Sagas originated in the Middle Ages, but continued to be composed in the ensuing centuries. Whereas the dominant language of history-writing in medieval Europe was Latin, sagas were composed in the vernacular: Old Norse and its later descendants, primarily Icelandic.
While sagas are written in prose, they share some similarities with epic poetry, and often include stanzas or whole poems in alliterative verse embedded in the text.
Etymology and meaning of saga
The main meanings of the Old Norse word saga (plural sǫgur) are 'what is said, utterance, oral account, notification' and the sense used in this article: '(structured) narrative, story (about somebody)'.[1] It is cognate with the English words say and saw (in the sense 'a saying', as in old saw), and the German Sage; but the modern English term saga was borrowed directly into English from Old Norse by scholars in the eighteenth century to refer to Old Norse prose narratives.[2][3]
The word continues to be used in this sense in the modern Scandinavian languages: Icelandic saga (plural sögur), Faroese søga (plural søgur), Norwegian soge (plural soger), Danish saga (plural sagaer), and Swedish saga (plural sagor). It usually also has wider meanings such as 'history', 'tale', and 'story'. It can also be used of a genre of novels telling stories spanning multiple generations, or to refer to saga-inspired fantasy fiction.[4] Swedish folksaga means folk tale or fairy tale, while konstsaga is the Swedish term for a fairy tale by a known author, such as Hans Christian Andersen. In Swedish historiography, the term sagokung, "saga king", is intended to be ambiguous, as it describes the semi-legendary kings of Sweden, who are known only from unreliable sources.[5]
Kings' sagas (konungasögur) are of the lives of Scandinavian kings. They were composed in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. A pre-eminent example is Heimskringla, probably compiled and composed by Snorri Sturluson. These sagas frequently quote verse, invariably occasional and praise poetry in the form of skaldic verse.
Sagas of Icelanders and short tales of Icelanders
The Icelanders' sagas (Íslendingasögur), sometimes also called "family sagas" in English, are purportedly (and sometimes actually) stories of real events, which usually take place from around the settlement of Iceland in the 870s to the generation or two following the conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 1000. They are noted for frequently exhibiting a realistic style.[6]:101,105–7 It seems that stories from these times were passed on in oral form until they eventually were recorded in writing as Íslendingasögur, whose form was influenced both by these oral stories and by literary models in both Old Norse and other languages.[6]:112–14 The majority — perhaps two thirds of the medieval corpus — seem to have been composed in the thirteenth century, with the remainder in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[6]:102 These sagas usually span multiple generations and often feature everyday people (e.g. Bandamanna saga) and larger-than-life characters (e.g. Egils saga).[6]:107–12 Key works of this genre have been viewed in modern scholarship as the highest-quality saga-writing. While primarily set in Iceland, the sagas follow their characters' adventures abroad, for example in other Nordic countries, the British Isles, northern France and North America.[7][6]:101 Some well-known examples include Njáls saga, Laxdæla saga and Grettis saga.
The material of the short tales of Icelanders (þættir or Íslendingaþættir) is similar to Íslendinga sögur, in shorter form, often preserved as episodes about Icelanders in the kings' sagas.
Like kings' sagas, when sagas of Icelanders quote verse, as they often do, it is almost invariably skaldic verse.
Contemporary sagas (samtíðarsögur or samtímasögur) are set in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland, and were written soon after the events they describe. Most are preserved in the compilation Sturlunga saga, from around 1270–80, though some, such as Arons saga Hjörleifssonar are preserved separately.[8] The verse quoted in contemporary sagas is skaldic verse.
According to historian Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, "Scholars generally agree that the contemporary sagas are rather reliable sources, based on the short time between the events and the recording of the sagas, normally twenty to seventy years... The main argument for this view on the reliability of these sources is that the audience would have noticed if the saga authors were slandering and not faithfully portraying the past."[9]
Legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur) blend remote history, set on the Continent before the settlement of Iceland, with myth or legend. Their aim is usually to offer a lively narrative and entertainment. They often portray Scandinavia's pagan past as a proud and heroic history. Some legendary sagas quote verse — particularly Vǫlsunga saga and Heiðreks saga — and when they do it is invariably Eddaic verse.
Some legendary sagas overlap generically with the next category, chivalric sagas.[10]:191
Chivalric sagas (riddarasögur) are translations of Latin pseudo-historical works and French chansons de geste as well as Icelandic compositions in the same style. Norse translations of Continental romances seem to have begun in the first half of the thirteenth century;[11]:375 Icelandic writers seem to have begun producing their own romances in the late thirteenth century, with production peaking in the fourteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth.[10]
While often translated from verse, sagas in this genre almost never quote verse, and when they do it is often unusual in form: for example, Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns contains the first recorded quotation of a refrain from an Icelandic dance-song,[12] and a metrically irregular riddle in Þjalar-Jóns saga.[13]
Saints' and bishops' sagas
Saints' sagas (heilagra manna sögur) and bishops' sagas (biskupa sögur) are vernacular Icelandic translations and compositions, to a greater or lesser extent influenced by saga-style, in the widespread genres of hagiography and episcopal biographies. The genre seems to have begun in the mid-twelfth century.[14]
Icelandic sagas are based on oral traditions and much research has focused on what is real and what is fiction within each tale. The accuracy of the sagas is often hotly disputed.
Most of the medieval manuscripts which are the earliest surviving witnesses to the sagas were taken to Denmark and Sweden in the seventeenth century, but later returned to Iceland. Classical sagas were composed in the thirteenth century. Scholars once believed that these sagas were transmitted orally from generation to generation until scribes wrote them down in the thirteenth century. However, most scholars now believe the sagas were conscious artistic creations, based on both oral and written tradition. A study focusing on the description of the items of clothing mentioned in the sagas concludes that the authors attempted to create a historic "feel" to the story, by dressing the characters in what was at the time thought to be "old fashioned clothing". However, this clothing is not contemporary with the events of the saga as it is a closer match to the clothing worn in the 12th century.[15] It was only recently (start of 20th century) that the tales of the voyages to North America (modern day Canada) were authenticated.[16]
Most sagas of Icelanders take place in the period 930–1030, which is called söguöld (Age of the Sagas) in Icelandic history. The sagas of kings, bishops, contemporary sagas have their own time frame. Most were written down between 1190 and 1320, sometimes existing as oral traditions long before, others are pure fiction, and for some we do know the sources: the author of King Sverrir's saga had met the king and used him as a source.[17]
While sagas are generally anonymous, a distinctive literary movement in the 14th century involves sagas, mostly on religious topics, with identifiable authors and a distinctive Latinate style. Associated with Iceland's northern diocese of Hólar, this movement is known as the North Icelandic Benedictine School (Norðlenski Benediktskólinn).[18]
The vast majority of texts referred to today as "sagas" were composed in Iceland. One exception is Þiðreks saga, translated/composed in Norway; another is Hjalmars och Hramers saga, a post-medieval forgery composed in Sweden. While the term saga is usually associated with medieval texts, sagas — particularly in the legendary and chivalric saga genres — continued to be composed in Iceland on the pattern of medieval texts into the nineteenth century.[19][10]:193–94
Explanations for saga writing
Icelanders produced a high volume of literature relative to the size of the population. Historians have proposed various theories for the high volume of saga writing.
Early, nationalist historians argued that the ethnic characteristics of the Icelanders were conducive to a literary culture, but these types of explanations have fallen out of favor with academics in modern times.[20] It has also been proposed that the Icelandic settlers were so prolific at writing in order to capture their settler history. Historian Gunnar Karlsson does not find that explanation reasonable though, given that other settler communities have not been as prolific as the early Icelanders were.[20]
Pragmatic explanations were once also favoured: it has been argued that a combination of readily available parchment (due to extensive cattle farming and the necessity of culling before winter) and long winters encouraged Icelanders to take up writing.[20]
More recently, Icelandic saga-production has been seen as motivated more by social and political factors.
The unique nature of the political system of the Icelandic Commonwealth created incentives for aristocrats to produce literature,[21][22] offering a way for chieftains to create and maintain social differentiation between them and the rest of the population.[22][23] Gunnar Karlsson and Jesse Byock argued that the Icelanders wrote the Sagas as a way to establish commonly agreed norms and rules in the decentralized Icelandic Commonwealth by documenting past feuds, while Iceland's peripheral location put it out of reach of the continental kings of Europe and that those kings could therefore not ban subversive forms of literature.[20] Because new principalities lacked internal cohesion, a leader typically produced Sagas "to create or enhance amongst his subjects or followers a feeling of solidarity and common identity by emphasizing their common history and legends".[21] Leaders from old and established principalities did not produce any Sagas, as they were already cohesive political units.[21]
Later (late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century) saga-writing was motivated by the desire of the Icelandic aristocracy to maintain or reconnect links with the Nordic countries by tracing the ancestry of Icelandic aristocrats to well-known kings and heroes to which the contemporary Nordic kings could also trace their origins.[22][23]
Editions and translations
The corpus of Old Norse sagas is gradually being edited in the Íslenzk fornrit series, which covers all the Íslendingasögur and a growing range of other ones. Where available, the Íslenzk fornrit edition is usually the standard one.[6]:117 The standard edition of most of the chivalric sagas composed in Iceland is by Agnete Loth.[24][10]:192
↑ Dictionary of Old Norse Prose/Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (Copenhagen: [Arnamagnæan Commission/Arnamagnæanske kommission], 1983–), s.v. '1 saga sb. f.'Archived 18 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine .
↑ J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series was translated into Swedish by Åke Ohlmarks with the title Sagan om ringen: "The Saga of the Ring". (The 2004 translation was titled Ringarnas herre, a literal translation from the original.) Icelandic journalist Þorsteinn Thorarensen (1926–2006) translated the work as Hringadróttins saga meaning "Saga of the Lord of the Rings".
↑ "Untitled Document". www.fotevikensmuseum.se. Archived from the original on 12 September 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Vésteinn Ólason, 'Family Sagas', in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by Rory Mcturk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 101–18.
↑ "heimskringla.no". www.heimskringla.no. Archived from the original on 2 May 2023. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
1 2 3 4 Matthew, Driscoll, 'Late Prose Fiction (Lygisögur)', in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 190–204.
↑ Jürg Glauser, 'Romance (Translated Riddarasögur)', in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 190–204.
↑ Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, 'How Icelandic Legends Reflect the Prohibition on Dancing', ARV, 61 (2006), 25–52.
↑ 'Þjalar-Jóns saga', trans. by Philip Lavender, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 46 (2015), 73–113 (p. 88 n. 34).
↑ Margaret Cormack, 'Christian Biography', in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by Rory Mcturk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 27–42.
↑ Matthew James Driscoll, The Unwashed Children of Eve: The Production, Dissemination and Reception of Popular Literature in Post-Reformation Iceland (Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press, 1997).
Clover, Carol J. et al. Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A critical guide (University of Toronto Press, 2005) ISBN978-0802038234
Gade, Kari Ellen (ed.) Poetry from the Kings' Sagas 2 From c. 1035 to c. 1300 (Brepols Publishers. 2009) ISBN978-2-503-51897-8
Gordon, E. V. (ed) An Introduction to Old Norse (Oxford University Press; 2nd ed. 1981) ISBN978-0-19-811184-9
Jakobsson, Armann; Fredrik Heinemann (trans) A Sense of Belonging: Morkinskinna and Icelandic Identity, c. 1220 (Syddansk Universitetsforlag. 2014) ISBN978-8776748456
Jakobsson, Ármann Icelandic sagas (The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages 2nd Ed. Robert E. Bjork. 2010) ISBN9780199574834
"Edda" is an Old Norse term that has been applied by modern scholars to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: what is now known as the Prose Edda and an older collection of poems now known as the Poetic Edda. The term historically referred only to the Prose Edda, but this usage has fallen out of favour because of confusion with the other work. Both works were recorded in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching back into the Viking Age. The books provide the main sources for medieval skaldic tradition in Iceland and for Norse mythology.
Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland. While authorship of Heimskringla is nowhere attributed, some scholars assume it is written by the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1178/79–1241) c. 1230. The title Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts.
The sagas of Icelanders, also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries, during the so-called Saga Age. They were written in Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse. They are the best-known specimens of Icelandic literature.
The Poetic Edda is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related Prose Edda, although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse poetry. Several versions of the Poetic Edda exist: especially notable is the medieval Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius, which contains 31 poems.
A skald, or skáld is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally composed to honor kings, but were sometimes extempore. They include both extended works and single verses (lausavísur). They are characteristically more ornate in form and diction than eddic poems, employing many kennings, which require some knowledge of Norse mythology, and heiti, which are formal nouns used in place of more prosaic synonyms. Dróttkvætt metre is a type of skaldic verse form that most often use internal rhyme and alliteration.
A legendary saga or fornaldarsaga is a Norse saga that, unlike the Icelanders' sagas, takes place before the settlement of Iceland. There are some exceptions, such as Yngvars saga víðförla, which takes place in the 11th century. The sagas were probably all written in Iceland, from about the middle of the 13th century to about 1400, although it is possible that some may be of a later date, such as Hrólfs saga kraka.
The Jómsvíkinga saga is a medieval Icelandic saga composed by an anonymous author. The saga was composed in Iceland during the 13th century. It exists in several manuscripts which vary from each other. There are many different versions and translations of the saga.
Knýtlinga saga is an Icelandic kings' saga written in the 1250s, which deals with the kings who ruled Denmark from the early 10th century to the time when the book was written.
Kings' sagas are Old Norse sagas which principally tell of the lives of semi-legendary and legendary Nordic kings, also known as saga kings. They were composed during the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, primarily in Iceland, but with some written in Norway.
Old Norse literature refers to the vernacular literature of the Scandinavian peoples up to c. 1350. It chiefly consists of Icelandic writings.
Icelandic literature refers to literature written in Iceland or by Icelandic people. It is best known for the sagas written in medieval times, starting in the 13th century. As Icelandic and Old Norse are almost the same, and because Icelandic works constitute most of Old Norse literature, Old Norse literature is often wrongly considered a subset of Icelandic literature. However, works by Norwegians are present in the standard reader Sýnisbók íslenzkra bókmennta til miðrar átjándu aldar, compiled by Sigurður Nordal on the grounds that the language was the same.
Íslendingadrápa is a skaldic poem composed in Iceland in the 12th or 13th century. It is preserved only in AM 748 Ib 4to, one of the manuscripts of the Prose Edda. The manuscript identifies the author as one Haukr Valdísarson, a man otherwise unknown. The poem consists of 26 dróttkvætt stanzas and the first two lines of the 27th. At that point, the preserved part of the manuscript terminates and the end of the poem is lost.
Scandinavian literature or Nordic literature is the literature in the languages of the Nordic countries of Northern Europe. The Nordic countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Scandinavia's associated autonomous territories. The majority of these nations and regions use North Germanic languages. Although the majority of Finns speak a Uralic language, Finnish history and literature are clearly interrelated with those of both Sweden and Norway who have shared control of various areas and who have substantial Sami populations/influences.
A prosimetrum is a poetic composition which exploits a combination of prose (prosa) and verse (metrum); in particular, it is a text composed in alternating segments of prose and verse. It is widely found in Western and Eastern literature. While narrative prosimetrum may encompass at one extreme a prose story with occasional verse interspersed, and at the other, verse with occasional prose explanations, in true prosimetrum the two forms are represented in more equal measure. A distinction is sometimes drawn between texts in which verse is the dominant form and those in which prose dominates; there the terms prosimetrum and versiprose are applied respectively.
The riddarasögur are Norse prose sagas of the romance genre. Starting in the thirteenth century with Norse translations of French chansons de geste and Latin romances and histories, the genre expanded in Iceland to indigenous creations in a similar style.
Ölkofra þáttr, the "Tale of Ölkofri" or the "Tale of Ale-Hood", is a þáttr, a minor Old Norse prose genre related to the sagas of Icelanders. Preserved in the 14th-century manuscript known as Möðruvallabók and other post-Reformation copies, the tale is a satire on the judicial system of the medieval Icelandic Commonwealth. It tells the story of an ale-brewer, named Þórhallr but known as Ölkofri or "Ale-Hood" for the hood that he habitually wears. Ölkofri accidentally sets fire to some valuable woodland belonging to six powerful Icelandic chieftains. These chieftains consequently file suit against him at the Althing in an effort to get him outlawed, but thanks to the efforts of men who unexpectedly come to his aid, Ölkofri manages to escape this fate.
The bishops' saga is a genre of medieval Icelandic sagas, mostly thirteenth- and earlier fourteenth-century prose histories dealing with bishops of Iceland's two medieval dioceses of Skálholt and Hólar.
Riddles are widely attested in post-medieval Scandinavian languages.
Merlínússpá is an Old Norse-Icelandic verse translation of Prophetiae Merlini in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae. It is notable for being the only translation of a foreign prose text into poetry in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and for being the earliest Arthurian text to have been translated in medieval Scandinavia. Merlínússpá is preserved in two consecutive parts preserved in the Hauksbók version of Breta sögur. In both Hauksbók and the version of Breta sögur preserved in the manuscript AM 573 4to, the poems are attributed to Gunnlaugr Leifsson. The poem is omitted in AM 573 4to, with the scribe noting that "many people know that poem". Gunnlaugr Leifsson wrote Merlínússpá around 1200. It is a close translation of the Prophetiae Merlini but also includes material from the Historia regum Britanniae.
Breta sögur is an Old Norse-Icelandic rendering of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae with some additional material from other sources. Breta sögur begins with a summary of the story of Aeneas and Turnus, derived from the Aeneid. Along with Rómverja saga, Veraldar saga and Trójumanna saga, it represents the earliest phase of translation of secular works into Old Norse-Icelandic.
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