Sagas in Time and Time in the Sagas: an Attempt at a Historiographical Review

Abstract

This article is devoted to the perception of time in early Iceland (from the establishment in 930 of the Althing, an annual national assembly, to the submission of the Icelanders to the Norwegian king in 1262—1264). This is not, however, a result of my work with medieval sources (first of all, Icelandic sagas and historical writings) but an attempt to present an overview of this issue in the assessment of international historiography, mainly of the last fifty years, but with a significant emphasis on the 2020s. If by 2017, as noted in the scholarly literature, very little had been published on time in medieval literature in general, and in the sagas in particular, in the last few years three monographic studies have been published that deserve attention and evaluation. The article is divided into two parts. The first one contains a description of general trends and methods of studying time in the works of Old Norse literature, while the second one presents the analysis of three recent works, thematic and methodological intersections in which are an obvious consequence not of interdependence, but of the general situation in the study of this issue.