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are set aside – served to facilitate a greater integration in Iceland. Nor did
there exist any strong national identities in the Viking Age, whereas the
reverse was clearly the case at the time of the great immigration waves
to North America in the nineteenth century. What we today know as
“Norway” was probably still in the making.59 We may be quite certain
that old Norwegian districts such as Hålogaland, Møre, Sogn, Hordaland
and Rogaland can be traced far back in time, and in the Viking Age people
probably had more or less strong identities tied to these smaller “home-
lands”. It would not then be remarkable if a family that came to Iceland
from Agder in the early 900s continued to consider themselves and – more
importantly – continued to be considered by others as Egðir for a long time
after they had migrated.
These are, of course, just more or less persuasive hypotheses; we are
left with very little material on which we base our assumptions. Never-
theless, it seems worth-while to consider whether the alternative hy-
pothesis, that there was something special about these Egðir, could have
something to recommend itself. If so, the existence of a certain “Egzk”
identity in the tenth century would not have to be assumed for all families
in Iceland, irrespective of their origin. There are some circumstances, par-
ticularly in Landnámabók, that suggest that there was something distinctive
about the families who came to Iceland from Agder. For one thing, it is not
obvious why someone should be identified by such a vast area as Agder. To
the contrary, Gísli Súrsson and his family were not regarded as Mœrir, but
rather as súrdœlir, and Gísli’s patronym is súrsson, not *Þorbjarnarson, so
here the ties seem to be to a particular place in Møre (today’s Surnadalen,
ON súrnadalr), rather than to Møre as a district. That also goes for
such nick­names (of early settlers) as Þorbjǫrn gaulverski (from Gaular),
Heyjangrs­Bjǫrn and others. What, then, could be so distinctive about
people from Agder? Interestingly, we see that there is a certain link be-
tween settlers from Agder and participation in the battle of Hafrsfjord (ca.
900), and this connection could have been even stronger in reality than it
appears in Landnámabók. Here, it is important to remember that the battle
of Hafrsfjord and its alleged consequences – Haraldr hárfagri’s ofríki ‘harsh
rule’, which forced many to flee the country – has become an integral part
59 See, e.g., Claus Krag, vikingtid og rikssamling 800–1130, Aschehougs Norgeshistorie, vol.
2 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1995), 89–91.
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