Gripla - 20.12.2009, Síða 171

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nous subject­matter and cultural attitudes and a style and structure to
match. Perhaps some of the less complex of the Íslendingasögur, such as
Droplaugarsona saga, might be thought to occupy such a position, or,
within the field of poetry, some of the royal encomia composed by tenth-
and eleventh­century Icelandic skalds, such as einarr Helgason skálaglamm
or Sigvatr Þórðarson, although even here arguments of foreign influence
could be adduced. At the other end of the continuum might lie Norwegian
and Icelandic works that are close translations of foreign originals, such as
various of the over one hundred saints’ lives translated mainly from Latin
(Widding, Bekker­nielsen and Shook 1963). yet such extreme categorisa­
tion is rather meaningless, as there are really very few, if any, medieval
Icelandic texts that can have been untouched by their relationship to the
world beyond Iceland, and even a close translation shows, in its new lin­
guistic dress, how cultural appropriation has taken place.
The fact is that, when Icelanders entered the world of medieval textual­
ity and manuscript culture, they necessarily became part of the wider medi­
eval European cultural world. This is manifested at a number of levels,
both textual and paratextual. By the term ‘paratextual’ is meant the cultural
attitudes that shaped people’s approach to composing particular kinds of
texts in the first place, whether these were for religious reasons or born of
the pressures of cultural recuperation of the past. Even though writers of
Icelandic saga literature developed their own ways of memorialising the
past, the whole project of saga writing can be seen as part of a pan-Europe­
an movement to place contemporary medieval society in relation both to
its legendary and historical indigenous past and to assert links to the still
prestigious culture of the ancient Graeco-Roman world.
one pointer to such paratextual influences is the actual choices Icelandic
translators made of the texts they decided to translate. of course, it is
likely that some kinds of texts were unavailable to them, but by and large
what has been translated probably reflects the interests of Icelandic society
and the branches of knowledge Icelanders found valuable or needed to
know. Outside the field of ecclesiastical literature, it is striking that works
of a historical kind dominate the list of known translations into medieval
Icelandic, ranging from Rómverja saga, based on Sallust and Lucan, through
the Chronicle of Pseudo­turpin and Karlamagnús saga, derived ultimately
from old french chansons de geste, to Breta sögur, an old norse version of
MeDIevAL ICeLAnDIC teXtuAL CuLtuRe