Gripla - 01.01.1979, Síða 200

196
GRIPLA
and authors. This is in accordance with the methods used by the
historians of Medieval Europe.
This explanation is more adequate, i.a. because the prose sections
and the verses serve different purposes. In the prose sections concrete
facts are presented, for instance what happened, where, and who took
part. The verses on the other hand describe how things happened,
almost devoid of concrete facts, somewhat beside the main story and
similar to an illustration accompanying the text.13
It is not possible to determine when this conglomerate of prose and
verse came into being, but in all probability it happened not very long
after the poems were composed and when they passed into oral
tradition.
Above, in 2.1-2.2, the primary, political, purpose of court poetry
was discussed. As it passed into oral tradition its function changed into
serving as illustrations in prose tales. This is the secondary purpose of
the poems leading to their conservation, at least in part, because the
historians used the poems later in the same way.
That prose and poems serve a different purpose is well known
elsewhere. Emeneau (1966:342-343) has this to say on the Todas:
The semantic orientation of the songs is very different from what
is often considered to be the primary purpose of speech. The songs
are not instruments of information, but of comment, socially
directed or individually emotional; . . . Prose, no doubt, can and
does say the same things. But the semantic essence of Toda songs
is that the comments that are made are made in a highly formulaic,
and consequently restricted, way. On the occasion of an event
information may be given and comment made in prose, but the
socially directed, traditionally directed comment is made in song.
Vansina (1973:149) says about African praise poetry:
Moreover, although the poems themselves give very little precise
13 Sturla Þórðarson, one of the latest of the court poets (13th century), com-
posed a poem in honour of king Hákon Hákonarson, and later included verses
from the poem in his own written saga of Hákon Hákonarson. As the poet Sturla
Þórðarson could know no better than the historian Sturla Þórðarson, this has
been taken as an example of a tradition-bound but in his case meaningless use of
court poetry as a historical source. In fact, this is in complete agreement with the
regular use of court poems in the sagas, as outlined above.