Gripla - 20.12.2004, Side 255

A NEW EDITION OF BISKUPA S¯GUR 253
was promulgated. The second book recounts miracles from the episcopate
of Bishop Páll Jónsson. The C version of fiorláks saga is preserved with the
second miracle collection and/or a younger collection, which covers the years
1300–1325 (this edition prints only chapters 57–70 and 107–32 of the C text
in full, as the remaining chapters are close in form to other texts printed here).
Two surviving leaves of AM 383 4to II (here designated fiorláks saga E)
include further posthumous miracles. As in Jóns saga helga, most of fiorlákr’s
many recorded miracles are healings, but there are also several involving the
weather. Women are again prominent in the miracle stories and several
animals are healed by the saint’s intervention. Miracles in the oldest collection
all occurred in the Skálholt diocese, as did almost all of those in fiorláks saga
A and most in fiorláks saga B. More miracles that took place abroad (Norway,
Shetland, England, Byzantium) are preserved in the C version.
Like Hungrvaka, Páls saga byskups is preserved only in post-medieval
manuscripts, all from the seventeenth century. In her account of research on
the date of this text Ásdís Egilsdóttir explains that whereas Magnús Már Lár-
usson and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson thought the saga was written before 1216,
Sveinbjörn Rafnsson has more recently argued that it is younger than Hungr-
vaka and dates from between 1229–35. He also thinks the author could be
Loptr Pálsson, the bishop’s son (see ÍF XVI:cxxx–cxxxii). For understandable
reasons, the saga makes much of Páll’s connections with his uncle, St fiorlákr.
After Páll has become bishop he plays a key role in establishing the cult of
fiorlákr; chapter 8, for example, describes the shrine Páll has constructed for
the new pilgrimage centre at Skálholt. The saga-writer also pays much atten-
tion to Páll’s family life, praising his wife Herdís for her domestic accom-
plishments.
Volume II of this edition also includes Ísleifs fláttr byskups, a text pre-
served in Flateyjarbók in the saga of St Óláfr and in incomplete form in a
fifteenth-century manuscript, AM 75 e fol 5 (copied when complete in Sth
papp 4:o nr 4). It concerns Ísleifr, the son of Gizurr inn hvíti, and tells of his
reception by king Óláfr in Norway, and then of his wooing of Dalla fiorvalds-
dóttir back in Iceland.
The third volume of this edition includes two fourteenth-century sagas of
bishops, Árna saga biskups and Lárentíus saga biskups. The later date of these
texts has been taken account of in their normalisation, with the middle voice
inflections and certain other features reflecting fourteenth-century norms.
Árni fiorláksson was born in 1237, consecrated bishop of Skálholt in 1269,