ABSTRACT
Studies of travel in the sagas have approached the topic from many angles, touching on several of the key debates that characterize saga scholarship more generally. The question of the world geographic system through which the Norsemen conceptualized the world around them is addressed by Sverrir Jakobsson in an earlier article on the Vínland sagas. The riddarasogur are not the only type of saga to concern themselves with language learning and the difficulties of communicating with foreign races and peoples. Marianne E. Kalinke notes that saga heroes who travel to such realms must deal with the changing languages they come across in different regions, and concludes that: ‘The type of hero cultivated in Icelandic romance is a polyglot, a traveller who couples physical and intellectual prowess.’ In other types of sagas that describe travel to other parts of the world, evidence of such ‘lived experience’ is practically non-existent, and indications of geographical learning from medieval Europe are far more pronounced.
