Studia Islandica - 01.06.1962, Page 182

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But in his doctor’s dissertation, Författarskapet till Eigla (1927),
the Swedish scholar Per Wieselgren completely rejected Ölsen’s argu-
ments. His main positive contribution to the solution of the problem
was a statistical study of selected syntactic traits in Snorri’s Edda and
historical works on the one hand, and in Egils saga on the other. He
deals with such things as the choice between the optative and the
sicu/u-paraphrase in subordinate clauses; the use of “double” or pleo-
nastic verbs of saying; the number of syllables per phrase or sub-period
and period respectively, etc. Wieselgren comes to the conclusion that
Snorri and Egils saga on the points in question reveal such differences
as to exclude every possibility of Snorri’s authorship.
No doubt most scholars have regarded this conclusion as inevitable
and definite. However, in the introduction to a new edition (1933) of
Egils saga in the Reykjavík serial publication Islenzk fomrit the Snorri-
expert Sigurður Nordal delivered a rather surprising refutation of
Wieselgren’s linguistic argumentation. He pointed to the existence of
a short vellum fragment (AM 162A, fol., {)), commonly held to be
the oldest, from about 1250, of Egils saga; according to Nordal it may
be a direct copy from the original. If this fragment (some 3100 words
only), not taken into account by Wieselgren, is compared with the
corresponding part of the vellum, M(öðruvallahók) (AM 132, fol.),
which is usually made the basis of the editions, one will find consider-
able differences on several syntactic points dealt with by Wieselgren.
In those cases the fragment corresponds much better with Snorri’s
authentic writings than does the M-manuscript. The latter, which for
many reasons editors have to keep to, cannot with any security be
used for such a statistical examination as Wieselgren has made. The
linguistic status of the original might have differed widely from that
of the M-vellum.
Thus we are back to the starting-point, with rather discouraging ex-
periences. But after disproving Wieselgren’s thesis Nordal revives Ól-
sen’s main arguments, completing them, following them up, and add-
ing new ones of his own. He concludes his discussion by stating that
the problem will never be definitely solved with our present resources.
Nevertheless Nordal feels convinced that Snorri has written Egils saga,
and is determined to hold that opinion, until new and weighty argu-
ments can be raised against it.
In spite of his authoritative personal declaration, Nordal does not
mean, of course, that the problem Snorri-Egils saga is closed to further
discussion. A Dutch scholar, M. C. van den Toom, has recently attack-
ed it once more, much along the same linguistic lines as Wieselgren.
In his book Zur Verfasserfrage der Egilssaga Skallagrimssonar (1959)
he presents a statistical survey of such elements as the number of
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