Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Side 152

160
On legal terms in Færeyinga saga
in charge could be called sýslumaðr2. We think we know that
this answers to conditions that obtained in the latter part of
the twelfth century3. We can only guess how far it is relevant
to earlier ages, for our knowledge of the period before c.
1040 depends on this entertaining Icelandic saga and of the
period from c. 1040 to c. 1170 is virtually nil.
If we are interested in discovering what might be genuinely
Faroese in a text like this, we must obviously start by isolating
elements that cannot be readily explained in Icelandic terms
and then attempt to identify them more closely. Given the
background, one may assume that what is not Icelandic may
be Faroese or may be Norwegian, or Faroese and Norwegian
at one and the same time; it may also be fiction or reflect
knowledge of conditions outside the West Norse sphere alto-
gether. Among the few things in the saga that lend them-
selves to comparative investigation is the legal terminology
(taken in a broad sense) which the author used in his various
tales. The prime difficulties in such a study are obvious: the
total absence of native Faroese material and the narrow range
of Norwegian material come first; then the comparatively
high degree of homogeneity in the way of life of the early
Norse Atlantic communities; and then the fact that we work
from the precepts and procedures of law codes and not from
real knowledge of practice — how far they might or did de-
viate is hard to tell. After these remarks no one will expect
much in the way of conclusions to the brief consideration of
the legal material in Færeyinga saga that follows. They will
be right.
We should begin by looking at those chapters of the saga
that are preserved only in Snorri’s Óláfs saga helga, separate
or incorporated in Heimskringla4. Information they contain
2 FJ 4/30—31, 5/9—10, 40/2, 52/14, 80/30—31; 23/12—13; ÓH 8, 50,
67, 116; 28. There are also references, doubtless anachronistic, to sýslur
in Norway, FJ 20/3, 24, 41/16, ÓH 24, 25, 52.
3 See the references in Foote, op. cit., 11, notes 1—2.
4 Cf. FJ v, ÓH xxiii; see Den store Saga, chs. 116, 118, 124, 132—3;
Heimskringla, chs. 127, 129, 135, 142—3.