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on the basis of older ones, reading aloud from manuscript or printed texts
of the Íslendingasögur, or retelling parts of the narratives in other contexts
or via other media) makes this situation of continuous reception via the
landscape possible. as such, the sagas are a good example of what the ge-
ographer Edward Soja has called “real-and-imagined places”.49
Many hundreds of place-names are mentioned in the sagas. Sometimes,
the same place is mentioned in several sagas, though in different narrative
contexts; at other times, a place is named only once, in one saga. the great
bulk of these place-names still exist and are in use today which means
that – at first glance anyway – matching places named in the sagas with
places in the Icelandic landscape that have the same name today is relatively
straightforward, even dangerously seductive and compelling, with the
possibilities for the one-to-one alignment of saga-places and ‘real-world’
places being hard to resist and influenced by political, ideological and eco-
nomic factors.50 Indeed, as has already been mentioned, the appearance of
continuity with regard to the landscape, together with the impression of
topographical accuracy conveyed by the sagas, is one of the features that
contributes towards their famous sense of realism and verisimilitude, and
has been the subject of attention by critics and editors.51 In telling and
49 Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. oxford: Blackwell,
1996.
50 See further Lethbridge and Hartman, ‘the Initiative Inscribing Environmental Memory
in the Icelandic Sagas and the Project Icelandic Saga Map’, and Ólafur rastrick and
Valdi mar Tr. Hafstein, eds, Menningararfur á Íslandi. Greining og gagnrýni (reykjavík:
Háskólaútgáfan, 2015).
51 Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða has been a key saga in this respect, with places and place-names in
it being scrutinised by editors of the saga and other literary-historical critics arguing either
for the saga’s historical veracity or its lack of it. See, e.g. Jón Jóhannesson, Introduction
to Austfirðinga sögur, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Íslenzk fornrit, vol. 11 (reykjavík: Hið ís-
lenzka fornritafélag, 1950); E. V. Gordon, ‘on Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða,’ Medium Ævum
8 (1939): 1–32; Sigurður nordal, Hrafnkatla (reykjavík: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja, 1940); o.
D. Macrae-Gibson, ‘the topography of Hrafnkels saga,’ Saga-Book of the Viking Society
19 (1974–77): 239–63; Jón Hnefill aðalsteinsson, ‘Jökuldalsmenn og Hallfreðargata. um
staðfræði Hrafnkels sögu freysgoða,’ Múlaþing 18 (1991): 12–28 and ‘freyfaxahamarr,’
Skáldskaparmál 4 (1997): 238–53; Páll Pálsson, ‘Er reykjasel Hrafnkelssögu fundið?’
Múlaþing 30 (2003): 84–85. In the case of Hrafnkels saga, the realism and detail with which
journeys around the landscape are portrayed, for example, persuaded critics to believe it
must be based on historical events and characters whose stories had been passed down
orally and then put into written form.
THE ICELANDIC SAGAS AND SAGA LANDSCAPES