Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how new tales emerge from the roots of older ones, and how the old material is manifested in the new ones. The focus will be on context-specific narrative units in the Medieval Icelandic legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur) that will be compared to Icelandic fairy tales.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores how new tales emerge from the roots of older ones, and how the old material is manifested in the new ones. The focus will be on context-specific narrative units in the Medieval Icelandic legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur) that will be compared to Icelandic fairy tales.

The comparison suggests that the narrative forms are significant and meaningful and cause us to read the stories from a variety of perspectives. For one, we do so, in light of past and subsequent events and in connection with the main characters, where the meaning of the semiotic unit is dependent on its context with other meaningful units of the same entity. For another, we understand the narrative units/motifs of the fairy tales in terms of the plot/progress, first and foremost. The suggested result, therefore, is that the signification systems of literary genres vs. oral narratives form audience expectations. Furthermore, the comparison shows that narrative units and motifs can be preserved in oral tradition and survive over a long period of time.