The self as other

Iceland and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages

Abstract

This article discusses links between medieval Iceland and contemporary medieval European culture. The notion that Icelandic medieval culture was, for the most part, free from European cultural influence still has some currency—at least amongst the general public. However, the central argument of the article is rather that Icelandic literary culture could not have emerged had not the Icelanders already begun to engage with European culture, and had not medieval Icelandic society—both clerical and lay—already adapted to it. In this context, reference is made to Margaret Clunies Ross’s concept of ‘Christian secularity’ in order to explain the specific characteristics of Christian Icelandic society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and recent work by other scholars is reviewed to provide further support for this perspective. Finally, reference is made to Egils saga and to the present author’s recent book on the saga: the aim is to demonstrate how the concepts of ‘self’ and ‘other’ may be used to define the attitude of the authors of medieval Icelandic sagas (especially the Íslendingasögur) to their own heathen past. It was by integrating the heathen ‘otherness’ of the past with their own contemporary ‘self’ that the Icelanders created for themselves a national identity as inhabitants of the Christian cultural world.