Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Blaðsíða 173

147
ces). This section thus contains, for example, a major interpolation,
a beguiling by means of seduction that I have not yet found in any
other version of the Bevers story; there are major reductions of the
lengths of battie scenes, e.g. the 147 lines of chap. xxx of Ceder-
schiold’s edition are reduced to 72 lines in JV’s copy18; in this part of
the text the role of the giant Eskopart is most significantly altered, and
there is also the greatest reordering of events with the result that
Sabaoth, Bevers’ foster-father, receives his commands and carries them
out in an uninterrupted instead of a broken sequence. All this could
suggest that for almost all of the last third of the saga JV reverted to a
completely new exemplar, leaving aside even S6 and S7, both of which
were also available to him in Stockholm (cf. his change from O to S6
in Ivents saga apparently because the O text was either deficient or
illegible, p. 152 below). On doser examination this proves, however, not
to be the case since the two parts of the saga match each other in their
reworking of the text; similar changes, although usually on a smaller
scale, appear in the first two-thirds. In this earlier section there is
admittedly no major interpolation, but there are significant reductions
of scenes of combat, the description of Bevers’ defeat of his stepfather
occupies, for example, 68 lines in S46 in contrast to 135 lines in
Cederschiold’s edition; already in this part of the story Eskopart is
allotted a more important role than in the main tradition, and his
efforts to help Bevers and his lady are given greater emphasis; here too
we find a rearrangement of the sequence of events, comparable to the
one in the last third, with the apparent aim of cutting down the number
of scene changes and smoothening out the narrative. Another deviation
from the main tradition that is noticeable in both parts of the saga in
S 46 is a tendency to emphasize the theme of conflict between
Christianity and Islam.
The two parts of the saga are therefore completely compatible; the
text of Bevers saga in S46 is homogeneous, and it is not possible to
detect a narrative or orthographical break in it. If JV did change
exemplar at any point, he must have reverted to a text that was very
similar to the one in O, and we have already dismissed the likelihood
that there was such a text in Stockholm as an “outside chance” (p. 144
18 One line in Cederschiold’s edition is the approximate equivalent of two lines in
S46, so the relationship wouid be more accurately represented by the figures 294:72.