The debate over why ecclesiastical institutions took so long to become established in medieval Iceland is not new. Between 1940 and 1970, what became known as the ‘Icelandic School’ framed the issue through a binary lens, portraying a society fractured between a clerical, European sphere on one hand, and an indigenous, national, and secular sphere on the other. In opposition to this view was the ‘anthropological school’, which offered a more integrated cultural perspective.[1] In contemporary scholarship, these paradoxical views have been reconciled by historians such as Orri Vésteinsson, whose seminal work portrays Icelandic society as neither solely ‘Icelandic’ nor entirely ‘Christian,’ but an amalgamation of both.[2] Despite these valuable academic contributions, the premise that Iceland’s ecclesiastical development was uniquely slow remains largely unchallenged, leaving a significant lacuna.
This essay will therefore challenge the premise of a slow establishment of a formal ecclesiastical structure in Iceland. By initially examining the uniqueness of Iceland’s society, peaceful conversion and the institutional absorption of Christian authority into existing societal structures, it becomes clear that an institutionalised church was initially superfluous. However, the various components of ecclesiastical structures that did emerge, such as the tithe, parish churches, monasteries and clerical education, proved a catalyst for societal change.
First, to understand the pace of ecclesiastical development in Iceland, we must highlight its uniqueness compared with earlier Christian establishments in the Christian North. From its settlement c. 870 until its submission to the Norwegian crown 1262-64, Iceland was a commonwealth without a ruler, government or executive authority.[3] Instead, society rested on a complex web of kinship and allegiance in the form of the goðorð (chieftaincy).[4] The goði (chieftain) attended assemblies, protected his þingmenn (followers) who were expected to support him in private feuds and at the Althing (National assembly). This system of kinship and social networking, as noted by historian Sverrir Jakobsson, was “well established before the advent of… Christianity, ecclesiastical organisation and literacy,” and not dependent on religion for its functioning or survival.[5]
Within this unique system, Christianity was introduced in either the year 999 or 1000 AD. The earliest Icelandic source for this event is Ari Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók (Book of Icelanders), which describes a schism at the Althing in 1000.[6]Under pressure from the Norwegian king Óláfr Tryggvason, and the threat of a social divide between Christians and pagans, the two parties settled on a solution to adopt Christianity, albeit with the compromise that the pagan practices of worshipping pagan gods, eating horseflesh and infanticide would be permitted as long as they took place in private.[7]This agreement enabled the continuation of the existing commonwealth system and has served as the foundation for academic debate over whether the motivations for this settlement were clerical and European or secular and national.
Nevertheless, Orri Vésteinsson suggests that Icelanders, in the year 1000, would not have consensually accepted Christianity if they felt their lives would be impacted in any meaningful way,[8] and for a generation or more, that seems to be largely accurate until Iceland, from 1056 onwards, got its own native Bishops.[9] The perception that life would remain largely unchanged is likely founded on the nature of pre-Christian belief as a local and personal affair. As described by the law code Grágás, religion was a largely upper-class culture. In contrast, for the majority of the Norse populace, its focus was primarily local and personal, which could be dropped in the event of conversion due to a lack of communal attachments.[10]
Comparatively, the earlier Anglo-Saxon migrants to Britain are not believed to have had a coherent body of beliefs, whilst migration must have disrupted previous belief systems; for example, the Anglo-Saxons could not take their groves with them from Germany to Britain.[11] Here, we can draw parallels with Iceland, a migrant society with belief systems detached from their place of origin, which could be more easily adopted, thereby avoiding conflict and societal schism. Iceland’s conversion stands in contrast to other comparable conversions, which were made by force. In the case of the Saxons and Avars, conquest was followed by almost immediate imposition of the tithe and Christian law, provoking violent pagan reactions.[12] Instead, Icelanders accepted Christianity on their own terms at the Althing, rather than face constant harassment at the hands of Óláfr Tryggvason.[13] In this regard, Icelanders’ unique acceptance of Christianity on their own terms ensured some autonomy over its pace of adoption and the absence of violence.
This peaceful conversion had direct consequences, in that there was no immediate push to impose ecclesiastical infrastructure. It was not until 1056 that the first native bishop, Ísleifr Gizurarson, was consecrated,[14] and not until the end of the eleventh century did key institutions such as fixed episcopal sees, clerical training, and the tithe begin to emerge.[15] However, while this period appears, on the surface, to be one of slow progress in establishing ecclesiastical institutions, it was nevertheless one in which Christian authority was absorbed into the pre-existing social structure.
For example, from the top down, the absence of a king or monarchy, the role of bishop in Iceland had a unique character, as observed by Adam of Bremen: “They hold as law whatever he ordains as coming from God, or from the Scriptures, or even from the worthy practices of other peoples.”[16] The royal symbolism given to the Bishop in Iceland is unique. For example, elsewhere in Scandinavia, the first indigenous saints were kings, and later saints still had a connection to ruling dynasties, cementing the link between royal and divine authority.[17] Iceland, on the other hand, having no king before 1262, venerated its early bishops as its first saints.[18] The 12th-century text Hungrvaka describes Bishop Gizurr Ísleifsson in precisely these terms: “each man sat or stand as he bade, young or old, rich or poor, women and men; and it was right to say that he was both king and bishop over the land while he lived.”[19] In this context, the bishop became the closest thing to a national figurehead, a unifying symbol for a polity otherwise defined by competing goði.
However, Iceland’s uniqueness poses challenges in setting both a start and an end point for measuring the pace of theecclesiastical institutional establishment. Adam of Bremen, between 1073 and 1076, indicates that Icelanders had not fully become Christian until Ísleifr Gizurarson was ordained by Adalbert, archbishop of Hamburg and bishop of Bremen.[20] Whilst there is no archaeological evidence, the book of settlements claims that Christianity existed in the country since the first settlers were Christians.[21] Therefore, to provide a time scale, the ecclesiastical institutions of the Icelandic Church will be further broken down into the tithe, parish churches, clerical education and training, and monasteries.
The introduction of the tithe in 1097, codified in the law code Grágás, marks a defining point from privatised Christianity to an institutional church and, in doing so, became a catalyst for social change.[22] The acceptance of this law was the first legal mechanism that gave the Church the right to collect revenue and to establish itself in Iceland as a distinct corporate entity. Despite being nearly 100 years after the conversion, the process of implementing the tithe is revealing. As Sverrir Jakobsson notes, a census of farmers was undertaken to organise the tithe, indicative of “a new kind of mentality at work in Icelandic society, dedicated to fact collecting and registration within a literary framework.”[23]
Ari Þorgilsson, a church owner and priest himself, was clearly impressed with the obedience of Icelanders accepting the tithe so readily,[24] and both economically and politically, the impact of the tithe cannot be underestimated. The bulk of farmers, effectively, had to pay tax to the Church, half of which was designated for the upkeep of the Church and the priest. By assuming the role of priest, the church owner could control the income and receive the priest’s payment.[25] A combination of both secular and clerical authority. Whereas, paradoxically, where the priest was an employee, his status was typically lowly. [26] Therefore, the tithe did not immediately separate secular and ecclesiastical power.
At the parish level, volume three of the Cambridge History of Christianity describes the Church in Iceland having acquired a distinctively national character, with private churches attached to the homes of the chief families, served by priests who had close and constant contact with the farmers: they were recruited from their ranks, shared their traditional assumptions, and for the most part led the same kind of life.”[27] This system presented a fundamental barrier to the development of an independent clerical estate. Why would a chieftain cede authority when he could embody both secular and sacred power himself? The institutional Church, as a corporate entity distinct from Iceland’s kinship-based structures, was not yet necessary for the functioning of either society or religion in Iceland. The “slowness” was, therefore, a period of adaptation where the new faith was filtered through and constrained by the powerful, resilient structures of Icelandic society.
The development of church-owned staðir, however, developed this process. These were farms partially or wholly owned by the Church but were often granted to goði to manage. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson has emphasised, “those who govern the staðir had a great deal of freedom in the control of their fortunes and incomes”[28] and the staðir became important centres of the ruling elite.[29] The introduction of Church property on this scale created permanent revenue for the Church. It facilitated the accumulation of power, in which control of ecclesiastical resources became central to secular authority. Thus, the emerging ecclesiastical institutions created the infrastructure for centralised power, perhaps paving the way for territorial chieftaincies and the acceptance of monarchical rule in 1262.
However, the imposition of the tithe and the management of the infrastructure required a trained clergy. Therefore, the delay between conversion and the establishment of the first bishoprics and schools can be partly attributed to the time required for religious learning and the acquisition of Latin. Such schools provided the intellectual equipment that a priest or bishop needed, which was comparatively essential to the British and Irish Churches in the 6th and 7th centuries.[30] In contrast, Iceland had to send its candidates for training abroad until the establishment of the ecclesiastical infrastructure.[31]
However, in reaching the majority of the population that could not read or write, the culmination of the clerical class alongside parish churches and monarchies is important. It also indicates the external role of the Roman Church in this process. Archaeology has revealed Benedictine and Augustinian monasteries with architecture and design comparable to monasteries in Europe. The design is argued to have originated in Rome, and the role monasteries played in Icelandic religion and society is consequential. The first established monasteries, for example, Þingeyrar, Munkaþverá, Þykkvibær, and Hítardalur, were “without doubt the direct result of the expansion of the Roman Church and the Rule of Benedict in the 12th century.” [32] The interiors of churches and monasteries were filled with statues, images, ornaments, and objects that were an important part of religious discourse and conversion at the time, alongside the performance of textual material that, when read aloud, could be heard and extended beyond the clerical class. Moreover, monasteries which belonged to international monastic orders and maintained contact with religious houses abroad, alongside the episcopal sees at Skálholt and Hólar, provided clerical training, where books were collected and copied, literary works composed, and artworks produced.[33]
Ultimately, this process of integration from a pre-existing oral culture into a literate worldview demonstrates the completion of a societal shift.[34] The Church was the catalyst for this shift, but the result was distinctly Icelandic. For example, the 12th-century text Hungrvaka belongs to the Latin genre of gesta episcoporum, which flourished in Saxony, indicating Iceland’s ecclesiastical ties to Germany. However, as Jonas Wellendorf stresses, the author of Hungrvaka chose to write in the Icelandic vernacular, “which was quite an unusual choice for this kind of literature at the time”[35] The first chapter of the text highlights its aim of enticing young readers to read Norse so they may learn how Christianity gained strength in Iceland and how episcopal sees were established.[36]
The work of Ari Þorgilsson, which demonstrates the use of the vernacular through his Íslendingabók written between 1122 and 1133, is a landmark of medieval historiography.[37] Ari’s careful style of documentation and citation demonstrates the permeation of Christian literary habits into Icelandic ecclesiastical culture.[38] Ari’s application of the critical methods of Latin chronicle writing to the history of his own people produced a concise account of the settlement, conversion, and establishment of the Church. While his secular outlook has led some to see the conversion as purely political,[39] his work reflects the new literate mentality the Church enabled.
This literary culture, ultimately, preserved an Icelandic version of the pre-Christian past. Whilst other Scandinavian kingdoms produced Latin histories,[40] Iceland’s Church, embedded in the literate elite, who had the clerical skills and culture,[41] spearheaded the recording of Norse history, mythology, poetry, and the saga histories of the settlement in the vernacular. Therefore, the Icelandic Church’s record and reinterpretation of the past are proof of its distinctive development that transcends arguments about speed.
In conclusion, the establishment of ecclesiastical institutions in medieval Iceland should not be seen as slow but as shaped by the uniqueness of its society. The peaceful conversion of 1000 was a success because it was a political compromise tailored to a stateless, kin-based commonwealth that demanded no immediate overhaul of the social order. For the following century, a corporate Church was unnecessary, as Christian authority was absorbed into the roles of chieftains and the king-like figure of the bishop. The apparent initial ‘slowness’ was a period during which the new faith was filtered through existing social structures.
When core institutions finally emerged, they acted not as late imports but as powerful catalysts for change. They introduced a new literary mentality, created a stable economic base, and began to concentrate power in ways that enabled the end of the Commonwealth. In contrast to Orri Vesteinson, who describes the development of a centralised power as “slow and painful”,[42] instead, the acceptance of Christianity, the tithe, and ecclesiastical infrastructure accelerated this process. This process culminated in a confident, vernacular ecclesiastical culture, exemplified by Hungrvaka and Ari’s Íslendingabók, which used the tools of the Latin Church to forge a distinctive Icelandic historical identity. While Iceland’s unique social structure dictated the terms of the Church’s gradual acceptance, and the Church, in turn, fundamentally reshaped that society and secured its unique historical voice.
[1] See, Jesse L. Byock, “History and the Sagas: The Effect of Nationalism,” in From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, ed. Heather O’Donoghue and Eleanor Parker (Enfield Lock,1992), 43-59.
[2] Haruldur Hreinsson, Force of Worlds: A Cultural History of Christianity and Politics in Medieval Iceland (11th-13th Centuries), (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 14.
[3] Gunnar Karlsson, “Godar and Hofdingjar in Medieval Iceland”, in Saga-Book Vol. XIX (London: University College London, 1974-7) 359; Sverrir Jakobsson, “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland”, Viator 40 (2009), 151-70.
[4] Gunnar Karlsson, “Godar and Hofdingjar in Medieval Iceland”, 358-9; Dag Strömbäck, The Conversion of Iceland: a Survey, translated by Jesse L. Byock, (London: University College London, 1975): 38.
[5] Jakobsson, “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland”, 157.
[6] Íslendingabók, in Íslendingabók, Kristni Saga: The Book of Icelanders, The Story of Conversion, translated by Siân Grønlie (London: University College London, 2006), Chapter VII, 9.
[7] Orri Vésteinsson, “The conversion of the Icelanders” in Europe around the year 1000, ed. P. Urbanczyk, (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 2001), 325.
[8] Vésteinsson, “The conversion of the Icelanders”, 329-331.
[9] Strömbäck, The Conversion of Iceland, 30.; See also, Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, translated by Francis J. Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 217–18.
[10] Vésteinsson,‘“The conversion of the Icelanders”, 336.
[11] Ian Wood, “The Northern Frontier: Christianity Face-to-Face with Paganism”, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, ed. T Noble and J Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 231.
[12] Ibid. 234.
[13] Wood, “The Northern Frontier: Christianity Face-to-Face with Paganism”, 240.
[14] Kristni Saga in Íslendingabók, Kristni Saga: The Book of Icelanders, The Story of Conversion, translated by Siân Grønlie (London: University College London, 2006), Chapter Fourteen, 51–52.
[15] Vésteinsson, “The conversion of the Icelanders”, 328.
[16] Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. By Francis J. Tschan, 217–18.
[17] Jonas Wellendorf, ‘Whetting the Appetite for a Vernacular Literature: The Icelandic Hungrvaka’ in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European periphery: early history writing in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070-1200), ed. I.H. Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepolis, 2011),124.
[18] Ibid.124
[19] Camilla Basset, “Hungrvaka”, (MA Dissertation, Haskoli Islands, 2013), 53.
[20] Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, 217–18.
[21] Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, The Book of Settlements: Landnámabók. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1972) 15.
[22] A. Dennis, P. Foote, and R. Perkins, The Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, Vol. II. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2000) 221–235.
[23] Jakobsson, “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland”, 160
[24] Íslendingabók, Chapter Fifteen, 52.
[25] Jakobsson, “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland”, 160.
[26] Ibid. 160.
[27] Strömbäck, The Conversion of Iceland, 2.
[28] Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth, translated by Jean Lundskær-Nielsen (Odense 1999; 1st ed. Bergen 1993) 108.
[29] Jakobsson, “The Process of State-Formation in Medieval Iceland”, 159.
[30] Thomas Charles-Edwards, “The Celtic World,” (London: Routledge, 1995): 715–26.
[31] Hreinsson, Force of Worlds, 62-63.
[32] Hreinsson, Force of Worlds, 58; Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, Leitin að klaustrunum, (Reykjavík: Sögufélag, 2017): 49– 53.
[33] Hreinsson, Force of Worlds, 23.
[34] Sverrir Jakobsson, “State formation and pre-modern identities in the North: A synchronic perspective from the early 14th century”, Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi, 125 (2010), 76
[35] Wellendorf, ‘Whetting the Appetite for a Vernacular Literature’.141
[36] Basset, “Hungrvaka”, 44.
[37] Wood, “The Northern Frontier: Christianity Face-to-Face with Paganism”, 240.
[38] Strömbäck, The Conversion of Iceland, 5.
[39] Vésteinsson, “The conversion of the Icelanders”, 327
[40] See for example, Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes, translated by Karsten Friis-Jensen and Peter Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
[41] Wellendorf, ‘Whetting the Appetite for a Vernacular Literature’, 125.
[42] Vésteinsson, “The conversion of the Icelanders”, 339.
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Strömbäck, Dag. The Conversion of Iceland: A Survey, translated by Jesse L. Byock. London: University College London, 1975.
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Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes, translated by Karsten Friis Jensen and Peter Fisher. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Sigurðsson, Jón Viðar. Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth, translated by Jean Lundskær-Nielsen. The Viking Collection, 12. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 1999.
Vésteinsson, Orri. “The conversion of the Icelanders” in Europe around the year 1000, ed. P. Urbanczyk, 325-342. Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 2001.
Wellendorf, Jonas. ‘Whetting the Appetite for a Vernacular Literature: The Icelandic Hungrvaka’ in Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European periphery: early history writing in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070-1200), ed. I.H. Garipzanov, 123-142. Turnhout: Brepolis, 2011.
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