Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 28
26 GRIPLA
equates to change in society; change in society entails change in the law,
and hence, as discussed briefly above, later texts can break Icelandic history
down into the ages before and after Conversion.
However, the actual legal change reported in Íslendingabók is (rather
famously) a compromise. To maintain peace, the laws become Christian
in general but still permit the exposure of infants, eating horsemeat, and
“blóta á laun” (to sacrifice in secret) (Íslendingabók, 17). Although the
last act could be punished if witnesses were produced, on the face of it
Íslendingabók is implying that more than one siðr can co-exist within the
same law. Yet Íslendingabók immediately undermines this idea by relating
that the non-Christian practices were made entirely illegal “síðarr fám
vetrum” (a few years later). These exceptions could have been dropped
because Icelanders had learned that siðr and law could not be separated
without impeding the functioning of society, or because Christians had
grown to dominate politics enough to force through the change. Certainly,
Hallfreðr’s lausavísur demonstrate that a Christian could already view their
siðr as exclusive of non-Christian siðr in the tenth century; Hallfreðr’s text
carefully but plainly conveys that he is giving up his previous gods because
of the demands of his patron Óláfr’s Christianity.
Yet the presentation of the exceptions in Íslendingabók is curious and
hints at its own biases (on those, see Schach 1982; cf. the parallel accounts
in Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson and Foote 2003; Einar
Ól. Sveinsson 1954). Recorded over a hundred years after the Conversion,
Íslendingabók likely does not reflect the events as they occurred, least of all
in its quotations of historical speech like “ein lǫg ok einn sið”. Yet those
details may be part of a wider design that (sometimes subtly) condemns
Old Norse religion. For example, greater criminality (and shame) is at-
tached to transgressions performed in secret (Grágás 1974, 154, 162–64; cf.
Andersson 1984, 496–505). Given that, Íslendingabók says, non-Christian
sacrifice must be conducted in secret and is, practically-speaking, illegal
as it can be prosecuted, the text is casting non-Christians in the conver-
sion moment as transgressors practising a siðr that was inherently morally
compromised.
It seems, therefore, that northern Christians perceived their own siðr
as inflexible and based on social norms – and may already have done
so when Hallfreðr was composing for Óláfr – but the doubtfulness of