Ebook: The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins: A Historical Survey

The present study was undertaken several years ago for the purpose of providing the student of Germanic or medieval literature with a convenient synopsis of the controversy surrounding the origins of the Icelandic family sagas. In the meantime the need has become less acute. Marco Scovazzi's 'La Saga di Hrafnkell e il Problema delle Saghe Islandesi' (i960) compiles much of the material reviewed in Chapters 3 and 4, in addition to some material not included here, and gives an abundance of key quotations. Paul Schach has provided a translation (with bibliographical preface and notes) of Peter Hallberg's introduction to the saga under the title 'The Icelandic Saga' (1962) and has promised a review of research in Old Norse literature since 1930 to appear in a Modern Language Association handbook for students in medieval literature. Nonetheless it is hoped that this survey will still prove useful since, aside from the fact that Italian and English are not always interchangeable languages, it spans a longer period and is more synthetic in form than Scovazzi's book and more exclusively concerned with the central problem of origins than Hallberg's general essay.