Gripla - 01.01.1979, Qupperneq 100

PETER A. JORGENSEN
ÞJÓSTÓLFS SAGA HAMRAMMA
The Case for Forgery
In the twelve-volume edition of Icelandic sagas published by Guðni
Jónsson in 1946, is to be found an entertaining adventure entitled Þjósí-
ólfs saga hamramma.1 Numerous tales attested only in younger paper
manuscripts are included there, for the unbroken scribal continuity in
Iceland often preserved now-lost medieval sagas or parts thereof. Until
recently, there has been no reason to believe that Þjóstólfs saga was not
an important link to the past, if only as part of a long literary tradition
based on older oral material.2
Between the Middle Ages and modern times, however, the author
grew in stature, and slavish imitation could be relabelled plagiarism. It
is the thesis of this paper that in post-Renaissance Denmark, especially
eighteenth-century Denmark, with its emphasis on the authenticity of
sources and the value of the sagas as historical repositories, the re-
arrangement of a well-known saga’s plot (which we would now call
plagiarism), sold to a historian as genuine, constituted forgery.3 This is
not to say that the saga must be without literary merit, but even if the
element of fraud is subtracted and original authorship established, one
is left, at best, with post-medieval unoriginality. The primary value of
1 íslendinga sögur (Reykjavík, reprint 1953), VIII, 361-397. To Jónas Krist-
jánsson go my thanks for his help and the many useful suggestions which he has
made to me, as well as to Stefán Karlsson for putting at my disposal his expertise
in the still to be adequately described history of post-sixteenth-century Icelandic.
2 Cf., for example, ísl. sögitr, I, xxvi: “í safn þetta höfum vér tekið upp all-
margar ungar íslendinga sögur, jafnvel frá 19. öld. . . . Þær eru í sjálfu sér engu
ómerkari en sumar af sögunum frá 14. öld og samdar með sömu aðferðum sem
þær. Þær eru ritaðar í anda og stíl íslendinga sagna.”
3 This view was also held in 18th-century England: “Forgery, or the crimen
falsi is . . . ‘the fraudulent making or alteration of a writing to the prejudice of
another man’s right’,” William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
(Oxford, 1769; reprint Brussels, 1966), IV, 245.