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Sagas of Icelanders

Not to be confused withSagas,an Icelandic literary form encompassing this and other genres;Íslendinga saga,a specific saga based on historical events from the thirteenth century.

Thesagas of Icelanders(Icelandic:Íslendingasögur,modernIcelandic pronunciation:[ˈislɛndiŋkaˌsœːɣʏr̥]), also known asfamily sagas,are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandicsagas.They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place inIcelandin the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries, during the so-calledSaga Age.They were written inOld Icelandic,a western dialect ofOld Norse.They are the best-known specimens ofIcelandic literature.

Egill Skallagrímssonin a seventeenth-century manuscript ofEgil's Saga
Grettiris ready to fight in this illustration from a seventeenth-centuryIcelandicmanuscript.
Detail of a miniature from a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript

They are focused on history, especially genealogical and family history. They reflect the struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the early generations of Icelandic settlers.[1]The Icelandic sagas are valuable and unique historical sources about medieval Scandinavian societies and kingdoms, in particular regarding pre-Christian religion and culture and the heroic age.[2]

Eventually, many of these Icelandic sagas were recorded, mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries. The 'authors', or rather recorders, of these sagas are largely unknown. One saga,Egil's Saga,is believed by some scholars[3][4]to have been written bySnorri Sturluson,a descendant of the saga's hero, but this remains uncertain. The standard modern edition of Icelandic sagas is produced byHið íslenzka fornritafélag('The Old Icelandic Text Society'), or Íslenzk fornrit for short.

Historical time frame

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Among the several literary reviews of the sagas is theSagalitteraturenbySigurður Nordal,which divides the sagas into five chronological groups (depending on when they were written not their subject matters) distinguished by the state of literary development:[5]

  • 1200 to 1230 – Sagas that deal withskalds(such asFóstbrœðra saga)[5]
  • 1230 to 1280 – Family sagas (such asLaxdæla saga)[5]
  • 1280 to 1300 – Works that focus more on style and storytelling than just writing down history (such asNjáls saga)[5]
  • Early fourteenth century – Historical tradition[5]
  • Fourteenth century – Fiction[5]

This framework has been severely criticised as based on a presupposed attitude to the fantastic and an over-estimation on the precedence ofLandnámabók.[6]

List of sagas

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It is thought that a number of sagas are now lost, including the supposedGauks saga Trandilssonar– The saga of Gaukur á Stöng. In addition to these, the texts often referred to as the "Tales of Icelanders" (Íslendingaþættir) such as "Hreiðars þáttr" and "Sneglu-Halla þáttr" of the kings' sagaMorkinskinnacould be included in this corpus, as well as the contemporary sagas (written in the 13th century and dealing with the same period) incorporated intoSturlunga saga.[7]

See also

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References

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  1. ^Myers, Ben (2008-10-03)."The Icelandic Sagas: Europe's most important book?".The Guardian.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved2017-08-24.
  2. ^Bagge, Sverre(2014).Cross and Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation.Princeton University Press. p. 45.ISBN978-1-4008-5010-5.
  3. ^Egil's Saga,English translation, Penguin Books, 1976, introduction byHermann PálssonandPaul Edwards,p. 7
  4. ^Sigurður Nordalhad this to say in his edition of Egils saga: "This matter will never be settled fully with the information we now have.… As for me, I have become more and more convinced, as I gained a better understanding of Egils saga that it is the work of Snorri, and I will henceforth not hesitate to count the saga among his works, unless new arguments are presented, which I have overlooked."
  5. ^abcdefLönnroth, Lars (1976).Njáls Saga.London: University of California Press. pp.204–205.ISBN0-520-02708-6– via Internet Archive.
  6. ^Ármann Jakobsson and Yoav Tirosh (2020).""The 'Decline of Realism' and inefficacious Old Norse literary genres and sub-genres"".Scandia(3): 102–38.
  7. ^Tirosh, Yoav (2019)."On the Receiving End: The Role of Scholarship, Memory, and Genre in Constructing Ljósvetninga saga".PhD Thesis, University of Iceland.University of Iceland: Unpublished Doctoral Thesis.

Further reading

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