Lost in Transmission:Reconstituting Forgotten Verses in

Gísla saga Súrssonar

Edel Porter

of the considerable amount of scholarship devoted to the discussion of dreams in Gísla saga Súrssonar, the focus in the main has been on the

visions of the so­called ‘dream­women’, the female figures which begin to appear to Gísli in his sleep after he has been declared an outlaw. Another recurring pro phetic dream, which has so far received relatively little attention, however, is the one that refers to the infamous slaying of Gísli’s brother­in­law Vésteinn. Apart from some debate as to the nature of the ‘dream animals’ (see below), the des cription of events as presented by the saga, that is, that the identity of Vésteinn’s murderer, was made known to Gísli in two dreams dreamt on the two consecutive nights prior to Vésteinn’s death, symbolized first by a wolf and then by a snake, has largely remained unchallenged. Even a cursory rereading of this episode, however, raises a number of questions which reveal how awkwardly Gísli’s account of his dreams fits in its narrative context, and a closer examination identifies a number of incongruities and inconsistencies which strongly suggest that the entire episode is an interpolation, grafted on to an earlier version of the saga. As I will argue below, the two central motifs around which the dream narrative is constructed, the biting wolf and the striking snake, most likely had

Edel Porter (EdelMaria.Porter@uclm.es) is a Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the Department of Modern Philology, University of Castilla-La Mancha.

Abstract: This paper re­examines the passage in Gísla saga Súrssonar in which Gísli relates a pair of dream visions he has had regarding the killing of his brother­in­law Vésteinn. Gísli claims that the dreams point to the identity of Vésteinn’s murderer, who is traditionally viewed as being symbolized first by a viper (ho ggormr) and then a wolf (vargr), which bite Vésteinn to death. However, a close reading of the text reveals a number of incongruities, which suggest that the entire episode was composed and added on to an earlier version of the text, and that the reading of the viper and wolf as fetches, or representations of Vésteinn’s killer, was based on the misconstruing of a poetic fragment from another source.

Keywords: Skaldic poetry, Gísla saga Súrssonar, weapon kennings, dreams, orality, literacy, prosimetrum.

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 9 (2013), 173–195 BREPoLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/J.VMS.1.103881

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their origin in a poetic text which may or may not have been related to the story of Gísli Súrsson.

The content of the dreams in question is first disclosed in a speech given by Gísli in the aftermath of Vésteinn’s funeral. As the men sit talking, Gísli’s brother Þorkell (one of the two main suspects in the murder), asks how Auðr is coping with her brother’s death:

Þorkell spurði Gísla: ‘Hversu bersk Auðr af um bróðurdauðann? Hvárt grætr hon mjo  k?’ ‘Vita muntu þat þykkjask’, segir Gísli; ‘hon bersk af lítt, ok þykkir mikit. Draum dreymði mik’, segir Gísli, ‘í fyrri nótt ok svá í nótt, en þó vil ek eigi á kveða, hverr vígit hefir unnit, en á hitt horfir draumana. Þat dreymði mik ina fyrri nótt, at af einum bœ hrøkkðisk ho  ggormr ok hjøggi Véstein til bana. En ina síðari nótt dreymði mik, at vargr rynni af sama bœ ok biti Véstein til bana. ok sagði ek því hvárngan drauminn fyrr en nú, at ek vilda, at hvárrgi réðisk.’1

(Þorkell asked Gísli: ‘How is Auðr bearing up after the death of her brother? Does she weep much?’ ‘It seems you should know that yourself ’, says Gísli; ‘she does not show much, but feels it deeply. I dreamed a dream the night before last, and last night too, but I will not say who did this slaying, although my dreams point to it. I dreamt the first night that a viper slithered out of a certain farm, and bit Vésteinn to death. And the second night I dreamt that a wolf ran from the same farm and bit Vésteinn to death; but I told neither dream before now, because I did not wish that anyone should interpret them.’)

Immediately after this account Gísli recites the following stanza:

Betr hugðak þá, brigði biðkat draums ens þriðja slíks af svefni vo  kðum sárteina, Vésteini, þás vér í sal sátum

1 Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson 1943, 46. This edition will hereafter be referred to as: ÍF vi. Gísla saga survives in three main redactions, which are normally referred to as: S (‘den større’, or ‘the longer’), whose main witnesses are two eighteenth­century paper manuscripts (AM 149 fol.x and NKS 1181 fol.x), both copied from the same (lost) source; M (‘den mindre’, or ‘the shorter’), which is preserved in a parchment manuscript written in the last quarter of the sixteenth century (AM 556 a 4to); and finally B (‘brudstykket’), a four­page fragment from around 1400 (AM 445 c i 4to). Standard editions, such as the one quoted here, are usually based on the M redaction, which has traditionally been viewed as the oldest, most authentic, and ‘truest’ witness to the ‘original’ saga. However, recent research on S has challenged this assumption. For a discussion of the relationship between the different recensions and an overview of scholarship on the subject, see Vésteinn Ólason and Þorður Ingi Gúðjónsson 2000.

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Sigrhadds við mjo  ð gladdir, komskat maðr á miðli mín né hans, at víni.

Prose word order

Betr hugðak þá Vésteini, biðkat ens þriðja draums slíks brigði sárteina vo  kðum af svefni, ­ þás vér sátum at víni í sal Sigrhadds gladdir við mjo  ð komskat maðr á miðli mín né hans.

Translation

I thought it better for Vésteinn then — I, wielder of wound­stick [(sword) > warrior], do not wish to be woken from sleep by a third dream like that — when we sat drinking wine in Sigrhadd’s hall, happy with mead, no man came between me and him.2

The pattern of preceding stanzas with a prose summary of their contents is one that occurs repeatedly throughout Gísla saga, particularly with regard to the dream poems. However, this case presents a striking anomaly in that the content of the prose and verse is not the same.3 While the prose recounts the snake and wolf dreams, the main subject of the ‘Betr hugðak þá’ stanza is a memory of happier times, specifically the time Gísli and Vésteinn wintered at Viborg in Denmark as the guests of a certain Sigrhadd. The only reference to dreams in the strophe is contained in the phrase ‘[I] do not wish to be woken from sleep by a third dream like that’, which of course implies that there have been two previous and unpleasant dreams, but the details are not provided in verse. As every other dream in the saga is recounted in poetic form (and usually prose as well), it is rea sonable to wonder, therefore, whether the premonitions of Vésteinn’s death were also once communicated in one or a pair of stanzas which, along with st. 5, formed part of a longer unit.4 Given that such prophetic dreams are normally

2 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this paper are my own.3 This is not the only example of a lack of correspondence between verse and prose in Gísla

saga. P. S. Langeslag (2009, 48) points out the case of st. 22, which is ‘spoken in a virtual narrative vacuum’. other examples which scholars have noted include: ‘Fell eigi ek fullum’ (10), ‘Luku þungliga á þingi’ (15), ‘Segja menn, at manni’ (28), ‘Skuluða it, kvað skorða’ (29), ‘Hugðak geymi­Go  ndul’ (31), ‘Mér bar hljóm í heimi’ (39), and ‘Fals hallar skal Fulla’ (40).

4 Ida Gordon (1949–50) and Peter G. Foote (1963) have both suggested the possibility of the existence of a poetic account of Gísli’s story, to which these hypothetical ‘lost’ stanzas may also have belonged.

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recounted before rather than after the event, this raises the question as to the position of the stanza in terms of the timeline of the plot; also, if st. 5 is to be read as containing a prayer for no more visions of Vésteinn’s killing, it would be more logical if Gísli recited it upon waking from the second dream, or at least at a point before Vésteinn died.

According to the prose text, Gísli avows that he ‘told neither dream before now, because [he] did not wish that any one should interpret them’, a declaration which recalls his earlier refusal to disclose the content of the dreams: ‘Nú bar þat til nýlundu á Hóli, at Gísli lætr illa í svefni tvær nætr í samt, ok spyrja menn, hvat hann dreymði. Hann vill eigi segja drauma sína’ (ÍF vi, 43) (Now the news came from Hól that Gísli slept badly two nights in a row, and people asked him what he had dreamed. He did not want to tell them). Although it is not made explicit in the saga, the reason for Gísli’s initial reticence may have been on the grounds that by not telling the dreams he might be able to countermand their prophecy.5 Now, however, his explanation is that he did not tell the dreams because he did not want anyone to interpret them, which suggests that in the first place they are symbolic dreams which require interpretation; and secondly, that they contain incriminating information regarding Þorkell’s direct or indirect involvement in Vésteinn’s death. All that Gísli divulges, however, are the two rather cryptic phrases which only reveal that first a snake, and then a wolf, came from a farm and killed Vésteinn, hardly enough evidence to charge either Þorkell or the other main suspect, Gísli’s brother­in­law Þorgrímr, with the crime. Indeed, at no point in the saga is the murderer unequivocally identified as either man, and although more evidence points to Þorgrímr, a convincing argument has also been made for Þorkell.6 Gísli’s dreams never are fully disclosed nor interpreted in the saga. Nevertheless, this statement does perform a number of important functions. First

5 Earlier in the saga Gísli also tries to avert fate. He attempts to circumvent Gestr’s prediction that within three years there would be animosity among the four ‘Haukdœlir’ by proposing a sworn brotherhood (ÍF vi, 21–22).

6 See Else Mundal (1974, 57–58). As Mundal points out, the view that Þorgrímr is the murderer is attested in three old Norse sources. In the earliest surviving witness to the M re ­daction of Gísla saga (AM 556 4to), Þorgrímr’s culpability is explicitly stated in the heading to Chapter 13 (fol. 58r): ‘Þorgrímr drap Véstein’ (Þorgrímr killed Vésteinn), although this was probably an addition by the copyist. The S redaction also contains a clear reference to Þorgrímr’s guilt in Chapter 14: ‘En Þorgrímr Freysgoði fór siðan til verksins ok vá Véstein eptir því, sem áðr er sagt’ (And afterwards Þorgrímr Freyr’s­priest set about the task and killed Vésteinn after that, as was said before). And lastly, in Chapter 12 of Eyrbygg ja saga (which may have used Gísla saga as a source), ‘Þorgrímr drap Véstein Vésteinsson at haustboði í Haukadal’ (Þorgrímr killed Vésteinn Vésteinsson at the autumn feast in Haukadalr).

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of all, it provides an excuse as to why the dreams were not told before. As we have noted above, the recounting of these premonitory dreams after, rather than before, the event is a reversal of the usual order, an anomaly that the saga writer may have felt required justification. More importantly, Gísli is letting Þorkell know that the identity of the killer has been revealed to him, and that he has it within his power to make this knowledge public or to keep it a secret. Also, the conversation between the brothers has provided the saga audience with an opportunity to ‘eavesdrop’, and thus become privy to the same information. This of course has the effect of raising the level of suspense at this point in the narra­tive,7 as does Gísli’s lament for his dearest friend in st. 5. By means of this strophe Gísli reaffirms the extent of his grief and reminds the audience that he will hardly leave Vésteinn’s death unavenged — indeed, as he was the one to withdraw the spear from Vésteinn’s body he is honour­bound to do so. But the question as to who will be the target of this revenge is left open, at least for the moment.

However, although the inclusion of the dream episode and stanza at this point in the narrative serves a clear purpose, there is a lack of cohesion regarding the exchange between the brothers that is difficult to account for. When Þorkell enquires about Auðr’s state of mind, Gísli answers: ‘“Vita muntu þat þykkjask”, segir Gísli; “hon bersk af lítt, ok þykkir mikit”’ (‘It seems you should know that yourself ’, says Gísli; ‘she does not show much, but feels it deeply’), but then very abruptly and without explanation, changes the subject and launches directly into the account of his dreams. Even more strangely, Þorkell appears to completely ignore everything Gísli has just said and simply repeats his question (using exactly the same phrasing as before): ‘Þorkell spurði þá: “Hversu bersk Auðr af um bróðurdauðann; hvárt grætr hon mjo  k?”’. As we have seen above, Gísli’s motive in recounting the dream to his brother is probably to unnerve him and perhaps even trick him into incriminating himself, and it could be argued that Þorkell’s silence indicates a refusal to be drawn into the trap, but the repetition of the question verbatim is puzzling and seems somewhat superfluous. Indeed, Þorkell’s dogged insistence exacts a wry comment from Gísli himself: ‘“opt spyrr þú þessa, frændi”, segir Gísli, “ok er þér mikil forvitni á at vita þetta”’ (ÍF vi, 47) (‘You ask this often kinsman’, said Gísli, ‘and you are extremely curious to find out’). It would seem that the manner in which Auðr manifests her grief, and whether or not she is shedding tears for her brother, is of crucial importance to Þorkell, but

7 As Heather o’Donoghue (2005, 154–57), has noted, this episode is a prime example of how the saga author has used the technique of external focalization to raise questions and create suspense and uncertainty.

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as Gísli’s sardonic remark makes plain, genuine concern for Auðr’s wellbeing is not his object. However, it is not at all clear what is.

one suggestion is that Þorkell is trying to ascertain how much Auðr knows, or has seen (Andersson, 1969). o’Donoghue (2005, 154), on the other hand, ven­tures the possibility that he is trying to find out whether Auðr ‘is reverting to heroic type and urging Gísli to take revenge’. There certainly seem to be verbal reminiscences of the heroic lays both in Þorkell’s question and in the two stanzas which Gísli utters immediately after his remark. As Gabriel Turville­Petre (1972b, 125) has pointed out, the stanzas in which Gísli describes his wife’s tears depict a level of emotion ‘unique’ in the skaldic verse of the family sagas. However, they do have strong parallels in certain highly emotional passages in the heroic lays of the Burgundian cycle, most notably the scene of Guðrún Gjúkadóttir weeping over the body of Sigurðr as portrayed in Guðrúnarkviða i (sts 15–16). Indeed the close correspondences here have led Turville­Petre to argue for a direct influence by the heroic poetry on the skaldic.8 Þorkell’s question may also contain an allu­sion to the Eddic poem. A large proportion of this text is devoted to Guðrún Gjúkadóttir’s initial reaction to the news of Sigurðr’s death. At first she is so ut ­terly paralyzed with sorrow that she is unable to weep, despite all attempts to help her. It is only when, at the suggestion of her sister, Guðrún kisses the dead body of her beloved that the tears began to flow. Þorkell’s enquiry, therefore, may be as to whether or not Auðr is immobilized by grief (manifested as an inability to cry), as Guðrún was at first, or whether she has released her emotions and is now strong enough to lament the death of her brother and seek retaliation.

Any of these suggestions would make sense in the context but still do not explain the point of the repetition. Although Þorkell’s persistent question does elicit a more elaborate and detailed response from Gísli, in the form of the two eloquent stanzas detailing his wife’s tears, the content of the verses does not ma ­terially add to the information already given in his first terse statement, that is, that although Auðr grieves deeply, she hides her tears. Turville­Petre (1972b, 123) explains the reiteration of the question as an example of ‘stylistic tenseness, or emphasis, such as is seldom found in the historical prose of Iceland’. For Theodore Andersson (1969, 27) Þorkell’s ‘persistent curiosity’ is indicative of his guilt. While these interpretations are certainly valid, I believe that the primary reason for the repeated question lies in another direction entirely. I propose that in an earlier redaction, Þorkell asked the question just one time and Gísli responded by

8 Magnus olsen (1938, 257) has also noted this similarity but is more cautious about drawing such conclusions due to the uncertainty about the dating of Guðrúnarkviða i.

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describing his wife’s grief in a short prose statement, followed by the more elabo­rate depiction in verse. This would fit well with the pattern of preceding stanzas, which have a prose paraphrase of their contents, and which, as we have noted, is a recurring feature of Gísla saga. However, by inserting the additional dream narrative as a response to Þorkell’s enquiry, the writer (or rewriter) sepa rated the prose and verse account of Auðr’s tears, which in turn necessitated a reiteration of Þorkell’s question. The addition of Gísli’s cynical comment ‘opt spyrr þú þessa, frændi […]’, is a masterly touch which distracts from the repetition by making a feature of it, and works to increase narrative tension at this emotional moment.

In the longer recension of Gísla saga (S), this dream episode appears in much the same form as in M. The variations between the two are fairly inconsequential and are mostly confined to the syntax, apart from one significant detail. In S, when Gísli announces that he has dreamed a dream, Þorkell responds with the question: ‘Hvat dreymdi þik?’ (What did you dream?) (Konráð Gíslason 1849, 108):

‘Draum dreymdi mik í nótt,’ segir Gísli, ‘ok svá hina fyrri nótt; en eigi vil ek á kveða, hverr verkit hefir unnit; en á sama hæfi ek um draumana.’ ‘Hvat dreymdi þik?’ segir Þorkell. ‘Þat dreymdi mik,’ segir Gísli, ‘ena fyrri nótt, at af bæ einum hrökktiz höggormr ok hjoggi Vèstein til bana. En í nótt dreymdi mik, at vargr rynni af enom sama bæ ok beit Vèstein til bana. En því sagði ek hvorigan drauminn fyrr en nú, at ek vildi gjarna, at hvorngi rèði.’

(‘I dreamed a dream last night’, says Gísli, ‘and also the night before; but I will not say who did this deed; though my dreams point to the same.’[?] ‘What did you dream?’ says Þorkell. ‘I dreamt this’ says Gísli ‘the first night, that a viper slithered out of a certain farm and bit Vésteinn to death. And last night I dreamt, that a wolf ran out of the same farm and bit Vésteinn to death. But I told neither dream before now, because I did not wish very much that anyone should interpret them.’)

Whether this difference arises from an omission in M or an addition to S is a mat ter for speculation. However, as Þorkell’s curiosity about the content of the dreams is more logical than his utter lack of response in the M redaction, it seems improbable that the redactor of M would have deliberately omitted the phrase. It is far more likely that the question was a later insertion to S by a narrator or redactor who felt uneasy about the lack of continuity in the dialogue and decided to modify the text in order to make the exchange between the two brothers sound more natural.

With or without the dream content revealed, the event of Vésteinn’s death comes as no surprise. From the moment Þorgrímr withdraws from the blood­brotherhood ceremony, ostensibly on the grounds that he owes nothing to a man to whom he is not related (ÍF vi, 23), a series of signs and omens presage the evil act,

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culminating in a dramatic portrayal of the murder scene. on the night Vésteinn is killed the saga tells that

Nú er gengit inn no  kkut fyrir lýsing, hljóðliga, ok þangat at, sem Vésteinn hvílir. Hann var þá vaknaðr. Eigi finnr hann fyrr en hann er lagðr spjóti fyrir brjóstit, svá at stóð í gegnum hann. En er Vésteinn fekk lagit, þá mælti hann þetta: ‘Hneit þar’, sagði hann. ok því næst gekk maðrinn út. En Vésteinn vildi upp standa; í því fellr hann niðr fyrir stokkinn dauðr. (ÍF vi, 43–44)

( Just before first light, someone entered the house silently and went to where Vésteinn was lying. He was awake but before he knew what was happening, a spear was thrust at his breast, so that it went right through him. And when Vésteinn received the blow, then he declared this: ‘struck there’, he said. And then the man went out. And Vésteinn tried to stand up; with that he fell down before the bed­post dead.)

As we have noted above, this ‘someone’ (lit. ‘something’) is traditionally viewed as being symbolized first by the viper (ho  ggormr) and then by the wolf (vargr) in Gísli’s dreams, which are said to come out of a farm and bite Vésteinn to death. However, as Else Mundal has pointed out (1974, 58–59), it is highly improbable that one person would be symbolized by two different animals, particularly if the dream animals were fylg jur. As Mundal explains, the fylg ja, or ‘fetch’, of an in dividual cannot change, one cannot be a wolf one day and a snake the next; therefore she makes that case that the wolf and the snake must represent the fylg jur of both Þorkell and Þorgrímr (based on their personalities she maintains that the serpent best represents Þorkell and the wolf Þorgrímr), who are equally guilty of Vésteinn’s murder, even if the actual death strike was only given by one of them.

Teodoro Manrique Antón (2008, 317–19) proposes quite a different theory. Highlighting the unusual triple alliteration in the paragraph (draum dreymði; hrøkkðisk ho  ggormr hjøggi; bœ biti bana), he suggests that the phrases may represent the fragmented remains of some verses, or may be the result of an at ­tempt on the part of the author to recreate the message of Gísli’s dream in a poetic style.9 Influenced by the dream cycle in the second part of the saga, the author may well have felt it was acceptable to invent the content of Gísli’s dreams using ingredients apposite to his purpose of creating tension in the plot. If his intention was to devise a dream which pointed to the culprit of an assassination in which two blood­brothers were implicated, it is not unlikely that he would have focused on the tragic legend of Sigurðr and Guðrún.

9 of course, another alliterating pair would be ‘vargr Véstein’.

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The strong parallels between the two stories as regards elements in the plot and, as we have seen above, the language of the poetry have long been established (olsen 1938),10 but Manrique Antón’s argument focuses specifically on a number of similarities in the circumstances surrounding the slayings of Vésteinn and Sigurðr, including the relationship between murderer and victim, and the use of the black arts in perpetrating both crimes. In Gísla saga, Þorgrímr relies on the help of the sorcerer Þorgrímr nef to reforge the magic sword Grásíða into the murder weapon,11 while in the heroic tradition, Guðormr has to drink a magic potion to increase his courage in order to kill Sigurðr, as described in Brot af Sigurðarqviðo, st. 4 (Neckel 1962, 198):

Sumir úlf sviðo, sumir orm sniðo, sumir Gothormi af gera deildo, áðr þeir mætti, meins um lystir, á horscom hal hendr um leggia.

(Some singed a wolf, some sliced up a snake, some doled out to Guðormr [flesh] of Geri [a wolf ], before they, intent on harm, could lay their hands on the brave hero.)

Manrique Antón argues that the two mythological animals cooked up in this con coction, the wolf and the snake, could have served as a model for the author of Gísla saga in recreating the content of the dreams.

Mundal and Manrique Antón both put forward convincing theories, and the saga author may well have been influenced by heroic poetry and almost cer­tainly by the concept of the fylg ja figure, when writing this episode. However, I believe that originally the wolf and snake referred to in this text were neither symbolic nor mythological animals but rather metaphors read literally, and in fact are simply elements of two kennings for weapons. The phrases ‘af einum bœ hrøkkðisk ho  ggormr ok hjøggi Vésteinn til bana’ and ‘at vargr rynni af sama bœ ok biti Véstein til bana’ seem to me to contain the vestiges of a lost stanza, or pair of stanzas, either self­contained or, as Manrique Antón suggests, part of a

10 The relationship between the two stories is further evidenced by a direct allusion to the legendary Guðrún in st. 12, where Gísli compares Guðrún Gjúkadóttir’s loyalty to her brothers with his own sister’s betrayal.

11 This motif has a further parallel in the story of the legendary sword Gramr, which, ac ­cording to the heroic tradition, first belonged to Sigmundr, the father of Sigurðr. Gramr was shattered in battle, but the pieces were kept and the sword was eventually reforged by the smith Reginn for Sigurðr’s use.

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larger group (or flokkr) that may once have included the ‘Betr hugðak þá’ stanza. over time these verses must have become detached from their original poetic framework but remained or became associated with the story of Gísli, so that they were eventually introduced into the version of the saga as we now have it. By this time the original poetic denotation of the animals had been lost, at least to the saga writer who devised a new context based on the understanding that in Gísli’s dream they represented the killer(s) of Vésteinn.

As we have seen above, the prose account of Gísli’s dreams takes the phrase ‘af einum bœ hrøkkðisk ho  ggormr ok hjøggi Véstein til bana’ to literally mean that a snake wriggled out of a farm and struck Vésteinn with a fatal bite, a reading which interprets ho  ggormr (striking/biting­serpent) as ‘adder’ or ‘viper’.12 Although this is its most common meaning, ho  ggormr also appears in an anonymous lausavísa in Chapter 133 of Njáls saga in a kenning for warrior, where it clearly refers to a sword: herði-Þundr ho  ggorma (hardening­Þundr (odin) = ‘God’ of biting­serpent (sword)’ > warrior.13 The second element in this compound, ormr (or a corresponding term for snake/serpent), is one of the most commonly occur ring base words in sword kennings, and some of the many examples throughout the corpus of skaldic verse include: blóðormr (blood­snake); rítormr (shield­snake); vals ormr (snake of slain); sóknar naðr (adder of battle); naðr unda (adder of wounds); hrænaðr (corpse­adder); naðr sára (adder of wounds); hrælinnr (corpse­snake); or grá linnr undg jalfrs (grey serpent of wound­splash (blood)).

The evidence suggests that this very strong association between sword and snake derives from the appearance of a blade that has been pattern­welded, a manufacturing procedure that was relatively common in the early Viking Age (Ellis Davidson 1962, 23–36; 166–67). In some cases the variegated patterns on these blades take the form of wavy or curvy lines which resemble the form of a snake, and according to Ellis Davidson, it is this similarity which is probably behind the notion that snakes sometimes appeared on swords. This type of dam­ascening can also result in a shimmering, iridescent effect such as that of watered

12 Cf. English dialectal: ‘hagworm’.13 The stanza in question (‘Ho  ggorma mun hefjask’) is also spoken in the context of a dream­

episode, which has a number of parallels with the text under discussion. Einar Ól. Sveinsson (1943, 8–13) has pointed out how the content of Flosi Þórðarson’s dream is constructed around a motif directly borrowed from another (Latin) text: Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, but also incorporates Icelandic folk beliefs and his own experience of the local landscape (Gísli Sigurðsson 2004, 24–25). Like Gísli, Flosi chooses not to reveal the contents of the dream, but this is based on the advice of Ketill of Mo  rk, who interprets it to mean that the men named in the dream are doomed to die.

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silk or of the glistening skin of certain fish or snakes in motion, a phenomenon which is suggested by terms such as old English wyrmfah (serpent­coloured) describing the sword Hrunting in Beowulf (l. 1698), grægmæl (silvery­patterned) of the sword Nægling (Beowulf, ll. 2577–78), and the oN cognate of oE mæl, mál (although mál can also refer to an inlaid pattern or engraved inscription).

Interestingly, the two references in Gísla saga to a blade exhibiting mál­pat­terns occur in relation to spears rather than swords. The first is the great málaspjót used at the ill­fated blood­brother swearing ceremony (ÍF vi, 22), and the second is the blade made from the broken pieces of Grásíða, which was reputedly re ­forged in the following manner (ÍF vi, 37–38):

Nú eru tekin Grásíðubrot, er Þorkell hafði hlotit ór skiptinu þeira brœðra, ok gerir Þorgrímr þar af spjót, ok var þat algo  rt at kveldi; mál váru í ok fœrt í hepti spannar langt.

Now the fragments of Grásíða, which Þorkell had allotted to himself out of the di vision of the brothers’ property, were got out and Þorgrímr made a spear out of them, and that was all done in the evening; there were patterns on it and it was fitted to a haft a span long.

The existence of such pattern­welded spearheads may explain the correspon ­dence between spear and snake as exemplified by spear­kennings with ‘serpent’ as the base­word.14 In the Lexicon poeticum, for instance, Finnur Jónsson translates slíðra flugdreki (flying dragon (> snake) of scabbard) as ‘sword’ (sværd) but flug -dreki sára (flying dragon (> snake) of wounds) as ‘spear’ (spyd). obviously ‘scab­bard’ qualifies the first kenning as a sword rather than a spear, but where there is no contextual information it is often impossible to distinguish which of the two is indicated. In Skáldskaparmál (Faulkes 1998, 67), Snorri claims that in kennings for ‘hewing weapons’ (ho  ggvápn), swords and axes are called ‘fires of blood or wounds’ (eldar blóðs eða benja), while ‘thrusting weapons’, such as spears and lances, are often called ‘snakes or fish’ (Lagvápn eru vel kend til orma eða fiska); to illustrate the latter, he cites an example from the poet Refr: myrkdreki marka borðs (dark­forest dragon (snake), of the board (shield) > spear). Nevertheless, the proliferation of sword­kennings with the element ‘fish’ or ‘snake’ undermines the justification for this division, and indeed the term ho   ggormr combines elements from both categories. Consequently, ho  ggormr could be read as a kenning for either spear or sword.15

14 For an example of a Viking Age pattern­welded spearhead, see Peirce 2002, 151.15 In this context, it is also worth mentioning the term níðho  ggr (malice­striker), which

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With regards to the first element of the compound, ho  gg­ can mean ‘biting’ or ‘hewing/cutting’ depending on the context. The same goes for the verb ho  ggva (here in the subjunctive preterite form hjøggi), which is usually used to denote a cutting or hacking movement, but can also mean ‘to strike’, and, when applied to snakes, ‘to bite’. As to the verb used to describe the movement of the ho   ggormr out of the farm, hrøkkva, the strong form appears earlier in the saga in a kviðlingr (little poem) in the context of the duel between Gísli and Skeggi (ÍF vi, 11):

Hro  kk hræfrakki, hjók til Skeggja.

(Carrion­blade [> ?sword?bill] jerked, I struck at Skeggi.)

Editors Björn Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson point out that this verb, which is es ­pecially associated with moving vipers, is also used of moving weapons when they are swung in a strike, and of a pole or shaft which moves very rapidly, a descrip ­tion which could equally well apply to a sword, spear, or even axe.16 Depending on how these lines are interpreted (see below), hro  kk could be translated as: ‘lunged’, ‘swung’, ‘struck’, ‘sprang’, ‘jerked’, ‘flinched’, or ‘recoiled’.

As to the reflexive form of the weak verb hrøkkva (here in the preterite hrøkk-ðisk), this is also usually used to refer to the twisting or sinuous movement of a snake, which may seem incongruous with the linear trajectory of a weapon­blade when it is thrust, but it is perhaps not necessary to read the verb too literally. It may just be a poetic usage of the term, which should be interpreted here as ‘slung itself ’, ‘hurled itself ’, or even just ‘sprang’, and was chosen to suit the metrical and alliterative requirements of a line of verse as much as for its lexical value. In addition, it is worth noting that some sword­blades of very high quality were so flexible that they could reportedly be bent back to the hilt, and when the point was released they would spring back to their former shape (Ellis Davidson 1962, 164–65), and the verb hrøkkva may contain an allusion to such a characteristic.

is listed as a sword name in Skáldskaparmál (Faulkes 1998, 120), but is also the name of the mythological serpent chewing at the roots of Yggdrasill.

16 The weapon in question, hræfrakki (lit. ‘corpse­blade’), is listed in the þulur as a sword name, and indeed a sword was the weapon customarily used in such duels. However, the prose context narrates that Gísli went armed to the duel with a ho  ggspjót (hewing­spear). No examples of such weapons have been found, but ho ggspjót is usually translated into English as ‘halberd’ or ‘bill’, and must have been a pole­mounted weapon with a blade, which could be used for slicing or striking.

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The poetic origin of the phrase ‘hrøkkðisk ho  ggormr ok hjøggi Véstein til bana’ is also highly apparent in its alliterative and metrical qualities, and, while it is obviously futile to attempt to reconstruct an entire stanza based on the scraps we have here, a rearrangement of the prose syntax shows we have (at least hypo ­thetically) the constituent elements a pair of verses in the dróttkvæðr háttr (court metre) including the requisite ‘half­rhyme’, or skothending (underlined), in the odd line:

hǫggormr […] hjøggi hrøkkðisk […]

It is also worth noting that a reordering of the elements in the phrase results in a couplet strongly reminiscent of the ‘Hro  kk hræfrakki’ kviðlingr quoted above (although this does not make sense syntactically):

Hrøkkðisk hǫggormr hjøggi til Véstein

In the second ‘dream’, the animal Gísli sees is a vargr. The primary meaning of vargr is ‘wolf ’, but it can also signify ‘outlaw’, ‘enemy’, ‘attacker’, ‘destroyer’, and, by association, in a poetic context frequently refers to a ‘sword’. Snorri (Faulkes 1998, 119–20) lists vargr as one of the numerous heiti for ‘sword’ alongside oth ­er terms such as: verúlfr (‘man­wolf ’ = man­destroyer), vitnir (‘watcher’ = wolf ), málvitnir (patterned­wolf ). However, vargr, úlfr, or equivalent terms (such as freki, garmr, gagarr, Fenrir, etc.) generally only refer to a sword when qualified by a determinant such as ben or undr (both ‘wound’) as in the examples undvargr (wound­wolf ) and benvargr (wound­wolf ). other instances of sword­kennings with a ‘wolf ’ element include: hjalm-Fenrir (helmet­Fenrir (wolf )); hrægagarr (corpse­hound (wolf )); halsgerðar freki (wolf of neck armour); slíðra garmr (wolf of scabbard). Consequently, if the vargr that ran out and bit Vésteinn (ren na is commonly used of weapons, as of course is bíta) did originally refer to a sword, then it most likely once formed part of a kenning, such as benvargr or vargr unda. The latter adapts well to a poetic rearrangement of the phrase, as illustrated below:

vargr unda biti Véstein til bana

As we can see from the examples listed above, weapon kennings that contain the element ‘wolf ’ almost always refer to swords, although they can also occasionally signify axes, for example, vargr unda (‘wolf of wounds’ > axe), but never spears. Therefore, although ho  ggormr could be read as ‘spear’, this seems less likely for

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vargr. If ho  ggormr and *benvargr are two sword­kennings which refer to the same weapon, and this was the weapon that killed Vésteinn, we are presented with a problem in that this would directly contradict the saga account of Vésteinn’s kil­ling, which explicitly states that he was killed by the spear Grásíða.

one explanation for this could lie in the type of spear used to kill Vésteinn, such as the ho   ggspjót referred to above, which could be used to cut as well as thrust. Envisaging Grásíða as a ho  ggspjót, or some other sort of broad­bladed polearm, would account for some of the inconsistencies in its description which emerge from a comparison of the sources.17 According to Peter G. Foote (1963, 130), these inconsistencies result from the fact that Grásíða never really existed as a sword. Foote claims that the story of its reforging as a spear is ‘clearly invention’, written into the saga by an author who wished to incorporate an anecdote cir­culating at the time which attributed the ownership of a real contemporary spear called Grásíða to Gísli. Anne Holtsmark (1951, 14–16) has also questioned the existence of a sword called Grásíða, based on the improbability of a sword having a name in the feminine gender. If we can discount the story of Grásíða as a later addition, then our putative kennings might refer to an earlier account of the story of Gísli (in verse or prose) in which the instrument of Vésteinn’s death was a sword and not a spear.18 of course, it is also conceivable that the original frame work for the verses was not related to the story of Gísli or Vésteinn’s murder weapon at all. At any rate, whichever way they arrived at their present context, it is clear that the saga author did not recognize ho  ggormr and *benvargr as weapon kennings, and certainly did not associate them with Grásíða.

This would not be the only example of such a phenomenon in Gísla saga. At least two other episodes unambiguously demonstrate a similar occurrence, where the original meaning of a poetic text has been either lost or misconstrued, and the prose narrative has been adjusted to accommodate the author’s new interpreta tion. The first example also concerns dream poetry. In his penultimate stanza, Gísli relates a dream he has had regarding his own imminent death. As in so many other examples in the saga, the opening lines of this stanza display a lack of concordance with the prose context, but what is perhaps of greater significance is that the prose introduction to this strophe appears to entirely misinterpret the content of the succeeding stanza (ÍF vi, 110):

17 Grásíða is also mentioned three times in Sturlunga saga. See Guðni Jónsson (1953, ii, 91, 95, 347). For a discussion of the differences between the longer and shorter redactions in relation to Grásíða, see Lethbridge 2006.

18 If this were the case, it would have a counterpart in Sigurðr’s death­scene in Völsunga saga, which recounts that he was killed in bed with a sword.

Lost in Transmission 187

Rennr á hann svefnho  fgi, ok dreymir hann, at fuglar kœmi í húsit er læmingar heita,19 þeir eru meiri en rjúpkerar ok létu illiliga ok ho  fðu válkazk í roðru ok blóði. Þá spurði Auðr, hvat hann hafði dreymt. ‘Nú váru enn eigi svefnfarar góðar’, Gísli kvað vísu:

(A heavy drowsiness came over him, and he dreamed that some birds came into the house which are called læmingar, they are larger than cock ptarmigans and they howled horribly and had been wallowing in blood and gore. Then Auðr asked what he had dreamt. ‘Now they were still not good dreams’, Gísli delivered a stanza:)

Mér bar hljóm í heimi, ho  r­Bil, þás vit skilðumk, skekkik dverga drykkju, dreyra sals fyr eyru. ok hjo  rraddar hlýddi heggr rjúpkera tveggja, koma mun dals á drengi do  gg, læmingja ho  ggvi.

Prose word order

Mér bar hljóm fyr eyru í heimi dreyra sals, þás vit skilðumk ho  r­Bil; skekkik dverga drykkju. ok hjo  rraddar heggr hlýddi læmingja ho  ggvi tveggja rjúpkera; dals do  gg mun koma á drengi.

Translation

I bore a ringing sound before my ears in home of hall of gore [(heart) > breast], when we parted, linen­Bil [(goddess) > woman]; I decant dwarf ’s drink [> poetry]. And tree of sword­clash [(battle) > warrior] heard the ?læming ja blows of two cock ptarmigans. Dew of bow [> blood] shall come upon the warriors.

Like the snake and the wolf in the text under discussion, the cock ptarmigans re ­ferred to in line 6 of the strophe are usually taken to symbolize Gísli’s killers, and it is perhaps by association that the saga author identifies the læmingar in the verse as another type of bird. Most scholars agree that this is a misinterpretation (Foote

19 ÍF vi, 110, n. 1: ‘Texti E er misskilningur á vísunni, því að læmingr þekkist ekki sem fuglsnafn, hvorki að fornu né nýju’ (The E text here is a misinterpretation of the stanza, because læmingr does not seem to be either an old or modern name for a bird). The S redaction offers the alternate reading: ‘ok hiogguz at i læmingi’ (AM 149 fol.x 45r: ‘oc hiogúz at i læmingi’), also obviously derived from the verse, but equally ambiguous.

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1963, 115),20 but although a multitude of suggestions have been offered, to date no one has come up with an entirely convincing alternative. More interest ing from our point of view is that here we have an unequivocal example of the saga author engaging in an interpretation of what he perceives to be a problematic word in the verse. It is highly unusual in the sagas to see such obvious authorly in ter ven­tion, but here, the saga writer clearly felt that such an elucidation was war ranted. From this action we can infer a number of things: that the writer of the prose and this strophe were not the same; that he anticipated that his audience would not understand the strophe, especially the term læming ja, which is uniquely at ­tested here; and that this word was just as unfamiliar to the writer, who would appear to have simply invented the plural form læmingar, based on a hypothetical masculine strong noun *læmingr.

It is plain that the saga author had at best an imperfect understanding of the content of the stanza, but tried to make sense of it by reading læming ja as the birds which were the fetches or fylg jur of the men who would soon kill Gísli. His description of the ‘birds’ having wallowed in blood and gore (ho  fðu válkazk í roðru ok blóði) could be inspired by one or both of the kennings in the stanza which contain a reference to blood: dreyra salr (hall of blood) > heart; and dals do   gg (dew of bow) > blood. However, a very similar wording occurs in the prose preface to sts 21–22, where Gísli describes how the ‘worse’ woman comes to him often (in his dreams), and ‘always wants to roll him in blood and gore and wash him in it, and screams hideously’.21 Turville­Petre (1972a, 37) has pointed out that in old Icelandic tradition, ‘a red or bloody fetch was an omen of violent death’, and the knowledge of such a belief may have influenced the author in em ­phasizing the bloodiness factor here. The reference to the sound the birds make (‘ok létu illiliga’) could be inspired by the hljómr (sound) the poet refers to in the first line of the stanza, and if he believes the birds referred to here are ‘loons’ (Icel. lómr), he may have been influenced by the particularly mournful wail of that bird.

20 Despite this general consensus, the most recent English translation (prepared for The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, 1997) has opted for one of the traditional interpretations (Regal 2000, 552): ‘When we parted flaxen goddess, | my ears rang with a sound | from my blood­hall’s realm | — and I poured the dwarf ’s brew. | I maker of the sword’s voice, | heard two loon birds fighting | and I knew that soon the dew | of bows would be descending.’

21 (ÍF vi, 76): ‘vill jafnan ríða hann blóði ok roðru ok þvá honum í ok lætr sér illliga’. See also dream stanza 32, where Gísli dreams that his wife is coloured red by his blood (ÍF vi, 105): ‘fríðr í fo  gru blóði | faðmr þínn roðinn mínu’ (your fair bosom was reddened with my scarlet blood).

Lost in Transmission 189

Another case of misinterpretation on the part of the saga author relates to the two kviðlingar recited during the duel between Gísli and Skeggi, which I have already mentioned above. The verses are presented in the following context:

ok ganga þeir á hólm ok berjask, ok heldr skildi hvárr fyrir sik. Skeggi hefir sverð þat, er Gunnlogi hét, ok høggr með því til Gísla, ok gall við hátt. Þá mælti Skeggi:

(And they go there to the duel and fight, and each one holds his shield in front of him. Skeggi has a sword which is called ‘Battle­flame’, and he strikes at Gísli with it and it ‘yelled’ loudly. Then Skeggi said):

Gall Gunnlogi, gaman vas So  xu.

(Battle­flame [> sword] cried out, It was pleasure/sport/delight for Saxa)

Gísli hjó í móti með ho  ggspjóti ok af sporðinn skildinum ok af honum fótinn ok mælti:

(Gísli hit back with the hewing­spear and struck off the tail end of his shield as well as his leg and said):22

Hro  kk hræfrakki, hjók til Skeggja.

(Carrion­blade [> ?sword?bill] jerked, I struck at Skeggi.)

Skeggi leysti sik af hólmi og gekk ávallt við tréfót síðan. (ÍF vi, 10–11)

(Skeggi bought himself out of the duel and afterwards always walked with a wood­ en leg.)

The ambiguities in the language of the verses quoted here have resulted in a num ­ber of different interpretations, most of which centre on a sense of sexual in nuen­ do or insult. Anne Holtsmark (1951), for instance, argues that the name of the is land on which the duel is supposedly carried out, Saxa, cannot refer to a real lo cation (it is not an identifiable place­name in Norway), but may well have been a name for a giant woman, which in the poetic context should be taken to refer to a weapon such as an axe or spear. The feminine appellation of this weapon would serve to accentuate the sexual overtones in the word gaman, as suggested by Holtsmark’s translation: ‘the sword yells, what a joy for the spear (axe)’. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen (1983, 58–61) essentially agrees with this interpreta­tion, but reasons that the verses make more sense if Saxa (the weapon) is seen as

22 The reference to the ‘tail’ of the shield, would indicate that Skeggi was holding a kite shield, a long shield with a pointed end often used by riders in combat, as shown on the Bayeux tapestry, for example. However, there is no archaeological evidence of kite shields being used in Scandinavia in the Viking period, and this detail must be an anachronism.

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be longing to Gísli rather than Skeggi. Emphasizing the phallic connotations of Skeggi’s ‘flame of battle’, or sword, he maintains that these lines contain a deliber­ate jibe on the part of Skeggi, who is implying that the duel is like a sexual act where he takes the active (masculine) part and Gísli enjoys the passive (feminine) role. Meulengracht Sørensen sees these kviðlingar as clear examples of the type of níðvísur (slanderous verses) which can be read either literally (and pretty harm­lessly), or symbolically, with all the slanderous connotations that níð entails.

It has also been debated whether the weapon hræfrakki in the second couplet refers to the sword Gunnlogi, which ‘flinches’ (hro  kk) when knocked out of Skeggi’s hand, or to a sword in Gísli’s hand, or to a ho  ggspjót as the prose suggests. As to the proper name ‘Skeggi’, Holtsmark sees it as most likely an invention of the saga author, based on a misinterpretation of the term skegg ja (‘axe’, ‘halberd’); alternatively, oren Falk (2005, 243–46) believes this term, with its connotations of ‘beard’, could refer to a man’s pubic hair and genitals, and that Gísli’s words contain a literal or symbolic reference to castration, which would requite the níð in the preceding couplet. Despite disagreement regarding the precise meaning of the terms, however, there is a general consensus that the saga author has focused on the literal meaning of these lines and ignored the symbolic import (Frank 1985, 170). Whether or not this was a conscious decision depends to a degree on the manner in which the verses were incorporated into the narrative.

Heather o’Donoghue (2005, 148) is convinced that the couplets represent ‘a scrap of tradition in verse’ out of which the saga author may have created a nar ­rative context based on a misconstruing of the proper names discussed above. Alternatively, she suggests that these fragments could have acquired their framing narrative in the context of oral transmission, ‘not necessarily reflecting very pre­cisely any “original” context’. Whether these poetic remnants once comprised part of a larger whole, or whether they represent an occurrence of flyting preserved in its original form, is difficult to determine. Either way, it is quite obvious that the verse predates the prose, and that several key terms in the prose context have been extrapolated from the poetic text. For instance, the saga author names Skeggi’s sword as ‘Gunnlogi’, but it is likely that this is simply a sword­kenning which has been borrowed from its poetic context and read literally; likewise, it is hardly a coincidence that the verb used to describe the sound Gunnlogi makes in the prose, gall (‘cried out’, ‘rang out’), is exactly the same as the poetic text. As regards the prose paraphrase of the second couplet, the most probable explanation for ho  ggspjót is that this is an interpretation or translation of hræfrakki. It is beyond the scope of this paper to enter into a detailed examination of the etymologies of all of these terms, but it is worth noting that although hræfrakki is listed in the

Lost in Transmission 191

þulur as a sword name, it is possible that the second element in the compound, frakki, is identical to frakka, a type of spear (ÍF vi, 11, n. 4).

The passage under discussion bears all the traces of a similar process: a saga writer used the imagery contained in some fragments of poetry, and combined them with other elements of the story to compose a fictional episode, which he then worked into the fabric of an already extant version of the saga. Such a sce­nario would explain the discrepancies in the narrative analysed above, such as the perplexing issue of Þorkell’s repeated question. But what prompted the writer to compose and insert the additional material?

The impetus might have come from a perceived gap in the narrative regarding the content of Gísli’s dreams. As I have noted above, the opening sentence to Chapter 13 relates that Gísli had slept badly on two consecutive nights prior to Vésteinn’s murder due to two dreams, whose content he refused to reveal. Stanza 5 also contains an allusion to two bad dreams. I would venture that these brief references were all that were available to the saga writer, who, in contriving to provide a more detailed account, looked for a model to the dream visions oc ­curring later in the saga. It is logical that the prominence of the fylg ja figure in these premonitions, coupled with the powerful images of the ho  ggormr and vargr preserved in a few snippets of verse, inspired him to devise a portentous dream centred on animal fetches. A certain predilection for such fetches is cer­tainly discernible in the writer’s interpretation of læming ja in st. 39, and also in the prose introduction to sts 32–34, where Gísli’s claim that in his dream his enemy Eyjólfr seemed to him to have a wolf ’s head (ÍF vi, 105: ‘ok þótti mér vera á honum vargs ho  fuð’) is not corroborated by the subsequent verses. Bernadine McCreesh (2012) has recently argued that such dream animals in the sagas are a ‘literary convention rather than a record of human experience’, a theory that seems certainly borne out by the three examples listed here. However, unlike the other two rather crude attempts, the snake and wolf episode is no mere nod to a literary convention; it is a carefully crafted piece of writing, judiciously placed at a pivotal point in the narrative where it is calculated to achieve the maximum effect.

While the ostensible function of this text is to supply missing information, specifically the subject of Gísli’s dreams, in fact the saga author reveals very little which is not already known, and indeed the whole incident could be re ­moved without greatly affecting the plot. As we have noted above, under close examination the seams of this insertion become plainly visible. However, by opting not to unravel the mystery of Vésteinn’s murder in this passage, the writer increases the level of intrigue, teasing the reader with the knowledge that Gísli knows but chooses not to tell. In addition, the episode serves to exacerbate the already strained relations between Gísli and his brother, and hints at worse times

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yet to come. In the Icelandic sagas, such points of high emotional tension are often signalled by a change in the discourse from prose to verse, and this is one of the functions of st. 5. But it is also reasonable to assume that the saga writer ful ly appreciated the alliterative and metrical qualities in the phrasing of the frag­ments, and made a conscious decision to employ this highly stylized language to accentuate the drama of the moment.

It is impossible to be certain with regard to the ultimate provenance of these phrases. If my hypothesis is correct, however, they would have first appeared in a poetic composition such as a lausavísa, a stanza in a flokkr, or perhaps a pair of kviðlingar. There are several ways in which these lines subsequently could have become detached from their original framework. It is possible, for instance, that they constitute an example of a direct borrowing. This would not be an iso ­lated occurrence — as we have noted above, the language of several stanzas and episodes in Gísla saga is obviously heavily influenced by the heroic poetry. However, if this were the case it is unlikely that the subject of the source was related to the story of Gísli, otherwise the author would doubtless have quoted the verse in full. Alternatively, the text could represent all that remains of a stanza which related dreams of Vésteinn’s murder. While it is true that the formal complexity of the dróttkvætt metre means that those stanzas which have survived are relatively intact, mistakes do occur due to copyists’ errors, misunderstandings of obsolete or archaic language, and damaged manuscripts. As we have seen in the example of the ‘læming ja’ stanza (39), once one word becomes garbled, the sense of a phrase, or indeed of the whole stanza, can be lost. If the writer had access to a very corrupt stanza, he may have opted to omit the verses altogether, and tried to reconstruct the content based on an (erroneous) prose exegesis of what was intelligible to him. Another possible source could be one of the poetical or grammatical treatises such as Snorri’s Edda, which characteristically cite isolated kennings and short snippets of skaldic verse,23 or even a historical work like Sturlunga saga or Heimskringla.

Whatever the origin, it is no more likely that the wolf or snake originally represented the person(s) who murdered Vésteinn, than that bloody birds rep­resent the fetches of Gísli’s killers in st. 39. The most logical explanation is that what we have here are a pair of weapon kennings which may once have referred to the instrument of Vésteinn’s death. There is no reason to suppose that the saga writer deliberately misconstrued the text; given his tendency to misinterpret and

23 As Judy Quinn (1995, 76) has pointed out, ‘while quotation of verse examples [in Skáldskaparmál] is copious, many kennings are instantiated only in prosified lists’.

Lost in Transmission 193

misunderstand other poetic texts in the saga, it is not surprising that he took these kennings at face value, overlooking their metaphorical significance and only seeing in them the vivid images of a snake and a wolf springing in a deadly attack.

Works Cited

Manuscripts and Archival Sources

Copenhagen, Royal Library, MS NKS 1181 fol.x

Reykjavík, Árni Magnússon Institute, MS AM 149 fol.x

—— . MS AM 445 c i 4to—— . MS AM 556 a 4to

Primary Sources

Faulkes, Anthony, ed. 1998. Snorri Sturluson: Edda. Skáldskaparmál, 2 vols, London: Viking Society for Northern Research

Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912–15. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, a: Tekst efter hånd-skrifterne i–ii; b: Rettet tekst med tolkning i–ii, Copenhagen: Gyldendal

—— . 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquae linguae septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilson, 2nd edn, Copenhagen: Møller; repr. 1966

Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1953 Sturlunga saga, 3 vols, Akureyri: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, ii: Íslendinga saga

ÍF vi Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, eds. 1943. Gísla saga Súrssonar, in Vestfirðinga so  gur, Íslenzk fornrit 6, Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1–118

Konráð Gíslason, ed. 1849. Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni: Hinn minni og hin meiri, Co pen­hagen: Fornritafélags norðurlanda

Neckel, Gustav, ed. (rev. Hans Kuhn). 1962. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, i. Text, 3rd edn, Heidelberg: Winter

Wrenn, C. L., and W. F. Bolton, eds. 1988. Beowulf, 3rd rev. edn, Exeter: University of Exeter

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