Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 66

GRIPLA64
did note that the events took place in King Alfred’s twenty-first year.30
This on its own could not have allowed Ari to reconstruct the date of 870,
were he using Ælfric’s text.31 Alfred’s accession is recorded in Icelandic
annals (under the wrong year), but neither his age at that point nor his
date of birth is specified, so there is no evidence that this information was
known in Iceland.32
In the late 1090s, Hermannus the Archdeacon, a monk based at the
abbey of Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia, compiled De miraculis Sancti
Eadmundi, a list of St Edmund’s miracles. The text provides the year of
Edmund’s martyrdom but does not name his killer. Hermann Pálsson
regarded the Miraculis as a likely source for his hypothetical “Játmundar
saga.”33 Although Svend Ellehøj rejected Hermann’s saga hypothesis, he
agreed that the Miraculis were probably known to Ari.34
A reference to the martyrdom is also found in John of Worcester’s
Chronicon ex chronici, which was compiled in stages in the early twelfth
century. Despite the text’s annalistic format, its entry for the martyrdom of
St Edmund is strikingly similar to Ari’s own turn of phrase: “Eodem anno
sanctissimus ac gloriousissimus Orientalium Anglorum rex Eadmundus,
ut in sua legitur Passione, ab Inguaro rege paganissimo... martirizatus est”
(in the same year the holiest and most glorious Edmund, king of the East
Angles, was martyred by Inguar, a most heathen king, as can be read in his
passion).35 It is conceivable that Ari or an informant merely copied this
reference and did not have access to the passion itself. However, R. R.
Darlington and P. McGurk suggest that the main body of the Chronicon
was compiled between 1128 and 1131.36 Íslendingabók’s accepted dating to
30 Finlay, “Chronology,” 47.
31 At least one of Ælfric’s texts, De falsis diis, exists in an Old Norse translation, although the
date and circumstances of the translation are unclear. John Frankis, From Old English to Old
Norse: A Study of Old English Texts Translated into Old Norse with an Edition of the English
and Norse Versions of Ælfric’s De falsis diis (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Medieval
Languages and Literature, 2016), 31–45.
32 Islandske Annaler indtil 1578. Udgivne for det norske historiske Kildeskriftfond, ed. Gustav
Storm (Christiania: Grøndahl & Sons Bogtrykkeri, 1888), 13 and passim.
33 Hermann Pálsson, “Játmundar saga,” 146.
34 Ellehøj, Studier, 65.
35 The Chronicle of John of Worcester. Volume II: The Annals from 450 to 1066, eds. R. R.
Darlington and P. McGurk and trans. Jennifer Bray and P. McGurk (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995), xix and 286.
36 John of Worcester, xxxiv.