‘Father of the People’: The Ancient Roman Metaphor for the Ruler in Medieval Icelandic Contexts

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the reception of the metaphor of ‘the ruler as father of the people’ and ‘the people as family’, a conceptual metaphor specific to the culture of ancient Rome, in both the vernacular and Latin literature within the medieval Nordic region, particularly as found in translations of classical literature into Old Icelandic. Its dissemination within the local Latin and vernacular literature can be used as a marker for Latinisation in Nordic Europe to help determine when, and to what extent, the local intellectual elites started thinking in Latin categories. For this purpose, I examine the resemantisation, namely the creation of new meaning in a changed context, of this metaphor in the Nordic region after Christianisation in order to determine the understanding of the concept of power relations between a ruler (state), the subjects (citizens), and the territory.