Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 69

65
MANIFESTATIONS OF RAGNARS SAGA LOÐBRÓKAR
of this general trend if he had been somewhat less devoted to his
traditional philological problems of ríítengsl—problems that do not
really merit the tremendous efforts Icelandic scholars have made to
solve them.’1 Later in the same review, after summarizing and discus-
sing Hallvard Mageröy’s contribution to Einarsbók,2 Lönnroth claims,
reasonably enough, that Mageröy has ‘shown the way to a more
scientific appraisal of the relationship between different versions than
the ones we normally find in studies of the saga’. Less reasonably,
however, he immediately goes on to raise the question of whether
‘Bjarni Guðnason would have assumed rittengsl for all the stories
about Ragnarr loðbrók had he used Mageröy’s method’.3 Before this
question can be in any way answered, it will be necessary to explain
Mageröy’s method.
Mageröy’s chief purpose is to attempt to establish more reliable
criteria than those offered by Liestpl in his Upphavet til den islendske
œttesaga (1929) for determining whether the differences between sur-
viving texts of the same story are to be explained in terms of ‘oral’ or
‘written’ variation.4 An acknowledgement of ‘oral variation’ between
such variant texts depends on the view that these texts are more or
less accurate, mutually independent records of variant oral versions of
the story in question; the similarities and differences between them
must therefore be explained by reference, primarily, to features which
experience and experiment show to be characteristic of aural memory
and oral communication. An acknowledgement of written variation
between the surviving texts, on the other hand, depends on the view
that these texts are more or less direct reflexes of scribally inter-
related variant written versions of the story in question; the similari-
ties between them must therefore be explained in terms of the scribal
inter-relationship of these variant written versions; while the differen-
ces between them must be explained by the conclusion that the scribe,
redactor or author of at least one of the texts or prototypes of texts
1 See M. Scati. (1971), 178.
2 Hallvard Mageröy, ‘Eventyrvariantar og sagaversjonar’, in Einarsbók, 233-54.
3 See M. Scan. (1971), 180.
4 See Mageröy, 233-34, and the English translation of Liest0l, The Origin of
the Icelandic Family Sagas (1930), 35 ff. See also T. Andersson, The Problem of
Icelandic Saga Origins (1964), 131 ff.
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