Year: 2017

 Remember the doomed man thrown by his horse and crying:                       ‘Beautiful is the hillside, I will not go.’;                                                                                                   The old woman confessing: ‘He that I loved the                                                           Best, to him I was worst.’

Islands are places apart where Europe is absent.                                                        Are they? The world still is, the present, the lie,                                                                          And the arrow bridge over a torrent                                                                              Or the small farm under a crag.

– W.H. Auden (1937)

These verses by W.H. Auden reflect the reverberation of Iceland’s medieval literature into modern literary consciousness.  The “doomed man” is Gunnar, a character in Njáls Saga, who is sentenced to outlawry and told to leave Iceland or else risk being killed. He is on his way fro his homestead when his horse trips and he looks back on his land, deciding that he cannot leave after all.  This decision to stay inevitably results in his death.  The “old woman” from the verses is Gudrun, heroine of Laxdæla Saga, who marries four times over the course of her life.  Near the end of her life her son asks her which man she loved most, and she gives no name but answers with the cryptic lines quoted above.  Students of Old Norse literature have been debating whom she loved most ever since!  In fact, at a Old Norse dinner series at Notre Dame last semester, colleagues and I debated this very question!

In the years 1871-1873, the 19th century artist and writer Willam Morris visited Iceland and kept a journal of his travels. He had read Njáls Saga, and described some of the places he saw with references to the saga.  He remarks on the entry for July 13, 1871: “we cannot see now for the mist, but the rain leaves off now and the clouds life, and there is a wonderful fiery and green sunset, so stormy-looking! over Eyjafell, the great ice-topped mountain which is at the eastern end of the Njala country.”  This “Eyjafell” is none other than the infamous Eyjafjallajökull which erupted in 2010.

I fell in love with Old Icelandic literature because of the sagas; I am drawn to literature that is both beautiful and melancholy (perhaps all truly good literature is both), and I found in the Íslendingasögur much beauty, but of a distinctly dark character. Our discussions in the Icelandic summer course about the works of Halldór Laxness (a Nobel Prize in Literature recipient) so intrigued me that I purchased Sjálfstætt Folk (Independent People) first in Icelandic, and when that proved too ambitious, in English. I have just finished reading it, and I am excited to read more of the works of Laxness and other modern Icelandic writers in the future. I found in Sjálfstætt Folk an echo of the cold resolve and submission to fate which so resounds in the medieval sagas. If there is an essential spirit of Icelandic literature, it has perhaps persisted from the medieval period to the present. It is clear why many have viewed the saga tradition as an influence on Laxness’s work.

As I am beginning to wrap up my time in Iceland, I’m thinking about how I will continue to study Modern Icelandic when I return to the States.  I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made whilst here, and I don’t want to lose momentum. I hope to come back in the not-too-distant future to continue my language study.  In the meantime, I’m developing a strategy to keep me from forgetting what I have learned. While it would be quite challenging to find speakers of Icelandic nearby, I am planning on continue my language study by:

1. Corresponding in Icelandic with friends I made in the program
2. Slowly but surely reading Sjálfstætt Folk in Modern Icelandic
3. Watching a Modern Icelandic film (in Icelandic) every other week.
4. Reading Modern Icelandic aloud to practice making some of the more difficult sounds

Iceland is a country more aware of its medieval past than many- if not most- modern nations.  One cannot walk down any of the main thoroughfares in downtown Reykjavík without spotting Viking paraphernalia for sale: keychains, T-shirts, drinking horns, helmets- you name it.  But this sense of the past extends far more deeply than a desire to part willing tourists from their cash; rather, many modern Icelanders still know the stories of the settlement of Iceland starting in the 9th century, to the conversion to Christianity in 1000, to the end of the Icelandic Commonwealth in 1262.  When I told one bookseller that I was studying the Icelandic sagas as part of my PhD, he was so pleased he gave me an edition for free!  Many Icelanders are very proud of these early settlers who came to cultivate what was often an unwelcoming terrain. One of my summer course instructors told me that in the early 2000s when Iceland was enjoying what appeared to be vast economic success, the bankers and businessmen involved with Iceland’s finances were proudly hailed as the “new Vikings.” Enthusiasm for these vikings soon waned with the economic crash.

Almost the entire first floor (of two exhibit floors) of the Pjóðminjasafn Íslands (National Museum of Iceland) contains medieval artifacts from the Viking Age and post-conversion period.  Below on the left is pictured a very famous statue of (most likely) Thor, believed to be carrying his famous hammer Mjolnir before him.  While Odin was the chief of the Norse gods (known as the All Father), Thor was immensely popular and has given his name to numerous places and people.  Many Icelanders contain names with “Thor” in them today (Thorstein, Thorvald, Thord, to name a few examples).  In more recent decades, this statue of Thor has been reused in modern advertisements.  Below (on the right) it is included in an illustration with the seated figure eating licorice instead of holding the hammer.

Then and Now:

Medieval Icelanders also produced exquisitely carved decorations which often adorned churches.  These interlace patterns usually included flora and fauna, sometimes depicting human beings as well. 

With the exception of Leif Erikson, the most famous medieval Icelander is probably Snorri Sturluson, known for writing down the Norse mythological works in a collection of texts which has come to be known as the Prose Edda or Snorra Edda (The Edda of Snorri).   Below is a statue of Snorri at one of the places he lived (and was murdered in 1241): Reykholt. You can also see me pictured with a pool of water on Snorri’s property.  As it has been dated to the medieval period, Snorri may have used the pool himself.   

The Church at Bessastaðir, a place very near Reykjavík, contains a series of stained glass windows depicting the history of Christianity in Iceland. Though built in modern times, a few of these artworks depict medieval subjects. According to Landnámabók (“The Book of Settlements,” dated to around 1200) and  Íslendingabók (“The Book of the Icelanders,” dated to the early 12th century), Irish Christians (likely monks) were in Iceland before the Norsemen arrived, leaving some of their property behind.

Depicted in the stained glass window below is Thorgeir Thorkelsson, the Law-Speaker of the Althing (Iceland’s governing body) at the time of the conversion around the year 1000.  Though a pagan himself, he decided that the country should become nominally Christian in order to avid conflict; however, he said that pagans could continue their practices in private.

In addition to depictions of medieval people in modern art, there are numerous saga museums in Iceland where visitors can see the sites of saga narratives and learn more about Iceland’s history.  Many places in Iceland bear the same names they did in the medieval period, and so the events of the sagas can be carefully traced.  You can even go on a saga tour!