The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

Abstract

There was never any such thing as a medieval Icelandic short story. Nevertheless it had its presence as a category of scholarly thought for most of the twentieth century in the form of the saga subgenre known as the þattr.1 Below I will explore how this came about. I will discuss the circumstances of its birth, the premises for its well-being, the ideological context it thrived in, and the reasons for its eventual decline and fall. This study is concerned with the how no less than the what, as it aims to illuminate the whole story of this category. The medieval Icelandic short story had its own name, and the term “short story” was rarely used. Scholars flirted with the term, mainly in the 1970s and the 1980s, without daring to use it openly.2 The Icelandic word