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The Pope of Iceland? Gizurr Ísleifsson and the Gregorian Reform in the Medieval North

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2025

Davide Salmoiraghi Open the ORCID record for Davide Salmoiraghi [Opens in a new window]
Davide Salmoiraghi*
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Abstract

In 1053, the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen became patriarchate of the North as part of a process of centralization with which the Curia sought control over Scandinavia and the North Atlantic. Although these ambitions risked being cut short by the German archbishops, who aspired to larger margins of independence, Gregory VII (1073–85) was able to secure the Icelandic diocese of Skálholt as a supporter of Roman reforming ideals. Bishop Gizurr Ísleifsson (1082–1118) maintained direct contacts with the Curia and organized the Icelandic church as a loyal Gregorian agent. In the absence of royal and archepiscopal authority in Iceland, Gizurr was considered ‘king and bishop over the country’: arguably, the pontiff of his own diocese. Through the analysis of Latin and Norse sources, this article explores how Gregorian ideals reached Iceland during the Investiture Controversy and how papal supremacy was built into the foundations of the northernmost diocese of Christendom.

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Studies in Church History , Volume 61: MARGINS AND PERIPHERIES IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY , June 2025 , pp. 168 - 185
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Ecclesiastical History Society

The movement of church reform that started with the pontificate of Gregory VII in the late eleventh century reached Iceland, the northernmost province of Christendom, with considerable delay. Since the conversion of the island in the year 1000, the first century of the church in Iceland was characterized by a profound interplay between the secular and the religious, so much so that scholars have argued for its nationalistic and semi-secular nature, more or less free from papal control.Footnote 1 It was only in the late twelfth century that bishops started fighting for the freedom of the church from the interference of secular chieftains.Footnote 2 The Gregorian movement towards ecclesiastical independence was first promoted by the Norwegian archdiocese of Niðaróss, which, since 1152, had overseen and administered the two dioceses of Iceland: the southern diocese of Skálholt and the northern diocese of Hólar. After its introduction in the 1170s, it took another century before the reform was successfully settled in favour of the church by Bishop Árni Þorláksson of Skálholt (1269–98), who won over the chieftains with the support of the Norwegian monarch, under whose authority Iceland had passed in 1262.

In this article, I investigate the existence of Gregorian tendencies in the Icelandic church prior to this first movement and around the time of the namesake of the reform, Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), and question the extent to which Rome shaped the episcopal authority of its northern representatives, especially during the episcopate of Gizurr Ísleifsson of Skálholt (1082–1118), Iceland’s second bishop. Previous scholarship has focussed on the uniqueness of the church of Iceland, stressing how its complete independence from Rome shaped its origins and development. In particular, Magnús Stefánsson did not see Gizurr’s effort as a valuable contribution to the Gregorian reform and deemed further speculation on the subject as pointless.Footnote 3 While I agree with the conclusions of the scholars on the secular nature of the early period of the church in Iceland, I challenge the claim that it was absolutely independent of Rome. Rather, I shall argue that through a careful negotiation between the Icelandic system and the rules of the church, Gizurr was able to take advantage of the interests of the chieftains to further the organization of the church in Iceland, implementing most of the pope’s directives, but adapting them to the social system of his land. The sources allow for a Gregorian reading of the life of Gizurr Ísleifsson and an interpretation of his deeds that indicates the bishop’s attention to the guidelines of the Curia around his time.

My interpretation of the relations between Rome and its northern suffragans begins by illustrating the anti-papal sentiments of the clergy of Hamburg-Bremen, Iceland’s first archbishopric, and the propaganda that was produced under the direction of Archbishop Liemar. I then contrast the attitude of the archdiocese with the conciliatory approach of the Icelandic bishops, and the consequences it had for the Icelandic church. Furthermore, I argue that Bishop Gizurr Ísleifsson not only shaped the church of Iceland according – as best he could – to the directives of the Curia, but also embraced Gregory VII’s conception of papal authority and reproduced it in his own country. I suggest that the absence of royal or direct superior ecclesiastical authority in Iceland allowed Gizurr to act and present himself as the pontiff of his own diocese. Finally, I address the issue of Gizurr’s marriage and interpret it as the result of a compromise between Roman aspirations and Icelandic customs, rather than a contradiction of the bishop’s Gregorian outlook.

I. Gregorian Reform and the Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen (1056–1101)

The archdiocese of Hamburg was founded in 831 by Pope Gregory IV as part of a mission to convert Denmark, Norway and Sweden. After the Danish King Horik I sacked the city in 845, the archbishopric was moved to Bremen, creating the larger archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen, with jurisdiction over the whole of Scandinavia.Footnote 4 As a sign of its strategic importance, in 1053 Pope Leo IX bestowed upon Archbishop Adalbert (1053–72) the dignity of apostolic legate and vicar of the North, including the Atlantic settlements of the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland.Footnote 5 However, the centralizing tendency of the papacy clashed with the aspirations of the archbishops themselves. During his years of office, Adalbert acted as the chief adviser to the young King Henry IV of Germany (1056–1105), who satisfied Adalbert’s appetite for expansion by granting lands and privileges to the archbishopric. Strengthened by this support, Adalbert’s ambition was for Hamburg-Bremen to become a reference point in northern Europe, with a level of independence that would have rivalled that of Rome.Footnote 6 The pope was therefore cautious, granting the legatine dignity on condition of the steadfast obedience (debita subjectione) of Adalbert and his successors to the Apostolic see.Footnote 7

Adalbert extended his authority of apostolic legate to the northern edges of Christianity in 1056, when he consecrated the first bishop of Iceland. Ísleifr Gizurarson belonged to the prominent chieftain family of the Haukdælir and had been educated and ordained priest at Herford in Saxony. According to Old Norse-Icelandic sources, Ísleifr was chosen by the Icelanders, who sent him abroad to be consecrated. In his journey, he met the Holy Roman emperor, Henry III (1046–56), who gave him safe passage to Rome, from where Pope Victor II (1055–7) sent him in turn to his metropolitan, Archbishop Adalbert, who consecrated him on 25 May 1056. Hungrvaka (‘Hunger-Waker’), the early-thirteenth-century Old Norse collection of bishops’ lives, records traces of the archbishop’s direct interest in the affairs of the newly established Icelandic church,Footnote 8 which he wanted to free from the influence of those ‘bishops’ who had not been appointed by the archdiocese. Despite being considered the first official bishop, Ísleifr’s position was still precarious. He was technically a missionary bishop in partibus infidelium (‘in the region of the infidels’), with neither an official see, nor an officially determined diocese. He also had competition: Hungrvaka registers that, in this period, at least six clergymen came to Iceland to proselytize from different lands. All of them are referred to as bishops; all stayed in Iceland for many years, and at least one of them, Bishop Bjarnvaðr, was remembered for his remarkable zeal.Footnote 9

Relations between Scandinavia and Rome increased during the papacy of Gregory VII (1073–85), who was in direct contact with Scandinavian sovereigns. To counter Adalbert’s self-centred belief in the freedom of the church, Gregory VII corresponded with King Sweyn Estridsson of Denmark (1047–76), with whom he discussed the foundation of an independent metropolitan see.Footnote 10 While this project would become reality only after Gregory’s death, with the foundation of the archdiocese of Lund (1104), the relationship between Hamburg-Bremen and Rome became increasingly tense during the tenure of Adalbert’s successor, Archbishop Liemar (1072–1101). Like his predecessors, the archbishop was an important supporter of Henry IV, to whom Liemar owed his election. Liemar openly showed his hostility to the pope’s understanding of the bishops’ role and their prerogatives when Gregory intervened directly in the running of his metropolitan see. In 1074, two papal legates, Hubert of Palestrina and Gerald of Ostia, were sent to Germany to convene a general reforming synod, usurping a legal prerogative of the archbishop, who was only asked to assist the papal envoys. When he refused, Liemar was suspended from office and summoned to Rome to explain his conduct at the Lenten synod the following year.Footnote 11 Eager to secure the claims of his see in the North, he obeyed the summons and went to Rome, there expressing his opposition to the pope’s infringement of his own authority as metropolitan and the authority of his bishops in general.Footnote 12 Despite his attempts to mediate with the pope on behalf of the emperor at Canossa (1077) and Rome (1080), Liemar remained a firm opponent of the pope’s authoritarian views. He was the only German archbishop to take part in the Brixen Synod in June 1080, which saw the deposition of Gregory VII and the election of the antipope Clement III, and he later acted as chief adviser to Henry IV during the siege of Rome in 1083.

The anti-papal attitude of the archbishopric within which Iceland’s church fell is well illustrated by two works associated with Archbishop Liemar at the time of the consecration of Bishop Gizurr of Skálholt. Liemar is the dedicatee of Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, which was completed around the time of his suspension.Footnote 13 The work not only claims the independence of the archiepiscopal see but celebrates it as a second Rome.Footnote 14 Together with Bishop Benno of Osnabrück (1067–88), himself a staunch supporter of the rights of the emperor,Footnote 15 Liemar sponsored the composition of a treatise entitled Liber de controversia inter Hildebrandum et Henricum imperatorem. Footnote 16 This work figures among the royalist pamphlets of the collection known as Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum (pamphlets on the controversy between emperors and popes) that were written by members of the clergy, which Robinson defined as ‘episcopal polemics’.Footnote 17 The treatise was composed between 1084 and 1085 by Wido, canon and bishop of Osnabrück after Benno’s death (1093–1101), who was also active in the royalist party as an advisor to Henry IV. It defends the election of Clement III after the Synod of Brixen, arguing against the legitimacy of Gregory’s election, and criticizes the latter’s misuse of the instrument of excommunication against the emperor and his bishops.

II. Gizurr the Gregorian

While Wido’s text and his sponsorship are exemplary of the climate of tension at the archepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen, the career of Bishop Gizurr Ísleifsson (1082–1118) offers evidence of the position that the episcopal see in Iceland took vis-à-vis the demands of the Curia. The connection between the bishop of Iceland and the pope, alongside the importance of Roman approval, are particularly stressed in Hungrvaka,Footnote 18 in which Gizurr is the most extensively discussed of the earliest bishops of Iceland.Footnote 19

After the death of Bishop Ísleifr in 1081, the people of Iceland requested the election of Gizurr, his son, then forty years of age. Like his father, Gizurr had received his education in Herford in Saxony; he had also travelled to Rome with his wife and spent a year in Denmark before being consecrated bishop of Iceland.Footnote 20 His connection to the Gregorian cause is evident from the time of his consecration. Due to Archbishop Liemar’s suspension, Gizurr could not be consecrated in Hamburg-Bremen and went directly to the pope. Gregory VII had him consecrated by the archbishop of Magdeburg, Hartwig of Spanheim (1079–1102), a trustworthy spokesman of the papal party in the investiture controversy (1076–1122).Footnote 21 According to Hungrvaka, the archbishop received Gizurr with honour and distinction, and consecrated him on 4 September 1082; he also provided him with ‘everything that was needed’, possibly robes and other episcopal paraphernalia, or material relating to canon law.Footnote 22 Before returning to Iceland, Gizurr spent a further year in Norway, where he accomplished his first duty on behalf of his people, confirming his father’s oath to King Óláfr kyrri Haraldsson (1066–93), and thus accepting the provisions regarding the rights of the Icelanders in Norway.Footnote 23

It seems that Gizurr travelled to Rome during the peak of the controversy between pope and emperor, and that he told the pope all the troubles he had suffered on the way.Footnote 24 In Rome, it is possible that Gizurr was subjected to the Gregorian proselytizing and ‘charismatic leadership’ to which the pope exposed many foreign visitors with the hope of turning them into trusted Gregorians.Footnote 25 Gregory VII’s persuasion may have been even more convincing in the case of Gizurr, who met the pope during or immediately after Henry IV’s second siege of Rome (summer 1082).Footnote 26 Gizurr’s two visits to Rome may also be interpreted as signs of personal obedience to the pope, who had often stressed that bishops should demonstrate their devotion to Peter and his vicar by coming ad limina apostolorum (to the threshold of the apostles).Footnote 27

Once back in Iceland in 1083, it is apparent that Gizurr organized and strengthened the church in Iceland according to the directives of the Roman church. First, the bishop had a church built and attached to his ancestral land at Skálholt, which he intended to become the bishop’s see ‘for as long as Christianity was maintained in Iceland’.Footnote 28 The association between the Icelandic and the Roman church was strengthened by the dedication of this new cathedral to the Virgin and St Peter. Iceland thus became the first country in Scandinavia to have a (cathedral) church dedicated to the Apostle Peter,Footnote 29 a significant move at a time when Gregory VII was giving particular importance to the prince of the apostles and to his own role as his vicar.Footnote 30 Hungrvaka defines Skálholt as ‘the spiritual mother of all the other consecrated buildings in Iceland’, and its implicit association with St Peter’s Basilica in Rome is made explicit in Petrs saga postola II, the thirteenth-century hagiographical saga of the apostle.Footnote 31

Bishop Gizurr also successfully established the payment of Peter’s pence. Again, Iceland was the first Scandinavian country to introduce tithing into the official laws of the land.Footnote 32 Most scholars overlook the importance of this accomplishment, arguing that the introduction of the tithe benefitted the chieftains, enabling them to access revenues of churches that stood on their lands.Footnote 33 In fact, owning churches and cashing their revenues was not the only source of power for the chieftains, who were very limited in how they could dispose of these assets. The law prescribed that church properties were to be listed in cartularies (máldagar), that they could not be sold,Footnote 34 and that the churches and their priests had to be maintained.Footnote 35 The tithe payments also encouraged the formation of parishes, as those who attended a church would pay the tithe there. In this regard, Gizurr ordered a count of farm owners in Iceland, probably in order to establish the distribution of churches and ensuring lay support in their construction. This is evidenced in the foundation of the second diocese of Iceland, Hólar, which Gizurr ordered at the request of his countrymen in 1106.Footnote 36 Finally, Magnús Stefánsson has pointed out that the rapid development of the organized system of the church under Gizurr led to the inclusion of a separate section of ecclesiastical laws when the first Icelandic legal code was committed to parchment in the winter of 1117–8.Footnote 37 It is significant that the recording of the laws was supervised by Sæmundr Sigfússon, a powerful chieftain and priest. Sæmundr had also supported Gizurr’s introduction of the tithe alongside the lawspeaker and poet Markús Skeggjason, who in turn had accompanied Gizurr to the court of the Norwegian king to confirm the rights of the Icelanders in the country. Thus, Sæmundr’ and Markús’s involvement in Gizurr’s decisions exemplifies the support that chieftains gave to the bishop’s organization of the church in Iceland.

The extant sources unanimously stress the exceptional prestige of Gizurr’s position and present his years of office as a golden age of peace. In contrast to the lack of a central power in Iceland, his authority was so well established, that Norse and foreign accounts – without exception – refer to Gizurr as both king and bishop in his own country:

All the chieftains promised him to be submissive to all of God’s ordinances and do whatever he commanded.Footnote 38

He gained great honour and respect from the very outset of his career as bishop, and everybody wished to do exactly as he ordered, young and old, rich and poor, women and men, and it was proper to say that he was both king and bishop over his country as long as he lived.Footnote 39

[After his death] it was the consensus of everyone that there would never be a replacement for him. It was also the view of all prudent men that, by dint of God’s benevolence and his own achievements, he was the most distinguished man in Iceland, both among clerical and secular men.Footnote 40

These extracts suggest that Gizurr was considered to exercise a power and authority over both ecclesiastical and secular matters that were pivotal to the establishment of the Roman church in Iceland. The way he achieved this was by negotiating between his role as chieftain and his role as bishop, and by adapting the directives of Rome to the social and cultural context of his homeland, thus achieving the church’s goals, while preserving Iceland’s peace. While there is no indication that he ever fought for the Gregorian cause in Iceland as other bishops were doing elsewhere,Footnote 41 Bishop Gizurr can be regarded as a Gregorian agent in the sense of a bishop who obeyed the directives of the pope and furthered them in his own diocese as best he could. This paralleled the strategy of Gregory VII, who was himself proceeding with care in his correspondence with the Scandinavian kings.Footnote 42 Moreover, while elsewhere in Europe the authority of the bishops was undermined by secular rulers, in Iceland, bishops exercised their authority in a context characterized by relatively weak chieftains who were also involved in internal conflicts.Footnote 43 Most importantly, the Icelandic bishops were themselves chieftains. Consequently, as in the case of Gizurr, they were able to acquire an authority that was unprecedented. In a sense, through the nationalistic character of combining the secular and the religious, ‘Christianity remained on the whole palatable to the Icelanders and in some respects vanquished its own victors.’Footnote 44

If, in the absence of a king, Gizurr himself often acted as one, in the absence of superior religious authority, he also acted as his country’s archbishop, dealing personally with the Curia and furthering the pope’s directives. As chieftain and bishop, he acted as primus inter pares (‘first among equals’) in both systems, while his double status raised him above both groups. This was necessary if he wanted to succeed in establishing the tenets of the church of Rome in the northernmost province of the church. Some elements of Gizurr’s biography are suggestive of his quasi papal (self-)representation in the eyes of his contemporaries, and especially in the late-twelfth-century sources. In a sense, the bishop is seen as establishing Iceland’s own Patrimonium sancti Petri (‘the patrimony of St Peter’), donating his own estate and other property to the church he himself had built and dedicated to St Peter, and encouraging others to follow his example.Footnote 45 Among Gizurr’s donations to his newly built cathedral, Hungrvaka mentions a precious purple-white chasuble (‘purpurahökul hvítan’) that would have been worn by Gizurr and his successors.Footnote 46 Although white became the distinctive pontifical colour only later, visual emblems of distinction such as this were important for signalling a special authority.Footnote 47 Finally, by far the most significant praise for Gizurr in his role of king, bishop and pope of Iceland, is the interpretation of the events following his death:

The wisest of men thought that Iceland seemed to decline after the death of Bishop Gizurr just as Rome declined after the fall of Pope Gregory. The loss of Bishop Gizurr pointed in the direction of all the decline in Iceland, both in shipping losses and loss of life with the resulting loss of revenue, and beyond that hostility and lawlessness as well as mortality in the whole country such as had not occurred since the country was settled.Footnote 48

Here, Hungrvaka seems not only to be suggesting Gizurr’s holiness, but also to be claiming that, in the minds of his countrymen, his authority and power was one and the same with those of the pope. Although here the reference is most probably to Gregory I rather than to Gregory VII, it is worth noting that parallels between the two popes were cited in defence of the legitimacy of the election of Gregory VII, who, like his predecessor, had been a monk, and that these soon became a constituent part of contemporary biographies of the pope, where they had both a laudatory and a legitimizing purpose.Footnote 49 It is therefore all the more significant that this parallel is used, apparently for the first time, to highlight Gizurr’s prestige and his exceptional role as the founder of the church in Iceland and the establisher of it ecclesiastical tradition.

III. Gizurr and Clerical Marriage

Clerical marriage is another area where Bishop Gizurr seemingly had to compromise his Gregorian identity. Contrary to the multiple prescriptions against clerical marriage promoted by the Curia since the mid-eleventh century, the sources register that Gizurr was married.Footnote 50 Like his father Isleifr, Gizurr married once he came back to Iceland after his ordination as priest in Saxony. His wife was Steinunn Þorgrímsdóttir, a widow, and the couple had five sons and one daughter.Footnote 51

In marrying, Gizurr was following what had been common practice among the Western clergy until the mid-eleventh century, and what would remain an Icelandic custom amongst clergymen and monastics until the late thirteenth century.Footnote 52 Clerical marriage was tolerated if the union had taken place before ordination, otherwise priests were expected and required to abstain sexually from their wives. Some canons even forbade married priests to separate from their wives, since this would be likely to leave their wives and children destitute.Footnote 53 Since Gizurr was consecrated bishop when he was forty years old, it is possible that he abstained from intercourse with his wife afterwards, but the sagas do not report this.Footnote 54 If that was the case, Gizurr might have been following similar guidelines to those issued by Hamburg-Bremen around the time that his father held office. Unable to limit the lust of his clergy according to the Roman Synod held in Easter 1049, Archbishop Adalbert urged them to exercise caution, if not chastity.Footnote 55

Another feature that is in contrast with Gregorian attitudes, but rather in tune with the tolerance of former times, is that Gizurr neither repudiated nor enslaved his wife. According to the 1051 Roman Synod, the wives and mistresses of the clergy became ancillae (servants) of the Lateran.Footnote 56 In contrast, Hungrvaka reports that Steinunn Þorgrímsdóttir was in charge of the episcopal household at Skálholt while Bishop Gizurr attended to the see.Footnote 57 Far from being in a position of servitude, the Old Norse text uses the term ‘household management’ (búsforráð) to refer to Steinunn’s role in the household at Skálholt, which echoes the scriptural role of a wife according to Genesis 2: 18 and Titus 2: 4–5.Footnote 58

Rather than representing an explicitly anti-Gregorian stand, Gizurr’s marriage seems to reflect older ecclesiastical provisions and probably also the requirements of his own status as chieftain. Following the prescriptions of the pastoral epistles (1 Timothy 3: 2, 12; Titus 1: 5–6), Gizurr only married once and initiated disciplinary action against those members of the clergy who married multiple times. His respect for orthopraxis is evident in the case of Jón Ögmnudsson, the first bishop of Hólar (1106–21), who had married twice, a situation that rendered him unfit for consecration.Footnote 59 According to the early-thirteenth-century saga of Bishop Jón, Gizurr referred the matter to the archbishop in Lund, to whom he sent the bishop-elect with a letter that detailed his status.Footnote 60 In turn, the archbishop sent Jón to Rome, where the Icelander pleaded his case in front of Pope Paschal II. The saga reports that the pope was astounded by Jón’s respect for spiritual marriage, which had brought him to openly confess his sin to the pope himself. Finding that losing such an exemplary bishop would be worse than diverging from orthopraxis, Paschal II set aside ‘the objections of the laws’ and issued a dispensation to the Icelander.

Jón’s case is therefore exemplary of Bishop Gizurr’s attitude towards clerical marriage, which he tried to enforce in his own country according to pre-eleventh-century provisions. Furthermore, it shows that papal dispensation was open to the Icelandic clergy, perhaps in consideration of their place at the edge of the Christian world. It is also possible that similar dispensations had been issued to Ísleifr and Gizurr themselves during their visits to the Curia.Footnote 61

Conclusion

To be ‘king of Iceland’ is a recurrent sub-theme in Old Norse literature, where it is used to praise or mock the abilities of Icelanders in hyperbolic terms.Footnote 62 In the case of Bishop Gizurr Ísleifsson of Skálholt, the sources are unanimous in granting him the title of king in a most laudatory sense, implying a fullness of secular power that transcended the hierarchy of the Icelandic system. With this article, I have provocatively suggested that Bishop Gizurr would equally deserve the title of pope: that is, in recognition of the highest authority in both the secular and the spiritual sphere. This is based on a reading of the sources and an interpretation of the bishop’s acts in the context of the Gregorian reform.

Despite the secular nature of the early Icelandic church, Hungrvaka stresses Gizurr’s connection to the Roman church and suggests that the bishop was, if not a trusted Gregorian agent, at least an aspiring Gregorian bishop with the most powerful say in both the ecclesiastical and secular spheres. This focus on Gizurr’s obedience to Rome may be explained in light of the process of interpretation that Haraldur Hreinsson has defined as ‘Gregorian hermeneutics’: a framework for understanding the discourses of the Christian religion promoted by the archbishopric of Norway in the late twelfth century through texts of ecclesiastical literature.Footnote 63 It is not unlikely that the early-thirteenth-century authors of Hungrvaka may have shared in this interest and elaborated a Gregorian reading of Gizurr’s episcopate that would illustrate the themes of papal and episcopal authority, and the demand for obedience to the Icelandic chieftains.Footnote 64

Although it is clear that Gizurr’s actual Gregorianism was far from perfect, I have argued in this article that the bishop was bound to compromise with the system of his land if he wanted to gain the powerbase to organize the church according to the directives of Rome. While he did not fight for ecclesiastical ownership of chieftains’ churches, his position as a chieftain was itself instrumental for the success of the church in Iceland, and so were the chieftains that constituted his network of support, such as Sæmundr Sigfússon and Markús Skeggjason. As for clerical marriage, if he deviated from Gregorian demands, Gizurr strictly enforced the orthopraxis that the church had prescribed for centuries, both in his own marriage and in the case of Jón Ögmnudsson’s two marriages. In this area too, Gizurr followed ecclesiastical guidelines, which, though pre-Gregorian, were more applicable to his role as chieftain. This suggests that he acted with a pragmatism that was pivotal for furthering the establishment and institutionalization of the church in Iceland.

In conclusion, Bishop Gizurr successfully founded the church in Iceland on the obedience due to St Peter and his vicar. He was also responsible for the enforcement of the tithe payment, which had not been introduced before in Scandinavia. Both these aspects introduced tenets of contemporary papal reform that would be settled in the struggle between bishops and chieftains two centuries later. His attitudes to church ownership and to marriage show a pragmatic ability to adapt the needs of the church to his own context. The respect and devotion Gizurr received from both secular and religious authorities in Iceland and abroad are the signs of his unprecedented authority. If, according to Gregorian formulations, the pope should expect the same obedience that a subject would give to a king, the lack of central authority in Iceland allowed Bishop Gizurr to receive the same obedience as both king and pope.

References

1 On the organization of the church in medieval Iceland, see Einar Ól. Sveinsson, The Age of the Sturlungs: Icelandic Civilization in the Thirteenth Century, transl. Jóhann S. Hannesson (Ithaca, NY, 1953); Sigurðsson, Jón Viðar, ‘Islanske storkirker før 1300’, in Þorláksson, Helgi, ed., Church Centres: Church Centres in Iceland from the 11th to the 13th century and their Parallels in other Countries (Reykholt, 2005), 157–66Google Scholar; and Jan Brendalsmo and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘The Social Elites and Incomes from Churches c.1050–1250’, in Bjørn Pouslen, Helle Vogt and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, eds, Nordic Elites in Transformation, c.1050–1250, 1: Material Resources (New York, 2019), 248–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Old Norse texts refer to this movement as staðamál (the question of the properties), as the clergy was mainly concerned with the ownership of the churches that had been built on chieftains’ estates. For an overview of the Icelandic bishops’ efforts to reform the church according to the tenets of the Gregorian reform and of the controversy over ecclesiastical property, see Stefánson, Magnús, ‘Frá Goðakirkju til Biskupskirkju’, in Líndal, Sigurður, ed., Saga Íslands, 4 vols (Reykjavík, 1974–89), 3: 111–260 Google Scholar; Vésteinsson, Orri, The Christianisation of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000–1300 (Oxford, 2000), 210–23, 286–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karlsson, Gunnar, The History of Iceland (Minneapolis, MN, 2000), 38–43, 96–9Google ScholarPubMed; Sigurdson, Erika, The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: The Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity, Northern World 72 (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2016), 32–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jensson, Gottskálk, ‘Íslenskar klausturreglur og libertas ecclesie á ofanverðri 12. Öld’, in Bernharðsson, Haraldur, ed., Íslensk klausturmenning á miðöldum (Reykjavik, 2016), 9–57 Google Scholar.

3 Stefánson, Magnús, ‘Kirkjuvald eflist’, in Líndal, Sigurður, ed., Saga Íslands, 2: 55–144 Google Scholar, at 62.

4 On the process of Christianization of Scandinavia, see, among others, Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer and Ian Wood, eds, The Christianization of Scandinavia: Report of a Symposium Held at Kungälv, Sweden, 4–9 August 1985 (Alingsås, 1987); Sanmark, Alexandra, Power and Conversion: A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia (Uppsala, 2004)Google Scholar; Berend, Nora, Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Diplomatarium Islandicum [henceforth: DI] 18, in Diplomatarium Islandicum: Íslenzk fornbréfasafn, ed. Jón Sigurðsson, 16 vols (Copenhagen and Reykjavik, 1857–1952), 1: 57–60.

6 Iain S. Robinson argues that the independence and immunity of Hamburg-Bremen was part of Adalbert’s conception of ‘freedom of the church’: Iain S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106 (Cambridge, 1999), 58.

7 DI 12 (Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. Jón Sigurðsson, 1: 50).

8 After his consecration, Bishop Ísleifr took back with him to Iceland a letter from the archbishop promising a personal visit to the new members of his archdiocese: compare Hungrvaka 2, in Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, Íslenzk Fornrit 16 (Reykjavík, 2002), 8–9; and Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum [henceforth: GHEP] 4.36.

9 Hungrvaka 3 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 11–13).

10 Das Register Gregors VII. 2.51 and 2.75, ed. Erich Caspar, MGH Epp. Sel., 2 vols (Berlin, 1920–3), 1: 192–4, 237–8; Cowdrey, Herbert E. J., ‘The Gregorian Reform in the Anglo-Norman Lands and in Scandinavia’, in Stickler, Alphons Maria, ed., La Riforma Gregoriana e l’Europa, 1: Congresso Internazionale, Salerno, 20–25 maggio 1985 (Roma, 1989), 321–52Google Scholar, at 323–34.

11 Register 2.28 (MGH Epp. Sel., 1: 160–1).

12 Hildersheimer Briefe 15, in Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV., ed. Carl Erdmann and Norbert Fickermann, MGH BdK 5 (Weimar, 1950), 33–5; Robinson, Ian Stuart, ‘“Periculosus Homo”: Pope Gregory VII and Episcopal Authority’, Viator 78 (1978), 103–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 109–10 and 113.

13 For a recent overview of Adam of Bremen’s work, see Bartusik, et al., Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum: Origins, Reception and Significance (London, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Adam of Bremen, GHEP 3.24, 3.73.

15 On Benno’s career, see Johnson, Edgar N., ‘Bishop Benno II of Osnabrück’, Speculum 16 (1991), 380–403 Google Scholar.

16 Excerpta ex Widonis Osnabrugensis libro de controversia inter Hildebrandum et Heinricum imperatorem, ed. Lothar von Heinemann, MGH LdL 1 (Hanover, 1891), 461–70. On Wido’s career, see Jasper, Detlev, ‘Die Papstgeschichte des Pseudo-Liutprand’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 31 (1975), 12–107 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Robinson, Iain S., Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester, 1978), 100 Google Scholar. According to Robinson, these treaties had a smaller circulation than the more ‘official’ works of propaganda produced on both sides of the controversy, being distributed among groups of sympathisers in the monasteries or cathedral chapters at a local level.

18 Compare Hjalti Hugason, ed., Kristni á Íslandi, 1: Frumkristni og upphaf kirkju (Reykjavík, 2000), 258–81, at 262–3.

19 Aside from Hungrvaka, information about Gizurr is recorded in Íslendingabók, the story of the settlement and the first institutions of Iceland written by Ari Þorgilsson around 1122–33 and in Kristni saga, the narrative of the conversion of Iceland, composed in the early thirteenth century: Íslendingabók 10, in Íslendingabók – Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 1 (Reykjavík, 1986), 21–6; Kristni saga 15–8, in Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steinsgrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson and Peter Foote, 2 vols, Íslenzk Fornrit 15 (Reykjavík, 2003), 2: 40–4. These sources are related to one another and, for the purpose of the present study, are treated as synoptic texts.

20 On Gizurr, see Jakobsson, Ármann, ‘Hinn fullkomni karlmaður: Ímyndarsköpun fyrir biskupa á 13. Öld’, Studia theologica islandica 25 (2007), 119–30Google Scholar; on Gizurr’s marriage in relation to the Gregorian programme against clerical marriage, see below.

21 Hartwig was the dedicatee of Bernhard of Hildesheim’s Liber canonum contra Heinricum IV (1085) and the object of harsh criticism in the pro-imperial Liber de unitate ecclesiae convervanda, composed by an anonymous monk of Hirsau in the 1090s: see Melve, Inventing the Public Sphere, 529–33. On the extension of Hartwig’s authority over Scandinavia in place of Liemar, see Seegrün, Wolfgang, Das Papsttum und Skandinavien bis zur Vollendung der nordischen Kirchenorganisation (Neumünster, 1967), 99 Google Scholar; and Hoffmann, Erich, Die heiligen Könige bei den Angelsachsen und den skandinavischen Völkern (Neumünster, 1975), 545 Google Scholar. It is significant to the discussion of the relations between Rome and Scandinavia to note that, after Henry IV deposed him in 1085 on account of his involvement in the Saxon opposition, Hartwig took refuge in Denmark, in the kingdom of Cnut IV (1080–6), the last of a long line of Danish kings with whom the pope had personally corresponded and the first Danish saint to be canonized (1101): Annales Magdeburgenses, s.a. 1085, ed. George H. Pertz, MGH SS 16 (Hanover, 1859), 178.

22 Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 15–6); compare Jóns saga helga 6, in Biskupa sögur I, ed. Sigurgeir Steinsgrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson and Foote, 2: 191–2. A similar phrase is found in Árna saga, where it is also said that the Norwegian archbishop gave the bishop-elect Árni ‘decretales cum apparatu’ (decretals) at the moment of his consecration: Árna saga 8, in Biskupa sögur III, ed. Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, Íslenzk Fornrit 17 (Reykjavík, 1998), 13.

23 DI 21 (Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. Jón Sigurðsson, 1: 64–8); Grágás 248, in Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, ed. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote and Richard Perkins, 2 vols (Winnipeg, 1980), 2: 213.

24 ‘Fór hann þá á fund Gregorii páfa ok sagði honum allan málavöxt sinnar ferðar ok svá vandræði þau sem um var at vera ámarga vegu’ (‘He then went on to meet with Pope Gregory VII and gave him a full account of his travels and the manifold difficulties involved’): Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 15); ET: Bishops in Early Iceland, transl. Theodore M. Andersson (London, 2021), 11.

25 Iain S. Robinson, ‘The Friendship Network of Gregory VII’, History 63 (1978), 1–22, at 5. See also Rennie, Kriston R., ‘Extending Gregory VII’s “Friendship Network”: Social Contacts in Late Eleventh-Century’, History 93 (2008), 475–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 On the question of Gizurr’s involvement in the controversy, see Helgason, Jón, Islands Kirke fra dens Grundlaeggelse til Reformationen: En Historisk Fremstilling (Copenhagen, 1925), 63 Google Scholar; Jón Jóhannesson, Íslendinga Saga, 2 vols (Reykjavík, 1958), 1: 176.

27 Compare Register 9.1 and 9.20 (MGH Epp. Sel. 2: 569–9, 600–1).

28 The church was consecrated on Holy Cross Day (14 September), but it is not known when Gizurr had started building the church. For an assessment of the archaeological evidence for this phase of the cathedral church, see Ágústsson, Hörður, Skálholt. Kirkjur (Reykjavík, 1990), 297–8Google Scholar.

29 On the cult of saints in post-conversion Scandinavia, see Antonsson, Haki, ‘Saints and Relics in Early Christian Scandinavia’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 15 (2005), 51–80 Google Scholar.

30 In his epistles, Gregory VII referred to the saint not just according to the standard practice of the papal chancellery but instrumentally, according to what has been defined his own personal ‘Petrine modulation’ of the practice: see Michele Maccarrone, ‘I Fondamenti “Petrini” del Primato Romano in Gregorio VII’, Studi Gregoriani (1985), 55–122, at 109.

31 Petrs saga postola II B4, in Postola Sögur: Legendariske Fortællinger Om Apostlernes Liv Deres Kamp for Kristendommes Udbredelse Samt Deres Martyrdød, ed. Carl R. Unger (Christiania [Oslo], 1874), 215.

32 Compare Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 16–17); DI 22 (Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. Jón Sigurðsson, 1: 70–162).

33 For a comprehensive overview of the establishment of the tithe and its interpretations, see Orri Vésteinsson, Christianisation, 67–92.

34 The Old Norse-Icelandic law code known as Grágás prescribed that every church keep a record of its property in its register (máldagi), which was to be updated regularly and read aloud to the congregation once a year: see Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, ed. Dennis, Foote and Perkins, 1: 32–3.

35 After their consecration, churches were nominally owned by the bishop, who in turn acted as warden for the patron saint. On the concept of loca sanctorum (‘places of the saints’), see Fouracre, Paul J., ‘The Origins of the Carolingian Attempt to regulate the Cult of Saints’, in Hayward, Paul and Howard-Johnston, James, eds, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford, 1999), 143–65Google Scholar.

36 Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 17–18).

37 Magnús Stefánson, ‘Kirkjuvald eflist’, 66.

38 ‘Allir höfðingjar hétu honum at halda hlýðni um öll Guðs boðorð, þau er hann byði, ef honum yrði byskupsvíglu auðit’: Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 15; Bishops in Early Iceland, transl. Andersson, 11).

39 ‘Hann tók tign ok virðing svá mikla þegar snemmendis byskupsdóms síns, ok svá vildi hverr maðr sitja ok standa sem hann bauð, unger ok gamall, sæll ok fátœkr, konur ok karlar, ok var rétt at segja at hann bar bæði konungr ok byskup yfir landinu meðan hann lifði’: Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 16; Bishops in Early Iceland, transl. Andersson, 12). Compare ‘Episcopum suum habent pro rege; ad illius nutum respicit omnis populus; quicquid ex Deo, ex scripturis, ex consuetudine aliarum gentium ille constituit, hoc pro lege habent’ (‘They hold their bishop as king. All the people respect his wishes. They hold as law whatever he ordains as coming from God, or from the Scriptures, or even from the worthy practices of other peoples’): Adam of Bremen, GHEP 4.36; ET: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, transl. Francis J. Tschan, Columbia Records of Civilization 53 (New York, 1959), 217–8.

40 ‘En þat kom ásamt með öllum mönnum at hans þóttusk aldregi iðgjöld fá. Þat hefir ok verit allra vitra manna mál at hann hafi af Guðs góðgipt ok sjálfs sinni atgørvi göfgastr maðr verit á Íslandi, bæði lærðra manna ok ólærðra’: Hungrvaka 5 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 20; Bishops in Early Iceland, transl. Andersson, 15). Morkinskinna, the ealry thirteenth-century collection of lives of kings of Norway, further elaborates the description of Gizurr as king and bishop by adding the secular dimension of chieftaincy to the praise: ‘Þá er Gizurr Ísleifsson kom á fund Haralds konungs var rœtt um at hann vári merkiligr maðr. Þá sagði Haraldr konuungs: “Svá er þat sem ér segið, en þar má gøra vel af þrjá menn. Hann má vera víkingahöfðingi, ok er hann vel til þess fenginn. Þá má hann ok vera konungr af sínu skaplyndi ok er vel fengit. Með þriðja hætti má hann vera byskup, ok þat mun hann helzt hljóta ok mun vera inn mesti ágætismaðr”.’ (‘When Gizurr Isleifsson came to King Haraldr, the king was told that he was a distinguished man. Then King Haraldr said: “What you tell of him could be made into three men. He could be a viking chieftain and has the makings for it. Given his temperament, he could be a king, and that would be fitting. The third possibility is a bishop, and that is probably what he will become, and he will be a most outstanding man.”’) Morkinskinna 46, ed. Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 23 (Reykjavík, 2011), 289–90; ET: Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030–1157), transl. Theodore M. Andersson and Kari Ellen Gade (Ithaca, NY, 2018), 255.

41 On the importance of the local contexts of action of the bishops in defining their attitude towards enforcing and acting on the tenets of the reform, see, amongst others, Miller, Maureen C., The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950–1150 (Ithaca, NY, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howe, John, ‘St Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130) “Model Gregorian Bishop”’, JEH 58 (2007), 400–16Google Scholar.

42 Cowdrey, ‘The Gregorian Reform’, 326–34.

43 Hjalti Hugason, ed., Kristni á Íslandi, 218.

44 Nordal, Sigurður, Icelandic Culture (Ithaca, NY, 1990), 236–53Google Scholar, esp. 241, 245 (quotation at 245).

45 Two early-twelfth century charters report that farmer Tanni Tordason and his wife Hallfríðr made donations of land and wealth to the almshouses at Bakka, in the west of Iceland, ‘at the advice of Bishop Gizurr’: DI 24, 25 (Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. Jón Sigurðsson, 1: 167–9, 172–4).

46 Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 16).

47 Gregory VII stressed the papal prerogative of wearing the imperial insignia in his Dictatus papae, relying on a tradition that dated to the Donation of Constantine: Constitutum Constantini 16, in Das Constitutum Constantini, ed. Horst Fuhrmann, MGH Fontes n.s. 10 (Hanover, 1968), 91–3. See also Miller, Maureen C., Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c.800–1200 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2014), 191–2Google Scholar. Among the privileges given to Adalbert in 1059, Leo IX granted his vicar of the North permission to wear a mitre on special occasions of the liturgical calendar: DI 18 (Diplomatarium Islandicum, ed. Jón Sigurðsson, 1: 59–60).

48 ‘Svá hugðisk at inum virtustum mönnum, at svá þótti drúpa Ísland eptir fráfall Gizurar byskups sem Rómaborgarríki eptir fall Gregorii páfa. En fráfall Gizurar byskups bendi til ættar um öll óhœgendi á Íslandi af óáran, bæði í skipabrotum ok manntjóni ok fjárskaða er því fylgði, en eptir þat ófriðr ok lögleysur ok á þat ofan manndauði sá um allt landit at engi hafði slíkr orðit síðan er landit var byggt’: Hungrvaka 5 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 21; Bishops in Early Iceland, transl. Andersson, 16).

49 On the parallels between Gregory I and Gregory VII in the polemicists, see Robinson, Authority and Resistance, 31–9. The reception of Gregory I’s ecclesiology during the pontificate of Gregory VII has been investigated in Gerhart B. Ladner, ‘Gregory the Great and Gregory VII: A Comparison of Their Concepts of Renewal’, Viator 4 (1973), 1–26; Capitani, Ovidio, ‘La ricezione di Gregorio Magno durante il pontificato di Gregorio VII’, in Convegno internazionale Gregorio Magno nel XIV centenario della morte: Roma, 22–25 ottobre 2003 (Rome, 2004), 291–319 Google Scholar.

50 For an overview of the issue of clerical marriage during the pontificate of Gregory VII, together with an analysis of the previsions that predate and follow it, see Barstow, Anne Llewellyn, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Struggle (New York, 1982), 19–45 Google Scholar; and Parish, Helen, ‘“A Concubine or an Unlawful Woman”: Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform’, in eadem, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700 (Burlington, VT, 2010), 99–134 Google Scholar.

51 All of Gizurr’s sons but one (Böðvarr) died young, before their father. His daughter Gróa married Ketill Þorsteinsson, who became the second bishop of Hólar (1122–45). Hungrvaka reports that Gróa later became a nun and lived until the days of Bishop Klœngr Þorsteinsson of Skálholt (1152–75). It is unknown whether she took the veil when her husband was elected bishop or perhaps after his death in 1145. We know that Ketill moved north to administer his diocese but died at Skálholt, where Gróa is also said to have died.

52 On clerical marriage in medieval Iceland, see Jochens, Jenny M., ‘The Church and Sexuality in Medieval Iceland’, JMedH 6 (1980), 377–92Google Scholar, at 382–3; Sigurdson, The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland, 130–6. Iceland was not the only country where clerical marriage continued to be practised well into the thirteenth century: see, among others, Filippo Liotta, La Continenza dei chierici nel penserio canonistico classico da Graziano a Gregorio IX (Milan, 1971).

53 Dortel-Claudot, Michel, ‘Le Prêtre et le marriage. Évolution de la législation canonique des origines au XIIe siècle’, L’Année canonique 17 (1973), 319–44Google Scholar.

54 Jón Helgason (Islands Kirke, 63) expressed his doubts on this matter.

55 ‘Si non caste, tamen caute’: Adam of Bremen, GHEP 4, schol. 76 [77]. Fuhrmann, Horst, ‘Adalberts von Bremen Mahnung: “Si non caste, tamen caute”’, in Hartmann, Martina et al., eds, Papst Gregor VII. und das Zeitalter der Reform: Annäherungen an eine europäische Wende. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Wiesbaden, 2016), 492–99Google Scholar.

56 Elliott, Dyan, ‘The Priest’s Wife: Female Erasure and the Gregorian Reform’, in eadem, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA, 1998), 81–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Hungrvaka 4 (Biskupa sögur II, ed. Ásdís Egilsdóttir, 15). The text presents this arrangement as a practice that had been put in place by Gizurr’s own mother, Dalla Þorvaldsdóttir.

58 On the role of women in Norse society, especially after the conversion, see Mundal, Else, ‘The Double Impact of Christianization for Women in Old Norse Culture’, in Børresen, Kari E., Cabibbo, Sara and Specht, Edith, eds, Gender and Religion: European Studies (Rome, 2001), 237–53Google Scholar. A classic study of Norse women remains Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY, 1995).

59 Vergier-Boimond, Joseph, ‘Bigamie’, in Dictionnaire de droit canonique 2 (1947), 853–88Google Scholar.

60 Jóns saga 20–2, in Jóns saga Hólabyskups ens Helga, ed. Peter Foote, Michael Chesnutt and Jonna Louis-Jensen (Copenhagen, 2003), 77–81. On this episode, see Anderson, Joel, ‘Disseminating and Dispensing Canon Law in Medieval Iceland’, Arkiv För Nordisk Filologi 128 (2013), 79–95 Google Scholar.

61 Jochens, ‘Church and Sexuality’, 382.

62 Andersson, Theodore M., ‘The King of Iceland’, Speculum 74 (1999), 923–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 923. The theme was first explored in Hermann Pálsson, ‘Brands þáttur örva’, Gripla 7 (1990), 117–30.

63 Hreinsson, Haraldur, ‘The Apostles and Ecclesiastical Elites in Medieval Iceland: A Gregorian Hermeneutic Turn in the Medieval North’, in Pac, Grzegorz, Hope, Steffen and Sigurðsson, Jón Viðar, eds, The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe up to 1300, Comparative Perspectives on Medieval History 2 (Turnhout, 2024), 113–34Google Scholar.

64 Hungrvaka may have been first authored by Gizurr’s own great-nephew, the lawspeaker Gizurr Halsson (1133–93), who ‘was held in high esteem at Rome, more so than any other Icelander before him’ (Sturlunga saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols [Reykjavík, 1946], 1: 60). This may also explain the Gregorian agenda behind its composition. On Gizurr Halsson, see Jensson, Gottskálk, ‘Latin Oratory at the Edge of the World’, in Bullitta, Dario and Wolf, Kirsten, eds, Saints and their Legacies in Medieval Iceland (Cambridge, 2021), 99–134 Google Scholar.