The Thematic Unity of the Younger Gautreks saga

by DENNIES CRONAN, University of Nevada-Reno


Gautreks saga, which usually appears in manuscripts as an introduction or a sort of prelude to Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar, has survived in both an older and a younger, expanded redaction. The early version consists of the Dalafífl and Gjafa-Refs pættir, two entirely distinct stories which are connected only by the presence of King Gautrek. the content of the saga becomes even more diverse in the longer version with the addition of the story of Starkad's sacrifice of King Víkarr, which is connected to the rest of the saga only through the device of presenting Jarl Neri of the Gjafa-Refs páttr as the son of King Víkarr. This latest addition appears to sit even less comfortably with the original two stories than they do with each other. Both the insertion of this story into the saga and the presentation of Neri as Víkarr's son have been characterized as "willkürlich," 'arbitrary, capricious,' and the reviser responsible for these additions has been described as a "Stümper," 'bungler.' As might be expected, the individual strands of this saga have received more attention than the saga itself, and with the partial exception of the Starkad story that supplements the longer account in Saxo, the saga appears to be regarded more as a useful mine of cultural and mythological information than as a successful work of literature. Indeed, the only attempt at a reading of the entire saga has been presented by an anthropologist, Paul Durrenberger, whose interpretation, however, is limited to an examination of reciprocity and its absence in each of the stories. More recently bruce Lincoln, a historian of religion, has read the saga as a series of contrasts: between the static and the mobile, the inland and the coast, accumulation and exchange, the asocial and the social, the past and the non-past. But despite his use of the younger version, he deals with the Starkad story by simply ignoring it.