The Legendary Legacy: Transmission and Reception of the ‘Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda’ ed. by Matthew Driscoll et al. (review)

The fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda (‘ancient sagas of the Northern lands’), commonly referred to as the ‘legendary’ sagas, form a genre distinct from other saga types due to their geographic setting (not Iceland) and the fact that their narrative time is set in a distant (if mythic) past notionally prior to the time of Icelandic settlement. This genre is, however, at best problematic, for thematically these sagas often share interests and topics with the other main genres: Íslendingasögur (sagas of the Icelanders), riddarasögur (chivalric sagas), fornsögur suðrlanda (romances), and konungasögur (kings’ sagas). Indeed, Viðar Hreinsson’s contribution in this collection deals explicitly with taxonomic problems of the genre, arguing that the classification itself, unlike all other genres, is ‘not based on any literary criteria’ (p. 72). Hans Jacob Orning also examines methodologies for understanding generic qualities of saga literature, and how to negotiate a relationship with historiography (both in content and manuscript collation). He argues that sagas, in their associated manuscript totality, need to be read as integral (i.e. across genres) ‘utterances formulated in concrete historical contexts’ (p. 115).

The fornaldarsögur are poor cousins in academic terms, with much less publication, translation, and scholarship in comparison to other genres, a characteristic that Alaric Hall suggests is due to the historical ideology of the Icelandic nationalist literary program favouring the Íslendingasögur for their idealization of an independent Icelandic past. As a corrective, this volume represents a milestone in the ongoing field of fornaldarsögur study. It results from a 2014 conference convened as part of a project funded by the Velux Foundation, ‘Stories for all time: The Icelandic fornaldarsögur’, whose aim was to survey the entire transmission history of the genre.

There are thirteen contributions in this collection, in addition to the introduction by the principal investigator of the project, Matthew Driscoll. The approach taken in each varies markedly. Each contributes important developments to the field, and the volume encompasses a wide array of Norse material that falls under such a ‘faulty’ generic classification. The works examine aspects of the field through the long context of evolving critical approaches, including historical source criticism, materiality, textuality, the sociology of literature, and material philology. The array of texts investigated in this volume is broad: it includes medieval, post-medieval, and modern saga manuscripts, folk-tales, poetry and rímur, modern literary reflexes, and the long arc of translations and re-tellings from Saxo Grammaticus through to the current century. Annette Lassen provides a catalogue and reviews fornaldarsögur translations and re-tellings in Danish, of which there are surprisingly few. She also offers the welcome news of a complete Danish translation currently in preparation.

Post-medieval re-workings and modern reflexes of Norse texts are a particularly strong thread among the contributions. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir reviews reflexes in later Icelandic poetry and Massimiliano Bampi examines the eighteenth-century Starkaðar saga gamla in the context of its antecedents. T. A. Shippey discusses fornaldarsögur influences in an array of modern science fiction and fantasy writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Poul Andersen, and Harry Harrison. Alaric Hall argues for a nuanced reading of post-GFC Icelandic fiction, drawing upon a kind of dystopian fornaldarsögur medievalism, in contradistinction to the more common literary, nationalist, golden age medievalism of a pre-GFC context, which tended to draw upon Íslendingasögur and Eddic themes.

The survival of Icelandic manuscripts is largely due to the work of prominent seventeenth- and eighteenth-century collectors, and a vibrant Icelandic manuscript culture that survived into the last century. Fornaldarsögur were popular in this tradition, and a number of contributions look closely at the collection and continued production of...