Gripla - 2021, Qupperneq 257

255
jarteikn er í boði og aðeins ævilöng iðran getur gefið von um sáluhjálp. ATU 1343*
þekktist einnig á Íslandi úr prentuðum erlendum ritum en birtingarmynd þess í
Skarðsárannál kemur væntanlega úr munnlegri geymd.
Heildarfrásögn annálsgreinarinnar er átakanleg en grunnforsenda hennar er
að vítaverð hegðun einstaklings, samfélags eða jafnvel alls heimsins getur beinlínis
kallað fram hirtingu í formi hörmunga. Flestir nútímaviðtakendur hafna þessari
grunnforsendu án þess að hafna heimildargildi annálsgreinarinnar. Afleiðing þess
er að faðir ungs bóndasonar sem dó við grunsamlegar kringumstæður í sjóróðri
við Skagaströnd hefur verið bendlaður við hryllilegan glæp sem ekki nokkur
fótur er fyrir. Til að fyrirbyggja slíka meðferð á raunverulegum, nafngreindum
einstaklingum skiptir máli að huga vel að uppbyggingu og hlutverki annála sem
frásagnarforms.
S U M M A R Y
Björn Jónsson’s Dark Materials: ATU 1343* and its Reception in Skarðsárannáll
Keywords: Skarðsárannáll, AT 2401/ATU 1343*, reception studies, annals as narrative,
cultural and social function of annals, early modern crime and punishment
The post-medieval revival of the annalistic format in Iceland in the early
seventeenth century involved a deliberate and very successful decision to align
contemporary history-writing with a long and venerable past tradition. Although
the post-medieval annals were not structured around an Easter table like their
medieval counterparts, they did not record secular history in a modern sense.
Temporal time and space existed within an infinitely vaster eternity, and the true
goal of earthly life was accepted to be salvation of the soul. Death was represented
in meditative literature of the seventeenth century as a life-long journey rather
than a single isolated event, during which journey divine punishments might be
deservedly meted out to individuals and communities as corrective action for those
who strayed from the straight and narrow path. In this context, annals were a
means of situating the past, present and future within a single narrative space.
Early modern Icelandic annals such as Skarðsárannáll, compiled by Björn
Jónsson of Skarðsá (1574–1655), have been approached as a source of well-struc-
tured data on very diverse topics, but far fewer studies have examined their inter-
nal narrative structure across and within individual entries. The present article
focuses on an entry for the year 1553 in Skarðsárannáll that provides a cautionary
tale on discipline and justice for early modern audiences. The entry describes the
misfortunes of Bjarni of Efranes in Skagaströnd, who killed his first wife for kill-
ing their older son for killing their younger son. What has to date been received as
a gory historical account of a chain of deaths set in motion by a mother’s inappro-
priate threat to castrate her misbehaving young sons is actually a hitherto unknown
Icelandic variant of a well-known tale type, AT 2401/ATU 1343* (“The Children
Play at Hog-Killing”). Very close parallels can be found in contemporary folk-
TIL ÞESS ERU ILL DÆ MI AÐ VARAST ÞAU