Gripla - 20.12.2016, Blaðsíða 110

GRIPLA110
to Ás to Þórgrímur, who lived there, and he brought Özurr home
and tended to his wounds.]

Sverrir Jakobsson notes that in the eleventh and twelfth century, there was
a specific ecclesiastical movement called the Peace of God, later broad-
ened to the truce of God, which called for the adoption of a non-violent
mindset, especially towards priests’ and Church property, but also more
generally away from weapons and toward mercy.57 Christian men were
discouraged from spilling the blood of any other Christian man, no matter
the cause, in this movement.58 the pattern of Þórður sparing his oppo-
nents’ lives inside of Skagafjörður and killing them outside of it, combined
with the geographic emphasis on Hjaltadalur, seems a nuanced rhetorical
effort on the part of the narrative to suggest Skagafjörður is a holy place. It
certainly brings questions of Christianity and Christian behavior into the
saga without any overt references to religion or conversion. that entire
layer of meaning is carried only by strategic use of places as the locale of
specific saga events, a pattern the original intended audience likely noticed
at least subconsciously, but which modern scholars overlook entirely.
8. Mapping Speech acts
More overt themes are also expressed in the saga at strategic locales, and
appreciating the importance of those locations can add a layer of complex-
ity to the saga narrative. for instance, in both the Complete version and
fragmentary version, key speech acts related to kinship bonds take place
at boundary markers.59 three examples of this, two in Miðfjörður and one
in Skagafjörður, show an awareness on the part of the saga of the contours
of the regional boundaries, and the fit between having pivotal narrative
57 Sverrir Jakobsson, “the Peace of God in Iceland in the 12th and 13th Century,” in Sacri
canones servandi sunt: Ius canonicum et status ecclesiae saeculis XIII–XV, ed. Pavel Krafl
(Prague: Historický ústav Cr, 2008), 205–213.
58 Various instances of people seeking refuge inside churches in the contemporary Sturlunga-
sögur demonstrate that the idea of sparing the lives of those who sought sanctuary in holy
places was well known in Iceland in the twelfth and thirteenth century.
59 the boundaries of Miðfjörður and Skagafjörður are defined by rises in the landscape
on either side of a river valley. as natural landscape features based on geography rather
than political units, they have remained consistent, and are still marked on some maps of
Iceland.