Remembering England: Cultural Memory in the Sagas of Icelanders

This book provides an in-depth study of depictions of England in the Saga of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), examining their utility as sources for the history of Viking Age Anglo-Scandinavian cultural contact.

The Íslendingasögur present themselves as histories, but they are difficult historical sources. Their setting is the Saga Age, a period that begins with the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century and ends along with the Viking Age in the late eleventh century - however, the saga texts are disconnected from this setting, having first been written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This book traces the transmission and development of Icelandic cultural memory of Saga Age England across this distance of centuries. It offers case study analyses of how historical time, place, cultures, and events are adapted and conceptualised in the Íslendingasögur and suggests methodological approaches to their study as historical literature.

Remembering England is an interdisciplinary book that will appeal to scholars and students of the history of pre-Norman England, the Icelandic sagas, medieval literature, and cultural memory.

Matthew Firth is an Australian Research Council Fellow (DECRA) and an Associate Lecturer in medieval history at Flinders University, Australia. His research focuses on historical narrative and its transmission across time and place with particular interest in the historiography of tenth-century England. Matthew’s first monograph, Early English Queens, 850-1000: Potestas Regina, was published by Routledge in 2024. He is also the author of over twenty articles and book chapters focused on the development of medieval history writing traditions.