The fornaldarsogur : Stephen Mitchell's contribution

The fornaldarsogur (literally, "sagas of antiquity") have long been relegated to the status of "poor cousins" within the family of Old Icelandic literature. To a large degree this downgrading has occurred because the fornaldarsogur are often fantastic narrations that read very differently from the more sober and worldly islendingasogur [family sagas]. Written in the period from roughly the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, the fornaldarsogur, a mixture of tradition and invention, often recount legendary and mythic events from the recesses of Scandinavian folk memory. Sometimes a tale follows its hero or heroes into the supernatural world and also recounts quasi-historical memories of events that can be traced as far back as the migration period. In general, the fornaldarsogur focus on Scandinavia; southern Germanic matters and events are less evident and usually only enter the tales in connection with stories built on, or sharing motifs and traditions with, Eddic material, as they do in the Volsunga saga

Choices of honor : telling saga feud, thattr, and the fundamental oral progression

The family and Sturlunga sagas are not only narratives of "sophisticated conventionality," but it is precisely the unclear combination of mundane and refined that has made these medieval texts so hard to classify.1 On the one hand the sagas are a sophisticated written phenomenon. On the other, they are stories filled with repetitions and other conventions of oral, ethnographic narration recounting the social past. Can we determine the elemental, generative structure of the Icelandic texts? The answer is yes, since the sagas themselves, despite their overlay of sophistication, retain this primary repetitive progression. With our question in mind, let us look at just such a progression.Not

Völsunga saga. English

The Saga of the Volsungs is an Icelandic prose epic whose anonymous thirteenth-century author based his story on the legends of Old Scandinavian folk culture. A trove of traditional lore, it tells of love, jealousy, vengeance, war, and the mythic deeds of the dragonslayer, Sigurd the Volsung. The Saga is of special interest to admirers of Richard Wagner, who drew heavily upon this Norse source in writing his Ring Cycle. With its magical ring acquired by the hero, and the sword to be reforged, the saga has also been a primary source for writers of fantasy such as J. R. R. Tolkien and romantics such as William Morris.Byock's comprehensive introduction explores the history, legends, and myths contained in the saga and traces the development of a narrative that reaches back to the period of the great folk migrations in Europe when the Roman Empire collapsed