Gripla - 2020, Page 209

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áðr fekk’k andspilli stillis jóta ‘before I got an audience with the ruler of the
Jótar (danish king = Knútr)’,32 so the parallel is purely on the surface.
Gísli’s kenning thus remains unique.
Who were Gísli’s Egðir?
As already hinted at, I believe that there must be something concrete
behind Gísli’s referring to himself as Egða andspillir ‘confidant of the
Egðir’. There seems to have been some with whom Gísli was acquainted
who could be called Egðir, and to whom Gísli alludes in one of the stan-
zas in which he relates the dream that reveals how much time he has
left to live. These “friends” do not necessarily have to come from Agder
themselves; it would probably suffice if their family hailed from there.
Both Landnámabók and the sagas of Icelanders demonstrate that the
early Icelanders had knowledge about their ancestors back in the places
in Norway where the original settlers came from, and that this type of
knowledge was kept in memory for a long time; in the introductory chap-
ters in the family sagas it is customary to account for the forefathers of
the leading characters, the landnámsmenn, and their background in one or
more districts of Norway. One obvious reason for this wide-spread inter-
est in genealogy in Iceland was the detailed legal regulation of inheritance,
maintenance responsibilities and homicide fines in the Old Norse laws,
which were also adopted in Iceland. These regulations made it necessary
to keep trace of one’s relatives at least up to fourth cousins.33
We may ask, then, whether there is anyone with forefathers from
Agder mentioned in Landnámabók or in the sagas who could be connected
to Gísli in one way or another? The one who first comes to mind is of
course Vésteinn, Gísli’s sworn brother and dearest friend, but his father
came from Sogn, as so many other settlers in Iceland.34 If instead we start
at the other end and look for people in Landnámabók who are said to
have come from Agder, there is one entry that stands out. It concerns a
certain Þrándr mjóbeinn who arrived in Iceland together with the chieftain
32 So skP I, 618.
33 See Jón Jóhannesson, Islands historie i mellomalderen. Fristatstida, trans. by Hallvard Mager-
øy (Oslo – Bergen – Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget, 1969), 11.
34 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. by Jakob Benediktsson, íslenzk fornrit I (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 1968), 180, 188.