Orð og tunga - 01.06.2010, Page 126

116 Orð og tunga
2.3 Green and yellow in the Sagas and þættir of Icelanders
The prose sections of the sagas and þættir of Icelanders reveal a simi-
larly infrequent use of gulr. In fact, gulr is attested only once, in Fóst-
brœðra saga, to describe one of the four colors of the nerves of Þor-
móðr's heart, some of which were red and some white, yellow, and
green ("rauðar en sumar hvítar, gular ok grœnar" 850).
Grœnn, too, occurs infrequently, and in contrast to the eddic and
skaldic poems, it is not used to describe land or vegetation; the only
exception is in Vatnsdœla saga, where in his search for a suitable place
for settlement, Ingimundr expresses the hope to his men that some
greenness awaits them ("at nqkkut grœnt mun fyrir liggja" 41.2). In
his edition of the saga, Einar Ól. Sveinsson comments on the color
term that the color green is dear to the settler ("landnámsmanninum
er græni liturinn kærstur") and that other examples show that green
is considered a good color ("[ý]mis önnur dæmi sýna, að grænt þykir
góður litur" 41. fn. I).10 The naming of Greenland by Eiríkr rauði
as related in íslendingabók, that is, that he called the land Greenland
and said that people would want to go there, if it had a good name
("[h]ann gaf nafn landinu ok kallaði Grœnland ok kvað menn þat
myndu fýsa þangat farar, at landit ætti nafn gótt" 13.8-10), is no doubt
the most famous example in Old Norse-Icelandic literature.
In the sagas and þættir of Icelanders, grœnn is used almost exclu-
sively about the color of clothing:11
10Einar Ól. Sveinsson's statement is supported by the fact that instead of AM 559
4to's "grœnt" AM 396 fol. has "gott."
nFor an analysis of the green mantles and cloaks, see Zanchi (2006:1097-1099).
She notes that "very few green garments appear in the sagas and tales in question,
while they are virtually non-existent in the rest of the medieval corpus" and com-
ments that "[i]t is probable that we might here be dealing witli localised fashions,
which disapproved of green garments or did not place them at an equal level as, for
instance, their red counterparts" (1097). In comparison with the Sagas and þættir of
Icelanders, grœrm may be said to occur frequently in Sturlunga saga to describe the
color of clothing. In addition to describing klæöi ([laufgrœnt] 2:144.20), grœnn is used
about a kyrtilsblað (2:212.20) and about a kyrtill (2:125.11,137.32,150.4, 237.22).