The Sagas of the Icelanders (9 page)

Listed below are some of the more recent books in English about the
Íslendinga sögur
and their historical and cultural backgrounds. Much authoritative work on the sagas exists only in the Icelandic language or in journal articles and is not included. References to this more specialized literature may be found by consulting Pulsiano and Wolf,
Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia
and Clover and Lindow,
Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide
(see below).

All the
Sagas of Icelanders
, also known as the
Family Sagas
, share certain characteristics of form and content, but they can be classified into several closer groupings. Three sets of criteria are generally used to classify them: time of writing and textual considerations; historical and geographical setting; and literary considerations (in particular theme and point of view). The present selection includes texts from most periods in the ‘Age of Writing’, but its chief aim is to show the diversity of good literature within the family saga canon, and it contains representatives of all main literary types, set in virtually all the known Viking world.

Many sagas in this selection begin with a prelude in Norway and trace the arrival of a particular family as settlers in a particular part of Iceland. Sometimes Norway supplies more than distant noble roots for the main characters – in
Gisli Sursson’s Saga
, for example, Gisli displays the blind obedience to the revenge ethic which will send him into exile in Iceland too, and in
Egil’s Saga
the first third of the action takes place in Norway, launching the running feud with the royal family there. The main focus of most sagas, however, is the third and fourth generation after the settlement. Although the
Sagas of Icelanders
as a whole span virtually all the Viking Age from the second half of the ninth century to the middle of the eleventh, most deal in the greatest detail with 975 to 1025. By this time the political and legal structure of the Commonwealth was firmly in place, so that the dominant theme of the conflict between individual and society has a clear frame of reference. Perhaps even more significantly, the fulcrum of these fifty years is the adoption of Christianity in 1000, when a new system of values and ethics replaced the ancient Viking code of personal honour, and also when the seeds of a new, centralized power structure were sown. The maturing society of farmers would become increasingly intolerant of the heroic individualism on whose vision and ideals it was originally founded. The friction between public law without executive power and men of action driven by personal motivation is crucial to the plots of most sagas.

A basic distinction can be established according to whether the point of view of the saga is the individual or society.

Biographical sagas
concentrate on an individual and his conflicts and relationships either with other individuals (seen in the
sagas of poets and warriors
such as Egil or Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue) or with society as a whole (in the
sagas of outlaws
such as Gisli Sursson). Since outlaws live on the fringes of society, we often see in them elements of a supernatural world which contrasts with the typical saga realism, although it is generally described with the same objective nonchalance. Significantly, we also see elements of fantasy on the fringes of the known geographical world in Greenland, both in the otherwise realistic
Vinland Sagas
and in the fantastical
Saga of

Ref the Sly
. Ref is an example of a champion, a strong individual who defends the weak or undertakes ordeals. This branch of saga writing often has a picaresque or roguish element to it and is sometimes closer to folk legend than to history. Certain episodes in
Gisli Sursson’s Saga
and
Egil s Saga
are in this vein too; interestingly, even champions have to perform their noble deeds either outside Iceland or outside human society in outlawry.

Opposing the biographical sagas are the
sagas of feuds
, typically located in a relatively small district which in a sense assumes the central role in the action. An example is
The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal
, which is a family saga describing five generations of chieftains who live in a district with which they clearly have strong emotional bonds. The concept of the man of authority, the godi, is essential to this saga, but even more to two others spanning a much shorter time,
The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi
and
The Saga of the Confederates
. These two sagas are succinct but thorough examinations of local power and authority: the emergence of a leader of men, his duties as well as his rights, his response to subversion of his authority. It could be said that the leader figure is the antithesis of the outlaw figure at odds with society, and of the inwardly motivated poet at odds with himself.

In the longer sagas of feud a vast gallery of characters is introduced, but inevitably a few strong personalities dominate the stage – for example Ingimund the Old and his son Jokul in Vatnsdal, and the triangle Bolli, Kjartan and Gudrun in Laxardal.
The Saga of the People of Laxardal
, like
Njal’s Saga
, is usually regarded as superior to the majority of the regional feud sagas, a masterpiece of epic narrative with tragic dimensions. The saga charts the dissent and dissolution within a single family as sharply etched characters struggle nobly through a series of fated events over which they have no control. Feuds escalate from trivial local squabbles into unstoppable vendettas. The male protagonists are splendid figures who die heroic deaths, while the women are strong characters who engineer much of the action.

Somewhere between the two main saga classifications are the two
Vinland Sagas
and one tale, which describe the western outposts of the Viking world: Eirik the Red’s discovery of Greenland and settlement there as leader of a large community, and the first European voyages to North America by his son Leif and later by Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir and Thorfinn Karlsefni.

From a historical perspective, the sagas in this selection map the Viking world and extend across the entire Viking Age: the movement from Norway, the flowering of national culture and localized settlements in Iceland, and the exploration and experience of new worlds. Characters and events recur