Saga - 2011, Page 143

ent endings, which shows a freedom of style on the part of those
who wrote them down, and speaks against differentiating the texts
on the basis of the oath alone.23 These variations suggest that Jón
Sigurðsson’s differentiation between 1263-, 1262- and 1264-agree-
ments is practically unworkable, and that it is more probable that all
the documents were thought, by those who wrote them down in the
fifteenth century, to represent agreements made around the years
1262–1264. That the exact date was not known, or was not of special
concern, can be seen in the ending of the document in AM 456 12°:
the term „Datum“ is not followed by a specific place or date. A six-
teenth-century manuscript, on the other hand, provides the date:
„m. ijc. lxiij.“,24 which supports the idea that the sixteenth-century
Icelanders who transcribed these documents considered them to be
representations of the earliest — or one of the earliest — agreements
mentioned in the sagas and annals, and not a fourteenth-century
agreement with King Hákon Magnússon.
Although Jón Jóhannesson does not seem to include that partic-
ular group of documents („Gamli sáttmáli 1264“) in his analysis, he
discusses a very similar document, recorded in the manuscript AM
148 4º, which Jón Sigurðsson classifies as „Annar sáttmáli 1263“.25
Jón Jóhannesson argues that this text represents an agreement made
in 1302 between the Icelanders and King Hákon háleggr Magnús -
son.26 However, Jón Jóhannesson’s classification is not based on a
close analysis of the text, but on a hypothetical narrative which he
builds up from the accounts of sagas and annals.27 Indeed, he pays
little regard to the text of the agreements, arguing that the docu-
ments of that time were often inaccurate, and that in some of them
the text has been mixed up.28 This allows him to correct what he
sees as inaccuracies in the documents and, in the specific case of the
a response to „gamli sáttmáli …“ 143
23 Patricia Boulhosa, Icelanders and the Kings of Norway, p. 114, and Gamli sáttmáli:
Tilurð og tilgangur, p. 41.
24 Norges gamle love indtil 1387. Ed. R. Keyser and others, 5 vols (Oslo: Gröndahl
1846–95), I, p. 461. The manuscript is Holm perg 27 4°.
25 Diplomatarium Islandicum I, nr. 153, pp. 635–46. Jón Sigurðsson identifies this
group of texts, which contain the oath, as agreements made between Icelanders
and the Oddaverjar, and King Hákon Hákonarson and his son Magnús.
26 The Icelandic annals record for the year 1302 that Icelanders sworn allegiance
to King Hákon Magnússon and accepted the amendments to the law-book:
Islandske Annaler, pp. 52, 146, 99 and 388.
27 Jón Jóhannesson, Íslendinga saga II, pp. 246–247.
28 Ibid., p. 274.
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