The Valhalla saga by Snorri Kristjánsson: perception of the Old Norse culture in modern Iceland prose in English

Abstract

The paper deals with The Valhalla saga (2013–2015), the novel trilogy by Snorri Kristjansson, the Icelander who writes in English and is familiar both with the Icelandic and the Anglo-American traditions of reception of the Old Norse. The question is how these two ways of reception interact in the trilogy. In modern Icelandic literature, the way of reception depends on the genre of the works referred to: if the modern work is based on sagas, its starting point is the text of a particular saga, but if it is based on mythology, the main focus is on the plot of the myths, without regard to particular texts. Besides, the Anglo-American (as well as the continental European) tradition of reception deals with some general “Viking” universum, with original persons and plots that are not related to particular ancient texts. The universum can be heroized or romanticized. The Valhalla saga begins as a historical novel and gradually develops into a mythological novel, as the plot of Ragnarok becomes the main subject matter. Still, while the mythological element in the novels increases, the historical one also becomes stronger, and the battle of the gods and the forces of chaos is attributed to the exact date in the history of the North. The Valhalla Saga is a complicated synthesis of the Icelandic and the Anglo-American ways of reception of the Old Norse universum, but the inertia of the both literary traditions is overcome in the trilogy.