{"id":20541,"date":"2025-03-10T20:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T00:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20541"},"modified":"2025-03-10T20:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T00:14:09","slug":"islendingabok-kristni-saga-the-book-of-the-icelanders-and-the-story-of-the-conversion-translated-by-sian-gronlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20541","title":{"rendered":"‘\u00cdslendingab\u00f3k, Kristni Saga: The Book of the Icelanders and The Story of the Conversion,’ translated by Si\u00e0n Gr\u00f8nlie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This will not be a review exactly,<\/strong> as I don\u2019t feel qualified to judge a translation from a language I don\u2019t read, and a work of scholarship above my level of erudition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to me, it was very interesting to read \u00cdslendingab\u00f3k, Kristni Saga: The Book of the Icelanders and The Story of the Conversion<\/a><\/em>, translated by Si\u00e0n Gr\u00f8nlie, published by the Viking Society for Northern Research. My friend Dale Nelson gave me my copy a while back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we\u2019re dealing with here is heavily annotated translations of two different books, quite short, which deal with the conversion of the Icelanders. We know the author of the first book, the Book of the Icelanders<\/em>, Ari \u00feorgilsson, who is considered by some the father of Icelandic history. The author of the second, more detailed book, The Story of the Conversion<\/em>, is an unknown churchman. The books center on one of the most famous events in northern history \u2013 the decision of the Icelandic Althing to peacefully adopt the Christian religion. Ari\u2019s account seems to be primarily aimed at telling the story of his own prominent family, while the author of The Story of the Conversion<\/em> seems more concerned with spreading the glory around to several of the prominent families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that I particularly noticed was the passage in The Story of the Conversion<\/em> (a story familiar also from Heimskringla<\/em>) that told about the incident in Trondheim where King Olaf Trygvesson, offended by the Icelanders\u2019 outlawing of his missionary Thangbrand, arrested a group of Icelanders. He was persuaded not to harm them before one of their number could go to Iceland and get their countrymen to convert. I noticed that one of the men listed in this group was Thorarin Nefjolfsson, whom you may recall is a character in my novels West Oversea<\/a><\/em> and King of Rogaland<\/a><\/em>. I thought at first that this was fresh information, but a look at Heimskringla <\/em>informs me that Thorarin is listed there too \u2013 I just never noticed him before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems likely that Thorarin stayed in King Olaf\u2019s retinue, and that may have been where he met Erling Skjalgsson. But I have them meet in Iceland in West Oversea<\/em>, and give them a dramatic adventure together. And I think that was appropriate in terms of fiction. I felt that Thorarin\u2019s bond of loyalty to Erling had to be a particularly strong one, in order for him to take the extraordinary risks he took to help rescue Asbjorn Selsbane for Erling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read somewhere \u2013 without a source cited \u2013 that Thorarin died with Olaf Haraldsson at the Battle of Stiklestad. I\u2019d like to know how he retained Olaf\u2019s favor after pulling such a stunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, this book is an impressive work of scholarly translation, and is recommended for serious students of Icelandic history and the sagas. Not light reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will not be a review exactly, as I don\u2019t feel qualified to judge a translation from a language I don\u2019t read, and a work of scholarship above my level of erudition. But to me, it was very interesting to read \u00cdslendingab\u00f3k, Kristni Saga: The Book of the Icelanders and The Story of the Conversion, … Continue reading ‘\u00cdslendingab\u00f3k, Kristni Saga: The Book of the Icelanders and The Story of the Conversion,’ translated by Si\u00e0n Gr\u00f8nlie<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[5487,1265,5488,5489,5490],"class_list":["post-20541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-reviews","tag-ari-thorgilsson","tag-iceland","tag-sian-gronlie","tag-the-book-of-the-icelanders","tag-the-story-of-the-conversion"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20542,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20541\/revisions\/20542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}