Byskupasögur and heilagra manna sögur – A Case Study

Summary

Byskupasögur and heilagra manna sögur have long been labels used for, respectively, accounts of ‘hinn fyrstu biskups í Skálholti og á Hólum’ (the first bishops in Skálholt and in Hólar), and of Old Norse ‘stories and legends of holy men and women’. As the only traditional saga genres defined by a focus on religious actors, bishops’ sagas and saints’ sagas seem ripe for direct comparison. If, however, we shift attention from what these texts are about to what they are, we may find ourselves trying to compare two quite unlike concepts. I suggest that these sets of texts do not just differ in the way that all non-identical members of a class must, but that they perhaps will not fit in the same categorical box(es).

Yet before considering whether terms like saga and genre apply, in the same way or with the same meaning, to both sets of texts, it must first be acknowledged that, even if this is assumed, we are not here dealing with two distinct ‘saga genres’. Rather, we have one genre that is fairly unified and homogenous, and another that is split between two other genres, one of which happens to be the first we are addressing. Since the category's inception, some byskupasögur have been classed among samtíðarsögur or ‘contemporary sagas’, a temporally defined genre dominated by the Sturlunga saga compilation, and covering events in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Others are placed among heilagra manna sögur, for the simple reason that their subjects are saints as well as bishops. As most who make this division observe, however, no byskupasaga is ever purely one or the other. Rather, each is an unbalanced hybrid or chimera, with bits and pieces of a secondary genre jutting out, in often obvious and sometimes incongruous ways, from the dominant one. The upshot of this is that our terms for comparison have shifted: what really needs to be compared are the qualities of contemporary sagas with those of saints’ sagas.