Gripla - 01.01.1998, Qupperneq 161

FOLKTALE AND PARABLE
159
At the folktale’s climax, the angry host attempts to get back at the hero, but
his vengeance goes astray and he finds that he has killed his own horse
instead of his unwelcome guest’s. In the inverse move in Gautreks saga, the
destructive impulse is tumed on itself — the miser’s reaction to Gauti’s visit
is not to kill the guest, but to commit suicide, taking his wife and servant with
him. As we shall see, the ultimate meaning of the narrative is not that of the
corresponding tale-type, which, as James Milroy (1966:212-215) has argued,
reflects a conception story — the host is hostile to the visitor because it has
been predicted that his daughter will give birth to a hero who will kill his
grandfather.10
The saga continues in the folktale-mode, but without the framework of a
complete tale-type. Instead, the saga-author explores the further destructive
effects of avarice through the misadventures of Skafnörtungr’s sons, who are
fools as well as misers. The series of motifs includes that of the fools who
push their parents over a cliff as a favor to them, the fool who believes that he
has impregnated his sister by touching her cheek, the fool who believes that
snails have destroyed his gold, the fool who kills himself because a sparrow
has eaten one grain from his comfield, and the fool who kills himself because
his ox has been killed.11 Although the familiar folktale triad appears in the
number of brothers and sisters, there is no corresponding tripartite structure,
nor do the folktale motifs occur in the typical series of three. For example, we
would expect the sequential deaths of the brothers after a foolish action by
each. but in fact one of them is persuaded not to kill himself after his foolish
action, and it takes a second foolish action to propel him over Ættemisstapi.
This lack of discemable pattem gives the impression of incidents piled on top
of one another (rather like the bodies which must be accumulating under the
cliff), suggesting that the author was imitating folktales here, rather than
adapting pre-existing ones.
The lack of common sense or intelligence that the fools display is typified
by their bizarre religious beliefs, particularly in their worship of Oðinn.
Again, the depiction seems to be satirical, since Oðinn is traditionally the god
of battle and poetry and the ancestor of royal houses, and hence utterly inap-
10 See Weber (1986) for an exposition of this development in reception-theoretic terms. Here
I am describing the response of the reader to the text, rather than the reception of the shorter
Gautreks saga by its later redactor.
11 Boberg (1966) classifies these under J1744 (Ignorance of marriage relations), J1919.7
(Absurd disregard of facts), J1810 (Physical phenomenon misunderstood), J2119.3 (Absurd
shortsightedness), and J2518.1-2 (Foolish extremes). Stith Thompson (1957) provides non-
Scandinavian analogues under J1744, J1919, and J2119.