Gripla - 20.12.2006, Qupperneq 135

READING FOR SAGA AUTHORSHIP 133
As the poem progressed, Egil began to get back his spirits and when it
was completed he tried the poem out before Asgerd, Thorgerd and his
household. Then he got out of bed and took his place on the high-seat.
He called the poem ‘Lament for My Sons’. (Hermann Pálsson P. Ed-
wards 1976:209)]
The verse is the beginning of Sonatorrek and the prose a comment which
follows the poem as a whole. It suggests, I think, an authorial conception of
what the poem means to the character Egill. In itself, the first verse signals a
range of concerns regarding both the internal and bodily nature of com-
position, as well as the objects of the act of composition. In addition, there is
a relationship between the internal and physical struggle of the poet and the
object of the poem: Bƒðvarr’s death is the cause of grief as well the poem’s
supposed object, whilst grief creates both Egill’s dumbness (or the poetic
theme of dumbness) and a very eloquent stream in the narrative within the
kvæði. The kvæði successfully blends the physical and the psychic, the subject
and the object. The prose comment, and the narrative of Egill’s loss frame the
Sonatorrek as a whole and can be said to stand outside Egill’s personal and
physical space. That is, the poem appears to look in, just as Egill’s daughter
wishes to look in, to view what effect the poetic performance is having on the
mood of the utterer.
The prose narration around the poem creates a chamber that is, in a literary
sense, similar to the distance which the physical chamber represents for Egill’s
relationship with his world and his various losses: the loss of poetic fluency,
the loss of a son, and the loss of his youth and former strength. The prose
comment about the poem goes on to follow the early life of the poem, that it is
delivered to Ásgerðr and Þorgerðr, that Egill then resumes his place as head of
the household, and that Egill himself names the poem Sonatorrek. The narra-
tion recognizes the life of the skáld and how the poetic act affects the skáld,
and watches the kvæði move, firstly, from Egill to a discourse with himself
within his room, secondly, an exchange with his family, and thirdly, into an
expression of his household. Egill is being commented on in a way that em-
phasizes his belonging to an older, past world — to the historical Iceland of an
earlier age as it is jointly conceived by the author and his audience. At the
same time, the surrounding prose codifies the poem as a character’s private
statement of self that acts on the author: here, the poetry and prose combine to
form a dialogue between saga author and Egill, the poet of a saga, about the