Gripla - 20.12.2009, Page 202

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looking at how its actors had access to material from other cultures. Indeed,
many things have been uncovered by the last two or three generations of
scholars that indicate that the image of Iceland as the repository of an
ancient Germanic culture, un adulterated by influence from the South, does
not hold up to scrutiny. It is quite sufficient merely to read through the
great amount of texts which have been left to us from the period in order
to discover evidence of the very close links between Iceland and the rest of
Christian europe in every field.
the Christianization of Iceland
If we begin by considering the field of religion, it is an inescapable fact that
Iceland became part of the Catholic Church when the leaders of the coun­
try decided to convert to Christianity at the Alþing, or Parliament, of the
year 1000. It stayed Catho lic until the Reformation in 1550. throughout
the period in which all the literature was created, therefore, Iceland was a
Christian country.
The Conversion had an enormous impact on Iceland. This impact was
not only immediate but shaped the development of the society for years to
come. An important factor in this development was the need to educate
clerics. though the first priests came from abroad, this could not be a per­
manent situation. It was necessary to train young Icelanders for the priest­
hood. Many of those chosen appear to have belonged to the upper echelons
of society and within two generations, there seems to have developed quite
a large group of educated Icelanders from the dominant classes who were
ready to take control of and administer the new Church of Iceland. There
is no reason to believe that these local clerics were any less educated than
their counterparts else where in Europe, though usually members of the
higher clergy in Iceland had to travel abroad to study. What is important is
that their training involved studying Latin and therefore gaining access to
the world of clerical learning. There is overwhelming evidence that this
knowledge was quite widespread in Iceland, at least from the late 11th cen­
tury onwards.5 It is safe to assume that access to a body of knowledge com­
5 For an overview of this see for example Sverrir Tómasson, Formálar íslenskra sagnaritara á
miðöldum (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1988), 15–43.