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well as the two other romances) have until very recently received scant
scholarly attention, and there is little concrete evidence to date their com-
position more precisely than to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries.32
Discussion about authorship and dating is often stimulating and can il-
luminate the cultural and literary milieu out of which texts emerged, but
the absence of medieval manuscript witnesses, and the fluidity of medieval
texts, can, in many cases, present further challenges. In medieval Iceland,
literary texts were frequently adapted and rewritten to fulfill the tastes and
needs of different redactors and audiences.33 Several of the sagas in AM
152 fol. are preserved in their longer redactions, and, in many cases, these
versions represent the first extant text. these longer redactions have been
reworked from their shorter versions, showing significant variation at a
textual, episodic, and even ideological level; they are prime examples of
the regenerative process that literary texts underwent in the late medieval
period.34
Like many other late medieval manuscripts, AM 152 fol. contains sagas
from several genres, which, however, derive from the same literary tradi-
32 Older scholars’ dating of sagas to periods much earlier than their first extant manuscript
witnesses using stylistic evidence is often based on circular arguments that do not stand up
to scrutiny, and I will thus not rely on these. for general bibliography of the indigenous
romances, including manuscripts, see Marianne E. Kalinke and P. M. Mitchell, Bibliography
of Old Norse-Icelandic Romances, Islandica, vol. 44 (Ithaca: Cornell university Press, 1985);
note that AM 152 fol. is misdated to the fifteenth century. Ectors saga’s oldest manuscripts
are from 1400–1500, while Sigurðar saga þǫgla’s short redaction is found in AM 596 4to,
dated to 1350–1400. Þórðar saga hreðu has a complicated preservation history and its
redactions are very unlike each other, but the AM 152 fol. redaction’s oldest witness is
AM 551 d β 4to (ca. 1400); see introduction to Þórðar saga hreðu, in Kjalnesinga saga, ed.
Jóhannes Halldórsson, Íslenzk fornrit, vol. 14 (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag,
1959), lvi.
33 Ǫrvar-Odds saga is extant in three medieval redactions and has been a frequent subject
of discussion about textual variation and literary culture in the medieval period, see e.g.
Stephen A. Mitchell, Heroic Sagas and Ballads (Ithaca, Cornell university Press, 1991),
109–113; orning, ‘Ǫrvar-oddr og senmiddelalderens,’ 291–321.
34 Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar’s longer version first appears in a fragment from ca. 1400; at
some point in the fourteenth century, the saga was lengthened and reworked from a slightly
different ideological point of view, as I will discuss in a forthcoming article. for discussion
about Flóvents saga’s two redactions, see introduction to Fornsögur Sudrlanda. Magus saga
jarls, Konraðs saga, Bærings saga, Flovents saga, Bevers saga, ed. gustaf Cederschiöld (Lund:
Berlings, 1884), cxciii–ccxv, and for Sigurðar saga þǫgla’s redactions, see introduction
to Sigurðar saga þỏgla. The Shorter Redaction. Edited from AM 596 4to, ed. M.J. Driscoll
(reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, 1992), lxxxi–cxxxiii.
IDEoLogY AnD IDEntItY In LAtE MEDIEVAL WESt ICELAnD