Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 110

GRIPLA108
count, and his glossators explained that ‘no irrational animal utters a vox
from the discerning power of the mind so that the utterance may have the
intention of signifying, but nature gives the animal the ability to produce
a sound when it perceives pain or some other feeling’ (Irvine 1985, 860).
The canonical animal utterance for the grammarians is thus cra or coax: a
non-semantic noise (sonus), not a voice (vox), nonetheless susceptible, as
litterata, to representation, estrangement from embodied presence. As the
Second Grammarian writes:
Önnur hljóðsgrein er sú, sem fuglarnir gera eða dýrin ok sæ-
kvik indin; þat heitir rödd, en þær raddir heita á marga lund. Fuglarnir
syngja ok gjalla ok klaka, ok þó með ýmsum háttum; ok með mörgum
nöfnum er greind dýraröddin, ok kunnu menn skyn, hvat kvikindin
þykkjast benda með mörgum sínum látum. Sækvikindin blása eða
gella. Allar þessar raddir eru mjök skynlausar at viti flestra manna.
Another kind of sound is the one birds, beasts and sea-animals
produce; this is called voice, but these voices are named in many
ways. Birds sing, shriek and twitter, and even (that) in different
ways, and by many names is differentiated the voice of the animals,
and men understand what animals intend to signify with many of
their sounds. Sea-animals blow or yell. All of these voices appear
quite senseless to the minds of most men. (SGT 1982, 52–3)
Glæsir the bull in chapter 63 of Eyrbyggja saga (ÍF 4, 169–76; Eb 2003,
296–304)) is to my knowledge the sole animal in the Íslendingasögur that
‘speaks’.17 Does Glæsir have a vox, and if so, what does it say?
The story goes as follows.18 Þórólfr bægifótr’s ghost has been causing
trouble, so the local farmer Þóroddr exhumes Þórólfr’s body (which is
17 Talking ships (Flóamanna saga ch. 26; see Lindow 2004), a versifying cloak (Laxdæla saga
ch. 67) and a versifying stone (Harðar saga ch. 38) do appear, but there seem to be no talking
animals in the Íslendingasögur.
18 The only extant medieval manuscript for this part of the saga is W (Wolfenbüttel 9.10.
Aug. 4to, c. 1330–70). AM 448 4to, the basis of the text printed in ÍF 4, is a copy made
for Árni Magnússon of the lost vellum Vatnshyrna. Marginal variants in the seventeenth-
century ms. AM 447 4to are likely to have been copied from AM 445b 4to (c. 1380–1420)
when it was in a more complete state (Eb 2003, 123*-130*); the 11 leaves of AM 445b which
now survive do not include any of the text discussed here. In the following discussion, the
ÍF 4 text is taken as a basis, but variants from W and 447 are cited from Eb 2003 where
these are significant.