Gripla - 20.12.2016, Page 66

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a question of rhetorical style. In some instances, one function of this kind
of explict comment or narrative association of places with events and char-
acters in the sagas is as a kind of corroboration or means of asserting the
veracity of the story being told, not unlike the way in which skaldic verse
is deployed in Heimskringla or other konungasögur, attributed to a poet and
used to confirm or substantiate the description of the event just related.40
Place-names and topographic discussion in Íslenzk fornrit
editions
Þórhallur Vilmundarson, in his introduction to Bárðar saga in íslenzk
fornrit 13, is of the opinion that “höfundur Bárðar sögu hefur að verulegu
leyti lesið persónur og atburði sögunnar út úr örnefnum” [‘the author of
Bárðar saga, in a substantial way, read saga characters and events out of
place-names’] and that (as Holtsmark suspected of Egils saga and Skalla-
Grímur’s twelve followers) “Líklegt er, að það eigi við um fylgdarlið
Bárðar” [‘It is likely that this applies to Bárður’s followers’].41 following
a line of argumentation similar to that employed in analysing the place-
names in Harðar saga, Þórhallur provides alternative etymologies based
on natural features for many of the place-names in Bárðar saga said to
have acquired their name as a result of an association with a character or
an event.42 and, as with Hörður and Harðar saga, the suggestion is also
made that Bárður, too, may well have been the fictional creation of the saga
author, and invented on the basis of place-names. Þórhallur goes further
here, though, in sketching out a scenario whereby Bárður was literally
conjured out of the Snæfellsnes landscape. thus, certain place-names and
prominent natural features in and around the Dritvík bay (the cliffs that
enclose the bay, a rocky outcrop in the middle of the bay that is reminis-
cent of a ship and now bears the name ‘Bárðarskip’, the suggestion of a face
in this outcrop which looks up to the glacier behind) may have been the
inspiration behind the creation of a story about a supernatural character
called Bárður who arrived from across the sea, made land at Dritvík with
40 See, e.g., Heather o’Donoghue, Skaldic Verse and the Poetics of Saga Narrative (oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005).
41 Introduction, lxxxii.
42 Introduction, lxxxii–lxxxv.