Seeing Colour: Racial "blackness" in Ectors saga

Abstract

This thesis examines the construction of black identity in the 15th century Icelandic text Ectors saga using a critical race approach and utilising the concepts of subalternity, marginality, and intersectionality. By taking this approach this research reveals how connotations of blackness are used in this saga as a basis for exclusion and racial thinking. Moreover, this thesis underscores how the author of Ectors saga utilises geography to incorporate Iceland into a broader European narrative of migration and shared descent, whilst simultaneously presenting black characters as unassimilable to this narrative. This research also addresses the intersection of blackness with other categories of differentiation, highlighting the racial undertones of religious groupings and the Norse categories of “berserker” and “troll.” Therefore, this thesis offers insight into the implications of blackness as well as other categories of differentiation, thus suggesting possible avenues for future research into race in Old Norse literature.