The Other Sagas. A New Reading of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders
Final Report Abstract
Because of saga scholarship’s focus on the ‘classical’, thirteenth-century Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), the so-called ‘post-classical’ sagas, dated to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as well as other saga genres, have not been studied adequately. Changing attitudes have recently resulted in new approaches to these texts, but a systematic reevaluation of the ‘post-classical’ Íslendingasögur was still needed. This project finally gave full attention to a group of texts comprising more than a third of the Íslendingasögur genre, and reassessed the notion that the ‘post-classical’ sagas lack social interest. These sagas have often been characterised as lacking interest in the social concerns prominent in more ‘classical’ narratives. Instead, they have been argued to depict a dichotomy between an exaggerated hero figure and episodically appearing paranormal opponents. Recent studies have begun to read them alongside ‘classical’ sagas, showing that it is only an inclusive approach that allows us to comprehend this genre as a whole. But these preconceptions had not been addressed, and the ‘post-classical’ corpus as a whole had not been considered, so that an inclusive reading of all ‘post-classical’ sagas was the project’s starting point. Rather than assuming a dichotomy of hero vs. paranormal, a triangular relationship between the individual, the paranormal, and the social was argued to underlie saga composition. Each of these aspects was considered in turn, as well as those cases in which the boundaries between them collapse. A new approach to these sagas’ presumed fictionality and escapism, based on possible worlds theory (PWT), was also formulated. Narratological theories were thus applied together with sociological and psychological approaches to social interaction, trauma, and belonging, to gain a fuller picture of the narrative structure, character construction, encounters with the paranormal, social engagement, and worldbuilding reflected in these sagas. This inclusive methodology enabled a reading of these texts as integrated in their socio-cultural background and as a reflection of the real-world concerns that were incorporated into their storyworlds. This thorough reassessment of the narratives, the interactions between characters and their social context contributes to a fuller understanding of the Íslendingasögur as a whole. It has also opened up new areas of investigation, most notably readings informed by PWT, in Old Norse-Icelandic studies. Finally, it was shown that the ‘post-classical’ sagas need to be considered in their late medieval context, in which they are not a deviation from the norm but part of a larger engagement with socio-cultural developments also reflected in other genres.
Publications
-
‘I Had to Be Somewhere’: Spaces of Belonging in the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 16, 103-135.
Merkelbach, Rebecca
-
‘The coarsest and worst of the Íslendinga Sagas’: Approaching the Alterity of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders. Margins, Monsters, Deviants, 101-127. Brepols Publishers.
Merkelbach, Rebecca
-
Dreamworlds, Storyworlds: Narrative Proliferation and the Case of Stjörnu-Odda draumr. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 121(1), 6-33.
Merkelbach, Rebecca
-
Outlawed Bears and Trollish Foster-Parents: Exploring the Social Dimension of the ›Post-Classical‹ Sagas of Icelanders. Unwanted, 143-179. utzverlag GmbH.
Merkelbach, Rebecca
-
Voice and World in Jökuls þáttr Búasonar. Þáttasyrpa – Studien zu Literatur, Kultur und Sprache in Nordeuropa, 127-136. A. Francke Verlag.
Merkelbach, Rebecca
-
‘Kjalnesinga saga and the Outlaw Saga Tradition: Subversion and Simultaneity in a Kaleidoscopic Perspective’, Saga-Book 46, 65–92
Rebecca Merkelbach
