Gripla - 01.01.1984, Side 247

SAXO IN ICELAND
243
are for the most part very short, and concern only one or two heroes.
A longer one, made at the end of the seventeenth century (NKS 1590
4to), stretches from the beginning to the death of Hrólfr kraki. It was
only in the mid-nineteenth century that all of the first nine books of
Gesta Danorum were translated into Icelandic, by the indefatigable
writer Gísli Konráðsson (1787-1877). Gísli states in a preface to his
work that he used Schousb0lle’s translation, but in addition he larded
his own translation with copious references to Icelandic versions of
events recounted by Saxo. Many of these references are to Heimskringla
and to the medieval sagas, but some of them are also to the late sagas
based on Saxo. His account of Starkaður is based on the eigtheenth-
century Icelandic saga (see below), itself a combination of Saxo and the
Icelandic sources, in particular Gautreks saga. He has worked into this
the additional material with which Saxo’s account is interspersed so as
to include all the possible subject-matter. Another distinctive feature of
Gísli’s translation is that he has provided verses composed by himself or
others which are loose renderings of Saxo’s verses.
Although this translation of Saxo is cited in several places as one of
Gísli’s many works,5 only an autograph copy (Lbs. 1133 4to), and one
poor copy (Lbs. 4486 4to) by another Icelander of the Vestfirðir, Guð-
brandur Sturlaugsson (1820-97), survive. The translation was made too
late to be used as the basis for any new sagas and it had no further in-
fluence.
One of the earliest of the sagas derived from Saxo is based on the two
voyages of Thorkillus in Book Eight of Gesta Danorum. Sagan af Gorm
kónginum gamla is known from a single seventeenth-century manuscript
(BM Add. 4867, 256r-261v), where it has been written in at the end of
a volume that contains several of the íslendingasögur.6 Although certain
additions have been made about the characters and the voyages they
make, and in particular the first voyage, it does not diverge very far
from its source. The most important of these additions is that a ferry-
man named Vöttur ferries Gormur, Thorkillus and their companions
from Guðmundur’s land to their destination, while in Saxo Guðmundur
5 See Ævisaga Gísla ens fróða Konráðssonar, Reykjavík, 1911-14, 326.
6 Konungs Gorms gamla þáttur is also listed by Sólrún Jensdóttir, ‘Books
Owned by Ordinary People in Iceland, 1750-1830’, Saga-Book of the Viking So-
ciety XIX (1975-76), 283.