The Interplay of Pagan and Christian Traditions in Icelandic Settlement Myths

Abstract

Medieval Icelanders took pride in their cultural inheritance and descent. They knew that being a new nation was something out of the ordinary, and they cultivated a remarkable literary tradition about their past. They preserved tales of the distant heroic Scandinavian past as well as of more recent Icelandic events, but the tradition that concerned the events connected with the landnam or settlement seems to have been cultivated with a particular interest. This is understandable since the settlement is equated with the foundation of their nation, and the event that had made them Icelanders. Tradition has it that many prominent settlers threw their highseat pillars overboard when they caught sight of Iceland, and settled at the place where they landed. In this essay I shall discuss the stories about settlings where this course of events is described and present some parallels from Latin hagiographic narratives. The Icelandic sources present both Christian and pagan versions of this ritual and appear to applaud both. I conclude by tentatively suggesting how a contemporary audience might have interpreted these myths in light of their Christian faith. When reading about events that took place in the settlement period of Iceland, traditionally dated between 870 and 930, but not recorded in writing until the twelfth century at the very earliest, scholars have often been compelled to address the question of the historicity of certain customs, beliefs, or anecdotes mentioned in the texts. One example of this is a brief article from 1988 by Hermann Palsson.1 He analyzed an anecdote about an Icelandic settler by the name of Porir Grimsson who, as a prophecy foretold, settled at the location where his mare lay down. Hermann Palsson adduces two parallels to this story. The first is quite obvious and concerns the legendary or mythological Greek hero Cadmus and the founding of the city of Thebes. The second requires a bit more goodwill on behalf of the reader and involves the prophecy that Aeneas should found the future Rome at the location where a white sow was seen suckling thirty newborn piglets. These two stories of Classical antiquity have been retold numerous times and vernacular Old Norse versions ex-