The Reception and Reinterpretation of Old Norse Myth: an analysis of Víga-Glúms saga and Gautreks saga

Abstract

After the conversion of Icelanders to Christian religion, Old Norse myth was perceived differently with respect to pagan times. Though, with the end of paganism and the introduction of Latin and Latin texts, there was a new beginning from the literary point of view and the development of a literary tradition. The texts written in the twelfth and thirteen centuries, especially the ones that belong to the saga genre, were full of narratives and references to the Old Norse mythological world. This study aims to determine what was the interpretation given to the pre-Christian myth and how the use of myth in sagas was functional to create a “cultural memory”. This approach, in fact, erases any type of religious function of the Old Norse myth: sagas became an instrument to convey and transmit the reconstruction of the pagan past and to give form to a collective identity using the mythographic references. To support the concept of “cultural memory” in sagas, this study delineates the several features of Old Norse myth from the general aspects to the details. In fact, two sagas of two different genres have been analysed in order to demonstrate that this approach has been specifically used, with reference to myth, in these texts in the moment in which they have been written. The first is Víga-Glúms saga, which belongs to Íslendigasögur, while the second is Gautreks saga, which belongs to fornaldarsögur: in both cases the aim is to recognise how there is a particular vision of the pagan past and myth which is the result of a Christian interpretation.