Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1978, Page 80

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ÁRBÓK FORNLEIFAFÉLAGSINS
the Hólar bishop very interested in access to driftwood. Shortly after the re-
formation the King, because of the confiscation of the land of the monasteries,
became one of the greatest landowners in Iceland and began (1591—1622) to lay
the burden of timber supply on his tenants witbout lowering the rent. Otlier
landowners gradually did the same to their tenants. The overwhelming majority
of tbe farms in Iceland, at. least from late medieval t.imes, were tenant farms.
The result of these ordinances was a rapid deterioration in housing in Iceland
with its well known vulnerability of the population to hunger, cold and epide-
mics. People had to make do with almost the same timber in their houses for
more than two hundred years and as a consequence turf and stones were used
as much as possible and buildings assumed the appearance of heaps of earth.
This explains tbe deplcrable condition bf the surviving remants of medieval
house-timber in Iceland — they suffered the purgatory of Danish colonialism.
III
In tbe nineteenth century wben we get our first account of the above mentioned
fragments of panels from Bjarnaxtaöahlíð and Flatatunr/a they were believed
to be from a skáli in Flatatunga. A skáli in Flat-alunga is mentioned in Þórða/r
saga lireðu and the hero of this saga, Þórður hreða, is said to have built it, and
it stood to the days of bishop Egill of Hólar (1332—41). No other source men-
tions a skáli in Flatatunga.
In late medieval times hotb Flatatunga and Bjarnastaðah.líð came into the
possession of the Hólar bishops. Around 1600, in the time of bishop Guð-
brandur Þorláksson, both of the farms were managed by the Hólar estate and
land stewards were posted on them. At that time tbe large medieval timber
cathedral was still standing at Hólar. It was completely broken down by a vio-
lent winter storm in 1624. A new but much smaller cathedral was built instead
of the old one; it was almost completed in 1628 when the new bishop Þorlákur
Skúlason took over. Tn 1628 we can also see from the land registers of Hólar
that the status of Flatatunga and Bjarnastaðahlíð has changed, the farms are no
longer managed from Hólar but are bired out with cattle to individual tenants.
It was of course the duty of the landowner, in this ease the cathedral of Hólar,
to attend t.o the housing on these tenant farms. Tn the course of these changes
timber from the old cath'edral building could very well have been transported
to the two farms which were to be hired out. These circumstances and sugges-
tions strengthen the assumption already proposed by Krist.ján Eldjárn that the
fragments of the picture of the Last Judgement derive from a masterpiece of
so great a size that it could not easily be fitted into any other building than the
medieval cathedral of Hólar.
Stofnun Arna Magnússonar við árslok 1977.