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Grethe Jacobsen
son-in-law. He asked for the hånd of borgerSr, daughter of the chieftain
Egill Skallagnmsson, who received his proposal well. borgerbr, how-
ever, rejected the proposal and furiously accused her father of showing
her little esteem by accepting a proposal from the son of an Irish slave
woman. As Egill was unable to change his daughter’s mind, matters
were at a standstill - until Olåfr went to propose to Porgerbr personally.
After a day’s talk, the two came to an agreement and the betrothai was
announced. The couple married the following year, and their marriage
tumed out to be generally happy.6
The story of Melkorka and her son is well known to students of the
Icelandic sagas. Yet there has been little attempt to explain either how
typical her story is or the bias her prospective daughter-in-law exhibits.
These issues are important in dealing with the composition of the Ice-
landic population and with the ensuing social institutions. The article
proposes to show, through an analysis of the demographic data of the
Landnåmabok (the Book of Settlement), that Melkorka’s life was typ-
ical of one group of women, Celtic slave women, during the first cen-
tury of the Icelandic Republic. There is one important difference,
though. Melkorka was remembered due to the prominence of her lover
and sons. The other women were not. However, they left traces in the
physical anthropology of the Icelandic population.
The presence of a considerable Celtic element in the Icelandic popu-
lation, both medieval and modem, is not unknown to scholars. Stef-
fensen compared the various biood types and their distribution among
present-day Icelanders with those of other North European peoples and
demonstrated that a greater similarity was found with biood type pat-
tern of the Irish and Scottish population than with the other Scandin-
avian peoples.7 Examinations of the skeletal material from the Viking
period and the Middle Ages have produced similar results. It is now
generally accepted that “the Norwegian influence on the population of
Iceland is strongly overestimated in the data of the Landnåmabok.”8
This assumption finds support in one manuscript of the Landnåmabok,
which States that the book was compiled in order that the Icelanders
6 Laxdæla saga, Einar 01. Sveinsson gaf lit, Islenzk fomrit, V (Reykjavlk, 1934) chap. 23.
7 Jon Steffensen, “The Physical Anthropology of the Vikings,” The Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, 83 (1933) pp. 86-97.
8 Jon Steffensen, “Population. Island,” Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder,
vol. 13 (1968) col. 391.