Ætt og saga: Um frásagnarfræði Sturlungu eða Íslendinga sögu hinnar miklu (review)

Sturlunga saga, the modern (seventeenth-century) title of a unique compilation of several texts by different authors, which has been ascribed to the lawman Þórðr Narfason (d. 1308), forms a chronicle of Icelandic history during the period 1117-1264. The work has received considerable attention from philologists ever since the mid-seventeenth century, when the compilation was extant in two vellum manuscripts, Króksfjarðarbók and Reykjarfjarðarbók, that were almost complete. The studies have addressed problems concerning the composition of the compilation, its origins, preservation, and age, and have revealed that the compilation was originally put together from the following separate works: Guðmundar þáttr heljarskinns, Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, genealogies, Sturlu saga, a prologue, Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar, Guðmundar saga dýra, Sturla Þórðarson's Íslendinga saga, Haukdœla þáttr, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, Þórðar saga kakala, and Svínfellinga saga. To these, the compiler of Reykjarfjarðarbók added four more works: Þorgils saga skarða, Sturlu þáttr, Jarteinasaga Guðmundar biskups, and Árna saga biskups. The compilation has been regarded primarily as a work of history and has been used by historians as a primary source for Icelandic history of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Curiously, it has received modest attention as a work of literature, and its literary value has never been properly assessed. With his Ætt og saga: Um frásagnarfræði Sturlungu eða Íslendinga sögu hinnar miklu, which deals with the narratology of Sturlunga saga, Úlfar Bragason therefore fills a very sizeable gap in past and current research on the compilation. Indeed, Úlfar maintains that an examination of Sturlunga saga as a narrative is necessary before the work can be used as a historical source, since its value as a source lies as much in how the saga is told as in what it has to tell. In his view, it is not possible to appraise the historical value of the old sagas, including Sturlunga, in a sensible manner without examining their narratology ("ekki er unnt að meta heimildargildi fornsagna, þ.á.m. Sturlungu, af nokkurri skynsemi án þess að rannsaka frásagnareðli þeirra," p. 31), for, as he points out,

Sögurnar eru ritverk sem lúta ákveðnum reglum. En jafnframt því sem takmarkanir Sturlungu sem heimildar um einstaka atburði ættu að vera ljósar er víst að samsteypan getur gefið innsýn í tíma sinn, ekki síst hugsunarhátt manna og aldarbrag. Höfundar miðaldarita leituðust ekki við að vera frumlegir heldur heyjuðu sér efni bæði úr munnlegri geymd og af bókum. Þeir lifðu og hrærðust meðal áheyrenda sinna eða lesenda og textinn varð til í samspili við þá. Minnugir þessa geta menn lesið úr Sturlungu, rétt eins og öðrum fornritum, nokkuð haldgóðar upplýsingar um samfélagið sem hún spratt úr.

(pp. 35-36)

(The sagas are literary works ruled by certain principles. But at the same time as Sturlunga's limitations as a source for individual events ought to be clear, the collection does provide insight into its time, not least people's mentality and the characteristics of the period. The authors of medieval texts did not attempt to be original, but drew on both oral tradition and books. They lived among and interacted with their audience and readers, and the text came into existence in the interplay between them. With this in mind, people can extract from Sturlunga, like from any other old works, some solid information about the society from which it evolved.)

In his introduction to Ætt og saga, which has its origin in his 1986 doctoral dissertation, Úlfar makes clear the aim of the book:

Í riti þessu er ætlunin að sýna hvernig ætt og saga blandast saman í Sturlungu. Lýst verður frásagnarlögmálum samtíðarsagna, efnisafm...