Gripla - 20.12.2007, Blaðsíða 12

GRIPLA
3 These terms are used by Theodore M. Andersson 2006.
etc. On a deeper level it can be seen in the reduced importance of feud and
power politics. Apart from Fljótsdæla saga and Svarfdæla saga, that are based
on older sagas, most of the sagas listed here are in a biographical mode; these
two can be characterized as regional. Hávarðar saga is closer to a feud saga
since it begins when the protagonist is already past his prime and describes
one killing and its consequences. The biographical saga was indeed not a
novelty in the fourteenth century. Many of the sagas that can make claims to
being early, such as the skald-sagas (including Egils saga), can be classified as
biographical, but the regional and feud sagas are the most characteristic thir-
teenth century Íslendingasögur, and it is significant that the biographical dom-
inates saga writing so strongly again in the last phase of the genre.3 The ex-
planation is, I believe, that the mechanism of feud and the issues at stake in
feud were no longer an important and highly relevant issue for the saga writers
and audiences in the fourteenth century when social and political conditions
were more stable than they were in the thirteenth century. The heroes in our
sagas usually face one adversary after the other, and the thread that connects
them is the person of the hero and his almost inconquerable strength; their
composition is therefore usually episodic.
The main subject of this article, the fantastic in late sagas, is very closely
connected to another subject, namely the interplay of modes and genres in
narrative literature. It must also be emphasized that fantastic elements are
present in many thirteenth century sagas, both early and late ones. Egils saga,
Eyrbyggja saga, Gísla saga, Laxdæla saga, Njáls saga and Vatnsdæla saga
are obvious examples. These sagas are so well known that there is no reason to
enumerate fantastic elements appearing in them, although the question will be
raised whether they are different from fantastic elements in later sagas or have
a different function. There are, however, many early sagas where the fantastic
plays only a modest role and appears mainly in a few legendary or folkloric
motifs, if at all. Here we could mention Bandamanna saga, Droplaugarsona
saga, Gunnlaugs saga, Hænsa-Þóris saga, Hrafnkels saga, Ljósvetninga saga,
Reykdæla saga, Valla-Ljóts saga, Víga-Glúms saga, Vopnfirðinga saga. The
boundaries are unclear, and I agree with those like Margaret Clunies Ross
(1997) who have said that the saga is modally mixed in this respect.
The importance of fantastic elements is very different from one saga to
another within the group under discussion. First a few fourteenth century
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