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rúnstr er fyrir vestan haf, með þeiri øxi, er átti Gaukr Trandilssonr fyrir
sunnan land’ (The man who is most skilled in runes west of the ocean
carved these runes with the axe that Gaukr Trandilssonr owned in the
south of the country [Iceland]).102 Gaukr is briefly and enigmatically
mentioned in njáls saga, where we learn little more than that he was killed
by his foster brother.103 We know that there existed a saga about him in
the fourteenth century, since in M, the commissioner has informed the
scribe that he should write down Gauks saga trandilssonar after njáls
saga.104 This never happened, and the saga is now lost to us. Gaukr is also
mentioned in Íslendingadrápa, where we learn that he made the birds of
the battlefield happy and that he was harmful to many a man in combat.105
The importance of his axe to the carver in Maeshowe suggests that he was
connected to martial, saga-like events.
Íslendingadrápa is a poetic list of Icelandic saga heroes. Its date has been
disputed, but indications of a twelfth century date are strong, not only
be cause such historical poems seem later to have been replaced by saga
writing, but also because the poem repeatedly differs from saga accounts in
ways comparable to other twelfth century poems (notably Háttalykill and
Rekstefja). There is also some linguistic evidence in support of this date.106
We thus have a few indications that the lore of the heroes of Iceland was
at the focus of attention in the twelfth century, but while it may have been
collected into a precursor of Landnámabók, it is unlikely that it was written
102 Michael P. Barnes, the Runic Inscriptions of Maeshowe, Orkney, Runrön 8 (Uppsala:
Institutionen för nordiska språk, 1994), 152–53.
103 Brennu-njáls saga, ed. by Einar ólafur Sveinsson. íslenzk fornrit 12 (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954), 72–73, 371.
104 The reading of parts of this notice is insecure and has become progressively more so in
recent years, but the words ‘láttu rita hér við Gauks sǫgu Trandilssonar’ (let Gauks saga
trandilssonar be written here) have not been called into doubt (sagas of Icelandic Bishops.
Fragments of Eight Manuscripts, ed. by Stefán Karlsson. Early Icelandic Manuscripts in
Facsimile VII (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1967), 27; Andrea de Leeuw van
Weenen, A Grammar of Möðruvallabók (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 2000), 27).
105 skj A I, 558–59 (19); B I, 543 (19).
106 On the dating of Íslendingadrápa, see Jónas Kristjánsson, ‘Íslendingadrápa and Oral
Tradition’, Gripla 1 (1975): 76–91. Later dates have been proposed, but largely without
responding to Jónas’s solid arguments: thus Bjarni Einarsson, ‘Íslendingadrápa’, tímarit
Háskóla Íslands 4 (1989): 127–31; Ernst Walter, ‘Argumente zur Bestimmung des Alters
der Íslendingadrápa Hauks Valdísarsonar’, Deutsch-nordische Begegnungen. 9. Arbeitstagung
der skandinavisten des deutschen sprachgebiets 1989 in svendborg, ed. by Kurt Braunmüller
and Mogens Brøndsted (Odense: Odense University Press, 1991), 96–103).
Fó STBRœÐ RA SAGA: A MISSING LINK?