Yggdrasil · Humankind
Ari Þorgilsson: The Person Behind the History
The Christian priest and historian who wrote down Iceland’s conversion story, long after the events.
The story
Later historical account: this entry is about the author of a source, not an eyewitness to the Viking-age events he describes.
Ari Þorgilsson, called Ari the Learned, was born in 1067 or 1068 into a well-connected western Icelandic family. His father drowned young, and as a boy he was sent to Haukadalr, where he was raised and taught by Teitr, the son of Iceland’s first bishop. He later became a priest and died in 1148. His Íslendingabók, “Book of the Icelanders”, is a short history of the island’s settlement, laws and early Church. He was a man of the new Christian order, writing about a world only a few generations older than his grandparents.
- Siân Grønlie, Íslendingabók / Kristni saga: The Book of the Icelanders / The Story of the Conversion (introduction and notes) (opens in a new tab) (2006), Introduction, Ari’s life Rights: Web page cited, text not reproduced.
What we know, and what we do not
What is recorded: his family, schooling, ordination (Kristni saga says he became a priest), the people he names as sources, and a close link to the family that gave Iceland its first bishops. Grønlie reads the conversion chapter as largely that family’s own success story.
What is not recorded: how much more he knew than he wrote. Grønlie argues that Ari must have had longer traditions than he used, and that the book’s brevity is better explained by his narrow interest in leading families than by caution. Scholars have also long debated what else he wrote. Some have called him a modern historian because he names informants; Grønlie is more careful, since his information reached him at second hand and the book is deliberately selective. Treat it as one informed Christian voice, not a neutral record.
- Siân Grønlie, Íslendingabók / Kristni saga: The Book of the Icelanders / The Story of the Conversion (introduction and notes) (opens in a new tab) (2006), Introduction, Íslendingabók as Family History; the work’s selectivity Rights: Web page cited, text not reproduced.
The evidence
Siân Grønlie’s introduction to the Viking Society edition dates the book to 1122 to 1133, from the bishops named in its prologue, and notes it is Ari’s only surviving work. It exists today in two paper manuscripts of the 17th century, copied by Jón Erlendsson from a medieval manuscript of about 1200. Ari repeatedly names where his information came from, mainly Teitr, who he says had it from eyewitnesses, along with his uncle Þorkell Gellisson, the lawspeakers Úlfheðinn Gunnarsson and Markús Skeggjason, and Hallr Órœkjuson. He also describes his informants as wise or reliably informed.
- Siân Grønlie, Íslendingabók / Kristni saga: The Book of the Icelanders / The Story of the Conversion (introduction and notes) (opens in a new tab) (2006), Introduction, dating, manuscripts, informants Rights: Web page cited, text not reproduced.