Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context (original) (raw)
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The paper is an attempt to describe the literary system of medieval Iceland on the basis of five principles: genealogy, geography, religion, relation to the supernatural and social status of the protagonists. A subsequent study of several family sagas (Íslendingasögur) will reveal a specific trait distinguishing them from others: their predilection for "ontological uncertainty", i.e. the uncertain religious, supernatural and social status of their protagonists. This is to be understood in relation to what was going on in Icelandic society in the first half of the 13th century, which is when family sagas seem to have appeared. This is a period when the dominant group in society seems to be recomposing itself. On the one hand, a hitherto more or less homogeneous chieftain class is dividing itself into a class of overlords dominating the others: on the other hand, church officials, until then a part of this homogeneous dominant class, define themselves increasingly as a separate group with its own identity, inducing the remaining chieftain class to define itself as laymen. This social redefinition is the main drive behind the appearance of the family sagas. They express the uncertainty that necessarily accompanies such a redefinition.
Scandinavian folk legends and Icelandic sagas
New Focus on Retrospective Methods (Folklore Fellows Communications 307)., 2014
The article argues that Scandinavian folk legends recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries often explain supernatural episodes in Íslendingasǫgur better than comparison with other medieval sagas. Saga scholars have in many cases come to the wrong conclusions from too narrow a focus on written texts contemporary with the Íslendingasǫgur. The interest in supernatural motifs is a characteristic feature of the “post-classical” Íslendingasǫgur. This is an important reason why they are usually seen as fundamentally different from the “classical” Íslendingasǫgur, whose realism is linked to an origin in oral tradition that was perceived as essentially historical. The “post-classical” sagas with their many fantastic motifs are in contrast seen as unhistorical, pure fiction, influenced primarily by written literature like fornaldarsǫgur and riddarasǫgur. Sometimes this is certainly correct. But in most “post-classical” Íslendingasǫgur such parallels are few and superficial. In the article some concrete examples from the sagas are given where late recorded legends seem to provide much better parallels than any contemporary saga text. My conclusion is that the time gap of c. 600 years should not prevent us from using these sources if they seem to be more conclusive than the contemporary ones. My conclusion also has consequences for the perception of Íslendingasǫgur in general. The view of the “post-classical” saga as bookish fiction which emerged under the influence of the written fornaldarsaga is hardly sustainable. Nor is the contrast between the supernatural orientation and the realism of the classical saga evident. The stories in the later legends about encounters with the supernatural were also seen as basically true, and these stories were part of the image people had of a real past. There is reason to believe that this also applied to many of the motifs of the “post-classical” sagas as well.
AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2019 No 3, 2019
Scholars have traditionally viewed the post-classical sagas and þaettir of Icelanders, written between the second half of the 13th century and the early 15th century, as inferior to the classical sagas and þaettir in terms of narrative form and social relevance. In the present study we argue that the post-classical texts show an innovative approach to the concept of narrative space, and that they are reflective of the various narrative modes in a way that allows the narratives to become more varied and multi-layered than the classical sagas. We also argue that the increased use of supernatural motifs is not a sign of disinterest in the social concerns, because such motifs contribute to the conceptualization of the social issues that had changed after the end of the Sturlung Age, but they had not become less significant.
Fact and Fiction in the Icelandic Sagas
History Compass, 2007
After a survey of the types of historical evidence that can be used for comparison with Icelandic sagas, current scholarly approaches to these sagas as historical sources are presented and critiqued. Pitfalls in using this material are pointed out, and some new research is discussed.
Authorship and auctoritas in Sagas of Early Icelanders. The example of Reykdoela saga
Germanisches Altertum und Europäisches Mittelalter: Gedenkband für Heinrich Beck, 2023
Although the so-called Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Early Icelanders) rarely comment or reflect on questions about the art of narration, short remarks of the narrative voice as well as some narrative techniques demonstrate that the sagas have been composed according to generic rules and that they try to meet generic expectations. Since all Íslendingasögur are anonymous, questions about authorship have mainly focused on identifying specific individuals who might have been responsible for a saga. 1 Even less attention than to the concept of authorship has been paid to the function of the narrative voice that has usually been considered to be identical with the author in anonymous texts. In this article I want to look at narratorial comments in Reykdoela saga with a special focus on their function within the narrative. 2 It will be demonstrated that the references which seem to be referring to tradition are actually references to the narrative itself and thus on the same level as the clearly intra-textual crossreferences. All these remarks ultimately refer back to the narrative voice and thus to the auctoritas of the text, i.e. to the text-controlling authority.
Unwanted. Neglected Approaches, Characters, and Texts in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies
2021
The 9 essays collected in this volume are the result of a workshop for international doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies held at the Institute for Nordic Philology (LMU) in Munich in December 2018. The contributors focus on ›unwanted‹, illicit, neglected, and marginalised elements in saga literature and research on it. The chapters cover a wide range of intra-textual phenomena, narrative strategies, and understudied aspects of individual texts and subgenres. The analyses demonstrate the importance of deviance and transgression as literary characteristics of saga narration, as well as the discursive parameters that have been dominant in Saga Studies. The aim of this collection is to highlight the productiveness of developing modified methodological approaches to the sagas and their study, with a starting point in narratological considerations. Andreas Schmidt and Daniela Hahn are postdoctoral researchers, reading and teaching Old Icelandic literature from narratological perspectives. Both completed their PhDs in Scandinavian Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Following Bad Boys and Wicked Women (Münchner Nordistische Studien 27), this is their second co-edited collection of essays.
A Layered Landscape: How the Family Sagas Mapped Medieval Iceland
Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, 2010
The Icelandic Family Sagas – Old-Norse prose narratives written during the 1200s – inscribe in retrospect a process by which the unknown terrain of late ninth-century settlement Iceland is ‘mapped’ through association with human story. Space begs history: family sagas locate past deeds in a present landscape. At the most evident level, sagas explain how places received their names by reference to the people who had lived there. Another layer of meaning is created by the movement of stories and journeys over this named geography. Furthermore, the saga landscape thus constructed is shown to have continuing relevance: the sagas link past and present, with physical evidence of saga action still evident in thirteenthor even twentieth-century Iceland. Yet family sagas do not claim that all responsibility for this construction of landscape lay with the early settlers. The land too is shown to have had agency, so choosing its people and history.