The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (review)

In the preface to this slim volume, Margaret Clunies Ross declares an ambitious aim: "to offer an up-to-date analysis of the medieval Icelandic saga genre and to review major issues to do with its origins and development, its literary character and identity, its material existence in manuscripts and printed editions, and its changing reception from the Middle Ages to the present time" (p. ix). Although many of the issues listed could be dealt with separately in substantial volumes, this comprehensive introduction will be obligatory reading for its immediate target group, students in the field, and at the same time interesting reading for those who are active researchers as well as readers with a general interest in the sagas.

The first three chapters, "Medieval Iceland," "What is an Old Norse-Icelandic Saga," and "The Genesis of the Icelandic Saga" give a necessarily short but balanced and lucid description and defninition of the phenomenon to be discussed and its context. They reflect well the results of recent research. Studies of Icelandic romances (fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur) as well as revisions of saga chronology have in the last decades led to increased interest in the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, attention to Icelandic society is here, as in earlier studies, mainly focused on the so-called Commonweatlth period (before the 1260's). This is logical insofar as the writing of sagas began in this period, and the structure of this particular society must have had something to do with the kinds and character of literature that arose there. However, recent research—unfortunately mostly accessible only in Icelandic—has thrown new light on the post-commonwealth period, which undeniably played a great part in the development of the sagas and a crucial one in their preservation and the form in which they have survived. A substantial paragraph about the fourteenth century would have been helpful here.

Most modern scholars would agree with Clunies Ross's description of the genesis of the Icelandic saga as an interplay between oral and literary tradition, while some might think that she ascribes too much importance to the oral tradition. That problem can partly be resolved, however, by taking into account that the interplay between the oral and the literary must have continued from the twelfth century into the fourteenth, as she indeed assumes, and in this period the literary element will have been gradually strengthened allowing more freedom of invention to saga writers. The question of how developed the forms of narrative were before the period of writing will remain controversial and will never be definitively answered.

Chapter 4 deals with the difficult issue of saga chronology. It is easy to agree with most of the analysis. Clunies Ross mentions the nationalistic interpretation of events of the thirteenth century, common in the mid-twentieth century and probably most clearly expressed in Einar Ól. Sveinsson's Sturlungaöld (1940), and thinks that the connection between social and political change has been exaggerated. It should be kept in mind, however, that one can accept that there were important changes in this period without evaluating them from the point of view of nationalistic ideology or whether they were a curse or a blessing for Iceland. The hierarchical worldview of the church could not be fully understood or internalized by the Icelanders until they had accepted becoming part of a monarchy and had begun to adapt to a European model. These changes were a precondition for the abolition of traditional feuding, with punishment replacing revenge. It is correct that the situation in the Sturlung Age has often been contrasted too strongly with the periods before and after, and yet it must be seen as a turning point.

In Chapter 5 various groupings of the sagas are discussed. Clunies Ross is not happy with a distinction made by many scholars between classical and postclassical sagas of Icelanders. It is convenient, however, and not unfounded, but also misleading if the...