Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 124
GRIPLA124
There is another sense in which the literary activity makes up for some
thing awkward in Icelandic history, namely the descent from pagans. If, as
suggested by kurt Schier (1981), the entire literary activity of the thirteenth
century may be read as a more or less explicit wish to raise and maintain a
consciousness of the Icelandic prestations in terra nova, it also sets the stage
for the Icelandic love of freedom and for their noble activities. In other
words, the stage was one upon which ‘the noble heathen’ played an impor
tant part (Lönnroth 1969) – a strange precursor to Rousseau’s noble sav
age. In a thoroughly Christianised period – if such is possible – such as the
thirteenth century, the literary motif of the noble heathen was a way of
solving the dilemma between a pagan past and the teachings of the Church
– a dilemma that Adam of Bremen had puzzled over in the eleventh cen
tury. Within Iceland itself, the dilemma was solved in writing – the litera
ture mediating the awkward descent from pagans and present nobility.
It is no accident, therefore, that the central and most elaborate chapter
of Íslendingabók concerns the introduction of Christianity in Iceland; it is
supplemented by the accounts of the three last chapters which deal with
the early history of the Church. No doubt this was seen as a major civilis
ing move, a move that definitely signalled a turning away from heathenism
– and by consequence from barbarism. Landnámabók too testifies to a
civilising process on the Icelanders’ own account. By naming and histori
cising nameless tracts, the authors of Landnámabók definitively claimed
Thule for civilisation. The categorical others of the learned classical world
now defined themselves, and reclaimed a degree of nobility. Additionally,
The First Grammatical Treatise measured vernacular Icelandic against Latin
and found the latter did not entirely match the sounds of Icelandic. these
three texts are among the oldest literary pieces in Icelandic, and together
they testify to a local self-consciousness as a civilised society within a larger
order of civilisation. The texts offer their own solutions to the paradox of
having a kingdom without a king, a law without ruler, a written language
without religious imperatives.
In this connection it is worth mentioning Saxo Grammaticus who, in
his prologue to the Danish Chronicle, writes about the nature of Iceland
being so savage that one should hardly expect people to live there; he
thereby echoes the general opinion held in ‘the South’ that thule is on the
margins of human habitation. It is well established that Saxo was influ