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Not only is the setting of the saga regionally defined but also, to the
extent knowable, the saga was written and rewritten in the same geo-
graphic area where it was set.40 there is also little doubt, given the lack
of parallels in Landnámabók, that a long-standing oral tradition about a
carpenter in Skagafjörður inspired the written saga; even the Íslenzk
fornrit editors acknowledge that.41 And the rímur tradition was similarly
localized in its transmission history.42
Below, the effect this close contextual relationship with its local area
could have on the reception of the text is analyzed. this method requires
close attendance to place-names and landscape features in the text, and
mapping those locations alongside the development of the narrative. Such a
hermeneutics mimics the mental process which the local intended recipient
audience, themselves intimately familiar with the landscape, would have
undergone whenever they were listening or reading the saga. Knowledge
of place brings a heretofore unacknowledged political complexity and rich-
ness to the Complete version of Þórðar saga hreðu.
6. Mapping as Method
as a method for understanding the rhetorical aim of a work of literature
for its author and its reception by the intended audience, franco Moretti
suggests a rigorous use of mapping.43 In his methodology, and for other
literary scholars interested in issues of textual representation of place and
space, what is important to note is that the real physical space referenced
in a textual story influences the readers’ interpretation of a text constantly
and subconsciously. the reader plots the action described in a narrative fic-
tion against their real-world knowledge of place. Scholars can replicate this
mental process by marking onto a real geographic map places mentioned in
40 a full discussion of the manuscripts and their probable dating is found in Ward, “nested
narrative,” 23–26. Given the concentration of manuscript production areas in the north-
west of Iceland, such an overlap is not unexpected.
41 Jóhannes Halldórsson,“formáli,” liii.
42 Kuhn, “Þórðr hreða.”
43 franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel (London, new York: Verso, 1998); see also
Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary Histories (London, new York:
Verso, 2005).
COMPLETING Þ Ó R Ð A R S A G A H R E Ð U