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period: Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar, Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar, Gautreks saga,
Flóvents saga and Mágus saga may be from before 1300, but others may be
up to 200 years younger.30 A lively debate about the sources, authorship
and dating of Grettis saga has been ongoing since the nineteenth century
and in the last two decades, several scholars have argued persuasively that
the saga was composed in the fifteenth century.31 Conversely, Ectors saga,
Sigurðar saga þǫgla, Þórðar saga hreðu and Hálfdanar saga Brönufóstra (as
are published in Loth’s Late Medieval Icelandic Romances (1962–63). Mágus saga was
published in gunnlaugur Þórðarson’s edition (1858) and Flóvents saga (as Flóvents saga I)
was printed by gustav Cederschiöld in Acta Universitatis Lundensis (1877–78), and reprinted
in Fornsögur Suðrlanda in 1884. All of these editions except Grettis saga, Þórðar saga hreðu
and Flóvents saga use AM 152 fol. as their base text; in the following, quotations from those
sagas are from the manuscript text of AM 152 fol. with supplementary references to the
corresponding passage in the printed editions.
30 While many scholars consider Gautreks saga to be composed in the thirteenth century, the
first extant manuscript of its shorter redaction (without Víkarrs þáttr) appears in ca. 1400;
the longer redaction first appears in AM 152 fol. for an overview of manuscripts, redactions
and editions of Gautreks saga, see Michael Chesnutt, ‘the Content and Meaning of Gjafa-
Refs saga,’ in Fornaldarsagaerne. Myter og virkelighed. Studier i de oldislandske fornaldarsögur
Norðurlanda, ed. Agneta ney, et al. (Copenhagen: Museum tusculanums forlag, 2009),
93–106. For a recent analysis of Gautreks saga in a late-thirteenth-century context, see
kevin Wanner, ‘Adjusting judgements of Gauta þáttr’s Forest Family,’ Scandinavian Studies
80 (2008): 375–406. Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar’s oldest manuscript, AM 567 XIV β 4to
is dated to ca. 1300, see Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. Registre (Copenhagen: Den
Arnamagnæanske kommission, 1989), 269–70. rowe, building on arguments made by
Hollander, suggests that Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar might have been composed in the 1290s,
and Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar in the 1280s; see ‘Absent Mothers,’ 151–152; however, see
discussion about the problems of the idea of medieval authorship vis-à-vis Þorsteins saga in
Lethbridge, ‘the Place of Þorsteins saga,’ 397–398. Mágus saga’s and Flóvents saga’s older
redactions are in AM 580 4to, dated to the early fourteenth century. Both are norwegian or
Icelandic translations of foreign chansons de geste from before or around 1300 but they differ
significantly from foreign versions, see Marianne E. Kalinke, ‘the Importation of chansons
de geste in the North,’ chapter in a projected monograph about translated riddarasögur.
31 See overview and discussion in Kate Heslop, ‘Grettisfœrsla: the Handing on of grettir,’
Saga-Book 30 (2006): 76–78, and ‘grettir in Ísafjörður: Grettisfœrsla and Grettis saga,’ in
Creating the Medieval Saga. Versions, Variability and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse
Saga Literature, eds. Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge, the Viking Collection: Studies
in northern Civilization, vol. 18 (odense: university of Southern Denmark Press, 2010),
221–222; see also Örnólfur thorsson, ‘grettir sterki og Sturla lögmaður,’ in Samtíðarsögur.
The Contemporary Sagas. Níunda alþjóðlega fornsagnaþingið. Ninth International Saga
Conference, Akureyri 31.7.–6.8.1994. Forprent. Preprints, vol. 2 (Akureyri: [n.p.], 1994),
918–919. Although narratives about grettir were probably told through the centuries in
Iceland, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is no evidence for the existence of the
preserved saga earlier than the fifteenth century.