72
with gilded spine is not original. The foliation
has been added later in pencil on every tenth leaf
by an unidentified hand. The scribe ‘personal-
ized’ his text by adding occasional decorated
titles and letters (e.g. ff. 45r, 103r, 127r),
coloured decorations (f. 45r), rubrication (e.g.
149r) and vignettes (ff. 15v and 172v).
Altogether, the manuscript contains sixteen
texts: five family sagas, three
fornaldarsögur
(so-called ‘legendary sagas’), three
þættir (i.e.
short saga-like stories about characters that
feature in major sagas) and some poetry. The
Vísur uppá Laxdæla sǫgu are the fourth of
these texts, arranged as follows:
5
1. 1r–44v:
Eyrbyggja saga (the
beginning
of the saga is missing)
2. 45r–97v:
Laxdæla saga
3. 97v–102r:
Bolla þáttur Bollasonar (as a
continuation
of the saga text
without interruption or rubric)
4. 102v:
Vísur uppá Laxdæla sǫgu
5. 103r–112v:
Kjalnesinga saga
6. 112v–115v:
Jǫkuls þáttur Búasonar
(Leaf 116r is blank.)
7. 116v:
Gælur [‘nursery rhymes’]
8. 117r–118v:
Hálfdanar þáttr svarta.
9. 119r–126r:
Sǫgubrot af nokkrum
fornkonungum
10. 126v:
Draumþula
11. 127r–138v:
Víglundar saga
12. 139r–147r:
Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða
13. 147v–148v:
Þorsteins þáttur forvitna
14. 149r–172v:
Hrólfs saga kraka
15. 172v:
Bjarkamál
16. 173r–176v:
Starkaðar saga gamla
(incomplete)
The first three sagas are connected not only by
genre (i.e. they are all family sagas) but also by
content: their main characters are various
descendants of the famous Norwegian
hersir (a
kind of
tribal warlord) Ketill
flatnefr
[‘Flatnose’].
Eyrbyggja saga tells the story of
the family of his son Bjǫrn
austræni [‘the
Easterner’];
Laxdæla saga concentrates on the
family of his daughter Auðr
djúp(a)uðga,
while
Kjalnesinga saga details the lives of
descendants of his son Helgi
bjólan (< Gaelic
beulan [‘little mouth’]). The other notable
group of texts in the manuscript is formed by
Hálfdanar þáttr svarta,
Sǫgubrot af nokkrum
fornkonungum,
Hrólfs saga kraka cum
Bjarkamál, and
Starkaðar saga gamla: they
are all set in Europe and deal with legendary
‘Viking’ kings.
Throughout the manuscript, Tyrfingur
added marginal notes commenting in both
Icelandic and Latin on the texts in question. In
the first colophon, which follows
the first text,
Eyrbyggja saga, he informs the reader that the
writing began during the winter of 1746:
Eyrbyggja sögu þessa skrifaði ég Tyrfingur
Finnsson um veturinn 1746 (Lbs 513 4
to
, f.
44v).
6
I, Tyrfingur Finnsson, wrote down this
Eyrbyggja saga during the winter of 1746.
There is a second colophon following the
second and third texts,
Laxdæla saga and
Bolla
þáttr Bollasonar:
Skrifuð orðrett, ok sva stafrett sem verða
kunni, Anno a Partu Virginis, Millesimo,
Septingentesimo, Qvadragesimo Septimo.
Tyrfingur Finnsson. (Lbs 513 4
to
, f. 102r.)
7
Copied word-for-word and, in so far as
possible, letter-by-letter. In the year one
thousand seven hundred forty-seven after the
virgin birth. Tyrfingur Finnsson.
It is safe to assume that the
vísur following the
saga text were written down in 1747 and
constitute an original contribution by Tyrfingur.
Summary of Laxdæla Plot as Relevant to the
Stanzas
It is characteristic of Icelandic sagas to be
organized around a central plot that is
customarily preceded and followed by stories
of earlier and later generations in the same
family that contextualize it both historically
and in society.
Laxdæla saga starts with the
story of the arrival in Iceland of Auðr
djúp(a)uðga, praised in stanza 1 below. Auðr
escapes from Norway via Scotland, the
Hebrides and Faroe Islands, and settles a large
region in Breiðafjǫrðr [‘Broad Fjord’], in the
northwest of Iceland. Several of her
descendents were significant players in
Icelandic politics, among them her great-
grandson, Hǫskuldr. He had several children,
including two sons: Þorleikr by his wife and
Óláfr by a slavewoman he bought while
abroad. The slavewoman is later revealed to be
Melkorka, a kidnapped daughter of an Irish
king Myrkjartan. Óláfr grows up to be a man
of renown and acquires the nickname
pái