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67
the Apostate’s blasphemies of injustice).48 Although Edmund’s act of di-
vine justice is found in other English texts (notably John of Worcester’s
Chronicon), the comparison with St Mercurius is unique to the Miraculis
and the Icelandic texts.49 Conversely, the knowledge of Hinguar and
Hubba found in subsequent Icelandic texts cannot have derived from the
Miraculis but could have been sourced from a manuscript which paired
Hermannus’s text with Abbo’s Passio.
*
From whence, then, did Ari derive his knowledge of Ívarr’s parentage?
Rowe suggests that this information may already have been associated
with Norse legends of Ragnarr loðbrók by Ari’s time. As she points out,
Ari’s casual reference to Ragnarr assumes that the name was familiar to his
audience. Furthermore, Ari derived his own family line from a different
son of Ragnarr in the genealogy attached to Íslendingabók; indeed Ragnarr
became a major progenitor of Scandinavian royal dynasties and Icelandic
noble families in the thirteenth century.50
Ari’s knowledge of vernacular traditions is indicated by his use of
the Norse form Ívarr. This is comparable to a reference to “Ywar, filius
Lothpardi, quem ferunt ossibus caruisse” (Ywar, son of Lothpardus, who
was said to lack bones) in the Chronicon Roskildense, compiled in Denmark
in 1137/38.51 This is the first attestation of Ívarr’s nickname, beinlausi, and is
likely to reflect Norse tradition.52 Furthermore, the chronicler distinguishes
between Ywar and another son, Ingvar, who was sourced from a reference
to “Inguar, filius Lodparchi” in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis
ecclesiæ pontificum, the earliest source to express this relationship.53 The
chronicler did not recognize that Inguar was an Anglicized form of Ívarr
and so listed it alongside the name familiar from Norse legend.
48 Hermannus. De miraculis Sancti Eadmundi, Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, ed. Thomas
Arnold, 3 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1890), I:36.
49 John of Worcester, 476–77.
50 Íslendingabók; Landnámabók, 28; Rowe, Vikings in the West, 158 and 181–82.
51 Scriptores minores historiæ Danicæ medii ævi ex codicibus denvo recensvit I, ed. M. Cl. Gertz
(Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1917–18), 16.
52 Rowe, Vikings in the West, 89–90 and 160.
53 Magistri Adam Bremensis: Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. Bernhard Schmeid-
ler (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1917), 23; Rowe, Vikings in the West,
69, 89–90, and 160.
UNEARTHING ST EDMUND