Sagaene var novellene, kortromaner, romaner, krim, rettsdrama og Forsøk på å definere det uoppløselige episke element i Telemark lenge før resten av Norden var det. I alle fall i følge Roy Jacobsen i Literary Hub. Men det er ikke bare påstander, Jacobsen har rikelig med eksempler:
There is, or at least there was, a widespread orthodoxy that Boccaccio invented the short story, as it appears in his masterpiece The Decameron, written in the middle of the 14th century. But Boccaccio was not just a latecomer; he didn’t have an epiphany either, as we find it in Audun’s tale, and in so many of the other short Norse tales (þættir).
The novel—can we slip the saga into modern novel theory?
Definitively. You need only compare Njáls saga and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the family chronicle as intricate historical drama.
If you need a crime novel, you can read Gisli Surson’s saga, which is even a crime novel with an unknown perpetrator, and with a refreshing absence of didactic clarification at the end.
Og så videre. Les hele artikkelen på Literary Hub.