The Development of Education in Medieval Iceland

Ryder Patzuk-Russell

• Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781501514432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History of Education
• Index: History

Medieval Iceland is known for the fascinating body of literary works it produced, from ornate court poetry to mythological treatises to sagas of warrior-poets and feud culture. This book investigates the institutions and practices of education which lay behind not only this literary corpus, but the whole of medieval Icelandic culture, religion, and society. By bringing together a broad spectrum of sources, including sagas, law codes, and grammatical treatises, it addresses the history of education in medieval Iceland from multiple perspectives. It shows how the slowly developing institutions of the church shaped educational practices within an entirely rural society with its own distinct vernacular culture. It emphasizes the importance of Latin, despite the lack of surviving manuscripts, and teaching and learning in a highly decentralized environment. Within this context, it explores how medieval grammatical education was adapted for bilingual clerical education, which in turn helped create a separate and fully vernacularized grammatical discourse.

Chapter 1 Pre-Christian and Secular Education

From c. 870 until the official conversion in 999/1000, Iceland was a largely pagan country. Some Christians certainly lived there, but they appear not to have had any legal or institutional support for their faith, though there must have been significant enough numbers of them by around 1000 to make the official conversation possible. It took another half century for clear evidence to emerge of Christian education and the first steps towards an institutional school, with the teaching organized by bishop Ísleifr at Skálholt, in 1056. The 180 years between 870 and 1050 have been a particularly interesting period for students and scholars, as the period when the great narratives of the Íslendingasögur take place. It is also the period when the culture and society of medieval Iceland, from which Icelandic Christianity would develop, established itself.

An educational history of Iceland must therefore begin with this period, with the teaching practices and subjects of learning which prevailed at this time, to truly understand how education developed later. Scholars have speculated little about these early modes of learning, pagan or Christian, and what comments have been made are very general.⁸¹ However, secular education after the conversion must have been heavily influenced by, if not based on, pre-Christian practices. Many subjects, like law, poetry, and genealogy, remained important long after the conversion, particularly for the social elite. Even clerical education at monasteries, cathedrals, and churches around Iceland should not be considered entirely independent, and must have been in some way influenced both by pre-Christian practices and contemporary secular learning.

However, the source material for studying both pre-Christian education and secular education, at least those aspects of secular education that differed from clerical education, is highly problematic. In essence, in the Íslendingasögur corpus, we have literary depictions of some components of how pre-Christian Icelanders taught and learned, written by Icelanders of the thirteenth and later centuries. On the one hand, this is valuable insight into how Icelanders of these centuries thought about pre-Christian education, and they must have also incorporated elements of secular education from their own time. On the other, this combination of past and present makes these sources of uncertain value for both the periods. Elements of these texts very likely reflect something of pre-Christian education, whether through the preserved knowledge of oral tradition or through the maintenance of older practices in later medieval education. We cannot know for certain, however, what elements these are, or how much continuity existed from pre-Christian to Christian education. At the same time, because Íslendingasögur are deliberately presenting, or attempting to present, a past society, the educational practices presented in them cannot be assumed to fully reflect the practices of the authors’ own society. It can be said, however, that as largely incidental details, references to education are likely to reflect some aspect of the contemporary society of the author and audience.

Despite the problems with the Íslendingasögur, they are the best sources we have for understanding pre-Christian education and the distinctive features of post-Christianization secular education. Other sources will also be useful here, poetry and romances and legendary sagas, though these are even more loosely connected to any sort of historical reality, and mainly provide insight into literary conceptions about education. Yet, when so little is known about pre-Christian and secular education, no source can be ignored, and we must simply proceed with caution.

What is a School in Medieval Iceland?

Before delving any deeper into this topic, it is important to clarify one key point: not all education takes place in a “school,” and what constitutes a medieval Icelandic school must therefore be defined. It is, however, difficult to present a clear definition, and any will have an element of subjectivity. Education, even the formal education of a cleric, could take place wherever there was a willing teacher. For a textual education, some sort of book or other text would be used, but many different books could be and were used for elementary reading in the Middle Ages, and more specific texts would only be necessary in the intermediate stages of a clerical education. For education in oral subjects, nothing would be required but a teacher with the right skills.

As such, we must be cautious in what we call a school in medieval Iceland, with all the implications of a defined institution that the term might have for a modern reader. For the purposes of this study, a school should, above all, have a professional teacher: a person whose primary role and work is the teaching of students. References to such figures are quite rare in medieval Iceland, and can be considered a significant sign of a school. While, as this study will show, physical locations of schools could move, they should have at least some sort of institutional identity that allows them to endure even as teachers change. A priest or other master taking on an apprentice does not inherently constitute a school, as the location where they were teaching would have no institutional identity, and no basis for supporting continuing educational activities. The idea of a school implies some sort of community of learning governed by pedagogical structure, and thus must have consistently more than one student, and should have at least some outline of an established curriculum. The sources are usually unclear on the nature of the curriculum or the number of students, and professional teachers are not often explicitly mentioned, so speculative judgments must be made. But it remains necessary to draw some kind of distinction, to avoid assuming that educational institutions existed where references appear in the sources that may only indicate a single part-time teacher and their student.

Taking this definition into account, the actual terminology used for schools and schooling in the Middle Ages could be highly variable. Nicholas Orme has pointed out the variable terms for and understanding of schooling in England, with words for “school” in Latin, English, and Anglo-Norman functioning together. He suggests that the Latin scola/schola usually referred to the teaching of children, but could also refer to higher education, and could denote the a school building, a classroom, or even a group of people studying or learning together outside of such structures.⁸² As this range of meanings suggests, medieval teaching in general had a fairly informal quality by modern standards.⁸³

ON educational terminology, while similarly flexible and variable, makes some distinctions that support using a narrow definition of “school” in a medieval Icelandic context. By far the most common terminology to describe an educational situation or event are the verbs kenna (to teach) and nema (to learn), followed by their derivatives kennsla and nám (education/learning). The Íslendingasögur corpus, the main source for secular education examined in this chapter, only uses these two verbs, and seems to avoid even the abstract nouns kennsla/nám, preferring specific terms for the subjects tought and learned.⁸⁴ ON does make use of the loanword skóli, but it is not common, and in the sources examined for this study it is entirely confined to cathedrals, monasteries, and places outside of Iceland.⁸⁵ Even the fosterage and education of future bishops at major farms like Oddi and Haukadalr, which many scholars have described as taking place in schools, is never described using skóli or related compounds. From what context can tell us, even within this narrow usage, skóli does still have a variability of meaning comparable to Orme’s description of English usages. In at least two cases, it seems to indicate a specific room or building at the see of Hólar, a physical school.⁸⁶ More often, however, the verbs setja and halda are used with skóli to describe when teaching is taking place at a cathedral or monastery, or the compound skólahald may even be used, indicating the activity of teaching and learning, rather than the location.⁸⁷

Other terminology offers further distinctions between the sources’ description of secular and clerical education within Iceland. The verb læra (to teach) and related nouns, lærdómr and læring (learning/education), are confined to descriptions of clerical teaching, and as noted above the nouns kennsla/nám do not appear in the Íslendingasögur and appear to be used primarily for clerical education.⁸⁸ This distinction does not prevail in translated texts, which naturally take place outside of Iceland, and notably in certain romances læra is applied to the secular skills of both men and women.⁸⁹ Terms for a student, like kennslupiltr and lærisveinn, are confined to those pursuing an ecclesiastical career, often simply referred to with the diminutive prestlingr, sveinn (boy), or even just klerkr (cleric). Skólasveinn/skólaklerkr are uncommon, and when they are not describing students in translated texts and other contexts outside of Iceland, they appear confined to the cathedrals.⁹⁰ As will be discussed in chapter 2, the office of skólameistari (schoolmaster) is entirely confined to cathedrals. Other terminology translating the Latin magister, namely lærifaðir, is rarely used for teachers in Iceland, but does have slightly more flexibility of meaning, and could apply to monastic teachers.⁹¹ Perhaps the closest thing to a general medieval Icelandic word for a teacher is fóstri (foster-father), but, as will be discussed over the course of the next two chapters, fóstri has a complex meaning that likely changed over time, and does not necessarily describe someone involved in teaching.

With all this in mind, none of the education described in this chapter should be conceptualized as taking place in a school. Indeed, before Christianization, it would be misleading to identify anything as a formal school in Iceland. There is no evidence for a person whose primary work was teaching, or of a location where groups of students, year after year, would seek out an education. Equally, there is no evidence for secular schools appearing during the late medieval period in Iceland, as they did in many other places in Europe.⁹² As this chapter will explore, however, the practice of fosterage – a diverse collection of practices whereby someone other than a biological parent raised or helped raise the child – did provide an established means for bringing students and teachers together. Providing children with foster-parents was a primary mode of secular education, but it was also important to clerical education, and had an impact on the development of Icelandic schools, as the next chapter will address in more detail. However, education did not necessarily begin with foster-parents. Early education in the Middle Ages took place in the home, often with the mother as a teacher.⁹³ While most of the references collected here deal with foster-parents, there are some hints as to this early education, and we should not discount its potential importance.

Exploring the Íslendingasögur and other sources for pre-Christian and secular education thus not only provides an important framework for a more nuanced study of clerical education, but can also suggest to us how much education happened in Iceland outside of any sort of formal institution. Even as educational references in the Íslendingasögur are presumably made up of an uncertain mix of late medieval practices, distant memories of pre-Christian practices, and pure fiction, it is telling that they do not attempt to project any sort of idea of pagan schools into the past.

Subjects of Pre-Christian and Secular Education

The educational references of the Íslendin...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Pre-Christian and Secular Education
• Chapter 2 Clerical and Christian Education I: Contexts and People
• Chapter 3 Clerical and Christian Education II: The Latin and Bilingual Curriculum
• Chapter 4 Vernacular Grammatica
• Conclusion
• Index of Names
• General Index