VIKING SOCIETY
FOR NORTHERN RESEARCHT E X T SERIES
General Editor: G. Turville-PetreVOLUME I I I

D A T I N G T H E I C E L A N D I C SAGASBy Einar Ol. Sveinsson

T h e publication of this volume
has been made possible by a gift in memory of
D O R O T H E A COKE

But the whimhrel still are calling
And the silver water's falling
Just where Langa River joins the sea.

DATINGICELANDIC
AN E S S A Y I N

THE
SAGAS
METHODBY

EINAR OL. SVEINSSON
Honorary Life Memberof the Society

V I K I N G SOCIETY
FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDONMade and Printed in Great Britain byWestern Printing Services Ltd, Bristol@ 1958 Einar Ol. Sveinsson

GENERAL E D I T O R ' S

PREFACEHAVE great pleasure in presenting Professor Einar
Ol. Sveinsson's Dating the Icelandic Sagas. This isa pioneer work, for no general treatment of the subject
has been published since modern methods of criticism
have been applied.
Readers will already be aware of the profundity andthe humane qualities of Professor Sveinsson's scholarship, and many will have enjoyed his earlier works,
among which I may mention his sensitive Age of theSturlungs (trans. Johann S. Hannesson, 1953), his penetrating Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of Njdlssaga(1953), to say nothing of his edition of Brennu-Njdls
Saga (1954), a monument of self-sacrificing devotion.
The Viking Society is proud to publish a work by sodistinguished an Icelandic scholar, and expresses deep
gratitude to him, since he has written this volume especially for us.
G.T.P.

I

AUTHOR'S

PREFACEHIS book was completed in Icelandic in September
1956, and nothing has been added since then except
for two footnotes. The following books and papers, allof which have some bearing on the subject of this work,
have been published since it was finished: Hallvard
Mageroy, Sertekstproblemet i Ljosvetninga (Avhandlinger
utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo II,
Hist.-fil. klasse 1956, No. 2), Oslo 1957; the sameauthor's Studiar i Bandamanna saga (Bibliotheca Arnamagasana XVIII), Copenhagen 1957; Ari C. Bouman,
Observations on Syntax and Style of Some Icelandic
Sagas (Studia Islandica 15), Reykjavik 1956; J6nas
Kristjansson's edition of Eyfirdinga Sggur (fslenzk
Fornrit IX), Reykjavik 1956; J6n Johannesson's paper
Aldur Grcenlendinga sogu (Nordaela, Afmaeliskvedja til
SigurQar Nordals, Reykjavik 1956); Walter Baetke,ijber die Entstehung der Isldndersagas (Berichte iiber die
Verhandlungen der sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philol.-hist. Klasse, Band 102,
Heft 5), Berlin 1956; Anne Holtsmark's Introduction to
The Legendary Saga of Saint Olav (Corpus Cod. Norv.
Med Aev., IV sen, vol. II), Oslo 1956. In this last
named work Professor Holtsmark mentions certain
palaeographic details, which suggest that the Midsagaof St Olaf was written as early as about 1200.
To my great regret, two distinguished scholars, whoTX

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

are mentioned in this book, have died since it was written,
viz. Professor Jon Johannesson and BarSi GuSmundsson,
Keeper of the National Archives of Iceland.
I wish to express my warmest thanks to the Viking
Society for the honour they have done me in electing
me an Honorary Life Member, and for including thisbook in their Series.
I would like also to thank my friend Professor G.
Turville-Petre for the translation, so carefully made, ofa book which is in many ways difficult. He has sparedno pains to make the translation as exact and readable aspossible.
I would like finally to thank Mr Peter G. Foote, who
has kindly read the typescript and the proofs, and Mr
David Thomas, who has given a great deal of helpfuladvice on typography and technical problems.
E.O.S.
Reykjavik
June 1958

CONTENTS
General Editor's Prefacevii
Author's Prefaceix
I Earlier Researchesi
II Technical Terms
6
III Manuscripts and Texts
ii
IV Alterations in the Texts
31
V Subjective and Objective Evidence
39
VI References to Saga-writing in Early Texts 41
VII The Ages of Manuscripts
48
VIII Historical Evidence
50
IX Family Sagas and Contemporary History 73
X Literary Relations
76
XI Linguistic Evidence
96
XII Clerical and Romantic Influences
108
XIII Artistry115
XIV Heroic Sagas and the Decline of Realism 124
XV Conclusion
127

ABBREVIATIONS
Bisk. Biskupa Sogur gefnar lit af hinu
fslenzka b6kmentafelagi, I-II, 1858-78.
I.F. Islenzk Fornrit, 1933- (in progress).
Safn Safn til sogu Islands og islenzkra
bdkmenta, 1855- (in progress).
Quotations from Old Icelandic texts are given
in normalized form.

CHAPTEREARLIERr

RESEARCHESt

iKE many other medieval works, the Icelandic./Family Sagas^ have come down to us without thenames of their authors; nor do these sagas tell us when
they were written. As might well be expected, considering the great value of the sagas, scholars have attempted
to solve such problems. The first of them, that of authorship, has often made the scholar feel as if he were in theposition of Tantalus in the Greek myth: the water andfruits which seemed so close were so elusive when hetried to grasp them.
The second question, that of the dates when the sagas
were written, has not appeared nearly so difficult toanswer, as may be seen from the unhesitating way inwhich scholars have made their assertions about theages of various sagas. But if we regard the problem
more closely, we can say that, although there is plentyof evidence, much of it is exceedingly treacherous. In
the present essay I shall attempt to examine this latterproblem rather more closely.
At one time, scholars used to regard the Icelandic
Family Sagas as true pictures of the events, and theyI T h e term Islendinga SSgur (literally 'Sagas of Icelanders') is usedin Icelandic for those sagas which relate the lives of Icelanders livingin the Age of Settlement and the Saga Age (or Viking Age). Although
it is not altogether suitable, the term ' Family Sagas' is used -for suchsagas in this book, since many English-speaking people know themunder that name. T h e term Fornaldar SSgur is rendered by ' Heroic
Sagas', and Riddara Sogur by 'Romantic Sagas' or 'Romances'.

2

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

troubled less about the age when they were written; they
asked rather when the events related in the sagas took
place, and quoted the sagas as if they were contemporary
sources. Examples of this approach may still be found,but on the whole it can be said to belong to a past age.
First of all, scholars began to notice, as already Ami
Magniisson had done, that many sagas showed in themselves that they were written long after the events related
in them took place. Gradually this became clearer; all
Family Sagas were written long after their stories took
place, but some of them appear to be older than others.
If sagas are to be used as sources of history, it is obviously a matter of great consequence how long a period
elapsed between the events related and the time when
the sagas were written.
One of the first attempts to decide the age when thesagas were written was made by P. E. Miiller in his
Sagabibliothek (I, 1817), but, as Snorri says in the
Hdttatal, first attempts generally leave room for improvement. The dates to which Miiller assigned various sagas
differ greatly from those to which later scholars haveassigned them, although some of the sagas which hethought were written very late are still thought to be so.
I shall not trace the opinions on the dating of Family
Sagas expressed by scholars between the appearance ofthe first volume of Miiller's Sagabibliothek and the time
when Finnur J6nsson turned his attention to the problem in his great history of Old Icelandic and Norwegian
literature {Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, II, 1898). I should, however, mention that during

I

EARLIER RESEARCHES

3

the interval Konrad Maurer published his Ueber die
Hoensapdris saga (1871), and K. Lehmann and Hans
Schnorr von Carolsfeld published their book Die Njdlssage (1883). Both of these books showed a keener appreciation of the criteria of age than was common in thosedays.
In his history of the literature, Finnur j6nsson attempted to establish the ages of all Family Sagas. P. E.
Miiller had supposed that the sagas had been written atvarious times, but he did not think that there had been
any pause in saga-writing from the beginning to the end.
But the most striking point in Finnur Jonsson's datingis that he allows for two groups of sagas, one datingfrom about 1200, and the other from about 1300, andbetween these two dates he seems to suppose there wasa gap. This would certainly be a very strange phenomenon, and the doctrine was bound to awaken suspicion
and doubt.
In his later works and in the second edition of his
history of the literature (1920-4), Finnur Jonsson expressed more or less the same opinions about the ages ofFamily Sagas. But about the same time, Bjorn M. Olsenpublished his weighty criticism of the Prologue to Sturlunga Saga in which Finnur J6nsson had found the chief
support for his peculiar system of dating, as will be explained more fully below. Olsen attempted in an independent way to decide the ages of various sagas, ^ and hereached important conclusions about the relations of
I See B. M. Clsen, Om Gunnlaugs Saga Ormstu-ngu, 1911; Urn
ttlendinga Sogur, published posthumously in Safn VI, 1937-9.

4

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

very many of them with the Landndmabdk, which incourse of time provided valuable evidence of their ages.
I regard the bold attempts made in the series Islenzk
Fornrit (1933 ff.) and by the editors of this series in otherwritings as a direct continuation of this work of B. M.
Olsen. In my view, there can be no doubt that editors of
the Fornrit have made great advances in assembling
evidence about these questions.
But it was not to be expected that such difficult problems would be settled at one stroke, and I have no doubtthat there may be errors in some of the conclusions set
forth in these works. At the same time, it should beobserved that the evidence and methods used there havenever been thoroughly examined, and, I think, it isparticularly this which is needed. It is necessary to
examine more closely the basis upon which any datingmust be founded, i.e. the texts themselves, and closer
consideration is also needed of the nature and value ofthe individual criteria which may be used to establish
the age of a work. That was my opinion when I lectured
on this subject at the congress of northern philologists in
Helsinki in 1950.^ That lecture was, in fact, the basis of
the present essay.
Since that time. Volume VIII B of the series Nordisk
Kultur has been published, and it contains SigurSur
Nordal's remarkable study of the sagas (Sagalitteraturen).
When it is realized that the whole study of this extensive
subject covers no more than ninety-four pages, it can, I See Redogdrelse for nionde nordiska filologmotet i Helsingfors och
Abo 1951, pp. 16-17.

I

EARLIER RESEARCHES

5

hardly be expected that the author would find room to
discuss the methods used in dating Family Sagas, andhence I consider an essay of this kind not altogether
superfluous. For this reason I have given renewed andcloser attention to all those problems upon which I
touched briefly in my lecture of 1950.

CHAPTERTECHNICAL

II

TERMS

EFORE going further I would like to say something
about technical terms. Obscurity in the use of technical ternas has seriously hampered scholarly research,and sometimes it has even been difficult to know what thewriter really means. First of all we must consider theword 'saga'. As everyone who knows Icelandic is aware,
this word has a very wide application in that language.
All the same, in works written in Icelandic during thelast twenty-five years, I think the usage has never been
so obscure as to cause confusion, and this is because of aclear appreciation of the differences. In this essay I shalluse the word 'saga' as it is used, for example, in the introductions to the series Islenzk Fornrit.
When I speak of sagas in the following pages, I shallalways mean written works, such as Egils Saga, Njdls
Saga, HeiSarviga Saga, or Hrafnkels Saga, and I shalluse the word exclusively for such written works. It isimpracticable to use the same word for the sources uponwhich sagas may have been based. It is also impossible
to start out on the assumption, once and for all, that thesources of sagas were of this kind or of that, for such aproblem has to be considered separately in every case.
If we suppose that the sources of sagas were oral, thesesources may be called 'tradition'. I have chosen thisword while fully realizing that no more must be said
about the form of the oral sources than is known. They

B

II

TECHNICAL TERMS

7

may have been anecdotes, shorter or longer tales, or acomplex of short tales. If investigation proves that asaga is based upon a single oral source, a complete oral
story, this will have to be especially emphasized.
It may seem strange, but sometimes it appears as
though people overlook the fact that sagas, as we designate them, the written works, really exist, while the oral
sources upon which they are supposed to be based, do
not exist. We must not close our eyes to the danger,
when we feel certain that one incident or another isderived from an oral tradition, that this may be only
an illusion; this incident may never have existed inoral tradition about the same hero. Scholars should
never lose sight of the difference between that which
exists and that which does not—the certain and the uncertain.
All who have read works of recent years on the Family
Sagas must have come across the expressions 'free-prose
theory' and 'book-prose theory'. I shall not expatiate onthese, but I have always considered these terms questionable, since the free-prose theory does not in fact
allow for a free oral tradition, but rather for one which ismore or less fixed; though this is of little importance.
The chief difference between the two theories is thatthe book-prose theory is not, in the first place, a theory,
not in the first place a doctrine, but rather an attempt
to follow the tracks from the known to the unknown
without prejudice, to pass with the help of experienceand probability from one point to the other. On theother hand the free-prose theory, at least in its German

8

DATING THE SAGAS

form, ^ is primarily a Lehre, a doctrine, which is set forth
fully fashioned, and the origin of the Family Sagas is
explained in accordance with it.
The advocates of the free-prose theory distinguishsome of the larger sagas, and say that they are more
literary than the others; they allow for exceptions of one
kind or another. With such reservations their doctrine
may be described in this way: the sources of the sagas(i.e. of the preserved, written sagas) were complete oral
stories of fixed form, fixed both in matter and in style.
In general it is supposed that these complete oral stories
corresponded exactly with the written sagas. It is supposed that they were commonly written down word for
word, and it is stated plainly that the differences between
a written saga and its oral source are no greater than thediflferences which two story-tellers would make in tellingthe same tale; the alterations were no greater than any
story-teller would permit himself. These oral stories,
from which the written sagas were taken, are believed tohave been learnt by heart by one story-teller from another, and finally, as already said, they were written
down more or less word for word as one of the storytellers had told them.
As may readily be appreciated, we are here faced witha series of preconceived ideas, I might almost say postulates, none of which follows from the other. The first
postulate is that when we have a saga its source is a
I K. Liestol (in The Origin of the Icelandic Family Sagas, 1930)
was less rigid, and had learnt much more from experience. He hadwide experience of the development of oral tales.

II

TECHNICAL TERMS

9single, complete oral story, although it is obvious that
there are many other possibilities, and the scholar's task
is therefore more complicated and difficult. The second
postulate is that every oral story which is supposed tohave existed was fixed in style and learnt word for wordby heart. But even if we start from the first postulate(which I consider wrong) it does not follow that thesecond is right. It is well known that there are long tales
whose substance is preserved orally, although they are
not learnt word for word. This, to speak generally, is thecase with the popular Mdrchen.^ I may add that I consider it questionable whether prose texts were ever preserved orally word for word unless there was a distinct
class which lived by reciting them, learning them systematically for years together, as the Irish filid were said to
do. There was no such class as this in Iceland.
We come now to the third postulate. If we suppose forthe moment that the first and second are right, it does
not by any means follow that the third is right. The third
postulate is that the scribe followed the oral tale word forword. But why should he do so? If I may use a rather
paradoxical expression, I may say that this kind of writingis against the laws of nature. What I mean is this: for
century after century lettered men have been writing
down stories which they learned from oral story-tellers,
but what writer was ever so oppressed with a sense of
I This, of course, does not apply to fixed phrases and suchlike,which are preserved in any kind of oral tale. There are also types ofrime-like Mdrchen containing a lot of repetition, which may be learnt
more or less by heart, but in style these are nearly the antithesis of
Family Sagas.

lO

DATING THE SAGAS

inferiority that he did not think himself better able tofind the right words than an illiterate story-teller? It isonly in the last decades that scholars have begun to write
dovm stories word for word, and before they can do it
they have to undergo a strict training. It is such an unnatural thing to do. ^This is not the place to discuss the free-prose doctrine
further, although I shall perhaps do so in another context. Indeed, there is no reason to do so here, for thisessay is not about the sources of the written Family
Sagas, but about these sagas themselves. Only in veryrare instances will the free-prose doctrine come in ourway, but yet often enough to make it clear that it shouldbe mentioned and explained briefly. It was appropriate
to describe it at the same time as I explained what precise
meaning I would give to the word 'sagas' in the following
pages.
I I am concerned with oral prose-stories on profane subjects. I
realize that rather different conditions may apply to stories about
religious subjects, but these have nothing to do with the present
problem.

CHAPTERIII

MANUSCRIPTS AND

TEXTS

HE sagas with which I am dealing in this essay are
the extant, written Family Sagas, and when I speakof their age, I mean the date when they were written.
But before discussing this, it is necessary to consider one
other problem, viz. the state in which these sagas arepreserved. The importance of the question whether asaga is well or badly preserved has become ever clearer
to me during years of study, and much depends upon
whether it is possible to answer it conclusively. To speak
generally, most other kinds of scholarly investigation of asaga must depend on the state of its preservation. A good
example of this can be found in studies of Egils Saga. In
his book Forfattarskapet till Eigla (1927), Per Wieselgren
investigated the style of Egils Saga, and among otherthings, he reached the conclusion that the style of thissaga differed so sharply from the style of Snorri that it
was inconceivable that Snorri was its author. But on thispoint SigurSur Nordal refuted him conclusively, ^ showing that what people call the style of Egils Saga is, inreality, the style of Mgdruvallabdk, in which the saga has
been considerably abbreviated, as may be seen by comparison with the fragment designated as 6.
Family Sagas have come down to us chiefly in manuscripts of the fourteenth and later centuries, for there arevery few noanuscripts, and these only fragments, which

T

I Egils Saga ml.F. II, 1933, Introduction, pp. Ixxxii ff.

12

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

can be assigned to the thirteenth century. The oldest arethought to be the fragments 6 of Egils Saga, D2 of
Laxdoela Saga, and the first hand in the vellum manuscript Sth. perg. 18, 4to.i Probably all of these fragments
may be assigned approximately to the middle of thethirteenth century. Next come C of Egils Saga and A.M.
162, E, fol. containing texts of Eyrbyggja and Laxdcela,
and the fragment S of Egils Saga, which is in a similar
hand. Dating from about 1300 are the manuscripts D iof Laxdoela Saga and just five manuscripts of Njdls Saga,
viz. Reykjabok (AM 468, 4to), Grdskinna (Gl. kgl. sml.
2870, 4to), Kdlfalcekjarbok (AM 133, fol.) and the fragments 8 and ^.^ The fragments of Njdla, C, K, y, 6 areassigned to the first half of the fourteenth century, as are
the fragment y of Egils Saga, and the Hauksbdk whichcontains Eiriks Saga Rauda and Fdstbrosdra Saga (written
before 1334). The manuscripts Sth. perg. 7, 4to and /3of Egils Saga are assigned to the middle of the fourteenth
century, as are the Wolfenbiittel manuscript containing
Egils Saga and Eyrbyggja and the text of Gunnlaugs Sagain Sth. 18.
The great vellum manuscript Mgdruvallabdk (AM 132
I T h e fragments of Egils Saga and Njdls Saga denoted by Greek
letters are contained in A M 162 fol. A-B. I have followed the opinionsof Finnur Jonsson (see especially his editions of these sagas) and of K.
KMund on the ages of these manuscripts. In the following pages I
have taken consideration of Finnur Jonsson's opinions, although mychief authority is KS,lund's catalogue {Katalog over den Arnamagneeanske Hdndskriftsamling I - I I , 1889-94).
a On the manuscripts of Njdls Saga see my work Studies in the
manuscript tradition of Njdlssaga, 1953. In that work I have followed
the opinions of Finnur J6nsson and of KMund in dating the manuscripts.

Ill

MSS AND TEXTS

13fol.) is slightly older than these last named, and waswritten at some time between 1316 and 1350.^ It contains Njdls Saga, Egils Saga, Finnboga Saga, Bandamanna Saga, Kormaks Saga, Viga-Gldms Saga, Droplaugarsona Saga, Qlkofra Pdttr, Hallfredar Saga, Laxdoela, and Fostbroedra Saga. Nearly all of these sagas havebeen edited from the Mgdruvallabdk, and if it did notexist, we should have no more than paltry fragments ofKormaks Saga, Droplaugarsona Saga, and Viga-GMms
Saga, while Hallfredar Saga would be preserved only insections, as is e.g. Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa.
I do not consider it necessary to enumerate manuscripts later than these, but it is plain that there weresome manuscripts containing various texts written about
1400 and in the fifteenth century, which contained two
or more Family Sagas, sometimes together with Heroic
and other later sagas. I shall mention only two of these.
Vatnshyrna written for J6n Hakonarson of ViQidalstunga
about or a little before 1400, which GuSbrandur Vigfvisson rescued from oblivion in his Introduction to
Bdrdar Saga (i860). Vatnshyrna survives only in fragments and transcripts, but it contained Fldamanna Saga,
Laxdoela, Hcensa-Pdris Saga, Vatnsdcela Saga, Eyrbyggja,
Kjalnesinga Saga, Krdka-Refs Saga, Viga-Gliims Saga,
Hardar Saga, Bdrdar Saga, Pdrdar Saga Hredu, Bergbia
Pdttr, Kumblbda pdttr, and Draumr Porsteins SiduHallssonar. It may thus be said that Vatnshyrna andMgdruvallabdk supplement each other. I shall mention
I See J6n Helgason, Gauks Saga Trandilssonar in Heidersskrift til
G. Indrebo, 1939.

14

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

just one other composite manuscript, Melabdk, which
was written at the beginning of the fifteenth century andcontained Fldamanna Saga, Eyrbyggja, Vatnsdoela, as
well as Landndmabdk and genealogical lists. Considerable
fragments of this manuscript are preserved. *Many vellum manuscripts have been lost, but the loss
is partly made good because, early in the seventeenth
century, people began to copy the vellum manuscripts,
and thus we have complete texts of many sagas of which
only small fragments survive on vellum. Sometimes thesetranscripts have to serve instead of the lost vellums. We
shall now consider how some of the sagas were preserved
under these conditions. We must consider how many
independent texts of medieval sagas now survive in complete vellums written in the Middle Ages, or in fragments of them, or else in later copies of such vellums.
When we have to deal with late copies, it does not matter
how many they are, but rather what evidence they provide of the independent medieval manuscripts fromwhich they are descended. It need hardly be said thatinvestigation of all the late manuscripts is necessary, sothat we may be sure whether they represent one medieval
text or more. Such investigation has only been done inpart, and I must ask my readers to bear this in mind as
they go through the following pages. I must also rely
upon the opinions now current. Maybe, the future willbring to light some texts among the paper manuscripts
which descend from lost, unknown medieval manuI Gu&brandur Vigfusson has given a list of other manuscripts ofFamily Sagas in his Prolegomena to Sturlunga Saga (1878), § 29.

Ill

MSS AND TEXTS

15

scripts. But it is wiser not to hold out high hopes on thisscore.
When we consider the number of medieval codices inwhich various sagas were preserved, we shall understandthe extent of their popularity in the Middle Ages. But
their number must also influence our judgement of thevalue and reliability of the existing texts. It is well known
that the early scribes did not care to copy word for word,and hence we may suppose that, in their extant form,
very few sagas are anything like exact copies of the texts
as they were first written. But even if this is admitted, it
does not follow that the manuscripts are not to be trusted
at all, and that they have all been interpolated or abbreviated. Certainly some of them have, but it may well bethat by studying the existing manuscripts we may gain
some knowledge of the history of the texts—knowledge
which may be useful to us in deciding their ages andmany other problems.
We must first of all consider the number of independent manuscripts in existence. It is a natural probability
that the greater the number of witnesses the greater the
likelihood that one of them is telling the truth on one
point or another. If a saga has been shortened or alteredin other ways it may be that one manuscript or anotherwill preserve relics of its form before it suffered thesealterations. But if, on the other hand, we have only one
witness, one text, we must honestly admit that very little
can be certain; we are left to the mercy of one scribe andof other scribes before him, of whom we know nothing.
We have to consider other problems besides that of thel6

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

number of the manuscripts, and the first to which I shallturn is that of their age. Needless to say, it does not takelong to alter a saga if a man sets out to alter it. But if
this does not arise, and if we are dealing with an ordinary
scribe who had no intention of altering a saga, then we
can say that the longer the time and the greater thenumber of intermediaries between our text and theoriginal, the greater are the chances of corruption.
Hence, we are in a much stronger position if we have oldmanuscripts, and if they are both old and numerous, weare not altogether at a loss. On the other hand, thescholar must inevitably wander in a maze of bewilderment if he has only paper manuscripts, representing only
one medieval codex, whose text may be uncertain inmany passages.
This brings us to the third question, that of the qualityof the texts. In deciding this subjective considerations
inevitably play a great part, but it is, nevertheless, very
important. In considering quality we have the help of
the learning which scholars have gained by experience of
textual criticism and from the technique of editing, suchas may be found in manuals on the subject. We are in astronger position if we have more than one text, forby comparison we may sometimes acquire some knowledge of the textual history. At the same time, it is as
well to realize that, while many of the changes made in
the texts are undoubtedly corruptions, they may also
include corrections and improvements, although this isless usual. Sometimes a text has been shortened, andthen it may be that the shortened text is every bit as

Ill

MSS AND TEXTS

17

readable as the other, and then we need all our wits aboutus. Even in cases where we have only one text, we canstill acquire some knowledge of its quality. We may
notice meaningless phrases, late expressions, sometimes
mistakes in personal names, or else the absence of allthese faults. But it is one thing to detect errors, anotherto correct them, and, in doing this, editors have sometimes trusted too much to their own judgement, and evento their own caprices.
I shall now give a survey of the preservation of the
Family Sagas, beginning with Njdla, which survives in
the greatest number of manuscripts, for there are relics ofnineteen to twenty medieval codices containing it. Besides these there are later vellums, chiefly fragments,
whose texts are, of course, no better than those of paper
manuscripts of the same period. Among the paper manuscripts, traces of a lost codex, probably but not certainly
written in the Middle Ages, may be detected. This codex
was the Gullskinna, and it appears to descend from the
Reykjabdk, which is still preserved. In this case, Gullskinna would have no independent value. Other paper
manuscripts of Njdla preserve texts of certain codices ina more complete form than that which they have now.
I should point out that not all the paper manuscripts of
Njdla have yet been examined, any more than have thoseof many other sagas, and I ask readers to bear this inmind. As already stated (p. 12 supra), there are five manuscripts of Njdla, which are believed to date from about
1300, and another five dating from the next half-century.
If Njdls Saga was written about 1280, as seems probable.

l8

DATING THE SAGAS

the manuscripts are, in age, very close to the original.
They thus have the advantages both of number and ofage.
I have discussed the manuscripts and text of Njdla inStudies in the Manuscript Tradition of Njdlssaga (1953)
and in Skirnir (1952), where I reached the conclusion
that, in the original, the text of this saga was similar tothat preserved in its best manuscripts, Reykjabdk, Grdskinna, and Mgdruvallabdk, each of which is the chiefmanuscript of one of the three groups. But the differences
between them are so slight that they all constitute one
version, not only in subject matter, but also in phraseology. In many passages of Njdls Saga it appears to bepossible to attain the original text by comparing thesemanuscripts.
In the number of its manuscripts, Egils Saga comesnext to Njdla, for there are thirteen medieval manuscripts of it, although most of them are, of course, fragments.^ In the editions, Mgdruvallabdk has been madethe basis of the text, and indeed no other course seems
possible. Finnur Jonsson divided the manuscripts ofEgils Saga into three groups, which he designated by the
initials of their main manuscripts, Mgdruvallabdk,
Wolfenbiittel, Ketilsbdk. He pointed out that manuscriptsof the W group were abbreviated, and maintained that
the K text was compiled from the other two. But Finnur
J6nsson did not notice, or did not state, that 6, which
belongs to the same class as Mgdruvallabdk, has a fuller
1 See Finnur Jdnsson's edition of Egils Saga, 1886-8, Introduction,
Ch. I.

Ill

MSS AND TEXTS

I9text than Mgdruvallabdk. SigurQur Nordal discussed thisproblem in his edition of the saga,^ pointing out that
Ketilsbdk sometimes shares words and sentences with 6
which are not to be found in Mgdruvallabdk, and thesame could, in fact, be said of manuscripts of the Wgroup. The explanation which he gives is that all of themanuscripts have been abbreviated, each in its own way,
except for d which cannot be shown to be abbreviated.
Thus one manuscript preserves the original text in one
passage, another in another. But 6, which is believed todate from about 1250, is only a few decades younger thanthe original text, and appears to follow it very closely.
A new understanding of the history of the text is thus
obtained. Although the text of Mgdruvallabdk has not
suffered great alteration, Q gives a different picture of theoriginal, which we could not have obtained, at least notwith any certainty, if it did not exist. ^The manuscripts of Laxdoela are numerous. There areseven medieval manuscripts of it, or their equivalents,
some of which are, of course, fragments. But besides
these, there are paper manuscripts, which may or may
not descend from yet another medieval codex. It should
be added that chapters from the Laxdoela Saga have also
been incorporated in sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of
1 I.F. II, 1933, Introduction, § 6. Reference to the problem wasalso made in my Introduction to the facsimile of Mgdruvallabdh(Corpus codicum Islandicorum medii csvi V, 1933), pp. 14-15.
2 J6n Helgason has lately published a study of some paper manuscripts of Egils Saga (Nordcela, Afmceliskvedja til Sigurdar Nordals,
1956, pp. n o ff.). He points out that, in certain manuscripts ofthe seventeenth century, lost vellums have been followed in somechapters.

20

D A T I N G T H E SAGASOlaf the Saint. Comparison of all these manuscripts
makes it plain that there can be no question of morethan one version of the saga, and their similarity indicates that no great changes have been made since thesaga was first written. It is particularly fortunate that wehave the fragment D2, which must be very close to theoriginal and was probably written only a few years after
it. This fragment shows that the text of Mgdruvallabdk
is a reasonably sound representative of the original,
although sentences, or parts of sentences, have undoubtedly been omitted here and there. We would probably not be able to rely so fully on the evidence of theZ vellums if we had not got D2. But on this point theevidence of the other manuscripts of the Z group ismuch the same: here and there they contain sentences
which are not in the Y group. ^The manuscripts of Eyrbyggja Saga have been investigated to some extent in the editions of Gu9brandurVigfusson (Leipzig, 1864), of Gering (Halle, 1897), andin my edition (Reykjavik, 1935), but these investigations
are far from exhaustive. There are fragments of four
vellums and transcripts of a fifth (Vatnshyrna). Material
differences are small, and comparison of the manuscripts
does not suggest that the wording has been radicallyaltered. It is possible that manuscripts of the B and M
groups are, in some particulars, closer to the original
than those of the Vatnshyrna group, on which the
I T h e most important study of the manuscripts of Laxdcela is contained in K. KMund's edition, 1889-91; see also my edition of thesaga in I.F. V, 1934.

Ill

MSS AND TEXTS

21

editions are based. At least, this possibility would be
worth considering. 1
There is no thorough critical edition of Grettis Saga,
since little variant apparatus is provided in the editionsof R. C. Boer (Halle, 1900) and Gu6ni Jonsson (Reykjavik, 1936). In his Introduction^ Boer maintained thatsix manuscripts of Grettis Saga had independent value,
and most of these are medieval vellums.^ In a few passages there is considerable difference between thesemanuscripts, but I doubt whether it would be right totalk of two versions.
Pdrdar Saga Hredu has not been published in a
critical edition. In his edition (Copenhagen, 1848),
Halld6r Fri5riksson followed AM 551 d 4to and its
transcript AM 139 fol. But besides this there are fragments of four other medieval manuscripts in the AM
collection, and there is yet another vellum in Stockholm.
I do not know whether any of the paper manuscripts
have independent texts. There are two versions of thissaga, one preserved in the fragments of Vatnshyrna, andthe second in the other manuscripts, whose text seems tovary little.
Now we come to sagas whose texts are preserved infour vellums (or their equivalents) or even in less. In
1 Mr Forrest S. Scott writes to me (3/6/1957) about the remainsof yet another old text preserved in two paper manuscripts (AM446, 4to and 139, fol.). This text belongs to the B-class.
2 See also Boer's paper in Zeitschrift fUr deutsche Philologie XXXI,
1899, pp. 40 ff.
3 Boer does not mention the vellum AM 571410, believed to date fromthe sixteenth century. It is difficult to understand the interrelationshipof the paper manuscripts from Boer's article mentioned above.

22

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

such cases, scholars often tend to be less diffident, toplace greater faith in these few witnesses although, inreality, the fewer the texts the greater the caution andscepticism needed, for it is even more a question ofchance whether all the versions of the saga have come tolight, and how faithfully they are preserved.
Bdrdar Saga, Kjalnesinga Saga, Finnboga Saga, andViglundar Saga appear all to be known in three or four
texts which can be traced to the Middle Ages, but it isimportant to note that Bdrdar Saga and Viglundar Saga
have not yet been published in satisfactory criticaleditions.
The case of Viga-Gltims Saga is rather different. It
may not be the most important point that one manuscript
contains an interpolation or, expressed in another way,that one of the manuscripts contains a section not in theothers, but what would we say if only this manuscript had
been preserved? It is no less remarkable, as G. TurvillePetre has shown in his edition (Oxford, 1940), that the
text has been shortened in Mgdruvallabdk, which is theoldest manuscript, while relics of an earlier text arepreserved in two fragmentary manuscripts.
Then there is the Gisla Saga, which is preserved inthree texts representing two versions, which differ
widely in the early chapters, but afterwards draw closer
together. One text is preserved only in paper manuscripts, and the others in manuscripts which are believed
to date from the fifteenth century.
Bandamanna Saga is preserved in three medieval
vellums, of which the oldest is Mgdruvallabdk, writtenIll

MSS AND TEXTS

23

in the first half of the fourteenth century. The Norwegian scholar, Hallvard Mager0y, after studying thethree manuscripts closely, has reached the conclusionthat the text of the vellum fragment in Jon SigurQsson's
collection is possibly descended from Mgdruvallabdk.
This leaves us with two independent medieval texts ofthe saga, each of which preserves a distinct version. The
text of Mgdruvallabdk is the fuller, and various theories
have been put forward about the relationship between
the two, but, after thorough investigation, Mageroy has
lately given the opinion that the shorter text is no otherthan an abbreviated form of the same original text asthat from which Mgdruvallabdk is descended. ^In rare instances we may find extraneous evidence
about the texts of Family Sagas. As examples, I may
mention the chapters of Laxdoela which are included in
the sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf the Saint (inFornmannasogur and Flateyjarbdk). There are also threesagas of poets which have been treated in the same way,
except that the Kings' Sagas preserve a much greater
proportion of their texts than they do of the Laxdoela
Saga. These sagas are Fdstbroedra Saga, Hallfredar Saga,
and Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa.
Fdstbroedra Saga is preserved separately in four independent texts. The oldest is Hauksbdk, dating from the
beginning of the fourteenth century, and then comeMgdruvallabdk and paper transcripts of a lost manuscript,
formerly preserved in the Royal Library in Copenhagen.
I See Kulturhistorisk
pp. 332-3-

Leksikon for nordisk MiddelalderI, 1956,

24

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

There are also the vellum fragments in AM 75 e fol.,whose text is closely related to that of a paper manuscript
in Stockholm.^ Besides these, a great part of the Fdstbroedra Saga is preserved in Flateyjarbdk and in twoother related texts, where it is interwoven with the sagaof St Olaf. There are wide differences between the
manuscripts of the Fdstbrosdra Saga, and the mostremarkable is that the text of Hauksbdk is much shorter
than the others. This was formerly held to show that the
text of Hauksbdk was the closest to the original, but
Sigur5ur Nordal and Sven B. F. Jansson have recently
argued that the text of the Hauksbdk has been abbreviated.^
The text of Hallfredar Saga is also preserved in ashorter and a longer form. The shorter is in the Mgdruvallabdk, where the saga is presented as a single whole;
the longer version is in the Greatest Saga of Olaf
Tryggvason, where it is broken up into chapters. The
text of the Flateyjarbdk is compiled from that in the
Greatest Saga of Olaf and a complete text of Hallfredar
Saga like that in Mgdruvallabdk. Problems of the relationship between these two versions have not been
decided, and it may be that both of them have beenaltered.^Finally, we have the Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa,
which is preserved only in fragments. There were two
vellum leaves of it in the time of Arni Magniisson, who
1 See Bjorn K. p6r61fsson's edition of Fostbroedra Saga, 1925-7.
2 See I.F. I l l , 1938, p. cxxxix, and especially VI, 1943, pp. Ixx ff.;
also S. B. F. Jansson, Sagorna om Vinland I, 1944, pp. 173 ff.
3 Cf. I.E. VIII, 1939, p. Ixxviii.

in

MSS AND TEXTS

25

got hold of them, but in the seventeenth century more ofthis saga survived on vellum, and it had been copied.
There are, however, two lacunae in the text, althoughparts of the opening chapters of the saga have been
incorporated in the manuscripts of the Saga of St Olaf.
These chapters have been altered to some extent, butthey give a fair idea of the content of the first chapters, ^Together with these sagas I may mention Vatnsdoela,
preserved in two texts traceable to the Middle Ages,
which do not differ excessively [Vatnshyrna and Melabdk and their transcripts). Besides these, excerpts fromthe saga are found in versions of the Landndmabdk, in
Sturlubdk and Hauksbdk on the one hand, and in
Pdrdarbdk on the other. These excerpts appear to be
based upon a better text of the saga than those preserved,
but it does not seem that there can be any question of
separate versions, and it is by no means certain that the
texts varied greatly in style.
We come now to those sagas which are preserved onlyin two medieval manuscripts, and in some cases one of
the manuscripts is no more than a fragment. Our difficulties are then graver.
There are two vellum manuscripts of Gunnlaugs Saga,
one dating from the middle of the fourteenth century, andthe other from the fifteenth century. There are somedifferences between them, although their texts are, in
general, alike. One or other must have been interpolatedor shortened.
Kormaks Saga is preserved intact in Mgdruvallabdk
I See I.F. Ill, pp. xcv-vii.

26

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

and there is, besides, a small vellum fragment of it.
These two manuscripts have much the same text, with
only slight verbal differences. There is no reason to suppose that these differences were greater in the chaptersother than those covered by the fragment. This is of
considerable importance, because the Mgdruvallabdk text
is so concise that scholars have suspected that this sagahas been shortened and spoilt. But it may be that wehave here an old, clumsy text, which has not been
seriously corrupted.
Fldamanna Saga is preserved in transcripts of one
intact medieval manuscript and in fragments of another.^
There is some difference between the two texts, the mostremarkable being in the genealogies at the end of thesaga, which must certainly have been altered in one or
the other.
Svarfdoela Saga is preserved only in fragments; there
is one large lacuna in the text and many small ones. The
main text is found in paper manuscripts which may be
traced to a lost vellum. This text cannot be called a good
one, but there is a rather better one on a vellum fragment.
Eiriks Saga Rauda and Droplaugarsona Saga are bothpreserved in two texts, one shorter and the other longer.
In the case of Eiriks Saga the longer text (dating fromthe fifteenth century) appears to be closer to the original
than the shorter (in Hauksbdk), as Sven B. F. Jansson
has shown, ^ and it was Lawman Haukr who shortened
the text.
1 See Finnur Jonsson's edition, 1932.
2 Sagorna om Vinland I, 1944.

Ill

MSS AND TEXTS

27

Droplaugarsona Saga is preserved entire in Mgdruvallabdk, and besides this, a small fragment of it is foundin a manuscript of the fifteenth century, which was readby Kr. Kdlund in 1886. Scholars have not agreed about
the textual history of this saga. Konra5 Gislason considered that the text of Mgdruvallabdk had been shortened, but Kilund held that this was the original text,
while that of the fragment had been expanded. J6n
J6hannesson has discussed this question in his editionof the saga,i and has concluded that the text of the fragment is the closer to the original, while that of Mgdruvallabdk has been altered, not only in wording but also
in subject matter, especially because of omissions. The
problem is difficult, but I think that all the indications
suggest that Jon Johannesson is right. We must, therefore, suppose that the original text of Droplaugarsona
Saga has been lost except for the small part preservedin the fragment.
The complete text of Hoensa-Pdris Saga is preservedin paper manuscripts which must descend from one
medieval vellum, or perhaps from two, and there is alsoa fragment dating from the fifteenth century. There are
no great differences except that most of the complete
texts contain an interpolation which, according to theopinions of Gu6brandur Vigfusson and SigurSur Nordal,cannot have been present in the fragment.^
A fragment of Hardar Saga, which belongs to Vatnshyrna, is preserved, and besides this there is another1 See I.F. XI, 1950, pp. Iviii ff.
2 See I.F. I l l , 1938, Introduction, § 4 .

20

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

text. There are great differences between the two (cf.
Pdrdar Saga Hredu, p. 21 above).
Ljdsvetninga Saga survives only in two late vellum
fragments and in paper manuscripts descending fromone of the fragments in a form less defective than thatwhich it has now, but there is no complete text of thesaga. In this case, there are two divergent versions, oneof which is expanded with tales (pattir) and, in part,
unlike the other in phraseology. Here we are faced withthe same question that arose when we considered Bandamanna Saga: can we rely on these manuscripts to give
evidence of the original text? One of them is certainly
unreliable as a witness, but are they not both? Is not
Ljdsvetninga Saga what might be called a badly preservedsaga?
Jon Helgason has maintained that in the case of
Hrafnkels Saga there are two 'branches', one preservedin the vellum fragment and in transcripts of it, and theother in paper manuscripts. There are some, although
no great differences between them.^ It should be mentioned that not all the paper manuscripts have yet been
examined.
Finally we come to those sagas which are preserved
only in one medieval manuscript or its equivalent. These
are Heidarviga Saga, Vdpnfirdinga Saga, Gull-Pdris Saga,
Reykdoela Saga, Porsteins Saga Hvita, Porsteins Saga
Sidu-Hallssonar, and Valla-Ljdts Saga.
I See Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoda, ed. Jon Helgason, 1950 (reprinted
1955)- It should be mentioned that J6n Johannesson believes that
all the paper manuscripts descend from the codex of which a fragment
is preserved. See I.F. X I , 1950, pp. Ivi-vii,

in

MSS AND TEXTS

29

Now the problems grow even more difficult. Only
chance has decided whether a good or a bad manuscript
has been preserved and, in most cases, we have no evidence
about the history of the text. Sometimes the text may
recommend itself, as does the fragmentary manuscriptof Heidarviga Saga, part of which is very old and written
in a very archaic style. At the beginning of the eighteenth
century Porsteins Saga Sidu-Hallssonar existed only infragments on vellum and, for a long time, only one directtranscript was known. But Jon Johannesson discovered
another transcript from which some corrections may bemade. We cannot get back beyond these transcripts ofthe vellum, but it may be mentioned that the text shows
marks of age, e.g. the preposition of (for later urn) occurs
often, and this speaks for the age of the text.
We have none but paper manuscripts of Valla-Ljdts
Saga, and these are carelessly written and descend froma vellum whose text was corrupt.
Even though it cannot be proved that it has beenaltered or corrupted, we must beware of placing too
much faith in the text of a saga which survives only in
one vellum or its equivalent.
There is yet another group of sagas, of which evenless can be said than of those last named, known only
from one medieval manuscript. It so happens that we
can deduce from various evidence that, at one time,
there were sagas which have since been lost, and there
were quite a number of these. Since I shall have little tosay about them in the following pages, I shall here content myself with giving a short list.

30

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Skdld-Helga Saga: the substance of this saga is preserved in rimur.
The following lost sagas are named in the Landndmabdk: Bgdmdds Saga Gerpis ok Grimdlfs, Pdrdar Saga
Gellis, Vebjarnar Saga, Isfirdinga Saga (which containedmaterial similar to that of Hdvardar Saga). The Svarfdoela Saga and Porskfirdinga Saga mentioned in theLandndmabdk are generally believed to be older versionsof the extant Svarfdoela and Gull-Pdris Saga.
Landndmabdk also contains excerpts from the following
sagas: *Fljdtshlidinga Saga, *Hrdars Saga Tungugoda,*Kjalleklinga Saga, *Sncebjarnar Saga Galta, *Krceklinga
Saga.'^
Certain sagas are also named in other texts:
Esphoelinga Saga: named in Pdrarins Pdttr Ofsa. The
material is probably included in MrSr's version ofLandndmabdk.
Gauks Saga Trandilssonar: named in Mgdruvallabdk.
Material from it is used in Njdls Saga.
Porgils Saga Hgllusonar: quoted in Laxdoela Saga.
Alfgeirs Pdttr: quoted in Hardar Saga.
In addition to these, scholars have deduced the existence of *Porsteins Saga Kuggasonar^ and of *Porlaugar
Pdttr.^
1 T h e names of these are not certain, but I follow J6n Johannesson,
Gerdir Landndmabdkar, 1941.
2 See I.E. I l l , p. Ixxxi.
3 See I.F. X, pp. Ixiv ff.

CHAPTERALTERATIONSIVIN T H E

TEXTS

E often come across the opinion that the texts ofFamily Sagas were, to so speak, fluid, and thatlittle significance can be attached to points of detail. Not
only is this the opinion usually held by disciples of thefree-prose doctrine today, but such conceptions appear
time and again in the works of Gu9brandur Vigfusson.
Even in the works of Finnur Jonsson we may often findstatements in which this is implied.
The survey given in the preceding chapter, although
too short to do justice to the topic, is enough to showthat the problem varies from one saga to another. In
some cases we have little evidence about the history of
the text and in others a great deal. Sweeping statements
and generalizations do not apply, but each case has to bestudied separately.
When we are able to follow the history of a saga-text,
this history varies greatly. If we consider the texts of
Laxdoela or of Njdls Saga, we come to respect them more
highly the longer we study them. To be sure, the Bolla
Pdttr is tacked on to the end of Laxdoela Saga in one
group of manuscripts, while verses have been interpolated in some of the manuscripts of Njdls Saga, but theother manuscripts show the original form and, by comparison, I think we can get close to the original text ofboth these sagas. In Bandamanna Saga and FdstbroedraW32

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Saga, on the other hand, we find texts which vary considerably. Thus, conditions are by no means invariable;
sometimes we find that a text is preserved in fairly
conservative form, and sometimes that liberties havebeen taken. Whether it is possible to obtain any reliable
evidence of the history of a text depends on the number,qualities, and dates of the manuscripts, as was explainedin closer detail in the last chapter.
If a text has been altered, it may be that it has been
expanded or shortened. For example, the longer text ofGisla Saga has been expanded. Formerly scholars generally supposed that texts had been expanded, but in recent
years it has been proved that the texts of many sagas havebeen shortened, and more examples of this will probably
be found. But it would not be right to regard this as a
general rule without investigation, for each text must be
judged separately according to the evidence available.
In the preceding pages we saw that, in some instances,
new versions of sagas had been made. In Bandamanna
Saga, the changes made were chiefly in phraseology, but
in such examples as Ljdsvetninga Saga, Hardar Saga, andPdrdar Saga Hredu the material of the story had also
been altered. Formerly, scholars were very ready to presuppose that there were many versions of sagas, and it
would be almost true to say that they regarded the hunt
for interpolations as their chief duty. I must confessthat I often feel that scholars of the latter decades of thenineteenth century show a certain levity in this. It would
certainly be foolish to be altogether stubborn and topretend that such things never happened, but caution

IV

ALTERATIONS IN THE TEXTS

33

and care are needed, and every example has to be studied
by itself.
In his studies of the Landndmabdk, Bjorn M. Olsen
often allowed for more than one version of a saga and,on the whole, his views were in accordance with those of
his contemporaries, although he often brought moreevidence in support of them than others did. For example,
Olsen supposed that there was an older, lost version of
Eiriks Saga Rauda, as well as lost Porskfirdinga, Isfirdinga,
and Svarfdoela Sagas, and some such sagas are named in
the Landndmabdk. R. C. Boer attempted to show that
there was an older version of Grettis Saga, and Sigurdur
Nordal has revived this theory in a new form.
When there is more than one version of a saga it is, ofcourse, the duty of a scholar to attempt to show reasons
why such great changes have been made in it.
It should be noted that reasons for altering a saga once
it had been written were not always equally strong. Let us
consider material alterations. If the author of a saga had
succeeded in getting all the material from the best
informed people, it might well be that he had included
everything with which the story was concerned, andthere was then no good reason to add anything. But if
much of the material had been left unused, there mightthen be good reason to make additions, or a new version.
The form of a saga might also vary in excellence. If it
was composed with great skill in its plot, characterdrawing, and style, people of later generations could
more easily be content with it, and it was then less likelythat they would make radical changes. The manuscripts

34

DATING THE SAGAS

of Njdla, Egils Saga, and Laxdoela seem to give evidenceof this. On the other hand, it is easy to understand that' defects in the form of a saga might incite people toi change it. I think that scholars have not given this point
the consideration it deserves.
In one passage Finnur Jonsson wrote: 'In its originalform no saga began like this.' Finnur Jonsson had hisown, decided views on what sagas must have been liketo begin with, at least those sagas which he believed
to be old—they must have been well composed andclassical. These sagas, as he generally believed, had all
been taken, independently of each other, from tradition.
He believed, moreover, that changes from the originalform were most often damaging. In holding such beliefs,
the scholar assumes what he has to prove, for it isobviously just as likely that the original work left room
for improvement and, in some cases, it was improved
afterwards. As for the relations between one saga andanother, the researches of recent decades have shownplainly that saga-writing developed as an unbroken evolutionary process. In all probability, some sagas werepreceded by some kind of historical summaries inwriting. For obvious reasons, most of these are now lost,
but who can say whether some of the oldest sagas were
not also more primitive in form than later ones? In thepreceding pages I mentioned many lost sagas. Is it not
likely that many of them were lost simply because they
were less highly developed than extant ones?
We may suppose that a new book, or a new version ofa saga, comes into being by the addition of stories

IV

A L T E R A T I O N S I N T H E TEXTS

35(pcettir) or by interpolation into an older text, or elsethat a completely new work is made from the old one,with a new plot and in a new form. I have alreadyremarked that reasons for making a new version might
be found in the defects of material or form. But anotherreason for alteration might be that there were different
opinions about the people and the events related, otherpoints of view. Bjorn Sigfiisson has suggested that suchdifferences largely accounted for the two versions of
Ljdsvetninga Saga, for, in the later version, an attempt
has been made to present Gu5mundr Riki in a rather
more favourable light.
The conditions ruling in other cases may be somewhat
different. A man might have been described in one sagaor another, but then comes a second author, who takes
a different view of the people and events related. He does
not make a new version of the old saga, but writes a newone, in which the leading characters are different ones.
He touches on the material of the older saga and on thecharacters described in it, but he gives a picture different
from the one given there. I think there were many
instances of this, and I shall name a few of them.
In Njdla we read a little about Gu5mundr Riki.
Investigation has shown that the author of Njdla knew
Ljdsvetninga Saga, but the picture which he gives of
GuSmundr is quite a different one; he describes him
altogether favourably. In his treatment of I'orkell Hdkr
the author of Njdla shows that he is writing in direct
opposition to Ljdsvetninga Saga.
In another passage the author of Njdla is certainly not

36

DATING THE SAGAS

contradicting any other book, but he uses the fame ofMQr9r Gigja to enhance the splendour of Gunnarr andNjall; for they succeeded where Mgrdr had failed, andgot the better of Hriitr Herjolfsson. It does not seem
possible to prove that the author of Njdla knew the lost
*Fljdtshlidinga Saga, in which much was told of thewisdom of MgrSr—at any rate, he did not have thissaga before him as he wrote, but it is clear that he knew
about MgrQr's fame and used it for his own purposes.
It may be seen from Laxdoela Saga that there was a
written saga of I>orgils Hglluson, and it is natural tosuppose that it gave a favourable picture of him. Porgils
comes into the lives of Snorri Go9i and of Gu9run
Osvifrsdottir, and we may suppose that, in spite of theimpartiality of sagas (at least on the surface), the authorof the saga about I>orgils took his part against them.
But afterwards another man wrote a saga, in which
GuSriin and Snorri were among the leading characters,
and he favoured them. He knew the saga about torgils,
and he was careful not to change any of the factual
statements in it which he believed to be correct, but hedescribed everything in a different light. That is how it isin Laxdoela, which contains a direct reference to Porgils
Saga, although this saga is lost, and we have to decide
its details from probabilities which are, nevertheless,very strong.
It may also be remembered that the Laxdcela contains
a reference to the Njardvikinga Saga. Either this saga is
the same as Gunnars Pdttr Pidrandabana or else Gunnars
Pdttr is an abbreviated version of the Njardvikgina Saga.

IV

ALTERATIONS IN THE TEXTS

37

But we may conclude that the incidents told in it havebeen used in the Laxdoela Saga, where they have been
touched up in order to embellish the character ofGu9run Osvifrsdottir, and thus an entirely different
picture is given. In all these cases we have to do with an
unbroken, organic development. These are, as it were,debates about people and events; the later author contradicts the earlier.
Not all of the sagas written in the region of the
BreiSafjgrdr are preserved. I have already mentioned
Pdrdar Saga Gellis and Porgils Saga Hgllusonar. Sigur9ur
Nordal has also concluded that there was a Porsteins
Saga Kuggasonar, and Finnur Jonsson that there was a
Kjalleklinga Saga, while some suppose that there wasan older Eiriks Saga Rauda. We cannot tell what thesewere like, but other sagas belonging to this district arepreserved, i.e. Heidarviga Saga, Eyrbyggja Saga, Laxdoela Saga, Eiriks Saga Rauda, Groenlendinga Pdttr,
which are great artistic unities, the creation of theirauthors. Attempts to show that these sagas have beeninterpolated have not, in my opinion, been successful.
The authors of later sagas undoubtedly knew the older
ones, and we can often see that they did. Sometimes
authors of the later sagas take account of what is said in
the older ones, e.g. they take care not to repeat it, or they
contradict the older sagas by telling the story differently.
The surviving sagas of the Brei6afj(jr9r are, for the mostpart, well constructed.
Sagas of this district, as indeed those of most otherparts of Iceland, appear to have been fixed unities ever38

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

since they were first written. But in EyjafjgrSr there
were a remarkably large number of short tales {pcettir),
written but more or less unattached. The older versionof Ljdsvetninga Saga is very loosely constructed, andmany short tales have been inserted in the later version.
I think it correct to say, as some scholars have stated,that the version of Viga-Gltims Saga in Mgdruvallabdk
has been interpolated, and a further tale {pdttr) has been
added in the Vatnshyrna. The relations between the
Esphoelinga Saga and the Viga-Gliims Saga are notaltogether clear, and the Valla-Ljdts Saga is more likea tale {pdttr) than a complete saga. Some scholars havededuced from the relations between Reykdoela Saga andViga-Glums Saga that there was an independent Porlaugar Pdttr. It may well be that methods of sagawriting in this region were rather different from thosefollowed, for example, in BreiQafjgrSr and BorgarfjgrSr.
If so, it would be wise to tread cautiously; the basis
for dating the sagas of the EyjafjgrSr district may beless secure.

CHAPTERV

SUBJECTIVE AND O B J E C T I V E
EVIDENCE
N § 12 of his Prolegomena to the Sturlunga Saga,
GuSbrandur Vigfusson discusses the ages of the
Family Sagas. It is as if wisps of evidence pass by, one
after the other, and he is aware of their weaknesses andof the danger of trusting them. But there is something
left, which does not let him down. He writes:I

The best we can do is to look at the tone and character ofa saga, which even in a late adulterated form is never quite
effaced; even the worst, Svarfdcela, shows marks of antiquity.
No furbishing can hide the antique grace of a true saga, suchas Kormak's or Havard's, neither can any affectation of
spurious age make Kjalnesinga or Viglund's Saga look ancient.
There is no doubt that Gu9brandur Vigfusson had akeen appreciation of the Icelandic language and of
Icelandic sagas, but might he not have failed to distinguish between 'antique grace' and simple 'grace'?
The authors of sagas looked back, for they were trying
to describe an age which had passed. These authors
differed in taste and temperament, as the sagas show; but
between the composition of many sagas only a few years
or decades could have elapsed. How could it, then, bepossible for anyone to decide their ages simply from'tone and character'? It is, indeed, certain that few would
now accept the assertion that Hdvardar Saga is ancient.
So much for the green tree, but what of the dry? What

40

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

are we to say when Tom, Dick, and Harry think that theycan establish the ages of sagas from their 'tone andcharacter'? I think of young men who are put to writetheses after studying sagas only for a few years, when
they have perhaps read few of them, and those quickly.
No, it is obvious that fortune will not favour endeavours of this kind. Instead, we must search with all themeans available for concrete, objective evidence, and try
to estimate the value of every shred of it. In very few
instances can we speak of absolute certainty; generally
it is rather a question of probabilities, whose strength
we must assess. I do not despise the feeling for 'tone andcharacter', but some basis must be found for it; it mustbe turned into logical argument. Above all, we must
avoid confusing 'characteristics' with 'characteristics ofage'.
Accordingly, I shall look first for concrete, objective
evidence, and try to decide the value of it in every case.
Afterwards, I shall come to the less concrete evidence,
including the 'tone and character', if it is ever possible
to get a grasp of such things.
My aim is not to argue a case, not to 'prove' but, inthe first place, to find out where we stand, what we know,
and what conclusions we may think it proper to draw.

CHAPTERVI

REFERENCES TO SAGA-WRITINGIN EARLY T E X T S
T is natural that, in their attempts to establish theages of Family Sagas, scholars have tried to findgeneral principles, according to which the ages of allsagas could be established, or at least the ages of someof them. It is thus natural to conclude that sagas inwhich the civilization of the Icelandic republic is described in close detail and with verisimilitude were mostly
written during the age of the republic, or not long afterwards, since the succeeding age differed in many ways.
This seems to accord with other evidence, but it does
not suffice for precise dating.
Scholars have tried to date a great proportion of thesagas by other means; they have looked for passages incertain ancient writings in which the authors have spoken
in general terms about the ages of sagas. When theauthor of the First Grammatical Treatise lists thebranches of literature which it was fashionable to writein his day, he mentions law, genealogy, renderings ofreligious works, and those learned works which Ari
had compiled. The Grammatical Treatise cannot be
dated with absolute certainty, but despite all objections,
I think it was probably written about the middle of thetwelfth century. From the words of the Treatise it seems
that we may conclude that sagas were not commonly
written at that time. On the other hand, in the PrologueI

42

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

to the Hungrvaka, written in the first decade of thethirteenth century, mention is made of 'that which is
written in the Norse tongue, law, sagas, and family
history'.^ To be sure, the author does not say what kindof sagas these were. Kings' Sagas, Family Sagas, or
both; but it is certain that, in his time, written sagas
must have been known and fairly common.
Snorri, in his Prologue to the separate Saga of St
Olaf, also tells us something about saga-writing: 'Morethan two hundred and forty years had elapsed since thetime when Iceland was settled before people began towrite sagas. That was a long period, and there was therisk that oral traditions would have been corrupted . . .'^It is not altogether clear to what period Snorri alludedin the words 'when Iceland was settled', but even if hemeant the beginning of the settlement, he could not
imply that saga-writing started before c. 1120. But it
may be that he referred to a period twenty to forty years
later. Plainly, Snorri was thinking chiefly of the Kings'
Sagas, but he speaks in such general terms that it isnatural to conclude that no sagas, and therefore no
Family Sagas, were written before.
Of all that was said in ancient works about sagawriting, the words of the so-called ' Prologue' to Sturlunga Saga have undoubtedly had greatest consequence.
This 'Prologue' stands between Sturlu Saga and the
Prestssaga Gudmundar Gdda, and it was certainly written
I 'pat, er a norroenu er ritat, Igg e5a sggur e6a mannfroeSi.'z 'Pat var meirr en tvau hundruS vetra t6Ifroe8, er Island var
byggt, a&r menn tceki h6r sggur at rita, ok var }>at Igng sevi ok vant,at SQgur hefdi eigi gengizk 1 munni . . .'

VI

R E F E R E N C E S TO S A G A - W R I T I N G

43by the m a n who put the Sturlunga collection together,
I>6r9r Narfason, or whoever it was. T h e 'Prologue'^ reads
as follows:
Many of the sagas here will
be contemporaneous, but yet
they cannot all be written at
once: the sagas of Bishop
I>orIakr the Saint and of
GuQmundr Arason the Good
up to the time when he wasordained priest; the Saga of
GuSmundr Dyri begins three
years after the death of Sturla
and ends after the death of
Bishop Brandr, and Gu5mundr the Good was thenconsecrated Bishop; the Sagaof Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson andPorvaldr Snorrason is contemporaneous with that of
GuQmundr the Good, and it
ends after the death of Bishop
Brandr, as Sturla I>6r9arson
relates in the Islendinga Sggur.
Nearly all the sagas whosestories were set in Iceland
were written before Bishop
Brandr Saemundarson died,but those whose stories took
place after that were rnostly
not written until the poet
Sturla I>6r9arson compiled

Margar sggur ver9a her
samtiSa, ok ma JJO eigi allar
senn rita: saga Porlaks biskups ins helga ok Gu9mundarins goSa Arasonar, Jjar til erhann var vfg9r til prests; saga
GuSmundar ins dyra hefsk
Jjrimr vetrum eptir andlat
Sturlu ok lykr J?a, er Brandr
biskup er anda9r, en Gu9mundr inn g69i vigSr til biskups; saga Hrafns Sveinbjarnarsonar ok torvalds Snorrasonar er samtiQa sggu Gudmundar ins goQa, ok lyksk
hon eptir andldt Brands biskups, sva sem Sturla I>6r9arson segir 1 fslendingasggum.
Flestar allar sggur, )jaer er
her hafa ggrzk d Islandi, varu
ritaSar, a9r Brandr biskup
Saemundarson andaSisk, en
Jjasr sggur, er si9an hafa
ggrzk, varu litt ritaQar, a9r
Sturla skald I>6r9arson jag9i
fyrir
Islendingasggur,ok
haf9i hann j^ar til visendi af
fr69um mgnnum, ]?eim er
varu a gndver9um dggum

I Sturlunga Saga, ed. K. K&lund, 1906-11, I, 119-20.

44

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

the Islendinga Sggur; and forthis he relied upon information supplied by knowledgeable men who had lived in his
early years; some of it he got
from records written by people
who lived at the same time as
those of whom the stories tell.
He had also been able to witness many momentous events
which took place in his own
day. . . .

hans, en sumt eptir br^fum]?eim, er Jjeir ritu9u, er J>eim
varu samtida, er sggurnar eru
fra. Marga hluti mdtti hannsjalfr sja, J>d er d hans dggum
ger9usk til st6rti9enda. . . .

When it says in this text that Sturla wrote the Islendinga Sggur, the work referred to is that commonly known
now as the Islendinga Saga, which tells of events in the
Sturlung Age. But many scholars believe that the words'nearly all the sagas . . . {Flestar allar sggur . . .)' referto the works which are now called Family Sagas. It wasprobably P. E. Miiller who first put forward this view,^
and he concluded from this passage that the Family
Sagas were mostly written before 1201, the year when
Bishop Brandr died. Many later scholars shared thisopinion, and it was especially important that Finnur
J6nsson advocated it in his great history of the literature.
Many scholars, however, criticized this interpretation,
including N. M. Petersen, Gu9brandur Vigfusson, andKonrad Maurer. That perceptive scholar Gu9brandurVigfusson felt sure that there was something questionable in the text, and when the second vellum was examined, it was found to contain the very sentence which
I Sagabibliothek I, 1817, p. 248.

VI

R E F E R E N C E S TO S A G A - W R I T I N G

45

Gu9brandur Vigfusson had guessed should be there.
Bjorn M. Olsen discussed this problem in three works^
and, as it seems to me, it was he who finally solved it.
The text quoted follows the Krdksfjardarbdk, one of
the two main manuscripts of Sturlunga Saga. This text
is a little strange, since it gives no chronological limits
for these sagas, not saying when the events related inthem took place, but only that they were written before
the death of Bishop Brandr. There are other difficulties
as well. Of the sagas directly named in the 'Prologue', itis known that Gudmundar Saga Dyra and Prestssaga
Gudmundar Gdda must have been written a considerable
time after the death of Bishop Brandr, so that the evidence of the Krdksfjardarbdk, even about the sagas
named, is wrong. If the Family Sagas were included aswell, we should have to admit that some of them musthave been written after the death of Bishop Brandr, andevidence in support of this will be given later in thepresent essay.
But investigation has shown that in Reykjarfjardarbdk,
the other vellum manuscript of Sturlunga,^ the text ofthe passage is different, and reads:
Nearly all of those sagas
whose stories were set in Iceland before Bishop Brandr
Sxmundarson died were written, but those which took
place afterwards were mostly

Flestar allar sggur, Jjaer erggrzk hgf9u i Islandi, a9r
Brandr biskup Sasmundarson
anda9isk, vdru rita9ar, en
Jjser sggur, er si9an hafa
ggrzk, vdru litt rita9ar, a9r

1 Um Sturlungu in Safn III, 1897, pp. 193-510; Om den sdkaldte
Sturlungaprolog, 1910; Um Islendingasogur in SafnYl, 1937-9.
2 Sturlunga Saga, edition cited above I. 120.

46

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

not written before the poet
Sturla I>6r8arson compiled
the Islendinga Sggur.

Sturla skald I>6r9arson sag8i
fyrir Islendinga Sggur.

If these words were taken to apply to those sagas
which deal with the 'Saga Age' (i.e. Family Sagas), thelatter reading would only tell us that they were written
before the Islendinga Sggur of Sturla, which he can hardly
have started to compile before the mid-thirteenth century, or even later. But is it really true that the authorof this passage was talking about Family Sagas? Is not
P. E. Miiller's interpretation wrong on this point?
The Prologue is otherwise concerned only with sagasin the Sturlunga collection and sagas about later times.
Bjorn M. Olsen showed that the difficulties disappear if
the text is taken to apply to the so-called contemporary
sagas. Porgils Saga ok Haflida, Sturlu Saga, and Porldks
Saga all end before 1200; Prestssaga Gudmundar ends in
1203, but is concerned chiefly with the time before thedeath of Bishop Brandr, and the chief events related in
the Gudmundar Saga Dyra also took place before 1203.
Bjorn M. Olsen did not let the matter rest there. He
also showed that the Sturlunga Prologue was compiled
from one which Sturla had written himself and hadplaced at the head of his Islendingasggur, and the sentences under discussion would there have read:
Nearly all of those sagas whose stories were set in Iceland before Bishop Brandr Saemundarson died have been written, but
those which have taken place since have mostly not been written. ^I 'Flestar allar sggur, )?aer er ggrzk hgf8u a Islandi, a3r Brandr
biskup Sasmundarson andaQisk, eru ritaSar, en Tpser sggur, er sidan
hafa ggrzk, eru litt rita5ar.'

VI

REFERENCES TO S A G A - W R I T I N G

47

Since this was the case, since the sagas of the later
period had been little written, Sturla set to work andbegan to compile his book. Although in his Islendinga
Saga he mentions some events which took place before
the death of Bishop Brandr, the detailed account given
in it begins just after the death of Bishop Brandr. When
we realize this, the whole problem becomes clear. This
also explains why phrases which were natural as Sturla
wrote them have become clumsy in the Sturlunga Prologue, with two parallel main clauses with relative clauses
inserted, while the ending necessary for both of them (thesubsidiarytemporalclause) does notcome until afterwards.
The conclusion, therefore, is that all evidence suggeststhat the Sturlunga Prologue has no relevance to the
Family Sagas, and even if it had, it would only tell usthat many of them were written before the middle ofthe thirteenth century. Thus, we can make no use of
P. E. Miiller's interpretation of this Prologue in establishing the ages of the Family Sagas.
On the other hand, the evidence about saga-writing
which I quoted earlier, from the Grammatical Treatise,
the Saga of St Olaf, and the Hungrvaka, is sound andreliable as far as it goes. But if we are to learn more
about the ages of individual sagas, we must look forevidence of other kinds, and to this I shall now turn.^
I The manuscript Sth. perg. 2, 4to contains a list of books, written
in a hand said to date from about 1300. The list consists of: SkJQldunga
Saga, Rumverja Saga, two books, Sturlu Saga, Drauma Saga,
Eyrbyggja, Qnundarbrennu Saga, Viga-Glums Saga. See Saga Olafs
Konungs bins Helga, ed. O. A. Johnsen and Jon Helgason, 1941,
II, 886. This list is interesting, but it would have greater value if itwere older.

CHAPTER

THE AGES OF

VII

MANUSCRIPTS

IRST of all we have to consider the ages of manuscripts. Only very few manuscripts of Family Sagas
are older than 1300, but we should probably not attach
too much significance to this. It is always dangerous todraw hasty conclusions ex silentio, unless there is otherevidence as well. It may be mentioned that the profane
sagas of contemporary life (chiefly preserved in the
Sturlunga collection) are not found in manuscripts older
than the fourteenth century. In so far as sagas did not
circulate widely, and existed only in a few copies, it
could hardly be expected that more than very few copies
should be preserved, and it is less likely that the older
than the later manuscripts should survive. Since we haveso few very old manuscripts, the ages of sagas are generally delimited more closely by other evidence. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to consider the ages of manuscripts. It is, for example, of great significance that theoldest manuscripts of Njdls Saga are believed to datefrom about 1300, and that there are five of these. Theirlarge number assures us that the saga is not younger than
this date, for although the dating of manuscripts isgenerally somewhat uncertain, it is unlikely that theyshould all be supposed to be later than they really are.
It is also surprising that so many manuscripts should
appear at the same time, and that there should be noneolder. On the other hand, we must suppose that some ofF

Vn AGES OF MSS
49
the manuscripts have been lost, so that the saga must
be a good ten or even twenty years older than 1300.
Finnboga Saga is preserved only in Mgdruvallabdk which,as already said, was written between 1316 and 1350,
shall we say 1330-40. There is nothing to suggest thatthe saga is much older than that, and the evidence of themanuscript is valuable, for it gives a terminus ante quem.
The manuscript AM 162 D2, containing part of
Laxdcela Saga, is believed to date from about the middleof the thirteenth century, and this is also important, for
we might otherwise suppose that the saga was written
rather later than that.
The oldest manuscripts of Egils Saga, Eyrbyggja Saga,and Heidarviga Saga are not without importance, but inthese cases, other evidence shows that the sagas belong
to a still older period than these early manuscripts.
Thus, the age of manuscripts is sometimes of value inestablishing the ages of sagas. But we cannot base conclusions on the fact that a saga exists only in late manuscripts, least of all if the medieval manuscripts of it are
few. To prove that a saga was written late we need otherevidence.

CHAPTERHISTORICAL

VIII

EVIDENCE

E come now to what we may call 'historical evidence', i.e. a saga mentions people or events ofan age later than that with which it is concerned, or else
it alludes to practices or details of antiquity which givesome evidence of its age.
First of all we may mention the closing sentences of
the Droplaugarsona Saga, which are very famous, andnot without reason. It says there:W

After Ingjaldr was dead, Helga lived at Arnei9arsta5ir, as
well as I>orkell, son of Helga and Grimr. I>orvaldr had a soncalled Ingjaldr, and his son was I>orvaldr, who told this story.
A year after the priest I>angrbrandr came to Iceland, Helgi
Droplaugarson was killed.'^This is the only instance in which it is said that a
Family Saga was 'told', and in which the 'teller' is named.
But as soon as the passage is examined a little moreclosely, its faults come to light. Mention is made of
torkell, the son of Grimr, but in the next sentence itsays: 'I'orvaldr had a son.' It is obvious that some mistake has been made, and the usual explanation is that
'I>orkeir is a mistake for 'I>orvaldr'. This is an old correction, for it is found already in the text of the Fljdtsdoela Saga. We might thus suppose that 'I>orvaldr' was
I 'Helga bjo eptir Ingjald liSinn a Arnei8arstg5um ok Porkell,sonr Jieira Grims. porvaldr atti son, er Ingjaldr h^t. Hans sonr h6t
Porvaldr, er sag3i sggu Jjessa. Vetri si5ar en Pangbrandr prestr kom
til Islands fell Helgi Droplaugarson.'VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

51

the original reading. In that case, the man who told thestory must have lived about the same time as Ari theWise. The fault might also have arisen by dropping one
or more generations out of the genealogy, and this waswhat Bjorn M. Olsen supposed. ^ He looked for men
living in the Sturlung Age, who might have belonged tothis family. Jon Johannesson has suggested, on the other
hand, that the original author of the Droplaugarsona Sagadrew on a written account of these brothers, a summary
life, in which I>orvaldr was cited, but the compiler ofthe version in Mgdruvallabdk misunderstood this, andthought that torvaldr was the source of the saga itself.
Jon Johannesson mentions two small points which would
be explained on this supposition,^ but, as it seems to me,
his brilliant surmise has too little basis, and the explanation given by Bjorn M. Olsen, that a part of the genealogy has dropped out, is more probable. I can neither
accept nor reject Bjorn M. Olson's attempts to finddescendants of this family among the people of theSturlung Age, but if one or more generations have been
omitted from the genealogy, the time-limit given for theage of the saga would not be close, and it would be implied only that it was written in the latter part of thetwelfth century or in the early thirteenth century. But
in this case we must apply the rule which we usually
apply to the evidence of one manuscript alone; it is dangerous to rely on the text, and moreover, the text of the
Droplaugarsona Saga given in Mgdruvallabdk appears tohave suffered rather substantial alteration.
I See Safn VI, 17.

2 I.F. XI, pp. Ixiv-vii.

52

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

I shall mention some other examples of sagas in whichpeople who lived long after the events related took place
are named. Sometimes events of later ages are also mentioned, and well-known men are named in connexion
with them. The first example which I shall cite is from
Egils Saga, where it is told how Egill's bones were dug
up. 'The priest Skapti Porarinsson was present', says thesaga, and it goes on to give details telling how he struck
the skull with an axe.^ Skapti is mentioned in the
Porgils Saga ok Haflida and in Ari's List of Priests, andhe might have lived until after the middle of the twelfth
century.
Occasionally mention is made of people who musthave lived during the author's own time. In Njdls Saga
mention is made of Kolbeinn Ungi, the Hvammverjar,
and the Skogverjar, as well as of older people andfamilies.^ In these cases so many manuscripts agree that
we can have no doubt about the text. This goes to showthat Njdla cannot have been written before the second
half of the thirteenth century. But, when &orvar9r
I'6rarinsson is named in the manuscripts of one group(Y) alone, this should warn us to tread warily if manuscripts are few. The other manuscripts show that thisname has been interpolated, but what would we say if
we had manuscripts of the Y group alone?
In the genealogies of Laxdoela Saga mention is madeof Archbishop Eysteinn (d. 1188), of Ari the Strong(d. 1188), I'6r9r Gilsson (father of Hvamm-Sturla), of
Ketill, who was made Abbot of Helgafell (d. 1220), andI I.F. II, 299.

2 I.E. X I I , pp. Ixxv-vi.

VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

53

of his brothers Hreinn, Styrmir, and Ko9rdn. Laxdoela
Saga also names Brandr Porarinsson, who founded thechurch estate at Hiisafell, adding that his son was thepriest Sighvatr, 'who lived there for a long time'.^Finally, the family of the Vatnsfir9ingar is traced down
to Porvaldr Snorrason, who died in 1228.^
Needless to say, we may suppose that scribes inclined
to add names to genealogies in order to bring them closer
to their own time. Finnur Jonsson and other scholars
believe that they did so in a great many instances. But
in the case of Laxdoela, as in that of Njdls Saga, thenumber, age, and quality of the manuscripts are of greatsignificance. When we have only one manuscript, everything is uncertain, but when the manuscripts are manyand good, and some perhaps even old, it must be considered that we have an old text, perhaps even that of anarchetype.
I shall name a few more examples from sagas which
are preserved in several manuscripts. In Grettis Saga,
Sturla I>6r9arson (d. 1284) is named several times.
Sigur9ur Nordal has conjectured that the reference is toa book, a saga, which Sturla wrote about Grettir.
In Eyrbyggja Saga I>orfinnr of Straumfjgr9r 'fromwhom the Sturlungs are descended'^ is named. In thegenealogies of Ch. 65 of that saga, many people andfamilies of the thirteenth century are named, including
the Sturlungs, the Vatnsfir9ingar, and the Asbirningar.
Mention is also made of the exhumation of the bones of
1 'er )jar bj6 lengi'.
2 I.F. V, pp. xxv-vi.
E

3 'er Sturlungar eru fra komnir'.

54

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Snorri Go9i, Bgrkrthe Stout,and Cordis; and it is added:'Gu9ny BQ9varsd6ttir, mother of Snorri, I>6r9r andSighvatr, sons of Sturla, was present then'.^ The Wolfenbiittel manuscript and Melabdk add, after naming Gu9n;^,that she 'then had charge of the household at Hvammr'.^Gu9n^ certainly lived at Hvammr after the death ofSturla I'6r9arson (1183), and down to the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and after that she kept house forher son I>6r9r at Sta9r and at Eyrr, and in 1218 she waswith Snorri at Reykholt, where she died in 1221. The
words of the saga could have been written in the second
decade of the thirteenth century, although, of course,
they could equally well have been written later. ^I shall now list some examples from sagas of which
there are fewer manuscripts, and the details of theoriginal text are therefore more doubtful.
The Fldamanna Saga ends in a normal way according
to Melabdk, but in the transcripts of Vatnshyrna a
genealogy is traced down to Bishop Jgrundr and to J6n
Hdkonarson of Vi9idalstunga, and this is obviously alater addition (cf. the genealogies of Pdrdar Saga Hredu
as given in Vatnshyrna).^
In Eiriks Saga Rauda^ a genealogy is traced in bothmanuscripts to Bishop I>orldkr Runolfsson, Bishop
Bjarni Gilsson, and to 'the first Bishop Brandr'. This
1 'pd var )>ar vi6 stgdd Gu6ny Bg6varsd6ttir, m66ir Jieira Sturlusona, Snorra, p6r3ar ok Sighvats.'
2 'er \>a. var hOsfreyja 1 Hvammi'.
3 I.F. IV, pp. xlv-vi.
4 See Fldamanna Saga, ed. Finnur J6nsson, 1932, p. 71.
5 Ed. G. Storm. 1891, p. 48.

VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

55

must, therefore, be inherited from an older manuscript, from which both are descended, but in the
Hauksbdk a genealogy down to Lawman Haukr andothers is added.
According to both manuscripts of Bandamanna Saga,
Snorri Kalfsson of Melr (probably the one who died
1175) was descended from Oddr Ofeigsson.^
Ljdsvetninga Saga says: 'afterwards I'orvar9r torgeirsson used often to say when a tumult was made "nowlet us have the Veisa prank". '^ In this passage there is alacuna in A, and we have to rely on the C version alone.
Now we come to sagas preserved only in one medieval
manuscript or its equivalent.
Reykdoela Saga: 'the spear Vagnsnautr belonged
afterwards to I>orvar9r Porgeirsson'.^Groenlendinga Pdttr {Flateyjarbdk):^ a genealogy is
traced to Bishop Brandr, Bishop I>orlakr Runolfsson,and to Bishop Bjgrn (Gilsson). This may be comparedwith the end of Eiriks Saga Rauda.
Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa:^ 'Bjgrn had a church
built at Vellir and dedicated it to God and St. Thomas
the Apostle, about whom Bjgrn composed a fine drdpa;
this is what Runolfr Dagsson said.' An early emendationis Ddlksson for Dagsson, and Runolfr Dalksson was awell-known man who lived in the twelfth century.
1 I.F. VII, 363.
2 I.F. X, 73: 'hgfum mi VeisubragS'.
3 I.F. X, 213: 'Spj6tit Vagnsnaut atti si8an PorvarSr porgeirsson.'
4 See Eiriks Saga Rauda, ed. G. Storm, pp. 73-4.
5 Ed. R. C. Boer, 1893, p. 42: 'A Vgllum l^t Bjgrn g0ra kirkju okhelga meS gu6i Tomasi postula, ok um hann orti Bjgrn drdpu g66a.
Sva sag3i Runolfr Dagsson.'

56

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Sigur9ur Nordal believes that the reference is to a written
work. ^
Porsteins Pdttr Stangarhgggs^ contains a long genealogy down to people who lived in the thirteenth century, such as Ormr Svinfellingr and the sons of Sturla.
Vdpnfirdinga Saga: 'I>orkell was lucky in his descendants. His daughter Ragnhei9r was married to Loptr
I>6rarinsson, and they had nine children. Halla was theirdaughter, and she was mother of Steini, father of Halla,
mother of Bishop I>orlakr the Saint. Ragnhei9r was thesister of Bishop torlakr, and mother of Bishop Pall, ofOrmr Jonsson, and of the priest Jon Arnjjorsson' (d.
1224).^

It cannot be said that the sagas contain much of thiskind, and they almost give the impression that theirauthors did not care to introduce too much modernmaterial into sagas which were concerned so distinctly
with ancient times. But, on the other hand, if they did
mention people of later times, they could just as wellmention those of their own as of the intervening period.
When it says in Ljdsvetninga Sagathzt I'orvar9r I>orgeirsson 'used often {var vanr)' to use the words quoted
above (p. 55), this does not by any means show that hehad been dead for a long time when the passage waswritten, but only that he was off the scene. He went off
1 I.F. I l l , p. Ixxxiv.
2 IF. X I , 78-9.
3 I.F. X I , 65: 'porkell var kynssell ma6r. RagnheiSi, dottur hans,dtti Loptr Porarinsson, ok attu )?au niu bgm. Halla var dottir peira,moSir Steina, fg5ur Hgllu, moSur Porlaks biskups ins helga. Ragnhei6r
var systir Porlaks biskups, m66ir Pals biskups ok Orms Jonssonar okJons prests Amporssonar.'VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

57

the scene when he entered a monastery in his declining
years, and these words could have been written at thattime, for he was dead to the world. But they would be
still more natural after his death in 1207, so that they
could very well have been written in 1208, or 1218, orlater. The same may be said about the words quoted
from Reykdoela Saga.
Occasionally it is remarked in sagas that somethingused to be different from what it is now, i.e. at the time
when the saga was written; e.g. farms or buildings weredifferent, institutions or the lie of the land, customs orpractices.
In most cases so little is known about such things that
we cannot say when one change or the other took place,and indeed, some of them could well have occurred long
before the saga was written. Therefore, statements likethese do not give a precise date for every saga. Nevertheless, I consider that such things are very important indeciding the period when the Family Sagas, as a whole,were written. There are, in fact, so many examples that
it is unthinkable that they were all interpolated and,taken altogether, they show incontrovertibly that many
years must have passed between the time when theevents related took place and that when the sagas were
written. I do not think it rash to conclude that they showthat the sagas cannot have been written before the latterpart of the twelfth century, and can, indeed, have been
written in the thirteenth.
But if it can be said that some of the changes
mentioned occurred early, the memory of the older

58

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

conditions suggests that the sagas which preserve it were
not written very late. This does not allow of exact dating,but all the same, it has much significance.
In the following pages I shall cite some examples ofsuch things from several sagas, enough to give some ideaof their prominence. I shall not trouble whether or not
I have taken all the examples in the sagas from which I
gather them.
First I shall quote some passages from sagas whichrefer to farms, institutions, buildings, which were not
the same at the time of the author as they were when theevents took place.
Laxdoela quotes the words of Gestr Oddleifsson:'I will have my body taken to Helgafell, for that will be
the most noble place in this neighbourhood, and I
have often seen a light burning there.'^ This is a reference to the monastery which was moved to Helgafell
in 1184.
Laxdoela says that Hgskuldr made H9r9aland 'at the
point where the market town of Bergen has sincestood'.^ The market town was founded in the days of
Olaf Kyrri. Needless to say, there are many things in thesaga which show that it was written much later than that.
Heidarviga Saga :^ 'HesthQf9i who lives at the place now
called Sta9r in SkagafJQr9r.' Eiriks Saga Rauda in Skdlholtsbdk: 'There was a man called I>orfinnr Karlsefni,
1 I.F. V, 196: 'Ek vil mik lata fcera til Helgafells, pvi at si staSr
mun ver5a mestr h6r i sveitum; pangat hefi ek opt lj6s s^t.'
2 I.F. V, 22: 'par sem kaupstaSrinn 1 Bjgrgvin er siSan'.
3 Ed. K. Kilund, 1904, p. 102: 'HesthgfSi er byr par, er nu heitir
at Sta8 i Skagafir6i.'

VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

59

son of I>6r9r HesthQf9i, who lived in the north, in
Reynines in SkagafJQr9r, at the place which is now
called Sta9r {at Stad).'^ The words at Stad are not in
the manuscript, but they must have been in the original
text. In this passage, Hauksbdk has been altered, and its
text taken from Landndmabdk. In Sturlunga Saga andin the Bishops' Sagas this farm is always called Stadr
or Stadr i Reyninesi. It is not certain when the name waschanged, but it was most probably in the early years of
the twelfth century. This happened because, at sometime or other, all the land of the estate had been madeover to the Church and a church estate {stadr) had been
established there.
Laxdoela Saga says 'that is now deserted' (of Hrappssta9ir, Melkorkusta9ir, and Hafratindar).^
Laxdoela Saga and Eyrbyggja both contain many examples of the phrase: 'the marks of that can still be seen'.*In Droplaugarsona Saga it says of a hall: 'this hall still
stands on Mjovanes'.* In both versions of Pdrdar Saga
Hredu it says that I'6r9r built a hall at Hrafnagil 'whichis still standing today'. ^Sometimes the scribes are not content with such statements; they are more precise about the date, although insuch cases, the texts usually differ. Porvalds Pdttr
Vidfgrla says of the church built by I>orvar9r Spak1 'MaSr h^t Porfinnr karlsefni, son P6r8ar hesthgfSa, er bj6 norflr
i Reyninesi f Skagafir5i, er mi er kallat (at Sta8).'
2 I.F. V, 19, 28, 151: 'par er mi auSn'.
3 'S^r pess enn merki.'
4 I.F. XI, 155: 'Stendr sd skali enn i Mjovanesi.'
5 Islendinga Sogur, ed. Gu5ni Jonsson, VI, 1946, pp. 466, 485:
'pann sem enn stendr i dag'.

6o

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

BQ9varsson of Ass: 'it remained without any alteration'.*
These words are not in the Flateyjarbdk; but as Gu9brandur Vigfusson points out in a footnote to his editionof the Bishops' Sagas, the original text must have read:'and it still stands without any alteration'.^ This must be
an exact translation of the words of the monk Gunnlaugr
Leifsson, but in the Kristni Saga, which is based uponthis same work, it says of the church: 'it was still standing
when Bishop Botolfr was at H61ar, without any alteration
except for the turfs'.* Botolfr was bishop from 1238 to1246.

In the version of the Jons Saga Helga which follows
the Latin of Gunnlaugr most closely it says of J6n's
school: 'which we have seen with our own eyes'.* But
in the 'Oldest Saga' which was undoubtedly writtenconsiderably later than the Latin version of Gunnlaugr,
it says: 'the remains of the buildings can still be seen'.^Here the wording is changed and made to conform moreclosely to the style of the native sagas, but we can seethat the buildings must have fallen down by the time
this was written. In the Fdstbroedra Saga it is said of thehall at Reykjaholar that it was still standing ' right down
to the time when the second Bishop Magnus occupied
the See of Skalaholt'.^ These words are found in the ver1 Bisk. I, 44: 'en hon st68 sva at ekki var at ggrt'.
2 'En hon stendr (enn?) sva at ekki er at ggrt.'
3 Bisk. I, 7: 'hon st68 \>k er B6t61fr biskup var at H61um, svA at
ekki var at ggrt litan at torfum'.
4 Bisk. I, 235: 'hvern v^r sam me3 varum augum'.
5 Bisk. I, 163: 'ok enn s6r merki husanna'.
6 Fdstbroedra Saga, ed. Bjorn K. porolfsson, 1925-7, p. 88: 'allt till
pess, er Magnus biskup var at sta5num i Skalaholti inn siSari'.

Vin

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

6l

sions of Mgdruvallabdk and Flateyjarbdk, and in the
copies of the vellum once preserved in the Royal Library
it says: 'until Magnus Gizurarson was made Bishop . . . ' . *Magnus was bishop from 1216 to 1237. In the Hauksbdk,
on the other hand, the passage reads: 'it was still standing when the second Bishop Arni was consecrated
Bishop of Skalaholt'.^ This was in 1304.
In Porgils Saga ok Haflida mention is made of a hall which
I>orgils Oddsson built while in outlawry: 'and that hall
was still undamaged when Bishop Magniis died'.* Thesewords are found in manuscripts of the Reykjarfjardarbdk
group, but are not in those of the Krdksfjardarbdk group,
but in these, the text of the passage, as of manyothers, must have been shortened.* Reykjarfjardarbdk
must here preserve the original text of Sturlunga, butthat does not imply that Sturlunga preserves the originaltext of Porgils Saga which, indeed, is by no means
likely. Finally, I may notice that Pdrdar Saga Hredu, in
its A version, says that E>6r9r built a hall at Flatatunga:'it was a remarkably strong building; this hall remained
standing right down to the time when Egill was Bishop
of Holar'.^ This was 1331-41.
In studying the ages of sagas, scholars have attachedgreat weight to statements like these, but investigation
1 Ibid.: 'til pess er Magnus Gizurarson var8 biskup.'
2 Ibid.: 'hann st63 enn, er Ami biskup inn siSari var vig8r til
SkSlaholts'.
3 'ok si skali var pd dhrorligr, er Magnus biskup anda8isk'.
4 See Sturlunga Saga, ed. K. K5,lund, 1906-11, I, 32.
5 Islendinga Sogur, ed. Gu8ni Jonsson, VI, 1946, p. 446: "varpat fur8u sterkt hiis. St68 sd skali allt til pess er Egill biskup var &H61um.'

62

DATING THE SAGAS

shows plainly how deceptive they are. The differences inmanuscript readings show that there was a strong tendency to alter such sentences, and when there is morethan one manuscript their readings most often differ.
It is also clear that the readings of the original texts
always implied 'now' or 'still' without further specification ('still stands . . .', 'is still undamaged', etc.). Therefore, when instead of words like these, allusion is madein the manuscripts to the lifetime of one man or another,
this generally has no relevance to the original text, except
perhaps in the case of Pdrdar Saga Hredu. On the other
hand, it may well be that the variant readings are of some
importance for the history of the text and its development. Thus, Kristni Saga might, in this passage, bebased upon a manuscript written in the time of Bishop
Botolfr; Sturlunga might go back to a manuscript ofPorgils Saga ok Haflida written about the time when
Bishop Magnus died; Hauksbdk was certainly not written
long after the time when Arni Helgason was Bishop of
Skalaholt, and Haukr might have seen the hall then. In
the same way, the other manuscripts of Fdstbroedra
Saga might give evidence of the history of the texts
preserved in Mgdruvallabdk, Flateyjarbdk, and the copiesof the manuscript once in the Royal Library, without
preserving the original text.
Occasionally changes made in the countryside since
the time described in the saga are mentioned, and I shallcite a very few examples.
Heidarviga Saga says: 'at that time there was a great
forest in Hvitdrsi9a, as in many other parts of the

VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

63

country', and: 'at that time, and for long afterwards,
there was a bridge over the river, up by Bjarnafoss'.*
Laxdoela Saga: 'there was a dense forest in the valley
at that time'.^I see no reason to assemble further examples likethese, although it could easily be done. Such remarks
show an historical sense and an appreciation of thedifferences between the Saga Age and the age when thesagas were written, but obviously they cannot be used
for precise dating.
Very often, saga-writers allude to cultural matters,
objects, fashions, customs, which were formerly otherwise than they were when the saga was written, and thisis fully emphasized. I give a few examples.
Heidarviga Saga: 'it used to be the custom to place
the food on the^able in front of people, for in those days
there were no plates'.*
There are many examples like this one in Eyrbyggja
Saga where it is said: 'in those days it was the practiceamong merchants to employ no cooks, but mess-mateswould draw lots among themselves to decide who shouldtake charge of the cooking'; 'Egill had tasselled shoelaces, as was then the custom'; 'I>6rir had a knife hungon a strap round his neck, as was then usual'; 'at thattime there used to be outdoor privies on the farms';
1 Heidarviga Saga, ed. K. Kcilund, pp. 85, 88: 'pi var skogr mikill
i Hvitdrsi8u, sem pa var vl8a h^r a landi . . .', 'pa var brii i dnni uppi
hja Bjarnaforsi ok lengi si8an.
2 I.F. V, 165: 'skogr pykkr var 1 dalnum i pann ti8'.
3 Heidarviga Saga, ed. KMund, p. 73: 'En pat var si8r, at lagSrvar matr a borS fyrir menn, en pa varu ongvir diskar'.

64

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS'at Fr69a there was a large living-room and a lock-bed{lokrekkja) on the inner wall of the living-room, as wasthen the custom . . . meal-fires were lit every evening inthis living-room, as was the custom then'.*
Laxdoela says of a funeral feast: 'that was the practicein those days',^ and of the outdoor privy: 'that was very
common in those days';* of a long pin in a cloak: 'as wasthen common'.* Describing a pagan trial by ordeal{skirsla), Laxdoela says 'the heathens did not feel thatthey carried any less responsibility when such trials
were to be performed than Christians do now whentrials by ordeal are made'.^ The last sentence seems to
imply that trials by ordeal were in force when the saga
was written. It is known that they were held in Icelandin the twelfth century and the thirteenth, and last of all
in 1237. The Lateran Council of 1215 forbade clerics
to take part in them, although ordeals continued to beheld in Norway after that. Cardinal William of Sabena
forbade trials by ordeal in Norway in 1247, and mention is made in the Icelandic annals of a 'change of
1 I.F. IV, 104, 117, 161, 66, 145: 'pat var pa kaupmanna si8r
at hafa eigi matsveina, en sjalfir mgtunautar hlutu8u me8 s^r, hverir
bu3arvgr8 skyldi halda . . .', 'Egill haf8i skufa8a skopvengi, sem p ivar si8r til . . .', 'porir hafSi haft tygilknif a haisi, sem pd var t i t t . . .','I pann tima varu vitikamrar a boejum . . .', 'At Fr68a var eldaskali
mikill ok lokrekkja innar af eldaskalanum, sem pa var si8r . . . par viru
ggrvir maleldar hvert kveld i eldaskala, sem si3r var til.'
2 I.F. V, 73: 'pat var tizka pa i pat mund'.
3 Ibid., p . 145: 'i pann tima var pat mikil tizka".
4 Ibid., p . 219: 'sem pa var titt'.
5 Ibid., pp. 4 2 - 3 : 'Ekki pottusk heiSnir menn minna eiga i ibyrg8,
p i er sUka hluti skyldi fremja, en nu pykkjask eiga kristnir menn, p i
er skirslur eru ggrvar.'VIII

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

65

ordinance' in 1248. It is most likely that trial by ordeal
was then abolished in Iceland. It seems, then, that thispassage gives excellent evidence of age.
Vatnsdoela Saga says: 'at that time it was the custom
for the sons of noblemen to have some occupation'.*
It is worth noting at this point that an indication ofage may be given when saga-writers allude to objects orcultural practices which were fashionable at the time of
the author, but not at the time which he is describing(anachronism). A well-known example is that of thebuilding of stone in which, according to Njdla, Gunnhildr the Mother of Kings used to live. It is well known"that castles of stone did not become fashionable in
Norway until much later, possibly in the twelfth century,
and certainly in the thirteenth. The same may be saidof the heraldic signs described in Laxdoela and Njdla,
which heroes of these sagas are said to have borne when
they came from foreign lands. These must be based upon
contemporary practice, which can hardly be older than
the thirteenth century. I do not doubt that an observant
reader could assemble various points like these, but it isseldom possible to date the introduction of new objects
or fashions precisely.
It would obviously be possible to enumerate many
practices which were changed when Iceland became
Christian, and the learned men were well aware of manyof these. A great knowledge of the heathen religion isdisplayed in Snorri's Edda, and it is obvious that
1 I.F. VIII, 57-8 (cf. I.F. X, 109): 'pat var si8r rikra manna sonai pann tima at hafa ngkkura i8n fyrir hendi.'

66

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS; memories of it did not fade until the very end of thej Sturlung Age, and were subsequently preserved by the
I Edda.
We should also consider allusions to law and to legal
procedure. It may be considered certain that soundknowledge was preserved about assemblies {ping) andthe places where they were held, and the changes which
had been made in these, although only people wellversed in the law knew about the changes in the constitution and distribution of the godord.
In Eyrbyggja Saga (Ch. 38) mention is made of theproceedings taken after the death of Arnkell go9i, whichwere less vigorous than they should have been, with theresult that new regulations for the conduct of the prosecution in cases of manslaughter were introduced 'andthese have been maintained ever since'.^ In many
passages of the Eyrbyggja Saga ancient laws are mentioned,^ and some of the stories told in this saga conflictwith the Grdgds. Konrad Maurer* investigated this point
in detail, and reached the conclusion that Eyrbyggja Saga
was based upon ancient procedure, which was older thanthat of the Grdgds. Some other scholars have turned theirattention to passages in which sagas contradict theGrdgds, e.g. Vilhjalmur Finsen, Wilda, Karl Lehmann,and A. Heusler. Only a few of these inconsistencies(such as some in Njdla) can be explained as legal mistakes of the saga-writers, and most of them have to be
1 'ok hefir pat haldizk jafnan si8an'.
2 See I.F. IV, p. xxix.
3 Zwei Rechtsfdlle in der Eyrbyggja, 1896.

VIIIHISTORICAL EVIDENCE

67

explained in some other way. A. Heusler, ^ who wrote
most about this, maintained that, when the Family Sagas
conflict with the Grdgds, they are generally following anolder law. The problem has not been thoroughly studied
by later scholars, although it well deserves to be. A few
points have been noticed which rather weaken Heusler's
conclusions; he did not fully realize that the penalties
imposed in the settlement out of court must have beenquite different from the sentence. Others have pointed
out that, in a society which had no unified executive,
the letter and the practice of the law must have differed.
It should be added that it was a great pity that Heusler
did not write his book Zum isldndischen Fehdewesen in derSturlungenzeit (1912) before his Das Strafrecht der
Isldndersagas. If he had, he might have realized that the
Family Sagas sometimes follow the legal practices of theSturlung Age, while Grdgds preserves the law of the early
twelfth century, as may be noticed, for example, in
accounts of weregild.^ But although Heusler's conclusions
certainly need much modification, I think there are a good
many instances left in which Family Sagas do preserve
memories of an older law. This is obvious in their references to laws of matrimony. As they are laid down in
the Grdgds, these laws had been subjected to strong
ecclesiastical influence, and the changes made in themwere so radical that it may be said that most people
would know about the older conditions. On the other
hand, many legal changes were comparatively slight, and1 Das Strafrecht der Isldndersagas, 1911.
2 See Einar (5l. Sveinsson, Um Njdlu, § 10.

%^

68

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

in such cases it is very remarkable that memories ofolder conditions should survive. It may be said thatpoints like these tend to place the sagas in which theyoccur in a rather earlier period, although we have also
to consider the reliability of the oral sources and thehistorical interest and proficiency of the individual
authors.
.
In the latter decades of the thirteenth century radical•\ changes were made in the civilization of the Icelanders'' as well as in their laws. They then submitted to the Kingof Norway, and new laws were established, which
entailed great alteration, not only in the system ofgovernment, but also in the administration of justiceand in legal procedure in general. The new laws werebased largely upon Norwegian ones, in which the technical terms differed, to some extent, from those used in
the older Icelandic law. The first law-code compiled
under Norwegian influence was Jdrnsida, introduced in
1271, and the next was Jdnsbdk, introduced in 1281; andwe may also mention the laws of Christian observanceof Bishop Arni, introduced in 1275. Since these newlaws differed sharply from those of the Republic, bothin substance and in terminology, there is some likelihoodthat we may notice it if a saga-writer confuses the lawsof his own time with the ancient ones. This seems to have
happened occasionally, and when it does it gives evidenceof age.
Karl Lehmann^ maintained that in Njdla, which, inmatters of law, is based largely upon an old legal codex,
I Die Njdlssage, 1883.

VIIIHISTORICAL EVIDENCE

69

the influence of post-republican law-books, both interminology and implication, may sometimes be detected,
and especially the influence of Jdrnsida. Many scholars
have accepted this view and since, if it is correct, it
provides such weighty evidence of age, I considered it
in detail in my edition of Njdla. I attempted to dismiss
everything which could be explained in any other way,
but there were some points left over, indisputable ones as
it seemed, and so many of them that they could not possibly have arisen by accident. It appeared that all ofthese could be traced to Jdrnsida, or to legal practices
introduced after Iceland had submitted to the King,
although nothing could be found which suggested theinfluence of Jdnsbdk. This is, in fact, among the mosttelling evidence of age in the whole saga.
Hugo Gering remarked on the words of Ospakr inEyrbyggja (Ch. 58): hvdrki vdru gefin nd goldin ne sglum
seld; and he said that in Icelandic law such a formulaconsisting of two parts only was used, while one consisting of three parts did not occur before the Jdrnsida.^
But on this point the learned Gering was mistaken, for in
Grdgds we find in one passage: . . . ok hann hefir pat
eigigefit negoldit ne sglum selt.^ This shows how cautious
we must be in judging such details.
In the old days, the authority of the godi {godord) was
not territorially limited, except to some extent by thedivision of the country into Quarters, and exemption
1 See Eyrbyggja Saga, ed. H. Gering, 1897, pp. xvii-viii.
2 Grdgds II, 1879, p. 521; III, 1883, p. 392; cf. Grdgds lb, 1852,P- 123; II, 510.
F

70

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

from the restrictions which this implied could be obtained. Even in the Sturlung Age when, in some regions,the 'hundred' {herad) was the real unit, people remained
fully conscious of this characteristic of the godord. Whensagas refer to the godord simply as if they were territorial,
this is the mark of a later age, when the country was
divided among sheriffs {syslumenn). 1 quote the following
examples:Hardar Saga (the longer version) :i 'Grimkell held the
godord over all these districts.'
Kjalnesinga Saga:^ Porgrimr of Hof 'held authority all
the way up to N^ja Hraun {Minna Hraun, manuscript A),
and this is called the Brundoelago9or9'. Porgrimr's authority must have extended from Botnsa; Biii assumed authority after him: 'all the way from N^ga Hraun to Botnsd'.
Finnboga Saga:^ Asbjgrn Dettiass held a godord 'over
Flateyjardalr, and up to the boundary of his brother-inlaw JJorgeirr'.
Pdrdar Saga Hredu {B version).* Qzurr 'held a godord
over the upper part of SkagafJQr9r and northward to theboundary of the sons of Hjalti'. Mi9fjar9ar-Skeggi was'godi over Mi9fJQr9r and many other districts'.
1 Islendinga Sogur II, 1847, p . 26: 'Grimkell hafBi go5or8 yfir
pessum sveitum gllum.'2 Ed. J. Posthumus, 1911, pp. 6, 68: 'haf8i mannaforra8 allt til
Nyjahrauns (Minna Hrauns A) ok kallat er BrundseIago3or8', '. . . allt
fri Nyjahrauni til Botnsar'.
3 Ed. H. Gering, 1879, p. 3: 'Um Flateyjardal ok upp til mots vi8
porgeir, mag sinn.'
4 Islendinga Sogur, ed. Gudni J6nsson, VI, 426, 401: "hafSi
go&or5 um hinn efra hlut Skagafjar6ar ok lit til mots vi8 Hjaltasonu','. . . go8or8sma8r yiir Mi8fir8i ok vida annars staSar'.

VIIIHISTORICAL EVIDENCE

71

Gunnars Pdttr Keldugnipsfifls:^ torgrimr 'held agodord between Jgkulsa and Lomagmipr. He abused his
authority, and laid hands on the farmers' property, bothoxen and horses, and because of all this he became very
unpopular.' It is obvious that this is a description of awicked sheriff and not of a godi.
Fljdtsdoela Saga:^ 'I>i9randi held authority in Njar9vik
and up to Flj6tsdalshera9 as far as Selfljot. Selfljot flows
from the moor on the eastern side, between Gilsarteigr
and Ormssta9ir, and then it runs down into the Lagarflj6t. Selfljot marks off the district to the south andLagarfljot to the west, and this is called the tJtmannasveit. This was the property of a hundred and seventy
farmers.'*
Under the new constitution the office of Lawspeaker{Iggsggumadr) was abolished and replaced by that of theLawman {Iggmadr). The titles were so much alike that
there was always the danger that later writers would
describe the Lawspeakers of the Republic as Lawmen.
On the other hand, the functions of the two differedconsiderably, and we can sometimes see that the practices of later times are being described. Mention is made1 Islendinga Sogur, ed. Gu8ni Jonsson, X, 455: 'hafSi go8or8
milli Jokulsir ok Lomagmips. Hann for ilia me8 sinu go8or8i. Hann
t6k upp goz fyrir basndum, bas&i yxn ok hesta; var8 hann af pessu
oUu mjok ovinsasll.'
2 Ed. K. KMund, 1883, p. 7: 'pi8randi itti mannaforriS um
NjarSvik og upp i h^raS a3 Selflj6ti. Selfljot gengr fyrir austan lir
heiflinni milli Gilsirteigs og Ormssta8a og svo fellr pa8 ofan i Lagarflj6t fyrir vestan, og er pa3 kolluS Utmannasveit. petta var p i hundra3
b6nda eign og Ixx.'
3 Cf. Gu8mundr J6nsson in Eimreidin, 1955, p. 249.

72

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

of Lawmen, who gave legal decisions, in Svarfdoela Saga
(Ch. ii), Hdvardar Saga (Chs. i and 3), and in Grettis
Saga (Ch. 77). In the last-named saga (Ch. 72) mention 1,
is also made of a Iggretta (i.e. legislative council) on-"Hegranes. This expression indicates a late date.

CHAPTERIXFAMILY SAGAS AND
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
T this point it is perhaps appropriate to consider
i. another question. Is it possible that events, people,
or incidents which took place in the time of theirauthors could have provided models for the charactersand events described in the sagas?
It is a long time since scholars first thought of thispossibility. Gu9brandur Vigfusson and Kr. KMund^
remarked on the similarity between the 'Deildartunga
case' in Sturlunga and the law-suit about the inheritanceof torsteinn Surtr, described in the Laxdoela Saga,
while Bjorn M. Olsen noticed similarity between theaccount given in Sturlunga of the fall of the Vatnsfir9ingar (1232) and Ch. 63 of Laxdoela,^ and again
between a story told in Viga-GMms Saga and events
which took place in EyjafJQr9r in the time of Sighvatr
Sturluson.* Bjorn Sigfusson* has independently noticed
a similarity between these last two. Stefan Einarsson has
remarked on a similarity between Laxdoela Saga (Ch. 75)
and events described in Ch. 16 of Porgils Saga ok
Haflida.^ I have also touched on these problems, both inA

1
OriginesIslandicaen,igo5,p.J3y;Aarb0gerfornord.Oldkyndighed,
1901, p. 387; cf. Finnur J6nsson, Litt. Hist., ed. 2, II, 551.
2 Um Sturlungu in Safn III, 437-8.
3 Um Islendingasogur in Safn VI, 359-62.
4 Arkivfor nord.fil., 1937, pp. 62 ff.
5 Skirnir, 1953, p. 212.

74

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

a general way in a lecture delivered before a philologicalcongress in 1935,^ and in various other works.^
The scholar who has compared the Family Sagas with
Sturlunga in closest detail is Bar9i Gu9mundsson. In
1939 he delivered some broadcast talks about Njdls Sagaand the age in which it was written,* and in later years
he has published a series of papers in Andvari.* Hewrote a separate paper on Qlkofra Pdttr,^ and two on
Ljdsvetninga Saga,^ which were later expanded and published as a book.
It must be said that all these attempts to find similarities between the sagas and events of the age in which
they were written present exceedingly difficult problems.
In the first place, similar incidents often occur in real
life, without there being any relationship between them.
Secondly, while there may be some literary relationshipbetween a Family Saga and a story of contemporary life,
it may be difficult to decide which is the borrower. If we
can be sure that there is some direct relationship between
a Family Saga and contemporary history, then it iscertainly probable that the saga is the borrower, but itneed not be so in every case. For example, I think thatthe corselet, Fulltriii, which I'orvar9r of Saurbcer wore
1 Published in Acta Philologica Scandinavica XII, 71-90.
2 About Laxdoela in my edition (I.F. V, 1934), especially p. xxxiii(on Asbjgm Gu8mundsson and Helgi HarSbeinsson); about Njdla in
Skirnir, 1937, pp. 15 ff.; A Njdlsbud, 1943, 11, 25-7; Sturlungaold,
1940, p. 87-8; in my edition of Njdls Saga (I.F. X I I , 1954), pp. cxiv-v.
3 Published in Alp^dubladid 25/3, 1/4, 27/4-29/4, 1939.
4 Andvari, 1947, 1949 (1950-1), 1955.
5 Ibid., 1951, afterwards published separately.
6 Ibid., 1950-1; Ljdsvetninga Saga og Saurbceingar, 1953.

IX

F A M I L Y SAGAS AND H I S T O R Y

75

at the battle of 0rlygssta9ir (1238), took its name from
Viga-Gliims Saga.^
There are many possibilities in cases like these, andthe problem is tricky, and has not yet been fully studied
from all aspects. It would, therefore, be wise not to use
such things as the basis for dating sagas, but rather tolook for other evidence.
1 Cf. Viga-Glums Saga, ed. G. Turville-Petre, 1940, p. xxxvii,
footnote. In Viga-Glums Saga (Ch. 14) Gliimr names his 'patrons'(fulltruar) as his purse (fesjddr), his axe (ex), his log store-house(stokkabiir). This strange use of the word fulltriii is well understandable if we consider its older usages on the one hand and the foreign
tale upon which the concept is based (integer amicus) on the other.
After this clever story was written it was natural that a man should
call his corselet his 'patron' (fulltrui), but before this it would not be
so easy to understand. It should be mentioned that corselets generally
had feminine names (see H. Falk, Altnordische Waffenkunde, 1914,
p. 178, and cf. the pulur in Snorra Edda). Exceptions are Sigfussnautr,
which is masculine (-nautr masc.) and Fulltrui in Sturlunga. I may
also mention nati which is a variant of ndin in the pulur and undoubtedly a scribal error for that word.

CHAPTER

LITERARYX

RELATIONS

E have next to consider the literary relations
between the sagas. Of all the means of deciding
the ages of sagas, it is their literary relations which aremost fruitful. It is well known that this is the case with
the Kings' Sagas, but the same conditions apply to the
Family Sagas, although research is not so far advanced.
I shall now attempt to explain this in a few words.
The expression 'literary relationship' implies that theauthor of a saga shows in his own work that he knew anolder written work. It may be that he uses the older work
consciously, or it might be that he has been influenced
by the older work without being conscious of it. It
might be that he had the older work lying on the tablein front of him, but it might be that he had read it
earlier, or heard it read. There is yet another possibility.
The author of a saga might have written a summary of
the older work, or of some chapters of it, and he might
have relied on this summary, and not on the work itself.
We have to bear all these possibilities in mind when we
attempt to decide questions of literary relations.
We may be faced with grave difficulties, for it is only
rarely that reference is made in one saga to another.
Such references to sagas are often to be found in theLandndmabdk, as I have shown by examples, and they
are occasionally found in Family Sagas. To quote someinstances, Egils Saga refers to Hdkonar Saga Gdda;

W

X

LITERARY RELATIONS

77

Eyrbyggja refers in its last chapter to Laxdoela Saga andHeidarviga Saga; Laxdcela Saga refers to Porgils Saga
Hgllusonar and to Njardvikinga Saga; Grettis Saga refers
to Eiriks Saga Jarls (perhaps Fagrskinna), Laxdoela,
Bandamanna Saga, and Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa.
I think that investigation will show that all these references apply to written works.
But much more often, a saga contains no reference toanother, and yet the two correspond with each other insuch a way that literary relations are probable. In suchcases it is often difficult to reach a conclusion. Material
similarity need not necessarily prove scribal relationship;
the same incident might have occurred twice independently; the same motif may come into being in two
independent traditions. Moreover, the influence of one
oral tradition upon another is a phenomenon widely
known.
But the closer the likeness is, and the more numerous
and distinctive the incidents involved, the greater is thelikelihood of literary relationship. Differences in material
do not in themselves prove that there was no literary
relationship, for these differences may arise from othercauses. It may be that the author of the saga B knew
saga A, but rejected its story, partially or totally, because
he knew another source or other sources, written or oral,
in which he placed greater faith, and therefore followed
more closely. It might also happen that the author of B,
although he k n e w ^ , diverged from it because he thoughtthat its account was improbable or its story inartistic, or
because he saw the people and the events described in a

78

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

different light. Inanearlierchapter of this essay (pp. 35-7)
I remarked upon instances in which a chapter of one
saga is written to contradict a chapter in another. This
has also to be considered as literary relationship.
Saga-writers seem rather frequently to avoid writing
in detail about events which had already been describedin an earlier saga. Excellent examples of this may befound in Eyrbyggja, as was remarked by Gu9brandurVigfusson and later considered by H. Gering, and it
seems to have been very usual.
Sometimes we come upon instances in which a sagawriter more or less avoids repeating events told in anolder saga, and yet he does relate some of them, althoughrather differently. The explanation of this is obviouslythat the later saga-writer thought it unnecessary to
repeat what the older one had said, when he had no
criticism of it to make, but he wrote down the incidents
which he had heard, read or interpreted in another way.
It is worth remarking that it was contrary to the objective
narrative style of the sagas to discuss corrections, or, if
the author was expressing his own opinions, to say so.
Such things were generally put down as facts, in ordinary
narrative style.
Much more could be said on this score. For example,
the author of a saga sometimes writes with the assumption that the reader would be aware of the things which
he knew from a well-known book. This often happens
and it is fairly easy to detect. Often individuals or objects
are talked of as if they had already been described in thesaga, although the description was really in the author's

X

LITERARY RELATIONS

79

source. I may cite a good example of this from the Eyrbyggja
Saga. In Ch. 24 we read of events which led to the discovery of Greenland by Eirikr the Red. The saga says:
At this same meeting I>orgestr the Old and the sons of
I>6r9r Gellir prosecuted Eirfkr for the slaughter of the sons ofI>orgestr, who had lost their lives in the autumn when Eirikr
went to Brei5ab61sta9 to fetch the plank-beams.^
No mention of these plank-beams had been made in
Eyrbyggja before, but they had been mentioned in thesource which the author was following, whether this wasan older Eiriks Saga Rauda or an early Landndmabdk.
It may be added that, if there were very well-known
oral tales, the same thing could happen; reference could
be made to them even though they were not written
down, but only to the best known of them.
The most certain indication of literary relationship isin verbal similarity. Naturally, we can attach little significance to the occurrence of the same proverb or ofwell-known expressions in two works. Moreover, scholars
must beware of concluding that there is literary relationship because of short standardized sayings attributed toa man, which may have been widely known in oral
tradition. But leaving these and other such things aside,
it can be said, in general, that verbal similarity gives
evidence of literary relationship. Obviously, we need tobe cautious and to appreciate the difference between
greater and lesser similarities. One word, one sentence
1 'A pessu sama pingi sottu peir Porgestr inn gamli ok synir
P6r3ar gellis Eirik inn rau3a um vig sona Porgests, er litizk hQf3u um
haustit, p i er Eirikr sotti setstokkawa a Brei8ab61stad.'8o

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

may appear by chance in two works, but the greater thesimilarity, the more distinctive and significant it is, thegreater are the probabilities of literary relationship. At
the same time, absence of similar wording is not conclusive evidence that there is no literary relationship, but
we must then have doubts unless there should be compelling reasons for supposing it.
Most scholars will be in general agreement with what
I have said about the value of verbal similarity for
deciding whether there are literary relations. Nevertheless, the advocates of the free-prose theory are not of
one mind on this problem. Liestol, as I believe, showsin more than one passage that he hesitates to denyliterary relationship when the wording is similar. Heusler
and many other adherents of the free-prose theory go
rather further. Heusler suggested, for example, that thetwo versions of Bandamanna Saga were independent
texts of two oral variants. I have recently seen a scholar
go so far as to maintain that the texts of Fdstbroedra Saga,
Hauksbdk on the one hand, and the rest of the manuscripts on the other, were independent texts of variantsof an oral saga. This might be called reducing the theory
to an absurdity. In earlier pages I discussed the strengthof this theory's foundations, and there is no reason to say
more about it at this point.
While it may appear certain that there are literary
relations between two works, it may still be difficult todecide which was the giver and which the receiver. But
yet it can often be seen when a story has been shortened,as I remarked earlier. And it often happens, although not

X

LITERARY RELATIONS

8l

necessarily in every case, that when one saga has imitatedthe episodes of another, some sign of this is shown; e.g.
the secondary version contains 'blind' motives or suchlike faults. I may quote an example from Heidarviga
Saga and Njdls Saga. Heidarviga Saga tells of a portent
which appeared to iJorbJQrn of Veggir on the morning
before the battle of the moor:
torbjgrn Brunason got up early at Veggir and told his
servant to get up too: 'and we shall go to I>orgautr in thesmithy today and shall forge there'; this was early in themorning, just at sunrise. I>orbjgrn called for their breakfast,
but it is not related what was served, except that the housewife
put a dish on the table before them. t>orbjgrn said that thiswas not good food, and he hurled the dish at her back. She
turned and was angry at this and spoke to him sharply, as theyboth did to each other: 'and you', said he, 'just serve up food
which is nothing but blood; and a wonder it is that you do
not see anything wrong with it'. Then she answered him
calmly: 'I did not serve up anything which you could not
well enjoy, but I think it none the worse that you have seen
portents which show that you will soon be in your grave.
Indeed, you have seen your fetch.' He answered in a verse . . .
Then she ran off and picked up a cheese and threw it in frontof him, and she sat down on the dais on the opposite side andwept. I>orbjgrn spoke in another verse , . . 'but yet things
seem strange now; it seems to me as if both the gable-ends
had been taken away from the house, and a heavy stream
seems to flow through the building from the moor in thenorth. The cheese looks to me like nothing but earth, and thatis how it tastes.'^
I Porbjgm Briinason st68 upp snimma a Veggjum ok bi8r huskarl
sinn standa upp me8 sdr,—'ok skal fara upp til smi3ju i dag til Porgauts
ok skal smi8a par', pat var snimma, pegar i solar uppris. Hann kvaddi

82

D A T I N G T H E SAGASThis is what Njdla says about the last supper of Njdll:
Now it is to be told that, at Berg)j6rshvall, Bergjiora said
to her household: 'Now you should choose your own food thisevening, so that everyone may have what he likes best, forthis is the last evening on which I shall place food before myhousehold.' 'That must not be,' said those who were present.
'But that is how it will turn out,' said she, 'and I could tell
you of many more things if I pleased; and this will be a signof it that Grimr and Helgi will come home this evening
before the household have finished supper, and if this turns
out, so will the other things which I say.' Then she placed
the food on the table, and Njdll said: 'Things look strange
to me now, and it seems as if I can see through the wholeroom, and as if both the gable-walls had gone, and the wholetable and food were covered with blood.'^peim dggur3ar, ok var pat eigi i kve8it, hvat fengit var annars, enhiisfreyja setti fyrir p i trygil i bor3it. porbjgrn vittar, at honum s^
eigi vel fengit, ok rekr me8al herSa henni trygilinn. Hon snysk vi3
ok ver3r ilia vi3 ok maelti vi8 hann hrapalligt, ok svi hvirt vi8 annat,—'ok berr pvi pat fram', segir hann, 'er ekki er i nema bl63 eitt, ok
undr, er pu s6r eigi missmi3i i pvi'. Hon svarar honum p i stilliliga:'Ekki bar ek pat fram, er eigi maettir pti vel neyta, ok setla ek eigi pvi
verr, at pau undr beri fyrir pik, at pii s6r britt i helju, ok vist mun
petta pin fur3a vera.' Hann kva3 vlsu . . . p i hleypr hon i braut oktekr osthleif ok kastar fyrir hann; hon sezk i pallinn g8rum megin
ok graetr. porbjgm kva3 visu a3ra . . . 'En p6 bregSr mi kynligu vi8;
undan pykki m^r nd gaflhla9it vera hvarttveggja undan husinu, oki synisk m^r falla strgng eptir husinu ok nor3an af hei3inni, en moldein synisk m6r ok svi kennisk mdr eigi si3r ostrinn, sji er ek et.'(Heidarviga Saga, ed. K. K^lund, 1904, pp. 82-3.)
I N u er til mils at taka at Bergporshvali, at Bergpora mselti til
hj6na sinna: ' N u skulu8 \>€r kj6sa y3r mat i kveld, at hverr hafi pat,er mest fysir til, pvi at penna aptan mun ek bera si8ast mat fyrir hj6n
mln.' 'pat skyldi eigi vera,' segja peir, er hji viru. 'pat mun p6 framkoma,' segir hon, 'ok m i ek p6 segja af miklu fleira, ef ek vil, ok mun
pat til marka, at peir Grimr ok Helgi munu heim koma i kveld, i8r
menn eru mettir. Ok ef petta gengr eptir, p i mun svi fara annat sem
ek segi.' SiSan bar hon mat a bor3. Njill mslti: 'Undarliga synisk

X

LITERARY RELATIONS

83

It is obvious that in the Heidarviga Saga the removalof the gable-wall has significance in the story, and stands
in relation to the river which flows from the moor in thenorth, for this is the symbol of Bar9i's assault. The
vision of blood, in this text, symbolizes the battle andthe shedding of blood, but in Njdla it symbolizes deathin general, and it has no specific significance that thegable-walls should be gone, although it has poetic force
and heightens the eeriness of the vision.
It should be added that examples may, no doubt, befound in which a later writer has improved on the older
story. There are many possibilities, and it is sometimes
difficult to arrive at conclusions.
It is especially helpful in dating Family Sagas if we
can trace literary contact between them and other works
which can be dated with reasonable precision. In this,the Kings' Sagas and Landndmabdk are especially valuable.
One of the most important observations of this kind
was made when Sigur9ur Nordal showed that Fdstbroedra Saga had been used by the so-called Middle
Saga of St Olaf, which is now lost, although its existence
can be proved from later sources. Sigur9ur Nordal has
shown that Styrmir the Wise used this book when hewrote his Saga of St Olaf, and Snorri, who probably
wrote during the years 1220-30,1 based his Saga of
St Olaf on that of Styrmir. It could reasonably bem^r mi. Ek pykkjumsk sji um alia stufuna, ok pykki mdr sem undans^ gaflveggimir bi8ir, en bl68ugt allt bor8it ok matrinn.' (I.F. X I I ,324.)
I See S. Nordal, Om Olav den helliges Saga, 1914, pp. 142 ff.

84

DATING THE SAGAS

conjectured that the Middle Saga was written ten years
earlier, but it could equally well have been written
twenty years earlier or even more, and the Fdstbroedra
Saga is older than this. The Fdstbroedra Saga was, therefore, written at the latest in 1210, and it may have been
written considerably before that. The Family Sagas, asa branch of literature, cannot possibly have begun later
than 1210. I have explained this in some detail because
Paul V. Rubow^ once made the suggestion in an article
that the Norwegian translation of Tristrams Saga, which
Brother Robert made in 1226, was the beginning of
the Family Sagas. There is really no evidence for suchan assertion, and the relationship of Fdstbroedra Saga
with the Kings' Sagas shows with certainty that Family
Sagas flourished before King Hakon Hakonarson began
to have the French romances translated.
I shall now cite some examples of relationship between
Kings' Sagas and Family Sagas. In Egils Saga reference
is made to a Saga of Hakon the Good, and on this point
we need no further evidence, although it is anotherquestion what this saga was like. There are also literary
relations between Egils Saga and Heimskringla, and
G. Storm^ was probably right in suggesting that Egils
Saga had been used in the compilation of Heimskringla.
This opinion does not conflict with the view that Snorri
might have been the author of Egils Saga, and is reallyirrelevant to it. Indeed, Sigur9ur Nordal favours both ofthese theories.
1 Smaa kritiske breve, 1936, pp. 7 ff.
2 Snorre Sturlassons Historieskrivning, 1873, pp. 52-3.

X

LITERARY RELATIONS

85

It can hardly be doubted that the author of Hallfredar
Saga knew one saga or another about Olaf Tryggvason.
Evidence of this may be found in the way in whichsome people, who are known from sagas about Olaf
Tryggvason, are named in the Hallfredar Saga without
introduction. At the same time there is every probability
that Snorri knew the Hallfredar Saga. ^In his edition of Viga-Gltims Saga G. Turville-Petre
noticed a similarity between that saga and Heimskringla.
on which I would like to make a remark. In Ch. 9 of VigaGMms Saga we read of a dream which Glumr dreamed:
Hann })6ttisk vera liti staddr d bee sfnum ok sjd ut til
fjar9arins. Hann ]?6ttisk sja konu eina ganga litan eptir heradinu,
ok stefndi Jjangat til I'verdr; en hon var sva mikil, at axlirnar
toku lit fjgllin tveggja vegna. En hann Jjottisk ganga or gar9i
d m6t henni ok bau9 henni til sin; ok si9an vakna9i hann.
This is the text of the Mgdruvallabdk which, in thispassage, differs little from that of AM 445c, 4to, themost noticeable difference being that the latter reads:
sjd it eptir firdinum. The story is supported by a verse
ascribed to Gliimr, of which the authenticity need not
be questioned, and the poet describes the arrival of thewoman, saying that she was seen walking 'in unnatural
size' {i miklum auka) and 'it seemed to me' {me'r pdtti)that she stood 'beside the mountains' {med fjgllum). Thisverse appears to provide the model for the prose.
Now, in Heimskringla we read of the magical voyage of
the wizard:
1 See Hallvard Lie, Studier
I.F. VIII, pp. Ixi-iii.
G

HeiTnskringlas stil, 1937, pp. 54-8;

86

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

En hann lag9isk i brot ok vestr fyrir land, allt fyrir Eyjafjgr9.
For hann inn eptir Jjeim firdi. Par for moti honum fugl sva
mikill, at vcengirnir toku lit fjgllin tveggja vegna, ok fjgl9i
annarra fugla, bse9i storir ok smdir.^
We have no older source of the voyage of the wizard
to Iceland, and it is probable that Snorri was the first to
write about it. Hence we might suppose that the details
in Snorri's description of the wizard's encounter withthe elemental spirits {landvcettir) of EyjafJQr9r weremodelled on the story told in Viga-Gliims Saga. It is
well known that Snorri would sometimes complete his
stories by such means.^
There is no need to explain in detail that in some of
the Family Sagas, which for various reasons are believed
to be written late, the use of the Kings' Sagas may be
noticed. Such is the case with Vatnsdoela Saga andGrettis Saga, which probably drew on Fagrskinna, andwith Njdla whose author used one or other of the sagasof Olaf Tryggvason. One of the sagas of Olaf Tryggvason
appears to have been known to the author of Laxdcela
Saga. Besides this, the Laxdoela Saga appears to be usedin the Arnamagnaean manuscript of the translation of
Oddr's Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, and this provides
another limit for the age of Laxdoela Saga. I shall mention two further points on which there is correspondence
between the Family Sagas and the Kings' Sagas.
Sigur9ur Nordal pointed out in his edition of Heidarviga Saga that some of the verses in it bear certain
1 6l4fs Saga Tryggvasonar, Ch. X X X I I I (I.E., XXVI, 271).
2 See S. Nordal, Snorri Sturluson, 1920, pp. 206 ff.

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LITERARY RELATIONS

87

resemblances to the verses of other early scalds, and heremarked especially on their resemblance to the verses
found in sagas which he believed to be written at
I^ingeyrar. He thought it likely that the verses in
Heidarviga Saga were composed by the author of thesaga, or by his informants, or else revised by the author.
But Sigur9ur Nordal's list of similarities does not convince me. If we read through the scaldic poems, we caneasily find many resemblances between verses by various
scalds. The scalds themselves, probably unconsciously
rather than consciously, imitated each other, and wemust also remember the many years in which the verses
were preserved orally; this provided sufficient time forthe one to influence the other. But if we doubt that thesesimilarities prove literary dependence of Heidarviga Saga
upon the books written at Pingeyrar, we have no proof
that Heidarviga Saga was written after 1200.
Ljdsvetninga Saga contains a story about the death ofHallr Otryggsson, and a similar story is told in Morkinskinna and Heimskringla. Bjorn Sigfusson has comparedthese stories, and he believes that the story of Ljdsvetninga Saga is compiled from those of Morkinskinna andHeimskringla. But there is yet another work which might
be considered as the source of Ljdsvetninga Saga, andthis is the Saga of Hakon Ivarsson, of which only fragments are preserved. It should, however, be noticed
that this chapter of Ljdsvetninga Saga survives only in
the C manuscript, and it is difficult to say what theoriginal text was like.
Obviously, Landndmabdk is difficult to deal with

88

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

because of its variant versions. In spite of the valuable
studies which have been published (I would mention
especially those of Bjorn M. Olsen and Jon Johannesson),the relations between the variant versions of the Landndmabdk and the Family Sagas are not altogether clear.
Three medieval versions of Landndmabdk are preserved:
Sturlubdk, written by Sturla I>6r9arson (d. 1284);
Hauksbdk, written by Haukr Erlendsson (d. 1334);
Melabdk, written by a member of the family of the
Melamenn, perhaps Snorri Markiisson (d. 1313). Unfortunately only small fragments of this latter version arepreserved. There are also the seventeenth-century versions: Skardsdrbdk, compiled by Bjorn Jonsson of
Skar9sd (d. 1655) from Sturlubdk and Hauksbdk; andPdrdarbdk, compiled by Sira I>6r9ur Jonsson of Hitardalur (d. 1670) on the basis of Skardsdrbdk and Melabdk,
which was then less defective than it is now. Thus,
Pdrdarbdk throws light on the text of Melabdk in thechapters of it which are now lost. An edition of Skardsdrbdk which is now in preparation will probably makeit easier to distinguish the passages from Melabdk which
are preserved in Pdrdarbdk, and even as it is this should
be possible to some extent.
As for the relations between the medieval versions ofLandndmabdk, it is known that Hauksbdk was compiled
from Sturlubdk and a version written by the priest
Styrmir the Wise (d. 1245), but the position of Melabdk
is more doubtful. Bjorn M. Olsen thought that it
descended from a version which was older both than
Styrmir's book and Sturlubdk, but J6n Johannesson

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89

maintains that Melabdk descends from
Styrmisbdk.
Hauksbdk and Melabdk differ greatly, and Jon Johannesson
believes that this is because Sturla, who, in his opinion,
knew and used Styrmisbdk, added a great deal to it,
while Haukr himself made further additions when hecombined these two versions. The opinion that Melabdk
descends from Styrmisbdk seems to me the most questionable in Jon Johannesson's work, which I consider
one of the most remarkable studies of the early literature
made in recent years.
It may be noted that Haukr wrote in the epilogue to his
version oi Landndmabdk:
I, Haukr Erlendsson, wrote this book following the book
written by Herra Sturla the Lawman, a very wise man, andalso that other book, which Styrmir the Wise had written,
and I took from each of them that which was told more fully,
but for the most part, they both said the same, and so it is
no wonder that this Landndmabdk is longer than any other. ^In these sentences it is stated clearly that most passages were the same in both books, and it is explained(i) that there were rather many versions of the Landndmabdk in existence, and (2) that Styrmisbdk was so
detailed that it was in parts fuller than Sturlubdk,
although Sturlubdk was fuller in other parts, and it could
hardly be expected that such a thing would be said of
1 'En pessa b6k rita3a (ek) Haukr Erlendsson eptir peiri b6k, sem
ritat haf3i herra Sturla IggmaSr, inn fr63asti ma8r, ok eptir peiri b6k
annarri, er ritat haf3i Styrmir inn fr68i, ok haf3a ek pat 6r hvarri,sem framar greindi, en mikill pori var pat, er p£er sgg8u eins biSar,
ok pvi er pat ekki at undra, p6 pessi Landnimabok s6 lengri en ngkkur
gnnur.'

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D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Styrmisbdk if it had not a fuller text than the original
Melabdk.
Comparison shows that Sturlubdk contains a great
deal of material derived from the Family Sagas, and sometimes summaries of these are given. Thus, we have aterminus ante quem, which is particularly valuable indating the later sagas. Jon Johannesson considers thatthe following sagas were used in compiling Sturlubdk,
and in some cases the evidence had already been given
by Bjorn M. Olsen and others: Egils Saga, Hoensa-Pdris
Saga, Hardar Saga, Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa, Eyrbyggja, Porfinns Saga Karlsefnis (older version), Porskfirdinga Saga, Hdvardar Saga (older version), Gisla
Saga Siirssonar, Hrdmundar Pdttr Halta, Vatnsdoela
Saga, Svarfdoela Saga (?), Reykdoela, Droplaugarsona
Saga. Besides these, it is believed that the following
lost sagas were used: Pdrdar Saga Gellis, * Kjalleklinga
Saga, Vebjarnar Saga Sygnakappa, *Sneebjarnar Pdttr
Galta, Bgdmdds Saga Gerpis ok Grimdlfs, *Hrdars Saga
Tungugdda, *Fljdtshlidinga Saga.'^
At the same time, it can be seen that Sturlubdk has beenused in some of the later sagas, such as Grettis Saga,
Fldamanna Saga, Bdrdar Saga Sncefellsdss, and perhaps
Viglundar Saga; and Jon Johannesson also includes the
svLwWmgPorskfirdinga Saga^ in this group. Thus we haveanother valuable criterion of age, a terminus a quo.
We may ask whether Sturla I'6r9arson was the first
to introduce material from the Family Sagas into the
1 See J6n Johannesson, Gerdir Landndmabdkar, 1941, pp. 75-121.
2 Ibid., p. 105.

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LITERARY RELATIONS

9I

Landndmabdk, or whether Styrmir had already done thisto some extent. The answer to the first question depends
largely on whether Melabdk descends from Styrmisbdk
or not.
In Melabdk, Vatnsdoela Saga and probably a lost
Esphoelinga Saga have been used. Jon Johannesson
maintains that it was the compiler of Melabdk himself
who drew on these; in other words, these summaries
were, in his opinion, not in the version of Landndmabdk
which the compiler of Melabdk followed. ^ Moreover,while there is, no doubt, some relationship between
Melabdk and Reykdwla Saga, it is very difficult to decide
what it is. I shall not go further into this problem atpresent.^
If it is true that the compiler of Melabdk added thematerial from Vatnsdoela Saga and Esphoelinga Saga, andthat his main source was Styrmisbdk, it is probable that
Styrmisbdk did not contain material derived from theFamily Sagas. It is, of course, possible that Melabdk only
gave a shortened text of Styrmisbdk, whether shortenedby the compiler of Melabdk or by an intermediary.
Nevertheless, it is improbable that this shortening particularly affected the material which Styrmisbdk had fromthe Family Sagas, and so this explanation can hardly beright. But if, on the other hand, the text of Melabdk does
not descend from Styrmisbdk, but from another earlyLandndmabdk, dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century, then it might be supposed that some of
1 Ibid., p. 65.
2 Ibid., pp. 113-14 and references given there.

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D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

the Family Sagas had been used in Styrmisbdk. This iswhat we might suspect from the words of Haukr, whotalks of Styrmisbdk precisely as a detailed version ofLandndmabdk. If it is true, as all the evidence seems tosuggest, that Sturla used Styrmisbdk, it is then understandable that the greater part was the same in bothversions.
Haukr used Styrmisbdk and Sturlubdk, taking fromeach the more detailed account. Even if we allow that
this may have been his theory rather than his practice,there must have been some passages in which Styrmisbdk
was fuller and was followed by Haukr. I think there isone example of this in Ch. i6i oi Landndmabdk {Hauksbdk
Ch. 85, Sturlubdk Ch. i n ) , which is about the Kjalleklingar on Me9alfellsstr(3nd. Only a part of the text ofHauksbdk in this passage is preserved (in Skardsdrbdk),
but there is enough for us to be able to judge the difference between the two texts. The text of Hauksbdk isfuller and more lucid than that of Sturlubdk, which isexcessively abbreviated. If Haukr has taken up the textof Styrmisbdk this is quite understandable. Let us suppose that this text was compiled from an early Landndmabdk and a summary, which Styrmir made, of thelost *Kjalleklinga Saga. Sturla followed the text ofStyrmir, but abbreviated it immoderately. When Haukr
came to this chapter, he rightly preferred the text ofStyrmir because it was fuller and better. It would be
worth considering whether there may not be otherchapters in Hauksbdk which would naturally be explainedin this way, but I shall not go further into the question

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93

now. There is the possibility that when Sturlubdk provides a terminus ante quem for the composition of Family
Sagas, future researches may, in some instances, put thatterminus back to the time of Styrmir the Wise.
Before leaving this subject, I shall mention one further
instance in which Hauksbdk and Sturlubdk differ, although conditions are not the same as in Ch. 161 ofLandndmabdk. This is in the story about Ormr the Leanand I>orbJQrn the Stout at Fr69a, which is told in Landndmabdk Ch. 129 {Hauksbdk Ch. 67, Sturlubdk Ch. 79).
As Bjorn M. Olsen showed, in the Hauksbdk we obviously have an early text of Landndmabdk, related to thatof Melabdk, as well as a short chapter based on Eyrbyggja. Jon Johannesson thought that the text of Hauksbdk was compiled by Haukr himself. ^ but Gu9ni
Jonsson derived it from Styrmisbdk in his unpublisheddissertation for the M.A.; and I also worked on this assumption in my edition oi Eyrbyggja Saga (1935).^ Thereis no difficulty in supposing that if this was the text ofStyrmisbdk it acted as a spur to Sturla to make a moreexact summary and to rewrite this chapter of Landndmabdk. But it is less easy to see why Haukr shouldhave preferred the shorter text of Styrmisbdk to thelonger one of Sturlubdk. Perhaps there was no otherreason than negligence. Perhaps Haukr also laid store
by the reference to Eyrbyggja and the verse which wascited. If, on the other hand, we suppose that the text ofStyrmisbdk in this passage was the same as that of' Gerdir Landndmabdkar, pp. 40-3.
2 I.F. IV, pp. XV, xlvii.

94

D A T I N G T H E SAGASMelabdk, it is impossible to understand why Haukr
did not give preference to that of Sturlubdk, and why he
did not follow it, but instead gave himself the troubleof compiling a new text from an old version of Landndmabdk on the one hand and Eyrbyggja Saga on theother.
Although many details about the relationship of the
Family Sagas with the Kings' Sagas and Landndmabdk
remain obscure, yet these works provide valuable information about the ages of the Family Sagas, and theyoften give us more or less fixed points to which we canattach ourselves. Moreover, we can often discoverliterary relationship between works whose ages we do
not otherwise know, and this gives evidence of theirrelative ages. If such investigations are pursued, they
may become very important, because we may graduallyacquire a kind of yardstick of relative ages, and in theend it may be possible to discover relations with works
whose ages are known. I have no doubt that here wehave one of the most valuable means of finding out theages of sagas.
The editors of the series Islenzk Fornrit have frequently tried to establish literary relationship between
various sagas, and similar attempts were made, for example, in my book Um Njdlu. It has been thought that,in some ways, scholars have gone too far in this. Needlessto say, much may be doubtful in such attempts, and criticism, contrary evidence, and discussion are very valuable.
Perhaps it will be shown that scholars have sometimes
pursued this line too far and that other evidence is more

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95

trustworthy. Such discussions may perhaps bring tolight reliable evidence in course of time.
Before leaving this subject I shall mention one otherpoint which deserves attention. It seems that literary
relations between sagas are very usual. If it should turnout that one saga has no literary relations with anyother, it is worth paying particular attention to this.
Sometimes, it may be due only to chance, and sometimes
it may be because there were not many written works
in the place where the saga was written. It might give
evidence of the place where it was written, but it mightalso provide evidence of the age when it was written;
it might suggest that it was an old saga (e.g. Heidarviga
Saga and Porgils Saga ok Haflida). ^Some of the criteria of age which I have given may bedisputed, but on the whole they may be called tangible.
But there are also other criteria, which may sometimes
be objective, and at other times more subjective, andthen greater caution is needed. In such cases, thescholar's approach, his prejudices, and even his mood
may lead him astray.
1 References to oral tales are often made in sagas with suchphrases as pess er getit, eigi er pess getit, sva er sagt, sumir segja, etc.
No general study of the use of such phrases in sagas has been published, but I do not think that they can be altogether without significance. We might suppose that, during the earlier period of sagawriting, oral tales flourished more vigorously than they did later,
and in this case, a great number of allusions like these would suggest
a rather early date for the sagas in which they occur. This problem
needs closer attention.

CHAPTERLINGUISTICXIEVIDENCE

E may next consider such evidence of age as may
appear in the language of a saga. When we study
the problem from this point of view, it is no less important than before to bear in mind the state in which sagas
are preserved, and perhaps even more so.
It is well known that every copyist modernized thelanguage, substituting word-forms used in his own time
for the older ones; he would even put in new words inplace of those which seemed obsolete. Consequently,
late word-forms in a manuscript are no proof that a saga
was composed late but, on the other hand, archaic forms
which are older than the linguistic stage of the manuscript do suggest an earlier age, and as far as they go,they are noteworthy indicators of age. When we cometo the vocabulary there is, of course, much that isneither late nor old, but rather both, i.e. words whichwere used both in later and in earlier times. But there
are other words which seem particularly to indicate an
early date, and these suggest that the original text was
old. One or two late words might be ascribed to a
copyist, but if there are very many of them, late loanwords and suchlike, they clearly suggest that the original
was late, and the more strongly the greater their proportion. The basis of these rules is that, although weknow that copyists modernized the language, we do notknow that they archaized it.

WXI

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97

If there is likelihood that only a short time had
elapsed between the oldest manuscript and the original,
the value of the manuscript in deciding the linguistic
stage of the original is increased. That is the case withthe oldest manuscripts of Njdla.
But, in general, conditions are not like these, andoften a long period must have elapsed between theoriginal and the extant manuscripts. It is not, therefore,
surprising that they do not bear traces of the archaic
language which may have been current up to or during
the time of the author. As an example I may mention
the sound-change s>r in the verb vesa and the relativees. Such archaisms must have been expunged by scribes,
even if they were in the original, but it is remarkablethat in compounds, where the -j was suffixed, it could
be preserved, and this could give evidence of early
writing, as in the forms pars, hvars, in Morkinskinna^and Pars in the Oldest Saga of St Olaf.^ Similar forms
are found in Heidarviga Saga: parstu, pars.^
The occurrence of the expletive ofjum is very rare in
the texts of Family Sagas, and it must have been lost in
the spoken language in the twelfth century.* I have notcome across it in the oldest Miracle Book of BishopI^orlakr, written about 1200 and preserved in a manuscript of slightly later date. But this expletive does occur
1 Ed. Finnur Jonsson, 1932, p. viii.
2 Otte Brudstykker, ed. G. Storm, 1893, 6/11, 6/33.
3 Heidarviga Saga, ed. K. KMund, 1904, 62/6, 83/27 (in verse).
4 See H. Kuhn, Das Fiillwort of-um im Altwestnordischen, 1929;
Ingrid Dal, Ursprung und Verwendung der altnordischen Expletivartikelof, um, 1930.

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D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

in the Heidarviga Saga:^ um skyldr (97/31), hedan of ser(103/22). Otherwise, it is very rare in manuscripts ofFamily Sagas, except in proverbs and in fixed expressions.
At this point I may mention the prepositions of andumb, which fall together in Icelandic in the first half ofthe thirteenth century, so that umb comes to dominate
in the form um. This development had been known fora long time, although it had not been investigatedthoroughly or used systematically for dating literaryworks. When I went through the Sturlunga Saga in
lectures on Icelandic literature in the University of
Iceland during the winter 1949-50, I noticed that theform of was by no means equally common in all thesagas preserved in the Krdksfjardarbdk, the older manuscript of the Sturlunga (mid-fourteenth century). The
count was only approximate, but the conclusion seemed
to be that, according to Kalund's edition, of occurred
more than once on every page in Porgils Saga ok Haflida,
once every two pages in Sturlu Saga, Gudmundar Saga
Dyra, and Hrafns Saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, but rarely or
not at all in the others. These figures apply only to thosechapters which are preserved in the Krdksfjardarbdk.
I regarded this as evidence of age but it was, of course,
clear that closer investigation was needed.^ It therefore
gave me pleasure when, at my suggestion, Peter Footewent thoroughly into the problem in his article 'Notes
on the preposition of and um{b) in Old Icelandic and
Old Norwegian Prose', published in Studia Islandica 14(Reykjavik, 1955). In this article the whole problem is
1 Ed. Kilimd, 1904.

2 Cf. Skirnir, 1952, p. 252.

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99

carefully studied. I may refer to the article itself for
details about individual writings, b u t Foote's general
conclusions are as follows:(i) In Norway um was the regular prepositional form fromthe beginning of the 'manuscript-age', though the disappearance of of could not have taken place long before. Of may
have remained longer in some dialects.
(2) In twelfth-century Icelandic of was the regular preposition, but umb tended to be retained in a few phrases
where its peculiar spatial sense was strongly marked. During
the latter half of the century, um{b) began to be used more
widely as a preposition, developing from its adverbial andcompounded use. Its occurrence in the earliest manuscripts israre, but for the change to have proceeded with such rapidity
after c. 1200, it is necessary to presume that it had begun sometime before that and had gained considerable momentum bythen. The conservatism of a written language conceals to someextent this early development.
(3) Between c. 1200 and c. 1250 the transition from the useof of to the use of um seems to have been generally made,perhaps completely so with some speakers. Of could remain
the common form in poetry longer than in prose, probably
to the end of the thirteenth century. The high point in thetransition is marked by the general disappearance of umb, thefinal -b being assimilated to give um. This took place not later
than c. 1230, by which time um{b) must have made largeadvances as a preposition.
(4) Where a text shows a high proportion of of, it may besafe to use this as evidence in assessing the date of the work.
A high proportion will suggest that it was written beforec. 1250, possibly before c. 1235 (the form umb is important inthis respect); under favourable circumstances it may be possible to decide the date, or at least the terminus ad quem.

lOO

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

even more closely. The possibility of dialect usage must however be taken into account. Finally, it must be rememberedthat we can only argue from the presence of of in a text, neverfrom its absence.
In Table I (pp. 63-4), Foote gives a survey of certain
writings preserved in relatively early manuscripts, andthe proportion of of and umb to um is often as we might
expect, although sometimes one copyist has modernized
the language more than another. Such is the case in thesurviving part of the Heidarviga Saga in which of does
not occur often, although it seems to have occurredrather more frequently in the chapters which J6n
Grunnvikingr wrote out from memory. There are, nevertheless, many other archaisms in the language of thisfragment.
The scribe who wrote Q of Egils Saga changed of toum in every case except one, but in I the proportion ofof-umb to um is 43-3 per cent. In manuscripts of Laxdcela
Saga, of hardly occurs at all, and that is as we should
expect. It is surprising how often of occurs in Porsteins
Saga Sidu-Hallssonar, which is preserved in paper manuscripts. It may be that this saga is rather an old one, or
perhaps the old practice continued rather longer in theeast of Iceland than elsewhere. ^ The very high percentage of of in Konrdds Saga Keisarasonar (50 per cent)might partly be explained as dialectal, although this saga
may be older than generally supposed.
I may mention a few other points; my examples will
I On porsteins Saga Sidu-Hallssonar,
1950, p. cix n.

see my remark, I.F. XI,

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L I N G U I S T I C EVIDENCE

lOI

be chosen largely at random, and there is urgent need offurther investigation.
The suffix -k, -g (for ek) after verbs was common bothin poetry and in prose in the twelfth century, but it
gradually vanished.^ It is common in the Morkinskinna,'''but it may be counted rare in manuscripts of the Family
Sagas, although it does occur both in Laxdoela and in
Njdla.''The negative suffix -a {-at, -t) was current in theprose of the twelfth century. It occurs in manuscripts
of Grdgds (e.g. Codex Regius), and was therefore obviously in common speech in the twelfth century. Examples
of it may be found in the First Grammatical Treatise,*and this and other linguistic peculiarities have beenpreserved by copyists through two centuries. Thissuffix never occurs in the Miracle Book of Bishop
torlakr, where n is generally written instead, and sometimes ekki or eki. In Morkinskinna, however, the negative-a is used in a considerable number of passages,^ andthis shows incontrovertibly that parts of Morkinskinna
are based on texts written in the twelfth century. In
manuscripts of the Family Sagas this negative is very
rare, and appears chiefly in standard phrases.*
1 Cf. A. Noreen, Altisldndische und altnorwegische Grammatik,ed. 4, 1923, p. 310 and references there given.
2 Ed. Finnur Jonsson, 1932, Introduction, p. viii.
3 See I.E. V, p. xxx n.; I.E. X I I , p. Ixxxiii n.
4 See E. Haugen's edition in Language, XXVI, No. 4, Supplement,
1950, p. 9.

5 Ed. Finnur J6nsson, Introduction, p. viii.
6 See e.g. I.E. IX, 86; X I I , 106 n. 2; Fldamanna Saga, ed. Finnur
J6nsson, 1932, 6ylis. T h e form era (I.F. V, 88) does not appear to be
used in a fixed phrase.
H

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D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

The positive, emphasizing suffix -gi, which is common
in the Grdgds, appears now and again in Family Sagas,
but it was obviously rather rare in the thirteenth century.^ The negative -gi is very rare indeed.^
I may also remark on word-forms like -dali, grydri{.grynnri), brudr {:brunnr), midlum, peima, pvisa, er andper, it and pit, and on the forms of the word ngkkurr,
nakkvat, nekkvi, etc. Some of these may prove to beevidence of age on closer examination. The word-forms
yr, lir, dr might also deserve attention, but I cannot
predict whether they will prove useful in dating.
Before leaving the problems of word-forms, I may
remark that old spellings of certain words are sometimes
retained for a remarkably long time. For example, thename of Brynjolfr the Old, who appropriated land in the
Eastern Fjords, appears in Pdrdarbdk time and again
as Brunnolf-, which I believe to be a corruption of
Bruniolf-, dating from the time when u was often written
for y, as it sometimes is in the oldest manuscripts, e.g.
Reykjaholtsmdldagi. In Droplaugarsona Saga the name
Seydarfjgrdr is written Saudarfjgrdr, and this might be
an old spelling. The same might apply to fullar forfyllar in the second strophe of that saga,* although thisis less certain. There are instances in which mutatedvowels are written in a similar way (i.e. with the letter
which represented the sound from which the mutated
1 E.g. Heidarviga Saga, ed. KMund: (eigi) miklogi (88/29), (/^Si)stdrugi (101/6-7); see also Njdla (I.F. XII), p. Ixxxiii n.
2 Heidarviga Saga 62/10: manngi; Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa(I.F. III, 154/17): P^igit.
3 I.F. XI, 158, 172.

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L I N G U I S T I C EVIDENCE

IO3

vowel was derived) in verses and poems: e.g. Egils Saga
str. 25/8: eidsosrt, -sort 6, -{z)ort K, -sott W; str. 27/5:
syrar, surar W, 30/1: lyngs, lungs 17; and in Njdla str. 6/3
bcena, bona M,R, bodnar Gr, Krs.
The first is certainly the most significant of the examples from Egils Saga. In these cases, the spellings are
not, to be sure, evidence of the age of the sagas, but they
may descend from early written texts, which were
followed. 1 I once guessed that the spelling ekia in
Kormaks Saga str. 39/5 (in Mgdruvallabdk) was derived
from the ligature of k and c, used by early scribes for
kk,^ but a single k for kk is also a possibility. The textof the verses in Kormaks Saga is not such as to suggestthat they were written before the saga itself.
As already mentioned, the great body of words usedin the sagas gives no evidence of their age. But yet,there are some words which seem to suggest an earlier
period, and others a later one. The innovations are ofdiverse origin; some of the late words are loan-words,
and others are words or word-combinations which cameinto fashion, and they sometimes give evidence of ataste different from that followed in the archaic orclassical sagas. It must be admitted that many aspects
1 It is not altogether certain that 0 was written for ce in the earlytexts. The irregularity might have arisen because the scribe misread
an old, unrecognizable form of the letter ce. I may also refer to
Grottasgngr (10/1, 5 in r) and to the instances of o for ce in the Codex
Regius which S. Bugge mentioned in his edition of the Edda (Norrcen
Fornkveedi, 1867, p. x). Finally I may mention archaic word-forms
and spellings in Njdla which should probably be traced partly to thegenealogical sources of the saga (see I.F. X I I , p. 1, n).
2 IF. VIII, p. cix n.

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of this problem are difficult to grasp. Except for Larsson'sbook {Ordfdrrddet i de dlsta isldnska handskrifterna,1891), our authorities for word-usages in prose are thedictionaries, and these are not thesauri, for they cite
only selected passages in which the words occur. It is,therefore, only experts who can decide which words
were used during one or another decade of this comparatively short period. It is easier to get a grasp of theloan-words, for they are fairly easy to recognize, andbesides this there is a study of them by F. Fischer {Die
Lehnwdrter des Altwestnordischen, 1909) which ought,
nevertheless, to be replaced by a more thorough one.
Besides this, difficulties arise from the state in whichtexts are preserved and the late dates of their manuscripts. The archaic idiom of ancient texts may beobliterated, while only relics of early words and phrases
survive, and later ones may have taken their place.
For these reasons, many scholars have been suspiciousof late linguistic characteristics. Finnur Jonsson, forexample, emphasized again and again that examples oflate words in a saga, or passages showing late taste, do
not necessarily prove that the original was of late date.
This was not because Finnur Jonsson was lacking insensibility for the changes in taste which took place inthe late thirteenth century. He mentioned late expressions in the texts of Gisla Saga, Vatnsdoela Saga,
Ljdsvetninga Saga, and others, while insisting that they
showed nothing about the original text.^ Nevertheless,
I Litt. Hist., ed. 2, II, 454, 471, 476-7 (cf. Finnur Jonsson'sedition of Vatnsdcela Saga, 1934, p. xii), 498.

XI

L I N G U I S T I C EVIDENCE

105

Finnur Jonsson did cite loan-words in Njdla when discussing the age of chapters which he believed to be later
than the rest.^ Lehmann and Carolsfeld also cited latewords as an indication of the age oiNjdla.^ Again Finnur
Jonsson mentioned the late style as an indication of theage of the extant Gull-Pdris Saga, and late loan-words{kumpdn, kjallari, buklari, piltr, prdfa, partr) to show
the age of Grettis Saga.^
Bjorn M. Olsen frequently cited early and late words,
although he was well aware that single late words proved
nothing.* He mentioned archaic words as an indicationof age in Gisla Saga, Heidarviga Saga, and Kormaks
Saga,^ and enumerated late words found in Grettis
Saga and Finnboga Saga.^ In my book Um Njdlu'' I discussed the late words, and especially the loan-words
used in Njdls Saga, and in my editions of Eyrbyggja
Saga, Laxdoela Saga, and Vatnsdoela Saga^ I have also
touched on the characteristics of age in the idiom.
Features of this kind may still provide valuable information, especially about the later sagas, and I shall quote
one example.
Hardar Saga is preserved in two versions, a longer
one in AM 556 A, 4to, and a shorter in the fragments
1 See e.g. Finnur Jonsson's edition oi Njdls Saga, 1908, p. xxiii.
2 Die Njdlssage, 1883, p. 3.
3 Litt. Hist., ed. 2, II, 449, 743.
4 On the word Iggkldkr in Valla-Ljdts Saga see Um Islendingasogur in Safn VI, p. 392.
5 Ibid., p. 130 (on the word teva in one manuscript of Gisla Saga);p. 210 (list of archaic words in Heidarviga Saga); p. 224.
6 Ibid., pp. 288 (more words could be added), 343.
7 Um Njdlu, 1933, § 62; cf. I.F. X, pp. Ixxxii-iii, Ixxvi-lxxx.
8 I.F. IV, p. Ii; V, pp. xxx-i; VIII, pp. xxiv, liii-v.

I06

D A T I N G THE SAGAS

of Vatnshyrna (564 A, 4to). Finnur Jonsson said thatthe longer version could not possibly be older thanabout 1300. It contains many post-classical verses, whichcannot be older than the fourteenth century, and Finnur
J6nsson^ thought that the main text and the verses inthis later version were the work of one hand. In thiscase, an old text has been refurbished rather verbosely,and somewhat expanded materially. The language andstyle of the verses show decisively that they are notolder than the fourteenth century, and I know of no one
who has disputed this.^ But Vera Lachmann* argued
that the verses had been interpolated in an older prose
text, which she did not think showed characteristics ofa particularly late date. I shall not discuss the content
of the saga, but I maintain that there are turns of phrase
which indicate that the prose text is of late date. Even
if some of these might be found in older writings, taken
altogether they give this text a stamp which is not thatof sagas of the thirteenth century, but rather of the
fourteenth; in other words the prose is of the same age
as the verses. The expressions which I have in mind are
pr6f (12/16, 45/12), serliga (31/14), ndttHra (46/15,
112/4), banna (?) med fjglkynngi (56/9), vdru godin i busli
miklu (59/5-6), kiflnn (62/9), spennum ok dnddum (63/14),
boli (78/6), teikna til {102j J<)), fangadr (105/17).* I think
1 Litt. Hist., ed. 2, II, 422-3.
2 See Janus Jonsson's paper in Timarit hins islenzka bdkmenntafelags X I I I , 1892, pp. 259-753 Das Alter der Harbarsaga, 1932.
4 References apply to the edition of Jon SigurSsson in Islendingasogur II, 1847.

XI

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE

IO7

that these are the chief tangible examples, but in general
the language of this text gives me the impression that it
was written in the fourteenth century. Of course, thistext may well have been rewritten from one thatbelonged to the thirteenth century, and it probably was.
The Vatnshyrna version must derive from the same
original, but it has undoubtedly been shortened. I thinkthat some of the differences between the two are theresult of mistakes made when the shortened version was
written.
I think that we may find many characteristics of latedate in the language of sagas which, for other reasons,
we believe to be written late, but I shall not discuss thisproblem further for the present.

CHAPTER

CLERICAL AND

XII

ROMANTIC

INFLUENCES
N the last chapter I mentioned among examples oflate expressions used in the Hardar Saga: vdru godin ibusli miklu. Every one of these words may be old, forI have no evidence that busl is a late word. But since thedictionaries give no other examples of it than this, we
may suppose that it did not belong to the vocabulary of
the classical sagas, and when it is used about the gods,
as it is here, it is evidence of a late taste. This brings
us to the style of sagas which, without doubt, does
sometimes give evidence of their ages, but on the whole,this evidence is much more tricky and difficult to assess.
The same may be said of narrative form, narrative skill,ideas. Since such things are so intangible, their value indating is much less than that of many other characteristics already discussed.^I

I In his book Untersuchungen iiber den Entwicklungsgang und die
Funktion des Dialogs in der isldndischen Saga (1934), W. Ludwig
distinguishes two different uses of dialogue for describing charactersin sagas: 'Die eine entwickelt objektiv, nur durch Wiedergabe desWahrnehmbaren und wirklich Wahrgenommenen, das Bild einer
Personlichkeit, ohne selbst dazu irgendwie Stellung zu nehmen . . .
Die andere Erzahlweise benutzt Gesprache um zu reflektieren;subjektive Auffassungen werden breit und ausfuhrlich vorgetragen.'T h e first kind of dialogue, common in Heidarviga Saga and Droplaugarsona Saga, is considered by Ludwig the older. The second kindappears in Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa, Laxdcela Saga, Hrafnkels
Saga, Gunnlaugs Saga, etc. Although the one form of dialogue isbelieved to be older in itself than the other, Ludwig maintains that weXII

INFLUENCES

IO9

Here and there we may notice clerical influences on
the style, material, or outlook, but it is wise to be
cautious in estimating their value as criteria of age. The
Icelandic clerics were the first to write, and they went
on writing. It might be expected that clerical influences
would appear here and there, even in the oldest sagas.
On the other hand, in Iceland the twelfth century was
the age of clerical chiefs and the fourteenth century thatof ecclesiastical authority, and Icelandic clerics of thetwelfth century thought and wrote otherwise than thoseof the fourteenth century. More thorough investigationof the development of clerical writing is needed,^ andthe consideration of clerical influences on the style ofcertain Family Sagas might be of some value in deciding
their ages. Influences of Christian morality and outlook
might also appear at any time, but the sources showthat they were much stronger at the end of the thirteenth
century than they were at the beginning of it.^
have here to do with two literarische Stromungen, flowing at the sametime, and he does not appear to believe that sagas can be dated on such
evidence. Nevertheless, this question seems to deserve closer attention.
1 I may remark that investigation of the vocabulary and the loanwords (especially from Latin) in the version of jfons Saga Helgapreserved in Stockholm (perg. 5 fol.) suggests strongly that this version belongs to the fourteenth century. T h e version called by Vigfusson 'the Oldest jfdns Saga', in which the original is shortened inparts, must be older. T h e version in Stockholm must, in this case,have been made by a man who had both the older translation and
Gunnlaugr's Latin original before him, and realized that passages
had been omitted in the older translation. He decided to make acomplete translation of Gunnlaugr's work, but to save himself
trouble he used the older translation where he thought possible.
2 See e.g. Einar 6 I . Sveinsson, Sturlungaold, 1940 (The Age of theSturlungs, 1953), passim.

n o

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

I shall now mention a few phrases used in sagas,
phrases which must be derived from clerical letters,
although these provide little evidence of the ages of thesagas.
In Latin writings it was common to introduce placesnamed in stories with the words: in loco qui dicitur andsuchlike. Phrases of this kind were translated early into
Norse by stadr heitir, i peim stad er heitir, etc. This
usage seems to have been common in the twelfth century.'^ Many examples of it may be found in the Heidarviga Saga. It is obvious that it was less usual in thethirteenth century although it occurs occasionally rightdown to the fourteenth century, as in Finnboga Saga.^
The phrases just quoted must not be confused wither nd heitir, er sidan heitir, and others of that kind,which belong to the native idiom and contain allusion
to oral records of places and events.
In Latin works authors often v/rite in the first person,saying ego or nos. In Icelandic historical writings of thetwelfth century ek is often used, and there are examples
of it in Ari's Islendingabdk, Hryggjarstykki, and the Oldest
Saga of St Olaf. For obvious reasons later scribes did
not like to write this word when copying early texts, andthey would put something else instead. Our knowledge
1 See Einar Ol. Sveinsson, Um Njdlu, 1933, pp. 69-70.
2 See the examples given in my Um Njdlu (p. 69). One example
from the Kristni pdttr of Njdla is cited there, and there is another in
I.F. X I I , 32/17. I have noticed the following examples in some othersagas (references apply to editions in I.F. unless otherwise stated):
Bjarnar Saga Hit. 163/17, 164/1; Viga-Glums Saga (ed. G. TurvillePetre), p. 26/20; Reykdoela Saga 179/18, 214/18; Ljdsvetninga Saga
25-6; Hcensa-pdris Saga 6/12, Finnboga Saga (ed. Gering, 1879) i.

XII

INFLUENCES

III

of the authors of many ancient works results from thispractice, for later copyists thought it proper to givesome details about this ek. I have not thoroughly considered the practices of the learned clerks of the thirteenth
century, or whether they still wrote ek to any extent,
but in the profane sagas it vanishes, and I do not think
it appears in Family Sagas except at the end, in suchphrases as: ok lyk ek . . . {Njdla; Finnboga Saga).^ The
sentence: at pvi sem mik minnir in Porgils Saga ok
Haflida^ is unique in its content and also in its archaic
form. Instead of ek, vir occurs in some passages ofFamily Sagas, and I may cite a few examples of it:
kunnum ver nu eigi annat segja {Heidarviga Saga 101/17);
J>6tt ver kunnim eigi at greina {Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa
201/11);ok vitu ver p6 eigi {Reykdoela Saga 159/25);
En ekki kunnu ver me9 sannindum at segja. . . . En Jjat vitu
ver {Viga-Sktitu Saga 2x4/10-12);
ok eigi vitu ver manna frd honum komit {Eyrbyggja Saga
183/9);
en eigi vitum ver {Gunnars Pdttr Pidrandabana 204/9);
Heyrum v6r {Finnboga Saga 71);
pat hgfum ver heyrt {Finnboga Saga 76);hgfum ver ekki fleira heyrt me9 sannleik af honum sagt
{Pdrdar Saga Hredu, longer version, near the end).
1 It should be mentioned that in Njdla the phrase l^k ek appears
only in M; Ga have l^kr; X manuscripts have luku ver. T h e originaltext is thus not certain but M has the lectio difficilior. Bjarnar Saga
Hit. Ch. I has the sentence: en pvi get ek eigi peira smdgreina . . . butthese are the words of the redactor who inserted the chapter in thedlafs Saga Helga, not those of the author of the saga.
2 Sturlunga Saga, ed. K. K^lund, 1906-11, I, 44/23; only in II
manuscripts, but the text of I has been shortened.

112

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Undoubtedly many more examples like these could befound, for I have noticed these only while looking formany other things. Nevertheless, we may suppose that
authors in the age of the classical sagas tended to avoid
such expressions. These expressions and especially thelittle word ek {ver) await investigation, as do many otherthings.
It is of great help in deciding the ages of sagas if we
can detect unquestionable influences of courtly life orof romances in them. Least can be deduced from thepresence of the same motifs in Icelandic sagas andromances, for motifs could easily be brought to theNorth orally at an early period by pilgrims and students,and some of them might even have been conveyed by
Varangians and Vikings. In Morkinskinna there are anumber of tales about military ruses, e.g. in the Saga ofHaraldr Har9ra9i, which are also found in foreign
literature and in romances.^ The story told by the monk
Oddr of the words spoken as Olaf Tryggvason's ships
sailed past Svoldr—a story perfected in Snorri's Olafs
Saga Tryggvasonar (Ch. loi)—also has parallels in
foreign literature, e.g. in stories and poems about
Charles the Great. ^ The motifs in the Ingdlfs Pdttr
in Viga-Gltims Saga^ are derived from southern stories,
1 J. de Vries has discussed southern elements in Kings' Sagas in
Arkiv for nord. fil. X LV I I I , 1931; A. Stender-Petersen has dealt
with Varangian traditions in various works.
2 See S. Bugge, Norsk Sagaskrivning og sagaforicelling i Irland,
1908, pp. 73-4; J. B^dier, Les Legendes epiques, II, 329-31.
3 See especially K. Liestol in Nordiskt Folkminne, studier till. C. W.
von Sydow, 1928, pp. 207 ff.; Bjorn Sigfusson, Arkivfor nord.fil. LIII,
1937-

XII

INFLUENCES

I13

although not from romances, and the same may be saidof those in the story about the fly on the foster-father'sskull, told in Ljdsvetninga Saga.^
One of the most remarkable examples of early and,as it seems, oral influence of romance poetry is found in
the Rauddlfs Pdttr,^ where a circular building is described, apparently in imitation of the castle of the
Byzantine Emperor, as it was described in the Pelerinage
de Charlemagne. Fortunately, we can see that Snorri
knew the Rauddlfs Pdttr, so that it cannot have been
written much later than 1220. A Norse translation of thePelerinage is included in the Karlamagntis Saga, which
is believed to have been written considerably later than
this. No similarity in phraseology between the translation of the Pelerinage and the Rauddlfs Pdttr has been
detected, and so this must be a case in which tales or
motifs were brought to the north orally before thePdttr was written. The material came from abroad, butneither the outlook nor the style of the Rauddlfs Pdttr
is that of the translators of romances.
In the time of King Hdkon Hakonarson people began
to imitate the culture and civilization of France, its
outlook and customs, and before long also its social
order. Then they started to translate the romances into
Norse, beginning, as far as is known, in 1226, with
Brother Robert's translation of the story of Tristram.
The writers of Romantic Sagas now developed a distinct
1 See especially Jan de Vries, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandscke Taalen Letterkunde, 47, 63-80.
2 See especially Joan Turville-Petre, The Story of Raud and hissons (Viking Society), 1947.

114

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

Style, and it was naturally influenced by the foreign
poems, although also based partly on the Norse clericalstyle. People were struck nearly dumb by the splendourof the Romantic Sagas, by their courtoisie, levity, andgallantry. We can see from the Sturlunga Saga, to someextent, how and when these influences penetrated Iceland about 1240-50, and if unquestionable marks ofthem are found in Family Sagas they provide excellent
criteria of age. ^I On this question see, e.g. I.F. V, Introduction, §§ 1-2; Einar Ol.
Sveinsson, Um Njdlu, §§ 69-72; I.E. X I I , pp. cxvii-ix. Romance influence on the national life of the Icelanders is discussed by Einar Cl.
Sveinsson, Sturlungaold (The Age of the Sturlungs), Ch. IV.

CHAPTERXIII

ARTISTRY
E may next consider the skill displayed in thesagas, the ability of their authors in constructing
them, their control of the material, their narrative
methods, and literary artistry.
We might well suppose that such accomplishments
developed gradually; at the beginning authors had lesscontrol over their material, but this developed as moresagas were written. But there is much to beware of, andif some of the evidence given above was thought doubtful, our doubts must now get out of hand. I suspect thatsome scholars use their intuitions about artistic qualities,
about the 'character' of sagas, to quote Gu9brandurVigfusson once more, as the basis for dating them. We
need not examine such evidence for long before we
realize how perilous it is to trust in it.
It is reasonable to expect that the sagas which were
written first would show certain marks of the primitive,
if only we can detect them. But an unskilful author oflater times might perhaps show a similar clumsiness in
his first work. Much discrimination is needed in judging
features like these. I cannot give a strong enough warning
against rashness in dating sagas by their 'composition'.
I may mention that in the chief study of the compositionof sagas, A. U. Bkkth {Studier dfver kompositionen i nigra
isldndska dttsagor, 1885) showed that some sagas are
primitive, in so far as they consist of loosely connected

W

Il6

DATING THE SAGAS

pcettir, while others are closely woven. But when wecompare the dates to which later scholars have assigned
these sagas, we see that it is not wise to make the authors'skill in composition the basis for dating sagas.
One of the chief characteristics of classical Family
Sagas is the illusion of reality which they create. It is as
if the reader or listener witnesses the events himself, andas if there is no author, no one between these events andthe reader. Only when characters are introduced is any
judgement passed upon them. The author does notpause in the middle of the story to explain; he does notpass judgement upon people or incidents. He takes pains
to say neither too much nor too little. He does notpredict the future in his own words. If he wishes hisreader to have an idea, a suspicion of future events, heuses special devices which do not break the illusion.
Of course there are exceptions, and there are somesagas in which these rules are more flagrantly broken
than in others. These sagas might perhaps be called'archaic'.
Firstly I may mention the Heidarviga Saga. A wellknown example of a breach of the rules of artistic illusion
is in the advice given by I^orarinn the Wise in Ch. i6,
where the words of the author and those of forarinn are
so confused that Sigur9ur Nordal gave up trying todistinguish them:. . . there is a farm called Bakki; it is beyond Hiinavatn; there
was a woman living there called Cordis and nicknamed Gefn,
and she was a widow. Living with her was a man called Oddr,
and he was a manly man. He was not particularly rich or well

Xni

ARTISTRY

II7born, but yet he was well known. You must call on him to gowith you; he shall decide what answer he will give. In that
region there is a district called Kdlgumyrar, and there aremany farms in it, one of which is called Me9alheimr. There
was a man living there called ^orgisl, who was a first cousin of
Gefn's Oddr, a doughty fellow and a fine poet, well off formoney and a manly man; call on him to go with you. Thereis a farm called . . .^T h u s the story goes on. L a t e r on, in C h . 24, m o r edetails about I>6rarinn's advice are given, a n d h e tells
Bar9i h o w to conduct his attack on t h e m e n of Brei9afJQr9r. It says there, a m o n g other t h i n g s :'take night quarters on the moor'—and from this it got its nameand was called Two-day Moor—'and you must go to both of thevantage points on the moor.'^A little later, describing these same directions, t h esaga says:
And midway another six must stop, the brothers I>6roddr andPorgils of fernumyrr, first cousins of Bar9i, and the third man
shall be the one who came in place of Halldorr, and your sister'ssons must also be there . . .
1 'Beer heitir i Bakka, hann er fyrir utan Hiinavatn; par bjo konasii, er Pordis h6t ok var kgllu3 gefn ok var ekkja. At ri3um var me3
henni ma3r si, er Oddr h^t; hann var gildr ma8r fyrir s6r. Ekki var
hann eins kostar f^ggfugr e3a settstorr; p6 var hann frsegr ma3r; hannskaltu bi8ja fylg8ar me3 p6r; hann raeSr svgrum. Par er kallat i sveit
peiri i Kolgumyrum, ok eru par margir boeir, ok heitir einn boer i
MeSalheimi; par bjo si ma3r, er Porgisl h^t; hann var systrungr
Gefnar-Odds at frasndsemi ok var hraustr ma3r ok skild gott ok atti
g68a kosti fjir ok gildr ma8r fyrir s^r; kve3 pii hann til farar me3
pit. Boer heitir . . .'2 'Hafi8 nittsta8i i heiSinni'—pa fekk hon pat nafn, at hon var
Tvidcegra kgllud—'ok skuluS koma til vigis pess hvirstveggja, er i
hei3inni er'.

1X8

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

She (Gu9nin) said that she had tried by every means, but
said that Bjgrn would do nothing for him, even for Gudriin( 9 7 / 2 6 - 8 ) . . .1

The author speaks of the future:
And he took a strap-knife off his neck and then the stone
necklace which the old woman had put round his neck moved
a little, and this will be mentioned later (81/13).^
The author passes judgement:
and they loved him greatly, and thought much more of him
than he deserved (66/23-4).*
It is noticeable that in the Heidarviga Saga the author
harps on the same words with less restraint than is usualin the classical sagas;* the whole narrative is unevenand unpolished, and these are the sort of features wemight expect in the infancy of a literary form, but theylargely vanish with practice and the growth of literaryskill.
Of all Family Sagas, the Fdstbroedra Saga breaks theordinary rules of narrative most flagrantly, and this is
1 'En mi81ei8is skulu sitja a3rir sex, [peir] broe3r Poroddr ok
Porgisl af Pemumyri, brcedrungar Barda, ok si ma8r inn pri3i, er kom
i stad Hallddrs, peir skulu ok par vera systursynir pinir , , ,'Hon (Gu3run) kvezk alia vega eptir hafa leitat ok segir Bjgrn vilja
honum ekki gott gera sakar Gudrunar . . .
2 ok tekr tygilknif af halsi s^r, ok pokask p i ngkkut steinasorvit,
er hon haf3i latit i hils honum kerlingin, ok pess verdr getit sidar.
3 ok unnu pau honum mikit ok vir3u hann meira en hann var
verdr.
4 Sigur3ur Nordal gives some good examples of this feature in his
edition of the saga, see I.F. H I , cxxxiii. T h e same tendency is noticeable in the text of Droplaugarsona Saga in 162, and may be a mark ofage. See I.F. X I , p, lix.

XIII

ARTISTRY

II9

especially because of the digressions which occur invarious parts of it. These digressions sometimes consistof strange anatomical lore, while at other times they arenothing more than bombast. The digressions are notincluded in the Hauksbdk, but they are in all the othermanuscripts. It was for a long time the received opinion
that they were later accretions, and that the original textof the saga was that preserved in the Hauksbdk. But in
1938 Sigur9ur Nordal put forward the opinion that the
text of Hauksbdk had been shortened, and that thedigressions had been present in the original.^ Since then,he and Sven B. F. Jansson have discussed the problem
in closer detail.^ Certainly the text of Hauksbdk has beenshortened, whether or not the digressions were in theoriginal, and if they were, the Fdstbroedra Saga wasdifferent from all other Family Sagas. This might bebecause it was written in the infancy of saga-writing.
But even if we exclude the digressions, the Fdstbroedra
Saga departs in many ways from the conventions of theclassical sagas. For example, I may mention incidents
in Ch. 6 of this saga; it would be groundless andarbitrary to maintain that all of these were added inlater times, and many of them must have been in theoriginal.
We may ask whether archaic sagas are necessarily oldsagas, and whether these archaic characteristics areenough for us to conclude that a saga is old. Fortunately,
1 See I.F. I l l , p. cxsadx.
2 See I.F. VI, Introduction, § 10; S, B. F, Jansson, Sagorna om
Vinland, 1944, pp, 172-262,

120

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

we have reliable evidence of the great age of the Fdstbroedra Saga (see pp. 83-4 above), and there is much evidence of the age of the Heidarviga Saga, but I may
mention a saga which is generally believed to have been
written much later than these, although the rules of'illusion' common to the classical sagas are broken. Thisis the Reykdoela Saga. It says in this saga:
Eysteinn submitted to the arbitration of Askell in this suitfor he was a most just man in arbitration, whoever might be concerned (p. 153).
We have now to tell what was Eysteinn's reason for telling him
to throw down his stick and his gloves by the hole in the ice; hethought that people would think that he had been drowned, andthat was why he was lost (p. 156).
There was a man called Hdnefr, who lived at (3pveginstunga; little good will be said of him in this saga, and he wasbadly spoken of (p. 160).
Now Askell got to know this, and he thought it strange that
Vermundr should agree to have his child fostered by such a
disreputable man as he said he believed Hdnefr was (p, 160),^
This may well be defended, but in this saga more is told
in oratio obliqua about people's thoughts and wishes
than is usual in classical sagas:
I Eysteinn lag3i gorS undir Askel um petta mil, pvi at hann var
rettldtastr manna i siettargordum, hverir sem i hlut attu , . , (p. 153).
En frd pvi er at segja, hvat Eysteini gekk til pess, er hann baud honum
at kasta nidr stafnum ok vQttunum hjd vgkinni, en hann hugdi, at mennskyldi pat cetla, at hann veeri drukknadr ok at hvarf hans myndi af
pvi vera , . , (p. 156).
Hinefr h6t ma&r, Hann bj6 i 6pveginstungu, Fdtt verdr frd honumvel sagt i pessari sggu, ok var hann 6or8sasll ma8r (p. 160),
Nu ver8r Askell varr vi5 petta, ok potti pat kynligt, at Vdmundr
vildi piggja pat bamfostr at svi skitligum manni, sem hann kvezk
hyggja, at Hinefr vaeri , . . (p. 160).

XIII

ARTISTRY

121

It is told that Askell got to know about this, and he said
that he could not see that I>orgeirr was in any way related tothem, and he called it imprudent to share one's food withsuch a ruffian as Porgeirr. . . . But Vermundr sat talking with
I>orgeirr as if he were a man of worth (p. 182).
But then their journey was delayed, and this was because of
Steinjinnr's magic, as will be told later (p. 192),^
W e may w o n d e r w h e t h e r statements like t h e s e show
merely that t h e a u t h o r h a d not kept u p with t h e times,
or whether this saga is really older t h a n is generally
believed,
I shall finally mention two examples of an archaic
mode of expression in sagas, while admitting t h a t it ischiefly by chance that I have hit on these. I n t h e lastchapter of Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappaan account isgiven of the settlement made after Bjgrn h a d b e e nkilled:It was {hefir verit) almost as if I>orsteinn alone decided theterms of settlement after Porkell had saved I>6r9r, his kinsman,from outlawry, and he was not moderate in his award of pecuniary damages, for there was plenty of money available. ^I n Ch, 2 of Porsteinns

Saga Sidu-Hallssonar

it is said

that Porsteinn went from O r k n e y to N o r w a y :where he came to the court of King Magnus Clafsson, and1 pat er sagt, at Askell var3 varr vi3 petta ok kvazk ekki vita vin
i, at porgeirr vaeri peim ngkkut skyldr, ok kallar pat ovitsamligt at
gefa slikum ovendismanni mat sinn sem Porgeirr var . , , En V^mundr, , , sitr nu i tali vi3 Porgeir, svd sem hann vceri dugandismadr (p, 182),
En p i dval3isk fer8 peira, ok var pat af fjglkynngi Steinfinns, sem
enn mun sagt verSa si8ar (p. 192).
2 Mjgk hefir verit, sem Porsteinn r^8i einn g0r3inni, pegar porkell
haf3i P6r8i komit undan sek8um, fraenda sinum; en ekki spar8i hanni6 til sakbdta, pvi at cerit var til.

122

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

was made his courtier, and was unlike those who only hear
the tidings in their houses at home. He was in the company
of many powerful men, was well respected, and thought tobe a most excellent man. He was also most lavish in his householding, and his house might well be equalled with the residences of noblemen, Porsteinn was loyal to his friends, cheerfuland humble, wise and patient, perceptive and vengeful, andsevere with those who offended him; he was generous to thepoor and to all who needed his help, but he often overcame
greater men while he was in Iceland. He was distinguished bybirth, and he also acquired good kinsmen by marriage, andthe support of the Vapnfir9ingar. When Porsteinn had been
abroad for three years and had won great fame, he came out
to Iceland. Porsteinn was twenty years old when he foughtin the battle of Clontarf {Brjdnsorrosta). He made land in theeastern fjords before the autumn assembly, and he went to his
house, and his kinsmen and friends and all his liegemen rejoiced in his return. 1
It can safely b e said that it is u n u s u a l in Family Sagas toplace passages like these in the middle of the story. Alt h o u g h these t w o examples prove nothing in themselves,
I Ok kom til hir8ar Magnuss konungs Olifssonar ok ger8isk hans
hir8ma8r ok var olikr peim, er heima spyrja ti8endin at bum simmi,
Hann var me3 mgrgum rikum mgnnum ok vel vir3r ok p6tti inn
mesti igaetisma8r. Harm var ok inn mesti rausnarma8r i biii, ok vel
m i t t i boer hans jafnask vi8 rikra manna herbergi, porsteinn var
vinhoUr, gla8r ok litillatr, vitr ok polinmoSr, djiipssr ok langraekr,
en grimmr m6tg0r3armgnnum sinum, g68r vi3 glmusur ok alia pi,
er hans purftu, en ina stcerri menn bar hann opt ofriki, p i er hannvar h^r i landi, Uppruni hans var merkiligr, Hann fekk sdr ok g63a
maEg3 ok traust peira Vipnfir3inga. En er hann haf3i prji vetr litan
verit ok var or3inn fraegr mjgk, p i for hann lit higat. p i var Porsteinn
tvltogr, er hann var i Brjansorrustu. Hann kom ut I fjgr8um austrfyrir lei3 of haustit ok for heim til bus sins, ok ur3u honum fegnirfraendr ok vinir ok allir hans pingmenn.

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ARTISTRY

123

they are not valueless if considered together with theother features which give evidence of an early date.^
I In Viga-GUms Saga (Ch. XIX) it says of a lawsuit after thedeath of Bar8r Hallason: 'attempts were made to reach a settlement,
but such was the opposition that there was no chance of this, for on
the other side were skilled lawyers and men of courage, Mg8rvellingar
and Esphcelingar' (var leitat um saettir. En par var svi pungt fyrir,
at engi viru vgl i pvi, pvi at i moti vdru Iggvitrir menn ok hugdjarfir,
Mg3rvellingar ok Esphcelingar),This praise of Gliimr's enemies may derive from the Esphoelinga
Saga.

CHAPTERHEROICXIVSAGAS AND THE
OF REALISMDECLINE

INNUR J O N S S O N argued rather strongly that if theinfluence of Heroic Sagas on Family Sagas could be
detected plainly, or if Family Sagas closely resembled
Heroic Sagas, this was sound evidence of their ages, andsuch sagas must be late.
Again we must be cautious. In twelfth-century Icelandstories used to be told which resembled our Heroic Sagas
in content. It is, therefore, not surprising if motifs
similar to those of Heroic Sagas appear already in theoldest Family Sagas, especially in chapters whose sceneis laid abroad. But this does not imply that episodes likethese are valueless as criteria of age. If sagas which, for
one reason or another, are known to be old are comparedwith Heroic Sagas, then the older Family Sagas are
generally characterized by a striking realism. But the
Heroic Sagas, probably all written later than 1250, show
a much stronger taste for the fantastic, the exotic, and thesupernatural, and this is clearly a characteristic of theage. If, in a Family Saga, we find a great deal similar tothe style of the Heroic Sagas, and if fantastic material isused in such a degree as to show a taste or an inclination
for it, then it may be a criterion of age.

F

This brings us to a point which is more important,more radical, and of wider implication. Individual motifs

XIV

THE DECLINE OF REALISM

I25

of Heroic Sagas may not be significant, but it is significant if a predilection for the fantastic and supernatural
is displayed. It implies discontent with reality, escapefrom it. It signifies the collapse of the appreciation ofreality and realism. The way in which the Heroic Sagas
flourished in the latter decades of the thirteenth century
is itself evidence of this.
I have spoken of the influence of Heroic Sagas on
Family Sagas, but the Heroic Sagas are rather symptoms, I might almost say symptoms of a malaise, than an
original cause. The cause must be something in people's
outlook, in their society and culture. I have tried to trace
this complex development in my book The Age of theSturlungs {Sturlungaold).
If we consider the Family Sagas on the basis ofobjective evidence, it seems that extraordinary changes
took place in the first generation after the fall of the
Republic. Appreciation of the ancient moral values
vanishes quickly; the cruel compulsion of honour had
driven men of old to tragic actions, but now the champion
grows more and more into the insensitive prize-fighter.
Hitherto the heroic spirit had been admired in sagas noless than physical prowess, but now the 'strong man'becomes the hero, and that is really the main point.
Before long character-drawing fades and all kinds ofexcesses develop. The interest in magic and supernatural happenings increases. Taste declines, as well as
moderation, the balance between the aristocratic and the
popular, the harmony between them. Bad taste is morein evidence, and there is a predilection for the gross and126

D A T I N G T H E SAGAS

vulgar. The fictitious element grows stronger and deteriorates at the same time. Nevertheless, it looks strongly
as if some of the sagas which appear to be written late
are nevertheless based partially on oral tradition, e.g.
Svarfdcela Saga, Hardar Saga, Gull-Pdris Saga, but as
the times change, so the traditions change; the old moral
values decline and the tales become popular legends.
Thus, people cease to concern themselves with history,
and sagas in the end become pure fiction, like Viglundar
Saga and Finnboga Saga.
As far as form is concerned, the composition of sagas
and narrative skill, it is plain that many of the later
writers knew their job well enough. The decline isinternal.
In judging the ages of these sagas we must first lookfor objective, concrete evidence; but the changes which
took place in the latter decades of the thirteenth century
were so radical that subjective evidence is also valuable.
Indeed, it was chiefly on such considerations thatscholars first learned to distinguish the latest sagas fromall the rest.

CHAPTERXVCONCLUSION
BEL I EVE that I have now spoken of most of the moreweighty evidence which may be used in dating Family
Sagas. If it should be asked whether there is any likelihood that sagas could be dated within reasonably narrow
Umits, I think the question may be answered in the affirmative. But this can only be done if the correct methods
are applied, and applied with precision. Moreover, muchnecessary research in this field remains to be done.
I may repeat a few of the points of which I have spoken:

I(i) Exact consideration should be paid to the state inwhich each saga is preserved; if the preservation ispoor, the basis for exact dating may be destroyed.
(2) The method must be as soundly and solidly based as
possible; if it is not, everything will be uncertain,(3) First we must look for objective, concrete evidence,and make that the basis, and then we may turn tomore subjective considerations, and try to find asmuch independent evidence as possible, weighing
every grain of it, one against the other if they conflict,(4) Much of our evidence consists of probability, and wemust estimate its value, for this may vary greatly. It
is of greater service to scholarship that the student
should train himself to evaluate the various grades ofprobability, than that he should master the trade of
the attorney.