Minni and Muninn

Minni and Muninn
ACTA SCANDINAVICA
Aberdeen Studies in the Scandinavian World
A series devoted to early Scandinavian culture, history, language, and literature, between
the fall of Rome and the emergence of the modern states (seventeenth century) – that
is, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Early Modern period (c. 400–1600).
General Editor
Stefan Brink, University of Aberdeen
Editorial Advisory Board under the auspices of the

Centre for Scandinavian Studies, University of Aberdeen
Maria Ågren (History), Uppsala universitet
Pernille Hermann (Literature), Aarhus Universitet
Terry Gunnell (Folklore), Háskóli Íslands (University of Iceland)
Judith Jesch (Old Norse/Runology), University of Nottingham
Jens Peter Schjødt (History of Religions), Aarhus Universitet
Dagfinn Skre (Archaeology), Universitetet i Oslo
Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde (Law), Universitetet i Bergen
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.
Volume 4
Minni and Muninn
Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture
Edited by
Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell,

and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Minni and Muninn : memory in medieval Nordic culture. -- (Acta Scandinavica ; 4)

1. Old Norse literature--History and criticism.
2. Memory in literature.
3. Civilization, Medieval, in literature.
4. Collective memory--Scandinavia--History--To 1500.
5. Memory--Social aspects--Scandinavia--History--To 1500.
6. Historiography--Scandinavia--History--To 1500.
I. Series
II. Hermann, Pernille editor.
III. Mitchell, Stephen A. (Stephen Arthur), 1951- editor.
IV. Agnes S. Arnorsdottir editor.
839.6'09353-dc23
ISBN-13: 9782503549101
© 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2014/0095/43
ISBN: 978-2-503-54910-1
e-ISBN: 978-2-503-54996-5
Printed on acid-free paper
Contents
Foreword
Jürg Glauser vii
Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture

Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell,
and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir 1
Part I. Memory and Narration
Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering in

Old Norse-Icelandic Literature
Pernille Hermann 13
Memory and Old Norse Mythology

John Lindow 41
Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse

Margaret Clunies Ross 59
Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts
Kate Heslop 75
Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia

and amongst the Kievan Rus’
Russell Poole 109
vi Contents
Part II. Memory and History
Memoria Normannica
Rudolf Simek 133
The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval

and Early Modern Gotland
Stephen A. Mitchell 155
Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson

on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri
Gísli Sigurðsson 175
Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men

in Legal Cases
Stefan Brink 197
Legal Culture and Historical Memory

in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir 211
Index 231
Foreword
E
very culture is to a significant degree defined by the way it relates to its
own past and defines itself through memory. This observation is nothing
more than a commonplace in the study of cultural history, but it points
to the fact that ever since the time of ancient cultures — from the ancient
Egyptian culture’s veneration of the dead, to the scepticism against writing as
expressed in ancient Indian and classical Greek texts, to the Greek and Roman
theory of rhetoric — different forms of memory presentation have again and
again given rise to reflections about the phenomena of creating, disseminating,
storing, re-creating, and re-writing memories, and of dealing with collective
and cultural memory, activities central to every society.
If proof were needed that culture and memory have been linked together from
their beginnings, memory studies undertaken within the field of cultural analysis
in recent decades will remove any doubts, as they have been able to demonstrate
with innumerable examples that the history of human culture can only be under-
stood when its memorial performances are adequately taken into account. This
novel and intense interest in questions of memory in recent cultural studies does,
of course, not come out of the blue, but must be seen in the context of the his-
torical developments and political turmoil of the twentieth century. This is why,
for example, the German preoccupation with its own past received new currency
during the 1980s and 1990s, and that was, in turn, one of the reasons for the
renewed interest in questions of the construction of the past, and of the critical
re-evaluation of images of the past, especially in German-speaking research.
The debate about the construction of ‘pasts’ and memories of them, and
the preoccupation with their meanings and functions for the present and
the future, are, however, in no way only modern phenomena, but themselves
have a long tradition which reaches partially back to classical antiquity, as, for
example, with regard to concepts and images of memory, be it as storage or as
creation. It will suffice here to mention only two small, but rather prominent,
examples from Greek and Roman tradition; in contemporary memory studies,
viii Foreword
these cases have time and again been taken as starting points, because they rep-
resent core moments of pre-modern memorial culture.
The first example is the myth of Teuth/Toth as told by Plato in his dialogue
Phaedrus, from about 370 bc. In this story, the invention of letters is taken
to make clear the difference between remembering as the conscious activity of
a person, on the one hand, and being reminded with the help of some exter-
nal medium (here writing), on the other. In Plato, Phaedrus, 275α the crea-
tion of this new means of communication is commented on as follows: ‘οὔκουν
μνήμης ἀλλὰ ὑπομνήσεως φάρμακον ηὗρες / oukon mnemes alla hypomneseos
pharmakon nures’ (‘You have found an elixir not of memory but of remind-
ing’). Jacques Derrida, in his seminal essay, ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, in Dissemination,
trans. by Barbara Johnson (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), and, in
the wake of Derrida, David Farrell Krell in his Of Memory, Reminiscence, and
Writing: On the Verge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), have
written extensively on this central passage, which highlights the close connec-
tion between memory and mediality at an early stage in Western culture.
That this criticism of writing, as it is expressed here, is not an isolated inci-
dent, but formulates a more general scepticism in traditional cultures against
modern means of preserving memory and medial forms, is shown by the ancient
Indian Vedas which, because the Brahmins did not consider the art of writing
suited to the preservation of memory, in much the same way as was stipulated
in Plato’s dialogue, were only transmitted orally.
The second example concerns the legend about the origin of classical rheto-
ric, attributed to the Greek orator Simonides by Roman authors like Cicero
and Quintilian. Simonides, it is told, witnessed how a hall in which a feast was
being celebrated had collapsed, but he was able to identify the dead, mutilated
to the point of unrecognizability, because he remembered where they had been
sitting (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book xi, Chapter 2). This passage dem-
onstrates how topology and rhetoric go together and how strongly memory is
based on thinking in terms of place and space.
Recent memory studies were largely developed through analyses of such
examples from ancient cultures, for example, by the German Egyptologist Jan
Assmann, and combined with modern methods and approaches, for example,
from sociology (cp. Maurice Halbwachs and many others). By transferring these
concepts to contemporary subjects, such as modern and postmodern literature,
film, art, and architecture, new and important fields of study arose, interest-
ingly enough, not infrequently depending heavily on ancient and medieval
traditions. Today’s memory studies, informed as they are by cultural history
and cultural analysis, thus integrate aspects of intertextuality studies, topology
Foreword ix
studies, rhetoric studies, performativity studies, media studies, and a number

of other fields (see, for example, the series edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar
Nünning, Media and Cultural Memory).
Like the ancient civilizations, the Nordic cultures of the Viking Age and
the Middle Ages were memorial cultures par excellence. The traditions of the
Scandinavian countries offer therefore a wealth of forceful concepts and mem-
orable images and narratives where one finds considerations of, and reflec-
tions on, the nature of memory construction and the function of memory. In
many respects, Old Norse literature was a culture that, expressed abstractedly,
was minted in a specific way through the transference and adaptation of for-
mally and thematically ancient features into new ones; these new features were
in turn dependent on memories and memory media to a special degree. For
Icelandic literature and its historical development, from the beginnings to the
early twentieth century, the concept of a cultural archive can be aptly applied,
an archive which was very much based on the transmission of old narratives,
and thus on the storage and creation of literary memory.
Quite like the case of classical poetry, it is possible to observe in Old Norse-
Icelandic culture itself — both the linguistic-written one and the non-verbal
one (i.e. all aspects of material culture, landscape, and so on) — an intense and
active examination of the numerous facets of memory. This is a central feature
for many genres of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, and it is therefore both a
responsibility and a specific challenge for students of this literature to devote
themselves to understanding this reception of memory.
For the sake of illustration, I shall mention here only a very few examples.
The famous fróðir menn of Icelandic medieval historiography were, in fact, men
who were always equipped with an especially good capacity for remembering
events, rules, relations, and so on, i.e. they were minnugir. Historical works like
Íslendingabók, Hungrvaka, Landnámabók, and Heimskringla, as well as trans-
lated sagas like Strengleikar and sagas with affinities to translations like Þiðreks
saga, regularly made memory’s role in the creation and transmission of narra-
tives a subject of discussion, mostly in the prologues (formálar/‌forrœður) and
very often on a rather high level of abstraction and theorizing.
The Icelandic family sagas have repeatedly been termed manifestations and
forums for the cultural memory of Iceland during the Middle Ages and the
early modern period. Numerous Old Norse-Icelandic myths tell stories about
origins, and thus represent memories — for example, the myths about Þjazi
and Skaði in Gylfaginning, or about Aurvandill and Gróa in Skáldskaparmál
— but they also present different, distinct, and at times enigmatic images for
media of oblivion, as, for example, the óminnishegri (heron of forgetfulness) in
x Foreword
Hávamál 13, or the óminnisveig (potion of forgetfulness) in Dráp Niflunga and

Guðrúnarkviða, ii. 21–24. Or consider Muninn, one of Óðinn’s two ravens,
mentioned in the title of the present volume. In all these and countless other
narratives, the creation of the past and of history through remembering and
through forgetting is staged in prototypical ways, and more often than not, the
connection between memory, oblivion, and media is highlighted, especially, for
example, when the mythological tales make fragmented body parts — Þjazi’s
eyes, Aurvandill’s frozen toe — the bearers of memory.
But the importance of memory in Old Norse-Icelandic texts extends to even
deeper levels. Apart from such explicit reflections as those just mentioned, gen-
eral aspects of literary theory are often touched on in more implicit ways. If
the memory of literature manifests itself in its intertextuality, i.e. by the way in
which a text speaks with the voice of another text, and thus always remembers
these other voices and texts and recalls them by re-using them, then the whole
system of skaldic kennings, at the centre of Old Norse-Icelandic poetry, could
be defined as one large memory machine, recalling earlier events and narratives
in the forms of concentrated mini-myths. In this respect, it might be said that
the main work of Nordic literature on the topic of mythography and poetics,
the Prose Edda, is to an extraordinary degree a theory of memory; indeed, there
is, in fact, barely a text in the whole body of Old Norse-Icelandic literature
which does not in one way or another deal with memory.
The closer one looks, then, the clearer it becomes that extraordinarily inter-
esting and multifaceted material for the study of memory is offered by Viking
Age and medieval Nordic cultures. Although quite a number of shorter and
longer pertinent publications have appeared during the last few years, and more
will surely follow in the immediate future, and although the 15th International
Saga Conference, which was held in Aarhus, Denmark, in the summer of 2012,
had as its frame topic, ‘Sagas and the Use of the Past’, a more systematic and
large-scale examination of Old Norse-Icelandic culture relating to memory and
making use of recent memory theory is still more-or-less at its beginning. Yet
a look at some neighbouring disciplines in medieval studies, such as history,
German and English studies, shows how fruitful an engagement with different
aspects of medieval memorial cultures can be.
It is therefore extremely encouraging, and welcome, to see that the present
volume addresses the highly relevant topic of ‘Memory in Medieval Nordic
Culture’ with a range of diverse approaches and themes. The editors of this vol-
ume are to be thanked for the fact that, by publishing the following collection of
articles, they are pointing out new and promising directions for future research.
Jürg Glauser, Zürich and Basel
Introduction: Minni and Muninn –
Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture
Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir
T
he present volume deals with terms for, and concepts of, memory,
and the function of memory in medieval Nordic culture. It treats Old
Norse terms like minni (memory), muna (to remember), forn minni
(ancient memories), and the Old Swedish term minnunga men (men with good
memory), as well as subtle Old Norse expressions like Muninn (memory) and
óminnis hegri (heron of forgetfulness). It also considers mnemonic techniques
among the Norsemen, and deals with memories and identities which were con-
structed by the Norsemen themselves, as well as with memories that were con-
structed about the Norsemen. The collection of essays in this volume, its com-
parative touch notwithstanding, is very much an empirical study of memory
and memory-dependent issues as these took form in medieval Nordic culture.
In addition, however, the collection considers general aspects of memory, in as
much as the articles to varying degrees deal with a variety of theoretical con-
cepts and areas of investigation which are of general relevance when dealing
with memory, such as transmission and media, preservation and storage, for-
getting and erasure, and authenticity and falsity. In other words, the volume
Pernille Hermann (norph@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics

and Communication, Scandinavian Languages and Literature, at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Stephen A. Mitchell (samitch@fas.harvard.edu) is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at

Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and Fellow of the Swedish Collegium
for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden.
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir (hisaa@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of

Culture and Society (History) at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Minni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture, ed. by Pernille Hermann,
Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, AS 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 1–10
BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.AS-EB.1.101972
2 Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir
explores the role of memory in medieval Norse culture with an eye towards the
different branches of memory studies that have in recent years proposed useful
tools of analysis, offering new ways of understanding medieval cultures.
Memory studies, which deal with how individuals and groups of people
construct the past, have no clear single focus, but are characterized by multi-
ple approaches and a variety of topics covering many different time periods.
Conceived, however, as a discipline, it usually dates its origins to the ground-
breaking observations of Maurice Halbwachs about the social frameworks of
memory in the 1920s, albeit with many subsequent layers of reconsideration
and theoretical sophistication.1 Although it would be difficult among the many
contributions that have been made over the intervening years to identify any sin-
gle text as ‘the’ critical turning point, there is little doubt that several works by
Jan Assmann (e.g., Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische
Identität in frühen Hochkulturen; ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’)
have both redirected and re-energized the field. The growth of memory stud-
ies in recent years has been impressive, to say the least, as we witness the field’s
rapid acquisition of many academic hallmarks of success — handbooks (e.g.,
Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook,
ed. by Erll and Nünning, and Gedächtnis und Erinnerung: Ein interdiszi
plinäres Lexicon, ed. by Pethes and Ruchatz), university centres (e.g., Indiana
University’s Center for the Study of History and Memory), dedicated academic
journals (e.g., Memory Studies), BA programmes (e.g., Washington University in
St Louis), and even its own internal dissent (e.g., Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning
in Memory’).2 These studies, of course, do not develop ex nihilo, and a number
of scholars treat similar questions about how to approach the past, with inspira-
tion from, for example, anthropology, history of mentalities, and media studies.
And although their studies on earlier theories of memory are largely independ-
ent of current memory studies, the works of such scholars as Carruthers, The
Book of Memory, Carruthers and Ziolkowski, The Medieval Craft of Memory,
and Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of
the Past are clearly highly relevant for medieval Scandinavia.
For its part, research on Old Norse culture has often, rightly, suggested that
memory is a central component of the Viking and medieval Nordic worlds.
Indeed, from its beginnings in nineteenth-century national romanticism and
1
Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire.
2
On the development of the field, see Roediger and Wertsch, ‘Creating a New Discipline
of Memory Studies’.
Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture 3
well into the twentieth century, the study of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, for
example, often positioned its intellectual centre vis-à-vis such ideas as the role
of memorization (rote or otherwise), of the possibility of so-called set forms,
of memorial poetry, of memorized family genealogies, and so on.3 A host of
important names in the field (for example, Finnur Jónsson, Andreas Heusler,
Knut Liestøl, Anne Holtsmark) wrestled with these important questions and
others, and considered how these relationships help explicate the sagas and
other Old Norse texts.
Despite recognizing the importance of memory in the Old Norse world,
it would seem as if more often than not, with rare exceptions, such discus-
sions have been based on general assumptions, rather than on detailed analysis
accompanied by conceptual and theoretical considerations.4 As a response to
this obvious desideratum, it is the intention of this volume to follow up on, to
underscore, and to give substance to such views by directing even more atten-
tion to memory and the ways in which it manifests itself in medieval Nordic
culture. Toward that end, the editors initially asked the contributors, coming
from the disciplines of philology, literature, folklore, and history, to focus on
issues of the following sort: Where in the culture do the terms for, and symbols
and metaphors of, memory occur, and with what consequences? What can be
said about memory’s instrumental dimension, for example, mnemotechniques
or ars memoria in the context of medieval Nordic culture? And how do we
explain the construction of the past found in medieval texts — representing
as they do one of our main entrances to this culture — and their devices and
strategies, the discourses they imply, and the attitudes that people had towards
the past through memory studies?
The contributors come from different disciplines; however, they all are Old
Norse experts and thus share an interest in the medieval textual materials and
how these cultural monuments provide a prominent source for the investiga-
tion of medieval memory. One of the characteristics of the medieval Nordic
texts, making them especially apt to be researched from the perspective of
memory, is their strong past-awareness and intense preoccupation with the
past, evidenced in a variety of genres, including oral genres with roots stretch-
ing back to the Viking Age.
3
See the overview in Andersson, The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins.
4
See, however, also Hermann and Mitchell, eds, Memory and Remembering: Past Awareness
in the Medieval North.
The texts under consideration in this anthology cover a wide range of

medieval genres, such as saga, myth, poetry, law, historiography, learned litera-
ture, and other forms of verbal expression. As products and reflections of the
Nordic cultures in which the texts came into being, they also in turn helped
shape those same sub-cultures, and thus offer intriguing entrances into medi-
eval Nordic narrative, historical and legal cultures, and the types of memory
which preserved and transmitted them. Many of the texts date back to Iceland
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; however, some of these early vernacu-
lar texts existed simultaneously with oral genres and some were anticipated by
runic inscriptions from other places in Scandinavia, as well as by Latin texts.
The texts came into being in a culture of radical change, where Christianity had
relatively recently taken over as the new faith and confirmed that the Nordic
region was part and parcel of medieval Europe. It was parallel with such crucial
changes — and perhaps sometimes even as a response to them — that the texts
of the medieval North were written, texts which are famously known for not
having erased all aspects of the traditional cultural heritage. Quite to the con-
trary, they demonstrate that intense efforts were made to transfer their authors’
cultural heritage into new media and new contexts, a further indication that
memory was indeed a cornerstone of the underlying pan-Nordic culture.
It is very likely, and in some cases without doubt, that the past was negoti-
ated and interpreted in the context of the present, and that the medieval texts
re-used the old oral forms and traditions according to new contexts, and pre-
sumably even invented ‘pasts’. On the other hand, it seems that some genres,
individuals, and institutions actually preserved and transmitted the past in ways
corresponding to rote memory. This spectrum of possibilities, everything from
generative memory to fixed memory, marks one of the paradoxes of the texts,
as it demonstrates what unique material these texts offer for the investigation
of a number of different types of memory present in medieval Nordic culture.
Given the extent to which memory studies have become widespread in
recent years both inside and outside of the humanities, it is increasingly impor-
tant to understand how branches of memory theory, popular in current literary,
cultural, and historical studies, can also provide useful frameworks for under-
standing specifically medieval Nordic culture. Some of the present articles cen-
tre on interfaces between memory and history, and point to the relevance of
nuancing understandings of the past by considering parallel existing discourses,
as well as regional differences; moreover, in some of these cases, attention is
also directed to the connection between memory, myth, and origins, and on
the interrelation between memory and identity. The articles in this volume
also suggest the relevance to Old Norse studies of a number of concepts well-
known from memory studies, such as ‘cultural memory’ and ‘communicative

memory’ (Assmann), ‘autobiographical memory’ (Conway and Rubin), ‘lieu
de mémoire’ (Nora), and ‘social memory’ (Burke). The diversity of topics dealt
with is emphasized by the fact that some articles refers to ‘collective memory’
(Le Goff, Halbwachs), and thus deal with the social frameworks of memory,
while others draw attention to the memorial capacities of individuals.
It has not been our goal to synthesize the articles, such that, for example,
they should all refer to a single concept or to the same primary texts, but rather
to insure that concepts of memory are used in each individual article in ways
that correspond to the actual context and discussion. In much the same way,
each article stands as its own unit that can be read individually, despite the
fact that the same text passages may be referred to (but not necessarily inter-
preted in a similar way) in more than one article. In realizing that many con-
cepts of memory exists, rather than advocating for the relevance of one specific
approach or one definition of memory, each article suggests an area in medieval
Nordic culture, or a corner of the textual material, where adaption of and inspi-
ration from various branches of memory studies is believed, and shown, to be
fruitful. From such a meeting, it would seem that new concepts of memory
have the opportunity to develop, just as further critical discussion can emerge
regarding the extent to which memory studies methodologically and theoreti-
cally are capable of adding new dimensions to our understanding of the medi-
eval Nordic world.
* * *
This book is divided into two sections, ‘Memory and Narration’ and ‘Memory
and History’, a division which is to a certain extent arbitrary and overlapping;
however, the articles in the first part are concerned with memory, prose, and
poetry, and often deal with conceptual aspects and terminology. The articles in
the second part are concerned with memory, historical writing, and law, as well
as with notions of origin and identity.
Pernille Hermann’s broad consideration of memory and methods of remem-
bering opens the section on Memory and Narration. In ‘Key Aspects of Memory
and Remembering in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature’, she points to selected
passages from Old Norse-Icelandic literature which deal with memory and
remembering. In considering various genres, she demonstrates that the texts,
despite treating different worlds and different pasts (for example, historical,
mythological), may be occupied with similar questions relating to key aspects
of memory. Moreover, Hermann discusses the connection between memory
and the idea of the book, especially the status of the book as an aid to memory
in medieval culture. She further suggests that memory and memory techniques
would have been refined with inspiration from both local and foreign resources,
and that a kind of artificial memory deriving from classical rhetoric might have
intensified the engagement with memory in the learned milieux which stood
behind medieval Nordic literature.
John Lindow directly addresses the question of whether thinking about
memory can help us think about Old Norse mythology. In his paper, ‘Memory
and Old Norse Mythology’, he concludes that memory theory may help us in
understanding how closely related the Æsir and jǫtnar are, and how disrup-
tive Ragnarǫk is. According to him, the surviving Æsir after Ragnarǫk use four
techniques for maintaining or renewing cultural memory. Firstly, they gather
together so as to remember — that is, to discuss — the primal struggle with the
chaotic forces; secondly, they use objects as sites of memory; thirdly, they use
places as sites of memory; and fourthly, their rituals involves only the Æsir, not
the jǫtnar, who seem to have disappeared with the old cosmos.
The article by Margaret Clunies Ross scrutinizes the important connec-
tion between memory and skaldic poetry, looking at the various ways in which
skalds presented their own memories, or the memories of others, as authen-
tic witnesses to the events and personages of early Scandinavian history. Her
paper, ‘Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse’, seeks to
establish the means by which the poets guaranteed the veracity of their speech
acts to their audiences, and the careful and subtle ways by which they indicated
the status of the evidence for what they asserted. Her study of a range of skaldic
poems reveals a number of strategies developed by the poets to present memo-
ries of the past in the form of skaldic verse. One of her conclusions is that many
of the compilers of medieval vernacular prose works elided the distinction
between old and new poetic memorials for their subjects, a development that
is to some degree responsible for the potpourri of verse and prose that modern
editors of skaldic verse struggle to differentiate.
Kate Heslop, in her article, ‘Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic,
Skaldic and Runic Texts’, explores the core inventory of Old Norse words for
memory and remembrance. She produces an initial sketch of the medium-spe-
cific characteristics of skaldic memory, as compared to the inscriptional and
compilatory mediality of the runic and eddic material. Focusing on the period
of transition from oral and inscriptional culture to one in which this culture has
acquired a textual component, she concludes that the eddic, skaldic, and runic
rhetoric of memory demonstrate varying media in which these literary genres
were realized in medieval Scandinavia. The runic inscriptional medium com-
bines the individual mental act of re-membering with the monument, whereas
the compilatory medium of the Poetic Edda deploys ‘drinks of forgetting’ as

a textual strategy of compensation for the memoria of the text. This contrasts
with the rhetoric of memory in skaldic poetry, which embodies both commu-
nicative memory, as a bearer of living memory, as well as cultural memory when
the skalds reach back into the distant past to narrate events which took place in
mythic or legendary time.
While Kate Heslop discusses a variety of memory types, Russell Poole
focuses on one specific type of memory in his article, ‘Autobiographical
Memory in Medieval Scandinavia and amongst the Kievan Rus’’. He argues
that autobiographical memory originates through the self ’s experience and is
maintained through social interaction with others. This type of memory is to
be found in skaldic poetry, along with the memory that enshrines the ‘memora-
ble things’ of myth and legends, as, for example, the commemoration of kings
and rulers. He argues that narrative realizations of autobiographical memory,
attested in the Scandinavian sources from perhaps as early as the tenth century,
formed a part of the culture that was imitated from generation to generation,
‘given voice in the lapidary format of skaldic verse’, as he calls it, and also giv-
ing information about the practice of passing on stories and communicating
memories without writing.
The second part of the book, dealing with memory and history, covers four
different regions, Normandy, the Baltic island of Gotland, the border region of
Sweden and Norway, and Iceland. The first paper, ‘Memoria Normannica’ by
Rudolf Simek, is the first systematic treatment of how much the Normans in
Normandy and in Sicily preserved, both in oral and written memory, of their
Scandinavian tradition. The sources for these memorial remnants are limited
to written texts, composed by Norman authors, from the early eleventh century
onwards. These sources include myths telling of Scandinavian and Trojan ori-
gin, information about the famous raid to Italy in 859–61, which also incorpo-
rates, in most sources, a tall tale, which might be called the Canny Conquest of
Castles. The Norman authors seem to have preserved a certain set of concepts on
Scandinavian habits and customs. One of Simek’s conclusions is that the notion
of a common Germanic Scandinavian origin may actually have served as a means
for the Normans to become more integrated with the other Germanic gentes.
Stephen A. Mitchell addresses a similar topic in his paper, ‘The Mythologized
Past: Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Gotland’, by asking how a rela-
tively small, increasingly heterogeneous, insular community shapes its identity
over time. He focuses on two key episodes in the history of medieval Gotland
and how they are represented in the island’s history over time, from the thir-
teenth century through the seventeenth, focusing especially on Gotland’s con-
version to Christianity and the mid fourteenth-century bubonic pandemic. By

reference to various objects of memory, Mitchell explain how the Gotland’s
‘men of memory’ gave their versions of history, with their many references to
the memorial landscape of the island, its churches, places, prominent families,
and so on. Secondly, he also discusses a different kind of memory, the empty
set, that is, when there is, by accident or planning, no memory. An important
example of this sort of empty set from Gotland comes from an incident con-
nected to the great fourteenth-century pandemic, known as the Black Death
(or digerdöden).
In his article, ‘Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on
Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri’, Gísli Sigurðsson continues
the discussion about memory and textual production. With a focus on Sturla
Þórðarson and his version of Landnámabók, he takes up the question of the
relationship between the Norwegian king and families and individuals who
immigrated to Iceland in the ninth century. Gísli Sigurðsson analyses a version
of Landnámabók which reveals different relationships to the king, as well as
shows how the past is shaped by political and social circumstances in the pre-
sent. In pointing to regional differences as regards the contact between settlers
in Iceland and Haraldr hárfagri, it becomes evident that generalizing pictures
of the settlement of Iceland must be avoided.
Stefan Brink, in ‘Minnunga mæn — The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men
in Legal Cases’, takes us to the border between Norway and Sweden during the
thirteenth century, where a farmer was brought to the general thing assembly
as a witness, where he orally enumerated forty-one boundary markers. Brink
discusses men carrying a collective memory of importance for an essentially
oral society by referring to enactments in the Old Swedish provincial laws and
similar medieval documents. With no documents at hand, an oral society had
to rely upon individuals who had a special gift and interest in preserving the old
customs and traditions. He concludes that stereotypically constructed lists of
place names, boundary markers between Norway and Sweden, have been mem-
orized and repeated for hundreds of years. In these cases, there was no freedom
for creative changes in the lists, as there would be for a storyteller, who could
embroider her or his story around a core of facts, resulting in several variants of
the story.
This brings us to the last paper in the book, ‘Legal Culture and Historical
Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland’, by Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir,
an essay that also addresses the ‘modes of transmission’ of memorial culture,
oral as well as written. She argues that the earliest law courts of the Icelandic
Commonwealth can be seen as a space of legal remembrance, space which also
influenced historical writing. At the same time, oral methods of remember-

ing continued to exist side by side with written legal documents. Written texts
needed to be read aloud in front of gatherings, either at assemblies or in church.
From very early on, lists of law-speakers were used as a chronological frame-
work in written narratives, and as time passed, the transmission of all kinds of
legal as well as historical texts continued to be closely linked.
That memory, remembrance, memorialization, and all the other aspects of
bringing the past into the present, of minni and Muninn, as we have chosen
to entitle this volume, had a key function in all eras of Nordic culture must be
regarded as beyond doubt. After all, a sense of pastness, and very often in the
form of a constructed past, dominates what we know of that world. And as
modern readers of Icelandic sagas readily appreciate, these texts are obsessed
with the details of the writers’, sponsors’, and audiences’ genealogies, one result
of which is that common phrases in the openings and closings of the sagas
of the sort ‘[…] ok er þaðan mikil ætt komin’ (‘and from this a great family
has descended’) constantly remind readers and hearers that the deeds of the
past recounted in the narrative maintain their importance primarily through
their relationship to contemporary society. Even the new dominant Christian
religion tended to reify this same reticulation between past and present, as
when an early fourteenth-century runic inscription on a grave slab in a church
admonitions its visitors that: ‘Byþvi(?) hvilis [h]iar, Ganna dottiR a Hambri/
Hammars. Biþin fyriR … Minni[n]s þet at hon vaR þet sum iR eR[u] [n]u [o]
k iR verþ [i]n þet [su]m hon eR [n]u’.5 (‘Byþvi rests here, daughter of Ganni of
Hammars. Pray for [her soul]. Remember that she was as you are now and you
will be as she is now’).6
The concepts of memory and of remembering in medieval Nordic culture,
the terms its inhabitants developed for it, how memory functioned in their
learned lore, and how memory shaped their conceptualizations of the past are
then the topics which occupy the essays that follow. Diverse in their approaches
as they are in their areas of inquiry, we nevertheless trust that the research
represented in this volume will add to the growing body of literature on, and
inspire future studies of, memory and medieval Scandinavia.
5
G S37 M, Hallvi church on Gotland.
6
Our translation.
Works Cited
Andersson, Theodore M., The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins: A Historical Survey, Yale
Germanic Studies, 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)
Assmann, Jan, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique, 65
(1995), 125–33
—— , Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen
Hochkulturen (München: Beck, 1992)
Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Carruthers, Mary, and Jan M. Ziolkowski, eds, The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Antho
logy of Texts and Pictures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)
Clover, Carol J., and John Lindow, eds., Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide,
Islandica, 45 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985)
Coleman, Janet, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Erll, Astrid, and Ansgar Nünning, eds, Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Inter
disciplinary Handbook (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2008)
Halbwachs, Maurice, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Travaux de l’Année sociologique
(Paris: Alcan, 1925)
Hermann, Pernille, and Stephen A. Mitchell, eds, Memory and Remembering: Past
Awareness in the Medieval North (= special issue, Scandinavian Studies, 85. 3) (2013)
Kansteiner, Wulf, ‘Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective
Memory Studies’, History and Theory, 41 (2002), 179–97
Roediger, Henry L., and James V. Wertsch, ‘Creating a New Discipline of Memory Studies’,
Memory Studies, 1. 1 (2008), 9–22
Ruchatz, Jens, and Nicolas Pethes, eds, Gedächtnis und Erinnerung: Ein interdisziplinäres
Lexikon (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2001)
Part I
Memory and Narration
Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering
in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature
Pernille Hermann
M
any passages in Old Norse-Icelandic literature are implicitly or
explicitly occupied with memory (e.g., minni) and remembering
(e.g., muna). In this article, I explore selected text passages, mainly
from prose texts of different genres that illustrate some of the key aspects of
memory and remembering which medieval writers and the saga-characters or
mythological persons in the narratives seem to have implied when occupied
with, or when talking about, memory or remembering. It is not my intension to
compile a complete catalogue of references to memory, in the sense of a mental
storehouse and its contents, or to remembering, that is, to the act of remember-
ing. Instead, I want to draw attention to important key aspects of memory and
remembering in the Middle Ages, such as the tendency to pair memory and
wisdom, the connection between memory and its counterpart forgetting, and
the limitations of memory and the need for memory aids, both in the form of
mental training and in disembodied forms such as the book.
The main sources of these passages are Old Norse-Icelandic texts that were
first written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These texts are usually cat-
egorized as belonging to different genres, but despite being separated by mod-
ern textual classification schemes, they are very often occupied with similar or
closely related questions. Even if they treat different types of worlds (i.e. mytho-
logical, fictional or historical) and different kinds of pasts (i.e. recent or distant
pasts), the texts are often occupied with issues related to memory and remem-
bering. These categories seem not only to have been much appreciated in the
Pernille Hermann (norph@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics

and Communication, Scandinavian Languages and Literature, at Aarhus University, Denmark.
14 Pernille Hermann
period in question, but also talents that could be refined and strengthened by
the use of various techniques.
All the texts under discussion came into being in a transitional culture
between orality and writing, and they are discursively indebted to the recip-
rocal influences between folklore and learned knowledge, as well as local and
foreign traditions, i.e. Christian and classical culture. How memory functioned
in the medieval Nordic region (especially in Iceland, where by far most of the
texts were written) is an intriguing topic. The texts support the view that mem-
ory was a mental and cultural resource of major importance at the time the
texts were written, and there is no reason to believe other than that memory
was trained and refined with inspiration from all kinds of available sources, that
is, sources deriving from both oral and written contexts, and from both mental
and material devices (mnemotechniques and physical objects, including such
items as books, landscapes, and so on).
In this article, I argue that we must, in part at least, seek inspiration in clas-
sical texts that deal with ars memoria. Those texts, in contrast to the Old Norse-
Icelandic situation, where little concrete evidence about how memory was
trained is provided, give insights into classical mnemotechniques, and into the
considerable memorial capacity of memory specialists.1 Memory techniques
deriving from the classical world, of course, are not the only possible gate-
way to understanding medieval memory; comparative materials, for instance
about mnemonic techniques in oral cultures, are just as relevant. Techniques
described in the classical texts, which consider memory in a learned context
and presuppose the existence of writing and the concept of the book, are not
applicable to all episodes and passages in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, where
memory, as it functioned orally, undoubtedly provides part of the background.
Still, memory-elements like those read about in the classical tradition and their
medieval adaption may provide one of the sources of inspiration for coming to
grips with, firstly, how memory functioned in the Norse world in the Middle
Ages, and secondly, how memory was represented in the literature.
Old Norse-Icelandic literature was not only indebted to the local narra-
tive culture, but was also at the same time part and parcel of learned environ-
ments and the efforts of people with, we can assume, some rhetorical training.
Memoria was one of the five parts of the discipline of rhetoric (inventio, dispo
1
For example, De oratore (Cicero), Rhetorica ad herennium, and Institutio oratoria
(Quintilian). The proto-story is the Greek legend about Simonides of Ceos, who is often empha-
sized as the inventor of memory techniques. For thorough treatments of memoria in classical and
medieval times see, for example, Yates, The Art of Memory and Carruthers, The Book of Memory.
Memory and Remembering in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature 15
sitio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio), which was revisited by medieval scholars

and used for educational purposes in the Middle Ages.2 Key aspects of memory
found in Old Norse-Icelandic literature — such as the tendency to combine
wisdom and memory, the relevance of place and image as structural principles
for memory, as well as the differentiation between natural and artificial mem-
ory, which implies memory training and people of remarkable memory — are
all elements which could have shaped memory by traditional means, but they
are also elaborated on in ars memoria.
Memory and Wisdom

In the Old Norse mythological texts, memory and remembering are expressed
symbolically. Among the key aspects of memory found in this text-group are:
the close relationship between wisdom and memory, the connection between
memory and forgetting, and what can be understood as an indication of artifi-
cial memory.
Memory and wisdom, or related forms such as thought, cleverness, and
intelligence, are repeatedly paired. This is evidenced by the raven pair, Huginn
and Muninn, which — despite of the fact that they have been interpreted dif-
ferently — are most often considered as embodiments of thought and memo-
ry.3 In a recent treatment of the various and sometimes conflicting opinions
about the meaning of Huginn and Muninn, Stephen A. Mitchell has written:
It is worth noting that this ‘thought’ and ‘memory’ perspective probably reflects
many medieval Icelanders’ understanding of the name associations as well. […] The
bifurcation of the mind into two partially overlapping categories by these under-
standings of the terms captures something essential about the way the mind was,
and is, conceived.4
A medieval understanding of the ravens as thought and memory is supported

by the fact that other traditions than the Old Norse have understood birds
2
See Ásdís Egilsdóttir, ‘From Orality to Literacy’ and Malm, ‘Varför heter det kenning?’.
3
The etymologies of Huginn and Muninn, and their connection to the mind, as well as to
thought and memory are much debated. See, for example, Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson,
An Icelandic-English Dictionary, pp. 290 and 438; de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches
Wörterbuch, pp. 265 and 396; Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, pp. 164, 216, and 222.
See also Meyer, Germanische Mytologie, p. 232, and Mitchell, ‘Óðinn’s Twin Ravens, Huginn
and Muninn’, as well as Lindow’s article in the present volume, p. 41.
4
Mitchell, ‘Óðinn’s Twin Ravens, Huginn and Muninn’.
16 Pernille Hermann
as images for the mind, and thus as symbols of memories and thoughts. One
notices here, though, that in Old Norse mythology the birds are ravens, con-
nected not merely to such intellectual notions of thought and memory, but also
to somewhat darker dimensions of existence, namely death and war.5
Gylfaginning relates that the ravens sit on Óðinn’s shoulders, offering him
the knowledge they have gathered by speaking into his ears: ‘Hrafnar tveir sitja
á ǫxlum honum ok segja í eyru honum ǫll tíðindi þau er þeir sjá eða heyra. Þeir
heita svá: Huginn ok Muninn’.6 (‘Two ravens sit on his shoulders and speak
into his ear all the news they see or hear. Their names are Hugin and Munin’).7
As is well-known, there is a close connection between Óðinn and the ravens,
and the description of the ravens in Gylfaginning makes it reasonable to regard
the ravens as personifications of Óðinn’s mental and intellectual capacity, a
relationship that supports Óðinn’s function in the mythology as the god of
wisdom.8 In any case, according to Gylfaginning, the ravens extend Óðinn’s
sight and support the idea that he is well-informed about happenings in the
mythological world. In the mythology, this implies that the raven informants,
standing behind Óðinn and assisting him in his acquisition of knowledge, were
guaranteeing that he could maintain order in the mythological world. At a
more basic level, the ravens’ function affirms that there is a connection between
the intellectual resources they personify and worldly order. Without thought
and memory, such order would be difficult to maintain, and the world would
be one step closer to chaos and destruction.
In the eddic poem Grímnismál (stanza 20), Óðinn refers to Huginn and
Muninn in a monologue:
5
For example, Mary Carruthers has written about the symbolic connection between birds
and the soul, memories and thought: ‘Birds are a common image for the souls, memories, and
thoughts throughout the ancient world, both classical and Hebrew. “Feathered thoughts” and
“winged memories” copiously flock in the Psalms, in Virgil, and many lesser texts, though one
of the best and, in the Middle Ages, most remembered is that of Boethius, The Consolation
of Philosophy […]’. Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 36–37. In the present article, I limit
myself to an elaboration of the semantic field which sees the ravens as supportive of Óðinn’s
function as the god of wisdom, acknowledging however, that other fields, not least the one con-
cerned with war and death, are equally closely connected to this god.
6
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, p. 32.
7
Translation from Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes (1995), p. 33.
8
For a recent treatment that deals with Óðinn’s gaining and maintaining of wisdom,
see Quinn, ‘Liquid Knowledge: Traditional Conceptualisations of Learning in Eddic Poetry’,
pp. 183–226. About the possibility that in the medieval period, the ravens were understood as
personifications of Óðinn’s wisdom, see Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, p. 164.
Huginn oc Muninn fliúga hverian dag

iormungrund yfir;
óomc ec of Hugin, at hann aptr né komið,
þó siámc meirr um Munin.9
Hugin and Munin fly every day, over the wide world; I fear for Hugin that he will
not come back, yet I tremble more for Munin.10
If we accept the premise that Huginn and Muninn embody the mental capaci-
ties of thought and memory, this stanza confirms both the tendency to pair
these capacities, i.e. to consider them as complementary, and their close connec-
tion to Óðinn. Despite the fact that in eddic poetry the ravens do not always
occur together, and despite that fact that, quantitatively, references are more
often made to Huginn than to Muninn, the Grímnismál stanza highlights the
value of memory over thought. Óðinn is anxious that Muninn will not come
back, which hints at the relative superiority of memory over thought. Asked
rhetorically: what is thought without memory, which brings the past into the
present?
The stanza homes in on another key aspect of memory, namely memory’s
counterpart, forgetting. The possibility that the ravens do not return to Óðinn,
and the reaction of Óðinn, invoked with fear and anxiety while waiting for
them to come back, points to the fragility of memory and the possibility that
it may disappear. The relationship between memory and forgetting, i.e. that
memory cannot be conceived without its counterpart forgetting, implies that
memory, ‘what is’, must be understood from its opposite, ‘what is not’.
Mímir and Hœnir constitute another mythological pair which, like the
ravens, may be understood as embodiments of the intellectual capacities of
memory and thought.11 Ynglinga saga places these two beings centrally in the
war between two god-powers, the Æsir and the Vanir, when they exchange
hostages. The Æsir offer Mímir and Hœnir as hostages to the Vanir, who, for
9
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Neckel and Kuhn, 5th edn, i, p. 61.
10
The Poetic Edda, trans. by Larrington, p. 54.
11
See arguments of Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, i, p. 96, n. 7 and pp. 211–14. The
etymologies of Mímir and Hœnir are debated, see, e.g., de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches
Wörterbuch, pp. 278 and 387 and (about Mímir) Heslop, ‘The Mediality of Mímir’. It may be
relevant to distinguish between etymologies and functions in the mythology, where both Mímir
and Hœnir, semantically, are inserted in situations where it makes sense to see them as embodi-
ments of thought and memory respectively.
18 Pernille Hermann
their part, give the Æsir Njǫrðr and Freyr. Furthermore, the Vanir send the wise
Kvasir to the Æsir:
Fengu Vanir sína ina ágæztu menn, Njǫrð inn auðga ok son hans, Frey, en Æsir þar
í mót þann, er Hœnir hét, ok kǫlluðu hann allvel til hǫfðingja fallinn. Hann var
mikill maðr ok inn vænsti. Með honum sendu Æsir þann, er Mímir hét, inn vitrasti
maðr, en Vanir fengu þar í mót þann, er spakastr var í þeira flokki. Sá hét Kvasir.12
The Vanir gave their most outstanding men, Njorth the Wealthy and his son Frey;
but the Æsir, in their turn, furnished one whose name was Hœnir, declaring him
to be well fitted to be a chieftain. He was a large man and exceedingly handsome.
Together with him the Æsir sent one called Mímir, a very wise man; and the Vanir
in return sent one who was the cleverest among them. His name was Kvasir.13
According to the passage, both groups exchange hostages connected to thought

and wisdom (Mímir and Kvasir), indicating that wisdom is indeed an acknowl-
edged mental capacity in the mythological world. That the Vanir are aware of
the importance of wisdom is underlined by a passage in Skáldskaparmál, which
emphasizes exactly how wise Kvasir was. It further mentions that his knowl-
edge had suffocated him, because no one was clever enough to compete with
him in wisdom games, and it emphasizes that the Vanir actually sent the wisest
man they had: ‘Dvergarnir sǫgðu Ásum at Kvasir hefði kafnat í mannviti fyrir
því at engi var þar svá fróðr at spyrja kynni hann fróðleiks’.14 (‘The dwarfs told
the Æsir that Kvasir had suffocated in intelligence because there was no one
there educated enough to be able to ask him questions’.)15 But the exchange
also underscores that the Æsir, in contrast to the Vanir, recognize the value of
memory. Both by understanding the pair Mímir and Hœnir as concrete mani-
festations of memory and thought, and by emphasizing that Mímir possesses
both these powers, it appears that these two specific mental capacities were
among the Æsir considered to be complementary.16
12
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, i, p. 12.
13
Heimskringla, trans. by Hollander, p. 8.
14
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, p. 3.
15
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes (1995), p. 62. Skáldskaparmál furthermore
relates how Kvasir was created by the Æsir and became himself the origin of poetry, pointing
to the connection between wisdom and poetry, Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by
Faulkes, p. 3.
16
For example, Rudolf Simek writes that etymologically Mímir means ‘the rememberer/the
wise one’, cf. Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, p. 216.
Like Grímnismál 20, Ynglinga saga also highlights the value of memory
above thought. When Hœnir (thought) is placed among the Vanir, it becomes
obvious that he depends on Mímir (memory), and without Mímir’s advice,
Hœnir is disorientated and unfocused. On realizing that, the Vanir feel cheated,
and consequently behead Mímir and return the head to the Æsir. The reaction
of the Vanir — letting go of memory (decapitating and returning Mímir) —
indicates that they do not fully recognize memory’s value.17 Jens Peter Schjødt,
amongst others, has argued that the Æsir and the Vanir respectively represent
culture and nature, and this act may be understood to imply that they are at
a lower cultural level than the Æsir.18 The main point here is not so much to
argue for a structural bipolarity between Æsir and Vanir, as to note the ten-
dency in Ynglinga saga to present the Æsir as a superior group that possesses
not merely thought but also memory, that is, both of these intellectually and
culturally important resources.
This episode from Ynglinga saga, where hostages are exchanged, once again
points to memory’s counterpart — forgetting. Mímir shifts positions, from ini-
tially living among the Æsir, to being away from them, and finally to being back
again. From the perspective of the Æsir, this movement implies a momentary
disappearance of memory, but also a return which has given Mímir a new form.
When back among the Æsir, the decapitated Mímir is treated carefully by
Óðinn: ‘Óðinn tók hǫfuðit ok smurði urtum þeim, er eigi mátti fúna, ok kvað
þar yfir galdra ok magnaði svá, at þat mælti við hann ok sagði honum marga
leynda hluti’.19 (‘Óthin took it and embalmed it with herbs so that it would not
rot, and spoke charms over it giving it magic power so that it would answer him
and tell him many occult things’.)20 Once again Óðinn is closely connected to
the embodiment of intellectual powers. Óðinn’s sensitive treatment of Mímir’s
head (Míms hǫfuð) and his caring for what is obviously considered by him to be
a treasure, confirms that, if nobody else, Óðinn certainly recognizes memory’s
value. Ynglinga saga points to the fact that only the Æsir, represented by Óðinn,
are fully aware of memory’s importance; or rather it is only when among the
gods of that group that memory can fulfil its potential. Thus, the thirteenth-
century text of Ynglinga saga underscores that the Æsir are not merely the bear-
17
Cf. Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, i, p. 96.
18
For example, Schjødt, ‘Relationen mellem aser’, pp. 311–13. See also Clunies Ross, Pro
longed Echoes, i, p. 218.
19
20
Heimskringla, trans. by Hollander, p. 8.
20 Pernille Hermann
ers of culture, but more specifically of a high culture based upon the comple-
mentary relation between wisdom and memory. It is symptomatic that the god-
group that recognizes memory’s importance, or among whom memory thrives
and lives, is the one which, in the mythological world made by the texts, has
absolute dominance. By contrast, the Vanir — apart from Njǫrðr, Freyr, and
Freyja, who become assimilated with and integrated among the Æsir — are not
much elaborated on, but rather are excluded from the centre of mythological
activity, an exclusion that underlines how crucial the acquisition of memory is
for group persistence.
Because of Óðinn’s special treatment of Mímir’s head, it is capable of pro-
viding him with special knowledge. Whereas Huginn and Muninn reveal to
him empirical knowledge that can be observed directly in the present, the
knowledge revealed by Mímir’s head seems to be of a sort that is not imme-
diately observable in the here-and-now world, but derives from other worlds.
The special knowledge may include also knowledge about the future, and in
that case, Mímir’s head adds another dimension to Óðinn’s wisdom, providing
him with foresight, i.e. knowledge about future events. Moreover, that Mímir
can reveal things about the future may be inferred from Gylfaginning’s descrip-
tion of Mímir, who is said to be the master of Mímir’s well (Mímis brunnr).
Gylfaginning relates that at Ragnarǫk, Óðinn will go to Mímir’s well to consult
Mímir and get his advice, indicating Óðinn’s desire for knowledge of the future
and the ability of Mímir to reveal it.21
It should be noted here that — when speaking about memory specifically —
the mythological texts repeat one of the general principles of memory: namely,
that memory is not limited to dealing with the past, but also has an affiliation
with the present and the future. Knowledge about the present, or the very
recent past, is connected to Huginn and Muninn, who relate the latest news to
Óðinn; the past is connected partly to the sybil in Vǫluspá, who remembers the
very distant past; and, finally, the future may be involved when Óðinn is occu-
pied with Mímir, e.g. by Mímir’s well, and when he is engaged in dialogue with
the sibyl in Vǫluspá, who can inform not only about the distant and far away
past, but also about the future.22 The Óðinn-complex thus connects memory
to the past, the present, and the future, emphasizing that memory is all-encom-
passing, in as much as it implies and effects all temporal stages.
21
22
See Lindow’s article in this volume.
Memory, Intelligence, and Foresight

In De inventione, Cicero specifically treats the close relationship between mem-
ory, intelligence, and foresight, that is, those same intellectual capacities which
we see expressed in symbolic form in the mythological texts, where Huginn
and Muninn, Mímir and Hœnir, as well as Mímir’s head and Mímir’s well,
function within an Óðinn-complex, as beings and places that either personify
or support the superior intellectual capacity of Óðinn’s mind. When defining
virtue, Cicero classifies memory, intelligence, and foresight as sub-categories
of wisdom:
Prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum neutrarumque scientia. Partes eius:
memoria, intellegentia, providentia. Memoria est per quam animus repetit illa quae
fuerunt; intellegentia, per quam ea perspicit quae sunt; providentia, per quam futu-
rum aliquid videtur ante quam factum est.
Wisdom is the knowledge of what is good, what is bad and what is neither good
nor bad. Its parts are memory, intelligence, and foresight. Memory is the faculty
by which the mind recalls what has happened. Intelligence is the faculty by which
it ascertains what is. Foresight is the faculty by which it is seen that something is
going to occur before it occurs.23
The sub-classes in De inventione, where wisdom is an overall category cover-

ing memoria (memory), intelligentia (intelligence) and providentia (foresight),
are thus repeated in the mythological texts where Óðinn is described as the
wise god (corresponding to wisdom), having connected to him embodiments
of or sources to, most clearly, intelligentia and memoria, but also to providentia.
Cicero’s classification may not have served as a direct structural principle, or
a typological parallel, of the Óðinn-complex as it appears in the mythic texts
referred to above. Still, the mythic texts emphasize these same resources and
underscore their connectedness, demonstrating that in the medieval period
memory was conceived in connection with wisdom and foresight. Even if
memory was understood to have close affinities with wisdom and foresight at
a time much earlier than when the myths were written down, in the thirteenth
century, such notions deriving from a classical tradition might have guided the
authorial choices which lay behind the textual representations. Such a sugges-
tion does not at all mean that in the thirteenth century, the mythic heritage was
23
Cicero, De inventione, ed. and trans. by Hubbell, pp. 326–27.
22 Pernille Hermann
deprived of its originality or misused; quite to the contrary, it confirms that it

was still considered capable of expressing valuable cultural resources.24
Óðinn’s engagement with these mythological beings indicates that he
depends on something outside of his body in order to have wisdom, memory,
and foresight. The endeavours of Óðinn, and his efforts and sacrifices to acquire
these intellectual powers, are recurring themes in the mythological texts, some-
thing which underscores the importance of having access to the powers that
these other beings embody, as well as the necessity of these mental resources
for his capacity to maintain the knowledge that is required to maintain order
in the mythological world. In contrast to other genres, mythic texts to a very
high degree invoke symbolic language, embodiments, and personifications to
express valuable cultural resources, and this bodily dissociation can be under-
stood from such contexts. The disassociation of these powers from Óðinn does
not at all indicate this god’s lack of intellectual capacity. His position as the
wise god is never really questioned in the mythic texts, despite the fact that —
exactly through his striving for memory, wisdom, and foresight — it is made
quite clear that he is actually not all-knowing.
The dissociation of memory from Óðinn, that is, the symbolical detach-
ment of this mental capacity from its bodily location, may express something
about the nature of these resources, or that the kind of memory Óðinn is in
possession of is of a certain character. Ad Herennium describes different types
of memory, ‘natural memory’ and ‘artificial memory’, and the following expla-
nation is given of these memory types:
Sunt igitur duae memoriae: una naturalis, altera artificiosa. Naturalis est ea quae
nostris animis insita est et simul cum cogitatione nata; artificiosa est ea quam con-
firmat inductio quaedam et ratio praeceptionis.
There are, then, two kinds of memory: one natural, and the other the product of
art. The natural memory is that memory which is imbedded in our minds, born
simultaneously with thought. The artificial memory is that memory which is
strengthened by a kind of training and system of discipline.25
The distinction points to ‘the art of memory’ as a technique, which has been
explored by, amongst others, Frances A. Yates.26 In contrast to ‘natural mem-
24
See Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, ii and Hermann, ‘Cultural Memory and Old Norse
Mythology’.
25
Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and trans. by Caplan, pp. 206–07.
26
Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 4.
ory’, ‘artificial memory’ implies training and refinement, and the acquisition of
an extraordinary memory. Such a process is symbolically expressed in Óðinn’s
continuous efforts to gain access to memory, a most needed resource for the
god of wisdom. A strengthening of memory is implied most clearly in Óðinn’s
engagement with Mímir’s head. When it is returned from the Vanir, Mímir
has undergone a transformation from body to head, a process which implies
cultivation and condensation, and which is successful, only because of Oðinn’s
striving and intense efforts. Moreover, sacrifice and effort are indeed required,
for when Óðinn wishes to drink a drop from Mímir’s well, he must leave his eye
there as a pledge.
Mnemonic Images
It is remarkable that Oðinn’s striving for intelligence, memory, and foresight
is integral to some of the most strikingly grotesque incidents in Old Norse
mythology, which include speaking heads, body parts being forfeited, a one-
eyed god, and invocations of sibyls with special gifts. These are all memorable
simply because they are imbedded in peculiar images. Such striking images as
those found in the mythological texts resemble classical memorial techniques,
which have as their main organizing principles places (loci) and images (ima
gines). According to these techniques, to memorize a situation implies a men-
tal creation of a spatial environment and, next to that, the creation of images,
placed at various locations within that spatial environment, and having the
function of triggering the memory of things (res) or words (verba). In Ad
Herennium, the images that support ‘artificial memory’ are described as such:
[…] at si quid videmus aut audimus egregie turpe, inhonestum, inusitatum, mag-
num, incredibile, ridiculum, id diu meminisse consuevimus […] Imagines igitur
nos in eo genere constituere oportebit quod genus in memoria diutissime potest
haerere. Id accidet si quam maxime notatas similitudines constituemus; si non mul-
tas nec vagas, sed aliquid agentes imagines ponemus; si egregiam pulcritudinem aut
unicam turpitudinem eis adtribuemus; si aliquas exornabimus, ut si coronis aut
veste purpurea, quo nobis notatior sit similitudo; aut si qua re deformabimus, ut
si cruentam aut caeno oblitam aut rubrica delibutam inducamus, quo magis insig-
nita sit forma, aut ridiculas res aliquas imaginibus adtribuamus, nam ea res quoque
faciet ut facilius meminisse valeamus.
[…] if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary,

great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember for a long time
[…] We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the mem-
ory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set
24 Pernille Hermann
up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them
exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or
purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if
we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled
with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assign-
ing certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering
them more readily.27
Mímir’s head, as well as other mythological beings or incidents, can be an

embodiment of memory, underscoring Óðinn’s role as the wise god, and — in
the textual representation of the mythological world — the wish to represent
the Æsir, i.e. the pagan gods, as being at a culturally sophisticated level. Such
an understanding would be supported by the tendency, for example in the pro-
logue of Snorra Edda, for Nordic pre-history, including the pagan gods, to be
combined with, and balanced by, high-cultural idea worlds, like the classical
and the Christian. But at the same time, Mímir’s head may be an example of a
condensed image of a narrative, that is, an image of memory, which supported
the storage of the mythic narrative.
A deeper understanding of such mnemonic images, characterized by their
visual character and their functions, would provide us with insights into mem-
ory techniques of the sort that may have been used by the Norse experts who
preserved the myths.28 Also, an increased recognition of the significance of
memory’s visual dimension will open a field of investigation about how mne-
monic images might have formed constitutive structural principles for Old
Norse-Icelandic literature.
Memory and Forgetting

If we turn our attention away from the world constructed by the mythologi-
cal texts, and focus instead on the saga world, some of the same key aspects of
memory are repeated; they are, however, expressed more directly than in the
mythological texts. The dialogues of saga characters are, among other things,
concerned with the relationship between remembering and forgetting, as well
as with memory’s diminution.
27
Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. by Caplan, pp. 218–21.
28
Images, of course, are not limited to the types that are described by the classical authors,
but would have been relevant for performers in other contexts, see e.g. Scheub, ‘Body and Image
in Oral Narrative Performance’.
That memory may fade over time is implied in Laxdæla saga, in a discussion
between Guðrún and Þorgils, when they revisit an agreement about a poten-
tial marriage made between them some time earlier. Responding to his ques-
tion about whether she remembers her promise, Guðrún answers: ‘Ekki hefir
síðan svá langt liðit, er vit rœddumsk víð, at mér sé þat ór minni liðit […]’.29
(‘Hardly has the time which has passed since we spoke of this been so long that
it has dropped out of memory […]’.)30 Firstly, this passage presupposes one of
the most widespread metaphors for memory in the classical and medieval peri-
ods, namely memory as a storehouse, a metaphor which implies that memory
serves as mental storage and as a container for keeping things in an archive.31
At the same time, however, the dialogue implies the conviction that memory is
a storage-space of limited capacity. Over time, it will diminish, i.e. things can
drop out of memory. The process of memory fading is expressed by the literary
scholar Ann Rigney with the ‘leaky bucket-metaphor’, illustrating how memory
diminishes, just like water flowing from a leaky bucket.32
Furthermore, the episode touches on the ambiguity of remembering. When
speaking about their agreement, Guðrún and Þorgils both seem to imply that
they may remember it differently. The dialogue continues like this:
‘[…] ætla ek ok þat eina fyrir mér, at efna við þik allt, þat er ek varð á sátt, eða
hvers minnir þik um, hversu mælt var með okkr?’ Þorgils kvað hana muna mundu.
Guðrún svarar: ‘Þat hygg ek, at ek héta þér því, at giptask engum manni samlendum
ǫðrum en þér, eða villtu nǫkkut mæla í móti þessu?’ Þorgils kvað hana rétt muna.
‘Þá er vel’, segir Guðrún, ‘ef okkr minnir eins um þetta mál’.33
‘I have no intention of doing otherwise than fulfilling the bargain we agreed upon
completely. Do you remember what it was that we agreed upon?’ Thorgils said she
must remember that. Gudrun answered, ‘I think I promised you I would marry
no other man in the country except you; do you have any objection to make with
that?’ Thorgils said she remembered correctly. ‘It is well that we both have one
remembrance thereof […]’.34
29
Laxdæla saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, p. 195.
30
The Saga of the People of Laxardal, trans. by Kunz, p. 101, slightly revised.
31
Mary Carruthers considers ‘memory as storage-room and strongbox’ to be one of the
dominant models of memory in ancient and medieval times, see Carruthers, The Book of
Memory, pp. 33–45.
32
Rigney, ‘Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory’, pp. 11–28.
33
34
The Saga of the People of Laxardal, trans. by Kunz, p. 101, slightly revised.
26 Pernille Hermann
In this situation, the persons involved have not erased the agreement from their
memory; actually they share the same memory even if the question given by
Þorgils implies that there is no real guarantee that individuals remember a past
situation or agreement in the same way. But Guðrún runs away from her prom-
ise to marry Þorgils, not by manipulating the agreement, that is, by changing
its wording during the process of remembering. Rather she responds to the
agreement with a literal understanding of its wording. What she promised was
not to marry any other man who was in the country; the plan she afterwards
made for her married life, though, was to marry a man who was not in the coun-
try: ‘þó at ek giptumk Þorkatli Eyjólfssyni, því at hann er nú eigi hér á landi’35
(‘though I marry Thorkel Eyjolfsson, for he is at present not in this country’).36
Since Guðrún responds to the agreement by playing with the words, it seems
that she and Þorgils both presuppose a quite detailed word-for-word agreement
made in the past, something which indicates that exact verbal statements were
remembered and shared among saga persons making contracts and taking part
in disputes.37
The dialogue between Guðrún and Þorgils presupposes that memory is
indebted to the interpretations of those remembering, something which chal-
lenges what memory is actually about: frozen moments of the past or living
moments of the present? The episode brings attention not merely to the func-
tion of memory as a storehouse and to the limitation of the storehouse, but
also to the plasticity of remembering and the impact of the moment of remem-
brance (in the present) on the situation (in the past). That memory has limited
capacity is implied in a passage from one of the other Íslendingasögur, namely
Bandamanna saga, which expresses the need for memory aids. Ófeigr ends a
cunning and subtle lawsuit that he has taken over for his son with a verse per-
formance, which is composed with the intention of strengthening the memory
of those chieftains at the Althing who witness the end of the case: ‘Þá mælti
Ófeigr: “Nú vil ek kveða yðr vísu eina, ok hafa þá fleiri at minnum þing þetta ok
málalok þessi, er hér eru orðin”’.38 (‘Then Ofeig spoke up: “Now I want to recite
35
36
The Saga of the People of Laxardal, trans. by Kunz, p. 101.
37
One highly interesting aspect of memory and remembering, which falls outside the scope
of this article, is the relationship between verbatim and generative recall, or between rote mem-
ory and re-creative memory. About such different forms of memory see Carruthers, The Book of
Memory and Carruthers and Ziolkowski, eds, The Medieval Craft of Memory, pp. 1–31; See also
Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral, p. 180.
38
Bandamanna saga, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, p. 356.
you a verse, so that more people will remember this Althing and the outcome of
this case”’.)39 Ófeigr is aware of the danger of oblivion, and his creative attempt
to strengthen the memory of those present points to the felt need to keep in
memory the settlement that has been reached. After all, it is only when agree-
ments are remembered that conflicts come to an end and order is maintained.
By contrast, forgetting settlements implies chaos and destruction of orderly
society. Obviously, in a world like the one narrated in the sagas, where society is
regulated by contractual agreements made between people, memory is a crucial
resource for social regulation and for maintaining order. Thus, just as in the
mythological texts, memory supports an orderly society.
It is remarkable that the mnemonic aid in this case is an orally composed
verse, that is, a performance that vanishes and leaves no material trace. A per-
formed verse does not archive information physically and concretely, and it
does not constitute a tangible memory aid, which can be consulted by means of
touch and sight. It points to a highly intriguing issue concerning transmission
and preservation of memory in oral contexts. In the world constructed by the
saga, the verse seems to function as a mnemonic aid ready for repetition, some-
thing which supports the view that saga persons were capable of remembering
and repeating skaldic verses that had been performed for them. A similar exam-
ple of that is found in Gísla saga, where Þórdís — with crucial consequences
for the escalation of the conflict in which Gísli is involved — remembers and
repeats a skaldic verse.40 In the sagas, fixed oral texts function as store-boxes. In
relying on oral utterances and performance such episodes contrast the convic-
tion that a memory aid must be tangible and concrete. Quite to the contrary,
oral performances, e.g. skaldic verse, share similar functions in oral contexts as
books do in contexts of writing.41
Mnemonic Places
Saga-texts, like the mythological texts, presuppose the basic organizing principles
of memory which are emphasized in classical texts, places (loci) and images (ima
gines), and they reveal the relevance of places for preservation and structuring of
39
The Saga of the Confederates, trans. by Ellison, p. 491.
40
Gísla saga Súrssonar, ed. by Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, pp. 58–59.
41
Much has been written about skaldic poetry as literacy ‘avant la lettre’, see e.g. Jesch,
‘Skaldic Verse, a Case of Literacy Avant la Lettre?’ and Harris, ‘Old Norse Memorial Discourse’,
pp. 122–23. See also Schneider, ‘Archives. Performance. Remains’.
28 Pernille Hermann
memory. The relevance of place for memory is attested in the Greek legend about
Simonides of Ceos. Simonides recalled who had been present in a hall which had
burned to the ground, because he could visualize each person and where they
had been seated. With regard to Old Norse-Icelandic literature, Jürg Glauser has
more than once emphasized that memory is spatially grounded. Glauser has writ-
ten that ‘memory is pre-eminently associated with spatial modes of thought’, and
he has specifically argued that the lesson learned from the Simonides legend, that
memory is constituted on a spatial basis, is also seen in saga-texts.42
Whereas in the classical world, mnemonic places were inspired by archi-
tecture — buildings, temples, and public places — mnemonic places in Old
Norse-Icelandic literature most obviously reflect the spatial environment of the
Icelandic landscape, and it is not least the topography of saga-texts and their
literary mapping of the natural and cultural landscape which is crucial when
considering the relation of saga-texts to mnemonic places. But buildings and
halls and their interior parts constitute important types of mnemonic place
systems here as well. In Njáls saga — similar to the Simonides legend — the
memory of a gathering seems to have been supported by the interior architec-
ture of the Icelandic hall. The episode relates in quite a detailed way the seating
of those people who celebrated the wedding of Gunnarr and Hallgerðr:
Hann sat á miðjan bekk, en innar frá Þráinn Sigfússon, þá Úlfr aurgoði, þá Valgarðr
inn grái, þá Mǫrðr ok Runólfr, þá Sigfússynir; Lambi sat innstr. It næsta Gunnari
utar frá sat Njáll, þá Skarpheðinn, þá Helgi, þá Grímr, þá Hǫskuldr, þá Hafr inn
spaki, þá Ingjaldr frá Keldum, þá synir Þóris austan ór Holti. Þórir vildi sitja yztr
virðingamanna, því at þá þótti hverjum gott þar, sem sat. Hǫskuldr sat á miðjan
bekk, en synir hans innar frá honum; Hrútr sat utar frá Hǫskuldi. En þá er eigi
frá sagt, hversu ǫðrum var skipat. Brúðr sat á miðjum palli, en til annarrar handar
henni sat Þorgerðr, dóttir hennar, en til annarrar handar Þórhalla, dóttir Ásgríms
Elliða-Grímssonar.43
[Gunnar] himself sat in the middle of the bench, and next to him, on the inside,
sat Thrain Sigfusson, then Ulf Aur-Godi, Valgerd the Grey, Mord Valgardsson,
Runolf, and the sons of Sigfus, with Lambi all the way in. On the other side of
Gunnar, toward the door, sat Njal, then Skarphedin, then Helgi, then Grim, then
Hoskuld, then Haf the wise, then Ingjald from Keldur, then the sons of Thorir of
Holt over in the east. Thorir himself wanted to sit at the outer edge of the men of
42
Glauser, ‘The Speaking Bodies of Saga Texts’, p. 19 has specifically compared the
Simonides legend with the episode in Njáls saga where Njáll prepares his body for the burning
down of his farm. See also Glauser, ‘Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir’.
43
Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, pp. 88–89.
worth, for then everyone would think himself well seated. Hoskuld Dala-Kollsson
sat in the middle of the opposite bench, with his sons to the inside of him. Hrut sat
on the other side of Hoskuld, toward the door. There is no report of how the others
were seated. The bride sat in the middle of the cross-bench. On the other side of
her sat her daughter Thorgerd, and on the other Thorhalla, the daughter of Asgrim
Ellida-Grimsson.44
The basic structure of the hall, its directions and its benches, here serves as an
organizational device, according to which it is possible to remember who had
been present. In the passage, those guests who are not anchored to a specific
spot in the room are not mentioned by name, i.e. they are not remembered
(‘En þá er eigi frá sagt, hversu ǫðrum var skipat’). Thus, if not associated with
specific places, the mechanism of forgetting intervenes and elements of the nar-
rative fall from memory.45
Considered in the light of classical mnemonic techniques, when narratives
are based on how places are ordered, whether such spatial organization takes
the form of the landscape, or of cultural markers in the landscape (i.e. farm-
steads, mounds, and similar significant places) or on buildings, such as the hall,
these places serve as a surface onto which the remembered things or words
can be attached, much like the book page, or manuscript leaf, serves as a sur-
face upon which letters can be placed.46 The spatial dimension of Old Norse-
Icelandic literature, its ‘mnemonic places’, together with its visual dimension,
its ‘mnemonic images’, might provide us with an insight into a type of ‘artificial
memory’, which most likely had an organizational function for, and thus can be
expected to be represented in, Old Norse-Icelandic literature.
The Memory of Individuals and Cultural Memory

Historical texts also express key aspects of memory, and Íslendingabók will serve
as the first example. Íslendingabók — like the mythological texts — presup-
poses a pairing of memory and wisdom; it deals with extraordinary memory,
44
Njal’s Saga, trans. by Cook, p. 39.
45
See also Lönnroth, Njáls saga: A Critical Introduction, pp. 195–96 where this episode is
linked to the social context.
46
A widely used metaphor among the classical writers for mnemonic places (loci) is exactly
the written surface; the metaphor is completed when mnemonic images (imagines) are under-
stood as the letters written on that surface. See, for example, Carruthers, The Book of Memory,
pp. 28–29.
30 Pernille Hermann
i.e. individuals with a trained and remarkable memory, and it displays an aware-

ness of the limitations of memory.
In Íslendingabók, storing knowledge of the past (fræði) is inextricably bound
to both wisdom and memory. Thus, the common reference to wisdom and mem-
ory that historical and mythological texts share points in turn to similarities of
theme and interest. Very specifically, the term fræði, which refers to both histor-
ical and mythic knowledge, marks an intriguing point of intersection between
those otherwise differently conceived worlds as they are pictured in the litera-
ture. A juncture of this sort between myth and history in Old Norse-Icelandic
literature is evidenced by the fact that both Óðinn and Ari Þorgilsson are called
fróðr (the wise), i.e. in Vafþrúðnismál and Heimskringla.47 Furthermore, they
are both preoccupied with memory, that is, conceived of in a semantic field,
which involves preoccupation with this resource, something which confirms
their authoritative position as those who, on the one hand, maintain order in
the mythological world and, on the other hand, construe Icelandic history and
thus impose order on the historical world from society’s beginning.
The engagement in Íslendingabók with people who are wise, people of good
memory, and people who are capable of remembering far back, is most evident
from Ari Þorgilsson’s characterization of informants. Two informants, Þorkell
Gellisson and Hallr Teitsson, are described as men who remembered a long
way back: ‘Þorkels fǫðurbróður míns Gellissonar, es langt munði fram’ (‘My
paternal uncle Þorkell Gellisson, who remembered a long way back’) and ‘En
Hallr sagði oss svá, es bæði vas minnigr ok ólyginn ok munði sjalfr þat es hann
vas skírðr’ (‘And Hallr, who both had a reliable memory and was truthful, and
remembered himself being baptised’).48 Hallr Teitsson is described both as
capable of remembering far back and as reliable, which underscores his compe-
tence in storing things in memory.
Íslendingabók touches on another key aspect of memory, namely that mem-
ory cannot encompass every aspect of the past. Neither the medieval writer
nor his informants are capable of recovering the past fully. A frontier towards
the past is met, for instance, when attempts are made to reconstruct the list of
Icelandic lawspeakers: some knowledge is ‘before memory’: ‘Fyrir várt minni’
47
John Lindow has emphasized this as well as other similarities between Íslendingabók and
the eddas, such as their sharing of a cosmological theme and an interest in the ordering of the
world, time and space, see Lindow, ‘Íslendingabók and Myth’. See also Meulengracht Sørensen,
Fortælling og ære, pp. 36–38.
48
Íslendingabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, pp. 4 and 21. Translation from Íslendingabók.
Kristni saga, trans. by Grønlie, pp. 3 and 11.
(‘earlier than my memory extends’) and ‘fyrir hans minni váru’ (‘earlier than his
memory extends’).49 Another historical text, Sverris saga, which is concerned
mainly with the memory of someone who had relatively recently experienced
the events being narrated, uses a phrase with the opposite meaning, namely
‘within memory’. ‘Hér hefr upp ok segir frá þeim tíðendum er nú hafa verit um
hríð ok í þeira manna minnum er fyrir þessi bók hafa sagt’.50 (‘We begin to talk
about events which happened a while ago within the memory of the men who
told them for this book’.)51
Considerations of before memory/within memory occupied medieval writ-
ers in their attempts, partly, to stay safe and refer to those who saw or heard,
and, partly, to reach beyond the memory of their witnesses. Such a challenge
concerns the difference between, firstly, direct experience and proximity to
events, and, secondly, mediated and represented cultural forms relevant for the
transmission and storage of the distant past. The theoretical concept ‘cultural
memory’ seeks to explain such a schism between experience and representa-
tion, and makes an appropriate excursus to a quite different form of memory
than what is otherwise discussed in the present article.52 ‘Cultural memory’
metaphorically implies that culture has a memory of its own, i.e. that memory
is not merely to be conceived of as a phenomenon that resides inside individu-
als, but as a collectively shared phenomenon, which takes external form, i.e. in
poetry, narratives, rituals, or other representational forms.
Only when memory is transferred from the individual to collectively shared
forms, embedded in various media (orality, writing, picture), is it possible to
reach the past that lies beyond experience. As such, ‘cultural memory’, in con-
trast to the memory of an individual, allows for an extensive diachronic per-
spective.53 With reference to such a concept, it can be argued that when medi-
eval writers chose to refer to cultural forms, rather than to witnesses, they were
engaged with ‘cultural memory’. The fræði of Íslendingabók is connected to eye-
witnesses or people within a few generations of the events, i.e. people who are
49
Íslendingabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, p. 22. Translation from Íslendingabók. Kristni
saga, trans. by Grønlie, p. 11.
50
Sverris saga, ed. by Þorleifur Hauksson, p. 3.
51
My translation.
52
Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. The concept ‘cultural memory’ has been elaborated
on and developed in a variety of contexts, see, for example, Erll and Nünning, eds, Cultural
Memory Studies.
53
Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, pp. 48–56 uses the concept ‘communicative mem-
ory’ to refer to a synchronic perspective.
32 Pernille Hermann
not at a great remove from the events told about. Íslendingabók itself, this writ-
ten book, however, represents, constitutes, even is externalized memory, which
could serve as a point of reference for later history writers, for instance, Snorri
Sturluson who referred to Íslendingabók (and skaldic verses) when writing the
earliest history of the Norwegian kings.54
Memory and the Book

Sverris saga, already mentioned above, is a historical text which — like Íslen
dingabók — touches on a number of memory-related issues. In Sverris saga’s
prologue, as in some of the previous text examples, attention is drawn to the
relationship between memory and forgetting, and furthermore to memory in
written culture:
Inn síðarri hlutr bókar er ritaðr eftir þeira manna frásǫgn er minni hǫfðu til svá
at þeir sjálfir hǫfðu sét ok heyrt þessi tíðendi, ok þeir menn sumir hǫfðu verit
í orrostum með Sverri konungi. Sum þessi tíðendi váru svá í minni fest at menn
rituðu þegar eftir er nýorðin váru, ok hafa þau ekki breytzk síðan. En vera kann þat
ef þeir menn sjá þessa bók er allkunnigt er um at þeim þykki skyndiliga yfir farit
í mǫrgum stǫðum ok mart þat eftir liggja er frásagnar myndi vert þykkja, ok megu
þeir þat enn vel láta rita ef þeir vilja.55
The latter part of this book is written according to the stories of the men who had
the memory of the tidings and had seen or heard them, and some of them had been
with King Sverrir in battles. Some of the tidings were fixed in memory, so that men
wrote after that what had just happened, and they have not been changed since
then. If this book is seen by those who know everything about the events, they may
think many things are touched upon in an insufficient way, and much has not been
told which they regard as relevant enough to mention, and they may have them
written down if they wish.56
In presupposing the principle of selectivity and reduction, which is integral

to any transmission of memory, the prologue explicitly directs itself to recipi-
ents presumed not to agree on what is included in, and, consequently, what is
excluded from, this written record. It lays open how textual organization, as
well as the dependency upon writers’ and sponsors’ priorities is a relevant topic
when occupied with memory. The invitation to the readers to write an addi-
54
55
Sverris saga, ed. by Þorleifur Hauksson, p. 3.
56
My translation.
tional piece about their memory potentially leads to different textual repre-
sentations, which would lay open the perspective of a manifold past essentially
formed by textual representations. Textual representations that do not depict
the past in the same ways will not merely represent the past — or more pre-
cisely competing memories about the past — but also actively take part in the
construction of the past, in as much as they will be formative for how the past
is understood among the recipients. The prologue touches upon the problem-
atic relationship between experience and externalized textual representation, a
relationship reflected on in a number of other medieval texts occupied with the
past; moreover, it considers textual construction and the potential for textually
transmitted memory not merely to represent the past, but to shape past reali-
ties among those engaged with the texts.
In passages scattered around the Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus, the
medieval writers touch on the intriguing question of the relationship between
two coexisting storehouses, memory and the book. In Sverris saga’s prologue,
which homes in on memory and writing, these two parallel means of storage
are considered. It mentions that events were fixed in memory and that events
were written down. This way of bringing together memory and the book, inter-
nal and external storage, directs attention to the archiving capacity of both of
these storehouses.
Another saga that touches on the relationship between memory and the
book is Þorláks saga, usually categorized among the biskupa sǫgur:
En áðr menn gengi frá grepti ins sæla Þorláks byskups þá mælti Gizurr Hallson
langt ørendi ok fagrt um þau tíðendi er gǫrzk hǫfðu, eptir því sem vanði er á yfir
tiginna manna grepti, ok vil ek geta nǫkkura orða, segir sá er sǫguna setti, þeira er
hann talaði ok mér ganga sízt ór minni.57
But before men went away from the burying of the blessed bishop Thorlac, Gizor
Hall’s son spake a long and fair speech upon what had taken place there according
as the manner is over the grave or at the burying of men of rank. And I will set down
certain of the words which he spake, which have gone least out of my memory.58
Firstly, the anonymous writer of Þorláks saga explicitly refers to his own
memory in a way that implies an acknowledgement of the fact that things
can fall out of it. Once again the storehouse metaphor is accompanied by an
acknowledgement of its incompleteness. Secondly, as the last part of the pas-
57
Þorláks saga, ed. by Ásdís Egilsdóttir, p. 190.
58
Origenes Islandicae, ed. and trans. by Gudbrand Vigfusson and Powell, i, p. 500, slightly revised.
34 Pernille Hermann
sage shows, memory and the book are considered as comparable items, as the
writer explicitly presupposes a transfer of words from being held in memory,
one storehouse, to become items inscribed in a book, another storehouse.59
The passage in Þorláks saga and the speech which is recreated in writing, refers
to a performance situation, where educated men were gathered at the bishop’s
burial, listening to Gizurr’s speech, which the writer, in pointing to Gizurr’s
rethorical skills, characterizes as long and fair. The memorization of that speech
by the writer of Þorláks saga, obviously a trained rhetorician himself, may owe
its existence to an inner decoding based on ‘artificial memory’.
Memory is also compared with the book in the prologue to Hungrvaka,
another saga of bishops. In that case, it is explicitly expressed that the book is
considered to be an aid to memory, much in the same way as the skaldic verse,
which in Bandamanna saga was considered as a memory aid in the oral context
depicted by the saga:
En ek hefi þó náliga ǫllu við slegit, at rita þat sem ek hefi í minni fest. Hefi ek af því
þenna bœkling saman settan, at eigi falli mér með ǫllu ór minni þat er ek heyrða af
þessu máli segja inn fróða mann Gizur Hallsson, ok enn nǫkkura menn aðra merki-
liga hafa í frásǫgn fœrt.60
Though I have cast together into my book well-nigh all that I have fast in my mem-
ory. I have put together this little book in order that there might not altogether fall
out of memory what I heard that man of knowledge, Gizor Hallsson, say on the
matter thereof, and what certain other notable men have set forth in narrative.61
The mechanism of memory/forgetting is present in the passage, where writing

is considered to be a means to avoid oblivion.62 The capacity of memory and the
book respectively is evaluated, and the Hungrvaka- passage expresses the belief
that the book is a storage which can assist memory, and which is less inclined
to diminish.63
59
See Hermann, ‘Saga Literature, Cultural Memory and Storage’.
60
Hungrvaka, ed. by Ásdís Egilsdóttir, p. 3.
61
Origenes Islandicae, ed. and trans. by Gudbrand Vigfusson and Powell, i, p. 425.
62
See, for example, Glauser, ‘The Speaking Bodies of Saga Texts’, p. 19 and Hermann,
‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past’, p. 289.
63
Reflections on the relationship between writing and memory were an issue in the antique
world and in the medieval period. Among the Greek philosophers, for example in Phaedrus,
Socrates considers writing as a new and radically different mnemonic cue of his time, but not
as something which can take over memory’s function. Mary Carruthers discusses in detail the
extent to which the book would have functioned as an aid to memory in the European Middle
A final example that talks about the relationship between memory and the
book is found in Jóns saga helga. In the following passage, we are told about a
priest, the young Gísli, who was hired from abroad by bishop Jón Ǫgmundarson
to teach in the Hólar cathedral school:
Ok ávallt er hann prédikaði fyrir fólkinu, þá lét hann liggja bók fyrir sér ok tók þar
af slíkt er hann talaði fyrir fólkinu, ok gerði hann þetta mest af forsjá ok lítillæti, at
þar hann var ungr at aldri þótti þeim meira um vert er til hlýddu at þeir sæi þat at
hann tók sínar kenningar af helgum bókum en eigi af einu saman brjóstviti.64
And ever when he was preaching before the people, he had a book lying before
him, and took therefrom what he spoke to the people, and he did this most out of
prudence and humility, because as he was young in years that those that listened
might lay more store by it, when they saw that he took what he taught out of holy
books and not out of his own natural knowledge or breastwit.65
In the passage, ‘sacred books’ are compared with ‘breast-knowledge’, which I

take literally to mean knowledge placed in the breast. Whereas the first source
of knowledge is dissociated from the body, the latter is placed very directly and
concretely within the body. The tendency to locate wisdom — and with that
memory — in a concrete part of the body, in this case the breast, is found in
classical and medieval traditions, which attaches mental capacities to specific
body parts.66
Another point worth mentioning about the passage from Jóns saga helga
concerns the evaluation of the book and bodily-based knowledge respectively.
In this specific situation, the book is regarded as the most authoritative. When
understood in its specific context, however, it seems that a perception of age,
that is, favouring old age as regards wisdom-authority, colours this evaluation.
According to Gísli, who was a young man, the listeners (students) would put
more weight on his words if he referred to the book rather than to his own
memory, indicating an attitude where bodily-based powers such as memory and
wisdom were connected to old people, that is, were considered to be powers
Ages, and to what extent it would have substituted memory.

64
Jóns saga ins helga, ed. by Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson, and Foote,
pp. 205–06.
65
Origenes Islandicae, ed. and trans. by Gudbrand Vigfusson and Powell, i, p. 552.
66
Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, p. 80: ‘[for] the
ancients the breast was thought to be the abode of the mind’. See also Schnall, ‘Nahrung, Erin
nerung, Dichtung’. See Kate Heslop’s article in the present volume, pp. 79–80.
36 Pernille Hermann
that accumulated over the years and with experience, rather than as something
which derived from training and was achieved through artificial techniques,
accessible even to youngsters.
Concluding Remarks
This very short investigation of memory-related issues, i.e. key aspects of mem-
ory, across genres in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, indicates the medieval
period’s recognition of memory’s importance. It would appear that memory
was part and parcel of a semantic complex relating to wisdom, recognized as a
storehouse, which needed careful treatment and required assistance. This point
confirms that memory was considered among the main resources for cultural
continuance. Passages like the ones in Hungrvaka, Sverris saga, and Þorláks
saga, for example, clearly put forth the conviction that the book was considered
an aid to memory, in turn raising the question of the extent to which writing
and the book came to substitute for memory in the Old Norse world. Whereas,
on the one hand, the introduction of writing and the book on a general level
would have meant the beginning of an initial decline in the capacity of indi-
viduals for memory, since embodied storage possibilities increased, then on the
other hand, it is likely that — in line with the institutionalization of education
— an increased knowledge of artificial memory deriving from classical rhetoric
would actually have intensified the engagement with memory in the learned
milieux which stood behind medieval literature. Rather than assuming from a
narrow perspective that the book substituted for memory in the centuries fol-
lowing the adoption of Christianity in the North, memory and memory tech-
niques may in some instances be expected to have been increasingly explored.
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Memory and Old Norse Mythology
John Lindow
T
he seeress in Vǫluspá really remembers.
Hlióðs bið ec allar helgar kindir,
meiri oc minni, mǫgo Heimdalar;
vildo, at ec, Valfǫðr vel fyrtelia
forn spiǫll fira, þau er fremst um man.
Ec man iǫtna, ár um borna,
nío man ec heima, nío íviði
mjǫtvið mœran fyr mold neðan.1
Attention I ask from all the sacred people, greater and lesser, offspring of Heimdall,
Father of the Slain, you wished that I should declare, the ancient histories of men
and gods, those which I remember from the first.
I, born of giants, remember very early, those who nourished me then; I remem-
ber nine worlds, I remember nine giant women, the mighty measuring tree down
below the earth.2
Vǫluspá presents a synopsis of the mythology as embedded in a single human

memory, or as experienced in a vision in a human mind. Others remember and
see the future as well. In the imagined conceptual world called forth in the texts
we usually combine under the rubric ‘Old Norse mythology’, that is, a social
world set long in the past, with its own past and future, comprising a different
curve from the Christian master narrative to which the scribes who recorded
1
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn, p. 1.
2
John Lindow (lindow@berkeley.edu) is Professor of the Graduate School, Department of
Scandinavian, University of California, Berkeley.
42 John Lindow
the myths subscribed, memory is thus apparently fundamental. What I seek to

explore here is whether thinking about memory can help us think about Old
Norse mythology. Although mythology as a category (as opposed, perhaps,
to myth) resists certain of the analytic tenets that have emerged in the recent
study of memory, we will see that application of them can help lead to a more
nuanced view of a number of familiar matters having to do both with the actors
in the mythology and the broad plot that it enacts.
A philosophical interest in human memory famously goes back at least to
Locke,3 but the last decades have proved to be particularly fruitful. Various
approaches have been brought to bear, including but not limited to psychology,
cognitive science, and philosophy on the one hand, and sociology and the his-
tory of religion on the other. Broadly speaking, the first set of disciplines has a
greater focus on the individual and the latter set on the group.
Those who study memory in the individual have long recognized different
sorts of memory. Nearly everyone accepts a distinction among personal memo-
ries — things we experienced, or think we did — a memory for facts, and a
memory for skills or repeated acts.4 Philosophers have treated the first under the
rubrics episodic memory and autobiographical memory,5 although for our pur-
poses ‘experienced memory’ might be the most fruitful notion. Remembering
facts is often called ‘semantic memory’, and remembering skills or actions under-
taken routinely can be called ‘habit memory’ or ‘procedural memory’.
Clearly the seeress in V ǫ luspá lays a claim to having experienced those
things in the poem that she remembers: the jǫtnar and íviðjur, nine worlds and
the measuring tree. She also displays considerable semantic memory about the
facts of the mythology: the golden age of the gods and its end, the catalogue
of dwarf names, the creations of human beings, the war and reconciliation of
the Æsir and Vanir, the death of Baldr (in the Codex Regius version). What she
does not remember, she sees, a point to which I will return below.
Óðinn is the master of wisdom. This wisdom resides in and is recalled from
his mind and therefore constitutes memory. The interconnection of mind
and memory may be concretized in his ravens, whom we know best from
Grímnismál 20. There Óðinn mentions them in connection with his vision of
Valhǫll, which occupies stanzas 18–26.
3
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
4
Sutton, ‘Memory’ <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/memory/>
[accessed 1 May 2011].
5
Hoerl, ‘Sense, Reference and Truth-Value Links’.
Memory and Old Norse Mythology 43

iǫrmungrund yfir;
Hugin and Munin fly every day, over the wide world; I fear for Hugin that he will
not come back, yet I tremble more for Munin.7
Since Óðinn is the speaker, we do not really need the testimony of Snorra Edda
and Ynglinga saga to know that these birds are important to him. The kenning
tradition makes it abundantly clear that both are ravens, although Huginn
appears a bit more frequently than does Muninn.
Association of Huginn with hugr and especially hugi (mind, thought) seems
obvious ( Jan de Vries: ‘also hugi mit bestimmtem artikel’ (‘thus hugi with the
definite article’)).8 Association of Muninn with muna (remember) and thus
interpreted as ‘memory’ is less etymologically transparent. In his etymological
dictionary, de Vries accepts the connection with muna (remember) without
comment,9 and most recent commentators seem to agree.10 Other suggestions
have, however, been advanced. The issue is that, although some kind of mental
activity must be meant, what kind is unclear. Sĳmons and Gering thought of
munr (distinction) and read the name of the raven as ‘Ability to distinguish’
(‘Unterscheidungsvermögung’).11 That strikes me as overwrought, and it seems
to me on balance likely that pre-Christian poets and medieval men of letters
alike could hardly have overlooked the parallel between hugr/Huginn and
muna/Muninn even if one departs from a noun and the other a verb. And peo-
ple who thought about language — this would have included poets and men
of letters — might easily have postulated a ‘lost’ participle for the preterite-
present verb muna (remember), as with the noun megin (might) from mega or
perhaps the adjective eiginn (own) from eiga.
6
7
8
de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 265 (hugr/hugi/Huginn).
9
de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 395 (muna 1).
10
For example, Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, p. 213. In recent handbooks, Orchard,
Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend, p. 115, has ‘Memory’, while Simek, Lexikon der germanis
chen Mythologie, p. 274 has ‘Thought’ (‘der Gedanke’). In my Norse Mythology: A Guide to the
Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, pp. 186–88, I glossed Muninn as ‘mind’, a position I now find
overly cautious.
11
Sĳmons and Gering, Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, i, p. 194.
44 John Lindow
If we understand Huginn and Muninn as thought and memory, certain con-

clusion follow.12 The first I have already mentioned: that mind and memory
work together, or to put it another way, that Óðinn’s mental powers depend in
part on his memory. A few other conclusions are less obvious. From the point of
view of memory, what the ravens acquire is experienced memory, what they see
and hear: ‘Hrafnar tveir sitja á ǫxlum honum ok segja í eyru honum ǫll tíðindi
þau er þeir sjá eða heyra’.13 (‘Two ravens sit on his shoulders and speak into his
ear all the news they see and hear’.)14 Technically we should probably call what
is going on communicated memory, parallel to Óðinn acquiring information
from jǫtnar, but if anyone reading, telling, or listening to this material saw a
connection with Sámi shamanism (and I have argued that Snorri at least did),15
they could have understood the ravens as shape-shifted versions of Óðinn him-
self, in which case the memory acquired is experienced.
The ravens fly. So do the three Sámi who explored Iceland for Ingimundr
inn gamli Þorsteinsson in ch. 12 of Vatnsdœla saga.16 We should almost cer-
tainly attach them to the vertical axis of the structuralist view of the mythol-
ogy and therefore associate memory with wisdom, cosmogony, and eschato
logy.17 At the same time, the ravens fly over the horizontal axis, where they gain
knowledge of the mythological present.
Ravens are not just any birds. They are beasts of battle, tokens of the dead,
and perhaps Huginn and Muninn primarily visit battlefields and tell Óðinn of
the outcomes. More likely, however, is a symbolic operation. These ravens see
people die and thus acquire a memory of what cannot be remembered: one’s
own death. They also remind us that the only thing that can take memory past
death is other peoples’ memory — that is, social or cultural memory. And they
themselves are threatened with death, as we may infer from Óðinn’s worries
about their safe return.
12
As this article went to press, I learned of the forthcoming piece by Stephen Mitchell,
‘Óðinn’s Twin Ravens’, which treats at greater length some of the themes I treat here and brings
out many others. Of these perhaps the most compelling in this context is the relationship of
thought and memory in the working of the human mind.
13
14
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes (1987), p. 33.
15
Lindow, ‘Cultures in Contact’, pp. 89–109.
16
Vatnsdœla saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, pp. 32–36.
17
Meletinskĳ, ‘Scandinavian Mythology as a System’; Schjødt, ‘Horizontale und vertikale
Achsen’; Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland, pp. 145–54.
A more obvious connection with the dead is found in the embalmed head of
Mímir, who has been taken as an embodiment of memory; indeed, with Hœnir
in Ynglinga saga’s version of the myth of the incorporation of the Æsir and
Vanir as a parallel to the pair Huginn and Muninn as thought and memory.18
Although Clunies Ross warns us that memory in an oral society is not to be
equated with memory in a writing society, she makes a clear case for the impor-
tance of memory as Óðinn uses it and for Mímir as a concrete representation of
that memory. The wisdom that Mímir imparts can be taken to some extent as
communicated memory, but an embalmed talking head hardly qualifies as eve-
ryday communication, and the embalming process clearly invokes the realm of
ritual. If we recall the possible background of Mímir/Mímr/Mími among the
jǫtnar,19 we are again in the situation of ritualized communication of memory
to Óðinn, communication that comes from the Other world (the jǫtnar) and
sometimes simultaneously from the world of the dead.
It seems that the kind of wisdom that Óðinn wins in these cases is frœði
(knowledge of the past and of history).20 Preben Meulengracht Sørensen sug-
gested that we distinguish between the knowledge (frœði) and the narrative
(saga) in which it was embedded,21 and this distinction is useful here, since as
it plays out in the mythology, frœði amounts to facts and should be associated
with semantic memory. But before moving on to some of the implications
of this association, it should be noted that Óðinn also has access to habit or
processual memory. This we see in the magic chants that he knows — lióð
ec þau kann (I know those spells) — and boasts of in Hávamál 146–64, the
so-called ljóðatal. These are not facts but rather skills. Specifically, he knows
(can remember) how to chant effectively, how to carve and colour runes. The
twelfth, set forth in Hávamál 157, enables him to gain information from a
hanged man, which in this context we must associate with the ravens and
Mímir’s head.
18
Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, pp. 96, 212–15. Clunies Ross assigns observation of this
possible parallel to Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, pp. 142–43, but I do not see
it there, although Turville-Petre certainly does associate interpretations of Hœnir as a bird with
Óðinn’s ravens.
19
Mundal, ‘Forholdet mellom gudar og jotnar i norrøn mytologi’, p. 8; Schjødt, ‘Horizontale
und vertikale Achsen’.
20
Meulengracht Sørensen, Saga and Society, p. 107; cf. Meulengracht Sørensen, Fortælling
og ære, pp. 33–51.
21
Meulengracht Sørensen, Saga and Society, pp. 33–51.
46 John Lindow
Þat kann ec iþ tólpta, ef ec sé á tré uppi

váfa virgilná:
svá ec ríst oc í rúnom fác,
at sá gengr gumi
oc mælir við mic.22
I know a twelfth one if I see, up in a tree, a dangling corpse in a noose: I can so carve
and colour the runes, that the man walks, and talks with me.23
Perhaps most interesting in this context, however, is the fourteenth (Hávamál 159).
Þat kann ec iþ fiórtánda, ef ec scal fyrða liði
telia tíva fyrir:
ása oc álfa ec kann allra scil,
fár kann ósnotr svá.24
I know a fourteenth one if I have to reckon up, the gods before men: Æsir and elves,
I know the difference between them, few who are not wise know that.25
This charm seems to indicate that mythological knowledge (frœði) is more than
just facts (semantic memory). Apparently Óðinn relies on some kind of process
to access and order it, or in this context, we might say that access to semantic
memory is aided by processual memory. This raises what may be an important
point: Óðinn seems be able to tap experiential, semantic, and process memory
when dealing with frœði, whereas the jǫtnar, as we have seen, have primarily
experiential memory leading to semantic memory. This difference — that is,
the ability to use process memory — may map onto the inside-outside binary
that seems to animate the mythology, in that Óðinn and the Æsir know how to
do things, not just what things are.
Above I have used the self-evident term ‘communicated memory’ to indicate
memory that an individual may not recall from personal experience (autobio-
graphical memory). Clearly semantic memory and process memory are more
likely to be learned than experienced, and in an oral culture the only means of
communicating facts or processes was oral. However, the term ‘communicated
memory’ also enters into the debate on cultural memory, and given the rela-
22
23
24
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn, pp. 43–44.
25
tionship between a lifetime and the mythological move from beginning to end
(the seeress remembers giants born long ago and can provide Alfǫðr with the
past and the future), it is a helpful notion to maintain.
I have in mind its use in the distinction set forth by Jan Assmann between
communicative memory and cultural memory. ‘For us the concept of “commu-
nicative memory” includes those varieties of collective memory that are based
exclusively on everyday communications’.26 The point is that these memories
are not experienced by individuals but are communicated to individuals by oth-
ers. They then create a kind of collective memory that binds the speaker and
listener into a group, which may range from family (or even dyad) up to nation.
Communicated memory relies ultimately on human experience and cannot
therefore as a rule last longer, Assmann asserts, than eighty to hundred years,
that is, three or four generations or a single human lifetime. The Latin term
saeculum captures this notion perfectly, with its meanings of ‘lifetime, genera-
tion’, but also ‘race, breed’, or even ‘spirit of the time’. When the bearers of these
memories die off, the memories die off with them.
Opposed to this communicative form of collective memory is what Assmann
calls cultural memory, a subject he has treated in a variety of forums. Cultural
memory is that form of collective memory that can survive those who bear it. It
can survive because societies create mechanisms to keep it in place. These mech-
anisms vary from society to society but can include fixing memories in writing
or other forms, recalling them in ritual, associating them with places or objects,
and so forth. Where communicative memory lives in the realm of individuals,
cultural memory lives in the realm of the social. Specialists take responsibility
for it, cultivate it and teach it. I quote Assmann again:
Cultural memory has its fixed point; its horizon does not change with the passing
of time. These fixed points are fateful events of the past, whose memory is main-
tained through cultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutional com-
munication (recitation, practice, observance). We call these ‘figures of memory’.27
I now turn to questions of communicated memory.
Like the seeress, Vafþrúðnir really remembers. In Vafþrúðnismál stanza 35
Óðinn asks him what he first remembers or knows from farthest back. The
giant responds:
26
Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, p. 126.
27
Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, p. 129.
48 John Lindow
Ørófi vetra, áðr væri iǫrð um scǫpuð,

þá var Bergelmir borinn;
þat ec fyrst um man, er sá inn fróði iǫtunn
var á lúðr um lagiðr.28
Uncountable winters before the world was made, then Bergelmir was born; that I
remember first when the wise giant, was first laid in his coffin.29
We should compare the first half-stanza with the statement of the seeress in
Vǫluspá 3.
Ár var alda, þat er Ymir bygði,
vara sandr né sær né svalar unnir;
iǫrð fannz æva né upphiminn,
gap var ginnunga, enn gras hvergi.30
Young were the years when Ymir made his settlement, there was no sand nor sea
nor cool waves; earth was nowhere nor the sky above, chaos yawned, grass was there
nowhere.31
Do these statements about events that occurred before the world was created
derive from the personal experience of the giants or from some sort of collec-
tive memory? With respect to Vafþrúðnir, our view on this question must turn
on questions that have never satisfactorily been answered. Is Bergelmir the wise
giant laid on a lúðr? And what did the poet mean with that word? If Bergelmir
is the wise giant, and if the lúðr is a cradle, as some have thought,32 Vafþrúðnir’s
personal memory extends back to before the world was created. If Bergelmir is
the wise giant, and if the lúðr is a bier or coffin,33 Vafþrúðnir’s memory of the very
beginning might be understood as communicated memory, and indeed in the
three generations of jǫtnar in Vafþrúðnismál 29, we could even invoke the notion
of the saeculum.
Ørófi vetra, áðr væri iǫrð um scǫpuð,
þá var Bergelmir borinn;
Þrúðgelmir var þess faðir,
en Aurgelmir afi.34
28
29
30
31
32
Collinder and Christiansen, ‘Det norrøne ord lúðr’.
33
Following Holtsmark, ‘Det norrøne ord lúðr’.
34
Uncountable winters before the world was made, then Bergelmir was born;
Thrudgelmir was his father, and Aurgelmir his grandfather.35
However, if Bergelmir is not the wise giant, then we are at a loss.

All that we can firmly conclude is that both a female jǫtun and a male jǫtunn
passed along experienced and possibly communicated memories to Óðinn, but
that both possessed knowledge that was very old, indeed cosmogonic.
But is this memory anything more than communicated memory? Could it
also be cultural memory? Well, no and yes. In both cases it is apparently pre-
sented as personal experience communicated verbally, and it is difficult to see
that it extends beyond the saeculum. On the other hand, it is material of consid-
erable cultural value (frœði), and neither the situation of a seeress performing
before an audience at the behest of a leader nor a contest of wisdom fits the
notion of everyday communication, a requirement for communicated memory.
In that we appear to be in the realm of ritualized activity — a séance, a contest
of wisdom — we must speak of cultural memory. Indeed, these samples suggest
that in the textual world of the mythology, figures of memory are largely in the
realm of behavior. I shall return to this point.
It is worth stressing that the figures of memory in the two poems are agonis-
tic. This agonism, the use of what appears to be cultural memory as a weapon
in a battle between two closely related but inimical groups, appears to contra-
dict rather completely Assmann’s notion of cultural memory as a mechanism to
bind together a group and to delimit it from other groups, what he has termed
‘the concretion of identity’.36 Here it seems to me we have a modest reward
for the experiment we are conducting, for if the knowledge of the history and
structure of the cosmos constitutes cultural memory, then we must regard the
Æsir and jǫtnar not so much as opposites but rather as groups — shall I say
factions? — within a single society vying for power and control. Ragnarǫk may
be the end point, but it comes when all bonds will have dissolved. The steady
state before it is not warring armies but these vying factions. Because they share
cultural memory, they share a society.
I conclude with a consideration of cultural memory in the contest of wis-
dom in Vafþrúðnismál and the myth of Ragnarǫk in the eddic tradition.
The duel of wisdom in Vafþrúðnismál falls formally into three parts, not
including the frame. The first is the jǫtunn’s questioning of Óðinn. These ques-
tions are lexical: what are the names of the horses that pull day and night, of
35
36
For example, Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, p. 130.
50 John Lindow
the river that divides the land of the jǫtnar and goð, and of the site of the last
battle? Óðinn’s questions to the giant may be divided according to the refrains
used. First comes a numbered set of twelve questions, with some variation in
the refrain but ending in all but the truncated eleventh with the words ‘þú,
Vafþrúðnir, vitir’. These questions are cosmogonic and cosmological, although
the twelfth leads perhaps into eschatology, assuming that the secrets alluded to
in the phrase ‘frá iǫtna rúnom | oc allra goða’ constitute the demise of the two
groups.
Segðu þat iþ tólfta: hví þú tíva rǫc
ǫll, Vafðrúðnir, vitir?
frá iǫtna rúnom oc allra goða
segir þú iþ sannasta,
inn alsvinni iǫtunn!37
Tell me this twelfth thing, why all the fate of the gods, you, Vafthrudnir, know; of
the secrets of the giants and of all the gods, tell most truly, all-wise giant!38
When the refrain now shifts to ‘fiǫlð ec fór | fiǫlð ec freistaðac | fiǫlð ec reynda
regin’ (‘Much I have travelled, much I have tried out, much have I tested the
Powers’),39 the coming end and rebirth of the world is indeed the topic, until
Vafþrúðnir forfeits his head on the unanswerable sixth question to which only
Óðinn could know the answer. What he said into the ear of his dead son on
the funeral pyre apparently resides only in Óðinn’s experienced memory, as
the doomed jǫtunn recognizes, but the rest belongs to the cultural sphere. Is it
cultural memory? I think we must agree that it is, even though it has not yet
happened. This same ‘memory’ of the future is equally important in Vǫluspá,
where it dominates both versions of the poem, although there it is presented as
the vision of the seeress and therefore may be in the realm of the experienced. It
becomes social when it is communicated, and Vafþrúðnismál helps us to under-
stand it, in the imagined world of the mythology, as cultural memory. Vǫluspá
helps us to accept future events as memory, since, as I have stressed, the seeress
states in the opening stanza that she is to recount forn spiǫll fira (ancient tales of
men). Many of these ‘tales’ have yet to take place. Although the expression forn
spiǫll fira thus must take in past and future, it might also reflect the idea that
the tales to be recounted have long been fixed in memory.
37
38
39
Cultural memory can of course include notions of the future; indeed it does
so in many if not most or all of the great textual religions. Knowing as they do
the future of the cosmos and its inhabitants, the Æsir and jǫtnar are no differ-
ent from the Christian scribes who recorded Old Norse mythology.
Because these scribes were literate, they were part of the body of specialists
who took responsibility for maintaining a large part of the cultural memory,
although in medieval Iceland there were certainly other figures of memory, not
least in the landscape. Old Norse mythology also has specialists in what I am
calling cultural memory (a knowledge of cosmology, cosmogony, and eschatol-
ogy). Thus far we have mentioned three: the seeress, Vafþrúðnir, and Óðinn.
For the males, at least, there was a term to designate such specialists, namely
þulr. Vafþrúðnir refers to himself in stanza 9 as inn gamli þulr,40 and Hávamál
80 and 142 mention a fimbulþulr who is clearly to be understood as Óðinn.41
* * *
Although the fimbulþulr in Hávamál alliteratively coloured runes (fáði rúnar),
it is perhaps worth bringing up again the point raised earlier, namely that the
imagined society of the mythology is an oral society. Assmann especially has
stressed the advent of writing as a transformative moment in a society’s cultural
memory, although numerous studies have shown how oral and written mem-
ory can coexist in a given society. The seeress, Vafþrúðnir, and Óðinn are thus
memory specialists in an oral culture, and one apparently without the kind of
fixed memorial tradition we see, for example, in many religions.42 Perhaps this
state of affairs contributes to the agonism I have mentioned: when there is no
fixed textual authority it may be possible or even necessary for agents to vie for
individual textual authority. Indeed, such a circumstance may be able to help
us comprehend how a memory specialist such as Óðinn can use his knowledge
for what appears to be personal purposes or indeed to conceal it. Here I am
thinking in particular of his parting words to Baldr, which would be cultural
memory if he shared them.
How do these specialists acquire their specialized knowledge? As we have
noted for the jǫtnar, they claim great age for their personal memories, and
each may be the last chain in a chain of communicated memory. But they also
invoke places. The seeress remembers nine worlds, and Vafþrúðnir indicates
40
41
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn, pp. 29, 41.
42
Bourgeaud, ‘Memorization’, pp. 5849–53.
52 John Lindow
in stanza 43 that his knowledge derives from having travelled in every world,
indeed from travelling through nine worlds beneath Niflhel.
Frá iǫtna rúnom oc allra goða
ec kann segia satt,
þvíat hvern hefi ec heim um komit;
nío kom ec heima fyr Niflhel neðan,
hinig deyia ór helio halir.43
Of the secrets of the giants and of all of the gods, I can tell truly, for I have been
into every world; nine worlds I have travelled through to Mist-hell, there men die
out of hell.44
In the final refrain in Vafþrúðnismál, Óðinn begins by stressing the extent of his
travels: fjǫlð ec fór. Thus the cultural memory of the mythology is also associ-
ated with places, lieux de mémoire or sites of memory as Philippe Nora clas-
sically envisioned them early in his memory project: sites as sites.45 Later, of
course, the conception grew to sites as entities,46 but I find the notion of an
association between topography and cultural memory to be a useful one in the
context of Old Norse mythology. Although it is presented as a vision induced
by fire and hunger, Grímnismál consists of a listing of important places and
their inhabitants, and these encapsulate the narratives of the ‘cultural memory’
of Old Norse mythology. One clear example is stanza 11.
Þrymheimr heitir inn sétti, er Þjazi bió,
sá inn ámatki iǫtunn;
enn nú Scaði byggvir, scír brúðr goða,
fornar tóptir fǫður.47
Thrymheim the sixth is called, where Thiazi lives [sic], the terrible giant; but now
Skadi, the shining bride of the gods, lives in her father’s ancient courts.48
Thus the place Þrymheimr calls up the myth of the death of Þjazi, the marriage
of Skaði to Njǫrðr, and their subsequent separation.
43
44
45
Nora, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire.
46
Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, pp. xv–xxiv.
47
48
The Poetic Edda, trans. by Larrington, p. 53. For my argument here it is important to
retain the preterite of the verb bió.
As noted above, the cultural memory of this society includes future events,
and in Grímnismál Óðinn invokes places to invoke the future. The clearest
example is stanza 17.
Hrísi vex oc há grasi
Víðars land, viði;
enn þar mǫgr of læzc af mars baki
frœcn, at hefna fǫður.49
Brushwood grows and high grass, widely in Vidar’s land; and there the son pro-
claims on his horse’s back, that he’s keen to avenge his father.50
Ragnarǫk looms, ever present in the cultural memory. When it comes, it

famously destroys cosmos and society, and then recreates both. I wish to end
by considering how the surviving Æsir, sons of those who perish at Ragnarǫk,
maintain their cultural memory.
Vafþrúðnismál devotes one question and answer sequence to this issue,
stanzas 50–51, followed by sequences devoted to the death and vengeance for
Óðinn and the withheld item of cultural memory about Baldr’s last words.
Fiǫlð ec fór fiǫlð ec freistaðac
fiǫlð ec reynda regin,
hverir ráða æsir eignom goða
þá er slocnar Surtar logi?
Viðarr oc Váli byggia vé goða
þá er slocnar Surtar logi;
Móði oc Magni scolo Miǫllni hafa
oc vinna at vígþroti.51
Much have I travelled, much have I tried out, much have I tested the Powers; which
Æsir will rule over the possessions of the gods, when Surt’s fire is slaked?
Vidar and Vali will live in the temples of the gods, when Surt’s fire is slaked;
Modi and Magni will have Miollnir, for battle-strength.52
Although the answer is to some extent determined by the question — Óðinn

asks about eign (property, possessions), the link to the past, that is, the memory
site, is an object. The fact that it is Þórr’s hammer, and that it may bring about
49
50
51
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn, pp. 54–55.
52
54 John Lindow
an end to killing, as many have understood the words at vígþroti,53 suggests that
in this particular view of the mythology, Þórr’s role as orderer may be para-
mount.
Vǫluspá has a far more expansive presentation of the links of the new present
to the past, with at least four stanzas on this topic, 60–63, two with refrains.
Finnaz æsir á Iðavelli
oc um moldþinur, mátcan, dœma,
oc minnaz þar á megindóma
oc á Fimbultýs fornar rúnar.
Þar muno eptir undrsamligar
gullnar tǫflor í grasi finnaz,
þærs í árdaga áttar hǫfðu.
Muno ósánir acrar vaxa,
bǫls mun alz batna, Baldr mun koma;
búa þeir Hǫðr oc Baldr Hroptz sigtóptir,
vel, valtívar — vitoð ér enn, eða hvat?
Þá kná Hœnir hlautvið kiósa,
oc byrir byggia brœðra tveggia
vindheim víðan — vitoð ér enn, eða hvat?54
The Æsir meet on Idavoll, and they converse about the might Earth-girdler, and
they remember there the great events, and the ancient runes of the Mighty One.
There afterwards will be found in the grass, the wonderful golden chequers,
those which they possessed in the ancient times.
Without sowing the fields will grow, all ills will be healed, Baldr will come
back; Hod and Baldr, the gods of slaughter, will live happily together, in the sage’s
palaces — do you understand yet, or want more?
Then Hœnir will choose wooden slips for prophecy, and the sons of two broth-
ers will inhabit, widely, the windy world — do you understand yet, or want more?55
According to this presentation, the surviving Æsir use four techniques for
maintaining or renewing cultural memory, one, neatly, per stanza. The first is
narrative: they gather so as to remember — that is, to discuss — the primal
struggle with the chaos being. The second is through the use of objects as sites
53
Finnur Jónsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquae Linguae Septentrionalis, p. 624 (s. v. vígþrot);
La Farge and Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda, p. 293 (s. v. vígþrot); Gísli Sigurðsson, ed.,
Eddukvæði, p. 72.
54
55
of memory, namely the golden gaming pieces that recall the gaming of the old
Æsir in stanza 8. The third is the use of place as site of memory: Óðinn’s abodes,
occupied by Baldr and Hǫðr as they were before the grisly murder occurred.
The fourth is ritual, and this brings us back to the ritualized circumstances of
the seeress’s performance in Vǫluspá or the contest of wisdom in Vafþrúðnismál
that offered figures of memory in the mythological present. Now, however, the
agonism is gone, and we have a ritual that involves only the Æsir, not the jǫtnar,
who seem to have disappeared with the old cosmos. However we understand
the ritual over which Hœnir presides, it must have to do with cosmic wisdom of
some sort, perhaps the new cultural memory of the second or new generation
of gods in the new cosmos.
The use of all these sites and techniques of memory indicates just how
important was the break brought about by Ragnarǫk and the threat to society it
imposed. By employing no fewer than four figures or sites of memory, Vǫluspá
indicates how difficult it may be to carry forward the culture of the Æsir beyond
Ragnarǫk.
In the end, conventional theories of cultural memory face a challenge when
they are applied to mythologies: myth more or less by definition happens at the
beginning, and the society of the gods therefore lacks the large time frame that
memory theories attempt to account for. Nevertheless, I think we can conclude
that memory theory may help us understand in a different way how closely
related the Æsir and jǫtnar are, and how disruptive Ragnarǫk is.
56 John Lindow
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, i: Text, ed. by Hans
Kuhn and Gustav Neckel, 4th edn, 2 vols (Heidelberg: Winter, 1962)
Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony Faulkes, Viking
Society for Northern Research, 2nd edn (London: University College London, 2005)
Edda, trans. by Anthony Faulkes, Everyman Classics (London: Dent, 1987)
Vatnsdœla saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, in Vatnsdœla saga. Hallfreðar saga. Kormáks
saga. Hrómundar þáttr halta. Hrafns þáttr Guðrúnarsonar, Íslenzk fornrit, 8 (Reyk
javík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1939)
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Assmann, Jan. ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique, 65
(1995), 125–33
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and others, 2nd edn, 15 vols (New York: McMillan, 2005), ix, 5849–53
Clunies Ross, Margaret, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society,
The Viking Collection, 7 and 10, 2 vols (Odense: Odense University Press, 1994–98)
Collinder, Björn and Hallfrid Christiansen, ‘Det norrøne ord lúðr’, Maal og minne (1952),
101–06
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Hastrup, Kirsten, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of
Structure and Change, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)
Hoerl, Cristoph, ‘Sense, Reference and Truth-Value Links’, in Analyomen 2: Proceedings
of the 2nd Conference ‘Perspectives in Analytical Philosophy’, ed. by Georg Meggle,
Perspectives in Analytical Philosophy, 16–18, 3 vols (Berlin and New York: De
Gruyter, 1997), ii: Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics, pp. 125–30
Holtsmark, Anne, ‘Det norrøne ord lúðr’, Maal og minne (1946), 49–65
La Farge, Beatrice, and John Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda (Heidelberg: Winter,
1992)
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Margaret Clunies Ross, Viking Collection, 14 (Odense: University Press of Southern
Denmark, 2003), pp. 89–109
—— , Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs (Oxford: Oxford
Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975; orig. publ. 1690)
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ing the French Past, ed. by Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman, 3 vols (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996–98), ii: Conflicts and Divisions (1997), pp. xv–xxiv
Nora, Pierre, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire, 7 vols (Paris: Gallimard: 1984–92)
Mitchell, Stephen A., ‘Óðinn’s Twin Ravens, Huginn and Muninn’, in Gemini and the
Sacred: Twins and Twinship in Religion and Myth, ed. by Kimberley Patton (London:
Tauris, forthcoming)
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pology, 1 (1973), 43–58, and 2 (1974), 57–78
Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben, Fortælling og ære (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag,
1993)
—— , Saga and Society: An Introduction to Old Norse Literature, trans. by John Tucker
(Odense: Odense University Press, 1993; orig. publ. 1975)
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giske namnematerialet’, Studia Anthroponymica Scandinavica, 8 (1990), 5–18
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chen Kosmologie’, in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place Names: Based
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History, 1990), pp. 35–57
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(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1964)
Authentication of Poetic Memory
in Old Norse Skaldic Verse
Margaret Clunies Ross
I
n two separate places, in his prologue to Ynglinga saga in Heimskringla and
in the prologue to the Separate Saga of St Óláfr found in the manuscript
Holm 2 4°, Snorri Sturluson set out the conditions that he considered
would guarantee the authenticity and veracity of the compositions of skaldic
poets.1 He was commenting here on the case of court poets attendant upon
kings of Norway and other Norwegian dignitaries, although he did not say so
directly. In the first place he stressed that poetry recited in the physical presence
of the poems’ protagonists, such as kings and jarls, or of their sons, in the case
of memorial poems (erfidrápur) composed after the rulers’ deaths, could not fail
to be truthful because, if it was not, its recipients would recognise it as mock-
ery rather than praise of their achievements. He also mentioned the topics of
journeys (ferðir) and battles (orrostur) as being the expected subject-matter for
such encomia. In the prologue to the Separate Saga of St Óláfr Snorri adduced
another criterion of a different kind, which depended on the metre and conven-
tional diction of skaldic poetry, if correctly recited (ef rétt er kveðit), as a guaran-
tee of the faithful transmission of a poem from one person to another, because
these formal characteristics meant that the poetry could not be changed from
the way it was to begin with.
1
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, i, p. 5 and ii, p. 422.
Margaret Clunies Ross (margaret.cluniesross@sydney.edu.au) is Emeritus Professor of English

at the University of Sydney.
60 Margaret Clunies Ross
Snorri’s remarks are clearly based on the situation that the vernacular histo-
rian of early medieval Scandinavia faced when constructing coherent written
histories of past rulers from a time when the major part of available evidence
came from oral sources, mostly skaldic poetry, composed, or supposedly com-
posed, either contemporaneously with the events celebrated or shortly thereaf-
ter. His criteria are appropriate to an oral world and depend on a rather narrow
set of circumstances that were not, in fact, always met by medieval Norse histo-
rians. Nevertheless, they have on the whole been accepted by modern scholars
as typifying the authenticating type of skaldic verse, usually found quoted as
evidence in kings’ sagas, though I have proposed in an earlier discussion that
Snorri was as much concerned with the socio-dynamics of interpersonal rela-
tions between poet and patron as with the absolute truth value of such poetry.2
Snorri does not mention the word minni (memory or memorials) in the
passages I have just discussed, but it must have been at the back of his mind
as one of the keys to skaldic authenticity, because the transmission of poetry
from the old poets to the time when he was composing his histories in the early
thirteenth century would have depended for much of its journey on the oral
memories of later poets and other persons who knew a lot of old lore, as Snorri
evidently did himself. There is, in fact, a wealth of evidence we can draw on,
both from within the poetry of the skalds who are said to have composed in
the pre-literate period and from the compositions of later poets composing
about rulers and events of the pre-literate age, that illuminates the various ways
in which skalds presented their own memories or the memories of others as
authentic witnesses to the events and personages of early Scandinavian history.
This study seeks to establish the means by which they guaranteed the veracity
of their speech acts to their audiences, and the careful and subtle ways in which
they indicated the status of the evidence for what they asserted. The degree of
the poet’s personal closeness to the events described emerges as a key to the
strength with which he can claim an authentic memory of them, but there are
other factors concerning the nature and status of the information to be con-
veyed that are as important, if not more so in some cases.
Criteria of Poetic Authenticity

The creation of texts, whether oral or written, depends fundamentally on the
human memory, because textual composition can never be absolutely contem-
2
Clunies Ross, A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics, pp. 72–78.
Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse 61
poraneous with the events or persons that inspire its creation. These things
must be consciously remembered and mentally reworked by the author or com-
piler, either before composition can begin or simultaneously with it. And tex-
tual composition requires prior knowledge of subject-matter and conventions,
not to speak of the author’s command of language itself, all of which depend on
memory. In an oral society memory has a greater urgency than it does in literate
cultures, where things can be checked or looked up in the written record if they
have been forgotten. I assume that this urgency and the anxiety it provokes in
the oral poet is symbolized by the second of the god Óðinn’s ravens, Muninn,3
and the thoughts that Grímnismál 20 attributes to that god, whom Old Norse
skalds took as their patron:
iǫrmungrund yfir;
Huginn and Muninn fly every day over the mighty earth. I fear for Huginn that he
may not come back, yet I am afraid more about Muninn.5
A close study of a range of skaldic poetry presumed to date from the period
c. 900–c. 1050, before the art of writing had become firmly established in
Norway and Iceland, together with a group of antiquarian poems, probably
of the late twelfth century onwards, that represent events and persons from
that pre-literate period, reveals a number of strategies poets developed to pre-
sent memories of the past in skaldic verse. Three criteria emerge as of greatest
importance in determining the skald’s presentation of his material. The first is
his own position vis-à-vis his subject-matter, the second is the nature and status
of the subject-matter to be remembered, and the third is the genre of the poem,
which is usually dependent on the second criterion. The first criterion bears
some resemblance to Snorri’s notion of face-to-face communication between
poet and patron, but extends far beyond that somewhat narrow set of imagined
circumstances to include personal recollections in solitude, comments on the
reports of others, expressions of doubts as to the veracity of information, and
positive endorsements of specific events not necessarily witnessed by the poet
3
The name Muninn is associated etymologically with the verb muna (to remember),
while Huginn is cognate with hugr or hugi (thought).
4
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Neckel and Kuhn, 5th edn, p. 61.
5
My translation.
himself. The second criterion includes the journeys and battles mentioned by
Snorri but extends to a range of other subjects. The criterion of genre corre-
sponds to some degree to Snorri’s strictures about the role of verse-form and
diction in ensuring the reliability of the transmission of skaldic verse. The three
criteria combine as interrelating variables in determining how the skald will
present his material: whether he will assert its veracity without caveats, relying
without reservation on his memory alone, or whether he will hedge his presen-
tation about with disclaimers of varying degrees of strength.
It is clear that the two circumstances in which the skald feels at his freest
to assert his memory of an event without qualification are, first, when it is a
personal memory of an event or person, recollected in tranquillity, to echo
the words of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, 6 and, sec-
ond, when the subject to be remembered and recorded constitutes forn minni
(ancient memories), a term Snorri Sturluson used in Háttatal to character-
ize the semi-proverbial brief allusions to Old Norse myth and legend that he
stated were requisite features of the verse-form hjástælt (abutted).7 Aside from
Snorri’s own exemplification of this poetic device in Háttatal 12, a well-known
example from the tenth century is Kormákr Ǫgmundarson’s Sigurðardrápa, in
honour of Jarl Sigurðr Hákonarson, where terse reference to Norse myths is
juxtaposed with praise of the ruler.8 The poetic effect is created by this abut-
ment, which does not require the poet to declare the truth value of either what
he says about the ruler or the implied comparison he draws with the events
and persons of myth; the latter are self-evidently true and correctly recalled,
implicitly because they are universally known and assented to. We shall see that
there is an interesting correlation between the skald’s stance vis-à-vis forn minni
and Christian poets’ representations of the veracity of miracles. In both cases
no disclaimers are presented and none, presumably, were thought to be needed.
* * *
6
‘[…] poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from
emotion recollected in tranquillity’, Lyrical Ballads, ed. by Brett, and Jones, p. 266. While the
spontaneity of skaldic poetry may often be in doubt, some of the lausavísur of the skalds present
as very striking recollections of personal emotions.
7
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Háttatal, ed. by Faulkes, 2nd edn, p. 10.
8
Examples are stanzas 3/4 ‘seið Yggr til Rindar’ (‘Yggr <= Óðinn> directed seiðr at
Rindr’), 4/4 ‘komsk Urðr ór brunni’ (‘Urðr appeared from the well’) and 5/4 ‘sitr Þórr í reiðu’
(‘Þórr sits in the chariot’).
The unqualified character of skaldic presentations of Norse myths, whether in

hjástælt form or more extensively, can also be detected in those few long myth-
ological poetic narratives that have survived in the skaldic corpus. Although
Þjóðólfr of Hvinir’s choice of words in his retelling of the two myths that are
the subject of Haustlǫng (c. 900) very cleverly imparts his particular take on
those narratives, he does not indicate any narratorial uncertainty about the
veracity of his information. On the contrary, he uses a small number of judi-
ciously placed intercalary clauses to impute motives for their divine actions to
the gods themselves. In stanza 17, for example, he uses two intercalaries, at lines
2 and 4, to convey the gods’ motives in causing the giant Hrungnir to stand
upon his stone shield instead of placing it in the normal fashion in front of his
body to defend himself against Þórr’s impending attack. Apparently, according
to Þjóðólfr, ‘bǫnd ollu því, vildu svá dísir’ (‘the gods caused that, the female dei-
ties wanted [it] so’) (17/2, 4).9
Þjóðólfr was, of course, basing himself upon a pictorial representation on a
decorated shield of the myths he represented in words, so ultimate responsibil-
ity for their veracity might have been thought to rest with the artist of the pic-
tures. Nevertheless, early skalds were generally comfortable with the myths they
retold, even if they were aware that different versions of them existed. Further,
the fact that visual images of myths also existed, though precious few have sur-
vived into modern times, seems to have reinforced the idea that forn minni were
largely exempt from scrutiny of the authenticity of their presenters’ poems or
visual images.10 Indeed, the concept behind the noun minni extended to the
pictures that called myths and legends to mind, as is clear from a line of the
Icelandic skald Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa (c. 1000), which may have functioned
as part of the refrain (stef) of that poem: ‘Hlaut innan svá minnum’ (‘Inside [in
the house] it was thus decorated with memorable images’).11
If we turn from the certainty with which skalds approached mythic sub-
jects from the pre-Christian religion, that were presumably part of early Nordic
society’s collective knowledge, to recollected personal experience, we find a
similar lack of qualification of the veracity of poetic memory, but for an obvi-
9
This assertion of motivation is significantly different from Snorri Sturluson’s account of the
same mythic event. Snorri says that the reason why Hrungnir stood on his shield is because Þórr’s
companion, Þjálfi, ran up to him and told him to stand on the shield as Þórr was planning to
attack him from underground, cf. Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, i, p. 21.
10
Clunies Ross, ‘Stylistic and Generic Identifiers’ and Fuglesang, ‘Ekphrasis and Surviving
Imagery in Viking Scandinavia’.
11
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, i, pp. 9, 17.
ously different reason. In such cases the poet is representing his own thoughts
and emotions, not those that have public significance, though they may often
be connected to or caused by events in the public eye. Some of the most moving
and often lyrical skaldic poetry comes into this category and it normally occurs
in the form of lausavísur or separate stanzas. These have usually been transmit-
ted within the manuscripts of prose texts. One example of many is a lausavísa
attributed to Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson (d. c. 990), cited in both Fagrskinna
and Heimskringla. It comes in the context of those prose works’ treatment of
the acts of the sons of Gunnhildr and Eiríkr blóðøx, who had been converted to
Christianity in England and, on their return to Norway, proceeded to destroy
the sacrificial places of the old religion. The prose narratives link these actions
with an ensuing famine and bad weather in the country, and this link under-
pins three stanzas by Eyvindr, which are presented as his personal reactions to
these hard times, though the prose texts connect them to the political situation,
Fagrskinna more strongly than Heimskringla.12
The helmingr is Eyvindr’s lausavísa 12,13 and I cite it in Russell Poole’s edi-
tion for volume i of Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages.14
Snýr á Svǫlnis vǫ́ru
— svá hǫfum inn sem Finnar
birkihind of bundit
brums — at miðju sumri.
It is snowing on the spouse of Svǫlnir <= Óðinn> [= Jǫrð (jǫrð ‘earth’)] in the mid-
dle of summer; we have tied up the bark-stripping hind of the bud [goat] inside
just like the Saami.
These lines are presented as immediate impressions of unusual weather events

which the poet as speaker describes as an eyewitness. The poetry itself does
not indicate any external context for Eyvindr’s experiences, though both the
prose contexts in which it is quoted do so, and Heimskringla places the poet in
Hálogaland, thus going some way towards explaining the phenomenon of snow
in midsummer.
Another example of how the poetry of personal reminiscence does not
require guarantees of authenticity, even though it relates indirectly to events
in the public eye, is a moving lausavísa by Sigvatr Þórðarson, one of King Óláfr
12
Cf. Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, p. 14 and Turville-Petre, Scaldic Poetry, p. 44.
13
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, p. 65.
14
Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson, Lausavísur, ed. by Poole, pp. 231–33.
Haraldsson’s chief skalds, who was, however, absent from the front line at the
battle of Stiklastaðir (1030) when King Óláfr met his death. In prose histories
the poet is said to have composed this lausavísa on the way home from a pil-
grimage to Rome, which he had undertaken at the time of Óláfr’s last battle.
I quote it from the edition by R. D. Fulk for Volume I of Skaldic Poetry of the
Scandinavian Middle Ages, where it is Sigvatr’s lausavísa 18:15
Stóðk á Mont, ok minntumk,
mǫrg hvar sundr fló targa
breið ok brynjur síðar
borgum nær, of morgin.
Munða ek, þanns unnði
(ǫndverðan brum) lǫndum
(faðir minn vas þar þenna
Þórrøðr) konung, forðum.
I stood one morning in the Alps, and I remembered where many a broad shield and
long mail-coats flew asunder near towns. I recalled the king who once enjoyed his
lands; Þórðr my father was there in that early period.16
Here no criteria of authenticity stand in the way of Sigvatr’s direct and painful
memory of battles he had been in and then of the one battle, at Stiklastaðir, when
he had been absent. The ‘I stood […] and I remembered’ in the first helmingr
leads directly to the ‘I recalled’ of the second: his recollection of both his king
and his father, the poet Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld, who also served Óláfr Haraldsson.
The recollection of the king’s enjoyment of his lands in his younger days, and
the poet’s family association with that happy time, is poignantly contrasted with
Sigvatr’s grief at Óláfr’s last battle and his own absence from the scene.
Not unexpectedly, it is within the poetry of historical record, devoted to
the lives and actions of kings and other dignitaries, that skalds indicate in their
compositions that they are most constrained by questions of authenticity and
veracity. The ideal situation for a skald who wishes to assert the reliability of his
composition and therefore of his memory of events is to represent himself as a
eyewitness to them. The next most reliable position is for the skald to be able to
draw on contemporary or near contemporary reports from informants of high
15
Sigvatr Þórðarson, Lausavísur, ed. by Fulk, pp. 722–24. Cf. Den norsk-islandske skjalde
digtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, B I, p. 251.
16
It is also possible to construe borgum nær ‘near towns’ (l. 4) with of morgin ‘one morning’
and Stóðk ‘I stood’ (l. 1) as Finnur Jónsson does, Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning; also Snorri
Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, iii, pp. 14–15.
status about what happened and to whom. Most of the poets who served the
kings of Norway in the pre-literate period claim one or other of those two posi-
tions and carefully construct their compositions to reflect their status vis-à-vis
their subject-matter.
We can contrast the position of skalds contemporary or near contempo-
rary with their subjects with that of poets composing retrospectively about
the kings and events of the past. There are a number of poems of this latter
kind in the skaldic repertoire, most of them probably composed in the second
half of the twelfth century about the two most important Norwegian kings
of the period of the conversion to Christianity, Óláfr Tryggvason and Óláfr
Haraldsson (St Óláfr). It is no accident that twelfth-century poets were drawn
to compose poetry about these kings, as they are strongly associated with the
coming of Christianity to Norway and Iceland, and, as such, the subjects of
hagiography and historiography, both in Latin and the vernacular, that began
to be composed about that time. A comparison between contemporary poetry
commemorating Óláfr Tryggavson and poetry in his honour produced in the
twelfth century or later is instructive in demonstrating how skalds at a consid-
erable temporal remove from their subject-matter presented their encomia.
Poetic Memories of King Óláfr Tryggvason

It is perhaps surprising to learn that Skáldatal,17 a list of Norse poets and their
patrons, knows for certain of only two poets who served such an important
Norwegian king as Óláfr Tryggvason (r. 995–1000), namely the Icelander
Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, and a certain Bjarni, about whom nothing
is known beside his name. In all probability, the composer of Skáldatal got his
information about Bjarni from stanza 34/4 of the poem Rekstefja ‘Extended (or
Split) Refrain (?)’ by the poet Hallar-Steinn, probably of twelfth-century date.
This stanza mentions both Hallfreðr and Bjarni as composers of drápur (long
17
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, ed. by Jón Sigurðsson and others, iii, pp. 253, 274 and
495–98 (on Bjarni). The U text of Skáldatal also includes the following names: Bjarni gull-
bráskáld, Gizurr gullbráskáld and Sigvatr skáld. The Bjarni is possibly Bjarni gullbrá(r)skáld
Hallbjarnarson, but no modern scholar has supported this identification. There is no evidence
that either Gizurr or Sigvatr composed for Óláfr Tryggvason, and Sigvatr’s likely dates would
preclude it. One other poet who composed about Óláfr, though he was not his court poet but
rather Eiríkr jarl Hákonarson’s, was Halldórr ókristni; his Eiríksflokkr is an account of the battle
of Svǫlðr, told from the viewpoint of a supporter of Óláfr’s opponents, but one who was clearly
not an eyewitness to the conflict.
poems with refrains) about Óláfr, but gives no more information than his name
about the latter.
It may well be the paucity of contemporary or near-contemporary poetry
about Óláfr Tryggvason that inspired a number of later poets to compose long
poems about him, given that medieval historiographers would have been rather
lacking in authentic contemporary skaldic poems to use as their authorities
about Óláfr’s life and deeds. There was a market there for poetry about this king
and about St Óláfr, and the evidence from the twelfth-century corpus in hon-
our of both kings shows that skalds readily stepped in to fill the breach. Further,
as we shall see, this later corpus was much better at presenting royal encomia as
suitable source material for hagiographers. This tendency was more marked in
the case of Óláfr Haraldsson than Óláfr Tryggvason, and reached its apogee in
Einarr Skúlason’s Geisli (1153), but the trend is also apparent in the twelfth-cen-
tury and later encomia for Óláfr Tryggvason. Included among the last-named
are the following: Hallar-Steinn’s Rekstefja (35 stanzas), already mentioned; the
anonymous Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar (28) and another anonymous poem in
the king’s honour (7 stanzas), probably of the fourteenth century, recorded only
on the bottom margin of three folios in the manuscript AM 61 fol.18
Hallfreðr is the only contemporary skald of Óláfr Tryggvason whose poetry
has survived. An assortment of stanzas and helmingar variously arranged in
different manuscripts of versions of the prose saga of Óláfr are usually taken
as comprising a praise-poem for him, entitled Óláfsdrápa, though difficulties
attach to the question of the independence of these stanzas from Hallfreðr’s
memorial poem for Óláfr, Erfidrápa Óláfs Tryggvasonar. 19 The so-called
Óláfsdrápa concentrates mainly on giving an account of the king’s triumphant
viking campaigns in Russia and Wendland, Gotland, Denmark, Saxland and
Frisia, England, Scotland, and Ireland, describing a series of bloody encounters
in which the ruler was always victorious. There is no evidence that Hallfreðr was
present himself on any of these campaigns, and the poet is careful to indicate
that he is reporting what he has heard from others. The stanza usually regarded
18
See The Great Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, pp. 22–25. Both
Rekstefja and Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar are recorded in the compilation Bergsbók (c. 1400–25),
written out continuously without intervening prose, along with the text of Einarr Skúlason’s
Geisli and the anonymous Lilja, which dates from c. 1345. Some stanzas from Rekstefja are also
included in manuscripts of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta. Bergsbók ascribes the composition
of the anonymous drápa to Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld, but this is very unlikely to be true; see the
Introduction to Anonymous, Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar, ed. by Heslop, pp. 1031–33.
19
Fidjestøl, Det norrøne fyrstediktet, p. 106 and Heslop’s Introduction to Óláfs drápa.
as the first begins with the disclaimer ‘Svá frák hitt’ (‘Thus I have learned this’)
(1/1), which contrasts in its sober reportage with the immediately following
grand claim ‘at hǫrgbrjótr hlóð hǫ́va valkǫstu í mǫrgum stað’ (‘that the shrine-
smasher piled up high corpse-heaps in many a place’) (1/1, 2, 4). Again in the
second stanza the poet uses the formula frák ‘I have learned’ (2/3) to cover him-
self as he embarks on a frenzy of baroque kennings describing Óláfr’s battles
in Skåne and in Denmark south of Hedeby. Perhaps sensing that some of his
descriptions were a little exaggerated, Hallfreðr exclaims in stanza 4/3, ‘hvat of
dylði þess hǫlðar?’ (‘why should men conceal that?’).
We learn from Hallfreðar saga that the poet was in Iceland when he heard
news of Óláfr Tryggvason’s death at the battle of Svǫlðr (Svolder) in the year
1000.20 This news is said to have greatly affected him. The saga reports that he
sails to Norway and reaches Sognefjorden at the Winter Nights in mid-Octo-
ber, where he enquires again about the circumstances of Óláfr’s fall and com-
poses a drápa about the king immediately afterwards. This drápa is presumed to
be the Erfidrápa Óláfs Tryggvasonar, comprising twenty-three full stanzas and
five helmingar. Its main subject is the battle of Svǫlðr but an interesting section
near the end discusses differing opinions that arose afterwards about whether
Óláfr was killed in the fight or escaped and fled to the east, in which the poet is
careful to distinguish his own opinion as a responsible reporter of events from
the views of rumour-mongers.
The opening stanzas of the poem may well be missing, as it begins rather
abruptly without a review of the king’s early life as a Viking.21 The first pre-
served stanza begins in medias res with the poet voicing an opinion that the king
lacked the support of men from Trøndelag at Svǫlðr: ‘Þar hykk víst gram […]
misstu til mjǫk gengis þrœnzkra drengja’ (There, I certainly believe, the prince
[…] missed too much the support of warriors from Trøndelag) (1/1, 4). He does
not say how he formed this opinion, but presumably it was based on the enquir-
ies Hallfreðar saga claims he made both in Iceland and Norway about how Óláfr
met his death. Hallfreðr is upfront about the status of much of his informa-
tion as report in other stanzas: in stanza 3 he tells that Óláfr made a speech to
his men urging them not to flee and introduces this with the words: ‘Geta skal
máls, þess’s menn kvǫ́ðu dáðǫflgan bǫr fangs dolga mæla við drengi at sennu
vápna’ (‘One must mention the speech which men reported the deed-mighty
tree of the tunic of strife [mail-shirt > warrior] addressed to the warriors
20
Hallfreðar saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, pp. 192–94.
21
Cf. Fidjestøl, ‘Erfidrápa (Erblied)’, p. 484.
at the flyting of weapons [battle]’) (3/1–4). In other places, as in stanza 4,

he indicates that the information he is providing is ‘Hitt vas mest hvarkunnt
orð’ (‘the most widely-known report’) (4/5, 6, 7), thus vouching for its reliabili-
ty.22 At the same time, modern scholarship has considered some of the informa-
tion provided rather vague, particularly that of the actual location of the battle,
which Hallfreðr several times places south over the sea (fyr sunnan lǫg).23
Although he was not present at Svǫlðr, Hallfreðr is able to strengthen the
impact of his account of Óláfr’s fall by introducing the topic of his own emo-
tional reaction to the deaths of his comrades and, most emphatically, his grief
at the death of his lord. Because this is a personal reaction, the skald does not
need to hedge the topic around with disclaimers, but can report his emotions
directly. He begins to do this in stanza 5 where he refers to the deaths of many
of his true friends (hollvinir mínir 5/7, 8) who fell with Óláfr, and states in an
intercalary clause ‘mein hlautk af því’ (‘I got grief from that’). However, the
poet’s strongest statement of his own feelings, and the stanzas that made and
still make this erfidrápa most memorable,24 comes at the poem’s conclusion.
Stanzas 25–28 begin with Hallfreðr’s statement that ‘it was an evil, harmful
thing’ (Illt mein vas 25/1, 4) that he was separated from his lord at the latter’s
moment of need. Each subsequent stanza enlarges the sphere of influence of the
impact of Óláfr’s death, from the north generally: ‘norðr und Norðra niðbyrði’
(‘in the north under the burden of Norðri’s kin [dwarfs > sky]’) (26/3–4)
to the whole cosmos, which will split asunder before a ruler like Óláfr is born
(27/1, 2, 5, 6). And each stanza deepens the poet’s relationship to his patron;
Óláfr is Hallfreðr’s godfather (goðfǫður 26/4), ‘hann vas mest gótt mennskra
manna’ (‘he was the greatest good among human beings’) (27/3–4) and finally
‘flugstyggs sonar Tryggva’ (28/4) (‘the flight-shy son of Tryggvi’). No qualifica-
tions are required for these assertions, because they are presented as the skald’s
own thoughts and feelings, and none are given.
22
A similar assurance is given in 12/7: ‘ek frá skilit’ (‘I was informed clearly’).
23
The site of the battle remains unidentified, though many modern scholars presume it
was somewhere in the Baltic; see Heslop’s Note to stanza 4/6.
24
These stanzas probably set the fashion for ending memorial drápur in similar ways.
A version of stanza 26/1–4 appears also in Hallfreðar saga, so was obviously widely known,
cf. Hallfreðar saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, p. 155. Arnórr jarlaskáld, composing his
Þorfinnsdrápa in the mid-eleventh century, clearly imitated Hallfreðr in his stanzas 24–25,
cf. Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Þorfinnsdrápa, ed. by Whaley, pp. 258–60.
Hallfreðr’s erfidrápa includes only two references to Óláfr’s alleged Christian

qualities, both of which come in the final stanzas.25 This is by no means surpris-
ing in a poem composed by a recent convert, and one who, as his saga indi-
cates, struggled to see the justification for a change of faith. Twelfth-century
and later prose historians, on the other hand, whose models were essentially
hagiographical, must have been very receptive to the new kind of retrospec-
tive encomium which knew how to place kings like the two Óláfrs in a clearly
Christian context. Óláfr Tryggvason’s claim to being a fully Christian king
would have been difficult for prose writers and poets alike to substantiate from
authentic contemporary evidence. Unlike the case of Óláfr Haraldsson, about
whom miracles sprang up very quickly after his death, there was relatively lit-
tle evidence for Óláfr Tryggvason’s latter-day skalds to go on.26 Nevertheless,
they tried their best and came up with praise-poems that combined a retrospec-
tive antiquarianism in their use of mythological kennings and complex syntax
with a recognizable vita-like structure. They began with material similar to that
in Hallfreðr’s Óláfsdrápa, about their hero’s viking triumphs in his youth in
Russia, the Baltic and the British Isles (Anon, Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar, 3–8,
Hallar-Steinn, Rekstefja, 2–6). They then quickly turned to his role as the con-
verter of Norway and five other lands, Shetland, Orkney, Iceland, the Faroes,
and Greenland, to the Christian faith. There is a very close verbal similarity
between the anonymous drápa and Rekstefja in these conversion stanzas, and
it is possible that their poets were working from written prose sources in creat-
ing them.27 From their vantage-point as Christians looking back to an era that
is past, these poets take a long view of Óláfr’s achievements: he was the one
who ‘destroyed longstanding heathendom’ (‘braut langa heiðni’, Anon, Óláfs
drápa Tryggvasonar, 14/1, 3), something for which ‘we’ are grateful and have
to repay, so that ‘he has become the most useful lord [for men] […] up here in
the north’ (‘Sá hefr of orðit þarfastr þengill […] hingat norðr’, 14/5, 6, 8). It
would be unthinkable to find such a statement in a poem as close to Óláfr’s day
as Hallfreðr’s erfidrápa.
25
The first is Hallfreðr’s reference to Óláfr as his godfather (26/4), the second the poet’s expressed
wish that ‘pure Christ’ (Kristr inn hreini 27/7) keep the wise king’s soul (ǫnd) high above the lands.
Unlike Hallfreðr’s poetry for his zealous pagan patron, Hákon jarl Sigurðarson, however, there are
very few references to pagan myth in the erfidrápa for Óláfr, cf. Frank, Old Norse Court Poetry, p. 65.
26
Einarr Skúlason’s Geisli, ed. by Chase, pp. 37–43.
27
The claim that Óláfr converted Greenland is likely to be a fiction, possibly deriving
from Gunnlaugr Leifsson’s lost biography of Óláfr; see Heslop’s note [All] to Anon, Óláfs drápa
Tryggvasonar, 12 and references cited there.
Ironically these Christian poets do not seem to feel the need to qualify
their statements nor to remind their audiences of their roles as reporters of
past events. This is taken for granted as part of the Christian view of history.
Indeed, at the beginnings and ends of their poems they remind their hearers
that God is on their side and has imbued them with the ability to compose
poetry about Óláfr. Nevertheless, both Hallar-Steinn and the anonymous poet
of Óláfsdrápa make mention of their skaldic predecessors in their penultimate
stanzas (Rekstefja 34, Óláfsdrápa 27), revealing a knowledge of and debt to ear-
lier skalds, characterized as ‘finer poets’ (fríðri skǫld 27/3) in the latter, and by
name as Hallfreðr and Bjarni in Rekstefja 34. The first helmingr of the Rekstefja
stanza, in particular, seems to hint at a possible contemporary controversy
about the nature of poetic evidence for the life of Óláfr Tryggvason, which may
have suggested that it was thought to be inadequate or mean:
Hermart hví kveðum ortu
hugdyggs of son Tryggva
handbáls hnykkilunda
hreins of flokka eina?
Why do we say that the moving trees of the pure hand-fire [gold > men] composed
a great deal about the son of the brave-minded Tryggvi [= Óláfr] and only flokkar?
Hallar-Steinn answers this rhetorical question by claiming that Hallfreðr com-

posed ‘a thoughtful drápa’ (hugða drǫ́pu 34/7) about Óláfr, as did Bjarni, the
point being that rumour had it that the poetry previously composed for Óláfr
was not of the highest quality, being only flokkar (poems without refrains)
rather than the more prestigious drápur.
Two of the latter-day Óláfr poets, the skald of the anonymous stanzas in
AM 61 fol. (stanzas 3–7) and Hallar-Steinn (Rekstefja 29–31), include refer-
ence to some of the king’s feats of physical dexterity and a miracle attributed to
him, which is also narrated in the prose sources.28 In it the king leaves his ship
at night, goes ashore without anyone seeing him and without leaving footprints
in the heavy dew, and communes in prayer with angels. All this is witnessed by
a retainer, Þorkell, whom the king throws in the sea as punishment for his curi-
osity, spoiling the man’s cloak, which, however, Óláfr miraculously restores by
touching it, and then invites Þorkell to accompany him on one of his nocturnal
visits. Although the anonymous poem in AM 61 fol. introduces its account of
28
Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar en mesta, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, ii, pp. 231–36 and
Færeyinga saga, ed. by Ólafur Halldórsson, pp. 267–70.
the miracle with the assertion ‘satt var’ (‘it was true’) (3/5), the two accounts in
general take the veracity of their narratives for granted.
What emerges from the present study produces a much more complex pic-
ture of the various ways in which skalds sought to guarantee the authentic-
ity of their memories of the past and those of others than Snorri Sturluson’s
statements, quoted at the beginning of this study, support. At the same time
his criteria are largely vindicated when the conditions he described actually
applied, as was frequently the case in his own histories. It can be seen that inter-
nal evidence from skaldic poetry contemporary or near-contemporary with the
persons and events described indicates that poets were themselves aware of the
unwritten rules about authenticity pertaining to skaldic poetry from the pre-
literate period: memories that were personal could be presented without cave-
ats about their authenticity, and so could forn minni relating to the pre-Chris-
tian gods and legendary heroes. Both eyewitness reports and those obtained
from hearsay had to be carefully differentiated, and the latter supported with
frequent assertions of veracity.
Once the technology of writing had become reasonably widespread in
Norway and Iceland, something that probably did not happen until after the
middle of the twelfth century, the rules changed. Although later skalds respected
and followed their predecessors in terms of the genres, diction and metre of
their poetry, they were much freer than the pre-literate poets to use both tra-
ditional and more recent sources to create poems that conformed to expected
Christian norms. In many cases they probably drew on both oral and written
traditions, while the prose writers who used their work and that of their oral
predecessors did not always discriminate between old and new poetic sources,
but often quoted them side by side. Many of the compilers of medieval vernacu-
lar prose works elided the distinction between old and new poetic memorials
for their subjects, and are to some degree responsible for the potpourri of verse
and prose that modern editors of skaldic verse struggle to differentiate. In the
case of the poetry composed in honour of Óláfr Tryggvason, some of the major
prose writers, such as the compiler of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, selected
and arranged stanzas from both old and new poetry without much regard for
the authenticity of their sources. Stanzas from Rekstefja are quoted alongside
stanzas from Hallfreðr, and parts of stanzas are often excerpted to suit the prose
writer’s narrative.29 For these writers the task of authenticating poetic memo-
ries became subordinate to the desire to create a narrative that conformed to
expected norms of Christian historiography.
29
Cf. Heslop, ‘Assembling the Olaf-Archive?’, pp. 385–87.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Anonymous, Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar, ed. by Kate Heslop, in Skaldic Poetry of the
Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and others, 9 vols (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2007–), i: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, i: From Mythical Times to c. 1035, ed.
by Diana Whaley, SKALD, 1 (2013), Part 2, pp. 1031–60
Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Þorfinnsdrápa, ed. by Diana Whaley, in Skaldic Poetry of the
Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross and others, 9 vols (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2007–), ii: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii. From c. 1035 to c. 1300, ed. by Kari
Ellen Gade, SKALD, 2 (2009), Part 1, pp. 229–60
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI–II (Tekst efter håndskrift-
erne), BI–II (Rettet tekst), 4 vols (København: Rosenkilde & Bagger: 1912–15; repr.
Gyldendal, 1973)
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, i: Text, ed. by Gustav
Neckel and Hans Kuhn, 5th edn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983)
Einarr Skúlason’s Geisli: A Critical Edition, ed. by Martin Chase (Toronto, Buffalo, and
London: University of Toronto Press, 2005)
Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson, Lausavísur, ed. by Russell Poole, in Skaldic Poetry of the
Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and others, 9 vols (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2007–), i: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, i: From Mythical Times to c. 1035, ed.
by Diana Whaley, SKALD, 1 (2013), Part 1, pp. 213–35
Færeyinga saga. Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason, ed. by Ólafur
Halldórsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 25 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2006)
The Great Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf the Saint: AM 61 fol., ed. by Ólafur
Halldórsson, Early Icelandic Manuscripts in Facsimile, 14 (København: Rosenkilde
and Bagger, 1982)
Hallfreðar saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, in Vatnsdœla saga. Hallfreðar saga. Kormáks
Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Text of the 1798 Edition with the Additional
1800 Poems and the Prefaces, ed. by R. L. Brett, and A. R. Jones (London and New
York: Routledge, 1963)
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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and oth-
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A 1–3, 3 vols., (København: Munksgaard [Reitzel], 1958–2000)
Sigvatr Þórðarson, Lausavísur, ed. by R. D. Fulk, in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian
Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and others, 9 vols (Turnhout: Brepols,
2007–), i: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, i: From Mythical Times to c. 1035, ed. by Diana
Whaley, SKALD, 1 (2013), Part 2, pp. 1031–60
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross and others,
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Times to c. 1035, ed. by Diana Whaley, SKALD, 1 (2013)
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Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory
in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts
Kate Heslop*
Recollection begins not in the plenitude of experience but in the absence

or pastness of the moment or period being recalled. Indeed, ‘memory’ is in
fact a less appropriate term than ‘recollection’ or ‘remembrance’, since the
latter rightly suggests an activity, a performance, taking place in the here
and now of those doing the recalling.1
Der Begriff des ‘kulturellen Gedächtnisses’ bezieht sich auf eine der Außen
dimensionen des menschlichen Gedächtnisses. (The concept of ‘cultural
memory’ refers to one of the external dimensions of human memory.)2
Introduction: What do Skalds Remember?

The word ‘memory’ denotes a fundamental element of both individual minds
and human culture.3 Its semantic range stretches from ‘the action or process of
commemorating, recollecting, or remembering’ (Oxford English Dictionary:
* An earlier version of this study was presented at the Kenning Symposium, Cambridge
University, 28–29 June 2011. I am grateful to the convenor of the symposium, Judy Quinn, for her
hospitality, and to my audience for their responses. I also thank Jürg Glauser and Judith Jesch for
their stimulating comments on draft versions. This essay is dedicated to the memory of Nora Ewing.
1
Rigney, ‘Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory’, pp. 16–17.
2
Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 19; translation my own, as elsewhere unless other
wise specified.
3
If the two can in fact be separated; cf. Clark, Supersizing the Mind.
Kate Heslop (K.S.Heslop@ds.uzh.ch) is a post-doctoral research fellow on the project
‘Mediality. Historical Perspectives’ at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
76 Kate Heslop
‘memory’ i), through ‘the faculty of recalling to mind’ (OED: ‘memory’ ii) to
‘something that perpetuates remembrance or stimulates the memory’ (OED:
‘memory’ iii, common in the late medieval-early modern period and now obso-
lete) — so, then, the activity of remembering, the faculty which enables it, and
the objects which act as triggers. Although memory has only fairly recently
come to prominence in academic discourse, the expansive, ramified nature of
the concept means there is a vast scholarly literature devoted to it, extending
across many disciplines, and including at least one dedicated journal, Memory
Studies (2008–).4 In view of this breadth, and the concomitant risk of a cer-
tain spreading and thinning by which ‘memory’ comes to include almost any
discourse about the past, the present study sets out to investigate a circum-
scribed domain — skaldic poetry, the Poetic Edda and runic inscriptions, focus-
ing on material from the Viking Age and early to high medieval periods — by
means of an exploratory core sample of the words ON minni n. (memory) and
ON minna (remind, remember). By focusing on minni in these texts it aims
to elucidate skaldic rhetorics of memory, and to produce an initial sketch of
the medium-specific characteristics of skaldic memory as compared to the epi-
graphic and compilatory mediality of the runic and eddic material respectively.
The time period was chosen so as to allow comparison of roughly contempora-
neous material (although the uncertainty of dating all three corpora means this
point cannot be pressed at all far), focusing on the period of transition from a
purely oral and epigraphic culture to one in which manuscript textuality plays
an important role. The late medieval skaldic and runic material is excluded, as
its (rich and fascinating) reflection on the media in which it is transmitted has
quite different characteristics, as is the much earlier Rök stone which, despite
being a locus classicus for minni in runic inscriptions, leads too far away from
the discussion here. The analysis is of course limited by the exclusion of other
‘memory’ words, most prominent among them ON muna vb, but the mate-
rial is nonetheless rich enough for some tentative conclusions to be drawn. In
favour of the focus on minni is the large number of pre-existing studies of this
word in non-skaldic contexts, and the relatively small number of instances of
minni/minna, which allows exhaustive treatment in the space available.5
4
Recent surveys of the vast field of memory studies from various disciplinary perspectives
include: Dudai, Memory from A to Z [neurobiology]; Sutton, ‘Memory’ <http://plato.stanford.
edu/entries/memory/> [accessed 9 November 2012] [philosophy]; Olick and Robbins, ‘Social
Memory Studies’, [sociology]; Klein, ‘On the Emergence of Memory’ [history].
5
See Meissner, ‘Minnetrinken in Island und in der Auvergne’, pp. 232–45; Wiercinski,
Minne: Herkunft und Anwendungsschichten eines Wortes; Düwel, Das Opferfest von Lade;
Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts 77
The neuter noun minni and its corresponding verb minna(sk) are related
etymologically to Germanic *ga-menþia- and ultimately to the Indo-European
root *men (to think);6 they are therefore cognates of Latin memor.7 Fritzner
glosses minni n. as
1. Hukommelse, Evne til at mindes […] (memory, capacity of remembering)
2. Minde, hvad man mindes […] (recollection, what one remembers)
3. fyldt Bæger […] som naar man drak nogen til (á e-n, til e-s), og vel ogsaa
ellers naar man ved en høitidelig Leilighed drak deraf, tømtes med Guds,
Helgenes eller anden afdøds Hukommelse, hvis Navn man nævnte, idet
man mælti fyrir minni (full cup […] which when one drank to somebody,
or perhaps also when one drank at a solemn occasion, one drained to the
memory of God, a saint, or the deceased, whose name was mentioned, a
practice called mæla fyrir minni).8
Fritzner’s third sense, whose origins have been much debated,9 is not attested in
skaldic verse before the fourteenth century,10 so will be less important than the
first two senses in what follows. The gloss for minni in Lexicon poeticum is simi-
lar, except that sense 2 (minde, recollection) is further qualified as erindringstegn
(souvenir).11 ON minni therefore shares the polysemousness of the English
word ‘memory’, in contrast, for instance, to German, which keeps Gedächtnis
(memory) and Erinnerung (recollection) firmly separate. This polysemy struc-
Grønvik, ‘To viktige ord i Rök-innskriften’; Harris, Joseph, ‘The Rök Stone Through Anglo-
Saxon Eyes’, pp. 38–45. Zimmermann, ‘Minne und Minnetrinken’, gives a useful overview.
6
de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, ‘minni’; Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon,
Íslensk Orðsifjabók, ‘minni’.
7
Bjorvand and Lindeman, Våre Arveord, ‘minni’.
8
Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, ‘minni’.
9
The consensus view, already outlined by Meissner (‘Minnetrinken’) though refined and
fleshed out in the studies cited in n. 5, is that minni (toast) involves a transfer of meaning from
the etymologically unrelated Middle High German homophone minne (love) and the custom
of minne trinken, or collective toasting. The transfer is thought to have taken place in a guild
context in Norway, so ON minni (toast) is no older than the eleventh century (of course the
custom of drinking memorial toasts may well be).
10
Cf. Allra postula minnisvísur (Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by
Clunies Ross and others, vii, pp. 852–71). The blood-kenning benstara minni (toast of the
wound-starling) occurs in Einarr Gilsson’s Guðmundarkvæði, 23 (Den norsk-islandske skjaldedi
gtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, BII, 424).
11
Finnur Jónsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquae Linguae Septentrionalis, p. 407.
78 Kate Heslop
tures the investigation which follows, which moves from the faculty of mem-
ory in Section 1, through the action of remembering in Section 2, to consider
objects which perpetuate or stimulate remembrance in Sections 3 and 4.
The raw material of this study consists of the skaldic,12 eddic,13 and runic14
corpus editions. Instances of minni in the eddic and runic corpora were found
using the published concordances,15 while instances of minni n. and minna vb
in the skaldic corpus were located by electronic combing of the normalized
(B-) text of Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning and those parts of the new skal-
dic edition which already exist in electronic form.16 These were then checked
against the diplomatic (A-) text to eliminate instances resulting from unjus-
tifiable emendations. A total of around 90 instances of the two lexemes was
found in the skaldic corpus (the lists in Lexicon poeticum, totalling 57 skaldic
instances, are incomplete).
1. ‘Ars memorativa, ars oblivionalis’:

The Faculty of Recalling to Mind (and of Forgetting)
Skaldic poetry is memory-dependent like no other genre of Old Norse litera-
ture. Composition in writing came late to this highly conservative art form,
while judging by the minor role verbal formulae play in skaldic poetry, and
the prose sources’ accounts of skalds performing from memory, improvisation
was not an option for the performing skald or skaldic rhapsody. Furthermore,
12
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI–II (Tekst efter hånd-
skrifterne), BI–II (Rettet tekst), hereafter cited as Skj AI–II, BI–II. Translations from Skj are
my own. Where possible, ON texts and English translations of skaldic verse are quoted from
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, ed. by Clunies Ross and others, of which vol-
umes vii: Poetry on Christian Subjects and ii: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2 had appeared at the
time of writing; these volumes are cited as SkP vii, ii. Other editions and translations of skaldic
poetry are also used occasionally; this is pointed out in the footnotes.
13
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn.
14
References to the runic corpus editions are given in the notes; a useful key to these is
Samnordisk runtextdatabas (hereafter SamRun), available for download at <http://www.nord-
iska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm> [accessed 9 November 2012].
15
Kellogg, A Concordance to Eddic Poetry. A concordance to SamRun available for down-
load at <https://‌sites.google.com/a/engebretsen.ch/runor/> [accessed 9 November 2012].
16
The database of The Skaldic Project: An International Project to Edit the Corpus of Medi
eval Norse-Icelandic Skaldic Poetry, editorial board: Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade,
Guðrún Nordal, Edith Marold, Diana Whaley, and Tarrin Wills, is online at <http://skaldic.
arts.usyd.edu.au/db.php> [accessed 9 November 2012].
many stanzas would have only yielded up their meaning to an audience able to
memorize and ruminate upon what they heard. The skaldic form thus made
great demands on the memories of all participants in poetic communication,
composer, performer, and audience, and the formal qualities of the skaldic
stanza, accordingly, support memorization. The tight metrical patterning of
dróttkvætt (court metre), the most important skaldic metre, triggers the mem-
ory, via both the aural cues of the successive alliterative and rhyming syllables,
and lexico-grammatical regularities which only permit certain word classes in
particular metrical positions. The kennings provide a wealth of visual images
which, thanks to their juxtapositional logic, are often of precisely the bizarre
sort used in the classical ars memorativa as mnemonic devices. 17 And the
use in the grammatical literature of terms such as hǫfuðstafr (main stave) and
stuðill (prop) for the alliterating staves,18 coupled with terminology from the
poetic texts themselves such as -bǫlkr (partition),19 -stikki (?needle),20 -flokkr
(group),21 and þáttr (strand),22 suggest that skaldic poems may have been
imagined as spatially organized, a method used since antiquity to assist perfor-
mance from memory.
Jens Eike Schnall has recently proposed that Óðinn’s transport of the
mead of poetry to Ásgarðr in the form of an eagle, as described in Snorri’s
Skáldskaparmál, is an instance of the metaphor ‘memory as stomach’ found in
medieval learned works.23 Some (mostly late) kennings do indeed show signs
of a conception of memory as a container located within the body, as discussed
below, but what underlies the account in Skáldskaparmál, rather than meta-
phors of rumination and digestion (the latter hardly improves the arnar leirr
(eagle’s mud), which Snorri tells us Óðinn in eagle form ‘sent out backwards’), is
the association of liquids, especially alcoholic ones, with poetry and memory.24
17
Cf. Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. by Caplan, esp. p. 221; Bergsveinn Birgisson,
‘The Old Norse Kenning as a Mnemonic Figure’.
18
Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda, ed. by Björn Magnússon
Ólsen, p. 97; Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Háttatal, ed. by Faulkes, 1991 edn, p. 4.
19
Sigurðarbǫlkr, Skj BI, p. 467.
20
For example, Haraldsstikki, Skj BI, p. 394, cf. also Oddmjór (Narrow-Point), Skj BI, p. 167.
21
For example, Eiríksflokkr, Skj BI, p. 193.
22
Leiðarvísan 43; SkP vii, p. 176.
23
Schnall, ‘Nahrung, Erinnerung, Dichtung’.
24
On wisdom-drinks in the Poetic Edda, see Quinn, ‘Liquid Knowledge: Traditional
Conceptualisations of Learning in Eddic Poetry’, pp. 183–226.
80 Kate Heslop
Peter Orton has argued that this is the origin of the myth of the poetic mead,25
and alcohol is the common denominator of the eddic drinks of memory and
forgetting, the party at which óminnis hegri (the heron of forgetfulness) makes
its appearance, the mead of poetry, and the custom of minni drekka.
Despite the intimate association of memory and poetry, memory does not
feature heavily in kennings. Skáldskaparmál includes minni (memory) as a pos-
sible determinant in a list of kennings for the breast: ‘[b]rjóst skal svá kenna
at kalla hús eða garð eða skip hjarta, anda eða lifrar, eljunar land, hugar ok
minnis’ (‘the breast shall be referred to by calling it house or enclosure or ship
of heart, spirit or liver, land of energy, thought and memory’);26 and in lists
of heiti for thought: ‘[h]ugr heiti ok geð, þokki, eljun, þrekr, nenning, minni
[etc.]’ (‘thought is also called disposition, attitude, energy, fortitude, liking,
memory’);27 and for wisdom: ‘[v]it heitir speki, ráð, skilning, minni [etc.]’
(‘wisdom is called sagacity, counsel, understanding, memory’).28 But only one
kenning in the extant skaldic corpus uses the word minni (memory): minnis
garðr (memory’s yard) for mind or heart, in stanza 3 of Arngrímr Brandsson’s
fourteenth-century Guðmundar kvæði biskups (Skj BII, 372). Kennings whose
referent might be interpreted as being ‘memory’ — and here the stanza con-
text plays the deciding role — are also infrequent; perhaps unsurprisingly so,
as kennings for mental capacities and similar abstractions are generally rare. An
anonymous stanza only transmitted in Codex Upsaliensis of the Prose Edda is
an exception, describing love as trauma in terms Nietzsche would recognise,
‘Nur was nicht aufhört, weh zu tun, bleibt im Gedächtnis’ (‘only what does not
stop hurting stays in the memory’):29
Stendr, þats stórum grandar,
sterkviðri mér Herkju
í hneggverǫld, hyggju
hefk stríð borit víða.30
25
Orton, Peter, ‘Spouting Poetry’.
26
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, p. 108; translation from Snorri
Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes (1987), p. 154.
27
28
29
Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Colli and Montinari, v, 295.
30
Skj BI, p. 601.
Herkja’s strong storm [passion], which hurts greatly, blows in my heart-world

[breast]; I have borne distress far and wide.
Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek is unusually rich in kennings for mental states,

and kennings such as hugar fylgsni (hiding-place of thought) (st. 1) and rýnnis
reið (chariot of thought) (st. 19, a head-kenning, where rýnni probably origi-
nally meant (knowledge of runes))31 turn on the idea of the mind as a container
for wisdom or cognition located within the body, inside the head or torso. The
container image later becomes architectural in kennings for the mind such as
óðborg (verse-castle)32 or óðrann (verse-hall)33. The opening stanzas of many
Christian skaldic poems invite God to lúka upp (open up) such spaces and allow
the poem to come forth. In these late kennings we have to do with a model of
the memory as treasury or storehouse, as found in Old Norse prose texts.34
Memory’s lack of salience in the kenning system is in stark contrast to the
Poetic Edda, which at several points reflects on memory and forgetting, often
in the form of the memory-enhancing or impairing drink. The memory drinks
of Sigrdrífumál and Hyndluljóð are intended to enhance their drinkers’ recall of
numinous information. Hyndluljóð 45 specifies that the drink, ars memorativa
in liquid form, fosters retention and verbatim performance of a memorized text:
svát hann ǫll muni orð at tína
þessar rœðo á þriðia morni,
þá er þeir Angantýr ættir rekia.35
so that he can recount all the words from this conversation on the third morning,
when he and Angantýr reckon up their lineage.36
Sigrdrífa’s horn, fult miaðar (horn full of mead), which she festively offers in
combination with a formal speech of greeting and acclamation before launch-
ing into her recitation of runic wisdom, seems to cite (as Joachim Grage has sug-
gested) minni drekka, a ritual, commemorative mode of remembering in which
31
Turville-Petre, Scaldic Poetry, p. 38. See also Lühr, Die Gedichte des Skalden Egill,
pp. 216–17.
32
Gamli, Harmsól 1; SkP vii, p. 73.
33
Líknarbraut 1; SkP vii, p. 230.
34
Hermann, ‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past’.
35
36
The Poetic Edda, trans. by Larrington, p. 259 (slightly modified).
82 Kate Heslop
the drinker knowingly participates.37 Grage points out the contrast between
these memorial beverages and the drinks of forgetting prepared by Grímhildr:
the óminnisǫl that robs Sigurðr of his memory of Brynhildr (Vǫlsunga saga,
ch 28), and the óminnisveig she gives Guðrún to manipulate her into marry-
ing Atli (Drap Niflunga, Guðrúnarkviða II, 21–24). Here the drinker is duped
into consuming something the significance of which they do not and — given
that the aim is involuntary forgetting, not conscious memorizing — cannot
recognise. Drawing on Umberto Eco, Grage argues that ‘sollte es eine […] semi-
otische Vergessenskunst geben, so müßten Zeichen für etwas gefunden werden,
was anschließend nicht mehr erinnert werden darf ’ (‘if there were to be a semi-
otic ars oblivionalis, signs would have to be found for something which it is sub-
sequently forbidden to remember’).38 The drinks of forgetting cannot enlist the
drinker’s cooperation. Instead they must operate by magical means, and they
remain opaque to the drinker: Guðrún ráða […] né mátt (could not interpret)39
the runes decorating the horn she is offered, in stark contrast to the lengthy
explanation which accompanies Sigrdrífa’s beer-and-rune cocktail.
Perhaps the best-known instance of (ó)minni in eddic poetry is in Hávamál
13–14:
Óminnis hegri heitir, sá er yfir ǫlðrom þrumir,
hann stelr geði guma;
þess fugls fiǫðrom ec fiǫtraðr varc
í garði Gunnlaðar.
Ǫlr ec varð, varð ofrǫlvi
at ins fróða Fialars;
því er ǫlðr baz-t, at aptr uf heimtir
hverr sit geð gumi.40
The heron of forgetfulness hovers over the ale-drinking; he steals men’s wits; with
the feathers of this bird I was fettered in the court of Gunnlod.
Drunk I was, I was more than drunk at wise Fialar’s; that’s the best sort of ale-
drinking when afterwards every man gets his mind back again.41
37
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn, p. 189; The Poetic
Edda, trans. by Larrington, p. 166. Grage, ‘Der Vergessenheitstrank’, pp. 499–508.
38
Grage, ‘Der Vergessenheitstrank’, pp. 499–500.
39
Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. by Kuhn and Neckel, 4th edn, p. 228; The Poetic
Edda, trans. by Larrington, p. 199.
40
41
The enduringly mysterious óminnis hegri looks like a kenning, but no convinc-
ing interpretation in terms of the kenning system has yet been presented,42
and a better point of departure may be its aural and contextual similarity to
óminnisveig and the latter’s pairing with minnisveig. The corresponding minnis
hegri is Óðinn’s raven Muninn, of whom it is said in Grímnismál 20:
óomc ec of Hugin, at han aptr né komið,
I fear for Hugin that he will not come back, yet I tremble more for Munin.44
Óminnis hegri is an ‘anti-Muninn’, a bird which personifies forgetting as the

active obliteration of memory, hovering and snatching (stelr) memories like
so many fish.45 The two passages share not only the bird image, but also the
theme of anamnesis or ‘calling back to mind’, in the phrases aptr uf heimtir
and aptr né komið. This theme points up the way in which memory, in Ann
Rigney’s words, ‘begins not in the plenitude of experience but in the absence or
pastness of the moment or period being recalled’. The raven Muninn was once
there, and Óðinn nervously awaits his return, while óminnis hegri steals his
victim’s integrity to immobilizing effect, and it is not certain that the drinker
will be able to retrieve his stolen geð once he has sobered up. Judy Quinn has
pointed out the importance of distinguishing in Hávamál between Odinic and
human experience,46 and it is possible to read this passage straight, as conclud-
ing the gnomes about moderation in consumption of alcohol in str. 11–12 with
a warning of its amnestic effects. On the Odinic level, however, óminnis hegri
works, like the óminnisveig, magically rather than naturally.
In their treatment of memory, as in many aspects of medial self-reflection,
skaldic poetry and the Poetic Edda are poles apart. As Grage argues, the Poetic
Edda’s drinks of forgetfulness are strategies to counter the memoria of the text,
by papering over the cracks between the divergent bodies of narrative material
in the compilation. Skaldic poetry, despite the demands it makes on the memo-
42
Cf. Johansson, ‘Hávamál strof 13’. Glóða garmr (dog of the embers) (Ynglingatal 4; Skj
BI, p. 7) is a similar animal metaphor — like óminnis hegri it is not, technically, a kenning — for
a destructive force, in this case, fire.
43
44
45
Dronke, ‘Óminnis hegri’, suggests another reason why the bird in this episode is a heron:
vomiting, central to the mead of poetry metaphor, is traditionally associated with herons.
46
Quinn, ‘Liquid Knowledge: Traditional Conceptualisations of Learning in Eddic Poetry’.
84 Kate Heslop
ries of performer and audience, for which the dróttkvætt form compensates as
an ars memorativa, generates no such textual memoria, and takes a dim view of
forgetting. The concept of memory is first taken up into the kenning system in
twelfth-century and later poems on Christian subjects, when new ideas about
the body,47 about poetic inspiration, and about the role of memory in religious
devotion find expression in kennings depicting memory as a storehouse. But as
will be shown in the next section, acts of commemorating, remembering and
reminding play an important role in the courtly communication of the skaldic
encomium.
2. ‘Sús Engla minnir’: Recalling and Reminding in Skaldic Encomia

The semantic content of the instances of minni n. and minna vb in skaldic
encomia is quite stereotyped, and they may be classified as follows. The larg-
est group comprises memories of battles, journeys, and similar noteworthy
deeds.48 There is some overlap between this group and the next, comprising
memories of individual people, as it can be difficult to decide whether warrior
or battle is focalized in particular instances; a handful of instances concerning
women (almost always in erotic contexts) have also been placed in this group.49
A third group consists of memories of positive or negative social interactions:
gifts, moments of fellowship or hospitality, versus wrongs and injuries, usually
as incitements to revenge; in Gizurr Þorvaldsson’s words, ‘skaði kennir mér
minni’ (‘loss teaches me remembrance’).50 Memory is presented as a virtue
47
Guðrún Nordal, Tools of Literacy, pp. 239–43, 254–58.
48
In this footnote and those which follow, instances additional to those cited in the main
text are listed. The abbreviations used are those of the respective editions. Cf. Sigv Lv 23 (Skj
BI, 251–52), ÞKolb Lv 3 (Skj BI, 260–61), Gísl Lv 1 (SkP ii, 430–31), Esk Sigdr I 5 (SkP ii,
541–42), Rv Lv 8 (SkP ii, 585), Rv Lv 27 (SkP ii, 604–05), Arn Magndr 8 (SkP ii, 217), Háv Lv
6 (Skj BI, 180), Anon (XII) B 7 (Skj BI, 593), Anon Pl 36 (SkP vii, 203), Þhreð Lv 11 (Skj BII,
486), Vers af Hrólfs saga kraka 7 (Skj BII, 251).
49
Cf. Sigv Lv 24 (Skj BI, 252), Sigv Berv 5 (SkP ii, 16–17), Arn Hryn 19 (SkP ii, 205),
Korm Lv 10 (Skj BI, 72), Jóms 20, Anon Pl 34 (SkP vii, 202–03), Vers af Grettissaga 13 (Skj BII,
465), Vers af Þórðar saga hreðu 12 (Skj BII, 486), Vers af Víglundarsaga 6, 12 (Skj BII, 489–90).
50
Lv 1; Skj BII, p. 110. Cf. Sigv Vestrfararvísur 1 (Skj BI, 226), Þorm Þorgeirsdrápa 4 (Skj
BI, 257), ÞKolb Lv 5 (Skj BI, 261), GGalt Lv 5 (Skj BII, 53), SnSt Lv 3 (Skj BII, 89), Áóreið Lv
(Skj BII, 94), SturlaS Lv (Skj BII, 94), Svert Lv 2 (Skj BII, 95), Anon (XIII) B 22 (Skj BII, 152),
Anon (XIII) B 56 (Skj BII, 158–59), Vers af Harðar saga 7 (Skj BII, 478), Vers af Hálfssaga V
(Skj BII, 278); note the cluster of examples in Sturlunga saga, in which the connection between
revenge and remembrance is emphasized.
in itself, and as being of central importance in moral education and religious

devotion, in a large body of instances from Christian, and especially Marian,
poetry.51 Finally, skaldic memory discourse is at times self-referential, describ-
ing the poem itself as a reminder, act of remembrance or memorial.52 Having
organized the source material into this rough classificatory schema we are now
in a position to investigate the rhetorical ends served by these various kinds of
reference to memory.
Memory serves the discourse of fame, when great deeds are widely remem-
bered: ‘mannkyn hefr at minnum | morgun þann’ (‘the race of men holds that
morning in memory’);53 or are remembered by the discerning: ‘hafa mun svinn
at minnum | ǫld, hvé ýtar guldu | yfirmanns bana […]’ (‘wise people will hold in
memory how men repaid the chieftain’s death’),54 or become the occasion for
competitive acts of recollection: ‘Minnisk ǫld, hverr annan | jafnþarfr bláum
hrafni | […] | herskyldir tøg fylldi’ (‘Let men recall which troop-commander
has lived out his second decade equally generous to the dark raven’),55 or the
conquered are traumatized by their defeat: ‘Enn vas, sús Engla minnir | egghríð’
(‘Then came the edge-blizzard [battle] which the English remember’).56
Memory forms affective bonds: ‘enn vilk einskis minnask | […] | […] | […]
nema okkars góða’ (‘still I will remember nothing but our good [fellowship]’);57
to remember the dead is to take revenge for them: ‘Víst hafa minzk, þeirs mestu,
| menn, ofstæki nenna, | (ferð rauð flein at morði) | fǫður síns […]’ (‘Certainly
those men most inclined to strife have remembered their father; the band red-
dened the spear in battle’);58 and remembering segues into reminding when it
51
Mark Eirdr 7 (SkP ii, 439), Hsv 8, 37, 143 (SkP vii, 365, 383, 445), Kolb Lv 9 (Skj
BII, 48–49), Gamlkan Has 23 (SkP vii, 93), Anon Pl 28 (SkP vii, 199), Anon Líkn 46 (SkP
vii, 281–82), Anon Lil 53, 69, 99 (SkP vii, 623, 640–01, 675–76), Mv I 1, 27 (SkP vii, 679,
697–98), Mv III 2, 20 (SkP vii, 719–20, 730–01), Anon Vitn 17 (SkP vii, 751–52), Anon Mgr
24, 40, 41, 42, 52 (SkP vii, 777, 787–89, 794–95), Anon Pét 40 (SkP vii, 830–01), Anon Mey
23, 37 (SkP vii, 906, 914–15), Arngr Gdβ 40 (Skj BII, 382).
52
Cf. ÞjóðA Sex 4 (SkP ii, 116), Gísl Lv 1 (SkP ii, 430–31), Esk Sigdr I 5 (SkP ii, 541–42),
SnSt Ht 31 (Skj BII, 69), Háv Lv 12 (Skj BI, 181), Anon Líkn 34 (SkP vii, 266–68), Anon Mv
I 29 (SkP vii, 699–700, by emendation).
53
Arnórr Þórðarson, Haraldsdrápa 9. 7–8; SkP ii, p. 270.
54
Svertingr Þorleifsson, Lv 1. 2–4; Skj BII, p. 95.
55
Arnórr Þórðarson, Magnússdrápa 18. 1–4; SkP ii, p. 227.
56
Arnórr Þórðarson, Þorfinnsdrápa 16. 1–2; SkP ii, p. 247.
57
Þórmóðr Kolbrúnarskáld, Þórgeirsdrápa 4. 5, 8; Skj BI, p. 257.
58
Guðmundr Oddsson Lv 5; Skj BII, p. 92.
86 Kate Heslop
is a matter of gifts: ‘þú vændir gefa mér nakkvat […] nú samir mér at minnask
gǫrva á þat’ (‘you promised to give me something […] now it’s only fitting for
me to recall that perfectly’).59
The normative force of the appeal to memory is clearly apparent. To remem-
ber is to compare performance in spheres of action such as war and revenge
according to socially-defined standards of behaviour, to define the group
against outsiders, such as the English, or to invoke ethical norms, for example
those governing friendship and gift-giving. More striking than this ideological
bent, though, is the shallowness of the time-depth to which memory refers.
Encomiastic memories are memories of the recent past.
An illuminating model for the memorial rhetoric of the skaldic encomium
is provided by what the German Egyptologist and theorist of memory Jan
Assmann calls ‘communicative memory’.60 His theory distinguishes between
two main modes of memory, communicative and cultural. Communicative
memory is that memory of the recent past, with the saeculum of living memory
as its chronological lower bound, which the individual constructs in the pro-
cess of interaction with other members of their social group. It is the possession
of the collective, not limited to specialists (scholars or clerics, for example), and
‘everyday’ in the sense that it is bound neither to ritual or festive occasions, nor
to transmission as a body of sacred or canonical material, embracing rather the
range of objects and practices studied for modern societies under the rubric of
‘oral history’. This is not, however, to say that communicative memory is exclu-
sively oral:
Eine mündliche Überlieferung gliedert sich genau so nach kommunikativer und
kultureller, alltäglicher und feierlicher Erinnerung wie die Erinnerung einer Schrift
kultur […] In schriftlosen Kulturen haftet das kulturelle Gedächtnis nicht so
einseitig an Texten. Hier gehören Tänze, Spielen, Riten, Masken, Bilder, Rhyth-
men, Melodien, Essen und Trinken, Räume und Plätze, Trachten, Tätowierungen,
Schmuck, Waffen usw. in sehr viel intensiverer Weise zu den Formen feierlicher
Selbstvergegenwärtigung und Selbstvergewisserung der Gruppe.61
59
Þórarinn stuttfeldr, Lv 2; SkP ii, p. 480.
60
Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 50. See also Erll and Nünning, eds, Cultural
Memory Studies and for applications of this theory to the Old Norse sagas, Glauser, ‘Sagas of
Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir’; Hermann, ‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to
the Past’; Zilmer, ‘Scenes of Island Encounters’.
61
Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 59.
The oral transmission is divided into communicative and cultural, everyday and
festive remembering, just as written culture is […] in nonliterate cultures, cultural
memory does not cling so closely to texts. Here dances, plays, rites, masks, images,
rhythms, melodies, food and drink, spaces and places, costumes, tattoos, jewellery,
weapons, etc. belong to a much greater degree to the group’s forms of festive self-
realization and -assertion.62
The fundamental dividing line between communicative and cultural memory

is therefore not oral versus literate transmission, even though this may be one
of the ways this division manifests itself in a literate society (Assmann describes
cultural memory as having an ‘affinity for writing’), but rather, that between
‘everyday’ memory and ‘festive’ memory.63 It may seem perverse to associ-
ate skaldic encomia with a category which maps on to the ‘everyday’, but this
oblique perspective on skaldic court poetry is heuristically worth entertaining.
Such evidence as we have suggests that these poems were indeed for the most
part — and with the great exception of the erfikvæði — not associated with
particular rites or festivities, but rather a mode of everyday communication
between participants in courtly life. As the examples cited above show, skal-
dic encomia are topical talk, whose temporal limits are the present moment of
performance and the recent past of narration. Memory in these poems is not
always personal — the memories in question are in fact often collective — but
it is immediate, both in the sense that it (claims to) draw directly either on the
skald’s own recollections or those of his informants and contemporaries, unme-
diated by other re-tellings in between, and in the sense that it is confined to the
saeculum of living memory.
This model of the memory-work done by skaldic encomia intersects inter-
estingly with Judith Jesch’s suggestion that skaldic encomiastic poetry is a case
of ‘literacy avant la lettre’,64 or even ‘history-writing avant la lettre’.65 She argues
that skaldic verse shows a ‘concern with the longevity of the message’ parallel to
that seen in runic inscriptions, and can be seen as ‘striving towards the condi-
tion of literacy (i.e. repeatability, if not permanence) despite its origins in an
62
My translation.
63
Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 59; for a discussion of the boundaries between
the two ‘modi memorandi’, see pp. 48–56. This distinction runs the risk of an unreflective elit-
ism (though less so in the medieval Norse context), cf. the criticisms of Scharfe, ‘Erinnern und
Vergessen’, p. 34, Winthrop-Young, ‘Memories of the Nile’, p. 349, and Harth, ‘The Invention of
Cultural Memory’, pp. 93–94.
64
Jesch, ‘Skaldic Verse, a Case of Literacy Avant la Lettre?’.
65
Jesch, ‘The Once and Future King’, p. 107.
88 Kate Heslop
oral context’.66 The final grouping in my rough classification above includes a

number of instances in which encomiastic poems refer to themselves in terms
of memory and remembering. The poetic text may incorporate the skald’s own
memories, or those of contemporaries, into itself:
Kannk til margs […] manna/minni
I know people’s memories about many things.67
Veitk, hvar Óláfr úti óslækinn rauð mæki | — deilask mér til mála | minni — fyrsta
sinni
I know where tireless Óláfr reddened the sword at sea for the first time; the memo-
ries give me material for tales.68
Or the poem may be memorial in the sense that it is brought into being by the
skald’s act of remembering; it may even be referred to as minni:
Almdrógar varð œgis / opt sinn, en ek þess minnumk, / barma ǫld fyr Baldri /
bensíks vita ríkis
The people of the brother of the terrifier of the bow-string (i.e. the Eiríkssynir) had
often to know [Hákon’s] power before the Baldr of the wound-fish, and I com-
memorate this.69
Hlýð, manngǫfugr, minni / myrkblás

Listen, noble with your retinue, to the recollection of the dark black one.70
Sætt frák Dœla dróttin | — drengr minnask þess — vinna

I heard that the lord of the Dœlir [Norwegian king] captured Sidon; the man [I]
commemorates that.71
66
Jesch, ‘Skaldic Verse, a Case of Literacy Avant la Lettre?’, pp. 188, 190.
67
Sigvatr, Víkingarvísur 1. 5–6; Skj BI, p. 213.
68
Steinn Herdísarson, Óláfsdrápa 9. 1–4; SkP ii, p. 375.
69
Guthormr sindri, Hákonardrápa 7. 1–4; Skj BI, p. 56.
70
Óttarr svarti, Hǫfuðlausn 1. 1–2; ON text and translation here are from a forthcoming
volume of Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages. I am grateful to the editor of the verse
in question, Matthew Townend, and the General Editors of SkP for permission to quote from
unpublished material.
71
Einarr Skúlason, Sigurðardrápa I 5. 1–2; SkP ii, p. 541.
Stáls dynblakka støkkvi | stinngeðs samir minnask | […] á lof þengils

It befits the impeller of the noisy stem-horses [sailor, i.e. the poet] to recall the
glory of the firm-minded prince.72
However, skaldic encomia remain stubbornly attached to their original

medium, the voice, and the rhetoric of minni/minna(sk) positions the skald’s
act of remembering as actively circulating alongside the recollections of oth-
ers, which nourish it. Furthermore, these self-referential uses of minni lack
what Joseph Harris has called ‘a sense of monumental durability specific to
the verbal structure’.73 An anonymous stanza cited in the Prose Edda refers to
poetry as ‘seinfyrnd skip dverga’ (‘slowly-grown-old dwarves’ ship’),74 where the
hapax legomenon *fyrna must be related to fyrnask (become old, decay, lapse,
be forgotten).75 The word seinfyrnd suggests that longevity results not from
monumentality but from staying in use. And the examples above demonstrate
that durability is not the focus of skaldic memory-talk, in contrast to the runic
material — which, as we shall see, is in turn well aware of the precariousness
of the condition of literacy.76 Skaldic encomium may then be, pace Jesch, a
form of history, but ‘oral history’ is a better model than ‘history-writing’, not
only because of its medium, the voice, but also because of its content. From
a cultural memory perspective the skaldic mythological poetry which Jesch
excludes from her analysis77 also fits into the division of labour posited here, as
its decisively different relationship to the past (a reach back into the deep past,
beyond the individual’s capacity to remember) demands a different structure,
what Assmann refers to as cultural memory.
72
Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 31. 1–4. ON text from Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Háttatal, ed.
by Faulkes, 1991 edn, p. 17, English translation from Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes
(1987), p. 186.
73
Harris, ‘Old Norse Memorial Discourse’, p. 126.
74
Skj BI, p. 173.
75
Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, ‘fyrnast’.
76
Háleyg jatal 16 (Skj BI, 62), cited in Jesch, ‘Skaldic Verse, a Case of Literacy Avant la
Lettre?’, p. 191, compares the poem not only to a stone bridge (sem steinabrú) but also to the
holding of a feast (Jólna sumbl): as Poole writes, both are ‘communal functions’, a factor which
is presumably the main driver for the choice of the bridge metaphor (Poole, ‘Myth and Ritual
in the Háleyg jatal’, p. 175). Elsewhere (‘Memorials in Speech and Writing’) Jesch suggests that
concern for posterity is associated with the erfikvæði’s commemorative function, and the evi-
dence supports this more cautious position.
77
Jesch, ‘Skaldic Verse, a Case of Literacy Avant la Lettre?’, p. 188 n. 2.
90 Kate Heslop
3. ‘Vas þat fyr lǫngu’: Remembering the Deep Past

‘Cultural memory’ (kulturelles Gedächtnis) as Assmann defines it is ‘cultural’,
as it is realised in the form of institutions, and a form of ‘memory’, because it is
to social communication as individual memory is to consciousness. The study
of cultural memory is concerned with ‘the medial conditions and social struc-
tures of organization which groups and societies use to connect themselves
to an objective supply of cultural representations, available in diverse forms
(for example, in writing, image, architecture, liturgy), in order to construct
patterns for self-interpretation legitimized by the past’.78 Like tradition, cul-
tural memory is concerned with the deep past of the origins, but in contrast
to the concept of tradition, the memory metaphor emphasizes that constructs
of the past are creative, striving for continuity and identity in the face of gaps,
ruptures, and heterogeneities. Haustlǫng’s explicit comment on the distance in
time of the events it portrays (vas þat fyr lǫngu) indicates its awareness of such a
gap, and of its own divergence from skaldic encomiastic practice:79
Ok slíðrliga síðan
svangr (vas þat fyr lǫngu)
át af eikirótum
okbjǫrn faðir Marnar80
And Morn’s hungry father [the giant] was then eating horribly the yoke-bear [ox]
at the roots of an oak — that was long ago.81
Most skaldic mythological poems (Þórsdrápa is the major exception) present

themselves as descriptions of other objects, or ekphraseis, to use the term cur-
rent in recent critical commentary.82 The gap between the present of perfor-
78
Harth, ‘The Invention of Cultural Memory’, p. 91.
79
Most other skaldic instances of the phrase fyr lǫngu denote the distant, mythic/legend-
ary past, cf. Þjóð Yt 29 (Skj BI, 12), Snæbj Lv 1 (Skj BI, 201), Hl 1b (Skj BI, 488); Þjóð Yt 33
(Skj BI, 13) is controversial. In later poetry fyr lǫngu also sometimes refers to the speaker’s own
long-distant youth, cf. Grett Lv 3 (Skj BI, 288), Krm 1 (Skj BI, 649), Jóms 4 (Skj BII, 2). A verse
exchange between Haraldr harðráði, his skald Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, and a group of Norwegian
fishermen, transmitted in several king’s sagas, makes a joke of the phrase (cf. Anon HSig 3; SkP
ii, 817) and may be an intertext for later uses of fyr lǫngu as referring to the speaker’s own past.
80
(Haust 6. 1–4; Skj BI, 15).
81
82
See Webb, ‘Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern’ for an account of the ‘re-invention’ of ekph-
rasis in the mid twentieth century and the explosion in popularity it enjoyed in literary-critical
mance and deep mythological time is bridged by making the poetic text par-
asitic on a pre-existent forming of the narrative materials, named in the stef
(refrain) in the three canonical skaldic ekphraseis:
Ragnarsdrápa 7, 12:
Ræs gáfumk reiðar mána | Ragnarr ok fjǫlð sagna83
Ragnar gave me the Rae’s chariot moon and a multitude of stories with it.84
Haustlǫng 13, 20:

Baugs þá ek bifum fáða | bifkleif at Þorleifi85
I received the border’s moving cliff decorated with horrors from Thorleif.86
Húsdrápa 6, 10:
Hlaut innan svá minnum87
Within have appeared these motifs.88
All three stefjar refer, in a somewhat obscure manner, to a discourse which pre-
dates the poem itself: fjǫlð sagna (a multitude of stories) in Ragnarsdrápa, bif/
bifa, which is translated by Faulkes as ‘horrors’ but seems literally to mean ‘shiv-
ering’ (the word is a hapax legomenon), so could be translated as ‘image/story
giving rise to terror’, in Haustlǫng,89 and, of course, hlaut innan svá minnum
and art historical contexts in the 1990s. The term ekphrasis, first applied to skaldic poetry by
Frank in Old Norse Court Poetry, p. 104, acquired currency in skaldic studies in the mid 2000s,
when Clunies Ross published ‘The Cultural Poetics of the Skaldic Ekphrasis Poem’ and organ-
ized a roundtable discussion entitled ‘Approaches to Skaldic Ekphrasis’ at the Durham Saga
Conference, subsequently printed in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 3 (2007). These poems
had previously been referred to as billedbeskrivende dikt (cf. Lie’s article of the same name in
Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, i (1956), cols 542–45) or ‘shield poems’
(cf. Rosenfeld, ‘Nordische Schilddichtung und mittelalterliche Wappendichtung’; McTurk,
‘Schildgedichte’), although the latter term excludes Húsdrápa.
83
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, i, p. 51.
84
85
86
87
88
89
Cf. Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, ii, p. 244, and see Holtsmark,
‘Myten om Idun’, p. 40, for a discussion of bif/bifa (the form is uncertain).
92 Kate Heslop
in Húsdrápa.90 The skaldic idiom’s demands for present focus and immediacy
could be seen as being satisfied, in a poem dealing with events far distant in time,
by the mediation of a plastic representation, although none of these phrases
emphasize the visual quality of their ‘source’. The poem does not merely describe
this object, but insists on its presence, by means of the frequent deixis often
noted as a feature of skaldic ekphrasis. Material objects as bearers of memory,
such as the skeletons (Egils saga, Eyrbygg ja saga), churches (Hávarðar saga,
Þórðar saga), and bells (Kjalnesinga saga) mentioned in the closing chapters
of some sagas of Icelanders, are a well-known feature of the cultural memory
work carried out by these texts. In their materiality these objects bridge the gap
between the past time of the events described and the present of narration.91
Rather than themselves originating in the past, the objects described in the
skaldic ekphraseis are already representations of that past. Minni in this sense,
denoting memorial content to which the poetic text has access via a prior media-
tion which delivers the ‘memories’ in a fixed form, is different from minni as
individual, communicative memory in the encomiastic poetry. The ekphrastic
mythological poems concern themselves with cultural memory: the deep past of
the origins, the founding moments from which the society in question draws its
sense of identity and cohesion. As it lies beyond the saeculum and so exceeds the
powers of individual human memory, this kind of minni must be mediated. The
ekphrastically described object does the same rhetorical work in these poems as
the references to informants (frák ‘I heard’ etc.) do in the skaldic encomia.
This kind of minni — what Lexicon poeticum glosses as an erindringstegn
(token of memory) — is not limited to the ekphraseis, but also appears in some
other poems which describe events distant in time. In Geisli 34, the minni is a
physical object, the memorial crucifix to Óláfr helgi, which reminds worship-
pers of the saint and his miracles (note the deixis):
90
Düwel translates as ‘Es wurde (die Halle) inwendig so mit Erinnerungszeichen (Bildern?)
geschmückt’ (‘It (the hall) was decorated thus within with memorial signs (images?)’, Das
Opferfest von Lade, p. 69); as the parentheses here suggest, the usual assumption is that the clause
is an incomplete klofastef, and the subject and object of hlaut are in the lost part (see, for exam-
ple, Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, i, p. 159). Grønvik contests this
view, arguing that the construction is impersonal with dativus rei and nothing is missing. He
translates ‘slik tilfalt det oss “minner” (slik mottok vi “minner”) der innenfra’ (‘so “memories”
fell to us (so we received “memories”) there within’, ‘To viktige ord i Rök-innskriften’, p. 32).
91
Cf. Perkins, ‘Objects and Oral Tradition in Medieval Iceland’, although he is mainly
interested in objects from the söguöld as ‘kernels’ for oral tradition, whereas I see such objects
(whether real or fictional) as elements of the texts’ creation of a sense of pastness.
Satts, at silfri skreytta

seggjum hollr ok golli
hér lét Gutthormr gerva
— grams hróðr vas þat — róðu.
Þat hafa menn at minnum
meir; jartegna þeira
mark stendr Krists í kirkju
— konungs niðr gaf þat — miðri.92
It is true that Gutthormr, devoted to men, here had an image made, ornamented
with silver and gold; that was praise of the king. Men have that [i.e. the crucifix]
still as a reminder: the mark of those miracles stands in the middle of Kristkirken;
the king’s relative [Gutthormr] gave that.
In later examples, minni is probably textually mediated. Gunnlaugr’s Merlínús

spá II promises fornra minna | miðsamlig rǫk (a medium-level account of
these ancient traditions) (st. 3. 6–7),93 where the ‘ancient traditions’ are taken
from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetia Merlini. Málsháttakvæði notes hølzti
eru nú minni forn (this is exceedingly old lore now)94 at the end of a stanza
retailing mythological information which the poem’s most recent editor,
Roberta Frank, argues is drawn from Skáldskaparmál.95 Arngrímr Brandsson’s
Guðmundardrápa 49 runs:
Liðit er nú sízt hann var heðra
hundrúð ára (svá hǫfum fundit),
aukaz þar til enn at líku
átta vetr, sem ritning váttar;
aldri þverr í efrum ǫldrum,
einart vex fyr sannar greinir,
frægðin hans ok fagrar dygðir;
finnaz þar til sǫgur ok minni.96
92
SkP vii, p. 33.
93
Text and translation from Poole, ‘Conspicuous Mediality in a Medieval Poem’; I thank
him for permission to quote from unpublished material.
94
St. 8. 8; Skj BII, p. 140. Translation from Frank, Sex, Lies and Málsháttakvæði, p. 25.
95
Frank dates Málsháttakvæði to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, so it is possible
that its author could have known the Prose Edda, especially if Skáldskaparmál was the first part
to be composed; see further on this Frank, Sex, Lies and Málsháttakvæði, pp. 20–21.
96
Skj BII, 384.
94 Kate Heslop
Now one hundred years have passed since he was here (so we have discovered),
with eight winters added to that, nevertheless, as borne witness to in writings; his
fame and fair deeds will never diminish in later ages, [rather] incessantly grow for
true reasons; stories and mementoes are to be found about that.
Here the sǫgur are presumably the earlier redactions of Guðmundar saga
which Arngrímr used in composing his own saga about the bishop, known as
Guðmundar saga D, into which the verses of the drápa were interspersed prosi-
metrically. As the poem shows a fondness for the pleonastic constructions typi-
cal of the learned style,97 it is possible that sǫgur and minni both refer to these
earlier texts, although minni may alternatively refer to visual sources such as
sculptures or painted images. The stanza’s emphasis on written sources and on
the distance in time of Guðmundr’s life does, however, rule out the possibility
that minni here refers to individual personal memories.
In Merlínússpá and Málsháttakvæði, the adjective forn (ancient) stands in
place of the arithmetical excursus in Arngrímr’s Guðmundardrápa. This appeal
to an ancient and authoritative precursor is typical of medieval textuality,98 and
is notably absent in the ekphrastic references ‘outside the frame’. The content of
the representations described in the ekphraseis may be ancient, but this is not
claimed for the representations themselves. What is it, then, that makes them
worthy of ekphrastic description? The pragmatic answer — assuming, as almost
all previous research does, that such shields existed — is that they were splendid
gifts and as such part of the exchange relationship between skald and patron.
Another answer could lie in the ‘mixed media’ nature of ekphrasis. Gods, mon-
sters, and heroes are present in their images — physically sharing the space of
the audience, and in a cultic context, experienced as actually present — in a way
that they are not in narrative, even the live performed narrative that we imagine
in the case of early skaldic poetry.99 We could think of the image and the poetic
text as complementary, the image lending to the text a presence which made of
narration something more like re-enactment, the text providing the narrative
element lacking from the image. The combination has a performative force that
97
Cf., for example, sts 6, 7, 16.
98
Another notable instance is Háttatal’s description of hjástælt: ‘[…] skal orðtak vera forn
minni’, Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Háttatal, ed. by Faulkes, 1991 edn, p. 10 (‘the expression has to
be proverbial statements’, Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes (1987), p. 176). Assmann
argues that the very notion of ‘old’ and ‘new’ texts, and the valuing of the old, is a consequence
of writing and its storage potential, Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 100.
99
On the presence of the sacred in images, see Belting, Likeness and Presence and Belting,
‘Image, Medium, Body’.
either alone does not, one which we also see in the intermedial practice of níð
as poem plus carving, for example in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (ch. 58) and
Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa (ch. 17), or in the runic monuments to which we
turn in the final part of this essay.100
4. ‘Þø munu minni’: The Memory of Objects

Commemoration is generally accepted to be a central function of Viking Age
runic monuments.101 Set up at prominent locations, often near boundaries,
roads, bridges, bodies of water, or graveyards, they establish ‘places of memory’
within the landscape.102 Readers lend their voices to their inscriptions, intro-
ducing a performative aspect: ‘the monument has become an event that can be
experienced over and over again’.103 The runestone thus retains its immediacy
for later audiences, while the durability of the stone suggests that the memo-
ries it embodies will endure.104 And the high degree of formalization of both
inscription and ornament ensure that the illiterate can also participate in the
‘communicative pact’ that the fully developed Viking Age form of the rune-
stone represents: it is not just a linguistic, but also a visual monument.105 The
memory culture of the runic monument is thus quite different from that of the
skaldic encomium performed by its composer in the face-to-face setting of a
royal court.
In the great majority of Viking Age inscriptions memory is implicit, con-
tained in the formula ‘x raised this stone in memory of y, his/her relative’, where
‘in memory of ’ corresponds to a prepositional phrase (eptir, at, etc. ‘after’, plus
the name of the dedicatee). But there is also a small number of explicit refer-
ences to memory. The concordance to SamRun lists five occurrences of minni
n. All but one are on Viking Age runestones: three Danish stones from Jutland
(DR 83, 94 and 110), and one from Uppland in Sweden (U 114).106
100
For the passages in question see: Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal,
pp. 165–71; Borgfirðinga sǫgur, ed. by Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, pp. 154–56.
101
Düwel, Runenkunde, p. 95; see also Jesch, ‘Memorials in Speech and Writing’.
102
Klos, Runensteine in Schweden, p. 332.
103
Zilmer, ‘Viking Age Rune Stones in Scandinavia’, p. 145.
104
Zilmer, ‘Viking Age Rune Stones in Scandinavia’, p. 147.
105
Malm, ‘Rökstenens tilltal’, p. 248. Cf. Bianchi, Runor som resurs.
106
The final instance is the inscription on the Rök stone, where the sequence sakumukmini
includes the word minni according to some interpretations. Despite its considerable interest,
96 Kate Heslop
Sønder Vinge 2 (DR 83), c. 970–1020

-u(þ)i : b(i)--(l)i : risþi stin : þensi uftir : uruku auk : kaþu bruþr : sino : tuo :
… : sarþi : auk siþ : r(a)(t)i : sar monr : ias : auþi : mini : þui
Guði <bi--li> resði sten þænsi æftir Urøkiu ok Kaðu, brøðr sina twa … særði ok seð.
Ræti(?) sar mannr æs øthi minni þwi.
Guði <bi--li> raised this stone in memory of Órókia and Kaða, his two broth-
ers … wounded and bewitched(?). A warlock(?) (be) the man who destroys this
memorial!107
Ålum 1 (DR 94), c. 970–1020

tuli : (ri)s[þ](i) : stin : þasi : aft | ikal:t : sun : sin : miuk(:)(k) | (u)[……]k : þau
: mun(u) mini : m-(r)gt : iuf [:] þirta :
Toli resði sten þæssi æft Ingiald, sun sin, miok goðan dræng. Þø munu minni … … …
Tóli raised this stone in memory of Ingialdr, his son, a very good valiant man. These
memorials will …108
Virring (DR 110), c. 900–60

: ki-mutr : | ………n : k(a)rþi | : m(i)n(i) : [þa](u) : af(t) : sasur : star | r(i)sþi :
stin : aft : tuþan : þur : uiki : þisi : kuml
Germundr(?) … sun gærði minni þø æft Sazur. Star resði sten æft døðan. Þor wigi þæssi
kumbl.
Geirmundr(?) … son made these memorials in memory of Sassurr. Starr raised the
stone in memory of the deceased. May Thórr hallow this monument.109
this instance will not be treated here, as its early date (c. 800–50) and the immense secondary
literature devoted to it both lead too far away from the material under discussion.
107
Transcription from Danmarks Runeindskrifter, ed. by Jacobsen and Moltke, cols 120–21.
Normalized text and English translation from SamRun. Find information, including dating and
images of the stones, can be found in the online database Danske Runeindskrifter <http://runer.
ku.dk> [accessed 9 November 2012]. Niels Åge Nielsen proposes an alternative interpretation
of the second line: … sarþi auk siþriti sar monr ias auþi mini þui, [Wærþi] særþi ok seþretti(?)
sar mannr æs øþi minni þwi (‘[May he be considered] a pervert and a wizard(?), that man who
destroys this memorial’), cf. Nielsen, Runestudier, pp. 19–24.
108
Transcription from Danmarks Runeindskrifter, ed. by Jacobsen and Moltke, cols 129–30;
the last three words are yet to be satisfactorily interpreted. Normalized text and English transla-
tion from SamRun. Dating from Danske Runeindskrifter.
109
Transcription from Danmarks Runeindskrifter, ed. by Jacobsen and Moltke, cols 147–48.
Normalized text and English translation from SamRun. Dating from Danske Runeindskrifter.
It is noteworthy that minni does not stand alone in any of these inscriptions,
but appears in combination with a commoner term: sten or kumbl. This suggests
that the word minni is supplementary, highlighting a special aspect of the mon-
ument — its memorial nature — above and beyond its mere physical presence;
in the case of Ålum 1, prosody probably also played a role in the choice of words,
as minni alliterates with munu and the presently uninterpretable m-(r)gt. There
seem to be two possibilities here. One is that minni refers to the runestone itself,
as is generally suggested in the secondary literature. The other is that minni
denotes not the stone, but rather an associated performance practice, analogous
to the blót rituals which Andrén suggests took place around the Gotland picture
stones.110 The deictic pronouns þwi (dat. sg) and þø (nom./acc. pl.)111 indicate
that this minni, whatever it is, is present to the reader of the inscription. But this
does not necessarily mean it is an object, as a performance could also be part of
the reader’s ‘here and now’ if repeated over time; minni could indeed be consti-
tuted in the act of reading the inscription. Sønder Vinge 2, on the other hand,
invokes the vulnerability of minni to destruction, in a formula for which there
are many parallels clearly referring to the physical monument (cf., for example,
DR 81 Skjern 2), and seems to see minni as embodied in an object, although
the verb it uses, eyða, is unique, and has a broad semantic range which includes
attempts to disrupt or otherwise interfere with a performed ritual.
* * *
The Viking Age inscription on a glacial boulder near the River Ed in Runby,
Uppland (U 114) gives a further perspective on runic memory. The inscription
is carved within the bodies of interlaced serpents on two sides of the stone,
although from the word manna on, the inscription on side B runs out of the
end of the serpent.
A: * ikriþ ‘ l[i]t * laþbo * kiara ‘ auk * stain * haku[a eftir] ikim[a]r (b)(o)[ta s]
in * auk * eftar * tan * auk * eftir * baka * suni * sina
B: ‘ þair byku ‘ i rynby ‘ auk ‘ bo atu ‘ [kr]istr * ialbi ‘ s(a)(l)(u) * þai[r- *] (þ)it
skal ‘ at minum * mana ‘ miþan * min li[fa]
110
Andrén, ‘Dörrar till förgångna myter’, p. 291.
111
Erik Moltke suggests that the use of a plural in such cases refers to the whole memorial
complex, stone setting and mound, cf. Moltke, Runes and their Origin, pp. 167, 215, while Marie
Stoklund sees the plural as indicating the stone and the runes inscribed upon it, cf. ‘Stoklund,
‘Runesten, kronologi og samfundsrekonstruktion’, p. 287.
98 Kate Heslop
A: Ingrið let laðb[r]o gæra ok stæin haggva æftir Ingimar, bonda sinn, ok æftir Dan
ok æftir Banka(?), syni sina.
B: Þæir byggu i Runby ok bo attu. Kristr hialpi salu þæira. Þæt skal at minnum
manna, meðan menn lifa.
A: Ingríðr had the causeway made and the stone cut in memory of Ingimarr, her
husbandman, and in memory of Danr, and in memory of Banki/Baggi(?), her
sons.
B: They lived in Runbýr and owned the estate. May Christ help their souls. That
will (stand) in memory of the men while man lives [lit. ‘people live’].112
The monument (þæt), whether bridge, stone or both, will serve as a reminder
(at minnum) of Ingimarr, Danr and Banki/Baggi, as long as people live (meðan
menn lifa) who are capable of remembering. Phrases asserting the durability
of the memorial, often in verse or (as here) alliteratively heightened prose, are
common on runestones.113 What is unique about this inscription — for no
other instance of the formula combines the three elements of monument, mem-
ory, and human agency — is how it makes minni the interface between physical
object and human consciousness, and so lays bare the hybrid nature of runic
memory culture. It is the combination of human memory and stone monument
which guarantees remembrance. The memorial function of the link between
object and person, the fact that these monuments are at minnum manna and
æft goðan, is perpetuated as long as the inscription finds readers.
This prospective sense of ‘memorial’ is much less frequent in the skaldic cor-
pus, with the only clear example found in the present survey being the follow-
ing instance in Háttatal 67. 1–4:
Ortak ǫld at minnum
þá er alframast vissak
of siklinga snjalla
með sex tøgum hátta
I have composed as a memorial for men about the valiant princes who I knew to be
quite the most outstanding with sixty verse forms.114
112
Transcription and normalized text from Sveriges Runinskrifter, ed. by Wessén and
Jansson, pp. 165–72. English translation from SamRun.
113
Cf., for example, DR 212, Sm 16, U 323, G 343; see also the discussions in Zilmer,
‘Viking Age Rune Stones in Scandinavia’.
114
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Háttatal, ed. by Faulkes, 1991 edn, p. 29, Snorri Sturluson,
It is perhaps no coincidence that our sole example of a skaldic poem describing

itself as an enduring memorial was composed long after the advent of writing
in Latin letters in the North, and is usually thought to have been ‘sent in manu-
script form to its patrons to be read by them or to them by someone else’.115
If this hypothesis is correct Háttatal, as postal skaldic encomium, approaches
the situation of epigraphic memorial culture, in which ‘the presence of the […]
[memorial], standing before the person reading the inscription, is as emphatic
as the absence of the author who, at the moment when his inscription is read,
is no longer there’.116
Conclusion: Mediating Memory

As the quotation from Ann Rigney with which this essay began indicates,
absence and repetition are key to memory and remembering. Memorials mark
the absence against which memory works, and remembering is the process of
summoning back into consciousness, or reactivating, what was once present.
Absence and repetition are also, however, significant attributes of the written
text. The absence of the speaker from the written text, and the repetition, vari-
ance, and proliferation fostered by writing are well-known themes of research
into orality and literacy. The foregoing survey of eddic, skaldic, and runic rhet-
orics of memory as manifested in the use of the words minni and minna has
demonstrated (despite being a mere sample of a vast field) similarities and dis-
continuities which reflect the varying media in which these literary genres were
realised in medieval Scandinavia. In particular, I would argue, it is processes of
reading which are implicated in the rhetorics of memory of the runic inscrip-
tions and the Poetic Edda compilation. The runic epigraphic medium combines
individual re-membering, shared performance, and the monument — human
memory’s ‘Außendimension’ — into a durable but vulnerable hybrid, whereas
the compilatory medium of the Poetic Edda deploys its drinks of forgetting as
a textual strategy of compensation for the memoria of the text, that is, for the
reader’s experience of the Sigurðr cycle as a palimpsest of material from dispa-
rate sources which nonetheless is woven together into a coherent narrative.
Edda, trans. by Faulkes (1987), p. 205. Þjóðólfr Arnórsson’s Sexstefja 4. 5–8 (SkP ii, 116) may
also be an instance of prospective memory if minni in svá finnask til minni refers to the poem,
but this is by no means certain.
115
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Háttatal, ed. by Faulkes, 1991 edn, p. ix.
116
Svenbro, Phrasikleia, p. 31.
100 Kate Heslop
This contrasts with the rhetoric of memory in skaldic poetry, the main focus
of the study. Skaldic encomia, I have argued, embody communicative memory.
Skalds speak as bearers of living memory, whether the memories in question are
their own, drawn from hearsay, or merely surmises as to what others remember,
and their poems enter into oral history, to circulate alongside other memories
of the events they describe. In contrast to the runic monuments, skaldic enco-
miastic texts rarely assert that they will survive in posterity. Poems as verbal
artefacts are inextricably bound up with performance and use; a lasting poem
is seinfyrnd (slow to become obsolete), and only when early skaldic poetry is
interpreted as part of the archive of the textual transmission can its memo-
rial rhetoric be analysed in terms of literate practices.117 An example from
among the texts discussed in the present essay of such a shift in perspective is
the ekphraseis in the context of the Prose Edda, where the device of ekphrastic
description operates not to heighten the immediacy of the mytho-heroic narra-
tives, as it probably did in the situation of in-person performance, but to frame
and distance them (as they place the reader at one further remove from the
mythical narrative), a frequent strategy in the Edda.118
Cultural memory is not exclusively a literate phenomenon, however. Skaldic
texts embody cultural memory when they reach back into the distant past to
narrate events which took place in mythic or legendary time, fyr l ǫngu. The
minni invoked by these texts differs from that of communicative memory. This
procedure is at its most developed in the ekphraseis, which narrate their stories
of gods, heroes and monsters not directly but via an intermediary, the sǫgur, bif/
bifa, or minni within whose frame the narrative which is the poem’s subject mat-
ter plays out. But it is also apparent in Geisli, Merlínússpá, Málsháttakvæði, and
Guðmundardrápa, where minni again signifies a prior instantiation of the sub-
ject matter which the poem re-mediates. The fact that this minni or ‘reminder’
is a physical object in the earlier examples (Húsdrápa, Geisli) confirms its ori-
gins as a pre-literate anchor for cultural memory, in an ‘archaic notion of mem-
ory as the union of divine presence and material object’.119 Thinking of minni
as ‘reminder’ or ‘hint’,120 a trigger for constructive thought, is also in tune with
current neuroscientific research into how humans remember, which empha-
sizes not accurate recording and reproducing of the past, but rather the ability
117
See Heslop, ‘Assembling the Olaf-Archive?’, for a sketch of such an approach.
118
On framing in the Prose Edda, cf. Glauser, ‘Sinnestäuschungen’.
119
Klein, ‘On the Emergence of Memory’, p. 142.
120
Harris, ‘Myth and Meaning in the Rök Inscription’, p. 95.
to ‘draw on the elements and gist of the past, and extract, recombine and reas-
semble them into imaginary events that never occurred in that exact form’.121 In
this way cultural memory’s foundational gesture, the reach back into the dis-
tant past, holds out the promise of transcending the reality of the present in an
opening towards an imagined future.122
121
Schacter and Addis, ‘Constructive Memory’, p. 27; see also Dudai and Carruthers, ‘The
Janus Face of Mnemosyne’, p. 567.
122
Aleida Assmann’s reflections on the archive as ‘das Repertoire verpaßter Möglichkeiten,
alternativer Optionen und ungenutzter Chancen’ (the repertoire of missed opportunities, alter-
native options and unrealised chances) in Assmann, Erinnerungsräume, p. 137, suggest a way in
which the late compilations, such as Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar mentioned above, could be consid-
ered in the light of their futural potential.
102 Kate Heslop
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Webb, Ruth, ‘Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: The Invention of a Genre’, Word & Image,
15 (1999), 7–18
Wiercinski, Dorothea, Minne: Herkunft und Anwendungsschichten eines Wortes, Nieder
deutsche Studien, 11 (Køln: Böhlau, 1964)
Zilmer, Kristel, ‘Scenes of Island Encounters in Icelandic Sagas: Reflections of Cultural
Memory’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 4 (2008), 227–48
——  , ‘Viking Age Rune Stones in Scandinavia: The Interplay between Oral Monumentality
and Commemorative Literacy’, in Along the Oral-Written Continuum: Types of Texts,
Relations and Their Implications, ed. by Slavica Ranković, Leidulf Melve, and Else
Mundal, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 20 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp.
135–62
Zimmermann, Christiane, ‘Minne und Minnetrinken’, in Reallexikon der germanischen
Altertumskunde, ed. by Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, and Heiko Steuer, 2. Aufl.,
35 vols (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1972–2008), xx: Metuonis–naturwissenschaftliche
Methoden (2002), pp. 49–56
Autobiographical Memory in Medieval
Scandinavia and amongst the Kievan Rus’
Russell Poole
M
emory can be shown to have at least three aspects in skaldic poetry.
One is the enshrining of the supernatural or preternatural minni
‘memorable things’ of myth and legend. This notion we see in the
Húsdrápa of Úlfr Uggason, where the things remembered include stories about
Þórr, Óðinn, Baldr, Heimdallr, and other gods and giants.1 The same focus,
though without the explicit use of the word minni, at least within the extant
stanzas, is seen in such early skaldic poems as Ragnarsdrápa and other attribu-
tions to Bragi Boddason and the Haustlǫng of Þjóðólfr ór Hvini.
A second aspect of memory, and the predominant one, given the conditions
of preservation of the literary record, is the commemoration of the deeds of
kings and other rulers. Thus Egill Skallagrímsson in his Hǫfuðlausn speaks of
the contents of the poet’s memory in terms of a commodity suited for presenta-
tion to a ruler. These two types of memory are either already incorporated in
the communal memoria or intended for incorporation in it.
Sometimes, however, when skalds invoke memory and remembrances it is
with purposes of a third kind, partly distinct from these and partly overlapping.
This aspect of memory can be termed ‘autobiographical’, and it will form the
* I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada and to
Western University for funding to undertake the research reported in this paper. I should like to
dedicate the paper to the memory of Robert Cook.
1
Turville-Petre, Scaldic Poetry, pp. 67–70.
Russell Poole (rpoole@uwo.ca) is an emeritus Distinguished University Professor at Western

University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Royal Society of Canada.
110 Russell Poole
subject of the ensuing essay. My contention will be that in skaldic poetry, as

in some other narrative types, we see a definite cultivation of autobiographical
memory. I shall argue that the systematic development of this type of memory
would have served to further the interests of both the individual and the wider
society within which he or she moved in early medieval Scandinavia and its
diaspora. First, however, I shall consider the concept of autobiographical mem-
ory in a broad cross-cultural perspective that will enable us to identify some
characteristic and peculiar aspects of the type of autobiographical memory cul-
tivated by the skalds.
‘Autobiographical memory’, in a standard description, is ‘memory for the
events of one’s life. […] It constitutes a major crossroads in human cognition
where considerations relating to the self, emotion, goals, and personal meanings
all intersect’.2 This we can amplify with the observations that autobiographi-
cal memory typically involves ‘a sense of self experiencing the event at a specific
point in time and space […] and, beyond that, is personally significant, focusing
on episodes that have personal meaning’.3 While autobiographical memory
originates through self ’s experience it is elaborated and maintained through
social interaction with others.4 Individuals thereby gain a sense of who they
are in relation to others, both locally, within their family and community, and
more globally, within their culture, leading to a shared moral perspective.5
Additionally, it is now recognized that possession of this kind of memory ena-
bles us to exercise foresight and imagination and to plan for the future.6
Memory practices and styles have been shown to differ systematically from
culture to culture. When forming memories, Mary K. Mullen and Soonhyung
Yi point out, children learn how ‘to process the information that they encoun-
ter in ways that are valued by the people in their environment. Cultures are
likely to differ in such values and even in the degree to which they value remem-
bering personal experiences generally. Such differences would likely be related
to differences in socialization goals and cultural values’.7
Childhood acculturation on the part of parents and care-givers, particularly
the mother, is regarded as formative for the cultivation of specific styles of auto-
2
Conway and Rubin, ‘The Structure of Autobiographical Memory’, p. 103.
3
Nelson and Fivush, ‘The Emergence of Autobiographical Memory’, p. 488.
4
Hayne and MacDonald, ‘The Socialization of Autobiographical Memory’, p. 99.
5
Nelson and Fivush, ‘The Emergence of Autobiographical Memory’, p. 506.
6
Tulving, ‘Episodic Memory and Autonoesis’, pp. 9, 11, 18–22.
7
Mullen and Yi, ‘The Cultural Context of Talk’, pp. 408–09.
Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia 111
biographical memory. Mullen and Yi observe that ‘as adults verbally guide a
child in forming descriptions of experiences, they may be teaching the child a
number of concepts such as: what types of events are considered memorable,
what aspects of those events are considered memorable, how to organize events
in a temporal sequence, how to make inferences about causality, how to make
inferences about human intentions, and how to evaluate behaviour. Through
this process, children are, in a sense, learning how to remember personal experi-
ences’.8 We might add that they are learning to put a narrative shape on them.
In a series of studies, the cultivation of autobiographical memory in
US mainstream culture has been contrasted with that seen in its Taiwanese,
Chinese, and Korean counterparts.9 It has been shown, for instance, that
Chinese children’s stories are formative for autobiographical memory in incul-
cating a greater orientation towards social engagement and a greater concern
with moral correctness than do equally representative samples of mainstream
American stories.10 Taiwanese culture is based on the Confucian tradition,
with its characteristically high value on teaching, discipline, and acceptance of
social obligations, and here a key goal in the child’s socialization is the devel-
opment of filial piety, which for centuries has been taught through ‘narrative
exemplars of extraordinary filial deeds, written collections of which are still in
use in Taiwan’.11 Mary Carruthers invokes a related process within medieval
European culture when she posits that a person’s first relationship with a text
would have been to use it as a source of communally experienced wisdom for
his or her own life, gained by memorizing from it however much and in what-
ever fashion the individual was able or willing to do.12
In traditional Asian cultures, autobiography has traditionally been a rarely
attested genre, at least in part because it has been considered egotistical to
write a book about the self.13 Researchers on rural Indian adults have reported
8
Mullen and Yi, ‘The Cultural Context of Talk’, p. 408.
9
For instance, Mullen and Yi, ‘The Cultural Context of Talk’; Wang, Leichtman, and
Davies, ‘Sharing Memories and Telling Stories’; Leichtman, Wang, and Pillemer, ‘Cultural
Variation in Interdependence and Autobiographical Memory’; Nelson and Fivush, ‘The
Emergence of Autobiographical Memory’, p. 505.
10
Leichtman, Wang, and Pillemer, ‘Cultural Variation in Interdependence and Autobio
graphical Memory’, p. 85.
11
Miller and others, ‘Personal Storytelling’, pp. 557–58.
12
Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 202.
13
Leichtman, Wang, and Pillemer, ‘Cultural Variation in Interdependence and Autobio
graphical Memory’, p. 92.
112 Russell Poole
that their informants appeared puzzled or even annoyed at requests to provide

personal memories, considering them unimportant. 14 There is evidently an
essential interaction — positively or negatively — between prevailing social
attitudes, existing conventions of narrativization, and the formation of auto-
biographical memories.
As we think about the respective roles and interrelations of communal
and autobiographical memory in Scandinavian tradition the New Zealand
Maori tradition provides an especially interesting analogue. It features a very
highly developed communal memoria, encompassing myth, legend, geneal-
ogy (whakapapa), proverbs (pepeha), prayers (karakia), challenges (haka),
and songs (waiata). Beginning in early childhood, individuals brought up in
traditional communities are socialized into the history of their people.15 At
the same time, however, perhaps contrary to expectation, this cultivation of
the communal memory by no means suppresses the development of autobio-
graphical memory. Indeed Maori individuals retain personal memories from
considerably earlier in their lives than do Pakeha (European settlers or their
descendants), setting great significance on both their community past and their
personal past and telling stories about both.16 Such personal stories, while nor-
mally verbal, may have their complement in a narrativization of the body, in the
form of tattoos, termed mau moko (wearing ink). Many people in the Maori
world take moko in order to mark a significant moment in their lives: a birth,
marriage, bereavement, or key achievement.17
To the best of our knowledge, derived from admittedly hard-to-date
materials, narrative realizations of autobiographical memory are attested in
Scandinavian sources from perhaps as early as the tenth century. Two formats
dominate. One is the sharply and specifically realized autobiographical episode,
as seen in a sequence within Egill Skallagrímsson’s Arinbjarnarkviða and in his
fellow-Icelander Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Vestrfararvísur, Erfidrápa Óláfs, and laus
avísur (occasional verses). Alongside such episodic treatments we find more
extended autobiographical exercises that take the form of a ‘catalogue of deeds’.
This appears to be exemplified already in verses attributed to the Icelander Skúli
14
Leichtman, Wang , and Pillemer, ‘Cultural Variation in Interdependence and
Autobiographical Memory’, p. 91.
15
Reese, Hayne, and MacDonald, ‘Looking Back to the Future’, p. 100.
16
Hayne and MacDonald, ‘The Socialization of Autobiographical Memory’, p. 102. For a
story in this style see Husayn Rawlings, ‘The Old Kuia with the VC’.
17
Te Awekotuku, ‘Memento Mori: Memento Maori’, p. 1.
Þorsteinsson, apparently from the early eleventh century, and then furthered in
the Gamanvísur of King Haraldr harðráði of Norway, also from the eleventh
century, and a series of lausavísur composed by the Norwegian-Orcadian earl
Rǫgnvaldr Kali and his associates in the twelfth century. A possible prose pen-
dant to these texts from the Kievan Rus’ is the Pouchenie Ditiam (Teachings
for [my] Children) composed by the Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh in the
early twelfth century.
Superficially comparable to this discourse, but in an altogether less imme-
diate, more generalized or mythic or legendary style, are the Anglo-Saxon
English poems Deor and Widsið, where memories on the part of their typical
itinerant poet-figures are relayed in catenulate format; Hávamál, where wry
reminiscences on the part of Óðinn are interspersed with gnomic content; the
verse narratives spoken by Grettir and Hallmundr in Grettis saga, Ǫrvar-Oddr
in his eponymous saga, Starkaðr in one redaction of Gautreks saga, and other
saga protagonists; and the prosimetra celebrating Starcatherus, Hildigerus, and
other heroes that Saxo Grammaticus elaborated from native materials in Gesta
Danorum.18 Since the key informing principle in these works is other artists’
construction of the protagonist’s ego rather than ego’s own, I shall not be con-
sidering this latter type further in this essay. Also problematic as attestations of
‘autobiographical memory’, since the attributions so often have dubious claims
to veracity, are the lausavísur found in the sagas of Icelanders and those too I
shall leave aside.
As the first of our ‘catalogues of deeds’, we can consider a series of verse
fragments attributed to Skúli Þorsteinsson. The bulk of them are attested
only in Snorra Edda but one (numbered as stanza 2) appears in Heimskringla,
Fagrskinna, and separate sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason:
Fylgðak Frísa dolgi
(fekk ungr þars spjǫr sungu
— nú fiðr ǫld at eldumk —
aldrbót) ok Sigvalda,
þás til móts við mœti
malmþings í dyn hjalma
sunnr fyr Svǫlðrar mynni
sárlauk roðinn bárum.19
18
A brief, useful survey is offered in Clunies Ross, ‘Poetry and fornaldarsögur’.
19
Stanza 2: Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, pp. 305–06,
BI, p. 283; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, i, p. 358, Ágrip af
Nóregskonunga sögum, ed. by Bjarni Einarsson, p. 54.
114 Russell Poole
I followed the foe of the Frisians [= Eiríkr jarl] and Sigvaldi — in my youth I gained
advancement in life where spears sang; now people perceive that I am growing old
— when I bore the reddened wound-leek [sword] into the din of helmets [battle]
towards an encounter with the encounterer of the metal-assembly [warrior] in the
south off the mouth of the Svǫldr.20
As we see, stanza 2 alludes to the famous battle associated with the place-name
Svǫldr (999 or 1000 ce). Several of the fragments in the Edda also mention
fighting. At the conclusion of Egils saga, Skúli is said to have fought seven bat-
tles í víking.21 Editors conjecture that what lies behind these various snippets
of information is a detailed retrospective catalogue of battles, which has been
excerpted in the Edda and the sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason and digested in Egils
saga.22 The poem can scarcely have been a tribute to a ruler, since the skald’s
consistent focus is on his own deeds and he notes in a personal vein that he is
growing old.23 Not hitherto discussed in this context is an additional fragment
attributed to Skúli in Snorra Edda:
Glens beðja veðr gyðju
goðblíð í vé síðan
— ljós kømr gott — með geislum —
gránserks ofan Mána.24
The divinely content bedfellow of Glen [the sun] then proceeds to the goddess’s
sanctuary with her beams; the good light of the grey-shirted moon comes down.25
In Snorra Edda, this fragment has the same footing and purpose as the other
Skúli citations, namely as excerpts used in order to illustrate kenning types.
Because of its quasi-lyrical content, something in the style of a Natureingang,
it has been treated in the editions as a lausavísa (occasional verse) rather than
20
My translation.
21
Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, p. 300.
22
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, p. 305 and BI, p. 283; cf.
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, i, p. 358; Snorri Sturluson, Edda.
Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 185–86; contra Wood, ‘Skúli Þorsteinsson’, p. 176.
23
Fidjestøl, Det norrøne fyrstediktet, p. 166.
24
Lausavísa 1: compare the somewhat different editorial interpretations in Den norsk-
islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, p. 306, BI, p. 284; Snorri Sturluson, Edda.
Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, pp. 39 and 183; Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by Faulkes
(1987), p. 93.
25
My translation.
as part of the posited retrospective poem.26 There is, however, no warrant for
separating it from the other fragments.27 Stanza 1 of the poem states that ‘it
[impersonal] causes convulsive sobbing, early and late […]’ (‘vekr […] ekka […]
ár ok síðan’).28 This suggests that the speaker is wakeful through the night hours
as well as the day and therefore well placed to make observations on the pro-
gress of sun and moon across the sky. His evident pleasure in the ‘good’ light
of the moon runs against cultural expectations and appears to signal a special
state of mind on his part, perhaps melancholic. It seems, then, that Skúli’s poem
would have had its focus on autobiographical memory and self-reflection, with
some admixture of communal memories concerning the parts played by Eiríkr
jarl and Óláfr Tryggvason in the Battle of Svǫldr.
A catalogue of deeds where the speaker apparently seeks to contribute his
autobiographical memory to communal memoria is contained in the Gaman
vísur ( Jesting Verses), in which king Haraldr harðráði narrates his expeditions
of c. 1043–44.29
Fundr vas þess, at Þrœndir
þeir hǫfðu lið meira;
varð, sús vér of gerðum,
víst errilig snerra.
Skilðumk ungr við ungan
allvald í styr fallinn;
þó lætr Gerðr í Gǫrðum
gollhrings við mér skolla.
The encounter was such that the Þrœndir had more troops; the fight which we had
was truly fierce. I parted, young, from the young overlord, fallen in battle; yet the
Gerðr of the gold ring [lady] in Russia ridicules me.30
Sneið fyr Sikiley víða

súð; várum þá prúðir;
brýnt skreið vel til vánar
26
Wood, ‘Skúli Þorsteinsson’, p. 188, Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes,
pp. 183, 186.
27
Pace Wood, ‘Skúli Þorsteinsson’, p. 188.
28
Cf. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, p. 305, BI, p. 283;
Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. by Faulkes, p. 92; Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. by
Faulkes (1987), p. 139. My translation.
29
Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, p. 35.
30
Gamanvísur 1: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, pp. 1, 36. Translation by Gade.
116 Russell Poole
vengis hjǫrtr und drengjum.

Vættik miðr, at motti
myni enn þinig nenna;
þó lætr Gerðr í Gǫrðum
gollhrings við mér skolla.
The ship sliced [the sea] before broad Sicily; we were proud then; the stag of the
cabin [ship] glided swiftly beneath the men entirely as expected. I hardly think
that a sluggard will ever head there; yet the Gerðr of the gold ring [lady] in Russia
ridicules me.31
This insistent address to the speaker’s wife Ellisif, the daughter of Jaroslav
( Jarizleifr) of Novgorod, who is represented as discounting his prowess (and
therefore presumably querying his reminiscences), playfully elaborates on
the well recognized skaldic convention of the returning warrior’s address to a
woman.32 It suggests the kind of contestation that may have arisen as autobio-
graphical memories came into candidacy for incorporation into the communal
memoria. Further testimony to this process can be gained from the following
stanza from the anonymous praise-poem Liðsmannaflokkr, where we hear the
speaker relaying memories that lie somewhere between autobiographical and
communal and that are seemingly formed dialogically with a woman (the ‘wise
maiden’) and also with other combatants (the ‘bow-men’):
Hár þykki mér, hlýra,
hinn jarl, es brá snarla
— mær spyrr vitr at væri
valkǫstr — ara fǫstu,
en þekkjǫndum þykkir
þunnblás meginásar
hǫrð, sús hilmir gerði,
hríð, á Tempsar síðu.33
This jarl, who briskly broke the fast of the eagle’s brother [i.e., provided carrion-
birds with a supply of corpses], seems tall to me; the wise maiden hears that there
was a heap of the slain; and to knowers of the powerful beam of the thin linen cord
[bow-men] the battle that the ruler waged on the bank of the Thames seems hard.34
31
Gamanvísur 2: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, pp. 1, 36–7.
32
Frank, ‘Why Skalds Address Women’, pp. 67–83.
33
Liðsmannaflokkr 5: Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace, pp. 87–88 (with modifications).
34
My translation.
The female role in memory in medieval Europe has recently been reassessed,
partly on the basis of Norman and Scandinavian material, by Elisabeth van
Houts, who points out the importance of recognizing that ‘women informed
men, stimulated men and actively collaborated with men to make sure that
the past was not forgotten’.35 To this we could add ‘contested or disputed with
men’, a phenomenon also seen in the formation and maintenance of the com-
munal memoria in Maori culture.
Similar features can be found in a series of reminiscent lausavísur attrib-
uted to Rǫgnvaldr Kali, earl of Orkney. These are now known exclusively from
their incorporation into Orkneyinga saga but might also have served as a free-
standing catalogue of deeds. Like Haraldr’s verses, they are rather informally
and even humorously expressed. Two of them relate to an attack on a castle in
Galicia during Rǫgnvaldr’s expedition to the Holy Land in 1151–53:
Muna munk jól, þaus ólum
austr gjaldkera hraustum,
Ullr, at Egða fjǫllum,
undleygs, með Sǫlmundi.
Nú gerik enn of ǫnnur
jafnglaðr, sem vask þaðra,
sverðs at sunnanverðum
svarm kastala barmi.36
Ullr of the wound-flame [warrior], I will remember the Yule-tides when we enter-
tained in the east beside Agder’s mountains with Sǫlmundr, the valorous steward.
Now, just as glad as I was there, I make, once again, throughout another [Yule-
tide], a swarm of the sword [battle] at the southern perimeter of the castle.37
In this stanza a new act of autobiographical memory is built associatively upon

an old one: Rǫgnvaldr recalls how he and his kinsman Sǫlmundr provided
hospitality in former days, whereas now he is in battle, providing food for the
birds and beasts of battle. An annual festival such as Yule is a natural anchor for
memories. The lexis of ‘memory’ is foregrounded by the word order in the first
line, lending the stanza a self-reflective quality. Rǫgnvaldr’s play on the motif of
catering becomes more explicit in the next lausavísa:
35
van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, p. 2.
36
Lausavísa 18: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, pp. 596-7; cf. Orkneyinga
saga, ed. by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, p. 217.
37
Translation by Gade, with modifications.
118 Russell Poole
Unðak vel, þás vanðisk

víneik tali mínu,
— gæfr vask vǫlsku vífi
vánarlaust — á hausti.
Nú gerik enn, þvít unnum
áttgóðu vel fljóði,
— grjót verðr laust at láta
límsett — ara mettan.38
I liked it well in the autumn when the wine-oak [lady] got used to my conversa-
tion; I was clearly pleasing to the French woman. Now I get the eagle fed again,
because we [I] love the well-born woman well; the mortared stone is starting to
come loose.39
The ‘lady’ here is Ermingerðr of Narbonne (usually identified as Ermengarda,

Viscountess of Narbonne, b. 1127 or 1129–d. 1197), who purportedly played
hostess and patron to the pilgrim Crusaders before the Galician campaign. The
following is one of several other lausavísur that reminisce about her:
Orð skal Ermingerðar

ítr drengr muna lengi;
brúðr vill rǫkk, at ríðim
Ránheim til Jórðánar.
Enn, es aptr fara runnar
unnviggs of haf sunnan,
rístum, heim at hausti,
hvalfrón til Nerbónar.40
The outstanding warrior will remember the words of Ermingerðr for a long time;
the stately lady wants us to ride Rán’s world [the sea] to the Jordan. We will carve
the whale-country [the sea] to Narbonne again, when the trees of the wave-horse
[seafarers] travel back home in the autumn from the south across the sea.41
38
Lausavísa 19: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, p. 597; cf. Orkneyinga saga,
ed. by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, p. 217.
39
40
Lausavísa 16: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, p. 594; cf. Orkneyinga saga,
ed. by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, p. 211.
41
The broad comparison of these and further stanzas with troubadour poetry has
often been made.42 The notion of Ermingerðr as a courtly inamorata no doubt
has Rǫgnvaldr himself as its fons et origo and is not necessarily a complete mis-
construction. In the culture of her court and of the Provençal ruling class more
generally relationships of contract and fidelity customarily found articulation
in terms of love, often meaning sexual love.43 From a functional viewpoint,
however, she could more realistically be classed as a ‘pragmatic friend’ of the
Orkney leaders.44
The memories embodied in Rǫgnvaldr’s verses often revolve around expe-
riences shared with friends, comrades, and colleagues. Another instance is
the following, which enshrines an autobiographical memory of a shipwreck
undergone by Rǫgnvaldr and his fellow jarl Haraldr Maddaðarson in 1148 at
Gullberuvík (Gulberwick) in Shetland:45
Brast, þás bæði lesti
— bauð hrǫnn skaða mǫnnum —
— sút fekk veðr it váta
vífum — Hjǫlp ok Fífu.
Sék, at sjá mun þykkja
snarlyndra fǫr jarla
— sveit gat vás at vísu
vinna — hǫfð at minnum.
There was a loud noise when both Hjǫlp and Fífa were damaged; the wave caused
men harm; the wet weather gave women sorrow. I see that that voyage of bold-
hearted jarls will be kept in memory; the crew got drenching work for sure.46
Here the role of female witness and holder of memory seems to be humor-
ously displaced on to the two femininely-named ships. Shipwrecks were evi-
dently one kind of event that could make the transition from autobiographical
memory so as to literally, as well as figuratively, inscribe themselves on the com-
munal memoria. The Prestssaga Guðmundar góða tells how a ship belonging to
42
See, for example, Meissner, ‘Ermengarde Vicegräfin von Narbonne’; de Vries, ‘Een skald
onder de troubadours’; Finlay, ‘Skalds, Troubadours and Sagas’, pp. 106–16.
43
Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, pp. 233–35.
44
For the concept of ‘pragmatic friendship’ see in particular Althoff, Family, Friends, and
Followers; also Althoff, ‘Friendship and Political Order’.
45
Orkneyinga saga, ed. by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, pp. 196–97.
46
Lausavísa 8: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, ii, ed. by Gade, p. 585, cf. Orkneyinga saga, ed.
by Finnbogi Guðmundsson, pp. 196–97. Translation by Gade.
120 Russell Poole
Ingimundr Þorgeirsson was driven ashore in the barrens of Greenland, with the
loss of its entire complement. Fourteen years later the remains of seven men,
one of whom was Ingimundr, were discovered in a cave. His body was intact
and so too his clothing. Beside him lay the skeletons of six men and also wax
inscribed with runes relating their story.47
Also from the twelfth century, and a remarkable pendant to the poetic
realizations of autobiographical memory, is the Pouchenie Ditiam of Vladimir
Monomakh (1053–1125): preserved uniquely in the Laurentian Codex of the
Russian Primary Chronicle sub anno 1096, this text was written shortly before
Vladimir’s death, which took place in 1125, and probably owes its preservation
to Vladimir’s descendants.48 Structurally, it is a mix of precepts and autobiog-
raphy and the integrity of the different portions as a single composition has
been doubted.49 Nonetheless, the autobiographical component has a logical
place in the total preserved text, since it illustrates Vladimir’s precepts by exam-
ples from his personal life. To quote two passages:50
I now narrate to you, my sons, the fatigue I have endured on journeys and hunts for
fifty-three years. First I rode to Rostov through the Vyatichians, whither my father
had sent me while he himself went to Kursk. Second, to Smolensk with Stavko the
son of Gordyata; he then went to Brest with Izyaslav, and sent me to Smolensk.
From Smolensk, I rode on to Vladimir. In that same winter, my brethren sent me
to Brest to the place which they had burned, and there I watched their city. Then I
went to my father in Pereiaslavl’, and after Easter, from Pereiaslavl’ to Vladimir to
make peace with the Poles at Suteysk. Thence back to Vladimir again in the sum-
mer. Then Svyatoslav sent me to Poland; after going beyond Glogau to the Bohe-
mian forest, I travelled four months in that country.51 […]
After the death of my father, under Svyatopolk we fought until evening with
the Polovcians at the Sula in the vicinity of Khalep, and then made peace with
Tugorkan and other Polovcian chiefs. We took from Gleb’s followers all their
troops. Oleg subsequently attacked me in Chernigov with Polovcian support; my
troops fought with him for eight days by the small entrenchment and would not
47
Ch. 13 in Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján
Eldjárn, i, p. 138; see the discussion by Hagland, ‘Ingimundr prestr Þorgeirsson and Icelandic
Runic Literacy’, p. 102.
48
Børtnes, ‘The Literature of Old Russia, 988–1730’, p. 12; The Russian Primary Chronicle,
ed. and trans. by Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, p. 27.
49
For instance, by Alekseev, ‘Anglo-Saksonskaia parallel’, p. 72.
50
Čiževskĳ, History of Russian Literature, pp. 64–65.
51
The Russian Primary Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, p. 211.
let him inside the outworks. I took pity on the souls of our Christian subjects, and
upon the burned villages and monasteries, and said, ‘It is not for the pagans to
boast’. I therefore gave my cousin my father’s place, and myself retired to my father’s
domain of Pereiaslavl’. We left Chernigov on the day of St. Boris, and rode through
the Polovcians in a company of not more than a hundred together with the women
and children. The Polovcians showed their teeth at us like wolves, as they stood at
the fords and in the hills. But God and St. Boris did not deliver us up to them as
their prey, so that we arrived at Pereiaslavl’ unscathed.52
When Vladimir died, his sons were the sole legitimate heirs to the throne.53
It was no doubt important to give them salutary advice. One of the admoni-
tions in the Pouchenie brings out with unusual directness the notion that the
speaker’s experience is transferable and enabling for his descendants: ‘As you
read this writing, prepare yourselves for all good works, and glorify God among
his saints. Without fear of death, of war, or of wild beasts, do a man’s work, my
sons, as God sets it before you. If I was preserved from war, from wild beasts,
from flood, or from falling from my horse, then surely no one can harm you and
destroy you, unless that too be destined of God’.54 The speaker pointedly cites
his rapport with his father and praises him for his grasp of languages and other
skills. Altogether, these memories are clearly calculated to have a proleptic or an
admonitory effect.55
It has been argued that only on the basis of some kind of diary could
Vladimir have compiled his extensive list of campaigns.56 Such a claim, how-
ever, risks seriously underestimating a twelfth-century person’s retentiveness of
memory. In fact, the amount and type of narrative detail included are closely
comparable with what we find in skaldic praise-poems. Each episode is quite
pithily narrated, with a singling out of just a few telling facets, typically names
of peoples, persons and places, principal actions, and an indication of the out-
come. While introspection and personal emotion are far from absent, they are
not the principal topic. The episodes combine to form a succinct listing of life
52
The Russian Primary Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, p. 213,
with modifications.
53
Martin, Medieval Russia, p. 91.
54
The Russian Primary Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Cross and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, p. 215,
with modifications.
55
We find similar praise of a ruler’s linguistic competence in Markús Skeggjason’s
Eiríksdrápa 7.
56
Čiževskĳ, History of Russian Literature, pp. 64–65.
122 Russell Poole
events. Given the extent of these commonalities between Vladimir’s notated

memories and the skaldic conventions, the text may even point to some cultural
continuity between Scandinavia and Rus’, communities with shared political
origins and enduring contacts.
In Vladimir’s time people of Scandinavian origin formed a prominent part
of the Kievan elite and retained some traditions from their homelands, notably
in naming and burial customs. Among them were the Boyars Nikyfor Kyanin
and Mikula Chiudin, who took part in the compilation of the first code of
law for Rus’ territory, the Pravda Yaroslavichej of 1072.57 Simon Franklin and
Jonathan Shephard have remarked that
travelling with Monomakh, one might almost be back in the saddle with his great-
great-grandfather Sviatoslav. […] His choice of self-presentation is symptomatic of
a shift in emphasis throughout the Christian culture of the Rus’ in the late eleventh
and early twelfth centuries. By the end of the century translatio from Byzantine
sources and exemplars was increasingly giving way to traditio, as the Scandinavian,
Byzantine, and Slav strands fused into a self-sustaining synthesis.58
In many of our examples of autobiographical memory, the speaker’s escape from

predicaments, often in association with a pragmatic friend, is a characteristic
aspect, though admittedly Vladimir’s friendships are on a spiritual plane (God
and St Boris) whereas those of the homeland Scandinavians are of this world.
The locus classicus for both the ‘tight spot’ and the salvific function of friend-
ship is Arinbjarnarkviða 10–11, where Egill Skallagrímsson narrates his visit to
Eiríkr blóðøx at York:
Þar stóð mér
mǫrgum betri
hoddfinnǫndum
á hlið aðra
tryggr vinr minn,
sás trúa knáttak,
heiðþróaðr
hverju ráði,
Arinbjǫrn
er oss einn um hóf,
knía fremstr,
frá konungs fjónum;
vinr þjóðans,
57
Androshchuk, ‘The Vikings in the East’, p. 534.
58
Franklin and Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, p. 315.
er vættki laug
í herskás
hilmis garði.59
There stood at my other side, better than many finders of treasure [benefactors], my
true friend, whom I could trust, increasing in renown with each counsel, Arinbjǫrn,
the most outstanding of champions, who saved me from the enmity of the king;
the friend of the king, who never lied in the precincts of the warlike ruler.60
The status of Arinbjǫrn, as an honest friend (vinr) and honest broker to both
Egill and Eiríkr, who are each other’s sworn enemies, is pivotal. The differences
in social status, with Egill lowest-ranked, Eiríkr highest, and Arinbjǫrn inter-
mediate, are characteristic of pragmatic friendships.
Sigvatr also singles out friendships and comradeships as a component in
autobiographical memory. Typical instances occur in Vestrfararvísur 1, a collec-
tion of stanzas narrating a ‘journey to the west’ to meet King Knútr:
Bergr, hǫfum minnzk, hvé, margan
morgun, Rúðu borgar
bǫrð létk í fǫr fyrða
fest við arm inn vestra.61
Bergr, we have remembered, many a morning, how I brought the ship’s stems to
their place at the western arm of the Rouen fortification on the journey of men.62
Implied here is a sharing of autobiographical memories between comrades

— and, if the interpretation of the stanza given above is correct, apparently a
recurrent sharing at that. A second comrade, Bersi, disguised beneath the ofljóst
word húnn (bear-cub), is addressed at a subsequent point in the narrative:
Knútr hefr okkr inn ítri
alldáðgǫfugr báðum
hendr, es hilmi fundum,
Húnn, skrautliga búnar.
Þér gaf hann mǫrk eða meira
margvitr ok hjǫr bitran
59
Egils Saga, ed. by Bjarni Einarsson, p. 158.
60
My translation.
61
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, p. 241, BI, p. 226; Snorri
Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ii, p. 271.
62
My translation.
124 Russell Poole
golls — ræðr gǫrva ǫllu

goð sjalfr — en mér halfa.63
The illustrious Knútr, celebrated for his deeds, has decked both our arms splen-
didly, Bersi, when we met with the ruler. To you he, wise in many things, gave a
mark of gold or more and a piercing sword, and to me half [a mark]; God Himself
fully decrees everything.64
In the narration of a different mission, this time eastwards to King Óláfr

Eiríksson of Sweden, Sigvatr mentions Bjǫrn stallari as his travelling compan-
ion. The beneficial effects of this friendship are recalled with especial insistence:
Áðr hefk gótt við góða
grams stallara alla
átt, þás ossum dróttni,
ógndjarfs, fyr kné hvarfa.
Bjǫrn, faztu opt at árna,
íss, fyr mér at vísa
góðs, meguð gótt of ráða
gunnrjóðr, þvít vel kunnuð.65
Previously I have had good relationships with all the good marshals of the king
[Óláfr], bold in intimidation, those who walk up and down before the knee of our
lord. Bjǫrn, oftentimes you succeeded in eliciting something good for me from the
ruler; you have the ability, reddener of battle-ice [warrior], to bring about good,
because you well understand [how to do so].66
Sigvatr also allows scope for autobiographical memory in verses associated with
lamentation over Óláfr’s death in the battle of Stiklastaðir, invoking memories
that go back to his father Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld:
Stóðk á Mont, ok minntumk,
mǫrg hvar sundr fló targa
breið ok brynjur síðar
borgum nær, of morgin.
Munða ek, þanns unnði
63
Vestrfararvísur 5: Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, p. 242,
BI, p. 227; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ii, p. 224.
64
My translation.
65
Lausavísa 6: Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, p. 267, BI,
p. 247; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ii, p. 92.
66
My translation.
(ǫndverðan brum) lǫndum

(faðir minn vas þar þenna
Þórrøðr) konung, forðum.67
I stood one morning in the Alps, and I remembered where many a broad shield and
long mail-coats were shattered near strongholds. I recalled the king who once, right
at the inception, enjoyed his lands; Þórðr my father was there then.68
In sum, we see that these narratives embodying autobiographical memories

have multiple functions. For ego, they establish a sense of self. The self-reflective
element is characteristically foregrounded by an emphasis upon lexical items
denoting ‘memory’. These narratives also typically memorialize the relationship
between ego and various key figures, notably friends of the ‘pragmatic’ kind
and rulers with habits of patronage (two categories that often overlap, as with
Sigvatr and Óláfr Haraldsson). For the wider benefit, they contribute to the col-
lective memoria and communicate strategies for survival and success — strate-
gies that relate particularly to the formation of pragmatic friendships and the
ability to escape from situations of jeopardy. The implication, as directly stated
in the Pouchenie, is that the audience can advantage themselves by emulating
and practising the speaker’s example. This fits with Mary Carruthers’s proposi-
tion that memory has the role of influencing the future as well as recording the
past. With Yadin Dudai, she observes:
Aristotle, Galen, and their medieval Arab commentators emphasized the role of
memory in the ethical virtue of ‘prudence’, the ability to make wise judgments and
plan effectively. […] Mnemosyne has a Janus face, looking to both time past and
time future.69
We could go so far, on the basis of the primary sources, as to construe the cul-
tivation of autobiographical memories as a ‘meme’, that is to say an element
of culture that is imitated from generation to generation and confers adap-
tive or selectional advantages upon the individuals amongst whom it is trans-
mitted.70 Within the concept of imitation such a scholar as Susan Blackmore
67
Lausavísa 21: Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, AI, pp. 271–72,
BI, p. 251; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, iii, p. 14.
68
My translation.
69
Dudai and Carruthers, ‘The Janus Face of Mnemosyne’, p. 567.
70
For the concept of ‘meme’ see Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p. 192. For the presumed evo-
lutionary/adaptive value of episodic memory see Tulving, ‘Episodic Memory and Autonoesis’,
pp. 18–22.
126 Russell Poole
would include the practice of passing on stories: ‘Something about the story is
internalized in the listener and then reproduced when she or he tells the story
again’.71 This is a logic that clearly can also apply to autobiographical memo-
ries. Mental routines of recalling and communicating memories of dire pre-
dicaments and salvific friendships, expressed in the lapidary format of skaldic
verse, would have been readily transferred onwards in a population attempting
to form livelihoods in a dearth of material resources, as we see in, for instance,
medieval Iceland and Greenland, or isolated from their kindred, as appears to
have been the case for many Icelanders in Norway.
71
Blackmore, ‘Imitation and the Definition of a Meme’.
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vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007–), ii, SKALD, 2 (2009)
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1987)
Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols
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(London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 517–42
Blackmore, Susan, ‘Imitation and the Definition of a Meme’, Journal of Memetics —
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Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), i, 180–87
Conway, Martin A., and David C. Rubin, ‘The Structure of Autobiographical Memory’,
in Theories of Memory, ed. by Alan F. Collins, Susan E. Gathercole, Martin A. Conway,
and Peter E. Morris (Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1993), pp. 103–37
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serie, 11 (Øvre Ervik: Alvheim & Eide, 1982)
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Part II
Memory and History
Memoria Normannica
Rudolf Simek
R
esearch about how much the Normans in Normandy and in Sicily pre-
served, both in oral and written memory, of their Scandinavian tradi-
tion, is scarce. It has often been touched upon, but never systematically
investigated. Our sources for these memorial remnants are necessarily limited
to written texts, composed by Norman authors, from the early eleventh cen-
tury onwards. After 1066, these sources include Norman writers in Britain as
well, but around the same time the rise of the Norman state in Southern Italy
and later Sicily offers another line of investigation. However little has been
preserved of Sicilian Norman literature, it is all the more precious for show-
ing the transfer of memorial records into the Mediterranean, even though the
Normans of the South never seem to have lost their cultural (nor political and
clerical) connections with Normandy.
The following article is intended as a primary survey of topics and motifs
alone found in texts by Norman historiographers and does not pretend to cover
any of these in any depth.
Sources
No primary sources are available before the turn of the tenth century, when
Duke Richard I of Normandy (r. 942–96), his half-brother Count Rodulf of Iva
and Richard’s son Richard II (r. 996–1026) started repeated initiatives for the
composition of a Norman ‘national’ history, which was then composed by the
Rudolf Simek (simek@uni-bonn.de) is Professor for Medieval German and Scandinavian

Studies at Bonn University, Germany.
134 Rudolf Simek
Frankish monk, Dudo of St Quentin, and finished before c. 1015.1 Richard I

was a son of William Longsword (* 893, r. 927–42) and grandson of the
(Norwegian?) Viking Rollo, who had been granted Rouen and the surround-
ing lands by Charles the Simple, probably in 911, upon his having received
baptism. The information available to Dudo was thus based upon the mainly
oral traditions of third generation Viking immigrants into the Frankish empire.
After Dudo, several other clerics composed secular histories of the Norman
dukes, some of them simply revising Dudo’s De moribus et actis primorum
Normannorum ducum. The first of these was William of Jumièges, 2 who
shortened and updated Dudo’s work under the title Gesta Normannorum
ducum (after 1050), taking in the reigns of Richard III (1026–27), Robert I
(1027–35) and William II (1035–85, king of England after 1066), later in his
life even adding a history of the Norman Conquest of Britain up to c. 1070.
Several anonymous redactors of Dudo’s text altered and partly expanded his
history in the course of the remaining eleventh century, before Ordericus Vitalis
(1075–c. 1142), a noble Norman Benedictine at Saint-Evroul-sur-Ouche, aug-
mented it on the basis of William of Jumièges’ text yet again between c. 1109
and 1113. Orderic’s text3, which not only extended the history of William the
Bastard and the Norman Conquest, but also revised the text stylistically, was
yet taken up again by Robert of Torigni towards the end of the 1130s4. He not
only took up bits from Dudo again to expand the story of Rollo, but also inter-
polated the history of his own monastery at Le Bec, and also added a whole
new book on king Henry I, leading up to 1135. Robert’s slightly older contem-
porary at Le Bec was Stephen of Rouen (Stephanus Rothomagensis, Étienne de
Rouen, died 1170), who wrote, around 1167–69, his Draco Normannicus,5 a
Norman chronicle based both on Dudo and William, but even more fantastic
than either of them.
Not much later, these texts, or redactions of Dudo’s text, were expanded
in a far more generous, and far less reliable way by Benoît de Sainte-Maure
(d. 1173), the productive Norman Benedictine, author of an extensive Roman
de Troie as well as of a Chronique des ducs de Normandie of 44,544 verses.
1
Dudo of St Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, in Patrologia latina,
cxli (1853), cols 607–758; Dudo of St Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen.
2
His version of the text is known as redaction C of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum.
3
Known as redaction E.
4
Redaction F; cf. The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, ed. by Howlett.
5
Stephen of Rouen, Draco Normannicus, ed. by Howlett.
Memoria Normannica 135
He wrote this chronicle, in the vernacular, at the behest of Henry II and his
wife Elenore of Aquitaine, starting work around 1170.6 He interpolated the
histories of Dudo and William with the Brut by Wace, a vernacular version of
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin Historia Brittonum, the influential history of
the British Isles composed c. 1136–38.
For the southern Italian expansion of the Normans, the sources are far
scarcer. They are limited to a handful of works from the late eleventh (and early
twelfth) centuries, namely the oldest, but lost, history of the Normans in Italy by
the Benedictine monk Amatus (Aimé) of Montecassino (Amatus Casinensis),
whose chronicle must have been finished just before or after 1080. Its Latin
text is lost, but there is a French translation of the fourteenth century, L’Ystoire
de li Normant, preserved in a single manuscript.7 The most extensive source
is only slightly younger and was composed by a Benedictine of Norman ori-
gin, Geoffrey (Gaufredus) Malaterra (d. 1099?), whose history of Roger I (De
rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi, composed
1098–1101) is the main source for the history of the Normans in Sicily8 and
is nearly contemporary with William of Apulia’s Gesta Roberti Wiscardi (com-
posed between 1096 and 1099).9 Other Southern Italian authors of the period,
like Peter of Eboli in his Carmen de rebus Siculi10 (before 1197) and the fiercely
anti-Norman Lombard Falco of Benevento11 in his Chronicon Beneventanum
(ending in 1139) have nothing to say about the Norman (pre-)history.
The stories from Norman memory found in these sources can roughly be
categorized into three groups:
Firstly, Myths of Origin, although here we may distinguish between
a: Myths of Scandinavian Origin and b: (Learned) Myths of Trojan origin.
6
Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Fahlin, Södergård,
and Sandqvist.
7
L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. by Champollion-Figeac; Amatus of Montecassino, The
History of the Normans, trans. by Dunbar.
8
Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae, ed. by Pontieri. Extracts only are
available in Danish translation in Geoffrey Malaterra, Normannernes Bedrifter, trans. by Erling
Albrectsen.
9
Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, ed. by Wilmans; William of Apulia, La Geste de Robert Guiscard,
trans. by Mathieu.
10
Peter of Eboli, De rebus Siculis carmen, ed. by Rota. Peter starts immediately with Roger
as son of Robert Guiscard, without mentioning their ancestry at all.
11
Falco of Benevento, Chronicon Beneventanum, ed. by D’Angelo.
136 Rudolf Simek
Secondly, the Famous Viking Raid in Italy in 859–61, which also incorpo-
rates, in most sources, a third complex of tall stories, which might be called the
Canny Conquest of Castles
Thirdly and finally, the Norman authors seem to have preserved a certain set
of concepts on Scandinavian habits and customs, very occasionally even allow-
ing a glimpse of heathen religion.
Myths of Origin
The first complex of references, about Myths of Origin, is the one that has been
studied in most detail, but not normally with reference to Norman historians
of the eleventh century. I shall therefore limit myself, as far as possible, to the
Norman sources whilst referring to the studies made of the continental and
Scandinavian source texts.
a) The Origin of Tribes in Scandinavia

Dudo has little to say about the origins of the Scandinavians from the
Scandinavian peninsula, even though he compares the Normans to the Getae,
Goths, in their habit of driving out the younger male population surplus by
means of drawing lots:
Hae namque gentes petulanti nimium luxu exardescentes, feminasque quam-
plurimas singulari turpitudine stuprantes commiscendo, illinc soboles innumeras
obscena illiciti connubii commistione patrando generant. Hi, postquam adolev-
erint, rerum pro possessionibus contra patres, avosque, aut saepius inter se feroc-
iter objurgati, fuerint exuberantes, atque terram quam incolunt habitare non suf-
ficientes, collecta sorte multitudine pubescentium, veterrimo ritu in externa regna
extruduntur nationum, ut acquirant sibi praeliando regna, quibus vivere possint
pace perpetua: quemadmodum fecerunt Getae, qui et Gothi, totam pene Europam
usque eo quomodo morantur.12
Now these people burn with too much wanton lasciviousness, and with singular
depravity debauch and mate with as many women as they please; and so, by min-
gling together in illicit couplings they generate innumerable children. When these
have grown up, they clamour fiercely against their fathers and their grandfathers,
or more frequently against each other, for shares of property; and, as they are over-
many, and the land they inhabit is not large enough for them to live in, there is a
12
Dudo of St Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, col. 620.
very old custom by which a multitude of youths is selected by lot and expelled into
the realms of other nations, to win kingdoms for themselves by fighting, where they
can live in uninterrupted peace. That is what the Getae did, who are also called
Goths, after they had laid waste almost the whole of Europe as far as where they
live now.13
That the Scandinavian Peninsula produces too many people, which therefore
have to emigrate, is an old motif of Germanic historiographers and can be
found 200 years before Dudo in Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum,
i. 2 (written c. 790):
Multae quoque ex ea, pro eo quod tantos mortalium germinat, quantos alere vix
sufficit, saepe gentes egressae sunt, quae nihilominus et partes Asiae, sed maxime
sibi contiguam Europam afflixerunt.14
Therefore it brings forth so many humans that it can hardly feed them, that often
whole peoples have emigrated from it, which have affected not least parts of Asia,
but particularly those parts of Europe which lie next to it.15
Even nearly two hundred years earlier, Jordanes in his Getica (c. 520) had
expressed the well-known sentiment that Scandinavia was like a ‘womb of
nations’, from which not only the Goths, but many other nations originated.16
These authors, among them a Goth, a Lombard, and the Normans, obvi-
ously preserved a common notion of the origins of those Germanic nations
harrowing Europe and originating from Scandinavia.
It may be added, as an appendix, that not all Norman historians have
preserved even these rather general pieces of information about their ori-
gins. Among the Southern Italian historians of Norman descent, Amatus of
Montecassino (bk 1, ch. 1) in particular shows how garbled and scant informa-
tion of the homeland of the Normans could become by the end of the eleventh
century. In his description of Normandy he perpetuates the myth of overpop-
ulation as a reason for the exodus of Norman knights to the Mediterranean
and at the same term he offers an etymology of Normanni as ‘men of Nora’,
thus losing all connection with the original etymology ‘men of the North’ apart
from correctly identifying the element -manni. Even William of Apulia in his
13
Dudo of St Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen, p. 15.
14
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Waitz p. 12.
15
My translation.
16
Iordanis Romana et Getica, ed. by Mommsen, i, p. 14.
138 Rudolf Simek
Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, which hardly had anything to say on the history of the
Normans, did at least offer a better etymology: ‘Normanni dicuntur, id est
homines boreales’.17
More interesting than Amatus’s poor etymology is his famous explanation of
the origins of the Norman intervention in Apulia, namely that the Salernitans
called upon the Normans for help after the original forty Norman pilgrims had
helped them against a Saracen pirate fleet (bk i, ch. 19). It has been noted before
that this passage is reminiscent of the story in Paul the Deacon’s History of the
Lombards (Historia Langobardorum, ii. 5), where a certain Narses invited the
Lombards to come to Italy. It is quite likely that Amatus could have had Paul’s
eighth century version in mind, but it is similarly noteworthy that the Russian
Chronicle of the First Things (formerly called Nestor-Chronicle, actually Povest’
vremennych let = ‘History of the Past Years’)18 offers a somewhat closer parallel
to Amatus’s story. In this history it is related how the Russians asked the Swedes
to provide them with rulers. Here, we have the same structure of original travel-
lers, returning to their homeland, only to be called back by emissaries to help
solve their difficulties with their (internal or external) enemies.
b) Learned Prehistory in Norman and Scandinavian Sources

Learned prehistory is a wide field in Medieval literature. Its roots can certainly
be traced back to antiquity to the story of Aeneas, fleeing from burning Troy,
eventually to become the founder father of the Roman nation. In the twelfth
century, the Britons began to trace their ancestors back to Brutus, who, accord-
ing to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, 1. 3–16, was a
great-grandson of Aeneas, who sailed on past the straits of Gibraltar to become
the ancestor of the Britons.
In addition to these well-known learned myths of descent (and to many
later, late medieval ones), there is a strong tradition among the early Franks
of their also being descendants of the Trojans, not via Aeneas but via Antenor,
who did not sail the Mediterranean but made his way northwest, settling for
some time in Scythia at the mouth of the Danube into the Pontus, and later
moving on to the west of the European continent.19
17
Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, ed. by Wilmans, bk i, p. 241.
18
Die Nestor-Chronik, trans. by Tschižewskĳ.
19
Cf. Heusler, Die gelehrte Urgeschichte; Klingenberg, ‘Trór Thórr (Thor) wie Trōs Aeneas’.
Our oldest Norman source, Dudo’s De moribus et actis primorum Norman

norum ducum, i. 1, connects the Danes, too, to Antenor:
Igitur Daci nuncupantur a suis Danai, vel Dani, glorianturque se ex Antenore
progenitos; qui quae Trojae fuerunt depopulatis, mediis elapsus Achivis, Illyricos
fines penetravit cum suis. Hi namque Daci relato ritu olim a suis expulsi, qua suos
tractus Francia protense expargit, cum duce Anstinuo [Hastingo] ferociter appulsi.
Hic sacer atque ferox nimium crudelis et atrox.20
And so the Daci call themselves Danai or Dani, and boast that they are descended
from Antenor; who, when in former times the lands of Troy were laid waste,
‘slipped away through the middle of the Greeks’ and penetrated the confines of
Illyria with his own men. Now, those Dacians were once driven out from their
own people by the ceremony I have described, and were fiercely driven to where
Francia spreads out its wide expanse, along with their leader Hasting: This was a
man accursed: fierce, mightily cruel and savage, […].21
Thus Dudo makes Danes descendants of Antenor, and as Rollo, first duke of
Normandy, is considered a descendent of the Danes, this makes the Normans
descendants of Antenor, the refugee from Troy who fled first to south-eastern
Europe. As I have argued elsewhere,22 the notion of the Scandinavians descend-
ing from the Trojans is quite widespread, even in high medieval Icelandic texts
(for example, in the cosmography of Hauksbók) and does not even contradict
Snorri’s stories, either of the immigration of the Aesir from Asia nor of the
Vanir. In fact, both his stories may be influenced by the learned traditions of
Francia, as in medieval cosmography the Danube’s mouth into the Black Sea
lies in the far north at the border between Europe and Asia, close to the Meotic
swamps (Meotides paludes) in Scythia.
William of Jumièges expands on Dudo and combines Isidore of Seville’s
explanation of the Goths as the forefathers of the Dacians with the Dani/
Daci, and thus constructs a line from Magog to the Goths, from them to the
Trojans (Antenor), to the Dani and finally to the Normanni, including those
of Normandy. Stephen of Rouen, about one hundred and fifty years later in
his Draco Normannicus, does not mention a Trojan ancestry for the Normans,
only for the Franks (bk i, ch. xiv, vv 493ff ), and seems to distinguish sharply
20
21
22
Simek, ‘Der lange Weg von Troja nach Grönland’.
140 Rudolf Simek
between the origin of Franks and Danes, who break forth from Dacia at the
times of (Ragnar) Lodbrok:
Rex fuit hic magnus Lobrocus, tempore cujus
Advenit Hastingus, sic simul ipse Bier (vv. 591–92)23
The great Lo(d)brok was king here, at whose time

came Hasting, and at the same time Biorn himself.24
Interestingly, he pretends to know a lot more about Denmark than his prede-
cessors, mentioning eight towns, of which he names only Lund, and knows the
name of a historical Danish king, namely Waldemar the Great, thus dating his
source of information to the period between 1157–82.
The very first indication of a second group of refugees from Troy (apart
from the better known Aeneas and his family) in Frankish historiography was
to be found in Fredegar’s Historia Francorum in the first half of the seventh
century25 and thus seems to have been a construction created in Francia during
Merovingian times, long before the Vikings settled in Normandy. However, it
came in handy for the Norman historians to show that the Normans were on
an equal footing with the Franks, descending as they did from the same branch
of Trojans. It is likely that Dudo derived the notion straight from Fredegar.
Snorri and several other Icelandic historians later took up this train of thought
and developed it further, but in the case of the learned prehistory the roots
of the common material lies in France, not in a common memory of the
Scandinavians.
The Famous Viking Raid in Italy

The most famous story of a Viking journey must surely belong to the years
after 859, when at the height of Viking activity a certain Björn Ironside and
his ‘tutor’ Hastingus (= Hástein?) navigated the river Seine and stayed for the
winter on the island of Oissel (just above Rouen). Charles the Bald, not daring
to attack the marauding Scandinavians himself, paid another Viking, Weland
(= Völundr?) to drive them away, offering 3000 pounds of silver in return;
23
Stephen of Rouen, Draco Normannicus, ed. by Howlett, bk i, ch. xiv, v. 493ff; Day,
Latin Arthurian Literature.
24
My translation.
25
Fredegar, Historia Francorum epitomata, in Patrologia latina, lxxi (1849), cols 573–604;
he was followed by Aimoin of Fleury (c. 996–98) and many others.
Weland took on the job, but demanded a higher price, namely 5000 pounds of
silver, plus expenses. This agreed upon, he started to besiege the island. Björn,
however, put his trust in diplomatic means and topped the Frankish by offering
6000 pounds in return for free safeguard. He then left the Seine and decided to
do something memorable instead, for example conquering Rome. With sixty-
two ships he and his men sailed south, hugging the Spanish west coast, fighting
the Moors on the Guadalquivir (and getting a first beating), possibly getting as
far as Seville. After plundering Algeciras when passing the Straits of Gibraltar
they turned south to the African coast where they plundered and took black
slaves, before turning north and harrying Murcia and the Balearic Islands. This
done, they made their winter camp on an island in the Camargue near the
mouth of the Rhone river, spending the winter plundering as far north as Arles,
Nîmes and Valence. In the spring of their second year abroad, the Viking fleet
sailed along the Côte d’Azur to Italy. Whether they mistakenly really attacked
Luna instead of Rome, or whether Pisa was their only victim, is unclear from
the sources. Whatever the case, they did not reach Rome and were satisfied
with conquering one of the other towns, supposedly by means of a ruse, pre-
tending that Hastingus had died and asking for a Christian funeral for him (see
below). In 861, they are once more involved in a fight with Moorish pirates
in the Western Mediterranean, but managed to escape to the Atlantic and
returned to the Loire in 862 with only twenty of their richly laden ships — not
without having plundered Pamplona in the kingdom of Navarra on the way.
The first historical record of this journey is to be found in the Annales
Bertiniani, which for 859 record not only a height of Viking activity along the
French rivers, but also tell of the Viking fleet sailing round Spain up to the
mouth of the Rhone and plundering there. However, the supposed attack on
Luna may owe its origin to the following two sentences:
Nordomanni Petrocorium Aquitaniae civitatem populantes incendunt atque in
pune ad naves remeant. Mauri et Saraceni Lunam Italiae civitatem depredantes,
nullo obsistente maritima omnia usque ad Provinciam devastant.26
The Northmen sacked and burned the city of Périgeux in Aquitaine, and returned
unscathed to their ships. The Moors and Saracens sacked the Italian city of Luni, and
without meeting the least resistance ravaged the whole coast along to Provence.27
26
Annales Bertiniani, ed. by Rau, s. a. 849.
27
The Annals of St-Bertin, trans by Nelson, s. a. 859.
142 Rudolf Simek
Although the first continuator of the Annals of St Bertin, namely bishop
Prudentius of Troyes in his Annales (s. a. 860), seems to state that this was actu-
ally the town of Pisa,28 de Vries may well be right when he argues that the two
consecutive sentences were misinterpreted by Dudo of St Quentin in his De
moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum and were thus the base for his
story of the Vikings attacking Luna in Italy:29
[…] omnium Alstignus unus pro omnibus inquit nequissimus: ‘Optatae nobis cre-
brescunt aurae, facilesque nobis viam spirant venti secundi. Si vobis non displicet,
Romam eamus, eamque sicuti Franciam nostro dominatui subjugemus’. Hoc con-
silium complacuit omnibus, velisque lectis a praedatoribus, torquent proras Franci-
cis a littoribus. Altis namque longe lateque fluctibus tactis, terrisque cis citraque lit-
tora sibi vindicatis, Romam dominam gentium volentes clam adipisci Lunxe urbem
[Lux urbem], quae Luna dicitur, navigio sunt congressi.30
and the most infamous of all, Alstignus, spoke by himself on behalf of the others:
‘The breezes we long for are gathering force, and the easy following winds show
us the way. If you do not object, let us go to Rome, and force it to submit to our
dominion like Francia’. This plan suited them all, and the pirates hoist their sails
and turn their prows away from Frankish coasts. And when they had encountered
heavy seas in all directions, and had conquered lands and coasts hither and thither,
hoping to reach Rome, which is the mistress of the nations undetected, they arrived
in their ships at the (fair?) city called Luna.31
In Dudo, this is followed up, in great detail, by the story of the taking of the
town by deception, feigning the illness and death of Anstignus (see below).
Dudo’s story was further elaborated on by William of Jumièges in his Gesta
Normannorum Ducum,32 who makes Hastingus (ON Hásteinn) rather than
Bier Costae ferreae (for Old Norse Björn járnsíða, Björn Ironside), son of
King Lodebrochus of Denmark, the hero of the story, as we have seen above.
Stephen of Rouen puts that error right in his Draco Normannicus (bk i, ch. xv,
vv. 591–93), but here Bier Ferrea-costa and Hastingus are contemporaries of
Rollo, which gives the author a chance of giving a proud list of all the towns
which the three of them destroyed, all gleaned from the older chronicles:
28
Cf. Patrologia latina, cxv, cols 1377–1420 (col. 1419).
29
de Vries, ‘Die Entwicklung der Sage von den Lodbrokssöhnen’, pp. 122–25. I owe the
reference to de Vries here to Ashman-Rowe, Vikings in the West, p. 16.
30
31
Dudo of St Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen, pp. 17f.
32
Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, pp. 22–27.
Nantes, Rheims, Beauvais, Orleans, Chartres, Tours, Paris, Bayeux, Evreux,

Rouen, Angers, Poitiers, Noyon, Clermont, Saintes, Limoges, Angoulême,
Bourges, Périgueux, only to go on to tell of the capture of Luna mistaken for
Rome: ‘Cingitur interea Lunis, quæ Roma putatur’ (bk i, ch. 23, v. 1101). Here,
it is again Hastingus who devises the trick of asking for baptism and then feign-
ing death (v. 1102–48). It is interesting to note that, despite the proper dis-
approval of Hastingus’s actions (Horridus Hastingus, v. 1113, etc.) in the text,
the Danes, as they are called throughout, are also occasionally connected with
positive epithets (for example, legionum Danica virtus, v. 1121). Obviously the
larger distance in time had already started to cast a more golden light on the
acts of the Viking ancestors.
But that was not the end of the journey-motif; William’s version was taken
up yet again by Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his vernacular twelfth century
chronicle Chronique des ducs de Normandie, where the whole story is found in
its lengthiest version.33 Despite Benoît’s verbose rendering over 700 verses, it is
certainly a result of his retelling that this story has survived into modern times
as one of the great stories of the Viking Age.
This tall tale about Vikings in their hubris trying to attack Rome is thus
testified both in Frankish and in Norman historiography and, notwithstanding
the irrelevant question of whether or not there is any historical truth behind
the matter, was a story that seems to have impressed both (Frankish) contem-
porary chroniclers as well as (Norman) historiographers later on. The story
obviously had all the qualities to make it popular with the Norman rulers who
commissioned the historical works of Norman authors, just as the story about
the excessive virility as the reason for overpopulation had had in the origin
myths. Björn and Hásteinn were the type of ancestors (or at least predecessors)
the Norman dukes would have wished for!
The Canny Conquest of Castles in the Mediterranean34

The story of the planned attack on Rome incorporates an anecdote already
mentioned, which is not only found in Norman historiography, namely of
the ruse by which Luna was taken. The most famous, and also most extensive
33
Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Michel, i,
vv. 1173–1877.
34
I am grateful to Ms Ulla Kramer for assembling the relevant material in a Seminar paper
at the University of Bonn, titled: ‘Normannisches Lehngut in den isländischen Königssagas?’
from July 2011.
144 Rudolf Simek
literary realization of this motif is the conquest of four Sicilian castles by the
future Norwegian king Haraldr harðráði, whilst in the service of the Byzantine
emperor, and related by Snorri Sturluson in his Heimskringla in Haralds saga
Sigurðarsonar, ch. 10.35 Here Snorri relates how Harald conquered four castles
that were previously thought to be impregnable. The first he conquers using
the help of fires which have been kindled within the town by birds to which
burning sticks have been bound, the second with the help of a tunnel, the third
by luring the inhabitants into safety by his men walking around supposedly
unarmed, the fourth by his feigned illness and death, whereupon his coffin is
taken into town, but is filled with weapons for his apparently mourning follow-
ers. This last episode has very close equivalents in Norman historiography.
These four canny ways of conquering a castle are by no means limited either
to the person of Harald as a military leader, or to Snorri as an author. The second
episode, which is actually a realistic way of taking a castle, may have been added
because Snorri may have had access to a (now lost) stanza by Halldór skvaldri
in the style of Útfarardrápa, where Halldór records, one by one, epic battles and
conquests by king Sigurðr Jórsalafari,36 but the other three obviously belong
to stock tales current among tenth- and thirteenth-century Scandinavians.
Snorri’s near contemporary Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum (c. 1200)
relates a similar story to the one of Snorri’s first castle in bk i, ch. 6. 10, where
his hero Haddingus attacks a castle near a town called Duna belonging to king
Handvanus of Hellespontus, and similarly conquers it by igniting fires with the
help of little birds.37 The only difference is that Snorri mentions small pieces of
kindle with wax and sulphur, whilst Saxo thinks of dry fungi as ignitable materi-
al.38 The setting is again Mediterranean, but here it is only one castle that is can-
nily conquered by the hero of the text. Jan de Vries noted as early as 1924 that
this trick to start fires within the enemy walls is a widespread motif in medi-
eval tales.39 He, however, considered Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum
Britanniae to be Saxo’s and Snorri’s source and was looking for the factual bases
35
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, pp. 52–56.
36
Cf de Vries, ‘Normannisches Lehngut’, pp. 57f.
37
Quorum fastigio oppugnationis aditum prohibente, diuersi generis aues loci illius
domiciliis assuetas per aucupii peritos prendi iussit earumque pennis accensos igne fungos
suffigi curauit; que propria nidorum hospitia repetentes urbem incendio compleuere. Saxo
Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Holder, p. 24.
38
de Vries, ‘Normannisches Lehngut’, p. 67.
39
de Vries, ‘Die Wikingersaga’, p. 90.
of the tale, which he thought might be found in a story about carrier pigeons
in Sicily in Geoffrey of Malaterra’s De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae
Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius (bk 2, ch. 42), which, however,
offers only very slight parallels and has most likely nothing to do with our motif.
Snorri’s tale of the conquest of the fourth castle also has a parallel in Saxo’s
Gesta Danorum, when Frotho I., son of Haddingus, is attacking the town of
Palteskia in Russia, ruled by a certain Vespasius. Here again Frotho feigns illness
and death, during his supposed funeral the town is not guarded properly and
Frotho can take it.40 And a much more detailed account of this type of canny
conquest can be found in the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi by William of Apulia,41
here attributed to his hero Robert Guiscard and taking place in Apulia. Robert
Guiscard, according to William, here takes advantage of a monastery within
the town, and the feigned death concerns one of his men, rather than himself,
but otherwise the story is very close to Snorri’s about Harald, and both take
place in the Norman territories of the Mediterranean.
Fuller versions of the story may be found in several of the historians in
Normandy ever since Dudo’s De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum
ducum. Here, Alstignus (= Hastingus) is the hero of the story, and Dudo dedi-
cates all of bk i, ch. 3 to the ruse used for the conquest of Luna,42 whilst the
intention of sacking Rome is limited to the first few lines of the chapter (see
above). In a much dramatized way, with lots of dialogue and several longish
speeches, Hasting’s request for baptism, his feigned illness and death, his request
for burial in town, and the ruse with the bier full of arms are told. The only dif-
ference to the named versions is that the bier is not used to block the town gate,
but that the slaughter of the townspeople happens within the town church.
Dudo’s story was further elaborated on by William of Jumièges in his Gesta
Normannorum Ducum;43 Stephen of Rouen in his Draco Normannicus devotes
a whole chapter to this (bk i, ch. 23), the hero here is Hastingus, and the attack
is linked to Luna in Italy. Just as in William of Apulia’s version, the baptism of
the Viking leader is a key element of the ruse.
The key elements already present in William of Apulia’s version, namely
an impregnable town or castle in the south, the feigned death of one of the
40
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Holder, pp. 41f.
41
William of Apulia, La Geste de Robert Guiscard, trans. by Mathieu, vers 352/53, p. 150.
42
Dudo of St Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, cols 622–25;
Dudo of St Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. by Christiansen, pp. 17–20.
43
146 Rudolf Simek
attackers, the request for the Christian funeral, and the open town gates show
the common origin of the stories, even though the coffin with the weapons is
absent from Snorri’s description, and Saxo’s account of the taking of Palteskia
seems reflected in Snorri’s third castle — taken as a result of the haughty neglect
of the defenders — as much as in his fourth one. The fact that this particular
episode is found in close versions in late eleventh-century Apulia and in early
thirteenth-century Iceland make a mutual dependency most unlikely; both
versions — and the three other cunning attacks on castles collected by Snorri,
to which we may add the famous breaking of Vifilsborg by fire by the sons of
Ragnarr loðbrókr in the Ragnarssona þáttr —,44 seem to have belonged to com-
mon fund of Scandinavian tales about the cunning taking of castles in the late
Viking age, which were available to Scandinavian historians, Icelandic saga
authors and also to Norman authors, even when they had resettled in Southern
Italy in the late eleventh century.
The ‘Danish Custom’ (more Danico)

This phrase, more Danico45 (‘according to Danish custom’), is actually only found
in connection with marriage and fighting, but even so it has a certain ring to
it which is used by the early Norman historians to distinguish between (new)
Frankish customs and (old) Scandinavian ones among the Normans of Normandy.
Ragnoldus vero vertens ad Alstignum dixit: ‘Quid vobis videtur: Bellumne initia-
bitur? Vos ex illorum gente estis, vos artem praeliandi more Dacorum non ignora-
tis. Dicite quid sumus facturi?’46
And Ragnold turned towards Hasting and said: What seems best to you? Shall we
give battle? you are from that nation: you are not unacquainted with the art of giv-
ing battle in the fashion of the Danes. Tell us, what are we to do?47
In this context, it may be fairly typical that Hastingus then advises not to join
battle, thus illustrating the well-known Viking custom of avoiding battle unless
44
Ragnars saga lóðbrokar, ed. by Valdimar Ásmundarson, pp. 204–07.
45
For earlier investigations into this field, although with the stress either on the question of
identity or historiography, cf. Webber, The Evolution of Norman Identity and Plassmann, ‘Der
Wandel des normannischen Geschichtsbildes’, pp. 188–207.
46
Dudo of St Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, col. 621 (bk ii,
ch. 11).
47
in the clear majority or in a vantage position, thereby minimizing the danger of

casualties to their usually small forces.
Interestingly enough, the most common reference to Scandinavian habits
to be found in the Frankish Annals, namely the din produced by Viking armies
prior to battle by rattling their quivers and screaming,48 never seems to be men-
tioned by Norman historians; either this was obsolete at their times or else it
did not seem worth mentioning.
But the most common reference to the Danish habits is the reference to
the marriage more Danico, that is, the taking of a concubine without the nor-
mal Christian wedding ceremony. This is repeatedly mentioned by William of
Jumièges and Robert of Torigni as a way in which the early Norman Dukes took
their wives,49 but never in a disapproving fashion, rather to distinguish it from
the normal type of dynastic marriage. This type of concubinage was not neces-
sarily associated with pre-Christian habits. It is worth keeping in mind that of
the first generations of Norman dukes, namely Rollo’s son William Longsword
(* 893), Richard I (* 933), Richard II (* 970), Robert I (* 1000) and William
the Conqueror (* 1028), William and Robert I were the only ones to be born
within wedlock — hence the ON epithet bastardr referred not only to William
the Conqueror but rather his whole family. Thus, it seems that the taking of
concubines was deemed a traditionally Viking fashion — Richard I’s mother
Sprotta had been a Breton prisoner of war — and continued until well after the
Viking Age under the title of ‘Danish marriage’.
The Scandinavian customs mentioned by Norman historians also include
adherence to the ‘Danish’ language, which was still spoken in parts of
Normandy in mid-tenth century, but not in others. Hence, in the mid-ninth-
century story of Hastingus he has to serve as an interpreter between the Franks
and the Vikings (Dudo, bk ii, ch. 11), but a century later full bilingualism was
considered appropriate for a duke of Normandy, as Dudo reports: William
Longsword considered it obviously highly important that his son Richard I
(born in 933) should learn the Danish language (Dacisca lingua), which was
used in Bayeux, whilst in Rouen lingua Romana was common in the 930s. But
the most fascinating aspect in this passage in Dudo, and one that is unfortu-
nately left out by William of Jumièges, is that reference is made to the Danish
eloquence that comes with the knowledge of the Danish tongue and which
William wished upon his son Richard: ‘[…] et educetur, cum magna diligentia,
48
For example, Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, ed. by Rau, s. a. 891.
49
Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, pp. 59 and 79.
148 Rudolf Simek
fruens loquacitate dacisca’50 (‘[…] and educated there with great diligence, prof-
iting from Danish loquaciousness’).51 What this Danish loquaciousness would
imply, we have of course no means of knowing, but the implication is clear that
even in Dudo’s days it held a certain prestige.
Only on very rare occasions do we get references to the pre-Christian reli-
gion — and then without any direct reference to this as a ‘Danish custom’. One
example of this is in the very first chapter of Dudo’s De moribus et actis primo
rum Normannorum ducum, where he deals with the exodus of Vikings from
Scandinavia in the course of which they sacrifice to their god Thor (in Dudo:
Thur); he then goes off on a tangent, specifying this sacrifice as a bloody human
sacrifice, although it is unclear if he really believed this to be true or if it was
simply a literary motif, something a clerical author had to ascribe to heathens:
Caeterum in expletione suarum expulsionum atque exituum, sacrificabant olim
venerantes Thur Deum suum. Cui non aliquod pecudum, neque pecorum, nec
Liberi Patris, nec Cereris litantes donum, sed sanguinem mactabant hominum […].52
Besides, at one time they used to complete their expulsion and exits by making sac-
rifices in honour of their god Thor. And to him they would offer no single beasts,
nor herds of cattle, nor ‘gifts of Father Liber, nor of Ceres’, but men’s blood […].53
In connection with the martial spirit of the Vikings, which Dudo mentions in
the previous paragraph, this religious reference smacks strongly of a similar pas-
sage in Jordanes: Getica, vii:
Quem Martem Gothi semper asperrima placavere cultura (nam victimae ejus mor
tes fuere captorum), opinantes bellorum praesulem apte humani sanguinis effu-
sione placandum.54
Now Mars has always been worshipped by the Goths with cruel rites, and captives
were slain as his victims. They thought that he who is the lord of war ought to be
appeased by the shedding of human blood.55
50
51
My translation.
52
Dudo of St Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, cols 620f.
53
54
Jordanes, Romana et Getica, ed. by Mommsen, p. 64.
55
My translation.
The traditional way of depicting heathen sacrifices has obviously little source
value, but I find it quite remarkable that in Dudo’s days the name of the god
Thor was still remembered at all, considering that most other historians of the
previous centuries had limited themselves to using what they thought was the
Latin equivalent, namely Mars.
Dudo’s reference to Thor was later taken up by William of Jumièges, but in a
different context, namely the beginning of the expedition by Björn Ironside and
Hastingus, and with a distinctly less blood-thirsty connotation to this sacrifice:
Fabricantur naues, innouantur scuta, resarciuntur thoraces, poliuntur lorice et
galee, acuuntur enses et lancee, omnique telorum apparatu accurate munitur exer-
citus. Inde uero statuto die pelago impelluntur naues, ad eas propere festinant
milites. Eleuantur uexilla, librant uentis carbasa, uehuntur lupi pernices ad laceran-
das dominicas oues, deo suo Thur humanum sanguinem libantes.
They built ships, restored shields, repaired cuirasses, polished hauberks and hel-
mets, sharpened swords and lances, and carefully strengthened their army with
all manner of weapons. On the appointed day the ships were pushed into the sea
and the soldiers hastened to go aboard. The raised their standards, spread the sails
before the winds, and like agile wolves set out to rend the Lord’s sheep, pouring out
human blood to their god Thor.56
Despite a similar setting — the departure of Vikings from Scandinavia — in

Dudo’s description, the connotation of the reference to Thor is slightly differ-
ent, implying somehow that the atrocities of the Viking expedition itself were
considered a sacrifice to Thor: but such a type of religious motivation of Viking
expeditions is something which we have otherwise no indication for in any
other source.
A passage added to William of Jumiège’s Gesta Normannorum ducum by
Robert of Torigni may well have a religious, or at least a mythological back-
ground, when he is telling an episode of the sort of peaceful state which Rollo
brought to the Normandy through his efficient and powerful reign:
Dum post uenationem in silua que imminet alueo Sequane iuxta Rothomagum
stipatus obsequentium turbis comederet, sedens super lacum quem usu cotidiano
loquendi Maram uocamus, armillas aureas in quercu pependit, que per tres annos
ob timorem ipsius intacte ibidem fuerunt.
When, after a hunt in the wood high above the River Seine near Rouen, the duke,
accompanied by his followers, sat down for a meal beside a lake commonly called
56
150 Rudolf Simek
La Mare, he hung some golden bracelets on an oak-tree and they remained there
untouched for three years because the duke was so feared.57
This seems to parallel the famous passage in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda (Skálds
kaparmál, ch. 42), where a golden ring was lying on the Jutland heath:
En fyrir því at Fróði var allra konunga ríkastr á Norðlöndum, þá var honum kendr
friðrinn um alla danska tungu, ok kalla menn það Fróðafrið. […] Þá var ok engi
þjófr eða ránsmaðr, svá at gullhringr einn lá á Jalangrsheiði lengi.58
And because Frodi was the most powerful of all kings in Scandinavia, peace was
called after him in the whole Northern language, and was called Frodi’s peace. […]
There was no thief or robber, so that a gold ring lay for a long time on the heath of
Jelling.59
Not only can the story of Frodi’s peace be found in Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta
Danorum, v, in two versions, but both versions are much closer parallels to
Robert’s reference, when Frotho deliberately hangs gold bracelets from trees
(or rocks) to test his subjects’ respect for his reign:
Denique in Iutia, tamquam in capite regni sui, magni ponderis auream armillam
triuiis affigi curauit, edictae a se innocencie experimentum tam insignis prede doc-
umento daturus.60
At last he ordered that in Jutland, the chief district of his realm, a golden bracelet,
very heavy, should be set up on the highways, wishing by this magnificent price to
test the honesty which he had enacted.61
Victor Frotho, pacem per omnes gentes reficere cupiens, ut unius cuiusque rem
familiarem a furum incursu tutam prestaret, ociumque regnis post arma adsereret,
armillam unam in rupe, quam Frothonis petram nominant, alteram apud Wig
prouinciam, habita cum Noruagiensibus concione, defixit, edicte a se innocencie
experimentum daturas, subductis iisdem in omnes regionis presides animaduer-
tendum minatus. Itaque summo cum prefectorum periculo aurum absque custodia
mediis affixum triuiis magnum auaricie irritamentum exstabat, opportuna rapinae
57
[o. c.] Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, i, p. 19.
58
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, ed. by Finnur Jonsson, p. 106.
59
My translation.
60
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Holder, p. 169.
61
Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, trans. by Davidson and Fisher, i, p. 156.
preda plena cupiditatis ingenia prouocante. Statuit idem, ut nauigantes repertis

ubicunque remis licite fruerentur.62
Frode, now triumphant, wished to renew peace among all nations, that he might
ensure each man’s property from the inroads of thieves and now ensure peace to his
realms after war. So he hung one bracelet on a crag which is called Frodi’s Rock and
another in the district of Wik, after he had addressed the assembled Norwegians;
threatening that these necklaces should serve to test the honesty which he had
decreed, and threatening that if they were filched punishment should fall on all the
governors of the district.63
In his motivation of the gold ring left hanging, Saxo comes much closer to
the ob timore of Robert of Torigni, whilst Snorri takes Frodi’s Peace into more
mythological spheres. Common to all passages, the Scandinavian ones and the
Norman one, is the free-hanging gold ring as a symbol of political stability,
which is thus probably an old (mythological) motif known to all these authors.
Disparate passages like the ones named here in section 4 may by sympto-
matic for the type of Norman memoria which can be found in eleventh- and
twelfth-century sources: occasional facts are being reinterpreted by Christian
historians, mainly for the sake of literary effectiveness rather than for ideologi-
cal reasons. Ideology, on the other hand, plays the greatest role where it effects
the ruling dukes or their descendants, the Norman kings of England: both the
story of Scandinavian virility as the reason for the exodus of the Vikings from
Scandinavia, as well as the repeated reference to a marriage more Danico was
probably used to support still practised customs of the ruling families as well as
to enhance their social prestige. Because much of Norman historiography was
either initiated by or dedicated to the Norman dukes, this is hardly surprising.
In a more general way ideology may also play a role in the memory of the
common Scandinavian origin of most Germanic tribes, quite apart from the
much younger learned construction of a descent from Trojans. The notion of
a common Germanic Scandinavian origin may actually have served as a means
for the Normans to become more integrated with the other Germanic gentes
who they were confronted with in continental Europe, even if the Franks, of all
people, were possibly not the most obvious choice.
The most lasting impression in Norman historiography was achieved,
however, by tall tales prevalent from Iceland to Sicily during the late Viking
Age. Such tall stories concerned smart ways of conquering castles by Viking
62
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. by Holder, p. 164.
63
Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, trans. by Davidson and Fisher, i, p. 152.
152 Rudolf Simek
or Norman leaders, which could be found in a variety of texts right up to the

early thirteenth century, when they found their way into Snorri’s Heimskringla
as well as Ragnarssona þáttr. But most popular of all was the achievement of
two Vikings called Björn and Hástein, who had vowed to conquer Rome, just
to become famous, to achieve something that was söguligr, worth telling a saga
about. They did not conquer Rome, but they did achieve fame, and a place in
long-lasting memory from Normandy to Sicily is probably a fitting reward for a
deed done only for memory’s sake.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Amatus of Montecassino, The History of the Normans, trans. by Prescott N. Dunbar and
rev. by Graham A. Loud (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004)
Annales Bertiniani / Jahrbücher von St. Bertin, ed. by R. Rau, in Quellen zur karolingischen
Reichsgeschichte, 6 vols (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1955–60),
ii: Freiherr vom Stein — Gedächtnisausgabe (1958), pp. 11–287
The Annals of St-Bertin, trans. by Janet L. Nelson, Ninth-Century Histories, 1 (Manchester,
New York: Manchester University Press, 1991)
Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Francisque Michel,
Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, 1st ser., Histoire politique, 3
vols (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1836–44)
—— , Chronique des ducs de Normandie: publiée d’après le manuscrit de Tours avec les vari-
antes du manuscrit de Londres, ed. by C. Fahlin, Ö. Södergård, and S. Sandqvist, Acta
Universitatis Lundensis, 1. 29 (Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1951–79)
The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, ed. by Richard Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns
of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, Rolls Series, 82, 4 vols (London: Longman,
1882–89), iv
Dudo of St Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum ducum, in Patrologiae
cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Migne,
1844–64), cxli (1853), cols 607–758
—— , History of the Normans, trans. by Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell and
Brewer, 1998)
Falco of Benevento, Chronicon Beneventanum: città e feudi nell’Italia dei normanni, ed. by
Edoardo D’Angelo (Firenze: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998)
Fredegar, Historia Francorum epitomata, in Patrologia latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne,
221 vols (Paris: Migne, 1844–64), lxxi (1849), cols 573–604
Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti
Guiscardi ducis fratris eius, ed. by Ernesto Pontieri, Rerum Italicarum scriptores nuova,
5. 1 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1928)
—— , Normannernes Bedrifter i Syditalien, trans. by Erling Albrectsen (Odense: Odense
Universitetsforlag, 1981)
The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni,
ed. and trans. by Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)
Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, ed. by Roger Wilmans, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica:
Scriptores, 39 vols (Hannover: Hahn and Hiersemann, 1826–2009), ix (Hahn, 1851),
pp. 239–98
Jordanes, Romana et Getica, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica:
Auctores antiquissimi, 15 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882–1919), v. 2 (1882)
Die Nestor-Chronik, trans. by Dmitrĳ Tschižewskĳ (Leningrad, 1926; repr. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1969)
154 Rudolf Simek
Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum, ed. by Georg Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae
Historica: Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), pp. 12–187
Peter of Eboli, De rebus Siculis carmen, ed. by Ettore Rota, Rerum Italicarum scriptores,
31.1 (Città di Castello: Lapi, 1904)
Ragnars saga lóðbrokar ok sona hans, ed. by Valdimar Ásmundarson, in Fornaldarsögur
Norðrlanda, 1 (Reykjavík: Kristjánsson, 1886–91)
Regino of Prüm, Chronicon, in Quellen zur karolingischen Reichsgeschichte, ed. by Reinhold
Rau, Freiherr vom Stein–Gedächtnisausgabe, 7, 3 vols (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1956–60), iii (1960), pp. 179–319
Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, trans. by Hilda R. Ellis Davidson and David
Fisher, 2 vols (Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979–80)
—— , Gesta Danorum, ed. by A. Holder (Strasburg: Trübner, 1886)
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, ed. by Finnur Jonsson (København: Gad, 1900)
—— , Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Íslenzk fornrit,
26–28, 3 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1941–51)
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Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, Rolls Series, 82, 4 vols (London: Longman,
1882–89), ii (1885), pp. 585–781
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Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bicantini e Neoellenici, 1961)
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(Paris: Renouard, 1835)
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Day, Mildred Leake, Latin Arthurian Literature (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2005)
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Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908)
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Rezeption und Altisländische Gelehrte Urgeschichte’, Alvíssmál, 1 (1992), 17–54
Plassmann, Alheydis, ‘Der Wandel des normannischen Geschichtsbildes im 11. Jahr
hundert’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 115. 1 (1995), 188–207
Simek, Rudolf, ‘Der lange Weg von Troja nach Grönland: Zu den Quellen der gelehrten
Urgeschichte in Island’, in Germanisches Altertum und christliches Mittelalter: Festschrift
für Heinz Klingenberg, ed. by Bela Brogyanyi und Thomas Krömmelbein (Hamburg:
Kovač, 2001), pp. 315–27
de Vries, Jan, ‘Die Entwicklung der Sage von den Lodbrokssöhnen in den historischen
Quellen’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 44 (1928), 117–65
—— , ‘Normannisches Lehngut in den isländischen Königssagas’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi,
47 (1931), 51–79
—— , ‘Die Wikingersaga’, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 25 (1927), 81–100
Webber, Nick, The Evolution of Norman Identity 911–1154 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005)
The Mythologized Past:
Memory in Medieval and
Early Modern Gotland
Stephen A. Mitchell
Introduction
By examining the way several historical episodes are treated diachronically in
the traditions of the Baltic island of Gotland, this essay looks to explore inter-
related questions about the role of constructed memories, specifically: how
empirically knowable facts are treated by the shapers of the island’s history, its
‘men of memory’, in order to make these events fit larger schemes, that is, how
the past is mythologized. Of special importance with respect to Gotland are
the means by which the community refers to and recalls this history — that is,
with what references to (by which I generally mean ‘uses of ’) popular culture,
texts, monuments, the natural and built landscapes, heritage objects, and other
mnemonic aids to (or, if not aids, then proofs of ) ‘history’, real or imagined.
In addition to how certain events are remembered and memorialized,
emerging as equally significant have been the seemingly collective, corporate,
or popular decisions about which events to incorporate into the fabric of the
community’s history and which to leave out. And, one wonders, what factors
condition such choices: are they responses to political expediency, philosophi-
cal decisions by elites working within a high-status media culture (i.e. writing),
popular, serendipitous recollections or re-workings of history, or, perhaps,
some combination of these possibilities? How, for example, does this relatively
small, increasingly heterogeneous, insular community shape its identity over
Stephen A. Mitchell (samitch@fas.harvard.edu) is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at

Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and Fellow of the Swedish Collegium
for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden.
156 Stephen A. Mitchell
time? And how does it do so in relation both to larger political situations, and
to, and in part through, its well-documented and sometimes turbulent, past?
And, finally, were those people making these competing choices consciously
struggling with the issues facing them about how to remember the past and
what to remember from it?1
The answer to the last question would appear to be ‘very much so’, if we con-
sider the theoretical treatments of this question by intellectuals already in the
classical and medieval periods, as well as the empirical data reflecting the views
of those confronting the issue of memory in practical situations.2 A revealing
example from the Nordic Middle Ages of the pressures that were felt about
preserving the past, and of the remedies being applied, is reflected in a letter
from the Archbishop of Lund in the early 1200s to one of the Swedish bishops.
It concerns previous agreements about episcopal visits to Gotland. In his mis-
sive, the prelate offers his reasoning for the need to record such arrangements in
writing. He laments, for example, that such things as forgetfulness and compet-
ing interests can cause quarrels to arise as long as the regulations are not written
down (‘dum scripta non habentur’). Moreover, he assures the bishop at some
length, written texts will aid memory (‘succurratur memoriæ’).3 Through its
very explicit references, indeed, among the most explicit we know of in the
medieval North, the archbishop’s letter exemplifies the problem of memory,
control, and the need for writing.
Although far from unique in medieval Europe, the archbishop’s logic in pre-
ferring the comforting, presumed stability of writing stands in stark contrast
to the signs we find elsewhere in medieval Scandinavia of a preference for the
authority of the spoken, oral tradition as a source of facts and as a truth filter.4
1
On these and related issues in an Old Norse context, see the reviews and arguments in
Hermann, ‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past’, and Hermann, ‘Founding
Narratives and the Representation of Memory’, as well as the other essays in this volume. A par-
allel situation, in which popular memories and narratives are selectively preserved and shaped by
elites, may be adduced from nineteenth- and twentieth-century traditions of folklore collecting,
archiving, and publishing, the subject of Frederik Skott’s important dissertation, Folkets minnen.
2
See, for example, the views expressed by Hugo of St Victor, Albertus Magnus, Thomas
Aquinas, and others in Carruthers and Ziolkowski, eds, The Medieval Craft of Memory.
3
Diplomatarium suecanum, ed. by Liljegren and others, i: 817–1285, ed. by Johan Gustaf
Liljegren (1829), pp. 690–91, no. 832.
4
For examples of this view in both Old Norse literature and medieval Scandinavian histo-
riography, see Glauser, ‘The Speaking Bodies of Saga Texts’, pp. 13–26, and Hermann, ‘Concepts
of Memory and Approaches to the Past’, pp. 287–308.
The Mythologized Past 157
It is this preference, for example, that famously informs Snorri’s prologue to his
history of the Norse kings, Heimskringla, and is to be seen in such phrases as
that in the Old Swedish Laws of Hälsingland (Hälsingelagen), minnugha mæn,
the ‘men of memory’ on whom it relies for truth.5 The archbishop’s concerns,
and his remedy, are of general interest to us because they pointedly raise the
question of mediality in the North; however, what makes his letter of particu
lar interest to this discussion of Gotlandic history is that it has been argued
that this letter is itself connected in important ways with the very idea of writ-
ing out Gotland’s history in a narrative form.
The Sources
Gotland distinguishes itself in the East Scandinavian area for the existence of
an early prose history of the territory, the so-called Guta saga. Written in Old
Gutnish, Guta saga is a brief (c. 1800 words) narrative encompassing the leg-
endary events of the island’s past: how its first settler brought fire to the island,
thus preventing its magical disappearance into the water during the day, and
how the island was then settled by his three sons, each taking one third of the
island from north to south, how it was Christianized, and so on. One cannot
help but suspect that the surviving medieval text represents something of a
collective précis of more elaborate, independent narratives, purpose-written in
this instance to support a distinctively Gotlandic view of the island’s history.6
The oldest text of the ‘saga’ survives in a fourteenth-century manuscript
(Cod. Holm. B64) mostly devoted to the so-called provincial laws (landskapsl
agar) of the island.7 Most researchers have concluded that the extant Guta saga
was shaped in the thirteenth century.8 The possibility that it may have been
5
Cf. Le Goff, History and Memory, p. 73: ‘The Middle Ages venerated old men above all
because they were regarded as memory-men, prestigious and useful’. See also the discussion of
the institution of the mnemon on pp. 56 and 63. Regarding Heimskringla’s prologue, see also the
essays by Margaret Clunies Ross and Pernille Hermann in this volume.
6
Or so, at least, I have argued in Mitchell, ‘On the Composition and Function of Gutasaga’.
7
The text was described by Carl Säve in the nineteenth century as ‘En verklig Gotlands-Saga
eller liten Gutnisk Landnamabok’, and has at various times been called Gutasaga, The Legendary
History of Gotland, Historia Gotlandiæ, Gullandskrønike, and Gotlændinga saga. Its designation
as a saga is not at all out of place in so far as the term fundamentally means an account, history,
or narrative but, of course, insofar as it has come to imply a tale of some length associated, in
Scandinavia, at least, with composition in Iceland, is misleading.
8
Whether the date is early or late in the century has been a matter of some debate.
composed early in the thirteenth century has largely centred on the perceived
connections, both historical and verbal, between the Gutnish narrative and
the letter referred to above from Archbishop Andreas Suneson of Lund to the
Bishop of Linköping sometime between 1220 and 1223. The letter’s discussion
of episcopal visitation to the island, it is argued, shows strong verbal ties to the
section of Guta saga also dealing with that topic.9
In addition to the Old Gutnish original, Guta saga, or parts of it, also exists
in a number of translations into the major languages in the island’s history.
These include a fifteenth-century Swedish translation (Cod. Holm. D2), and
three partial Danish translations, all now generally held to be late medieval and
reformation era works independent of one another.10 A German translation,
the only complete rendering of the text into another tongue, dates to 1401;
importantly, it was executed exactly during the period (1398–1409), when
control of the island was in the hands of the Teutonic Order.11 Like the B64
manuscript, the German Guta saga follows immediately after the translation of
the island’s provincial laws into German in Cod. Holm. B65. Thus, the text’s
connections, both functional and codicological, with the medieval laws of
Among those arguing for an early date is Läffler, ‘Till 700-årsminnet af slaget vid Lena (31
januari 1208)’, p. 167. On the more general assessment of a thirteenth-century origin, see
Wessén, ‘Gutasagan’, Naumann, ‘Gutasaga’, and others, but cp. Sjöholm, Gesetze als Quellen:
Mittelalterlicher Geschichte des Nordens, who argues for a date roughly a century later. In a recent
assessment of the dating question, Peel notes in her commentary in Guta saga, pp. lii–liii, ‘It thus
seems reasonable to propose a terminus ante quem for the composition of Guta saga of 1275 or
very shortly thereafter, with a terminus post quem of 1220 as agreed by the majority of scholars’.
Stobaeus, ‘Gutasagan’, pp. 79–80, the most recent review of the dating question, forwards new,
and to my mind, convincing, evidence to suggest that the text came about in the second half of
the thirteenth century.
9
Cf. the analysis in Läffler, ‘Till 700-årsminnet af slaget vid Lena (31 januari 1208)’,
pp. 162–69, who notes that the relevance of this correspondence was argued already in J. H.
Schröder (and C. A. Weström), De visitationibus episcoporum Lincopensium, pp. 2–3. The pos-
sibility of this relationship has awakened considerable debate, including in recent years the
question of whether the archbishop’s letter might possibly be a medieval forgery, itself built on
Guta saga. See the discussion and bibliography, including rejections of this theory, in Stobaeus,
‘Gutasagan’, p. 79.
10
For brief introductions to the texts, see Wessén, ‘Gutasagan’; Mitchell, ‘Guta saga’;
and Naumann, ‘Gutasaga’; for a comprehensive review of the literature, see Guta saga, ed. and
trans. by Peel, pp. x–xiv. Detailed commentaries and editions of the later texts are provided in
Jacobsen, ‘Gamle danske Oversættelser’, and En fornsvensk och några äldre danska översättnin
gar, ed. by Ljunggren.
11
See Schmid, ‘Altnordisch auf Frühneuhochdeutsch’, p. 62.
Gotland need to be understood as deep and significant, and it is likely this sym-
biotic relationship between the narrative and the legal traditions of the island
that accounts for the fact that the various translations, Swedish, German, and
Danish, generally follow the B64 text closely as regards content.12
Augmenting our knowledge of the history of the island, and apparently
independent of the Guta saga materials, are the annalistic materials from the
Franciscan monastery in Visby, contained in Cod. Holm. B99.13 Gotland’s
story continued to be a subject of interest for history writers well into the post-
medieval world, especially in the sweeping narrative provided in Hans Nielsson
Strelow’s Cronica Guthilandorum (1633). Also of interest is Cimbrorum et
Gothorum origines by Nicolaus Petreius (alt., Niels Pedersen), written in the
period 1573–79, but not published until 1695.14 But whereas Strelow’s work
represents an expansive — and native Gotlandic — view of all things connected
with the history and traditions of Gotland, Petreius has a goal that is much nar-
rower. Crudely summarized, he is a Danish functionary briefly stationed on
Gotland arguing for an identification of the Gotlanders with the Goths of his-
tory, and thus ultimately looking to legitimize the Danish king’s connection to
these famous brigands of history. Among many other resources, both authors
make much use of Guta saga, but neither of them shows the sort of fidelity to
that text exhibited by the Guta saga translators. At the same time, both authors
‘footnote’ or document their versions of history by multiple references to vari-
ous ‘objects of memory’, not just to the Guta saga text but to the monuments,
onomastics, traditions, and the natural and built landscape of Gotland.
As these comments suggest, my main concern here is, of course, not in
the earlier traditions that inform Guta saga, but rather in exploring the ways
Gotlandic history in and after the thirteenth century is shaped. In other words,
what results do we see from the call by Archbishop Andreas Suneson for a firm
written form of the past? His position is rational, but as we will see the appar-
ent fixity of the written text shows itself to be every bit as susceptible to manip-
12
Scholarly opinion about the Guta saga stemma varies, but generally holds that a now
missing thirteenth-century original gave rise to three branches, of which the mid-fourteenth
century B64 manuscript is the oldest surviving text; however, the differences between the texts
as regards narrative content are slight. See Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. xiii.
13
Visbyfranciskanernas bok, ed. by Odelman and Melefors, pp. 52–69; facs. 43–49; the
main text, covers the years 815–1444.
14
On, and for, Petreius, see Körner, Slottsprästen Petreius berättar. One of the Danish
translations of Guta saga is bound with a manuscript of Cimbrorum et Gothorum origines; see
Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. xi.
ulation and the vagaries of selective recollection, whether intentional or not, as

the oral tradition he fears. More than simply a demonstration of the capacity
of authors working in a written medium to treat their materials as malleably
as their oral counterparts, I am also curious about what has been included and
what has been left out of the Gotlandic historical narrative as it is massaged (=
translated, embellished, retold, rewritten, and transformed) over four centuries.
As a means of exploring the way the past is selectively preserved, memorial-
ized, elided, and so on, in the context of this new medieval media culture, I
focus here on two key episodes in the history of medieval Gotland and how
they are represented, if at all, in the island’s history over time, from the thir-
teenth century through the seventeenth, namely, 1) Gotland’s conversion to
Christianity, and 2) the mid-fourteenth-century bubonic pandemic.
Conversion Narratives
In histories almost entirely written and recorded by churchmen (both before
and after the Reformation), it is hardly surprising that the Christian conver-
sion of pagan Gotland is painted quite vividly in Guta saga, with a description
of the Gotlanders’ lamentable and lurid heathen practices, rituals which are
said to have even included human sacrifice.15 Guta saga then offers detailed
information about how the island is transformed from this heathen state into
a Christian world. Like the famous dual creation myths of the biblical Genesis
(1. 1–2. 3, 2. 4–2. 25), Guta saga provides two versions of the Christianization
process, one directly tied to the figure of St Olaf (Óláfr inn helgi Haraldsson) as
an outside agent of change, the other lacking this historical figure and empha-
sizing the Gotlanders’ own initiatives in promoting Christianity.16 Quoting
Christine Peel’s translation, Guta saga relates the following about Olaf ’s role in
the process:
Later, after this, King Olaf the Saint came fleeing from Norway with his ships, and
laid into a harbour, the one called Akergarn. St Olaf lay there a long time. Then
Ormika of Hejnum, and several other powerful men, went to him with their gifts.
15
‘Blotaþu þair synum ok dytrum sinum ok fileþi miþ mati ok mungati. Þet gierþu þair
eptir vantro sinni. Land alt hafþi sir hoystu blotan miþ fulki’, Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel,
p. 4.
16
See the review of literature in Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, pp. xxxvi–xl, and Pernler,
Gotlands medeltida kyrkoliv, pp. 11–19. As a practical matter, I will use the personal name form
Olaf except in quoting other texts or in reference to their usage.

Ormika gave him twelve yearling rams along with other valuables. St Olaf then
reciprocated and gave him in return two round drinking vessels and a battle-axe.
Ormika subsequently received Christianity according to St Olaf ’s teaching and
built himself an oratory at the same location as Akergarn church now stands. From
there St Olaf travelled to visit Jaroslav in Novgorod.17 [emphases added]
To some extent, this story intersects with West Norse traditions about this mis-
sionary king-turned-saint, insofar as Olaf is said to have been on Gotland in
1007 as a twelve-year-old, where, according to his court skald, Óttar, he forced
the Gotlanders to pay him tribute.18 There may be a suggestion in the conflict-
ing West Norse accounts of Olaf ’s journey in 1029–30 to Russia that he again
stopped at Gotland but certainly nothing that would directly account for the
story as it is developed in Gutnish tradition. Still, some sort of presence on
Gotland by this famous missionary king is indicated.
Notably, the Guta saga author frames his story by having the king flee from
Norway to Gotland and then, at the end of the narrative, Olaf departs from
the island for Novgorod. Thus, Gotland is situated in the middle of the ‘mental
17
Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, p. 9. The original reads in full (p. 8): ‘Eptir þet siþan
quam helgi Olafr kunungr flyandi af Norvegi miþ skipum ok legþis i hamn, þa sum kallar
Akrgarn. Þar la helgi Olafr lengi. Þa for Ormika af Hainaim ok flairi rikir menn til hans miþ
giefum sinum. Þann Ormika gaf hanum tolf veþru miþ andrum klenatum. Þa gaf helgi Olafr
kunungr hanum atr agin tua bulla ok aina braiþyxi. Þa tok Ormika viþr kristindomi eptir helga
Olafs kennidomi ok gierþi sir bynahus i sama staþ, sum nu standr Akrgarna kirkia. Þeþan for
helgi Olafr til Ierslafs i Hulmgarþi’.
18
According to Heimskringla, ‘Óláfr konungr sigldi um haustit til Gotlands ok bjósk þar at
herja. En Gotar hǫfðu þar samnað ok gerðu menn til konungs ok buðu honum gjald af landinu.
Þat þekkðisk konungr ok tekr gjald af landinu ok sat þar um vetrinn. Svá segir Óttarr:
Gildir, komtu at gjaldi Rann, en maðr of minna
gotneskum her, flotna. margr býr of þrek, varga
Þorðut þér að varða hungr frák austr, an yngvi,
þjóðlǫnd firar rǫndu. Eysýslu lið, þeyja’.
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ii, p. 9.
‘In the fall King Óláf sailed to the Island of Gotland and made ready to harry there. But the
people met together and sent messengers to the king offering him tribute from the land. That
the king accepted. He took the tribute and dwelled there during the winter. Thus says Óttar:
Tribute-taker, thou didst Fled the islanders — few are
teach the Goths to fear you, fearless more than thou art.
so they did not dare to Wolf-brood’s hunger, hear I
draw their swords to ward them. hero, in the east thou satedst’.
Heimskringla, trans. by Hollander, pp. 248–49.
map’ sketched by the saint’s journey. If the typical medieval mappa mundi places
Jerusalem at its centre, the image sketched here looks to do something similar for
Gotland. It should be noted too how well this brief narrative, and its projection
of truth value (however fabulous its composition may in the end prove to be) is
enmeshed in the geography and onomastics of north-eastern and north central
Gotland: the king anchors in a harbour called Akergarn, where a chapel is built
in honour of the king, ‘i sama staþ, sum nu standr Akrgarna kirkia’ (‘at the same
location as Akergarn church now stands’). Subsequently renamed St Olafshamn
(St Olaf harbour), the church there — a St Olaf church, naturally, one of many
on the medieval island whose patron saint he became — apparently enjoyed a
significant income by the thirteenth century.19 Importantly, the saga specifies
that Ormika accepts Christianity ‘according to St Olaf ’s teaching’ (‘eptir helga
Olafs kennidomi’), a phrase widely, although only with uncertainty, assumed
to suggest a break with the influence of other Christian traditions, such as the
Orthodox church’s.20 The ritualized exchange of gifts — Ormika’s twelve rams
to Olaf and Olaf ’s gift of two drinking vessels and a battle-axe, the saint’s most
important physical attribute in later iconography (and providing a connection
between the text and his image in subsequent Gotlandic church art) — simul-
taneously conveys to the audience the sense of medieval traditions of christen-
ing gifts, of Gotland as a trading nation, of the reciprocal respect being shown
by the saint and the Gotlanders, and perhaps of the stories about Olaf having
received tribute from the islanders in order to halt his harrying there.
For a variety of reasons, not least the degree to which the Guta saga ver-
sion clashes with other sources, it has been reasonably suggested that the sce-
nario in which Olaf is portrayed as ‘Gotland’s apostle’ is a narrative developed
in response to the growing Olaf-cult of the thirteenth century from informa-
tion about the royal saint’s eleventh-century visits to Gotland.21 This version
thus places Gotland’s Christianization squarely at the centre of one of northern
Europe’s fastest growing cults and builds on historical events, events memorial-
ized in part by the landscape: the harbour, the chapel, Akergarn church, and
the prominence in the process of the Hejnum region, whose parish church con-
spicuously displayed its historical connections with St Olaf.
19
Cf. Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, pp. 38–39.
20
See, for example, Blomkvist, Brink, and Lindkvist, ‘The Kingdom of Sweden’, p. 184.
21
See the excellent review of secondary literature in Pernler, Gotlands medeltida kyrkoliv,
pp. 11–19, and Pernler, ‘Sankt Olav und Gotland’, pp. 101–14.
Having thus established the key role in Gotland’s conversion process for one
of medieval Scandinavia’s great cult figures, the saga then goes on to say, ignor-
ing the previous tale about Ormika’s conversion, that when they were pagans the
Gotlanders had gone on trading voyages to other countries, both Christian and
heathen. Some consequently became Christians and brought priests back with
them. What follows in this second conversion narrative, apparently untroubled
by its juxtaposition with the first, is a vastly less placid version of the island’s
Christianization than the one surrounding Olaf ’s activities. Here we get a tale
of native Christian converts being set upon by native pagans — after the initial
comment about foreign priests, these figures simply fade away and are nowhere
to be found later in the tale. Here again, but with vastly greater profusion, the
story’s factuality is undergirded by a plethora of still identifiable place-names:
Botair of Akebäck builds the first church, ‘in that place which is now called
Kulstäde’. The pagan islanders burn it, for which reason (apparently) the loca-
tion is known as ‘Kulstäde’ (‘charcoal place’?). Botair builds a second church at
Vi, where a sacrifice is taking place, and he defends it by going into the church
and saying that if people want to burn it, they will have to burn him as well.
Because of his status, and that of his powerful father-in-law, who lives at a
place called Stenkyrka ‘stone church’ and who reminds the pagans of the sacred
nature of the location (Vi), the church is left standing. This man, Likkair, is said
to have had great authority, and he is reported to have said: ‘Do not persist in
burning the man or his church, since it stands at Vi, below the cliff ’.22
Although scholars have argued at length about the name Vi and the degree
to which the text here may or may not refer to the location of medieval Visby,
it is obvious from the references both to the cliff and to the specific site called
St Peter’s (but formerly known as Allhelgona) that whatever the ‘real’ historical
situation may or may not have been, within the narrative we are to understand
that this location is indeed at the very heart of the emerging commercial capital
of the island. It is surely not irrelevant that this church is said to be the first —
St Olaf ’s earlier oratory notwithstanding — to survive on the island (‘Han var
fyrsti kirkia i Gutlandi, sum standa fikk’). From this centrally-located house of
22
‘Botair af Akubek hit þann sum fyrsti kirkiu gierþi, i þan staþ, sum nu haitir Kulasteþar.
Þet vildi ai land þula utan brendu hana. Þy kallar þar enn Kulasteþar. Þa eptir þan tima var blotan
i Vi. Þar gierþi kirkiu aþra. Þa samu kirkiu vildi land ok brenna. Þa for hann sielfr upp a kirkiu
þa ok segþi: “Vilin ir brenna, þa skulin ir brenna mik miþ kirkiu þissi”. Hann var rikr sielfr ok
*rikasta manz dotur hafþi hann, sum hit Likkair *snielli, boandi þar, sum kallar Stainkirkiu. Hann
reþ mest um þan tima. Hann halp Botairi, magi sinum, ok segþi so: “Herþin ai brenna mann ella
kirkiu hans, þy et han standr i Vi, firir niþan klintu”’. Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, pp. 8–9.
worship, others descend: Liccair’s church, at the place ‘now called Stenkyrka’,
is the first church in the northern third of the island. The author then assures
his audience that Gotlanders begin becoming Christians of their own will and
without duress, and that a second church is built at Atlingbo, in the middle
third of the island. And then, in the southern third of Gotland, a church goes
up in Fardhem. And from these churches, others spread everywhere in Gotland.
It is obvious here that the mythology of the growth of the church on
Gotland mirrors, and I suggest is meant to mirror, exactly the origin legend of
the island: just as the first settler must bring fire to keep the island above water,
the first Christian must brave fire in order to assure the survival of the island’s
first church. And just as from that original settler, three brothers descend who
divide the island up into thirds and populate it with their descendants, so too
does the growth of churches on the island follow the same process, beginning in
the northern third, and moving to the middle third, and then to the southern
third.23 Here the author of Guta saga has, I think, used a highly traditional pat-
tern, well-documented throughout the Germanic world, and certainly an inti-
mate aspect of the island’s mythology, to present the conversion of the island.
The Guta saga translations carefully follow suit, of course. On the other
hand, Chronica Visbycensis does not discuss this process at all, contenting itself
with simply noting St Olaf ’s martyrdom. Writing in the sixteenth century (but
a text not printed until a century later), Petreius specifically mentions that he
wants to avoid the sense that he is focused on the pagan past and has forgot-
ten Christianity. In his telling of the story of Olaf and Ormika, the gifts from
Ormika are because Olaf lacked foodstuffs; in return, Ormika is given an axe
and two silver chalices. But the greatest gift to Gotland is that Olaf converts
Ormika. A chapel is subsequently built, and Ormika lives at the place called
Krekebol (= kirkebol, ‘church dwelling’), which, it is noted, still exists in
Hejnum parish.
Strelow’s 1633 account, as is so often the case, is more detail-rich than these
earlier tales and differs, in fact differs substantially, from them. It is generally
assumed that, particularly as a native of the island, he is mirroring the folk tra-
23
‘Þair skiptu siþan Gutlandi i þria þriþiunga, so et Graipr, þann elzti, laut norþasta þriþi-
ung ok Guti miþal þriþiung. En Gunfiaun, þann yngsti, laut sunnarsta. Siþan af þissum þrim
aukaþis fulk i Gutlandi so mikit um langan tima, et land elpti þaim ai alla fyþa’. (‘They later
divided Gotland into thirds, in such a way that Graipr the eldest inherited the northern third,
Guti the middle third and Gunfiaun the youngest inherited the southernmost. Subsequently,
from these three men, the population of Gotland increased so much over a long period of time
that the land was not able to support them all’.) Guta saga, ed. and trans. by Peel, pp. 2–3.
ditions of his own day. In Strelow’s version, Olaf is on a mission to Gotland pre-
cisely because he has heard that they are heathens. He explains how Olaf had
arrived at locations which are now no longer by the water and how the remains
of his ship’s mooring rings were visible in the cliff until recently (‘huor nu er
tørt Land oc store Fyrreskofue for faa Aar | siden ere de store Jernringe seet i
Klippen | huor ved hans Skibe skulle væred fested | nu udhugne’).24 And now
follow entire episodes not known to other traditions, including Olaf ’s going
ashore and spying in cognito as a beggar, only to be recognized by his royal
undergarments when a servant girl at the home where he is staying watches him
through a keyhole. His host reveals himself to be a Christian and Olaf in turn
explains to him his goal of converting the Gotlanders. A great battle takes place
then between the pagans and Christians, complete with people, place names,
and a miracle in which the imprint of Olaf ’s knee and arm — which had sunk
into the stone as he prayed — are said to still be visible. Having won the victory,
Olaf then harries widely and forces the Gotlanders to become Christians, all
the while accepting tribute (‘Brandskatt aff Siølff oc Guld’).25
Olaf overwinters and has ‘Ackergaarns’ church built on ‘S. Olufs Holm’,
which Strelow notes is now desolate, although some of the church’s walls are
still visible. Ormika of Hienum, now referred to as a woman, and others, visit
Olaf, presenting him with a wide array of foodstuffs, and she is baptized (but
no longer is there any reference to ‘according to Olaf ’s wisdom’ or the like).
Olaf travels to Kirkeby where he has built ‘the large stone building where his
bed, his chair, his washbasin’ (‘det store Stenhuus | huor hans Seng | hans Stoel
| hans Haandfad’) are still visible. Olaf then — in 1029 — sails to Russia. In
certain ways, specifically the battle between Olaf ’s forces and the Gotlanders
and the matter of ‘tribute’, Strelow’s presentation of Olaf ’s visit stands in better
accord with Heimskringla’s account and since there is little likelihood of the
West Norse text having been known so early to Strelow, it seem possible that
his version reflects folk traditions uninflected by the tendentious elite version
of Guta saga.
Strelow then follows the account of the second conversion process as it is
given in Guta saga fairly carefully, complete with its many identified people and
places, until we get to another strange change in the identity and gender of one
of the saga’s characters. In the thirteenth-century text, Botair is married to the
unnamed daughter of Likkair Snielli (i.e. ‘the wise’), who lived at a place called
24
Strelow, Cronica Guthilandorum, p. 130.
25
Strelow, Cronica Guthilandorum, p. 131.
‘stone church’. In Strelow’s account, Botair’s wife is named Lickersmella, the

daughter of Tyssi of ‘stone church’. Whether this amalgamation of the names
given in Guta saga into a single name is the result of a misreading of the manu-
script or part of some tradition outside the manuscripts is not easy to say. In
any event, it did not start with Strelow. One of the Danish translations, Ny
Kgl. Saml. 408 8:o, from c. 1500, has the same configuration as Strelow: Botiar
[!] ‘had a rich man’s daughter who had most authority at that time and she was
called lickher snalle’.26
I suspect that what we do not see in these histories of Gotland is the sce-
nario where one written text gives direct rise to another, but rather a heavily
reticulated stemma, one suggesting a complex relationship between written
texts coming from the hands of the clerical culture, on the one side, and oral
traditions from all elements of Gotlandic society, on the other.27 In the stories
of Gotland’s conversion, two different and partially opposed forces are at work:
medieval Christian thinking and traditional Germanic mythological patterns.
In the first case, we see a story shaped by Christian considerations aimed at
giving the island a role in one of the region’s best-known saint’s lives, indeed,
the saint who becomes the island’s patron saint. In this way, the Olaf story
responds to, shapes, and perpetuates two important local myths: 1) the inde-
pendent, uncoerced, free nature of major changes in the island’s governance
and political life, and 2) a myth in which Gotland stands at the centre of the
northern world as evidenced by the ‘fact’ that its conversion through the mar-
tyred Christian king, St Olaf, represents his very first missionary achievement
while still only a youth.
In the second conversion narrative, we see this same basic experience,
of how the Gotlanders came to be Christians, shaped according to very tra-
ditional Germanic modes of thought, not only in terms of the Gotlanders’
own island history but paralleled by the roughly contemporary presentation
of Norse pagan cosmography in Snorra Edda and traceable as far back as the
story provided by Tacitus (ad 98) of the Germanic progenitor Tuisto, with
26
The ambiguity of whether it was the father or daughter who had the authority is implicit
in the manuscript form. En fornsvensk och några äldre danska översättningar, ed. by Ljunggren,
p. 23, ‘Ok haffdhe righæ mantaz dotther | som rodhe mesth oppaa then tidh | Ok hwn heth
lickher snalle’.
27
Cf. the comment by Le Goff, History and Memory, p. 68, that ‘the most characteristic
traits of memory in the Middle Ages’ are ‘the Christianization of memory and mnemotech-
nology’ and ‘the division of collective memory between a circular liturgical memory and a lay
memory little influenced by chronology’.
his son Mannus, who in turn sires three sons.28 Casting the conversion story in
this way, parallel to traditional Germanic origin legends, thus places the rather
mundane tale of foreign commercial contacts leading to Christianity into a
mythic mould known to the audience. It was part and parcel of the Gotlanders’
so-called ‘ethnic memory’.29
Clearly, both conversion narratives are responding to, and contributing to,
traditions, but traditions of different sorts.
The Fourteenth-Century Plague

Against these multiple, popular, creative, vibrant, and competing myths of the
island’s conversion, with their many references to the memorial landscape of
the island, its churches, places, prominent families, and so on, I want to set a
different kind of memory, the empty set, that is, when there is, by accident or
planning, oblivion, that is, no memory. The absence of memory, although not
lending itself to lengthy description or multiformity, also tells a tale. A lack
of memory, or more specifically the erased memory,30 can also be a conscious
social construct every bit as meaningful as the more obvious forms of memory,
where we would use terms like retention, recollection, and memorialization.
An easy-to-miss yet important example of this sort of empty set from Gotland
comes from an incident connected to the great fourteenth-century pandemic,
known as the Black Death (or digerdöden), which is frequently said, although
with uncertain factuality, to have hit Gotland with particular ferocity.
In addition to the deaths resulting directly from the bubonic plague itself,
a number of innocent people across Europe, Jews in particular, are killed amid
rumour panics that follow the spread of the plague and the suggestion that peo-
ple outside ‘normal’ society — Jews, Muslims, lepers — are conspiring to under-
28
On this topic, see the summary of materials in Schütte, Vor Folkegruppe. Cp. Guten
brunner, ‘Zur Gutasaga’, and Avis, ‘Writing Origins’.
29
Cf. Le Goff, History and Memory, pp. 55–58. I employ ‘ethnic memory’ here but note
that students of culture coming from many disciplinary directions — history, folklore, anthro-
pology, to name some of the most prominent — have over the decades looked to explain the
nature of such memories and their continuity over time; in the process, they developed an array
of terms to describe the phenomenon, terms often freighted with theoretical orientations, such
as superorganic, cultural memory, ethnohistory, mentifact, tradition, and mnemohistory.
30
Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, p. 57, refers to such erasures as ‘social amnesia’ and
‘acts of oblivion’, and asks (p. 58), ‘Can groups, like individuals, suppress what it is inconvenient
to remember?’.
mine Christian society by poisoning wells and other water sources.31 Gotland
does not escape this rumour panic, and according to information preserved in
the archives of several north German cities, an uncertain number of people,
perhaps as many as nine — one of whom we know by name, Tidericus — have
supposedly poisoned wells and also murdered people through even more ingen-
ious forms of poisoning throughout Sweden (i.e. in Stockholm, Västerås, and
Arboga, as well as Visby); moreover, they are supposedly in the pay of the Jews.
Some of them, perhaps all nine, are burned at the stake in Visby in July 1350.32
Several aspects of this event are striking : one is the fact that one of the
condemned men maintains that it is the Jews and ‘we villains’ who are poison-
ing all of Christendom (‘sed tota christianitas est per Judeos et pessimos nos
intoxicata’). What group he means by the ‘villains’ phrase is unclear and has
understandably caused considerable puzzlement.33 Because he is identified as
an organista ‘organist’, the inference is made that this man may be an itinerant
organ builder, but in any event, an outsider to Visby and Gotland in several
different ways. Of a very different sort are the identities of two of the other con-
demned men: they are both priests and said to be guilty of worse offences than
the others. One of them confesses that when he celebrated mass in St Olaf ’s
church in Visby on the second day of Pentecost (‘secunda Penthecostes’), he
infused the mapula (a napkin, or maniple) with poison such that those who
kissed it died within a day or two. He also warns, as he is about to be burned,
that all of Christendom may be doomed and that ‘you should beware of priests
and other religious [persons]’ (‘quia vobis cavere debetis pro sacerdotibus et
religiosis aliis quibuscunque’).34
31
On this point, see, for example, the excellent discussion in Ginzburg, Ecstasies,
pp. 33–86, as well as, more generally, Harrison, Stora döden.
32
The events are recounted by the council in Visby to the council in Rostock, from whence
copies were further distributed to other various Hanseastic cities. For the texts of the two
extant letters, see Codex diplomaticus Lubecensis, iii, ed. by Carl Friedrich Wehrmann (1871),
pp. 103–06, no. 110 A–B. The more interesting communication with regard to events on
Gotland is the ‘B’ letter, also published in Diplomatarium suecanum, ed. by Liljegren and others,
vi: 1348–1355, ed. by Emil Hildebrand, Sven Tunberg, and Ernst Nygren (1959), pp. 259–60,
no. 4655, as well as in ‘En giftmordares bekännelser’, ed. and trans. by Aili, Ferm, and Gustavson,
in both the original Latin and in modern Swedish translation, with a note on the letter’s textual
history on p. 20. See also Myrdal, Digerdöden, pestvågor och ödeläggelse, pp. 87–88.
33
The clause is translated in ‘En giftmordares bekännelser’, ed. and trans. by Aili, Ferm, and
Gustavson, p. 19, as ‘men hela kristenheten är förgiftad av judarna och oss uslingar’.
34
Codex diplomaticus Lubecensis, iii, p. 196, no. 110 B.
But while the ferocity of the plague itself is mentioned in passing in con-
temporary and later documents,35 and the term for the pandemic, digerdöden,
is even famously memorialized in a late medieval runic inscription in Lärbro
church, these horrific executions by burning find no place, none at all, in the
medieval and early modern histories of the island. In fact, whether by design
or accident, we only know about the event from references in documents pre-
served in various north German cities.
Perhaps it was so great a crime against the senses that it had to be actively
erased, or, conversely, an act so banal and inconsequential that it was simply for-
gotten, although this is difficult for the modern imagination to comprehend.
Then again perhaps the violent events a dozen years later, when in 1362 the city
is conquered by King Valdemar Atterdag of Denmark, have so overshadowed the
plague conspiracy and executions that no one remembers them. A further pos-
sibility is that the event’s consignment to the dustbin of history should be con-
nected with the active roles in the events of the two clerics as poisoners found
guilty of the most heinous crimes. It may not be unreasonable to imagine that
the clerical conspiracy theories of the mid-fourteenth century offended later
ecclesiastics such that they actively erased the narrative from the island’s history.
The fact that the gruesome spectacle is not recorded in, for example, the contem-
porary entries in Visbyfranciskanernas bok suggests that already at the time of the
executions there was a vested interest in not remembering the awful occasion.
In any event, unlike the conversion narratives, with their elaborate ref-
erences to families, genealogies, and the homesteads and churches dotting
the landscape, this fiery event — apparently involving at least some foreign-
ers without these kinds of complex local connections and whose deaths were
not subject to the sort of elaborate memorialization to which, for example,
Valdemar Atterdag’s 1361 invasion of the island gave rise — slips, or is erased,
from memory.36
35
For example, Visbyfranciskanernas bok, ed. by Odelman and Melefors, p. 50: ‘Anno
Domini mcccl fuit maxima pestilencia per totum mundum’ (‘ad 1350 there was the greatest
pestilence throughout the whole world’); Strelow, Cronica Guthilandorum, p. 162: ‘Aar 1350 |
var en swer Pestilenße | kalledis den dyre død | der om er giort saadan it Verß: Rystram triustrum
Spid longum tunc mala pestis’. (‘In the year 1350 there was a terrible pestilence called the great
death [dyre for diger], about which this verse is made: Rystram [= M] triustrum [trevurstum? =
CCC] Spid longum [= L], i.e. 1350 then evil plague’). On this verse and parallel examples, see
Mansa, Bidrag til Folkesygdommenes, pp. 68–69.
36
This event and the question of its treatment was the basis for an excellent recent confer-
ence presentation. See Cole, ‘The Jew Who Wasn’t There’.
Conclusion
This essay began by asking how socially constructed memory contributes to the
mythologizing of the past, that is, how the identity of a small insular commu-
nity is shaped over time, and with what references to its history and that his-
tory’s associated texts, monuments, landscapes, games, songs, and other mne-
monic aids?37 This brief foray into Gotland’s constructed past suggests that all
of these means — and more (for example, rituals and celebrations on St Olaf ’s
day, July 29) — played their parts as members of the island’s population
selected, shaped, and valorised their visions of its past, but perhaps nowhere
more so than when its communal historical narrative, both the canonical Guta
saga text and its many unrecorded multiforms, was performed (a term meant to
include every occasion on which the story was read, told, referred to, or formed
the basis for further elaborations).38
At first blush, as many have noted, the word ‘memory’ tends to conjure a
sense of what individuals personally recall from their own lived experiences,
the remembrances, recollections, and so on of particular people; when we
transfer the idea of ‘memory’ from the individual to a broader social level, to
a Halbwachian sense of ‘collective memory’, agency naturally continues to
matter. Who ‘remembers’ and what they ‘remember’ counts, especially when
such memories are given shape as narratives, plastic arts, rituals, and so on. By
reference to various objects of memory, Gotland’s ‘men of memory’, a term I
intend here in a non-technical sense to include all those who contributed to
the island’s proto-national narrative, gave their versions of Gotlandic history
37
Strelow, Cronica Guthilandorum, for example, makes elaborate allusions to the built
landscape and to island traditions: he notes and reproduces monuments commemorating calam-
ities (p. 171) and carefully records games and songs mocking Valdemar Atterdag before his con-
quest of the island in 1361, performances which he says were enacted everywhere throughout
the island (pp. 168–69). As Zachrisson, ‘The Queen of Mist and the Lord of the Mountain’,
p. 119, notes in her exploration of memory, folklore and landscape, the relationship between
the built and natural surroundings and those memories we ascribe to them by way of names,
events and narratives are both reciprocal and vital: ‘The immaterial and material memories give
landscape its character’.
38
One sense the degree to which Strelow himself recognized the importance of this point
when in his foreword, he quotes Psalm 78: ‘Jeg vil udøse mørck Tale om Ting fra gammel tiid
[v. 2]. den som vi hafue hørt oc vide | oc vore Fædre fortellede os [v. 3]’. (King James English
translation: ‘I will utter dark sayings of old [v. 2]: Which we have heard and known, and our
fathers have told us [v. 3].’)
sustenance, making plausible their projections of the island’s ‘memories’.39 But

as the treatment in Gotlandic tradition of Tidericus and the others at the time
of bubonic plague suggests, it was also possible for inconvenient or unpleasant
memories to be elided, an erasure behind which one suspects a studied act of
commission and thus oblivion of a different character than merely forgetting.40
In this sense, wilful forgetting can be viewed as simply another form of remem-
bering, or of actively constructing the past.
The synergy between Gotland’s ‘traditions’ (or to the extent that term is
occasionally conceived in popular imagination as static and fixed, one might
understandably prefer such dynamic terms as ‘cultural memory’)41 and the
goals of its ‘men of memory’ was clearly profound. The Gotlandic history that
synergy has bequeathed to us provides a valuable lesson in how ‘memory stud-
ies’ may in time finally lead to a realization of ‘tradition studies’.42
39
The matter of agency, that is, whether Halbwach’s notion of collective memory is of the
group or one shaped for the group by active tradition bearers within the group, has been an
object of debate almost since the beginning. See the discussion and review of critical theories in
Wertsch, ‘The Narrative Organization of Collective Memory’.
40
Memory studies sometimes use a ‘leaky bucket’ analogy, in which the originally com-
plete storehouse of information is drained over time of its contents; on this concept, see the
review in Hermann, ‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past’, pp. 288–90.
41
Cf. the comment by Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 34, rejecting what he takes
to be the usual understanding of tradition, but conceding that, ‘Gewiß läßt sich manches von
dem, was hier mit den Begriffen Erinnerungskultur oder kulturelles Gedächtnis beschreiben
wird, auch Tradition oder Überlieferung nennen’. One assumes that Assman has in mind some-
thing akin to the nineteenth century’s fondness for the analogy of tradition to a fossil found
in a field (and here I am especially thinking of Andrew Lang), rather than the view in modern
folklore that tradition is by definition a dynamic process, or as the view is sometimes phrased,
‘all tradition is change’.
42
Cf. the discussion of this idea, tradition research and traditions science in Bronner, ‘The
Meaning of Tradition’, who notes, ‘There is yet to be conceived a program in tradition studies
or traditionology. But there may well be one in the future if multidisciplinary efforts to engage
continuities and themes of culture grow further’.
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Constructing a Past to Suit the Present:
Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and
Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri
Gísli Sigurðsson
T
he 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. In the Middle Ages writing was gradually replacing
oral tradition in Western Europe as the storehouse of memory in the cultures
that were adopting Christianity and the technique of writing. Rather than try
to reconstruct a grand historical narrative from all the varied sources that have
come down to us, it may be advisable to scrutinize one of these texts, namely
Sturla Þórðarson’s (1214–84) version of Landnámabók (in which Sturla assem-
bles information and anecdotes about the first settlers in Iceland in the ninth
and tenth centuries and their families), in order to get a closer look at how the
shaping and reshaping of the past may have taken place through the quill of an
individual and his scribes. It is well known that stories about the past can reflect
identity, power, conflicts, honour, and status in the present.1 Sturla was active in
politics at the highest level with the king of Norway and it is therefore of special
interest to dwell in particular on the settlers whom Sturla describes in a royal
context: first, those who left Norway for Iceland as a result of fighting against
King Haraldr in Hafrsfjörðr, second, those who were advised by King Haraldr
1
Hermann, ‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past’, Glauser, ‘Sagas of Ice
landers (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir’, Glauser, ‘The Speaking Bodies of Saga Texts’, and Vésteinn
Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age.
Gísli Sigurðsson (gislisi@hi.is) is a Research Professor in the Folklore Department at the Árni
Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, University of Iceland.
176 Gísli Sigurðsson
to go to Iceland, and third, those who fled Haraldr’s tyranny in Norway and
went to Iceland. Looking at stories about these people, their genealogies, areas
where they settled, and how they are linked up with others, down to the writing
present of Sturla, can throw light on identities and ideas that the text conveys,
beyond the possible historical information that it may (or may not) contain.
Problems in Determining Historicity

The written texts from medieval Iceland contain varied reflections of the oral
memories of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries about what mod-
ern scholarship has often discussed as the political unrest in Norway, culmi-
nating in the efforts of Haraldr hárfagri to unite Norway under his kingship,
with the sea-battle in Hafrsfjörðr (dated to 872 in many annals) as a decisive
moment in the narratives.2
Many chieftains and free men are said to have left Norway in connection
with Haraldr’s rise to power, moving to the Norse colonies in the British Isles/
Ireland, and, ultimately, to Iceland, where they established a new society. The
society in Iceland has often been portrayed by historians as a reaction to the
growing royal power in Norway, with chieftains getting together in the new
country as equals and forming a new societal order.3 Different perspectives on
this history are reflected in the preserved texts, not least because some of them
are primarily written for domestic purposes in Iceland, whereas others were at
least partly put together with export to Norway in mind.4 A possible example
of this is that Snorri Sturluson’s (1178/79–1241) Heimskringla differs from
comparable chapters of the early texts on the Norwegian kings Ágrip (c. late
twelfth century) and Fagrskinna (c. 1220) by having an explanatory chapter on
how independent chieftains left Norway because of Haraldr.5 Another exam-
ple of different viewpoints is that Heimskringla does not have any reference
to confrontations between royal rulers in Norway and Skallagrímr’s family —
who left Norway in order to settle in Iceland as is related in the domestically
orientated family saga named after Egill Skallagrímsson.6
2
Titlestad, ‘Forskerne og sagaene’.
3
Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘Myter om Harald hårfager’, p. 597.
4
Whaley, ‘A Useful Past’, pp. 174–84.
5
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, i, p. 117–18.
6
Baldur Hafstað, Die Egils saga und ihr Verhältnis, pp. 67–92.
Constructing a Past to Suit the Present 177
It is well known that the medieval texts represent enormous problems when
it comes to determining their historical authenticity. Oral memory about the
distant past is likely to reflect contemporary interests and current thinking at
any given time.7 A particular example could be the ideas people in the thir-
teenth century have about the size of the original settlements in Iceland and
kingship in Norway. Thus the size of settlements may vary as a reflection of disa-
greements about land boundaries in the present (as in the different information
about the size of Skallagrímr’s settlement in Styrmir’s version of Landnámabók
[according to Melabók] and Egils saga — Egils saga is in agreement with what
Sturla says in his version of Landnáma, that is, both Egils saga and Sturla
describe Skallagrímr’s landnám as larger than the size given by Styrmir),8 and
kings of the past may be portrayed as kings are expected to be in the thirteenth
century.9 The ‘problem’ (that is, if it is a problem at all) is that tradition can and
does also preserve some historical information. In the case of Iceland and the
Norse texts, it is very difficult to determine the level of historicity because there
are only a few contemporary sources with which to compare the written reflec-
tions of oral memory. It is, for example, obvious that the combined chronol-
ogy of the texts contains conflicting information, and the information cannot
therefore be coordinated in all details — even though the overall chronology is
comparable with what archaeology and other sources tell us about the Viking
Age and the human settlement of the North Atlantic.10
A View of the Past from the Present

Rather than try to solve all the problems which the texts present from the
viewpoint of actual history, it is advisable to analyse them all in their own
right, as the different written reflections of oral memory that most of them
are: reflections of oral memory from among different families and groups of
people, almost exclusively in different parts of Iceland but also to some extent
from other parts of the Norse/Gaelic world as well. From that angle it may be
said that the battle in Hafrsfjörðr and Haraldr hárfagri’s rise to power as the
first king of a united Norway are remembered as very important for the politi-
7
Goody, The Logic of Writing, pp. 127–70, Goody and Watt, ‘The Consequences of Lit
eracy’, pp. 32–33.
8
Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. lx–lxii.
9
Ármann Jakobsson, Í leit að konungi.
10
Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition, pp. 253–60.
cal development and movements of people from Norway and the Norse colo-
nies in the British Isles and Ireland to Iceland. And this ‘social memory’ (or
could it be ‘individual memory’?) is cherished and/or emphasized around the
same time as Snorri and other chieftains in Iceland were trying to gain social
status in Norway in the thirteenth century — the political development in
Iceland ultimately led the chieftains to swearing allegiance to the Norwegian
king in 1262–64.
During the time of political unrest and societal reshaping in Iceland in the
thirteenth century, people in leading roles, as well as others, are bound to have
had different interests and ideas about how they wanted things to develop
for their own social and economic benefit — as is always the case during the
ever-changing times. It might thus be of interest to analyse a text that was put
together by an individual who had a stake in this development and see if and
how his contemporary interests may be reflected in his ideas and in the infor-
mation he chooses to mediate about the past: Sturla Þórðarson’s Landnáma.
Sturla was an active man of law and politics, and was elected lawspeaker in
1251. He fell out of favour with the king but managed to change that after the
death of King Hákon in 1263. Eventually Sturla became a royally appointed
lawman in 1272–82. He was also a prolific writer, poet, and storyteller and
seems thus to have received an education similar to that of his uncle, Snorri
Sturluson. Sturla died at the age of seventy in 1284. In his time, he wrote both
on contemporary domestic affairs in his Íslendinga saga, now preserved as an
integral part of the Sturlunga-collection, and a saga on King Hákon the Old
in 1264–65, commissioned by King Magnús of Norway — whose saga Sturla
also wrote. In addition, Sturla is one of the suspected writers of Kristni saga
and some of the Family sagas;11 most recently, Sturla has been advocated as
the author of Njáls Saga because of structural and thematic similarities in that
work to Íslendinga saga.12
Landnáma, or the Book of Settlements, is a term that is applied to different
versions of a work that had probably been in progress in some form since Ari fróði
and Kolskeggr fróði started to compile information on the settlement of Iceland
in the early twelfth century. We know for certain of one lost version compiled by
Styrmir fróði in the early thirteenth century, and then Sturla Þórðarson probably
put his version together in his sixties, during the last decade of his life. Sturla’s
book, or Sturlubók as it is called, was known and used by the compiler of the other
11
Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Sturla Þórðarson’.
12
Einar Kárason, ‘Njálssaga og Íslendingasaga Sturlu Þórðarsonar’.
main preserved medieval version, Haukr Erlendsson (d. 1331), in the beginning

of the fourteenth century. Haukr’s manuscript, called Hauksbók, is preserved but
Sturlubók is only known through a seventeenth-century copy (AM 107 fol.) of a
vellum manuscript from around 1400 (which burned in Copenhagen in 1728),
believed, however, to be close to Sturla’s original. Other and fragmentary (and/or
not so relevant for the present purposes) versions are Melabók, compiled around
1300 or early in the fourteenth century with the lost Styrmir’s book as a source
but only fragmentarily preserved in script from the fifteenth century, and two
seventeenth-century versions: Skarðsárbók and Þórðarbók.13
Both Sturla’s and Haukr’s versions reflect their personal interests and ideas
about the past. The information they mediate is potentially very sensitive because
it has legal significance in land claims. It must have been of great economic value
for landowners to have their ideas about what belonged to their farm confirmed
by the written witness or memory of the original landnám. Unless we have con-
flicting evidence (as in the case of Skallagrímr’s landnám, for instance), we have
no way of telling for certain if there were indeed some disagreements or bend-
ing of the ‘historical’ oral evidence in the writing process (possible bending and
adjustments could and/or would, of course, also have taken place at the oral
stage). What we do know is that it is clearly important for the compilers of their
personal Landnámas to include contemporary families and genealogical infor-
mation with a focus on their own families (Sturla’s and Haukr’s respectively —
the same is true of Melabók) in order to link them up with important individuals
of some political and cultural significance in the past and present. This informa-
tion, how it is presented and how individuals are linked with each other as well
as with the contemporaries of the compilers, can be very illuminating when it
comes to squeezing out ideas about the past as well as contemporary interests
that may lie behind these written works. Who is said to be with whom, and who
is said to be against whom? And also: who is not mentioned at all? ‘The silence
can be very informative even though it cannot be relied upon in every detail’, as
Einar Ól. Sveinsson is reported to have said in the oral tradition of the kaffistofa
(cafe) at Árnastofnun (the Arnamagnean Institute).
Political Situation in the Thirteenth Century

Two family-based power blocks dominate the political scene in Iceland in the
thirteenth century: the Sturlungs (the family of Snorri and his nephew, Sturla)
and the Haukdælir (the family of several bishops and the Norwegian king’s
13
Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. l–lii, cxliv–cxlviii.
political favourite, Earl Gissur Þorvaldsson (1208–68)). Individuals who came

from one of these two ‘parties’ held the position of the lawspeaker/lawman in
Iceland for more than a century 1181–1282.14 During this age of the Sturlungs
and Haukdælir (usually just referred to as the Age of the Sturlungs), the rela-
tions with Norway and the king were extremely important. In the 1220s, Snorri
did his best to gain royal friends in Norway but backed the wrong candidate for
the throne (Earl Skúli) and thus fell out of favour — he was finally executed on
king Hákon’s orders in the cellar of his Reykholt home by Gissur and his men in
the evening of 23 September 1241.
This is the political background in Sturla’s mind when he, as a lawman in
his sixties, starts making a version of Landnámabók — with his unmistaken
personal mark on it. Gissur, the king’s favourite and the former arch-enemy of
the Sturlungs, had recently died at the age of sixty. Gissur and Sturla had tried
to make peace through the arranged marriage of their children on 18 October
1252, but the wedding feast at Flugumýri turned into a tragedy when those who
had not had ‘a seat at the negotiating table’ arrived late in the night and set fire
to the houses, so memorably described by Sturla himself in his Íslendinga saga.
Gissur’s wife and the groom were caught in the blaze but Gissur and Ingibjörg,
Sturla’s daughter, survived.
When Sturla sets to have his own version of the past written in Landnámabók,
he is a survivor who has finally gained the much sought-after royal favour (Earl
Gissur died in 1268 and Sturla was appointed lawman in 1272) — the quest for
which had brought great harm to Sturla’s closest family. Bearing this in mind,
it is only natural that Sturla follows in the footsteps of his uncle, Snorri, in
Heimskringla by being preoccupied with the rise of royal power in Norway as a
factor in the settlement process of Iceland (see above). Sturla thus both remem-
bers settlers who took part in the battle in Hafrsfjörðr and left Norway after
Haraldr’s victory there, and settlers who generally disliked or opposed/con-
fronted Haraldr’s tyranny and left as a result. These individuals are either said
to have gone to Scotland, the Scottish Isles and Ireland, or all the way to Iceland
— sometimes after a stopover in the British Isles and Ireland. This information
can be analysed in order to look for some family pattern and perhaps also some
settlement pattern within Iceland.
It is often said that Sturla may have had a vision of the complete his-
tory of Iceland from the beginning to his own time through his work on
Landnámabók, possibly some Family Sagas, Kristni saga, and Íslendinga saga
14
Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition, p. 61.
in the Sturlunga-collection.15 If that history is all regarded as a narrative entity

(reminiscent perhaps of Pernille Hermann’s reading of the papar-story in Ari
fróði’s Íslendingabók),16 it becomes possible to read the story in the beginning
of Landnámabók (SH 8)17 about the revolt of Hjörleifr’s slaves, who flee out
to the Westmen Islands after having killed their master, as a prelude to the
grand narrative about the people of Iceland. The slaves are haunted down in
the Islands by Hjörleifr’s foster brother, Ingólfr, who has them all killed. The
memory of the fate of these slaves may well be a reflection of the story about the
people who revolt against their master in Norway, Haraldr hárfagri, and flee
out to the island of Iceland where at first the long and strong arm of the royal
power cannot reach them — as is demonstrated in unsuccessful royal missions
to Iceland in the early period. Much later the kings’ men hunt down the author
of this historical view, Snorri Sturluson, and have him killed — like Hjörleifr’s
slaves had been killed for their disobedience many centuries before. Disobeying
the king in Norway puts individuals in Iceland in a similar social position (from
the Royal standpoint) as the fleeing slaves in the Westmen Islands had in the
eyes of Ingólfr.
Thinking about the settlement of Iceland along these lines was by no means
universal within Iceland, as we read in Ari fróði’s Íslendingabók. Ari does not
hint at chieftains fleeing royal power. Rather he describes emigrants who
were seeking new and better lands and had to pay a special emigrant tax to
the king who feared that Norway would be emptied.18 In Haukr’s version of
Landnámabók, we also read (H 294) that King Haraldr laid out rules about
how big an individual landnám could be in Iceland. Both notions fit poorly
with the idea about independent chieftains fleeing Haraldr’s power and setting
up a new free society on the remote island of Iceland. Perhaps we are looking at
a tendency in the Sturlung-family to construct a political confrontation in the
past in order to provide a parallel for the present?
15
Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Sturla Þórðarson’.
16
Hermann, ‘Who Were the Papar?’.
17
References to Landnáma are all to chapter numbers in Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob
Benediktsson, S referring to Sturlubók and H referring to Hauksbók.
18
Íslendingabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, pp. 5–6; Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘Myter om Harald
hårfager’, p. 597.
Haraldr’s Opponents in the Battle of Hafrsfjörðr

The first person in Landnámabók who is said to have opposed Haraldr in
Hafrsfjörðr is Bálki in Hrútafjörðr in the northwest. This information is only
supplied here by Haukr (H 45), who tells us that Bálki was the great-grandfa-
ther of the Family Saga hero, Björn hítdælakappi. Haukr also makes an effort to
link Bálki with Skallagrímr, a well-known opponent of King Haraldr. It is note-
worthy that Sturla does not make these connections even though the episode is
among stories about people related to Skallagrímr. Several chapters later, Sturla
(S 166) finally mentions Bálki’s opposition to King Haraldr but does not link
Bálki’s family with anyone in particular.
The second opponent is Hallvarðr súgandi of the Westfjords. His role
against Haraldr is mentioned both by Sturla (S 144) and Haukr (H 114). Both
tell a story (S 146, H 117) of a certain Helgi, grandson of his namesake ‘the
lean’ (Helgi magri); that he sought shelter at Hallvarðr’s but that it brought no
luck to him or to his son.
Önundr tréfótr is said to have fought against King Haraldr (S 161, H 130).
He later went to Iceland, where he settled in the uninviting place called
Kaldbakur (Coldback) in the northwest — which compares poorly with the
lush fields of Norway in a verse attributed to Önundr in Grettis saga.19 Önundr
is symbolically one-legged, and we read that his sister stayed in Norway (per-
haps indicating the ‘family leg’ which Önundr lost in the battle in Hafrsfjörðr),
and had a great future: the sister was the great-grandmother of King Óláfr the
Saint, whereas in Iceland, Önundr was the grandfather of Hrefna, the wife
of Kjartan, the male hero of Laxdœla saga (who was baptized by King Óláfr
Tryggvason in Niðarós and killed in an ambush in Iceland just after the Easter
Lenten season — which may have weakened him, thus making it possible for
his opponents to kill him), and the great-grandfather of Grettir the strong.
Thus, St Óláfr and Grettir are from the same generation of the same family: one
is a shining king in Norway and the other is the most tragic of saga heroes, who
ends his life in exile on the island of Drangey, hunted down by emissaries of the
judicial system. Sturla is often thought to have written separately on Grettir but
it is unlikely that the preserved Grettis saga was composed in Sturla’s time.20
Perhaps these two parallel family fortunes are meant to be read together as a
19
Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, p. 22: ‘[…] kröpp eru kaup, ef hrep-
pik | Kaldbak, en ek læt akra’.
20
Örnólfur Thorsson, ‘Grettir sterki og Sturla lögmaður’.
comment on the fate of people in Iceland and Norway respectively. That pos-
sibility might even call for a rereading of the travels of their respective half-
brothers, King Haraldr harðráði and Þorsteinn drómundr, both of whom go on
adventurous journeys to Mikligarðr/Constantinople.
A fourth opponent of Haraldr hárfagri in Hafrsfjörðr is Þrándr mjöksiglandi,
brother of Eyvindr austmaðr, the father of Helgi magri (S 378, H 333). Þrándr
had to flee Norway and came out late in the settlement period (he spent time
in the Hebrides and fought a just case for his inheritance in Norway which
led eventually to a royal hit man, Þorgeir hvinverski, being sent on an unsuc-
cessful mission to Iceland). These events are told in great length in Grettis saga
— which remains silent about the information in Landnámabók that Sturla in
Hvammr, the father of the Sturlunga-clan, was a descendent of Þrándr’s helper
in the case, whose sons fled to Iceland and sought shelter at Helgi magri’s in
Eyjafjörðr, in the central north. Grettis saga also makes all these four opponents
of Haraldr from Hafrsfjörðr (Bálki, Hallvarðr, Önundr, and Þrándr) friends
and comrades in Viking activities before they move to Iceland — which is sug-
gestive of how free the storytellers and writers were in manipulating the mate-
rial at hand.21
One more character in Landnámabók is said to have opposed Haraldr in
Hafrsfjörðr: Sæmundr suðureyski (the Hebridean). Sæmundr and Ingimundr
(nicknamed gamli, a settler in Vatnsdalr in the northwest of Iceland) are
comrades who return to Norway from a viking voyage when the battle in
Hafrsfjörðr is brewing (S 179, H 145). Ingimundr wants to support the king
but Sæmundr is against that. After the battle, Sæmundr goes to Iceland, settles
in Skagafjörðr in the central north and becomes the forefather of important
and influential people, such as Víga-Barði, Guðmundr ríki, and Sæmundr fróði
(S 187–88, H 154–55). Sæmundr suðureyski is also linked to a certain Höfða-
Þórðr of an exceptional family, a descendant of the legendary Danish king,
Ragnarr loðbrók, and married to a granddaughter of the King of Ireland. Þórðr
and his wife have nineteen children, so one would think that almost every
one in thirteenth-century Iceland could establish a familial link with them.
Strangely enough, Sturla only makes a note of his own paternal uncles being
their descendants, adding a link to Þórðr gellir. Haukr continues that Karlsefni,
who found Vínland the good, was the grandson of Þórðr gellir, before Haukr
traces the family line down to his own father (S 208, H 175).
21
Guðni Jónsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. xvii–xix.
From the family connections which Sturla makes to the opponents of

Haraldr in Hafrsfjörðr, one can see that he is proud to count some of them
among his forefathers — but he also makes it clear that either their opposition
was based on a just cause or that among the other descendants, one can find
many influential individuals who were on good terms with the royal line in
Norway (Guðmundr ríki and Sæmundr fróði’s family at Oddi in the south in
particular). This can be read as an indication that the ‘sins’ of the forefathers
should not be held against them. The entire episode about Önundr tréfótr can
be read as a comment on the people in Iceland versus the people in Norway.
Two branches of the same family fared differently in their respective coun-
tries. Representatives of the Icelandic ‘leg’ both managed to make peace with
representatives of the royal line in Norway (like the pact between King Óláfr
Tryggvason and Kjartan — whose practicing Christianity (which he received
from the king) after returning home may have weakened him to the point of
making him vulnerable in Iceland), or else they met their tragic death in exile
on an island, like Grettir.
Haraldr’s Supporters Who Settle in Iceland

For comparative purposes, it is useful to look at those who are remembered in
Landnámabók as having supported King Haraldr before they emigrated and
settled in Iceland. Ingimundr gamli has already been mentioned. He was the
son of feuding families of a hersir and an earl in Norway. His pagan beliefs
are emphasized and he acts out a land-sanctioning ritual when he arrives in
Iceland, travelling from Borgarfjörðr in the southwest to his divinely allotted
settlement at Hof in Vatnsdalr in the northwest. Ingimundr also gives King
Haraldr the first two polar bears that come from Iceland to Norway and
receives a ship loaded with timber in return. The region around Ingimundr is
named after these two cubs, or húnar (Húnaflói and Húnaþing), which shows
how significant this is meant to be (S 179, H 146). Strangely enough, in spite of
Ingimundr’s obvious social status, neither Sturla nor Haukr make any effort to
build important family relations around him.
Hrollaugr, son of Earl Rögnvaldr, was a great friend of Haraldr who advises
Hrollaugr to go to Iceland where he settles in the area around Hornafjörðr in
the southeast. Hrollaugr brings with him royal presents, a sword, an ale-horn,
and a golden ring, all of which belong to or were seen by later friends and men
of status, including a son of Síðu-Hallr and Kolskeggr fróði (S 310, H 270 —
note that H leaves out the reference to Kolskeggr and says that Haraldr sent the
gifts). Síðu-Hallr’s family is associated with the coming of Christianity around

the year 1000 and Kolskeggr is cited as the source about the settlements in
the Eastfjords, probably in Ari fróði’s time, that is, in the early twelfth century
(S 287, H 248).22
Hrollaugr is of an exceptionally high social status and it is therefore not sur-
prising that we hear about important people being connected to him, such as
Guðný, the mother of the Sturlung-brothers, the Bishops Magnús Einarsson,
Jón Ögmundarson, and Magnús Gissurarson, as well as Sæmundr fróði and Ari
fróði (S 310, H 270). Haukr Erlendsson adds the brother of Magnús, Þorvaldr,
the father of Gissur. Interestingly Haukr has Gissur in two other family lines
(H 109, H 192), whereas Sturla does not mention him at all in any of his
genealogies.
Uni (who is nicknamed danski and óborni in H), is the son of Garðar, who
was among the first who found Iceland and was in Skjálfandi in the northeast.
Uni goes to Iceland on Haraldr hárfagri’s advice (S 284, H 245) and has plans
to rule the country — with a promise from Haraldr to become his Earl. Sturla
describes how Uni claims land in the east and how everyone turns against him
when his plans are discovered. Uni then moves with a band of twelve anon-
ymous men, and comes to a farm in Skógarhverfi in the southeast, where he
begets a child with farmer Leiðólfr’s daughter. When Uni refuses to shoulder
his responsibilities, Leiðólfr kills him and his followers (immediately east of
Kirkjubæjarklaustr). Thus, the entire mission is ridiculed and Uni is slaugh-
tered with his men in a fashion similar to Hjörleifr’s slaves — with no one to
take up revenge, as Uni’s son was paradoxically descended from a grandfather
who had killed his father.
Of special interest in the story about Uni is the part of Iceland which his
father, Garðar, and Uni himself encircle: from Skjálfandi in the northeast to
the farm where Uni ends his life in the southeast. This area marks the part of
Iceland where the sources do not record any memories about settlers who are
said to have left Norway because they did not like Haraldr hárfagri’s rule (with
the exception of Vopnafjörðr, see below). But even so, Uni’s attempt is met with
utter contempt and ridicule in the areas he intended to rule in Haraldr’s name.
In addition to these three above, Ingimundr, Hrollaugr, and Uni, two more
settlers are remembered as having a specially close or friendly contact with King
Haraldr in Norway. One is Þórðr Víkingsson, who is believed to have been
Haraldr’s son. He settles in the Westfjords (S 140 H 112) but his social status
22
Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. cvi–cx.
is not confirmed with any story or other signs. Sturla however makes a very
demonstrative claim to being his descendent by tracing Þórðr’s line carefully to
Hvamm-Sturla (his own grandfather) — a claim ignored by Haukr. Another
is Þórólfr fasthaldi who had a confrontation with Earl Hákon in Norway.
Sturla writes that King Haraldr advised Þórólfr to go to Iceland, where he set-
tles in the northernmost part of the Westfjords (S 154). Earlier, Sturla has said
(S 115) that Þórólfr’s granddaughter became the second wife of Geirmundr
heljarskinn, one of the most noble of settlers who had fled Haraldr’s reign (see
below). Haukr does not mention the reference to Haraldr in this context.
Those Who Flee Norway to Avoid Haraldr’s Reign

A large group of people is said to have left Norway because Haraldr had risen to
power. Some feared that they would lose their status; others disliked Haraldr’s
tyranny (ofríki) or got into trouble that involved the king and left as a result. The
foremost of all settlers in Iceland is said to be Geirmundr heljarskinn (S 112–16,
H 86–88), a local king’s son from Rogaland who returns to Norway from a
viking voyage after the battle of Hafrsfjörðr. Upon realising that his family and
friends had all lost out, he decided to leave for Iceland with a retinue of at least
three important men: the first, Úlfr skjálgi (S 122, H 94) marries the sister of
Helgi magri and among their descendants are the people of Reykjahólar (Ari,
who ended his life in Hvítramannaland or Írland et mikla, near Vínland the
Good, and Leifr son of Þjóðhildr and Eiríkr rauði). The second, Steinólfr lági
(S 116, H 88), becomes the forefather of Hrafn hlymreksfari (who was the first
to tell the story about Ari in Hvítramannaland) and Yngvildr, the wife of law-
speaker and priest Snorri Húnbogason (d. 1170). The third, Þrándr mjóbeinn,
is associated with the family at Reykjahólar and friend of the saga heroes Gísli
Súrsson and Kjartan Ólafsson in Laxdœla saga. Much later in Landnámabók
(S 233, H 199), Sturla takes the line from Þrándr through his daughter Þórarna
to Hvamm-Sturla.
Geirmundr settles first in Breiðafjörðr but later moves to the northern part
of the Westfjords. Sturla treats him with great respect, describes how wealthy
he was in running his multiple farms and how he travelled between them with
a throng of eighty men. Sturla ends however in mid-sentence when he starts
on Geirmundr’s children with his second wife. Haukr, on the other hand, tells
the entire story in a different manner and adds a little piece of information
about Geirmundr giving the farm Ballará (in the area where he first settled)
to the forefather of Páll the priest in Reykjaholt. The reference to Páll evokes
the memory of the feud between him and Hvamm-Sturla in the late twelfth
century. The peace agreement between the two set in motion the entire saga of
the Sturlungs — as it involved sending young Snorri Sturluson to be fostered in
Oddi by the mediator in the case, Jón Loftsson. Sturla has no reference to this
Páll in his work.
A story from Geirmundr’s childhood is also of great interest. His mother, the
queen, exchanges him for a better-looking child of her slave maid. Eventually,
the better family qualities become apparent in Geirmundr, so it can be said that
he is a man of royal status who is denied his birthright in Norway and has to
flee to Iceland where he ends his life as a rich man on the northwestern-most
and most barren part of the country — not unlike Önundr tréfótr, who came
one-legged to Iceland and whose ‘family leg’ that was left in Norway grew into
King Óláfr Haraldsson. Geirmundr’s significant role in the founding myth of
the people of Iceland can also be observed in the Sturlunga-collection which
starts with his story (Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns), followed by genealogies
that link him with many of the most important people in the country — clear
evidence of the multiple possibilities which people had in mediating the tradi-
tional material.23
The descendants of Björn buna, and in particular those of his son Ketill
flatnefr, form the single most influential group of people in the genealogies
(S 10–15, H 11–15). Ketill is leading the revolt as Landnámabók says that
Haraldr sent him to the British Isles in order to regain the Hebrides for the
king — which Ketill did but never sent any taxes back to Norway. Ketill’s chil-
dren later move on to Iceland and the pattern of their settlements and of that
of their major allies also marks the area settled by people who are said to have
brought early Christianity to Iceland and shown opposition to King Haraldr:
Ketill, son of Jórunn (daughter of Ketill flatnefr), settles in Kirkjubæjarklaustr
in the southeast (where papar had been and pagans could not live, S 320,
H 280), Helgi bjóla Ketill’s son, on Kjalarnes in the southwest (S 14, H 14),
Björn austrœni (S 84, H 72) and Auðr djúpauðga are in the Breiðafjörðr area
(S 97, H 84) and Þórunn hyrna, daughter of Ketill and wife of Helgi magri, set-
tles in Eyjafjörðr in the central north where she gives birth to the first child in
the area en route to their future farm at Kristnes (S 218, H 184). Örlygr, son of
Hrappr son of Björn buna, comes with early Christianity as many of his cous-
ins, and eventually settles near Helgi bjóla on Kjalarnes (S 15, H 15).
23
Mitchell, ‘The Sagaman and Oral Literature’.
As a result of Egils saga, Skallagrímr’s family is one of the better-known

opponents of King Haraldr. Sturla tells how Haraldr had Skallagrímr’s brother
unjustly killed and how they took revenge by killing at least three important
men and many others before taking refuge on the island of Iceland. Judging
from the Icelandic account, it is noteworthy, as already mentioned, that none
of this is recounted in the kings’ sagas proper. Not only does Sturla’s account
follow Egils saga here in defining the size of Skallagrímr’s settlement (S 29–30),
thus differing from the lost Styrmisbók (as has been deduced from Melabók,
see above), but the relevant page in Hauksbók has been taken out of the manu-
script at an early stage and its content is thus lost without a trace in any younger
manuscripts.24 The conflicting information and the lost evidence both indicate
the sensitivity of the knowledge and how potentially important it may have
been for those concerned to gain control of the written medium in order to
permanently construct a past that suited the present.
Several less noteworthy settlers are referred to as having fled from Haraldr’s
rule, as Sturla moves west and to the Westfjords in his accounts. Those who
have not already been mentioned in the northwest can be conveniently assem-
bled as follows:
–– Additional Opponents of Haraldr in the Northwest
–– Þórólfr mostrarskegg on Þórsnes in Breiðafjörðr, very pagan (S 85, H 73).
–– Örn, related to Geirmundr heljarskinn, in Arnarfjörðr and later Eyjafjörðr
(S 134, H 106, S 221, H 187).
–– Ánn rauðfeldr, son of Grímr loðinkinni, married to an Irish Earl’s daughter,
in Arnarfjörðr (S 135, H 107).
–– Dýri, in Dýrafjörðr (S 139–H 111 does not mention Haraldr)
–– Örlygr, goes to Geirmundr and receives Aðalvík from him, later he gets
Slétta and Jökul(s)firðir as well (S 155, H 125).
–– Hella-Björn in Skjalda-Bjarnarvík by Geirólfsgnúpr (S 156, H 126).
–– Eyvindr, Ófeigr and Ingólfr, sons of Herröðr, all in their respective fjords
(S 159, H 128).
East of Þórunn hyrna and Helgi magri in Eyjafjörðr, there are no accounts
of any fugitives from King Haraldr’s tyranny until Sturla describes the settle-
24
Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, p. 69, n 8.
ment in Vopnafjörðr. Eyvindr vápni comes to Krossavík in Vopnafjörðr (S 267,

H 229) and gives his nephew Steinbjörn körtr (whose father had been killed by
King Haraldr’s men) the farm Hof in Vopnafjörðr (S 268, H 230). Eyvindr’s
foster-brother, Hróaldr bjóla, settles in the next valley, Selárdalr (S 269, H 231).
Steinbjörn is the grandfather of the first wife of Þorkell Geitisson, a well-known
saga character who lives in Krossavík in the sagas,25 and whose chief opponent
comes from the family that seized the farm at Hof from Steinbjörn because of
his debts. Interestingly enough, that family is not associated with trouble result-
ing from Haraldr but from Earl Hákon Grjótgarðsson (as some other settlers
are). In the sagas, Þorkell, on the other hand, has to seek support all the way to
Eyjafjörðr, where he marries his second wife in order to secure his position in
his home area and in national politics. Perhaps his domestic isolation can be
read in connection with the memory about Haraldr-fugitives in Vopnafjörðr in
such a way that those who had shown opposition to Haraldr were thought to
be in a league of their own in Vopnafjörðr, as they were surrounded by people in
the east who did not have such background in their families.
* * *
Among the settlers in the east and southeast, there are no more references to
Haraldr’s tyranny. It is not until Sturla’s account comes to the central south
that we read about Haraldr’s rule again. King Haraldr executed the husband of
a certain Ásgerðr, who leaves for Iceland with their children and her brother,
Þórólfr (S 341, H 299). They settle around Markarfljót, and Þórólfr is said to
have fostered the father of Burnt Njáll (S 342, H 300).
The main settler in the Rangárvellir-area is Ketill hœngr of the Hrafnista-
family — as is Skallagrímr. Sturla (S 344, H 303, following Egils saga) says
that Ketill settled all the land between Þjórsá and Markarfljót, which is (as in
the case of Skallagrímr in the Borgarfjörðr area) much more land than can be
deduced from other sources.26 Ketill decides to live at Hof and is thereby asso-
ciated with paganism as the place name refers to a pagan temple. Ketill had
tried to help Þórólfr against King Haraldr but did not get there in time before
Þórólfr was killed and took revenge instead by burning the sons of Hildiríðr
(interestingly, Egils saga only says that he killed them) who were responsible
for Haraldr’s actions — before taking refuge in Iceland with his wife, Ingunn.
The son of Ketill and Ingunn, Hrafn, becomes the first lawspeaker in Iceland.
25
Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition, pp. 161–84.
26
Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Formáli’, pp. lxii–lxiii, and pp. 346–47 (note).
Ketill’s high social status and just cause in taking revenge after Þórólfr is thus
emphasized by selecting his son as the first lawspeaker. Noteworthy charac-
ters in the area are traced to Ketill: Ormr sterki Stórólfsson is his grandson,
and Ketill is the great grandfather of the poet Vetrliði (who was killed by
Þangbrandr the priest (whom Sturla’s readers probably knew as a missionary
from King Óláfr Tryggvason) because of a degrading poem which Vetrliði had
composed), and the great-great-grandfather of Gunnar á Hlíðarenda in Njáls
saga. Most of the feud and family tragedy in that saga is played out among the
descendants and extended relations of Ketill, whose family saga thus matches
that of Skallagrímr: Egils saga. Ketill’s opposition to the king and the emphasis
on his paganism, further strengthened by Veturliði’s poem, can be read as play-
ing a role in the downfall of the best-known characters in Njáls saga, Gunnar
and Njáll, both of whom are associated through their families in Sturlubók with
the opposition to Haraldr. Their ultimate defeat or ragnarök in the burning of
Njáll at Bergþórshváll marks the end of the pagan era in Iceland and the dawn-
ing of the new power structures that come with Christianity, introduced by the
King of Norway.
Two other major opponents of Haraldr come to the Rangárvellir region:
Þorsteinn Ásgrímsson with his brother Þorgeir and their aunt, Þórunn
(S 356–57, H 314), and Flosi Þorbjarnarson (S 359, H 315). Þorsteinn had
avenged his father by burning the men who King Haraldr had sent to execute
Þorsteinn’s father because of the father’s refusal to pay tax. Flosi, on the other
hand, had killed three of Haraldr’s men (sýslumenn) before moving to Iceland.
Sturla associates Flosi with Sæmundr fróði — and Haukr adds Sæmundr to
Þorsteinn’s family in his version. Þorgeir, Þorsteinn’s brother, buys land from
Hrafn, the lawspeaker, son of Ketill hœngr, and Þorsteinn receives his land from
Flosi who was there before them.
Again, opposition to King Haraldr and revenge by fire are strong themes
associated with settlers in the Rangárvellir region. The link through Ketill
hængr with Skallagrímr’s family further strengthens the ideas of opposition
to royal power and evokes the connection with the Sturlungs and how Snorri
may have identified with how Egill’s family confronted the king in Norway in
Egils saga. Perhaps some similar themes are being played with in the main char-
acters of Njáls saga, who are strongly linked with the opposition to Haraldr
through their regional and family connections to Ketill hœngr and Ásgerðr and
Þórólfr, the settlers on the banks of Markarfljót. On a more generally thematic
level, the entire Njáls saga can be read as elaborating on themes in the episode
about Sighvatr rauði in Landnámabók (S 345–48, H 304–07) of honour, kill-
ing, women calling for revenge through arson, and reconciliation eventually
achieved through marriage27 — a reference evoked in the very first sentence of

Njáls saga.28
Finally, a few settlers west of Þjórsá and around Ölfusá are linked with the
opposition to Haraldr: Hásteinn, son of Earl Atli, flees from King Haraldr and
settles east of Stokkseyri (S 371, H 326). Haukr traces his family to Hásteinn
in Hauksbók. Hásteinn’s brother, Hallsteinn, comes to Iceland as well and set-
tles further west on Eyrarbakki (S 372, H 327). Two more arrive in the area
around Varmá: Ormr gamli, son of Earl Eyvindr, who was against Haraldr in
Hafrsfjörðr, settles east of the river (S 391), and Álfr egzki flees from Haraldr to
settle by Varmá (S 392, H 348). His nephew inherits the land and has a grand-
son who marries Bera, the daughter of Egill Skallagrímsson (Haukr makes a
point of linking Álfr here with the family of Bishop Ísleifr — which does not
interest Sturla).
Grímr, whose rich hersir-uncle had fled from Haraldr east to Jamtaland,
goes viking in the west, where he finds a wife in the Hebrides and finally settles
in Grímsnes in the south of Iceland (S 388, H 342). He does not live in peace
there for long, as Ketilbjörn, grandson of Earl Hákon Grjótgarðsson, comes
to the area late in the settlement period and settles Grímsnes further inland
from Grímr and lives at Mosfell. Sturla tells a similar story about Ketilbjörn
and his silver as is told about Egill in Egils saga, when he has retired to live
with his daughter on another Mosfell in Mosfellsdalr. Both men hide it, aided
by their slaves whom they kill afterwards.29 Ketilbjörn’s wealth comes straight
from Norway and he is the great ancestor of the main bishops’ family of the
Haukdælir (S 385, H 338) — whereas Egill is one of the ancestors of the
Sturlungs and his silver came from the King of England.
Those who know the region will realise that Sturla describes Ketilbjörn’s
landclaim as reaching into the land already settled by Grímr in the area
between Svínavatn and Höskuldslækr.30 Sturla does not press that point but
describes the arrival of Ketilbjörn’s halfbrother, Hallkell, who challenges Grímr
to a duel about Grímr’s land — and wins it. Hallkell is the father of Otkell, one
of the worst scoundrels in Njáls saga, justly killed by Gunnar Hámundarson
— as Sturla refers to him rather than mentioning his farm Hlíðarendi as he
does in S 344. Other descendants of Hallkell are also killed without any appar-
27
Baldur Hafstað, ‘Egils saga, Njáls saga, and the Shadow of Landnáma’, pp. 31–33.
28
Gísli Sigurðsson, ‘Njáls saga og hefðin sem áheyrendur þekktu’.
29
Baldur Hafstað, ‘Egils saga, Njáls saga, and the Shadow of Landnáma’, pp. 27–29.
30
Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, p. 387, n. 7 and p. 388, n. 1.
ent regret in Sturla’s text but the most noteworthy of his descendants, for the
present context, is probably Halldóra, the wife of Bishop Magnús Gissurarson
(S 389, H 343) — whom Sturla’s readers would immediately have recognised
as the paternal uncle of Earl Gissur Þorvaldsson. By his portrayal of Hallkell
and the family link with Otkell, Sturla manages to cast a dark shadow on the
contemporary descendants.
Haraldr’s Opponents and People from the British Isles

and Ireland in the Same Areas
Surveying the areas where Haraldr’s opponents are said to have settled in
Iceland, it is noteworthy that these coincide with the parts of the country
where Landnámabók tells of settlers coming from the British Isles and Ireland,
both of Norse and Gaelic family backgrounds — as summarized by Hermann
Pálsson in his Keltar á Íslandi. This is the area in the central south with the
eastern-most point at Kirkjubæjarklaustr east of Mýrdalsjökull, settled by the
son of Jórunn manvitsbrekka, daughter of Ketill flatnefr, and going clockwise
west and north to the settlement in Eyjafjörðr in the central north of Þórunn
hyrna (daughter of Ketill) and Helgi magri — with an extension to one set-
tlement south of Skjálfandi. The rest of the country is encircled around the
east by the coming of Garðar to Skjálfandi and his son Uni in the central east
and southeast, on a notoriously unsuccessful mission to rule the country in the
name of King Haraldr.
It is not immediately clear how that should be interpreted but it is neverthe-
less suggestive of some differences in cultural identities and ideas people may
have had about their origins — further strengthening the general idea of being
open to local and regional, even individual differences within Iceland rather
than to treat the entire country as a national cultural unity in the medieval
period.31 There is even the possibility that there is a historical reality behind
the information: those who were fleeing King Haraldr in Norway may have
identified with those who were coming to Iceland from the Norse settlements
in the British Isles and Ireland — remembered as bringing early Christianity
with them to Iceland.32
31
Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition, p. 113–14.
32
Gísli Sigurðsson, Gaelic Influence in Iceland.
Conclusions
Current thinking in memory studies would teach that a thirteenth-century
text about the tenth century should first be read as a source about its time of
construction before its historical content could or should be contemplated.
The general historicity of Landnámabók has, of course, been seriously ques-
tioned by earlier scholars of history,33 and no reader of Landnámabók fails to
observe how the different redactors gear the genealogies towards themselves. A
close reading of how Sturla Þórðarson frames his references to the opposition
to King Haraldr has, however, proved valuable in taking our thinking about
Landnámabók a step further.
Sturla is proud to link his family with royal adversaries of the past and
often makes a point about the just cause for which they were fighting. Perhaps
that should be read as his attempt to justify contemporary conflicts with the
Norwegian crown. He demonstrably avoids mentioning the name of his main
political adversary in the thirteenth century, Earl Gissur, who is mentioned
three times in Hauksbók. It is of meaningful interest that Sturla links well-
known bishops in Gissur’s family to King Haraldr and thereby to the coming of
Christianity and the royal favourites which they were in the thirteenth century.
In a very subtle and indirect way, he also ties Gissur’s family of bishops to noto-
rious bullies through the family of Ketilbjörn of Mosfell: Hallkell and Otkell
— the character of Otkell in Njáls saga being one of the most unethical foes in
the entire saga corpus.
Sturla delights in telling of unsuccessful royal missionaries in Iceland, such
as Uni. All through his narratives, he is also writing about characters who kill
those who rise up against their superiors, sometimes on remote islands, from
the slaves of Hjörleifr through the poet Vetrliði to Grettir the Strong. This
theme leads up to what must have been one of the most traumatic killing of that
kind in Sturla’s own experience: the execution of Snorri Sturluson.
When the stories in Landnámabók move into ‘Njála-land’ in the Rangárvellir
area, Sturla writes about the opponents of King Haraldr using fire to take
revenge in Norway before moving to Iceland, again evoking a theme that is fur-
ther exploited in Sturla’s description of the burning of Flugumýri in Íslendinga
saga — and, of course, in Njáls saga itself. This specifically links Sturla’s work
to the major themes of Njáls saga, and turns that saga into a parallel to Egils
saga by elaborating on the fate of the main characters of Njála who are linked
33
Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, Studier i Landnámabók.
to the opposition to King Haraldr, that is, Gunnar and Njáll, whose downfall is
partly brought about through the efforts of people Sturla ties to his own politi-
cal adversaries. The episode in Sturlubók on Sighvatr rauði can also be read as
a prelude to the entire Njáls saga — linking these two works together in an
extraordinary way.
Lastly, this analysis shows a settlement pattern by Haraldr’s opponents and
people from the British Isles and Ireland coming to the same areas in Iceland,
the outskirts of which are marked by the settlements of members of the family
of Ketill flatnefr: from Kirkjubæjarklaustr in the southeast around the west to
Eyjafjörðr in the central north. Behind this, there may well be notions of shared
identity among people in these parts of the country, based on some historical
reality in the past, which may have affected the fact that people remembered
their origins in the land in such a way.34
Reading Sturla’s version of Landnámabók as a possible construction of his
own vision of the past for purposes in the present thus reveals a highly person-
alized way of remembering the settlement era and presenting it in a fashion that
could elevate and secure Sturla’s political and social status in the present (and
in the future) — at the expense of his most influential political adversaries: the
Haukdælir family. Such a tendency should not come as a great surprise to stu-
dents of memory in oral cultures, where it is customary to use the tradition for
one’s own benefit in the present. How much more so when people have mas-
tered the art of writing and can fix their own version of the past and thus affect
the memory of the following generations in a new and unprecedented manner.
34
Gísli Sigurðsson, ‘The Saga Map of the British Isles’ (in press).
Works Cited
Primary sources
Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 7 (Reykjavík: Hið
Íslendingabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, in Íslendingabók. Landnámabók i, Íslenzk forn-
rit, 1 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968)
Landnámabók, in Íslendingabók Landnámabók ii, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, Íslenzk
fornrit, 1–2, 2 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968)
Secondary Studies
Ármann Jakobsson, Í leit að konungi: Konungsmynd íslenskra konungasagna (Reykjavík:
Háskólaútgáfan, 1997)
Baldur Hafstað, Die Egils saga und ihr Verhältnis zu anderen Werken des nordischen Mittel
alters (Reykjavík: Rannsóknarstofnun Kennaraháskóla Íslands, 1995)
—— , ‘Egils saga, Njáls saga, and the Shadow of Landnáma: The Work Methods of the
Saga Writers’, Sagnaheimur: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 80th birth
day, 26th May 2001, ed. by Ásdís Egilsdóttir and Rudolf Simek (Wien: Fassbaender,
2001), pp. 21–37
Einar Kárason, ‘Njálssaga og Íslendingasaga Sturlu Þórðarsonar’, Skírnir (2012), 289–302
Gísli Sigurðsson, Gaelic Influence in Iceland: Historical and Literary Contacts. A Survey
of Research, Studia Islandica, 46 (Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs, 1988); 2nd
edn with a new Introduction (Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press: 2000)
—— , The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method, trans. by
Nicholas Jones, Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, 2
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)
—— , ‘The Saga Map of the British Isles’, in Clerics, Kings and Vikings: Essays on Medieval
Ireland in Honour of Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ed. by Emer Purcell and others (Dublin: Four
Courts; in press)
Brepols, 2007), pp. 13–26
Goody, Jack, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge
Goody, Jack, and Ian Watt, ‘The Consequences of Literacy’, in Literacy in Traditional
Societies, ed. by Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 27–68;
orig. publ. in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5. 3 (1962–63), 304–45
Guðni Jónsson, ‘Formáli’, in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk
fornrit, 7 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag 1936), pp. v–civ
Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Sturla Þórðarson’, in Sturlustefna: Ráðstefna haldin á sjö alda
ártíð Sturlu Þórðarsonar sagnaritara 1984, ed. by Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir and Jónas
Kristjánsson, Rit, 32 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, 1988), pp. 9–36
Hermann, Pernille, ‘Concepts of Memory and Approaches to the Past in Medieval
Icelandic Literature’, Scandinavian Studies, 81. 3 (2009), 287–308
—— , Keltar á Íslandi (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 1996)
—— , ‘Who Were the Papar? Typological Structures in Íslendingabók’, in The Viking Age.
Ireland and the West. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Viking Congress, ed. by J. Sheehan and
D. Ó Corráin (Dublin: Four Courts, 2010), pp. 145–53
Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Formáli’, in Íslendingabók Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson,
Íslenzk fornrit, 1 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), pp. v–cliv
Mitchell, Stephen A., ‘The Sagaman and Oral Literature: The Icelandic Traditions of
Hjörleifr inn kvensami and Geirmundr heljarskinn’, in Comparative Research on Oral
Traditions: A Memorial for Milman Parry, ed. by John Miles Foley (Columbus, Ohio:
Slavica Publishers, 1987), pp. 395–423
Örnólfur Thorsson, ‘Grettir sterki og Sturla lögmaður’, in Samtíðarsögur: Forprent. Papers
delivered at the 9th International Saga Conference at Akureyri, 31 July–6 August 1994
(Reykjavík, 1994), pp. 907–33
Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, Studier i Landnámabók: Kritiska bidrag till den isländska fristats
tidens historia, Bibliotheca historica Lundensis 31 (Lund: Gleerup, 1974)
Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘Myter om Harald hårfager’, in Sagas and the Norwegian experience. 10th
International Saga Conference. Preprints. Trondheim, 3–9 August 1997 (Trondheim:
NTNU, 1997), pp. 597–610
Titlestad, Torgrim, ‘Forskerne og sagaene — hva sagaene forteller om slaget i Hafrsfjord’,
in Tverrfaglige perspektiver, 2, ed. by Marianne Nitter, AmS-Varia, 48, 53, 2 vols
(Stavanger: Universitetet i Stavanger, Arkeologisk museum, 2009–1111), ii, 15–22
Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age: Narration and Representation in the Sagas
of the Icelanders, trans. by Andrew Wawn (Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1998)
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Literature and Society, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 2000), pp. 161–202
Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old
Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases
Stefan Brink
W
e do not know the date, nor the exact year, but sometime between
1267 and 1282 the farmer Loden of Ulvkälla (OSw Aldrarkællda)
in the province of Härjedalen in northern Scandinavia was brought
to the general thing assembly (alþingi) in Sveg as a witness where he orally enu-
merated forty-one boundary markers between Norway and Sweden (‘landa
mære ok ramerki mellim Noregs konungs rikis ok Swia konongs’) as follows:
Hafuer j Straumj
or Straumi ok j Rafnasill
or Rafnasill ok j Raundar foss
or fossenom ok j Morbek
or Morbek ok a Breko ok j Glaumshofda
af hofdanom ok j Haframinni
or Haframinni ok j Sottnorer
or Sottnorum ok j Rossang
or Rosange ok j Runastein
or steininum ok j Hoadalenn
or Hoadale ok j Steinberget
[...].1
This is an astonishing amount of information this Loden remembered and
could enumerate when being asked for it. Was he unique for his time? As
the evidence will show below, obviously not. In this article I aim to discuss
1
AM 114a 4°; see appendix. For the translation: OSw. j = Eng. in, or = from, ok = and, a =at/on.
Stefan Brink (s.brink@abdn.ac.uk) is Sixth Century Professor of Scandinavian Studies, and

Director of The Centre for Scandinavian Studies, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
198 Stefan Brink
these individuals, who often had the ability to carry huge amounts of informa-
tion, who could remember events from the past, and who carried with them
knowledge of importance for the community in which they lived, individuals
who kept the traditions alive, men and women carrying a collective memory
of importance for an essentially oral society. They were indeed treasurers of
cultural memory. I will do this by referring to enactments in the Old Swedish
provincial laws and some medieval documents.
This list that Loden recited at the alþingi in Sveg (above) is obviously part
of an older witness letter, which was cited in a later document written around
1315–25 (AM 114a 4°),2 most probably, according to Anne Holtsmark, pro-
duced in the Norwegian royal chancellery,3 a document which seems to be a
compilation of many witness letters dealing with the boundary between Norway
and Sweden.4 The citation from the letter from Sveg lacks the preamble, as well
as the final dating and the sigillatio; these parts of the letter have been omitted
in the later compilation. Luckily, the compiler has copied the part where the
witnesses are mentioned, the men who were present at the alþingi:
Suoro þessir bøndr sem adr varo næmfndir, en half tylft an[n]ara bonda sannade
at sua hefuir fra forna ok nyiu faret tint ok talt mellim rikianna. Var her i hia herra
Jon erkibyskup, sira Sigwatr, sira Ellendr, Hakon bonde, Arne prestr, Loden pre-
str, Halluardr prestr Stecla, Þostæin i Tuneimmi, Eindridi rædesmanz son, Pall
Suri, Iwar Andresar son a Laini, Markus Eindrida son skuadru; ok aller bøndr af
Vedradalenom varo ok her vidr næmfndir […].5
The farmers mentioned before affirmed, and half a dozen other farmers confirmed
that so has from ancient time and new been and counted between the kingdoms.
Present were Sir Jon, Archbishop, Sir Siwatr, Sir Ellendr, Hakon farmer, Arne
priest, Loden priest, Halluardr prester (Stecla), Thorsteinn i Tunheim, Eindride
Redmansson, Páll Suri, Iwar Andresarson a Laini, Markus Eindridason skuadru,
and all the farmers from Vedradalinn were also here mentioned […].6
Present were hence the archbishop, Jon Raude, two noblemen, Sigvat and
Erland, the farmer Håkon, three clergymen, Arne, Loden, and Hallvard, and
2
Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, p. 151, with references.
3
Holtsmark, En tale mot biskopene, p. 137, n. 13.
4
An early discussion of this letter is Werlauff, ‘Grændsebestemmelse mellem Norge og
Sverrig’, pp. 147–92.
5
AM 114a 4°; Printed in Jämtlands och Härjedalens Diplomatarium, ed. by Löfqvist and
Swedlund, i. 1 p. 6 (no. 2).
6
My translation.
Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases 199
two other men. From this information it is possible to give an approximate

dating of the letter to 1267 to 1282, which were the years Jon Raude was the
archbishop of Nidaros.7
It can be assumed that the original witness letter was kept in Härjedalen,
probably at the thing site in Sveg in the landskista ‘the coffer of the province’,8
where important documents were kept, a letter which obviously seems to have
been lost already during the Middle Ages.9
This witness letter is part of an oral genre, which has been named deildevers
in Norwegian by Magnus Olsen, and rågångsramsor in Swedish by Carl Ivar
Ståhle, hence something like ‘boundary (line) chants or lists’,10 and they have
been highlighted in conjunction with memorial poetry. Recently, Olof Holm
has given an excellent analysis and discussion of this genre, especially as we find
several of them in the aforementioned compilation document from 1315–25,
dealing with the border between Norway and Sweden.11
In a letter from 1403 written in Särna in northwest Dalarna, commissioned
by bishop Sigurd of Hamar, a man, Tore Arnulvsson, enumerated in front of
the bishop and his retinue, thirteen boundary markers which defined the bor-
der between Norway and Sweden (‘endæmærki millum Noregis och Swerikis’):
Byriæde fyrst i Syf(u)erbergi,
som ligger nördaust fraa Herdalĳ,
theden och i Ra(u)dhamre,
och swa i Thoretzkiöl,
theden i Trondiklætt
och swa i Landerdeildor tiörn,
thedan i Landerdeildor åås,
och swa i Lidwaltzflötæ
[...].12
7
Several scholars have narrowed the dating down to c. 1269–72, see for refs Brink, Socken
bildning och sockennamn, p. 45 n. 92; cf. Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’,
pp. 137–40, 151–52.
8
See Petrini, ‘Landskista och häradskista’; for the province of Hälsingland, see Brink,
Sockenbildning och sockennamn, p. 383.
9
Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, p. 155.
10
Olsen, ‘Deildevers’, pp. 151–53.
11
Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’.
12
Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, p. 141; cf. Diplomatarium sue
canum, ed. by Liljegren and others, 371b.
200 Stefan Brink
Started first at Syf(u)erbergi, which lies northeast from Herdal, then to Raudhamre,
and then in Thoretzkiöl, then in Trondiklætt, and then in Landerdeildor tiörn, then
in Landerdeildor åås, and then in Lidwaltzflötæ, and so on.13
Afterwards, Tore and many other men gave oaths that these were the correct
boundary markers. The original letter was kept in the church in Lillhärdal,
which probably had a practical background. This letter, as well as other witness
letters describing the boundary between Norway and Sweden, was important
for defining the resource area for the farmers. Exploitations of the outback,
the outlying land, could sometimes be extensive and could lead to conflicts.
It was therefore important to know, and to eventually have it written in legal
documents, that one’s seters, forests, outlying meadows, forest pastures, lakes
for fishing, and so on were not contested assets. Hence, the background to this
and other letters was primarily to claim the rights to one’s forests, outfields and
pastures adjacent to the border.
We can see how this chant or list, which Tore Arnulvsson told the assem-
bled thing in Särna, was constructed. It comprises of lines beginning alternately
with thedan i (then in) and then on the next line, swa i (and then in), and then a
place name, line after line. This construction was obviously a mnemonic device.
The same structure is found in another witness letter, where the list was
recited by a Peter of Hjärtum parish in Bohuslän for the border between
Götaland and Norway (‘mellim Gautzlandz ok Noregs’):
þedan ok i Akersvik ok nordr æftir endelangom Aur
ok sua i Auru,
þædan ok i Aurfla
ok sua i Galgasaur,
þædan ok i Mosafotenn
ok sua i þristikill,
or þristikli ok i Skarnhellu,
or Skarnhellu ok i Tiorn,
þædan ok i Kiærndølo14
from there in Akersvik and north along the whole of Aur, and then in Auru, from
there then in Aurfla and then in Galgasaur, from there then in Mosafotenn, and
then in þristikill, from þristikli then in Skarnhellu, from Skarnhellu then in Tiorn,
from there in Kiærndølo15
13
My translation.
14
Cited after Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, p. 147. Peter’s list is
found in the same compilation from 1315–25.
15
My translation.
And there are many other similar lists, built up in the same mnemotechnic
way.16 The analyses Holm is conducting, comparing testimonies of the bound-
ary from the eighteenth century with these letters from around 1300, make it
convincing that these boundary markers were remembered in oral chants and
lists like these for at least five hundred years.
Returning to the chant or list that Loden of Ulvkälla recited at the thing
assembly in Sveg, it says in an insertion in the letter: ‘ok kuazst Loden bonde
muna, þa er hann fotfor þetta ramerki, at þa kunni enge madr pater noster i
Straumi’ (‘and Loden the farmer said that he remembered that when he walked
along the border, no one knew the Pater Noster in Ström’). It thus seems that
Loden took part in some kind of a border commission, probably in the early
thirteenth century, when he walked — and thereby probably testified to the
boundary markers between Norway and Sweden — along the border, some
three hundred kilometres to the north of where he lived.17
This Loden, together with Tore Arnulvsson and Peter from Hjärtum, were
men who were asked to come to thing assemblies and retell the traditions and
customary knowledge they carried. In these cases, they presented the assembly
with some boundary chants or lists, which sometimes — as we have seen —
were interfoliated with other unique or strange events, thus illuminating stories
from the past.
In the Hälsinge Law, valid for more or less the whole of northern Sweden
(Norrland), or more accurately, for the north part of the Uppsala Archbishopric,
we actually are given a term for these kind of men, namely minnunga mæn (men
with [good] memory). In an enactment in the church law (Kyrkiu balkær, 7),
regulating tithe (tiund), we can read the following:
Koorn tiund ok all annor akur tiund göræs æfftir þy gamul siþwænnia hawr wærit
ok skifptis sama lund. Delæ þe vm. þa witi þæt II minnungæ mæn aff aþrum sok-
num ok II præstir huru þæt hawr wærit.18
Corn tithe and all other arable tithe shall be paid according to the old custom
and be distributed in the same way. If they quarrel about this, then two men with
16
See Holm, ‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, pp. 140–71.
17
Cf. Södermannalagen och Hälsingelagen, ed. by Holmbäck and Wessén, p. 409; Holm,
‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, pp. 157–59. In my dissertation I unfortunately
mislead the reader by writing that Ström is to be found in southern Jämtland. It is situated in
northernmost Jämtland, cf. Brink, Sockenbildning och sockennamn, p. 45.
18
Codex iuris Helsingici, ed. by Schlyter, Kyrkiu balkær, § 7.
202 Stefan Brink
good memory from other parishes and two priests shall examine how it had been
before.19
These men with good memory are also mentioned in other enactments in this
law. In the same Book we read:
Testamænt gifws. hwar æftir synum viliæ aff þy gooz [sum] han aflæt hafwr aff gam-
blæ byrþ synnu ma han æy meræ gifwæ æn .XVI. öræ. hwarti iorþ æller lööz öræ
vtan æruingæ goþuilia. sighiæ aruingi ia wiþer þa wari þæt gilt. witi twe minnungæ
mæn [minninga män] þæt aa hwars þeræ wægnæ hwat som gamal ær.20
Every man may in his will, according to his wish, give away from his property what
he has acquired. From his old patrimony, he may not give away more than sixteen
ørar, neither landed property nor movable property, without the consent of the
heirs. If the heirs consent thereto, then it may be valid. Two men with good mem-
ory representing each party shall adjudicate what is old heritage.21
In the Book of Land (Jorþæ balkær) we read:

Delæ twe wm iorþ enæ. ok sighiæ baþir fæþernæ sit wæræ fornt ok gamalt. þær
skulu baþir minningæ mæn till þingx föræ. ok hwar þeræ .VI. mæn næmpnæ. þe XII
skulu scoþæ hwar þeræ minnung hawer eræ æller ældræ. ok wæri þæt gilt þe göræ.
þæn þeræ at miung falder bötæ VI marker. til þræskiftis.22
If two men have a dispute over the same land and both claim that it is their patri-
mony, old and ancient, then they both shall come to the thing assembly with men
with good memory and each name six men. These twelve shall try, which one of
them has better or older evidence regarding old possession, and it shall be valid,
whichever they do. The remaining one of them who fails regarding evidence of old
possession, he shall pay six marker in fine to be divided in three lots.23
In the same Book, in paragraph 16:

Delæ byær twe vm iorþ ena skogh æller watn. æller annor nokor till lagh. þær skulu
baþæ .i. [.VI.] minungæ mæn hafwa. ok till gangu. ok minung gangæ sum för ær
sakt.24
19
My translation.
20
Codex iuris Helsingici, ed. by Schlyter, Kyrkiu balkær, § 14.
21
My translation.
22
Codex iuris Helsingici, ed. by Schlyter, Jorþæ balkær, § 14. 1.
23
My translation.
24
Codex iuris Helsingici, ed. by Schlyter, Jorþæ balkær, § 16.
If two hamlets have a dispute over the same land, forest or water or some other
belonging, both shall have six men with memory and appear with them and state
old possession, as is said before.25
And finally in the Book of Settlement (Wiþerbo balkær):

Delæ mæn vm a ganga byæ mællum þa skulu minunga mæn mærkiæ witæ þeræ
i mællum.26
If men dispute regarding trespass between hamlets, men with good memory shall
examine boundary markers between them.27
The term minnunga mæn (or minninga mæn) contains the word OSw minnung
f. ‘memory; old possession of land; proof of old possession’; cf. OSw minnunge
n. ‘memory’ and ON minning ‘memory’, derivations to the verb minna(s) ‘to
remember’.28
The term is also found in a — in this connection — very interesting letter
from the province of Ångermanland from 1413, where the lawman or judge
(lagman) for the province, Laurens Karlsson, ratifies the boundary between the
hamlets Järnäs and Bredvik:
Alla the mæn thetta bref høra aller se helsar iak Lawrinz Karlson, lagmanz dom
hafuande i Angormannalande, kerlica medh varum Herra. Thet skal allom man-
nom viterlikit wara, at tha iak hiolt lagmanz thing i Balanda fierth, tha deldo
samman Geranæs mæn ok Bredauik mæn vm bolstatha ra millan Geranæs ok
Bredauik. Tha dømde iak the delona at gamle minnige mæn, ok xii asyna mæn
scullo the delona at skilia. Tha vithnadho the swa ok sworo at i Mitmoses sund,
thet ær ra, ok swa i Ingaskær ok swa i Karfuaholm ok swa i Hesianæs; ok engen aff
Geranes villo vethia mot minningene ok xij asyna mannom. Tha dømde iak the
raan fast ok vbrotlikin ther wara, æpter thy som før scrifuat star, ok hwiliken by
Geranes æller Brethauik øfuer fara oppa annan, han bother æpter laghen. Thesse
waro minninge mæn: Clemitter i Berge, Østen i Humblaholm; ok asynamen
war Algoter i Ronaholm, Ketil i Balandaferdh, Anunder ibidem, Ion i Fornaby,
Østanus ibidem, Niclis i Konungxuagh, Olaus i Humblaholm, Østanus i Leuar,
Suen i Lydhasio, Helghe i Hundzsio, Swen i Lefteno. In cuius rei euidens tes-
25
My translation.
26
Codex iuris Helsingici, ed. by Schlyter, Wiþerbo balkær, § 12.
27
My translation.
28
Olson, De appellativa substantivens bildning, pp. 392, 443; Elias Wessen in Söder
mannalagen och Hälsingelagen, ed. by Holmbäck and Wessén, p. 280 n. 39; de Vries, Altnordisches
etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 388.
204 Stefan Brink
timonium sigillum meum presentibus est impensum. Scriptum Balandafierdh,

anno Domini m°cd°xiij°, in die beati Pauli conuersionis.29
All men who may hear or see this letter I, Laurens Karlsson, judge in Ångermanland,
lovingly greet in the name of our Lord. It shall be known to all men, that I con-
ducted a thing in Banafjäl, when men from Järnäs and Bredvik quarrelled about
the boundary between Järnäs and Bredvik hamlets. Then I decided that old men
with good memory, and twelve witnesses, should settle the dispute. Then they
witnessed in this way that in Mitmoses sound is a boundary [marker], and also
at Ingaskær and also at Karfuaholm and also at Hesianæs; and none of the men
from Järnäs contradicted the men with good memory and the twelve witnesses.
Then I adjudicated the boundary permanent and infrangible, according to what
has been written before, and whichever hamlet, Järnäs or Bredvik, trespasses over
it, he violates (probably?) the law. These were the men with memory: Klemens
in Berge, Östen in Humblaholm; and witnesses were Algot in Ronaholm, Kjell
in Balandaferdh, Anund ibid., Jon in Fornaby, Östen ibid., Nils in Konungxuagh,
Olof in Humblaholm, Östen in Leuar, Sven in Lydasio, Hlge in Hundzsio, Sven in
Lefteno.30
We can see here that first, for this jurisdiction, the normal committee or panel
of twelve men (Sw tolvmannanämnd) is appointed and named, but also two
minninge mæn (men with good memory): Klemens in Berge and Östen in
Humblaholm. They must have been two, probably older, wise men, who were
known to have good memory.
Similar to the institution of minnunga mæn are the talumæn. In the same law,
the Hälsinge Law, in Ærfþabalkær (the Book of Inheritance) we can read in the
twelfth paragraph about a case when men are disputing over some inheritance:
§.3. Delæ mæn vm arf ok sighiæ sik baþir iæmpskyldir wæræ. hawi þa frammæ .II.
talu mæn. þæn þe wiliæ till arfs swæriæ mæþ .XIIII. manna eþe þa taki han arff.31
§3. If men dispute over inheritance and both claim they are equally close relatives,
then they shall bring forward two men knowledgeable in genealogies [talu mæn].
He, whose right to the inheritance they want to ratify with fourteen men’s oaths,
he shall take the inheritance.32
29
Diplomatarium suecanum, ed. by Liljegren and others, 17767; cf. Fritz, ‘Ångermanlands
medeltidsbrev’, p. 109.
30
My translation.
31
Codex iuris Helsingici, ed. by Schlyter, Ærfþabalkær, § 12.
32
My translation.
In this case, two men, called talumæn, are brought forward at the thing assem-
bly to give a statement, men who obviously were knowledgeable and trustwor-
thy regarding genealogies. The first part of the compound seems to be related to
the verb OSw tælia ‘to count’ and ON telja til ‘to count one’s origin or lineage
from’,33 and I assume that the word is to be seen in context with ON ættartal n.,
ættartala f. ‘genealogy, genealogical enumeration’.
* * *
What we have here are examples of how, in an oral society, old, knowledge-
able men and women are used as ‘archives’ for a society. With no documents
at hand, an oral society had to rely upon individuals who had a special gift and
interest in preserving the old customs and traditions. They were the ‘well’ to
pour knowledge from when needed, for legal, societal, or genealogical matters,
walking reference libraries as Jan Vansina has put it.34 This is, of course, the
background to the veneration of elderly people in (‘primitive’) oral societies,
so often noticed in anthropological field studies. As Morton W. Bloomfield
and Charles W. Dunn have formulated it: ‘Wisdom is the universal virtue of
early societies. It provides a guide for everyday living and allows every person to
make some kind of sense out of the world’.35 And very often in these early socie-
ties, the ones who carried this wisdom were the ones who had lived and experi-
enced, hence elderly people, and who could instruct people about, for example,
in the case of early Scandinavia, forn siðr, the traditions to embrace and to fol-
low if you lived in the early Scandinavian oral society. This traditional wisdom
and custom functioned as the cement that kept an oral society together.
This veneration of wisdom readily links to the study of collective or societal
or cultural memory studies, which today is a trendy field of research, where
the literature has grown exponentially. In the intersection between cultural or
collective memory in an oral society and the individuals who constituted the
‘store house’ of this knowledge, historians and anthropologists have provided a
number of interesting contributions, such as the following by Jacques Le Goff:
In societies without writing, collective memory seems to organize itself around
three major interests: the collective identity based on myths, and more particularly
on myths of origin, the prestige of the leading families that is expressed by genealo-
33
Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog, 4th edn.
34
Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, p. 37.
35
Bloomfield and Dunn, The Role of the Poet in Early Societies, p. 8.
206 Stefan Brink
gies, and the technical knowledge that is transmitted by practical formulas that are
deeply imbued with religious magic.36
The main importance for the usage of cultural or collective memory is thus,
according to Jacques Le Goff, the creation of myths of origin for ethnic groups,
clans, or families.37 Drawing the line between the two different kinds of ‘history’,
he furthermore claims that the collective memory is ‘essentially mythic, deformed
and anachronistic’; in a way, the myths ‘confuse’ history, but serve to connect
the past with the present and give guidance to solving problems in the present.
History (as a science), on the other hand, ‘must illuminate memory and help it
rectify its errors’,38 something which, of course, is not achievable in an oral society.
In these kinds of ‘primitive’, oral societies, there are certain individuals who
are ‘memory specialists’, genealogists, guardians of the laws and acceptable con-
duct for that society, according to tradition and custom, ‘priests’, bards, and
cult leaders, and so on. As many scholars have noticed, ‘The Middle Ages vener-
ated old men above all because they were regarded as memory-men, prestigious
and useful’, according to Le Goff,39 and he cites Marc Bloch, who in this con-
nection mentioned a letter from 1250 where some serfs of Orly had refused to
pay taxes, referring to the witness by some elderly men.
These memory specialists are no custodians of an ‘objective’ history, they use
their knowledge instrumentally, which sometimes is called ‘ideological history’.
As Jack Goody has noticed in his anthropological studies, the knowledge these
individuals carry is not a word-for-word memory, but they work in a way creat-
ing a generative reconstruction of history, not a mechanical memorization.40
This is certainly true, but one should, in my opinion, qualify this observation, by
pointing to the genre discussed here, namely witness chants or lists for bounda-
ries. Here we really can talk about a word-for-word memorization, where the
stereotypical structure of the chants is used as an obvious mnemonic device.
The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that there are, in an oral
society, mnemonic devices in use to actually memorize large chunks of text
word-for-word, hence a verbatim memorization.41 In our case, stereotypically
36
Le Goff, History and Memory, p. 59.
37
38
39
Le Goff, History and Memory, pp. 73–74.
40
Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral, pp. 174–82. — Cf. Finnegan,
Oral Literature in Africa, pp. 76–82 and Finnegan, Oral Poetry, pp. 76–78.
41
On this theme, verbatim memorization in oral cultures, with further examples, see Ong,
Orality and Literacy, pp. 61–66.
constructed lists of place names, boundary markers between Norway and

Sweden, have been memorized and reiterated obviously for hundreds of years.
In these cases, there was no freedom of creative changes in the lists, as for a sto-
ryteller, who could embroider her or his story around a core of facts, resulting
in several variants of the story. In these cases, there were knowledgeable men
who had to be able to remember long lists, which ultimately was to be recited
— under oath — at thing assemblies and there scrutinized and accepted as cor-
rect by other knowledgeable men.
Appendix
This is the full list of boundary markers Loden from Ulvkälla told the alþingi in
Sveg, and which afterwards he and five other local farmers declared under oath
to be accurate.
–– Hafuer j Straumj
–– […]
–– Or Straumi on j Rafnasill
–– or Rafnasill ok j Raundar foss
–– or fossenom ok j Morbek
–– or Morbek ok a Breko ok j Glaumshofda
–– af hofdanom ok j Haframinni
–– or Haframinni ok j Sottnorer
–– or Sottnorum ok j Rossang
–– or Rosange ok j Runastein
–– or steininum ok j Hoadalenn
–– or Hoadale ok j Steinberget
–– þædan ok j Lifuisio
–– or Lifuisio ok j Møroklak
–– or Møroklak ok j Malungsil ok j Finzasen
–– or Finzase ok j Mullungsbergh
–– or berginu ok j Røynkloe
208 Stefan Brink
–– þædan ok j Astulfstainnabergh
–– þædan ok j Hundsioar skiæl
–– þædan j Amsafreng
–– or Amsafreng ok j Vædal litle
–– or dalenom ok j Myrardal
–– or Myrardal ok j Leigstig
–– or Laigstig ok j Raudahamra
–– or Raudhomrom ok j Leonarbergh
–– þædan ok j Leonar seo ok j Leaonar ness
–– þædan [j] Bilstiærnar bergh
–– or berginu ok j Þores kæö
–– or Þores kæl ok j Þrondr klætt
–– or Þrondar klætt ok j Arna biærta bergh
–– þædan ok j Vlfualldafløyttr(?)
–– þædan ok j Laufklæppa
–– or Laufklæppum ok j Trollagrof
–– or Trollagrof j Feimifioll
–– or feimufiollum ok j Frengs enda
–– or Frengs enda ok j Þinguoll
–– or Þinueli ok j Lee
–– er Lee mykit vatn. a Swia konongr firir austan vatnet en regs konongr firir
vestan vatnet.
–– or Lee till lanxenda.
The list is printed and commented upon several times, for example Jämtlands
och Härjedalens Diplomatarium, ed. by Löfqvist and Swedlund, i, pp. 5–6
(no 2), and is given a very knowledgeable and exhaustive analysis by Holm,
‘Den norsk-svenska riksgränsens ålder och hävd’, pp. 151–60 and 223–26.
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in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir
A
ccording to the earliest historical writing in Iceland, it was a well-
established fact that the law was kept in memory before it was written
down.1 The president of the Alþingi was the law-speaker (lögsögumaðr),
who was supposed to recite the law at the annual meetings, taking one third of
it each year. The earliest law-speakers, like the later medieval and early modern
Icelandic lawmen, had an important role in the transmission of legal knowl-
edge. They did not, however, simply collect evidence and keep records of a legal
character; they were also involved in the earliest historical writing in Iceland.
And when in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a humanistic interest in
the past influenced the learned elite of the country, lawmen too were deeply
engaged in collecting and copying evidence about the past history of Iceland.
The focus of this paper is, first of all, on the connection between legal inter-
ests and the earliest historical writing in medieval Iceland, and, secondly, on the
transmission of historical memory in the context of the legal culture of the later
centuries. In these contexts, the paper also briefly discusses how the historical
annals of the seventeenth century can be seen as a continuation of the memo-
rial culture of the medieval age. One of the main questions to be answered in
the paper is: how did legal interests influence the earliest writing in Iceland,
and what kind of legal matters in the later centuries continued to be of impor-
tance as a part of an Icelandic historical discourse?
1
Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years, pp. 23–24.
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir (hisaa@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture

and Society (History) at Aarhus University, Denmark.
212 Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir
Social Memory and Legal Culture

In his book, Varieties of Cultural History from 1997, Peter Burke initiated a
discussion about ‘history as social memory’ with a reference to the French phi-
losopher and sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945), who in the 1920s
published a pioneering work on the social framework of memory. In this first
study, as well as in later works, Halbwachs argued that collective memories are
constructed by social groups, and these groups determine what is ‘memorable’
to society, as well as how it will be remembered.2 According to Burke, the term
‘social memory’, as it has established itself in the tradition from Halbwachs,
‘sums up the complex process of selection and interpretation in a simple for-
mula and stresses the homology between the ways in which the past is recorded
and remembered’.3 Burke also notes that the social history of remembering
is concerned with the transmission of public memories, especially how they
have been used and shaped. As a historical phenomenon, memory, meaning
the social history of remembrance, is selective, and it is our task as historians
both to identify the principles of selection and to study how memories vary
from place to place, and from time to time. Three main questions are to be
addressed in this connection according to Burke: first, what are the modes of
transmissions of collective memories, and how do these modes change over
time? Second, what are the uses of these memories — the use of the past, in
other words — and how have these uses changed? And third, what is the func-
tion of oblivion?
In this paper, I will mainly concentrate on the ‘modes of transmission’,
although the uses of memory and the function of oblivion are also relevant
topics. My focus on the transmission and change of memory over time has its
background in my earlier work on Icelandic legal culture from the early Middle
Ages to the seventeenth century.4 My hypothesis is that the legal culture was
closely related to a selective remembrance of the past. I shall argue that the
earliest law courts of the Icelandic Commonwealth can be seen as a space of
legal remembrance, both in a narrative meaning, for instance as represented
in the sagas, and in a practical sense, that is in actual court procedures. In the
2
Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, p. 44, with reference to Halbwachs, Les cadres
sociaux de la mémoire; Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire des évangiles; and Halbwachs, The
Collective Memory.
3
Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, p. 45.
4
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, ‘Erindring i afskrift’, pp. 283–99; Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, ‘Erindring
og ejendomsret’, pp. 81–94, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, Property and Virginity.
Legal Culture & Historical Memory in Medieval & Early Modern Iceland 213
earliest courts of the Commonwealth, the law was spoken or read aloud, and
over time, selections were made concerning which laws were written down and
codified, and those which were not. Also important in this process of selection
were such questions as those concerned with which law was ‘changed’ because
of the demands of more ‘learned’ law coming in from abroad, as in, for example,
the canon law of the church. James A. Brundage has shown that professional
lawyers first emerged in the courts of the medieval church. This happened in
the thirteenth century when lawyers began to receive legal education at the law
faculties of the first European universities. The new group of professional law-
yers emerging became ‘crucial players in the social and intellectual revolutions
that began with the so-called renaissance of the twelfth century and continued
to unfold well into the later Middle Ages’.5
Even if some scholars have been aware that the first vernacular writings in
Old Icelandic were probably legal texts, 6 not much attention has been paid
to the close connection between legal interests and the transmission of texts in
the vernacular. An exception is Gísli Sigurðsson’s pioneering work on the oral
tradition behind the writing of the Íslendingasögur (the sagas of Icelanders),
where the importance of the writing down of Icelandic laws in the early twelfth
century is underscored. Especially worth mentioning is the important political
role that the bishops in Skálholt had according to Sigurðsson, since they had
the law written down and preserved at their episcopal see.7 Sigurðsson also
focuses on the effect that the introduction of literacy — an integrated part of
the coming of Christianity — might have had on old power structures among
the elite, as, for instance, when he writes that ‘power was removed from the
orally trained law-speaker and orally learned lawmen, and relocated with the
bishop and his book’.8 According to Sigurðsson, it is possible to find a sym-
bolic expression of this confrontation in Íslendingabók (Book of the Icelanders),
which was written by the priest Ari Þorgilsson sometime between 1122–33. In
particular Sigurðsson points to the fact that Ari writes that the ‘law was then
read aloud by a priest at the Alþingi the following summer, thereby replacing for
the first time the oral recitation of the law-speaker’.9
5
Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession, p. 2.
6
Jónas Kristjánsson, ‘Bókmenntasaga’, pp. 211–12.
7
Gísli Sigurðsson, Túlkun Íslendingasagna, pp. 334–35.
8
Gísli Sigurðsson, Túlkun Íslendingasagna, p. 337.
9
Whether or not Sigurðsson is right in talking about a confrontation in this

connection, it is interesting to study closer how the introduction of Christianity
and the possible introduction of learned law can have been the driving force
behind the first codifications of Icelandic law and thus an important factor in
changing the legal culture.10 In his study of the Social Consequences of Literacy
in Medieval Scandinavia, Arnved Nedkvitne has shown that there is a clear
change in the nature of the earliest Scandinavian provincials law, to be seen by
comparing the Gulathing codex, of which the oldest part is from the early elev-
enth century, with the revised law codes of the provincial Christian law from
the thirteenth century. While the oldest law tells a story easy to remember, for
instance, that eating meat is prohibited on Fridays, the younger Christian law
is clearly more ‘literate’, reflecting a context where the judge used more abstract
terms to describe legal cases.11
Having this observation in mind, it is interesting to take a closer look at the
oldest law code of the Icelandic Commonwealth, the famous Grágás. When
they needed a model for legislation, the Icelanders looked back to the Gulathing
in southwestern Norway.12 The Icelandic legal historian Ólafur Lárusson has
emphasized the fact that, compared to the oldest existing provincial laws of
Scandinavia, the two remaining manuscripts of Grágás, Codex Regius (GKS
1157 fol.) and Staðarholtsbók (AM 334 fol.), have a strong mark of being literary
productions. He explains the literary stamp as the result of a revision of the law
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, thus assuming that there has existed an
older version.13 To a large extent the content of the law was customary law, but
it contained also many rules with an origin in contemporary church law of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries.14 Since both Codex Regius and Staðarholtsbók
are late thirteenth century compilations of older versions of the law, it would be
10
See also the discussion in Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 274–337, about the
memory culture and the book, where she among other things discusses how the oral and written
culture co-existed during the Middle Ages.
11
Nedkvitne, The Social Consequences of Literacy in Medieval Scandinavia, p. 84, with ref-
erence to Norges gamle love indtil 1387, ed. by Keyser and Munch, Gulatingslova, pp. 1–118, and
Frostatingslova, i, pp. 119–258.
12
Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age, p. 23.
13
Ólafur Lárusson, ‘Grágás’, cols. 410–12.
14
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, Property and Virginity, p. 53; compare Sveinbjörn Rafnsson,
‘Forn hrossreiðalög og heimildir þeirra’, p. 131; Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir and Nors, ‘Ægteskabet
i Norden og det europæiske perspektiv’, pp. 33–35. See also Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, Af fornum
lögum og sögum.
interesting to investigate whether the writing of these compilations could be a

result of the twelfth century renaissance. Taking such an approach would build
on the assumption that the memorial culture of the medieval age was a mixture
of old and new behavior, the new element being especially the use of written
law, and of procedures from international canon law.
But, first some words about the character of the memorial culture in medi-
eval Iceland.
The Memorial Culture of the Middle Ages

In Icelandic medieval sources there are many descriptions showing how peo-
ple could act and remember without written judicial documents. Therefore, it
would be naïve to think that legal performance, contracts, and rituals did not
exist before the introduction of writing with Christianity. Instead of looking
at legal developments as a struggle between oral and written culture, it is nec-
essary to see the legal changes as a more complicated process. In Iceland, the
transition from oral tradition to written documents did not happen overnight,
and the oral tradition lived on along with the written one.
An illustration of this point is seen in how ownership rights could be
claimed by reference to genealogies, and how genealogies could be written
down and used as legal documents. An example is provided by the genealogy
from 1290 of the lawman and writer Haukr Erlendsson and his wife Steinunn.15
Haukr is supposed to have been the author of the main part of the manuscript
of Hauksbók, which was written in the beginning of the fourteenth century and
contains versions of many Old Icelandic texts, Landnámabók and Vǫluspá, for
instance, but also a number of geographical and theological texts.16 The geneal-
ogy of Haukr and his wife represents a ‘textual mixture’ of Christianity with
the pagan past. Starting with Adam, it continues in an agnatic line through
mythical persons of the Old Norse culture and ends in tracing the kin of Haukr
and his wife into the well-known Icelandic past. This genealogy — as well as
15
Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. by Jón Sigurðsson and others, iii: c. 1269–1415, ed.
by Jón Þorkelsson (1896), pp. 5–8, the genealogy from 1290, ‘Ættartala Hauks lögmanns
Erlendssonar og konu hans Steinunnar’.
16
Hauksbók, which exist in three main manuscripts, AM 371 4to, AM 544 4to and AM
675 4to, is written by the lawman Haukr Erlendson as well as some other unknown writers, see
<http://handrit.is/da/manuscript/view/AM04-0544> [accessed 16 March 2013].
other similar ones17 — is written evidence for the older oral methods of trac-
ing inheritance rights back in time, clearly showing how the introduction of
Christianity and of writing resulted in the incorporation of the pagan past into
the Christian concept of the history of the world.
Other legal documents from late medieval Iceland give detailed informa-
tion about the oral part of the legal performance, as, for instance, when rights
are claimed by calling on the memory of old people. The oldest preserved docu-
ment about property transfer in Iceland, containing information that owner-
ship rights could be proved orally, dates from the year 1309 and mentions a
land boundary testified to by old men. A similar document from 1354, referring
both to the boundary and the purchase of property, is a testimonial concerning
a man who had bought land from a woman. According to the document, the
men and a woman who had been present when the sale agreement was made
rode along with the writers of the document to the piece of land, where some
old men explained the exact boundaries of the property.18
My main point here is that the introduction of literacy did not mean a dis-
missal of the old ways of remembering. In his book From Memory to Written
Record, Michael Clanchy has shown how difficult it was to persuade people in
the high Middle Ages to believe in written documents. Medieval culture was
based on what people could hear and see, and in the beginning written docu-
ments had a similar meaning as those objects which before, in the oral culture,
had been used as testimony.19 That is why the written word needed to be read
aloud in front of an audience. Jürg Glauser has argued that a written text was
not regarded as trustworthy if it was not represented in or accompanied by
some form of bodily performance, for instance, the handing over or simply the
reading of the text aloud.20
To sum up, one could say that the introduction of literacy and learned law
in Iceland meant that the law continued to be read aloud, but that the perfor-
mance was more closely attached to a group of people with some sort of learned
or even clerical background. Thus, the legal culture continued to be performed
orally, even if the law was codified. As Arnved Nedkvitne has pointed out, ‘The
new way of enforcing decrees presupposed an interaction between orality and
17
For instance a genealogy from 1310 in Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. by Jón Sigurðsson
and others, iii, pp. 10–13.
18
See Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. by Jón Sigurðsson and others, iii, pp. 9, 54–55.
19
Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, pp. 202ff.
20
Glauser, ‘The Speaking Bodies of Saga Texts’, pp. 13–26.
literacy. New church laws from the bishop were read aloud to congregations
on Sundays. New laws from the king were read aloud outside the church or at
Thing assemblies [sic]’. 21 I will now proceed to connections between the early
codifications of the law and the oldest historical writing.
Myths of Origin and the Role of the Law-Speaker

The introduction of writing in Iceland not only meant that the old custom-
ary law was written down: as the earliest historical writing and the First
Grammatical Treatise indicate, Christianity and the introduction of the Latin
alphabet seem also to have stimulated an awareness of a special ‘Icelandic’ iden-
tity. The first, and one of the best, examples of this is one of the oldest sur-
viving texts in the Icelandic language, Íslendingabók, which was — as already
mentioned — written in the vernacular in the early twelfth century by Ari
fróði.22 Ari’s ‘Book of the Icelanders’ is a short chronicle about the settlement
of Iceland, and its early history, especially the legal and constitutional develop-
ments, is an important theme in the account.23 According to Ari, the oldest
law was orally remembered for almost two centuries, until it was written down
in the beginning of the twelfth century. Ari also provides an author of the origi-
nal law, a man called Úlfljótr, and tells how this man brought the law to Iceland
from Norway.24 To give the law an author is not uncommon in connection
with myths of origin, and Ari’s account is such a myth. What is less common
is that we are able to give the origin of the settlement, as well as the first law, a
precise date.25
The oldest part of the law, the so-called Hafliðaskrá, is supposed to have
been written down in 1118 by the law-speaker Hafliði Másson at his farm
Breiðabólsstað in Vesturhópi. His second wife was Rannveig Teitsdóttir, who
was a daughter of Teitr, son of the first Icelandic bishop, Ísleifr Gissurarson.26 In
21
Nedkvitne, The Social Consequences of Literacy in Medieval Scandinavia, p. 82.
22
23
The original manuscript is lost. There existed a copy of the original text probably writ-
ten c. 1200, but this copy was also lost in the course of the late seventeenth century. The text is
known from a copy from the seventeenth century. See Hermann, ‘Skriftkulturens opkomst som
forudsætning’, pp. 151–54.
24
Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years, p. 20.
25
Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years, pp. 1, 22, and 24.
26
Páll Eggert Ólason, Íslenzkar æviskrár, pp. 228–29.
Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, it is said that she was a wise and well educated woman,
‘vitr kona ok vel at sér um margt’.27 This testimony refers to the high social
status of Rannveig, who not only was a granddaughter of the first Icelandic
bishop, but also a daughter of the learned Teitr Ísleifsson whose father had been
educated in Saxony, while he himself had established a school in Haukadalr on
the south cost of Iceland. To have this social and educational background, as
well as to be married to one of the most powerful chieftains at that time, has
given Rannveig a memorable place in the saga’s narration of the story about the
conflict between her husband and another powerful chieftain called Þorgils. It
is worth noting that Hafliði, as well as other law-speakers in the first centuries
of Icelandic history, played a major role in the way Ari fróði told the early his-
tory of the Icelanders in a chronological order.
Being elected from the group of goðar, the law-speakers were presidents or
speakers of the Thing for three-year periods, with the primary duty to recite the
law publicly at the Althing and to adjudicate when people disagreed about what
the law was.28 And the law-speakers also have a central role in Ari’s account.
Jacques Le Goff has pointed out that people without writing normally have a
different type of historical collective memory than do people who are literate.
He refers especially to groups of specialists, for instance, experts in remember-
ing genealogical lists or the law.29 Such specialists were central in Íslendingabók,
and they can also be found as a kind of chronological framework in other
historical works. This is, for instance, the case in Egils saga, which in chapter
twenty-nine introduces a person by the nema Óleifr hjalti and then lists more
genealogical information, such as the names of his sons, among them, Þórarinn,
who is said to have been law-speaker after Hrafn Hængsson.30 Thus, the names
of the law-speakers function almost like a calendar, which gives the narratives a
chronological framework, and perhaps also a more trustful appearance.
This is especially interesting when one recalls that in the Uppsala manu-
script of Snorri’s Edda, inserted within Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal, is a list of
skalds, as well as Snorri’s own genealogy and a catalogue of the Icelandic law-
speakers.31 There seems to be some kind of connection between the original
culture of oral remembrance and how this culture was later transmitted within
27
Sturlunga saga, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, i, p. 33.
28
29
30
Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, pp. 76–77.
31
Kure, I begyndelsen var skriget, p. 329.
the corpus of medieval manuscripts. In the transmission from oral to written

documentation, the art of skaldic poetry, as well as genealogical information,
are connected to those persons who were specialists in remembering the law.
Apart from the years 1219–21 when he was in Norway, Snorri Sturluson was
himself a law-speaker from 1215 to 1231. Probably he did not need to remem-
ber all the law orally, since at the time when he was a law-speaker the law had
existed in a written form for a century. On the other hand, much of his writing
on the art of skaldic poetry must have been based, at least partly, on a contem-
porary oral knowledge.32
It can be argued that the role of the specialists who should remember
the law took on another dimension some centuries after the introduction of
Christianity. The legal specialists not only continued to be experts in remember-
ing the law, but it seems that they also — together with the bishops — became
front figures in the process of legal codification. Pointing to the Skálholt law-
book, Gísli Sigurðsson has underlined the growing political importance of lit-
eracy. Instead of interpreting this development as a total loss of the memorial
skills of orally trained law-speakers, I would rather underscore that the late
twelfth- and thirteenth-century generations of law-speakers — mainly learned
men from the family of Haukdælir — were both specialists in the old skill of
oral remembrance, as well as in the new one, i.e. adjudication on the basis of
written law. As we can see when Snorri Sturluson held the office of law-speaker,
oral and written culture clearly co-existed, in his case both when knowledge
was about skaldic poetry and when it concerned the law and legal matters.33
Pernille Hermann has emphasized that one of Ari’s central aims was to write
the oldest history of the Icelanders into the wider history of Christianity.34 At
Ari’s time, the Gregorian Reform movement in central Europe had profound
influence on clerical training, and the demand for intensified religious commu-
nication from the clergy to the lay people was great. Written religious texts had
to be explained orally in sermons, and a large amount of literature about preach-
ing and pastoral care with practical advice for the clergy was produced. At the
same time, secular authorities institutionalized memory in different forms, in
movable archives of kingdoms, in notary archives of Italian cities, and in writ-
32
Gísli Sigurðsson, Túlkun Íslendingasagna, pp. 96–97 and 123–25.
33
Gísli Sigurðsson, Túlkun Íslendingasagna, pp. 95–96 and pp. 335–36.
34
Hermann, ‘Skriftkulturens opkomst som forudsætning’, pp. 144–45. See also Hermann,
‘Íslendingabók and History’.
ten chronicles and registrations, such as Doomesday Book.35 Although written

documents became more and more common in administrative contexts, here
too the written word did not dismiss oral communication, since it was normal
to read ‘open letters’, especially when connected to some kind of legal matter,
in public.36 The literary work of the Icelandic priest Ari can be seen as a part of
this common European discourse.
Christianity as History and the Everyday Practice of Learned Legal Culture

Christianity introduced not only new law, but also new ways of looking at the
law, especially of placing the written law in a context of Christian history.
The early history of the Christian church was a written history. It is worth
noting that the earliest manuscripts of canon law, collections systematically
arranged by theme and chronology, indicate historical sense with a perception
of time and change. According to Rosamond McKitterick, the collections of
canon law from the early Middle Ages are history books offering a progression
of ideas and decisions from the ecumenical councils and the popes of the ancient
church. Such texts shaped the perception of the history of the early church, and
were probably more widespread than other narratives about the history of the
church. Therefore, canon law collections must be understood side by side with
martyrologies, which are also history books of a special type.37As McKitterick
argues, memory becomes history, both in these earliest writings of the church,
and also in the way that the Franks in the Carolingian empire defined them-
selves in terms of their own history. As with the old church history, one finds
a selective memory, where the selection of the past served a present concern.
The Franks were first and foremost interested in Roman history and in
the early Christian past. The oldest Icelandic fragments are written in the so-
called Carolingian style and share this interest in a common past.38 That the
Icelanders looked back to the origins, before the settlement of Iceland, could
not have happened without the introduction of Christianity. Jürg Glauser has
contrasted ‘tradition’, signifying continuity, with ‘memory’ which is only pos-
sible through an awareness of historical difference.39 The author of the First
35
36
37
McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World, pp. 245–83.
38
39
Glauser, ‘Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir’, pp. 203–20.
Grammatical Treatise from the early twelfth century seems to have been very
much aware of this change in media when he wrote:
til þess at hœgra verði at ríta ok lesa, sem nú tíðisk ok á þessu landi, bæði lǫg ok
áttvísi eða þýðingar helgar, eða svá þau in spakligu frœði, er Ari þórgilsson hefir
á bœkr sett af skynsamligu viti, þá hefi ek ok ritit oss Íslendingum stafróf, bæði
látínustofum.40
[…] in order that it may become easier to write and read, as is now customary in
this country both the laws and genealogies, or interpretations of sacred writing, or
also that sagacious (historical) lore that Ari Þorgilsson has recorded in books with
such reasonable understanding — I have composed an alphabet for us Icelanders
as well.41
Here the first written texts are described as laws, genealogies and sacred writ-
ings, as well as history. The earliest known written text in Iceland is the tithe
law from 1096/97 which was written down when Markús Skeggjason was law-
speaker.42 After that, Bishop Þorlákr Runólfsson in Skálholt (1118–33), and
his colleague at Hólar, Bishop Ketill Þorsteinsson (1122–45), were responsible
for the composition of the first code of church law in Iceland, namely the first
section of the collection of law in Konungsbók of Grágás.43 From the twelfth
century onwards, canon law and canonistic thinking not only influenced legal
regulations in Iceland, but also the writing of the Icelandic sagas. This can be
seen from the fact that the authors of the sagas written in the thirteenth cen-
tury were highly interested in matters of marriage, concubines, and the rights
of illegitimate children. According to Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, this resulted not
only from a change in legal knowledge, but also from social changes taking
place in Iceland during the thirteenth century when the sagas were written.44
Continental legal knowledge seems to have influenced Icelandic legal writing
from a very early stage. In his latest book on ancient law and sagas, Sveinbjörn
Rafnsson argues that a certain part of the old Christian law section of Grágás
can be dated to the period when the Icelandic church was subjected to the arch-
bishops of Hamburg-Bremen, that is, before the establishment of the archbish-
opric of Lund in 1103/04. He also thinks that some of the ‘secular’ parts of
40
First Grammatical Treatise <http://etext.old.no/gramm/> [accessed 16 March 2013].
41
Here after Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age, p. 46.
42
43
Grágás, Islændernes Lovbog, ed. and trans. by Finsen, pp. 1–36.
44
Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, ‘Þorláksskriftir og hjúskapur á 12. og 13. öld’, pp. 114–29.
Grágás can be traced back to twelfth-century legal sources on the Continent,

mainly Roman and Lombard law.45
There are many indications of the influence of Christianity on the oldest
provincal laws of Scandinavia, and the explanation is that missionaries, and
later the first church organizations, must have made some early codifications of
Christian law.46 Let us now take a closer look at this practical textualization of
the legal culture of Iceland.
Transmission of Legal Culture at the Level of the Courts

It is important to realize that even if the old civil law codes contained no rules
concerning church law,47 the distinction between legal matters to be dealt with
by the church and by the secular authorities were never that clear at the level
of the courts. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a special law council
called Lögrétta was the most important part of the assembly of the Alþingi in
Þingvellir. This council had legislative power in matters concerning the church,
as well as in other business.48 Therefore, the laws of the church were closely
related to regional custom, even if the ius divinum, the canon law of the church
called guðs lög, had been accepted at the assembly in 1253.49 When Iceland
came under Norwegian rule in 1262/64, the law council, Lögrétta, became pri-
marily a law court.50 The role of the court in relation to the church was, how-
ever, not altered. In this way a special ius particulare evolved in Iceland.
Statements from the bishops, as well as church statutes more in general, had
the status of church law in Iceland.51 Existing church law was not always easy to
determine, and sometimes there were fierce disputes concerning the correct rules
to follow.52 This resulted in the production of written documentation of legal
45
Sveinbjörn Rafnsson, Af fornum lögum og sögum, pp. 161 and 163.
46
47
Einar Laxness, Íslandssaga, ii, p. 64.
48
Einar Arnórsson, ‘Gottskálk biskup Nikulásson’, p. 5.
49
Einar Arnórsson, ‘Gottskálk biskup Nikulásson’, p. 6; Einar Laxness, Íslandssaga, ii,
p. 64. In 1253 the agreement was made at the law council, but it seems that this agreement was
accepted this time only by the council. The existence of ius divinum as a legal concept is, how-
ever, evidence for the way in which canon law was a part of the legal thinking in Iceland.
50
51
Björn Þorsteinsson and Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Enska öldin’, pp. 42–43.
52
Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. by Jón Sigurðsson and others, viii: c. 1261–1521, ed. by
judgements, as well as in a greater awareness of the importance of preserving such

legal documents in private or official archives. When canon law began to have
direct influence also on secular proceedings in judicial matters, criminal cases
were often modified according to the canonical procedure of inquisition. This
meant that the burden of proof was given larger importance than before. And
written documents could be used as proof in both civil and ecclesiastical courts.53
The acceptance of new modes of proceeding influenced by canon law meant
that more written documents were produced, but it had also effect on the keep-
ing of all kinds of written documents and texts. The most important centers of
textual production and preservation of legal material in medieval Iceland were
probably the courts of the bishops at Hólar and Skálholt. This lasted until the
end of the sixteenth century, when the Icelandic bishops began to hold their
jurisdictional meetings at the assembly of Þingvellir. In actual transmission all
kinds of written documentation could be kept together, reflecting that legal
documents were often the result of dispute-settlement in not only one, but sev-
eral cases. We know that in the seventeenth century many collections of older
legal documents were brought together.54
Especially the documentation of property rights was central in the collec-
tion of legal documents. According to the law book, Jónsbók, from the end of
the thirteenth century, it was mandatory to make a written agreement about
property transfer. During the fifteenth century, newly powerful families got
hold of the largest manors in Skarð in Skarðströnd, Reykhólar, Vatnsfjörður,
and in other parts of Breiðafjörður, and generally in the district of Vestfirðir.
The members of this new elite actively used the past to legitimize their posi-
tion. For instance, it has been argued that there was a clear connection between
the writings of the monastery of Helgafell and the new families.55 In the same
century, the use of paper became widespread, making it much easier to produce
documents. The families on the wealthiest manors in the bay of Breiðarfjörður
all had private archives containing important legal documents, as well as histor-
Jón Þorkelsson (1906–13), pp. 429–52. There are two copies of Leiðarhólmsskrá, a list made by
laymen concerning the church laws that had the status of legal rules in Iceland. This document
dates from 1513, and it rejects the growing power of clerics at that time.
53
Eiríkur Tómasson, ‘Var réttarfar á þjóðveldisöld nútímalegt’, p. 104.
54
See for instance AM 229, 4to. 175 bl, written by Þorsteinn Magnússon in the sev-
enteenth century. In this manuscript there are paragraphs no. 6, about marriage contracts
(‘Kommentar til Ægteskabskontrakt’), no. 9, about engagement (‘Om straf for hævet trúlofun
1642 med en efterskrift 1646’), no. 10, about patrimonial inheritance rights (‘Om odels-salg’).
55
Vésteinn Ólason, Íslensk bókmenntasaga, ii (1993), p. 16.
ical writing. In this way, the histories of these families were ‘stored’ and remem-
bered. The prevalent interest in preserving written documents as evidence for
property rights can be regarded as indeed a very selective use of the past.
A New Understanding of the Past: The Memory of the Old ‘Nobility’

In the fourteenth century, when the mightiest families of Iceland were part
of the Norwegian king’s court, a tradition existed for legitimizing status by
claiming descent from ruling families of the past. Looking back on this situa-
tion, a Latin description of the country from the end of the sixteenth century,
Qualiscunque descriptio Islandiae, introduces an interesting view on the his-
torical development in Iceland. The author of the book states that in his time, a
few families owned all the principal properties in the country. The richest men
from these families could own as much as twenty farms each, in addition to the
manors on which they usually lived themselves. According to the description,
the situation had been different in the fourteenth century. At that time, the
elite had been constituted principally by obtaining offices from the king. They
had been ‘honored as noble men with their own coats of arms’ because they
were related to the mightiest families of the Norwegian aristocracy. According
to the author of the Qualiscunque descriptio Islandiae, these families still existed
at the end of the sixteenth century, but they did not have their leading role any
longer because they had lost their property to families of a lower status.56
This narration about the ‘old nobility’ that had lost its status to a new rul-
ing elite has some similarities with other Icelandic writings in the seventeenth
century in which we hear how the Icelanders after the Black Death — which
reached Iceland shortly after 1400 — had lost their remembrance of the past.
Thus, the danger of oblivion was a primary motive for historical interest.57
Clearly both the introduction of paper in the fifteenth century and the ensu-
ing introduction of printing technology in the sixteenth century changed the
culture of literacy. There was a strong influence from the humanistic movement
in Iceland, and especially the new post-Reformation bishops of the late six-
teenth and early seventeenth century were deeply involved in this new histori-
cal movement. It was thanks to this development that some of the oldest writ-
ings in Iceland were preserved, not least Íslendingabók of which the priest, Jón
56
Íslandslýsing, trans. by Sveinn Pálsson, pp. 88–99.
57
According to Le Goff printing meant the death to medieval memory, in the meaning
oral memory; see Le Goff, History and Memory, pp. 81-82.
Erlendsson (d. 1672) in Villingaholt, made two copies. The same interest for
the ‘lost’ past inspired also the writing of new historical annals, as for instance
Skarðsárannáll, written by the lawman Björn Jónsson. Being brought up in the
old nunnery of Reynivellir and — according to his own account — using medi-
eval documents and manuscripts, he was one of the most important writers of
seventeenth-century Iceland. It is worth mentioning that the brother of his fos-
terfather was also a lawman, who among his belongings had two medieval vel-
lum manuscripts of Grágás.58
An interesting example of literary patronage lies behind Björn’s annals: It
was Bishop Þorlákur Skúlason (1597–1656) who hired Björn to write a chroni-
cle in the vernicular about the period from around 1400 until his own time.
With this work, which occured in the late 1630s, a new movement of histori-
cal writing started in Iceland.59 Gunnar Karlsson has explained that it was ‘a
revival of the old scholarship, largely an imitation of medieval lore gathering,
often excellently written, but devoid of anything comparable with the medieval
sagas in literary depth or insight’.60 But maybe it was not the purpose of Björn’s
annals to be a new kind of saga? He had made copies of medieval sagas, he
wrote his own poems, and as a lawyer with great knowledge of legal matters, he
also wrote many treaties on Icelandic customary law.61
That the new wave of historical writing in the seventeenth century was still
a part of the old memorial culture of the Icelanders going back to the Middle
Ages can be seen from the prologue of Skarðsárannáll. Here Björn Jónsson
explains that because the Icelanders had lost their interest in history, they were
no more able to remember their glorious past. It was, argues Björn, mainly the
terrible consequences of the Black Death that had made the Icelanders stop
writing down their history at the beginning of the fifteenth century. His own
work was meant to fill the existing gap in Icelandic remembrance. Thus, there
was a deliberate intention to preserve the ‘national’ past in the early modern
period, something that explains why other parts of medieval culture were not
58
Jón Þorkelsson, ‘Þáttur af Birni Jónssyni á Skarðsá’, pp. 37–38. The fosterfather was Páll
Jónsson from Staðarhól, called Staðarhóls Páll. According to Jón Þorláksson it was a copy of
both Konungsbók and Staðarholtsbók that he owned.
59
Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years, pp. 156–57, with reference to Annálar
1400–1800, i, p. 28.
60
61
Jón Þorkelsson, ‘Þáttur af Birni Jónssyni á Skarðsá’, pp. 34–96. In this article about the
life and work of Björn from Skarðsá, the author has made a list of all his writing, which are
tremendous.
preserved or copied, but got lost. As examples, one could mention copies of the
Corpus Juris Canonici, as well as glossaries and other works of leading canonists
which had been present in the libraries at the Icelandic episcopal sees during
the medieval period.62
Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated how the earliest historical writing in Iceland was
highly influenced by a legal interest, as well as how a similar legal interest in
later centuries continued to be a part of a historical discourse. The aim has nei-
ther been to discuss the origin of writing in Iceland, nor the development from
oral to written culture. Rather it has been the intention to show that legal and
historical writings were part of the same kind of selected memorial culture.
In Iceland, this culture started when Latin was introduced with religious
texts that needed to be explained in the vernacular, first orally and later in writ-
ing. In connection with the collection of ecclesiastical tithes at the end of the
eleventh century, some kind of written accounts must have been introduced.
As time passed the textual transmission of the Christian culture became inter-
woven into a new form of using the past. In this way, the first history of the
Icelanders was written by a priest, according to the wishes of the bishops — in
exactly the same way as a copy of this history many centuries later was copied
by another priest, and still according to the demand of the Icelandic bishops
at that time, in the seventeenth century. Through this transmission of cultural
memory, the oldest Icelandic history became fixed. That other parts of the
history of Iceland were forgotten can be seen from the fact that even if many
medieval manuscripts with religious content have survived, all the great collec-
tions of canon law are lost.
Secondly, this paper has argued that oral methods of remembering contin-
ued to exist side by side with written legal documents. Written texts needed
to be read aloud in front of gatherings, either at tings or in church. From very
early on, lists of law-speakers were used as a chronological framework in writ-
ten narratives, and as time passed the transmission of all kinds of legal as well
as historical texts continued to be closely linked. The earliest writing was done
by clerics, whether it was the codification of church law or the narration of the
earliest history of the Icelanders. The transmission of these writings, as well as
the continued writing and copying of religious and non-religious texts in the
62
Björn Þorsteinsson and Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, ‘Enska öldin’, p. 46.
late Middle Ages, took place at the two episcopal sees especially, and at the
richer monasteries, but under great influence from a strong and powerful secu-
lar elite based on manors along the coast. In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, a number of writers tried to keep the old Icelandic tradition alive. Many
of them were lawmen, often paid for by the bishops, who were inspired by the
new humanistic movement of that time, with its strong interest in the ‘national’
past. They gathered large amounts of legal and historical texts, but they also
made selections. The social history of remembering and the transmission of the
Icelandic memories must be understood in close relation to the way in which
this early modern group of people used and shaped the historical identity of the
Icelandic people. In this selective way of recording the past, many texts related
to the medieval Catholic church were censored out, while on the other hand,
local customs documented in legal texts were preserved.
This interest, as well as an ongoing occupation with the origin of the Ice
landic people, became the foundation for the later nationalistic movement of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but that is another story.
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Index
Alphabetization follows Library of Congress standards.

Icelandic authors and characters are listed by given names.
Ångermanland: 203–04 Atlantic: 141, 177

Ad Herennium: 22–24 authenticity: 1, 59–60, 63–65, 72, 177
Aeneas: 138, 140
Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir: 8
Ágrip: 176 Baldr: 42, 51, 53–55, 88, 109
Akergarn, Ackergaarn: 160–62, 165 Bálki: 182–83
alcohol: 79–80, 83 Baltic: 7, 69 n. 23, 69–70, 155
Alstignus (=Hastingus): 140–43, 145–47, Bandamanna saga: 26, 34
149; see also Hásteinn Bayeux: 143, 147
Althing, Alþingi: 26–7, 211, 213, 218, 222 Benoît de Sainte-Maure: 134, 143
in Sveg: 197–98, 207 Bergelmir: 48–49
Amatus (Aimé) of Montecassino Bersi: 123–24
(Amatus Casinensis): 135, 137–38 Bier Costae ferreae (Old Norse Bjǫrn járnsíða
Andreas Suneson, archbishop of Lund: ‘Bjǫrn Ironside’): 140, 142, 149
158–59 birds as mental images
annals: 141–42, 147, 176, 211, 225 see under Óðinn’s ravens
Apulia: 138, 145–46 Bjarni: 66, 66 n. 17, 71
Ari fróði Þorgilsson: 30, 178, 181, 185, 213, Black Death: 8, 167, 169, 171, 224–25
217–18, 221 Bloch, Marc: 206
Arinbjarnarkviða: 112, 122 blót (sacrifice): 22–23, 97, 148–49,
Arngrímr Brandsson: 80, 93 160 n. 15, 163 n. 22
ars memorativa, ars oblivionalis (the art of Book of Land (Jorþæ balkær): 202
memory, the art of forgetting): 78 Book of Settlement (Wiþerbo balkær): 203
ars memoria (the art of memory): 3, 14–15 Book of the Icelanders see Íslendingabók
Asia: 111, 137, 139 boundary
assemblies: 8, 9, 151, 197, 201, 202, 207, 217; chants: 200–01
see also Althing, Alþingi markers: 8, 197, 199–201, 203, 207
Assmann, Aleida: 101 n. 122 Brink, Stefan: 8
Jan: viii, 2, 5, 47, 49, 51, 86–87, 89–90, British Isles: 70, 133–34, 135, 176, 178,
94 n. 98 180, 187, 192, 194
232 INDEX
bubonic plague see Black Death courts

Burke, Peter: 212 ecclesiastical: 213, 223
law: 8, 212, 222
canon law: 213, 215, 220–23, 226 royal: 95, 224
Carmen de rebus Siculi: 135 Cronica Guthilandorum: 159, 169 n. 35,
Carruthers, Mary: 2, 16 n. 5, 25 n. 31, 170 n. 37
34 n. 63, 111, 125, 156 n. 2 cultural
Christian: 9, 14, 24, 41, 70, 72, 84–85, analysis: vii–viii
121–22, 147, 160, 162–66, 168, continuity: 36, 122, 133
220, 226 formation: 47
funerals: 141, 146 forms: 31
historians: 151 heritage: 4
history: 71,216, 220 history: vii, viii
laws see canon law identity: 192
poets: 43, 62, 71 landscape: 28
religion: 7, 63, 70, 148 markers in the landscape: 29
scribes: 51 memory: vii, ix, 5–7, 31, 44, 46–47,
skaldic poems: 81 49–55, 75, 86–87, 89–90, 92,
weddings: 147 100–01, 167 n. 29, 171, 198,
Christianity: 4, 8, 36, 64, 66, 160–64, 205–06, 226
167, 175, 184–85, 187, 190, 192–93, monuments: 3
213–17, 219–20, 222 representations: 90
Chronica Visbycensis: 164 resources: 14, 22
Chronicon Beneventanum: 135 spheres: 50
Chronique des ducs de Normandie: 134–35, studies: vii, 4
143 values: 49, 110
Cicero: viii, 21 culture of literacy: 224
Cimbrorum et Gothorum origines: 159
Clunies Ross, Margaret: 6, 157 n. 5 Danish
commemorations and commemorating: 66, customs: 147
75, 84, 170 n. 37 language (dansk, dǫnsk tunga): 147, 150
conversion narratives: 160–62, 166–67, 169 marriage custom (moro Danico): 146–48,
conversion to Christianity: 66 151
Gotland: 160–67 sovereignty in Gotland: 158–59
Norway: 66 Danube: 138–39
Iceland: 4, 66, 185, 187, 190, 192–93, De invention: 21
213–14, 216, 219–20 De moribus et actis primorum Normannorum
Corpus Juris Canonici: 226 ducum: 134, 139, 142, 145, 148
cosmogony: 44, 51 De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae:
cosmography 135, 145
medieval: 139 Comitis et Roberti: 135, 145
pagan: 166 Guiscardi: 135, 145
court Deildevers: 199
culture: 119 Denmark: x, 67–68, 140, 142, 169
metre: 79 Deor: 113
poetry: 87 digerdöden see Black Death
poets: 59, 66 n. 17 Draco Normannicus: 134, 139, 142, 145
procedures: 212 Dudo, dean of St Quentin, and Norman
skalds: 161 historian: 134–40, 142, 145, 147–49
INDEX 233
Edda fræði (knowledge of the past): 14, 16, 18,

Poetic or Elder: 7, 30 n. 47, 76, 81, 83, 20–22, 30–32, 34–36, 44, 45–46, 49,
93, 99 51, 52, 61, 63, 71, 81, 188, 198, 201,
Snorra or Prose: x, 24, 43, 80, 89, 204–07, 219, 221, 225
93 n. 95, 99–100, 113–14, 118, Francia: 139–40, 142
166, 218 Frankish: 141, 143
see also individual poems or sections annals: 147
Egill Skallagrímsson: 81, 109, 112, 122 coasts: 142
176, 191 customs: 146
Egils saga Skallgrímssonar: 92, 94, 114, empire: 134
177, 188–91, 193, 218 historiography: 140
Einarr Skúlason: 67, 67 n. 18 monks: 134
Eiríkr blóðøx Haraldsson, king of Norway: Franks: 138–40,147,151, 220
64, 122 French: 118, 135, 141, 212
Eiríkr Hákonarson, earl (jarl) of Norway: Fróði, Frode, Frodi, Frotho: 145, 150
66, 114–15, 123 Frodi’s Rock: 151
England: 64, 67, 134, 151, 191 fróðir menn (wise, knowledgeable men): ix,
epigraphic 8, 207
mediality: 76, 99
memorial culture: 99 Gamanvísur: 113, 115
episcopal Garðar: 185, 192
sees: 213, 226, 227 Gautreks saga: 113
visits: 156, 158 Gedächtnis (memory): 2, 31 n. 52, 75, 77,
erfidrápa Óláfs Tryggvasonar: 67–68 80, 86, 87 n. 63, 90, 171 n. 41
erfikvæði (funeral poem): 87, 89 n. 76 Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns: 187
Erinnerung (recollection): 77, 86, 92 n. 90, Geirmundr heljarskinn: 186–88
171 n. 41 Geisli: 67, 92, 100
Erll, Astrid: ix genealogies: 3, 169, 176, 185, 187, 193,
eschatology: 44, 50–51 204–05, 221
ethnic as legal documents: 215
groups: 206 Genesis: 160
memory: 167 Geoffrey of Monmouth: 93, 134–35, 145
eyewitnesses: 31, 64–65, 66 n. 17, 72 Gerðr: 115–16
Eyjafjörðr: 183, 187–89, 192, 194 Germanic
*ga-menþia- > Old Norse minni: 77
Fagrskinna: 64, 113, 176 gentes: 71, 151
Falco of Benevento, Lombard historian: 135 historiographers: 137
family sagas see Íslendingasǫgur origin legends: 164, 166–67
First Grammatical Treatise: 217 tribes, Scandinavian origin of: 7, 151
Flugumýri: 180, 193 Gesta Danorum: 113, 144–45, 150
folklore: 3, 14, 156 n. 1, 165, 167 n. 29, Gesta Normannorum ducum: 134, 142,
170 n. 37, 171 n. 41 145, 149
foresight: 20–23,110 Gesta Roberti Wiscardi: 135, 138, 145
forgetting: x, 1, 7, 13, 15, 17, 19, 24, 27, 29, Getae: 136–37
32, 34, 78, 80–84, 99, 171 Getica: 137, 148
formálar see prologues giants and giantesses: 42, 47–50, 52, 63,
forn (old, ancient) 90, 109
minni (old memories): 1, 62–63, 72, 94 Gibraltar: 138, 141
siðr (old custom): 205 Gissur Þorvaldsson see Gizurr Þorvaldsson
spiǫll fira (old tales): 50 Gísla saga: 27
234 INDEX
Gísli Sigurðsson: 8, 213, 219 Härjedalen: 197–99

Gísli Súrsson: 186 Hásteinn: 142–43, 145–47, 191;
Gizurr Hallson: 33–34 see also Alstignus
Gizurr Þorvaldsson (=Gissur Þorvaldsson): Hasting, Hastingus see Hásteinn
84, 180, 185, 192–93 Háttatal: 94 n. 98, 98–99, 218;
Glauser, Jürg: 28, 75, 216, 220 see also under Edda
Goths: 136–37, 139, 148, 159, 161 Haukdælir: 178, 180, 191, 194, 219
Gotland: 7–8, 9 n. 5, 67, 97, 155–71 Haukr Erlendsson: 179, 181–86, 190–91, 215
picture stones of: 97 Hauksbók: 139, 179, 181 n. 17, 188, 191,
Grágás: 214–15, 222, 225 193, 215, 215 n. 16
Grage, Joachim: 81–83 Haustlǫng: 63, 90–91, 109
Greenland: 70, 120 Hávamál: x, 45, 51, 82–83, 113
Grettir Ásmundarson: 112, 182, 184, 193 ljóðatal: 45
Grettis saga: 113, 182–83 Hávarðar saga: 92
Grímnismál: 16–17, 19, 42, 52–53, 61, 83 heathen: 70, 148–49, 160, 163, 165
Guðmundar kvæði biskups: 81 practices: 160
Guðmundar saga: 94 religions: 136
Guðmundardrápa: 93–94, 100 Hebrides: 183, 187, 191
Guðmundr inn ríki Eyjólfsson: 183–84 Heimskringla: ix, 30, 59, 64, 113, 144, 152,
Guðrúnarkviða: x, 82 157, 157 n. 5, 161 n. 18, 165, 176, 180
guðs lǫg see law(s) Hejnum: 160, 162, 164
Gulathing, laws of see law(s) Helgi magri Eyvindarson: 182–83, 186–88,
Gunnlaugr: 70, 93 192
Guta saga: 157–62, 164–66, 170 helmingr: 64–65, 71
Gylfaginning: ix, 16, 20; see also under Edda
Hermann Pálsson: 192
Hermann, Pernille: 5, 157 n. 5, 181, 219
Haddingus: 144–45
‘heron of forgetfulness’ see óminnis hegri
Hafliðaskrá: 217
Heslop, Kate: 6–7, 35 n. 66
Hafliði Másson: 217–18
Haframinni: 197, 207 Historia Brittonum: 135
Hafrsfjǫrðr: 175–77, 180, 182–84, 186, 191 Historia Francorum: 140
Hafuer j Straumj: 197, 207 Historia Langobardorum: 137–38
Hákon inn gamli (the old) Hákonarson, Historia Regum Britanniae: 138, 144
king of Norway: 178, 180 historiography: ix, 4, 66, 72, 140, 143–44,
Hákon inn riki Grjótgarðsson, earl of Lade 146 n. 45, 151, 156 n. 4
(Hlaðajarl): 189, 191 Hjǫrleifr: 181, 185, 193
Hákon inn riki Sigurðarson, earl of Lade Hǫðr: 54–55
(Hlaðajarl): 186 Hœnir: 17 n. 11, 17–19, 21, 45, 45 n. 18,
Halbwachs, Maurice: viii, 2, 5, 212, 212 n. 2 54–55
Hallar-Steinn: 66–67, 70–71 Hólar: 35, 221, 223
Hallfreðar saga: 68, 69 n. 24 Holtsmark, Anne: 3, 198
Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson: 66 Houts, Elisabeth van: 117
Hálogaland: 64 Hrollaugr: 184–85
Haraldr inn harðráði Sigurðarson, king of hugi (mind, thought): 43, 61
Norway: 90, 113, 115, 144, 183 Huginn: 15–17, 20–21, 43–45, 61, 83
Haraldr inn hárfagri Hálfdanarson, king of hugr (mind, thought): 43
Norway: 8, 176–77, 181, 183, 185, 194 Hungrvaka: ix, 34, 36
and migration to Iceland: 176, 180, 186, Húsdrápa: 63, 91–92, 100, 109
188–89 Hvamm-Sturla see Sturla inn gamli Þórðarson
Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar: 144 Hyndluljóð: 81
INDEX 235
Iceland Jon Raude, archbishop of Nidaros: 198–99

early modern: ix, 8 Jóns saga helga: 35
medieval: ix, 8, 211, 225, 227 Jónsbók: 223
settlement of, settlers in: 8, 27, 175–94, Jordanes: 137, 148
217, 220 Jórunn manvitsbrekka (daughter of Ketill
size of settlement in: 177, 188 flatnefr): 187, 192
Icelandic jǫtnar (giant) see giants and giantesses
Commonwealth of: 8, 212–13, 214 Jutland: 95, 150
law-speakers, lawman: 9, 30, 180, 189,
211, 213, 215, 217–18, 221, 225, kennings see skaldic kennings
226 Ketilbjǫrn inn gamli Ketilsson, of Mosfell:
legal culture: 4, 8, 211–12, 216, 220, 222 191, 193
literature: ix–x, 3, 5, 9, 13–15, 24, 28–30, Ketill flatnefr Bjarnarson: 187, 192, 194
33, 36 Ketill hœngr Hallbjarnarson: 189–90
poetry: x, 3, 4, 5, 7, 17, 27, 31, 60–72, Ketill Þorsteinsson, bishop of Hólar: 221
78–95, 100–01, 109–10, 112–19, 219 Kievan Rus’: 7, 113, 121–22
sagas: ix, x, 3, 9, 26–27, 60, 92, 113, 178, Kirkjubæjarklaustr: 185, 187, 192, 194
180, 188–89, 212–13, 221, 225; Kjalnesinga saga: 92
see also individual titles Kjartan Ólafsson: 182, 184, 186
settlers: 8, 175–94 knowledge of the past see fræði
identity, identities: 1–2, 4–5, 7, 49, 90, 92, knowledgeable men see fróðir menn
146, 155, 165, 168, 170, 175–76, 192, Knútr inn ríki Sveinsson, king of
194, 205, 227 England, Denmark and Norway
images (imagines): vii, ix, 15–16, 23–24, 27, (alt. Canute the Great): 123–24
29, 63, 79, 81, 83, 87, 90–94, 96, 162 Kolskeggr fróði: 178, 184–85
Ingimundr ‘gamli’ Þorgeirsson: 44, 120, Konungsbók: 221, 225
183–85 Kristni saga: 178, 180
Institutio Oratoria: viii, 14 n. 1
intelligentia (intelligence): 21 La Mare 149–50
intertextuality: viii, x land
Ireland: 67, 176, 178, 180, 183, 192, 194 boundaries: 8, 197–204, 207, 216
Isidore of Seville: 139 claims: 179, 185, 191, 202, 216
Ísleifr Gissurarson, bishop of Skálholt: 191, landnám (settlement): 177, 179, 181
217 Landnáma, Landnámabók: ix, 8, 175,
Íslendinga saga: 178, 180, 195 177–84, 186–87, 190, 192–94, 215
Íslendingabók: ix, 26, 29–32, 181, 213, landscapes, references to: ix, 8, 14, 28–29,
217–18, 224 51, 95, 162, 167, 169–70
Íslendingasǫgur: ix, 26, 178, 180, 213 natural and built: 155, 159, 170 n. 37
Italy: 7, 133, 135–36, 138, 140–42, 145–46 Latin: 47, 77, 149, 224, 226
ius divinum: 222 alphabet: 99, 217, 221
ius particulare: 222 texts: 4, 66, 135
iviðjur (giantess) see giants and giantesses Laurens Karlsson: 203–04
lausavísur (occasional verses): 64–65, 113,
Jamtaland: 191 117–18
Järnäs: 203–04 law(s)
Jaroslav: 116, 161 church laws (kyrkiu balkær): 201;
Jesch, Judith: 87, 89 see also canon law
Jews: 167–68 council (lǫgrétta): 222
Jǫkul(s)firðir: 188 courts: 8, 212–13, 222–23
236 INDEX
customary: 214, 217, 225 Lund: 140

guðs lǫg (lit. God’s law): 222 archbishop, archbishopric of: 156, 158, 221
lawman: 178, 180, 203, 215, 225
law-speaker (lǫgsǫgumaðr): 9, 30, 178, Málsháttakvæði: 93–94, 100
180, 189–90, 211, 213, 217–19, 226 Mannus: 167
laws of manuscripts
Gotland (Gutalag): 157–59 AM 61 fol.: 67, 71
Gulathing: 214 AM 107 fol.: 179
Hälsingland (Hälsingelagen): 157, 201, AM 114a 4°: 198
204 AM 334 fol.: 214
Iceland: 8, 211–27 Cod. Holm. 2 4°: 59
Lombard: 222 Cod. Holm. B 64: 157
Norway: 8, 214, 217 Cod. Holm. B 65: 158
Sweden: 8, 157–58, 198 Cod. Holm. B 99: 159
provincial laws (landskapslagar): 8, 157–58, Cod. Holm. D 2: 158
198, 214 Codex Upsaliensis of the Prose Edda
Roman: 222 (DG 11): 80
Laxdœla saga: 182, 186 GKS 1157 fol. (Grágás): 214
Le Goff, Jacques: 5, 205–06, 218 GKS 2365 4° (Codex Regius of the
learned Elder Edda): 42
individuals: 211, 213, 218–19 Ny Kgl. Saml. 408 8:o: 166
knowledge: 14, 135, 139, 151, 216, 220 Maori tradition: 112, 117
law: 213–14, 216 Markús Skeggjason: 121 n. 55, 221
literature: 4, 79 Mars: 148–49
lore: 9 martyrdom, martyrologies: 164, 220
milieux: 6, 36 mead of poetry: 79, 80, 83
prehistory: 138, 150 media, mediality: viii–x, 1, 2, 4, 6, 31, 76,
style: 94 83, 90, 94, 99, 155, 157, 160, 221
legal compilatory mediality: 6, 78
claims: 179 medieval
culture: 4, 159, 211–13, 215–16, 219–20, genres: ix, 3–6, 13, 36, 72, 99
222 historiography: ix, 4, 66, 72, 140, 143–44,
knowledge: 205, 221, 225 151
texts: 9, 200, 215–16, 223, 226–27 Nordic culture: ix–x, 1–5, 9, 14
legend(s): 7, 62, 69, 72, 100, 109, 112–13, Nordic literature: x, 3, 5–6, 13–15, 24,
164, 167, 183 28–30, 36; see also Old Norse(-
of Simonides: viii, 14, 28 Icelandic) literature
Lexicon Poeticum: 77–78, 92 Mediterranean: 133, 137–38, 141, 143–45
Liðsmannaflokkr: 116 Melabók: 177, 179, 188
lieux de mémoire: 5, 52 memorial
Likkair Snielli: 163, 165 capacities of individuals: 5, 14, 77, 89, 237
Lindow, John: 6, 15, 20, 30 culture: viii, 8, 95, 98–99, 226
literacy: 87, 89, 99 poems (erfidrápur): 59, 67–70, 112
introduction of: 213–14, 216–17, 224 poetry: 3, 199
Loden of Ulvkälla (OSw Aldrarkællda): records: 133
197–98, 201, 207 memorialization: 9, 167, 169
Lǫgrétta see law council memory
lǫgsǫgumaðr see law-speaker absence of: 75, 83, 99, 167
Luna: 141–43, 145 and affective bonds: 85
INDEX 237
and facts: 42, 45–46, 155–56 habit or procedural: 42, 45

and fame: 85, 152 institutionalized: 36, 47, 219
and foresight: 21–23, 110 key aspects of: 15, 24, 29
and forgetting: x, 13, 15, 17, 19, 24–27, limitations of: 13, 20, 25, 26, 30
29, 32, 34, 78–84, 99, 167, 170–71, natural: 15, 22, 83, 117
212, 224 objects of: 6, 8, 14, 47, 54–55, 76, 78, 92,
and identity: 2, 4–5, 7, 49, 90, 92, 155, 95, 155, 159, 170, 216
170, 175, 194, 205, 227 processual: 45–46
and individuals: 2, 5, 6, 8, 26, 29–31, 42, rhetoric of: vii–ix, 6–7, 14, 22–24,
46–47, 51, 75, 84, 86, 89–90, 92, 99, 75–76, 86, 89, 99–100
110–12, 125, 167 n. 30, 170, 178, ritualized communication of: 45
198, 205–06 rote: 3, 4, 26 n. 37
and intelligence: 15, 18, 21, 23 selective: 156 n. 1, 212, 220, 224, 227
and kennings: x, 35, 77–84 semantic: 42, 45–46
and landscape: ix, 8, 14, 28–29, 51, 95, social aspects of: 2, 5, 44, 47, 50, 90,
155, 159, 162, 167, 169–70 110–11, 167, 170, 178, 212, 227
and repeated acts: 42 spatial aspects: 23, 28–29, 79
and the book: 5, 13–14, 27–29, 31–36 training of: 13–15, 22–23, 29–30, 35–36
and the old ‘nobility’: 224 memory construction: vii, ix, 3, 33, 119,
and wisdom: 13–23, 29–30, 35–36, 140, 151, 193–94, 206
42–45, 49–50, 55, 80–81, 111, 205 memory drinks: 7, 23, 77 n. 9, 79 n. 24,
artificial: 6, 15, 22–23, 29, 34, 36 80–83, 99
as ‘leaky bucket’: 25, 171 memory media: viii–x, 1–2, 4, 6, 31, 76, 90,
as stomach: 79 99, 155, 157, 221
as storehouse: 13, 25–26, 33–36, 81, 84, memory specialists: 14, 47, 51, 86, 206,
171, 175 218–19
autobiographical: 5, 7, 42, 109–13, 115, memory techniques: 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 14, 23–24,
117, 119–20, 122–25 29, 35–36, 54–55, 216, 226
books, as aid to: 5, 14, 26, 34–36 men of memory: (minnugha mæn,
collective: vii, 2, 5, 8, 31, 47, 63, 77, alt. minninge mæn, minnunga mæn,
86–87, 155, 166 n. 27, 170–71, 198, minnunga men): ix, 1, 8, 32, 155, 157,
205–06, 212, 218 170–71, 198, 201–06, 216
communicated: 44–51 mental map: 161–62
communicative: 5, 31 n. 53, 47, 86–87, Merlínússpá: 93–94, 100
92, 95, 100 Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben: 45
concepts of: 5, 9, 36 Mímir: 17–21, 23–24, 45
cultural: ix, 2, 5–7, 29, 31, 36, 44, head of: 19–21, 23–24, 45
46–47, 49–55, 75, 86–87, 89–90, well of: 20, 21, 23
92, 100–01, 167 n. 29, 171, 198, minni drekka (memorial toast): 80–81
205–06, 226 Mitchell, Stephen A.: 7–8, 15, 44 n. 12
diminution of: 24 mnemonic
embodiment of: 15, 17, 19, 21–22, 24, 45 aid: 27, 155, 200, 206
experienced: 31, 41–42, 44, 46–47, images: 23–24
49–50, 95 places: 27–29
externalized: 32–33 techniques: 1, 14, 34 n. 63, 79
extraordinary: 23, 29 mnemosyne: 125
festive: 86–87 modes of transmission: 8, 86, 212, 223
fixed: 4, 32–33, 47, 50–51, 92, 171, 226 monasteries: 121, 227
generative: 4, 26 n. 37, 206 Apulia: 145–46
238 INDEX
Helgafell: 223 Oddi: 184, 187

Le Bec: 134 Óðinn’s
Visby: 159 ravens: x, 15–16, 16 n. 5, 16 n. 8, 17,
monuments: 3, 47, 95, 98, 100, 155, 159, 170 42–45, 61
Morbek: 197, 207 wisdom: 16 n. 7, 16 n. 8, 20–23, 30,
Mosafotenn: 200 42–45, 49, 55
Mosfell: 191, 193 Önundr tréfótr: 182–84, 187
muna (remember): 1, 13, 25, 43, 61 n. 5, 76, Ófeigr: 26–27, 188
117, 118, 201 Óláfr inn helgi Haraldsson, king of Norway,
Muninn: x, 1, 9, 15–17, 20–21, 43–45, 61, 83 later saint: 59, 64–66, 70, 92, 125,
munr (mind): 43 160–66, 182, 187
myths of origin: ix, 135–36, 138, 143, 160, as ‘Gotland’s apostle’: 162
167, 170, 205–06, 217–20 cult of: 170
Óláfr Tryggvason, king of Norway: 66–72,
Narbonne: 118, 119 n. 42 88, 113–15, 182, 184, 190
Nedkvitne, Arnved: 214, 216 Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar: 67, 70
Nicolaus Petreius (alt. Niels Pedersen): 159, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta: 67 n. 18,
164 72
Niðarós (Nidaros): 182, 199 Óláfsdrápa: 67, 70–71
Njáll: 28, 189–90, 194 Ólafur Lárusson: 214
Njáls saga: 28, 178, 190–91, 193–94 Old Norse(-Icelandic)
Nora, Philippe: 5, 52 literature: ix–x, 3, 5–6, 13–15, 24, 28–29,
Norman 30, 33, 36, 99
authors: 7, 133–34, 136–37, 143, 146 mythology: 6, 15–16, 23, 41–42, 51–52, 62
Conquest: 134 óminnis hegri (alt. óminnis hegri,
dukes: 133–34, 139, 143, 147, 149–51 óminnishegri): x, 1, 80, 82–83
historians: 136–37, 140, 145–47, 149, 151 óminnisveig, óminnisveigr: x, 82–83
historiography and historiographers: 133, onomastics: 159, 162
137, 140, 143–44, 151 oral
kings of England: 151 culture(s): 6, 215–16
knights: 137 forms: 4, 31
literature: 133 genre(s): 3, 4, 199
memory: 7, 117, 133, 135, 151–52 history: 86, 89, 100
‘national’ history: 133 memory: 175–77, 224 n. 57
pre-history: 135 methods of remembering: 9, 216, 226
rulers: 143 poets: 61
state: 133 remembrance: 60, 218–19
writers: 133 society: 8, 45, 51, 61, 198, 205–06
Normandy: 7, 133, 137, 139–40, 145–47, tradition: 86, 156, 160, 166, 175, 179,
149, 152 213, 215
Normans: 7, 133, 135–40, 146, 151 orally composed verse: 27
Norway: 7, 8, 59, 61, 64, 66, 68, 70, 72, Ordericus Vitalis: 134
77 n. 9, 113, 126, 160–61, 175–78, Orkney: 70, 117, 119
180–87, 190–93, 197–201, 207, 214, Ormika of Hejnum: 160–65
217, 219 Östen in Humblaholm: 203–04
Norwegian aristocracy: 224 Östen in Leuar: 203–04
king(s): 32, 59, 66, 151, 176 Otkell: 191–93
Novgorod: 116, 161 Óttar: 88 n. 70, 161
Nünning, Ansgar: ix, 2, 31 n. 52 ownership rights: 215
INDEX 239
pagans: 121, 163, 165, 187 prologues (formálar): ix, 24, 32–34, 59, 157,
paper 157 n. 5, 225
introduction of: 224 property rights: 223–24
use of: 223 Prose Edda see under Edda
Paris: 143 providentia (foresight): 21
past, constructions, uses of: vii, x, 2–9, provincial laws see under laws
13, 17, 20, 26, 30–33, 43, 45, 47, 50,
53–54, 60–61, 66, 70–72, 75–76, 83, Qualiscunque descriptio Islandiae: 224
86–87, 89–90, 92, 100–01, 112, 117, Quinn, Judy: 75, 83
125, 155–57, 159–60, 164, 170–71, Quintilian: viii, 14 n. 1
175, 177–81, 188, 193–94, 198, 201,
206, 211–12, 215–16, 220, 223–27 Rafnasill: 196, 207
selective uses of: 25, 32–33, 224 Ragnarr loðbrók (alt. Ragnar Lodbrok): 91,
selective way of recording: 167–71, 227 140, 146, 183
pastoral care: 219 Ragnarsdrápa: 91, 109
patron saints: 162, 166 Ragnarssona þáttr: 146, 152
Paul the Deacon: 137–38, 154 Rangárvellir: 189–90, 193
Peel, Christine: 158 n. 8, 160 Raundar foss: 197, 207
performance: vii, 27, 34, 55, 75, 81, 86–87, ravens see Óðinn’s ravens
94, 97, 99–100, 170 n. 37, 215–16 Reformation: 158, 160
Périgueux: 143 Rekstefja: 66–67, 67 n. 18, 70–72
personal memories: 42, 48, 51, 62, 94, 112 rhetoric
Phaedrus: viii, 34 n. 63 classical: vii, viii, 6, 14, 17, 34, 36, 79
place and image: 15, 27–29, 81, 87 skaldic: 7, 71, 75–76, 85, 89, 92, 99–100
place name(s): 8, 114, 163, 165, 182, 189, Richard I, duke of Normandy: 133–34, 147
200, 207 Richard II, duke of Normandy: 133, 147
places (loci): viii, 6, 8, 15, 23, 27–29, Rigney, Ann: 25, 73, 83, 99
29 n. 46, 51–53, 55, 64, 68–69, 81, Robert I, duke of Normandy: 134, 147
87, 95, 120–21, 123, 161–62, 163–64, Robert of Torigni: 134, 147, 149, 151
167, 182, 212 Rǫgnvaldr Kali: 113, 117, 119
poets and patrons: 60–61, 66, 69, 70 n. 25, Rollo: 134, 139, 142, 147, 149
94, 99 Roman de Troie: 134
poetic Rome: 65, 141–43, 145, 152
authenticity: 60 Rouen: 123, 134, 140, 143, 147, 149
communication: 79 Runastein: 197, 207
memorials: 6, 72 runestones and runic inscriptions: 4, 6, 9,
memory: 16, 63 76, 81, 87, 89, 95, 97–100, 169
Poetic Edda see under Edda DR 81 (Skjern 2): 97
Polovcians: 120–21 DR 83 (Sønder Vinge 2): 95–97
Pontus, the region: 138 DR 94 (Ålum 1): 95–97
Pouchenie Ditiam (Teachings for [my] DR 110 (Virring): 95–97
Children): 113, 120 G S37 M (Hallvi, Gotland): 9
preaching: 35, 219 U 114 (Runby, Uppland): 97–98
pre-Christian religion: 63–64, 136, 148 Russia: 67, 70, 115, 116, 138, 145, 161, 165
preservation: viii, 1, 27, 109, 120, 223 Russian Chronicle of the First Things (Povest’
Prestssaga Guðmundar góða: 119 vremennych let = ‘History of the past
printing technology: 224 years’; alt. Nestor-Chronicle): 138
private archives: 223 Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian
professional lawyers: 213 Codex of: 120–21
240 INDEX
sacrifice see blót Stephen of Rouen (Stephanus

saeculum: 47–49, 86–87, 92 Rothomagensis Étienne de Rouen),
Sæmundr inn fróði Sigfússon: 184–85, 190 monk and poet: 134, 139, 142, 145
Saxo Grammaticus: 113, 144, 145 n. 40, Stiklastaðir: 65, 124
150–51 storage: vii, ix, 1, 24–25, 25 n. 31, 31,
Scotland: 67, 180 33–34, 36, 94 n. 98
Scythia: 138–39 storyteller: 8, 178, 183, 287
seeress: 41–42, 47–51, 55 Strelow, Hans Nielsson: 195, 164–66,
Seine: 140–41, 149 169 n. 35, 170 n. 37, 170 n. 38
selective recollection: 160 Strengleikar: ix
Separate Saga of St Óláfr: 59 Sturla inn gamli Þórðarson (also known as
settlers see Icelandic settlers Hvamm-Sturla): 8, 175–80, 182–94
Shetland: 70, 119 Sturlubók: 178–79, 190, 194
Sicilian: 133, 144 Sturlunga saga: 84 n. 5, 120, 218
Sicily: 7, 116, 133, 135, 145, 151, 152 Sturlunga-collection: 178, 181, 187
Síðu-Hallr: 184–85 Sturlungs: 179–80, 187, 190–91
Sighvat rauði: 190, 194 Styrmir inn fróði Kárason: 177–79
Sigrdrífa: 81–82 Styrmisbók: 188
Sigurðardrápa: 62, 88 Sveg: 197–99, 201, 207
Sigvatr Þórðarson: 64–65, 66, 112, 123–25 Sverris saga: 31–33, 36
Simek, Rudolf: 7, 18 n. 16 Svǫlðr, Battle of: 66 n. 17, 68–69
Simonides see legend of Simonides
Skáldatal: 66, 66 n. 17; see also under Edda Teitr Ísleifsson: 217–18
skaldic testimony: 216, 218
kennings: x, 35 n. 66, 43, 68, 70, 77 n. 10, thing assemblies see Alþingi; assemblies
79–81, 83, 83 n. 42, 84, 114 things (res): 23
poetry: 6–7, 26–27, 27 n. 41, 59–61, Thórr, Thor see Þórr
62 n. 6, 64–5, 72, 76, 78, 83, 88, Thoretzkiöl: 199, 200
90 n. 82, 91, 94, 100, 109–10, 219 Tidericus: 168, 171
verse: 6, 7, 27, 32, 34, 59, 60–62, 72, 77, tithe: 201, 221, 226
87, 126 topography: 28, 52
Skáldskaparmál: ix, 18, 18 n. 15, 79–80, Tore Arnulvsson: 199, 200–01
93, 93 n. 95, 150, 218; thought: 15, 15 n. 3, 16, 16 n. 5, 17,
see also under Edda 17 n. 11, 18–19, 22, 28, 43, 43 n. 10,
Skálholt 44, 44 n. 12, 45, 61 n. 3, 64, 69, 80–81,
bishops of: 213, 221, 223 100, 140, 166
lawbook of: 219 tradition
Skallagrímr Kveld-Úlfsson: 176–77, 179, bearers: 171 n. 39
182, 188–90 classical: vii, viii, ix, 6, 14, 14 n. 1, 16 n. 5,
Skjálfandi: 185, 192 21, 23–24, 24 n. 28, 25, 27–29,
Snorra Edda see under Edda 29 n. 46, 35, 36, 79, 156
Snorri Sturluson: 32, 59, 62, 63 n. 9, 72, studies: 171, 171 n. 42
144, 150, 176, 178, 181, 187, 193, 219 transmission: 1, 8, 27, 31–32, 86–87, 100,
social history of remembering: 212, 227 212, 219, 226–27
Sonatorrek: 81 of collective memories: 212
St Olaf (Óláfr inn helgi Haraldsson) of cultural memory: 226
see Óláfr inn helgi Haraldsson of legal culture: 9, 198, 212–13, 222–23,
Staðarholtsbók: 214, 225 n. 58 226
Steinberget: 197, 207 of public memories: 212
INDEX 241
Trojan origins: 7, 135 Yates, Frances: A. 14 n. 1, 22

Trojans: 138–40, 151 Ymir: 48
Trondiklætt: 199, 200 Ynglinga saga: 17, 19, 43, 45, 59
Troy: 138–40 L’Ystoire de li Normant: 135
Úlfr Uggason: 63, 109 Þiðreks saga: ix

Uni: 185, 192–93 Þingvellir: 222–23
Útfarardrápa: 144 Þjazi: ix, 52
eyes of: x
Vafþrúðnir: 47, 48, 50–51 Þjóðólfr of Hvinir: 63
Vafþrúðnismál: 30, 47–50, 52–53, 55 Þjórsá: 189, 191
Valdemar Atterdag, king of Denmark: 169–70 Þórðar saga: 92
Vanir: 17–20, 23, 42, 45, 139 Þórðarbók: 179
Vatnsdæla saga: 44 Þórðr Sigvaldaskáld: 65, 124–25
Vestrfararvísur: 84 n. 50, 112, 123–24 Þórðr Víkingsson: 185–86
Vetrliði: 190, 193 Þorgils saga ok Hafliða: 218
Viking: 68, 70, 134, 140, 145, 152, 183 Þorláks saga: 33–34, 36
age: ix, x, 2–3, 76, 143, 146, 177 Þórólfr Kveld-Úlfsson: 189–90
ancestors: 143 Þórr (alt. Thórr): 54, 62 n. 8, 63, 63 n. 9,
customs: 146–48 96, 109
inscriptions: 95, 97 hammer: of 53
raids: 67, 114, 137, 140–41, 142, 147, 151 in Dudo (as Thur): 148–49
voyages: 149, 151, 183, 186, 191 Þórsdrápa: 90
Vínland the Good: 183, 186 Þórunn hyrna Ketilsdóttir: 187–88, 192
Visby: 159, 163, 168, 168 n. 32 Þulr: 51
Visbyfranciskanernas bok: 169
Vǫluspá: 20, 42, 48, 50, 55, 215 Æsir: 6, 17–18, 18 n. 15, 19–20, 24, 42,
Vopnafjǫrðr: 185, 189 45–46, 49, 51, 53–55, 139
ættartal n., ættartala f. (genealogy): 205
Weland (= Vǫlundr): 140–41
Westfjords: 182, 185–86, 188
Widsið: 113
William Longsword: 134, 147
William of Apulia: 135, 137, 145
William of Jumièges: 134, 139, 142, 145,
147, 149
wisdom: 13, 15–16, 16 n. 5, 16 n. 8, 18,
18 n. 15, 20–23, 29–30, 35–36, 42,
44–45, 49, 55, 79 n. 24, 80–81, 111,
165, 205
Wordsworth, William: 62
writing
and cultural memory: ix, 31, 47, 49,
86–87, 89, 90, 92, 100, 226
vernacular: 4, 6, 60, 66, 72, 135, 143, 213,
217, 226
written texts, read aloud: 9, 213, 216–17, 226
Acta Scandinavica
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grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned
by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the
screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive
texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being
approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the
publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.
Titles in Series
The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to Vǫluspá and Nordic Days of Judgement, ed. by Terry
Gunnell and Annette Lassen (2013)
Medieval Christianity in the North: New Studies, ed. by Kirsi Salonen, Kurt Villads Jensen,
and Torstein Jørgensen (2013)
New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson (2014)

Minni and Muninn

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Minni and Muninn

Editorial Advisory Board under the auspices of the

Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell,

Minni and Muninn : memory in medieval Nordic culture. -- (Acta Scandinavica ; 4)

© 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture

Part I. Memory and Narration

Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering in

Memory and Old Norse Mythology

Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse

Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia

Part II. Memory and History

The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval

Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson

Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men

Legal Culture and Historical Memory

studies, rhetoric studies, performativity studies, media studies, and a number

Hávamál 13, or the óminnisveig (potion of forgetfulness) in Dráp Niflunga and

Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir

Pernille Hermann (norph@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics

Stephen A. Mitchell (samitch@fas.harvard.edu) is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at

Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir (hisaa@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of

The texts under consideration in this anthology cover a wide range of

known from memory studies, such as ‘cultural memory’ and ‘communicative

the compilatory medium of the Poetic Edda deploys ‘drinks of forgetting’ as

version to Christianity and the mid fourteenth-century bubonic pandemic. By

influenced historical writing. At the same time, oral methods of remember-

Pernille Hermann (norph@hum.au.dk) is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics

sitio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio), which was revisited by medieval scholars

Memory and Wisdom

A medieval understanding of the ravens as thought and memory is supported

Huginn oc Muninn fliúga hverian dag

According to the passage, both groups exchange hostages connected to thought

Memory, Intelligence, and Foresight

The sub-classes in De inventione, where wisdom is an overall category cover-

deprived of its originality or misused; quite to the contrary, it confirms that it

[…] if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary,

Mímir’s head, as well as other mythological beings or incidents, can be an

Memory and Forgetting

The Memory of Individuals and Cultural Memory

i.e. individuals with a trained and remarkable memory, and it displays an aware-

Memory and the Book

In presupposing the principle of selectivity and reduction, which is integral

The mechanism of memory/forgetting is present in the passage, where writing

In the passage, ‘sacred books’ are compared with ‘breast-knowledge’, which I

Ages, and to what extent it would have substituted memory.

Vǫluspá presents a synopsis of the mythology as embedded in a single human

the myths subscribed, memory is thus apparently fundamental. What I seek to

Huginn oc Muninn fliúga hverian dag

If we understand Huginn and Muninn as thought and memory, certain con-

Þat kann ec iþ tólpta, ef ec sé á tré uppi

Ørófi vetra, áðr væri iǫrð um scǫpuð,

However, if Bergelmir is not the wise giant, then we are at a loss.

Ragnarǫk looms, ever present in the cultural memory. When it comes, it

Although the answer is to some extent determined by the question — Óðinn

Margaret Clunies Ross

Margaret Clunies Ross (margaret.cluniesross@sydney.edu.au) is Emeritus Professor of English

Criteria of Poetic Authenticity

The unqualified character of skaldic presentations of Norse myths, whether in

These lines are presented as immediate impressions of unusual weather events

Poetic Memories of King Óláfr Tryggvason

at the flyting of weapons [battle]’) (3/1–4). In other places, as in stanza 4,

In later examples, minni is probably textually mediated. Gunnlaugr’s Merlínús

Assmann, Aleida, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächt

Construction of a Narrative Self: Developmental and Cultural Perspectives, ed. by

Our oldest Norman source, Dudo’s De moribus et actis primorum Norman