The Image of King in «Norna-gests þáttr»: the Epic Chieftain and the King from Chronicles

Abstract

The article deals with specific qualities of designing the image of the king Olav Tryggvason into narrative space of the «Norna-gests þáttr», which was written at the end of XIV c. and included into «Olafs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta». The main specific of this kind of narrative consists in the fact, that epic heroes are near to historical persons. The basement of the research is the interpretative and comparative textual approaches. It is also guided by the research of E.A. Gurevich, who translated and commented the text of the «Norna-gests þáttr», having devoted several scientific articles to it. The recieved results show that the formation of the image of the ruler in the text of the strand is carried out through building a common space of cultural memory for epic heroes and historical figures and comparing their actions and achievements.