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thoroughly, stressing the A-redaction’s closeness in almost all cases to
what he deems the original saga26 and arguing for a consistent and inten-
tional tendency of the C-redaction towards expansion of the plot.27 Finally,
Magerøy accounts for the deviations in certain character names as a sys-
tematic misreading made by the C-redaction’s original scribe.28
Andersson responds to Björn Sigfússon and Magerøy’s studies by refut-
ing most of their claims regarding the C-redaction’s corruption, pointing
out that many of the logical mishaps that the íslenzk fornrit editor argued
for were in fact literary technique in practice, and that the inconsistencies
that remain are not unique within the Íslendingasögur corpus.29 Andersson
dismisses Magerøy’s argument for a systematic misreading of names that
caused the variations in detail in the A and C-redaction, stating that the
nature of these variations as well as their “sheer number” prove that these
cannot be attributed to a fault in the scribe’s practice.30 Andersson agrees
with Magerøy that the most logical explanation for the redactions’ rela-
tionship is a textual one, with priority instead given to the C-redaction,
declaring the A-redaction a rushed abbreviation.31 In what could be seen as
a compromise between the Bookprose and the Freeprose approaches, he
argues for an authorial agency behind the two redactions, with the differ-
ence in details as stemming from local oral variants.32 As Andersson later
points out, there is a consensus in subsequent Ljósvetninga saga scholarship
A STYLOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF LJóSVETNINGA SAGA
26 The C-redaction portrayal of Rindill’s discussion with Þorkell hákr is a noteworthy excep-
tion, Hallvard Magerøy, sertekstproblemet, 78.
27 Magerøy, sertekstproblemet, 64, 89. Haakon Hamre finds this explanation of the C-redaction
being written “in order to ‘increase the dimensions’ in content and narration … not so
convincing.” “Reviewed Work: sertekstproblemet i Ljósvetninga saga by Hallvard Mageröy,”
the journal of English and Germanic Philology 58.3 (1959): 469.
28 Magerøy, sertekstproblemet, 86–87.
29 Andersson, Problem of saga Origins, 153, 156. In addition, Andersson claims that the íslenzk
fornrit editor is too invested in the fallacy that “older is better,” which sees a text’s quality
as an indication of age.
30 Andersson, Problem of saga Origins, 158.
31 Andersson, Problem of saga Origins, 159–165.
32 Andersson, Problem of saga Origins, 165. The fact that this is a compromise between the two
schools of thought finds support in the words of Bookprose scholar Einar ól. Sveinsson
and Freeprose scholar Knut Liestøl. As Einar states: “If the author of a saga had succee-
ded in getting all the material from the best-informed people, it might well be that he had
included everything with which the story was concerned, and there was then no good
reason to add anything. But if much of the material had been left unused, there might