Thrand of Gotu: Two Icelandic Sagas from the Flat Island Book (review)

332 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 Thrand of Gotu: Two Icelandic Sagas from the Flat Island Book. Translated by George Johnston Porcupine's Quill. 192. $14.95 The manuscript Icelanders call the Flateyjarbok (The Book of Flat Island) contains both sagas George Johnston includes in his Thrand of Gotu, the other being the Saga of the Greenlanders. Thrand ofGotu is more important in literary terms yet less well known in North America; the whole matter of the Norse Atlantic saga has been studied at length and the texts frequently translated, so the Greenlanders will not be treated here. The Saga of the Faroe Islanders (now renamed Thrand ofGotu) is, paradoxically, a classical Icelandic saga about non-Icelanders. Moreover, this is one of the oldest Icelandic sagas, or at least one of the first of them to be written. The bare fact takes one by surprise because this early saga seems to be composed in full view of the tradition and conventions of the Icelandic sagas and even to parody those conventions and to play with the audience 's conventional expectations. In style and in matter, as Johnston's commentary and translation suggest, Thrand of Gotu is sophisticated, mature, and subversive. The saga of the Faroe Islanders survives only in interpolations made in sagas of the two Norwegian kings named Olaf: Olaf Tryggvason, the Viking who would be, and briefly was, king of Norway, and Saint Olaf (Olaf the Stout in his own time), another Viking who won and eventually lost that kingdom. Both Olafs converted Norway to Christianity - the earlier one, Tryggvason, was credited with converting five countries (Norway, the Orkneys, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland). Norway returned to paganism after Olaf Tryggvason's death, but Saint Olaf's conversion of it was officially permanent. The missionary connection brought the story of the Faroe Islanders into the orbit of the kings' sagas. This missionary activity can readily be seen - and was seen by characters in the saga - as a cloak for Norwegian imperialism, In the fourteenth century, the copyist of Flateyjarbok, Jon Thordarson, had a good and independent text of the Faroe Islanders' saga which he interpolated into his recopyings of the so-called Great (long or big) Saga of Olaf Tryggvason and of Snorri Sturlason's saga of Olaf Tryggvason. Olaf Halldorsson, the Icelandic editor of the saga of the Faroe Islanders, has reconstituted it chiefly from Jon's interpolations. Halldorsson believes that Jon: Thordarson left his independent manuscript of the Faroe Islanders' saga for two short groups of chapters which he took from the Olaf sagas. Since the writing of the kings' sagas precedes the writing of the Icelandic family sagas, the early date of the saga of the Faroe Islanders has occasioned too little scholarly surprise. The present translation is a revision and rethinking of Johnston's earlier The Faroe Islanders' Saga (Oberon 1975); the change in titles makes explicit HUMANITIES 333 the direction of Johnston's reflections on this saga since 1975. The new title for the Faroe Islanders' saga goes right to the heart of the story: Thrand of Gotu is the saga's central character, and indeed, its hero. In his preface to this translation, Johnston'sbriefbut penetrating and compelling exposition of the saga's essence drops the evocative description of the Faroe Islands and the discussion of the aesthetics of translation from the 1975 version. The sharper focus justifies the loss. Icelandic sagas, a diverse group of prose narratives, can be divided into two groups, one representing the conflicts between people in a given district of over two or three generations, the other telling the story of a single remarkable person - like Egil Skallagrimsson, Grettir Asmundarson , or Gudrun Osvifrsdottir. Though the conflicts and power struggles in the Faroe Islands and the tense relationship between the Faroe Islanders and the rulers of Norway make up the story's setting, Thrand of Gotu is its centre, its chief character, its hero. Johnston makes Thrand's dominant role, and problematic character, equally clear, as the hero of this saga is more sinner than saint, but his wisdom - not mere cunning - and supernatural powers, to raise up storms at sea and to call up the spirits of dead...