Gripla - 20.12.2004, Page 249

A NEW EDITION OF BISKUPA S¯GUR 247
brandr to Iceland. He achieves a notable success by converting Sí›u-Hallr, but
also faces powerful opposition, surviving the loss of his horse when the ground
opens under him, and the wreck of his ship (attributed by the poet Steinunn to
the action of fiórr). When fiangbrandr returns to Norway and reports on his re-
ception the king’s anger is assuaged only by two Icelandic Christians, Hjalti
Skeggjason and Gizurr hvíti, who promise to go back to Iceland to secure its
conversion. When the Christians and pagans meet at the Alflingi, the pagan
law-speaker fiorgeirr emerges from under his cloak to declare that all Ice-
landers are to become Christian. At this point the saga returns to fiorvaldr Ko›-
ránsson and Stefnir fiorgilsson who are both said to have gone to Jerusalem,
Constantinople and Kiev, with fiorvaldr dying at Polotsk ‘ok kalla fleir hann
helgan’ (ÍF XV:37). Stefnir is later killed in Denmark. The final part of the
saga recounts the role of Gizurr hvíti and his family in the establishment of the
church in Iceland.
The longest section of Sigurgeir Steingrímsson’s introduction to Kristni
saga (pp. lxii–cxxix) is a painstaking comparison of the contents of the text
with other accounts of the conversion and early ecclesiastical history of
Iceland (the relevant texts are helpfully listed on p. lxii). This discussion be-
gins with a summary of the views of the five scholars (only) who have dealt in
detail with the question of Kristni saga’s relations with other texts, from the
important and influential work of Björn M. Ólsen published in 1893 to a
recent article by Siân Duke which appeared in 2001. Sigurgeir endeavours to
keep his presentation of the evidence separate from his interpretation of it. He
argues against Ólsen’s view that there was a fiorvalds fláttr in Gunnlaugr
Leifsson’s life of Óláfr Tryggvason and in favour of the idea that Kristni saga
itself was a source for the Kristni flættir preserved in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar
en mesta (p. cxxix). Where so much depends on speculation about the con-
tents (or even existence) of lost source texts a variety of views is, however,
always likely to remain: Sigurgeir’s conclusions contrast remarkably with
those of Ólafur Halldórsson later in the volume.
Several short episodes concerning the conversion of Iceland are preserved
in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta and Ólafur Halldórsson, who was re-
sponsible for the recently completed edition of that text, has edited these flætt-
ir for inclusion here. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta was put together in
the first part of the fourteenth century from a variety of sources and Ólafur
suggests its compiler intended to produce a comprehensive account of the
king’s reign comparable to the Separate Saga of St Óláfr by Snorri Sturluson