Borg () (often referred to as Borg á Mýrum) is a settlement due west of Borgarnes township in Iceland. Its

recorded history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world h ...

reaches back to the

settlement of Iceland The settlement of Iceland ( ) is generally believed to have begun in the second half of the ninth century, when Norsemen, Norse settlers migrated across the North Atlantic. The reasons for the migration are uncertain: later in the Middle Ages Icel ...

. One of the country's original settlers was Skallagrímur Kveldúlfsson (''Skalla-Grímr''), who claimed the area around Borg as his land, built a farm and made his home there. His son

Egill Skallagrímsson Egil Skallagrímsson ( ; Modern Icelandic: ; 904 995) was a Viking Age war poet, sorcerer, berserker, and farmer.Thorsson, 3 He is known mainly as the anti-hero of '' Egil's Saga''. ''Egil's Saga'' historically narrates a period from approx ...

then continued to live and farm at Borg á Mýrum. Borg á Mýrum was visited in 1897 by a British antiquary, William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932),(see note) who found 'the historical homestead, still partly built of oak-beams carved and moulded in the ancient times'. This building has not survived. However, there is a twentieth-century monument to Egill by Icelandic sculptor

Ásmundur Sveinsson Ásmundur Sveinsson (20 May 1893 – 9 December 1982) was an Icelandic sculptor, whose works include “ Thor's gavel”, the ornate gavel used by the President of United Nations General Assembly. Early years Ásmundur Sveinsson was born in Kol ...

(1893–1982). The abstract sculpture represents him as he grieves for two of his sons, Gunnar and Böðvarr, and seeks solace in the

skaldic poem A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: ; , meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally compo ...

Sonatorrek ''Sonatorrek'' ("the irreparable loss of sons") is a skaldic poem in 25 stanzas, that appears in Egil's Saga (written c.a. 1220–1240), an Icelandic saga focusing on the life of skald and viking, Egill Skallagrímsson (ca. 910–990). The ...

''.

Church

Borg á Mýrum has had a church ever since Iceland was Christianised around the year 1000, shortly after Egill's death. The present Borg á Mýrum Church (''Borgarkirkja'') was built in 1880, and is notable for its geographical alignment: it faces north–south, which is not traditional for Icelandic churches. It is also unusual in that the church building does not stand in the church yard, but is separated from it by the farm buildings. The

altarpiece An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, ...

, depicting Christ blessing the little children, is unique in Iceland for being painted in

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, ...

style. The artist was Collingwood.

Notes

:1.Collingwood was a gifted artist who became professor of Fine Arts at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

. He spent much of his life in the English

Lake District The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

where he developed his antiquarian interests and researched the Norse legacy in the area. He made an extensive trip around Iceland preparing an illustrated book "A Pilgrimage to the Saga-steads of Iceland" (published at

Ulverston Ulverston is a market town and civil parish in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, it lies a few miles south of the Lake District Lake District National Park, National Park and j ...

in 1899), which surveyed locations cited in the

Icelandic Sagas The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early elev ...

.''A Pilgrimage to the Saga-steads of Iceland''. W.G.Collingwood, Jón Stefánsson (Holmes, Ulverston. 1899). (The

National Museum of Iceland The National Museum of Iceland ( Icelandic: ''Þjóðminjasafn Íslands'' ) was established on 24 February 1863, with Jón Árnason the first curator of the Icelandic collection, previously kept in Danish museums. Collections The second curat ...

has a collection of Collingwood's art work related to the book)

Church

See also

Notes

References

Other Sources