Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1977, Blaðsíða 143

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nåma text, it must have been connected with Borkell, Blund-Ketill’s
son, as it is in Islendingabok and BorSarbok.
Sturlubok (chapter 107) mentions Borålfr refr “who was killed
at the Thing at Porsnes when he was one of Bor5r Gel lir’s men and
fought with Oddr of Tunga.” Hænsa-Boris saga says that the men
who did the burning were prosecuted at the Thing in Porsnes. There
we have an error which the two accounts have in common, Porsnes
for the correct Pingnes, as in Islendingabok. On the other hånd,
Sturlubok has the fighting take place while the Thing is in session,
as in Islendingabok, whereas, according to Hænsa-Boris saga the
fighting was at Hvitå.
Among the children of Gunnarr Hlifarson Sturlubok lists Borunn
“who was the wife of Hersteinn the son of Blund-Ketill”, but Is-
lendingabok recounts that Borunn was married to Hersteinn the
son of Borkell, the son of Blund-Ketill, as previously mentioned.
Laxdæla saga is in agreement with Islendingabok. In this case
scholars think Sturla put in the name of Blund-Ketill instead of
Borkell’s following Hænsa-Boris saga. (Nobody complains that the
wife, here called Borunn, is given a different name in Hænsa-Boris
saga - they dismiss the point as merely an error in the manuscript).
I have given these extracts in order to show that scholars
are able to argue that Sturla always had a copy of Hænsa-Boris
saga at hånd, or knew its contents well, and that whenever the saga
was at variance with the older Landnåma text, he always used the
saga. One can begin to wonder whether indeed this is a normal pro-
cedure and whether it is likely that Sturla worked in such a fashion.
And what about the author of Hænsa-Boris saga, did he not also
have his written sources? Bjorn M. Olsen (Aarbøger 1905, p. 76)
did indeed assume that he had used a Landnåma text as a source,
and that makes the matter more difficult to settie. The examples
that Olsen chooses especially to emphasize his point are as follows :
1. The genealogy of Blund-Ketill, the son of Geirr the Wealthy,
son of Ketill biundr. The same genealogy is found in Landnåma
and Hænsa-Boris saga.
2. The passage about “Arngrimr the son of Helgi, the son of
Hogni who came out with Hromundr” (H-B., chapter 1).
3. The passage about Borkell trefill Rau5a-Bjarnarson and his