Gripla - 01.01.2003, Page 78

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GRIPLA
would very likely be current in oral stories that might not ever achieve written
status. Its antiquity does not automatically define a saga in which it appears as
old, and the greater clumsiness with which the author of Bjarnar saga
integrates it into his text indicates only that he was less adept than the author
of Laxdœla saga.
A similarly venerable theme is the subject of Bjami Guðnason’s claim that
the episode in Heiðarvíga saga (ch. 22) in which Þuríðr, mother of Barði
Guðmundarson, incites her sons to avenge the death of their brother Hallr, is
derivative of Laxdœla saga (ch. 54), in which Kjartan’s mother Þorgerðr
whets her surviving sons to avenge him (Bjami Guðnason 1993, 66-91). The
female inciter is such a familiar presence in both edda and saga, ‘a stock
figure’ in David Evans’s words, that we must be cautious about assuming
direct literary influence. The classic figure of the avenging mother is Guðrún
Gjúkadóttir (Hamðismál, Guðrúnarhvgt). The similarities in theme and
phrasing that Bjami Guðnason points out between Heiðarvíga saga and other
eddic and saga texts (1993, 69-82) suggests this strong traditional background
rather than specific literary echoes.21
A more telling parallel arises in the sequel to the whetting, where in both
sagas the mother insists on accompanying her sons on their mission of
vengeance. A consideration in favour of a connection between the two
episodes is the familial link between the two inciters; Þuríðr is the daughter of
Þorgerðr, as Laxdœla saga makes clear (Heiðarvíga saga gives no details of
Þuríðr’s family), and both may owe their bloodthirstiness to their kinship with
Egill Skalla-Grímsson, whom Þuríðr invokes in her rebuke to her sons: ‘eigi
myndi svá gera Egill, móðurfaðir yðvarr, ok er illt at eiga dáðlausa sonu’
(Laxdœla saga, 162) [Egill, your mother’s father, would not have behaved like
that, and it is a bad thing to have spineless sons]. Among those who have
considered the similarity to arise from literary influence, the choice of origin-
ating saga varies with the preconceptions of the critic; Jenny Jochens suggests,
‘Perhaps the author of Laxdœla saga borrowed the theme from the older saga
and rendered the story more elegant and plausible by placing the inciter a
generation earlier’ (1996, 194).
Bjami Guðnason’s argument for influence in the reverse direction depends
on the seemingly better integration of the episode into Laxdœla saga. Þor-
2]
For a full analysis of the female whetter (which, however, is more concemed with the po-
tential historicity of the stereotype than its literary functions) see Jochens 1996, chapter 8.