Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 186
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All that can be gleaned through our manuscripts is only a part of the world
view, even though it may still show us complex concepts such as the one of
God himself (see p. 187, picture from Schedels Weltchronik, 1492).
II.
In keeping with the topic of this volume, I shall go on to show how much
– or rather how little – the Icelandic world view of the 12th century dif
fered from that of Western Europe. It has, been postulated that the world
view of the Icelanders (reflected in literature on the one hand, in their
political system on the other) was radically different from the rest of
Europe and “two cultures” have thus been identified: namely what Lars
Lönnroth called “the clerics’ and courtiers’ european culture” on the one
hand, and the “Icelandic farmer’s attempts to write down the histories of
his home country“ on the other. 6
Sverre Bagge brought this argument to a point towards the end of the
last millennium when he talked of the two well known heretics, Hermann
Pálsson7 and Lars Lönnroth, “who interpreted Icelandic culture, including
the sagas, as part of the common culture of Western Christendom”.8 Bagge
went on to suggest that this “heretic view” had, for some time, become the
orthodox view. But he then claimed that history and social anthropology
have now again helped us to revert to earlier views, a point with which I
can not agree at all.
If we really wanted to establish that there was such a thing as two cul
tures, firstly, we would have to establish that the one culture, the clerical
one, was actually the same in Iceland as the clerical Latin culture on the
European continent and thus “foreign” to Iceland. This is a view contested
by jesse Byock in his paper at the International Saga conference in
Helsingør held in 1985 where he argued that the situation of the Icelandic
church was fundamentally different from the continental one – although
6 “... den isländske bonden, som fjärran från klerkers och hovmäns europeiska kultur roar
sig med att skriva ned gamla berättelser från hembygden.” Lars Lönnroth, Tesen om de
två kulturerna. Scripta Islandica 15/1964 (uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksells
Boktryckeri, 1965), 97.
7 Hermann Pálsson, Art and Ethics in Hrafnkel's Saga. (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1971).
8 Sverre Bagge, “Icelandic uniqueness or a Common european Culture. the Case of the
kings’ Sagas,” Scandinavian Studies 69 (1997): 418–442.