Chennells, John Benjamin; (2024) ‘Heilir þeirs hlýddu’: Skaldic Audiences in Old Norse Saga Literature. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines how audiences of Old Norse skaldic poetry are depicted in the corpus of prosimetric sagas composed primarily in Iceland between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Reading against the prevailing marginalisation of these groups in both medieval and modern thinking, it demonstrates the idiosyncratic functions of skaldic audiences in different literary environments.In doing so, the thesis shows how the social acts of performing and spectating are conceptualised and used by saga authors, and ultimately how these literary models of skaldic reception are conducive to historical perspectives on prosimetric saga entertainment. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for the investigation, reviewing previous scholarship on the reception of skaldic poetry, and especially the regularity with which scholars have discounted saga evidence from research on the subject. The following analysis is structured primarily according to the relationships between skaldic performers and their audiences, and secondarily according to the types of utterance that skalds deliver. In chapter 2, I examine how Scandinavian rulers are portrayed responding to praise, criticism, and jesting from court poets, and show how such episodes interrogate the communal and competitive aspects of court life. In chapter 3, I consider skaldic insults, challenges, and threats, and the ways in which these utterance-types contrive and enact corresponding physical and poetic violence on their receivers. In chapter 4, I turn to saga authors’ portrayal and use of skaldic love-verse, and especially how skalds attempt to influence their lovers through poetic performance. I illustrate parallels between this dynamic and the apostrophised ‘lady’ of skaldic convention, and demonstrate how female audiences are afforded greater agency in sagas. In chapter 5, I conduct case studies of two episodes set beyond skaldic poetry’s geographic and cultural centres. I show how these instances of intercultural exchange between a skaldic performer and an audience allow saga authors to reappraise the cultural and socio-political functions of skaldic poetry.

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