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VIKING REVALUATIONS VIKING REVALUATIONS VIKING SOCIETY CENTENARY SYMPOSIUM 14–15 May 1992 Edited by Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 1993 © Viking Society for Northern Research 1993 Printed in the University of Birmingham ISBN 978 0 903521 28 4 The Society acknowledges with gratitude the grants of the British Academy towards the expenses of the symposium and of Se›labanki Íslands towards the cost of publication of this volume The cover design is by Calum Campbell CONTENTS A letter from the President of Iceland .................................................... frontispiece FOREWORD......................................................................................................... vii CENTENARY REVALUATIONS KNUT HELLE. Norway, 800–1200 ............................................................................ 1 GUNNAR KARLSSON. A century of research on early Icelandic society...............15 VÉSTEINN ÓLASON. The Sagas of Icelanders .........................................................26 DIANA WHALEY. The Kings’ Sagas .......................................................................43 MICHAEL BARNES. Norse in the British Isles ........................................................65 CHRISTINE FELL. Norse studies: then, now and hereafter ....................................85 CURRENT PROBLEMS (1): PAGAN BELIEFS AND CHRISTIAN IMPACT BJARNE FIDJESTØL. The contribution of scaldic studies .....................................100 URSULA DRONKE. The contribution of Eddic studies ......................................121 ELSE ROESDAHL. Pagan beliefs, Christian impact and archaeology—a Danish view....................................................................................................128 PETER FOOTE. Historical studies: conversion moment and conversion period ..............................................................................................................137 CURRENT PROBLEMS (2): SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETY 800–1100 R. I. PAGE. Scandinavian society, 800–1100: the contribution of runic studies .............................................................................................................145 JUDITH JESCH. Skaldic verse and Viking semantics ...........................................160 PREBEN MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN. Historical reality and literary form.....172 BJØRN MYHRE. The beginning of the Viking Age—some current archae- ological problems...........................................................................................182 Figures .................................................................................... after page 204 FOREWORD HE Viking Society for Northern Research celebrated its centenary by publish- T ing a Centenary Saga-Book (XXIII 4, 1992) and by holding an international symposium on 13–15 May 1992. This was arranged in collaboration with the Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, and the meet- ings were held in Birkbeck College. Speakers were invited from Denmark, Iceland and Norway, and from among members of the Society. The papers given, vari- ously revised, make the contents of the present volume. The Society gave a reception for foreign guests on the evening of Wednesday, 13 May. Members of the symposium were the guests of H.E. Helgi Ágústsson, Icelandic Ambassador, and Mme Hervör Jónsdóttir, at their residence on the evening of Thursday, 14 May. The principal blót, however, was the Centenary Dinner, held in University College on the evening of Friday, 15 May, and well attended by symposium participants and members of the Society at large. The principal guests were Dr Sveinbjörn Björnsson, Rector of the University of Iceland, and his wife, Gu›laug Einarsdóttir; H.E. Kjell Eliassen, Norwegian Ambassador, and Mme Eliassen; H.E. Helgi Ágústsson, Icelandic Ambassador, and his wife, Hervör Jónsdóttir; H.E. Ólafur Egilsson, and his wife, Ragna Ragnars; and Dr Jóhannes Nordal, Chairman of the Central Bank of Iceland and of Hi› Íslenzka Fornritafélag, and his wife, Dóra Gu›jónsdóttir. In addition to the symposium speakers, Professor Bjarne Fidjestøl and Professor Knut Helle, both of Bergen University, Professor Gunnar Karlsson and Professor Vésteinn Ólason, both of the University of Iceland, Else Roesdahl and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, both of Århus University, and Professor Bjørn Myhre of Oslo University, a number of other scholars were especially invited to join the Society in its celebrations. At the dinner they were welcomed because of their distinction in fields of endeavour matching the aims and interests of the Society, and some of them in particular because they recalled its foundation as a ‘social and literary’ branch of the Orkney and Shetland Society of London: Professor Bo Almqvist (University College, Dublin), Professor Hans Bekker-Nielsen (Odense University, and representing the Danish Ministry of Education), Dr Barbara E. Crawford (St Andrews University, and sometime President of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies), Professor Lennart Elmevik (Uppsala University, and representing Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för Folklivsforskning), Dr Thomas Fanning (University College, Galway), Professor Jan Ragnar Hagland (Trondheim University), Professor Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen (Oslo University), Helgi fiorláksson (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík), Professor Finn Hødnebø (Oslo University), Professor Jónas Kristjánsson (University of Iceland), Professor Bengt R. Jonsson (Svenskt Visarkiv, Stockholm), Professor Else Mundal (Oslo viii VIKING REVALUATIONS University), Dr Lena Peterson (Uppsala University), Professor Bo Ralph (Gothenburg University), Professor Hubert Seelow (Erlangen University), Brian Smith (Shet- land Archivist, Lerwick), Stefán Karlsson (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík), William P. L. Thomson (Orkney), and Arne Thorsteinsson (State Antiquary, Faroe Islands). The President presided. He extended a warm welcome to all and warm thanks to many: to the speakers, to H.E. Helgi Ágústsson for his reception and for his never-failing help in the course of the symposium preparations, to the officers of the Society who had worked hard and willingly to make the occasion a success, and to the British Academy and the Central Bank of Iceland for their generous subventions. Speeches of congratulation were made by Dr Sveinbjörn Björnsson and H.E. Kjell Eliassen. Toasts were frequently and enthusiastically drunk, to the health of heads of state, to the Society’s guests and to the Society’s future. H.E. Helgi Ágústsson read a message from H.E. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, President of Iceland, and another from Daví› Oddsson, Iceland’s Prime Minister. On behalf of the President of Iceland, Helgi took the opportunity to decorate three senior members of the Society, Professor Michael Barnes, Dr (now Professor) Anthony Faulkes and Professor emeritus Desmond Slay, with the knight’s cross of the Order of the Falcon ‘for services to Icelandic scholarship’. Other presentations were made: Professor Elmevik brought medals issued by Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien and by Uppsala University as congratulatory tokens of esteem; Professor Hans Bekker-Nielsen a gift of books for the Society’s Library from the Danish Ministry of Education; Professor Finn Hødnebø facsimile editions of early Norwegian texts and the volumes of Regesta Norvegica; and subsequently, through the good offices of Dr Sveinbjörn Björnsson, the Society received from the University of Iceland a facsimile edition of the Konungsbók of the Eddaic poems ‘in gratitude for the excellent achievements of the Viking Society in fostering íslensk fræ›i ’. Inadequate thanks were expressed on the Society’s behalf at the time, later confirmed by letters of more eloquent gratitude. The officers of the Society were content to think that their efforts, in straitened circumstances, to make the centenary celebration a worthy commemoration had not been unsuccessful, and they were deeply gratified by the ready goodwill they met on every hand, both before and during the symposium, most especially from the friendly scholars who agreed to contribute the papers now found in this volume. I should like to thank them yet again and also acknowledge the debt I personally owe, along with every member of the Society, to the editors, Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins. Peter Foote President 1990–92 KNUT HELLE NORWAY, 800–1200 N 1891, the year before the Viking Club was founded, Ernst Sars published the I fourth and last volume of his monumental Udsigt or ‘survey’ of Norwegian history (Sars, 1873–91). In Sars’s presentation, the nationally oriented Norwegian history writing of the nineteenth century reached its peak. This was a historiography which consciously served the purpose of creating a national identity within the young Norwegian state that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1814 the long-lasting union with Denmark had been dissolved and Norway had declared its independence, only to be forced into a new union with Sweden which lasted until 1905. The first generation of Norwegian historians after 1814 set out to show that their people constituted an old and venerable nation, histori- cally entitled to statehood. In pursuit of this goal they turned to the Middle Ages, the only period when Norway had formed an independent state. Led by the founding fathers of Norwegian historical research, Rudolf Keyser (1865–70; 1867; 1868) and Peter Andreas Munch (1852–63), they not only made extensive and learned contributions to medieval studies