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Колдовское знамя Сигурда Хлёдверссона в контексте прагматики нарратива «Саги об оркнейцах»
This chapter examines how the pragmatics of a source shapes the construction of a regional ruler’s image, drawing on three Old Norse texts that describe the participation of the Orkney earl Sigurðr Hlǫðvisson in the Battle of Clontarf (1014): Orkneyinga saga, Njáls saga, and Þorsteins saga Hallssonar. The Battle of Clontarf was conceived by the medieval tradition as a pivotal event; the analysis focuses on the episode of the raven banner, which symbolically links the earl’s authority with the sacred (the sorceress mother, the pagan banner) and the Christian (baptism, heroic death) discourses. A comparison of the versions reveals that in the family sagas, the banner episode serves to mark the independence of Icelandic heroes and allows for an ironic diminution of the earl’s image, whereas in Orkneyinga saga (belonging to the kings’ saga tradition) the same episode works to construct a positive dynastic narrative: the earl’s cruelty is displaced onto the mother-instigator, and his death serves to legitimize the dynasty’s power. Thus, the raven banner emerges not as a historical reality but as a marker of the generic and narrative pragmatics of the saga text.