Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Page 20

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mýgja vilja ok til jarðar koma”). Ingi was defeated by Há-
kon Herðibreiðr, son of his brother Sigurðr, in 1161.
This period (1130—1177) is in several sources spoken of
as a particularly bad time in the history of Norway.1 The
similar prophetic dream in Hemings þáttr, whose author
probably knew Rauðúlfs þáttr, ends with a reference to the
same events in which a comparable judgement is expressed.2
It cannot now be told whether the author of RaúSúlfs
þáttr knew the Book of Daniel in Latin or the vernacular.
There is no special influence of Latin style or syntax dis-
cernible in the þáttr, but the author’s obviously close ac-
quaintance with the leamed literature of his time makes it
seem likely that he would have been able to understand
Latin if no translation were available, and the elegant
periods and carefully balanced sentences in parts of Rauð-
úlfr’s interpretation of the dream almost suggest a know-
ledge of Classical Latin prose. There is no evidence that the
Book of Daniel was ever translated into Old Norse, although
translations of other parts of the Old Testament survive. But
the book was widely known. There are quotations from it
(in Icelandic) in a twelfth century homily and in the early
thirteenth century Jakobs saga postula,3 and Nebuchad-
nezzar’s dream is referred to in a discussion of the reliability
of dreams in the fourteenth century Nikolaus saga.4 All
these references may have been taken over by the compilers
of these works from their foreign sources, and they do not
necessarily mean that the Book of Daniel was known at
1 See ÍF XXVIII lxi f.
2 Hemings þáttr Aslákssonar, ed. G. F. Jensen (Copenhagen 1962),
pp. 43—-44. See p. 76 below.
3 Leifar fornra kristinna frœSa íslenzkra, ed. Þorvaldur Bjarnarson
(Kaupmannahöfn 1878), p. 165 (Daniel vii 10); Postola sögur, ed. C. R.
Unger (Christiania 1874), pp. 517, 533 (Daniel vii 14). See also the
quotations from Daniel vii 10 and xiv 36 (apocrypha) included in the
translations in Leifar, pp. 64 and 116.
4 Heilagra manna sogur, ed. C. R. Unger (Christiania 1877), II 87
(Daniel ii 29 and 31 are quoted). This version of Nikolaus saga is by
Bergr Sokkason (d. 1345).