Jón Ögmundsson

Influence

A religious purist, Jón made it his mission to uproot all remnants of paganism. This included changing the names of the days of the week. Thus Óðinsdagr, "day of Odin", became miðvikudagr, "mid-week day" and the days of Týr and Thor became the prosaic "third day" and "fifth day".

Jón's names for the days are still in use in Iceland today but despite the success of this cosmetic reform it appears that Jón did not manage to uproot the memory of the heathen gods. More than a century after his death the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda were written, preserving large amounts of pagan myth and poetry.

Jón's relics were translated to the cathedral of Hólar on 3 March 1200, which made him a local saint. His feast day, 23 April (the date of his death) was decreed a Holy Day of Obligation for all Iceland at the Althing in the summer of 1200. These two events are distinguished in the Icelandic annals: Jón was not 'made a saint' by the Althing.

Jón never received as much veneration as the first Icelandic saint, Thorlak Thorhallsson. He was venerated primarily in the diocese of Hólar, and also at his birthplace, Breiðabólstaður in Fljótshlíð; relics were preserved at both these places.

''Jóns saga''

A Latin life (vita) about St. Jón was probably written by the monk Gunnlaugr Leifsson of the monastery at Þingeyrar in the early thirteenth century. Composed nearly a century after Jón's lifetime, its historical value is dubious. It is a classic example of hagiography for a confessor saint, aiming to praise the saintly virtues of its subject rather than record accurate historical information. The Latin original has not survived, but it was translated into Icelandic shortly after its composition and revised on subsequent occasions.

Editions and translations

• Jóns saga Hólabyskups ens Helga. Ed. Peter Foote. (Copenhagen: Editiones Arnamagnæanae Series A vol. 14, 2003)
• Biskupa sögur I (Íslensk Fornrit XV). Eds. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson, and Peter Foote. (Reykjavík: 2003).
• "Saga of Bishop Jón of Hólar", in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Tom Head. (NY and London, Garland: 2000) 595–626. Paperback edition by Routledge: 2002. pp. 595–626. (A partial translation.)
• The Saga of St. Jón of Hólar, ed. and trans. by Margaret Cormack and Peter Foote (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020)

References

References

1. Gustav Storm. (1888). "Islandske Annaler indtil 1578".