Sujeto y heroicidad en las sagas islandesas

In this paper an attempt is made to understand the way medieval Icelandic sagas stage their characters as an expression of a conflict of norms within the society which produced them, i.e. Iceland in the thirteenth century. Two contemporary sagas show how this conf lict of norms is part of the reality facing chieftains in a society where they must use violence to preserve their power and protect themselves and their kinsmen but where the fate of their souls is also at stake in a Christian world-view forcefully promoted by a militant Church. Two sagas of Icelanders are then studied in which this conf lict of norms is thematized as one between Christianity and paga-nism. The conflict of norms in question is instrumental in generating an image of the Self which is the generated by the forces in presence in medieval culture.