The irruption of the past in "Nornagests thattr" and allied texts

This study treats four Old Norse-Icelandic narratives in the manuscript Flateyjarhók as narrative machines for thinking about the pagan past and the reuse of intellectual goods of that past in a medieval Christian present: Nornagests páttr, Tóka, páttr Tókasonar, and two tales of mysterious guests, one in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta and the other in Óláfs saga helga. Each tells of an old man who appears at the court of one of Norway's missionary kings. He tells stories about the heroes and kings of the pagan age. In two tales, the stranger is a centuries-old pagan and witness to the ancient events he describes. These old heathens take baptism and die peacefully. In the other two, the stranger is the Fiend disguised as the god Óðinn. The king is fascinated by the guest's tales; the Bishop disapproves. All the stories depict the scene of narration as the site of confrontation and negotiation between a pagan past and a Christian present.

All the texts wrestle with the irruptive past. The narratological strategies employed by each for containing the past and separating it from the present introduce difficulties of their own. The past is figured as a gestr , a stranger or guest, with implications both positive and negative for inhabitants of the present. The tales engage with contemporary historiography without presenting themselves as serious history. Instead they press the signifiers of serious history to extremes: the supernaturally old informant or the account historically but not spiritually true. The tales have mythological resonances: the past is an Ymir-like corpse underlying a landscape of burial mounds and placenames and threatening to irrupt into the present. Óðinn appears, emblematic of the dangers and temptations of antiquarian curiosity. The sagas containing these tales involve the missionary kings, both named Óláfr, in orthodox and unorthodox typologies with each other and with pagan kings. For the manuscript's original intended owner, another Óláfr who had expected to become King of Norway, these four tales could have served as a handbook for understanding his own relationship to great men of the past and narratives about them.