Gotland, Geatland, Gothland: Guta Saga in a Sweo-Gothic Manuscript

Description

Compiled during the heyday of Swedish Gothicism, the seventeenth-century paper manuscript UBB Ms. 58 contains an expected compilation of Icelandic fornaldarsögur and konungasögur, exposing its origin in the Gothicism movement with the title ‘GL. GÖTSKA SAGOR’ on the spine. The sagas, which span from Scandinavia to Russia to Asia to the British Isles, are meticulously copied — though mostly incomplete — in a young form of Icelandic, compiled by Petter Salan, and given to the infamous proponent of Swedo-Gothic nationalist ideology, Olof Rudbeck the Elder. Included among the Icelandic material is the Gotlandic narrative Guta Saga, only the second known extant copy of the text in the original Old Gutnish language. As with the other texts in UBB Ms. 58, the narrative is incomplete, though the two and a half chapters included in the manuscript clearly serve a purpose in the Gothicism movement. This paper aims to compare the literary themes found in these chapters of Guta Saga with the other narratives found in the manuscript and their intentions to connect Sweden with the heroic peoples and places of the ancient past. Special focus will be placed on the themes of (1) the founding myth of a nation or people-group, the origins of the myth and later use the formation of a national or regional identity; (2) connections with heroic tribes, their proposed origins and later attempts at finding a common identity; and (3) connections to the contemporary Kingdom of Sweden and the attempt to create a unified identity. The paper concludes that, although the chapters from Guta Saga found in UBB Ms. 58 could easily be used in creating the Swedo-Gothic identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the text itself cannot be seen merely as an East Nordic parallel to Old Icelandic saga literature.

Period	12 Aug 2015
Event title	The Sixteenth International Saga Conference: Sagas in Space
Event type	Conference
Location	Zürich & Basel, SwitzerlandShow on map