This important study is devoted to the genesis of literary genres in Old Norse literature, their interaction and intersection with one another, and their adaptation under the influence of foreign literature. The editors state that the aim of the volume is “to interrogate the term ‘genre’, its applicability to Nordic literary materials, its usefulness, its inherent complexities and the relevance of both medieval and modern generic classifications to our understanding of the Old Norse literary heritage” (p. 8). The volume is tripartite and devoted to Theory, Themes, and Genre in Focus.The first essay in “Theory,” by Massimiliano Bampi, surveys the theoretical background of Genre Studies in the context of the very nature of literature and the limits of literary activity. He reviews the positions taken by such critics as Jauss, Sigurður Nordal, and Fowler, and concludes that genre is best investigated in the context of synchronous and diachronous social and political changes.In “Hybridity” Sif Rikhardsdottir addresses the issue of genre from the perspective of generic hybridity, which abounds across more or less all Norse genres. The author emphasizes the significance of innovation as a force that both shaped the Norse genres but was also the source of their deconstruction and displacement. Dissimilar French genres assumed the generic form of prose romance in Norse translation, but at the same time exhibited hybridity as a form of reconception of generic identity.In “Terminology,” Lukas Rösli proposes directions “for a more historical approach” to genre in Old Norse-Icelandic literature (p. 47). He claims that genre terminology is an arbitrary social or scholarly convention based on modern editorial work rather than on the literature itself. He claims, absurdly, that editions are no longer necessary tools, and suggests that scholars should use “actual manuscripts, both in their material and digitised forms” (p. 58). I dare him to do so and read, for example, the text on fols. 6r9–v47 in the fifteenth-century manuscript AM 586 4to (in Agnete Loth's facsimile edition of Fornaldarsagas and Late Medieval Romances [1977], which I happen to have at hand). This should at once disabuse him of the notion that editions are unnecessary, in this case, Hugo Gering's Íslendzk Æventýri (1882–84).In “Form” Mikael Males analyzes medieval discussions of the same, the locus classicus of which is the wedding at Reykjahólar in 1119 and the two sagas that were told there. Males concludes that saga authors theorized not about the form of sagas but rather their historical reliability. Poetry is defined by form, and references to stanzas assured the historical veracity of the saga.A similar topic is taken up by Judy Quinn in her essay “Orality, Textuality, and Performance,” where she points out that poetry, which was created in the past, functions as an important token of authenticity for saga narratives about the past. In her discussion of the wedding feast at Reykjahólar she notes that in textualized saga prosimetrum few poems are quoted in their entirety as a single utterance, and that textualization favored the truncation of poetic quotation. The prosimetric form represents a creative hybridization of poetic and prose modes, as past oral performances were incorporated into stylized literary prose.The final contribution to “Theory” is Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir's “Manuscripts and Codicology.” She focuses on codicology and its implications for genre. Many manuscripts were never conceived as cohesive volumes, and in the course of time manuscripts could be added to a codex, split up, or combined with others. The extant copies of Grettis saga, dating to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, are not particularly fine, except for a copy made in the huge double-columned codex AM 152 fol. by Þorsteinn, the half-brother of Björn Þorleifsson, a member of the rich Skarðverjar dynasty. The manuscript, one of the two most illustrious books of the early sixteenth century, is rivaled only by Holm perg 3 fol., to which Jóhanna refers, but does not name. This is the so-called Reykjahólabók, the last of the great medieval legendaries, the texts of most of which were translated from Middle Low German and written down by Björn Þorleifsson himself.Part II of the book, devoted to Themes, opens with Hans Jakob Orning's article, “The Body Politic,” an investigation of the manner in which kings and elites availed themselves of various genres in support of their authority throughout the Middle Ages. Whereas skaldic poetry initially served to reinforce a heroic royal ideology, as did some eddic poetry, by the twelfth century an amalgamation of royal and ecclesiastical authority prevailed in the kings’ sagas. While the sagas of Icelanders and contemporary sagas sought to validate elite power, and the sagas of Icelanders deal mostly with power from below, the contemporary sagas depict multiparty conflicts.Dale Kedwards opens his article “Geography” with the statement that the link between place and narrative is fundamental in our construction of genre in the Icelandic sagas. While the Íslendingasögur describe real places in the Icelandic landscape, the majority of which open with landnám (land-taking) accounts, a geographical introduction occurs across the various saga genres, including the indigenous riddarasögur, which largely derive the geographic information contextualizing the plot from foreign encyclopedic works.The premise of “Time and Space,” by Torfi H. Tulinius, is that the medieval Icelandic literary genres grew out of social circumstances and evolved as society changed. He reviews various approaches to literature, and focuses on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope, the result of a dialogic co-creation of authors, performers, and listeners/readers. Tulinius concludes that study of the chronotope reveals that the various saga genres are grounded in a dynamic social reality not unlike that of other parts of contemporary Europe.In the following essay, entitled “Memory,” Pernille Hermann discusses how genres generate and function as repositories of cultural memory. Inasmuch as the sagas cross various genres, they are in dialogue with other genres. They are a repository of important genres in Icelandic culture, and thus play an important role in the construction of cultural memory.In “The Human Condition” Stefanie Gropper explores the emotional response of individuals to marriage and death in a number of Íslendingasögur, among them Laxdæla saga and Egils saga, and the less well known post-classical Víglundar saga, a skald saga. She concludes that the human condition in these sagas is dependent on interpersonal relations, so that expressions of love and grief are informed by plots about conflicts within and between families and Icelandic society.Carolyne Larrington's essay “God(s)” surveys Eddic and skaldic mythological poetry and its various types, such as wisdom poetry. With the advent of Christianity came hagiography and its diverse genres, including skaldic poetry, and development of the drápa. Larrington concludes by noting that while both Eddic and skaldic poetry addressed the functions and histories of the pagan gods, the same were adapted to Christian ends after the Conversion.The final contribution to the section on Themes is “Wisdom” by Brittany Schorn, who distinguishes between wisdom as utterance, that is “applied wisdom,” and “traditional” wisdom as disseminated in texts, such as in Eddic poems. This wisdom could be voiced by giants and gods in Eddic texts or by persons or a narrator in sagas, where the exchange of wisdom is situational, with a specified speaker and an addressee. Under the heading “Learned” Wisdom, the author explores works such as the Physiologus, Elucidarius, and Konungs skuggsjá. The essay concludes with a discussion of the specific use of words for wisdom in a variety of texts.Part III, “Genre in Focus,” contains case studies of skaldic and Eddic poetry, þættir and Íslendingasögur, biskupasögur and heilagra manna sögur, and romances.The essay “Skaldic Poetry–A Case Study: The Poetry of Torf-Einarr Rögnvaldsson of Orkney,” by Erin Michelle Goeres, is devoted to five stanzas of battle poetry attributed to the Earl of Orkney and found in Orkneyinga saga, Heimskringla, and Fagrskinna. They focus on the vengeance exacted by Torf-Einarr on Hálfdan háleggr, son of King Haraldr hárfagri of Norway. The stanzas illustrate how skaldic poetry was adapted and newly construed in the prosimetric context of the later sagas, and at the same time demonstrate the flexibility of battle poetry as a genre.Carolyne Larrington's essay, “Eddic Poetry–A Case Study: Sólarljóð,” consists of an analysis of “The Song of the Sun,” a generic hybrid, part wisdom poem, part Other world vision. The gnomic wisdom poem includes and is structured around exempla that deal with transience, sexual desire, arrogance, and gullibility, and ends with a list of precepts and the admonition to remember and practice them. Larrington concludes that Sólarljóð represents a productive encounter between native wisdom modes and Christian visionary literature.The essay “Þættir–A Case Study: Stjörnu-Odda draumr” by Elizabeth Ashman Rowe delivers a succinct review of the copious scholarly discussion concerning the nature of þættir, which occur as prologues, epilogues, episodes within a saga, and also as independent tales. She acknowledges the difficulty of arriving at a generic framework for the skald þættir and dream þættir, which are associated with the Íslendingasögur. The dream þættir seem to be a secondary development of prosimetric narratives containing nonnarrative poetry. Stylistically Stjörnu-Odda draumr resembles some late medieval fornaldarsögur as well as the dream visions of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century European literature. Ashman Rowe concludes that the compositions of historical poets became a model for the prosimetric narrative of the dream þættir.In “Íslendingasögur –A Case Study: Vatnsdaœla saga,” Russell Poole explores “a text long stigmatised as transgressing certain norms” (p. 271), that is, norms usually associated with the genre Íslendingasaga. Poole surveys the features that Vatnsdœla saga shares with other sagas and argues that these suffice to classify the work as belonging to the saga genre. He notes, however, that individual texts within the genre can possess distinctive emphases—in this case, the avoidance of excess in conflict, coupled with a penchant for seeking settlements rather than engaging in protracted feuds.Kevin J. Wanner's case study is devoted to byskupa sögur and heilagra manna sögur, two related yet different genres: the former the lives of Icelandic bishops, some of whom were also saints; the latter the lives of non-Icelandic saints. Since the byskupa sögur are temporally defined sagas they have also been classed as samtíðarsögur, that is, contemporary sagas. Wanner differentiates between generic and nongeneric styles or modes of storytelling, and notes that there are not only “saga genres” but also “genre sagas” (p. 287), the latter employing stock situations and story patterns. A chart visualizes and categorizes the variety of Icelandic sagas by their degree of contingency (unscripted/unauthored incidents) and contrivance (scripted, authored, invented signs), and places heilagra manna sögur in the quadrant of divine authorship—that is, absolute, paradigmatic truth—whereas the biskupa sögur partake unequally in both contingency and contrivance. Unlike the heilagra manna sögur, the biskupa sögur permit random events to undermine an otherwise benevolent authorial will.The last case study is devoted to Romance, a textual group, as Jürg Glauser points out, with neither stable elements nor terminology across the various languages. Norse romance consists of several thematically, medially, and chronologically defined subgroups. The core group consists of Old Norse-Icelandic riddarasögur and the Old Swedish Eufemiavisor deriving from Latin, Old French, or Anglo-Norman sources. Then there are early indigenous Icelandic romances that are stylistically similar to the translated riddarasögur, but without known foreign sources. Finally, although some thirty late-medieval indigenous riddarasögur share common structures and narrative matter, they differ substantially in style and intergeneric relationship. Glauser observes that Norse romance is an extraordinarily hybrid, unstable, and heterogeneous genre, but that codicological evidence might reveal a potential medieval genre awareness, which complements and supports the approach taken by Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir in the essay “Manuscripts and Codicology.”The volume concludes with a most useful “Annotated Taxonomy of Genres,” which names and defines the various text types that are the subject of A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre.