Gripla - 20.12.2016, Qupperneq 72

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often diverse, with Íslendingasögur copied alongside other sagas assigned
to the fornaldarsögur, riddarasögur or other saga genres, or other texts such
as exempla. Similarly, many of the post-medieval paper manuscripts which
contain Íslendingasögur texts also include texts from other genres, and ap-
pear to have been copied for the purpose of domestic entertainment and/
or edification: title-pages and scribal colophons in post-medieval paper
manuscripts (generally not present in medieval manuscripts) are evidence
for this.
the chronology according to which events are said to have happened
is the main structural organisational principle of the sagas, and modern
readings and literary-critical studies of the Íslendingasögur – shaped to a
significant degree by modern reading habits whereby texts are read on a
consecutive, chapter-by-chapter basis – have tended to read and analyse
them from start to end as whole units with introductory, middle, and con-
cluding sections. the publication of editions and translations of the sagas
divorced from their manuscript contexts, on a stand-alone, text-by-text
basis, also implicitly influences critical approaches to and interpretations of
sagas as individual, discrete narratives. the manuscript context of any sin-
gle text – that is, which texts it is copied alongside – has rarely been taken
into consideration in efforts to better understand how the sagas (or indeed
most other medieval Icelandic literary texts, perhaps with the exception
of skaldic poetry59) were interpreted or received over time in Iceland. the
company which any single text keeps within the covers of a manuscript can
have a significant impact on how that text might be read, which themes or
motifs, for example, might be foregrounded, and even the genre to which
a text might be assigned.60
Icelandic manuscripts were valuable possessions which were often
passed down from one generation of a family to the next and they played
a key role in the winter kvöldvaka tradition, from the medieval period
59 See further Guðrún Nordal, Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual
Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (toronto: university of toronto Press,
2001).
60 See Emily Lethbridge, ‘the Place of Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar in Eggertsbók, a Late
Medieval Icelandic Saga-Book,’ in Uppruni og þróun fornaldarsagna Norðurlanda; The Origins
and Development of the Legendary Sagas, ed. Ármann Jakobsson, agnete ney and annette
Lassen (reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2012), 375–403; Jóhanna Katrín friðriksdóttir,
‘Ideology and Identity in Late Medieval northwest Iceland: a Study of aM 152 fol.,’
Gripla 25 (2014): 87–128.