Ketill Flatnose Bjornsson - Ketil Flatnose

Started by Andrew Ross on Monday, December 7, 2020
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Private User I'm glad you liked it. Most people on Geni react badly when I'm telling them that their lines back to Nordic saga persons are not to be trusted and say it is written in the sagas therefore it must be true.

Thank you for reacting like you did, it was refreshing.

Sincerely
Remi Pedersen

https://www.mphpl.org/sites/default/files/Evaluating%20the%20Eviden... Do the Sagas not fulfill any of these criteria ?

“ So when reading the sagas you need to have some knowledge about what was the authors aganda about writing the sagas. The historians have found that the earliest sagas are probably more correct than the later ones.” much like Remi Tryggve’s business in selling “genealogical” sources for his own financial gain?

Guðbjörn Ívar Kjartansson the definitions on the page you link to seem reasonable, and by those definitions the sagas would be at best a Derivative Secondary Source.

Back then family oral traditions where the case prior to hand written sources. So a secondary source that most likely was based on now lost primary sources..

Studies on the preservation of information have shown how long acco- unts or narratives can survive, even for centuries. It does not necessarily mean that the narrative is historically accurate, as stories change with each performance. Formulae were used to remember the narrative. In Iceland, you can see these formulae, like special rules for poetry, such as metre (Ice. bragarháttur), alliteration (Ice. stuðlasetning), rhyme (Ice. rím) and the rhythm of poetry (Ice. hrynjandi í kveðskap). The ancient Norse poetry, the Edda poems, and much court poetry (Ice. dróttkvæði), were preserved in oral transmission until the 13th century, when they were written down on parchment

In Iceland, oral tradition has been known since the early settlement in the 9th century and before written sources were available, culture, poetry and a variety of knowledge were preserved through oral transmission. Princi- ples and information from society were passed between generations in the form of stories and poems. Ritual and worship wrapped themselves around the spoken word, either through song or poetry. Legislation was passed and sentences were rendered, without the lawspeaker (Ice. lögsögumaður) ha- ving the law written down.
It is believed that the parliament, the Alþingi, was established around the year 930, and the law, parliamentary session and procedural rules of an assembly were all preserved in oral transmission. Each year the lawspeaker had to recite a third of the laws of the country

So interesting. Thank you. So the skalds were the history keepers as well as the story tellers.

Sharon Doubell yes indeed

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