2018/01/01 by Mart Kuldkepp · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical and Archaeological Studies
paper · doi:10.1484/m.bbl-eb.5.116082
openalex publication_date 2018/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
This article takes a look at how Icelandic folklore was mediated in Old Norse literature through a case study of Einarr Gilsson’s mid-fourteenth-century dróttkvætt poem Selkolluvísur. After sketching out what is known about the poem’s cultural and political background, how the poem attempts to reconcile folk tradition, elevated in poetry, and ‘high’ Christianity is considered, thus providing an example of literary transmission and transformation of folklore in Medieval Iceland. A particular focus is on skaldic diction and imagery (kenningar and heiti) as likely indications of the poem’s intended audience, expected impact, and relationship to hypothetical earlier folk narratives. I argue that Selkolluvísur demonstrates the continuing potential of skaldic imagery as rhetoric in the fourteenth century, while also saying something about the transmission and reinterpretation of Icelandic folklore in Old Norse literary texts.