SKALDIC VERSIFYING AND
SOCIAL DISCRIMINATIONIN MEDIEVAL ICELAND

BY

GU‹RÚN NORDALREADER IN ICELANDIC LITERATURE
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND, REYKJAVÍK

The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecturein Northern Studies
delivered at University College London
15 March 2001

PUBLISHED FOR THE COLLEGE BY THE
VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCHLONDON© UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 2003

ISBN: 0 903521 58 X

PRINTED BY SHORT RUN PRESS LIMITED EXETERSKALDIC VERSIFYING AND SOCIALDISCRIMINATION IN MEDIEVAL ICELAND
1S

KALDIC VERSIFYING WAS PRACTISED IN ICELAND FOR MORE THAN

five centuries. It was one of the art forms which the settlers
brought with them when they made their home in this remoteisland in the ninth century, and it did not give way to new poetic
trends until the fourteenth century. We know frustratingly little of
the way skaldic verse was communicated or understood in an oral,
pagan culture, but the earliest written sources give us insight into
the subsequent development of skaldic poetry in Christian society– particularly after 1100 – where it maintained its appeal to aparticular section of society, the aristocratic, learned and religious
community. The apparent continuity and consistency in skaldic
versifying belies the radical social and cultural changes that took
place over a five-hundred year period; changes that in themselves
might seem to undermine the very foundations of skaldic versemaking and weaken its attraction and function in society. But not
so. The strong and elevated position of skaldic verse in a Christianculture comes as a surprise, and we need to ask why verse firmly
rooted in pagan myth held its own in the face of Christian Latin
learning, even becoming the preferred medium for deeply religious
poetry in the twelfth century, and how it redefined its role in the
new Christianized culture. The answers to both these questions lie
partly, I believe, in the relationship between formal school learningand skaldic verse in Iceland.1
The advent of literacy as a result of the Conversion of Icelandsome thousand years ago serves as the dividing line between verse
1 See a more detailed discussion in my book Tools of Literacy. The Role of Skaldic
Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the 12th and 13th Centuries. Toronto, Buffalo,
London 2001.

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SKALDIC VERSIFYING

composed in a predominantly oral society on the one hand and ina written culture on the other. It is convenient to draw this line
around 1100 when writing began and the new Christian culture
had gained considerable ground. It was crucial for the developmentof the young written culture that the learned community, apparently
beginning with Ari fró›i (‘the Learned’) fiorgilsson (1068–1148),
chose to write their historical works and learned treatises in thevernacular. Preference for the Icelandic language in historical
writing – instead of Latin – could not however be guaranteed unless
it was supported by a forceful and comprehensive educational
policy in the cultivation of new generations of writers and learned
men. But how could this be achieved? I will argue that skaldic
verse was discovered at this early date as a crucial mediator between
the study of grammatica in the schools and the indigenous oral
traditions, thus ensuring that skaldic verse remained strikingly
fashionable and ‘modern’ – so to speak – in medieval Iceland.
2
The gradual adoption of skaldic verse in an educational frameworkby the twelfth- and thirteenth-century élite is best explained byfollowing the life of a key figure in securing skaldic poetry a place
within the schools. Moreover the pattern of his life reveals thesocial discrimination inherent in skaldic versifying and in the
documentation of skaldic verse in the twelfth, thirteenth andfourteenth centuries. The man in question, Einarr Skúlason, wasborn in Iceland c. 1090, first mentioned as a priest in 1114 at the
court of King Sigur›r, the traveller to Jerusalem.2 It is of note thathis priestly status is highlighted on his first appearance in thesources, indicating that he must have been ordained before
travelling to Scandinavia. He is never mentioned as a participant
in political affairs in Iceland but there is an important reference tohim in Ari fiorgilsson’s list of high-born priests in 1143,3 which
implies that he was in Iceland at least at this time, possibly living
2 Morkinskinna. Ed. Finnur Jónsson (Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk
litteratur 53). Copenhagen 1932, 375. English translation by Theodor Andersson
and Kari Ellen Gade published as volume 51 in the Islandica series, 2000.
3 Diplomatarium Islandicum I. Ed. Jón Sigur›sson. Copenhagen 1857–76, 185–6.

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AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

on his family’s estate at Borg in M‡rar. The chronological list of
court poets, Skáldatal, notes twelve kings and earls in Denmark,Sweden and Norway for whom he composed verse.4 He rose to
the distinguished position of stallari, ‘marshall’, at King Eysteinn
Haraldsson’s court. In 1152 or ’53, when he was around sixty, hecomposed the first known metrical vita of St. Óláfr, where he refers
to recent miracles that had occurred in Constantinople only a few
years prior to the poem’s composition. He recited the poem at theshrine of St Óláfr in Nidaros cathedral in the presence of King
Eysteinn, King Sigur›r and King Ingi, and the newly appointed
archbishop. His professional career abroad therefore spans morethan forty years. He is not mentioned in the sources after 1160.
Einarr Skúlason’s is a remarkable life of exciting contrasts. He
was evidently born of a distinguished family, possibly educated asa chieftain’s son in the first cathedral school in Iceland, run by
Bishop Ísleifr at Skálholt from 1056: ‘when chieftains and good men
realized that Ísleifr was much more effective than other clergymen
available in the country, many gave him their sons to teach, and hadthem ordained.’5 We can surmise that Einarr enjoyed at least theminimal education befitting priests, notwithstanding the rudimentary state of education in Iceland in his time. Even though oursources are silent as to the details of the education of students at
the early schools in Iceland, they would certainly have studied grammatica. Grammatica was the most important discipline in the schools,
and every student would study the classical textbooks – and probably also the native ones when they appeared – as part of his education.
Our earliest sources seem to suggest that the theoretical analysisof language and composition included in the study of grammatica
was from the very first period applied to Icelandic vernacularliterature and to this end skaldic poetry proved the only fitting
4 King Sƒrkvir Kolsson of Sweden (no verse preserved), Earl Jón Sƒrkvisson (noverse preserved), King Sigur›r Jórsalafari, King Eysteinn Magnússson, King Haraldr
gilli, King Magnús blindi (no verse preserved), King Ingi Haraldsson, King Sigur›r
Haraldsson, King Eysteinn Haraldsson, Sveinn sví›andi (no verse preserved) and theNorwegian chiefs Gregoríus Dagsson (only in the Skáldatal preserved with Snorra
Edda in Codex Upsaliensis, DG 11 4to) and Eindri›i ungi (also in Codex Upsaliensis).
See Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Jón Sigur›sson. Hafniæ 1848–87, III, 270–86.
5 Íslendingabók. Ed. Jakob Benediktsson (Íslenzk fornrit 1). Reykjavík 1968, 20.

5SKALDIC VERSIFYING

genre. The mid-twelfth-century First Grammatical Treatise shows
clear acquaintance with skaldic verse. But why did skaldic verse
interest its learned Christian author? Classical pagan poets, suchas Vergil, Horace and Ovid, were the great authorities in the Latin
textual culture which served as the foundation for the emerging
vernacular literary culture in Iceland in the eleventh century.
Their example was scrutinized in the grammatical literature and,presumably, influenced the way learned men in Iceland in theeleventh and twelfth centuries came to regard and treat their own
indigenous, pagan literary heritage. By the thirteenth century theskaldic poets had taken their place alongside the Latin auctoresreferred to in the study of grammatica in the European schools,
because they fulfilled the same criteria: they observed stringent
metrical rules in their verse and alluded to pagan myth and legendin their imagery and kennings. These two distinctive features madeskaldic verse a fitting model for the writers of grammatica in their
explication of orthography and phonology and in their elucidationof rhetorical devices. The early pagan poets of the North werethus acknowledged and respected by the Christian community for
their poetic excellence, in the same way as were the pagan Latin
poets, such as Vergil and Ovid, in a Latin culture. Reference topagan imagery was thus legitimized at the heart of the Christianculture, as is manifested in twelfth-century Christian poetry suchas Einarr Skúlason’s influential poem Geisli.6 But how representative are these two pioneers, the First Grammarian and Einarr
Skúlason, of their time? Our twelfth-century sources are too scarce
to allow us to determine whether their view of the pagan indigenous
tradition was accepted by the whole learned community as early as
the mid-twelfth century, particularly by the early, and not wholly
consolidated, Icelandic Church. However, the maturity of these early
endeavours cannot be ignored, and they developed from a painstaking consideration of fundamental issues relating to writing in
the vernacular as well as from a confidence in the native traditionin the face of the strong current of Latin Christian learning.
6 Even though direct references to the pagan gods grew fewer in the 11th and 12th

centuries (see Bjarne Fidjestøl. ‘Pagan beliefs and Christian impact: The contributionof scaldic studies.’ In Viking Revaluations. Viking Society Centenary Symposium

6AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

Four Icelandic grammatical treatises are preserved from the middle
ages and all of them in manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, thethirteenth-century textbook of skaldic poetics.7 One manuscript fromthe fourteenth century, the Codex Wormianus, preserves all four
together, and they are usually referred to by the order they are enteredin that vellum, First, Second, Third and Fourth, which also accords
with their likely relative ages. All four depend on or refer to skaldic
verse. The first two treatises deal with Icelandic orthography andphonology, and both allude to skaldic verse in their treatment of thelanguage. The First Grammarian writing in the middle of the twelfth
century cites skaldic verse on two occasions, and he uses minimal
pairs to distinguish between sounds and to argue for his spellingsystem. Minimal pair distinction is at the centre of his terminology,
and is likely to have arisen, as Roberta Frank has pointed out, ‘naturally in a cultural milieu trained to distinguish the alternating skothending and a›alhending of the skalds’.8 The second is preservedin one manuscript in conjunction with Snorri Sturluson’s clavis
metrica, Háttatal, and sheds theoretical light on sound distinctionsin the different types of skaldic metres. The third was written by Snorri
Sturluson’s nephew, Óláfr fiór›arson, in the middle of the thirteenth
century, and contains both an account of orthography and phonology based on Priscian’s Institutiones, and an analysis of the normative rules of style from Book 3 of Donatus’s Ars maior. The Fourth
Grammatical Treatise is the latest, written in the fourteenth century. It is an adaptation of Alexander de Villa Dei’s Doctrinale andEberhard of Bethune’s Græcismus.9 The third and fourth treatises,
which are adaptations of classical textbooks in grammatica, cite agreat number of skaldic verses by pre-Christian as well as contemporary poets, instead of translating the examples of the Latin original.
14–15 May 1992. Ed. A. Faulkes and R. Perkins. London 1993, 100–120), the pertinenceof the pagan belief system to kenning constructions is never challenged by the poets.
7 A fragment of a ‘fifth’ treatise is preserved in the A-manuscript of Snorra Edda,
AM 748 Ib 4to.
8 Roberta Frank. Old Norse Court Poetry: The Dróttkvætt Stanza (Islandica 42).
Ithaca and London 1978, 37.
9 Björn M. Ólsen. ‘Indledning.’ In Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandlingi Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske afhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg
(Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur 12). Copenhagen 1884, XLII–XLIII.

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SKALDIC VERSIFYING

Learning was the privilege chiefly of men of Einarr’s social class,men who belonged to the affluent and powerful section of society.
The ease with which skaldic verse was adopted by the Christiancommunity at large suggests a well-defined study of the medium
in an educational context, inside and outside the Church, possibly
by the twelfth century. The study of the art of skaldic poetry wasin essence a study of skaldic versifying.10 However, the poverty of
documentation from the twelfth century should caution us against
asserting that every learned establishment in the country followed
the same educational policy, particularly the Church establishments.
But even if this conjecture were judged tenable, it would not ruleout the continuation of skaldic verse-making outside the school
milieu and among the illiterate in society. It would however explain
how skaldic verse became a crucial tool in scholastic learning andhistoriography in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The
successful introduction of the oral, pagan heritage in Latin Christianculture in Iceland through the intermediary characteristics of skaldic
verse is – I believe – at the root of the flourishing literary productionof the thirteenth century. There is an unequivocal tie between theart of the skaldic poet and the vernacular prose writings of thethirteenth century, as becomes apparent when we study Einarr
Skúlason’s work.
3
Einarr stands on the threshold of a new, exciting era when he starts
school in the first years of the twelfth century. Even though there
are no direct references to his school days, his metrical compositions bear witness to his learning. It would seem that his own
verse-making was nurtured by academic training and that he composed verse which could be studied in a school framework. His
impeccable command of internal rhyme and thus of the vowel system
10 See Rita Copeland. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle
Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge 1991, 161, where shesuggests that the works on poetics ‘teach the art of composition through the art offormal literary analysis’. See also Douglas Kelly. ‘The scope of the treatment ofcomposition in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century arts of poetry’. Speculum 41,
1966, 261–78.

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AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

may suggest formal schooling.11 Such stringent regularity is also
attested by the poem Háttalykill, a clavis metrica, by the Orcadianearl Rƒgnvaldr kali and the Icelander Hallr fiórarinsson, composedat about the same time as Einarr’s Geisli. Háttalykill apparently
reflects a need for the systematization of skaldic metrics, and is at
the same time rooted in royal chronology. The same intrinsic relationship between a study of skaldic versifying and royal historia ispresent in Geisli, as I will discuss later. Anne Holtsmark detectedtraces of Latin learning in Háttalykill, and suggested that it cameinto being as a verse game whereby two poets competed in composing a stanza in the same metre.12 The rhyme is indeed very
regular in these two twelfth-century poems, which may suggest asystematic study of language such as would be entailed in the studyof grammatica. Regularity of rhyme alone cannot, however, determine the poet’s learning. More significantly, we find in Einarr’s
corpus traces of instructional verse only preserved in the context
of textbooks of skaldic poetics or in the grammatical treatises.
Few words need to be said about the provenance of the elevenverses by Einarr Skúlason which Finnur Jónsson arranged under
the invented name ‘Øxarflokkr’ – a poem about an axe.13 This title ispurely fictional, as is the existence of such a poem. However, someof these verses are clustered together in Skáldskaparmál in Snorra
Edda in a way which indicates that they may have belonged together at an earlier stage. In Skáldskaparmál Snorri Sturluson rarely
cites a sequence of stanzas by the same poet, and when he does theverses are most often drawn from the same poem. 14 We can
11 See Finnur Jónsson’s remark in his Litteraturhistorie II. Copenhagen 1923,

71–2 (2nd edition).
12 In Háttalykill enn forni (Bibliotheca Arnamagnæanæ A1). Ed. Jón Helgason
and Anne Holtsmark. Copenhagen 1941, 118–34.
13 Jón Sigur›sson created the title ‘Øxarflokkr’ (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Jón
Sigur›sson. Hafniæ 1848–87, III, 364–5). The title has since been used for the verses
printed together in Finnur Jónsson’s Den norsk-islandske Skjaldedigtning. København 1912–15, A I 477–9, B1 449–51.
14 This point needs to be discussed more fully in another paper, but I will note a
few examples of this practice from the first part of Skáldskaparmál. The verse
numbers are drawn from Skáldskaparmál 1. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. London 1997:
15–16 (Sonatorrek), 27–8 (Vellekla), 34–5 (Vellekla), 45–7 (poem by Eysteinn
Valdason), 51–2 (by Bragi, 51 from Ragnarsdrápa, the other stanza is from an

9SKALDIC VERSIFYING

therefore conjecture that the seven stanzas cited in the gold section(vv. 145–9, 193–4) originally belonged to the same poem, andprobably the eighth cited separately in that same section (183).
Another peculiarity in the case of some of these verses is the citationof whole stanzas, whereas Snorri’s general practice in Skáldskaparmál is to refer to couplets or helmingar.15 If we regard these eightstanzas cited in the context of gold-kennings as belonging to thesame poem, it is striking that the imagery is only drawn from themyths of Freyja and Fró›i. Einarr describes gold solely by reference
to these two myths. The first five verses are cited in conjunction
with Freyja and contain an energetic and accomplished elaborationon the theme of Freyja’s tears, worthy of the brilliance we arefamiliar with in the author of Geisli. He shows his skill and knowledge of pagan myth by alluding to Freyja through her different
family and social positions. In one stanza he describes the weapon
through a reference to Freyja’s daughter (mær Gefnar) Hnoss,whose name means a treasure. Hnoss is brought to the poet’s bed(be›), as if the poet has received a woman from the king, not a weapon.
The reference is not, however, improper, for the wording lei›a ‘lead’
invokes the marriage ceremony. Citing the text of Codex Regius:
Ríkr leiddi mey mækis The powerful controller of sword-meetings[battles] led Gefn’s [Freyja’s] maid to themótvaldr á be› skaldi
poet’s [my] bed covered with Gautrekr’s
Gefnar gló›um drifna
Gautreks svana brautar.16 swans’ [ships’] road’s [sea’s] embers [fire, gold].

It is noteworthy that Einarr Skúlason, the priest, describes theweapon in terms of pagan mythology, thereby linking his verses
generically to earlier mythological poems in the context of goldkennings such as Haustlƒng and Ragnarsdrápa, and producing an
inventive and imaginative amalgamation of old and new poetic
unknown poem), 55–6 (Húsdrápa), 105–6 (by Arnórr, possibly from fiorfinnsdrápa),113–14 (by Arnórr, 113 from an otherwise unknown poem, 114 from Rƒgnvaldsdrápa), 118–19 (from Hallfre›r’s Hákonardrápa), 128–32 (by Einarr Skúlason).
15 It is impossible to say whether the three additional fragments cited by Finnur inØxarflokkr, two half stanzas (244–5) cited in sequence in the context of weapon
kennings or the anonymous stanza from the Third Grammatical Treatise, belonged
to the same poem.
16 Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. London 1997, v. 149.

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traditions. In doing so, Einarr also endorses the instructional valueof mythological poems composed in pagan times, such as Haustlƒng and fiórsdrápa, for generations of poets. It is striking that these
poems, whatever their original context may have been, are only
preserved in Skáldskaparmál in Snorra Edda and therefore only
function in an educational framework. Einarr’s intention in composing his stanzas is likewise descriptive and they too are only
preserved in Skáldskaparmál, a work which typifies the didactic
importance of skaldic verse.
4Einarr Skúlason sought both to achieve social recognition at the
courts of Scandinavian dignitaries, and to enjoy a privileged position in Iceland as a chieftain-priest, and he seems to have managed
both. We could perhaps tentatively refer to his third latent occupation in life as skaldic scholarship. His verse-making also reflects
two distinct but not exclusive subject matters, panegyrics of royal
patrons and a celebration of the spiritual life of St Óláfr in Geisli,along with his instructional verse. These spheres are not contradictory, but complement each other, as is attested by the works ofa number of poets in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Einarr
Skúlason is perhaps not a typical man of his age, when we consider
the 50,000 people living in Iceland in the twelfth century; his privileged background and opportunities in life immediately distinguishhim from most of his contemporaries. But he can be compared toother men of his social standing who dominate the Icelandic sourcesof the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Einarr not only worked as a professional poet at the courts ofdistinguished Scandinavian rulers, he contributed to the establishment of the master-poets – or auctores – within Icelandic royalhistoriography. In doing so he sets an important example followedby Snorri Sturluson and other saga-writers of the thirteenth century.
His poem Geisli is a pioneering work in many ways. Einarr is thefirst known Icelandic author to be commissioned by the court tocompose a life of a Norwegian king, in this case a metricalhagiography of St Óláfr. He uses not only contemporary sourceson the king’s holiness in the poem, emphasizing Óláfr’s sainthood
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SKALDIC VERSIFYING

by listing miracles that were witnessed after his death, he probably
also relies on a lost version of Passio Olavi from the middle of thetwelfth century, which is preserved in an Old Norse reworking in
the Norwegian book of homilies. His sophisticated method ofcomposition at this early date is of great interest. He is working in
the middle of the twelfth century as a learned and skilled author,
using and judging the reliability of a wide selection of sources: a
Latin text, stories of miracles and skaldic verse composed for Óláfr.
Einarr’s poem is in effect the first saga of St Óláfr in the vernacular,
and the thread between his poem and Snorri’s Separate Saga of StÓláfr is unbroken. Einarr does not give a detailed description ofÓláfr’s life in the poem, but cites instead two of Óláfr’s court poets,Óttarr svarti and Sighvatr fiór›arson, as sources for the saint’s life:
Sigvatr frák at seg›isóknbrá›s jƒfurs dá›ir.
Spurt hefr ƒld at ortiÓttarr of gram dróttar.
fieir hafa flengils Mœra –flví’s s‡st – frama l‡stan,helgum l‡tk, es hétuhƒfu›skald fira, jƒfri.17

I have heard that Sighvatr told about thedeeds of the aggressive king.
People have learned that Óttarr composed verse about the king of the court.
They who were called men’s master
poets have described the glory of theking of the Mœrir – that is done – I bow
to the holy king.

This stanza is of particular importance because it is later echoed in
Snorri’s short version of the Prologue to the Saga of St Óláfr,
preserved in the Bergsbók manuscript, which is also one of thetwo manuscripts containing the poem Geisli (the other is Flateyjarbók). Possibly following Einarr, Snorri Sturluson in his Prologuerefers only to these two poets, Sighvatr fiór›arson and Óttarr svarti,
as the most reliable sources for the life of St Óláfr.
I suggested before that the use of skaldic verse in the teaching ofgrammatica was at the root of vernacular saga-writing in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, and that Geisli documented its links toroyal historiography. Writers and poets such as Einarr in Geisli referto skaldic stanzas composed by eleventh-century poets as their sourcesin works about the first Christian kings, but the sources for the
17 Geisli 12, after Bergsbók (Holm perg. 1 fol.). Ed. Gustaf Lindblad (Early Icelandic
Manuscripts in Facsimile 5). Copenhagen 1963, fol. 117rb, 7–9. Normalized spelling.

12AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

lives of the early, pagan kings would have been composed in a predominantly illiterate society. How could this pagan and early
Christian verse – this important historical source – be rendered in
the Latin alphabet? We can envisage a need for exact rules of orthography and phonology to secure a faithful presentation of the verse.
The First Grammatical Treatise written at about the same time as
Geisli admirably fulfils this need, even though its author does notindicate that the Treatise was written for that reason. The use ofskaldic verse in the context of the study of grammatica in theschools was a necessary prerequisite for early skaldic verse to berespected as a reliable source in the historical kings’ sagas, even though
this approach may seem anachronistic as far as the old verse isconcerned. Snorri Sturluson was aware of this fundamental requirement. He states in the Prologue to the Separate Saga of St. Óláfr:
fiau or›, er í kve›skap standa, eru in sƒmu sem í fyrstu váru, ef rétter kve›it, flótt hverr ma›r hafi sí›an numit at ƒ›rum, ok má flví ekki
breyta.18
The words which stand in verse are the same as they were originally, if
the verse is composed correctly, even though they have passed fromman to man, and that cannot be altered.

And he repeats this notion in the Prologue to Heimskringla:
En kvæ›in flykkja mér sízt ór sta› fœr›, ef flau eru rétt kve›in ok
skynsamliga upp tekin.19
And the poems seem to me least disturbed if their metre is correct andthey are interpreted in a sensible way.

A reliable rendering of these oral compositions in the Latin alphabet
was therefore fundamental to the acceptance of the verse in the
kings’ sagas, which would give the authors – the master-poets –credibility in the written culture.
Critical selection from the most respectable poets, distinguishedas the master-poets (hƒfu›skald) is a strong feature of the textbooks
in skaldic poetics and the grammatical treatises, as early indeed asin the First Grammatical Treatise, and the importance of the poets
18 Heimskringla II. Ed. Bjarni A›albjarnarson (Íslenzk fornrit 27). Reykjavík 1945, 422.
19 Heimskringla I. Ed. Bjarni A›albjarnarson (Íslenzk fornrit 26). Reykjavík 1941, 7.

13SKALDIC VERSIFYING– or auctores – to official historiography is born out by Skáldatal,
the list of poets. This list is preserved in two versions in manuscripts
of Snorri Sturluson’s works, the Kringla manuscript of Heimskringla
and the Codex Upsaliensis of Snorra Edda. Its place in these two
manuscripts highlights the strong relationship between the studyof skaldic poetics and royal saga-writing, which is also apparent
in the two twelfth-century poems, Geisli and Háttalykill. Skáldatal
is not only a catalogue of poets, but primarily a list of successive
kings and earls in Scandinavia. The composition of the list belongs
clearly to the writing of chronology and genealogy, and to thecompiling of records of the past which formed the basis for historical writing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The affiliationof the list to the writing of kings’ sagas is borne out by the fact that, as
far as we know, not all the kings and earls listed in Skáldatal had
poems composed for them. Yet they earn their place in the catalogue.
All the works I have mentioned – the two poems, the First GrammaticalTreatise, and Skáldatal – are products of the same cultural milieu.
Einarr Skúlason emphasized the authority of two poets in his
poetic life of St Óláfr, and his own importance among the skalds
was highlighted by the writers that succeeded him. His verse
enjoyed unusual popularity in medieval skaldic scholarship. We
have already noted that Skáldatal chronicles his service to twelve
Scandinavian dignitaries, and he is cited extensively in the sagasof the twelfth-century kings. He is the most popular poet in Snorri’s
Skáldskaparmál (following the Codex Regius version), and he isquoted extensively in the Third and Fourth Grammatical Treatises.
The critical selection of pieces by the respectable skalds in theworks of grammatica and the kings’ sagas may also be counted apolitical act, controlled by the élite who wrote or commissioned
the writing of manuscripts and the composition of poetry. Einarr
Skúlason belonged to this privileged group, and the preservationof his verse in – or in the context of – the kings’ sagas and in thelearned treatises reflects his cultural and social background.
5
The history of Icelandic literature is traditionally supposed to startwith Sæmundr the Learned Sigfússon (b. 1056) and Ari the Learned
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AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION

fiorgilsson who wrote important historical works in the late eleventhand the first part of the twelfth century. Each had the cognomen
hinn fró›i, which indicates the respect for their learning and theirauthority in the written culture. None of Sæmundr’s writings exist,
but Ari’s Íslendingabók and his contribution to the writing ofLandnámabók (the Book of Settlements) attest to his learning andknowledge of classical historiography. While their groundbreaking
achievements are well known, the role of the poets in the development of vernacular saga writing has been less remarked.20
Einarr Skúlason is a near-contemporary of these two pioneers,and I would argue that his metrical compositions were also
influential in shaping the textual culture of the twelfth century.
His works are – as we have seen – deeply rooted in scholastic
tradition, in the study of grammatica, royal chronology and skaldic
poetics. Einarr Skúlason should be acknowledged as one of themost influential twelfth-century figures in the transition between
the pagan tradition of the early skalds, and the new era in the late
twelfth century where skaldic verse was given an eminent place inthe textual culture of the time. Einarr Skúlason’s position in theskaldic hierarchy and in the textual culture supports this claim.
We witness variations on Einarr’s life in the lives of many privileged men of his time and in the next generations; educated andhigh-born men who composed panegyrics for kings and earls aswell as religious verse. I could mention two examples in thethirteenth century: the scholar, court poet and sub-deacon Óláfr
fiór›arson, Snorri’s nephew, the author of the Third GrammaticalTreatise and possible author of kings’ sagas, and Gizurr fiorvaldsson, the court poet and sub-deacon who became the first earl of
Iceland in 1258. There are more such men of note who exemplify the strong hold of the élite on learning and skaldic versecomposition in medieval Iceland, which made skaldic verse oneof the class symbols of the thirteenth-century Icelandic aristocracy.
The existence of a systematic study of skaldic verse in the context
of grammatical literature does not exclude the active study of the
20 I discuss this matter more fully in my essay ‘Samhengi› í íslenskum fornbókmenntum.’ In Sagnaheimur. Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 80th Birthday, 26th May 2001. Ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir and Rudolf Simek. Wien 2001, 91–106.

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art-form outside the schoolroom. It is likely that poets continued
to learn their art in the same way as had been the practice of theirilliterate colleagues of the past. We cannot exclude the possibility
that the unknown poets represent a group distinct from that comprising the more privileged skalds; a group filled with poets of lowerranking families who sought to strengthen their position in society
by mastering the favoured art-form of the aristocracy. Moreover
we must acknowledge that access to learning does not necessarily
imply that all members of the élite were educated, only that education
was most readily available to those belonging to the privilegedclasses to the exclusion of the less privileged and the community at large. Some poets who belonged to the ruling class could
even have studied skaldic verse-making outside the schoolroom.
Twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources rarely mention whether aperson had enjoyed formal education; it is nevertheless possible
to deduce from his activity in life and by scrutinizing his compositions
whether he came from a learned background. Einarr’s example isa case in point. The difficulty remains, however, that we have few
means by which to ascertain the role which skaldic verse played insociety generally, other than by analysing the historical sources,
grammatical treatises and Snorra Edda. When we look closely at the
profession of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century poet a picture ofsocial discrimination emerges. But it only reflects the tangible evidence
displayed by the manuscripts; that is, it reveals the élite’s interests
and their control of the information technology of the time: book production. Skaldic verse which did not meet its interests or which functioned outside their social milieu must regrettably remain hidden.
Skaldic and eddic poetry are the only known literary genres tohave been transmitted from an oral culture and adapted to a written
one, and the process of teasing out the service rendered by skaldic
verse in the development of the textual culture in early Icelandbrings to life the vigour and creativity of the literate community inthe twelfth century. Today I have brought to your attention the
intriguing implications of this phenomenon for Icelandic literaryculture. The accomplishments of Einarr Skúlason and his contemporaries reveal the imagination and confidence with which thesemen embraced and overcame the cultural challenges of their time,and demonstrate how they redefined their heritage for the future.
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