Gripla - 01.01.2003, Síða 77

INTERPRETATION OR OVER-INTERPRETATION
75
The theme of the borrowed sword which fails the hero in need has parallels,
not only within the íslendingasögur,'9 but in other Germanic heroic literature.
A famous example is in Beowulf, where Unferð bestows the sword Hrunting
on Beowulf as the hero prepares for his underwater assault on Grendel’s
mother. The hero, like Bjgm, is lent an ultimately useless sword by a lesser
man; Beowulf, like Bjgrn, but unlike Kjartan, relinquishes his own sword
voluntarily. The loan is elaborated into an exchange of weapons, since Beo-
wulf offers his own sword to Unferð in case he is not able to retum with
Hmnting (1488-90). The motif has been examined in Icelandic literature by
Peter Jorgensen, who found parallels between the loan or gift of a useless
sword in Beowulf and the fornaldarsögur (Jorgensen 1979).
In Beowulf and in Bjarnar saga, the relationship between a sword and its
owner or user is an index of the quality of a fighting man. Unferð lends his
sword to selra sweordfreca, ‘a better swordsman’ (1468), and in the saga the
mismatch between man and weapon is signalled by the hero’s words, ‘Illt
sverð á hér góðr drengr’ (Borgfirðinga SQgur, 199) [Here a good man has a
bad sword]. The authors of Laxdœla saga and Bjarnar saga were probably
both, in different ways, exploiting a resonance in the idea of the sword as in-
dex of its owner’s quality which comes from outside the context of the saga
itself. In both cases the theme expresses loss and frustration. In Bjarnar saga
the main point is not, as it is in Beowulf, to make a comparison between men,
since the owner of the ‘bad sword’ is the cipher Þorfinnr Þvarason; rather it
emphasizes the hero’s loneliness and extremity in his last fight, deserted even
by his own sword.20 In Laxdœla saga the loss of the ‘good’ sword is the
counterpart of the disappearance of the precious headdress; both symbolic of
the marriage that never happened between Guðrún and Kjartan. Altematively,
it could be seen to represent the former friendship of Kjartan and Bolli,
rejected by Kjartan once it is shown to be flawed. The fact that the theme is
put to different uses in the two sagas does not mle out borrowing. But a theme
that was resonant throughout Germanic culture, and probably other warrior
societies as well, could crop up independently in quite separate texts, and
19 Examples, besides that of Laxdœla saga, are found in Kormáks saga (Vatnsdœla saga, 234-
41) and Droplaugarsona saga (Austfirðinga sQgur, 157-63).
20 Edith Marold makes the attractive suggestion that the sverð mitt ok skjQÍdr enn hvíti of v. 35
(cited above, p. 72) is ‘a clarification of the irony of the first line [Út gengk með lið lítit]', his
small retinue is expressly limited to his sword and white shield’ (2000, 93). This semi-
personification of the weapons furthers the purpose of emphasizing the hero’s isolation.