03-Feb-2026
A Stemma of Sigurgarðs saga frækna, and a Case Study of Saga-Anthologization
Alaric Hall (University of Leeds), Alaric Hall (University of Leeds), Sheryl McDonald (University of Copenhagen), Hervin Fernandez-Aceves (Universidad Panamericana / El Colegio de Jalisco), Katelin Marit Parsons (University of Iceland and Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), and Ian Simpson (Independent Scholar)
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18475600
Abstract: This article publishes the first stemma of the manuscripts of the fifteenth-century Icelandic romance Sigurgarðs saga frækna, taking in 58 of the 61 known witnesses. It capitalizes on digitally-native publication to publish all underlying data, presenting a fully open-data approach to stemmatics. The article shows how the post-medieval transmission of the saga supports previous claims about how Icelandic sagas in this genre circulated but also takes manuscripts containing Sigurgarðs saga frækna produced in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries in the Dalir region of Iceland as a case study for a methodologically novel investigation of how scribes went about anthologization. Refining previous work on the manuscript filiations of Ambrósíus saga og Rósamundu, Sigurðar saga turnara, Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar, Nítíða saga, and Konráðs saga keisarasonar, and making the first outline of a stemma of Nikulás saga leikara, the study gives our first systematic insight into how the scribes of the eighteenth-century manuscript Rask 32 assembled their anthology, and how their work influenced subsequent anthologies that drew material from that manuscript.
03-Feb-2026
“The Ancient Tradition of our Elders”: A Structural Analysis of the Historia Brittonum
Edwin Pace (Independent Scholar)
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18475808
Abstract: Analysis of the structure of the Historia Brittonum suggests that an extended, very early account of British history is embedded therein. This account began with Britain’s founding by Britto, included at least seven Roman emperors, and ended with the military exploits of the Post-Roman figures Arthur and Guorthemir. In the Ninth century the historian Nennius then dismantled this original account and dispersed its various parts to their present positions. The HB56 citation about an alternate victor for the battle of Badon, which refuted the earlier historians Gildas and Bede, fully explains Nennius’ frustration with Insular historians in the Historia Brittonum’s Prologue. Most important, reassembling these narratives into their original sequence provides one of the earliest Insular accounts of events in Post-Roman Britain.
