SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society 261
for example, the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Saxo, was
yet typically Icelandic in its adherence to objective rationalism,
standing half-way between the austere history of Ari the Wise and
the later fornaldarsogur.
Bjarni adheres to the view put forward by Einar 61. Sveinsson
in Sagnariiun Oddauerja (Studia Islandica I, 1937), that the saga
was written in Oddi in the south of Iceland. The family of the
Oddaverjar traced their ancestry back to the Skjoldungar and
their genealogy may have been compiled by Szemundr Sigfusson
the Wise. Bjarni agrees that the saga was probably written by,
or for, the Oddaverjar and, after a reasoned attack on the theory
of the existence of three separate literary schools in Iceland, he
concludes by tentatively proposing Pill Jonsson of Oddi, bishop
of Skalholt from 1195 to 121 I, as the author of Skjoldunga saga. It
is not and probably never will be possible to establish the author's
identity with certainty. That the saga was composed in Oddi,
however, seems a reasonable assumption.
In his book Bjarni brings many established theories in question
and puts forward some new ones of his own. Not all of these
seem equally attractive but the book gives much food for thought
and discussion. All students of Icelandic literature will be
grateful to him for presenting the problems in a new light and with
so many full quotations from the relevant material. The
arrangement of the various chapters and disposition of materials
is perhaps not entirely satisfactory, for the devotion of separate
chapters to individual texts entails some repetition on the part of
the author and a good deal of referring back to the quotations
from Arngrimur on the part of the reader. A clearer picture,
though without the wealth of detail, is gained from Jakob
Benediktssorr's concise account in Bibliotheca Arnamagnceana XII
107-17. Some kind of tabular summary of the relation between
the text in Arngrimur Jonsson and that of all the other sources
treated by Bjarni Guonason would have been a welcome addition
to the book.
GILLIAN FELLOWS JENSEN
SAGNASKElVIMTUN iSLENDINGA. By HERMANN PALSSON. Reykjavik:
Mdl og Menning, 1962. 188 pp.
Mr. Hermann Palsson is both an Old Norse and a Celtic scholar,
and one might hope that a book of his would show traces of this
very attractive blend of scholarship, and throw new light from the
outside on Old Icelandic literature. Unfortunately this is not
his approach, and we learn little about the world outside Iceland