A History of Icelandic Literature, Stefan Einarsson, c. 1957

This page is not complete. It's for my use only as a way of keeping notes as I read the book.

Introduction

"In comparison with most other European national literatures that of Iceland is relatively clear in origin. Thanks also to its literature, the history of Iceland lacks those grey prehistoric mists of other nations whose gloom can be pierced only by the more or less feeble rays of archaeology. Among the Germanic nations only the English have a somewhat similar native tradition to refer to, though by comparison it has suffered too much from Christian influence."

• Twelfth-century history
• Viking literature
• Origin of Eddic poetry
• Origin of skaldic poetry
• Western influence
• East Norse origins
• Norwegian origin
• Viking heathendom
• Viking ideals
• Aims of settlers
• Creation of the Commonwealth and the Althing
• Landmarks in law
• Introduction of Christianity
• Noble families as carriers of literature
• Appetite for news and hte role of the Althing
• Icelandic globe-trotters and court poets
• Ex boreale lux

"And so it came to pass that the Old Icelandic literature became a great aurora borealis, throwing the only light available  on the primordial darkness of Northern history and, still more important, holding up the only torch in existence for the ideals by which our old Northern and Germanic ancestors lived and died before the advent of Christianity.

Eddic Poetry
mythologic and heroic poems

"Of all Icelandic books it has been the most edited, translated, and commented on."

Bishop Brynjolfur came in possession of this book in 1643; sent it to Danish King Frederik III, 1662

Edda of Saemund the Learned (Edda Saemundi multiscii)

At that time (1600's), scholars were very familiar with the Edda of Snorri Sturluson, the so-called Snorra Edda, a textbook of poetry. But based on content, scholars knew there must be an earlier source.

Meaning of "edda"? Obscure. Possibly derived from word meaning "poetry." But also possibly to Oddi, the place where Snorri received his education.

From the early 1200's.

The Snorra Edda dates from 1220 - 1230; the Codex regius of the Saemundar Eddar dates from the second half of that century.

Eddic poems in the Codex Regius

• mythological and didactic poems
• heroic poems

other Eddic poems outside the Codex Regius

Most Eddic poem names are made up of proper names of supernatural beings and heroes and a second meaning "song" or "lay."

1917, a runic stone found in Norway, quickly seen to be related to Eddic poetry:

Eggjum Stone,  inscribed stone that bears 200 runic characters. It is the longest known text in the old-style futhark (runic alphabet) and was discovered inside a tomb in western Norway in 1917. The runes are arranged in three unequal lines, separated by an engraving of a stylized horse’s head. The date is uncertain; archaeologists place it in the 7th century, whereas runologists, citing transitional rune forms and the relatively modern language of the sample, estimate the 8th or even the 9th century.

"I do not, of course, mean to imply that Eddic poetry did not exist elsewhere in Scandinavia or elsewhere among Germanic tribes. The Icelanders brought it with them from Germanic tribes. The Icelanders brought it with them from Norway, and the oldest poems may just as well be Norwegian as Icelandic. And Beowulf and Saxo prove an unbroken heroic tradition in the East Norse area especially Denmark, from the sixth to the twelfth century. But just as Beowulf is unmistakably English though it deals with subjects of the Scandinavian homeland, and just as the fornaldar sogur are unmistakably Icelandic though they are similarly oriented toward the Scandinavian East (Austrvgr), so we must grant that the related Eddic poems are most probably also Icelandic, though the mythical and didactic poems may preferably reflect the nature of the Norwegian homeland and the heroic poems may range from the Goths and the Huns, the Burgundians and the Franks to Denmark, Sweden, and even Norway." -- p. 21 - 22.

The poem about Sleeping Beauty, p. 37

Is Sigrdrifa the same as Brynhildr?

******************

Skaldic Poetry
deeds of kings

"The trend of modern opinion seems to be that skaldic poetry originated in (West) Norway or in the Scandinavian Baltic. If so, it could not have started until after the exodus of the English from Jutland-Angel (fifth century). It appears fully developed in the poetry of Bragi hinn gamli a Norwegian flourishing ca. 800 - 850, the ancestor of an Icelandic family of skalds."

"Most scholars assume that skaldic poetry originated at the courts of kings, the poems being praise poems to celebrate the deeds of these kings. The Icelandic custom of visiting the kings of Scandinavia (primarily Norway) and England, does not seem essentially different from the manners of the factitious scop Widsith, who is made to visit the famous Gothic Ermanric and other Germanic ings famed in story before the sixth century."

scop: A scop was an Old English poet, the Anglo-Saxon counterpart of the Old Norse skald.

Widsith: Widsith is an Old English poem of 144 lines that draws on earlier oral traditions of Anglo-Saxon tale singing. The only text of the fragment is copied in the Exeter Book, a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the late 10th century containing approximately one sixth of all surviving Old English poetry. Since the discovery of the Exeter Book in 1076, it has been housed in the Exeter Cathedral in southwest England. The poem is for the most part a survey of the peoples, kings, and heroes of Europe in the Heroic Age of Northern Europe. Excluding the introduction of the scop Widsith, the closing, and brief interpolated comments, the poem is divided into three 'catalogues', so-called thulas.

Sacred Poetry

"The Icelandic sacred poetry of the 12th, 13th, 14th, and, to some extent, the 15th centuries is a hybrid flower deriving its form and diction from the skaldic poetry -- the meter is mostly drottkvaett, sometimes hrynhent -- but the spirit from contemporary currents of thought in the Catholic Church. It is really a marvel that the church hymn forms did not break through earlier, but the Icelandic chieftain-clergy probably saw nothing incongruous in breaking with the established rules of the Church in this field as in many others, and the true hymn forms did not appear until the fifteenth century."

 The Hrynhent, a Skaldic stanzaic form which came along after Drottkvaet, also generously employed kenning but the imagery was more natural and connected to the meaning making the poems more understandable than its predecessor.

Kenning: Old Norse, a metaphor using two substitute nouns. E.g, ship was a "sea horse." And blood was "tears of wounds."

Secular Poetry of the Later Middle Ages

"Late medieval secular poetry in Iceland was of two kinds: popular and learned. The learned branch, the discussion of which we shall defer to the end, was represented by hattalyklar (metrical keys) in continuation of Snorri Sturluson."

Literature of the Clergy

"We shall now trace what part the Icelandic church and clergy played -- more or less directly -- in the production of literature. Its first important part was introducing the Latin alphabet for writing books, a virgin field, for the runes were always restricted to monumental and magic purposes. Sermons and homilies must have been preached from the very first in the native tongue by the missionaries and since there were Englishmen among them, such as Rudolfr in Ober in Borgarfjordr, they may have started the Icelanders on writing their homilies in their native tonge as was the custom in England."

First two bishops, father and son Isleifr Gizurarson and Gizurr Isleifsson at Skalaholt in the South.

The son was so popular he was able to introduce tithing in 1097; he generously gave up a quarter of his jurisdiction to a new bishop, Jon ogmundarson, at Holar in the north.

Scholars know nothing about the school set up at Skalaholt, now Skalholt, but they do know about the school at Holar.

Calendar: 52 weeks; a year of 364 days; realized by the 10th century, this was too short a year, and they added one week to summer every seventh year.

The Earliest Historiographers

"The founder of the school at Oddi, Saemundr Sigrusson inn frodi (the Learned) (1056 - 1133) was the earliest historiographer of Iceland. He wrote a Latin Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings; it is now lost but was used by subsequent writers, such as the poet who eulogized Saeundr's grandson in Noregskonungatal (List of Norwegian Kings)."

The Kings' Sagas

"As already stated, the origins of the kings' sagas go back to the writings of Saemundr inn frodi and Ari inn frodi -- both no doubt inspired by medieval European Latin chronicles, thoughonly Saemundr used that language. Judging by the poem Noregskonungatal, Saemundr's survey went down to the death of King Magnus the Good (1047)."

Snorri Sturluson

"We now come to an author who, standing head and shoulders above his predecessors, raised the sagas about the kings of Norway to their ultimate perfection. He did more. If he wrote Egils saga, as many scholars now believe, he broght the family sagas also to a previously unattained peak. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in his day he overshadowed other saga-writers almost as much as his ancestor Egill had towered over his skaldic brethren of old. And though he aspired in vain to become himself a great poet, he became the greatest critic of the old poetry, building for it a fortress safe against foreign encroachment for a long time to come." 

The Sagas

"Saga is etymologically the same word as the English (old) "saw"; it means something said or told, a tale, a story or narrative in prose, in a wide sense. In length it varies from short stories (thaettir) of a page or so to that of a full length novel (Njala). In subject matter it also ranges widely. The translated saints' lives are sagas, as are the biographies of the native bishops and the records of their miracles. ... Sagas, too, are the so-called fornaldar sogur, treating mythical figures or heroes from the heroic age of Continental Scandinavia. The histories or chronicles of the Norwegian kings are sagas, kings' sagas, and so are par excellence the sagas of the Icelanders or family sagas, dealing with Icelandic heroic farmers of the saga age (870 or 930 - 1030). Sagas, finally, are translations and imitations of French and Anglo-Norman romances and stories of chivalry, adventure and phantasy, called riddara sogur (knights' tales) and lygi sogur (lying tales), always in prose even though their sources may have been in verse. These types range from pure history to wild fiction, but practically all the fictitious sagas purport to be historical and deal with semi- or pseudo-historical figures."

The Family Sagas

"The oldest Icelandic family sagas seem to have been written in the period 1200 - 20, either at the monastery of Thingeyrar or in the surrounding districts of the West and Northwest, though not all of them seem inspired by that monastery. Three of these sagas deal with court poets -- of the two missionary and saintly kings, whose sagas had been written by the monks of Thingeyrar in the last quarter of the preceding century."

Sturlung Saga

"Sturlana saga is a collection of sagas dealing with the contemporary or nearly contemporary history of Icelanders during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. It was compiled about 1300 by one of the sons of Narfi Snorrason from the manor Skard on Skardsstrond, probably Thordr Narfason, Lawman at Skard (d. 1308). It represents a tendency, increasingly common during the fourteenth century, to collect within one manuscript as many sagas of one type -- or as much miscellaneous matter -- as possible."

The author tried to tell the history of the previous two centuries based on these sagas; Einarsson feels he failed miserably. 

Fornaldar Sogur

oldest memories of the race in the north

the Viking sagas

Tough the name fornaldar sogur, sagas of antiquity, is not old (it was coined by the first editor of the sagas) it is a very apt name, for many of these sagas deal wih the oldest memories of the race in the North and, to some extent, in the surrounding Germanic lands. They have also, in English, been called the mythical-heroic sagas, which is apt, as far as it goes, for, like Eddic poems, whose tradition they continue in many respects, they deal with myths and heroic legends, a few of which vie in importance with the Eddic poems themselves. Some of them have also been called Viking sagas because they deal with raids and adventures of the Vikings, both in the West (Vestrvegr) and preferably, in the East (Austrvegr). As stories of adventure in strange exotic lands they are filled with folklore motifs of various kinds: ghost stories, troll stories, and fairy tales. They are as fantastic as the family sagas are realistic; and while the family sagas (and the heroic legends among the fornaldar sogur) are mostly tragedies, the happy ending comes as natural to these sagas as to a Hollywood movie.

Romantices of Chivalry and Lygi Sogur

 

"While the Icelanders were already experienced in writing kings' and family sagas, the king of Norway (Hakon Hakonarson) prodded his clerks to introduce cosmopolitan chivalry in Norway by translating the best of the Anglo-Norman metrical romances. The beginning was made by a certain Brother Robert, probably an Englishman, who translated the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas's Tristan into pompous but indifferent and rather clumsy prose. This was in 1226. There followed the translation of Marie de France's Breton Lays....."

riddara sogur: chivalric sagas
lygi sogur: lying sagas

The Reformation

"Although the fifteenth century was a time of comparative stagnation, it brought, in the sacredpoetry, the new measures that were to dominate not only the new evangelical hymns but also, to a great extent, the lyric poetry of the succeeding centuries."

The Icelandic Renaissance

late 1500's to mid-1600's

"Looking back, the Lutherans claimed to see nothing but dense ignorance in Catholic times. But though their criticism must be taken with reservations, it cannot be denied that interest in learning was increased after the Reformation. We have already seen how reading was spurred by dissemination of printed books and the need for people to learn Luther's Catechism.  On the higher levels, the leaders were not immune to the aspirations fo the Renaissance and the budding natural sciences. The writing was resumed....and though the bishops usually were more interested in Lutheran propaganda than native lore, Oddur Einarsson (note name of author of this book) of Skalholt is on record as the earliest collector of Icelandic manuscripts. Among the native lore history, personal history, genealogy, and law bulked large."

Secular Poetry, 1550 - 1750

Enlightenment (Neo-Classicism), 1750 - 1830

National Romanticism, 1830 - 1874

Realism to Neo-Romanticism, 1874 - 1918

Tradition and Revolt Between the World Wars, 1918 - 1940

After World War II, 1940 - 1956

American-Icelandic Writers