Gripla - 01.01.1995, Page 128

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GRIPLA
the use of his tongue and of one eye was in some measure left to
him.“27 In his Chronicles Relating to Scotland, Herbert Maxwell com-
ments on this discrepancy of events as follows:28 „It will be seen from
this that John of Fordun, instead of exaggerating the narrative, brings
it into sober prose, eliminates the miraculous element and suggests
what was probably the case, that Earl Harald’s men were of milder
mood than their master, who was probably drunk, and, by wounding
the bishop in the face and mouth, deceived the earl into the belief that
his orders had been carried out.“
Thus all the ingredients of Sturla Sighvatsson’s scheme to rid him-
self of his troublesome cousin Órækja were present, in one way or an-
other, in both contemporary insular sources and in Orkneyinga saga.
The question is whether these events, historical or literary, were
known to Sturla Sighvatsson and whether they could have loomed
large enough on his horizon to have served as the model for the Surts-
hellir incident.
IV. The Orkney Connection
The connections between Norway and Iceland and the northern isles
during the first half of the thirteenth century were very close. The con-
temporary sagas record frequent traffic between Norway, Iceland,
Orkney, Man, and the Hebrides, and the news of events that took
place in the isles must have spread quickly in Norway and Iceland.2''
Óláfr Guðrpðarson’s emasculation and blinding of his cousin Guðrpðr
Rggnvaldsson, for example, is recorded in all Icelandic annals, in-
cluding „Annales Reseniani.“30 Furthermore, Sturla Þórðarson’s Há-
konar saga mentions that Óláfr himself and Páll Bálkason, the in-
J Sir Herbert Maxwell, The Early Chronicles Relating to Scotland, Glasgow, 1912, p.
199.
28 Ibid., pp. 200-01.
29 Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Sagnaritun Oddaverja in Studia Islandica. íslenzk frœði 1,
Reykjavík, 1937,17-18.
30 Cf. the „Flateyjarannáll" (Flat III, 526); the „Annales Reseniani“ (Storm, Island-
ske annaler, p. 24); the „Henrik Hpyers annáll" (ibid., p. 63); the „Annales regii“ (ibid.,
p. 126); the „Skálholtsannáll“ (ibid., p. 185); the „Gottskálksannáll" (ibid., p. 326);
„Oddverjaannáll" (ibid., p. 479). See also Guðmundar saga Arasonar, in Byskupa sögur
II, 369.