Gripla - 01.01.1995, Page 154

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GRIPLA
The full import of the role the Sth. 3 text plays in transmitting Stefa-
nus saga will only become clear once there exists an edition of the leg-
end that utilizes all manuscripts. The source of the Sth. 3 redaction of
Stefanus saga was indeed related to the texts transmitted in the other
extant manuscripts, but repeatedly the deviations unique to Sth. 3 are
so significant - the most striking of which occurs in the Inventio (cf. III
below) - that one can posit as its source an Icelandic redaction into
which, at an unknown point, text from a variant version of the legend
had been introduced. This variant version competed on the continent
with the redaction that presumably represented an older stage and
which is known from the other Icelandic manuscripts.
II. Editorial intervention in Stefanus saga
Variants and scribal errors attest that Stefanus saga in Sth. 3 trans-
mits a copy of an older Icelandic redaction of the legend. Nonetheless,
at the same time that Stefanus saga in Reykjahólabók is a copy of a no
longer extant manuscript, it also represents the work of an editor and
compiler, who is presumably identical with Björn, a compiler who was
a hagiographer par excellence. Time and again Reykjahólabók attests
that the compiler was hagiographically literate and had at his disposal
a good library. Often he knew of more than one version of events, and
chose either to interpolate the divergent material or make reference to
it.23 Occasionally the compiler commented upon discrepancies be-
tween versions known to him, but nonetheless incorporated deviating
material into his redaction for the sake of completeness. If he consid-
saga minna (cf. section II of this article). This is not the place to undertake an investi-
gation of the fate of Vespasian and Tiberius in Iceland, but the Sth. 3 redaction might
point toward a solution. See Kirsten Wolf’s overview of the non-Icelandic and Icelandic
tradition of the legend of Pilate, „The Sources of Gyðinga saga,“ ANF, 105 (1990),
140-55; on the Vespasian and Tiberius narratives, pp. 150-53.
23 •» •
For a striking case of the transmission of variant redactions in another narrative in
Rhb, see Marianne E. Kalinke, „The Icelandic „Gregorius peccator" and the European
Tradition," The Sixtli International Saga Conference. 28.7. -2.8. 1985 (Copenhagen: Det
arnamagnæanske Institut, 1985), pp. 575-84; „Gregorius saga biskups and Gregorius auf
dem Stein,“ Beitrage zttr Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 113 (1991),
67-88.