Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 56

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received Christianity from Anglo­Saxon england. the significance of this
is not confined to the impulses coming from the english Church but also
consists in the fact that Anglo­Saxon rulers, in contrast to their Carolingian
and Ottonian counterparts, were not able to introduce Christianity through
force or the threat of force. In so far as military or political pressure was
used, it came from indigenous kings or magnates who thus played a crucial
role in the conversion. This may also serve to explain how so much of the
pre-Christian traditions survived in Norway and Iceland, as they also did
in Anglo­Saxon england.11
A unique culture? the saga literature
the main claim for a unique Icelandic culture is based on the existence of
the family sagas, but the kings’ sagas show largely the same features and
can, in addition, be directly compared with Latin prose. The story of St
óláfr taking the young Hákon jarl captive may serve as an example; any
reader familiar with the sagas may easily find others. The story is told in
several sources, the oldest of which is Theodoricus Monachus’s work from
around 1180.12 Theodoricus tells how Óláfr, having arrived in Norway,
sailed to a place called Saudungsund (in Sunnfjord in Western Norway),
where he learned that the young earl was on his way. Óláfr laid a trap for
the earl by placing his ships on each side of the narrow sound with a rope
between them, lifting the rope at the right moment so that the earl’s ship
capsized. Hákon was captured, gave up his lordship in Norway and left for
england.
Theodoricus writes a simple, matter-of-fact Latin without rhetorical
embroidery – Saxo would have made much more out of this passage, had
he included it in his work. Theodoricus’s account is also relatively detailed.
He notes that both Óláfr and Hákon had two ships and even bothers to
inform his readers of the size of Hákon’s ships, despite the fact that this is
of no importance for the message Theodoricus wants to convey. He also
adds that the larger of Hákon’s ships corresponded to the type the ancients
11 Sverre Bagge, ”Christianization and State Formation in Early Medieval Norway,” Scandi­
navian Journal of History 30 (2005), 113–16, 123 f.
12 theodoricus Monachus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, Monumenta Historica
Norvegiae, ed. Gustav Storm (Christiania: A.W. Brøgger, 1880), ch. 15, 26 f.