Gripla - 2021, Síða 63
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establishes Ari’s credentials as a historian, highlighting his use of both
written and oral authorities. Furthermore, the absolute Incarnation date of
870, the one piece of data concretely attached to the “saga,” seems unlikely
to have come from vernacular oral tradition, which, as demonstrated by
the Íslendingasögur, konungasögur, and Íslendingabók itself, typically dated
things through references to coinciding events or relative chronologies
such as the reigning Norwegian king or serving lawspeaker.16 The appear-
ance of an Incarnation date argues for an origin in a learned, ecclesiastical
milieu.
The language of the source has proven more controversial. In the
1950s, Hermann Pálsson argued that Ari would not have used OIcel saga
to refer to a Latin ecclesiastical text such as Abbo’s Passio or Hermannus’s
Miraculis and must thus have been referring to a hypothetical Old Icelandic
“Játmundar saga hins helga” (saga of St Edmund). Hermann believed that
this Icelandic saga was used as a source for Heimskringla and Knýtlinga saga
in the thirteenth century and for Ragnarssona þáttr and Heilagra manna
drápa in the fourteenth.17 However, as this is the only time Ari names a
probable written source – although we know he drew upon others – there
is no empirical basis to assume that he would not use OIcel saga in this
way.18 Hermann’s assertion that “ósennilegt er, að nokkrum myndi detta
í hug að kalla Passio sögu” (it is unlikely that anyone would think of call-
ing a Passio a “saga”) is contradicted by subsequent examples throughout
the Old Icelandic corpus.19 One passage in Íslendinga saga, for example,
refers to the recitation of “sögur heilagra manna á latínu” (saints’ “sagas”
in Latin).20
The possibility of an English provenance for the material is encour-
aged by Ari’s use of English/Anglo-Latin orthography to render the
saint’s name as “Eadmund,” rather than OIcel Játmundr, as it appears in
Landnámabók and most later texts. This provenance was even accepted by
Hermann, who suggested that the hypothetical “Játmundar saga” was based
on English traditions, mentioning both Abbo’s Passio and Hermannus’s
16 Íslendingabók; Landnámabók, 5, 9, 19, and 20.
17 Hermann Pálsson, “Játmundar saga,” 143–44.
18 Book of the Icelanders, xvii–xx.
19 Hermann Pálsson “Játmundar saga,” 143–44.
20 Íslendinga saga, ed. Guðni Jónsson, Sturlunga saga 2 (Akureyri: Prentverk Odds Björnssonar
h.f., 1965), 288.
UNEARTHING ST EDMUND