Friday, May 15, 2020
The Unknown Saga Men Of Icelandic Family Sagas - 1738 Words
The unknown saga-men of Icelandic Family Sagas who wrote in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries utilized a plethora of writing techniques to portray the lives of native Icelanders from roughly 930 to 1030. Throughout this period, Family Sagas progressed from choppy, scattered life stories to literary masterpieces laced with dark humor and adventure. However, sagas sometimes stray from the truth due to the saga-men’s tendencies to romanticize the past, use interstitial expansion, and edit manuscripts to fit Christian morals. Written in the 9th and 10th centuries (and put together in the 13th century) The Book of Settlements is an important reference for all sagas about to be discussed. It takes place during the age of settlement (870 to†¦show more content†¦The organization of Olaf’s saga is loosely additive in the fact that none of the chapters seem to lead to each other and chapters are often repeated. Such as chapters 37 and 55 where it is the same story of king Olaf slapping a queen, but in one he does so because she wouldn’t convert to Christianity, and in the other he does so because he was caught giving her a false gold arm band. This seemingly accidental repetition and misplacement of narratives could have happened for a variety of reasons, but the most likely is that since Oddr wrote the saga as he interviewed people, he would be forced to put narratives pertaining to earlier stories at the end of the manuscript because there was no way for him to â€Å"copy and pasteâ₠¬ and add it to the beginning. Since all chapters after 25 were written from solely oral accounts, interstitial expansion plagues the Saga to the point that it is hard to tell what actually happened and what is completely made up, for example the scene where Olaf gets married in Winland probably never even happened. Usually after demonic or paranormal activities are mentioned, Oddr interludes to write in his own thoughts. An example of this happening is in chapter 43 when Odin appears to Olaf. Oddr feels it necessary to comment his own thoughts due to the monostatic lens that he has, because he is after all a monk writing in a monastery. When he writes about paranormal events he feels the need to let his audience know that he doesn’t believeShow MoreRelatedEssay on A Fictional Account of Early Iceland1573 Words  | 7 Pagesof saga writing in Iceland are largely matters for speculation. A common pastime on Icelandic farms, from the 12th century down to modern times, was the reading aloud of stories to entertain the household, known as sagnaskemmtun (saga entertainment). It seems to have replaced the traditional art of storytelling (Hermann Palsson, pg. 1). Njals Saga uses Old Icelandic writing convention and historical data to give a fictional account of a generations lifestyle and struggles. 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