The study is a critical assessment of the Islendingasögur and ĺslendingaÞættir through the lens of costume and textile history, aiming to shed light on the possible connections or discrepancies between dress and identity within the narrative fabric. The process of characterisation is analysed in detail, with emphasis on the correlation between actions and behaviour on the one hand and physical appearance and clothing on the other. Particular attention is given to Norse aesthetic standards, the perception of beauty and of its absence, and their rendering in the corpus in question.

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The thesis examines the medieval Icelandic sagas’ many accounts of travel taken by Scandinavian characters to lands in the distant north, south, east and west. These Norse far-travellers have various motivations for their journeys, and particular motivations and motifs are associated with each cardinal direction. Travel to the distant west and north, for example, is typified by commercial motivations: real estate and settlement schemes in the west, trade and tribute-collection in the north. Travel to the distant east frequently takes the form of royal exile, and piety is often the central motivation for journeys to the distant south. Other sorts of narrative patterns are also discussed. It is shown, for example, that there is a sort of “moral geography” evident in the literature, whereby journeys towards “holy” regions (east and south) are more spiritually beneficial than journeys in the opposite directions. The study systematically identifies and discusses saga-accounts of far-travel, surveying the various purposes and themes associated with each of the cardinal directions. The first chapter introduces the material and key terms and provides a survey of the relevant scholarship. The following four chapters cover far-travel in each of the four directions, west, south, east and north respectively. The primary-text examples cited throughout support literary observations, and the conclusions drawn are all focused on literary aspects of the texts. Additionally, some historical observations are occasionally made, though these are never the main focus of the arguments. The sixth and final chapter supplements the concluding sections of these four main chapters and draws additional conclusions. The concluding chapter also offers a diagrammatic representation of the relationships between the various motivations for far-travel in the different cardinal directions.

This thesis examines Leiðarvísir, a medieval itinerary from Iceland to the Holy Land. The itinerary indicates stops and distances, but is also rich in significant information on the places along the route. Leiðarvísir has been attributed to the twelfth-century Abbot Nikulás of the Benedictine abbey of Munkaþverá in Iceland and the text has been considered to be a travel account based on the direct experiences gained by the abbot during a journey. An analysis, however, of all the datable termini present in the itinerary demonstrates that the attribution of the whole itinerary to Nikulás cannot be maintained. Having taken into consideration the most relevant criteria and definitions required to categorise a text as ‘travel writing’ and as a ‘travel account’, this thesis will then show that Leiðarvísir does not share any of the distinguishing genre features typical of a travel account, and that it should rather be classified as an impersonal guide. Finally, the thesis focuses on the description of Rome in Leiðarvísir, putting it in the context of other medieval descriptions of Rome. Not only does this contextualization make evident that the description of Rome is largely based on written sources, but it also proves that some of its details are incompatible with a twelfth-century dating and with its attribution to Nikulás. It emerges that Leiðarvísir is a work composed by an erudite scholar using written sources, and that it was probably successively enriched and updated with relevant information by one or more later scribes.

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My thesis is a comparison of the wizard figure in Scottish and Icelandic folk legend. It begins with a study of the international wizard tradition. The first chapter concerns two wizards, the Rev. Saemundur Sigfusson of Iceland and the Scottish wizard Master Michael Scot. It includes brief biographies of the historical characters and some comments concerning the manner in which they first gained their reputations as wizards. In the chapter I also consider the migratory legends ML 3000: "Escape from the Black School", ML 3020: "Inexperienced Use of the Black Book", and ML 3025: "Carried by the Devil". I compare the magic practised in these legends with similar historical practices and beliefs. I then consider the respective development of the legends in Scotland and Iceland. Social and historical influences are considered and the legends are compared with similar traditions in other countries. Special attention is paid to the changes which the legends underwent. Finally I consider the witch tradition and the course of the witchcraft trials in either country, and their influence on popular beliefs.

This is a literary-historical investigation of the evidence for lost Sagas of Icelanders which it has been assumed once existed but no longer are preserved in manuscript form. The aim is a critical reevaluation and systematization of these hitherto haphazard assumptions. A brief introductory chapter discusses and defines the terms 'lost literature' and 'medieval Iceland' and restricts the study to written literature and to one genre in particular, the Sagas of Icelanders. The process by which literature is lost is also considered. A long chapter on methodology describes the general principles involved in a literary-historical search for lost sagas, as they have evolved in the course of the investigation. The types of evidence for lost sagas are discussed in detail, with cross-references to the following chapter, under the categories: 'Citations', 'Lost sagas as sources of Landnamab6k', 'Lost sagas as sources of existing sagas' and 'Lost sagas as sources of rfmur'. The evidence is constantly considered in the context of medieval Icelandic literature as a whole. The next chapter contains, in catalogue form, individual detailed analyses of seventeen instances where lost sagas have been posited, using the methodology described in the previous chapter and including further evidence which may have been too specific to be mentioned there. Further, a number of cases where the evidence seems to indicate a lost saga, but where no lost saga has ever previously been suggested, are discussed. The conclusion condenses the results of the two preceding chapters and distinguishes between those lost sagas for which there is convincing evidence of their erstwhile existence and those for which there is not (the two categories being roughly equal). Some tentative conclusions are drawn about the consequences a knowledge of lost literature may have for our total picture of saga literature, in terms of the distribution of sub-types of the genre and of the use of sources.

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