Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 356
354 GRIPLA
Nights, he explains, there is a simple and logical connection between an
individual’s character and actions. There is rarely any attempt made to
explain why one person is brave and another a coward. The characteriza-
tion is primarily built on one person telling his or her personal story to
another person. This clarifies why the works in question are structured
the way they are:
The appearance of a new character invariably involves the inter-
ruption of the preceding story, so that a new story, the one which
explains the “now I am here” of the new character, may be told to
us. A second story is enclosed within the first; this device is called
embedding.18
Todorov explains that this sort of interruption to the narrative is analogous
to subordinate clauses, using this complex German sentence to illustrate his
point: “Derjenige, der den Mann, der den Pfahl, der auf der Brücke, der
auf dem Weg, der nach Worms führt, liegt, steht, umgeworfen hat, anzeigt,
bekommt eine Belohnun.”19 The first few chapters of Ólafssaga can be il-
lustrated in a similar manner: “Ólafur, who listened to his father describe
his interactions with German merchants, met Þórhildur, who claimed her
parents were under a spell, when he was looking for his father’s sheep.”
In the chapter in question, Todorov primarily focuses on the structure
of The Thousand and One Nights, a large story collection thought to have
been compiled in eighth-century Persia or India, though parts of it date
much further back.20 A French reworking of the Arabic version was pub-
lished in France at the start of the eighteenth century, and its influence
quickly spread throughout Europe. An English translation was published
in 1714; a Danish translation followed in 1745; and pieces from these were
translated into Icelandic in Eiríkur Laxdal’s day.21 Like Ólafssaga, The
Thousand and One Nights is a third-person narrative, but most of the sto-
ries presented are embedded within the frame story of Shahrazãd’s conver-
18 Ibid., 70.
19 Ibid., 71.
20 On the complex history of The Thousand and One Nights and its reception in the West see
Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights. A Companion (London and Dublin: Bloomsbury, 2005).
21 Cf. Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir, “Middle Eastern Tales in Icelandic Tradition,” Narrative Culture
10/1 (2023): 151–73.