RT Article
T1 Il laccio di scarpa di Skarpheðinn, la scena-tipo, e la tipologia cristiana
JF Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
VO 81
IS 2
SP 414
OP 439
A1 Turco, Jeffrey
LA Italian
PB Morcelliana
YR 2015
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1850788553
AB Joseph Harris has described Njáls saga as «perhaps the supreme artistic realization of the idea of Northern history as turning on the conversion and of the implications of this idea in the lives of individuals». The current paper attempts to show precisely how this general assertion - made at the macro-level of medieval Christian Geschichtsschreibung - plays out at the micro-level of saga narrative. To illustrate one such instance, I begin with the seemingly pedestrian observation that there are exactly three instances of shoelace-tying in Njáls saga. The first takes place when the Irish slave Melkólfr returns from his cheese-stealing expedition on Hallgerðr's behalf. The second takes place when Skarpheðinn pauses to tie his shoe before gliding across the ice to kill his enemy Þráinn. Thirdly and lastly, Þorsteinn Hallsson stops to leisurely tie his shoe while his fellows are being being mown down after the battle of Clontarf and is spared by Kerþjálfaðr. I argue that what at first seems like an inconsequential detail (or at most an irreducible example of the author's flair for the enigmatic) in fact belongs to a scheme of typological patterning that, in Njáls saga, is best understood as a hybrid-product of indiginous narrative and continental historiographic traditions. (English)
K1 Christianity
K1 Harris, Joseph
K1 Narratives
K1 Njáls saga
K1 Saga di Njáll
K1 Sagas
K1 Shoelaces
K1 Typology (Theology)
K1 Cristianesimo
K1 Narrativa
K1 Narrative
K1 saghe islandesi
K1 tipologia
K1 Typology
K1 Íslendingasögur