Reading Selected Sagas

Chapter 4 examines a selection of the most admired and most widely studied sagas of Icelanders. It demonstrates how the source traditions discussed in chapter 2 and the thematic concerns examined in chapter 3 come together in narrative explorations of identity. Themes of gender and sexuality, family, human and non-human relations, friendship, and more are explored in brief yet thorough overviews of these Icelandic stories. The texts discussed in detail include: Auðunar þáttr vestfirzka (“The Tale of Audun from the West Fjords”), the poets’ sagas (skáldasögur), Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, the Vínland sagas, outlaw sagas (Gísla saga and Grettis saga), Laxdæla saga and Njáls saga.

Icelandic Identities

Chapter 3 looks at ways in which sagas of Icelanders engage with and explore three broad aspects of identity: nationality (including the importance of feuds in medieval Icelandic law), gender and sexuality, and the distinction between human and non-human (including the supernatural). The sagas thus performed what is sometimes called “ideological work”: they gave expression to the common memories and ideals of a community, and they strengthened bonds within that community through the shared activity of reading the stories or hearing them read. By bringing the sagas into dialogue with approaches associated with the study of other periods and other literatures, this chapter sheds new light on the sagas and on thinking about identity today. Special attention is paid to Hrafnkels saga Freysgoði as a saga illustrating the exploration of different kinds of identity.

Traditions in Time

Chapter 2 explores relevant historical contexts: the period in Icelandic history in which the sagas are set (encompassing the Viking Age, the discovery and settlement of Iceland, and that country’s conversion to Christianity), and also the period during which the sagas were composed (including the Sturlung Age of the thirteenth century, dominated by conflicts between chieftains and complex relations with Norway). It then examines the literary and oral traditions that nurtured the production of sagas of Icelanders, and considers some salient aspects of the preservation of the saga texts: their anonymity, the existence of variant versions, saga manuscript contexts, the difficulties of dating the sagas, and the interpretative decisions that inform modern published saga editions. The chapter shows that the texts do not have single fixed identities but are constituted through a complex process of oral and literary creation, re-creation, and conservation.

Identity and Alterity

A brief conclusion draws together the preceding chapters by emphasizing how they have presented the sagas of Icelanders as narrative explorations of identity and alterity which reflect, but also helped to construct, medieval Icelandic beliefs about the past and how the present came to be. The narratives illuminate beliefs surrounding the ways humans relate to animals, to their physical environment, and to the supernatural. Some saga characters exemplify ideals to which men and women could aspire. But in also describing characters who fail or deliberately refuse to meet society’s expectations, the sagas also offered opportunities for readers to imagine different possibilities and alternative identities.

Encountering the Sagas

Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter. Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, Icelanders produced as rich, varied, and extensive a vernacular literature as was produced anywhere in medieval Europe. That literature has been central to Icelandic cultural identity. It has also played a prominent role in the formation of national identity in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as well as in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. Medieval Icelandic literature has also inspired many notable writers in English since the eighteenth century. This chapter begins by reading a couple of short episodes from Eiriks saga rauða in which Norse explorers encounter Native Americans as parallels to the encounter between modern readers and the medieval Icelandic sagas. The chapter goes on to consider what an Icelandic saga is and to delineate the different saga genres. It also introduces the language of the sagas, explaining the terms Old Norse and Old Icelandic.

The Sagas in English

Chapter 5 considers the translation history of the sagas of Icelanders into English. The chapter reveals the importance of the Icelandic sagas to literary culture in the English-speaking world over the last two hundred or more years and also shows how consistently the translation of Old Norse-Icelandic literature has been inspired by, and undertaken in accordance with, beliefs about identity. Beginning with Walter Scott’s epitome of Eyrbyggja saga it goes on to consider the Victorian translations of William Morris, Sabine Baring-Gould, and George Webbe Dasent; the translation of Egils saga by the early fantasy novelist E. R. Eddison; the translations of Gwyn Jones; the widely read Penguin Classics translations by Hermann Pálsson and his collaborators; and the complete translation of all sagas of Icelanders published by Leifur Eiríksson Publishing in 1997.