Quantifying Feelings

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The medieval sagas of Icelanders, celebrated for their emotionally restrained narrative style, merge prose with verse in a genre-defining prosimetrum. Traditional analysis has largely focused on the prose for emotional insights, while acknowledging that the poetry in the sagas conveys feelings more openly. This paper presents findings concerning the use of emotive language in the poetry from “The Íslendingasögur as Prosimetrum“ (ÍSP) database, which contains a comprehensive collection of quantitative data on the features of all 722 stanzas in the corpus of the sagas. The database facilitates diverse analytical explorations and assessments of correlations, allowing for a comprehensive quantitative scrutiny of established assumptions within the entire corpus of sagas. Consequently, it emerges as a robust and influential instrument for scholarly inquiry. The present study finds that internalized self-expression through first-person emotive words is relatively rare in saga poetry, representing less than a fifth of instances where emotion words are used. More frequently, self-expression is externalized, with speakers reflecting on their emotions as if they were external forces. The most prevalent usage of emotion words is in the description of others’ emotions, rather than as direct expressions of the poet’s own inner state. This suggests that the “inner world” of the poet, as scholars describe, is most often not explicitly revealed through direct emotive language but is instead implied through these observations. Thus, emotive words in the sagas’ poetry serve more to imply than to directly convey the poet’s internal experience. Furthermore, emotive stanzas in sagas often function as performative narrative elements, complementing or contrasting with direct emotional expressions. Analysing their roles may provide deeper understanding beyond merely reflecting the poet’s psyche.