Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1977, Page 146

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2. Jonsbok says that whoever takes the hay must leave a surety
guaranteeing payment for the hay taken {juliar vorzlur ... i moti),
and in the saga the tenants ask Blund-Ketill to be responsible for
their payment (e/ pu gengr i vorzlu fyrir oss um kaupin). The word
varzla (that is, responsibility) is seldom used in the Icelandic sagas;
examples in dictionaries are almost all from Norwegian law or
translated sagas.
Bjorn Sigfusson also points out that in the saga there appear
quite a few other rules and ideas that came to Iceland with Jonsbok.
The close relationship between the problem dealt with in this
chapter of Jonsbok and the saga suggests very strongly that the
saga was written when this problem was being worked out in Ice-
land. When we add the similarity in words and in the conceptions
of legal rights expressed in Jonsbok, then we can be almost certain.
The Norwegian National Law was compiled in the years 1271-74
and came into effect throughout Norway in 1274-76. Bjorn Sig-
fusson (p. 356) is unwilling to insist:
a3 hofundur Hæns. hafi pur ft a3 bi3a Jonsbokar fullsmi'SaOrar; allt
frå 1274 gåtu borizt bréf og ordsendingar um pa3 milli landa, hver tok
myndu reynast vera å £>vi a3 logleyfa heyupptoku å Islandi i samræmi
vi3 Landslagakapitulann.
In my opinion this is a rather far-fetched explanation in order to
settie this problem in such a way that the gap between the writing
of the saga and the death of Sturla LorSarson does not become
too short. I think that if there is indeed a literary connection be-
tween the saga and Jonsbok, one must assume that the saga was
not written until 1280-1281 when the arguments about Jonsbok
began.
In 1281 the Icelanders sent letters to the king to request that
various of the new articles in Jonsbok be changed. Among these,
everyone asked for the repeal of the article in the code forbidding
owners to defend their hay. This article in Jonsbok was not changed,
however, but one can imagine that it took the Icelanders many
years to get accustomed to the new law. It is most likely that Hænsa-
Loris saga was written at this time.
If Sturla BorSarson had used Hænsa-E>oris saga, three things
must have taken place between 1281 and 1284: