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READING FOR SAGA AUTHORSHIP 135
they often thematise the act of representation, seeking in a sophisticated way
to understand communication in and of the past.
Secondary authorship need not be limited to such clear-cut instances of
composition. Other representational if less creative discourses may also reflect
conceptions of saga authorship if the character’s speech or behaviour can be
analysed in terms of the modes of representation that are encoded in them and
not merely in terms of the characters’ plot function.13 This necessarily casts a
rather wide net, and may open the approach to the criticism of taking common
features of all literature as starting points in a discussion of the specific au-
thorship context in medieval Iceland. However, the aim of the secondary au-
thorship approach is to expand the range of texts that can be used in dis-
cussing saga authorship, and as such a broad definition of secondary author-
ship is preferable to a narrower, if more precise one: this allows us to at least
begin by looking at a wide range of representations by characters, taking each
as a potential reflection of how saga authors conceived of literary representa-
tion.
Persuasion and advice, for instance, often involve expressions of how
characters in the sagas interpret events and other characters, as can the very
detailed legal arguments which the family sagas at times relish at the cost of
narrative momentum.14 If one function of saga authorship is to preserve legal
history, then characters’ fascination with legal detail is an instance of char-
acters making representations on a theme taken up by the genre as a whole:
13 Compare Cook’s emphasis on will in the family sagas in 1973: ‘in the typical actions of the
saga the inner life is played down in favour of manifestations of the will’ (93). Such ex-
pressions of the will include whetting (97-101), requests for aid (102-105), trickery (105-
106), persuasion and reluctance (106-108), warnings which demonstrate the object’s
unyielding will (108-109), and wise refusals (111-112). Amory’s (1991) categories of saga
speech acts, namely refusals of requests (64-68), breaches of contract (68-73), threats (73-
74), insults (74-77), and challenges (77-80) are also starting points for an analysis of the
sagas that is, although with a sociolinguistic emphasis, similar to my idea of secondary au-
thorship. Speech act theory does not stress the authorial nature of words but their relation to
other modes of social performance and various performance structures. It is this interest in
words as social functions, anthropologically aligned with physical actions rather than ironic
narratives, that distances speech act theory from my notion of secondary authorship, and I do
not consider Amory’s formulation of social exchanges in the sagas to be immediately ap-
plicable here. See also Bonner and Grimstad 1996, who have collaborated as linguist and lite-
rary scholar on a dialogue analysis of Hrafnkels saga freysgoða (5); they develop a perform-
ative approach that can be linked to arguments by Amory 1991 and Bauman 1986.
14 Regarding legal advocacy in the saga age, see, for example, Lönnroth 1976:88-102, and,
more generally, Miller 1990; Byock 1982 and 1986; and Berger 1976 and 1978-1981.