Pall Jonsson Skalholtsbiskup: Nokkrrar athuganir a sogu hans og kirkjustjorn.

NOKKRAR ATHUGANIR A SOGU HANS OG KIRKJUSTJORN. By Sveinbjorn Rafnsson. (Ritsafn Sagnfraedistofnunar, 33.) Reykjavik: [Sagnfraedistofnun Haskola Islands], 1993. Pp. 139.

Pall Jonsson, bishop of Skalholt from 1195 to 1211, is a much-neglected figure in Icelandic history. Scion of one of the most prominent families of twelfth-century Iceland, he was educated in England, returning home to marry and settle down to the life of an up-and-coming chieftain; he had received decanal orders by this time. Elected bishop of Skalholt in 1194, Pall went abroad again for ordination and consecration. Once installed in Skalholt he exerted himself in both the administration of his see and the ornamentation of his cathedral. He made the first known catalogue of the churches in his diocese; the result, known as the Kirknashra, survives only in four redactions dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bishop Pall imported the first glass windows to Iceland and commissioned the largest reliquary in the country for the remains of his uncle and predecessor, St. Porlakr, the Translation of whose remains he had supervised. Pall is the only Icelandic bishop with whom surviving objects can be associated. The excavations at Skalholt in 1954 revealed his stone sarcophagus, containing not only his earthly remains but also the head of a crozier carved from walrus ivory. Last but not least, he is the subject of an early thirteenth-century biography, Pals saga biskups, a short work preserved, like the Kirknashra, only in young copies.

A study of the life and times of Bishop Pall Jonsson would thus be a welcome contribution to the understanding of Icelandic history and society at the turn of the twelfth century. The aims of the volume under review are more modest: it contains, as the subtitle indicates, "some thoughts on his history and administration." The author is interested primarily in the written sources for Pall's episcopate--the biography and the Kirknaskra--both of which are printed in the book. There are a number of excellent illustrations of the carvings on the crozier and related motifs in Norwegian ecclesiastical art, and an Icelandic translation of a letter from 1198 addressed to the bishops of Iceland by Pope Innocent III.

The volume is the most recent publication of the Institute of History of the University of Iceland in a series ...