Hvað á að gera við Landnámu?

Um hefð, höfunda og raunveruleikablekkingu íslenskra miðaldasagnarita

Abstract

This study concerns the twentieth-century scholarly reception of Landnámabók [The Book of Settlements] and how this reception has been characterised by an interest in Landnámabók’s reliability as a source about the distant past which is nevertheless hard to believe in. The debate has been stuck in outdated imaginary opposites such as truth and fabrication or history and fiction. The author emphasises that Landnámabók is both literature and the history of its time and yet more traditional than many other contemporary historical texts which does not mean that the narrative is closer to ‘truth’. It is suggested that to better understand the nature of the text as history, its ideology and form must receive closer attention to better see how the narrative attempts to create a believable image of the past in a very different way than in the Íslendingasögur, as exemplified by a comparison of the settlement of Skalla-Grímur in Landnámabók and in Egils saga.