Gripla - 01.01.2000, Qupperneq 188

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GRIPLA
skinna, however, does not contain that information, and the reason must be
that the author was too heavy-handed in his incisions in the text of his exem-
plar: he deleted the story about Giffarðr, and, in doing so, he also deleted
information pertinent to the main narrative.
Thus the textual transmission can be reconstructed as follows: The Giff-
arðr episode was part of ÆMsk, but it was regarded as extraneous and left out
by Snorri and by the author of Fagrskinna. Whereas Snorri rewrote the perti-
nent sections, the author of Fagrskinna abbreviated the text of ÆMsk and left
out the information about Magnús’s claim to the Swedish districts. Later,
when Morkinskinna was interpolated from Ágrip, the interpolator must
have expanded the original text with sections from Ágrip, thus leading schol-
ars to believe that the Giffarðr episode, too, was a later interpolation.
We may conclude, then, that the little story about Giffarðr can most likely be
dated to the twelfth century (assuming that the stanzas were transmitted with ac-
companying prose). The current version was part of ÆMsk and could not have
been composed later than 1220. Thus it was certainly available to Snorri, and,
because the essence of the story is captured by him in the preface to Heims-
kringla and because the two texts show verbatim correspondences,16 Sigurður
Nordal’s suggestion that the Morkinskinna episode served as the immediate
source for this section of the Heimskringla preface would appear to be correct.
3. The Identity of the Nonnan Knight Giffarðr
We may ask, then, whether the Giffarðr episode was an amusing fictive ac-
count designed to highlight the dual function of skaldic poetry as a tool of
praise and punishment, or whether the story contains vestiges of actual histor-
ical events. Aside from giving a graphic description of Giffarðr’s cowardly
behavior, the skaldic stanzas contain concrete information about his person:
his name was Giffarðr, and he was an old Norman knight who participated
(or failed to participate, as it were) in the battle of Fuxema. According to the
chronology of Heimskringla, which is more reliable than that of Morkin-
skinna at this point, that battle took place in the early spring of 1101, and
Giffarðr must have arrived at Magnús’s court in Viken during the winter of
1100 or, at the latest, during the early spring of 1101.17 After the battle he left
for England in disgrace.
16 Consider the following sentences from Morkinskinna and from the preface to Heimskringla:
“Hann veit þat með sér at honum er þetta háð, en eigi lof’ (Morkinskinna 1932:326); “Þat
væri þá háð, en eigi lof’ (ÍF XXVI:5).
17 In Morkinskinna the introduction of the Giffarðr episode caused an incorrect doubling of the