Gripla - 20.12.2009, Page 216

GRIPLA216
SuMMARy
This article discusses links between medieval Iceland and contemporary medieval
European culture. The notion that Icelandic medieval culture was, for the most
part, free from european cultural influence still has some currency—at least
amongst the general public. However, the central argument of the article is rather
that Icelandic literary culture could not have emerged had not the Icelanders
already begun to engage with European culture, and had not medieval Icelandic
society—both clerical and lay—already adapted to it. In this context, reference is
made to Margaret Clunies Ross’s concept of ‘Christian secularity’ in order to
explain the specific characteristics of Christian Icelandic society during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, and recent work by other scholars is reviewed to provide
further support for this perspective. finally, reference is made to Egils saga and to
the present author’s recent book on the saga: the aim is to demonstrate how the
concepts of ‘self’ and ‘other’ may be used to define the attitude of the authors of
medieval Icelandic sagas (especially the Íslendingasögur) to their own heathen past.
It was by integrating the heathen ‘otherness’ of the past with their own contempo­
rary ‘self’ that the Icelanders created for themselves a national identity as inhabit­
ants of the Christian cultural world.
Torfi H. Tulinius
University of Iceland
tht@hi.is