Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1963, Page 105

anglo-saxon england and iceland
87
n°l°gy 0f icelandic church. We
know, indeed, that the first two
bishops of Iceland studied at Here-
ford in Westphalia but we also know
fhat when an Icelander wished to
adopt the monastic way of life he
Want to Anglo-Saxon England. Guð-
laugr, the son of the great Icelandic
ohieftain, Snorri goði, went there
about 1012, entered a monastery and
ended his days within its walls.40
Anglo-Saxon literature is of the
same kind as Icelandic literature.
11 is interesting to speculate why
ihe saga did not develop in Eng-
isnd as it did in Iceland for there
are indications that the beginnings
°í a similar genre of literature were
t° be met with in England in the
tenth and eleventh centuries. Was it
the Irish element that was lacking
or Was it rather that the emigra-
tion to a new country and the sever-
ance of ties with the old created
an atmosphere in Iceland in which
a11 recollections of the old home-
and were treasured by the emi-
grants who had been forced to leave
heir ancestral haunts. Sigurdur
ordal has pointed out how appo-
site the words “Let us not weep
ut remember the more,” are in any
explanation of the origin of the
amily sagas in Iceland. These words
^ere uttered, of course, in an en-
lrely different context — one in
which the remembering was done
or the sake of revenge. As Nordal
ernPhasizes, however, one may re-
^rember for many other reasons,
fn<1 ^he vast interest, so great as to
e almost unique, in genealogy im-
11 les that the Icelanders felt nos-
a gic about the homelands they had
left and desired to keep green as
far as possible the memory of these
lands and any kinsmen dead or
alive, whom they left behind. In-
structive in this connection is the
stanza which is attributed to Önundr
iréfóír (Peg-Foot) uttered about the
land which he was to settle. The
substance of the verse is “I have
fled lands and left behind numer-
ous kinsmen, but this is the ulti-
mate: Hard is the bargain if I am
to gain Kaldbakr (the “cold” name
Önundr gave to the mountain above
his farm) in return for the loss of
cultivated fields.”41 Out of such a
milieu grew and flourished the Ice-
landic sagas, but in England there
are only the bare beginnings of this
type of literature 42
The book collections of Icelandic
churches also show English influ-
ence going back to Anglo-Saxon
times. In the inventories which list
the books owned by churches in the
14th and 15th centuries several
service books are designated as Eng-
lish and in one instance lectionaries
are called reddingabaekur which is
easily recognizable as a derivative
of the Anglo-Saxon rædingboc.43
The post-C o n q u e s t relationship
which was close between Iceland
and England has its roots in the
pre-Conquest relationship. The ear-
liest Icelandic saint Þorlákur Þór-
hallsson, (1133 -1193), bishop of
Skálholt, was venerated in Eng-
land44 and thirteen Icelandic medi-
aeval churches were dedicated to
Saint Thomas Becket45 As early as
1191 Rafn Sveinbjarnarson took two
walrus tusks with him to Canter-
bury and presented them to the
martyred saint, Thomas.46