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gain verisimilitude”.35 there is only one instance of an explanation for a
place-name given in the second part of the saga (for that of Hítardalur, in
chapter 13, where the saga states that “í þann tíma var Hít tröllkona uppi
og bygði Hundahelli í þeim dal, er síðan var kallaðr Hítardalr” [‘at that
time, the troll-woman Hít was alive and lived in Hundahellir, in the valley
later called Hítardalur]. In the first part of the saga, by contrast, a number
of names are given “special attention” by the author, this constituting a
veritable “onomastic outpouring” and “naming spree” in chapter 3.36 Allee
does not discuss in any detail the extent to which the posited author of
Bárðar saga/Gests saga might have created the narrative out of existing
place-names around Snæfellsnes and beyond, but he implies this may
have been the process with the statement that “at least fictitiously, he [the
author] claims either (a) to tell who did the naming, or (b) to explain how
the place was named”.37
It may be that there is some relationship between the proportion of
explicit explanatory place-name anecdotes or use of them as a source –
whether the tradition associated with any given place-name is ‘genuine’ or
pre-dates the writing of the saga, or is the construction of the saga-writer
– and the posited date of the composition of respective sagas. Largely on
the basis of style (and the inclusion of folk-tale related or fantastic mat-
erial), most of the sagas that have a higher proportion of explicit place-
name explanations (e.g. Bárðar saga, Kjalnesinga saga, Harðar saga – the
version of this latter saga that is extant is thought to be a reworking of an
older version) are those typically designated ‘post-classical’ rather than
‘classical’ sagas, and dated to the fourteenth rather than thirteenth centu-
ry.38 But texts of Laxdæla saga and Egils saga, on the other hand, survive in
manuscripts that are amongst the oldest extant witnesses for the written
Íslendingasögur, albeit fragmentary.39 It seems then that it may be instead
35 ‘a Study of the Place names in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss,’ 29–30.
36 ‘a Study of the Place names in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss,’ 31, 33.
37 ‘a Study of the Place names in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss,’ 33.
38 Vésteinn Ólason, ‘family Sagas,’ in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and
Culture, ed. rory Mcturk (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), 114–15.
39 the oldest extant manuscript witness of Egils saga, aM 162 a θ fol., is dated to c. 1240–1260
(handrit.is) and manuscript evidence attests to Laxdæla saga being transmitted in written
form at least as early as the mid-thirteenth century: the single leaf of aM 162 d II fol. con-
taining a text of Laxdæla saga is dated to c. 1250–1300 (handrit.is).
THE ICELANDIC SAGAS AND SAGA LANDSCAPES