SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Treatment of Sources in the Volsunga saga 353
There can be little doubt that the compiler would have
done well to avoid these few repetitions.
This study of the compiler's treatment of his sources
leads to a very clear conclusion. He must have seen it as
his task to write a new saga which told the story of the
Volsungs and Gjukungs, a work which would replace the
older Siguroar saga by expanding it on the basis of certain
lays of PE. To perform his task competently it was
essential for him to avoid to the best of his ability any
hint of poetic diction in his paraphrase of the lays he chose
to make use of, and here that ability has been shown to be
considerable: surprisingly few traces of poetic style or
vocabulary remain. It is, of course, unfortunate - and
irritating - that his enthusiasm for his main task, allied
to his desire to avoid too much unnecessary detail, should
have led him to ruin quite needlessly a number of
particularly striking effects, obtained not by their poetic
form, but by their content. Yet it is perhaps unfair to
over-censure the compiler for this fault which is at least
partly off-set by the skill with which he fuses together his
sources, poetic and prose, making small changes and
additions which are usually appropriate in their context
and are often of a clarifying or explanatory nature and yet
introduce no new element into the 'received' Iegends,s 5
for such was not his purpose.
There can be little doubt that the compiler has very
largely achieved his object, for he has created from his
various sources a unified prose narrative that lacks neither
a certain vigour, nor yet considerable consistency.
Throughout this study the term 'compiler' has been used.
Should it not perhaps yield to 'author'?
" Except in one instance: Sigurd's growth in wisdom conditional on eating
Fafnir's heart.