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Russian Russian General Linguistics European languages Oriental languages General literary studies Russian literature Literature of Europe and America Literature of Asia and Africa Reviews Preprints Select the section New arrivals General linguistics Russian languages European languages Oriental languages General literary studies Russian literature Literature of Europe and America Literature of Asia and Africa
M. I. Steblin Kamensky
ICELANDIC SAGAS
(Icelandic sagas.
The Irish epic. - M., 1973. - pp. 7-22)
I
Iceland is a large and deserted country.
The population in it is very rare.
Only its coastal strip, sometimes quite narrow, is more or less populated.
Iceland is more than twice the size of its former metropolis - Denmark, and its population is twenty - five times less than in Denmark - only about two hundred thousand people, and almost half of this population lives in the capital and the only big city Reykjavik.
Huge areas are occupied in the country by lava fields, glaciers, rocky wastelands, sands, that is, they are not suitable for habitation at all.
The entire interior of the country is a completely deserted plateau.
The almost complete absence of vegetation makes it look like the earth, as it looked many millions of years ago, before the appearance of life on it, or the moon.
It is no accident that American astronauts, preparing for operations on the surface of the moon, trained in Iceland, on its desert plateaus.
In fact, most of Iceland now looks the same as the country looked when people first appeared in it.
And they appeared in it relatively recently - just a little more than a thousand years ago, at the end of the IX century of our era.
And they appeared in it relatively recently - just a little more than a thousand years ago, at the end of the IX century of our era.
Iceland was settled by immigrants from Norway in 870-930 AD.
The first settlers did not meet any human beings in the newly discovered country, except, perhaps, a few hermit monks who had sailed there a little earlier in search of solitude from Ireland in their fragile boats.
It is believed that by the end of the era of settlement of the country, that is, by 930, there were already several tens of thousands of people in Iceland, that is, about the same as there were at the beginning of the XIX century.
A relatively short period of independent existence and prosperity (from the beginning of the X to the middle of the XIII century) was followed by a long period of stagnation and decline.
The centuries when the country was first Norwegian (from the middle of the XIII to the end of the XIV century), and then Danish possession (from the XIV to the XX century), were very difficult for the Icelandic people, so that the population not only did not increase, but at one time even decreased.
The economic recovery began only in the second half of the XIX century.
In the XX century, it became rapid.
Finally, in 1944, Iceland was declared a republic.
The country became independent again.
Despite the fact that the Icelandic people are one of the smallest nations in the world, they have always followed their own, special path in everything from the very beginning of their existence.
The first settlers formed a society in Iceland, unlike the one from which they came.
When Iceland was settled, King Harald the Fair haired ruled in Norway, who united Norway and laid the foundations of the Norwegian state.
Sailing away from Norway, the Icelandic first settlers sailed away from the state.
In the society they founded in Iceland, pre state institutions found a new life - the ting, that is, the people's assembly, the veche, and the godord, that is, the community of the ancestral priest godi, who maintained the local temple and led the ting.
The All Icelandic ting althing was established (now the Icelandic parliament is called that).
It adopted laws and tried all cases that could not be resolved at local meetings.
Simultaneously with the althing, the lagretta, that is, the court formed by all the godi together (there were originally thirty nine of them), was also assembled.
Lagretta elected a law speaker, that is, an all Icelandic elder, who, however, had no power outside the althing.
The execution of the decisions of the althing was the business of the plaintiffs themselves or anyone who undertook their execution.
There was no central executive power, no military force opposed to the people, no offices, no officials, no police, no prisons in Iceland at that time.
The Icelandic people also went their own way in the field of religion, and therefore culture and, in particular, literature, which at that time were closely related to religion.
At the end of the X - beginning of the XI century, its kings introduced Christianity in Norway.
They introduced it by force of arms and under threat of torture, and the introduction of Christianity was accompanied by the eradication of the native literary tradition, since it was associated with paganism.
Meanwhile, in Iceland, the official adoption of Christianity (in 1000) was an amicable deal between pagans and Christians.
Thanks to this, the native literary tradition was carefully preserved in Iceland, despite the fact that it was associated with paganism.
Later, when Iceland lost its independence and became the possession of first Norway, and then Denmark, despite this, it retained its own language, which already in the XIII century was somewhat different from Norwegian, and over time it moved far away from it.
Thanks to this, it has preserved its cultural independence, in particular, its rich and peculiar literary tradition.
Although Iceland became a country of very poor peasants, literacy was widespread in it and original literary creativity never stopped.
The Icelandic people are called the most literary people in the world.
It is also called the people of poets.
The passion for writing poetry and for mastery in versification is an Icelandic national trait.
Apparently, the percentage of poets in Iceland is much higher than the corresponding percentage in any other country.
In the pre written era, poetic creativity was spread in Iceland almost even more than in modern times.
Hundreds of Icelanders who lived in that era are known to have composed poems, and many of these poems were later recorded.
For three and a half centuries, from the middle of the X to the end of the XIII century, the Icelanders supplied the rulers of Norway, as well as other Scandinavian countries, and even England, with songs of praise, at that time the most highly valued type of poetry.
Writing appeared in Iceland, apparently, at the beginning of the XII century.
But the most important works of Old Icelandic literature were recorded in the XIII century.
In the XIII century, mythological and heroic songs were recorded, which in modern times received the name "The Elder Edda".
This is one of the most famous monuments of world literature.
In the XIII century, the oldest poetry of the Skalds was recorded and the famous skaldic textbook by Snorri Sturluson was written, which in modern times received the name "The Younger Edda".
At the same time, most of the Old Icelandic prose works, the so called sagas, were written.
Old Icelandic literature is the most peculiar and the richest of the medieval literatures of Europe, and the bulk of this literature is sagas.
The Icelandic word "saga" comes from a verb that means "to say" or "to tell", and, therefore, the original meaning of this word is "told".
In Old Norse, any prose narrative was called a saga.
In the XIII - XIV centuries, a huge number of prose narratives were written in Iceland, which are all called sagas.
The Old Icelandic saga literature is very diverse.
There are sagas that tell about the history of Norway.
They are called "sagas of kings", because Norway has long had kings, while Iceland has never had them.
The oldest surviving sagas are the sagas about some Norwegian kings.
There are sagas about the reign of individual Norwegian kings - "The Saga of Sverrir", "The Saga of Olav Tryggvason", "The Saga of Hakon Hakonarson", etc.
But there are also summary sagas about the Norwegian kings.
The most famous of these consolidated sagas is the so called "Heimskringla" (literally "earth circle"), which is usually attributed to Snorri Sturluson.
It covers the period from mythical times to 1177.
There is also an Icelandic saga about the Danish kings and Danish history - "The Saga of the Knutlings" (the Knutlings are the Danish royal family).
There are sagas that tell about the history of Iceland in the XII - XIII centuries, that is, about events that are almost simultaneous with the writing of the saga.
These sagas are collected in a compilation of the XIII century, which is called "The Saga of the Sturlungs" (the Sturlungs are a noble Icelandic family, whose representatives then fought for power).
"The Saga of the Sturlungs" is extremely meticulous in presenting the facts.
There are sagas that tell about the Icelandic bishops of the XI XIV centuries and the church in Iceland.
They are called "Sagas about Bishops".
There are also a lot of reliable facts in these sagas.
There are also sagas about legendary heroes who lived even before the colonization of Iceland (that is, until the end of the IX century).
They are called "sagas of ancient times".
There is usually nothing historically reliable in these sagas, but some of them are based on ancient epic tales or ancient heroic songs.
The most famous of these sagas is the "Saga of the Velsungs".
It tells about the heroes who are also known from the epic tales of other Germanic peoples.
There are many fairy tale motifs in the "sagas of ancient times".
There are also sagas that consist entirely of fairy tale motifs.
Sagas, in which there are many fairy tale motifs, were called "false sagas" in ancient times.
There are also various translated narrative works.
All of them are also called "sagas" (for example, "The World Saga", "The Saga of the Romans"," The Saga of the Jews"," The Saga of the Trojans"," The Saga of Alexander","The Saga of Charlemagne and his knights").
Finally, there is a large group of sagas that tell about the events in Iceland in the X XI centuries, that is, in the so - called "age of sagas" (and they were written, as far as it can be established, also in the XIII XIV centuries).
These sagas are called "sagas about Icelanders", or "ancestral sagas".
The most peculiar and most famous of the Icelandic sagas are precisely the "sagas about Icelanders", or "ancestral sagas".
Therefore, when they talk about" Icelandic sagas "or simply about" sagas", they usually mean"sagas about Icelanders".
The title of this volume also refers to them.
Below is a brief description of the originality of the "sagas about Icelanders" and mainly about the localities, people and events in these sagas.
More details about the originality of these sagas are described in the book of the author of this article "The World of the Saga" (L., 1971), and about the originality of Icelandic culture in general - in his book "The Culture of Iceland" (L., 1967).
II
In the" sagas about Icelanders " there are a very large number of names of Icelandic farms, rivers, sea bays, lakes, islands, mountains, hills, etc.
Russian Russian translation of the sagas could simply convey, as far as possible, the supposed Old Icelandic sound of these names in Russian letters, that is, write, for example, "Merk farm", "Hvita River", "Reykjavik Bay", "Fiskiveti Lakes", "Flatey Island", "Trihurning Mountain", "Laxdal Valley", etc.
This was exactly what was done in the Russian translation of the Icelandic sagas, published in 1056.
However, you can translate these names into Russian and write accordingly: "Farm Forest", "White River", "Dymov Bay", "Fish Lakes", "Flat Island", "Three Cornered Mountain", "Salmon Valley", etc.
The fact is that for an Icelander of the era when these sagas were written (just like for an Icelander of our time), these names, as a rule, are not just names, that is, a set of sounds, but necessarily having some meaning and conditionally associated with what is called, but the same full meaning words as any other words of the Icelandic language.
However, it is not easy to translate Icelandic toponymy (i.e. geographical names) into Russian.
For example, we have to use the same Russian word "hill" where there are different words in Icelandic names, depending on the size of the hill, the steepness of its slopes, its vegetation cover, etc.
The Icelandic language is extremely rich in designations of different elements of the landscape.
Russian Russian is the exact equivalent of the corresponding Icelandic word, but even if the Russian word is the exact equivalent of the corresponding Icelandic word, the reality denoted by this word for a Russian speaker will not be the same as for an Icelander.
Russian Russian word "sand" is the exact equivalent of the corresponding Icelandic word, but for an Icelander, the reality denoted by this word is basalt sand, that is, blue black sand, whereas for a Russian speaker it is rather yellow or golden sand.
The peculiarity of the geographical names in the "sagas of Icelanders" not that these names are meaningful words (such geographical names there are, of course, not only in the "sagas of Icelanders", and they are in the Russian language, compare: Black river, city Island, Bear mountain, etc.).
It is likely that none of these names were not invented by those who wrote these sagas, and that they had all been previously used symbols objects actually existed in Iceland - it is a concrete Icelandic hills, rivers, lakes, bays, mountains, valleys, farms, etc.
These names, as a rule, still exist in Iceland and have not changed their meaning for seven hundred years, just as the mountains or valleys of Iceland have not changed during this time.
Even the farms mentioned in the "sagas of the Icelanders", in a large number of cases, still exist as farms.
At the same time, the nature of Iceland over the last thousand years, that is, since the country was settled, has been so little affected by man that the names given by the Icelandic first settlers or their closest descendants often still correctly describe what they mean.
When you travel around Iceland, it happens that when you cross a river in which the water seems white, you find out that this river was already called the White River in ancient times, and when you see a flock of wild swans on a swampy plain, you find out that this plain was already called the Swan Tract in ancient times.
Individual "sagas about Icelanders" are, in fact, the history of those who lived in the" age of sagas " in a certain Icelandic area.
Often, this is reflected in the names of certain "sagas of Icelanders"; there is "the Saga about people with the Sandy Shore", "the Saga of the people of Lososa Valley", "the Saga of the swamp people," "the Saga of the people with the Bright Lake", "the Saga of the people of the valley of the Smokes", "the Saga about people with Cod Fjord", etc.
Since the individual "sagas of the Icelanders" always closely associated with certain mestnosti in Iceland or in related publications these sagas are usually not placed in chronological order of their writing (she's too vague), and in geographical sequence.
So in the present volume, the sagas are arranged in order of their place of action or the place where their heroes come from: first - the northwestern coast of Iceland, then - the northern, eastern, southern and western.
In modern scientific publications of the "sagas about Icelanders" and especially in publications edited by Icelandic scientists, toponymy is usually commented on in detail.
For example, it is indicated where the farm mentioned in the saga was located and subsequently abandoned; where the ravine, pit, rock, etc. mentioned in the saga are located, if they now have no special name (or if they are now called differently); what mistakes were made by the one who wrote the saga in his instructions on the location of certain objects or the distance between them.
In addition, the publication is usually accompanied by an index of geographical names mentioned in the saga, and a map of the area in which the action takes place.
such comments and applications in a literary work may seem strange to a modern reader.
Did those who wrote the sagas necessarily have a very specific area in mind?
Could they not, like the authors of our time, have in mind some generalization of the farms, mountains, etc. they saw, that is, something fictional?
The fact of the matter is that it was absolutely impossible for them.
They might have confused the names, made a mistake when indicating the distance, or made some other mistake, but they undoubtedly believed that they always had in mind completely specific realities, and not the fruits of their artistic imagination.
Thus, each geographical name in the" sagas about Icelanders " contains information about the nature of Iceland, and often about its history or both.
Thus, the name of the farm "The End of the Slope" contains an indication that this farm is located at the end of a gentle slope of the ridge where the slope ends and cliffs and cliffs begin, and the name of the farm "Bergtorov Hill" contains an indication that this farm is located on a hill in the middle of the plain, and that the person who first settled here was called Bergtor.
In their entirety, the geographical names in the "sagas about Icelanders" - and there are a huge number of such names in these sagas - are a description of the nature and the ancient history of the country.
Iceland with all its mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, swamps and sands is present in the "sagas about Icelanders" thanks to these names much more specifically, in fact, than it could be present in the sagas due to the landscape, that is, descriptions of nature as a literary device.
However, at the time when the sagas were written, this technique had not yet appeared in literature at all.
Descriptions of nature as a literary device were impossible as long as nature was an environment from which man did not distinguish himself.
Only when nature was opposed to man as an object of aesthetic admiration, the landscape appeared in literature.
In the fiction of modern times, the purpose of the landscape is that it emphasizes the specifics of the work as an artistic fiction.
When a modern work tells, for example, that the hero or the author observed how "purple shadows lay on the fields and the last reflections of the setting sun painted the clouds in such and such colors" or how "the northern Lights illuminated the bay with magic or some other light", it is immediately clear to the reader that this description is an artistic device, that is, that nature in this case is an artistic fiction that should cause a certain aesthetic experience in the reader (but may not cause it, if the reader, burning with impatience to learn that what happened next to the hero, jumps over this description as an annoying obstacle).
There is nothing like such descriptions of nature, and in general there are no descriptions of nature in the "sagas about Icelanders".
If in the "sagas about Icelanders" sometimes some information is reported about the landscape against which something is happening, then this is only to explain the events described in the saga.
So, for example, when it is reported in the" Saga of Nyala "that" flat stones lay on the path at the ford", it is only to explain why those who approached the ford could not ride away from Gunnar.
Only to explain the events described in the saga, information is provided about what happened at a certain moment in nature (it froze or melted, snow fell or it rained, the sun went down or the moon rose, etc.).
III
About the same as with the localities, the situation is with the people in the "sagas about Icelanders": those who wrote these sagas undoubtedly believed that the people described in them were real people, and not the fruits of artistic fantasy.
However, here the mistakes could be much larger: the names of people could be confused or the kinship or other ties between people could be misunderstood, and these people themselves could be interpreted in different ways, depicted in a more or less favorable light for them, and thus their image in the saga actually turned into fiction.
Apparently, however, it was not realized as fiction to the same extent that those who wrote the sagas did not realize themselves as their authors.
Thus, the "sagas about the Icelanders" are completely different from novels, that is, conscious fiction, and those who wrote them are completely different from the authors of novels.
Since those who wrote the "sagas about Icelanders" believed that everything told in them was true, of course, both the listeners and readers of these sagas believed this, that is, in fact, everyone in Iceland until quite recently.
This naive belief also had a hypnotic effect on the scientists who studied the sagas.
So, Icelandic the scientist Finn Jonsson (1858-1934), who devoted his entire life to the study of Old Icelandic literature and knew it like no one before or after him, kept the naive belief until his death that everything told in the "sagas about Icelanders" is mostly true.
Meanwhile, it is not difficult for a modern person to notice fiction in the "sagas about Icelanders".
It is, in fact, obvious.
In order to uncover it, there is no need at all to compare the saga with more reliable historical chronicles (as the researchers of the sagas have repeatedly done) or to conduct any other scientific research - archaeological excavations, etc.
And it's not even that there is something implausible in the" sagas about Icelanders".
What seems implausible from a modern point of view, could seem quite plausible from the point of view of people at the time when the sagas were written.
Everyone then believed in witchcraft, ghosts, etc.
In addition, there is very little improbable in the "sagas of the Icelanders", in fact, and there are only some of them interspersed with it.
The fiction is obvious in the "sagas about Icelanders" from their very manner of telling about people, namely, from the fact that the actions of individual people are described in detail and everything they said in the described situation is given, sometimes even what no one could see or hear.
Such a narrative about people can only be an artistic fiction, of course.
And if this fiction was still not noticed in Iceland for many centuries, this is obviously due to the fact that the ability to put oneself in the place of those who wrote these sagas was preserved, to look at this fiction from their point of view, that is, it is naive not to notice it.
When the researchers of the" sagas about Icelanders " lost their naive faith in the truthfulness of these sagas, the fiction in them suddenly became obvious, and, naturally, they came to the conclusion that it was obvious to those who wrote the sagas, that is, that he was conscious.
Since then, the "sagas of the Icelanders" have been considered works that are completely analogous to the realistic novels of our time, and those who wrote these sagas are exactly the same authors as the authors of these novels.
As it often happens, science has outwitted itself: in fact, there was more understanding of them in the naive trust in the truthfulness of the "sagas about the Icelanders" than in the distrust of their truthfulness that arose as a result of their scientific research.
But although the "sagas about the Icelanders" have become considered novels, it is obvious from the way they continue to be interpreted in scientific publications that they are something completely different from novels.
Why would the editor of a novel tell in the notes whether this character is mentioned in other works, whether there is an error in the information reported about this person, etc.?
And such notes are common in scientific publications of the "sagas about Icelanders".
These notes clearly indicate that the editor considers the purpose of the saga to be the communication of the truth in the proper sense of the word, and not the so called "artistic truth", that is, plausible fiction.
Meanwhile, the purpose of every novel, including the most realistic one, is precisely the communication of artistic truth, and not the truth in the proper sense of the word.
When talking about this or that character of the saga, the one who wrote it always had in mind some real, really existing person.
Meanwhile, the author of the novel, telling about one or another of his characters, only in a rare and completely atypical case for the novel - namely, in the novel of biography has in mind some real person.
But even the author of the biography novel is aware, of course, that although the canvas in his work is genuine facts, it itself is only a plausible fiction (a novel!).
Usually, the character of a realistic novel is a generalization, the result of the selection of common for many real persons, the result of the selection of the typical, that is, the rejection of the image of a separate real person in all its individual complexity and uniqueness, thereby in a certain sense - simplification, schematization.
Thus, we can say that realistic novels relate to the "sagas about Icelanders", as a literary processing of the raw material of reality to this raw material itself, or as plausibility to the truth.
In other words, in a certain sense, the "sagas about Icelanders" are more truthful than realistic novels.
It is not surprising because the characters of the "sagas about Icelanders", as a rule, are unlike literary types.
This is especially true for the main characters of the sagas.
Secondary characters in them, on the contrary, are often literary types (evil witches, insidious schemers, etc.).
Meanwhile, the main characters of the sagas, as a rule, are more vital than literary types.
This is manifested primarily in the fact that their behavior and actions do not necessarily follow from their character.
A man who is cowardly by nature, like Bjorn from the Forest in the "Saga of Njala", shows courage.
A man of noble character, like Flosi from the "Saga of Nyala", turns out to be the leader of those who commit a vile crime - the burning of Nyala and his family in the house.
It may seem, however, that such cases are the result of the author's conscious desire to show the human personality in all its complexity.
However, in fact, such cases in the "sagas about Icelanders" are as much not the implementation of the author's plan as similar cases in life are not the implementation of the plan of some omnipotent being who controls people like puppets.
The fact is that the" sagas about Icelanders " did not have the goal of depicting people at all: the human personality itself did not attract enough attention in that distant era to become an object of image in literature.
That is why in the "sagas about Icelanders" there are absolutely no descriptions of the inner world of the characters, their experiences, their feelings and thoughts.
The purpose of the" sagas about Icelanders " was not to describe people, but events, and moreover events of a certain kind.
IV
About the events described in the "sagas about the Icelanders", we can say about the same thing that was said above about the localities and people: those who wrote the sagas believed that these events were reality, and not the fruits of artistic fantasy.
These events are not facts of the personal life of the characters of the sagas.
Personal life, as already mentioned above, is never described in the"sagas about Icelanders".
these events are the feuds between Icelanders in the so - called "age of sagas", that is, the X XI centuries.
About what these feuds were, what were their reasons, how they proceeded, and so on, the reader can form an idea for himself by reading the sagas.
But after reading about this or that murder in them - and in the feuds described in the" sagas of the Icelanders", it often comes to murder - the reader should not rush to condemn the people of that time for cruelty.
He should take into account that, as a rule, this is a murder out of a sense of duty, namely, the duty of revenge and, most often, revenge for a murdered relative, and moreover a murder similar to murder in a fair and open battle with the enemy, since the man who was killed was always a man, but not a woman or a child, the blow was struck openly, not from behind or from cover, and during the day, but not at night, and the person who committed the murder himself announced it.
It should also be taken into account that for members of a society in which there were no police, prisons, or punitive bodies - and this was the Icelandic society in the "age of sagas" - the fulfillment of the duty of revenge could not but be mandatory.
Such a society could not exist if the duty of revenge was not mandatory for its members.
People are depicted in the "sagas about Icelanders" to the extent that they participate in a particular feud.
But that is why they are depicted so objectively: what is inadvertently described in the process of describing something else turns out to be described more objectively than the immediate object of the description.
An example is the tragic and romantic in the "sagas of the Icelanders".
The events described in the" sagas of the Icelanders " are often tragic.
However, in the sagas, as a rule, nothing is said about the tragic experiences that should have been caused by these events.
The modern reader perceives this as a subtle literary device: he should, as it were, read these experiences into the saga himself and imagine them all the more vividly and feel all the more lively sympathy for them.
However, in fact, those who wrote the "sagas about Icelanders" were not interested in the experiences of the participants in the tragic events described in the saga.
I was interested in events.
Sentimental sympathy for the experiences of the heroes of the literary work hardly took place.
Therefore, if the purpose of the tragic in literature is to evoke sympathy for the tragic experiences of the characters of the work, then the tragic in this sense was not in the plan of those who wrote the "sagas about Icelanders".
The more objectively, however, the tragic events are depicted in the saga.
The narrative of any events, both tragic and not at all tragic, is conducted in the "sagas about Icelanders" in the same key.
the modern reader does not notice this tonality, since he inevitably reads the tragic tonality into the description of tragic events.
Some idea of the tonality, which is difficult for a modern reader to notice in the "stories about Icelanders", can only be given by medieval music: in contrast to the music of modern times, medieval music also, as a rule, does not aim to evoke sympathy for some experiences.
In general, the medieval narrative often had a completely different purpose than the modern reader reads into it.
So, for example, in the story about Thorstein Frost, the modern reader inevitably discovers comedy, that is, he believes that the purpose of the story is to make fun.
Meanwhile, this story is a Christian legend about a miracle.
The purpose of this story is to inspire faith in the miraculous power of King Olav Tryggvason as a representative of the Christian Church.
Those who wrote the "sagas about Icelanders" were not interested in the experiences caused by sexual relations, that is, romantic experiences.
Apparently, these experiences did not cause the sentimental sympathy that the author of any novel expects.
There was no poetic aura around them.
It is characteristic, for example, that although Gunnar's infatuation with Hallgerd is obvious from the facts reported in the Njala Saga (Chapter XXXIII), Gunnar's marriage with her is regarded as a "reckless marriage of passion" (a more accurate translation would be "out of lust").
Marriage for love seemed to the people of that time just foolishness, stupidity.
On the contrary, it seemed reasonable to conclude a marriage in the same way as Skarphedin, Helgi and Grim, Njal's sons, do in the same saga, for whom Njal himself selects suitable wives (chapters XXV and XXVI).
"Love" is called in the "sagas about Icelanders", as a rule, only the relations established between the spouses after some, sometimes very long time after marriage.
The word "love" obviously had a completely different meaning than in romantic literature.
The word "love" in the "sagas about Icelanders" does not apply to what from a modern point of view seems to be a connection based on a romantic feeling.
If this is a man's love affair with someone else's wife, then it is usually simply said that the man "fooled" the woman.
If we are talking about a married man's love affair with a single woman, then it is usually said about a "side wife" and "side children" as something that is quite natural and should not cause objections from a legitimate wife.
At the same time, it is obvious from the facts reported in the "sagas about Icelanders" that the experiences themselves caused by sexual relations were, in fact, the same as in other times: people also fell in love, experienced passion, were jealous, etc.
The only other assessment of these experiences was: there was no idealization and romanticization of them.
But that is why in the" sagas of the Icelanders " these experiences were more objectively depicted than is possible in the novel, although in the sagas they were not the object of the image.
In the novel of modern times, there can be no idealization of these experiences, if only because it exists in the meanings of the corresponding words (that is, the words "love", "love", etc.) in all modern European languages.
Thus ,in this respect, the "saga of the Icelanders" is truer even than the most realistic novels.
An exception in this regard is the "Saga of Gunnlaug the Snake Tongue".
In this saga, love in the romantic sense of the word is idealized in the spirit of medieval courtly literature.
However, even in this saga, the main thing is a feud, and love in it only motivates this feud.
V
Nowhere in this article are those who wrote the " sagas about Icelanders "called their"authors".
In fact, it is completely unclear whether they can be called that.
Scientists have been discussing this issue for a long time.
In the first half of the last century, the opinion was established that those who wrote the "sagas about the Icelanders" were simply recorders of what existed in the oral tradition.
But in the second half of the last century, they began to incline to the fact that those who wrote "sagas about Icelanders" collected a formless tradition and gave it the form of sagas, that is, they were their authors.
At the beginning of our century, the opinion was again established that those who wrote sagas, with some reservations about the sagas, the longest and most complex in composition, were simply their scribes.
But in the thirties of our century, the point of view was again put forward, according to which the" sagas about the Icelanders " are written works created by their authors, and this point of view has recently prevailed.
However, the supporters of this point of view also admit that the source of the written saga was the oral tradition, but they do not call this oral tradition a "saga".
All the theories of the origin of the "sagas about Icelanders" that have been put forward so far imply a simplified idea of the specifics of oral and written literature.
The transition from oral literature to written literature allegedly coincides with the transition to author's creativity, and, consequently, written literature is supposedly necessarily author's creativity.
In reality, however, the situation is much more complicated.
In fact, there can be no "authorless" literature, if I may say so, at all.
All literature is created by people, that is, by authors.
But unconscious authorship is possible, and in the conditions of unconscious authorship, the author's contribution is not delimited from the retelling and, therefore, cannot be determined.
The oral tradition is dominated by unconscious authorship.
However, even in the oral tradition, conscious authorship is possible.
Thus, the poetry of the Old Icelandic Skalds undoubtedly implies conscious authorship.
However, it is known that this poetry existed for several centuries before the introduction of writing.
The oldest skaldic poems were composed in the IX century, and there is information about their authors.
True, among the Skalds, conscious authorship extended only to the form, but not to the content, that is, it was an early stage of the development of conscious authorship.
The transition from unconscious to conscious authorship is a whole huge epoch in the history of human consciousness.
Meanwhile, the transition from oral literature to written literature, that is, the introduction of writing, is an event that is carried out in a relatively short time.
It is natural, therefore, that these two transitions do not necessarily coincide.
Unconscious authorship is also possible in written literature and is widely represented in medieval literature.
Thus, it undoubtedly took place in the "sagas about the Icelanders", since those who wrote them believed that these sagas were true, and not the fruit of their artistic imagination.
But with unconscious authorship in written literature, the author's contribution is about as much not delimited from writing or rewriting as in oral literature it is not delimited from retelling, and, therefore, it is also not definable.
Those who wrote the "sagas of the Icelanders" could write down an oral tradition or copy from what had already been written by others.
But they could also add their own to the recorded or copied, and in this respect they did not differ from those who transmitted the oral tradition on which they were based, because the oral tradition, of course, was not transmitted word for word.
Thus, it is impossible to establish to what extent those who wrote the "sagas about the Icelanders" were their authors.
VI
The volume of the Library of World Literature offered to readers includes the following eight "sagas about Icelanders" - "The Saga of Gisli", "The Saga of Thorstein Bit", "The Saga of Hrafnkel Godi Frey", "The Saga of Hurd and the Islanders", "The Saga of the Greenlanders", "The Saga of Eirik the Red", "The Saga of Njal", "The Saga of Gunnlaug the Snake Tongue" - and the following four "strands about Icelanders" - "About Audune from the Western Fjords", "About Thorstein Frost", "About the Icelandic storyteller", "About Halldor, the son of Snorri".
The five sagas named first are being published in Russian for the first time.
"Strands about Icelanders" are short stories about the stay of Icelanders with the Norwegian kings.
These stories are fragments from the "sagas of kings", but since their characters are the same as in the "sagas of Icelanders", they are usually included in the"sagas of Icelanders".
All four strands have been translated into Russian for the first time.
There are still about thirty "sagas about Icelanders" and several dozen "strands about Icelanders"that have not been translated into Russian.
The translation of the" sagas about the Icelanders " presents great difficulties.
The Old Icelandic language is quite different from modern European languages in many respects.
There are many words and phrases in it that have no equivalents and correspondences in these languages.
In other words, it is very idiomatic.
The language of the "sagas about Icelanders"is especially idiomatic.
However, he is completely free from any artificiality, pretentiousness, rhetoric or ostentation.
But it is known that it takes more art to convey artlessness than to convey artificiality.
The translation of vis (poetic stanzas) found in the sagas is particularly difficult.
The style of vis is completely different from the style of sagas, it is extremely pretentious.
There are many so called "kennings" in viss, that is, very conditional poetic figures consisting of two or more nouns (for example, "ash of the sich" or "tree of the storm of weapons" = warrior).
the word order in them is unnatural (individual sentences are intertwined with each other), and the size is very complex (alliteration and internal rhymes form a strict pattern).
It is absolutely impossible to convey this complex and pretentious form in translation into Russian with any accuracy.
It can only be transmitted very approximately.
But such an approximate translation of vis is justified by the fact that their content, as a rule, is very sparse (usually they report some facts that are also reported in prose), and the form is so conditional that it seems to be independent of the content.
That is why the free transfer of vis, in fact, does not distort their content.
The comments to individual sagas or strands provide information about their features, historical basis, translations into Russian, bibliography, and also explain individual words and expressions found in them.
