Gripla - 2020, Blaðsíða 212

211
“gerði […] af honum eyjarnar” ‘took the isles from him as a fine’,41 and that
Ingjaldr had to move to the farm Hlíð in Þorskafjörður. In Gísla saga we
hear nothing at all about these measures taken by Bǫrkr; the saga simply
states (in both versions) that “Berki þykkir eigi þat til liggja at veita Ingjaldi
atgǫngu, landseta sínum” (M); “B(orkr) þottiz eigi mega veita atgongu
Ingialldi landseta sinom, oc qvez eigi nenna at lata drepa hann” (S).42 Even
though Bǫrkr did not want to kill Ingjaldr, he could, of course, have driven
him off the islands. In any case, it is conspicuous that the author of Gísla
saga does not include any of the information that Landnámabók has to of-
fer, namely, that Ingjaldr after having given refuge to Gísli, was forced to
move from Hergilsey and settle anew in Þorskafjörður. This strengthens
the hypothesis that the versions given in Landnámabók and Gísla saga must
be traced back to different (oral) traditions about Ingjaldr, and they need to
be assessed independently of each other.
The chapter about Ingjaldr’s family (see above, p. 209) is fairly similar
in two of the versions of Landnámabók, Sturlubók and Hauksbók (of
which the latter is most likely based on the former), but it is not found
in the third version, Melabók.43 Therefore, Björn Magnússon ólsen ar-
gued convincingly that this chapter is a later addition to Landnámabók,
introduced in the Sturlubók–Hauksbók-recension from an older, now
lost version of Þorskfirðinga saga or Gull-Þóris saga (“Ældre Gull-Þóris
saga”), which is referred to towards the end of the chapter about Ingjaldr
in Landnámabók: “af því gerðisk Þorskfirðinga saga”.44 In the extant ver-
sion of Þorskfirðinga saga, which was written probably in the fourteenth
century, we find statements about Ingjaldr in Hergilsey similar to those in
Sturlubók:
Þórir eignaðist Flatey eptir Hallgrímu ok hafði þar sæði, en Hergils,
son hennar, bjó í Hergilsey, sem fyrr var ritat. Hann var faðir
Ing jalds, er þar bjó síðan, ok hann barg Gísla Súrssyni, ok fyrir
41 Translation from Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic–English Dic-
tionary, 2nd ed. by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874), 225.
42 Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 84; Membrana regia deper-
dita, ed. Loth, 57.
43 Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, xv.
44 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 154; Björn Magnússon ólsen,
“Landnáma og Gull-Þóris (Þorskfirðinga) saga”, Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie,
2nd series, vol. 25 (1910): 55–58.
Gí SLI Sú RSSON AS E G ð A A n D s P I L L I R