CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The aim of this article is to assess the ideology of two short stories focused on gift-giving composed in medieval Iceland: Gjafa-Refs þáttr and Auðunar þáttr vestfirzka. Our hypothesis is that the texts, while sharing a similar narrative motif, represent different ideological stances that can be associated with the transformations undertaken by Icelandic society during the thirteenth-century. We argue that while the earlier Tale of Auðunn exemplifies a story of social rise based almost purely on personal qualities, the later Tale of Gift-Refr adds supraindividual conditions to explain the success of his main character, emphasizing good lineage and aristocratic patronage.