The origins of many of the Icelandic sagas have long been the subject of critical speculation and controversy. This book demonstrates that an investigation of the relationship between verse and prose in saga narrative can be used to reconstruct how the sagas were composed. O'Donoghue provides a detailed analysis of Kormaks saga, revealing that far from being a seamless narrative of either pre-Christian oral tradition or later medieval fiction, the work is in fact a patchwork of different kinds of literary materials.

From runic inscriptions to sagas, this book introduces readers to the colourful world of Old Norse-Icelandic literature.

• An introduction to the colourful world of Old Norse-Icelandic literature.
  
• Covers mythology and family sagas, as well as less well-known areas, such as oral story-telling, Eddaic verse and skaldic verse.
  
• An introduction helps readers to appreciate the language and culture of the first settlers in Iceland.
  
• Looks at the reception of Old-Norse-Icelandic literature over the ages, as views of the vikings...

Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative is a study of the varying relationships between verse and prose in a series of Old Norse-Icelandic saga narratives. It shows how the interplay of skaldic verse, with its metrical intricacy and cryptic diction, and saga prose, with its habitual spare clarity, can be used to achieve a wide variety of sophisticated stylistic and psychological effects. In sagas, there is a fundamental distinction between verses which are ostensibly quoted to corroborate what is stated in the narrative, and verses which are presented as the speech of characters in...