What every medievalist knows about medieval Iceland is it had no king, at least not until 1262 when it passed under the control of the Norwegian crown. In the rapidly growing discussion of early Iceland in the last forty years there has, however, been relatively little comment on what it may have meant for Iceland to have no king, specifically what it may have meant for the unique flowering of Icelandic letters beginning in the late twelfth century and persisting in full vigor into the early fourteenth century. In what follows I will argue the absence of a king and the increasingly palpable presence of the Norwegian king were significant factors in the shaping of Icelandic literature, not least of all peculiar triumph of medieval narrative, the Icelandic saga. In 1990 Hermann Palsson published a paper in which traced a curious subtheme in Icelandic literature, focusing on the qualifications to be king of Iceland.' The theme surfaces for the first time in Hungrvaka, a little text from circa 1200. It reports when Gizurr Isleifsson, who was destined to be the second bishop of Iceland at the end of the eleventh century, met with King Harald Hardrule of Norway, the king commented he would be very well qualified to have whatever noble title was allotted to him.2 This prophetic judgment is borne out when Gizurr in fact becomes bishop, and the author remarks was so greatly honored everyone, young or old, rich or poor, woman or man, wished to sit or stand exactly as commanded, so it might properly be said was both king and bishop over the land for as long as lived.3 The theme surfaces a second time about twenty years later in a much larger work, a chronicle of the Norwegian kings for the period 1030-1157 titled Morkinskinna and dating from around 1220. This compilation includes a little story about the Icelander Brandr Vermundarson, who, like Gizurr before him, visits King Harald Hardrule. One of his countrymen praises him to the king, stating that it was not clear any other man was better suited to be king of Iceland because of his generosity and outstanding personal qualities.4 That puts Brandr in a difficult position vis-a-vis a notoriously prickly king, who proceeds to test his alleged generosity to the utmost, but Brandr acquits himself brilliantly and thereby justifies the good opinion of his countryman. The theme occurs a third time in Bandamanna saga from the late thirteenth century, a saga in which a wily old man discountenances eight Icelandic chieftains in a legal case and derides them mercilessly into the bargain. In this saga the motif