Stewart Baldwin <sbald@AUBURN.CAMPUS.MCI.NET>
Subject: Re: Adam of Bremen's kings of NorwayFrom: S StewartBaldwin <sbald@AUBURN.CAMPUS.MCI.NET>Date: Sun, 30 Mar 199721:06:01 -0500Anders Berg <an<anderzb@ALGONET.SE> wrote:[somesnipping]>To illustrate how modern historians look at Adam'sNorweorwegian data, I have>added the notes made by Carl FredrikHallencreutz, Kurt Johannesson, Tore>Nybyberg and Anders Piltzin the 1984 Swedish translation of "The History of>theArchbishops of Hamburrg-Bremen":Of course, the comments of theabove authors which you quoted arepretty much the same as as onemight expect from anyone who is acceptingthe saga accounts asthe official established histtory, and must thenexplain awayanything which does not agree with it.>Why is Adam not trustedregaegarding these Norwegian kings but held in much>higherrespect when he speaks of Denmark? I can thiink of somereasons:I agree with these reasons, up to a point, but I thinkthat thesearguments can an be carried too far. Although I amcurrently sitting onthe fence as to whether we should giveprreference to Adam or the sagaswith regard to early Norwegianhistory, I think that Adam also hassomome important points inhis favor.>1. Adam never set out to write a history of theNorwegian kings.s. The>information is fragmentary and what welearn is all related to the conflict>with Danish inteterests.Adam's main source is the Danish king Svend>Estridsson, who mayhave been both unknowledgaable and subjective inhis>testimony.However, all of the most important places whereAdam disagreesees withthe sagas involve events which occurredwithin a hundred years of whenAdam was writing, so o even thoughAdam wasn't a comtemporary, he waspretty close. In addition,the fact that most of AAdam's Norwegianinformation comes fromNorway's direct contacts with Denmark is areason to trust ththeinformation, for Adam was well-informed aboutDanish affairs, andthat would presumabley includee Danish foreignrelations. Also,the saga account could be just as subjective as thedata whichAdadam got from his Danish sources. I have always found thesagastory of the intermittent periods wheen Norway was ruled byJarls(rather than Kings) to be somewhat disconcerting, and thoseperiods seeemto correspond roughly to periods of Danish rule inAdam's account. Couldit be that these Jarls a are just a way ofdeemphasizing the occasionalrule of Norway by Danish kings, asrepresented by Addam? Embarrasingperiods of foreign dominationare sometimes written out of the historybooks in thihis way.>2.The traditional sources for Norwegian history (the sagas) arelater than>Adam, but the he sheer volume and detail ofinformation that they bring makes>it very unlikely that basicinformaation, such as a king named Tryggve>Haakonsson, would notbe mentioned in the sagas.The volume of df detail can bedeceptive. What is often found in thecreation of officialnational histories is thhat a certain framework isset up by theearliest group of individuals working on the subject(sometitimeswith reliable background information, sometimes not), andthatlater authors then regard this framework as authoritative,andmold their writing to fit the framework. A king who reignedfor avvery short time can very easily be overlooked in such aprocess.>3. The saga litterature was producduced in Iceland andNorway, with knowledge>of local tradition, whereas Adam was aforeigner relyinng on information>from another non-Norwegian(Svend).However, the basic framework of the history of of theNorwegian kingsappears to be of Icelandic origin rather thanNorwegian. (At least,the earliliest traceable strands of thebasic outine come from Icelandicsources.) The settlement ofIcelandd occurred during a time whenNorway was not completelyunited, and it is possible that some of therrulers mentioned inthe early Icelandic sources were only of localprominence. Laterembellishment t could have promoted these localrulers to kingsof all Norway, so the disagreement of Adam with thhesagas mightnot be as great as it appears.>To the specific question of St.Olav's paternity, contontemporary records are>as always hard tocome by in Scandinavia.>Generally speaking, I think (sorrrry, noreference) text analysis has shown>that the poems woven intoSnorri's History of the Norweggian Kings>(Heimskringla) are ofan older date than the prose. Poems are likely to>stay unchangedo over time. Many of them are attributed to skalds>contemporarywith the kings involved.Poems are ex extremely difficult to useas historical (or genealogical)sources. In particular, thestatement tthat "Poems are likely to stayunchanged over time"has been often used with more force than isjustitified, and isnot entirely true. I would be willing to agree thatit islargely true if you add thhe qualifying phrase "provided thatthelanguage in which the poem is written has not undergonesignnificantchanges". Since I am not familiar with the extentto which the OldNorse language changed b between ca. 900 and ca.1150, I will resort toan analogy from another country. Betweenthe converrsion of Ireland toChristianity in the fifth centuryand the seventh and eighth centuries(when the e volume of Irishwritings becomes really significant), theIrish language hadchanged so much that the fifth century language wasvirtuallyunintelligible to those living in the seventh century.[SSee"Ireland before the Vikings" by Gearoid MacNiocaill, volume1 of theGill History of Ireland.] I If one finds an Irish poemwritten inseventh century Irish which claims to give historicalinformaationabout fifth century Ireland, can this poem beregarded as a fifthcentury poem which hasn't chahanged withtime? Most certainly not. Isit an accurate translation of anoriginal fifth century ppoem? Maybe,but quite possibly not.(Because of the restrictions of meter, poemsare notoriously ddifficult to put into more modern language withoutchanging themeaning.) Thus, I am very skepticaal regarding any sortofblanket statement that these poems are to be accepted atfacevalue. I woululd be willing to accept this for specificpoems ifcareful study by qualified linguists showed themm to begenuinely old.(Unfortunately, I haven't seen much of this typeof study in Old Norsepoems, , possibly because such studies arefrequently in one of theScandinavian languages.)>With this in mnmind, I checked St. Olav's Saga for any mention of Olav's>fatherin the poems. In three of them ((by the skalds Ottar, Sigvatand>Bjarne) Olav is said to be "Harald's son".>>Lastly, thenaming tratradition at the time makes it unlikely thatOlav>Tryggvasson would name a son Olav.Although I am nm not yetready to completely rejects Adam's Norwegianaccount on theplaces where he disagrees withh the sagas, I agree thathe wasprobably wrong about the parentage of St. Olaf.Two of theearliest st Norwegian histories are the "Historia deantiquitateregum Norwagensium" by Theodoricus (written ca. 1180?)and"Historia Norwegiae" (early thirteenth century), neither ofwhichappear to be availalable in English (and are unavailable tome in anyform). For purposes of comparison, it would beiintersting to see whatthese sources say about the earliestNorwegian kings. Does anyone haveaccessss to these?StewartBaldwin |