The Gyðinga Saga: When Icelandic Scribes Wrote Jewish History

In the mid-13th century, an Icelandic priest named Brandur Jónsson sat down to write something unexpected. Not a tale of Nordic kings or saints, but a saga about Jewish resistance, survival, and faith. The result was Gyðinga saga: “The Saga of the Jews.” It’s one of the earliest known attempts to present Jewish history to a Norse-speaking audience, and it remains a rare medieval bridge between Icelandic literary culture and Jewish historical tradition.

Gyðinga saga tells the story of the Jewish people across centuries, focusing especially on the Maccabean Revolt, when a small group of Jewish rebels stood up against the Seleucid Empire and reclaimed their temple. The core of the narrative is based on the biblical books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, but it’s adapted with the voice and rhythm of Icelandic saga literature.

The story begins with the campaigns of Alexander the Great and eventually narrows in on the years 175 BCE to 26 CE. It’s divided into three parts: the Maccabean uprising under Judah Maccabee, the Hasmonean dynasty that followed, and finally the rise of Roman rule, including figures like Herod the Great and Pontius Pilate. While the final part is brief, it sets the stage for what would eventually become the early Christian period.

What makes the Gyðinga saga stand out isn’t just the content, it’s who wrote it, when, and why.

Brandur Jónsson became bishop of Hólar in 1263, one of Iceland’s two major episcopal seats. He died just a year later, but before becoming bishop, he was already active as a scribe and intellectual at Hólar, a center of learning and manuscript culture in northern Iceland. Between 1257 and 1263, at the request of King Magnús Hákonarson of Norway, Brandur translated and adapted two major works into Old Norse: one about Alexander the Great, and this saga about the Jews.

Brandur didn’t just translate the Latin sources word-for-word. He reshaped them. He added details, adjusted narrative tone, and reworked the historical material into the familiar structure of a saga - complete with dramatic turns, political intrigue, and the moral ambiguity typical of Icelandic storytelling. Some scholars believe he was also influenced by the civil strife of his own time, the violent Sturlunga Age in Iceland, when political betrayal and family bloodshed were everyday realities.

Why would a 13th-century Icelandic priest care about ancient Jewish history?

In part, because medieval Iceland wasn’t as isolated as it might seem. Monasteries like Hólar were connected to broader European intellectual trends, and kings like Magnús wanted their courts to reflect classical and biblical learning. But more than that, Brandur seems to have found something in the Jewish story - especially in the Maccabees - that resonated deeply with Icelandic values: courage, loyalty, resistance against oppression, and the cost of internal division.

Though there were no Jewish communities in Iceland at the time, the word Gyðingr (Jew) appears in Old Norse from around this period. It literally means "God-worshipper," a respectful term rooted in the word guð. That linguistic detail tells us something important: the Jews weren’t seen merely as “others,” but as part of a shared religious heritage, even if distant.

Of course, medieval texts aren’t free of bias. Some Christian interpretations are embedded in the saga’s framework. But overall, Gyðinga saga is remarkable for its attempt to understand and even admire a people very different from the Icelandic audience it addressed.

For Jewish readers in Iceland today, or Icelanders curious about Judaism, this forgotten medieval work offers something rare: a sincere, if imperfect, gesture of connection across time and culture. A 13th-century Icelandic bishop, writing in a windswept northern scriptorium, found value in telling the Jewish story - not just as history, but as something worth preserving in his own language, for his own people.

That story is still worth sharing.