Alterity and Occidentalism in Fourteenth-Century Icelandic Texts: Narratives of Travel, Conversion, and Dehumanization

Abstract

This article analyses five fourteenth-century Old Norse travel narratives in light of the learned geographical tradition of medieval Iceland. Three of the narratives, Þorvalds þáttr víðfǫrla, Eiríks saga víðfǫrla, and Yngvars saga víðfǫrla, focus on the travels of Nordic people to eastern Europe and Asia; while the latter two, Eiríks saga rauða and Grœnlendinga saga, tell of travels to the continent later named North America. While the travels to the East deal with pilgrimage and the search for the terrestrial Paradise in the service of individual salvation and missionary activities in Scandinavia and Iceland more specifically, the travels to the West are focused on the violent conquest and Christianization of newfound peripheral areas and their peoples. What these narratives have in common, and owe to the learned (Plinian) tradition, is their dehumanized view of foreign and strange people: the giants and monsters of the East, and the skrælingar (indigenous peoples) and einfœtingar (sciopods) of the West. In these sagas travels to the East, while dangerous, introduce heroes to courtly manners, encyclopedic knowledge, and salvation; whereas travels to the West lead to mayhem and death and all attempts at settlement there fail miserably, making Greenland the westernmost outpost of Christianity in the world. This article aims to show how this learned tradition was adapted for use in saga literature to contrast the monstrous and heathen periphery with the more central and piously Christian Iceland.