Old Icelandic Literature and Society

This book provides a comprehensive account of Old Icelandic literature within its social context. An international team of specialists examines the ways in which the unique medieval social experiment in Iceland, a kingless society without an established authority structure, inspired a wealth of innovative writing composed in the Icelandic vernacular. The book explores the shaping and context of Old Icelandic poetry, mythology, metrical treatises, religious writing, and the saga, a new genre that textualized their history and incorporated oral traditions in a written form, as well as exploring Old Icelandic literary culture's indebtedness to adopted continental and Christian genres. Essays contained in this volume: Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, "Social Institutions and Belief Systems of Medieval Iceland (c.870-1400) and their Relations to Literary Production" Judy Quinn, "From Orality to Literacy in Medieval Iceland" Kari Ellen Gade, "Poetry and its Changing Importance in Medieval Icelandic Culture" Gísli Sigurðsson, "Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskald and Oral Poetry in the West of Iceland c.1250: the Evidence of References to Poetry in The Third Grammatical Treatise" Margaret Clunies Ross, "The Conservation and Reinterpretation of Myth in Medieval Iceland" Stephen Tranter, "Medieval Icelandic artes poeticae" Diana Whaley, "A Useful Past: Historical Writing in Medieval Iceland" Jürg Glauser, "Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir as the Literary Representation of a New Social Space" Guðrún Nordal, "The Contemporary Sagas and their Social Context" Torfi H. Tulinius, "The 'Matter of the North': Fiction and Uncertain Identities in Thirteenth-century Iceland" Geraldine Barnes, "Romance in Iceland" Ian Kirby, "The Bible and Biblical Interpretation in Medieval Iceland" Margaret Cormack, "Sagas of Saints"