Þættir

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Ármann Jakobsson (University of Iceland)

Ed. by Ármann Jakobsson, University of Iceland
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.3.4: Icelandic Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Ármann Jakobsson (University of Iceland), Sven Hakon Rossel (Universitat Wien), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (University College London)

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1200- c.1300

Places

Iceland (Location)

Genres and Modes

Prose Fiction Narrative

Þættir are short episodes, mostly from the Icelandic kings’ sagas, that were published as separate narratives in the twentieth century, with the first þættir edition appearing in Reykjavík in 1904. Influenced by these editions, scholars began to regard these narratives as independent short stories, closely related to the sagas of Icelanders, while their connection to the kings’ sagas was mostly ignored. In the 1970s, Harris argued for a structuralist and thematic analysis of the þættir but met with resistance from Lönnroth (1975) who argued that the þættir were not a medieval saga genre. Lindow (1978) also demonstrated that the …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1875 words

Citation: Jakobsson, Ármann. "Þættir". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 January 2023 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19678, accessed 14 May 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Þættir

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Save this article

Leave Feedback