Gripla - 20.12.2005, Page 15

STYLISTICS AND SOURCES OF THE POSTOLA SÖGUR 13
called graphically violent,10 and the sermons or long speeches that supposedly
‘overweigh’ the apostles’ lives are in fact their most vital element, as signi-
ficant in their messages to the writer and audience of the vitae as any discus-
sion of the moral consequences of a choice made or to be made by a saga
character at a crucial moment. In addition, the fact that the apostles’ lives bear
little surface resemblance to the Íslendingasögur should not deter us from tak-
ing into account and investigating further the correspondences that the two
genres share on other levels: their overriding didacticism, as well as formulaic
qualities, narrative schemes, and certain aspects of characterization.
One of the most important studies that remains to be done on the earliest
Icelandic saints’ and apostles’ lives, before any further lines are stretched be-
tween them and the Íslendingasögur and other medieval Icelandic narrative
genres, would be to locate and determine, to a fuller and more systematic ex-
tent than has been previously done, the precise ways in which the sagas in the
collections AM 645 4to and AM 652/630 4to were adapted and transformed
from the Latin by their Icelandic interpreters. Such a study could reveal much
in terms of how Icelandic and Latin idiom were being reshaped by Icelandic
translators, and would give us a far better understanding of the level of literary
fluency that Icelandic men of letters possessed even at a very early stage. In
many places the texts in AM 645 4to and AM 652/630 4to bear the marks of
highly original thinking, not only in the ways that Latin rhetoric is often
streamlined, but also in the ways that dictional choices give certain subtle
nuances to the translations that the originals lack. In one brief example, Col-
lings notes the ‘sensitivity’ in the ‘choice of suitable expression’ displayed by
the Icelandic translator of the saga of the apostles Simon and Jude, as he pares
down the exalted Latin paraphrastic rhetoric that is unsuited to a description of
the apostles of God. The apostles compel the devils in an idol to foretell the
outcome of the war that the earl Varardag is going to wage against the Indians,
10 In the saga of the apostle Philip, for example, the martyrdom scene reads as follows: „Segia
sva helgar bøkr, at fla kømi flar hei›nir menn me› ofri›i miklum ok hπndlu›u postolann ok
dømdu hann flegar til liflatz, ok var hann si›an krossfestr, ok gryttu fleir hann si›an a kross-
inum, ok for hann me› fleim piningarsigri a flessum degi til almattigs gu›s“ (Post.:737.20-
24). In the saga of the apostles Simon and Jude, the martyrdom is even more concise: „fia
drifu blotmenn at postolum gu›s ok vagu fla, ok foru fleir fagnandi til gu›s“ (Post.:788.38-
789.1). In the saga of the apostle James the Greater, the attention during the martyrdom is in
fact focused on a secondary character, Josias, whom James converts just prior to their deaths:
„En Josias var algerr i tru drottens vars Jesu Cristi oc flegar høggvenn mefl Jacobo postola, oc
gerflesc saflr piningarvattr gofls, oc foru fleir bafler a einne stundo til drottens [...]“ (Post.:
529. 22-24).