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in Gísla saga) that the son of Ingjaldr, Þórarinn, was married to a daughter
of the skald Glúmr Geirason, who stayed at the court of King Haraldr grá-
feldr in Norway and composed Gráfeldardrápa in the memory of him ca.
970, about the same time as Gísli is supposed to have been in Hergilsey.55
This points to a certain poetic milieu around Ingjaldr. Ingjaldr possibly
showed an interest in the skaldic art himself, and when Gísli alludes to him
and his family with the rather obscure kenning Egða andspillir, he might have
had Ingjaldr as one of his addressees and thought that Ingjaldr would grasp
the allusion. In any case, through these stanzas Gísli and Ingjaldr would
share a common literary destiny. We may now understand better the des-
peration of st. 23, in which Gísli comes straight to the point: “Ráðs leitar nú
rítar ruðr”, ‘the warrior [I] now looks for a plan’, – and then: “þvít skiljask
verðum frá Ingjaldi”, ‘because we [I] must part from Ingjaldr’. The peaceful
time at the friend’s house in Hergilsey is now over; Gísli must run away.
Incidentally, as was the case with st. 17, st. 23 was not included among
the clearly authentic stanzas in the analysis in my article for jEGP. Rather,
it was categorized as “ambiguous” because of an uneven rhyme in verse 6
(hafa: skafla), where f rhymes with fl; at that point I regarded this either
as an early feature – with the only parallel in Bragi’s Ragnarsdrápa v. 14.3
– or as a late, misconstrued rhyme.56 In light of the findings presented in
this article, I am now inclined to regard this as an early feature. There is
otherwise nothing in the stanza to suggest a late date. To conclude posi-
tively: if we now, for reasons of content, accept both stanzas 17 and 23 as
genuine compositions by Gísli, the number of authentic stanzas in Gísla
saga increases from 19 in my previous article to 21 (of a total of 35 complete
stanzas).
Inherited regional identities?
The question that arises is to what extent the kenning Egða andspillir
‘confidant of the Egðir’ by Gísli can be used as an indication of inherited
regional or tribal identities in Iceland in Gísli’s times. If the kenning in the
foregoing is understood correctly and the stanza is placed in its original
55 See the chronology in the introduction to Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and
Guðni Jónsson, xli–xliii.
56 See Myrvoll, “The Authenticity of Gísli’s Verse”, 245; skP III, 47.
Gí SLI Sú RSSON AS E G ð A A n D s P I L L I R