Old Norse-Icelandic Literature

Summary

The Body of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature is larger, more varied, and of longer duration than the partially overlapping literatures of early medieval England and Germany. Old English literature disappeared from view for several centuries because of the linguistic transition after the Norman Conquest, and Old High German and Old Saxon literature were not recovered until the early nineteenth century. Old Icelandic literature, by contrast, was protected by a substantial linguistic continuity in Iceland and never disappeared from circulation altogether, although, like Old English, it received a notable stimulus from the antiquarian and national impulses of the Renaissance. In particular, the great manuscript collector Árni Magnússon (died 1730) was able to salvage a great deal of widely dispersed material that might otherwise have been lost. Most of it was recovered in Iceland, and although we routinely refer to “Old Norse-Icelandic” literature in order to account for a number of texts in Old Norwegian, it should be borne in mind that the great preponderance of texts are Icelandic. For all practical purposes, therefore, this chapter deals with Old Icelandic literature.

More than the other Old Germanic literatures, Old Icelandic has been bedeviled by genre boundaries. We do not write histories of the literature as a whole but of distinct literary types, skaldic poetry, Eddic poetry, kings’ sagas, sagas about early Icelanders, sagas about twelfth- and thirteenth-century Icelanders, romances, legendary sagas, and so forth. The approach by genre is partly dictated by the difficulties that beset the dating of our texts. Some sagas can be dated, others only quite approximately. The problems attendant on the dating of Eddic poetry are much greater, to the point that we seem to have entered a period of agnostic resignation. Skaldic poetry, on the other hand, constitutes the exception to the dating impasse because the skalds, unlike the usually anonymous saga writers and always anonymous Eddic poets, are named and associated with kings who can be located in time. Skaldic verse also has the advantage of envisaging the whole period of our concern from ca. 800 to ca.1300.

Skaldic Verse

If skaldic verse is known at all, it is known for being “hard” or even “incomprehensible.” By now there are enough aids and commentaries to make most of the material accessible with patient study, although, as in all archaic languages, many cruxes remain.