Gripla - 01.01.2003, Qupperneq 76

74
GRIPLA
proved an irresistible temptation to link it with the sword Mæringr. Along with
other early editors, Finnur Jónsson went so far as to emend kaldhamars nauta
to Kaldamarsnauta (Skj., BI 282), and to translate ‘sværdet gik itu i min hánd’,
taking -nauta as the accusative singular of a postulated weak form *-nauti
(Boer, xxx), though in Lexicon poeticum it is glossed as a plural of -nautr. In
fact, the influence is most likely to be in the other direction, the name
Kaldimarr for the original owner of the sword being derived from this verse
(Boer, xxxi); Borgfiröinga SQgur, Ixxviii). If so, the saga’s inclusion of the
entire Kaldimarr episode shows that, as Nordal says, ‘hér er um misskilning
að ræða, en sá misskilningur er eldri en ritun sögunnar’ (Borgfirdinga SQgur,
lxxix) [this is a case of misinterpretation, but the misinterpretation is older
than the writing of the saga]. Although in Bjarnarsaga as it stands, the verse is
not taken to predict the breaking of Mæringr, the currency of this misinterpre-
tation at or before the time of writing of the saga meant that there must have
existed one or both of two further explanations of Bjgm’s unarmed state:
either that his famous sword had broken in a previous skirmish, and therefore
was not available to him in his last fight; or, assuming that verse 30 was
originally anticipatory of his last fight (as Vogt 1921, 55 argues), that it is
broken in the course of the last fight, leaving him to fight on unarmed.
These signs of confusion indicate a multiplicity of divergent sources
behind the saga’s account. It is interesting that in these instances the confusion
clearly derives from different interpretations of the verses, most if not all of
which clearly predate the writing of the saga and are likely to have been in
oral circulation.18 This is at odds with the cobbling together of literary bor-
rowings envisaged by Bjarni Guðnason. There is further overt evidence for
multiple sources, which the wording suggests are likely to be oral, relating to
Bjgrn’s weaponless state in the saga’s account of Bjgm’s killing of a man
with the point of his shield, whereupon the saga adds, ‘en sumir menn segja at
hann legði hann með sgxunum til bana’ (Borgfirðinga SQgur, 201), that is, that
he did the killing with the shears he was carrying for trimming horses’ manes.
It is often difficult, in a case of shared narrative material, to determine
which text has influenced the other. But in the case of the motif of the
borrowed sword, the similarity may well come down to an archetype so
common in oral tradition as to make a search for literary influences pointless.
18
I have argued elsewhere (Finlay 1994) against the contention of Bjami Einarsson (1961) that
the verses were composed by the saga author himself.