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Hólar was established in 1106 a.D. the only direct reference to Hólar
found in the text is the clause “er Egill biskup var at Hólum” [‘when
Bishop Egill was in charge of Hólar’, i.e. 1332 to 1341], which is used as
a time referent to explain how long one of Þórður’s halls stood. But even
without being directly named, Hólar would have had tremendous real
world associations for the intended audience of this saga. the saga seems
to use Hjaltadalur, the small but dramatic valley ringed by steep mountains
in the northeastern part of Skagafjörður,50 as a sort of stand in for Hólar,
a site still today referred to as Hólar í Hjaltadal.
Mapping the named farms in the rest of the Complete version of the
saga brings to light just how very much the text is favoring Hjaltadalur.
no place-names are listed in the main valley of Skagafjörður traversed by
Héraðsvötn river, which is the productive farmland and geographic center
of the valley, even when Þórður travels through this area on his way to
flatatunga and Egilsá. also, the only farmstead not leading directly into
Hjaltadalur associated with a recurring character in Skagafjörður is the
farm of Þórður’s enemy, Özurr. all of Þórður’s friends are from farms in
the part of Skagafjörður that leads into Hjaltadalur or inside Hjaltadalur it-
self, such as the farm Kalfstaðir. One of his friends, Þórgrímur, is from the
farm of Ás, the site where the first church in Iceland was erected sixteen
years before Iceland formally adopted Christianity.51 It is very likely the
medieval recipient audience would have known this and would have picked
up on the Christian association of these helpful friends of Þórður’s.
the heavy preference for the area near Hólar, combined with the si-
lence about other parts of the valley, allows the text to create an authentic
core of Skagafjörður that serves to define the whole valley. as Moretti
notes, when texts create such a geographic focus, they are participating in
identity politics: the features associated with that particular area are rhetor-
ically offered to the audience as appropriate characteristics to define a larg-
er region.52 for the Complete version of Þórðar saga hreðu, only the farms
very near Hólar can lay claim to being the authentic core of Skagafjörður,
and thus Skagafjörður as a whole becomes a very Christian place.
50 Sacred sites are often located in noteworthy topographies. See richard Bradley, An Archa-
eology of Natural Places (London and new York: routledge, 2000).
51 See chapter 3 of Kristni saga, in Biskupa sögur I, edited by Jónas Kristjánsson, íslenzk fornrit,
vol. 15 (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2003).
52 Moretti, Atlas, 47
COMPLETING Þ Ó R Ð A R S A G A H R E Ð U