„Þeir hafa flest vitni til síns fróðleiks er best eru lærðir“: The Influence of Learned Literature and Educational Books on Medieval Icelandic Sagas

Abstract

Following the Christianisation of Iceland around 1000 AD, it was necessary to import and translate the most essential literature for the education of priests to ensure the success of the fledgling Church of Iceland. While it was necessary for priests to have at least some command of Latin, the same could not be said for the general populace of Iceland, which by and large consisted of farmers who were unfamiliar with the long-standing traditions of the Roman Church. In order to ameliorate the situation, sermons and other foundational texts were thus made available in the vernacular. The oldest translations from Latin into Old Norse-Icelandic are thus liturgical texts, homilies, hagiographies, theological treatises and works on Christian philosophy and ethics.

This article considers two particularly influential textbooks from the early years of Nordic literacy. The first is a Christian didactic work, the Elucidarium by Honorius Augustodunensis, which has the form of a dialogue between master and apprentice on the basic tenets of Christianity as well as providing an education on morality. The latter is a Norwegian text – like most medieval Nordic texts by an unknown author – written ca. 1250, the King’s Mirror (Konungs skuggsjá). Even though its primary purpose is the secular education of kings on all matters of importance pertaining to their future as worldly rulers, the King’s Mirror is greatly influenced by the Elucidarium, both in form and subject matter; as the king receives his power directly from God, his education is by necessity also a Christian one.

It is argued here that both of these early didactic texts, neither of which were accessible to the general public, had a tremendously interesting, not to say important, impact on two Icelandic sagas in particular: Eiríks saga víðförla (The Saga of Eiríkr the Far-Traveled) on the one hand and Yngvars saga víðförla (The Saga of Yngvarr the Far-Traveled) on the other.

It will be shown that the Christian, secular and royal learning exhibited in these works of literature were no less meant to reach a public audience than a more learned one. In spite of the seemingly more fantastic narrative elements of the sagas, which concern themselves with pilgrimages of a sort to distant lands in the East, inhabited by dragons, giants and all kinds of monsters that the protagonists must vanquish in order to reach their goals, all of these works of literature have a common theme: a great admiration for learning „Þeir hafa flest vitni til síns fróðleiks, er best eru lærðir“: Áhrif lærdómstexta og kennslurita á íslensk sagnarit miðalda 14 and wisdom, Christian and royal virtues which are thought to be the foundation of all worldly understanding and that which separates good from evil and Christians from heathens.

Both Eiríks saga and Yngvars saga focus on humble heroes of great skill and thirst for knowledge, who seek and receive vital learning from kings whom they have befriended. The knowledge imparted is of the same nature as that which is found in the Elucidarius, a textbook for priests, and in the King’s Mirror, a textbook for future kings. The knowledge proves to be essential to the saga protagonists, as they would not have achieved their objectives without it, and thus the sagas provide concrete albeit fictitious accounts of legendary people whose service to God and wisdom has brought them eternal glory.

In a society almost exclusively populated by illiteratre working classes, these sagas demonstrate the utmost admiration for education – literary but also spiritual and practical learning. The public would still not have had access to the sagas in their written form, but these were stories told from generation to generation in an oral story-telling culture, and along the way the theme of the importance of true knowledge became an integral part of the narrative. While not directly educational texts themselves, these sagas may indicate how such a message could be imparted to those who had no other means or access to education.