Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Page 44
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General introduction
the berserk story, surely based on a folktale,75 both in time and motivation.
This is an important point in the estimation of the way the author of
Eyrbyggja saga deals with his sources, and consequently, in helping to
decide what those sources were.
The author occasionally lets his delightful humour break through, for
example Katla’s comment on the chopping up of her distaff and Ospakr’s
“excellent advice” to Álfr not to put at risk the thinness of his skull.
Perhaps the most interesting of all Eyrbyggja saga’s varied sources is the
Viðbætir (‘Appendix’, also called Ævi Snorra goða = Æ) that is found at the
end of M. Einar Ól. Sveinsson lays stress on this both in his edition and in
“Eyrbyggja sagas kilder,” pointing out that it is probably a surviving
example of the writings that were once available to saga-writers as histo-
rical source-material. He tentatively suggests it was by Ari fróði himself.
Eyrbyggja saga is bound very closely to the countryside it deals with. It
supplies many ‘signposts’ in the form of the words inn(an) and út(an), with
the result that most of the sögustaðir can readily be located by the eager
reader-pilgrim.
Like many saga-writers, the narrator of Eyrbyggja saga is conscious of
his position as an author who has his readers in mind. Examples of this trait
are ‘þarf ecki at segia fra þeira manna vidrskiftvm (ædr) land naamum er
ecki koma vid þessa sögv’ M 6.10-1, ‘Þat gerðiz nu næst til tidenda er fyr
uar ritat at berserkirnir uoru með Styr’ W 26.2 - in the latter case
specifically written (ritat) not told (sagt).76
He lived, moreover, in a world of books, or at any rate of sagas. In the
last chapter he refers, rather as a reviewer might, to other sagas: ‘kemr hann
ok uiða uið aðrar sogur en þessa bæði uið Laxdæla saugu sem morgum er
kunnikt... hann er ok uið Heiþaruigs sögu ...’ W 50.4-7; ‘kemr ... uið’ may
imply acquaintance with some sort of library, communal or private.77
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, towards the end of “Eyrbyggja sagas kilder”, sum-
marizes well the exceptional ability of the author: “Hans saga viser som
Snorris værker en syntese af videnskab og kunst ....” (like Snorri’s work
his saga exhibits a synthesis of scholarship and art).78 In his edition Einar
Ólafur commented on the author’s unusual sympathy with women,79 a topic
75 Harris 1976.
76 C/the translation by Schach and Hollander 1959, p. xviii.
77 And indeed William Morris and Eiríkur Magnússon boldly assume the presence of such a
library in the monastery of Helgafell (1892, p. xxv); cf Einar 01. Sveinsson in IFIV, pp. lii-lv.
78 EinarÓl. Sveinsson 1968, p. 17.
79 Einar Ól. Sveinsson in IFIV, p. xliii.