The World's Literature in Europe discussion

Hello everyone!

I'm going to attempt to lead our discussion about the Sagas but let me first say this is a brand new adventure for me. I have had this book since the paperback came out around 2001 but have never read it. I admit, I have been a little intimidated. So i'm excited to finally tackle it with some comrades!

I like this Penguin edition because it has been very carefully edited and includes historical background for each Saga and Tale. I'm planning to read about two per week to ensure I read the whole thing in June and July (our official discussion period).

I have read Jane Smiley's Preface a few times and it really inspires me to dive in. Perhaps to start our discussion, here are some points that stood out to me:

--the sagas are anomalous for their time, the 13th through 15th centuries, the time of Chaucer and Dante

--they are anomalous in both form (prose, rather than poetry) and purpose (the Icelanders wrote for each other, rather than for an aristocratic leisure class)

--the stories in the Sagas and the Tales are familiar to the modern reader because they sound like things that happen all the time: people making rash commitments, foolish choices, speaking unwisely, taking stubborn positions, ignoring the wise counsel of others, hoping to get more on a gamble, refusing to submit or lose face

--the typical saga style shows an agricultural world where leisure is at a premium; the tales are full of work (sheep herding, horse-breeding, weaving, cooking, etc)

--Iceland was Iceland before France was France, England England, or Italy Italy

--the Sagas are a literature of unity: the inability of an individual to fit in is noticed, remarked upon, analyzed, perhaps admired, but always dealt with

--Scholars study the Sagas to find out who the Icelanders are and what they meant, but novelists will "recognize a fellow artist" in the narrative style, which focuses on the individual and the social consequences of conflict.

Anyway, I look forward to reading with you!

Hi, Marieke,
I'm reading these sagas, too, and rereading their Preface by Jane Smiley. I got a little taste of Icelandic saga literature in Grettir's Saga, the narrative of a particular man with exceptional human qualities, who used them for the benefit of defenseless farm dwellers from real or fantastical evildoers. I found that this preface reiterated those themes and other ones. Unlike Homer, this isn't the poetic genre, but prose, which your post mentioned, too. All that internal conflict without resolution led Iceland to vote away its autonomy in 1262 [until 1918, Intro's timeline] for Norwegian sovereignty. Next in the book comes Robert Kellogg's Introduction.

Jón "Grunnvíkingur" Ólafsson,an 18th century scholar, is reported to have summed up the Sagas of the Icelanders as 'farmers came to blows'! There is so much to love about these wonderful sagas - exciting stories which gallop along, and include all manner of characters with their manifold foibles, strengths and weaknesses. No wonder they are still so beloved of modern Icelanders, some of whom can claim descent from some of the people named in the sagas.

Carolyn wrote: "...the Sagas of the Icelanders as 'farmers came to blows'!..."

Some of Iceland's great events are its settlement and its constituting a government--not straightforward endeavors. There were no Icelandic kings to write about, but landowning farmers became characters.

In the introductory sections 'A Fiction of Social Realism' and 'A Sturlung Age Anatomy of Power', Kellogg talks about the "Icelandic foundation myth", the "refusal by independent and ambitious farmers to serve" a king. Though there was an Icelandic legislature. The Sturlung age when the heritage sagas began to be written down, 1220-1264, also brought forth rival powers and breakdowns of social standards by contrast to the early settlers' commonwealth in the sagas with its concomitant clarity about honor and about how it was bestowed and about the genealogical lines of property and vengeance inheritance. The narrated plots of early Iceland's golden age depict conflicts arising out of a character's divergence from the generally accepted social standard.

"farmers came to blows" is really making me giggle.

I just finished the Olaf Olafsson book (must go visit the thread for that book) and was excited to read that the uncle toward the end reads from the Sagas every night before bed. it's really fascinating to me just how important these stories are, even to modern Icelanders.

They are in many ways just as important to modern Icelanders as they were throughout history. There was a tradition of the father of the house reading aloud to his family and workers most nights, and the sagas, sermons and parts of the bible were the stock fare. Even though Iceland under the Danish rule (for over 500 years), was desperately poor and oppressed, the level of literacy was astonishing.
Modern Icelanders have little difficulty in reading the sagas in their original form, providing they are typed! Icelandic is the closest of the Scandinavian languages to Old Norse, with very few loan words. An Icelandic friend can trace her ancestry to Bolli (Laxdaela saga), and many other Icelanders can do likewise to various saga characters. This connection with the past is far stronger in Iceland than in just about any other country on earth.

I recommend a Vimeo called "Memories of old awake", created by Cambridge University's Dr Emily Lethbridge. This follows the landscape where Gisli's saga was set.
http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/...
One of the most delightful parts of the film was the attitudes of the three old Icelanders whom Emily interviews. To them, the saga lives, as relevent today as ever. One man says that the characters in the saga feel like real people, who maybe left the district 20 or 30 years ago.

I just think this is so amazing!

I found the Vimeo video through "Memories of Old Awake" and saw how the interviewed Icelanders remembered events in Gisli's saga in the landscape. Gisli Sursson's Saga... is in this month's saga collection. The connection between centuries ago and present day moved me, as if the passage of time were an illusion. I agree with the previous commenters that the video is wonderful, Carolyn.

The introductory §VIII, xlix-liii, explains who came to Iceland, how place names are related to stories, what kind of society was Iceland then, what function did "uninhabited places" serve, why people liked stories about heroes rather than living heroic lives.

A listening segment on the BBC covers many familiar topics about Icelandic Sagas.

Marieke wrote: "I like this Penguin edition because it has been very carefully edited and includes historical background for each Saga and Tale...."

Whew!, the comprehensive Introduction now is read and (an)notated. Of interest in the § 'A Note on the Texts' is that the saga stories are about the third/fourth generations of Icelanders rather than about the settlers. Why? Adventurous ambitions of individual Norwegian/Celtic settler families jelled into the routine responsibilities of landholding farmers.

"The maturing society of farmers would become increasingly intolerant of the heroic individualism on whose vision and ideals it was originally founded."(lix)

The traditional blood feuds were unsettling to a tranquil, productive farm life. Also, consolidated power among a few landholders led not to desired legislative fairness and peaceful co-existence but created competitive power struggles. The "centralized power" in the conduct of legal settlements was coveted by a few and was distanced from the majority; and, the point of view of "Christian values" frowned upon the traditional vengeance of personal dispute resolution. The sagas of these later generations are about individuals' confrontations with the holders of new values. For example, in Gr. s., vengeful marauders and fantasy monsters attack unprotected farms; Grettir the Strong prevents their doing harm to the inhabitants. Nevertheless, he must gather a majority of supporters to justify his actions. His supporters must not neglect vigilance over his opponent's unwarranted influence. And, he could deceitfully be assigned to outlawry when no one's looking. Grettir's initiative to avert disaster to isolated Icelanders matters little because officials are not swayed by individualistic heroism. Quite irrational it sounds. The new values themselves engendered great social conflict until Norway interceded by Iceland's giving up its sovereignty.

Two other points of interest. That same § points out the sagas' conflating "supernatural"/"fantasy" with "realism". Finally, I like the charting of the forty sagas among four saga types. The end-of-book Reference Section looks of interest, too.

Sorry, everyone...I have had a bad dose of life interfering with reading and participating. I have really fallen behind. Also, I had no idea when I started that Egil's Saga is so long, I have about 70 pages to go. I'm enjoying it though. It's very readable and I detect some humor, which is always great.

Marieke wrote: "...I had no idea when I started that Egil's Saga is so long, I have about 70 pages to go...It's very readable and I detect some humor, which is always great. "

This book is making me giddy with so much reading. As singer Patti Smith wrote, "Laughter. An essential ingredient for survival. And we laughed a lot." I'm glad that you're enjoying the saga, Marieke.