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This dissertation presents the thesis that the literary figure of Óðinn was an extremely useful artistic device for medieval Icelandic authors seeking to engage with their pagan heritage and to reconcile an interest in this cultural past with their own beliefs and experiences. An accurate definition of what constitutes the Odinic figure and its various uses is therefore highly valuable to a fuller understanding of the complex and dynamic relationship in Old Norse literature produced in the Christian present but reflecting on the pagan past. Part One examines source evidence for Óðinn, taking the numerous names for Óðinn as a method by which to categorise and understand him as a figure. These names are found overwhelmingly in Old Norse poetry and poetic treatises, providing information on the mythological attributes and guises of Óðinn. These sources (the poems of the <i>Poetic Edda, Snorra Edda</i>, including the additional <i>pulur</i> appended to <i>Skáldskaparmál</i>, and skaldic poems) comprise the most complete and earliest evidence of Old Norse mythology for modern scholars. Part One collates and analyses the names of Óðinn found in these sources to reach a definition of the ‘Odinic’ and its constituent parts which include: disguise; deception; moral and sexual ambiguity; and status as the father of gods and men, as patron of poetry and the giver of victory in battle. Part Two utilises the definitions as the basis of a comparative study into the manifestations of the Odinic figure found in Old Norse prose, in particular the narratives of <i>Heimskringla</i> and <i>Flateyjarbók</i> which each combine Old Norse myth, legend, and history in order to construct a chronological account of the Scandinavian peoples, encompassing and adapting the contradictory origin myths of the pagan and biblical traditions. Examination of the ways manuscript compilers use Óðinn for this purpose casts light on their world view and on Óðinn as means by which Icelandic Christian writers could explore and reconcile these seemingly disjunctive traditions in their literature.

This dissertation looks at three closely related Norse texts, all dated to the early thirteenth century: <i>Morkinskinna, Heimskringla, </i>and <i>Fagrskinna.</i> These are collections of stories involving Norwegian kings, and so are known as ‘kings’ sagas’. The stories themselves are not only about state affairs, but also about personal relationships in royal circles. For this reason, these three works - especially <i>Morkinskinna </i>and <i>Heimskringla</i> - are significant sources of information about the way in which the social behaviour of Norwegian kings was presented in Norse historiography of the early thirteenth century. Because the compliers devote so much attention to activities which can be seen as entertainment or play (<i>skemmtan, gaman),</i> and because accounts of such activities provide particularly rich opportunities for analysis of social behaviour, I focus in this study on these. I concentrate first on entertainment for kings, in which kings mainly spectate, before looking at entertainment by kings, in which co-participation by royal and non-royal performers creates especially complex and interesting performance situations and relationships. Often, entertainment activities involve verse recitation or prose storytelling, although clowning and other kinds of spectacle are also to be found. Most feature an element of competition, which Huizinga sees as central to play, and which Ong considers especially important in primarily oral cultures. As a result, I view many of the entertainments which appear in the compilations as challenge rituals, of the kind of identified by Meulengracht Sorensen as vital to the Norse world, represented in the literature. Sometimes, challenge appears to be personal as well as interpersonal, giving characters opportunities to confront and even exploit their own potential weaknesses, in addition to those of others. Repeated challenge tends to generate a culture of mocking spectatorship, particularly when it comes to the circle around Haraldr harðraði, as shown by <i>Morkinskinna</i>. Readers are invited to share in this culture through vivid focal details - intensely striking images or sounds - which bring them close to the people and events described, and fix these in memory. What otherwise seems to count for characters and compilers is inscrutability, often attained through personal peculiarity or singularity, for instance in the form of radical temperamentality or unpredictability, or apparent weakness or lack of wisdom, or through recitation of complex verse, or even outright deception. Alongside challenge, then, personal and social ambiguity are fundamental themes in the many entertainment accounts to be found in the compilations, particularly <i>Morkinskinna</i> and <i>Heimskringla.</i>

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The primary object of the thesis is to discuss a particular group of female supernatural beings called ‘nornir’ and their relationship to the Old Norse concept of fate. Although well-known and often mentioned in scholarship dealing with Old Norse culture, these beings are all too often dealt with in overly superficial ways. The research presented in the thesis seeks to go much deeper in order to properly understand the nature and role of ‘nornir’ in the Old Norse world view, and the conclusions reached importantly overturn a number of stereotypical conceptions that have long dominated our understanding of ‘nornir’. The discussion of these beings falls into four main chapters: a discussion of the similarities and differences between ‘nornir’ and several other kinds of female supernatural beings; a discussion of certain symbolic aspects relating the dwelling place of the ‘nornir’ to their strongly feminine nature; a discussion of the well-established image in which fate is represented through different kinds of textile work, and the problems that surround this metaphor in the Old Norse sources; and a discussion of the Old Norse vocabulary relating to fate and the quasi-legal aspects of the ‘nornir’. The thesis focuses on Old Norse culture and uses predominantly Old Norse source material. Comparative material, especially Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Classical, is, however, employed when this is thought to be relevant.

This thesis focuses on late medieval and early modern Icelandic literature and society roughly spanning the years 1400–1700, including the reception and reinterpretation of medieval Icelandic popular texts after the Icelandic Reformation in 1550. The thesis discusses in detail one late medieval Icelandic romance called Nítíða saga, which was very popular in post-Reformation Iceland, surviving in 65 manuscripts. The thesis is organized into two parts. Part One discusses Nítíða saga’s internal and external contexts, looking at the saga as a physical and cultural artefact, as well as its setting. Chapter One delves into the saga’s manuscript context, including a classification of the surviving manuscript witnesses and a discussion of the medieval text’s post-Reformation reception and transformation through three case studies. Chapter Two discusses the saga’s intertextual relationships, through the analysis of a prominent motif and through two case studies highlighting the saga’s relationships with other Icelandic romances. Chapter Three analyses the saga’s setting, investigating the text’s unusual depiction of world geography. Part Two considers the saga’s characters and their relationships: Chapter Four discusses the depiction of the saga’s hero, including perspectives on gender and power; Chapter Five looks at the characterization of other figures in the saga and how they reinforce the hero’s position; and Chapter Six explores the role of the narrator. Overall this thesis shows, through material philology together with literary analysis, how Nítíða saga explores and negotiates the genre of Icelandic romance. The thesis also raises questions of Icelandic identity, both locally and in relation to the wider world, uncovering relationships among manuscripts and texts, which have previously gone unnoticed, and also shedding light on Icelandic attitudes towards literature and literacy in the late medieval and early modern periods.

Nikulás saga leikara (Nsl.) tells the story of Nikulás, king of Hungary. His foster-father, Earl Svívari, convinces him to stop playing with magic and try to win Princess Dorma of Constantinople as a bride. Svívari makes a secret betrothal with Dorma, contrary to her father's wishes. Nikulás then travels to Constantinople where he poses as a merchant in order to insinuate himself into the Byzantine court. Nikulás meets with Dorma secretly, and the couple escape from Constantinople. Valdimar's Scandinavian mercenaries capture Dorma by employing magic, but Nikulás re-captures his bride, also using magic. The final battle is precluded by Valdimar's accidental killing of his own mercenaries. Valdimar accepts Nikulás, and Nikulás becomes king over Constantinople upon Valdimar's death. Nsl. is an Icelandic romance which survives in sixty manuscripts dating from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Despite the saga's popularity in Iceland, Nsl. has received little attention from saga scholars. Nsl. is clearly a fictional saga, and neither the action nor the protagonist are related to Scandinavia. Consequently, scholars who regarded saga as history, as well as those who wished to define a unique medieval literature for Iceland - or other Scandinavian countries - had no interest in this saga. However, recent scholarship has discovered that sagas such as Nsl. are rich in both Icelandic and continental literary styles and motifs. Nsl. may therefore be seen as a particulariy Icelandic form of medieval romance. The present translation of Nsl. will make the saga available for further study of native Icelandic romance. Of the two redactions ofNsl., the edition ofNsl. (Nks. 331, 8vo) which is part of this study represents the longer, more popular version. With this edition, it is hoped that scholarly attention will be drawn to a saga which was read and enjoyed in Iceland over at least four centuries.

The core premise in this thesis is that each generation rediscovers and reinterprets mythology from its own perspective; and that individual authors within each generation make intertextual use of mythology accordingly. With this premise in mind I will examine the intertextual use, interpretation, and revision of Norse mythology, particularly the material from Snorri's <I>Edda</I> and the <I>Poetic Edda</I>, in Scandinavian literature of the 1980s and early 1990s. Through an analysis of the use of mythology by individual authors, I aim to examine the appeal of myth generally, both to authors and readers, and will discuss how the presence of mythological material in literature can reinforce the underlying ideology in the work as a whole, and may also influence the reader's receptiveness to the work. Alongside this, the works will be analysed individually in their social and literary context. The thesis will be divided into three sections. The first section will introduce the earliest literary accounts of Norse mythology, and the cosmology they depict. The re-use of the mythology in literature generally will be discussed, and the tradition of literary re-use of Norse mythology will be presented. The second section will form the main body of the thesis. The first chapter will provide a brief survey of the works to be covered. These are taken from across Scandinavia - primarily from Denmark and Norway. In all the works, which range from post-modern poetry to picture books for children, the use of Norse mythology is a central element. The works will then be analysed in individual chapters. The first four of these (2-5) examine the use of myth in novels: <I>Ragnarok</I> [The Downfall of the Gods] (1982) by Danish author Villy Sørensen; <I>Kärleksguen Frö </I>[The Love God Freyr] (1988) by Swedish writer Torgny Lindgren; <I>Gunnla</I>ð<I>ar saga</I> [The Story about Gunnlod] (1987) by Icelandic writer Svava Jakobsdóttir; and Norwegian Vera Henriksen's <I>Ravn og Due </I>[Raven and Dove] (1991). These will be analysed in turn showing how they utilise similar material with a variety of results.

That Scandinavian ballads are somewhat similar to Scottish ballads is one of the standard beliefs of ballad study. Yet another is that ballads diffuse across geographic and linguistic frontiers. This thesis seeks to examine these tenets in terms of examples from the Faroe Islands and from Scotland. The Faroe Islands are chosen for geographic and linguistic reasons. Although they are a dependency of Denmark, they lie geographically much closer to Scotland. Since they shared a West Scandinavian language with the Scottish islands of Shetland and Orkney for almost a thousand years these islands are considered as a possible cultural bridge between the Scottish and Faroese ballad communities. The organisation of material is in terms of the history of a shared culture and language with examples of surviving Norn ballad texts from the Shetland Islands and possible parallels in Scotland and Scandinavia; a brief overview of continued contact after the political separation of 1468-69; a comparative history of ballad collection; a summary of ballads deemed to be parallel and a deeper examination of selected ballad pairs. Since the extensive Faroese ballad corpus is little known in Scotland, considerable attention is also given to the different types of Faroese ballads and their function in tradition.

This thesis is a literary analysis of the entire corpus of dreams and visions described in the prose romances (riddarasogur) composed in Iceland between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It considers the sources and analogues of the dreams and visions, the ways in which they are narrated, their narrative functions, and their connections with folk tradition, religious beliefs, and early writings on dreams. The study is organised according to the nature of the material under analysis. The dreams and visions of the riddarasogurfall naturally into six categories: (a) fetch dreams, in which the spirits of individuals appear as animals; (b) dreams and visions which convey information through symbolic images; (c) dear, unencrypted visions of future events; (d) dreams which are reported to have occurred but the contents of which are not described; (e) dreams and visions in which individuals appear to the dreamer and impart useful advice and information; and (f) dreams in which a supernatural being physically interacts with an individual in his sleep. Each chapter of the thesis treats one of these six categories, examining each individual dream or vision with regard to the features outlined above. The study shows that riddarasaga dreams and visions are heavily influenced by foreign literature, but also find a natural place in the Icelandic literary tradition by being integrated with the conventional structures of saga narrative. Dreams are used for a variety of purposes, not only to foreshadow later events in the story, but also as a medium through which the saga protagonist is provided with assistance or confronted by an enemy, and a means of characterisation. Extra-textual factors are also shown to be relevant to the dreams of the riddarasogur, most especially the influence of Christianity and medieval Icelandic conceptions of the relationship between the natural and supernatural worlds.