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there can be no doubt that we have completely lost some written sagas,
along with copies of existing texts, but discovering the extent to which the
surviving corpus preserves either direct quotations from them, or modi-
fied passages, remains difficult to prove. the only systematic attempt to
analyse this problem has been Judith Jesch’s 1984 doctoral thesis, which
did not deny the role of oral traditions in saga formation, but nevertheless
focussed solely on the evidence for lost written stories.3 two of Jesch’s
case-studies that will be referred to in the present article are *Þorgils saga
Hǫllusonar and *Þorsteins saga Kuggasonar. The former is a narrative men-
tioned in Laxdœla saga that does not survive elsewhere, whilst *Þorsteins
saga Kuggasonar is included in Jesch’s study because of arguments made
by Sigurður Nordal.4
Barði Guðmundsson was the first modern scholar to observe that
clues as to Þorsteinn’s fate can be found within his appearances in the
Íslendingasögur.5 following Barði, Sigurður nordal combined the evidence
to suggest that a written saga of Þorsteinn’s life had once existed, and had
been used as a source by the authors of the surviving texts mentioned at
the opening of this article.6 Jesch was justly sceptical of the existence of
such a written saga; however, she largely ignored the evidence relating to
Þorsteinn’s death and instead felt that his life had not been “sufficiently
remarkable” to be the subject of a saga narrative.7
two years after Jesch defended her thesis, Carol Clover’s influential
article on the oral background of the “long prose form” was published,
introducing the notion of the “immanent” saga.8 Whilst Jesch’s thesis re-
mains an extremely useful resource, the idea of immanence perhaps makes
the search for “lost” sagas redundant. Clover’s suggestion, based on the
study of epic oral traditions around the world, was that whilst a full-length
prose saga need not have existed as a single oral story (ready to be dictated
and passim. as Jesch has pointed out, the editors of the Íslenzk fornrit series have often
been the main investigators of references to what seems to be ‘lost’ saga literature.
3 Jesch, “Lost Literature,” 10.
4 Sigurður Nordal, Introduction to Borgfirðingasögur, eds. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jóns-
son, Íslenzk fornrit, vol. 3, 2nd ed. (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1956).
5 Barði Guðmundsson, “tímatal annála um viðburði sögualdar,” Andvari 1936 (1936): 33–
34.
6 Sigurður Nordal, Introduction to Borgfirðingasögur, lxxxii.
7 Jesch, “Lost Literature,” 269.
8 Carol J. Clover, “the Long Prose form,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 101 (1986): 10–39.
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF ÞORSTEINN KUGGASON