Gripla - 01.01.2003, Side 88

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GRIPLA
Where and when were these sagas written?
While there is no space here to consider all of Bjami Guðnason’s extensive
and detailed arguments, my analysis of two of his main techniques of
analysis demonstrates that an allegorical reading of Heiðarvíga saga cannot be
sustained. The suggestion that the ridiculing of Þuríðr constitutes a critique of
the ethics of feud has been challenged above, as have the negative con-
notations of the names Barði and Þuríðr. But even if the work could be
accepted as a moralizing tract denouncing pagan values, what evidence is
there that this moralizing fervour is a more likely phenomenon at the end than
at the beginning of the thirteenth century? Bjami outlines a three-fold ideo-
logical time-scheme: ‘Víga-Styrr represents the old times and heathen values
while Barði is the champion of contemporary times, believing excessively in
his own might and main at the expense of God’s tenets. The third phase is
expressed in the author’s vision of a world without warfare or violence, a
mirage of a world where peace prevails’ (1993, 281) (no major character can
be found to exemplify this stage, though elsewhere Bjami represents Gestr,
unconvincingly, as a figure of Christ). As David Evans observes, ‘As so often
nowadays when scholars espy hidden religious symbolism and spiritual
messages in works seemingly secular, one wonders just why the writer had
taken such care to hide his important message’ (Evans 1997, 363). Not only is
the message difficult to tease out, but there is in fact nothing about it more
appropriate to the period after 1260 than to the early part of the century.
My discussion of Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa shows that themes concen-
trated in the climactic scene of Bjgrn’s last battle are more likely to have their
origin in oral tradition than in literary dependence on other sagas. While it is
notoriously difficult to prove that this has been the case, it must be taken into
account as a probability in the case of highly traditional themes that can be
shown to be ubiquitous not only in the sagas, but in other Germanic litera-
tures; this applies to themes such as the hero’s borrowed sword, the hero’s
fighting unarmed and (in Heiðarvíga saga) the inciting female, and could also
be argued in the case of a parallel Bjami perceives with Njáls saga and
Hallfreðar saga, of a fight taking place from either side of a river (Bjami
Guðnason 1994, 82). There are many indications in Bjarnar saga of the de-
velopment of the narrative from earlier sources, written or oral: the reference
in the saga to an account of Bjqrn by Runólfr Dagsson (Dálksson?); the
chapter about Bjqrn’s dealings with King Óláfr, possibly derived from