"All we know about Margret the Adroit comes from the Saga of Bishop Pall—she is mentioned in no other source—and Loft says excruciatingly little about her. We learn that she lived at Skalholt as the wife of an important priest. Her high status excused her from the day-to-day drudgery of an ordinary farm woman—milking and cheese making, spinning and weaving—but she likely had some managerial role, especially after the death of Pall’s wife, Herdis, when the official role of housekeeper was taken up by Pall’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Thora.
Upon Pall’s own death in 1211, Margret and her husband took complete charge of Skalholt for five years, until the new bishop was named in 1216. Along with croziers and altarpieces, Margret may have carved practical things: spoons, combs, weaving tools. She may have had a fine hand at embroidery or tablet weaving—we’ll never know. Loft is not interested in Margret the Adroit. What he wants to talk about is his father’s—and his own—importance. Loft, it seems, acted as his father’s emissary, bringing gifts to the bishop of Orkney and the king of Norway, and it is within this context of reciprocal gift exchange that he remembers Margret.
His association of her skill in ivory work with Pall’s propensity to send “precious things” as “gifts to his friends abroad” is our best clue that Margret made the Lewis chessmen. This short passage has not been published before in English; it reads in its entirety: (...)
It should also be said that Bishop Pall sent many gifts to his friends abroad, both gyrfalcons and other treasures. He sent Archbishop Thorir a bishop’s crozier of walrus ivory, carved so skillfully that no one in Iceland had ever seen such artistry before; it was made by Margret the Adroit, who at that time was the most skilled carver in all Iceland. Both she and her husband were at Skalholt when Bishop Pall died, and Thorir the Priest, Margret’s husband, took over the management of the see, but Margret made everything that Bishop Pall wanted. Bishop Pall had commissioned the making of an altarpiece before he died, and had put aside for it a lot of money, both in gold and silver, and Margret carved the walrus ivory extremely well. It is certain that it would have become the greatest treasure, if it had been made according to his design, but Thorsteinn Shrine-Smith and Margret, with their artistry, completed it afterward. There was great dismay at his death, and such things at first came to an end, but only for a moment for the sake of the others in the family. Thorsteinn was chosen to design the altarpiece."
Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, Nancy Marie Brown
(Lewis chess pieces)
