Medieval Icelandic Studies

In the field of medieval Icelandic studies, “the oral tradition” refers to the accumulated and encyclopedic knowledge (both sacred and profane) that was passed on from person to person before and after writing was first introduced into the newly Christianized society of Iceland. This tradition commonly used stories and poetry as a medium, as well as special training in the oratorical art of law. Iceland, which had previously lain undiscovered in the middle of the North Atlantic, was first settled by people from Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, Shetland, the Orkneys, and the Hebrides in the late ninth century, a mixture of pagans and others who had come into contact with Christianity. The people of Iceland decided to accept Christianity as their official religion in the year 1000, thus providing an opening for a more systematic use of writing and books than before. At first, that writing was used exclusively within the Church, but in the twelfth century it gradually began to involve a broader cultural sphere, documenting historical memory (from the church’s viewpoint), legal texts, and, from around 1200, secular accounts dealing with the kings and earls of Scandinavia and the Orkneys. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, stories about local farmers and chieftains in Iceland began to appear (the sagas). In the thirteenth century, the technique of writing was also used to augment the oral training of poets by providing a written mythological background for the poetic language as well as a means of recording the traditional oral poetry that dealt with the gods and heroes of the Germanic peoples (the Eddas).