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not in all texts. Well-known examples are the rock ‘Gunnarsklettur’ by
the river rangá (where Gunnar fought a fierce battle against Starkaður
Barkarson and other enemies, Njáls saga chs. 62–63) and ‘flosadalur’ on
Þríhyrningur (where flosi and his band of burners are said to have hid-
den themselves and their horses following the burning of Bergþórshvoll,
Njáls saga ch. 130).20 Either Gunnarsklettur and flosadalur (and other
comparable place-names associated with a saga but not named in written
saga texts) were created or bestowed on places after written texts of sagas
started circulating as a kind of landscape-based response to or reception of
the saga, or, (in the case of this example) the highly literate figure behind
the written composition of Njáls saga in the late thirteenth century chose
not to use these place-names, thereby giving Njáls saga a distinctively dif-
ferent character in this respect when compared with sagas such as Harðar
saga or Kjalnesinga saga.
In addition to considering the relative frequency of these explana-
tory place-name anecdotes from one saga to another, their distribution
throughout individual saga narratives is also worthy of note. as might be
expected, this kind of place-name rhetoric is most common in the pas-
sages in sagas which describe the settlement process – the claiming and
naming of tracts of land, and the building of farmsteads. In this context,
one place-name-related trope that has been examined is that of a primary
settler distributing land amongst those who accompanied him or her, and
these parcels of land each being named after the respective recipient. anne
Holtsmark has drawn attention to the passages in chapters 25 and 29 of
Egils saga, which describe how twelve men accompany Skalla-Grímur
when he meets King Haraldur and subsequently sail with him to Iceland;
once there, each follower is given land. Grímur thus settles near Grímsá,
Áni at Ánabrekka, Grímolfur at Grímolfsstaðir (Grímolfur is also as-
sociated with Grímolfslækur and Grímolfsfit, notes the saga), Grímar at
Grímarsstaðir, Grani at Granastaðir, Þorbjörn krumur at Krumsshólar,
Þorbjörn beigaldi at Beigalda, Þórður þurs at Þursstaðir, Þorgeir jarðlangr
at Jarðlangsstaðir.
20 See further Emily Lethbridge and Steven Hartman, ‘the Initiative Inscribing Environ-
mental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas and the Project Icelandic Saga Map,’ Publications of
the Modern Language Association of America 131 (2016): 385.
THE ICELANDIC SAGAS AND SAGA LANDSCAPES