The Partisan Muse in the Early Icelandic Sagas (1200-1250)

240 Pages·2012·0.9 MB·English

by  Theodore M. Andersson

Islandica
A Series in Icelandic and Norse Studies
Cornell University Library
patrick j. stevens, managing editor
volume lv
Ee
The Partisan Muse in the Early Icelandic Sagas
(1200-1250)
THEODORE M. ANDERSSON

The Partisan Muse in the
Early Icelandic Sagas
(1200-1250)
E e
Theodore M. Andersson
islandica lv
cornell university library
ithaca, new york
2012
Copyright © 2012 by Cornell University Library
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published 2012 by Cornell University Library
Printed in the United States of America
Design and composition: Jack Donner, BookType
A complete version of this book is available through open access
at http://cip.cornell.edu/Islandica
ISBN: 978–0–935995–14–5
Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
chapter 1: The Oral Prelude to Saga Writing 1
chapter 2: The Prehistory of the Kings’ Sagas 35
chapter 3: The First Written Sagas of Kings and Chieftains 45
chapter 4: Sources and Attitudes in Óláfs saga helga 83
in Heimskringla
chapter 5: Political Subtexts in Morkinskinna, 119
Heimskringla III, and Egils saga
chapter 6: Domestic Politics in Northern Iceland 143
chapter 7: Warrior Poets in the Northwest 171
Epilogue 189
Notes 197
Sources for the Present Volume 213
Bibliography 215

Preface
The present volume assembles several papers from the last ten to fi fteen
years in slightly corrected and updated form and combined in such a way as
to argue a general thesis. Chapters 1–5 substantially reproduce previously
published papers (listed before the Bibliography); chapters 6–7 are new,
though based on earlier work. To some extent the last fi ve chapters make
an attempt to work out the chronology of the early sagas. A number of
these have traditionally been dated in the middle or toward the end of the
thirteenth century, but I argue that some are appreciably earlier. Part of
the project is therefore to establish what the repertory of early sagas is
likely to have been. The larger project is an experiment in literary history
at the time when the fi rst sagas came into being. Readers will inevitably
fi nd the detailed exposition of the texts under study somewhat trying, but
it is necessary for the purpose of establishing the textual interplay and the
historical framework.
The general argument is that these sagas, without being explicitly
ideological, nonetheless interact with one another on political and literary
matters. Relations between Iceland and Norway were particularly troubled
in the period 1215–1220, and this seems to have been the time frame in
which saga writing fi rst blossomed, with the appearance of the most distin-
guished kings’ sagas and the fi rst notable sagas about Saga Age Iceland. It
seems inevitable that the political tensions must have carried over into the
nascent writing of the period; the Icelanders were surely concerned with
the status of their own polity and its connections abroad, most especially
its relationship to the mother country.
After some introductory consideration of the antecedent oral traditions,
the Icelandic perceptions of self and others become the subject of chapters
3–5. They outline how a prefatory cultivation of royal panegyric yielded
viii Preface
to a more searching and critical account of the Norwegian kings. In due
course this critical posture affected the composition of native sagas, in
which international antipathies are replaced by regional rivalries within
Iceland. Chapter 6 explores a few relevant cases in the area of Eyjafjörður.
But the literature was not long constrained by local antagonisms, and
chapter 7 illustrates how saga writing soon freed itself from political
concerns and embraced more personal and social issues. Taken together, the
chapters try to illuminate how the earliest sagas evolved into the narratives
that modern readers still fi nd so remarkable.
My fi rst acknowledgment goes to the Centre for Medieval Studies at the
University of Bergen in Norway for three most agreeable spring seasons
in 2006, 2007, and 2008. I am much beholden to Sverre Bagge and Else
Mundal for their very warm welcome at the Centre and to all the colleagues
in residence for much stimulation. They kept my interest in Norse-Icelandic
matters alive for a decade after I retired from Indiana University. I am also
greatly indebted to the staff of the Stanford University Library, especially
to Mary-Louise Munill for her instantaneous provision of interlibrary
loan books and to Eric Heath and his colleagues, who suffered and solved
the most arcane questions. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to
Patrick J. Stevens and the staff of the Division of Rare and Manuscript
Collections, Cornell University Library, for a month of generous hospitality
and a cornucopia of Icelandic journals and books from the riches of the
Fiske Collection.
T.M.A.
Menlo Park, CA
December, 2011