This book is an examination of some of the principal issues arising from the study of the kings’ sagas, the main narrative sources for Norwegian history before c. 1200. Providing an overview of the past two decades of scholarship, it discusses the vexed relationship between verse and prose and the reliability as historical sources of the verse alone or the combination of verse and prose; the possibility and extent of non-native influence on the composition of these texts; and the function of the past, in particular given that most of the historiography of Norway was produced in Iceland. This book aims to stimulate studies of medieval Scandinavian historiography with its critical perspective on the texts and the scholarship, while also providing a useful work of reference in order to make this area of research accessible to scholars in cognate fields.
Author(s): Shami Ghosh
Series: The Northern World. North Europe and the Baltic c. 400-1700 A.D., 54
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 270
City: Leiden
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xiii
1. Introduction 1
Medieval Norwegian History and the Problem of Sources 1
The Kings' Sagas ('konungasögur') 4
Skaldic Verse 18
2. Skaldic Verse and Saga Prose: Transmission and Reliability 25
The Authenticity of Skaldic Verse 25
The Relationship of Verse and Prose 70
Summing Up: The Historical Value of the Kings’ Sagas 95
Appendix: Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld after the Battle of Stiklarstaðir 101
3. Non-Native Sources and Influence 111
The Anglo-Norman Background 111
The Broader Context of the Growth of Historical Writing in Iceland 131
Appendix: Parallel Narratives in Scandinavian and Foreign Sources 152
4. The Uses of the Past 177
Chronology 203
Bibliography 209
Concordance of Cited Passages from the 1932 and 2011 Editions of 'Morkinskinna' 239
Index of Modern Scholars Cited 241
General Index 246
