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To say that the Finnar- in modern parlance, the Sámi and Finns - are closely connected to the North in the Icelandic sagas does not appear to be a statement that needs further explication. After all, the Finnar in reality lived (and in most cases still live) in the extreme north of Europe, in setdements in Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula, into northern Russia along the coast (Bjarmaland), and in the forested interior of Scandinavia (Mundal, "Perception" ???). Yet the northerliness of the Finnar signified far more to the writers of the sagas than a mere geographical position, and the associations Icelanders held in regard to the North affected their depiction of the Finnar.1 The Finnar are described negatively in the sagas compared to other European ethnicities the Norse encounter. The tendency of the sagas to denigrate the Finnar has been noted before, in articles such as Else Mundal's 'The Perception of the Saamis and their Religion in Old Norse Sources" and in Hermann Pálsson's book-length work Ur landnorÖri: Samar ogTstuReturíslenskrarMenningar (Out of the Land of the North: The Sámi and the Most Distant Origins of Icelandic Development) ; in turn, explanations have been put forth to explain this treatment with scholars proposing solutions that incorporate either postcolonial theory (Lindow, "Supernatural" ir-2,· Cardew 149) or Christianity (Lindow, "Cultures" 91; Mundal, "Perception" 109; Davidson 31) as their driving force. Each of these explanations likely contributes gready to an understanding of the depiction of Finnar in the sagas (and, as can be seen with Lindow, they are not mutually exclusive); however, neither explains the specific ways in which the foreignness or paganism of the Finnar manifests itself. From a vast array of possible defects, the Finnar are consistendy tarred with a small yet potent combination of flaws - a lack of civilization, oppositional intent, and magical ability- that imply a specific reasoning behind the highly specialized stereotypes attributed to them. What causes the specific portrayals of the Finnar in the Icelandic sagas is the reputation of the North, in both the deficiencies Icelanders perceived within it and the harsh conditions that are its reality; this reputation, in turn, was held to determine the character of the people who resided in the...