25 - Learned Literature

Summary

This chapter discusses the interactions between Latin learning and Old Norse-Icelandic vernacular literature between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Beginning with the arrival of Latin textual culture in Iceland with the introduction of Christianity, it describes how oral literary culture was transformed by contact with these new forms of learning. It takes as case-studies manuscripts which reveal the influence of learned material, first considering the relationship between Ari’s Íslendingabók and the study of computus, chronology and geographical learning, and then discussing encyclopaedic handbooks attributed to two lawmen, Sturla Þórðarson’s Resensbók and Haukr Erlendsson’s Hauksbók. To explore the interaction between Latin learning and skaldic poetry, it then focuses on Codex Wormianus, a compilation of vernacular grammatical literature and skaldic poetics. It argues that skaldic verse was reconciled with Christian textual culture by functioning in vernacular grammatical literature in the same way as classical verse did in Latin culture, and analyses an example from the Third Grammatical Treatise to show how a skaldic stanza could be used in this way.