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READING FOR SAGA AUTHORSHIP 127
represented possible and not actual events to their audience, and, as there was
relatively little social change between the saga and writing ages, the sagas pro-
vide an accurate portrait of medieval Icelandic society, at least until the civil
disturbances of the early 1200s. While there is a familiar circularity to this
thesis – after all, our evidence for the difference between the saga and writing
ages comes entirely from the writing age — the case for significant social con-
tinuity is more compelling than a modern reader’s assumption that the sagas
take a largely ironic view of the ethical standards embodied in them.7
And yet the sagas are historical novels of a kind and in no way blind to the
historical differences to which they give witness (see Harris 1986). When they
feel the need, saga authors carefully explain differences between the worlds of
their characters and their intended audience. In this respect, the authors of
Gísla saga Súrssonar and Eyrbyggja saga are conspicuously helpful, the
former interested in the difference of past ethical values and engaged in a
‘sympathetic effort to investigate their meaning and limits in concrete dra-
matic situations’ (Vésteinn Ólason 1998:174),8 the latter an expert story-col-
lector who builds a region’s history out of folk lore and ghost stories, bio-
graphies of leading figures, genealogical information, and histories of well-
known disputes. For example, for all it tells us about competition for land,
Eyrbyggja saga’s account of the elaborate means by which Snorri goði ac-
quires the Helgafell farm functions, primarily, as a humorous story that adds
Geertz’ concept of performance (1993: esp. 131-34). Bauman, like the other scholars noted,
attributes the beginning of anthropological approaches to the sagas to Turner’s 1971 essay.
7 On the vexed question of defining the differences between the Sturlung Age and early Ice-
land, see esp. Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1953; Byock 1986; Miller 1990:40, 319; Jónas Kristjáns-
son 1998; Clover 1985:233; Clunies Ross 1994:675.
8 In what seems to be a refutation of the drive in the 1970s and 1980s to read for strong
thirteenth century moral statements in the sagas, Vésteinn Ólason insists that ‘efforts to
transform the sagas into …. parables or moral tales, almost always end up obfuscating what
matters most and diminishing the artistic and emotional impact of the works” (1998:10-11).
On Bakhtinian readings of medieval Icelandic literature, see Würth 2000 and, of medieval
texts more generally, see Farrell 1995. Cf. Vilhjálmur Árnason’s approach as stated in his
study of morality and social structures in the sagas (1985, 1991). He discusses the application
of romance, humanist, and sociological approaches to the question (1991: esp. 157-160), and
favours an approach which is directed towards studying the ethical power of social institu-
tions to which individuals in the saga belong (163-164), the basis, that is, of the ‘sociomoral
conflict which is of the essence of the sagas’ (164). On the sagas’ historical stance, see also
Bagge 1992: esp. 63-64, and 1991: 30. On the saga authors’ recognition of changing ethical
landscapes, see also Sayers 1996; Lönnroth 1969; Schach 1982; Allen:91-96. Regarding the
critical reception of the Gísla saga Súrssonar, see esp. Sørensen 1986; Andersson 1968; and
Vésteinn Ólason 1999 and 1998:167-174.