The Concept of Outlawry and Sturla's Book of Settlements

chapter 8 ‘I’m on an island’: The Concept of Outlawry and Sturla’s Book of Settlements

Gísli Sigurðsson

Here in – or should I say on – Iceland we are all outlaws with our Icelandic króna, constantly waiting for those whom we have wronged to reach out and take their revenge after the bankers grabbed everybody else’s money and took off to yet another island, that of Tortola, not so long ago. This feeling of ex ile in a safe haven from our tormentors in the outside world goes a long way back and has its foundation in the origin myth about the Icelandic folk. In the medieval Icelandic texts that have come down to us, exile and outlawry on islands is a common theme. It can even be argued that the concept of outlawry developed into a very central part of the identity of the people who emigrated from Norway and eventually ended up in Iceland as settlers – and characters in the Book of Settlement (Landnámabók) and the Sagas of Icelanders (Íslend ingasögur). In the modern popular perception of the country’s settlement, it is often presented as historical fact that the first settlers were independent freedom seekers who had been expelled or who had decided to leave Norway rather than to be subjugated to the tyranny of King Haraldr hárfagri. As all sim plified notions about the past and general reasons for human behaviour, this particular idea is unlikely to be of any great value in terms of historical accuracy – except as a reflection of some ideological and/or political interests in the present when the idea is put forward and reinvigorated. It is thus interesting to consider how, and perhaps why, this idea came about, along with how it was expressed and developed in different literary contexts in the medieval period.

Outlawry as a Theme in Sturla’s Grand Narrative

In his doctoral work on Outlawry in the Icelandic Family Sagas that came out in Helsinki in 2014, Joonas Ahola chose a relevant and original topic that is cen tral in the medieval literature of Iceland. This topic has not been examined in a systematic fashion that meets our current theoretical thinking about referen tiality in traditional and/or orally derived texts, such as the Sagas of Icelanders and other narrative texts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Ahola’s topic even touches on some basic foundations for thinking about identity of

84 g. Sigurðsson the people of Iceland versus those of Norway that can be developed further. Snorri Sturluson says in his Heimskringla that chieftains fled Norway in outlaw ry from King Haraldr1 – and took up residence, among other places, in Iceland – making Icelanders outlaws in a sense. The notion of outlawry even reaches to the highest level in the Nordic countries as kings, such as Óláfr Tryggvason and St. Óláfr Haraldsson, are both said to have been in outlawry. The relevance of this level of Ahola’s theoretical approach can be most clearly demonstrated in the parallels he points out between St. Óláfr in Norway and his outlawed cousin in Iceland, Grettir Ásmundarson – not only on his father’s side as I and others have previously commented on,2 but also on his mother’s side, an area that has not received the same attention. This connection suggests that these seemingly unrelated narratives should be read together in order to compre hend their mutual frame of reference. Ahola says:

However, the former relations between the family of Grettir and King Óláfr Haraldsson was not unambiguous. According to Grettis saga (Ch. 39), Grettir appeals to his kinship to the King when he wants to join King Óláfr Haraldsson’s forces, in spite of a killing he has accidentally committed. However, through his maternal lineage, Grettir’s family was associated with King Óláfr’s enemies. According to Óláfs saga helga in Heimskringla (Jónsson F. 1911, 371–72), Grettir’s maternal uncle Jökull was a captain of Jarl Haakon, the rival of King Óláfr. King Óláfr had Jökull executed as an enemy of the crown. According to the story, Jökull recited fearless, strong poetry at his moment of death. Grettis saga (Ch. 17) tells that Grettir’s first sword was a family heirloom from his maternal side, called Jökulsnaut (‘Jökull’s Gift’) and even though the name of the sword refers to Grettir’s forefather told about in Vatnsdæla saga, his uncle bore the same name, and the sword was a concrete link between them. Grett ir’s uncle Jökull also appears in Grettis saga to warn Grettir from fighting the ghost Glámr, who turned out to become the cause of Grettir’s tragedy (Grettis saga, Ch. 34). This attempt to help further strengthens the bond between Grettir and his uncle Jökull and lays a foundation for enmity between Grettir and King Óláfr. (293–294)

1 ‘… margir ríkismenn af Nóregi flýðu útlaga fyrir Haraldi konungi ….’ Heimskringla 1: 118 (Ch. 19 of ‘Haralds saga ins hárfagra’). 2 Gísli Sigurðsson, ‘Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri’: 182–83.