T HE A TTRACTION OF THE E ARLIEST

O LD N ORSE V ERNACULAR H AGIOGRAPHY

Jonas Wellendorf

T
his chapter intends first to give a brief sketch of the hagiography from the
earliest phase of Old Norse vernacular literature according to the evidence
provided by preserved manuscripts of that period. Secondly, it will specu-
late on one possible explanation for the apparent attraction to Old Norse readers
of a particular kind of hagiography, namely the lives of the martyrs of the early
Church.
The earliest phase of Old Norse vernacular literature is defined here as the first
hundred years of preserved vernacular literature; that is, the period from roughly
1150 to 1250.1 This was a period during which translations from Latin dominated,
in particular translations of hagiographic narratives and sermons.2 Towards the end
of the period a new kind of vernacular literature appeared on the scene, namely the
romances translated from French and Anglo-Norman from 1226 and onwards,
which caused something of a literary revolution.3 The first hundred years of the
preserved manuscript tradition thus make up quite a coherent and homogeneous
corpus, while at the same time providing sufficient material for generalizations.

1
For the dating of manuscripts, I rely throughout on the datings provided in Ordbog over det
norrøne prosasprog: Indices (Copenhagen: Den arnamagnæanske kommission, 1989).
2
A convincing case for interference from translations of Old English texts can be made as well.
See Christopher Abram, ‘Anglo-Saxon Influence on the Old Norwegian Homily Book’, Medieval
Studies, 14 (2004), 1–35.
3
1226 is the date provided by the colophon to Tristrams saga, a translation and reworking of
Thomas d’Angleterre’s Tristan. The earliest manuscript preserving this new kind of literature dates
from c. 1270.
242 Jonas Wellendorf

If one takes a glance at general overviews of Old Norse literature, it is evident

that they emphasize the genres that consist of locally conceived works in the
vernacular (such as the sagas of kings, the sagas of Icelanders, and eddic and skaldic
poetry), at the expense of the works that had a much wider circulation in the
Middle Ages.4 This unevenness in the coverage of the material is mainly caused by
the fact that our culture for some centuries has valued originality at the expense of
traditionality and preferred historical accuracy to ethical truths. This considered,
it is no wonder that texts such as the translated lives of international saints have
been shown relatively little interest. Contrary to, for example, the most famous
sagas of the Icelanders, the lives of saints normally stress the universal and para-
digmatic traits of the saint rather than the unique and distinctive, and the story
line often emphasizes ‘the ethical message of historical events […] at the expense of
the literal’.5 While the sagas of the Icelanders might be the unique contribution to
world literature that clearly demarcates Old Norse-Icelandic literature from other
literary traditions in the Middle Ages, and indeed other periods as well, the lives of
saints connect the very same literature with the rest of Western Europe.

Saints’ Lives and Old Norse Literature

Saints’ lives were possibly the most popular narrative written genre in the Middle
Ages. The texts we value the most are often preserved in few medieval manuscripts
only (or sometimes only in post-medieval manuscripts), whereas the lives of saints
are typically preserved in many manuscripts. Thus no less than seventeen manu-
scripts containing vernacular versions of the life of St Nicholas are preserved, and
many of these manuscripts even contain the long version, of which the printed
edition runs to almost 110 pages. With particular reference to this longer version,
Finnur Jónsson wrote in his shorter literary history: ‘the longer they [the saint’s

4
Such as Jónas Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas, trans. by Peter Foote (1988; repr. Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka bókmennntafélag, 2007); or Bjarne Fidjestøl, ‘Norrøn felleslitteratur’, in Norsk litteratur
i tusen år, ed. by Bjarne Fidjestøl and others (Oslo: Capellen, 1994), pp. 31–129. More represen-
tative are Hans Bekker-Nielsen and others, Norrøn fortællekunst (Copenhagen: Akademisk forlag,
1965); and Guðrún Nordal and others, Íslensk bókmenntasaga (Reykjavík: Mál og menning,
1992–2006).
5
Thomas J. Heffernan, ‘The Liturgy and Literature of Saints’ Lives’, in The Liturgy of the
Medieval Church, ed. by Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute
Publications, 2001), pp. 73–105 (p. 77).
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 243

lives] are, the more unbearable they are to read’.6 The medieval Icelanders and Nor-
wegians obviously thought otherwise, and the number of medieval manuscripts
containing hagiographic literature is supposed to outnumber those containing
sagas of Icelanders and contemporary sagas.7
This translated literature has chiefly been regarded as important because it was
written before the more famous sagas of kings or sagas of Icelanders, and it is thus
in a chronological sense primary to the texts that are most held in the highest esteem.
The germ of Old Norse literature, so it has been thought, must somehow be sought
in this literature. More than half a century ago it was famously formulated by Tur-
ville-Petre that ‘the learned literature did not teach the Icelanders what to say, but
it taught them how to say it’.8 But it is worthwhile to emphasize that these texts are
not only important as antecedents of the golden age saga literature. They should
also be important to us because they were important to the people who wrote,
copied, read, and listened to them. Still more importantly, hagiography and related
kinds of literature were the favourite reading material of the Old Norse readers,
and what was being read might be equally as important as what was being written.
The popularity of the hagiographic literature is nicely illustrated in a passage
from Þorgils saga skarða, one of the so-called Sturlunga sagas that describe events
of the more recent past. The action takes place at the Hrafnagil farm in Northern
Iceland in 1257 on 21 January. The main character, Þorgils, comes on horseback
to the farm, where he is well received:
Þorgils was asked to choose what kind of entertainment they should have in the evening,
saga reading or dance. He asked which sagas were available. He was told that they had the
saga of Thomas the archbishop, and he chose that one because he loved him more than
other saints. Then the saga was read all the way to the point where the archbishop was
attacked in the church and the crown was chopped off him. People say that Þorgils stopped
at this point and said: ‘This would be a most beautiful death.’ Shortly thereafter he fell
asleep.9

6
Finnur Jónsson, Den islandske litteraturs historie; tilligemed den oldnorske (Copenhagen:
G.E.C. Gad, 1907), p. 404: ‘Jo længere de er, desto mere uudholdelige er de at læse.’
7
See Margaret Cormack, ‘Christian Biography’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Litera-
ture and Culture, ed. by Rory McTurk (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 27–42 (p. 29). Cormack
quotes an unpublished lecture by the Icelandic manuscript specialist Stefán Karlsson.
8
Gabriel Turville-Petre, Origins of Icelandic Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953),
p. 142.
9
‘Honum var kostr á boðinn, hvat til gamans skyldi hafa, so3gur eða dans, um kveldit. Hann
spurði hverjar so3gur í vali væri. Honum var sagt, at til væri saga Tómass erkibiskups, ok kaus hann
hana, því at hann elskaði hann framar en aðra helga menn. Var þá lesin sagan ok allt þar til, er unnit
244 Jonas Wellendorf

This description is not to be taken as a historical account of what happened

that winter evening of 1257, for the whole passage anticipates Þorgils’s own death,
which takes place a few pages later in a manner corresponding to that of St Thomas
of Canterbury. The anonymous saga author even takes care to spell out the paral-
lels between the two historical scenes. But even if this passage is mainly to be seen
as a literary device of prefiguration, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there
were people at the time of this saga being written who had saints’ lives as their
preferred reading matter.
Saints’ lives and other ecclesiastical texts make up the bulk of the earliest pre-
served vernacular literature, but at the same time it is important to keep in mind
that this corpus does not reveal much about the very beginnings, either of vernac-
ular literature in the North or of the cult of saints. In the period from which our
first manuscripts are preserved, Christianity is already firmly rooted in the North,
the archbishopric of Nidaros has just been established, and the liturgical practices
are well on their way to receiving a stable form with the ordinal of the archdiocese.
It must accordingly be assumed that saints’ lives in Latin and the abbreviations of
such lives used for the lections during the night office had been in circulation for
a long time already. This means that the translations represent a second traceable
wave in the dissemination of the saints’ lives in the North. The first wave consists
of texts in Latin that were both imported and produced locally for liturgical pur-
poses and as reading matter. The second wave thus represents the translation of
some of these texts — the most appealing it must be assumed — into the vernacu-
lar. Latin texts on the saints have unfortunately only been preserved as fragments
used for bindings in post-Reformation accounting books. Moreover, they have not
yet been sufficiently catalogued, let alone described or edited. Accordingly, it is
virtually impossible to get an overview of the preserved material unless one has
permanent access to the collections.
In the last decades it has become increasingly clear that ‘literary history no
longer is entirely literary’, as it has been formulated.10 Questions have been posed

var á erkibiskupi í kirkjunni ok ho3ggvin af honum krúnan. Segja menn, at Þorgils hætti þá ok mælti:
‘Þat myndi vera allfagr dauði’. Litlu síðar sofnaði hann’: Þorgils saga skarða, in Sturlunga saga, ed.
by Jón Jóhannesson and others (Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946), pp. 104–226 (p. 218). The
orthography of all Old Norse quotations has been normalized according to common practice.
10
The expression by Walter Ong is quoted by Hans Rudolf Velten, ‘Performativität: Ältere
deutsche Literatur’, in Germanistik als Kulturwissenschaft: Eine Einführung in neue Theoriekonzepte,
ed. by Claudia Benthien and Hans Rudolf Velten (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschen-
buch), pp. 217–42 (p. 224).
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 245

concerning the performative aspects of the text, their modes of reception, and the
mediality, to mention some. In this connection such questions will be all but
ignored. No definitive information is available about the nature of audiences or
about the modes of interpretation they applied to the texts — caution is therefore
required. For example, the idea that vernacular texts were made for the laity who
might not have been able to understand the texts in their original Latin form seems
too simplistic. In the period of the emergence of Old Norse vernacular literature,
Western Europe was witnessing a literary revolution that saw the rise of the vernac-
ular language, in some areas for the first time. This was the case with the Old Norse
and Old French literature, while the vernacular rose again as a popular medium of
literature in the English- and German-speaking areas after a period of hibernation.
When placed in this larger context, it becomes apparent that an explanation of the
evolution of Old Norse literature needs to take other factors into account than
simply the presumed (and perhaps exaggerated) inability of the people of Norway
and Iceland to understand Latin.
The quotation from Þorgils saga skarða above shows that it was not utterly
incredible that the life or saga of Thomas Becket could have been the favourite
reading of a non-clerical Icelander and that texts were read aloud. Some of the
vernacular versions of lives of saints begin with phrases suggesting they were read
aloud on the feast days of the saint in whose honour they were composed. At least
thirteen vernacular saints’ lives have homiletic introductions along the lines of
‘Today we celebrate the mass-day of the apostle Bartholomew in the memory of
etc’. This introduction points to an occasion where the text is being read aloud in
front of an audience. However, such homiletic introductions are not found in the
early period with which we are concerned. This might be coincidental, but in some
cases it can be convincingly argued that homiletic introductions were added to
existing vernacular texts at a later point in their history of transmission.11 At the
same time, homiletic and hortative endings along the lines of ‘now let us all pray
to our Lord’ are found occasionally in the early period, for instance, in a Norwegian
fragment of the saga of Bartholomew.12 Thus it is not unlikely that one of the uses
of a vernacular life was for it to be read aloud during the feast of a saint; perhaps,

11
Philip Roughton, ‘Stylistics and Sources of the Postula sögur in AM 645 40 and AM
652/630 40’, Gripla, 16 (2005), 7–49, uses the presence or absence of such homiletic sections to
distinguish between different groups of lives of the apostles.
12
‘Nú skulum vér allir biðja várn herra’: Agnete Loth, ‘Et gammelnorsk apostelsagafragment:
AM 237 b, fol.’, in Afmælisrit Jóns Helgasonar: 31. júní 1969, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson and others
(Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1969), pp. 219–34 (p. 223).
246 Jonas Wellendorf

but not necessarily, in a church. Another possible occasion and location would be
during meals in monasteries, since the Rule of Benedict, as is well known, pre-
scribed reading during meals.13 The Rule makes no mention of the language in
which the reading is to be executed, and it might as well have been in the vernacular
as in Latin. The use of the vernacular for monastic readings at a refectory becomes
all the more likely considering that one of the oldest Old Norse fragments is indeed
a fragment of a vernacular translation of the Rule of Benedict. But still, besides
these hints, the consumption of texts is in the main largely a matter of conjecture.

The Corpus of Vernacular Hagiography

An examination of the early preserved material reveals that saints’ lives and homi-
letic literature make up the largest share. If we consider the hagiographical texts
only, they can be further subdivided into the following groups according to their
main protagonist:
• two local saints (Olaf and Þorlákr);
• eight apostles and other biblical characters (Andrew, Bartholomew, Jacob, John
the Baptist, Matthew, Paul, and Stephen the protomartyr);
• six early martyrs (Blaise, Clement, Erasmus, Eustace, Silvester, and Vincent);
• one doctor (Basil);
• three confessors (Brendan, Martin, and Nicholas);
• three Marian miracles (Theophilus, Jew lends to Christian, and Romaldus).
Two aspects of this list are particularly conspicuous. Firstly, it does not contain
lives of female saints,14 while many vernacular lives of female saints, virgins in par-
ticular, are preserved from later periods. Secondly, with the exception of the two
local saints, there are no recent saints on the list. Brendan is usually believed to have
lived in the sixth century, and the text about him, which is now quite fragmentary,
was in all likelihood not a saint’s life but the Navigatio Brendani, a text that might
be better thought of as an allegorical story. Besides Brendan and the two local saints,
all the other saints are supposed to have lived either in the first or fourth century.

13
‘Mensis fratrum lectio deesse non debet […]. Et summum fiat silentium, ut nullius musitatio
vel vox nisi solius legentis ibi audiatur […]. Fratres autem non per ordinem legant aut canent, sed
qui aedificant audientes’: Regula monachorum sancti Benedicti, Benedikts Regel, ed. and trans. by
Brian Møller Jensen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1998), p. 166.
14
In the Marian miracles, Mary naturally comes to the rescue of the main characters (who are
male).
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 247

This tendency must reflect a preference among the translators, their patrons,
or audiences for this kind of saint’s life. A comparison with the ordinal of the
archdiocese makes it apparent that a much wider range of saints were to be cele-
brated in the liturgy, such as Agatha, Agnes, Alban, Anthony of Egypt, Augustine
of Canterbury, and Augustine of Hippo — just to mention those saints who are
not male martyrs and whose names begin with an A.15 The Norwegian Christian
laws also have a section on Christian feast days, and they are usually regarded as
reflecting a period before the introduction of the ordinal. In the law of Frostathing,
the northern law district of Norway, thirty-two feast days are listed; in addition to
biblical characters and local saints, the feasts of the following saints are listed: Greg-
ory, Botulph, Swithun, Margaret, Lawrence, Martin, and Clement.16 This list is
also much more varied in the choice of saints, but it is slightly closer to the corpus
of translated lives. Another source that can be used to determine the popularity of
a particular saint in this period is church dedications, but they do not show the
same preferences for early Christian male martyrs as do the vernacular lives.17
By comparing the selection of saints in the vernacular hagiography with the
selections of the ordinal, the laws, and the church dedications, it is clear that the
preserved translations are not representative of the saints who were generally vene-
rated in the archdiocese. Instead, there is a clear bias in favour of fourth-century
martyrs and biblical characters, who were of course all martyrs as well. This raises
the question of why these lives in particular were chosen. What did they have that
apparently appealed so much to the Old Norse translators or their commissioners
that the life of a confessor like Anthony or a virgin like Agatha lacked?
It might initially be tempting to think of the blood and gore and the torments
of the martyrs during their passions as something that would appeal to an audience
of Vikings accustomed to plundering and raping. But at this point in time the
Viking Age was a thing of the past, and the term víkingr itself had almost become
a term of abuse. The descriptions of the passions can be quite blood dripping, as in

15
See the index of saints in Lilli Gjerløw, Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae (Orðubók) (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1968).
16
I have used the handy table found in Audun Dybdahl, Helgener i tiden, vol. I: Vitnesbyrd om
helgenkult i Trøndelag; vol. II: To utenlandske kalendarier brukt i Trøndelag, Senter for middelalder-
studier, Skrifter 10 (Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press, 1999), p. 16.
17
The Icelandic material is surveyed by Margaret Cormack, The Saints in Iceland: Their Vene-
ration from the Conversion to 1400, Subsidia hagiographica, 78 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes,
1994). The Norwegian material is covered in an older survey by Lorentz Dietrichson, ‘Sammen-
lignende Fortegnelse over Norges Kirkebygninger i Middelalderen og Nutiden’, Tidsskrift for den
evangeliske lutherske Kirke, 3rd ser., 2 (1888), 1–51, 273–319, and 465–512.
248 Jonas Wellendorf

the life of St Vincent, which is basically nothing more than a long enumeration and
description of the various torments he suffers; but understatement seems to be
more common, and many texts show restraint when it comes to the description of
the actual torments. Often they would simply state that the martyr was beheaded
outside the city walls, as in the following example from Blasius saga: ‘Later the
martyr of God was beheaded together with two boys outside the city walls of
Sebastia.’18 In another example from Jakobs saga, just before Jacob is beheaded he
baptizes one of his persecutors, Josias: ‘And Josias was complete in his faith in our
Lord Jesus Christ and was beheaded at once together with the apostle Jacob, and
he became a true martyr of God, and together they travelled to the Lord.’19
If blood and gore are not the main attractions of the translated saints’ lives,
what are then? A common feature of many of these texts is the public confronta-
tion of the saint with those in power. The protagonist usually brings about the
destruction of pagan temples and idols, either by prayer or through newly con-
verted pagans, but he rarely resorts to direct violent action against the idols and
temples.20 This destruction usually angers the pagan priests — or blótbiskupar,
‘sacrificial bishops’, as they are often termed in Old Norse — and they approach
the local ruler and persuade him to arrest the saint. This persuasion is often
facilitated by the considerable sum of money the sacrificial bishops have collected in
advance. Alternatively, the local ruler might himself be angered by the actions of the
saint and no bribe is necessary. The arrest is followed by an interrogation where the
saint sometimes gives a lengthy exposé of the Christian doctrine and the falseness of
the pagan belief. The scene invariably ends with the martyrdom of the saint.
This is an easily recognizable sequence of events that can be presented with
varying degrees of elegance and skill by the authors, and the schematic nature of the
narrative must have contributed to the popularity of these texts. But this cannot
be the decisive factor, since the lives of virgins are equally schematic, and they do
not seem to have enjoyed comparable popularity. I would argue that it is these
sections dealing with pagan gods and idols and their destruction that caught the
interest of translators and later copyists in particular, since this is a feature that is

18
‘En guðs vátr var síðan ho3 ggvinn með tveim sveinum fyr utan borgveggi Sebastie’: Blasius
saga, ed. by C. R. Unger, in Heilagra manna søgur, 2 vols (Christiania: B. M. Bentzen, 1877), I,
256–71 (p. 271).
19
‘En Jósías var algerr í trú domini nostri Jesu Christi ok þegar ho3ggvinn með Jakobo postola
ok gerðisk saðr píningarvátr Guðs ok fóru þeir baðir á einni stundu til domini’: Jakobs saga, ed. by
Ludvig Larsson, in Isländske handskriften N o 645 4° i den arnamagnæanska samlingen (Lund:
Malmström & Kompis boktryckeri, 1885), pp. 90–99 (p. 99).
20
Exceptions are St Martin and St Olaf.
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 249

shared by most of the texts on the list.21 Sometimes it is even clear that these
sections are considerably elaborated upon in the Old Norse tradition. This can be
seen by a comparison with the known Latin texts about the same saints. Even if the
precise Latin exemplars of the Old Norse translations are not available for a com-
parison, some conjectures can be made about the elaborations and innovations that
were probably introduced in the texts during their transmission in the Old Norse
context, and not while they circulated in Latin. The best example of this is found
in the Old Norse life of St Clement.

Clemens saga

Clement was one of the first popes and one of the saints whose popularity in the
North is well attested from an early period onwards. Thirteenth-century tradition
has it that St Olaf (d. 1030) himself founded the Church of Clement in Nidaros.
In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, lives of the saint circulated widely as did the
account of his travels with Peter known under the name Itinerarium Petri but in
modern scholarship usually referred to as the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones. In
this fascinating text the narrator, who introduces himself with the words Ego
Clemens (I Clement), tells of his travels with the apostle Peter and gives lengthy
excerpts of Peter’s teachings. These are spiced up with a story in the style of Byzan-
tine romances about how Clement’s family was separated and endured hardships,
but finally after many years recognize each other in Peter’s large following. The
reunification that follows is reinforced by their now common belief in the God of
Peter’s preaching. The story of the separation and reunification of the family is not
told in chronological order in the Recognitiones but rather through a complex
sequence of flashbacks in the seventh and ninth book of the work, which is made
up of ten books in total. A Passio Clementis (BHL 1848) circulated in addition to
— and sometimes in conjunction with — the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones.22
This text related how Clement was taken prisoner, accused of blasphemy against
the Roman gods, exiled to Asia Minor, and finally martyred.
There is good evidence from the earliest phase of the Old Norse-Icelandic
literary history that the Clementine material was popular in the archdiocese.

21
The texts without such confrontations are the lives of Basil, Brendan, Þorlákr, and the
Marian miracles.
22
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, Subsidia hagiographica, 6 and
70 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1898–1901 and 1986).
250 Jonas Wellendorf

Fragments of his legend are preserved in Latin.23 The text clearly derives from BHL
1848, but has been heavily edited, mainly by the excision of text, and divided into
lections so it is suitable for reading during the celebration of the night office on the
feast of Clement (23 November). Whether the text of the passio was transformed
for liturgical purposes in Norway or Iceland or somewhere else is at the present
stage uncertain. From what is preserved of the text, it appears to be in tune with the
mainstream of the Latin tradition.
Turning to the vernacular life or saga of Clement, Clemens saga, the situation
is very different. Because of the work’s length and epical breadth, it is immediately
clear that the Old Norse version is not translated from the liturgical fragment.
Clemens saga is a text that is not only entertaining but also interesting from a
textual and philological viewpoint. Thirteen years ago it was the subject of a
monograph by Dietrich Hofmann, in which great emphasis was put on tracing the
sources of the saga.24
The first part of the saga must somehow be derived from the Pseudo-Clementine
writings, and covers the life of Clement from his childhood, via his travels with
Peter, to his election as pope. But the material has been completely rearranged and
now appears in ordo naturalis, rather than the ordo artificialis as in the Recogni-
tiones. Hofmann finds a model for this approach in a life of Clement initiated by
John the Deacon25 and completed by the bishop of Gaudericus of Velletri between
876 and 882 (BHL 1851) and argues that the Old Norse author, compiler, or
translator knew this text. The differences between BHL 1851 and Clemens saga
are, however, substantial, and Hofmann accounts for these differences by suggest-
ing that the material about Clement also circulated orally in the North.26

23
Oslo, Riksarkivet, Lat. fragm. 714, dated to 1150–1200 in Michael Gullick’s preliminary
hand-list. The fragments are unpublished and I would like to thank Åslaug Ommundsen for
providing me with photographs. A slightly later fragment containing the beginning of the same
legend is Oslo, Riksarkivet, Lat. fragm. 23.
24
Dietrich Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens in den skandinavischen Ländern im
Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Skandinavistik, 13 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997). An English
translation of the text and a discussion of its sources can be found in Helen Carron, Clemens Saga:
The Life of St Clement of Rome (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005).
25
John the Deacon is perhaps more famous for his life of Pope Gregory the Great (BHL 3641).
26
Hofmann’s argumentation is based on the (misguided) preconception that hagiographers
would not change the chain of events in an account of a saint’s life; see Hofmann, Die Legende von
Sankt Clemens, pp. 79–80. But the entire Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, which lists the
numerous versions of saints’ lives, is an argument against this preconception. With this in mind one
may sketch a different development of the life of Clement in Old Norse.
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 251

The identification of the source for the passion section is on the other hand
relatively straightforward, since this section obviously is based on the most wide-
spread passion of Clement (BHL 1848), the same passion that was used in the
liturgical fragments. A complicating factor is that the Old Norse version of the
passion is also preserved in another manuscript fragment (The Arnamagnæan Col-
lection, 655 xxviiia 4°, c. 1250–1300). Hofmann edited this fragment for the first
time in his monograph of 1997. It only covers events found in the Passio Clementis
and not the Recognitiones material, and Hofmann argued that it never contained
the complete life.27 Below I refer to this version as A, while the complete Clemens
saga is referred to as B.
The two differing versions become important because they show how a text was
gradually acculturated through the stages of its transmission in the Old Norse
vernacular. A good example of this approach in Clemens saga can be found in the
passage where Clement has converted a great crowd to Christianity. This, as one
might expect, enrages an official, so he pays the powerful men of the region to
persecute the Christians. This leads to civil unrest in Rome, and people discuss
Clement and his actions. The pro-Clement wing refers to all the miracles per-
formed by Clement, but the crowd that is against him accuses him of wizardry and
more importantly blasphemy.28 In the Latin version of the passion they say:
16. 2. Iovem dicit deum non esse, Herculem conservatorem nostrum dicit esse immundum
spiritum, Venerem deam sanctam meretricem esse commemorat, Vestam quoque deam
magnam ignibus crematam esse blasphemat. 16. 3. Sic sanctam deam Minervam et Dianam
et Mercurium simul et Saturnum et Martem accusat.29
[He says that Jupiter is not a god; he says our protector Hercules is an unclean spirit, he
calls the sacred goddess Venus a whore, and Vesta, a great goddess as well, he blasphemes
as consumed by fires. Thus he accuses the holy goddess Minerva and Diana and in like wise
Mercury and Saturn and Mars.]

Old Norse translators did not follow the same principles of equivalency that
modern translators do, and even though Clemens saga is far from a word-for-word
translation, the way in which these two sentences are translated shows that the

27
Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens, p. 114.
28
The following passage has been discussed a number of times in the context of Clemens saga.
Here I will mention Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens, pp. 120–27; and Mattias Tveitane,
‘Interpretatio norroena: Norrøne og antikke gudenavne i Clemens saga’, in The Sixth International
Saga Conference 28. 7.–2. 8. 1985 (Copenhagen: Det arnamagnæanske institut, year), pp. 1067–82.
29
Passio sancti Clementis, ed. by Franciscus Diekamp, in Patres apostolici, vol. II (Tubingen:
Henricus Laupp, 1913), pp. 51–81 (p. 69).
252 Jonas Wellendorf

material must have appealed to the translator in such a way that he felt inspired to
elaborate on the passage in a quite striking way. The passage parallel to the Latin
just quoted runs thus in version A:
Segir hann, at Þórr sé eigi guð, ok kallar Óðin óhrein anda ok segir Freyju portkonu hafa
verit. Fǿlir hann Frey. Hrǿpir hann Heimdall. Lastar hann Loka. Hatar hann Hǿni. Bo3lvar
hann Baldri. Tefr hann Tý. Níðir hann Njo3rð. Illan segir hann Ull. Flimtir hann Frigg.
Geyr hann Gefjun. Sekja dǿmir hann Sif.30
[He says that Þórr is not a god and calls Óðinn an unclean spirit and says that Freyja was
a whore. He derides Freyr. He speaks ill of Heimdall. He blames Loki. He hates Hǿnir. He
curses Baldr. He hinders Týr. He derides Njo3rðr. He calls Ullr evil. He ridicules Frigg. He
scoffs at Gefjun. He outlaws Sif.]

Several features should be of interest here. Firstly, the use of the so-called
interpretatio norrœna is conspicuous, whereby the names of Roman deities are
replaced by names of local Norse deities. This is a quite well-known phenomenon
in Old Norse, and in a wider context the same trend is found in the Germanic
names of the days of the week. The correspondences between the Old Norse and
the Roman pantheon are unstable and the Old Norse god Óðinn, who at some
point in time gave his name to Wednesday, might be used as the equivalent to the
Roman god Mercury, as in dies Mercurii, but also to Mars, Jupiter, Hercules, and
Saturn.31 This variance gives us the impression that the identification of gods in the
respective pantheons was a somewhat ad hoc phenomenon and that no fixed
correspondences were at hand.
Another noteworthy detail is that the vernacular list is quite expanded in
comparison to the Latin one. Whereas nine deities are mentioned in the Latin text,
no fewer than fourteen are mentioned in the Old Norse vernacular version. But the
most interesting aspect of the list is that it is organized by and tied together with
alliterations. Since alliteration is perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of
traditional Germanic poetry, these three features taken together make it quite
certain that the additions found in the Old Norse text are additions that are made
in a Germanic language, and presumably in Old Norse, rather than elements taken
over from a now lost Latin source. The natural conclusion to draw is that the Latin
passage somehow appealed to the Old Norse translator, or a later redactor/scribe,
and inspired him to elaborate on the list.

30
Hofmann, Die Legende von Sankt Clemens, p. 280.
31
Simonetta Battista, ‘Interpretations of the Roman Pantheon in the Old Norse Hagio-
graphical Sagas’, in Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross, Viking
Collection, 14 (Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press, 2003), pp. 175–97 (p. 193).
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 253

In comparison with the rest of the text, which is not generally characterized by
a heavy-handed use of alliteration, amplification, and elaboration, this section be-
comes highly conspicuous. But Clemens saga is not the only text where sections
elaborating on the pagan gods can be found. In another early hagiographic saga,
Martinus saga I (The Arnamagnæan Collection, 645 4°, c. 1225–50), a comparable
method of amplification has been applied, although the alliteration is omitted: ‘Þór
kallaði hann heimskan, en Óðin deigan, en Freyjo portkonu’32 (He [Martin] called
Þórr stupid and Óðinn cowardly and Freyja a whore). Establishing which Latin
text might have been the exemplar of a particular Old Norse text is always difficult,
but for Chapter 36 of Martinus saga I the Latin exemplar seems to have been the
Dialogii of Sulpicius Severus (BHL 1561). The relevant sentence of the dialogues
reads thus in the Latin version: ‘Mercurium maxime patiebatur infestum, Iouem
brutum atque hebetem esse dicebat’33 (He suffered Mercury who was extremely hos-
tile, and said that Jupiter was stupid and languid). Again, the Old Norse text is
augmented in relation to the Latin with the introduction of an extra deity. In Mar-
tinus saga I the extension is more modest, but the technique applied is similar.34
Apparently the appeal of the passage blaspheming the heathen gods did not end
with this, and in the other Old Norse manuscript with material relating to
Clement the passage is elaborated further. This version, B, is preserved in an older
manuscript than A and is thus chronologically speaking closer to the Latin text.
Textually speaking it is, however, more distant from the Latin, and the transmis-
sion of the Old Norse passion thus exemplifies the quite typical situation where a
later codex is not worse than an earlier one. B elaborates A, not only in this instance
but in many other instances as well. In the following example, the additions have
been italicized, and they are clearly of a different nature than those in A:

32
Martinus saga I, ed. by C. R. Unger, in Heilagra manna søgur, I, 554–74 (p. 569).
33
Sulpicius Severus, Gallus: Dialogues sur les ‘vertus’ de Saint Martin, ed. by Jacques Fontaine
and Nicole Dupré, Sources chrétiennes, 510 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006), p. 278.
34
A similar but later example can be found in Fídesar saga, Spear ok Karítasar, ed. by C. R.
Unger, Heilagra manna søgur, I, 369–76 (p. 370), where the emperor Adrianus accuses the three
sisters as follows: ‘Þér […] hafit illyrðt Óðin en lastat Þór ok Baldr, en skammat Frigg ok Freyju ok
Gefjun í orðum, ok lastat o3ll goð vár, ok segit þau ónýt, ok eyðit allri vegsemð þeira’ (You have
spoken evil about Óðinn, and criticized Þórr and Baldr, and disgraced Frigg and Freyja verbally and
criticized all our gods and you call them useless and ruined all their honour). The earliest manu-
script of the saga is from c. 1350–75. Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog: Indices, indicates that the
Latin text closest to the Old Norse is BHL 2971, Hystorie plurimorum sanctorum noviter et labo-
riose ex diversis libris in unum collecte (Cologne, 1483). This version has not been available to me.
254 Jonas Wellendorf

Hann segir at Þórr sé non guð, fulltrúi várr ok inn sterksti áss, áræðisfullr ok er nær, hvar sem
hann er blótinn. En þá ósǿmð ok óvirðing veitir hann Óðni órlausnafullum ok hvarfsemi, at
sjá Clemens kallar hann fjánda ok óhreinan anda. En hann kveðr Freyju portkonu verit hafa.
Fǿlir hann Frey, en hrǿpir Heimdall. Lastar hann Loka með slǿgð sína ok vélar ok kallar
hann ok illan. Hatar hann Hǿni. Bo3lvar hann Baldri. Tefr hann Tý. Níðir hann Njo3rð.
Illan segir hann Ull. Flimtir hann Frigg. En hann geyr Gefjun. Sekja dǿmir hann Sif.35
[He says that Þórr is not a god, our patron (fulltrúi) and the strongest God (áss), enterprising
and present wherever people sacrifice to him. But that unseemliness and disgrace he attributes
to the helpful Óðinn in whom we seek refuge, so that this Clemens calls him a fiend and an
unclean spirit. He says that Freyja was a whore. He derides Freyr. He speaks ill of Heimdall.
He blames Loki with his wiliness and machinations and calls him evil as well. He hates
Hǿnir. He curses Baldr. He hinders Týr. He derides Njo3rðr. He calls Ullr evil. He ridicules
Frigg. He scoffs at Gefjun. He outlaws Sif.]

Clearly the scribe/redactor has elaborated upon the text, not by mentioning
more gods but by assigning further characteristics to the gods already mentioned.
In the fiction of the text it is the pagans who speak in this way about their own
gods. Many of the qualities they assign to their pagan gods are, however, designa-
tions, qualities, and characteristics that we usually find used in a Christian context
by Christians to designate the saints in particular, but also Christ or the Lord. That
Þórr is the strongest god (áss) would have been common knowledge at the time
when the text was written; excessive strength is, after all, one of Þórr’s main charac-
teristics.36 But it is more surprising that he is also ‘the one in whom they put their
trust’ (fulltrúi). De Vries, discussing this term in his Altgermanische Religions-
geschichte, argues that the concept of the fulltrúi is a genuine heathen one and gives
some examples of the usage of the term in the saga literature.37 The most relevant
is perhaps from the saga of Eiríkr the Red, where a certain Þórhallr veiðimaðr, in
order to put an end to the starvation that tries the members of the Vínland expe-
dition, performs a pagan ritual in honour of Þórr and states that Þórr, his fulltrúi,
rarely has failed him. But De Vries’s arguments in favour of a genuine heathen

35
Clemens saga, ed. by Ludvig Larsson, in Isländska handskriften N o 645 4°, pp. 33–74 (pp.
66–67).
36
The prose Edda, our main repository of Old Norse myths, even says about Þórr that he is
the strongest of all gods and humans (‘hann er sterkastr allra guðanna ok manna’); Snorri Sturluson,
Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern
Research, 1988), p. 22.
37
Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, vol. II: Die Götter – Vorstellungen über den
Kosmos – Der Untergang des Heidentums, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, 12, 2nd edn
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1957), pp. 353–54.
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 255

origin of the term becomes less convincing when the example is read in the context
of the saga in which it belongs. Rather than being a description of a heathen prac-
tice, it seems to be an episode that is staged by an author with an ecclesiastic bent,
and the food Þorhallr manages to procure by his magical practices turns out to be
poisonous. Thus the famine is not over before the crew members decide to toss the
food into the sea and put their faith in God.38 A more enlightening use of the same
term is found in an Old Norse version of the Marian miracle tale known as Light
on Masthead, in which an abbess is asked who her fulltrúi is, and she answers
‘Mary’.39 The preferable translation must therefore be ‘patron’, a term which
evokes the Christian cult of saints rather than the Old Norse cultic practices.40
Further on, Þórr is said to be present wherever people sacrifice to him. Critique
of this belief in the presence of the pagan gods in their temples is one of the
repeated points of criticism in the antipagan polemics. In such texts, the pagans
believe that their gods are identical with the idols. The missionary can then show
how the idols are powerless and susceptible to all kinds of physical attacks. Exam-
ples of this are legion, but the most developed Old Norse example is found in the
Dala-Guðbrandr episode of the Legendary Saga of St Olaf, which is preserved in a
manuscript dated between 1225 and 1250 (Uppsala, De la Gardie Collection, 8).
This episode with its biblical and patristic subtexts has been analysed in detail by
Theodore M. Andersson, and his conclusion is that ‘there is little or nothing in the
account of Dala-Guðbrandr that cannot be located in the biblical, patristic, and
hagiographic traditions’.41 When the pagans themselves describe Þórr as present
wherever people sacrifice to him, they thus live up to the expectations any medieval

38
Eiríks saga rauða: Texti Skálholtsbókar AM 557 40, ed. by Ólafur Halldorsson, Íslenzk
fornrít, 4 viðauki (Reykjavík: Hið íslenska fornritafélag, 1985), pp. 422–26.
39
Mariu saga: Legender om Jomfru Maria og hendes Jertegn, ed. by C. R. Unger (Christiania:
Brögger & Christie, 1871), p. 70. Further examples can be found in Hofmann, Die Legende von
Sankt Clemens, p. 123.
40
In the Icelandic Homily Book the word fulltrúi appears twice and the meaning seems to be
‘help’ or ‘support’ but in a more metaphorical sense. The source of this homily is unknown
according to Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen, The Icelandic Homily Book: Perg. 15 4° in the Royal
Library, Stockholm, Íslensk handrit, series in quarto, 3 (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar,
1993). The term fulltrui appears twice on fol. 53r, at lines 24–25.
41
Theodore M. Andersson, ‘Lore and Literature in a Scandinavian Conversion Episode’, in
Idee, Gestalt, Geschichte: Festschrift Klaus von See: Studien zur europäischen Kulturtradition, ed. by
Gerd Wolfgang Weber (Odense: Odense University Press, 1988), pp. 261–84 (p. 278). After
having outlined the background, Andersson turns his attention to the aspects of the episode that
turn it into ‘a good story’.
256 Jonas Wellendorf

reader and listener of a hagiographic text would have of them, since this kind of
description of paganism had been a longstanding hagiographical commonplace.
The presence of the pagan gods at their shrines is also of interest when com-
pared with the saints, since they are indeed present wherever they are venerated as
well — either in a direct physical sense, since a church might have had relics of that
particular saint, but also in a less direct sense since their attention is directed
towards anyone who justly calls upon them, even if they lived under distant skies
and no relics were nearby. This distance, in particular when dealing with the saints
of the biblical period or of the early Church, seems to have been a source of con-
cern to the Christians of medieval Norway and Iceland, distant as they were from
the Mediterranean. Perhaps it was this uneasiness that compelled the scribe/author
of an old Icelandic fragment (The Arnamagnæan Collection, 655 4° iii, c. 1200) of
the life of St Nicholas to add the following lines in the conclusion of a vernacular
rendering of a version of the life, translation, and miracles of Nicholas:
And not only where his body rests, but also wherever he is invoked, when people are
exposed to the dangers of the world, are sick or in distress in this world or in all kinds of
troubles, as soon as they ask him of mercy with the right disposition, they are comforted
in their troubles. […] since he was made bishop his power became so great that people were
alleviated from their troubles when they called upon him, even though they were in other
countries or at great distances, and he showed himself to those who invoked him, some-
times while they were awake and sometimes while they were sleeping, and yet he was at
home at his episcopal see at the same time.42

This section, which appears to be an addition in the Old Norse text,43 under-
lines that the powers of the saints are omnipresent and that help depends on the
disposition of the one who asks for help and not necessarily on the physical
presence of the saint. Shortly hereafter the manuscript breaks off in the middle of
a sentence, but in later manuscripts from which the ending can be supplied the

42
‘Ok eigi þar at eins es hann hvílir at líkam, nema ok horvetna þess es á hans nafn es kallat, sem
menn verða staddir heimsins í háska eða í sóttum eða í hveregi m[e]insemi þegar es hann biðia
miskunnnar með réttu hugskóti þá fá huggun sinna meina. […] síðan es hann varð biskup gerðisk
svá mikill máttr at krapti hans at menn fingu líkn meina sinna þá es þeir ko3lluðu á hann þótt þeir
væri á o3ðrum lo3ndum eða mjo3k í fjáska ok sýndisk hann þeim es á hann hétu, stundum vo3kundum
en stundum so3fundum ok vas hann þó heima at stóli sínum sem áðr’: Arnamagnænische Fragmente
(Cod. AM. 655 40 III– VIII, 238 fol. II, 921 40 IV 1. 2.): Ein Supplement zu den Heilagra manna
sögur, ed. by Gustav Morgenstern (Leipzig: Emil Gräfes Buchhandlung, 1893), pp. 6–7.
43
See Ole Widding, ‘Kilderne til den norrøne Nikolaus saga’ and ‘AM 655 4°, fragment III: Et
brudstykke af Nicolaus saga’, Opuscula, 2 (1961), 17–26 and 27–33.
ATTRACTION OF THE EARLIEST OLD NORSE VERNACULAR HAGIOGRAPHY 257

author argues that even though Nicholas lived and worked in Greece, he is not only
venerated there but also,
on this side of the Aegean Sea, both throughout Lombardy, and north of the Alps, Franks
and Saxons, Welshmen and Englishmen, Danes and Norwegians, and all Christians vene-
rate him as apostle […]. His fame extends over the whole world, and the name of the
honourable lord, the holy Nicholas, has made it to almost every desolate area, islands and
promontories and remote valleys.44

The saints are thus present wherever they are venerated, just like the pagan gods,
but their presence is of a different nature, and they require the right spiritual
disposition rather than sacrifices.
Another interesting addition to the list in Clemens saga is the designations used
to characterize Óðinn. The pagans describe him as ‘full of forgiveness/help’
(órlausnafullr) and as one in whom you can seek refuge (hvarfsemi). These two
designations occur only here in Old Norse, but the ideas that lie behind the terms
are of the same kind used in connection with the cult of saints or the Christian
God.45 The lausn of órlausnarfullr is often used to translate Latin redemptio
‘redemption’ or remissio ‘forgiveness’,46 and lausnari is ‘the saviour’, while hvarfsemi
recalls Latin words like adjutorium ‘help’, solatium ‘comfort’, and refugium ‘refuge’
without being an exact translation of any of them. These are all terms that are
much more closely connected to the Christian faith than with Nordic paganism.
This is at least the impression we get from the available sources.
In order to describe pagan practices from the point of view of the pagans them-
selves, the Old Norse author thus uses two strategies: 1) he has recourse to the
commonplaces about the pagan belief in idols from biblical and patristic writers,
and 2) he adopts a Christian framework relating to the cult of saints to describe the

44
‘fyrir heðan Grikklandshaf, bæði um Langbarðaland ok fyrir norðan fjall; frakkar ok saxar,
valir og englar, danir ok norðmenn, ok allir kristnir dýrka hann sem postula […]. Hans frægð er
farin um allan heim, ok nær í hverja óbygd, eyjar ok andnes ok afdali er komit nafn virðuligs herra
heilags Nicholai’: Bergr Sókkason, Nikolás saga, ed. by C. R. Unger, in Heilagra manna søgur, II,
49–158 (p. 158).
45
Hofmann argues that the designations are taken over from a Latin vita of Clemens. This vita
is only partly preserved in a single Italian manuscript (BHL 1851), and the relevant section is lost.
Hofmann’s argument for the use of this vita is quite complicated and rests on the (false)
assumption that one would not change the text of saints’ lives because of the high status the genre
enjoyed.
46
Ernst Walter, Lexikalisches Lehngut im Altwestnordischen: Untersuchungen zum Lehngut im
ethisch-moralischen Wortschatz der frühen lateinisch-altwestnordischen Übersetzungsliteratur (Berlin:
Akademie, 1976), pp. 130–31.
258 Jonas Wellendorf

cult of the pagan gods. The fact that the author does not apply a more appropriate
terminology, whatever that might have been, clearly indicates the kind of knowl-
edge people in general would have had about the pre-Christian religious systems.
Already at this early stage in the development of the Old Norse literature, less than
two hundred years after the conversion, the conceptual framework and vocabulary
needed to describe pre-Christian practices seem to be lacking. The author’s only
option (maybe even without being aware of it himself) was to use a Christian frame-
work. He and his audience knew the names of the old gods and a wealth of myths,
as is amply evidenced by the Old Norse mythological texts, but when it came to
rites, rituals, and religious practices and beliefs more generally, in particular what
the gods were actually good for in the interactions between men and gods, their
knowledge seems to have been more or less as restricted as the one we possess today.

Conclusion

One of the appeals of these early hagiographic texts must have been the returning
scenes where the pagan gods and their idols are overthrown or destroyed by the
heroes of these narratives. This would strengthen the believers in their faith, but
already at this early stage in medieval Norway and Iceland it was the exoticism of the
descriptions of the pagan religion that was one of the most appealing aspects of the
oldest preserved vernacular hagiography. Besides myths and names of deities, they
knew so very little about pre-Christian rites and rituals, but they could find para-
digmatic descriptions of the pagan cult in the hagiographic literature and of course
in the Bible itself, in particular in the book of Daniel and the letter of Jeremiah.
Armed with this knowledge of what paganism ‘really’ was, they went on to elaborate
the texts describing pre-Christian cults or compose texts themselves. These descrip-
tions, such as the one from Clemens saga, might rest not on a genuine knowledge
of the pagan cultic practices, but on a combination of patristic commonplaces and
well-established Christian paradigms borrowed from the cult of saints.
This attraction of the pagan past does not seem to have evaporated or
diminished with the passing of centuries. Still today, the descriptions of the pre-
Christian period are one of the main appeals of the Old Norse literature, and the
pagan period still fascinates. Unlike medieval people, however, most readers of such
texts do not find the biblical paradigms adequate for the description and under-
standing of paganism. Whether our terminology and today’s conceptual frame-
works are more adequate remains to be seen.