Gripla - 01.01.2003, Side 251

ANDMÆLARÆÐUR
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curiosity. So I would like to ask Gísli: How do you separate immanent narra-
tives that are rooted in oral tradition from those that are purely literary like the
untold stories of Sherlock Holmes?
However one regards the concept of “immanent saga”, it is in my view an
excellent idea to compare — as Gísli has done — sagas about a particular area
at a particular time, in this case the Eastfjords in the late lOth century and
early 1 lth century, in order to see what they have to say about the same people
and the same events. By scrutinizing passages where two or more sagas
overlap or tell versions of the same story, he tries to draw conclusions about
the tradition behind these sagas. Is it, as Jón Jóhannesson appears to think in
his edition of Austfirðinga sögur in Islenzk fomrit, a primarily literary tradi-
tion, based on rittengsl, or is it primarily an oral tradition, from which each
saga-writer has chosen his own story or combination of stories, selected from
a wide range of narratives included in the large “immanent saga” of the East-
fjords?
Before going further into this question, I think we should for a moment
look closer at the concept of rittengsl. What is really meant by this word?
Does it just mean, in the narrow sense, a direct influence from a written text
on another written text, as for example when a scribe copies a section from an
older manuscript or “borrows” a passage from something he has read? Or
could rittengsl also, in a wider sense, refer to a more indirect influence
through oral intermediaries, as for example when a saga-writer tells a story in
writing that he once heard somebody else read aloud or tell freely, even
though the story as such is ultimately derived from some written text? In the
latter case, rittengsl is not very easy to distinguish from an influence that is
based on oral tradition alone. Gísli is aware of this difficulty, as can be seen
from his criticism of the “Icelandic school”, but he himself does not make
very clear what he means by rittengsl. Perhaps he could tell us here today
more exactly what he means by this term.
However, the method used by Gísli to determine the relationship between
the Eastfjord sagas is, on the whole, a sound one, I think. When he compares
what the sagas tell about the same people and the same events, he is thus open
to the possibility that there may be literary influence, rittengsl, between them,
but he is only prepared to regard the rittengsl as proven when he finds a
reasonably large number of direct verbal parallels. If, on the other hand, the
stories differ from each other not only in the wording but also in various
factual details, Gísli tends to conclude that the stories are unrelated but based