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to bodily health. A belief or interest in lithotherapy perdured in various
forms and to various degrees from the pre-Christian period well into the
sixteenth century, where we find a reference to a stone that eases childbirth
in an inventory list of the cathedral church at Hólar.123
Propertied stones in Íslendingasögur, Fornaldarsögur and Riddarasögur
I now discuss the various properties of stones in sagas grouped within the
sub-genres of Íslendingasögur, fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur. These sub-
genres belong to a post-medieval classificatory system,124 whose validity
has come under scrutiny in recent years.125 While, as Massimiliano Bampi
suggests, the widespread employment of these categories in research evi-
dences their heuristic value,126 the taxonomy is nonetheless limited in
its rigidity127 and its retrospectivity.128 The problem of genre overlaps
with the issue of proposed chronologies of Icelandic saga production. It
is particularly difficult to date saga texts, both due to the possibility that
earlier versions of sagas may have existed in written or oral form, and
due to the nature of the surviving manuscript evidence.129 Where earlier
123 Jón Steffensen, “Aspects,” 195–96.
124 This taxonomy is based largely around distinctions in texts’ geographical settings,
chronologies and subject matters. See Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction
to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 72–3;
Dale Kedwards, “Geography,” A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, ed. by
Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir (Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 2020) 127–44; Torfi H. Tulinius, “Time and Space,” A Critical Companion,
145–60.
125 See, e.g., Judy Quinn et al., “Interrogating Genre in the Fornaldarsögur: Round-Table
Discussion,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 2 (2005): 275–96; Clunies Ross, Cambridge
Introduction, 13–36; Massimiliano Bampi, “Genre,” The Routledge Research Companion to
the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, ed by. Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (London:
Routledge, 2017), 1–11; Bampi, Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir (eds), A Critical
Companion.
126 Bampi, “Genre,” 5.
127 Since it does not allow for the hybridity of those sagas which appear to defy generic
distinction within this system. See Sif Rikhardsdottir, “Hybridity,” A Critical Companion,
31–46.
128 E.g., the majority of the labels we give to these sub-groupings are not attested in medieval
sources, just as the compositional criteria we use to distinguish distinct generic identities
are constructed by modern scholars.
129 There are very few manuscripts of sagas pre-dating the thirteenth century, with the
majority of works extant solely in manuscripts dating to the second half of the fourteenth
century or later (Clunies Ross, Cambridge Introduction, 57–8). On approaches to and issues