Gripla - 20.12.2017, Qupperneq 40

GRIPLA40
Þorsteinn might largely be termed a background character, contribut-
ing to the scenery of the society depicted, but not influencing the drive of
the story. Confronted with characters like this – a familiar feature of the
Íslendingasögur – we are minded to ask why they made it into the story at
hand. the scenes that I will examine here have been explained by Judith
Jesch simply as products of a saga author’s “imagination”, functioning only
to illustrate the personalities of Þorsteinn’s relatives, Þorkell and Grettir.1
this is a conclusion that I will question, considering how “authorial” or
compositional imagination might have interacted with established tradi-
tion as well as the needs of the story at hand. as will be developed further
below, this is not to claim that compositional imagination is a purely liter-
ary phenomenon, and it must be recalled that even an established tradition
must have featured variants and innovation as much as conservatism. Both
Laxdœla saga and Grettis saga contain information that allows us to piece
together aspects of an immanent saga of Þorsteinn Kuggason, but the ma-
terial is muted and manipulated in order to fit the context of the sagas that
make use of Þorsteinn, according to their own narrative priorities.
Immanent sagas and lost sagas
Medieval Icelandic literature is full of references to sources that we can
no longer access, some of which may have been written down, some of
which may only have existed as oral accounts. Some of these are named,
whilst others are little more than allusions to tales, or the suspicion that
arises when a character reappears frequently with little introduction. these
instances have naturally precipitated discussion of the “lost” literature of
medieval Iceland; that is, sagas that were written down but have subse-
quently disappeared from the canon through loss and damage. Building
upon speculation regarding the number of manuscripts lost, the propor-
tion of these that contained otherwise unattested material, and upon as-
sumptions regarding the chronology of saga composition, the search for
lost sagas has sought to recover proof of physical documents from little
concrete evidence.2
1 Judith Jesch, “the Lost Literature of Medieval Iceland: Sagas of Icelanders,” (PhD diss.,
University College London, 1984), 266; 268.
2 See, for instance, the summary of previous scholarship in Jesch, “Lost Literature,” 27–28