Old Norse-Icelandic literature offers us its own scriptogenesis, that is, a creation narrative of its own writing and literariness. In contrast to other text-bound founding narratives, however, scriptogenesis is directly linked to its own mediality and thus, in its own form, always refers to itself, the written word. Scriptogenesis thus turns out to be metafiction. In my lecture I will talk about how Old Norse-Icelandic literature narrates and discusses its own written mediality as a founding myth and what influence this has had and continues to have on our understanding of Old Norse-Icelandic literature.

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