Eyrbyggja Saga
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Durham E-Theses Patterns of Nationalist Discourse in the Early Reception of the Icelandic Sagas in Britain SPRAY, THOMAS,EDWARD How to cite: SPRAY, THOMAS,EDWARD (2019) Patterns of Nationalist Discourse in the Early Reception of the Icelandic Sagas in Britain, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12964/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Patterns of Nationalist Discourse in the Early Reception of the Icelandic Sagas in Britain Thomas Edward Spray Ph.D. Department of English Studies Durham University 2019 Thomas Spray 2 Patterns of Nationalist Discourse Table of Contents Introduction: Tales of Many Nations ...................................................................................................... 5 1. Nationalism and Translation: Preliminary Definitions ....................................................................... 9 1.1. On Nationalism – or, Hvað er þjóð? .......................................................................................... 10 1.2. On Translation ........................................................................................................................... 15 2. Context: Old Norse in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries ................................................... 22 2.1. Wider European Reception of Old Norse .................................................................................. 32 2.1.1. The Germanic Aspect: Vergleichende Philologie ............................................................... 33 2.1.2. Scandinavian Context: Sjálfstæðisbaráttan, or the Struggle for Independence .................. 39 2.2. Summary; or, Gunnlaugs saga in English ................................................................................. 50 3. Narrating the North: Blackwell’s Northern Antiquities .................................................................... 54 3.1. Editorial Intent ........................................................................................................................... 60 3.2. Presentation: Emerging Themes ................................................................................................ 72 3.3. The Application of Idea(l)s ........................................................................................................ 75 3.4. Blackwell’s Saga Extracts .......................................................................................................... 79 4. From Shetland to Snæfellsnes: Exploring Eyrbyggja saga ............................................................... 89 4.1. Iceland First Seen: Eddas to Sagas ............................................................................................ 92 4.2. Walter Scott’s Saga .................................................................................................................. 100 4.3. Romance and Beyond: Constructions of Northern History after Scott .................................... 112 4.3.1. The Pirate .......................................................................................................................... 112 4.3.2. The Historians ................................................................................................................... 121 4.3.3. The Adventurer ................................................................................................................. 137 5. Sognefjord, Sweden, and Sleswig-Holsten: Friðþjófs saga and Nationalist Conflict .................... 143 5.1. The Great and Powerful North ................................................................................................. 155 5.2. George Stephens’s 1839 translation ......................................................................................... 165 5.3. What’s in a Name? German, Germanic, Germanification ....................................................... 174 5.4. Old Norse and the Schleswig-Holstein Question ..................................................................... 184 5.4.1. Norse Texts as National Propaganda: Models of Language-based Land-claims. ............. 186 5.5. Conclusion: a Siegesallee for Sognefjord ................................................................................ 204 6. Persistent Nationalisms: Conclusions and Reflections ................................................................... 208 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 213 Manuscripts ..................................................................................................................................... 213 Primary Texts .................................................................................................................................. 213 Secondary Texts .............................................................................................................................. 237 Thomas Spray 3 Patterns of Nationalist Discourse The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Thomas Spray 4 Patterns of Nationalist Discourse Acknowledgements The research behind this thesis has also provided content for a number of articles written during the last four years. Ideas from chapter three were published, in an emended form, in ‘Northern Antiquities and Nationalism’, eSharp, 23 ‘Myth and Nation’ (Spring 2015) 11, 1-17. Research into chapter five has been published as ‘Friðþjófs saga Revisited’, Quaestio Insularis, 16 (2017), 20-48. Research on the sagas and Anglo-Scandinavian tourism, a topic which appears in numerous chapters, was published in ‘Of Schooners and Sagamen: Anglo-Icelandic Tourism in the Nineteenth Century’, in Sea Lines of Communication: Construction, ed. by Joel Found, Maria Newbery and Ayan Salaad (Southampton: Southampton Marine and Maritime Postgraduate Group, University of Southampton, 2015), 161-74. Additional material from the same research project (but which sadly fell out of the word limit of a doctoral thesis) is due to be published as the chapter ‘Njorl’s Saga: Victorian Comedy and the Reception of the Íslendingasögur to the Present Day’ (forthcoming); and the papers ‘V for Víga-Kári: Fake News, “Notorious Fame”, and Victorian Readings of Njáls saga,’ in Imitation and Innovation: Uses of the Past in the Medieval World, ed. by Dom Birch, Kelly Clarke and Katie Haworth (Durham: Medieval and Early Modern Student Association, 2018), 12-46; and ‘Missing Links: Beowulf, Grettis saga, and the Late Romances of William Morris’ (forthcoming). The research project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, via the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership. In addition to their support I have received extra funding over the course of the three years from numerous bodies at Durham University, notably the English Studies Research Fund, the Faculty Postgraduate Research Fund, and the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. I would also like to thank READ Durham for allowing me to promote my research online via articles and podcasts. Bishop Percy writes in Northern Antiquities that while truth is universal, mistakes are widely variable (footnote 286, below). Any ‘truth’ found in this thesis is down to the much- appreciated input of numerous colleagues; the variable mistakes are all my own. I would like to offer my gratitude to all the staff working at the various archives and libraries used for this thesis: particularly those at the Bill Bryson Library, Palace Green Special Collections, and Ushaw College, Durham; the library of the Nord-Europa Institut, Humboldt Universität, Berlin; and the Landsbókasafn Íslands, Reykjavík. I would like to thank Kathryn Lowe of Glasgow University for improving and putting up with my dreadful Old Norse. Thank you to Christina Lee and John Shafer of Nottingham University for pointing me towards Durham and firing my enthusiasm for medievalism. Thank you to my colleague, Dr Alex Wilson, for countless proof- reading favours and for being a steadfast friend. Thank you to Dr David Ashurst for repeatedly going above and beyond the requirements of a doctoral supervisor, and for introducing me to some of the most interesting texts I have had the pleasure to study. Thank you to my late godfather Richard, for many formative trips to Iceland. Thank you to my parents, who first took my brothers and me ‘hunting for Grendel’ around the woods of Arkengarthdale. You are probably to blame for this. Finally, this work is dedicated to Anna, who was there all the way through it and brought a much-needed statistician’s eye to proceedings, and to my daughter Freya, who appeared along the way. I hope you will both enjoy