Advanced Old Norse, Session
01
Introduction
In this course, we will read Egils saga and the associated
poetry in Old Norse, which comes to about twenty pages per week. You
will also write an essay on any aspect of the text, or any aspect of the
culture that gave rise to it with reference to the text. More about
assessment in a bit.
Scheduling
Various students have expressed an interest in rescheduling our
weekly session. We have now settled on a main session of Thursdays 9–11,
with any further students meeting me individually.
Office hours are by appointment, or just drop in at Robarts
14286a.
Assessment
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Participation
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25% (evenly split between reading and role assignments)
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Translation test
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10% (an Arts and Sciences requirement)
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Presentation
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15% (may be based on your assigned role, more about this later)
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Term paper
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50% (may be on the same topic as the presentation; 20pp. grad, 15pp.
SMC)
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We have negotiated the paper due date to the week of our 21 March
session. Let’s say Sunday night, 24 March, midnight.
Session setup
- Reading
- Context and enhancement through role assignment
- Presentations
Auditing policy
- Anyone is welcome
- Everyone reads
- I won’t mark essays, though you can ask me to read and comment on
them as a favour, which I may decline.
Role Assignment
Objectives
- Gamify the classroom experience
- Ensure everyone understands the text in a maximum of context
Procedure
- Every student takes on a specialized role for the duration of the
term
- “Characters” are called on both as the need arises and at
particularly appropriate and more specifically prepared moments
- If students like to be efficient with their time, they can opt to
base their presentation and term paper on their role
Rules
- Students can interrupt a reading at any point to assume their
role
- Students can be asked to elaborate on a relevant aspect of the
narrative at any time
- Everyone still gets to read the poetry; the court poet simply adds
information on metre, kennings, and the like
- Students should indicate at the start of a class if they want to be
sure a certain passage is not skipped in class reading.
Roles
- Navigator: *********
- Historian: *********
- Skald: *********
- Scholar: *********
I will email each of you with some resources or tips of how to go
about your task.
Egla Provenance
Preliminary Dating
- Not very accurate as a terminus ad quem is the fact that
Sturla Þórðarson (d. 1284) had access to the saga when he wrote his
redaction of Landnámabók, written after 1250, perhaps as late
as 1280.
- More usefully, the oldest MS fragment (θ) dates to ~1250 and is
generally held not to be the author’s copy or archetype. A terminus
ante quem can thus be anchored to sometime before 1250.
- There is general consensus that the text predates
Heimskringla, which was completed about 1230.
- A first terminus a quo consists in the saga’s reference to
Skapti Þórarinsson, a priest still alive in 1143 and possibly for some
decades after: “Þar var þá Skapti prestr Þórarinsson, vitr maðr.” Nordal
thought this reference looked to be written after Skapti’s death, likely
after 1150, which may be reasonable if we assume he was ordained for
life. At any rate he seems to have retired, or moved, again not much
before 1150.
- A more accurate terminus a quo could be formulated if we
had a better understanding of the author’s sources on Norwegian history.
If he used Haralds saga hárfagra, also used by Snorri for
Heimskringla, this could push the date forward to about 1200,
though this postulation depends on a number of further assumptions.
Authorship
Dating may profit from a study of the text’s authorship. Snorri has
long been considered the author, on grounds including the following:
- The text takes a special interest in the Mýramenn, and
among them in Skalla-Grímr and his family.Snorri was a direct descendant
of Egill’s and held the goðorð of the Mýramenn.
- The author also takes an apparently unrelated interest in
Tungu-Oddr, whose goðorð (Reykholt) Snorri also held. No-one
else had these combined interests.
- The saga author has a good knowledge of both history and geography,
subjects we know Snorri to have been familiar with from his writings and
travels.
- More importantly, the limits of the text’s geographical horizon also
correspond to Snorri’s.
- Heimskringla and Egils saga share the otherwise
unattested phrase láz at síðu (“lace on the side”).
- We know of no other works composed in Borgarfjǫrðr at this early
time, and Snorri was prominent here both as a goði and as a
scholar.
- The compiler understands and handles the poetry exceptionally well,
which cannot be said of all compilers of family sagas, and Snorri was
the authority on poetry at this time.
- Peter Hallberg has attempted to determine Snorri’s authorship on
linguistic and stylistic grounds (1960s).