Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 168

166 GRIPLA
Influence from this first generation is observable elsewhere in Old
Norse literature, for example in Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar from
around the middle of the thirteenth century. The saga relates the life and
violent death of Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson (ca. 1166–1213), a powerful chief-
tain in the Western-fjords, who supported Bishop Guðmundr Arason of
Hólar (1203–1237) and undertook a pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine. The
saga’s description of Hrafn’s death reveals the influence of the martyrdom
of Thomas Becket, as depicted in his Life by Robert of Cricklade.93
Arngrímur Brandsson (d. 1361) represents the third generation. This
priest and abbot of Þingeyrar (from 1350) used St Thomas as the primary
exemplar in his saga about Bishop Guðmundr Arason (Guðmundar saga D)
and, as Stefán Karlsson has shown, he likely composed the youngest of the
Becket compilations (Thómas saga III).94
Stefán Karlsson identifies Jón Holt (d. 1302) as representative of
the second and middle generation. This priest, who may have been of
Norwegian origin, translated Quadriologus, a composite text of ear-
ly Becket biographies. It is easy to link Jón Holt’s project with Árni
Þorláksson’s agenda of libertas ecclesiae. In Árna saga biskups, Jón is argu-
ably the bishop’s most trusted supporter and sometime advisor. Priest Jón
Holt first appears in 1284 when he is displaced from his rich church farm
of Hítardalur in Western Iceland where, the saga claims, he had lived for
nearly four decades.95 Later, compensating for Jón’s loss turns into one of
the more protracted wrangles between Árni and Hrafn. Near the end of
the saga, we find Jón Holt presenting the Church’s case before the king
and archbishop.96
I argue that the impact of this second generation, writing in the early
part of the fourteenth century, is also observable in Magnúss saga lengri.
The arrival of Magnús’ relics in 1298 in Skálholt would have enhanced any
interest in the Orkney martyr. An existing, yet hardly popular, cult could
now be reformulated and in a sense relaunched. From this fermentation
came Magnúss saga lengri, a text that highlights Robert’s Latin Life of St
A (Copenhagen: Reitzels 1983), 139.
93 Guðrún P. Helgadóttir, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987), lxi–lxxiii.
94 Marlene Ciklamini, ‘The Hand of Revision: Abbot Arngrímr’s Redaction of Guðmundar
Saga Biskups’, Gripla 8 (1993): 231–252.
95 Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir (ed.), 119.
96 Ibid., 195.