Saint Magnœs's Fame in Orkneyinga Saga

Robin Waugh, Wilfrid Laurier University

All of the chief sagas of Icelanders take, eventually, an ironic stance toward the word-of-mouth fame that they usually establish for major characters early in and throughout their narratives. Orkneyinga saga offers an individual and striking presentation of this ironic stance during the events of Saint Magnœs Erlendsson's martyrdom. Typically in the sagas, parody of renown occurs when narrators or characters express doubts about fame as a virtue, or when the action seems to depict fame in a negative light. Yet the attack on renown throughout Magnœs's martyrdom is unusually satirical, and particularly so when some of the events seem to have their sources in scriptural narratives, accounts of conversions, and early passios. The influence of Christian literary tradition is hardly surprising: the ultimate source for the account of this saint's life, as it appears in Orkneyinga saga, Magnœss saga skemmri, and Magnœss saga lengri, is apparently a Latin work by an English cleric.