11 - Poets’ Sagas

Summary

This chapter focuses on a major subgroup of Islendingasögur, the poets’ sagas or skalds’ sagas. While many Íslendingasögur include skaldic verses placed in the mouths of characters, in poets’ sagas the verses are attributed to and spoken by known poets, who were predominantly Icelanders. The role some of these Icelanders played as court poets to rulers of Norway is often depicted in short narratives or þættir, and is here argued to represent the beginnings of the development of poets’ sagas. Four sagas are concerned with the more personal aspects of the poets’ lives back in Iceland, and the narrative follows a distinct and repeated pattern of rivalry with another man, in some cases also a poet, who marries the object of the protagonist’s desire. These sagas, Kormáks saga, Hallfreðar saga, Bjarnar saga Hítdœkappa and Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, are analysed in detail to highlight the centrality and similarity of the love-triangle pattern, with Egils saga displaying a vestigial element of it. Themes of love, grief and insult (nið) are discussed, and the chapter concludes by contrasting the bitterness of the poets’ rivalries with the strength of their devotion to their patrons.