The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Síða 66

176
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING/SUMMER 1995
cal, rather than lists of names and biogra-
phies that are characteristic of earlier liter-
ary histories, fairly accurate on the whole,
but wrong in the details. There exists a kind
of a canonical picture of the saga literature;
the heroic past of the Eddaic poetry, the
12th century as the age of learning, the
golden age of classical saga writing in the
13th century, the decline into escapist ro-
mances in the 14th century, followed by the
final decline of saga writing. This picture
has of course been challenged in many ways
by a number of scholars over the decades,
but it remains to gather the new insights
into a new kind of synthesis. However, that
is far from easy, in fact impossible, and not
because of the skeptical modern literary
theories claiming the Active character of
all large historical syntheses. The problem
is that there is an unresolveable tension be-
tween the possibility of mapping the his-
torical development on the one side, and
generic definitions on the other. That is be-
cause the explosive literary activities from
the beginning until around 1400, were vari-
ous and manifold. Moreover, there are gaps
in the knowledge surrounding the practi-
cal circumstances of the literary produc-
tion. Therefore, establishing the historical
context is impossible without violating
reductionism with regard to genres, and
vice versa, an adequate treatment of the
genres separately cannot avoid neglect to
the large historical context of the literary
production as a whole.
The present volume deals with the gen-
res separately, although the classification has
been brought into accordance with the gen-
eral classification of medieval literature. The
treatment of how Icelandic literary life and
culture as a whole developed can however
not be judged until the other volumes have
appeared. On the other hand, the treatment
of the subjects is extraordinarily concise and
accurate, as well as well written, in spite of
the differing writing styles of the authors.
Vesteinn Olason, the editor-in-chief of
the first two volumes, writes the first 262
pages. He starts with an excellent introduc-
tory chapter, which begins with reflections
on when the literature becomes Icelandic,
provides with the background of literature
and literary culture in historical and social
context, the Norse society, religion, runes,
Christianity, the settlement of Iceland and
its impact on the culture, and finally the lit-
erature in general within this context. Then
follows a short chapter on the poetry in
general, its role in an oral culture as a pres-
ervation of various kinds of knowledge,
some of which was written into books later.
The different types of poetry, style, meth-
ods and form are also described. There are
over 100 pages of rich and detailed accounts
of the Eddaic poetry. He brilliantly covers
the various types of mythological poems in
such a way that they can also be conceived
as a whole of cosmology, wisdom and seri-
ous as well as comical myths. The court po-
etry, dealt with in the next 70 pages, has a
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