The Seven Sleepers of Þingeyrar — Forty Days Without Waking

Þingeyrar Monastery, North Iceland

At the medieval monastery of Þingeyrar, seven monks fell into a sleep they could not wake from during a winter storm in 1180. They breathed and ate but could not speak for forty days. When they woke, each reported the same dream, word for word.

The monastery of Þingeyrar was founded in 1133 in Húnavatnssýsla in North Iceland — the first monastery in Iceland and one of the main centres of Icelandic manuscript production in the medieval period. It stood on the shore of the lake Hóp, isolated and austere, producing saga manuscripts and saints' lives in a scriptorium that operated through the worst of the northern winters. The account of the Seven Sleepers is preserved in a single document from the 14th century, apparently copied from an earlier source now lost. It describes an event said to have occurred in the winter of 1180 during a storm that sealed the monastery under several feet of snow for three weeks. Seven monks — their names are given — fell into a sleep from which they could not be roused. They breathed. Their colour remained natural. They could swallow water administered carefully. They could not be woken by any means tried: sound, cold water, fire held near the hand. They lay in the dormitory for forty days while the remaining brothers maintained the offices. On the forty-first day, all seven woke within the same hour. They were hungry and confused — they had no experience of the forty days as time passed. What they had experienced, each said separately without consulting the others, was a dream: a single, continuous dream of a coastal landscape in bright light, green and warm, with a city visible in the distance that none of them could identify. The account notes: 'They described the same city, and named the same gate, and said the same words had been spoken to them at it.' The words are not recorded. The scribe notes that this was deliberate.