1966/03/01 by Jacqueline Simpson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical and Archaeological Studies #Medieval Literature and History
paper · doi:10.1080/0015587x.1966.9717025
openalex publication_date 1966/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
AMONG the less-known sagas of Iceland is the short ]orsteins saga bwjarmagns,x which is richly varied in material and has affinities with myth, folk-tale, and several works of medieval literature. Among its episodes there is one, the longest, which is derived from myths about Th6r, and it is this episode alone which has hitherto been considered in discussions of the saga. However, the work as a whole is worth examination in its own right, and not merely as a re-handling of older mythological material. Its date cannot be fixed within narrow limits. It belongs to a type (the so-called Lying Sagas) which in the fourteenth century dominated Icelandic writing to the exclusion of the earlier, more realistic types; it survives in forty-eight manuscripts, of which five are vellums from the late fourteenth or the fifteenth centuries. Its