15 - Literature

Summary

From an international point of view Scandinavian literature of the Middle Ages is largely identified with the narrative literature of Iceland, particularly the myths of the Edda and the classical family sagas. And it is true that these celebrated works, written in a remote island where West Scandinavians had settled during the Viking period, are nowadays generally considered medieval Scandinavia’s most remarkable contribution to world literature. In order to fully understand these texts, however, one must see them in the wider context of European and specifically Nordic literary tradition, oral as well as written, and not only in the Norse or Scandinavian language but also in Latin.

Although the early Germanic myths, poetic forms and narrative patterns were generally best preserved in west Scandinavia, i.e. in Iceland and Norway, some of the early Norse traditions have in fact only survived in east Scandinavia, i.e. in Denmark and Sweden, although usually mixed with Christian and Latin learning, which influenced literary production much more strongly in the east than in the west. Moreover, medieval writers living not only in Iceland but also on the Scandinavian peninsula or in Denmark made several important contributions to the religious literature of the Church and also to such secular European genres as the ballad, the romance and the rhyme chronicle. And although the earliest secular literature was strongly dominated by the Norwegian court and by the Icelandic skalds and saga-writers, it was the Danes and the Swedes who controlled the major centres of literary production towards the end of the Middle Ages.