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The icelandic annals as historical

sources
Eldbjrg Haug

Ospelia 1, Fetsund, 1900, Norway

Published online: 23 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Eldbjrg Haug (1997) The icelandic annals as historical sources,
Scandinavian Journal of History, 22:4, 263-274, DOI: 10.1080/03468759708579356
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The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources

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Eldbjrg Haug

Up until around 1280 there was an abundance of writing on Norwegian history.

The historiography consisted mainly of sagas, most of them written by Icelanders.
The last saga we know of is about Magnus Lagabte, but unfortunately only a
fragment of it has survived. From the 14th century onwards we find no writing of
this kind, but there are narrative sources relating to the history of Norway in the
Icelandic Annals.
Owing to the lack of sources, the 14th century is a rather obscure period in
Norwegian history. The Icelandic Annals therefore hold a central position as
sources for the political history of that century. It has been assumed that the real
annalistics on Iceland started around 1300.
Issues such as the coronation of Magnus Eriksson in Stockholm in 1336, the
Black Death in Norway and the church policy of Queen Margaret all have the
Icelandic annals as important sources (Haug 1996). Hallvard Magery used them to
determine the communications between Norway and Iceland (Magery 1993).
Some historians evidently regard the annals as such a comprehensive source
category that they insist that what is not mentioned in them, has never occurred.
Edvard Bull has maintained that the annals are the main sources to medieval
history, and Knut Drum took the same position in a debate with me recently
(Haug 1995b).
I began to question the Icelandic Annals when I needed some of their notices to
throw light on Magnus Eriksson's and Queen Margaret's church policy (Haug
1996).
At the outset I shared the common opinion that the Annals were contemporary
to the events they described. But I soon discovered that an event was not always
annotated in the same year in different annals. Some events were even written
about twice in the same annal, but often under different years. It is difficult to
decide which notice to rely on when there are only two sources - one that states a
and one that states b. It is thus necessary to ascertain the years of the events
according to the yearbook. It is also necessary to question to what extent the notices
were contemporary. Could it be that the annals had not been written year by year
in an ongoing process after all? Equally important - did there exist other sources to
events annotated in the notices which could be studied as exhibits to the annals?
And, if we regard the yearbooks from a holistic point of view, when did they take
Eldbjrg Haug, born 1947, cand.philol, PhD. is an advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Important published
works include Bygdehistorie for Fet fra de eldste tider til ca. 1800 (1980); and Provincia Nidrosiensis i
dronning Margretes unions- og maktpolitikk (with an English summary) (1996).
Address: Ospelia 1, 1900 Fetsund, Norway.

Stand. J. History 22

264

Eldbjrg Haug

the form in which they have been left to us? Would it be possible to date them in
relation to each other?
To answer these questions, I first explain something of the research situation.
Then I try to demonstrate source criticism applied to the Icelandic annals. As an
example on how to evaluate a yearbook, I use notices from the Lgmann's annals.
Finally, the source value of the annals is assessed.

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1. The characteristics of annals

Annals were written by the Romans, but the source class is held to be medieval,
starting in the 8th century. It is believed that medieval annalistics started in Britain
as notices in the Easter tables. Every monastery had to keep such tables because of
the complicated calculation of Easter. It was considered heretical to celebrate
Easter at the wrong time. Since some of these yearbooks start with the life of Jesus
or the consulate of Caesar, we know that at least some of the events in the annals
are neither contemporary to the writer nor immediate, first-hand sources.
In the Icelandic Annals we thus find some letters in the margin, which are taken
from the chronological system of Bede and tell the date of Easter Sunday for each
year. There are many other similarities with English annals as well, and there is
reason to believe that the Icelandic annalists started by copying English annals.
It is a general opinion that the annals are narratives of a more fragmented and
incoherent character than a chronicle or a saga. Being records, they are to a certain
extent the opposite of literary sources. The Norwegian historian Ottar Dahl holds
this to be significant. "The literary form of a narrative will influence it, and further
its prejudice", he says. "Fragmented records of annals will, on the other hand, leave
the data without cosmetics." The contents of the annals are sparse. We often find
that the description of an event is not written out in complete sentences. In this
respect the annals differ both from history writing like the sagas, and from
chronicles.
As the name indicates, they are written year by year - often starting with the
Incarnation.
The Icelandic Annals are also considered to be written in an on-going process,
although critical examinations of other Nordic annalistics have indicated that all
their notices as they appear in the manuscripts are written at a fixed period, not
much later than their youngest notices. All the oldest Icelandic annals are based on
older yearbooks, but it has been assumed that the last notices in each of them were
independent continuations and contemporary information, written down consecutively year by year. One could imagine, then, that each Easter Eve the annalist
would go to his manuscript, pontificate on what major events had occurred since
last Easter, dip his quill in the ink and write the events down. Then he would put
the manuscript away until the following Easter.
1
2
3

Cf. Beda.
Translated from Dahl 1967: 45.
Bolin 1931; Christiansen 1974.

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The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources 265

The annals are often written by several generations of different and mostly anonymous
authors. The Fragmented Annals have ten different writers, and the Lgmann's
Annals have five.
Their emphasis is on events, and they give contemporary notices of historical facts
which were important to the annalists.
Doubts about the annals being on-the-spot accounts led to the next popular
belief: As the annalist could not have been present at all the occasions he wrote
about, he must have based his information on oral information and perhaps
rumour. Carried out to their extreme, the annals may be perceived as the
newspapers of the Middle Ages.
The place of origin adds a character to the sources, which could be significant in
explaining certain characteristics and peculiarities. Annals were mostly written in
monasteries and chapter houses, and were intended for internal use. But they were
often copied in one place, and then continued somewhere else. The copyist might
also add new information to the years already described. It is therefore difficult to
create a stemma, as well as to determine each yearbook's place of origin. The
Icelandic Annals were mostly written by clerics in monasteries or at bishop Sees,
and events which are important from an ecclesiastical point of view are given a
relatively large amount of space.
On this background the study of annals belongs to the study of medieval
historiography. The history writing from the Middle Ages and well up to the 17 th
century was a teleological history writing. Building upon Hebrew antecedents,
Christianity introduced a new linear notion of time into the Greco-Roman world.
The Judeo-Christian time line literally began at one moment and would end at
another, and it revealed God's purposes. In the Christian schema, the turningpoints of sacred history- the Creation, the Incarnation, the life and death of Jesus,
and the prospect of the Last Judgement - set the framework for all historical time.
Sacred history gave all of time its meaning. The Christian time schema occupied
scholars right into the 17th century.
Before turning to the next point, it should be noted that there are annals on
Nordic ground other than the Icelandic yearbooks. The Danish chronicle of
Zealand is in the form of a yearbook (Christiansen 1974). The Vadstena Diary is
another example (Gejrot 1988). Lists of kings also belong to this category (Bolin
1931). Although it has been assumed that annalistics was something the Norwegian
clergy did not occupy themselves with, some sources of this kind from Norway are
issued in Volume IV of The Old Norwegian Laws.

2. Research
The first Nordic historian to introduce modern source criticism based on philology
was Gustav Storm. His publication of sources to Norwegian medieval history, with
critical commentaries, is impressive. Among his publications we find the already
mentioned Volume IV of the Old Norwegian Laws {Norges gamle Love), the ten oldest
Icelandic Annals (Storm 1888), and Monumenta Histrica Norwegica (Storm 1880). He
was also the first to issue the Chronicle of Hamar, which is possibly a remnant of
annalistics at the medieval bishop See of Hamar (Storm 1895, 1890a, 1890b). His
Introduction to the Icelandic Annals is of such great value that it may have
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266 Eldbjrg Haug

prevented other historians from taking up the subject. He did not himself, however,
consider the theme as exhaustive, as can be seen in his encouragement to other
historians to continue the research on the Icelandic Annals (Storm 1888).
The next important historian in the critical school was the Danish historian
Krislian Erslev, who introduced the dichotomy of narratives and remnants (Erslev
1926/1987). He was succeeded by the Swedish historian Lauritz Wdbull, with his
critical examination of the history of the Nordic countries around the first
millennium. His dissertation was issued in 1911 (Weibull 1911), and in 1913
Halvdan Koht followed up with his radical criticism of the sagas (Koht 1913). In
treating the dichotomy, narrative remnant, Koht's main point was that the sagas
reflect the time in which they were issued. They should therefore be treated as
remnants of their issuing situation, rather than as narratives about the events they
described. In 1931 Sture Bolin, known among historians and archaeologists for his
"History of the Coin", presented a large critical treatise on the oldest Swedish
annals (Bolin 1931, 1962). He showed that these annals from the very beginning
were learned compilations. When an archaeologist finds an old treasure of coins in
the ground, he knows that it could not have been laid there earlier than the year of
issue of the earliest coin in the treasure. Bolin found that the Swedish yearbooks
were constructed in a similar way. From the beginning they were the result of
learned compilations, copied into the annals not much later than their earliest
notices, instead of being written into them consecutively, event by event. The
annalists were historians - they used the sources and evaluated them. Only one
thing was missing - a systematic criticism.
After Storm presented his Introduction no critical treatises on the Icelandic annals,
similar to Bolin's on the Swedish ones, have appeared. It is true that Sven Axelson
held his doctoral dissertation on Sweden in foreign annalistics with a particular view
to the Icelandic Annals (Axelson 1955). His intention was, however, to trace the
origin of the information on Swedish affairs, not to clarify the origin of each of the
yearbooks in the way Bolin had done. If he had discussed that issue, his large body
of work would have had a greater value. Tage E. Christiansen emphasized this
point in his study of the chronicle of Zealand. The question of the origin situation
is crucial to an understanding of the character of the source: The annals are
remnants of the past - all sources are remnants. But are they also narratives? Are
we working with a contemporary or non-contemporary source? Are our sources
first-hand records?

3. What is criticism of sources?

If we are going to make use of the narratives of the annals, we have to be certain
that what they tell us is true. The information must be reliable.
Our point of departure must be to determine die manuscript: Is it a copy of an
older text, or is it the work of a historian? Annals should be unfolded from their
final entry. The notices should be regarded from the final year's point of view, as an
expression of how a compiler would formulate them from the perspective of
hindsight. Do we know who wrote the annals? For whom were they written? Why
4

Christiansen 1974.

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The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources 267

were they written? This critical position may give us a clue to understanding the
unintelligible, and may explain errors and peculiarities that we were unable to
explain before.
There is also the question of how to arrive at a date for the manuscript. We
should not take the year of entry of the last notice as the terminus ante quern at face
value. The first thing to do is to read the source in its entirety and look for
discrepancies in the notices. The mistakes may give us a clue. Even if the Skalaholt
annalist writes for the year 1349 that Pope John XXIII was elected, it is worth while
asking whether the notice was written after 1410, when the Council of Pisa elected
a pope of that name. It is also reasonable to assume that no one would record the
death of a person before he or she was actually dead.
If it is possible to prove that the annals were not annotated consecutively year by
year, this may explain why the chronology varies from one piece of work to
another. Even events which would presumably have occurred in the immediate
surroundings of the writer are dated wrongly and described falsely. This is a
consequence of the fact that, contrary to what is believed, the annals were not
written consecutively year by year.
Secondly, we should decide whether our source is biased. Some notices could be
seen in this light. When the annalist suddenly presents the cause of an event, we
should be on the alert. This is not typical of annalistics. Another form of prejudice
could be in the character given to some persons, with their virtues or vices specified.
For example, the characterization of Archbishop Nicholas Rusare in the
Lgmann's annals: He did not perform any of a bishop's tasks before he died.
Or the characterization of Queen Margaret in the Vadstena Diary: She had a very
happy life as to mundane matters.
The bias of a source must be evaluated according to the time in which it was
written, not according to what it describes. The bias of the source is thus important
in itself, and may give us a clue as to the time when the evaluation first appeared. It
is therefore necessary to form an opinion on the bias of the annals and ask for which
historical situation it is typical.
Besides mistakes in the manuscripts themselves, we find, of course, information
from other manuscripts such as the sagas, which we are able to trace in the annals.
This, then, is our third task: to look for information drawn from other written
sources. Are there any elements from other manuscripts which can be found in the
annals? If the answer is yes, this may disappoint us regarding the establishing of one
type of historical fact. It will, however, give us a source to another historical issue.

4. The "Lgmann's" annals

I have studied these questions more closely for five Icelandic Annals, which are
presumed to have been written in the second half of the 14th century.5
One of these sources is the so-called Lgmann's annals (the Yearbook of the
King's local justiciar). Storm assumed that these annals were older than the socalled lost annals from the Northern Coast of Iceland, on which Gottskalk's annals
5

Haug 1996.
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268 Eldbjrg Haug

are based upon, and also older than the Flateyarbk. This assessment depends on
how our concepts are clarified.
The oldest manuscript of the Lgmann's annals dates from the 14th century, and
is written by five different annalists or "hands". This manuscript is considered to be
the original one. The yearbook was continued after 1393, as can be seen from a
copy, and went on until 1430, but the original last part of it is lost. From this,
however, it can be concluded that in its complete form the yearbook was younger
than the Flaty annals, as well as the lost annals from the North Coast.
The first author of the annals is the priest and official principal of Hlar, Einar
Havlidesson. Thus the annals must have been written close to the Northern bishop
see on Iceland. Einar Havlidesson's edition stops in 1362.
Einar Havlidesson also wrote Bishop Laurentius's saga, probably after he had
finished the annals, as they and other annals are referred to and quoted in several
places in the saga. His narrative of the Black Death has been used both by authors
of historical novels and by historians as a contemporary source on how the disease
spread. I would, however, be reluctant to use this narrative as a source before
checking what other contemporary authors had written about the plague. In any
case, Einar Havlidesson's narrative should not be regarded as older than the
description given in the annals from Skalaholt for the year 1348.
When I looked for errors in Einar Havlidesson's annals, I noted the description of
the death of the Swedish king Erik Magnusson in 1359. The annalist writes that
Erik Magnusson died from poisoning. This is considered to be false. Its provenance
is Hbellus de Magno Erici Regis, which was written while Magnus Eriksson was the
prisoner of King Albrecht of Sweden, i.e. between 1365 and 1371. The tendency of
the Libel is to justify the Swedish aristocracy for supporting Albrecht of
Mecklenburg as Swedish king while dethroning Magnus Eriksson. The anonymous
author used material from St. Birgitta's revelations, but the poisoning of King Erik
is an original accusation.
The libel also accused Queen Blanche of being a poisoner. The annals did not
include this accusation. Einar Havlidesson must have sensed the prejudice of his
exhibit and therefore omitted any accusation against the king's mother.
The notice of King Erik's poisoning indicates that Einar Havlideson wrote this
after the Libel had been written between 1365 and 1370. He seems to have written
the annals in one process, and not consecutively, year by year. This indicates 1365
as terminus post quern, and Einar's death in September 1393 as terminus ante quern.
The next four writers of the Lgmann's annals are anonymous. The 2nd hand
started with notices for 1362, and continued until 1380.
One piece of information could give an indication to the provenance. For the
year 1364 the annalist states that King Erik Magnusson and Lady Blanche were
betrayed at the court. This notice may also have been constructed from the Libel,
although not as precisely as the other one. One might therefore suspect that the 2nd
hand was familiar with the serious accusations of the libel, but had not read them
himself. He knew that Queen Blanche was dead, and also that her son was dead.
He had heard about the wedding in Copenhagen between Margaret, King
Valdemar's daughter, and King Hkon VI of Norway, but did not have any exact
6

Kraft 1927; Andersson 1928; Christiansen 1974.

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The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources

269

information. Tage E. Christiansen has pointed to the Libel as the source of The
Chronicle of Zeeland concerning its narrative of the wedding in Copenhagen and
Prince Christopher's death at that time. The Icelandic 2nd hand might have mixed
these rumours without having read any of the manuscripts himself. He knew that
Queen Blanche and her son, King Erik, were dead, but was not capable of
evaluating his information, either chronologically or factually.
My hypothesis is that the 2nd hand started his work some time after 1380, which
is the last year of his notices.
The notices of the 3rd hand for the years 1379 and 1380 do not give any clues to
indicate provenance. The 4th hand is of greater interest. This "hand" has written
notices for the years 1380-1383 and 1388-1392, many of them relating to the
church policy of Queen Margaret. Here is the narrative of the provision of the
Dane Nicholas Rusare to the Arch See of Nidaros, contrary to the election of the
chapter. Some errors give us a clue to the date of authorship. The canonization of
St. Birgitta is mentioned for the year 1390, whereas she was actually canonized in
1392, so the notice cannot be older than that. For 1391 it mentions the deaths of
some well-known Norwegian nobles: Hkon Johnson, Hkon Stumpe and Gaute
Eiriksson. Their deaths cannot have been written into the annals before these men
had actually passed away. Gaute Eiriksson lived longest of all. He was alive in 1412,
but mentioned as dead in 1413, his death thus being the terminus post quern for the
writings of the annalist. And since we have already established that these annals
were continued after 1392, a possible hypothesis would be that the 3rd, 4th and 5th
"hands" all belong to that part of the yearbook which is now known only as a copy,
and is often referred to as the New Annals. All the errors in the chronology indicate
that the notices must have been written down a relatively long time after the events
had occurred.
The 5th hand in the Lgmann's annals fills in the gaps from 1384 to 1387, 1388
and 1389. It is this "hand" who has written the famous aftermath of Archbishop
Nicholas Rusare: He did not perform any of a bishop's duties while being in
Norway, therefore he did not perform any consecrations and did not confirm any
children. The 5th annalist also made a mistake in his chronology. From the fact that
he wrote his notices in the gaps left by the 4th hand, we conclude that they were
written after that writer had stopped. We have already demonstrated that 1413 was
terminus post quern for number 4. But since the manuscript ends in 1393, we cannot
tell from palaeographical indications exactly when annalist No. 4 put his quill
down.
We may, however, get somewhat further by studying the annals' place of origin.
Einar Havlidesson was a priest on the Northern Coast of Iceland, close to the
bishop See of Hlar. According to Storm, his successor should be traced in the
same circles. But from about 1380, or with the 3rd hand, the manuscript must have
been continued at Skalaholt. Its continuation, only known through our copy, has so
much information on Bishop Vilkin of Skalaholt, that someone close to him
probably wrote those notices. My hypothesis is that this annalist is identical with the
3rd hand. It is difficult to say exactly when he stopped he may have continued for
some years after Vilkin's death. But from 1403 and up to 1420 another
ecclesiastical character dominates the text - the next bishop at Skalaholt, Arni
Olafsson. My next hypothesis, therefore, is that a person close to this bishop
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270 Eldbjrg Haug

continued the annalistics, and that he is identical with the 4th hand. Since this hand
began his writing after 1413,1 am inclined to believe that he started after the death
of the bishop in 1420.
If my other hypotheses are correct, who is the last annalist, who is identical with
the 5th hand? Let us take a look at the dramatic events at Skalaholt after Bishop
Arni's death. The vacancy lasted until 1426, when he was succeeded by John
Gereksson Lodehat. The new bishop had been dismissed as archbishop of Uppsala
in 1421, owing to misconduct. Before becoming archbishop, he had been
Chancellor to Erik the Pomeranian. From the narrative of the Icelandic Annals we
learn that the infamous archbishop and bishop ended his days in 1433, when
rebellious Icelanders drowned him. The rebellion was linked with a proposal to
Margaret Vigfusdatter, daughter of the Icelandic "hirdstjore" and sister of Ivar
Vigfusson. The suitor was the bishop's son, but Margaret turned down the
proposal, and her brother supported her. As a revenge their house was set on fire.
Ivar perished, while Margaret survived. She took an oath that she would only
marry a man who would avenge her brother.
Elements of this dramatic narrative echo throughout the Icelandic family sagas.
There is little else to read about John Gereksson in the last parts of the new annals.
However, they do not present a positive image of conditions on Iceland. The
church at Skalaholt is reported to be in a bad state, as it has been without a bishop
since the death of Arni Olafsson. The official principal is old and almost blind. The
new bishop arrives from England, bringing with him a great many Danes who are
of no use. Only two priests are mentioned by name, probably because they
collected tithes for the bishop in great haste, to take to England to be sold. These
are not events that one would expect to be written at the bishop See, in close
proximity to the new bishop. I would rather suspect that the annalist belonged to
the same circle that drowned the bishop in July 1433.
If we assume that the compilation of the last part of the annals took place at the
bishop see after the drowning of the bishop, we arrive at the time of the Council of
Basle, where the drowning ofjohn Gereksson was treated. On a more homely base,
the Dala rebellion raged from 1434 to 1436. In Norway, Amund Sigurdsson Bolt
rebelled in 1436. And on Iceland, the English behaved like pirates towards the
inhabitants. If we see this political climate in connection with the 5th hand of the
annals, new light is thrown on the notices from the 1380s. The Norwegians and
Icelanders were in conflict with Danish bailiffs and English merchants and pirates.
Since Nicholas Rusare was also a foreigner, actually a German, although according
to the annals a Dane, this could be used against him in the actual situation of
conflict with foreigners. The annalist's rather biased summing up of the archbishop
office of Nicholas Rusare probably reflects the political situation in Iceland at the
time that it was written.
My hypothesis concerning the last part of the yearbook, which is only preserved
as a copy, cannot be considered as proven. What is established, though, is that the
yearbook was not finished until the middle of the 1430s.

5. The Icelandic Annals as historical sources

The examples from the Lgmann's annals demonstrated that they were secondary
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The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources 271

sources, not contemporary ones, and to a certain extent based on rumours of

doubtful origin. Moreover, the origin of their information is confined to Bergen and
the Western Coast of Norway. The information from Oslo and the Eastern part of
Norway is very limited. We cannot consider the annals to be a source of such
richness that every significant event would be noted in them.
As already mentioned, it has been maintained that the Icelandic Annals are the
most important sources to Norwegian political history in the 14th century.
Furthermore, it has been maintained that since the Norwegian coronation of Erik
the Pomeranian in 1392 was not mentioned in these sources, the coronation did not
take place. In other words, the historian introduces an argument from silence. This
leads to the last issue to be discussed: What is the source value of the Icelandic
Annals? Are they so-called "complete"? Are they of such a nature that we may take
the liberty of using silence as an argument?
An argument from silence is a negative statement of existence. A narrative is
being rejected because no other witnesses tell about the event. It is claimed that this
phenomenon was of such a character that it had to leave traces, and that these
traces would consequently have been conserved and known.
Concerning the coronation of Erik the Pomeranian and the use of argumentum e
silentio in that connection, my conclusion is that, since we have a diploma that tells
about his Norwegian coronation, we cannot use the silence of the Icelandic Annals
to prove that it did not occur.
Although some of the narratives of the Icelandic Annals are doubtful or false, I
consider the annals to be an interesting source category. Furthermore, some of the
information found there must have had a written exhibit missives, diplomas, as
well as other material which might be considered as annals themselves. Obituaries
may have been one of them.
When a rich person died, he or she often donated the means to a church or a
church institution to sing masses for them. Sometimes the masses were supposed to
be sung for all eternity at every anniversary of the death or funeral. It was necessary
to keep records of such masses in the actual church institution. The records could
be kept in separate books, in calendars, anniversaries, missals or in annals. When a
notice in the annals records the day of a person's death, we may rest assured that
the day is correct. The year, however may be more doubtful, as demonstrated by
the untimely death of Gaute Eiriksson.
In the Middle Ages all trade from the Norwegian provinces overseas went via
Bergen. Bergen was thus the "capital" of Iceland after it had ceased to be the
capital of Norway. Most of the communication with Norway went to or through
Bergen. So the oral and some of the written exhibits for the annals must have been
gathered here. Another important location in Norway concerning the gathering of
information for the annalists was Nidaros. It was the duty of every suffragan in the
church province to visit the Arch See once a year, either personally or by deputy.
The oath of obedience from the bishops included a promise of such visits.8 The
obligation to visit the archbishop was maintained, at least up to the last years of the
15th century, but the bishops from Iceland did not travel personally every year.
7
8

Haug 1995.
DN VIII 74; Hamre, col. 513.
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272 Eldbjrg Haug

There are, however, several notices in the annals about the bishops leaving the
island with their followers. Their destination was Norway, their mission in most
cases to visit the archbishop. It is likely that these visits resulted in both oral and
written information about events which could later be written into the annals.
Although we cannot always trust the information in the annals, the fact that an
event is written down at least gives us a source concerning the diffusion of
information.
Obituaries in the annals, and also information about bishop successions, are
often of such a character that even when we lack other sources, they can be
assumed to be correct. This is of course most likely for events on Iceland, but
events recorded for Bergen or Nidaros may also be true. The problem is usually the
dating, particularly of the year, as the annals cannot be considered to be
contemporary sources in a strict sense.
Before I finish, let me point to another area of interest - the history of mentality.
Events which we would not consider significant nowadays, the annalists found to be
so important that they took notes about them. Often it is impossible to decide
whether or not the event is true. One of Queen Margaret's dreams is recounted in
the Fragmented Annals. Although it is not significant as such, it gives an interesting
glimpse of a way of thinking and imagining. From Heimskringla we know the
dreams of Queen Ragnhild. King Sverre used his dreams consciously in his political
propaganda. Dreams have always had a great symbolic value, not only in the
Nordic Middle Ages. The annalistic notice of Queen Margaret's dream was
probably meant to throw light on her life and work. However, it tells us more about
the writer and his world of thoughts than about Queen Margaret.

6. Conclusion
I have maintained that the Icelandic annals should be studied as historical remnants
before we use them as narratives. We date the annals, we establish the place in
which they were written, we identify the anonymous writers; in short we establish
the situation of origin. I have demonstrated that one of the annals is not written
consecutively. All the Icelandic annals I have studied so far, give the same
conclusion. And I have proved the annals to be an interesting source category,
although more interesting as remnants than as narratives.
My final remarks are about the benefit of studying the annals. When studying
them as remnants we perform a historiographical research, or a literary criticism.
Since the event's imprints cannot be properly interpreted unless we first put them
back into the cultural system which they influenced at the time, it is necessary to
bear in mind everything that is known about this culture in order to evaluate the
accounts that have come down to us. The study of the annals is a hermeneutical
process of knowledge, which gradually reveals to us other aspects of medieval
culture and society which were formerly hidden.
The annals are interesting sources in the study of the medieval mentality. The
characteristics of each of them tell us what the anonymous annalist considered
9
10

Cf. Otto 1933.

Cf. Cormack 1996: 185-209; Hamre 1996: 505.

Scand. J. History 22

The Icelandic Annals as Historical Sources 273

important. In the words of Georges Duby, we seek to observe "the impact that the
imaginary and oblivion have on information, the insidious penetration of the
marvellous, of the legendary, and, in the course of a sequence of commemorations,
the fate of a memory in the midst of a changing set of mental representations."

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