Gripla - 01.01.1993, Side 231

MARLENE CIKLAMINI
THE HAND OF REVISION: ABBOT
ARNGRÍMR’S REDACTION OF
GUÐMUNDAR SAGA BISKUPS'
By the fourteenth century, Icelanders felt comfortable with imported
literary works that stylistically and thematically ran counter to the
sparse, dramatic prose of native tradition. Concomitantly, the leisure-
ly, often anticlimactic, tone and exuberant phrasing prevalent in
learned works of foreign origin came to influence indigenous saga
writing. The manneristic, or florid, style of such sagas influenced Ab-
bot Arngrímr Brandsson (d. 1361),3 as he reworked the vita of Bishop
Guðmundr (1161-1237) according to a new literary canon and interpre-
tive mode. He thus ranks among those hagiographers intent on mod-
1 Guðmundar saga Arasonar eftir Arngrím ábóta Brandsson, in Byskupa sögur,
Hólabyskupar ed. Guðni Jónsson (íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1953), III, 147-475. The date
of composition is between 1343 and Arngrímr’s death in 1361. The text follows the edi-
tion by Guðbrandr Vigfússon of Holm. 5, fol. in Byskupa sögur (Kaupmannahöfn: Hið
íslenzka bókmentafélag, 1878), II, believed to represent an interpolated redaction. See
Stefán Karlsson, “Um handrit að Guðmundar sögu bróður Arngríms,” Opuscula, I
(1960), 179-89. The authoritative edition, not yet published, is to include the incomplete
text of AM 219, fol. (14. century), the lacunae to be filled from AM 397,4to (ca. 1700), a
manuscript based on AM 219 (in its complete state). For the relationship of extant sagas
on Guðmundr and manuscript tradition, see Jprgen Hpjgaard Jprgensen, Bispesagaer -
Laurentius saga. Studier i Laurentius saga byskups, indledt af overvejelser omkring bisk-
upa spgur som litterær genre (Odense, 1977), 21-24; Stefán Karlsson, ed., “Inngangur,“
Guðmundar sögur biskups I: Ævi Guðmundar biskups, Guðmundar saga A. Editiones
Arnamagnæanæ Series B, vol. 6 (Kaupmannahöfn: C.A. Reitzel, 1983); Ole Widding,
Hans Bekker-Nielsen, L.K. Shook, C.S.B., “The Lives of the Saints in Old Norse Prose.
A Handlist,'1 2 Medieval Studies 25 (1963), 312-13.
2 Hans Bekker-Nielsen, “Legender-Helgensagaer,“ Norrpn Fortœllekunst. Kapitler
af den norsk-islandske middelalderlitteraturs historie. By Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Thorkil
Damsgaard Olsen, Ole Widding (Kpbenhavn: Akademisk Forlag, 1965), p. 120.
3 According to “Annalbrudstykke fra Skálholt (N)“ and “Gottskalks Annaler (P),“
Islandske Annaler indtil 1578, ed. Gustav Storm, (Christiania: Det norske historiske
Kildeskriftfond, 1888, repr. 1977), pp. 226, 359, Arngrímr died in 1361 or 1362.