Preface

Summary

Traditionally, the relationship between saints and sagas is formulated in terms of origins: in the words of Turville-Petre, the Icelanders would not have written sagas if they had not first been ‘trained in hagiographic narrative’. The translation of Latin saints’ lives predates the earliest sagas about Icelanders, so the saint's life has been considered in some sense a starting point for the saga: Boyer, for example, speaks of the ‘emancipation’ of the saga; he describes sagas as saints’ lives without a saint in them. These views are, perhaps, not wholly surprising given the distinctiveness of the saga: here we have a genre uniquely Icelandic, in contrast to the international and ubiquitous saint. Yet the relationship between saints’ lives and sagas deserves attention beyond the ‘origins’ of Icelandic literature: the Icelanders translated, copied, composed and revised a range of hagiographic literature well up until, and in some cases past, the Reformation. Saints’ lives survive in more manuscripts than all the vernacular genres combined: they were of keen interest to the same audiences that appreciated the sagas of Icelanders. In this book, I argue that there is a creative interplay between saints’ lives and sagas throughout the saga-writing period, and that this had a significant impact on how saga narrative developed.

I start from the premise that saints’ Lives are sophisticated literary texts, with much to offer the saga authors. They combine heroic narrative with a strong ideological challenge to secular heroism and material values. The world of the saint's life is one in which the invisible and spiritual takes on material form: it seeks to transcend historical particularity and reaches towards the interrelatedness of all times and places. Saints offer a model of virtue in the daily struggle against sin and temptation, and throw into relief the eschatological trajectory of all human life. Most importantly, perhaps, the saints were not just literary characters to the medieval Icelanders, but a powerful and active presence in their lives.

In this book, I wish to explore some of the ways in which sagas engage creatively with the lives of saints.