My short trip to Reykholt was delightful. The priest there, Geir Waage, was exceptionally gracious and gave me a personal tour of the church and a personal lecture on Icelandic history and literature. He is both deeply learned and passionate about his topics and helped to explain a number of issues to me, including some questions regarding the conversion of the Icelanders to Christianity and the collapse of the Icelandic Commonwealth in the 13th Century. His explanations were interspersed with beautiful readings from memory of old Skaldic poems in the Norse language, which he then translated into English and the kennings of which he carefully explicated. It was quite a visit.
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Tom, this article just might interest you:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/36nrl04647066201/
Thank you, Gissur! I do know that essay and have read it carefully. I still found the historical details about the family conflicts in the civil war quite enlightening. Geir Waage gave an account that agreed in the institutional details (and the description of the incentives) with Birgir’s, but he really helped to round out the description with details about the intensity of the family conflicts, not only among families, but within them.