Gripla - 20.12.2009, Síða 196
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they also managed to integrate very successfully both native and foreign
learning into a single culture. This culture was, at least in the 12th and 13th
century, on a par with continental European culture.
If there had been two cultures – rather than one literary and social
elite, interrelated and interacting in life as in literary production – we
would have to imagine two different social groups of (say, monastic-clerical
and secular) Icelanders that had a very different outlook. Despite the well-
known political clashes between the higher clergy and some secular chief
tains in the 13th century, the manuscript tradition gives us no clue that this
may have been the case when it came to the actual world view of Medieval
Icelanders. The examples of geographical knowledge in maps and in cos
mographies shows how unlikely it is that it was two different sets of peo
ple who preserved the Latin and such native additional information of the
“cognitive surplus” to be found in Iceland. the social setup of Iceland in
Christian times, as represented by the institution of the Goðakirkja (or
Eigenkirchenwesen) makes it even more improbable that priests and farm
ers who were in daily physical and mental contact could, over a prolonged
period of time, preserve or develop two differing world views. 24
But in saga writing, too, it is unlikely that the Icelandic literati who
composed hagiography, political history in the kings sagas, or the courtly
texts of the riddarasögur, would have handed over their quill to somebody
else to compose Eiríks saga rauða or Eyrbyggja saga. therefore, I see no
need to talk of two cultures, of a particular (and unexplained) Icelandic
uniqueness or an Icelandic Sonderkultur.25 What the Icelanders achieved,
and could rightly be proud of, was a not insubstantial cognitive surplus.
24 Cf. Gunnar karlsson, Goðamenning (Reykjavík 2004).
25 klaus von See, “Snorris konzeption einer nordischen Sonderkultur,” Snorri Sturluson.
Kolloquium anläßlich der 750. Wiederkehr seines Todestages, ed. by Alois Wolf. ergänzungs
bände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 4. Berlin, New York: de
Gruyter, 1993, 141–177.