Gripla - 01.01.2003, Qupperneq 83

INTERPRETATION OR OVER-INTERPRETATION
81
men named in the saga bearing the rather unusual name Kálfr suggests that
this refers to Kálfr illviti; as the reference occurs at the point where Þor-
steinn’s allegiance is finely balanced between Bjgm and his enemies, the men-
tion of Kálfr illviti here would give colour to the supposition that Þorsteinn is
about to align himself against Bjgrn. Against this, Kálfr’s family origin is
located elsewhere after the death of Bjgrn, where the settlement imposed by
Þorsteinn requires that Kálfr must ‘láta jqrð sína í Selárdal ok fara suðr um
heiði í átthaga sinn’ (210) [give up his lands in Selárdalr and go south across
the heath into his native territory]. Both references suggest that more was
known about the origins of Kálfr than the author chooses to tell us, or than
survives in the now fragmentary text. Kálfr is also referred to by name in a
verse attributed to Bjqrn, in which the hero boasts of his killing of Kálfr’s son
Þorsteinn (167). Bjami Guðnason does not engage in detail with the question
whether the verses attributed to Bjgrn are older than the prose narrative, but
the implication of his argument is that he agrees with the opinion of Bjami
Einarsson that the verses are the invention of the saga author. But the verse in
which Kálfr is named is one of many in the saga in which scholars have
pointed out elements that are not consistent with the prose narrative, and it is
therefore most likely that the verse is older than the prose;25 therefore this
verse must be borne in mind as a likely source of the name, though not the
nickname, of Kálfr illviti.
In a footnote beginning ‘Bardaginn á Stiklarstöðum hefur verið höfundi
Bjamarsögu hugleikinn’ (1994, 74, n. 14) [The author of Bjarnar saga must
have been preoccupied with the battle of Stiklarstaðir], Bjarni Guðnason
extends his suggestion that Heimskringla was the inspiration for the climactic
battle scene in Bjarnar saga. He derives Kálfr’s pun on Bjqrn’s name, ‘ek
veiða nú þann bjqrn er vér vildum allir veiða’ (Borgfirðinga SQgur, 199) [now
I am hunting the bear that we all want to hunt] from Oláfs saga helga, where
Þórir hundr says as he kills Bjqrn stallari, ‘Svá bautu vér bjqrnuna’ (Heims-
kringla, II 384-85) [Thus we kill the bears]. In fact the use of animal puns in
25 The killing of Þorsteinn is said in the verse to take place á roðmtm KlifsjQrva, but this place-
name recurs later in the saga referring to a location that does not agree with the prose account
of the site of the killing of Þorsteinn Kálfsson (Borgfirðinga SQgur, 167-68). Bjami
Einarsson’s attempt to explain away the discrepancy is not convincing (1961, 240-41).
Nordal notes the similarity of this verse to one in Fóstbrœðra saga believed to belong to
Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld’s Þorgeirsdrápa (Vestfírðinga SQgur, 200-01), but considers it
intpossible to say which poem has influenced the other (Borgfírðinga SQgur, lxxiii n. 2).