Damnation and Salvation in Old Norse Literature

In his examination of an understudied theme, that of salvation and damnation in Old Norse Literature, Haki Antonsson considers how sub-themes found in a variety of literary genres - sagas of Icelanders, kings' sagas, and religious poetry - reflect basic Christian concerns with the fate of their protagonists in the next world. Although Christian authorship of, and influence on, the sagas has been assumed in scholarship for several decades, its full implications have seldom been realized, and the focus has usually been on individual sagas and episodes in which Christian themes are thought to imply sanctity. In this volume Antonsson demonstrates through meticulous textual analyses how death scenes, biographical patterns, and themes such as betrayal and violent death suggest not that individuals are saints, but that their eventual places in heaven are guaranteed - or prohibited. The volume serves as a welcome and pointed reminder that such issues were just as important for thirteenth-century Icelanders as they were elsewhere in Europe.- -- Margaret Cormack, Professor Emerita in the Department of Religious Studies at College of Charleston
Haki Antonsson has provided in a remarkably wide-ranging work an important contribution to our growing appreciation of the important Christian dimension in Old Norse saga literature. It deserves to be read by serious saga students and scholars but also by those from other fields with an interest in the popular religion of medieval Western Europe. * PARERGON *
In addition to well informed interpretations of individual passages, the value of this work lies not least in its breadth and in the author's capacity to bring together texts that are not usually discussed in the same breath. Through his demonstration of how they reflect the concerns of salvation and damnation, he has added a new dimension to our understanding of many a central work in the Old Norse corpus. * Speculum *