The sagas of the east of Iceland contain a large number of passages with parallels of subject matter or theme with other sagas within the group or with written works from other parts of the country. Of the examples considered in the previous two chapters, the only cases where it seems, on the grounds of shared diction, that the relationship can be traced to a literary connection (rittengsl), i.e. the use of one text in the composition of another, are as follows:

1. Vápnfirðinga saga and Þorsteins saga hvíta: the description of Brodd-Helgi and the story of how he got his nickname.
2. Landnámabók and Brand-Krossa þáttr: the dream of Hrafnkell Hrafnsson in Skriðudalur. However, Brand-Krossa þáttr has material not found in Hrafnkels saga, which reduces the likelihood that the þáttr got its material directly from any of the known redactions of Landnámabók.
3. The Sturlubók redaction of Landnámabók and Droplaugarsona saga: the episode about Ketill þrymr and Arneiðr, the daughter of the earl of the Hebrides. However, Sturla Þórðarson can hardly have been using the written saga as we know it but rather some other written source related to both these texts.
4. Laxdœla saga and Gunnars saga Þiðrandabana: Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir’s reception of Gunnarr Þiðrandabani at Helgafell.
5. Laxdœla saga and Fljótsdœla saga: Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir’s reception of Gunnarr Þiðrandabani at Helgafell.
6. Laxdœla saga and Vápnfirðinga saga: the deaths of Kjartan Óláfsson and Geitir Lýtingsson.

This is a considerably simpler picture than the intricate web of literary relationships that previous scholars have claimed to detect among the Austfirðingasögur. Previous analyses have tended, for instance, to involve lost written works for whose existence there is no independent evidence, posited solely to account for passages where two or more sagas tell of the same characters or events. When accounting for correspondences for which there is no tangible evidence of literary relations in the form of shared diction, we ought rather to assume that the writers of the sagas derived their material from an oral narrative tradition. At many places in the extant texts characters are referred to in ways that suggest that the writer took for granted that his audience was already familiar with them and thus able to interpret correctly the events that were being described: for instance, Brodd-Helgi Þorgilsson is known as a heathen chieftain living at Hof in Vopnafjörður far beyond the confines of the main source that tells of his life, Vápnfirðinga saga; his son Bjarni is consistently portrayed as a peaceable and conciliatory chieftain in the sagas that we may suppose owe most to local stories from the Vopnafjörður region, but as we move further away from his immediate environment he develops into a more aggressive figure, perhaps prompted by his celebrated nickname—‘Víga-Bjarni,’ ‘Killer-Bjarni’—which may have colored how he was pictured by writers in places where he was less well known; Geitir Lýtingsson is little mentioned outside Vápnfirðinga saga but his name has curious echoes in tales of giants and trolls set in Norway and Shetland; and finally there is his son Þorkell Geitisson, who judging from the extant sources was a much better known man than his father, particularly outside his own local region.

Though several sagas mention Þorkell, in none of them is he the main character. However, his various appearances present a consistent image of the man and can be arranged into a plausible chronological order, making it possible to construct a coherent and continuous biography of his life. We can suppose that this broad outline constituted a reality in the minds of participants in the saga tradition of eastern Iceland. In the existing sagas we therefore get a clear reflection of a fully rounded characterization going back to fragmentary oral accounts, even though these fragments were never integrated into a single written saga. A similar ‘oral saga’ might lie behind the textual appearances of Sveinungr/Sveinki of Borgarfjörður, an independently minded farmer from a remote and rugged fjord who stood up against more powerful men and refused to be cowed in the face of their high-handedness and overbearing manner.

The evidence suggests that the saga writers in the east of Iceland in general made little use of Landnámabók as a source. [1] Similarly, there is little evidence that the compilers of Landnámabók used the sagas that have come down to us in books (leaving aside the connection between Brand-Krossa þáttr and Droplaugarsona saga by way of some unknown written source). The written sagas contain several instances where characters, often nobly born chieftains whom we know about from other sources, are introduced into the action without formal details of their identity or background, or where events are referred to in passing on the apparent assumption that the audience will possess sufficient prior knowledge to interpret the reference. Examples of this include the battle in Böðvarsdalur; the ‘brothers from Búastaðir,’ whom the writer of Vápnfirðinga saga seems to assume will be familiar to his audience as the sons of Glíru-Halli; and the background to Skegg-Broddi’s insinuations against the chieftains in Ǫlkofra þáttr. Thus, meaning in the sagas is often dependent on the audience’s familiarity with the narrative tradition, i.e. there is an assumption that audiences will be able to fill in gaps in the written texts through their own orally derived knowledge of characters and events.