The Post-Classical Icelandic Family Saga by Martin Arnold (review)

Abstract

1162 Reviews ticultural writing in the German language (by the Russian-Jewish immigrant writers Wladimir Kaminer and Vladimir Vertlib or the Turkish German writer Feridun Zaimoglu , forexample)?to name just one European language in which some ofthe most interesting literature is currently being produced by non-Christian immigrants ofthe first,second, or third generation?likewise indicates that German, for example, has long ceased to be purely 'Christian' or even ethnically 'German'. Although I cannot concur fully with all of Sherman's conclusions, the building-blocks of his narrative (the examination ofthe Joseph story as the master narrative ofthe Jewish Pope myth, as well as the analyses of individual reworkings of the myth) are truly insightful, meticulously researched, and masterfully argued. His book is an important contribu? tion to Jewish literary and cultural studies and will also be of great interest to students and scholars of folklore. University of Illinois at Chicago Elizabeth Loentz The Post-Classical Icelandic Family Saga. By Martin Arnold. (Scandinavian Stu? dies, 9) Lampeter: Mellen. 2003. viii + 296pp. ?69.95. ISBN 0-7734-6804-8. Martin Arnold calls for a critical re-evaluation of post-classical family sagas?those Islendingasogur dated to the century following the loss of Iceland's independence to Norway in 1262, and therefore, crucially, the period after what virtually all scholars have characterized as the high point of saga-writing, to which the so-called 'classical' Islendingasogur belong. His primary contentions are that post-classical sagas have been neglected because of unfavourable comparisons with the classical ones, and that not enough attention has been paid to how Iceland's colonial status and increasing economic dependence on Norway have shaped these fourteenth-century sagas. Arnold's analysis of the scholarly reception of the classical Islendingasogur is thorough and careful. He shows how the subject matter of these sagas?the lives of Icelanders who built up an independent republic after the ninth-century settlement of Iceland, with its own legal and parliamentary structures?fitted perfectlythe nationalist agenda of Icelandic critics, and that saga style?that cool, realist narrative which continued to be privileged even when its subject matter came to be regarded as more fictional than historical?met the literary taste of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The predispositions of early saga critics are ruthlessly exposed by Arnold. And yet (at the risk of being accused of not having examined one's own critical position with sufflcientrigour), one could take issue with the implication that the classical Islendingasogur have for these reasons been over-valxied. Certainly, both critical approval forthem?as proto-novels written by 'men of refinedtaste'?and the celebrated dismissals of what came after?sagas touched by continental romance giv? ing offa whiffof 'the sultry and stale air of the boudoir'?reflect these predispositions, but literary merit, hard as it is to define, cannot be absolutely reduced to a matter of taste. Significantly, Arnold's excellent discussion of Hrafnkels saga as a classical saga which 'reveals a great deal about the coincidence between the idealising valuations of the Icelandic national character in the thirteenth century and the idealising valuations of scholarly judgement in the twentieth' demonstrates almost in spite of itself the fine literary quality ofHrafnkels saga, not least in the way that itis farfromclear even from a plot synopsis that the hero is indeed idealized; the saga itself is more complex still. Arnold's characterization and analysis of the post-classical sagas is constantly stimulating and engaging. The 'ideological dynamics' of Fostbrcedra saga?that 'a tran? scendent ethic is achievable beyond ethnic insularity'?mark it out for Arnold as a post-classical product. Kroka-Refs saga, neatly and acutely described as 'paradig? matic in its presentation ofthe improbable in the language of probability', is held to MLR, 100.4, 2005 1163 be taking issue not with historical reality,but with the supposed representation (ac? tually idealization) of it in literary discourse: the classical Islendingasogur themselves. He sees Kroka-Refs saga as a proto-postmodernist parody ofthe classical sagas; until now critics have dismissed it as derivative, or even plagiaristic. One might argue, of course, that Arnold's judgements are as context-bound as those which precede him. But the Islendingasogur can...