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surely rest with those claiming that there was an opposition. That duty
has not been fulfilled through adequate demonstration in the sources,
while the notion of justification has been taken for granted on the basis of
an assumption which seems rather derived from modern gut-feeling than
medieval sources. To the contrary, the sources do, if anything, demonstrate
the normality with which Christian medieval Icelanders used mythological
material, with no hints of moral problems or religious guilt.
The following pages are devoted to this normality, and are split into
two main sections. The former is a study in Sturlunga saga, the contem-
porary sagas of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland. The latter takes
up the case of skaldic poetry in Sturlunga, and proceeds to a broader
discussion of skaldic poetry in general, genealogies, and Snorra-Edda and
mythology.
Before moving on to Sturlunga a point should be explicitly emphasized,
although quite implicitly done above: Christian medieval Icelanders, as
we meet them in the sources, did not view paganism impartially, let alone
favorably. Heathen religion itself is, quite expectantly, uniformly nega-
tively viewed. We will encounter such instances in our survey, although
they are not specifically under review.
II. The Attitude Towards Mythology –
the Testimony of Sturlunga
Plowing Sturlunga only turns up a handful of instances where mythol-
ogy is directly touched upon or referred to, and our focus is primarily on
those. Also, we may occasionally encounter instances where thoughts of
mythology are evoked while no direct reference is made. These instances
are, however, rare. One is found in Íslendinga saga, where the course of
events in the fateful year 1255 is told. Shortly before the killing of Oddur
Þórarinsson in Geldingaholt, Hrafn Oddsson, one of the two assailants,
rides with his men over the Hjaltadalsheiði heath:
Ok er þeir kómu upp á heiðina, kenndi, at brá lit. Hrafnar tveir
flugu með þeim um alla heiðina. Hrafni Oddsyni kvaðst þat vel líka,
er nafnar hans váru þeim í sinni.8
8 Sturlunga saga I, eds. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn (Reykja-
vík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946), 512.
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY