Table Of ContentNarrative in the Icelandic
Family Saga
ii
Narrative in the Icelandic
Family Saga
Meanings of Time in Old Norse Literature
Heather O’Donoghue
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First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Heather O’Donoghue, 2021
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Cover Design: Ben Anslow
Cover image: Kvöldvaka in Icelandic Farm House, H. Aug. G. Schiøtt (1823–1895)
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Names: O’Donoghue, Heather, author.
Title: Narrative in the Icelandic family saga : meanings of time in Old Norse literature / Heather
O’Donoghue.
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Summary: “Representative of a unique literary genre and composed
in the 13th or 14th centuries, the Icelandic Sagas rank among some of the world’s greatest
literature. Here, Heather O’Donoghue examines the singular textual voice of the Sagas while
also exploring their important underlying ideas about the passage time. Bringing fresh and lively
insights to the foundation texts of Old Norse and medieval Icelandic heritage, this book is an
essential discussion the luminous oral tradition of a migratory people and an iconic
canon of Western culture”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039279 (print) |
LCCN 2020039280 (ebook) | ISBN 9781788312875 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350211636 (paperback)
| ISBN 9781786726254 (epub) | ISBN 9781786736314 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Time in literature. | Sagas–History and critcism. | Old Norse literature–History
and criticism. | Narration (Rhetoric)–History–To 1500.
Classification: LCC PT7193.T56 O36 2021 (print) | LCC PT7193.T56 (ebook) | DDC 839/.63–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039279
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039280
ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1287-5
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For my students, past and present
vi
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 The representation of external time 11
2 The management of narrative time: Duration 47
3 The management of narrative time: Order 75
4 The voice of the silent narrator 113
5 Withheld knowledge 153
Conclusion 183
Notes 187
Further reading 214
Index 216
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to everyone who has helped me, directly or indirectly, with this
book: family, friends and colleagues (especially Carolyne Larrington and Siân
Grønlie, who have provided unstinting practical help and unfailing moral
support in the often difficult circumstances of present-day academia), students,
and my husband, Bernard. I owe particular thanks to Matthew Roby, who, with
his technical expertise, wide knowledge of Old Norse literature and apparently
limitless patience, has guided this book from messy script to print. Any
remaining messiness is down to me.
Introduction
Icelandic family sagas – the Íslendingasögur – are a unique literary genre.
Written in Iceland, for the most part in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
they are lengthy prose narratives – sometimes interspersed with carefully
positioned stanzas of poetry – which tell of people and events in Iceland in
the period between its settlement in 870 CE and its Christianization, following
conversion in the year 1000 CE. Although there is very little in the way of
historical or archaeological record with which to compare these sagas, the
indications are that at least some of the people and events within them have a
basis in historical actuality, while others, and probably most of the dialogue, are
invented. Certainly, the society depicted in the family sagas – their setting – is a
plausible recreation of a possible reality. This is largely due to the subject matter
of family sagas. Their focus is squarely on human society. Indeed, even when
they portray supernatural or otherwise unrealistic phenomena, these tend to be
limited to entities of human size and shape – such as witches or ghosts – rather
than the dragons or giants common to other saga genres. Family sagas are very
unlike myths or fairy tales. Instead of invention and fantasy, we are presented
with a real-feeling world of deceptively familiar human characters in everyday
and domestic – though often very dramatic – circumstances. And in part, this
impression of actuality arises from the confident and comprehensive but above
all remarkably consistent portrait of early medieval Icelandic society, as if saga
authors were working with an authentic and detailed picture of their ancestral
society accurately transmitted via oral tradition.
So far, the characteristic literary mode of the family saga might appear very
little different from that of the post-medieval historical novel. And indeed family
sagas – as extended, secular, naturalistic prose narratives – have sometimes
been compared with nineteenth-century European novels. But what sets apart
– definitively – saga and novel is the distinctive narrative mode of the family
saga, and this distinctiveness lies in its authors’ apparent avoidance of almost
