On the Receiving End: The Role of Scholarship, Memory, and Genre in Constructing Ljósvetninga saga

• Main Author: Tirosh, Yoav
• Other Authors: Ármann Jakobsson, Íslensku- og menningardeild (HÍ), Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies (UI), Hugvísindasvið (HÍ), School of Humanities (UI), Háskóli Íslands, University of Iceland
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Iceland, School of Humanities, Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies 2019
• Subjects: Old Norse; Sagas; Authorship; Memory; Genre; Old Icelandic Literature; 15th century; Íslendingasögur; Ljósvetninga saga; Íslenskar fornbókmenntir; Doktorsritgerðir; Theodore; Iceland
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/1305

This thesis reveals how scholarly preconceptions guided the reception of a specific saga, Ljósvetninga saga, and contributes to a wider understanding of how saga, Old Norse, medieval, and general literature are each constantly changing and unstable, both in their preservation, and in the ways they are presented to the general public and scholarly community. It focuses on issues of memory and genre that arise from a material philology approach, providing a literary analysis of both redactions of the saga as independent texts with their own intrinsic value. Ljósvetninga saga takes place in Northern Iceland during the tenth and eleventh centuries and focuses on the political maneuverings of the chieftain Guðmundr inn ríki Eyjólfsson and his son Eyjólfr. Most of the academic debate surrounding Ljósvetninga saga has focused on the issue of its origins. This saga, most likely written in the thirteenth century, is atypical in that it has two seperate redactions that offer highly divergent information and narratives in several segments, dividing the saga between the A-redaction, based on the late fourteenth–early fifteenth-century manuscript AM 561 4to, and the C-redaction, based on the mid-fifteenth-century manuscript AM 162 c fol. and its approximately fifty post-medieval paper copies. The divergent redactions are the source of much speculation about the text’s origins, split between an interpretation of oral composition, commonly referred to as Freeprose, and one of written composition, commonly referred to as Bookprose. These two understandings of the saga are also tied to two different editions of the saga, which have been alternately used to elevate one redaction over the other. Theodore Andersson’s attempt to shift the debate toward a compromise between Freeprose and Bookprose has only been partially successful, due, among other reasons, to his continued elevation of one redaction (the C-redaction). This thesis approaches both redactions as independent, internally-coherent texts rather than stressing their ...