Gripla - 20.12.2017, Page 50

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Yet if one description of Þorgils Hǫlluson’s legal nous is enough to
make readers including Jesch doubt the motives of the narrator of Laxdœla
saga, then what is the collective result of these descriptions of Þorsteinn’s
difficult personality? Ójafnaðarmenn in the Íslendingasögur rarely get a
happy ending: most are dead by the end of the saga in which they appear, if
not by the end of the chapter in which they are introduced.34 If an account
existed during the thirteenth century, or had existed, of a dispute in which
Þorsteinn was unequivocally viewed as the provocateur, then that would
explain the agreement of these sagas regarding his forceful nature.
additionally, it is the victors who get to write history; Þorsteinn has
no recorded descendants, nor does his foster-son, Ásgeirr Kjartansson. as
Gísli Sigurðsson demonstrates in the case of Guðmundr ríki, the nature of
stories told about prominent figures can vary drastically depending upon
the interests of the audience and of those telling the stories.35 Traditions
regarding Þorsteinn’s life seem to have been of interest largely to the com-
pilers of sagas that focussed on events in the west of Iceland, and given
that he was apparently involved in some sort of dispute with Snorri goði,
we might suspect a certain bias when it comes to medieval perceptions of
his character. Snorri was, after all, a man whose many children were well-
provided for in terms of land and high-status marriages, and who were
remembered as important ancestors by many in the thirteenth century.36
this overview of Þorsteinn’s portrayal thus tells us that he was a well-
connected man with a disruptive personality, despite his unremarkable
behaviour in many of the surviving sources. He fulfils another aspect of a
character with immanent traditions: enjoying a consistent portrayal across
Viðar Sigurðsson and Sverrir Jakobsson, the northern World, vol. 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2017),
83–92, particularly p. 91.
34 Shortt Butler, “narrative Structure and the Individual,” ch. 3.
35 Gísli Sigurðsson, “Guðmundr ríki,” 215. Ármann Jakobsson has also examined the variation
in the many portrayals of Skapti Þóroddsson. although he initially took a chronological
view of the source material, Ármann has since re-written his observations to focus instead
on thematic nuance in the representation of Skapti. His articles are more interested in the
individual development of different sources than in an “immanent saga” but, like Gísli, he
does not prioritise one version of the character over another: Ármann Jakobsson, “Skapti
Þóroddsson og sagnaritun á miðöldum,” Árnesingur 4 (1996), 217–33; “tradition and the
Individual talent: the ‘Historical figure’ in the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, a Case Study,”
Viator 45.3 (2014), 101–24.
36 Eyrbyggja saga, eds. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, Íslenzk fornrit, vol. 4, 2nd
ed. (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1986), 180–84.