Íslendingabók
The Íslendingabók (the Icelandic Book or Liber Islandorum ) is the oldest known historical work of Iceland .
It was written around 1125 by the Icelander Ari Þorgilsson (Ari the Scholar) and depicts the history of Iceland from the conquest by Norwegian upper-class families to 1118. The original version has not been preserved, but his own revision of the text has been made. According to his own statements, he left out the genealogical registers ("áttartala") and royal biographies ("konunga ævi") of the original version in this version.
Language and style
The book was written in Icelandic , very contrary to the custom of the time . Normally, Latin was also used by scholars of this time in Iceland , which was the international scientific language until the Baroque period . In a certain way, Ari fróði established the tradition of writing scientific texts in the mother tongue even in the early days of Icelandic literature. His style is concise, and you can see that he was quite proficient in Latin himself.
Scientific working method and content
Ari was already working with documents, citing his sources and documenting dates. His most important source was his foster father Hallr von Haukadalur , who died in 1089 at the age of 94. This had been a follower of Olav the Saint . He had other sources as well. But he also used written sources: Beda Venerabilis , Adam von Bremen , and foreign annals.
The focus of the presentation is on the Allthing ( Alþingi ) and the Church. The work is divided into 10 chapters, the first five of which contain the settlement, the first laws and the foundation of the Allthings in 930. Chapter 6 deals with the discovery and settlement of Greenland in 986. Chapter 7, the longest, deals with the introduction of Christianity. Chapter 8 covers the 11th century and the activities of foreign missionaries. Chapters 9 and 10 deal with the history of Iceland under the bishops Ísleifur Gissurarson (1056-1080) and his son, Bishop Gissur Ísleifsson (1082-1118).
Ari's chronology
Ari used a relative chronology for the most part . Only four dates are formulated as dates: the death of Pope Gregory the Great in 604, the killing of the English King Edmund in 870, the death of Olav the Saint in 1000 and the beginning of a new calendar calculation in 1120. With the information 870 and 1000 he linked the settlement of Iceland and the introduction of Christianity with continental chronology. The indication 1120 served to make it easier for the reader to find his way around the relative chronology with the help of the Easter tablets. The information 604 for the death of Gregory provided the control that the back calculation via the Easter tables also worked. This is concluded from the fact that this number is mentioned as the last absolute date at the end of the work and the relative chronology is not linked to it. Ari was not satisfied with stating the absolute year, but also determined Gregor's death relative to the table of Eastern Roman emperors. Bede also has this double dating in his Historia ecclesiastica Book II, Chap. 1 applied, which is why it was assumed for a long time that Ari relied on Beda's historical work. However, this came to the wrong result 605, from which it is concluded today that Beda was not used directly for this dating, but at most via secondary literature. The date itself was probably taken from Johannes Diaconus, as a parallel is drawn between the times of need after the death of Gizur in Iceland and the times of need after the death of Gregory described in Johannes in his Vita Gregorii pape . Both use the topos of describing the years of distress after a man's death as an indication of his size and importance. Both link their relative chronology to the second year of the reign of the Eastern Roman emperor Phocas . It remains unproven whether Ari even knew Beda's historical work.
Preserved manuscripts
The oldest surviving manuscript of the version revised by Ari dates from the 17th century and was written by Jón Erlendsson for Brynjólfur Sveinsson , the bishop of Skálholt . Jón copied a manuscript from the 12th century that has since been lost. This medieval manuscript must have been lost soon after it was copied, because Árni Magnússon , who traveled through Iceland in the late 17th century and collected medieval manuscripts, could no longer find any trace of it.
Individual evidence
literature
- Ólafia Einarsdóttir: Studier i kronologisk metode i tidlig islandsk historieskrivning (= Bibliotheca Historica Lundensis . Volume 13 ). Gleerups, Lund 1964, OCLC 877475448 .
- Jonna Louis-Jensen: Ari and Gregor . In: Nordiska Studier i Filologi och lingvistik. Festskrift tillägnad Gösta Holm på 60-årsdagen den 8 july 1976. Studentlitteratur AB, Lund 1976, ISBN 91-44-12851-7 , p. 273-279 .
- Íslendingabók. In: Rudolf Simek , Hermann Pálsson : Lexicon of Old Norse Literature. The medieval literature of Norway and Iceland (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 490). 2nd, significantly increased and revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-520-49002-5 , pp. 208-209.
Web links
- Íslendingabók on sjalfala - Old Norse readings for self-study