Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 137

Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 137
ANTIPAGAN SENTIMENT IN THE SAGAS 133 concentrated on the texts themselves, quoting extensively and ex- clusively from the sagas and disregarding the polemic literature about them. For those of us who read and enjoy the sagas as serious fiction created in Iceland for the most part in the thirteenth century, there is nothing new or startling either in the quotations or in my comments about them. For others, however, who may be more intimately ac- quainted with romantic speculations about the sagas than with the texts themselves, some of the quotations (and my commentary) may have been just a bit annoying or disquieting, since they do not always say what sagas are supposed to say. There seems, for instance, to be far too much praise of Christians and deprecation of pagans in these passages. Even if the adoption of Christianity was such an important event in the history of Iceland, was it really necessary for so many saga writers to make such a big thing of it in stories that are, according to romantic doctrine, pre- dominantly pagan? Even more disquieting questions are raised by the statement in Sturlunga saga that Sturla Sighvatsson made a pilgrim- age to Rome to receive absolution for his transgressions and those oj his father, and by the various requests made by dying pagans that their Christian conquerors name sons for them. Perhaps the numerous accounts in saga literature of pilgrimages to Rome and the Holy Land are more than a casual concession to the Church? And why did so many writers of pagan sagas find it necessary to condemn so many pagan practices? And why, if the sagas were written from the pagan point of view, is the belief in pagan gods so consistently depicted as baleful or ludicrous or both? According to romantic saga doctrine the Christian element in the sagas is slight and superficial, having little or nothing to do with their essence or substance. If this were so, we should have to regard more than half of Hallfreðar saga as a superfluous superimposition, and the haunting dream verses in Gísla saga would have to be eliminated as late emendations. And Njáls saga would no longer be the mightiest of the Sagas of Icelanders, for we would have to regard some of the most memorable and meaningful passages of this monumental repu- diation of the old way of life as improper intrusions on the heathen viewpoint that must, according to romantic doctrine, inform the ís- lendingasögur. Njál’s adoption of Höskuldr, whose father was slain by
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