Studia Islandica - 01.06.1993, Page 284

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name for Christ that occurs in Sólarljóð, although not in Heið-
arvígasaga, and means “he who puts an end to killing”. As
such he could be seen as a symbol of contrast to the killer,
Víga-Styrr, and the revenger, Barði.
Heiðarvígasaga assumes the garb of an heroic tale and does
so by using coarse effects in order to satirize and protest a-
gainst the ethics of revenge that is based both on the law and
traditions of society. Its intent is the goal of the satire while
the method is to all intents and purposes that of the travesty,
displaying acts of brutality as heroic deeds.
The time ofwriting of Heiðarvígasaga. As mentioned
earlier, the saga has generally been considered the oldest of
the sagas, dating from about 1200, and this view has been sub-
stantiated by various types of evidence, including the exist-
ence of an old vellum fragment, no references to other
writings, the fact that it contains archaic words and phrases
and, finally, is written in a narrative form which seems to indi-
cate that the saga was written by a novice in the beginning of
the saga writing period. The oldest handwriting in the Sth. 18,
4to parchment, which contains the second part of Heiðarvíga-
saga, has been dated from about 1250, although according to
more recent research it seems obvious that the hand is con-
siderably younger, or from approximately 1300. The phraseo-
logy and style of Heiðarvígasaga does not seem to bear as
sound a witness to the saga’s high age as scholars have generally
been led to believe. On one hand, so-called archaicforms sim-
ilar to those in the Stockholm manuscript do occur in manu-
scripts dating from after 1250, for instance in the main manu-
script of Alexanders saga (AM 519 A, 4to). On the other
hand, placing too much importance on style when trying to
determine age can be risky, since style is a complex concept
involving various levels such as personal style, genre style or
time style. The narrative form of the saga is unpolished and
even primitive compared with the classical sagas. Some of the
flaws are obvious writing errors made by a careless scribe
whereas others can perhaps be attributed to personal exposi-
tion in a moralistic tale as well as to defects resulting from the