Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Page 67

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a loud, clear voice. The king was furious, but his subjects,
tiring of the continual hostility with their neighbours, are
said to have forced him to accept a settlement. Although the
author of RauSúlfs þáttr must have known this story in some
form, he cannot have known it from Snorri’s saga, which
was written after the þáttr. There is no reason to think that
the reference to Bjpm’s mission was added after the þáttr
was written.
The episode does not survive among the fragments of
the Oldest saga, but in the Legendary saga, which can be
presumed to reproduce the Oldest saga and Middle saga
fairly closely at this point, the story of these negotiations
is very different. In this version Bjgrn did indeed under-
take the mission to Sweden, but it was the Icelander Hjalti
Skeggjason who took the main part in the negotiations and
brought about the settlement, and the striking scene at the
Uppsala-þing is entirely lacking.1 Obviously it cannot have
been this version of the episode that was known to the
author of RauSúlfs þáttr. The only other possibility is that
the version of Óláfs saga he knew was Styrmir’s, which must
have had the episode in a form closer to that in which it
appears in Snorri’s saga than to the version in the Legendary
saga (this part of Styrmir’s saga unfortunately does not
survive).
It has been assumed that the alteration of this episode in
Óláfs saga was Snorri’s work: that he must have thought it
unlikely that such an important mission would have been
entrusted to (and carried out by) Hjalti, a foreigner, and so
increased the role of Bjprn and reduced that of Hjalti.2 But
the reference in RauSúlfs þáttr shows that the scene at the
Uppsala-þing is older than Snorri’s saga, and must have been
in Styrmir’s saga: the alteration of the episode must be at
least in part Styrmir’s work.
1 Óláfs Saga hins helga, ed. O. A. Johnsen (Kristiania 1922), pp.
36—39.
2 Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, IF XXVII xxxvii.
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