Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 57

MANIFESTATIONS OF RAGNARS SAGA LOÐBRÓKAR
53
Skjöldungasaga
r
Rs.’íHb.)
Rs. (1824b)
Rs. (147)
In this stemma, which Bjarni sees as conjectural, no mention is made,
rather surprisingly, of Amgrímur’s accounts of Ragnarr and his sons
in Rerum Danicarum Fragmenta, which Bjami must surely regard as
an important extant manifestation of the part of Skjöldunga saga re-
levant to his stemma.30 The chief reason for the question mark at the
end of the line leading from Skjöldunga saga to the version of Ragn-
ars saga lying behind Ragnarssona þáttr in Hauksbók seems to be that
the nature of the relationship between Skjöldunga saga and the oldest
Ragnars saga, as Bjarni calls this version, is in his view uncertain.37
Since neither Ragnarssona þáttr nor the relevant part of Amgrímur’s
text reproduces Skjöldunga saga without alteration, however, as Jakob
Benediktsson has shown,38 and since it is chiefly in outlines rather
than in details of the story that the þáttr and Amgrímur are in agree-
ment,39 it is doubtful how far Skjöldunga saga ought to be given a
definite place in the stemma at all. Since Bjarni expresses in his re-
marks on the stemma the view that the 147 text of Ragnars saga con-
tained narrative material descending from Skjöldunga saga, ‘whether
or not an intermediate link is in question’ (‘hvort sem um millilið er
að ræða eða ekki’),40 another purpose of his question mark, we may
36 See Guðnason (1969), 31, footnote 14. Bjarni regards Arngrímur’s accounts
of Ragnarr as derived from Skjöldunga saga and from a version of Ragnars saga
somewhat like the one reflected in 1824 b.
37 Guðnason (1969), 32: ‘Erfitt er að gera sér grein fyrir tengslum Skjöldungas.
og Rs. elztu.’
38 See Arngrimi. . . opera . . ., IV, 113, 260-62.
39 See Axel Olrik, ‘Skjoldunga saga i Arngrim Jonssons udtog’, in Aarbrþger for
nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, II, 9 (1894), 83-164, pp. 147-49.
40 Guðnason (1969), 32.