The Best-Written Saga and the Absence of its Author

Abstract

Identifying the anonymous authors of the Icelandic family sagas has been a popular preoccupation and a never-ending task, not least in modern scholarship. As has often been pointed out, any information about the author of a work will most likely have direct influence on how its readers interpret and under stand it. Some scholars believe that the sagas were created by individual authors, whereas others read the sagas as written accounts based on an oral tradition. Yet when did the quest for the author begin, and why was it important? This chapter takes its point of departure in Árni Magnússon’s (1663–1730) notes on the sagas. Árni was not only a famous manuscript collector and scholar but may also be seen as the first author of a literary history of Iceland; in his notes he discusses the characteristics of the author of Njáls saga and of other medieval authors, both known and unknown. The present chapter is an attempt to throw light on early-modern Icelandic ideas of saga authors and other medieval authors, mainly as they are presented in the first purposeful attempts at writing a literary history of Iceland – that is, Jón Ólafsson ’s (1705–1779) Safn til íslenskrar bókmenntasögu , recently edited by Guðrún Ingólfsdóttir and Þórunn Sigurðardóttir; the literary history by Jón Þorkelsson (1697–1759) entitled Specimen Islandiæ non barbaræ (forthcoming in a new edition); the account of Icelandic writers and poets by Páll Vídalín (1667–1727); and a literary history by Hálfdan Einarsson , Sciagraphia historiæ literariæ Islandicæ , published in Copenha gen in 1777. These histories show different emphases in their approaches, but it seems that the need to find and identify authors of the sagas was felt most urgently by Icelandic scholars who found it necessary for the reputation of Icelandic literary history to have ‘real’ authors, comparable to the classical scriptores . Article 25. The following is the last part of Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar in Resen’s manuscript collec tion: So the brothers Gunnlaugur and Oddur say: that these individuals told them the largest part of what they later composed and gave an account of King Ólafur Tryggvason: Gellir Þorgilsson, Asgrímur Vestlidason, Biarni Bergþorsson, Ingunn Arnórsdóttir, Herdís Dadadóttir, Þorgerdur Þorsteinsdóttir, and then Gunnlaugur says he showed it to Gissur Hallsson. 93