On the origins of Þórðar saga kakala
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the origins of Þórðar saga kakala. Chapter 1 reviews scholarship on the lost original version of Þórðar saga kakala (*Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla). By testing previous arguments and suppositions, it concludes that: *Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla was a “biography” of the adult life (c. 1233-56) of Þórður kakali Sighvatsson (c. 1210-56); it was written during the 1270s in the Western Quarter of Iceland; and Svarthöfði Dufgusson (c. 1218-c. 86) may have been its author. It also identifies a gap in previous research of Þórðar saga kakala’s earliest history: there has been no satisfactory attempt to establish its contemporary significance. The thesis attempts to remedy this over the following two chapters. In chapter 2, a literary-analytic approach is applied to *Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla. This literary analysis takes into account the formal elements of the extant text and reconstructed lost original, as well as what we know about the worldview of the audience. Chapter 2 constitutes the point of departure for chapter 3: an historical analysis of *Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla. After theorising about the telos of the biographical contemporary saga subgenre in general, *Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla is turned to in particular by considering the product of the literary analysis in chapter 2 within a 1270s political context. The conclusion drawn is that the saga can sensibly be considered as a work of propaganda to support Hrafn Oddsson in his power struggle with Þorvarður Þórarinsson during the period 1273-9. Chapter 3 then evaluates the ways in which Þórðar saga kakala concords with what we know and can infer about Hrafn’s political stances to appraise and bolster this interpretation of the text.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".