Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 67

MANIFESTATIONS OF RAGNARS SAGA LOÐBRÓKAR 63
independent work, and removed it from the text of the saga; and will
have made the end of Ragnars saga less chronicle-like and more
romantic, removing the quotation from Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Knúts-
drápa, and generally blurring the political outlines of this part of the
story.73 The last three chapters of Y, and the insertion of the 28th and
29th lausavísur, with the few lines of prose introducing them, must
methodologically be regarded as the work of this compiler.74 The ad-
vantages of this view are that it allows for the possibility of Völsunga
saga and Ragnars saga having originally been independent works, and
it does fuller justice than Bjami does himself to his fine distinction
between what may now be called the X and Y versions of the saga.
It will be evident by now that this view of the tradition owes a great
deal to Bjarni’s and de Vries’s contributions; it differs from Bjami’s,
however, in leaving open the possibility that Völsunga saga may ori-
ginally have been independent of Ragnars saga, and from de Vries’s
in that it sees the X-version of Ragnars saga as older than the Y-
version, whereas de Vries regarded 147 as reflecting a combination of
73 This may be illustrated in particular by a comparison of those passages from
147, Hauksbók and 1824 b which have been selected for numerical comparison
later in this paper; see p. 22 below.
74 See Olsen, 160, 11. 3-25. de Vries (1928), 296, who sees the 1824 b text as
reflecting a version of the saga older than the one reflected in 147, nevertheless
regards these verses and lines as interpolated. On the possibility that certain mate-
rial in 1824 b, including material from Þiðriks saga, was added by an interpolator
after Völsunga saga and Ragnars saga had been joined together by means of the
linking chapter, see also Per Wieselgren, Quellenstudien zur Vglsungasaga (1935-
36), III, 351-52. Wieselgren does not allow, however, as this paper does, for the
possibility that the two sagas were joined together otherwise than by means of
this chapter. If it is accepted (cf. note 18 above), that no traces of the influence
of Þiðriks saga are discernible in the 147 text of Ragnars saga, then it may be
assumed that the Y-redactor was responsible for those traces of its influence which
are found in 1824 b. If, on the other hand, it is found that 147 does show the
influence of Þiðriks saga, then we must assume that the X-redactor is primarily
responsible for the marks of its influence in the 147 and 1824 b texts, and that
those traces of the influence of Þiðriks saga which Edzardi, XXXVIII, thought he
could find in chapters 1 and 19 of the 1824 b text of Ragnars saga, are to be
attributed not to the direct influence of Þiðriks saga, but to the influence of the X
versions of Völsunga saga and Ragnars saga on those passages which were added
by the Y-redactor.