Gripla - 2019, Síða 31

31
ume edition of Old Norse kings’ sagas and related material does include
Þorsteins þáttur bæjarmagns,65 but this edition would have been a rarity in
North America, as would Biörner’s trilingual version of Þorsteins þáttur
bæjarmagns.66 Þorsteins þáttur bæjarmagns could be widely obtained in hand-
written form, often copied alongside romance-sagas.67
Two of the texts are redactions or adaptations found only in NIHM:
Ástríðar saga and Erlings saga Skjálgssonar og Einars. Their source texts
are easily identified: Ástríðar saga is an innovative reworking of Ólafs
saga Tryggvasonar from the perspective of ólafur Tryggvason’s mother
Ástríður, while Erlings saga Skjálgssonar og Einars is a history of two
Norwegian chieftains, Erlingur Skjálgsson and Einar Indriðason, whose
lives span the events of Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, Ólafs saga helga and
Magnúss saga góða og Haralds harðráða. These texts plausibly derive from
an unidentified manuscript exemplar. If Albert worked directly from a
printed edition, he must have altered his source material dramatically.
Here, as elsewhere, NIHM groups texts by theme. Skálda saga and
Þorleifs þáttur jarlaskálds, both dealing with poets, are copied back-to-back.
Two dream sequences from Ólafs saga helga are paired together, while the
final four texts are accounts of holy men and women: St. Sunnifa and her
companions, two Icelandic anchorites (Ásólfur and Máni) and a noble
heathen (Þórhallur) who converts to Christianity after ólafur Tryggvason
visits him in a dream.
The next eleven leaves contain material from Hauksbók, with no in-
formation on dates of completion (Table 5). It is an eclectic selection: a
rehearsal of monstrous races and a description of paradise, both adapted
from Isidore’s Etymologiae; a translation of an unidentified Latin text on
world geography; a text on the sons of Noah, also from the Etymologiae; a
homily on heresy (Ælfric’s De falsis diis); and an excerpt from Elucidarius
on idolatry.68
ALBERT JóHANNESSON AND THE SCRIBES OF HECLA ISLAND
65 Peter Andreas Munch (ed.), Fornmanna Sögur, eptir gömlum handritum (Copenhagen: Hið
konunglega norræna fornfræðafélag, 1825–1837).
66 Erik J. Biörner (ed.), Nordiska Kämpa Dater (Stockholm: 1737).
67 For a list of all known mss containing Þorsteins þáttur bæjarmagns, see the catalogue entry
“Þorsteins þáttur bæjarmagns,” Stories for All Time: The Icelandic Fornaldarsögur, http://
fasnl.ku.dk/bibl/bibl.aspx?sid=ththb&view=manuscript [Accessed 31 August 2019].
68 See Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, “Literary, Codicological, and Political Perspectives on
Hauksbók,” Gripla 19 (2008): 54–55.