Sagas of Icelanders

Neste trabalho, tratarei de analisar a única obra de Ari
Þorgilsson que chegou à nossa contemporaneidade, o
Íslendingabók. Antes de mergulhar nesse, no entanto, trato de
explicar do que se tratam as aproximadamente dez páginas que
compõem um dos mais antigos escritos, compostos em Islandês
Medieval.

This paper explores the vargr-an Old Norse term connoting both "wolf" and "outlaw"-as a symbol of social exclusion and psychological projection. In early Scandinavian law, the vargr marked those expelled from society through outlawry, a formal ritual that maintained social cohesion. Drawing from Jungian depth psychology, the vargr can be seen as a scapegoat for the community's shadow-the rejected parts of the self, including rage, shame, and transgression. This mirrors René Girard's theory of scapegoating, where societies manage inner tension by casting blame onto an external figure. The wolf's wild and dangerous image reinforced its role as a symbolic container for threat. Norse sagas and Thing-site archaeology support the vargr's cultural and legal significance. In contemporary psychological terms, the vargr archetype illuminates how modern individuals manage exclusion and disowned identity. Understanding this figure highlights enduring patterns of exile, repression, and healing within both ancient and modern contexts.

Vikings commonly feature in the Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders). The words víking (the act of raiding) or víkingr (a raider) appear over 180 times across the forty-some texts of the corpus. Here, they are a ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape of the late ninth-to mid-twelfth-century North Atlantic. The Íslendingasögur are not contemporary sources such as those from England and Francia that report experiences of viking raids. The sagas do, however, represent stories of the societies from which the vikings came. Here there are nuances to the depictions of the raiders that contrast with the accounts of their victims. This article examines the intersection of viking activity and the Icelandic conversion in the year 1000 (kristnitaka) in the Íslendingasögur. It posits that while, in the saga worldview, víking could be lauded prior to kristnitaka, with the coming of Christianity, Icelandic heroes could no longer easily pursue víking without censure.

In recent years some scholars, inspired by speech act theory or performance theory, have analysed Old Norse texts as performative acts in which the words are used not only to convey meaning but to achieve specific results with people in a social context. One may, for example, analyse a court scene in a saga as an exemplary piece of judicial action, an exchange of insults as a method of provoking violence, a skaldic drápa as an act of rhetorical celebration, or a galdr as a magic ritual aimed at destroying one's enemy. Such studies may become even more interesting, however, if they are combined with some consideration of how the Old Norse texts were originally performed in front of an audience. Were they, for example, recited, chanted, or sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument? Were they dramatically enacted by one or more actors? Who were the performers, and how did these performers relate to their audience? In my book Den dubbla scenen: Muntlig diktning från Eddan till ABBA (1978), I tried to answer such questions, and other scholars have since that time provided interesting new answers. A new and partly updated edition of Den dubbla scenen came out in 2008, but there are still many unsolved problems that deserve to be further discussed with regard to the oral performance of Eddic poems, skaldic poems, and sagas during the early Middle Ages. My lecture will discuss some saga passages in which the performance of the saga characters is likely to have merged with the performance of the actual saga as it was told or read aloud to its audience, thus creating what I refer to as a "double scene", in which the narrative and its narration become almost indistinguishable.

El artículo analiza cómo la peste bubónica influyó profundamente en el teatro isabelino, particularmente en la obra de Shakespeare. Durante los frecuentes cierres de teatros por epidemias, la melancolía y la obsesión por la muerte, la locura y la corrupción moral se convirtieron en temas centrales. La enfermedad impregnó no sólo la vida cotidiana, sino también el lenguaje dramático, reflejando un mundo en descomposición

desde agosto de 1999 hasta diciembre de 2005. En dicha entidad dirigió la Comisión de Reglamentos y el Área de Ciencias Sociales, hizo cinco publicaciones y, al finalizar la gestión, fue nombrado director de cierre para el lapso de diciembre de 2005 a febrero de 2006. El Dr. Lozada se desempeñó también como director interino del IEB, durante tres meses, la primera vez, de agosto a noviembre de 1996, la segunda vez, a partir de agosto de 2010 y; la tercera, de inicios de mayo a fines de julio de 2017. Además, participó en el programa de movilidad docente auspiciado por el IEB, denominado Duke en los Andes, impartiendo clases de pregrado en 1999,

desde agosto de 1999 hasta diciembre de 2005. En dicha entidad dirigió la Comisión de Reglamentos y el Área de Ciencias Sociales, hizo cinco publicaciones y, al finalizar la gestión, fue nombrado director de cierre para el lapso de diciembre de 2005 a febrero de 2006. El Dr. Lozada se desempeñó también como director interino del IEB, durante tres meses, la primera vez, de agosto a noviembre de 1996, la segunda vez, a partir de agosto de 2010 y; la tercera, de inicios de mayo a fines de julio de 2017. Además, participó en el programa de movilidad docente auspiciado por el IEB, denominado Duke en los Andes, impartiendo clases de pregrado en 1999,

desde agosto de 1999 hasta diciembre de 2005. En dicha entidad dirigió la Comisión de Reglamentos y el Área de Ciencias Sociales, hizo cinco publicaciones y, al finalizar la gestión, fue nombrado director de cierre para el lapso de diciembre de 2005 a febrero de 2006. El Dr. Lozada se desempeñó también como director interino del IEB, durante tres meses, la primera vez, de agosto a noviembre de 1996, la segunda vez, a partir de agosto de 2010 y; la tercera, de inicios de mayo a fines de julio de 2017. Además, participó en el programa de movilidad docente auspiciado por el IEB, denominado Duke en los Andes, impartiendo clases de pregrado en 1999,

This article deals with the management of narrative expectations in the Íslendingasögur. Through an analysis of how objects with suprahuman capacities are presented, it argues that these play an influential role in how saga audiences are able to decode such narratives. In the Íslendingasögur, such objects and their possible effects on the narrated worlds are often either undermined or have their agency expressed through resistance against a protagonist’s intentions. While Kormákr Ǫgmundarson disregards the magical properties of the sword Sköfnungr to improve his situation, Vatnsdæla saga’s Ingimundr inn gamli tries his best to evade the agency of his talisman which leads him to Iceland. Equally, in Gísla saga’s M-version, the supposedly doom-laden role of the sword Grásíða is cast as doubtful and hardly necessary for the narrative to develop the way it does. Through this analysis, I argue that the narrative handling of such objects is used to pluralize interpretive options and problematize readings focussed on the notion of ›fate‹. Instead of presenting finalized plot motivations, the Íslendingasögur exhibit a strategy of introducing competing explanations for why certain events happen. This invites both intradiegetical characters and audiences to reflect on their understandings of ›fate‹.

Despite its fame as the pre-eminent medieval Icelandic saga, Njáls saga lacks a stemma comprehending all the saga’s manuscripts. As part of the Variance of Njáls saga (Breytileki Njáls sögu) project, we produced a stemma of all witnesses to chapter 86 (forty-eight out of the total sixty or so surviving manuscripts and fragments). Besides providing an independent confirmation of the findings of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson regarding the medieval manuscripts (1953), this affords the first systematic insight into the post-medieval manuscript transmission of the saga. Our methods develop past experiments in using software created for parsimonious phylogenetic analysis to assist stemmatology. A further methodological advance is that this paper takes a first step towards learning how to crowd-source stemmatic data: the authors of the article were participants in the Tenth International Arnamagnæan Summer School in Manuscript Studies, and undertook the core research for this paper as part of the...

The literary legacy of the Oxford Dominican and theologian Nicholas Trevet (c. 1258-after 1334) is remarkable for its diversity and breadth. His writings include university quaestiones, Biblical commentaries, chronicles, and expositions on the Church Fathers and classical authors. They address topics spanning the liberal arts, theology, and canon law. The three speakers in this session seek to examine the nature and extent of Trevet’s interdisciplinary knowledge. Jakub Kujawiński provides a contextualized overview of Trevet’s literary corpus and stresses the uneven interest of existing scholarship on his body of works. He argues for a comprehensive approach by calling attention to recurrent topics across Trevet’s works. With respect to the trivium, Sofia Brusa revisits Beryl Smalley’s categorization of Trevet as a forerunner of classicizing friars by investigating ‘humanistic’ elements in his commentary on Seneca’s Tragedies. Although commenting on this work was a novelty, the result remained indebted to scholastic tradition. Jason Stoessel asks what Trevet’s writings reveal about his knowledge of music, musical discourse and the quadrivium more broadly. An analysis of the friar’s discourses about music scattered across his writings shows that his conservative views on speculative music theory were paired with a vivid interest in contemporary musical practices.

he reception of the Old Icelandic literature in the Icelandic poetry of the 1990–2020s is found mainly in its content. Contemporary Icelandic poets use mostly the well-known sagas of Icelanders or mythological songs of the Elder Edda. Events, characters and aphorisms of the Old Icelandic texts become objects of reception. There may be several approaches to that material: 1) “pulling” the ancient text closer to the present day by means of its psychologisation; 2) reconsidering it as a precedential text for some universal situations; 3) ironical attitude to the old text and parodising it (actually, not so much the text itself, as its’ high status in the modern culture); 4) using the Old Icelandic text as a starting point for the poet’s personal associations. All of these approaches can be observed during the whole period examined, but in length of time the ironical approach is being reduced, and the psycologising and the universalising ones become more wide-spread; it is partly related to the fact that the young generations of poets enter the literature. This article is part of a larger study of reception of the Old Icelandic literature and culture in the Icelandic literature of the 1990s — 2020s.

This article investigates Eiríks saga rauða and Grœnlendinga
saga, together known as the Vínland sagas, as literary artefacts
shaped by the ideological and cultural context of thirteenth-
century Iceland. While archaeological discoveries, such as the
settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, lend support to the historical
plausibility of Norse exploration in North America around the year
1000, the sagas’ transmission, narrative structure, and ideological
orientation suggest a more complex negotiation between memory
and fiction. The study explores how Christian morality, social
memory, and narrative tropes are embedded in the depiction of
landscapes, characters, and events. The main conclusion is that the
sagas reflect a deliberate authorial effort to inscribe the colonial
memory of Vínland within the evolving Icelandic identity in the
thirteenth century.

Римы - один из жанров исландской средневековой поэзии постъязыческой эпохи, пришедший на смену скальдическому стиху и частично продолжавший использовать некоторые его приёмы. Цикл рим «Трюмлур» ( Þrymlur), датируемый обычно XV веком, основан на эддической «Песни о Трюме» (Þrymskviða), где рассказывается история похищения Молота Тора, Мьёльнира, и его возвращения хозяином.

This article introduces a landscape-oriented material narratological approach to the reconstructed medieval Icelandic codex Melabók (1390-1425). The text order within the codex zooms clockwise from a broader notion of space into actual places, thus constructing an image of a coherent geographical area. The ocean-centered perspective of exploration during the settlement and the accumulated knowledge about Icelandic Ocean currents have produced a stylized way of storytelling that repeats the act of place-making, thereby carrying the early Icelandic being-in-the-world into medieval manuscript production. My literary-anthropological reading of the compilation demonstrates how Viking Age landscape knowledge can be identified in medieval manuscripts and what we might gain from it. Understanding Melabók as a meaningful compilation rather than a loose collection gives an insight into a specific sense of space and place.

A razão que me trouxe inicialmente à Reykjavík para estudar islandês na Universidade da Islândia em 2002 era traduzir obras da literatura islandesa medieval para o português, pois, naquela época, praticamente nada daquele legado literário havia sido vertido ao nosso vernáculo. Durante e após os estudos de islandês e de tradução, traduzi, de fato, alguns causos e sagas de islandeses como preparação para traduzir, futuramente, as sagas islandesas completas. Entre 2002 e 2020, alguns tradutores brasileiros e portugueses, com destaque para Théo de Borba Moosburger, doutor em estudos de tradução pela UFSC, e o escritor e tradutor português João Reis, passaram a dedicar atenção à literatura islandesa medieval, tendo algumas obras esparsas sido traduzidas do islandês antigo ao português.  Mais ou menos quando me formei aqui na Islândia, em 2007, traduzi a minha primeira obra literária islandesa contemporânea. Trata-se da novela "Skugga-Baldur" (no Brasil: "A raposa sombria") do poeta e prosador Sjón. Li esse livro pela primeira vez, de uma sentada só, durante um feriado de natal e reveillón em 2005. O estilo poético na novela de Sjón me deixou como que possuído, e mesmo antes de 2006 começar, eu já havia concluído uma boa parte da tradução de A raposa sombria.

Resumen: Esta investigación analiza algunas razones del advenimiento de movimientos ecofascistas y etnonacionalistas en una esfera pública cada vez más convulsa, así como las consecuencias sobre las alteridades fronterizas que pueden emerger de dicho desarrollo. Para ahondar en ello, luego de una somera descripción de las narrativas ecofascistas, se examinarán algunos elementos de su fundamentación teórica en la metaforización de G. Hardin sobre el bote salvavidas, y el peso de dicha emocionalidad en el despliegue de elementos ecologistas en la discursividad política de dichos grupos. Finalmente, se considerará la utilidad de corrientes que analizan los afectos, para comprender a cabalidad el surgimiento de este tipo de discursos que apelan a narrativas autoritarias y xenofóbicas sobre las alteridades fronterizas, y que si no se auscultan más a fondo pueden cerrar la puerta a discusiones de vital urgencia.

На основе анализа содержания британских путевых очерков периода с 1860 по 1875 гг. предпринимается попытка выявить особенности конструирования образа исландцев. Выявляются интертекстуальные конструкты образов Исландии и исландцев в западноевропейских нарративах XI-XVIII вв. Демонстрируются репрезентационные конструкции, использовавшиеся британцами при характеристике исландцев. Предпринимается попытка оценить влияние делового и романтического дискурсов на формирование образа островитян. На основе анализа механизма формирования нарратива об Исландии делается вывод о причинах неоднородности образа исландцев.

Les hommes ont toujours lutté les uns contre les autres. Quelles que soient les causes invoquées, les motifs sont les mêmes : s'approprier ce qui appartient à l'autre, voire l'autre lui-même. Comment transformer cette furieuse envie de détruire et d'absorber l'autre en respect et reconnaissance ? Comment établir d'autres modes de relation que la force ? Deux hommes ont vécu et pratiqué l'art de la guerre dans une Europe déchirée qui se pensait alors à l'échelle du monde ; dans le même temps, tous deux étaient des hommes de culture passionnés d'histoire. Au sortir de la Grande guerre, ils entreprirent de mettre en place les outils d'un nouveau type de relations internationales et de les appliquer au monde, tel que l'avaient redessiné les vainqueurs. La connaissance et le respect de la culture de l'autre devaient fonder un nouveau style d'échange, destiné à supplanter à terme la violence et la contrainte. C'est du moins dans cette épure qu'Henri Seyrig et le général de Gaulle inscrivirent les grandes lignes qui devaient permettre d'assurer le passage de la connaissance entre tous les partenaires du nouvel ordre international. La France développa ainsi un système original, associant recherche scientifique et diplomatie, qu'elle met toujours en pratique sur les cinq continents. Au terme de bientôt 80 ans de pratique, le moment est sans doute venu de dresser un bilan, si provisoire et fragile soit-il.

There are several manuscripts of Landnámabók, the oldest being Sturlubók by Sturla Þórðarson who probably composed it in later part of his life (died 1284) (Jónas Kristjánsson 2007, p. 125). The other manuscripts are younger but the Hauksbók (after 1300) manuscript, for example, used among its sources Styrmisbók which was probably composed before 1245 (the date of the death of Styrmir), and now is lost. For more information of manuscripts of Landnámabók, see Jónas , pp. 124-127. 131 Vésteinn Ólason 2005, p. 107. 132 See Chapter 5.0-5.3. 133 This dating is based on the information of his travels during which he composed Háttatal, the poem on King Hákon and Earl Skúli (Jónas Kristjánsson 2007, p. 175). 134 McKinnell 2005, p. 13. 135 Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, pp. 6-7. 136 The long debate among scholars was concluded by Gísli Sigurðsson: see Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, p. 7.

This book presents an innovative approach to Sturlunga saga and related texts depicting the history of Iceland in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Through the lens of cultural memory studies, the sagas and their structural patterns are analyzed as imprints of mental structures that determined what was memorable from the recent past and how it was shaped into stories from which a society facing change could derive a sense of continuity.

Among numerous medieval runic inscriptions on wooden sticks, plates, and the like (сa. 1400) a small group of 11 texts
can be distinguished. These texts are financial documents recording collection of state taxes, supply of natural products,
payments of debts to moneylenders, financing trade enterprises. The dating of the oldest inscriptions to the late 12th cen-
tury, diversity of their content, verification signatures witness a widely spread practice of using runic sticks in Norwegian
record management from its emergence and its coexistence with parchment recordings,

Based on the assumption that the longstanding discussion about history/fiction has exhausted itself, this article suggests an alternative approach to the sagas of Icelanders. It approaches the sagas from a memory perspective and illustrates how two concepts of memory: cultural memory and artificial memory, provide us with useful methodological tools for opening new dimensions of saga narratives.       

In this article I re-examine the information that we have about the Old Norse and Germanic god Týr. The latest research concludes that, even if the name Týr indicates that he had a connection with the sun and the firmament, this must reflect a period much earlier than our sources. I go against this view and argue that the connection was there in Scandinavia until the Late Iron Age, at least in Denmark. Týr has a clear connection with the sun through the myth where he secures the gods’ binding of the Fenrir wolf, because this motif is linked to the myth about the wolves that chase the sun across the sky. Týr prevents the wolf from swallowing the sun before Ragnarǫk. I take a closer look at this myth in the Old Norse texts and the atmospheric phenomenon that we believe it derives from, namely parhelion. I also consider the sun phenomenon at Tysnes in Western Norway, which is the only certain Týr place name in Norway, and I moreover consider the link to Mars that is indicated by the overlapping weekday names týsdagr – Martis dies, the association between Mars and spring equinox, and the names of the constellations Ulfskjǫptr, ‘Wolf’s Jaws’, and Ásar bardagi, ‘the God’s Battle’. I conclude that Týr’s function is to defend the sun and the division of the year. As part of the interpretation, I launch a new suggestion regarding the god Viðarr’s origin and function. I argue that he derives from the idea that the sun reaches safety from the wolves when it sets til varna viðar, ‘into the safety of the forest, viðr’. The discussion provides arguments that lend some strength to Gísli Sigurðsson’s suggestion that we should see the Old Norse gods as directly associated with the firmament.

In the prologue to Íslendingabók, Ari fróði Þorgilsson informs us that he showed an early version of the text to Bishop Þorlákr Runólfsson of Skálholt (r. 1118‒1133) and Bishop Ketill Þorsteinsson of Hólar (r. 1122‒1145). He then updated his text with “því es mér varð síðan kunnara ok nú es gerr sagt á þessi en á þeiri” (that which afterwards became better known to me and is now more fully told in this [version] than in the other).
The reference to the bishops has been used to date the text to 1122‒1133,
although a reference to Goðmundr Þorgeirsson (r. 1123‒1134) in the text’s list of lawspeakers has also been used to date the text to 1134 or later. The differences between the two versions, whether they both circulated, or whether the oldest version existed at all have been the subject of debate. These discussions about Íslendingabók’s dating and composition have primarily focused on the text’s use by subsequent medieval Icelandic scholars.
In this article, I instead consider Ari’s sources of information. What could have “become better known” to him between his first and second versions? Two key clusters of information suggest themselves: a list of obits derived from Fulcher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana and the reference to Goðmundr Þorgeirsson. On this basis, I argue that the surviving version of Íslendingabók could not have been completed before 1125 at the earliest, and that a date of 1134‒1135 is more likely.

Note: this is a digital project consisting of an academic blogpost accompanying an interactive digital map.

During the mid-twelfth century, an Icelander named Nikulás Bergsson went on a pilgrimage that took him over 4,000 miles away from his home in northern Iceland to Jerusalem in the Holy Land. We don’t know much about him, but it is clear that he was a lettered Benedictine monk. Around the year 1153, however, Nikulás left his home to venture out towards the Holy Land. By 1155, perhaps thanks in part to the prestige he gained through such a pilgrimage, he had returned to northern Iceland to become the abbot of the newly formed monastery at Munkathverá, where he remained until his death in either 1159 or 1160. Before departing the mortal world, though, Nikulás recounted his pilgrimage to his fellow monks, who fashioned his account into an itinerary that details Nikulás’ journey across the western medieval world.

Pillards ou envahisseurs ? Des Vikings, essentiellement Norvégiens, pendant environ 300 ans ont régulièrement fréquentés nos côtes atlantiques et leurs îles.
Cependant très peu de vestiges de leurs passages sont actuellement connus,  si ce n’est dans la toponymie et le vocabulaire courant, seuls quelques rares sites de caractères scandinaves ont été découverts et identifiés à ce jour.
Michel Rolland, auteur de nombreuses fouilles subaquatiques et publications, nous propose, au travers de l’étude d’un vestige lapidaire tout à fait exceptionnel, unique en son genre et  richement orné de sculptures très archaïques, le fronton sculpté de l’église Saint Nicolas de Brem en Vendée, de porter un regard différent sur l’occupation viking et finalement sur leur christianisation et leur implantation. Par l’étude de nombreuses publications scientifiques et archéologiques, il met en évidence les marqueurs de l’occupation viking : les ports et fleuves – les mottes castrales – le culte de Saint Nicolas. Il apporte également  un regard neuf sur l’origine du nom de Brem et sur l’origine de la légende du Grand Brenn.
Cet ouvrage constitue  l’une des clés pour appréhender, avec une approche différente des idées reçues, la colonisation d’une partie du territoire des francs par les vikings et l’existence d’un important port scandinave à Brem sur mer, au pied du tombeau dit du « Grand Brenn » et de la motte castrale qui, d’après la légende, renfermerait encore dans ses souterrains son trésor.

Anno 12 4 1. .. Death of Snorri Sturluson at Reykholt. He was a wise man, learned in many subjects, and a great and cunning chieftain. He was the first man in this country to allow estates, namely those at BessastaSir and EyvindarstaSir, to become property of the Crown. He compiled the Edda and many other books of lore, Icelandic stories. He was killed at Reykholt by Earl Gizurr's men.

This article examines the function of St Óláfr Haraldsson (d. 1030) in the genealogies of saints from the Norse world. Studies of Norwegian kingship have shown how Óláfr retained a pivotal role in legitimising claims to power from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. But Óláfr was also used to legitimise later saints. This study considers two such saints: St Hallvarðr Vébjarnarson (d. c. 1043) from eastern Norway and St. Magnús Erlendsson of Orkney (d. 1116/17). The article illustrates the ways in which genealogies of these later saints interacted with and used the legacy of Óláfr helgi, demonstrating the enduring significance of Óláfr in the genealogical narratives of subsequent saints. Hallvarðr’s genealogies are carefully explored through fragmented textual sources including the Latin Acta Sancti Halvardi and the almost completely lost Old Norse Hallvarðs saga. The sources consistently report of a matrilineal relationship between Hallvarðr and Óláfr helgi but are inconsistent about the details. It is contended that the idea of this relationship circulated orally before the genealogies were committed to writing. It is, however, good reason to be critical of the proposed kinship. Both Hallvarðr and Óláfr are mentioned in Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontificum (c. 1075/76) but are not shown to be related. It is likely, therefore, that the claimed relationship emerged only around the 1100s, when King Sigurðr Jórsalafari (r. 1103–30) was involved in the construction of St Hallvarðr’s Church for the bishops of Oslo. The relationship between Óláfr and Hallvarðr could have underpinned this collaboration, consolidating the power and prestige of King Sigurðr in competition with his co-kings Eysteinn and Óláfr. The second part of the article turns to St Magnús Erlendsson. His genealogies from Orkneyinga saga, Magnúss saga skemmri, and Magnúss saga lengri offer new perspectives on the promotion of Magnús’ cult in the centuries after his death. Orkneyinga saga emphasises the Icelanders among Magnús’ matrilineal ancestors whereas his cousin and rival, Hákon, is shown to descend from King Magnús góði (r. 1035–47), notably stopping one generation short of King Óláfr helgi. Magnúss saga skemmri, from the second half of the thirteenth century, is considered to offer little of value outside the narrative of Orkneyinga saga, but it both condenses and expands the genealogy of its source. The text increases the prestige of St Magnús by connecting him by a new branch to the Norwegian royal family although Óláfr helgi is completely omitted from the narrative. This omission highlights the individual merits of Magnús’ achievements and miracles, possibly reflecting competition between the Óláfr and Magnús in late thirteenth-century Iceland. Finally, the genealogies in Magnúss saga lengri are seen to establish Magnús’ status as a saint within a broader Nordic context. It reintroduces Óláfr helgi to Magnús’ genealogy aligning him genealogically with even more saints from the Norse world. In this text, rivalry and local concerns are thus displaced by a harmonised vision of a pan-Nordic community of related saints from Norway, Iceland, and Orkney.

This article reviews the two most recent English-language translations of medieval sagas of Icelandic bishops, both from 2021: Margaret Cormack's The Saga of St. Jón of Hólar, published with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Theodore M. Andersson's Bishops in Early Iceland, published with the Viking Society for Northern Research. Both translations represent valuable new contributions to the field. In addition to a critical overview of these texts, the article overviews the history of English translations of the genre of medieval Icelandic bishops' sagas.

Anne-sofie GräsLund, Kvinnorepresentationen på de sen vikingatida runstenarna med utgångspunkt i Sigurdsristningarna. .. .. .. terry GunneLL, Pantheon? What Pantheon? Concepts of a Family of Gods in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions. .. .. .. .. .. .. tommy KuuseLA, "Den som rider på Freyfaxi ska dö". Freyfaxis död och rituell nedstörtning av hästar för stup .

This book provides an in-depth study of depictions of England in the Saga of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), examining their utility as sources for the history of Viking Age Anglo-Scandinavian cultural contact.

The Íslendingasögur present themselves as histories, but they are difficult historical sources. Their setting is the Saga Age, a period that begins with the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century and ends along with the Viking Age in the late eleventh century – however, the saga texts are disconnected from this setting, having first been written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This book traces the transmission and development of Icelandic cultural memory of Saga Age England across this distance of centuries. It offers case study analyses of how historical time, place, cultures, and events are adapted and conceptualised in the Íslendingasögur and suggests methodological approaches to their study as historical literature.

Remembering England is an interdisciplinary book that will appeal to scholars and students of the history of pre-Norman England, the Icelandic sagas, medieval literature, and cultural memory.

Si, dans nos representations communes, les Scandinaves etaient jadis de feroces et sanguinaires peuplades, nous leur attribuons volontiers aujourd'hui les qualites inverses : peuples pacifiques, soucieux de leurs regimes sociaux, proches de la nature, ils nous apparaissent desormais comme des gens qui portent en eux une " ethique de vie ". Ainsi en va-t-il de l'Islande, pays lointain et magique dont on entend rarement parler. Mais lorsque journalistes et reporters nous en disent un mot, c'est generalement sur un ton elogieux : ile sans conflit ni chomage, ou la hauteur du niveau de vie egale sa qualite, le tout dans un contexte d'une incroyable beaute, ou la nature sauvage domine dans toute sa purete… Or, voila qu'en 1998 un seisme inattendu a tout a coup brise cette feerie nordique, puisque les medias europeens decouvraient horrifies que le gouvernement islandais autorisait une entreprise de recherche bio-medicale a proceder au fichage systematique de ...

The TV series about Draken Harald Hårfagre (DHH [The Dragon Harald Fairhair]), which is currently being broadcast on NRK [the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation], is an interesting documentary. It tells an exciting story about the construction of the ship and the challenges it faced on its long voyage. All the way through, a good deal of solid scholarship is included on ships and sailing in the olden times, on Nordic history, Viking-Age life and culture, genetics, the Norse settlement in Vinland, and more. Even so, NRK should not have aired this series. This is because it constructs a myth about what a Viking ship was, which is going to harass us for generations to come. And also because the series presents DHH as something completely different from what it really is.

In medieval Icelandic society, law was deeply intertwined with everyday life; it was the Icelanders’ greatest obsession. Yet, one could argue that this obsession only bloomed in the face of an opposition: the presence of feud. In Njal’s Saga, this perception of the relationship between law and feud is an evident concern. By looking back into the memory of a man named Njal Thorgeirsson, who was burnt to death in his own home, the author expressed his concerns for his society. A careful examination of the various instances in which feud reaches a legal phase in Njal’s Saga reveals this saga to be far more than a historical account of feuding farmers. Rather, the tale’s careful presentation of the concept of honor in relation to the manipulation of law demonstrates a pattern of social commentary. This study argues that this saga was specifically designed to comment on the ever-powerful desire for personal honor that once cost this land its law and stability.

This paper focuses on the literary functions of various figures, Thorvald the Far-Traveled, Njal Thorgeirsson, and Hoskuld Thrainsson the Godi of Hvitanes. Particular emphasis is placed on the behavior of these figures when in the presence of conflict, primarily in thirteenth-century texts such as Brennu-Njáls saga and Þorvalds þáttur víðförla. Despite representing only a small portion of a vast genre, these works will help to introduce the possibilities of thirteenth-century authorship in formulating new social and cultural ideals, particularly around Christianity. Further studies will need to be made in order to obtain a fuller understanding of such possibilities, but this paper should provide a step towards such a direction.