Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland
By Chris Callow
Early Medieval Europe, Vol. 14:3 (2006)
Abstract: Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid-thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.
The dating and contextualizing of medieval texts is an activity which has had a long and important history. For generations of scholars, whether literary critics or historians, knowing when and where a text was produced was of fundamental importance for understanding what that text could tell us, either about literary culture and development, or about social change. For saga scholarship, particularly for scholars of Sagas of Icelanders (íslendingasögur), the locating of texts’ origins was perhaps of even more significance. While the development of Icelandic society was once thought to be traceable through the analysis of these texts, saga scholars increasingly saw them only as literary fictions. The scepticism about sagas’ historical value seems only to have intensified the debate as to how and when sagas came to be composed. The mid-twentieth-century editors of the Íslenzk Fornrit series of standard editions of saga texts provided a detailed account of these debates. In many cases the discussion about particular sagas’ origins has moved on very little.
Click here to read this article from Academia.edu
Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland
By Chris Callow
Early Medieval Europe, Vol. 14:3 (2006)
Abstract: Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid-thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.
Click here to read this article from Academia.edu
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