Gripla - 01.01.2003, Síða 96

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GRIPLA
only Sörla þáttr should still be numbered among thefornaldarsögur. Fundinn
Noregr and Hversu Noregr byggðisk he excluded because they were non-
narrative, Helga þáttr Þórissonar was rejected because of its structural and
thematic similarity to saints’ legends, and although Norna-Gests þáttr and
Tóka þáttr Tókasonar were clearly related to the “heroic legends” subgroup of
thefornaldarsögur, Mitchell was reluctant to admit them into that group be-
cause they were hardly “heroic legends” themselves. The present article will
argue explicitly what Harris implies but does not insist on, namely that Sörla
þáttr, too, should be excluded from the corpus of fornaldarsögur proper.
Moreover, the reasons for doing so also support Mitchell’s assessment of
Norna-Gests þáttr and Tóka þáttr.
Norna-Gests þáttr provides a good example of one of the pitfalls in
thinking about the relationship between the þættir found in Oláfs saga
Tryggvasonar and Oláfs saga helga and the fornaldarsögur, which is the
inclination to group a text with the fornaldarsögur because it contains a
substantial amount of Scandinavian mythological or legendary material, as
Norna-Gests þáttr does. Being surrounded by a framing narrative or being
embedded in another text should not automatically change the generic
affiliation of the text so enclosed, especially when, as in the case of Noraa-
Gestr’s accounts of the heroes of Germanic legend, the relationship to the
source material is relatively clear (e.g., a Völsunga-saga-style retelling of
older material or an episode invented by the þáttr-author to insert Noma-Gestr
into the world of legend). But few scholars insist on the distinction between
the embedded elements and the textual matrix, which results in the misleading
impression that Norna-Gestsþáttr as a whole is a fornaldarsaga (e.g., Wurth
1993:435b, Boyer 1998:71-72), even after Harris (1980:162-167) established
on the basis of the narrative’s theme, stmcture, and location within its own
textual matrix of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar that its generic affinities lay with
the pagan-contact þættir. These texts emphasize “the historical gulf between
the Old and New Dispensations” (Harris 1980:166), as when Noma-Gestr’s
supematurally lengthened life enables the Christian king Olaf Tryggvason to
gain first-hand knowledge of the pagan past. Furthermore, because the þáttr as
a whole seems to have been composed within the literary tradition of Óláfs
paganism” (Harris 1980:162). At the highest level, all eleven narratives have a tripartite
structure in which an original (i.e., old, damned, pagan) state of affairs is changed by the
intervention of a Christian agent and gives way to a new (i.e., redeemed, Christian) state
(Harris 1980:165-167).