98 Rezensionen belief in one of the dominant cultural para- jarne Fidjestøl. Selected Pa- digms of their day? On the other hand, if any pers, ed. Odd Einar Haugen medieval country was capable of developing and Else Mundal, trans. Peter an alternative view of kingship, it was Ice- Foote. The Viking Collection land, which for several centuries governed B 9. Odense: Odense University Press, itself without a monarch. Resistance to Nor- wegian rule had been important at other 1997. 406 pages. times in Iceland’s history (e.g., when the Ice- landers declined to grant King Olaf Haralds- These seventeen essays by the late and much son’s request for the island of Grímsey and missed Bjarne Fidjestøl are, like his longer a poll tax) and in other genres of its literature studies, characterized by intellectual courage (e.g., the plot of Egils saga revolves around and originality, methodological elegance, the hostility that Egill feels towards the and interpretive sensitivity. Their skillful En- sons of Haraldr hárfagri). The complex glishing by Peter Foote was a labour of love, and changing nature of Icelandic attitudes extending the knowledge and appreciation of towards the Norwegian parent society has the author’s work to readers outside Scan- been the subject of much research in recent dinavia. Fourteen of the articles originally years, and Ármann Jakobsson’s reconstruc- appeared in Norwegian (nynorsk), in jour- tion of the ideas about kings and kingship nals and volumes not easily accessible; two that underlie the individual sagas’ represen- are translated from German, and one, origi- tation of individual rulers is a valuable con- nally published in English, has here been tribution to a discussion that naturally tends rendered into a graceful, idiomatic form of to emphasize difference over similarity. that language. Bjarne Fidjestøl’s prose, supple, personal, understated, and suffused Elizabeth Ashman Rowe with gentle humour, is a treat even in trans- lation. The papers, selected from the large number he published, are arranged in five groups: skaldic studies, saga studies, prose and poetry, literary history, and “in lighter vein.” The first section includes five articles: “The Kenning System: An Attempt at a Lin- guistic Analysis” (16–67); “The King’s Skald from Kvinesdal and his Poetry” (68–92); “Arnórr Þórðarson: Skald of the Orkney Jarls” (93–116); “‘Have You Heard a Poem Worth More?’: A Note on the Economic Background of Early Skaldic Praise-Poetry” (117–32); and “Skaldic Poetry and the Con- version, with Some Reflections on Literary Form As a Source of Historical Information” (133–50). The next group contains: “Algirdas Julien Greimas and Hrafnkell Freysgoði: Semiological Models Applied to an Icelandic Saga” (151–67); “The Legend of Þórir hundr” (168–83); “European and Native Tradition in Óláfs saga helga” (184–200); and “Óláfr Tryggvason the Missionary: A Literary Por- trait from the Middle Ages” (201–27). Four papers make up the third section: “Icelandic Sagas and Poems on Princes: Literature and Society in Archaic West Norse Culture” (228–54); “Skaldic Stanzas in Saga-Prose: alvíssmál 9 (1999): 98–100 Rezensionen 99 Observations on the Relationship between Baltic, the places named lying “like beads on Prose and Verse in Snorri’s Heimskringla” a string” along the shipping lanes of Europe (255–76); “The Tale of Haraldr harðráði and (237). Bjarne Fidjestøl, with deep roots in Þorgils the Fisherman” (277–93); and “‘See the Sognefjord parish where he grew up and What Happens, Compose on It Later’: A in Bergen where he taught for nineteen Footnote to a Piece of Historical Criticism years, was as international in outlook as Found in a Prologue” (294–302). The sole the poetry he studied. He delighted in the essay in the fourth group, “Norse-Icelandic breadth of scholarly interest in Old Norse– Composition in the Oral Period” (303–32), is Icelandic studies outside Scandinavia and an extract from Bjarne Fidjestøl’s contribu- was, of course, an early and enthusiastic tion to a new history of Norwegian literature supporter of Alvíssmál. He would, I think, (1994). The final section contains three be pleased to know that his proposal, first papers: “‘Out They Will Look, the Lovely presented at the Sixth International Saga Ladies’: Views of Women in Norse litera- Conference in Helsingør (1985), for a col- ture” (333–42); “Snorri Sturluson — Euro- laborative reediting of the skaldic corpus, pean Humanist and Rhetorician” (343–50); is at last bearing fruit in an international and “Romantic Reading at the Court of project with plans for completion in 2005. Hákon Hákonarson” (351–65), chosen, the Bjarne Fidjestøl’s highly developed editors explain, because they illuminate sense of the past goes hand-in-hand in these Bjarne Fidjestøl’s ability to convey the mean- essays with an equally strong awareness of ing and relevance of current Old Norse continuities. “The King’s Skald from Kvines- scholarship to a wider audience. Even in his dal,” a paper that first appeared in a volume most “popular” pieces, he never falsifies, or narrowly concerned with local history, de- betrays, his calling as a scholar-writer; there scribes the ancient Swedish king Aun, who is no second-rateness in this gathering. dies of old age in Ynglingatal, stanza 16, as These essays, most of which focus on “so feeble that he had to drink milk from verse in the preliterate period (ca. 870–1100), a prehistoric baby’s bottle, an ox-horn with were written to stand alone; there is the risk, a hole in the sharp end” (85). The fourth pa- when they are bundled into a collection, of per in this collection, on the economics of what William Trevor calls “cancellation” — skaldic composition, mentions the generous one work shadowing the effect of the next rewards given to skalds by princes, the cor- all the way through — or at the very least of relation between a prince’s wealth and the repetition. This does not happen here, owing number of skalds in his stable, and the rela- in part to Bjarne Fidjestøl’s multifarious and tionship between the “finances of the ruling constantly developing interests. Papers in houses of early medieval Scandinavia and this volume discuss the sociology of medieval the prominence poets give to gold in their literature, structural linguistics, skaldic stan- praise of princes” (132). The editors remind zas as historical sources, the output of indi- us that this material was first presented by vidual poets, the conversion of the North to the author in the lecture (on a subject of his Christianity, iconography, native and foreign choice) required of him as a doctoral candi- elements in saga-literature, manuscript trans- date. It is a superb illustration of Bjarne mission of the skaldic corpus, and much else. Fidjestøl’s wit, subtlety, and moral balance: An ever present concern in these essays, the skaldic scholar speaking, on this particu- almost imperceptible because so delicately lar occasion, about the reciprocal obligations handled, is the relationship between Old of skald and patron, and on the financial Norwegian and Old Icelandic, the “peaceful rewards to be gained by skaldic effort. rivalry” (236) between the two nations for Peter Foote appears to this reviewer to ownership of the rich early literature. The have done an almost flawless job of transla- author quietly suggests that Norse praise tion. Even the paper originally published in poetry, which had its opening phase in Nor- English is not so much “lightly revised” (14) way, was itself not restricted by political as skillfully edited and transformed, so that divisions, that its view was largely fixed on the author’s own distinctive voice comes the waters and coasts of the North Sea and through. The editors provide a crisp intro- alvíssmál 9 (1999): 98–100 100 Rezensionen duction that includes summaries of each inar Gunnar Pétursson. Eddurit paper, a bibliography of Bjarne Fidjestøl’s Jóns Guðmundssonar lærða: scholarly publications (which reveals his flu- “Samantektir um skilning á ency in Russian), and another of works cited Eddu” og “Að fornu í þeirri by him in the seventeen essays. In the index E gömlu norrænu kölluðust rúnir bæði of personal names and primary sources, Snorri Sturluson gets the largest number of ristingar og skrifelsi.” Þættir úr fræða- entries; St. Óláfr easily outdistances Óðinn, sögu 17. aldar. Volume 1, Inngangur. who is mentioned only a few more times Volume 2, Texti. Rit 46. Reykjavík: than God. The volume is handsomely print- Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, ed. There are remarkably few typographical 1998. 512 and 116 pages. errors: read því for oví (94). One skaldic phrase, “þvít kannk yrkja” (243), has not The book here under review, a doctoral the- been rendered into English. Equally trivial, sis by Einar Gunnar Pétursson, Sérfræðingur the original Norwegian “i kong Alfreds at Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, engelsk” is probably preferable to “in King presents the first full-length study of the Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon” (131). Under the sec- life and literary activity of the seventeenth- tion heading “troops of skalds” (69), the century Icelandic autodidact Jón Guðmunds- translator renders Old Norse greppa ferðir son, known to his contemporaries and since as “ways of the poets” (70), but later emends as Jón lærði [the learned], in addition to edi- to “clusters of poets” (127). In an effort to tions of two of the works attributed to him: remove the syntactical ambiguity in Bjarne Samantektir, a version of parts of the Prose Fidjestøl’s own English translation (“Mag- Edda with extensive additions and annota- nús, hear my powerful poem; I know none tions, and Ristingar, a commentary on Bryn- better than you”), the translator inadvert- hildarljóð in Volsunga saga. This review is ently creates another ambiguity (“Magnús, a shortened and translated version of the hear my mighty poem; no other know I supe- writer’s andmælaræða, presented at the au- rior,” 110) before correcting to “no other thor’s doctoral defence at the University of man know I superior” (245).