Gripla - 20.12.2006, Page 37

KVE‹SKAPUR EGILS SKALLAGRÍMSSONAR 35
SUMMARY
‘The Poetry of Egill Skallagrímsson’
Keywords: Poetry of Egill Skallagrímsson/ The Saga of Egill/ Scaldic Poetry
The author first discusses the surviving texts of the poems which have been attributed
to Egill Skallagrímsson, and concludes that what we have are 48 single stanzas, three
full poems and fragments of three others. In this connection the author discusses the
preservation of Egill’s poems in manuscripts of Egils saga and elsewhere, including
the Snorra-Edda and the Third Grammatical Treatise by Ólafur Þórðarson hvítaskáld,
the nephew of Snorri Sturluson. He reviews the opinions of scholars who have ques-
tioned Egill’s authorship of the works which have been attributed to him, especially
those of Finnur Jónsson and Sigurður Nordal. He devotes a long passage to the essay
on Höfuðlausn by Jón Helgason, which appeared in Einarsbók (1969), where Jón argu-
ed for the reading “gør” in the tenth stanza, as opposed to “giƒr / gjƒr”. Jón’s
argument affects the dating of the poem, since the vowels “ø” and “ƒ” could not have
formed a rhyme at the time when Egill was alive. The author concludes that Jón’s
argument does not hold water and that the full rhyme in stanza 10 of Höfuðlausn was
“ƒ / ƒ” [hjƒr / gjƒr], referring to Haraldur Bernharðsson’s etymological explanation of
the word “göróttur,” which appears in this volume (pages 37–73). A survey is given of
the views of those who have called into doubt the attribution of poems to Egill, in-
cluding Bjarni Einarsson, Baldur Hafstað and Torfi Tulinius. Finally the author submits
Egill’s poetry to a grammatical and prosodic analysis, showing how it accords with the
so-called law of W. A. Craigie as it appeared in Arkiv för nordisk filologi 1900. The
author’s conclusion is that it has not been proven conclusively that Egill’s poems are
contemporary with the saga, in other words composed during the 13th century. His
opinion is that the poems are ancient and can be justly attributed to Egill Skalla-
grímsson.
Jónas Kristjánsson
Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum
Háskóla Íslands
Árnagarði við Suðurgötu
IS-101 Reykjavík, Ísland
jk@hi.is