which they are preserved, and that these texts are even found in the inventories of
medieval Icelandic churches indicates the audiences for them were large and diverse. On
the other hand, some sagas (e.g. Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka) are preserved in unique
medieval manuscripts, while still others (e.g. Hrólfs saga kraka) have come down to us
only in post-Reformation codices. Significant too in understanding the character and
complexity of these sagas is the fact that a number of them have survived in highly
varied multiforms. The variations often include lengthy interpolations, and the overall
effect of the codicological testimony indicates the ready acceptance, and practice, of
textual massaging according to the tastes of subsequent scribes, audiences and patrons.
And as with other saga genres, although perhaps to a greater degree in this instance, the
fornaldarsögur are ornamented with details drawn from a diverse and eclectic set of
sources, including the learned clerical culture that informs encyclopaedic works like
Alfræði íslenzk (AM 194 , 8 vo). Yet the hallmark of the legendary sagas remains, as the
various names given to the genre suggest, their fascination with the old heroic traditions
of northern Europe. Typically, the exploits of their champions take place before the
settlement of Iceland, and the few exceptions (e.g. Yngvars saga víðförla) explicitly set the
adventures outside the historical worlds of their audiences. Characteristically, these
sagas play out either on the undefined landscape of Germanic heroic literature or in
the exotic, far-off venues of adventure tales; in any event, the locales (and resulting
atmospheres) are far from the realistic, workaday world of medieval Iceland so charac-
teristic of the íslendingasögur and other more realistic saga genres.
Testimony to the popularity of the heroic traditions these sagas celebrate – through-
out the Nordic world, not just in Iceland – is provided by a wide variety of adjacent
cultural monuments. The most impressive work in this regard is surely Völsunga saga.
Although this fornaldarsaga is preserved only in a single fifteenth-century manuscript,
the fame of the traditions at its heart is evident in a wide array of media throughout
northern Europe. Scenes from the story are found in sculpted and carved representations,
most notably in the many Norwegian stave-church carvings, but also on such impressive
works as the Ramsund petroglyph in Sweden (see Figure 23. 3. 1 ) and the Andreas
carving on the Isle of Man. Literary works in related Germanic traditions (e.g. Beowulf,
Nibelungenlied) refer to, and are informed by, this material, as is the case in other genres
of Old Norse literature (i.e. in an encapsulated form in Snorra Edda and in the heroic
cycle constituted by more than a dozen poems in the Poetic Edda). Within Scandinavian
narrative tradition, the popularity of many of the fornaldarsögur materials is also readily
apparent, nowhere more so than in the twelfth-century Gesta Danorum of Saxo Gram-
maticus. This text is rich with characters and episodes also known from the fornaldars-
ögur (e.g. Örvar-Odds saga, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks), a knowledge of which Saxo attrib-
utes to the Icelanders’ love of legendary materials. Given the popularity of the for-
naldarsögur traditions, it is hardly surprising that they are well represented in the ballad
traditions of the Faroes, Norway, Sweden and Denmark and in the Icelandic metrical
romances (rímur). Many of the motifs and characters of the fornaldarsögur corpus are also
found in the folklore materials collected in the nineteenth century, although questions
of authenticity and direction of influence, or even of reticulated influences, naturally
abound in such contexts.
How the fornaldarsögur were used by medieval audiences, and to what purpose, has
attracted much attention in recent years. Were they written through the patronage of
individuals whose ambitions and concerns influenced the shape of the text? Were they
–– Stephen Mitchell––