Íslendingabók, "The Book of Icelanders," was written between the years 1122-33 by Ari Thorgilsson (ca. 1068-1148). It is the first extant text in vernacular Old Icelandic and contains the earliest account of the settlement of Iceland by Norse people after the year 870 and their foundation ca. 930 of an island-wide government based upon assemblies of chieftains and their followers, rather than the rule of kings. It also offers the first Icelandic witness to the further settlement of Greenland and discovery of the New World in the late tenth century. Ari's focus, however, is the formal conversion of his fellow-countrymen to Christianity in 999 or 1000 at the annual Althingi, "National Assembly," and their subsequent Christianization under native bishops. His account is "quite unique" (xvi) in medieval historiography for the clarity with which he specifies the direct personal communications he received from several long-lived informants, who remembered their baptism as children or were born soon after the turn of the millennium. His models were possibly Bede's Eccesiastical History of the Nation of Angles or Adam of Bremen's History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, but unlike those authors, Ari concentrates rather narrowly upon the secular and political aspects of the change of faith, with minimal reference to affairs of the Church abroad or even its interest in earlier missions to Iceland. Grønlie argues that Ari's book about "the Icelanders" (the first use of that collective designation) suggests that his work should be interpreted not as a national or ecclesiastical history per se, although it contains elements of both genres. Rather, Íslendingabók represents a distinctively new kind of "constitutional history," where the author follows closely the development of a legal system in which challenges and changes to its operation form the author's "main structuring device" (xxviii).
Even though Ari is proud to trace the lineage of leading families back to their distinguished origins in Norway and favors the victory of the Christian party, the sense of affinity he expresses in Íslendingabók is neither dynastic nor ethnic nor even religious, like other national histories he might have used as models. Instead, Ari describes a polity of competitive leaders whose identity as a group is defined by their participation in the legislative and judicial processes of the Althing, an institution that enjoys its authority and bestows its benefits for peace by their collective assent. Respect for the Althing was a principle honored in the breach, of course, never threatened more dramatically than during the crisis engendered by attempts to evangelize Iceland, when the Christian and pagan parties renounced their community of laws. Grønlie thus implicitly follows Vilhjálmur Stefánsson (1939) and Richard Tomasson (1980) in finding the constitution of the Icelandic Commonwealth as described by Ari in Íslendingabók the first attempt to create a new nation on new principles in the "New World." In fact, the gorge at Thingvellir where the Althing met, the Almannagjá depicted in an aerial photo on the cover of the book, is the cleft of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge separating Europe and America. Iceland's attempt to maintain this oligarchic form of representative government failed in the century after Ari wrote when the Althing submitted to the Norwegian crown in 1262-64 and lost its independence as a law-making body until the twentieth century.
For a more religious perspective on the evangelization of Iceland, one that draws upon traditions from other parts of the country than the southwest, we must turn to a source most scholars believe was composed in the mid-thirteenth century, when the Althing was seriously weakened by the violence and factionalism that would soon initiate its demise. The anonymous author of Kristni Saga, "The Story of Conversion," is also much more heavily influenced by European traditions of hagiography with their stress upon pagan resistance and persecution of missionaries. The author illustrates the violent reaction provoked by the missions more dramatically than any other source, yielding a total "body count" of eighteen, plus some memorably abusive language (xxxviii). The author of Kristni Saga further uses miracles to dramatize the conversion of key leaders and God's protection of the missionaries. Many of these stories serve simultaneously to display the potency of "Christian rites--ecclesiastical chant, the sign of the cross and the use of incense" (xxxvix)--over the power of pagan incantations, skaldic poetry and sacrifice to the old gods. Episodes are sometimes constructed symbolically, as when the pagan champion Kjartan is submerged three times in his swimming match against King Óláfr Tryggvason in Norway, then given a cloak by the king, in a distinct foreshadowing of his later baptism and robing at that Christian monarch's instance. Iceland's history is thus bifurcated into chronologically balanced before-and-after halves of about 130 years apiece, in which three preparatory missions by Thorvaldr, Stefnir, and Thangbrandr pivot upon the momentous Althing of 999-1000, followed by the consecration of the first bishop Ísleifr and the establishment of sees at Skálaholt in the south in 1082 and Hlar in the north in 1106.
Even with this strong ecclesiastical bias, however, Kristni Saga differs from other medieval missionary narratives by including many pagan poems from the conversion era. These verses are full of poetic circumlocutions or kennings based upon myths of the old gods; they depict popular pagan divinities like Thor smashing the ships of hapless preachers, whose own God is nowhere to be found:Before the bell's keeper [= the priest Thangbrandr] (bonds [= gods] destroyed the beach's falcon [= his ship]) the slayer of giantess-son [= Thor] broke the ox of seagull's place [= ship]. Christ was not watching, when the wave-raven [= ship] drank at the prows [= sank]. Small guard I think God held if anyover Gylfi's reindeer [= ship]. (44) Grønlie comments: "These verses are forceful enough to need watering down within the Christian prose: when describing the shipwrecks, the author feels compelled to add that Stefnir's ship was 'not much damaged' and that Thangbrandr's was later 'repaired'. The voice given to paganism here, perhaps even its own voice, is unique to Old Icelandic literature" (xli). One reason for the inclusion of this pagan perspective may be that many thirteenth-century Icelandic readers of Kristni Saga would have been able to trace their own family histories back to leading figures of various persuasions during the crisis of conversion, so that the author is careful to depict in his otherwise polarized narrative many unbelievers of good sense and good will: "Then the heathens thronged together fully armed and it came very close to them fighting, and yet there were some who wished to prevent trouble, even though they were not Christians" (48). The author also seems to harbor a sneaking regard for some of the more hostile figures, like the pagan poetess Steinunn, at least for her talent and colorful personality. There is also a touch of dry humor: a few pagans accept baptism cheerfully enough once it becomes clear they can be immersed in nearby hot springs rather than cold water (50).
And the violence depicted in the saga, while serious and sectarian, is still not so very impressive by continental standards. We find no martyrdoms, no relapses, no backlash apostasies, but rather faults on both sides. The vengefulness and rapine of some Christian missionaries like Thorvaldr and Thangbrandr are explicitly disapproved by other figures. These men kill in response to highly implausible libels--such as that Thorvaldr fathered nine children on Fridrekr, an insult charitably shrugged off by that foreign priest himself. The missionaries are outlawed from Iceland "not because of their faith," but for homicide (xliii). Hjalti Skeggjason receives the lesser three-year outlawry for "blasphemy," a category of crime the pagans learned from the Christians and managed to prosecute only with great difficulty. Hjalti had uttered a satirical quip at no less solemn a place than the Law-Rock, where legal judgments were pronounced and changes of law proclaimed: "I don't wish to bark at [= criticize] the gods; / It seems to me Freyja's a bitch" (44). The author thus views the conversion very much as did Ari before him, more as a secular conflict than a confrontation between the forces of good and evil. When Óláfr Tryggvason is angry at the treatment of his agent Thangbrandr, the king's Christian Icelandic friends Gizurr the White and Hjalti himself point out that the Saxon bishop's killing of their fellow-countrymen was something that self-respecting Icelanders could hardly be expected to put up with from a foreigner (46). They offer to go and try themselves. Indeed, a certain amount of national pride and "anxiety about Norwegian intervention" in the affairs of his country may be the reason the author of Kristni Saga seeks to separate the evangelization of Iceland as much as possible from the political interests of the king of Norway. The king's mission is shown as counter-productive. In fact, the author begins his account with a list of godar, "priest-chieftains," from the pre-Christian era and stresses that the first initiatives to preach the gospel in Iceland came from native Icelanders rather than foreign kings or prelates. The author finishes his account with the deaths of the Icelandic missionaries Thorvaldr and Stefnir, completely ignoring the fate of the Saxon Thangbrandr, and concludes with the triumphant progress of the early church in his country without any reference to outside interests at all, except that Icelandic bishops encouraged by popular acclaim go abroad to receive their pallia: "The conversion effort is firmly attributed to Icelandic chieftains: they are among the first to be converted and the first church-builders, they provide the first two bishops of Iceland and "most men of high rank," the author tells us, "were educated and ordained priests even though they were chieftains" [53]...[Kristni Saga] is a fitting tribute to the success of those chieftains who negotiated the political threat from Norway and brought Iceland into the Christian world" (xliv-v).
In addition to a full and informative introduction, summarized here, Grønlie offers a close, clear translation into Modern English, surprisingly detailed and useful notes to the translated text which coordinate persons and events with references to them in other sources, a full up-to-date bibliography of modern scholarship in both English and Icelandic, a chronology, map, and index of persons and place-names. At least for scholars whose access to and fluency in reading Modern Icelandic scholarship is limited, this slim volume offers an invaluable starting point for all further study of these texts and the period of medieval North Atlantic history they treat.