Gripla - 20.12.2009, Page 212

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ity of integrating aspects of the pagan culture, for example skaldic poetry,
into the contemporary Christian secular culture.
Conversion is one of the important though hidden themes of Egils saga.
It is possible to understand the history of the saga’s main character as one
of conversion in the widest sense of that term in medieval times.29 egill
receives the “prima signatio” when serving the Christian king of England,
i.e. he submits to a rite that is equivalent to the shorter baptism that a lay­
person can give to newborns in the absence of a priest. This does not mean
that he converts; he is, however, brought into the orbit of Christianity and
becomes eligible for salvation.30
But egill is also a sinner, as the saga suggests. By suggesting parallels
between his story and those of Cain and Abel, Judas, and most signifi­
cantly that of King David, especially David’s affair with Bathsheba and its
con sequences, the saga offers itself to be read as the story of the conversion
of egill’s soul, from savage viking to a poet of pre­Christian times capable
of expressing his inner life in terms close to Christianity. though the saga
probably makes many complex references to events and persons in 13th­
century Iceland, as I have tried to show in my book, one can also read it as
a story of the conversion of the old pagan poetry, as a pendant in many
ways to Heimskringla, authorizing the kings’ sagas’ use of this poetry as a
source of knowledge about the distant past. The account of what is done
with Egill’s bones after his death in the last chapter of the saga is symbolic
of this. He dies before Iceland has been converted. therefore, his remains
are buried in a mound. Shortly after the advent of Christianity, egill’s niece
has egill’s bones taken out of the mound and buried under the altar of a
Church that her husband has built on their estate. When a learned priest
finds these bones several generations later, he removes them from under
the altar and has them buried on the outskirts of the cemetery, which is
appropriate for those who are only prime-signed. The pagan poet’s rela­
tionship to Christianity is thus being defined, as well as the proper
others),” Tradition og historieskrivning. Kilderne til Nordens ældste historie, ed. by kirsten
Hastrup and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen. Acta jutlandica LXIII:2. Humanistisk Serie
61 (Aarhus: Aarhus universitetsforlag, 1987), 95–141.
29 For a wide-ranging discussion of this theme, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Conversion
d’Hermann le Juif. Autobiographie, histoire et fiction (Paris: Seuil, Librairie du XXIe siècle,
2002).
30 torfi H. tulinius, Skáldið í skriftinni, 97–105.