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The Flateyjarbôk Annals as a Historical Source

Elizabeth Ashman Rowe
Published online: 06 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Elizabeth Ashman Rowe (2002) The Flateyjarbôk Annals as a Historical Source, Scandinavian Journal of
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The FlateyjarboÂk Annals as a Historical Source

A Response to Eldbjùrg Haug

Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

In 1997, Eldbjùrg Haug published an assessment of the value of the Icelandic

annals ± especially the LoÈgmann's Annals ± as historical sources.

1

Her conjectures

about the effect of contemporary political situations on the annals' accounts of

other events are plausible, and some of her conclusions are valid. Because much of

Haug's article is informed by surprise at discovering that these documents are not

what she and other Scandinavian historians had assumed they were, it is worth

reviewing a few of Haug's key points from the perspective of the FlateyjarboÂk

Annals, whose sources and process of compilation are fairly well understood.

2

Moreover, because the FlateyjarboÂk Annals draw on the LoÈgmann's Annals, they

help date the first phase of the latter's compilation.

First, a brief summary of the compilation process is in order. As is revealed in

Storm's introduction to his edition of the oldest annals, the Icelandic annalists

created their notices in a number of ways.

3

Most made use of earlier written

sources: annalists copied notices from other annals without changing them; they

created notices by combining information found in several written sources and

leaving the wording of these documents unchanged; and they created notices by

editing text found in one or more sources (e.g. leaving words out or using different

words to convey essentially the same meaning). In addition, notices could be

created from information derived from non-written sources, such as the reports of

eye-witnesses, second-hand accounts, or the annalist's own opinions. Information of

this kind could also be included in notices whose other descriptions are based on

written sources, in the ways just listed. Finally, it is important to know how these

words could be set down on the page. Annalists starting a new manuscript or

continuing an existing one set down their notices in the primary writing space, for

Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, born 1961, Ph.D. (Cornell University 1989). Important published works include:

Forthcoming: The Development of FlateyjarboÂk: Iceland and the Norwegian Dynastic Crisis of 1387

(Viking Collection 15, Odense UP, 2003); ªSoÈrla †aÂttr: The literary adaptation of myth and legendº (Saga-Book of

the Viking Society 26, 2002); ªCultural Paternity in the FlateyjarboÂk OlaÂfs saga Tryggvasonarº (AlvõÂssmaÂl 8,

1998); ªFolktale and Parable: The Unity of Gautreks Sagaº (Gripla 10, 1998); ªGeneric Hybrids: Norwegian `Family'

Sagas and Icelandic `Mytho-Heroic' Sagasº (Scandinavian Studies 65, 1993). Present research: Annals and Sagas:

Historical Writingin Fourteenth-Century Iceland.
Address: 176 Summer Street #3, Somerville, MA 02143, USA. E-mail: [e-mail]

1

E. Haug, ªThe Icelandic Annals as Historical Sourcesº, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 22 (1997),

pp. 263±74.

2

See E. Haug, Provincia Nidrosiensis i dronningMargretes unions- ogmaktpolitik (Trondheim, 1996), pp. 33±

35, for references to historians who have assumed that the last notices in Icelandic annals were

independent continuations updated year by year.

3

G. Storm, Islandske annaler indtil 1578 (Christiania, 1888), pp. iii±lxxxiv.

# 2002 Taylor & Francis

Scand. J. History 27, pp. 233±242. ISSN 0346-8755

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example in a two-column format with a few line spaces between the entries. Later

annalists contributing to that same manuscript could add information (gathered by

any of the means described above) to one of those earlier notices by writing above a

line of text, in the margin, or in the blank space left after the entry, if there was one.

Thus what appears to be a single notice could in fact be composed of several

ªlayersº of writing: a first layer, formed when an annalist created the notice from

scratch or compiled it from one or more sources, and subsequent layers, formed

when one or more annalists added information to entries already in their

manuscript. Storm draws attention to these series of accretions both in his

introduction and within the edited text.

Next, let us turn to the annals in FlateyjarboÂk (GKS 1005 fol), a very large and

beautifully decorated manuscript now at the Stofnun AÂrna MagnuÂssonar a IÂslandi.

Sometimes referred to as the FlateyjarannaÂll (ªAnnals of Flat Islandº), this text is the

work of one person, MagnuÂs †oÂrhallsson. The manuscript was begun in 1387 by

JoÂn †oÂr

D

arson for JoÂn HaÂkonarson, a wealthy farmer from the north of Iceland, but

JoÂn †oÂr

D

arson left Iceland in 1388 and MagnuÂs was brought in to continue the

effort. He copied several king's sagas and shorter texts into the book and then

added the annals, starting from 46 BC and continuing until AD 1394. MagnuÂs

worked from several older Icelandic annals, including the LoÈgmann's Annals

(LoÈgmannsannaÂll or ªJusticiar's Annalsº), which were first compiled by the cleric

Einar Hafli

D

ason (1307±1393), JoÂn HaÂkonarson's friend and neighbor, and which

were later continued by a series of other annalists. These annals were MagnuÂs's

source for the notices up until 1388.

4

The so-called ªOldest Annalsº (Annales

vetustissimi or Elztu annaÂlar) provided the notices for the last decade of the 13th

century, and several other annals (the SkaÂlholtsannaÂll, the KonungsannaÂll in Icelandic

translation, and lost annals from western Iceland) served as additional sources.

MagnuÂs had difficulty collating the notices, sometimes writing down the same event

in two different years and sometimes combining fragments from two sources that

had no connection with each another. He also made a poor job of copying the

manuscript of the Elztu annaÂlar.

5

However, the notices for the last five to six years,

which are very thorough and a valuable source of information, are a different

matter. MagnuÂs composed them himself, writing them down over time and leaving

room for information to be filled in later.

6

He seems to have worked on the annals

4

S. Nordal, FlateyjarboÂk, vol. 4 (Akranes,1945), p. xiii.

5

As the editors of the diplomatic text of FlateyjarboÂk put it, ªDenne Afskrift er paa mange Steder meget

feilagtig, Gyldentallet i Randen svarer ofte ikke til Texten inde paa Siden, Begivenhederne ere

anforte under urigtige Aarstal, og hvor nogen Uoverensstemmelse med Annales Regii finder Sted,

kan man vñre vis paa, at den sidste Bog har det retteº [This copy is in many places full of errors, the

Paschal letters in the margin often do not match the text on the page, the events are entered under

the wrong years, and where there are any discrepancies with the Annales Regii, one can be certain

that the latter book is correct] G. VigfuÂsson & C. R. Unger, FlateyjarboÂk: En Samlingaf norske Konge-

Sagaer med indskudte mindre Fortñllinger om Begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt Annaler, vol. 3 (Christiania,

1868), p. xv.

6

OÂ. HalldoÂrsson, Grettisfñrsla. Safn ritger

D

a eftir OÂlaf HalldoÂrsson gefi

D

uÂt a sjoÈtugsafmñli hans 18. April 1990

(ReykjavõÂk, 1990), pp. 208±209. Based on the dates given in the notices, it appears that MagnuÂs did

not finish with the annals before the autumn or early winter of the year 1394. He probably intended

to fill in the gaps later, but that did not happen, and HalldoÂrsson guesses that MagnuÂs did not touch

the book again after he finished the annals.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

234 Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

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continuously until the end of the notice for 1390, after which there is a gap of about

three lines. In the notice for 1391 there are blank lines in three places and three

empty lines before the next entry. Between the notices for 1392 and 1393 are four

empty lines. In the notice for 1393 are three blank spaces for people's names, and in

the sentence that tells of the death of Einar Hafli

D

ason, there are blank spaces for

the lengths of his tenures as officialis and manager of the bishopric of HoÂlar. The

notice for 1394 is the last one; MagnuÂs reports that Bishop Vilchin landed at

HvalfjoÈr

D

ur and arrived at SkaÂlholt on the feast of St. Bartholomew (August 24).

He also mentions that the priest JoÂn †oÂr

D

arson had travelled with the bishop, had

been away for six years, and had held office at Krosskirkja. This almost certainly

refers to the first scribe of FlateyjarboÂk, who must have gone to Norway in the

summer of 1388. In this last notice are four blank spaces, and after the last one

there is an entry about the punishment of two monks that has been scraped off.

With this information in mind, let us return to Haug, who at the outset ªshared

the common opinion that the Annals were contemporary to the events they

describeº.

7

Common or not, this view is, as we have just seen, only partially true.

For any particular annal, anything from zero to one hundred percent of the first

layer may have been written more or less contemporaneously with the events

described. In the case of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, the contemporaneous entries do

not start until 1389 or 1390. As most of the extant annals are copies and

compilations of other annals, at some remove from the original layer(s) of writing, it

may well be that a particular annal does not contain any contemporaneous entries

at all.

Haug soon discovered that in different annals an event was not always annotated

in the same year and that some events were even written about twice in the same

annal, but under different years.

8

These differences and duplications could have

arisen from a variety of causes. Not everyone knew when a particular event took

place, and when they did think that they knew, they did not always agree.

Moreover, the annals mostly use Easter letters rather than numerals to indicate the

year of an entry, and because the system of Easter letters became less and less used

in Iceland, a scribe who had accurate dates for events could, through his

unfamiliarity with the Easter letters, set down the information in the wrong place, a

mistake that would then be propagated in copies of his work. Similarly, duplication

of information can be the result of compiling sources that disagreed about the year

in which a particular event occurred, as happened with the FlateyjarboÂk Annals.

Thus, when Haug asks whether it could be that the annals were not written year by

year in an ongoing process after all, the answer is definitely yes: the annals were not

necessarily written year by year; rather, their contents were organized by year.

Haug then reviews several chronological errors in the later hands of the

LoÈgmann's Annals (e.g. deaths that were recorded as having happened years before

those persons actually died) and concludes that these annalists were adding

information about events long after those events had taken place.

9

This is indeed

7

E. Haug, ªThe Icelandic Annals as Historical Sourcesº, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 22 (1997),

p. 263.

8

Haug, op. cit., p. 263.

9

Haug, op. cit., pp. 268±269.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

The FlateyjarboÂk Annals as a Historical Source 235

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how many annals were compiled. Scribes writing a primary entry sometimes left

room for information that they expected would be added later, and if they did not

do this, later scribes who desired to expand the notice would add information in the

margin or above the line. The expectation that information would be added later

was, of course, no guarantee that the information would be accurate or written

down in the right place.

The issue of the sequential authorship of the LoÈgmann's Annals leads Haug to

conclude that, in its complete form, this yearbook was younger than the

FlateyjarboÂk Annals.

10

The fact that the LoÈgmann's Annals were continued does

not affect the dating of its earlier parts, so it would be more accurate to say that the

portion of the LoÈgmann's Annals (AM 420b 4to, with the continuations through

1388) that MagnuÂs used is older than all of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, the portion of

the LoÈgmann's Annals that was written while MagnuÂs was at work on his own

entries in the 1390s (preserved in AM 420c 4to, a direct copy of AM 420b 4to) is

contemporaneous with that part of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, and the portion of the

LoÈgmann's Annals that was written after MagnuÂs stopped writing is younger than

all of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals.

One significant stumbling block for Haug was an assumption that is stated as

though it were the result of scholarly investigation, namely that the Icelandic annals

are ªconsidered to be written in an on-going processº.

11

To the extent that many

annals are the product of a sequence of scribes ± as Haug later puts it, ªThe annals

are often written by several generations of different and mostly anonymous

authorsº ± it would indeed be accurate to describe them as having been written in

an ongoing process.

12

However, the phrase turns out to have a different meaning:

ªAll the oldest Icelandic annals are based on older yearbooks, but it has been

assumed that the last notices in each of them were independent continuations and

contemporary information, written down consecutively year by yearº, for example,

every Easter.

13

Haug deploys this assumption as something of a straw man, for her

subsequent analysis of the LoÈgmann's Annals shows that Einar's part in it was not

written year by year:

Ihave demonstrated that one of the annals is not written consecutively. All the

Icelandic annals I have studied so far [i.e. the SkaÂlholt Annals, the SkaÂlholt

Annal Fragment, the LoÈgmann's Annals, the Gottskalks Annals, and the

FlateyjarboÂk Annals], give the same conclusion.

14

We have seen that not every layer of every annal was written on a year-by-year

basis, but it would be misleading to suggest that no layer of any annal was so

written. MagnuÂs's notices for 1390 through 1394 certainly appear to have been

written year by year, because the introduction of blank spaces and empty lines

10

Haug, op. cit., p. 268.

11

Haug, op. cit., p. 264.

12

Haug, op. cit., p. 265.

13

Haug, op. cit., p. 264.

14

Haug, op. cit., p. 272. See E. Haug, Provincia Nidrosiensis i dronningMargretes unions- ogmaktpolitik

(Trondheim, 1996), pp. 37±49, for the list of annals.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

236 Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

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contrasts markedly with the previous solid columns of notices, and the size of the

writing is not always the same from one notice to the next. Another example is that

of the second continuator of the LoÈgmann's Annals, who was writing around

1380.

15

This annalist finished Einar's notice for 1361 and provided notices for 1362

through 1380. He, too, may have been writing year by year towards the end,

because he left blank lines between each year for the notices for the last five years.

Further examples of annalists leaving blank lines between notices are found in the

Annales Regii (GKS 2087 4to) and the fragment of the SkaÂlholt Annals (AM 423a

4to).

16

A second stumbling block is Haug's application to the Icelandic annals of Sture

Bolin's conclusions regarding the Swedish yearbooks, which is that they were ªthe

result of learned compilations, copied into the annals not much later than their

earliest [recte youngest] notices, instead of being written into them consecutively,

event by eventº.

17

Again we have a statement that is correct for some parts of some

annals and incorrect for others. It does not apply to the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, for

example, as shown by the manuscript's internal information about the dating of its

various parts. MagnuÂs is believed to have started the annals before he added new

material to the beginning of the manuscript, including the following notice:

18

Ari sidar enn fyrr segir huarf Olafr konungr Hakonar son. sogdu Danir hann

daudann enn Nordmenn villdu ecki trua ‡ui. ‡a var tekin til rikisstiornar yfir

Noreg ok Danmork drottning Margreta modir Olafs konungs enn dottir

Valldamars Danakonungs eptir er hon let fanga Albrict.

19

[The year after what has been previously said [i.e. that Olaf HaÂkonarson was

king in 1387, when JoÂn †oÂr

D

arson wrote his part of the manuscript], King

Olaf HaÂkonarson disappeared. The Danes said he was dead, but the

Norwegians did not want to believe that. Then Queen Margareta, the mother

of King Olaf and the daughter of Valdimar, King of the Danes, was taken as

ruler over Norway and Denmark, after she had Albrecht captured.]

King Albrecht of Sweden was captured by Queen Margareta's men on February

24, 1389, and it is presumed that MagnuÂs wrote these lines in the summer of 1389,

when the news of Albrecht's capture came to Iceland.

20

After this, MagnuÂs finishes

15

Storm, op. cit., p. xxi.

16

Storm, op. cit., pp. xiii and xviii. The manuscript of the SkaÂlholt Annals (AM 420a 4to) provides a

counterexample: it is a copy in which the copyist has added blank lines between the notices (Storm,

op. cit., p. xiv). It cannot be determined whether the exemplar contained blank lines between the

notices as well.

17

E. Haug, ªThe Icelandic Annals as Historical Sourcesº, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 22 (1997),

p. 266. Haug's previous citation of Bolin's view, on p. 264, gives this correctly: ª... all their notices as

they appear in the manuscripts are written at a fixed period, not much later than their youngest

noticesº.

18

See S. Nordal, FlateyjarboÂk, vol. 1 (Akranes, 1944), p. xxiv, for the relative chronology of the annal

and the prefatory material; he seems to be following F. JoÂnsson, ªFlateyjarboÂkº, in Aarboger for nordisk

Oldkyndighed og Historie, ser. 3, vol. 7 (1927), pp. 141±142, 144±145.

19

G. VigfuÂsson & C. R. Unger, FlateyjarboÂk, vol. 1 (Christiania, 1860), pp. 28±29.

20

HalldoÂrsson, op. cit., p. 209.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

The FlateyjarboÂk Annals as a Historical Source 237

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his introductory supplements by writing a preface on the verso of the first leaf of the

quire he has prepended to the manuscript:

†essa bok aa Jonn Hakonar sun. er her fyrst aa kuñdi. ‡a huersu Noreghr

bygdizst. ‡a fra Eireki vidforla. †ar nñst fra Olaafi konungi Tryggua syni

medr ollum sinum ‡aattum. ‡ui nñst er sagha Olafs konungs hins helga

Haralldz sunar med ollum sinum ‡aattum ok †ar medr soÃgur Orkneyia jarla.

†a er Suerris sagha. ‡ar eftir Hakonar saga gamla med soghu Magnusar

konungs sunar hans. ‡a er ‡aattr Einars Sokkasunar af Grñnlandi. †ar nñst

fra Helgha ok Vlfui hinum illa. ‡a hefr vpp annaal ‡egar heimrenn er skaptr.

tekr hann allt til ‡ess er nu er komit heimstodunni. hefir skrifat Jonn prestr

‡ordar son fra Eireki vijdforla ok Olaafs sogurnar baadar. enn Magnus prestr

Thorhallz sun hefir skrifat vpp ‡adan ok sua ‡at er fyrr er skrifat. ok lyst alla.

Gledi gud allzualldandi ‡aa er skrifadu ok ‡ann er fyrir sagdi ok iumfru sancta

Maria.

21

[This book belongs to JoÂn HaÂkonarson. In it are poems first, then it tells how

Norway was settled, then about Eirekr Wide-Farer, then about King Olaf

Tryggvason with all its [i.e. the saga's] ‡ñttir. Next comes the saga of King

Olaf Haraldsson the Holy, with all its ‡ñttir and also the sagas of the Orkney

earls. Sverrir's saga comes next, followed by the saga of HaÂkon the Old, with

the saga of King MagnuÂs, his son. Then comes the ‡aÂttr of Einar Sokkason of

Greenland, then next about Helgi and Ulfr the Evil. The annals then begin

from when the world was created. They include everything up to the present

age. The priest JoÂn †oÂr

D

arson wrote about Eirekr Wide-Farer and both of the

Olaf sagas, but the priest MagnuÂs †oÂrhallsson wrote from that point on and

thus that which was previously written [i.e. described above], and illuminated

everything. May all-ruling God gladden the ones who wrote and the one who

dictated, and the Virgin, sancta Maria.]

All this evidence suggests that MagnuÂs worked on the manuscript, including the

compiled portion of the annals, from 1388 to some time during or after the summer

of 1389. The gap of three lines after the entry for 1390, the first such gap in the

annals, indicates the beginning of his contemporaneous reporting. There is no

evidence that he wrote the compiled portion of the annals shortly after 1394, the

year of the youngest entry, as Haug's assertion would have it.

Haug is thus led to a problematic surmise: ªAnnals should be unfolded from their

final entry. The notices should be regarded from the final year's point of view, as an

expression of how a compiler would formulate them from the perspective of

hindsight.º

22

Certainly the notices should be regarded as having been written

retrospectively, because in most of the scenarios outlined here the annalist is dealing

with events that occurred in the past (whether recent or not so recent), but the final

entry is not necessarily the point from which the events were viewed. It may be for

21

VigfuÂsson & Unger, op. cit., p. iii.

22

Haug, op. cit., p. 266.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

238 Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

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some annals, but the writing of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals probably had several

discrete phases during which MagnuÂs was looking back at events: the first effort of

compilation and then each year's entry after that. In addition, because many annals

were compiled by a series of scribes, any retrospective unfolding ± whether from the

final entry or from multiple points within the annal ± would have to be done for the

work of each person who contributed to the manuscript, not just for the last.

Like MagnuÂs's notices for 46 BC through AD 1389, Einar Hafli

D

ason's part in

his annals seems to be an example of retrospective, continuous compilation, rather

than of year-by-year entries. Haug suggests that the entry for 1359, which states

that the Swedish king Erik Magnusson died by poisoning, was based on the Libellus

de Magno Erici Regis (written between 1365 and 1371), which contains this

information.

23

This, in turn, would mean that Einar was at work on his annals

sometime around 1365 or later, and as the last notice in his hand ± which breaks off

in the middle of a sentence ± is for 1361, it is likely that he was writing the entire

text around that time. Haug supposes that the terminus ante quem was September

1393, the date of Einar's death, but this should be moved up to at least 1388, when

MagnuÂs made his copy of Einar's last notice. Indeed, the terminus ante quem was

probably earlier still, perhaps 1380, since this is the date that Storm assigns to the

hand of the second continuator, who finished the interrupted entry for 1361 and

added notices for the years 1362 through 1380.

24

Haug concludes from this and the mistakes of the later continuators that the

Icelandic annals ªwere secondary sources, not contemporary ones, and to a certain

extent based on rumours of doubtful originº.

25

But Einar's use of the Libellus de

Magno Erici Regis (if this is his source) only means that parts of the annals were

secondary sources; some parts of some annals are very likely primary sources. The

contemporary entries of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, for example, describe events in

which JoÂn HaÂkonarson, the man who commissioned the manuscript, was involved.

There is also the example of Einar himself; although he may have composed his

notices years after the fact, he played an active role in the conflict between the

bishop of HoÂlar and the clerics and laymen of Northern Iceland, which he describes

in his entry for 1361.

The example of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals does support one of Haug's most

important points, that annalists could add information about past events for

contemporary reasons. For instance, she discusses the negative evaluation of the

14th-century foreign bishop Nicholaus Rusare that was inserted into the LoÈgmann's

Annals in the 15th century by its fifth continuator. This is not merely a reflection of

the 1430s Icelandic prejudice against foreigners, as Haug asserts; it is an active

revision of the past that supports the fifth continuator's contemporary agenda.

26

If

he was indeed an associate of the men who drowned Bishop John Gereksson

Lodehat in 1433, his evaluation of Nicholaus Rusare helps to create the impression

that the killing of John Gereksson was justified because it stemmed from a long

23

Haug, op. cit., p. 268.

24

Storm, op. cit., p. xxi.

25

Haug, op. cit., pp. 270±271.

26

Haug, op. cit., p. 270.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

The FlateyjarboÂk Annals as a Historical Source 239

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history of mistreatment at the hands of foreign bishops and their men.

27

In the case

of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, MagnuÂs presumably included details about the family of

JoÂn HaÂkonarson in his entries for years far in the past because JoÂn wanted this

information ± especially the doings of his paternal grandfather, Gizurr galli ± to be

part of the historical record. Gizurr had been a hir

D

ma

D

r of King HaÂkon

MagnuÂsson, and the tax exemptions and grants of land that he received from the

king had laid the foundations for several generations' worth of wealth and power,

but as a farmer's son he would have been considered one of the ªnew menº whom

the Icelanders requested in 1302 should not be chosen as loÈgmenn or syÂslumenn.

28

JoÂn

HaÂkonarson undoubtedly had FlateyjarboÂk written to enhance his status and

reputation, and this would have resulted as much from the manuscript's testimony

concerning his family's connection to the Norwegian monarchy as from its sheer

expense.

29

Haug's review of the LoÈgmann's Annals thus refutes the position of the

Norwegian historian Ottar Dahl: ªThe literary form of a narrative will influence it,

and further its prejudice ... Fragmented records of annals will, on the other hand,

leave the data without cosmetics.º

30

Dahl is certainly correct as regards literary

form, but as Haug suggests, annalistic form cannot be said to ªleave the data

without cosmeticsº. For one thing, the annalists selected which data were to be

included, and for another, they often had noticeable biases. In addition to the

examples of the prejudices of the continuators that Haug discusses, Einar

Hafli

D

ason himself had opinions about the events on which he is reporting,

whether praising those he thinks good (e.g. Egill EyjoÂlfsson, Bishop of HoÂlar, who

died in 1341) or reproaching those he finds unworthy. For example, his notice for

1343 has this to say about Bishop Ormr: ªspente hann fast Hola kirkiu godze ‡ui

sem ‡eir herra Egill byskop ok sira Einar Haflida son hofdu vndir komitº [he

quickly spent the goods of the church at HoÂlar, those which Lord Bishop Egill and

Father Einar Hafli

D

ason had accumulated].

31

In the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, MagnuÂs's

comments appear to present the opinion of others, but most likely these are

opinions that he shared. For example, his entry for 1387 includes this note:

ªVtkuoma Eireks Gudmundarsonar med hirdstiorn ok Narfua Sueinssonar med

loÃgsogn yfir haalft land. Skipadir baadir af Ogmundi drozseta ok ‡otti ‡at nylundaº

[Arrival of Eirekr Gu

D

mundarson as hir

D

stjoÂri and Narfi Sveinsson as law-speaker

for half the country, both appointed by steward OÈgmundr, and that was thought

uncommon].

32

In some cases, the reported general opinion may have been shared

by very few. MagnuÂs's notice about the death of King HaÂkon MagnuÂsson (1380)

27

Haug, op. cit., p. 270.

28

H. †orlaÂksson, ªKonungsvald og hefndº, in Sagas and the Norwegian Experience / Sagaene og Noreg.

Preprints of the 10th International Saga Conference, Trondheim, 3±9 August 1997 (Trondheim, 1997), p. 259.

29

For a detailed examination of the importance of JoÂn HaÂkonarson's relationship with his grandfather

to FlateyjarboÂk, see E. Rowe, The Development of FlateyjarboÂk: Iceland and the Norwegian Dynastic Crisis of

1387 (Odense, 2003).

30

Haug, op. cit, p. 264.

31

Storm, op. cit., p. 274.

32

VigfuÂsson and Unger, op. cit., p. 572.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

240 Elizabeth Ashman Rowe

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records that ªñtla menn godann mannº [men think (him a) good man], a sentiment

found in no other contemporary source.

33

Haug finishes with two results:

Ihave demonstrated that one of the annals is not written consecutively. All the

Icelandic annals Ihave studied so far, give the same conclusion. And Ihave

proved the annals to be an interesting source category, although more

interesting as remnants than as narratives.

34

As Ihave demonstrated, not all of these annals do give this conclusion, including

one layer of the LoÈgmann's Annals itself. The examples of year-by-year notices

described above are not extensive when compared to the millennium of history

being recorded, but they are enough to refute Haug's implication that these annals

are nothing but late compilations. These documents have complex textual histories,

and a single manuscript can preserve both contemporary notices and information

about events greatly predating the annalist. However, Haug is quite right to argue

for the necessity of studying the annals as subjective texts rather than as transparent

narratives of historical ªfactsº. Having opened the article with the ªgeneral

opinionº that ªthe annals are narratives of a more fragmented and incoherent

character than a chronicle or a saga. Being records, they are to a certain extent the

opposite of literary sourcesº, Haug goes on to show that as subjective texts, the

annals have a certain amount in common with literary sources.

35

To this conclusion

can also be added the example of the FlateyjarboÂk Annals, for MagnuÂs added them

to a manuscript in which he had already copied the poem Noregs konungatal, the

kings' sagas Sverris saga and HaÂkonar saga (and excerpts from Styrmir KaÂrason's saga

about King Olaf Haraldsson), the short narratives Grñnlendinga ‡aÂttr and Helga ‡aÂttr ok

UÂlfs, and the Icelandic version of the life of St. Edward (JaÂtvar

D

ar saga). The fact that

JoÂn HaÂkonarson wanted (or did not mind having) annals as well as sagas in his fine

manuscript suggests that annals and sagas were for him complementary historical

genres rather than competing ones. Haug remarks, ªAs the annalist could not have

been present at all the occasions he wrote about, he must have based his

information on oral information and perhaps rumour. Carried out to their extreme,

the annals may be perceived as the newspapers of the Middle Ages.º

36

This is

similar to what the eminent Norwegian historian Sverre Bagge says of Sverris saga:

ªThere is every reason to believe that any author who collected this material and

presented it, either in Norway or in Iceland, would find readers or listeners. To turn

to the analogy of the modern press, it contains `good news'.º

37

Compared with the

kings' sagas, the annals are even more complex to analyse, given their multiple

layers of writing, but both are the products of individuals who are writing about the

past for reasons wholly of their present.

33

VigfuÂsson and Unger, op. cit., p. 570. Cf. Storm, op. cit., p. 281.

34

Haug, op. cit., p. 272.

35

Haug, op. cit., p. 264.

36

Haug, op. cit., p. 265.

37

S. Bagge, ªIdeology and Propaganda in Sverris sagaº, in Arkiv foÈr Nordisk Filologi, vol. 108 (1993), p. 12.

Scand. J. History 27 (2002)

The FlateyjarboÂk Annals as a Historical Source 241

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