SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

The Language of Dunstanus saga 329
As a matter of fact, tala as an introductory verb seems
to be extremely infrequent outside the "Bergr-texts".
The only exception I had noticed before Dunst was
Laurentius saga biskups (see p. 325 above) with its 22 per
cent (28 cases out of 127).13 Another one is a large
section of the Old Testament text, Stj6rn; that text will
be dealt with summarily in an Appendix to this paper.
Of the linguistic-stylistic tests applied up to now, the
high frequency of reverse word order and the distribution of
the verbs introducing direct speech (including the very
uncommon tala) come close to the typical "Bergr-profile".
On the other hand, the low rate of the present tense in
Ami Laurentiusson's narrative rather disagrees with that
profile.
III
Two different vocabulary tests were constructed to make
a filter for tracing "Bergr-texts". One comprised the
following 12 words or phrases: ddsama 'admire, praise',
dragsa 'drag, trail', eptir megni 'to the best of one's
ability', eptir sud talat 'having spoken thus', forsjalforsj6
'care, management', frabrerr 'excellent, unparalleled',
geysi 'highly, extremely', greindr 'above-mentioned',
mekt 'force, power', punktr 'point, place', st6rliga 'greatly,
extremely', umbergis 'around', The other list had 9 items:
einkanliga 'especially, particularly', flj6tr 'fast, rapid,
swift' (instead of the far more frequent skj6tr), fullting
'assistance, help', hceoerska 'courtesy', kumpann 'companion,
fellow', lypta sinni feriJ 'start one's journey',
optliga 'often', pr6fa 'get to know, learn; prove',
senniliga 'in truth, truly'.14
These 21 words or phrases turned out to be characteristic
of my "Bergr-texts", compared to a voluminous control
material from other texts of the same kind. But of
13 Cf. Stilsignalement, I55.
,. For the construction of these vocabulary tests, cf, Stilsignalement, I14-8.