Damnation and Salvation in Old Norse Literature

• IntroductionConfession and PenanceLife's Journey Towards Salvation: Salvation and the Biographical PatternBetrayalOutlaws and Marginal FiguresSalvation, Damnation and the Visible WorldThe Hour of DeathLast Things and Judgement DayBibliography

In his examination of an understudied theme, that of salvation and damnation in Old Norse Literature, Haki Antonsson considers how sub-themes found in a variety of literary genres - sagas of Icelanders, kings' sagas, and religious poetry - reflect basic Christian concerns with the fate of their protagonists in the next world. Although Christian authorship of, and influence on, the sagas has been assumed in scholarship for several decades, its full implications have seldom been realized, and the focus has usually been on individual sagas and episodes in which Christian themes are thought to imply sanctity. In this volume Antonsson demonstrates through meticulous textual analyses how death scenes, biographical patterns, and themes such as betrayal and violent death suggest not that individuals are saints, but that their eventual places in heaven are guaranteed - or prohibited. The volume serves as a welcome and pointed reminder that such issues were just as important for thirteenth-century Icelanders as they were elsewhere in Europe.-