N.A.M. Oosterlee

By N.A.M. Oosterlee, The Medieval Skald, Blog Entry VI

As witty as the title might be, in this article, I would like to demonstrate the intriguing alteration of skaldic poetry by twelfth to fourteenth centuries Icelandic poets. Generally, the topic will involve how the late medieval Icelandic people established a deviation from the original Germanic poetic verse, especially in their ‘realistic’ nature of scenery presentation. Whereas tales such as Beowulf and The Nibelungenlied required an intervention of a super-mythical dragon, the Icelandic poets appear to have swapped such an element for settings of the common daily peasantry. What do the Icelandic sagas tell us about these and their contemporary society?

What Are the Icelandic Sagas?

The Icelandic sagas are surviving manuscripts composed roughly between 1200-1400 AD, in Iceland. They hail from a long tradition of Germanic oral poetry. The metrical metre of their poetry is: “…mostly in the skaldic metre dróttkvætt (court poetry)… difficult in terms of syntax and vocabulary, making use of special synonyms (heiti) and abstruse circumlocutions (kennings) for its referents” (Clunies Ross, 2023).¹ Whoever read one of the Old English texts might be familiar with a poet’s usage of kennings, whereas they probably find an introduction to the Old Norse dróttkvætt metre. The latter metrical form was most commonly associated with the medieval Norwegian court; hence, it was called ‘court metre’. This particular style of poetry was there to elevate the royal family’s overall mood by prizing them through summarising their former achievements: “Skaldic verse is a complex form of verse used, among other things, in praise poems for royalty. It was believed by thirteenth-century Icelandic authors to contain valuable historical information about the kings in whose honour it was recited” (Cormack, 2006).² During the long aftermath of Iceland’s Christian conversion, Icelandic poets attempted to ‘snatch’ the dominant literary hand: “…the portion of the contest waged through poetry can be viewed as a manifestation of transformations in Iceland’s cultural market. Long before the currents of French romance and chivalry spread from Norway to Iceland, the island felt the influence of cultural trends of continental origin, some of which heavily impacted poetic practice and consumption during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries” (Wanner, 2008).³ Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241 A.D.) was probably one of the most famous Icelandic saga writers and high-medieval historians. In his book, Wanner suggests that Snorri Sturluson’s well-famed Prose Edda came from the poet’s appetite for power. This particular view on the earlier Icelandic sagas is strong among many other scholars. Although we can never fully replicate or simulate Snorri’s main reason for composing his Edda, we can attempt to examine the overall socio-structure during the times of his composition.

Snorri Sturluson, His “Prose Edda”, and Social Disorder

Iceland was a scarce case in its Christian conversion compared to the rest of Europe. As for its inhabitants, the island saw sporadic Irish monks arrive on its desolated shores before Scandinavians discovered and colonised it. The Viking Age was already reaching its finale when these Scandinavians gradually established themselves to be known as a people called ‘Icelanders’. Unlike any other beginning human settlement, the earliest Icelanders began their community from scratch without any neighbouring tribe aligned with them. The closest ones available were separated by miles of roaring sea waves. Because no other civilisation existed around them, their need for law establishment was one of their first main objectives after settling. The only chance of survival rested upon one’s assurance in mere words. Snorri Sturluson gave one reason why the Scandinavians bound for Iceland left Norway: “…the cause of this emigration was the tyrannical rule of King Harald Fine-hair, who had united all Norway under his sway after crushing the chieftain class at the battle of Hafrsfjord in 872” (Karlsson, 2000).⁴ The defeat of a ‘chieftain class’ may reveal who the earliest Icelanders consisted of: “…the threat the monarchy posed to nobles, the institution of aristocracy, and its associated property rights, including those to territories outside the mainland” (Lincoln, 2014).⁵ Most of the Icelandic sagas’ content is questioned to be historically correct, however, the socio-hierarchical distinction between Scandinavian nobility and peasantry seems to be a recurring feature when defining the early Icelandic centuries. It is even evident to such an extent that it is believed that the producers of skaldic poetry are socially distinguished in prestige: “As Snorri himself will relate in Skáldskaparmál, in pagan myth, the poems of non-professionals, the ditties of uninspired rhymesters, were , not, like skalds’ verse, regarded as gifts from Óðinn, but rather were thought to derive from the remnants of the poetic mead which the god was forced to evacuate rearward as he fled in eagle’s form from the jötunn Suttungr” (Wanner, 2008). When one remembers the origins and audience of the original Skaldic poetry, it will soon become clear why Iceland remained conservative in this poetic tradition; for the nobility, who later practised its customs, were once the audience and creators of the original Norwegian version of its poetry genre. Of course, the poets, who composed during the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were not the same as the ones in ancient Norway. However, it can be suggested that they continued their poetic intent and habits in their contemporary time. Although this may seem accordingly, the Icelandic variation of the Germanic saga writing does seem to have a unique and distinctive quality, which also concerns and emphasises one’s social power status: “Growingly, modern scholars are coming to recognise that many twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century Icelanders, some whom we know by name and others whom we do not, used sagas and poetry as instruments of political power and self-aggrandisement, whether as composers or commissioners of those works” (Clunies Ross, 2002).⁶ This towering and dominant ‘small elite’ would naturally determine their writings’ content and who plays their acts in them. From the once-desolated land of Iceland, their social elite seemingly attempted to ‘reconstruct’ their current society by substituting and immortalising a subjectively imaginative world concerned around its citizens: in a fair or vile manner. Their characters’ roles were determined by their social stance towards their composers. While many established Snorri Sturluson as the compiler of the following line, others remain in dispute, but this may reveal little of the social power distribution of Icelandic literature, even in terms of an individual’s interpretation level:

“En kvæðin þykkja mér sízt ór stað fœrð, ef þau eru rétt kveðin ok skynsamliga upp tekin” –Heimskringla, 3-8.⁷

Germanic Paganism: What Art Thou?

When someone asks a philologist of Germanic languages what a major medieval contribution is, they will probably argue that it comes from the hands of Snorri Sturluson; mainly his Prose Edda. The reason, for this, is that his work is one of the minor surviving artefacts, which sheds a little, but yet dim, light on the mythology of Germanic paganism. Although his beloved work illustrates ancient ‘Germanic’ tales, we must be wary of its validation: “They expressed this in the art objects… not by abjuring the religious feelings and basic images of their older Germanic faith, but by letting their more newly received Christianity ‘come home’ to them, letting the new faith speak to them through the art and poetic imagery, the language, of their Germanic religious culture” (Ronald Murphy, 2013).⁸ Medieval Iceland saw their Christian conversion rather rapidly take hold of its society’s main practised religion. Like Anglo-Saxon England, their literature and poetic tradition would still have remnants of Germanic paganism for centuries. Some could even suggest a greater Germanic presence within the Icelandic literary corpus than the Old English by translating ancient mythological oral tradition into written texts. Opposed to Old English literature, the Icelandic sagas included, for instance, the tales and adventures of Óðinn in Hávamál (‘Words of the High One’). However, recent research does suggest that the old Germanic ‘All-father’ also made his appearance in the Old English elegy Widsith (Neidorf, 2022).⁹ Within the latter’s narrative, a mysterious figure named Widsith (a kenning meaning ‘Wide-Journey’) travels and visits various courts during the Germanic migration period (approximately 300-600 A.D.). The figure is depicted as an old and wise man who bears similar characteristics to the representations of Óðinn in the thirteenth-fourteenth-century Scandinavian narratives. Mainly, the god’s supernaturally long life span and being in disguise, while wandering around the Germanic world, are the characteristic features which can be drawn equally from Widsith. However, this ‘wandering’ element is, according to Grímnismál, more dedicated to Óðinn’s famous two ravens:

“Huginn ok Muninn flúga hverjann dag

Jörmungrund yfir;

óumk ek of Hugin, at hann aftr né komi-t,

þó sjámk meir of Munin” –Grímnismál 20.

(Hugin and Munin who daily fly across the earth; I fear that Hugin will not return to me, but for Munin’s return, I care more deeply).

As loosely stated before, we will need to be careful to address these narratives as being a part of genuine Germanic paganism. All of the written recordings, concerning its topic, were compiled by already converted Christian authors: “Important motifs, such as the final battle between good and evil forces, the destruction of the old world, and the emergence of a new heaven and earth, reveal influence from the Christian eschatology. Vǫluspá is a syncretic poem the purpose of which supposedly is to show a way out of the religious crisis of the transitional period” (Hultgård, 2022).¹⁰ What is true Germanic paganism? We only have a few remnants of its forgotten song, which has gradually hummed its final tunes from the people of the past.

Realism in the Icelandic Sagas: A Subjectively Fictional Journal

I will now, finally, tend towards the article’s main subject: the portrayed ‘realism’ within the Icelandic sagas. How much of its content contains such literary characteristics? For starters, we have already seen that most of the surviving sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were products of a yearning feeling for social hierarchical power by their composers. In creating their narratives, it is assumed that they applied rather rhetorical aspects to their plots: “It is, thus, important to recognise that a saga-writer who treats a subject in fantastic mode may be as engaged with ‘reality’, as he perceives it, as when he writes objectively and creates an impression of realism. Although some Old Icelandic writing in the fantastic mode is frankly escapist and parodic, there is a great deal more that is not” (Clunies Ross, 2002).

Furthermore, M. Clunies Ross further explains that the literary genre of ‘realism’ is a modern one and that, if it were to be addressed to the Icelandic sagas, it would then be an author’s rhetorical technique not to display ‘reality’ but to persuade their audience that the projected scenario is real. Such an action would then not be an objective ‘realistic’ one but rather a subjective reflection upon contemporary social life: “And this relationship between private fiction or fictionalised private history and true though ‘interpreted’ public history is similar to what the sagas offer: Old Mortality describes the Battle of Bothwell Brig through the eyes of Henry Morton, a fictional character suggested by actual prototypes; Egils saga presents the victory at Brunanburg in 937 as mainly the work of an Icelandic farmer, Egill Skallagrímsson, a real person much influenced by fictional patterns” (Harris, 1986).¹¹ As with any historical fiction, we must, once again, be wary of what we quantify as being objective ‘realism’.

Conclusion

The Icelandic sagas from the island’s high-medieval period do contain scenes which make you believe that you are reading an objective reality. However, most of these scenes have been attested to provide a subjective reflection of someone’s social status within that community. These narratives indeed involve a much more ‘realistic’ setting by substituting a supposed wicked beast’s lair, as it would perhaps be so in another previous Germanic saga, for a local farm or smithery, but these poetic strategies (as they were addressed by earlier research) appear to only have been a rhetorical mode of writing to enhance the realistic experience. To what extent the author’s purpose might have been will always remain unclear. It does remind me a bit about the ‘boasting’ of one’s image before a royal court when they are asked about their past endeavours and victories. A story mechanism that is assumed to have been common in the Norwegian poetic oral tradition. Although still innovative in its genre, the Icelandic sagas remain loyal to this aspect of dróttkvætt.

Works cited

Clunies Ross, M., Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders, Boydell & Brewer, 2023.

Clunies Ross, M., “Realism and the Fantastic in the Old Icelandic Sagas”, Scandinavian Studies, Vol., 74, No. 4, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

Cormack, M., “Fact and Fiction in the Icelandic Sagas”, History Compass 5/1, Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

Faulkes, A., & Finlay, A., Heimskringla, Second Edition, Viking Society for Northern Research, 2016.

Harris, J., “Sagas as Historical Novel”, Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, Eds. John Lindow et al., The Viking Collection 3, Odense: Odense UP, 1986.

Hultgård, A., The End of the World in Scandinavian Mythology: A Comparative Perspective on Ragnarök, Oxford University Press, 2022.

Karlsson, G., History of Iceland, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Lincoln, B., Between History and Myth: Stories of Harald Fairhair and the Founding of the State, University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Neidorf, L., “Woden and Widsith”, English Studies, Vol. 103, No. 1, 1-18, Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2022.

Ronald Murphy, G.S.J., Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Wanner, K., Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia, University of Toronto Press, 2008.

1. Clunies Ross, M., Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders, Boydell & Brewer, 2023. ↩
2. Cormack, M., “Fact and Fiction in the Icelandic Sagas”, History Compass 5/1, Blackwell Publishing, 2006. ↩
3. Wanner, K., Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia, University of Toronto Press, 2008. ↩
4. Karlsson, G., History of Iceland, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. ↩
5. Lincoln, B., Between History and Myth: Stories of Harald Fairhair and the Founding of the State, University of Chicago Press, 2014. ↩
6. Clunies Ross, M., “Realism and the Fantastic in the Old Icelandic Sagas”, Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 74, No. 4, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. ↩
7. “As to the poems, I consider them to be least corrupted if they are correctly composed and meaningfully interpreted”.
   The translation was made by A. Faulkes & A. Finlay (2016, Heimskringla, Second Edition, Viking Society for Northern Research). ↩
   
8. Ronald Murphy, G.S.J., Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North, Oxford University Press, 2013. ↩
9. Neidorf, L., “Woden and Widsith”, English Studies, Vol. 103, No. 1, 1-18, Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. ↩
10. Hultgård, A., The End of the World in Scandinavian Mythology: A Comparative Perspective on Ragnarök, Oxford University Press, 2022. ↩
11. Harris, J., “Saga as Historical Novel”, Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, Eds. John Lindow et al., The Viking Collection 3, Odense: Odense UP, 1986. ↩