Conceptualizing the Multicultural ‘North’ in the Íslendingasögur: Peoples, Places, and Phenomena

• Published in: Nordlit
• Main Author: Solveig Marie Wang
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Norwegian
• Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2020
• Subjects: Norse-Sámi relations; Íslendingasögur; Liminal landscapes; Medieval spatial understandings; Norwegian literature; PT8301-9155; Fjall; Norway; Fennoscandia; Fennoscandian; Northern Norway
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5480; https://doaj.org/article/4c4bcca6f064477ba1a60ee5d7c673fb

During the early medieval period, a large part of Fennoscandia was inhabited by the Sámi (Zachrisson 2008, 32). With written sources such as Historia Norvegiæ, Ágrip af Noregs konungasǫgum, and Heimskringla referring to Sámi settlements in the Viking and medieval period reaching as far south into Norway as Hadeland (Einarsson 2007, 5-7), alongside archaeological excavations asserting a Sámi cultural presence south of the contemporary cultural borders of Sápmi (Bergstøl 2008), close contact between the groups is not surprising. Despite often being described as ‘desolate’ and ‘remote’ (especially in the terra nullis colonialism exercised by the Scandinavian nation states in early modern times), the northernmost parts of the Fennoscandian landscape complexes are described as already inhabited in several medieval Scandinavian sagas, including the Íslendingasögur. Primarily, these texts explicitly assert that the ambiguous and distant ‘north’ of Fennoscandia was a special, preternatural place, simultaneously internal and external to what medieval Icelanders perceived as ‘Nóregi’. Whether enforced by the ‘othering’ of characters depicted with northern descent through expressive features and abilities traditionally associated with the area or its indigenous inhabitants, by the descriptions of different landscapes and communities unequivocally ‘othered’ and distinct from that of the saga-writers’ reality, or by extraordinary phenomena connected to the two, ‘norðarliga í Nóregi’ is portrayed as somewhat distinct from that of the rest of the ‘national’ landscape. Encompassing an area extending further south than contemporary northern Norway, the notion of a supernatural north in the Íslendingasögur goes beyond an idea of a unified Nóregi. Moving into the land of powerful chieftains in Naumdælafylki and the ambivalent Hálogaland, venturing ‘á fjall upp’ to the Sámi borderlands of Finnmǫrkr, whilst also incorporating the mysterious landscapes and peoples of eastern Fennoscandia, the notoriously equivocal Kvenland and ...