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through genealogical emendations or overt political echoes,35 but rather in
the specific place-names mentioned in the saga. as a generic mode, land-
scape’s relationship to text has been only loosely discussed. torfi tulinius
notes that there seems to be a different tone when a saga is taking place
in Iceland versus when it is not36 and Jürg Glauser has argued that place-
names can have enduring efficacy in linking the contemporary audience to
the saga narrative: “By narrative means, a place-name is thus established
to whose literary description the fiction immediately following it can refer
repeatedly … [this] transformation of nature into culture … forms a trope
of memory.”37 as Pierre nora demonstrates, place is a strong mnemonic,
and it is capable of generating and regenerating story.38 In this paper, the
mnemonic link established by places is offered as serving in the same way
as genealogies, to bridge the gap between the time period of the sagas and
the audience’s own experiences.
Þórðar saga hreðu, despite being named for a stereotypical hero, is very
localized: once the action of the saga arrives in northern Iceland from
norway, it stays in Miðfjörður and Skagafjörður with only short forays
into nearby Eyjafjörður and one into Borgarfjörður. This is not a saga
sweeping all over Iceland or following the exploits of the hero to kingdoms
abroad and back to Iceland again. as a carpenter involved in building many
prominent halls and ferry systems in the area, Þórður is an important
shaper of the built landscape and in that sense integral to the region.39
35 Cf torfi tulinius, “Political Echoes: reading Eyrbyggja Saga in Light of Contemporary
Conflicts,” in Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of
Margaret Clunies Ross, eds. Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and tarrin Wills (turnhout: Brepols
2007), 49–62.
36 torfi tulinius, “Landafræði og flokkun fornsagna,” Skáldskaparmál 1 (1990): 142–56.
37 Jürg Glauser, “Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir as the Literary represen tations
of a new Social Space,” trans. John Clifton-Everest, in Old Icleandic Literature and Society,
ed. Margaret Clunies ross (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2000), 209.
38 Pierre nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc roude-
bush. Representations 26 (Spring, 1989): 7–24.
39 the built landscape – roads, buildings, and other architecture – is distinguished from
the natural landscape in as much as it is the product of human action. this is however a
rel ative dichotomy, since even areas designated as “wilderness” are, in the act of naming,
subjected to shaping by human minds. Ármann Jakobsson has discussed this in regard to
Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss in “the Good, the Bad, and the ugly: Giants in Barðar saga,” in
The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature. Sagas and the British Isles. Preprint Papers
of the 13th International Saga Conference, Durham and York 6th–12th August 2006, ed. John
McKinnell et al. (Durham: Centre for Medieval and renaissance Studies, 2006).