Dr. Gísli Sigurðsson and Örnólfur Thorsson will discuss the Old Icelandic Eddas and Sagas and their oral and literary merits, first as a window into the prehistoric intellectual world view in Northwestern Europe as it had been expressed for ages in mythological terms (Gísli), and second as creative literary works of narrative fiction, inspired by the learned milieu of the individual authors at the time of writing in the 13th and 14th centuries (Örnólfur). The panel will focus on the multicultural society of the first settlers in Iceland in the 9th and 10th centuries and how they managed to cultivate customs, traditions and art forms that do not have any direct parallel in the Western World but which can be explained with the fruitful mixture of cultures and learning and creative individuals who stood behind the literary activity in Iceland during the Middle Ages – leaving us works that have managed to inspire artist down to the present day, not only in Iceland (Guðmundur Andri), Germany (Wagner) and England (Tolkien) but also many of the scriptwriters in Hollywood.
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