Saga - 1996, Page 352

350
RITFREGNIR
romances is slight, and at first sight they seem to be written only to enter
tain. Increasingly, however, scholars have begun to uncover the authors
contemporary political agenda under the surface.
Focusing primarily on the Icelandic legendary sagas, Torfi TulimuS
coins the analogous term, „the matter of the North", and argues that the
authors of this largely neglected genre composed their stories for reasons
similar to those that inspired the French authors. In the process the
Icelandic authors developed a new narrative genre, the saga. Shifting the
geographic setting to the north but retaining a slight content of local his
tory in the manner of the French, Roman, and Arthurian romances, the
northem stories were equally intended primarily as entertainment. Ac
cording to Torfi, they also reveal contemporary concems while narratmg
largely fictional material. His second focus is therefore the emergence ^
fiction in Icelandic literature during the thirteenth century, a theme
carries from the fortmldarsögur to the sagas of Icelanders exemphfied m
Egils saga. This sequence reveals his conviction that the oldest fornaldar
sögur existed in some form by the first decades of the thirteenth centuO'
and were the inspiration for the subsequent emergence of the íslendinga
sögur. Furthermore, although the fictional element is less prominent i
the latter narratives than in the former, contemporary concems ace
revealed in both. The two genres can therefore be illuminated by c
samtíðarsögur.
This ambitious program is carried out in the book's elegant dispositmn
A first part, Enjeux (the stakes), presents the manuscript history ^
eight sagas chosen, offers a methodological introduction to narratologlC
analysis, and discusses the emergence of fiction in Icelandic Iiterature-
of the
Combined with the resumés of the sagas' content found in the appcnd'x'
this part constitutes less than a third of the book. The largest third lS
devoted to an analysis of six legendary sagas and the last third treats
Jómsvíkinga saga and Egils saga. ^
Of cmcial importance for the validity of Torfi's thesis is his choice
individual narratives. If the legendary sagas inspired the sagas of Ice
landers, he clearly needs to demonstrate that the former genre predates
the latter. In itself this is a provocative idea. If he wants to demonstraUj
that both genres are influenced by contemporary concerns - a gene ,
theory developed by modern literary critics for other literature - he nee
to correlate them with the thirteenth century, a period of Icelandic his
for which information is plentiful, rather than the fourteenth century
when contemporary historical sources are scarce but to which the cre
ation of the legendary sagas has normally been credited. In other wo
Torfi's thesis is conditioned by the Iogic of the evidence.
From the large group of fornaldarsögur Torfi selects four which
considers to be among the oldest and which came to define the genre'