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
| Participation | 25% (evenly split between reading and role assignments) |
| Translation test | 10% (an Arts and Sciences requirement) |
| Presentation | 15% (may be based on your assigned role, more about this later) |
| Term paper | 50% (may be on the same topic as the presentation; 20pp. grad, 15pp. SMC) |
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: Glenn
- Historian: Thorsteinn
- Skald: Bob
- Scholar: Erin
I will email each of you with some resources or tips of how to go about your task.
Tools
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).