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latter hypothesis, it is still hard to say where the information on Timur
comes from, since the treatment is so idiosyncratic that much of it may be
original. Nevertheless, as I have hoped to show in the discussion above,
those creative choices seem to be responding to and consciously subvert-
ing traditions about Timur such as those which we see in Oddverjaannáll.
With such a wealth of sources on Timur which could have been used (as
we saw above), it would be risky to claim any direct connection between
Oddverjaannáll and Ambáles rímur and Ambáles saga (especially the form
the text takes in AM 521 c 4to), but nor can such a connection be ruled
out, and by putting these texts side by side our reading of the latter two is
certainly enriched.
The question still remains as to why in this version of Amlethus’ story
the British king is swapped out for Timur and, moreover, why Timur is
rehabilitated. There are a number of possible answers to the first ques-
tion, not the least likely of which is that Britain was simply deemed too
pedestrian. Many sagas written in the post-medieval period revel in the
use of exotic locations and characters, and Tamerláus of Scythia may sim-
ply have been more captivating to Icelandic audiences. In answering the
second question, it is fair to say that the demonising of a Turkish ruler and
consequent elevation of Timur fits neatly with the political imagination
of late-seventeenth-century Icelanders. The North African pirates who
raided coastal locations around Iceland in 1627 were generally called tyrkir
(hence the attacks were called tyrkjaránið).70 North Africa was under
Ottoman rule, and thus an Ottoman leader could be seen as an enemy. An
Icelandic scribe with knowledge that an Ottoman leader had been defeated
and humiliated in battle by Timur could well choose to make literary use
of the latter figure and, although not Christian, present him as a tool of
God. Þorsteinn Helgason has described how Icelanders in the seventeenth
century made use of writing as a kind of collective therapy for dealing with
the trauma of the tyrkjarán.71 In such a context it seems reasonable that
Timur could be rehabilitated for Icelandic audiences. After all, common
wisdom has it that the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend.
70 For several contemporary sources on the Turkish Abductions see Jón Þorkelsson, tyrkja-
ránið á Íslandi, 1627, Sögurit 4 (Reykjavík: Prentsmiðjan Gutenberg, 1906).
71 Þorsteinn Helgason, “Historical Narrative as Collective Therapy: The Case of the Turkish
Raid in Iceland,” scandinavian journal of History 22 (1997): 275.
TIMUR, ‘THE WRATH OF GODʼ