Gripla - 20.12.2007, Qupperneq 11

THE FANTASTIC ELEMENT
2 My ideas about the development of the writing of Íslendingasögur in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries are presented and argued in my Dialogues with the Viking Age, see esp.
pp. 211-20. In Íslensk bókmenntasaga, vol II, p. 42, I have attempted a grouping according to
date, although with considerable overlappings between the groups. More precise datings of
twelfth and thirteenth century saga writing is attempted in Theodore M. Andersson’s The
Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180-1280).
however, exaggerations may also be of a comic nature and even turn into
parody; in such cases ‘fantastic’ is hardly an appropriate term. This distinction
is relevant with regard to some late sagas. Without making any further distinc-
tions I shall say only that I will take into account both the supernatural cate-
gory and the category of fantastic exaggeration when I discuss the fantastic
element in the sagas. I shall also point out related characteristics in individual
sagas, which in my opinion are likely to be parody and where the supernatural
and the exaggerated consequently have a different function from the one they
have in fantastic tales, but in these cases it may be controversial whether a
narrative is a parody or not.
The second part of my title, ‘fourteenth century Íslendingasögur’, is not
altogether unproblematic either. I have chosen to deal with sagas that are com-
monly thought to have been composed after 1300 in the form in which they
are preserved. I shall rely mainly upon Íslenzk fornrit for the datings, not be-
cause I think they are necessarily always right, but I think they are sufficient-
ly exact for my practical purpose. I have also decided to include only what is
named saga in these editions, although several þættir could be called sagas,
and some (or at least one) of these sagas could by called a þáttr. Let me say
also that the year 1300, the turn of a century, is obviously chosen for practical
reasons. There are fantastic elements present in the sagas all through the
thirteenth century, and in all fourteenth century sagas there are ‘realistic’ or
‘historical’ elements – I am here referring to a historical mode of writing
rather than to ‘historical’ in the sense of ‘what really happened’. I shall main-
tain, however, that in the years, say, 1270-1310, changes were taking place in
saga writing which had as a result that as a whole the fourteenth century sagas
are different from the thirteenth century sagas. There is continuation but there
is also change.2
There is no doubt that one cause of these changes in literature is changes in
society; on the surface of the texts this is revealed by deviance from the stan-
dard image of the functioning of the judicial system, in references to com-
monwealth law, in the use of terms like ‘lƒgmaðr’ instead of ‘lƒgsƒgumaðr’,
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