National Identity across the North Atlantic in Sagas and Other Sources Anonymous College

As Medieval (13th century) texts focused on the Viking Age settlement (9th-10th) of the islands of the North Atlantic, sagas can be analyzed as vital accounts of these cultures, both in the era depicted and in the time of composition. For example, there is a wealth of literary evidence pointing to the construction of the national identities of Iceland and Norway, drawn from the numerous family and kings’ sagas set, respectively, in each country. With only a handful of sagas focusing on other settlements, however, it is harder to conclude from literary analysis alone what collective identity may have developed in these countries over time. Nevertheless, extra-literary studies have backed up the idea that a transnational culture did exist among the Norse peoples outside the Scandinavian Peninsula. The archaeological record of ship burials points convincingly to the existence of a “North Atlantic” culture with commonalities between settlements and their Western Norwegian forebears. Historiographic analysis suggests the various ways Scandinavians developed national boundaries – in patriotism and politics – to effectively differentiate cultural groups. To test these theories further, we can scan the literature of the islands,...