Education in Medieval Iceland has long been a contested topic. On one hand, the sheer volume of literary works created in Iceland between 1100 and 1400 reflects a high degree of literary education. In contrast, the sources about schools in Medieval Iceland are very scarce, and very few texts have survived in Latin, the common tongue of the educated European elite in this period. Thus, the question arises whether the learning of medieval Icelanders was qualitatively different from that of the educated elite in Europe in the same period, more homespun and shaped by a vernacular, oral culture that has left few remaining traces in most other societies of that period. In this ambitious book, Ryder Patzuk-Russell aims to give a qualified answer to those questions. His aim is to investigate the institutions and practices of education in medieval Icelandic culture and give a comprehensive view of education and literacy by using a broad spectrum of sources, such as sagas, law codes, and grammatical treatises. Of particular interest to him is the evolution of a bilingual clerical culture, which was reflected in the creation of the four vernacular grammatical treatises that have survived from Medieval Iceland.The first chapter is devoted to pre-Christian and secular education in Iceland. As elsewhere in the book, the author proceeds systematically and evaluates all possible forms of transmission of traditional and secular lore. Attention is given to traditional institutions such as fosterage, which might be regarded as a system of education of young men, in particular in legal matters. Examples are also used from the Sagas of the Icelanders, which were composed in the thirteenth century and later, but deal mostly with events before and around the adoption of Christianity. This is illuminating, but more attention might have been paid to the evidence of the contemporary sagas, which also shed some light on secular practices. Although the author briefly mentions Sæmundr Sigfússon´s fosterage of Oddi Þorgilsson and Jón Loftsson´s fosterage of Snorri Sturluson in later chapters (see, in particular, pp. 82 and 84), more attention might have been given to these examples in this first chapter. As these chieftains lived at Oddi, this fosterage could be regarded in the context of the clerical school in Oddi, run by Eyjólfr Sæmundsson, the son af Sæmundr and uncle of Jón (p. 82). Was the fosterage offered by Sæmundr and Jón an example of clerical education on a personal scale, in contrast to the institutional education of Eyjólfr, or would that be overestimating the importance of Eyjólfr's school as an institution? Or, alternatively, was the fosterage offered to Oddi and Snorri a secular counterpoint to the clerical school system of which the teaching offered by Eyjólfr was an integral part? As examples of a secular education inherent in fosterage are few and unreliable, the close connection between these well-known examples and one of the few institutions of clerical education is noteworthy. The problem is, of course, that we know very little of the content of the education involved in the fosterage of Oddi Þorgilsson and Snorri Sturluson, and it might have involved clerical learning no less than secular subjects such as the law. Another missed opportunity in the context of secular learning is the rhetorical erudition that was acquired by powerful men such as Sturla Þórðarson, Kálfr Guttormsson, and Hallr Kleppjárnsson, which was exhibited during legal disputes at the parliament, as evidenced in the contemporary sagas. Although there is a subsection on education in secular law (pp. 33–7), the contemporary sagas are not brought into evidence, and little attention is devoted to rhetoric in this context. The value of this section is nevertheless considerable, not least in demonstrating how limited the evidence for secular education is when it is reviewed in a holistic manner.The second chapter is devoted to institutional aspects of the clerical education system introduced in Iceland following the introduction of Christianity. Here, the author uses his strong command of the sources and no-nonsense approach to great avail, as he compares education in Iceland to education in other Roman Catholic countries at the same time and demonstrates the general similarities between Icelandic practices and those in other parts of Europe. Nevertheless, the rural, decentralized nature of Icelandic society had to be taken into consideration, as the author points out quite succinctly: “Cathedral schools and monasteries adapted European educational institutions to the particular circumstances of Iceland, shaping themselves around existing social practices like fosterage” (p. 144). The author regards the examples of high-status fosterage from Oddi as compatible with this system of clerical education, but he also believes that secular learning might have been quite similar to the education offered at institutional schools at cathedrals and monasteries. In addition, he argues that there were significant continuities in the system of education in Iceland throughout the medieval period.The curriculum of the schools is explored in the third chapter. A fundamental question raised in this chapter is the significance and presence of Latin in Icelandic society. The author challenges widely held assumptions that Latin was insignificant in comparison to the vernacular and draws on three factors to counter this view: the importance of the Latin liturgy for the church in Iceland, extensive mentions of Latin books in lists that have survived from ecclesiastical institutions and monasteries, and the importance of Latin for international communication and intellectual prestige. He argues that there is significant evidence of the presence and importance of Latin education in Medieval Iceland. The main subject of clerical education was grammatica, which involved learning Latin and produced many forms of partial literacy. However, the use of Latin interacted with vernacular literacy, and there must have been a substantial number of people who were introduced to clerical education but did not gain the skills to use Latin in an intellectual discourse. Patzuk-Russell argues that this was not far removed from the intersection of Latin and vernacular literacy in other European societies. The standard medieval European forms of clerical education were both complex and variable. He emphasizes the bilingual nature of clerical education in Iceland, as well as elsewhere. This is perhaps the most important contribution of this book and is likely to influence any further discussion on the use of Latin in Medieval Iceland.In the fourth chapter, the author focuses on a particular branch of literature, the vernacular grammatical treatises, to elucidate the relationship between the use of Latin and vernacular in learning. As grammar was a key subject of the clerical curriculum, its study must have been a central occupation of the schools in Medieval Iceland. The treatises are mostly concerned with subjects that were prominent within the curricula of monastic and cathedral schools, such as grammar, orthography, and rhetoric, and are thus repositories of clerical learning. However, there is an anomaly that the surviving grammatical treatises are not composed in Latin or preoccupied with Latin grammar. They are composed in Old Norse and deal with grammar and composition in Old Norse. Thus, they are evidence of a strong vernacular literacy, but also a preoccupation with adaptation to the Latin Catholic culture. In the first grammatical treatise, for instance, the Latin alphabet is introduced, and its uses for composing texts in Icelandic are accentuated. The third grammatical treatise deals with Latin grammatical and rhetorical terms and their uses in understanding traditional skaldic poetry. Thus, the grammatical treatises are a mixture of native traditions and Christian and Latin learning. According to Patzuk-Russell, their heterogeneous qualities show “the diversity of grammatical and educational practices in Medieval Iceland” (p. 279). This is the reason they are highlighted in the book, although the author concedes that the vernacular grammatical treatises were probably not central to medieval Icelandic education. They do make an interesting subject for a case study, due to their combination of Latin and vernacular learning.All things considered, The Development of Education in Medieval Iceland is a welcome addition to its field of study. The research questions and the scope of the subject matter are framed in a prudent manner, the method of analysis is useful and sound, and the conclusions are thoroughly corroborated in a scholarly and cautious fashion. Throughout the book, Patzuk-Russell adopts a circumspect and meticulous approach, and his deductions generally have a reassuring no-nonsense attitude about them. The work is structured in a helpful and inclusive manner, which gives it a sense of a wide-ranging and systematic overview. The main novelty is the emphasis on the central status of Christian and clerical education and the importance of Latin for clerical learning, although due note is given to pre-Christian forms of learning, the continuing importance of oral learning, and secular topics of study. Nevertheless, the fundamental conclusion is that education “was a livelihood for young men aspiring to be priests, and a tool for bishops to spread reformist ideology” (p. 283). Without the Church, education in Medieval Iceland would have had a very different context and content.