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Saint Olafs Dream House
a fixed angle to the sun.56 There could hardly be a more explicit way of telling the
reader that the movement was imitating the turning of the cosmos.
Motion was the characteristic of time but eternity was fixed and unmoved. To
Plato (Timaeus 37) time was an eternal moving image of the eternity. Although
time is not equal to motion (Plotinus Enneads III.7, Augustine Confessions 11),
motion was an important aspect of time. The course of time began with the
motion of creation (St. Augustine De Genesi ad Litteram Liber Imperfectus, PL 34
219—46, ed. Migne 1861).
Rauðúlfr does not make it clear whether it was the house or the bed that moved.
It seems that he expected the reader to know. In a theocentric cosmos there ought
not be a doubt about the fact that the centre represented the fixed eternity and
the periphery represented the moving time.5, Olaf himself would, however, be
able to observe only the relative motion of the house and the bed. Perhaps the
author had in mind the idea expressed in Asclepius that the motion of time is
relative to the eternity, hence eternity is in a sense moving:
And accordingly, though eternity is stable, fixed, and motionless, yet since time is
mobile, and its movement ever goes back into eternity, it results from this that eternity
also, though motionless in itself, appears to be in motion . . . And in this way it is
possible to hold that God also moves within himself, though God, like eternity, is
motionless. (Asclepius III 31, tr. Scott 1993.)
Eriugena presents a similar thought when he says: “For of God it is most truly
said that He is modon at rest and rest in motion” (Periphyseon I, tr. Sheldon-Wil-
liams and O’Meara 1987). He further explains that the motion is that of God’s
will, by which he wills all things to be made, and his rest is the immovable
determinadon of this same will.
King Olaf is situated in eternity. One of the chief characteristics of eternity is
that it contains all time: past, present and future, and the one who is situated in
eternity sees everything at once.58 This is probably the reason why King Olaf was
able to see the future of Norway.
The movement conforms to the idea of the house as a model of the soul, which,
according to Plato (Phaedrus245c-246a), was self-moved. This nature of the soul
was subject to an extended discussion by Macrobius [Commentary 2.13-16).59
56 “þvl' var svo smíðað herra, að þér skylduð jafnt horfa á sólina . . .” (Johnsen and Helgason, p.
672,11. 5-6) In Rémundarsaga Keisarasonar (ch. 5) a turning house was constructed so that the
door always faced the sun [“Þetta hús snerist svo, að dyrnar horfðu æ jafnan á sólina”] (Broberg,
ed. 1909-12, p. 14).
57 Cf. Boéthius Consolation 4. Prose 6.
58 Cf. Augustine Confessions 11.11.13 (tr. Pussey 1920): “ . . . but in the Eternal nothing passeth,
but the whole is present; whereas no time is all at once present”; also Proclus The Elements of
Theology Prop. 52, Boéthius Consolation 5. Prose 6; Anselm of Canterbury On the Harmony of
the Foreknowledge, the Predestination, andthe Grace ofGodwith Free Choice, Question 1, Asclepius
III 30.
See also Eriugena Periphyseon II.