Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1960, Page 80

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manuscripts with this interpolation have been preserved. Whoever
was responsible for it can hardly have known Grettisfærsla: had he
known it or heard it he would hardly have written the absurdity
that it was based on the farmers’ conversation. He had only heard
the poem mentioned and knew something of its natnre, and it was
either he or another before him who linked it with the story of the
capture of Grettir Åsmundarson in IsafjorSr.
The Grettir about whom Grettisfærsla is written is very unlike
Grettir Åsmundarson. Grettir Åsmundarson had but little zest
for work (chh. 14, 17, 53), and nowhere in the saga is it suggested
that he was abnormally inclined to eroticism. It could he argued
that the account of Grettir’s dealings with the men of IsafjorSr is
historically true and was preserved orally until Grettis saga was
written, and that Grettisfærsla, though not written down until much
later, was preserved in connection with this story. But Grettisfærsla,
both in content and in metre, is so completely different from any
other poetry that has been preserved with the saga-literature, that
it seems hardly possible to explain its origin in this way.
From all this it seems to me clear that Grettisfærsla was not in
faet composed about Grettir Åsmundarson. It was probably ex-
plained at the beginning of Grettisfærsla about whom the poem
was written, but as this section is completely illegible we can
hardly reach full certainty in the matter. We have no choiee but
to attempt to draw conclusions from the pula printed above.
The pula says that ‘karl’ made Grettir out of a sheep’s leg.
Most of the pula-texts refer to four sheep’s legs, but Glafur DaviSs-
son gives the variant reading ‘five’ (shared by text D), and Grettir
was made out of one of them. It may be that ‘five’ is more
original than ‘four’, and that Grettir was made out of the fifth leg
of the sheep, i.e. the penis. Such a turn of phrase is not improbable,
as it is common in Icelandic and other languages to speak of the
penis as the third leg of a man, cf. this verse from Orn Arnarson’s
Rimur af Oddi sterka (Orn Arnarson, Illgresi, 1942, p. 161):
Vék ei hæti vosi frå,
votur i fætur, emn, tvo, prjå.
Heimasætum Ægis å
allar nætur lék sér på.
I