Gripla - 20.12.2007, Blaðsíða 21

THE FANTASTIC ELEMENT
6 This episode and its social context has most recently been discussed by Torfi H. Tulinius
2007.
of the earlier sagas. I have already pointed out that the fantastic elements in
Njáls saga do not have the same function as the ones in Grettis saga. In Njáls
saga it seems to me that such elements are primarily symbolic and have the
function of enhancing the pathos of the narrative while the course of events is
not changed by them. Högni and Skarphéðinn would no doubt have conduc-
ted the vengeance for Gunnar although he had not appeared to them and urged
them to be relentless against their enemies. Brjánsbardagi would have taken
place without the visions occuring ahead of it. Njáll may have atoned for his
sins before he was burnt but there is no divine interference to save his life.
Eyrbyggja saga, to take a saga with a strong fantastic element, is primarily
about social and political conditions and conflicts in the old society. The re-
venants appearing affect the lives of human beings, but their world is mostly
clearly distinguished from the world of the living, and the supremacy of hu-
man society in this world is confirmed when the revenants obey the verdict of
a human court and disappear (Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 55).6 The fantastic elements
in the saga are a mixture of popular motifs of pre-Christian or at least non-
Christian origins and influences from religious literature, quite obvious in the
whole Fróðá-episode.
In spite of their proximity to the fornaldarsögur, the Íslendingasögur from the
fourteenth century all have important generic indicators showing that they are
intended to be of the same kind as the ones from the thirteenth century: they
all pretend to be history. However, generic boundaries are less clear in the
fourteenth century sagas than they were, say, in the second half of the thir-
teenth century, and this is one of the reasons why fantastic elements are more
prominent in the late Íslendingasögur. There must be other reasons for this
than an increased influence of folktale and fornaldarsaga. Why were such mat-
ters more appealing and interesting in the fourteenth century than they were in
the thirteenth? Two possibilites, not mutually exlusive, come to mind:
1) Historical legends, local traditions about events in the near and distant
past, were used as material for literature in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies, but this source was drying up in the fourteenth while there was an
abundance of more fantastic lore that could be used as material and inspira-
tion for saga writers. This would in my opinion apply to the sagas with the
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