Biblical precedents are a critical milestone in the construction of sanctity. It is in the interpretation and imitation of a wide range of biblical events, which exemplify the often-ungraspable relationship between the Creator and the created, that the investigation of the miraculous has its origin. While the Old Testament narratives contain a wealth of wondrous examples that move from those showcasing God’s majesty on earth to acts performed by divinely inspired people serving as his agents, the New Testament miracles provide excellent paradigms of spiritual preaching as well as physical and mental healing that served as models for aspiring saints throughout the history of Christianity. From the early days of the Church, Scriptural images and examples were recalled and deployed to mold hagiographic narratives, while biblical tropes studded preaching on saints and their miracles. Accordingly, saints’ lives are by their very nature permeated with God’s grace and holiness, and the miracles related in them were logically seen as manifestations of God’s glory and power. Expressions of wonder by the spectators and recipients of miracles were necessary prerequisites for the credibility and validation of a saint’s sanctity. Consequently, such emotional features of awe and surprise became particularly prominent in medieval hagiographic literature, where both the faithful and the unfaithful marveled at the heavenly performance of holy men and women and sang in unison the praises of the Lord. The adoption and accommodation of such paradigms, established through centuries of Christian literature, strongly influenced the religious and secular lore of even more peripheral areas of the Latin West. Iceland in particular benefited enormously from the creative interplay between translated and native saints’ lives and secular literature.

The locus classicus for such models of awe and astonishment during public manifestations of the saintly miraculous appears early on in Icelandic hagiographic literature. The older redaction of Jóns saga Helga (S-text) relates that during a banquet at the Danish court of King Sveinn II (c. 1019–1076), Jón Ǫgmundarson (1052–1121) – a quick-witted Icelander soon-to-be elected first bishop of Hólar (northern Iceland) and locally translated in 1200 – recounts a dream vision of a magnificent cathedral in which he saw Christ sitting on the bishop’s seat with King David playing the harp at his feet, the fairest harmony resonating throughout the church.