Gripla - 2021, Page 262

GRIPLA260
study is a first attempt to reveal the relationships between four versions
of the story of Hrómundur in Icelandic, two sagas and two sets of rímur
– which appear to be very closely related – with the main aim of identify-
ing the influences present in the younger saga of Hrómundur, which has
hitherto remained unknown, and the younger rímur of Hrómundur, which
have hitherto been rather sparsely treated in the scholarly literature. The
possibility of the influence of the lost rímur of Hrómundur composed in
the years 1775–77 by Benedikt Gröndal (Finnur Sigmundsson 1966, I:263)
is also taken into consideration, but since no witness of this work survives,
the possible influences remain purely hypothetical.
The present study is organized into five analytical sections, each de-
voted to relationships between different manifestations of the story. The
first section looks at the relationship between the older saga and the me-
dieval rímur. The second, third, and fourth sections are focused on the
younger saga and its relationship to the older saga and the medieval rímur.
Finally, the fifth section examines the sources of the younger set of rímur
of Hrómundur. The main findings of these five sections are summarized
in the last section of this article, where their relevance and perspectives for
future research are outlined.
The Relationship between 17HsG and Griplur
The relationship between the two oldest extant versions of the story of
Hrómundur, 17HsG and Griplur, has been a matter of scholarly discussion
for over a century now. Eugen Kölbing (1876, 182) suggested that the rímur
dates to the late fifteenth century. The seventeenth-century saga is the only prose mani-
festation of the story of Hrómundur known to scholarly discourse. It was first edited by
Biörner (1737) and later included in Rafn’s (1829–30) edition of the forn aldarsögur. The
existence of the younger set of rímur of Hrómundur has been registered in Rímnatal
(Finnur Sigmundsson 1966, I:262), but no edition of their text yet exists. The younger
prose adaptation of the story, which is preserved exclusively in nineteenth-cen tury manu-
scripts, has remained unknown to scholarship until very recently (Kapitan 2018). There is
also a post-medieval metric adaptation called Hrómundar kvæði Gripssonar, which was pub-
lished by Andrews (1911) and later Jón Helgason (1979, 173–79) but is not included in this
analysis, as according to Andrews’ (1911, 540–44) observations of the differences between
kvæði and the rímur, the relationship between them cannot be established with certainty
using the method applied in this study. Andrews (1912, 397) seems convinced that the kvæði
were composed based on the rímur, while Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir (2014, 5–6; 2018,
26) does not exclude the possibility that they are based on the lost saga.