Gripla - 20.12.2014, Page 110

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siblings’ (mainly Björn’s) property, never ceasing despite repeated rulings
in his cousins’ favour. Ironically, Björn guðnason himself was the son of an
illegitimate daughter, but this does not seem to have been used against him.
He managed to rally considerable support in the West fjords for his cause;
to complicate matters, power struggles between landowners, spearheaded
by Björn guðnason, on one hand, and, on the other, the Church, became
mixed up in the matter, as stefán jónsson, bishop of skálholt, supported
Þorleifr’s heirs. In 1514, after years of legal wrangling, Jón Sigmundsson
lögmaður ruled that Björn guðnason was the heir of Þorleifr, and this was
confirmed by the king in 1518. However, by then, the bishop had finally
managed to subjugate Björn, and he died soon thereafter.
In a long and impassioned letter that Björn guðnason wrote to Bis-
hop Stefán in 1500, he complains bitterly about Björn and Þorsteinn
Þor leifssynir’s alleged slander of him to the Bishop, and accuses them of
various other offences towards him.83 Although Þorsteinn was illegiti-
mate and thus not eligible to inherit from his father in the same way as his
brother Björn, they appear to have joined forces throughout this dispute,
and it can be conjectured from this letter that the brothers enjoyed a good
relationship, with Þorsteinn supporting his brother despite his inferior
legal standing. the only direct hint at the scribe’s attitude to the texts is in
his previously mentioned marginal identification as ‘the brother of Björn
Þorleifsson’, which is written at the very place where Þorsteinn drómundr
– incarcerated in Miklagarðr for having slain his brother’s killer – sings so
wonderfully that Spes, who is passing by, has him released from prison.84
At this point, the text reads: ‘Þorsteinn nefndi sik’ [Þorsteinn stated his
name], and, as Dario Bullitta has suggested, the marginal note appearing
at this point is unlikely to be coincidental. Perhaps the scribe not only
wished to draw a link between himself and the name, but also the charac-
ter himself: Þorsteinn drómundr is grettir’s half-brother – like Þorsteinn
and Björn, he and Grettir have the same father – and he is arguably one of
the saga’s most positive figures. Emphatically, harmony between brothers
is most likely in both the literary and the historical realms when they are
not in direct competition with each other for inheritance. the illegitimate
83 DI, 7:532–536.
84 Dario Bullitta, ‘La “saga di Þorsteinn Víkingsson”: Introduzione e traduzione’ (Master’s
dissertation, University of sassari, 2010).