Conclusion

Summary

The present study has revealed many different ways in which the authors of sagas of Icelanders combined verse and prose. From the first appearance of these sagas, arguably in the early part of the thirteenth century, there seems to have been a variety of approaches that determined the nature of the textual product, probably the result of several factors, most of which can only be guessed at. They may have included the availability of suitable orally transmitted poetry; perhaps the existence of some stanzas that had already been recorded in written form together with accompanying prose; the attitude of the saga author or authors towards the use of poetry; the encouragement or lack of it from a patron, a local religious house or other sponsor; and the varying levels of skill in literary creativity that the saga author (or authors) brought to the task of incorporating poetry within a prose narrative, or in composing it themselves.

The evidence from extant sagas indicates that two particular trends emerged amongst the earliest sagas of Icelanders. The first was to avoid the use of poetry altogether, as we have discussed in Chapter 8, and instead to develop an episodic and fast-moving narrative style that was externalised in terms of characterisation. This trend seems to have been connected with a northern and eastern school of saga writing. The second trend, which is associated particularly with the poets’ sagas, was to create a prosimetrum comprising a set of situational stanzas attributed largely to male poet-protagonists and their local rivals for the attention of a woman. This type of prosimetrum to a large extent dominated the narrative of Fóstbrœðra saga, Hallfreðar saga, Kormáks saga and Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa, among the oldest sagas. In Kormáks saga the poetry is so copious and the prose so meagre that most modern critics regard the saga as a whole as defective, even though some of the poetry itself is marvellous.

It is a reasonable assumption that the poets’ sagas grew out of material that had already been at least partially textualised in stories and traditions centred around those kings of Norway who were the patrons of the court poets Hallfreðr vandræðskáld, Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, Bjǫrn Arngeirsson, Þorgeirr Hávarsson and Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld Bersason.