http://hdl.handle.net/10900/53306 2026-07-27T02:46:00Z 2026-07-27T02:46:00Z Úlfar Bragason http://hdl.handle.net/10900/46219 2019-10-30T02:13:54Z 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z

The word and the world: A resonant textual fragment of Íslendinga saga Úlfar Bragason The paper investigates into the narratology of the Sturlunga compilation: how the events of the 12th and 13th centuries in Iceland are turn into narrative in the contemporary sagas. I will take examples of the ways of selecting and organizing the story material, and the principle of narration. I will argue that the recognition and appreciation of the narrative nature of the Sturlunga are long overdue and will show by the example of Islendinga saga by Sturla Thordarson that it is necessary to understand the narrative rules of the contemporary sagas before making use of them as sources of the history of the Sturlung Age.

2002-01-01T00:00:00Z Grønlie, Siân http://hdl.handle.net/10900/46216 2019-10-30T02:13:44Z 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z

The sagas and conversion history: Kristni sagaand other texts Grønlie, Siân Different attitudes have been expressed about the historicity of Kristni saga since the saga was edited and translated into Latin in 1773. For historians up until the mid-twentieth century, it was a reliable source for conversion history, and its account of the missions to Iceland was used frequently in works of history in combination with Ari, the conversion þættir in Flateyjarbók, and extracts from the family sagas. More recently, however, it has been dismissed by those more sceptical about the historicity of saga literature as containing little of any value for the serious historian, and classed along with legendary and hagiographical works like Oddr and Gunnlaugr’s sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason. At the same time it is generally recognized not only that the saga’s skaldic verses are valuable historical sources, but also that some of the anecdotes not found in Ari may have a kernel of historical truth. The saga’s probable connection with the historian Sturla Þórðarson suggests that a serious historical purpose lies behind it. He collected and ordered his material on historical principles, adding both chronological and geographical details not found elsewhere, and including a passage on the missionary Þangbrandr’s stay in Borgarfjörðr. This is probably based on oral sources and its numerous place-names may reflect Sturla’s familiarity with the area. Although his written sources included hagiographical and fictional material from Oddr and Gunnlaugr’s work, Sturla is careful to revise and sometimes rewrite entirely those passages that contravene the saga’s impression of historicity. While it is difficult to tell whether he made these changes because he had access to more reliable information or purely on stylistic grounds, it is clear from comparison with other texts that the main impulse behind the saga was neither religious nor aesthetic, but historical in nature. There are several reasons why Sturla might have compiled Kristni saga or supervised its compilation. His model is usually thought to have been Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla and he may have wished to provide a comprehensive overview of Icelandic history just as Snorri did for the kings of Norway. In this overview, Kristni saga was the link between Landnámabók and the contemporary sagas, placing the conversion at the centre of the island’s history. Secondly, there is Sturla’s noted interest in legal matters: as in Ari’s account of the conversion, the shift from paganism to Christianity in the saga is portrayed less as a religious phenomenon than as the establishment and development of Christian law. Finally, Sturla may have seen in Iceland’s conversion an opportunity to explore the relationship between Iceland and Norway, a central problem in accounts of the conversion from Ari to the family sagas. The belief that the Norwegian king Ólafr Tryggvason brought Christianity to Iceland raised important issues concerning the political relationship between the two countries, and Iceland’s loss of independence to Norway during Sturla’s lifetime made an evaluation of that relationship especially relevant.

2002-01-01T00:00:00Z Finlay, Alison http://hdl.handle.net/10900/46222 2019-10-30T02:13:46Z 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z

Two Borgfirðinga sögur: the oldest or the youngest Íslendingasögur? Finlay, Alison Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa and Heiðarvíga saga alike have traditionally been described as 'primitive' sagas. Bjarnar saga is conventionally dated c. 1220; Heiðarvíga saga is often named as the oldest of the Íslendingasögur. Bjarni Guðnason turned these datings on their heads when he argued, largely on grounds of ideology, that Heiðarvíga saga is as late as c. 1260 1993), and that Bjarnar saga, post-dating Njáls saga, is one of the youngest of these sagas (1994). Taking as examples these two sagas, one set in Borgarfjörður and the other relating a feud heavily involving the Borgfirðingar, this paper reviews the possible criteria - stylistic, ideological, and those relating to literary relations and historical context ? for assessing the chronology of saga composition, and revisits Sigurður Nordal's speculations (Íslenzk fornrit III) about the conditions in which sagas may have been written in Borgarfjörður in the early thirteenth century.

2003-01-01T00:00:00Z Helgi Skúli Kjartansson http://hdl.handle.net/10900/46208 2019-10-30T02:13:14Z 2002-01-01T00:00:00Z

From the frying pan of oral tradition into the fire of saga writing : The precarious survival of historical fact in the saga of Yngvar the Far-Traveller Helgi Skúli Kjartansson The Saga of Yngvarr used to be classified as a Legendary Saga (Fornaldarsaga) on account of its vague and distant geographical setting and unrealistic subject matter, despite its being set in the 11th century - with Swedish Vikings as champions of Christianity in the East. Lacking the mythological or heroic connections of the more “classical” Legendary Sagas, it was considered late and obviously devoid of any historical value. Research of the last quarter century, philological (Hofmann) as well as historical (e.g. Larsson), has turned all of this upside down. The saga’s own dating of its main events to around 1040 is credible. So is its account of its own composition. It is a translation into Icelandic of a Latin saga, written by the Benedictine monk Oddr Snorrason, better known as the author of a Latin history of King Óláfr Tryggvason of Norway (like Yngvar’s Saga only preserved in translation). The translator or editor summarizes a letter by the author where he accounts for his three different oral sources (one of them representing a Swedish tradition) and his doubts regarding certain points. The letter was addressed to the two leading aristocrats of South Iceland, both of them respected for their clerical education. The saga must have been finished before the death of one of them in 1197 – i.e. some 150 years after the events took place. For they did take place. Not only is Yngvarr an historical person, attested to by scores of Swedish rune stones, but his expedition, across the Caucasus from the Black to the Caspian Sea, is mentioned in a contemporary Georgian source, with sufficient detail provided to confirm its identity with the events described by the saga. Yngvar’s Saga, then, represents no less than state-of-the-art historical research in Iceland at a time when Danish and Norwegian historians readily acknowledge the superiority of Icelanders as preservers of historical tradition. A first-rate scholar undertakes, presumably encouraged or recruited by the two Southern aristocrats, to produce an export quality version, in the language of international scholarship, of an oral tale. He approaches the task methodically by finding and tapping oral sources representing different strands of the tradition. Yngvar’s Saga belongs to the period of saga writing which precedes the 13th century constellation of distinct saga genres. Its closest relative may, in some ways, be the Saga of the Jomsvikings (Jómsvíkinga saga), also centered on one unusual event of historical proportions, i.e. the invasion of Norway by a peculiar band of Baltic Vikings, set some 50 years before Yngvar’s expedition. Among the memorable events of those 50 years were the Vineland expeditions, and the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland (Brjánsbardagi) 1014. Both were the subject of codified stories, probably at more or less the same time as Yngvar’s Saga, but now only known as used by subsequent saga writers. Less similar to Yngvar’s Saga, and perhaps a bit younger, is the Saga of the Faeroe Islanders (Færeyinga saga). All of these works represent attempts to reconstruct extraordinary events on the basis of 150–200 years of storytelling tradition. In the case of Yngvar’s Saga, at any rate, the result turns out to be remarkably unhistorical. One may wonder how typical it is as an example of the difficulties involved in preserving historical fact as oral tradition. First of all, to be viable in oral transmission, historical fact has to be given a narrative form, in line with the tastes of a given oral culture. In a single chain of transmission, some content is necessarily lost. Then the tradition either degenerates or is replenished with new content. Only by creative transmission can the story retain its appeal. With multiple and interlocking chains of transmission, content is not necessarily forgotten. The creative inclusion of extra content would occur all the same, at least in some of the chains. A diligent scholar – say Oddr Snorrason in the case of the Yngvarr expedition – might conceivably have access to all the facts related by storytellers 100 years earlier. They would, however, be mixed with fiction in various proportions. His problem would be to tell one from the other, and then to make narrative sense of what he chose to believe. It is Oddr’s superstition which makes his mistakes so glaring to the modern reader. A saga writer with less of a taste for the supernatural would not give himself away so easily. But if the oral story was open to the inclusion of supernatural elements, it would have been equally open to other types of extra content, and the less superstitious saga writer would be no better placed than Oddr to tell fact from that sort of fiction. Similarly, the sense that Oddr gives to his story tends to be ecclesiastical, which strikes some readers as un-sagalike, whereas a different author might lean towards a more political interpretation – without necessarily staying any closer to his oral sources than Oddr. Compared with domestic events, the distant scene of Yngvar’s Saga may have contributed to a more creative transmission. On the other hand, the time span of 150 years is short compared with many sagas with serious historical content. Oddr’s material is oral narrative. Different arguments may apply to the oral transmission of different content, such as poetry, law, and geneology. Even narrative may retain accurate fact for any length of time. But when evaluating saga narrative as an historical source, the crux is not the potential for accuracy but the danger of distortion. The grim fate of historical fact in the Saga of Yngvarr the Far-Traveled is a reminder of that danger.

2002-01-01T00:00:00Z