Egill, Snorri and the Story of a Hiatus

Abstract

This article addresses the question of the authorship of a couple of stanzas (lausa­vísur 28 and 29) attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson in the eponymous saga (ÍF 2: 163–165). The stanzas contain two invectives addressed at Eiríkr blóðøx and Queen Gunn­hildr, share several verbal echoes and seem to constitute a conceptual pair. Unlike the one focusing on Gunnhildr, the stanza for Eiríkr contains linguistic features not compatible with a tenth century dating and seems a probable product of the saga author. Alongside the late ones, however, the stanza contains a seemingly archaic feature, thus presenting a methodologically challenging case. The presence of the hiatus form féar (gen. of fé, contracted to fjár after ca. 1150) calls into question the ability of Icelandic medieval scholars, and of Snorri Sturluson in particular, to deliberately reproduce linguistic archaisms, as well as the feasibility of using hiatus forms as a dating criterion for Old Norse verse.