ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the way in which the religious environments of donations and inheritance strategies in Iceland during the medieval and early modern periods were gendered. In the 1970s and 1980s, Otto Gerhard Oexle's articles defined the field of memoria, which he defined as a complex of liturgical and social acts connecting the living and the dead. The existing study of the role of sainthood in medieval Iceland has not specifically addressed the connection between saints and donation culture. The medieval deathbed was a place where a dying person could distribute her or his belongings. One of the first preparations before one's death was to secure to legitimate heirs their share of the inheritance. Medieval hagiographical literature stored and constructed memory of sainthood, which almost lost its meaning after the Reformation. The introduction of the Christian theology of the afterlife led to the establishment of new channels of property transfer, which greatly enriched the Church in the medieval period.
