A literary and editorial study of Áns saga bogsveigis

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Second Cycle Degree

programme

in Language Sciences

“

D.M. 270/2004

”

Final Thesis

A Literary and Editorial

Study of Áns Saga

Bogsveigis

- Ca’ Foscari Dorsoduro 3246 30123 Venice Supervisor

Ch. Prof. Marina Buzzoni

Assistant supervisor

Ch. Prof. Massimiliano Bampi

Graduand

Giulia Fabbris 849291

Academic Year

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Abstract

This thesis is based on the fifteenth-century Icelandic text Áns saga bogsveigis and it is meant to be the outcome of the course of my studies in Germanic philology and editorial linguistics. The study I carried out for this work belongs to two main domains: literature and encoding. In the first section, I will briefly present the origin and history of the Icelandic people and the development of a cultural tradition that has remarkably influenced the medieval European literature. I will then move to a literary analysis of the saga of Án with an essential exposition of the plot. The second section deals with the digital edition of this text. I will offer the description of the manuscript and of the literary tradition of the saga, to move then to my work on the manuscript. Here, the focus will be mainly on the rendition of the copious abbreviations encountered in the text with the aim to produce a paleographic transcription alongside with a reinterpreted text displaying all the abbreviations in their expanded forms, proposing the whole text encoded with XML TEI and a digital representation of a section of it.

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Introduction

This thesis is the result of a study that crosses two fields, medieval literature and digital humanities. The intention with which it was born is that to prove the usefulness of new technologies applied to old traditions and texts, so that more people can approach these matters from a different perspective, somehow assisted. Beside this, digital works can be precious tools for scholars given their ease of transmission and the usually implied set of functionalities.

This work is divided in two parts. The whole discussion is centered on an Icelandic saga, Áns saga bogsveigis, extant in a vellum manuscript dated 1450-1475, the oldest version at our disposal.

In the first part, I will offer a literary description of the saga. In particular, chapter one is an introduction to the Icelandic society in the first centuries of their settlement, why these people went there, how they established a new social setting and the dynamics that gave rise to such an impressive literary tradition. A special stress will then be given to the figure of the medieval outlaws, since Áns saga deals greatly with this theme, being Án an outlaw himself. The focus will be on the Icelandic and English tradition, which have long been contrastively studied because of the many similarities that characterize them.

For the second chapter, we put the lenses on and look closer at the content of the saga. The first part is a comparative analysis that follows two directions. On the one hand, we will see how this saga can be related to those of another subgroup to which there belong some sagas dealing with the same theme. The other comparison will try to detect the similarities and differences between the Icelandic and English main figures of the outlaw lore. The chapter ends with a general and brief exposition of the plot.

The second part of the thesis is of a more technical nature, and contains the innovative aspect of the study. In fact, I have created an XML version of Áns saga accounting in particular for the copious abbreviations that characterize Old Icelandic manuscripts.

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The third chapter is an introduction to the world of digital editing. After a hopefully exhaustive historical frame, I have tried to delineate in which respects a digital text should and can differ from a printed one, and what are some of the main opinions discussed by the scholarly world on the matter. Some emphasis is also on the timeless main actors of each editorial process, the editor and the materials. The method and the scope need to be delineated well in advance before plunging into these works, and the resources must be well organized. Thus, in the following sections of the chapter I have reported a description of the text to be edited and the sources I availed myself of to create the edition.

In chapter four, I have presented the reasons that guided my work, how it has been developed, the tools I utilized and how it is structured. One of the scopes of this section is to offer the material for the reduplication of a project of this kind. I have declared all the criteria adopted and the choices made to offer a trustful version of the manuscript, along with all the types of abbreviations and their rendition in the digital edition.

The last chapter is the presentation of the finished work. The result is double, since the proper digital edition is considerably shorter than the whole text. So, on the one hand we have the effective digital version, equipped of interactive functionalities that aim at satisfying the previously fixed targets. On the other hand, we find the whole saga in its XML format. Both of the works are accompanied by a detailed description of the steps that brought them into being.

The verbal descriptions of the last three chapters find visual support thanks to a considerable number of images that I retained necessary given the highly practical nature of the work.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

J. R. R. Tolkien

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Acknowledgments

First of all, I wish to thank my supervisor Professor Buzzoni Marina, who followed and guided me during this path and that, thanks to her passion and enthusiasm, got me develop in turn the passion for a world that I mean to explore as much as it will be possible. Nevertheless, I am grateful to Ca’ Foscari for its academic offer and its extremely competent corpus of Professors. The chance to have been part of this large family for five years makes me rich.

I thank my siblings, Giovanni, Maria and Benedetta to be the most interesting people life could offer me. I love you dearly.

I thank my mother, who ever believed in me and always incited me to go on and to aim higher, this goal is as mine as hers.

I thank my father, the man that determined my growth and my temperament probably more than anyone else, arousing well in advance all the most characterizing aspects of my personality that make me who I am.

I thank my aunts, Cristina and Claudia, who always looked after my siblings and me as children of theirs, and together with them, I thank my grandparents and all my relatives, in particular my cousins who gave me a joyful and rich childhood.

I thank the friends of a life. Thank you Serena, for being a keystone in my life. Thank you Ilaria and Sara, because even if life necessities sometimes keep us apart, they do not distance us in our hearts. Thanks to Salvatore, Martina, Lisa and Jürgen to be people with which I could always be myself and always gave me the possibility to express myself, for better or worse.

A special thank goes to my flat mates, Stephanie, Claudio and Lucia, three amazing people with which I had the pleasure to pass these last months of intense studying.

I thank Giosuè, a person that I met just last year but that has had a certain impact on my life from the beginning.

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1. An introduction to the Icelandic sagas

The Icelandic society can boast a singular history that began in the second half of the ninth century. In fact, that was the time of the Viking expansion. People from mainland Scandinavia moved to different parts of Europe and created colonies, the reasons are different and much debated. It is true that the movement westward was just one of the many, but there is one specific motivation that urged many Norwegians to leave their land, and it is to be found in the political scenario. From 870 to 932 Norway was under the tyrannical reign of Haraldr hárfagri “fair-hair” Hálfdanarson who was to subdue the autonomy of local leaders. People then saw in that remote and unwelcoming island the possibility of a new life, far from oppression and political control. The land was unspoiled and full of sources and those who arrived there hoped to create a better and independent society based on the best traditional features of their homeland.

The Icelandic history began with the period of settlement (870-930 ca.) and is followed by what is commonly known as the Commonwealth, which ended in 1262 with the submission to the king of Norway Hákon Hákonarson because of social disorders that Icelanders could not resolve themselves. The settlement stage is considered finished with the establishment of the general assembly, the Alþingi, which held the legislative and judicial power. No one was in charge of the executive arm, and often violence was the only way to achieve the decisions of the courts. The only official of the Commonwealth was the Lawspeaker (lǫgsǫgumaðr), since one of the most characterizing aspects of the Icelandic society was the almost total absence of social stratification. The highest figure of the society were the goðar (sing. goði), the chieftains, who held both religious and social authority. They held power over their territory – the goðorð – and over those free people who decided to accept their authority to have protection and leadership. The goði had his þingmenn, who accompanied their chieftain to the general assembly. There was a particular bond between them, which reminds that of the comitatus that Tacitus depicted in his Germania. In the medieval Icelandic society, there were also slaves, who had no rights and were scorned. The situation

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was even worse for those who were declared outlaws, and below a particular discussion will be reserved to these wrecked men. As for individuals, personal honor was the measure to esteem, as was in use in the Germanic societies. Another value that they did not abandon was the relevance of family. Familiar bonds determined the lives of Icelanders in everyday life, and this was consolidated by the copious allegiances that were created through marriages, fostering and oaths of brotherhood. Despite all these similarities, this new society was innovative if compared to its Germanic relatives because it abandoned kingship or any other type of supremacy of power.

However, being a new entity meant the lack of a common identity and a cultural specificity, so it was born in the hearts of Icelanders the desire to feel as a nation. They needed to remember to themselves and to the world their origin and their ancestors in order to prove that they were not poor migrants or descendants of slaves. We have proof of this urge thanks to Ari Þorgilsson called the Wise, one of the most important writers of medieval Iceland and the first one to write in Icelandic. In the oldest version that we have of his Landnámabók1_{(twelfth century), he records in an extremely detailed fashion the names of} the founding fathers of that land, with their kin and origin so that Icelanders could trace back their ancestry and attest their identity. Nevertheless, works for popular memory undoubtedly existed before the coming of writing in oral form, like in all societies. This can be proved by the presence in the sagas of sudden slides from direct to indirect discourse and tense-switching, which give immediacy to the narrative, thus suggesting an oral delivery. Moreover, the variety of versions that characterizes the saga genre may be due indeed to its oral phase. Some scholars inferred that sagamen did not tell the stories in their full form, because they recounted of known events and people that were part of the collective memory2_{. Clover (1986) in an essay comparing different oral traditions argues,}

1_{The book of settlement or of the land-takings. It records who were the first to settle in Iceland,}

where they settled and where they came from.

2_{“The society in which the myths we know were formed and took literary expression was one in}

which the whole community would have had a basic knowledge of the Norse mythological system and world view. […] In all probability, then, it was not necessary for every telling of a myth to set out its details fully and in chronological sequence. […] It is certainly true that one need special knowledge to understand the narrative sequence of many of the poems, both heroic and

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narrowing down to Icelandic sagas, that “[i]t can be hypothesized that oral traditions about particular events were first disseminated by those who knew them best […]. Because the larger framework was already familiar to the community at large (or quickly became so), there was no need to tell the whole story or indeed “stories” at all; people could contribute “their” parts, which sufficed precisely because they were understood to be parts. […]. To the audience familiar with the larger framework, the chronological and casual relationship of [the] anecdotes to each other and to the wholes of which they were understood to be parts would be self-evident. […] As the artistic dimension waxed and the historical dimension waned […] and as narrators reworked their material, adding and subtracting as they saw fit, the shape of the immanent saga changed accordingly. Precisely because it had never been canonized in performance, the immanent whole was susceptible to adjustment; nor, presumably, did any two persons have exactly the same whole in mind”3_{. Thus, she}

sustains, the forms in which sagas have come down to us are the result of processes that saw the assembling and reshaping of oral material, and they are not to be found in the oral stage itself, since the oral tradition of a saga would report then the core scenes of the whole narration. Therefore, it came that when scribes began to write them down, each of them adapted the story according to his own memories and tastes, and divergences arose. What is more, orality did not disappear at once with the coming of writing because many Icelanders were not able to write and read yet, and so the influence endured and written sagas kept drawing from the oral lore.

As for their creed, Icelanders adhered to a polytheistic religion tied to the Germanic culture, but in that far away land it persisted the most, since the rest of the Germanic world came into contact with the Christian faith sooner thanks to the influence of missionaries. However, the conversion of Iceland was by no means peaceful and smooth, and surely it was not achieved by means of preaching. Christians were already present in the land, and the opposition between them and the pagans became dangerous. It was one of the goði of

mythological, for much is left unsaid and much background narrative is sketched allusively in such a way as to make it difficult for anyone to follow who does not know the underlying stories upon extant poems depend.” Clunies Ross (2000:123-125)

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that time (end of the tenth century) to realize that such an unstable situation would have weakened the nation and made it easier for the king of Norway to subjugate it. So it happened that the authorities chose to convert, but it was a gradual process. It was decided by the Alþingi in 999 or 1000, and eventually accepted by the rest of the society. Anyway, the Church had to cope with the fact that Icelanders recognized as sole authority the assembly since that society was the offspring of those people who left their homeland to escape from the imposition of a supreme power.

The exposition to a new faith brought along some intellectual influence, which arrived mainly in the form of written texts. It is widely believed that conversion was one of the keystones for the flourishing of the new literary genre, since it was the means through which Icelanders came into contact with the writing practice. A runic alphabet was indeed in use in the Germanic societies, but it was suited for signs short incisions, not surely for the preservation of social memory. Icelanders soon recognized the usefulness of a technology such as writing was, and they adopted it.

1.1. The need of literacy

The first texts that were written down were those to which some social relevance was attributed, as the First Grammatical Treatise proves. This book was written in the twelfth century to account for the use of the Latin alphabet, as the Anglo-Saxon world already did, and to introduce additional symbols when needed. An anonymous Icelandic grammarian drew up a list of texts referring to laws and genealogies, which was meant to offer material to assist people in writing and reading and these texts were written most likely in the Icelandic vernacular. Moreover, political and religious authority soon realized that to consolidate their power they had to put into writing what until then had just been said4_.

However, alongside the production of religious and juridical books, many other kinds of texts were created, and the literary and mythological heritage finally began to take its

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written shape. What is striking and remarkably different from the other recently converted cultures is that many texts were translated into Icelandic rather than being disseminated in Latin, probably because the medieval society did not know it. This technique allowed a huge quantity of people to come into contact with the texts disposed by the authorities and, of course, with the new genres that were growing.

But why did Icelanders begin to invent sagas? The answer is partially above, since they needed to ensure themselves the prestige owed to a real independent nation. Many characters, places and events described in the sagas are reflected in reality, attesting thus the veracity of narrations. But if on the one hand we find realism, on the other we find fiction. Sagas are crowded with trolls and dwarves, witches, spells and precognitive dreams. Sometimes, people and places with a realistic reference are placed in the wrong age or in the wrong part of the land. However, this set of references allowed the audience to feel within the story, because they recalled the heroes and the events upon which their society was built. This is also proved by the sporadic appearance of characters of which nothing is said, but that are clearly known in the context. Along with their cultural meaning, sagas had also a high entertaining value. More than that, Christendom brought a new prestigious class, the religious one, which came with its rich cultural heritage. The Icelandic aristocracy then felt the need to impose themselves culturally upon the newcomers, and enhanced the creation of sagas to praise the memory of their ancestors and so consolidate their prestige. Sagas have conventionally been divided into different categories, and the one proposed here are Clunies Ross’ 2010.

- Íslendingasögur are usually referred to as “sagas of Icelanders” or “family sagas”. They deal with the doings of the first settlers.

- Fornaldarsögur have various translations, “sagas of ancient time”, “mythical-heroic sagas” and “legendary sagas”. They are set in Scandinavia before the age of settlement and many characters belong to royal and heroic dynasties with mythological beginnings.

- Riddarasögur, “sagas of knights”, deal mainly with subject-matters of foreign origin and are often translations commissioned by king Hákon Hákonarsson in the thirteenth

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century. Their characters – knights, nobles and kings – perform their deeds in courts and castles of the Christianized Europe.

- Konungasǫgur are “sagas of kings”. They are mainly biographical and hagiographical stories of the kings of Norway and saints’ lives both before and slightly after the conversion.

- Samtíðarsögur, or “contemporary sagas”, deal with Icelandic people and their doings in the early twelfth century until the second half of the thirteenth century. They owe their name to the fact that the date of composition is close to the events narrated. While riddarasögur were translated from French chivalric romances and other Anglo-Norman genres and konungasǫgur have counterparts in the Norwegian records, the other three subgroups are unique in their scene. There are ca. 140 sagas known to us, but it has been noted that some medieval Icelandic texts cite sagas of which we know nothing, so we can say for sure that more sagas existed than have survived. To the same conclusion leads the fact that, assuming the existence of an oral transmission period, not all of the yet oral sagas are likely to have been written.

We know very little of how sagas were performed and who created and enacted them, since most sagas are anonymous, unlike the other Scandinavian major works, namely the Eddas and the skaldic poetry. On the contrary, we can assume that the audience ranged from Icelandic farmers to the clergy and other important people who commissioned them. Sagas are mainly stories about Norse people and their doings, and in most cases, the scenes that take place are set in a relatively distant period from the time of the actual writing, and so refer to a period that could be different under some aspects and people needed to remember this difference. The style is not homogeneous. It is a prose text which can contain some verses but is not defined by them, it is about people even if it deals with this matter in different ways, it can report true facts or/and fictional episodes and people. The narratorial position is flat and indirect, and the writer presents the facts as if he were told them. This lack of point of view encourages thus the retrieval of information from the common knowledge. As for the themes, the previous subdivision and all the other proposed by the scholarly community are just canonical, since sagas were not composed according to

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any schemas and the very fact that researchers have come up with different possible sub-groups implies that topics overlap.

The oldest extant in the vernacular is found in codex AM 237a and is dated 1150, while the oldest Íslendingasaga we have is Heiðarvíga saga and was probably composed at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

It can be asserted that a text is an act of communication between the author and the implied audience, and the meaning of the said text can be fully understood in relation to the context of creation. Thus, the absolute understanding of literary texts, sagas in this case, is limited by our ignorance of things taken for granted by the Icelandic writers and audiences of the time of writing. Moreover, Tulinius (2002) argues, the ideology that each person and society has influences the way in which reality is perceived, because he defines it as “the aggregate of representations, values, and hierarchies of value that condition the relationship of the individual to the world in general and society in particular”5_{. This statement implies that}

ideology can be described, but also that it changes during time and among societies, and therefore the scholar willing to interpret old texts belonging to other traditions should detach himself from his own ideology, in order not to have a distort visual.

1.2. Outlaws in the medieval scenario

Outlawry is a theme that can be found in many medieval literary traditions. Of course, the stress in this thesis will be on the outlaws of medieval Iceland, together with those belonging to the English medieval tradition. In fact, these two boast a long series of studies that have often put them into comparison and have tried to outline what they have in common and in what respect they differ.

As already stated, the Icelandic society was quite peculiar in the medieval scene and diverged from the English one under some aspects, one of the consequences being that the status of outlawry – since this is what concerns us – developed in different ways in the two

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traditions. On the whole, Ohlgren 2005 has identified three categories in which the different types of outlaws fall according to some characteristics and behavior toward the society and the law. These are the social bandit, the good outlaw and the trickster6_.

English romances and ballads containing stories about outlaws have been named by Maurice Keen (2000) as the matter of the Greenwood to complete the triad of the matter of Britain, France and Rome. The main subject of this category is the centrality of wilderness, while in the other traditions the forest is a place that remains in the background, the majority of the scenes being set in courts and castle. This means that main characters and life-stiles will be of another kind as well. The most renown English outlaw is undoubtedly Robin Hood, though his ballads due much to its ancestors. In fact, the comparative studies I have analyzed for this discussion are based on the older traditions. Many adventures and characters of these legends find for sure their strength in history, even though fiction and re-elaboration are also present. The sentence of outlawry, usually taken by the king, meant literally that a person was put outside the protection of the law. He lost every right he possessed and a price was put upon his head. Moreover, having no rights, anyone could have killed him without consequences. An outlaw’s prospect of life depended upon his own ability to live in the wilderness, to find shelter and food among forests and marshes. This liminal life usually carried along violence: the outlaws of these legends could be brutal, even ruthless. They had nothing to lose, they needed to survive and could not be merciful with those who wanted to kill them, least of all those whose fault that situation was. Another

6_{The social bandit is the outlaw that remains within the society and is regarded as a hero who fights}

for justice and is admired. The enemy is not the king, but rather the local gentry, the clergy or the sheriff. In his career, he fights for a better society or to right the wrongs done to him. The good outlaw, despite having committed some crime that procured him the status of outlawry, has not lost the admiration and love of people. He is also superior to his opponents in strength and moral integrity. The trickster is quite a complicated figure, since he behaves as if controlled by impulses he cannot master. This means that he is and can do both good and evil, he acts obeying to no moral nor social values. Ohlgren (2005)

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characteristic of this figure is that he often managed to gather peasants or other poor miserable men like him so to create an outlaw community. They gathered their strengths to fight against the law that could do nothing to them having disowned them.

The English outlaws considered here are Hereward, Fouke fitz Waryn and, to some extent, Eustache the Monk and William Wallace. They are all real characters who lived between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, though their figures have been much romanticized. These people become outlaws for no real reason, for no real crime, but often just because the king declared them such. Their life in the forest is characterized by many tricks and disguise, but their struggle is against oppressors, unjust or foreign rulers that want to impose their power over the population, and they try to restore justice for all of their kin, not only peasants as Robin Hood did. Moreover, they all adhere to a proper moral code that incites them to take action just against the king’s men, and sometimes they are merciful even toward them. They do not base their fortunes on the unlucky passers-by of the forest and are much loved by common people7_{. Some of these characters travel much abroad, but}

always come back to their native land to pursue their mission of saving the oppressed. In their fights, strength and cunning are ever-present and always lead them to victory. Another peculiar aspect of these tales is that they often manage to build up unconventional bands of rascals like them that follow them and become a sort of family.

The Icelandic outlaws belong to a scenario that differs to some extent. The Icelandic society, as already stated, grew up to be different from the others of that period. Its characteristic configuration may suggest that outlawry could be treated in some different way. One great difference was that people were all equal in front of justice, so sanctions were applied with no regard to the social status. Moreover, laws did not have a written form but rather were recited by the Lawspeaker until the early twelfth century. As a consequence, there was not the concept of “breaking the law” and, what is more, there was no king who could declare the status of outlawry. The decision was taken by the assembly and was meant to prevent

7_{“Often Fulk and his men were succoured by friends and sympathizers, for none cared much for the}

evil king, and he counted among his kindred the greatest lords of the land; indeed it was said among John’s foreign favourites that ‘all English nobles were cousins to Sir Fulk, and therefore traitors to the King, and would not take these felons’” Keen (2000:44)

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the perpetuation of social disorders rather that seen as a punishment. An Icelandic outlaw, like the English one, was put outside political jurisdiction and protection. He could not live in the community, lost his property and could be killed at any time with impunity. His family nor anyone could help him, feed him, shelter him. It shall not be forgotten that the climate and the geographical configuration of Iceland were rather different from those of England. The harsh weather and the scarcity of forests made life quite impossible outside a farm. It was very windy and wet, and the large plains of the midland were unsuitable for the creation of a shelter since it would have been seen from afar. The absence of a sovereign authority marks a great difference between the Icelandic and English outlawry. If Hereward and Fouke fought against a power that imposed its laws from above, who could the heroes of the Icelandic sagas fight against? And why were they outlawed? The sentence often derived from family or feud quarrels that brought to someone’s death, and the outlaw was destined to defend himself from those who had some bond with the victim. What is rather different then is that the Icelandic outlaw did not struggle for the community but for himself, not against a group of people who imposed themselves upon the society and did harm to it but against those who tried to kill him, not to right the wrong done to him but to keep high his honor.

Both traditions probably derive from earlier oral lore, but the forms they took when they began to be written down followed different paths. The English tales were episodic ballads and romances where outlawry was not the only central theme. The Icelandic legends were long prose sagas that accounted for the whole life of the main character, the outlaw. The English ballads and romances are part of the folkloristic literature, while these sagas “are best regarded as imaginative, though realistic reconstructions of historical traditions”8_.

Some characters and places are not fictional, the long genealogies were written down exactly to preserve the memory of families and allegiances and to attest their existence. But the fantastic elements appear many times. The heroes of these sagas meet mythological creatures and are haunted by premonitory dreams. The three outlaw sagas considered here

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all belong to the sub-genre of the Íslendingasögur. These are Gísla saga Súrssonar (the saga of Gísli), Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (the saga of Grettir) and Harðar saga Grímkelssonar (the saga of Hörðr). All of these figures are historically attested. They lived in Iceland between the second half of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh century. The manuscripts, however, are quite late, dating to the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century. The fact that they can all be found in the same collection (AM 556a 4to, Arnamagnæan Collection, Reykjavík) suggests that probably even at that time someone had already noticed that they could belong to some kind of common tradition.

What drives these men to outlawry is their impulsive temperament, their boldness. They actually committed some real crimes, and, once in the wilderness, their mission was surely not to help other people. As already said, in the Icelandic tradition, the outlaw is the center of the plot and the events are the set in which he performs his actions and where he finds his conflicts, unlike the English lore that gives more space to the adventures. They all take part into journeys and, except Hörðr, they do not have a gang. Bad luck and curses pursue them, and the dramatic tone characterizes these tales.

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2. Áns Saga Bogsveigis

It is clear that some similarities exist between the Icelandic and English outlaw tradition, and some scholars have long thought that the English motif was borrowed from the northern one. However, in more recent studies this idea has been discarded, since it would be just a series of coincidences that would relate the two traditions. Many researchers consider that the relations are too casual and feeble to prove that there was some serious kind of influence between the two. However, it is beyond doubt that the two cultures were in contact and some kind of exchange took place.

There is one saga that is quite peculiar in the scene depicted up to now, that is the comparison of the two outlaw medieval traditions. Áns saga bogsveigis (the saga of Án bow-bender), in fact, does not belong to the subgroup of the Íslendingasögur like the three other outlaw sagas, but to the sagas of ancient time – the fornaldarsögur. Yet, like them, it has some features that can be compared to the English outlaws. In the subgroup to which it belongs, this saga is the only one that deals with outlawry and this moved the curiosity of scholars.

The aforementioned grouping of sagas follows spatial and temporal criteria. Goddard Leach (1921) observed that the medieval vernacular romances of the matters of France, Britain and Rome were grouped according to similar criteria, and added to this triad the fornaldarsögur. In this view, the sagas of ancient time would be the Icelandic response to the creation of romance. However, Tulinius (2002) states that Goddard Leach seemed to have in mind just one portion of the sagas of ancient times, those concerned with heroes undertaking quests which end well, those offering a way of escape from reality. The extension of this selection to the whole group of the fornaldarsögur can “imply a comparison between the rise of fiction in the French-speaking world during the twelfth century and in the North one or two generations later. The conditions that are thought to have fostered this development in Western Europe were in many ways similar in Norway

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and Iceland”9_{, and, to sum up, the control that the clergy exercised over the aristocracy}

urged this last to create its own aristocratic culture through the use of the vernacular and the restoration of genealogies to attest their nobility. This perfectly reflects what has already been said concerning the growth of sagas.

The saga of Án is extant in a vellum manuscript of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, but this does not mean that it was unknown before this century since his character is present in one of Saxo Grammaticus’ stories – even if the two plots differ a lot. This probably means that the sagaman had a different and much fuller tradition on which he based his tale, either historical or legendary. The saga of Án is much shorter than the other outlaw tales, the rhythm of the narrative is always kept high and there is no place for long descriptions. However, the story is complete and satisfying.

2.1. A hybrid saga

Like every respectable Íslendingasaga, the three Icelandic tales mentioned before contain the genealogies of the characters, are set in Iceland at the beginning of the colonization era and are focused on the doings and the relationships of some families. Even if the saga of Án shares much with this subgroup, it has been appointed to the fornaldarsögur because the oldest manuscript is quite late, but that is not the only reason. In fact, Án is said to be a descendent of Hallbjörn hálftröll of Hrafnista, a Norwegian island, and in this land he actually abides. Therefore, the story is set in the period before the colonization, and this sets this saga apart from the other three. The fornaldarsögur tell the feats of the descendants of heroic and legendary families, from here the abundance of supernatural scenes and fantastic creatures. It is nevertheless true that these elements are found also in the sagas of Icelanders, but the background is different. The three outlaws almost lived to see the conversion to Christendom10_{, so a change had already began to occur in the}

9_{Tulinius (2002:244)}

10_{Hörðr’s mother had a dream when she was pregnant with her second child that foretold the}

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Icelandic society, but this does not mean that they had denied their origins. The possibility to trace back the protagonist’s lineage is shared from the two groups, even though in the legendary sagas the ancestors belong to historical Scandinavian families, but in the sagas of Icelanders these families just held great power.

The actions of the protagonists of the Íslendingasögur aim to preserve their families and their own honor and a heavy stress is assigned to family bonds. On the other hand, “[t]he themes, characters and the whole world of the fornaldarsaga lend themselves to interpretation, not as realistic narratives, but rather as subjects dealing with deep ad disturbing human issues that cannot be approached from the perspective of the mundane world but must rather be enacted in a literary world in which often tabu subjects can be raised and aired, though not necessarily resolved”11_{. In many instances, literature has}

worked and still works as a means of escape, as a way of expressing discontent or thoughts in general that in some cases could not be directly exposed. Referring back to Tulinius (2002)’s argumentation on ideology, he goes further stating that it can be expressed through literature in different ways. Even if the set is fantastic, there will always be an amount of the author’s influence and of the audience’s interpretation in it – the implication being that this fiction is contaminated by reality. How could a thirteenth-century Icelandic author know about the life in Norway five hundred years before? People and places are fictional, are conceptual, they offer “an ideal image of what the pre-Christian past of the Scandinavian lands might represent for Icelanders”12_{, but this ideal image is not entirely}

idealized. Through fiction, ideology can paradoxically emerge more than can do through realistic literature, allowing us to come into contact with aspects that otherwise would remain obscure to us, because “[t]here are contradictions between what can be spoken in a society and what is experienced, or what an author has called the “political unconscious” (cit. F, Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 1981). The latter is that which society repress, but which finds expression in fictional literature: indeed, the cathartic effect of fiction makes it an outlet for the political

11_{Clunies Ross (2010:80)} 12_{Tulinius (2002:41)}

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unconscious”13 14_{. However, it remains to be clarified whether the society of that time}

already regarded fornaldarsögur as works of fantasy or attributed to them some historical value. In fact, if on the one hand it is quite sure that the fornaldarsögur had among their principal scopes that of entertaining a public15_{, on the other it has been widely expressed}

their intent to affirm the authenticity of the Icelandic society. Tulinius (2002) suggests that the fictional aspect slowly overtook the historical one and was, in the end, accepted and legitimated. Interestingly, he even argues that Íslendingasögur are to some extend fictional as well, because, as every type of historical narration, they are based yes on real facts, but are inevitably reconstructions. The writers selected, avoided, did not know things, and thus influenced the representation of that past.

Some scholars have proposed further sections for this group. One of these is the subdivision in heroic sagas, Viking sagas and romances or adventure sagas, even if characteristics of the different groups can coexist in one single saga. Another one is the division into hero legends and adventure tales, where the former ones would derive from ancient heroic traditions transmitted through poetry, and the second ones would be more similar to continental romances.

Finally, there are those who believe that it would be better not to divide this subgroup but rather see it as a hybrid genre. In fact, an interesting supposition has been made concerning the emergence of the fornaldarsögur. Some researchers presume that these sagas had some written ancestors in a solid tradition, which is the Eddic poetry. They assume that

13_{Ibid. (2002:42)}

14_{Of the same opinion seems Clunies Ross (2000) on a wider discourse on the need of mythology,}

and I would say that she goes even further, tackling with life and death: “To the extent that these beings [Æsir and jǫtnar in particular, supernatural beings in general] and their life experiences reflect the desires and frustrations of humankind, myths about their adventures and relationships explore a number of basic ontological questions of fundamental interest to the humans. These include the subjects of the world’s creation and the creation of classes of living beings, including humans; the operation of time in the mythic world; the existence and operation of fate as it affects the individual lifespan, and the concomitant inevitability of death, which, the myth shows, might be delayed but could not eventually be avoided” (2000:122).

15_{One scene in particular of Þorgils saga ok Hafliða has been much studied. It shows the episode of}

the celebration of a wedding where a certain Hrólfr tells a story about Vikings and berserkers and these are considered by King Sverrir as “skemtiligastar”, the most entertaining.

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there would have been some sort of transition from one genre to the other, indeed Eddic lays contain some prose and, as a matter of fact, legendary sagas (but sagas in general) contain verses. Prose passages were used as frameworks for the poems or as links between scenes, and again to offer explanations to better understand the poems or to introduce new elements. The assumption being that slowly the prose sections became the preponderant elements of the lays in which the plot actually developed. If we set this scene in the twelfth century16_{, we realize that in this period the Icelandic aristocracy needed to regain its}

prestige, somehow diminished after the consolidation of Christendom. The Eddic tradition, widely known among the aristocrats, offered much heroic material that could serve as basis to enhance the fame of these noble people. On the other hand, the compilation of genealogies that traced back their oldest ancestors to the heroes of these poems seemed to be a proper way to ensure family prestige. The fornaldarsögur are just one of the directions that this change undertook.

While the family sagas are indeed much focused on the family relations, a more “archaic” bond emerges in the Áns saga, where the theme of the comitatus is somehow present. This motif is typical of the Germanic tradition, but the relation between the king and Án is not as that of a beloved king and his follower, but as that of an unfavorable counterpart to the hero and an independent Icelandic land-owner. Despite the loyalty to his lord, the family-tie is preponderant, probably under the influence of the Icelandic family sagas. In fact, Án refuses to kill his former sire who outlawed him and killed his brother, but sends his son to avenge the uncle.

Biography and genealogy are two dominating themes in the whole corpus of Icelandic sagas, this is true, but in some genres, it assumes particular relevance. The Íslendingasögur are the biographical sagas par excellence, and in particular those dealing with poets and outlaws. Indeed, the three figures previously outlined – Grettir, Gísli and Hörðr – do compose poetry, even if that does not define them. Outlaws, like poets, are difficult in their early life, they are hot-tempered and assertive, and to some extent can be considered anti-social. Their

16_{It has been observed that to this period there belong some Eddic transitional works, thus offering}

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temperaments set them in a troublesome position with the society. They usually have a poor relation with their fathers, but their mothers love them greatly. The thorny life-history syntagm begins with the description of “the events that lead up to the protagonist’s outlawry, while, after the outlawry has been proclaimed, each saga consists of a series of adventures in which the hero escapes those who try to capture and kill him”17_{. It is evident}

that all these traits associated with the outlaw tales of the sagas of Icelanders find perfect coherence in Áns saga as well. On the other hand, genealogy is an important element in the sagas of ancient times even if not considered in comparison with the sagas of Icelanders. In fact, Clunies Ross (2010) suggests that the practice of tracing back the character’s lineage may be associated to the necessity of explaining some traits of the characters as inheritance from his family lines. She bears as example precisely the sagas of the Hrafnista men, who can engage with the paranormal world.

Other similarities can be found in the plots of these four outlaw sagas, from single episodes to underlying ideas. In fact, he lives in the outskirt of the society, but he is neither alone nor with a gang of outlaws, but rather “he soon settles down as an honoured bóndi after his marriage with Jórunn. He is now no longer the hunted outlaw who lives in the woods and perpetrates all kinds of crimes, but a well-to-do farmer, who is harassed by a perfidious king”18_{and performs most of his deeds alone. Like all the other outlaws, he is a large and}

strong man and is cunning, even if he might seem foolish and clumsy.

It might be easy to detect some similarities within a single tradition, but when a kind of continuity is perceived through different literatures, the situation becomes interesting. De Lange (1935) compared the three outlaw-Íslendingasögur and Áns saga to the English traditions and found points in common, and in particular strength, boldness, travels and adventures, kin relationships, non-conventional groups and, to some extent, the disguise theme. With these points in mind, De Lange thought to have proven that there might have been an underlying Norse tradition that influenced the Icelandic and English traditions, which eventually took different paths. He attributed much weight to Áns saga: “The

17_{Clunies Ross (2010:135)} 18_{De Lange (1935:116)}

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obviously Scandinavian setting of the Án-saga precludes the idea that the saga originated with the Vikings in England and was transferred to Iceland afterwards. On the contrary, it is clear that the English outlaw-literature contains a body of old Norse outlaw-themes, brought over to England by the Vikings – notwithstanding the characteristically English development it went through in the course of time”19_.

Many scholars believe that De Lange’s hypothesis is not sufficiently specific to attest such a relation, and that the traits are indeed shared but in the wider context of the Old Norse popular literature and the West European romances. Some fundamental elements for the developments of the plots lay in deeper layers of the societies of that time – and in their being different –, starting from the social and legal setting. The sentence of outlawry in the English stories is generally dictated by some trivial reasons, and the narratives “concern a good retainer who being wronged by an unjust monarch is eventually able to restore feudal order by his resistance […] [or] concern individuals who remain loyal to their monarch resisting the abuses of aristocrat such as the sheriff who have local authority […]”20_{. In}

Iceland this scene is impossible, since there were no monarch nor sheriff. Outlawry was a common decision taken during the assemblies, and full outlawry was the consequence of some serious crime. The felony even had the chance to be protected by his kin and friends who, if able enough, could lighten the penalty. The particular context in which the saga of Án takes place offers once again a situation placed in a middle way. In fact, Án is outlawed by the king, not by the þing, but the rest of the outlawry resembles that of the other Icelandic sagas. As hinted in the last quote, the English exiled fought against injustice deriving from the upper classes of the societies and tried to restore fairness also thanks to organized actions in battle. Their moral integrity is highly praised and the peasantry considers them as heroes. On the other hand, in Iceland the outlaw had, first of all, to survive in a hostile land, and secondly to escape to his pursuers. His concern was not in the quality of the society, he did not belong to it anymore. As Faulkes puts it, “[w]hile the English ballads are basically romances about alienated groups creating an alternative ideal society

19_{Ibid. (1935:122)} 20_{Ohlgren (2005:295)}

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in a mythical greenwood, the Icelandic sagas are realistic attempts to show how basically well-motivated people can run foul of their society’s conventions and unwittingly find themselves outcast in spite of their best endavours to reintegrate themselves and atone for their mistakes. They are tragedies in the true sense of the term.”21_{This means that the}

conception of the two traditions is totally different. The English stories emphasize the actions, the characters being somehow just the performers. In the Icelandic outlaw-matter, the main characters hold the scene, their personalities are more delineated, and the external circumstances just make the personal conflicts possible. It might be easy to state that, given that the discrepancies are found in the very structure of the traditions, there cannot have been deep influence between the two.

2.2. Án’s exploits

The saga of Án is set in Norway before the colonization of Iceland. A king and his son rule over the region called Naumdæla. King Oláfr is a just ruler, while his son Ingjaldr is a deceitful man. The king has also a daughter, Ása, and two stepsons, who rule over the region of Firðir. Ingjaldr believes that they should share with him those lands as inheritance from his mother.

On an island off the coast of Naumdæla, Hrafnista, there lives a farmer with his daughter Þórdís and his two sons, Þórir and Án. The first was older, handsome and polite and a retainer of king Oláfr, who had given him the mighty sword þegn (thane), relic of his family, as sign of his regard. On the other hand, Án grew up as a large but clumsy boy, unattractive and poorly dressed. No one knew anything about his strength, he least of all, because he had not put it to the test yet.

One night, he goes into the forest and meets a dwarf, who crafts for him a large and strong bow together with five arrows, and with them Án would have been able to do whatever he meant.

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Án is now eighteen years old, and that spring Þórir is headed to the king’s court. Án asks him to take him along, but the brother refuses and, after a second request, Þórir ties Án to an oak tree. The younger brother uproots the tree and follows Þórir, and grabbing him, he throws him into the air and shakes him like a child. With this act, some of his strength is revealed, and Þórir sees hvert efni í manninum var (what substance there was in the man). When they arrive to Naumdæla, they come to know that the king has died, and now only Ingjaldr rules over that region. Án enters the hall of the court, and his bow, large as it is, bends but does not break. His odd appearance causes sneers, but the king is well disposed toward him and accepts offering him winter lodgings. On Yuletide, Án receives a ring from the king as gift, and a name-fastening – bogsveigis “bow-bender”. Later, playing with the ring, it shoots away and is lost. When he reports this to his companions, they begin to look for it on all fours until Án says that he still has it. With this, he meant to pay them back for all the mockeries.

One day, the retainers want to text Án’s strength, and ask him to wrestle with Björn, the strongest of all men. During the first match, Björn tosses Án in the fire that he had asked to be prepared. Standing up slowly, all can see that he is not harmed, thanks to the long, weird cloak that he is wearing. After some laughter, it is now Án’s turn to toss the strong man in the fire, and here he is badly burnt. Now they recognize his might.

During a talk with his brother, Án reveals what he thinks of king Ingjaldr, and that he is the worst man that might grow up in Norway, and he stresses his idea also later when the king proclaims that they would have gone to visit his brothers in Firðir to settle matters about their territories. When they arrive to that land, Án refuses to fight and goes to rest in the ship. However, he decides to provide help and shoots two arrows and kills the two brothers but from a hidden position. The king understands that it was work of Án, and he sends men to tell him that he deserved a splendid reward, but Án refuses to go, perceiving that the king actually means to kill him, and so it is. Ketill, one of the king’s retainers that mocks Án the most, visits the farmstead of an old man and tells he is Án bow-bender and learns that his shots are renown. After some time, Án arrives at the same farm and reveals that he is the true archer, and puts out one of Ketill’s eyes and gelds him. He sends him back to the

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king as a compensation for one of the two brothers he killed, but the king drives him away. Án suggests the old man to leave the house because the king will surely pursue him, in fact during the night the king’s men burn the farm and Ingjaldr declares Án an outlaw, and this becomes widely known. Án helps the farmer rebuild the house and remains with him until spring. Before leaving, he says that he suspects that the farmer’s daughter is pregnant, and if she should give birth to a boy, he wanted them to send him to his place, and leaves a ring as proof.

In the forest he meets a footpad called Garan, with whom he fights and he manages to kill him. Garan had a beautiful house full of wealth and Án takes possession over it. The following autumn, he leaves that place and comes to the place of a wealthy widow, Jórunn. There, he works hard and is much beloved, and the two marry, and Án increases considerably the possessions and the honor of those people. Án’s nephew, Grímr, goes to meet him and abides there, and becomes popular as well. Þórir often meets his brother, hoping to reconcile, and they are on good terms, but Án still believes that the king has ill intentions also toward his brother.

A man called Ívar intends to marry the king’s sister, and Ingjaldr says that if he manages to bring him Án’s head, he might be worthy of it. He does not succeed in his attempt to kill Án, and moreover he is badly altered, since Án breaks his legs and turns his feet in the opposite direction, and sends him back to the king as compensation for the second of his brothers. The king then sends twelve men after Án, but Jórunn perceives their bad intentions and Grímur kills them all. Greatly displeased, king Ingjaldr kills Þórir and sends his body on a ship with sixty men to Án’s abode. The men say that his brother is there and wants to reconcile, and they toss the corpse out. Án had dreamed about that, and all of his sensations about the king proved right. During the fight with the king’s men, Grímur is badly wounded and remains stiff-legged before he heals. This time, the king in person takes part in the attack, but Án finds refuge at an old man’s house. When he comes back, he fetches the wealth he was storing at Garan’s place, and their situation improves even more.

One night, he sees a fire coming from an island, and he goes to check. There, he sees a young and large man sitting by a fireplace and eating. He shoots at him thrice from a hidden

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spot, and then changes position. The young man takes his bow and shoots three arrows that would have perfectly pierced Án if he had remained in the first place. The two then wrestle, and the young man is stronger than Án. He says he is called Þórir and his father is Án. When he shows the ring, Án is sure of who he is, and they go home. Þórir has nothing more to offer than the ring, so Án thinks that now, as a member of the family, he has to avenge his kin and he reaches the king’s hall. He kills Ingjaldr and takes with him his sister and a great treasure, and sends them to his father. Later on, Án leaves his farmstead and returns to Hrafnista and then he goes north, and there he becomes a great man.

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3. Toward a digital edition of Áns saga bogsveigis

This second part is the core of the work and from now on I will try to prove the usefulness of a digital edition. Therefore, it is essential to explain how digital editing has come to get the importance it is gaining, and of course the stress will be on its application in the humanistic studies. However, “humanities scholars’ increasing use and exploration of information technology as both a scholastic tool and a cultural object in need of analysis”22

is still an ongoing process.

3.1. Why digital editing

Humanities computing was a discipline that arose in the 50s, but its consolidation took place some thirty years later, when the first conferences were held and the first associations established. At the beginning, cooperation with specialists of computer science was fundamental, but thanks to technological development and the institution of humanities computing centers and courses, humanists were more and more able to rely on themselves. The 80s and the 90s marked the advent of personal computers and electronic mails, two fundamental elements that boosted the interest for the discipline and the possibilities of application. Moreover, the distribution of the TEI Guidelines (see below) in the 90s influenced and increased the functionalities of digital projects to an extent that had not been envisaged. This field, as the whole world, was heavily revolutionized by the introduction of the World Wide Web and the new possibilities that it offered. By now, it is everyday practice to use the Internet for every reason, but when it first arrived it offered a range of functionalities whose advantages could not be completely understood immediately. As will be better seen below, this meant and still means an ease of publication and fruition of material and an exchange of information and collaboration with no similar

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precedents. If it is true that the first projects were created by academics, the growing interest for and availability of electronic works incited several institutions to dispose their online digital collections with primary sources, providing thus useful (or mere?) facilities for looking up words. However, the “archival” nature of these works seemed not to match with the idea of electronic edition, which “implies a good deal of scholarly added value, reflecting the views of one or more editors, which could be implemented by privileging specific navigation routes”23_{. Moreover, the possibility to add images, videos and sounds added}

great value to these works and electronic resources began to be considered as tools for research and were analyzed as such. It is here that it might be observed the shift from humanities computing to digital humanities, since this last term “seems intend to define something broader that includes most of humanities computing but adds the digital arts to the mix, pushing the notion of humanities toward interpretative and creative digital practices”24_{. However one may call it, it is undeniable that this type of studies has enriched}

the scientific environment with peculiar works, offering new ways of investigating texts that are at disposal not only of scholars, but also of general learners and public.

Given its potential power of implementing the cultural heritage, the field of digital humanities is branching out worldwide, and, given that “the Internet is such a dominant feature of everyday life, the opportunity exists for humanities computing to reach out much further than has hitherto been possible”25_{. We live in a world that uses technology for more}

and more purposes, not least the exchange of information. As being the main tool for transmitting knowledge, culture needed to accommodate and to embrace the possibilities offered by digital equipment, and the advantages cannot be denied. I am not going to consider here the actual handling of the technologies associated with works in the field of humanities26_{, but rather I will try to expose the hypothetical pros of digitally editing.}

23_{Hockey (2004:14)} 24_{Scholes et al. (2008:57)} 25_{Hockey (2004:17)}

26_{Leonardi (2007) argues that most digital editions do not exploit the real potential offered by these}

tools, instead they propose some sort of digital archive where the editor simply displays and compares the various variants without attempting any further critical operation, thus reducing the innovative aspect. Analogously, Orlandi (2007) observes that many digital editions are conceived

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As for academic teaching, it has been observed27_{that in most humanistic faculties classes}

dealing with computer science have been introduced. However, they are usually quite limited and not integrated in the whole course. What is more, those scholars who might be interested in the evolution of specific departments of digital humanities meet the opposition of engineers, who believe that the teaching of computer science should be restricted to their faculty, and of those humanists who believe that this discipline is pure technology28_.

Robinson (2005) and Hillesund (2005) argue that, despite the proved potential of digital editions, printed editions still hold the scene. Robinson (2005) observes that many of the prospects scholars expected for digital editions, are indeed effective. There are highly valued digital publications that show, alongside the full text, high-quality digital images, editions that represent the text in different levels and show the interventions, there are searchable editions and tools that consent to see the relations among texts and assist the reader in the exploration. Going even further, progress has been such to offer beautiful editions with flexible interfaces. Therefore, if digital editions do fulfill the expectations and meet the requirements set by scholars, “what has gone wrong”29_{? If the shared idea by the}

academic community is that “the digital editions we have made over the last ten years now far exceed their print equivalents in what they include, in their ability to shape themselves to the reader's needs, in the routes they offer to understanding highly complex webs of knowledge”30_{, why are printed editions still preferred? Unfortunately, it results quite}

difficult to find publishers offering to publish digital works and this, combined with the

just in respect of hypertextuality and ease of transmission, which he considers as secondary and accessory, and a real proper digital edition has yet to appear.

27_{Orlandi (2003)}

28_{Orlandi (2003) continues his argumentation proposing a master degree curriculum divided into}

three sections, theoretical-computational (foundations and philosophical and operative assistance), technological (general technologies, such as software, and assistance technologies) and methodological (linguistics, history, literature, philology etc.). In designing this schema, he argues that professors should be completely competent both in the fundamental topics and in the transversal ones.

29_{Robinson (2005)} 30_Ibid.

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skepticism of many scholars, leads easily to the assumption that these works are not perceived as real publications. Buzzetti (2009) argues that the potential of digital editions is not fully exploited, since scholars concerned with digital humanism do not take all the advantages offered by the digital form of representation, and thus the critical engagement with the text is lessened. Like the colleague, he allows that a part of the fault is to be found in the “reluctance of the humanities scholar to devote more than cursory attention to informatics and computer sciences. […] Another reason may be found in the persistence of conventional habits and practices in the production of digital editions. The edition continues to be seen chiefly as something for a human to read and only to a very limited extent for a computer to process”31_{. In this respect, the author means to emphasize the importance of}

transferring the text in digital form through interpretation and processing of textual data. Moreover, the digital environment requires a different perception of the text, which is no longer material written by an author, but rather information represented by and as characters. Stella (2007) argues that “[g]li aspetti nuovi che le edizioni digitali stanno introducendo e che possono avere conseguenze sul metodo sono ovviamente legati alle potenzialità tecniche del mezzo, riassumibili nei quattro punti che troviamo in qualsiasi manuale di informatica: […] [q]uantità, relazionabilità, interoperabilità, multimedialità. Queste caratteristiche producono conseguenze anzittutto nell’individuazione degli obiettivi generali dell’edizione, e possono essere colte, a mio avviso, come un’opportunità per consentire all’edizione critica, quale che sia, di tener conto di esigenze scientifiche che vengono abitualmente trascurate o occultate dalle edizioni a stampa per motivi non scientifici ma tecnici”32_{. The first element, quantity, refers to the possibility to master a}

number of data that cannot be published on paper; relatability allows to connect data in a rapid, precise and complex way that, again, paper cannot offer; interoperability refers to the already mentioned possibility of interaction of the scientific community that crosses borders and operates in fractions of time; multimedia is the chance to use audio and video within the edition that books, of course, do not support. Therefore, this author joins the

31_{Buzzetti (2009)} 32_{Stella (2007)}