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landscape archaeology and environmental history.7 for present purposes, it
might be noted that this idea entails, on the one hand, the notion of ‘read-
ing’ landscape as a physical entity in order to better understand its compo-
nent parts and thus navigate around it physically, and on the other hand,
the notion of landscape as a medium which preserves and even actively
communicates narrative, and thus enhances navigation both physically and
also culturally or ideologically.8
although new or material philological approaches to medieval Icelandic
literature and textual culture emphasise the anachronism inherent in look-
ing back to lost archetype manuscripts of ‘original’ saga texts, the idea of
the landscape itself as the original manuscript is a persuasive one – even if
the precise ‘text’ inscribed on it cannot be recovered. Indeed, if landscape
is to be seen and read as a manuscript, it is best regarded as a palimpsest
– a manuscript which is characterised by multiple stages and reuse, with
accretions of text building up over time, newer text being written over
older, scraped-away text.9 this analogy will be returned to in the ensuing
discussion about place-names in Íslendingasögur texts.
as is well known, Iceland was settled permanently and comprehen-
sively in the late ninth century though archaeological and environmental
research suggests that prior to this, the island may have been one of several
northern atlantic outposts that were used as temporary, seasonal bases
7 William Hoskins’s The Making of the English Landscape, first published in 1955, is key here
(toller fratrum, Dorset: Little toller Books, 2014, second edition). See also, more recently,
richard Muir, The New Reading the Landscape: Fieldwork in Landscape History (Exeter:
University of Exeter Press, 2000).
8 See, e.g., J. Duncan and n. Duncan, ‘(re)reading the Landscape,’ Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space 6 (1988): 117–26; W. Cronon, ‘a Place for Stories: nature, History,
and narrative,’ The Journal of American History 78 (1992): 1347–76; Keith H. Basso,
Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (albuquerque:
university of new Mexico Press, 1996).
9 this metaphor is common in landscape history: for an overview of scholarship, see oscar
aldred, ‘time for fluent Landscapes,’ in Conversations with Landscape, ed. Karl Bene-
diktsson and Katrín anna Lund (farnham: ashgate, 2010), at 69–70. aldred (69) cites
o. G. S. Crawford who, over sixty years ago in his book Archaeology in the Field (London:
Dent and Sons, 1953), set forth the idea that “the surface of England is a palimpsest,
a document that has been written on and erased over and over again” (at 51). the metaphor
of the story-layered landscape is employed by Carol Hoggart in a short article that explores
how Iceland was “mapped through association with human story” (‘a Layered Landscape:
How the family Sagas Mapped Medieval Iceland,’ Limina: A Journal of Historical and
Cultural Studies 16 (2010), 1).
THE ICELANDIC SAGAS AND SAGA LANDSCAPES