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There is no extant Old Icelandic “Saga of Aeneas” that we can use to compare with other medieval romances that draw on the Aeneid. Nevertheless, medieval Scandinavia was not untouched by Virgilian historiographical tradition. Though Scandinavian responses seem not to have followed the allegorizing tradition associated with the Aeneid, they were perfectly aware of the historical possibilities offered by the tale of Aeneas’s journeys. Indeed, the theory of origins that prevailed in Europe from late Antiquity to the late Middle Ages was imported to Iceland in early times. For this very reason, the tale of Aeneas and his descendants, founders of several empires, became an obligatory chapter in the history of Iceland as well as in the histories of Great Britain and France. Like their European counterparts, historians writing in Old Icelandic felt the need to present their respective Trojan lineages in a synchronic perspective, both because it helped to establish, indirectly, the Scandinavian branches themselves, and because it was a common feature in universal histories. Thus, Aeneidinspired episodes appear in historical contexts in Old Icelandic literature. I shall refer in this study, firstly, to a very brief Aeneas section in the Icelandic compilation AM 764 4to, which also contains a partial translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth;1 secondly, to a similar section in the so-called Veraldar saga (History of the World), in which there is no obvious knowledge of Geoffrey;2 and, thirdly, and the main focus of this study, to the |
