Random: The Old Icelandic roots of Star Wars

Sniggled from petermorwood ...

Over on Wordpress, Jackson Crawford has dropped the kind of academic bombshell most professors only dream of exploding: he has uncovered the Old Icelandic version of the Star Wars saga. His essay "Tattúínárdœla saga: If Star Wars Were an Icelandic Saga" masterfully expounds the source material for modern readers, with, as he says, "some spare comparative notes on the cognate traditions in other old Germanic languages." The result is a rich and fascinating summary both of an understudied example of the saga form and the difficulties involved in interpreting a text so far removed from our current cultural and linguistic understanding. For instance, of the episode in which the hero trains in secret, Crawford remarks:

The saga spends several chapters describing the escalation of tensions between Veiðari and Lúkr over the next years. Hani returns to Tattúínárdalr and is there betrothed to Leia (whom Lúkr still does not know to be his sister); he becomes a great goði. Meanwhile Lúkr shipwrecks on an island in the Faroes called Dagóba (the name is of unknown origin but probably Celtic) where he meets and is trained by the great warrior Jóði, who was a companion of Víga-Óbívan in his youth; Jóði continues to incite Lúkr to kill Veiðari, but his remarks are confusing in the text as preserved and are probably much damaged by later redactors – the word order is considerably jumbled and many of his comments reflect anachronistic Christian sentiments.

Finally Lúkr sees the ghost of Víga-Óbívan outside the latter’s howe, and Víga-Óbívan intones a scornful skaldic stanza at Lúkr, informing Lúkr that Hani and Leia (whom he now strongly hints is Lúkr’s sister) have been abducted by Veiðari’s men, and upbraiding him for being in the Faroes “sporting with Jóði” when this occurred.

Lúkr returns to Jóði (who in a bizarre aside is revealed to live inside a giant tree trunk in the middle of a marsh), and tells him of the apparition. Jóði foresees that if Lúkr leaves, he will face his death, but in typical saga-heroic fashion Lúkr refuses the older man’s counsel and sets out to rescue his sworn brother. Their exchange is well-known to students of Old Icelandic literature as a classic example of the forecasting of which the saga authors were so fond:

"Þú munt vera maðr feigr,” segir Jóði, “Ok ver þú varr um þik."
"Ekki mun mér þat stoða,” segir Lúkr, "Ef mér er þat ætlat."

["You must be a doomed man,” said Yoda, “Be watchful of yourself."
"That will not avail me,” said Luke, “If this be my fate."]

Crawford has further undertaken an edition of the saga itself, currently being released here. It is distressingly lacking in apparatus, but no doubt that will come in time. Meanwhile, share and enjoy.