Gripla - 2022, Síða 120

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closely associated in Norse tradition) would have shaped the portrayal of
dwarves in Icelandic literature.12
My analysis takes its cue in part from both these researchers: like
Schreck, I consider the learned lapidary tradition alongside indigenous saga
literature, and like Mayburd, I am particularly interested in medieval ideas
of agency and materiality spanning the bounds of the human and non-
human. Where Schreck focuses on riddarasögur, I broaden my scope to
include other saga sub-genres (Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur).13 Where
Mayburd outlines medieval scholastic debates concerning the properties
of stones without analysing lapidary material extant in Iceland itself, I
provide a summary of the contents of an Old Norse lapidary text from a
fourteenth-century Icelandic manuscript (AM 194 8vo).14
Beyond the lapidary tradition, researchers have also explored the ap-
pearance of powerful stones, and specifically lyfsteinar (healing stones),
in saga literature. Rafael García Pérez examines the etymology and tran-
scription of the ON noun lyfsteinn, demonstrating how the term originally
referred to a medicinal stone (where lyf derives from PGmc *lubja (herb,
potion)).15 Lyfsteinn was gradually reinterpreted via false etymology as
a “life-stone,” becoming synonymous with the Mod. Icelandic lífsteinn
of a later tradition. Brenda Prehal examines quartz/white pebbles in the
archaeological and literary record as one of several case studies aimed
at expounding the value of reintegrating archaeological theory with the
12 Mayburd, “Between a Rock and a Soft Place: The Materiality of Old Norse Dwarves and
Paranormal Ecologies in Fornaldarsögur,” Supernatural Encounters in Old Norse Literature
and Tradition, ed. by Daniel Sävborg and Karen Bek-Pedersen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018),
189–214.
13 On the concept of genre as a critical tool for Old Norse studies, as well as the validity of
our current generic categories for analysing Old Norse texts, see below.
14 AM 194 8vo was written in Western Iceland in 1387, according to a scribal interjection
on fol. 33v (Margaret Cormack, “The ‘Holy Bishop Licius’ in AM 194 8vo,” Opuscula
11 (2003): 188–92). This manuscript is chiefly discussed by scholars interested in the
itinerary-text it contains, Leiðarvísir (see, e.g., Arngrímur Vídalín, “Óláfr Ormsson’s
Leiðarvísir and its Context: The Fourteenth-Century Text of a Supposed Twelfth-Century
Itinerary,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 117.2 (2018): 212–34).
15 “Piedras que curan e incluso resucitan a los muertos: traducción al inglés, francés y español
del sustantivo lyfsteinn en dos textos en antiguo nórdico (Kormáks saga y Göngu-Hrólfs
saga),” Hermeneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación 21 (2019): 238.