Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 66

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GRIPLA
in recent editions of Völsunga saga,09 with the story of Hamðir and
Sörli, and Ragnars saga was made to follow it as a sequel, beginning,
as we may gather from the text of 147, with the story of Ragnarr’s
serpent-fight in Gautland. There was an element of inconsistency in
this arrangement in that no explanation was given as to how Áslaug
came to be living at Spangarheiðr as the supposed daughter of Áki
and Gríma, but this was hardly more serious than the inconsistency
involved in allowing Ragnarr to recite in the serpent-pit certain stan-
zas from Krákumál dealing with events not mentioned elsewhere in
either Ragnars saga or Völsunga saga,70 and it had the great advan-
tage of providing an effect of suspense from the point in the saga at
which the reader, like Ragnarr’s matsveinar, begins to wonder whether
the fair Kráka really can be the daughter of the hideous Gríma. 1824
b, on the other hand, represents a later stage of the descent, and
reflects the work of a redactor with authorial pretensions who felt
that Völsunga saga and Ragnars saga needed to be more firmly ce-
mented together, and therefore composed the chapter about Heimir
and Áslaug. His version of the saga may be called Y. This redactor,
or Kompilator as de Vries calls him, will have added to Völsunga
saga the reference to Áslaug in that saga,71 and the brief reference to
Heimir, already referred to, in the part of Ragnars saga dealing with
Ragnarr’s wooing of Kráka;72 he will have regarded Krákumál as an
69 See Olsen’s edition, and R.G. Finch, ed., The Saga of the Volsungs (1965).
70 See the references given above in note 33. A further inconsistency becomes
apparent in the 147 text if it is accepted that Olsen, XCII and 189, is correct in
taking the words immediately following the end of Krákumál in that text as refer-
ring to Ragnarr’s death, by analogy with Hauksbók, 463, 10, since a few lines
further on in 147 Olsen found he could read some words which seem to form part
of the first of the two verses which, according to the 1824 b text, were recited by
Ragnarr in the serpent-pit. This would mean that in the 147 text Ragnarr would
have died after completing his recitation of Krákumál, but was neverlheless suffi-
ciently alive to recite verses a few lines further on—unless, of course, the later
verse-passage was included in a passage of reported speech. Inconsistencies of this
kind, which will have prompted the Y-redactor of Ragnars saga to exclude Kráku-
mál from his text of the saga, are on a par with those which prompted him to
add the chapter dealing with Heimir and Áslaug, and indeed tend to support the
view that this chapter was not present in the X-version of the saga.
71 See Olsen, 69,11. 3-4.
72 See note 59 above.