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Book Reviews
He is pulling the reader's leg, I fancy, when he offers his version
of why Brynj6lfur Sveinsson was not granted a privilege to run
a printing press. This was due to the narrow-mindedness of the
Danish government, we are told, and not apparently to the strong
opposition of his colleague, Bishop :Porlakur Skulason of Holar,
who is not mentioned by him at all in this context.
The first well documented Sagnaskemmiusi was the one at
Reykholar in IIIg. 2 According to Mr Palsson the sagas used to
entertain the guests on that occasion must have been written
sagas. This is found easier to believe by Mr Palsson than by
other scholars because he has the benefit of his own definition of
what Sagnaskemmtun is, i.e. a reading aloud of sagas in contrast to
mere story-telling. The entertainment at Reykholar is known
from the Porgils saga ok Haftioa, and in so far as it is advisable to
believe in this source, most scholars have agreed that the sagas
mentioned must have been oral tales. It is all very well to think
that the phrase setja sam an sogu, on which he pins his faith, can
only mean to compose or write a saga, when the context shows in
fact that the meaning can equally well be to tell a story or to spin
a yarn. But why is it so important for the author to make us
believe in this very early instance of written sagas of an
entertaining nature? Obviously because his theory demands that
not only the later popularity of such sagas, but also the very
origin of the genre must be connected with the Sagnaskemmtun,
To those of us who have hitherto believed the author of the First
Grammatical Treatise, who wrote later in the twelfth century, and
the evidence of the oldest manuscripts, it comes as a shock to find
that the oldest written literature in the vernacular should not be
legal or historical works or hagiographic and homiletic writings,
so essential for a society in which Christian education and literacy
on any large scale was still something pretty new, but rather works
of an entertaining and far less useful nature. The two entertainers
at the wedding in I IIg have thus a better chance, in Mr
Palsson's view, of being the fathers of Icelandic literature than
Ari has ever had. Another rash attack on the teachings of other
scholars is his suggestion (p.63 f.) that such works as Fostbrceora
saga, Bjarnar saga Hitdcclakappa, Kormaks saga, Bandamanna
saga, and Heioaroiga saga existed in written form already in the
twelfth century.
Some of Mr Palsson's arguments in later chapters of his book
are also somewhat provocative, though often quite stimulating.
His peculiar chronology makes it possible for him to explain the
• Discussed by Peter G. Foote, 'Sagnaskemtan: Reykjah6lar IIIg', Saga­
Book XIV: 3 (I9SS-S6), 226-239, with references.