Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 20

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in the native language22. In Iceland we find the same tendency in the
FostbroeSra saga, as has been pointed out above.
The Church bad acquired great wealth, and was in a position to send
students abroad to study in France and England, but it was also able to
secure good and experienced teachers, at least for the cathedral schools,
and, as in schools elsewhere in Europe, the teaching of Latin and philo-
sophy, through the medium of the trivium, was the aim of this instruction.
It had become necessary for members of the old class of lendir menn,
barons, to transact some of their business in writing, both as officials of
the Crown and as great landowners, and to a certain extent as merchants
as well, and at the beginning of the 13th century we find the future King
at school in Trondheim. The kings, in faet, consciously lead the way; King
Sverrir, the usurper, had been educated as a priest, and all his descendants
were men of taste and culture. Thus the new rhetorical style appears in
a period when the upper classes were becoming interested in literature, and
this can scarcely be an accident. To an audience of noblemen who had
learnt some Latin and were probably eager to appear as well educated as
their contemporaries in England and France, and still more, to the really
well-read clergy of the cathedral cities, a literature consisting of sermons
written to instruct a half-pagan people ignorant of the literary conventions
of European culture was no longer adequate. The Ågrip is the first
attempt, as far as we know, to create a secular literature, written in a
language that would appeal to this educated minority.
But in the long run, translations of religious and philosophical works
were not sufficient to satisfy the cultural ambitions of educated laymen.
The King and his court had close connections with England and the
English court; embassies crossed and recrossed the North Sea with letters
and gifts between King John and King Sverrir and his successors, and
during the reigns of King Hakon and Henry III, the relations between
the courts of Norway and England grew even more cordial23. The Nor-
wegians who visited the court of King John must have been well aware of
** Rhetorical devices like alliteration and rhytmical prose are used in some prob-
ably 12th century translations as well, cp. D. A. Seip: En norsk oversettelse av
Prosper fra 12. hundreår, Maal og Minne 1943 pp. 104-136, especially pp. 116—
120.
25 A survey of the relations between Norway and England in the Middle Ages is
given in H. G. Leach’s book: Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, Cambridge, Mass.
1921, particularly on pp. 36-72.
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