Gripla - 2020, Blaðsíða 214

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Þorkell was married to a certain Sigríðr Sléttu-Bjarnardóttir, whereas in
the saga his wife is Ásgerðr Þorbjarnardóttir. In the Sturlubók-version,
these discrepancies are smoothed out in such a way that Ari is added as the
last of Þorbjǫrn súrr’s sons, and the mention of Þorkell’s wife is deleted
along with that of Gísli’s wife Auðr.48 In other words, Sturla Þórðarson
must have known Gísla saga when he wrote his version of Landnámabók,
and he brought the latter up to date with the information he found in Gísla
saga, which he – for obvious reasons – considered more reliable. This
strengthens the hypothesis that Landnámabók and Gísla saga were built on
totally different traditions about Ingjaldr in Hergilsey as well. Moreover, it
is reasonable to conclude that Landnámabók has the most reliable tradition
about Ingjaldr, that he really was a descendant of settlers from Agder, and
that he did not arrive in Iceland together with Gísli as Gísla saga relates.
Is the stanza composed by Gísli?
The information gleaned so far leads us to a most important question: is
the stanza composed by Gísli? Is it the historical person Gísli Súrsson who
referred to himself as Egða andspillir, or is it someone else, later in the tra-
dition about Gísli, who put these words in his mouth? In a recent article,
I analyse in detail the stanzas in Gísla saga and rely on formal criteria for
dating only, that is, numerous linguistic and metrical criteria as well as dis-
tinctive rhyme patterns that disappeared after the tenth century.49 These
formal criteria lead me to conclude that the stanzas of Gísla saga divide
into four groups: authentic, inauthentic, uncertain (where no dating crite-
rion applies) and ambiguous stanzas. The first group is the largest by far,
with 19 out of a total of 35 complete stanzas, followed by 8 uncertain and
5 inauthentic, and finally 3 ambiguous stanzas, in which different criteria
point in different directions. If one isolates the stanzas that have diagnostic
criteria – 27 stanzas – there are almost four times as many authentic (19) as
inauthentic (5), which indicates that four fifths of the stanzas in Gísla saga
are authentic. For details, I refer to my article.
The stanza that contains the kenning Egða andspillir, st. 17 in the saga,
was grouped among the “uncertain” stanzas in this analysis; that means
48 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 180–81.
49 Myrvoll, “The Authenticity of Gísli’s Verse”.
Gí SLI Sú RSSON AS E G ð A A n D s P I L L I R