Triangularity in the Pagan North

Among the some forty Old Norse narratives classified as the sagas of Icelanders (or family sagas), is a subgroup labeled “skald sagas” because in each the chief character is an Icelandic skald or poet. ¹ The group contains a core of four, in which the major theme, expressed in several stanzas, is the poet's unhappy love for a woman. At least four other narratives focus on a hero for whom love and poetry are found among his many preoccupations. ² These men are presumed to have lived in the ninth century, their poetry kept alive orally until the thirteenth century, when prose authors wrote their biographies and inserted the poetry into the texts. The consequence of this theory, if correct, would postulate that expressions of romantic love and longing in the north predated by several centuries similar articulations emanating from France.