It is tempting to think of Iceland in the Middle Agesas sitting somewhat uneasily on the ‘outer regionsof the world’. While it had first existed as anindependent Commonwealth without a monarch, Icelandbecame subject to the control of Norway in 1262 andjust over a century later became part of the largerKalmar Union. While the communities inhabiting thissmall island in the middle of the Atlantic wereclearly different from their Scandinavian neighboursin terms of their history, literature, andeventually also their language, at the height of theMiddle Ages Iceland was drawn into the mainlandEuropean community with which Nordic monarchs werekeenly interacting. With its landscape of farmsteadsinstead of towns and, in its Commonwealth days, itsdecentralized government structured around afederation of chieftains instead of kings, Icelandin many ways had far less in common with the rest ofmedieval Europe than did Norway or Denmark. It is nowonder, then, that the author of a romance calledNítíða saga – a textwritten in Iceland, probably sometime during thefourteenth century – would appear to situate Icelandat the fringes of the world. But, as we will seethroughout this book, the culture and literature oflate medieval Iceland was not as isolated frommedieval European ideas and ideals as this excerptmight lead us to believe, taken at face value.Likewise, we will see that Iceland’s language wasnot such an ófróðurtunga ‘unlearned tongue’ as the authorhere suggests.

While the marginality or non-marginality of Iceland iscertainly not a new line of enquiry in itself, ithas yet to be considered in very much detail fromthe vantage point of late medieval Icelandic romance(riddarasögur), which has until recently been agenre of Icelandic literature left to the margins infavour of the better known family sagas (Íslendingasögur) andlegendary sagas (fornaldarsögur).