Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 33

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oldest and best writers on history have made distinctions among them and
given us three kinds of sagas according to subject matter.
1. first are those sagas which are made up purely for pleasure and
amusement by leaned and intelligent people as a diversion, and there is not
the least amount of value in such, of which there is a very large number
floating around among us, and many others have without doubt perished.
Some also again recently and in our days have been translated into Icelandic
from foreign languages. of such I find in this book, the sagas of Þjálar-Jón
Svipdagsson and rósanía. 88
the first is certainly 200 years old or more and either made up by
some clever Icelander such as are Ármanns saga,89 Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss,
Víglundar saga and more of a similar kind, or translated from German or
English in those times when those nations had trade relations here and
yearly contact with the country’s inhabitants. Rósaniæ saga90 I have read
printed in Danish now some fifty to sixty years ago.91 Using this text some
Icelander has translated it. It is clearly composed for amusement just like
other romances or fables, and was at first written in Italian. It is completely
unfounded.92
2. In the second category I place those sagas in which to be sure some
truth exists, in that both their characters have existed which they speak
about, and likewise some of the events took place which occur there in
the narratives. But these sagas are, however, so full of worthless fables and
lying fairy-tales,93 mixed in a contrived manner with that little that is true
in them so that it is impossible to sift out the truth from the false stories.
of these there is a great number among us, such as Bósa saga og Herrauðs,
88 Rósanía saga is translated from french via Danish, but Þjalar-Jóns saga is a fourteenth-cent-
ury Icelandic composition.
89 Halldór is being coy here as his version of this saga had already appeared in print in 1782.
90 Halldór seem to hesitate between marking the first vowel of rósania long (-oo-) or short
as here. usually the word is indeclinable, but here it is treated as a Latin first declension
feminine noun ending -ae in the genitive.
91 Since Halldór was 55 when he wrote this Preface, these figures mean no more than to
indicate some time in his youth. the publication referred to is: Bastian Stub, En Smuck
Historie om Rosanie, fød af Kongelig Byrd, en Princesse, opfostred of en Bunde ... of Italiensk paa
Dansk (Copenhagen: n.p., 1708).
92 that is, completely without truth.
93 on the complicated range of meanings for the word ævintýri over the centuries, see Shaun f.
D. Hughes, “the old norse Exempla as arbiters of Gender roles in Medieval Iceland,” in
New Norse Studies, ed. Jeffrey turco, Islandica 58 (Ithaca, nY: Cornell university Library,
2016), 255–300 at 268–71.
HALLDóR JAKOBSSON ON TRUTH AND FICTION