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scholarship viewed saga genres evolutionarily and hierarchically (with
classical Íslendingasögur representing a golden age of saga production in
the thirteenth century, and fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur reflecting the
literary decline of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the consensus
increasingly is that different sub-groups of the Icelandic saga developed
contemporaneously and continued to interact with one another.130 My
analysis therefore uses these scholarly sub-groupings loosely, to point to
areas of difference and similarity in the presentation of stones across a
wide range of sagas. The flexibility of stones as a motif across sagas is sug-
gestive of the “multimodal” and open nature of the genre of the medieval
saga at large, in which there is varied interaction and permeability between
different literary “sub-groups.”131
There are multiple traditions concerning the use of propertied stones
in saga literature. These traditions are informed by what appear to be ver-
nacular concepts of healing stones and learned, continental interest in the
diverse virtues of stones, as codified textually in lapidaries.132 Stones vary
in their properties (stones can heal, harm, bring victory, protect the body
from external injury, render the user invisible or facilitate clairvoyance
etc.), just as they vary in their operation (applied directly to wounds, worn
around the neck etc.).
In Íslendingasögur, stones are used for therapeutic and prophylactic pur-
poses. Often, these stones are lyfsteinar (as in Kormáks saga and Laxdœla
saga), associated with specific swords and bearing curative properties that
apply only to wounds inflicted by the swords to which they belong.133
However, we do also see stones with protective functions, worn round the
involved in dating Íslendingasögur, see Dating the Sagas, ed. by Else Mundal (Copenhagen:
Museum Tusculanum, 2013).
130 Clunies Ross, Cambridge Introduction, 70; Bampi, “Genre,” 7.
131 On the term multimodality in the context of genre, see especially Sif Rikhardsottir,
“Hybridity,” 34–41; Bampi, “Genre,” 7, and Clunies Ross, Cambridge Introduction, 70.
132 While this section is focused on stones in saga literature, it is nonetheless interesting to
note that an additional tradition surrounding the use of stones is also preserved in eddic
poetry, where stones appear to be associated with the swearing of oaths (see Guðrúnarkviða
III, sts 3, 9, in Eddukvæði II, 362–63).
133 Kormáks saga in Vatnsdœla saga, Hallfreðar saga, Kormáks saga, Hrómundar þáttr halta,
Hrafns þáttr Guðrúnarsonar, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit 8 (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 1939), chs. 9, 12, 13; Laxdœla saga, chs. 57–58.
LAPIDARIES AND L Y F S T E I N A R