Gripla - 01.01.2003, Blaðsíða 246

244
GRIPLA
literary compositions by prominent authors such as, for example, Snorri
Sturluson.
When I say “originated essentially” I want to emphasize the fact that
fundamentalism has not been very common on either side in the conflict
between Freeprose and Bookprose. It is, on the contrary, important to note that
adherents of Freeprose such as Heusler could admit that individual saga-writ-
ers had sometimes Ieft their trace on the saga texts, thereby modifying or in
some cases even radically changing the previous oral tradition. Likewise,
adherents of Bookprose such as Nordal and other members of the “Icelandic
School” have often admitted that the authors of the sagas probably had access
to some kind of oral tales as basic source material for their literary composi-
tions. Perhaps the most important difference between Freeprose and Book-
prose is not one of basic theoretical suppositions but rather one of practical
scholarly method: while adherents of Freeprose have worked primarily as
folklorists with parallels from various legends and other oral sources, ad-
herents of Bookprose have worked primarily as textual philologists and com-
parative literary historians, trying to establish manuscript relationships and
literary influences, what members of the “Icelandic school” have called
rittengsl, a crucial concept to which I shall come back later.
Since the 1960s, oral tradition has come back into focus after a long ab-
sence, and there has been, intemationally, an increasing reaction against Book-
prose and the “Icelandic School”. Gísli Sigurðsson’s dissertation is an out-
growth of that reaction as can be seen already from the title, Túlkun Islend-
ingasagna í Ijósi munnlegrar hefðar, and still more from his introductory
chapter, in which he states his aims and presents the previous discussion about
oral tradition and literary authorship in the sagas. From Gísli’s subtitle, Tilgáta
um aðferð, we may further conclude that his ambition is to introduce new
methhods or a new approach in dealing with the oral tradition behind the
written sagas.
Before going further into this discussion, I think we need to consider for a
moment what actually happened in the sixties that triggered the reaction and
the retum of oral tradition. This was something that happened not only in saga
studies but also — and even more prominently — in the study of Homer,
Beowulf, Chanson de Roland and several other verse epics. It happened pri-
marily in the United States, and an extremely influential work was — as Gísli
rightly points out — the Harvard scholar Albert B. Lord’s book The Singer of
Tales, published in 1960.