Gripla - 2022, Page 197

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miscellany span the sections designated A, B and D above (see 1.3) as well
as one of the texts in the lower margin of 1v; if those sections do indeed
correspond to the marginalia of four separate law-books, the simplest ex-
planation for both Gissur and Gottskálk having access to them is that they
were all in Þorvarður’s library.
A chronological curiosity
Item 70 states that St Óláfr died 1,023 years after the incarnation, an unu-
sual date and one at odds with the general consensus; furthermore, not one
easily arrived at by a misreading or slip of the pen. Although dates other
than 1030 do crop up in some Norwegian sources, 1023 is not among
them: Theodoricus monachus and Ágrip give 1029, the Passio et miracula
beati Olavi gives 1028, and the Old Norwegian Homily Book gives 1024.
Either of the latter two dates could readily lead to 1023 by the omission of
a u or an i respectively. However, as David and Ian McDougall observe in
the notes to their translation of Theodoricus monachus, all of the Icelandic
sources to give a date for Óláfr’s death agree on 1030.20 This explanation,
then, would rely not just on a misreading but on a misreading of a dating
otherwise unexampled in Icelandic historiography.
The second, more plausible, possibility is that 1023 was intended, and
that it derives from the calendar of Gerlandus the computist. Gerlandus
dated Christ’s birth to the year 8 according to the preceding (and our)
chronology; accordingly, our 1030 would be 1,023 years after the incarna-
tion. This would be a very satisfying conclusion, except that Gerlandus’
chronology, having been current in Iceland since perhaps the middle of the
twelfth century, appears to have been falling out of use by the mid-to-late
thirteenth century – for instance, Sturla Þorðarson, writing Hákonar saga
Hákonarson in 1264–65, uses the current chronology.21 Jónsbók, mean-
while, was first promulgated in 1281. The likeliest explanation is thus that
this date was copied from annalistic material in an older manuscript – but
20 Theodoricus monachus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium. An Account of the
Ancient History of the Norwegian Kings, Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 9,
trans. and annotated by David and Ian McDougall (London: Viking Society for Northern
Research, 1998), 88–89.
21 Ólafía Einarsdóttir, Studier i kronologisk metode i tidlig islandsk historieskrivning, Bibliotheca
Historica Lundensis 13 (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1964), 140.
“EX MARGINIBUS”