SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

On Arons saga Hjorleifssonar 165
demands to be judged with the best products of
thirteenth-century writing. W. P. Ker wrote:
There is no reason for depressing these histories below the level
of any but the strongest work in the heroic sagas. The history
of Bishop Gudmund and the separate lives of his two friends,
Hrafn and Aron, are not less vivid than the stories of the men
of Eyrr or the men of Vatzdal ... It is not easy to specify any
element in the one that is not in the other, while the handling
of the more authentic stories is not weak or faltering in
comparison with the others.s!
Yet between Arons saga and the best of the Islendinga
siigu«, however much the former may vie with the latter
in respect of individual scenes, there are certain more or
less definable differences. The most salient of these
are the author's habit of intruding personal statements,
and his manifest bias towards the clerical, the royalist,
and the orthodox. He plainly has a case to plead, a
trait not normally associated with the family sagas,
where the author maintains that appearance of
impartiality which is generally accounted a hallmark of
the classical style. Thus, after the heat of the Grimsey
battle is over we are told that Aron showed great bravery,
and expected to believe it, without the concrete proof of
a direct narrative account of his deeds. The concentration
is rather on the hero's wounds and sufferings, and we fall
between the thrones of saint and hero. Even when
valorous action has been shown, the author is not averse
to spoiling the effect somewhat by interjecting a shallow
little boost for his man, as after the escape at Valshamarr,
when we are told what a bold fellow Aron was to have got
away from such fierce foes. Again after Aron's tough
verbal exchange with Gautr which follows the horse-fight
in Bergen, the author insensitively explains what the
incident purported in terms of Aron's character. Such
a trait does not suggest the writer's overwhelming confidence
in the intelligence of his audience. It is
81 W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance (18g7), 256-7.