This three-year project investigates how time and space is constructed and understood in the sagas about early Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), both with regard to the sagas as narratives and with regard to their transmission. Based on the premise that the sagas are firmly grounded in medieval Icelanders’ perceptions of their physical and social world and its relationship to the past, the project aims to create new knowledge through the study of mental maps, negotiations of identities, liminal times and places, as well as the multiplicity of temporal constructs in both the sagas and the society in which they originated. In addition, the prototype of a new digital research tool in the form of an openly accessible online ‘Icelandic Saga Map’ will be developed as part of the project, see http://sagamap.hi.is. Senior and junior researchers, PhD students at the University of Iceland, and international experts will work on aspects of the research project both individually and together.
Time, Space & Narrative in the Icelandic Sagas 