Studia Islandica - 01.06.1960, Page 48

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1460 and would then have been about sixty years old
when he died. We have no information of any kind on
the date of Valgerður’s birth. Dr. Arnórsson says that
she could well have been born in 1475.42 So might she
have been about 1465 or even 1455. It is, however, rather
odd to find Dr. Arnórsson saying that Valgerður was
born about 1475, for he has previously said that her
daughter, Kristín, was probably (sennilega) born not
long after 1490 and possibly somewhat earlier (ef til vill
heldur fyrr) ,43 If she was born in 1489 and her mother
in 1475, the latter would have been fourteen years old at
the birth of her daughter and only thirteen years old
when she became Gottskálk’s concubine. It is much more
reasonable that Valgerður was about twenty years old
when she formed her union with Gottskálk, i.e. that she
was born about 1470. If that were so and Oddur was born
in 1514, she would have been at that time forty-four years
old and forty-five or six when Guðrún was born. The
truth is, however, that we know nothing of Valgerður’s
age except that she must have been born before 1475
and was likely born five or ten years earlier.
From the above examination the following conclusions
would seem to emerge: 1) That Valgerður Jónsdóttir
was the mother of Bishop Gottskálk’s three children;
2) That Kristín was almost certainly born in 1490 or
1491; 3) That it is very likely that Oddur was born about
1496; 4) That he was brought up in Norway and may
have gone thither from Iceland in the period 1500—
1507); 5) That it is by no means impossible that Guðrún
was born about 1497—1498 and that she may have been
brought up in Norway; that her betrothal, at the age
of forty-two or three, to Bishop Gizur is a difficulty, al-
though no greater than that of the twenty-five years dif-
ference in the age between Kristín and Guðrún, assuming
that the latter was born about 1515; 6) That the evi-
dence is too fragmentary to allow one to say with cert-