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

The thirteen articles in this volume are the result of a 2014 conference connected to the four-year project Stories for All Time: The Icelandic fornaldarsögur (http://fasnl.ku.dk), which has the aim to “survey the entire transmission history of the fornaldarsögur” (p. 12), or legendary sagas. The contributions show great variety, focusing on different time periods and various aspects of transmission and reception, such as scribal networks (Silvia Hufnagel), translations into Danish (Annette Lassen), or the influence of the fornaldarsögur on Icelandic poetry (Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir), as well as modern crime and science fiction literature (Alaric Hall and T. A. Shippey). The remaining essays are written by Massimiliano Bampi, Viðar Hreinsson, Hans Jacob Orning, Ralph O’Connor, Beeke Stegmann, Philip Lavender, Andrew Wawn, and Shaun Hughes. In addition, the volume includes an introduction by Matthew Driscoll, one of the editors, as well as a list of figures, a bibliography, notes on the contributors, an index of manuscripts, and a general index.

Due to certain limitations in length, the discussion here cannot address each individual contribution. As was noted, the contents are diverse, and it is undeniable that each essay presents an interesting piece of new scholarship. However, it is on occasion questionable whether all contributions organically fit the theme of transmission and reception of the fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda; some appear to some extent “made to fit.” Beeke Stegmann’s contribution, “Árni Magnússon’s Rearrangement of Fornaldarsaga Manuscripts,” for example, uses two manuscripts primarily containing fornaldarsögur to discuss Árni Magnússon’s practices of disassembling and rearranging manuscripts in his collection. Yet, despite the use of fornaldarsaga manuscripts, the genre itself seems irrelevant for the discussion, and it appears the article could have been written with any genre with much the same conclusions drawn (e.g., a case study using manuscripts containing Icelandic family sagas instead). Similarly, the title of Silvia Hufnagel’s article, “Family, Friends and Fornaldarsögur: Manuscript Transmission in Western Iceland in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” seems misleading, as only one of the scribes in the network she discusses seems to have copied fornaldarsögur more intensively, and this literary genre thus plays only a seemingly marginal role in Hufnagel’s overall analysis. Still—whether somewhat superficial or not—Stegmann’s and Hufnagel’s essays at the very least attempt to tie into the theme of the book, something that is far less apparent with regards to Andrew Wawn’s contribution, “Jason bjarti in rímur and saga.” Though his discussion introduces the reader to a rather unknown narrative, and in itself is thorough, well written, engaging, and valuable, Wawn points out that the story—which he describes as an “Icelandic post-medieval romance narrative” (p. 237)—“embraces elements of medieval riddarasögur, Renaissance chapbook, and post-Renaissance lygisögur” (p. 244). He even argues that rímur by Jón Þorsteinsson (born 1684) may have been the origin of the prose narrative (rather than vice versa) and that Jón may have drawn “on his familiarity with romance saga and renaissance chapbook traditions” (p. 277). While lygisögur, riddarasögur, and fornaldarsögur certainly share some overlap, Wawn never seems to suggest that the narrative and rímur he discusses are related to the fornaldarsaga genre. The only connection evident in the article is that Jasons saga bjarta appears in at least one manuscript (Lbs 1629 4to) also containing fornaldarsögur, as well as other types of sagas—though Jasons saga bjarta is never suggested to belong to the former group. The saga is also not among the thirty-six sagas listed in the bibliography section of the Stories for All Times Project (http://fasnl.ku.dk/bibl.aspx...