Icelandic Saga Map

The hyperlinked structure of the Icelandic Saga Map presents various possibilities for accessing or processing — ‘reading’ — the sagas.

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Linear, chronological readings

1. Select a saga by clicking on a title in the drop-down menu of saga-titles top right (‘The Sagas’).

2. Follow the text in chronological chapter order (or jump to a specific chapter using the drop-down chapter menu top right).

3. Hovering over a bold-font place-name in the text with the mouse will highlight its location on the map.

4. Clicking on the place-name in the text will open an information box on the map.

5. Having selected a ‘base’ saga, clicking on the coloured icon(s) to the left of other saga titles in the drop-down menu of sagas top right will add places in that (or those) sagas to the map.

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Non-linear, spatial readings

1. Select a saga by clicking on a title in the drop-down menu of saga-titles top right.  Add other saga-places to the map by checking them (as per #5 above).

2. Mouse over the marked-up place-names on the map and click on one to open an information box about that place.

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Pop-up information boxes on the map

1. The place-name (in bold type) is followed by the type of place (farm, mountain, river etc), the region (e.g. Skagafjarðarsýsla) and the GIS co-ordinates (in degrees/minutes/seconds).

2. Information or discussion about the place/place-name (taken from the Íslenzk fornrit edition footnotes) is included where it exists.

3. Hyperlinks to other sources of information on the internet are given where they exist (or will be added).

4. Hyperlinks to photographic images of places available on the internet are given where they exist (or will be added).

5. If the place-name appears in other sagas, these are named and the chapters referenced, and hyper-linked.

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The map interface

1. It is possible to zoom in or out of the map…and some places named in the sagas are located elsewhere in Scandinavia or beyond.

2. It is possible to change the base-map (e.g. between Bing, Google, Open-Street-Map, basic topographical map).

3. The size of the white outline around individual points indicates the density of references in the texts.

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