SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

260 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
account for the evident influence of the riddarasogu« on the
fragment. He wishes, therefore to date the composition to
approximately II80-1200. He points out that Gunnlaugur
Leifsson probably knew SkjQldunga saga when he wrote his saga of
Olafr Tryggvason c. 1200 and that SkjQldunga saga is probably
contemporary with those other Scandinavian historical works we
now know by Saxo, Svend Aggeson and Theodricus,
Bjarni agrees in essentials with Jakob's assessment of the
sources of Skjoldu-ng« saga. The only certain written source is
a genealogy of the Skjoldungar but the author may have found
miscellaneous pieces of information in odd lays and mnemonic
verses. The various existing Icelandic genealogies are discussed
and compared and Bjarni draws attention to the fact that the
author was acquainted with some foreign historical and religious
works. It is difficult to determine whether he borrowed anything
fom these. The main body of material for the Skjpldunga saga,
however, must have been derived from oral sources. Bj irni
demonstrates the author's treatment of this material by comparison
with heroic poems and shows that he belongs to the objective
rationalistic school. He sifted his material and discarded
anything that was grossly improbable. It is a pity that Bjarni
does not pay more attention to the Skjoldungar episodes in
Beowulf which, although not of course a source for the saga, are
interesting because the poem is much older than any of the
written Scandinavian sources. No real idea of the extent of the
Beowulf material can be gained from Bjarni's few scattered
references to the poem. Some consideration of Beowulf could
perhaps have been included in the section dealing with the
transmission of the Skjoldungar tales to Iceland and more
attention could have been paid to the individual names and
incidents preserved in Beowulf in Bjarni's reconstruction of the
SkjQldunga saga.
Bjarni gives a good description of the way in which Skjoldunga
saga blends traditional tales, Christian sentiments and foreign and
Icelandic learning. He praises the air of reality it achieves, as
compared with, say, Saxo or Hr6lfs saga kraka, and criticizes its
main fault - an inconsistent texture.
His final section represents an attempt to place the saga in its
context, both Icelandic and international. It was hardly
necessary to include all the material that he presents here. The
potted history of the twelfth-century European literary renaissance
could well have been summed up in a couple of pages
without weakening the demonstration of the way in which
Skjoldwnga saga, while belonging to the same literary fashion as,