Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Page 250

248
Marianne Kalinke
the composition of Reykjahólabók through a translation of the Physiologus,
the popular medieval bestiary. There one reads:
Er hvalr í sæ, er heitir aspedo, ok er of bak sem skógr sé. En í miðju hafi skýtr
þat upp baki sínu, en skipverjar ætla ey vera ok festa skip sitt við þar, ok kynda
elda síðan. En aspedo kennir hita, ok drekkir sér í sjó okpllum skipverjum.
As in Nikolaus saga, the whale in the Physiologus is associated with
suffering, and the author concludes:
Svá eru ok þeir menn sviknir, er hafa von sína undir djpfli ok gleðjask í hans
verkum, ok drekkjask í eilífar kvalar með fjanda.17
The preceding are illustrative of the nature of the correspondences
between the texts of Reykjahólabók and the Passionael. Although they
attest the Low German origin of the sources, none of the legends derives
from the Passionael. Despite repeated correspondences in vocabulary, and
even instances of what appears to be word-for-word translation, overall
there are so many discrepancies both in length and content between the
legends in the Icelandic compilation and the popular Low German imprint
that one is forced to conclude that the Passionael could not have been the
source, even though the readings in the Passionael intermittently resembled
those of the source(s) of Reykjahólabók. Widding and Bekker-Nielsen to the
contrary, there is no evidence that the translator/compiler of Reykjahólabók
thought of himself as a creative writer. He was no teller of original tales or a
writer of fiction; rather, he was a hagiographer intent on disseminating
traditional saints’ lives. He transmitted into Icelandic what was contained in
his sources, which - except for four legends - were Low German, but not
the legends found in the Passionael.
In place of the theses enunciated by Widding and Bekker-Nielsen in their
articles, the following are proposed: 1) the source of the Icelandic legendary
was not the Low German Passionael of 1492 - or, for that matter, any other
earlier or later imprint of this legendary;18 2) the sources of the Icelandic
17 Halldór Hermannsson, cd., Tbe Icelandic Physiologus, Islandica, XXVII (Ithaca:
Cornell Univ. Press, 1938), p. 19. The same motif also occurs in Orvar-Odds saga (ch.
21). Five men, who are sent to scout out an island, drown when the island sinks
beneath the sea. It turns out that the supposed island is in fact a monster called
lyngbakr: “Heitir... annat lyngbakr. Er hann mestr allra hvala í heiminum... . en
lyngbakr var ey sjá, er niðr sökk” (Fornaldarsögur norðurlanda, ed. Guðni Jónsson
and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson [Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Forni, 1943], I, 352).
18 In their article “Low German Influence,” Widding and Bekker-Nielsen state: “Of
editions older than Holm 3 the masterprinter Stephan Arndes’s editions of the
Passionael (Lúbeck, 1488, 1492, 1499, 1507) come nearest to the text of Holm 3, and
of these we consider the edition of 1492 to be the most useful” (p. 246). The statement