*Article* **Þingeyrar Abbey in Northern Iceland: A Benedictine Powerhouse of Cultural Heritage**

**Gottskálk Jensson**

**Citation:** Jensson, Gottskálk. 2021. Þingeyrar Abbey in Northern Iceland: A Benedictine Powerhouse of Cultural Heritage. *Religions* 12: 423. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12060423

Academic Editor: Marina Montesano

Received: 1 May 2021 Accepted: 28 May 2021 Published: 8 June 2021

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Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen; Njalsgade 136, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark; gthj@hi.is

**Abstract:** Þingeyrar Abbey was founded in 1133 and dissolved in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation (1550), to virtually disappear with time from the face of the earth. Although highly promising archeological excavations are under way, our material points of access to this important monastic foundation are still only a handful of medieval artifacts. However, throughout its medieval existence Þingeyrar Abbey was an inordinately large producer of Latin and Icelandic literature. We have the names of monastic authors, poets, translators, compilators, and scribes, who engaged creatively with such diverse subjects as Christian hagiography, contemporary history, and Norse mythology, skillfully amalgamating all of this into a coherent, imaginative whole. Thus, Þingeyrar Abbey has a prominent place in the creation and preservation of the Icelandic Eddas and Sagas that have shaped the Northern European cultural memory. Despite the dissolution of monastic libraries and wholesale destruction of Icelandic-Latin manuscripts through a mixture of Protestant zealotry and parchment reuse, philologists have been able to trace a number of surviving codices and fragments back to Þingeyrar Abbey. Ultimately, however, our primary points of access to the fascinating world of this remote Benedictine community remain immaterial, a vast corpus of medieval texts edited on the basis of manuscript copies at unknown degrees of separation from the lost originals.

**Keywords:** Latin literature; Icelandic and Old Norse literature; Þingeyrar Abbey; cultural heritage; monasticism

#### **1. Introduction**

Umberto Eco's novel *Il nome delle Rosa* (*The Name of the Rose*) (Eco 1980) is deservedly famous for providing the modern reader imaginative access to the rich if occasionally poisonous mentality of a community of Benedictines in Northern Italy, anno 1327. Although variously shaped by the author's creative imagination and expertise in postmodern semiotics, Eco's idea of a Benedictine Abbey borrows heavily from existing Italian monasteries, chief among them the Sacra di San Michele, a picturesque monument poised on top of a mountain in Val di Susa, Piedmont. Even today this spectacular location can be visited and admired by Eco's fans, built as it is of stone and never discontinued or destroyed during a disruptive religious revolution. The situation with Þingeyrar Abbey in Northern Iceland, although founded already in the early 1100s and operating under the same monastic rule, is strikingly different. Today, a visitor to the site will find but a small stone church, which despite its Romanesque features was built as late as the 19th-century. The oldest artefact inside this church dates to the 15th century, an English alabaster altarpiece, known from a medieval inventory to have decorated the high altar of the monastic church, and a hexagonal pulpit with a few other artifacts from the 17th century. The natural site of Þingeyrar is impressive enough, situated as it is on a hill between two lakes, Hóp and Húnavatn, but there are virtually no material remains on site from the medieval Abbey. Icelanders built their churches and monasteries from wood, occasionally imported from Norway but more commonly, especially in the case of Þingeyrar, using the plentiful driftwood found on the neighboring beaches. According to a description from 1684, when a new caretaker took up

residence at Þingeyrar, there were 46 wooden buildings on location, large and small. Many of these were old and needed rebuilding, making it probable that they were remnants from the time of the monastery before 1551. Traditionally, buildings were renewed more or less according to their original design. Thus, we should picture the medieval Abbey as a small village of tarred timber houses and huts with an imposing stave church in the centre. Named constructions were the 'priests' hall', 'large hall', 'dining house', 'kitchen', and a 23 m long tunnel in between. In the medieval charters, apart from the church itself, mention is made of the cloister (Claustrum), chapter house (Capitulum), and the convent house (Conventum), where the monks sat when they read, wrote, and studied. The church was a timber stave church with apprentices surrounding the central space and a palisade walkway; two towers framed the façade, and probably carved pillars on each side of the main door, which was of a type rounded at the top. Similar structures are preserved in Norway to this day. Such wooden buildings, if not destroyed in fires at some point in history, have long since rotted away in the wet and windy Icelandic climate, or been torn down or reused, to leave no visible remains above ground. Naturally, something must still remain in the ground, at least post holes and stones, marking the outlines of former buildings, and these will no doubt be unearthed in the ongoing excavations, led by archeologist Steinunn (2017a), gradually giving us a more precise picture of the layout and arrangement of individual buildings at Þingeyrar Abbey.

Even though the modern visitor to the site may feel disappointed by its desolation, the Benedictine brothers would likely have begged to differ, despising as they did this world and spending their lives in preparation for Kingdom come, of which they thought they had reliable knowledge from their sacred books. Most moderns think they know better than to waste their lives on transcendent promises, but in a sense the *monachi Thingeyrenses* were actually quite successful in overcoming the material restraints of this world. Throughout its medieval existence, the Abbey was a center of book production like probably no other institution in the whole of Scandinavia. The monks of Þingeyrar were responsible for most of the original Latin literature of Iceland, which although largely lost today in its original form survives in vernacular versions, many of which were no doubt also created at the Abbey. Judging by the number of pages that survive in translation, the monks were highly productive authors of Latin texts, measured on medieval scales, when books were handwritten on animal skin, and a library of 200 volumes was large.

Nothing indicates that these monks intended to limit themselves to the exclusive literary medium of ecclesiastical Latin. They have not only bequeathed to us vernacular translations and discussions of classical authors (Sallust, Ovid, Lucan, Pseudo-Dares Phrygius, and Hyginus, to name a few) and of medieval historians (Beda the Venerable, Adam of Bremen, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Pseudo-Turpin), not to mention the numerous Icelandic renderings of Judeo-Christian scriptures, apocrypha, homilies, and hagiography; the Benedictines of Þingeyrar seem to have begun early on to experiment with writing original histories in the vernacular, now called 'sagas', as well as poetry, religious or otherwise, in an effort to preserve and expand local Icelandic, Scandinavian, and Germanic legends. Indeed, if it were not for these Icelandic Benedictines, we would not have some of the most important manuscripts transmitting the Eddas and studies on vernacular grammar and poetics, which today inform our Northern-European historical identity and cultural memory, since many of the manuscripts transmitting such texts were produced at Þingeyrar Abbey (Gunnlaugsson 2016; Kristjánsdóttir 2016). Perhaps strangest of all, at the end of the 12th century, the men of Þingeyrar got embroiled in the historical quarrel between *regnum* and *sacerdotium*, and in that connection penned past and contemporary political history (Jensson 2016). While much of Icelandic medieval literature is anonymous, we have the names of abbots, priests, and monks of Þingeyrar Abbey, who are spoken of as authors, poets, translators, compilators, and scribes, engaging with a diversity of literary topics. Remarkably, these monastics were able to fashion all of their subjects into a coherent universal whole, using an orthodox medieval theology, which

was largely established in antiquity by the Church Fathers, though long since revised today and all but forgotten.

After the Reformation, which in Iceland is marked by the beheading of the last Catholic bishop and his two sons in 1550 (one of whom, Björn Jónsson, was the caretaker and future abbot of Þingeyrar), both mobile and landed property belonging to the Icelandic monasteries was confiscated by officials of the Danish Royal Crown. In 1551, an armed band of Danish soldiers stole from the northern episcopal cathedral and monasteries most items of value, especially artifacts of gold and silver, which they transported to Copenhagen to be melted down by royal goldsmiths. Even more sadly, we have no accounts of what happened to the monastic libraries. For all we know, books were burnt, left to rot, or thrown overboard from the Danish ships on the voyage to Copenhagen. Another perhaps more innocent but equally devastating practice in the 16th and 17th century was parchment reuse, mainly in book binding. Several surviving codices are missing pages, cut out for this purpose 'by a barbaric hand', as the Icelandic manuscript collector Árni Magnússon (d. 1730) wrote on a slip of paper he inserted into one of them (Reykjavík, AM 382 4to).

Medieval libraries were quite different from their modern counterparts. As was usual elsewhere in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, in Iceland books and documents were mostly stored in wooden chests and coffers. At Þingeyrar Abbey, these were apparently located near the high altar of the old church, according to an inventory of 1525. Liturgical books lay around in the church, and 'numerous' others were found elsewhere in the building (where exactly it does not say), while 'on the high altar there [were] many books in Latin, in good and bad condition, and books in Icelandic [nine titles are mentioned, among them the lives of the three Icelandic saints, Þorlákr, Jón, and Guðmundr], and a few other used up and rotten books'. The compiler of the 1525 inventory, Sigurður, who was the son of the last Catholic bishop of Hólar, seems not to have considered it important to describe all the books in detail or list their contents. The monks who knew and perused them no doubt took a different view. The large wooden church itself survived the Reformation well into the 17th century, when it was rebuilt by the king's bailiff, probably according to the same design, only smaller. We may have a rough design for the medieval church from one of the seals of Þingeyrar Abbey together with a miniature inside an illuminated capital letter in a manuscript written there (Reykjavík, GKS 1005 fol., 69v) (Sverrir 2009; Guðrún 2016). This codex, the grandest of Icelandic manuscripts, comprises a small library in one manuscript. Its copying was begun in 1387, apparently from the works available at the Abbey.

What happened to the books after the Reformation? Despite the damaging dissolution of monastic libraries and wholesale destruction of especially Latin manuscripts, fragments of 400–450 Latin books from Iceland have been identified but hardly any whole books. Codicologists have been able to trace about 40 surviving manuscripts and fragments to Þingeyrar Abbey and surroundings (Gunnlaugsson 2016; Kristjánsdóttir 2016). Some of the surviving manuscripts were probably not among the books in the church when it was inventoried in 1525. Many books were produced in the monastery to be sold elsewhere in Iceland or exported to Norway (Stefán 2000). However, the preserved manuscripts from Þingeyrar Abbey do not tell the whole story, because a vast corpus of texts still exists, material of the kind that Mortensen has dubbed 'intangible cultural heritage' (Mortensen 2020), i.e., ancient and medieval texts edited on the basis of manuscript copies at unknown degrees of separation from the lost originals, and therefore usually not included in the definition of cultural heritage, which mainly focuses on preserved material artifacts. The quality of preservation of these medieval texts from Þingeyrar Abbey varies, but on the whole they give a good picture of the learned and religious mentality of this and other monastic communities in Iceland. Numerous studies of individual texts have been published in the past, but few have attempted to survey this corpus of literature for evidence of the historical consciousness of the Benedictines of Þingeyrar Abbey, nor to understand how the diverse topics they subjected to study relate to each other, indeed, how they were made to cohere in a catholic (in the original sense of that word) whole. What was the *Thingeyrenses*' view on essential issues for medieval Icelanders, such as the connection between languages,

peoples, and the outline of the terrestrial orb? What were the epochs of world history from creation to the present? How did the idolatry of their pagan ancestors relate to the true faith of Christianity? Where did they see their own place in the world as Benedictines in Iceland? The aim of the present study is to try to answer such questions.

#### **2. The Þingeyrar Abbey Corpus: 12th Century**

One of the first writers of Þingeyrar was Abbot Karl Jónsson (c. 1135–1212/13), who authored *Sverris saga* ('The Saga of Sverrir'), which follows the career of King Sverrir Sigurðarson of Norway (r. 1177–1202) from the time he left the Faroe Islands, where he grew up and where his mother revealed to him that his true father was King Sigurðr Haraldsson of Norway (d. 1155), through his uprising against King Magnús, chosen by the universal church to rule Norway as vassal of St Óláfr of Niðaróss, and concludes with Sverrir's attainment of monarchy through armed struggle, shrewdness, and good fortune. King Sverrir drove two archbishops into exile and was himself excommunicated in 1194 by Pope Celestine III together with all of Norway. Nevertheless, he managed to hold on to power for over two decades and establish the future dynasty of Norway. *Sverris saga* is medieval literature at its best, and its sober and understated narrative style no doubt set the standard for later Icelandic historiography. The saga paints a highly sympathetic picture of a struggling but resourceful leader of men, assigning him artfully composed orations that reveal his balanced character and sophisticated sense of humor. The saga is said to have been the chosen last reading of King Hákon the Old of Norway (r. 1217–1264), King Sverrir's grandson, on his deathbead in Orkney.

*Sverris saga* was begun by Abbot Karl during his stay in Norway from 1185 to 1188, in collaboration with the king himself, who 'decided what was written', as is stated in the prologue. Later, according to the saga's revised prologue in the aforementioned manuscript Flateyjarbók, the saga was completed or revised by the priest Styrmir Kárason (c. 1170– 1245; on him below), who was probably the son of the abbot who replaced Abbot Karl while in Norway. The Norwegian scholar Munch suggested long ago that Abbot Karl may have begun writing *Sverris saga* in Latin, given that King Sverrir's Faroese fosterfather, Uni, is Latinized to *Unas* in the vernacular text, and two of Abbot Karl's contemporaries at Thingeyrar used Latin when writing Norwegian history (Munch 1857). The priest Styrmir would then have translated, revised, and continued the saga in the vernacular, and the preserved text would be largly from Styrmir's hand. To Munch's arguments could be added that the title of the latter part of the original saga was *Perfecta fortitudo*, according to the revised prologue. If we look at contemporary writing in Norway, King Sverrir's main opponent in the early 1180s, Archbishop Eysteinn Erlendsson (d. 1188), commissioned the Benedictine monk Theodoricus to write Norwegian royal history in Latin, *Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium*. Against the choice of the Roman tongue, on the other hand, speaks that King Sverrir commissioned a propaganda oration against the church in the vernacular, *Ræða gegn biskupum* ('A Speech against the Bishops'), which exploits the vernacular to better get its message across to lay Norwegians. The King may, however, have wished to employ a different strategy in his biography, if it was aimed at the officials of the Roman Church. Just like Abbot Karl, Sverrir was clerically educated. If nothing else, our inability to determine with certainty the language of the original biography of King Sverrir underscores the bilingual nature of literacy at Þingeyrar in this period.

A contemporary of Abbot Karl at Þingeyrar was the priest Oddr Snorrason, whose precise dates seem impossible to ascertain. Brother Oddr wrote in Latin a pseudo-hagiographical vita of King Óláfr Tryggvason of Norway (r. 995–1000), *Gesta regis Olavi filii Tryggva*, a vernacular translation of which has come down to us, likely made at Þingeyrar Abbey, and certainly preserved in a manuscript written at the Abbey: Copenhagen, AM 310 4to (dated to 1250–1275). King Óláfr Tryggvason was virtually unknown or even reviled in written accounts outside of Iceland (such as the *Passion of St Olav* and Adam of Bremen's *History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen*) but in the earliest Icelandic historical writings by Sæmundr Sigfússon and Ari Thorgilsson, from the early 12th century, he was much

loved as the king who brought Christianity to five countries in the north, Iceland among them. One of Oddr's sources on King Óláfr I was Ásgrímr Vestlidason (d. 1161), the second Abbot of Þingeyrar. Brother Oddr prefaced his work with a letter in Latin, addressed to his 'Christian brothers and fathers', his intended audience presumably being, besides other monastics in Iceland and Scandinavia, the archiepiscopal court at Niðaróss, Norway, in the last decade of Archbishop Eysteinn's period of office (1177–1188).

In his prefatory letter, Brother Oddr further announces his intention to promote King Óláfr Tryggvason, 'as you promote King Óláfr'—meaning the royal Saint Óláfr II of Niðaróss, who was the head figure of the new Olavian ideology of ecclesiastical control over the kingship of Norway. Brother Oddr writes that King Óláfr I held his namesake, St Óláfr, as a babe during baptism, and just as John the baptist was the precursor of Christ, so King Óláfr I prepared for the arrival of St Óláfr. Oddr concedes that after his death King Óláfr did not shine with miracles like St Óláfr, but he nevertheless believes him to have been 'a saintly man, virtuous, and a friend of God'. To underpin Oddr's daring claim to royal sanctity for King Óláfr I, he describes when the king and his bishop discovered the earthly remains of the Saints of Selja, the site of the first Benedictine monastery of Norway, citing in full the entire Latin legend of Sunniva, the saint of Bergen (St Óláfr's cult was centered around Niðaróss). The prominence of Selja in Oddr's work might indicate a possible institutional bonding between these two Bendictine Abbeys in times when Augustinian influence was increasingly felt in the archdiocese. A number of prelates in Norway collaborated with King Sverrir despite the papal ban and the flight of their archbishops to England and Denmark. The message Oddr wished to get across to his reader is that men should, with Peter the Apostle, 'fear God and do honor to the king' (1Peter 2:17: *Deum timete: regem honorificate*). The king gives men good things, God gives them the king; thus, human approval is due to the king and divine worship to God. Put more plainly, the Church should not meddle in politics. Oddr's work likely reached both Niðaróss and Lund, in his days, and was studied in both archsees, as is evidenced by Theodoricus' account of the *Norwegian Kings of Old* and Saxo Grammaticus' great *Deeds of the Danes*, written in Lund in the decades before and after 1200.

Another Latin work by Brother Oddr, *Gesta Inguari late peregrinantis*, is preserved only in an Icelandic translation, *Yngvars saga víðfo˛rla* (The Saga of Yngvar the Far-traveler). This is the story of a Viking pretender to the throne of Sweden, who on a pseudo-missionary exploration into "Russia" sails upstream (on the Daugava?) through unknown territory filled with strange peoples such as the Amazones, a tribe of women warriors, Cyclopes, monsters, and dragons. Yngvar and his men come to cities with Greek sounding names— Scythopolis, Heliopolis—most of the material for which ultimately derives from Adam of Bremen and Isidore of Seville's *Etymologiae*. Surprisingly, at least from the modern point of view, Oddr's fantastic narrative has a historical kernel, as is shown by some 26 runestones from the 11th century, found primarily in the Stockholm area, which were erected in memory of the men who "perished in the east with Yngvar". True to history, in Brother Oddr's original *Gesta Inguari late peregrinantis*, Yngvar never returns, but his Icelandic travel companion Garða-Ketill (Russia-Katle) does, and it is he who brings the story to Iceland, although ironically no one in Sweden seems to have heard it, judging by the runestones. In the latter half of *Yngvars saga*, the protagonist's son, Sveinn, who was left behind to receive schooling in the languages of the East, follows in his father's footsteps and sails into Russia, where he ends up marrying a Greek-speaking queen, non of which is found on the runestones.

The story of Yngvar has both direct and subtle associations with the *Gesta regis Olavi filii Tryggva*, which, as we saw, plays into the ecclesiastic and political context of the day through undermining the 'Olavian' ideology of Archbishop Eysteinn of Niðaróss by ascribing the Christianization of the Northern countries not to St Óláfr but to his predecessor, King Óláfr I. Indeed, both texts decisively reject the policy of *libertas ecclesie* (ecclesial independence from secular government) by depicting the ideal role of Christian bishops *vis-à-vis* their lords and kings as that of loyal companions and subjects (Hofmann 1981). With his writings,

Oddr like Abbot Karl no doubt intended to lend indirect support to King Sverrir in his struggle for power in Norway and conflict with the universal Church of Rome. Brother Oddr must therefore have written his works after 1179, when King Sverrir had risen to power after killing Earl Erlingr, the father of King Magnús. In doing so, he shows himself to have belonged to a network of prelates and magnates in Iceland and Norway, who were sympathetic to King Sverrir and opposed Danish influence in Norway. Indeed, in a prefatory letter to the original Latin text, which is cited in the epilogue of *Yngvars saga*, Oddr addressed two clerically educated magnates in the south of Iceland, Jón Loptsson of Oddi (d. 1197) and Lawspeaker Gizurr Hallsson of Skálholt (d. 1206), almost as his patrons. The latter was also mentioned at the end of *Gesta regis Olaui* as the expert reader, who reviewed and emended the text, although this could be an interpolation from the other Latin work on King Óláfr I by Brother Gunnlaugr. Two short Latin fragments are embedded in the translations of Oddr's works, a Latin stanza from *Gesta regis Olaui* and a passage of *Gesta Inguari* relating information from a work well known in Iceland, Adam of Bremen's *History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen*. In one of the manuscripts containing Oddr's account of King Óláfr I (Stockholm, Holm perg 18, 4to; c. 1300), it is added at the end, where the author is identified, that Brother Oddr experienced visions. He had been unhappy, and was planning to leave the community, when Christ appeared to him in the church at Þingeyrar with arms spread and dropping his head, saying in a troubled voice, "Behold how I have suffered for your sake; you shall overcome your temptation in my name". After which it says that Oddr praised God and never again fell into temptation. He is also said to have had another magnificent vision of King Óláfr I (Hofmann 1988), who presumably command him to write his story.

Brother Gunnlaugr Leifsson (d. 1218/19) was the younger contemporary of Abbot Karl and Brother Oddr at Þingeyrar. He was the most prolific Latin author of the Middle Ages in Iceland and respected in his time for his extensive learning. His *magnum opus* was another, presumably much longer and more elaborate, history of King Óláfr Tryggvason, *Historia Olaui regis filii Tryggua*, which he submitted for review to Lawspeaker Gizurr Hallsson. Gizurr is said to have kept it for two years before returning it to Gunnlaugr, who then emended the text accordingly. Gizurr died in 1206, hence the work was drafted no later than 1204, and presumably already in the 1190s, when King Sverrir still ruled Norway, since the work would not have had the same exigency after his demise. Brother Gunnlaugr also collaborated with Lawspeaker Gizurr on the composition of the life and miracles of the first canonized Icelandic saint, Bishop Þorlákr Þórhallsson (1133–93), *Vita et miracula S. Thorlaci Skalholtensis episcopi*, whose earthly remains were translated at Skálholt See in the summer of 1198. Latin fragments of this work are preserved, which show Gunnlaugr to be a competent writer of ecclesiastical Latin.

Bishop Þorlákr was educated in Paris after the middle of the 12th century. Paris was the intellectual center of Europe at the time, and based on the known affiliations of other Scandinavians in Paris, such as the later archbishops Eiríkr Ívarsson of Niðaróss and Absalon of Lund, the most likely institutions where Þorlákr studied are the Abbeys of St Victor and Ste Geneviève, which were celebrated for their learning and together with the cathedral school of Notre-Dame the cradles of the University of Paris. It was Þorlákr who brought the Augustinian rule to Iceland by presiding over the first Augustinian house at Þykkvibær in Síða in the south of Iceland. The Augustinians were promoted by the newly founded archbishopric of Niðaróss and acted as agents of ecclesiastical policy in Iceland. By a clever stratagem, the magnates of Iceland, primarily Lawspeaker Gizurr, in collaboration with the Benedictines of Þingeyrar, promoted the canonization of St Þorlákr, who died in 1193, and wrote his *vita*, where the conflicts between these factions of society were so downplayed that a revised vernacular version of the saga of St Þorlákr was deemed necessary in the early 14th century (Fahn and Jensson 2010). Incidentally, the abbot who likely wrote this revised saga, Brother Bergr Sokkason (d. c. 1350), was in his youth a monk at Þingeyrar Abbey. By promoting the canonization of St Þorlákr, Brother Gunnlaugr and

his magnate patrons could contribute to improving the relations with the papacy and the archbishop while at the same time controling the legacy of St Þorlákr.

Brother Gunnlaugr's second engagement with original Icelandic hagiography was through his *Vita et miracula S. Johannis Holensis episcopi*, written around 1202 at the request of Bishop Guðmundr of Hólar. Bishop Jón of Hólar (d. 1121) was the first *presul* of this newly founded northern diocese (before there was only one see in Iceland, Skálholt). He prepared for the founding of Þingeyrar Abbey and no less importantly for the northern Benedictines, he established a school at his see, where many of the later members of Þingeyrar Abbey received their clerical education. Bishop Jón brought with him to Iceland two experts from abroad, Rikini, who is said to be a *franzeis*, although judging by his name (*Richinne*, *Ricvine*) he may have been a Lotharingian (Kålund and Beckman 1914), and a schoolmaster, Gísli Finnsson, from Gothland (now in Sweden) in the ecclesiastical province of Lund (until 1153 the only archsee of Scandinavia). Rikini taught singing and versification, and he impressed the diocese of Hólar with his phenomenally retentive memory, having learnt by heart the complete *Opus Dei*, both the words and music of the liturgy from morning to evening for the entire year. Brother Gunnlaugr displayed a great interest in liturgical recitation and singing, portraying St Jón as a marvelous *cantor* with a great voice and capable of reading Latin aloud most beautifully. He reports that because of the quality of liturgical performance, people flocked to Hólar to celebrate Easter and Pentecost.

St Jón is made the spiritual founder of Þingeyrar Abbey, even if it was consecrated by his successor in 1133. An infectious passion for Latin runs through Brother Gunnlaugr's *Vita S. Johannis* (Jensson 2017). The reader is entertained with stories of the carpenter Þóroddr Gamlason, who while building the Hólar cathedral learnt Latin by overhearing students being taught at the school. There was also a pious lady, Ingunn by name, so learned in Latin grammar that she could correct the texts of others by listening to them read aloud; meanwhile, she busied herself with embroidery. Then there is the story of Klœngr Þorsteinsson, future bishop of Skálholt, caught reading Ovid's *Ars amatoria* (a copy of this work is attested in the 1525 inventory of Hólar cathedral; *DI*, IX, p. 298) and reminded by Bishop Jón not to stimulate his already excitable carnal appetites by perusal of such poetry. Indeed, according to the vita, St Jón went so far as to ban all erotic poetry in his diocese, as well as dancing. These stories of life at Hólar in the early 12th century may reflect the ideals of the community at Þingeyrar Abbey rather than actual history. A certain zealotry characterizes the figure of St Jón as a bishop, as for example when he is credited with reforming the designations of the weekdays, drawn from the pagan gods/heroes Týr (=Mars), Odin (=Mercurius), Thor (=Jupiter), and Freyja (=Venus), by insisting on referring to them by numbers or functions instead (third day, midweek day, fifth day, fast day, and washing day), appellations that have survived in Iceland to this day. In addition, the Life of St Jón contains many anecdotes and miracles *post mortem*, which give a bleak but interesting picture of everyday life in 12th-century Iceland: hunger, death, and poverty among the common people. These tales of suffering and disease provide authentic testimony about religious beliefs and practices, and give fascinating glimpses into the mentality of the period.

Finally, Gunnlaugr translated the *Prophetiæ Merlini* of his fellow Benedictine Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1155). The translation, entitled *Merlínusspá*, is composed in the eddic metre *fornyrdislag*, which is also used in the famous eschatological Old Norse-Icelandic poem *Vo˛luspá* ('Prophecy of the Seeress'). The Icelandic poem includes material from Geoffrey's *Historia regum Britanniae*, which is also found translated into the vernacular in two manuscripts, Hauksbók (Reykjavík, AM 544 4to) and Copenhagen, AM 573 4to, no doubt the work of one of the members of the Þingeyrar community. Gunnlaugr is finally said to have composed a rhymed office in honor of St Ambrose, *Historia Ambrosii*, but when he performed it in the Hólar Cathedral, probably in 1209, Bishop Guðmundr of Hólar, a militant agitator for the liberty of the Roman Church, rejected the composition, saying that he preferred the old one by Gregor the Great. By then, Gunnlaugr had virtually replaced the half–manic bishop as the highest ecclesiastical authority in the diocese.

#### **3. The Þingeyrar Abbey Corpus: 13th Century**

The 13th century is arguably the golden age of Icelandic literature, when many of the greatest sagas of Icelanders were written. It was also during this century that Nordic mythology was put into writing in the so-called Eddas. Although 19th century scholars had a tendency to study this material in "splendid isolation", both earlier and later studies have emphasized that Norse mythological tales were embedded in a learned European context. *Snorra Edda*, which derives its name from Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), who is believed to be its author, makes this clear when it explains its purpose as that of educating young poets in the art of vernacular poetry. The Icelandic grammatical treatises are preserved in the same context and found in the same calf-skin codices as *Snorra Edda*. The first treatise, from the middle of the 12th century, is concerned with how best to write the vernacular, using the letters of the Latin alphabet, and the third treatise insists on the unity of Greco-Roman and Icelandic grammar, illustrating the figures of style defined in ancient Latin treatises (Priscianus, Donatus) with examples taken from vernacular poetry. This treatise was written around the middle of the 13th century by Óláfr Þórðarson (d. 1259), nephew of the famous Snorri Sturluson.

It may surprise the lovers of Norse mythology to know that essential eddic manuscripts were written at the Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar. This may even apply to Codex Regius of the Elder Edda (Reykjavík, GKS 2365 4to), the mother of all the so-called Sæmundar Eddas (an appellation based on the 17th-century hypothesis that the first historian, Sæmundr Sigfússon, collected and transcribed these poems from runic inscriptions), which preserves poetry on such Norse gods as Odin, Thor, Frigg, Freyja, Freyr, Baldur, and Loki, as well as narrative poetry about Germanic heroes and heroines. This manuscript occasionally has short prose bridges between the poems, some of which are based on *Snorra Edda* (Lindblad 1978; Lassen Forthcoming). There is only one other comparable source of eddic poetry, Copenhagen, AM 748 a I 4to, which is highly fragmentary. Codex Regius was originally compiled around 1270, and emended in the middle of the 14th century, apparently by Abbot Arngrímr Brandsson of Þingeyrar (Katrín 2003). When it was rediscovered in 1643 by Bishop Brynjólfur of Skálholt, it had presumably been handed down for generations from mother to daughter in the family of the royal caretaker of Þingeyrar after the Reformation, Henrik Gerkens (Helgi 1997; Stefán 2000). Gerkens was originally from Hamburg, Germany, and became quite wealthy on an Icelandic scale. He had a native wife, who may have picked up Codex Regius from the abandoned books at the monastery. At the time it was hardly considered to be worth much. Even though it cannot be proven beyond doubt that this essential codex for the survival of eddic poetry was written at Þingeyrar Abbey, we know for certain that the Benedictines of Þingeyrar took an interest in this genre, because the half-pagan, half-Christian eschatological poem of *Vo˛luspá*, as found in the manuscript *Hauksbók* (Copenhagen, AM 544 4to; c. 1310), can be traced to Þingeyrar Abbey. The scribe who wrote this part of the manuscript was also responsible for most of the manuscript Codex Wormianus (Copenhagen, AM 242 fol., c. 1350) containing *Snorra Edda* (Johannsson 1997). *Snorra Edda* quotes numerous eddic poems in its presentation of pagan mythology, which it historicizes to a degree not seen elsewhere in manuscripts containing the *Eddas*. Besides the *Snorra Edda*, Codex Wormianus preseves all the vernacular grammatical treatises, so the context Old Norse pagan poetry enters into at the hands of the Benedictines is primarily poetical.

The learned priest Styrmir Kárason fróði (c. 1175–1245), Styrmir the Wise, was reputedly the son of Abbot Kári Runólfsson (d. 1187/8) of Þingeyrar (Hannes 1912), Abbot Karl's stand–in, while he was away in Norway, and grew up in and around the abbey, where he also received his education. He left Þingeyrar presumably around 1220, when he became the household priest of Lawspeaker Snorri Sturluson of Reykholt, alleged author of two of the most well–known works of medieval Icelandic literature, the *Heimskringla* (the history of Norway from the 8th to the late 12th century) and *Snorra Edda* (a handbook for young poets and one of our most important sources of Norse mythology). Styrmir is known to have worked on and contributed to Snorri Sturluson's historiographical and mythopoetic

projects, which again might seem to provide an indirect link between Þingeyrar Abbey and eddic poetry. The writing of medieval literature in monasteries and at royal courts or the estates of powerful magnates was not necessarily done by individuals, more likely such projects were collaborative to an extent not seen in modern literary practice. During 1210–1214, and again 1232–1235, Styrmir somewhat incongruously held the civil office of lawspeaker but ended his days as prior of the newly founded Augustinian House on Viðey Island, just off the coast of Reykjavík, the modern capital. Among Styrmir's works is a new redaction of *Landnámabók* ('The Book of Settlements'), now lost as such, although it was incorporated into the Hauksbók-version of this work by the knight and lawman Haukr Erlendsson (d. 1334, in Bergen). *The Book of Settlements* is a unique historical construct, providing information on where each newcomer to Iceland settled in the period of colonization, AD 870–930, and giving a brief genealogy of these people from their ancestestors in Norway into 12th–century Iceland, frequently including anecdotes and relating events associated with the settlement of Iceland. Over 3000 people and 1400 settlements are named.

Styrmir the Wise also wrote the biography of St Óláfr Haraldsson, king of Norway, a version of the saga thought to be partly preserved in the manuscript Flateyjarbók. As mentioned above, Styrmir translated, completed or revised Abbot Karl Jónsson's *Sverris saga*, at least the final part of that saga. He also had a hand in the composition of the prototype of the Icelandic outlaw saga *Harðar saga ok Hólmverja* ('The Saga of Ho˛rðr and the Islet-Dwellers'), where presumably in acknowledgment of his work his estimation of the protagonist is quoted at the end of the saga. This saga, which is a sort of Robin Hood narrative, tells the story of the Viking-adventurer Ho˛rdr, who leaves Iceland for Sweden where he has various adventures, for instance he breaks into a burial mound with the help of Odin, and stealing a cursed ring, which leads to his death at the end of the saga. In Sweden, Ho˛rðr marries Helga, the daughter of a Swedish earl, and back in Iceland he takes up habitation with his band of robbers on an island in Whale Fjord, from where he raids the farmers of the neighboring estates, until they trap him on land and kill him. To save their two sons, the noble Helga swims a great distance from the island in ice-cold water.

Other 13th-century works, believed to have been written at Þingeyrar Abbey and associated church farms, are *Vatnsdæla saga* ('The saga of the People of Vatnsdale'; c. 1270–1280) about the family of 9th-century Norwegians who settled in this valley in the vicinity of Þingeyrar. The saga follows the first generations of their descendants until the crucial moment when Christianity arrives in Iceland around AD 1000. Even older is *Heiðarvíga saga* ('The Saga of the Heath Slayings') about the prolonged armed hostilities between the Men of Húnaþing, the region around Þingeyrar, and the Men of Borgarfjörður, leading up to the Heath Slayings, a battle on the mountain road midway between them. The hero of the latter part, Bárðr, afterwards travels to Norway where he is turned away by St Óláfr, whence he travels to Constantinople, where he ends his days in the emperor's Norse troupes, the *Væringjar* (Varangians/Confederates). Doubtlessly, a number of other Icelandic sagas were written by members of the community at Þingeyrar or associated priests (e.g., *Bandamanna saga*, *Kormáks saga*, and *Hallfreðar saga*), but since they are anonymous we cannot know for certain who wrote them or whether they derive from Þingeyrar Abbey, however probable this may be.

#### **4. The Þingeyrar Abbey Corpus: 14th–16th Centuries**

In the 14th century, the northern Benedictines became known for their translations and rewritings of hagiographic literature in the vernacular. Most of this material originated in Latin hagiographical works, compiled anew and contaminated by multiple texts, to make new vernacular reading material for church congregations on the Feast Day of the Saints whose lives and miracles were related in these works. The Benedictines of northern Iceland cultivated a particular style of writing in these retellings, which has been termed 'florid', a style characterized by an alliterative and occasionally rhymed prosody, peppered with synonym pairs and present participles, and ultimately inspired, it seems, by examples of Latin poetry in common textbooks like the *Liber Catonianus* (so named from the popular poem *Disticha Catonis*, which it contained). In vernacular poetry, on the other hand, the clerical poets of the 13th century strove in the opposite direction, towards a clearer and more immediately intelligible diction than the one practiced in traditional skaldic poetry, and systematized in the *Snorra Edda*. In rebelling against the "eddulist" (the art of the Edda), these poets cite as precedence the rules of the 'new poetry', advocated by Geoffrey of Vinsauf in his *Poetria nova* a century earlier (Males 2020). Although the "Lilja" (Lilly), a prime example of this new and attractive vernacular style in poetry, is most often attributed to Eysteinn Ásgrímsson (d. 1361), an Augustinian canon of Þykkvibær in Ver, in the south of Iceland, the abbot of Þingeyrar Arngrímr Brandsson's "Guðmundarkvædi", a praise poem composed in 1345 in honor of the aforementioned Bishop Guðmundr the Good, is very much nourished from the same poetic vain as the "Lilja". Abbot Arngrímr (d. 1361) is otherwise credited with writing a Latin vita of Bishop Guðmundr, *Vita et miracula Godemundi boni*, also dated to 1345, which was no doubt used in several unsuccessful embassies to Avignon and Rome to attempt to have the good bishop canonized. Abbot Arngrímr may also be the poet of *Sancti Thorlaci episcopi officia rhythmica*, uniquely preserved among the Latin works written by the brothers of Þingeyrar Abbey (Róbert 1959).

In the beginning of the 14th century, there was a concentration of new literary talent at Þingeyrar Abbey. Great histories were recompiled out of the literature of the previous centuries with increased emphasis not only on style and prosody but also on narrative structure and continuity, in imitation of continental models. In the spirit of the 14th century, ancient heroes of remote times were in vogue, and a new taste for the chivalric and religiously outrageous was introduced into the storyworlds of the Benedictines of Þingeyrar. During Abbot Guðmundr's period of office (1310–1338), Laurentius (or Lárentius) Kálfsson, later bishop of Hólar (r. 1324–1331), joined the Abbey to lead its school. One of his named students was the talented if bibulous Árni, Laurentius' own son by a Norwegian concubine, who is believed to have written *Dunstanus saga*, a vernacular reworking of Adelard's *Vita S. Dunstani* and several other sources, a highly entertaining narrative about this popular English saint and archbishop, who was known as a musician, illuminator, metalworker, and trickster for cunningly defeating the devil. Another of Laurentius' students at Þingeyrar in the second decade of the 14th century was Bergr Sokkason, who has already been mentioned. Brother Bergr later became prior and abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Þverá and a prolific writer of vernacular hagiography. He reputedly wrote sagas about Bishop Guðmundr the Good, St Nicholas, the archangel Michael, and in all probability the B-redaction of *The Saga of Saint Thorlak*, as well as translating the history of King Óláfr I of Norway by Brother Gunnlaugr, and many others. Indeed, it is rarely possible to ascribe the anonymous Icelandic vernacular prose works on saints, angels, and sacred objects—there are sagas preserved on about 130 such subjects (Wolf 2013)—to individual writers, although the names of the religious poets are more often known (Wolf and Deusen 2017).

Laurentius' best known disciple from Þingeyrar Abbey is no doubt his chaplain Einarr Hafliðason (d. 1393), who joined him as a ten-year old in 1317 and served him loyally for 14 years, until Laurentius' death at Hólar See in 1331. Einarr became a fine cleric and wrote his master's biography sometime after 1346, which is our best source on life at Þingeyrar and in general on Icelandic intellectual life in the early 14th century. Especially informative are the descriptions of Laurentius' travels in Iceland and Norway, the accounts of heated quarrels within the ecclesiastical community, especially at Niðaróss, and last but not least the descriptions of Laurentius' teaching, and his ambition to sustain an international standard at the monastic houses where he sojourned, but primarily Þingeyrar, where he insists on the use of Latin not only in prayer and church service but in the daily interactions between the members of the community. It is from *Lárentius saga* that we have information that the monks conversed, read, wrote, and studied their books in the building at Þingeyrar Abbey called the Conventus, which probably opened out to the cloister garden adjacent to the south flank of the church, with the Chapter House (Capitulum) at the east end by the church's high altar. Einarr Hafliðason also contributed entries to the *Lo˛gmannsannáll* ('Annal of the Lawman'), a reliable chronicle running from the early 9th century, and continued by Einarr Hafliðason up to 1361, where another took over and carried on to 1430. In 1381, Einarr also translated from Latin a curious miracle story, *Atburðr á Finnmo˛rk* ('An Incident in Finmark').

Einarr's connection to Þingeyrar Abbey was close, since he was raised at Breiðabólstaður in Vesturhóp, about 20 km southwest of the monastery. Breiðabólsstaður was one of two major church estates in the area, and had been the site of the first writing of the laws of Iceland in the winter of 1117–1118. Before this the laws were transmitted orally by the lawspeaker, each summer one third of the whole being recited at the annual General Assembly, the Althing. After they were committed to writing, however, and revised in the process, the laws would from that time on be read aloud from a codex, a practice which caused a major shift in how the laws were conceptualized (Sandvik and Sigurðsson 2005). Einarr's father, Hafliði Steinsson (d. 1319), was an important figure in Icelandic society. He received his clerical training at Þingeyrar Abbey in the time of Abbot Vermundr (r. 1254–1279), and functioned as the caretaker of Þingeyrar Abbey and the See of Hólar. Earlier in his career, he served as palace priest for King Eiríkr Magnússon of Norway (r. 1280–1299), who married princess Margaret of Scotland, daughter of King Alexander III, in Bergen 1281. She died giving birth to Margaret, Maid of Norway, who only lived to 1290, and whose death led to the Wars of Scottish Independence, when her father laid claim to the Scottish crown as his inheritance; he later married the sister of King Robert I of Scotland. King Eiríkr also made a claim to the throne of Denmark as his inheritance from his mother, Princess Ingibjo˛rg, and spent many years warring the Danes on that account. He was nicknamed "Priest Hater" because of his strained relationship with the church.

As King Eiríkr's palace priest, Hafliði Steinsson is not an unlikely candidate for the authorship of *Bósa saga and Herrauðs* ('The Saga of Bósi and Herraud'), a comic legendary saga from the end of the 1200s, relating the fantastic escapades of Prince Herraud of East Gotland and his best friend Bósi, the son of a viking and a shieldmaiden. The two companions have many strange adventures, most unusual among them Bósi's erotic encounters with three farmers' daughters, which are told in a comically explicit dialogue of metaphors. Such erotic language is extremely rare in Icelandic sagas, and for it to have been acceptable to the audience of this saga, we must assume an unusual audience, beyond the reach of chastising clerics, i.e. a community like the powerful and rebellious court of King Eiríkr Magnússon of Norway. It is hard to imagine that the course, yet sophisticated chivalric humor of this saga would have been at home anywhere else in this period. There is only one other Icelandic saga, which stages an encounter with a farmer's daughter and uses explicit language reminiscent of *Bósa saga*, although toned down in comparison. This is *Grettis saga sterka* ('The Saga of Grettir the Strong'), one of the best loved of the anonymous Icelandic family sagas, and it has for other reasons been ascribed to Hafliði Steinsson. The saga is believed to be written shortly after 1300, and the author is evidently a clerically educated man from the district of Þingeyrar Abbey, who is likewise familiar with Norway.

Close by Breiðabólsstaður is Víðidalstunga, where the magnate Jón Hákonarson commissioned the manuscript Flateyjarbók (GKS 1005 fol.), which was mentioned above, the greatest of all Icelandic manuscripts. Breiðabólsstaður was a prebend of the archbishop of Niðaróss, granted only to the most senior of prelates. When Einarr Hafliðason was awarded Breiðabólsstaður in 1343, which he held for half a century, he doubtlessly received it in recognition of his services as *officialis* for several Norwegian bishops at Hólar, while they were away in Norway, but possibly also in recognition of his father's achievement.

At the turn of the 15th century, Iceland was struck by the Black Death for the first time, which devastated the community at Þingeyrar Abbey, reputedly leaving only one monk and three deans alive, although donations from God-fearing families poured in. Clerics were worse affected by the plague than the general population, because of their role in tending to the sick and dying. The Norwegian clergy and privileged class fared badly, and ships stopped sailing to Iceland with imported goods. With the establishment of the Kalmar Union in 1397, which was ruled from Denmark, English prelates and merchants became influential in Iceland for the first time in history. Literary life was seemingly

paralyzed after the Black Death, although books were still read and copied and occasional texts even translated from Middle English into Icelandic. It was in this period that the monastic church of Þingeyrar Abbey acquired its English alabaster altarpiece, now in the modern church. By the early 16th century, the Reformation in Scandinavia began to exert its influence in Iceland, though this happened later in the recalcitrant Hólar diocese than in Skálholt. The last Catholic bishop, Jón Arason, brought a printing press to Iceland in 1530, which ushered in a new usage of books and literature and initiated the transition of Icelandic books from handwritten to mass produced. As mentioned above, Björn son of Bishop Jón was expected to take over as abbot of Þingeyrar when he was brutally executed with his father and brother in 1550. Incidentally, the Swedish printer who worked the first printing press of Iceland was a priest at Breiðabólstaður in Vesturhóp by Þingeyrar Abbey, the very same estate where just over four centuries earlier the revolutionary technology of writing Latin letters with ink on animal skin was introduced to Iceland.

#### **5. Time and History at Þingeyrar Abbey**

Measuring and structuring time was essential for the monastic community at Þingeyrar Abbey. Each day was divided into seven regular intervals for the canonical hours, the fixed times of prayer. The day began around two in the morning in the church, the chapter house (Capitulum) or meeting house (Conventum), where the community gathered. About four and a half hours were spent in prayer every day. About the same time was reserved for reading and meditation. Equally essential was to know the ecclesiastical calendar for the year and to have an overview of world history from creation to the present. The Benedictines of Þingeyrar did not see themselves as living in the Middle Ages, according to them they were living in the Sixth Age of the world. Nonetheless, they counted the years from the birth of Christ, as we do, albeit with a seven-year difference. In the *vita* of St Þorlákr, this holy man is said to die in 1186, not in 1193 as would be correct according to the *aera vulgaris*. From around the middle of the 12th century and well into the 13th, the Þingeyrar Abbey writers followed Gerland the Computist (d. after 1093), a Lotharingian who dated the incarnation to seven years later than the common era. Likely it was the *franzeis* Rikini, a liturgical expert at the cathedral school of Hólar, who introduced Gerland's calendar to Iceland (Jón 1952). Most of the early Þingeyrar texts, and certainly those that were originally written in Latin in the late 12th century, were dated according to Gerland. The *Thingeyrenses* probably first realized that they were alone in following Gerland when an Icelandic representative returned from the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 (Jón 1952).

However, there is a relatively minor difference between the Þingeyrar time reckoning of the early period and our own; a major difference was their belief that the world was only a few thousand years old. According to an Icelandic treatise, *Fimm stórþing* (Five Universal Councils), 5199 years had passed from the world's creation to the incarnation of Christ. Hence, the world was believed to be 6332 years old, when Þingeyrar Abbey was founded in 1133. Together with the Earth, the monks believed that man was created in God's image to rule over it. This was not a reactionary article of faith: there was no competing hypothesis. Before the arrival of Christian time reckoning, there was a different method in use among the Icelanders for dividing up the year with only two seasons, summer and winter. Instead of abandoning this tradition altogether, by the middle of the 12th century the Icelanders had integrated their own system into the Christian computistical system. In accordance with Mediterranean practice, the period from the creation of the world to the incarnation of Christ was divided into five Ages of the World (Icelandic: *heimsaldrar*; Latin: *aetates mundi*), based on a historical periodization first presented by the Church Father Augustine of Hippo. According to an Icelandic computational treatise from the 12th century—*Rímbegla*—apparently from the same northern Icelandic intellectual milieu as Þingeyrar Abbey, precisely 2557 years had passed from the creation of the first man, Adam, to the birth of Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood. This was the so-called antediluvian period, the age of original sin, which ended in almost total

destruction because of God's displeasure with mankind. The original mankind was a race of giants, who lived for centuries.

The Second Age, the postdiluvian age, was that of Noah and his sons, who became the ancestors of all peoples living. At the beginning of this age, all of humanity spoke one language (usually believed to be Hebrew, although the Bible does not specify this) and believed in one God, but this mankind was also prone to sin like the antedeluvians. These great humans gathered to build the tower of Babel (Gen. 11). If we follow the prologue of *Snorra Edda*, as preserved in the *Codex Wormianus*, written at Þingeyrar Abbey around 1350, we find that there "were seventy-two leading craftsmen" who worked on this ambitious building project. To stop them from reaching heaven undeservedly, God divided their common tongue into as many languages, which "have since dispersed throughout the world, in accordance with how the giants were then distributed to the countries and the peoples multiplied". "[A]fter the division of tongues had come about, the names of men were also multiplied and those of other things". This is why the Greco-Roman gods have many names in many languages, e.g., the Greek Zeus is Jupiter in Latin and Thor in Icelandic (Lassen 2018). With the confusion of languages a confusion of the original true religion began, and idolatry arose: "when the appellations multiplied, thereby truth perished, and from the first error, every successor worshipped his previous master, or animals or birds, or the air, the planets and various inanimate things, until this fallacy became current throughout the world, and so completely did they forgo the truth that no one knew his creator except those men alone, who spoke the Hebrew tongue, which was current before the tower construction [...], and thus they understood everything with an earthly understanding, because they had not been granted spiritual wisdom" (cited after Lassen 2018).

The Third Age began with Abraham, and extended to David the king, the fourth to the Babylonian captivity, the fifth to the incarnation of Christ, which marked the beginning of the Sixth Age, the Age of Redemption, when mankind was saved through the sacrificial death of Christ, leading to the beginning of the New Testament and Christian history. The reunification of mankind through prozelitizing the Christian faith was an ambition that sought in some sense to overcome the linguistic and religious obstacles that were the consequences of the disaster at Babel, which had given rise to idolatry and false faith. In the New Testament, the story of the Pentecost miracle forms a sort of redemption from the sin committed by mankind at Babel, or at least a momentary lifting of the divine curse of miscommunication between the nations of the world (Lassen 2018). According to the acts of the apostles, on the day of Pentecost, suddenly they heard a noise and a wind from heaven blew into the house, tongues of fire were seen that separated and rested on each of them, and the Holy spirit came over them, and they began miraculously to speak in other languages. The people of Jerusalem understood them as if they were speaking their own language (Acts 2. 1–13).

Just as the Church Fathers integrated classical Greco-Roman history with biblical history, the Benedictines of Þingeyrar had no qualms in integrating the mythic history of the Germanic peoples with that of the Bible and Classical Literature. In this, they very much followed in the steps of continental authors, who imitated the Romans and derived their own origins from Troy, too. Old Norse translations of hagiography, such as *Clemens saga* ('The Saga of St Clement'), or of historiography, such as *Trójumanna saga* ('The Saga of the Men of Troy'), a translation of Dares Phrygius' *De excidio Troiae*, which was made at Þingeyrar Abbey, or at the very least copied by the monks there, rendered the names of Greco-Roman gods and Trojan heroes as Nordic Odin, Thor, Freyja, Sif, and others we associate only with Norse Mythology. This view of the past was not invented at Þingeyrar Abbey, as is shown by the Germanic translations of the planetary days of the week: 'Mars' is 'Tyr', 'Mercury' is 'Odin', 'Jove' is 'Thor', and 'Venus' is 'Freyja'. Clearly this way of matching the Germanic pantheon with the Greco-Roman is older, although no richer sources exist for the Germanic world-view than those written at Þingeyrar Abbey.

The emergence of paganism or idolatry was associated by the Benedictines of Þingeyrar with the building of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages, when "the names of men were also multiplied and those of other things", and with the increase in names, truth perished and people forgot their knowledge of god (Lassen 2018). Only the Hebrews of old, who still spoke the original tongue, retained a grasp of the spiritual truth until the incarnation of Christ. This is the historical background for the rise of the Nordic peoples, as explaind by the Benedictine compiler of Codex Wormianus: "When Pompey, one of the Roman generals, harried in the eastern part of the world, Odin fled from Asia to here, the northern part, and at that point he gave himself and his men their names, and claimed that Priam was called Odin and his queen Frigg [...] and whether or not Odin said this out of pride, or because it had come about with the division of tongues, many scholars have held it to be a true story [...]." (cited after Lassen 2018), with modifications). According to *Codex Wormianus*, when the eschatological poem of *Vo˛luspá* speaks of the end of the world, *ragnaro˛k*, this is really a memory of the Trojan War because Odin and his Æsir (understood as meaning 'Asians'), who brought the language and culture of the North to Saxony, Scandinavia, and even England, were refugees from Troy. The Swedes who first believed in the stories of Odin and his men and spread those myths throughout Scandinavia were naïve pagans, and no Christian should believe their stories because they are not true, except in the sense that these were the false beliefs that mankind held to be true when it lost its way after the disaster at Babel. Odin's men, who were Turks or Asians, fabricated stories like the pagans they were so that the simple rustics of Scandinavia would think they were gods (Lassen Forthcoming). Thus, in the *Third Grammatical Treatise* from the middle of the 13th century, the author Óláfr Þórðarson argues for an identity between Old Norse-Icelandic vernacular grammar and the Greco-Roman tradition: "It is all the same art of language" (*málslist*), he claims.

What emerges from this very brief look at the theory of world history, according to Þingeyrar Abbey, is a willingness on the part of this Benedictine community in the remote northern Atlantic to find a place for itself on the periphery of the Roman Ecclesiastical world, a creativity in solving apparent incongruities and differences between the pagan past and the Christian present, and finally an unworried and confident belief in the vernacular and its ability to match and represent ecclesiastical Latin in translation, and in conveying the essential messages of biblical discourse. From the vantage point of Þingeyrar Abbey, a small village of wooden buildings in northern Iceland, the Benedictines could fix their mind's eye on the centre of the Christian world, which was not so much Rome as Constantinople and Jerusalem, a wonderfully vague Asian paradise, where the greatest riches of the world were gathered, which they believed to be just as much their own place of origin as anyone else's in Europe. Through a supernatural and yet rational link—given the historical premise of the events at Babel—between all the world's languages, mythologies, and religions, they could comprehend and know the whole of the brief history of the world from creation to their own times, just as they were able to totally map out, geographically and genealogically, the origins of their own remote island community in the North Atlantic from its settlement to the present, to a degree that must have made them feel that whatever they did not yet know, they would soon be able to figure out—indeed a wonderful premise for enabling the rich contribution to world literature that was made by the Benedictines of Þingeyrar Abbey.

#### **6. Conclusions**

The modern reception of medieval Icelandic literature, including that of Þingeyrar Abbey, begins with the humanist Arngrímur Jónsson the Learned (1568–1648), who was born in Víðidalur in the vicinity of Þingeyrar and lived in the area for his entire life. His descendants were the first in Iceland to take up a Latinized family name, Vidalinus (in Icelandic *Vídalín*), beside their traditional patronymic, a custom that never caught on among the Icelanders. Arngrímur Jónsson's Latin scholarship was published in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Leiden, and London, and reached a learned readership throughout Europe. His achievement was to mediate the vernacular literature of previous centuries in

a form that suited the *Res publica litterarum* of the Renaissance. Arngrímur Jónsson argued that the literature of Iceland was the product of a politically independent Common Wealth or Free State in Iceland that rose with the establishment of the Althing in 930 and fell when Iceland became a tax-paying province of the King of Norway in the late 13th century. He also argued that Icelandic was the ancient language of Northern Europe, a form of Gothic, and that Icelanders had preserved its pristine state, while the other peoples of Northern Europe had corrupted it (he mentions the Norwegians and the Danes in particular), and therefore Icelanders have a historic responsibility in maintaining the pristine condition of their ancient tongue (Jensson 2004).

Arngrímur Jónsson came in possession of the Þingeyrar manuscript *Codex Wormianus* with *Snorra Edda* and the Icelandic *Grammatical treatises*. He had the text of the former revised to be more presentable to modern tastes, and in that form it was eventually published as *Edda Islandorum* in 1665, an edition that became *the* reference point for Icelandic mythology and literature for over a century. Thus, a continuity was established between the literature of handwritten books from Thingeyrar Abbey and the new printed Latin-based scholarship of the humanists, which laid the foundations for the modern reception. However, Arngrímur Jónsson was a Lutheran priest, and he and others of that denomination deliberately played down the importance of the Roman-Catholic monastic communities of Iceland, and of Medieval Latin literacy in general, in the creation of Icelandic literature (Jensson 2017), so while the survival of the Icelandic literary tradition was secured by the humanist reception, the role of the Benedictine community at Þingeyrar Abbey was reduced to almost nothing, and whenever the monks of Þingeyrar and their contribution was mentioned in the scholarship, it was with the inclusion of harsh and judgemental comments about how they had strayed from the path of true religion.

Thus, not only was Þingeyrar Abbey closed and its library dissolved in a religious revolution orchestrated by the secular authorities of Denmark, the literary achievement of the Benedictines of Þingeyrar Abbey has to this day been deliberately and systematically underappreciated in surveys of Icelandic medieval literature (Steinunn 2017b). Yet, the richness of their contribution is still recoverable, albeit with some effort, through studying the cultural heritage of Þingeyrar Abbey, artefacts, originals, and copies alike, a treasure that first began to appear in print in the late 18th century, and has since been coming out in a continuous stream throughout the 19th and 20th century, and is still being published in first editions in the 21st century. As a phenomenon of the world Þingeyrar Abbey may not offer much to view for today's visitor, but as a powerhouse of cultural heritage it has certainly earned itself a place in history.

**Funding:** The research for this article received partial funding by the Icelandic state through the program RÍM—Ritmenning íslenskra miðalda.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I wish to acknowledge the generous help provided by Jón Torfason, archival expert at the National Archive of Iceland, during the writing of this article.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**

Eco, Umberto. 1980. *Il Nome della Rosa*. Milano: Bompiani.

Fahn, Susanne M., and Gottskálk Jensson. 2010. The Forgotten Poem: A Latin Panegyric for Saint Þorlákr in AM 382 4to. *Gripla* 21: 19–60.

Jensson, Gottskálk. 2004. The Latin of the North: Arngrímur Jónsson's Crymogæa (1609) and the Discovery of Icelandic as a Classical Language. *Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies* 5. Available online: www.njrs.dk/rf\_5\_2008.htm (accessed on 6 June 2021).

Jensson, Gottskálk. 2016. Íslenskar klausturreglur og *libertas ecclesie* á ofanverðri 12. öld. In *Íslensk Klausturmenning á Miðöldum*. Edited by Haraldur Bernharðsson. Reykjavík: Miðaldastofa, pp. 9–57.

Jensson, Gottskálk. 2017. Latin Hagiography in Medieval Iceland. In *Corpus Christianorum. Hagiographies: International History of the Latin and Vernacular Hagiographical Literature in the West from Its Origins to 1550*. Edited by Monique Gaullet. Turnhout: Brepols, vol. 7, pp. 875–949.

Kristjánsdóttir, Guðbjörg. 2016. Handritalýsingar í benediktínaklaustrinu á Þingeyrum. In *Íslensk Klausturmenning á Miðöldum*. Edited by Haraldur Bernharðsson. Reykjavík: Miðaldastofa, pp. 227–311.

Guðrún, Harðardóttir. 2016. Myndefni íslenskra klausturinnsigla. In *Íslensk Klausturmenning á Miðöldum*. Edited by Haraldur Bernharðsson. Reykjavík: Miðaldastofa, pp. 201–25.

Gunnlaugsson, Guðvarður Már. 2016. Voru *scriptoria* í íslenskum klaustrum. In *Íslensk klausturmenning á miðöldum*. Edited by Haraldur Bernharðsson. Reykjavík: Miðaldastofa, pp. 173–200.

Hannes, Þorsteinsson. 1912. Nokkrar athuganir um íslenzkar bókmentir á 12. og 13. öld. *Skírnir* 86: 126–48, 339–57.


## *Article* **Religious Images and Iconoclasm in Reformation Iceland**

**Sigrún Hannesdóttir**

Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland, 102 Reykjavík, Iceland; sha@hi.is

**Abstract:** This work assesses what happened to liturgical objects from Icelandic churches and monastic houses during and after the Lutheran Reformation, through an examination of written sources, such as inventories and Visitation books, and material evidence in museum collections and from archaeological excavations. The aim of this work is first, to assess the extent and nature of iconoclasm in Iceland and secondly to re-examine traditional narratives of the Icelandic Reformation in the light of material culture.

**Keywords:** Reformation; devotional objects; iconoclasm; church history; Icelandic history

#### **1. Introduction**

Judging solely from the vast collection of visual heritage from the Catholic period preserved in Iceland, it would seem that the pillaging and demolition of religious imagery that followed the Protestant Reformation in many European countries did not transpire there. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that some attacks on images and liturgical objects took place during and after the Reformation. It also seems that in some cases, objects were transformed and reused in ways that better suited the Lutheran faith and in yet other cases, objects of precious metals were stolen and shipped to Denmark as taxation for the king.

As elsewhere in Europe, church interiors and inventories in Iceland changed significantly in accordance with Lutheran conventions. The material culture of the churches and the changes thereof present valuable evidence in illuminating the nature of the changes that followed the Protestant Reformation and the pace at which these changes took place. As argued by Jürgensen, textual sources might provide us with "the reasoning and vocabulary of the reformers", but churches and their material culture reveal the ways in which reformers "expressed their ideas when it came to actually giving form or body to their visions of a new church free of the 'popery' they reacted against" (Jürgensen 2017, pp. 1041–42).

This work assesses what happened to religious images and devotional objects during and after the Lutheran Reformation in Iceland through an examination of written sources, such as church inventories and Visitation books, and material evidence in museum collections and from archaeological excavations. The aim of this work is first, to assess the extent and nature of iconoclasm in Iceland; was iconoclasm confined to a few isolated and erratic attacks or did a systematic confiscation and destruction of Catholic objects take place following the Reformation? What were the motives and targets of iconoclasts in Iceland? How were objects otherwise re-contextualized? Secondly, this study aims to re-examine traditional narratives of the Icelandic Reformation in the light of material culture; what can the evidence at hand tell us about the process of the Reformation in Iceland and its political implications? Was the Icelandic Reformation first and foremost a political struggle, centered around the monarch's acquisition of power? Furthermore, perhaps most importantly, what role did objects play in the advancement and resistance to Lutheranism? To gain a deeper insight into the political aspect of the Reformation, a wider Scandinavian context will be also considered.

**Citation:** Hannesdóttir, Sigrún. 2021. Religious Images and Iconoclasm in Reformation Iceland. *Religions* 12: 428. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12060428

Academic Editors: Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir and Greg Peters

Received: 29 April 2021 Accepted: 6 June 2021 Published: 9 June 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

#### **2. The Reformation in Iceland and Denmark-Norway**

On the morning of the 7th of November in 1550, Jón Arason, the last Catholic bishop of Hólar, and two of his sons, Ari and Björn, were beheaded in Skálholt, the other episcopal see of Iceland (Figure 1). A year later, in 1551, the diocese of Hólar submitted to the Lutheran Church Ordinance of King Christian III<sup>1</sup> which had been accepted in Skálholt in 1541. Consequently, the king became the head of the church, and church property was largely secularised (Ísleifsdóttir 2013, pp. 353–56). The execution of the three men marked a symbolic concluding event in a more than decade-long political struggle between the Catholic clergy in Iceland and Protestant Reformers working in the interest of the king (Hugason 2018, p. 173; Ísleifsdóttir 2013). With the death of Jón Arason "the external opposition to the Reformation was broken" and Lutheranism could be firmly established in the country (Andersen 1990, p. 156).

**Figure 1.** Map of Iceland, showing the two episcopal sees: Skálholt and Hólar. The diocese of Skálholt encompassed the Western, Southern and Eastern Regions, while Hólar encompassed the Northern Region.

Amongst the first advocators of the Reformation in Iceland was Gissur Einarsson, who had become acquainted with Lutheranism during his studies in Hamburg in the period 1531–1534. Two years after his return home he was appointed assistant to Ögmundur Pálsson Bishop of Skálholt but, in the interim, remained silent about this Protestant sympathies. Shortly after, in 1539, when Ögmundur, due to his old age and impaired eyesight, resigned his position, he recommended Gissur as his successor and in 1540 Gissur was appointed as the bishop of Skálholt (Guttormsson 2000, p. 54).

An important factor that differentiates the Reformation in Iceland from mainland Europe is that there was no evangelical movement prior to the formal conversion and thus it has been argued that, for Icelanders, the Reformation initially presented itself as a political struggle. Because of the low population density and absence of cities and market towns, a middling class of merchants and craftsmen, that often were the first to take to the message of Protestant Reformers in mainland Europe, was practically non-existent in Iceland, and there were no universities. Thus, it has been argued that there was little sociocultural premise for any Evangelical movements and, therefore, Iceland was "completely

unprepared for the Reformation" (Andersen 1990, p. 154). However, around the time Gissur Einarsson came to power, some Lutheran influence had gained footing in Skálholt and in 1540 the first Icelandic translation of the New Testament by Oddur Gottskálksson was printed (Guttormsson 2000, pp. 51–52).

In 1538, shortly after Christian III had proclaimed the new Church Ordinance for Denmark, he attempted to introduce it in Iceland, but it was rejected by both Ögmundur Pálsson, Bishop of Hólar, and Jón Arason, Bishop of Skálholt (Andersen 1990, p. 155). In 1541 a royal emissary was sent to Iceland to have the ordinance accepted, in which it succeeded only in Skálholt which Gissur Einarsson was now in possession of. Ögmundur, who had turned against the new bishop, was arrested by the emissary and died on the journey to Copenhagen (Guttormsson 2000, pp. 57–59). In the meantime, some dramatic measures had been employed to put an end to Catholicism in the country and on the morning of Pentecost in 1539, Sheriff Didrik von Mynden and some other men working for King Christian III are said to have stormed into the monastery of Viðey, plundered anything of monetary value and struck and burned the rest (Diplomatarium Islandicum (DI) 1857– 1972, X, pp. 478–80). During construction work near the monastic site in recent years, an effigy of St. Dorothy was found by chance. The head of the effigy is missing but other than that the effigy is whole (Gunnarsdóttir and Kristjánsdóttir 2016, p. 36). The headless effigy of St. Dorothy may thus present a tangible remnant of the attack on Viðey, led by Didrik von Mynden, which marked the dissolution of the monastery (See Kristjánsdóttir 2017, p. 326).

Bishop Gissur Einarsson died in 1548, only 36 years of age. In his short time in office, he had made great efforts to organise the diocese of Skálholt in accordance with the new church ordinance. He sternly opposed any Catholic ceremonies and, amongst other things, urged priests to obtain the Icelandic translation of the New Testament from 1540. In addition, Gissur had evangelical sermons translated into Icelandic, and himself translated parts of the Old Testament (Andersen 1990, pp. 155–56). After the death of Gissur, Jón Arason attempted to take possession of the diocese of Skálholt to re-establish Catholicism and in doing so, took prisoner Gissur's successor. Soon after that, Jón and his sons were arrested by the king's men and executed (Ibid.).

The execution of Bishop Jón and his sons has traditionally been regarded as the resolution of Roman Catholicism in Iceland and is commonly described as a turning point in Icelandic religious and political history. However, as various scholars have pointed out in recent years, the Reformation was a long and complex process, encompassing several realms of society, and did not straightforwardly end with the acceptance of the new church ordinance in 1551 but continued to develop over the next decades, or even centuries (Ísleifsdóttir 2013; Hugason 2018). In its narrowest sense, it has been suggested that the Reformation, strictly seen as the establishment of the Lutheran Church, took place in the decades between 1540 and 1600, from the first attempts of Christian III to introduce the new Church Ordinance at Alþingi until Lutheranism had become somewhat established in both dioceses (Guttormsson 2000, p. 110).

Another result of the low population density in Iceland was that the changes that followed the Reformation happened at a slow pace. This was also due to the fact that Iceland was, at the time, far removed from the sovereignty of the king and there was no central authority capable of effectively taking matters into their own hands and leading the change. With the exception of the envoys sent to Iceland in 1541 and 1551, the presence of the king was limited and did by no means suffice to propel forward the Reformation at the speed which the traditional narrative seems to suggest (Hugason 2018, p. 183).

It can be expected that the changes following the Reformation happened at a different pace in different localities depending on the willingness of parishes to adapt to the new tradition, and although the bishops were required to make regular visitations to each parish, the management of the churches was first and foremost in the hands of the priests. This is clearly demonstrated by an account of Sigurður Jónsson, the youngest son of Jón Arason, who served as a priest at Grenjaðarstaðir, in the diocese of Hólar, who shortly

before the Easter of 1554 officially stated that he would begin serving in accordance with the Lutheran doctrine instead of the Catholic one. It seems that Sigurður was amongst the first Icelandic priests who had been ordained by the Catholic Church but willingly converted to Lutheranism (Hugason 2015). According to a register of priests from the period it seems that only about a quarter of priests in the diocese of Skálholt and a fifth of the priests in the diocese of Hólar resigned their position as a result of the Reformation, which means that a majority of the priests serving in the new Lutheran Church had previously served as Catholic priests (Hugason 2018, pp. 187–89). Therefore, it seems likely that it generally took some years and perhaps a new generation of priests for any significant changes to take place (Ibid.).

The situation in Iceland was in many ways comparable to that in Norway where, following the victory of the Reformation in Denmark, Lutheranism was introduced in 1537. It has been maintained that the transition in Norway, for the most part, took place without much force from the Danish king who recognised the need for a slow and gradual change (Von Achen 2020, pp. 80–81). However, whereas the Reformation in the Danish-Norwegian kingdom may have been a political success for the king, it has been argued that Lutheranism did not gain a strong footing amongst the populace. Indeed, the Reformation in Norway has been described as a 'Reformation without people' (Laugerud 2018; Von Achen 2020, p. 82).

The progress of the Reformation in Denmark and Norway will not be traced in detail here. It suffices to say that a systematic destruction of images and devotional objects from the Catholic period did not transpire on a large scale following the Reformation and there seems to have been a moderate tolerance towards images within the kingdom, although a few iconoclastic riots broke out in Copenhagen, Malmö, and Schleswig in Denmark in the years leading up to the Reformation and in Bergen in Norway a few decades later (Johannsen and Johannsen 2012, p. 266; Von Achen 2020, pp. 80–81; Gilje 2011; Figure 2).<sup>2</sup> However, although such attacks were indeed very rare, the description of the Danish Carmelite Paul Helgesen (b. ca. 1485) of the attack on the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen in 1531 suggests that they may have been dramatic (Quoted in Frederiksen 1987, p. 117. Own translation):

*First they threw over all the Holy images, spat on them, blew them with their fists and mocked them with ghastly insults, while they smashed them with axes, thereafter they permeated the choir where they demolished completely the Canon's chair and the panel. [* . . . *]. They even went so far, as to rip the books apart.*

The series of iconoclastic conflicts which took place in Bergen in the period 1568–1572 were part of an attempt to introduce a second Reformation under Calvinistic influence. During these conflicts, the altars in many churches in Bergen were stripped of images of saints under the lead of Bishop Jens Skielderup (b. 1510–d. 1582) (Gilje 2011). Skielderup went so far in removing what remained of the Catholic tradition that the town council feared that he would "strip the churches down to the mere walls" (Ibid., p. 74. Own translation). Importantly, the removal of images from the churches of Bergen was largely initiated by the Danish nobility, specifically by the king's commission that, during an inspection of the town, criticised Skielderup for not having already taken steps to have them removed. As a result of the pressure posed on him by the king's commission, Skieldrup called together a synod where he decreed that images and effigies were to be removed from churches, albeit with some few exceptions (Ibid.).

**Figure 2.** Map of Scandinavia, with some key locations discussed in this paper.

Similar to Bergen, influence of the Danish monarch affected the tolerance towards images in the province of Jämtland which had ecclesiastically belonged to Sweden but was transferred to the Norwegian diocese of Trondheim in 1571. Consequent to the transferral, in the late 16th and early 17th century, many churches in Jämtland received new altarpieces and other church fittings which were decorated with catechisms in Danish instead of images of saints. It seems that in the Danish-Norwegian Jämtland there was generally less tolerance towards images than in the provinces east of it which remained Swedish, and while in the Swedish providences the old and the new were commonly mixed together, the priests in Jämtland more often disposed of Catholic imagery upon obtaining the new pieces. It has been noted that the removal of religious images from the churches of Jämtland was initiated by the authorities without popular support (Holm 2017, pp. 389–90). This is demonstrated by an incident in the parish of Offerdal in the north of Jämtland, where images of saints were disposed of by the vicar but salvaged by some members of the parish who continued their worship in non-official, semi-domestic chapels (Ibid; Zachrisson 2019, pp. 8–11). Thus, although the events in Bergen and the province of Jämtland are perhaps not representative of the general situation in Norway, they demonstrate the national politics at stake at the Reformation within the Oldenburg Monarchy.

#### **3. Iconoclasm: Motives and Approaches**

Shortly before his death, Gissur Einarsson, the first Lutheran bishop in Iceland, issued an edict which was to be read in the churches in the diocese of Skálholt and included instructions for the confiscation of all effigies worshipped by "ignorant and supersticious" people (Biskupaannálar Jóns Egilssonar 1856, pp. 87–88). An exception was made for effigies depicting Jesus, Virgin Mary and the Apostles, which could be kept as tokens of remembrance. However, Gissur quickly took a less tolerant stance and a year later he journeyed to the church of Kaldaðarnes where he had the Holy Cross taken down. The cross, which was believed to be miraculous and had long been an attraction for pilgrims from around the country, was stored in Kaldaðarnes for a few years, until Bishop Gísli Jónsson (b. 1515–d. 1587) had it moved to Skálholt where it was broken into pieces and burned (Ibid.). The episode that supposedly followed was described by the poet Bjarni Jónsson (b. 1560–d. 1640) (Bragi Óðfræðivefur n.d., Own translation):

*All writings and ornaments*

*Torn apart and burned;*

*Christ's images shattered,*

*Paper and icons rotten.*

Much has been written about the iconoclastic destruction of images and sacred objects during and after the Protestant Reformation in Europe and the motives that drove such attacks (e.g., Aston 1988, 1989; Duffy 1992; Eire 1986; Koerner 2002). Iconoclasm varied much in intensity between regions and whereas in some places, both statuary art and two-dimensional images from the Catholic period have largely remained intact, in other places a significant part of the visual heritage from that time has been destroyed completely or damaged greatly (Graves 2008, p. 35). The latter was the case in England where the reformation was accompanied by a wave of plundering and destruction encouraged by the authorities. This wave reached its crest during the reign of Edward VI, when a systematic destruction of religious images was implemented throughout the whole country with the lead of Archbishop Cranmer and his associates (Duffy 1992, pp. 448–77). In some cases, objects were shattered or burned so that nothing remained of them. In other cases, images were defaced or painted over, and the heads, hands and feet of statues were hewn off, their eyes gouged out or noses scraped off. Many images subjected to such attacks were deliberately left to view in these states and can, to this day, be found in many parish churches and cathedrals around England (Ibid., p. 35).

The critical attitude of many Lutheran theologians and reformers towards images in the first decades after the reformation was first and foremost directed at the veneration of things, which had characterised Christian devotion from at least the 12th century (Eire 1986, pp. 13–14). In this cult of images, paintings, reliefs, relics, effigies, crucifixes and other liturgical objects in churches were regarded as embodiments of divine powers. As such, they were not conceived or treated as inert things but as animated and alive, and capable of conveying power and healing (Bynum 2011, pp. 21–25). The belief in the powers and vitality of sacred objects was invigorated by stories of such objects miraculously bleeding, weeping or changing colours, which proliferated in the late Medieval period (Ibid., pp. 21–22). Often, objects were not only thought to invoke external powers but were in themselves powerful; as in the case of the Holy Cross from Kaldaðarnes, people made pilgrimages to view them and touched them and kissed "as if Christ himself were present in them all" (Ibid., p. 127). After the Holy Cross had been burned, written accounts describe how the old people at Skálholt sought to get ahold of its ashes, demonstrating the power invested in the material traces of the Cross (Biskupaannálar Jóns Egilssonar 1856, pp. 87–88). Another such powerful item in Iceland was the reliquary of St. Þorlákur in the Cathedral of Skálholt, which people stroked with their hands before placing them on their eyes or other parts on their body that required healing. Regularly, the reliquary was carried around the cemetery, followed by people singing canticles or reading scriptures (Ibid.).

The Catholic cult of images was criticised by many Protestant reformers who feared that the veneration of objects misdirected people's worship to the material world, to the point that it overshadowed the worship of God (Eire 1986, p. 54). In the view of Protestants, objects could not "objectify a spiritual reality" and thus, worship offered to images "offered only to the artistic representation, not to the person represented by it" (Ibid., p. 59) The

aim of iconoclasts was, at least in part, to demonstrate this and to reveal the powerless and inert nature of images (Graves 2008, p. 39). Protestant reformers were, in other words, not only opposed to the veneration of saints, which were often the subject of religious imagery, but to the worship of material things and attempts to objectify the divine. However, Luther himself did not wish to ban images from churches altogether as, for example, Karlstadt and Zwingli did; he considered images to be neither good nor bad and if necessary, they could still be used within a certain framework as long as they were not worshipped. It is of interest whether this is reflected in the Icelandic material and whether iconoclasts exclusively targeted objects which were seen as particularly sacred or miraculous, such as the Holy Cross at Kaldaðarnes.

As already discussed, iconoclasm did not take place on a large scale in Denmark. Efforts were focused on modifying unsuitable objects rather than demolishing them completely; church furniture from the Catholic period certainly found its place within the Lutheran faith, and Bishop Peter Palladius (b. 1503–d. 1560) recommended that altar tables were used as foundations for pulpits and that altar cloths were used to make clothing or bandages for the poor and sick (Johannsen and Johannsen 2012, p. 267). One interesting example of modification of imagery is an altar piece made in 1496 which originally belonged to the monastic church of Esrum, in the north of Zealand but was moved to the church of St. Olai, in Helsingør in the east of Zealand in 1659. In the mid-17th century, an Abbot Peter which is depicted on the bottom of the piece was transformed into a Lutheran priest; the tonsure was covered up, a beard and a moustache were added to his face, his robe was changed and a ruff was put around his neck (Jensen 1921, p. 182; Skinnebach 2016, pp. 157–58). This suggests that it was not always the images in themselves which were considered unsuitable but rather their subject. However, a critical attitude towards images and the veneration of objects gained some footing in Denmark and in reforming the Danish church art, images were often replaced by text, as recommended by Luther (Johannsen and Johannsen 2012, pp. 262–65). As discussed earlier in the example from Jämtland, words became a popular decorative feature in Danish churches, particularly from in the late 16th century and onwards, and quotes from scriptures, often in gilded letters, were displayed on a great number of church walls, and altar pieces and fronts ( Jürgensen 2017, pp. 1055–56). As expressed by Niels Palladius (b. 1510–d. 1560), brother of the bishop (Quoted in Jürgensen 2017, p. 1055):

*The true ornament of the Christian churches is the sacred office itself of God's words, and the administration of the sacraments and pious ceremonies to whom they are joined, not logs, a wooden nose or eye, painted and fashioned faces.*

In some cases, the addition of text to unsuitable imagery could even offer a compromise. In 1593, an alabaster retable in Vejrum Church in Jutland depicting St. Catherine was, for example, 'neutralised' with the addition of the words: 'Saints, you should not serve, but worship God alone. These images are embellishment alone. They have no other power, nor virtue' (Ibid., p. 267). With the addition of the text, attempts were made to reveal the inert nature of the image and to strip it of its power; it could still be enjoyed as a piece of art or even as a historical curiosity (see Jensen 1921, p. 196), but in no instance was it to be worshipped or bestowed with divine powers.

As indicated by the account of Gissur Einarsson, some opposition towards the worship of objects seems to have been present in Iceland. However, scholars do not agree upon the extent to which this opposition materialised through iconoclastic attacks or confiscation of devotional objects; while some have regarded the story of the crucifix of Kaldaðarnes as a testimony of systematic destruction of church art and religious objects (e.g., Björnsson 1964) others reject the idea of such vandalism altogether (e.g., Kristjánsson 2017). Only a few studies have looked at what happened to devotional objects during and after the Lutheran Reformation in Iceland. The most influential of these is a study by medievalist Cormack (2017) where she examines church inventories of two Lutheran bishops. As will be discussed further, Cormack finds in these inventories some indications of vandalism as well as other important evidence for the fate of Catholic objects in the decades after the Ref-

ormation. However, Cormack does not look in depth at any extant objects from the Catholic period. Theologian Gunnar Kristjánsson (2017) has also examined selected inventories of churches as well as some Icelandic church art in the national museums of Iceland and Denmark but claims to find no examples of vandalism. Gunnar is highly critical of accounts about iconoclasm in Iceland and believes them to be untrustworthy dramatizations of the true events. However, Gunnar examines no other factors than iconoclasm and does not consider how the objects may otherwise have been recontextualised. Apart from these two, a few other authors have examined the change in church interiors and art after the Reformation (e.g., Harðardóttir 2017), but they have mostly been concerned with how the Lutheran faith influenced new church art and furnishings rather than the fate of the Catholic objects.

#### **4. The Fate of Catholic Objects in Iceland**

In examining the fate of religious images, statues and other devotional objects, church inventories and visitation books provide important evidence. In the aforementioned research on possible iconoclasm in Reformation Iceland, Margaret Cormack (2017) uses data from the visitation books of two Lutheran bishops of Skálholt, those of Gísli Jónsson (1559–1587) and Brynjólfur Sveinsson (1639–1674). In the inventories of Brynjólfur, Cormack finds several mentions of broken effigies; in the inventory of the church of Keldur, he, for example, noted "three heads broken off alabaster" and "three fragments so the images can not be identified". (Ibid., p. 247). In the same church, Brynjólfur listed a broken effigy of John the Apostle (Ibid., p. 250). Above the altar in the church of Þykkvibær Brynjólfur found "remains from alabaster effigies" and in Mýrar there were four effigies, one of which was broken. At Hvol, Brynjólfur also mentions a "broken stone altarpiece" which may have been decorated with images of saints (Ibid.).

Interestingly, the damaged objects listed by Brynjólfur seem to have been only partly damaged and then retained within the churches in that state rather than demolished completely. Only a few effigies of saints from the Catholic period which are preserved in the National Museum of Iceland show signs of such vandalism. Amongst those is a majestic statue depicting the sedes sapientiae missing the Christ child. The statue is carved in oak and is 90 cm high. It has been dated to the 13th century and is believed to originate from Sweden. In the right side of head of the effigy is a large cleft and one of the lilies is missing from the crown (Sarpur n.d., 10944/1930-355). Art historian Selma Jónsdóttir, who studied the statue, argued that this damage was purposefully inflicted with a blunt object (Jónsdóttir 1964, p. 9). Upon examination, this indeed seems probable. The statue was gifted to the National Museum of Denmark in 1853 but returned to Iceland, along with many other artefacts in 1930. According to Danish accounts, the National Museum of Denmark acquired the effigy from a Gudmann Jr. who came by it in Hjaltadalur, in which the Cathedral of Hólar was situated. In the accounts of the National Museum of Iceland from 1930 this is, however, claimed to be a misconception but no further explanation to this claim is provided (Sarpur n.d., 10944/1930-355). Selma Jónsdóttir questioned this and argued that statue was indeed imported to Hjaltadalur, in the episcopacy of Guðmundur góði Arason (Gudmund the Good, b. 1203–1237) who is said to have been devoted to Virgin Mary. Selma maintains that the inhabitants of Hjaltadalur regarded the statue as particularly sacred and that its special status eventually drove someone to attack its face with an axe or a similar tool (Jónsdóttir 1964, pp. 56–57). It is difficult to confirm the association of the statue to Hjaltadalur or to Guðmundur góði but it does indeed seem likely that it was attacked due to its special status.

Other than this effigy, very few of the religious images exhibited in the National Museum seem to have been subjected to iconoclastic attacks. Many statues of saints are missing hands, arms, or parts of their face, such as the nose, which were common targets of iconoclasts, but this is more likely due to the fact these parts are most liable to break off, rather than deliberate destruction. Nevertheless, such damage, albeit accidental, reflects

a changed attitude towards the images which were, in the Catholic period, regarded as sacred but were neglected and left to decay in the centuries after the Reformation.

Only two of the numerous effigies recorded in Sarpur, an online database for Icelandic museum collections, show possible signs of deliberate destruction. One of these is an effigy of Paul the apostle carved in oak, which belonged to the church in Hjarðarholt in Borgarfjörður. The effigy is missing its nose and its eyes have been gouged out, which is typical for iconoclasm. Another effigy recorded in Sarpur which might also have been subjected to vandalism is carved in pine and depicts Andrew the apostle. The effigy, which has been dated to the 13th century and was probably made in Iceland or imported from Norway, belonged to the church at Teigur in Fljótsdalur, a turf church dedicated to St. Andrew and the Virgin Mary which was abolished in the late 19th century (Sarpur n.d., 2441/1883-290). At some point the bottom half of the effigy was cut off. This is not typical for iconoclasm and thus possibly requires an alternative explanation. It is noteworthy that both these effigies depict apostles, which along with Marian images and images of Christ, were acceptable according to bishop Gissur Einarsson, as long as they were not worshipped. Thus, if these effigies were truly subjected to iconoclasm, it seems likely that they were attacked on grounds of their special status or supposed miraculous nature rather than their imagery, as in the case of the statue associated with Hofstaðir discussed above.

The effigy of St. Andrew is mentioned in an inventory of the church of Teigar from 1397 along with an effigy of the Virgin, a crucifix and an altar stone containing relics (DI IV, p. 78). In an inventory of 1553 made by Bishop Marteinn Einarsson, none of these items are listed (DI XII, p. 650). However, the National Museum of Iceland obtained the effigy from the church of Teigar in 1883 (Sarpur n.d., 2441/1883-290); therefore, it seems likely that it was retained in the church throughout the years, perhaps hidden or stored away. If that is the case, it can be inferred that the inventories are not always accurate in that they might not include all the objects kept within the churches, and that either the bishops responsible for the inventories intentionally avoided listing such items or they were hidden away by the parish priest before their visitations.

As in the case of the effigy of St. Andrew, a great part of the religious imagery and devotional objects from the Catholic period is missing from inventories shortly after the Reformation. For this study, two collections of inventories were examined in order to compare the listings before and after the Reformation: first, the abovementioned inventory book made by Bishop Marteinn Einarsson during his tour of the diocese in the period 1553–1554, only little over a decade after the Lutheran church ordinance was officially brought into force there. A transcript of the original manuscript of these inventories has been published in the series Diplomatarium Islandicum (DI) (1857–1972, XII, pp. 643–68). The second inventory book was written in 1601 by Bjarni Marteinsson, scribe at Skálholt, and contains a collection of inventories of churches in the diocese, the oldest dating to the 12th century and the most recent to the year 1600. The manuscript is preserved in the National Archives of Iceland but no transcript of it has yet been published (Biskupsskjalasafn AII n.d.).

The collection of inventories written by Bjarni is somewhat problematic as only a few of the individual inventories within it include a date and thus, it can be difficult to assess their precise age. However, the collection should not be dismissed completely. On grounds of their contents, the pre-Reformation inventories in the front of the manuscript can easily be distinguished from the 16th century inventories, which suffices for the aim of this study; although the exact dates of the inventories are unknown, they can still be used in comparison to inventories from after the Reformation (see Table 1).

**Table 1.** A comparison of the inventory book of Bishop Marteinn Einarsson published Diplomatarium Islandicum and the unpublished collection of inventories written by Bjarni Marteinsson in 1601. A majority of the devotional objects listed in the pre-Reformation inventories are missing from later inventories.



#### **Table 1.** *Cont*.

The inventories in the collection of Bjarni reveal that in the centuries before the Reformation, the churches in the diocese of Skálholt were filled with effigies of saints, crucifixes and reliquaries. Moreover, in a majority of the inventories, the dedications of the churches to the various saints are mentioned. Already in the inventory from 1553 to 1554 this had changed radically. While many of the church inventories examined from that year include chalices, patens and corporals, only one included effigies, that is the church of Oddi which was said to own an effigy of the Virgin Mary and some other "graven images" (DI XII, pp. 652–53). The inventory from Oddi also includes a reliquary and four crucifixes (Ibid.). The only other mention of a crucifix was in the inventory of Kaldaðarnes which was described as broken (Ibid., pp. 658–59). In addition, the inventory of Skarð lists a reliquary with silver (Ibid., p. 656) and the church at Ásar had hagiographies of St. John and St. Paul (Ibid.). Three altar pieces, which might have included images of saints, were mentioned in the inventories: one in Oddi (Ibid., pp. 652–53), one in Húsafell (Ibid., pp. 666–67) and one in Gufudalur (Ibid., pp. 667–68). Only one inventory notes the church's dedication, that is the church at Keldur, which was dedicated to Paul the Apostle (Ibid., p. 654).

Evidently, a large part of the Catholic objects of the churches in the diocese of Skálholt are missing from the inventories from 1553 to 1554. As described earlier, Bishop Gissur Einarsson did order the confiscation of effigies and other objects worshipped by the people in the diocese. Written sources also cite that in the diocese of Hólar, Ólafur Hjaltason, the first Lutheran bishop, had all effigies and crucifixes which he considered to be objects of worship to be collected and broken (Cormack 2017, p. 243; Skarðsannáll 1922, p. 134). While these narratives have often been seen as unreliable exaggerations of the true events (see Kristjánsson 2017, pp. 218–19; Harðardóttir 2017, p. 195; Hugason 1991; Hugason 1988), the difference in the inventories before and after the Reformation might, at first glance, suggest that there is some truth to them. Importantly, however, as demonstrated in Cormack's study, some objects seem to reappear in later inventories, suggesting that they were omitted from destruction.

Indeed, returning to Cormack's study, one of the most interesting results is the difference in the two inventories she examines: whereas Brynjólfur, writing his inventories in the mid-17th century, lists various effigies of saints and other devotional objects of a Catholic

nature, Gísli, who served within the first decades after the Reformation, very similar to Marteinn Einarsson, does not mention effigies, and lists only a few crucifixes and relics as well as two hagiographies (Cormack 2017, pp. 249–50). As has already been postulated, this might suggest that the first Lutheran bishops simply avoided noting such objects in their inventories although they were present in the churches. However, if this was the case, the question remains why Marteinn Einarsson decided to note only a few selected items but circumvented such objects in all the other churches. Another explanation for the disappearance of objects from the inventories is that they were hidden away in the first decades after the Reformation but were slowly reintroduced as Lutheranism had become more established.

It is well known from other countries that devotional objects were hidden away during the Reformation. In England, for instance, a large number of alabaster panels from the Catholic period have been found hidden in roofs, walls or under floors of churches and even in domestic buildings (Cheetham 2005, pp. 53–54). The same seems to have occurred in Denmark; in Odense Cathedral in Funen, for example, a reliquary shrine of St. Canute was hidden in the choir walls and rediscovered in 1582 (Johannsen and Johannsen 2012, p. 266), and in the Cathedral of Roskilde in Zealand some epitaphs were hung over images of the Virgin Mary and some other saints which had been painted on pillars within the church (Lauring 1963).

It is well possible that this was also the case in Iceland. Some decades ago, the farmer of Klaustur by Lagarfljót, near the monastic site of Skriða in the diocese of Skálholt, found an effigy of the Virgin Mary, which has been dated to the Medieval period, in the walls of an old shed. It is not unlikely that it belonged to the monastery of Skriða and was hidden within the wall of the shed to protect it from vandalism or theft or for the fear that it would be confiscated by the church authorities (Sarpur n.d., 14414/1950-145). A 16th century effigy of Christ, removed from the crucifix, found under the floor tiles of the church of Staður in Steingrímsfjörður in the diocese of Skálholt (Sarpur n.d., 1834–1892), might similarly have been deposited to protect it from harm. At the same time, the deposition of the effigy may have been a part of a ritual to protect the church building from disasters, or even from riots. Similar deposits of devotional objects have been detected in Norway; for example, a textual amulet containing prayers to St. Dorothy and the Holy Cross was recovered from under the floor tiles of a medieval wooden stave church in Torpo. The amulet has been discussed by Hagen, who has speculated that it might have been deposited to protect the church from fires due to its connection with St. Dorothy (Haug Hagen 2019).

In any case, the effigy of the Virgin Mary in the wall at Klaustur and that of Christ under the floor tiles in Staður certainly imply that there was some motive to place objects out of sight, and that priests or parish members may have feared that the belongings of their churches would be confiscated or attacked by iconoclasts or the king's men. A broken effigy of St. Barbara which was found during archaeological excavations at Skriða makes compelling the argument that the effigy of the Virgin was concealed on a nearby farm to safeguard it from a similar fate. All the pieces of the effigy of St. Barbara were found in the choir of the monastic church in 2006, excluding the face which was found on its own near the kitchen in 2007. The fact that the face of the effigy was found separately, in a distinct building, suggests that it was deliberately hewn off, perhaps around the dissolution of the monastery at the Reformation (Kristjánsdóttir 2012, pp. 97–100). In an inventory of the church of Skriða from 1641 an effigy of "some holy maid" was listed, suggesting that the faceless effigy was retained within the church, although it had become unrecognizable to the writer of the inventory (Ibid., p. 100). The effigy is made of terra cotta and was probably produced in Utrecht in the 15th century. The individual pieces have now been attached back together and the effigy stands around 30 cm tall (Ibid., pp. 97–100).

For whatever reason that many of the devotional objects missing from the earliest inventories after the Reformation reappear in the inventories of Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson in the mid-17th century, this seems to suggest that the critical attitude towards religious imagery diminished or at least became more moderate some decades after the Reformation. The same pattern has been suggested in Denmark, where the Protestant material critique diminished as the Reformation lost its potency and the exuberance and grandeur of the Baroque found its way into Danish churches (Jürgensen 2017, pp. 1052, 1074).

In addition to evidence for broken and damaged images and statues, there is also evidence to suggest that some liturgical objects from the Catholic period were modified as to better fit Lutheran customs. Such physical transformations reveal clearly the cultural transformations that the objects underwent during the Reformation and how their meaning and value changed (e.g., Dooijes and Nieuwenhuyse 2007). An example of a physically modified object is a 14th century manuscript which was originally a Catholic mass-book containing text in Latin. At some point after the Reformation, the Latin text was scraped off the pages of the manuscript and replaced with music notes and Icelandic song lyrics. The original illustrations of the manuscripts were kept in place and merged with the new notes and lyrics. On some pages, attempts were made to fit the new text with the subject of the illustrations but in other cases this was not possible, and the text and illustration do not relate to each other (Ingólfsson 2019, pp. 68–69). Through this transformation, the songbook bore physical marks of its history, and for its readers the illustrations would have conjured powerful memories of the original meaning of the book and the association to other objects, people and events from which that meaning emerged.

Other examples of repurposing of objects from the Catholic period include a piscina from the church of Saurbær which is said to have been used as a baptismal font after the Reformation, and parts of a monstrance from Skálholt which were recycled as feet for two candlesticks (Harðardóttir 2017, p. 196). In the church of Villingaholt, a case originally used to house an effigy was used for storage (Cormack 2017, p. 250). One remarkable instance of the repurposing of a liturgical object after the Reformation is described in an inventory of the Cathedral of Skáholt from 1698 where some old procession staffs were said to serve as hinges for a door (Harðardóttir 2017, p. 196). All these instances of repurposing reflect a radical recontextualization of the objects, which in the Catholic period were considered sacred but after the Reformation were translated into seemingly mundane objects. However, the translation of these objects certainly created the possibility of keeping them within the churches.

A relic case from the church of Valþjófsstaðir, exhibited in the National Museum, from which large parts of the gold overlay, which originally depicted a crucifixion scene and other religious imagery, has been removed (Sarpur n.d., 3612/1891-91), may present yet another example of modification. Church inventories after the Reformation in fact commonly mention reliquaries which are missing parts; the lid of the reliquary in Oddi noted by Brynjólfur Sveinsson was, for instance, lost and in Kálfafellsstaðir one side of a reliquary was missing (Cormack 2017, p. 248). However, although it is well possible that parts of the reliquaries were removed because of religious motives, they may also have been stolen. It is known that from the 16th century and onwards, religious objects of precious metal from Icelandic churches were shipped to Denmark as taxation for the king and it has been suggested that after the Reformation, church objects were often stolen from churches for this purpose (Kristjánsson 2017, pp. 236–37; Magnússon 2013, p. 34). In either case, it is significant that what remained of the cases was kept in the churches, whether they served as tokens of memory for the old religion or were actively used in religious activities.

#### **5. Results**

In tracing the fate of religious imagery and devotional objects in Iceland, at least three phases can be identified. In the Catholic period they were received as embodiments of divine power and played an important role in exalting the religious experience. Importantly, the significance of these objects stemmed from a certain understanding of their matter as potent and alive. During and around the Reformation the meaning of these objects changed drastically as Protestant reformers sought to reveal the inert nature of what they regarded as mere pieces of wood or stone. With the orientation towards the Word of God, as advocated by Lutheranism, there was less room for the worship of such dead things. In Iceland, this message was received by some of the first Lutheran bishops who were critical, if not hostile, towards the worship of objects and ordered the confiscation and destruction of objects which were perceived as miraculous. However, the bishops do not seem to have been successful in this and there is not much evidence to suggest that systematic attacks on religious objects took place in Iceland.

Nevertheless, albeit neither common nor systematic, some sporadic attacks indeed seem to have transpired. It has been suggested that these exclusively singled out objects which were perceived as particularly sacred or miraculous (Cormack 2017), in accordance with the orders of the bishops and Luther's criticism of the cult of images. However, this is not entirely convincing since many objects which were indeed seen as particularly holy did survive the Reformation (e.g., Eldjárn 1958). It seems more likely that in the few instances that churches were attacked, iconoclasts struck anything they could find. However, it is noteworthy that according to the material evidence and some written sources, the heads or faces of effigies seem to have been a particular target, as, for example, was the case in England, and thus some aspect of iconoclasm was selective rather than erratic. Written sources also suggest that, in some instances, objects were burned or otherwise demolished, but this is impossible to confirm with material evidence.

As a result of the bishops' decrees, and some few iconoclastic attacks, many objects seem to have been either hidden away or physically modified and thereby incorporated into Lutheran customs. In many cases, these were reintroduced into the churches after the havoc of the Reformation. The fact that objects could successfully be hidden or stored away reflects what has been argued about the Icelandic Reformation, that it was not driven by a powerful, central authority but rather contingent on the readiness, or indeed reluctancy, of each parish to adapt to the new religion. In this phase, devotional objects went from being, first and foremost, devotional objects to being laden with political significance.

The narratives from Bergen and in Jämtland in Norway reveal the political implications of religious imagery during the Protestant Reformation. In both cases the stripping of the altars was set in motion by Danish influence and may have played a role in the establishment of Protestantism, and thus the authority of the Danish monarchy. This, in many ways, echoes the situation in Iceland where the Reformation, in some part, revolved around the king's acquisition of power and such efforts manifested themselves, for example, in the violent attack on the monastery in Viðey led by the king's men. The continued worship of images in illicit chapels or the depositing of religious imagery inside church walls or under floor boards, "out of sight, yet not out of mind to the still faithful defenders of the old confession", as expressed by Johannsen and Johannsen (2012, p. 266), may have been powerful acts of resistance, not only towards the new religious conventions but also towards external powers. Whereas the confiscation or destruction of sacred objects could serve to establish the new religion in the favour of the Danish king, hiding objects, or continuing their worship, could serve as a counteract to conserve the old, and signify resistance to Protestantism or to the authority of the king. Thus, although it is hard to say whether the Icelandic people received the Reformation first and foremost as a political struggle, religious objects certainly played an important role in that aspect.

After the first decades of the Reformation, the opposition towards images and the cult of saints seems to have diminished and the objects once again found their place within churches, either as an integral part of religious activities or as physical memories of the Catholic period that had survived even the turmoil of the Reformation. This underlines the fact that Lutheranism continued to develop and change long after the last Catholic bishop was executed and a new church ordinance was accepted, and that the Reformation cannot be understood merely in terms of specific dates or events but rather as a long and complex process. Thus, this examination of Catholic objects in many ways confirms what has already been stated about the Icelandic Reformation: namely, that it developed over a long period of time and advanced in different ways in each parish. Further work is needed to examine in more detail the advancement of the Reformation on local scales. In particular, a detailed study of the parishes in the diocese of Hólar, where the opposition towards the Reformation is believed to have been stronger, is needed as well an examination of changes in devotion in domestic contexts.

**Funding:** The research received partial funding by the University of Iceland Research Fund.

**Acknowledgments:** I thank Eleanor Standley for her guidance and good advice, and Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir her support.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **Notes**


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