Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 64

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GRIPLA
to be living under the name of Kráka in the humble company of
Haki. They were presumably satisfied, as the audience of an Icelandic
saga could possibly also be, with the dramatic effect of suspense
leading up to Kráka’s eventual revelation of her true identity.
In the Faroese Ragnars táttur, Áslaug reveals her identity to Ragn-
arr when he expresses his disbelief, after seeing her in the fine
clothing he offers her, that Kráka can be a mere farmer’s daughter.63
In 1824 b, on the other hand, as is well-known, she declares herself
to him after leaming by magic of Ragnarr’s secret plan to leave her,
since he believes her to be of low birth, and to marry Ingibjörg, the
daughter of King Eysteinn of Sweden.64 The reasons for this differ-
ence have been carefully analysed by de Vries, who believes that the
Ragnars táttur preserves the older form of the Kráka-story, and who
agrees with Bjarni in regarding Ragnarssona þáttr as representative of
a Ragnars saga older than the one reflected in 1824 b.65 According to
de Vries, this older Ragnars saga was more concerned, as the þáttr
indicates, with the sons of Ragnarr than with Ragnarr himself. In the
younger Ragnars saga—which for the moment we may regard as the
one reflected, in different ways, in 1824 b and 147—the author or
redactor evidently wished to bring Ragnarr more into the foreground
than in the older version. One way of doing this was by presenting
Ragnarr as being on better terms with his sons Eirekr and Agnarr,
who in the þáttr, it will be remembered, tried unsuccessfully to oppose
their father by making Eysteinn tributary to themselves rather than to
Ragnarr.66 In 1824 b, on the other hand, Eysteinn and Ragnarr fall
out as a result of Ragnarr’s abandoning his idea of marrying Ey-
steinn’s daughter, and Eirekr and Agnarr are then made to invade
Sweden for reasons which are not made at all clear in the text, but
which would seem to be connected, like Ragnarr’s estrangement from
Eysteinn, with the latter’s daughter. In the þáttr, of course, Eirekr had
wished to marry Eysteinn’s daughter, and had been offered her hand
in marriage by Eysteinn after being defeated by him in battle. Since
now, in ‘the younger Ragnars saga’, the two brothers are being pre-
03 See Djurhuus/Matras, 222, stanzas 95-97.
34 See Olsen, 132-37.
65 See the references given above in note 47.
08 See p. 47 above, and Hauksbók, 459-60.