Studia Islandica - 01.07.1963, Page 105

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be presented, if Ólafr Þórðarson hvítaskáld is to be deprived of his
author’s rights to Knýtlinga saga and/or Laxdæla saga.
6. Sögubrot af fornkonungum and Knýtlinga. (Pp. 59—61). In
their edition of Sggur Danakonunga (Sagas of the Danish Kings),
Carl af Petersens and Emii Olson publish as a sort of introduction to
Knýtlinga the fragment SQgubrot af fornkonungum (Saga fragment
of ancient Kings). This arrangement, say the editors, is built on the
“supposition that the saga of which Sogubrot is a fragment — the
later revision of ‘Skjpldungasaga’ — and Knýtlingasaga once belonged
together and foi-med a coherent Danish Kings’ saga”. In favour of this
plausible opinion, they refer to arguments both from literary history
and paleography, advanced by famous scholars.
The fragment is quite short, 6127 words only, and therefore not
well suited to a pair word inquiry. But in spite of bad odds it seemed
worth while to test the method on this text too. Thus in Appendix
V:a-e all pair words between Sögubrot, on the one hand, and each of
the five family sagas which were above confronted with Knýtlinga,
on the other, are registered and placed in tlie four word categories.
The numbers for both the unreduced series and the series with “Snorri
words” removed are given on p. 60. To be sure, the figures are too
small to be entirely convincing. But in every case they reveal an af-
finity between Sögubrot and Knýtlinga comparable to that between
Knýtlinga and Laxdœla. — The high frequency quotient for the say-
ing verb svara in Sögubrot points in the same direction; it tums out
to be 5.3 (12/15) compared with 3.4 for Knýtlinga and 3.2 for Lax-
dæla. For the other texts in the pair word inquiry, the quotient varies
between 0.4 (Egla and Njála) and 2.5 {Eyrbyggja).
Thus this philological test also indicates a close connection between
Sögubrot and Knýtlinga. If Ólafr ÞórSarson, as has been asserted here,
is the author of Knýtlinga, he is most likely to have had something
to do with the composing of Sögubrot too, or rather the text of which
Sögubrot is a fragment.
Epilogue. (Pp. 61—62). Lastly, a few remarks only on the conse-
quences resulting if the conclusions of this investigation become ge-
nerally accepted.
An author’s name may seem insignificant and add little to our
knowledge of Iinýtlinga and Laxdœla. However, if the name is that
of Ólafr Þórðarson, it indisputably provides a fuller and more detailed
insight into the history of Icelandic saga writing. To begin with, the
dating of both Knýtlinga and Laxdœla becomes safer, as it can be