Haug - The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney] On: 06 August 2013, At: 14:56 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Scandinavian Journal of History Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/shis20 The icelandic annals as historical sources Eldbjørg Haug a a Ospelia 1, Fetsund, 1900, Norway Published online: 23 Jun 2008. To cite this article: Eldbjrg Haug (1997) The icelandic annals as historical sources, Scandinavian Journal of History, 22:4, 263-274, DOI: 10.1080/03468759708579356 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03468759708579356 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/ page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Haug - The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources

This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney]On: 06 August 2013, At: 14:56Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Scandinavian Journal of HistoryPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/shis20

The icelandic annals as historicalsourcesEldbjørg Haug aa Ospelia 1, Fetsund, 1900, NorwayPublished online: 23 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Eldbjrg Haug (1997) The icelandic annals as historical sources,Scandinavian Journal of History, 22:4, 263-274, DOI: 10.1080/03468759708579356

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03468759708579356

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions andviews of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. Theaccuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independentlyverified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liablefor any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources

Eldbjørg Haug

Up until around 1280 there was an abundance of writing on Norwegian history.The historiography consisted mainly of sagas, most of them written by Icelanders.The last saga we know of is about Magnus Lagabøte, but unfortunately only afragment of it has survived. From the 14th century onwards we find no writing ofthis kind, but there are narrative sources relating to the history of Norway in theIcelandic Annals.

Owing to the lack of sources, the 14th century is a rather obscure period inNorwegian history. The Icelandic Annals therefore hold a central position assources for the political history of that century. It has been assumed that the realannalistics on Iceland started around 1300.

Issues such as the coronation of Magnus Eriksson in Stockholm in 1336, theBlack Death in Norway and the church policy of Queen Margaret all have theIcelandic annals as important sources (Haug 1996). Hallvard Magerøy used them todetermine the communications between Norway and Iceland (Magerøy 1993).Some historians evidently regard the annals as such a comprehensive sourcecategory that they insist that what is not mentioned in them, has never occurred.Edvard Bull has maintained that the annals are the main sources to medievalhistory, and Knut Dørum took the same position in a debate with me recently(Haug 1995b).

I began to question the Icelandic Annals when I needed some of their notices tothrow light on Magnus Eriksson's and Queen Margaret's church policy (Haug1996).

At the outset I shared the common opinion that the Annals were contemporaryto the events they described. But I soon discovered that an event was not alwaysannotated in the same year in different annals. Some events were even writtenabout twice in the same annal, but often under different years. It is difficult todecide which notice to rely on when there are only two sources - one that states aand one that states b. It is thus necessary to ascertain the years of the eventsaccording to the yearbook. It is also necessary to question to what extent the noticeswere contemporary. Could it be that the annals had not been written year by yearin an ongoing process after all? Equally important - did there exist other sources toevents annotated in the notices which could be studied as exhibits to the annals?And, if we regard the yearbooks from a holistic point of view, when did they take

Eldbjørg Haug, born 1947, cand.philol, PhD. is an advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Important publishedworks include Bygdehistorie for Fet fra de eldste tider til ca. 1800 (1980); and Provincia Nidrosiensis idronning Margretes unions- og maktpolitikk (with an English summary) (1996).

Address: Ospelia 1, 1900 Fetsund, Norway.

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the form in which they have been left to us? Would it be possible to date them inrelation to each other?

To answer these questions, I first explain something of the research situation.Then I try to demonstrate source criticism applied to the Icelandic annals. As anexample on how to evaluate a yearbook, I use notices from the Lögmann's annals.Finally, the source value of the annals is assessed.

1. The characteristics of annals

Annals were written by the Romans, but the source class is held to be medieval,starting in the 8th century. It is believed that medieval annalistics started in Britainas notices in the Easter tables. Every monastery had to keep such tables because ofthe complicated calculation of Easter. It was considered heretical to celebrateEaster at the wrong time. Since some of these yearbooks start with the life of Jesusor the consulate of Caesar, we know that at least some of the events in the annalsare neither contemporary to the writer nor immediate, first-hand sources.

In the Icelandic Annals we thus find some letters in the margin, which are takenfrom the chronological system of Bede and tell the date of Easter Sunday for eachyear. There are many other similarities with English annals as well, and there isreason to believe that the Icelandic annalists started by copying English annals.

It is a general opinion that the annals are narratives of a more fragmented andincoherent character than a chronicle or a saga. Being records, they are to a certainextent the opposite of literary sources. The Norwegian historian Ottar Dahl holdsthis to be significant. "The literary form of a narrative will influence it, and furtherits prejudice", he says. "Fragmented records of annals will, on the other hand, leavethe data without cosmetics." The contents of the annals are sparse. We often findthat the description of an event is not written out in complete sentences. In thisrespect the annals differ both from history writing like the sagas, and fromchronicles.

As the name indicates, they are written year by year - often starting with theIncarnation.

The Icelandic Annals are also considered to be written in an on-going process,although critical examinations of other Nordic annalistics have indicated that alltheir notices as they appear in the manuscripts are written at a fixed period, notmuch later than their youngest notices. All the oldest Icelandic annals are based onolder yearbooks, but it has been assumed that the last notices in each of them wereindependent continuations and contemporary information, written down consecu-tively year by year. One could imagine, then, that each Easter Eve the annalistwould go to his manuscript, pontificate on what major events had occurred sincelast Easter, dip his quill in the ink and write the events down. Then he would putthe manuscript away until the following Easter.

1 Cf. Beda.2 Translated from Dahl 1967: 45.3 Bolin 1931; Christiansen 1974.

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The annals are often written by several generations of different and mostly anonymousauthors. The Fragmented Annals have ten different writers, and the Lögmann'sAnnals have five.

Their emphasis is on events, and they give contemporary notices of historical factswhich were important to the annalists.

Doubts about the annals being on-the-spot accounts led to the next popularbelief: As the annalist could not have been present at all the occasions he wroteabout, he must have based his information on oral information and perhapsrumour. Carried out to their extreme, the annals may be perceived as thenewspapers of the Middle Ages.

The place of origin adds a character to the sources, which could be significant inexplaining certain characteristics and peculiarities. Annals were mostly written inmonasteries and chapter houses, and were intended for internal use. But they wereoften copied in one place, and then continued somewhere else. The copyist mightalso add new information to the years already described. It is therefore difficult tocreate a stemma, as well as to determine each yearbook's place of origin. TheIcelandic Annals were mostly written by clerics in monasteries or at bishop Sees,and events which are important from an ecclesiastical point of view are given arelatively large amount of space.

On this background the study of annals belongs to the study of medievalhistoriography. The history writing from the Middle Ages and well up to the 17 thcentury was a teleological history writing. Building upon Hebrew antecedents,Christianity introduced a new linear notion of time into the Greco-Roman world.The Judeo-Christian time line literally began at one moment and would end atanother, and it revealed God's purposes. In the Christian schema, the turning-points of sacred history- the Creation, the Incarnation, the life and death of Jesus,and the prospect of the Last Judgement - set the framework for all historical time.Sacred history gave all of time its meaning. The Christian time schema occupiedscholars right into the 17th century.

Before turning to the next point, it should be noted that there are annals onNordic ground other than the Icelandic yearbooks. The Danish chronicle ofZealand is in the form of a yearbook (Christiansen 1974). The Vadstena Diary isanother example (Gejrot 1988). Lists of kings also belong to this category (Bolin1931). Although it has been assumed that annalistics was something the Norwegianclergy did not occupy themselves with, some sources of this kind from Norway areissued in Volume IV of The Old Norwegian Laws.

2. Research

The first Nordic historian to introduce modern source criticism based on philologywas Gustav Storm. His publication of sources to Norwegian medieval history, withcritical commentaries, is impressive. Among his publications we find the alreadymentioned Volume IV of the Old Norwegian Laws {Norges gamle Love), the ten oldestIcelandic Annals (Storm 1888), and Monumenta Histórica Norwegica (Storm 1880). Hewas also the first to issue the Chronicle of Hamar, which is possibly a remnant ofannalistics at the medieval bishop See of Hamar (Storm 1895, 1890a, 1890b). HisIntroduction to the Icelandic Annals is of such great value that it may have

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prevented other historians from taking up the subject. He did not himself, however,consider the theme as exhaustive, as can be seen in his encouragement to otherhistorians to continue the research on the Icelandic Annals (Storm 1888).

The next important historian in the critical school was the Danish historianKrislian Erslev, who introduced the dichotomy of narratives and remnants (Erslev1926/1987). He was succeeded by the Swedish historian Lauritz Wdbull, with hiscritical examination of the history of the Nordic countries around the firstmillennium. His dissertation was issued in 1911 (Weibull 1911), and in 1913Halvdan Koht followed up with his radical criticism of the sagas (Koht 1913). Intreating the dichotomy, narrative — remnant, Koht's main point was that the sagasreflect the time in which they were issued. They should therefore be treated asremnants of their issuing situation, rather than as narratives about the events theydescribed. In 1931 Sture Bolin, known among historians and archaeologists for his"History of the Coin", presented a large critical treatise on the oldest Swedishannals (Bolin 1931, 1962). He showed that these annals from the very beginningwere learned compilations. When an archaeologist finds an old treasure of coins inthe ground, he knows that it could not have been laid there earlier than the year ofissue of the earliest coin in the treasure. Bolin found that the Swedish yearbookswere constructed in a similar way. From the beginning they were the result oflearned compilations, copied into the annals not much later than their earliestnotices, instead of being written into them consecutively, event by event. Theannalists were historians - they used the sources and evaluated them. Only onething was missing - a systematic criticism.

After Storm presented his Introduction no critical treatises on the Icelandic annals,similar to Bolin's on the Swedish ones, have appeared. It is true that Sven Axelsonheld his doctoral dissertation on Sweden in foreign annalistics with a particular viewto the Icelandic Annals (Axelson 1955). His intention was, however, to trace theorigin of the information on Swedish affairs, not to clarify the origin of each of theyearbooks in the way Bolin had done. If he had discussed that issue, his large bodyof work would have had a greater value. Tage E. Christiansen emphasized thispoint in his study of the chronicle of Zealand. The question of the origin situationis crucial to an understanding of the character of the source: The annals areremnants of the past - all sources are remnants. But are they also narratives? Arewe working with a contemporary or non-contemporary source? Are our sourcesfirst-hand records?

3. What is criticism of sources?

If we are going to make use of the narratives of the annals, we have to be certainthat what they tell us is true. The information must be reliable.

Our point of departure must be to determine die manuscript: Is it a copy of anolder text, or is it the work of a historian? Annals should be unfolded from theirfinal entry. The notices should be regarded from the final year's point of view, as anexpression of how a compiler would formulate them from the perspective ofhindsight. Do we know who wrote the annals? For whom were they written? Why

4 Christiansen 1974.

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were they written? This critical position may give us a clue to understanding theunintelligible, and may explain errors and peculiarities that we were unable toexplain before.

There is also the question of how to arrive at a date for the manuscript. Weshould not take the year of entry of the last notice as the terminus ante quern at facevalue. The first thing to do is to read the source in its entirety and look fordiscrepancies in the notices. The mistakes may give us a clue. Even if the Skalaholtannalist writes for the year 1349 that Pope John XXIII was elected, it is worth whileasking whether the notice was written after 1410, when the Council of Pisa electeda pope of that name. It is also reasonable to assume that no one would record thedeath of a person before he or she was actually dead.

If it is possible to prove that the annals were not annotated consecutively year byyear, this may explain why the chronology varies from one piece of work toanother. Even events which would presumably have occurred in the immediatesurroundings of the writer are dated wrongly and described falsely. This is aconsequence of the fact that, contrary to what is believed, the annals were notwritten consecutively year by year.

Secondly, we should decide whether our source is biased. Some notices could beseen in this light. When the annalist suddenly presents the cause of an event, weshould be on the alert. This is not typical of annalistics. Another form of prejudicecould be in the character given to some persons, with their virtues or vices specified.For example, the characterization of Archbishop Nicholas Rusare in theLögmann's annals: He did not perform any of a bishop's tasks before he died.Or the characterization of Queen Margaret in the Vadstena Diary: She had a veryhappy life as to mundane matters.

The bias of a source must be evaluated according to the time in which it waswritten, not according to what it describes. The bias of the source is thus importantin itself, and may give us a clue as to the time when the evaluation first appeared. Itis therefore necessary to form an opinion on the bias of the annals and ask for whichhistorical situation it is typical.

Besides mistakes in the manuscripts themselves, we find, of course, informationfrom other manuscripts such as the sagas, which we are able to trace in the annals.This, then, is our third task: to look for information drawn from other writtensources. Are there any elements from other manuscripts which can be found in theannals? If the answer is yes, this may disappoint us regarding the establishing of onetype of historical fact. It will, however, give us a source to another historical issue.

4. The "Lögmann's" annals

I have studied these questions more closely for five Icelandic Annals, which arepresumed to have been written in the second half of the 14th century.5

One of these sources is the so-called Lögmann's annals (the Yearbook of theKing's local justiciar). Storm assumed that these annals were older than the so-called lost annals from the Northern Coast of Iceland, on which Gottskalk's annals

5 Haug 1996.

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are based upon, and also older than the Flateyarbók. This assessment depends onhow our concepts are clarified.

The oldest manuscript of the Lögmann's annals dates from the 14th century, andis written by five different annalists or "hands". This manuscript is considered to bethe original one. The yearbook was continued after 1393, as can be seen from acopy, and went on until 1430, but the original last part of it is lost. From this,however, it can be concluded that in its complete form the yearbook was youngerthan the Flatøy annals, as well as the lost annals from the North Coast.

The first author of the annals is the priest and official principal of Hólar, EinarHavlidesson. Thus the annals must have been written close to the Northern bishopsee on Iceland. Einar Havlidesson's edition stops in 1362.

Einar Havlidesson also wrote Bishop Laurentius's saga, probably after he hadfinished the annals, as they and other annals are referred to and quoted in severalplaces in the saga. His narrative of the Black Death has been used both by authorsof historical novels and by historians as a contemporary source on how the diseasespread. I would, however, be reluctant to use this narrative as a source beforechecking what other contemporary authors had written about the plague. In anycase, Einar Havlidesson's narrative should not be regarded as older than thedescription given in the annals from Skalaholt for the year 1348.

When I looked for errors in Einar Havlidesson's annals, I noted the description ofthe death of the Swedish king Erik Magnusson in 1359. The annalist writes thatErik Magnusson died from poisoning. This is considered to be false. Its provenanceis Hbellus de Magno Erici Regis, which was written while Magnus Eriksson was theprisoner of King Albrecht of Sweden, i.e. between 1365 and 1371. The tendency ofthe Libel is to justify the Swedish aristocracy for supporting Albrecht ofMecklenburg as Swedish king while dethroning Magnus Eriksson. The anonymousauthor used material from St. Birgitta's revelations, but the poisoning of King Erikis an original accusation.

The libel also accused Queen Blanche of being a poisoner. The annals did notinclude this accusation. Einar Havlidesson must have sensed the prejudice of hisexhibit and therefore omitted any accusation against the king's mother.

The notice of King Erik's poisoning indicates that Einar Havlideson wrote thisafter the Libel had been written between 1365 and 1370. He seems to have writtenthe annals in one process, and not consecutively, year by year. This indicates 1365as terminus post quern, and Einar's death in September 1393 as terminus ante quern.

The next four writers of the Lögmann's annals are anonymous. The 2nd handstarted with notices for 1362, and continued until 1380.

One piece of information could give an indication to the provenance. For theyear 1364 the annalist states that King Erik Magnusson and Lady Blanche werebetrayed at the court. This notice may also have been constructed from the Libel,although not as precisely as the other one. One might therefore suspect that the 2ndhand was familiar with the serious accusations of the libel, but had not read themhimself. He knew that Queen Blanche was dead, and also that her son was dead.He had heard about the wedding in Copenhagen between Margaret, KingValdemar's daughter, and King Håkon VI of Norway, but did not have any exact

6 Kraft 1927; Andersson 1928; Christiansen 1974.

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information. Tage E. Christiansen has pointed to the Libel as the source of TheChronicle of Zeeland concerning its narrative of the wedding in Copenhagen andPrince Christopher's death at that time. The Icelandic 2nd hand might have mixedthese rumours without having read any of the manuscripts himself. He knew thatQueen Blanche and her son, King Erik, were dead, but was not capable ofevaluating his information, either chronologically or factually.

My hypothesis is that the 2nd hand started his work some time after 1380, whichis the last year of his notices.

The notices of the 3rd hand for the years 1379 and 1380 do not give any clues toindicate provenance. The 4th hand is of greater interest. This "hand" has writtennotices for the years 1380-1383 and 1388-1392, many of them relating to thechurch policy of Queen Margaret. Here is the narrative of the provision of theDane Nicholas Rusare to the Arch See of Nidaros, contrary to the election of thechapter. Some errors give us a clue to the date of authorship. The canonization ofSt. Birgitta is mentioned for the year 1390, whereas she was actually canonized in1392, so the notice cannot be older than that. For 1391 it mentions the deaths ofsome well-known Norwegian nobles: Håkon Johnson, Håkon Stumpe and GauteEiriksson. Their deaths cannot have been written into the annals before these menhad actually passed away. Gaute Eiriksson lived longest of all. He was alive in 1412,but mentioned as dead in 1413, his death thus being the terminus post quern for thewritings of the annalist. And since we have already established that these annalswere continued after 1392, a possible hypothesis would be that the 3rd, 4th and 5th"hands" all belong to that part of the yearbook which is now known only as a copy,and is often referred to as the New Annals. All the errors in the chronology indicatethat the notices must have been written down a relatively long time after the eventshad occurred.

The 5th hand in the Lögmann's annals fills in the gaps from 1384 to 1387, 1388and 1389. It is this "hand" who has written the famous aftermath of ArchbishopNicholas Rusare: He did not perform any of a bishop's duties while being inNorway, therefore he did not perform any consecrations and did not confirm anychildren. The 5th annalist also made a mistake in his chronology. From the fact thathe wrote his notices in the gaps left by the 4th hand, we conclude that they werewritten after that writer had stopped. We have already demonstrated that 1413 wasterminus post quern for number 4. But since the manuscript ends in 1393, we cannottell from palaeographical indications exactly when annalist No. 4 put his quilldown.

We may, however, get somewhat further by studying the annals' place of origin.Einar Havlidesson was a priest on the Northern Coast of Iceland, close to thebishop See of Hólar. According to Storm, his successor should be traced in thesame circles. But from about 1380, or with the 3rd hand, the manuscript must havebeen continued at Skalaholt. Its continuation, only known through our copy, has somuch information on Bishop Vilkin of Skalaholt, that someone close to himprobably wrote those notices. My hypothesis is that this annalist is identical with the3rd hand. It is difficult to say exactly when he stopped — he may have continued forsome years after Vilkin's death. But from 1403 and up to 1420 anotherecclesiastical character dominates the text - the next bishop at Skalaholt, ArniOlafsson. My next hypothesis, therefore, is that a person close to this bishop

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continued the annalistics, and that he is identical with the 4th hand. Since this handbegan his writing after 1413,1 am inclined to believe that he started after the deathof the bishop in 1420.

If my other hypotheses are correct, who is the last annalist, who is identical withthe 5th hand? Let us take a look at the dramatic events at Skalaholt after BishopArni's death. The vacancy lasted until 1426, when he was succeeded by JohnGereksson Lodehat. The new bishop had been dismissed as archbishop of Uppsalain 1421, owing to misconduct. Before becoming archbishop, he had beenChancellor to Erik the Pomeranian. From the narrative of the Icelandic Annals welearn that the infamous archbishop and bishop ended his days in 1433, whenrebellious Icelanders drowned him. The rebellion was linked with a proposal toMargaret Vigfusdatter, daughter of the Icelandic "hirdstjore" and sister of IvarVigfusson. The suitor was the bishop's son, but Margaret turned down theproposal, and her brother supported her. As a revenge their house was set on fire.Ivar perished, while Margaret survived. She took an oath that she would onlymarry a man who would avenge her brother.

Elements of this dramatic narrative echo throughout the Icelandic family sagas.There is little else to read about John Gereksson in the last parts of the new annals.However, they do not present a positive image of conditions on Iceland. Thechurch at Skalaholt is reported to be in a bad state, as it has been without a bishopsince the death of Arni Olafsson. The official principal is old and almost blind. Thenew bishop arrives from England, bringing with him a great many Danes who areof no use. Only two priests are mentioned by name, probably because theycollected tithes for the bishop in great haste, to take to England to be sold. Theseare not events that one would expect to be written at the bishop See, in closeproximity to the new bishop. I would rather suspect that the annalist belonged tothe same circle that drowned the bishop in July 1433.

If we assume that the compilation of the last part of the annals took place at thebishop see after the drowning of the bishop, we arrive at the time of the Council ofBasle, where the drowning ofjohn Gereksson was treated. On a more homely base,the Dala rebellion raged from 1434 to 1436. In Norway, Amund Sigurdsson Boltrebelled in 1436. And on Iceland, the English behaved like pirates towards theinhabitants. If we see this political climate in connection with the 5th hand of theannals, new light is thrown on the notices from the 1380s. The Norwegians andIcelanders were in conflict with Danish bailiffs and English merchants and pirates.Since Nicholas Rusare was also a foreigner, actually a German, although accordingto the annals a Dane, this could be used against him in the actual situation ofconflict with foreigners. The annalist's rather biased summing up of the archbishopoffice of Nicholas Rusare probably reflects the political situation in Iceland at thetime that it was written.

My hypothesis concerning the last part of the yearbook, which is only preservedas a copy, cannot be considered as proven. What is established, though, is that theyearbook was not finished until the middle of the 1430s.

5. The Icelandic Annals as historical sources

The examples from the Lögmann's annals demonstrated that they were secondary

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sources, not contemporary ones, and to a certain extent based on rumours ofdoubtful origin. Moreover, the origin of their information is confined to Bergen andthe Western Coast of Norway. The information from Oslo and the Eastern part ofNorway is very limited. We cannot consider the annals to be a source of suchrichness that every significant event would be noted in them.

As already mentioned, it has been maintained that the Icelandic Annals are themost important sources to Norwegian political history in the 14th century.Furthermore, it has been maintained that since the Norwegian coronation of Erikthe Pomeranian in 1392 was not mentioned in these sources, the coronation did nottake place. In other words, the historian introduces an argument from silence. Thisleads to the last issue to be discussed: What is the source value of the IcelandicAnnals? Are they so-called "complete"? Are they of such a nature that we may takethe liberty of using silence as an argument?

An argument from silence is a negative statement of existence. A narrative isbeing rejected because no other witnesses tell about the event. It is claimed that thisphenomenon was of such a character that it had to leave traces, and that thesetraces would consequently have been conserved and known.

Concerning the coronation of Erik the Pomeranian and the use of argumentum esilentio in that connection, my conclusion is that, since we have a diploma that tellsabout his Norwegian coronation, we cannot use the silence of the Icelandic Annalsto prove that it did not occur.

Although some of the narratives of the Icelandic Annals are doubtful or false, Iconsider the annals to be an interesting source category. Furthermore, some of theinformation found there must have had a written exhibit — missives, diplomas, aswell as other material which might be considered as annals themselves. Obituariesmay have been one of them.

When a rich person died, he or she often donated the means to a church or achurch institution to sing masses for them. Sometimes the masses were supposed tobe sung for all eternity at every anniversary of the death or funeral. It was necessaryto keep records of such masses in the actual church institution. The records couldbe kept in separate books, in calendars, anniversaries, missals or in annals. When anotice in the annals records the day of a person's death, we may rest assured thatthe day is correct. The year, however may be more doubtful, as demonstrated bythe untimely death of Gaute Eiriksson.

In the Middle Ages all trade from the Norwegian provinces overseas went viaBergen. Bergen was thus the "capital" of Iceland after it had ceased to be thecapital of Norway. Most of the communication with Norway went to or throughBergen. So the oral and some of the written exhibits for the annals must have beengathered here. Another important location in Norway concerning the gathering ofinformation for the annalists was Nidaros. It was the duty of every suffragan in thechurch province to visit the Arch See once a year, either personally or by deputy.The oath of obedience from the bishops included a promise of such visits.8 Theobligation to visit the archbishop was maintained, at least up to the last years of the15th century, but the bishops from Iceland did not travel personally every year.

7 Haug 1995.8 DN VIII 74; Hamre, col. 513.

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There are, however, several notices in the annals about the bishops leaving theisland with their followers. Their destination was Norway, their mission in mostcases to visit the archbishop. It is likely that these visits resulted in both oral andwritten information about events which could later be written into the annals.Although we cannot always trust the information in the annals, the fact that anevent is written down at least gives us a source concerning the diffusion ofinformation.

Obituaries in the annals, and also information about bishop successions, areoften of such a character that even when we lack other sources, they can beassumed to be correct. This is of course most likely for events on Iceland, butevents recorded for Bergen or Nidaros may also be true. The problem is usually thedating, particularly of the year, as the annals cannot be considered to becontemporary sources in a strict sense.

Before I finish, let me point to another area of interest - the history of mentality.Events which we would not consider significant nowadays, the annalists found to beso important that they took notes about them. Often it is impossible to decidewhether or not the event is true. One of Queen Margaret's dreams is recounted inthe Fragmented Annals. Although it is not significant as such, it gives an interestingglimpse of a way of thinking and imagining. ° From Heimskringla we know thedreams of Queen Ragnhild. King Sverre used his dreams consciously in his politicalpropaganda. Dreams have always had a great symbolic value, not only in theNordic Middle Ages. The annalistic notice of Queen Margaret's dream wasprobably meant to throw light on her life and work. However, it tells us more aboutthe writer and his world of thoughts than about Queen Margaret.

6. Conclusion

I have maintained that the Icelandic annals should be studied as historical remnantsbefore we use them as narratives. We date the annals, we establish the place inwhich they were written, we identify the anonymous writers; in short — we establishthe situation of origin. I have demonstrated that one of the annals is not writtenconsecutively. All the Icelandic annals I have studied so far, give the sameconclusion. And I have proved the annals to be an interesting source category,although more interesting as remnants than as narratives.

My final remarks are about the benefit of studying the annals. When studyingthem as remnants we perform a historiographical research, or a literary criticism.Since the event's imprints cannot be properly interpreted unless we first put themback into the cultural system which they influenced at the time, it is necessary tobear in mind everything that is known about this culture in order to evaluate theaccounts that have come down to us. The study of the annals is a hermeneuticalprocess of knowledge, which gradually reveals to us other aspects of medievalculture and society which were formerly hidden.

The annals are interesting sources in the study of the medieval mentality. Thecharacteristics of each of them tell us what the anonymous annalist considered

9 Cf. Otto 1933.10 Cf. Cormack 1996: 185-209; Hamre 1996: 505.

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important. In the words of Georges Duby, we seek to observe "the impact that theimaginary and oblivion have on information, the insidious penetration of themarvellous, of the legendary, and, in the course of a sequence of commemorations,the fate of a memory in the midst of a changing set of mental representations."

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