Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Síða 57

Stæri ek brag
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be the biography of the Norwegian king. In other words, Hallfreðrs life must be
read against the life of King Óláfr into whose life the saga of the troublesome
skáld is artfully woven. In this embedded vita, the account of the poet’s life is
interrupted, following his departure from Iceland, with the story of Ingólfr and
Valgerðr, but this excursus as it were has a direct bearing on our understanding
of the saga. Not only is this episode not disruptive to the flow of Hallfreðr’s life,
as Bjarni Einarsson also noted,8 but the short love story actually functions as an
echo of Hallfreðr’s own situation. Here too a father and son are at loggerheads
because of a woman, in this case Hallfreðr’s sister. Upset that Ingólfr kept visiting
her, Óttarr asked him to cease, but the young man retorted that he himself would
decide on his comings and goings: “at hann mundi sialf raðr ferða sinna”
(1:345,8). Óttarr’s recourse, just like Ávaldi’s in the case of Hallfreðr, is to seek
out the young man’s father. When Þorsteinn tells his son to stop visiting Valgerðr,
Ingólfr feigns obedience — “þat skal ekvistgerafyrirþin orð faðir” (1:345,13—14)
— but then resorts to scurrilous verse instead. None of his compositions is
recorded, but the episode may be interpreted both as an anticipatory device to
Hallfreðr’s Iater behavior toward Kolfinna and as a contrastive incident to
emphasize Hallfreðr’s own belligerent conclusion — for the time being - of his
relationship with Kolfmna.
Despite his refusal to propose marriage to the woman he ostensibly loves,
Hallfreðr is not misogamous. In Gautland he successfully woos the pagan
Ingibjörg, the widow of Auðgísl, and sets up housekeeping with her, and this
portion of Hallfreðr’s life concludes with the narrator’s observation that there was
no lack of wealth, that the poet stayed there for the time being, and “vndí uel raði
sínu” (2:31,6). There is a hiatus of two years, implicitly a period of, if not marital
bliss, at least satisfaction, a period the events of which the author presumably does
not consider compelling enough to recount. The plot recommences when Hall-
freðr seeks out the Swedish King Óláfr in order to recite a poem he has composed
about him.
This is the order of events in the biography of Hallfreðr in Möðruvallabók,
which is not interlaced in King Óláfr’s life.9 In Óldfi saga Tryggvasonar en mesta,
however, the narrator’s comment “ok undí uel raði sínu” is followed by a brief
excursus (ch. 177) revealing the author’s perspective on the construction of Óláfi
sagar.
<N>V þo at margar ræður ok fra sagnir se skrifadar iþessu mali. *þær er eigi þickia
miyk til heyra sygu Olafs konungs Trycva s(onar) þa þarf þat eigi at vndraz. þviat sva
sem rennandi vptn fliota af ymissvm vpp sprettum. ok koma oll i einn stað niðr. til
þeirar sgmu likingar hafa þessar fra sagnir af ymisligv vpp hafi eítt endimark at ryðia
8 See Bjarni Einarsson, Skáldasögur. Um uppruna og eðli ástaskáldasagnanna fomu (Reykjavík:
Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs, 1961), pp. 174-80.
9 See Hallfreðarsaga, ed. Bjarni Einarsson (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977), 80:2.