Eirik’s Saga contains a lot of information on the Nordic expeditions to North America. How much of it is actually true? This question kept popping into my mind while reading these adventures. However, I feel this question is not important when analyzing the literary style and history of this saga.
One conclusion I immediately came to was the importance of family lineage in Norse culture. The first two chapters set up the characters and explained who is whose son and who is married to whom. These family lineage breakdowns were extremely confusing to me, “Eirik was supported by Styr Thorgrims- son, Eyjolf of Svin Island, Thorborn Vifilsson, and the sons of Thorbrand of Alptafjord….” (77). Who? What? Come again? It makes sense that I do not understand these first chapters as I was not alive during this time. This saga was not written for people today to read. The literary style shows that these adventures were written for people of the fourteenth century. They explain the characters as if the reader already knows them. The importance of family lineage is a universal idea that can be seen in cultures today. However, the specific characters and lineage in the saga are hard to identify with.
There was a lack of character development in these stories. Each story focused on the specific action or event instead of the depth of the characters. Character descriptions were often brief with few adjectives used, “Karlsefni was a sea-going merchant and was considered a trader of great distinction” (91). The character development consisted of the character’s family, occupation, and how the character was perceived by society. Much of recent literature uses a good amount of dialogue to develop characters. This saga has little dialogue and is mainly used to drive the action. It is not used to reveal the inner quality of a character. I argue that the character development in this saga is a polar opposite to Jane Austin’s character development in Pride and Prejudice. I felt no connection with the characters in this saga.
No matter how hard I tried I could not help but doubting the accuracy of these tails. The accounts in this saga are historical fiction. They are based off some historical fact, but have been embellished and altered. I still think it is important to examine this saga to reveal some history of these early European explorations of the New World.
3 comments:
Who is to decide what is whole and accurate of the past. I would say that many use some embellishment to enliven the story, but here it is just a sequence of events. Anything at all would make it better and yet the author seemed to neglect to do anything to imporve it.
By the way it's "tale" not "tail."
(this is a tale about a tail, a tale that belonged to Squirrel Nutkin)
why thank you for pointing that out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well done!
"I argue that the character development in this saga is a polar opposite to Jane Austin’s character development in Pride and Prejudice." - fair argument. But, one could discuss whether or not there is a certain kinship between Elizabeth and Freydis. -?
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