Gripla - 20.12.2004, Qupperneq 40

GRIPLA38
of the years 1255–1257 and 1258–1261 (Hofmann 1973:16), and it is conceiv-
able, though entirely conjectural, that he spent some of that time in Norway.
The reason for attributing Stjórn III to Brandr in the first place is a statement
at the end of Gy›inga saga in 226 (Gu›mundur fiorláksson 1881:101; Wolf
1995: 219), which says that he had translated that book from Latin into Norse,
„ok svá Alexandro magno, eptir bo›i vir›uligs herra, herra Magnúsar kóngs,
sonar Hákonar kóngs gamla“ (and also Alexander the Great, at the command
of the worthy lord, the Lord King Magnús, son of King Hákon the Old).
Gu›brandur Vigfússon argued in favour of the view, by then almost
traditional, that Brandr had also translated Stjórn (1863:131–151; cf. Wolf
1995:lxxxiii–lxxxvii), but it was strongly opposed by Storm (1886b:246–251)
and most scholars have rejected it since. Seip (1957:17) countenanced it as a
possibility, however, and Hofmann and Kirby have subsequently returned to
it. In l961 Einar Ó1. Sveinsson showed that in its examples of alliteration of h-
with hl-, hn-, hr- Stjórn III bore the marks of Icelandic authorship, a fact
which has been found to lend some support to the attribution to Brandr
Jónsson (1961:17–32). It will of course never be possible to demonstrate that
he was the only Icelander who might be considered a candidate for the title of
translator of Stjórn, though no other name has so far been put forward. There
were probably a good many Icelandic literati in the thirteenth century, but
there are very few we can identify.
The chief conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is that in all prob-
ability, and without prejudice to the question of priority, Stjórn III and Kon-
ungs skuggsjá are contemporary in origin. The links between the two works
and various pointers in Stjórn III to Norwegian historical events show that the
translation must have been undertaken in Norway, even though an Icelander
may have been engaged on it. It would be natural enough for it then to be
written up by Norwegian scribes, and even if translated by an Icelander, the
first clean copy could well have been in a Norwegian hand. These circum-
stances would explain those features of the language of 228, the oldest of the
Icelandic manuscripts, which some scholars have been prepared to classify as
Norwegian.33
With suitable reservation on various points that remain obscure, we may
summarise the general development of Norse-Icelandic translation of the
historical books of the Bible in the following way:
33 See Hofmann 1973:21–23, though most of his examples are of dubious worth and prove very
little.