Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1977, Blaðsíða 13

A Question of Conscience
By Peter Foote
At the 1973 Odense symposium Dr Bjarni Einarsson spoke on
“the status of free men in society and saga”1. He gave a brilliant
sketch of the situation in Iceland, where even in the thirteenth
century ideas of equality and freedom seem to have flourished
with uncommon vigour. He compared the situation in other coun-
tries where feudalising tendencies bred superior classes contemp-
tuous of lower orders. He then illustrated his thesis by juxtaposing
two passages, one in Eiriks saga ravda on Bjarni Grimolfsson, who
does not survive a shipwreck, and one in a miracle of the Blessed
Virgin on an anonymous bishop, who does. The text of Eiriks saga
in AM 557 4to is believed to represent the original more closely
than that in Hauksbok. Dr Bjarni mentions some variants from
the latter in his paraphrase, but they do not affect the present
discussion, so only 557 is cited below. Similarly, of the two versions
of the Mary-legend I give only the one which Bjarni thinks has
more points of resemblance to the story of Bjarni Grimolfsson.
The Bjarni-story goes like this :2
Då Bjarna Grimolfsson bar i Grænlands-haf, ok kom i ma&ka-
sjå; fundu jaeir eigi fyrr enn skipit geriz mabksmogit undir
jaeim. Då tplubu jaeir um hvert råb jaeir skyldu taka. Deir
hijfQu eptirbåt jaann er bræddr var seltj9ru. Dat segja menn
at skelma&krinn smjugi eigi jaat tré er seltj9runni er brætt.
Var jaat flestra manna S9gn ok tillaga at skipa m9nnum båtinn,
svå sem hann tæki upp. En er jaat var reynt, Jaå tok båtrinn
1 Influences on and attitudes of early Icelandic-Norse literature: A Symposium,
Odense, April 1973 (1974), pp. 45-55 (= Mediaeval Scandinavia 7 (1974), 45-55).
2 Normalised from the text printed in Sven B. F. Jansson, Sagorna om Vinland
(1944), pp. 78-79; ef. also Gustav Storm, Eiriks saga rauda (1891), pp. 45-46; Einar
01. Sveinsson and Matthias E>or5arson, Eyrbyggja saga, Orænlendinga sggur, Is-
lenzk fomrit IV (1935), p. 235, note 2.