Gripla - 2020, Síða 228

227
Conclusions
In this article, we have seen that the kenning Egða andspillir in st. 17 of
Gísla saga most likely should be understood as a við(r)kenning, as a factual
statement about Gísli, that he indeed was ‘a confidant of the Egðir’, that
is the people from Agder. We have further seen that the Egðir referred
to are most likely to be the family of Ingjaldr in Hergilsey, who accord-
ing to Gísla saga, Landnámabók and Þorskfirðinga saga housed the outlaw
Gísli, for three full winters if Gísla saga is to be believed. According to
Landnámabók, Ingjaldr’s paternal grandfather, Þrándr mjóbeinn, came
to Iceland from Agder as one of the men of the legendary chieftain Geir-
mundr heljarskinn. The author of Gísla saga evidently did not know this
tradition and confused Ingjaldr in Hergilsey with another Ingjaldr who
plays a marginal role earlier in the saga and who was a Norwegian relative
of Gísli. This, in turn, is a strong argument in favour of the authenticity of
the stanza that contains the kenning Egða andspillir: it was not composed
by the author of Gísla saga, notwithstanding that he may have composed
other stanzas in the saga.96 The obscure kenning Egða andspillir, which
would make sense only to a select group of people, is a strong indication
that this stanza belongs to the core of Gísli’s authentic compositions. The
circumstance that Ingjaldr is mentioned in another of Gísli’s stanzas (st. 23
in the saga) – this time by name – where Gísli is lamenting that the good
days at Ingjaldr’s in Hergilsey have come to an end, and that he has to run
away to escape his enemies, points in the same direction: both stanzas (17
and 23) should be regarded as genuine productions of the historical Gísli,
and there is nothing formal about them, in language, metre or rhyme, that
precludes such a conclusion.
These observations on Gísli’s poetic language raise the question wheth-
er the mention of Ingjaldr’s household as the Egðir implies that such clas-
sification or characterization of the settlers according to their ancestors’
home districts in Norway was a common feature of early Icelandic society.
There is nothing unreasonable about such a hypothesis in itself, given that
Iceland at the time was a recently settled community, but a study of per-
sons who are said to have come to Iceland from Agder in Landnámabók
rather suggests that they came relatively late (about one generation after
96 See Myrvoll, “The Authenticity of Gísli’s Verse”, 250–51.
Gí SLI Sú RSSON AS E G ð A A n D s P I L L I R