Stepmother Sagas: An Irish Analogue for Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvérs

Abstract

vexed question of Irish influence upon medieval Icelandic literature has suffered over the years from being too enthusiastically answered. The following article is not intended as yet another answer'5 but it is hoped that the evidence it puts forward will enable others to advance the debate constructively. Too often Celtoskeptics have vehemently rejected (or ignored) even the possibility of such influence without providing any satisfactory alternative, while proponents of the positive view have damaged their case by claiming far too much and lapsing into Celtophile55 rhapsodies. Even Gisli Sigurdsson's supposedly impartial 1988 survey of betrays its pro-Gaelic agenda by presenting almost no research which points the other way. Like the relatively dormant bookprose-freeprose55 quarrel concerning the origins of the Islendingasbgur (Andersson 6581), this debate has become unhelpfully polarized prompting several scholars to ignore the question altogether. This study will focus in particular upon the narrative and rhetorical parallels between the (probably) tenth-century Irish tale Fingal Rdndin (fr) [Ronan's Kin-killing] and the (probably) fifteenth-century Hjdlmpers saga ok Olvers (hs). fr is preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster (Trinity College, Dublin, h. 2.18), folios 271-3, and the fourteenthand fifteenth-century collocation Trinity College, Dublin, H.3.18, folios 749-54. hs is preserved in twenty-four seventeenthto nineteenth-century paper manuscripts (Harris xxv-xxxii), most importantly Vigrarbok (Landsbokasafn Islands, ibr 5, fol.) (£.1680), folios 77-104. The two texts are thus widely separated in time, as well as geography and cultural-historical context. The parallels are found in their analogous employment of a story-type known as the lustful stepmother55 pattern, in which a young woman solicits her stepson and,

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