Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 85

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of the saga. But from the king’s biography the reader should have learned
not just the direction of the journey the hero had to undertake but the
relevant frame of associations as well.
There are good grounds for believing that the fabulous story of an
Icelander who is persuaded by the Norwegian king to travel far away in
search of some exotic objects, earlier acquired there by the king himself,
could have alluded to another episode in the tradition ascribed to Haraldr.
This is the famous story describing the future king’s fight with a dragon-
like serpent while he is imprisoned in a dungeon in Constantinople.5
The story in question is known both from Mork and Flat — it is worth
emphasizing at this point that it is in the latter compilation that Þorsteins
þáttr forvitna is included — and it tells of Haraldr being slandered before
the Byzantine emperor by queen Zoe, who accused him of having misap-
propriated the booty that belonged to the crown and “of being familiar”
with her niece (Mork, 12; Flat III, 304). On that account, Haraldr (who
called himself Norðbrikt at that time) was arrested and thrown into prison,
together with his two retainers, Úlfr stallari and Halldór Snorrason. The
saga relates that the dungeon they were kept in was like a vertical cave and
there was a great poisonous serpent that “fed off the corpses of men who
came into conflict with the emperor or his magnates” (Mork trans., 145).
Despite the danger, the prisoners took the risk of attacking the sleeping
monster, and Haraldr succeeded in slaying it after a stubborn fight in
which his only weapon was a small knife he happened to have with him.
The account of this adventure in Flat does not differ at all noticeably
from that of Mork, however, interestingly enough, there are some minor
distinctions precisely in those passages which deal with the weapon the
monster was killed with.
First of all, both redactions of the saga inform the reader that all three
of the prisoners were disarmed before they were thrown into the dungeon.
The audience therefore did not expect that any of them could still have
some sort of implement to fight the serpent. Consequently, the saga author
was facing the need to decide at which point in the narrative it would be
most suitable for the knife to come to light. In this regard Mork coincides
5 It has been pointed out that this story may originate from a verse by Illugi Bryndœlaskáld
(Skj A I, 384, 1, 1) in which Haraldr’s exploits were interwoven with those of Sigurðr
Fáfnisbani. See note 6 in Eric Christiansen’s edition of Gesta Danorum, Book XI (Saxo
I, 222–23).
THE FANTASTIC IN Í SLENDINGA ÞÆTTIR