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Mírmanns saga: The First Old Norse-Icelandic Hagiographical Romance?

Mírmanns saga: The First Old Norse-Icelandic Hagiographical Romance?

By Sverrir Tómasson

Romance and Love in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iceland Essays in Honor of Marianne Kalinke, edited by Kirsten Wolf and Johanna Denzin (Cornell University Library, 2008)

Introduction: Medieval Icelandic writers seem at times to have been fully aware that the boundaries of their texts were not fi rmly fi xed within a rigid historical or generic frame, but could and indeed should be varied according to subject matter. The lives of their chosen saints were not recorded strictly according to the saints’ worldly experiences; rather, particularly praiseworthy events were selected and recorded to provide audiences with examples of holy living. A saint’s vita is, of course, classifi ed as a biography, but its inclusion of miracles that occurred during or after the saint’s lifetime also tests the limits of textual boundaries.

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