AUÐUN E L’ORSO

Auðunar þáttr vestfirzka or “The story of Auðun of-the-western-fjords” is one of the best known and interesting stories of medieval Icelandic narrative. It tells the story of a young pilgrim who visits the royal courts of Scandinavia with a polar bear in tow. This curious and, at times, amusing story is modeled on the universal structure of the short story specific to Nordic literature. This volume presents the original text and, for the first time ever, an Italian translation, including a scrupulous analysis which brings to the fore the organic, polysemous combination in the text at all possible levels – mimetic, historic, anthropological and symbolic – where narrative communication is fully achieved.