Gripla - 20.12.2007, Page 57

ANTIQUARIANISM, POETRY, AND WORD-OF-MOUTH FAME 55
immediately after he has slain a foe (202-206, 210), but also that this saga
contains remarkably few examples of word-of-mouth fame. Possibly, then,
certain saga-writers, especially if they knew of other sagas in written form (as
seems likely), thought of fame through word of mouth and self-praise as vir-
tually equivalent, so that Njáls saga can dispense with the latter because it
contains the former.
Kári’s reaction, then, would seem to describe rather precisely the transfer,
in an almost physical fashion, of an apparent ‘message’ (in this case, a specific
feeling of achievement), from the mind of a performer to that of a spectator.
His comment performs the same disseminating function as a stanza of praise-
poetry; but, in the instance of the communication of Skarpheðinn’s feelings to
Kári, the transfer is more immediate, intimate, and direct than verse. This
transfer idea is even suggested by the distinct characters of the two men in-
volved. Up to the point of Þráinn’s killing in Njáls saga, Kári’s thoughts, com-
pared to those of other characters, have seldom appeared. He offers no spon-
taneous praise of Grímr and Helgi, the other two sons of Njáll, when he first
appears in the saga (203-204). The killing of Þráinn produces Kári’s first as-
sessment of Skarpheðinn; Kári had never seen his oldest brother-in-law fight
before. Meanwhile, the saga has openly portrayed Skarpheðinn’s sensitivity to
public opinion. The latter is in many ways the story’s most acute judge of
what might benefit one’s reputation and what probably will not (324), and he
displays a characteristic expression of emotion, grinning, while Kári has no
such attribute (114, 327).
The transfer also indicates that situational thinking is at work: each deed in
an oral society, together with its spontaneous reaction, amounts to a potential
means of communication, a potential composition — even, in its own way, a
potential myth of origin.17 The sagas of Icelanders betray a passive concern
with origins by including many settlement-stories and genealogies; they de-
monstrate a more active concern with origins by including generative con-
structs — that is, events related allusively in one saga may appear at greater
length in another as if one work might be the ‘origin’ of the other. Hence, any
episode of word-of-mouth fame is the potential point of origin for an entire
saga.18 For instance, the transfer of Skarpheðinn’s thoughts to Kári is genera-
17 I use the phrase ‘myth of origin’ because source-relationships are often very difficult to prove,
while the entire strategy of trying to learn about a subject through a search for its origins is
now less valued than it used to be (Said 1975:174-175, 197; Derrida 1976:242-243).
18 Generative passages in the sagas may result from the writers of them drawing upon the same
oral tradition and hence demonstrating knowledge of the same figures from the past.