DOCSLIB.ORG

Review of Bjarne Fidjestøl, Selected Papers

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Review of Bjarne Fidjestøl, Selected Papers 98 Rezensionen belief in one of the dominant cultural para- jarne Fidjestøl. Selected Pa- digms of their day? On the other hand, if any pers, ed. Odd Einar Haugen medieval country was capable of developing and Else Mundal, trans. Peter an alternative view of kingship, it was Ice- Foote. The Viking Collection land, which for several centuries governed B 9. Odense: Odense University Press, itself without a monarch. Resistance to Nor- wegian rule had been important at other 1997. 406 pages. times in Iceland’s history (e.g., when the Ice- landers declined to grant King Olaf Haralds- These seventeen essays by the late and much son’s request for the island of Grímsey and missed Bjarne Fidjestøl are, like his longer a poll tax) and in other genres of its literature studies, characterized by intellectual courage (e.g., the plot of Egils saga revolves around and originality, methodological elegance, the hostility that Egill feels towards the and interpretive sensitivity. Their skillful En- sons of Haraldr hárfagri). The complex glishing by Peter Foote was a labour of love, and changing nature of Icelandic attitudes extending the knowledge and appreciation of towards the Norwegian parent society has the author’s work to readers outside Scan- been the subject of much research in recent dinavia. Fourteen of the articles originally years, and Ármann Jakobsson’s reconstruc- appeared in Norwegian (nynorsk), in jour- tion of the ideas about kings and kingship nals and volumes not easily accessible; two that underlie the individual sagas’ represen- are translated from German, and one, origi- tation of individual rulers is a valuable con- nally published in English, has here been tribution to a discussion that naturally tends rendered into a graceful, idiomatic form of to emphasize difference over similarity. that language. Bjarne Fidjestøl’s prose, supple, personal, understated, and suffused Elizabeth Ashman Rowe with gentle humour, is a treat even in trans- lation. The papers, selected from the large number he published, are arranged in five groups: skaldic studies, saga studies, prose and poetry, literary history, and “in lighter vein.” The first section includes five articles: “The Kenning System: An Attempt at a Lin- guistic Analysis” (16–67); “The King’s Skald from Kvinesdal and his Poetry” (68–92); “Arnórr Þórðarson: Skald of the Orkney Jarls” (93–116); “‘Have You Heard a Poem Worth More?’: A Note on the Economic Background of Early Skaldic Praise-Poetry” (117–32); and “Skaldic Poetry and the Con- version, with Some Reflections on Literary Form As a Source of Historical Information” (133–50). The next group contains: “Algirdas Julien Greimas and Hrafnkell Freysgoði: Semiological Models Applied to an Icelandic Saga” (151–67); “The Legend of Þórir hundr” (168–83); “European and Native Tradition in Óláfs saga helga” (184–200); and “Óláfr Tryggvason the Missionary: A Literary Por- trait from the Middle Ages” (201–27). Four papers make up the third section: “Icelandic Sagas and Poems on Princes: Literature and Society in Archaic West Norse Culture” (228–54); “Skaldic Stanzas in Saga-Prose: alvíssmál 9 (1999): 98–100 Rezensionen 99 Observations on the Relationship between Baltic, the places named lying “like beads on Prose and Verse in Snorri’s Heimskringla” a string” along the shipping lanes of Europe (255–76); “The Tale of Haraldr harðráði and (237). Bjarne Fidjestøl, with deep roots in Þorgils the Fisherman” (277–93); and “‘See the Sognefjord parish where he grew up and What Happens, Compose on It Later’: A in Bergen where he taught for nineteen Footnote to a Piece of Historical Criticism years, was as international in outlook as Found in a Prologue” (294–302). The sole the poetry he studied. He delighted in the essay in the fourth group, “Norse-Icelandic breadth of scholarly interest in Old Norse– Composition in the Oral Period” (303–32), is Icelandic studies outside Scandinavia and an extract from Bjarne Fidjestøl’s contribu- was, of course, an early and enthusiastic tion to a new history of Norwegian literature supporter of Alvíssmál. He would, I think, (1994). The final section contains three be pleased to know that his proposal, first papers: “‘Out They Will Look, the Lovely presented at the Sixth International Saga Ladies’: Views of Women in Norse litera- Conference in Helsingør (1985), for a col- ture” (333–42); “Snorri Sturluson — Euro- laborative reediting of the skaldic corpus, pean Humanist and Rhetorician” (343–50); is at last bearing fruit in an international and “Romantic Reading at the Court of project with plans for completion in 2005. Hákon Hákonarson” (351–65), chosen, the Bjarne Fidjestøl’s highly developed editors explain, because they illuminate sense of the past goes hand-in-hand in these Bjarne Fidjestøl’s ability to convey the mean- essays with an equally strong awareness of ing and relevance of current Old Norse continuities. “The King’s Skald from Kvines- scholarship to a wider audience. Even in his dal,” a paper that first appeared in a volume most “popular” pieces, he never falsifies, or narrowly concerned with local history, de- betrays, his calling as a scholar-writer; there scribes the ancient Swedish king Aun, who is no second-rateness in this gathering. dies of old age in Ynglingatal, stanza 16, as These essays, most of which focus on “so feeble that he had to drink milk from verse in the preliterate period (ca. 870–1100), a prehistoric baby’s bottle, an ox-horn with were written to stand alone; there is the risk, a hole in the sharp end” (85). The fourth pa- when they are bundled into a collection, of per in this collection, on the economics of what William Trevor calls “cancellation” — skaldic composition, mentions the generous one work shadowing the effect of the next rewards given to skalds by princes, the cor- all the way through — or at the very least of relation between a prince’s wealth and the repetition. This does not happen here, owing number of skalds in his stable, and the rela- in part to Bjarne Fidjestøl’s multifarious and tionship between the “finances of the ruling constantly developing interests. Papers in houses of early medieval Scandinavia and this volume discuss the sociology of medieval the prominence poets give to gold in their literature, structural linguistics, skaldic stan- praise of princes” (132). The editors remind zas as historical sources, the output of indi- us that this material was first presented by vidual poets, the conversion of the North to the author in the lecture (on a subject of his Christianity, iconography, native and foreign choice) required of him as a doctoral candi- elements in saga-literature, manuscript trans- date. It is a superb illustration of Bjarne mission of the skaldic corpus, and much else. Fidjestøl’s wit, subtlety, and moral balance: An ever present concern in these essays, the skaldic scholar speaking, on this particu- almost imperceptible because so delicately lar occasion, about the reciprocal obligations handled, is the relationship between Old of skald and patron, and on the financial Norwegian and Old Icelandic, the “peaceful rewards to be gained by skaldic effort. rivalry” (236) between the two nations for Peter Foote appears to this reviewer to ownership of the rich early literature. The have done an almost flawless job of transla- author quietly suggests that Norse praise tion. Even the paper originally published in poetry, which had its opening phase in Nor- English is not so much “lightly revised” (14) way, was itself not restricted by political as skillfully edited and transformed, so that divisions, that its view was largely fixed on the author’s own distinctive voice comes the waters and coasts of the North Sea and through. The editors provide a crisp intro- alvíssmál 9 (1999): 98–100 100 Rezensionen duction that includes summaries of each inar Gunnar Pétursson. Eddurit paper, a bibliography of Bjarne Fidjestøl’s Jóns Guðmundssonar lærða: scholarly publications (which reveals his flu- “Samantektir um skilning á ency in Russian), and another of works cited Eddu” og “Að fornu í þeirri by him in the seventeen essays. In the index E gömlu norrænu kölluðust rúnir bæði of personal names and primary sources, Snorri Sturluson gets the largest number of ristingar og skrifelsi.” Þættir úr fræða- entries; St. Óláfr easily outdistances Óðinn, sögu 17. aldar. Volume 1, Inngangur. who is mentioned only a few more times Volume 2, Texti. Rit 46. Reykjavík: than God. The volume is handsomely print- Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, ed. There are remarkably few typographical 1998. 512 and 116 pages. errors: read því for oví (94). One skaldic phrase, “þvít kannk yrkja” (243), has not The book here under review, a doctoral the- been rendered into English. Equally trivial, sis by Einar Gunnar Pétursson, Sérfræðingur the original Norwegian “i kong Alfreds at Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, engelsk” is probably preferable to “in King presents the first full-length study of the Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon” (131). Under the sec- life and literary activity of the seventeenth- tion heading “troops of skalds” (69), the century Icelandic autodidact Jón Guðmunds- translator renders Old Norse greppa ferðir son, known to his contemporaries and since as “ways of the poets” (70), but later emends as Jón lærði [the learned], in addition to edi- to “clusters of poets” (127). In an effort to tions of two of the works attributed to him: remove the syntactical ambiguity in Bjarne Samantektir, a version of parts of the Prose Fidjestøl’s own English translation (“Mag- Edda with extensive additions and annota- nús, hear my powerful poem; I know none tions, and Ristingar, a commentary on Bryn- better than you”), the translator inadvert- hildarljóð in Volsunga saga. This review is ently creates another ambiguity (“Magnús, a shortened and translated version of the hear my mighty poem; no other know I supe- writer’s andmælaræða, presented at the au- rior,” 110) before correcting to “no other thor’s doctoral defence at the University of man know I superior” (245).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • John Lindow Professor Emeritus Department of Scandinavian University of California Berkeley CA 94720-2690 USA [email protected]
    John Lindow Professor Emeritus Department of Scandinavian University of California Berkeley CA 94720-2690 USA [email protected] Curriculum Vitae Education: Harvard University, A.B. magna cum laude 1968, Ph.D. (Germanic Languages and Literatures), 1972 Research Focus: Old Scandinavian myth and religion Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture Nordic folklore (Scandinavian, Finnish, Sámi, Greenlandic) Elections and Honors: Knights Cross of the Order of the Falcon, Republic of Iceland, 2018 Honorary Doctorate in Folkloristics, University of Iceland, 2018 Annual lecture, Viking Society for Northern Research, 2018 Elected to Society of Fellows, American Folklore Society, 2014 Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, 2013 Archer Taylor lecture, Western States Folklore Society, 2007 UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award, 2006 Richard Beck lecture, University of Victoria, 2004. Fulbright lecturer, University of Iceland, 2000 Sigurður Nordal lecture, Reykjavík, Iceland, 2000 UC Berkeley Humanities Faculty Fellowship, 2000-2001 Triebel lecture, The Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1993 President's Fellowship in the Humanities, University of California, 1989-90 Regents Faculty Fellowship, University of California, 1977-78 Memberships American Folklore Society International Society for Folk Narrative Research Gustav Adolfs Akademi för Folklivsforskning Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study Western States Folklore Society (President 2015-19) Bibliography of Academic Publications 2018 Article “The Challenge of Folklore to Medieval Studies.” In The Challenge of Folklore to the Humanities, ed. Dan Ben-Amos. special issue , Humanities 7 (1), 15; doi:10.3390/h7010015. http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/7/1/15 Article “Nordic Legends of the Churchyard.” In Storied and Supernatural Places: Studies in Spatial and Social Dimensions of Folklore and Sagas, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context.” New Literary History 16(1984-1985): 153-173
    Jesse Byock. “Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context.” New Literary History 16(1984-1985): 153-173. Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context Jesse L. Byock HE Icelandic family sagas (the Íslendingasögur) are anonymous prose stories.1 They are not heroic epics, folktales, chronicles, or romances T but plausible vernacular tales about often real people who lived in Iceland in the period from the settlement in the 980s until about 1030. More than thirty major family sagas are extant; there are also many short stories called Þættir (sing. Þáttr). As a written literary form the sagas suddenly appeared at the end of the twelfth century, and their production ended abruptly in the early decades of the fourteenth century.2 Although no one denies a mixture of oral and literary elements, theories differ widely as to how much the sagas reflect an oral compositional prehistory and how much they reflect the artistry of a literate self-conscious author. The bitter controversy in the first half of the twentieth century over the extent of orality evidenced in the family sagas polarized scholars into "freeprosists" believing in the oral origin of saga narrative and "bookprosists" advocating a written origin.3 The two groups debated the issue of whether the family sagas were factually accurate arid hence memorized and essentially fixed texts or whether they were nonhistorical, late literary fictions. By the mid-1950s the bookprosists, led by the Icelanders Sigurður Nordal and Einar Ól. Sveinsson, had prevailed.4 In their view the sagas, though owing a small and undetermined debt to an oral prehistory, were literary stories created by Icelanders of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.5 In recent decades many saga scholars have bogged down in their attempts, largely frustrated, to prove that the family sagas as sophisticated narratives stemmed from some discernible European narrative model.
    [Show full text]
  • NINE NORSE STUDIES by Gabriel Turville-Petre
    VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH TEXT SERIES General Editors G. Turville-Petre and P. G. Foote VOLUME V NINE NORSE STUDIES By Gabriel Turville-Petre NINE NORSE STUDIES BY GABRIEL TURVILLE-PETRE Vigfusson Reader in and Professor of Ancient Icelandic Literature, History, and Antiquities, in the University of Oxford Honorary Life Member of the Society VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON Made in Great Britain and printed by Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol © 1972 Gabriel Turville-Petre © 1972 Modern Humanities Research Association (Chapter viil, first published in the Modern Language Review and here reproduced by permission of the Editors). PREFACE The nine studies selected for publication in this volume were written over a number of years, although nothing that has ap­ peared since 1962 is included. Various minor amendments have been made, some references updated, and bibliographical and other conventions normalized throughout, doubtless not with perfect consistency. Postscripts have been added to five of the papers, showing that in some cases I have revised my opinions slightly. Two of the articles were first published in Icelandic. 'The Cult of 09inn' has been translated by me, 'Drottkvatt and Irish syllabic measures' by Professor Gearoid Mac Eoin, to whom I am most grateful, as I am also to Professor David Greene for re­ moving errors and suggesting improvements after the paper had been put into English. My thanks are also due to Mr P. Cahill who checked references in papers V, VI, and VII, and to Mr M. P. Barnes who read a proof of the whole book. Mr David Thomas, Honorary Member of the Society, has given unstinting help in designing the book and seeing it through the press.
    [Show full text]
  • ISL 1346878002 215 227 Pdf.Pdf (196.6Kb)
    Bibliography Texts and Translations Adam of Bremen. Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum = Ham- burgische Kirchengeschichte. Ed. Bernhard Schmeidler. 3 rd ed. Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum. Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 19 17 ; reprinted 1977. Agrip af Noregskonungasggum: A Twelfth-Century Synoptic History of the Kings o f Norway. Ed. and trans. M. [Matthew] J. Driscoll. Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 10. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1995; reprinted 2008. The Complete Sagas o f Icelanders Including 49 Tales. Ed. Vidar Hreinsson. 5 vols. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiriksson Publishing, 1997. Fagrskinna. Ed. Finnur Jonsson. SUGNL 30. Copenhagen: S. L. Moller, 1902-1903. Fjorutrn Islendinga-pwttir. Ed. Porleifur Jonsson. Reykjavik: Kostnadarmadur Sigurdur Kristjansson, 1904. Fornaldarsogur nordurlanda. Ed. Gudni Jonsson. 4 vols. [Reykjavik]: Islend- ingasagnautgafan, 1954. Fwreyinga saga. Ed. Olafur Halldorsson. Reykjavik: Stofnun Arna Magnus- sonar, 1987. Hakonar saga Hakonarsonar. Ed. Gudbrand Vigfusson. Rolls Series 88. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1887. Hakonar saga Hakonarsonar etter Sth. 8 fol., AM 325 VIII, 4° og AM 304, 4°. Ed. Marina Mundt. Norrone Tekster 2. Oslo: I kommisjon hos For- lagssentralen, 1977. Hakonar saga Ivarssonar. Ed. Jon Helgason and Jakob Benediktsson. SUGNL 62. Copenhagen: J. Jorgensen, 1952. Islandske annaler indtil 1578. Ed. Gustav Storm. Christiania: Grondahl & Sons Bogtrykkeri, 1888. Konunga sogur. Vol. 1: Olafs saga Tryggvasonar eftir Odd munk; Helgisaga 216 Bibliography Olafs Haraldssonar; Brot ur elztu sogu Olafs helga. Ed. Gudni Jonsson. [Reykjavik]: Islendingasagnautgafan, 1957. Morkinskinna: Pergamentsbog fra f0rste halvdel a f det trettende aarhundrede. Ed. C. R. Unger. Christiania: Bentzens Bogtrykkeri, 1867. Morkinskinna. Ed. Finnur Jonsson. SUGNL 53. Copenhagen: J.
    [Show full text]
  • The Inter...Disciplinary Study of Nordic Subjects, and the Enthusiasm and Erudition of the Contributors to Scots in the Baltic Certainly Seem to Justify This Optimism
    29 the inter...disciplinary study of Nordic subjects, and the enthusiasm and erudition of the contributors to Scots in the Baltic certainly seem to justify this optimism. Fiona Robertson 'The Vikings'. Proceedings of the Symposium of the. Faculty of Arts of Uppsala University, June 6-9,1977, edited by Thorsten Andersson and Karl Inge Sandred. Paperback, 176 pp. This is a well... produced booklet containing the papers read at one of six symposia arranged by the Faculty of Arts of Uppsala University to mark the 500th Anniversay of the University. This particular symposium was an interdisciplinary one devoted to the Vikings. After an introduction by the President of Iceland, Kristjan ' Eldjarn, the papers are divided into three groups. 1. Scalds and Ships. -Viking Seamanship in the Light of Literature and Archaeology. 2. Scandinavian Influence on Language and Place-Names in the British Isles. 3. Viking Society in Scandinavia. Evidence of Settlement and Administration. All the papers, with one exception, are in English. Of particular interest, especially to your reviewer, is the second section, with papers by Kenneth Cameron, Margaret Gelling, Gilliam Fellows Jensen and our own Angus MacIntosh. These cover a wide range of studies, from 'Place-Name Evidence for Scandinavian Settlement in the Danelaw: A Re-assessment', by Dr. Fellows Jensen to 'Norse and Gaelic in Mediaeval Man: the Place-Name Evidence' by Dr. Gelling. In Section 1, well­ known Scandinavian scholars like Professor Peter Foote, Peter Sawyer and-,OI~Crumlin-Pedersenhave contri~uted papers on various aspects of the Scandinavian sea-culture, while Section 3 is devoted to a variety of topics such as 'Some Problems in the 30 History of the Settlement of Iceland' by J'akob Benediktsson of the Icelandic National Dictionary, and 'Trade Problems in the Viking Age' by the redoubtable Curator of the Museum of Anti­ quities at the University of Oslo, Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Full Text (PDF)
    International Journal of Language and Literature June 2020, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-11 ISSN: 2334-234X (Print), 2334-2358 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v8n1a1 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/ijll.v8n1a1 Representation of Emotions in Indigenous Icelandic Riddarasögur Inna Matyushina and Peter John New1 Abstract The article is devoted to analysing the representation of emotions in Old Norse chivalric sagas (riddarasögur). Unlike the characters of French romances, who express their feelings in highly expressive monologues, the heroes of Old Norse riddarasögur, are portrayed as seldom showing their emotions and acting only after careful consideration of the implications of their deeds. In riddarasögur, changes in the representation of expressions of feelings remain within the Old Norse tradition of family sagas and kings’ sagas; it can be accounted for by the influence of indigenous models of behaviour and by the desire to satisfy the expectations of a contemporary Scandinavian audience. The subgenre of indigenous riddarasögur, which appear in Iceland, the so-called meykongr sögur (maiden-king sagas), is characterized by an inversion of gender roles, influencing the expression of emotions. Feelings are verbalised by men, whereas the heroines of maiden-king sagas prefer to act, verbally and physically humiliating their suitors (in Nitida saga the representation of emotions is used to distinguish a real maiden-king from a false one). The way the emotions of the heroines are implied by their actions in maiden-king sagas can be traced back to indigenous Scandinavian literary traditions.
    [Show full text]
  • 1117 in Iceland and England
    1117 IN ICELAND AND ENGLAND BY PETER FOOTE EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London 14 March 2002 PUBLISHED FOR THE COLLEGE BY THE VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH LONDON © UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 2003 ISBN: 0 903521 59 8 PRINTED BY SHORT RUN PRESS LIMITED EXETER 1117 IN ICELAND AND ENGLAND1 MAN IN HIS DOTAGE HAS FEW UNTRIED ORATORICAL DEVICES left to him in attempting to capture the benevolence of Aan audience. Acknowledging defeat in the struggle for novelty, I fall back on an old anecdote. It has the advantage first of unimpeachable authority, for it was recorded by Dean Ramsay of Edinburgh in his Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character, published in 1857; and the advantage second of remarkable aptness to my present circumstances. The Dean tells of a Highland hamlet cut off by snow for weeks on end. Tobacco supplies were exhausted and the minister of the parish, an inveterate snuff-taker, was in desperate straits. He at last sent his beadle through the snow to find what he could; all in vain – he came back empty-handed. The despondent minister made a final appeal. Struck by a sudden thought, the beadle left him, only to return a few minutes later with a well-filled box. The wordless minister took a long, deep pinch. Then asked where he had got it. To which came the reply, “I soupit the poupit” – “I swept the pulpit.” I can say much the same of this paper, a miscellany, I fear, as dry as old snuff, though perhaps the more desperately tolerant among you will find some small savour still in a few grains.
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography Literature in English on Norwegian
    BIBLIOGRAPHY LITERATURE IN ENGLISH ON NORWEGIAN HISTORY CA.800-1800 Edited by Hans Jacob Orning & Therese Tjeldflaat Historisk institutt, Oslo, February 1995 CONTENTS: General Norwegian History before 1800 s.3 The Viking Age (ca. 800-1030) s.9 The Middle Ages (ca. 1030-1536) s.35 The Early Modern Period (ca. 1536-1800) s.61 The bibliography is not complete and will be up-dated on regular intervals. The periodization is not always clear-cut. 3 GENERAL NORWEGIAN HISTORY BEFORE 1800 Anker, Peter og Andersson, Aron The art of Scandinavia I-II. London 1970 Bugge, Alexander A thousand years of Norwegian trade. The American-Scandinavian Review 14, pp.593-99 Buledahl, J. (ed.) Scandinavia past and present B.1: From the Viking age to absolute monarchy B.2: Through revolution to liberty B.3: Five modern democracies Odense 1959 Christensen, Arne Emil Boats of the North. A history of boatbuilding in Norway. Oslo, 1968 Christiansen, Reidar Thoralf Scotsmen and Norsemen. Cultural relations in the North Sea area. Scottish Studies, vol I 1957 Connery, D.S. The Scandinavians. New York 1966 Derry, Thomas Kingston A short history of Norway. 2.ed, London, 1968 Derry, Thomas Kingston A history of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. London, 1977 Flint, J.T. The Secularization of Norwegian Society [Xth to end of the XVIIIth century]. Comp. Studies in Soc. and History VI, 1963-64, pp.325-344 Garmonsway, George Norman Counte and his empire. London, 1964 Gjerset, K. History of the Norwegian People, 2 vols. New York 1969 (orig. 1932) 4 Haugen, E.
    [Show full text]
  • 4 Ecclesiastical Literature and Hagiography Jonas Wellendorf, University of California, Berkeley
    1 4 Ecclesiastical Literature and Hagiography Jonas Wellendorf, University of California, Berkeley Students of Old Norse literature and literary culture have long been aware that hagiographical and ecclesiastical literature has a longer written history in the North than the native saga genres. The earliest preserved Norwegian and Icelandic manuscripts, dating from the late twelfth century, primarily contain hagiographic or homiletic texts and other texts with a Latin background.1 Most of these texts had been edited (some more than once) by 1900, but scholars of this period nevertheless tended to prioritize the native narrative genres and the eddic and skaldic poetry that suited their political, national, and aesthetic sensibilities better than, say, the translated saints’ lives. As the Old Norse canon gradually took shape, the ecclesiastical literature and texts written in Latin were left by the wayside. The most comprehensive history of Old Norse literature ever published, Finnur Jónsson’s Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs historie, is illustrative of this attitude.2 In his preface, Finnur Jónsson states that he aims to write a ‘fairly complete … critical description of the literature of both countries [Iceland and Norway]’.3 ‘Critical’ here should be understood in its most literal sense, and Finnur Jónsson’s harsh and frank opinions about the texts he discusses rarely fail to amaze readers of his literary history. He particularly dislikes texts that have a foreign, non-Norse background or prehistory, such as romances and hagiographies. One example is Barlaams saga ok Josaphats, whose ornate style makes it ‘even less pleasant to work one’s way through this already utterly dull 1 See the present author’s complete survey in Jonas Wellendorf, ‘Lærdomslitteratur.’ Handbok i norrøn filologi, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Previously Published Works
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by eScholarship - University of California UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Previously Published Works Title Ecclesiastical literature and hagiography Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40r7r9nr ISBN 9781472433305 Author Wellendorf, J Publication Date 2017 DOI 10.4324/9781315613628 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California 1 4 Ecclesiastical Literature and Hagiography Jonas Wellendorf, University of California, Berkeley Students of Old Norse literature and literary culture have long been aware that hagiographical and ecclesiastical literature has a longer written history in the North than the native saga genres. The earliest preserved Norwegian and Icelandic manuscripts, dating from the late twelfth century, primarily contain hagiographic or homiletic texts and other texts with a Latin background.1 Most of these texts had been edited (some more than once) by 1900, but scholars of this period nevertheless tended to prioritize the native narrative genres and the eddic and skaldic poetry that suited their political, national, and aesthetic sensibilities better than, say, the translated saints’ lives. As the Old Norse canon gradually took shape, the ecclesiastical literature and texts written in Latin were left by the wayside. The most comprehensive history of Old Norse literature ever published, Finnur Jónsson’s Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs historie, is illustrative of this attitude.2 In his preface, Finnur Jónsson states that he aims to write a ‘fairly complete … critical description of the literature of both countries [Iceland and Norway]’.3 ‘Critical’ here should be understood in its most literal sense, and Finnur Jónsson’s harsh and frank opinions about the texts he discusses rarely fail to amaze readers of his literary history.
    [Show full text]
  • Fiction in the Code: Reading Legislation As Literature Thomas J
    College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans 2018 Fiction in the Code: Reading Legislation as Literature Thomas J. McSweeney William & Mary Law School, [email protected] Repository Citation McSweeney, Thomas J., "Fiction in the Code: Reading Legislation as Literature" (2018). Faculty Publications. 1889. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1889 Copyright c 2018 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs FICTION IN THE CODE: READING LEGISLATION AS LITERATURE Thomas J. McSweeney* ABSTRACT One of the major branches of the field of law and literature is often described as "law as literature." Scholars of law as literature examine the law using the tools of literary analysis. The scholarship in this subfield is dominated by the discussion of narrative texts: confessions, victim-impact statements, and, above all, the judicial opinion. This article will argue that we can use some of the same tools to help us understand non-narrative texts, such as law codes and statutes. Genres create expectations. We do not expect a law code to be literary. Indeed, we tend to dissociate the law code from the kind of imaginative fiction we expect to find in a narrative text. This article will take a historical example, the medieval Icelandic legal manuscript known as Konungsb6k, and examine it for its fictional elements. This article will examine Konungsb6k for the ways in which it creates an imagined world, populated by free, equal householders, a world that was very different from the Iceland in which its creator lived.
    [Show full text]
  • The Medieval Accounts of Olaf Tryggvason and the Conversion of Norway Author(S): Sverre Bagge Source: the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol
    The Making of a Missionary King: The Medieval Accounts of Olaf Tryggvason and the Conversion of Norway Author(s): Sverre Bagge Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 105, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 473- 513 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27712621 . Accessed: 03/05/2011 07:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of English and Germanic Philology.
    [Show full text]