Gripla - 20.12.2007, Qupperneq 51

ANTIQUARIANISM, POETRY, AND WORD-OF-MOUTH FAME 49
of saga-discourse, an obvious question comes up: why offer such material so
late in the narrative? Why spell out the public opinion concerning Grettir’s
swim instead of just noting that people hear about the deed? Or, to put the
point another way, why not write, Illugi kastaði skildi þá yfir hann, ok varði
hann rƒskliga (cf. Grettis saga:260)? Surely in the last few episodes of a saga
a writer can reinforce a character’s fame through merely relating heroic deeds,
while the audience could assume that the reactions of typical witnesses to such
events and behaviours would take place, once the narrator has included a few
examples of these reactions. Yet references to word-of-mouth fame persist
throughout Grettis saga and most others right to their final chapters, and the
sheer number of these references would seem to overwhelm any idea that they
are meant to appear at strategic junctures of the narrative (Grettis saga:69, 71,
72, 72-73, 76, 78, 81, 94, 104, 117, 121, 122, 125, 129, 131, 132-34, 136, 137,
162, 170, 174, 184, 187, 196, 211, 216, 218, 222, 233, 234, 249, 261, 263,
265, 266, 268, 272, 286, 289-290).5 Equally, in Njáls saga, a general picture of
Gunnarr of Hlíðarendi’s reputation is reproduced many times up to and even
after his death, often in the same terms as earlier in the saga, engi var hans
maki, ‘he had no equal’ (Njáls saga:82; 76, 82, 84, 85, 86, 91, 127, 130, 133,
146, 166, 174, 181, 189, 190, 191, 198, 201, 230, 335). The persistence of
these passages has no obvious cumulative effect. They come over as re-
dundant.
One might, then, argue that evaluative episodes recur throughout the sagas
because fame-worthiness is a theme or motif of these compositions. Yet puz-
zlement arises from this theory as well. As the narratives of most of the sagas
of Icelanders develop, each starts to include more complex ways of thinking
about reputation than simple praise through word of mouth. One sees, for in-
stance, ritualistic declarations of an individual’s renown that are more for-
mulaic than spontaneous, as when the dead Gunnarr gets up in his grave and
proclaims his deeds loudly in verse (Njáls saga:193). One sees the growth of
a character’s reputation into a kind of social currency, as when Hƒskuldr Dala-
Kollsson in the same saga immediately recognizes a well-executed plan as
representative of Njáll’s thinking (65). One sees self-consciousness by
characters regarding their word-of-mouth fame, as when Gunnarr openly
compares his methods of gaining renown with his wife’s (189, 83, 139). One
5 An example of a strategic moment would be just before a character dies. Theodore M.
Andersson notes that a character’s reputation often receives a summing up at this juncture
(1967:62- 64).