Gripla - 20.12.2016, Síða 52

GRIPLA52
diversity that manuscripts of the same work display is placed under greater
scrutiny, as is the nature of the unique physical and textual features of
individual manuscripts.2 Such approaches result in new literary- and socio-
historical perspectives and appreciation of, for example, the engagement
of scribes and readers with the texts and books that passed through their
hands, the potential of individual works for rewriting and reinterpretation
(as well as a more nuanced understanding of what external factors might
have shaped these processes), and the reciprocal influence and relationship
between manuscript culture and print culture.
another key material context as far as questions about the origins and
transmission of the Íslendingasögur are concerned is the Icelandic landscape.
the natural, topographical contours of the previously uninhabited land,
together with the settlement patterns of those who colonised the island
from the late ninth century onwards, were an important source of inspira-
tion for the composition of narratives about these first settlers and their
descendants – first orally articulated, and later set down in written form.
Equally, the landscape (and evidence for settlement and life in and around
it such as place-names and man-made structures) was a crucial vehicle for
the transmission of these narratives, alongside the parchment and paper
manuscripts that were produced and circulated from the thirteenth century
up until the early twentieth century.
the aim of this article is to attempt to bring these two material contexts
for the transmission and reception of the Íslendingasögur together, and to
emphasise the simultaneous and equal importance of both manuscript and
landscape contexts for the continuity that might be said to be one of the
hallmarks of this genre’s transmission over time. Such a consideration of
Icelandic landscapes as a medium for transmission alongside the parchment
and paper tradition might be seen as a natural extension of the ‘material
turn’ that has shaped recent approaches to medieval Icelandic literature.
2 See, e.g., Emily Lethbridge, ‘Gísla saga Súrssonar: textual Variation, Editorial Construc-
tions, and Critical Interpretations,’ in Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability, and
Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature, ed. Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge
(odense: Syddansk university Press, 2010), 123–52 (and other essays in the same volume)
and ‘authors and anonymity, texts and their Contexts: the Case of Eggertsbók,’ in
Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages, ed. Else Mundal, Slavica rankovic and Ingvil Budal
(toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2012), 343–64; Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir,
‘Expanding Horizons: recent trends in old norse-Icelandic Manuscript Studies,’ New
Medieval Literatures 14 (2012): 203–23.