Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 109

PAULSCHACH
ANTIPAGAN SENTIMENT
IN THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS
During the four centuries that elapsed between the settlement of
Ingólfr Amarson at Reykjavík and the submission of the national
leaders of Iceland to the authority of the Norwegian crown Icelandic
civilization underwent three major periods of transition, all of which
are reflected in various ways in saga literature. The first of these
cultural changes resulted from the fact of colonization, during which
perforce the rapacious culture of the marauding Viking was gradually
transformed into a less bmtal and more orderly form of society, into
a community of landholders. The raider gave way to the trader, the
freebooter was replaced by the farmer and dairy husbandman—
a transition that is strikingly depicted in several sagas by means of
the generation-gap theme. One need think only of the contrastive de-
scription of Egill Skalla-Grímsson and his son Þorsteinn; or of Þór-
ólfr bægifótr and Arnkell goði in Eyrbyggja saga; or of the super-
annuated Viking Þórarinn in Þorsteins þáttr stangarhöggs, who had
small means but a large selection of weapons, and his son Þorsteinn,
who supported his destitute father by doing the work of three men
on their farm.
The second major cultural change resulted from the advent of
Christianity, which brought with it literacy and a closer contact with
European culture and led to the founding of schools and monasteries,
where leaming and literary activity flourished. For whatever reasons,
saga writers were keenly conscious of what is sometimes called the
discrepancy between cultural milieu and cultural reference, of the
vast distance in time and essence between their own age and the dim
world of the pagan past which they sought to recreate in their stories.
The third cultural change was the disintegration of the Icelandic
Commonwealth during the Sturlung Age under the dismptive forces
of internal discord and the constant, relentless menace of external