"It is fascinating to see how these studies can provide new insights into the emotional life and societal structure depicted in our medieval literature," says Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, assistant professor at the Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland, who is participating in an international research project analysing emotional expression in the poems of the Icelandic sagas. The project as a whole aims to analyse the relationship between the poems and prose in the Sagas. A book on the subject was published in December 2024. The project, hosted by the universities of Cambridge and Tübingen, uses databases and systematic analyses to shed new light on this narrative world.
"We began to wonder why the poems are in the Sagas. Most of the Icelandic Sagas contain poems, but readers often tend to skip them, probably because their Old Norse verse form (dróttkvæði) makes them outlandish and hard to understand," says Brynja.
In the study, all the poems of the Icelandic Sagas, over 700, were entered into a database. They were analysed using over 200 variables, such as circumstances, expression, and context. The methodology allows scholars to answer various questions, such as which emotions are expressed in personal spaces and which in public spaces.
The research revealed that emotional expression in the poems is highly dependent on the circumstances. Anger, hatred, and contempt are more often expressed in public spaces. The expression of these emotions is often linked to power struggles or characters' efforts to secure their positions. In personal spaces, however, more sincere emotions emerge, such as grief, fear, sadness, or other emotions that reveal the characters' vulnerability. The results reflect the societal rules within the narrative world about what is permitted and what is not. Emotions such as anger were allowed in public spaces, but people did not reveal grief and fear publicly; as such expression threatened their status.
"Answers questions that could not be answered before"
Increased technological development and its use provide scholars with access to extensive data that can now be analysed and understood in previously unknown ways. In this study, the use of databases allowed scholars to examine the relationship between prose and poetry in the Icelandic sagas more thoroughly than before. The database created in the research project is now open to the public.
"The digital revolution has changed all research work. Many advanced databases can be connected to this one. This facilitates all research work and answers questions that could not previously be answered," says Brynja, emphasising how critical these studies are for providing a new understanding of the emotional life and societal structure depicted in Nordic medieval literature. She believes the project also opens up possibilities for further qualitative research in the field. In her opinion, the digital revolution has radically changed research work in this field, as numerous powerful databases now exist that can be used to analyse and understand the subject more deeply.
The book can be accessed for free online.
A more detailed analysis of the research was published in a collection of articles released in early December 2024. The book contains ten essays that specifically examine the interplay of poetry and prose in the Icelandic sagas, analysing the aesthetics underlying them from various perspectives. Brynja places special emphasis on emotional expression in the Icelandic sagas, as emotional expression has been a key focus of Brynja's work in recent years. Along with Brynja, the editors of the book are Stefanie Gropper, Judy Quinn, and Alexander Wilson. The book, The Prosimetrum of the Íslendingasögur: Aesthetic and Narrative Effects, can be found in open access at the publisher De Gruyter.
Author: Kári Snorrason, journalism student at the University of Iceland