and the Norse settlement on the islands in the west, was founded. An important factor
behind the foundation of the archbishopric in Niðarós was the church reform move-
ment. The aim of the reform was to free the Church from secular influence and place it
under the leadership of the pope.
As soon as Iceland became part of the archbishopric in Niðarós, the archbishop
introduced the universal church demands in Iceland. But to do that successfully he
needed support from the Icelandic bishops. He got support from Þorlákur Þórhallsson
who became bishop in Skálholt in 1178. But after a dispute with Jón Loftsson, the
country’s leading chieftain, Þorlákr relinquished his claims, and did not raise them
again. The main reason for this shift in Þorlákr’s policy was a change in the political
situation in Norway. Archbishop Eysteinn was, due to conflicts with the king, forced to
leave Norway in 1180. Without the archbishop’s support there was little Þorlákur could
do on his own and he was therefore forced to concede ( Jón Jóhannesson 1956 ; Gunnar
Karlsson 2000 ; Magnús Stefánsson 2000 ).
After the death of Bishop Þorlákur in 1193 , the chieftains in the Skálholt bishopric
elected Páll Jónsson as his successor. He was a chieftain from the powerful Oddaverja
family, and by choosing Páll as a bishop the chieftains in the Skálholt see could prevent
the archbishop from intervening in ecclesiastical matters in the bishopric.
The chieftains in the Hólar see thought that they had done this when they elected
Guðmundr Arason as a bishop in Hólar in 1201. But this was not the case. Guðmundr
instead became a strong advocate for the church reform programme. Two issues were
at the heart of the disputes between Bishop Guðmundr and the chieftains. The first
one was on the administration of the bishopric at Hólar, where Guðmundr wanted
to be more generous to poor people than the chieftain liked. The second and main
conflict between Guðmundr and the chieftains concerned the judicial status of clergy-
men, whether they should obey church law or the secular law of the country. These
conflicts lasted for decades. It was not until 1234 that Guðmundr was left in peace at
Hólar. The outcome of this dispute was a kind of status quo; the Church gained no new
rights.
Both bishops in Iceland died in 1237. As usual, the chieftains in Iceland elected
candidates and sent them to Niðarós. This time the archbishop rejected the Icelandic
candidates, and appointed two Norwegians as bishops in Iceland. After the archbishop
had gained control of the election of bishops in Iceland, it became easier for him to
influence the ecclesiastical and political developments in the country. Consequently over
the course of the next fifty years he managed to transform the Icelandic Church to a
bishop’s Church which better suited the general ecclesiastical structure that was created
in Europe in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Magnús Stefánsson 1978 ;
Gunnar F. Guðmundsson 2000 ).
BIBLIOGRAPHYAgnar Helgason et al. ( 2001 ) ‘mtDNA and the islands of the North Atlantic: estimating the
proportions of Norse and Gaelic ancestry’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 68 : 723 – 37.
Anna Sigurðardóttir ( 1985 ) Vinna kvenna á Íslandi í 1100 ár (Úr veröld kvenna 2 ), Reykjavík:
Kvennasögusafn Íslands.
——( 1988 ) Allt hafði annan róm áður í páfadóm. Nunnuklaustrin tvö á Íslandi á miðöldum og brot úr
kristnisögu (Úr veröld kvenna 3 ), Reykjavík: Kvennasögusafn Íslands.
–– Jón Viðar Sigurðsson ––