“Reading and Understanding”: The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr
ens víðfrla

Siân Grønlie

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4, October 2013, pp. 475-494 (Article)

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“Reading and Understanding”:

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

Siân Grønlie, St. Anne’s College, Oxford

We live in an age where the miraculous is more likely to invite skepticism
than to confirm belief. Although the Roman Catholic Church affirms the
continued occurrence of miracles and maintains their apologetic function
as evidence for the “reasonableness” of faith, most philosophers question
that miracles can be used to justify religious belief, while acknowledging
the theoretical possibility that they may happen.

1

David Hume’s essay from

1798, On Miracles, in which he attacks the value of miracles as evidence for
God’s existence, has had an enduring impact on our thinking: miracles,
he claims, “are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barba-
rous nations” and show “the usual propensity of mankind towards the
marvellous.”

2

While miracles seem appropriate within the conventions of

particular literary genres, such as hagiography, most of us would now agree
that they are out of place in historical narrative and feel uncomfortable
with medieval texts like Bede’s Ecclesiastical History that so obviously work
on different premises from ours. Even within the study of hagiography, the
idea that miracles belong to the popular imagination, rather than to the
sophisticated thinker, is widespread: in his Legends of the Saints, Hippolyte
Delehaye condemns “people’s blind attraction towards what is marvellous,
the supernatural made concrete” and laments that “the soul’s mysterious
commerce with God has to be translated into concrete effects if it is to
make any impression on the people’s mind.”

3

Medieval hagiographers like

Gregory of Tours and James of Voragine, he complains, “simply catered
for popular taste”: they privileged “all that is marvellous and appealing
to the senses” at the cost of authenticity.

4

These sorts of attitudes have dominated critical thinking about the Old
Icelandic narratives of conversion: the complete lack of miracles in Ari
Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók is taken as tribute to Ari’s critical capacities as a

1.

New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Berard L. Marthaler et al., 2d ed. (Washington DC: Catholic

Univ. of America, 2003), IX, 666–67.

2. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition, ed. Tom L.

Beauchamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 90.

3. Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater (Dublin: Four

Courts, 1998), pp. 33–34.

4. Delehaye, Legends of the Saints, p. 60.

historian, while later accounts of conversion that abound in the marvel-
lous—principally Kristni saga and the kristni þættir in Óláfs saga Tryggva-
sonar en mesta—are seen as untrustworthy. Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, for
example, attacks Kristni saga as “uncritical history writing in the service of
church and religion,” and he condemns Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta
as “every inch as much a religious tract as Kristni saga.”

5

Dag Strömbäck is

more emphatic in his disapproval of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta: “Of
this monument of bombast and rhetoric I shall say only that much of its
material has been adopted by modern authors in what otherwise purport
to be serious and scholarly accounts of the conversion.”

6

There are two points to be made about this. The first is that the presence
or absence of miracles in a medieval text cannot be a reliable marker of
whether its aim is historical accuracy, since miracles, when authenticated
by qualified witnesses, were accepted as historical events in the Middle
Ages. The miraculous was, for the medieval Christian, an integral part of
everyday life: although some theologians, like Pope Gregory the Great,
struggled with how contemporary miracles related to Biblical miracles,
no one doubted that miracles actually happened.

7

It may seem obvious

to us that medieval hagiographers like Gregory the Great or Bede are
intentionally borrowing miracle stories from other works or enhancing
their meagre collection of “facts” with literary parables, but some studies
suggest that not all hagiographers from this early period routinely in-
dulged in “pious frauds.”

8

Although appeals to eyewitnesses are sometimes

literary inventions, this is by no means always the case, and witnesses who
are high-ranking figures of their own time should be taken seriously. It is
worth noting, then, when named informants are used to support miracles
in the Old Icelandic narratives, especially when such men can be identified
from elsewhere. One miraculous incident in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla, for
example, is carefully traced back through three stages of transmission:
“Þenna atburð segir Gunnlaugr munkr at hann heyrði segja sannorðan
mann, Glúm Þorgilsson, en Glúmr hafði numit at þeim manni er Arnórr
hét ok var kallaðr Arndísarson” (The monk Gunnlaugr says that he heard a

5. Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, Under the Cloak: A Pagan Ritual Turning Point in the Conversion

of Iceland, 2d ed., ed. Jakob S. Jónsson (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 1999), pp. 59–60.

6. Dag Strömbäck, The Conversion of Iceland: A Survey, trans. Peter Foote, Viking Society

for Northern Research, Text Series, 6 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research,

1975), p. 23.

7. Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event 1000–1215

(London: Scolar, 1982), pp. 203–5; William McCready, Signs of Sanctity: Miracles in the Thought

of Gregory the Great, Studies and Texts, 91 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,

1989), pp. 7–32.

8. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, pp. 215–16; Clare Stancliffe, St. Martin and His

Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp.

325–27; McCready, Signs of Sanctity, pp. 155–75.

476

Grønlie

truthful man, Glúmr Þorgilsson, relate this event, and Glúmr had learned
it from a man called Arnórr, known as son of Arndís). This is exactly the
kind of scholarly “footnote” we find appended to many of Bede’s miracle
stories, and it implies not popular belief but the existence of a learned
circle of religious men within which such stories were circulated.

9

The second point is that, while miracles tell us little about the critical
capacities of those who record them, they tell us much about what sort of
meaning we should read into the narrative. If Ari is interested primarily in
the legal and political dimension of conversion and depicts it accordingly,
later writers approach the same events with a greater interest in theologi-
cal issues, locating individual historical events within the wider context of
salvation history.

10

Miracles, in the Middle Ages, can be understood as part

of a sacramental view of the world: the whole order of creation, according
to Augustine, was miraculous, but inherent within it (rather than opposed
to it) were less familiar or rarer manifestations of God’s power, designed
to provoke wonder and thereby to “inspire the soul, hitherto given up to
things visible, to worship Him, the Invisible.”

11

Miracles are signs (signa):

they point to something beyond themselves and offer themselves to be
read and interpreted exegetically in the same way that one reads Biblical
narrative. Writing about the miracles in the Gospel of St. John, Augustine
emphasizes the need to move beyond a mere sense of wonder to a proper
understanding: “As to this miracle, as we have heard how great it is, let us
seek also how profound it is; let us delight not only in its surface, but let us
search out its depth.”

12

To illustrate this, he uses the simile of beautifully

formed letters in a manuscript:

It would not be enough for us to praise the writer’s hand because he made

the letters uniform, even and elegant, if we were not also to read what he

made known to us through them, so that he who only looks at this deed

is delighted by the deed’s beauty so that he admires the artist; but he who

understands reads, so to speak.

9.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson, and Peter Foote, Íslenzk

fornrit, XV (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2003), p. 72 (Íslenzk fornrit will hereafter

be referred to as ÍF). Glúmr Þorgilsson is also named among Oddr Snorrason’s informants

in Yngvars saga víðförla, and Arnórr Arndísarson probably belongs to the Ásbirning family,

although he is not mentioned elsewhere; see Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et

al., p. clxix; Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, ed. Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, 3 vols.

(Reykjavík: Forni, 1943–44), III, 393.

10. On the distinctive approaches to conversion in Ari’s Íslendingabók and Kristni saga, see

the introduction to my Íslendingabók, Kristni saga: The Book of the Icelanders, The Story of the

Conversion, trans. S. Grønlie, Viking Society for Northern Research, Text Series, 18 (London:

Viking Society for Northern Research, 2006), pp. xviii–xxiv, xxxvii–xlv.

11. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, ed. and trans. Robert W. Dyson (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), p. 411 (x. 12).

12. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 11–27, trans. John W. Rettig (Washington DC:

Catholic Univ. of America, 1988), pp. 232–33 (Jn. 24:2).

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

477

While developments during the twelfth century led to a greater distinction
between that which was “natural” and that which was properly “miraculous,”
the Augustinian outlook persisted throughout the Middle Ages. The world
was understood as analogy and symbol, and within it miracles were not
isolated gestures but vital signs of the relationship between God and men.
Particularly relevant for the Icelandic accounts of conversion is the em-
phasis placed on the apologetic function of miracles in medieval writing:
both Augustine and Gregory the Great emphasize that they are necessary
“in order that the world might come to believe”: they testify to “that one
grand and saving miracle of Christ’s ascension” and are recorded in writ-
ing “in order to produce faith.”

13

Although contemporary miracles were

of a lesser order than those of Biblical times, they nevertheless served to
strengthen and increase faith, and they continued to play an important
part in mission: in his Morals on Job, Gregory emphasizes the role of “the
brilliant miracles of preachers” in the conversion of the English, and in a
letter to Augustine, he expresses his joy that “the souls of the English are
drawn by outward miracles to inward grace.”

14

Gregory also acknowledges

the secondary role of miracles in securing protection for the apostles, and
this became a more important motif in later lives of missionaries, such as
Alcuin’s Vita Willibrordi or Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii, perhaps as reassurance
for those missionaries among their readership who found themselves in
dangerous situations.

15

Yet, for both Augustine and Gregory, the greatest

miracle of all was not the “physical” miracle, perceptible to the senses, but
the “spiritual” or inward miracle of conversion, which brought not bodies
but souls back to life. As the Old Norse version of Gregory’s Dialogues puts
it: “Ef ver hvggiom at osvneligom hlutom, þa er vist meiri iartein at leiþretta
svnþgan mann i cenningom oc bøna fultingi en at reisa up davþan licam,
þvi at licamr scal devia i annat sinn en ond lifa ei oc ei” (If we consider
invisible things, then it is certainly a greater miracle to convert a sinful
man by preaching and the aid of prayers than to raise up a dead body,
because the body shall die again but the spirit live forever).

16

These points have been worth making at length because they give us a
context within which to place the miracles recorded in the kristni þættir in

13. Augustine, The City of God, p. 1120 (xxii. 8).

14. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, trans. James Bliss, 3 vols (Oxford: Parker,

1847–50), III, 214 (xxvii. 21); Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram

Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 108–9 (i. 31). See

also McCready, Signs of Sanctity, pp. 33–64; and Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the

Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 262.

15. McCready, Signs of Sanctity, p. 36; Wood, The Missionary Life, pp. 262–64.

16.

Heilagra manna søgur: Fortællinger og legender om hellige mænd og kvinder, ed. C. R. Unger,

2 vols (Oslo: Bentzen, 1877), I, 228. Cf. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé,

3 vols, Sources chrétiennes, 251 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1978–80), II, 340–41 (iii. 17).

478

Grønlie

Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta: that, far from showing “uncritical” or “cred-
ulous” attitudes, miracles rightly belong to medieval accounts of mission and
may be theologically sophisticated signs, designed to be read allegorically
as well as on a literal level. I now want to look at the layers of meaning in
the miracles described in one of these þættir: the account of the Icelander
Þorvaldr and the German bishop Friðrekr’s mission to the north of Iceland
in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla. This short story survives in four versions: in the
two main recensions of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta (best represented
by ÁM 61 fol. and by Flateyjarbók); in a separate paper manuscript (AM 552
k

α 4to), now thought to be of independent source value; and, much abbre-

viated, in Kristni saga.

17

The authorship of the þáttr is unknown, although it

is sometimes attributed to Gunnlaugr Leifsson, a Benedictine monk who
lived at the monastery of Þingeyrar in the north of Iceland and died in
1218. Gunnlaugr is mentioned twice in the þáttr, once as a source for the
miracle story mentioned above, and once in an exemplary anecdote about
the hermit Máni at Holt.

18

Some of the material, therefore, must derive

from him, even if he was not responsible for its final shape. We know from
a comment toward the end of Flateyjarbók that Gunnlaugr composed a life
of Óláfr Tryggvason in Latin, now lost, and it is possible that he included
Þorvaldr’s mission as a forerunner to that of Óláfr: in Flateyjarbók, the þáttr
ends with an account of how Þorvaldr and Óláfr met in the East and ex-
changed views on Iceland’s potential for conversion.

19

Gunnlaugr also wrote

a Latin life of St. Jón of Hólar, which was later translated into Icelandic,
compiled a selection of miracles performed by St. Þorlákr, and composed
a liturgical text about St. Ambrose that has not survived.

20

Intriguingly, he

also appears to have had an interest in vernacular poetry and British history:
he is named as translator of the Prophecies of Merlin or Merlínusspá inserted
into the Old Icelandic Breta sögur.

21

Gunnlaugr was a highly educated cleric with a taste for Latin hagiog-
raphical texts, and the miracles in Þorvalds þáttr reflect this. Following
the Gregorian pattern, two are closely connected with the conversion
of individuals, Koðrán Eilífsson and Óláfr in Haukagil, and two others
concern the protection of churches and missionaries from pagan attack.

22

17.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. clxiv–clxvii, 3–13, 51–100.

18.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 72, 84.

19.

Flateyjarbók, ed. Sigurður Nordal, 4 vols (Akranes: Flateyjarútgáfan, 1944–45), I (1944),

568, 300–02.

20.

Biskupa sögur I, Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. cclxxxiii–ccxcii; Biskupa sögur II,

ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, ÍF, XVI (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2002), p. 243; Biskupa

sögur, ed. Jón Sigurðsson and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, 2 vols (Copenhagen: Hið íslenzka

fornritafélag, 1858–78), II, 77.

21.

Hauksbók, ed. Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Thiele, 1892–96),

pp. 271–83.

22.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 60–72, 75–78, 86–87.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

479

The miracles are interdependent in other ways as well: they strongly affirm
the efficacy of ecclesiastical rite (the chanting of psalms, the sprinkling
of consecrated water, and the donning of episcopal vestments) and they
celebrate God’s supreme control over the four elements (fire, water, dwell-
ers in rocks, birds of the air). These miracles are designed to be read
together and they add a theological dimension lacking in Ari’s account:
read carefully, they provide a means of interpreting the historical event
of conversion.
The first miracle, which brings about the conversion of Þorvaldr’s fa-
ther, Koðrán, occurs toward the beginning of Þorvaldr’s mission and is
carefully set up as an opportunity to contrast paganism and Christianity.
Koðrán, we are told, observes the divine service held by Bishop Friðrekr
and is intrigued by its difference from his own rites: “Eptir því sem mér
gefr at skilja, eru mjok sundrleitir siðir várir, því at mér sýnisk at guð yðvarr
mun gleðjask af ljósi því er várir guðar hræðask” (According to how I
understand it, our faiths are very different, because it seems to me that
your God must rejoice in the light which our gods fear).

23

He compares

the Christian bishop to his own spámaðr, or “prophet,” who lives in a rock
near his farm and serves him in various ways, foretelling future events
and giving him practical advice about farming. As Koðrán tells Þorvaldr,
this so-called “prophet” is opposed to the new arrivals: “Misþokkask þú
honum mjok ok svá spámaðr þinn ok siðferði ykkart, ok afletr hann mik
at veita ykkr nokkura viðsœming ok einna mest at taka ykkarn sið” (You
displease him very much, as does your prophet and your faith, and he is
against my showing you any honor and above all taking your faith). Þor-
valdr suggests that they set up a “trial of strength” to test which of the two
is more powerful: if the bishop can drive the “prophet” from his home,
Koðrán must accept baptism. For three days the bishop proceeds to the
rock with prayer and psalmody, sprinkling it with consecrated water, and
on the three following nights the “prophet” appears to Koðrán in dreams;
on the third occasion, he announces his intention to depart. Convinced
by this that the Christian God is “better” and “stronger,” Koðrán takes
leave of the spirit “með styggð en engum blíðskap” (with anger and on
no friendly terms).

24

He is baptized together with his wife and household,

with the exception of his son Ormr, whose conversion will provide the
centerpiece for a later event.
This story is one of many in which the coming of Christianity drives
from the land the old pagan spirits that previously inhabited it; folktales
of a similar kind have been recorded from all over Scandinavia. One of

23.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 62.

24.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 68.

480

Grønlie

the earliest is the story in Oddr Snorrason’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, in
which the trolls in Naumudalr are overheard plotting against King Óláfr;
they are driven away by Óláfr and his bishop, who sprinkle the whole area
with consecrated water.

25

As has long been recognized, this is a reworking

of an anecdote in Gregory’s Dialogues in which a Jew overhears evil spirits
conversing in a pagan temple, but the translation from Roman temple to
rocky wasteland creates a distinctively Scandinavian feel.

26

Also relevant to

Koðrán’s experience is another story from the Dialogues about how some
monks building a monastery were unable to move a stone upon which a
devil was sitting.

27

Only when Benedict has prayed and made the sign of

the cross over it, are they able to continue with their work. In Þiðranda
þáttr in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, the prophet Þórhallr awakes one
morning to see that “margr hóll opnask ok hvert kykvendi býr sinn bag-
ga, bæði smá ok stór, ok gera fardaga” (many a mound is opening and
every creature, great and small, is packing its bags and preparing to move
on): the emptying of the landscape heralds the coming of a new faith in
the shape of the missionary Þangbrandr.

28

Similar stories are told of the

departure of gods from temples in Þórhalls þáttr knapps—which prefaces
Gizurr and Hjalti’s mission—and in Harðar saga, where the conversion of
Horðr’s sister Þórbjorg is foreseen.

29

These last two stories also express

a fear that, in leaving, the gods will harm those who have abandoned
their worship—or even those who have not. In the þáttr, the danger that
Koðrán’s prosperity will dwindle is implied by the prophet’s parting words:
“Hugsa nú hverr þitt góz mun heðan af varðveita, svá dyggiliga sem ek
hefi áðr varðveitt” (Now think about who will look after your goods as
faithfully as I have done).

30

Such stories convey something of the radical change to the landscape
brought by Christianity—not only the pulling down of heathen temples
and the building of Christian churches, but more significantly the de-
sanctification of the natural world, the transference of power from trees,

25.

Færeyinga saga, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson,

ÍF, XXV (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2006), pp. 290–94. The relevance of this

scene is discussed more fully in my “Translating (and Translocating) Miracles: Gregory’s

Dialogues and the Icelandic Sagas,” in Lost in Translation?, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiana

Whitehead, The Medieval Translator, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 47–50.

26. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II, 278–85 (iii. 7); Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I,

222–24.

27. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II, 170–71 (ii. 9); Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I,

165, 209.

28.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 125.

29.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 157–58; Harðar saga, ed. Þórhal-

lur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, ÍF, XIII (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag,

1991), pp. 51–52.

30.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 68.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

481

fountains, and rocks to the proper human and ecclesiastical channels.
Peter Brown speaks of the “hominization” of the cosmos in late Antiquity:
the replacement of natural objects with human artefacts or relics and the
presence of the human saint.

31

“Nulla est enim religio in stagnum” (There

is no religion in a swamp), declared the fifth-century bishop of Javols ac-
cording to Gregory of Tours.

32

For Christians, it was not just temples and

idols that were the haunt of evil spirits; stretches of uninhabited land also
needed to be claimed for Christianity. Desert saints like Anthony fought
demons in the wilderness; Martin, Benedict, and Boniface cut or burned
down trees; Cuthbert and Guthlac moved to uninhabited places in order
to fight devils and win the land for Christ.

33

We know from various laws as

well as from references in Landnámabók and other sagas that natural objects
like waterfalls, groves, and mounds were worshipped in Iceland during the
heathen period.

34

Perhaps this is why the missionary bishop Bjarnharðr,

mentioned in Hungrvaka, is reported to have consecrated not only man-
made objects like churches, bells, and bridges, but also springs, rivers,
and rocks.

35

That such ideas were still current long after the conversion is

clear from the different versions of Guðmundar saga biskups, which include
a number of stories about how Guðmundr consecrated wells and rocks and
drove out trolls and evil spirits from “óbyggð ok útlegð” (wasteland and
exile) by using relics and consecrated water—just as Friðrekr does here.

36

Superstitions rooted in the landscape, unlike official pagan cult, must have
been difficult to eradicate. The story in Þorvalds þáttr makes it clear that
natural objects are not an appropriate source of divine power: conversion
to Christianity involves the abandonment of the old sacred places and the
re-channelling of power through the Church and its representatives.
What sort of spirit Koðrán worships is difficult to say, and it is perhaps a
composite figure: it has been variously described as a landvættr (land-spirit)
like the rock dwellers in Þiðranda þáttr, a nisse of the type found in Scandi-

31. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago:

Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 124–26.

32. Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum, in Gregorii Turonensis Opera, ed. W. Arndt

and Br. Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum rerum Merovingicarum, 1

(Hannover: Hahn, 1884–85), p. 750.

33. See John Howe, “The Conversion of the Physical World: The Creation of a Christian

Landscape,” in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gaines-

ville, FL: Univ. Press of Florida, 1997), pp. 63–78.

34.

Gabriel O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient

Scandinavia (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1964), pp. 230–35, 236–50. See Íslendingabók,

Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, ÍF, I (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1986), pp.

270–71, 273, 358; Hauksbók, ed. Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson, p. 167; Norges gamle

Love indtil 1387, ed. R. Keyser and others, 5 vols (Oslo: Gröndahl, 1846–95), II, 308.

35.

Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, p. 12.

36.

Biskupa sögur, ed. Jón Sigurðsson and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, I, 450, 597–99, II, 130.

482

Grønlie

navian folktales, an elf living in a mound, or a dead ancestor.

37

Kristni saga

calls it ármaðr, which in other written sources means “steward,” but which
can also be a name for a guardian spirit (ár [plenty, abundance]), as in the
Icelandic place-name Ármannsfell.

38

Einar Ól. Sveinsson suggests that it is an

early type of nature spirit that later developed into elves and trolls, and this
seems a plausible account of its origins.

39

The author of the þáttr, however,

seems less interested in giving an accurate picture of pagan belief than in
pointing out its relationship to Christianity: the spirit is presumably called
spámaðr in order to create a deliberately false equivalence with the human
bishop and to foreground the two as representatives of their respective
faiths. Koðrán identifies Bishop Friðrekr as his son’s “prophet,” from whom
he receives his faith, but claims that his own prophet is a better source of
power, since the bishop is auðgætligr (common or inferior—perhaps because
he is human) and ekki aflmikill (not very strong). More significantly, he notes
that both sides are making the same, mutually incompatible, claims: “Eigi
síðr skil ek þat með kappi miklu fylgja hvárir sínu máli; ok alla þá hluti sem
þit segið af honum, slíkt it sama flytr hann af ykkr” (I understand equally
well that each pleads his cause with great vehemence; and all the things that
you two say about him, he also says about you two).

40

We are given a taste

of this within the story: Þorvaldr describes the spirit to his father as þinn
fullkominn svikari (your complete deceiver), but the spirit later describes the
bishop to Koðrán as þessi vándr svikari (this evil deceiver).

41

Words—which

can conceal truth as well as reveal it—are not enough to decide the matter:
only a demonstration of power will uncover in whose words Koðrán should
place his trust.
For the Christian Þorvaldr, as one might expect, the “prophet” is really
a devil, and this is clear from his opening statement: “Þessi er þik afletr at
trúa á hann er þinn fullkominn svikari ok hann girnisk at draga þik með
sér frá eilífu ljósi til óendiligra myrkra” (The one who dissuades you from
believing in [God] is your complete deceiver and he desires to drag you
with him from eternal light into unending darkness).

42

Þorvaldr is also

37.

Elves and dead ancestors are sometimes connected. See Turville-Petre, Myth and

Religion, p. 231. On the nature of the ármaðr, see Adolf D. Jörgensen, Den nordiske kirkes

grundlæggelse og første udvikling (Copenhagen: Selskabet for Danmarks kirkehistorie, 1874–78),

p. 278; Kristnisaga, ed. Bernhard Kahle, Altnordische Saga-Bibliothek, 11 (Halle: Niemeyer,

1905), pp. 6–7, 65; and Gryte A. Piebenga, “Fridrek den første utenlandske misjonæren på

Island,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 99 (1984), 88.

38.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 7.

39.

Einar Ól. Sveinsson, The Folktales of Iceland, rev. Einar G. Pétursson, trans. Benedikt

Benedikz, ed. Anthony Faulkes, Viking Society for Northern Research, Text Series, 16 (Lon-

don: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2003), pp. 159–63.

40.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 63–64.

41.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 64, 67.

42.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 64.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

483

clear from the outset about the true purpose behind this devil’s apparent
helpfulness: “En ef þér sýnisk sem hann geri þér nokkuru góða hluti, þá
gerir hann þat allt til þess at hann megi því auðvelligar þik fá svikit, ef þú
truír hann þér góðan ok nauðsynligan” (But if it seems to you as if he is
doing you any good, then he does it all that he may more easily manage
to deceive you, if you believe him to be good and necessary to you). This
is similar to what Saint Anthony says in Antonius saga about the allegedly
prophetic powers of devils: they announce things that will later happen
only so that “trvnaðr væri a festr þeira savgn sva sem nockvrri forspa, ok
eptir þat mætti þeir avðvelligar yfvir þeim valld hafva, er trvðv þeira falsi”
(their announcements might be believed as if they were prophecies, and
after that they might more easily have power over those who believed their
falsehoods).

43

In Koðrán’s dreams, however, it takes time for the identity

of the devil to be revealed. On his first appearance, we are told that he ap-
pears “með daprligri ásjónu ok skjálftafullr sem af hræzlu” (with a downcast
face and shaking as if with fear): he complains about the attempt to drive
him from his home but stresses that it is not doing him much harm. On
his second appearance, we are given a more telling detail: “Fyrr var hann
vanr at birtask honum með bjortu ok blíðligu yfirliti ok ágætliga búinn. En
nú var hann í svortum ok herfiligum skinnstakki, dokkr ok illigr í ásjónu”
(Before he used to appear to him with a bright and joyful countenance
and excellently arrayed. But now he was in a black and wretched leather
shirt, dark and hideous in appearance). He speaks with a “sorrowful and
shaking voice” but still insists that he will not flee. Only on his third ap-
pearance have the prophet’s powers of illusion entirely dissolved: for the
first time, the narrative voice describes him as fjándi (devil) and sá inn
illgjarni andi (that malignant spirit), his fine clothes are soaked through
and ripped to pieces, and his sorrowful plaints are replaced by outright
whining and sobbing. The bishop, he rages, has condemned him to “end-
less burning” and driven him and his family langt í brot í auðn ok útlegð (far
away to wastelands and places of exile)—to the haunts of devils.

44

Medieval Christians knew, of course, that the devil sometimes masquer-
ades as an angel of light and that discernment is required to perceive his
true nature.

45

In Martinus saga, the devil appears to the saint enveloped

in light and biartr ok bliþr i alite (bright and joyful in appearance): it is not
until Martin makes the sign of the cross that his true nature is revealed
and he disappears in a puff of smoke (sva sem reycr), leaving a terrible smell

43.

Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 72; cf. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, III, 176–77

(iv. 50).

44.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 65–68.

45.

2 Corinthians 11:14.

484

Grønlie

behind him.

46

What is interesting about the reworking of this motif in

Þorvalds þáttr is that the typically sudden revelation of the devil’s identity is
replaced by a much more gradual process: the devil becomes progressively
darker, uglier, and more degraded, as Koðrán sees more clearly in the light
of Christian faith. Building a sense of process or gradual enlightenment
into a story type (the trial of strength) that commonly depicts conversion
as a dramatic moment or peripeteia is a clever innovation on the part of the
writer. And it is not only the sense of process that is unusual but also the
fact that we experience it with Koðrán: the narrative voice does not label
the spirit as “devil” until Koðrán himself has come to that conclusion.
There is more to this story, however, than the simple revelation that
pagan belief is belief in the devil, because this devil is an unusually crafty
one, as we discover from its very first speech. The missionaries, he warns
Koðrán, are plotting against him:

Þeir leita at reka mik brotu af bústað mínum, því at þeir steypðu vellanda

vatni yfir mitt herbergi, svá at born mín þola eigi litla kvol af þeim brennandi

dropum er inn renna um þekjuna. En þó at slíkt skaði sjálfan mik eigi mjok,

þá er allt at einu þungt at heyra þyt smábarna er þau œpa af bruna.

47

(They are trying to drive me away from my home, because they have poured

boiling water over my house, so that my children suffer no little torment

from the burning drops running through the roof. And although such things

don’t much hurt me, it is still hard to hear the cries of the little children as

they scream because of the burning.)

The bishop is not, as far as we know, using boiling water, but consecrated
water: the burning motif is borrowed from saints’ lives like Jacobs saga or
Bartholomeus saga in which the presence or prayers of an apostle are said to
burn devils.

48

This probably derives from the idea of prayer as fervens (boil-

ing, burning).

49

Yet the image of the little children crying out in pain is so

vivid and the detail of water dripping through the thatching on the roof
is so imaginative that one can hardly help feeling sorry for this anguished
father—and sympathy for the devil, as readers of Milton will know, is a very
dangerous thing indeed.

50

This devil is all too aware of how to manipulate

human feeling: after describing the torment of his “little children,” he goes

46.

Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 563–64.

47.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 65–66.

48.

Postola sögur: Legendariske fortællinger om apostlernes liv, deres kamp for kristendommens

udbredelse samt deres martyrdød, ed. C. R. Unger (Oslo: Bentzen, 1874), pp. 515, 745.

49. Thomas Hill, “Tormenting the Devil with Boiling Drops: An Apotropaic Motif in the

Old English Solomon and Saturn I and Old Norse-Icelandic Literature,” Journal of English and

Germanic Philology, 92 (1993), 162–63.

50. Compare the influential reading of Milton’s Satan in Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The

Reader in Paradise Lost, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1997), especially pp. 4–22.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

485

on to argue that the rock is his “rightful inheritance” (minni eiginligri erfð),
and inherited property is something that an earlier scene in the þáttr has
established as a justifiable source of wealth.

51

Next he tries the typically

female trick of “whetting,” urging Koðrán to act “like a man” (mannliga)
and drive the missionaries away. Even in defeat, he delivers a parting shot
by alluding to the Scriptures: “Þú kallask maðr réttlátr ok trúlyndr, en þú
hefir ombúnat mér illu gott” (You call yourself a righteous and faithful man,
but you have repaid me with evil for good,” with reference to Romans 12
v. 21). Some of these tricks are played by devils elsewhere, but rarely all at
once, and it is clear that this devil is a very real source of danger, even to
one well versed in the devil’s arts.

52

There is a lesson in this not just for the

potential convert, like Koðrán, but also for a more established Christian
audience. Appearances can be deceptive, words are untrustworthy, the
Scriptures can be misused. Even the most natural human emotions, like
compassion, can play us false.
It is striking that this long and intense threefold encounter takes place
entirely in a series of dreams: there is never, in the end, any externally
observable evidence for the drama that has unfolded. Dreams, of course,
could be used by the devil (Gregory warns the readers of his Dialogues
against this), but the internal nature of Koðrán’s conversion experience
nonetheless deserves some attention. According to the modern definition
of miracles by the Roman Catholic Church, they must be “perceptible to
the senses”: Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is a miracle be-
cause the internal experience can be deduced from its external effect.

53

By this definition, it could be argued that Koðrán’s dreams are not strictly
miraculous at all, since there is no external witness to the prophet’s ap-
pearances. One might contrast Fursey’s vision of hell in Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History, which leaves him with a visible burn when devils thrust against
him a sinner and former associate.

54

Rannveig, too, visibly flinches dur-

ing her vision of hell, and when she awakes, she has burns on her legs,
hands, and back from the boiling pitch to which the devils dragged her.

55

Perhaps this is why Kristni saga adds to its retelling of Koðrán’s conversion
the unique detail that the rock in which the spirit resided “burst apart”
(brast í sundr): like the spontaneous shattering of idols, this gives tangible

51.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 66, 53–54.

52.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 67–68. The desert fathers were

the experts in the psychology of demonic temptation, and similar antics on the part of devils

can be found in Antonius saga and Vitae Patrum (in Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 60,

77, II, 376, 472), as well as in saints’ lives like Nikolaus saga (in Heilagra manna søgur, ed.

Unger, II, 27–29).

53.

New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Marthaler, IX, 665–66.

54.

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 270–75 (iii.19).

55.

Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, pp. 9–11.

486

Grønlie

evidence that the devil has left it and leads Koðrán to the reasonable con-
clusion that ármaðr var sigraðr (the guardian spirit had been defeated).

56

In the þáttr, however, it is the change within Koðrán that proves that the
spirit is overcome. The three dreams can be read as an external projec-
tion of his internal struggle against the devil’s promptings; they reveal
the process by which his mind is cleared of such error and infused with
sanctifying grace. Far from showing “credulity” on the part of its writer,
this story conveys a sophisticated understanding of both the psychology
of temptation and the theology of conversion—the moral and spiritual
process by which one moves from ignorance to knowledge, from error to
truth, from spiritual darkness to the light of Christian faith.
Just as sophisticated, in a different way, is the account of Bishop Friðrekr’s
contest with two berserks, which immediately follows Koðrán’s conversion.
As well as appearing in the three versions of the þáttr, this anecdote is retold
somewhat differently in Kristni saga and in Vatnsdœla saga, and there is a
related account in Njáls saga about the later missionary Þangbrandr’s defeat
of a berserk at the house of Gestr the Wise.

57

The þáttr stages the contest

at a feast celebrating Þorvaldr’s marriage to Óláfr of Haukagil’s daughter
Vígdís and sets it up as a “trial of strength” between practitioners of pagan
magic and the representative of Christianity. The berserks challenge the
bishop to compete with them at their arts: striding through fire without
suffering burns and falling on the point of their swords without any injury.
Trusting in God’s mercy, Friðrekr agrees. After he has consecrated the fire
and sprinkled it with holy water, the berserks prepare to pass through; but
they trip and the fire burns with such intensity that they are immediately
killed. When Friðrekr strides through in full vestments, however, the fire
parts on either side and not even his garment is singed. As a result, many
of the onlookers are baptized and a church is later built on Óláfr’s farm.
At first glance, this appears to resemble many saga accounts of trouble-
some berserks, which the saga hero must either kill or drive away in or-
der to prove himself and protect the local community; sometimes, it is
specified that the berserk is immune to iron and fire.

58

Often, he is cast

in the role of unwelcome suitor, which is probably why the þáttr rather

56.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 7–8.

57.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 8–9, 69–72, 93–94; Vatnsdæla

saga, Hallfreðar saga, Kormáks saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ÍF, VIII (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka

fornritafélag, 1939), pp. 124–26; Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ÍF, XII (Reykjavík:

Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954), pp. 267–68.

58.

Eyrbyggja saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ÍF, IV (Reykjavík:

Hið íslenska fornritafélag, 1935), pp. 70–75; Víga-Glúms saga, in Eyfirðinga saga, ed. Jónas

Kristjánsson, ÍF, IX (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1956), pp. 11–13, 17–19; Snorri

Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ÍF, XXVI–XXVIII (Reykjavík: Hið íslenska

fornritafélag, 1941–51), I, 17.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

487

implausibly places the scene at Þorvaldr’s wedding feast; in fact Vígdís ap-
pears to have been married to somebody else.

59

Several details, however,

do not quite fit. First, the berserks do not intrude upon the feast but have
been invited to it: they are among the guests in the heathen party, which
is kept separate from the Christians by einn lítill lœkr (a little stream) run-
ning down the middle of the hall. This is not a particularly realistic setup,
but there is an obvious symbolism in the separation by water of heathens
and Christians, especially in a story where consecrated water plays such an
important role. Second, the berserks’ challenge is specifically religious;
they are not conceived of as the social menace that they are elsewhere.
The narrative voice informs us at the outset that “þeir stóði með ollu afli
einna mest í móti réttri trú ok kostgæfðu at eyða kristiligu siðlæti” (they
stood with all their power against the true faith and made every effort to
destroy Christian custom), and they follow this by challenging the bishop
to compete with them “ef hann hefði þoran til eða nokkut traust á guði
sínum” (if he dared to or had any faith in his God).

60

To refuse would

imply not only physical cowardice, the usual taunt in the sagas, but more
importantly, spiritual weakness.
The unusual angle in the þáttr is confirmed by the versions of the scene in
Kristni saga and Vatnsdœla saga, which are much closer to the typical berserk
story. Here the berserks turn up uninvited to an autumn feast, and their
arrival is greatly feared by the heathens; Þorkell krafla asks Friðrekr to get
rid of them, and he agrees on condition that Þorkell and the other guests
accept the Christian faith. Although the fire, once consecrated, does burn
the berserks, it is the other men present who actually kill them: they have
to be beaten to death because of their magical immunity to iron. Friðrekr
does not pass through the flames himself, nor does anyone suggest that
he should. Indeed, in these two versions, the “trial of strength” seems a
less important aspect of the story than the social and communal benefits
to be reaped from Christianity: the bishop’s role is to rid the community
of those who constitute a threat to it, rather than to challenge the prevail-
ing order. This is especially important in Vatnsdœla saga, where Ingimundr
and his descendants are characterized throughout by their intolerance of
sorcery and witchcraft, and their commitment to the stability of the local
community: to this extent, there is some continuity between the values of
“noble” heathens and the representatives of a new and better faith.

61

59.

Benjamin Blaney, “The Berserk Suitor: The literary application of a stereotyped scene,”

Scandinavian Studies, 54 (1982), 279–94. On Vígdís’s marriage, see Skarðsárbók: Landnámabók

Björns Jónssonar á Skarðsá, ed. Jakob Benediktsson (Reykjavík: Háskóli Íslands, 1958), p. 96.

60.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 70.

61. Lars Lönnroth, “The Noble Heathen: A Theme in the Sagas,” Scandinavian Studies,

41 (1969), 1–29.

488

Grønlie

In

Njáls saga, elements from both versions are found: as in Kristni saga

and Vatnsdœla saga, the berserk, fittingly named Ótryggr (faithless, not
to be trusted), intrudes upon the feast from the outside, but as in the
þáttr, Christianity and paganism are opposed: Þangbrandr orders three
fires to be built, one consecrated by him, one by the heathens, and the
last to remain unconsecrated. He then stipulates that “ef berserkrinn
hræðisk þann, er ek vígða, en vaði yðvarn eld, þá skuluð þér taka við trú”
(if the berserk is frightened of the one I consecrate, but strides through
your fire, then you must accept the faith).

62

Before he has even entered

Þangbrandr’s fire, the berserk (like the rock-dwelling devil) complains
of a burning sensation: he lifts up his sword to strike, but it catches in the
roof-beam, and Þangbrandr and Guðleifr are able to kill him, with Þang-
brandr wielding the “sign of the cross” (in the shape of a heavy crucifix)
all too literally.
Whichever version of this story came first, there are clearly two main
sources: the first is the troublesome berserk of the family saga, to which
Kristni saga and Vatnsdœla saga are closest, and the second is the “trial of
strength,” for which the archetype is Elijah’s contest with the prophets of
Baal at Mount Carmel in I Kings xviii. 17–40. Njáls saga, where the fire
consecrated by pagans is set against the fire consecrated by Þangbrandr,
comes closest to this Biblical model. The author of the þáttr surely knew
the native traditions about berserks but deliberately reshaped these into
a religious contest that was intended to recall another famous Biblical
“trial”: that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace
from Daniel, chapter 3. This story was well known not only from the use
of its canticles in the daily office (and, indeed, the Easter Vigil) but also
from its many retellings in the passions of saints.

63

When Gregory, in his

Dialogues, recounts how the monk Benedict’s body was preserved whole
in a burning oven, Peter exclaims: “Fornar iarteinir hevri ec nu, sva sem
sagt es forþom fra .iii. sveinom, es i ofn voro settir oc brunno eigi” (I now
hear miracles of old, just as it was told long ago about the three boys who
were placed in an oven and were not burned).

64

The same Biblical story

lies behind the many miracles where saints and bishops successfully ex-
ert power over conflagrations, or undergo ordeals with burning coals or

62.

Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, p. 267–68.

63. See Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 19, 264, 293, 435–36, II, 203; and Gamal Norsk

Homiliebok. Cod. AM 619 4to, ed. Gustav Indrebø (Oslo: Dybwad, 1931), p. 167. The hom-

ilist also draws an explicit parallel on pp. 118–19 between the three youths in the furnace

and the story of how St. Óláfr set fire to some woodchips that he had distractedly cut on a

Sunday: the woodchips burned in his hand, but his palm was untouched by the fire.

64. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II, 344–45 (iii. 18); Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I,

229.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

489

red-hot iron: in one version of Jómsvíkinga saga, Bishop Poppo walks over
burning iron in full vestments without suffering burns to either his body or
his clothes.

65

Guðmundar saga byskups plays on its audience’s knowledge of

such stories when it tells us that Bishop Brandr donned full ecclesiastical
vestments and regalia in an attempt to avert a fire in one of the buildings
at Hólar. In a nice twist, he is unsuccessful, for only water consecrated by
the saintly Bishop Guðmundr can extinguish it.

66

Many other such stories could usefully be cited for comparison, but the
immediate source for the þáttr may be Rufinus’s Historia monachorum in
Aegyptum, a text ascribed to Jerome in the Middle Ages, as in the Norse
translation.

67

Here the monk Copres challenges a Manichean to enter

a bonfire in order to prove whose faith is true: like Friðrekr, he makes
the sign of the cross before entering, and the fire parts before him on
either side (flyde þegar tvo vega ut ifra), leaving him entirely unharmed. The
Manichean, however, has to be dragged in, and the fire latches onto him
from all sides (elldinn lagde þegar at honum ollum megin). We find the same
contrast, in inverse order, in the þáttr. At the approach of the berserks,

65.

Jómsvíkinga saga, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson (Reykjavík: Íslenzkar fornbókmenntir, 1969),

pp. 95–96. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson has noted some close similarities between the scene

in Jómsvíkinga saga and Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla, which may suggest mutual influence (see

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. lxxxii–lxxxiv and references there).

However, the immunity of saints and their vestments to fire and red-hot objects is such a

common motif in saints’ lives that it is hard to draw any firm conclusion from this. See the

references under “fire” in C. Grant Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of

Christian Legend (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948), pp. 30–33; and,

for a saint who walks over burning coals, Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, II, p. 233. Ordeal

by fire could also be used to authenticate newly discovered relics, or the relics of potential

saints, as in the case of St. Óláfr, St. Magnus, and St. Theodgar. See Tom Head, “Saints,

Heretics and Fire: Finding Meaning through the Ordeal,” in Monks and Nuns, Saints and

Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society, ed. Lester K. Little, Sharon A. Farmer and Barbara H.

Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 220–38.

66.

Biskupa sögur, ed. Jón Sigurðsson and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, I, 445–46.

67.

Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, pp. xxi–xxii, and II, 422–23. Similar uses of the

“trial by fire” can be found as far afield as Muirchú’s eighth-century life of St. Patrick (where

it takes place at Easter) and the late fourteenth-century life of St. Stephen of Perm, where

in a realistic touch, the antagonist twice loses his nerve and Stephen himself tries to drag

him into the fire. See Richard M. Price, “The Holy Man and Christianization from the

Apocryphal Gospels to St. Stephen of Perm,” in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the

Early Middle Ages, ed. James Howard-Johnston and Paul A. Hayward (Oxford: Oxford Univ.

Press, 1999), pp. 224–25, 230–32. The Irish example is particularly interesting because

Christian and native traditions of fire are used to recreate the triumph of the new religion

over the old. See Patrick K. Ford, “Aspects of the Patrician Legend,” in Celtic Folklore and

Christianity: Studies in Memory of William W. Heist, ed. Patrick K. Ford (Santa Barbara, CA:

McNally and Loftin, 1983), pp. 31–32); Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in

Early Irish Literature (Maynooth: An Sagart, 1990), pp. 176–77; and Thomas O’Loughlin,

“Reading Muirchú’s Tara-event within its background as a biblical ‘trial of divinities’,” in

Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults, ed. Jane Cartwright (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 2003),

pp. 123–35.

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the fire flames up and burns with great intensity: “Elldin lagði at þeim ok
brenndi þá á lítilli stundu með svá mikilli ákefð at þeir váru þaðan dauðir
dregnir” (The fire attacked them and burned them for a short period with
such great vehemence that they were both pulled out from there dead).
Before the bishop, however, it parts like the Red Sea before the Israelites:
“En logann lagði tvá vega frá honum sem vindr blési, ok því síðr kenndi
hann meinsamligs hita af eldinum at eigi með nökkuru móti sviðnuðu
inar minnstu trefr á skrúða hans” (But the flames parted both ways from
him as if the wind were blowing, and he felt the harmful heat of the fire so
little that not even the least of the fringes on his vestments were singed).

68

The phrasing of this last detail recalls the story of the monk Benedict in
Gregory’s Dialogues: “Non solum eius caro ab ignibus, sed neque extrema
ullu modo uestimenta cremarentur” (Neither his flesh, nor even the ends
of his vestments were in any way burned by the fire).

69

From the motif of the troublesome berserk, the author of the þáttr has
fashioned a parable that recalls three Biblical miracles as well as numer-
ous saints’ lives: he fuses native traditions of the berserk’s fearlessness of
fire with hagiographical traditions of the saint’s immunity to it in order
to make a strong point about God’s supreme control over the elements
and the divine sanctioning of episcopal authority. Perhaps there is also a
claim for the sanctity of Bishop Friðrekr, whose act metonymically recalls
all those other saints who have passed through fire: later on, Kristni saga
describes him as sannheilagr (a true saint).

70

On an allegorical level, we

may understand Friðrekr’s immunity as a victory over the “fiery darts”
of evil, from which he is protected by the daily practice of virtue. On an
anagogical level, the fire that burns the berserks is an external projection
of the invisible fires that tortured the rock-dwelling devils: this miracle
carries a strong warning to reflect on whether we ourselves shall be saved
from everlasting flames on the Day of Judgement.

71

The remaining miracles demonstrate God’s power to protect his ser-
vants from attack, and they too transform native traditions into spiritu-
ally edifying narrative. One tells how two pagans, Klaufi and Arngeirr,

68.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 71–72.

69. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II, 344–47 (iii. 18). The Norse translation of the Dialogues,

somewhat surprisingly, has: “þa vas Benedictus heill i ofninom oc brunnin cleþi hans oll”

(Then Benedictus was unharmed in the oven, and his clothes were all burned), but it goes

on to say of the three youths in Daniel that “voro cleþi þeira obrunnin” (their clothes were

unburned; Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 229; Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingríms-

son et al., pp. lxxxiv–lxxxv).

70.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. 13.

71. Compare Bede’s interpretation of a similar miracle involving fire in Two Lives of Saint

Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. and trans. Bertram

Colgrave (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), pp. 202–03.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

491

are twice prevented from burning down the first church in the North of
Iceland.

72

On their first attempt, the church seems to them to be already

on fire and they depart only to discover later that this was an illusion. On
their second attempt, two arrows fly at Arngeirr as he leans across the
threshold of the church to kindle the flames: the first narrowly misses his
head, the second pins his clothing to the floor, and he decides “at bíða
eigi hér innar þriðju” (not to wait here for the third). The final miracle
occurs when the heathens gather to burn Þorvaldr and Friðrekr in their
house: as they stop to graze their horses, a flock of birds suddenly flies
up toward them, and their horses are so terrified that many are thrown
off or injured; they are forced to turn back without success.

73

Although

neither Þorvaldr nor Friðrekr ever become aware of these incidents, the
author makes it clear that they should be attributed to the Christian God:
“Nú hlífði Guð svá húsi sínu” (Thus God protected his house), “Skýlði
svá allsvaldanda Guðs miskunn sínum monnum” (In this way the grace
of the all-powerful God protected his men).
The miracle in the church provides a neat counterpart to the scene with
the berserks: in one, the Christian bishop strides unafraid through a real
fire, in the second, heathens flee from a fire that is illusory. Nevertheless,
the form it takes is rather unusual. Illusory fires in saints’ lives are, almost
without exception, the work of the devil: the earliest is the story in Grego-
ry’s Dialogues about how an idol causes the illusion of fire in a monastery
kitchen. Only when Gregory prays and gets the monks to make the sign
of the cross over their eyes do they realize that there is no fire and that
the building is intact; the Old Norse translation of the Dialogues describes
this diabolical deception as sionhverfing.

74

Bede includes a similar incident

in his Life of St. Cuthbert, which explicitly recalls Benedict’s act: “phantom
fires” caused by the devil disappear upon Cuthbert’s prayer.

75

The story

in the Dialogues may also be the basis for a number of Icelandic folktales
in which heathen supernatural beings protect themselves from human
interference by causing the illusion of fire in either a church or a house.

76

Yet nowhere is this sort of illusion attributed to the Christian God, and
sjónhverfing is a term used only of pagan magic, which is presumably why
the writer does not use it here. The only place I have found Christian
saints causing illusory fires is in the lives of Irish saints, although there
are some different examples of sjónhverfing in stories about Bishop Guð-

72.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 10–11, 75–77, 95.

73.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. 12–13, 86–87, 97.

74. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, II, 170–73 (ii. 10); Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I,

165–66, 209.

75.

Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, ed. Colgrave, pp. 198–99.

76.

Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., pp. clxxix and references there.

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mundr, where again the term itself is studiously avoided.

77

The similarity

to magic may have been less of a problem than we imagine for medieval
Christians, for whom the essential distinction between magic and miracle
resided in the source of power: God or the devil.

78

Emanating from the

Christian God, this illusion takes on a symbolic significance: the God who
opened Koðrán’s eyes to the devil’s wiles will blind the eyes of those who
refuse to believe.
There is a similar strangeness about the stories of the arrows and the
birds, although the theme of God’s power to protect his friends and take
vengeance on his enemies is unmistakable. The three arrows must have
folktale origins, as the same motif is found in slightly different configura-
tions in Oddr’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar and, with apples replacing arrows,
in Yngvars saga víðforla; but it also, as Sigurgeir Steingrímsson has shown,
recalls the symbolism of arrows in the Old Testament.

79

It is harder to

find a source for the flight of the birds, although birds do of course play
an important role in many saints’ lives, especially those from Ireland. Yet
this particular anecdote brings to mind rather the many stories in family
sagas about how ambushes are sabotaged by pagan magicians, who typ-
ically conjure up darkness or thick fog. There is a good example of this
in Njáls saga where, as in the þáttr, the pursuers fall from their saddles,
lose their horses, and injure themselves.

80

Yet God twice protects Þorlákr

from ambush by causing thick fog in Oddaverja þáttr, so the transferral
of the motif in the þáttr is not without parallel.

81

It may, however, be the

closeness of these miracles to pagan magic that prevents the author of
the þáttr from attributing them to Friðrekr’s intercession and prompts his
explicit statements that they are manifestations of divine power exercised
by the Christian God on behalf of his servants.
Through these miracles, the author of the þáttr gives depth of meaning
to the historical records of conversion: he takes stories about rock dwellers,
berserks, illusory fires, and interrupted ambushes and transforms them

77. For ocular illusions attributed to Irish saints, see Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. Charles

Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), I, clxix; and for those of Guðmundr, see

Biskupa sögur, ed. Jón Sigurðsson and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, I, 506, 601–02. One might

also include cases where God blinds the eyes of unbelievers, as in 2 Kings 16:15–20. e.g.,

Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 182 (which also involves the protection of God’s servant);

Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson, pp. 161–62, 253;

and Flateyjarbók, ed. Sigurður Nordal, III, 95–96.

78. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, pp. 9–12.

79.

Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason, ed. Ólafur Halldórsson, pp. 342–43;

Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda, ed. Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, III, 386; Biskupa

sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson et al., p. cxlv and references there. Arrows are also used

as a symbol for divine judgment in Gregory’s Dialogues, II, 430–31 (iii. 38), III, 128–29 (iv.

37); Heilagra manna søgur, ed. Unger, I, 234, 250.

80.

Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, p. 38.

81.

Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, pp. 174–75.

The Miracles in Þorvalds þáttr ens víðforla

493

into spiritually nourishing episodes that can be read exegetically. Although
some of the motifs may be popular in origin, their use here is learned
and sophisticated, for by using native traditions in an explicitly hagiog-
raphic mold, the author succeeds not only in Christianizing them, but
also in “Icelandicizing” a foreign literary genre.

82

In the case of Koðrán’s

conversion, it could be argued that the miracle is not included primarily
as historical event, except in as much as it tells us, as other sources do,
that Koðrán was converted to Christianity. Rather, it takes the “fact” of
Koðrán’s conversion and gives us an insight into the dramatic spiritual
struggle that lies behind it: it tells us, in Augustine’s words, how to “read”
and “understand” the inner miracle of conversion. Taken as a whole, these
miracles demonstrate God’s intervention in Icelandic history, his supreme
control over the elements and the superiority of Christian rite over all
forms of pagan magic. They carry a strong warning (for the contemporary
reader as much as for the historical protagonists) about the deceptions
of paganism and the dangers of demonic temptation, about the spiritual
blindness of unbelievers and the eternal fires of hell. When it came to
textual interpretation, medieval writers had their own, very different,
ideas of sophistication, and they cannot be dismissed as either “popular”
or “uncritical” for reading beyond the literal level of the narrative. Rath-
er, for this writer, reading and understanding meant seeing beneath the
surface of events to discover and communicate their interior meaning.

82. Compare the comments on “christianizing” and “hibernicizing” in Dorothy Ann Bray,

“The Study of Folk-Motifs in Early Irish Hagiography: Problems of Approach and Rewards

at Hand,” in Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars, ed. John Carey, Máire Herbert,

and Pádraig Ó Riain (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), p. 274. On the adaption or “trans-

lation” of folklore in the life of Bishop Guðmundr, see Marlene Ciklamini, “Hagiography

and Folklore in Arngrímr’s Guðmundar saga Arasonar,” in The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic

Literature: Sagas and the British Isles, 2 vols., ed. John McKinnell, David Ashurst, and Donata

Kick (Durham: The 13th International Saga Conference, 2006), I, 171–79.

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