Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 261

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present in the known manifestations are not mentioned in Þorgils saga og
Hafliða (cf. Kölbing 1876, 185; Andrews 1912, 396–97; Björn K. Þórólfsson
1934, 354; Holtsmark 1961, 314–18; Jesch 1984, 96–97). Similar material is
utilized in the Scandinavian ballads: in the Danish Rigen Rambolt og Aller
hin stærke, Ungen Ranild (Grundtvig, ed. 1853, 1:358–74), and Ramund
(Nyerup and Rahbek, eds. 1813, 4:334–40), the Norwegian Ramund den
unge (Landstad, ed. 1853, 189–95), and the Swedish Ramunder (Arwidsson,
ed. 1834, 114–20).
So far, only a fraction – mostly the medieval fraction – of the rich
trans mission and adaptation history of this story has been the subject of
scholarly investigation, mainly due to the saga’s relevance for the discus-
sion of the origins of legendary sagas as well as the modes of their com-
position and performance in the medieval period. Scholars focused on the
lost saga of Hrómundur and its medieval metric adaptation in the form
of rímur, while the post-medieval adaptations have been less interesting
for scholarship. This resulted in sparse knowledge of the long-lasting and
fascinating transmission history of the story of Hrómundur in prose and
verse, which has been present in the cultural landscape of Scandinavia in
one form or another for almost a millennium; with the most recent adapta-
tion of the story being in a form of a metal song performed by a Faroese
Viking Metal band (Kapitan forthcoming).
The present study focuses on the Icelandic tradition of the story of
Hrómundur, which includes the medieval metric manifestation of the
story called Griplur, or Hrómundar rímur Gripssonar (Simek and Hermann
Pálsson 2007, 130), a seventeenth-century prose manifestation of the story
called Hrómundar saga Greipssonar (17HsG) (Simek and Hermann Pálsson
2007, 196), a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century prose manifes-
tation also called Hrómundar saga Greipssonar (19HsG) (unmentioned in
the secondary literature), and a nineteenth-century versification called
Rímur af Hrómundi Greipssyni (RHG) composed by Sigfús Jónsson from
Klungurbrekka (Finnur Sigmundsson 1966, I:262). While the older ver-
sions of the story are well known to scholarship and are available in mul-
tiple editions and translations, the younger versions remained unknown
until very recently, and no edition of these texts yet exists.4 The present
4 Griplur have been edited twice by Finnur Jónsson (1896; 1905–22); they were most likely
composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, but the earliest known manuscript
HRÓ MUNDUR IN PROSE AND VERSE