Guðrún Nordal. Sturlunga saga and the context of saga-writing

• Author: Guðrún Nordal
• Title: Sturlunga saga and the context of saga-writing
• Published in: Introductory Essays on Egils saga and Njáls saga
• Editors:John Hines, Desmond Slay
• Place, Publisher: London: Viking Society for Northern Research
• Year: 1992
• Pages: 1-14
• E-text: Viking Society Web Publications
• Reference: Guðrún Nordal. "Sturlunga saga and the context of saga-writing." Introductory Essays on Egils saga and Njáls saga, pp. 1-14. Eds. John Hines, Desmond Slay. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1992.

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Annotation

The article provides a reading of the writing strategies displayed in Sturlunga saga, in order to underline the major similarities with the traditional narrative technique of the family sagas. In the author’s view, contemporary sagas show a significant degree of similarity with the sagas of Icelanders, regarding several narrative devices (interpolation of verses, anticipations through dreams and supernatural happenings, predictions, visions, commenting etc.) Guðrún Nordal focuses mainly on Íslendinga saga by Sturla Þórðarson, as it is one of the few sagas whose author and his background are well known. This allows Guðrún Nordal to show the uniformity in the narrative techniques employed in contemporary sagas as well as in family sagas. In Guðrún Nordal’s view, both sub-genres show the concern of the contemporaries for the re-telling and re-creation of the past. The given example is the episode of the burning at Flugumýri (ch. 172-4; 1253) which has a striking parallelism in the burning of Njáll in Njáls saga.

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See also

• Hines, John. Kingship in Egils saga
• Finlay, Alison. Egils saga and other poets’ sagas
• Larrington, Carolyne. Egill‘s longer Poems: Arinbjarnarkviða and Sonatorrek
• Jesch, Judith. "Good men" and peace in Njáls saga
• O'Donoghue, Heather. Women in Njáls saga
• Hamer, Andrew. "It seemed to me that the sweetest light of my eyes had been extinguished"
• McTurk, Rory W. The supernatural in Njáls saga
• Robinson, Peter. Vikings and Celts
• Hines, John. Egils saga and Njáls saga: bibliographical guides

Links

• Written by: Eleonora Pancetti
• Icelandic/English translation: