Bishops' sagas

Bishops' sagas (modern Icelandic Biskupa sögur, sometimes given in Old Norse spelling as Biskupa sǫgur) are a genre of medieval Icelandic sagas, mostly thirteenth- and earlier fourteenth-century prose histories dealing with bishops of Iceland's two medieval dioceses of Skálholt and Hólar.

Sagas about Skálholt bishops

• Hungrvaka (short biographies of the first five bishops of Skálholt, 1056-1176)
• Þorláks saga helga (three redactions, including the earliest of the biskupa sögur)
• Páls saga biskups (the saga of Þorlákr's successor Páll Jónsson, d. 1211)
• Árna saga biskups (composed c. 1300 about Árni Þorláksson, d. 1298)

Two þættir are also relevant: Ísleifs þáttr biskups and Jóns þáttr Halldórssonar.

Sagas about Hólar bishops

• Jóns saga helga (about Jón Ögmundsson, 1052–1121, in several different versions)
• Guðmundar saga biskups (about Guðmundur Arason, 1161-1237, in several different versions)
• Laurentius Saga (the latest of the biskupa sögur, about Lárentíus Kálfsson, 1267-31)

Several of the Hólar sagas are associated with the North Icelandic Benedictine School which flourished in the fourteenth century.

Editions

• The principal modern edition of these sagas is Biskupa sögur, Íslenzk fornrit, 15-17 (Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 2002-3).
• Biskupa sögur. Volume 1. Kaupmannahöfn [Copenhagen]: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag. 1858.
• Biskupa sögur. Volume 2. Kaupmannahöfn [Copenhagen]: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag. 1878.
• A number of these sagas are edited and translated in Gudbrand Vigfusson; Powell, F. York (1905). Origines Islandicae: A collection of the more important sagas and other native writings relating to the settlement and early history of Iceland. Volume 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sources

Ásdís Egilsdóttir (1993). "Biskupa sögur". In Pulsiano, Phillip; Wolf, Kirsten. Medieval Scandinavia: An encyclopedia. New York: Garland. pp. 45–46. ISBN 0824047877.