Legendary Legacy

The Fornaldarsögur Norourlanda (literally 'ancient sagas of the northern lands', but often referred to in English as 'mythical-heroic' or 'legendary' sagas) are a group of some 35 Icelandic prose narratives relating the exploits of kings and heroes of late iron-age and early Viking-age Scandinavia -- before the unification of Norway under Haraldr Hárfagri and the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century, and hence before the dawn of 'reliable' historical writing. In their present form, the Fornaldarsögur are generally presumed to date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and thus represent one of the younger, 'post-classical' genres of saga literature, but most have at least some basis in significantly older tradition. Although many, with their stock characters and fondness for the fabulous, have been dismissed as historically unreliable and of scant artistic merit, their great and lasting popularity is attested by the very large number of manuscripts in which they are preserved -- over a thousand in all, the earliest from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the latest from the beginning of the twentieth. The essays presented here deal with various aspects of the transmission and reception of the Fornaldarsögur, from their earliest manifestations until the present day.

Year

2022

Language

English

Publisher

University Press of Southern Denmark

Editions

1

Pages

457

ISBN

9788740831030

Data source: Wikidata