Gripla - 01.01.2003, Side 256

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GRIPLA
vel”). At the end of both sagas these remarkable shining and sweet-smelling
descendants of Guðríðr are listed, and we leam that they are three prominent
Icelandic bishops who all lived in the 12th century: Bishop Þorlákr, who was
bishop of Skálholt between 1118 and 1133, Bishop Bjöm, who was bishop of
Hólar between 1147 and 1162, and Bishop Brandr Sæmundarson, who was
bishop at Hólar between 1163 and 1201. The people who first told the stories
about the Vínland voyages in the early llth century could not very well have
known that Guðríðr would have these three episcopal descendants more than
a hundred years later, unless they really had access to some kind of second
sight and could look into the future. And since we do not today believe in the
existence of such second sight, we are forced to conclude that the story about
the prophecy and the three bishops did not in fact enter the tradition until the
1160s at the earliest, probably from some kind of clerical source, since the
language in the prophecy describing the three bishops is typical of religious
style in written clerical texts.
If this conclusion is accepted, and it is in fact an unavoidable conclusion,
we must also accept the possibility that other material may have entered the
tradition of the Vínland sagas as late as the 1160s. Furthermore, we must
accept the possibility that there may, after all, have been some kind of direct or
indirect literary influence, rittengsl, from some kind of clerical source on both
sagas, or from one of the two sagas on the other saga, even though such an
influence cannot now be ascertained with certainty.
What is then the consequence of this reasoning for Gísli’s argument?
First of all, we cannot be certain that the two Vínland sagas present inde-
pendent testimonies about the same historical events. Even when they do
agree about something, for example that Leifr Eiríksson and his men were the
first to set foot on Vínland, this may not necessarily have been the case. It may
very well have been some other Viking sailors who first came ashore in North
America, and the circumstances may have been very much different from
what the sagas say. The very fact that the tradition about the Vínland expedi-
tions was evidently preserved and cultivated in the 12th and 13th centuries by
Icelanders who claimed to be descendants of Guðríðr and relatives of the three
bishops makes it in fact rather likely that the role of Guðríðr, Leifr Eiríksson
and the Brattahlíð family for the discovery of Vínland has been exaggerated in
both sagas.
On the other hand, it may well be that the two sagas have preserved real
memories of what actually happened in Vínland insofar as their information