Creating tradition: The use of skaldic verse in old norse historiography

Abstract

Afundamental question for scholars working with skaldic poetry is-or at least should be-whether skaldic stanzas reflect the Viking Age (the time of their supposed origin) or the Middle Ages (when they were recorded in manuscripts). It is not only a question of whether stanzas fit into the traditional categories of ægte (authentic, composed by recognized Viking-Age skalds) or uægte (inauthentic, fabricated by medieval Icelanders and falsely attributed to Viking-Age skalds). Most of the skaldic corpus is preserved in the form of quotations in sagas or in rhetorical or grammatical treatises, which means that even if the verses are authentic, they have been removed from their original oral context and function, and edited into a prose context that will no doubt have a significant ef ect on their interpretation, from both medieval and modern perspectives. Even if we were able to confirm that many stanzas in sagas and other medieval texts actually were composed in the Viking Age- and a substantial number of them probably were1-we would still need to ask how much these verses have changed in the course of a long oral transmission. Were they available to saga authors in written form, or orally through in for mants? Were they handed down with explanatory anecdotes, the so-called Begleitprosa?2 And last but not least: were medieval scholars even concerned with the authenticity of skaldic verse, or is this concern a post-medieval phenomenon? The full answer to these questions will probably remain obscure; however, a detailed examination of the interaction between saga prose and skaldic verse can increase our understanding of medieval attitudes toward skaldic verse and even give us an idea of the pro cess by which skaldic stanzas were transmitted from their supposed original context to their quotation in saga prose. For my analysis I have chosen stanzas dealing with the Battle of Svolor quoted in the sagas of the Norwegian King Óláfr Tryggvason (ca. 968-1000), a single stanza by Skúli Porsteinsson, and a number of stanzas from the drápa Rekstefja by the skald Hallar-Steinn. The stanzas will be considered under the following headings: (1) the content of the stanza, (2) the narrative mode, (3) the prose context, (4) the poetical context, (5) the skald. A preliminary discussion of stanzas in the sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason will clarify the following analysis.