Shortly before the Protestant Reformation took hold in Iceland in 1550, a medieval legendary containing translations of saints’ lives was produced by Björn Þorleifsson (d. 1548-54), a wealthy farmer from Reykhólar in the Westfjords of Iceland. Stock. Perg. fol. no. 3 (ca. 1530-40), named Reykhólabók for its provenance, is a manuscript in the hand of the translator and compiler himself. In its present state it comprises 168 folios but was presumably much larger in its original form; the surviving leaves contains twenty-five saints’ lives translated from a now lost and anonymous Middle Low German redaction that resembles the source(s) of Der Heiligen Leben. The Old Norse-Icelandic translations are therefore the only surviving evidence of the Middle Low German narratives that no longer exist, making them valuable witnesses to Middle Low German hagiographic tradition. Reykhólabók holds the distinction both of being the largest surviving legendary from medieval Iceland and also of being the last Catholic legendary produced in Iceland, on the eve of the Protestant Reformation.
The present volume, co-authored by Marianne Kalinke and Kirsten Wolf (both of whom have significant expertise with both Reykhólabók and Old Norse-Icelandic hagiography), begins with a brief history of Christianity and the lives of the saints in medieval Iceland, which is useful for those unfamiliar with Old Norse-Icelandic hagiography and its relationship to “secular” Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The authors also provide a general introduction to Reykhólabók, including its sources; as Kalinke and Wolf point out, three of the legendary’s twenty-five texts were based on Latin sources, but the remaining twenty-two derive from Low German. They also discuss the legendary’s provenance and authorship and speculate as to how Björn Þorleifsson may have come into possession of the texts that were the legendary’s sources, and moreover why he chose to translate them. In addition to sources, authorship, and provenance, Kalinke and Wolf discuss the manuscript’s acquisition history and detail the contents of the 168 surviving leaves of the manuscript. The introduction is followed by English translations of eight of the twenty-five total saints’ lives in the legendary, and normalized editions of each of these legends in an appendix. Kalinke and Wolf selected for translation either entirely or partially apocryphal legends that they describe as “pious fiction,” defined by the authors as “fictitious accounts about established saints or, in two instances, imaginative biographies of invented saints” (8). The English translations and normalized editions are based on Agnete Loth’s diplomatic edition of the legendary, the two-volume Reykjahólabók: Islandske helgenlegender (1969-70).
The first two legends concern royal saints, starting with the “Legend of St. Oswald” (Ósvalds saga), a historical figure whose bridal-quest romance resembles those found in the riddarasögur (chivalric sagas), such as the translated legend of Tristan and Isolde (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar). “The Legend of St. Oswald” had been previously translated by Kalinke for her 2005 monograph St. Oswald of Northumbria: Continental Metamorphoses but was revised for the present volume. The bridal-quest theme continues in the next legend, which is of Sts. Henry and Cunegund (Hendreks saga og Kúnígúndísar). The legend concerns Emperor Henry II (r. 1002-24) and his quest for a bride. The legend describes his marriage to Cunegund, who is accused of adultery and must undergo an ordeal (a familiar trope in courtly romances).
Next are legends of two doctors of the church: Sts. John Chrysostom and Jerome. “The Legend of St. John Chrysostom the Golden Mouthed” (Jóns saga gullmunns), also referred to as the tale of the hairy anchorite, describes the life of a holy man who retreated to the wilderness to live as a hermit, and who lives as a hairy beast for fifteen years after grave sins. This translation was also revised from one of Kalinke’s previous translations, which was published in Beatus vir (2006), a memorial volume for Phillip Pulsiano. This is followed by the “Legend of St. Jerome and the Lion” (Jerónímuss saga), a life of a man whose saintliness was, according to the text, comparable only to that of St. John the Baptist. The legend relates that St. Jerome went to live as a hermit in the wilderness, where he eventually had a church and a monastery built and tamed a wild lion.
Two martyr legends follow. The first, the “Legend of Christopher, the Christ Bearer” (Kristófórs saga),concerns St. Christopher, formerly a man named Reprobus, who wished to serve the most powerful ruler. At first, he served a king, then he sought out and served Satan, and eventually he repented and turned to Christ and to the Christian God and is given the name Christopher by the Lord himself, whom he carries in the form of a child (thereby earning the designation “Christ-bearer”). Christopher went on to perform miracles and convert pagans to Christianity before being seized, tried, tortured, and finally killed and made a martyr for his faith. “The Legend of St. George the Dragon Slayer” (Georgíuss saga) follows; the translation, which begins at Chapter 19 according to Loth’s diplomatic edition, describes St. George’s trials before the Emperor Dacian, and his eventual martyrdom by decapitation.
The final two translations concern what Kalinke and Wolf refer to as “pseudo-saints.” The first of these is the “Legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus” (Sjö sofanda saga), which tells the story of seven holy men--Maximian, Malchus, Marcian, Constantine, Serapion, Dionysius, and John--who flee Ephesus due to the persecution of the Roman emperor Decius. The men pray to God to be protected, and while in a cave on Mount Celion fall into a miraculously long sleep. The eighth and final text translated is the “Legend of Gregorius the Good Sinner” (Saga Gregóríuss hins góða syndara), which tells the story of Gregorius, who was borne of incest between a brother and a sister and who, shockingly, finds himself unknowingly in an incestuous marriage with his own mother. Gregorius then repents of his sins going into exile and chained to a rock at sea for sixteen or seventeen years.
The legends selected for the present volume are compelling, fantastical narratives that demonstrate the instability of genre boundaries and the unreliability of genre labels, arguably to a greater extent than any other hagiographic narratives translated to or composed in Old Norse-Icelandic prior to Reykhólabók. Indeed, the texts translated and edited by Kalinke and Wolf integrate into the form of a saint’s life elements of fiction, folklore, courtly romance (especially bridal quest narratives), and edifying narratives for purposes of instruction. This serves as a reminder to scholars that genre labels, as scholarly creations and designations themselves, are often misleading, and that reading across artificially created genre boundaries is necessary for a fulsome picture of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and the narrative traditions to which medieval Icelanders may have been exposed. Indeed, it is critical to have access to English translations of these narratives, which have long been overlooked by scholars in favour of “secular” texts, despite these hagiographic texts being heavily influenced by, and, in turn, influencing the vernacular literary corpus.
Kalinke and Wolf have done a tremendous service to students and scholars alike by making these texts accessible in their highly readable English translation, which includes notes on inconsistencies and peculiarities of language and style. The inclusion of the normalized texts in the appendix is a particularly useful and welcome addition to an already excellent volume. I sincerely hope that the remainder of the texts in Reykhólabók, as well as other heretofore untranslated Old Norse-Icelandic hagiographic texts produced before this legendary, will be translated to English (ideally, with normalized texts as in the present volume), either by Kalinke and Wolf or by other scholars working on Old Norse-Icelandic hagiographic literature. This would serve the purpose of making these texts more available to students and scholars, especially those without a reading knowledge of Old Norse-Icelandic, particularly when the text is not normalized. Continuing this kind of translation and editorial work would, in turn, allow narratives such as these, which are about so much more than saintly individuals, to more easily be brought into scholarly conversations regarding the rich and diverse literary tradition of medieval Iceland, and vernacular literary traditions in the Middle Ages more broadly speaking.