[gothic-l] Re: Danparstadir - Reidgotaland

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

--- In gothic-l at y..., trbrandt at p... wrote:
> Hi Dirk
>
> I agree in most of your letter, except that I am sure the sagas and
> poems contain some real events.

Hi Troels,

even here we are in agreement, as I also think that the poems and
sagas contain 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.


Exactly my point and poems like the Hildebrandlied are a good example.
 If we were to attempt to learn history from the Hildebrandlied which
was written down only some 250 years after (some of) the events we
would have got a completely distorted view.





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.



I agree, once you have documentary and/or archaeological etc. sources
sagas, poems etc. could be used to fill in a picture or give an idea
of how these events were perceived by contemporaries or
near-contemporaries.



>
> 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.



Absolutely and I would not argue that one cannot retrive any clues
from these sources. But still, if a legend about Reidgotas was popular
in the 9th century it may still have been common knowledge in the
12/13th century so that the two sources are not necessarily
independent, but may have both refered to a commonly known, but still
only imagined concept.



>
> 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 didn't mean to be 'unfair' to Snorri, after all Walter Scott was a
great writer. Also was I not refering to Snorri in particular in that
comparison, but spoke about medieval literature as a historical source
in general.



>
> 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.


That is certainly right, but examples of literature that are based on
historical facts like the Nibelungenlied instill little confidence
that they can be used as historical sources. Many elements that we can
corroborate with documentary sources proved to be completely
distorted. So why should we believe that we can gain something from
the parts that cannot be corroborated with other sources?




> 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.


Yes, but you cannot use it as historical source just because real
historical sources are absent. If real historical/archaeological
sources are absent that there is simply no history. In other words,
one cannot simply assume that the Reidgota were a real people on the
basis of a saga and a lay on a stone. They must remain part of
literature and tell first and foremost something about literary
traditions and continuity, which should not prevent researchers to
find evidence for their existence in real sources.

cheers,

Dirk







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