Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Blaðsíða 40

22*
General introduction
approbation, a summary of Eyrbyggja saga taken from the Latin translation
in the 1787 edition.54
Einar Ól. Sveinsson,55 Rolf Heller56 and Peter Hallberg57 all consider the
verbal similarities between Eyrbyggja saga and the works of Sturla
Þórðarson, for example the shared use of gfund(ar)samt, mannasættir. This
could be explained in two ways, that Sturla (born 1214) became familiar
with Eyrbyggja saga ‘in his cradle’, or that he himself was the author of
Eyrbyggja saga, In the latter case he must have been told by his grand-
mother (who died in 1221), or perhaps his father (who died in 1237), about
the exhumation of the bones. If, moreover, he was the author, one can
explain the relative absence of features typical of ‘romantic’ literature
when compared with Laxdœla saga. For content and style may be the
product not only of chronology but of individual writers; Hallberg points
| out that this relative lack of interest in romantic material does fit the nature
of Sturla.
Hallvard Lie suggests that there is a clue to the date of Eyrbyggja saga in
the whispered words of Freysteinn bófi to Snorri as he tweaks his toe to
wake him, ‘Nu er aurn hinn gamli floginn a ætzlit a Aurlygs staudum’ (The
old eagle has just flown down onto the carrion at Órlygsstaðir) (W 32.91).
The pun, according to Lie, is not only on grn and Arn- but also involves
gamli and -kell. To ‘work’ properly this needs a pronunciation of karl (“old
chap”) as kall, as is the case in Modern Icelandic; once this situation
obtained, “grninn gamli” could be understood as a circumlocution for Arn-
kell (or perhaps as a popular etymology). Hallvard Lie dates this sound
change to ca 1250; but in fact it must have begun a good deal earlier, since
there are several examples of rl written ‘11’ already in the Icelandic Homily
Book from ca 1200, e g ‘kallar oc conor’.58 This means that even if Lie
happens to be right in his interpretation of “grninn gamli”, it does not
provide the terminus a quo for the saga which he calculates with. On the
other hand, it is by no means incompatible with the dating to the latter half
of the thirteenth century suggested by Hallberg.
A feature that might point to a still later date is the third-person ending
‘ir’ for first person singular present indicative in the phrase ‘ek hefir' in a
passage occurring in all three of the oldest MSS of Eyrbyggja saga (E
45.17, W 45.48, M 45.9), where it almost immediately follows ‘þv hef/r’ in
54 Sir Walter Scott 1814.
55 Einar Ol. Sveinsson 1968, pp. xiv-xvi.
56 Heller 1979, p. 54.
57 Hallberg 1965a.
58 Cf Bjöm K. Þórólfsson 1925, p. xxx and de Leeuw van Weenen 1993, p. 93; Lie 1950.