Hrómundur in prose and verse: On the relationships between four versions of the story of Hrómundur Greipsson

Abstract

The present study examines the transmission history of the story of Hrómundur Gr(e)ipsson in Icelandic. Its focus lies in the investigation of textual relationships between four works dealing with the story of Hrómundur: two in metric from, Griplur and Hrómundar rímur Greipssonar (RHG), and two in prose, the seventeenth-century saga (17HsG) and the younger, hitherto unknown saga, possibly originating in the nineteenth-century (19HsG). The study concludes that the saga-writer of 19HsG most likely utilised both Griplur and the older saga to create a coherent story of Hrómundur. Alternatively, they based their adaptation on a now lost intermediate version of the story that already merged the accounts of the rímur and the saga, as elements from both older adaptations can be found in the younger saga. Furthermore, the study concludes that the younger set of rímur (RHG) are derived from the printed edition of the seventeenth-century saga, as the editorial error of C.C. Rask, the saga’s editor, appears in the poem.