SOURCE AND GENRE

Bandamanna saga expanded ch.10 Möðruvallabók (M) presentation; K 1874 comparator p.15

OLD NORSE

er eg hafði boðið þér heim úr hrakbúinu um jól … En er úti voru jólin

TRANSLATION

Hermundr recalls inviting Egill out of hardship for Jól; when Jól ended, Egill dreaded returning to poverty, and Hermundr then offered a longer stay.

DIRECTLY ATTESTED

In the expanded narrative Hermundr claims an invitation for Jól, Egill’s relief, his reluctance to leave after Jól, and a separately offered extension for Egill and one other person.

CONTEXTUAL

Christian literary saga dealing with disputes and hospitality in medieval Iceland. The speech is argumentative dialogue, not an independent household record.

MY INTERPRETATION

The separate invitation to remain illustrates a bounded narrated visit in this recension, not a universally required checkout date or charitable custom.

NOT ESTABLISHED

The 1874 Cederschiöld edition based on GKS 2845 4to tells this recollection much more briefly and does not attest the same expanded Jól dialogue at that point; do not silently combine manuscript redactions. No blanket legal duty to prolong a guest’s stay; no pagan rites.

FIND IT YOURSELF

ACTUALLY CONSULTED: Anonymous, Bandamanna saga, expanded version, ch.10, Norrœn.info online transcription explicitly identified as after Möðruvallabók (printed edition base not specified); Gustaf J. Chr. Cederschiöld (ed.), Bandamanna saga efter skinnboken N:o 2845, 4:to å Kongl. biblioteket i Köpenhamn (Lund: Fr. Berlings, 1874), p.15 (K-branch comparison); William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon (trans.), “The Story of the Banded Men,” in The Saga Library, vol. I (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1891), ch.10, consulted at Icelandic Saga Database. EXPANDED TEXT: https://norroen.info/src/isl/bandamanna/is.html (ch.10; search úr hrakbúinu um jól). K COMPARATOR: https://runeberg.org/bandamanna/0039.html (p.15, visibly abbreviated account). ENGLISH READ: https://www.sagadb.org/files/html/bandamanna_saga.en.html (ch.10). NOT EXAMINED: printed critical M recension apparatus or medieval manuscripts.

CHRONOLOGIES

Represented: saga-world events often placed in the mid-eleventh century; narrative recorded in medieval Icelandic manuscript redactions, older M and shorter K divergent versions; surviving witnesses medieval, manuscripts not directly examined.

VARIANTS AND DEPENDENCIES

Expanded digital normalized passage (specific printed edition behind M web transcription not identified) directly compared with Cederschiöld’s 1874 printed K-manuscript-based page 15 transcription/OCR and 1891 Morris–Magnússon English translation. This is a material recension contrast, NOT three independently witnessed Jól episodes.