Gripla - 01.01.2003, Page 63

ALISON FINLAY
INTERPRETATION
OR OVER-INTERPRETATION
THE DATING OF TWO ÍSLENDINGASÖGUR1
Introduction
SlNCE the inception of the influential Islenzk fornrit series of saga editions in
1933, it has been traditional to rank the Islendingasögur according to a system
of relative chronology, based on a methodology originating in the writings of
Bjöm M. Ólsen. Some of the criteria employed in this method were more ob-
jective than others; in the case of texts for which only little or late manuscript
evidence survives, their literary relations with other texts and the degree of
sophistication of their style were crucial factors. Although some datings have
been disputed with varying degrees of conviction, for a long time a fixed point
in the shifting sands of relative chronology has been the antiquity of
Heiðarvíga saga, considered to be ‘probably the oldest extant Islendingasaga
... Evidence for its age are its awkward style and composition and its in-
fluence on later saga literature’ (Schach 1993, 275). It is the only Islendinga-
saga sometimes considered to date from before 1200 (Jónas Kristjánsson
1988, 224). Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa, too, has usually been ranked among
the oldest in the genre. It is disconcerting, therefore, that in the recent col-
lection of saga translations, issued by the publisher Leifur Eiríksson in 1997,
the date of Heiðaniga saga is given without further explanation as ‘mid-13th
century’ (Viðar Hreinsson 1997, IV 97); that of Bjarnar saga as ‘late 13th
century’ (Viðar Hreinsson 1997,1 255).2 This paper traces the minor upheaval
which has led what were by common consent our oldest sagas to be ranked
1 A shorter version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Sagas and Societies (Sögur
og samfélög)’, Borgames, 5th-9lh September, 2002.1 am grateful to the British Academy for
an Overseas Conference Grant that enabled me to attend the conference.
2 Diana Whaley, in her introduction to the version of the same translation of Bjarnar saga in
Sagas ofWarrior Poets, is more circumspect: ‘Some scholars have seen the saga as an earlier