Gripla - 01.01.1984, Page 253

SAXO IN ICELAND
249
drengur, to whom there are references in Gautreks saga and Hervarar
saga. The three manuscripts that contain this saga are all very late, but
in the oldest (Lbs. 1504 4to) it is said that this is a copy of a manuscript
lent to the writer by Gísli Konráðsson many years before. It would
therefore appear to have been composed not later than the middle of
the nineteenth century. There are also two twentieth-century manu-
scripts of the saga (Lbs. 2081 8vo and Lbs. 2500 8vo), both of which
are apparantly derived from the earlier one. The second of these two
manuscripts must be among the youngest of all Icelandic saga manu-
scripts, as it was written in 1930, apparently for the personal satisfaction
of the scribe. He did not follow his source closely, as he states himself.
Most of the remaining works derived from Saxo comprise a single group
as they can be traced to, or connected with a single manuscript, most of
which was copied by the Breiðafjörður farmer Magnús Jónsson from
Tjaldanes (1835-1922), but which itself disappeared at some time in
the mid-nineteenth century. Magnús copied some of these sagas more
than once and some of these copies were incorporated in his twenty-
volume Fornmannasögur Norðurlanda (Lbs. 1491-1510 4to, 1880-
1905).
These sagas again appear to have originated in the north-west of Ice-
land, for in two of his prologues (Lbs. 1492 4to and 1505 4to) Magnús
says that he acquired the book in which they were contained many years
previously, on loan through an intermediary on Flatey from Birget Jóns-
dóttir who lived on Hergilsey but was originally from ‘Sellátrum vestra’.
Although the book was in poor condition when he obtained it he be-
lieved it to have been written in the early nineteenth century. He was
much impressed by the contents, and after he had returned it to Flatey
he attempted on several occasions to borrow it again, but always un-
successfully. Magnús recognised that the sagas contained traditional
heroic material although he did not think that they were themselves very
old.15 He did not recognise their provenance, for in spite of his acquaint-
ance with Gísli Konráðsson he appears to have had no knowledge of
Saxo. Most of the sagas were new to him, and also to his intermediary, a
minister’s wife on Flatey, called Guðrún Oddsdóttir, who, according to
Magnús, was well-versed in saga literature.
15 See Formáli to Lbs. 1493 4to.