Gripla - 01.01.2003, Page 254

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GRIPLA
commonsensical answer to this question. The saga-writer will probably base
his narrative on oral tradition when he is writing about the actions of the main
heroes or about well-known dramatic events such as the Battle in Böðvarsdal.
On the other hand, he may in some cases be consciously or unconsciously
influenced by some great written work that he has read or heard somebody
read aloud. He is also likely to consult a written source like Landnámabók or
some earlier saga that happens to be available when he is compiling ”back-
ground material” about the hero’s ancestor or some other matter that has no
direct bearing on the main plot but is still considered relevant to include in the
saga. In this way one could possibly explain three of the cases where Gísli
does find clear examples of direct verbal borrowing (rittengsl) in accounts of
the same events: the description of Brodd-Helgi and the story of his nickname,
the dream of Hrafnkell Hrafnsson in Brand-Krossa þáttr, and the story of
Ketill þrymr and Ameiðr jarlsdóttir from the Hebrides.
The three remaining examples of rittengsl admitted by Gísli are, however,
of a somewhat different kind. All three cases deal with major scenes in
Laxdæla saga that are also somehow echoed in certain Eastfjord sagas, but not
in a way that suggests direct copying from a written source. In these cases it
seems to me likely that Laxdæla, which was a great and memorable literary
work, left its mark in the minds and works of several Eastfjord saga-writers.
Needless to say, any theories about the reasons for these instances of rittengsl
must be speculative. It would nevertheless be interesting to hear Gísli’s
opinions about this matter. What is certain, however, and this is convincingly
demonstrated by Gísli, is that saga-writers did not normally work like modem
scholars, constantly quoting each other and copying long sections from
books available in their library. Saga-writers are in fact not likely to have had
access to a lot of books, and that in itself makes it reasonable to suppose that
rittengsl (in the narrow sense) was a fairly unusual phenomenon, except when
manuscripts were copied.
IV
I shall now tum my attention to Part III, which deals primarily with the
tradition behind the Vínland sagas. There are clear indications that such a
tradition existed long before the sagas were written, because the discovery of
Vínland is mentioned in the Church History of Adam of Bremen from
around 1075 and then in Ari fróði’s Islendingabók, written about fifty years