Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. The Heroic World: Icelandic Sagas and the Old-English “Riming Poem”

• Author: Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey
• Title: The Heroic World: Icelandic Sagas and the Old-English “Riming Poem”.
• Published in: Pacific Coast Philology 14
• Year: 1979
• Pages: 51-58
• E-text:
• Reference: Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. "The Heroic World: Icelandic Sagas and the Old-English “Riming Poem”." Pacific Coast Philology 14 (1979): 51-58.

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• Key words: intertextuality (textatengsl)

Annotation

The 87-line Riming Poem can be seen as a juxtaposition not of youth and old age but rather of heroic/pagan and Christian worldviews and values; its bipartite structure is similar to that seen in the Wanderer and the Seafarer as well as a number of Icelandic sagas. Egils saga is a good analogue to the first part of the Riming Poem, which deals with the heroic world and its mutability – the speaker can indeed be compared to Thórólf Kveld-Úlfsson, whose good fortune brings about his downfall when it exceeds that of his king. Whereas death is treated as the end of a man’s story in the heroic sagas, however, the Riming Poem ends with a shift to the theme of life after death and the immutable Christian world.

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