Gripla

						
Andmælarœður
við doktorsvörn Gísla Sigurðssonar 31.8. 2002'
I
RÆDA LARS LÖNNROTH
I
The Relationship between oral tradition and literary authorship is a classical
problem in Icelandic saga sholarship, but it is also a classical problem in the
study of other types of early epic narrative in ancient Greece, Anglo-Saxon
England and Medieval France. Works like the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf,
La Chanson de Roland and Njáls saga have all been interpreted as orally
transmitted texts, but they have also been interpreted as literary artifacts com-
posed in writing by an author. Most literary historians have tended to agree in
principle that these texts contain both oral and literary elements, but they
have, in each case, very much disagreed about the proportions and the relative
importance of orality versus literacy. While some have tended to see the text
primarily as a product of a long oral tradition, others have seen it primarily as
a product of writing at a particular time and place.
Within the field of saga scholarship this disagreement was for a long time
known as the conflict between Freeprose and Bookprose. The Freeprose
Theory, vigorously defended by Knut Liest0l in Norway, Andreas Heusler in
Germany and by several other Germanists and folklorists before the Second
World War, maintained that the Islendingasögur originated essentially in the
Viking period and then circulated in oral tradition for a couple of hundred
years until they were finally written down in the Sturlung Age. The Bookprose
Theory, which has been particularly strong in Iceland after the war and
brilliantly represented by Sigurður Nordal, Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and other
prominent members of the so-called "Icelandic school", maintained that Is-
lendingasögur originated essentially in the Sturlung Age as individual written
Gísli Sigurðsson. 2002. Túlkun íslendingasagna í Ijósi munnlegrar hefðar. Tilgáta um aðferð.
Rit 56. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Islandi, Reykjavík.