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Hollander: Jómsv. saga. 211
motif’. The family sagas, notwithstanding the general simil-
arity of their pattern, show ever new combinations of human
fates and fortunes. It is only where the source of historic
facts dries out that the constructive imagination of the sa-
gamen becomes evident.
Now, the Scandinavian has no great gift of invention.
Witness the Fornaldarsogur. However interesting, they are
repetitious and monotonous what concerns their incidents *)..
The Jómsvíkingasaga assumes a middle position in this
respect. The events told are, for the most part, bona fide
history. At the same time there are a number of motifs
that decidedly smack of the Fornaldarsçgur.
We must here make a clean distinction between the
Jómsvíkingasaga proper and the rich tradition from which
it is culled and which, no doubt, lived on orally among the
people. It is not possible to hold that the story of the
saga proper was common tradition; for notwithstanding their
many mutual differences the various redactions that have
come down to us contain the essential events concatenated,
and what is more, told, in precisely the same way.
Conclusive evidence of individual authorship is to be
seen in the novellistic episodes which amplify and vivify
the narrative. Particularly telling are the retarding episodes
in the Romantic style which immediately take us out of
the atmosphere of the realistic family sagas. As in more
elaborate fairy-stories, the number 3 is their common and
recurring characteristic. These episodes are altogether lacking
in the Fgska account.
1) King Gorm invites his father-in-law Klakharald three
times to participate in his Yule banquet. Three times
Klakharald sets out to cross the Limfirth, and three times
he is held back by the ominous sights he witnesses.
2) Svein8 quarrel with his father is spun out with
’) Cf. F. Jónsson, Den Islandske Litteraturs Historie, 1907, p. 831.
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