7 - A useful past: historical writing in medieval Iceland

Summary

AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL WRITING IN MEDIEVAL ICELAND

One could gain the impression from many handbooks on medieval European historiography that there was none in Iceland, and it is perhaps easy to see why authors such as Ari Þorgilsson and Snorri Sturluson are so often left unmentioned. Clearly, writing in a littleknown vernacular and on a remote island in the North Atlantic does not favour wide impact. Moreover, a small, generally impoverished nation, deficient in kings and battles, but also lacking roads, towns and the other preconditions for social, economic and political diversity, might seem to have little to offer to serious historians; especially when that nation's records of the past more often take the form of saga rather than of chronicle.

However, the Icelanders, as recent colonists of a near-virgin territory far from the cultural centres of Europe, and as possessors of a constitution unique in the known world, had, and have, more reason than most to reflect both on their origins and on their uniqueness. By the time written history began in the early twelfth century they had abundant oral materials to work with, while the tools of international scholarship had been available at least since the official conversion to Christianity c. 1000. Indeed, the Icelanders have cultivated their own history with a vigour out of proportion to their resources and population size.