"Der sagata mir ze wara": Iceland in the Merigarto

The Old High German fragment named Merigarto contains a description of Iceland that entwines ancient literary with modern oral data. Scholars have repeatedly tried to verify the originality and reliability of the data from a historical point of view. However, the question of authenticity is also a literary one, which is posed by the author himself and is solved in a way that foreshadows usages in later Latin and vernacular exempla. The most innovative literary aspect of the passage dealing with Iceland can be found in a few lines in which the poet guarantees the authenticity of Iceland’s mirabilia by briefly describing his oral source, a cleric, and the events that led to their meeting. The brief presence of a homodiegetic narrator is an important stage in the development of the author’s self-consciousness in medieval German literature.