Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Page 93

A REASSESSMENT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CATHEDRAL AT GARÐAR, GREENLAND
drals. Since he believed the enclosure to
be contemporaneous with the church, it
was natural for Norlund to believe that
Garðar 1 was erected soon after the
bishop’s seat had been established. This
would place the building sometime after
the mid 1120’s. This is not necessarily the
case. As I have tried to argue, the enclo-
sure could very well be a later addition to
the church. If this is the case, the church
could have been standing before the bish-
op’s seat was established. Although it is
natural to assume that the enclosure had
a connection with the church as cathedral
it does not necessarily mean that it was
added immediately after 1126. Whenever
it happened it is intriguing as a material
expression of the change of status that
took place at Garðar - that the farm now
also housed the bishop’s seat. Unfor-
tunately we are still unable to date the
enclosure more precisely. The only thing
that remains certain is that it must have
been added before the final extension of
the church (phase 3).
The addition of the enclosure
seems to presuppose an ecclesiastical
presence at Garðar and probably would not
have happened if a bishop was not there.
In this connection it is relevant to men-
tion Jette Arneborg’s article The Roman
Church in Norse Greenland (1991). She
points out that none of the Greenlandic
bishops are explicitly said by the Ice-
landic annals to have gone to Greenland
before Helge in 1212 (Arneborg 1991,
145). This presupposes that Grænlend-
inga Þáttr is incorrect since it clearly
says that Arnald, the first bishop, made
his bishop’s seat at Garðar (Halldórsson
1978, 105). Arneborg suggests that the
picture painted by Grænlendinga Þáttr
and which gives credit for the establish-
ment of the bishop’s seat to the Green-
landers, is false. She instead suggests
that the establishment of the Greenlandic
bishopric was an expression of church
policy and as such was instigated by the
archbishopric in Lund (Ameborg 1991,
145). Such an attempt to install an eccle-
siastical elite is likely to have been very
unpopular amongst the church-owning
Norse Greenlandic chieftains and the
bishops may not have been welcome at all.
It should be pointed out that Arneborg’s
line of argument is based on negative evi-
dence, as she herself acknowledges in the
article, and that, while the overall results
may well be correct, no real conclusions
can be drawn in this manner.
From the written sources we
also know that several of the Green-
landic bishops of the 13th and 14th centu-
ries spent considerable amounts of time
abroad if they even went to Greenland at
all, and after 1378 none of the appointed
bishops ever went out to their diocese
(Ameborg 1991, 144-145). Reading the
Icelandic annals to mean that no bishop
before Helge went to Greenland in 1212
may be going too far. Indirect evidence
does exist that Arnald, at least, went to
Greenland. The Icelandic annals mention
him as being present in Iceland in the
1120’s which is in accordance with the
story as related by Grœnlendinga Þáttr
(Grenlands Historiske Mindesmœrker
III, 6-7). The thought is worth having in
mind, though, since it could have a bear-
ing on the interpretation of the church and
its extensions. A post 1212 dating for the
addition of the enclosure seems too late,
however, and if there is truth in Arneborg’s
theory it seems more likely that Arnald
at least reached Greenland and oversaw
the erection of the enclosure south of the
church in the years after 1126. This would
leave the possibility open that the final
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