Sigurðar saga fóts (The Saga of Sigurðr Foot)

MIRATOR 11:1/2010 58past work on it, and the core evidence for its literary milieu: evidence for itsdate; what other texts it influenced; and what texts it draws on.Past workSigurðar saga fóts has received little scholarly attention, though like manyIcelandic romances, it seems to have been popular throughout its history. Itsurvives in a respectable number of manuscripts—forty-one—from thefifteenth century to the nineteenth. 10 Their textual relationships and degreeof variation is not yet known, but the dating distribution of those which canreadily be assigned to a particular century is typical of Icelandic romances,with one manuscript from the fifteenth century, none from the sixteenth,seven from the seventeenth, ten from the eighteenth, thirteen from thenineteenth and one from the twentieth. The saga was versified as a set ofrímur (Sigurðar rímur fóts og Ásmundar Húnakonungs) in the earlier fifteenthcentury, also gaining a half-stanza mention, probably in the sixteenthcentury and probably on the basis of the rímur, in the poem Allra kappakvæði. 11 The first half was also versified as a Faroese ballad (ÁsmundurAðalsson), probably in the fifteenth or sixteenth century: this is attested inone of the earliest Faroese ballad collections, Jens Christian Svabo’s, from1781–1782, and widely thereafter. 12 The saga was the basis for three laterrímur, composed by Gunnar Ólafsson (in 1758), Jón Hjaltalín (d. 1835), andÁrni Sigurðsson (in 1827). 13 Loth’s 1963 edition of the saga in her LateMedieval Icelandic Romances 14 inspired the publication of a modernised textin the Sunnudagsblað, a supplement to the newspaper Tíminn, 15 and shortlybefore the publication of this article the saga enjoyed the unusual distinction10 Kalinke and Mitchell 1985, 111.11 Rímnasafn: Samling af de ældste islandske rimer, Finnur Jónsson ed. (Samfund til udgivelse afgammel nordisk litteratur, 35), 2 vols, Møller: Copenhagen 1905–1922, ii 288–325; Gustaf Cederschiöld,‘Allra kappa kvæði’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 1 (1883), 62–80, accessed from ,at 63 (text, stanza 4) and 67 (date).12 Føroya kvæði = Corpus carminum Færoensium, Sv. Grundtvig and others ed. (Universitets-jubilæetsdanske samfunds skriftserie, 324, 332, 339, 341, 344, 347, 357, 368, 406, 420, 427, 438, 540, 559), 7vols, Munksgaard: Copenhagen, 1941–2003, ii 47–67 (for a free-access version of the earliest text, see). On dating see MichaelChesnutt, ‘Bevussrímur and Bevusar tættir: A Case Study of Icelandic Influence on Faroese Balladry’,Opuscula 12 (2005) (= Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 44), 399–437, at 399–409.13 Finnur Sigmundsson, Rímnatal, Rímnafélagið: Reykjavík, 1966, 423–24.14 ‘Sigurðar saga fóts’, in Loth ed., Late Medieval Icelandic Romances, iii 231–250.15 ‘Sigurðar saga fóts’, Riddarasögur, Bjarni Vilhjálmsson ed., 6 vols, Íslendingasagnaútgáfan:Reykjavík 1949–1951, vi 65–84; ‘Sigurðar saga fóts’, Tíminn, Sunnudagsblað (26 May 1968), 390–393,406, accessed from .