Gripla - 01.01.2003, Síða 249

ANDMÆLARÆÐUR
247
II
But let us now take a closer look at Gísli’s own contribution! What is it that he
wants to do, and how does he attempt to do it?
Actually, I think his dissertation can best be characterized as a collection
of separate studies in which he uses not one but several methods in order to
come to grips with various problems that do not necessarily have very much
in common except for the fact that all of them, in some way or other, involve
a search for oral tradition. Most of the chapters have in fact been published
earlier as individual articles, and Gísli’s attempt to fit them together may
sometimes seem a little bit eccentric or artificial like a colourful quilt or rúm-
ábreiða patched together from different pieces of cloth with different pattems.
Let me say already at this stage, however, that I think most of the patches are
well made and competently sewn together. To me, then, the quilt or rúm-
ábreiða as a whole looks attractive.
Two studies, which together constitute Part I of the book, are not about
saga-writing at all but about the function of oral tradition in other areas of
Icelandic culture after the conversion of Iceland. The first deals with the office
of the lawspeaker and attempts to find out how that office was changed when
orally transmitted law was replaced by written law in the 12th century. The
second one deals with Olafur Þórðarson Hvítaskáld’s range of knowledge
about orally transmitted poetry in 13th century Iceland. Both these studies are,
in my view, convincing in their conclusions about the nature of oral tradition,
but I shall not comment on them further, since they are of limited interest for
the saga problems I have chosen to discuss and will be scrutinized by the
second opponent, Guðrún Nordal.
I shall, however, have something to say about the studies presented in
Parts II and III. Part II deals with the literary universe of the Eastfjord sagas,
and the question Gísli attempts to answer here is to what extent this universe
existed in oral tradition already or was a result of literary development in the
13th century as saga-writers influenced each other through rittengsl and con-
tinued to write about the same people and the same events. Part III deals with
the oral tradition behind the two Vínland sagas, and the question Gísli tries to
answer here is to what extent the nature of this tradition may be determined by
comparing the sagas with each other and with recent archeological findings
conceming Viking activities in Newfoundland and the natural history of North
America around the year 1000.