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nature of loss and its expression in verse.11 That is, the saga author is engaged
in a representation of authorship, a secondary authorship that, while some
way from being a direct treatise on the nature of composition or literary ef-
fects, may nevertheless be useful when discussing conceptions of saga author-
ship. Although the author is portraying a character accepted by his audience as
historically credible, the process by which the character represents the world
around him may be imbued with, and indeed may influence, the saga authors’
own, late medieval conception of how representation comes into being and
then becomes accurate and true to sources, informative, analytical, artistically
praiseworthy, and entertaining.
Aside from the composition and delivering of poems, perhaps the clearest
example of secondary authorship is the widely-discussed instance of story-
telling in Þorgils saga ok Hafliða during saga entertainment (sagnaskemmtan)
at a wedding feast at Reykhólar, an event that suggests that even those sagas
used as entertainment during celebrations and other important gatherings were
scrutable.12 The author explains who told which story and troubles over the
truth value of sagas. An amusing exchange of verses concerning Þórðr Þor-
valdsson’s bad breath precedes the author’s list of the entertainment at the
feast. The author’s apparent pleasure in this spiteful banter, and his later con-
cern about what people think about the old stories, are candid acknowledg-
ments of a world of thinking about well-chosen or memorable words and the
contexts in which they are delivered. The sagas are not only representations,
11 As one would expect, poetic composition has received a great deal of attention to date. Even
recent scholarship about Old Icelandic poetic composition is immense (see generally Tur-
ville-Petre 1976; Frank 1978; Poole 1991; Clunies Ross 1998b; and regarding the charac-
terisation of poets, see, e.g., Vésteinn Ólason 1998:144-145). In a recent article, Torfi Tulinius
emphasizes the creative and intellectual links between saga events, poetic composition and
the outlook behind it, and the nature of saga narratives (2001: see esp. 192-194), and dis-
cusses possible meanings behind the presence of both complex meaning and a conceit of
God-given poetic talent (2001:198). See also Larrington 1993, who examines Old Icelandic
wisdom poetry; especially interesting is her discussion of wisdom and knowledge in Háva-
mál, the guide to honourable conduct (see 1993:4-36; see further Toorn 1955): Old Icelandic
wisdom poems defy normal narrative or chronological patterns (65), suggesting that in cer-
tain contexts knowledge and guidance are sufficient functions of textuality. That is, ‘an aes-
thetic impulse is always at work in the organisation of the wisdom poem: with no inherent
logical or chronological order, its structure becomes symphonic in character. Themes are
taken up, allowed to drop, returned to in a different key or tempo, modulated until resolution
is finally reached’ (Larrington 1993:220).
12 See further Foote 1955-1956; Úlfar Bragason 1994; Bauman 1986:135-137. See also Anders-
son and Gade’s discussion of Morkinskinna (2000: esp. 963, and Morkinskinna ch. 42).