Founded by Bishop Jörund of Hólar in 1296. The sisters followed the rules of St Benedict. Ten of its abbesses are mentioned, and the last died in 1562.
The Skálds, or bards, who probably long retained their old paganism in new Christianity, distinguished themselves by word and deed in every northern court of Europe, and wandered as far as the Mediterranean shores. But the heart of the people was dying, and the national spirit had fled, never more to be revived. In A.D. 1024, the Althing bravely refused all connection with Norway. But, presently, the clergy, spiritually subject to foreign sees,—Bremen, Scania, and Throndhjem,—listened to the voice of the annexor, and thus traitors divided the island camp. They fostered jealousies between rival Udallers, whose implacable hatreds and blood-feuds converted the annals, like those of the Anglo-Saxons, into records of rapine and murder. The Althing shortly after A.D. 1004 had abolished the duello, a northern institution unknown to classic Greece and Rome; or rather, let us say, it abolished itself, when “trial by point and edge” had lost its old significancy as a formal and religious appeal to that God of Battles who defends the right. The Court of Justice took the place of the Hólm-gang; and at times it was silent in the presence of the sword and the firebrand, which, in riotous frays, spared neither sex nor age. But gradually it developed every form of chicanery and law-devilry, in whose dark labyrinths it is hard to see any improvement upon the “wild justice of revenge.” Its arts were jury-challenging; demurrers aided by the jealousy of the judges, whose duty was to catch a man tripping; the detection of flaws; attempts to split the court (að vèfingja dóminn) and cause non-suits; false witness, and the breaking of oaths those “sports of brave men and terrors of fools.” The law was made bankrupt by the tricks of irrelevancy and by-play, by the special pleading, by the quibbling, the bribery, and the corruption of the tribunals. When all failed, a petty massacre was sure to succeed; and as these proceedings arose from the captious litigiousness of the race, so they long maintained the grievous trammels and shackles of so-called legal principles.[137]
Thus in the middle of the thirteenth century, Hakon V., king of Norway (reg. A.D. 1217-1264), was able openly to treat for the surrender of Iceland liberty. After some three hundred years of Udallism, the heroic island passed into foreign dominion by a decree of the Althing under “Catillus,” or “Catullus” (Kettill), the last of the independent law-sayers or presidents. Modern Icelanders, copied by strangers, stoutly and patriotically maintain that the relation of the two countries was an alliance, a personal union, rather than a real union, or à priori a subjection. It is certain that treaties were formally exchanged; that the ancient laws and rights of property were secured; that free commerce was stipulated; that Icelanders were made eligible to hold office in Norway; and that any infringement of conditions dispensed with the incorporation. But the hard facts remain that a poll-tax, a tribute of sixteen ells of homespun cloth, was imposed, and that a viceroy was appointed to govern the island. Thus Liberty was palsied, and Independence gave place to the status pupillaris. To dispute upon this independent allegiance is only to debate a question of degree.
The eighth and last of the Crusades, movements which began in A.D. 1188-1190, and ended in A.D. 1260-1275, was the first preached in Iceland (Hist. Eccles., i. 571), and it partially aroused the islandry from their apathy and habitual law-contests. But the effects were transient, save upon individuals. The physical history of the thirteenth century is chiefly remarkable for the widespread ruin caused by its terrible eruptions and desolating earthquakes. Now began the epidemics and epizootics which, from A.D. 1306 to A.D. 1846, number 134—viz., seven in the fourteenth, six in the fifteenth, twelve in the sixteenth, twenty-eight in the seventeenth, and forty-one in the eighteenth centuries, with several during the present. An unreformed pagan would have believed that the wrath of the olden gods weighed heavy on the land.
The same may be said of the fourteenth century, which also witnessed the calamitous annexation to Denmark.[138] After the death of Knut (Canute) in A.D. 1035, Magnús ascended the throne of Norway, and native sovereigns ruled till A.D. 1319, when the male line became extinct with Hakon VII. The Diet enthroned his daughter’s infant son, Magnús Eiriksson, who, being already king of Sweden, had brought the Scandinavian peninsula and its dependencies under a single sceptre. But the union did not last. Magnús bestowed Norway upon his son Hákon, who was married to Margaret, sole daughter of Waldemar III., king of Denmark. The issue, Ólafr IV., succeeded to the throne of his grandfather in A.D. 1376, and to that of his father four years afterwards, thus incorporating Norway with Denmark. Dying a minor in A.D. 1387, he left both kingdoms to his mother, Margaret, by whose energetic rule the regency had been carried on, and she found no difficulty in setting aside the feeble pretensions of Albert of Mecklenburg. In A.D. 1397 the union or treaty of Calmar took place, and Iceland, which still maintained its modicum of independence, was once more transferred without opposition to the triple crown of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The conditions of the annexation to Norway (A.D. 1264) were tacitly consented to by the Danish rulers when they succeeded to Iceland by marriage and inheritance. Yet “the Semiramis of the north” began by the usual contempt of stipulations: she repaid submission by perpetuating a poll-tax of half-a-mark per head, and, worse still, by establishing a royal monopoly of trade. The latter, confined to vessels licensed by the Crown, nearly secured for Iceland the fate which befell the lost colonies of Greenland. From this period till A.D. 1814, Denmark and Norway remained united, each, however, governed by its own laws.
The fifteenth century was as disastrous as that which preceded it. The Digerdoed, or Black Death, the Plague of the Decameron, had raged with prodigious violence about A.D. 1348, and it was followed by a winter which, destroying nearly all the cattle, left a purely pastoral country permanently upon the verge of utter ruin. A second pestilence, the Svarti Dauði, or Black Death, visited the hapless island; whilst English and other pirates, plundering and burning on the main, fortified themselves in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago, despoiled the churches and farms of the coast, held the franklins to ransom, and sold the poor into slavery. And at last, in the middle of the sixteenth century, came the crowning blow, the introduction of Lutheranism.
Catholicism had sat lightly upon the remote spot verging on the hyperborean seas. The papal tithe (Páfa tíund) and Peter’s Pence, imposed in A.D. 1305 by the king of Norway under pain of excommunication,[139] did not weigh heavy. At first the tax was one nagli (nail), or tenth of an ell, of Wadmal (Vað-mál) cloth, its equivalent being two fishes; and it never rose higher than ten ells of homespun per adult male. The sale of Indulgences, which accompanied the last and first crusade, was abolished in A.D. 1289. Celibacy of the clergy was introduced in Iceland by Thorlák Thorhallsson, who died in the quasi-odour of sanctity in 1193. After that date ecclesiastics were not formally married, but were not debarred from living with Frillur, or Fryllas, concubines, then generally called by the laity “holy women.” As in Charlemagne’s day, bigamy was not wholly unknown. A few took second wives, “non libidine, sed ob nobilitatem; but the fierce temper of the Húsfreya, or materfamilias, must have made the arrangement uncomfortable. Thus it is said[140] Snorri Sturluson in A.D. 1212 married the daughter of Deacon Loptsson, who had a harem of concubines, one the child of a bishop. Jón Geirriksson, the Dane, popularly written “John Jerechini,” bishop of Skálholt, in A.D. 1430, is also accused of being a buccaneer, a mere brigand, who could not write his name, which little drawback, however, did not prevent an attempt to canonise him after he was deservedly (?) lynched in A.D. 1433. Jón Arason, bishop of Hólar, is charged with keeping a mistress at the age of eighty.[141] But much of this may be sectarian exaggeration, and in after-ages Protestant authors would not inquire too curiously if, as often happens in the present day, the priest was married before he was ordained. And, although we are told that a frequent entry at Councils was “Quoniam Dominus A. Episcopus scribere nescit, ideo ejus loco subscripsit, B.C.”—which reminds us of many nobles and gentles who could “nocht write” in Scotland,—we must not forget that, in the thirteenth century, the Augustines attempted a vernacular translation of the Bible.[142]
Thus all the glow of faith and the fervid belief in the deifications of the family, in saints and martyrs raised above man’s estate by supererogatory piety and virtue, and in the living and breathing locum tenens of the first apostle, was darkened by a system of semi-rationalism, which allows reason too much or too little scope; which arrogates to itself the unreasonable right of saying “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther,” at the same time loudly professing its own fallibility; and which has succeeded fatally well in splitting the Church into a thousand fragments. A philosopher might have forecast the result from his study. Men unwilling to believe were relieved of a great load, and their energetic action was no match for the passive resistance of the many honest and pious souls who embraced the new form of faith. The Crown laid violent hands, as in England, upon the “Regalia Sancti Petri” (temporalities), which it transferred to its favourites; the religious houses were secularised, and the ecclesiastics had the choice either of banishment, or of conforming to what they held the teachings of a heresiarch.
Changes of religion seem to have been peculiarly unfortunate in Iceland. The seventeenth century saw absolute monarchism extend from Denmark under Frederick III. to her distant dependency. Encouraged by the apathy and indolence of the islanders, the foreign pirates, English and French, redoubled their exertions; even the Algerines made a successful raid. The seventeenth century showed the epidemic of superstition which distinguished the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers; an ignorant and fanatical interpretation of Jewish history caused the torturing and burning of many a witch and wizard, who probably were often only natural media, and mesmerisers or odylic sensitives. The eighteenth century (A.D. 1707) began with the small-pox, which killed 16,000 to 18,000 of the 50,000 islanders. In A.D. 1759, rigorous winters brought on a famine equally fatal to man and beast; of the former some 10,000 perished. In 1762 about 280,000 sheep died, or were slaughtered. In A.D. 1788 took place that first eruption of the Skaptárjökull, which has been described as the most appalling and destructive since authentic history began.
About the beginning of the present century, Iceland, under physical evils, monopoly, and misrule, fell to its lowest point. Greatly to the displeasure of the lieges, the two sees were reduced to one; the same took place with the colleges, and finally the Althing was abolished (A.D. 1800). The war between Great Britain and Denmark would inevitably have caused actual starvation, but for a humane order in council,[143] through the interest of Sir Joseph Banks, permitting the island to be supplied with the necessaries of life. In A.D. 1843, brighter days dawned. After a disuse of nearly half a century, the Althing was re-established; but it was only a shadow of its former self—a body of representatives whom the Home Government deigned to consult. Still, it roused the people to take interest in their own affairs. Finally, the proclamation of a constitution for Denmark (1848) produced effects which now are being matured.