The present volume stems from a workshop (“Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Medieval Northern European Literature”) held in 2021 at the University of Tübingen. However, while the workshop itself had a strong focus on the paranormal and the contested compatibility between fictionality and factuality especially in the so-called “post-classical” Íslendingasögur, the volume centers on the adaption and application of the concept of the storyworlds as an analytical model and aims to “showcase the multiplicity of purposes to which storyworlds theory can be utilized in an Old Norse-Icelandic context” (10). [1]
In the Introduction, Merkelbach extracts from various storyworlds theorists to present an overview of storyworlds as a workable framework and explicates some of its key concepts. Following Marie-Laurie Ryan, storyworlds are defined as “totalities that encompass space, time, and individuated existents that undergo transformations as the result of events” (10) and as such they go beyond the traditional diegetic dichotomy. The creation and reception of a story are essentially worldbuilding processes cognitively conducted on both the author’s and the audiences’ part, as both inevitably draw from their prior experience and knowledge about and acquired from the actual world (also defined as “primary”) to engage with a storyworld (“secondary”), however close or distant it may be from the worlds (both primary and secondary) already familiar to them. A story, even if it is passed down to us in a fixed version, is therefore never singular or static, but evokes an infinite possibility of worlds in different audiences. Having laid the theoretical foundation, Merkelbach turns to Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar and helpfully showcases at an early stage the kind of storyworlds that can be identified in an Old Norse-Icelandic saga, their constituents, and the ways in which they are connected to each other and to the primary world. In particular, as many points covered here—such as geographical and temporal “settings” of the story, manuscript witness, interrelations with other sagas and saga genres—will be examined in greater details in individual chapters, the case study signals the upcoming discussions and, together with the description of the volume’s structural rationale and content, intellectually prepares the readers for what to come.
The following twelve chapters are evenly divided into four parts. Furthering the theoretical discussions, Part I “Building Worlds” focuses on aspects fundamental to worldbuilding that both the author and the audiences could use to navigate through a storyworld. In “Intrusive Dreams and Converging Worlds in the Íslendingasögur,” Alexander Wilson reads depictions of dreams as embedded storyworlds (referred to as dreamworlds) and investigates them in relation to the main world (i.e. of the story), thereby pointing to a co-existence of multiple worlds in varying degrees of secondariness within a given story. Using Þorbjǫrn’s pre-death visions and dream inHeiðarvíga saga as a close study, he further argues that, although the dreamworlds and the main world may be presented as unconnected, they are nevertheless “consubstantial” (39) due to the audiences’ cognitive participation in worldbuilding. As storyworlds are intrinsically incomplete, the audiences must refer to their knowledge of not only the primary world but also the main world to fill in the gaps; taking these into consideration allows a more nuanced reading of Þornbjǫrn’s visions, dream, and the possible rationale behind his actions. Continuing to emphasize storyworlds’ cognitive aspects, the next two chapters are both concerned with voice. In “Navigating Through the Storyworld(s). The Narrative Voice in the Íslendingasögur,” Stephanie Gropper foregrounds the mediating roles of the narrative voice (i.e. voice of an extradiegetic narrator, who may or not may not be the author) in the audiences’ mental construction of a storyworld. The narrative voice drops cues and gives clues, manipulates and manages the audiences’ expectation, prepares them for and guides them through upcoming ontological transitions (such as between the dreamworlds and the main worlds in Wilson’s chapter), and also helps to “rein in the storyline” (63), so that the audiences’ imagination would not take the story everywhere and nowhere. But is the narrative voice—or, indeed, any voice in a story—always reliable? In his chapter “Truth and Lies in the Worldbuilding of the Íslendingasögur. Public, Individual and Narratorial Voices in Eyrbyggja saga,” Andreas Schmidt investigates the ways in which the narratorial voices (defined as all the voices contained in the story) and their lack thereof are deliberately used to create ambiguity, thereby to encourage audiences’ mental engagement with the storyworld, thus achieving greater immersion.
Part II “Placing Worlds” shifts the focus from characters to the space they move in and around, and all its chapters are interested in the spatial settings of storyworlds in relation to the primary world. It opens with Lucie Korecká’s “Centrality and Peripherality in the Storyworlds of the Old Norse Sagas,” in which she analyses the conceptualization of the central-peripheral polarization in sagas with Icelandic or historical Norse subject matters and establish four categories. As the characters travel between these spaces and as the plot develops, categorical boundaries can be redefined or reenforced, but in either way contributing to the construction of medieval Icelandic identity. Then the two following chapters venture further into storyworlds marked by increased secondariness. In “Narrated Space: The East and Its Inhabitants in Yngvars saga víðfǫrla,” Annett Krakow frames her argument within the “principle of minimal departure” as defined by Ryan: “the ‘textual actual world’ is interpreted ‘as conforming as far as possible to our representation of [the actual world]’,” for which reason, the accessibility of the former from the latter depends on “the strength of their relations” (135). With Yngvars saga víðfǫrla as a case study, she demonstrates that, through modifying a series of toponyms from the actual world, the saga reconciles and converges in its textual actual world two images of its eastern settings: as a historical and Christian space, but also as a fantastic realm filled with monsters fit for adventures. In his chapter “Becoming a Knight in a Polarized World. Models of Spatial Representation in Sigurðar saga þögla,” Michael Micci moves onto the storyworlds of riddarasögur and situates them within a larger literary and intellectual discourse. Despite such storyworlds’ lack of realism, Micci argues that their spatial construction is nevertheless consistent with the learned spatial thinking developed in the primary world. He then extrapolates a horizontal and a vertical spatial model by which he interprets the mirroring yet contrasting fates of Sigurðr and his brothers in Sigurðar saga þögla, an indigenous riddarasaga. The transnarrative aspects have also been flagged up at the end; while this section points to yet another kind of vertical (genealogically, as a sequel to Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr) and horizontal movements (compared to texts in other literary traditions, both foreign and local), it also hearkens back to the centrality/peripherality spectrum and Iceland’s position discussed in Korecká’s chapter: building from the spatial paradigm of their time, the worldbuilding process of the riddarasögur is read as both “a statement of belonging to the same cultural background” and a desire “to negotiate Iceland’s position on the international stage” (183).
Additionally, Micci’s chapter paves the way for Part III “Transnarrative Worlds.” It begins with Sabine Heidi Walther’s chapter “The Two Storyworlds of Ectors saga ok kappa hans,” in which she distinguishes in this riddarasaga two storyworlds marked by different distances from the primary world: the Arthurian/romance and the Trojan/classical. She then demonstrates that the saga connects and separates the two by, structurally, dividing its storyworld into a series of Arthurian/romance storyworlds embedded in a Trojan/classical frame tale, and content-wise, confining paranormal creatures only to the former and carefully controlling these worlds’ accessibility. The reconciliation between worlds with varying secondariness continues in the next chapter, “The Storyworld/s of AM 162 c fol. How Manuscripts Govern Icelandic Saga Worldbuilding” by Yoav Tirosh, but the storyworld(s) in question have changed from words to a manuscript, i.e. a physical object, while paranormality manifests here as an indigenous riddarasaga (Sálus saga ok Nikanórs) in the midst of five Íslendingasögur, and as a storyworld exclusively constructed from these sagas in contrast to their other versions known elsewhere. Through a nuanced analysis of these sagas in relation to each other and to the immanent Íslendingasögur storyworld (defined as storyverse here), Tirosh concludes that, despite Sálus saga ok Nikanórs’ generic variance and lack of historicity, it is thematically linked to the manuscript’s overall storyworld, and, on a larger scale, it is possible to read the particular storyworlds contained in AM 160 c fol. as both connected and contradictory to the Íslendingasögur storyverse either as a “metafictional commentary” (239) or as an independent storyworld meant to be enjoyed on its own. Textual and generic boundaries are further broken down in the final chapter, “Evil Customs and Manifold Injuries. Imagined Realms in Old Norse Laws,” in which Sean Lawings reads medieval Icelandic and Norwegian law-books as storyworlds, as they construct through storytelling an ideal version of the primary world in the hope of real-world effect. Furthermore, Lawings connects the law-book storyworlds to those of the sagas and reads both as “expansions and modifications of the self-same storyworld complex” (262).
Although paranormal phenomena have been mentioned throughout the volume, it is only in Part IV “Paranormal Worlds” that they come into focus. In “Hobbled Shieldmaidens and Shapeshifting Kings. The Transfiguration of the Storyworld in Bósa saga ok Herrauðs,” Thomas Morcom addresses the ontologically seemingly incongruent storyworld in Bósa saga ok Herrauðs, divided by and transitioned through Buslubæn, a prosimetrum uttered by a transgressive paranormal woman. Combining the storyworlds with Mikhail Bakhtin’s (minor) chronotope and hearkening back to the roles of narratorial voices, Morcom convincingly argues that Buslubæn functions to “reboot” the narrative, as it deconstructs the minor chronotopes dominating the first half that deter the saga’s development into a typical fornaldasaga, imposes new physical laws, and manages the audiences’ expectation. The concluding two chapters return to “post-classical”Íslendingasögur and re-center on the issues of the secondariness of these storyworlds and their relationship to the primary world, thereby bringing the volume to a full circle. In “Fates, Faiths, and Fauna in Harðar saga ok Hólmverja,” Yoav Tirosh and Ármann Jakobsson offer an in-depth analysis of the mound-breaking episode in the said saga and, borrowing the principle of “maximal departure” (complementary to the “minimal departure” explicated in Krakow’s chapter), argue that the vast gap between the saga’s storyworld (placed in tenth-century Iceland) and its contemporary audiences (fourteenth-century Icelanders) would force the latter to interpret the storyworld within the system of thoughts from their own primary world. As a result, while the overlaying of these two worlds allows Hörðr’s triumph over the undead to be perceived within a Christian paradigm, it also places an impossible impasse on Hörðr’s identity: he becomes a Christian who can never be, and this seals his fate. Following on Tirosh and Ármann Jakobsson, Tom Spray in “The Storyworld and its Parasites. Unearthing Horror Story-Modes in the ‘The Post-Classical’ Icelandic Sagas” continues to explore the relationship between the artistic truth of the storyworld and the historical truth of the primary world. Here a storyworld is read as a host to a variety of parasitic story-modes. Drawing from the rhetorics of horror, Spray presents an insightful and highly readable interpretation of the paranormal encounters, notorious violence, and misogyny of Svarfdæla saga, and in doing so delineates the saga storyworld’s role in manifesting the concerns and anxieties of its audiences’ primary world. The interaction of the story-author-audience triad is re-emphasized, hearkening back to the Introduction and guiding the volume to a fitting conclusion.
Altogether, the chapters in this volume have demonstrated that utilizing the storyworlds as a conceptual framework leads to a significant broadening of perspectives, which in turn yields new insights on well-researched sagas and motifs, bringing attention to the hitherto understudied ones, and overall putting Old Norse-Icelandic literature in a dynamic dialogue with the larger field of literary studies. As a number of contributors have pointed out, all narratives are essentially cognitive results of story and worldbuilding, and, since literature does not exist in a vacuum, even the most bizarre stories reflect some truths of the primary world. The adaptation of the storyworlds to Old Norse-Icelandic literature helps unmask these truths. In doing so, it deepens our understanding of the intricated relationship between literature and the societies in which it is produced and enjoyed. In this sense, the volume fulfills the task it sets out for itself quite admirably.
However, as the first book-length exploration of this topic, limitations and gaps are expected. This has been acknowledged in the Introduction by the editor, but I would like to devote the remaining space to some reflections as food for thought for the future. Throughout the entire volume, there is a strong focus on the “post-classical” íslendingasögur and the paranormal phenomena they contain: likely reflecting the framing of the original workshop. Although the volume does contain a few chapters dealing with fornaldar- and riddarasögur, it leaves one wonder what would happen if we left the entire fictionality-factuality contention behind, especially when many analyses above should be easily translatable to these genres. What if, for instance, we read the brutal treatment of Yngvildr in Svarfdæla saga to the abused maiden-kings and interpret their stories in the light of the horror story-mode? Furthermore, while each contributor is allowed the liberty of “test[ing] the utility of existing models” of their choice (21), at times this independence results in terminological confusion: for example, citing Ryan, Korecká highlights the importance to distinguish the storyworld from the reference world—is it this the same as the primary world, or how do they differ? Likewise, in what relations should one understand “the main world [of the story]” (Wilson) and “the textual actual world” (Krakow)? Last but not least, while factoring in the audiences expands the analytical scope and perspective, it also necessitates the construction of an audience on the researcher’s part, which can be problematic when dealing with past societies. Some of the analyses, such as those focusing on manuscript collation and textual transmission, indirectly address this problem, but it would have been interesting to see it explicitly discussed in the volume. And, following from this point, the storyworlds framework also encourages us to reflect on our role as researchers. After all, we approach the texts as readers and as such inevitably carry the storyworlds already familiar to us, which bear on the analysis we produce. In the volume, the examples would be the rather frequent mentions of and comparisons to modern media franchise shared universe such as Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which apparently are storyworlds known to the authors that may have inspired their analysis. Such references could confuse unfamiliar and uninterested readers, as they create their own jargon, but for those who know, they facilitate their understanding. This points to a balance that needs to be more carefully considered. Nevertheless, the explicit references to these modern storyworlds, alongside the storyworlds’ overall emphasis on cognitive aspects, are a refreshing addition to the field. Together, they highlight the contemporary relevance of Old Norse-Icelandic texts and the creative or emotive power they still hold over us. Centuries-old as they are, these texts are by no means static and confined in the past but constantly change, grow, and yield new meanings with the surrounding world.
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Notes
1. The term paranormal is used throughout this volume; I will therefore also use it in this review. However, as no explanation or definition has been provided, I would like to point out that it is likely to have been borrowed from Ármann Jakobsson and Miriam Mayburd, “Introduction: The Paranormal Encounter,” in Paranormal Encounters in Iceland 1150-1400, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Miriam Mayburd (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 1-7.