Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 87

ÍSLENDINGADRÁPA AND ORAL TRADITION 83
Átti élbjóðr hrotta
ágætr sonu mæta,
dýrr skóp himna harri
höfuðsmanna veg sannan.
(The great warrior had worthy sons. The Lord of Heaven made great
honour of these chieftains.) I have already brought attention to this
verse in the introduction to Eyfirðinga Sögur, and there I pointed out
that Síðu-Hallr was in fact the forefather of three bishops who lived
in the twelfth century; that is Klængr Þorsteinsson and Magnús Ein-
arsson of Skálholt, in addition to Jón Ögmundarson of Hólar, and in
my opinion this could be a sufficient explanation of this stanza of the
drápa.9 On further examination, however, it seems to me most likely
that the poet is here using the word ‘sonu’ literally, referring to sons
rather than to descendants generally, and this is also the view which
Möbius puts forward. The names of five sons of Síðu-Hallr are re-
corded, and most of them in terms of high praise, and the stanza after
the one just quoted in the drápa recalls the deeds of one of his sons,
Þorsteinn.
From what has been said so far, it is clearly necessary to examine
the date of íslendingadrápa and its relation to the sagas in greater
detail. Three possible explanations suggest themselves:
1) That the drápa is older than the sagas and is, like them, sup-
ported by oral sources, without there being any direct connection be-
tween the two forms.
2) That the drápa is later than the sagas, which the poet used as
his source.
3) That some of the sagas are older than the poem and some
younger. The poet used those sagas which were available to him, but
relied otherwise on oral accounts.
In examining the first of these possibilities one might initially at-
tempt to establish the independent dates of the drápa and the sagas,
but it is also constructive to look for any discrepancies between the
accounts that the two forms offer of certain events. Such inconsist-
encies could then demonstrate that the poem was not entirely depend-
ent upon the written forms as we now know them. Thirdly, it is also
9 íslenzk fornrit IX, p. xcv, cf. Möbius, op. cit., p. 48.