Gripla - 20.12.2007, Page 61

ANTIQUARIANISM, POETRY, AND WORD-OF-MOUTH FAME 59
would have an urgent antiquarian interest in preserving the ‘signs’ within the
‘oral language’ of the societies that they depict because, I would submit, they
could observe first hand the effects of the new technology of literacy upon
their own largely oral societies (Quinn 2000:30-60; Gísli Sigurðsson 2004).
When Christian missionaries arrive in Iceland with the bible, they announce a
new treatment of time (salvation history), a new myth of origins (God), and a
new theory of origins (history as depicted in Judeo-Christian records). There
is also a sudden and overwhelming usurpation of the fame-ideal implied in
these Christian texts, and the new mode differs from the old in two ways.
First, Jesus’ competitive acts are mainly non-aggressive, and therefore do not
register as typical deeds in the traditional, heroic, oral past. Second, competi-
tion with the Almighty is (by definition) impossible, so God’s reputation
absorbs all of the past and replaces any heroic precursors with Himself and
with His inimitable life-story. Hence, He not only usurps the means of
receiving a reputation; He also takes its end, because God becomes both the
ideal performer and the ideal witness of any deed. In sum, He brings with Him
a new order of deeds, competitions, histories, and signs.23
Rarely is conflict between Christian and pagan tradition conceived as a
battle between the old kind of language and the new in the Old Icelandic
works, but examples exist, though one has to stray from the canon of the sagas
of Icelanders in order to find them. An example occurs in one of the þættir in
the Flateyjarbók version of Óláfs saga hins helga (Flateyjarbók 1944-1945
II:218-219; Schlauch 1931:973, 976).24 When this brief narrative begins with
the arrival of an elderly guest of mysterious appearance at King Óláfr’s court,
it seems to be about to partake in the Old Norse tradition of Óðinn-like old
men who represent the values of the heroic past. In typical fashion, the ruler
asks this djarfmæltr, ‘bold-spoken’ stranger to entertain him, whereupon the
court expects the old man’s entertainment to be accounts of fornkonungr,
‘ancient princes’ and their framaverk, ‘outstanding deeds.’ These expectations
are unsurprising. Mysterious wanderers often impress listeners with their
knowledge of legendary heroes in Old Norse works (Flateyjarbók II:218;
Rowe 2004:468). But this old man asks Óláfr an unusual question: which of
these legendary figures he would most like to be. The guest thus brings up the
idea of identifying with — that is empathizing with — the heroes of the past,
23 For more on medieval sign-theory, see Vance 1986:59.
24 This þáttr shares attributes with both ‘the Conversion’ þættir and the ‘pagan-contact’ þættir,
to use Joseph C. Harris’s (1980:162, 166) generic divisions.