Kung Sverre och norrön sagaskrivning

Abstract

In an article published in 1914 Halvdan Koht tried to show that King Sverrir Sigurðs­son, who ruled Norway between 1177 and 1202, had played an important role in the early history of Old Norse saga-writing. Trained as a priest before he fought his way to the throne of Norway, Sverrir had commissioned the first Old Norse biography of a contemporary king, namely the one about himself, Sverris saga, written by abbot Karl Jónsson of Þingeyrar monastery in Iceland. The king had taken an active part in the composition of this saga by supervising its writing and telling Karl Jónsson what to write. Furthermore, Koht argued that Sverrir had also inspired the writing of Ágrip and possibly other sagas and thus been a formative force behind the early development of sagas, particularly konungasögur.

Koht’s opinion has not been accepted by later scholars, who have generally described the genre of konungasögur as an Icelandic creation derived from Icelandic skalds and fróðir menn such as Ari Þorgilsson and Sæmundr Sigfússon. In this article it is argued, however, that results of Old Norse studies from later years tend to support Koht’s ideas. Although the konungasögur were indeed mainly created and written by Icelanders, King Sverrir made a very important early contribution to the genre by introducing Latin models for certain aspects of storytelling such as the composition of speeches, dreams and literary portraits. It also seems clear that Sverrir had an influence on the saga-writing in Þingeyrar monastery, and that he was, as a promotor of sagas, a highly respected man in Iceland, in spite of the fact that he was seen in Europe as a dangerous usurper and an enemy of the church.