Gripla - 01.01.1975, Side 45

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ILLUGA SAGA OG ILLUGA DANS
The most important single point of difference between the two concerns the
giantess. In the ballad she is nothing but the monster-captor of the princess. In
the fornaldarsaga the same giantess is herself a princess suffering under the spell
(álög) of a wicked stepmother, and the fair one is her own daughter. The incon-
sistencies of the fornaldarsaga’s account of the giantess Gríður and her daughter
Hildur reveal beyond doubt that the álög, and the tale within the tale which tells
how the álög was imposed on them, must have been added on to the same basic
story as in the ballad.
An examination of other differences, such as the one concerning the sworn
brother-hood of Illugi and the prince, and the one concerning the evil counselor
(Björn), points the same way. Álög, sworn brothers and an evil counselor are
common motifs likely to be used to expand and alter the story, giving it the ap-
pearance of a (fornaldar) saga.
If the fornaldarsaga had been the source of the bailad, as has been assumed,
the ballad poet could not conceivably have changed the story back to a more
original form. The relationship between the two is therefore of another kind.
Either both have a source in common, or the fornaldarsaga is simply derived from
the ballad. Although neither of these alternatives can be safely excluded at this
stage of knowledge, there are positive indications in favour of the latter. Such
indicative criteria are arrived at i.a. by a close comparison of the contents of the
three truths in the ballad and the saga, and by analysing the curiously inconsistent
role of the evil counselor in the saga. This person, named Björn, must be the same
as Herebj0nn in the Norwegian ballad. Since there is no evidence of the existence
of a third piece of literature (distinct from both the ballad and the saga) about
Illugi, it is more plausible to assume that the saga drew its matter from the ballad.
This would make understandable the saga’s confusion regarding the contents of
the truths and its inconsistencies in the role of the counselor.
At this point the student is reminded of Tantalus when he finds certain traces
of poetic diction in the prose of Illuga saga without being able to identify them
as belonging to the ballad.
The marks of verse either transliterated or at least remembered by the saga-
writer when he was forming the work can be seen in at least two passages. First,
in the description of the difficult voyage before the sworn brothers reach Bjarma-
land, one finds clear traces of the repetitive style of ballad verse. Later, the de-
scription of Gríður’s ugly appearance is marked by a metrical original, but this
seems to have been of a different kind. In its extant versions the ballad does not
contain any passages corresponding to these. It may be mentioned that such
passages would not have been strictly necessary for the structure of the tale. Also
it may be said that it would seem less likely that the saga-writer used or was
distracted by verse about other matters while in the process of forming his story
of Illugi. But this is mere speculation. We have found that certain, apparently
unidentifiable passages in verse must have been hovering in the mind of the saga-
writer, and perhaps he made conscious use of them. With regard to the present
problem of ballad-saga relationship these traces of verse yield no new evidence.