Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 62

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recension of 1306–08.10 Consequently, we cannot know if this genealogi-
cal tradition was genuine, was inspired by Íslendingabók’s association of
Edmund with Iceland’s settlement, or some mixture of the two (such as an
unrelated Oswald and/or Edmund being conflated with their royal name-
sakes by creative descendants).
*
These uncertainties prohibit an unassailable identification of Ari’s source;
however, analysis of the wording and context of the citation allows us to
reduce the range of possibilities. In particular, we must interrogate Ari’s
use of OIcel saga to refer to his source. On this point, Alison Finlay sug-
gests that the term “means nothing more specific than ‘something said or
told’ and could apply to any kind of narrative in any language.”11 This is a
logical extrapolation from the term’s wide-ranging and often ambiguous
connotations in medieval literature.
For example, the use of the term does not distinguish between written
and oral traditions.12 In Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla from the early
thirteenth century, we find references to information both “sǫgð” (told)
and “ritat” (written) in sagas of Úlfr Jarl and Knútr inn gamli respectively.13
The late-thirteenth-century Morkinskinna refers to a “saga” of Haraldr
harðráði comprising “kvæði ... þau er honum samtíða váru um hann kveðin”
(poems ... which were recited about him during his lifetime).14
As the following discussion shows, most researchers who have com-
mented on this issue have supposed that Ari referred to a written tradi-
tion. This is supported by the context in which OIcel saga appears in
Íslendingabók: paired with OIcel ríta (to write) and juxtaposed with Ari’s
diligently named oral sources in the text’s opening passage.15 This passage
10 Íslendingabók; Landnámabók, lxxv, lxxxii, 48–49 (inc. n. 4), and 312.
11 Alison Finlay, “Chronology, Genealogy and Conversion: The Afterlife of St Edmund in
the North,” St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, ed. Anthony
Bale (York: York Medieval Press, 2009) 47.
12 Robert Kellogg, “What is a Saga?” Sagnaþing helgað Jónasi Kristjánssyni sjötugum 10. apríl
1994 2, eds. Gísli Sigurðsson, Guðrún Kvaran, and Sigurgeir Steingrímsson (Reykjavík:
Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 1994), 497.
13 Heimskringla, II:284 and III:37.
14 Morkinskinna, eds. Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, 2 vols., Íslenzk fornrit
XXIII–XXIV (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2011), I:5.
15 See quotation above.