Gripla - 2020, Blaðsíða 86

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likely to have been the case when Einarr treated these stanzas as a group
long before the saga was written.
In my book, I provide a fuller treatment of this and two additional
instances, where we can follow the growth of the prose around a set of
stanzas.50 In these instances, we are in all likelihood dealing with con-
ceptual frames for given sets of stanzas, but not with prosimetrical oral
accounts. When sagas were written down, these frames would be adapted
and expanded to suit the saga account. Such a mode of oral transmission
of lausavísur makes sense, since it provides a way of cataloguing and con-
textualising them, while it still retains full focus on the stanzas, which is
required by the demanding art form of skaldic poetry, as opposed to the
more accessible eddic poetry.
Such a ‘conceptual frame’ scenario can account for the remarkable con-
vergence of the order of the stanzas in Fóstbrœðra saga and the Legendary
saga, while also explaining why there is almost no overlap in the prose; in
oral transmission, there was almost no prose to begin with, but all focus
was on the stanzas set in a scene. The shared but differently placed sen-
tence presumably belonged to the setting of the scene. This explanation
might appear counterintuitive, given the likelihood of influence from the
Oldest saga, where the order of the stanzas was probably the same. The
author does not appear to have a very clear memory of that saga, however,
and I therefore suggest this possible, alternative explanation. Whether the
order of the stanzas is dependent on the Oldest saga or not, the combina-
tion of thematic and poetic overlap with the shared innovation of rich
prosimetrum strongly suggests that the Oldest saga exerted some influence
on Fóstbrœðra saga.
Jónas’s remaining arguments in favour of a late date are either inter-
textual or stylistic, and Andersson does not address these. These features
are of limited value for dating Fóstbrœðra saga to the end of the thirteenth
century, but some of them may suggest a dating to the beginning of that
century. With regard to intertextual connections, Jónas discusses simi-
l arities to number of sagas of Icelanders and contemporary sagas (as
well as the Bible, which is irrelevant for dating). Importantly, however,
he consistently focuses on whether direct influence is plausible, but not
on the direction of influence, and I have found no diagnostic instances
50 See note 45.
Fó STBRœÐ RA SAGA: A MISSING LINK?