Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 358
356 GRIPLA
From this point on, the stories are completed one at a time, just like the
subordinate clauses in the German sentence Todorov cited. But there is
also a sort of short circuit between the surrounding nest and the nested
story within. When the tailor finishes his tale, the sultãn summons the
barber to his court. The barber manages to remove the fish bone from the
throat of the hunchback, who turns out to be alive. By telling his story, the
tailor saves his own life as well as the lives of his three companions, and
Shahrazãd once again succeeds in extending her life by at least a few more
nights. It’s no wonder that the characters in The Thousand and One Nights
are constantly telling one another stories, says Todorov, since “narrating
equals living.”23 Additionally, he underlines that “embedding is an articula-
tion of the most essential property of all narrative. For the embedding nar-
rative is the narrative of narrative. By telling the story of another narrative,
the first narrative achieves its fundamental theme and at the same time is
reflected in this image of itself.”24
Ólafssaga contains one intricately woven narrative akin to that of The
Thousand and One Nights. The third-person narrator describes Ólafur’s
journey traveling south over the vast expanse of Arnarvatnsheiði, where
he passes by a farm in an unfamiliar valley. A middle-aged housewife,
Ingibjörg, welcomes Ólafur and invites him inside, where he meets her
husband Dvalinn and their teenage daughter, Sólrún. Dvalinn scowls
when he sees the guest, predicting that he will bring harm to the family,
but Sólrún entreats her father to show Ólafur kindness. For her part, she
undresses and lies down beside Ólafur. But when he begins to caress her,
she implores him:
[...] ekki spilla meydómi sínum því að hún hefði ekki gjört þetta af
nokkrum holds- eður lostatilfinningum – „heldur gjörði ég það til
að firra bæði föður minn og þig vandræðum því að ég veit að faðir
minn gjörir þér ekkert mein svo lengi sem ég er hjá þér.“
Ólafur spyr hverslags fólk þetta sé en hún lést mundi birta
honum sannleikann ef hann gjörði hennar vilja. „Vil ég því segja þér
Þáttinn af Ólafi Hrólfssyni og Dvalin, syni hans (184).25
23 Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, 73.
24 Ibid., 72.
25 Lena Rohrbach highlights how, in the manuscript of Ólafssaga (as in the 1987 edition), some