Gripla - 2020, Side 73

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in the only medieval, incomplete manuscript of the saga (c. 1300).6 The
collected evidence of the ratio of of versus um, the spelling -ðr for -nnr and
komi for kœmi strongly suggests an original from early in the thirteenth
century.7 There can thus be little doubt that Heiðarvíga saga belongs to the
oldest group of sagas of Icelanders, and this is supported by a reference to
it in Eyrbyggja saga.8 The only complication is that Bjarni Guðnason has
pointed to a passage where it is likely that Laxdœla saga has influenced
Heiðarvíga saga.9 If this is correct, the formal criteria suggest that Laxdœla
saga must have exerted some influence on Heiðarvíga saga after its original
composition.
By all appearances, then, Heiðarvíga saga is one of the earliest sagas
of Icelanders, but there is little to suggest that it represents an attempt
to write a local saga based on the older conventions of the kings’ sagas. It
shows no thematic overlap with these and, perhaps more importantly, the
treatment of poetry conforms to the conventions of sagas of Icelanders, not
of kings’ sagas: all poetic quotations in the main manuscript are situational
(on this term, see below).10 Heiðarvíga saga is therefore not a likely repre-
sentative of an initial transition from kings’ sagas to sagas of Icelanders.
Fóstbrœðra saga is a different matter. First of all, it is the most obvi-
ous ‘missing link’ between kings’ sagas and sagas of Icelanders, since its
ending overlaps thematically, but not verbally, with the Oldest saga of
óláfr Haraldsson. Secondly, the stylistics of Fóstbrœðra saga are in some
respects unique. Its learned ‘digressions’ and marked rhetorical features
have received much attention, but I shall argue that the saga’s treatment
of poetry is equally important, or even more so, since the conventions for
6 Einar ól. Sveinsson, Ritunartími Íslendingasagna. Rök og rannsóknaraðferð (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1965), 115 (expletive of), 117–18 (of/um ratio), 121–22 (orthograp-
hy). Some additional archaisms are noted in Finnur Jónsson, Den oldnorske og oldislandske
litteraturs historie, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (København: G.E.C. Gads forlag, 1920–1924), 2: 484 n.
3.
7 On the use of standard Latin letters for mutated vowels, see Hreinn Benediktsson, Early
Icelandic script. íslenzk handrit 2 (Reykjavík: The Manuscript Institute of Iceland, 1965),
56–57.
8 Borgfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, xcviii.
9 Bjarni Guðnason, túlkun Heiðarvígasögu. Studia Islandica 50 (Reykjavík: Bókmenntafræði-
stofnun Háskóla íslands, 1993), 250–52.
10 See Borgfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, 263–311.