Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 53

MANIFESTATIONS OF RAGNARS SAGÁ LOÐBRÓKÁR 49
poses as 19.22 This page, 19 recto, which is evidently the one which
Olsen found easiest to read, contains, among other things, a quotation
from Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Knútsdrápa about ívarr having the blood-
eagle cut on Ella’s back,23 a statement about ívarr becoming king
over part of England, a mention of his being reputedly responsible
for the death of King Edmund, and finally, the following statement:
‘lodbrokur synir foru vida med hernadi vm england vestur ok suo vida
anars stadar.’ Olsen’s view that this is the point at which the saga
comes to an end is presumably based partly on a consideration of
the 147 text of Ragnars saga in relation to the accounts of Ragnarr
and his sons in the þáttr24 and in Amgrímur’s Rerum Danicarum
Fragmenta,25 and partly on the fact that the sentence just quoted
brings the writing on 19 recto to an end very slightly higher up the
leaf than is the case with the other leaves in this gathering.26
A comparison of the 1824 b and 147 texts of Ragnars saga—
taking into account, of course, the fragmentary state of the latter
text—very soon reveals that they resemble each other closely; in
parts, as Olsen pointed out, they are virtually word for word the
same. It is grossly misleading, at least as far as these two texts are
concerned, to speak of ‘the glaring differences between the written
sagas’, as Lönnroth does in his review of Einarsbók 27 Nevertheless,
as Bjarni quite rightly points out, there are certain important differen-
ces between these two texts, and his list of these differences can, I
think, be developed in several ways. In the first place, while it is quite
true, as Bjami suggests, that both these texts of Ragnars saga are
linked to Völsunga saga through the person of Áslaug in the manner
described earlier, there is no evidence that the Ragnars saga reflected
in 147 was linked to Völsunga saga in precisely the same way as the
one reflected in 1824 b, i.e. by means of a separate chapter dealing
with Heimir and Áslaug. The only clear-cut evidence of a link with
22 See Olsen, LXXXVI, and 193^t.
23 The surviving verses of Knútsdrápa have been edited by Finnur Jónsson,
Den norsk-islandske Skjaldedigtning, AI (1912), 248-51, and BI (1912), 232-34.
24 See Hauksbók, 464, and the remarks made below, pp. 71-72, on the chapter-
ing of Ragnarssona þáttr.
25 See Arngrimi. . . opera . . ., I, 359 and 466.
20 See Olsen, 194, footnote to 1. 23.
27 See M. Scan. (1971), 178.
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