Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 21

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been printed twice as a children’s book.46 the sagas, however, did not sell
as well as expected, and ten years after they were printed half the print-run
of 1000 copies remained unsold.47
7. History and Halldór’s “formáli”
the majority of the population in Iceland, subsistence farmers as they
were, eked out an existence on marginal farmlands. for their entertain-
ment in the evening work periods they wanted action, and they found
that the fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur or the narrative rímur based on
these and similar stories fulfilled that need. also, these materials were not
a waste of time, because so far as they were concerned they were “saga,”
that is “history.”48 When Eggert Ólafsson visited the fishing camps on
Snæfellsnes he noted:
Oft hittast hér skáld, sem hafa það at atvinnu að yrkja rímur út af
sögum. Það, sem verst er í því efni, er það, að rímnaskáld þessi taka
sé jafnt hinar lélegustu lygisögur að yrkisefni og hinar, sem sannar
eru, enda eru þeir fáir, sem kunna að greina þar á milli.49
In Iceland itself a new approach towards history begins to make an
appearance. first of all there is a shift of emphasis from the past to the
present. as the result of a petition to the King a commission had been set
46 the MS copy is found in Lbs 1793 8vo (ca. 1800). the childrens books are: Berthold hinn
víðförli (reykjavík: Sögusafn heimilanna, 1935); 2nd ed., Berthold á eyðiey (reykjavík: Smári,
1959).
47 Ólafur Pálmason, “Inngangur,” Nockrer Marg-Frooder Søgu-Þætter Islandinga 1756, íslenzk
rit í frumgerð 1 (reykjavík: Endurprent, 1967), vii–xv at xiv.
48 this suggests that ralph o’Connor, “History or fiction? truth-Claims and Defensive
narrators in Icelandic romance-Sagas,” Medieval Scandinavia 15 (2005): 101–69, at 133–41,
is on the right track when he argues that the fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur were regarded
as “history” in the late Middle ages since there is sufficient evidence that they were regarded
as such in the early modern period.
49 Eggert ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson, Ferðabók Eggerts Ólafssonar og Bjarni Pálssonar um
ferðið þeirra á Íslandi árin 1752–1757, trans. Steindór Steindórsson frá Hlöðum, 2nd ed., 2
vols. in 1 (reykjavík: Örn og Örlygur, 1975), §519, vol. 1, p. 204. ‘often one meets here [in
the winter fishing camps] poets who have that for an occupation to compose rímur out of
sagas. that which is worst in this regard is that that these rímur-poets take on equally the
worst lygisögur for their inspiration as others which are true, and they are few who know
how to distinguish between the two.’
HALLDóR JAKOBSSON ON TRUTH AND FICTION