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Book Reviews 265
taking attempt has been made to demonstrate the relationship
between them.
In addition to the text of Hemings pdttr, Mrs Fellows Jensen
provides us with a text of Hemings rlmur by Benedikt Sigurosson
and of an eighteenth-century kjent}1Y af Heminge Asldkssyne
based upon it; the earlier medieval Hemings rimur is not printed,
because its text is available elsewhere." She further discusses
Arngimur ]6nsson's Latin summary of Hemings pdttr, Magnus
j onssou's Hemings rimur, and various Norwegian and Faroese
ballads on the same subject.
From the above it should be clear that we now have not only
a fine edition of Hemings pattr but an abundance of valuable
information about it. Indeed the very abundance of this
information provokes the main criticism the reviewer has to make
- that the introduction is so full and yet so compressed that it is
difficult to use. Mrs Fellows Jensen must herself have felt this,
for she very considerately provides as an appendix a summary
of her conclusions on the relationships between the various
manuscripts and also an index of references to the manuscripts
throughout the introduction, without which the reader would
indeed be in difficulties. A further appendix gives a summary
account of one extra manuscript not listed on page xvi.
The production of the volume deserves high praise, and both
editor and printer are to be congratulated.
A. R. TAYLOR
THE SAGA OF GISLI. Translated by GEORGE ]OHNSTON, with Notes
and an Essay on the Saga of Gisli and its Icelandic Background
by PETER FOOTE. j. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, and University of
Toronto Press, 1963. xiii, 146 pp.
This translation has a special interest for members of the
Viking Society, coming as it does after the publication of the two
papers 'On Translation' in Saga-Book (1957-61), 383-402. It
testifies to the wisdom of Professor]ohnstorr's decision to follow
the Icelandic as closely as he could (see p. xi), in that its closeness
enables the reader to know not only what the saga says, but,
within the limits of translation, how it says it. To take a very
small example (from p. 22), "A gift always looks to a return" (sir
C1i gjQf til gjalda) allows the reader to feel for himself the effectiveness
of the expression, where the substitution of a modern English
near-equivalent (e.g. "one good turn deserves another") would
immediately intrude the presence of the translator. There are
1 P. :\1. den Hoed, Hemings rimur (1928).