The 9 essays collected in this volume are the result of a workshop for international doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies held at the Institute for Nordic Philology (LMU) in Munich in December 2018. The contributors focus on ›unwanted‹, illicit, neglected, and marginalised elements in saga literature and research on it. The chapters cover a wide range of intra-textual phenomena, narrative strategies, and understudied aspects of individual texts and subgenres. The analyses demonstrate the importance of deviance and transgression as literary characteristics of saga narration, as well as the discursive parameters that have been dominant in Saga Studies. The aim of this collection is to highlight the productiveness of developing modified methodological approaches to the sagas and their study, with a starting point in narratological considerations.

Andreas Schmidt and Daniela Hahn are postdoctoral researchers, reading and teaching Old Icelandic literature from narratological perspectives. Both completed their PhDs in Scandinavian Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Following Bad Boys and Wicked Women (Münchner Nordistische Studien 27), this is their second co-edited collection of essays.

Beachtenswert ist das vreite thematische Spektrum der vorliegenden Beiträge – ausgeschlossen, unerwünscht oder verstoßen sind nicht nur Figuren in den Sagas, sondern auch Gattungen und Lesearten. Auch mit dem Fokus auf diese „Schattenseiten“ wird die beeindruckende Vielfalt der altnordischen Literatur umso deutlicher.