Gripla - 2019, Side 237

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in disputes of various kinds, such as questions about inheritance, accusa-
tions of not having paid full tithes to the Catholic Church and allegations
that he had entered into an illicit marriage, as he and his second wife Björg
were third cousins. Some of these cases brought him into fierce strife with
the unyielding Bishop of Hólar, Gottskálk Nikulásson, which went on
for almost the first twenty years of the sixteenth century. In this contest
the bishop proved victorious and the lawman, having been a wealthy man,
lost most of his property to the Church; he died in reduced circumstances
in the autumn of 1520, only a few months before his adversary. Almost
half a century later Guðbrandur took up his grandfather’s case, and even
went to Copenhagen in 1568 in an attempt to have the property of Jón
Sigmundsson restored to his heirs, asserting that his grandfather had
been illegally deprived of it. Guðbrandur was successful and some of the
property still in the possession of the Church was actually restored to
Jón Sigmundsson’s heirs. But it was not only in his private affairs that
Guðbrandur was active. As soon as he had taken over control of the Hólar
Diocese he proved himself a most energetic and insistent defender of the
interests of the Church in a variety of ways. He reclaimed ecclesiastical
properties which certain of his predecessors had lost, took measures to
improve the economic conditions of the clergy, asserted the rights of the
Church in certain cases of immunity from the secular jurisdiction and soon
became a highly successful promoter of God’s word, as we have already
seen. To get his way the young bishop often turned directly to the King of
Denmark or his important connections in Copenhagen, thereby creating
animosity and even hostility against himself among the local authorities in
Iceland. Even the King’s repesentative was offended, as he had expected
the bishop to proceed in the more traditional way through the Alþing, the
Icelandic legislative and judicial body. The enmities increased considerably
in the 1580s, when the bishop instigated further claims to properties which
had originally belonged to Jón Sigmundsson but had passed from the
Church to other owners, including members of an exceptionally powerful
family in Iceland. Himself a descendant of Jón Sigmundsson, Arngrímur
Jónsson became involved in this series of events primarily or perhaps sole-
ly as Bishop Guðbrandur’s agent. In 1590 Arngrímur made claim to three
estates but was met with a strong defence and an unexpected manoeuvre
on the part of the owners, who maintained that they were in possession
TO TELL THE TRUTH – BUT NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH