Iceland's Medieval Art

The Lewis chessmen are among the most popular exhibits in the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland. Found on the Isle of Lewis in the early 1800s, these walrus-ivory figurines have been called the best-known Scottish archaeological treasure of all time. 

Who carved them? Where? In my book Ivory Vikings, I evaluate the theory that they were made for Bishop Pall of Skalholt, Iceland in about the year 1200 by a woman artist named Margret the Adroit.

According to the Saga of Bishop Pall, the bishop was in the habit of sending expensive gifts to his friends in Norway, Denmark, Greenland, and the Orkney Islands. He surrounded himself with the finest artists in the land, four of whom are named in his saga: Amundi the Smith, Atli the Scribe, Thorstein the Shrine-Smith, and Margret the Adroit, who was the best ivory carver in Iceland.

Until recently, scholars thought the Lewis chessmen must have been carved in a town like Trondheim, Norway. Iceland was too poor and backwards, they thought, to produce such sophisticated works of art.

They didn't know about Bishop Pall and his artists.

Why not? The Saga of Bishop Pall has never been translated into English. Besides, many scholars consider the Icelandic sagas to be fiction. Some of the sagas are. The word "saga" comes from the Icelandic verb segja, "to say," and it doesn't imply either fact or fiction.

The Saga of Bishop Pall, however, is as factual as any medieval chronicle. It falls into the category of Contemporary Sagas. These sagas were composed within a generation of the actions they describe. Their authors were often eyewitnesses to the events. 

The Saga of Bishop Pall is also backed up by archaeology. According to the saga, when Pall died in 1211, he was buried in a stone sarcophagus. This sarcophagus is the only one mentioned in Icelandic records. The country has no tradition of stone sculpture, and even Icelanders did not believe the saga account of Bishop Pall's sarcophagus--until they found it.

Bishop Pall's sarcophagus. From fornleifur.blog.is

In the mid-1950s, before the new church was built at Skalholt, archaeologists were called in to excavate. They were uncovering the floorplan of the huge cross-shaped medieval basilica, the largest wooden church in Scandinavia at the time, when one of the workers struck stone. "Of all the things that came to light during the excavations at Skalholt," said archaeologist Kristjan Eldjarn (who later became president of Iceland), "the grave of Pall Jonsson is the most important and meaningful. It is not certain that another such sign and wonder of the Icelandic sagas could ever be unearthed."

You can now see the sarcophagus in the basement of Skalholt Cathedral. Carved out of one large stone, of the soft reddish volcanic tuff found on the hill across the river from Skalholt, it is simple and elegant, its rounded lines ornamented only by two cylindrical knobs projecting from the broader end. The lid has been cracked by fire, perhaps by an inferno in 1309 that destroyed the cathedral, but otherwise the coffin shows little damage.

When it was opened, the researchers found a bishop's crozier carved from walrus ivory resting on the shoulder of the skeleton.

Bishop Pall. From thjodminjasafn.is

In 2012, any question that the skeleton was not that of Pall Jonsson was put to rest by carbon dating, which dated a bone sample to between 1165 and 1220. Pall lived from 1155 to 1211.

Bishop Pall's crozier.
From fornleifur.is

Margret the Adroit would have remained a colorful detail in a little-read saga if the Icelanders had not decided to build that new, modern cathedral at Skalholt--and called first for an archaeological excavation. The existence of Pall's sarcophagus vouches for the overall truth of the Saga of Bishop Pall. The ivory crozier found inside it calls to mind the one Margret carved out of walrus tusk, the saga says, "so skillfully that no one in Iceland had seen such artistry before."

Bishop Pall's crozier is now on display in the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik. We don't know if Margret made it, but if the one she carved was comparable, she was clearly a talented artist. And the description of Pall in his saga proves that this lover of fine things has the means, the motivation, and the taste to commission the Lewis chessmen.


(This story was first published on the "Stuck in Iceland" blog, http://stuckiniceland.com/south/ivory-vikings/.)

Read more about Ivory Vikings on my website, http://nancymariebrown.com, or check out these reviews:

"Briefly Noted," The New Yorker (November 2): http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/briefly-noted-the-blue-guitar (scroll down)

"Bones of Contention," The Economist (August 29): http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21662487-bones-contention

"Review: Ivory Vikings," Minneapolis Star Tribune (August 29): http://www.startribune.com/review-ivory-vikings-by-nancy-marie-brown-the-mystery-of-the-lewis-chessmen/323230441/

The Iceland Theory of the Lewis Chessmen

Where were the famous Lewis chessmen carved? Art historians usually assume, in the absence of other evidence, that an object was made close to where it was found. But while these chessmen found on Lewis are universally known as "the Lewis chessmen," few experts today have championed the Isle of Lewis as the home of an ivory carver of such sophistication. They consider medieval Lewis too "marginal" and "out of the way" to produce great art.

As I explain in my book Ivory Vikings, the same prejudice applies to medieval Iceland.

Frederic Madden of the British Museum published the first scholarly account of the chessmen in 1832. At the end of this nearly 100-page treatise he confidently concludes that they were made in Iceland.

This theory was accepted until 1874, when the Norwegian chess historian Antonius Van der Linde belittled Madden's suggestion that Iceland could produce anything approaching the sophistication of the Lewis chessmen. Icelanders, he scoffed, were too backward to even play chess.

Since then, although chess historians like Willard Fiske and H.J.R. Murray thought the chessmen came from Iceland, art historians have favored the Norway (or Trondheim) theory. This theory was strengthened between 1965 and 1999 by a series of studies of Romanesque sculpture by Norwegian art historians and archaeologists. But mostly the Norway theory has been strengthened by repetition—what one scholar has called "the snowball effect."

In 2010 David Caldwell of the National Museum of Scotland and his colleagues wrote that "the limited evidence favors Trondheim." Their main argument was that "most scholars would at present expect to locate the manufacture of such pieces in a town or large trading center. The craftsmen who made such prestigious items were, perhaps, more likely to thrive in such a setting."

When civil engineer and chess aficionado Gudmundur Thorarinsson posted his discussion of the Iceland theory on the internet, he was attacked. Said one critic, "The content is literally filled with faults and oversights. … This whole argument seems far-fetched."

Yet as I traced Gudmundur's path through libraries, cathedrals, and museums, from Reykjavik to Skalholt, from Edinburgh to Trondheim, Lund, and Lewis, I found very few "faults and oversights." Fewer, in fact, than I found exploring the Norwegian theory, which seems mostly to be based on that grand medieval concept of authority.

Building on Madden and Murray, Gudmundur added the insights of scholars who wrote in Icelandic and whose voices had not entered the international debate on the origins of the Lewis chessmen, such as art historian Bera Nordal, archaeologist Kristjan Eldjarn and his colleagues, and historians Helgi Gudmundsson and Helgi Thorlaksson.

Before Gudmundur wrote his paper, no one discussing the Lewis chessmen connected them with the extraordinarily rich 12th-century bishopric at Skalholt, its wooden church larger than any in Norway. No one mentioned the art-loving Bishop Pall Jonsson, who surrounded himself with the finest artists in the land, four of whom are named in his saga: Amundi the Smith, Atli the Scribe, Thorstein the Shrine-Smith, and Margret the Adroit, who was the most skillful ivory carver in Iceland.

Did Margret the Adroit carve the Lewis chessmen under a commission from Bishop Pall? Unless proof of an ivory workshop is found at Skalholt, we cannot say yes or no. But "the limited evidence," I believe, places Iceland on equal footing with Trondheim as the site of their creation. Someone else will need to argue the case for Lewis.

(This story is based on an interview with the Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið, published on September 4.)

Read more about Ivory Vikings on my website, http://nancymariebrown.com, or hear me speak about the book at these events:

September 19: Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vermont at 7:00 p.m.

September 21: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York at 6:30 p.m.

October 15: The Fiske Icelandic Collection at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY at 4:30 p.m.

October 17: The Sixth Annual Iceland Affair, Winchester Center, CT, time to be announced.

Music for Saint Thorlak's Day

Last November, I spent a few days at Skalholt, the medieval capital of Iceland and site of its first cathedral. While there, I began understanding the Icelanders' fondness for their patron saint, Thorlak Thorhallsson, who was bishop of Skalholt from 1178 to 1193 and declared a saint in 1198.

November days are very short in Iceland. Through a fluke of scheduling, I was completely alone in the cathedral guesthouse. It was eerie, walking around the grounds at night--even before the storm came--and I soon imagined I heard voices in the babbling of the brook and the whinny of a distance horse. There could, indeed, be a lot of ghosts at Skalholt: I knew its history. Though not a "believer" I found I had Saint Thorlak's name on my lips and rushed back inside, where a gift from the current bishop of Skalholt awaited me.

Since December 23rd is Saint Thorlak's Day, I thought I'd share that gift. But first, a bit about Thorlak, whom I met while researching Song of the Vikings, my biography of Snorri Sturluson.

Thorlak was a well-educated man: He studied at Paris, France and Lincoln, England. After that he returned to Iceland and "was ever at writing," his saga says. He dressed plainly, ate and drank like an ascetic (no meat, only water), and was rather dull company, the saga implies, noting that it "was a great misfortune that his speech was hard and slow." On the other hand, "he was so lucky in his brewing that the ale never burst that he had blessed."

Soon after Thorlak died, people began reporting miracles that occurred when they called on him for aid. These miracles provide a digest of the common Icelander's woes in the 12th century: Saint Thorlak cured stiff hands, sore throats, burning eyes, and gassy stomachs. He found lost hobbles, lost sheep, a sledgehammer, and a ring. He healed a horse ridden "unwarily where there was volcanic heat"; its legs "got so burned that people thought it would die." He healed a woman who "fell into a hot spring in Reykholt and got so severely burned that her flesh and skin came off with her clothes." He stemmed the flow of blood when a chieftain, soaking in his hot-tub, cut himself with a razor. He calmed storms and floods, resuscitated a drowned boy, quenched a house fire, and mesmerized a seal so a starving mother could kill it.

In Song of the Vikings I describe these miracles, along with the glorious translation of Bishop Thorlak—the ceremony by which he was officially recognized as Iceland's first saint in 1198.

The bishop's coffin, buried for five years, was dug up, dusted off, and carried into Skalholt Cathedral. Saint Thorlak's holy relics (his bones) were taken from the coffin, washed, and encased in a golden shrine. The priest Gudmund the Good, then 38, was a coffin-bearer; he chanted the Te Deum in his unforgettable voice. Twenty-year-old Snorri probably accompanied his foster-brothers Saemund and Orm, whom the saga says attended the ceremony. During the Mass which followed, Snorri would have marveled at the 230 expensive beeswax candles twinkling on the altar (all imported, since honeybees did not live in Iceland).

But what I didn't know when I wrote Song of the Vikings was that the music written for the ceremony still survives. On my recent trip to Skalholt, Bishop Kristjan Valur Ingolfsson lent me a recording of it by the early-music ensemble Voces Thules.

You can listen to part of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emmG7Pl3mCU

As explained in the CD's liner notes, "Liturgical chants are a kind of soothing incantation, in which flow has an all-important role to play, like sailing effortlessly on the crest of the wave toward a nevertheless clear destination. The singing of music of this kind is the most intimate form of worship and meditation still to be preserved within the sanctuary of the Christian Church."

The six members of Voces Thules depended on the doctoral thesis of Robert Ottosson (1912-74) to understand how to reconstruct this chant from the 24 pages of manuscript in the archives. These manuscript pages are also online; you can see them at the Icelandic music website www.ismus.is. Click on "Handrit og prent," then on manuscript number "AM 241a fol. Þorlákstíðir," then on "Síður (24)" and the pages of manuscript will appear and you can scroll down through them.

The "Office of Saint Thorlak" was performed in 1998, for the first time in centuries, to mark the 800th anniversary of Bishop Thorlak's death. It was part of the Reykjavik Arts Festival that year, stretching over a day and a half and culminating in a High Mass, at which Kristjan Valur and another priest also sang.

I listened to Saint Thorlak's music at Skalholt on that dark November night, while the wind howled and the rain lashed against the windows and I was the only person in the entire guesthouse.

"The darkness flees, the light illuminates the mind, a devoted nation dances," the Office begins. "Let us prepare for the festival of jubilation and offer praise, cast out the darkness at the world's extreme."

Join me again next week at nancymariebrown.blogspot.com for another adventure in Iceland or the medieval world.