Two Borgfirðinga sögur: the oldest or the youngest Íslendingasögur?

Abstract

Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa and Heiðarvíga saga alike have traditionally been described as 'primitive' sagas. Bjarnar saga is conventionally dated c. 1220; Heiðarvíga saga is often named as the oldest of the Íslendingasögur. Bjarni Guðnason turned these datings on their heads when he argued, largely on grounds of ideology, that Heiðarvíga saga is as late as c. 1260 1993), and that Bjarnar saga, post-dating Njáls saga, is one of the youngest of these sagas (1994). Taking as examples these two sagas, one set in Borgarfjörður and the other relating a feud heavily involving the Borgfirðingar, this paper reviews the possible criteria - stylistic, ideological, and those relating to literary relations and historical context ? for assessing the chronology of saga composition, and revisits Sigurður Nordal's speculations (Íslenzk fornrit III) about the conditions in which sagas may have been written in Borgarfjörður in the early thirteenth century.