SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

262 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
in this book on the important question of the origin and growth of
saga literature.
His message is very simple, possibly too simple, for he argues
that the development of medieval Icelandic literature is more
closely connected with the traditional pastime Sagnaskemmtun
than we have hitherto been willing to believe. By Sagnaskemmtun
is understood the more or less formal reading aloud of
sagas to an audience, and the author rightly emphasizes the
well-established fact that the creation of any sort of literature
depends on an audience. As evidence of the fact that this form
of entertainment had an important place in the life of the people
until quite recently, he cites a number of passages from later
centuries, by Eggert Olafsson and others. The quotations are
excellent, but they are accompanied by the author's own glosses
which are sometimes inaccurate and occasionally quite wrong.
Thus, it was not because of special animosity towards the
Icelanders and their innocent and time-honoured pastime, that
the Danish king, Christian VI, issued two decrees with a warning
against the spiritual dangers of reading sagas and the like. This
was simply an expression of the somewhat narrow-minded
Christianity which throughout the reign of that king was dominant
in all his countries. The frustrating results of this spiritual policy
in other spheres have been known for a long time, for instance, in
the case of the young Danish theatre, which after a promising
beginning was closed during the reign of Christian VI, so that
Holberg was unable to follow up his earlier success as a playwright.
The heyday of the Sagnaskemmtun is loosely put at
c. 1250 to c. 1650, and one of the reasons why it gradually became
less popular is, according to Mr Palsson, because the antiquaries,
or as he nicknames them handritasmalar, collected manuscripts
in Iceland in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century in
order to promote scholarly studies abroad. 'What Mr Palsson
seems to overlook are the two facts that a great many old
manuscripts had already perished or been more than half
destroyed when Ami Magnusson, the greatest of the collectors,
rescued the remnants, and that a multitude of paper manuscripts,
often more legible than the old vellums, remained in Iceland.
Such younger manuscripts on paper are now found in an amazing
number in Landsbokasafn and in several British collections.!
The preliminary survey of the Sagnaskemmtun in later centuries
(pp. 14-38) makes the reader doubt whether Mr Palssori's book
is meant to be a piece of scholarship, or simply a patriotic tonic.
1 See Ole Widding, 'Ami Magnusson and his Collection. An Appreciation
on the Tercentenary of his Birth', Scandinavica II: 2 (Nov. 1963), 93-107,
especially 97 ff.