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the writing of history an identity for 13th-century Icelanders.11 though
they have been shown to be shaped by Christian ethics, the world they
portray is not only a pagan one; it is also one which celebrates a heroic
ethos that seems to us in contradiction with a Christian world-view.
However, I believe that this is an anachronistic misinterpretation and that
one must conceive of these sagas as written by and for the lay chieftains
and the people sur rounding them. These people were Christian but also
had to defend themselves or at tack others in the recurrent power struggles
of the period. Therefore, they had to strike a balance between their
Christian morals and a more aggressive aristocratic ethic. Indeed, quite a
few of these sagas can be read as working through the contra dic tions and
conundrums of these two types of ethical standards that compete for the
souls and minds of the lay chieftain class. The opposition between pagan­
ism and Christianity has nothing to do with this. Recently, Margaret
Clunies Ross has pro posed the term of ‘Christian secularity’, to character­
ize the culture of the social group which gave us the sagas.12
In an important book, orri vésteinsson gives us a careful study of “the
Christianization of Iceland”.13 What is perhaps the most interesting result
of his work is that he shows how the history of the Icelandic Church and
the evolution of society in the first two centuries of Christianity in the
country were inextricably related. The Church shaped the society and
evolved with it, as the society evolved either to accommodate or to react to
the Church’s new demands upon society. Moreover, this evolution can be
shown to follow more or less the same lines as those by which Church and
society evolved elsewhere in Europe during the same period.14
11 for a more elaborate presentation of these ideas see my “the Matter of the north. fiction
and uncertain identities in 13th century Iceland,” Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed.
M. Clunies Ross. Cambridge studies in medieval literature 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge
university Press, 2000), 242–265.
12 Margaret Clunies Ross, “Medieval Iceland and the european Middle Ages,” p. 113.
13 orri vésteinsson, The Christianization of Iceland. Priests, Power and Social Change 1000–
1300 (oxford: oxford university Press, 2000).
14 Richard W. Southern, Western society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin,
1970).
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