Hrafnkels saga

The eponymous main character, Hrafnkell, starts out his career as a fearsome duelist and a dedicated worshiper of the god Freyr.

The saga has been interpreted as the story of a man who arrives at the conclusion that the true basis of power does not lie in the favor of the gods but in the loyalty of one's subordinates.

[citation needed] The saga remains widely read today and is appreciated for its logical structure, plausibility, and vivid characters.

He dedicates his favourite horse, named Freyfaxi, to his patron god Freyr, along with the best of his other possessions and livestock.

He would generally need the support of another goði, both for the complicated legal manoeuvring often necessary and, if successful at the assembly, for subsequently enforcing the verdict.

When Sámr and Þorbjörn reach the assembly at Þingvellir they quickly discover that no major chieftain wants to aid them.

One early morning Sámr, supported by Þorgeirr and Þorkell, arrives at Aðalból, surprising and capturing Hrafnkell while he sleeps.

The next morning Hrafnkell surprises Sámr when he is asleep and offers him a similar choice to the one he had received from him six years before, with no weregild paid for Eyvind.

[7] Hermann Pálsson further reasoned that it was penned by the bishop Brandur Jónsson [is] written shortly before his death 1264,[e][8][9][10] but other commentators have assessed his amassed evidence to be insufficient.

[18][g] One class of paper manuscripts, the "AM 551c 4to" and its copy (designated C and C1 in the diagram),[h] contains a slightly different version of the saga with several, mostly minor, additions.

Its supporters in response depicted the standardised Old Norse spelling as an artificial construct—no closer to the actual manuscripts than the modern spelling—and an unnecessary burden to the casual reader.

[30] Readers especially appreciate it for its cohesive and logical story line; along with its brevity, these qualities make it an ideal first read for newcomers to the sagas.

[i] Scholars in the 19th century (such as Guðbrandur Vigfússon[32] and Finnur Jónsson[33]) especially espoused this view; it largely went out of fashion in academia by around 1940.

They find the saga inherently plausible in that its characters have logical motivations and the results of their actions are realistic.

[m][35][36] Historical inconsistencies and other difficulties were systematically analysed by E. V. Gordon in his 1939 paper and by Sigurður Nordal in his groundbreaking book Hrafnkatla in 1940.

The conclusion they reached regarding the origin of the saga was that it was not a redaction of oral transmission, but rather a "bookish composition" that are "historically impossible".

[n][37] No outsiders from the north-west would have been able at that time to meddle in this local affair of the east, as happens in the saga; in fact, the meddlers (Þorkell and his goði brother Þorgeirr Þjóstarsson from the Westfjords) are considered fictitious.

He claims that the valleys used as the ostensible settings for the events of the story would never have allowed for as great a population as the saga assumes.

[40][o] Nordal sees the saga's convincing narrative and characters as evidence that a single brilliant author composed it.

[42] Another school of thought regarding the origin of the sagas, which came into prominence in the second half of the 20th century, emphasises the elements of folklore and the oral survival of legends for an extended period of time.

In some ways, this marks a revival of the old notion that the saga is an accurate redaction of an orally preserved narrative.

[30][31]) But unlike earlier freeprosists, the latter-day proponents regard the narrative as folklore, and therefore, they do not dwell on strict historical accuracy.

Theory suggests that core story lines of the sagas will preserve oral elements long-term, whereas one can expect details – such as the names of secondary characters – to change over the centuries.

The Icelandic scholar Óskar Halldórsson wrote a short book on Hrafnkels saga criticising Sigurður Nordal's previous work.

[43] According to Óskar such details as an incorrect name for Hrafnkell's father do not constitute valid evidence for the view of the saga as a 13th-century fiction.

On the contrary, Óskar takes this as confirmation that the story of Hrafnkell survived independently in the east of Iceland, and changed in unimportant details, long after the composition of Landnámabók.

[44] Óskar traces the story of Freyfaxi back to horse-worship among Indo-European peoples,[p] and in his opinion such mythic or folkloric themes strengthen the case for the oral preservation of elements of Hrafnkels saga since heathen times.

In a departure from previous scholarship, Hermann Pálsson based his research on the extended version of the saga.

It has become a test-case, the classic example, in the discussion of relations between unsophisticated oral story-telling and learned well-read authors, between inherited pragmatic attitudes and imported Christian ethics."