Taken together, their judicious and attractively written essays-each with a full bibliography-make up the first book-len
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English Pages 376 [390] Year 2019
Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Mythology And Mythography
Eddic Poetry
Skaldic Poetry
Kings’ Sagas (Konungasögur)
Icelandic Family Sagas (Íslendingasögur)
Norse Romance (Riddarasögur)
Contributors
Index Of Texts And Authors
Index Of Critics
Index Of Topics
ISLANDICA A SERIES RELATING TO ICELAND AND THE
FISKE ICELANDIC COLLECTION CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES EDITED BY JOSEPH HARRIS
VOLUME XLV Old Norse-Icelandic
A
Critical
Literature:
Guide
EDITED BY Carol
J.
Clover and John Lindow
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
-
"A,
https://archive.org/details/oldnorseicelandiOOclov
Old Norse-Icelandic Literature
A
Critical
Guide
EDITED BY
Carol
J.
Clover
and John Lindow
ISLANDICA XLV
Cornell University Press Ithaca and London, 1985
Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges financial contributions from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, that aided in bringing this book to publication.
Copyright
©
1985 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof,
must not be reproduced
in
any form without permission
information, address Cornell University Press,
in
writing from the publisher. For
124 Roberts Place, Ithaca,
New York
14850.
First
published 1985 by Cornell University Press.
Book Number 0-8014-1755-4 of Congress Catalog Card Number 85-47697
International Standard
Fibrary
Printed in the United States of
America
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears
on the
The paper
in this
permanence and
book
last
is
page of the book.
acid free and meets the guidelines for
durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Contents
Preface
7
Abbreviations
12
Mythology and Mythography John Lindow
21
Eddie Poetry
68
Joseph Harris Skaldic Poetry
157
Roberta Frank Kings’ Sagas (Konungasogur)
197
Theodore M. Andersson Icelandic Family Sagas (Islendingasdgur)
Carol
J.
239
Clover
Norse Romance (Riddarasogur)
316
Marianne Kalinke Contributors
365
Index of Texts and Authors
367
Index of Critics
373
Index of Topics
384
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^?« Poeticum (published posthumously in 1860), the most complete dictionary of Old Norse poetry, serves as a partial commentary to his
own
normalized edition. Rudolf Meissner’s invaluable index of
skaldic kennings (1921)
is, in
based on the 1913-16 edition of the Lexicon
turn,
Poeticum; his explanations of kennings,
founded on dictionary entries that tions.
The one way of breaking
like Finnur’ s, follow Snorri
reflect Finnur’ s interpretations
this
hermeneutic circle
is
to
and are
and emenda-
go back
1860
to the
Lexicon Poeticum. Current academic practice ing
some
facts
specimen,
its
about context.
when
studying an ancient poetry involves establish-
We want to know the genre of which the poem is a
approximate date of composition, and
its
manuscript setting; author
and authorial style must be identified and the structure and unity of the work admired;
its
sources have to be analyzed,
transmitted text restored and improved.
its
cultural milieu
examined; and the
We try to determine the precise meaning
of words and to say something about the literary merits of the piece. Skaldic verse does not lend itself easily to analysis of this kind.
The
vast
majority of publications in the field have been devoted to solving cruces and to clarifying textual obscurities (see Hollander 1958), a scholarly corpus dismissed
by Kuhn as “mostly worthless’’ (1983:21). What is usually regarded as the prime feature of skaldic eludes us.
The word kenning promises
works by rendering obscure, rather substitution for a
dable nominal
noun
like
‘a
art,
the kenning,
making known,’ but
still
the thing itself
our definitions of the term: a two-part
in ordinary discourse
(Meissner 1921:12); a multiexpan-
compound (Lindow 1975:317);
a transform of a relative clause
(Amory 1982:74). Early scholarship saw the kenning primarily as verbal ment (Falk 1889:268; Misch 1928:215) and assumed that it was, at least
at the
and contextually relevant
1855-
beginning,
pictorially
(Gisli
Brynjulfsson
orna-
57:147; Konra5 Gislason 1872; Heinzel 1875; Finnur Jonsson 1890:121; Meis-
Roberta Frank
164 sner 1904; Krijn 1927; Craigie 1937:13).
The modem focus on
typical, general,
and conventional aspects of the kenning (^Heusler 137; ^Hallberg 109; von See/
Weber 1971:1481; Gardner 1972:466) has encouraged any old kennings for those
in the original
repeated a circumlocution
word
translators to substitute
(Genzmer 1943:7). Yet
for word, his
own
the skald rarely
(Kuhn
or anyone else’s
1983:221). This century has added to the functions -of the kenning verbal play
(Wolff 1923:219; Einar 01. Sveinsson 1947; Gabrieli 1962:17; Stefan Einarsson
1963-64; Gutenbrunner 1963b), magic (Lie 1952; Schwartz 1955-56), and the allusive techniques of panegyric (Mittner 1955:13; Lie 1963:379; von See 1964:9). Different types of kennings have been distinguished by
(Rosenberg 1878; Hoffmann 1883; Meyer 1889:156; Falk 1923;
GuSmundur Finnbogason 1934-35; Einar
many Mohr
critics
1933;
01. Sveinsson 1947; Mittner 1951;
Hallberg 1962, 1978b; Fidjestpl 1974, 1979b; Spamer 1977; Steblin-Kamenskij
1979:69-72); the most recent systematization comes up with some thirty-three separate varieties (Marold 1983). Although
we
think
we can
discover what
may have meant by the term (Heusler 1922:127; Brodeur 1983:25), we do not agree on what we mean.
Snorri
There have been exceedingly few changes
in the constitution
1952; Marold
of poetic units
many changes
since the publication of Finnur Jonsson’s edition, although
are
needed. There have been even fewer corrections of Finnur’ s authorial ascriptions, although several
and
at least
one
poems
are assigned
to
to three. ^ Finnur’ s dating of the verse is
although to do so requires a leap of
We
by the sagas
two still
different authors
largely accepted,
faith.
hesitate (or should hesitate) to speak of unity in connection with
poems
number and ordering of stanzas is uncertain (Vestlund 1929). It has been suggested that numeric symbolism underlies the structure of certain late Christian drdpur (Hill 1970; Tate 1978), while some of the longer secular poems composed between the tenth and the twelfth centuries seem to be built as sewhose
original
quences of paired stanzas (Holtsmark 1927a; Jon Helgason/Holtsmark 1941;
Olsen 1944; Fidjestpl 1982:71-80). Similar echoic structures have been detected
and sensitively used
in recent studies to reunite the scattered
fragments of longer
poems (von See 1960; Olafur Halldorsson 1969; Poole 1975, 1981, 1982). Any concerted attempts to improve the transmitted texts on the basis of metrical or aesthetic principles rituals
have tended
to dissolve into name-calling
and other agonistic
(Kuhn 1934a, 1934b, 1936, 1937; Kock 1923-44, 1938).
dependence of the standard ning index
text edition, standard dictionary,
— combined with
If the
mutual
and standard ken-
the circularity of using the Finnur Jonsson chro-
nology as the basis for our conclusions on linguistic dating
— has
not been con-
ducive to progress, neither have the feuds of the leading scholars in the
field.
Gunnlaugr and Kormakr are rivals for one stanza, Eyvindr skaldaspillir and Porgeirr hpggvinand Sighvatr has to contend with Ottarr svarti and Bersi Skaldtorfuson for a third; although Finnur Jonsson assigns Glymdrdpa to Porbjgm homklofi, the claims of Pj6661fr of Hvin seem at least as strong. See Jon Helgason 1953:143; Poole 1975:37. Bjami Kolbeinsson may or may not have composed the anonymous Mdlshdttakvsedi. See Holtsmark 1937. 4.
kinni for another,
Skaldic Poetry
/ ^
165
modem
Snorri Sturluson provided
skaldic scholarship with most of
nology and principles of analysis and interpretation.
It is
its
termi-
because of him and his
Icelandic disciples that the study of skaldic verse kept an impressive lead over that
of other European vernacular poetries
down
seventeenth century, Porlakur Skulason sent a
still
to at least 1850. In the early
useful introductory treatise
on
Worm, who gave it wide circulation;^ Sveinbjom Egilsson’s Lexicon Poeticum was completed many years before the appearance of its Old skaldic verse to Ole
and the publication of Gu5brandur Vigfusson’s two- volume
English rival
Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883) was greeted with not a little envy in Britain: “Let us hope that his example will soon be followed in our own country, and that
some new Grimm or Kemble may gather
in a store-house like this the scattered
fragments of our oldest English literature.’’^ In the
last
hundred years, the tables
have been turned: the study of Old English poetry has made remarkable progress, but skaldic research has almost stood
A
survey of
active
modem
skaldic scholarship might start with Finnur Jonsson,
from the 1890s on,
represented a
new
son, leaned heavily
of Snorra Edda.
still.
if
such a point of departure did not suggest that he
approach. He, like his distinguished teacher, Konra6 Gisla-
upon
When
Snorri; almost all his notions can be traced to the author his
methodology
differs in
any way
— when he — he appears as
ranges the words of a stanza in prose order before translating justify his practice
by inventing a (phantom) precedent
in Snorri
ar-
to
(1904-5:44-
45).
was to isolate recognizable kennings the kenning types listed and explained by Snorri. This procedure usually resulted in a skewed, highly artificial word order. In 1923, the Swedish Finnur’ s
first
step in unraveling a skaldic verse
—
Germanist E. A. Kock launched a twenty-year onslaught against Finnur Jonsson I
^ and the Icelandic school. In a long series of vituperative textual notes
some 3,428 V
—
there are
separate items up to 1941 collected in Notationes Norroenae
— Kock
was not so unnatural as Finnur Jonsson made it seem; he also campaigned for as few manuscript emendations as possible and recommended pointedly that difficult words in the verse not be explicated solely on the basis of West Norse usage. It was a great flyting (“a stylized exchange insisted that skaldic syntax
—
—
between hostile speakers of and curses
—
traditional provocations
—
insults, boasts, threats,
Counhad changed. The
typically organized in the basic pattern Claim, Denial, and
when it was all over little much a grand Hegelian synthesis
terclaim” [Clover 1979:125]), but result
5.
of the quarrel was not so
“Literarum Runicarum
in
Poesi
usum
uberius declarans” in Ole
as a draw:
Worm, Runir seu Danica Danorum Poesi Dissertatio
Cui accessit de prised (Copenhagen: Martzan, 1636), pp. 176-84. Other issues are Amsterdam: Janson, 1636; Copenhagen: Holst, 1636. Another issue or edition in Ole Worm, Antiquitates Danicae (Copenhagen: Martzan [& Holst], 1650-51). 6. Christian W. M. Grein, Sprachschatz der angelsdchsischen Dichter (Kassel, etc.: G. H. Literatura Antiquissima, vulgd Gothica dicta
.
.
.
Wigand, 1861-64). 7.
Charles
I.
Elton in The Academy, 600 (November 3, 1883), 291-92.
Roberta Frank
166
sometimes Finnur Jonsson, following Snorri’s lead, seems to have the better despite his fixation on the “natural” interpretation; sometimes Kock, who
—
observed from the number of emendations required just where Finnur was in trouble and rushed in with first aid. Konstantin Reichardt attempted to raise the
and to reach solid ground by establishing
level of discourse
the rules of skaldic syntax (1928);
Kuhn’s
first
statistically
some of
publication on skaldic verse
attacked Reichardt for methodological looseness (1929); the latter had ignored
meter to his
number of
Kuhn himself over
peril.
subtle, provocative,
mostly metrical and syntactical
(1923-44: 2902 A). The
lists
the last fifty-five years has presented a
and important revelations about skaldic verse,
— what Kock intemperately
drawn up by Kuhn
inventory of every verse in Finnur Jonsson ’s
called lilleputtregler
1920s
in the
—
his line-by-line
volume (1912),
first
according to Sievers’s metrical types and other criteria
— continue
(Kuhn 1983). Yet Kuhn has never laws or the ways in which they relate
classified to yield a
harvest of precious facts
really explored the
implications of his
to lexical tensions
within the verse.
A
passionate search for system, for regularity, for stability, can induce an
allergy to change.
The old order (ca.
is
a history of decay.
seen as threatened from the very beginning: Porbjgm homklofi
is
900) brings the drottkvaett form to completion only by distancing
further
most
For Kuhn, the history of skaldic verse
from
“Germanic roots” (1983:281-83, 343); Sighvatr
its
prolific of the early skalds,
two
did not treat the
even
(ca. 1025), the
cannot get anything right (1983:301-5). Skalds
parts of the old alliterative long line alike
into a syllable-counting couplet, with the result that lines of a skaldic stanza
it
do not work
when
Kuhn’s
they turned
rules for the
it
odd
for the even, a result he finds disturbing
rather than suggestive (1983:24, 105, 160).
The
history of the English sonnet,
ode, or limerick shows that the technical problems facing a poet are very different in stichic and strophic composition; in the skaldic stanza,
were continually adapting
to
each other
metrical innovations highlighted
until the
form
by Kuhn went hand
in
itself
form and sense had meaning. The
hand with semantic ones.
A by-product of the Finnur Jonsson/Kock fight was an ultimately inconclusive / spat over the existence of tmesis and half-kennings. Tmesis
compound and
\
the separation of
its
the skald Fj6561fr, for example,
sandwiched a reference
iunnr." Finnur Jonsson needed many such divisions 'and rejected /
(
I
to
to I5unn’s abductors
— among
make
Genzmer, a supporter of Kock, went even all
the splitting of a
parts with a grammatically unnatural result;
between the two syllables of her name: “Then was Id (1933); Felix
is
the giants
sense of the poetry
further than his
mentor
tmesis (1928); Reichardt steadfastly maintained that some,
though not much, tmesis occurs
in skaldic
composition (1962, 1969); examples
of the device in Old Irish and medieval Latin have recently been assembled by Frederic
Amory
kenning, a kind of skaldic shorthand in represented by
more negative view of the halfwhich a two-part circumlocution is
(1979). Reichardt took a far
its
baseword alone
(e.g.,
‘storm’ for ‘storm of the warrior’
=
Skaldic Poetry
167
he claimed that there were only two certain examples between the ninth
battle);
and twelfth centuries (1930). His assertion was received as gospel by Wolfgang
Krause (1930:8, 14) and Kock (1923-44: §§1904- 13) only to be effectively challenged by Kuhn (1934b:416), who still bars half-kennings from court poetry (1983:223).
The ^
history of skaldic scholarship
from Snorri down
to the great skaldicists of
deny the interplay of the three systems at work in the verse: the metrical, lexical, and syntactical; each scholar isolated one level, trying to make its workings seem logical and consistent and its way of ordering the only sound one. The indeterminacy that results when two or more of the levels pull in opposite directions is illustrated by a halfthe last fifty years can be seen as a series of attempts to
stanza in Einarr skalaglamm’s Vellekla, the
first line
of which
may
may
or
not
exhibit tripartition, a division into three syntactically independent segments
C Skjaldedigtning
BI: 118):
Mart var6
el
a6r Ala
austr Ignd at
mun banda
randar lauks af
rfki
roekilundr of toeki.
^
According to Snorri {Haralds saga grdfeldar, ch. 6 [IF 26:210]), Einarr’s quatrain {Vellekla 9) is one of several in that poem relating the battles of Earl
Hakon
against the sons of Gunnhildr, battles that culminated in the earl’s con-
tinued hold on Trondheim.
many as
it
The general sense of
the verse
a battle before the warrior seized lands.” If
comes, segment by segment,
“Mart var5 toeki”
el
a5r
(“Many
.
.
austr Ignd at
.
a storm
italicizing the
we
is
clear:
take each line of the verse
kenning for warrior,
mun banda randar lauks af rfki
became before ...
“There was
in the east, lands, in
we
get:
roekilundr of
accordance with
the will of the gods, the shield's leek’s with strength heeding-grove took”).
Roekilundr ‘heeding-grove’ laukr ‘shield’s leek’
a normal baseword in warrior kennings; randar
{= sword)
sword’s heeding-grove
common baseword
is
=
is
a recognizable definer in such kennings; the
Hakon. ^ El ‘storm, snowstorm’ is a kennings and Snorri cites several examples of the
warrior, here
in battle
type; ‘storm’ continues the
imagery of the two preceding stanzas of Vellekla
which Ggndlar vedr ‘gale of the valkyrie’ of the valkyrie’
storm
.
.
.
=
battle.
The stanza
=
battle,
and odda
as explicated reads:
vifs drifa
in
‘snowfall
“There was many
a
before the warrior took with strength lands in the east in accordance X
with the will of the gods.” The only word singular of the sea-king
name
still
needing a
home
is
Ala, genitive
Ali.
Finnur Jonsson and his predecessors
in the Icelandic
—
school interpreted Ala el
randfdrs reykilundr ‘heeding-grove of the Snorri finds an almost identical warrior kenning sword’ in a stanza by HallfreSr, Einarr’s near contemporary: Skdldskaparmdl in ^Snorra Edda, p. 8.
147
.
—
Roberta Frank
168
parallels in the early poetry.
divides the Ala)\ the
battle)
The only problem with such
with numerous
a reading
is
of the half-stanza into three segments {Mart vard
first line
two
=
kenning (storm of the sea-king
as a typical skaldic
parts of the warrior
and the definer Ala
that
e7,
it
ddr,
kenning are separated by the conjunction ddr,
positioned awkwardly within the following subordinate
is
Kock could be counted on to come to the rescue of oppressed syntax (1923-44:§396, §1827). He argued, and Ivar Lindquist followed him (1929:49),
clause.
that el alone
contiguous
could stand for the storm of battle and that Ala belonged with the
compound
austrlgnd; the sea-king’s eastlands
= Norway
the kenning system ‘land of the sea-king’ should designate a as the Baltic).
The word order
is
now completely
(although
body of water, such
natural and prosaic, but in order
y
to
achieve this goal a habitual collocation {Ala
circumlocution put in
its
place.
first line
atypical
Kock’s interpretation has both the advantage and
the disadvantage of not being the
Reichardt took the
was dismantled and an
el)
way
Snorri understood the stanza.
of Vellekla 9 as a confirmed case of tripartition
(1928:154), thereby avoiding the reduction of el to half-kenning status (his particular bete noire). that posits a phrasal
A
year later Kuhn, out of loyalty to his Zdsurgesetz (a law
boundary between the two
a skaldic verse and
alliterative lifts in the
between the rhyming syllables
odd
line
of
denied the
in all lines),
existence of a three-way division here and in every other odd line of the corpus
(1929:200-202) except line
in Sievers’s
Type A1 (1983:169). The caesura
of Einarr’s quatrain comes between el and ddr; since the
proclitic to a
word
in another clause,
Ala and
must separate. Kuhn,
el
to
el a
half-kenning for battle; he attaches Ala not to
randar lauks: the sea-king’s shield’s leek
overdefined kenning
is
possible but
=
cannot be
Kock, austrlgnd, however, but
y
makes
latter
in the first
like
sword. This kind of pleonastic or
uncommon
in early skaldic verse; the result-
word order is no more natural than Finnur Jonsson’s, but from the perspective of Kuhn’s Zdsurgesetz, whose existence Hollander denies (1953) and von ing
See upholds (1967:43-44, 1980a:30-31), Einarr’s stanza invited alternative,
which interpretation
if
well at
all is
last.
not conflicting, readings;
we have no
word order seem to vie with one another for supremacy. Perhaps Finnur Jonsson was nght to support a conventional kenning {Ala el), even if it meant playing fast and loose with normal syntax; perhaps Kock’s natural word order {Ala austrlgnd) should be allowed to triumph over traditional diction; perhaps Kuhn’s horror of
certainty as to
tripartition is as
are
we
is
preferable. Kennings, syntax, and
poorly grounded as Reichardt’ s distaste for half-kennings.
And
obliged to choose only one reading? Elsewhere in skaldic verse terms
appealing Just once participate in multiple propositions; perhaps Ala should be construed simultaneously with triple
We IS
all
three nouns
{el,
austrlgnd, and rgnd) in a
apo koinou construction. are not really sure
often
assumed
what we mean when we
call a
that in circumlocutions such as “Ali’s
kenning conventional.
storm” or
‘‘Ali’s
It
land” y
or ‘‘tree of Ali’s
sword”
the skald
may
substitute
any sea-king name for Ali
Skaldic Poetry
169
without the slightest change in sense. This
is
right or
wrong, depending on what
one takes as the sense. In stanza 10 of Vellekla, Hakon
is
called “the guardian of
waves,” a kenning for sea-king in which the name of Ali’s steed (Hrafn) stands for “horse.” The kennings of the two adjacent half-stanzas inA teranimate each other, urging the figures of Ali and Hakon, the legendary hero and the contemporary ruler, to do the same. The skald views the present through the transparency of what has gone before and finds it meaningful to the extent that it repeats some exemplary pattern from the past; replace Ali in stanza 9 with any other sea-king name and the harmony is lost. Such congruity seems to have been highly prized, at least some of the time by some of the skalds. Even thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poets worked hard to interlace two distinct pictures by means of kennings: in one stanza, the movement of a snake sloughing off its skin and slithering into a pond becomes a sword leaving its scabbard and immersing itself in a man’s blood; in another, the tumultuous cutting down to earth of trees in a forest is the counterpointed image for a haircut or tonsure given to a monk (Gu5mundur Finnbogason 1934-35; Wood 1958). If we do not concentrate on the nouns of Einarr’s quatrain but look, instead, at the adverbial phrases, we encounter more indecidables. Should we construe at mun banda and of nki not with toeki but, as Finnur Jonsson once suggested (1924:321-22), with the main clause {vard)l Should we not construe them with both clauses simultaneously? Blended syntax, the poet’s escape from the linear, temporally ordered bonds of prose, is characteristic of skaldic style. There is a quatrain by Egill, Einarr’s older contemporary, consisting of two bare sentences (he went, he fell) and a name, an adverb, an adverbial clause, and a relative
the horses of the
clause that can be grammatically construed with either (Frank 1978:52-54). In
some
words seem urged into place, drawn together into a logical structure like iron filings above a hidden magnet; there is only one solution, as in a Rubik’s cube. In other stanzas, the underlying structure seems more flexible, more manipulable; several equally valid interpretations appear possible and enskaldic stanzas,
couraged, as in a Rubik’s snake.
The
precise placement of a
word or phrase within
a skaldic stanza might have a
own, might encapsulate the poet’s meaning. The insertion of of nki in line 3 of Einarr’s quatrain between the two halves of the warrior may announce through conkenning ‘shield’s leek’ and ‘heeding-grove’ tiguity how closely Hakon’s strength was tied to the sword; the careful balancing of Ignd and banda in line 2 seems to confirm that Hakon ruled Norway by divine significance of
its
—
right.
—
Multiple and shifting associations like these are a hallmark of skaldic
aesthetics. Despite efforts
over the
last fifty
and lexical laws, no single rule seems certainty
is
that the dislocation of
to
years to legislate a set of syntactical
work
language
for all the poetry.
Our one
in skaldic verse brings out the
man. Where man locates meaning, however, varies considerably from age
meaning-maker
in
to age.
Snorri and the thirteenth century found significance in the concrete details con-
Roberta Frank
170
who
firmed by the stanzas: facts that
make
—
fought
a story authoritative
whom, when and where and how all the and memorable. Skaldicists have known for
a long time that saga authors did not always fully understand the verses from
which they derived of just
their information;
how and why
Most
we have
recently
become more conscious
they erred.
frequently, a kenning or kenning element
(Holtsmark 1939). Because the author of Agrip
noun skeidarbrandr ‘prow of the
ship’ in an
is
misread as a proper name
(ca.
compound the name and
1190) read the
anonymous stanza
as
epithet of a sea-king called Ship-Brandr, the second chapter of his history in-
The euhemeristic determination of Snorri and his predecessors to uncover meaning in “old kennings’’ may have led to a similar proliferation of phantom figures and to stories lending them legitimacy (Frank 1981a). Concentration on the literal level of the poetry occasionally leads a saga author to ignore its more important symbolic meaning. A couplet in Gisla saga describes the encounter between two cludes a brief reference to the battles and death of this (ghost) ruler. ^
weapons female
in
role:
sexual terms, with one of the pair depicted as enjoying the passive
“Gunnlogi cried
out, a joy
it
was
to Saxa’’; the
saga author, missing
or wishing to miss the barb, decided that the female appellation must be that of the island
on which the duel took place: a
local habitation received a
name
at the
expense of a significant double entendre (Meulengracht Sprensen 1980:72-75).
Sometimes
in his
eagerness to
wrong: Snorri misreads ddr
in
tell
a
good
story the saga author gets his syntax
one stanza of Glymdrdpa as the adverb “earlier”
rather than the conjunction “before,” with the result that, in his account of the
attack of Haraldr harfagri (Harald Fairhair), the Isle of tants without a single spear
Man
is
emptied of inhabi-
being thrown (von See 1977a:68).
Saga authors also have a tendency
to
miss the skald’s
stylistic
shorthand; they
take his metaphors and kennings literally, interpreting poetic allusions in an
overly explicit way.
The tenth-century poet Kormakr
necklaced lady staring
at
him,
at his
depicts in one stanza his
“Hagbar5r’s neck.” The saga author,
treating the latter phrase as a local reference, explains in excruciating detail
the
woman
how
hid in the farmhouse behind a partition adorned with a carving of
Hagbar6r and peered
at the
poet from beneath
its
sculptured beard (Kormdks
A
saga, chap. 3 [IF, 8:208]; von See 1977a:63); but the poet obliquely and ominously
—
his
own
was just associating
lifelong fatal love with that of the legendary
hero hanged on the gallows: “Hagbar5r’s neck” was his Achilles’ heel.
One
of the more remarkable practices attributed to the vikings in England
be a by-product
at
some
may
stage of just such a literal reading. Historians of the
period continue to demonstrate a touching faith in the reality of something called the blood-eagle sacrifice, a viking
a
number of later Norse sources.
method of execution attested to in Saxo and in The blood-eagling procedure varies from text
kgrip afNoregs konunga sggum, ed. Finnur Jonsson, ASB, 18 (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1929),
9. p. 2.
10.
ed.
^Saxo,
p.
263
(9:5);
Ragnars saga, chap.
Magnus Olsen, SUGNL, 36 (Copenhagen:
17, in
Vglsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loSbrokar, Ragnars sonum,
S. L. Mpller, 1906-8); Pdttr af
Skaldic Poetry
171
becoming more lurid, pagan, and time-consuming with each passing century. The only contemporary evidence for the rite is a half-stanza composed } between 1025 and 1038 by the skald Sighvatr and cited in one manuscript of Ragnars saga and in the Hauksbok redaction known as the Pdttr af Ragnars sonum. In both, the accompanying prose explains, Ragnarr’s sons “had a bloodeagle carved on Ella’s back, and afterward they cut all the ribs from the spine with a sword so that the lungs were there pulled out. Thus says the skald Sighvatr in Knutsdrdpa" to text,
^
‘
Ok
Ellu bak,
at let hinn’s sat,
Ivarr, ara,
lorvik, skorit. A
(And
who
Ivarr
dwelt
at
York
had Ella’s back scored with (or by) an eagle.)
Medieval
men
of
letters, like their
eager to recover the colorful Ella’s
rites
modem
counterparts, were sometimes over-
and leafy folk beliefs of
their
pagan ancestors.
back may have been incised with the picture of an eagle, but
likely to
have been lacerated by a
real one.
verse, looking at Sighvatr’ s stanza in isolation
trouble seeing
it
An
it is
more
experienced reader of skaldic
from
its
saga context, would have
as anything but a conventional utterance, an allusion to the eagle
as carrion beast, the pale bird with red claws perched
on and slashing the backs
of the slain. Skaldic poems of the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries refer
chap. 3, in Hauksbok, ed. Eirikur Jonsson and Finnur Jonsson (Copenhagen: Thiele, 1892-96), pp. 458-67; both Ragnarr texts may be consulted in F ornaldarsdgur Nordurlanda, ed. Gu6ni Jonsson ([Reykjavik]: Islendingasagnautgafan, 1954), i:219-303j Orkneyinga saga, chap. 8, in IF, 34:1220; Haralds saga hdrfagra, chaps. 30-31, in IF, 26:131-34. Norna-Gests pdttr, chap. 6, and Orms pdttr Storolfssonar, chap. 9, are (along with one of the five redactions of Orkneyinga saga) in Flateyjarbdk, ed. Vilhjalmur Bjamar, Finnbogi GuSmundsson, and SigurSur Nordal, 4 vols. (Akranes: Flateyjarutgafan, 1944-45). Reginsmdl 26 may be consulted in ^Neckel/Kuhn, p. 179, and in Norna-Gests pdttr (in Fornaldarsogur Nordurlanda, i:305-35). This eddic stanza, which contradicts the immediately preceding prose, is believed by most Nordicists to be a late addition: see Kuhn, “Das Eddastiick von Sigurds Jugend,” Miscellanea Academica Berolinensia: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Feier des 250jdhrigen Bestehens der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1950), ii, no. 1, 39-40 (rpt. in ^Kuhn, ii:96); ^de Vries 1941-42
(1964-67), 1:297-98. For a survey of recent opinions on Sigurd’s “Vaterrachelied,” see Andersson 1980:89-105. 11.
By
the beginning of the nineteenth century, the various saga motifs
— eagle
sketch, rib
and salting— were combined in inventive sequences. Among numerous accounts is Sharon Turner, The History of the Anglo-Saxons (London, 1799-1805; 7th ed., 1852), i: 439. The rite continues to grow: see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Vikings in Francia, Stenton Lecture (Reading: Univ. of Reading, 1974); rpt. in his Early Medieval History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), p. division, lung surgery,
224.
For the prose accompanying the stanza in saga and pdttr, see Rory W. McTurk, “The Extant Icelandic Manifestations of Ragnars Saga LoSbrokar,’’ Gripla, 1:74-75. 12.
Roberta Frank
172
more than once
to
men
with bloody foot tread Ottarr will
under the eagle’s talons: Pj6661fr has an eagle
falling at
Vendel; Torf-Einarr muses over whose “lot
be to stand under the eagle’s claws”; Porleifr
eagle’s claw”;
Amorr
has
Magnus vow
under the raven’s claw; and Saxo’s prose swearing
to
“stretch
flat
that
at the
fells a
it
warrior “under the
he will possess Denmark or
fall
end of the century envisages Grep
The
with eagles’ talons this line of newcomers.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (under year 867) reports that Ella fell in battle against the vikings at York; Sighvatr says the same and more through his metaphoric shorthand, which scornfully demotes the king slain by Ivarr to the rank of prey,
(Frank 1984).
to a mutilated carcass
Skaldic verse
as the thirteenth century well
is,
source, transmitting a
y
Germanic
literature;
more authentic pagan
modem
knew, an invaluable primary
tradition than anything in the rest of
skaldic scholarship recognizes
its
historical value
Campbell 1971; Foote 1978; Peters 1978; Hallberg 1978a; von See 1979; Hellberg 1980; Frank 1981b), while insisting that it is, above all, poetry (Turville-Petre 1969a, 1969b, 1974). Sighvatr’s (Turville-Petre 1968; Jon Steffensen 1969;
indirection
is
not unlike Shakespeare’s:
Let us score their backs.
And
snatch ’em up, as
’Tis sport to
maul
we
take hares, behind,
a runner.
Nevertheless, the content of his stanza was paraphrased by
at least
teenth-century au^^hors as step-by-step instmctions for lung surgery.
Scandinavian story (von See 1961). Similar misreadings,
our
almost
all
duly supported by
and thirteenth-century prose narratives, by current skaldic editions,
ary histories, and reference tools, and by in
An
thir-
development has been traced for the berserk or heathen champion of
identical
twelfth-
two
texts.
modem
historical scholarship,
liter-
abound
Such discrepancies between verse and prose can be informative
in
two ways: they suggest in many instances that the verse is older than the surrounding prose; and they force us at the same time to consider how a single stanza like Sighvatr’s could have survived intact for a century or more before being written down. /
Much
of the scholarship of the
last fifty
years has been expended on attacking
I
or supporting Finnur Jonsson’s faith, expressed above
\
in the
history,
realism and authenticity of the verse; he insisted (although his articles
more balanced view) that tenth-century skalds were as early present a
I
all in his literary
the
poems
attributed
by the sagas
to ninth- or
as they purported to be. His fundamentalist
approach has engendered a strong reaction. Today almost none of the verse 13.
The following references
are to
poem and
stanza
number
in
Finnur Jonsson’s ^Skjalde-
digtning: PjoSolfr of Hvin, 1:19; Torf-Einarr, lausavi'sa 4; Forleifr jarlsskald, lausavisa 2;
F>6r6arson, 3:5. Grep’s boast occurs in
Book
5 of ^Saxo, p.
History of the Danes, tr. Peter Fisher (Totowa, N.J.: 14. Antony and Cleopatra, iv.vii.l2.
1
14; English
Rowman &
in the
tr.
Amorr
Saxo Grammaticus:
Littlefield, 1979), i:128.
— Skaldic Poetry
family sagas
173
is
(
credence, for
considered secure; poetry in the kings’ sagas
still
commands
has not yet seemed likely that these verses are fabrications,
it
falsely attributed to the early skalds.
Several scholars have argued that at least sagas
may be
the
work of
some of
the verses in the family
the saga authors themselves (Bjorn
M. Olsen
1911;
Bjami Einarsson 1961, 1982; Magerpy 1973). Supporters of this view point to late forms in some of the stanzas and to the fact that verse in the family sagas, unlike that in the kings’ sagas, seems part of the story, entertainment rather than evidence (Wolf 1965); they contend that the contradictions between poetry and prose are usually only apparent and any that are not are to be explained as authorial design
(Bjami Einarsson 1974). This approach
some of the verses
some of the
in
is
certain to be valid for
sagas. But attempts to distinguish genuine
from
spurious stanzas on the basis of the roles they play in the sagas are fraught with uncertainties (the
same poem can be
the next); and although
whole,
all
too often
—
it
may be
cited as evidence in
one
text
and as wit
in
desirable to view verse and prose as an organic
as with the stanzas of
Kormakr and Sighvatr cited above
meaning and artistry of the poetry have been obscured by their prose context. Another approach has been to consider the verse in the sagas as the creation of someone who lived after the time of the skald to whom it is attributed but before the time the saga was written (de Vries 1959). For when there are marked discrepancies between prose and verse, and when there appears to be evidence that the prose is based on the verse, the probability is that the same man did not compose both. This was the case with the anonymous quatrain cited by Agrip (ca. 1190) that described how Haraldr harfagri drove one Ship-Brandr out of Norway. That the stanza is older than the late twelfth century, however, does not the
[
mean
that
it
has to be as old as
its late
ninth-century subject.
The
collocation
rhyme with land) is identical to that in a stanza composed around 1056 by Amorr jarlaskald; more important, the metrical type exhibited in skeidar brandr (and
line 3
its
of the quatrain seems not to occur before 1015 and appears most frequently
in the poetry
of mid-eleventh-century skalds (Kuhn 1969b).
Still,
the author of
Agrip must not be charged with the labor either of invention or misattribution. He
may have been
fully
aware
that
he was quoting from a mid-eleventh- or early
twelfth-century drdpa that related the deeds of the early kings of Norway; the
very anonymity of the citation might have signaled noncontemporaneity to his audience.
It is
we who
are at fault
—
in
our editions and
in
our literary histories
for placing the stanza so firmly in the oldest stratum of the corpus.
/
numerous individual cases that some of the poetry attributed by the authors of the family sagas to well-known tenthand eleventh-century skalds was actually composed in the twelfth century, when verse may have been needed to embellish and authenticate tales told about Icelanders of an earlier time (Bjorn K. Porolfsson 1943:v-xii; Turville-Petre Recent scholarship has demonstrated
in
Gordon 1961; Foote 1963; Olafur Halldorsson 1969; Poole 1975, 1981). The terminus ad quern for these datings is established by the saga authors’ 1944;
Roberta Frank
174
apparent misunderstandings of the stanzas, the terminus a quo by kennings and
grammatical forms that have reliable parallels only
who
flourished after 1100.
The use of
historical
in the
compositions of skalds
evidence to date the poetry
is
seldom convincing. The factual accuracy of supposedly early court poetry can be determined only by testing
its
information against that of independent sources,
and such sources are rarely available (A. Bugge 1910; Campbell 1971; Sigrun Davi5sd6ttir 1979; Poole 1980). History poetry, but skaldic verse can
tell
us
may
little
help us to understand Norse court
about history that
we
did not already
know.
No
single theory
seems able
to account for all the poetry in
Instead of one Egill, one Hallfre5r, or one
ality in verse
we
will
have
to
cope with
skald, a twelfth-century forger,
means by which we still
Kormakr exposing
any one saga.
his
unique person-
at least three individuals:
a tenth-century
and a thirteenth-century saga author. Yet the
are to distinguish confidently
between these different layers
elude us.
Philological and metrical criteria are of limited value in dating skaldic verse;
one can point article),
to features in the poetry that are clearly late (such as the suffixed
but there are few early features (such as Einarr’s
full
banda, a correspondence that scholars believe disappeared
rhyme of Ignd and at the
end of the
twelfth century) that could not have been imitated sporadically in later times.
The
presence of loanwords or foreign place names in a form that suggests they were
we
are
dealing with probability in such instances rather than with proof (Fell 1981).
An
borrowed
in
an earlier century
is
often taken as a sign of authenticity; yet
Byzantium or find doom deeper than any sea-dingle for reasons that have little to do with his century. Datable forms are useless unless they can be guaranteed on metrical grounds; English poet
may
sail to
the suffixed definite article
Among
is
usually only the result of scribal modernization.
amassed by Dietrich Hofmann (1973) against Jon Helgason’s move (1969) to put EgilFs Hgfudlausn in the twelfth century, perhaps the most compelling was the skald’s use of the independent form figl ‘many.’ On the basis of Craigie’s law (1900) and Kuhn’s demonstration of its workings in the arguments
the ninth through twelfth centuries (1937:55-56), that /ip/ occurs
The
Hofmann was
able to
show
only in poetry composed before the beginning of the eleventh
Hgfudlausn because demanded by the rhyme; all other tenth-century occurrences were changed by later scribes to the more familiar figld and must now be emended metri causa. century.
correct
form survived unaltered
in
Even when meter guarantees a late form, inauthenticity is not proven beyond a doubt. Snorri was optimistic that stanzas could not be altered if they were from the outset metrically correct, yet there are a number of skaldic poems in which the sense can be changed by incorporating variant readings that do not affect the meter. Verses could always be slightly modified, improved, and brought up to date both in oral and written transmission. A single stanza attributed to two
Skaldic Poetry different poets
175
and cited
in
two
different sagas could
end up with completely
and rhyme schemes (Jon Helgason 1953:107-8; Dronke 1981: 65-72; Fidjestpl 1982:61-70). Fundamentalists like Finnur Jonsson support the different verses
genuineness of doubtful stanzas by declaring
presence of
that, despite the
late
forms, they could be as old as the saga claims they are (1912). Radical skeptics
Bjami Einarsson argue that nothing but wishful thinking keeps us from making many stanzas coeval with the saga authors; early forms, few and far
like
between, are to be disregarded, for thirteenth-century practitioners were more than capable of employing an occasional archaism, as the grammatical literature bears witness (1961). Einar Ol. Sveinsson objected on the grounds that a thir-
was
employ
was not linguist enough to manufacture archaic forms consistently (1966). Bjami Einarsson responded that invention was not the issue; a skald could imitate the old-fashioned words teenth-century poet
and forms that he found
free to
in the verse
poetic license but
of his predecessors (1971). Early daters and
agree on only one thing: the burden of proof rests on the other fellow.
late da'ters
We know
very
little
about the transmission of skaldic verse. The sagas and
recent excavations in Bergen reveal that skaldic verse could be recorded in letters /
V
on
period
sticks (Liestpl et al. 1962).
still
The only
drottkvdett stanza
from the pagan
surviving in a contemporary inscription was carved in
1000 on the Karlevi Stone
in
may
Oland. Such practices
an important role in the transmission of the verse that has in this century several half-stanzas
were rewritten
mnic
mnes around
may not have played come down to us. Early or
in tenth-century
mnes; each
mnic letters (Olsen 1916). Doubts have recently been cast on the methodology employed and on the magic interpretation of the results (Morgenroth 1961). The first extensive skaldic compositions to be recorded in the Latin alphabet are thought to have been the long Christian poems of required exactly seventy-two
the twelfth century.
Yet skalds were exposed
to Latin letters long before the
would in some ways second code, making it more perma-
twelfth century; the very art of fixing their poetry in writing
have been equivalent to masking
it
under a
nent and unbreakable. Writing itself
may have
played a larger part than
is
now
recognized in the process of skaldic transmission (Bjami Gu5nason 1976),
al-
though no one has yet posited the existence of early secular poetic codices, skaldic precursors to the eddic anthologies.
Skaldic verse, orally literary
composed and
phenomenon than
transmitted,
the written sagas,
where a
is
in
many ways
later version
unique, and stable. fluid; the different
the stanzas
seem
bound forms:
poem on
relatively fixed, codified,
The prose surrounding them, however,
is
extraordinarily
saga accounts of the incident thought to be authenticated by
in their shifting perspectives to serve as touchstones for the
regulation of oral speculation, not as permanent fixatives.
sonum, witness
more
can easily wipe
out an earlier one. Sighvatr’s quatrain on Ella’s death and Torf-Einarr’s the death of his father’s slayer are
a
to the blood-eagle rite visited
on
Ella,
The Pdttr afRagnars
gave a highly sensational
Roberta Frank
176
were tom from the spine and
report of the event unrelated to the cited stanza: ribs
lungs pulled out so that the corpse resembled a spread-eagle.^^
The compiler of
Ragnars saga in NKS 1824b 4to and Saxo (ca. 1200) had merely envisaged someone’s scratching a picture of an eagle upon Ella’s back; the saga has a woodcarver sketch the design; Saxo’s version adds salt to the wound. In depicting Torf-Einarr’s revenge, Orkney inga saga (ca. 1190-1220) gives a surgical description of the blood-eagle rite
was intended
as an offering to
ceremony, adding the information
Odin
for victory.
that the
Three of the five manuscripts
of the saga allow Torf-Einarr to perform the vivisection himself; two tone the incident, letting the jarl delegate the task.^^
When
Snorri related the incident
Haralds saga hdrfagra (chap. 30), he eliminated the reference noticed what the compilers of Orkneyinga saga and Fagrskinna had
to
in
of Einarr’s
poem
down
Odin and
not: stanza 3
reported that his father’s slayer had not died by torture but
before a shower of spears;
it
was only afterward
fell
“the grey eagle flew to the
that
X
wounds” (IF, 26:132; von See 1960). Snorri had a problem. The blood-eagle torture was too established an element in Einarr’s revenge to be eliminated; the author of Snorra Edda was not one to rewrite a skaldic stanza to support current views, nor would he wish to leave an obvious contradiction in his text for
someone
stanza, and he did just that, even though
it
and depriving a supposedly reliable ninth-century source of
tradition integrity. stability
was to discard the offending meant canonizing a late popular
else to catch. His only remaining option
No
matter
how
its
literary
often and eloquently Snorri claims to have prized the
and tmstworthiness of skaldic verse, he seems here to have honored the
flux of oral story more.
The uneasy
relationship
subject of speculation.
between verse and prose
Gu6brandur Vigfusson,
in the
sagas has long been a
distressed that stanzas turned out
not to contain information that the surrounding prose had supposedly
them, imagined an extensive revision of the corpus
drawn from
in the twelfth century;
he
blamed Einarr Skulason
for this “leprosy of
vapid phrases, which
us nothing new, are substituted for the rougher original
lines
which once
tell
remaniement”
in
which “smooth
bristled with hard facts” (1883:i:lxxxv). Discrepancies
between
verse and prose indicate at the very least that the two must have passed into or
through tradition separately.
One model of transmission imagines the sagas
coming
the conglomeration of verse and prose in
into existence shortly after the verse
was composed; each
Ragnars sonum in Fornaldarsdgur Nordurlanda, i:298. 16. Ragnars saga lodbrokar in Fornaldarsdgur Nordurlanda, i;278, tr. Margaret Schlauch, The Saga of the Volsungs, the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, Together with the Lay of Kraka (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930), p. 250. ^Saxo, p. 263 (9:5); English tr. i:292. 17. The Orkneyinga Saga, tr. Alexander Burt Taylor (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1958), p. 354, n. 2. Orkneyinga saga, IF 34:13, n. 3. 18. Snorri’s omission of stanza 3 was noted by Felix Genzmer, “Sage und Wirklichkeit in der Geschichte von den ersten Orkadenjarlen,” Historische Zeitschrift, 168 (1943), 516. Torf-Einarr’s five stanzas contain three references to the eagle as carrion bird, a concentration that may have helped 15.
Pdttr af
to attract the
blood-eagle motif into his story.
Skaldic Poetry
177
skaldic stanza quickly
may
became
the kernel of an oral prose anecdote that
may
or
not have correctly interpreted the verse and that subsequently underwent
Hofmann
independent development (Beyschlag 1950, 1953;
1972, 1978-79;
Jonas Kristjansson 1975). Another perspective postpones the joining of verse and prose until the written period, at which time saga authors are thought to have
dismantled extended poems, inserted individual stanzas into their texts, and devised a narrative context for them as need and talent dictated (Poole 1975; von
See 1977a). Neither hypothesis necessitates belief
in the ultimate authenticity
of
the verse; both propose a lengthy period of oral transmission for the earliest strata
of the corpus; and both, in one
way
sion over centuries of the poet’s
approaches seem
The
at
or another, account for the accurate transmis-
name and
the
title
of his poem. The two
base complementary.
model stresses that the single stanza would not have been comprehensible without an accompanying oral commentary; such a commentary is imagined to* form the invisible bedrock of the saga account. The second approach first
insists that the individual stanza
could have survived into the written period as
poem; and, indeed, much fine work has been devoted in reassembling these longer poems out of the individual lausavisur
part of an extended
recent years to
of the family sagas (Holtsmark 1927b, 1928; Krijn 1931, 1935; Olsen 1944;
Gutenbrunner 1955; von See 1960; Gordon 1961; Olafur Halldorsson 1969; Poole 1975, 1981). Members of the “whole poem” school point to the apparently free treatment of skaldic stanzas in the sagas.
More
than one verse
is
provided with different contexts in separate redactions of the same saga, and the
commentary in any real sense but an imaginative reconstruction of how such a verse came to be uttered. ^ The difference between the two models is one of degree. To what extent does the surrounding prose embody a core of oral commentary coeval with the verse? To what extent have developing oral traditions, new narrative needs, and scribal practices so overwhelmed this core that no trace of it remains? The diligence of Icelanders in remembering the past, so praised by Saxo and Theodoricus, must early and often have dug into skaldic verse as the source of authoritative tradition. Historical and mythological speculation based on the poetry would have continued into and throughout the written period. There would have been a accompanying prose
is
often not a
gradual shift in emphasis, however, once saga authors found themselves revising
and trimming written as opposed to oral far
more
stories. It
would quickly have become
desirable and challenging to place individual stanzas in a well-moti-
vated, carefully contoured, citable context than to
mine overworked verse
what everyone already knew. The saga author’s close attention and placement of his stanzas has been explored
the first nine books of
prosimetrum
is
framing
in several valuable studies
(Hruby 1932; Wolf 1965; Clover 1974; Magerpy 1977). A prototype for the characteristic mixture of verse and prose in
to the
for
Saxo has not yet been
located.
in the sagas
and
The Old Norse
usually seen as a native development, reflecting the different
Roberta Frank
178 functions of verse and prose in the storyteller’s art
(Kuhn 1952; Hofmann 1971,
1978-79). But twelfth-century historians like Ordericus Vitalis of
William of Malmesbury
cite Latin epitaphs
narratives, rather as the author of
A
ments.^^
St.
Evroul and
and other topical verse
Agrip incorporated
in their
his seven vernacular frag-
mixture of verse and prose not unlike that in the sagas of poets
(skdldasogur) can be found in the early thirteenth-century Provencal biographies
of the troubadours (vidas) and in the commentaries (razos) to their poems, but no direct indebtedness
can be proven (Reuschel 1961; von See 1978-79, 1980a:89-
92).
Because skaldic verse, cadenced and syllabic, in
I
Germanic, models for
its
is
different
from anything else
metrical structure have been repeatedly sought,
if
not
convincingly established, in medieval Irish, Welsh, and Latin poetry. The direct influence of Irish syllabic verse on the development of skaldic meter, although [
proposed
I
many
times in the
last
hundred years (Edzardi 1878; Gu5brandur
Vigfusson 1883:i:446; S. Bugge 1894; A. Bugge 1905; Krause 1930; TurvillePetre 1954, 1971; Einar 6l. Sveinsson 1976;
Mackenzie 1981; Kuhn 1983:62,
274-276, 331), is probably unprovable (Finnur Jonsson 1904-5:7, 1921; Noreen 1926:143; Askeberg 1944:108; de Vries 1957; Foote 1976:182).
1
Thematic models for skaldic verse have been found
all
over the Continent and
beyond. Bjami Einarsson contended that Provencal influence was visible in the love stanzas of the sagas of poets (1961
,
1971); Siegfried Gutenbrunner located a
medieval Latin love poetry from tenth-century
likely source of inspiration in the
England (1955); Theodore M. Andersson demonstrated that erotic poetry was an indigenous Icelandic form and that what foreign influence there was emanated
from the
badours (1969). '
A much earlier,
drottkvaett shield in
known
classical Latin poets
in twelfth-century Iceland, not the trou-
preclassical inheritance has been posited for the
poem, a genre supposed
Homer and Hesiod and
(Rosenfeld 1936). Earlier
to
be related to the shield descriptions
to the use of votive shields in ancient cult practices still
is
the Indo-European context proposed for the
skaldic poetry of praise and blame, analogues of
which have been located
poetry of the ancient Hindus, as well as in early Irish and satires
Welsh panegyrics and
(Williams 1972).
Skaldic verse, even in gling of
two
its first
currents, native
extant manifestations, already reflects the min-
Norse
tradition
on the one hand and insular and
Continental learning and preoccupations on the other. 19.
in the
On
It is
becoming clearer
verse in William of Malmesbury, see Lapidge 1981;61-71; in Orderic Vitalis, see esp.
Bk. 5, chap. 9, of The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and tr. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), iii:49-97. On the occasional verses in monastic narratives, see Cyril E.
&
Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in An^lo-Saxon England (Edinburgh: Oliver Boyd, 1939), pp. 33-38. The seven citations of verse in Agrip occur on pp. 2, 12, 32-33, 35, 43, 47, and 53; on their function, see Bjami Einarsson 1974:119-20. 20. Bragi’s Ragnarsdrdpa, probably
composed
in the latter half
of the ninth century, portrays not
only Thor’s encounter with the world serpent (depicted on stone carvings from Altuna in Uppland to
Gosforth in Cumberland) but also the death of Ermanaric, the fourth-century Gothic king whose fame, according to the late ninth-century archbishop Fulk of Rheims, was touted in contemporary
Skaldic Poetry
179
that this poetry,
and
unusual as
it is,
cannot be studied apart from the larger literary
developments of Europe between the ninth and fourteenth centuries
artistic
(Dronke 1971). The shield poem, usually taken to be the oldest skaldic genre (H0st 1960:447-51), has
work of
description of a I
much art,
in
common
with the ekphrasis or formal poetic
a recognized literary
mode
practiced at the early
ninth-century Carolingian courts by such poets as Theodulf of Orleans and Er-
moldus Nigellus (Erank 1978:104; Clunies Ross 1981b:282). The skald’s anatural syntax has been seen as analogous to and inspired by graphic art interlace design
— whether
this
took the form of two or more entwined dragons on a viking
rune stone or a decorated insular manuscript page (Lie 1952:3; Stefan Einarsson
/ 1963-64; Marold 1976); a poet’s version of events
may
derive directly from
V contemporary pictorial art (Schier 1976) or be reflected Buisson 1976; Margeson 1983).
Eor most of the viking period, insular influence
is
in
it
(Weber 1973;
predominant. The same
forces that gave rise to an esoteric and eulogistic court poetry in Latin and
English
at
Athelstan’s Winchester (Lapidge 1981)
may have
played a role not
only in inspiring Egill’s Adalsteinsdrdpa and Hgfudlausn but also in fostering the court poetry of the favored skalds /
and
1
in a
clustered around Athelstan’s trading
Haraldr harfagri. English borrowings and Anglicisms have
political partner,
been detected
f
who
number of major
attributed to the literary activity of a
skaldic
poems of
the Viking
mixed English-Scandinavian
Age and
culture area
(Kuhn 1969b, 1977b; Hofmann 1955); it has been suggested that the name of the chief skaldic meter, drdttkvcett, was composed under English inspiration (Kuhn 1956:24) and that the first skald whose verse survives had British relatives (Kuhn 1983:275-76). The British Isles appear to have exerted a continuing influence on the evolution of Viking licenses,
Age
skaldic art, giving rise to
meters,
new
poetic
and new genres. During the twenty-year reign of Kniitr (Cnut the Great)
London was probably the center in the North of skaldic poetry (Kuhn 1983:267).
Erom
new
for the production
and distribution
the second half of the eleventh century until the middle of the twelfth,
Danish, Saxon, and Frankish influences are noticeable. The poetry of Markus
Skeggjason the
Danish
(ca.
1
100) reveals that skald’s familiarity with and concentration on
political
and ecclesiastical scene (Foote
1975:66-67).
Fredrik
Paasche long ago stressed the links between the Christian poetry of the early skalds and contemporary spiritual and intellectual developments on the Continent
(1914).
/
French culture
[twelfth century.
starts to
become an important
factor in the second half of the
A relationship has been seen between Rpgnvaldr’s Hdttalykill,
a
twelfth-century clavis metrica from Orkney, and contemporary French artes
poeticae and rhythmicae (Jon Helgason/Holtsmark 1941); Norse meters some-
“Teutonic books”: Flodoard, Historia Remensis Ecclesiae, 4:5, ed. J. Heller and G. Waltz, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, 13 (Hanover: Hahn, 1881), pp. 564, 574.
MGH,
Roberta Frank
180 times have
Romance
parallels (Vesteinn
Olason 1969). RQgnvaldr’s stay
in
Narbonne has attracted the attention of comparatists, for his stanzas to Ermengarde mix viking carnage with troubadour love-longing (Finnur Jonsson 1912:53-57; de Vries 1960; Andersson 1969). In the thirteenth century, Olafr ForSarson pointed out classical rhetorical tropes fourteenth-century continuator
composed
original stanzas to illustrate sections of
/^Alexander of Villedieu’s Doctrinale (1199).^^ 1
from the
Ito
later period, Lilja (ca. 1350),
in inherited skaldic verse; his
The most famous
by the monk Eysteinn,
is
skaldic
poem
deeply indebted
Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova of ca. 1210 (Foote 1982). The European
context of the later secular poetry has hardly been touched, even though the links
movepredecessors. There was
between the twelfth- and thirteenth-century skalds and the ments of
their
day were
at least as vital as
those of their
intellectual
homelands about skald-clerics like Einarr Skulason, whimsical tongue-in-cheek bishops like Bjami Kolbeinsson, men like Haukr Valdisarson whose passion for the past drove him to compose a kind of native de little
insular except their
viris illustribus
and de casibus virorum illustrium combined, and
who dabbled
skalds
in
all
the other
crusade poems, erotic lyrics, parodies, and personal
satires.
we are still ignorant of some of the literary processes and relations of skaldic verse, we are even more ignorant of its social context. Old Norse scholarship If
knows seven
the
names of some 250
women, and
skalds; they include kings, bishops, outlaws,
a sprinkling of ghosts and berserks.
These poets are featured
prominently in our editions and literary histories, while anonymous verses huddle together at the
end of each chapter or century. Yet we know almost nothing
about most of the poets except their names. Their
documented; few lives,
facts are
known about
mode
of existence
is
scantily
the institutions that dominated their
providing them with an income and an audience.
mention of skaldic schools, give no evidence that
Our sources make no
literary specialists trained
new
We
do not believe that the skald’s profession was hereditary, but there may have been some form of social control over recruitment recruits in the required skills.
(
that is
now hidden from
composing was
us.
We
are not told whether the skald’s
rigidly prescribed, or
kinds of literary productions. For
all
manner of
whether he had a monopoly over certain
we know, he was
entitled to
wear
distinctive
garb or colors in court. Interest in the skald’s
world and role
in society is reflected in several recent
made
meaning of the word skald (Gutenbrunner 1963a; von See 1964; Steblin-Kamenskij 1969) and of the terms used by the Norse poet to describe his art and his relationship to it (Kreutzer 1974; Clover 1978; Koch 1979; Clunies Ross 1981b). Other studies have considered how sagas portrayed their tenth-century skalds and what this
publications. Useful attempts have been
to establish the
Mdlhljoda og mdlskrudsrit: Grammatisk-retorisk afhandling, ed. Finnur Jonsson (Del Kgl. Danske Videnskab. Selskab. Hist.-filol. meddelelser, vol. xiii, no. 2, [1927]); Den tredje og fjaerde grammatiske afhandling, ed. Bjorn Magnusson Olsen, SUGNL, 12 (1884). 21. Olafr PorSarson,
Skaldic Poetry
181
on the nature and purpose of poetry (Naumann 1950; Reuschel 1961; Bjami Einarsson 1961; Wright 1973; Dronke 1978; Clunies Ross 1978). reveals about thirteenth-century Icelandic views
!
/
The
first
virtual
skalds were Norwegians, but soon Icelanders
monopoly
as the court poets of
Norway
—
a
seem to have enjoyed a symptom, it has been sug-
gested, of the political instability and upheavals of the period (SigurSur Nordal
1942:239).
The
role of the
Norse poet
in his society is still
though perhaps not a very practical one given the
state
an open question,
What
of our knowledge.
Did skaldic verse contribute to group? Was the verse propaganda for the ruling
part of his culture did the skald’s poetry reflect?
the self-awareness of a particular
formal announcement of public discontent, or a codification of patterns
class, a
/ of heroism and deceit?
Was
the skald genealogist, prime minister, historian,
warrior, storyteller, journalist, satirist, prophet, diplomat, lover, or fool?
scholar
makes him a rower and
his poetry a
work-song
in the tradition
One
of sea
chants Or whalers’ ditties (Perkins 1969, 1976); another, working on a higher level of abstraction, depicts literature,
him
as a kind of halfway
house between folklore and
an author of form but not of content, a painter whose objective was
external embellishment and ornamentation (Steblin-Kamenskij
1978:40-64).
There has always been a temptation to impose the nature of viking society
upon skaldic verse,
to see a relationship
ravaged the West and direct connection
with
its
this
tough poetry.
between the grim-beaked prows
Some have
that
envisaged a more or less
between Viking Age economics, the growth of a chieftain
class
and a market for skaldic verse (Moberg 1943); still others trace its Viking Age religion with its (assumed) rituals (Holtsmark 1949;
courts,
inspiration to
Kabell 1980b). Whereas previous studies sought the origin of the kenning in j
,
taboo language (Olrik 1897; Portengen 1915; Ohlmarks 1944; Mittner 1951) or
magic (Schwartz 1955-56), John Lindow believes that the riddlelike quality of the skaldic kenning points to an audience of initiates, an in-group awareness
Norwegian court (1975). The dual role of the Norse court poet praise and blame has been acknowledged in a number of recent works; not surprisingly, the latter function has received the most attention (Noreen 1922; Almqvist 1965, 1974; Markey 1972; A Strom 1974; Meulengracht Sprensen 1980). In the early eighteenth century. Ami Magnusson was astonished to discover that Flateyjarbok, but not Snorri, quoted verses composed by a tenth-century skald to mock his patron; on the grounds that A sensible men did not go out of their way to anger a prince. Ami rejected the Skaldicists today are /deviant stanzas: “These are the greatest falsehoods. firmly convinced that the early court poets of northwestern Europe could and did likely to
be found
at the
—
satirize their lords; 1
I
a king.
we
—
recognize that a skald might not only toast but also topple
The Norse poet was regarded
as a dangerous being, a manipulator of the
deep stmcture of language. His poetry was an instmment for molding public Arne Magnusson, Brevveksling med Torfaeus, ed. Kristian Kaalund (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1916), p. 66. Cited in Andersson, The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins, p. 9. 22.
Roberta Frank
182
opinion and for presenting a ruler’s political and ideological platform. This I !
\
Marold 1972; Kreutzer 1972; von See 1977b; Strom 1981, 1983), each of which shows how function has been discussed in several recent articles (Wolf 1969;
skaldic verse could have played a part in the maintenance of social control.
Current scholarship sees verse; poets
little
were involved
unconscious or natural in the production of skaldic
in the political realities of their time,
and princes were
probably as eager to gain power over poetry as to be entertained by
We do not know how the poet presented his verse at court.
it.
Old Norse seems
to
between composing (yrkja) and reciting {kveda, flytja, fcera fram)\ most extant verse was probably composed orally and privately by professionals ( and memorized for delivery. The composition and recall of skaldic verse must distinguish
.
complex metrical form; pairs of alliterating and rhyming syllables tend to hang together in the memory, ready to spring to life (^de Vries 1964:i:104; Foote 1976:183). There is no evidence for the presence of harp or lyre or any other musical accompaniment, although Kuhn suggests that a musical accent may have fallen on the rhyming syllables of each line (1969b: 415, 1983:244-47). Thirteenth-century texts distinguish between formal court poetry iflokkr, drdpa) and a genre of spontaneous personal verse {lausavisur)\ Kuhn makes the same distinction, for the praise poems of the Norwegian court seem to him more regular than the occasional stanzas of Iceland (1983: 218-20), which often have simpler clause arrangements (Edwards 1983). Yet we have no certainty that this dichotomy is a genuine early feature of West Norse poetic tradition and not merely a reflection of the interests and narrative methods of the saga authors (Poole 1975:287-94), of differences in date and transmission. Current scholarship has turned to contemporary non-European oral traditions have been greatly assisted by
I
(
its
for a better grasp of the processes of
Davf5sd6ttir 1979).
The findings
memorization and transmission (Sigrun
are rich and provocative.
The complex
praise
names of southern African panegyric poetry resound in a diction as specialized as that of the skalds verse composed in private, memorized by a poet for subse23. quent performance and forever owned by him is as prized and discussed in 24. Somalia today as it seems to have been in medieval Iceland;^^ there is a close 25. analogue to skaldic ofljost among the Ruanda. Our growing knowledge of formula play in contemporary oral cultures, and of oral phenomena such as the disambiguations of two-tone African talking drums,
may
eventually help us to
rephrase the “origin of the kenning” question as posed by traditional scholarship.
A
start
made with
has recently been
mulaic principles of economy and
the incorporation of the oral for-
utility into
an exploration of
kenning functioned (Spamer 1977). The kenning
Jeff Opland,
may soon
take
how
its
rightful place
An^lo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions (New Haven,
Univ. Press, 1980). Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry:
Its
the early
etc.:
Yale
Nature, Significance and Social Context (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977). A. Kagame, La poesie dynastique au
Rwanda
(Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Beige, 1951).
— Skaldic Poetry
183
minimal unit of semantic distinction alongside the phonemes of the First Grammatical Treatise, minimal oppositional pairs most likely inspired by as the skald’s
the alternating
rhymes of the poets (Frank 1978:37).
/ A recurrent issue in skaldic research its
is
that of the intelligibility of the verse to
original recipients, a question that probably deserves the dull answers
Thormod Torfaeus found
received. In the seventeenth century,
it
has
the stanzas “fre-
quently so obscure that without an interpreter they could hardly be compre-
hended.’’^^ Finnur Jonsson observed that not
all
verses need have been under-
some could be learned by heart and struggled with until comprehension dawned (1924:320). Genzmer insisted, gamely if not credibly, that skaldic poetry was scarcely more difficult than eddic (1930). There is a stood at
,
first
hearing;
consensus today that a verse form that retained
some
five centuries
case with so ^
much
The question of
must have said something oral poetry
—
it
intelligibility is
ence of Rezeptionsdsthetik; our
was what
its
popularity in the North for
even
to its public,
if
—
as
is
the
the audience already knew.
gradually being reformulated under the influ-
focus has shifted from authorial con-
critical
1943-44; Nordland 1956; Turville-Petre 1976: audience reception, from a concern with historical verisimilitude to a
sciousness (Sigur5ur Nordal Ixxvi) to
.
two centuries of skaldic composition, the skald seems to have imposed greater constraints on himself in meters, rhymes, number of syllables (Kuhn 1969c; von See 1968) and, conwersely, greater demands on his audience. The skald’s “art in a closed field’’ (Clover 1978:81) may have struck his listeners as dangerously open, for it was now their responsibility to decode the verse, making choices between alternate meanings; they had to create order and build unities and relationships between its inducing of parts. The psychological effect of skaldic verse on its recipients view of poetry as process. In the course of the
[ '
1
first
—
—
—
tension and anxiety by a systematic unsettling of the senses, intellect, the ^
prehension
surge of relief and power that accompanied the
— was portrayed
aesthetics (Lie 1957:33).
must have kept
in
one of the
first
its
teasing of the
moment
of com-
studies devoted entirely to skaldic
The skewed syntax and segmented clauses of the
their audiences alert
and vulnerable, open
to a
skalds
dimension of
experience that could not be circumscribed in prose.
/ New work means hones
us,
however,
convey information,’’
to in
still tells
on
facts, not feelings
scheme whereby
Egill
is
“with the skalds, poetry was largely a
that their love poetry
—
to the excesses of “psychological realism,’’
able “to express his whole soul in a
colouring’’ (Olrik 1907:161). Yet the nineteenth century
when
it
like all their verse
(Steblin-Kamenskij 1978:74, 70-89). Such state-
ments are understandable reactions a
that
poem
knew what
lamented the vagueness and fuzziness of the verse, mourned
it
with lyric
was doing
how minute
seemed to play (Gu5brandur Vigfusson 1883:i:lxxxv). have conveyed fundamental values, meanings, and feel-
a role facts and figures
For the skald seems to 26.
Thormod Torfaeus,
Series
Dynastarum
Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins,
p. 7.
et
Regum Daniae,
p. 56, cited in
Andersson, The
Roberta Frank
184
on a few themes and formulas: heroic death, enduring love, the voyage of discovery, the good statesman and the grasping, the generous act and the cowardly, the loyal retainer and the treachings through his ingenious variations
And
erous.
if his
central task
was
to catch
and keep those fleeting moments of
which man seemed illumined by a divine or hearers to summon intellectual and affective
joy, of heightened consciousness, in
demonic
force,
it
was up
to his
responses comparable in intensity to his own;
was
it
the obligation of the con-
noisseurs in his audience to puzzle out what combination of dark thoughts gave rise to his
sunset or sea-skerry, what triumphant hopes brought forth the blood-
stained eagle and corpse.
Skaldic verse, despite the efforts of generations of scholars, tively mysterious in
still
seems seduc-
antecedents, social context, and narrative processes. If
its
admissions of ignorance can lead to progress, the present survey of the state of skaldic studies will have served
work
scholars induces work, and
what
this field still
its
purpose.
— along with
A
puzzle that interests enough
sufficient bodies to
perform
it
—
is
wants. Kinds of sources, kinds of verse, kinds of kennings,
meters, and syntactic patterns, kinds of repetitions and binding techniques must
be distinguished as cleanly and sharply as possible; tools,
new
perhaps even a computer concordance to the corpus: these
consumer needs
in the
The leading
skaldicists of the past half
at their tasks,
often in relative isolation
years to come.^^
century labored long and passionately
new reference are some of our
editions,
from one another and, perhaps as a consequence, issuing a minimum of synthesizing or encouraging
communiques; they
felt
cluded that “stillness had enveloped drottkvaett as al” (Kuhn
1983:18).
The
situation has
themselves alone and conit
had skaldic verse
in gener-
prompted a fellow Nordicist (Foote
1978:59) to recall Marvell’s lines:
Had we
enough and time. This coyness, lady, were no crime.
Entomologists
know
“to incite to work.” they
stroll
of a pattern of behavior they call stigmergy, which means
When
four or five termites are put together in a chamber,
around without purpose; but when more termites are added, real work
They pick up each
begins.
but world
other’s fecal pellets, stock
soon the foundations of the termitarium are laid tell, in
27.
it
in
even columns, and
elegantly and, as far as
we can
Such collective intelligence should be fostered means keeping at each other all our lives.
harmonious accord.
skaldic studies, even if
—
them
in
A computer tape bank of West Norse texts has been established at the Amamagnaean Institute:
Amamagnaean Institute and Dictionary, 1979-81 (Copenhagen, 1981), pp. concordance by George Tate of twelfth-century skaldic verse is in progress. 28. Lewis Thomas, “Debating the Unknowable,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1981), pp. 49-52.
see Bulletin 13 of the
12-13.
A
.
Skaldic Poetry
185
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Kings’ Sagas
(Konungasogur) Theodore M. Andersson
The kings’ sagas
differ in several
family sagas. In the
first
place,
fundamental respects from the better-known
most of them belong
to an earlier era.
Whereas
phenomenon, the productive period of
the family sagas are a thirteenth-century
kings’ saga writing falls in the century ca. 1130 (Saemundr Sigfusson’s and Ari
Porgilsson’s lost books) to ca.
1230 (Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla). The
family sagas are a national literature with a definite,
C
The
Icelandic affairs.
if
not exclusive, focus on
kings’ sagas chronicle non-Icelandic events.
They embrace
Norwegian, Danish, Orkneyan, Faroese, and, more peripherally, Swedish ry;
they betray their Icelandic authorship only by viewpoint and digression.
Whereas '
histo-
anonymous, the names of many Saemundr Sigfusson, Ari Forgilsson,
the family sagas are without exception
kings’ saga authors have
come down
to us:
Oddsson, Theodoricus monachus, Karl Jonsson, Oddr Snorrason, Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Styrmir Karason, Snorri Sturluson, and Sturla F6r5arson. As a Eirikr
result, the kings’
are
unknown,
sagas can be dated more accurately. Even
as in the case of Agrip, Morkinskinna,
when
their authors
and Fagrskinna,
their close
textual affiliations with other kings’ sagas allow a relative dating within a decade
or so.
These textual
affiliations are a special feature
family sagas, which almost never
\
'
tell
the
same
of the kings’ sagas. Unlike the
story twice, the kings’ sagas
tell
Norwegian kings, many times. More accurate dating and the gradual evolution of one and the same narrative should theoretically permit the writing of a more finely tuned literary history than the
is
same
story, especially the biographies of the
possible for the family sagas, but, as
we
shall see, this opportunity has
been
/ blocked by the complexity of the textual relationships. Most of the critical effort \ devoted to the kings’ sagas has gone into establishing the sources of a given text.
As
a consequence, the nonexpert will be surprised at the relative absence of
general literary
comment and perhaps dismayed
197
at the
minute and seemingly
Theodore M. Andersson
198
The charm of kings’ saga study
barren analysis of source problems.
is
decidedly
remote. Because of
their extraordinary literary qualities, the family sagas
tionally attracted a large readership abroad
German and
and enthusiastic
have
tradi-
critical studies
by
and more recently by American, French, and Soviet
British scholars
The
kings’ sagas have tended to be confined within the bound-
aries of Scandinavia,
and only Heimskringla has acquired an international au-
scholars as well.
dience. Scholarly analysis has remained almost exclusively in the hands of the
Scandinavians a
much
—
lesser extent. Since the great majority of
the Scandinavian languages, the outsider
books and
German, and the only
\
to
articles is written in
likely to experience linguistic as well
is
as technical difficulties in gaining access to the field.
kings’ sagas in
Danes and Swedes
Icelanders and Norwegians in particular,
partial
There
is
no overview of the
survey in English
is
Gabriel Tur-
of Icelandic Literature (1953). The following essay therefore confronts the problem of surveying an
ville-Petre’s Origins
sically difficult field that is, in addition, unfamiliar to those
dinavian medievalists.
To overcome
this
problem,
I
have
who
intrin-
are not Scan-
tried to identify the
main works as they are introduced and to review the main periods of kings’ saga writing in the process of summarizing the scholarly debates they have provoked. There are four main periods to be discussed: the earliest lost kings’ lives by Saemundr and Ari from the early twelfth century, the so-called Norwegian synoptics (ca.
:
1
175-90?), the formative period of the Icelandic kings’ saga proper
(ca.
1150-1200), and the major compendia {Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, Heims:
kringla)
from 1220
to 1230.
The
kings’ sagas from the latter part of the thirteenth
century and the late compilations have been omitted (except in the bibliography) I
because they have not yet become the focus of protracted debate. In dealing with the scholarly literature,
and
to concentrate
I
have
tried to
avoid excessive detail
on the general implications of recent work
relative roles of Icelandic
—
for example, the
and Norwegian writers, the balance of foreign and
native elements, the importance of oral and literary accretions, and indexes of
Icelandic bias.
Only
in the
skrivning (1965) have Ellehpj’s
is
the
I
case of Svend Ellehpj’s
at a
represents the state of the art at this
it
presents.
The
believe
it is
uninitiated reader
on the
norr0ne historie-
general reassessment of the
kings’ saga writing (Saemundr, Ari, and the
I
aeldste
entered into the technicalities of the controversy.
most recent attempt
evaluated in any detail,
Den
first
Norwegian synoptics), and
moment
in history.
Since
it
phase of his
book
has not been
important to take a position on the argument
may
find the relevant pages, as well as the
works of Saemundr and Ari, excessively academic, but these matters have dominated kings’ saga study and cannot be passed over in
entire speculation
lost
silence.
The beginnings of the legendary and family sagas
are lost in literary prehistory
and can only be the subject of conjecture, but the birth of the kings’ sagas approximately datable literary event.
Two
texts,
is
an
which are no longer extant but
Kings’ Sagas
199
are considered to be the direct ancestors of the kings’ sagas as
were written
in the early twelfth
century on the eve of our
ment, Ari Porgilsson’s Islendingabdk
(ca.
first
we have them, surviving docu-
1122-32). The authors of these proto-
were Ari himself (1067/68-1148) and his slightly older contemporary Sasmundr Sigfusson (1056-1133). Although their accounts of the Norwegian kings are lost, subsequent writers make frequent and tantalizing referkings’ sagas
ences to them. Saemundr’s seniority suggests that he
may have
he presumably wrote in Latin because Snorri Sturluson
tells
written
first. If
so,
us in his prologue to
Heimskringla and the Separate Saga of St. O/a/ that Ari was the first to write in Norse. ^ Only one of the references to Saemundr’s book gives us any idea of its scope. ^ This
is
a reference in the fortieth stanza of the
composed around 1190 and preserved
Nu
hefk
poem Ndregs konunga
tal
in Flateyjarbdk.^
talt
tm landreka l)as
hverr vas
fra Haraldi;
intak sva aevi l^eira
sem Saemundr sag5i enn fr66i.
(Now
I
have enumerated
Ten rulers, Each descended From Harald; I
have rehearsed
Their lives
As Saemundr The Wise said.)
We
Saemundr included the ten Norwegian rulers during the period 858-1047, after Haraldr harfagri (Harald Fairhair) and down to Magnus g65i (Magnus the Good), but it is not impossible that he also dipped back into the more legendary kings of an earlier era.^ 1.
learn
from
IF, 26:5.
this stanza that
On Saemundr
in general see-Halldor
Hermannsson 1932:esp. 33-36. On
the evidence
Saemundr wrote in Latin see Olafia Einarsdottir 1964:169. Ellehdj (1965:15) inclines to the view that Saemundr wrote first but leaves open the possibility that he wrote after Ari. On the complicated relationship between the two versions of Snorri’s prologue to Heimskringla and the Separate Saga see Wessen 1928-29:52-62. 2. On the references to Saemundr see Gjessing 1896 and Ellehpj 1965:16-17. On possible rem-
that
work On Noregs konunga
nants of Saemundr’s
in
Flateyjarbdk see also Olafur Halldorsson 1977.
Mogk
1888 and Olafia Einarsdottir 1964:165-83. The poem may be found in Flateyjarbdk, ed. GuQbrandur Vigfusson and C. R. Unger, ii:524, and Flateyjarbdk, ed. Vilhjalmur Bjarnar et al., iii:131. The text is cited from ^Skjaldedigtning, iB:582. 4. See the literature cited by Ellehpj (1965:109-10). 3.
tal see
Theodore M. Andersson
200 Ari Porgilsson’s account of the Norwegian kings
about
also lost, but the hints
contained in his Islendingabok have fueled a hundred-year controversy.
it
The prologue
Islendingabok (IF, P:3)
to
us that
tells
it
is
a second version of an
work, without the “attartala” (genealogy) and “konunga aevi” (kings’
earlier 1
is
lives):
byskupum drum,
Islendingabok g0r6a ek fyrst
En me6
f)eim ok Saemundi presti.
f)vf at
Porlaki ok Katli, ok syndak baeSi
f>eim lfka6i sva at hafa e6a bar vi6r auka,
ba skrifaSa ek bessa of et sama
far, fyr
mer var6 si6an kunnara ok
es gerr sagt a bessi en a beiri.
and Saemundr the
priest.
And
since they liked
[fslendingabdk] in the same
more
told
it
as
manner without
and added what became better known to
lives,
aevi,
ok jokk bvi es
wrote Islendingabok for our bishops Porlakr and Ketill and showed
(I first
this
nii
utan attartglu ok konunga
it
it
them
to
was, or supplemented,
wrote
I
the genealogical matter and kings’
me
in the
fully (or exactly) in this [book] than in the
meantime, and now
it is
former one.)
what students of the kings’ sagas would most have. Whether the missing “kings’ lives’’ were a separate book or
Ari’s second version thus omitted like to
interspersed notes in the tion.^
A
'^narrative )
nature.^
version of Islendingabok
first
second question
is
whether the “kings’
is
an unresolved ques-
lives’’
were
in
any sense
or whether they were brief indications of a largely chronological
The
latter
assumption
is
supported by the observation that half of the
extant references to Ari’s “kings’ lives’’ concern chronological matters (Hagnell /»
1938:113-30).
One of
these references in Snorri’s Oldfs saga helga in Heims^
kringla,
however,
is
more general
(IF, 27:326):
Olafr konungr haf6i ba verit konungr
Sveinn jarl varu ba6ir li6it
grein
um jol
i
landi,
fram, er hann
konungdoms hans
spgull, minnigr
let
i
Noregi fimmtan vetr
me5 bcim
vetri, er bcir
ok bessum, er nu um hrf6 hefir verit fra sagt, ok ba var skip sm ok gekk a land upp, sem nu var sagt. Fessa
—
ritaSi fyrst Ari prestr
ok sva gamall ma6r,
at
Forgilsson inn fr66i, er bae6i var sann-
hann mun6i ba menn ok haf6i spgur af
haft,
muna bcssi tfSendi, sva sem hann smum bokum ok nefnda ba menn til, er hann haf6i froeSi af numit.
er beir varu sva gamlir, at fyrir aldrs sakir mattu hefir sjalfr sagt
i
Norway for fifteen years, including the year he and Jarl Sveinn were both in Norway and the one of which I have now been speaking, and the Yule season was well advanced when he left his ships and went (King Olaf had
ashore, as
I
at that
have
time been king
told.
in
This part (“grein”) of his kingship was
first
written
by the
See Hagnell 1938:87-109, Elleh0j 1965:30-35, and the literature they cite. 6. Hagnell 1938:135-41, Halldor Hermannsson 1948:28, and Elleh0j 1965:43-53. The main proponents of the view that Ari wrote extensive kings’ lives were Gjessing (1873-76; 1885) and Schreiner (1926a; 1927a: 1-20, 60-85; 1927b). See also ^Turville-Petre 1953:98. Schreiner’s views were criticized by Bjami ASalbjamarson (1936:44-47, 177-80). 5.
s
Kings’ Sagas
201
priest Ari Porgilsson the
and was old enough
who was
that
memory from them) who
both truthful and had such a good
he remembered those
that
were old enough
in turn
Wise,
men
(and got reports
because of their age they could remember these events,
as he [Ari] has related himself in his books,
naming
the people
from
whom
he got
the information.)
This passage, like several others, has been interpreted in terms (the length of
sugge^s a and
fall at
events) within the if
(‘part,
section’)
Whether it refers to the narrow matter of Olaf’s departure from Norway or to the larger matter of his exile, the Battle of Stiklarsta5ir
memory
not clear. Nonetheless, Snorri
is
refers not just to chronological niceties but to
events
chronological
fuller jrmrrative.
landing before his return,
word grem
Olaf’s reign), ^ but the
St.
strictly
“ti5endi” (events or reports of
of Ari’s sourcemen.
Why
refer to the
memory
of
Ari told of no events?
Despite the ambiguities of Snorri’s reference, a clear consensus holds that Ari’s treatment of the
Norwegian kings was very
notices in the older lost redaction of Islendingabok. ^
of the kings’ sagas
is
rare
amounting
to scattered
Such agreement
in the study
brief,
and should probably be welcomed with
alacrity, but the
from resolved. The evidence remains a matter of interpretation or must be inferred from a second generation of kings’ sagas. This second generation comprises three Norwegian works of the late twelfth
question
is
far
we may
century, to which
refer (with Turville-Petre
1953:169-75) as the “Nor-
wegian synoptics”:^ Theodoricus monachus, Historia de Antiquitate Re gum
Norwagiensium haps as
(ca.
late as 1220);
history specifically
ing to postulate
Agrip
afNdregs konunga sggum
(ca.
1
190). Theodoricus ’s
acknowledges the learning of the Icelanders, and
some dependence on Saemundr
also states that he has that
1180); Historia Norwegiae (perhaps before 1178, but per-
no written authority, and
tempt-
it is
or Ari or both. But Theodoricus
it is
therefore
commonly assumed
he composed his history largely on the basis of oral material provided by the
Icelanders.
The Historia Norwegiae belongs more
clearly to a written tradition. A
It
shares so
many
verbal correspondences with Agrip that one must stand in
literary debt to the other or,
more
both derive from a
likely,
common
written
source. In addition, the similarities between Theodoricus and Agrip are so great that the author of
Agrip
is
generally assumed to have
made
direct use of
Theo-
The unknown quantity in this configuration is the lost common source of Historia Norwegiae and Agrip. This source has been identified as Saemundr’ doricus.
Beyschlag 1950:282-83; Ellehpj 1965:44, 52. 8. Sigurbur Nordal 1914:24; Bjami Adalbjaraarson 1936:50, 68; Hagnell 1938:135-36; Beyschlag 1950:284; and Ellehpj 1965:43-47. 7.
9.
The
best survey of the discussion surrounding these texts, including the disputed dating of
be found in Ellehpj 1 965 On the dating of Historia Norwegiae see also Bjami A6albjamarson 1936:20-29 and Hanssen 1949b:3-36.
Historia Norwegiae,
may
.
Theodore M. Andersson
202 lost
book, as Ari’s "^konunga
Norwegian
or as a lost
aevi,
history of
which we
have no other record.^®
The
son (1936) and Elleh0j (1965) analyze the textual
wegian synoptics in
by Bjami ASalbjamarrelationships among the Nor-
large-scale discussions of the earliest kings’ sagas
Figure
1
(X
=
in similar
a lost
ways. Bjami A5albjamarson relates them as shown
Norwegian
history in Latin).-
X
Theodoricus
A
Historia Norwegiae
Agrip Figure
1.
The
Norwegian synoptics according
interrelationship of the
to
Bjami A5al-
bjamarson
Ellehpj argues that the lost Ari’s
*konunga
aevi, as
common
source of Agrip and Historia Norwegiae was
indicated in Figure 2. Ari
Theodoricus
Historia Norwegiae
Agrip Figure
2.
The
interrelationship of the
Norwegian synoptics according
The difference between Bjami A5albjamarson and is
a
ASalbjamarson thought), we are led
Svend Elleh0j
Ellehpj does not appear great,
but the implications of the difference are far-reaching. If the
Agrip and Historia Norwegiae
to
Norwegian book
(as
to believe that there
common
source of
Bemtsen and Bjami was an independent
Norwegian school of history writing and that the synoptics are a specifically Norwegian manifestation. To be sure, Theodoricus acknowledges the Icelanders, but he also refers to a "^Catalogus Re gum Norwagiensium, and there is no reason to suppose that this was not a Norwegian book. Thus a hypothetical Norwegian "^Catalogus and a lost Norwegian history may underlie all three of the Norwegian ^
*
we can imagine that at some early date, perhaps in the middle of century, Norway began to cultivate her own history in competition
synoptics, and the twelfth
with the Icelandic school established by Saemundr and Ari
An
at the
beginning of the
is provided by Ulset (1983:16-42). He conveniently between on the one hand Theodoricus and Agrip and on the other Historia Norwegiae and Agrip in parallel columns (pp. 152-82). Ulset’s own view, based on a distinction between latinisms inherent in learned style and latinisms attributable to a written model, is that Agrip shows signs of translation both from Theodoricus and Historia Norwegiae. See also Bemtsen 1923:53-93, Bjami ASalbjamarson 1936:7-19, and Ellehpj 1965:199, n. 6. 1 1 The fullest attempt to isolate the contents of the *Catalogus was made by Ellehpj (1965: 18296). The early controversy on Norway’s participation in the writing of kings’ sagas is summarized by Bemtsen (1923:11-22). Jakobsen has reasserted in persuasive detail the Norwegian origin of Fagrskinna (1970). See also Hanssen 1949b.
10.
extensive survey of the debate
tabulates the verbal correspondences
.
Kings’ Sagas century.
The
203 thesis of Toralf
Bemtsen’s book Fra sagn
such a separate Norwegian tradition existed. Icelandic. If Theodoricus if
was
saga (1923) was that contrast, Ellehpj’s emphasis is
By
til
chiefly dependent on his Icelandic informants and
Historia Norwegiae and Agrip derive chiefly from Ari’s *konunga
aevi, the
Norwegian synoptics are not an independent phenomenon but an adaptation of Icelandic models. Since the later kings’ sagas are almost exclusively Icelandic,
we might
then conclude that the genre
is
peculiarly Icelandic, no less so than the
family sagas. In emphasizing the role of Ari’s
*konunga
Bjami A5albjamarson. For
his predecessor
we
factor in the general development. If
which he
set
Heimskringla
down in
source only for
the latter, Ari
was not a decisive
review the summary of his findings,
volume of
we may observe
1941 (IF, 26:ix-xix),
to
Ellehpj differed radically from
in the introduction to the first
Oddr Snorrason and
were considered
sevi,
that Ari figures as a
Snorri Sturluson, and even these influences
be minimal (1936:43-47, 50; see Figure
Ellehpj’s conclusions in the
his edition of
same way
(see Figure 4),
we
3).
Visualizing
see that Ari figures at
the very center of the tradition. Ari thus continues to be a central issue in the
debate, and our
first
task
must be
to test the evidence Ellehpj uses to reassert his
importance. Studies of the kings’ sagas evolve slowly, and despite the twenty years that
have elapsed since the publication of Ellehpj’s book,
There can be no doubt that
tion.
is
it
it
has received
little
atten-
an unusually rigorous and valuable
contribution to the field. Ellehpj familiarized himself with every aspect of the
debate and reported
it
with great
clarity. In contrast to
Bjami A5albjamarson’s
book, which was criticized for a lack of reader’s aids,^^ EllehpJ includes an analytic table of contents, concluding
summary
(in English), bibliography,
and
book therefore makes a complicated subject as accessible as possible serve as a research summary on the early kings’ sagas for the foreseeable
index. His
and
will
future.
Whether Ellehpj’s new conclusions tion.
He
will gain acceptance
isolates the central issue as the relationship
is
a separate ques-
between Historia Norwegiae
and Agrip and explains the connections between these
texts as a
common
inheri-
tance from Ari’s "^konunga aevi (pp. 12-13). In practice, then, most of the book is
concerned with the possible traces
left
by
the "^konunga aevi in
Norwegian and
Icelandic literature, but these traces are extremely difficult to identify. Ellehpj
himself notes that there are few decisive arguments 12.
BONIS
lists
(p. 12). In the first place,
it is
four reviews: Knut Helle in (N)HT, 46 (1967), 73-78; Lars Lonnroth in SS, 39
Marco Scovazzi in Paideia, 21 (1966), 415-18; Inge Skovgaard-Petersen in MS, 1 229-31. Only Helle meets Elleh0j on his own terms. Jakob Benediktsson questions whether
(1967), 378-80; (1968),
have contained everything Elleh
3 '^3
^ s
Theodore M. Andersson
206 virtually impossible to decide
whether Agnp’s correspondences
wegiae are to be explained from a
common
to Historia
Nor-
source or from direct use of the
Historia by Agrip. In the second place, Ellehpj posits no fewer than three lost sources (in addition to the extant
book by Theodoricus)
for
Agrip (see Figure
Adam
Under these circumstances
it is
of
5).
Bremen
from which of the three lost Agrip derives. Ari is always a
difficult to ascertain
sources any particular item of information in
possible source, but Saemundr and the "^Catalogus can never be absolutely
excluded. Elleh0j’s argument turns
Ari’s
^konunga
aevi.
on the hypothesis
that Historia
Other parts of the discussion are
Norwegiae drew on
less crucial.
For example,
Ellehpj refurbishes an older view that the Yngling dynasty in Historia
derives from Ari, but as
Knut Helle pointed out
in his
Norwegiae
review (note 12 above),
other solutions are possible. In addition, Ellehpj argues (p. 171) that the
Norman dukes and English kings
list
of
Norwegiae derives from Ari, but this view seems highly speculative because we do not know what Ari may have included on the Anglo-Norman dynasty. The only evidence is Snorri’s statement in the prologue to Heimskringla that Ari included in his book {scil. the lost version) “the lives of kings in 26:6).
A
further
argument
in Historia
Norway and Denmark and
in Ellehpj’s case is that a special affinity exists be-
tween Historia Norwegiae and Konungatal the affinity
on,
among
is
also in England’’ (IF,
i
Noregi
(in
Flateyjarbok) and that
attributable to Ari, but this contention appears
weak and depends
other things, two copying errors (pp. 246-53).^"^
Yngling kings, Norman dukes, and English kings are peripheral figures, but
Norwegian core of Historia the heart of the matter. The theory is not new
the idea that Ari’s "^konunga aevi provided the
Norwegiae and Agrip 14.
It is
lies at
easier to believe that
Konungatal
(
Noregi depends on Snorri than on Ari. Konungatal
KonungaKonungatal the reign of Haraldr hMagri,
agrees everywhere with Snorri’s chronology except in the case of Haraldr grafeldr, where tal
also disagrees with Historia
Norwegiae
(the alleged
key
to Ari).^In addition,
from Ari by attributing seventy-three years whereas Islendingabok (IF, 1F6) gives the figure as seventy. specifically deviates
to
Kings’ Sagas 1965:199), but
(Elleh0j
presentation
among
207 it
has never been argued in such detail. In Ellehdj’s
becomes the linchpin of
it
the system of textual interrelationships
the early kings’ sagas. Ellehpj’s success depends
Ari’s central position.
As
far as
I
on
his ability to
can see, he advances three arguments
prove
in support
of his view. 1
.
Historia Norwegiae assigns thirty-three years to the reign of
accordance with Ari and against the authority of
Adam
of Bremen,
and who was demonstrably known
the figure as thirty-five years
Historia Norwegiae (Ellehpj 1965:160).
The
Hakon
difficulty
is
who
jarl in
records
to the author of
that
Ssemundr also
assigned thirty-three years to Hakon’s reign, as Ellehpj notes in other contexts:
menn
Eessir
sam|5yckia
J^etta
me5
f)essum
fro5i er huartueggia sogn er trulig at
hetti
Hakon
Saemundr hinn fro6i oc Ari hinn
hafi styrt rikinu xxxiij uetr si{)an er fell
Haralldr grafelldr.
(These
men
testimony
is
agree on
this,
reliable, that
Saemundr the Wise and Ari the Wise, both of whose
Hakon
ruled the realm for thirty-three years after the death
of Haraldr grafeldr [Harald Graycloak].)
Since Saemundr and Ari are in perfect agreement,
whether the source of Historia Norwegiae
is
it
is
impossible to
know
Ari or Saemundr, or both, or another
source derivative from one, or the other, or both. 2.
In describing the death of Halfdan svarti (Halfdan the Black), Historia
Norwegiae
(p.
tion of the
same event
103) shows a special verbal correspondence with Snorri’s descrip-
[Q]ui [Halfdanus] iter
ubi
ageret,
cum
pastores
in
dum
Heimskringla
(IF, 26:92):
Rond nominatur, quandam scissuram,
noctu per cujusdam stagni glaciem, quod
curribus et equitatu
mag no
a cena rediens in
gregem suum adaquare solebant, improvide advectus sub
glacie
deperiit.
(As Halfdan was proceeding
at
night across the ice of a certain lake called
Rpnd,
wagons and a large mounted company, he was carried certain hole, where herdsmen were accustomed to water their
returning from a feast with
without warning into a
animals, and perished under the ice.)
Halfdan
svarti
ok
fra veizlu a
HaSalandi, ok bar sva
til
lei5 bans, at
hann ok
um
Rpnd. Pat var um var. Pa varu s61bra6 mikil. En er heir oku um Rykinsvik, J)a hpfSu |3ar verit um vetrinn nautabrunnar, en er mykrin haf5i fallit a isinn, haf5i grafit um s61bra6inu, en er konungr ok bar um, ba brast ni5r issinn, ok tyndisk bar Halfdan konungr ok lid mikit me6 honum. vatnit
i
15.
quotation 4to].
49-50, 68, 71, 73. See also Olafia Einarsdottir 1964:171, 179, 195. The Snorrason’s from Oddr Oldfs saga Tryggvasoner, ed. Finnur Jonsson, p. 90 [AM 310
Ellehqj 1965:17, is
Theodore M. Andersson
208
(Halfdan svarti drove from a feast in HaSaland and his route lay in such a
way
he drove across Lake Rgnd. That was in the spring. There was a great thaw.
when
that
And
they drove by Rykinsvik, there had been watering holes there during the
when the animal dung had fallen on the ice, it had melted it away in the thaw and when the king drove there, the ice broke and King Halfdan perished and a large company with him.) winter and
The
detail that
two
these
Halfdan was traveling with a “large company”
texts, not in other descriptions
na). Since Snorri
is
is
back
to Ari’s "^konunga aevi. This
up against the ubiquitous problem
in
of the same incident (Agrip, Fagrskin-
explicit about his general debt to Ari, Ellehpj
the phrase in question goes
found only
assumes
that
argument brings us
saga research of evaluating indi-
in kings’
vidual correspondences in wording. Is the special similarity between Historia
Norwegiae and Snorri so great that it compels us to believe that one text is derived from the other or a common written source? Or is it coincidence that two writers
imagined that Halfdan perished with a considerable company?
haps not so strange that they both
Nor can
hit
drew independently on
familiar tradition about Halfdan ’s death. But
best evidence that Historia
per-
on the mention of a retinue independently.
the possibility be excluded that each
common
sufficient to persuade us of a
It is
if
the verbal correspondence
written source, this passage
Norwegiae echoes
a generally
may be
is
the
Ari. X
by Olafr Tryggvason to Norway, Oddr Snorrason’s Oldfs saga Tryggvasonar and the Historia Norwegiae list a Bishop Jon (or Johannes) against the evidence of Theodoricus and Agrip, in which the name appears as Sigwardus (or Sigur5r). Ellehpj prints the In a passage dealing with the clergy brought
3.
passages in parallel columns
HN .
.
.
.
.
sumpsit secum
Johannem episco-
viros religiosos,
pum
Sigwardum
.
.
.
episcopum
Oddr
Agrip
Theodoricus
habens secum
.
(p. 256):
.
.
.
ok haf6i meb
Sigurb byskop
.
.
ser .
Oc var ba ifor me6 honum Ion by scop.
videlicet .
.
.
name Jon or Johannes is a common borrowing from Ari, who in turn got it from Adam of Bremen (“lohannes quidam episcopus”),*^ but there are reasons for construing the evidence differently. Historia Norwegiae and Oddr Snorrason could have used Adam of Bremen independently. If this seems unHe
argues that the
common
more likely, that common source could, again, have been Saemundr, not Ari. Oddr Snorrason cites Saemundr by name in connection with Olafr Tryggvason ’s first assembly and conversion activity on DragseiS, and this is the logical context in which to find mention of the clergy likely
16.
and a
Ellehpj 1965:257-58.
Icelandic source
The
relevant passage from
Adam
is
cited
on
p. 151.
Kings’ Sagas
209
him
Olafr brought with
to
conduct the mission. Ellehdj
cites the
passage
(p. 17;
ed. Finnur Jonsson, p. 114):
bessa bings getr Saemundr prestr hinn fro6i er agetr var a6ru
ari rikis
DragseiSi. oc
Olafs T. let eigi
s.
Sua
si6.
hefir
Saemundr
(This assembly
is
bo6a monnum
stulbi
rita6
He
reign he assembled a great in
retta tru fyrr
oc maelti sua.
atti
A
bing a Sta5i a
en b^ir tocu skim, Olafr
oc mandrap. hann gaf oc go6 log folkinu oc go5an
um
Olaf konung
mentioned by the
tinguished in wisdom.
and did not desist
samna5i hann saman mikit folk oc
af at
konungr hepti miok ran oc
at speki.
isinni
bok.
Saemundr the Wise, who was
priest
dis-
said thus: “In the second year of Olafr Tryggvason’s
crowd of people and held a meeting
at
Sta6r on DragseiS
preaching the true faith to the people until they accepted
He
baptism. King Olafr did
much
good laws
and good standards of conduct.” Thus Saemundr wrote of
to the people
King Olafr
in his
to curb
robbery and theft and murder.
also gave
book.)
Furthermore, Snorri’s Heimskringla (IF, 26:326) mentions a Bishop Sigur5r
must be identical with the clergyman
sumes Ari
that Snorri
named
this
is
in question.
the key to Ari’s version,
it
who
Since Fllehpj elsewhere as-
would be
logical to suppose that
bishop SigurSr and not Jon.^^
Fllehpj’s three arguments in favor of Ari’s *konunga xvi as a source for the
Historia Norwegiae lead to an impasse. equally well.
more
The second
in the direction
points
more
of Saemundr.
The
first
argument
in the direction
One cannot
fits
Saemundr and Ari
of Ari. The third points
dispute the possibility that
view of the relationships is correct (see Figure 5), but there is nothing the evidence that would exclude other possibilities, for example, switching the
Fllehpj’s in
Saemundr
positions of Ari and
in the
wegiae and Agrip both made use,
The only
stemma or assuming
in differing proportions,
that Historia
Nor-
of Ari and Saemundr.
stable elements in the textual puzzle are the belief that Theodoricus
is
independent of Saemundr and Ari and a substantial majority opinion that Agrip
made
direct use of Theodoricus. This area of
agreement
is
not large but should
perhaps be sufficient to justify the labor expended on the task and to maintain our
mechanisms. Both propositions are supported equally by Bjami A6albjamarson and Svend Fllehpj. Unfortunately, even this limited con-
faith in the scholarly
sensus has collapsed in the In
last
few years.
1977 Bjami Gu5nason published an ’
lenskir sagnaritarar.
’
In
it
article entitled
“Theodoricus og
is-
he convincingly dismantled current thinking and
returned to an older view, maintained by A. Gjessing and Finnur Jonsson,
that
Bishop SigurSr and the possibility that a man by that name was transferred from the story of St. Olaf to the story of Olafr Tryggvason (whose bishop was originally named Johannes) see Lonnroth 1963:59 and his references. See also SigurSur Nordal 1914:61-62, Birkeli 1960, and Damsgaard Olsen 1965:52-54. 18. Gjessing 1876:50-56, ^Finnur Jonsson 1920-24, ii:587-94, and ^Finnur Jonsson 1928: 263-66. 17.
On
Theodore M. Andersson
210
Theodoricus was perfectly familiar with Saemundr and Ari despite his statements that it
is
he
is
recording
“non
visa sed audita” (what
“maxime
that
Norway
ubi nulla opitulatur scriptorum auctoritas” (especially where no
written authority lends
nearly contemporary.
As
Gu5nason argues
He
Bjami Gu5nason, Thec^ Ari constituted “auctoritas” because he was too
assistance).
doricus did not consider that
“auctoritas.”
have heard, not seen) and
of Haraldr harfagri’s subjection of
difficult to establish the date
(858)
I
did,
to
however, consider skaldic poetry
for Theodoricus’s that
According
in the light of
emphasis on “non visa sed audita,” Bjami
“hearing” and “reading” were identical
in
Norse par-
lance and gives examples of the interchangeability of “to read” and “to hear”
Oddr Snorrason and Snorri Sturluson. He also points out that the contemporary historians Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus made much of in the writing
of
their oral sources
although
it
is
written sources as well. Finally,
becoming increasingly clear that they used he makes a persuasive case for believing that
Theodoricus got information on the mysterious disappearance of Olafr Tryggvason from Saemundr and information on the conversion of Iceland from Ari.^®
Bjami GuSnason is right, Theodoricus’s independent status is compromised and he must be integrated into the written tradition along with Historia Norwegiae and Agrip. At this point even the minimal agreement between Bjami A6albjamarson and Ellehpj is undermined, and we must consider a different If
among
Norwegian synoptics. Bjami GuSnason believed that Theodoricus used both Saemundr and Ari, and this assumption may contain the germ of a new theory. We may extend the assumption to embrace Historia Norwegiae and Agrip and conjecture that all three picture of the textual relationships
synoptics used both Ari and Saemundr,
the
who presumably
differed
on certain
points to the extent that one revised and supplemented the other. This hypothesis
would explain the equally striking agreements and disagreements in the synoptics that drew on Saemundr and Ari, sometimes preferring the account of one and sometimes the account of the other. The development could be outlined as in Figure 6.
Saemundr and/or Ari
Figure
6.
Another view of the interrelationships among the Norwegian synopties
de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium, p. 6. On the commonplace non visa sed audita see Hanssen 1949a;75-76 and Holm-Olsen 1952:45-46. 20. Without knowing Bjami Gudnason’s article, I argued the same thesis in an article published two years later (1979). I took Theodoricus’s disclaimer about written authority to mean not that he had no written sources himself but that his written sources about such matters as the chronology of 19. Historia
Haraldr harfagri’s reign were doubtful because they depend ultimately on oral tradition. That
is,
even
Kings’ Sagas
211
Such a hypothesis leaves standing very little of the painstaking edifice erected by Bjami A5albjamarson and Svend Ellehpj, and the question arises whether any cogent analysis of the textual relationships
possible. This question
is
posed thirty-five years ago by Siegfried Beyschlag
was
in fact
in his full-scale study entitled
Konungasogur (1950). Beyschlag ’s solution was radical. He denied that the Norwegian synoptics stand in literary debt to one another or to earlier written sources and argued that they are independent recordings of very similar oral accounts.
It
is
impossible to debate this idea objectively.
correspondence
is
required to
make
storytellers? EllehpJ (1965:14)
How much
us believe that copyists are at
verbal
work and not
found no way to counter Beyschlag other than
to
main line of kings’ saga research represented by Gustav Storm, Sigur5ur Nordal, Gustav Indrebp, and Bjarni ASalbjamarson and to review the verbal correspondences once more (1965:197-276). In my opinion, most scholars who read the chapter in which he surveys this material (“Agrip og deTatinske krpniker”) will agree that the correspondences must be scribal and not oral. It is fair to say that we have abandoned the faith in oral tradition that once allowed Andreas Heusler to argue that the two redactions of Bandamanna declare his adherence to the
saga are oral variants because exact verbal correspondences never extend beyond
two successive
lines of the text.^^
We
are
now more
two words must be
likely to believe that
passages of nearly identical content sharing several significant scribally linked. If
Beyschlag’s theory
is
rejected and the analyses
and Ellehpj founder on their
own
by Bjami A5albjamarson
disagreement as well as the altered presupposi-
by Bjami GuSnason, we are obliged to conclude that the last fifty years of kings’ saga research have left us empty-handed. This situation is not without irony in view of the optimistic note on which Bjami A5albjamarson began the foreword to his book: “I have tried to arrive at conclusions that are as secure as possible in most of the hitherto unresolved questions.” He clearly hoped to settle the remaining details. tions suggested
Theodoricus knew Ari’s *konunga sevi, Ari himself was dependent on oral sources, as he states in islendingabok and as Snorri describes in his prologue to Heimskringla and the Separate Saga of St. Olaf. It seems unlikely that chronological speculations on the reign of Haraldr harfagri could still have been a matter of interpreting oral tradition at the end of the twelfth century. Gustav Indrebp if
“Such chronological information
something that oral tradition did not retain either in ancient or modem times.” In support of my view that Theodoricus ’s reference to oral tradition concerns the ultimate sources and not his immediate sources, I adduced a passage from the “articles” of Styrmir Karason’s *6ldfs saga helga in Flateyjarbok (ed. Gu6brandur Vigfusson and Unger, iii:248; ed. Vilhjalmur Bjamar et al., iv:13), in which, although asserted in another connection (1917:49):
Styrmir worked from a his to
full
written source,
account rests on “sggusQgn,” that
is,
is
margin of error must be allowed because on “oral tradition” or “hearsay.” This comment is taken it is
stated that a
stem from the scribe Magnus Porhallsson by Sigur6ur Nordal (1914:71) and Bjami Gu6nason
(1979:148), but Bjami Einarsson (1975:224) attributes dates
from the early thirteenth or
it
late fourteenth century,
directly to Styrmir. it
Whether
comment
the
betokens the same uncertainty
I
detect in
Theodoricus about information that, in the final analysis, depends on oral transmission. 21. Andreas Heusler, ed., Zwei Islandergeschichten (Berlin: Weidmann, 1913), pp. xxxvi and xliii.
Theodore M. Andersson
212
At
this point
we must
turn to the third stage in the development of the kings’
1150-1200, during which the first independent sagas were composed. Most notable in this group were the sagas of St. Olaf and Olafr Tryggvason. The chief irony in Bjami A5albjamarson’s foreword was his decisagas, roughly the period
I
sion to omit any consideration of the sagas of St. Olaf “because the relationship
by Sigur5ur Nordal in his book Om Olaf den precisely Sigur6ur NordaTs view of the St. Olaf material
among them has been helliges saga.’' that has
It is
clarified
unraveled most spectacularly in recent years.
He argued
a sequence of
Saga of St. O/a/ (preserved only in fragments) written toward the end of the twelfth century^^ and followed by a lost "^Middle Saga from around 1210. The ^Middle Saga was in turn the basis for Styrmir FlateyKarason’s redaction, which is preserved only in fragments (“articles” jarbok, ed. Vilhjalmur Bjamar et al., iv:l) in later manuscripts (Sigur6ur Nordal 1914:69-96), and the so-called Legendary Saga of St. Olaf, preserved in a manuscript from the middle of the thirteenth century. Snorri subsequently drew versions beginning with the Oldest
on Styrmir Karason’s version. SigurSur Nordal (1914:154) outlined the development as shown in Figure 7. Oldest Saga
Fostbrcedra saga
Legendary Saga
Styrmir’ s *Oldfs saga
Heimskringla Figure
7.
SigurSur Nordal’ s view of the development of Oldfs saga helga
The Oldest Saga survives only
in six
fragments from
MS
52
National Archive. In addition, there are two fragments in
which Gustav Storm considered survives fragmentarily in
NRA
reedited the fragments in
AM
to
Norwegian 325 IVa 4to,
in the
AM
be copied from the same manuscript that
52 (1893:1-10). In 1970 Jonna Louis- Jensen 325 IVa 4to and in the course of a painstaking
paleographical study redated them and argued that they cannot derive from
NRA
was affirmed and further clarified by Jonas Kristjansson. It turns out that Storm’s last two fragments are not part of the Oldest Saga but of a separate collection of the miracles of St. Olaf. Almost all the criteria for an early dating of the Oldest Saga between 1155 and 1180 rested on the seventh frag52. This conclusion
22.
Storm
(pp.
22-23 of his
edition of the Oldest Saga) argued for a date between 1155 and
but SigurSur Nordal (1914:53-54)
was
page 200 he confines himself to a date
critical
in the
1
180,
of Storm’s dating and was more cautious himself. “second half” of the twelfth century.
On
Kings’ Sagas
ment. Once
213
it is
removed, there
no good reason
is
Saga
for dating the Oldest
around 1200, as Jonas Kristjansson does (1972:156-63, 223). In the course of this reappraisal we have lost two bits of the Oldest Saga.
earlier than
appears that
we have
lost the * Middle
Saga
as well. This
It
a redaction to which
is
Sigur5ur Nordal assigned separate status because he believed that
it
was charac-
by material taken over from Fostbroedra saga (SigurSur Nordal 1914:142-50). But Jonas Kristjansson reverses the direction of the borrowing
terized
and argues that Fostbroedra saga borrowed from Styrmir Karason’s *dldfs saga helga, which, as he says, is “the only ‘middle saga’ of St. Olaf of which we have certain knowledge’’ (1972:223).^^ What emerges from literary history.
around 1200.
It
debate
altered
is
The most important revision is the later dating of the Oldest Saga thus joins the company of Oddr Snorrason’s Oldfs saga Tryggva-
Gunnlaugr
sonar,
this
Leifsson’s
saga
"^Oldfs
Tryggvasonar,
Sverris
saga,
Jomsvikinga saga, Fsereyinga saga, and Morkinskinna (perhaps Orkneyinga
saga and "^Skjgldunga saga as well),
all
of which seem to have been composed in
190 and 1220. The Oldest Saga of St. thus no longer an isolated precursor anticipating later developments. As
a great burst of literary activity between
Olaf is long as
was held
it
to include the
1
two fragments
judged to be a hagiographic proto-saga written acquired
its
more
subtle
secular
down
writing emerging from a hagiographic prototype is
now no
at a
characteristics.^^
fragments, the Oldest Saga will seem more
There
in
Am
325 IVa 4to,
time before saga Stripped
to earth,
it
was
art
had
and our idea of saga
may need
to
be rethought.
reason to believe that the history of the kings’ sagas entails the
gradual freeing of native talent from the confining traditions of the Church.
of the
first
two
of these
Most
narrative efforts in the vernacular {Orkneyinga saga, Faereyinga saga,
Jomsvikinga saga, Morkinskinna) are as secular as Snorri’s work. Perhaps the
two sagas of Olafr Tryggvason by Oddr Snorrason and Gunnlaugr Leifsson, with their concessions to
hagiography, represented an eccentric school of saga writing
and should not be taken as the point of departure for the
later tradition.
That
1976:291-92. The existence of the ^Middle Saga was also disputed by Johan Schreiner (1926b) but was defended by Didrik Arup Seip (1929:3-15). Every change in detail has wider implications. Bjami ASalbjamarson (1936:5) considered that borrowings from Agrip into the * Middle Saga were the best proof for dating Agrip before 1200, and Jonas Kristjansson maintained the early dating of Agrip by arguing that the Oldest Saga borrowed from it (1972:191-98, 1976:290), but if, as Jonas Kristjansson proposes as an alternate possibility (1972:201), these latter borrowings were not from Agrip but from the common source of Agrip and 23. See also Jonas Kristjansson
becomes uncertain again. SigurSur Nordal (1914:52-53) assigns the author a low artistic rank along with Oddr Snor-
Historia Norwegiae, the dating of Agrip 24.
whom
he nonetheless credited with brilliant passages. Objections to this low evaluation of the Oldest Saga were raised by Oscar Albert Johnsen (1916c:214) and Schreiner (1926b:ll). TurvillePetre (^1953:190) emphasized the foreign hagiographic models. Cf. Jonas Kristjansson 1976:289-
rason,
90. 25. See Louis-Jensen 1970:60.
Legendary Saga
is
mistitled:
It
“The
was pointed out long ago by Oscar Albert Johnsen designation ‘legendary’
is
misleading; as
we have
appropriate only to a small part of the saga’’ (1916c:217). 26. On Oddr and Gunnlaugr in general see Bjami ASalbjamarson 1936:55-135.
that the
seen,
it
is
Theodore M. Andersson
214
would explain why Oddr and Gunnlaugr reverted tradition
to Latin after the vernacular
had already been established by Ari, Eirikr Oddsson
in the
now
lost
^Hryggjarstykki, Karl Jonsson in the “Gryla” portion of Sverris saga, and,
depending on the dating, perhaps the authors of the the earliest parts of
lost
^Skjgldunga saga and
Orkneyinga saga.
Olaf was not written as early as Gustav Storm thought, we must decide what replaces it as the earliest saga. Bjami GuSnason If the
Oldest Saga of
has recently proposed a
St.
new
candidate in a monograph programmatically entitled
Fyrsta sagan. Here he reviews succinctly
all
the problems relating to Eirikr
book "^Hryggjarstykki, which is referred to and adapted in both Morkinskinna and Heimskringla. The long-standing debate over the dating and coverage of *Hryggjarstykki is resolved in favor of the view that it is strictly a biography of the pretender to the Norwegian throne Sigur5r slembir (or slembidjakn) covering the years 1136-39 and written around 1150. The chief concern of Bjami Gu6nason’s book, however, is not the narrower question of date but the Oddsson’ s
lost
broader question of
Hryggjarstykki
s
location in literary history, whether
based on foreign hagiographic models or is
right
and *Hryggjarstykki
SigurSr slembir,
who was
is
is
it is
a sample of native storytelling. If he
pure biography culminating in the martyrdom of
tortured to death
by
his enemies, then his conclusion
Oddsson was indebted to the hagiographic tradition must also be correct. But it emerges from his discussion that the ecclesiastical and secular elements are fairly evenly balanced, and it appears that the Church did not exert an overwhelming influence on Icelandic historiography even at this early period. Perhaps we should assume that Ari’s model had to some extent inoculated the that Eirikr
tradition against outright hagiography.
An
book by Bjami Gu5nason (1963) puts the same questions to ^Skjgldunga saga, which he thinks may have been written as early as 1180 although most scholars prefer an approximate date around 1200. He attaches it in some measure to the historical revival of the twelfth century in Europe, but it is narratively more dependent on the Icelandic fornaldarsaga (legendary or mythicheroic saga), which found a more learned expression in the works of the Danish historians Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus. Again, native impulses seem to earlier
counterbalance,
is
not dominate, foreign trends.
may now be
considered older than the Oldest Saga of St. Orkneyinga saga. In a long introduction to his edition, Finnbogi Gu6-
Another saga Olaf
if
that
may have been
mundsson
(IE, 34) argues that the original redaction
the priest
Ingimundr Porgeirsson, who began the work as early
completed
it
by 1189.^^ He suggests
that
written by
as
1165 and
Ingimundr may have worked
in the
Oddsson (p. ci) and points out in addition (p. cvii) that he Norway with Abbot Karl Jonsson in 1185. During the following three
tradition of Eirikr
sailed for
years Karl Jonsson began the writing of Sverris saga under the surveillance of and KLNM, xii;699-702. Finnbogi Gudmundsson believes that the was executed by Snorri Sturluson or under his aegis. See also Taylor 1973.
27. tion
IF, 34:c-cvi
later redac-
Kings’ Sagas
King
215
Sverrir, as
by Karl
pleted led to
is
we learn from the prologue known as “Gryla,” but the
one of the most inconclusive debates
The portion comexact parameters of “Gryla” have to Sverris saga.
in all of kings’ saga studies. Scholars
have often assigned only a brief section to Karl Jonsson, assuming that the remainder was written sometime after Sverrir’ s death in 1202. Exactly when continuation
from 1204
A
was executed
another disputed question, with estimates ranging
is
to 1230.28
saga that must have been written
traces
it
has
kringla,
is
left in
the lost
at a fairly early stage,
Hakon
gem
derived from
jarl, the
it
is
suggested by a
by Fagrskinna (chaps. 59-68) on the dealings of
Danish king Haraldr blatgnn (Harald Bluetooth), Gull-Haraldr,
and Haraldr grafeldr. Indrebp correctly rated terpart in
judging from the
Fagrskinna, Snorri’s Separate Saga of St. Olaf, and Heims*Hladajarla saga.^^ That *Hladajarla saga belongs to the
period of full flowering and not to the formative period narrative
this
Heimskringla
(IF,
this
passage higher than the coun-
26:232-39).
Extant but almost as difficult to assess as "^Hladajarla saga because in five differing redactions, all
of which deviate from the original,
saga.^^ Like *Skjgldunga saga,
it is
ary saga, and like "^Hladajarla saga
is
it
survives
Jomsvikinga
a cross between a kings’ saga and a legendit
lent parts of
and Heimskringla. With ^Hladajarla saga
it
its
also has in
narrative to Fagrskinna
common
a high point in
which the Jomsvikings were defeated by Hakon jarl. The two sagas might be considered as a complementary pair, one written from the perspective of the victorious Norwegians at HjQrungavagr and one from the point of view of the vanquished but irrepressible Jomsvikings. In what order these sagas were written is unclear, but the customary guess for the the Battle of
Hjgrungavagr
composition of both
is
(ca. 980), in
around 1200
(e.g., ^Schier, pp. 25, 31).
28. On the parameters of “Gryla” see Holm-Olsen 1952:30-102 and 1977, and Lams H. Blondal 1951 and 1982:80-123. The number of chapters in Sverris saga assigned to “Gryla” has been
variously set at seventeen, thirty-one, thirty-nine, forty-three, and one hundred (see
Holm-Olsen
1952:30-32). Holm-Olsen also reviewed earlier opinions on authorship and concluded that there
were two authors (1952:32-35, 50). Brekke (1958:87-122) believed
that the saga as a
whole was
Karl Jonsson ’s work, but failed to convince his “opponents” at his doctoral defense (Lie 1960 and Schreiner 1960; see Brekke’s reply 1960). See also Halvdan Koht 1959a and 1959b, and Knut Helle
1961:342-44. More recently Holm-Olsen (1977:67) and Lams H. Blondal (1982:124-57) have shown themselves open to the idea that Karl Jonsson was the sole author. Helle (1958:100) believed that Sverris saga was complete ca. 1210. Brekke (1958:1 1-82) again surveyed the dating problems and concluded that the saga was completed in 1204-7. Lams H. Blondal (1982:80-123) also rejects
was written at a considerably later date. 29. See Indrebp 1917:80-84, Bemtsen 1923:182-217, Schreiner 1927a:20-60, and BJami A6albjamarson 1936:185-87, 206-24. 30. Indrebp 1917:147-49, BJami Abalbjamarson 1936:223, and Jakobsen 1970:120-21. 31. See Krijn 1914, Indrebp 1917:53-80, Hempel 1922-23, BJami A5albJamarson 1936:201the idea that part of the saga
Jakob Benediktsson in KLNM, vii:607-8, Almqvist 1965:119-28, the introduction to Olafur Halldorsson’s edition (1969:7-55), and BJami Einarsson 1975: 105-55. For a brief English summary of the problems see Blake 1962:vii-xxv. 32. Fsereyinga saga also belongs to this period but is omitted here because, as Jonas Kristjansson 17,
says (1975:235),
it is
closer to the family sagas than to the kings’ sagas.
Theodore M. Andersson
216
After considering the earliest Icelandic school (Saemundr and Ari) and the
Norwegian synoptics (Theodoricus, Historia Norwegiae, mdAgrip) most probably from the period 1 175-90, we now have a third group of sagas before us. This group belongs to the broad period 1150-1200 and includes *Hryggjarstykki, ^Skjgldunga saga, Orkneyinga saga, some portion of Sverris saga, ^Hladajarla
Oddr Snorrason’s and Gunnlaugr Leifsson’s versions of dldfs saga Tryggvasonar, and the Oldest Saga of St. Olaf. The composition of these works marks the birth of the Icelandic saga proper, but they show that the
saga, Jdmsvikinga saga,
term saga covered from the outset a remarkable variety of narrative themes and styles.
Some
of the texts are about nearly contemporary events C^Hryggjarstykki,
Sverris saga, and to
some
much of Orkneyinga
We may
saga).
surmise that they operate
extent in Ari Porgilsson’s tradition of securing accounts from the best
possible authorities and eyewitnesses. Other sagas in this group deal with sub-
and rely on skaldic or other oral
jects antedating the accounts of eyewitnesses
Orkneyinga saga, *Hladajarla saga, Jdmsvikinga
tradition (the early parts of
saga, and the biographies of Olafr Tryggvason and St. Olaf).
Norwegian monarchs
(the
deal with
Olaf sagas, Sverris saga, and to some extent "^Hlada-
jarla saga), but others center on Danish affairs extent Jdmsvikinga saga).
The
orientation. *Hryggjarstykki
is
Skjgldunga saga and to a large
Norwegian in Norwegian throne who
earliest of these texts are not
about a pretender to the
had Danish support and happened is strictly
Some
to
spend a winter
in Iceland. * Skjgldunga
Danish, and Orkneyinga saga (like Faereyinga saga)
is
saga
a provincial
history.
Some
of the texts are primarily historical in tone
C Hryggjarstykki,
Orkney-
inga saga, and Sverris saga). Others are better described as tales of adventure
C^Skjgldunga saga and Jdmsvikinga saga).
coloring
Some show
a hagiographic
Hryggjarstykki and Oddr’s Oldfs saga Tryggvasonar), but most are
we are by the Heimskringla, we tend to
entirely secular. Influenced as
classical formulation of the kings’
sagas in Snorri’s
think of kings’ saga literature as
tantamount to a history of the Norwegian kings. This view
is
Norwegian synoptics, but the first period of kings’ saga writing strikingly open and experimental. There is nothing in Icelandic 1
adequate to the
was from
in Iceland
literature
150 to 1200 that leads inevitably to Snorri. Perhaps the writers of this period
felt
Norwegian kings had already been dealt with in sufficient detail by Saemundr and Ari, but the brevity of these early works was not destined to satisfy
that the
Icelandic reading appetites indefinitely.
After the disparate beginnings of the period
down
to about
1230 takes on a much clearer
1
150-1200, the following period
profile.
It is
the period of the first
compendia of the Norwegian kings, Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and Heimskringla. Morkinskinna covers the period from the death of St. Olaf (1030) great
to the reign of Haraldr gilli’s sons SigurSr, Ingi,
may 33.
originally have extended
down
and Eysteinn
to 1177.^^
(until
1
157), but
it
Fagrskinna covers the period
Bjami ACalbjamarson 1936:135 and Indreb0 1938-39:62-63.
On
the range of the author’s
geographical knowledge and his probable location in northern Iceland see Kvalen 1925.
Kings’ Sagas
217
from Halfdan
svarti, in the
middle of the ninth century, to Magnus Erlingsson
(1177), and Heimskringla covers the
ductory
section
Morkinskinna
is
of the
it is
the addition of an intro-
Yngling dynasty (Ynglinga saga).
quasi-historical
the first in the series and
the kings’ sagas
all
same period with is
customarily dated around 1220.^"^
Of
probably the least thoroughly studied. Second in line
is
Norwegian Fagrskinna, on which Gustav Indrebp produced an admirable monograph in 1917. Indrebp demonstrated in detail that the author of Fagrskinna
the
made use of
a series of earlier texts, Morkinskinna, Agrip, *Hladajarla saga,
Saemundr, "^Hryggjarstykki, the oldest
(lost)
version of Jomsvikinga saga, a
Oddr Snorrason’s Oldfs saga Tryggvasonar closest to the Stockholm manuscript, some version of Oldfs saga helga, whether Styrmir’s redaction or a
redaction of
version of the Oldest Saga, and perhaps a "^Knuts saga. Indrebp believed that
Fagrskinna was written around 1225 and
in the service
of King Hakon Hakonar-
son (pp. 273, 277). His main thesis was that Fagrskinna was composed in a strictly literary tradition
on the basis of written
texts
and was only marginally
indebted to oral tradition (p. 111). This thesis has not been challenged.
Heimskringla, which Snorri seems to have composed in the period from roughly 1225 to 1235,^^ belongs to the same tradition and used most of the same written sources, in addition to others.
The source question was
clarified
by
Gustav Storm as early as 1873. Since then the debate has centered chiefly on the question of whether Snorri used Fagrskinna. Indrebp concluded that he into possession
came
of Fagrskinna only after he had begun work on Heimskringla and
made use of it beginning with the saga of Haraldr grafeldr (1917:285-97). Bjami A5albjamarson, though somewhat irresolute, was also inclined to believe that Snorri used Fagrskinna (1936:197-98, 224-27, 235-36).
For the period 1030-1157 the
/
compendia Fagrskinna and Heimskringla depend chiefly on Morkinskinna. But where did the author of Morkinskinna find his narrative material? This question leads to one of the most interesting, as yet unresolved, problems in kings’ saga research. The analysis of the kings’ sagas grew out of the philological tradition (Holtsmark 1938:146) and has concerned itself
with the unraveling of textual relationships. Indrebp established the rule
that oral sources \
\
later
should be considered only as a
last resort
(1917:111):
“We can
one should derive only as much of Fagrskinna absolutely compelled to; that is to say, whatever one
establish as a critical rule that
from oral tradition as one
is
'cannot reasonably derive from written sagas or skaldic
poems.” Indrebp’s
prin-
was strongly endorsed by Bjami A5albjamarson (1936:188): “This line of argument strikes me as incontestable.” The mle is valid in the case of those
ciple
sagas that are based on written texts, but
confronted with the earliest sagas for which
it
when sources. As a
leaves the critic helpless
we have no
written
Bjami ASalbJamarson 1936:136-37. Jonas Kristjansson (1975:231) suggests that the date may need to be revised. The original version from ca. 1220 is no longer extant and must be assessed on the basis of a redaction from the end of the century. Albeck (1946:59-68) argued that Fagrskinna was the source of Morkinskinna, not vice versa, but his arguments were rejected by Jakobsen (1968). 35. See Bjami A6albjamarson’s preface in IF, 26:xxviii-xxix. 34. Morkinskinna, ed. Finnur Jonsson, p. ix, and
Theodore M. Andersson
218 result,
we have
detailed studies of the sources of Fagrskinna and Heimskringla
but no source studies for
Oddr Snorrason’s Oldfs saga Tryggvasonar or
Oldest Saga of
We
St.
Olaf.^^
have not learned
to deal with sagas that
the
do not
from Saemundr, Ari, or known texts. In the case of Morkinskinna this embarrassment has produced a curious solution: if no known sources are available, it is assumed -that the author had written sources that have since been lost. Thus Finnur Jonsson assumed ihdX Morkinskinna was based on separate lost sagas about Magnus g66i and Haraldr har5ra6i
'yderive
(Harald Hardrule), Olafr kyrri (Olaf the Quiet), leg),
Magnus
berfoettr
(Magnus Bare-
Magnus’s sons Eysteinn, Sigur5r, and Olafr, and Hakon her5ibrei6r and
Magnus
Erlingsson.^^
He concluded
with the decisive statement {Morkinskinna,
must be considered beyond any doubt that individual sagas about the Norwegian kings before Sverrir date from the period ca. 1 160 (or 1 150) to ca. 1180.’’ Bjami A5albjamarson, though critical of Finnur Jonsson’s lack of evidence for this assumption, somewhat reluctantly agreed that there were separate p. xxxviii): “It
Magnus
sagas about
g65i, Haraldr har5ra5i (possibly a single saga about both),
Magnus’s sons, and Hakon her5ibrei5r and Magnus Erlingsson (1936:171). Aside from the lack of evidence, this assumption has the disadvantage of removing from consideration the original nature of the kings’ sagas in question. They are too remote to invite literary assessment or to allow
Magnus
berfoettr,
any analysis of the ultimate oral sources.
Gustav Indrebp became more than a is
little
doubtful about these lost sagas: “It
demonstrate that before the Oldest Morkinskinna there was a
difficult to
separate saga about a single king between St. Olaf and SigurSr Jorsalafari (Jeru-
salem Farer), including the
book was
available.
latter
—
after Sigur5r Jorsalafari Eirikr
For some of the
Oddsson’s
earlier kings a separate saga
argued more easily. Thus a separate Haralds pdttr hdrfagra
in
can be
Flateyjarbok (ed.
GuSbrandur Vigfusson and Unger, i:561-76; ed. Vilhjalmur Bjamar et al., 11:53-70), which borrows from Fleimskringla but cannot be derived from this source alone, seems to indicate that a separate "^Haralds saga hdrfagra existed before Heimskringla and was used by Snorri (Jonas Kristjansson 1977; Berman 1982). Similarly, Indrebp (1917:35-36, 39-40) argued for the existence of a separate *Hdkonar saga goda as a source for Fagrskinna because this section of Fagrskinna deviates from Agrip and is fuller than other sections and because Egils saga refers to such a saga (IF, 2:239): “Hakon konungr for i J^eiri fer6 v{5a
um
Gautland
Gautland on
An
.
.
.
sva
this trip
sem
sagt er
...
as
is
i
sQgu bans’’ (King Hakon traveled widely
told in his saga).
in
Bjami A5albjamarson (1936:
Bemtsen, who tried to isolate the Norwegian traditions behind the kings’ sagas (1923). He remained in the philological tradition, however, by the expedient of dissolving the extant Icelandic sagas into lost Norwegian sagas. 37. See ^Finnur Jonsson 1920-24, ii:622-23, 628, n. 3, and Finnur Jonsson’s introduction to his edition oi Morkinskinna, pp. x-xxxviii. See also Fellows Jensen 1962;cl-clv. 38. Indrebd 1922:64. Cf. Koht 1914b:83 (rpt. 1921:176), Kvalen 1926:334, Schreiner 1927a:636.
7,
exception should probably be
and Gimmler 1976:45.
made
for Toralf
Kings’ Sagas
219
190-96) agreed with
view even though Indrebd had already withdrawn it.^^ The only reasonably certain separate saga (aside from the biographies of the two Olafs) seems therefore to be that of Haraldr harfagri. The possibility thus remains open that Morkinskinna was the first attempt to record the lives of the Norwegian this
kings after St. Olaf.
The most probing general statement about
the lost independent sagas
is
that of
Gustav Indrebp (1938-39: 58-79). Indrebp not only reminds us of the thin evidence adduced in favor of these sagas but makes a positive case for believing that
Morkinskinna
is
an original work (pp. 74-76).
If this is true,
Morkinskinna, minus the psettir and other interpolations of the redaction, a firsthand narrative tion.
It
drawn
directly
from skaldic and
we have
later
in
preserved
oral prose tradi-
thus differs from Fagrskinna and Heimskringla in the
manner of
its
composition, but the implications of this difference remain unexplored. Indrebp’s study of Fagrskinna was so thorough that very
little
has been added,
but Snorri Sturluson’s central position in Icelandic literature has assured an '
ongoing preoccupation with Heimskringla. Not
least important is the question
whether Snorri really wrote Heimskringla since no manuscript of that work mentions his authorship. According to Islendinga saga, chapter 79 C Sturlunga
I
saga, i:342), Sturla Sighvatsson copied books which Snorri had composed, but the identity of these
books
is
not known.
translators of Heimskringla, Laurents
Two
sixteenth-century
Norwegian
Hansspn and Peder Clausspn,
refer to the
author as Snorri Sturluson. Jakob Benediktsson (1955) argued that this information
came from
a
common
lieves that the case cannot
manuscript, but Jonna Louis-Jensen (1977:50) be-
be proved. Olafur Halldorsson (1979:123-27), how-
ever, points out that Snorri’s authorship of Heimskringla does not
depend
exclusively on the references in Laurents Hansspn and Peder Clausspn because references to Snorri in Olafs saga Tryggvasonar hin mesta clearly echo Heims-
was pursued by Lars Lonnroth from the standpoint of medieval authorship in general. Even if Snorri is responsible for kringla.
Another
line of inquiry
[Heimskringla, Lonnroth queries whether his role 1
authorship or entrepreneurial leadership."^® in closer literary
is
to
be understood as personal
The answer
to this question
must
lie
study of Heimskringla to ascertain whether the various parts are
homogeneous or heterogeneous with respect to style and authorial viewpoint. The sources of Heimskringla, already analyzed in some detail by Gustav Storm (1873a), were reviewed in still greater detail by Bjami A5albjamarson in his monumental edition of Heimskringla (IF, 26-28). Because the 367 pages of commentary are dispersed in three volumes, it is easy to lose sight of the fact ^
39. Indreb0 1922:50. Schreiner (1927a;95- 102) also argued against
it
and Beyschlag (1950:157-
60) opposed Bjami ASalbjamarson’s arguments. Jakobsen (1970:99, 113, 115) tacitly accepts a *Hdkonar saga, but most recently Fidjestpl (1982:11) has expressed himself guardedly about the existence of such a text. If Jonas Kristjansson (1977:470-72) later than
is
correct in believing that Egils saga
Heimskringla, the reference in Egils saga need not be to a
Heimskringla. 40. Lonnroth 1964:78-97, 1965:9, 13-14.
lost
*Hdkonar saga but
is
to
Theodore M. Andersson
220 that,
taken together, they constitute the most painstaking and complete study of
any kings’ saga. In addition to clarifying Snorri’s relationship to his sources, Bjami A5albjamarson made substantial improvements in the critical edition of
end has
the text (see Louis-Jensen 1977:35-36). Further material toward this
been provided by Jonna Louis-Jensen
in a study of the compilations
Hulda and
Hrokkinskinna (1977).
The
relatively
advanced
ary analysis than
we
state
of Heimskringla studies has allowed more
find for Morkinskinna and Fagrskinna.
As
liter-
early as 1920
Sigur5ur Nordal’s book Snorri Sturluson undertook to define Snorri’s narrative in a chapter entitled
art
“Sagnakonnun og
emplified such matters as Snorri’s
command
sogulist.” Sigur5ur Nordal ex-
of the story
line, correlation
of the
individual sagas, motivation of subsequent events, rationalization of his sources,
and broad perspective on the history he describes. Of special interest are the pages on the relationship between the Separate Saga of
St.
Olaf and Heims-
book (1914:166-98), apparently to the satisfaction of all later scholars, that the Separate Saga was written before Heimskringla and was slightly modified for inclusion in the later compendium. In Snorri Sturluson (1920:241-49) he argues that the Separate Saga and Heimskringla represent different stages in Snorri’s literary personality. The kringla. SigurSur
had established
Separate Saga
characterized by a relative paucity of skaldic stanzas and a
relative
is
abundance of
paettir
in his first
(semi-independent short narratives).
with a greater zest in storytelling for parts of
became
its
own
Heimskringla sometimes sacrifice “stricter, drier,
more
it
rests
was
written
sake, whereas the earlier and later art for learning.
scholarly’’ (1920:248). This
of Snorri’s literary development, but
It
on the view
is
With age Snorri
an attractive history
that Snorri
wrote Egils
^
saga early
in his career (IF, 2:lviii).
If
Jonas Kristjansson (1977:470-72)
correct that such an extraordinarily dramatic
was
in fact written as late as
and humorous work as Egils saga
1240, Snorri’s development from youthful anima-
tion to the sterner style of the senior historian is
The boldest attempt Heimskringlas
stil
more
difficult to argue.
to recapture Snorri’s artistry is Hallvard Lie’s Studier
(1936). Lie
is
is
alone
among
i
kings’ saga scholars in shaking off
source questions to probe Snorri’s underlying habits of mind.
He
studied Snorri’s
visualization of the individual scene, his references to the past for the purpose of
lending color and resonance to the present
moment,
his ability to
convey an
impression of objectivity, his simplification and dramatization of the dialogue in his sources, hisTise^of verbal
echoes to bind question and answer or statement
and rejoinder, his habit of jumping from indirect to direct discourse \
tence, his use of verba dicendi (close to
Morkinskinna and
in
midsen-
from Eagrskinna), and the capping of his scenes with lapidary formulations (“den monumentale replikk’’). In addition, he classified the speeches of Heimskringla with special attention to certain rhetorical features.^* Topics that have yet to be dealt distinct
41. Briefer notes on Snorri’s style and technique are found in Paasche (1916), Finnbogi
mundsson (1976), Andersson .(1976), Bjami Gu6nason (1979), and Ciklamini (1981).
GuS-
s
Kings’ Sagas
221
with are the general rules governing the composition of the individual sagas in
Heimskringla and Snorri’s overall perspective on the evolution of Norwegian history, perhaps considering rise
and decline, conflicting claims of foreign and
domestic policy, or the transition from warrior kings to kings whose claim to the throne If
more a matter of legitimacy than
is
we
ability.
glance back at the development over the
century of kings’ saga
first
we observe an early attempt to summarize the lives of the Norwegian first down to Magnus g65i (Saemundr) and then (presumably) down to
writing,
kings
Sigur5r Jorsalafari (Ari). Recent studies have suggested persistently that these early lives
were the textual basis of the Norwegian synoptics
end of the
whereas the Norwegian historians concentrated exclusively on
century. their
at the
own
kings, Icelandic writers in the period
1
150-1200 explored a
variety of
genres, provincial history, historical adventure tales, and individual biographies,
including those of Haraldr harfagri, SigurSr slembir, and the two Olafs. This biographical trend culminated in the compendia of 1220-30, Morkinskinna,
Fagrskinna, and Heimskringla. Since the lost books by Saemundr and Ari have taken on increasing importance in this development,
it is
tempting to posit a neat,
purely literary evolution from their works through the synoptics to the full biographies.
But such an evolution
illusory. ?No matter
is
what dimensions we choose
to
assign to Saemundr and Ari, they cannot explain the emergence of novel-like
biographies at the end of the century.
And no
matter
how
confidently
Beyschlag’s oral biographies as an explanation of the synoptics,
we
we
reject
cannot elude
1190-1220 show an enormous accretion of oral material that must have circulated earlier and was drawn Ion only very selectively by Saemundr and Ari. By a rough estimate, Oddr’s Olafs saga Tryggvasonar, ihc Legendary Saga of St. Olaf, 2end Morkinskinna' account rthe impression that the great sagas of the generation
of
Magnus g65i and Haraldr har5ra5i
are forty to fifty times the length of the
equivalent sections in Agrip. This discrepancy poses a problem that has yet to be addressed. Scholars have been so preoccupied with the intricacies of the transition
from Saemundr and Ari
to the synoptics that they
have not attacked the
equally crucial issue of the transition from the synoptics to the real sagas.
Most
of the effort devoted to the third generation has been expended on Snorri, but Snorri
is
material
some sense no problem. He acquired his stories from a mass of available to him in written form: the lost "^Haralds saga hdrfagra, in
Oddr’s Olafs saga Tryggvasonar, Styrmir Karason’s "^Oldfs saga helga, Jomsvikinga saga,
HlaSajarla saga, Orkneyinga saga, Fcereyinga saga, Mork-
inskinna, and Fagrskinna.
was already a
fitter
their extraordinary
The period of
literary
and trimmer of written
texts.
growth was over, and Snorri
But where did
his
models get
growth?
42. Attempts to arrive at a
more
theoretical understanding of Snorri have
been made by Beyschlag
(1950:368-76 and 1966), and Sandvik (1955). 43. Ellehpj 1965 and 1966, Bjami Gu5nason 1977, Olafur Halldorsson 1977, and Andersson 1979.
Theodore M. Andersson
222 There
a prevailing instinct in the study of the kings’ sagas to avoid the oral
is
and stick to the
issues
terra,
however
infirma, of written tradition. But the oral
problems cannot be eluded, only postponed.
certain that the independent
It is
1190-1220 harnessed a great deal of hitherto unexploited tradition. In her official “opposition” to Bjami A5albjamarson’s dissertation, Anne Holtsmark complained of his programmatic disregard of oral tradition and his tendency to explain what we have from lost written sources, which in turn remain sagas of
unexplained (Holtsmark 1938:146).
The most important new component
/
in the sagas
from 1190
expanded use of skaldic verse. Snorri figures prominently this
phenomenon
as
we have because he
of
St.
Olaf,
skalds.
first to
exploit skaldic sources.
tradition
the
and the Separate Saga, but
Oddr Snorrason,
the Oldest all
cited seven whole, half, or quarter stanzas,
Saga
drew on the
and there
is
a
know, only Beyschlag and Bjame have made any attempt to calculate, on a small scale, how much This might have been transmitted by the vehicle of skaldic verse.
possibility that Ari did so as well.^"^
Fidjestpl
is
such discussions of
Orkneyinga saga, Morkinskinna, and Fagrskinna
Even Agrip
1220
specifically dealt with the critical
principles involved in his prologue to Heimskringla
/he was not the
in
to
calculation
is
As
far as
I
a fairly straightforward matter.
It
involves isolating the skaldic
from them whatever information they contain or suggest, consulting whatever stanzas from the cited poems have been preserved in other contexts, making a fair surmise about what may have appeared in stanzas that are not recorded but must have existed, adding up the total skaldic stanzas in a particular text, extracting
information, and comparing
it
with what the saga prose actually says.
Beyschlag ’s sample from the lives of Haraldr harfagri, Hakon g65i, and Olafr
Tryggvason convinced him
that the skaldic sources
the saga narratives they buttress.
were not
sufficient to explain
There must have been additional information
available to the saga writers. This surplus tradition led Beyschlag to the concept
of “Begleitprosa,” prose narrative transmitted in conjunction with the skaldic stanzas and capable of independent development. Beyschlag held that skaldic stanzas could not have existed in hermetic isolation
gave
them and that survival of some
rise to
teed the
from the circumstances
the very existence of such stanzas
would have guaran-
narrative attaching to their original circumstances. In
other words, skaldic stanzas must have served as the nuclei of traditions.
that
The Icelander who, according
to
Morkinskinna
(ed.
somewhat
fuller
Finnur Jonsson,
pp. 199-200), gives an account of Haraldr har6ra5i’s adventures before the king
himself in the middle of the eleventh century presumably told the same story in
one stanza in his *konunga sevi, but his argument was rejected by Baetke (1970:14-18). See also Bjorn Sigfusson 1944:26-27. Fidjest0l (1982:20) is inclined to believe that Agrip is the first of the kings’ sagas to cite skaldic stanzas. 45. Beyschlag 1953:1 1 1-20 and Fidjest0l 1971. On the relationship of verse and prose transmissions in general see also Beyschlag 1981, Hofmann 1981b and 1978-79 (publ. 1982), and von See 1977 and 1978-79 (publ. 1982). 44. Elleh0j (1965:51
,
64) argued that Ari included
at least
—
A Kings’ Sagas
223
someone
would have supplemented or authenticated the story with the skaldic stanzas composed by Haraldr and his skalds. It is unlikely that this story would have perished completely during the 150 years between the death of Haraldr har6ra5i and the composition of the older redaction of Iceland, and he, or
else,
Morkinskinna, leaving only a residue of stanzas without context and obliging the saga writer to reconstruct the underlying events from skaldic hints and his imagination. There
would have been tellers,
but there
is
own
every reason to think that the details of Haraldr’ s story
by successive generations of enthusiastic think that there was no story at all.
utterly transformed is
no reason
to
Indeed, the existence of narrative tradition beyond the narrow skaldic confines is
guaranteed precisely by Morkinskinna, in the form of interlarded paettir about
Icelanders. There
is
some doubt about how many of
these paettir were in the
original redaction of Morkinskinna, especially since not all are to be
the cognate redaction of Flateyjarbok,"^^ but the point at
manuscript tradition
is
in
one respect immaterial;
at
found
which they entered the
whatever moment
in the
were written down, they must have derived from
thirteenth century they tradition.
The nature of
scholars,
who have been
that oral tradition
is
in
difficult to define, but
oral
American
conspicuously uninterested in conventional kings’ saga
made some attempt to pin down oral form. Joseph Harris defined characteristic structure of some Icelandic paettir, and this common structure
research, have the
might be attributed to the oral precursors of the written Clover defined the form of the basic episodic unit that
it
works
in the kings’ sagas exactly as
that matter, in
many
it
in
works
paettir (1972).
Carol
J.
saga narrative and showed
in the
family sagas and, for
of the translated sagas (1974). This episodic structure might
also be attributed to the oral stage.
The labor expended on
the kings’ sagas has been unevenly distributed.
Much
works of Saemundr and Ari and to the sources of the Norwegian synoptics, but some of the fuller texts have suffered relative neglect. There have been some very helpful recent studies of individual sagas Bjami Gu5nason’s books on "^Skjgldunga saga and *Hryggjarstykki, Ludvig Holm-Olsen’s, Egil Nygaard Brekke’s, and Lams Blondal’s studies of Sverris saga, and Finnbogi Gu6mundsson’s detailed introduction to Orkney inga saga but other sagas have gone begging. There is virtually nothing of general (1965) effort has
been devoted
to the lost
—
on Jomsvikinga saga or Faereyinga saga. Although Fagrskinna was thoroughly studied by Indrebp, his call for a similar study of Morkinskinna interest
r
(1938-39:62) has gone unheeded. Even Oddr Snorrason’s Oldfs saga Tryggvasonar and the Legendary Saga of St. Olaf which according to Jonas Kristjansson (1972:198, 223, 318) should
have not been explored
now be
regarded as a version of the Oldest Saga,
in literary terms.
sympathetic reading of these five
Bjami Adalbjamarson 1936:154-59, Indrebp 1938-39:64-72, Gimmler 1976:46-47, and Louis-Jensen 1977:64-65, 69, 79-82, 109-22. 47. On the relationship of the Oldest Saga to the Legendary Saga see Jonas Kristjansson’s concise discussion (1976). A few pages of literary analysis are provided by Anne Heinrichs (1976:134-41). 46. Morkinskinna, ed. Finnur Jonsson, pp. ix-x,
Theodore M. Andersson
224 relatively neglected sagas should enable us to
circulated around
first
Icelandic kings’ sagas
came
traditions
into being.
from exhausted is ideological. In this area, as comments have tended to cluster around the Norwegian synoptics (and
Another in others,
1200 and how the
gauge more exactly what
line of inquiry that is far
Sverris saga) to the exclusion of the early Icelandic sagas. Initial attempts to isolate the biases in these
works, especially by Halvdan Koht, culminated in a
from Fredrik Paasche.^^ Subsequently there were only occasional remarks on political partisanship^^ until Brekke (1958:esp. 49-52) argued a quasi-propagandistic view of Sverris saga. Hallvard Lie (1960:29-38) countered with a skepticism far more explicit than the doubts earlier expressed by skeptical reaction
Paasche.
More
recently Lars Lonnroth (1976) has tried to elucidate Snorri’s political
outlook by comparing a passage in the Legendary Saga with the equivalent
passage in Snorri’s Oldfs saga helga. The moral in the Legendary Saga
is,
according to Lonnroth, that “kings and their subjects are better served by inde-
pendent chieftains than by the proud aristocrats and obedient sycophants surrounding the throne”
18).
(p.
This picture
because the Swedish King Olafr, on
whom
is
complicated
Heimskringla
in
this story centers, is
advised by two
independent chieftains of differing character (IF, 27:111-57). Forgnyr l9gma5r offers direct hints that
and forceful advice, but Emundr IggmaSr offers only metaphorical
must be explicated
for the king
by
his
immediate advisers. Lonnroth
concludes that Snorri counterposes positive and negative images of the indepen-
’
dent chieftain because he '
is
intent
on balancing the claims of royal legitimacy
against the proper claims of the independent farmers. This interpretation to considerable
doubt because
it is
difficult to Justify a reading of
open
is
Emundr
iQg-
^
/ima6r as a “subversive rascal”
(p. 25).
Like Porgnyr, he
tells
only the truth,
albeit in parables,
and serves the purpose of putting an unreasonable King Olafr
back on the right
track.
chieftains
The upshot
have contributed equally.
is
a desirable compromise, to which both
Still,
Lonnroth ’s method points the way
to a
more subtle understanding of the underlying attitudes in the kings’ sagas. The Norwegian synoptics have been studied more fully than the first Icelandic sagas not only for their sources, but for their political meaning as well. Long ago Halvdan Koht (1919-20) traced the rise of Norwegian national feeling, but there is
no equivalent treatment of Icelandic particularism
When
SigurSur Nordal touched on Snorri’s Icelandicness in the same year as
Koht’s
I
\
in the earliest kings’ sagas.
article,
he mentioned only two episodes from Heimskringla (including
Einarr Fveraeingr’s famous speech against the surrender of Grimsey to
—
\01af
IF,
27:216) and concluded that Snorri was
King
“incredibly impartial”
Koht 1914b and Paasche 1922. See also Indrebd 1917:275-78 and Finnur Jonsson 1919. 49. Bemtsen 1923:42-46, Ame Odd Johnsen 1939:72-84, and Beyschlag 1950:290-335 and 1966. See also Ellehdj 1965:23, 151, 158-59, 198, 279. 50. On the same episode (“FriSgerSar saga”) see also Nerman 1916, Oscar Albert Johnsen 1916b, Jon Jonsson 1917-18, Beckman 1918, Friesen 1942, and Wessen 1964. 48.
Kings’ Sagas
225
(1920:237-38). But a strong element of Icelandic pride and self-interest
is
pre-
The extant literature begins with a work entitled, almost programmatically, Book of the Icelanders, and it may not be without significance that Ari was advised by the bishops Porlakr and Ketill to delete the kings’ lives and genealogies (with their Norwegian ancestries) from the first version, thus making the book more Icelandic, more about the new Iceland than the old Iceland with its Norwegian affiliations and family roots. The sent throughout the kings’ sagas.
I
which we have evidence, "^Hryggjarstykki, is not about a Norwegian king but about a pretender to the Norwegian throne who spent a winter in Iceland with Porgils Oddason in 1135-36 (Bjami Gu5nason 1978:126). He also had close ties to Denmark, which had designs on the Norwegian province of Vflc in this period, and he was buried in Aalborg after his kings’ saga of
first
death (Bjami
Gu5nason 1978:131-48). Bjami Gu6nason surmises
that his saga
was of Icelandic or Danish inspiration (1978:125). It may not be explicitly antiNorwegian, but it celebrates a man whom the Norwegians considered to be an intmder. Icelandic interests
We
may
also have underlain the first literary flowering at Oddi.
have some knowledge of Saemundr’s
was used
to preface a panegyric
literary activity
{Ndregs konunga
tal) in
only because his book
honor of Jon Loptsson,
X
“the gr^test chieftain in Iceland” (Einar Ol. Sveinsson 1937:3). The purpose of ^
.
\
Ndregs
konunga tal was Norwegian king Magnus serve the glorification
to trace Jon’s ancestry through his
mother Eora
to the
Thus the Norwegian succession is made to of Iceland’s leading aristocrat. The Oddaverjar also berfoettr.^^
Vclaimed descent from the Skjoldung dynasty, and Einar 6l. Sveinsson ascribes the composition of * Skjgldunga tion,
to their patronage (1937:40-41). In addi-
he connects Orkney inga saga with the Oddaverjar,
number of prominent Orkney rect, a substantial part
^ kings’ sagas
No
saga
who had relations
with a
Islanders (1937:16-39). If his inferences are cor-
of the early Icelandic literature generally classified as
grew out of the
special interests of a leading Icelandic family.
such explanation has been advanced for Jdmsvikinga saga, but like
more to Denmark than to Norway. Furthermore, it views the Norwegian victory at Hj^mngavagr from the enemy’s perspective. The notable exception in the non-Norwegian orienta"^Skjgldunga saga and perhaps ^Hryggjarstykki
tion of twelfth-century Icelandic literature
is
it
pertains
Sverris saga. There seems to be
general agreement that the Icelander Karl Jonsson took a strong position on the
legitimacy of Sverrir’s claim (Brekke 1958:50, n.
1),
surprising since, according to the prologue of Sverris saga, ^
is
perhaps not
“King
Sverrir him-
but this
and decided what he [Karl Jonsson] should write.” Sverrir may also have been originally attractive to the Icelanders because he grew up as a fellow provincial on the Faroes. In the most recent book on his saga, Lams H. self supervised
51. Halldor
1953:84.
Hermannsson 1932:10-11, Einar 01. Sveinsson 1937:16, and
^Turville-Petre
Theodore M. Andersson
226
Blondal emphasizes Icelandic initiative rather than Norwegian sponsorship and points to the objective treatment of Sverrir’s opponents (1982:170-72).
Norwegian kings’ saga proper, we may detect an Icelandic slant. As we have seen, the only lost independent saga of which there is secure evidence is a "^Haralds saga hdrfagra, which must surely have been inspired by this monarch’s role, for good or ill,- in the Icelandic colonization. One of the earliest family sagas, Egils saga Skallagnms sonar, may be understood as a more forthright Icelandic response to Harald’s record in office and the conduct of the Norwegian monarchy in general. Lars Lonnroth (1963:93 and 1965:17) has suggested that the celebration of Olafr Tryggvason by Oddr Snorrason and Gunnlaugr Leifsson sprang in part from an Icelandic national interest in promoting their own missionary king beside the Norwegian missionary king Olafr Haraldsson. Oddr digresses on the Icelandic conversion (ed. Finnur Jonsson, pp. 122-30), and Gunnlaugr expands this material greatly (Bjarni ASalbjamarson 1936:120-124). The second fragment of the Oldest Saga of St. Olaf is chiefly about the heroics of Porm65r Kolbrunarskald, and another of
Even when we
!
arrive at the first
y
A
^
Olafr’ s Icelandic skalds, Ottarr inn svarti, figures in the third fragment.
I
I
The tendency to interject Icelandic matter becomes a major factor in the first compendium, Morkinskinna, in which there is a series of paettir on the dealings of Icelanders with Norwegian kings, Haraldr har6ra5i in particular. Morkinskinna notes that Haraldr was especially popular with the Icelanders because he came to their assistance in time of famine (ed. Finnur Jonsson, p. 170).
/
lore
We
might surmise that
one point of departure for the
rich Icelandic
on Haraldr. Another source may be the Icelander Halldorr Snorrason, who
accompanied Haraldr during (
this is
his
deeds after his return to Iceland. of Haraldr, Gustav Indrebp has
Mediterranean adventures and recounted his
But despite these reasons for a positive view
shown
that there is a curious discrepancy in the
by Morkinskinna (1928). Indrebp pointed out that the body of the saga takes a favorable view of Haraldr, but that the Icelandic paettir cast him in a considerably more negative light. Indrebp speculated that the main narrative was built on the flattering image contained in the panegyric poems of the attitude displayed
skalds, whereas the paettir
grew out of
a popular Icelandic tradition that had
taken the nicknames of the co-regents Haraldr and
Magnus (“Hardrule” and
“the Good’’) to heart and evolved a hostile view of the former. Thus even a
/Norwegian monarch with the most extraordinary and heroic credentials emerges '
in a
doubtful light after passing through the
filter
of Icelandic public opinion.
The fullest study of the Icelandic perspective on Norway is Gudmund Sandvik’s Hovding og konge i Heimskringla (1955). Sandvik argues that Heimskringla’ version of Norwegian history is determined by the author’s status as an 52. 6).
Bemtsen
isolated the Icelandic features in Styrmir’s
and Snorri’s Oldfs saga helga (1923: 104-
See also Jonas Kristjansson 1976:285.
53. Morkinskinna, ed. Finnur Jonsson, p. 200. in particular
54.
On
Halldorr Snorrason’s mediation of tradition see
de Vries 1931.
See also Gimmler 1976:47-48. Jakobsen (1970:101) argues
hostile l)3sttir indicates the
Norwegian orientation of
this text.
that
Fagrskinna’s suppression of
Kings’ Sagas
227
He
Icelandic chieftain.
/
tended to see Norwegian history in terms of the
tionship between the king and
Norway’s leading
rela-
aristocrats. Their relationship
went through several phases. Haraldr harfagri’s unification of Norway took place at the expense of the local magnates, and the first period of Norwegian history
down
to the
days of
Olaf was characterized by persistent conflict between
St.
king and chieftains. After the death of his
son
Magnus from Russia
St. Olaf, the chieftains’
decision to recall
signaled the consolidation of the monarchy, albeit
with concessions to the chieftain class. The period from
Magnus g65i
to
Magnus
was transitional and included moments of both conflict and conciliation, but on the whole it produced a gradual tapering off of the antagonisms. The final period from the sons of Magnus berfoettr to 1177 was marked by an alliance between aristocracy and monarchy and culminated in the coronation of the chieftain’s son Magnus Erlingsson. It was this collaborative model, and the identification of chieftain and king in the person of Magnus, that enlisted the sympathies berfoettr
j
.
]
of the aristocratic historian Snorri Sturluson.
I
The
last
of the great kings’ sagas, Sturla P>6r5arson’s Hdkonar saga Hdkonar-
sonar, was long thought to be traditions
gued
that
composed exclusively on
the basis of
Norwegian
and documents (Koht 1927), but Lennart Sjostedt (1954-56) has arSturla drew extensively on materials already collected by his uncle
Whether this is true or not (cf. and King Hakon had reasons not to be on
Snorri and accounts of other Icelanders.
Bjprgo :1967a),
it is
known
that Sturla
good terms, and a
certain lack of enthusiasm in the saga has
strained
Every work from Ari’s between king and author. Sturla’ s Hdkonarsaga thus shows some Icelandic coloring.
been attributed
to the
relationship
Islendingabdk to
Despite the foreign matter they embrace, the kings’ sagas are presumably no less Icelandic in outlook than the native family sagas.
modem
historians to
They have been used by
document events abroad, but an
( Icelandic sensibilities that
internal history of the
perceived and recorded these events has yet to be
written.
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EDITIONS OF kings’ SAGAS
AGRIP Agrip afNoregs konunga sggum. Ed. Finnur Jonsson. ASB, 18. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1929.
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FyTREYINGA SAGA Faereyinga saga. Ed. Olafur Halldorsson, Reykjavik: Jon Helgason, 1967.
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Heimskringla och den sarskilda
—
Icelandic Family Sagas
(Islendingasogur) Carol
While the than the
life
life
that life is
J.
Clover
represented in the Sagas
is
more
primitive, less civilised,
of the great Southern nations in the Middle Ages, the record of
by a
narrative then
still
greater interval in advance of
known
to the
more
fortunate or
all
the
common modes
more luxurious
of
parts of
Europe.
W.
P. Ker,
Epic and Romance
Not every reader would agree with W. P. Ker that the Icelandic family sagas are “in advance” or with Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg that they are “miraculously precocious,” but few would deny that the sagas are different, even emphatically so, from the “common modes” of medieval literature.^ As fusions of history and legend in a vernacular prose form, the sagas constitute depending on one’s point of reference either Europe’s first novels or her only prose epics. This odd category is shared only by the roughly contemporary Irish
—
sagas, a coincidence often noted but never satisfactorily explained.
Given
this
awareness of the sagas’ deviant status
in
medieval
letters,
and
emergence without known antecedents, it is no surprise scholarship has from the outset been preoccupied with questions of back-
further given their abrupt that
ground and sources, tradition.
The
in particular the relation of the preserved texts to oral
history of saga scholarship
year-old debate on origins.
The
is in
effect the history of a hundred-
best-publicized phase of that debate
is
the one
dominated by the competing theories Andreas H^usler labeled freeprose and bookprose. Freeprose refers to the view that the sagas were orally composed and transmitted and that they existed in something like their present form before they
were written down. Bookprose holds thirteenth-century antiquarians
that the sagas are the literary creation of
who may have had some
recourse to oral tradi-
Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature (New York: Dover, 1957; originally published in 1897 and in a revised, second edition in 1908); Scholes and Kellogg 1966:43. 1.
W.
P. Ker,
239
240
Carol
form of complete sagas) but who
Clover
J.
more heavily on various literary sources and above all on their own imaginations. The freeprosesome scholars consider bookprose debate is no longer argued in those terms but the issue of origins is that it never was and that Heusler overstated the case still very much with us. It is a rare article or book that does not touch, directly or indirectly, on the question of how the sagas came to be. The discussion has been rekindled in the last two decades by the publication of Theodore M. Andersson’s critical evaluation of the issue {The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins, 1964) and the general swell of interest in orally composed literatures throughout the tions (though not in the
relied
— —
*
world.
The year
that
Andersson’s history of saga scholarship leaves
a logical place for this survey to begin.
even though the period
is
task
short, the scholarly
lend themselves to a concise dic sagas remain the
The
summary. One
is
1964, seems
off,
not an easy one, however, for
developments
it
embraces do not
difficulty is sheer bulk.
most popular genre of Old Norse
The
literary studies,
Icelan-
and the
production of essays, books, editions, and translations has burgeoned in the
two decades. The present survey
is
for that reason
developments than are the other essays
in this
more
last
strictly limited to recent
who want
volume. Readers
a
deeper perspective can begin by consulting the works listed below. The second difficulty with recent saga scholarship is
its
consensus as to what constitutes a proper question and correct solution, the comparative
exists
it
and
no more. The
literary horizons
last
If there
ever was a
how one
arrives at a
heterodoxy.
twenty years have seen a widening of
and the emergence of a variety of methods
and approaches, not to speak of competing conclusions. In short, saga scholarship has finally
begun
resemble other medieval
to
literary scholarship.
sure, the issue of origins runs like a red thread through
secondary literature, but on the whole one at least as
compared
to the
struck
is
To be
most of the recent
by the diversity of
interests,
monothematic quality of criticism from the 1940s and
1950s. Still,
certain
themes emerge and certain zones can be staked out. In
this
chapter, recent contributions on the sagas are organized into three categories the basis of approach: source analysis (especially as represented
on
by the Icelandic
school), literary anthropology (social-historical studies), and literary formalism I
(which includes the new-traditionalist as well as survey
is
selective
and for
strictly literary writings).
that reason idiosyncratic,
wanting other recent opinions and further guidance literature
are directed to the following sources:
and so
in the
is this
Every
one. Readers
secondary and primary
Kurt Schier, Sagaliteratur
Les sagas islandaises (1978); Else Mundal, Sagadebatt (1977); Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen and Ole Widding, Norr0n fortaellekunst {^NFk)\ Preben Meulengracht Sprensen, Saga og samfund
(^Schier); Regis Boyer,
(1977b); Vesteinn Olason,
“Frasagnarlist
i
fomum sogum”
(1978); Gabriel
Saga” (1970); Theodore M. Andersson, The Icelandic Family Saga (1967; see also Andersson 1978a); Sigurd Kvaem-
Turville-Petre, “Altnordische Literatur:
Icelandic Family Sagas
241
drup’s introduction to Antologi af nordisk litteratur (1977); Gerd Wolfgang
“Die
Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft (1978); and Paul Schach, Icelandic Sagas (1984). Peter Hallberg’s book on the family sagas, still useful though somewhat dated, is now Weber’s
Literatur des
Nordens”
German
available in Danish (1965e) and
in
the
(1965f) as well as English (1962a) and
Swedish (1956). Recent and forthcoming encyclopedias and dictionwith coverage of saga topics (both general and specific articles) include
the original aries
Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder
(KLNM); Kindlers
Literatur
Lexikon (KLL); Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA); and Dictionary of the Middle
Ages (DMA). Last but not
least, there is the
annual Bibli-
ography of Old Norse-Icelandic Studies (BONIS), which presently covers the years 1963-79.
Source Analysis
To my knowledge was Hallvard Lie
the first person to use the term “Icelandic school” in print
in 1939.
“It has
become customary,” he wrote
in a critical
essay, “to speak of ‘the Icelandic school’ or simply ‘Nordal’s school’
wishes to
make
a point of the consensus of opinion that prevails within that circle
was likewise
of scholars and characterizes saga research in Iceland today.
It
Sigur5ur Nordal’s influence as a teacher that R. George
Thomas
tributed
when one
in
1950
to at-
“so much of the uniformity of outlook among present Icelandie scholars
and editors.”^
Remarkably
little
has changed in the intervening years. The term “Icelandie
school” continues to be used, and
it
continues to refer to that branch of saga
scholarship devoted to the use of the traditional tools of textual and source criticism in the service of determining manuscript
and
text relations.
The produc-
1933-54, of the Islenzk fomrit editions of the family sagas regarded as the great achievement of the Icelandic school.^ Nowhere are
tion, during the years is
justly
the priorities of Icelandic scholarship
more
clearly spelled out than in the intro-
ductions to these editions, which consider such matters as the individual saga’s literary sources (its rittengsl or literary connections),
use of skaldic stanzas,
manuscript transmission, dating, authorship, and provenance, but which do not consider, or consider only in passing, biases, or
its
narrative
art.
The
its
background,
oral
its
social
and
political
Icelandic editors, in short, are interested in the
sources of parts, not the shape or significance of the whole.
The
bias extends to
Icelandic scholarship in general. In the blunt words of Oskar Halldorsson,
2.
Hallvard Lie,
“Noen metodologiske
overveielser
og Minne (1939), p. 97. 3. R. George Thomas, “Studia Islandica, ”ML0, 4.
The
i
anl.
av
et
bind av ‘Islenzk fomrit,’ ”
“On Maal
11 (1950), 403.
Icelandic family sagas proper (the Islendingasdgur, also referred to as Sagas of Icelanders)
are contained in IF, vols.
2-12 and
14.
242
Carol
the artistic qualities of this branch of literature in general, for ture
and
style, virtually
example
J.
Clover
its
struc-
nothing has been written in the Icelandic language”
(1978a:318-19).
on written sources, and in their general the sagas are products of medieval “novelists” who had re-
In their nearly exclusive reliance
assumption that
course to a variety of manuscripts, the source analysts of the Icelandic school are the clear heirs of
bookprose tradition.^ But the source analysts of the Icelandic
school differ from their bookprose predecessors in two important ways. / ^
that
One
is
even the most programmatic of the source analysts are not as programmatic
as the
bookprose advocates were, nor as given to theory or synthesis. The source
analysts of the Icelandic school
seldom
if
ever consider the sagas as a phe-
nomenon; indeed, they seldom consider the “sagas” (in the plural) at all. They have preferred to proceed saga by saga, indeed part by part, hewing to what is demonstrable in the individual work. The second difference has to do with oral .tradition. To the extent that the bookprosists acknowledged its existence, they saw it as matter and not form. The source analysts of the Icelandic school, on the Mother hand, concede that oral tradition is in some degree responsible not only for points of content but also for some features of style and composition. When actually discussing oral tradition, however, the modem source analysts fall back on something like the following logic. The sagas do have an oral component, but it is largely unknown and probably unknowable in any precise sense. The lack of / \ an uncontaminated specimen of native tradition means that there is nothing to measure the given saga against. Folktales serve the purpose up to a point, but they shed no light on the origin and evolution of the long form. The sagas’ literary components, on the other hand, are identifiable by the usual methods of textual comparison. The task of the scholar, therefore, is to identify the literary I
elements
mainder
The
in the
sagas and, by logic of negative inference, to consign the re-
to native tradition.
results, in practice, are studies that are
long and specific in their exposure
of the sagas’ oral features but short and vague on their oral background. For
example,
in his
three-hundred-page book on Fostbroedra saga (1972), Jonas
Kristjansson appeals to oral tradition only in passing and mainly to explain inconsistencies or crude spots in the composition. In his chapter
the
on the family sagas
new three-volume survey of early Icelandic culture, Jonas
lists
oral tales as
in
one
of three sources used by saga authors (the other two being written materials and poetry), but again he does not issue of oral sources
go
into detail (1978:272-73). Jonas broaches the
most directly
in his analysis
of the skaldic
ingadrdpa, which refers to a number of persons and events (1975).
As long
as the
poem was
thought to be a
were explained as deriving from written versions.
from the twelfth century, as he argues, then 5.
Andersson (1964:82-119) gives a
critical
it
late If,
poem
known from
Islend-
the sagas
one, the saga references
however, the poem dates
contains “incontestable proof”
summary of
the Icelandic school position.
Icelandic Family Sagas ble proof”
—
that is,
literary existence
243
proof based on source-analytical arguments
—
for the pre-
both of skaldic stanzas on saga subjects and of versions of the
sagas themselves (1975:90).
what form these oral versions might have taken is a question Jonas does not address, however or rather, a question he addresses only in his final senJust
—
tence:
“The
extent to which points of detail in the drapa
seem
to
be almost
completely related to the early verses, does however suggest that such oral versions as existed behind the Islendingasogur were generally insubstantial and
under-developed” (1975:91). The oral background looms larger
in
Olafur Hall-
dorsson’s recent book on the medieval writings on Greenland (1978). In his
view, the extensive similarities between Einks saga rauda and Groenlendinga
saga are attributable not to
The sagas
literary
borrowing but to a
common
oral tradition.
are therefore best seen as oral variants (Olafur Halldorsson,
400). Faereyinga saga also contains elements
—
eleven, to be exact
—
1978:293that
can be
explained only by positing an active oral tradition (Olafur Halldorsson 1970). In both cases, however, oral matter
The one saga
that has for
is
viewed
some
as information only.
forty years stood as a test case for the
bookprose-Icelandic school position
is
Hrafnkels saga. Ever since Sigur5ur
Nordal published his 1940 monograph declaring Hrafnkatla to be “pure fiction” with no traditionalist basis whatever, the larger discussion of origins has centered
on
that saga
and
that analysis of the evidence.^ Dissenting voices
raised over the years, but until recently they
a “revolutionary proposal,” as into established doctrine,
dal’s opinion
Shaun
F.
had very
little
D. Hughes put
have been
What began as “has now hardened
effect.
it,
and those voices which have been raised against Nor-
consequence” (1980:301; also Fidjestpl decade has the counterevidence mounted to the point that
have been told of
little
Only in the last it could no longer be ignored. One of the first hints of a change in attitude came in the third edition of Oskar Halldorsson’ s school edition of Hrafnkels saga, into which was inserted a paragraph acknowledging the possibility of oral sources (1971:9). The year 1976 saw the more or less simultaneous publication of two independent attacks on the Nordalian doctrine regarding Hrafnkels saga. One was an article by Dietrich Hofmann, which argued for the traditional basis of the 1983).
SigurSur Nordal, Hrafnkatla, Studia Islandica, 7 (Reykjavik: Isafold, 1940). English translation: Hrafnkels saga Freysgoda, tr. R. George Thomas (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales, 1958). As recent scholars have stressed, Nordal’s views on Hrafnkels saga were anticipated by E. V. Gordon (“On 6.
Hrafnkels saga Freysgoda,” Medium vEvum, 8 [1939], 1-32) and Bjorn M. Olsen. See esp. Oskar Halldorsson 1976:14. “Strangely enough,” writes one reviewer, “Bjorn’s [Bjorn M. Olsen’s] work on Hrafnkels saga is not found in the collection of his essays [and unprinted lectures] published
posthumously in 1937-39” (Sverrir Tomasson, review of Oskar Halldorsson 1976, in SBVS, 20 [1978-79], 150; also Fidjestpl 1983:6). An important harbinger of the new-traditionalist reaction to Sigurbur Nordal’ s view is Marco Scovazzi, La saga di Hrafnkell e il problema delle saghe islandesi (Arona: Paideia, 1960). For recent surveys, see Hughes 1980 and Fidjestpl 1983. Work by SigurSur Nordal reissued in recent years includes Islandske streiflys (Bergen, etc.: Universitetsfodaget, 1965 [Norwegian translations of seven earlier essays]) and Urn islenzkar fornsogur (Reykjavik: Mai og
menning, 1968 [translation into Icelandic of ^Sigurdur Nordal]).
244
Carol
famous opening dream sequence of Hrafnkatla
I
—a
J.
Clover
sequence Sigur5ur Nordal
viewed as fabricated out of a passage in Landndmabok. Hofmann argues persuasively that the discrepancies between Hrafnkels saga and Landndmabok are not attributable to a fictionalizing author, as Sigur5ur are the result of the author’s attempt to
f
a competing oral version. If this
'
we have
then
is
would have
it,
but rather
harmonize the Landndmabok version with
so (and Hofmann’s, case
is
cogently argued),
an instance of a saga author’s having weighed oral against written
sources and given equal or greater credence to the former
a procedure with other attack on Icelandic
The was Oskar Halldorsson’s own book on Hrafnkels saga. After
important implications for saga studies in general. school doctrine
—
rehearsing the problems and the earlier discussion, he too proposes a “tradi-
was not a fictional character but a historical person whose extraordinary life story was preserved in oral tradition, one version of which found its way into the saga and a somewhat different version of which found its way into Landndmabok. (Oskar’s analysis of oral tradition draws on modem Norwegian folklore studies.) The perception, in the saga, of Hrafnkell’s dramatic fall from and second rise to power may reflect the political thinking of tional” solution: Hrafnkell
^
I
the thirteenth century, but the events are ultimately historical (Oskar Halldorsson
1976; also 1978b).
This challenge to Nordal has not passed unnoticed, and several critics have
added
their voices to
Hallberg 1977; is
one side or the other (Jon Hnefill A6alsteinsson 1977;
Hermann Palsson 1979g).
Klaus von See. Hrafnkels saga
is,
Especially strenuous in his objections
in his
view, far too politically charged, shot
through with anachronisms, and schematically organized to be anything but a literary construction
of the thirteenth century (von See 1979). Oskar Halldorsson
has also contributed a remarkably direct article in which he assesses in critical
terms the literary fixation, the methodology, and the nationalistic undercurrents of the Icelandic school (1978a; see also here this
Hermann Palsson
1969a).
What
not the critical opinion (see Andersson 1964:82-119), but that
is
time from the inside, not the outside.
voice, that of Kristin Geirsdottir,
who
in
From
the lay quarter
comes
it
is
new
comes
yet another
an essay entitled “Faein all3y5leg or5”
takes exception to point after point of the “anti-oral” position of the Icelandic
She wonders,
school.
in conclusion,
why
scholars have so
much
difficulty be-
two centuries of oral tradition in early Iceland when present-day mral Iceland, literate and modem though it may be, oral
lieving in the possibility of
even
in
family history can easily extend over four generations (1979:33-40; see also
Amor
Sigurjonsson 1976).
Oskar Halldorsson’s book, Hughes suggested that its implications “may be just as far reaching as they were in the wake of Nordal’ s Hrafnkatla there seems no reason to doubt that this is only the beginning of a renewed scholarly debate on Hrafnkels saga and the nature of the origin and In his review of
.
.
.
composition of the Family Saga” (1980:307-8; also Fidjestpl 1983).
It is
per-
Icelandic Family Sagas
245
haps too early to speak of a renewed scholarly debate, but there are a few small signs of change within the Icelandic scholarly
community. Oskar Halldorsson’s the appearance and scholarly acknowledgment of
writings are one such sign;
essay
Kristin Geirsdottir’s
is
another.
One can
also
not help noticing the
“denordalization” of saga studies in the years since his death. Jonas Kristjansson begins his article on the Islendingadrdpa with a remarkable preface
aimed
M. Olsen
Bjorn
at establishing
as the true spiritual father of the Icelandic
I
school (Sigur5ur Nordal
(
not even mentioned)
is
man who
Kristjansson takes pains to stress, a
— Bjorn
avoided the
Olsen being, Jonas extremes of
artificial
j
bookprose and freeprose by holding the sagas L
rather than just
we
await the fruits of this ideological adjustment with are
anonymous.^
It is
the case, since “authors” of other kinds of
1
be both traditional and
one or the other (1975:76-77). Jonas’s intention seems
The Icelandic sagas
r
to
some
not entirely clear
Norse
literary,
clear,
and
interest.
why
literature are
this
should be
known. Various
explanations for family saga anonymity are offered: the traditional nature of, the material and style or “the authors’
W
modesty or foreign influence or Catholicism
simply ‘custom,’ whatever that might
mean”
(Steblin-Kamenskij 1966:28).
any case, ever since N. F. S. Grundtvig proposed Snorri as the
In
Egils saga, the hunt for authors has been on.
It
man behind
has proceeded with particular
vigor in the last twenty years or so, presumably as part of the tendency of literary studies, in response to the
decade and a /
I
overweening position of the hard sciences
occupy
half, to
with empirical questions.^ The scholar
has done most to put saga authorship study on a scientific footing Hallberg,
who
in a .variety
is
who Peter
of publications has developed and applied an au-
thorship methodology based
I
itself
in the past
on the
statistical analysis
of correspondences in
^vocabulary, particularly the disposition of “pair words” (e.g.,
1965b and
1968a).
Remaining scholars
at the center
now suppose
of authorship speculation
that Snorri
is
Snorri Sturluson.
Most
wrote Egils saga (Hallberg 1962b; Vesteinn
Olason 1968; Bjami Einarsson 1975; West 1980; Jonas Kristjansson 1977a; Berman 1982). We shall probably never have full proof to that effect, but as Vesteinn Olason points out, the combination of accumulated positive evidence
and the absence of negative evidence strengthens the case (1968:66).
A comput-
er-aided analysis of that saga’s vocabulary likewise concludes that Snorri’s “statistical fingerprint is
very clear from the data” (West 1980:191).
Anne
Holts-
mark’s (tongue-in-cheek?) claim that Egils saga was the handiwork not of Snorri but of one of his associates has not attracted the
meantime been implicated
in the writing
1972a, 1972b: 183-96). Laxdcela saga
is
many
adherents (1971). Snorri has in
of Laxdcela saga as well (Madelung
otherwise thought to be the work either
The single exception is Droplaugarsona saga, the penultimate sentence of which reads; “His son was called Porvaldr, who told this saga” (chapter 15). 8. A more complete survey of the authorship discussion can be found in Mundal 1977:267-70. 7.
246
Carol
Clover
J.
of Olafr P6r5arson hvitaskald (Hallberg 1963, 1965c, 1968a: 57-60, 1978-79) ^
or of Sturla P6r6arson (Heller 1965,
1967;
Mundt 1965,
1969;
cf.
Mager0y
1971).
The
author has also been credited with Eyrbyggja saga (Hallberg
latter
1965b).^ Speculation continues as to the authorship of Njdls saga; Lars Lonnroth
underscores the likelihood that
was written by s.omeone
it
in or
near to the
Svinfelling family (1976:187). Richard Perkins argues convincingly that Flda-
manna saga was written for, and by someone near to, Haukr Erlendsson (1978). Helgi Gu5mundsson reluctantly rejects on grounds of insufficient evidence the Haukr wrote Kjalnesinga saga; it seems clear, however, that the author was someone very like Haukr in background and training (1967:77-83). Haukr has also been nominated as the author of Viga-Glums saga, partly on the basis of genealogy (Haukr being descended from Viga-Glumr) and partly on the possibility that
anachronism (Berger 1980).
basis of an implicating legal
One of that has
more appealing
the
gone along with
it.
sides of the authorship issue
As
is
the metadiscussion
early as 1939, Hallvard Lie posed
some
piercing
questions about both the methodology and the ultimate value of attaching
names
His criticism of the view of literary production that underlay the
to sagas.
many ways the Steblin-Kamenskij, who argue, on
Islenzk fomrit editors’ discussions of the subject anticipates in
more recent objections of Lonnroth and M.
I.
the basis of their surveys of the semantic fields of such
saman (compose), and sagnamadr (‘saga man’)
(write), setja J
Norse words as that the
medieval
Icelanders had different notions of “authors” and “authorship” and that efforts to attribute texts to particular
mann Palsson 1973b:2 19-20). Moreover, Heimskringla and Snorra Edda in fact
put
it)
authored by Snorri that
—
rests
its
Her-
cf.
the attribution of Egils saga (or any linguistic
and other
on the assumption
similarities with
that the latter texts
again, authored in the sense (as Ole
Strindberg authored
modem
people are fundamentally anachronistic
(Lonnroth 1964:9-20; Steblin-Kamenskij 1966, 1973a: esp. 50-68; other saga) to Snorri on the basis of
rita
Roda rummet (1965:84-85;
were
Widding once also Lonnroth
1964:78-97). Widding argued that the data used to prove that Snorri wrote both Egils saga and Heimskringla could just as well be used to prove he wrote neither
(1965:84).
The
that of Olafur
discussions of
strongest case to date for Snorri’s authorship of Heimskringla
Halldorsson (1979). Finally, mention
method
that
seem
authorship. Points of Hallberg’s
9.
Hallberg
is
of some of the
inevitably to attach to inquiries into dating and
methodology have been questioned by
Leoni (1970) and Oskar Handle (1965)
methodology have been
may be made
is
criticized
here following the lead of
in particular; points
F.
A.
of Marina Mundt’s
by Sture Allen (1971) among others; and Gunnar Benediktsson, Sagnameistarinn
Sturla (Reyk-
Bokautgafa Menningarsjods og PJoSvinafelagsins, 1961). Lie, “Noen metodologiske overveielser,” esp. pp. 114-34. The most vigorous advocate of the Icelandic school position in the last two decades has been Peter Hallberg, a Swede.
javik:
10.
Icelandic Family Sagas
247
Handle’s objections to Hallberg’s “pair word’’ analysis (1965, 1968) have been
^answered by G. Herdan (1968). Just as the sagas are anonymous, so
One of the main aims
are they undated.
of
the source analysts has been to establish a chronology of manuscripts and texts.
When the main events
of a given saga took place
the saga took
form
its
final
^the manuscripts, the style,
is
is
in
notoriously difficult to
anonymity of the authors, the
most cases clear; but when pin down. The lateness of homogeneity of the
relative
and the possibility that such “contemporary’’ references as
exist are inter-
ipolations (for example, allusions to events or persons of the author’s I
genealogies that extend to the “present’’) in time.
It
is
all
era or
but defeat efforts to locate the saga
the premise of the Icelandic school, spelled out in Einar 01.
Sveinsson’s 1958 monograph, that the most
nology of the sagas and that textual
own
and source
this
we can hope
can be arrived
at
for
is
a relative chro-
only through a combination of
criticism.
Arguments on the dating of individual sagas and saga manuscripts
are
summa-
rized in the Islenzk fomrit introductions, as well as in the individual entries in
KLNM
and the chronological table
Kurt Schier’s Sagaliteratur (^Schier, pp. 50-59). Since the publication of these works, however, there have been some significant developments.
saga. Gisla saga
is
One
in
of these has to do with the manuscripts of Gisla
one of the few saga
different redactions: a shorter
one (the
texts to
be transmitted in significantly
M version), conventionally held to be the
primary one and the one on which most of the secondary
longer one (the S version), long thought to be secondary. priority of the versions,
and a
literature is based;
In reversing the
Gu5ni Kolbeinsson and Jonas Kristjansson (1979) have
changed our understanding of
that saga
the divergence of the redactions
is
—
most
early chapters, in
which
radical (see also Berger 1979,
Rohn
or at least
its
1979, and Jakobsen 1982a, 1982b).
New dates
of composition have also been suggested for both Fostbroedra saga
and Reykdcela saga. Fostbroedra saga, with diction and
its
its
irregularities of construction
obvious indebtedness both to hagiographic
literature
eval medical and rhetorical learning, has long been regarded as an It is
indeed partly because of
its
awkwardness, especially
its
nections, that an earlier generation of scholars assigned the
and
to
awkward
and
medicase.
hagiographic con-
work
a date at the
very beginning of the saga- writing period (ca. 1200). This view has been chal-
lenged by Jonas Kristjansson in a book (1972) that ranks, along with Bjami Einarsson’s book on Egils saga (1975) and Rolf Heller’s book on Laxdoela saga I
(1976a), as one of the three main source-analytical monographs of the last two I
11.
Einar 01. Sveinsson, Dating the Icelandic Sagas:
An Essay
in
Method, Viking Society for
Northern Research, Text Series, 3 (London; Viking Society for Northern Research, 1958). Expanded Icelandic version: Ritunartimi Islendingasagna: Rok og rannsoknaradferd (Reykjavik; Hid Islenzka
Bokmenntafelag, 1965). 12.
The
M version
is
presented as the main text in IE. The S version
Membrana Regia Deperdita, EA, A:5 (1960), 3-80.
may
be found
in
Agnete Loth,
248
Carol
J.
Clover
decades. Through a combination of textual and source criticism (in particular an '
analysis of
relation to the kings’ saga tradition
its
translated romances), Jonas Kristjansson
—
position forward a century \
placing
it,
and
connection with the
its
moves Fosthroedra saga's in other
date of com-
words, toward the end of the
saga-writing period rather than at the beginning (1971, 1972, 1976;
Hallberg
cf.
1976a). Reykdcela saga, on the other hand, has been redated in the opposite direction
(Hofmann
1972).
It
has conventionally been assigned to the middle of
Hofmann produces
the thirteenth century, but Dietrich
1207 and 1220
dating between
Hofmann
makes
also
—
at the
very beginning of the saga period.
the case that Reykdcela saga
kings’ saga tradition and that
it is
But attempts
inevitably beset
is
to date the sagas
statistical
copies, there
by the same problems as the attempts
is
methods
oral.
to the ques-
on the basis of linguistic
Because the surviving manuscripts of the sagas are ^
wholly independent of the
based entirely on local sources, mostly
Recent years have also seen the application of tion of dating.
several arguments for a
criteria are
to establish authorship.
of
later copies, or copies
always the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that the
copyists changed the language. Hallberg acknowledges this problem but argues that the data are too that the copyists’
many and
too consistent to be so dismissed and moreover
tendency would be to modernize the language, not archaize
it
(1972:215). His analysis of the relative frequency of the synonyms hitta(sk) and
we normally
finna(sk) shows a preponderance of the former in texts earlier {Egils saga, Olafs
saga helga
a preponderance of the latter in texts
in
regard as
Heimskringla, and Heidarviga saga) and
we normally
regard as later {Grettis saga,
Njdls saga, Finnboga saga, and Viglundar saga) (Hallberg 1968a: esp. 100102, 1965b, 1972:214-15). Hallberg also uses the hitta/finna criterion to support his contention that
Eyrbyggja saga was written by Sturla P6r6arson (1979;
Heller 1978b).
Hallberg ’s
mode
of inquiry
is
not conceptually different from that of tradi-
tional source analysis but is rather
its
empirical extension, and
surprise that his results tend to confirm standard views. fore, are those cases in
which
his conclusions
contradict the standard view. Fostbroedra saga \
i
jansson judges to
it
what originally appeared
Of some
comes
no
interest, there-
do not accord with but is
as
directly
a case in point. Jonas Krist-
on source-analytical grounds, and Hallberg judges
to be late
be early on the basis of
it
its
to
linguistic features. Gisla
saga
is
it
another example;
be a neat confirmation of the hittalfinna distribution
two versions has now been upended by the new view of that saga’s manuscript tradition (Gu5ni Kolbeinsson and Jonas Kristjansson 1979). At present, scholars seem inclined to put greater faith in the more traditional methods of source analysis. But if, as seems inevitable as we enter the computer age, empirical studies of the sort pioneered by Hallberg become more refined and more frequent, we can perhaps look forward to the integration of statistical methods into traditional textual studies. in the
The redatings of Fostbroedra saga and Reykdcela saga
are of
some
interest in
Icelandic Family Sagas
249 and development. Fostbroedra saga
the larger discussion of saga origins
skald saga, and
it
is
a
has been speculated that the skald sagas as a group constitute
an evolutionary link between the somewhat earlier kings’ saga tradition and the
somewhat
later
ally shifted
family saga tradition. According to this thinking, interest gradu-
from the Norwegian kings
to the poets in their courts (a natural
development because the poets and the authors of the kings’ sagas, sector of the early audience,
were mostly Icelandic), so
as well as a
that in time the poets,
and eventually their Icelandic families and communities, themselves became the subjects of sagas.
Norwegian
The appeal of
this
model
is
obvious:
it
explains the shift from
to Icelandic subject matter as well as the shift in
form from royal
biography to community chronicle. The chronological premise here skald sagas as a group antedate the family sagas as a group
—
that the
— accorded
until
recently with the dates assigned to individual sagas. Kurt Schier listed as the oldest family sagas Heidarviga saga, Fostbroedra saga,
Kormdks saga, Hall-
fredar saga, Bjarnar saga Hitdoelakappa, and Egils saga (^Schier, pp. 50-51). Of these, only the first, Heidarviga saga, is not a skald saga. If we now accept the redating of Fostbroedra saga (marginally a skald saga) to the thirteenth century
and Reykdoela saga
end of the
(a saga of the district chronicle type) to the
beginning, the model collapses. Like Heidarviga saga, Reykdoela saga focuses not on an individual but on
community
conflict;
it is
moreover a saga with no
apparent connection to the kings’ sagas. Needless to say, the existence of
dawn
full-
\
fledged Icelandic sagas of the district chronicle type at the
/
saga period undercuts the view that family saga writing was an extension of
On the contrary,
kings’ saga writing via the skald sagas. that the Icelanders
tradition that
had a prior
equipped them
to
tradition,
and
that
it
of the family
would seem was precisely it
to suggest this prior
undertake the dramatic chronicling of the Nor-
wegian kings.
Whether or not they are pivotal
in the evolution of Icelandic prose, the skald
sagas constitute an intriguing subcategory of saga literature. Unlike works of the district
chronicle type (such as Eyrbyggja, Vdpnfirdinga, Njdla, Laxdoela), they
concentrate on individual destinies
—
destinies informed to an unprecedented
degree by ill-starred romance (Dronke 1978; Wright 1973; Andersson 1967, esp.
226-28; Marold 1973; Schottmann 1982; Bredsdorff 1971). The study of the skald sagas has been dominated for the past two decades by Bjami Einarsson, /
’
who
has published three books on the subject: one on the skald sagas as a group
Kormdks saga and Hallfredar saga (1976a), and one on Egils To a certain extent Bjami’s books rehearse and augment earlier
(1961), one on
saga (1975).
arguments regarding the sagas’ holds,
for example,
literary
that Egils
saga
connections with other Norse works.
— only
marginally a skald saga
He
— and
Heimskringla draw on the same sources and moreover that Heimskringla makes direct use of Egils
Berman
saga (1975: esp. 29-43;
cf.
Jonas Kristjansson 1977a and
Bjami also explores the parallels between Egils saga and Jomsvikinga saga, Pinga saga, and Orkney inga saga, and he concludes that the 1982).
250
Carol
author of Egils saga, presumably Snorri, drew on factual information but for political notions
and
all
J.
Clover
of these works not only for
artistic
design. His depiction of
Egils saga as a well-wrought novel drawing liberally on earlier written sources fully consistent with the general
But Bjami Einarsson
is
best
is
views of the Icelandic school.
known
for his efforts to find literary sources for
beyond the Scandinavian arena. In his book on Egils saga, for example, he revives the idea that chapter 64 of that saga derives ultimately from the skald sagas
Chretien’s Yvain (1975:184-86), and he further proposes that certain points of Egill’s character
and actions have Christian analogues (1975:176-80, 259-65;
Boyer 1973:18; Clunies Ross 1978). In the skald sagas proper, especially Kormdks saga, Bjami finds a strong influence from the Tristan legend in the form both of particulars and of a romantic sensibility. The idea the impact of the translations into
Norse
(the first
is
not new, of course;
one probably
in
1226) of
Thomas’s version of that tragic love story has long been recognized. Where Bjami Einarsson, like Paul Schach, differs from previous scholars is in his view that some of the Tristan motifs scattered about Norse literature derive from versions other than Thomas’s in other words, that they entered Norse literature not via the known translations but directly from foreign sources, perhaps transmitted by Icelanders abroad (1976a:29-34; Schach 1969; Tveitane 1969:88-92). From such reflexes of the Tristan material the love plots of the skald sagas were conceived, Bjami argues, and then augmented with stanzas fabricated in imitation of troubadour poetry (see also von See 1978-79, 1980; cf. Hofmann 1978-
—
79). (The role
The reader
is
and authenticity of the sagas’ skaldic verse remains a referred to Roberta Frank’s essay in this
volume
lively issue.
for a discussion
and bibliography.)
The
criticisms of
Bjami Einarsson’s work, some of which were aired
in
an
X
article
by Einar 01. Sveinsson (1966a, 1966b) and others
in a journal
(Bjami Einarsson 1971a; Andersson 1969), offer an insight into
odology of the Icelandic school, despite
its
meant,
form of manuscripts known in practice, the
to
have circulated
avoidance of those areas of the
“material links’’ are scanty or absent.
such an area.
Its
the meth-
ostensible neutrality, has conditioned
decisively the form and direction of scholarly research. in the
how
debate
The in
insistence
on sources
medieval Iceland has
literature for
The Franco-Norse
which such
literary interface is
exploration has gone as far as the demonstrable points of contact
(the extant translations of verse
romances and chansons de geste) and no
despite larger similarities that cry out for explanation.
The reader of
further,
skaldic and
troubadour poetry and biography cannot help being stmck by both the formal and
phenomenal
parallels (von
See 1978-79, 1980; Bjami Einarsson 1976b: 13-29),
and the same goes for the reader of saga and prose romance (Clover 1982).
comes down scholars
is at
dic school
is
to the value
of circumstantial evidence, which for
least strongly suggestive if not persuasive but
no evidence
at all.
The
many
It
readers and
which for the Icelan-
circumstantial evidence for a fuller and
more
varied influence from French medieval culture than strict source analysis admits
Icelandic Family Sagas
is
251
considerable, and one suspects that the definitive chapter of this side of Norse
literary history
remains to be written.
“Foreign influence” was indeed one of the main considerations ic
in the
dramat-
reaction, in the mid-1960s, against the methodological and ideological conser-
vatism of saga scholarship. The collaborative volume Norr0n fortsellekunst
CNFk)
distinguished itself from earlier literary histories in three important ways:
deemphasis of what are conventionally viewed as the “main” genres (family and kings’ sagas) and its corresponding emphasis of such neglected (1) in
its
genres as saints’ lives and learned history writing; (2) in
its
effort to obliterate the
between “native” and “foreign” or “learned” general assumption that the medieval Icelanders were
traditional sharp distinction literature;
and
(3) in its
considerably more conversant with, and indebted to, contemporary European culture, or sectors of
it,
than traditional scholarship has been inclined to allow.
The same ideas had been earlier promulgated in more elaborate and also more polemfcal form by Lars Lonnroth in four dissertation-derived articles published mid-1960s (1963, 1963-64, 1964, 1965a, 1965b; see also Tveitane 1969:77-84). The ensuing debate between Lonnroth (1967, 1968) and Peter
in
the
Hallberg (1965d, 1966a) was more than a collision of individual personalities;
was also tionist
on one hand, the
a collision between,
traditional philology
and
it
isola-
views of the generation of saga scholars under the sway of Sigur5ur
Nordal, and, on the other, the more eclectic methodology and European literaryhistorical perspective of a
Europeanism
is
new
generation of scholars, mostly non-Icelanders.^^
by no means a new development
in
Norse
studies.
The influence
of European literature, especially learned history writing and hagiography, on northern prose has long been acknowledged by saga scholars of
all stripes.
(distinguishes the Europeanists of the 1960s and 1970s (Lonnroth,
What
Hans Bekker-
Damsgaard Olsen, Bjami Einarsson, Ole Widding, Mattias Hermann Palsson) from their predecessors is the kind and degree of
Nielsen, Thorkil ^Tveitane,
influence they posit. If the earlier generation of scholars thought of “influence” as involving occasional bits of foreign matter or ideology inserted into an essentially
native form, the
new Europeanists
are
more
inclined to see
them
as ele-
whole that itself owes European debts: an intellectual debt ^to medieval theology and a formal debt to medieval historiography. In the meantime, the list of suspected foreign debts, large and small, continues /to grow. The irreverent tone of Bandamanna saga, Olkofra pdttr, and parts of Grettis saga has been attributed to the mode of the European fabliau and novella, and it has been suggested that at least one episode in Grettis saga, Grettir’s nude possibly, depending on how late a scene, owes its origin to an Italian source ments integrated
in a
.
—
date one assigns to that saga, Boccaccio’s story of Masetto (Glendinning 1970).
The
relationship
between Grettis saga and Beoww/f continues
(Jorgensen 1973, 1978, 1979;
J.
to attract attention
Turville-Petre 1977; R. Harris 1973;
Madelung
Lonnroth later modified his position on some of these points. See the introduction to his 1976 book on Njdls saga; see also Chesnutt 1973 for a general assessment of Lonnroth’s views. 13.
252
Carol
1969), and
two scholars have speculated, apparently independently,
account of Porkell hakr’s monster fights
in
Njdls saga (chapter
1 1
9)
is
J.
Clover
that the brief
also cognate
(Opland 1973; Clark 1973). Njdls saga has long been rich territory for seekers of foreign influences. Einar 01. Sveinsson suggested some years ago that a passage in Alexanders saga (the
with
Icelandic translation of the Alexandreis)
which Gunnarr leaps from
was
model
the
home
his horse, gazes at his
decision not to leave Iceland.
for the scene in Njdla in field,
Lonnroth has suggested
scene but the whole of “ Gunnarr’ s saga” (the
first
and makes
his fatal
that not only this short
half of Njdla)
is
informed by
themes of the Alexander story (1970a; also 1976:152-60). The characof Gunnarr and Njall, and the bipartite construction of their saga, have been
the moral ters
related to Isidore’s
dream
in
dictum dbouX fortitudo and sapientia (Chesnutt 1973). Flosi’s
Njdls saga (chapter 133) and Egill’s rune-carving in Egils saga (chapter
44) are just two of the numerous saga loans from Gregory’s Dialogues listed by
Regis Boyer (1973).*^ Gabriel Turville-Petre speculates that the Somniale
many
Danielis was the direct or indirect source for
saga visions and dreams,
especially those involving serpents, wolves, deer, and other non-Icelandic crea-
The scholar who has done more than any other to establish the importance of medieval Christian philosophy in the North is Hermann Palsson; his prolific contributions in this area will be taken up in some detail later. The medical and ethical digressions, as well as the stylistic flourishes, in tures (1966).
Fdstbrcedra saga have long been the subject of
adduced numerous parallels (including sources, which, because they
stylistic
later,
ones) in French and Latin in Iceland before the
support his theory of a late date for that
saga (1971, 1972:238-91). Fdstbrcedra saga its
Jonas Kristjansson has
would not have been available
middle of the thirteenth century or traces of cursus in
interest.
also the only saga that
is
shows
prose style (Jakob Benediktsson 1974:20). Formal matters
A
recent dissertation
ascribes certain of the Icelandic sagas’ narrative techniques to
European romance
have not otherwise received much comparative attention.
evolution of saga prose in the context of the
compositionally similar
art
My own
book considers contemporaneous evolution of
convention via the riddarasggur (Rossenbeck 1970).
prose on the Continent (Clover 1982).
Margaret Schlauch has pointed out some similarities between Gunnlaugs saga
and the story of Polynices and Eteocles, although she hesitates to posit influence even via Le Roman de Thebes (1972). The intriguing but inexplicable parallels
between the torture noted once again 1978b). Frederic things French and
in
Hrafnkels saga and two Homeric torture episodes has been
(McKeown 1972; cf. Hofmann 1976a, and Andersson 1977, Amory reminds us that Byzantine writers too were fond of borrowed accordingly and
that
what sometimes appear
to
be
See Einar 6l. Sveinsson’s introduction in IF, 12;xxxvi. 15. The Njdla author’s use of Gregory has been explored in particular by Einar 01. Sveinsson; see, for example, his note in IF, 12:346-48, and his Njdls saga: Kunstverket (Bergen: Universitetsforlag14.
et,
1959), p. 15.
.
Icelandic Family Sagas
253
Byzantinisms in Icelandic sources tion (1984).
The
Irish
many
to
well stem from a
common
French
tradi-
connection continues to be explored, particularly in the
folklore area. Despite the (far too
may
numerous and
mention here)
and extent of Celtic-Norse
have come to
that
form and content
striking parallels in
literary influence
light
over the years, the nature
remains essentially mysterious
(Chesnutt 1968). Readers wishing further guidance can consult Michael Ches-
and Davi6 Erlingsson’s bibliographic survey (1970, 1971, 1972). Two of the three main Icelandic-school monographs of the last two decades
nutt’s
have already been discussed; Jonas Kristjansson’s book on Fdstbroedra saga and
Bjami Einarsson’s book on Egils saga. The third is Rolf Heller’s book on Laxdosla saga (1976a). Heller, originally a student of Walter Baetke,^^ sounds his theme in the title: Die Laxdoela Saga: Die literarische Schdpfung eines Islanders des 13. Jahrhunderts Just how freely the Laxdoela author played with history can be seen from the discrepancies between the saga and Landndmabok (that these discrepancies might stem from competing oral variants is not a possibility Heller entertains).
Other written sources used by the author are family
and kings’ sagas and also the contemporary texts Sturlunga saga and the bishops’ sagas (see also Heller 1965, 1966b, 1969a, 1974, 1976b).
from the in a
latter
The appropriation
of events, personal descriptions, motifs, and even language results
saga unusually rich in anachronisms. The historical sources give no hint of a
love dimension, and Heller maintains that the triangle plot too author’s
own
construction, which, he points out,
Gu5run-Sigurd-Brynhild story of eddic (especially the later elegiac lays)
Laxdoela saga that Heller
is
tradition.
is
clearly
is
modeled on the
Also referred to eddic tradition
the saga’s emotional tone.
is
inclined to see
it
the Laxdoela
So
allusive
as a novelists’ novel. Its author
any case fully deserving of Heusler’s epithet “der Laxdoelakiinstler.
is
is in
”
Literary Anthropology
In 1971 the noted anthropologist Victor
W.
Turner paid his respects to the
Icelandic sagas. Despite the “jagged and treacherous terrain of Icelandic saga origins and datings,” Turner wrote, anthropologists have early Iceland, via the saga
medium, and
(Turner 1971). Turner’s enthusiasm
where
else in the
is
medieval world do
in turn
much
to learn
from
to offer Icelandic studies
readily understood
we
much
by saga readers. No-
find such elaborately and realistically
detailed accounts of people’s political and legal dealings with one another, and j
nowhere
else are historical events as fully fleshed out with social motivations
consequences. I
It is
obvious that the sagas are rooted
contemporary European 16.
is
not; as
best
known
literature
Baetke, an ardent bookprosist,
is
Ker put for his
it,
Uber
in reality in a
way
and that
their “close relation to the
die Entstehung der Isldndersagas,
Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen der Sachsischen Akad. der Wiss. zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Kl., vol. cii, pt.
5 (1956), pp. 5-108.
Carol
254
whom they
were made
J.
Clover
them a substance and a solidity beyond anything else in the imaginative stories of the Middle Ages.”^^ But what reality? The impulse to read the sagas as historical documents is not
lives of those for
new, as any glance
at
.
.
.
[has] given
nineteenth-century scholarship will show. But this ap-
proach was dealt a hard blow by the bookprosists’ demonstration that the picture
and tenth centuries
the sagas paint of the ninth folklore,
and sheer
is full
of distortion, anachronism,
Nor, because of their antiquarian pretensions, do the
fiction.
sagas offer a clear insight into the thirteenth century, written.
but
The sagas may
we do
not
they were actually
closer than other medieval literature to people’s lives,
lie
know whether
the “reality” they reflect
settlement period, or the writing period, or these periods in a syncretic combination
some period
the reality of the
is
between, or
in
— or whether indeed
some imaginative version of their pagan Icelanders collectively subscribed. The documents all,
when
or
past to
it is
all
of
“reality” at
which the medieval
that appear at first glance to
be such a rich source of social history thus end up, on consideration of the scholarly problems, seeming hopelessly intractable.*^
The promotion of
from history to literature has discouraged and complicated inquiries into their social and historical background. Still, interest in these matters remains strong, and recent decades have seen the evolution of two the sagas
acceptable scholarly strategies.
One
involves measuring the sagas’ representation
of events and customs against that of a set of texts thought to
lie
closer to history:
Landndmabok. “historical canon” are
the laws, the bishops’ sagas, Sturlunga saga, Islendingabdk, Siud
Points on which the sagas are in agreement with this
assumed
to
be
But when there are discrepancies, priority
true.
is
usually given to
canon” and the sagas are assumed to be incorrect. For example, a recent study of women’s role in marriage and divorce in early Iceland concludes, by comparing the sagas with the “historical texts,” that the picture in the sagas is not true but is an idealized back projection, encouraged by the church (Jochens the “historical
1980 ).
The problem with
this strategy lies in its
superiority of the
“historical
works
mode and
in a different
reliability
automatic assumption of the historical
canon.” Islendingabdk and Landndmabdk are have been of limited use
as such
of the sagas’ social picture.
To some
extent the
in
determining the
same
is
true of the
bishops’ sagas, which give a highly selective and often suspiciously conventional picture of secular society.
such that
The laws
almost impossible to gauge what historical period
transmission
is
they reflect.
Nor do we know
degree normative
—
to
it
is
are notoriously problematic; the manuscript
to
what degree laws are descriptive and
what extent,
that
is,
to
they reflect an actual and to
extent a merely desirable state of affairs on the part of lawmakers.
what what
“The law
Ker, Epic and Romance, p. 184. 18. For a consideration of the possibilities and problems in using the sagas as ethnographic 17.
documents, see John Lindow 1973. The most recent scholar Iceland is Kirsten Hastrup (1979a, 1979b, 1981).
to attempt
an ethnography of medieval
Icelandic Family Sagas
codes,” as one
255
put
critic
actual state of affairs.
it,
Law
“are not on their
demonstrates
first
own
sufficient evidence of the
and foremost what the
wanted when the law was enacted. But we cannot be sure
when we
necessarily observed, and
we know
that
legislator
any act of law was
are dealing with remote times about
which
often difficult to discern the intention of a given piece of
little, it is
(Gunnar Karlsson 1977:360; also 1972:6). Nor does it seem prudent to regard the “contemporary sagas” known collectively as Sturlunga saga as the Rock of Gibraltar in medieval Icelandic histo-
legislation”
may
/riography. Sturlunga saga sagas, but
1
Vfactual
it
is
not be as patently contrived as the Icelandic
nevertheless suspiciously novelistic in tone, a far cry from the
mode of European
chronicles.
It is
also suspiciously stylized in
its
presen-
example violent conflict (Ulfar Bragason 1981; Andersson 1975a:440-41). The events of Sturlunga saga are no more verifiable than the events of the family sagas, and for the same reason: there exist no independent sources against which they can be measured. Faith in Sturlunga
tation of certain actions, for
saga’s historical authority rests largely on describes,
some of which
proximity
is
its
relative proximity to the events
transpired during the lifetime of
only relative; the most relevant portions of Sturlunga saga (the
dyra, and Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar) (ten to
may
lie at
Gudmundar saga
considerably less remove
one hundred years) from the events they describe than do the family sagas
(two hundred to four hundred years), but they are /
authors. But that
its
twelfth-century works Porgils saga ok Haflida, Sturlu saga, V
it
In any case, relative proximity to the events
cveracity.
It
is
still
not “contemporary.”
in itself
no guarantee of
could indeed be argued that the political and social pressures of the
Sturlung period were such that distortion was inevitable. Porgils saga skarda patently tendentious, for example, as
is
Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, and the
question arises whether the presence of collection does not
compromise
is
some untrustworthy
the veracity of the whole.
material in the
One
also
wonders
whether the accounts of recent or contemporary events might not have been subject to stricter censorship on certain sensitive issues than were the accounts of
On
ancient times.
the subject of infanticide, for example,
some form and degree
well (so laws, I
Sturlunga saga the
pagan past
common
sense suggest),
Evidently authors were willing to admit to practices in
that they preferred to suppress in the Christian present. In the area
of shameful practices associated with paganism, the family sagas truer picture of reality
(precisely because of
X The I
mentioned
and thirteenth-century Iceland as
analogous evidence, and
folklore, is silent.
in twelfth-
is
and which must have
(albeit disapprovingly) several times in the family sagas
existed in
which
— not
in spite
may
offer a
of their greater distance from the events but
it.
second strategy for getting
at the
sagas as cultural documents
is
simply to
ignore the issue of their historicity and to concentrate instead on their signifi-
[cance to the audience that produced and consumed them (fourteenth centuries. This
is
the point of departure for
in the thirteenth
and
two books by Preben
256
Carol
Clover
J.
Meulengracht S0rensen: Saga og samfund (1977b) and Norr0nt nid (1980). The former attempts to present early Icelandic literature not
in philological
terms but
of social and economic structures in medieval Icelandic culture. In his
in the light
illuminating discussion of kinship structures, Meulengracht Sprensen brings to
bear on the Scandinavian sources what
may
be called “analogical data” from the
discipline of anthropology (1977b:30-36). Despite
and
readability
common
sense, however, and despite
ceed synchronically. Saga og samfund
still
Norr0nt
is
phenomena and concerns
sagas
if
its
it
disclaims.
The
constraints of
which views “homosexual”
nid,
itself
to
origins, could not
The premise here
have survived as an
integral
and masculinity on which
the notions of femininity
insults as
only in passing with their origins (Meulen-
gracht Sprensen 1980; also Strom 1972, 1974).
matter what
stated intention to pro-
and social history rather than integrating them. More
literary
successful in both respects social
its
Meulengracht Sprensen’s tendency
traditional categories are also revealed in
between
considerable virtues of
worries to a considerable extent,
directly or indirectly, the very philological issues
alternate
its
is
that nid,
element
it is
no
in the
based did not
also obtain for the audiences of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The advantages of
this
synchronic approach are obvious. Freed from the
obsession with reconstructing actual historical events, the
critic
can concentrate
on the personal and social values that emerge from the study of themes, biases, patterns, structures, distaste for
approach
New
and oppositions. In
fact, despite their
declared or undeclared
Criticism or aesthetic formalism, advocates of the “social”
are, ironically,
sometimes so indebted
to this style of analysis that
The disadvantages
are equally obvious.
one
One
is
hard-pressed to see the difference.
is
always aware, for example, of the inherent circularity in such argumentation.
The
virtual
absence of independent sources for the social and political history of
means
viking and medieval Scandinavia
that speculations
on such matters must
be derived from the very texts one seeks to illuminate. Moreover, one tends to
grow impatient with pure description the observation that the presence of
any form and with the self-evidence of
in
X
insults) in a literature suggests a society
the use of analogical evidence
is
(feud, marital problems,
homosexual
preoccupied with X. Finally, as far as
concerned, one must bear in mind that the
equation between the preindustrial peoples of early Europe and present-day preindustrial peoples around the world
employed with caution. None of impossible
— only
that
it
is
this is to
by no means automatic and must be say that social analysis of the sagas
hard to do well and
is
is
necessarily tentative in
conclusions. In the long run, the importance of Meulengracht Sprensen ’s
may
lie less in his
the society that
modem
its
work
actual analyses than in his effort to reconnect the sagas with
produced and consumed them and
social scientific concepts
ments beg for such treatment
—
and findings
feminism has had
to bring,
to bear
whatever the
pitfalls,
on a society whose docu-
widen the horizons. In the scholarly no mean achievement.
in general, to
milieu in which he began his work, this
Modem
is
less
is
impact on saga studies than on other medieval
Icelandic Family Sagas
literatures,
257
perhaps because saga
women, prominent
long ago as scholarly subjects and their literary
Recent commentators along these
critics.
were discovered role remarked by generations of as they are,
selves in the position not of exploring the territory for the
reacting to the claims of their predecessors.
them-
lines, therefore, often find
Helga Kress argues
first
time but of
that
Andersson’s
j
commitment
male feuding as the structuring principle of saga narrative does particular violence to Laxdcela saga, which is clearly organized from beginning Vto end around the life of Gu6run Osvifrsdottir (1980:266-72; A. R. Taylor /
to
Conroy has made much
same point about Einks saga rauda: critics who have found the plot diffuse and heroless would do well to look to the other gender, for like Laxdoela saga, Einks saga rauda is framed as a female biography (1980). Helga Kress also notes the many instances in Laxdcela saga of women’s reaction against a narrowly defined female role, and she wonders 1974). Patricia
the
whether the original material of the story might not have had a different shape
and aim than
has in the surviving saga, in which women’s interests have been
it
^subordinated to those of
men and Gu5run remodeled
as a love heroine in the
eddic pattern (1980:272-79).
The female
characters in Njdls saga, above
all
Hallger5r, continue to fascinate
readers and to prompt different interpretations even
among
work (Helga legitimacy of the women’s
Helga Kress underscores the misogyny
nist orientation.
Kress 1977, 1979). Marina
Mundt emphasizes
the
scholars with a femiin that
harsh reactions to infringements on what they perceive to be their natural rights (1976).
Nanna
Olafsdottir suggests that A/d/a’s females are
the males (1977).
And
Ursula Dronke stresses the unusual degree and subtlety of
the Njdla author’s interest in male-female relations, stereotypical patterns in earlier sagas
concludes that of \
Au5r, serve the
its
more masculine than
which transcend the narrow,
(Dronke 1980).
An
analysis of Gisla saga
eighteen female characters those who, like Gisli’s wife
interests
of the patriarchal family fare better than those who, like
^ordis, act at cross-purposes with their male relatives (Grpnstpl 1979).
/ (
Kellogg has made the intriguing literary-historical suggestion that the peculiar
persistence of the vernacular in Iceland
of
women,
for
whom the
literature (1971).
indirectly testify to the participation
study of Latin was seldom feasible, in the production of
Mention may also be made here of three items
implications for the study of saga is
may
women though their focus
Else Mundal’s analysis of the fylgja (guardian
spirit),
falls
have
that
elsewhere.
One
a motif which, she
^
speculates,
may be
Birgit Strand’s
comprehensive study of
Gesta Danorum.
image of
a remnant of female ancestor worship (1974). Another
women
Of
women
and sexual
politics in
An
Saxo’s
particular interest to those concerned with the role and
in the
family sagas
is
Strand’s effort to link Saxo’s strident
views to learned authorities (1980). Medieval writings on odd 19.
is
women
—
for
inventory of themes can be found in Rolf Heller, Die literarische Darstellung der Frau in
den Islandersagas, Saga: Untersuchungen zur nordischen Literatur und Sprachgeschichte, 2 (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1958). See also Frank 1973.
Carol
258 example, amazones, viragines
— are also the starting point of N.H.
Larson’s book on Saxo’s shield maidens (1983). Finally there
Andersen’s book on the shield maiden theme
in the
is
Clover
J.
Holmqvist-
Lise Praestgaard
North, with emphasis on the
courtly ballads (1982).
The common impression
that
Norse
women were on
the
whole more highly
valued and enjoyed greater social privileges than their Continental sisters rests heavily on the witness of the family sagas, and in recent years several scholars
through a variety of means, to gauge the accuracy of that representa-
have
tried,
tion.
For Meulengracht Sprensen, the shortest route
early Icelanders
of the
through their sexual invective (Meulengracht S0rensen 1980).
is
md
Directly or indirectly, most
woman. Masculinity
into a
to the sexual politics
charges or threatens buggery
—
turning a
on “phallic aggression,” which
rests
expressed as male rape but figuratively expressed
is
man
literally
of harm and
in other acts
humiliation. This sexual metaphor lurks just under the surface of the fighting and killing of saga feuding.
Jenny Jochens arrives
at a similar
A
of the church and sexuality in medieval Iceland.
conclusion in her study
look
canon,” she argues, does not support the sagas’ representation marital fidelity reflect not
and divorce
initiated
of, for
by women. She concludes
an actual state of affairs but one idealized
in
“historical
at the
example,
that the sagas
accordance with church
views (1980). Another exploration of the historical sources concludes that the
“strong”
woman
of the Icelandic sagas,
if
explained on the basis of her participation in
homespun production. Wadmal was
unimportant until the eleventh century (that
when
it
women
was
the staple of the
economy,
its
she indeed existed, could not be
is,
after the saga age),
and even
weaving was probably performed by
of the lower social classes, not those of the sagas’ social
elite
(Helgi
Forlaksson 1981).
Forbidden love
The
(1971).
is
the subject of
Thomas
Kaos og
Bredsdorff’s book
kcerlighed
sagas’ preoccupation with the pursuit of wealth and honor, and the
often bloody consequences,
is
well known. But alongside this “first pattern” of
saga conflict, Bredsdorff argues,
a “second pattern,” potentially as destruc-
is
[
\
unapproved sexual passion.
tive as the first:
acts of
coincide, as they
do preeminently
in
the
two patterns
Laxdaela saga and Njdls saga, the results
are catastrophic. Bredsdorff finds the second pattern
what he
When
most completely realized
calls the “classical” sagas (Laxdeela saga, Egils saga, Gi'sla saga,
in
and
Njdls saga) and either absent or rudimentary in the “postclassical” sagas (such as Grettis saga), in a society
and he links
undergoing a
shift
this distribution to tensions that
from
tribal to
“medieval”
must have inhered
social organization
and
values. Although Bredsdorff declares in his opening pages his intention to ignore
questions of origins and to approach the sagas as works of art susceptible of
simple description, he quickly subordinates his “synchronic” observations to a
scheme and further subordinates that scheme to a political one commentator put it, “he has asked literarily but answered
literary-developmental
context
—
or, as
historically” (Jprgensen 1975:104).
Icelandic Family Sagas
259
Bredsdorff’s book has been criticized on several points, one of which extraction of an erotic structure in Egils saga.
One reviewer
“forbidden love” comprises
his single category of
his
is
has suggested that
in fact three distinct motifs:
relationships with concubines, relationships contrary to the will of the family,
and betrayed love with the attendant emotions of jealousy and “love-hate.”
“When
only to the third, she argues, that Bredsdorffs formula can be applied: total inner
and outer chaos occurs
[in the sagas], the
cause
is
It is
not love alone, but
j '
love that has turned into jealousy and love hate” (Mundal 1973). Jprgen
Haugan
and Jan Sand Sprensen have further faulted Bredsdorffs “reductive and moralizing” text analyses, his overly schematic view of generic development, his equa-
1000 (the demise of paganism) and 1262 (the demise of the Commonwealth) and overemphasis on their watershed status, and his black-and-
tion of the years
white reading of NJdis saga (1975; see also Jprgensen 1975; Bredsdorff 1975, 1978; Jensen 1977; Hansen 1978b). In any case, Bredsdorffs thesis has interesting implications for our understanding of the “strong
women”
erotic conflicts are indeed a projection of the emotional
of the sagas. If
ambivalence of the
medieval Icelanders straddling political systems, then women’s central role these erotic conflicts
is
in
similarly not to be taken at face value but rather under-
stood to be part of the larger imaginative construction.^® ^
/
Inquiries into early Scandinavian structures of perception have been pursued
most vigorously
in recent years
Steblin-Kamenskij.^^ Neither
by the Soviet scholars A. Ya. Gurevich and M. is
a saga scholar primarily; both have tended to
more archaic sources,
focus on the
I.
particularly in their linguistic aspects,
and
to
address the sagas only in passing. But their use of philology in the service of “historical
psychology”
is
of considerable interest for saga studies
—
if
not
always for the findings, certainly for the approach. Gurevich, for example, argues that gift-giving
—
properly understood in
a conspicuous theme in
modem terms
Old Norse
of private property.
literature
It is
— cannot be
rather to be related
custom of potlatch, which serves a specific social function in the which it is found (1968, 1977). In a somewhat different vein,
to the primitive i
societies in
Gurevich finds that the mythological vision of the Scandinavians
by a “qualitative heterogeneity of both time and space” of an archiac
mode
of perception (1969).
with specific reference to the sagas, were article in
Many
—
is
characterized
again, a manifestation
of the same points about time,
made by Steblin-Kamenskij
in a short
1968, and the same views, expanded, form one chapter of his book The
Saga Mind (1973). 20.
A
21.
Unfortunately, this discussion of Gurevich and Steblin-Kamenskij
marriage/wooing norms may be found in Lars Lonnroth, '‘Ski'rnismdl och den fomislandska aktenskapsnormen” in ^Ole Widding, pp. 154-78. Taking his cue from Malinowski and Levi-Strauss, Lonnroth argues that the eddic poem Skirnismdl con/ stitutes a mythic projection and resolution of tensions that inevitably arose in the strongly clanoriented system of early Iceland when a young man wished to marry a woman designated as socially ^ unsuitable. different approach to early Icelandic
I
able in translation.
is
limited to what
is
avail-
260
Carol
J.
Clover
The Saga Mind surely qualifies as the most-discussed book of the decade field
in the
of saga studies. In a style less scholarly than personal, not to say tongue-in-
cheek, Steblin-Kamenskij proposed to correct the scholarly emphasis on philology at the expense of history by exploring the “spiritual world” of the sagas
and
—
“their conceptions of truth,
human
personality,
form and content, good
and death” (1973:9). Of these it is the first, truth, the centerpiece both of The Saga Mind and of the ensuing controversy. time and space,
evil,
that is
life
Because the “truth” debate has been amply dealt with elsewhere 1972, 1981b) and
main
is
familiar to
many
readers, this
summary
and syncretic.
Modem people
will touch only the
understand the
but have no comprehension of ecclesiastical tmth, which
medieval religious thinking (as exemplified
which
\
Weber
points. Steblin-Kamenskij distinguishes four kinds of truth: artistic, histor-
ical, ecclesiastical,
,
(e.g.,
is
the
two modes
characteristic of
in saints’ lives), or syncretic
tmth,
dominant mode of early Icelandic society and hence of the Icelandic
sagas. Syncretic truth
midway
is
first
is
not a combination of artistic and historical tmth, nor a
category, but another kind of tmth “fundamentally distinct from both of
them ...
a third entity” (pp. 24-25). “Syncretic tmth
is
what
is
thought of as
simply tmth, something given, not created ... the lack of distinction between historical
,
and
artistic
tmth”
(pp. 50-51).
As with tmth,
so with time (pp. 123-
|40): the early Icelanders did not discriminate, at least not to the
modem
extent,
/past and future from present, but experienced a continual transfer and hence a greater unity
1
—
a proposition Peter Hallberg
dubbed “syncretic time” (Hallberg
1974b: 109- 12).
The notion of syncretism may be elusive, but its implications were immediately clear, especially to those whose scholarly tenets were at stake (and one suspects from Steblin-Kamenskij ’s tone that this effect was fully intended). /According to Steblin-Kamenskij, efforts to discriminate fact from fiction in the I
sagas are anachronistic and pointless, as
of literary borrowings (1973:49-68; thorship: syncretic
is
the assumption underlying the tracing
1967).
Likewise considerations of au-
tmth “inevitably implies the absence of consciousness of
authorship” and the “lack of consciousness of authorship sciousness of the
human
personality” (1973:51, 1966).
fense of the Icelandic school were
is
The
Hermann Palsson and
the lack of con-
first to rise in
de-
Peter Hallberg (Her-
mann Palsson 1973a; Hallberg 1974a, 1974b, 1976b; see also Weber 1972, 1981b; Guldager 1974). They faulted Steblin-Kamenskij on his sweeping generalizations, his
incomplete and biased coverage of the lexical evidence, his incon-
sistencies, his misleading claims to originality, his failure to
stances
when authorship
his underlying
and
is
in-
clearly understood, his tendency to argue e silentio,
assumption of the “primitive” nature of the early Icelandic mind,
in general the unverifiable nature
tions are cogent at least in
acknowledge
of his argumentation.
Many
of their objec-
and do indeed compromise the notion of a syncretic saga mind,
Steblin-Kamenskij ’s particular adumbration.
Steblin-Kamenskij responded with a brief but brilliant defense not of his
Icelandic Family Sagas
conclusions
—
261
book
his
will
speak for
— but
itself
of his point of departure
(1975b). Every inquiry into the past, he argues (p. 187), assumes either that “the
psychology of medieval
man
is
identical with that of
hypothesis), or that “the psychology of medieval
of
modem man”
worth quoting
at
modem man”
man
(the nonidentity hypothesis). His
is
(the identity
not identical with that
remarks on
this point are
length because of the light they shed not only on his
and the Soviet contribution
in
own work
generaF^ but also on some of the other
strains
within the field of saga studies (1975b: 188-89; see also 1976):
The
fact is that in studies of literature of past ages the identity hypothesis
old and very firmly established tradition, and this studies, that
is
particularly so in
one of the most conservative branches of humanistic
studies.
can be traced back to an epoch when humanities did not yet
set
is
a very
Old Icelandic
It is
a tradition
themselves the
comprehend the past ages in their difference from the present, the epoch when the so-called historical point of view had not yet begun to
task of trying to
pre.-romantic
assert itself in humanistic studies. In fact the tradition in question is not only pre-
romantic,
is
it
ultimately medieval.
All methods of studying the Icelandic sagas, for instance, methods of determining the authors of the sagas, of finding out
what
is
deliberate fiction in a saga, of
discovering the ethical principles supposedly introduced into a saga by etc., are is
based essentially on the identity hypothesis. Thus,
called in question,
if
it
is
shown
to
if
author,
its
the identity hypothesis
be probably unsound, then
all
methods used
studying the sagas are unsound too, and so are the studies themselves.
It is
in
therefore
quite understandable that any criticism of the identity hypothesis cannot but provoke irritation in
every active saga scholar.
Steblin-Kamenskij goes on to mention, in connection with the nonidentity hypothesis, the position of
modem
anthropology and, significantly, the work of
Milman Parry and Albert Lord. Recent literacy in societies previously reliant
seem
The Saga Mind)
historical time in
on memory and
oral transmission
Steblin-Kamenskij ’s general proposition
to bear out
application in
investigations into the consequences of
(if
not
its
particular
that preliterary peoples perceive history
should be further remembered that the shift from
many
and
And
it
illiterate to literate is typically
a
fundamentally different ways than do literary peoples.
slow process with
would
intermediate stages.
Steblin-Kamenskij ’s use of pure categories stems from a philosophical tradi22.
A brief survey of Steblin-Kamenskij ’s contribution can be found in the obituary by his student
Anatoly Liberman, “Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamenskij,” Scandinavica, 21 (1982), 89-91, as well as his epilogue and bibliography in Steblin-Kamenskij 1982:103-50. 23. See Jack Goody and Ian Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack [John Rankine] Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 27-68; also Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, tr. H. M. Wright (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Chicago: Aldine, 1965), esp. pp. 40-46, 76-113; Paul Kiparsky, “Oral Poetry:
Some
Linguistic and Typological Considerations,” in Oral Literature
the Formula, ed.
(Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1976), iii, 73-106; and Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York: Methuen, 1982).
B. A. Stolz and R. S. Shannon J.
and
Carol
262 tion of argumentation; in reality, as
J.
Clover
he notes, most scholars operate on the basis
I
I
some combination.
of
Still,
not
all
combinations are the same, and the
dif-
ferences are all-important in understanding the present scholarly disposition of
saga studies. The source analysts, above as certain of the “literary critics,”
all
those of the Icelandic school, as well
assume a greater degree of “identity” than do
the “traditionalists” (especially those under the direct or indirect influence of
Parry and Lord), folklorists, and literary ethnographers, their
primary task exactly to apprehend what in
many
modem
of
whom make
parlance
it
called the
is
art.
The
former approach has dominated saga studies for several decades, which
may
“alterity” of the early Icelandic perceptions of history and sense of
explain the stunted condition of the latter relative to scholarly traditions (Greek
is
a
good example).
effort to penetrate the historical
Kamenskij’s book, whatever For
all
the controversy
it
It is
its
counterparts in other
in this light, as a
psychology of the early Icelanders,
its
failings, deserves to
pioneering
that Steblin-
be judged.
generated, however. The Saga
Mind
has had no
appreciable effect on the course of saga scholarship. For mainstream saga studies,
especially under the purview of the Icelandic school, the
ciopolitical issue of the last
Sigur5ur Nordal’s view: century, they must at
“The
the sagas are fictional constructions of the thirteenth
if
some
and even the events of the
level reflect the attitudes
in his early
it
Icelandic Family Sagas and the Period in
were written down.”^'^ At the most basic
—
the reassignment in
tenth century.
Two
masked form of contemporary events
and his family
at
Porvaldsson during his son’s wedding,
Gu6run
in
to the
One
is
Berg|36rshvall, an episode that has been
in the
by the enemies of Gizurr
year 1253.^^ The other
which Helgi Har5beinsson wipes
of an event that took place
in
is
the scene
his blood-stained spear
OsviTrsdottir’s apron after he has slain her husband. This
fictional reflex
which they
level, this imprint consists of material
interpreted as a reflex of the burning at Flugumyrr,
Laxdcela saga
in
paradigmatic examples serve to demonstrate the logic.
the burning of Njall
in
program essay
Which Their Authors
Lived,” the sagas must “bear the imprint of the age and place projection
so-
decade and a half has been the one implied by
thirteenth century. Or, as Einar 01. Sveinsson put entitled
paramount
is
on
held to be a
northern Iceland in the year 1244.
As Pdrdar saga kakala tells it, a certain AsbjQm Gu5mundarson killed a man and then, when that man’s wife drew near, wiped his weapons on her clothes. In both cases, the scene
is
the occasion for a mortal prophecy,
which
is
duly
fulfilled.
24.
Einar 01. Sveinsson,
“The
Icelandic Sagas and the Period in
Which Their Authors Lived,”
APS, 12 (1937-38), 78-79. 25.
Bar6i Gu6mundsson,
“Nu
taka oil husin a6 loga,” in his
book Hofundur Njdlu (Reykjavik:
Bokautgafa MenningarsJ66s, 1958), pp. 225-34. Cf. Einar 01. Sveinsson
in IE, 12:cxiii-cxx; also
Hallberg 1976c. 26. This scene has been discussed by Andreas Heusler in his review of Johannes van Ham’s Beschouwingen over de literaire beteknis der Laxdcela Saga, rpt. in Heusler’s Kleine Schriften, 2 vols., ed. Stefan Sonderegger (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), i, pp. 362-67. Originally published in
— Icelandic Family Sagas
More
263
recently, the life of Gisli Siirsson (of Gisla saga) has been associated
with that of the historical outlaw Aron Hjgrleifsson, whose
life
story
is
partially
recounted in Sturlunga saga. Sentenced in 1222, Aron spent three years hiding out in the same vicinity and
\
much
jhave done two centuries earlier. stories (both
outlaws
mend
the
The
same circumstances
as Gisli
is
alleged to
striking correspondences of detail in the
their hosts’ boats, for
example, and both
men
two
elude
by setting boats adrift in such a way as to give the impression that they drowned) leave little doubt that the two accounts are related (A6algeir Kristjansson 1965; Heller 1966a; Foote 1963:130-31; Porter 1971). In this case, however, it is not impossible, depending in part on what dates and priority one their pursuers
assigns to the accounts of Aron, that Gisla saga conditioned the
f
Aron biography,
^ not vice versa (Heller 1966a; Porter 1971).
The authors of Gisla saga and Laxdoela saga
are likewise suspected of having
contemporized episodes and persons known from the Sturlunga saga account of Hrafh Sveinbjamarson (Heller 1977a; Foote 1963:131-33). Parallels to the battle of Hrisateigr in Viga-Glums saga have been identified in the account of Sighvatr Sturluson’s death in Sturlunga saga (Einar Ol. Sveinsson 1969), and the saga
motif of unearthing and removing the bones of heroes (such as Egill and Grettir)
\
I
1
has been related specifically to the celebrated exhumation at Holar in the year 1
198 of the bones of two bishops and more generally to the conventional trans-
Uatio of medieval hagiography (Bjami Einarsson 1976b). Hrafnkels saga has
been
interpreted
as
a
masked version of
historical
events
described
in
(Hermann Palsson 1962; Thomas 1973; cf. Ringler 1972). The most extreme example of this line of reasoning remains Bar6i Gu6mundsson’s reading of Njdls saga as an elaborately Recent critics have been content specific roman a clef of Sturlung Age history.
Svinfellinga saga between the years 1242 and 1255
with smaller denominations of plot (Foote 1974a).
As with
content, so with spiritual and political values.
When
the sagas
thought to be collectively “authored” and transmitted chronicles of
life
were
during
was supposed that they lacked a moral superstructure or rather, that they were unconscious and unsystematic purveyors of the ethical system of the pre-Christian era and that Christian references were interpolations. One would expect that when the idea of the historical saga died (assuming for the moment that it once lived) and was replaced by the idea of the saga as medieval fiction by an individual author, the view of its ethics would change accordingly. the settlement period,
it
In fact, however, scholars and readers have been oddly slow in confronting the
obvious implication of the “fiction” hypothesis for the understanding of saga values.
Even
as he declared Hrafnkels
saga
to
be the “pure fiction” of a
Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 53 (1932), 2467-72. See also Einar 01. Sveinsson, “The Icelandic Sagas and the Period in Which Their Authors Lived,” p. 71; Rolf Heller, “Laxdoela saga und Sturlunga saga,” ANF, 76 (1961), 112-33; and NjorSur P. NjarSvik 1971:78. Bar6i GuSmundsson, Hofundur Njdla. Cf. Einar 6l. Sveinsson, IF, 12:cxiii-cxx; also Hallberg 1973c, 1973d, 1973e. For earlier examples of this approach, see Andersson 1964:74-75. 27.
264
Carol
thirteenth-century author, Sigur5ur Nordal, in the essay that has
Clover
J.
become
the
program piece of the Icelandic school, explained the plot motivation in terms of Germanic notions of honor and vengeance. The first programmatic objection to this archaic approach to saga ethics was by Hermann Palsson. Hermann’s reading of Hrafnkatla argues (against Sigur5ur Nordal in particular) that the motivations of that saga are better referred to Augustine than to Atlakvida and that its proverbs are as likely to have their raised
origins in the Bible as in folk tradition (1966, 1971b, 1977b,
examples
will suffice.
One
the “romantic’’ critics; for the medieval theological
the “sore toe’’ episode,
is
Hermann
Palsson,
it
.
.
.
perfect sense in terms of
views on sympathy and compassion (1971b:65-69).
sworn an oath
I’ve
which has long perplexed
makes
Likewise the exclusionary oath regarding Freyfaxi Freyfaxi.
1978a). Three
to kill
(
“ You may
ride
any horse but
anyone who rides him’’), which Her-
mann relates to the exclusionary oath concerning the tree of knowledge in Genesis (“You may eat from every tree in the garden, but not from the tree of the on the day that you eat from it, you will certainly die.’’ Hrafnkell’s warning words to Samr, “Don’t let pride be your down-
knowledge ... Finally, fall,’’
for
are related
by Hermann
to the biblical
“Pride goeth before a
fall’’
(1970,
1971b:46-47, 60). He takes particular exception to the conventional view that is
free choice
and
saga:
i
governed by heroic
Hrafnkatla
its
fate.
On
the contrary, he argues, not fate but
problems and consequences distinguish the plot of Hrafnkels
“The human
will
is
and the
the motivating force behind the action,
ultimate responsibility lies with the characters themselves, rather than with any
extra-human agency’’ (1971b:44). In his eyes, sponsibility
is
yet another
on individual
this insistence
example of Hrafnkatla
%
re-
dependence on the tenets of
medieval humanism.
,
much
same ground, Davf5 Erlingsson took exception to Hermann Palsson ’s impressionistic method even as he seconded some of the main conclusions (1970). The theme of excessive pride is not necessarily Christian, he points out, but the recommendation of humility, attained through humiliation, certainly cannot be pagan. He also agrees that the message of the “sore toe’’ episode may very well reflect Benedictine views on suffering and In an essay going over
the
compassion, though here as elsewhere evidence of direct influence
is
lacking.
But even though conceding that the “depiction of events and characters Hrafnkatla build, “the realist
critical
in significant
in
ways, on Christian thought,’’ he concludes that
He
reader must greatly admire the author’s independence.
and takes the consequences of the heathen setting of his
independence, together with other fine narrative qualities, has
made
creation of a classic saga’’ (Davi6 Erlingsson 1970:40-41; also
1966; Njor5ur NJarSvik 1973b). Peter Hallberg countered
plot.
.
.
.
is
a
This
possible the
Bjami Gu6nason
Hermann Palsson ’s
28. Other recent examples of this reasoning are Hallberg 1962a; Handle 1969;
Maarten C. van den Toom, Ethics and Morals in Icelandic Saga Literature (Assen; Van Gorkum, 1955); and Andersson 1967:32. Andersson later modified his views; see his 1970 article, esp. n. 10).
Icelandic Family Sagas
265
views on Hrafnkatla with an analysis of Njdla, arguing that the characters are
complex and individuated, not theological types, and
that the
whole
plot reflects
^
the realities of life, not an overarching moral point (Hallberg 1973c,
1973d,
1973e). Peter Foote points out that not a few of the “heroic” sentiments often associated with
Germanic paganism
“contemporary”
find full expression in
texts as well (1974a).
But the
real
breakthrough
in the
came with
study of saga ethics
the penetration
of the celebrated and deceptive neutrality of saga style. Saga authors observe a
formal objectivity, argued Lars Lonnroth, in that they virtually never interject their
own views and
they
still
make
indeed go to some lengths to give both sides of a story; but
their opinions evident in a variety of less
These include the use of loaded adjectives
in the introductory descriptions
the necrologies of characters (for example, vinsasll
I
“good” word,
a
is
“bad” word); the ascription of summary judgments condemned this deed”) or to community leaders who
^
obvious ways (1970b).
to
and
uvinsaell a
“the people” (“people
are understood to represent
the collective morality (for example, Njall in Njdls saga)\
and the elaborate
staging effects in especially significant scenes (most conspicuously in the death
scenes of good men). Such an analysis
may seem
other medieval literature, but this, Lonnroth says,
oversubtle to the reader of the result of the peculiar
is
homogeneity of early Scandinavian society, which produced “a certain consen-
what kind of actions should be considered good or evil (innocent or suspect, idyllic or ominous, etc.), so that it does not have to be spelled out each time” (1970b: 163). sus between the narrator and his audience in regard to
Quick
to seize
on the implications of Lonnroth’ s work, Theodore M. An-
dersson posed the logical next question:
“Does
the [saga] author
impose values
Are the real heroes of the sagas the men who guard their honor most sedulously, and if not, who are the /real heroes?” (1970:577). He sums up his analysis of ten sagas thus: “What gives a consistency to the ethical temper of these sagas is precisely a sense of ( on the action, and
if so, is
the chief value really honor?
proportion and moderation.
They
are written against excess: excessive self-
seeking {Egils saga), excessive passion {Gunnlaugs saga), excessive ambition
(Hdvardar saga, Eyrbyggja saga), or praise of moderation {Heidarviga saga, Eyrbyggja saga) and
{Valla-Ljdts saga), excessive arbitrariness
they are written in
forbearance (Hcensa-Pdris saga, Reykdcela saga, Njdls saga)”
Bjami Gu5nason before him (1966), Andersson concludes concept of moderation tian
and
that
is
associated with Christianity,
“what we probably have
it is
(p.
588). Like
that although the
not necessarily Chris-
in the sagas is not so
much
a replacement
of a pagan ideal with a Christian ideal as the replacement of a warrior ideal with a
1
social ideal” (p. 592).
^
The
old-style hero did not pass
attaches to figures
Hlf5arendi
—
who
—
like
unmoumed, however.
Gisli,
A
special poignancy
Skarphe6inn, Grettir, and Gunnarr of
try to live heroic lives in a postheroic age.
Nowhere
ronism of heroes and heroics more elaborately examined than
is
the anach-
in Grettis
saga.
266
Carol
When
Grettir can
—
Beowulf
thrives.
perform epic tasks for lordly persons, he
But
in the
long stretches of civilian
—
it
Clover
like his relative
life that lie
heroic occasions (the call for heroes not being what
J.
between such
once was) Grettir
is
theme of Grettis saga is the “incompatibility of a traditional form of heroism with the demands of an evolving society” (Hume 1974:482; also Oskar Halldorsson 1977). The moderation ethic was put into still another perspective by Lars Lonnroth, who speculated in an essay on the “noble heathen” that the ambivalence of the thirteenth-century Icelanders toward their forebears, who were on the one hand pagans but on the other the heroic founding fathers of their nation, was resolved in the doctrine of natural religion (1969). According to this doctrine (which is spelled out in the preface to Snorra Edda), even pagans who had no direct
The
positively dysfunctional.
knowledge of God or the
true faith
and mercy.
might qualify as natural or proto-Christians on
wisdom, reverence
the basis of their native restraint,
central
Some
of the sagas’ greatest heroes
Njall in Njdls saga, Gisli in Gi'sla saga,
saga
— are
for nature, and sense of justice,
— such
as
and Gestr Oddleifsson
Gunnarr and Laxdcela
in
construed as such “noble heathen” (Lonnroth 1969; also Schach
1975:105-8; Clunies Ross 1978). Like Hermann Palsson, Lonnroth thus ac-
knowledges a strong theological component
in
saga ethics; but unlike him, he
believes that Christian ideas have not been taken over wholesale but assimilated to traditional attitudes.
“On
the
whole,” he writes, “the relationship between
pagan and Christian ideas among Saga-writers has been much misunderstood: is
seldom a clear-cut conflict but often a
Christian authors eagerly explore
sort of
all possibilities
armed
alliance in
it
which the
of mutual interests and overlap-
same time watching out for anything that could be regarded as a real threat to the Church” (Lonnroth 1969:11; also Hallberg 1973c, 1973d, 1973e). Another such area of overlap, Lonnroth argued elsewhere, is the complex of terms and notions referring to “luck” {gasfa, gipta, hamingja). Whatever its prehistory, it was by the thirteenth century fully harmonized with the Latin complex of terms and notions referring to “grace” {gratia, donum, munus, and ping ideas,
at the
the like) (Lonnroth
1963-64; see also Hermann Palsson 1974b, 1975b; Hallberg
1973a, 1975c). Paul Schach’s survey of antipagan sentiments in the sagas (many of which also
exemplify the “noble heathen” theme, though he does not identify leads
way
him
to a
it
as such)
more moderate version of Lonnroth’s conclusion: “Without
generalizing about the Islendingasdgur as a genre,
we can
in
any
state that to the
extent that these quotations represent the views of the authors and are integral parts of the sagas in
which they occur, they do not seem
to lend support to the
romantic doctrine that these stories were written from a pro-pagan point of view” (1975:134; also 1982; Scovazzi 1967a). Schach also makes the point that the pagan-Christian tension
is
often realized in the sagas in a generation-gap conflict
between father and son (1977). Claiborne of
“pagan” sentiments
in
W. Thompson,
pointing to examples
“Christian” works and “Christian” sentiments
in
Icelandic Family Sagas
267
“pagan” works, argues
modem
that a categorical distinction
is strictly
in the
eyes of the
beholder (1977). The texts rather suggest that the abiding interest of the
Scandinavians, regardless of their religion, was not in “the moral contrast
good/bad or the aesthetic one beautiful/ugly,” but a “wise/foolish contrast as understood in a pragmatic sense” (1977:359). What emerges from these essays (with the exception of
Hermann
Palsson’s)
that of Steblin-Kamenskij’s of time
and
and the purely Christian models, these
is
a conception of ethics rather like
truth.
Rejecting both the purely pagan
critics
propose instead a peculiar third
category that at the same time embraces and transcends the other two
—
a secu-
larized
“syncretic ethics” that allowed the thirteenth-century Icelanders to
“come
to terms with both their ancestors
But on the whole the reader of medieval
and themselves” (1977:357).
of religious sentiments in the sagas than by their in
God
stmck
by the presence absence. Their minimal interest
literature is
less
or gods, afterlife, religious experience, and divine justice and order
qualify the sagas as the
may
most secular narratives of the Middle Ages. For Peter G.
Foote, this secular spirit
is
better explained as a reaction to extreme clerical
claims in thirteenth-century Iceland than as a reflection of a traditional sen-
“People could not avoid being brought face
sibility.
to face with the choice
posed by the claims of Bishop Porlakr and Bishop GuSmundr for
clerical su-
premacy and with the choice of belief or disbelief posed by the alleged miracle working of Gu6mundr in his lifetime,” he writes. “Certainly, a human worldly response was likely, a tendency to concentrate on secular values in .
everyday
.
.
life,
a reluctance or refusal to accept the reality of religious sanctions in
ordinary dealings” (1974b).
That the sagas’ preoccupation with violence stems from the strife-ridden in other words, that the Sturlung experiatmosphere of the thirteenth century
—
ence conditioned the perception of settlement-age history
— has become
a critical
commonplace. It is likewise agreed that the political attitudes of the sagas stem though just what these attitudes are and just from thirteenth-century tensions what tensions they reflect are less clear. As mentioned before, the shift in medieval Iceland from a tribal to a feudal social structure has been offered as the
—
political substructure
1971).
A
of the sagas’ particular brand of love conflict (Bredsdorff
related change, in the thirteenth century,
economic and
political
power of
was
the challenge of the
the traditional overclass of the chieftains
{godar, hgfdingjar) by an emerging “middle class” of wealthy farmers {storbosndr). Just
how much
wealth and power the storboendr actually
with respect to the chieftains during the Sturlung
Age
is
commanded
currently in dispute, but
would seem in either case that the conflict between these two groups was a fundamental one with far-reaching consequences (Gunnar Karlsson 1972, 1977, 1980; Helgi Porlaksson 1979, 1982; also Seggewiss 1978). In Vesteinn Olason’s it
view, the sagas not only reflect that conflict, they actually take sides. Laxdcela saga, Gunnlaugs saga, Vatnsdcela saga, Hrafnkels saga, and especially Eyr-
byggja saga represent, in varying degrees, the interests of the godar, whereas
268
Carol
Hoensa-Poris saga,
Bandamanna
interests of the storboendr.
Gisla saga, Porsteins
Also
J.
Clover
saga, and Ljdsvetninga saga represent the
tilting in the direction
of the wealthy farmer are
stangarhgggs, and possibly even Njdls saga (Ve-
fkittr
Olason 1973; Sverrir Tomas son 1977; Lonnroth 1970c, 1972, 1976:165214; von See 1979; Skyum-Nielsen 1973). Vesteinn reminds us that it was the godar who were most likely to sponsor the writing of the sagas, although the existence of “antichieftain” sagas indicates some literary activity also on the steinn
part of the rising
middle class (1973). In Bandamanna saga, the godar are
represented as positively corrupt (Sverrir
Well and good; but how does
many of
distinctly unfavorable light?
1977).
square with the frequent depiction of
this picture
whose
the very characters
Tomasson
interests the saga
supposedly represents in a
Laxdoela saga’s well-known descriptions of fine
manners are conventionally taken as expressions of the author’s admiration for the class of people who so comported themselves. Yet, as Njor6ur Njar5vfk points out, there is a serious discrepancy between the external finery of clothes and
these aristocrats and their deeds.
“one glimpses
“Beneath the
glittering surface,”
he writes,
a world full of cruelty, ambition, ruthlessness, fraudulence
.
.
.
A
not to speak of theft and other foul deeds” (1971:73). Vesteinn Olason dismisses
“Both these sagas [Laxdoela saga and Gunnlaugs saga] may inelude some moral criticism of the main heroes, Kjartan and Gunnlaugr, criticism the problem:
i
which could apply
to chieftains
this
does not
alter
view” (1973:7-8). But Njor5ur Njar5vik’s point about Laxdoela saga’s incorporation of two bits of contemporary history the scene mentioned earlier in which Helgi wipes his sword on Gu5run’s apron, and the scene in chapter 47 in which Kjartan locks the the fact that they are written
j
of the thirteenth century, but
from an upper
class point of
—
people of Laugar indoors for three days without access to latrines^^ fuller hearing. If the
references in these ^
\
'
— deserves
a
audience of Laxdoela saga recognized the contemporary
two scenes,
as
seems
likely, they
would surely
transfer their
antipathy accordingly. For Njor5ur, these and other negative passages reveal not a friendly view of the chieftain class but a decidedly critical one. Perhaps, he
proposes, the author’s real sympathies
lie
with the plain farmer in chapter 49
who, when he learns of the impending encounter between Kjartan and the men of Laugar, expresses the opinion that the bloody wars of mighty men could be good entertainment
if
viewed from a safe distance. So, Nj6r5ur concludes, must
at
some of the common people have felt about the brutal power struggles that took the lives of some of the leading citizens in the Sturlung Age (1973:79-80). (How a member of the common people came to write a saga is not a question least
NjorSur addresses, however.) In Oskar Halldorsson’s view (based on a survey of saga portraits), the sagas operate on the basis of individuals, not social classes; 29. In the “historical” incident, dreittu inni a
which took place
man named Markus Skeggjason, who
See Islendinga saga
in
^Sturlunga saga, p. 235.
later
in
1198, Ketill Eyjolfsson and his son Ljotr
took revenge by killing both Ketill and Ljotr.
Icelandic Family Sagas
269
persons regarded as heroes are portrayed positively, regardless of their social
_ standing (1975). The study of law
in the
sagas has a venerable history, and
it
continues to shed
on the authors’ historical pose. Many of what are purported to be “old laws” in the sagas (laws of the settlement period) are unverifiable as such, for light
lawbooks date from the medieval period, and trying
the surviving
older from
^
more recent
layers
a desperate undertaking.
is
When a saga cites
not found in, or contradicts, the medieval codices,
that
is
two
things: either that the saga
medieval period, or that
to discriminate
a law
we may assume one
of
law was indeed old but had fallen out of use by the
never existed and was fabricated by the author to
it
More clearly anachronistic are cases in which the sagas appeal of law known to have been adopted during the medieval period. A
explain a conflict. to points
striking instance of the latter
the hay-seizure in Hcensa-Pdris saga,
is
which
appears to reflect an article of law from Jonsbok, submitted by the Norwegian
king to the Icelanders in the year 1281. This case raises a number of issues,
among them
the possibility that the saga
is
of considerably later date than con-
ventionally supposed (Berger 1976; Jonas Kristjansson 1977b; esp.
Mundt 1973b;
also Berger 1981). But in either case
we
142-48;
are dealing, in this central
episode of Hcensa-Pdris saga, not with an “old” law but with a medieval one,
which moreover was based on a thoroughly medieval sentiment
(the idea that
community needs take precedence over private property in times of scarcity). An even more drastic anachronism, according to Alan Berger, is the one underlying the chain of inheritance in the early part of Viga-Glums saga, which appears to derive from a law adopted in Norway in 1313 (some hundred years after the .saga’s supposed date of writing) and in Iceland in 1508 (1980). Elsewhere /
Berger has speculated that saga authors invoked broken laws as a device for
I
explaining conflicts insufficiently motivated in the sources. This “legalizing” of '
the past required in turn the
adumbration of lawsuits and lawyers.
He
suggests,
“If episodes are to turn on points of law, then heroes and villains must be (
made
lawyers to accommodate such conflicts” (1978-79:78). For Berger, as for the Icelandic school in general, such anachronisms as these in the sagas are proof of
1
authorial fiction. Icelandic-school scholars that
j
have yet
to take account of the fact
such anachronisms are a standard feature of oral
contemporize
may even be
a
“law” of
Miller has published three articles
tendency to
—
a point to which we written, the legal historian William Ian oral transmission
was on law and society
will return later. (Since this essay
literature; its
in early Iceland
[1983a,
1983b, 1984]. Miller’s extensive use of comparative anthropological materials
marks a new and welcome turn
As
this
reflect
saga studies.)
in
survey suggests, readers attached to the idea that the sagas
premedieval
satisfy their interest.
on egalitarian
life
and ways
will find
little in
modem
somehow
saga scholarship to
A refreshing exception is a short article by Bjarai Einarsson
attitudes
among
free
men
in early Iceland (1974a).
He compares
I
270
Carol
two passages describing a shipwreck: one a Mary legend
men
chooses
I
in
would be considered the greatest Einks saga rauda, in which men
who
loss if they
was drafted
are chosen for the lifeboat
in specific reaction to the
by
lot, for, as
Bjami
we have
Family Sagas of the idea of equality among free men,” an idea which
view “originated cf.
latter,
in the
the
“extreme example of inequality”
of the former and as such constitutes “the most telling expression the
lets the
and one from
to perish”)
passage goes, “this ought not to be dependent on rank.” The argues,
“he
most prominent and who
are
were
Clover
which the captain
for the lifeboat according to rank (as the text says,
bishop enter the boat together with the people
J.
in all
in his
circumstances of the settlement of Iceland” (1974a:55;
Foote 1977a). The idea of Norse society as being especially egalitarian
otherwise associated with an older generation of
What,
finally,
manner of
of audience: for
their publication?
tions as there are scholars
written,
and what was the
There are perhaps as many answers
The conventional view of
sight.
critics.
whom were the sagas
who have
Icelanders were unusually literate,^
^
to these ques-
addressed them, and no consensus
the Icelandic school that
is
is
is
in
medieval
that the
parchment was cheap and easy
to
come
was therefore not confined broader social base. This “roman-
by, and that the production and consumption of sagas to the richest class
tic”
and/or the church but had a
view was attacked by Lars Lonnroth, who argued on the basis of counterevi-
was more widespread in Iceland than elsewhere in the Middle Ages, it was only slightly so; by the same token, that if manuscripts were cheaper, they were only slightly so (and they would in any case have been beyond the means of any but the richest individuals or the church); and that clerics were involved in saga production, perhaps cendence (and the lack of positive evidence) that
trally so. In short,
much
if literacy
he concludes, the production of literature
in Iceland
operated
same way as in the rest of western Europe during the Middle Ages: jwealthy persons commissioned sagas for their own consumption (and for the promotion of their own social interests), and the clergy managed the writing the
(Lonnroth
1964:65-76,
1976:165-214;
cf.
Hallberg
Karlsson 1970; Sverrir Tdmasson 1977:98-101).
One
1965d: 175-84;
Stefan
appreciates Lonnroth’s
hardheaded approach to the matter, just as one appreciates his impatience with 30. ^
The
fullest treatment
Islendinga (Reykjavik: in
Hermann’s usage,
Mai og Menning,
to the
Hermann Palsson’s Sagnaskemmtun “Sagnaskemmtun” (“saga-entertainment”) refers,
of performances and audiences 1962).
custom known from
is
later centuries
of reading sagas aloud from written
manuscripts to assembled family and guests as a form of entertainment. variety of postmedieval references to
sagnaskemmtun and argues
that the
He
points to a
same
number and
practice prevailed in
^the thirteenth century and even before; in his view, the “saga-entertainment” in Reykjaholar in the
year 1119 (see below) was performed from written manuscripts. His examples and discussion of
sagnaskemmtun
in later centuries are illuminating,
but his arguments for early manuscripts are not
generally accepted.
The
medieval Iceland was given a boost by Stefan Karlsson (1970). He adduces evidence from later periods of a high degree of literacy and extrapolates to the Middle Ages. Cf. Lonnroth (1976:166-70). 31.
traditional claim of unusual literacy in
Icelandic Family Sagas nationalism; but at the
271
same time, one must
shortcomings, the “romantic” view that
which begs
to
also appreciate that, whatever
its
attempts a historical explanation for
at least
be explained: the prodigious quantity and the anomalous form,
content, and style of Icelandic prose in general and the family sagas in particular. If
Iceland
was not a
special place,
how
did
it
come
to
produce a special
litera-
ture?
Compared with land was a special
/
and the high
other literature-producing societies in the Middle Ages, Iceplace.
It
lacked a royal court and hence both royal patronage
literary society that
elsewhere played a prominent role in medieval
The operative social unit was the farm, and it is persumably in the farm’s decidedly mixed company that the sagas had their origins and audience. The locus classicus in this cultural life. Iceland also lacked
connection
is
towns and hence an urban
clerisy.
the passage in Chapter 10 of Porgils saga ok Haflida CSturlunga
saga) describing a wedding in Reykjaholar in the year 1119. Here,
it is
said,
“sagas” (though not Islendingasdgur hut fornaldarsogur) were told to entertain those present, who included prominent landowners, clerics, merchants, and independent farmers, as well, presumably, as
women
of various social classes and
perhaps some servants (Foote 1974a). Whether the peculiarities of Icelandic social life are sufficient to account for the peculiarities of
how,
are probably unanswerable questions.
may
But one
its
literature,
and
if
so
hazard some guesses.
Walter Baetke believed that the extraordinarily broad social compass of the sagas
was the
direct result of the socially
mixed nature of
(Lonnroth makes a similar point about Njdls saga: aristocracy, but
its
community. strongly biased toward the
the Icelandic
it is
inclusion, in positive terms, of nonaristocratic persons
must
presuppose a socially mixed audience (1976:194-95). Foote thinks the audience
must have been both mixed and the “objectivity” of the sagas
large, is
and both he and A. B. Taylor suggest
that
a direct function of the nature of the audience
(Foote 1974a: 17- 18; A. B. Taylor 1973). That the mixed audience was also a
motivating factor in the retention of the vernacular seems self-evident, just as
it is
self-evident that the institution of the assembly afforded an unparalleled opportunity for the
exchange of information and dissemination of
national scale (Foote 1974a).
An
be gained from a study of
narrative form.
its
literature
on a
insight into the nature of the early audience can
Of the
family saga’s
many anoma-
most anomalous is its combination of properties characteristic of oral and written literature. Such combined forms are not usual, but neither is it usual, in an oligoliterate society, for the clerisy and the uneducated classes to be as closely meshed as they were in medieval Icelandic society. The family saga has the look of a literature aimed at both a reading public and an oral lous features, one of the
The question of just what these oral and literary be taken up in more detail, as a formal issue, in the
public (Clover 1982:188-204). features consist of will
following section. 32. Baetke,
Ober
die Entstehung der Isldndersagas, esp. pp. 99-108.
272
Carol
J.
Clover
Formalism
The study of
the family sagas’ oral or traditional dimension has for the last
forty-odd years been pursued outside of Iceland
I
dinavia.
Given the exclusively
surprise.
More
surprising
is
— by and
large outside of Scan-
of the Icelandic school, this
literary bias
no
the fact that the study of the sagas as literature has
been a largely non-Icelandic enterprise. Nordalian doctrine holds
also
is
that the
i
!
i
sagas are in effect historical novels, created by thirteenth-century authors
know
little
historical
more about
the Viking
Age
who
than what could be gleaned from the few
remnants available to them, which sources they elaborated into
full-
length narratives intended for dramatic entertainment. But the interest of Icelandic scholars has
been
in the authors’ use of sources, not the literary products they
created, and in parts, not wholes or the relation of wholes to
one another or the
Icelandic corpu^to medieval literature in general. Ironically, the logical implication of the Icelandic school position
—
that the sagas are novels
and hence suscep-
of literary analysis and that as literature they are to be viewed in the
tible
European
literary context
— has been pursued not by
Icelanders but by others,
mainly Americans and Germans.
The to
bias
and intention of
literary analysis
and traditional analysis would seem
much in common. the received text has its own integrity and in itself. Both tend even when focusing on
be diametrically opposed. As methods, however, they have
Both proceed on the assumption
that
can be studied profitably as an entity
particulars to relate, directly or indirectly, the particular to to the entire saga,
Norse
aim
literary
context: a passage
an individual saga to the genre, the genre both fo other Old
genres and to comparable European genres (epic, chronicle). Both
to penetrate the aesthetic of the
or a traditional product; and is
its
by way of illuminating
when
work
in question,
be
it
construed as a literary
sources are sought and comparisons drawn,
that aesthetic,
and not, as
in
it
source analysis, for the
purpose of tracing the route of certain information. Both, in other words, are
do for Icelandic prose what Snorri Sturluson did for Norse verse some eight hundred years ago: apprehend its poetics. But the most striking similarity between literary and traditional analysis, as they have developed in saga studies trying to
in the last if
two decades,
their concentration
is
on formal matters. Both subscribe,
only implicitly, to a linguistic view of narrative: like speech, the literary work
grammar and
has a
component artistic
and
parts
a syntax, and the task of the critic
and explain
to an extent
its
far as
literary
and
to
view of
apprehend the
the saga’s peculiar ft is
traditional analysis that
as formalist in spite of their different
One sometimes
So parsed,
intellectual properties are laid bare,
uous structural orientation of
them
their interaction.
is
the conspic-
marks both of
origins.
hears reference to a structuralist or formalist “school.” Inso-
formalism per se
is
origins and development,
merely a method, an approach, not a coherent theory of it
cannot be said to constitute a school. But the branch
of formalism here referred to as
new
traditionalism or formalist-traditionalism
— Icelandic Family Sagas
may
indeed qualify as a school in the making, for
that the sagas are at their narrative 1
273
bottom
traditional art or folk art
form not only exposes the
mode of transmission.
genesis and
proceeds on f he assumption
it
and that a close analysis of
rules of that art but sheds light
on the
This line of reasoning has been related (e.g.,
work of Vladimir Propp, who devised a morfolktale, and Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who (argued, by analogy with modem Yugoslavian practice, that Homeric epic was lorally composed out of traditional language- and idea-units. Proppian analysis by Vesteinn Olason 1978) phology for the European
and Oral Theory
to the
(as Parry’s
and Lord’s views are sometimes called) have indeed
played a central role in recent thinking about the genesis and transmission of epic./One should not forget, however, that a formalism of sorts also attached to Criticism, to the narrative analysis of such theorists as
Andre
Jolles
and
Franz Stanzel, to Northrop Frye’s style of literary thought, and to developments in the disciplines Sjtrauss,
of linguistics and anthropology (A.
Claude Bremond, Alan Dundes, and others).
J.
Greimas, Claude Levi-
It is this
combination of
American scholars in particular to embrace full-blown literary stmcturalism when it emerged on the scene. It is not clear what use, if any, the schemes of Propp and Oral Theory have been or can be in the study of the family saga. They cannot be applied in any direct sense for the simple and significant reason that they do not work. The trends that predisposed
—
—
sagas resist Proppian analysis because they are too long and too complex, and they resist Parry an analysis because,
among
other things, they are in prose
poetry being the sine qua non of Oral Theory. traditionalist
theories
say, therefore, that the
branch of saga studies derives from the “big” literary-stmctural
to overstate the case.
is
To
The main
Propp and Oral Theory on
effect of
saga studies has been to remind us, once again, just
Only
how odd
Icelandic prose
consists
most general level (the notion that traditional narrative of repeated forms) can one speak of the influence of oral literary theory
on saga
studies; “inspiration”
literature is.
at the
is
perhaps the better word. For better or worse,
saga scholars have not had recourse to a ready-made theory of origins and transmissions but have had to find their
own way.
It is
no
surprise, then, that
seems both theoretically underdeveloped (long on description and short on conclusions) and procedurally inconsistent (different critics employ different analytical schemes and terminologies). One is left with stmcturalist study of the sagas
the consolation that formal analysis has at least the advantage of being a positive
approach to the sagas’ traditional component the Icelandic school), and
component
A
moreover
new
most
fully
whatever insight can be gained into that
modem
was Scholes and Kellogg’s The Nature sweeping survey of Western narrative form from
traditionalism
of Narrative (1966). In their to
film, the Icelandic sagas are given
due consideration as the
developed amalgam of fiction and history (“a new synthesis of myth
and mimesis”) to be found in preliterary Europe
5
negative view of
will be a contribution to the study of traditional prose in general.
harbinger of the
Homer
that
(in contrast to the
/V/y'
(p. 45).
That the sagas are
Carol
274
formity of their narrative style from saga to saga. final
shape by individual authors
The
we have may have
texts
(p. 43),
but insofar as
the formal and rhetorical stigmata of oral composition,” their art 50).
Clover
and Kellogg assume from the extraordinary uni-
essentially preliterary Scholes
been given their
J.
it
“bears
traditional (p.
is
For Scholes and Kellogg, the formulaic quality of saga diction overrides the
1
(consideration that prose
not the normal vehicle for. orally
is
and the objections of some
critics that
(p. 51).
On
and syntactic rhythm of the prose sen-
“a
the contrary, they argue,
‘saga style’ of the family sagas
mar’ of Icelandic oral narrative
would in effect yield a description of the ‘gramprose. The existence of such a ‘grammar’ was the
will necessarily
“Because
history
the
in
be highly stylized”
clude, an oral prehistory for the Icelandic sagas
excellence:
famous
detailed analysis of the
primary basis for the achievement of an oral prose
composed prose
literature
prose “cannot develop orally because of
the difficulty of controlling the logical
tence”
composed
is
medieval Iceland. Orally
(p. 51).
Indeed, they con-
the only explanation for their
development of a powerful art-prose and a secular
has been considered impossible without writing and individual au-
thorship, the very quality of Icelandic narrative has until
now been
the best
argument against the oral composition of the family sagas. With the Homeric
from quality
epics as a model, however, the argument
destroyed.
.
.
.
The sagas would not be
as
good
vidually created compositions in anything like the
is
weakened,
if
not
were indisense” (pp. 43-44).
as they are if they
modem
Scholes ’s and Kellogg’s remarks are brief and general, and readers unfamiliar with the course of saga studies in the
last forty
years
may wonder what
the fuss
is
about (see Vesteinn Olason 1978). But their discussion marks a radical departure
from recent scholarly tradition
in
two important ways. One
is
its
unabashed
presumption on the basis of form alone that the sagas are the products of oral \composition. To the extent that the freeprose case has been made at all in recent decades,
it
has been
made
in source-analytical
terms (that
is,
through the analysis
of variants and the references to oral sources), not formal or oral-compositional ones. Second, Scholes’s and Kellogg’s “holistic” approach runs directly against the strongly empirical in the
mance
and atomistic grain of saga scholarship as
twentieth century. Not since Walter Paton in
Ker wrote
it
has developed
his
Epic and Ro-
1897 have the sagas as narrative forms been put into such a broad,
comparative perspective.
Theodore M. Andersson’s book on Icelandic saga origins appeared two years earlier than Scholes’s and Kellogg’s The Nature of Narrative. In it, Andersson stated plainly his objections to the Icelandic school position
an oral saga (1964:116-19, taken, however,
and his
own
belief in
123-82). What form that oral saga might have
Andersson did not
book on family saga macrostructure. The Icelandic Family Saga: An Analytic Reading (1967), which may be counted the first systematic piece of saga analysis in the formalist-traditionalist mode. Its point of departure that the family sagas “do, after all, constitute a homogeneous genre capable of homogeneous definition” spell out until three years later in his
—
Icelandic Family Sagas
— runs
(p. v)
275
directly counter, as the
wording suggests,
to the then-prevailing
tendency of Icelandic scholars in particular to regard the sagas as different works, each with
its
own
characteristic stamp.
For Andersson, as for Scholes and
Kellogg, the issue was not their differentness but their similarity: are in fact so repetitive
and the
“The
patterns
doing undue
similarities so great that, without
violence to the plots, one can abstract from them a standard structure, to which all
the [twenty-four] sagas under study, with the exception of Vatnsdcela saga,
conform
That structure has
to a greater or lesser extent” (p. 29).
stages: introduction, conflict, climax, revenge, reconciliation,
They
six parts or
and aftermath.
are paradigmatically represented in the short account of Porsteinn stangar-
hQgg. (The special character of family saga beginnings and endings has been
Hume
perceptively elaborated by Kathryn
both in his
As Andersson makes
clear
chapter and in the subsequent analyses of individual sagas,
first
not only their
[1973].)
common
it is
skeletal structure that associates the sagas with
one
another and distinguishes them as a genre but also the manner in which that skeleton
is
fleshed out.
“may
conflict, for
example,
is
“touched off by an
typically
sometimes inflamed by the malice of a troublemaker, and gradu-
insult or injury, ally intensified
The
by a sequence of invective and assault”
either be effected
by
and the revenge
(p. 29),
legal procedures or (in the majority of cases)
blood vengeance, or by a combination of both”
(p. 29).
Many
by
of these specifics
are also highly stylized, both in substance (for example, horsefights, sheepthefts,
ominous dreams) and
manner of presentation
in
shifting before the climax, use of
symmetries and epic
(for
triads),
constitute type-scenes or recurrent microstructures, though treat
them systematically
and refers to others
A
as such (he enumerates
some
example, scene-
and
in effect they
Andersson does not
in the chapter
on
rhetoric
in passing in the context of the individual text analyses).
similar operation, though
more
overtly Proppian, has been performed
on
some Islendinga paettir by Joseph Harris (1972; also Joseph 1972). Harris extracts an ideal scheme of six parts: introduction, journey in, alienation, reconciliation, journey out, conclusion. Again, this framework is filled out and further defined by the standard motifs that attach to
journey ^
is
to
Norway;
the locale
is
it
(the traveler
is
an Icelander; the
the king’s court; the visitor excites the king’s
anger by slaying a favored retainer; and so forth).
Of
the thirty-one paettir
analyzed, nine “conform without qualification” to that structural scheme; six
conform
in part (that is, the pattern
whole of
it);
informs a section of the pdttr but not the
and the remaining sixteen constitute
structural variants.
“All these
from the formal standpoint as Elsewhere Harris argues that these
stories,” Harris concludes, “are best understood
variants of a single plot structure” (p. 20). paettir share not
only an “outer” but also an “inner” form
—
that they are, in
other words, unified thematically as well as structurally (Harris 1976b). /
Harris’s interest lies first and foremost in the generic consciousness such
structural uniformity implies.
of genres
is
He
based on analogies
quotes Northrop Frye’s remark that “the study in
form” and proposes
that together with the
Carol
276
common
J.
Clover
features of subject matter and setting, rhetoric and style, characters,
''common narrative structure is a useful tool to apply as a generic template in the study of individual works” (1972:27). Harris is here reacting against Lonnroth’s earlier claims, based in large part on lexical in evidence, that the early Icelanders had no real native generic categories particular, that jpdttr as a literary category has no medieval authority and is thus a
characterization, and themes,
—
modem
constmction.
prompted a three-way discussion of genre in Scandinavian Studies (Harris 1975; Andersson 1975a; Lonnroth 1975a). Lonnroth apologized for the excessive nominalism of his earlier work but defended his conclusions on Harris’s article
which was
other grounds, one of
and Andersson perceived
that the
in the paettir
common
narrative stmcture that Harris
and family sagas respectively was neither
exclusive to the genre in question nor found in
all
the representatives. Harris
defended the effort to systematize on theoretical grounds and, referring to Dan
Ben-Amos’s
distinction
an exploration of both
and
their audiences
between analytic genre and ethnic genre, suggested
is
necessary for an appreciation of
understood their
literature.
how medieval
that
authors
“I confess,” he concludes,
‘‘to
harboring an unprovable belief that the analytic system intuition has bequeathed to us
does to some extent coincide with relevant aspects of the inaccessible ethnic
system, and to that extent
I
am
agreement with Lonnroth’s desire to have the
in
systems congment. For no one has yet shown that the standard
modem
genre
system violates the medieval system as evidenced by vocabulary, and the argu-
ment from silence can be applied
in
both directions” (1975:434-35). Andersson
simply quarrels with Lonnroth’s assertion that the traditional saga genres are not
He
distinct.
reiterates that his
aim ‘‘was not
common
the family sagas, in addition to a
930-1050 (which
As
never) in other groups of sagas.” is
which are found much
less often (not
for Lonnroth’s claim that the family saga
‘‘eminently applicable to several konungasogur and fornaldarsogur"'
(1975a:420)
own
setting in Iceland during the period
also a generic characteristic), share very often (not always)
is
certain principles of dramatic constmction
pattern
to oversimplify, but to suggest that
—
a claim he does not substantiate
— Andersson
says only that his
research suggests otherwise and that he will consider that eventuality only
and when
it is
demonstrated
in detail
(1975:438). Lonnroth’s point
is
well taken,
however. The case for the generic integrity of the Islendingasogur and the
would be stronger •
if
they could be
shown
to
Although the
last
paettir
be stmcturally distinct from the other
classes of sagas {riddarasogur, konungasogur, fornaldarsogur, sagas).
if
contemporary
couple of years have seen some suggestive efforts along
these lines, no full-scale analysis has yet emerged.
There have been two recent systematic attempts, both based on Njdls saga, to break saga narrative (1971), 33.
who
down
into
its
component
parts.
One
is
that of
Richard Allen
distinguished these elements, beginning with the smallest: the mini-
On fornaldarsogur,
see Righter-Gould 1980 and Hallberg 1982; on riddarasogur, see Rossen-
beck 1970; and on contemporary sagas see
IJlfar
Bragason 1981.
Icelandic Family Sagas
mal
fact
(“They rode
277 to the
Althing”) or the figurative or gnomic statement
(“Cold are the counsels of women”); the motif (a small when Gunnarr catches a spear in midflight and hurls
unit of a typical act, as it
back); the scene (a
sustained personal or social action such as a shipboard fight, a feast, or bartering for a bride); the
“chapter” (which refers not
to the physical chapter divisions in
the manuscripts but to the “patterned sequences of events
of a larger theme”
[p. 72]); the
journey abroad of young ture of the story as
it
is
men
episode and episode cluster (for example, the
in search of adventure); the plot (the entire struc-
preserved); and, finally, the archetypal level.
Lonnroth offers a somewhat different For him, the smallest unit
103).
commonplaces fact); transition
which are components
is
set
of categories and labels (1976:42-
the formula, of
which there are three
varieties:
for presenting recurrent but fairly trivial motifs (Allen’s
formulas (for example,
Nu
er fxir
til
minimal
mdls at taka); and direct
discourse consisting of proverbs, legal formulas, and figurative statements (Allen’s figurative or
gnomic statements). The second
sponds to Allen’s and
my
unit
is
scene, which corre-
descriptions (Allen 1971:65-66; Clover 1974) and
which has several stock forms
(to
be discussed below). Yet another unit
is
the
personal description, which Lonnroth elsewhere refers to as the character portrait (1965a). Scenes and descriptions, which are individually subject to expansion
and contraction, constitute the saga’s narrative segments or building blocks; they
combine fjcettir
to
form chapters, which
in turn
combine
form semi-independent
to
(Allen’s episodes and episode sequences). Lonnroth identifies
two
stan-
dard “action patterns” in the paettir: the feud pattern and the travel pattern.
There are seven distinct feud patterns
in Njdls
saga
(for
example, the feud over
Unnr’s dowry), each one conforming roughly to Andersson’s six-part scheme
form of the macrostructure). The travel pattern appears four times in Njdla (for example, Hnitr’s travels in chapters 26), and each one corresponds roughly to Harris’s morphology (see also Hieatt 1978). Lonnroth has also looked into the Njdla manuscripts to determine whether (thus the microstructure duplicates the
there
is
any scribal authority for such structural divisions (1975b). In addition
to
discussing stock structures, Lonnroth discusses stock characters (1976:61-68; cf.
Hermann Palsson 1973a) and stock rhetorical effects (82-99). The saga scene is defined by Allen in terms of its plot as “the
level of
sustained individual or social action, as a compact unit of significant action
which has a beginning, middle, and end” (Allen 1971:65). Scene can also be defined in terms of
its
structure, as a narrative unit about a paragraph in size
constructed around a conversation (Clover 1974; also Lonnroth 1976:65-66).
The conversation
is
preceded by a narrative preface spelling out the who, where,
when, and circumstances of the encounter, and narrative conclusion in
it
is
normally followed by a
which the speakers are dispatched and the outcome of the
encounter mentioned. Scenes are readily identifiable not only because of their tripartite structure
but also by virtue of their observance of the dramatic unities;
time, place, and action are indicated at the outset and remain constant through-
278
Carol
out, breaking only
when
that scene
Clover
J.
concluded and another begun. In addition,
is
scenes are often marked off by transitional narrator-formulas (for example,
Nu
er
fra pvi at segja).
Scenes can be as standard
“most
characteristic stock scenes in
hero
presented
is
woman
at a
As
in their content as in their structural format.
Njdla," Lonnroth
the
the following: (1) a
lists
foreign court and accepted as one of the king’s men; (2) a
goads her kinsman to take revenge on her enemy by suggesting that he
coward if he does not; (3) a man encounters his enemy and kills him; heroes exchange boasts and insults at a feast or at the Althing; (5) a a
encounters her kinsman (or lover) as he
is
returning with a bloodied
(4)
is
two
woman
weapon
after
having killed his enemy; (6) two heroes make a settlement at the Althing; (7) a man visits a kinsman or neighbor to solicit his support before a meeting at the Althing; and (8)
somebody
of these stock scenes has
tells its
another person about an ominous dream. “Each
rules
and recurrent formulas
using
in addition to
general conventions for scenic presentation,’’ Lonnroth writes (1976:47-48).
Allen offers a similar
list
of stock narrative events (1971: esp. 20-21; also
Berger 1977a). Equally stereotypical are the narrative segments describing combat. The duel
{hdlmganga, stylized
einvi'gi), for
example, occurs throughout saga
form (Sieg 1966). The “rhetorical
effects’’
literature in a highly
Andersson includes
in his
Heinemann
better
discussion of staging before a battle are according to Fredrik
J.
seen as stock microstructures belonging to the approach-to-battle type-scene of
Germanic
tradition (1974). “Type-scene,’’ as
it
used by Old English scholars,
is
refers to a standard cluster of motifs, not a formal structure per se.
What An-
dersson calls the “staging sequence’’ and Heinemann the “approach-to-battle type-scene’’ normally consists of several or
many
saga scenes.
tripartite
the fighting begins, tripartite scenic narration normally gives
report narrative
preamble itself
to
—
way
When
to simple
a reflection, perhaps, of the author’s greater interest in the
combat, the preparations and the motivation, than
in the
combat
(Heinemann 1974:104-5; Clover 1974:64).
Patterning in smaller narrative units has received considerably less attention
than patterning in whole saga plots, faettir, episodes, and scenes. studies,
however, suggest that even
strongly regulated by tradition.
what Anne Heinrichs
calls
at the lexical level
One example
Some
scattered
saga narrative can be
of lexical patterning
is
the use of
an “apposition formula’’ (for example, “Grata
ek Gisla, broSur minn,’’ “Sart ertu leikinn, Samr
fostri’’),
mun
which, because
it
typically anticipates a disaster, serves as an emotional clue to the audience /
(1972). Another example of lexical patterning
(roughly “that man, the big one’’);
I
,
its
may be
the phrase sd inn mikli
occurrences in Egils saga
discourse are followed by the slaying of the
man
functioning as a verbal signal to the audience of what is
direct
so designated (Bell 1979). In
both cases, the lexical pattern precedes the event to which
intriguing here
in
is
it
is
attached, thereby
about to come.
What
is
not only the idea that certain events called for certain fixed
Icelandic Family Sagas
279
knew
phrases but the implication that the audience
these fixed phrases in ad-
vance.
The
may
analogy employed by saga
linguistic
not be an idle one
linguistic basis.
as
if,
structuralists,
Lonnroth
K. C. Kossuth argues, saga structure
Her analysis shows
distinguished by tense,
is
word
“grammar of composition”
discerns a
itself
that the subdivisions of narrative are
by time expressions and the interplay of agent and aspect and narrative
in particular,
has a
marked
that the flow of
order, and anaphora. Kossuth thus
not only in repeated plot structures but in
Taking a different tack, Frederic Amory argues
the language itself (1980).
the syntax of saga narrative, especially the discourse in saga scenes,
that
conforms
to
an extraordinary extent to the syntactic rules for basic oral narrative as set forth
by the sociolinguist William Labov. As the
first
attempt since Knut Liestdl’s
at a
positive identification of the “oral” features of saga language, and the first
attempt ever to do so in something like scientific and universal terms, analysis
Amory ’s
of considerable interest for the traditionalist case (1980).^"^ Ulrike
is
Sprenger speculates that the sagas’ abundant preference for the more colloquial inn over the
more
literary sd (“the, that”) constitutes
an indirect proof of oral
origins (1977:239-71).
Let us pause to consider the aim and underlying assumptions of the studies of saga form dealt with so in the
No
far.
saga scholar nowadays would deny that the sagas
form we have them are the products of thirteenth-century Icelandic
writers.
But they do not agree on the role of these writers. Members of the Icelandic school would maximize their involvement, conceiving of them as authors in
something like the
minimize
modem sense,
their role, conceiving of
rehandlers of a literature
As
it is
whereas formalist-traditionalists are inclined
them
less as creators or innovators than as
bom and substantially developed during the oral period.
currently used, the term “traditional narrative”
narrative, despite literary mediation retaining
aesthetic of oral prose
—
rhetorical stigmata of oral
the authors
were
literate
or,
have
it,
simply,
of the properties and the
and availed themselves of written works, is
for that reason to be
—
“judged by
criteria applicable
I
1
would
(Steblin-Kamenskij’s distinction
between the “nonidentity hypothesis” and the “identity hypothesis”
on the
if
their art
not, as the Icelandic school
criteria applicable to written fiction.
clearly played out
oral
“narrative which bears the formal and
composed works” (Allen 1971:21) by
many
means ultimately
composition” (Scholes and Kellogg 1966:50). Even
“recreates a tradition” and to orally
to
is
thus
level of formal analysis.)
new version of freeprose doctrine. And so it is, although its largely deductive mode of argumentation and its theoretical presuppositions make it in some important ways a differ-
On
first
glance, the
ent undertaking.
new
traditionalism appears to be a
These presuppositions are worth an excursus, not
least
because
den islendske aettesaga (Oslo; H. Aschehoug, 1929). English translation: The Origin of the Icelandic Family Sagas (Oslo: H. Aschehoug, 1930; rpt. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974). See also Widmark 1966. 34.
Knut
Liest0l,
Upphavet
til
Carol
280 they
seem
to
have eluded
from
the idea, derived structures .
and
at least
some
first,
in
and of
recurrent structures in the sagas are oral
by
itself.
The
Clover
mentioned above,
as
is
deep and surface
can reveal the generative rules. The second
an oral feature
in the earliest texts as
The
linguistic theory, that oral narrative has
that analysis
that recurrence is
critics.
J.
is
the idea
third is the idea that
virtue of the fact that they are
well as prefigured in eddic poetry. Let
me
discuss
found
them
in
turn.
Multiformity within Uniformity: The Linguistic Model
The idea of deep and surface structure in language is too well known to require summary here. Suffice it to say that it corresponds to, and has served to buttress, once original and unique (on the surface level)
the idea that oral narrative
is at
and general and traditional
(in its
modem
narrative predates
underlying structure). That this conception of
grammatical theory
is
illustrated in the following
exchange between Joseph Bedier and Ferdinand Lot, quoted by Andersson by
way of
explaining his
own
writes, “recognizing that our positions
suaded that there
is
we separated,” Lot He [Bedier] was per-
views. “After an hour or more
were irreducible.
a spontaneous birth of literary works:
‘All literature,’
repeated, ‘begins with a masterpiece, which has no past.’
bom
I
he
objected that the
framework and that it was this framework that was under discussion.” “The positions,” Andersson concludes, “are exactly the same for the saga and equally irreducible. My own persuasion is that Lot was correct and that there is a pre-established framework” (1967:309). By “pre-established framework” Andersson does not mean a fixed saga plot but a dynamic system of mles out of which were generated a variety of similar but not necessarily identical sagas. The evidence of the variants is that “the traditions were subject to extensive and probably rapid mutation. Even if the details were fluid, the tradition was narratively firm, that is to say, the gist of the story was constant” (1964:182). Harris avoids committing himself, though his remarks on “multiformity within uniformity” betray generative thinking masterpiece
is
in a pre-established
.
.
.
(1972:27). Allen expresses the multiformity-within-uniformity idea as follows:
“The
sagas, then, are
recalled and
made up of
composed by
typical scenes
and such scenes
in turn are
a fitting together of smaller motifs, small events, and
gestures which are also stylized, also familiar and traditional. These motifs
belong to given scenes, but they the scene a
new creation”
may
(1971:21).
make each occurrence of Lonnroth avails himself more directly of
vary enough to
“Although he [the Njdla narrator] used traditional phrases and motifs,” Lonnroth writes, “his way of combining episodes into a transformational
complete saga
is
logic.
unique.”
could generate his dented scenes
own
still
And “Each
rules
felt to
sagawriter, including the author of Njdla,
from the preceding ones and thus construct unprece-
be ‘within saga tradition’.” Lonnroth’s remark that
“even though the plot was
traditional, the
saga was
not;
it
was an individual
— Icelandic Family Sagas
literary
281
creation” echoes the classic formulation of Oral Theory:
on the generative
traditional
all is
unique on the level of performance (1976:41, 43, 48;
level, all
Clover 1974:82).
As
for the origins of these generative structures,
one can only speculate.
^
.
Andersson (1964:119) and Allen (1971:20-21) refer the primary matter of the sagas
brides
— could not
—
duels, feuds, legal debates, bartering for
from form.
exist apart
objected that certain aspects of
to LiestpTs contention that
life itself
It
might be, and indeed has been,
(feuds, for example) consist in effect of
repeated structures, and one can assume that the underlying structures of the sagas were originally conditioned
if
not by the events themselves then by the
they were experienced by participants and onlookers. issue
is
dim
finally not the
way
But for the formalists the
prehistory of narrative structures in reality (or the
patterned perception of reality) but the fact that they were firmly in place as fully
developed generative patterns
in the earliest sagas.
Recurrence as an Oral Feature
The second premise of and boils down
to the following logic: the sagas are full of recurrent
features (motifs, themes,
“rhetorical” devices, and plot structures, large and
repetition
small); recurrence of this sort
not of literary narrative; and recurrent features, that early Icelanders
I
do with formal
the formalist-traditionalists has to
that
what
is
it is
this extent is characteristic
of oral narrative,
therefore in the sagas’ standard patterns, their
we can apprehend
— and hence
roth’s entire chapter
and to
the native storytelling habits of the
“The Language of Tradition”
recurrent in Njdla
is
is
predicated on the notion
native and oral and what
is
not recurrent
I \
Lonn-
arrive at the shape of the preliterary sagas.
elements lacking analogues elsewhere in Njdla or in other sagas
—
is
original
same idea when he writes that “the structures of the family saga, the ways in which they assemble themselves event after event, seem to follow the examples and seem to
1(1976:42-103, esp. 42-44;
cf.
Berger 1977a). Allen aims
at the
recreate the pattern of extended oral composition” (1971:20).
saga scenes similarly
more precisely quence.
tries to
analysis of
“define the traditionally Norse storytelling
mode
as a narration of tripartite scenes arranged paratactically in se-
One supposes
tradition, a
My
that scene functioned as a kind of
mnemonic
unit in oral
predetermined frame in which a plot event could be encapsulated”
(1974:82). Andersson takes this line of reasoning to 35. Scholes and Kellogg speculate
on
this point as
its
logical
follows (1966:47-48).
“The
tion of Njdls Saga, like that of several of the individual histories in Sturlunga
motif directly from Icelandic narrative pattern
—
life,
end
point:
“What
narrative articula-
Saga,
is
provided by a
the perfect motif, in fact, to give unity and shape to a genealogical
the family feud.
The
intense cultivation of civil law in Iceland, at the expense of
imposed an almost artificial order on the lives of the Icelanders, presenting the saga-men with ready-made materials for narrative presentation, and producing inevitably a unique kind of narrative, tied closely to history and to the actualities of contemporary life.” See also Berger 1978-79. (or in lieu of) every other area of public life, itself necessarily
282 is
Carol
characteristic of the written saga
likely to
is
Clover
J.
have been characteristic of the oral
saga as well and the perennial question about the form of the oral tradition might
answered
tentatively be
in
terms of what
common
is
to the written
most obvious, and most basic, shared feature of the written sagas,
sagas.” The
in his
view,
is
This defines the written saga and in a
their conflict-centered macrostructure.
broad sense the same definition “might also serve
to' describe
the oral stories that
must have preceded and preconditioned the written sagas” (1967:309). Here the
new
traditionalism parts
ways with
freeprose.
As
Harris explains, the “current
versions of a prehistory including oral components or stages continue to gain supporters; but in general this simply projects the generic-historical questions
back
time.” Formalist-traditionalism, on the other hand, “has sought to
in
establish
432).
by a fresh approach a generative
The assumption
To be
difficulties. )
link with earlier oral
genres” (1975:
36
that recurrence
sure,
folktale study in general
is
it
betokens orality
is,
however, not without
an assumption fostered by Proppian analysis and
(which concentrates on shared elements) as well as by
Oral Theory (which also stresses formulaic features). But the saga folktale
“oral” is
and not a verse epic and, as in the
it.
one can readily see
romance (medieval
as well as
“genre” implies a degree of literary
f the '
The problem
is
a defining characteristic of oral literature,
literature, as
\ or
form we have
traditionalists
at
modem)
it
first
that although formulaic repetition
it is
by no means exclusive
and thematic typicality even
structural
not possible (as at least
assume) that the
themselves agree, not even
to oral
or the western or pornography. Again,
saga author(s)
in fully
assume that recurrence in the sagas is Could it not just as well be wholly
to
function of traditional storytelling?
literary? Is
not a
a glance at such genres as the detective novel
What reason do we have
works.
is
some members of
hit
the Icelandic school
on a successful formula and
that later
Such was presumably the case in the Icelandic riddarasogur; why not assume the same developmental model for the
practitioners
merely imitated and refined
it?
Islendingasdgur? This
is
a question traditionalists have not addressed, or have addressed only in
passing (e.g., Lbnnroth 1976:43).
modem
Many
readers, like myself, suspect that the
pattern does not apply and that structural and thematic uniformity in the
family saga
is
indeed a function of tradition and not invention; but the case
remains to be made.
One
consideration
society like that of medieval Iceland,
is
audience, of course. In an agrarian
where
social classes lived
cheek by jowl,
forum was necessarily mixed. Saga authors were presumably aware work would be both read (by a few) and heard (by many). But as long
the literary that their
as a substantial portion of their audience
some
presumably bound
at least to
comprehension
an oral performance.
at
remained
illiterate,
extent by an oral model, It
if
saga writers were
only for the sake of
may moreover be argued
that the
“The Heroic Legacy’’ (Andersson 1967:65-93). Ruth Finnegan designates as “oral’’ all literature intended for oral performance, regardless of the literacy or sophistication of the author. See her Oral Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 36. 37.
Harris here footnotes Andersson’s chapter
Icelandic Family Sagas
283
kind and narrative level of recurrence in the sagas
is
than written literature. Patterning in literary genres
—
more
characteristic of oral
the western, say
—
tends to
operate at the gross level of macrostructure (an imported marshal eventually
community of predatory
succeeds, after lengthy tribulations, in ridding the
out-
laws), event sequences (marshal and outlaw encounter each other in saloon),
scenes (brawl in saloon,
showdown on Main
of course, characters
Street), and,
(drunken doctor, laconic marshal, eastern dandy, helpful whore). But the flow of written narrative
and above
—
the relation and ratio of dialogue to narrative, for example,
the narrative pace
all
—
is
not so patterned; here the literary nature of
the exercise, the author’s personal “art,”
remarkably stylized
is
evident.
at just this level; their
pace
The
is
sagas, by contrast, are
remarkably uniform, the
rhythm almost monotonously episodic, and the scenic format remarkably fixed, not only within the saga but from saga to saga. What idiosyncrasies emerge are finally subtle
and minor
level bears a strong
This
literature.
would seem indeed
by
—
fact,
to
again,
in
comparison
resemblance
on the
and
tures,
will
its
may
found
in other oral
the facts of publication in medieval Iceland,
level of paragraph-by-paragraph narration
composed works. The
mode, must be
so.
—
to
be Judged
sagas’ macrostructure
not (Ldnnroth) be traditional; but
paratactic
at this
the new-traditionalist contention that the sagas are
criteria applicable to orally
(Andersson) or
Saga patterning
to the narrative patterning
combined with
recommend
to the uniformity.
its
(Composition
may
lesser narrative fea-
is
another matter and
be treated separately below.)
Patterning in the Early Sagas and Eddie Poetry
The
third formalist
premise
is
an extension of the second: namely, that the
recurrent features of the sagas represent the oral layer because they are found in
more or less full form in the earliest saga texts and in some cases in prototypical form in eddic verse. “The form of the family saga,” writes Andersson, “is too elaborate to have been invented in a
must have been an
century. There
vacuum
artistic
at the
beginning of the thirteenth
continuity between the preliterary and
and the written saga must have derived much of its form and technique from the oral stories that went before” (1967:309). Likewise saga scene: its existence as a fully conceived and integral feature of the earliest texts literary periods
indicates a fundamental point of contact with oral tale-telling (Clover 1974:26).
Lonnroth expands the point: “It also seems probable that the narrative conventions to
developed largely
vellum, for
we
find
in oral storytelling before the first sagas
them
in
saga manuscripts
at
were committed
such an early date that they
could hardly have had time to develop between the introduction of writing and the composition of ‘classical’ sagas such as Njdla.
Although some sagas, such as
1977), esp. pp. 16-24; also Clover 1982: 188-204. For a useful discussion of recurrence in prose, see Bennison Gray, “Repetition in Oral Literature,” JAF, 84 (1971), 289-303.
284
Carol
Clover
J.
Heidarviga saga or Reykdosla saga, have a more primitive and stereotyped appearance than Njdla, which basic technique
the
is
is
unusually sophisticated and
same and bespeaks
common
their
much
new
traditionalists
stock in the stylistic and structural consistency, and the generally
“finished” quality, of the ^
their
origin in the oral saga”
(1976:101). Like freeprosists before them, therefore, the place
‘literary,’
first
sagas. This, they argue, speaks loudly against the
“invention” hypothesis. Curiously, the
stylistic continuity
sagas and the kings’ sagas has not been
much
between the family
explored.
by no means an original exercise. Generations of scholars (including Ker, Gu6brandur Vigfusson, Magnus Olsen, Liestpl, Sprenger, and Wolfgang Fleischhauer) have sought to identify and explain eddic parallels. As Andersson points out in his chapter “The Heroic Legacy,” however, these investigations have focused almost without
The
1
connect the sagas with eddic poetry
effort to
is
exception on motif analogies and temper, not narrative qualities. After surveying
'
“There are some very fundamental structural and thematic correspondences which link the saga with ( the lay. .In view of the evidence it seems more fruitful to regard the literary form of the saga as an adaptation of heroic models than as history, as an older generation held, or as a novelistic innovation, as a newer generation believes. The saga authors did not need to create an entirely new literary type, but were able to elaborate on a traditional literary mold, the heroic mold” (1967:93; see also Madelung 1972b: 150-54).^^ from
the territory
.
this
point of view, he concludes:
.
'
j
.
.
.
i
Lonnroth
tiies to
He
distinguish layers.
agrees that
many
of the type-characters
of the sagas have eddic and indeed Germanic prototypes, and he assumes that certain of the smaller structural
segments (motifs, scenes, action patterns) also
derive from the native stock. Unlike Andersson, however, he doubts the tradi-
“Very long sagas,” he
tional basis of the full form.
exist in the oral tradition as
had
the saga writers ,
own models
.
.
.
complete narrative units.” At
to “turn to foreign
rated
into
long
“probably did not
this level,
he argues,
models, or, alternatively, create their
out of the old and comparatively simple feud patterns and
travel patterns” (1976:102). earlier, pasttir or
writes,
These feud and
travel patterns are, as
mentioned
fmttr-Wkt narratives; in suggesting that they have been elabo-
forms,
Lonnroth
is
in
effect
reviving
the
long-dormant
/\3t/r-theory of saga origins.
Readers familiar with the freeprose-bookprose debate will wonder what hap-
pened
to the classic question of the sagas’ historical
fair to
say that the reason for the
historicity is
new
simply that they regard
formalist-traditionalists,
traditionalists’ silence it
though not necessarily of the others). Like
the original stories sprang Andersson
from
later adjusted his
probably
is
true of the
their counter-
non-European), they assume that
historical reality but that,
views on
It is
on the question of
as beside the point (this
parts in other fields of oral literature (especially
38.
background.
once
set in oral
motion,
this point (1970).
39. For a brief history of the jpdttr theory of saga origins, see
Andersson 1964:61-64.
Icelandic Family Sagas
285
they were slowly but surely rationalized, localized, contemporized, and above
V
“traditionalized” (repattemed according to the narrative ety).
The degree of
involved, but
it
distortion
depends
to a
“laws” of
all
that soci-
may depend to some extent on the period of time much greater extent on the habits of the particular
on the consequences of literacy in traditional societies. Jack Goody and Ian Watt offer the following instructive example of “oral” mutation. It concerns the Gonja people of northern Ghana. When the British first visited Ghana, they found a state divided into seven chiefdoms. Asked to explain this division, the Gonja recounted how the founder of the state, Ndewura Jakpa, “came down from the Niger Bend in search of gold, conquered the indigenous inhabitants of the area and enthroned himself as chief of the state and his sons as rulers of its territorial divisions. At his death the divisional chiefs succeeded to the paramountcy in turn.” Shortly thereafter, two of the seven chiefdoms disappeared, as a consequence of incorporation and boundary changes. “Sixty years later, when the myths of state were again recorded, Jakpa was credited with only five sons and no mention was made of the founders of the two divisions which had since disappeared from the political map.”^*^ “Fiction” is the wrong word here, for it implies intent. It also implies purely untrue narrative, which it is not, or is not taken to be. Just how this model relates culture. In their essay
to
Steblin-Kamenskij’s idea of “syncretic truth”
is
not clear.
It is
clear,
ever, that the formalist-traditionalists espouse neither the “historical”
how-
view
at-
view of the Icelandic school view, conceptually derived from the workings
tributed to their freeprose forebears nor the fictional
but
some
as yet unclarified third
of oral transmission in other cultures.
One might
add, in this connection, that the
freeprose belief in the “historical saga” has been greatly exaggerated by book-
them members of the Icelandic school, evidently for straw-man purposes (e.g., von See 1979:47). If the new traditionalists were to elect a spiritual father, it would probably be Knut Liestpl. For Liestpl, as to an extent for Axel Olrik, the sagas’ oral component was not an unknown and unknowable quantity (as it has been for the Icelandic school) but one that could be isolated and identified through comparison with the Norwegian folktale; shared features, of which there were many, prosists
in
and
after
LiestpTs view, must derive from the
common
oral stock.
(The nationalistic
dimension of LiestpTs view, not to speak of that of the Icelandic school, needs
no comment [see also Oskar Halldorsson 1978a].) The new traditionalists also conceive of oral tradition as consisting of form as well as matter and further believe that
it is
susceptible of positive identification, again through a process of
comparison. The difference
lies in their
frame of “oral” reference. For Liestpl
(and Olrik), the frame of reference was specific and local: the Norwegian (or [
40.
Goody and Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,”
p. 33.
See also Fidjestpl 1983; esp. 3-8.
Axel Olrik, “Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung,” ZDA, 51 (1909), 1-12. An English translation may be found in Alan Dundes, ed.. The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 129-41 See also Widmark 1966. On the selective reception of Liestpl’s ideas, see Mundal 1977:198-204. 41.
Knut
Liestpl, Origin of the Icelandic
Family
Sagas',
.
286
Carol
Scandinavian) folktale. For the \
traditionalists, the
general to the point of being universal, including (as codified
(
new
all
indirectly, a general it is
no
at the
is t
analogue with the Icelandic family saga either in the
real
native tradition (the folktales
comparative use) or, as
only
aken to compass seems overly broad, one should bear in mind
formal level that universal patterns have been hypothesized; conten t
that thS^'exis^ts
is
demonstrably oral narrative
theory of speech production. (Hence the focus on form, since
If that
Clover
frame of reference
by various observer- theorists) and, directly or
be culture-bound.)
J.
now
are considered too short
and too
turns out, in oral literature at large (in
it
prose form appears to be a great rarity,
if
indeed
it
late to
be of
which the long
exists at all.)
Saga scholars
two choices, neither of them good: give up, or try, as the new traditionalists have elected to do, to develop out of such “laws” of narrative production as do appear to be universal an ersatz poetic of oral prose. Let us set formalism aside for the moment and turn our attention to other studies in the traditionalist vein. The scholar who has most persistently argued the case for oral origins in the last ten years is Dietrich Hofmann. Hofmann’s terms are by and large those of freeprose, which is to say that he relies heavily on therefore face
r !
the evidence provided by, for example, variant versions, the developmental .
relation
between verse and prose, and descriptions of or references
performance or oral transmission,
style,
“oral” formulas, and the
like.
to oral
On
these
and other source-analytical grounds Hofmann has judged Reykdoela saga to be an early, perhaps the earliest, family saga, a stylistically primitive
on the brink of the oral era (1972). the opening
dream
in
I
have already mentioned Hofmann’s essay on
Hrafnkels saga, which has been the bookprose trump card
ever since Sigur6ur Nordal claimed
gous passage
in
example standing
it
to
have been elaborated out of an analo-
Landnamabok."^^ Sifting yet again through the correspondences
two versions, Hofmann arrives at the conclusion that the saga author made use of two independent sources: Landndmabok and a competand discrepancies
in the
ing oral version. If this
giving as
one
— and
is
much credence
so, as to
I
have said,
it is
a clear instance of a saga author
an oral version of a historical event as to a written
not just any written one, but one from
Hofmann’s analysis rests on constitutes an oral and what a literary 1976a).
Landndmabdk (Hofmann
certain assumptions about precisely variant, an old issue that has
what
come up
for
reconsideration in recent years (Andersson 1964: 129-82; Schach 1972b; Mager-
0y 1970; Hofmann 1977b; Borggreve 1970).
The told
sagas’ ubiquitous references to oral tradition (“it
whether,” and so on) have loomed large
ning. Freeprosists, and
take
them more or
more
recently
less at face value,
as manneristic fillers.
is
said that,” “it
is
not
in
saga criticism from the begin-
Hofmann
(1972), have been inclined to
whereas bookprosists have dismissed them
Andersson concludes, from
his survey of 231 such refer-
j I
ences (of which more than one hundred appear in Reykdcela saga alone), that 42.
Hermann Palsson (1979g)
the biblical
takes the “literary” view of this
book of Joshua and a
reflex in Flateyjarbdk.
dream
a step further, relating
it
to
Icelandic Family Sagas
287
they are mixed: most spurious, but (for
some (about
example, “Gellir Porkelsson lived
a quarter) apparently genuine
at Helgafell until
remarkable things are told about him; he plays a part in said of
little is
him here” from Laxdcela saga,
old age, and
many
ch. 78).
many
other sagas, though
Andersson counts as
probably spurious those source references with a clear narrative or rhetorical function.
These functions are many, some of them highly contrived; they include
marking off narrative ibility,
transitions, highlighting certain details, establishing cred-
ironizing a situation, and defining the narrative limits (Andersson 1966;
Manhire 1975-76; Beck 1973a, 1973b; Bell 1976; Clover 1974). In this the source references are very much like the other major class of verbal formulas in the sagas: the authorial remarks (“now it is to be told of,” “now it is time to turn to,”
“now
he
is
out of the saga,”
“now
to introduce
X,” “now
it is
time to take
where they parted on friendly terms, as was written before”). Despite their formulaic quality and their typically impersonal construction, such phrases do constitute definite authorial intrusions, as Paul Schach has up
[the story at the point]
stressed (1970a). Certain of these intrusions so resemble, in their function and
was employed by medieval Latin writers (for example, “Sed ad nostra redeamus” [Theodoricus] “Vt enim ea, que narrare gestio, luculentiori stil ualeam indagare, superior! reincipiendium est exordio” [Profectio Danorum]), that they may be regarded as vernacular derivatives thereof (Clover 1982: 155-57 and passim). Fritz Paul compares Icelandic phrasing, the figure of the aphodos as
it
,
saga practice with kings’ saga practice and concludes that the formulas of the
former are more “fictional” than those of the
latter
The study of eddic echoes in the sagas has with some vigor. But here too there has been
change of direction. In the
this line
(1982).
a venerable history and continues a
past,
of reasoning has been limited by and large to the Poetic Edda’s heroic
component, and most recent studies have followed 1968; Heller 1976a; Bandle 1969;
suit
(Andersson 1967:65-93,
Wolf 1965b; Heinrichs 1970b; Beck 1968;
Uecker 1980). But some critics have explored the possibility of mythic prototypes as well. Joseph Harris, for example, has noted the presence in two sagas j{Eyrbyggja saga and Heidarviga saga) of Masterbuilder stories like the famous
\
one
in
Snorra Edda (the Sva5ilfari episode). His explanation
—
—
that Snorri ele-
Dronke thinks it I is not), of some consequence for Snorri studies (Harris 1976a; Dronke 1979a). Even if it is not true, the correspondence still suggests that the line between the fantastic mode of myth and the mimetic mode of the sagas is not as fixed as one often supposes. This is the premise of John Lindow’s article on Bandamanna saga, which in his view is directly indebted to the eddic poem Lokasenna not
^
vated a local Icelandic legend into myth
only for
its
true (and Ursula
two-part flyting but also for the figure of Ofeigr,
world what Loki \
is, if
is
to the
mythic one: a
trickster (1977).
who
is
Again the suggestion
mythic as well as heroic matter is subject to saga displacement. recalled here that Robert Glendinning attributed the satiric element
that
manna saga
to the saga is
(It
may be
in
Banda-
to the influence of fabliau tradition [1970].) In either case, the
288
Carol
senna-mannjafnadr
fly ting or
is
Clover
J.
a set-piece of Norse literature equally at
home
in
myth, heroic poetry, and saga, and the same can be said of the hvgt or incitement Odinic allusions in Egils saga (especially
scene.
own
connection with Egill’s
in
character and behavior) were noted long ago, and Gabriel Turville-Petre
extended the pattern to Viga-Glums saga.^^ Egill has also been linked with the
god Loki (Meulengracht Sprensen 1977a). Ursula Dronke perceives specific references to the poem Ri'gsjyula not only in Viga-Glums saga but also in Bjarnar saga Hitd(Elakappa and Eyrbyggja saga (1981). None of these cases and the question of whether, and
if
so
how and
is
with what intent, the saga authors
availed themselves of mythic matter remains open. Folklore, however, story. Just
Inger
how
freely the sagas absorbed folk
M. Boberg’s Motif-Index of Early
useful reference
work covering
all
the
themes and motifs
Old Norse
But not
all
another
suggested by
literary genres (1966).
Those analyses of structure basis have already been discussed at
bent on demonstrating the sagas’ traditional length.
is
is
Icelandic Literature, an incomplete but
Let us return, finally, to the sagas’ narrative
some
clear-cut,
art.
formal analysis of the sagas
is
dedicated to the tradi-
on the contrary, much of it rests exactly on the opposite premise, and some of it rests on no premise at all, but is simply descriptive. Jesse tionalist proposition;
Byock’s discussion, along Anderssonian latter
(1982).
lines,
Hermann Palsson has commented
of saga feuds briefly
He
is
an example of the
on some standard patterns
divides the standard heroic
life
into four phases: childhood, youthful adventures abroad, conflict in Iceland,
and
sagas with a biographical focus (1973a).
in
death struggle (often in the autumn).
He
also enumerates the sagas’ “ritualistic
elements” (by which he means weddings, divorces, duels, funerals, and the
like)
and stock characters (instigators, attackers, mitigators, spectators, sufferers). But he
is
inclined to see such patterns as universal or archetypal, not as elements
of a specifically Norse narrative tradition.
Njdls saga continues to get the lion’s share of literary appreciation. For Ursula
Dronke, as mentioned before, Njdla stands, male-female relations,
in a class
by
itself.
be the saga- writer’s deliberately chosen
age of
human
in the subtlety
Sexual themes
medium
and complexity of
its
“show themselves
to
for deepening the shallow im-
society in his native narrative tradition.
The wealth of sexual
themes represents his impatience with the monotony of the subject-matter that
was commonly thought appropriate
for the family sagas,
and with the
rigidity of
the conventional motivations of action”
(Dronke 1980:29). Alois Wolf makes
much
whole
the
character, 43. sitaire
the
same point about Njdla its
as a
blend of Christian and heroic, and
narrative: in its
its
conception of
orchestration of particulars
it
See Ari C. Bouman, Patterns in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature (Leiden: UniverPers, 1962), pp. 10-13; Joaqum Martinez Pizarro, “Studies on the Function and Context of
Senna
in
“The senna: From 65-1 A, and Carol J. Clover, (1979),
Early Germanic Narrative.” Diss. Harvard, 1976; Joseph Harris,
Germanic Studies, 5 Unferh Episode,” Speculum, 55 (1980), 444-68. 44. Viga-Glums saga, ed. Gabriel Turville-Petre (London: Oxford Univ. Press, ed. 1960), pp. xiii-xv. See also Clunies Ross 1978 and Grimstad 1976. Description to Literary Theory,” Michigan
“The Germanic Context of
the
1st ed.
1940, 2d
s
Icelandic Family Sagas
289
stands head and shoulders above
all
other sagas as a
work of
(1982). Oskar
art
Bandle agrees; Njdla has made fine use of the oral inheritance, but “eine spate Buchsaga” (1972:13). Bolton focuses on Njdla'
moments: the
finally
it is
two climactic
and BergJ^orshvall (1972). In a close comparison of the two narrative sequences, he bares not only their common structure, disasters at Hli5arendi
motifs, rhetoric, syntax, and vocabulary, but also the specifically
employed
in
“It
is
these elements are
both cases to neutralize or mediate oppositions that
obtained at the beginning of each sequence. Although traditional,
way
some of the techniques
are
Bolton writes, the patterning reveals a “single moral viewpoint.”
the assertion of the picture plane, of the artist’s individual and personal
command of the arrangement from the
largest units to the smallest, that argues
its
ultimate singleness of vision” (p. 204).
After Njdla, the saga that has been most studied from a formal viewpoint
Laxdcela saga.
Two
books have appeared on
dedicated to the proposition that of
all
work
that
the sagas
it
is
in the last
the
is
decade, both
most novel-like, a
work from beginning to end. One is the above-mentioned Die Laxdcela saga by Rolf Heller (1976a), a work concerned sophisticated and carefully crafted
mainly with source questions but including a general section on (pp. 121-49).^^
The other
is
Structural Patterns (1972b). er,
is
matters
Margaret Arent Madelung’s The Laxdcela Saga:
By
Its
Madelung means, howevcomposing the parts. She con-
“structural patterns”
not narrative parts but the devices used for
cludes that the saga
artistic
a “deliberately contrived piece of literary prose, put
together from bits and pieces, the patchwork being invisible so that a unified
whole emerges” level, in her
of
artistic
view
(p. 158). (p. 158).
prose”
(p.
There
is
no question of
Laxdcela saga
is
rather
oral tradition operating at this
“a
carefully constructed piece
145) and a “brilliant literary achievement” (p. 147).
The conventional view of Laxdcela saga
as a feud saga has
been challenged, as
mentioned before. To be sure, male conflict looms large, but
it
accretion on an underlying biographical pattern (Kress 1980;
Conroy 1980).
is
finally
an
—
Only one other saga, Eiriks saga rauda, is organized around the life centrally the marriages of a woman, and as Patricia Conroy points out, the resemblance
—
is
more than passing. She
extracts the following
story about the ancestor of the
prominent husbands; of the
woman;
(3) introduction
woman’s marriages;
common
structure: (1) pioneer
(2) family history
of the
of the
woman and her father;
(5) introduction of the first
first
of the
(4) foretelling
prominent husband and his
brother or foster brother; (6) marriage to the prominent husbands in turn; and (7)
epilogue about the
woman and
lates that this structure
the genealogy of her descendants.
was “pioneered” by
Conroy specu-
the Laxdcela saga author and imi-
by the author of Eiriks saga rauda; but one should perhaps not out the possibility that the female biography too had traditional roots.
tated (crudely) rule
45. Heller also treats narrative structure in his earlier article “Studien zu
Aufbau und
Stil
der
(1960), 113-67. On Laxdcela saga’s relation to other works, see Heller 1965, 1969a, 1974, 1976b, and ‘‘Laxdcela saga und Sturlunga saga,” ANF, 76 (1961), 112-33.
Laxdcela saga,”
ANF, 75
^
290
Carol
J.
Clover
The most systematic examination of Laxdoela saga’s structure is that of Heinrich Beck (1977). Beck discusses the saga’s time perspective, its narrative elements (for example, “the Icelander and the king,’’ occurring ten times; “acquisitions of land,’’ occurring four times),
and
its
narrative sequences (patterned
groups of the narrative elements). The sequences. Beck shows, are carefully arranged in ascending and descending patterns.
Although Beck takes An-
dersson’s structural scheme as a point of departure, he at no point espouses the
On
traditionalist explanation.
the contrary, he regards the saga as “art that has
been consciously inserted into the struggles of the thirteenth century’’
and
who
author as someone
its
(p.
401)
“set about organizing his narrative in a remark-
ably clear-headed and systematic way’’ (p. 398). Beck’s approach to narrative
time in the sagas stems from the style of literary theory popularized in the 1950s
by such
critics as E.
scholar to apply this
Lammert, A. A. Mendilow, and Kate Hamburger. The first theoretical framework to the sagas was Maarten C. van den
Toom.^^ The “presentation of
time’’ in saga narrative, in particular the relation
of “erzahlte Zeit’’ and “Erzahlzeit,’’ has been studied most recently by Hartmut
Rohn (1976;
also Loescher 1980). Espousing
conclusion, Rohn’s book
is
no theory and coming
to
no general
largely descriptive.
The other two sagas that have figured most prominently in the critical literature of the last two decades are Hrafnkels saga and Gisla saga. Hrafnkels saga has been discussed above in connection with source analysis and type-scene
no further (see also Kratz 1978; Slater 1968; Thomas 1973; Bolton 1971; Condren 1973; Dubs 1977; Halleux 1966a, 1966b; Hansen 1981). Gisla saga is an interesting case. Like the text itself, the literature on it
analysis and need detain us
stands apart.
The saga
is
notoriously rich in ambiguities, and critics continue to
new wrinkles in its psychosexual dynamic, new clues in its unsolved murder mystery, and new niceties in its puzzlelike construction (Schottmann 1975; Thompson 1973; Eirikur Bjornsson 1976; Ly5ur Bjomsson 1975; Grpnstpl 1979; Hansen 1978a; Heller 1966b; Hermann Palsson 1972, 1975a, 1979d; Kroesen find
1982a, 1982b; Andersson 1968; Bredsdorff 1964; Berger 1979; Foote 1963;
Clover 1977a). These essays are striking for their reverential tone. This with devotees, and
it
is
no surprise
that
The
is
a saga
one of the few feature films ever made
in
A
y
Iceland
is
a version of that story {Utlaginn, directed
by Agust Guomundsson).
unity and literary qualities of the perennially problematic Ljdsvetninga saga
have been commented on by Hallvard Magerpy (1969). The structure of Kor-
mdks saga has been discussed by Hans Schottmann (1982) and the Egils saga by Alois Wolf (1980) and Jan Sand Sprensen (1980).
We saga ,
—
arrive, finally, at the category of composition: the
scenes, episodes,
\(W. H. Vogt, A. U. Baath, and und Tempus
in
der Saga,”
the parts of the
— are organized into coherent, complex wholes.
Composition was the subject of some
46. Maarten C. van den
way
structure of
interest to
others), but
it
an earlier generation of scholars has for
some reason been given
Toom, “Zur Struktur der Saga,” ANF, 73 (1958), 140-68; and ANF, 76 (1961), 134-52. See also Loescher 1980.
‘‘Zeit
Icelandic Family Sagas
291
short shrift in recent decades, despite the general concern with
form and despite
An
the obvious relevance of composition to the issue of origins.
exception
is
what might be called “binding devices,’’ which have attracted a certain scholarly attention. Andersson, in his chapter on rhetorical devices, speaks of symme*
and foreshadowing (dreams, omens, portents, predictions, warnings, “psychic farewells,” curses, and the like) as articulating features (1967:31-64). tries
!
What Madelung
calls “structural patterns” are in effect binding devices: fore-
knowledge, anticipation trasts,
setja
in retrospect, repetition,
comparison, parallels and con-
contrapuntal variation, preparation and fulfillment, and so forth.
saman
is
apt, in her
view, for Laxdcela saga
highly sophisticated author (1972b: 158).
Anne
is
truly
The term
“put together” by a
Heinrichs identifies binding or
“intertextual” devices in three early sagas (Heidarviga saga, Reykdcela saga,
and the Legendary Saga of Saint Olaf). She arrives at a traditionalist conclusion: so standardized and well-executed are binding devices at this early stage that they
i
must be presumed
to
Heinrichs ’s work
unusual
is
have a prehistory in that
it
in oral tradition
(1976a:
143-44).
explores the stylistic continuity between
kings’ sagas and family sagas. Yet another study along these lines distinguishes
from prefiguration and derives the former from native tradition and from Latin exegetical practice (Prasstgaard Andersen 1976).
anticipation the latter
But
why
should such an array of binding devices be necessary?
What
is it
about saga narrative that needs holding together? The view that the sagas were originally
composed out of
j
laid to rest years
shorter, once-independent paettir
ago (Andersson 1964:61-64), but
there are signs that the Imttr theory of saga origins It
theoretically
ghost lives on. Indeed,
may be heading
for a revival.
has recently been proposed, for example, that the reason there are so few
faettir /
its
was
on Icelandic subjects
in the
independent paettir literature
is
not that they
never existed but that they did exist and were “swallowed up and used by the family sagas to such an extent that they are no longer recognizable as having
once been independent” (Joseph 1972:95). Lonnroth gives the pdttr theory an
added
twist. In his
view, although the sagas’ component parts (including
circulated in oral tradition, entire sagas did not.
When
paettir)
authors set about assem-
bling their material, therefore, they were obliged to devise large frames. This
they did either by imitating foreign models (such as biography) or by expanding native pdttr frames (the feud plot or the travel plot)
from short
to long forms.
A
I
^
saga thus consists of paettir fitted into an extended pdttr (Lonnroth 1976:42-103
passim, esp. 101-2).
Versions of the pdttr theory also lurk just beneath the surface of /
many modem
stmctural analyses. Eyrbyggja saga in particular seems to offer itself up in pieces
/
(Vesteinn Olason 1971; Mabire 1971), and Ljdsvetninga saga has long been
I
regarded as a compilation (Magerpy 1969). Andersson has dissociated himself
\
from the pdttr theory,
at least in its classical version,
but in his analyses of
individual sagas he repeatedly acknowledges the existence of semi-independent I
subplots that have been
more or
less successfully integrated into the
whole
292
Carol
J.
Clover
(Andersson 1967 passim). Integration can take the form of interweaving, often in gratuitously elaborate forms, and here we recall the etymological meaning of
(Lindow 1978a). Structural interlace of this sort is especially obvious in Eyrbyggja saga (Vesteinn Olason 1971; Mabire 1971; Andersson 1967:162; Rohn 1976:99-115; also Simpson 1973b), but similar patterns have also been noticed in Njdls saga, Grettis saga, Heidarviga saga, md Ljdsvetninga saga, among others (Magerpy 1970; Andersson 1967:127-31,
l^ttr as a “strand in a rope’’
150-51, 209, 303-7; Clover 1982:69-91). Such compositional peculiarities are the point of departure for my book, which argues that the digressive and interlaced composition of the family saga has the Continent (1982).
The
its
equivalent in medieval prose on
sagas’ closest formal counterparts in European
ature before the novel are the French prose romances, an
development of the
late twelfth
unambiguously There
and thirteenth centuries.
liter-
literary
is little if
any
evidence that prose romances actually circulated in Scandinavia (Bjami Einarsson 1961: esp. 75-76, 1971a; Andersson 1969), and ilarities
between them and the sagas are
to
this
that the sim-
be explained as parallel developments
out of Latin history- writing. In either case, /
may be
it
have argued, the
I
rise in
Europe of
kind of long, vernacular prose form appears to be a specifically literary
development (1982:182-204).
(
The
status of the long'^rose
unclear.
It is
/that prose
form beyond Europe,
certainly so that epic
seldom exceeds the
alleged to exist, however: H.
is
overwhelmingly a verse phenomenon and
and shape of the
size
M.
in living oral traditions, is
tale.
Oral prose epics are
Heinrichs and Peter Buchholz have pointed to
“sagas’’ in central Asia and Gaelic Britain, and one can add Japanese traditions \
and the more recently collected prose epics of Southeast Asia and Africa. Needless to say, such traditions are of considerable interest to saga scholars, not only because their existence confirms
at least the theoretical possibility
posing and transmitting long prose forms
of com-
at the oral level (a possibility often
denied by Western literary historians), but also because such epics could be to the Icelandic sagas
what the Yugoslavian songs have been
to
Homeric epic and
the chansons de geste: an analogous corpus permitting conclusions about the
nature of oral prose. /
A
closer look into these cases quickly dashes whatever hopes one
may have
had for a living oral saga tradition, however. Both “length’’ and “prose’’ turn [
\
out to be highly relative categories, and at least three of the major traditions
(Mwindo, Lianja, Koroglu) appear tors,
who
into long
to
owe
their “epic’’ status to
either solicited artificial performances or
forms
at the editing table.
The non-European
47. See also Chesnutt 1973 and Geraldine Barnes, Literature,”
MS,
composed
Western collecshorter episodes
material seems in fact
“The riddarasogur and Medieval European
8 (1975), 140-67.
48. Peter Buchholz, Vorzeitkunde: Mundliches Erzdhlen
und Uberliefern im
mittelalterlichen
dem Zeugnis von Fornaldarsaga und eddischer Dichtung, Skandinavistische M. Heinrichs 1976. 49. See Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry, esp. pp. 24-28; Isidore Okpewho, The Epic in Africa: Toward a Poetics of Oral Performance (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1979), esp. pp. 154-60;
Skandinavien nach
Studien, 13 (Neurniinster; Wachholtz, 1980), 29-30; H.
Icelandic Family Sagas
293
commonplace ^that long prose narratives are an essentially literary phenomenon whose rise is associated with the emergence of a reading class. At the same time, the non'not to contradict but to confirm the
European
literary-historical
European examples may suggest a possible course of evolution of a prose tradition through oral literary stages. The Bantu epic of Mwindo is a case in point. It was solicited from a performer who was baffled at the request that he perform consecutively, from beginning to end, episodes that he had before told only separately and in
no fixed order. In the end he was able
somewhat
his colleagues (though in a
forced performance, the
to
do
so, as
were three of
different form), but until the first such
Mwindo “epic” was
only immanent:
it
existed not as an
only as short episodes “whose relationship to some never-performed
(entity but
‘whole’ had to be constructed by
its
audience” (Kellogg 1979:124). As
some
in
other prose “epic” traditions, then, the parts are oral (in the sense that they are
performed as such); the whole, performed as such) but
at
the
artificial (in the
same time
sense that
it
was never
traditional (in the sense that
orally it
was
implied by the parts and therefore immanent). I
mention
saga origins.
this
case because of
Is it
possible that the preliterary saga existed not as a performed but
immanent
its
obvious relevance to the issue of Icelandic
which actually performed pasttir were understood to belong and that it came into literal being as a full form only in the writing down? The appeal of this idea is obvious. It explains our stubborn sense that, as Ker put as an
it,
“it
first
entity, to
the short story, the episodic chapter, that the art of Icelandic narrative
is in
defines itself”
pdttr that
is
—
that, in other
words,
it is
the “original unity” of Norse prose.
not the saga but the episode or It
also explains
why the
sagas
we are dealing with the “immanent” framework. At the same time, it explains why the composition of the sagas that have come down to us is so patently literary, especially if we should be structurally similar; here, one supposes,
suppose that saga authors, like other medieval authors, conceived of as one of their
main
makes sense of phenomenon of pendant
material.
of the
tasks the amplification
It
also
and
structural complication of their received
the variants that survive, just as paettir (for
it
makes sense
example, Bolla pdttr, attached to
Laxdcela saga). Finally, the idea of an immanent saga answers the objection that sagas could not have circulated in the form of paettir because audiences would
have found them incomplete and hence unsatisfying. In short, precise answer so far to the basic question of saga studies,
it
offers the
most
where “oral” ends
and “literary” begins (“hvar og hvemig maetast munnmaeli og saga,” as Oskar Halldorsson put
it):
at
accommodates the most tionalist
the level of composition (1978a: 324). In so doing, telling points
it
of both sides of the argument, the tradi-
and the inventionist. This version of a pdttr theory based on the idea of
Nora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky, Oral Epics of Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), p. 57 and passim; Daniel Biebuyck, The Mwindo Epic (Berkeley, etc.: Univ. of California Press, 1969), pp. 7-14; Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), esp. pp. 370-71. 50. Ker, Epic and Romance, p. 189.
294
Carol
an immanent saga
is
a suggestion only, and further research into the sagas and
may prove
wider oral prose traditions least
Clover
J.
encourage us finally to
let
it
untenable. In the meantime,
go of the either/or terms
it
should
inform
that continue to
our thinking about origins and to consider the probability that the saga
at
itself is a
syncretic form.
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Norse Romance (Riddarasogur) Marianne Kalinke
Romance,
to
judge by manuscript transmission the most popular genre
in
Iceland through the centuries, has not been similarly well received by the critics.
Assessment of the Old Norse-Icelandic romances, variously called riddarasogur (sagas of knights, chivalric sagas), lygisdgur (lying sagas, fictional sagas), /(7rn-
sogur Sudrlanda (ancient sagas of southern lands), and Mdrchensagas (fairy
tale
most frequently been negative. Literary historians and critics alike have considered the largely derivative romances unoriginal and hapless products sagas), has
(^Sigur5ur Nordal, p. 268), of limited imagination (^Finnur Jonsson,
devoid of significant literary merit (^Mogk,
p. 880;
iii:98),
^Jon Helgason 1934:218),
mere childish fantasies (^de Vries, ii:539), characterized by sentimentality and bombast (tSigur6ur Nordal, p. 268), and replete with tasteless exaggerations (ed. Lagerholm 1927:xvi). The romances have been adjudged “lamentably in'
ferior to the older type of narrative’’
Ker,
“They
Critical
are
among
(Schlauch 1934a:5). In sum, to quote
W.
P.
made by human fancy.’’ been deemed superfluous. Together
the dreariest things ever
assessment of them individually has
with ihc fornaldarso gur (mythic-heroic or legendary sagas), the romances have j
been looked upon as representing, as the distinguished Icelandic bibliographer
“a period of decadence in saga writing, the age when foreign influences became marked, when copying and recasting the earlier sagas was much in vogue, when tales and stories, omitted by the earlier writers, were found worthy of record, often freely elaborated or extended, and when new Halldor Hermannsson put
stories
were also invented.’’^ To judge by the short
ries,^ the
W.
it,
shrift
accorded the
fifty
or so
riddarasogur might be classified as Kitsch and Trivialliteratur, a minor
Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature, 2d rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1908; rpt. New York: Dover, 1957), p. 282. First published 1896. 2. Halldor Hermannsson in his preface to Bibliography of the Mythical-Heroic Sagas, Islandica, 5 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Library, 1912). 3. My figure is based on the number of romances known with reasonable certainty to have been composed in the Middle Ages. Counted as one item are collective works such as the Strengleikar (21 1.
P. Ker,
316
Norse Romance
317
genre in the grand corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic literature.
A
revision
is
nev-
ertheless in order.
Chronologically and geographically the Old Norse-Icelandic romances into
two
distinct, albeit related, groups: the translated riddarasogur,
Norwegian
thirteenth-century
translations, predominantly of
and the indigenous or Icelandic riddarasogur,
that
is,
French narratives;
that is, fourteenth-century Icelan-
from and imitating the Norwegian
dic compositions deriving
fall
translations. In
content, structure, and style the riddarasogur are a diverse group. Nonetheless,
Norwegian and indigenous Icelandic romances share several characthey are derivative, one group translated, the other imitative; they are
translated teristics:
prose narratives; the aristocratic protagonists are non-Scandinavian; and the settings are outside Scandinavia.
Historicity
modem
and verisimilitude have tended
to
be the
criteria applied in
both
and medieval times to assess the riddarasogur. The standard against
which Old Norse-Icelandic romance has been measured has been the family saga with
its
objectivity, realism,
Introduction to
and lucid
Old Norse not a
V. Gordon’s
style. In E.
now
classic
from the riddarasogur is to be mentioned in the introduction. The
single excerpt
found, even though that category of saga
romances constitute a minor genre;
in
is
Gordon’s opinion, they are of interest only
because of their mostly deleterious impact on indigenous
“At first the it was held in
literature:
was a happy one and it remained fmitful as long as When the restraining check by the discipline of Icelandic subject matter. hand of history had once been lifted, degeneration was swift. ’’^ Gordon’s jaundiced view of the riddarasogur is significant because generations of students in the English-speaking world have formed their initial perception of Old NorseIcelandic literature from his textbook. His judgment is unfortunately perpetuated in the successor to the Introduction, Sigrid Valfells’ and James E. Cathey’s Old Icelandic, which likewise contains not a single excerpt from the riddarasogur.^ effect
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
and Karlamagnus saga and the later Magus saga jarls with their several paettir that are sometimes found independently in manuscripts. If the Strengleikar and paettir are counted individually, the number rises to some 90 narratives. In his literary history, Stefan Einarsson arrives at a grand total of 265 romances (^Stefan Einarsson 1957, p. 165). The figure is misleading because it includes spurious as well as postmedieval works. 4. E. V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse, 2d rev. ed. A. R. Taylor (London: Oxford Univ. lais)
Press, 1957), pp. Iv-lvi.
James E. Cathey, Old Icelandic (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981). Scandinavian textbooks of Old Norse-Icelandic, however, have consistently included excerpts from the riddarasogur: Oldnorsk laesebog med tilhorende glossarium, ed. P. A. Munch and C. R. Unger (Oslo: J. Dal, 1847) [Tristrams saga ok Isdndar]\ Fire og fyrretyve for en stor deel forhen utrykte pr0ver af oldnordisk sprog og literatur, ed. Konra5 Gislason (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1860) [Karlamagnus saga, Kirjalax saga, Kldri saga] (Icelandic version: Synisbok I'slenzkrar tungu ok I'slenzkra bokmennta fornold [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, I860]); Oldnorsk laesebog med tilhorende glossarium, ed. C. R. Unger (Oslo: J. Dal, 1863) [Kldri saga, Mi'rmanns saga]-, Gamalnorsk ordlista, ed. M. Haegstad and A. Torp (Oslo: O. Norli, 1903; 2d ed. 1920) lesestykke maallaera [Karlamagnus saga]', Gamalnorsk og gamalislandsk laerebok for gymnas og laerarskular, ed. Per N. Grptvedt and Lars Reinton (Oslo: Noregs Boklag, 1950) [Erex saga, Tristrams saga ok Isondar]-, Synisbok i'slenzkra bokmennta til midrar dtjdndu aldar, ed. SigurSur Nordal, Gu6run P. Helgadottir, 5.
Sigrid Valfells and
i
—
—
Marianne Kalinke
318
Recurrent apologiae in the indigenous romances suggest that their authors
were
criticized
even by their Icelandic contemporaries for lack of realism and
Presumably
historicity.
fictional, the author
answer
in
of Sigurdar saga pdgla
can be no argument (ed. Loth, allra
hugj^okka,
t>vi at
romances are entirely
to a reproach that the
“Nu
ii:96):
engi l3arf truna5 a
made
which there
a statement with
ver6r hvarki
f^at
slikt at leggja,
ne annat gort eptir
nema
vili”
(Now
impossible to please everybody, and no one needs to believe such things
does not wish ered
to).
Listeners
who found
it is
if
he
and consid-
fault with the subject matter
prevarication were informed in the prologue to Pidreks saga that they
it
were not
possession of the truth, that they were unwilling to believe of others
in
what they themselves had not seen and heard or what they themselves
either
could not or would not dare.^ The author of Flores saga konungs reveals that sagas dealing with the extraordinary feats of kings “are considered
some”
Lagerholm,
(ed.
p.
appealing to auctoritas (ed. Rafn, iii:309):
if
ver5r
hverr
J)at (36
at segja, er
people think such things incredible,
it
“Nu hann
[Dott
monnum
his tale
presumably
that
provoked
hefir set e5r heyrt”
(Now even
everyone’s responsibility to say
is still
incredulity
provided
is
Gautrekssonar, another so-cddXtd fornaldarsaga (ed. Rafn,
Man
sva
um
h^ssa sogu sem
margr er maSrinn, ok hvorttveggja
satt vera,
(The same applies ently.
ferr vi5a,
margar a6rar,
ok heyrir
f)at
to this story as to a
good many
segja
sem annar
saga
iii:189):
allir
einn veg, en
heyrir ekki,
others, that people
But there are many people, and they travel widely, and one
may
ok
ma bd
tell
it
differ-
man
hears what
be telling the truth even though neither knows the
truth.)
The author of Vdhjdlms saga sjods takes '
annar,
at eigi
Hrolfs
in
inci-
ef hvorgi hefir gjorla atkomizt.
another doesn’t and both
whole
um
by
J^iki slikir hlutir
whatever he has seen or heard). Explanation for conflicting versions of an dent
by
122), but the author of Gongu-Hrolfs saga, a so-
caWcd fornaldarsaga, braces himself against attack on the veracity of otruligir, |3a
lies
a different approach to the reliability of
the information disseminated in the romances.
men make up
He
maintains that accuracy does
would not be able to detect the errors an expert might discover (iv:3-4). The author of Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar artfully dodges potential criticism by issuing a challenge (ed. Rafn, 111:190): “bykki mer bezt soma, at finna eigi til, b^ir eigi um baeta” (I Cthink you shouldn’t find fault with the story unless you can improve on it). In a similar vein Gongu-Hrolfs saga concludes with the admonition (ed. Rafn, not matter
if
ignorant
his audience; they
Jon Johannesson (Reykjavik; Sigfus Eymundsson, elskanda lj66”), Alexanders saga, 6.
1:6-7.
Magus
1953) [Breta sogur, Strengleikar (“Tveggja
saga, Konrads saga].
Pidriks saga af Bern, ed. Henrik Bertelsen,
SUGNL,
34 (Copenhagen:
S. L. M0ller, 1905),
Norse Romance
319
“Stendr
111:363):
bezt at lasta eigi e5r kalla lyg6 fr65ra
J^vi
me5 meirum
hann kunni
likindum
at segja
manna
e6r or5faeriligar fram
sagnir,
at
bera”
nema (It is
on this or call the stories of learned men lies, unless more plausibly and in a more elegant way). Elegance of
best not to cast aspersions
one can diction
tell
is
the stories
exactly what the author of the XdXQX
when he undertook explain
why
(ca.
1350) sought
he apparently had found wanting.
to recreate a tale
his version of Magus
Magus saga jarls
saga jarls might sound unfamiliar
to
To
some, he
appeals to authorial license based on stylistic considerations (ed. Gunnlaugur
E6r5arson, p. 176):
Nu bo til
at
ver finnim
ma
frasagnar,
frasagnir
saman
bessari sogu beri
ei, at
sett,
b^t
ok
til
skilr
saman vi6 a6rar sogur,
bera, at 6fr66ir
bvi mest a
menn
hafa
um frasagnir,
i
baer er
menn
hafa
fyrstu slikar e6r a6rar
at beir
sem
rita
e6r segja baer
beim bikkir skammt um talat, er orSfoerir eru, ba auka beir me6 morgum orSum, svo at beim sem skilja kunna bikkir me6 fogrum or6um fram bornar, sem a6r voru sag6ar me6 onytum or5um. sogur, er
(Now tell,
although
the reason
we may may be
not find that this story agrees with other stories that people that ignorant
men
ones and in such cases what makes one
somebody skilled in
who have
writes or tells stories that
words, then the
latter will
understanding think the
at first
put together such stories or other
tale different
from another
is this,
that if
seem too briefly told to such as are themselves augment them with many words, so that those same stories set forth with fair words which
formerly were told with useless words.)
As
stereotyped as the preceding examples of authorial commentary on the art
of romance appear to be, they nevertheless bespeak the authors’ awareness of the
and alien character of the
fictional
standing their
were propagating. Notwithapologiae, Icelanders apparently had no compunction about adoptliterature they
ing and adapting a “literature of escape,” as the riddarasogur have time and
again been termed pejoratively: Old Norse-Icelandic romance has prospered
now
more than seven hundred years. Unlike medieval romances that lay dormant for centuries in some countries before being resurrected by scholars in for
modem
times, ^ the riddarasogur, both translated and indigenous, continued to
be copied and read by the people of Iceland from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. Halldor
manuscripts in Iceland the small
number of
is
Hermannsson observed
that
“the large production of
indeed remarkable and without parallel in history
the population
is
when
taken into consideration.”^
There has never been a scarcity of texts of the riddarasogur. Icelanders were Mention of a manuscript of Gottfried von StraBburg’s Tristan dating from the early eighteenth critic Gottfried Weber to signal its uniqueness: “doch stellt S eine erst 1722 (!) angefertigte Abschrift einer ehemals StraBburger Handschrift aus dem Jahre 1489 dar” {Gottfried von Strafiburg, 2d ed. [Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965], p. 11). 8. Halldor Hermannsson, Icelandic Manuscripts, Islandica, 19 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. 7.
century elicited an exclamation point from the
Library, 1929), p. 70.
320
Marianne Kalinke
still
copying manuscripts long after the advent of printing and even after some of
the sagas that justifiably
were being copied by hand already had been printed.^ One can
speak about scribal mass production
some 190 books and pamphlets, primarily in Iceland
post-Reformation Iceland:
in
religious in character,
were published
during the seventeenth century;^® in the same century that number
is
matched, however, merely by the preserved manuscripts that contain riddarasogur. The Old Norse-Icelandic romances have been transmitted in more
uncommonly large number, especially if one few codices contain as many as ten individual sagas; some
than eight himdred manuscripts, an considers that not a
contain even more, such as Stockholm Perg. 4to
eleven romances; fol.
,
AM
.lo.
6 from around 1400 with
181 foL, ca. 1650, with fourteen romances; and
seventeenth century, with eleven romances. In
AM
179
more than fifteen hundred few of these are now frag-
all,
individual texts survive, although admittedly not a
mentary.
The
proliferation of extant manuscripts of the riddarasogur bears extraordi-
nary witness to the popularity of these narratives in Iceland.
ment of the
literary merits
of the riddarasogur
is still
are several reasons for the relative obscurity of
An
objective assess-
wanting, however. There
Old Norse-Icelandic romance:
the scarcity of facts surrounding the introduction of the riddarsogur in the North;
ignorance regarding the character of the original translations and the evolution of the genre; the chronological
gap between
their
composition and the oldest extant
manuscripts; the editorial idiosyncrasies of Norwegian and Icelandic scribes; and the scarcity of diplomatic or critical editions that
At the outset, then, lack of the corpus of
clarity
meet contemporary standards.
and lack of consensus as
Old Norse-Icelandic romance
to
what constitutes
as well as confusion concerning
nomenclature prove to be stumbling blocks.
From
a literary historian’s point of view, the riddarasogur are not the only
romances medieval Icelandic
Not a few works included in C. C. Rafn’s three-volume edition of Fornaldarsogur Nordrlanda qualify as romances, for example Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar and Gongu-Hrolfs saga. Those “romantic sagas” called riddarasogur are, however, distinct from “romantic” fornaldarsogur by reason of their origin and setting. Features that distinguish the two groups of sagas must be sought in the European, primarily French, fiction that was translated into Norwegian in the thirteenth century. According to the prologue of Tristrams saga ok Isondar, King Hakon Hakonarliterature has to offer.
For instance, the oldest edition of Kldri saga dates from 1879, yet several manuscripts are Lbs 3021 4to (1877); Lbs 1491 4to (1880-1905); Lbs 4489 4to (1885). Similarly, Sigurdar saga J^gla was first edited in 1883. The following manuscripts date from the same period; Lbs 1509 4to (1880-1905), Lbs 4837 4to (1878-79), Lbs 1305 4to 9.
nearly contemporary or postdate the edition;
(1869-78). Konrads saga was first published in 1859, but later manuscripts exist; Lbs 1509 4to (1880-1905), Lbs 3121 4to (1860-71), Lbs 2498 8vo (ca. 1902), Lbs 3944 8vo (1900). Partalopa saga was edited in 1877 and is extant in the following later manuscripts; Lbs 1503 4to (1880-1905),
Lbs 2932 4to (1904-5), Lbs 3161 4to (ca. 1900), Lbs 3162 4to (ca. 1900). 10. See Halldor Hermannsson, Icelandic Books of the Seventeenth Century, Islandica, 14 Cornell Univ. Library, 1922).
(Ithaca;
Norse Romance
321
Norway (1217-63) commissioned
son of
translate
Thomas’s Tristan from
in a period
of lively literary activity
The term riddarasaga
three fourteenth-century
Hakon’s court
at
works
was
that subsequently
to
to
literature.
as a designation for the translated fiction
Magus saga
redaction of
1226 a certain Brother Robert
the French. Tristrams saga ok I sondar ushered
have a profound impact on Icelandic ''
in
attest its origin in the
is
venerable;
Middle Ages. In the
later
1350), which derives ultimately from Les
jarls (ca.
quatre fils Aimon, a chanson de geste belonging to the Carolingian cycle, the
commends
author
who choose
those
be entertained by such narratives as
to
Pidreks saga (a thirteenth-century compilation of tales about Dietrich von Bern), Flovents saga (an Icelandic analogue of the French heroic epic Floovant), and other riddarasogur (ed. Gunnlaugur P6r5arson, p. 177: “J)vf
menn,
sem
heyra
at J)eir vilja
J) 2er
frasagnir,
sem
J)eim Ipikki katligar
til
outset that
gamans, svo
The author of
er Pi5reks saga, Flovenz saga e5r a5rar riddarasogur”).
Viktors- saga
gjdra spakir
l3at
ok Bldvus, an indigenous Icelandic romance, informs us
at the
Hakon Magnusson (1299-1319), Flakon Hakonarson’s grandson, had
many riddarasogur Kristjansson, p. 3:
translated
“Hann
let
from Greek and French
into
Norwegian
venda morgum riddara sogum
i
norraenu or girzsku
ok franzeisku mali”). The comment suggests the author’s awareness saga was written in the tradition of the translated chivalric
(ed. Jonas
that Viktors
tales. Finally, the
author of the Skikkju rimur, a fourteenth-century metrical version of Mottuls saga, which in turn
is
Norwegian
a thirteenth-century
mautaillie, intimates that the origin of the riddarasogur as a genre in the
Le mantel
translation of is
to
be sought
recounting of great adventures that befell knights (ed. Cederschiold and
Wulff, p. 71): “Riddarasogur risa af
rekkar
Ipvi:
kvomu
(The ridd-
{^rautir i”
arasogur came into being because knights underwent hard struggles).
The designation riddarasogur
an accurate descriptive term for the works
is
being considered here, since they are peopled by knights and ladies, by kings and queens, by princes and princesses
From
—
the aggregate of feudal aristocracy, in short.
a Continental literary perspective, however, the term riddarasogur, that
chivalric sagas,
romans
is
misleading, for
it
suggests translations and adaptations of the
courtois, the courtly romances. Scholars have
denote Norwegian
— and
a
is,
few Icelandic
—
come
translations of
to use the
European
term to
fiction
and
pseudo-historiography, as well as Icelandic compositions inspired by such translations ./Subsumed
rivm^s
under the heading riddarasogur are translations not only of
courtois but also of chansons de geste, Breton
lais,
a few Latin histo-
riographical works, and, occasionally, the aforementioned compilation of GerI
man
heroic
poems about
Dietrich
von Bern, Pidreks saga. That
[
/
traditional
medieval French categories of
matiere de France, and matiere de
common denominator / {
In addition to
literature
—
is,
the three
the matiere de Bretagne,
Rome — are represented
in the
North under the
riddarasogur.
Thomas’s
Bretagne were translated:
works belonging to the matiere de Chretien de Troyes’s romances Free et Enide (Erex Tristan, six other
>
Marianne Kalinke
322 A
Le chevalier au
saga), j
lion or Yvain (Ivens saga),
and the fragmentary Le conte
du graal or Perceval (Parcevals saga, a translation of vv. 1-6518; Valvens Imttr, V. 6519 to the end of Chretien’s text); the anonymous French lai or
— depending
upon one’s generic convictions Le mantel mautaillie {Mdttuls saga or Skikkju saga); and two lais belonging to a translation collectively known as Strengleikar (lit. ‘stringed instruments’) in Old Norse, namely Chievrefueil (Geitarlauf) and Lanval {Januals Ijdd). It is noteworthy that four of the twenty-one Breton lais in the Strengleikar collection have no known French originals {Garun; Strandar strengleikr, '"Lai of the Beach”; Ricar hinn gamli, ‘‘Richard the Old”; Tveggia elskanda strengleikr "Lai of Two Lovers”). The matiere de France is represented in the North by Norwegian translations— in some cases only Icelandic redactions, presumably diverging greatly of several chansons de geste: Boeve from the original translations, are extant fabliau
—
de Haumtone {Bevers saga); the chansons d’Otinel, de Roland, d’Aspremont,
and Le pelerinage de Charlemagne {Karlamagnus saga); Elie de
St. Gille (Elis
saga ok Rosamundu); Floovant {Elovents saga); Les quatrefils Aimon or Renaud de Montauban {Magus saga jarls).
Because of the preponderantly riographical Latin
works and
mance, scholars tend
their
fictional character of several pseudo-histo-
impact on the development of Icelandic ro-
to include translations of
them among
the riddarasogur:
Alexanders saga, an Icelandic translation of Gautier de Chatillon’s metrical Alexandreis; Breta sogur, a translation of Geoffrey of
regum Britanniae; and Trojumanna saga, a
De
gius’s
few riddarasogur derive from a miscellany of French and Latin
/ romance and hagiography:
\
translation primarily of Dares Phry-
excidio Trojae.
Finally, a
1
Monmouth’s Historia
E lores
saga ok Blankiflur {Eloire
et Blancheflor);
Partalopa saga {Partonopeus de Blois); Amicus saga ok Amilius (a translation of
Speculum Historiale of the legendary friendship of Amis and Amiles, known also from French, English, and German romances); Kldri a Latin account in the
saga (nominally an Icelandic translation of a Latin metrical romance).
As
a survey of their sources indicates, the translated riddarasogur represent
anything but a single genre, diverse as are the matter and form of the works from
which they derive. Nonetheless, the rhymed couplets of the roman courtois and Breton
lai,
the assonantal laisses of the chanson de geste, the Latin hexameter of
the Alexandreis, in
Norse
and the Latin prose of the other historiographical works emerge,
translation, as highly rhythmical, rhetorically embellished,
infrequently alliterative prose.
The
stylistic unity
of the riddarasogur that
forms plots generated by the aristocracy of former days
lemagne, Arthur, or even Alexander
—
settings lends the various translations of
in
and not
— be
it
in-
the age of Char-
European or Near and Far Eastern
works belonging
to diverse genres their
peculiar character and homogeneity.
The
translated riddarasogur caught the fancy of Icelanders
and inspired imita-
Norse Romance
323
and adaptations, mostly during the fourteenth century. In the wake of Tristrams saga ok Isdndar, Icelanders produced a series of bridal -quest rotions
mances, among them Tristrams saga ok Isoddar (an Icelandic parodistic treat\ment of the Tristan legend), Hermanns saga ok Jarlmanns, Konrads saga keis-
,
arasonar,
j [
Remundar saga keisarasonar Sdlus saga ok Nikanors, Samsons saga ,
fagra, Sigurdar saga fots, and Pjalar-Jons saga.
^ ^
romances are the maiden-king romances, analogues saga,
saga
Related to the bridal-quest to
Partalopa saga and Kldri
among ihtm Ala flekks saga, Dmus saga drambldta,
Nitida saga, Sigurdar
and Viktors saga ok Bldvus (see Wahlgren 1938). Terminology for the Icelandic adaptations and imitations of the translated riddarasogur vacillates. As Sigur6ur Nordal pointed out, both translated and lydgla,
indigenous romantic sagas are appropriately called riddarasogur or fornsogur
Sudrlanda
^
it is
He
decried another term for
had some currency, namely lygisdgur, not only misleading but also because he felt it was in poor taste as a literary
the indigenous
because
Nordal, p. 180).
in Icelandic (^Sigur5ur
romances
that has
was used in the Middle Ages. Its Porgils saga ok Haflida, in which King
term. Nonetheless, the designation lygisdgur earliest attestation is to
be found in
deemed such lygisdgur as Hromundar saga Gripssonar (a fornaldarsaga) most amusing: “ok kalla5i hann slikar lygisggur skemtiligastar.”^^ The implication of the remark would appear to be that Sverrir particularly enjoyed works of fiction. In other instances the use of the word lygi to characterize a saga would seem to have a negative connotation. The praise of Sverrir
is
reported to have
such riddarasdgur as Pidreks saga and Fldvents saga by the author of
who
consider these
Gunnlaugur P6r6arson,
p. 177): “{)6tt
saga jarls follows hard upon a reference to foolish persons
words prevarication,
that
fiction (ed.
is,
Mdgus
’
The author of Flores saga konungs ok sona hans also speaks deprecatingly of those who would dismiss as fictitious all tales of unknown wonders and feats beyond the imagination of puny men (ed. 6fr65ir kalli lygi
Lagerholm,
p.
j^aer
sogur.
’
122). In Pidreks saga the author defends his right to relate the
unheard-of by denouncing those
who doubt
the veracity of
what they themselves
have neither seen nor heard and about which they themselves cannot provide
“enn J)at er heimskligtt ath kalla J^at lyge er hann hefer ei sied edur heyrt enn hann veit ecke annat vmm J^ann lut.” In a similar vein, the Icelandic redactor of Gvimars saga, a Norwegian translation of further truth (ed. Bertelsen, i:6-7):
Guigemar, one of the Breton
lais,
chides at length those
who
consider his tale
nothing but untruths and empty chatter {Gvimars saga, p. 138: “lijge ok lokleisu”). Gdngu-Hrolfs saga concludes with the recommenda-
and others similar to
1 1
.
it
For a discussion of the impact of Tristrams saga ok Isdndar on Icelandic
literature see
Schach
1962, 1964, 1968. 12.
Brown (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), p. 18. In a 76): “The fact that Sverri called Hrom. a lygisaga, when
Porgils saga ok Haflida, ed. Ursula
Brown comments (p. Hromund was known to be an historical comment.” note
tc this
passage.
character,
appears to have evoked the remarkable
X
324 tion that the tales of learned
Rafn,
III:
363):
“Stendr
men
Marianne Kalinke
not be slandered or considered fiction (ed.
bezt at lasta eigi e6r kalla lyg6 fr65ra
[)vi
manna
sagnir.”
The preceding examples lead us
to
conclude that references to lygisdgur are to
be understood in a context of skepticism about the chivalric
Rather than
tales.
awareness of a genre, medieval attestations of the word lygi
in reference to
awareness of the fictional rather
certain sagas or types of accounts suggest an
than historical character of a narrative.
Some modem
designation as a generic term, however.
As such, it unfortunately has not only a The primary constant appears to be that
pejorative but also a shifting character. the term
is
applied only to Icelandic compositions.
scholars have chosen the
Some
scholars designate the
indigenous riddarasogur as lygisdgur (^Finnur Jonsson,
^Mogk
iii:98;
1904:
880; Leach 1921:164; Schlauch 1934a: 16).*^ Others use the term to apply to the ^
“fictional
development”
0929:xxvi). I
Still
of
the
fornaldarsaga
(Einar
01.
Sveinsson
others prefer to consider both indigenous riddarasogur and
fornaldarsdgur under the
single
appellation
lygisdgur
(^de
Vries,
ii:539;
Lagerholm 1927:x). German scholars have come to refer to the indigenous riddarasdgur increasingly as Mdrchensagas, primarily because of Kurt Schier’s advocacy of the term (^Schier 1970:105-6). The designation
is
not original with
^
him, however. Otto L. Jiriczek spoke of the lygisdgur as the oldest attestations of o
Mdrchen among Icelanders (1894:3), and Ake Lagerholm equated lygisaga with Mdrchensaga (1927:x). Although the term Mdrchensaga does not have the depreciative connotation of lygisaga,
it is
just as
vague and therefore just as useless
The designation Mdrchensaga does not subsume all sagas that might be considered Mdrchen and, as Einar Ol. Sveinsson has pointed out, many of the sagas classified as Mdrchensagas have nothing whatsoever to do with Mdrchen (1929:xxviii). The use of non-Icelandic nomenclature for a as a generic distinction.
X
group of indigenous compositions deriving from the translated riddarasdgur and imitative of
them
is
misleading because the English and
“romance” and Mdrchensaga
German
designations
respectively denote to the uninitiated a larger
group of compositions than the body of works actually intended to be delimited.
Some
translated riddarasdgur, (e.g., Ivens saga) are as
the indigenous Icelandic compositions,
much Mdrchensagas
and somt fornaldarsdgur
as
(e.g., Hrolfs
saga Gautreks sonar) are as much romances as the translated and indigenous riddarasdgur.
As
early as the fourteenth century the
konungs ok sona bans undertook
anonymous author of Flores saga
to classify the sagas dealing with events that
See also Halldor Hermannsson, The Sagas of the Kings (Konunga sdgur) and the MythicalHeroic Sagas (Fornaldar sdgur): Two Bibliographical Supplements, Islandica, 26 (Ithaca: Cornell 13.
Univ. Press, 1937), p.
vi.
See also A. Le Roy Andrews, “The Lygisggur,” SS, 2 (1914-16), 258. In their Legendary Fiction in Medieval Iceland, Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards prefer the term “legendary fiction” as a designation for fornaldarsdgur. They point out that “this does not, however, detract from the appropriateness of the term romance to these stories” (StI, 30 [1971], p. 14.
15.
17).
.
Norse Romance
325
He
occurred in the distant past.
arrived at three categories (ed. Lagerholm, pp.
121-22): (1) saints’ lives, which most people do not consider very entertaining (“eru J)eir \)6 fleiri menn, er litil skemtun [^ykkir at heilagra manna sQgum”); (2)
how
(“hoeverska hir5si5u”) or chieftains;
and
are
wont
to
about kings
(3) sagas
thereby achieve renown.
many
from which we may learn courtly behavior
about powerful kings,
sagas
conduct oneself
who
To judge by
the
—
—
that
deeds beyond the normal
the third category
md fornaldarsdgur because the
landic riddarasogur
immediately
that follows
to consider those sagas fiction that relate
mortal’s ability or realm of experience
powerful
mettle in feats of prowess and
test their
remark
in the service of
subsumes both
Ice-
protagonist’s confrontation
with the preternatural or superhuman plays a substantial role in both groups of
some of the translated riddarasogur would not be excluded. Presumably the Norwegian (translated) riddarasogur but by no means all are understood to belong in the second category. Still there is overlap, for some Icelandic riddarasogur SLndfornaldarsogur also depict kings and retainers whose sagas. Indeed, even
—
—
behavior might be considered exemplary. / /
The above
classification of sagas rests
on a
distinction deriving
character of the protagonist and the nature of his exploits.
from the
The anonymous author
of Flores saga konungs thus anticipates Northrop Frye’s classification of fiction
on the basis of the hero’s power of action, and
romance
whose
as
one “superior
in
degree to other
actions are marvellous but
who
is
his definition
men and
to his
himself identified as a
of the hero of
environment
human
.
.
.
being,
/to wit, the protagonist of both riddarasaga and fornaldarsaga. That formal
from the riddarasogur has yet to be character of the two groups of sagas was apparent,
features distinguish the fornaldarsogur
demonstrated. The
however,
to
common
Ami Magnusson
(1663-1730), the great manuscript collector,
subsumed Norwegian and Icelandic riddarasogur
who
“romantic” /6>m-
as well as
aldarsogur under the single heading “Fabulosae Islandorum Historiae.”^^
/ Modem I
scholars have been unable to arrive at a clear demarcation between
riddarasogur and fornaldarsogur. Jonas Kristjansson observed that the use of the
term lygisogur for both the “later Romantic Sagas and
.
.
.
Legendary Sagas
[fornaldarsogur] bears witness to the close relationship of the sagas” (Jonas Kristjansson 1975:282). Consensus as to what constitutes the canon of Old y
Norse-Icelandic riddarasogur
Halvorsen concurred 16.
is
wanting. Einar Ol. Sveinsson and Eyvind Fjeld
in their respective articles
on the fornaldarsogur {KLNM,
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957),
p. 33.
AM
Ami
567 used the heading Fabulosae Islandorum Historiae to describe the contents of 4to, under which signature vellum fragments from the fourteenth and fifteenth century can be found. The collection of fragments includes translated riddarasogur (such as Elis saga, Severs saga, and 17.
Tristrams saga ok tsondar), indigenous riddarasogur (such as Adonias saga,
Remundar saga
keis-
arasonar, and Viktors saga ok Bldvus), and “romantic” fornaldarsogur (such as Gongu-Hrolfs saga, Gautreks saga konungs, and Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar) In another instance. Ami lists translated
and indigenous riddarasogur of which he has paper manuscripts under the heading Eabu-
lae (see leaf 168-70'’ of
AM
435 A-B
4to).
Marianne Kalinke
326 iv:500-501) and the riddarasogur
{KLNM,
xiv:180) that there are borderline
namely Ala flekks saga, Hrings saga ok Tryggva, SigrgarSs saga froekna, Sigurdar saga fdts, and Vilmundar saga vidutan. Editors of multi volume editions of the riddarasogur have designated these works as romances or riddarasogur, however. With the exception of Ala flekks cases that could
fit
into either category,
saga, the above-named sagas were edited by Agnete Loth under the collective title
Late Medieval Icelandic Romances. Before her, Bjami Vilhjalmsson had
published,
among
Ala flekks saga,
others,
Sigurdar saga fdts
in his
Vilmundar saga vidutan,
and
six-volume popular edition entitled Riddarasogur.
Of
o
by Ake Lagerholm
the three sagas edited
in
Drei Lygisogur
[scil.
Mdrchen-
sagas], Egils saga einhenda had appeared previously in Rafn’s Fornaldarsogur
Nordrlanda, whereas Ala flekks saga and Flores saga konungs ok sona bans had
what he terms “islandische marcheniiberlieferungen” (1894). Most recently Davi5 Erlingsson has demonstrated that Drauma-Jons saga, which Bjami Vilhjalmsson been excerpted by Jiriczek
had included
devoted
in his article
in his collection
of riddarasogur,
to the lygisogur, or
is in
fact a variant of the folktale
of the dream-interpreting boy (1979).
The time seems
ripe for scholars to address themselves to the terminological
and especially taxonomical problem and to seek greater Icelandic riddarasogur.
A
valid assessment of the riddarasogur as a genre
indeed they constitute a genre or distinct saga type eration of the fornaldarsogur.
long, formally at least, to the
reason
it
would be
romance
tradition of
draw
title
selected by Rafn
noted,
all
of which are
{Hjdlmfes saga ok Olvis),
in
set in
Scandinavia
postmedieval;
By
it
The term fornwas coined by
virtue of the
works
olden times and, with one exception
—
a genre with
homogeneous group, Rafn’s
sagas, such as Volsunga saga,
its
canon of works was
the last category are
from
edition contains heroic-mythical
viking sagas, such as Orvar-Odds saga and
Ragnars saga lodbrokar, and a group (^Schier, pp. 77-78).
be-
between them
created, despite the diverse character of the sagas in the collection. Far constituting a
if
medieval Europe, and for that
of his three-volume edition of sagas.
—
“most of them
and the ‘riddarasogur’ and ‘lygisogur.’ is
—
perforce involves a consid-
a sharp dividing line
aldarsogur, unlike the term riddarasogur,
Rafn for the
—
As Hermann Palsson
a mistake to try to
[the fornaldarsogur]
clarity regarding the
that Schier designated
Abenteuersagas
From an extra-Icelandic literary perspective the sagas in as much romances as are the riddarasogur. Outstanding
examples are Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar and Gongu-Hrolfs saga. These sagas are distinguishable
solely
by virtue of Scandinavian
structural patterns
18.
from the group generally acknowledged
Hermann
setting
to
be riddarasogur
and characters. In an analysis of the
of the fornaldarsogur, Ruth Righter-Gould concluded, how-
Palsson,
“Towards
“Some
a Definition of Fornaldarsogur," in ^Saga Conference 4, p. 16.
Aspects of the Fornaldarsogur as a Corpus” {ANF, 97 [1982], 1-35), Peter Hallberg points out that the fornaldarsogur “show many signs of having been, more or less, influenced by chivalric literature, its themes and vocabulary” (p. 32). In a recent article,
I
Norse Romance
327
ever, that “the legendary sagas
.
.
.
have a distinctive narrative structure which
them
from other Old Icelandic types.” Had a control group of indigenous riddarasogur also been analyzed, the above conclusion would have had to be modified, since the structural elements isolated by Righter-Gould as distinctive features of the fornaldarso gur are presin addition to stylistic considerations sets
apart
ent in the riddarasogur as well: (1) introduction; (2) hero’s youth; (3) motivation
The pattern disof romance. The adventure
for departure; (4) adventure cycle; (5) concluding elements.
N cemed
for the fornaldarsogur
in fact the pattern
is
cycle above represents the quest which, according to Frye “gives literary form to the romance.
.
.
.
quest,” he writes,
The complete form of the romance is clearly the successful “and such a completed form has three main stages: the stage
of the perilous journey and the preliminary minor adventures; the crucial struggle, usually die;
some kind of
battle in
which
either the hero or his foe, or both
and the exaltation of the hero.”^^ With such views as these
must
mind,
in
Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards pointed out in their study Legendary Fiction in Medieval Iceland that some of the fornaldarsogur like the riddarasogur
—
—
clearly belong to the realm of secular romance. Following Frye’s analysis of
I
types of heroes, they suggested that qualities of the hero
we might
classify the sagas according to the
and the way they are displayed.
would go
further and
propose that examination of the hero’s quest, as well as of his motivation for that quest,
is
necessary
classification
if
and thus
we
are to arrive at a
more convincing and
satisfactory
understanding of the character and diversity of
at a better
imaginative Icelandic literature.
/ Once we predicate our analyses of Old Norse-Icelandic tance of the theory that genre
— from
fiction
the perspective of content
—
upon accep-
is
determined
by the accidents of geographical setting or the protagonist’s place of birth than by the character of the hero and the nature of the heroic quest, the tradiless
I
tional,
to
md fornaldarsogur begins
supposedly generic division into riddarasogur
^
crumble. Certain recurring patterns are
common
to translated
and Icelandic
known
as “adventure
riddarasogur as well as to a group of \dXtx fornaldarsogur
sagas” ox Marchensagas or lygisogur. Kathryn
Hume pointed out that
“knights’
number of lying and legendary sagas exhibit the structure Typically, a single hero the romance or folklore pattern.
sagas and a substantial /
variously
known
as
.
undertakes a quest or a series of V assuming power.
A
cuses on narrative types for understanding
tests,
.
.
and ends by succeeding, marrying, and
study of the riddarasogur and fornaldarsogur that fo-
common to both groups would appear to be more
fruitful
one
literary
Old Icelandic
fiction than
one
that limits itself to
category {riddarasogur ox fornaldarsogur) to the exclusion of the other. 19.
Ruth Righter-Gould, “The Fornaldar sogur Nordurlanda:
A
From
Structural Analysis,” SS, 52
(1980), esp. 425, 438. 20. 21.
22.
Anatomy of Criticism, p. 187. Hermann Palsson and Edwards, Legendary Fiction, pp. 12-16. Kathryn Hume, “Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas,” MLR, 68
594-95.
(1973),
Marianne Kalinke
328 the perspective of the heroic quest, a is
the bridal quest. This
comes
as
no
predominant type found
in
both categories
surprise, since the search for a bride
is
a
universally popular theme, one particularly favored in medieval literature.
Icelandic fiction
no exception.
is
In the rather large
the search for
group of Icelandic sagas
that
belong to the bridal-quest type,
and successful wooing of the bride constitute the essential frame
for the several secondary quests the hero
may
the primary motivating force of the plot
and the hero’s raison
undertake.
quest finds varied expression in Icelandic romance. for
woman
The
The hero
bridal quest d’etre.
is
The
both
bridal
obtains the longed-
only after successfully overcoming such obstacles as rival suitors,
Not infrequently the means to the hero’s end are dishonorable: he may resort to force, murder, and abduction in the face of rival suitors, or to impersonation, deceit, and trickery vis-a-vis the sought-for bride. Although the bridal-quest type is dominant among reluctant maidens,
and recalcitrant fathers or other
relatives.
^
/
the indigenous Icelandic riddarasogur,
\lated riddarasogur and the
\
3Xev
it
is
also represented
among
the trans-
fornaldarso gur (Andersson 1985). More than
twenty narratives have the bridal quest as their main theme and the plot’s primary motivating force.
Hrolfs saga Gautreks sonar, which has been designated a fornaldarsaga since
romance of wooer might be
Rafn’s^edition, might be considered the quintes^ntial bridal-quest Icelandic literature. In this one saga the various obstacles the
expected to overcome and the several types of prospective brides found in the aggregate of bridal-quest sagas are depicted in four different wooing expeditions
undertaken by two generations of the same family. Here so-called
“maiden
kings,’’
tagonists are Scandinavian, least
and overprotective and the
fathers.
we meet
rival suitors,
Even though
its
pro-
settings are, if not entirely Scandinavian, at
Northern, Hrolfs saga Gautreks sonar belongs to the same literary tradition
Gibbons saga, Sigurdar saga pogla, Nitida saga, Viktors saga ok Bldvus, and Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns. To begin with, there is old King Gautrekr’s wooing of Ingibjorg to the displeasure of a younger rival. King Olafr. Direct conflict is not generated, as such so-called riddarasogur as
—
however,
until after the princess
has chosen between the two, to the disadvantage
of the younger suitor. The latter attempts to redress what appears to him to be an
unwise and unjust decision. He ambushes the bridal party on
its
return to
The bridegroom is given two choices: to hand over the girl and all her wealth or to fight. Anyone familiar with both translated and Icelandic riddarasogur will recognize the stock figure of the nobleman, highwayman, Gautrekr’s country.
giant, or berserk
i
who
seeks to take another man’s wife, daughter, or sister by
der Weltliteratur (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1955); Theodor Frings and Max Braun, Brautwerbung, i. Berichte uber die Verhandlungen der Sachs. Akad. der Wiss. zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Kl., 96 (1944-48), no. 2 (Leipzig; Hirzel, 1947); Kurt Ranke, “Braut, Brautigam,” in Enzyklopddie des Mdrchens: Handworterbuch zur historischen und 23.
See Friedmar Geissler, Brautwerbung
vergleichenden Erzdhlforschung (Berlin:
W.
in
de Gruyter, 1978), ii;700-726.
— Norse Romance
329
armed forces against those of an unmarried lady of a castle of arms what he cannot by persuasion. We recall Isond’s
force, or musters his to attain
by dint
abduction by the harp-playing Irishman in Tristrams saga, or Ivens saga with Fjallsharfir episode, or Klamadius’s attack
on Blankiflur’s
its
castle in Parcevals
saga, or the several aggressive encounters in Erex saga in which, as in the
opening section of Hrolfs saga Gautreks sonar, the bride herself agrees to the marriage, but the hero must nonetheless demonstrate time and again his right to
Or consider Ddmusta saga,
her as wife and engage in combat to keep her.
which the motif of an aggressive
rival suitor is
hero
The
is
the unsuccessful suitor.
King Jon of Smaland
whom
plot
is
in
given an unusual twist because the
generated by Damusti’s murder of
Gratiana, the daughter of the king of Greece and
Damusti’s secret love, has married. The saga
is
a bridal-quest romance, but an
unusual one. Against seemingly insuperable odds, Damusti, the peccable protagonist, does eventually get the girl, but only after divine intervention
and
assistance have been assured.
The
—
young wife which, incidentally, provides a noteworthy counterpoint to other, less happy May~December alliances, such as that in Guiamars Ijdd is followed by the story of his son’s bridal quest. Hrolfr’s quest is as difficult as Gautrekr’s was easy, primarily story of old
King Gautrekr’s winning of
a
—
because of differences in the characters of the prospective brides. Hrolfr
is
determined to marry t>ombjorg, daughter of the king of Sweden. The princess
in
question belongs, however, to a long tradition of refractory princesses in Icelan-
romance who initially refuse to marry. Among these romances, in which the desired woman impedes the protagonist’s path to success, Kldri saga, which is ascribed to Jon Halldorsson (bishop of Skalholt, 1322-39) and supposedly derives from an unknown Latin romance, is the prototype. It belongs to the category Erik Wahlgren called the “maiden king” romance (1938). At the heart of such tales is the taming of a haughty and cruel princess. One Icelandic romance after another depicts the basic conflict of Kldri saga: a suitor for the hand of a maiden who is “king” is repulsed because she considers herself superior to the male and is afraid she will lose that superiority should she marry. Through a variety of techniques, male and female attempt to outwit each other. Inevitably the male prevails because he is able to discover the woman’s weakness, be it moral or physical. The maiden kings themselves range from obstinate but otherwise courtly ladies surrounded by a splendid court to monarchs who mount horses to fight in battle. At first blush they appear more at home in heroic epic in the case of Lomthan in courtly romance. These nubile maidens are rulers dic
I V
—
bjorg her father has given her complete authority over one-third of
who
Sweden
heap scorn and physical as well as psychological abuse upon them. Pombjorg is finally vanquished by Hrolfr on the battlefield. Other maiden kings are won over by trickery and cunning. In Kldri not only refuse
all
suitors but also
saga, for example, the protagonist outwits cupidity.
An
Queen Serena by appealing
interesting variant of the maiden-king type occurs in
to her
Dmus
saga
Marianne Kalinke
330
drambldta, in which, as the saga commences, not only the heroine but also the hero appear impervious to the charms of the opposite sex, and each to outwit
and humiliate the other. Despite
is
their initial abrasiveness
blooded disdain for their suitors, erstwhile maiden kings eventually
and deprecations, a happy end
spite their insults
is
and coldrelent; de-
finally achieved in marital
The miniature romance of Hrolfr and pombjorg
union.
determined
in
Hrolfs
saga
Gautrekssonar belongs to the maiden-king type: the sexual and military opponents eventually agree to a truce, put aside their differences, and marry.
That the Hrolfr/ Pombjorg if
one contrasts
tale
can be identified as a romance becomes evident
with the Helgi/Olof tale in Hrolfs saga kraka (also found in
it
Rafn’s corpus of fornaldarsdgur) At pattern. Like Viktor in Viktors
first
the narrative follows the maiden-king
saga ok Bldvus and Sigur6r
in
Sigurdar saga
fogla, Helgi has to endure the humiliation of having his head shaved and tarred
by the
woman
he proposes to marry; and like the protagonists of other maiden-
woman’s
king romances, he appeals to the
The
her into his power.
cupidity and thus
similarity ends here.
manages
to bring
The maiden kings of romance
eventually submit to the male, marry, and live happily ever after. In Hrolfs saga kraka, however,
we move
in the
world of heroic
After his sexual
literature.
conquest of Olof, Helgi avenges himself for the shameful treatment he had to
endure earlier
at
her hands by rejecting her. Olof in turn avenges her loss of
honor by concealing the fact that
their sexual
union produced offspring. Heroic
revenge and counterrevenge eventually lead to the tragic incest of Helgi and his daughter Yrsa.
As Helga Reuschel has pointed
Hrolfs saga kraka
is
out, the Helgi/Olof portion of
a heroic transmutation of matter
drawn from
folklore and
romance. Hrolfs saga Gautrekssonar contains two further bridal-quest narratives: one involves Hrolfr’ s brother Ketill, the other Hrolfr’ s foster brother
Asmundr.
Ketill
wishes to marry the daughter of the king of Russia; Asmundr, the daughter of the [
\
king of Ireland. In both narratives the fathers of the prospective brides are major obstacles to the desired union. In the case of the Russian princess, the
maiden
is
not only as hostile as her father, but the
rival suitor. Ketill ’s
wooer must
and Asmundr’ s wooings are replete with
wooed
also cope with a
battles,
bloodshed,
and incarcerations. Fathers or other relatives inimical to prospective suitors or unwilling to marry off their daughters are as kings. Flores saga
Duke S intram
much
the stuff of Icelandic
konungs ok sona bans comes
to
romance
mind;
in
it
as are
maiden
the rejected suitor
war against the father of the desired bride. The most extended treatment of this theme is found in Sigurdar saga turnara in which the hero discovers a beautiful princess confined by her father in a tower. The plot devolves primarily from the hero’s illicit and initially secret liaison with the declares
princess and her father’s attempts to uncover and thus thwart the relationship. Untersuchungen Konkordia, 1933), pp. 92-93. 24. Helga Reuschel,
iiber Staff
und
Stil
der Fornaldarsaga (Buhl-Baden:
,
Norse Romance
.
(
331
The predominance of should not surprise us
\ only
if
bridal-quest narratives
we
the first bridal-quest
among
the Icelandic romances
consider the popularity of what was presumably not
romance but
also the very first
romance
in the
North,
Tristrams saga ok Isdndar, the impact of which on Icelandic literature has been
amply documented by Paul Schach (1968). Its influence pervades as much Remundar saga keisarasonar an acknowledged riddarasaga, as it does GonguHrdlfs saga, a so-called fornaldarsaga. tributed the motif of the lovers. Like Hrolfs
voyage
To
the former, Tristrams saga has con-
for healing; to the latter, the
sword between the
saga Gautrekssonar, Gongu-Hrolfs saga
is
a bridal-quest
romance from beginning to end,^^ even though the eponymous protagonist of the fictional saga is linked by reason of his name to Rollo, the Norse chieftain who laid siege to Chartres in the year 911 and died in 927. To be sure, Gongu-Hrolfs saga abounds in battles, but their focus is less on the vikings’ conquest of foreign peoples and territories than it is on the bridal quest. The saga culminates in a triple wedding, the description of which is in the best tradition of the riddarasogur:
Ok
at
brullaupinu settu ok veizlunni sva skipa6ri, matti heyra allskonar strengleika,
horpur ok gigjur, simphon ok salterium; h^r voru bumbur barSar ok pipur blasnar,
me5
allskyns listilegum leikum, er likaminn matti vi6 glebjast. Eftir hat voru
jungfrurnar innleiddar
me6 srnum
skrautlegum skara ok skemtilegum kvenna
fj61da.26
(And when
wedding took place and the banquet was prepared, there could be heard all kinds of stringed instruments, harps and fiddles, cymphans and psalteries; drums were beaten and pipes played, and there were all kinds of games of skill for the pleasure of the participants. After that the maidens were led in accompanied by the
their splendid
entourage and pleasing crowd of women.)
—
Sweden, Norway, and Jutland and contains certain elements unfamiliar to Continental romance, such as burial mounds and berserks, the saga belongs to the same literary tradition as Tristrams saga, the quintessential bridal-quest romance, and the several IcelanAlthough Gongu-Hrolfs saga transpires
—
in the
North
in
by it. An investigation of all “romantic” sagas, both Southern and Northern, is a desideratum; a regrouping as well as modified nomenclature might result. Gustaf dic riddarasogur inspired
Cederschiold had entitled his edition of riddarasogur, translated as well as indigenous, Fornsogur Sudrlanda in analogy to Rafn’s Fornaldarsogur Nordrlanda. Given the one constant, the aristocratic character of the protagonist, in a large group of Icelandic romances, scholars might want to adopt a refined clas-
works based on setting and characters: riddarasogur Sudrlanda or “Southern romances,” and riddarasogur Nor drlanda or “Northern rosification of these
j
1
25. See ibid., pp. 94-95. 26.
“Gongu-Hrolfs saga,”
in
Fornaldarsogur Nordr landa, ed. Valdimar Asmundarson (Reyk-
javik: S. Kristjansson, 1889), iii:236.
Marianne Kalinke
332
mances.” The former category would embrace the translated Norwegian and the derivative indigenous Icelandic compositions with non-Scandinavian settings; the latter, those Icelandic compositions with Scandinavian settings that are
now
j
designated as
\
'' xomdiniic'
'
fornaldarsogur.^'^
Facts surrounding the origin of the riddarasogur are scant.
Tristrams saga ok Isdndar attests that a certain Brother Robert
—
The colophon
— we know
in
noth-
him translated the work into Norwegian in the year 1226. The translation of Thomas’s Tristan, generally assumed to be the first of the riddarasogur, was undertaken at the behest of King Hakon Hakonarson (1217-63). An Abbot Robert is responsible for Elis saga; this work too was commissioned albeit by Hakon, and it is not implausible that this Abbot Robert is identical with the Brother Robert of older and more advanced in the monastic hierarchy ing about
—
—
Tristrams saga. Furthermore, Ivens saga, Mdttuls saga, and the Strengleikar
King Hakon and would therefore have been produced before 1263. According to the later redaction of Karlamagnus saga, “Landres l3attr” is of English origin. Bjami Erlingsson is said to have found the English tale in 1285 in Scotland and to have had it translated into Norwegian (ed. Unger, p. 50). Hakon’s grandson, Hakon Magnusson (12991319), is commended by the author of Viktors saga ok Bldvus for having had many romances translated from Greek and French (ed. Jonas Kristjansson, p. 3). We know of none. The names of two Icelandic bishops are associated with the riddarasogur. According to the testimony of AM 226 fol., Brandr Jonsson of Holar (died 1264) translated Gautier de Chatillon’s Alexandreis The introduction of Kldri saga ascribes its origin to Jon Halldorsson, bishop of Skalholt also
owe
their existence to the patronage of
(1322-39),
who supposedly knew
Cederschiold, p.
the narrative in a Latin metrical version (ed.
1).
The paucity of information concerning the origin of the Norwegian riddarasogur is compounded on the one hand by a corresponding paucity of Norwegian manuscripts and on the other by a proliferation of Icelandic redactions of the Norwegian translations. The unparalleled dimensions of Icelandic manuscript transmission have militated, however indirectly, against a proper evaluation of the translators’ work and a proper understanding of the character of the riddarasogur. This paradox is explained by the nearly total absence of Norwegian manuscripts that may be said to represent the work of the translators better than 1
do the
late Icelandic
manuscripts; the erratic approach of copyists to textual
transmission; and the unjustified prejudice of nineteenth-century editors against
postmedieval manuscripts. i
Few Norwegian
survive. Elis saga, the Strengleikar,
Arguments
texts of the translated
and Pamphilus
riddarasogur
(a translation of the Latin
and against revising nomenclature and a consideration of the problem of genre in general can be found in the following articles in SS, 47 (1975): Lars Lonnroth, “The Concept of Genre in Saga Literature,’’ 419-26; Joseph Harris, “Genre in the Saga Literature: A Squib,’’ 42736; Theodore M. Andersson, “Splitting the Saga,’’ 437-41. See also Lars Lonnroth, “Genrebegrcppen,’’ in “Tesen om de tva kulturema: Kritiska studier i den islandska sagaskrivningens sociala fdrutsattningar,’’ SI, 15 (1965), 9-32. 27.
for
.
Norse Romance
333
dialogue Pamphilus de amore) are preserved in the Norwegian codex
Gardie 4-7 that dates from circa 1250-70. Pidreks saga
is
extant in a
De
la
Norwegian
manuscript from the second half of the thirteenth century (Stockholm Perg.
fol.
no. 4). In the National Archives in Oslo (Riksarkivet) are found three fragments
of one leaf
(NRA
65), and these are the only surviving remnants of a fourteenth-
century manuscript of Flores saga ok Blankiflur. Until recently a vellum frag-
ment of Karlamagnus saga (NRA 61) had been counted among surviving Norwegian manuscripts of the riddarasogur According to Stefan Karlsson, however,
certain
provenance.
,
orthographic forms
suggest Icelandic rather than Norwegian
In general, our assessment of the thirteenth-century translations
on the testimony of manuscripts that are geographically and chronologically some remove from their original composition. The oldest extant Icelandic manuscripts of the translated riddarasogur are
rests at
/
(AM
655 4to) and Mottuls saga (AM 598 4to 1(3), both from around 1300. Breta sogur and Trojumanna saga are preserved together in two fourteenth-century manuscripts, 544 4to, better known as
fragments of Alexanders saga
[
AM
Hauksbok, and
AM
573
4to.
The
latter
manuscript also contains a one-leaf
fragment of Valvens fmttr, the continuation of Parcevals saga. The oldest preserved remnant of the latter saga
is
a fourteenth-century fragment of one leaf
(NKS 1794b 4to). Other manuscripts from the fourteenth century preserve texts of Magus saga jarls (AM 580 4to) and Bevers saga (AM 567 4to ii). The most important medieval codex of romances 6) containing
among
is
a manuscript (Stockholm Perg. 4to no.
others the oldest texts of Amicus saga ok Amilius, Flovents
saga, Ivens saga, and Kldri saga. Partalopa saga has
533 4to from the
come down
to us in
AM
Four precious leaves from the late fifteenth century, 567 4to xxii (three leaves) and the so-called Reeves Fragment are our oldest attestations of what presumably was the first of the late fifteenth century.
AM
Norwegian translations, Tristrams saga ok Isondar. The oldest complete text of this romance is to be found only in seventeenth-century paper manuscripts. The transmission of Erex saga is even more tenuous: its oldest complete text is preserved in 181b fol. from around 1650. Two pieces of one leaf from around 1500 (Lbs 1230 8vo iii) that had been used in bookbinding are too
AM
fragmentary for anything but conjecture concerning the nature of the original translation.
summary, our oldest full (albeit frequently defective) texts of almost all the Norwegian riddarasogur postdate their composition by at least 150 years. In not a few cases complete redactions can be found only in seventeenth-century Icelandic manuscripts. Consequently, we must assess the reliability of extant manu-
/ [
In
scripts, especially late Icelandic
paper manuscripts, that transmit the thirteenth-
century Norwegian translations. Scholarly opinion
—
much
not so
directly ex-
pressed as implied by the nature of the research conducted and the primary sources employed
— has
oscillated
and continues
28. Stefan Karlsson, “Islandsk bogeksport
til
Norge
i
to oscillate
middelalderen,”
between two ex-
MM (1979),
pp. 1-17.
Marianne Kalinke
334 tremes: faith and agnosticism.
The former
attitude predominates,
can point to a long line of literary historians, undertaken comparative studies and
arasogur and
who have
stylistic
critics,
analyses of the translated ridd-
1977a; Halvorsen 1975; Kalinke 1977;
Meissner 1902; Schlauch 1934a: 174-75), their linguistic
and
who have
and editors
issued pronouncements regarding the techniques of
thirteenth-century translators (Barnes
ed. Aebischer),
We
however.
ability {Januals Ijdd,
(Hallberg 1971, 1975; Schach 1965,
stylistic proclivities
1975). Rudolf Meissner’s analysis of the Strengleikar (1902) and comparison
with the French lais
is
exemplary yet unfortunately informed by the erroneous
assumption that the Norwegian codex
wording of the translation
(p.
De
la
Gardie 4-7 reliably transmits the
189). Meissner implicitly accepted the theory of
Rudolf Keyser and C. R. Unger, the
first
editors of the Strengleikar (1850), that
Norwegian redaction represents the first fair copy of the translator’s draft (p. xix). This optimism regarding the Norwegian manuscript is shared by Robert Cook and Mattias Tveitane in their new edition of the Strengleikar (1979). They the
repeat Keyser’s and Unger’s assumption and regularly refer to the “translator”
when noting discrepancies between
the
Norwegian
text
and the French source
(p.
xxxi).29
Given the venerable age of De
Norwegian manuscripts
la
Gardie 4-7 and scholarly confidence
— would
Norwegian redaction of work some minor scribal
in general, the position that the
the Strengleikar accurately represents the translator’s errors aside
in
be reasonable were
it
—
not that another primary text of
Guiamars Ijdd, the first of the Strengleikar and a translation of the French Guigemar, one of the lais of Marie de France, has come to light in an Icelandic manuscript (Lbs 840 4to) from 1737. This text retains not only original translations from the French lai not found in the Norwegian manuscript but also correct translations of passages for which readings in the Norwegian redaction are corrupt or otherwise problematic. Nonetheless, the Icelandic redaction has also
suffered textual attrition. ological and alliterating
Gvimars saga preserves fewer examples of the tautcollocations that are characteristic of the Norwegian
translations. Occasional misreadings
landic redaction. Separated
only that corruption dic
is
phenomenon but
as
by
much
five
and modifications have crept into the Ice-
hundred years, the two redactions
a medieval
Norwegian
attest
not
as a postmedieval Icelan-
also that even very late Icelandic paper manuscripts can
contain invaluable evidence for arriving at a better reconstruction of a thirteenth-
century Norwegian translation {Gvimars saga,
ed.
Kalinke; Kalinke
1980,
1981a; Jakobsen 1978; Skarup 1979a). Gvimars saga provides evidence of corruption in
De
la
Gardie 4-7, thus vindicating Eugen Kolbing,
by Rudolf Meissner for suggesting containing Elis saga, 29.
is
that this
marred by textual
See, for example, p. 102, n.
1; p.
1
who was
attacked
Norwegian codex, at least the portion corruption and attrition.^®
15, n. 13; p. 118, n. 16; p. 122, n. 19; pp.
220-21,
n. 2.
See Kolbing’s edition of Elis saga ok Rosamundu, pp. xiii-xxix (1881), and Meissner’s response (1902:138-96). 30.
Norse Romance
335
A
perusal of Icelandic manuscripts reveals that the attitudes of scribes to the texts they were supposed to be copying was anything but uniform. Some Icelan\
die scribes faithfully transmitted the text of an exemplar; others modified both
1
substance and structure.
^and interpolated. tion, others to
Some
Some
scribes
condensed and omitted, others expanded
Icelandic scribes tended to reduce rhetorical ornamenta-
embellish laconic prose; in either case
of nuance ensued.
stylistic
modification and
remarkable that a variety of contrary scribal approaches could and did coexist even in one and the same work. Although the shift
It is
proliferation of Icelandic manuscripts editing, scribal
independence
draws particular attention
to Icelandic
neither the prerogative of Icelanders nor the
is
mark of postmedieval Icelandic manuscripts alone, as the evidence from Guiamars Ijod/Gvimars saga confirms. Moreover, not a few riddarasogur, translated as well as indigenous,
have come down
three, redactions substantially at variance with
to us in two,
sometimes even
one another. The several versions
of one -saga can be distinguished by length or style or a combination of the two, as well as by discrepancies in plot. The French sources of the translated ridd-
arasogur fortunately serve as guides when tion
— —
we endeavor to
ascertain
which redac-
or which combination of passages, scenes, or episodes from several redac-
tions
reflects best the
wording of the original
translation.
Close comparison with their French sources of hitherto unknown, published, or ignored manuscript fragments of
some of
un-
the Arthurian ridd-
arasdgur (such as Parcevals saga, Mdttuls saga, Ivens saga, and Tristrams saga ok Isdndar) presents ever more conclusive evidence that the Norwegian transreproduced more of the content of their sources more accurately than
lators
standard editions have in the past led us to believe. In every instance
among primary manuscripts of one saga mentary corruption. Although oldest,
all
we
observe
a process that might be termed comple-
extant primary manuscripts, starting with the
have undergone substantial textual deterioration, the passages affected
the several manuscripts of one saga are not necessarily identical.
conflation of passages
from the several primary manuscripts
sent the text of the source
closer to the content
— and
may at
As
— of
a result,
that correctly repre-
effect a reconstruction that brings us
times even the style
in
one step
the original translation.
Ivens saga, for instance, exists in two substantially different versions, one represented by the vellums Stockholm Perg. 4to no. 6 (ca. 1400) and
AM 489
4to (ca. 1450), the other by the late seventeenth-century manuscript Stockholm
Pap.
fol.
no.
46 (1690). The former redaction,
densed but highly
alliterative
that of the vellums,
is
a con-
prose version that reproduces the French plot more
or less faithfully, although certain episodes have been significantly reduced and
some minor scenes script, is radically
deleted.
The
latter redaction,
abbreviated and stylistically laconic
text of the vellums; nonetheless,
Yvain that
is
represented by the paper manu-
it
when compared with
retains important matter
the
from Chretien’s
lacking in the redaction represented by the other vellums. Although
Stockholm 46 was transcribed
in the seventeenth century, the text of Ivens
saga
Marianne Kalinke
336 in this
manuscript was copied from the no longer extant Ormsbok, a codex dating
from around 1400, approximately the same period as the other vellums. Both vellums and paper manuscript represent corrupt and condensed redactions the
— of
—
Norwegian translation. Nonetheless, on the basis of the matter transmitted only in Stockholm 46 we can postulate an original Ivens saga that reflected the content of the French romance at once more accurately and in greater detail than has hitherto been supposed on the basis of the text in Kolbing’s two editions. latter
more so than the former
the
In Kolbing’s estimation the seventeenth-century paper manuscript tual value {Ivens
Only now
that Foster
Blaisdell’s critical edition of the three primary manuscripts of the saga has
published does the textual significance of the Stockholm 46 redaction apparent. For instance, a substantial portion of the
Pesme Aventure
Yvain (vv. 5240-5346) does not appear in Ivens saga editions.
One
—
to
in
W.
been
become
Chretien’s
judge from Kolbing’s
scholar indeed singled out the episode as a typical example of
attrition in the translated
the
tex-
saga 1872:ix, 1898:xiii), and therefore he did not make use of
redaction for either edition of Ivens saga.
this
had no
riddarasogur (Zink 1975:79). With the publication of
Stockholm 46 manuscript, the observation loses
its
validity.
To be
sure, the
episode in question appears in reduced form and with several modifications, but the text of the paper manuscript attests that a scribe
and not the translator
is
responsible for the loss of substantial portions of Chretien’s text. Icelandic scribal practice and faulty
modem editorial judgment are obstacles to
research that must not be dismissed too readily.
The scholar who would devote
himself to the riddarasogur but does not have ready access to the manuscripts
is
handicapped.^^ Jonas Kristjansson justifiably observed that not only are old editions out of print but those that are obtainable
have recently been reprinted
—
“fall short of the
Tristrams saga and Elis saga
demands
that are
now made,
and hence cannot be considered a trustworthy basis for scholarly research’’ (1975:279).
Among
the translated riddarasogur such important
works as
Tris-
trams saga ok Isondar, Severs saga, Breta sogur, Flores saga ok Blankiflur, Magus saga, and Parcevals saga, to name just a few, are not yet available in editions that
meet contemporary standards. The editions of Icelandic ridd-
Denmark; Amamagnaean Institute and Royal Library, Copenhagen. In England: British Library, London; Bodleian Library, Oxford. In France; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. In Germany: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. In Iceland; Landsbokasafn (National Library), Stofnun Ama Magnussonar, 31. Manuscripts of the riddarasogur can be found in the following repositories. In
and Pj66minjasafn, Reykjavik;
libraries in
Akureyri, SkagafjorSur, Skogar, BorgarfjorSur, and in
Norway: Library of Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab, Trondheim; National Archives, Oslo. In Scotland: Advocates Library, Edinburgh. In Sweden: National Archives and Royal Library, Stockholm; Uppsala private hands throughout the country. In Ireland: Trinity College, Dublin. In
Lund Library. In the United States; Fiske Icelandic Collection, N.Y.; Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.;
University Library; University of
Cornell University,
Ithaca,
Nikulas Ottenson Collection, Johns Hopkins University Library, Baltimore, Md.; Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.
Norse Romance arasogur are no
337 better.
As welcome
Riddarasogur (1949-54) print, scholars
is,
since
would do well
Bjami Vilhjalmsson’s six-volume edition makes available sagas that are now out of
as
it
to recall that, excepting the
modem
Icelandic
orthography, the texts are mostly those of nineteenth-century scholarly editions,
such as Kolbing’s and Cederschiold’s, or nineteenth-century popular Icelandic editions. Further, scholars
security
dic
by the
Romances
may have been
availability of (ed.
lulled into a false sense of textual
Agnete Loth’s
Loth 1962-65).
It
is
five- volume
Late Medieval Icelan-
too easy to ignore the editor’s
all
intention “to provide a long-needed provisional basis’’ (italics mine) for study of the Icelandic
romances
(i:vii).
The
each saga
text of
is
based upon the oldest
vellum extant, with selected variants from other manuscripts. For want of a
complete apparatus the editions
are,
however,
far
G. Foote rightly observed, “this sorry
as Peter
from state
definitive. Nonetheless,
of textual
affairs,
which
Norse scholars have sadly allowed to remain thus unrepaired, has not prevented translators translating
and commentators commenting.
The work of nineteenth-century script resources at the disposal
unknown
editors
is
textually deficient.
Many manu-
of scholars today were either inaccessible or
a century ago. Further, nineteenth-century editors were prejudiced
unaware of their signifiwould seem, the philological
against post-Reformation paper manuscripts and were
cance for textual criticism. Not unreasonably,
of the pioneering editors of the riddarasogur told them that what
instincts
oldest
is
it
is
best and that the greater the chronological gap between composition and
copy, the greater the likelihood of corruption. They did not reckon sufficiently with the unpredictability of Icelandic scribes.
As meticulous
a scholar as Kolbing
could have erred as he did in his edition of Ivens saga only
if
he believed
Icelandic redactions to be internally consistent. His dismissal of the Stockholm
46 redaction of Ivens saga as totally worthless is difficult to explain, unless one assumes that he read only the first few leaves of the manuPap.
fol.
no.
script.
In
most instances access
to manuscripts
is still
or stylistic studies of the riddarasdgur. Hitherto
a sine qua
unknown
non for comparative
or ignored manuscript
fragments offer compelling evidence in support of this claim. For example, the oldest fragment of Parcevals saga
(NKS 1794b
4to, fourteenth century) provides
evidence that the translator adhered more closely to the content of his source than Kolbing’s edition would suggest {Parcevals saga, ed. Simek 1982 [“Ein Frag-
ment”]). In a sequence of twenty-eight verses (2456-83) depicting the storming of a castle, Kolbing’s text, based on Stockholm Perg. 4to no. 6, suggests that the translator had reduced the content of this passage by four verses (2480-83).^^
The fragment contains those very verses but
lacks a translation of a different set
G. Foote, “Saman er broeSra eign bezt at sja,” BONIS (1975), p. 12. 33. References are to Chretien de Troyes: Le roman de Perceval ou Le conte du graal, ed. William Roach, 2d rev. ed. (Geneva: Droz, 1959). 32. Peter
Marianne Kalinke
338
of four verses (2464-67). Conflation of the two primary texts produces what
amounts
to verse-for- verse translation (Kalinke
The conflation proposed here
—
content with the
work
is
valid only
when
when we encounter
that is to say,
toward
as a preliminary step
analysis of the translated riddarasogur
serve as guide
19816:68-71). literary-critical
the French sources can
actual correspondence of
one or the other manuscript. Whenever the
translated in
riddarasogur exhibit textual augmentation vis-a-vis the sources, the origin of such independent intercalations
much
as
is
of the text of an individual manuscript.
A
a matter of conjecture as striking
which a French original provides no model
is
is
the merit
example of an addition for
the prologue to Mdttuls saga,
(AM 598 4to 1(3) and (AM 179 fol. and AM
represented by two primary texts, one from around 1300 the other preserved only in seventeenth-century copies
181b
fol.)
of a text
that is defective
copied.
in a
manuscript from ca. 1400 (Stockholm Perg. 4to no. 6)
today but was
The older
text, that
still
intact in the seventeenth century
of the vellum fragment,
when
was
it
approximately two-thirds
is
the length of the text in the later paper manuscripts. Unlike the prologue in
179, the prologue in the vellum fragment does not contain matter that
is
AM
primarily
tautological and might express a copyist’s penchant for rhetorical embellishment. In face of such manuscript evidence,
two questions
attributed to the translator or to a later redactor?
arise. Is the
prologue to be
Evidence from other sagas
would permit ascription to either. Further, of the two recensions of the prologue, which is the original, the longer or the shorter text? Again, one can take either position and argue one’s point of view by adducing supporting evidence from other riddarasogur, both translated and indigenous. If the longer prologue represents the translator’s
work, then the shorter
evidence of extensive reduction within the shorter prologue
is
original,
text of the first
vellum fragment provides
century of transmission. If the
however, then Mdttuls saga as we know
it
from the
paper manuscripts and from Cederschiold’s edition represents a rhetorically embellished version of the original translation.
category as the later
Magus saga jarls
earlier, criticized the older version for
mented the
tale
by means of
It
would then
(ca. 1350), the
fall
same
into the
author of which, as noted
being too briefly told; he therefore aug-
rhetorical ornamentation
and several interpolated
fysettir.
A
similar
original
is
problem
in
determining which of two
—
or three
—
redactions
is
posed by the indigenous Icelandic riddarasogur. Konrads saga
the
keis-
arasonar and Sigurdar saga pdgla, for instance, are preserved in two redactions each. In 1859 Gunnlaugur P6r5arson published an edition of Konrads saga based on the text of
AM
179
fol.
(seventeenth century), a copy of Stockholm
Perg. 4to no. 6 (ca. 1400). Twenty-five years later Gustaf Cederschiold edited a
divergent and older redaction, that of Stockholm Perg. 4to no. 7 (ca. 1350). critical edition
of the saga based on
and because Cederschiold’s text
is
all
A
manuscripts has not yet been published;
readily available, especially in
hjalmsson’s popular edition, but Gunnlaugur’s
is
not, the
little
Bjami
Vil-
attention the saga
Norse Romance
339
has so far received rests on a deficient
text.^"^
represented by a long and a short redaction.
Similarly, Sigurdar saga pdgla
The two
cognizance of the work disagree as to which
scholars
who have
is
taken
the original version (Einar 6l.
is
Sveinsson 1964:cxix-cxx; Bjorn K. Eorolfsson 1934:441-43); supporting evi-
dence for either position
wanting. Study of Dirius saga drambldta, extant in
is
three redactions, the oldest of
fragments,
is
facilitated
which
is
preserved in two fifteenth-century vellum
by Jonas Kristjansson’s
critical edition.
The saga
is
characterized by progressively increased condensation in the two later redactions.
The redaction
served in
AM
184
that Jonas Kristjansson calls the
fol.,
sixteenth centuries,
“middle version”
(pre-
seventeenth century), composed during the fifteenth or
a case in point for the contrary scribal editing tendencies
is
noticeable in the translated and Icelandic riddarasogur: although the redactor of the middle version abridged
— and
altered
—
the older text, he also interpolated
matter from other sources, such as Alexanders saga (Dinus saga drambldta, pp.
and Ixiv). Given the complexities and vagaries of Icelandic manuscript transmission and the inadequacy of most available editions, the literary historian and critic is well
xlviii
advised to practice caution. In no instance can alent of an
known,
Ausgabe
letzter
Hand. Unfortunately
forgotten, or ignored.
A
case in point
and Ivens saga
—
that
is
boast the manuscript equivthis fact is often either
provided by an analysis of the
appeared in 1977
in
Saga-Book of the Viking Society
and was predicated on the assumption that “in their present arasogur fied
MSS
un-
—Elis saga, Flores saga ok Blanki-
translation technique of three riddarasogur flur,
we
state the ridd-
accurately represent the material translated, abbreviated or ampli-
by Brother Robert and
his
nameless colleagues” (Barnes 1977a:438). Since
nineteenth-century editions rather than the manuscripts themselves were consulted for the study, conclusions about manuscripts are valid only insofar as
nineteenth-century editorial judgment
is
not flawed.
The passages
selected
from
Ivens saga for comparison with Yvain are based only on the text published by
Kolbing, for example, and thus the author could not take into account significant readings from Stockholm Pap.
fol.
no.
46
for the simple reason that Kolbing
chose to ignore the manuscript.
The same
trust in the reliability
scripts that are the basis
of extant manuscripts (those extant manu-
of nineteenth-century editions) that generated invalid
conclusions regarding the translation technique in Ivens saga also informed the
otherwise commendable
statistical
analyses of Peter Hallberg (1971). On the
basis of certain syntactic-stylistic features, Hallberg distinguished
Norwegian group of
translations
—
between a
a so-called Tristram-group, to which Ivens
saga, Mottuls saga, Parcevals saga with Valvens pdttr, Tristrams saga, and the Strengleikar belong
— and
a control group of translated and Icelandic ridd-
arasogur that includes Bevers saga, the Icelandic redaction of Elis saga ok Konrads saga keisarasonar is based solely on Cederof variants provided by Gunnlaugur PorSarson’s edition. acknowledgment edition with no
34. Otto Zitzelsberger’s translation of
schiold’s
Marianne Kalinke
340
Rosamundu, Erex saga, Flores saga ok Blankiflur, Flovents saga, Magus saga
Mirmanns saga, and Partalopa saga. Since Hallberg’s
jarls,
calculations are is
open
man
best
based on insufficient manuscript evidence, the validity of his conclusions to question.
In light of the preceding, Jonas Kristjansson’s
suited to undertake a critical edition of a
undertake scholarly research on
it
work
as well”
Kolbing deserves mention here as a scholar
is
is
in
remark
that
often the
man
best suited to
reasonable (1975:277). Eugen
whom
the editorial and literary-
temperaments were joined. Despite the shortcomings of Kolbing’ s edi-
critical
he and others like him must be credited with being the
tions,
“the
the translated riddarasogur. Their scholarly editions
removed
the riddarasogur
nental perspective, that
works^^
from a position of
is,
first
poularizers of
and comparative studies
relative obscurity
— from
a Conti-
since Icelanders had never ceased to enjoy these
— and granted them
a place in the great corpus of medieval
European
romance. The significance of Tristrams saga ok Isondar as the only complete extant
member
of the
Thomas branch of
the Tristan legend and the significance
of the Strengleikar as the third major collection of Breton lais in existence are
beyond dispute. Despite Jonas Kristjansson’s suggestion that editorial and literary-critical work
be undertaken by one and the same scholar, current and past research on the Old
Norse-Icelandic riddarasogur has tended to
and
editors
split:
have produced editions
have practiced criticism. Even though the work of such
literary critics
scholars as Kolbing and Cederschiold went
beyond the preparation of
texts
and
description of manuscripts, they endeavored primarily to determine the sources
of the Norwegian romances. The riddarasogur were edited and analyzed with an
eye to a
common
medieval
tradition.
The comparative
century scholars were undertaken to elucidate as as the character of the translations.
Isondar, a
work
much
studies of nineteenth-
the nature of the sources
The outstanding example
that is as important for
French
is
Tristrams saga ok
literature as for
Old Norse-
Icelandic literature. Without this saga Joseph Bedier’s reconstruction of as’s Tristan,
for all
its
Thom-
weaknesses, would have been unthinkable.^^ Until
Meissner’s study Die Strengleikar appeared in 1902, no major effort had been
expended
to
apply literary-critical methods to the riddarasogur as a body of
narratives in their
own
right.
35. For a reaction to Hallberg’s analyses, see Blaisdell 1974, and Hallberg’s response 1975. 36. in
In addition to
popular editions
many
in the
copies in manuscript, not a few riddarasogur were available to Icelanders nineteenth century, such as Blomstrvalla saga (1814), Erex saga (1886),
Konrads saga keisarasonar (1859), Magus saga
jarls (1858), Mirmanns saga (1884), Saulus saga ok Nikanors (1852), Sigrgards saga free kna (1884), Sigurdar saga I>dgla
Kldri saga (1884),
(1883), Valdimars saga (1852), Vilmundar saga vidutan (1878), Pjalar-Jons saga (1857).
May
modem orthography
in the Sunday issue of 390-93, 406) bespeaks the appeal 26, 1968,
publication of Sigurdar sagafots as recently as 1968 with a Reykjavik newspaper (Timinn, Sunnudagsblad,
The
of medieval romance even to present-day Icelanders. 37. Joseph Bedier,
1902-5).
Le roman de Tristan par Thomas: Poeme du XIP
siecle, 2 vols. (Paris: Didot,
Norse Romance
Two
341
from the early twentieth century deserve mention. The first to investigate the riddarasogur as a group and as medieval literature was Henry Goddard Leach’s Angevin Britain and Scandinavia indeed a “guide book in studies
—
strange territory” for most medievalists, especially in the English-speaking world
(1921 :vii). Although incomplete, the study was a
first effort to
acquaint the world
with Scandinavia’s contribution to medieval romance. Leach focused on the
some of the indigenous romances as well, such as Dmus saga drambldta, Samsons saga fagra, and Tristrams saga ok Isoddar. The standard work on romance in Iceland is still Margaret Schlauch’s monograph by that title, published in 1934. The work is ambitious in scope: translated riddarasogur but considered
(
manuscripts were consulted
if editions
were lacking; included
in the
survey are not
only the medieval riddarasogur and fornaldarsogur but also postmedieval folktales. In short, the
focal point of the study
word “romance” is
is
understood
in a
broad sense. Since the
an analysis of the motifs prevalent in Icelandic romance,
other aspects of this literature, such as style, structure, or characterization, are
perforce neglected. Understandably, the analysis of the riddarasogur
— only one
of the types of saga subsumed under Margaret Schlauch’s “romance” vidually and as a group
is
—
indi-
limited.
Leach’s and Schlauch’s studies were for several decades solitary milestones in the assessment of the riddarasogur as I
European and
Although Erik Wahlgren’s The Maiden King
upon the heels of Schlauch’s monograph, ited, presumably because the dissertation
its
in
as Scandinavian literature.
Iceland (1938) followed hard
impact appears to have been lim-
(a sixty-eight-page typescript)
was a
by the University of Chicago Libraries). Nonetheless, study provides useful summaries of a dozen narratives as well as a classifica-
private edition (distributed the
tion of motifs
common
to the
maiden-king type.
Until recently, literary historians have given short shrift to the riddarasogur,
especially the indigenous sagas.
We
find
as having a significant place in the evolution of
An
extreme case of scholarly neglect
translated
to discuss these
romances
Old Norse-Icelandic
literature.
no attempts
is
SigurSur Nordal’s dismissal of the
and Icelandic romances with one paragraph each (^Sigur5ur Nordal,
pp. 224, 268) in his Sagalitteraturen, even though the riddarasogur are enumer-
ated and defined in the introduction as one of the six traditional types of saga
(^Sigur5ur Nordal, p. 180). Equally cursory
is
Jon Helgason’s treatment of the
romances (Hon Helgason 1934:21 1-13) and even more of the indigenous Icelandic derivatives in a seemingly obligatory paragraph of generalities that bespeaks a disdain for the genre equal to SigurSur Nordal’ s. Although the translated
Norges og Islanas litteratur (^Paasche/ Holtsmark, pp. 467-72), the indigenous romances are totally ignored. Eugen Mogk, Finnur Jonsson, and Jan de Vries are more generous, albeit not entirely receptive (^Finnur Jonsson, ^de Vries, ^Mogk). Their histories provide short plot summaries and give sources of the translated romances and noteworthy motifs translated riddarasogur are discussed in
for the indigenous compositions. Occasionally remarks about the riddarasogur,
Marianne Kalinke
342
especially the Icelandic sagas, suggest that the writer had at best only a superficial
that
acquaintance with the works in question. Indeed, Eugen
Mogk
admitted
he had to rely on comments and plot summaries of other scholars for want of
As commendable as Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen’s chapter “Den hpviske litteratur’’ in Norr0n fortsellekunst is, especially access to editions and manuscripts.
in discussing the translated
ature,
it
fails to
romances
in the
context of medieval European
liter-
consider the impact of the Norwegian riddarasogur on the
development of Icelandic romance {^NFk). The Icelandic riddarasogur are passed over in silence. The most recent survey of the riddarasogur in a reference
work
is
that of
Kurt Schier (^Schier). Given the conciseness of the Metzler series
Germanisten, Schier gives a
fair presentation
of the ridd-
Realienbiicher
fiir
arasogur
term for the translated sagas) and the Mdrchensagas
(his
(that is,
indigenous riddarasogur) vis-a-vis the other saga types. The section devoted to
Norwegian and Icelandic romances (pp. 92-115), when compared to those devoted to the kings’ sagas (pp. 9-34) or family sagas (pp. 34-66), bespeaks a more realistic assessment of the place of romance in Icelandic literature than that the
of earlier literary historians.
Old Norse-Icelandic romance has become a subject of serious scholarly inquiry. The change occurred around the middle of the century and was generated in large
measure by
Institutes in
Denmark and
editorial activity in
Iceland.
Copenhagen and Reykjavik have been seeking
The Amamagnaean to provide a
sounder
textual basis for literary criticism with their diplomatic editions of translated
and
Icelandic romances alike. Foster Blaisdell’s editions of Erex saga (1965) and
Ivens saga (1979), Jonna Louis-Jensen’s editions of Trojumanna saga (1963, 1981), and Robert Cook’s and Mattias Tveitane’s edition of the Strengleikar
(1979) are exemplary, as are Jonas Kristjansson’s editions of Di'nus saga dramb-
and Viktors saga okBldvus (1964). Many of the romances discussed by Margaret Schlauch in Romance in Iceland (1934a) are now easily accessible Idta (1960)
in
Agnete Loth’s
Late Medieval Icelandic Romances (1962-
five- volume edition
65). Critical editions of a
number of
the riddarasogur are in progress, notably
^
Tristrams saga ok Isondar, Fibres saga ok Blankiflur, Bevers saga, and Mottuls saga. Further, facsimile editions of several codices containing translated and
indigenous riddarasogur have been issued in the series Early Icelandic scripts in Facsimile. in
Thus
Manu-
the scholar has immediate access to the unedited texts
primary manuscripts of several romances: the facsimile edition of Stockholm
Amicus saga ok AmiUus, Bevers saga, Ivens saga, Parcevals saga, Valvens fydttr, Mirmanns saga, Flovents saga, Elis saga ok Rosamundu, Konrdds saga keisarasonar, Pjalar-Jons saga, Mottuls saga, and Kldri saga; in the facsimile of AM 489 4to {Ivens saga, ed. Blaisdell, Perg. 4to no. 6 (ed. Slay 1972) contains A
1980) can be found Flores saga ok Blankiflur, Brings saga ok Tryggva, Ivens saga, Tristrams saga ok Isoddar, and Kirjalax saga; the facsimile edition of
586 and 589 4to
(ed.
AM
Loth 1977) makes available Flores saga konungs ok sona
Norse Romance
343
hans, Vilmundar saga vidutan, Brings saga ok Tryggva, Kirjalax saga,
Samsons
sagafagra, Valdimars saga, Kldri saga, Ectors saga, mdAlaflekks saga. Concurrently there has been a change of attitude toward Old Norse-Icelandic romance. Scandinavianists have come to realize that the riddarasogur are neither a medieval afterthought nor the dying gasp of a once great literature. After the introduction of Continental
romance
into
Norway and
its
all,
transmission by
Icelandic scribes coincides with the composition and transmission of the family
sagas and the kings’ sagas. Further, few family sagas are preserved in manuscripts older than surviving
manuscripts of the riddarasogur.
A
review of the
oldest extant Icelandic manuscripts indicates that the transmission of family
sagas and other “classic” Icelandic literature was contemporary with the composition of indigenous
mony
romances and
from giving
their transmission. Far
to a degeneration of Icelandic literature
testi-
and a period of general decadence,
romance bespeaks a desire for diversity and for experimentation with a new literary form. The diverging redactions of the individual riddarasogur, for example Magus saga jarls, stem from the same creative impulse, the same wrestling with matter and form, as the diverging redactions of the composition of indigenous
such family sagas as Gisla saga.
The riddarasogur have now European
literature.
the inclusion of P.
also been accepted as an integral part of medieval
Evidence for
M.
by Roger
their acceptance is provided, for instance,
Mitchell’s chapter on the Arthurian riddarasogur in
Sherman Loomis’s Arthurian Literature
Middle Ages (1959). In the same study of Karlamagnus saga with a
in the
year, E. F. Halvorsen’s textual and literary
—
survey of the translated literature which, albeit too general and often inaccurate, is
still
useful
— appeared
in
Denmark, while
in Switzerland
Aebischer published an impressive series of books and
and France Paul
articles, studies,
and
Karlamagnus saga (1954a, 1954b, 1956, 1960, 1972) that were widely acknowledged in the form of reviews by Romanists, Scandinavianists, and comparatists. At international congresses the riddarasogur have not been neglected. The Fifth International Saga Conference (Toulon, 1982), which was devoted to the riddarasogur, comes to mind as does the Liege Colloquium of 1972, the proceedings of which were published in 1975 {^Relations litteraires). Unfortunately the appended bibliography of Franco-Scandinavian literary relations is marred by many errors and may prove more a stumbling block than a furtherance to the uninitiated. Romance scholarship has acknowledged the sigtranslations of
nificance of Franco-Scandinavian literary relations for French literature by in-
cluding
Knud Togeby’s
volume of the Since 1960 more than
chapter (1972) on this subject in the
Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters.
first
and theses here and abroad have been devoted to the riddarasogur. In addition to editing texts, scholars have concerned themselves in the fifteen dissertations
last
two decades with such matters as
translation technique (Halvorsen 1975;
Kalinke 1977, 1979a, 1979b, 1980, 1981a), structure (Clover 1974; Kalinke
Marianne Kalinke
344 1970), authorship (Schach 1975, Sverrir
Tomasson 1977),
style (Blaisdell 1965,
1972; Hallberg 1971, 1975; Halvorsen 1962b; Kalinke 1979a, 1979b; Rossen-
beck 1970), and the dell
reliability
of Norwegian and Icelandic manuscripts (Blais-
1967, 1974, 1979; Jakobsen 1978; Gvimars saga; Kalinke 1980, 1981;
Skarup 1979a). Older scholarship pertaining to Old Norse-Icelandic romance
An
evaluated.
outstanding example
is
being
is
re-
Alfrun Gunnlaugsdottir’s Tristan en
el
norte (1978) in which she demonstrates, on the basis of Tristrams saga ok
The Old Norse-
Isondar, the inadequacies of Bedier’s reconstruction of Thomas’s Tristan. fate of the
romance
Icelandic
1981b).
matiere de Bretagne
Of
is
the subject of
in
King Arthur North-by-Northwest (Kalinke
particular significance for a better understanding of the indigenous
romances
Icelandic
— including the Tristan matter—
is
Einar 01. Sveinsson’s groundbreaking essay “Viktors
saga ok Blavus: Sources and Characteristics,’’ which unfortunately
is
buried in
Jonas Kristjansson’s edition of the saga (1964). Einar’s essay, in which he analyzes the interrelationship of a attempt to larger
to terms with the
chronology and
literary
is
the first
interdependence of a
group of indigenous romances.
Jiirg It is
come
number of indigenous romances,
Glauser’s Isldndische Mdrchensagas (1983) merits special consideration.
the fullest study to date of the indigenous riddarasdgur within their histor-
ical, sociological,
and
literary context,
and
it
substantially furthers our
edge of a large but relatively unknown group of sagas.
An
knowl-
appendix to the
volume contains lengthy resumes of the twenty-seven sagas that constitute, according to Glauser, the corpus of Mdrchensagas. Because of the relative obscurity of the
indigenous romances, Glauser’s study
is
useful not only to the Scan-
The monograph has
dinavianist but also to the comparatist and folklorist.
its
weaknesses, however. Glauser assumes a priori that the sagas studied constitute a clearly defined corpus; included, however, in his “corpus’’ are
Magus
saga,
generally considered a translated riddarasaga, and three other sagas considered borderline cases
— between
riddarasaga and fornaldarsaga
— by
both E. F.
Halvorsen (1969:180) and Einar 6l. Sveinsson (1959:500-501). The question as to
what constitutes the genre Mdrchensaga (or indigenous riddarasaga )
indeed there
is
such a genre
— has
—
if
yet to be answered. Furthermore, Glauser’s
romances does not stand up to Like Astrid van Nahl {Originate Riddarasdgur als Teil altnordischer
definition of his corpus of sagas as bridal-quest scrutiny.
Sagaliteratur, 1981) before him, Glauser focuses
phrase, topoi, motifs
— without considering
on narrative cliches
their context
—
turns of
and the individuality of
a given saga.
Recent developments affecting research
in the area
of Old Norse-Icelandic
romance, such as the publication of some of the aforementioned
critical, diplo-
matic, and facsimile editions and also the use or discovery of hitherto ignored or
unknown fragments of interrelationship
the sagas, facilitate tentative suggestions concerning the
and evolution of the riddarasdgur. In the history of Old Norse-
,
Norse Romance Icelandic
345
romance redactors have played
and authors.
New
as important a role as
have translators
manuscript evidence suggests ever more forcefully that the
Norwegian riddarasogur transmitted the content and tone of their sources more accurately and more extensively than has been supposed but that the degree to which the individual translated riddarasogur were faithful to their sources varies considerably.
What
Strengleikar
such as Geitarlauf, contrasts with substantial loss of text in other
constitutes nearly a verse-for- verse translation in
some of the
Strengleikar, such as Januals Ijdd; the reduced text of tvens saga vis-a-vis the
French source contrasts strikingly with the amplified text vis
a
its
source.
work
The
alliterative
that adheres
more or
in
Mdttuls saga vis-a-
rhythmical language of Tristrams saga okisdndar,
less to the content of
for the laconic, unembellished prose of
substantial attrition, modification,
its
source, does not prepare us
Erex saga, which
exhibits, furthermore,
and interpolation.
The corpus of Old Norse-Icelandic romance
is
a diverse, stratified literature
engendered by translations of foreign fiction but transformed by generations of scribes
who
infused the texts with their
own
literary sense.
As
a group, the
riddarasogur reflect a transmutation of genre; they constitute a paradigm for the evolution of literary form from translation to revision, from revision to adaptation,
from adaptation
lation to original
to indigenous re-creation.
The metamorphosis from
trans-
composition consists of several stages of textual history that are
neither clearly defined nor strictly chronological and sequential but are, rather,
distinguishable by varying degrees of dependence on or independence from the original texts or the spirit of their sources.
composed during
the late
The
Middle Ages are the
Icelandic romances that were final
phase in an evolutionary
process devolving from the translation of foreign literature into Norwegian dur-
The degree of transformation of any one work in the course of transmission varies, depending upon the number of extant manuscripts and the relationship of a particular scribe to his exemplar. The greater the number of extant manuscripts of any one saga, the more readily scribal intervention can ing the thirteenth century.
be demonstrated. /
The following model can be proposed for the evolution of the riddarasogur as an indigenous genre in Iceland: (1) Norwegian translation; (2) Norwegian/Icelandic copy; (3) Norwegian/Icelandic revision; (4) Icelandic adaptation; (5) Icelandic re-creation. This
\in the
model
reflects the varying roles the transmitters of
North played as translators, copyists, editors, and authors. This
romance is
not to
suggest that the stage of indigenous Icelandic composition could be reached only
by traversing the preceding phases sequentially, but rather Norse-Icelandic romance manifests
in the
aggregate of
its
that the corpus of
manuscripts levels of
increasing independence from the literature of translation from which
On
the basis of such evidence as that provided
Old
it
sprang.
by the Icelandic redaction of
Guiamars Ijod, the “Reeves Fragment” of Tristrams saga ok Isondar, the Stockholm Pap. fol. 46 redaction of Ivens saga, and the vellum fragment NKS 1794b 4to of Parcevals saga, we are now
in a position to postulate relatively
Marianne Kalinke
346 faithful
then
Norwegian
at least
translations
if
not of
all
narratives transmitted to the North,
of a substantial number of them. The translators did not work
mindlessly, however; in not a few instances I
interpreters
rious
we can
and explicators of ambiguous passages
message Tristram incised on a
observe them
in their sources.
stick in Chievrefueil
passage (vv. 61-78) that has been interpreted to
mean
comes
work as The mysteat
mind, a
to
that Tristram carved the
substance of seventeen lines into the stick, or that the verses refer to the content
of a previous message, or that he etched only the letters of his
name
hazel wood, but that the
name
into the
alone sufficed to evoke the associations and remi-
niscences alluded to in the seventeen lines.
As
first
interpreter of Tristram’s
xylographic message, the Norwegian translator chose to read in the French lines the
words of a long message
to Isolt.
Norwegian riddarasogur underwent gradual hands of both Norwegian and Icelandic copyists. During a
In the course of transmission the
transformation at the theoretical
second stage of transmission, modifications did not yet affect sub-
stance; those aberrations that
were
willful rather than unintentional or occasioned
by scribal carelessness were nonetheless so minor as not work. The text of
shown
at least
to affect the
one of the Strengleikar, Guiamars
essence of a
Ijdd,
has been
be corrupt {Gvfmars saga; also Kalinke 1980), and this is evidence that as early as the thirteenth century Norwegian scribes had started to tamper with to
and
the sequence of events
to delete
words, phrases, and clauses
— whether
The same phenomenon is observable of transmission. The copying stage is a stage of scribal
intentionally or not cannot be determined.
throughout the centuries
misreadings, of changes in orthography, of substitutions in vocabulary, of inad-
word order. At this assumed the responsibility
vertent omissions and changes in inclination or discipline
one
else’s text
The
more or
—
still
—
for transmitting
— by
some-
less intact.
third stage, that of revision, in
our perspective
stage the scribe
which a supposed copyist
asserted editorial authority,
is
— viewed from
marked by pronounced modifi-
cation through interpolation, reduction, and augmentation of text affecting content, structure,
and
style.
The redactions belonging
to this
phase reflect contrary
and even contradictory approaches to textual revision. The redactor of the
Magus saga jarls boldly why he felt compelled to
steps forward as
AM
588a
in the
epilogue to explain
embellish a tale that some of his listeners might have
recalled as being shorter.
manuscript
“author”
later
A
note attached to the text of Ivens saga in the
4to, written
by Magnus Olafsson
at the
end of the seven-
from which the manuscript was copied the copyist had been interested primarily in preserving
teenth century, attests that the original
had been longer and
that
The majority o: extant texts of the riddarasogur do not contain conscious commentary, but whenever a redactor revised consistently, his the plot.
torial or 38.
compositional principles can be inferred. This
is
self-
edi-
the case in the afore-
See Maurice Cagnon, ''Chievrefueil and the Ogamic Tradition,” Romania, 91 (1970), 238-
48, for a review of criticism regarding this passage.
Norse Romance
347
mentioned abridged Stockholm Pap.
46 redaction of Ivens saga and in the middle version of Dmus saga drambldta. Similarly, the tenor and content of Tiddels saga, which is despite the title an Icelandic redaction of the Norwegian Bisclaretz Ijdd (Kalinke 1981a), leave no doubt that the deviations of the saga from the Ijdd aimed at clearer motivation. The greater the redactor’s independence, the more difficult it becomes to fol.
—
no.
—
determine whether a divergent text of a saga
is
properly speaking a redaction or a
The transmission of substantially dissimilar redactions of some of the riddarasdgur raises an issue to which scholars have not yet adequately addressed themselves: when is an Icelandic “redaction” that is, a different version of that saga.
—
text historically considered a redaction of a saga
classification of manuscripts
by cataloguers
by reason of
— no longer
title
and the
a “redaction” but rather
what point does the anonymous
a “version” of a tale? Phrased differently: at
Icelander responsible for a substantially altered text of a saga
become an author?
The questions
style of
germane because the
two redactions of a riddarasaga can differ as drastically as, for instance, Beroul’s and Thomas’s French versions of the Tristan legend or Eilhart’s and Gottfried’s
German
When
tenor, content,
and
versions.
a question concerning content or style of a particular saga elicits the
“That
retort
are
all
depends on the redaction,”
editorial revision has
sive as to affect substance; revision thus constitutes adaptation.
been so exten-
For example,
at
mention of Magus saga jar Is those familiar with Cederschiold’s scholarly edition
which the classical, somewhat of the indigenous sagas predominates. Those who know the saga
will think of a tightly constructed narrative in
laconic style
from Bjami Vilhjalmsson’s popular edition,
in turn a reprint of a nineteenth-
century Icelandic popular edition, will conjure up a rambling narrative intercalated with pasttir only tangentially connected with the style
main
plot and written in a
A
somewhat different two redactions, one
approximating that of the translated riddarasdgur.
situation obtains for Elis
thirteenth-century
saga ok Rdsamundu, extant
Norwegian and preserved
in
De
la
in
Gardie 4-7, the other
Icelandic from around 1400 and found, for example, in the Stockholm Perg. 4to
The Norwegian text breaks off in with a colomidstory presumably because the French source was defective phon identifying the translator as Abbot Robert. The Icelandic redaction omits no. 6 codex of
romances
(fol.
86''-106).
—
—
this
colophon
106'^).
(103’^:I3)
and brings the
The Icelandic “author”
is
tale to a
reasonable conclusion (103^:14-
not above plagiarizing, however; he repeats
almost verbatim certain passages from the Norwegian translation, such as the
Rosamunda’s garments (ed. Kolbing, pp. 86-87, 133). A comparison of the work of the Icelandic redactor with that of the Germans Ulrich von Tiirheim and Heinrich von Freiberg, both of whom completed Gottfried’s fragmentary Tristan, is not inappropriate. Whereas the Icelander was forced to seek inspiration in the work itself, the Germans were able to draw on another version description of
of the legend, Eilhart’s Tristan.
Marianne Kalinke
348
example of editorial intervention bordering on adaptation is the preserved text of Erex saga. On the basis of external evidence, a fairly accurate Norwegian translation of Chretien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide can be
The most
striking
postulated, one that tions.
was
stylistically similar to other thirteenth-century transla-
But then through a series of major changes brought about by condensation,
conflation, interpolation,
and rearrangement affecting content,
Erex saga became an
ture,
entity
style,
and
struc-
markedly divergent from the French source and
presumably from the Norwegian translation. Instead of copying, an Icelander thoroughly revised his exemplar. The alliterative, tautological language of the
was reduced to a laconic prose; similarly, two structurally tautological robber episodes were conflated into one. Pidreks saga provided not only inspiration but also further material for Erex saga. The conflated robber episode is modeled on a similar one in Pidreks saga, and the interpolated flying Norwegian
translation
dragon episode
is
a clear case of borrowing (Kalinke 198 lb: 194-98, 244-48).
Despite far-reaching modifications, however, the still
spirit
of Arthurian romance
pervades the saga.
The outstanding example of an
Icelandic adaptation per se
is
the fourteenth-
century Tristrams saga ok Isoddar, which suggests only vaguely the tragic love X
we know from
story
the
Norwegian Tristrams saga ok Isondar. Henry Goddard
Leach dismissed the saga as a “boorish account of Tristram’s noble passion’’ (1921:186). Paul Schach has argued convincingly, however, that the Icelandic /'saga
was intended
Norwegian version (1960). Indeed, a humorous commentary on Arthurian romance, a
as a deliberate reply to the
the saga can be interpreted as
parody that draws the ultimate and often ludicrous consequences of the behav-
romance (Kalinke 1981b:199-21 1). The means by which the author achieves his end are exaggeration and distortion of popular motifs such as the recreantise motif from Erec et Enide! Erex saga and the motif of the leicht getrostete Witwe from Yvainilvens saga. The motif of A unrequited love is given an ironic and unexpected twist: three times Isodd is offered to Tristram in marriage by her mother, by herself, and even by Tristram’s uncle and three times Tristram refuses her (despite the subsequent adultery) because he considers himself too humble a match and his uncle the more suitable mate for her. Notwithstanding Tristram’s love for one Isodd, he fathers a child with the other Isodd, who comes to him as booty in war. By means of this novel twist the author approaches the happy ending of Arthurian romance and at the same time bows to the structural exigencies of a proper saga: the narrative tenets
ioral
propounded
in courtly
—
—
ends with an epilogue that relates briefly the fortunes of Kalegras Tristramsson
and
his children.
legend
is
Throughout the saga, the author’s interpretation of the
tragic
iconoclastic.
Icelanders manifested most readily their independence from French tradition
when
they took to devising
new
plots.
Their main source of inspiration for the
Icelandic recreations continued to be the imported literature
from which they
extrapolated names, motifs, topoi, characters, and even entire episodes.
The
,
Norse Romance
349
contribution of Tristrams saga ok Isdndar to the formation of the indigenous
romances should not be underestimated, but other sagas also furnished matter and creative impulse. The grateful lion episode in Ivens saga and the dragon slaying in Pidreks saga in
combination
come
to
mind. They are elements that appear singly and
romances, but most charmingly
in several Icelandic
saga l)dgla.^^ Icelanders also drew on indigenous their compositions: vikings, berserks, trolls,
literature
in
Sigurdar
and traditions for
and shapeshifters appear not
infre-
quently in romances with a predominantly non-Scandinavian setting and cast of characters. Finnur Jonsson likened the corpus of Icelandic romance, with
its oft-
repeated motifs, situations, and characterizations, to a kaleidoscope with a lim-
number of
ited
constituent parts that are rearranged as the instrument
(^Finnur Jonsson,
iii:98).
The comparison, although not
nonetheless misleading. Originality
is
turned
is
entirely inappropriate,
is
admittedly rare in the indigenous ridd-
arasdgur, but the authors of romance evinced ingenuity in assimilating the foreign matter.
composed
More
than thirty romances
in Iceland in the
known with
certainty to have been
Middle Ages are preserved today. The burgeoning of
number
the riddarasogur in Iceland, their preservation in an astoundingly large
of manuscripts, and their publication in popular editions in both the nineteenth
and the twentieth centuries bespeak the genre’s continuing appeal.
Bibliography EDITIONS
AND TRANSLATIONS
Collections
Bjami Vilhjalmsson. See Vilhjalmsson. Blaisdell, Foster W., ed. 1980. The Sagas ofYwain and Tristan and Other Tales: 4to.
EIMF,
AM 489
12.
Magus saga jarls, Konrads
Cederschidld, Gustaf, ed. 1884. Fornsogur Sudrlanda: Baerings saga, Flovents saga, Bevers saga:
published in
LUA, 13-15,
Med
saga,
inledning. Lund: Berling. Originally
18-21.
Gu6ni Jonsson. See Jonsson. Jonsson, Gu6ni, ed. Fornaldar sogur Nordurlanda. 4 vols. Reykjavik: Islendingasagnautgafan, 1954; rpt. 1981. [Popular edition of 34 sagas.]
Kolbing, Eugen, ed. 1872. Riddarasogur: Parcevals saga, Valvers pdttr, Ivents saga,
Mirmans saga. Strasbourg: K.
J.
Triibner. ^
o
Lagerholm, Ake, ed. 1927. Drei Lygisggur: Egils saga einhenda ok Asmundar berserkjaA
bana, Ala flekks saga, Flores saga konungs ok sona hans.
ASB,
17.
Halle:
M.
Niemeyer. 39.
A grateful lion episode can also be found in Ectors saga,
Grega saga, Sagan af Kara Kdrasyni Konrads saga keisarasonar and Vil-
PorSarson [Reykjavik: Einar P6r6arson, 1886]), hjdlms saga sjods. For further discussion of the grateful lion motif see Harris 1970. with reference to German analogues (ed. Einar
—
^
indicates that the
work
is
listed in the
ae
ae; 0, oe, g,
o
=
oe;
ii
=
—
especially
Abbreviations, not in the bibliographies to chapters;
word or text. Alphabetization of non-English ue; d = d; b = after z.
* indicates a reconstructed or lost
=
in Icelandic narrative
characters; a
=
aa; a,
Marianne Kalinke
350
EA, B:20-24. and AM 589 a-f
Loth, Agnete, ed. 1962-65. Late Medieval Icelandic Romances. 5 vols. 1977. Fornaldarsagas 4to.
EIMF,
1
and Late Medieval Romances:
AM 586 4 to
1
Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldarsogur
Nordrlanda.
3 vols. Copenhagen;
Popp.
Desmond, EIMF, 10.
Slay,
ed. 1972.
Romances: Perg. 4:o nr 6
in
The Royal Library, Stockholm.
Vilhjalmsson, Bjami, ed. 1949-54. Riddarasogur. 6 vols. Reykjavik: Islendingasagnautgafan, Haukadalsutgafan. [Popular edition of 24 sagas.] Individual
Works
ADONIAS SAGA
“Om
raevestreger; Et kapitel
Adonius saga.” Ed. Ole Widding. Opuscula,
i
1
(1960):
331-34. BA, 20.
6SPEd. Loth 1962-65. Vol.
3.
ALA FLEKKS SAGA Ed. Lagerholm 1927.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
5.
Ed. Loth 1977.
ALEXANDERS SAGA Alexanders saga: Norsk bearbeidelse fra trettende aarhundrede af Philip Gautiers latinske digt Alexandreis. Ed. C. R. Unger. Oslo: Feilberg
&
Landmark, 1848.
Alexanders saga: Islandsk overssettelse ved Brandr Jonsson (Biskop
til
Molar 1263-
64) udgiven af Kommissionen for det Arnamagnaeanske Legat. Ed. Finnur Jonsson.
Copenhagen; Gyldendal, 1924. Alexanders saga: The Arna-Magnaean Manuscript 5 19a, 4to. Ed. Jon Helgason. MI,
7.
1966.
AMICUS SAGA OK AMILIUS “Bmchstiick einer Amicus ok Amilms saga.” Ed. Eugen Kolbing. Germania, 19 (1874); 184-89. Ed. Slay 1972.
ANS SAGA BOGSVEIGIS Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
2.
Ed. GuSni Jonsson 1954. Vol. 2.
ASMUNDAR SAGA KAPPABANA Zwei Fornaldarsogur (Hrolfssaga Gautrekssonar und Asmundarsaga kappabana) nach Cod. Holm. 7, 4'^. Ed. Ferdinand Detter. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1891. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
1.
ByERINGS SAGA Ed. Cederschiold 1884.
BEVERS SAGA Ed. Cederschiold 1884. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
1.
BLOMSTR VALLA SAGA Blomstrvalla saga. Ed. Theodor Mobius. Leipzig: Breitkopf
&
Haertel, 1855.
Norse Romance
351
BOSA SAGA OK HERRAUDS Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
Die Bosa-saga
in
3.
zwei Fassungen nebst Proben aus den Bosa-nmur. Ed. Otto L.
K.
Jiriczek. Strasbourg:
J.
Trubner, 1893.
Ed. Gu5ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3.
BRETA SOGUR “Breta sogur.” In Hauksbok udgiven efter de arnamagnaeanske hdndskrifter no. 371 544 og 675, 4^ sant forskellige papirshdndskrifter. Ed. Eirfkur Jonsson [and ,
Finnur
Jonsson].
Copenhagen:
Det
Kongelige
Nordiske
Oldskrift-Selskab,
1892-96. “Breta sogur; Trojumanna saga.” In The Arna-Magnaean Manuscripts 371,4to, 544, 4to, and 675, 4to. Ed. Jon Helgason. MI,
5.
1960.
DAMUSTA SAGA See Pjalar-Jons saga.
DINUS SAGA DRAMBLAtA Dmus saga drambldta. Ed. Jonas
Kristjansson. Riddarasogur,
1.
Reykjavik: Haskoli
Islands, 1960.
drauma-jons saga Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
“Drauma-Jons saga.” Ed. R.
I.
6.
Page. Nottingham Medieval Studies,
1
(1957),
22-
56.
ECTORS SAGA Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol.
“Et indledningskapitel 65.
BA,
til
1.
Ectors saga.” Ed. Agnete Loth. Opuscula, 4 (1970),
363-
30.
Ed. Loth 1977.
EGILS
SAGA EINHENDA
Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
3.
Ed. Lagerholm 1927. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
ELIS
3.
SAGA OK ROSAMUNDU
ok Rosarhundu: Mit Einleitung, deutscher Ubersetzung und Anmerkungen zum ersten Mai herausgegeben. Ed. Eugen Kolbing. Heilbronn: Henninger, 1881; rpt. Wiesbaden: M. Sandig, 1971.
Elis saga
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 4.
and Other Texts: Uppsala University Library Delagardieska samlingen Nos. 4-7 folio and AM 666b quarto. Ed. Mattias Tveitane. CCNMiE,
Elis saga, Strengleikar
Quarto Serie,
4.
EREX SAGA “Nokkur handritabrot.” Ed. Jakob Benediktsson. Erex saga Artuskappa. Ed. Foster W. Blaisdell.
Skirnir,
EA
125 (1951), 182-98.
B:19. Copenhagen: Munksgaard,
1965.
Erex saga and Ivens saga: The Old Norse Versions of Chretien de Troyes’ s Erec and Yvain. Tr. Foster W. Blaisdell and Marianne E. Kalinke. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press,
1977.
Marianne Kalinke
352
FLORES SAGA OK BLANKIFLUR Flores saga ok Blankiflur. Ed. Eugen Kolbing.
ASB,
5. Halle:
M. Niemeyer,
1896.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 4.
FLORES SAGA KONUNGS OK SONA HANS Ed. Lagerholm 1927. Ed. Bjami Vilhalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 5. Ed. Loth 1977.
FLOVENTS SAGA Ed. Cederschidld 1884. Ed. Slay 1972.
FRIDPJOFS SAGA INS FR.EKNA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 2.
Sagan ock
[sic]
rimorna
om
Fridpiofr hinn freekni. Ed. Ludvig Larsson.
Copenhagen: E. Malmstrom, 1893. Fridpjofs saga ins froekna. Ed. Ludvig Larsson. ASB,
9.
Halle:
SUGNL,
22.
M. Niemeyer,
1901.
Die Fridpjofssaga kritisch
in ihrer
Uberlieferung untersucht and
Fassung
in ihrer dltesten
herausgegeben. Ed. Gustaf Wenz. Halle: E. Karras, 1913.
Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3.
GAUTREKS SAGA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
Die Gautrekssaga
in
3.
zwei Fassungen. Ed. Wilhelm Ranisch. Palaestra, 11. Berlin:
Mayer & Muller, 1900. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
4.
GEITARLAUF “The Norwegian Prose Lay of the Honeysuckle (Geitarlauf).’’ Tr. S. A. J. Bradley. In The Tristan Legend: Texts from Northern and Eastern Europe in Modern English Translation. Ed. Joyce Hill. Leeds Medieval studies, 2. Leeds: The University of Leeds Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, 1977. Pp. 39-40. Medieval Studies, 1977. Pp. 39-40.
GIBBONS SAGA Gibbons saga. Ed. R.
1.
Page.
EA,
B:2. Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard.
GONGU-HROLFS SAGA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 3.
Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3.
GREGA SAGA “Fragment af en ellers ukendt ‘Grega 201-06. BA, 20.
saga’.’’ Ed.
Agnete Loth. Opuscula,
1
(1960),
GRIMS SAGA LODINKINNA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 2. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol. 2.
GVIMARS SAGA “Gvimars
saga.’’ Ed.
Marianne E. Kalinke. Opuscula, 1 (1979), 106-39. BA, 34.
HALFDANAR SAGA BRONUFOSTRA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 3. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol. 4.
Norse Romance
353
HALFDANAR SAGA EYSTEINSSONAR Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
3.
Hdlfdanar saga Eysteinssonar.
Franz Rolf Schroder.
Ed.
ASB,
15.
Halle:
M.
Niemeyer, 1917. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol. 4.
hAlfs saga ok hAlfsrekka Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
2.
Hdlfs saga ok Hdlfsrekka. Ed. A. Le
Roy Andrews. ASB,
14. Halle:
M. Niemeyer,
1909.
Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
2.
Hdlfs saga ok Hdlfsrekka. Ed. Hubert Seelow. Rit, 20. Reykjavik: Stofnun
Ama
Magnussonar, 1981.
HERVARAR SAGA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
Saga Heidreks konungs
1.
2.
ins vitra;
Christopher Tolkien. London,
The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. Ed. and
etc.:
tr.
T. Nelson, 1960.
hjAlmpes saga ok olvis Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 3. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol. 4.
HRINGS SAGA OK TRYGGVA Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 5.
Ed. Loth 1977. Ed. Blaisdell 1980.
HROLFS SAGA GAUTREKSSONAR Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
3.
Zwei Fornaldarsogur (Hrolfssaga Gautrekssonar und Asmundarsaga kappabana) nach Cod. Holm. 7, 4^^. Ed. Ferdinand Detter. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1891. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol. 4.
HROLFS SAGA KRAKA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
1.
Hrolfs saga kraka og Bjarkarimur. Ed. Finnur Jonsson.
SUGNL,
32. Copenhagen: S.
L. M0ller, 1904.
Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol. Hrolfs saga kraka.
Ed.
1.
Desmund
Slay.
EA,
B:l.
Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard,
1960.
HROMUNDAR SAGA GRIPSSONAR Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 2.
Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
2.
ILLUGA SAGA GRIDARFOSTRA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3. 3.
IVENS SAGA Ed. Kolbing 1872. Ivens saga. Ed.
Eugen Kolbing. ASB,
7. Halle:
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
2.
M. Niemeyer,
1898.
354
Marianne Kalinke
Ivens saga. Ed. Foster
W.
EA, B:18. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
Blaisdell.
Ed. Blaisdell 1980.
Die Saga von Iven: Aus dem Altisldndischen ubersetzt mit einem Nachwort. Tr. Rudolf Simek. Altnordische Bibliothek,
Hattingen; Kretschmer, 1982.
1.
See also Erex saga.
JANUALS LJOD “Texte norrois
et
traduction fran§aise du lanuals lioQ.’" In
Marie de France: Le
lai
de
Lanval: Texte critique et edition diplomatique des quatre manuscrits frangais par
Jean Rychner: Accompagne du avec une introduction
et
du lanuals Hod et de sa traduction frangaise des notes par Paul Aebischer. Ed. Paul Aebischer. Geneva: texte
Droz, 1958.
JARLMANNS SAGA OK HERMANNS Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 6. Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 3.
KARLAMAGNUS SAGA Karlamagnus saga ok kappa bans: jaevninger Oslo: H.
keiser Karl
Magnus og bans
norsk bearbeidelse fra det trettende aarbundrede. Ed. C. R. Unger.
i
J.
F ortaellinger om
Jensen, 1860.
Karlamagnus saga ok kappa bans.
3 vols.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson. [Reykjavik]:
Islendingasagnautgafan, Haukadalsutgafan, 1950;
rpt.
1954. [Popular edition.]
“SkinnblaS ur Karlamagnus sogu.” Ed. Jakob Benediktsson.
Ski'rnir,
126 (1952),
209-13.
Karlamagnus Saga: Tbe Saga of Charlemagne and His Heroes.
3 vols. Tr.
Constance
B. Hieatt. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975-80.
Karlamagnus saga: Branches /, III, VII et IX. Ed. Agnete Loth. Copenhagen: La Societe pour T Etude de la Langue et de la Litterature Danoises, 1980.
KETILS SAGA
H^NGS
Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
2. 2.
KIRJALAX SAGA Kirialax saga. Ed. Kr. Kalund.
SUGNL,
43. Copenhagen, 1917.
Ed. Loth 1977. Ed. Blaisdell 1980.
KLARI SAGA Cldri saga. Ed. Gustaf Cederschiold.
ASB,
12. Halle:
M. Niemeyer,
1907.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 5. Ed. Slay 1972. Ed. Loth 1977.
KONRADS SAGA Konrads saga keisarasonar, er for
til
Ormalands. Ed. Gunnlaugur PorSarson. Copen-
hagen: Pall Sveinsson, 1859. Ed. Cederschiold 1884. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 3. Ed. Slay 1972.
“Konrads saga keisarasonar.” lology:
Tr. Otto Zitzelsberger.
Yearbook (1980), pp. 38-67.
Seminar for Germanic Phi-
Norse Romance
355
MAGUS SAGA JARLS Bragda-Mdgus saga med
tilheyrandi jpdttum. Ed. Gunnlaugur PorSarson. Copenha-
gen: Pall Sveinsson, 1858.
Ed. Cederschiold 1884. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
2.
MIRMANNS SAGA Ed. Kolbing 1872. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
“Nokkur
3.
handritabrot.” Ed. Jakob Benediktsson.
Ski'rnir,
125 (1951), 182-98.
Ed. Slay 1972.
MOTTULS SAGA Versions nordiques du fabliau frangais Le mantel mautaillie: Textes et notes. Ed.
Gustaf Cederschiold and F.-A. Wulff. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
LUA,
13.
Lund; C.
W. K. Gleemp,
1877.
1.
Die Saga vom Mantel and die Saga vom schonen Samson: Mottuls saga und Samsons saga fagra. Tr. Rudolf Simek. Fabulae Medievales,
2.
Vienna:
W.
Braumiiller,
1982.
NITIDA SAGA Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 5.
NORNA-GESTS PAtTR Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
1. 1.
ORVAR-ODDS SAGA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu5ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
2. 2.
PARCEVALS SAGA Ed. Kolbing 1872.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 4. Ed. Slay 1972.
Die Saga von Parceval und die Geschichte von Valver: Parcevals saga ok Valvers pdttr. Tr.
Rudolf Simek. Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und
Philologie, 19. Vienna: N.p., 1982.
“Ein Fragment der Parcevals Saga.” Ed. Rudolf Simek. Codices manuscripti: Zeitschrift fiir Handschriftenkunde, 8 (1982): 58-64.
PARTALOPA SAGA o
Partalopa saga for forsta gdngen utgifven. Ed. Oskar Klockhoff. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
UUA,
1877.
2.
Partalopa saga. Ed. Lise Praestgaard Andersen. EA, B:28. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel.
RAGNARS SAGA LODBROKAR Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
1.
Vglsunga saga okRagnars saga lodbrokar. Ed. Magnus Olsen. gen: S. L. Mpller, 1906-8. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
SUGNL,
36.
Copenha-
1.
REMUNDAR SAGA KEISARASONAR Remundar saga
keisarasonar. Ed. Sven Gren Broberg.
SUGNL,
38. Copenhagen:
Marianne Kalinke
356
SUGNL,
1909-12.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 5.
SAMSONS SAGA FAGRA Samsons saga fagra. Ed. John Wilson. SUGNL, 65. Copenhagen: SUGNL, 1953. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 3. Ed. Loth 1977.
See also Mdttuls saga.
SAULUS SAGA OK NIKANORS Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol.
2.
SIGRGARDS SAGA FRCEKNA Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 5.
SIGRGARDS SAGA OK VALBRANDS Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 5.
SIGURD AR SAGA FOTS “Sigurthar saga fots ok
Asmundar Hunakongs.” Ed.
J.
H. Jackson.
PMLA, 46
(1931),
988-1006. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 6. Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol.
3.
SIGURDAR SAGA TURNARA Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 5.
SIGURDAR SAGA POGLA Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
3.
Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 2.
SORLA SAGA STERKA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu5ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3. 3.
STRENGLEIKAR Strengleikar eda Ijodabok:
folkesange
(lais),
aarhundrede
En samling af romantiske
oversat fra fransk paa
efter foranstaltning
fortcellinger efter bretoniske
norsk ved midten af det trettende
af Kong Haakon Haakonsson. Ed. R. Keyser and
&
Landmark, 1850. Strengleikar: An Old Norse Translation of Twenty-One Old French Lais: Edited from the Manuscript Uppsala De la Gardie 4-7 AM 666b, 4^. Ed. and tr. Robert Cook C. R. Unger. Oslo: Feilberg
—
and Mattias Tveitane. Norsk Historisk Kjeldeskrift-Institutt. Norrpne Tekster,
3.
Oslo: Kjeldeskriftfondet, 1979.
See also Elis saga ok Rosamundu.
STURLAUGS SAGA STARFSAMA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3. 3.
The Two Versions of Sturlaugs saga starfsama: A Decipherment, Edition, and Translation of a Fourteenth Century Icelandic Mythical-Heroic Saga. Ed. and tr. Otto Joseph Zitzelsberger. Diisseldorf:
M.
Triltsch, 1969.
TRISTRAMS SAGA OK ISODDAR gmndtexten med oversaettelse.” Ed. and ulfsson. ANOH (1851), pp. 3-160. Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 6.
“Saga
“The
af Tristram
og Isodd,
i
tr.
Gisli Brynj-
Icelandic Saga of Tristan and Isolt (Saga af Tristram ok Isodd).’’ Tr. Joyce Hill.
Norse Romance
357
The Tristan Legend: Texts from Northern and Eastern Europe in Modern English Translation. Ed. Joyce Hill. Leeds Medieval Studies, 2. Leeds: The University of Leeds Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, 1977. Pp. 6-28. In
Ed. Blaisdell 1980.
TRISTRAMS SAGA OK ISONDAR Tristrams saga ok Isondar: Mit einer literarhistorischen Einleitung, deutscher Uebersetzung und Anmerkungen. Ed. and
Hildesheim,
rpt.
etc.:
tr.
Eugen Kolbing. Heilbronn: Henninger, 1878;
G. Olms, 1978.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol.
“An
Unpublished Leaf of Tristrams saga:
1.
AM 567 Quarto,
xxii,
2.” Ed. Paul Schach.
Research Studies [Washington State Univ.[, 32 (1964), 50-62.
“The Reeves Fragment of Tristrams saga ok Isondar.” Ed. Paul Schach.
^Einar 01.
Sveinsson. Pp. 296-308.
TROJUMANNA SAGA Trojumanna saga. Ed. Jonna Louis-Jensen. EA, A:8. Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard.
Trojumanna saga: The Dares Phrygius Version. Ed. Jonna Louis-Jensen. EA, A:9. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. See also Breta sogur.
VALDIMARS SAGA Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol.
1.
Ed. Loth 1977.
VALVENS PATTR Ed. Kolbing 1872.
Ed. Eugen Kolbing. Germania, 25 (1880), 385-
“Ein Bruchstiick des Valvers 88
.
Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 4.
See also Parcevals saga,
tr.
Simek 1982.
VIKTORS SAGA OK BLAVUS Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol.
1.
Viktors saga ok Bldvus. Ed. Jonas Kristjansson. Riddarasogur, 2. Reykjavik:
Hand-
ritastofnun Islands, 1964.
vilhjAlms saga SJODS Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 4.
VILMUNDAR SAGA VIDUTAN Ed. Bjami Vilhjalmsson 1949-54. Vol. 6. Ed. Loth 1962-65. Vol. 4. Ed. Loth 1977.
VOLSUNGA SAGA Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol.
1.
Vglsunga saga ok Ragnars saga lodbrokar. Ed. Magnus Olsen. hagen: S. L. M0ller, 1906-8. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
36.
Copen-
1.
Vglsunga saga; The Saga of the Volsungs. Ed. and 1965.
YNGVARS SAGA VIDFORLA Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
SUGNL,
2.
tr.
R. G. Finch. London: Nelson,
Marianne Kalinke
358
PATTR AF RAGNARS SONUM Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
1. 1.
FIDREKS SAGA AF BERN
&
Saga Didriks konungs af Bern. Ed. C. R. Unger. Oslo: Feilberg Pidriks saga af Bern. 2 vols. Ed. Henrik Bertelsen.
SUGNL,
34.
Landmark, 1853.
Copenhagen:
S. L.
M0ller, 1905-11.
Pidreks saga af Bern. 2 vols. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson. [Reykjavik]: Islendingasagnautgafan, 1954. [Popular edition.]
FJALAR-JONS SAGA Pjalar-Jons saga; Damns ta
Vol.
saga.
i:
Teksten.
Louisa Fredrika Tan-
Ed.
Haverhorst. Diss. Leiden. Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk Willink
&
Zoon. 1939.
Ed. Slay 1972.
FORSTEINS SAGA VIKINGSSONAR Ed. C. C. Rafn 1829-30. Vol. 2. Ed. Gu6ni Jonsson 1954. Vol.
3.
SECONDARY LITERATURE
Aebischer, Paul.
1954a. Rolandiana Borealia:
derives scandinaves compares a la
manuscrit frangais de
la
par
utilise
le
La saga af Runzivals bardaga
et ses
Chanson de Roland: Essai de restauration du
traducteur norrois. Univ. de Lausanne. Publications
Faculte des Lettres, 11. Lausanne: R. Rouge.
1954b. Textes norrois et litterature frangaise du moyen age.
1:
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