Gripla

						OLD NORSE RELIGION IN THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS            307

reveal an opinion once general and still dominant that Sagas of Icelan-

ders are based on traditions. The next step is to consider whether

there is any way of establishing the age of these traditions at the time

when the authors of the sagas incorporated them. Sagas of Icelanders

for the most part tell of individuals living in the tenth and early elev-

enth centuries, reckoning by other historical sources. The question

then arises whether records of these people survived in oral transmis-

sion all the time from the tenth century, or whether their names have

been associated with traditions established later.

In folklore studies, it is a recognised fact that traditions are modified

by the environment in which they survive. Traditions that migrate

from one country to another change colour according to the area, and

adjust themselves each time to the cultural environment in which they

are recited.17 On the other hand, traditions firmly formulated in one

cultural environment can remain unchanged in new cultural surround-

ings for some time, long or short, even when they are at variance with

current attitudes. Then it is their form that keeps them going.18 We

must always take these two contrasting principles of folklore study into

account whenever we examine traditions that have travelled a long

way in time or space.

The cultural environment in Iceland changed but little in the period

between the completion of the settlement in the early tenth century

right up to the thirteenth century, when the Sagas of Icelanders were

written. Domestic conditions would have been in the main exactly the

same all this time, the size of the population was similar, habitation

was just as scattered. The one change in this period that was of any

significance and could have influenced the form and preservation of

traditions was the Conversion (in 999 or 1000 AD). The great majority

of sagas deal with events which actually happened before the Con-

version, some of them going back to the early tenth century. If tradi-

tions of leading characters had achieved a set form and stamp before

1000 AD, they could perhaps still carry some trace over into the sagas.

But then we have to reckon that these same traditions would have had

to be orally preserved for about two hundred years after the Con-

version. Such transmission was likely to leave its mark, presumably as

Anna Birgitta Rooth, Öskubuska í austri og vestri, Rvík 1982, p. 140.

18 Op. cit., pp. 141-2.