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characterisation, especially the relationship between character and success.26
For example, Bagge considers Snorri’s biography of Saint Óláfr (in Óláfs saga
helga) as an integration of persuasive tools drawn from the world of literature
and of ethics, whereby stranding and scene shifting are combined to heighten
both coherence and the possibility of audience empathy or distaste (for ex-
ample, Bagge 1991:42).27
A number of objections can be made to assuming that there are echoes of
saga authors’ interests in the speech and action of their characters. Firstly, saga
characters often inhabit a very different social context to saga authors, and are
confronted with choices which an author must only be able to imagine. Such
an author may never be forced to decide on whether to accept a sentence of
outlawry or go into hiding in the Icelandic highlands. This, in itself, does not
constitute an obstacle for secondary authorship, as I am not asking whether
the lived reality of early Icelanders or of Scandinavian kings and earls was the
same as that of medieval Icelandic authors. Even if that were the case, we would
still have to avoid any automatic correlation of outlook between characters and
authors. Rather, the aim here is to show that saga authors thematised represen-
tation and interpretation as a stage in recognising and reaching across such
distances of time and place.
A second objection, and one that often lies behind structural or formal
readings of sagas, is that we ought not to exaggerate the individual creativity
behind saga characterisation. This argument is based on two sensible proposi-
tions: firstly, that saga authors were often the inheritors of traditions about
figures of the past, and so may not have had much in the way of creative free-
way that directly seems intended to obscure it” (1996:43; see also Bagge 1993). These his-
torians are active in promoting particular points view and, as is suggested by the combined
structuralist/social analyses done in the field (e.g., Lönnroth 1976), Icelandic authors were
not immune to European influence or a medieval tendency to be heavy-handed in pushing a
particular bias, ethical point of view, or to writing with a distinct aim in mind (e.g., 1996: 91-
93 in relation to Sturla Þórðarson’s authorship, in 1265, of Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar). In
this regard, the sagas are not a special case; the objective veil created by saga style is often
very thin indeed (Lönnroth 1970; Schach 1970a; Whaley 2000). Especially in later works,
saga authors are capable of taking a morally instructive point of view (Vésteinn Ólason
1998:180-86).
26 See also the character-basis of historical writing in Morkinskinna; as Andersson and Gade
observe, their careers are described ‘less in terms of political history as in terms of character
study”’(2; see also 62-63 for Andersson and Gade’s discussion of reflexive literary comments
in Morkinskinna).
27 Cf. the approach to medieval historiography in Wallace-Hadrill 1981: esp. 46 and 54-57.