Gripla - 20.12.2008, Page 90

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second part of the story and omits the dragon tale altogether. According
to this second part, which is common to all versions of the saga, Haraldr
and his men were rescued from prison by a noble widow who was sent to
free them by Saint Óláfr. It is said that the holy king visited this woman
in a vision and told her that she would be cured from the illness she was
suffering, but in return she should release his brother Haraldr from prison.
Obeying this order, she hurried to the dungeon with her servants. They
climbed the tower, lowered a rope for the prisoners and pulled them up
by it (Fsk, 228 f.; Hkr III, 86; Mork, 13 f.; Flat III, 305). In Mork and Flat
this episode immediately follows the scene of Haraldr’s combat with the
monster; in Hkr and Fsk there are no other details concerning Haraldr’s
imprisonment besides those told in the story of the widow. It is most
likely that the omitted encounter with the dragon was one of the stories
Snorri could first of all have had in mind when he critically evaluated the
reliability of traditions depicting Haraldr’s adventures (cf. “Yet many more
of his famous deeds have not been set down, both because of our lack of
information and because we do not wish to put down in writing stories not
sufficiently witnessed. Even though we have heard mentioned, or touched
upon, a number of things, it seems better that they be added later, rather
than that they need to be omitted then.” Hkr trans., 607).
It seems that even those authors who were less captious with their
sources than Snorri nevertheless also strove to represent the stories of
Haraldr’s deeds they were putting in writing as “sufficiently witnessed”.
Perhaps for this reason, Saxo added to his account of Haraldr’s combat
with the dragon a reference to the authority of king Valdemar the Great
of Denmark, presumably addressing his remark primarily to those readers
who were inclined to mistrust the whole story: “King Waldemarus, who
loved hearing adventures, and telling them, often used to show this knife
to his attendants, ‘eaten away with rust, and scarce sufficient to its office’
of cutting” (Saxo I, 54). No doubt Íslendings þáttr sögufróða must have been
included into Saga Haralds harðráða in Mork for similar purposes.8 A little
account of a young Icelander who ran the risk of telling king Haraldr the
saga of his foreign adventures and received his full approval is an obvious
‘authentication story’. The king’s judgement that the saga he heard was
8 On relationship between the ‘main narrative’ and the þættir in Mork see Ármann
Jakobsson (1998; 2002).