Gripla - 20.12.2016, Qupperneq 70

GRIPLA70
listening or reading, much of the power of these narratives resides in their
precise locatedness around Iceland.52
the oral anecdotes that were worked into written narratives were set in
the landscapes in which the tellers/authors and audiences lived and moved
around themselves. Some degree of topographic faithfulness was, presum-
ably, a requisite in order for these narratives to be plausible, not least serv-
ing as a kind of local history. But there must always have been room for
exaggeration or elaboration, too, with the landscape serving the dramatic
requirements of plot, even if for the most part, the landscape stage of these
narratives was familiar and realistic.53 the section in Grettis saga which
tells of Grettir’s sojourn in the mythical and lush valley of Þórisdalur is
one example of a possible liberty taken with the ‘real’ landscapes that the
author(s) and audiences of Grettis saga would have known.54
In many cases, farms have stood on the same site for over a millennium
and continuity can be assumed both with regard to place-names and the
general contours of the landscapes. But in other cases, the situation is more
complicated: place-names have been changed over time, been lost or moved
around as settlements were abandoned and, sometimes, subsequently reset-
tled at a later point in time.55 Moreover, the Icelandic landscapes have also
changed dramatically in various ways over the centuries since the time of
the settlement in the late ninth century, both as a result of natural events
(e.g. volcanic eruptions and glacial floods) and human impact.56 Both the
52 See David Henige, ‘“this Is the Place”: Putting the Past on the Map,’ Journal of Historical
Geography 33 (2007): 237–53 on the power of the ‘this is the place’ dynamic or trope.
53 See Schach, ‘the anticipatory Literary Setting’ and Wyatt, ‘the Landscape of the Icelandic
Sagas’ on the narrative rhetoric of landscape in the Íslendingasögur.
54 See, e.g., Björn Ólafsson, ‘ferð í Þórisdal,’ Eimreiðin 24 (1918): 206–17; Ásgeir Magnús-
son, ‘Þórisdalur,’ Iðunn 15 (1931): 277–84; Jón Gíslason, ‘Sagan af því, hversu Þórisdalur er
fundinn,’ Blanda (1944–48): 333–55.
55 on changing settlement patterns in Hrafnkelsdalur, the valley where much of the action of
Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða takes place, see Sveinbjörn rafnsson, Byggðaleifar í Hrafnkelsdal og
á Brúardölum. Brot úr byggðasögu Íslands (reykjavík: rit Hins íslenska fornleifafélags, 1991)
and Stefán aðalsteinsson, ‘Bæjanöfn og bæjarrústir í Hrafnkelsdal,’ Múlaþing 31 (2004),
57–68, for example.
56 See, e.g., articles and further references in ramona Harrison and ruth a. Maher, eds,
Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic: A Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature
through Space and Time (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014).