Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 63

Stœri ek brag 61
those who decide to get up during Christmas night, at the urging of Kjartan, and
go so near the church:
at þeir mætti sea ok heyra at ferli kristinna manna. hversv þeir flytti framm sín fræði
ok þionosto við sinn guð .. . heyrðv þeir þar klokkna hlioð og fagran saung er þar var
fram fluttr ok kendo sætan reykelsis ilm. Gengv Islendingar eigi fyrr heim til sinna
herbergia en vm daginn eptir haa messu. (1:370,4-11)
They witnessed the liturgy and heard the attendant homilies for the three Masses
at Christmas, that is, the Mass at midnight, the Mass at dawn, and that for the
day itself, that is, the High Mass referred to above. The Introit of the Mass at
midnight opens with the above mentioned verse 7 of Psalm 2: “He said to me:
You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” During the Mass for the day, that
is, the third Mass of Christmas and the High Mass the saga mentions, the same
verse is quoted in the epistle to the Hebrews in ch. 1, v. 5, a text that has been
read at this Mass since at least the sixth century:23 “For to which of the angels
hath He said at any time: ‘Thou art my Son, today have I begotten Thee?’” And
the epistle continues: “I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son.”
Psalm 2 is a royal psalm, composed for a coronation, and the verse “You are
my son, today I have begotten you” is an ancient formula of adoption, as Artur
Weiser noted in 1962 in his commentary on the Psalms; it is “a declaration of the
sonship of the king that took place on the day of his enthronement” (Weiser, p.
113). The whole psalm may have been uttered by the king alone, while the author
of the text may have been one of the court-poets, a point Weiser makes that is
not without interest in regard to Hallfreðr (Weiser, p. 109). Understood in the
context of the Christmas liturgy, Hallfreðr’s stanza is singularly appropriate for
understanding both the significance of the feast for the conversion of the
Icelanders and for interpreting Hallfreðr’s complex relationship to King Óláfr
who in his role of godfather is the mediator to God the Father. Even if this
particular text itself was not the theme of the preaching, the meaning of the feast
as reflected in the psalm would inevitably have been expounded in the sermon(s)
the Icelanders heard. In the Christmas homily by Gregory the Great that is found
in the Norwegian Homily Book, the saint refers to the three Masses of Christmas
and remarks on the need for brevity because of the long liturgy:
Egi mego/w vér langt mæla u mm scyring þessa guðspiallz, goðer broðr. þvi at vér sculow
þrysvar messo syngva á þessow d?gi. En þo scyldir os siolf burðar-tið lausnara vars at
mæla noccot. 24
22 Cf. Saga Óldfi Tryggvasonar af Oddr Snorrason Munk, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Kobenhavn: G.E.C.
Gad, 1932), 124:29-34.
2^ See “Weihnachten” in Lexikon fiir l'heologie und Kirche, (1965) X:984—89.
24 Gamal norsk Homiliebok. Cod. AM 619 4°, ed. Gustav Indrebo (Oslo: Jacob Dybwad, 1931),
39:2-4.