Narrative in the Icelandic Family Saga

Heather O’Donoghue is Professor of Old Norse at University of Oxford, UK and a Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, UK. She is the author of The Genesis of a Saga Narrative (1991), Old Norse Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (2004), Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative (2005), From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths (2007) and English Poetry and Old Norse Myth: A History (2014). She has also broadcast with the BBC on the topic of the Norse Gods.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. The Representation of External Time2. The Management of Narrative Time: Duration3. The Management of Narrative Time: Order4. The Voice of the Silent Narrator5. Withheld KnowledgeConclusionBibliographyIndex

This important new study explores the often-ignored reality that Iceland‘s family sagas focus squarely on human society. Instead of pursuing the usual literary questions of invention or fantasy, Prof. O’Donohuge delves deeply into the “real-feeling” world of deceptively familiar human characters in everyday, though dramatic circumstances as she focuses on the remarkably consistent portrait of early medieval Icelandic society. Saga authors were, O’Donohuge states, “working with an authentic and detailed picture of their ancestral society accurately transmitted via oral tradition.“ Here is a work that has much to teach us and contributes significantly to the field.