The Culture of the Grotesque in Old Icelandic literature: The Saga of the Sworn Brothers

Abstract

ABSTRACT: According to scholarly consensus on the development of Old Icelandic literature, The Saga of the Sworn Brothers (Fóstbræðra saga) is an example of the earliest sagas. Such archaic sagas can be distinguished by their repetitious and fragmented or episodic narrations; they are negatively characterized by authorial digressions. Yet in the case of The Saga of the Sworn Brothers the digressions are actually key to understanding the saga itself. Full of irony and grotesque bodily imagery, they represent a medieval society’s culture of the carnival or “grotesque realism.” They function as a parody of heroes and heroic ideals in hierarchical and patriarchal societies.