Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 59

MANIFESTATIONS OF RAGNARS SAGA LOÐBRÓKAR 55
was similar to X only to the extent of the features which it shares
with the 147 text. Why, then, does Bjarni emphasize the likeness of
1824 b to X, rather than that of 147 to X? Is he now trying to say
that he regards 1824 b and 147 as textually equidistant from X? In
other words, is 1824 b supposed to differ as little in its own way
from X as 147 does in its? It is only fair to say that this seems un-
likely, partly in view of the remark referred to earlier about 147
having a ‘more original’ text than 1824 b, and partly in view of some
remarks made by Bjami later in his paper, where he describes the
version of Ragnars saga reflected in 1824 b as the one which has
‘undergone most development’ (‘tekiS . . út mestan þroska’), and
fits Ragnars saga into a pattem represented by certain other forn-
aldarsögur which have survived in texts reflecting more than one
version, and which show that, where two versions are in question,
the older version tends to be shorter, less ‘late’ in style, and less bulky
than the younger one.45
It is unfortunate that Bjami does not commit himself to a more
clearly-defined conjecture as to the nature and form of X, since he
gives it a particularly important place in the textual history of Ragn-
ars saga. It was most probably in X, he claims, that the episode of
Kráka was first introduced, and it was also in connection with X that
Völsunga saga was composed. Völsunga saga, according to Bjarni,
was composed as an introduction to X by the author or redactor of
that version of Ragnars saga, who linked the two sagas together
through the person of Áslaug, and made of them what is in effect one
long saga of the Völsungar, culminating in the story of Áslaug, who is
arguably more the heroine of what we now call Ragnars saga than
Ragnarr is its hero.40 It may be mentioned in passing that Bjarni
hardly allows here, as de Vries does in his long article on the West
Norse tradition of the Ragnarr-legend, for the possibility that the
Kráka-episode may have existed in the version of Ragnars saga re-
flected in Hauksbók, though in a form less developed than what we
find in 1824 b and 147.47 It should at all events be made clear that
45 Guðnason (1969), 37.
46 Guðnason (1969), 32, ff.
47 Jan de Vries, ‘Die westnordische Tradition der Sage von Ragnar Lodbrok’, in