Studia Islandica - 01.06.1960, Side 47

45
about forty six years old when she gave birth to the
triplets. Dr. Einar Arnórsson rightly urges that it is
strange that, if she was bom before 1500, Bishop Gott-
skálk should not have arranged a marriage for her be-
fore his death, and that she must have been consider-
ably older than Bishop Gizur when she was betrothed to
him around 1540.36 It is, of course, not impossible that
she was a widow in 1540. Again, she may have been sent
abroad with her brother Oddur around 1500 and only
later returned to Iceland. It is strange that Icelandic
sources contain no references to Oddur and Guðrún be-
fore 1536. It is not impossible that Bishop Gottskálk sent
the two children abroad sometime around 1500, or with
his brother, Guttormur, in 1503 or 1507 and that they
were brought up in Norway, Guðrún returning to Ice-
land with her brother only in 1534 or 1535.37 As to why
Gizur should choose to contemplate marriage (ca. 1540)
with a woman of forty-three (supposing Guðrún to have
been born in 1496 or 1497), it may be that his great
friendship with her brother Oddur was a factor in-
fluencing him.38 The whole affair is puzzling, but if we
assume that Oddur was born in 1514 and Guðrún about
1515 we are confronted with an even greater mystery,
viz. the interval of a quarter of a century between the
birth of Kristín and that of her brother and sister. I
doubt that a parallel to this circumstance can be found
in the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The last we hear of Guðrún is that, after her disgrace,
she stayed for a time in this place and that, but finally
came to live with her brother at Reykir and died there
during his lifetime.39
Unfortunately, it is not known when either Bishop
Gottskálk or Valgerður Jónsdóttir was born. We do
know, however, that Gottskálk was enrolled at the Uni-
versity of Rostock in 1482,40 and that he was a priest in
Iceland by 1487.41 He may thus have been born around