Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 169
169
Nowhere did the process of cultural appropriation happen more thor
oughly, it seems, than in Iceland. We often tend to forget that medieval
Icelandic written textual culture is largely a phenomenon of the later
Middle Ages, and seems not to have taken off until the twelfth century.
Thus we need to see it in the context of the vigorous textuality, both in
Latin and the various european vernaculars, that flourished throughout
Western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which led to
many new developments in textual cultures and communities of that peri
od. Within the field of literature, new vernacular genres evolved, many in
prose, such as the romance and the chronicle, and these provide an interest
ing parallel to the development of the prose saga, both chronologically and
in terms of compositional technique (cf. Clover 1982; torfi tulinius
2009). this does not mean that the Icelandic saga genre is a clone of the
romance or the prose chronicle; clearly, it has its own very distinctive char
acter and ideology and its own way of memorialising the past. However,
the rise of the Icelandic saga shortly after the rise of new genres of histori
cal writing and the roman courtois is unlikely to be fortuitous; the Zeitgeist
reached to Norway and to Iceland and Icelandic creativity responded with
its own version of historicism and memorialising of both past and
present.
We can see something similar taking place in the field of poetry. Here,
however, vernacular poetry occupied the high social and intellectual ground
in indigenous society in both Norway and Iceland, going back as far as we
have any evidence. Poetry in eddic measures was traditionally a vehicle for
the expression of preChristian religious thought and myth; poetry in
skaldic measures was the vehicle for expressing encomia in honour of rul
ers in Norway and other parts of the Norse world, while in Iceland it
seems to have taken on other functions in addition, yet still maintained its
socially privileged position. Men of high status, or those who composed
for them, continued to produce verse in skaldic measures on secular sub
jects well into the thirteenth century in Iceland (Guðrún Nordal 2001,
117–195), but it was the appropriation of Christian subjects and themes
that really shows how far and how thoroughly the vernacular and the lati
nate were intertwined in the poetic medium both thematically and stylisti
cally. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries vernacular Christian poetry
became a major vehicle for devotional piety, as witnessed by the composi
MeDIevAL ICeLAnDIC teXtuAL CuLtuRe