorleiks-son, father of Bolli Bollason, must, logically, have had more descend-ants still, and so his image in the saga has no doubt been shaped bywider forces than simply the interests of Ketill or of a single patron.The picture of politics in the saga, which will be explored in depthbelow, suggests explanations which play down the creativity of authorsand play up the processes of social memory.

Laxdæla saga’s reconstruction of the past in Dalir

Laxdæla saga provides a number of images of the relationships betweenindividual farms and their occupants – usually the bóndi (householder)– with which we can compare what we know of local ‘political’ rela-tionships in the twelfth and thirteenth century. Based on the argumentsoutlined above, we ought reasonably to be able to see some similaritiesbetween the relationships of individual farms in the text and in theperiod in which it was written. Whether this argument is accepted or

34 Sturlu saga tells us that Hermundr Konrá∂sson (see Fig. 4) lived at Kalmanstunga in Borgar-fjör∂ur, and had probably controlled the chieftaincy of the Jöklamenn (Jöklamannago∂or∂;Ingvarsson, Go∂or∂ og go∂or∂smenn, III, pp. 26–33). In the late 1150s he joined Einarr Thorgils-son against Sturla Thór∂arson, eponymous founder of the so-called Sturlungar clan. ButHermundr and his sons Ketill and Ko∂rán also probably supported Bö∂varr Thór∂arson(Sturla’s father-in-law) (Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 74, 107, 111). Ketill Hermundarson, however,seems to have taken up an ecclesiastical career before about 1210 as he was the servantof Bishop Páll of Skálholt (Byskupa sögur, ed. J. Helgason, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 1938–78), I,p. 140). His niece, Gu∂rún Hreinsdóttir, became the partner/mistress of Snorri Sturluson.Gu∂rún’s daughter by Snorri was briefly married to the powerful Gizurr Thorvaldsson(Sturlunga saga, I, p. 242). These were connections with the most influential men in Iceland.It is possible that Abbot Ketill had inherited a go∂or∂ (chieftaincy) but his general absencefrom the contemporary sagas suggests that he was either not interested in secular politics orelse not able to make his mark (Sturlunga saga, I, p. 107; Go∂or∂ og go∂or∂smenn, III, p. 29).His son, Kári, however, is named as a supporter of Klængr Bjarnarson, a member of thepowerful Haukdælir family, in events in Borgarfjör∂ur in 1231. Borgarfjör∂ur was the area inwhich the chieftain holding the Jöklamannago∂or∂ traditionally resided, which implies thatKetill’s family still had some influence there. By 1253, however, Thorgils skarvi Bö∂varsson,one of the Sturlungar, seems to have held the Jöklamannago∂or∂ and been able to appointsomeone else to take control of it while he was away in Norway (Sturlunga saga, II, p. 149;Jón Vi∂ar Sigur∂sson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth, trans. JeanLundskaer-Nielsen (Odense, 1999), p. 174).

35 Laxdæla saga, pp. lxii, 230–48.


312 Chris Callow

not, the comparison between the images of the tenth and eleventh centuriesand those of the twelfth and thirteenth provides much food for thoughtin relation to the origins of the Sagas of Icelanders generally.

What follows in this section is a detailed account of the relationshipsof individual farms mentioned in Laxdæla saga. Only by deconstructingthe saga in this detail can we actually see what it thinks of micro-political relations of the kind which mattered in Icelanders’ everydaylives. This provides the only meaningful level on which to compareSagas of Icelanders’ views of politics with the contemporary sagas.

First, it needs to be restated that the saga is undoubtedly pro-Laxárdalur– a view which it is hard to imagine Abbot Ketill Hermundarson orhis kinsmen fostering – and in particular it is keen to stress the pre-eminence of Hjar∂arholt. Hjar∂arholt has its own ‘origin myth’ (Ch. 24)in the shape of a story about how Óláfr pái Höskuldsson bought thefarm formerly owned by Hrappr (Hrappssta∂ir) and purged the farmto the north of Laxá of Hrappr’s ghost. Hrappssta∂ir was deserted whenthe saga was written (Ch. 10). Óláfr built the new farm, Hjar∂arholt, ina clearing in some woodland which had been popular with his live-stock; he is credited with naming it as well (literally ‘herd’s wood’ or‘herd’s clearing’). This story establishes the farm’s tenurial independ-ence and its seniority to Hrappssta∂ir, which the saga must be assumingwas part of the Hjar∂arholt estate. While this story and subsequentevents contrive to show Hjar∂arholt as pre-eminent in its region, as wellas its own valley, it should be noted that it was not remembered asbeing a farm established early in the region’s history. It is seen as settledby the family who had lived at Höskuldssta∂ir, which not only connectsthe two farms but also might suggest that Höskuldssta∂ir was seen assuperior in some respect. The question of the focus of the saga overtime and possible images of political change will be dealt with below.

Höskuldssta∂ir had a longer history than Hjar∂arholt, according tothe saga, but ultimately it did not have the same political clout. Anearly dispute defines its relationship with Hrútssta∂ir, a farm adjoiningit to the south. Hrútr, the half-brother of Höskuldr, came from Nor-way to claim his share of his Icelandic inheritance (Ch. 19). Althoughthe brothers disagreed over this it seems to have been settled amicablyand so that Hrútr kept Hrútssta∂ir. After this period, however, the sagadoes not mention Höskuldssta∂ir again.

In Hrútr’s later years tension rises between him and ThorleikrHöskuldsson, who rather than occupying Höskuldssta∂ir lives at Kamb-snes. Thorleikr is portrayed as a troublemaker – he takes in a sorcererand his family – while Hrútr’s urge to best Thorleikr comes to nothingbecause of Óláfr pái Höskuldsson’s support for his brother (Ch. 37).Eventually Thorleikr proves to be such a bad lot that he is encouraged



to leave Iceland by his brother. Kambsnes’ reputation is not an alto-gether positive one at this point and it seems decreasingly illustrious asthe saga progresses. Kambsnes – either as a place name or farm name –appears first as the place where Unnr in djúpú∂ga dropped her comb(hence Kambsnes, ‘comb’s ness’) and then as the temporary home ofHrútr for three years (Ch. 19) before Thorleikr Höskuldsson movesthere (Ch. 25). The saga in fact gives a rather muddled account; Kamb-snes is named by Unnr, occupied as a farm by Hrútr, but then estab-lished as a new farm by Thorleikr. It is almost as if two different placesare being discussed36 and that it is from the latter household, associatedwith the disreputable Thorleikr, that his son Bolli Thorleiksson wastaken to be fostered by Óláfr pái at Hjar∂arholt when Thorleikr leftIceland. The saga is perhaps reconciling the negative image of Thorleikrwith the positive one of Höskuldssta∂ir and choosing to place Thorleikrgeographically somewhere else (see below).

Höskuldssta∂ir, Hrútssta∂ir and Kambsnes disappear from the saga’saction relatively early but many other farms are involved in events inLaxárdalur. Like these three farms the rest can be seen as having polit-ical and/or tenurial relationships to other farms.

Goddasta∂ir, the next farm up from Hjar∂arholt on Laxárdalur’snorthern side, was occupied in the time of Höskuldr and Hrútr byThór∂r goddi. The various things we are told about Thór∂r seem, atface value, to be rather contradictory but they can all be read to showhim as politically weak and not altogether successful. He is said to havebeen supported by Höskuldr against the aggression of Hrappr fromHrappssta∂ir, Thór∂r’s neighbour at a time Hjar∂arholt was estab-lished. Thór∂r was very rich (au∂ma∂r mikill ) but childless and had hadto buy his farm, which presents him as ‘new money’ and not altogethersuccessful. He is also later accused by Höskuldr of being tight with hismoney (Ch. 16). Thór∂r is credited with marrying into the line of Unnrin djúpú∂ga, thus to a woman related to both Thór∂r gellir from Hvammrand to Thórólfr rau∂nefr from the farm of Sau∂afell (Ch. 11). Yet thepowerful connections of his wife and his own lack of a support networkprove to be Thór∂r’s undoing. When he falls out with his wife she seeksthe help of Thór∂r gellir who in turn turns to Höskuldr for support.Thór∂r has to accept Höskuldr’s son, Óláfr pái, as a foster son in returnfor Höskuldr’s aid; this is a fostering relationship which shows theimbalance of the political position of the parties involved. The sagamakes the further implications clear too: while Höskuldr’s wife regardsGoddasta∂ir as too lowly a place for her son to stay, Höskuldr is pleasedthat when Thór∂r goddi dies Óláfr pái will inherit Goddasta∂ir (Ch. 16).

36 Cf. Laxdæla saga, p. 45, n.1.


314 Chris Callow

The saga seems to imply that Goddasta∂ir had ended up in the controlof Óláfr pái and thus Hjar∂arholt. Thór∂r and Goddasta∂ir lose theirindependence in the face of aggression from stronger farmers.

Lambasta∂ir, on the other side of Goddasta∂ir, was occupied byThorbjörn skrjúpr (‘feeble’). Rather like Thór∂r, Thorbjörn is said tohave been wealthy (au∂igr var hann at fé ) but stingy (veifiskati ); his lackof genealogy also marks him out as fairly insignificant. Lambasta∂ir hasa more lasting impact on events than Goddasta∂ir, though, becauseThorbjörn marries Melkorka, the mother of Óláfr pái and one-timeconcubine of Höskuldr. Melkorka had her own farm, Melkorkusta∂ir,which Höskuldr had given her (Ch. 13). Although this farm lay some-where to the south of Laxá, its past, as Laxdæla saga portrays it, wasbound up with that of Lambasta∂ir. Thorbjörn and Melkorka have ason, Lambi, who both supports Óláfr’s sons in avenging the death ofKjartan Óláfsson and is forced into taking part in killing one of his com-rades from the Óláfssons’ group of supporters. Lambi appears unableto control his own political position. As for his abode in Laxárdalur, thetext is obscure as to whether Lambi inherited either Melkorkusta∂ir orLambasta∂ir, or both. Both farms, like Goddasta∂ir, are regarded asinferior to Hjar∂arholt. This is suggested from the outset by Thorbjörnskrjúpr’s willingness to pay off Óláfr pái with a large sum (thirty hundreds),in order to win Melkorka’s hand in marriage (Ch. 20). Lambasta∂ir andMelkorkusta∂ir thus appear weak, tied to Hjar∂arholt through rela-tionships which show them as politically and socially inferior.

Beyond these farms the saga gives a very scant account of politics inLaxárdalur. Lei∂ólfssta∂ir, next to Höskuldssta∂ir on the latter’s easternside, is seen as influenced by Thorleikr Höskuldsson from Kambsnes.Lei∂ólfssta∂ir is mentioned just once, when Thorleikr moves a sorcererand his family there (Ch. 36). Much further up the southern side of thevalley, Dönusta∂ir is later occupied by Steinpórr, the son of Óláfr pái(Ch. 52). While Steinpórr’s immediate loyalty was to Óláfr, his rela-tionship with Höskuldssta∂ir, his grandfather’s farm, might conceivablyhave mattered as well.

The pattern of relationships between farms in Laxárdalur whichLaxdæla saga conceives of shows up configurations that can be thoughtof as either enduring and long-term, or the short-term product of nar-rative demands. There is no doubt that in trying to make sense of un-clear stories, the saga creates solutions for problems. For example, Thór∂rgoddi and Melkorka are characters which were undoubtedly generatedfrom their names for stories which revolve around Hjar∂arholt.Sometimes the saga cannot quite reconcile stories which seem to con-flict, such as those about who lived at Kambsnes. At the same time itmight be argued that the primacy of Hjar∂arholt – suggested by its



control of at least three other farms north of Laxá and at least two toits south – could have been a feature of Laxárdalur’s micro-politics fromthe valley’s earliest occupation by Norse settlers. A balance between theseenduring geo-political patterns and the specious needs of the narrativeought, perhaps, to be struck.

The point of view of the text, and how it relates geography andgenealogy, can be further established through a look at the attitude ofLaxdæla saga to other places in western Iceland. Hvammssveit, the dis-trict immediately north of Laxárdalur, is the most obvious place to startin assessing the broader set of political relations. Hvammr, Laugar,Sælingsdalstunga, and Ljárskógar are the farms which are connectedin some way with the saga’s action. Hvammr appears as the home ofUnnr in djúpú∂ga and her grandson and great-grandson, Óláfr feilanand Thór∂r gellir. The pre-eminence of Hvammr as a settlement-period farm makes it stand out, alongside Bjarnarhöfn on the other sideof Hvammsfjör∂ur, as one of the most important farms at this time.Rather incongruously Hvammr disappears from the story, however,after Thór∂r gellir’s generation. Instead, it would seem that Laugar andSælingsdalstunga were remembered as important.

Gu∂rún’s family are associated with Laugar but there is no story tolink them right back to the colonization period. Similarly, the fate ofthe farm is of no interest to the saga after Gu∂rún and her father moveto Helgafell (Ch. 56). Thus the power of Laugar appears rather fleeting.At the same time the conflicts of the Laugamenn with Óláfr pái and hissons imply that the saga could believe Laugar capable of being somekind of centre of power.

Sælingsdalstunga’s first occupant (who is not connected with anyoneelse) is ousted by Bolli Thorleiksson who is then ‘gazumped’ by hisfoster brother, Kjartan Óláfsson. When Kjartan is killed the propertyreverts to Óláfr pái, who offers it to Bolli. Bolli lives there with Gu∂rúnuntil he too is killed. Next the property is swapped by Gu∂rún forHelgafell, whence she moves as Snorri go∂i moves in the oppositedirection. On Snorri’s deathbed he gives it (back) to Bolli Bollason,Gu∂rún’s son and Snorri’s son-in-law (Ch. 78). Thus at the end the farmis controlled by someone who could claim descent from the settlersUnnr in djúpú∂ga and Björn inn austræni, as well as the Laugamenn.It might be significant that Sælingsdalstunga was seen as the source ofso much conflict.

Midway between Laxárdalur and Hvammssveit was Ljárskógar. Thefarm was remembered as the home of Thorsteinn Thorkelsson kugga(Ch. 75) and probably his father Thorkell kuggi (Ch. 50). These menwere descendants of Unnr and, in fact, Thorkell was the son of Thór∂rgellir, the memory of whose power appears earlier on in the saga in


316 Chris Callow

connection with Thór∂r goddi’s wife (Ch. 16). The saga generally seemsto regard these as respectable, high-born characters but who took onlya limited and fairly neutral part in politics. Having said that, Thorsteinnis seen as the friend of Thorkell Eyjólfsson, Gu∂rún Ósvífrsdóttir’s lasthusband, when this Thorkell tries to buy Hjar∂arholt. Both men arerebuffed, outwitted by Halldórr Óláfsson. In this incident, there issome small sign, then, that Ljárskógar could be associated with farmsand people other than Hjar∂arholt and the Laxdælir, just as its locationmight suggest. Indeed, the farm’s occupants also had as close a kinshipto Thorkell Eyjólfsson as they did to the men of Hjar∂arholt.

Turning to the south of Laxárdalur, it is clear that the saga hasrelatively little interest in people and places in Mi∂dalir and on thenorthern coast of Snæfellsnes. This makes the farms and the people itchooses to name, and their reputations and genealogy, all the moresignificant. Without exception, in fact, the farms the saga mentions inthis area were wealthy or powerful in the later Middle Ages, yet mostof the characters in this area are not part of the master genealogy ofUnnr in djúpú∂ga and are either negatively portrayed or opposed toHjar∂arholt.

First, Sau∂afell is fleetingly identified as the home of Thórólfrrau∂nefr, whose niece divorced Thór∂r goddi. Thórólfr is not providedwith a genealogy, other than the connection with his niece, but he isseen as doing the right thing by supporting his niece against herhusband (Ch. 15). Sau∂afell is not seen as particularly remarkable but,perhaps, it is significant that the saga chooses it, rather than other farmsin Mi∂dalir, as the home of Thór∂r goddi’s wife.

Hundadalur, a farm (or valley of the same name) in Mi∂dalir, washome to Thorsteinn svarti. Thorsteinn was one of the men, along withLambi Thorbjarnarson, who takes part in the killing of Bolli Thorleiks-son and is then forced to take part in killing Helgi Har∂beinsson, whowas not only an accomplice from that first party but Thorsteinn’skinsman too (Chs 54, 61, 64). Thorsteinn, like so many characters inthe saga, is also manipulated into breaking a basic social rule of earlyIcelandic society. Of the two farms named in Mi∂dalir, then, Hundadalur,is more negatively portrayed.

Thorgils Hölluson from Hör∂udalstunga, a farm in the valley imme-diately west of Mi∂dalir, is also duped into taking part in the killing ofBolli’s murderer, but for a different reason. He is conned by Gu∂rúnÓsvífrsdóttir into thinking she will marry him if he acts on her behalf.Thorgils is chosen for this honour, however, because he is seen assomething of a political force in his district (Skógarströnd) and alsobecause he already seemed keen to win favour with Gu∂rún (Ch. 57, byinviting her son Thorleikr to live with him). Embroiling Thorgils in a



killing, after which he might be liable to be outlawed, is Snorri go∂i’sand Gu∂rún’s way of tempering his political ambitions. Even with thishanging over him, Thorgils still goes so far as forcibly to take over thechieftaincy of a man from Langadalur (Ch. 67, at the western end ofSkógarströnd, near Helgafell). Snorri now acts decisively to removeThorgils from the scene; he gives the son of the go∂i (chieftain) fromLangadalur an axe which the son uses to kill Thorgils Hölluson as thelatter, ironically, is counting out the silver to be paid in compensationto Helgi Har∂beinsson’s family. The saga does not tie up the loose endsof this set of conflicts which suggests that Thorgils was neither missednor had allies willing to seek redress.

The sons of Ármó∂r of Thykkvaskógr are best discussed in connec-tion with Thorgils Hölluson. These men were Thorgils’ foster brothersand went with him to kill Helgi Har∂beinsson. Their genealogy seemsto equate fairly well with their role in the story. While they have a fairlyillustrious descent – they were nephews of the well-known chieftainGestr Oddleifsson from Bár∂aströnd in the West Fjords – they are notdescended from Unnr. They do have a connection to Unnr’s line,though only tangentially as Hrútr Herjólfsson married their sister(Ch. 19). Thus Thykkvaskógr and its inhabitants emerge as being fairlyneutral and of middling status in the saga.

While Langadalur has already been mentioned as the home of a go∂i,the go∂i concerned is identified as seen as relatively weak (ekki ríkr).This view of the power of Langadalur helps to put the status of ThorgilsHölluson and Snorri go∂i (and later Gu∂rún’s household) at Helgafellinto perspective. On the one hand Thorgils aspired to be a ‘not verypowerful’ go∂i, on the other, Snorri, living close to Langadalur, was ago∂i who could control Thorgils. No doubt the power of Langadalur isconceived of primarily in relation to that of Helgafell and Snorri.

The control of Helgafell, like that of Sælingsdalastunga, is intriguing.The farm is not mentioned for most of the saga, not until it becomesthe subject of the swap between Snorri and Gu∂rún Ósvífrsdóttir. Thereason for the exchange of farms is that each party has made too manyenemies in their own district, something which is obviously true in thesaga for Gu∂rún but simply stated for Snorri (Ch. 56). The position ofHelgafell is seen mostly in terms of its relations with Sælingsdalstunga:Snorri and Gu∂rún are friends; Snorri has Bolli Bollason living withhim and eventually Bolli marries Snorri’s daughter and takes overSælingsdalstunga. Some of Snorri’s actions, then, see him allied toGu∂rún and therefore against the Óláfssons and Hjar∂arholt. Thisperhaps shows us what the saga thinks of Helgafell’s political position.Set against this, however, is Snorri’s unwillingness to be drawn intothe dispute in the first instance (Chs 49–50) and the fact that he does


318 Chris Callow

not start scheming with Gu∂rún against them until he has moved toSælingsdalstunga (Ch. 59). It is as the occupant of Sælingsdalstunga,therefore, that Snorri seeks to put one over on the Óláfssons, ThorgilsHölluson, Thorsteinn svarti and Helgi Har∂beinsson. Such a readingimplies that Gu∂rún is not as dominant as some commentators wouldlike to see her, but accords well with other representations of Snorri asa cautious and effective politician.

It is no easy task to sum up all the images of places and people frommid-western Iceland presented by Laxdæla saga, especially when someof them are so sketchy. One reading of the political patterns, however,might be as follows. No one farm remains dominant throughout the earlyhistory of the region. Hjar∂arholt supplants Höskuldssta∂ir as a centreof power within Laxárdalur; in Hvammssveit, Hvammr’s dominance isreplaced by (or at least not as well remembered as) that of Laugar andSælingsdalstunga. Of these farms, Laugar is opposed to Hjar∂arholtand Sælingsdalstunga is contested between them, with the result thatit makes sense that a powerful third party should move there. Laxdæla sagadoes not see the area to Laxárdalur’s immediate south as a focal part ofthe area’s past. It sees Sau∂afell in fairly neutral terms, but Hör∂udalrand Hundadalur as weaker and liable to influence not only by the farmHjar∂arholt but by Sælingsdalstunga and Helgafell as well. The peopleof the district of Mi∂dalir are not part of the genealogy of Unnr indjúpú∂ga which connects the other areas discussed. This implies thatthey were not remembered as being part of the same wider politicalcommunity. At the end of the saga Helgafell seems to have lost someof its secular political significance, with Snorri’s moving away, butgained a religious significance as the home of Gu∂rún who is said, inthe saga’s last chapter, to become a nun after building a church.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries

The political situation which the contemporary sagas give of the areacovered by Laxdæla saga is in some respects less full than Laxdæla’saccount. Nowhere is there as detailed an account of the relationships offarms in any given valley as there is for Laxárdalur in Laxdæla saga. Thedrier, often broader narrative of the sagas covering the later period(c.1117–21 and c.1150–c.1264) does, however, include some detail and sug-gests both political relationships and the preconceptions about place andgenealogy of their writers. Like the Sagas of Icelanders, contemporarysagas are eclectic and selective in what they tell us.37 Sturlu saga, which

37 The full list of relevant texts within the Sturlunga compilation of sagas is: Porgils saga okHafli∂a, Sturlu saga, Íslendinga saga, Pór∂ar saga kakala and Porgils saga skar∂a.



focuses on the rivalry of the chieftains Sturla Thór∂arson and EinarrThorgilsson in the later twelfth century, provides the densest coverage.Significant farms mentioned in Laxdæla saga, such as Hjar∂arholt,Laugar, Hvammr and Sau∂afell, are also important in this later period,but so too are other, larger farms like Ásgar∂r, Skar∂, Sta∂arhóll, Sta∂arfelland Kvennabrekka which feature because they were the homes ofimportant people at one point or another during the twelfth andthirteenth centuries.

In broad terms, there are some similarities with Laxdæla saga in theway politics are represented in the later period – the number of chieftainsactive in Dalir is somewhere between two and four – yet chieftains’bases and their political allegiances are usually different. Laxdæla saga,although imprecise in its terminology, seems to think of Snorri go∂i,Óláfr pái, Bolli and Thórarinn of Langidalr (and later Thorgils Hölluson)as chieftains. In Sturlu saga, by contrast, the number of active chieftainsin Dalir would seem to be just two, Sturla Thór∂arson (the founder ofthe so-called Sturlungar lineage, see Fig. 3) and Einarr Thorgilsson, witha third, Thorleifr beiskaldi Thorleiksson, living much further south atHítardalur, sometimes getting involved in politics in Dalir.

As far as mid- to late twelfth-century politics are depicted, Sturlapór∂arson is remembered as imposing his influence over a number ofless powerful farmers in Hvammssveit and surrounding districts. Sturlaseems to have been set on gaining power in Hvammssveit when he buysHvammr and later gains a share in Sælingsdalstunga at the expense ofthe allies of Einarr porgilsson from Saurbær.38 Ásgar∂r, a farm whichappears nowhere in Laxdæla saga, proves to be the biggest rival to Sturlain Hvammssveit until Sturla forces its hostile inhabitants to move out.39

Sturla dominates other farms, including Laugar, whose bóndi, thepatronymic-less Sigur∂ur kerlingarnef, is attacked by Einarr porgilsson.Hjar∂arholt appears just once in Sturlu saga when Magnús prestr wentto the wedding feast of the young Sturla pór∂arson in northern Iceland,which implies that they were on good terms.

To investigate the political relations of particular farms and districtsfor the texts dealing with the later period, it makes sense to start withHöskuldssta∂ir, a key farm in Laxdæla saga’s narrative and fairly central withinthe Dalir region. Höskuldssta∂ir actually emerges first as an opponentof Hvammr in a dispute which is attributable to the 1190s. The chieftainSturla Thór∂arson, the subject of Sturlu saga, is dead by now but hissons show themselves to be extremely powerful. In the dispute recorded,tensions rise as a kinsman of Sturla’s sons is murdered. The Sturlusons,

38 Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 68, 73.39 Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 82, 83, 96.


320 Chris Callow

probably in retaliation, try to hang someone they identify as a thief.This produces opposition, however, from the farmer at Höskuldssta∂ir,and a fight ensues which the Sturlusons effectively win.40 It wouldseem from this that Höskuldssta∂ir was remembered as quite activelyopposed to Hvammr in the late twelfth century. This tension may havebeen the result of the ousting of Hjar∂arholt’s owners as a result of adeal which Sturla had made. At some point before 1200, Sturla’s sonSighvatr had also moved to Hjar∂arholt, and this may well have causedresentment in Laxárdalur.

Sighvatr Sturluson is identified as being unpopular elsewhere in Dalirand this helps to shape images of power in Mi∂dalir for the early thir-teenth century. Sighvatr soon left Hjar∂arholt to buy Sau∂afell and, forthe first time, Sau∂afell emerges as the home of someone considerednotable by any saga.41 Sighvatr has disputes with the heads of the farmsof Fellsendi and Snóksdalr, although he manages to retain a strongconnection with Hjar∂arholt through his kinsman Dufguss Thorleifssonwho still lived there.42 The disputes in Mi∂dalir, and the active opposi-tion of even Sighvatr’s brother (living at Hvammr), precipitate his moveout of Dalir altogether.

The connection between Hjar∂arholt and Sau∂afell – a farm aboutwhich Laxdæla saga has little to say – remains stable throughout the nextgeneration of Sturlungar. While Sighvatr Sturluson and Dufguss bothmove out of Dalir, their sons continued to live at Sau∂afell and Hjar∂arholtrespectively and to operate together. In the end, in fact, the Dufgussonsalmost seem to have a loyalty to Sau∂afell which goes beyond the bondsof their kinship with the Sighvatssons. Dufguss and his brothers areoften named in raiding parties or accompanying first Sturla, then hiskinsman Thór∂r kakali, and finally the Sighvatssons’ brother-in-lawHrafn Oddsson, who lived at Sau∂afell by the 1240s;43 the youngest ofDufguss’ brothers was still living at Hjar∂arholt in 1255. The enduringlink between Hjar∂arholt and Sau∂afell is not depicted in Laxdæla saga.

Something can also be said about Hjar∂arholt’s relations with farmsin Hvammssveit because of a dispute recorded for the 1220s. The namesof the farms involved are completely different from any in Laxdæla saga,at least in the case of the lesser ones. Dufguss Thorleifsson, and byimplication, Hjar∂arholt, is shown in a bad light when he makes anill-advised attempt to attack a man from the farm of Skorravík (onFellsströnd) who had been accused of fathering a servant’s child.

40 Sturlunga saga, I, p. 232.41 Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 234–6; Helgi porláksson, ‘Sau∂afell. Um lei∂ir of völd í Dölum vi∂ lok

pjó∂veldis’, Yfir Íslandsála (1991), pp. 95–109.42 Sturlunga saga, I, p. 264.43 E.g. Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 311–14, 419, 423, 447, 455; II, pp. 24, 185, 191, 195.



Dufguss, like Sighvatr Sturluson, is driven out of Dalir by their kins-man Thór∂r Sturluson.44 Skorravík, and nearby Höfn, where Dufgussactually attacked the accused man, were effectively within Thór∂r’sterritory because Thór∂r still lived at Hvammr.

Further political relationships can be identified for Sau∂afell. First,three incidents suggest that the farm had a strong influence on Laxárd-alur. In the 1230s Sturla Sighvatsson was able to impose two outlaws ofhis acquaintance on the farms of Ljárskógar (the farm remembered asthe home of Thorkell kuggi in Laxdæla saga), and at Hornssta∂ir inLaxárdalur. Further north, Laugar, one of the pivotal farms in Laxdælasaga, emerges as the home of a supporter of Sturla Sighvatsson for overtwenty years from the 1220s.45 Elsewhere we are given some impressionof where Sturla Sighvatsson at Sau∂afell might get support most readily.In 1232, when threatened by a chieftain from outside Dalir, he coulddraw on the support of ‘those men, such as he wanted, from Haukadalr’and ‘Hör∂udalur and more widely about Dalir’.46 From these districtsthe homes of a further two supporters are identified, namely, Kvenna-brekka and Hundadalur.47 This all suggests that Sau∂afell could drawon a reasonably large support network, well beyond Hjar∂arholt andone or two farms in Mi∂dalir.

Moving westwards, Helgafell, so important in the latter half ofLaxdæla saga, has a less significant role in the contemporary sagas. Non-narrative sources attest to its having not only a church but also a mon-astery before 1190.48 Part of Helgafell’s absence from the action may beexplained by a lack of interest in the Helgafell district but it seemsunlikely that this accounts for it entirely. By the 1220s it would seemthat Thór∂r Sturluson, who controlled the farm of Öndver∂areyrr, afew kilometres west of Helgafell, was in a position to intimidate Hel-gafell but (later) also acted as the protector of smaller farmers aroundHelgafell and along Skógarströnd. Sau∂afell’s chieftains do not seem tohave had much sway in this area.49 In the 1250s there is also evidencewhich suggests the relative weakness of Helgafell in the face of thepower of the chieftain Thorgils skar∂i Bö∂varsson.50 Helgafell’s imageis significantly different to that which comes across in Laxdæla saga.

44 Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 312–13.45 Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 315, 316, 352, 353, 355, 413, 435, 438; II, p. 287.46 Sturlunga saga, I, p. 348.47 Sturlunga saga, I, pp. 350–52. Men from Höskuldssta∂ir and Laugar are named here as well.

This is also the only sequence of events in which Hundadalur, the home of Thorsteinn svartiin Laxdæla saga, is mentioned.

48 Islandske Annaler, pp. 118, 180; Diplomatarium Islandicum, Íslenskt Fornbréfasafn 834–1600,16 vols (Copenhagen and Reykjavík, 1857–1976), I, p. 282.

49 Sturlunga saga, II, pp. 237, 264–5.50 Sturlunga saga, II, pp. 51–2.


322 Chris Callow

Conclusions

Whether or not it is wholly appropriate to apply strictly Bohannan’smodel of the ‘genealogical charter’ to medieval Icelandic conditions,there is certainly every reason to believe that the communities whoknew the stories which are contained in Sagas of Icelanders would haveinterpreted much of their past in terms of their present. Every societywhich is not strongly reliant on written records does this, as has beenillustrated many times for other medieval societies.51 Given the detail ofpolitics in Dalir provided by the contemporary sagas, especially in thethirteenth century, it ought therefore to be possible to at least give someindication as to whether or not Laxdæla saga is more likely to have beenwritten down at some point in that period or another. Of course thecontemporary sagas are neither straightforward as historical narrativesthemselves,52 nor likely to be comprehensive. It is immediately clear, forexample, that they are only intermittently as detailed as any Saga ofIcelanders. In fact even this detail is rare for anywhere except the westof Iceland. There is sufficient information in which we can be reason-ably confident, however, that there ought to be geo-political patternsin common between Laxdæla saga and subsequent narratives aboutLaxárdalur and Dalir if, indeed, the former was written in the time ofthe latter.

It appears that there is relatively little in common between thepolitical situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and any situation portrayedin contemporary sagas. The differences can be outlined. Laxdæla saga isa narrative which almost breaks down into three parts. First, there is acolonisation story which emphasizes the pre-eminence of Hvammr andits association with Höskuldssta∂ir. Second, Hjar∂arholt takes over asthe dominant farm in Laxárdalur and contends for local control withLaugar. The relationships of Hjar∂arholt with other farms are set out:many in Laxárdalur are subservient to it, indeed most farms are exceptfor Höskuldssta∂ir and – a bit further away – Ljárskógar. People fromThykkvaskógar, to the south of Laxárdalur, are identified as opposingHjar∂arholt, as are farms in Mi∂dalir generally (Hör∂udalstunga,Hundadalur). To the north, Hjar∂arholt disputes with Laugar overSælingsdalstunga. Hvammr, the most powerful farm in the landnámnarrative in Laxdæla saga and in the later twelfth century, is curiouslyabsent from events. Instead, in the third broad section of the saga,

51 E.g. P. Magdalino (ed.), The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London, 1992).52 A message pushed most forcefully by Úlfar Bragason. See, for example, ‘Frásagnarmynstur í

porgils sögu skör∂u’, Skírnir 155 (1981), pp. 161–70; ‘The Art of Dying’, Scandinavian Studies63 (1991), pp. 453–63; ‘Um samsetningu pór∂ar sögu kakala’, in Gísli Sigur∂sson, Gu∂rúnKvaran and Sigurgeir Steingrímsson (eds), Sagna ing helga∂ Jónasi Kristjánssyni sjötugum 10.apríl 1994 (Reykjavík 1994), pp. 815–22.



Sælingsdalstunga and Helgafell emerge as the most powerful farmswhich work together, not only against Hjar∂arholt, but also againstthe farms identified in Mi∂dalir. Gu∂rún Ósvífrsdóttir is identified asHelgafell’s founder in what appears to be an addition to an earlier text.

The accounts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries show somepatterns which might be related to those which appear in Laxdæla saga.Hjar∂arholt seems to have been the most powerful farm in Laxárdalurthroughout this period and Höskuldssta∂ir was probably the secondmost powerful, to judge by its occasional appearance. The relationshipsof Hjar∂arholt, when they are traceable, seem, however, to have shiftedover the long term. First, in the later twelfth century it was connectedwith Hvammr (and by implication Sælingsdalstunga, another of SturlaThór∂arson’s properties), and then with Sau∂afell from about 1200.Neither of these relationships quite tallies with Laxdæla saga whichignores both of these farms in the main body of its account. We cannotsay much about relationships within Laxárdalur based on the contem-porary sagas; the fact that Hjar∂arholt is the only farm regularly referredto in these narratives does strongly suggest, though, that it was pre-eminent. Most of the farms mentioned in the valley in Laxdæla saga donot figure in the broader account of the contemporary sagas.

For Hvamssveit the account of politics differs markedly in Laxdæla sagaand the texts covering the later period. Hvammr is home to a leadingfigure throughout the period c.1150–c.1260 and Sælingsdalstunga is alsoimportant. Laugar is nowhere near as important in the later accountsas it is in Laxdæla saga, although it is of sufficient status to appear. Aswith Hjar∂arholt, it seems to be allied to Hvammr in the twelfth cen-tury and opposed to it in the thirteenth. Other Hvammssveit farmsappearing in the later period are not mentioned in Laxdæla saga; Skor-ravík and Höfn (both on Fellsströnd) and Ásgar∂r (in Hvammssveit)are all farms of reasonable size (judging by the documentary evidencedating from later centuries). There is perhaps a resonance between thedispute over Sælingsdalstunga recorded in Laxdæla saga and the contestover it which is alluded to in Sturlu saga, yet the respective ‘contestants’(Laugar and Hjar∂arholt; Hvammr and Sta∂arholl in Saurbær) are sodifferent as to make this seem like a very distant connection betweenthe two texts.

The same might be said of the image of Helgafell. The switch of abodeby the dominant power in the region from Helgafell to Hvammssveitin Laxdæla saga seems to parallel that which might have occurredwhen Helgafell became a religious institution in the 1180s just asSturla Thór∂arson and his sons were establishing their dominance inHvammssveit. Here again, though, the parallel might be only partialbecause we have too little evidence to determine whether Helgafell or


324 Chris Callow

Sælingsdalstunga were really as powerful in the twelfth century as theyappear in Laxdæla saga; if Snorri go∂i had moved to Hvammr theLaxdæla saga account would have made more sense in terms of the latertwelfth- and thirteenth-century ones.

Further differences between the world-views of Laxdæla saga and thecontemporary sagas could also be pointed out; for example, the kindsof marriage alliance outside of Dalir that leading figures make. The bigquestion is why there is such a difference in these sets of images. Themost likely explanation is not that the author of Laxdæla saga chose towrite a fictional account of the past but, rather, recorded somethingclose to contemporary views of the past. It is unlikely that the peoplewho composed Laxdæla saga, on the one hand, and all the contemporarysagas, on the other, had such one-sided views of the past that they didnot overlap with each other except in the few very broad ways identifiedabove. Rather, based on what we know of other societies, it is morelikely that Laxdæla saga was actually written down in a period differentto that in which any of the contemporary sagas were composed. Thisis not to say that it was definitely written earlier than the other texts.However, an earlier date does seem more likely to me, given the interestin Helgafell – a farm whose history was of special importance in thelater twelfth century – and the likely distance between the eventsrecounted and their writing down in the contemporary sagas.

Much of the above account has focused more on geography (i.e. therelationships between farms) than it has on genealogy. The point is,however, that in medieval Iceland the two were inseparable. The factthat in the case of Laxdæla saga we have such a different view of therelationships of individual farms from what we know of the latertwelfth century and the thirteenth, might suggest that this Saga ofIcelanders was written earlier than the other texts. To suggest this issignificant because we might actually have a view of the past whichoriginates earlier than is usually suggested for Iceland. A fuller assess-ment of the images of farms and local political relations in other Sagasof Icelanders might tell us more about their origins than has previouslybeen recognized.

University of Birmingham

EARLYMEDIEVAL

EUROPE

E d i t e d b y

Julia Crick

Catherine Cubitt

Paul Fouracre

Helena Hamerow

Sarah Hamilton

Matthew Innes

Antonio Sennis

Danuta Shanzer

VOLUME 14 NUMBER 3 2006

EA

RLY

ME

DIE

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L EU

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PEV

OLU

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14N

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2006

E A R L Y M E D I E VA L

E U R O P E

CONTENTS

Is Robert I in hell?Geoffrey Koziol

The use and abuse of hostages in later Anglo-Saxon EnglandRyan Lavelle

Reconstructing the past in medieval IcelandChris Callow

Book reviews

Announcement

This journal is available online at BlackwellSynergy. Visit www.blackwell-synergy.comto search the articles and register for tableof contents e-mail alerts.

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Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland