Saga - 2011, Page 137

Saga XLIX:2 (2011), bls. 137–151.
patricia pires boulhosa
A response to
„Gamli sáttmáli — hvað næst?“1
In the years since my books, Icelanders and the Kings of Norway and
Gamli sáttmáli: Tilurð og tilgangur,2 were published, I have had the
pleasure, and the good fortune, to discuss them with a number of
scholars who, even in their opposition to my ideas, have shown schol-
arly grace. That was not the case with Helgi Skúli Kjartansson’s article
in Saga xlix (2011), entitled „Gamli sáttmáli — hvað næst?“. Although
Helgi Skúli’s attention to my work could be seen as flattering, I
believe that some important points of my research have been misrep-
resented, and I would like to take this opportunity to respond.3
I have argued in my previous research that the texts known as
Gizurarsáttmáli and Gamli sáttmáli — which have been taken to be
agreements made between the Icelanders and the King of Norway
during the years surrounding the submission of the country — were
later fabrications. Through a historiographical4 and historical analy-
V IÐHORF
1 Helgi Skúli Kjartansson, „Gamli sáttmáli — hvað næst?“, Saga XLIX:1 (2011), pp.
133–153.
2 Patricia Pires Boulhosa, Icelanders and the Kings of Norway: Mediaeval Sagas and
Legal Texts (Leiden: Brill 2005) and Gamli sáttmáli: Tilurð og tilgangur (Reykjavík:
Sögufélag 2006).
3 In fact, Helgi Skúli’s discussion of my argument is in many places deliberately
misleading. One example will suffice. On pp. 140–41 („Það sem lesandi Patricíu
fær aldrei …. Guðni Jónsson heimfærir til sama árs“), my text is quoted in such
a garbled order that it is impossible to believe that Helgi Skúli has quoted it in
good faith.
4 The term „historiographical“ was omitted from Patricia Boulhosa, Gamli sátt-
máli: Tilurð og tilgangur in the translation phase. I have personally read and
checked the translation and I am therefore fully responsible for it. Even though
the idea of a historiographical analysis is not absent from the book, I regret not
having found a suitable synonym for it.
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