Gripla - 01.01.1990, Page 194

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GRIPLA
well as from those which are independent (and possibly even younger)
translations from European sources.17 That the relationships may be
quite complicated is demonstrated by the version of Samsons saga
fagra discussed below, as well as by Móðars þáttur, which is preserved
in two parts. The second portion obviously stems from the rímur,
while the first part has no parallels in the poetic text at all.18 In the case
of drastic shortenings amounting to no more than a brief plot outline,
it may well prove impossible to distinguish between the different types
of sources. This difficulty is further demonstrated by Ármanns saga in
yngri, which is apparently indebted in its first part to Bárðar saga Snœ-
fellsáss, but in the latter part it seems to rely either on Ármanns rímur
or on a version, probably from memory, of Ármanns saga ok Þorsteins
gála. To complicate matters it should be noted that this latter work is
itself an example of nmur-derived prose, being a late seventeenth-
century reworking of Ármanns rímur.w Sometimes only a single canto
of the poem would be turned into a saga, as was the case with Ás-
mundar saga Sebbafóstra, a reworking, probably in the seventeenth
century, of the ninth canto of the popular Geðraunir (also called
Hrings rímur ok Tryggva).20 There is even an example of a disjointed
“saga,” modelled on Æneas rímur, a poem written by Jón Jónsson í
Möðrufelli, who lived from 1759 to 1846. The prose paraphrase is
placed at the beginning of each ríma, and it is obvious that these pas-
sages were intended as an aid to understanding the poetic text.21 The
placement of the prose is important, because it may point to the ulti-
mate reason for the rise of rímur-derived prose, namely that by the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the unusual poetic diction and
17 Ólafur Halldórsson, Haralds rímur Hringsbana, p. 17. Sigurður Breiðfjörð, Núma
rímur, p. xxiii.
18 Jón Helgason, Móðars rímur og Móðars þáttur in íslenzk rit síðari alda, vol. 5
(Kaupmannahöfn, 1950), pp. xxii-xxiii.
19 Guðni Jónsson, íslendinga sögur, vol. 12 (Reykjavík, 1947), pp. xiii-xiv.
20 Björn K. Þórólfsson, Rímur fyrir 1600, in Safn Fræðafjelagsins um ísland og ís-
lendinga, vol. 9 (Kaupmannahöfn, 1934), p. 316.
21 The attribution of authorship to Jón Jónsson í Möðrufelli in Finnur Sigmundsson,
Rímnatal, p. 120, is far from certain, and the 4 mss. listed there, Lbs. 991, 4to, JS 339,
451, 645, 4to, do not contain this rímur, which is rather to be found in ÍBR 93, 4to and
Lbs. 188, 8vo. Both extant mss. end at the beginning of the sixth ríma, so it is not known
if the poem was ever finished, and no mss. of the rímur without the accompanying prose
are known to exist.