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162 Reviews Ages, both as individual concepts and side by side, which will be of value for many years to come. Natalie Tomas School of Historical Studies Monash University Clunies Ross, Margaret, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Society. Vol. 2: The Reception of Norse Myths in Medieval Iceland (The Viking Collection 10), Odense, Odense University Press, 1998; cloth; pp. 222; R.R.P. US$32.00; ISBN 8778383323. Clunies Ross, Margaret, ed., Old Icelandic Literature and Society (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 42), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; board; pp. vii, 336; R.R.P. AUSS135.00; ISBN 0521631122. The appearance of these two new books testifies to an ever-increasing interdisciplinary sophistication in Old Norse studies. Clunies Ross brings immense expertise, imagination, inspiration, and downright indefatigability to the tasks of authorship and editorship. In what follows I shall briefly highlight some key ideas and conclusions. Prolonged Echoes Vol. 2, the sequel to Vol. 1: The Myths (1994), extends the familiar notion that templates derived from heroic narrations were immanent in medieval Icelandic literature so as to make parallel claims for the inherited mythology. Sometimes invoked consciously, sometimes merely latent, myths maintained their status as powerful cognitive tools throughout the period when this literature took shape. Although official Christian belief is often privileged, the texts are not univocal but provide a synthetic world view. Analyses of an episode from Landndmabok (in Chapter Two, 'Myths to live by') and similarly of an episode found in both Grettis saga and Fostbrcedra saga (in Chapter Three, 'Myth and narrative') illustrate this dialogism from various perspectives. Grettir's rather grandiose self-mythicisation, voiced in the skaldic citations, sits in company with the narrator's intermittent irony and a predominantly Christian perspective. In Chapter Four, 'History, myth and genealogy in early Iceland', nonrealistic dimensions are shown as integral to the sagas, notably the genealogies, where the mythic content, rather than being fossilised, evolved in response to social needs, not least those of the elite, such as the Oddaverjar. Here and in Reviews 163 Chapter Five, 'Myth, the region and family: the nexus between subclasses of the Icelandic saga', Icelandic magnates are shown to have 'collected' sagas in an expression of material and symbolic power. These aggregations could be geographically based, as in Landndmabok, Modruvallabok and Vatnshyrna, or based on commonalities in the prosopography, for instance the ubiquitous Mi3fjar9ar-Skeggi. In Chapter Six, 'Myths of settlement and colonisation', the author argues that family self-legitimisation is operative in Landndmabok, where the settlers are shown as employing rituals. Masculine land-taking bases itself on constructions of the land as feminine and of competing inhabitants as rivals to be humiliated. Substituteritualsand understandings of divination and ofthe Irish papar were developed to accommodate female and Christian land-takings. In Chapter Seven, 'Myth and the individual talent', the author demonstrates that a common ancestor was ascribed qualities needed by the clan for success in medieval society, for instance as poets, priests, doctors, and lawmen. Marked pagan talents among the ancestors correlate closely with marked Christian talents among the descendants, as exemplified by GudriSr in Eiriks saga rauda. This brilliant study is rounded off with a select bibliography, a brief chapter ofconclusions, a full list of references, and a detailed index. For its part, the collaborative volume Old Icelandic Literature and Society will prove an attractive and invaluable orientation to recent research and a source of exciting new ideas for professional scholars and students alike. The chapters are supplemented by a full introduction, thorough bibliographies, notes on contributors, and index. Clunies Ross sets the scene in her introduction, identifying a predominantly social framework for the book. In his 'Social institutions and belief systems of medieval Iceland (circa 870-1400) and their relations to literary production', Preben Meulengracht Sorensen extends this to argue for textualisation in medieval Iceland as an interactive process. More than just a case of a society adopting writing, society in toto became understood as text. While certainly Icelanders' historical experience provided a basis for the literature, equally the literature contributed to shape history. Judy Quinn ('From orality to literacy in medieval Iceland') discusses the forms of oral tradition—laws, folktales, heathen rituals, verses, genealogies, and lists...

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