1Journey to the Antipodes. Cosmological and Mythological Themes in Alexanders Saga

• Main Author: David Ashurst
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.549.1154; http://sydney.edu.au/arts/medieval/saga/pdf/001-ashurst.pdf

First a look at evidence for the shape of the world as it was imagined by audiences of Alexanders saga, the mid-thirteenth-century account of Alexander the Great which is a translation of Walter of Châtillon’s Latin epic, the Alexandreis. Simek (1990, 102-103) has listed a small number of texts which indicate that Old Norse audiences of the thirteenth century, at least in ecclesiastical and courtly circles, were familiar with the belief that the earth is spherical. This idea had been an integral part of scholarly learning in Europe since the Carolingian renaissance of the eighth century, and from the twelfth century it was being taught to most clerics; by the thirteenth century it had found its way into popular literature (Simek 1996, 25). Evidence for the familiarity of this belief at the very start of the thirteenth century in Iceland can be found in a passage from Elucidarius, where the teacher explains to his pupil that the head of Man was given a rounded shape in the likeness of the world: Hofofl hans vas bollot ígliking heimballar (Simek 1990, 401, transcribed from MS AM 674a