The Old Testament in Medieval Icelandic Texts: Translation, Exegesis and Storytelling

As Siân Grønlie correctly points out in her introduction (“Biblical Literature and Stjórn”), “while biblical scholars have long realised that the Icelandic sagas are a useful analogue for the stories in the Hebrew Bible, this interest has not really been reciprocated. In the many discussions about the origins of the sagas and their distinctive style, biblical narrative has always been eclipsed by hagiographical and homiletic writing” (p. 2). The rest of the introduction focuses on the extant Biblical translations in Old Norse-Icelandic (collectively known as Stjórn), their date, provenance, and relationship. Grønlie notes that the original intent of the book was to examine the Stjórn texts, but that soon it had become evident that the engagement with the historical books of the Old Testament in Iceland was broader than she had anticipated: “in Iceland, the stories of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament were received not just as stories but also as sagas—stories that bore a remarkable likeness to Iceland's own saga literature even through the medium of Jerome's translation and the centuries of allegorical exposition” (p. 11). The aim of the book is “to explore how the curious affinity between biblical stories and Icelandic sagas shaped the reception of Old Testament narrative in Old Norse-Icelandic” (p. 41).The book consists of seven chapters. In chapter one, “Hebrew Sagas and Icelandic Sagas: Convergent Evolution,” Grønlie investigates the similarities between the Hebrew Bible and the Sagas of Icelanders given the focus in these works on genealogy, family matters, connections to place names, and so forth, and also similarities in style. To illustrate the similarities in style, she uses two Biblical stories, the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22) and Jacob's wrestle with an angel (Genesis 32), and compares them with scenes from Laxdæla saga (Kjartan returns to Iceland, finds out that Guðrún has married Bolli, marries Hrefna instead, and gives her a precious headdress, which Guðrún requests to see), Hrafnkels saga (a person appears to Hrafnkell's father in a dream and directs him to move to a different location), Grettis saga (Grettir's fight with the revenant Glámr), and Bárðar saga Snæfellsás (Ingjaldr's paranormal encounter while out fishing). Grønlie concludes that “the similarities between these two traditions may be best understood as driven by the environments in which they arose, rather than by a relationship of literary dependence” (p. 41).Chapter two, “From Hebrew Bible to Old Testament: Traditions of Exegesis,” examines the manner in which the Old Testament was read in the Middle Ages. Grønlie traces the development of allegorical readings from Origen to the Victorines and the following adjustments of Biblical stories to suit lay audiences through the Bibles historiales. Special attention is paid to Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica, which, as Grønlie notes, “opened the way not only to reading the Old Testament as history, but also encouraged the accumulation of many other kinds of extra-biblical material, including Jewish traditions and stories” (p. 69).In chapter three, “Types and Shadows: The Old Testament in Homilies and Saints’ Lives,” Grønlie returns to discussions of Old Norse-Icelandic literature to see how knowledge of the Old Testament was mediated, translated, and interpreted in early texts, focusing on Old Testament exegesis in homilies found in the so-called Stockholm or Old Icelandic Homily Book and the Old Norwegian Homily Book and in the later saints’ lives. The saints’ lives treated are Maríu saga and Jóns saga baptista II, which both draw on a wide range of Biblical material. Grønlie makes the interesting observation that “both homilists and hagiographers clearly signal different levels of exegesis—literal or allegorical—by varying their level of style” and comments that the “literal or historical level tends to be written in a ‘plain’ style” but that allegorical exegesis “is associated with poetry” (p. 101).The focus of chapter four, “World History and Biblical History: Exegesis and Encyclopaedic Writing,” is later Biblical translations—that is, universal history and encyclopedic writings, which were closely tied up with Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages. Grønlie examines a selection of Old Testament passages in Veraldar saga from the latter half of the twelfth century, arguing that a criterion for the choice of these passages by the author or compiler was the potential for allegorical interpretation. The other works examined is a short text generally referred to as Heimsaldrar, which is preserved in Copenhagen, Arnamagnaean Collection, AM 194 8vo; Reynistaðarbók, which is preserved in Copenhagen, Arnamagnaean Collection, AM 764 4to; and Konungs skuggsjá, which differs from the other works both in terms of provenance and genre, and in which, according to Grønlie, one finds “the richest and most complex development of Old Testament narrative so far” (p. 138).The next three chapters deal with Stjórn. Stjórn I, which runs from the beginning of Genesis to Exodus 18, is the subject of chapter five, “In the Beginning: Primeval History in Genesis I-II,” and chapter six, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: Family History in Genesis 12–50.” In chapter five, Grønlie discusses what she calls primeval history. She observes that that the beginning of Stjórn I, which draw heavily on Comestor's Historia scholastica, Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum historiale, Isidore's Etymologiae, and a couple of Augustine's commentaries on Genesis, is heavily commentated. Grønlie proceeds to analyze these commentaries and their sources, focusing especially on the fall of the angels, the creation of woman, and Noah's flood. She concludes that the first part of Stjórn I “is a patchwork of different sources” and argues that “it seems to have been more important to the compiler to accommodate a full range of glosses than to create a continuous narrative,” though “when telling some of the shorter, more self-contained stories, the compiler imitates the plain style of biblical narrative” (p. 169). In chapter six, Grønlie discusses ‘ancestral’ history—that is, stories that revolve around genealogy, inheritance, and kinship. Grønlie points out that the ‘plain’ narrative in this part of Stjórn I shows signs of saga style, such as use of the historic present tense, familiar narrative tags, and idiomatic phrasing. She focuses on the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, the story of Joseph, and Moses's wives, and shows in her examples that in addition to translating the Vulgate, the compiler also provided glosses and included extrabiblical material, and that he showed himself “to be adept in mobilising a variety of different styles” (p. 208). Stjórn III, which contains post-Pentateuchal historical material from Joshua to the Exile, is the subject of chapter seven, “Heroes, Heroines and Royal Biography: From Judges to 2 Kings.” Grønlie hypothesizes that the reason why an Icelander decided to translate this section of the Old Testament may have been because the Icelanders, too, had reservations about the institution of kingship, and because this material showed a semblance to historical compilations, such as Heimskringla. In her analysis of Stjórn III, she concentrates on Samson the Strong, Ruth and Naomi, and the story of David, and points to what seem like direct loans from a number of Sagas of Icelanders, kings’ sagas, and even eddic and skaldic poetry. She compares the narrative style of Stjórn III with that of Stjórn I, and notes that in contrast to the compiler of Stjórn I, the translator of Stjórn III was more interested in a narrative coherence and paid less attention to glosses and interpolations from other sources: “From proverbial diction to poetic conceit, the translator makes use of a vernacular tradition of storytelling in order to render his translation idiomatic, vivid and gripping” (p. 244).The seven chapters are followed by an epilogue, “Biblical Literature and Saga Literature,” in which Grønlie returns to the question posed in the first chapter of how the Icelandic sagas shaped the reception of Old Testament narrative in Old Norse-Icelandic. She explores Oddr Snorrason's Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Gísla saga Súrssonar, and Hrafnkels saga as examples of works that have been overlooked when it comes to loans from the Old Testament. In Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, she focuses on the story of Óláfr's childhood in Russia and his marriage to Geira, and argues that a close parallel is found in the story of Moses and Tharbis. In Gísla saga Súrssonar, she draws attention to, for example, Gísli tying together the tails of thirty cows, which echoes Samson tying together the tails of 300 cows. And in Hrafnkels saga, she sees parallels between the toe-pulling scene in Þorgeirr's booth and the episode where Naomi gives Ruth instructions on how to approach Boaz. Grønlie concludes her study by arguing that “it is high time that we recognise biblical translation and adaptation as an essential part of the wider history of Old Norse-Icelandic literature” (p. 257). Acknowledgements, a bibliography, and an index (names and topics) conclude the book.The Old Testament in Medieval Icelandic Texts: Translation, Exegesis and Storytelling is a most welcome contribution not only to the study of Old Norse-Icelandic religious texts, but to the corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic literature in general. The topic of Grønlie's book is innovative, and the scholarship is authoritative and sound. There is much to be learned from this book. My one and only wish is that Grønlie had included a bit of discussion of Stjórn II and at least some mention of translations into Old Norse-Icelandic of Old Testament apocryphal writings. I am thinking here especially of the translation of the Maccabees in the first part of Gyðinga saga. Finally, it should be noted that the book is well structured, well written, and easy to navigate. It is a must-read for students and scholars of Old Norse-Icelandic literature.