Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 94

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GRIPLA
copied from Þorsteins Saga when the latter was still complete. It is
perfectly possible that there were verses in the lacuna previously
mentioned, and that Haukr took his references about the time of day
and the five killings from them. We would need, otherwise, to postu-
late the existence of a very exact oral source which both Haukr and
the saga writer had recourse to.
It should also be mentioned that Haukr apparently knew Egill’s
verse in Egils Saga about the battle on Vínheiðr. ‘Helt, né hrafnar
sultu, / Hringr á vápna þingi’, says Egill, and ‘þreklundaðr fell Þund-
ar / Þórólfr í gný stórum’, which should be compared with: ‘Hrings
fell á því þingi / Þórólfr í gný stórum’, in the drápa.
In Einar Ól. Sveinsson’s opinion, Haukr is doubtlessly following
verse 29 of Hallfreðar Saga when he says that Hallfreðr ‘sótti konung
snjallan; seggr fekk et hæsta hald tveggja döglinga’.20
The reference to Helgi Droplaugarson’s being a heathen at the time
of his death cannot be traced to any extant verse. The battle in
Eyvindardalr, on the other hand, in which Helgi was killed, is re-
corded in the annals as having taken place in 998. It is not clear in
what way the three sources, the drápa, the saga and the annals, are
connected, and it is not possible to establish whether Haukr took his
information from a written or oral source, or from a lost verse.
In conclusion, I would like to draw together the results of my in-
vestigations into íslendingadrápa. It was composed before the first of
the íslendingasögur, and in all probability, in the twelfth century. The
poet did not use any written sagas as source material. When there is
agreement between the drápa and the saga in small details, this is, in
some cases, completely attributable to early verses known both to the
drápa poet and the saga writer, and in other cases, it is not possible to
distinguish between lost verses and oral tradition as the common
source.
íslendingadrápa contains, therefore, incontestable proof of the fact
that there were stories in circulation, in oral form, conceming the
leading figures in the íslendingasögur, and also other characters who
never received much attention in the written forms. The drápa also
provides certain proof that some of the verses in the íslendingasögur
20 Islenzk fornrit VIII, p. lix.