Medieval Icelanders Research Articles

Sending a Message to the Future: (Deep) Time Travel in and through Medieval Icelandic Literature

ABSTRACT This article seeks to understand how medieval Icelandic authors may have considered the possibility of speaking to the future. In the absence of explicit statements to this effect, it does this by looking at representations of time travel — or chronodisplacement — within medieval Icelandic sagas. When something from the past abruptly appears in the narrative, the past is seen as communicating with its future. The examples looked at include undead mound-dwellers, long-lived wanderers and the Icelandic version of the Seven Sleepers. The frequent association of voices emerging from the past with the underland is considered, particularly in relation to Iceland’s geology. This is also linked to the possibility for medieval Icelanders to engage with deep time. The analysis reveals that Icelandic authors were interested in the dynamic of the past speaking to its future, but chose always to represent it within a past setting. Moreover, authors seem to have been aware that speaking to a future inevitably involves changes in media and the materiality of communication.

“Сага про пішого Грольва” та Русь в епоху вікінгів: історична пам’ять та історіографія

The objective of this article is to analyse the Eastern European episodes in the Göngu-Hrólfs saga. Analyse it through the prism of collective memory and the cultural environment of their creators. Identify their sources and historical context. Also, highlight story patterns and literary constructions that were used in Rus’ descriptions. The novelty of the work is in an attempt to look at the sources from a different perspective. We took into account intellectual tendentious and collective conceptions of medieval Icelanders and based on the results of the research, we have proposed new ideas for the controversial questions. This article is one of the first attempts to analyse Eastern European episodes in the context of collective memory in Legendary sagas. A detailed study of the Göngu-Hrólfs saga showed that authors of the texts used some story patterns associated with Eastern Europe. First of all, the character of king Hreggvid: the description of this person is similar to the Hergeir, king of Aldeigjuborg from Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar. One more stereotyped persona is an Ingegerd, Hreggvid’s daughter, who can be identified with Igegerd, from Hálfdanar saga. Also, oikonym Holmardr was a cultural stereotype. In our opinion, it was not always identified with Novgorod as is customary in historiography. It was an element of collective memory that could have changed within cultural and political context. In general, Rus’ was described as a peripheral area bordering the Eastern world, which was perceived as a magical space, inhabited by fantastic beasts and folks. This idea appears under the influence of chroniclers from continental Europe. That was the reason for the dualism in the perception of these territories in the sagas.

The Development of Education in Medieval Iceland

The Development of Education in Medieval Iceland

Dreamworlds, Storyworlds: Narrative Proliferation and the Case of Stjörnu-Odda draumr

Dreamworlds, Storyworlds: Narrative Proliferation and the Case of <i>Stjörnu-Odda draumr</i>

The Saint and the Saga Hero. Hagiography and Early Icelandic Literature by Siân E. Grønlie

Reviewed by: The Saint and the Saga Hero. Hagiography and Early Icelandic Literature by Siân E. Grønlie Margaret Cormack The Saint and the Saga Hero. Hagiography and Early Icelandic Literature. By Siân E. Grønlie. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 2017. Pp. xi, 306. $130.00. ISBN 978 84384 481 5.) Siân E. Grønlie comments in the volume under review that "the saints were not just literary characters to the medieval Icelanders, but a powerful and active presence in their lives" (p. ix). This basic fact is often ignored by scholars of medieval Icelandic literature and culture. While a token nod may be made to the fact that the thirteenth-century saga authors were Christian (indeed as is now repeatedly suggested, they may have been associated with monasteries), the significance of that fact is often overlooked. Those who study the secular sagas have all too often neglected to read the translated passiones and vitae of the saints. This in spite of the fact that, as Stefán Karlsson pointed out two decades ago, over one-third of the surviving medieval Icelandic manuscripts contain saints' lives. This is twice as many as the next most frequent category (kings' sagas) and three times as many as the two next most popular groups, sagas of Icelanders and chivalric romances.1 The present volume provides a much-needed corrective to this neglect. Dr. Grønlie is thoroughly familiar not only with native saga genres, but also with translated religious literature that would have been available at monasteries, cathedrals, and some churches. That literature included homilies, saints' lives, patristic writings, liturgical books, and works such as Peter Comestor's Bible commentary, Vincent of Beauvais' Historia Scholastica, and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. After an introductory chapter on "Saints' Lives and the Sagas of Icelanders," her monograph is far more than a search for parallels such as have been undertaken in the past; she is well aware that the sagas do not blindly adopt the ideology of the saint's life, and shows how they respond creatively to it. Using polysystem theory, Grønlie examines how hagiography [End Page 618] and sagas of Icelanders interact with each other, and how different authors imitate, invert, and subvert hagiographic structures and ideals. Her second chapter—about the translation of a Latin work by the monk Oddr Snorrason, known as Oddr's Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason—is a wonderful illustration of the numerous influences that can be traced in this saga, and how they were used. Well aware of later additions to the Icelandic text, Grønlie discusses the insights the underlying text provides into the community of writers at the monastery at Þingeyrar and Oddr's practice as a historian (and, perhaps, would-be hagiographer). Like Ari Þorgilsson, Oddr lists his informants, and it is worth noting that three of the six are female. Grønlie discusses not only Oddr's work but also the poems about Óláfr, both verses contemporary with his life and others by two poets contemporary with Oddr; she concludes that those living in the late twelfth century were working from the same body of material. The following chapters consider sagas that are thematically similar: "The Confessor, the Martyr and the Convert," "The Noble Heathen and the Missionary Saint," "The Outlaw, the Exile, and the Desert Saint," and "The Saint as Friend and Patron." All provide in-depth readings of passages dealing with particular events, such as the conversion to Christianity, and characters, such as Bishop Friðrekr and Þangbrandr, in works as varied as Kristni saga, Þorvalds þáttr víðförla, Vatnsdæla saga, and Njáls saga. Grønlie is aware that medieval Christianity itself was not uniform (and very different from most modern varieties); she points out that in descriptions of a single episode, the attitude to violence that may be problematized in one saga may be valorized in another. She notes that the heroic violence of the missionaries, and the greater sympathy for the (often quite reluctant) convert, are innovations on the part of saga authors when compared to other missionary accounts. As in any detailed study there are occasional errors, for example, the...

Of Pots and Porridge: Food, Cooking, and Serving in Old Norse Sources

This article explores the ways in which medieval Icelanders imagined the food and culinary practices of their Viking-Age ancestors. Through a critical synthesis of vocabulary and narrative in sagas, poetry, and law texts, it becomes possible to move beyond isolated references to food and culinary practice, and to begin to consider attitudes to particular foods and technologies. The survey identifies some apparent constants in culinary memory - boiling, the use of kettles - as well as contrasting cooking and eating practices in elite and non-elite circles, and in foreign and domestic settings. The textual evidence thus usefully augments and nuances what can be gleaned from the material remains of culinary practice in Viking and medieval Iceland.

Conceptualizing the Multicultural ‘North’ in the Íslendingasögur: Peoples, Places, and Phenomena

During the early medieval period, a large part of Fennoscandia was inhabited by the Sámi (Zachrisson 2008, 32). With written sources such as Historia Norvegiæ, Ágrip af Noregs konungasǫgum, and Heimskringla referring to Sámi settlements in the Viking and medieval period reaching as far south into Norway as Hadeland (Einarsson 2007, 5-7), alongside archaeological excavations asserting a Sámi cultural presence south of the contemporary cultural borders of Sápmi (Bergstøl 2008), close contact between the groups is not surprising. Despite often being described as ‘desolate’ and ‘remote’ (especially in the terra nullis colonialism exercised by the Scandinavian nation states in early modern times), the northernmost parts of the Fennoscandian landscape complexes are described as already inhabited in several medieval Scandinavian sagas, including the Íslendingasögur. Primarily, these texts explicitly assert that the ambiguous and distant ‘north’ of Fennoscandia was a special, preternatural place, simultaneously internal and external to what medieval Icelanders perceived as ‘Nóregi’. Whether enforced by the ‘othering’ of characters depicted with northern descent through expressive features and abilities traditionally associated with the area or its indigenous inhabitants, by the descriptions of different landscapes and communities unequivocally ‘othered’ and distinct from that of the saga-writers’ reality, or by extraordinary phenomena connected to the two, ‘norðarliga í Nóregi’ is portrayed as somewhat distinct from that of the rest of the ‘national’ landscape. Encompassing an area extending further south than contemporary northern Norway, the notion of a supernatural north in the Íslendingasögur goes beyond an idea of a unified Nóregi. Moving into the land of powerful chieftains in Naumdælafylki and the ambivalent Hálogaland, venturing ‘á fjall upp’ to the Sámi borderlands of Finnmǫrkr, whilst also incorporating the mysterious landscapes and peoples of eastern Fennoscandia, the notoriously equivocal Kvenland and Bjarmarland, distinct descriptions of peoples, places, and phenomena appear and follow literary patterns and stereotypes that are sometimes archaic. By discussing the portrayal of north Norwegian landscapes and geographical understandings in these texts, in conjunction with an examination of the depiction of the Sámi, this essay aims to demonstrate how north Norwegian spatial awareness in the Íslendingasögur can help enlighten cross-cultural relationships and liminal identities, and present fewer rigid contrasts between people and cultures in Fennoscandia than previously accounted for.

Búi and the blámaðr: Comprehending racial others in Kjalnesinga Saga

This essay focuses on an understudied Old Icelandic saga, Kjalnesinga Saga (c.1310–1320), to examine medieval Icelanders’ discursive construction of race following the collapse of the independent Icelandic commonwealth. Employing postcolonial and critical-race theories from K. Anthony Appiah, Homi Bhabha, Achille Mbembe, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, this essay posits post-Commonwealth Iceland conceived of race as a spectrum of comprehensibility. The saga affords narrative agency to the assimilated and culturally comprehensible Irish hero, Bui, and casts him as a surrogate for Iceland’s colonial struggle. No such agency is granted to the blamaðr (black-man), a monster sent against Bui by the Norwegian King, Haraldr Fair-Haired (c.850–932). The blamaðr is subaltern: inaccessible outside Iceland’s subordinating narrative, bestializing rhetoric, or Bui’s interpretation. Kjalnesinga Saga’s racial discourse challenges modern conceptualizations of Scandinavia’s homogeneity and offers medieval Iceland as another space to explore constructions of race.

Narrating Blindness and Seeing Ocularcentrism in Þorsteins saga hvíta

This article explores Þorsteins saga hvíta using a disability studies approach. It considers how the saga’s depiction of the eponymous Þorsteinn might reflect how vision loss or blindness was perceived and may have affected the everyday life of medieval Icelanders. Greater focus, however, is placed upon how the saga makes use of Þorsteinn’s vision loss and subsequent blindness to confront the hegemony of vision in connection with both knowledge and narrative.

The Four Modes of Sin and the Cleansing of the Waters: The Fourth Grammatical Treatise, Chapter 21, Stanzas 48 and 50

Medieval Icelanders defined their ideas about language, the composition of literature, grammar, and the relationship between Icelandic and Latin in a series of vernacular treatises. One such treatise, the fourteenth-century Fourth Grammatical Treatise, describes the forms and mechanics of writing skaldic poetry. In addition to rhetorical and grammatical information, it provides insight into to the Christian Latin material that was known or available to medieval Icelandic authors. Some of these texts, often neglected by scholars of literature, reflect ideas found in Gregory’s Moralia in Iob, including his explanation of the four stages that sinners pass through as they move from temptation to mortal sin. It also reflects traditional exegesis of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, in which Jesus is said to purify the water. These elucidations provide insight into the freedom, or lack thereof, that Icelandic authors had to translate and adapt Christian Latin terminology and concepts into vernacular texts and tightly structured skaldic verse.

Possible Causes of Tooth Wear in Medieval Icelanders

Objectives: The importance of the Icelandic Sagas as a source of information on the way of life and diet habits in Iceland and possibly other Nordic countries 1000 years ago is obvious. Extensive tooth wear in archaeological human skull material worldwide has been blamed on coarse diet. Near volcano Hekla, 66 skeletons dated from before 1104 were excavated from a graveyard. The purpose of this study was to determine the main causes of tooth wear in Icelanders 1000 years ago. Materials and methods: Available were 49 skulls for research. Two methods were used to evaluate tooth wear and seven for age estimation. An attempt was made to determine main causes of tooth wear in the light of likely diet and beverage consumption according to a computer search on food and drink customs described in the Icelandic Sagas. Results: Extensive tooth wear was seen in all groups, increasing with age. The first molars had the highest score with no difference between sexes. It had all the similarities seen in wear from coarse diet. In some instances it had similar characteristics as seen in erosion in modern Icelanders consuming excessive amounts of soft drinks. According to the Sagas, acidic whey was a daily drink and used for preservation of food in Iceland until recently. Conclusions: It is postulated that consumption of acidic drinks and food in addition to a coarse and rough diet, played a significant role in the dental erosion seen in ancient Icelanders.

An Irish Sovereignty Motif in Laxdæla saga

While overall extent of Irish influence on Old Norse literature is still debated, (2) there is critical agreement on importance of Irish material to Laxdola sagai' because this text offers a sustained focus on Celtic presence in Iceland. Not only does begin in Seotland, but Melkorka, daughter of King Myrkjartan of Ireland, plays a prominent role: she had been carried off in a slave raid at age 15 and eventually becomes mother of Olafr pai. These features suggest that Laxdola is the family which approaches question of Irish blood in Iceland most squarely (Sayers 1988, 97). Building off foundational comparative work of Rosemary Power and William Sayers, this article adduces a previously unnoticed Irish motif in Laxdola saga: sovereignty test for kingship, best illustrated by Old Irish Echtra Mac n Echach Muigmedoin (The Adventures of Sons of Eochaid Mugmedon), (4) earliest surviving example of a genre of medieval Irish tales that focus on sovereignty. (5) Olafr pai and his Irish counterpart, Niall Noigiallach, are both illegitimate and youngest sons who gain their fathers' inheritances at expense of their older, legitimate brothers, yet by time this motif appears in Laxdola saga, outcome and significance of sovereignty test have shifted. Awareness of these changes sheds new light on both Olafr's status in Laxdola and values at stake in his rejection of Irish kingship. In finding points of contact between Olafr and heroic biographies of Irish kings, Sayers has argued for an appreciation of Irish concept of kingship and interest in manipulating this information for thematic ends in Laxdola saga (Sayers 1989, 92), noting ways in which Olafr fails to fulfill tripartite functions of a successful sovereign (legal justice, military success, agricultural prosperity) in Irish model of kingship. Recognizing Irish roots of sovereignty test in Laxdola further aids our understanding of this work's use of Celtic motifs, as depicts Olafr successfully passing a series of sovereignty tests, yet ultimately rejecting that sovereignty itself. In what follows, I will explore parallels between Laxdola and Irish trope of sovereignty test and discuss how its themes of inheritance, leadership, and kingship have been reshaped and reframed in Icelandic milieu in saga. As Laxdola itself indicates, there were numerous avenues for oral transmission of cultural material from Celtic British Isles to ears of early medieval Icelanders. Historical and literary accounts of Iceland's foundation make clear that a significant proportion of its population, particularly its female population, came from slave raids on British Isles, (6) and recent genetic studies have confirmed that roughly 60 percent of Icelandic female settlers and 20 percent of Icelandic male settlers were of Celtic origin (Agnar Helgason, Sigrtm Siguroardottir, Gulcher, et al. 2000; Agnar Helgason, Sigrun Siguroardottir, Nicholson, et al. 2000; Agnar Helgason et al. 2001). The Viking Age Norse settlements in Ireland and rest of British Isles offer another avenue by which medieval Icelanders would have become familiar with Celtic cultural material. (7) As recent studies by Rosemary Power (1985; 2013), John D. Niles (2006), and Matthias Egeler (2013) have demonstrated, Norse (and Anglo-Saxon) texts incorporated a great deal of Celtic material that was transmitted orally before surviving manuscripts in either language were written. As Power notes, the oldest area of contact between Norse and Gaelic worlds, involving transmission of stories of kind now regarded as literature or folktale, seems to have occurred almost exclusively in Viking Age, though possibility that traditional stories that had circulated orally might have been open to supplementation by travellers' accounts in later times (i. …

The Best Kept Secret: Ransom, Wealth, and Power in Völsunga saga

Northrop Frye writes that treasure means wealth, which in often means wealth in its ideal forms, power and (Frye 1957, 193). Are power and wisdom connected to treasure? This paper challenges Frye's statement by exploring the action of Volsunga saga, a thirteenth-century Icelandic mythopoeic romance (what we may consider legendary or heroic literature), to determine if the characters who come into contact with great wealth--as many in the saga do--also attain increased wisdom and power. Not all of the characters do become more wise or powerful from their acquisition of treasure, and the implications that this may have for the literary culture that composed this saga are explored below. To tackle the issue of how to understand medieval Icelandic culture and look into the past through a narrative text, whether literary or historical, it is important to recognize the worldview of the culture from which the text or document originates, even if such recognition does not lead to complete comprehension. Discussing the medieval view of wealth and labor, Aron Gurevich writes: If we are to understand the way the ancient Germans and Scandinavians treated precious metals, we cannot approach this problem from a narrowly economic standpoint; we have to see it in the wider context of the spiritual life of peoples making the transition from barbarism to civilisation (Gurevich 1985, 218). (1) In other words, when looking at a medieval text such as Volsunga saga, it is important to understand the transitory nature of the culture from which the text originated. At the time Volsunga saga is conjectured to have been composed, ca. 1270 (Finch 1965, xxxviii), (2) Icelandic society was at the tail end of its transition period to Christianity but fully in the midst of its transition from an autonomous commonwealth to a constituent part of the Norwegian monarchy. This means that during the centuries preceding the appearance of the saga in manuscript form, Icelandic society would have been adjusting its pre-Christian culture to the conventions of Christianity and at the same time becoming part of a kingdom, which, while taking away its independence, completed the transition of Iceland to Christianity by bringing it under the rule of a Christian monarch. Gurevich goes on to state that: According to concepts still current among them [medieval Scandinavians], the treasures a man owned incorporated in some way his own personal qualities and were intimately bound up with his fortune and happiness. To be deprived of them was equivalent to perishing, to losing one's most important qualities and one's prowess as a warrior. (Gurevich 1985, 218) It is no wonder, then, that the characters of Volsunga saga are willing to go to such great lengths to obtain and maintain their hold on wealth, for it was important to their sense of identity, not merely their economic status; many of them sacrifice their lives in the pursuit of wealth. The fact that at the time of composition of Volsunga saga the Norwegian kingdom was imposing control over economic and political life in Iceland can also account for why the saga represents the struggle for wealth and power in terms of legendary kings fighting one another for control of large amounts of gold. Not only were medieval Icelanders concerned with individual wealth, as will be shown below, but also with how wealth intersected with the monarchy; the interest in the struggle of legendary kings for power reflects the continual negotiations Icelanders had with the Norwegian monarchy throughout the medieval period. In medieval Icelandic literature, there are several stories of intentionally hidden hoards of treasure. Volsunga saga concludes with the permanent concealment of the Niflung a mass of wealth that travels through much of the saga and ultimately belongs to no one in the end, for all those who know of its secret location end up dead. Gurevich claims that gold, as the ancient Germans and Scandinavians saw it, was a materialisation of its owner's good fortune. …

Enamel erosion and mechanical tooth wear in medieval Icelanders

Objectives: The Icelandic Sagas are an important source of information on the way of life and diet habits in Iceland and possibly other Nordic countries 1000 years ago. Archaeological human skull material worldwide has revealed extensive tooth wear, with the main cause believed to be coarse diet. From a graveyard near volcano Hekla, 66 skeletons dated from before 1104 were excavated. The purpose of this study was to determine the main causes of tooth wear in Icelanders 1000 years ago.Materials and methods: Forty-nine skulls were available for research. Two methods were used to evaluate tooth wear and seven for age estimation. An attempt was made to determine the main causes of tooth wear in the light of likely diet and beverage consumption according to a computer search on food and drink customs described in the Icelandic Sagas. Results: Tooth wear was extensive in all groups, increasing with age. The highest score was on first molars, with no difference between sexes. It had all the similarities seen in wear from coarse diet. In some instances it had similar characteristics to those seen in erosion in modern Icelanders consuming excessive amounts of soft drinks. According to the Sagas, acidic whey was a daily drink and used for preservation of food in Iceland until recently. Conclusions: Since acidic whey has considerably high dental erosive potential, it is postulated that consumption of acidic drinks and food, in addition to a coarse and rough diet, played a significant role in the dental wear of ancient Icelanders.

Feeling Another's Pain: Sympathy and Psychology Saga Style

Progress is hardly a given in the humanities or the suspect sciences. In many ways we are not quite as astute as our grandparents, and they not as much as theirs, and so forth in an infinite entropic regress. Would I trade Montaigne or Stendhal's psychological acumen for even the best work that comes from social psychology departments? In this short essay I want to show just how good some medieval people, medieval Icelanders to be exact, were at understanding the mental and emotional states of others, and if of others then presumably, though not necessarily, also of themselves. And I hope to show in some ways they were rather more sophisticated than we are.

The Interplay of Pagan and Christian Traditions in Icelandic Settlement Myths

Medieval Icelanders took pride in their cultural inheritance and descent. They knew that being a new nation was something out of the ordinary, and they cultivated a remarkable literary tradition about their past. They preserved tales of the distant heroic Scandinavian past as well as of more recent Icelandic events, but the tradition that concerned the events connected with the landnam or settlement seems to have been cultivated with a particular interest. This is understandable since the settlement is equated with the foundation of their nation, and the event that had made them Icelanders. Tradition has it that many prominent settlers threw their highseat pillars overboard when they caught sight of Iceland, and settled at the place where they landed. In this essay I shall discuss the stories about settlings where this course of events is described and present some parallels from Latin hagiographic narratives. The Icelandic sources present both Christian and pagan versions of this ritual and appear to applaud both. I conclude by tentatively suggesting how a contemporary audience might have interpreted these myths in light of their Christian faith. When reading about events that took place in the settlement period of Iceland, traditionally dated between 870 and 930, but not recorded in writing until the twelfth century at the very earliest, scholars have often been compelled to address the question of the historicity of certain customs, beliefs, or anecdotes mentioned in the texts. One example of this is a brief article from 1988 by Hermann Palsson.1 He analyzed an anecdote about an Icelandic settler by the name of Porir Grimsson who, as a prophecy foretold, settled at the location where his mare lay down. Hermann Palsson adduces two parallels to this story. The first is quite obvious and concerns the legendary or mythological Greek hero Cadmus and the founding of the city of Thebes. The second requires a bit more goodwill on behalf of the reader and involves the prophecy that Aeneas should found the future Rome at the location where a white sow was seen suckling thirty newborn piglets. These two stories of Classical antiquity have been retold numerous times and vernacular Old Norse versions ex-

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders including 49 Tales (review)

318 Reviews The Complete Sagas of Icelanders including 49 Tales, General Edit Viar Hreinsson, Leifur Eiriksson Publishing, Reykjavik, 1997; 5 vols.; R.R.P. US$500. This, the first English translation of the complete corpus of Icelandic sagas of Icelanders, or family sagas, together with a number of short tales (pxttir), is a major achievement of its editors and its teams of translators and advisers w h o have worked together to ensure the overall publication's consistency of methodology and general scholarly approach. It comes handsomely packaged as a five-volume boxed set, printed on quality paper. It is, as its dark binding and gold lettering proclaim, a collection of 'Viking Age Classics', complete with no less than three Forewords by Icelandic dignitaries and the financial support of several Icelandic banks, insurance companies and Icelandair, the work's main sponsor. All these seals of official approval and support clearly demonstrate the importance of the medieval sagas of Icelanders in the modern Icelandic construction of nationhood and political independence. This English translation is a combined effort of native speakers of Icelandic and native speakers of English, most of w h o m are also scholars of Old Icelandic. The translators are drawn from a number of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. The translation is designed to be as authentic and informed an experience of the world of the medieval sagas as it is possible for people to have who are not medieval Icelanders and cannot read Old Icelandic! There are a good n u m b e r of English translations of individual Old Icelandic sagas already in existence, although not all had been translated up to the time of the present publication. They vary a good deal in quality and character. Some are excellent, Reviews 319 with useful introductions and notes, while others are mediocre and inaccurate, still others being presented in stilted, archaic or strained English style. The Complete Sagas of Icelanders has numerous advantages over existing translations, w h e n these are considered as a group. It contains all k n o w n sagas that belong to the genre of family sagas, as they are usually called in English (the Icelanders calls them 'sagas of Icelanders', hence thetitleof this collection), together with a number of short tales. It does not, by the way, include numerous other prose works that also go by the name of 'saga' in Icelandic—historical sagas, sagas of legendary and heroic kind, and indigenous or translated romances. This collection tries for a uniform approach to questions of translation and the provision of information to the reader about the cultural world whose nature is taken more or less for granted by the saga authors. The editors have supplied m a n y helpful charts, maps and notes and have included in Volume Five a glossary of key concepts and special terms that refer to specifically Icelandic cultural phenomena that the ordinary reader is unlikely to know, words like 'Althing' and 'Moving Days', for example. These words are italicised in the translations, so the reader knows to look them up. Another useful resource is a cross-referenced index of saga characters, which tells at a glance all the sagas in which a particular character appears. This handy list (which will be useful to scholars perhaps even more than the general reader) would have been even better if it had cross-referenced the characters on the basis of kinship as well. A further advantage of the present collection is that the translators pay serious attention to the poetry which is embedded in many saga texts. This poetry, called 'skaldic', is complex and esoteric, both in diction and verse form, but it is of very great literary interest. Previous editors and translators have not, on the 320 Reviews whole, m a d e a very good job of presenting it to the non-specialist reader, and there is no doubt that this is a difficult undertaking. In the present collection, however, a number of the sagas are particularly well translated w h e n it comes to the poetry (several of the translators are experts in poetry...

Palatine torus in the Greenlandic Norse.

Physical anthropologists have long been intrigued by the distinctive oral tori expressed by the medieval Norse populations of Iceland and Greenland. To assess the temporal and spatial variation of one form of oral tori, palatine torus, observations were made on all available Greenlandic Norse skeletons, as well as on samples of medieval Icelanders and Norwegians. In terms of temporal variation, 12th to 14th century (medieval) Greenlanders from the Eastern and Western settlements exhibited higher frequencies and more pronounced expressions of palatine torus compared with early 11th century Greenlanders. The early Greenlandic sample closely approximated the medieval Icelandic and Norwegian samples for total torus frequency, although the Norwegians exhibited the trait to a less pronounced degree. As degree of expression is the most distinctive aspect of torus variation among the Norse, some combination of environmental factors, including increased masticatory stress and chronic undernutrition, probably accounts for most of the difference between settlement period and medieval Greenlanders. Although palatine torus may be hereditary in part, environmental factors play a significant role in the expression of this trait.

Medieval Iceland: society, sagas, and power

The history of medieval Europe is incomplete if it does not take Iceland into account. Jesse Byock's reassessment of medieval Iceland uses all the available sources--the medieval Icelanders' historical writings, extensive saga literature, and intricate laws--to explore the way Iceland's social order functioned.

Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change.

In 930, Iceland first established a common law for the island and became an autonomous republic, which lasted until it came under the sovereignty of the Norwegian king nearly three and a half centuries later. This volume is a two-part analysis of that society, known as the Icelandic commonwealth or Freestate. The first section examines how medieval Icelanders classified and perceived such domains as time, space, kinship, political organization, and cosmology, linking together these various realms to present an integrated picture of the society's world-view. The second section focuses on the changes that took place during the period in the fields of ecology, demography, religion, property relations, and the law, and explains how and why these changes, interacting with more fundamental social structures and beliefs, undermined--and ultimately destroyed--the society.