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canonization in mind.66 The Danes appear to have considered the fallen
Ólafr Guðbrandsson a saint, and miracles are said to have been per-
formed where Eysteinn Haraldsson was slain.67 The latter was Sverrir’s
uncle, and I suspect that Sverrir encouraged - if, indeed, he did not
initiate - Eysteinn’s cult. Heimskringla informs us that he was respon-
sible for an account of Eysteinn’s death which laid the blame squarely
on the shoulders of Eysteinn’s brother, Ingi (who had also fought
against Sverrir’s half-brother, Hákon herðibreiðr.)68 Þorleifr breið-
skeggr’s death was followed by rumours of his sanctity,69 and Sverrir,
too, might well have been considered holy if he had not been at odds
with the Church during most of his career. As it turned out it was his
opponent, Archbishop Eysteinn, whose canonization was promoted by
Hákon Hákonarson in the mid-thirteenth century.70 Hákon himself ap-
pears to have been venerated as a saint in the late Middle Ages.71
Although Iceland was somewhat slower to produce saints than Den-
mark and Norway, its inhabitants were clearly eager to have their own.
The first attempt in this direction probably involved Ólafr Tryggvason,
represented as responsible for the island’s conversion in extant histor-
ical writings. A Latin biography with unmistakable hagiographic over-
tones was composed about him in the second half of the twelfth centu-
ry.7: Ólafr, however, was not as obliging as his namesake in the per-
formance of miracles, and by the end of the century Icelanders may
well have despaired of having a patron saint for their island. We are
told that after St. Þorlákr’s death in 1193, ‘margra vitra manna orð
tliis document is one of the first attestations of papal claims of the right to approve the
cults of new saints.
Fyrsta Sagan, Studia Islandica 37,1978.
67 Hkr III 410, 345.
68 Hkr III 345-6.
69 Ss 122.
70 Ludwig Daae, Norges Helgener, Christiania, 1879, p. 170 ff. ‘helgi Eysteins erki-
byskups’ is entered under the year 1229 in most of the Icelandic annals. As Daae points
out, the apparent anomaly of the promotion of Eysteinn’s sanctity by King Hákon, who
traced his claim to the throne to Sverrir, is undoubtedly due to the fact that Hákon
wanted to conciliate the church as far as possible.
71 Ibid. p. 180-88.
72
Jan de Vries, Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1967, vol. 2, p. 245.