plik

Journal of English and Germanic Philology—July

The Life and Death

of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

Ármann Jakobsson

I. THE ÞÁTTR AS A SHORT STORY

There was never any such thing as a medieval Icelandic short story. Nev-
ertheless it had its presence as a category of scholarly thought for most
of the twentieth century in the form of the saga subgenre known as the
þáttr.

Below I will explore how this came about. I will discuss the circum-

stances of its birth, the premises for its well-being, the ideological context
it thrived in, and the reasons for its eventual decline and fall. This study
is concerned with the how no less than the what, as it aims to illuminate
the whole story of this category.
The medieval Icelandic short story had its own name, and the term
“short story” was rarely used. Scholars flirted with the term, mainly in the
1970s and the 1980s, without daring to use it openly.

The Icelandic word

1. Sagas constitute a large part of the medieval prose literature of Iceland, and it is cus-

tomary (see, e.g., Sigurður Nordal, “Sagalitteraturen,” Nordisk kultur, VIII B (Copenhagen:

Schultz/Bonnier/Aschehoug, 1953), pp. 180 and 182) to divide them into six subgenres:

hagiographical sagas (or bishops’ sagas), romance sagas (or riddarasögur), legendary sagas

(fornaldarsögur), kings’ sagas, contemporary sagas (or the sagas of Sturlunga), and the Sagas

of Icelanders. Additionally, there are the þættir, which are sometimes not warranted the

honor of being a proper subgenre and, as noted below, are seen as a subsub-genre within

the Sagas of Icelanders. Thus it is possible to speak of the þættir as a corpus, as a category

and a subgenre, and in this study I will be using all three terms, depending on the context.

2. The noted philologist and editor of the Oxford English Dictionary William A. Craigie may

have been one of the earliest scholars to use it, although he put it in brackets in the preface

to a popular edition, Fornar smásögur úr Noregskonunga sögum, ed. Edwin Gardiner (Reykja-

vík: Leiftur, 1949), p. iii. Bjarni Guðnason uses the term “korte novellistiske fortællinger”

(“Þættir,” Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, 20 [Co-

penhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1976], p. 405) and sees them as short parallels to the

family sagas: “Forskellen på en islændingesaga og en þ. . . . er især længden.”. Here it must

be noted that “novelle” is the Danish word for short story. Joseph Harris also flirts with

the word “novelle” and “short story” in his article “Theme and Genre in Some Íslendinga

þættir,” Scandinavian Studies, 48 (1976), 1. Scholars remained tentative, if clearly wanting

to go all the way and use the term “short story.” In the second edition of the most popular

late twentieth-century saga edition, the word is slipped in coyly through the back door; the

preface states that “munurinn á þætti og sögu sé ekki ósvipaður þeim sem talinn er vera á

smásögu og skáldsögu í nútímabókmenntum” (the difference between a þáttr and a saga

is not unlike that between a short story and a novel in modern literature) (“Um þætti,”

Íslendinga sögur og þættir, III [Reykjavík: Svart á hvítu, 1987], p. ix).

þáttr actually has entirely different connotations, as I will discuss in more
detail below. However, the terms were successfully disregarded throughout
most of the twentieth century, and the Icelandic þáttr was widely believed
to be a short story—an independent narrative conceived as such—and
eventually it gained its own generic features. In the 1970s a typical þáttr
structure was diagnosed and eventually made it into the curriculum of
Icelandic high schools.

And even though the term “short story” was not

often used without a caveat, there were some scholars who went all the
way,

sometimes even crediting medieval Icelanders with the invention

of the short story, beating out powerful, if not particularly well-chosen
rival claimants, such as Boccaccio and Chaucer, by two centuries.

These

examples may have been exceptions, but they were nevertheless an inte-
gral part of a dominant school of thought that may have just shied away
from calling the þættir short stories but nonetheless believed them to be
more or less the same thing: minisagas of Icelanders abroad and closely
related to the Sagas of Icelanders.
One of the main features of the concept of the þættir as a distinct cat-
egory was the grouping together of Íslendingasögur and Íslendingaþættir—
novel and short story—in works of reference and in the most influential
editions, as I will discuss below. However, despite the fact that only in
recent decades have scholars discussed sagas as novels in a serious way,

3. The narrative structure of the þættir had six parts: Introduction, Journey In, Alienation,

Reconciliation, Journey Out, and Conclusion. See Joseph Harris, “Genre and Narrative

Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,” Scandinavian Studies, 44 (1972), 1–27, esp. 6–20;

Íslendingaþættir: Úrval þrettán þátta með inngangi, skýringum og skrám, ed. Bragi Halldórsson

and Knútur S. Hafsteinsson (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1999). This edition contains an

introduction that is fairly nuanced and critical of the the presumed independence of the

þættir while faithfully presenting Harris’s structural pattern (p. xv).

4. In 1967, Anthony Faulkes remarks on the difference between þáttr and saga: “The

two words, as they are now used, indicate a difference between two genres similar to that

between the novel and the short story in modern English literature” (“Introduction,” Two

Icelandic Stories (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1967), p. 1. He goes on to

explain why “Icelandic short stories . . . came to be called þættir.”

5. Sigurður Svavarsson, “Athugun á þáttum sem bókmenntagrein með dæmi af Auðunar

þætti vestfirska,” Mímir, 29 (1981), 24. Both Chaucer’s and Boccaccio’s “short stories” are,

of course, examples of narratives that have not been preserved as independent short stories

but rather in the context of an intricate narrative frame.

6. Although sagas have frequently been compared to novels offhandedly, especially by

those who wish to promote them within the big world of literary studies, there are rela-

tively few serious studies that examine the idea that sagas may be regarded as akin to the

form of the novel, which emerged in the eighteen century, with precursors in the sixteen

century; two of the more interesting studies are Halldór Guðmundsson, “Skáldsöguvitund

í Íslendingasögum,” Skáldskaparmál, 1 (1990), 62–72; Viðar Hreinsson, “Husbrag eller

herredsbrag: overvejelser omkring litterær selvbevisthed i islændingesagaerne,” Artikler

udgivet i anledning af Preben Meulengracht Sørensens 60 års fødselsdag 1. marts 2000 (Århus:

Norrønt forum, 2000), pp. 47–63. The whole comparison of saga to novel would seem

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it was the rule for most of the twentieth century to discuss Íslendingasögur
and Íslendingaþættir together as the respective long and short version of
the same form.

In this study I will explore how the þættir were reinvented as indepen-
dent narratives in the twentieth century, with editors taking the lead and
scholars following close behind, juxtaposing this with the actual medieval
preservation of the þættir in the kings’ sagas. This will be followed by a closer
look at the prehistory of the þættir as independent narratives, reviewing the
manuscript evidence from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.
Then I will discuss the premises for the twentieth-century editions and
how they evolved from romantic nationalism to the late twentieth-century
emphasis on form and content. This story of the þættir is essentially not
the full story of the þættir but of how twentieth-century scholarly thought
was dominated by the work of editors.

It may be regarded as a case study

of how the work of editors may provide an invisible frame for scholarly
thought, guiding it toward predetermined results.

to rest on how historical one’s approach to generic analysis is. To the present author, the

sagas must be seen as a specific narrative form confined to medieval Iceland and the West

Nordic region, and thus they are not novels. For a nuanced and critical comparison of the

two forms, see Joseph Harris, “Saga as Historical Novel,” Structure and Meaning in Old Norse

Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, ed. John Lindow, Lars

Lönnroth, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber (Odense: Odense Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 187–219

(repr. in “Speak Useful Words or Say Nothing”: Old Norse Studies by Joseph Harris, Islandica,

53, ed. Susan E. Deskis and Thomas D. Hill [Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Library, 2008], pp.

227–60).

7. Grouping the þættir along with the sagas has been the custom in Icelandic literary

histories since the days of Finnur Jónsson (Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie,

II, 2d ed. [Copenhagen: Gad, 1923], pp. 540–46 and 752–59), who even classifies the

þættir according to which part of Iceland the Icelandic protagonist in the þáttr comes from,

thus laying the ground for the later Íslenzk fornrit edition, which followed this custom but

disregarded the fact that the narrative takes place entirely within Norway. His discussion

of the earliest þættir ends with three narratives that cannot be categorized “da deres hoved-

personers herkomst og hjemstavn er ukendt” (p. 546) (as their protagonist’s family and

the place they grew up is unknown). In this, Finnur went further than later scholars, but

the custom of discussing the þættir along with the sagas as “minisagas” has survived and

is used in the two latest significant literary histories of Iceland. See Jónas Kristjánsson,

“Bókmenntasaga,” Saga Íslands, III (Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag/Sögufélagið,

1978), pp. 271–350; Vésteinn Ólason, “Íslendingasögur og þættir,” Íslensk bókmenntasaga,

II (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1993), pp. 25–163. On the other hand, Bjarni Guðnason

felt that the þættir genre connected the Sagas of Icelanders and the kings’ saga (“Þættir,”

p. 406).

8. Two important aspects of the story of the origins of the þættir will be referred to only

in passing in this study: the possible oral origins of the narratives referred to under this

rubric, and the aesthetic function of the þættir within their original kings’-saga framework.

The reason for this is that these topics are too big to be given the scope they demand within

a study that essentially concerns another topic.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

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II. EDITING THE ÞÆTTIR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The year 1904 is important in the history of Iceland, as it was the year
when Iceland gained home rule.

The first þættir edition also appeared

in this year, and it was a sign of the changing times that it was published
in Reykjavík, rather than Copenhagen, which had been the center of
publications of Old Icelandic texts by Icelandic scholars in the nineteenth
century.

This edition was named Fjörutíu Íslendinga-þættir and was edited

by Reverend Þórleifur Jónsson of Skinnastaðir (1845–1911), an old hand
in this business, having been involved with Old Norse editions both in
Copenhagen and Reykjavík since 1874.

Þórleifur’s edition was an ap-

pendix of the great saga edition released by the publisher and bookseller
Sigurður Kristjánsson (1854–1952), which was aimed at the general public
rather than the scholarly community.

Sigurður’s series of thirty-eight sagas appeared from 1891 to 1902 and
was the first collection of Sagas of Icelanders to be published in Iceland.
The main editor was Valdimar Ásmundsson (1852–1902), editor of the
Reykjavík newspaper Fjallkonan, who was mostly self-educated.

Þórleifur’s

9. The Icelandic home-rule act stipulated that the minister for Iceland, previously one

of the ministers in the Danish cabinet (the minister of justice), would be Icelandic and his

residence in Iceland. This meant the effective movement of the government of Iceland to

Reykjavík from Copenhagen.

10. All the important Icelandic editors of medieval literature, such as Jón Sigurðsson (1811–

79), Konráð Gíslason (1808–91), Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1827–89), and Eiríkur Magnússon

(1833–1913), were living and working outside of Iceland in the nineteenth century, and

Reykjavík did not begin to match Copenhagen as a center for scholarly editions until the

1930s when the Íslenzk fornrit series began to appear. The unparallelled editorial activity of

Finnur Jónsson (1858–1934) guaranteed the importance of Copenhagen as an important

center for scholarly editions during his lifetime, and the Arnamagnæan Institute in Copen-

hagen continued to be very active under Jón Helgason (1899–1986). By this time, however,

Icelandic scholars were increasingly working from Iceland, the University of Iceland having

been founded in 1911 and Reykjavík gradually offering more job opportunities to scholars.

11. Þórleifur had completed his first editions while a student in Copenhagen (most promi-

nently Snorra-Edda for Gyldendal in 1875) but continued his activity as a vicar of Skinnastaðir

from 1881. For example, his edition of Eyrbyggja saga appeared in Akureyri in 1882; he edited

Droplaugarsona saga and Gull-Þóris saga for Kristján Ó. Þorgrímsson (1857–1915) in Reykjavík

in 1878; and he was responsible for an edition of Flóamanna saga for the publisher Sigmundur

Guðmundsson (1853–98) in Reykjavík in 1884. Sigurður Kristjánsson took over Sigmundur’s

printing press when the latter moved to America.

12. Sigurður Kristjánsson explains in an interview taken on the occasion of his eightieth

birthday that his aim was to bring the Sagas of Icelanders to a new generation of Icelanders

and that he fought to make the books cheap and thus available to the majority of the popula-

tion (“Sigurður Kristjánsson áttræður,” Fálkinn, VII, 38 [1934], 4–5). Before publishing the

Sagas of Icelanders, Sigurður had taken over Sigmundur Guðmundsson’s popular edition of

the legendary sagas of the North (Fornaldarsögur Norðrlanda) that appeared in three volumes

in Reykjavík between 1886 and 1891.

13. Valdimar had previously been the main editor of Sigurður’s fornaldarsaga edition.

After his death, Sigurður followed up his Sagas of Icelanders with popular editions of the

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þættir edition was not an official part of the series (that Þórleifur himself
had contributed to with editions of Harðar saga and Hœnsa-Þóris saga), but
obviously forms a coda to it. Thus the connection between the Íslendinga-
sögur and the Íslendingaþættir was firmly established by this popular and
influential edition, a great enterprise that reflects well the entrepreneurial
spirit of Sigurður.

More than thirty of the þættir published by Þórleifur come from the kings’
sagas Morkinskinna (from ca. 1220) and Flateyjarbók (from ca. 1390), a few
from other kings’ sagas, and four narratives are included that are not pre-
served in any kings’ saga manuscripts, as I will discuss more closely below.
Thus the entire þættir corpus (soon to acquire the status of a saga category
or subgenre) was closely connected with two kings’ sagas, a whole subgenre
enclosed within two particular texts as it were. However, these were, at the
time, regarded as large manuscripts, collections, or compendia rather than
independent historical works and had a peripheral place in Old Norse schol-
arship, and so this somewhat anomalous situation attracted little attention.

Given that this edition was a part of an edition of Sagas of Icelanders, it is
noteworthy that thirty-six of the original forty þættir are taken from the kings’
sagas and only four have no connection with this other saga subgenre.
These forty narratives had never before appeared anywhere as a cor-
pus or a category, and thus this enterprise became a case of an edition
creating a corpus that later scholarship refers to, much like C. C. Rafn’s
influential edition (1829–30) of the legendary sagas.

Given that Þór-

Eddas (with Finnur Jónsson as the editor) and Sturlunga saga (first with Björn Bjarnason

and then Benedikt Sveinsson as the editor).

14. On the cultural influence of Sigurður Kristjánsson’s edition, see Gils Guðmundsson,

“Sigurður Kristjánsson,” Þeir settu svip á öldina: Íslenskir athafnamenn, I (Reykjavík: Iðunn,

1987), pp. 217–35. Gils is writing on Sigurður as an entrepreneur, and it is fair to say that

this is the spirit that pervaded his saga edition.

15. Although there was considerable interest in the textual relationship of Morkinskinna

and Flateyjarbók to other kings’ sagas, few if any scholarly studies of these sagas that were not

focused on philology in the narrow sense were published until the 1980s and the 1990s.

Morkinskinna did not exist in a popular edition until 2000 when it appeared in an English

translation (in Icelandic in 2011). Flateyjarbók was on the other hand published in Akranes

in a four-volume popular edition in 1944 and 1945 but attracted little scholarly attention

in its own right, though often discussed by scholars as a manuscript source for older texts

(such as Fóstbræðra saga, Færeyinga saga, and Jómsvíkinga saga).

16. In recent years there has been considerable scholarly debate about the generic stabil-

ity of the legendary sagas, and attention has been drawn to the fact that the corpus of this

supposed subgenre was in fact determined by C. C. Rafn in the early nineteenth century and

that scholars have been unable to rid themselves of his influence. Lars Lönnroth may have

instigated the modern debate with his criticism in his “Tesen om de två kulturerna: Kritiska

studier i den isländska sagaskrivningens sociala forutsättningar,” Scripta Islandica, 15 (1964),

1–94; see esp. p. 21. In recent years this debate has been taken up anew, culminating in a

recent round-table discussion in the journal Viking and Medieval Scandinavia in which twelve

authors participated (“Interrogating genre in the fornaldarsögur: Round-table discussion,”

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 2 [2006], 275–96).

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

261

leifur’s editorial policy eventually held such a strong influence on þættir
scholarship, it seems a pity that the edition contains neither a prologue
nor an introduction wherein Þórleifur explains his choice of texts for the
edition. Instead he lists previous editions that he had used in preparing
his own and then spends two pages explaining how the work was done in
his spare time with rare sojourns in Reykjavík being instrumental to the
progress of the work, saying nothing about the rationale behind his deci-
sions. Instead he somewhat defensively apologizes for possible mistakes by
referring to his cumbersome duties as a priest and mentions the fact that
many contemporary books have even more errors than his own.

Neither

does he illustrate what he thinks the þættir are. That he assumes their
independence can nevertheless be inferred from his decision to publish
them separately, each with its own heading, and the fact that they appear
as a part (if loosely connected) of a greater edition of Sagas of Icelanders
with the word “Icelanders” in the title, also attests to his willingness to see
these narratives as centered around Icelanders and as a part of the greater
project of the Íslendingasögur.
It seems likely that the absence of an introduction stems from the fact
that the main aim of Sigurður Kristjánsson’s whole enterprise was to bring
first the sagas and then their cousins, the þættir, to the public, and his
primary concerns were decidedly not scholarly. This he accomplished:
Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition of the þættir certainly reached more people
than C. R. Unger’s scholarly editions of Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók
from the 1860s,

and thus few twentieth-century readers became familiar

with these two great kings’ sagas, familiarizing themselves instead with
the þættir through editions of Sagas of Icelanders, of which Þórleifur’s
was only the first.
Although Þórleifur was a real pioneer in the sense that his was the first
large collection of þættir, his edition was actually preceded by a smaller edi-
tion, edited by the linguist Jón Þorkelsson (1822—904). His Sex sögu-þættir
was published in Copenhagen in 1855, the very first þættir edition, which
became popular enough to be reprinted in 1895. Presumably this edition
had some influence on Sigurður Kristjánsson’s decision to add the þættir
to his great saga edition in 1904. Þórleifr acknowledges Jón’s status as a
pioneer by dedicating his own larger edition (“þatta-bók”) to the memory
of Jón, who had died in January 1904 while the Fjörutíu Íslendinga-þættir

17. Þórleifur Jónsson, “Formáli,” Fjörutíu Íslendinga-þættir (Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjáns-

son, 1904), p. xiii–xv. Þórleifur was indeed not well situated at Skinnustaðir to do editorial

work, as this is a remote vicarage. According to Þórleifur’s obituary in the Nýtt kirkjublað,

6 (1911), 271, he was also an intemperate man, prone to mood swings, and the prologue

seems to bear witness to that as well.

18.

Morkinskinna appeared in 1867, and Flateyjarbók in three volumes between 1860 and

1868, both in Christiania (now Oslo).

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were in preparation.

As the headmaster of Iceland’s only grammar school

for boys between 1872 and 1895, Jón Þorkelsson was mainly noted for his
pusillanimity, which contrasted notably with the heavy-handed managerial
style of his successor who was another philologist, Björn M. Ólsen,

but

many also regard him as Iceland’s most important historical linguist in
the nineteenth century. True to form in this edition, he includes some
linguistic commentary.
The six þættir of Jón Þorkelsson’s edition were Egils þáttr Síðu-Hallssonar,
Þorsteins þáttr Austfirðings, Sneglu-Halla þáttr, Hemings þáttr Áslákssonar, Þor-
steins þáttr forvitna, and Gull-Ásu Þórðar þáttr, all of which come from the
kings’ sagas.

Jón helpfully includes a prologue where he explains that

he is using a paper manuscript from Hallgrímur Scheving (probably the
present day JS 434 4to) as a source.

Thus Jón’s edition forms a link

between the twentieth-century þættir editions and a manuscript tradition
that will be explored in more detail below. He does not really seem to
be collecting small narratives about Icelanders himself, and neither is he
establishing a corpus; indeed the Icelandic nationality of the assumed
protagonists does not make it into the title of his edition. He does not
emphasize any similarities between the six narratives and makes nothing
of the Icelandic nationality of the subjects. Although his edition seems
to have served as an inspiration to the 1904 edition, it is the latter that
must count as the landmark event in the history of the þættir as a genre.
And yet it is with Jón Þorkelsson’s edition that the tradition of publishing
these small narratives out of the context of their preservation begins. In
this, though, he was continuing a fairly recent manuscript tradition rather
than inventing a new one, as will be elaborated below.
After the success of his first edition, Sigurður Kristjánsson published a
second edition of Sagas of Icelanders in 1909–31. Sigurður was again the
driving force behind the collection, but Valdimar Ásmundsson’s editorial
position (he had died in 1902) was now filled by Benedikt Sveinsson

19. Jón had been Þórleifur’s teacher, and in Þórleifur’s obituary in Nýtt kirkjublað (p. 270),

it is remarked that he regarded Jón as a mentor and referred to him as “fóstri.”

20. See Heimir Þorleifsson, Saga Reykjavíkurskóla II: Skólalífið í Lærða skólanum (Reykjavík:

Sögusjóður MR, 1978), pp. 175–207.

21. There is no particular unity to these six þættir, which concern various kings; five of

them are found in Morkinskinna, Flateyjarbók, Hulda, and Hrokkinskinna (see notes 65 and

80), whereas Þorsteins þáttr may be postmedieval (see note 83).

22. JS 434 4to contains twenty-nine narratives in all and various other þættir, such as

Auðunar þáttr, Hreiðars þáttr, Stúfs þáttr, and two versions of Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs. It is

a composite manuscript with many hands and likely to have belonged to several owners

before it came to Hallgrímur Scheving (1781–1861), who was Jón Þorkelsson’s teacher;

thus the link between this þættir manuscript and the first þættir editions was actually quite

personal. Jón does not explain in his short prologue why he only published six þættir and

not, for example, all the þættir in the manuscript.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

263

(1877–1954), journalist, nationalist politician, and later librarian at
the National library. Benedikt had previously worked as an assistant and
proofreader on Þórleifr’s þættir-edition, which thus served not only as
an appendix to the first edition but also became in this way a catalyst
for the second. And the second edition too had an appendix: Professor
Guðni Jónsson’s (1901–74) þættir edition that appeared in Reykjavík in
1935, entitled simply Íslendinga þættir. This proved popular enough to
warrant reprinting in 1945, the year before Guðni’s own popular edition
of sagas and þættir (Íslendinga sögur) began to appear, several volumes of
which are still in print.
Along with Þórleifur’s 1904 edition, this edition may in a sense be said
to have defined the corpus of the þættir. Þórleifur included forty þættir
in his edition, whereas Guðni had forty-two, and it is usually this corpus
that twentieth-century þættir scholars worked with when investigating the
þættir.

These two editions contain roughly the same material. Guðni has

two narratives, called Halldórs þáttr Snorrasonar, which Þórleifur publishes
under one heading (this is justified, since the two Halldórr episodes are not
versions of the same story but two different stories, albeit about the same
person), and Guðni also adds Ísleifs þáttr. The material is thus more or less
the same; the difference amounts to one extra narrative from Flateyjarbók
in Guðni’s edition.

The lack of an introduction in the previous editions was amended by
Guðni Jónsson, and in his introduction he explains that the þættir are
short independent narratives and a branch of the sagas of Icelanders:
“Íslendinga þættir eru náskyldir Íslendinga sögum að efni og frásagnar-
hætti, standa yfirleitt á sama stigi sagnalistar sem þær, eru grein af sama
meiði.” He indicates, however, that they are not really related to the kings’
sagas (or kings’ saga manuscripts, in Guðni’s version) where they can
be found.

Thus the þættir are clearly separated from their kings’ saga

context, and this separation proved to be lasting. About thirty years after

23. This is evident in Jónas Kristjánsson’s discussion in Saga Íslands, III (pp. 343–44).

24. As demonstrated by this example, it is very often a matter of definition how many

þættir are included in an edition, and all figures about the number of þættir in individual

editions given below must thus be regarded as close approximations.

25. Guðni Jónsson, “Formáli,” Íslendinga þættir, ed. Guðni Jónsson (Reykjavík: Sigurður

Kristjánsson, 1935), pp. v–vi. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson phrases this even more clearly in his

discussion of the Morkinskinna þættir: “Det må betraktes som noenlunde utvivlsomt at ialfall

de fleste av disse tætter ophavlig har vært uavhengige av de norske kongers sagaer. Intet tyder

på at de er avfattet som deler av kongesagaene” (Om de norske kongers sagaer: Skrifter utgitt av

Det norske Videnskaps-Akademi, I. Oslo, II. Hist.-filos. Klasse 1936, no. 4 [Oslo: Dybwad, 1937],

p. 155). It is noteworthy that Bjarni asserts rather than argues; to him “nothing” suggests

that the þættir belong to the kings’ sagas, not even the fact that this is the context in which

they are found in medieval manuscripts.

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Jakobsson

the beginning of what became the standard twentieth-century editorial
practice, a theory had been established to justify it.
The idea that the þættir are a branch of the Sagas of Icelanders and have
really little to do with the kings’ sagas became a part of the influential
ideology of the so-called “Icelandic school” of saga studies, and this is the
view that echoes in almost every single scholarly review or article that is
published about the þættir from the 1930s to the 1980s. The same ideol-
ogy permeates the Íslenzk fornrit series that Sigurður Nordal (1886–1974)
and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (1899–1984) were originally responsible for,
employing Guðni Jónsson as one of the editors. In this series the þættir were
published alongside the Sagas of Icelanders, which appeared in thirteen
volumes (II–XIV) from 1933 to 1991. To take two examples, Sneglu-Halla
þáttr appeared in the Eyjafjörður volume of this geographically arranged
series (Íslenzk fornrit, IX) and Stúfs þáttr in the Laxdœla saga volume (Íslenzk
fornrit, V).

On the other hand those kings’ sagas where most of the þættir

can be found (Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók) were not included in the
series until this century, Morkinskinna appearing in two volumes (Íslenzk
fornrit, XXIII–XXIV) in 2011, whereas no plans have yet been made for
the publication of Flateyjarbók.

The same is the case with Guðni Jónsson’s popular edition originally
published from 1946 to 1949 (Íslendinga sögur) with a second edition
appearing in 1953, the popularity of which matched Sigurður Kristjáns-
son’s edition and that still has its proud place in many a literary Icelandic
home.

In this edition, Sneglu-Halla þáttr is again an “Eyfirðinga saga”

and Stúfs þáttr is a “Breiðfirðinga saga,” although both narratives take
place exclusively in Norway.

When these editions were being made in

the 1930s to the 1950s, the fact that these narratives stand side by side in
Morkinskinna did not figure at all in their categorization.

This editorial practice is by no means a thing of the past. The most
recent popular edition of the Sagas of Icelanders (published in Reykjavík

26.

Íslenzk fornrit, IX appeared in 1956, edited by Jónas Kristjánsson; Íslenzk fornrit, V in

1934, edited by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson.

27. In this series, Morkinskinna is edited by Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjóns-

son: Íslenzk fornrit, XXIII–XIV (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2011). This new edition

includes 10 þættir previously published in volumes IV, V, VI, VII, IX, X, and XI of the Íslenzk

fornrit series.

28. Guðni Jónsson’s edition was reprinted in 1968, 1978, 1981, and 1986. Like Sigurður

Kristjánsson’s edition, it is an octavo volume and thus very practical and reader oriented.

29. The edition was published in thirteen volumes and arranged according to the geog-

raphy of Iceland, with Sneglu-Halla þáttr appearing in volume 8 and Stúfs þáttur in volume

4. Similarly, in Vésteinn Ólason and Grímur M. Helgason’s nine-volume saga edition, which

appeared in Hafnarfjörður from 1968 to 1976 (Íslendinga sögur), Stúfs þáttr was in volume

2 and Sneglu-Halla þáttr in volume 5. They also followed the common twentieth-century

tradition of arranging the sagas geographically.

30. See Morkinskinna, Íslenzk fornrit, XXIII, pp. 270–85 (Halli) and 290–93 (Stúfr) .

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

265

from 1985 onward) includes the þættir as a part of the corpus, fifty-two of
them in all.

This is also reflected in the five-volume The Complete Sagas

of Icelanders (1997)

and in the more manageable and far more popular

selection published by Viking Penguin in 2000, with an introduction by
Robert Kellogg and a preface by author Jane Smiley, wherein Sneglu-Halla
þáttr duly appears as “The Tale of Sarcastic Halli” along with such respect-
able Sagas of Icelanders as Egils saga, Laxdæla saga, Hrafnkels saga, Gísla
saga, and Gunnlaugs saga (although respectfully at the end of the book).

Most people who know the narrative from these editions will have no clue
of its medieval context in Morkinskinna, which will be discussed in more
detail below.

The influence of editorial policy on scholarly thought had various side
effects. One of the most noteworthy is that twentieth-century saga editors
rarely explain the rationale behind their editions in detail. For example,
the Íslenzk fornrit editions usually do not provide detailed arguments as to
why the þættir are independent, Icelandic in origin, and concern Iceland-
ers rather than the kings in whose sagas they have ended up. That this
assumption is being made is still evident from the fact that the þættir are
grouped with the sagas after having been removed from the (Norwegian)
kings’ saga context.
If taken together, the late twentieth-century saga editions, along with the
reference and review books they influenced strongly, reflect rather than

31. This is the Svart á Hvítu edition (Íslendinga sögur og þættir), which originally appeared

in two volumes in 1985–86 but was then reissued and slightly revised in three volumes in

1987 and again reprinted in 1998. The editors were Bragi Halldórsson, Jón Torfason, Sverrir

Tómasson, and Örnólfur Thorsson. In this edition, the sagas are arranged alphabethically

instead of geographically, and the same applies to the þættir. Although this edition is more

ornamental and thus presumably aimed at the buyer rather than the reader, it has served

as a base for several more practical saga editions for schools (including the edition of

Íslendinga-þættir that is currently being read in some Icelandic high schools; see note 3) and

for audio books, and it was used by many of the translators for The Complete Sagas project.

Most of the þættir included are narratives from the 1904 and the 1935 editions. Among

the additions are Arnórs þáttr jarlaskálds, Óttars þáttr svarta, Þorsteins þáttr skelks, Stjornu-Odda

draumr, Brandkrossa þáttr, Bolla þáttr Bollasonar, Bergbúa þáttr, and Kumblúa þáttr.

32.

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders has forty-nine “tales” in addition to its sagas, spread

over the five volumes in a somewhat arbitrary fashion.

33.

The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000). This edition in-

cludes six þættir (or Tales), four from Morkinskinna (and the younger part of Flateyjarbók), one

from Flateyjarbók, and Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs. In his introduction (which is not identical

to his introduction to The Complete Sagas from 1997, although the part about the þættir is),

Kellogg mentions that þættir do come from kings’ sagas (although he refers to Morkinskinna

and Flateyjarbók as “manuscript collections” rather than works) and notes that these narra-

tives could “perform a variety of functions within a larger work” (p. xx). He nevertheless

refers to the þættir as a “genre of short tales,” and that is indeed how they are presented to

the reader in this edition.

34. The edition contains the Flateyjarbók version of the þáttr, but as this part of Flateyjarbók

is really a version of Morkinskinna, I refer to it as Morkinskinna, meaning in this instance the

saga text itself rather than the GKS 1009 fol. manuscript.

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Jakobsson

actively argue the main rationale behind the twentieth-century evaluation
of the þættir. Their view can be summed up as follows:

The þættir are independent. Although almost all of them are earliest attested

within the context of a larger narrative, they must have existed before as

independent narratives.

The

þættir are Icelandic. Their protagonist is an Icelander, and the reason

for their existence is the wish to narrate the tale of this Icelander.

Thus

the twentieth-century wish to collect all material about Icelanders from the

kings’ sagas was parallelled by a medieval wish to preserve stories about

Icelanders.

The biggest collection of þættir, Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók, are not really

sagas, just big manuscripts with assorted material.

Thus there is no need to

study the “new” context in which the þættir have been placed there; it is the

original life of the þáttr as an independent narrative that matters.

This argument focused on the independent origins of the þættir and the
nationality of their assumed protagonists, which was by no means unusual;
external factors such as history, nationality, and geography usually seem
to have had a larger hand in the demarcation of Icelandic saga subgenres
than formal features such as style or structure.

The second and third argument may be said to derive from the first: the
perceived independence of the þættir. This was believed to be particularly
evident in the rare cases where an independent medieval version of a þáttr
existed, such as Stúfs þáttr, which was the subject of a very influential study
by Björn M. Ólsen (1850–1919), the “father” of the so-called “Icelandic
school” of saga studies.

Stúfs þáttr is one of a handful of þættir that exists

in a separate medieval redaction, in the fifteenth-century manuscripts
AM 533 4to, AM 557 4to, and AM 589 4to. In addition, it exists in paper

35. This is clearly seen in Finnur Jónsson’s grouping of the þættir according to the regional

background of the Icelanders that appear in them (Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs

Historie, II, pp. 540–46), and in the same kind of grouping in various editions in the Íslenzk

fornrit edition (see, e.g., note 29).

36. Finnur Jónsson emphasizes that Flateyjarbók was “ikke noget originalt værk, men en

samling af tidligere arbejder” (“Flateyjarbók,” Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie

[1927], 189), and although scholars such as Sigurður Nordal polemicized against many

of Finnur Jónsson’s other findings about Old Norse literature, his study was the standard

reference work on Flateyjarbók for decades. The same applies to his edition of Morkinskinna

for Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, which appeared in Copenhagen in 1932

and remained the standard edition of Morkinskinna until 2011. Finnur Jónsson stressed

that this was the work of a collector or a compiler (“bearbejder”) and not of an author (see

esp. “Indledning,” Morkinskinna [Copenhagen: STUAGNL, 1932], pp. xxxv–xl). Thus both

Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók were seen primarily as vessels and received scant scholarly at-

tention for themselves until the 1990s.

37. See Sigurður Nordal, “Sagalitteraturen,” pp. 180–81.

38. Björn M. Ólsen, ed., Stúfs saga (Reykjavík, 1912). This was originally published as an

accompanying volume to Árbók Háskóla Íslands (1912). Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson has traced

the evolution of this school of thought and the story of the term “the Icelandic school.” He

credits Björn M. Ólsen rather than Sigurður Nordal with the development of the school’s

main principles (Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, “Íslenski skólinn,” Skírnir, 165 [1991], 103–29).

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

267

manuscripts, seven of which were studied by Björn M. Ólsen and proved
not to have independent value. Björn’s thesis was that the independent
version of the þáttr, which he referred to as Stúfs saga, even though it was
in fact a very short narrative (only seven pages in Björn’s edition), was
older than the Morkinskinna version attested to not only in a synonymous
late thirteenth-century manuscript (GKS 1009 fol.) but also in Hulda,
Hrokkinskinna, and Flateyjarbók. Björn argued that this was a case of a longer
separate narrative being shortened for inclusion in a king’s saga.
This eventually served as a model for the whole Íslenzk fornrit way of
thinking about the þættir: that they were short independent narratives
that had been cut for inclusion in the kings’ sagas, even though, apart
from Stúfs þáttr, there were few cases of independent versions of the þættir
from the Middle Ages. Stúfs þáttr was indeed one of the first þættir to be
published in an Íslenzk fornrit edition (in 1934), the editor (Einar Ólafur
Sveinsson) referring to Björn M. Ólsen’s conclusions as to the relation-
ship of the two versions instead of presenting his own argument. Björn’s
conclusions became the standard view of the relationship between the
independent version and the king’s saga version,

in spite of the fact that

the shorter version actually exists in a thirteenth-century manuscript and
the longer one appears only later, in the fifteenth century. Björn’s argu-
ment also proves somewhat tenuous when subjected to a critical reading;
the gist of it is that the longer version is more “logical” in making Stúfr
blind only in his old age.

The distinctive feature of the þættir scholarship that went in hand with
the midcentury þættir editions was its lack of discussion pertaining to
the literary qualities of this saga subgenre, which the editions seemed
to presuppose. In 1972, Joseph Harris notes only two brief studies that
had addressed the formal characteristics of this subgenre.

It was not

until the “formalist revolution” in saga studies started in the 1960s that
scholars began to argue for a common narrative structure of the þættir,
mainly Harris himself whose work will be discussed in more detail below.
As scholars often tend to do, Harris depended on published editions,
and in this case the twentieth-century editions of þættir, and it is hardly
an unfair assumption that they guided his hand a little.

Nevertheless,

39. See John Lindow, “Stúfs þáttr,” Mediaeval Scandinavia: An Encyclopaedia, ed. Phillip

Pulsiano (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 613.

40. Björn M. Ólsen, Stúfs saga, pp. x–xi. The whole concept of using “logic,” as defined

by the “common sense” of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars to distinguish be-

tween original and interpolated has been questioned by Ármann Jakobsson in reviewing the

case of Morkinskinna (see esp. Staður í nýjum heimi: Konungasagan Morkinskinna [Reykjavík:

Háskólaútgáfan, 2002], pp. 48–51).

41. Joseph Harris, “Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,” pp. 1–2.

42. Harris focused on a group of thirty-one þættir, of which twenty-six come from Guðni

268

Jakobsson

his project constituted a valiant attempt to break out of the nationalistic
mould that had characterized previous þættir studies.

Another relatively late addition to þættir studies was the comparison of
þættir to short stories, which was most noticeable in studies from the 1970s
and which was referred to above.

This was the result of the emerging

tendency to regard the sagas as works of art rather than historical docu-
ments, an important feature of the “Icelandic school” of Sigurður Nordal
and his disciples and some of their European colleagues.

In spite of

not-infrequent mentions of the term “short story” in þættir research, no
important studies appeared that took the comparison a step further, and
in the 1990s winds had started to change and the whole þættir subgenre
was suddenly under threat.

Jónsson’s 1935 edition (“Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,” pp.

2–3, n. 7). The remaining five are later additions to a genre that may have been said to

be “under construction” throughout the twentieth century. Two he chooses from Edwin

Gardiner’s Fornar smásögur úr Noregskonunga sögum, one from Guðni Jónsson’s Sturlunga

saga edition (1948; repr., 1953), and one from Íslenzk fornrit. The last is Þorsteins þáttr Síðu-

Hallssonar from Morkinskinna, which had not been edited separately at the time of the article,

although Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson had suggested that it was indeed a proper þáttr (see note

71). In 1975, Lars Lönnroth criticized Harris for being too dependent on twentieth-century

editors: “[H]is selection of texts [is] limited by the selection of so-called Íslendinga þættir

found in modern anthologies (which, for purely practical reasons, include episodes from

little-known konungasogur such as Morkinskinna but not episodes from generally well-known

Íslendingasogur and fornaldarsogur such as Njála or Orvar-Odds saga)” (“The Concept of Genre

in Saga Literature,” Scandinavian Studies, 47 [1975], 419–26).

43. Harris is not at all interested in the medieval manuscript preservation of the þættir in this

article. Influenced by the scholarship of the last sixty years or so, he originally takes for granted

that the þættir are independent narratives, as previous scholars had assumed, and his focus is

on their narrative characteristics. The latter issues are addressed more thoroughly in his later

study, “Theme and Genre in Some Íslendinga þættir,” Scandinavian Studies, 48 (1976), 1–28.

There he provides an impressive list of scholars who believe in the independent existence of

þættir (including Guðni Jónsson and Björn M. Ólsen) and mentions the independent existence

of þættir in younger manuscripts (pp. 2–4), but on the whole he takes a more cautious stance

than in his first article. In 1991, he has grown even more sceptical: “How can we tell what was

an independent literary work, and wouldn’t the very notion of independence—so central to

our conception of literature—be a historically relative one” (“Gender and Genre: Short and

Long Forms in the Saga Literature,” The Making of the Couple: The Social Function of Short-Form

Medieval Narrative, ed. Flemming G. Andersen and Morten Nøjgaard (Odense: Odense Univ.

Press, 1991), pp. 43–66 (repr. in “Speak Useful Words or Say Nothing,” p. 51).

44. See notes 2, 4, and 5.

45. The “Icelandic school” regarded the sagas (and mainly the sagas of Icelanders) as au-

thorial works, the term “novel” even mentioned defiantly now and then, such as by Sigurður

Nordal in his Hrafnkels saga study of 1940 (Sigurður Nordal, Hrafnkatla [Reykjavík: Ísafold,

1940], p. 73). Sigurður’s argument was based on the antithesis between fiction and history

(truth). Hrafnkels saga was in his view unhistorical, and that made it fictitious. On the other

hand, he dissented heavily from the hierarchy established by nineteenth-century scholars

where fiction was inferior to history, and he argued that Hrafnkels saga was, while not very

historical, an important work of art.

46. Joseph Harris and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, “Short Prose Narrative (þáttr),” A Compan-

ion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005),

pp. 462–78, esp. pp. 465–68.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

269

There was an important issue that most reference books and reviews
left either entirely unaddressed or clouded in uncertainty: the size of the
subgenre. Þórleifur published forty þættir (or actually forty-one), Guðni
forty-two. Around forty þættir have so far been published in the Íslenzk
fornrit editions: the volumes that contain the Sagas of Icelanders. Bragi
Halldórsson, Jón Torfason, Sverrir Tómasson, and Örnólfur Thorsson’s
edition of the Sagas of Icelanders had fifty-two, and its English counterpart,
The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, had forty-nine.

Herbert S. Joseph men-

tioned the figure ninety in a 1972 article.

In a reference article in 1993,

John Lindow postulated the number of þættir as about one hundred.

In 2005, Harris and Rowe put the number between seventy-five and one
hundred.

In his structuralist project, Harris mentioned that the þættir

might number more than a one hundred but chose wisely to focus on a
smaller group of þættir from the kings’ sagas, mainly those published by
Þórleifur and Guðni.

Thus, in their choice of texts for their respective editions, the editors
have defined the corpus. Their þættir become the true þættir, and it is no
matter that similar narratives can be found in both kings’ sagas and Sagas
of Icelanders, they are never treated as þættir.

A case in point is the work

of such serious scholars as Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson and Heinrich Gimmler,
who spent a great deal of effort in determining criteria to decide what was
a true þáttr and what was not. They both focused on Morkinskinna, and
after having discerned the true þættir, they list episodes from Morkinskinna
that look like þættir but, in their view, are not proper þættir.

By “proper

þættir,” they mean a narrative that existed independently of the king’s saga
in which it has been preserved.
The mere fact that there seems to be no general agreement on how
many þættir there are seems to provide sufficient reason to treat the cat-

47. These figures must be considered uncertain for several reasons, one being that a

certain narrative may sometimes be categorized as a saga and sometimes as a þáttr (see note

24).

48. Herbert S. Joseph, “The Þáttr and the Theory of Saga Origins,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi,

87 (1972), 89–96.

49. John Lindow, “Þáttr,” Mediaeval Scandinavia: An Encyclopaedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano

(New York: Garland, 1993), p. 661.

50. Harris and Rowe, “Short Prose Narrative,” p. 462.

51. Harris, “Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,” p. 2. His larger

figure is taken from Wolfgang Lange, “Einige Bemerkungen zur altnordischen Novelle,”

Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literature, 88 (1957), 154. Harris also accepts

Lange’s premise that in addition to the kings’ saga þættir, on which he focused, there were

other types of þættir more closely related to other saga subgenres.

52. See note 61.

53. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Om de norske kongers sagaer, pp. 157–58; Heinrich Gimmler, “Die

Thættir der Morkinskinna. Ein Beitrag zur Überlieferungsproblematik und zur Typologie

der altnordischen Kurzerzählung” (PhD diss., Frankfurt am Main, 1976), pp. 63–66.

270

Jakobsson

egory with suspicion. Might the uncertainty of the number of the þættir
not have something to do with the fact that the category is postulated
by twentieth-century scholars? Another problem with the þættir category,
demonstrated above, is how clearly influenced it is by published editions
and how randomly chosen the episodes seem to have been in the first
edition, Þórleifur Jónsson’s 1904 edition, which has ever since served as
a yardstick for all the ensuing collections. A third problem is the obvious
nationalism that lies behind the published editions and the consequent
scholarship. If þættir are a formal category, why do they all have to con-
cern Icelanders? Why cannot the protagonist be a Norwegian? It is true
that some scholars have worried about this last point,

but not enough

to abandon the idea of a þættir subgenre closely connected with the
Sagas of Icelanders. The scholarly arguments for the separate existence
of the þættir were from the beginning strongly nationalistic, fuelled by
the idea that national identity existed in Iceland in the Middle Ages.

It was relatively late when scholars first began to use formalistic and
structuralistic arguments for the existence of the þættir genre, and by
then they were necessarily hampered by the fact that the corpus under
examination was predetermined by the nationalistic publishers of the
early twentieth century.
It was thus to the kings’ saga episodes that had dominated Þórleifur
Jónsson’s edition that Joseph Harris (b. 1940) turned his attention some
forty years ago, resulting in two pioneering studies of the þættir,

the

most thorough attempt to place the þættir within a formalistic definition
of the sagas. Harris was carrying on the formalistic narratological project
of scholars such as Theodore M. Andersson who in turn were inspired

54. Unlike most other scholars, Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson did include two narratives with no

Icelandic protagonists among his sixteen Morkinskinna þættir (Om de norske kongers sagaer, p.

155). These two potential þættir have never been published in þættir editions, and Bjarni cat-

egorizes most Morkinskinna episodes where kings come face to face with Norwegian subjects

as a natural part of the saga. Finnur Jónsson also included narratives about Norwegians in his

literary history (Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, II, pp. 638–40), and Vésteinn

Ólason obviously felt uneasy about excluding narratives about Norwegians from the þættir

category in 1985 (“Íslendingaþættir,” Tímarit Máls og menningar, 46 (1985), 60–73).

55. Nationalism in Old Norse studies is hard to discuss extensively in a relatively narrow

study such as this one as it pervades all Icelandic scholarship from ca. 1850 to long after

1950, the period when the þættir emerged as a category. The nationalism of Sigurður Nordal

who was not only the “father” of the Íslenzk fornrit edition but also among the more subtle

scholars of that age was discussed in more detail by three scholars writing in Tímarit máls og

menningar, vol. 1, in 2000 (Ármann Jakobsson, “Dagrenning norrænnar sögu: Íslenzk men-

ning og íslensk miðaldafræði,” 3–9; Sigríður Matthíasdóttir, “Íslenzk menning og evrópsk

þjóðernisstefna,” 10–16; Kristján B. Jónasson, “Fúlsað við flotinu: Íslenzk menning eftir

Sigurð Nordal á árinu 2000,” 17–25).

56. Harris, “Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,”; “Theme and

Genre in Some Íslendinga þættir,” Scandinavian Studies, 48 (1976), 1–28 (repr. in “Speak

Useful Words or Say Nothing,” pp. 97–126).

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

271

by the revival of Russian formalism in the United States in the late 1950s
and early 1960s,

but his attempt also owed much to the influence of

the “Icelandic school” of Sigurður Nordal and his adherents.

But even

though the þættir fell naturally into place in the universal edifice of narra-
tive as short narratives with their own structural and thematic coherence,

there were always dissenters, such as Lars Lönnroth, who were worried
about the preservation of the þættir within the kings’ sagas, which seemed
to tell a different story.

It seems that the very existence of the category demands further scru-
tiny, beginning with an active consideration of the preservation of the
þættir in the Middle Ages, along with a close examination of the postme-
dieval paper manuscripts that contain sagas, right up until the nineteenth
century, revealing to what extent the idea of the þáttr existed before the
Jón Þorkelsson and Þórleifur Jónsson editions. Only then can we see the
circumstances surrounding the origins of the category and know whom
to credit with the invention of this saga subgenre.

57. This is clearly stated in Harris’s first article (“Genre and Narrative Structure in Some

Íslendinga þættir,” pp. 4–6), which acknowledges V. I. Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale

(published in Russian in 1928 but translated into English 1958) and Alan Dundes’s The

Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (1964) as his main inspiration, but he also refers

to Theodore M. Andersson’s The Icelandic Family Saga: An Analytic Reading (1967). When

Harris invents his six-part structure of the þættir genre (Introduction, Journey In, Alienation,

Reconciliation, Journey Out and Conclusion), he is explicitly “[f]ollowing the method of

Propp and Dundes” (“Genre and Narrative Structure,” p. 6).

58. Harris refers in both articles to Anthony Faulkes’s Two Icelandic Stories (1967), which

may be said to be an indirect product of the “Icelandic School,” which was not only domi-

nant in Iceland in the 1960s but also in England, where Gabriel Turville-Petre was perhaps

the most prominent Old Norse specialist at that time and much in tune with the ideas of

Sigurður Nordal and his disciples. Faulkes’s short introduction of the þættir form is an

excellent statement of the “Icelandic school” view of the þættir but with more emphasis on

form than seen in most Íslenzk fornrit introductions. As Faulkes remarks (“Introduction,”

pp. 2–3): “The distinction between a þáttr and a saga . . . is not primarily one of length. It

is also a question of subject-matter, treatment, and style.”

59. Harris, “Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,” 6–20. In his 1976

article (“Theme and Genre in Some Íslendinga þættir”), Harris felt he could also discern a

common “inner form” or “ethos” of the þættir. In 1975, Lönnroth observed that the action

pattern was not exclusive to the thirty-one þættir from Harris’s original article (“The Concept

of Genre,” p. 421), and Harris conceded this and added that in some of the narratives it was

imperfectly or variously realized (Joseph Harris, “Genre in the Saga Literature: A Squib,”

Scandinavian Studies, 47 (1975), 432).

60. Lars Lönnroth originally voiced his skepticism in “Tesen om de två kulturerna,” pp.

19–21, a critique that Harris felt focused too heavily on lexical matters (“Genre and Nar-

rative Structure,” p. 21). Their dispute became more focused in a a three-way debate in

Scandinavian Studies (1975), in which Theodore M. Andersson also took part (“Splitting

the Saga,” Scandinavian Studies, 47 [1975], 437–41).

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Jakobsson

III. THE MEDIEVAL ÞÆTTIR

The medieval existence of the þættir as a category proves to be far from
self-evident when the earliest manuscripts of the þættir are considered.
In 1964, Lars Lönnroth criticized this generic term, among others,

which led to an interesting debate about the term itself,

culminating

in John Lindow’s meticulous study of the medieval usage of the term
þáttr. Lindow demonstrates how the word evolved from denoting “a strand
of a rope” to a metaphorical usage as “part” and then on to “part of a
narrative,” originally a lawbook but later any large narrative. Only in the
late fourteenth century had the word come to denote “a small narrative
inside a larger narrative,” mainly in Flateyjarbók, where many of the nar-
ratives that make up the story are each referred to as þáttr, including
some, but not all, of the small narratives from Flateyjarbók now included
in the þættir category but also including much larger narratives such as
Jómsvíkinga saga and Orkneyinga saga. Lindow thus confirms Lönnroth’s
earlier assertion that the word þáttr as a generic term for a novella began
no earlier than the fifteenth century.

In fact, Lönnroth had noted that

the oldest case of the word having been used about a short narrative was
Sveinka þáttr in AM 557 4to, a manuscript that will be discussed more
closely below. Nevertheless, Sveinka þáttr has never been included in a
þættir edition. Harris took no note of it in his þættir studies, and of the
major þættir scholars, it was only granted þáttr status by Bjarni Aðalbjarn-
arson (see note 71 below). Lönnroth found only one fifteenth-century
citation, and it is thus debatable whether an isolated instance suffices
to argue that the þáttr term exists in any generic sense in the fifteenth
century. For example, not one of the three fifteenth-century manuscripts
that include Stúfs þáttr as an independent narrative employs the term
þáttr for this narrative.
As Harris counterargued, the lack of the term þáttr does not necessarily
mean that there is no þáttr category in the Middle Ages, as the category may
have existed independently of the term.

It might be added that neither

does the later emergence of the term about short narratives necessarily
suggest generic or subgeneric status. In fact, given that the word usually
means ‘part’ in medieval Icelandic, the usage of the word seems rather to

61. Lönnroth, “Tesen om de två kulturerna,” pp. 19–21.

62. Lönnroth reiterated his earlier view in 1975 (“The Concept of Genre,” p. 423).

63. John Lindow, “Old Icelandic þáttr: Early Usage and Semantic History,” Scripta Islandica,

29 (1978), 3–44.

64. Harris, “Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga þættir,” p. 21; Harris,

“Genre in the Saga Literature,” p. 434.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

273

counter the idea that something called þáttr would have been perceived
as an independent narrative.
‘Part’ indeed covers well the preservation of þættir in medieval manu-
scripts. The large majority of the original forty þættir of Þórleifur Jónsson’s
edition, and most of the other þættir included in þættir collections ever
since, are not attested as independent narratives in the Middle Ages. Most
of them exist only in large kings’ sagas from the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, such as Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók.
Of the forty þættir in Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition, thirteen came from
Morkinskinna and four from later versions of this same text.

Morkinskinna

is a large kings’ saga from the early thirteenth century, the text of which
exists in three main versions: the eponymous manuscript from the late
thirteenth century (GKS 1009 fol.), the Hulda/Hrokkinskinna compen-
dium from the early fourteenth century (in AM 66 fol. and GKS 1010
fol.), and a version that was added to Flateyjarbók (GKS 1005 fol.) late in
the fifteenth century.

When Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition appeared in

1904, the main edition of Morkinskinna was Unger’s 1867 edition, which
only used the Morkinskinna manuscript.

Later editions have also used

Flateyjarbók and Hulda/Hrokkinskinna—texts that derive from the original
Morkinskinna text.

Thus it is not a surprise that some of the Morkinskinna

þættir are also found in Hulda and Flateyjarbók. This is often not a case of

65. These are Auðunar þáttr, Brands þáttr, Einars þáttr Skúlasonar, Gull-Ásu Þórðar þáttr, Hall-

dórs þáttr Snorrasonar, Hreiðars þáttr, Íslendings þáttr sogufróða, Ívars þáttr, Odds þáttr Ófeigssonar,

Sneglu-Halla þáttr, Stúfs þáttr, Þórarins þáttr stuttfelds, and Þorvarðar þáttr krákunefs. Most of these

þættir are also found in Hulda, along with three other þættir from Þórleifur’s edition: Gísls

þáttr, Hrafns þáttr Hrútfirðings, and Þorgríms þáttr Hallasonar. Of these, Gísls þáttr is noteworthy

since it also exists in Jóns saga helga, an Icelandic bishop’s saga from the early thirteenth cen-

tury. Three versions of the þáttr are published in the 1986 Svart á Hvítu edition, the Hulda/

Hrokkinskinna version and two versions from Jóns saga (called A and B). The Morkinskinna

part of Flateyjarbók also has most of these þættir and in addition one þáttr in Þórleifur’s edi-

tion: Þorsteins þáttr forvitna. Flateyjarbók also contains Hemings þáttr Áslákssonar, which is found

in Hrokkinskinna but not Hulda. Thus this þáttr seems to be a fifteenth-century addition to

the Morkinskinna tradition, but it also appears in the much older Hauksbók (AM 544 fol.).

See Hemings þáttr Áslákssonar, ed. Gillian Fellows Jensen, Editiones Arnamagnæanæ, B, 3

(Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962).

66. On the relationship between these texts, see Jonna Louis-Jensen, Kongesagastudier:

Kompilationen Hulda-Hrokkinskinna, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, 32 (Copenhagen: Reitzel,

1977), pp. 62–108; Ármann Jakobsson, “Formáli,” Íslenzk fornrit, XXIII (Reykjavík: Hið

íslenzka fornritafélag, 2011), pp. vi–xxxiv.

67.

Morkinskinna: Pergamentsbog fra første Halvdel af det trettende Aarhundrede indeholdende en

af de ældste Optegnelser af norske Kongesagaer, ed. C. R. Unger (Christiania [Oslo]: Bentzen,

1867).

68. Finnur Jónsson’s 1932 edition for Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk Litteratur uses

both GKS 1009 and Flateyjarbók. In the 2011 Íslenzk fornrit edition (vols. XXIII–XIV), GKS

1009 (Morkinskinna), Hulda, Hrokkinskinna, and Flateyjarbók are used.

274

Jakobsson

a given þáttr existing in two or three versions but rather of a saga that
includes the þáttr existing in two or three versions.

Morkinskinna was not much studied until the late twentieth century, and
it mostly appears in reference books as a manuscript containing þættir.
Scholars have never agreed upon how many þættir there actually are in
Morkinskinna. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson concluded that there are sixteen,
while German scholar Heinrich Gimmler counted twelve þættir and twenty-
eight “þáttr-like narratives.”

Eleven of Gimmler’s twelve proper þættir

are those published by Þórleifur, while he excludes two of the former’s
Morkinskinna þættir from the category.

Although it was never the main

rationale behind the argument, most of Gimmler’s “þáttr-like narratives”
differed from the þættir in that they did not feature an Icelandic protago-
nist. Thus the very definition of the þáttr was always strongly nationalistic

69. This has been a standard in scholarship ever since the 1930s. In the oldest Íslenzk

fornrit volume that contains a þáttr, Einar Ólafur Sveinsson explains that Halldórs þáttr ex-

ists in three medieval manuscripts: Morkinskinna (GKS 1009 fol.) from the late thirteenth

century, Hulda (AM 66 fol.) from the fourteenth century, and Hrokkinskinna (GKS 1010

fol.) from the fifteenth century (Íslenzk fornrit, V, p. xc). Einar Ólafur mentions that it is

always a part of the same saga, but he refers to it as *Haralds saga, since he did not consider

Morkinskinna a proper saga but a collection of sagas. Scholars continue to this day to speak

of different versions of a þáttr without explaining that this þáttr is in every instance a part of

the same saga. For example, Auðunar þáttr exists in younger manuscripts as a separate þáttr

(see note 101), but the four oldest manuscripts are Morkinskinna (GKS 1009 fol.), Hulda

(AM 66 fol.), Hrokkinskinna (GKS 1010 fol.), and the younger part of Flateyjarbók (GKS 1005

fol.), which date from the fifteenth century. Most scholars even now speak of these as four

versions of Auðunar þáttr (see, e.g., William Ian Miller, Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law,

and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business [Leiden: Brill, 2008], pp. 3–6), whereas they

really are four versions of the same kings’ saga, which we may call Morkinskinna for want of

a better title, and which includes Auðunar þáttr.

70. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Om de norske kongers sagaer, pp. 154–55; Gimmler, Die Thættir

der Morkinskinna, pp. 49–66.

71. Bjarni’s þættir were the thirteen þættir from the 1904 edition plus Þorsteins þáttr Síðu-

Hallssonar, Sveinka þáttr Steinarssonar, and Þinga saga. Gimmler’s þættir were those published

by the Reverend Þórleifur with the exception of Einars þáttr Skúlasonar and Þórarins þáttr

stuttfeldar. Instead, Gimmler elevated Þorsteins þáttr Síðu-Hallssonar to the status of a proper

þáttr (Die Thættir der Morkinskinna, pp. 49–66). It is worthy of note that of the eleven þættir

accepted by both Þórleifur and Gimmler, ten have been published in the Íslenzk fornrit

series (Ívars þáttr Ingimundarsonar being left out, although Guðni Jónsson includes it in his

Íslendinga sögur editions of 1947 and 1953). The reason why Ívars þáttr was left out may be

that it is hard to connect to a particular geographical area of Iceland, as Guðni mentions in

the prologue to his edition (Íslendinga sögur, 12 [Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1947],

p. vii). Although Gimmler (who is not aware of Harris’s work, which was done at the same

time) discusses formal aspects of the þættir, his main criterion is whether these narratives

were likely to have had an independent existence prior to their inclusion in Morkinskinna.

The Svart á Hvítu edition of 1986 has all fourteen þættir canonized by Þórleifur, and adds

Arnórs þáttr jarlaskálds, which neither Þórleifur, Bjarni, nor Gimmler had accepted as a þáttr.

Guðni Jónsson seems to be responsible for canonizing that narrative; he published Arnórs

þáttr in his 1947 Íslendinga sögur edition (also in volume 12), reprinted in 1953. As in the

case of Ívars þáttr, Arnórs þáttr’s marginal position may owe something to the fact that it does

not fit easily into a geographical subcategorization of the Sagas of Icelanders.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

275

even though the scholars themselves tried to be objective, mainly because
they were so strongly influenced by the editions that they were using. It is
thus remarkable how strong the influence of Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition
has remained. Of Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson’s þættir, Sveinka þáttr and Þinga
saga have never been included in þættir editions, presumably because no
Icelanders have a significant role in them. And yet Sveinka þáttr is one of
the very few þættir that have a separate fifteenth century existence, as I
will discuss in more detail below. The same applies to Karls þáttr, which
even Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson did not classify as a þáttr and which was not
included in any twentieth-century þættir edition.
On further scrutiny, the case for an independent existence of the Mor-
kinskinna þættir is weak. No Morkinskinna þáttr exists in an independent
version that could not derive directly or indirectly from Morkinskinna
itself.

Scholars used to hold that the þættir did not conform well with the

Morkinskinna narrative—thus they must have been interpolated into the
saga at a later date—and that the saga was not really a saga but a loosely
structured compendium, badly organized and with no contextual rea-
son.

Recent scholarship has disputed all these claims and showed how

the þættir are in fact an essential part of Morkinskinna, where they serve
both a dramatic and an ideological purpose. Furthermore, there seem to
be no contextual or structural differences between the þættir concerning
Icelanders and various other episodes in the saga that have hitherto not
been regarded as þættir or included in the genre.

Thus when Morkin-

skinna is examined more closely, the þættir begin to look less and less like
short stories and more and more like chapters in a larger text that have
often been plucked from that text and deprived of their proper context.
In addition to the þættir from Morkinskinna, Hulda has three þættir of
its own in Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition, which may or may not have been
present in the oldest version of Morkinskinna.

Not only deriving from

72. As noted above and below, Stúfs þáttr exists in a longer version attested in the fifteenth

century. Karls þáttr and Sveinka þáttr also exist in fifteenth-century manuscripts (see mainly

n. 98 below).

73. This is a recurring theme in Finnur Jónsson’s “Indledning” to his Morkinskinna edition

(1932).

74. See Ármann Jakobsson, Staður í nýjum heimi, pp. 78–92. This was also Lönnroth’s

main criticism in his 1975 article (“The Concept of Genre in Saga Literature,” p. 423) and

has been further demonstrated in the work of Würth, Rowe, and Ármann Jakobsson (see

notes 40 and 79). This trend is also reflected in the most recent review articles, such as

Harris and Rowe, “Short Prose Narrative,” pp. 466–68. This evenhandedness might seem

surprising given that Harris had before championed the separate existence of the þættir, but

it is in fact typical of his scholarship; it could also be argued that Harris’s attempt to find

structuralist arguments for the þættir did mark a break from previous scholars who focused

on the Icelandic nationality of the protagonists.

75. See note 65.

276

Jakobsson

Morkinskinna, Hulda also contains material from Heimskringla, which itself
contains some þættir published by Þórleifur, and, like Morkinskinna, Heims-
kringla also contains episodes that do resemble þættir but have never been
identified as such, primarily as they do not concern Icelanders.

Thus,

when Hulda is compiled, þættir seem to be regarded as a natural part of a
kings’ saga, contrary to the assertions of late nineteenth-century and early
twentieth-century scholars who found them superfluous and not really
belonging to the narrative.

As the later part of Flateyjarbók is essentially a later version of Morkin-
skinna’s narrative of King Magnús and King Haraldr, it also contains some
Morkinskinna þættir, although sometimes alterations have been made to
them.

But Flateyjarbók also has þættir of its own, mostly about the Chris-

tianization of Norway and Iceland, and these are situated in the saga of
the missionary king Óláfr Tryggvason. The saga of King Óláfr Haraldsson,
the saint, also has some þættir that were published by Þórleifur Jónsson in
1904. As has been demonstrated by recent scholarship, these narratives
have a clear function in the context of Flateyjarbók and seem to be no more
“superfluous” than any other material in the saga.

All in all, Flateyjarbók

provides seventeen þættir for Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition, not counting
those that originate from Morkinskinna, and subsequent þættir editions
have included even more episodes from Flateyjarbók that Þórleifur did not
print.

Of much importance here was Edwin Gardiner’s Fornar smásögur

76. See Ármann Jakobsson, Staður í nýjum heimi, pp. 82–85.

77. Finnur Jónsson’s forty-page “Indledning” to his Morkinskinna edition (1932) provides

several examples of this; see the discussion in Ármann Jakobsson, “Den kluntede afskriver:

Finnur Jónsson og Morkinskinna,” Opuscula, 11 (2003), 298–300.

78. Of the thirteen Morkinskinna þættir in Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition, nine come from the

narrative of King Magnús and King Haraldr and would thus be expected in Flateyjarbók too,

but only three of the nine (Þorvarðar þáttr krákunefs, Stúfs þáttr, and Odds þáttr) appear in their

proper place in the narrative of the Flateyjarbók version of Morkinskinna, as do some of the

þættir published by later editors, but not by Þórleifur (such as Þorsteins þáttr Síðu-Hallsssonar

and Arnórs þáttr jarlaskálds). Two of the þættir appear at the end of the saga along with some

þættir not present in the oldest Morkinskinna manuscript (most notably Hemings þáttr). These

are Auðunar þáttr with only slight changes, but Sneglu-Halla þáttr in an enhanced version (with

more sexual innuendo than the older version, which may have contributed to its popularity

with twentieth-century editors). Hreiðars þáttr, Halldórs þáttr, Brands þáttr, and Íslendings þáttr

sogufróða are missing from the Flateyjarbók version of Morkinskinna, although all are found in

Hulda and Hrokkinskinna.

79. Of particular value are studies by Würth and Rowe, who are both skeptical of the

þættir as a genre. See Stefanie Würth, Elemente des Erzählens: Die Þættir der Flateyjarbók (Basel/

Frankfurt am Main: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1991), pp. 148–59; Elizabeth Ashman Rowe,

The Development of Flateyjarbók: Iceland and the Norwegian Dynastic Crisis of 1389 (Odense: Univ.

Press of Southern Denmark, 2005), pp. 53–54.

80. These are Egils þáttr Síðu-Hallssonar, Halldórs þáttr Snorrasonar (a different narrative than

the one in Morkinskinna, but they are published under one heading in Þórleifur’s edition),

Hrómundar þáttr halta, Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar, Stefnis þáttr, Steins þáttr Skaftasonar, Svaða þáttr

ok Arnórs, Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls, Þórarins þáttr Nefjólfssonar, Þórhalls þáttr knapps, Þorleifs þáttr

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

277

(1949), which consisted of narratives from Flateyjarbók that had not been
included in Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition, and thus it added to the genre
such notable þættir as Þorsteins þáttr skelks.
Of the seven remaining þættir in Þórleifur’s edition that do not figure
in Morkinskinna, Hulda, and Flateyjarbók, two come from Heimskringla and
one from Sverris saga (Mána þáttr skálds).

As previously mentioned, four

of the narratives published by Þórleifur are not found in any kings’ saga.
These are Gunnars þáttr Þiðrandabana, Þorsteins þáttr Austfirðings, Þorsteins
þáttr stangarhoggs and Olkofra þáttr.

These narratives were instrumental in

separating the þættir category from the kings’ sagas, as without them this
edition and most ensuing editions could have easily been called “episodes
from the kings’ sagas.” One of the four is a special case: Þorsteins þáttr
Austfirðings is only preserved in paper manuscripts but takes place in the
reign of Magnús the good and resembles various episodes in Morkinskinna
(and the later manuscripts from that tradition, Hulda, Hrokkinskinna, and
Flateyjarbók). As the oldest Morkinskinna manuscript has gaps, it could even
be possible to postulate a version of Morkinskinna that had contained this
episode, but a more likely possibility is that this is a much younger nar-
rative inspired by the Morkinskinna þættir, in the vein of the added Hulda

jarlaskálds, Þórodds þáttr, Þorsteins þáttr tjaldstæðings, Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts, Þorvalds þáttr tasalda,

Þorvalds þáttr víðforla, and Ogmundar þáttr dytts. Also from Flateyjarbók is Sighvats þáttr skálds,

which is gathered from many scattered chapters of Óláfs saga helga, which Guðni Jónsson also

published in 1935, and in his Íslendinga sögur edition (volume 12 from 1947; repr., 1953) but

which later þættir editors discarded from the genre. However, a part of Þórleifur’s constructed

narrative has been added to the þættir genre as Óttars þáttr svarta, both in Guðni Jónsson’s edi-

tion from 1947 and in the Svart á Hvítu edition (1986 and onward), which has no less than

four versions of this narrative. Although þættir scholars such as Harris (“Genre and Narrative

Structure,” p. 3, n. 7) found this particular narrative artificial (as it had to be reconstructed

from diverse material within the saga), it could be argued that Þórleifur is here doing the

same thing, as he does throughout his edition, that all þættir editors of the twentieth century

went on to do, that is, removing an episode from its proper context in a saga.

81. Both the Heimskringla þættir may in fact also be counted as Flateyjarbók þættir. One

is Sighvats þáttr (see note 80). The other is Jokuls þáttr Bárðarsonar which has rarely been

published since 1904; only in Guðni Jónsson’s 1935 edition and then twice in his Íslendinga

sögur editions of 1947 and 1953 (where it is made to fit into volume 7: Húnvetninga sögur).

Its noninclusion in Íslenzk fornrit and most subsequent þættir editions (such as the 1986

Svart á Hvítu edition) can be explained by the fact that it comes from Heimskringla and un-

like Morkinskinna, narratives from Heimskringla, tend not to get plucked from the saga and

published as independent stories.

82. These þættir are included in all þættir editions or editions of sagas and þættir. In the

Íslenzk fornrit series, they all belong to the Austfirðinga sogur volume published in 1950 by Jón

Jóhannesson (Íslenzk fornrit, XI). Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs is edited from a fragment from the

fifteenth century (AM 162 C fol.) and two seventeenth-century paper manuscripts (AM 156

fol. and AM 496 4to). Gunnars þáttr Þiðrandabana exists in these two same paper manuscripts,

whereas Olkofra þáttr is preserved in Moðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.) and is always edited from

that ancient saga manuscript. This þáttr has essentially the same plot as Bandamanna saga,

but in the categorization of Íslenzk fornrit, they cannot be grouped together, since one is a

“Húnvetninga saga” (volume VII) and the other an “Austfirðinga saga” (volume XI).

278

Jakobsson

and Hrokkinskinna þættir. It is even possible to postulate that this is not
even a medieval narrative.

The preservation of the other three þættir justifies calling them “inde-
pendent short narratives,” even though they do hardly a category make.

They are not episodes within larger sagas, although one might mention
that two of them are originally attested only in manuscripts containing
other sagas from their respective regions.

However, there is not such a

huge difference in length between these short narratives and the shorter
Sagas of Icelanders. Thus, of the þættir that have been published with the
Sagas of Icelanders in most twentieth-century editions, only a handful
of around fifty really belong in that category, while the rest would seem
more closely connected to the kings’ sagas.

And in the thirteenth and

fourteenth century, these kings’-saga þættir exist only as episodes within
larger sagas.
The

þættir became then the little sister of the saga proper: independent

short narratives or the medieval counterpart to the modern short story;
but only narratives from the kings’ sagas. Within this teleological school
of thought, similar short episodes from the Sagas of Icelanders could not
well be used as examples of the medieval short story, since the Sagas of
Icelanders were for most of the twentieth century received as well-crafted
and holistic works of art and not as conglomerates of episodes, as they
had been in the nineteenth century when it was fashionable to regard all
sagas as composites and to conjecture that Njáls saga, for example, was an
amalgamation of *Gunnars saga and *Njáls saga.

It is also worth noting

83. Its editor in the Íslenzk fornrit series, Jón Jóhannesson, does not seem to doubt that

this is a thirteenth-century narrative but gives no clear reasons for his faith in this matter

(Íslenzk fornrit, XI [Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950], p.cxi).

84. They do not fit into the generic mould Harris later attempted to create for some of

the þættir (see, e.g., note 57) and are not included in his studies.

85.

Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs at least is so closely connected to other sagas of the region

that it is originally preserved in manuscripts with them (AM 156 and AM 496 in particular

but also AM 162) and one of the two leading protagonists of the saga is not properly intro-

duced because the audience is obviously expected to know him from those sagas (for a more

detailed exposition of this, see Ármann Jakobsson, Illa fenginn mjöður: Lesið í miðaldatexta

[Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2009], pp. 124–26). The same might apply (to a lesser degree)

to Gunnars þáttr.

86. Among the þættir not related to the kings’ sagas are Bergbúa þáttr and Kumlbúa þáttr,

both believed to be medieval but neither of them included in Þórleifur Jónsson’s edition

or Guðni Jónsson 1935 edition and only very late in the Íslenzk fornrit series (the Harðar

saga volume edited by Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson that appeared in

1991 as part XIII of the series). They were thus originally canonized by Guðni Jónsson in

his Íslendinga sögur edition of 1946–49 (in volume 4: Breiðfirðinga sögur) and then included

in the 1986 Svart á Hvítu edition.

87. On the postulated *Gunnars saga and *Njáls saga and other postulated lost sources

of the preserved Njáls saga, see Lars Lönnroth, Njáls saga: A Critical Introduction (Berkeley:

Univ. of California Press, 1976), pp. 6–20. The emphasis on the lost sources of the sagas

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

279

that the episodes in question are necessarily narratives about Icelanders
in Norway, but not included are similar narratives concerning the kings’
Norwegian subjects. Thus the þættir genre was always dependent on the
Icelandic identity of their presumed protagonists.

Episodes from the

kings’ sagas were a natural starting point for a narratological study of
the þættir, in particular little known kings’ sagas. Scholars of the “Icelan-
dic school” may have been daunted by the textual complexities of the
kings’ sagas,

and they did not need sagas about Norwegian kings for

the creation of a national mythology for Iceland. Whatever the reason,
they were uninterested in the kings’ sagas, other than Heimskringla, which
indubitably benefited from its association with Snorri Sturluson, and it
is hardly a coincidence that while þættir studies thrived, the kings’ sagas
were somewhat neglected for half a century or so (from the 1940s to
the late 1990s) by scholars outside the field of traditional philology and
manuscript studies.

It could be argued that this neglect was enhanced

by the separation of the þættir from the kings’ sagas.

dominated scholarly discussion of this particular saga from ca. 1870 to ca. 1930 when Einar

Ólafur Sveinsson became the leading Njáls saga expert and emphasized the artistic unity

of Njáls saga as a great work of art composed by an unknown literary genius, in the spirit of

Sigurður Nordal and other “Icelandic school” scholars.

88. As has been observed (see esp. Ármann Jakobsson, Staður í nýjum heimi, pp. 78–79),

it is sometimes a matter of debate whether the protagonist of a þáttr is the Icelander or the

king himself, and sometimes it is not even a matter of debate that the king fulfills that role.

As Harris argued in 1991 (“Gender and genre”), the genre (as he still sees it) seems to

concern a “couple” rather than an individual, that is, the king and the Icelander.

89. The textual complexities of the kings’ sagas are well illustrated by Theodore M. An-

dersson’s graphs (Andersson, “Kings’ Sagas (Konungasögur),” Old Norse-Icelandic Literature:

A Critical Guide, ed. Carol J. Clover and John Lindow (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985

[repr. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2005]), pp. 204–5). The crux of the matter is that

the kings’ sagas essentially narrate the same events and serve as sources to each other. This

means that it is hard to study one kings’ saga without taking on the whole corpus. This can,

of course, be turned into an advantage as witnessed in Tommy Danielsson’s recent study

(Sagorna om Norges kungar från Magnús góði till Magnús Erlingsson [Stockholm: Gidlund,

2002]), but the reaction of many Old Norse scholars was to simply stay away from the kings’

sagas. There are other reasons for this neglect. As literature, they are neither exclusively

Norwegian nor exclusively Icelandic. Being regarded as more “historical” than the sagas

of Icelanders, they would not be as attractive to scholars wishing to treat the sagas as “lit-

erature”; well into the 1990s there was in the mind of many scholars a distinct separation

between history and literature, a boundary that is broken by the insights of historians such

as Hayden White and others who regard history as a creative genre, which has influenced

some recent studies; see, e.g., Ármann Jakobsson, “History of the Trolls? Bárðar saga as an

historical narrative,” Saga-Book, 25 (1998), 53–71; Icelandic Histories and Romances, ed. Ralph

O’Connor (Stroud: Tempus, 2002).

90. It is, of course, a matter of debate whether we can speak of scholarly neglect. Heims-

kringla was far from neglected by scholars in this period and neither was Sverris saga. Bjarni

Guðnason dealt with the origins of genre in his book Fyrsta sagan (1978), and Jonna Louis-

Jensen with its fourteenth-century manifestations in her Kongesagastudier (1977). In his

1985 review article (see note 89), Andersson mentions these studies and reviews two other

280

Jakobsson

There remains the possibility that the preservation of the þættir only
reflects their nature as written texts in the Middle Ages, and that before
that they had an independent oral existence. As has been noted by Harris,
Lindow, and others, some þættir are indeed thinly disguised folktales,

and other scholars have drawn attention to the nature of the þættir as
exemplary narratives with a clear moral function.

It is not unlikely that

many of the þættir are in fact adaptations of folktales that have been ap-
propriated by kings’ saga authors and given a new life in a new context.
Thus the þættir may have been a medieval oral genre if not a written me-
dieval genre.

However, in that instance this oral short form has very little

to do with the published þættir of the twentieth century, and it could in
addition be argued that a substantial part of the material in most extant
medieval sagas could have had such an oral pre-existence. Indeed, some
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars postulated more þættir
that had later evolved into full-length sagas. This was the theory of þættir

important books of the period, Siegfried Beyschlag’s Konungasögur (1950) and Svend Elle-

høj’s Den ældste norrøne historieskrivning (1965). In this review, it is nevertheless noticeable

how much the field depends on the efforts of scholars mainly active before the 1940s, such

as Finnur Jónsson, Gustav Indrebø, and Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. And it is hardly a matter of

dispute that some noteworthy kings’ sagas received scant scholarly attention in the postwar

period (1945–1990), mainly Ágrip, Fagrskinna, Morkinskinna, Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar,

Historia Norwegiae, and Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium. It is also notable how many

new editions and studies of the kings’ sagas have emerged in the last ten to twenty years,

compared to the postwar period.

91. See esp. John Lindow, “Hreiðars þáttr heimska and AT 326: An Old Icelandic Novella

and an International folktale,” Arv, 34 (1978), 152–79. As he notes (pp. 156–58), there had

been particular interest in the analogues between Auðunar þáttr and the folktale AT 1161

(see, e.g., Knut Liestøl, “Kjetta på Dofre: Til spursmålet om pilgrimsvegar og sagnvandring,”

Maal og minne [1933], 24–48; Stefán Einarsson, “Æfintýraatvik í Auðunar þætti vestfirzka,”

Skírnir, 113 [1939], 161–71; Arnold R. Taylor, “Auðunn and the Bear,” Saga-Book of the

Viking Society, 13 [1946], 78–96; Stig Wikander, “Från indisk djurfabel till isländsk saga,”

Vetenskaps-Societeten i Lund: Årsbok [1964], 87–114), but his own argument that Hreiðars þáttr

heimska is an adapation of AT 326 is actually far more convincing and demonstrates the

affinity between some þættir and folktales, although Lindow also stresses (p. 162) that in its

present form, Hreiðars þáttr is certainly no folktale. Thus its folktale origins take nothing away

from its function in Morkinskinna as an episode in a kings’ saga. On a similar note, Joseph

Harris argues that the possibly postmedieval Þorsteins þáttr austfirzka is a variant of a “king

in disguise” tale (perhaps AT 952). As noted before, this narrative does not come from a

kings’ saga, although it fits well into the generic mould of kings’ saga þættir, as Harris also

demonstrates ( “The King in Disguise: An International Popular Tale in Two Old Icelandic

Adaptations,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 94 [1979], 57–81; repr. in “Speak Useful Words or Say

Nothing,” pp. 137–69).

92. See esp. Ármann Jakobsson, Staður í nýjum heimi, pp. 61–108.

93. The oral origins of saga writing in general is a subject too big to be encompassed

within the limits of this article. The debate on whether there existed a “long prose form” in

medieval Iceland has recently been intelligently reviewed by Theodore M. Andersson, “The

Long Prose Form in Medieval Iceland,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 101 (2002),

380–411. On the other hand, there seems to be a scholarly consensus as to the possibility

of short narratives having existed in oral form.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

281

as “building-blocks” for larger works that was closely connected to the oral
theory of saga origins. Originally adumbrated by A. U. Bååth, this theory
was countered by Andreas Heusler,

but it continued to re-emerge in

some form or other at least until the 1970s,

when the attention of þættir

scholars seemed to fix permanently on the written kings’-saga þættir.
While the þættir cannot be discounted as a medieval oral genre, their
existence as written texts in the Middle Ages is rarely independent. Es-
sentially, the narratives published as þættir in the last two centuries are
aptly named, considering the meaning of the Old Norse word. They are
parts of kings’ sagas, episodes from a larger unity.

IV. A GRADUAL PROGRESS TO INDEPENDENCE:

THE POSTMEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT HISTORY OF THE ÞÆTTIR

As shown above, there are hardly any instances of a þáttr existing as an
independent narrative in the extant thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
Icelandic manuscripts. More or less every narrative published by Þórleifur
Jónsson and his successors is actually a chapter plucked out of Morkinskin-
na, Heimskringla, Hulda, Flateyjarbók, or the other large sagas of Óláfr Tryg-
gvason and St. Óláfr from the fourteenth century. This editorial practice of
the twentieth century is not in any way supported by the thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century manuscript evidence. Furthermore, the Icelandic na-
tionality of the supposed protagonist of each narrative seems paramount
in determining which chapters of the abovementioned kings’ sagas were
published independently and which we can read only within the context
of the kings’ sagas. If one considers, for example, the difference between
the þættir and the “þættir-like” narratives of Morkinskinna, as explored by
Gimmler, the actual difference is not the narratives’ thirteenth- and four-
teenth-century preservation but rather the fact that the þættir concern
Icelanders, whereas most of the þættir-like narratives rather feature a Nor-
wegian in the presumed role of the Icelander.
Did Reverend Þórleifur Jónsson then invent the þættir? Or was his men-
tor, Jón Þorkelsson, the true discoverer of this subgenre? The editorial
practice of the twentieth century does indeed seem to have been fueled
by the concerns of the nineteenth and twentieth century, which also influ-
enced þættir scholarship, but there was a preamble to this, which becomes
fairly apparent if we begin not with Þórleifur but with Jón Þorkelsson and

94. A. U. Bååth, Studier öfver kompositionen i nägra isländska ättsagor (Lund: Gleerup, 1885);

Andreas Heusler, Die Anfänge der isländischen Saga, Abhandlungen der K. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.,

Phil.-Hist.-Classe (Berlin, 1913).

95. Most notably in Lönnroth’s Njáls Saga; see esp. pp. 43–55.

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Jakobsson

his edition of six þættir in 1855. Jón edited his þættir from a manuscript lent
to him by his colleague Hallgrímur Scheving. This Scheving manuscript
is in all likelihood the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compilation
manuscript JS 434 4to (226 pages in all) that later came into the posses-
sion of the Landsbókasafn Íslands and includes all the six þættir printed
by Jón and more, all in all twenty-four þættir, mostly episodes taken from
Morkinskinna, Hulda, Hrokkinskinna, Flateyjarbók, and other kings’ sagas, but
also some þættir from Iceland, such as Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs, some post-
medieval þættir, as well as some longer sagas: Gull-Þóris saga, Vápnfirðinga
saga, and Valla-Ljóts saga.

This manuscript and some other early nineteenth-century manuscripts,
such as Rask 36 (written in 1809–10), are the first true þættir manuscripts,
although no single manuscript exists before Jón Þorkelsson’s edition,
which contains numerous þættir and nothing else. Thus the emergence
of the þættir as a category can only, with some reservations, be dated near
the beginning of the nineteenth century at the earliest.

It started at the

manuscript stage, before the earliest þættir editions, although it fell to the
first editors (Jón and Þórleifur) to publish þættir exclusively. Before the
early nineteenth century, there are also isolated examples of as many as
fifteen þættir found together in a manuscript but never as profusely as in
these early nineteenth-century manuscripts.
Of particular interest are AM 426 fol. from the late seventeenth cen-
tury and the early fifteenth-century manuscript AM 557 4to. Yet neither
of these manuscripts is dominated by þættir. However, a closer look at
the latter is warranted, since it is one of the earliest manuscripts wherein
kings’-saga þættir acquire a life of their own.
Saga writing is traditionally supposed to be in decline in the fifteenth
century, and thus it is noteworthy that at this time the first signs of a new
independence of the þættir start to appear. In AM 557 4to, thirty-seven of
the forty-eight pages are used for various sagas (as diverse as Gunnlaugs
saga ormstungu, Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds, Eiríks saga rauða, Hrafns
saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, Valdimars saga, and Dámusta saga), but at the very
end it also contains independent versions of three Morkinskinna episodes
(Karls þáttr vesæla, Stúfs þáttr skálds, and Sveinka þáttr), two of which are

96. Information about these manuscripts can be found on the recently available manu-

script website handrit.is, which is a mine of information about manuscripts currently in

Iceland. The site is still under construction, which means that some of the figures given

subsequently may not be accurate.

97. Rask 36 is a 235-page manuscript and includes both sagas and þættir, such as Gunn-

laugs saga, Kormáks saga, Gull-Þóris saga, and Hrafnkels saga, along with Halldórs þáttr, Hreiðars

þáttr, Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs, and some post-medieval þættir (Bergbúa þáttr and Kumlbúa

þáttr). This manuscript was written by Ólafur Sivertsen, who intended it as the first part of

a three-manuscript collection (the third part is Rask 37, which has sagas but no þættir).

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

283

never included in modern þættir editions. In addition, the manuscript
contains Rognvalds þáttr ok Rauðs and Hróa þáttr heimska, thus five þættir
in all. This hardly constitutes a collection of the þættir and does not sug-
gest that they are, at this stage, to be regarded as a corpus, but it remains
that this is one of the very first instances of kings’-saga þættir presented as
short independent narratives taken out of the context of a larger kings’
saga. It is interesting to note that this early independent existence still
has not earned narratives such as Sveinka þáttr and Karls þáttr a place in
any twentieth-century þættir edition.

Notably, these narratives do not

have Icelandic protagonists and, as discussed above, nationality seems
to trump manuscript evidence when it comes to defining the þættir as a
specific subgenre in the twentieth century.
The other manuscript, AM 426 fol., written by Magnús Þórólfsson, Þórður
Jónsson of Skarð, and Jón Þórðarson between 1670 and 1682, may today be
most famous for its illustrations, such as pictures of a sinister-looking Egill
Skalla-Grímsson and a potbellied Grettir Ásmundarson. It contains Egils
saga, Gunnlaugs saga, Grettis saga, and Þórðar saga hreðu, along with other
family sagas and sagas from Sturlunga. In addition, the manuscript contains
the following þættir: Brandkrossa þáttr, Stúfs þáttr, Bergbúa þáttr, draumur Þor-
steins Síðu-Hallssonar, þáttr af Þorsteini forvitna, Gunnars þáttr Þiðrandabana,
Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs, þáttr af Agli Síðu-Hallssyni, þáttr af Þorsteini fróða,
þáttr af Þorsteini Austfirðing, Kumlbúa þáttr, þáttr af Olkofra, þáttr af Þorsteini
uxafót, þáttr af Hreiðari inum heimska, and þáttr af Sneglu-Halla. Thus we have
here fifteen þættir in all, which is far more than we see in other seventeenth-
century manuscripts, and, unlike what we get in the fifteenth century, the
word þáttr is frequently used as a term for small narratives.
As may be noted, this collection is arranged according to much the
same logic as the later Íslenzk fornrit series, with larger sagas and smaller
þættir side by side and with the Morkinskinna episodes of Hreiðarr and
Halli clearly defined as narratives about these two Icelanders rather than
the kings. It seems also clear that their Icelandic nationality is of impor-
tance since the manuscript contains only Icelandic material and noth-
ing of kings. In this, however, AM 426 fol. is an isolated example in the

98. In spite of their independent appearance in fifteenth-century manuscripts, Karls þáttr

and Sveinka þáttr have never been included in modern þættir editions. Karls þáttr was pub-

lished in Copenhagen in 1815 by Birgir Thorlacius (1775–1829) and translated into Latin

(Res gestæ Caroli Vesæll dicti, cum gestis Regis Magni Boni cohærentes), but in spite of multiple

editions of other þættir that appeared in the twentieth century, it has never been published

as a separate narrative since, and neither has Sveinka þáttr, except as a part of Morkinskinna

and in the facsimile edition of AM 557 from 1940 (The Arna-Magnæan Manuscript 557 4to,

containing inter alia the history of the first discovery of America, in the series Corpus codicum Islandi-

corum medii aevi, 13). And yet the Sveinki narrative is the only medieval case of a þáttr that is

actually referred to as a “þáttur” in a manuscript.

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Jakobsson

seventeenth century. It is by far the largest collection of þættir in a pre-
nineteenth-century manuscript and thus an early precursor to twentieth-
century þættir editions.

On the whole, the postmedieval manuscript evidence supports the no-
tion that some medieval þættir have in that period come to be regarded as
independent narratives, even if they are originally preserved only as parts
of larger narratives. Of the þættir, Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar is clearly able to
stand on its own and is preserved in the greatest number of manuscripts
by far, along with Þorsteins þáttr forvitna.

100

Of the Morkinskinna þættir, one

notes the popularity of Auðunar þáttr and Sneglu-Halla þáttr (the two þættir
that were cut from the main narrative of Flateyjarbók and appear at the
back instead), whereas most of the Morkinskinna episodes (some included
by Þórleifur Jónsson and some not) are preserved in only two or three
manuscripts.

101

On the other hand, it is hard to see any evidence of the þættir as a special
category of narrative until, perhaps, the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury. If we look at the earliest manuscripts where þættir have been taken out
of the kings’ sagas, one can note that in some instances an episode from
a kings’ saga may be preserved along with romances rather than sagas of
Icelanders. Stúfs þáttr, for example, appears in the late fifteenth-century
AM 589 d 4to along with Hektors saga and Clári saga.

102

Auðunar þáttr is

preserved along with Færeyinga saga and other matter from the Faroe
Islands in the seventeenth-century manuscript AM 334 4to. In AM 592 a
4to, Auðunar þáttr and more þættir are in the company not only of Færeyinga

99. There also exist smaller collections from the seventeenth century that focus on either

the Flateyjarbók þættir (AM 313 4to) or the Morkinskinna þættir (AM 217 c fol.). These manu-

scripts are interesting in that they contain a fair number of episodes, but on the other hand,

these episodes are clearly aligned to the kings’ sagas where they are originally preserved.

100. The handrit.is website lists twenty-one manuscripts of Orms þáttr, sixteen from the

seventeenth century and one older (GKS 2845 4to), suggesting that at that time, Orms þáttr

was clearly considered an independent narrative. The handrit.is website lists twenty-eight

manuscripts of Þorsteins þáttr, actually more than of Orms þáttr, but on the other hand, there

are more eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manuscripts, which seems to suggest an in-

creasing popularity of this þáttr with a change in the literary tastes in the Enlightenment

period.

101. The handrit.is website lists thirteen manuscripts of Auðunar þáttr apart from Flat-

eyjarbók, all from the eighteenth century or later except AM 217 c fol. (see above), and

twenty-three manuscripts of Sneglu-Halla þáttr of which one is considerably older than the

rest (AM 593 b 4to from the late fifteenth century), and four are from the late seventeenth

century, of which one is AM 426 mentioned above.

102. This makes Stúfs þáttr a somewhat special case among medieval þættir in that the

independent version is almost as early as the kings’ saga version. Even though Björn M.

Ólsen’s argument that it must be the older version seems upon scrutiny not to be very decisive

(see above), the independent Stúfs þáttr can at least be said to be a medieval narrative. It is

worthy of note that in all three medieval manuscripts, the independent Stúfs þáttr appears

with romances and is not particularly associated with Sagas of Icelanders.

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

285

saga but of various legendary sagas and romances of quite a diverse nature
(Mágus saga, Sigrgarðs saga, Flóres saga ok Leó, Ála-Flekks saga, Illuga þáttr
Gríðarfóstra, and Olgeirs saga danska). In the late fifteenth-century manu-
script AM 533 4to, Karls þáttr and Stúfs þáttr are preserved along with Elís
saga, Mágus saga, and Partalópa saga. In the eighteenth-century Steph. 46,
Auðunar þáttr and Stúfs þáttr are to be found alongside legal paragraphs
and rulings, exemplary stories, and an essay on cabbage patches.

103

It does not seem to be an established rule even in the seventeenth cen-
tury that the þættir should be grouped with Sagas of Icelanders in the best
Íslenzk fornrit fashion, even though that seems to have become the most
popular way of grouping them at the time of the early nineteenth-century
manuscripts mentioned earlier, JS 434 4to and Rask 36, where the þættir are
mostly in the company of Sagas of Icelanders. This can also be discerned
in a few earlier manuscripts—the tendency is first attested relatively early
although confined to a few manuscript owners or scribes. A case in point is
AM 309 4to from 1498 where some þættir from Flateyjarbók (such as Sneglu-
Halla þáttr) keep company with Njáls saga, Laxdæla saga, and Eyrbyggja saga,
although the matter is complicated somewhat by the inclusion of other
material from the Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar of Flateyjarbók, and this may thus
not be the case of þættir being grouped with Sagas of Icelanders, but rather
of Flateyjarbók and Sagas of Icelanders being grouped together.
It is interesting that starting in the fifteenth century and culminating
in the nineteenth century, some material from the kings’ sagas became so
popular that it gained a life of its own, although most of the young þættir
manuscripts are believed to have little independent value and have rarely
been used by modern editors, as they tend to be copies of Morkinskinna
and Flateyjarbók. When it comes to choosing the text, the case of Stúfs
þáttr turns out to be the exception rather than the rule, even though
it still served as a model for a theory of independent þættir predating
Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók.

104

103. As remarked before (note 78), Auðunar þáttr and Sneglu-Halla þáttr are also cut from

the main narrative of Morkinskinna in the late fifteenth century Flateyjarbók version and ap-

pear instead semi-independently at the back, along with Hemings þáttr, a new Halldórs þáttr

Snorrasonar, Þorsteins þáttr forvitna, Þorsteins þáttr Ásgrímssonar, and Blóð-Egils þáttr.

104. In the Íslenzk fornrit edition, six of the ten Morkinskinna þættir that have been edited

independently are edited only from Morkinskinna manuscripts (AM 1009, Hulda, Hrokkin-

skinna, and Flateyjarbók). The main exception is Stúfs þáttr, where the independent version

(in AM 533 4to, AM 557 4to, and AM 589 4to) is given primacy; the editor of Íslenzk fornrit,

V (1934), Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, followed Björn M. Ólsen in this (see note 38). It should

be mentioned that Jónas Kristjánsson also uses an independent version, AM 593 b 4to, for

variants in his edition of Sneglu-Halla þáttr for Íslenzk fornrit, IX (1956); this is actually a

fifteenth-century manuscript that he believes to be secondary but that contains the longer

Flateyjarbók version of the þáttr. However, one Íslenzk fornrit editor took Björn’s principle

more seriously than the rest in choosing his main text. Jón Jóhannesson, the editor of Íslenzk

fornrit, XI (1950), gives primacy to the independent version of Gull-Ásu Þórðar þáttr in the

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Unfortunately the manuscripts give us few clues as to the rationale be-
hind the independent existence of þættir. The earliest extant examples of
episodes from kings’ sagas appearing outside that context are from the fif-
teenth century, and only a few of the narratives that came to be called þættir
in modern editions can attest to such an old independent existence. The
seventeenth century yields the first large-scale grouping of þættir together
in a single manuscript, AM 426 fol., but this case is somewhat unique. The
first manuscripts dominated by þættir are from the nineteenth century, and
there is a direct link between those manuscripts and the first published
þættir edition. The later distinction between material about Icelanders and
foreign material cannot be said to exist until the early nineteenth century,
when one starts to get the tales of Halli and Auðun mostly in the company
of the protagonists of the Sagas of Icelanders.
Thus Reverend Þórleifur or perhaps the bookseller and entrepreneur
Sigurður Kristjánsson may actually stand as the true originators of the
þættir subgenre, and although their editorial principle is, to a degree,
preceded by nineteenth-century manuscript activity, the þættir subgenre
is only truly established in 1904, at the dawn of the twentieth century.

V. THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT:

MAPPING THE STORY OF THE ÞÆTTIR

There is no way to separate the invention of the medieval Icelandic short
story and the zenith of nationalism in saga scholarship. The emergence of
the þættir as a published genre is supported by the rationale that the Ice-
landic material of kings’ sagas should be given special attention. The later
popularity of the þættir went hand in hand with the unpopularity of kings’
sagas, a somewhat marginal genre in twentieth-century saga scholarship.

105

What is interesting in this narrative is how editorial policies managed to

seventeenth-century manuscript AM 518 4to. The main reason for this is his belief that the

independent version must be older than the kings’ saga version. It is indeed interesting to

note that although this is the common belief of all Íslenzk fornrit editors at the time, very

few of them actually followed this principle when choosing their main text. In this case,

it may also have influenced Jón that both Jón Þorkelsson and Þórleifur Jónsson had pub-

lished the independent version in their respective editions, although Guðni Jónsson opted

for publishing the Morkinskinna text in his 1935 and 1947 editions. Preferring AM 518 to

Morkinskinna seems to be dubious as it prioritizes a seventeenth-century version of the þáttr

over the medieval version on unfirm grounds. Jón Jóhannesson also published Þorsteins

þáttr sogufróða under that name from the independent version in the seventeenth-century

manuscripts AM 562 f 4to and AM 496 4to (which put the þáttr in a clear Austfirðinga sögur

context) rather than the Morkinskinna version (usually referred to as Íslendings þáttr sogufróða).

105. See Ármann Jakobsson, “Um uppruna Morkinskinnu: Drög að rannsóknarsögu,”

Gripla, 11 (2000), 234.

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287

influence and guide the direction of scholarship rather than being directed
by it. It is also noteworthy how popular editions preceded and influenced
scholarly editions of the þættir. A third interesting feature of this story is how
the scholarly arguments for the separate existence of the þættir were not
only influenced by the editorial practices but were also originally strongly
nationalistic, fueled by the notion that national identity existed in Iceland
in the Middle Ages. It was relatively late when scholars first began to employ
formalistic and structuralistic arguments for the existence of the þættir
genre, and by then they were already hampered by the fact that the corpus
under examination was predetermined by the nationalistic publishers of
the early twentieth century.
Before wrapping up the story of the þættir, a few words must be said
about the ideological premises of the category as such. The discovery of
medieval Icelandic literature as an important part of European culture be-
gan in the seventeenth century when scholars all over Scandinavia started
collecting saga manuscripts and eventually publishing sagas. In the begin-
ning, these narratives were mainly regarded as historical documents and
studied for their source value. It was not until the nineteenth century
that the artistic merit of the medieval Icelandic texts began to capture the
imagination of European intellectuals. By then, scholarly interest in the
sagas had spread all over Europe, closely in hand with the emergence of
nationalism, with its interest in the Germanic and the Nordic. The sagas
also featured strongly in the nationalistic movement of Iceland, and that
ideology is of particular significance to the history of the Icelandic short
story. It was essential to the emergence of þættir as a separate category
and their definition as a subgenre of the sagas, the younger sibling of the
Sagas of Icelanders.
The emergence of the þættir coincided with a quest for a national iden-
tity, fueled by a romantic nineteenth-century ideology. It is important
to bear in mind the logistics of the ideology that breathed life into the
þættir category at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was strongly
hierarchical. Native trumped foreign, realistic trumped supernatural, and
historical trumped fictional. This is particularly evident in the reasoning
of scholars like Finnur Jónsson who argued for the historicity of the sagas
and for whom the real “original text” was the event itself that was being
depicted in the sagas; thus distance from this original would produce
changes, and the changes would always be less logical and less plausible
than reality itself. Finnur and his contemporaries believed that reality
was logical and that history ideally should be an accurate representation
of reality; thus less historical means less logical.

106

Saga subgenres were

106. See Ármann Jakobsson, “Den kluntede afskriver,” pp. 294–97; Magnús Fjalldal,

“Greatness and Limitations: The Scholarly Legacy of Finnur Jónsson,” Neophilologus, 95

(2011), 329–39.

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defined by their relationship to history and geography rather than by
their artistic features.

107

And within the saga subgenres, narratives were

also categorized from a historical-geographical perspective rather than
their narratological characteristics. Even though Sigurður Nordal and
his disciples who were responsible for the Íslenzk fornrit series distanced
themselves from this historical point of view and embraced creativity and
authorship, this is not very prominent in the introductions to the Íslenzk
fornrit series itself, in particular the first fourteen published volumes (vol-
umes II to XII and XXVI to XXVIII, i.e., most of the Sagas of Icelanders
and Heimskringla), which appeared in fairly rapid succession from 1933
and 1956. All these introductions show much interest in the links between
the narratives and the historical reality from which they stem, and most
include a supposed chronology of the events of the saga, thus confirming
their historical nature. Nationalism was another part of their core ideol-
ogy and although Icelandic nationality would not seem to be necessarily
entwined with the historical, the real, and the logical (to which one might
also add the masculine), sometimes there seemed to emerge a binary
opposition where native seemed to fall naturally in place with the real,
the historical, and the logical.

108

In the Íslenzk fornrit series, the individual

Sagas of Icelanders are published according to which part of Iceland they
come from, and the whole series is arranged geographically, starting with
volume II in Borgarfjörður, volume VI in the Vestfirðir, volume IX in the
Eyjafjörður region, then reaching the south of Iceland with volume XII.
The various popular editions of the sagas from the 1940s to the 1970s
followed suit, the þættir becoming a part of this schema and ending up
being largely presented as tiny Borgarfjörður and Eyjafjörður short stories
rather than episodes from royal biographies.
In the last two decades, this sort of þættir scholarship has run into trou-
ble. Scepticism was originally aired in the 1960s and 1970s by scholars such
as Lars Lönnroth and Sverrir Tómasson.

109

Later research on Flateyjarbók

107. The legendary sagas are a good example; they are defined as taking place in the

Northern world in the distant past, and thus the definition embraces both the historical and

the geographical. What else these narratives have in common has been the focus of much

scholarly discussion to this day (see “Interrogating Genre in the fornaldarsögur”).

108. This is particularly evident in Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s introduction to Laxdæla saga

(Íslenzk fornrit, V, pp. v–xii). It is nevertheless remarkable that Einar Ólafur admires both

the native and foreign, the logical and the fabulous. The Íslenzk fornrit belief was that the

sagas were a synthesis of creativity and historicity, although the result of this synthesis was a

new kind of “realism” that was indubitably higher up in the hiearchy than the fantastic.

109. See Lönnroth, “Tesen”; Sverrir Tómasson, “Vinveitt skemmtan og óvinveitt,” Mau-

kastella færð Jónasi Kristjánssyni fimmtugum 10. apríl 1974 (Reykjavík: Menningar-og min-

ningarsjóður Mette Magnussen, 1974), p. 65. This very short statement by Sverrir shows

an acute awareness of the preservation history of the þættir, relayed in the present article,

that is lacking in most other scholarly studies of the genre. Reservations of this kind even

sometimes made it into the review articles, in particular Lindow’s in Mediaeval Scandinavia

(“Þáttr,” p. 661), which ends with these words: “[I]t may be best to regard [the þættir] simply

The Life and Death of the Medieval Icelandic Short Story

289

and Morkinskinna has undermined the belief in the þættir as a separate
subgenre even further.

110

In the Blackwell Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic

literature, published in 2005, þættir still exist as a genre, but equal scope is
given to two methods of approaching them: the “pre-contextualist” and
the “contextualist.”

111

The problem with this approach, evenhanded as it

is, is that there remains considerable vagueness about the existence of the
þættir, a vagueness that this overview has tempted to counter, by reviewing
the wholy history of this genre, from the Middle Ages to our day.
The history of the þættir may be summarized as follows:

1. At the oral stage of saga composition, the þættir are likely to have

existed as oral narratives but presumably had no special status that
distinguishes them from other short oral narratives that sometimes
end up as episodes within larger sagas.

2. The þættir form a part of kings’ sagas, mainly Morkinskinna, in the

early thirteenth century as episodes with a clear function in the
narrative, such as linking the king more firmly with his Icelandic
subjects, exploring Icelandic identity, casting light on the institu-
tion of kingship and royal virtues, or illuminating the character
of a certain king. The same happens with various other short oral
narratives that were never to be called þættir later in their life. The
þættir do not seem to exist as independent narratives at this stage
or in the previous one.

3. During the fifteenth century, a tendency can be noted to separate

the þættir more clearly from the larger body of the saga than the
other bits and pieces that make it up. This is clear in how the Mor-
kinskinna text is treated in the late fifteenth century in the younger
part of Flateyjarbók, where some þættir are moved to the end of the
story, changed, or left out entirely. However, this does not happen
to all the þættir and to a much lesser degree in the Hulda version of
the same text from the fourteenth century.

4. In the fifteenth century, we also see a few manuscripts where epi-

sodes in the kings’ sagas (later to be termed þættir) are found along-
side longer narratives, presumably to make use of remaining space,

as anecdotes that made sense to medieval authors in the contexts in which we find them

recorded.”

110. See Harris and Rowe, “Short Prose Narrative,” pp. 465–68. Of particular importance

are Stefanie Würth’s Elemente des Erzählens (1991); the Morkinskinna edition of Andersson

and Gade (Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings [1030–1157],

Islandica, 51 [Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2000]); Ármann Jakobsson’s Staður í nýjum heimi

(2002); and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe’s The Development of Flateyjarbók (2005).

111. Harris and Rowe, “Short Prose Narrative,” p. 474.

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Jakobsson

as additional material. The þættir are consequently not only added
to manuscripts with Sagas of Icelanders but also to romances, leg-
endary sagas, and other texts.

5. In the late seventeenth century, there are isolated examples of

manuscripts with several þættir alongside sagas, veritable þættir col-
lections. It is only in the early nineteenth century, though, that
we find manuscripts where þættir form a substantial part of the
manuscript.

6. The mid-nineteen century sees the first þættir edition, although

only with six þættir. This edition owes its existence to the given
þættir’s presence in the same manuscripts but presumably also to
an Icelandic interest in collecting material about Icelanders in
sagas that take place outside of Iceland.

7. In the early twentieth century, we see the first big þættir editions,

mainly those edited by Þórleifur Jónsson (1904) and Guðni Jóns-
son (1935). This leads to the þættir’s establishment as a separate
category and later a subgenre of the sagas.

8. Scholars start to write about the þættir as if they were the sister

genre of the sagas, or even medieval short stories (constrasted
with the novelistic nature of the sagas of Icelanders). This view
becomes dominant in the early twentieth century and was further
bolstered by structuralist research in the 1970s.

9. Scholars have now begun to study the þættir as parts of the nar-

rative where they are originally found. This approach will in the
future become increasingly tempting with more readily available
editions of Morkinskinna and Flateyjarbók. It will eventually lead to
the death of þættir as a separate subgenre, although they still exist
in editions and works of reference and presumably will do so for
the next half a century or so.

Thus the autonomous medieval Icelandic short story most likely never
existed, at least not in written form. The independent þáttr was invented by
fifteenth-century scribes, the þættir collections by their nineteenth-century
counterparts, and the saga subgenre þættir by the popular publishing press
of early twentieth-century Reykjavík.

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