Gripla - 2020, Page 75

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there announced that he would publish a book on the topic, but it never
appeared.14 In the introduction, Sigurður gives general arguments in favour
of seeing the additional text as original, but he discusses no diagnostic
instances, and this is true also of Jónas Kristjánsson, who subsequently
embraced Sigurður’s view. The question would therefore remain open if
it were not for Sven B.F. Jansson’s study of Fóstbrœðra saga in Hauksbók,
in which he demonstrated how Haukr abbreviated the saga text, including
some of its most famous digressions, whereas his ‘first secretary’ did not.15
The text of Hauksbók’s exemplar must therefore have been of roughly
equal length to that of other witnesses. Based on the evidence of Jansson’s
analysis, scholars today agree that the digressions belong to the archetype.
One point has escaped notice, however: namely, that Jansson ignores im-
portant evidence that would have rendered his results more ambiguous.
The question must therefore be addressed once more.
What Jansson does not say is that the digressions and their style are
largely absent in the text of Haukr’s first secretary as well. Jansson actu-
ally quotes one such instance in full, namely that of Þormóðr’s interaction
with Lúsa-Oddi (Louse-Oddi). F, R and Hb all note that Oddi’s coat was
covered in lice. F and R then go on:
F: því at þá er sólskin var heitt þá gengu verkfákar fullir frá fóðri
hans hǫrunds á inar yztu trefr sinna herbergja ok létu þar þá við sólu
síður við blika.16
Because when the sunshine was hot, then the workhorses went, full
from the fodder of his body, onto the fringes of their lodgings and
there they let their sides glimmer against the sun.
Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. by Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson. íslenzk fornrit 6
(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943), lxx–lxxvii.
14 Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, lxxiii.
15 Sven B.F. Jansson, Handskrifterna till Erik den rödes saga (Stockholm: Wahlström och
Widstrand, 1945), 234, 255–59; for which portions of the manuscript are written by the
first secretary, see ‘Hauksbók’ udgiven efter de arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675,
4º, ed. Finnur Jónsson (København: Det kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab, 1892–1896),
xlvi.
16 Jónas Kristjánsson, Um ‘Fóstbræðrasögu’, 70; Fóstbrœðra saga, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson,
168–69; ‘Hauksbók’, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 398; Jansson, Handskrifterna till Erik den rödes
saga, 232.