Old Icelandic Literature and Society

This book provides a comprehensive account of Old Icelandic literature within its social context. An international team of specialists examines the ways in which the unique medieval social experiment in Iceland a kingless society without an established authority structure inspired a wealth of innovative writing composed in the Icelandic vernacular. The book shows how Icelanders explored their uniqueness through poetry mythologies metrical treatises religious writing and through saga a new genre that textualized their history and incorporated oral traditions in a written form.