Gripla - 20.12.2006, Page 127

So I seemed to have arrived at this: doubtless
I have methods, but they begot themselves, in
which case I am only their proprietor, not
their father.
– Samuel L. Clemens, The Art of Authorship.
THERE is no Old Icelandic word with the modern associations of originality,
individual intellectual voice, artistic intention, and creativity that are generally
connoted by authorship.1 The terms used to describe saga writing in medieval
Iceland emphazise quite different values, such as the value of repeating, of
putting together, and of telling.2 Yet readers may be justified in finding au-
thorial voices in the sagas equivalent, in terms of creative design and historical
consciousness, to modern novelists. Many sagas, after all, are great artistic
achievements, combining dramatic intensity with social history and a national,
often international, outlook. My aim here is to support the reading of saga au-
thorship as a creative and interpretive act by connecting the methods char-
1 Consider, for example, the Shorter OED definition of an author as ‘the person who originates
or gives existence to anything’(134) and authorship as the ‘occupation or career as a writer of
books’ (134). This idea of authorship as a professional pursuit and one centred around the
creativity of the individual is generally attributed to the desire of authors in the eighteenth
century to make a living from their writing (see, for example, Jaszi 1991; Woodmansee 1984;
Saunders and Hunter 1991; Barthes 1977; and Foucault 1979).
2 Sverrir Tómasson discusses the Old Icelandic descriptors of what modern readers might
alternatively regard as either creative and individual acts of story-telling or the work of a
scribe. Noting the terms previously listed by M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij — rita (‘to write’),
skrifa (‘to write’), setja á bók (‘set in/on a book’), setja saman (‘to put together’), samsetja
(‘to put together’), segja fyrir (‘dictate’) — Sverrir Tómasson asks whether it is appropriate
for us to use the term author as we use it today to talk about Old Icelandic writing, telling,
and setting together (1988:182). For most, authorship has sufficed as an awkward fit for what
the saga authors do.
KÁRI GÍSLASON
READING FOR SAGA AUTHORSHIP.
A CHARACTER-BASED APPROACH
Gripla XVII (2006):125–152.