This overview of Iceland’s medieval history is divided into three phases: firstly, from settlement in the ninth century to 1096−7, which marks the emergence of the Icelandic Church; secondly, from the appearance of Iceland’s earliest written historical sources to the ceding of independence to Norway in 1262/4; and finally, to the end of the fourteenth century. It shows how Iceland’s marginality to the rest of Europe, its lack of a centralized authority and the blurring of historicity and fiction in its most prominent texts have affected understanding of Icelandic history and problematized its historiography. The chapter begins with discussion of the two primary native sources, Ari Þorgilsson’s Islendingabók (The Book of Icelanders) and Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), their accounts of settlement and conversion, and the value of archaeology as a source. The second phase details the growth of the church and monasteries as places of learning, and how the church’s increasing power led to clashes with the secular elite, resulting in the chaos and violence of the Sturlungaöld. The final phase concerns Iceland’s loss of independence, economic condition and relations with Norway.

The subject of this chapter is Grágás, the compilation of the laws of Iceland in the Commonwealth period. The chapter begins by outlining the court structure of Iceland and the fundamentals of legal procedure, briefly discussing the importance of law to the conversion narrative in Íslendingabók and its account of the first decision to put Iceland’s laws into writing. It describes the distinctive concepts and customs which underlie the legal system of medieval Iceland, looking at the role of the búi (neighbour) in legal procedure, and explaining the key concepts of helgi (the right of inviolability), grið (domicile, or household attachment), vígt (the right to kill or to avenge a wrong with impunity), and the problem of dealing with ómagar (dependants). The chapter argues that the laws and sagas are often mutually informing and demonstrates how fundamental an understanding of law is to the interpretation of the Íslendingasögur. It gives numerous examples of how the laws can be used to help elucidate the sagas, and uses the sagas to reveal the importance of law and legal knowledge in medieval Icelandic society.

This chapter discusses the interactions between Latin learning and Old Norse-Icelandic vernacular literature between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Beginning with the arrival of Latin textual culture in Iceland with the introduction of Christianity, it describes how oral literary culture was transformed by contact with these new forms of learning. It takes as case-studies manuscripts which reveal the influence of learned material, first considering the relationship between Ari’s Íslendingabók and the study of computus, chronology and geographical learning, and then discussing encyclopaedic handbooks attributed to two lawmen, Sturla Þórðarson’s Resensbók and Haukr Erlendsson’s Hauksbók. To explore the interaction between Latin learning and skaldic poetry, it then focuses on Codex Wormianus, a compilation of vernacular grammatical literature and skaldic poetics. It argues that skaldic verse was reconciled with Christian textual culture by functioning in vernacular grammatical literature in the same way as classical verse did in Latin culture, and analyses an example from the Third Grammatical Treatise to show how a skaldic stanza could be used in this way.