essay
Humor as a guide to social change: BANDAMANNA SAGA and heroic values
From sagas to society : comparative approaches to early Iceland • Enfield Lock, Middlesex, Uk • Published In 1992 • Pages: 111-123
By: Durrenberger, E. Paul, Wilcox, Jonathan.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
The use of Icelandic family sagas in the reconstruction of medieval Icelandic history and social order has long been contested in the literature. This issue is significant because although the sagas present a relatively full account of Icelandic life in the tenth and eleventh centuries, yet they cannot be treated in a simple way as ethnographic description. 'One crucial problem faced by any attempt to exploit them for their picture of society is the time between the events they describe and when they were written down in the thirteenth century' (p.111). In this article the authors focus on an example of a single family saga, the 'Bandamanna saga', and their interpretation of what this particular saga can tell us about the social and political realities of either the period it was set or that in which it was written. The contextualized picture of the society depicted in the 'Bandamanna saga' is then compared to the collection of sagas about contemporary thirteenth century times appearing in the 'Sturlinga sagas'. 'In the Sturlung period, people revalued concepts such as reciprocity, honor, and law, all at a discount to the political manoeuvre of the age. Their valuations and re-valuations informed their writing about the past as well as about contemporary events' (p. 112).
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Humor
- Verbal arts
- Social relationships and groups
- Ethics
- Ingroup antagonisms
- Districts
- Trial procedure
- Execution of justice
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Early Icelanders
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2004
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Europe
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Scandinavia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypesThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Educator
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 2002
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- no date
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- ninth-thirteenth centuries
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- general Iceland
- NotesAdditional notes
- E. Paul Durrenberger and Jonathan Wilcox
- For bibliographical references see document 10: [Gísli Pálsson]
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 93150093
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Icelanders