A representation of islandness: the case of Guta saga ‘The history of the Gotlanders’

Veronka Szoke

2019-01-01

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Abstract

Guta saga ‘The history of the Gotlanders’, a short historiographic work written in Old Gutnish in the thirteenth century, hands down some of the major turning-points in the history of Gotland, starting with its legendary discovery and settlement. It also includes episodes, partly rooted in historical facts and circumstances and some of which are contemporary with the writing down of the Saga. The selection of the episodes – the first migration from the island, the compact with the Swedish king, the conversion and the relationships with representatives of secular and religious powers – and the strategies adopted by the author bear witness to the intention of building an identity. This representation is characterised by the insistence on the island’s autonomy from external forces, the ability of its inhabitants to deal with the authorities of the age and to successfully promote their interests. Guta saga’s background is an affluent society that derived its resources mainly from its role as a transit zone on the commercial routes that had connected East and West since the Viking Age and as a thriving marketplace well into the Late Middle Ages. The narrative strategies reveal the main facets of islandness and its function in the identity formation of the medieval Gotlandic community, which continue to be prominent even in our age. This portrait challenges and tends to contradict assumptions that establish a causal link between geographic features inherent in islandness and ideas of isolation and economic and commercial backwardness that such a condition would entail. The Saga shows that water is a boundary, but also, and above all, a medium for mobility which allows networks of connectivity and exchanges to be developed, including the importation of a new faith and integration into the Baltic arena. This medieval narrative proved vital in later times, also when new economic and political powers gained a foothold in the Baltic and Gotland itself lived through less successful phases. The gist and heritage of Guta saga have had a momentous impact, for instance, on the tourist industry which so often looks back at the Middle Ages. Indeed, this represents one of the island’s main assets today, just as trade was so essential in the past.