Gripla - 01.01.1975, Síða 179

THE RISE OF LITERATURE IN 'TERRA NOVA’ 175
obviously wrote down traditions as he knew them, and the anonym-
ous scribe who first wrote Eddic lays probably did it in a similar
manner. This does not mean that these traditions must have been
preserved unchanged, but the alterations or additions were limited.
When folk tales, ballads, or legends are written down, this is very
often performed by scholars; and putting them on paper or parch-
ment begins in general the ending of a living tradition. Also Snorri’s
approach to scaldic poetry was a scholarly one aimed at explaining
scaldic poetry at a time when it had passed its highest achievements.
Themes and rules of Eddic and scaldic poetry were fixed; writing
down was not an innovation in the development of these genres.
Writing down old traditions is a very common process and examples
can be found in many times and cultures, from Charlemagne, who
ordered to collect and write down German heroic lays to Elias Lönn-
roth, who collected Finnish epic songs and elaborated the epos Kale-
vala out of this material.
Prose narratives in folk tradition like Marchen, hero tales, Sagen
and legends are never fixed by rules of form and metre as poetic tradi-
tions, and the so-called ‘epic laws of folk tales’ are not at all laws or
rules comparable with metric rules in poetic tradition; they are mere
tendencies of composing and narrating a story. These tendencies are
followed more in Márchen, less in other kinds of folk tales.
Saga literature is first of all literature, and thanks to the work of
many scholars—not the least Icelandic ones—today there is no doubt
that the sagas in the shape we can read them in manuscripts are
works of literature and not products of folk tradition. But probably
all the sagas are built on traditional material, and in my opinion we
are not allowed to neglect this fact. Of course these pre-literary oral
traditions are vague in many respects; we do not know very much about
the subjects of such traditions and still less about their form. But
without these traditions a very great part of saga literature would not
exist. Therefore the process of literarisation of oral traditions is an
extremely important one, and one of the most fascinating I know.
I did not succeed in finding a society or a literature comparable
with Iceland in this respect. There are for instance single works built
on folk traditions like Kalevala, The Cid or even—to a lesser degree
—the Decameron of Boccaccio. But I do not know a single national