Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 204

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performed the ritual correctly. In this paper, I argue that we need to be
familiar with these regulations and their background in European canon
law in order to understand the daily life and religious anxieties of the peo-
ple we study, and the stories told about them.
for our understanding of medieval life, local law mattered most imme-
diately. the two complete manuscripts of the medieval Icelandic lawbook
known as Grágás (Konungsbók, GKS 1157 fol., and Staðarhólsbók, aM
334 fol.) both contain what we may describe as a small canon lawbook,
usually called Kristinna laga þáttr.2 this lawbook is also found copied
into seven other preserved medieval manuscripts.3 I will refer to it as the
older Christian Law of Iceland. It was, according to the testimony of the
manuscripts, put together in the 1120s by the two bishops in Iceland at the
time, Ketill Þorsteinsson and Þorlákr runólfsson, with the advice of their
superior, archbishop asser of Lund, Sæmundr fróði, and “many other
knowledgeable men.”4
In the 1270s, Bishop Árni Þorláksson of Skálholt compiled a new
Christian Law in collaboration with archbishop Jón of trondheim, who
2 a foundational study of the manuscripts and their dates is Sveinbjörn rafnsson, Af
fornum lögum og sögum: Fjórar ritgerðir um forníslenska sögu, Ritsafn Sagnfræðistofnunar 42
(reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2011), esp. pp. 20–22. See also Konrad Maurer, “Graagaas,”
Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, ed. J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber
(Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1864) and Dieter Strauch, Mittelalterlichen nordisches Recht bis 1500:
Eine Quellenkunde, reallexikon der Germanischen altertumskunde: Ergänzungsband 73
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 234–246. the conventional title, “Kristinna laga þáttr”, is poorly
attested in the manuscripts.
3 Each text is edited in Grágás: Stykker, som findes i det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift Nr. 351
fol. Skálholtsbók og en Række andre Haandskrifter, ed. by Vilhjálmur finsen (København:
Kommissionen for det arnamagnæanske Legat; Gyldendal, 1883), 1–290. the þáttr was
also found in a further “old manuscript” (Leirárgarðabók) whose text survives through four
early modern copies, see p. 291.
4 Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid udgivet efter det kongelige bibliotheks haandskrift, ed.
by Vilhjálmur Finsen (Kaupmannahöfn: fornritafjelag norðurlanda í Kaupmannahöfn,
1852), 36; Grágás efter det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift Nr. 354 fol., Staðarhólsbók, ed. by
Vilhjálmur finsen (København: Kommissionen for det arnamagnæanske Legat; Gyldendal,
1879), 45–46. – It is unlikely that this story about the compilation of Icelandic Christian
law is entirely reliable, or at least that the Christian law as preserved (only in manuscripts
from the second half of the thirteenth century and later) is exactly the compilation that was
put together at this early point. Similar origin myths attach themselves to many medieval
lawbooks, see, e.g., Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth
Century (oxford; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 43.