Icelandic Folklore and the Cultural Memory of Religious Change

Front matter

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ICELANDIC FOLKLORE AND THE CULTURAL MEMORY OF RELIGIOUS CHANGE

Contents

Chapter 1. The Dead Bridegroom Carries Off His Bride: Pejoration and Adjacency Pairs in ATU 365. 23.22.2203. áa sana een ha he aa RR Rr Red 23

Chapter 2. The Elf Woman's Conversion: Memories of Gender and Gender Spheresus vosio adde o due ias eod draco veau 45

Chapter 3. The Fylgjur of Iceland: Attendant Spirits and a Distorted Sense of Guardianship asian Rer Rex Re wh eee 67

Preface

THERE IS SOMETHING inherently offensive about the study of folklore. Inevitably, the student of folklore becomes either an imposter, an opportunist, or (most often) both, because they presume to project objectivity upon something that was never meant to be objectified. The search for such objectivity, further, is an endeavour doomed from the start. Folk stories, as one part of folklore, can never be objectified in the way the student would hope; the folk story is the action being done, not an object upon which something is done. Once itbecomes the object, it ceases to be folklore. Scholars normally call this kind of agency performance, yet when it is objectified, the performance must be torn from both the performers of the action—the storytellers, the singers, the dancers, the actors—and the recipients ofthe action—the hearers, the audience, the cultural life in which the folklore acts. Nor is it enough for the student of folklore to remain quiet and still and allow the story to speak for itself, without interruption or analytical lens, because it is not possible to hear or read any story without also becoming a participant in it. The human mind will always participate in the story being told. This much, at least, we know for sure. The best the student of folklore can hope for, perhaps, is to participate in a specific way: by telling the story ... and then by telling the story of the story. This volume represents an effort to participate thus in five of the greatest stories ever told in the northern world.

This book attempts to understand the origins and development of religious belief in Iceland and greater Scandinavia through the lenses of five carefully selected Icelandic folktales collected in Iceland during the nineteenth century. Each of these five stories has a story of its own: a historical and cultural context, a literary legacy, influences from beliefs of all kinds (orthodox and heterodox, elite orlay), and modalities (oral or written) by which the story was told. These factors leave an imprint—sometimes discernable, sometimes not—upon the story, and when that imprint is readable, the legacies and influences upon these stories come alive to illuminate a tapestry of cultural memory (that is, a society's perception of itself, its past, and its prospects for the future) and cultural development that might otherwise be hidden from the reader's eyes. So much is the aim ofthis book: to tell the story of five great stories.

It remains only to be added that I hope any ofthe offences that inevitably accompany a study of folklore will here be forgiven by virtue of the deep appreciation and wonder I hold for these (and all) Icelandic folktales, and for the people and the land from which they come.

Eric Shane Bryan Saint Louis, Missouri February 14, 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I HAVE ACCRUED many debts during the course of writing this book. I must first thank professors Thomas A. Shippey and Paul Acker for their encouragement and correction of the earliest version of this book. I am also deeply indebted to Professor Terry Gunnell at the University of Iceland, who was a wonderful mentor during my time as a Fulbright researcher and who has continued to be a source of support, encouragement, and friendship throughout this entire process. I also offer very special thanks to Professor Shaun F. D. Hughes for his encouragement even at the earliest stages of this project and for his willingness to review the final version of this book. His keen eye has saved me from more embarrassing mistakes than I care to count. Í am also grateful to Gísli Sigurósson, Ármann Jakobsson, Simon Bronner, and Anne Cotterill—all of whom read drafts of various chapters of this work and offered both encouragement and correction where needed—and to Margaret Cormack, who was always willing to discuss ideas related to this work. Special thanks to Bruce Smith, who has been a careful reader and source of constant encouragement for this and many other endeavours. I also extend my gratitude to the Fulbright Program, which gave me my first opportunity to travel and study in Iceland, as well as the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the College of Arts, Sciences, and Business at Missouri University of Science and Technology, and the Missouri Research Board, for granting financial support for travel and study in Iceland. I offer special thanks to the Árni Magnüsson Institute in Iceland, as well as to the many kind and generous scholars there who permitted me to study alongside them at various times from 2005 to the present. I am also very grateful to Robert Bjork, Anna Henderson, and the other editors at Arc Humanities Press for their tireless efforts during the review and editorial process. Thanks also to my department chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Kristine Swenson, who permitted me to run off to Iceland on various research trips whenever I could find the time and money. Last and most important, thanks to my family—my beloved wife, Emily; my son, Everett; and my daughters Bryndís (who was born in Iceland on one of my research trips) and Adelaide—for their love, support, and patience throughout the writing of this book.

INTRODUCTION: STORIES, MEMORIES, AND MECHANISMS OF BELIEF

Cultural Memory and the Development of Belief

This book traces the origins and development of five post-Reformation Icelandic folktales in an attempt to understand cultural memories of Christianization and Reformation in Iceland and elsewhere in the North. While the study of cultural memory has in recent years become a keen interest for scholars of the medieval North! relatively little attention has been given to the cultural memory of the post-medieval period, and even less consideration has been given to what post-medieval folk stories might contribute to memory studies? The present book seeks to fill that gap by drawing connections between Icelandic folktales collected during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—with special attention given to Jón Árnason's vast collection of tales published in 1862 and 1864—and their earlier counterparts in Old Norse- Icelandic sagas and Eddic poetry. The five Icelandic folktales that anchor the following chapters were selected because they meet criteria that set them apart as especially useful lenses through with to view the diachronic developments of cultural memory in Iceland: (1) each tale has deep and discernible roots in literary history, folkloristic development, and theological undercurrents not only in Iceland but throughout Scandinavia; (2) each displays a distinct concern for one of five fundamental aspects of religious belief (respectively, death and mourning, gender, supernatural attendance, sacred spaces, and the renewal of self); and (3) the development of each tale shows evidence of a demonstrable transformation over time of how those fundamental aspects of belief are perceived within cultural memory. Since discernible vectors can

| For some important examples, see Sverrir Jakobsson, "Conversion and Cultural Memory in Medieval Iceland," Church History 88 (2019): 1-26; Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018); Minni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture, ed. Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014); and "Memory and Remembering: Past Awareness in the Medieval North," ed. Pernille Hermann and Stephen A. Mitchell, special issue, Scandinavian Studies 85, no. 3 (2013).

2 Important exceptions to this rule are Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir's "Cultural Memory and Gender in Iceland from Medieval to Early Modern Times,' Scandinavian Studies 85 (2013): 378-99; Sofie Vanherpen's "Remembering Auór/Unnr djüp(a)uóga Ketilsdóttir: Construction of Cultural Memory and Female Religious Identity,” Mirator 14 (2013): 61-78; and my "Prospective Memory of Death and the Afterlife,” Neophilologus 103 (2019): 543-60.

be articulated from these tales backwards into literary history and cultural memories of the past? they illuminate the development of Icelandic cultural memory from the medieval to the post-medieval period, for, as will be argued in the following pages of this book, folktales do not change without purpose; they rather transform in response to the cultural, religious, and interpersonal influences around them. These narratives can therefore reveal elements of a society's cultural development that would otherwise go unnoticed if one looks only at more traditionally conceived historical evidence.

More specifically, viewing Icelandic cultural memory through the lens of folklore helps illuminate some of the most significant and long-standing questions regarding the relationship between the beliefs of the lay person and the doctrines of orthodoxy: How close are the beliefs of the lay person to the doctrines of the Church? What is the relationship between post-conversion Christian (and, later, post-Reformation Lutheran) beliefs and the pre-Christian pagan beliefs of the medieval North? And, finally, How accurately do later, post-conversion (or post-Reformation) folk narratives represent the convictions and beliefs of those persons outside the realm of the elite (literate) classes? As Stephen A. Mitchell recently stated, "Folklore and ‘memory’ (in all its different varieties) are largely inseparable, even, one might say, helpmates." As helpmates to memory, then, the five stories (and the corresponding aspects of belief) that anchor the following chapters allow for a comparative, diachronic assessment of the developing cultural memory of belief in Iceland. The following assessment of these five anchor narratives proceeds by considering them on three axes: (1) connections with international folktale types and motifs; (2) connections with theological and historical events that occurred in Iceland and beyond as the region experienced Christianization and Reformation; and (3) connections to the literature and poetry of the Old Norse/medieval Icelandic world. An assessment along these three axes enables a test of the hypothesis that, while it may reasonably be expected that fringe and heterodox beliefs as represented in these folktales would be an attempt to undermine or outright reject established religious institutions, these indications of heterodoxy instead reflect an inclination to create a unified belief system that incorporates both the institutional (i.e., Christian) religious doctrine and the native landscape of belief.

The specific outcomes of this assessment and how they relate to the above hypothesis will be borne out in the subsequent chapters of this book. The remainder

3 Gísli Sigurðsson takes up a similar perspective in consideration of the value of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, whose composition (it may be added here) has a similar makeup as might be observable in a later collection of folktales. See Gísli Sigurósson, "Past Awareness in Christian Environments: Source-Critical Ideas about Memories of the Pagan Past," Scandinavian Studies 85 (2013): 400-10 (especially 408-10).

4 Stephen A. Mitchell, “Folklore Studies," in Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 1:101. See also Mitchell's "Orality and Oral Theory, in Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 1:120-31.

of this introductory chapter will be dedicated to establishing the scope and scholarly context for the following chapters, particularly regarding three key factors: a framework for cultural memory and its application to Old Norse-Icelandic studies, a brief outline of Reformation history and theology relevant to post- Reformation folk narratives, and consideration of the folklore sources that make up the heart of this study.

Cultural Memory in Iceland and Abroad

The question of a tension between lay and ecclesial beliefs throughout these religious developments has long been a point of contention amongst scholars. In the broader context of medieval and early modern Europe, scholars have been divided on the question of how closely the beliefs and cultural views of the elite aligned with those of the masses. Some scholars, on the one hand, argue for a stark differentiation between a clerical elite and a much larger "folk" culture? while others vigorously reject the notion of a conflictive polarity between two cultures, arguing that the sources that would support such a polarity are in fact scarce and that many more reflect a culture struggling to understand Christianity rather than oppose it.? Recently, Richard Firth Green has argued for a "state of hostility, or at least deep suspicion, existing between representatives of the great tradition [of the educated few] and those espousing such aspects of the little tradition [of the uneducated masses] as a belief in fairies.” In fact, argues Green, "vernacular culture (that is to say, the culture of the little tradition) was far from having lost its power to resist in the Middle Ages despite the church's having stepped up its campaign against it"? The present study of Icelandic folklore bears relevance on this debate, which has been ongoing for several decades,? because

5 Conceptually, at least, this historical anthropological approach is not inherently partisan on the issue of elite versus folk beliefs, but suggests that historiography can benefit from applying methodologies from the fields of anthropology, art history, literature, and folkloristics.

6 This view is chiefly represented in John Van Engen's essay "The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem," American Historical Review 91 (1986): 519-52, which outlines the origins and development of the issue. See also Alexander Murray, "Confession as a Historical Source in the Thirteenth Century, in The Writing of History: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 275-322.

7 Richard Firth Green, Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 50. Green aims to nuance the notion of a high and low culture, or, as Peter Burke puts it, the "great" and "little" traditions. See Green, Elf Queens, 42-51, for more on this discussion.

8 Green, Elf Queens, 49.

9 For an appraisal of the relationship between this approach and Nordic memory studies, see Bjørn Bandlien, “History,” in Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018), 1:303-317 (304-5), but note that Norse proponents of the Schmitt/Le Goff perspective rarely acknowledge the reservations registered by Van Engen, "The Christian Middle Ages,” and others noted in footnote 6 above.

of the persistent question of whether medieval and post-medieval Icelandic folklore may be indicative of—if not pre-Christian then at least—heterodox Icelandic beliefs. Jean-Claude Schmitt's enticing reference to "the complex makeup of medieval culture," and "the heritage that gave birth to it: the legacies of Greco-Roman paganism ... or the 'barbarian' legacies that were brought back through the migrations of Germanic peoples and that were integrated into Christendom during the first millennium"? may be an exciting prospect, but as John Van Engen has demonstrated, it is nearly impossible to show evidence ofthe kind of definitive historical connections between paganism and Christianity alluded to by Schmitt."

The study of cultural memory has provided some useful new tools to the problem, largely due to its recognition of diverse modalities of transmitting cultural memories, along with the notion of an internal/external context for those memories. Early on, James Fentress and Chris Wickham emphasized the transmissible quality of “social memory? to use their terminology, saying that in order for a memory to be “social,” it must have some modality by which it can be felicitously distributed throughout a society. Both narrative and visual modalities function as viable means of such transmission, but in both cases the memory conveyed (rather than the medium of transmission) must remain the central subject of study." To understand the modality of transmission, Fentress and Wickham envisioned an internal and external context in which cultural memory might be transmitted. The external context depends upon a specific social environment and therefore upon those cultural phenomena which are meaningful to a particular society at a particular time. The internal context, which depends more heavily upon imagery and thematic coherence, tends to remain free of a specific social context.

For instance, one noteworthy site of the internal/external contexts of Icelandic cultural memories may be found in Ari Porgilsson’s (1068-1148) well-known deference to bishops Þorlákur and Ketill and the priest Sæmundur fróði (the wise) at the start of Íslendingabók (The Book of the Icelanders). As Sian Grgnlie points out, though Íslendingabók may be called history by genre, "Ari creates a myth of origins for the

10 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

II Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages,” 532.

12 For an effective discussion of the relationships between schools of social/cultural memory, see Alan Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,’ in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, ed. Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 1-24.

13 See especially chapter 2 of James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory: New Perspectives on the Past (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 41-86.

14 See Carole L. Crumley, “Exploring Venues of Social Memory,’ in Social Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2002), 39-52, for more on ways of understanding the different media (venues) of cultural memory.

15 Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, 72. Fentress and Wickham employ an analysis of epic narratives and what they call “fairy tales” to exemplify their distinctions. See below for my discussion of genre, however.

Icelanders involving migration over the sea and settlement in a ‘promised’ land."'“ Presuming this "myth of origins" was taken up by the Icelandic people, it would have been woven into the tapestry of the Icelandic cultural memory and carried forward through various means, and not just historical sources, like Ari's, but through a variety of modes of communication and memory. While it may be difficult to verify definitively that Ari's view of early Icelandic history is accurate, he is clearly concerned with (at least the appearance of) accuracy, for he refers to what would amount to the intellectual elite of Iceland at the time in the persons of Þorlákur, Ketill, and Sæmundur. All three were well known for their wisdom and learning and thus constitute an appeal to an external context for the cultural memory Ari means to communicate. Notably, even historians outside of Iceland during Ari's time took notice ofthe care Icelanders had for history. Ármann Jakobsson notes that the great medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus (ca. 1160-1220) acknowledged Icelandic historians for their ability.!? Saxo says he has "scrutinized [Icelanders'] store of historical treasures and composed a considerable part of [his] present work by copying their narratives, not scorning, where I recognized such skill in ancient lore, to take these men as witnesses."? This acumen for composing and preserving "historical treasures" and "ancient lore" does not necessarily imply that Icelandic histories are more accurate than others (as Saxo seems to deduce), yet it cannot be denied that Icelanders, from the earliest recorded writings about themselves, especially valued the very types of stories and sense of self that make a study of cultural memory possible. Ari's appeal to authority in his preface to Íslendingabók also represents an attempt to establish a connection with the external context in Iceland, specifically, as he aims to gain the approval of those considered wise in the country. Sverrir Tómasson has pointed out that Ari's appeal to church authority and his pursuit of accuracy reflect a common medieval topos evident in many such historical writings outside Iceland.? Even though they are derived from outside Iceland, these

16 Sian Grønlie, “Introduction,” in Íslendingabók = Kristni Saga (The Book of the Icelanders = The Story of Conversion), trans. Sian Grgnlie (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2006), xxv. See also Stephen A. Mitchell's "The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Gotland,” in Minni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture, ed. Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 155-74.

17 These must be Þorlákur Runólfsson, bishop of Skálholt (1118-1133) and Ketill Þorsteinsson, bishop of Hólar (1122-1145). Sæmundur inn fróði (the wise) was a priest at Oddi, in southern Iceland, who was well known for his learnedness and wisdom. He became an important figure in history and lore, and would feature in the story entitled "The Stupid Boy and the Devil," discussed in chapter 5, below.

18 See Ármann Jakobsson, A Sense of Belonging: Morkinskinna and Icelandic Identity, c. 1220, trans. Fredrik Heinemann (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2014), 287.

19 Saxo Grammaticus, The Histories of the Danes, Books I-IX, ed. Hilda Ellis Davidson, trans. Peter Fisher (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), 5.

20 Sverrir Tómasson, Formálar íslenskra sagnaritara á miðöldum, Rannsókn bókmenntahefðar, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, Rit 33 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1988), 155-57. Sián Grgnlie directs readers to this work in n. 4 of her translation of Íslendingabók.

topoi represent an internal context that remains free of any dependence upon the immediate external context localized in Iceland. The presence of such topoi not only indicates the author's concern with literary custom of the day (one modality of cultural memory), but it also speaks to a concern with the ethos with which his expressly Icelandic audience will receive his work. For the same reasons that modern scholars include footnotes and page references, Ari gives deference to the intellectual standards of his day. Despite Sverrir Tómasson's keen observations, if Ari were seeking to impress an international audience, he would have almost certainly written in Latin, and he would certainly have done much more to couch the Icelandic story within the context of global Christian missionary initiatives rather than the local?! In other words, the appeal to an international topos represents an internal context, but the manner in which he applies that topos (via a localized appeal to Icelandic figures) represents an external context. Both in this instance and in more general terms, this type of interdependence upon internal and external context results in a close relationship between the communicator ofthe cultural memory (be they saga writer, oral storyteller, or historian) and the audience. No doubt, as Gísli Sigurósson recently stated, "The tellers and writers of stories about the past shape the ideas of their audiences and readers about what happened, how it happened, and why it happened,"?? yet the authors of such stories (or histories, in the case of Ari) must also gain and sustain the respect of their audience in order to articulate such performative acts as Gísli describes.?

Fentress and Wickham's presentation of internal and external contexts also illuminates one of the most important attributes of cultural memory: malleability. Cultural memories are often constructed or reconstructed decades or even centuries after the events they purport to recall, and their shaping is influenced by all manner of contemporary forces, whether political, religious, or other cultural currents. The reasons why a particular society might permit or even encourage the shaping or reshaping of certain aspects of its cultural memories offer a good opportunity for an analysis of cultural development. A study of cultural memory acknowledges a reciprocal relationship between memory and the external cultural and historical context from which it draws its vitality, yet it does not depend wholly upon that relationship for its textual analysis; it also asserts itself upon that context. This allows for the presence of cultural differences to be indicated by a study of cultural memory without the need for claiming something on a historical level. In short, cultural memory is not history, and a

21 See Grgnlie, “Introduction,” xxv-xxvi for a useful defence of this point.

22 Gísli Sigurðsson, "Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliance with King Haraldr Hárfagri“ in Minni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture, ed. Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 175-96 at 175.

23 See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 14-15, where Austin discusses the need for performatives to meet certain felicity conditions, without which a performative would not be valid.

study of cultural memory is not historiography. Cultural memory is rather an image of history preserved, accurately or not and by various modalities” of the transmission of meaning, within a culture. Sverrir Jakobsson has recently explored these characteristics of cultural memory with respect to Old Norse-Icelandic historical narratives about the conversion and Christianization of Iceland. Sverrir suggests that the Old Norse-Icelandic histories of conversion in Iceland are concerned not only with the establishment of church institutions and authority but "also with the development of Christian identity in Iceland and the question of whether this new religion should be an elitist endeavor connected with a limited group of people or it implied a genuine conversion of the masses." Sverrir concludes that while the earlier accounts of conversion attribute the change in religion to an individual or a few people, subsequent accounts became increasingly inclusive until conversion was represented in the latest versions as a nationwide phenomenon, including both the elite and humble.?*

Iceland's conversion from paganism to Christianity? would clearly have been an especially important part of the cultural memory. This period marked a time when writing became an increasingly significant medium for narrative transmission,

24 Recently, Old Norse scholars Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir have taken up this notion (though they use their own terminology) of the various modalities of conveying meaning. These scholars seek to understand premodern Nordic memory from a variety of frameworks and genres: myth, history, poetry, and saga are all considered, such that their work perceives how memory is shaped, how it functions, and how is depicted in medieval Icelandic and Nordic culture. Their volume, Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies, referenced several times in this Introduction, brings together a wide array of interdisciplinary approaches to the conception of memory, cultural and otherwise, in the medieval North. While memory studies do not oppose historical approaches, they pursue a different objective than does historiography. Whereas historiography seeks an account of events as they happened, memory studies pursue an understanding of how events are remembered. A review of this expansive two-volume reference work would be impossible here, but, as the foreword to the first volume states, the goal of the study is to "scrutinise the ways in which memory, remembrance, commemoration, and other forms of anamnesis (at individual, collective, and cultural levels) mattered to pre-modern Nordic cultures" (Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies, 1:xvii). This volume will be of great use to scholars of memory in the medieval North. Of special value may be the second volume, which includes a wealth of interesting primary texts and images relevant to memory studies: Minni and Muninn.

25 Sverrir Jakobsson, "Conversion and Cultural Memory,’ 2. 26 Sverrir Jakobsson, "Conversion and Cultural Memory, 26.

27 The conversion and Christianization of Iceland have been thoroughly discussed in scholarship and requires no further scrutiny here. Aspects of conversion and Christianization relevant to the content of the following chapters will be addressed where appropriate. For the most accessible discussion of conversion and Christianization, see Orri Vésteinsson, The Christianization of Iceland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a broader Scandinavian context, see Anders Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe (New Haven: Yale, 2012); for a discussion of sources relevant to conversion, see Sián Duke, “Kristni Saga and Its Sources: Some Revaluations,’ Saga Book 25 (2001): 346-66. Further discussion of Reformation and Lutheranization is given below.

but oral transmission remained vital to the communication of cultural memory? Christianization was in full swing in Iceland by 1100, and it obviously had a tremendous impact on how and whether various pre-Christian folk beliefs persisted, due both to the increasing emphasis on written sources and the cultural dissemination of Christian doctrine and worldview. It is during this period (roughly 1100-1400) that many of the greatest of the early Icelandic family sagas and histories were composed. These remembrances and reinventions contain much about the pre-Christian past, but it must always be remembered that these sources contribute to the cultural memory of the time in which they were authored rather than the time of the narrative events.?? To name just one example, the fourteenth-century short tale from Flateyjarbók entitled Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls,” which narrates several supernatural competitions between Norse paganism and Christianity during the time of conversion, tells us more reliably about the cultural memory of the fourteenth century than about beliefs or events of the conversion period?! Nevertheless, by viewing these earlier sources as precursors to the post-medieval sources discussed here, a diachronic image of the development of cultural memory in Iceland begins to come into focus.??

To complicate matters further, history as we know it today has only been around since the invention of writing or, in societies that accepted the technology of writing much later, since the introduction of that technology to their society.*? Oral societies sustained a sense of their collective pasts, presents, and prospects for the future long before the introduction of written histories. In fact, Jan Assmann has posited, contrary to expectations of the modern (literate) world, that oral societies do a better job of preserving cultural remembrances than literate societies. In oral cultures, says Assmann,

28 I will say little about the folkloric elements of this era here, but see Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, The Folk-Stories of Iceland, rev. Einar G. Pétursson and trans. Benedikt Benedikz, ed. Anthony Faulkes, Viking Society for Northern Research, Text Series 16 (London: Viking Society, 2003), especially 71, as well as the work of Merrill Kaplan cited below in footnote 30. For a comprehensive overview of memory studies in Old Norse-Icelandic sources, see Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies.

29 See, for example, Jesse L. Byock, "Social Memory and the Sagas: The Case of Egils Saga, Scandinavian Studies 76 (2004): 299-316; Jesse L. Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogue with the Viking Age (Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1998); and, from a more historiographical perspective, see Sverre Bagge, "The Making of a Missionary King: The Medieval Accounts of Olaf Tryggvason and the Conversion of Norway,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology 105 (2006): 473-513.