Gripla - 20.12.2009, Page 210

GRIPLA210
and one of his sons, egill, is the main protagonist of the saga. Born a
pagan, Egill is not only a fierce warrior, avid for wealth and jealous of his
power, he is also one of the greatest practitioners ever of skaldic poetry. He
will kill a man in a most savage way and shortly afterwards, declaim a
poetic strophe that is remarkably complex and finely wrought.
of course, the egill of the saga is a fictional character, even though a
real person may have existed with this name. It might therefore be inter­
esting, in light of the subject of this paper, to examine how the author goes
about telling his story and to try to understand the meaning he gives it.
When studied carefully, it becomes clear that the saga is very elaborately
composed. It is divided into two parts where one is exactly twice as long as
the other. In addition, episodes and themes tend to repeat themselves with
variations in a very regular way. Finally, the plot is both intricate and com­
plex, doubling a surface conflict with the Norwegian royal family with a
more subterranean one, involving egill, his father and brother.
to this structural refinement, the author also brings a highly sophisti­
cated use of intertextuality. As we have already seen, the skaldic kenning is
partly based on inter textual play, since it is necessary to know the pagan
myths in order to understand some of them. In his narrative, the author of
Egils saga also refers covertly to pagan myths in different ways, for example
through nicknames of his characters or by transposing mythic situations
into the reality he is creating with his story. In this way he suggests a
meaning to his narrative: by naming a character Hǫðr, for example, i.e. the
blind god who killed his brother Baldr, the author thereby sounds the
theme of fratricide, which is one of the undercurrents in the saga.26
One of the ways in which skaldic poetry was adapted after the Con-
version was by using references to Christian learning in the poems com­
posed for religious purposes. An example of this can also be found in one
of the poems ascribed to egill in the saga, though it does not present itself
as a religious poem. In the fifth strophe of Sonatorrek (“on the difficulty of
avenging one’s sons”), egill develops an extended metaphor for praise
poetry: þat berk úr orðhofi mærðar timbr máli laufgat (“I carry out of the
word-temple the timber of praise which has been made to sprout leaves by
the action of language”). this nýgerving, i.e., an extended congruent meta­
phor based on a series of periphrases or kennings, also echoes the follow­
26 torfi H. tulinius, Skáldið í skriftinni, 53–116.