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were true.8 But the problem was given a new urgency after the supremacy
of Christianity. this new religion placed great emphasis on the historic-
ity and the truthfulness of the foundational texts on which it was based,
in particular the narratives recounted in the new testament. While the
ancients had equivocated over whether a text could accurately represent
history and recognized the fact that texts could contain various mixtures
of historicity and fictionality, the Christian tradition was adamant that a
completely reliable truthful history was possible and that the Scriptures
were the living embodiment of this principle. What then about secular
histories? Were they also capable of achieving this absolute standard of
historicity? as a result the term “history” became a contested category and
debates over the extent to which it is or is not capable of expressing truth
have continued down to the present.9
nevertheless, I have not found any evidence that “History” in Iceland
in the eighteenth century was as contested in this way as it was in Great
Britain. furthermore there can hardly be said to have been a great deal of
reflection in Icelandic intellectual circles at the time over what “history”
actually was.
In his Íslendingabók, written some time around 1130, ari fróði Þorgils-
son notes: “En hvatki es missagt es i frœðum þessum, þá es skylt að hafa
þat heldr er sannara reynisk.”10 this suggests a certain scrupulousness
8 See ruth Scodel, Credible Impossibilities: Conventions and Strategies of Verisimilitude in
Homer and Greek Tragedy, Beiträge zur altertumskunde 122 (Stuttgart: B. G. teubner,
1999), 1–31, and the essays in Panagiotis a. agapitos and Lars Boje Mortensen, eds.
Medieval Narratives between History and Fiction: From the Centre to the Periphery of Europe,
c. 1100–1400 (Copenhagen: Museum tusculanum, 2012).
9 See further Peter G. Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical
Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 59 (Leiden:
Brill, 1994).
10 ari Þorgilsson, “Íslendingabók,” Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson,
2 vols., Íslenzk fornrit 1 (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), 1–28 at 4 [‘and
what-ever is incorrectly stated in this work, one should rather take that which is proven
to be the more true’]. there has been considerable discussion over the boundaries of
“truth” and “fiction” in medieval literature among which see: Laura ashe, Fiction and
History in England, 1066–1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 68 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007); Jeanette M. A. Beer, Narrative Conventions of Truth in
the Middle Ages, Études de philologie et d’histoire 38 (Geneva: Droz, 1981); D. H. Green,
The Beginnings of European Romance: Fact and Fiction 1150–1220, Cambridge Studies in
Medieval Literature 47 (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2002); Päivi Mehtonen,
Old Concepts and New Poetics: Historia, Argumentum and Fabula in the Twelfth- and Early