Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1996, Blaðsíða 140
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first one in content but often clearer in form. In this paper all quotations
are based on this second version.3
Very little is known about the origin of the saga. According to a state-
ment found in the appendix to Gudmundar saga, written by the Bene-
dictine monk Arngrlmr about the middle of the 14th century, the narra-
tive of Mary’s life is the work of a certain Kygri-Bjorn.4 This is most
probably to be identified with Kygri-Bjom Hjaltason, who after having
been appointed secretary at the bishopric of Holar in northern Iceland,
was eventually ordained as bishop there in 1236. If the saga was actual-
ly written by Kygri-Bjorn - and nothing seems to prove otherwise -
then the date of his death, recorded to 1237 or 1238, can serve as a ter-
minus ante quem for the composition of the saga. Another terminus is
set by the detailed description in chapter 23 of Mariu saga of the Late-
ran Council summoned by Pope Innocent III in 1215. G. Turville-Petre
regards the relation of this event as a verification of the attribution of
the saga to Kygri-Bjorn, who was actually in Rome on that occasion.5
According to Gudmundar saga, the Icelandic author samsetti (com-
piled) the Vita of Mary from a great variety of sources. These were
completely different from one another in content, origin and reliability.
Foremost among them were the Apocryphal Gospels of the Infancy,
which unlike the canonical gospels devote a long section to the life of
Mary as a child, to her parents Anna and Joachim, to Joseph as an old
widower, describing all these characters in a lively manner against the
background of their everyday lives without any precise historical links.
Apart from the narrative sources, the author of Mariu saga made exten-
sive use of the exegetic works by the Church Fathers, who from the first
centuries of Christianity had concentrated on Mary and the religious be-
liefs related to her.
From these many and heterogeneous sources the Icelandic author
took his starting point for the composition of the saga, where narrative
sections alternate with exegetic comment. The former are mainly based
on the Evangelium de Nativitate Mariae and on the Pseudo-Matthaei
Evangelium, both of which are late reworkings of the older Protevange-
3 C.R. Unger, op. cit., pp. 339-401.
4 “Var Kygri-Bjorn mikilshattar klerkr, sem audsynast ma \ f>vf, at hann hefir samsett
Mariu sogu”. Biskupa sogur II, København 1878, p. 186.
5 G. Turville-Petre, “The Old-Norse Homily on the Assumption and the Mariu saga”,
Mediaeval Studies IX (1947), pp. 131-140, at p. 134.