The Other Sagas. A New Reading of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders

由于传奇学术的重点是13世纪冰岛人的“古典”传奇，可以追溯到14世纪和15世纪的所谓“后古典”传奇以及其他传奇流派一直没有得到充分的研究。然而，尽管态度的变化最近导致了对这些其他流派的新方法，但“后古典”的冰岛文学仍然是中世纪冰岛文学中最被忽视的亚流派之一。这些传奇故事经常被描述为对古典传奇中突出的社会问题缺乏兴趣。相反，他们被认为描绘了一个夸张的英雄形象和偶尔出现的超自然对手之间的二分法。然而，最近，丹尼尔·S对以约会为基础的方式提出了质疑，这种方式被认为是晚期传奇。这也为修改关于这些传奇故事的其他先入为主的观念提供了可能性，特别是关于它们缺乏社会维度和对超自然现象的关注。这个项目的目的是最终充分关注一个子流派，它包含了超过三分之一的Dislendingasögur流派，并重新评估了‘后古典’传奇缺乏社会兴趣的概念。不是假设英雄和超自然的二分法，而是个人、超自然和社会之间的三角关系被认为是传奇构成的基础。这些方面的每一个都将被依次考虑，以及它们之间的边界崩溃的情况。最终，这将使人们能够将这些文本融入到其社会文化背景中去阅读。因此，这个项目分为两个部分：第一部分，文本本身将根据它们的人物和他们的互动进行阅读；第二部分，它们将位于中世纪晚期冰岛的背景中，在故事世界中找到它们的反映的现实世界的关注将被考虑。这种对叙事、人物之间的互动和他们的社会背景的彻底的重新评估将最终导致对《滑铁卢》作为一个整体的更全面的理解。它还将提供一种阅读传奇文学的新方法，通过考虑各方面之间的交叉，最突出的是超自然和社会，到目前为止，这两个方面被认为基本上是分开的。

Because of saga scholarship’s focus on the "classical", thirteenth-century Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), the so-called "post-classical" sagas, dated to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as well as other saga genres have not been studied adequately. However, while changing attitudes have recently resulted in new approaches to these other genres, the "post-classical" Íslendingasögur are still one of the most neglected sub-genres of medieval Icelandic literature. These sagas have often been characterised as lacking interest in the social concerns prominent in the ‘classical’ sagas. Instead, they have been argued to depict a dichotomy between an exaggerated hero figure and episodically appearing paranormal opponents. Recently, however, Daniel Sävborg has called into question the dating-based approach to these supposedly late sagas. This opens up the possibility to revise other preconceptions about these sagas as well, especially concerning their lack of a social dimension and their focus on the paranormal. This project aims to finally give full attention to a sub-genre comprising more than a third of the Íslendingasögur genre, and to reassess the notion that the ‘post-classical’ sagas lack social interest. Rather than assuming a dichotomy of hero vs. paranormal, a triangular relationship between the individual, the paranormal and the social will be argued to underlie saga composition. Each of these aspects will be considered in turn, as well as those cases in which the boundaries between them collapse. Ultimately, this will enable a reading of these texts as integrated in their socio-cultural background. Thus, the project falls into two parts: the first part, in which the texts themselves will be read in light of their characters and their interactions, and the second part, in which they will be situated in the background of late medieval Iceland, and in which the real-world concerns that found their reflection in the story-worlds of the ‘post-classical’ sagas will be considered.This thorough reassessment of the narratives, the interactions between characters and their social context will ultimately lead to a fuller understanding of the Íslendingasögur as a whole. It will also provide a new way of reading saga literature by considering the intersections between aspects, most prominently the paranormal and the social, that have so far been considered essentially separate.