Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders

The book investigates the use of skaldic verse in the family sagas of Icelanders, analyzing why and how it is deployed. It explores the motivations behind its development, the literary effects achieved, and the various prosimetrum paths taken by saga writers. It also considers the evolution of the genre in the context of the growing popularity of romantic and legendary sagas.

Format: Hardback
Length: 262 pages
Publication date: 16 August 2022
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Sagas of Icelanders, also known as family sagas, are the most well-known of the numerous literary genres that thrived in medieval Iceland, the majority of which were written in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Modern readers and critics frequently praise their seemingly realistic portrayals of the lives, loves, and feuds of settler families during Iceland's commonwealth period (c. AD 970–1030), but this attribution of realism fails to account for one of the most significant components of these sagas: the abundance of skaldic poetry, mostly in the dróttkvætt court metre, which comes to the lips of saga heroes at moments of crisis. These presumed voices from the past and their integration into the narrative present of the written sagas are the subject of this book. It investigates what motivated Icelandic writers to develop this particular mode and what particular literary effects they achieved by it. It also looks at the various paths saga writers took within the evolving prosimetrum (a mixed verse and prose form), and explores their likely reasons for using poetry in diverse ways. Consideration is also given to the evolution of the genre in the context of the growing popularity in Iceland of romantic and legendary sagas. A final chapter is devoted to understanding why a minority of sagas of Icelanders do not use poetry at all in their narratives.

Sagas of Icelanders, also known as family sagas, are the most well-known of the numerous literary genres that thrived in medieval Iceland, the majority of which were written in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Modern readers and critics frequently praise their seemingly realistic portrayals of the lives, loves, and feuds of settler families during Iceland's commonwealth period (c. AD 970–1030), but this attribution of realism fails to account for one of the most significant components of these sagas: the abundance of skaldic poetry, mostly in the dróttkvætt court metre, which comes to the lips of saga heroes at moments of crisis. These presumed voices from the past and their integration into the narrative present of the written sagas are the subject of this book. It investigates what motivated Icelandic writers to develop this particular mode and what particular literary effects they achieved by it. It also looks at the various paths saga writers took within the evolving prosimetrum (a mixed verse and prose form), and explores their likely reasons for using poetry in diverse ways. Consideration is also given to the evolution of the genre in the context of the growing popularity in Iceland of romantic and legendary sagas. A final chapter is devoted to understanding why a minority of sagas of Icelanders do not use poetry at all in their narratives.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781843846390