The Earliest States of Eastern Europe

Sturla Þorðarson, the author of the first extant version of the Book of Settlements (Landnámabók) – Sturlubók, – used various types of sources in his work. These include historical works of his predecessors both European (Bede the Venerable) and Icelandic (Ari Þorgilsson the Wise, Sæmundr Sigfusson the Wise, Kolskeggr Asbjörnsson the Wise, Styrmir Karason), family sagas and family legends (preserved and not preserved up to our time), local toponymic legends, and testimonies of “wise men” and eyewitnesses.

Landnámabók is a systematic survey of the first settlers of Iceland and the territories they occupied, all over the island from the area of the modern capital of Iceland, Reykjavík (the place of landing of Ingólfr Arnarson, considered to be the first settler), clockwise along the entire coast. It is divided into five parts according to Icelandic administrative units – fjórðungr (the first and the fifth parts reporting the settlement of the Southern fjórðungr). The information of Landnámabók is presented in a fairly dry formulaic language, but in some places toponymic legends and detailed biographies of the first settlers are supplied. The latter stand out stylistically, and they can be compared with þættir.

The largest number of such þættir is found in the second part of the work which describes the settlement of the Western fjórðungr of Iceland, and which is the longest one in Sturlubók. Most likely, this is due to the fact that the Western fjórðungr was the homeland of Sturla Þorðarson. The neighborhood of his farm Saurbær was the area under his influence, and therefore its history and oral traditions were of greatest interest for him, and he should have known them better than the history of other fjórðungar. As a rule, Sturla does not retell the plots of family sagas he uses. He makes only short references to twenty family and kings’ sagas, five of which have not survived.

The structure and the composition of Sturlubók correspond to Sturla’s historical and literary concepts, and they are consistent and clear: there are introductory and final chapters, the material is presented in a strict geographical sequence, all parts have similar introductions and ends summarizing the results of the settlement in each fjórðungr and in the whole island. In cases where family ties or the movement of the first settlers around the country compelled the author to repeatedly mention the same person, cross-references are supplied.

Sturla Þorðarson intentionally does not show his author's attitude to the information borrowed from different sources, he presents the information as neutrally as possible. He makes no distinction between written and oral sources, and probably he does not realize it. He nevertheless finds it necessary to name the source he has used, especially when it comes to significant events (in the light of the settlement of Iceland) and phenomena.

Keywords:

Iceland, Landnámabók (the Book of Settlements), Sturla Þórðarson, source criticism, oral tradition, Icelandic family sagas

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