Icelandic Family Sagas

The present study scrutinizes the outlawry and outlaws that appear in the Icelandic Family Sagas. It provides a thorough description about outlawry on the basis of extant law and saga texts as well as an analysis of referential connotations attached to it. The concept of outlawry was fundamental for the medieval Icelanders conceptions of their past. Indeed, understanding outlawry is essential for understanding many of the Family Sagas. Outlaws appear in saga texts in significant roles.

The Icelandic Family Sagas comprise a group of prose narratives that were written down in the 13th and 14th century Iceland. They are based on events and personae that belong to the 10th century Iceland. These narratives introduce many outlaws, out of which some 75 are named.

The Family Sagas are studied here as one corpus and special emphasis is given to those narrative features that repetitively appear in connection with outlawry and the outlaw characters. Therefore, the eventual objects of this study are the medieval Icelanders general conceptions of the historical outlawry as well as the variations of these conceptions throughout the period of saga writing. The medieval Icelanders general conceptions about the 10th 11th century, which are reflected in the Family Sagas, are here referred to as the Saga World. The Saga World is the historically based taleworld to which all of the Family Sagas refer.

The medieval law texts, which were derived from centuries old legislative traditions, reveal that outlawry meant banishing from the society and being denied all help, and that the outlawed person lost the protection of the law. In practice, outlawry was a death sentence.

However, outlaws occupy many differing roles in the saga narratives even in connection with recurrent narrative motifs. These roles reflect the social and spatial structures of the Saga World. The inspection of outlawry within these structures reveals that the definition of outlawry as it appears in the law texts is insufficient for understanding outlawry in the saga texts.

The social and spatial structures also provide a basis for the connotations of outlawry. In this study, these connotations are inspected primarily from the referential connections between outlawry in the Family Sagas and corresponding phenomena in other concurrent literature. This is done by studying the implementations of the basic elements of outlawry in the Family Sagas marginalization, banishing, rejection and solitariness within other literary genres and the taleworlds to which they refer. It is argued that these taleworlds reflect the same ideas that were associated with outlawry in the Family Sagas albeit in different forms and that these different forms reciprocally contributed to the conceptions of outlawry.

The variety of denotations and connotations of outlawry that is visible in the medieval Icelandic texts reflects the ambiguity of outlawry in the Family Sagas. This ambiguity may shed light to questions such as why an outlaw could be perceived as a hero in a literary genre that predominantly promoted law and order and why the same outlaw could be perceived as a villain on another occasion.

The three Íslendingasögur about major outlaws have long fascinated scholars and readers alike, and the question why medieval Icelanders told tales in which social outsiders play the part of the hero has been the concern of scholarship for a number of years. At the heart of this scholarship has been a preoccupation with the characters and their families, for these families play a prominent role in the texts: Gísli is outlawed for killing one brother-in-law to avenge another; Hörðr does not trust any of his male relatives, and this eventually leads to his downfall; and Grettir's difficult relationship with his father seems to lead to his reckless and arrogant behaviour later in life. But why are these stories about outlaw heroes so focussed on the relationships between the individual and his kin group? And why were Icelanders – medieval and modern – so fascinated by these marginal, destructive figures?
In this article these questions are addressed by approaching the outlaw from the perspective of monster theory. The monster, as a creature that points towards or even embodies meaning beyond itself, lends itself well to such an investigation into social and cultural concerns whose reflection we might see in the literary products of said culture. So far, outlaws have not been included into the corpus of Íslendingasögur monsters, and therefore, the article consists of four parts. First, the concept of social monstrosity is established, based on Cohen’s monster theory but more suited to the unique situation in the Íslendingasögur. This concept is then applied to the three major outlaws before turning to the discussion of outlaws within their matrix of family ties. In the final step, the monstrous outlaw in his disrupted, disruptive family will be read as symptomatic of medieval Icelandic socio-cultural concerns about the fragmentation of family structures.

Chapter 4 of Eiríks saga rauða has long drawn the attention of scholars due to its detailed description of a seiðr, a rare occurrence in Íslendinga sǫgur as well as in sagas of other genres. The protagonist of the scene, a Greenlandic seiðkona named Þorbjǫrg, is depicted as a social functionary who creates a relationship with the supernatural world and acquires a deeper knowledge and foreknowledge concerning the surrounding area, for the benefit of the local community. The performance takes place during a great famine at the beginning of the eleventh century, and the semi-public ritual had the purpose of predicting when the dearth would come to an end. It consisted – among other things-of a ritual meal: a porridge of kid's milk and of the cooked hearts of all the living creatures that inhabited the area. The present paper aims at casting light on this specific aspect of Þorbjǫrg's seiðr, and at contextualizing it within a wider literary and historical landscape. The intention is to integrate traditional interpretations with observations on the importance of sympathetic magic in ancient and medieval Europe, and particularly in medieval Scandinavia.

Transhumance of livestock away from the home farms during the summer months played an important role in the subsistence economics of small farms in Iceland since the settlement in the ninth century. However, the role of summer pastures (shielings) went beyond being an important feature of the farming economy. Shielings were also places which transcended the boundary between the social world of the farm and unknown world of the wilderness, and as such they played an important role in shaping (and breaking of) traditional social relationships. The ambiguity of shielings was reinforced by their association with women whose place was traditionally in the safe and socialized space of innangarðs (‘within the enclosure/inside the fence’) and not in the uncontrolled and dangerous útangarðs (‘outside the fence/enclosure’). At shieling sites women enjoyed immense social freedom, away from the watchful eyes of their male relatives, but at the same time they were also removed from the protection of their families, and according to Íslendingasögur and later folktales they were under constant threat of attack by feuding men, outlaws, and supernatural beings that were believed to have frequented these remote locations. The unclear status of shieling sites and their role in shaping female identity in the Viking and Medieval Iceland will be the main focus of this paper. By examining artefactual assemblages at Viking and Medieval shieling sites and high-resolution sedimentary histories of shieling occupation contextualised against a review of saga and folk literature I will explore the nature of gendered activities at shieling sites and the role of Icelandic women as shieling keepers.

Fantasy novels by Icelandic writers were not very common in the 20th  century. In the last few decades they have grown in numbers and Icelandic fantasy is becoming more and more popular. Fantasy in general has not been considered a very respectable genre, but recent studies have found that interpretation lacking. Scholars who have studied "the fantastic" have learned that the line between realism and the fantastic is perhaps getting blurry and that the two are in fact not so far apart.
Medieval Icelandic literature is in many cases overflowing with supernatural occurrences, but is the supernatural the same as the fantastic? In modern society supernatural beings are regarded as fiction, but that was not the case in medieval times. Perhaps we could assume that the medieval supernatural could be the equivalent of modern fantasy. Modern fantasy literature implies that this is indeed possible.
This thesis is written from the University of Iceland and is an M.A. thesis in Icelandic literature. In it the evolution of the term "fantasy" will be studied. The difference between the supernatural and the fantastic in medieval Icelandic sagas will also be investigated and analysed in regard to three modern Icelandic fantasy novels. The conclusion will show how Icelandic fantasy writers are inspired by the medieval sagas; whether it is intentional or not.

This chapter makes a close reading of a short vignette in Eyrbyggja saga - the attempted forced marriage between the Swedish berserk Halli and Víga-Styrr's daughter Ásdis - exploring the ways that various norms and normative expectations are deliberately manipulated by the characters in question to further their own social goals in the narrative.

Cette communication propose de revenir sur le terme « viking » en analysant la notion de piraterie dans les sources norroises. Si les historiens sont familiers des témoignages des victimes de ces pirates du Nord, les sources norroises demeurent encore trop méconnues hors de Scandinavie. Les sagas, chroniques rédigées essentiellement au XIIIe siècle, sont des récits provenant des descendants de ces fameux Vikings et jouissant depuis ces vingt dernières années d’un regain d’intérêt de la part des historiens. 
Le mouvement de piraterie des Vikings, daté approximativement du VIIIe au XIe siècle, marqua profondément le Moyen Âge. De la route de l’ouest (vestrvegr) à la route de l’est (austrvegr), l’œkoumène des Vikings s’étendait de Terre-Neuve à Constantinople et de l’Islande au Maghreb. Ces pirates furent à l’origine de changements dans l’ensemble du monde médiéval : création d’États et de dynasties, consolidation du pouvoir, transfert des richesses, imposition de tributs aux peuples vaincus, explorations, mercenariat, etc. 
Devant la foule de problèmes soulevés par l’étude des Vikings, nous proposons ici de revenir à la notion de piraterie au sein des sources norroises. Nous tenterons tout d’abord de revenir sur la sémantique du mot víkingr et du champ lexical qui lui est associé. Puis à travers divers témoignages issus des sources norroises, nous essayerons de définir les enjeux et modalités de la piraterie vue par les Scandinaves.

Mots-clés : Vikings, piraterie, sagas, histoire maritime.

Ari wrote the Islendingabok, but it is unlikely that he also wrote the Landnamabok, because several genealogies end around 1030, and important people from later in the 11th century ar missing, such as lawspeakers and even from Ari's own family.
Later editing of the Landnamabok incorporated people from the 12th and 13th century.

This volume is the first book-length study of masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders. Spanning the entire corpus of the Sagas of Icelanders—and taking into account a number of little-studied sagas as well as the more well-known works—it comprehensively interrogates the construction, operation, and problematization of masculinities in this genre.

Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders elucidates the dominant model of masculinity that operates in the sagas, demonstrates how masculinities and masculine characters function within these texts, and investigates the means by which the sagas, and saga characters, may subvert masculine dominance. Combining close literary analysis with insights drawn from sociological theories of hegemonic and subordinated masculinities, notions of homosociality and performative gender, and psychoanalytic frameworks, the book brings to men and masculinities in saga literature the same scrutiny traditionally brought to the study of women and femininities. Ultimately, the volume demonstrates that masculinity is not simply glorified in the sagas, but is represented as being both inherently fragile and a burden to all characters, masculine and non-masculine alike.

Abstract: Some of the bloodfeuds in Iceland during c. 870–1056 are described in details in the numerous sagas, which makes them the main source of this article. A thorough analysis of these texts leads to the conclusion that the feuds on the island follow the development of the social patterns, the jurisdiction and the legislation in medieval Iceland. In a way this personalizes the Icelandic type of feud. In order to substantiate this point, the article focuses firstly on revenge as an act underlying any enmity. Vengeance obeys a set of specific rules and norms that place it within a certain framework. Secondly, attention is paid to the public support as a factor crucial for any conflict during the first two centuries of the Icelandic history.
  Along with all this, to get an idea of the actual flow of events in any bloodfeud, one needs to trace the individual development phases of the feud. According to what is mentioned in the sagas, feuds are most often prompted by purely human feelings such as love, jealousy, pride, by selfish acts like desire for succession rights or avarice. The results of such acts usually lead to retaliatory actions that often escalate into physical attacks on someone’s life, property or honour. Thus a feud is already a fact and it can quickly escalate to bloodshed. Events of this kind are also at the centre of the plot in most Icelandic sagas. Any feud is at its deadliest point when escalated, but then it subsided, and the warring parties made peace with each other. In some cases an agreement is achieved by judicial decision. In others, lawsuits are resolved through arbitration, which represents an extrajudicial practice that includes negotiations and mediations between two parties. The dispute is resolved by a third party – an arbitrator, who is a respected and fair-minded neutral person. Most often he achieves agreement between the conflicting parties by directing and convincing them to make peace through certain guaranties, compensations and other payments.
Judging by the information in the Icelandic sagas, bloodfeuds are amongst the phenomenon characteristics of the medieval Icelandic society. On this basis most of the events during the period 870–1056 take place during one or another family conflict. Although the Icelandic people were not involved actively in the major events of the Viking era, their history contributes significantly to the understanding of the historical processes in the medieval Scandinavia.

The depiction of religion, spirituality, and/or the 'supernatural' in travel writing, and more generally interconnections between religion and tourism, form a broad and growing field of research in the study of religions. This contribution presents the first study in this field that tackles tourism in and travel writing about Iceland. Using three contrasting pairs of German and English travelogues from the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 2010s, it illustrates a number of shared trends in the treatment of religion, religious history, and the supernatural in German and English travel writing about Iceland, as well as a shift that happened in recent decades, where the interests of travel writers seem to have undergone a marked change and Iceland appears to have turned from a land of ancient Northern mythology into a country 'where people still believe in elves'. The article tentatively correlates this shift with a change in the Icelandic self-representation, highlights a number of questions arising from both this shift and its seeming correlation with Icelandic strategies of tourism marketing, and notes a number of perspectives in which Iceland can be a highly relevant topic for the research field of religion and tourism.

Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas is an introduction to the language of the Vikings offering in one book graded lessons, vocabulary, grammar exercises, pronunciation, student guides, and maps. It explains Old Icelandic literature, Viking history, and mythology. Readings include runestones, legends, and sagas.  Viking Language 1 focuses on the most frequently occurring words in the sagas, an innovative method which speeds learning. Because the grammar has changed little from Old Norse, the learner is well on the way to mastering Modern Icelandic. It provides a wealth of information about Iceland, where the sagas were written and Old Scandinavian history and mythology were preserved. Viking Language 1 is accompanied by Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader.

This article discusses the account of the settlement of Þórsnes by Þórólfr Mostrarskegg as it is presented in Eyrbyggja saga, relating it to the question of the applicability of current thinking on landscape to the interpretation of Old Norse literature. While current approaches both to landscape in general and to the construction of the landscape of Þórsnes in Eyrbyggja saga in particular tend to emphasise the function of ‘landscape’ as a medium conveying existential ‘meanings’, a close reading of the literary landscape of Þórsnes in Eyrbyggja saga rather suggests that much of the literary construction of this landscape should be seen as consciously grotesque and intended to be understood as  such by the saga’s contemporary audience. Central for this reading is an interpretation of the place-name Dritsker as meaning “Guano Skerry”. This translation is suggested by the lexical evidence but has been avoided by previous critics, who chose to adapt their interpretations
of the place-name to the story told about it in the saga and thus missed an arguably central clue for the interpretation of the saga episode. Some thoughts are also offered on the reasons for why a thirteenth-century author, perhaps working in the monastery at Helgafell, might have chosen to present the past of this area in a purposefully grotesque fashion.

“Dating, Authorship and Generational Memory in Ljósvetninga saga: A Late Response to Barði Guðmundsson,” in Social Norms in Medieval Scandinavia, edited by Jakub Morawiec, Aleksandra Jochymek, Grzegorz Bartusik. Leeds: Arc Humanities Press - Amsterdam University Press, 2019, pp. 139–154.

One scholar who looked beyond the issue of Ljósvetninga saga’s origins is the Icelandic scholar Barði Guðmundsson (1900-1957), also an Alþingi (Icelandic Parliament) member. His reading went deep into the saga, suggesting that each detail described in it could be understood in light of thirteenth-century Icelandic politics. His approach is a clear case of overdoing things, and it is clear from his writing that there is a certain conflation between the way events in Sturlunga saga are described and how the actual historical events they describe took place. Nevertheless, his reading of Ljósvetninga saga reveals much of what still preoccupies saga scholars; namely issues of dating, authorship, and how the past is remembered in these texts. These three key issues are tied to one another; establishing dating is critical for establishing authorship, and vice-versa. Finally, arguments regarding the memory of the past cannot ignore questions of authorship and dating; we need to understand who the people actually doing the act of remembering embodied in the saga text. In the context of this volume, then, when we are talking about a certain society, we need to understand who and what the society reflected in the texts we are dealing with was. As such, questions of dating and authorship should always be on our skeptical minds; not to be ignored, but also not to be wholly trusted.

A principal aim of the book is to establish the tendencies and technique in the literary treatment of love and eroticism in the Icelandic saga literature. How do the sagas tell about erotic themes and emotions of love? What literary function do these motifs have? What kind of differencies are there between the different parts of the Old Norse literature? On the basis of these examinations I analyze the theme of love in seven individual family sagas: Laxdoela saga, Bjarnar saga Hítdoelakappa, Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, Kormáks saga, Hallfreðar saga, Fóstbroeðra saga, and Víglundar saga. Another principal aim is to examine how the continental/courtly tradition of love depiction was received in Old Norse literature and to examine how the indigenous and the courtly tradition influence each other. These are some of the main conclusions of the book:

• There is a well-developed and distinctive indigenous tradition of love depiction. Love is in several family sagas a more important motif than most scholars have realized, due to their misinterpretation of elements in the technique of love depiction in the sagas.
• The indigenous saga literature and the indigenous poetic tradition show in all essentials different tendencies. There is not only one indigenous tradition of love depiction in Old Norse literature.
• The translated riddarasögur reproduce to a great extent the courtly continental tendencies from their originals as regards love/eroticism.
• The indigenous saga tendency does hardly at all influence the treatment of the motif of love/eroticism in the translated riddarasögur, and the continental tendency does only slightly influence the depiction of love/eroticism in the family sagas.
• Fornaldarsögur connect in their treatment of love on to the tradition of the indigenous saga literature. The theory of a strong influence on the fornaldarsögur from the translated riddarasögur and courtly literature is refuted. The indigenous riddarasögur connect in their treatment of love principally to the tendencies of the translated riddarasögur. The prevalent theory of a close relationship between the groups of fornaldarsögur and indigenous riddarasögur is strongly overstated.

This paper proposes to analyse how the Icelandic Benedictine house of Þingeyrar in the Northern diocese exercised power over the neighbouring territory from its foundation in 1133 to ca. 1250. The study is based essentially on two acts of Þingeyrarklaustr in 1220 and 1250 and some other historical documents (legal codes) along with the vernacular narrative sources (the contemporary sagas). I will first present briefly the status of Benedictine monasticism in the 12th-13th century and its relation to local powers in feudal Europe. Of the four benedictine monasteries founded in Iceland, Þingeyrarklaustr is the oldest and the most influential in the 12th and 13th century. I will then focus on the analysis of the two acts from the monastery and when possible corroborate it with other texts, for example the connection between one of the acts and the legal provisions concerning rekaþáttr thought to belong to the oldest fragments of the Grágás. From this analysis, I will try to shed a light on the establishment of such a house in the Icelandic diocese of Hólar and its connections to the local powers of the time, i.e. the diocese and the neighbouring lordships.

A comparison of the conflict at Mávahlíð with that preceding the battle of Álptafjörðr, in which first a woman and then a child is injured.

Submitted in 2012 towards a final grade in the course 'MIS701M - Literature and Psychoanalysis. From Medieval Romance and Saga to the Modern Novel' at Háskóli Íslands.

This thesis unravels the deeper meanings attributed to ordinary objects, such as clothing and food, in thirteenth-century Icelandic literature and legal records. I argue that women weaponized these ordinary objects to circumvent their social and legal disadvantages by performing acts that medieval Icelandic society deemed masculine. By comparing various literary sources, however, I show that medieval Icelandic society gradually redefined and questioned the acceptability of that behavior, especially during the thirteenth-century. This is particularly evident in the late thirteenth-century Njal’s Saga, wherein a woman named Hallgerd has been villainized for stealing cheese from a troublesome neighbor. If Hallgerd were a man, this behavior would have been considered rán, which was a masculine act whereby men challenged one another to take things by force. As a woman, however, Hallgerd’s clever use of ordinary objects was unsettling to men; her act, although mirroring the masculine expectations of rán, has been condemned by the author. Thus, by emphasizing the anxieties of men regarding such behavior, it is evident that later male authors, particularly those writing from the late thirteenth century onwards, considered this behavior as preventing society’s progression away from extra-legal conflict resolution. In doing so, the author of Njal’s Saga demonstrated that both women and men were aware of the power that these ordinary objects had in the hands of ambitious women, as well as how potentially dangerous and harmful to society they could be.


The Icelandic sagas describe men and women from the North travelling throughout the medieval world, journeying to foreign, even marginal lands, fighting in foreign wars, serving at, or visiting foreign courts.  These saga far-travellers were uniquely Icelandic cultural creations; their stories were a form of epic literature.  The sagas were also written during a time of unrest and uncertainty; a time when Icelandic society was under great pressure from Norwegian political influence that was bringing great change to the community.  This thesis argues that the saga authors used images of far-travelling warriors and explorers to create and foster a sense of Icelandic independence, and their imagery was a deliberate construct that served to subtly advance the reputation of Iceland and Icelanders on the world stage.  The crafting of these images also reveals aspects of author intent and values, and how far-travel and journeys have been used to promote personal agendas, be it religious evangelism, to legitimise land-holdings, or for political purposes.  They articulated a literary response to a sense of an emerging Icelandic identity; the images served to shape, and were in turn shaped by attitudes towards far-travellers.  Far-travellers were now to be seen as cultural heroes.

"Milk, Masculinity, and Humor-Less Vikings – Gender in the Old Norse Polysystem", Limes, vol. 13: Constructing Masculinity in Old Norse Culture, ed. Remigiusz Gogosz (2020), pp. 136-150.

Last page proofs.

Following recent discussion regarding the multiple gender perceptions in Old Norse literature, this article promotes a polysystemic approach towards the topic. Polysystem theory suggests that in every society multiple literary systems operate, which represent different societal forces. The theory has mostly been applied to discussion of genre, but here it is suggested that it could be applied to other fields of study such as gender. The article focuses on approaches to milk and milk products in relation to masculinity in the Íslendingasögur corpus as a case study, separating between three systems, dubbed the saga mind, the Christian mind, and the scientific mind. In the discussion of the saga mind, the article examines examples of humiliation associated with milk in Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa, Sneglu-Halla þáttr, Egils saga, and Ljósvetninga saga, as well as the contemporary saga Íslendingasaga. In the discussion of the Christian mind, Þorgríms þáttur Hallasonar and Flóamanna saga are shown to shed a light on an ambivalent attitude towards milk within the Christian mind-frame. The discussion of the scientific mind first establishes that the Íslendingasögur authors indeed incorporated scientific learning into their writing, and then showcases Ljósvetninga saga’s use of milk to portray its main character, Guðmundr inn ríki, as a phlegmatic man. Once these different perceptions are established, moments of intersection within the different gender systems are acknowledged. This article is a contribution in both the research of Old Norse gender and masculinity, as well as approaches towards dairy products in medieval Scandinavia.

Errata:
- p. 142: "In one such scene, the Christian Þorgils irresponsibly leaves his wife alone with a group of disgruntled enslaved men, after they are all shipwrecked. The enslaved men then kill Þorgils’s wife and escape."

- Missing bibliographical citation for Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Humoral Theory in the Medieval North: An Old Norse Translation of Epistula Vindiciani in Hauksbók. "Gripla" 29 (2018), p. 35–66

Medieval Icelandic literature is rich with animal references. We often read of characters appearing in dreams as animals, taking the shape of animals, or even simply fighting like ferocious beasts. Particularly prominent are the traditions of animal warriors, such as berserkir, and animal doubles embodied by fylgjur and those who are said to be hamrammr. Traces of these animal traditions can be found across the Old Norse sphere, but they are most persistent in the literature of Iceland. Despite the changes in perspective to pre-Christian material that took place over the centuries, the versatility of these animal traditions allowed them to remain current and relevant in Iceland. By conducting a study of the character Bǫðvarr bjarki, with particular focus on his shape changing episode in Hrólfs saga kraka, this thesis demonstrates the resilience and versatility that allowed these rich animal traditions to endure for centuries within the Old Norse-Icelandic context.

Gjarnan er vísað til dýra í íslenskum miðaldabókmenntum. Oft koma sögupersónur fram í draumum sem dýr, taka á sig ásýnd dýra eða einfaldlega berjast eins og þau væru dýr. Einkar eftirtektarverðar eru frásagnir af hermönnum sem hafa dýrsleg einkenni, t.d. berserkir, en einnig fylgjur í gervi dýra auk þeirra persóna sem sagðar eru hamrammar. Menjar um þessa sagnahefð má finna víða í fornnorrænni menningu en eru mest áberandi í bókmenntum Íslands. Þó að afstaðan til hins forkristna efnis hafi breyst í gegnum tíðina, gerði sveigjanleiki sagnaminna um hamskipti af þessu tagi þeim kleift að halda gildi sínu í íslenskum bókmenntum eftir því sem sögu þeirra vatt fram. Með því að rannsaka sérstaklega sögupersónuna Bǫðvar bjarka og hamskiptum hennar í Hrólfs sögu kraka, er reynt í ritgerðinni að sýna fram á sveigjanleika en einnig varðveislu þessarar hefðar um aldaraðir í samhengi norrænna og íslenskra miðaldabókmennta.

Gísla saga has often been described as “enigmatic,” and the riddles posed by Iceland’s best-known murder-mystery indeed appear irresolvable. At least equally puzzling, I suggest, is Gisli’s “confession” of his subsequent act of vengeance through an obscure bit of skaldic verse, which has not received similar attention. Setting aside the psychological and forensic approaches traditionally brought to bear on the saga’s persistent enigmas, I offer that Gisli's “confession” forms the crux of an unnoted narrative structure, made plain by the saga’s treatment of  medieval Icelandic concepts of masculinity and femininity. In so doing, I identify an undetected analogue in Norse myth to the events that precipitate the saga’s “whodunit,” as well as reexamine widely-held assumptions about the view of gender enunciated in the saga, particularly as articulated in Carol Clover‘s seminal 1993 article, “Regardless of Sex.”

Sagas draw our attention to colour in clothes, and coloured clothing is also mentioned in poetry. From sagas and poetry, it would appear that coloured clothing is noteworthy in itself; it is usually blue, but red is more imposing, and most impressive of all is red scarlet. Undyed clothing is also mentioned, often as the dress of slaves, but it can be worn even by kings. White clothing appears to symbolise piety.

To what extent is this picture supported by archaeology? Finds from medieval Greenland suggest that dyed cloth might indeed have been a rarity in the saga age, but interestingly the picture changes slightly when we look back to Viking times. This would appear to point to increasing isolation of the Atlantic settlements in the second millennium. Nonetheless, dyes are best represented on the best cloths of Viking Scandinavia, such as fine tabbies, Birka-type twills and pile woven cloaks.

Chemical analysis of excavated Scandinavian textiles by Penelope Walton Rogers has confirmed a remarkable predilection for blue clothing among Vikings. Red clothing is limited to high status contexts. 'Red scarlet' refers to a type of luxury cloth that was unknown in the Viking Age; however, the dye that was used to produce it (kermes) has been found on Viking silks. White clothing appears to have been popular not only with the pious but with the ungodly too, though its religious significance was important from the Conversion. The archaeology of dyestuffs reflects a similar pattern to that of dyed clothing.

In the light of this, I argue that blue clothes occur in the sagas simply as best clothes, and the colour does not in itself have any special symbolic meaning when it is worn before a killing. I also consider how red clothes are used as a status marker in sagas and poetry.

As well as a general analysis, I look in more detail at some specific instances of coloured clothes in poetry, such as Atlakviða's 'serki valrauða ' (st. 4), Sigurðarkviða inn skamma's 'valaript vel fáð' (st. 66) and Rígsþula's 'serk bláfáan' (st. 29). I also consider literary and archaeological evidence for coloured clothes in other Viking-age societies, and find that the colour of Viking dress was distinctive, and was recognised as characteristically Scandinavian.

This paper explores the accounts of Norse Greenland in the medieval Icelandic sagas, looking past the Vínland sagas to examine ways in which Greenlandic settings are employed in the 'post-classical' saga-tradition and other texts. The style and content of these tales varied over time, but the recurrence of certain conventional patterns indicates that stories set in Greenland retained important thematic continuities for Icelandic saga audiences. From as early as the 12th century, Icelandic writers identified Greenland as a peripheral space in the Norse world, connected with Iceland, but markedly distinct and remote. This marginalization is evident in the Vínland sagas and developed further in the post-classical tradition, which made Greenland a place of exile in which Icelandic heroes were tested by extreme adversity in the settlements and wilderness. Embodying the preoccupations of Icelandic writers and audiences, these writings tell us little about historical realities in Norse Greenland; but they do show how details of geographical and historical lore were subsumed and transformed in the Icelandic narrative tradition.