[gothic-l] Re: Danparstadir - Reidgotaland

[trbrandt at POST9.TELE.DK]

Hi Dirk

I agree in most of your letter, except that I am sure the sagas and
poems contain some real events. Unfortunately phantasy and reality is
mixed up from different times and places, and normally you will not
know which of the elements are real. Therefore you can probably never
use the sagas and poems as historical sources, but they might explain
something when you compare them with history and archaeology - and
this is not necessarily about the time of the writer.

Snorri mentioned the Reidgoths, and 400 years earlier the Roek-stone
mentioned Hreidmare and the Hreidgoths living at least 9 generations
before. This seems to be more than pure imagination, but I do not
know what it is - that is why I have been "fishing" for information
the last week. This has surely been interesting.

Snorri tried to explain and tell about the past using old sources,
and he wrote about the problems with these sources. It is unfair to
compare him with Walther Scott, who had quite another purpose.

I noticed of course an earlier post from Andreas Schwarcz placing
sagas as literature. This is OK with me if literature is every thing
else than history, but there are different kinds of literature not
all being pure fiction.

Actually I have listened to Andreas earlier, and in the new version
of my own web-site about the Heruls I have tried to separate history
and archaeology from a pattern of stories in the sagas - but they
might tell the same story.

It is very easy to say, that we can not use the sagas and Saxo, as
they do not fit the criterias of historical sources, but this is
nearly the only written material about the early Scandinavian (and
maybe northern Gothic) history. In other professional jobs you have
to tell the story and make your reservations about the uncertainty in
the process looking for new knowledge. One day another person may
come with another knowledge being the missing link to prove your
story.

Troels

--- In gothic-l at y..., dirk at s... wrote:
>
> Hi Troels,
>
> do you believe that it is possible to gain real historical
knowledge
> from sagas or lays? I am not familiar with icelandic literature of
the
> 13th century or the Roek-stone inscription of the 9th (?) century,
but
> judging from the Hildebrandlied (8th century) or the Nibelungenlied
> (c1200) it is clear that these things tend to completely muddle the
> events, making people contemporaries who in reality lived many
years
> apart, turning historical events on their heads and getting
> geographical information totally wrong. The Hildebrandlied is
> especially instructive, as it was written down only about 250 years
> after the events, but still got virtually all the historical
details
> wrong.
>
> I suppose tales about Theoderic and Attila were en vogue all over
> Europe in the early middle ages. They were probably spread by
> traveling merchants, professional story tellers, etc.. There are
> countless Theoderich (Dietrich von Bern) legends in Germany
> underlining just how much he had become part of folklore, but to
> attempt and derive real history from these tales is in my view
> impossible. Thus, studying the Icelandic and other sagas tells you
> something about Norse medieval literature traditions, but nothing
> about real events of the 5th/6th centuries. Certainly these sagas
and
> tales contain kernels of truth, but separating those from the
literary
> composition is virtually impossible without corroboration with real
> historical sources. Using sagas to reconstruct migration period
> history is, in my view, similar to using Sir Walter Scott's writing
to
> reconstruct English medieval history. Hence, terms like Reidgota
etc.
> are of no historical value as long as they cannot be confirmed by
> historical sources, because for all we know they may only have
existed
> in the imagination of 8th/9th century story-tellers.
>
>
> cheers,
> Dirk


You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>.

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/