Gripla - 20.12.2016, Side 27

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the nature of texts have continued to undermine the certainties that existed
in previous centuries on the historical reliability of Icelandic documents
originating in the thirteenth century. Even “okkar saga” (Landnámabók)
was called into question in 1974.65 But the reaction to this and similar
revelations has been muted. as Ármann Jakobsson points out, despite the
fact that the subsequent researches of Sveinbjörn rafnsson and others have
continued to challenge the reliability of Landnámabók and similar sources,
deepening our understanding of why that is so, the response outside the
academy has been to pretend such research does not exist.66 This suggests
that the binaries “truth/falsehood,” “history/fiction,” have become unpro-
ductive and that a different approach is called for. Ármann suggests:
Síðan verða fræðimenn að forðast gamlar ímyndaðar andstæður á
borð við ‘uppspuna’ of ‘sannleik’ eða ‘sagnfræði’ eða ‘skáldskap’. Hér
eru á ferð bókmenntatextar sem jafnframt eru sagnfræðrit síns tíma.
Sannleikann er ekki að finna í þessum ritum, aðeins ‘sannleik’ hvers
og eins sagnaritara.67
In his “formáli” to the saga collection preserved in MS Icel. 32, Halldór
Jakobsson makes his contribution to a debate which has continued with
varying degrees of intensity down to the present. He is open to the ar-
gument that not everything designated as a saga is “history,” but he still
65 “Ju längre tikbaka i tiden man anser at Landnama ursprungligen författats, desto större
blir sannolikheten för ändringer och interpretationer.” Sveinbjörn rafnsson, Studier i
Landnámabók: Kritiska bidrag till den isländska fristatstidens historia, Bibliotheca historica
Lundensis 30 (Lund: Gleerup, 1974), 123.
66 Ármann Jakobsson, “Hvað á að gera við Landnámu? Um hefð, höfunda og raunveruleik-
jablekkingu íslenskra miðaldasagnarita,” Gripla 26 (2015): 7–27 at 9–10 (footnote 9). to
the works listed there might be added the controversial volume 1: Frá landnámstíð til 1700,
Gunnlaugur Haraldsson, Saga Akraness, 2 vols. (akranes: uppheimar, 2011) which on
the one hand discusses the unreliability of the written sources (164–65, 171–77) and then
goes on to devote an entire chapter to “Landnám Bresasona” (183–200) complete with
detailed maps and genealogies as if this was in fact the “history” of the region. Páll Baldvin
Baldvinsson, “Saga akraness eitt,” Fréttatíminn 2.27 (July 8, 2011): 30 draws attention to
the “[h]áskaleg umgengni við heimildir” [‘reckless handling of sources’] in this work.
67 “then scholars will have to sacrifice old conceptual oppositions along the line of ‘false’ and
‘true’ or ‘history’ or ‘fiction’. Here we are talking about literary texts which are the historical
writings of their time as well. the truth is not to be found in these writings, only the
‘truth’ of each and every saga-writer (historian).” Ármann Jakobsson, “Hvað á að gera við
Landnámu?” 22.
HALLDóR JAKOBSSON ON TRUTH AND FICTION