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context, this implies that Ingjaldr, whose family had lived in Iceland for
three generations, still could be identified by the home district of his pater-
nal grandfather, Þrándr mjóbeinn, who arrived in Iceland from Agder some
time around the year 900 (judged from the count of generations; Ingjaldr
in Hergilsey was probably about the same age as Gísli or a bit older, and
born around 930). Was this a common phenomenon in Iceland in the tenth
century, or was there something special about these Egðir? Could people
who had lived in Iceland for a couple of generations still be characterized
and identified by the home district of their ancestors back in Norway? One
could point to the fact that Iceland at that time still was a community of
settlers; the people who arrived in Iceland during the 870s came to a land
almost without any previous population – the people who may have been
present, the Christian Papar, soon left.57 There could then hardly have
been any local or regional Icelandic identities; such identities would need
some generations to develop, after people had had time to establish roots
in the new country. It is thus a reasonable hypothesis that the first couple
of generations of settlers in Iceland were more strongly tied to the districts
in Norway where their family had come from than to the fjords and head-
lands in Iceland where they had recently settled.58
There is a parallel from more recent times: in North America, im-
migrants from Europe identified with their homelands and could regard
themselves as “Norwegian”, “Swedish”, “German”, “Irish”, “Italian” etc., a
long time after their forefathers had left the countries referred to. In spite
of the apparent similarities, however, there are also differences between
this tendency and tenth-century Iceland. The most important is that, in
Iceland, language did not distinguish immigrants coming from different
parts of Norway – or from different parts of Scandinavia for that matter
– whereas in nineteenth-century North America it most certainly did so.
A common Old Norse language – at least as long as Irish-speaking thralls
57 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 5. The oldest excavated settlements
in Iceland are found just above the tephra plane caused by the volcanic eruption in South
Iceland ca. 871, see Orri Vésteinsson, “The Archaeology of Landnám. Early Settlement in
Iceland”, vikings. the north Atlantic saga, ed. by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I.
Ward (Washington – London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 164.
58 We noted above that knowledge about the roots of one’s family was important among other
things for lawsuits about inheritance. The Icelandic family sagas provide several examples,
for instance the famous case of Egils saga.