Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 181

THE RISE OF LITERATURE IN ‘TERRA NOVA’ 177
by a particular way of telling a story, differing from one saga to the
other.
As to point three: It is superfluous to talk about foreign influences
on saga literature—there is no doubt they existed, and it is quite irre-
levant to ask what in detail is native Icelandic and what is due to
foreign influence.
Of more interest is the fourth supposition: namely men familiar
with native traditions as well as with foreign literature. During the
middle ages in many European countries there were only few links
between folk traditions and written literature. On the continent edu-
cation and knowledge of literature was attached to monasteries. The
language spoken there was Latin, but there is some evidence that clerics
also used older traditions of oral literature. The epic poem Waltharius
manu fortis was created by a clergyman, and is based on older heroic
tales; but language and form of the poem are Latin, not German. On
the continent the reshaping of old oral traditions in written literature
remains an exception. Telling a story or singing a lay is one thing;
writing it down another. The ‘upper class’ of clergymen in the famous
monasteries, where scholarship and literature flourished, was a kind
of intemational élite.
Conditions in Iceland were quite different. Christianization was no
intemiption, neither in tradition nor in the social stmcture of the
country. The leading families in pagan times were to a large extent
the leading families during the first Christian centuries too. Educa-
tion, higher leaming and historical or literary knowledge were not
necessarily attached to the monasteries, as Ari or the Oddaverjar
prove. And on the other hand clerics like Karl Jónsson of Þingeyrar
also wrote in Icelandic.
Obviously there was no gap between leamed laymen and clerics on
the one side, common people on the other. The number of inhabitants
and the non-hierarchic stmcture of society may have favoured these
conditions.
Nevertheless it is astonishing that these men writing works like
some of the earlier konungaspgur or íslendingasogur did not use Latin
as historians and chroniclers did on the continent; instead of it they
used their vemacular language and obviously tried to combine tradi-
tional themes and formal tendencies with their literary experience.
Gripla 12