Textual Territory: The Regional and Genealogical Dynamic of Medieval Icelandic Literary Production

• Main Author: Ross, Margaret Clunies
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 1998
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198183891.003.0002; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52612016/isbn-9780198183891-book-part-2.pdf

Abstract It is now over twenty years since Kurt Schier published an important essay on medieval Icelandic literature, which he entitled ‘The Rise of Literature in “Terra Nova”: Some Comparative Reflections’ .1 It is an important essay because it attempts to find plausible modern explanations for an extraordinary medieval phenomenon, the uniqueness and plenitude of the vernacular literature written in Iceland, which sharply distinguishes that island’s medieval literary production from that of all other medieval European societies. Even though we now better appreciate the debt of Icelandic writing to medieval Latin and other foreign models, thanks to the research and scholarship of the last hundred years, we still return to a set of striking characteristics of medieval Icelandic literature, which distinguishes it even from the literary products of the Icelanders’ closest geographical and cultural neighbours, the Norwegians.