Eysteinn Ásgrímsson

Eysteinn Ásgrímsson (c. 1310 – 1360) was an Icelandic poet who wrote Lilja, the most famous and in most readers' opinion the best among religious poetry in Iceland in the Middle Ages.

Life

Eysteinn Ásgrímsson was a member of the Icelandic clergy as well as a skald. In 1343 he was sent to prison for beating up his abbot in the abbey of Þykkvabær. Some scholars assume that this was the occasion he composed 'Lilja', which is marked by a deep concern with sinfulness.

He was sent to Norway in 1355 and returned in 1357 as an inspector of churches. On the way back to Norway in 1360 the voyage turned out to be too rough for him, and the poet died just after landing.

Work

His poem Lilja ("the lily", in medieval Christian imagery the flower which symbolizes purity and thus also the Virgin Mary) still lives, however, mainly because of its extraordinarily gifted composition and the fact that Eysteinn was, for his times, a purist regarding language: he avoided both complicated kenningar and borrowings as far he could.

This is especially noteworthy as the poetic tradition he was a member of (skaldic poetry) draws for a great part upon most complex formal aspects, among them alteration and interweaving of word and phrase positions, a highly elaborated metaphorical system and strict metrical rules.

Only the metrical regulations are still held up by Eysteinn in his poem, although he does not use the traditional Dróttkvætt metre, but the Hrynhent whose main difference is a syllable count of eight in contrast to the six-syllabic dróttkvætt. The metre has also been seen to relate, in its slower, broader word-flow, to the sermon tradition.

The syntactic and semantic complexities of scaldic poetry are explicitly avoided by Eysteinn, in favour of a Christian 'claritas'-ideal as stated by St. Thomas Aquinas.

The poet is shown as a truly religious man with a deep understanding of human needs and their relationship to God, as it was understood at the time. Lilja is still read today.

References

• Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages:Eysteinn Ásgrímsson
• Phillip Pulsiano; Kirsten Wolf (1993). Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 391. ISBN 978-0-8240-4787-0.

Editions

• Ásgrímsson, Eysteinn (1870), Magnússon, Eirikr (ed.), Lilja (The Lily) - an Icelandic Religious Poem of the Fourteenth Century , English translation