61 Snorri versus the Copyists Snorri verSuS the CopyiStS. An inveStigAtion of A StyliStiC trAit in the MAnuSCript trAditionS of Egils saga, HEimskringla And the ProsE Edda By hAukur ÞorgeirSSon stofnun Árna magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum Introduction I n the 1960s the swedIsh scholar Peter hallberg published a series of investigations into the vocabulary and style of medieval Ice- landic prose texts (the major works are hallberg 1962, 1963 and 1968). hallberg’s principal goals were to identify features typical of particular time periods and particular authors. some of the most important results that hallberg felt his works established were snorri sturluson’s authorship of Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Óláfr Þórðarson’s authorship of Laxdæla saga and Knýtlinga saga and Bergr sokkason’s authorship of a number of fourteenth-century works. the type of research hallberg was engaged with is considerably facili- tated by digital technology and hallberg himself expected the computer to herald a golden age of stylistic research (hallberg 1968, 170). But as things have turned out, scholars have by and large not rushed to embrace this methodology. recent scholarship which makes use of hallberg’s work (e.g. helgi Guðmundsson 1997) or identifies new stylistic criteria (e.g. Katrín axelsdóttir 2005) is a rarity. In fact, even works specifically concerned with the authorship of individual texts tend not to focus on the details of style and vocabulary. as an example, sigurjón Páll Ísaksson’s (2012) argument that Heimskringla, Morkinskinna and Fagrskinna are works of the same author makes no mention of hallberg’s analysis of snorri sturluson’s prose style, even though hallberg was at pains to establish the differences in style between Heimskringla and the other Kings’ sagas (see in particular hallberg 1968, 20–21). In a similar vein, the spirited attempts by Matthías Johannessen (1997) and einar Kárason (2010, 2012) to establish the authorship of Njáls saga make little or no use of stylistic criteria. as a final example, Margaret cormack’s discussion of the author- ship of Egils saga and Heimskringla (2001) focuses on discrepancies in historical details and makes no direct reference to hallberg. It is not without reason that scholars have been sceptical about hallberg’s methods and results. Medieval Icelandic literary works are not preserved in