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the end of the eighteenth century, so the use of the fornaldarsögur as his-
tory was not to last much longer.30 When Carl Christian rafn publishes
a complete translation of them into Danish in 1822–1826 (second edition
1829–1830 to accompany what still remains the standard edition of the old
Icelandic texts), these narratives are identified not as history but as fiction
and classified as mythological and romantic sagas.31
5. The True History of Robinson Crusoe
the appearance in 1719 of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe marks a turn-
ing point in the quarrel between history and fiction. Defoe presented his
work as a true history, and equivocated when pressed about the fictionality
of the work.32 Robinson Crusoe was extraordinarily popular, especially in
Germany where there were numerous attempts to write robinson Crusoe-
like narratives, in effect challenging “[h]istory’s claim to the verifiable”
by writing narratives with “their own claim of historicity,” to use Everett
Zimmerman’s words.33 this activity culminated in the Wunderliche Fata
30 In Sweden by the middle of the eighteenth century, the enthusiasm for “Gothic” antiquities
had waned, so that when Yngvars saga víðförla was published in 1762 it was identified as
being edited from an Icelandic manuscript: Sagan om Ingwar Widtfarne och hans son Swen:
fran gamla Isländskan öfwersatt, och undersökning om ware runstenars alder, i anledning af
samma saga, samt företal om sagans trowärdighet; hwaruti de förr hos oss urgifna sagors wärde
tillika stadfästes; altsammans, till nordiska historiens och sprakets förbättring, ed. Nils Reinhold
Brocman (Stockholm: Lars Salvius, 1762). Brocman (1731–1770) was assesssor in the antik-
vitets arkivet in Stockholm.
31 Carl Christian Rafn, trans., Nordiske Kæmpe-Historier eller mythiske og romantiske Sagaer, 3
vols. (Copenhagen: H. f. Popp, 1821–1826); 2nd ed. under the title: Nordiske Fortids Sagaer,
efter den udgivne islandske eller gamle nordiske Grundskrift, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: H. f. Popp,
1829–1830); Carl Christian rafn, ed., Fornaldar sögur Nordrlanda eptir gömlum handritum,
3 vols. (Copenhagen: E. Popp, 1829–1830).
32 on these issues in Defoe’s work, see Maximillian E. novak, Realism, Myth, and History in
Defoe’s Fiction (Lincoln: university of nebraska Press, 1983); David Blewett, Defoe’s Art of
Fiction--robinson Crusoe, Moll flanders, Colonel Jack and roxana (toronto: university
of Toronto Press, 1979); and Mayer, History and the Early English Novel.
33 Everett Zimmerman, The Boundaries of Fiction: History and the Eighteenth-Century British
Novel (Ithaca: Cornell university Press, 1996), 236. See also Lennard J. Davis, Factual
Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press,
1996; first published 1983); William nelson, Fact or Fiction: The Dilemma of the Renaissance
Storyteller (Cambridge: Harvard university Press, 1973).
HALLDóR JAKOBSSON ON TRUTH AND FICTION