Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 202

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Arni Einarsson
Synthesis
At this point it should have become clear that the house is allegorical and was
probably not meant to be taken as a material construction.60 There seems no
reason to suppose that the narrator was not fully aware of the allegory. It is
complete, elaborate and logical and can hardly be a case of a pure “literary loan”
although stories can be pointed out, like the Voyage de Charlemagne, which the
author may have used as a model. We will turn to the relationship between these
two stories later. At the moment the apparent originality of the Raudulfs þáttr
should be emphasized, and it must be assumed that the author had a purpose for
placing King Olaf in these allegorical settings. Otherwise the whole story would
seem somewhat out of place.
But what was the purpose? We have seen that the house is a miniature cosmos,
and that this cosmos has a number of higher spiritual meanings attached to it,
based on symbolism which was known in 12th- and 13th-century Iceland, i.a. in
the Icelandic Homily Book and Elucidarius. What remains to be explained is why
King Olaf was placed within the structure. He was placed precisely in the centre
of the house, directly below an image of God, and in a context which repeatedly
links him with the sun. The simplest hypothesis seems to be that the author
wanted to demonstrate the saint’s holiness by equating him with the sun. The
sun signified Christ, who was the Sun of Salvation (sol salutis), the Sun of
Righteousness (sol justitiaé) and the Invincible Sun (sol invictus).61 He was also
the Light of the World (lux mundi).62
The allegorical settings, the events, geometry and numbers of Rauðúlfs þáttr
and the Voyage de Charlemagne are similar. The two allegories seem to have a
common base but they differ in the way the numbers and geometry are expres-
sed.63 An example is the huge bed in the middle surrounded by the splendid beds
of Charlemagne’s twelve peers. The beds were so huge that it took twenty oxen
and four wagons to carry them. Again we have the numbers rwenty and four,
60 See Mann (1994).
Elucidarius III.7: “Sun signifies Christ but Moon Christianity.” See Elucidarius 1.3-5 and the
Norwegian Homily Book (p. 207 in Unger ed. 1864) about the sun as a metaphor for the divinity
and Copleston (1962, Vol. 2, part 1, Ch. 4) for the Augustinian concept of divine illumination.
Clement of Alexandria (Exhortation to the Greeks 6, p. 50 in Fideler 1993) called Reason “the
sun of the soul”, a correspondence which fits the dream house as a model of both soul and
cosmos. St. Augustine ConfessionsX 1.11.13 speaksofGod’swisdom as “lightofsouls” (cf. “andar
Ijós' in Elucidarius 1.48). Asclepius 3.18b has it that: “By the light of mind the human soul is
illuminated, as the world is illuminated by the sun.” See also Christ as a “True Sun” in the
Icelandic Homily Book, p. 67.
62 John 8, 12-13. See also Ps 84.12, Is 60.20, Mal 4.2, Mt 17.2 and Lk 1.78. Cf. also the spiritual
sun, as described by Pseudo-Dionysius (The Divine Names 697C-D).
63 That the turning of Hugon’s palace was effected by the winds may seem to point to a different
symbolism. This is not necessarily so, because the winds were basic ingredients of medieval
cosmology (also in Rauðúlfr’s house). In a poetic passage on the winds in the Speculum regale
eight personified winds blow in harmony with the sun’s twenty-four hours passage round the
heavens (pp. 86-89 in Larson tr. 1972).