A. V. Zimmerling
The world of the Icelandic saga
The philological term "saga" in the exact sense of the word refers to narrative epic works in prose that developed in ancient Iceland and continental Scandinavia in the XIII XV centuries.
The use of the term "saga" in relation to literary monuments of other eras and cultures is a metaphor, the justification of which is set by the degree of proximity of these cultures to the Old Norse.
At the same time, within the Old Norse culture itself, the word saga has other meanings — "a story, a legend", "a story about a significant event" and even "the events themselves, the story".
This state of affairs is explained by the environment in which the saga genre originated and the functions that it performed.
The saga is based on an oral message, more precisely, on a detailed message in the conditions of the pre — written and young written era, when written fixation is either impossible or does not play a key role in the transmission of socially significant information.
It is usually said that the Icelandic saga, like the epic song, "goes back to the oral tradition": it would be more correct to say that the genre of the saga embodies the oral tradition, representing a form of information storage and a form of collective memory of society about the most significant events of its history.
A specific feature of the saga that distinguishes it from other "oral" and "traditional" texts is the absence of clear restrictions on the subject of communication: in the language of fairy tales and heroic songs, you can talk about strictly certain things, in the language of the saga you can talk about both the history of a kind and the creation of the world, retell the content of a courtly novel or the content of the life of a Christian martyr.
In essence, the language of the saga, with its refined formulations and characteristic genre cliches — is the highest form of organization of the Old Icelandic language itself.
Although we have evidence of the existence of Ancient Norse and Ancient Putnian sagas, the main attention of specialists and lovers of literature is deservedly attracted by the Old Icelandic sagas, which are among the masterpieces of world literature[1].
It was in Iceland of the XII XIV centuries. [7]
the genre of the saga reached its highest heyday, and in the written era.
The defining role in this was played by the peculiarities of the social way of life created by immigrants from Norway and Sweden in the IX X centuries: there was no state in Iceland, there was no institution of executive power.
The application of the norms of communal self government to the structure of the whole country created a democratic society, the vast majority of whose members had equal rights before the law.
In practice, of course, equality before the law was supplemented by the institution of patronage and clientele, which actually ensured the observance of the rights of ordinary citizens in the absence of bailiffs; but the ideology of a free patriarchal system based on independent owners determined the consciousness of the editors of sagas for many centuries and maintained interest in the ideals of the heroic era in long unheroic Iceland.
The adoption of Christianity (in 999, or, according to other sources, in 1000) and the introduction to the European, i.e. Latin, book culture on Icelandic soil did not entail a decisive break with the traditional culture (cf.the introductory article to the "Saga of the Named Brothers").
When writing appeared in the country at the end of the XII century, sagas were among the first works entrusted to parchment.
Paradoxically, the recording of sagas in the XIII XIV centuries did not mean the end of their existence and modification: subsequent scribes considered themselves entitled to shorten and supplement the versions of their predecessors, i.e. they acted in principle the same as oral storytellers.
This phenomenon clearly shows that in the first centuries after the adoption of writing, there is still no attitude to the text as a fixed verbal form: the role of the scribe is inseparable from the role of the editor.
The same conclusion can be drawn from the material of other languages and cultures, but the history of Old Icelandic literature allows us to observe a similar situation firsthand.
Restoring the original version (protograph) of the saga is not always possible.
The term "protograph" itself turns out to be somewhat conditional: it is justified when analyzing the later written versions, but not in relation to the previous versions, oral and written.
Only in very few cases do commentators have direct evidence that a particular saga was recorded in a certain period of time [8]; more often we have to limit ourselves to indirect arguments in favor of the fact that this saga could not have been recorded earlier or later than a certain date.
However, a number of philologists who modernize the recording situation and equate sagas with the author's works of modern times refuse to call the oral text preceding the written version a " saga "and use the terms" legend "and"oral stories" in relation to it.
The fundamental defect of this approach was noticed by the outstanding philologist Icelander Andreas Heusler at the beginning of the XX century: it is impossible to recognize the existence of information outside of certain forms of its transmission — their role is played by the genres of ancient German oral literature.
The greatest Russian Scandinavist M. I. Steblin Kamensky wrote a lot about the impossibility of building a detailed message without relying on tradition, creating a saga or a heroic song "out of nothing" [2].
Sagas are usually divided into several groups generic (they tell about the history of the family and the strife in Iceland of the IX–XI centuries), royal sagas (they tell about the history of Norway and other Scandinavian lands), sagas about bishops; sagas of the above mentioned groups, as well as chronicle sagas about the civil war in Iceland of the XII–XIII centuries, which are part of the compilation "Sagas about the Sturlungs" are generally recognized as reliable and as a historical source.
Another group consists of legendary sagas about ancient times, mythological sagas and false, i.e. romantic sagas.
It should be noted that the attitude to the saga as a conscious fiction was uncharacteristic for the Old Icelandic society: Icelanders, apparently, perceived stories about the adventures of Tristan or about the exploits of their legendary ancestors as difficult to verify, and not as impossible: listening to and retelling deliberately "false" sagas in the modern meaning of this word, i.e. artistic fiction, would be an unacceptable waste of time and profanation of the genre. [9]
According to another criterion, a group of so called sagas about the recent past is distinguished, which includes works written in the fresh traces of events, and do not assume a historical distance.
This includes the above mentioned sagas about bishops, the "Saga of the Sturlungs" and a number of sagas about the history of Norway, including the "Saga of Sverrir", which is known to the Russian reader.
The genre of prose works is adjacent to the generic sagas — the so — called strands or short stories about Icelanders, used as insert stories in larger works — royal, and less often generic sagas.
The boundary between the strand and the saga is not quite clear.
On the one hand, the criteria for selecting an episode from the narrative are not always obvious, especially in generic sagas.
On the other hand, most of the sagas have come down to us as part of extensive compilations, which can be considered with some stretch as whole works: compilers often wrote introductions or transitions from saga to saga or referred to what was told elsewhere in the book.
The action of all the strands is attributed to the historical era and is timed to prominent personalities kings and leaders.
On the contrary, the main characters of the strands are often little known figures; sometimes they can be considered apocryphal.
Another group of strands is devoted to individual episodes of the biography of people known to us, which are not included in the sagas, where the same people are told in more detail.
Strands are usually published together with sagas (cf. the Russian edition of sagas in 1973).
For this edition, we have selected strands that have a historical basis and thematically adjoin the generic sagas.
Most of the Icelandic sagas have long been translated into the main European languages.
The first translations of the sagas (into Danish) were made by Peder Klausson Fries (see about him in the introductory article to the "Pososhniki Saga") at the end of the XVI XVII centuries.
Mass translations, however, began only at the beginning of the XIX century.
after the realization of the fact of the Germanic linguistic community and the formation of Germanic studies as a scientific discipline.
The first accurate translations into Russian were published by the Akademia publishing house in 1930: the so — called false, i.e. novelistic sagas were translated - "The Saga of the Volsungs" (translated by B. I. Yarkho) and "The Saga of Fridtjof the Bold" (translated by A. I. Smirnitsky, placed in the appendix to the poem by the Swedish poet E. Tegner).
The event was the publication of the translation of four generic sagas — "The Saga of Gunnlaug", "The Saga of Egil", "The Saga of the People from Laxdal" and "The Saga of Nyala" — in 1956: the largest domestic Germanists took part in the publication M. I. Steblin Kamensky, [10] S. D. Katsnelson, V. G. Admoni.
This was followed by other editions of the sagas, made under the general direction of M. I. Steblin Kamensky the BVL edition (1973) [3] and the "Grettir Saga" (the Series "Literary Monuments", 1976)[4].
From the royal sagas, "The Circle of the Earth" ("Literary Monuments", 1980)[5] and "The Saga of Sverrir" ("Literary Monuments", 1988) were translated[6].
A number of "strands about Icelanders" (translated by E. A. Gurevich) was included in the recently published anthology "The Roots of Yggdrasil"[7].
All the sagas included in this publication are being translated into Russian for the first time.
A fundamentally new feature in this publication is the presence of a detailed scientific apparatus, including introductory articles to the text of each work and comments, which cover all the main aspects of the study of this work.
Unlike all previous Russian publications, more attention is paid to textual problems, the problems of reconstruction of the protograph are discussed and the specific dating of monuments is justified, which allows us to qualify the proposed book as a scientific publication.
The principles of publication are also new.
Sagas and strands are arranged strictly according to the geographical principle.
The section of ancestral sagas opens with the sagas of Borgarfjord in the Southwest of Iceland and ends with the sagas of the Eastern Quarter.
The section of sagas about recent times includes a single work — "Sagas about Pososhniki".
The article on the monument substantiates the fact of its belonging to the Old Icelandic literature and reveals its significance as a historical source.
Unlike previous editions, we preferred to convey to the reader the maximum information contained in proper names.
In [11], the book translates almost all nicknames and toponyms that previously remained untranslated.
An exception is made for the "Pososhnik Sagas", where nicknames are translated, but not Norwegian toponyms — another solution would make it difficult for the reader to identify them.
Especially for this edition, F. B. Uspensky and A.V. Zimmerling translated the skaldic poems that have come down to us as part of the published sagas and strands[8].
The book is illustrated with maps of Iceland, Norway and Greenland.
For the opportunity to use the map of Norway and the plans of medieval Norwegian cities, the editor expresses his deep gratitude to the publishing house Solum Forlag, Oslo.
For the first time in the history of Russian Scandinavistics, the original text of skaldic poems with a word by word translation, analysis of vocabulary, syntax, poetic figures and metrics of each poem is provided in the reading edition: the reader will be able to find it in the second part of our book.
We hope that such a solution will be interesting for both the ordinary reader and the specialist.
This publication would not have been possible without the support of sponsors — the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Iceland, the Corporation of Icelandic Freezers, the Embassy of Iceland in the Russian Federation, the Consulate of Iceland in St. Petersburg.
The author's team expresses its sincere gratitude to all of them.
In addition, we would like to personally thank the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Iceland to the Russian Federation, John Egil Egilsson, and the staff of the Embassy of Iceland, Havrun Stefaunsdottir and Torbjertn Jonsson, for their invaluable organizational assistance and invariably benevolent attitude to our project.
Anton Zimmerling [12]
Notes
[1] The history of the scientific study of sagas has a long tradition.
The first professional sagovologists can be considered the collectors of manuscripts Brynjolf Sveinsson and Peder Klausson Friis, who lived in the XVII century.
Currently, the International Sag Society is active, which publishes its own bulletin and organizes world congresses every three years with the participation of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, literary critics and linguists: the last congress was held in Trondheim (Norway) in August 1997.
[2] Unfortunately, the concept of oral literature has not yet gained due popularity in research on historical poetics.
The reader who wants to get an in depth idea of this concept and about the directions of scientific discussion should first of all recommend the book by A. Heusler.
Die altgermanische Dichtung.
Potsdam, 1941 and the monograph by O. A. Smirnitskaya "Verse and the language of Ancient German poetry".
Moscow: MSU, 1994.
The best essays on the saga in Russian belong to the pen of M. I. Steblin Kamensky: M. I. Steblin Kamensky: The Culture of Iceland, L., 1967.
The World of the saga.
The formation of literature.
L. 1984.
See also: A. Ya.
Gurevich.
History and Saga.
Moscow, 1972.
He is also: Edda and Saga.
M., 1979.
[3] The BVL edition includes reprinted translations of the "Gunnlaug Saga" and "Nyala Saga" and new translations made by M. I. Steblin Kamensky and O. A. Smirnitskaya: "The Saga of Gisli", "The Saga of Hurd", "The Saga of Hrafnkel", "The Saga of Torstein Bit", "The Strand about Audun from the Western Fjords", "The Strand about Torstein Frost", "The Strand about Halldor the son of Snorri", "A strand about the Icelander storyteller", "The Saga of Eirik the Red" and "The Saga of the Greenlanders".
[4] Translated by O. A. Smirnitskaya, general edition by M. I. Steblin Kamensky.
[5] Translations by M. I. Steblin Kamensky, A. Ya.
Gurevich, Yu.
K. Kuzmenko under the general editorship of M. I. Steblin Kamensky.
Poems translated by O. A. Smirnitskaya.
[6] Translated by M. I. Steblin Kamensky and E. A. Gurevich.
[7] "About the Generous Brand", "About Hrafn the son of Gudrun", "About Torleiv the Jarl Skald", "About Odd the son of Ofeig", "About Halli the Shuttle", "About the Beer Hood", "About Hreidar", "About Gisla the son of Illugi", "About Thorvald the Crow's Beak", "About Toki".
[8] The history of attempts to translate skalds into Russian has a longer tradition than the history of the translation of sagas; see the article by O. A. Smirnitskaya about this as part of the above mentioned edition of The Circle of the Earth.
Source: Icelandic Sagas.
- Moscow: Languages of Russian culture, 2000. [SAG2000]
Scan: Halgar Fenrirsson
OCR: User Userovich; Tim Stridmann
[7] - this is the end of the corresponding page.
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