Gripla - 01.01.1979, Page 169

TEXT AND SEX IN GISLA SAGA 165
cence and friendship, but refuses to halt his visits, so Gísli kills him.
Þorkell is very displeased.
This version of the slaying of the first suitor is superior to the other
in that his innocence does credit to his courting and thus to Þórdís. The
friendship with Þorkell, and Þorkell’s displeasure at the slaying, are
natural and intelligible. On moral grounds, therefore, we should prefer
this alternate version.
After the slaying of the first suitor, AM 149 fol. and related MSS
have a lacuna. The other events in chapter II are lost. Nevertheless, it
should be clear from the arguments above that we should prefer the
lacuna on moral grounds.
However, there are other grounds for preferring the lacuna: it is more
original, and it is in fact the source of the distasteful version. The copy-
ist of AM 556a 4to, the morally inferior version, found a lacuna like
that in AM 149 fol. in his source, and tried to bridge the gap with an
excessive economy of means. The subsequent distortions of character
and event are not to be attributed to Gísla saga but to an abbreviator
of the fifteenth century.
That AM 556a 4to is an abbreviation of a version like 149 fol.
should be clear from comparing the two accounts of the suitor’s death.
556a tells of the death in far less space than 149 does because it omits
the rather lengthy delineation of the suitor’s innocence and worthiness
for friendship. Instead, the suitor is made merely a sneering opponent
of Gísli and his father. Although the abbreviator omits the worthiness
of the suitor, he retains Þorkell’s (and apparently Þórdís’s) friendship
with him, thus distorting their characters.
The two principal texts of Gísla saga are most different in the open-
ing chapters, but the order of events is the same in both, except, signi-
ficantly, on the edges of the lacuna. The relationship may be schema-
tized thusly:
XXXXXABCXXXXX
X X X X Xy .... zX X X X X
X represents events in common, y and z represent the two fragmentary
episodes bordering the lacuna, and A, B, and C represent events which
have no parallel in the text with the lacuna. Faced with the lacuna, the
abbreviator excised the fragmentary episodes and endeavored to patch