SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Margretar Saga and its History in Iceland 275
published or who the publisher was; there is merely the
text and the statement that it was printed in the
Gutenberg printing-works. The year of issue is put at
c. 1906 in the Catalogue of the Icelandic Collection
bequeathed by Willard Fiske (1914). It is not easy to
conceive what the occasion for the printing of this text
may have been or what purpose it was meant to serve.
It is hardly credible that it was intended to be a source
either of entertainment or of edification for Icelanders at
the beginning of the twentieth century. It should be
noticed that the text is not a reprint of that given by
Unger in his edition in Heilagra manna segur (1877).
But we must now look more closely at the M argretar
saga and compare it with other lives of virgin saints in
Unger's collection, to see whether this gives us some clue
to explain the large number of copies of the saga. As
mentioned earlier, the M argretar saga does not appear
superior to the other sagas, either in language or in
treatment. The matter indeed is more or less the same
in them all. St Margaret preserves her virginity throughout
her life and at last suffers a martyr's death for her
faith. Before she died she called on God and said:
"Hear my prayer. I pray that the sins of the man who reads
the story of my passion may be washed away; and whoever
brings means of illumination to my church, may his sins be
washed away at that time .. .'
And later:
"Again I ask you, Lord, the man who writes the story of my
passion or buys that book, fill him with your holy spirit. And
in that house where that book is to be found, let there be no
child born dead or lame. Forgive the sins of that man, Lord,
who has my book in his keeping, if he asks you for mercy,"
Afterwards a dove comes from the sky with the sign of the
Cross, and a voice is heard which says, among other things,
"And if a sinful man comes to the place where'Your sacred relics
are preserved, with repentance for his sins and with humility,
then his sins will be forgiven him; and there the devil will not