Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1977, Page 147

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1. Hænsa-Loris saga was written.
2. Sturla Lor8arson had it at hånd.
3. Sturla wrote his Landnåmabok, either the greater part or
all of it, just before the time of his death. (The influence of
the saga is assumed to be felt in different places in Sturlubok
and appears by the 37th chapter).
If this solution can be trusted, then it is very important because
it delimits the possible time of writing of Sturlubok — which is
itself associated with many other ancient sagas, as is well-known.
The trouble is that it is very unlikely that all this happened in
such a short period of time, as all scholars have recognized and
acknowledged. This forces us to reconsider very carefully Maurer’s
old theory that Sturla used Hænsa-Loris saga.
Let us look first at chapter 45 of Sturlubok, which started it all,
and at the corresponding chapter in LorSarbok. There is no doubt
that the passage in LorSarbok is derived from Melabok, but that
does not mean that in turn it must have come from the original
Landnåma text. The last part of the passage is suspiciously like
Islendingabok: “Lingadeild mikil varQ å milli jieira Lorbar gellis
... ok Odds joess er kallabr var Tungu-Oddr” (Islb.), and by com-
parison in Lorbarbok: “Laban af gerbisk deild joeira Lorbar gellis
ok Tungu-Odds.” Bjorn M. Olsen cites this among other examples
to show that Ari wrote the original Landnåmabok. Whatever can
be said about him as the author, it seems to me more probable that
we are dealing here with a passage added in Melabok and taken
from Islendingabok. Then there remain just the words: “Ornolfr
hét mabr er nam Nor&tungu alla å milli Kjarrår ok Lverår ok bjo i
Ornolfsdal. Hans son var Blund-Ketill ...” This passage is so
slight that it is buried under the weight of all the arguments that
have been built upon it.
If scholars must necessarily continue to assume that Lorbarbok
preserves the original Landnåma text, then Sturla did not at all
need to go to Hænsa-Loris saga in order to change his text. If there
had indeed been two men with the name of Blund-Ketill, Sturla
might have mixed them together just as well as the author of Hænsa-
Loris saga. In any case it is very remarkable that in Hænsa-Loris
saga Blund-Ketill is called the son of Geirr the Wealthy of Geirshlib
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