Iceland was settled in the late ninth and early tenth centuries by mainly Norwegian
Vikings, with a fair number of Irish wives, slaves and servants. For a good two hundred
years after that, Icelanders still seem to have felt that they were part of Norway;
for example, around 1030, a treaty was signed establishing an affiliation between
the Icelandic people and the Kingdom of Norway, giving Icelanders privileges in Norway
and vice versa (Hastrup 1984 243). Up and coming young men—at least those in the
sagas—would pay a visit to the court
of Norway and hope to be well received. Most of the skalds at the Norwegian courts
seem to have been Icelandic too. Norway was Iceland’s main trading partner, and, when
Icelanders first started to write history, they recorded the history of Norwegian
kings.
By the twelfth century, however, relations had started to deteriorate. In fact, they
had deteriorated so much that in 1173-74 the bishop elect could not go to Norway to
be consecrated because of open hostility between the two countries (BS I 52).
But even before that, Icelanders had started to look upon themselves as distinct from
Norwegians. This feeling of separateness manifested itself in the writings of the
time (Karlsson 64): in the First Grammatical Treatise, a discussion of how to adapt the Latin alphabet to the Icelandic language; in the
Íslendingabók and the Landnámabók, accounts of the settlement of Iceland; in Hungrváka [“Hunger-Waker” or “Appetizer”], a little book containing short biographies of the first five Bishops of the See
of Skálaholt, the first diocese to be created in Iceland (BS I 1-31). Gunnarr Karlsson even suggests that the accounts in the Sagas of Icelanders
of men
going to Iceland to escape the tyranny of the king of Norway might be related to this
new sense of national identity (65).
With national identity came a desire for a national saint. Since the monks Oddr and
Gunnlaugr from the monastery of Þingeyrar both wrote Latin biographies of King Óláfr
Tryggvason in the middle of the twelfth century, Lars Lönnroth has suggested that
they may have been trying to promote the king responsible for the conversion of their
country to Christianity to compete with Norway’s St. Óláfr (17). E.O.G. Turville-Petre,
on the other hand, believes “the need for a patron saint could not be satisfied by
this Norwegian Viking, however
intimate his relations with the Icelanders” (196). Jón Johannesson suggests more
mercenary reasons: “But sooner or later the bishops were bound to realize how advantageous
it would be
for their Sees to have native saints to whom people could make their offerings” (190).
Óláfr Tryggvason did, however, have one advantage over Icelandic-born saints: he was
an Adelheilige, a member of a royal family who used his or her wealth and power in the service of
religion, and Adelheiligen were the most popular type of saint in Europe in the late
twelfth century.
However, there was one great disadvantage, besides his nationality, to having Óláfr
Tryggvason as the patron of Iceland: he had disappeared after the Battle of Svold
and his body had never been found, making it impossible to translate his bones and
difficult to do any of the other things necessary for the establishment of a cult,
such as constructing a shrine for the body, or providing primary relics, such as bones,
for the faithful. It is not altogether surprising that the cult of Óláfr Tryggvason
failed to produce any miracles.
Although Adelheiligen remained popular on the continent of Europe, a different type
of saint had started
to emerge in twelfth-century England: the bishop whose function was that of a critic
rather than an upholder of royal power; the murdered Thomas Becket, a staunch defender
of the rights of the church, would be an example (Wilson 34-35). Then, as the twelfth
century gave way to the thirteenth and more saints’ lives came
to be written in the vernacular, there was less interest in royal and high-born saints
and more in familiar and contemporary figures.
Iceland’s three saints—or saints aspirant—reflect these three tendencies. Þorlákr
Þórhallsson, since 1984 the official patron of Iceland, is a type of the bishop who
defended the Church against the encroachments of the secular authorities—only in this
case it was the Church that was doing the encroaching. Jón Ögmundarson (Bishop of
Hólar from 1106 to 1121), whose canonization by the Althing has not been ratified
by Rome, is portrayed to a certain extent as an Adelheilige. Guðmundr Árason (Bishop
of Hólar from 1203 to 1237), who has not been canonized
at all, was very much the “people’s saint.”
Þorlákr Þórhallsson, who was Bishop of Skálaholt from 1176 to 1193, was both a likely
and an unlikely candidate for canonization. From the Church’s point of view, he was
an excellent choice, for he had insisted on high moral standards and defended the
Church’s rights against secular encroachment. On the other hand, such attitudes were
not likely to have endeared him to lay chieftains (goðar), who made up the bulk of those who voted at the Althing.
Þorlákr came from a well-born but impoverished family. His personal life was beyond
reproach. Unlike most Icelandic bishops, he neither married nor produced illegitimate
children.
In fact, according to his biographer, he turned away from the widow he had been contemplating
because of a dream he had in which a heavenly messenger promised him a more worthy
bride (BS I 42-43).
He seems to have been very intelligent; he reputedly memorized the psalter as a young
child, and he was ordained at the early age of eighteen. He must have been careful
with money: according to his biographer, after serving as a parish priest for a few
years, he managed to save up enough to go abroad to study in Paris and Lincoln for
six years.
After he returned to Iceland, he became an abbot, and it was only with great reluctance
that he agreed to leave the cloister when Bishop Klœngr chose him as his successor.
As a bishop, he managed his income wisely, putting the diocese back on its feet after
Klœngr’s extravagance, and his choice of administrators was judicious. He was not
afraid to stand up to powerful chieftains in matters of jurisdiction over churches
or sexual morality. He discouraged divorce and used money from fines levied for immorality
to try to keep poor couples together, inspired perhaps by his own parents’ separation
after they got into debt. From the Oddaverja þáttr, we know that he tried to dissolve marriages contracted within forbidden degrees
of kindred, and he even tried to separate his sister Ragnheiðr from her long-time
lover, the powerful chieftain Jón Loptsson.
Þorlákr and Jón Loptsson came into conflict first over the jurisdiction of churches.
Jón refused to give up his rights to the church on his land and incited other landowners
to do the same. This was actually a case of ecclesiastical encroachment. Until 1190
there had been little separation between church and state in Iceland. Secular chieftains
(goðar) were educated in Church schools, and most of them were ordained. They also
owned
the churches which stood on their lands, and either officiated in them themselves,
or appointed a priest as chaplain. As a result, a large part of the tithes paid to
the Church came back to them. Then a law was passed in 1190, forbidding chieftains
to be in holy orders. At the same time, Archbishop Eysteinn in Norway claimed that
the Church should have jurisdiction over churches no matter whose land they were on,
a claim which Þorlákr sought to uphold, successfully at first but unsuccessfully later,
after Jón Loptsson refused to relinquish his claims to the church on his land.
Shortly after Þorlákr’s death, people started having dreams about him. For example,
Gizurr Hallsson, who had pronounced his funeral oration, dreamed that he saw him sitting
in the church in Skálaholt in bishop’s vestments and blessing the people; to Gizurr,
this was a confirmation of the former bishop’s sanctity and high place in heaven
(BS I 75). Four years later, Þorlákr appeared in a dream to a priest called Þorvaldr
living
in the northern diocese of Hólar, informing him that the bad weather would improve
if his bones were moved. The priest went to see his own bishop, Brandr, who then sent
the priest Ormr to the Althing to report on the miraculous dream. On the way, another
miracle took place: Ormr’s horse was too tired to move, but after the priest called
on Þorlákr the animal got a new lease of life (BS I 76). Þorlákr’s bones were moved, and more miracles took place; for example, although
there were great floods all over the country at that time, men were still not prevented
from going to the translatio—although it did have to be delayed for a day so that Guðmundr Arason could get there
(BS II 240).
One reason why the impetus for Þorlákr’s canonization came from the northern diocese
of Hólar rather than from Þorlákr’s own diocese of Skálaholt was presumably that memories
of conflict were still strong in Skálaholt; in fact, it was only after Jón Loptsson’s
death that the canonization process got under way. On the other hand, putting Þorlákr
forward as a saint probably helped to some extent to heal the rift between the Church
and the Oddaverjar: even if Jón’s family did not like the saint himself, they presumably
would not object to the honour that accrued from such a prestigious connection.
Þorlákr’s successor in the diocese of Skálaholt was his nephew Páll, the son of Jón
Loptsson and Ragnheiðr; he held the see from 1193 to 1213. He was a surprising choice
for the position, for, although well educated, he was illegitimate and only a deacon
when elected and so had to be first ordained and then consecrated bishop in Norway.
His election may, however, have been seen as a way of reconciling the church and Skálaholt’s
leading family. In addition, Páll was a family man with four children, and none of
the married bishops in the early history of the Icelandic Church were ardent defenders
of the Faith who created problems for local chieftains. Páll also seems to have been
something of a diplomat, managing to remain on good terms with both his father and
his uncle, if the details in his saga are to be trusted. His father presumably provided
the money which enabled him to study in England and to acquire a goðorð, and his uncle bequeathed his bishop’s ring to him on his deathbed, an indication
that he would like him to be his successor (BS I 69). Despite being on good terms with his uncle, Páll appears to have been a little
reluctant
to press for Þorlákr’s canonization. Jón Jóhannesson calls this “a logical reaction
from the son of Jón Loftsson” (191). Jørgen Højgaard Jørgensen, in a similar vein,
thinks that Páll (must have felt the rise of Þorlákr’s sanctity as a potentially
dangerous development) since he had been elected by and represented Þorlákr’s political
opponents (8). Margaret Cormack, on the other hand, suggests that “the Lincoln-educated
Páll might well have been dubious about the rapidity with which
his uncle’s sanctity had been proclaimed” (2005 31).
No doubt encouraged by the success of Þorlákr’s canonization and cult, Bishop Brandr
of Hólar decided to look for a saint for his own diocese. He therefore had the bones
of two bishops of Hólar, Jón Ögmundarson and Björn Gilsson (reigned 1147-62), exhumed
and washed. It was only after Jón appeared in a dream stating that the weather would
improve if his bones were moved, and also after a sick girl was cured by the water
used for washing his bones, that the problem of which of the two bishops was the more
saintly was resolved (BS II 61-62; 70-73). The bones were put in a shrine and miracles wrought through Jón’s
intercession started.
Jón’s vita, written by Brother Gunnlaugr in Latin and extant only in translations,
is obviously written to substantiate his claim to sainthood.
Jón was well connected. His forbears on his mother’s side went back to one of the
first baptized Icelanders in the eastern part of the country, and his father’s side
of the family traced their ancestry to the Settlement. Details of his childhood seem
to have been scarce, and so Gunnlaugr filled in the gaps with stories set in Scandinavia
but based on incidents from the life of Christ. In an almost certainly apocryphal
scene, Jón’s mother is taken by her parents at eight years of age to the court of
the King of Norway, where St. Olaf says of her:
“Hon verðr mikill lykkumaðr ok sá mun göfgastr ættbogi á Íslandi, er frá henni kemr” [She
will be a very fortunate person, and the noblest family in Iceland will descend
from her] (BS II 6). Later, when Jón is a child and the family is staying at the court of the King
of
Denmark, Astrid the queen mother tells Jón’s mother not to slap the child’s hands
when he tries to take food before the feast has started because
“hendr þessar…eru byskups hendr” [those hands…are bishop’s hands] (BS II 5).
The scenes have Biblical overtones of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary
(Luke 1: 26-35) and Mary’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1: 39-56). They
also link Jón with the royal families of Scandinavia, almost making him into an Adelheilige.
As a young man, Jón studied in Norway and Denmark. He is also said to have gone to
Rome for a papal dispensation after being chosen as bishop because he had remarried
after the death of his first wife (BS II 30-31).
Back in Iceland as the first Bishop of Hólar, he tried to eradicate all traces of
paganism, even going so far as to change the names of the days of the week (BS II 37).
He also attempted to put an end to the composing of licentious love-poetry, and he
improved the state of knowledge of the local clergy (BS II 38). His greatest achievement was the founding of the school in Hólar, which became
the
training-ground for all the future high-born clerics in the northern part of the country
(BS II 41-47). In spite of these achievements, Jón Jóhannesson comments: “It is noteworthy
that in no other sources contemporaneous with or older than Bishop
Jón’s life…is it maintained that the bishop excelled among the early leaders of the Church of
Iceland” (155). In the meantime, even before Þorlákr and Jón were declared saints
at the Althing
by the leading men of Iceland, the common people in the northern part of the country
were convinced that a simple priest, Guðmundr Arason, was a miracle-worker and presumably
a saint.
Guðmundr, like Páll, was born out of wedlock, for his mother, after being married
against her will, left her husband and went to live with Guðmundr’s father, Ari, by
whom she had four children. Ari was killed while Guðmundr was still young, and, since
illegitimate children could not inherit, his family decided to make a priest of the
boy, although he was not studiously inclined. It was only when he was in his twenties
that he suddenly became very devout and started devoting himself to the poor (BS II 203-04). Two incidents seem to have contributed to the flowering of his vocation:
first,
his leg was seriously injured in a shipwreck; second, his good friend, the son of
Bishop Björn, died unexpectedly after a short illness.
It was also around this time that Guðmundr began to gain a reputation as a miracle
worker. Miracles had already been attributed to some of the earlier Icelandic bishops
and to Saint Cecilia. Ísleifr, the first Bishop of Skálaholt, is said to have cured
madness and made drink contaminated with darnel safe (BS I 6). Gizurr, his son and the second bishop, was reputed to have been the noblest
man
who ever lived in Iceland; after his death the country drooped as Rome had done after
the death of Gregory the Great, which could be interpreted as a sign from heaven
(BS I 14). The next bishop was Þorlákr Runólfsson; as he lay dying a priest heard the
Latin
cantilena of Bishop Lambert being sung in the heavens although there was no other human being
around (BS I 18-19). These miracles seem, however, to have been isolated incidents, and there
is no indication
that they were connected with a canonization process.
By comparison, the miracles of St. Cecilia were more “popular” than those of the bishops
mentioned above: in one case, she cured a poisoned foot
and in other deafness (Heilagra Manna Søgur I 294-97). These miracles apparently took place before the establishment of St. Cecilia’s
feast-day
in 1179 (Cormack 1994 88-89), which suggests that by the second half of the twelfth
century the idea that miracles
could take place in Iceland was accepted by the common people. For this reason when
Guðmundr cured a madwoman with holy water people were prepared to believe that a miracle
had taken place, especially as other priests had already tried to cure her, also with
holy water, but with no success. According to Guðmundar saga Arasonar, the Virgin Mary appeared to a woman in a dream, telling her to use water blessed
by Guðmundr on the afflicted woman (BS II 211-12). When the water proved to be effective, stories about Guðmundr spread
throughout
Iceland, and people started inviting him so that he could bless the water on their
farms. From then on, the saga is full of miracles.
Guðmundr’s miracle-working and popularity may also have contributed to Þorlákr’s and
Jón’s canonization. In the minds of Guðmundr’s followers, there already was a saint
in Iceland, and the more Guðmundr’s reputation as a miracle-worker grew, the less
likely people were to put their trust in any new saints proposed by the clergy. Bishop
Brandr of Hólar and other members of the clergy were already perturbed by Guðmundr’s
almsgiving which they considered excessive. Bishop Brandr may not have been altogether
happy with the turn things were taking in his diocese and might have been glad when
one of his priests, Þorvaldr, came to tell him about his dreams of Þorlákr; here was
a new source of interest to distract people from Guðmundr.
Guðmundr himself was in favour of Þorlákr’s canonization. His saga states that he
and Ormr Eyjolfsson, Þorlákr’s chaplain, had already talked about Þorlákr’s sanctity,
and Guðmundr had maintained that he was the holiest of men (BS II 229). Guðmundr probably encouraged the common people to pray to Þorlákr, perhaps
to distract
them from his own growing notoriety as a miracle-worker, since there is nowhere any
indication that he used his abilities for personal aggrandisement.
An interesting feature of Guðmundr’s miracles is the extent to which some of them
resemble pre-Christian magic. Practically all the abilities ascribed to pagan witches
are attributed to Guðmundr: foretelling the future (
BS II 315), making out-of-body journeys (
BS II 246-7), altering the weather (
BS II 242; 249-50), diverting rivers (
BS II 253), creating optical illusions (
BS II 309). He is, in fact, a “superwitch” (McCreesh). This agrees with what Keith
Thomas says about the relationship between Christian
and pagan magic in the Middle Ages:
Conversions to the new religion … have frequently been assisted by the belief of converts
that they are acquiring not just a means of other-worldly salvation, but a new and
more powerful magic. (25)
The use of these motifs in Guðmundar saga becomes all the more striking when this saga is compared with the vitae of Jón and Þorlákr. In neither of these are there any unambiguous examples of the
pagan supernatural. Although both sagas have some incidents with pagan overtones,
there is always another possible source for them in religious writings. As an example,
let us take an incident in the Oddaverja þáttr. After pursuing and catching Bishop Þorlákr, Þorsteinn Jónsson is unable to deliver
the fatal blow because his arm stiffens. There are two possible sources for this lack
of movement: the herfjöturr of Germanic mythology and the story of Sanctulus in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, in which the executioner’s arm stiffens so that he cannot behead
Sanctulus (Book III Chapter 37). Has the author taken the motif from pagan mythology,
or is his source the Dialogues?
The question then arises: why does Guðmundar saga have so much more of the pagan supernatural than the vitae of the other bishops? According to Turville-Petre and Stefán Einarsson, it is “because
of lingering respect for the critical tradition of Sæmundr and Ari” that the sagas
of Thorlákr and the other bishops of Skálholt are “saner” [their expression] than
those from Hólar (Turville-Petre 202; Einarsson 101). Turville-Petre’s and Stefán
Einarsson’s reasoning does not, however, take into account
the fact that Guðmundar saga preserves more of the pagan supernatural than the vitae of Jón and later on Laurentius, the other two bishops of Hólar whose lives we possess.
Now, if we look at Heffernan’s theory of the origins and development of “sacred biography,”
a reason for the strong presence of the pagan supernatural in
Guðmundar saga emerges:
The author for sacred biography is the community, and consequently the experience
presented by the narrative voice is collective…The author is not the expert; rather
the community is a collection of experts, and the narrative reflects this state of
collective authority. (19-20)
Jón and Þorlákr were “establishment” saints. The community which pushed for Þorlákr’s
canonization would have been composed
for the most part of educated and aristocratic members of Icelandic society, churchmen
and statesmen in search of a national saint. The community supporting Jón’s cause
was similar, consisting of representatives of the diocese of Hólar who felt that they
too needed a patron saint. It is for this reason that most of Jón’s and Þorlákr’s
early miracles were witnessed by members of the Church. Guðmundr’s miracles, on the
other hand, were from the very beginning performed for and reported by the laity.
Because Guðmundr’s followers were drawn in large part from the poor and dispossessed,
they were more likely than educated chieftains and churchmen to believe in magic,
monsters, fortune-telling and out-of-body journeys. The miracles in Guðmundar saga illustrate the confusion that reigned in many people’s minds between Christian and
pagan magic.
It would have been Guðmundr’s followers who integrated elements from pagan folklore
into Christian tradition, transferring attributes of Odin and pagan witches to God
and his saintly bishop. By the time Guðmundar saga was set down in writing, these tales of holy magic were doubtless already anchored
in popular tradition, and could be removed from his vita only with difficulty.
The high incidence of the pagan supernatural in this saga is a reflection of the credulous
audience by whom and for whom Guðmundar saga was composed.
That Guðmundr was never canonized is not a reflection of his ministry to the poor.
The irritant he had been during his lifetime to wealthy farmers and ecclesiastical
authorities was forgotten in the course of time, and money was collected and another
vita written by Abbot Arngrímr in the fourteenth century, changing or glossing over certain
less desirable features of his life, such as his illegitimacy and his obstreperous
childhood, with a view to making a case for his canonization. That the cause went
nowhere was due to a change in policy at the Vatican. In 1234, due partly to abuses
of the system of episcopal canonization, partly to the proliferation of local saints,
and partly to Vatican politics, Pope Gregory IX decided to restrict the power of canonization
to the Holy See (Beaudoin 20-33). Guðmundr was caught by this change in policy and
so has remained forever Guðmundr
the Good.