Saga - 2001, Blaðsíða 207

Á ÖRLYGSSTÖÐUM
205
the previous night. Gissur dreamed that his late irncle, Bishop Magnús
Gissurarson, who had died just a week earlier, appeared to him and said
that he would go with Gissur. Kolbeinn and Gissur agreed that this was a
propitious dream. But Sturla Sighvatsson woke up early in the moming,
wiped the sweat off his face and said: "Dreams have no significance." It
seems ironic that his own victim, young Snorri Þorvaldsson whom he had
brutally put to death six and a half years earlier, also had bad dreams on
the last night of his life, but Snorri's brother who was executed with him
protested then that dreams shouldn't be considered significant. The third
iristance of the phrase is to be found in Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, where
borsteinn uses it misleadingly about his prophetic dream adumbrating
the tragic love between his daughter Helga the Fair and Gunnlaugur
Adder-Tongue.
Gissur's brief address to his troops before the beginning of the battle,
echoes a famous speech by King Sverrir which he made in 1180 when
hghting his way to power. In 1240, King Hákon quoted the same speech,
just before he set out to kill his father-in-law and rival, Duke Skúli. There
can be no doubt that both Gissur and King Hákon were inspired by the
Sverris saga of Karl Jónsson (d. 1212), but since Sturla was the author of
both Hákonar saga and íslendinga saga, the inclusion of these speeches
therein is hardly due to a mere chance.
As Sighvatr is lying slain on the battlefield, a certain deacon, also
uamed Sighvatr, flung himself over his dead body and was instantly
biUed; this heroic gesture echoes literary incidents going back to Virgil
(the Aeneid IX 444-45), and has striking analogues in Víga-Glúms saga,
Knýtlinga saga, Breta sögur and Alexanders saga. Was Sighvatr's leamed
namesake deliberately following a literary model, or did Sturla borrow
Öfis detail from one of the potential models mentioned above? Moments
before his death, Sighvatr is wounded slightly by Kolbeinn, a former
fiiend who was also his wife's nephew. Sighvatr's reaction was to ask
Kolbeinn to exchange words with him, echoing a sentiment in
Kugsvinnsmál, the Icelandic version of the Distichs ofCato; according to the
P°em, it was considered bad manners not to speak to the people one met
°n the way. The same notion occurs in Vatnsdæla saga and elsewhere.
Sighvatr's plea has a striking parallel earlier in íslendinga saga. Back in
Í232, as the executioner is raising his axe to kill Snorri Þorvaldsson, men-
iioned above, the victim said that he would like to speak to his killer first.
Just as in Sighvatr's case, Snorri was not granted his last wish.
As the battle was reaching its inevitable conclusion, one of Sighvatr's
c°mpanions, an elderly farmer called Árni kept striking out right and left.
JAhen Kolbeinn's men asked Ámi why he was doing this he replied, I
have no intention of going away from here." He was killed shortly after-