INTRODUCTION

     Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga

Note: The following is taken largely from Sigurdur Nordal’s introduction to the saga in Islenzk Fornrit, v. 3, pp.

The events described in Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga take place near the middle of the tenth century, and cover a period of approximately five years. If one accepts the chronology of the annals, the dates of the principal events of the saga are:

Ørn comes at Borgarfjord 961 A.D. Blund-Ketil burned at Ornólfsdal ) Burning-case prosecuted at Althing ) Thorvald Oddsson leaves Iceland ) 962 A.D. Thórod marries Jófrið ) Thórod leaves Iceland 963 A.D. Tungu-Odd dies 965 A.D.

     Gudbrand Vigfusson places the events a little later, and contends that the burning took place 964, the case itself in 965, Thórod’s marriage in 966, and Tungu-Odd’s death in 970.

The geographical location of the saga events can be determined more precisely, in the Borgarfjord area in the southwestern part of Iceland. Borgarfjord lies just north of Reykjavik. As can be seen from the accompanying map, the district is quite hilly, with many rivers in the valleys. These rivers play an important part in many sagas, and especially in Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga. They form boundaries between districts and are natural barriers to communication and travel. As in Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga, battles were often fought at the fording-streams of these rivers, because it was there that invading parties could be most advantageously stopped.

Between Hvita amd the Reykjadal River, to the northwest of Reykjadal, we find Skaneyfjell, the mountain on top of which Tungu-Odd wished to be buried. The tongue-shaped land area between these two rivers is what Tungu-Odd wanted to be able to see from his grave.

We cannot be certain when Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga was written, but evidence points to the thirteenth century. The most modern saga authority, Sigurdur Nordal, places the writing between 1250 and 1270. In doing so he disagrees sharply with both Konrad Maurer, who says that the saga was written between 1195 and 1245, and Bjorn M. Olsen, who fixes the date between 1200 and 1255. The reasoning behind these various theories is that Sturla Thordsson, author of Sturlabok, was influenced by the saga. Since the dates of Sturlabok’s writing are still controversial, and since influence in this case cannot be proved, we are still left with an enigma that can only be resolved when more evidence is found.

Nordal believes that the saga was written near Borgarfjord, where the events occurred, and comes to this conclusion because of the intimate way in which the author refers to places. For example, he says out on the nes and north of Hlidina (the Slope), whereas a person from a different district would have used the specific names Akranes and Thverarhlid. Nordal goes further, and maintains that the saga most likely was written in Reykholt, a settlement just south of Breidabolstad.

Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga is one of six Borgarfjord sagas. The others are Egils Saga, Saga of Gisli Illugason, Heidarviga Saga, Bjarnar Saga Hitdoelakappa, and Gunnlaugs Saga Ormstungu. Of these, the last is most closely related to Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga. Helga the Fair, one of the central characters in Gunnlaugs Saga, is the daughter of Thorstein Egilsson and Jofrid, who was the daughter of Gunnar Hlifasson. Both Jofrid and Gunnar appear in our saga. The very fact that Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga concludes with a comment on the later life of Jofrid suggests that the two sagas might be even more closely connected, and might have been written by the same person.

Many saga authorities in the past have held that Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga is the product of Borgarfjord oral tradition, and that its author had not known the writings of Ari concerning the events of which the saga tells. Nordal, however, arrives at a different conclusion. He says that the author of the saga was a learned and widely-read man, and that in all likelihood he had read Ari’s account. Also, the author shows disregard for chronology and distance, which would not have been likely had he followed oral tradition because these are central to oral tradition. Second, the saga contains no poems, which are the most reliable indications of the presence of oral tradition. Nordal says that the author, taking literary license, knowingly changed facts in order to make his saga more interesting.

Early saga-scholars, such as P.A. Munch, Jon Sigurdsson and Gudbrand Vigfusson, were unanimous in considering Hønsa-Thóri’s Saga more reliable than Ari’s account of the same events in Islendingabok. In 1871, Konrad Maurer published an essay that set forth some of the main relationships between the saga and Islendingabok, and he stated that in most cases Ari was more credible than the saga. Bjorn M. Olson, who wrote about this same issue somewhat later, agreed generally with Maurer. Sigurdur Nordal carried their position even further; in his introduction to the saga, he says that Islendingabok is factually more accurate than the saga in every respect. He says that since Ari lived one hundred years before the writing of the saga, and since he was a direct descendant of Thord Gelli, he most likely had a truer account of the events. Nordal reconciles the differences between the saga and Ari’s account by saying that the author of the saga had known of Islendingabok but had deviated from it intentionally, partly because of influences from other sources and partly from a desire, as mentioned earlier, to make his saga more interesting.