Gripla - 20.12.2005, Page 149

KRISTNI SAGA AND MEDIEVAL CONVERSION HISTORY 147
have predated Sturla’s version of Landnáma.3 The most recent editor does not
discuss the saga’s possible relationship to the historical Landnámabók, which
he considers it to predate, and declares its author to be „óflekktur“ (‘unknown’;
ÍF XV:cliv-v). That Sturla had a part in Kristni saga cannot, therefore, be
regarded as certain, although it remains an attractive possibility, especially
given the saga’s close correspondences with Sturlubók and its additions on
Snorri go›i and the West of Iceland (ÍF XV:5, 8, 22-23, 36). Nevertheless, the
saga’s shape and main emphases lend strong support to the theory that it was
first put together in conjunction with a redaction of Landnámabók, and this,
together with the saga’s presentation of conversion history, suggests that
closer attention should be paid to its historical credentials.
What is it that characterises Kristni saga as a work of history rather than
hagiography or fiction? First, while Iceland’s conversion is from the time of
Oddr onwards the achievement of a saintly king of Norway, in Kristni saga it
is treated separately as a subject in its own right. The saga presents itself in its
opening sentence as a history of Christianity in Iceland – „Nú hefr flat hversu
kristni kom á Ísland“ (‘Now this is the beginning of how Christianity came to
Iceland’; ÍF XV:3) – and this is rare in the Middle Ages, where mission is
more usually subordinated to other themes (Sawyer, Sawyer and Wood 1987:
17-18). Second, Kristni saga is the only source on the conversion other than
Ari to unite the early missions to later church history: it opens with the stories
of fiorvaldr, Stefnir, and fiangbrandr, goes on to tell in detail of events in
Norway and the legal conversion of Iceland, and ends with an account of the
first two native bishops, Ísleifr and Gizurr. Like nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century histories, it makes use of a variety of different sources in
order to reconstruct these events: certainly Ari’s Íslendingabók and Oddr’s
Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, but probably also the lost work of Gunnlaugr,
Vatnsdœla saga, Laxdœla saga and Heimskringla (see Björn M. Ólsen
1893:309-349, Jón Jóhannesson 1941:70-71, Duke 2001:345-366, ÍF XV:
cxxix-cxxxi). Ari is followed closely for the lives of Ísleifr and Gizurr, and
perhaps used in part for the account of the legal conversion: fiorgeirr’s speech,
3 Sveinbjörn’s suggestion that Styrmisbók contained a version of Kristni saga was rejected by
Jakob Benediktsson (1974:208), but he has recently extended his argument by attempting to
show on the basis of various inconsistencies that the Kristni saga in Hauksbók makes use of
both a more original Kristni saga from Styrmisbók and the lost version from Sturlubók
(2001:25-32). Given the hypothetical nature of both these lost texts, his argument is
inevitably conjectural.