Introduction: Royal Power Reconsidered

Abstract

References to the deeds and lives of the past monarchs and their commemorations are ubiquitous in the earliest extant Scandinavian literary sources. Their authors found relating to the narratives of royal power and the identification with the bygone kings and queens essential for the legendary and historical stories of national and personal origins, and for the ways of formulating and expressing the political and cultural significance of their own work. In the wealth of the material offered by Old Norse and Icelandic literature, we may find numerous examples of the texts either abounding in such connotations or drawing directly upon royal histories. Although the originals of the lists of kings (konungatal) did not survive beyond the early medieval era, they provided later medieval authors with fundamental inspiration especially for the kings’ sagas (konungasǫgur). Similarly, the vividness with which the past rulers were remembered is attested by the poems like Ynglingatal and Haleygjatal originating in the tenth century. Both of them legitimize the power and aspirations of subsequent monarchs by (...)