Gripla - 2021, Síða 64

GRIPLA62
Miraculis as examples. He proposed that “Játmundar saga” was composed
by Ari himself in the early twelfth century, informed by Icelanders (such
as Guðlaugr Snorrason góða) who had spent time in England.21
Hermann’s argument presents a solution for his own, unsupported
assertion that Ari would not use OIcel saga of an Anglo-Latin text by pro-
posing an uncorroborated stage of transmission that allowed Ari to cite
himself while ultimately drawing upon an English source. Nevertheless,
the suggestion of an intermediary between the original English source
and Íslendingabók is valuable. Although there is no decisive evidence that
Ari ever left Iceland, many of his contemporaries were educated overseas;
he himself alludes to the education of his contemporary Sæmundr fróði
Sigfússon in “Frakkland” (France/Franconia).22 It is conceivable that a
contemporary visitor to England provided a stage of transmission between
his English sources and Íslendingabók, whether in the form of an Old
Icelandic text or an oral report.
Yet the dependent Old Icelandic texts Hermann listed seem to ac-
knowledge the direct influence of an English tradition. The episode which
refers to St Edmund in Heimskringla, in which the revenant of “Eaðmundr
inn helgi” strikes down Sveinn tjúguskegg, cites “sǫgn enskra manna” (sto-
ries from English men) as a source.23 Heilagra manna drápa also credits
“enskir saungvar” (English poems), and both Heilagra manna drápa and
Ragnarssona þáttr include the name Yngvarr/Ingvarr in their accounts of
Edmund.24 This name derives from Anglo-Latin Hinguar. In Ragnarssona
þáttr, Yngvarr is paired with a brother, Hústó, a misreading of Anglo-
Latin Hubba, Hinguar’s fellow Viking.25 The simplest conclusion is that
these sources were drawing directly on a (probably) Latin tradition of
recognizably English provenance that circulated in Iceland in the twelfth
to fourteenth centuries. Intermediate stages between this tradition and
21 Hermann Pálsson, “Játmundar saga,” 144–46 and 149.
22 Book of the Icelanders, xix–xx and 21.
23 Heimskringla, II:14.
24 Heilagra manna drápa, ed. Kristen Wolf, Poetry on Christian Subjects, ed. Margaret Clunies
Ross, Skaldic Poems of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 878;
Þáttr af Ragnars sonum, ed. Guðni Jónsson, Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda 1 (Reykjavík:
Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1950), 298.
25 Hermann Pálsson, “Játmundar saga,” 144; Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Vikings in the West:
The Legend of Ragnarr Loðbrók and His Sons, Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia 18 (Vienna:
Fassbaender, 2012), 163.