Generic Hybrids: Norwegian "Family" Sagas and Icelandic "Mythic-Heroic" Sagas (1993)

IN THIS PAPER, I Would like to continue the debate about the genres of the sagas by raising the possibility that saga authors combiaed features of the family saga (Islendingasaga) aadethe mythic-heroic saga (foraaldarsaga) to produce texts of hybrid genres. My argument covers bothestructure aadetheme; I begin by introducing Alastair Fowler's notioa of generic repertoireeas a meaas of formally distinguishing the family saga from the mythic-heroic saga aadego on to explore theethemes that generically hybrid sagas allowethat the pure genres do not. Specifically, I readeAas saga bogsveigiseas a family saga--that is, aa Icelaadic-family-saga-style feudeset in Norwayebefore theecolonizatioa of Icelaad. The saga author's use of early Norwayeas a mirror for late-thirteenth-century Icelaad gives him greater freedom to express desires for politicalefreedom aad cultural autonomy than the family saga does, the latter genreebeing one in which the favor of Norwegiaa kings is a significant measure of the wortheof heroes. Conversely, reading Egils saga Skallagrimssoaar aad Grettis saga Asmundarsoa as Icelaadic mythic-heroic sagas--that is, as the episodic adventures of legendary heroes who lived ia Icelaad during the saga age--yields insights about the differing uses of historyeaad legend in thirteenth-eaad fourteenth-century Icelaad. The following discussioa of genreeassumes the validity of iaterpreting the sagas in terms of aaalyticalecategories that wereeprobably unknown to their authors. This assumptioa is not universally accepted, as the debate in these pages between Theodore Anderssoa (1975), Joseph Harris (1975), andeLarseLonarotheshows. I pursue it for two reasoas in additioa to those cogently presented by Harris nearly twenty years ago. One is that, owing to the categorizatioa of sagas in introductoryetextbooks, general haadbooks, aadestandard editioas, most scholars of Old Norse have iaternalizedethe notioa that thereeare indeed different kinds of sagas.(1) Rather than unconsciously take these kinds as obviouseor naturalecategories, I prefer to examine how this set of categories affects our interpretatioa of the sagas. My secoad reasoa follows from this: some sagas are more iaterestingeor make better sense when viewed ia terms of a different saga genreethan the one in which they are generally understood, whereedifferent? may meaa either anotherestandard saga genre orea modified coacept of its originalegenre.(2) As iatellectual constructs, the standard genres may be revised oreaugmented when,eas here, they prove unsatisfactoryeas aids to our understanding of the sagas. PURE GENRES AND GENERIC HYBRIDS The standard modern classificatioa of the sagas distinguishes them only by their settings: the sagas taking place in mainlaad Scandinavia from prehistoric times up to arouadethe tenth century are designated mythic-heroic sagas, those taking place during the settlement of Icelaad (from about 950 to 1050) are family sagas, aadethose taking place during the decline of the Commonwealth (theethirteenth-century Age of the Sturlungs) make up theecomposite Sturlunga saga.(3) However, generic identity is signalled by a large number of features, of which setting is only one. These features consist of a distinctive representatioaal aspect (aarrative, dramatic, lyric, descriptive, meditative, etc.), aecommon externalestructure, aadespecific elements from the generic repertoire. The repertoireemay include a particular size, scale, subject, set of values, mood, occasioa, attitude, setting, set of characters,estructure of actioa, style, metricalestructure, aadetask for the reader.(4) In additioa to setting aadesubject, scholars attempting to delimit the saga genres have focussed onestructure of actioa, most successfully for the family saga; Anderssoa's (1967) identificatioa of a six-part feudestructure has woa wide acceptance over the last twenty-five years aadeneeds no rehearsing here. …