Introduction
Over the last several years, while considering the literary uses of
proverbs in the Old Icelandic sagas, I have come to see the need for a new and
exhaustive listing of the paremiological materials found in this genre. Such a
focussed compilation has been neglected now for nearly a century, although there
have during that time been several useful collections of Icelandic proverbs
partially inclusive of the medieval corpus. The present need is made more
urgent, however, by the place we have reached in the progress and directions of
literary critical saga research.
We stand at a point of departure, or
perhaps departures, from several avenues developed in the later 20th century
which themselves now seem fairly exhausted: discussions, on this continent at
least, arising, first, from Theodore M. Andersson’s positing of a discernible
literary structure in saga narrative and, second, from studies of structure
determined less by literary considerations than by the process of feud itself,
an anthropologically based approach to these narratives, pursued most notably by
Jesse Byock, William Ian Miller, and, again, Andersson. Whereas the application
of the Book Prose Theory to the preparation of editions in the Íslenzk
Fornrit editions encouraged analysis of the sagas as originating in a
literary rather than in an oral background, North American scholarship tended
towards possible relationships of the preserved written word to what Theodore M.
Andersson termed the oral family saga, the nature of which is succinctly
described by Carol Clover as that “larger undertaking–the dramatic chronicle of
the Icelandic settlement, . . .” [Clover, “Open Composition: the
Atlantic Interlude in Njals Saga, in Sagas of the Icelanders: a book of
essays, ed. J. Tucker (Boston, 1989), p. 290.], or in other words,
all the stories all the Icelanders ever told about their ancestral heritage: the
verses they recited, the brief episodes they recounted, and perhaps also the
longer narratives of great families or famous heroes, occasional references to
the oral presentation of which are indeed to be found in medieval Icelandic
literature.
It is natural, then, that micro-structural studies of saga
narrative, dealing for instance with how proverbs are used in these stories,
should also be driven by these shifting critical views of the nature of the
sagas’ origins. Thus, arising from the Book Prose end of the critical spectrum,
Hermann Pálsson’s work with the moral philosophy of Hrafnkels saga
[Siđfrćđi Hrafnkels sögu, Reykjavík, 1966], in
which he remarked upon the continental conceptual background of the
paremiological expressions of that work, led to his Úr hugmyndaheimi
Hrafnkels sögu og Grettlu [Reykjavík, 1981], where he
showed how the composers of both these sagas were familar with the continental
background of medieval proverbial wisdom. His most focussed work in these
interests was his Áhrif Hugsvinnsmála á ađrar fornbókmenntir [Reykjavík, 1985], in which he examined various literary
relationships between Hugsvinnsmál, the 13th-century native rendering
of the Distichs of Cato, and other early Icelandic writings.
It should go
without saying that a culture which is much given to oral entertainment will
preserve among its people a richer selection of proverbial materials than is the
case in societies where storytelling is an activity of lesser importance. Thus,
Grigorii L’vovich Permiakov claimed to demonstrate in the 1970s and 80s that the
typical Russian adult of that time on average knew “no fewer than 800 proverbs,
proverbial expressions, popular literary quotations and other forms of cliches.”
[“On the Question of a Paremiological Minimum,”
Proverbium 6 1989, 91-102] Studies of American students during
the same era produced seemingly far less impressive results.
[Wolfgang Mieder, “Paremiological Minimum and Cultural Literacy,” in
Creativity and Tradition in Folklore: New Directions, ed. S. J.
Bronner. Logan, Utah 1992, pp. 185-203.] Presently unaware of cultural
literacy studies for contemporary Icelandic society, I think we might
nevertheless expect some rather high scores on paremiological awareness and
retention, especially among the older generations.
In Iceland of the
Settlement and the Commonwealth, when there seems to have been little non-oral
entertainment other than physical competitions, dances, and some board games,
the world of the proverb and the proverbial phrase might be expected to have
been very large indeed. A clear and objective assessment of its importance and
uses in the corpus of the Old Icelandic sagas has yet to be
reached.
Early in the 20th century Finnur Jónsson’s “Oldislandske
ordsprog og talemĺder,” comprising nearly one hundred pages with 494 individual
word headings, and supplemented by Hugo Gering’s “Altnordische sprichwörter und
sprichwörterliche redensarten” from his own, otherwise unpublished, collection,
together with a brief, additional study by Vratny, formed the most central basis
for any work to be done with proverbs in the sagas. [F. Jónsson,
“Oldislandske ordsprog og talemĺder,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 30
(1913-14), 61-217; H. Gering, “Altnordische Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlische
Redensarten,” ANF, 32 (1915-16), 1-31. I haven’t seen K. Vrátny, “Noch
einiges zu den altisl. Sprichwörtern,” ANF, 33 (1917), 58-63.]
Other collections with Icelandic materials made both before and
after this time sometimes included but were never exclusively devoted to the
proverbs of the Íslendingasögur. Thus, Finnur Jónsson’s 1920 Íslenzkt
Málsháttasafn, a self-admittedly armchair production, based on previous
published and unpublished collections, includes the occasional proverb from a
specific saga. In his helpful enumeration of those who had gone this way before,
he cites the work of Peder Lĺle, with around 1200 proverbs translated into
Latin, and meant as a text for teaching students in the latter language. [published as Östnordiska och latinska Medeltidsordsprĺk. Peder
Lĺles Ordsprĺk och en motsvarande svensk samling, ed. Axel Kock and Carl af
Petersens, Copenhagen, 1889-94] Finnur Jónsson makes extensive use of a
list of proverbs purportedly compiled by Hannes Ţorleifsson and included by
Peder Syv at the ends of each volume of his two-volume Almindelige danske
ordsprog (1682 & 1688) [ ] . He is also much indebted to Guđmundur
Jónsson’s vast Safn af íslenzkum orđskviđum, [fornmćlum, heilrćđum, snilliyrđum, sannmćlum og málsgreinum, samanlesiđ
og í stafrófsröđ sett af Guđmundi Jónssyni prófasti í Snćfellsnessýslu og presti
í Stađarstađarsókn Copenhagen, 1930], a
work drawing upon, among other items, a number of unpublished sources described
in its introduction. Finnur Jónsson uses also other collections such as that of
Hallgrímur Scheving, published from Bessastađir, 1843 and 1847, and a series,
whose compiler was unknown, published in the Almanak of the Ţjóđfélag,
1903-5 and 1907.
For more recent times, the definitive enumerative study
of the subject is that of Bjarni Vilhjálmsson and Óskar Halldórsson,
Íslenzkir Málshćttir, its second edition appearing in 1982, professedly
based on the 1920 Málsháttasafn, but both more comprehensive and more
precise than the pioneering productions of Finnur Jónsson and some of his
predecessors, taking cognizance of all the sources used by him but also going
far beyond his own scope in drawing upon many works which had not yet been
printed in his time or in which he did not take interest in his own work. In
particular, Jonas Rugman´s Samling af Isländska Talesätt and the
Thesaurus Adagiorum of Guđmundur Ólafsson, published by G. Kallstenius
in 1927 and 1930, respectively, made available new material for the compilers.
Thus, many of the Old Icelandic sagas, in their various sub-genres, are at least
selectively taken into account, along with editions of poetry and purely
historical works.
References to the sagas in Íslenzkir Málshćttir,
though more helpful than those of Finnur Jónsson’s Íslenzkt
Málsháttasafn, and even his “Oldislandske ordsprog og talemĺder,” are still
rather sketchy, and much of the paremiological material of the
Íslendingasögur remains unnoticed both by these earlier and the most
recent compilers. I hope to amass over the next few years A Concordance
to the Proverbs and Proverbial Materials of the Old Icelandic Sagas,
its initial focus to be on the 40 or so Íslendingasögur edited in
the Íslenzk fornrit series and translated in the Complete Sagas of
the Icelanders, whose texts and translations, respectively, will for the
most part provide the main foundation of the Concordance. The
proverbial texts thus established will then be augmented with any significant
variant readings and annotative material from other editions, with supplementary
information from lexicographical resources and whatever else may seem useful as
the project proceeds.
I will soon expand the inventory of proverb texts
beyond these first boundaries to include material, on the one hand, from such
works as the konungasögur, Orkneyinga saga and Fćreyinga
saga, and on the other, from Völsunga saga and its related prose
narratives. Since the influence of the Völsung material upon the Íslendingasögur
is recurringly a matter of literary critical concern, the next step in this
compilation will be in the direction of the legendary poems of the Elder
Edda, and after that, of course, the poems of mythological background.
Eventually, I hope to add to the collection from the riddarasögur and
the fornaldarsögur, and the samtíđarsögur.
Of the
twenty or so Íslendingasögur from which I have so far culled material,
the results are quite various, a few works remarkably abundant, such as
Brennu-Njáls saga, containing over fifty proverbs and proverbial
phrases, but many, the skáldasögur, for instance, having few or none at all!
Snorri Sturluson, as if aware long before the fact of that 1740s Neo-Classical
sense of taste which inspired Lord Chesterfield’s admonishment to his son that
“a man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs or vulgar aphorisms,” has, I
think, no more than eight proverbs in Egils saga and only a few in
Heimskringla. The volume of editorial matter to be added to my articles
on individual proverbs also varies from one saga edition to another, depending
on who the previous editors were and the particular editorial standards
according to which they published. Sagas, for example, in the Altnordische
saga-bibliothek series, have much annotative material which has already
found a useful place in the Concordance.
To other introductory essays:
Conceptual
Background of Paremiology
and
Construction
and Use of the Concordance
Back to Introduction, Concordance, and Bibliographies.