Gripla - 01.01.1975, Qupperneq 119

ANTIPAGAN SENTIMENT IN THE SAGAS 115
í þann tíma gerðusk þau góð tíðendi á landi hér, at forn trúa var niðr
lögð, en réttir siðir upp teknir. Létu þá margir ríkir bændr byggja kirkju
á bæ sínum. Þeira einn var Styrr, ok lét hann kirkju reisa undir Hrauni.
Sú var trúa á þeim tímum, at sá, er kirkju lét gera, ætti ráð á svá mörgum
mönnum at kjósa til himnaríkis sem margir gæti staðit innan kirkju hans.
At that time a good event occurred in this country: the pagan belief was
abandoned and the true faith was accepted. Many wealthy farmers had
churches buiit on their farms. One of them was Styrr, who had a church
erected on his place below Hraun. It was believed in those days that
whoever had a church built could select as many men for the kingdom of
heaven as could find standing room in his church.
This statement regarding the advent of Christianity and the buil-
ding of churches anticipates both the episode about Styr’s burial (ch.
9) as well as the confrontation of Snorri goði and his devout son
Guðlaugr, who later entered a monastery in England (ch. 12). It is
interesting to note how the author of Eyrbyggja (ch. 49) modified this
report (which must certainly have been his source). He asserts that
Snorri goði was most influential in having Christianity accepted in the
West Quarter, but refrains from making a value judgment about pagan-
ism and Christianity. He also adds that it was the priests who en-
couraged the building of more and larger churches by promising the
farmers that they would have as many followers at their disposal in
the kingdom of heaven as could find standing room in their churches.
It was noted above that the two Vínland sagas contain various
allusions to pagan customs and to the less than perfect observation of
Christian practices during the infancy of that religion in Greenland.
Similar references are found in other sagas, especially in those in
which the authors stress the great difference between then and now,
between the cultural reference and the cultural milieu in which the
sagas were created. In Eyrbyggja (ch. 53) certain events occur during
Advent (jólafasta), and the author comments that ‘in those days the
fasts were not observed in Iceland’. In the following chapter he in-
forms us that people believed in those days that men who perished at
sea and then came to attend their funeral feast had been well received
by Rán. ‘For at that time much heathendom still prevailed even
though all the people had been baptized and were nominally Christ-
ians.’ (En þá var enn lítt af numin forneskjan, þó at menn væri