Alvissmal. Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Kultur Skandinaviens: 4 1994

Richard Gaskins

The Narrative of Social Order in Sturla Þórðarson’s Íslendinga saga* But the most frequent reason why men desire to hurt each other, ariseth hence, that many men at the same time have an Appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it; whence it follows that the strongest must have it, and who is strongest must be decided by the Sword. — Thomas Hobbes, De cive ([1651] 1983, 46)

Social Perspectives on Íslendinga saga

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he final decades of the Icelandic Commonwealth, as portrayed in Sturla Þórðarson’s masterpiece, provide a rich field of speculation for students of social order. For today’s readers, the saga seems to offer a classic Hobbesian tale of escalating violence, as a stable but fragile public order degenerates into nasty, brutish competition among powerful chieftains. From the perspective of modern nationalist movements, it provides an early, medieval warning of the high price paid by polities that are too weak to control the conflicting ambitions of strong individuals. Given the historical distance of these events, however, is it reasonable to connect this thirteenth-century perspective on contemporary events with the social dilemmas of our own century? For one thing, the problem of social order inhabits a distinctive modern context, shaped by historically competing visions of human nature and of mankind’s capacity for peaceful cooperation. Whatever their internal differences, these modern views are all deeply concerned with powers exerted by the secular state — an institution conspicuously absent in medieval Iceland. How, then, can we apply our interpretive categories to Sturla’s text, when the twentieth-century problems of social structure are so far removed from the living substance of Íslendinga saga?

* This paper revises a talk presented at the Ninth International Saga Conference in Akureyri, Iceland, August 2, 1994. I wish to thank those who made helpful comments from the floor, including Sverre Bagge, Jesse Byock, Ted Andersson, and Donald Tuckwiller. Errors and omissions remain my own responsibility. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 3–14

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It should be remembered as well that Sturla’s world reaches us through the interpretive filters of saga narration, whose peculiar refractions remain the subject of heated scholarly debate. As one of the “contemporary sagas” (samtíðarsögur) in the Sturlunga compilation, Íslendinga saga tells of many events that entered into their narrator’s own life experience, adding yet more complexity to the function of sagas as social history. Whatever else it may be, Íslendinga saga is not an ethnographic study; it cannot be reduced to a set of neutral observation statements, ready to test experimentally the hypotheses of modern social theory. In my view, we can still connect the saga text and social theory, but not via the usual relationship of evidence to hypothesis. A closer comparison lies in the rhetorical affinities between saga narrative and certain basic presumptions of social theory, both rooted in fundamental visions of human nature. The medieval text offers a completely autonomous source of humanistic insights, including important notions of agency, volition, and interaction, which can be used indirectly to probe modern assumptions about social order. My purpose here is to outline a comparative strategy, in which the saga yields certain visions or norms for weighing the basic assumptions of modern theory: assumptions about the elusive forces that hold societies together. In methodological terms, the saga can deepen our understanding of the final principles behind today’s theories. The potential significance of Sturla’s vision derives from several interests specific to the late twentieth century. With the collapse of political institutions and resurgence of ethnic violence in Eastern Europe, social scientists have become increasingly interested in sources of social conflict among groups, not just political conflicts among states. Indeed, modern theorists should find special significance in thirteenth-century chronicles of social instability. Sturla’s age marks the beginning of a centuries-long era, ending perhaps only in our own day, when political authority rose to absolute strength to quell the perceived disorder among tribes and clans. Centralization of power in the medieval Scandinavian kingdoms can thus be understood as an early example of how sovereign authority fills a vacuum left by major shifts in customary social relations. In the twentieth century, as fresh assessments of power become unavoidable, we are newly inclined to see political authority as yet another arena of human conflict, not an automatic cure for anomic societies. For such reasons, among others, Western social scientists have recently returned to fundamental questions about the roots of social order (see, for example, Wrong 1994). In the absence of overwhelming political force, what are the underlying social and cultural factors that breed disorder? Are they inherent in human nature? Are they tied to contingent social and economic conditions? Is there any hope that self-governing communities can achieve a stable order while still leaving room for broader human ideals: social independence, personal honor, and cultural accomplishment? It is on this fundamental level of inquiry that Sturla Þórðarson’s great saga can be brought to bear on twentieth-century debates.

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Conflict or Consensus? Current social science recognizes no single theory of social order. It is instead divided into two distinct streams, for which conflict and consensus become the respective foundations of human sociability. This difference turns on a conceptual dichotomy and cannot be fully mediated by empirical data. Conflict theorists see strife and disorder as basic human conditions, not to be displaced by the simple appearance of social harmony. For them, an orderly regime must rest on tension and repression, regulated by either direct force or by false ideologies. Consensus theorists, for their part, are not blind to social strife. Their approach consists of interpreting all such conflicts in functional terms, as ways of testing and strengthening the society’s normative frameworks. What is now referred to as “social conflict theory” gained increasing academic attention during the 1960s as a conscious attempt by liberal and neo-Marxist thinkers to challenge what was seen as a conservative bias in social science.1 Adherents of this approach tended to advance their position in negative terms, in opposition to what they perceived as core assumptions of mainstream social analysis. In essence, they questioned whether every social order enjoys a basic presumption of stability, one that would prevail in the absence of destabilizing forces. The partisans of stability have had numerous champions, none greater than the sociologist Talcott Parsons.2 For Parsons, the postulate of an underlying normative consensus was itself a response to classic theorists who held to an opposing presumption of instability — a diverse group of thinkers including the disciples of Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. According to Hobbes and Freud, at least, conflict is built into the natural psychology of human action. For Hobbes, it is the inevitable result of human selfishness in the face of environmental scarcity; for Freud, it is the product of a psychodynamic struggle between ego and superego. Along with other twentieth-century sociologists, Parsons wanted an alternative to the implied determinism and mechanism behind the leading conflict theories. Rather than accept conflict as the natural state of human affairs, consensus theorists emphasized the human potential for treating conflict instrumentally, for letting it be guided by implicit rules and rituals, and potentially redeemed in terms of explicit social values. The following three sections review central themes from Hobbes, Freud, and Parsons, representing the classic modern visions of social order, in comparison with some perspectives gleaned from Sturla Þórðarson.3 1.

The fons et origo of this movement was Lewis A. Coser (1956).

2.

See especially The Structure of Social Action (1937; 2d ed. 1949).

3. My selection is influenced by Dennis Wrong’s analysis in The Problem of Order, which includes Rousseau and Marx, among others. I am grateful to Ted Andersson for suggesting the importance of Rousseau’s vision in this kind of study, and I hope to address it on another occasion.

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The Hobbesian Vision The conflict-centered Hobbesian vision begins from the premise that individuals relate to one another through mutual fear. They embrace stability imposed by public authority as the only alternative to a violent war of all against all; but their surrender of personal autonomy must be absolute.4 Some commentators approach Hobbes through his mechanistic psychology, which describes the transformation of personal fear into an overpowering desire for security, rooted in self-protection. But there is a prior element in Hobbes’s theory that brings it closer to objective conditions of the saga age: a concern with environmental scarcity, according to which personal fear is the natural product of social, economic, or cultural competition. On its surface, the disorder portrayed in Íslendinga saga reveals little of either Hobbes’s psychological or environmental analysis. Indeed, the initial impressions of social harmony that open this and other sagas point directly counter to Hobbes’s vision. Rather than moving from a fractious state of nature to authoritarian stability, the saga shows the disintegration of an established, organic social system. It suggests a more complex psychological theory than Hobbes allows, one in which the implied human “state of nature” is spontaneously cooperative. But the question remains, exactly what is the mechanism of accelerating disorder? Sturla provides no direct or simple answers, although his dramatic plot frequently reflects sharper competition over scarce environmental conditions, including limited economic wealth and positions of social status.5 On balance, the events portrayed in Íslendinga saga point to a psychological model in which individuals might reasonably subordinate their personal security to a body of cultural norms, rather than to an authoritarian state. My surmise here is not about the factual interpretation of historical events, but rather about the humanistic insights of a literary work, built on broad conceptions of human nature. Whatever modern historians tell us about the Sturlunga öld (most of which, of course, would have to be based on this and other sagas), Sturla’s construction of that period implies that any persistent order would have to rest on preexisting social norms — a presumed layer of social order that was notoriously missing from Hobbes’s theory. In turn, Hobbes’s insights may well supplement Sturla’s vision by underscoring the intensely competitive environment in which the social drama unfolds. 4. Hobbes’s statements in Leviathan are often quoted (part 1, chap. 13): “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man . . . no Arts; no Letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” ([1651] 1968, 185–86). 5.

On scarce resources in the saga age, see, among other discussions, Byock 1988.

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The Freudian Vision Freud’s provocative writings on social order extend Hobbes’s conflict-ridden vision in ways that help close the gap with Sturla’s construction. In Freud, Hobbes’s inherently contentious state of nature is transferred to a subconscious world modeled on biological rather than social images. The Freudian scheme lends itself well to explaining the genesis of social norms like those that support Sturla’s cultural universe. In brief, Freud’s view suggests that individuals in each successive generation face internal conflicts between their autonomous desires and the authority of broader social values, enforced by the superego. The remarkable assertiveness of historical figures arises when this psychological representative of the collectivized social conscience is temporarily overpowered by its natural, instinctive opposition.6 Sturla’s narrative shares certain elements of Freud’s broad theory. Saga authors tend to focus on distinctive individuals, often described in heroic dimensions, whose strong-willed actions violate the prevailing social order. Notwithstanding the “objective” style of saga description (arguably the antithesis of psychoanalytic reflection), the drama can rather easily be transposed into Freud’s conflictual terms. Freud remedies certain omissions in Hobbes’s political model by making the organic social order the underlying source of interpersonal conflict, prior to all questions of political authority.7 The reader of Íslendinga saga will find rich examples of rebellious spirits, from the anarchic outbursts of Órækja Snorrason to the oedipal rage of Sturla Sighvatsson. Still, the Freudian vision fails to capture important elements of Sturla’s creation. Freud satisfies the modern taste for interpreting social conflict in terms that allow for individual spontaneity — even when personal agency is known to be steeped in repression or doomed to burn itself out. But Sturla’s saga points to less fashionable possibilities, including conflicts endemic to the prevailing social structure, and the gradual decay of social forces powerful enough to check deviant personal ambitions. The saga thus invites a harder look at the Hobbesian theme of environmental constraints, even though the dramatic surface of saga narrative seems much closer to Freud. Sturla’s vision encompasses elements of both, and pushes us toward more complex models that subordinate conflict to an organic system, at once social and normative in nature.

6.

Freud’s leading work on social order is Civilization and Its Discontents ([1930] 1961).

7. For applications of Freud’s theory to literary analysis, see the classic work by Morse Peckham (1965).

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The Parsonian Vision Except among professional social scientists, Talcott Parsons is not as widely read today as Hobbes or Freud. Yet his works sum up several decades of sociological theory about the enigma of public order, and it is appropriate to grant him the status of a classic figure. His description of social systems is highly eclectic, incorporating significant elements of Hobbes and Freud, as well as other conflict-centered traditions. For our purposes, his major contribution was an emphasis on social values as the foundation of order. Parsons sums up a critical tradition that was willing to treat cultural and legal norms as autonomous social forces, reducible to neither individual self-interest nor psychodynamic repression. Above all, Parsons perfected a functional style of reasoning, derived in part from Durkheim, which assigns to social conflict the broader human purpose of conserving a closed set of higher norms. Whether implied in behavior or made explicit in legal rules, these norms define the core of a particular society or culture. In my view, this Parsonian vision comes closest to the humanistic insights of saga literature, provided one is ready to assume that the saga narrator’s voice speaks from a unified body of social values. (I shall return to this assumption in the next section.) These values need not be formally articulated, nor even approved of, by historical saga authors or compilers. They are rather an interpretive postulate inferred by modern readers, based on our expectation that each saga defines a coherent normative universe — one we would typically associate with the Zeitgeist of its author. In the case of samtíðarsögur, the time frames of author and events happen to converge. A Parsonian orientation to preserving and restoring value coherence appears to unify the dramatic action within many sagas, given their common emphasis on informal dispute settlement, legal proceedings, rule-guided feuding, and reciprocal obligations.8 Although Parsons meant to apply his theory of social systems to either existing or historically documented societies, his approach seems better matched to literary reconstructions of social conditions. Empirically analyzed societies have potentially fuzzier boundaries than the worlds described in saga narrative, and Parsons’s critics faulted his method for imputing too much coherence and permanence to historically dynamic systems. Marxist social theorists, for example, found no place in Parsons’s theory for the emergence of fundamental changes in class relationships, which they assumed to be the fate of all hitherto existing societies. The particular type of social order represented in saga texts may restore some balance to the Parsonian vision, which has probably been stretched too far in discussions of highly pluralistic modern societies. At least as we read them today,

8.

This point has been made by William Ian Miller (1990), among many others. See also Byock 1982.

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the sagas portray the institutions of feuding and dispute resolution from the lofty Parsonian standpoint of social equilibrium. Sturla’s chronicle of almost catastrophic events, in which he and his wider family appear as protagonists, is much admired for its elevated tone of balance and impartiality. Our own appreciation is doubtless shaped by the modern appeal of consensus theories and their underlying presumptions of stability, so close in spirit to the crafted symmetries and impersonal rhetoric of the sagas. A word of caution may be needed, however, to keep this interpretation in proper perspective. It is one thing to note some affinities between Sturla’s vision and the presumptions of consensus-based social theory. But it is overstating the point, if not downright circular, to treat Íslendinga saga as empirical evidence for the historical existence of self-correcting forces within Icelandic institutions. No one can deny, for example, the historical fact that something drastic happened to the early Icelandic polity near the end of Sturla’s chronicle, in the period 1262–64. That was the time Icelandic chieftains finally swore allegiance to the Norwegian crown. In retrospect, and in light of intervening centuries of Iceland’s political dependency on Norway and later Denmark, the early Commonwealth sustained a major rupture, after the prolonged period of civil strife described so graphically by Sturla Þórðarson. There is a sense of deep tragedy that marks the critical reception of Íslendinga saga in recent times, created surely by our present belief that a political deathblow was delivered suddenly to a society that was struggling valiantly, if in vain, to maintain its Parsonian value structure. Perhaps this judgment needs some rethinking, based on more careful distinctions between the facts and the presumptions surrounding social order. Sturla’s own text, interestingly, betrays little sense that he viewed 1262–64 as a catastrophic time; the narrative deals directly with individual persons and does not personify the broad social forces that would be required to give such historical significance to discrete actions taken at local assemblies of chieftains. The narrative fades away around 1264, but events up to that moment are related without any perceptible shift in its noble Parsonian vision. At least some current Icelandic critics have raised the startling but entirely appropriate question of whether the real story of Íslendinga saga is not one of cultural continuity, rather than the Hobbesian political tale of tragic decline and disintegration.9 A modern Parsonian should be prepared to develop this suggestion further, as some recent commentators have done who are attracted to social science methods for exploring the sagas. Keeping in mind the Parsonian presumptions behind this brand of social science, a revisionist perspective on Íslendinga saga is not difficult to sketch out. Despite its familiar reception by Spenglerian critics, the central values represented by the saga narrative remain those of consensus:

9.

See, for example, Ólason 1994. This point was especially emphasized in the oral presentation.

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consensus-despite-conflict, or even consensus-because-of-conflict. Along with progressively heavy strife, Íslendinga saga thus expresses the recurrent hope and need for the resolution of disorderly events. These values — expressly conserved by Icelanders in the Sturlung age, and reflected in the steadiness and balance of Sturla’s rhetoric — are inseparable from the inventive social procedures devised by Icelanders for their collective self-preservation. In Parsonian terms, the Icelandic social order was itself the process of the continual rectification of violence and disorder.

Social Order and the Rhetoric of Saga Narrative Sturla’s vision of social order does not appear as a philosophical statement. It can be found rather as an inseparable element of his narrative approach, which in broadest outlines follows rhetorical patterns found more or less in other saga groups. Up to now I have used Sturla’s thirteenth-century perspective to illuminate modern assumptions about social order, especially the complex interplay between conflict and consensus theories. But the comparison can also work in reverse, such that modern approaches to social theory may be used to clarify interpretive problems in reading the older texts. In particular, the dichotomy of conflict and consensus theories may be applied, by analogy, to several classic problems of saga narrative. Three aspects of Sturla’s rhetoric seem responsive to this comparison. The first problem emerges from the structure of any story that has a beginning and a development. As Edward Said has pointed out (1975), such stories inevitably posit certain conceptions about antecedent conditions, thus setting the stage for the unfolding historical or literary drama. Sturla’s text presumes there was a world already in place as his narrated events begin: a presumptive realm of apparent harmony, very unlike the brutish world in the equally presumptive Hobbesian state of nature. It is a narratively imposed social equilibrium, a residue of preconceived social stability prior to the dramatic unfolding of the saga’s complex tale of disarray. But do we really know how this or any other saga begins? These beginnings turn out to be somewhat elusive, subject to the same dichotomies seen in the clash between the rival presumptions of conflict and consensus in modern social theory.10 Complicating the issue in Sturla Þórðarson’s case is a special textual question about the location of Íslendinga saga within the entire Sturlunga compilation. In the editions of Kristian Kålund (1906–11) and Örnólfur Thorsson et al. (1988), following the arrangement of the oldest manuscripts, Íslendinga saga appears only after several other sagas have established a context of recurring conflict, retribution, and reconciliation. The opening section of Íslendinga saga

10.

For a structural analysis of saga beginnings, see Hume 1973.

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reflects this historical prologue by referring to Hvamm-Sturla’s death and relating the outcome of a dispute carried over from Sturlu saga. A conflict-centered reading of Íslendinga saga might seize on this distinctive beginning, which varies from the more usual saga fare of elaborate genealogies, Norwegian prologues, and mythic histories. Is Sturla Þórðarson trying to tell us something about conflict as primordial? Not likely: the context seems far too modest, and the tone is rather one of “business-as-usual,” with minor residual conflicts held over from the life of Hvamm-Sturla. These allusions furnish the same aids to later plot development that arise quickly enough in other sagas, where horse fights, sexual irregularities, or inheritance struggles launch the invariable cycle of escalating conflicts. More suggestive of conflict-centered readings, however, are those saga prologues that locate social order in a distant, prenarrative past: in a mythologized Norway or in the remote genealogies of mythic ancestors. Such counterfactual postulates of social harmony can suggest that disputes within the actual saga narratives were significant departures from any stable value system, with no guarantees that a natural social equilibrium could ever reassert itself. Hobbesian and Parsonian interpreters will obviously differ in applying their respective preconceptions to understanding this important question of saga beginnings. A second relevant feature of saga narrative is the dramatic emphasis on personal agency, rather than broad social conditions, as the instigator of social change. It is here that conflict-centered interpretations might gain their primary strength, especially if saga characters are taken to symbolize subtextual conflicts among economic classes, conflicts between men and women, or conflicts between any privileged group and a variety of disfavored “others.” Although Freudian theory is always prepared to assign these conflicts a naturalistic basis, modern interpreters are not restricted to psychological theories to support a presumptive state of social conflict. Over against the assertive qualities of distinct individuals, the Parsonian reader identifies with the sense of destiny that seems to guide the choices and behavior of main saga characters. The notion of a higher fate, emanating from a source beyond the social order and resisting individual human control, is amply reflected in the poetry, dreams, and casual remarks of major players within the drama of Íslendinga saga, as they are throughout the family sagas and other samtíðarsögur. A consensus-based reading of these sagas postulates a coherent set of values as the guiding force, only parts of which enter into the motivations of particular saga characters. But precisely whose values are they? Do they belong to the entire age (the Sturlunga öld), to the saga author’s clan perspective (to the mighty but defeated Sturlungs as a group), or even to that author’s own creative, intellectual side?11 11. See the similar questions about Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla raised by Sverre Bagge in his excellent study (1991), especially chap. 2, “The Conflicts.”

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This question leads naturally to yet a third rhetorical problem, for which the competing perspectives of conflict and consensus reach their highest importance. This feature is perhaps the most remarkable quality of saga narrative: the elusive “voice” of the anonymous, retreating author. Indeed, the more elusive the persona of the saga author in narrative terms, the more likely we are to project an overarching coherence to the value system that informs the saga itself. Even as the events described convey a sense of escalating violence and disorder, the narration remains stable, sure-footed, and constant in its largely implied commentary. The motivations and behavior of saga characters may change over the course of the narrative; but the whole saga, taken as a humanistic project, is a contrasting source of conceptual stability. In the case of Íslendinga saga, the name of this self-effacing author is confidently known to modern scholars. Identifying the historical author throws some confusion into the Parsonian method, which would prefer not to historicize the normative order of the saga, nor to see it reduced to the ideology of a single individual or clan. For the Parsonian interpreter, fortunately, there arises the higher-level problem of the elusive compiler for the entire Sturlunga collection of sagas.12 The very notion of a compiler, while expressed in terms of a possible historical figure, reflects an interpretive tendency to project normative coherence onto expanding levels of meaning — the very essence of consensus models in social science. In contrast, the conflict-centered theorist would seek out contradictory currents within a group of works, within anonymously authored sagas, and even within the works attributed to known individuals. This approach assumes that values are deeply separated by faction within any society, that values are always in a state of flux. Any authorial perspective that presumes to stand above the fray is just as suspect as the Parsonian social scientist, for whom all differences are reconciled in a synoptic normative system. An intriguing middle ground between the two approaches is the postulation of “mentalities,” which are historicized versions of Parsonian normative schemes: broad, coherent value systems, but plural in number, subject to inexplicable historical shifts, and scarcely recognized by the historical figures who inhabit them.

Conclusion Several points emerge from this comparison between problems of narrative authority in the sagas and problems of normative authority that stand behind much of today’s social science. In both cases, the authority in question rests on

12. See, for example, Tranter 1987. Many issues involving the poetic shape of Sturlunga have been raised by Úlfar Bragason; see the summary in his 1992 article.

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a postulate or presumption, not on simple empirical facts. Interpreters face a dilemma in treating such postulates as part of the natural world, a dilemma summed up in the division between conflict and consensus approaches. Investigating changes in value systems — whether in saga texts or in social systems — is different from describing changes in the climate, or changes in population. More specifically, there are inherent problems in interpreting periods of social change as driven by the disintegration of value systems. Armies disintegrate, family systems fall apart, social institutions slip into decline — these are all possible events to portray in either saga narrative or social science. But the decline of values as such presents great difficulties; there is always a broader, functional viewpoint from which the decline of certain values ensures the preservation or restoration of others. One can always project a higher level of coherence that rises above the dynamic theories of social science, or the narrative events in a saga. Is Íslendinga saga a chronicle of disintegration or one of restoration? Possibly both at once. Like other saga writers, Sturla Þórðarson balances contrasting views in a way that the modern social theorist must envy. It doesn’t help to say that it is only a story, because such stories find a peculiar way of reaching the deeper assumptions upon which our descriptions of reality are built.

Bibliography Bagge, Sverre. 1991. Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s “Heimskringla.” Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Bragason, Úlfar. 1992. “Sturlunga saga: Textar og rannsóknir.” Skáldskaparmál 2:176–206. Byock, Jesse. 1982. Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. ———. 1988. Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Coser, Lewis A. 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. Freud, Sigmund. [1930] 1961. Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton. “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur,” in idem, Gesammelte Werke, chronologisch geordnet, ed. Anna Freud et al. Vol. 14, Werke aus den Jahren 1925–1931, 419– 506. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1948. Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 1968. Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ———. [1651] 1983. De cive: The English Version, Entitled in the First Edition “Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society,” ed. Howard Warrender. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, Clarendon Press. First Latin edition Paris 1642. Hume, Kathryn. 1973. “Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas.” Modern Language Review 68:593–606. Kålund, Kristian, ed. 1906–11. Sturlunga Saga efter membranen Króksfjarðarbók udfyldt efter Reykjarfjarðarbók. 2 vols. København: Gyldendal. Miller, William Ian. 1990. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

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Ólason, Vésteinn. 1994. “The Political Element in Íslendinga saga.” In “Samtíðarsögur” (preprints from the Ninth International Saga Conference, Akureyri, Iceland, 31.7. – 6.8. 1994), 799–802. Parsons, Talcott. [1937] 1949. The Structure of Social Action. 2d ed. New York: McGrawHill. Peckham, Morse. 1965. Man’s Rage for Chaos: Biology, Behavior, and the Arts. Philadelphia: Chilton. Said, Edward W. 1975. Beginnings: Intention and Method. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. Thorsson, Örnólfr, et al., eds. 1988. Sturlunga saga, Árna saga biskups, Hrafns saga Svein– bjarnarsonar hin sérstaka. Reykjavík: Svart á hvítu. Tranter, Stephen N. 1987. “Sturlunga saga”: The Rôle of the Creative Compiler. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Wrong, Dennis. 1994. The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society. New York: The Free Press.

Lois Bragg

Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration in Sturlunga saga*

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ear the end of Sturlunga saga, an enigmatic, harelipped figure bursts onto the scene as an arrogant, rebellious, altogether insufferable child, goes on to a career of fomenting murder and mayhem among his own kin, and dies a saintly martyr’s death just a few years before the end of Icelandic independence, an end that he did so much to bring about. He is Þorgils skarði Boðvarsson, a great-grandson of Hvamm-Sturla through Þórðr Sturluson and Boðvarr Þórðarson, the eldest sons in each case and, ironically, the quietest. His first appearance in the compilation is in Íslendinga saga, chapter 152, where he is put out as a hostage to Gizurr jarl by his own father, who would rather hand his eldest son over to his mortal enemy than swear a loyalty oath to him — a not uncommon saga preference for truth in public speech over all other values, including blood kinship. Here, Þorgils bears his byname, skarði, without explanation.1 In the first chapter of Þorgils saga skarða, however, we have the following description: Þorgils var vænn maðr yfirlits, herðimikill ok gerviligr, hvítr á hár ok hörund, eygðr manna bezt, miðmjór ok herðibreiðr, þunnt hár ok fór vel. Hann var hraustr ok harðgerr, syndr vel ok inn mesti harðfari í hvívetna, fámæltr ok fastheitinn. Hvárt sem hann hét góðu eða illu, þá var hann örr í at efna. Í efri vör var skarð þat, er hann var alinn með, — því var hann kallaðr Þorgils skarði. (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 2:104) [Þorgils was a handsome man in appearance, big-shouldered and accomplished, fair of hair and complexion, very fine-eyed, slim-waisted and broad-shouldered, with fine hair that fell attractively. He was strong and hardy, a good swimmer, and very vigorous in whatever he entered upon. He was close-mouthed but kept his word. Whatever he promised, for good or ill, he was energetic in carrying out. In his upper lip was a cleft that he was born with — on that account he was called Þorgils skarði (harelip).]2

*

This article was written with the support of a generous grant from Gallaudet Research Institute.

1. Since skarði means only “notch,” it need not refer to a harelip and usually does not. Cf. Þorgils Dalluson, whom his brother Kormákr calls skarði (Kormáks saga verses 53–55) but who is nowhere described as disfigured, and the character Eiríkr skarði in this saga. Clearly, skarði must refer usually to gat-toothedness or a cleft chin. 2.

All translations are by the author in collaboration with William Sayers.

alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 15–32

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The dilemma posed by the birth of a child with a harelip in a society engaged largely in subsistence farming must have been resolved most often by exposure. Because such infants cannot nurse efficiently and must therefore be hand-fed, caring for them during their first year would have required the release of one grown woman from nearly all other duties for that length of time, a major investment on a major gamble, since hand-fed infants had a slim chance of survival.3 We note, however, that the narrator has been careful to state that Þorgils was an eldest son (that is, an only son at birth), thus establishing the rationale for what must have been a heroic effort to save him — and a needless one, since, as it happens, Boðvarr fathers two other, nonexceptional sons on his wife. In any case, although we must surmise that the harelip was a rarely seen disfigurement in this period in Iceland, there is no reason whatever to second-guess the narrator’s assessment of Þorgils as “handsome.” Medieval Nordic peoples were quite capable of noting and describing physical disfigurements and disabilities without confusing such exceptionalities with ugliness, as so often happens in modern Western societies. In the sagas, ugliness has its own conventions, distinct from the exceptional or bizarre.4 It seems that the only noteworthy consequence of Þorgils’s harelip in this introductory portrait is his penchant to say little: he is “fámæltr.” The inability to articulate labials ([b], [p], and [m]) would not have prevented Þorgils from being understood speaking Icelandic, but certainly would have prevented him from being called eloquent (an asset in the pursuit of power and advancement) or from becoming a lagamaðr (another, and related, avenue to both material gain and honor). Like other speech-impaired characters who are blocked from these paths to power, Þorgils eschews speech in favor of the cultivation of an image of boldness in order to resolve his disputes and to acquire the respect and the property of others. As we learn from the boyhood deeds recounted immediately after this portrait, however, Þorgils is subject to outbursts of temper and rash words that he will not later rescind. While the introductory portrait has allowed for his rare utterance to be “for good or ill,” what we in fact get is always “for ill.” If we readers were tempted to understand the portrait’s ambiguous “fámæltr ok fastheitinn” positively as “reserved and steadfast,” we are soon disabused by the account of his perverse boyhood deeds and adjust our understanding to a negative “taciturn and intrac3. A harelip is often accompanied by a cleft palate, a condition that truly makes it impossible for the infant to feed without the intervention of modern technology. An infant with a harelip alone, however, is merely unable to suck efficiently, and could be spoon- or horn-fed. (“Baby horns,” unlike modern baby bottles with nipples, allow the liquid to dribble out without sucking action.) The low survival rate is surmised based on the likelihood of bacterial infection from the handling of the milk, whether the mother’s hand-expressed milk or cow’s or sheep’s milk. In the latter case, the child would in addition suffer from dietary deficiencies and the lack of immunities (conveyed in mother’s milk) to colds and the like that carried off most motherless infants. 4. McDougall is simply wrong to read the saga ironically (1992, 59), since Þorgils’s good looks are everywhere noted. The view of exceptionalities that McDougall has in mind is not found in Icelandic literature but rather in Saxo, who, typically, presents the non-Nordic view when, in Book 7, he cites a harelip as a disqualification for marriage. (Cf. Saxo’s non-Nordic view of women as morally corrupt, for example.)

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table.” The relationship between the harelip and these character traits is foregrounded by the ellipsis of the causal link, a kind of historiographical asyndeton, which readers must supply, as is the relationship between the father’s preference for truth in public speech that removes the son from the family and the son’s twisted intractability. In addition to his hair-trigger temper and his self-cultivated image as a young tough, and related to his taciturnity, is his use of writing to get around his impairment, and this, too, has important consequences for his character and for the saga: Þá er skip tóku at búast um várit, lét Þorgils rita á vaxspjöld ok sendi konungi. Var þat þar á, at hann beiddi, at konungr leyfði honum at fara til Íslands eða ella til annarra landa, kvaðst eigi lengr vera vilja í ófrelsi. En er konungr sá þetta, virði hann svá sem Þorgilsi gengi til stærð ok metnaðr, er hann vildi eigi sjálfr flytja við sik sem aðrir menn. En þó sendi konungr eftir honum. (Þorgils saga skarða chap. 5; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 2:112) [Then, when they began to ready the ships in the spring, Þorgils had a wax-tablet written and sent it to the king. It stated there that he requested that the king give him permission to travel to Iceland or to other countries and that he no longer wished to be deprived of his freedom. When the king saw this, he judged that Þorgils was motivated by pride and honor so that he was unwilling to plead his case in person before the king like other men. Nevertheless the king sent for him.]

The result of this interview is that Þorgils becomes the king’s retainer and the recipient of valuable gifts: fourteen ells of leaf-green cloth, a shield, and a byrnie. In having his choice of writing over speech misinterpreted as pride, Þorgils not only gains these furnishings, but also increases his reputation as hot-tempered, impetuous, and arrogant — personality traits that the king, Hákon, admires. Although his facial disfigurement and speech impairment are in themselves of little consequence in many of his social and political pursuits, the character that the author constructs behind them and the behavioral modifications they entail become assets in the pursuit of power at any cost. And it is in pursuing power against the interests of his own kin that Þorgils emerges as a man of aberrant behavior: the bird in Jóreiðr’s dream “er í sitt hreiðr skít[r]” [that shits in its own nest] (Íslendinga saga, chap. 190; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:521). That meeting with King Hákon is, of course, the determinant of Þorgils’s subsequent career, for not only does Hákon make Þorgils his man, but he also gives Þorgils a new face. Surgery to correct a harelip was known as early as the tenth century in England (Cameron 1993, 169) and would have been practiced in the Nordic countries as well by this time, at least among people who could afford to raise such a child, of whom there would have been few in Iceland. Why the surgery was not done back home probably had more to do with the lack of professional surgeons than any cultural difference.5 In any case, it is Hákon who patches over 5. As some Western societies are now learning, the incidence of a medical procedure for any given condition corresponds not to the incidence of that condition in the population but rather to the presence of persons whose advancement or even livelihood depends upon performing the procedure. Thus, when

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the disfigurement and impairment that have shaped Þorgils’s character, it is Hákon who becomes the father figure in whose name Þorgils attacks his kinsmen, and it is Hákon who will be the disembodied voice behind which Þorgils functions, having the king’s letters read to the bœndr he is about to rob rather than speaking ineloquently to them himself (for surely without therapy some speech impairment would have persisted after the surgery). This essay undertakes to examine the motif of disfigurement and disability in Sturlunga saga, a compilation of works which trace the history of the thirteenth century dis-integration of the Icelandic freestate over four generations of internecine violence. As we have seen in the case of Þorgils skarði, physical irregularities are treated with the light touch — being mentioned only once, just in passing, ostensibly to explain an episode or a byname, with connections between them and other characteristics omitted — that in typical saga style effectively foregrounds them. In many cases, as with the harelip, it is left to the reader to project the consequences. Disfigurement and disability function as metonymies in the compilation: literal twisted speech is part of a larger motif pattern that includes the twisting of oaths and of kinship ties. I call this particular kind of metonymy an incarnation, a figure of narrative (as distinct from a theory of personality) in which the ethical dimension is embodied in the physical. The author invents — or, in the case of a historical narrative such as Sturlunga saga, selects from among the set of available physical traits — those that are to be read as character traits. For example, Skarpheðinn’s ugly mouth has been selected or perhaps invented to figure his sarcasm, while other physical traits such as the shape of ears or forehead are passed over in silence. This simple, nearly universal technique of selecting specific physical traits to suggest character traits is what we find in Sophocles’s Oedipus, whose lamed feet indicate a sexual, and then ethical, crippling. In the case of Þorgils, the disfiguring and disabling harelip prevents the integration of character into society, so that he becomes both the embodiment of, and a principal agent in, the dis-integration of society that is played out in this work. The harelip marks the fissure in society. In the more stylized, fictionalized sagas set in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, one can find very many disfigured or disabled characters, perhaps even more than one finds in Sturlunga saga, but they do not function in the way they do here. In the Íslendinga sögur, these dark figures — the ugly, the eigi einhamir, the surly and uncanny bœndr destined in traditional literary motifs to return as draugar — appear most often with their fair foils: Egill with his brother Þórólfr, Kormákr with his brother Þorgils, Þórólfr bægifótr with his son Arnkell, Grettir

northern surgeons learned how to fuse harelips and experienced the enhancement to their reputations and earnings that this procedure won them, they would have performed it as often as the low incidence of the condition in surviving adults permitted. Note the emphasis in this episode on the surgeon’s fee and who will pay it.

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with his better self. The presence of the fair brother in these sagas is one of the many devices that insulate the reader from the full impact of the dark figures. However revolting Egill’s projectile vomiting may be, he is clearly an exceptional man — that is, an exception. There is a norm in his saga, evinced by other members of his family, and the narrative world is still a safe and familiar place where sunny decency can be found and conflicts can be resolved. Darkness and disfigurement and mental exceptionalities are thus bounded in the Íslendinga sögur. In the Sturlunga compilation, on the contrary, the absence of the reassuring norm in the motif of the fair brother is one of the devices that force us to face the disfigured and disabled characters as incarnations of the component sagas’ unrelievedly dark and disfigured reality. With relatively little narrative guidance, with no narrative bright side in the form of the fair brother, for example, we confront disfigurement, disability, and dis-integrity of body and soul run wild. Whereas in Egils saga readers are filled with awe at the uncanny darkness of this famous skáld, we are simply repulsed by the gratuitous grossness and incommensurate violence of some of his twelfth- and thirteenth-century descendants. Whereas the Íslendinga sögur provide a varied array of memorable moments — moments like Gunnarr’s fall from his horse as he is leaving his homestead or his first meeting with Hallgerðr at the Alþing, as well as those like Hallgerðr’s refusal to give him a strand of her hair — we remember nothing of Sturlunga saga so clearly as the blinding and castration of Órækja Snorrason, or the plea of Kristrún, the beggarwoman, during the attack on Sauðafell that she be allowed to keep the salve because “hon sagði . . . konu þá, er brjóstin bæði váru af höggvin, yfrit þungt at tekna” [she said . . . that woman, both of whose breasts had been cut off, had borne a very great deal] (Íslendinga saga chap. 71; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:328). In fact, rarely does a stage of the feuding close without a maiming of some sort, and the motif of mutilation quickly assumes thematic status in the compilation as a whole. Like the random, congenital disfigurement or disablity, the random, intentional mutilation incarnates the dis-integration — the loss of wholeness — of the society through the loss both of its key members, like Snorri, and of its key values, like the inviolability of an oath. Congenital disfigurement or disability, therefore, is not the only incarnation in Sturlunga saga, and the support our theme gets from and gives to the better recognized mutilation theme is important to keep in mind. While the theme of disfigurement and disability is functioning on a literal level both to incarnate and to contribute to the social dis-integration that Sturlunga saga depicts, this theme is also a reflex of the mythological overlay6 of the compilation. As is well known, the Norse gods are remarkable for the frequency of disfigurement and disability among them, with Týr, Hoðr, and possibly Heimdallr in addition to him who springs first to mind: Óðinn. Óðinn is a sort of nexus for

6.

Haraldr Bessason coined this term (1977).

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a variety of motifs that occur in various combinations in the dark figures of the Íslendinga sögur: disfigurement/disability/mutilation, skáldskapr, shape-shifting/ disguise, and berserksgangr, that is to say, the multifaceted potential for hideous, unpredictable, uncontrollable violence. After all, it was Snorri Sturluson — a historian and mythographer in real life and, as a narrative persona, one of the principal characters in Sturlunga saga — who has told us much of what we know of Óðinn, so it is not at all farfetched to posit a mythic overlay to the contemporary historical compilation, much of which was written by his brother’s son. Here, one example will suffice: Þorbjörg, kona Páls, var grimmúðig í skapi ok líkaði stórilla þóf þetta. Hon hljóp fram milli manna ok hafði kníf í hendi ok lagði til Sturlu ok stefndi í augat ok mælti þetta við: “Hví skal ek eigi gera þik þeim líkastan, er þú vill líkastr vera, — en þar er Óðinn?” (Sturlu saga chap. 31; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:109) [Þorbjorg, Páll’s wife, was fierce-minded and greatly displeased with this wrangling. She ran up among the men and had a knife in her hand and thrust at Sturla and aimed for his eye, saying, “Why should I not make you most like him whom you wish most to be like — and that’s Óðinn!’’]

This seems quite close to an explicit statement of a mythic overlay to the societal dis-integration that Sturla is carrying out, as well, of course as to its incarnation as real mutilation. Like the Æsir, the Sturlungs have created the conditions of their own demise, have borne their own unnatural Fenrisúlfr. Deceptively like the more stylized, fictionalized Íslendinga sögur, Sturlunga opens in the immigration past, establishing the genealogical credentials of the principals as a kind of invocation of the sagaman’s muse: a search for and establishment of themes and tone. And as is sometimes the case, the first-generation, founding father or mother turns out not to be the forebear of the principals at all, but is rather someone historically tangential but associationally and thematically apropos to them, in the manner of Auðr djúpúðga, in Eiríks saga rauða, to her spiritual, though not blood, descendant Guðríðr. In Sturlunga saga, the tonesetting, theme-establishing immigrant is Geirmundr heljarskinn, the blood ancestor of the compiler, but the spiritual ancestor of the principals. And he is grossly disfigured: Geirmundr heljarskinn var sonr Hjörs konungs . . . Annarr sonr Hjörs konungs var Hámundr, er enn var kallaðr heljarskinn. Þeir váru tvíburar . . . Þeir váru báðir ákafliga miklir vöxtum ok báðir furðuliga ljótir ásýnis. En þó réð því stærstu um ófríðleika þeira á at sjá, at engi maðr þóttist hafa sét dekkra skinn en á þessum sveinum var. Drottning felldi lítinn hug til sveinanna, ok sýndist henni þeir óástúðligir. (Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns chap. 1; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:5) [Geirmundr heljarskinn (Hel-skin) was the son of King Hjorr . . . King Hjorr’s other son was Hámundr, and he was also called heljarskinn. They were twins . . . They were both extraordinarily ugly in appearance. And yet the most remarkable thing about their ugliness was that no one thought they had seen darker skin than was on these boys. The queen took little liking to the boys, and they seemed unlovable to her.]

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An aetiological account, not so simpleminded as the unlikely toponymic aetiologies that we find in the corresponding sections of the Íslendinga sögur, yet far more unlikely in that pigmentation darker than either of one’s parents is genetically impossible.7 The queen, in short, has given birth to miraculously monstrous children, monstrous in four respects: extraordinarily big, hideously ugly, dark skinned, and, of course, twins. The boys are a double face that even a mother cannot love, for the mother here is no savvy Icelandic húsfrú familiar with the traditional ugly duckling motif and thus fiercely protective of the hideous and homicidal child who has, as Bera says of her son Egill, “víkingsefni” (Egils saga chap. 40). “Þess er við getit eitt sinn, at Bragi skáld” [It is told that once Bragi the skald] was the one to recognize that character was a truer indicator of blood than physical features (chap. 2) — a nice fairy tale that, since the opposite is the factually, though not archetypally, truer. The boys are playing on the straw-covered floor of the hall watching the false heir, the pretty and effete Leifr, play with a gold ring. Observed by Bragi though believing themselves alone, Þá mælti Geirmundr til bróður síns: “Viltu, at vit farim til Leifs ok takim af honum gullit? — ok leikum okkr at nökkura hríð.” “Búinn em ek þess,” segir Hámundr. Síðan hljópu sveinarnir innar at hásætinu ok tóku gullit af Leifi, en hann glúpnaði ok æpir eftir. Þeir mæltu: “Heyr á,” sögðu þeir, “hvat konungssonr tekr til ok æpir eftir einum gullbaugi. Ok er þat satt at segja, at þat er illa komit, er þú ferr með.” Þrífa nú sveinarnir til Leifs ok ráku hann ór hásætinu ok hlæja at. (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:6) [Then Geirmundr said to his brother, “How about us going to Leifr and taking his gold away from him? Then let’s play with it for a while.’’ “I’m ready for it,’’ said Hámundr. Then the boys ran up to the highseat and took the gold from Leifr, and he looked crestfallen and cried out. They said, “Listen,” they said, “to how the king’s son carries on and cries over one gold ring. And it’s true to say that there’s a bad end for things you’re in charge of.” The boys now grab hold of Leifr and pull him off the highseat and laugh at the whole thing.]

At this point, Bragi announces his recognition of the boys to the queen. Here, returning to the very beginning of the compilation, we feel back in familiar, fictional territory, in a world where justice reigns and the truth will out.

7. Let us not confuse the (fictional) disfigurement of hypermelanism with the association between complexion and socioeconomic status asserted in Rígsþula, as the queen seems to have done, or with racism, a construct peculiar to our own era. Recall that while swarthy complexions were considered both unattractive and indicative of a less than noble ancestry or character, these notions appear not to have been connected with the African, who was exotically blár rather than déclassé dokkr, or with the heljarskinn twins, whose disfigurement causes them to be named for a supernatural being (cf. tjorskinn as a byname for a more ordinarily blemished character in Prestssaga Guðmundar góða chap. 2).

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The disfigurement so monstrous as to cause a mother to disclaim and abandon her own children is not in fact an indicator of base character! As soon as the children’s character is discovered, they are restored to the high position into which they were born and their disfigurement er ór sogunni [is out of the saga], so to speak: never mentioned again and no impediment to success. Its significance in the narrative world of the þáttr has been lowered to insignificance. Further reassuring to the reader is the message that it takes a skáld, and a legendary one at that, to see essential character through the veil of disfigurement.8 Ordinary people like the queen cannot be blamed for mistaking a disfigured appearance for a disfigured character, the tale seems to say. But what exactly are the character traits indicative of nobility? Obviously, they are not those connected with any fair brother:9 loyalty, cheerfulness, honesty, fairness, generosity, good judgment, eloquence, wisdom. No. The character traits necessary and proper to the ruling class are, not to put too fine a point on it, the desire and the ability to rob others of their possessions on a whim and for Schadenfreude. That is, not even for greed or personal advancement.10 The theme is set for Sturlunga saga: beneath a surface reading to the contrary, physical disfigurement really does appear as the incarnation of character dis-integrity: here, specifically, disloyalty and disrespect to the authority figure (Leifr, admittedly unimpressive but nevertheless the person í hásæti [in the high seat]), the choice of violence over other available alternatives, and instant, selfish gratification (the gold ring becoming other men’s wives among the adult characters). And these character traits, in turn, foreshadow the later casting down of authority figures, for although Geirmundr and Hámundr are a king’s sons, they do not inherit or even return to their father’s kingdom after their adolescent adventures as vikings, but rather sail, first, “í Nóregskonungs ríki” whence they are expelled by Haraldr hárfagri, who fears, reasonably enough, that they have come to depose him, and then to Iceland, where Geirmundr settles down to become a wealthy bóndi and to keep a force of never fewer than eighty fighting men, though there is now no one to fight. The fairy-tale aspects of the first two chapters are obvious, but additionally the mythic overlay is hinted at in the boys’ byname, heljarskinn, which they receive from their father when their identity is finally revealed to him: “At vísu ætla ek, at þessir sveinar sé minnar ættar, en þó hefi ek eigi sét slík heljarskinn fyrr sem sveinar þessir eru” [I certainly believe that these boys are my descendants, yet I have never before seen such “Hel-skins” as these boys are] (Geirmundar þáttr 8. This is an interesting point (which unfortunately cannot be pursued here), considering the relationship between disfigurement and skáldskapr, a relationship that we have already glanced at above in the characters of Egill and his patron, Óðinn. 9. Part of the interesting motif reversal here has to do, of course, with there being no fair brother: the brother is an identical(ly ugly) twin. 10. If one has ever felt in reading Sturlunga saga that the adult Sturla Sighvatsson and Órækja Snorrason were behaving like three-year-olds, here we have the template, presented in the literal three-year-old heljarskinn twins.

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heljarskinns chap. 2; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:7). And thus likened to the goddess Hel are they nicknamed for her and put under death’s sign. To sharpen some of the observations made thus far, we might look at the single counterexample in Sturlunga saga, Guðmundr góði, bishop of Hólar, who figures so prominently in the affairs of the second generation of Sturlungs. Although Sturla Þórðarson’s Íslendinga saga probably gives us the more accurate information about the historical Guðmundr biskup’s character and actions, it is to Prestssaga Guðmundar góða that we must look for the counterexample, since this piece is modeled on the imported genre of hagiography and evinces a continental Christian attitude toward disfigurement much different than that found elsewhere in the compilation. This foreign attitude is that disfigurements and disabilities derive from Satan and, therefore, appear in a narrative only as evidence of sin or as trials to be relieved by saintly people as evidence of their saintliness. Guðmundr appears in this saga largely as a miracle-working healer of disfigurements on the model of Jesus, but it is his own disfigurement that we shall look at here. At the age of nineteen, Guðmundr sets out on a journey abroad, is shipwrecked, and injured, his right foot crushed and “horfðu þangat tær sem hæll skyldi” [the toes twisted to where the heel should be] (Prestssaga Guðmundar góða chap. 6; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:128). Like the foot of a devil, his foot is backwards. The next morning, when it becomes clear that they must abandon the ship, there is a great deal of discussion about how to remove Guðmundr. “Ok tók til orða sá maðr, er Bersi hét ok var kallaðr valbráð, því at kinn hans önnur var kolblá: ‘Hví munum vér fara með fótbrotinn mann, er vér megum eigi bjarga sjálfum oss, — ok skjóti fyrir borð’” [Then a man spoke up, who was named Bersi and was called “Dead-Flesh,” because one of his cheeks was black as charcoal. “How are we to carry on with a man with a broken leg when we may not be able to save our own selves? — so, throw him overboard!”] (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:128). Guðmundr is brought safely to shore, however, and his foot is eventually healed — medically, not miraculously — though not before he makes a trip three weeks before Easter, “at úti stóðu leggjabrotin [while pieces of bone still protruded from his leg] . . . in passione domini” (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:129). In later years, “þóttust menn mestan mun á hafa fundit, at skap hans hafði skipazt vetr þann, er hann lá eftir skipbrotit á Ströndum” [people thought it most noticeable that his disposition changed that winter when he was laid up after the shipwreck at Strandir] (chap. 11; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:135). Among the several remarkable aspects of this story (and we will not touch on the archetypal sexual image of the foot injury here) is the satanic imagery connected with disfigurement: the foot with the toes where the heel should be and the man with the coal-black birthmark who offers to toss Guðmundr overboard. Equally important here are the facts that the disfigurement is completely cured (an

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outcome unlikely in fact though expected in hagiographical writing) and that the cure marked a noticeable change of character, a motif not common elsewhere in Sturlunga saga or Icelandic saga writing in general. Compare this episode and its thematic function in Prestssaga with the very different treatment of the heljarskinn twins and of Þorgils skarði, each of whose disfigurements is impossible to imagine as a “Cross to bear,” like Guðmundr’s. Recall that unlike the satanic imagery here that occurs with the onset of the disfigurement, the heljarskinn twins acquire their underworld connection as a badge of acceptance-as-they-are from their father. This counterexample demonstrates that here, atypically, disfigurement is an evil that Guðmundr overcomes (i.e., he is cured) to become a better man. In contrast to this hagiographical treatment of Guðmundr’s laming, disfigurements and disabilities are not otherwise treated as humiliations or as social barriers as they are in most modern societies. Nordic peoples have long lacked that sense of shame over disfigurements and disabilities that bleeds other Western societies of considerable human resources. While the hard-of-hearing English were withdrawing from friends to avoid the shame of the inability to engage in normal conversation (Finucane 1977, 107) and Christian Europe everywhere was institutionalizing the blind in monasteries and the facially disfigured, even the psoriatic, in leper hospitals, the Icelanders seem largely to have ignored such exceptionalities.11 Again, this is not to say that such things went unnoticed, for certainly they did not. The extant documentation of this fact extends to hundreds of men whose bynames distinguish them by their disabilities. A glance through Sturlu saga, just as an example, gives us Ásbjorn daufi (chap. 1), Skeggi skammhondung (chap. 3), Halldórr slakkafótr (chap. 7), Eyjólfr halti (chap. 29).12 The point is that deafness, a withered hand, or a crippled leg are features on the same order as those designated by other common bynames such as digri, rauði, auðgi, dýri, fróði. Complimentary or denigrating, these bynames all identified the Guðmundr or Ásbjorn in question, and there is no indication in Sturlunga or elsewhere that bynames such as daufi were insulting. Guðmundr is the only character in Sturlunga saga who

11. Again, Saxo provides the non-Nordic view: “Weakness is generally recognised by the way it needs others’ help. Although in that age young men used regularly to set about a request for marriage in their own persons, Helgi was hampered by such disability of speech that he was ashamed when strangers and even members of his own household heard him. People always avoid advertising their failings, since natural defects are a greater curse the more they are made public’’ (Book 3; Davidson 1979–80, 1:71). 12. These names all appear in genealogies, leaving the modern reader in doubt as to exactly what they imply. It is possible that some refer to a single episode in the man’s life, or were to be understood figuratively. For example, Ásbjorn daufi might (1) be congenitally deaf, (2) have been deafened by a head injury or illness, (3) have been temporarily deaf due to an ear infection at some crucial event in his life, (4) be normally hearing but absentminded, (5) have failed to have heard something important at one time, or (6) ironically, have acute hearing or be extraordinarily attentive and sharp. It should be noted that bynames suggesting disabilities are a male phenomenon, probably because women were not social agents and thus there was little need to distinguish among them, but perhaps also because women were by virtue of their sex already disfigured or disabled with regard to the male norm and so acquired no further labels of this sort.

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is threatened with death for being disabled, who accepts disability as suffering, and does so with Christ-like humility, and whose character is seen by others as strengthened by the adversity overcome. Precisely how well disfigurements and disabilities were tolerated is shown in the one well-narrated episode in Þorgils saga ok Hafliða. Doubtless included for the verses it contains, this episode, comprising chapter 10, is set at a wedding and concerns Þórðr Þorvaldsson of Vatnsfjorðr, one of the most prominent men in the district, but a man with a chronic condition, here described both clinically and in its embarrassing social dimension: Þórðr var ekki mikill drykkjumaðr, nökkut vangæft um fæðsluna, sem oft kann at verða þeim, er vanheilsu kenna, því at maðrinn var á efra aldri ok var þó enn hraustr. Hann kenndi nökkut innanmeins ok var því ekki mjök matheill ok nökkut vandblæst at eta slátr, því at hann blés svá af sem hann hefði vélindisgang ok varð þá nökkut andrammr. Þórðr var mikilúðligr maðr, eygðr mjök, ok lágu vel augun, framsnoðinn ok strýhærðr, sá upp mjök ok riðaði lítt at. (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:24) [Þórðr was not much of a drinker, and was somewhat disadvantaged in matters of diet, as can often be the case with those who experience ill-health, since he was advanced in years; yet he was still vigorous. He had some internal ailment and because of it did not have a very good digestion and developed gas when he ate meat so that he belched, and he had rather bad breath. Þórðr was an imposing man to look at: he had large, wellset eyes, a bald forehead, and very fair hair. He looked up a great deal and trembled slightly.]

As we shall see in the continued, lengthy quotation, the inclusion of some elements of this description is necessitated by the story that follows — the digestive problem causing gas and halitosis, the receding hairline, and perhaps even the imposing appearance (to prevent an otherwise likely though erroneous assumption that Þórðr is weak in character). The scene that follows provides a standard for the attitudes toward his disgusting dysfunction and his consequent stench, a “disfigurement” in its deviation from the normal or acceptable. The scatalogical double entendres are indicated in parentheses in the translation. Þeir drukku nú ákaft, ok fær á þá alla nökkut. Gerast nú málgir, ok má kalla, at hverr stingi annan nökkuru hnæfilyrði, — ok er þó fátt hermt af þeira kerskiyrðum í þessari frásögn. Þess er getit, at Ingimundr prestr laut at sessunaut sínum ok mælti við hann, svá sem hinn spyrði: 4. Hvaðan kennir þef þenna? Þórðr andar nú handan. Ok verðr at hlátr mikill, ok er næsta gerr at þessu gyss mikill. Ok er því léttir, þá kveðr Þórðr í mót: 5. Andi es Ingimundar ekki góðr á bekkjum. Ok af þessum áköstum tekr heldr at grána gamanit, ok koma kviðlingar við svá. Þá var þetta kveðit til Þórðar: 6. Rymr í barka ríkismanni.

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Lois Bragg Glitar skallinn við á goða yðrum. Hér hlær Þórðr mjök at þessum kviðlingi ok kveðr þegar í mót: 7. Vaxa blástrar á bekk þaðra. Raunillr gerisk þefr at ropum yðrum. Þorgils brosti nú at, en lagði aldri til um áköstin. Ingimundr mælti, at nökkurr þeira bekkjunauta skyldi sjá í móti við Þórð. Þá var þetta kveðit: 8. Þat es válítit, þótt vér reptim búðunautar af bolakjötvi, — reptir Þórðr Þorvalds sonr, Kjartans sonar, af kana sínum. Þórðr lítr eftir kviðlingi þessum, ok þótti honum mjök bera hljóðit þar yfir, sem maðr sat á forsætinu, mjök þrekligr ok allvel hærðr . . . Þórðr mælti: “Eigi munum vit báðir sitja at veizlu þessari lengi, ok send þú hann á brott á annan bæ, ellegar munum vér ríða á brott.” (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:24–26) [They now drank heavily and and they all became a bit drunk. They now became talkative and it could be said that each poked fun at the other with some gibe — and yet little of the repartee from their joshing is recorded in this account. It is said that Ingimundr the priest leaned toward his benchmate and said to him as if the other had asked: 4. Where is that stink coming from? Þórðr is breathing across the board (from the other end). And loud laughter is raised, and great mockery is more or less made of this. And when it lets up, then Þórðr says in response: 5. The breath of Ingimundr is not good for the benchmates (the bench). From these taunts the sport began to grow rather rough, and longer lampoons were composed. Then this was addressed to Þórðr: 6. It roars in the windpipe (colon) of the great man. The bald pate (buttocks) glistens on your chieftain. Þórðr laughed heartily at this lampoon and said in return: 7. The blasts grow on the bench over there. The stench gets very bad from your belches (farts). Þorgils smiled at this, but never responded to the taunt. Ingimundr said that one of the benchmates should respond to Þórðr. Then this was recited: 8. It is harmless even though we belch, boothmates,

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from bull-flesh. Þórðr belches — the son of Þorvaldr, the son of Kjartan — from his kani (from [eating] his own shit).13 Þórðr looked over after this lampoon, and it seemed to him to have provoked a great deal of laughter where a man sat on the front bench, very strongly built and having fine hair . . . Þórðr said, “We can’t both sit at this feast any longer; send him away to another farmhouse or we will ride away.”]

The modern reader may be surprised at the high threshold at which Þórðr’s hearty laughter turns suddenly to angry, hasty departure at this last lampoon. It is clear, however, that in the world of the Sturlungs, scatalogical taunts about such dysfunctions and “disfigurement” are well tolerated. Note, for example, the pun in verse 6 on skalli ‘bald pate’, skall ‘noise’, and its plural skoll ‘derision’, a pun that compares Þórðr’s head/buttocks with the roar from his windpipe/colon as he belches/farts, and both with the mocking verses. Þórðr’s reaction is hearty laughter. That he becomes angry at verse 8 has a great deal to do with the speaker of this verse, the strongly built and fine-haired man who is a socially marginal figure in this saga, not Þórðr’s peer as Ingimundr is, and his impertinent references to Þórðr’s genealogy as well, of course, as with the charge of autocoprophagy. Thus does this episode delineate the extent to which disfigurements and teasing about them were socially acceptable. Several characters in Sturlunga saga would repay the analysis of their disabilities or disfigurements and of the incarnation of character traits and societal conditions in these features. Most prominent among these, in addition to Þorgils skarði, are the myopic and lisping Einarr Þorgilsson (Hvamm-Sturla’s nemesis in Sturlu saga), the myopic Guðmundr dýri Þorvaldsson, and the stammering Þórðr kakali Sighvatsson.14 It is my contention that these particular disfigurements — those of vision and speech — incarnate the moral blindness and crooked speech that are the root and branch of the social dysfunctions that we witness in this compilation. With just a glance at Guðmundr dýri, who can see but cannot recognize (“Guðmundr sá mennina ok kenndi eigi, því at hann var óskyggn” [Guðmundr looked at the men, but did not recognize them because he was weak-sighted] [Guðmundar

13. Verse 8 is one of the many defamatory verses with punch lines that are ambiguous to modern readers because they may have been intended as double entendres based on informal usage that has not elsewhere survived (and that may have been misunderstood by later copyists). The 1946 edition glosses kani as “(sennil.) skoltur, munnur” [(probably) snout, mouth] while Jan de Vries gives “schüssel” (Vries 1962, 300). The key here seems to lie in the intended, and perhaps ironic, parallelism of the af phrases: af bolakjotvi, meaning “because of bullmeat,” and af kana sínum, which appears to mean “from a part of the body, i.e. the bowels,” but may in fact mean “because of what Þórðr has eaten”: clearly something deeply taboo and certainly not bullmeat; cf. Latin caenum. 14. For kakali, Jan de Vries gives “vgl. nnorw. kakla ‘gackern’ . . . Wohl schallnachahmende bildung” (1962, 297).

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saga dýra chap. 23; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:207]) and a short remark on Þórðr kakali, who stammers until his tongue is smoothened by demagoguery (“En nökkut þótti mönnum hann stirt tala í fyrstu. En þess at djarfari ok snjallari var hann í málinu, er hann hafði fleira mælt ok fjölmennara var við” [And it seemed to men that he spoke rather stiffly at first, but then more boldly and eloquently once into the case when he had spoken at greater length and more men were in attendance] [Þórðar saga kakali chap. 4; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 2:11]), we shall take a closer look and make a longer comment on Einarr, who stands as a chronological bookend opposite Þorgils in Sturlunga saga. If, as I shall contend, Einarr Þorgilsson’s disfigured speech and distorted vision propel him to dominate Hvamm-Sturla’s agenda in Sturlu saga and are at least partly and perhaps largely responsible for the continuation of the feud and the number of deaths and volume of destruction, it is another’s disability that had got the feud underway, back before Einarr inherited the goðorð from his father. The feud between these two centers of power — the Sturlungs and the goðorð at Staðarhóll — was in fact begun by a couple of the most marginal people to be met with in the entire compilation: Aðalrikr, the son of a foreign priest, who lived by hiring himself out for wages, and Vigdís, a halfwitted woman unintegrated into any household and living in sheephouses near the coast.15 When she steals linen from the bóndi by whom Aðalrikr is then employed, and Aðalrikr subsequently axes his employer to death, both Sturla and Einarr’s father, Þorgils Oddason, are drawn in to support their clients and wind up at odds with one another. “Þessi váru af Sturlu upphöf fyrst, er hann átti málum at skipta við menn” [This was the first occasion that Sturla had a lawsuit to prosecute with other men] (Sturlu saga chap. 5; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:68). Vigdís does not come into the saga again, and we leave her beachcombing, an incarnation of the dis-integration of the society that cannot encompass a disabled woman and thus allows her to become the cause, along with a vagrant foreigner, of the death of a good bóndi and the setting of goðar against one another. Einarr Þorgilsson was born during the year that his father was in full outlawry, the second of two sons among seven daughters. His elder brother, Oddi, bore the name of the boys’ paternal grandfather and was “vitr maðr ok manna snjallastr í máli” [a wise man and most eloquent in speech] (Sturlu saga chap. 6; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:68). When Oddi died without issue in an epidemic that also killed their father, Einarr tók þá fé sitt ok goðorð, ok gerðist hann höfðingi, því at margar stoðar runnu undir hann, frændr ok mágar ok vinir, er Þorgils, faðir hans, hafði fengit sér. Hann skorti ok eigi kapp né áræði. Engi var hann lagamaðr ok blestr í máli. (Sturlu saga chap. 6; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:68) 15. Vigdís is described as “skillítil” (chap. 4), lacking in discernment: specifically, we find as the story unfolds, unable to distinguish between public and private property. Clearly, she was mentally deficient.

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[Einar took over his property and goðorð and became a chieftain, because there was much support for him from kinsmen, in-laws, and friends — support that Þorgils, his father, had acquired. He was lacking neither ardor nor daring. He was no lawman and was lisping in speech.]

Thus are we introduced to Einarr Þorgilsson: while his elder brother was wise, he is daring; while his brother was eloquent, he is lisping. Had the saga picked up these characters earlier, we would have had the traditional and familiar pair of dark and light brothers, a motif that would have allowed the narrator to play Einarr off as a Kormákr against his emotionally stable and physically sound fair brother. By picking up the thread after Oddi’s death, however, the narrative presents the disfigured Einarr without context, a kind of mutant who acts as the irritant that will drive the first Sturla to greatness and set the tone for the age. We might read his portrait thus: Einarr has a lisp, which mitigates against pursuit of his conflicts in a court of law not only because of his lack of eloquence in pleading but also because he could be cited for procedural misarticulation and see his cases dismissed or lost by default. He therefore, like Þorgils skarði, cultivates an image of boldness to resolve conflicts in his favor out of court. He further capitalizes on his father’s and brother’s reputations and assumes their friends, followings, and affines, as the necessary correlate to assuming their enemies (not least among them the Sturlungs), and all the more necessary in that while legal resolution is difficult for him due to his lisp, vengeance is also difficult due to his myopia. Einarr therefore gets around his deficiencies by choosing other styles of play, such as the use of a surrogate:16 En um vetrinn eftir jól fór Einarr Ingibjargarson norðr til Eyjafjarðar. Ok er Einarr Þorgilsson frétti þat, þá fór hann við átta mann suðr í Tungu. Hann kvaddi til sín Þorgeir Grímsson ok kveðst vilja, at hann ynni á Lofti, fóstra Guðnýjar Brandsdóttur, ok lézt vilja gera þeim nökkura ákenning sinna verka. Þá er þeir kómu í Tungu, gengu þeir í stofu, ok var þeim heilsat ok spurðir tíðinda. Þeir settust niðr. En er Einarr sá, at ekki varð tilræði Þorgeirs, þá stóð hann upp ok gekk útar á gólfit. Hann var nærsýnn ok þekkti eigi, hvar Loftr sat. Hann sneri at þeim manni, er Þórólfr hét, ok lagði spjóti í lær honum, svá at út skar ór, ok var þat svöðusár. Þá hlaupa upp allir menn, þeir er inni váru, ok helt hverr á öðrum. Þar var Guðfinna Sveinsdóttir, ok helt hon Einari. Þau sendu konu eina út í Hvamm at segja Sturlu, en konur ok karlar heldu þeim, þeir er þar váru, ok myndi þeir eigi á braut komast, ef Svertingr Starrason veitti þeim eigi. Hann lét þá lausa ok kvað eigi hæfa, at þar yrði meiri vandræði, ok kom hann þeim í braut. Hann var þar heimamaðr. (Sturlu saga chap. 11; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:77) [In the winter after Christmas, Einarr Ingibjargarson went north to Eyjafjorðr. And when Einarr Þorgilsson learned of that, he went with a party of seven men south to Tunga. He summoned Þorgeirr Grímsson and said he wanted him to attack Loftr, the foster father of Gudný Brandsdóttir, and declared that he wanted to make some retaliation on them for their actions. 16. Recall Þorgils skarði’s use of a surrogate to read King Hákon’s letters aloud, a case of double surrogacy.

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Lois Bragg When they reached Tunga, they went into the main room and they were greeted and asked their news. They sat down. And when Einarr saw that Þorgeirr’s attack was not forthcoming, then he stood up and walked across the floor. He was nearsighted and could not make out where Loftr was sitting. He turned toward a man named Þórólfr and thrust his spear into his thigh so that flesh was cut from it, leaving a bone-deep wound. Then all the people who were inside jumped up and seized them one after another. Guðfinna Sveinsdóttir was there and she took hold of Einarr. They sent a woman off to Hvamm to inform Sturla, and the men and women restrained those who were there, and they would not have gotten away if Svertingr Starrason had not helped them. He had them released and said that it was not proper that there should be more trouble, and he got them away. He was one of the household there.]

To be myopic to the extent that one cannot distinguish one man from another across the short width of an Icelandic hall is, today, to be legally blind. We understand now why Einarr summons one of his men to be the assassin. Contrary to the usual procedure of bribing a man to do one’s killing so that one can arrange to be elsewhere as an alibi, Einarr leads the expedition and appears to have intended to take the credit for the killing. It’s just that he needed another man to do it. Not only does this scheme fail, however, but Einarr is further humiliated in the aftermath by being held by a woman. Sturla, with his habitual perspicacity, attempts to capitalize on Einarr’s myopia in an episode in which we see the latter already in a spot of trouble. Never one to miss a chance or shirk an expedition, Einarr sets out with a party to steal sheep from a kinsman of Sturla’s. Aided by a light snowfall that covers their tracks, his men round up the sheep successfully while Einarr himself blindly rides into a pothole, falls off his horse, and is injured (chap. 20). When the news of the rustling reaches Hvammr, Sturla and his men arm themselves and mount up two men to a horse in pursuit of Einarr. Einarr’s men spot the pursuers and debate the size of their party and whether they should stand or run. Depending for his long-distance vision on his men, Einarr makes the wrong guess about relative numbers and consequently the wrong decision.17 When the parties meet and do battle, Einarr is at first protected from blows by one of his men, but is eventually among the wounded, though apparently among the very few who do no wounding. This episode in the continuing feud is ended by arbitration, but “var þat mál flestra manna, at á þeim fundi skipti um mannvirðing með þeim Sturlu ok Einari” [in most people’s opinion that encounter was decisive in determining the relative honor of Sturla and Einarr] (Sturlu saga chap. 22; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946 1:94) — that is to say, decisive in Sturla’s favor. Other episodes demonstrate Einarr’s avoidance of legal action. Sturla and Einarr are each on their way to the þing at a time when the most recent salvo has redounded to Sturla’s honor, when Einarr decides to double back and burn 17. Note that this episode is a negative version of the watchman motif, which features correct interpretation of reported (sharp) sightings.

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Hvammr. In this episode, Einarr is faced with no opposition in the form of peers, that is, other adult males, to his use of force, so the scheme comes off without a hitch, for once, and even Sturla has to admit that “Einar mundu elt hafa frýjulaust eina nótt” [Einarr must have once lit a fire at night without a mistake] (Sturlu saga chap. 10; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:75). In another episode, Einarr even makes a joke about his preference for force over law. When a certain Oddr will not sell the property that Einarr wants to own, Einarr makes this remark: “Þat hefi ek heyrt menn segja, at þú munir eigi vera skilgetinn, ok mun þat vera réttara, at þú hafir ekki af” [I have heard men say that you were not lawfully conceived, but it would be more accurate to say you have no heritage] (Sturlu saga chap. 16; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946 1:83). The unfortunate Oddr misunderstands what was actually a threat to rob him of his property and instead, fearing legal action on the question of his legitimacy, offers to bear iron to prove it. He ends up robbed of everything he has, Einarr even taking the ring off his finger in a scene recalling the heljarskinn twins. It would not be true to say, however, that Einarr is an incompetent legal manipulator. He is “eigi lagamaðr” in the sense that he avoids legal resolution where it is possible to use force instead, but he does go to court on occasion, the most memorable being the suit over his sister’s abduction. Yngvildr Þorgilsdóttir is a widow (her husband having left home on an arduous trip, during which he dies, because the couple could not bear one another), and has set up housekeeping with a certain Boðvarr when she initiates a liaison with a third man, Sturla’s kinsman Þorvarðr Þorgeirsson. In an elaborate scheme involving advance planning with many conspirators, Yngvildr secretly bears Þorvarðr’s child and subsequently escapes Boðvarr by cutting her hair and dressing as a man (chap. 9).18 Despite the unmistakably voluntary, apparently even initiatory, nature of Yngvildr’s role in the elopement, Einarr brings suit against Sturla, of all people, for being privy to the abduction plot. The result was that “gengu hvár tveggja málin fram, ok urðu báðir sekir fjörbaugsmenn, Sturla ok Einarr” [each of their cases progressed with the result that both Sturla and Einarr were sentenced to lesser outlawry] (Sturlu saga chap. 9; Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946 1:74). And the two of them tie again in outlawing each other a second time in chapter 19. It is often observed that the various authors of the Sturlunga compilation, not least Sturla Þórðarson himself, showed remarkable restraint and objectivity in recounting events in which they and their close kinsmen played major roles. In the case of Einarr Þorgilsson, as in the cases of the other characters we have examined, the remarkably light touch with which his distorted vision and crooked speech, and their historical consequences, are treated serves in fact to foreground them for us. The sagaman is selecting and omitting to show us the results, on the 18. Yngvildr’s behavior and her unnatural dress constitute a kind of disfigurement or self-mutilation, which incarnates her societal dysfunctioning (from her brother’s point of view): acting independently of her brother’s approval, Yngvildr, like the vagrant woman Vigdís, fractures the social structure.

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assumption that we have attended to symbolic clues. Sturla, a man not remarkable for his honor, has nevertheless gained a good deal of this finite commodity at Einarr’s expense. We are shown Einarr falling off his horse, misjudging the numbers of his adversaries, unable to kill anyone but the wrong and utterly defenseless man or to terrorize anyone but women and children, but we are not reminded of why. Einarr’s disfigurement of speech and impairment of sight are no causes of shame in and of themselves and are thus no barriers socially or legally to his assumption and maintenance of the goðorð: as such they are of no particular interest to the narrative. Yet these disabilities are translated into certain character traits and styles of play that in turn drive the action in Sturlu saga. Einarr, as the first adversary of the patriarch of the family that gave the age (and the compilation) its name, shapes the character and style of both Sturla and the saga. Because Einarr’s disabilities block him from more peaceful routes to the resolution of conflict, and because his character has been shaped by his need to strike a compensatory figure of boldness, he chooses alternative approaches to conflict resolution — more violent and more deceitful — which in turn only raise the volume and the stakes of the conflict. As Einarr becomes a magnet, and increasingly a template, for anyone having a grudge against the initially bland Sturla, and as the narrative world mirrors his brotherless state by becoming increasingly and unidimensionally dark, Einarr Þorgilsson truly begins, as Þorgils skarði ends, the Age of the Sturlungs.

Bibliography Bessason, Haraldur. 1977. “Mythological Overlays.” In Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni, 20. júlí 1977, ed. Einar G. Pétursson and Jónas Kristjánsson, 1:273–92. Rit 12. 2 vols. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Cameron, M[alcolm] L. 1993. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 7. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Davidson, Hilda Ellis, ed. 1979–80. Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes, trans. Peter Fisher. 2 vols. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Finucane, Ronald C. 1977. Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Jóhannesson, Jón, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, eds. 1946. Sturlunga saga. 2 vols. Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan. McDougall, Ian. 1992. “The Third Instrument of Medicine: Some Accounts of Surgery in Medieval Iceland.” In Health, Disease, and Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall, and David Klausner, 57–76. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2d ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Thomas Krömmelbein

Die Spitzenstellung des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns innerhalb der Kompilation Sturlunga saga

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roßformen der altnordisch-isländischen Literatur geraten zunehmend in den Blick der skandinavistischen Mediävistik. Sammelhandschriften wie die Snorra Edda–Versionen der Codices Upsaliensis, Wormianus und Regius oder die in einen größeren Verband zusammengestellten Dichtungen wie Hávamál im Codex Regius der Lieder-Edda haben in ihrer überlieferten Endgestalt den Charakter eigenständiger Werke, deren Aussageabsichten sich insbesondere aus der spezifischen Anordnung überlieferter, respektive eigens für eine Kompilation verfaßter Texte ergeben.1 Aus dieser Perspektive ist die gängige Definition der Sturlunga saga als eine Kompilation einzelner Sagas über Ereignisse in Island von 1117 (Beginn der erzählten Zeit der Þorgils saga ok Hafliða) bis zum Untergang des Freistaates 1264 (Beginn der erzählten Zeit des Sturlu þáttr) ungenau: Vor Þorgils saga ok Hafliða und Sturlu saga, die mit dem Thema Konflikt und Konfliktlösung als “Einführungssagas” zu den nachfolgenden eigentlichen “Sturlunga sögur” bezeichnet werden können, hat der Kompilator einen þáttr plaziert, dessen Spitzenstellung in Sturlunga saga bislang ohne überzeugende Erklärung geblieben ist: Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns. Marlene Ciklamini hat den bisher einzigen Versuch einer Gesamtdeutung des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns vorgelegt (1981). Sie beschreibt den Sinn seiner Spitzenstellung als “a suitable, though unorthodox prelude to Sturlunga saga . . . The þáttr presents the phases of history and of individual fate as godwilled. Consonantly, the bloodshed and cruelty recorded in Sturlunga saga are likewise godwilled and finite. The horrors will pass as surely as the pagan era had suddenly ended” (1981, 86–87). Ciklaminis Interpretation gibt wichtige und weiterführende Anregungen, doch bleibt sie weitgehend spekulativ, und ihre

1. Mit der Frage nach der Großform wird die jeweilig überlieferte Endgestalt als literarisches Individuum gewürdigt. Damit werden wichtige Einblicke in die zeitgenössische, mittelalterliche Rezeptionsgeschichte dieser Texte möglich, die nicht als festgeschriebenes Korpus tradiert wurden, sondern als “offene Formen”, die immer wieder andere Texte heranzogen. Die Arbeit des Kompilators wird dadurch nicht minder wichtig als die des Autors. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 33–50

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Begründung wird meines Erachtens weder der Vielschichtigkeit des Schicksalsdenkens noch dem Darstellungsinteresse des Kompilators gerecht. Den Autoren, Kompilatoren und Rezipienten ging es sicherlich nicht um eine Rechtfertigung des Geschehens als “gottgewollt” oder “vorherbestimmt”. Zu Recht hat Tranter (1987) jene “Botschaft” des Kompilators als Grund für die Spitzenstellung abgelehnt (so auch Bragason 1986, 318). Allerdings bietet auch Tranter erklärtermaßen keine überzeugenden Lösungsmöglichkeiten an, wenn er in einem knappen “Appendix” auf Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns eingeht (1987, 239–41). Tranter verweist auf einen Aspekt, der mit entscheidend für die Spitzenstellung gewesen sein könnte: “Geirmundar þáttr represents a standard to be aimed for, and the period starting with Geirmundr and ending with Þorgils and Hafliði a reminder that such an aim can be achieved” (1987, 240). Úlfar Bragason teilt diese Ansicht und übernimmt Standpunkte von Ciklamini und Tranter: “What started as a Golden Age, shown in Geirmundar þáttr, ended with decline and fall” (1991, 321), wobei ein vermeintliches “golden age” nicht weiter hinterfragt wird.2 Der Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns läßt sich in fünf erzählende Abschnitte und eine Genealogie gliedern. Der erste und längste Abschnitt erzählt vom Tausch der Königskinder Geirmundr und Hámundr gegen den Knechtssohn Leifr und von der Rückgängigmachung des Tausches durch den Skalden Bragi; die Brüder erhalten den Beinamen heljarskinn. Der zweite Abschnitt handelt von den Wikingerzügen des erwachsenen Brüderpaars. Geirmundr und Hámundr lösen nach einem besonders erfolgreichen Wikingerzug ihre Schiffsgemeinschaft auf; König Haraldr mißversteht diese Aktion als gegen sich gerichtet. Die Brüder entschließen sich, nach Island zu fahren, und verlassen Norwegen. Thema des dritten Abschnitts ist die Landnahme Geirmundrs; er läßt vier Gehöfte von Knechten verwalten und führt einen aufwendigen Haushalt. Im nächsten Abschnitt wird die Geschichte von Geirmundrs Knecht Atli erzählt, der als Verwalter eines seiner Höfe einen Norweger und seine Angehörigen großzügig aufnimmt und bewirtet, woraufhin Geirmundr Atli die Freiheit und dazu Land schenkt. Der letzte Abschnitt erzählt von einem Ebereschenhain, den Geirmundr meidet. Der Erzähler berichtet, von kundigen Leuten erfahren zu haben, daß dort, wo jetzt die Kirche von Skarð stehe, früher die Ebereschen wuchsen. Eine umfangreiche Genealogie schließt den Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns ab, die unter anderen die Nachkommen Geirmundrs bis hin zu Þórðr Narfason á Skarði (gest. 1308) aufführt. Seit Jón Jóhannesson gilt er, oder möglicherweise einer seiner Brüder, sowohl als wahrscheinlicher Kompilator der KróksfjarðarbókRedaktion der Sturlunga saga (1941, 169–70) wie auch als Autor des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns.3 Die Anfangsstellung erklärt Jóhannesson ebenfalls mit der An2. Seelow (1994) verweist auf Jóhannesson 1941 und 1946, Ciklamini 1981, Bragason 1986, und Tranter 1987, ohne eine eigene Erklärung vorzulegen. 3. Nach opinio communis dürfte auch der sogenannte Sturlungenprolog (“Formáli”, auch “Um söguritun” [Thorsson et al. 1988a, cap. 81]) vom Kompilator stammen. Zu den Eigenleistungen könnten

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bindung an die Familientradition und den Stammsitz des Kompilators, da Skarð zur Landnahme von Geirmundr heljarskinn gehörte (1946, xxi–xxii).4 Der Verfasser respektive Kompilator des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns hat seinen Text teilweise aus anderer Überlieferung zusammengesetzt. Aus einer Version der Landnámabók scheint er Material zur Bragi-Geschichte, zur Auswanderung der Brüder aus Norwegen und zu Geirmundrs Landnahme auf Island, außerdem zu den Personen Atli und Hrólfr, die beide von Geirmundr mit einem Hof beschenkt werden, verwendet zu haben. Viele Details in der Bragi-Geschichte scheinen auf Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka oder die vom Kompilator genannte, nicht erhaltene Hróks saga ins svarta zurückzugehen. In Hálfs saga sind jedoch die Tauschgeschichte und die Kinderszene im Telegrammstil geschildert, während die entsprechenden Passagen im þáttr erzählerisch durchgeformt und psychologisch stimmig sind.5 Die Eigenleistung des Verfassers wird auch in den anderen Abschnitten deutlich, so etwa bei der abwägenden Begründung für die Landnahme der Brüder auf Island. Die Geschichte vom Ebereschenhain findet sich nur im þáttr. Für die umfangreiche Genealogie am Ende scheint der Autor des þáttr Material aus Landnámabók übernommen und beträchtlich erweitert zu haben.

Zur Deutung des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns Am Beginn des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns steht die Geschichte von der Geburt der Zwillingsbrüder Geirmundr und Hámundr, die die Königin während der Abwesenheit von König Hjorr zur Welt bringt: Þeir váru báðir ákafliga miklir voxtum ok báðir furðuliga ljótir ásýnis; en þó réð því stærstu um ófríðleika þeira á at sjá, at engi maðr þóttiz hafa sét døkkra skinn en á þessum sveinum var. Drottning feldi lítinn hug til sveinanna ok sýndiz henni þeir óástúðligir (Kålund 1906–11, 1:1) [Sie waren beide riesengroß und beide furchtbar häßlich; am meisten trug jedoch zu ihrer Häßlichkeit bei, daß keiner glaubte, eine dunklere Haut gesehen zu haben, als diese Knaben hatten. Die Königin war den Knaben wenig zugeneigt, und sie erschienen ihr nicht liebenswert.]

Die Königin tauscht die Zwillinge gegen den zur gleichen Zeit geborenen hübschen Sohn der Frau des Knechts Loðhottr. Alle Kinder wachsen im entspre-

noch weitere Texte zählen: die zwischen Þorgils saga ok Hafliða und Sturlu saga plazierten Ættartolur und der in die Íslendinga saga eingeflochtene Haukdœla þáttr, sowie der die Kompilation abschließende Sturlu þáttr. 4. Zur Einfügung des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns in die Kompilation und seiner Spitzenstellung vgl. auch Jóhannesson 1946, xvii; Jónsson 1923, 2:720–22; Bragason 1986, 124–26. 5. Ich kann mich Seelows Beurteilung der Bragi-Geschichte als “wortreich ausgeschmückter Erzählung” (1994, 705) nicht anschließen, die dem þáttr als eigenständiger Erzählung nicht gerecht wird und sich einer angemessenen Interpretation verschließt: “Diese eigenen Ergänzungen des Verfassers verleihen dem Text streckenweise einen geschwätzigen, betulichen Charakter, der fast kleinbürgerlich-modern anmuten kann” (1994, 711).

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chenden sozialen Milieu auf, entwickeln sich aber nach der Art ihrer Herkunft. Mit dem Auftritt des Skalden Bragi wird die Geschichte vom Rücktausch und der Wiedereinsetzung der Königskinder in ihren sozialen Rang eingeleitet: Þess er við getit eitt sinn, at Bragi skáld sótti heimboð til Hjors konungs, ok var hann með konungi nokkura hríð. Ok einn hvern dag er þat sagt, at konungr fór með hirð sína á dýraveiði, ok varð mannfátt eptir í hollunni. Bragi skáld var heima ok sat í ondvegi ok hafði reyrsprota einn í hendi sér ok leikr at ok þuldi í feld sinn. Drottning lá í þilpalli útar í hollunni ok var hulin klæðum, svá at ekki mátti vita, hvárt hon var þar, nema þeir er áðr vissu. Leifr sat í hásæti ok lék sér at gulli, en þeir Hámundr ok Geirmundr sátu í hálmi ok hugðu at, er Leifr lék sér at gullinu; þeir sá ok ekki manna í hollunni. Þá mælti Geirmundr til bróður síns: “viltu, at vit farim til Leifs ok takim af honum gullit, ok leikum okkr at nokkura hríð.” “Búinn em ek þess”, segir Hámundr. Síðan hljópu sveinarnir innar at hásætinu ok tóku gullit af Leifi, en hann glúpnaði ok æpir eptir. Þeir mæltu: “heyr á”, sogðu þeir, “hvat konungssonr tekr til ok æpir eptir einum gullbaugi, ok er þat satt at segja, at þat er illa komit, er þú ferr með”; þrífa sveinarnir til Leifs ok ráku hann ór hásætinu ok hlæja at. Þá stendr Bragi skáld upp ok gengr at, þar er dróttning lá á pallinum, ok styðr á hana reyrsprotanum ok kvað vísu þessa: Tveir eru inni, trúek báðum vel, Hámundr ok Geirmundr, Hjorvi bornir, en Leifr þriði, Loðhattar sonr, fátt prýðir þann, fár mun enn verri. Drottning stendr nú upp ok gengr í burt með sveinana ok skiptir nú aptr við ambáttina í annat sinn. (Kålund 1906–11, 1:2–3) [Es wird berichtet, daß einmal der Skalde Bragi zu einem Gastgebot bei König Hjorr kam, und er hielt sich eine Zeitlang beim König auf. Und es wird erzählt, daß eines Tages der König mit seinem Gefolge auf Jagd ging und wenige Leute zu Hause im Saal waren. Bragi der Skalde war dort und saß auf dem Ehrensitz und hielt einen Rohrstengel in der Hand und spielt damit und murmelte in seinen Mantel hinein. Die Königin lag auf der Wandbank nahe dem Halleneingang und war mit Zeug zugedeckt, so daß keiner wissen konnte, daß sie da war, außer denen, die vorher Bescheid wußten. Leifr saß auf dem Hochsitz und spielte mit einem Goldring, aber Hámundr und Geirmundr saßen auf dem Stroh und sahen zu, wie Leifr mit dem Goldring spielte. Sie sahen auch keine Leute im Saal. Da sprach Geirmundr zu seinem Bruder: “Willst du, daß wir beide zu Leifr hingehen und ihm den Goldring wegnehmen? Und laß uns eine Weile damit spielen.” “Ich bin dazu bereit”, sagt Hámundr. Dann sprangen die Jungen auf den Hochsitz zu und nahmen Leifr den Goldring weg, aber er blickte traurig und weint ihm hinterher. Sie sprachen: “Hör mal, wie der Königssohn sich aufführt und einem Goldring nachweint, und (zu Leifr gewandt) es stimmt, daß das, womit du umgehst, in schlechten Händen ist.” Die Knaben packen Leifr und stießen ihn vom Hochsitz und lachen über ihn. Dann steht Bragi der Skalde auf und geht dahin, wo die Königin auf der Bank lag, und stößt sie mit dem Rohrstengel an und sprach diese Strophe: Zwei sind drinnen, in beide setze ich großes Vertrauen,

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Hámundr und Geirmundr, dem Hjorr geboren, aber Leifr der dritte, Loðhottrs Sohn, den schmückt weniges, wenige werden noch schlimmer sein. Die Königin steht jetzt auf und geht mit den Knaben weg und tauscht nun wieder mit der Magd zurück.]

Die Geschichte vom Tausch der Königskinder hat den Charakter eines Märchens, wozu besonders das Motiv des “Zauberstabes” beiträgt. Bragi murmelt in seinen Mantel hinein und verbirgt dabei wohl seinen Kopf — eine Art ritueller Handlung, welche die Enthüllung des Geschehenen einleitet. Durch Beobachtung der Handlungs- und Redeweisen aller drei Kinder erkennt Bragi ihren wahren Charakter. Anders als Leifr, der sich “kläglich” verhält, sind die Zwillingsbrüder selbstsicher, egoistisch und zeigen angeborene Führerqualitäten, die auf ihre spätere Karriere als “Seekönige” verweisen. Die Zwillinge scheinen Leifr zu prüfen, wie er mit etwas umgeht, das als ein markantes Attribut eines freigebigen Fürsten bezeichnet werden kann: einem Goldring. Während in Landnámabók der Vater als Wikinger vorgestellt wird, sind es im þáttr erst seine Söhne (Benediktsson 1968, 150). In der Bragi-Geschichte klingt der gesellschaftliche Wandel im Norwegen der Wikingerzeit an: Die alten Strukturen werden durch politisch abgehobenere (Einigungswerk König Haraldrs mit dem Ziel eines zentralistischen Königtums) und zugleich individualistischere Strukturen (Wikinger- und Handelsgemeinschaften, Entdeckungen und Landnahmen) abgelöst.6 Die Egozentrik der Zwillingsbrüder zeigt sich in ihren späteren Wikingerzügen und bei Geirmundrs Landnahme und Etablierung auf Island. Die Andersartigkeit der Zwillingsbrüder manifestiert sich auf einer mythologischen Ebene durch ihren Beinamen heljarskinn. Der König erkennt die Zwillinge als seine legitimen Kinder an und gibt ihnen ihren charakteristischen Beinamen: “At vísu ætla ek, at þessir sveinar sé minnar ættar, en þó hefi ek eigi sét slík heljarskinn fyrr, sem sveinar þessir eru” [Gewiß glaube ich, daß diese Knaben zu meinem Geschlecht gehören, doch habe ich nie solche Höllenhäute wie diese Knaben gesehen] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:3). Mit dem Beinamen heljarskinn werden sie einer Macht zugeordnet, die scheinbar negativ zu bewerten ist: dem Totenreich der Hel. Mit ihrer dunklen Haut tragen die Brüder das Zeichen des “Unteren”, “Häßlichen” und “Dunklen”. In Snorris Gylfaginning heißt es: “vandir menn fara til heliar ok þaþan iniflhel” [böse Menschen fahren zur Hel und von dort nach Niflhel] (Jónsson

6. Die namentliche, das Dichter-Ich betonende Skaldendichtung bildete sich im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert in Norwegen heraus, und es dürfte kein Zufall sein, daß der Skalde Bragi, der auch im mittelalterlichen Verständnis mit der ersten namentlich überlieferten Dichtung, der Ragnarsdrápa, als Skaldentraditionsgründer galt, den entscheidenden Part beim Rücktausch der Zwillinge spielt.

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1931, 11), eine Beschreibung, in die zweifellos christliche Vorstellungen eingeflossen sind. An späterer Stelle in Snorra Edda wird Hel als “halb schwarz und halb fleischfarben” [bla half, en half með harvndar lit] beschrieben und in einen scharfen Kontrast zu Óðinns Valholl gestellt: “Hel kastaþi hann iniflheim ok gaf henne valld yfir ix. heimvm, at hon skyldi skipta ollum vistvm með þeim, er til hennar voro sendir, en þat erv sottdaðir menn ok ellidavþir” [Hel warf er (Allfoðr) nach Niflheim (hinab) und verlieh ihr Gewalt über neun Welten, so daß sie die Wohnstätten an alle die verteilte, die zu ihr gesandt wurden, und das sind die Menschen, die an Krankheit oder an Alter sterben] (Jónsson 1931, 34–35). Hel zugeordnet sind somit die Merkmale “unten”, weiblich, Aufenthaltsort der gewöhnlichen Sterblichen; dagegen Odin: “oben”, männlich, Aufenthaltsort der im Kampf gefallenen Krieger. Im Blick auf die nachfolgende Karriere der Brüder als herausragende “Seekönige” würde man eher “Odinskrieger” erwarten, doch sind sie mit ihrem Beinamen heljarskinn der Hel unterstellt.7 Die in heljarskinn aufscheinende Ambivalenz von oben und unten kennzeichnet die Bragi-Geschichte und den þáttr insgesamt. Der Tausch der Königskinder gegen den Knechtssohn Leifr verstößt unter anderem gegen die Gesellschaftshierarchie. Bragi beobachtet die Königskinder auf dem Stroh spielend, den Knechtssohn auf dem Hochsitz thronend, und initiiert den Rücktausch, der diese Verkehrung von oben und unten aufheben soll. Trotz der Wiederherstellung des “rechtmäßigen” Zustandes — alle befinden sich wieder auf dem Platz, der ihnen durch ihre Geburt zugewiesen ist — wird die Hierarchie diesmal anders wiedereingeschrieben: “Oben” und “Unten” bleiben jeweils durch ihr Gegenteil affiziert. In der sozialen Welt des þáttr bleibt es unter Umständen möglich, daß ein Knechtssohn den Platz eines Königs einnimmt oder ein Königssohn als Knecht aufwächst. Der þáttr-Autor schildert eine Gesellschaftsordnung im Umbruch.8 Politischer und gesellschaftlicher Wandel sind auch Thema des “Zwischenabschnitts”, der über die Wikingerzüge und die Gründe für die Auswanderung des Brüderpaars nach Island berichtet. Geirmundr und Hámundr genießen als sogenannte Seekönige hohes Ansehen: “þeir bræðr váru kallaðir þar mestir hermenn

7. Dieser Beiname verdichtet das Motiv des Verbergens und Verhüllens in der Bragi-Geschichte. Hel bedeutet “die Verhüllende”; der Name stellt sich etymologisch zu germ. *helan ‘verbergen’ (ais. hylja). 8. Deutliche Motiv-Parallelen zum þáttr finden sich unter anderem in Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts (überliefert in Flateyjarbók). Der Norweger Ívarr schwängert in Island Oddný, weigert sich aber, das Kind anzuerkennen. Das Kind wird auf Betreiben des Bruders Þorkell gegen den Rat ihres Vaters Geitir vom Knecht Freysteinn ausgesetzt, der das Kind mit Nahrung versieht. Þorsteinn wird vom Bauern Krummr gefunden und aufgezogen, der ihn für seinen eigenen Sohn ausgibt. Als Þorsteinn eines Tages in sein Heimathaus zurückkommt, wird er von Geitir beobachtet, der auf der Hochbank sitzt und in seinen Mantel murmelt [Þá sat Geitir . . . á palli ok þyldi í feld sinn] (Vilmundarson und Vilhjálmsson 1991, 350). Geitir erkennt Þorsteinns wahre Abstammung und veranlaßt seine Wiederaufnahme ins Elternhaus. Wegen seines Verdienstes um Þorsteinn wird der Knecht Freysteinn freigelassen und mit Oddný verheiratet. Der þáttr berichtet anschließend von Großtaten Þorsteinns in Norwegen und wie er schließlich die Anerkennung seines Vaters Ívarr erringt.

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af sækonungum í þann tíma” [die Brüder wurden dort (scil. im letzten Teil von Hróks saga) die mächtigsten Krieger unter den Seekönigen zu der Zeit genannt] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:3). Nach ihrem erfolgreichsten Beutezug entlassen sie ihre Mannschaft und lösen in Norwegen ihre Schiffsgemeinschaft auf. Es erscheint zunächst unverständlich, warum König Haraldr hárfagri diese Aktion als gegen sich gerichtet sieht: “þá líkar honum eigi þarvist þeira, ok þykkir eigi ørvænt, at þeir muni þar eflaz ætla til móts við sik” [da gefällt ihm ihre dortige Anwesenheit nicht, und er hält es für nicht unwahrscheinlich, daß sie ein Heer gegen ihn aufstellen wollen] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:4). Das Vorhaben der Brüder, “friðland” in Norwegen zu halten [ok ætluðu þeir bræðr at hafa þar friðland] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:4), hätte für Haraldr eine Provozierung bedeutet, wenn damit ein “Schutzland” gemeint ist, in dem sich die Zwillingsbrüder der Macht des Königs entziehen können (zu friðland siehe See 1964, 164). Ein Blick auf die parallele Überlieferung zur Landnahme Geirmundrs (in Landnámabók und Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka) ist aufschlußreich. Landnámabók (Sturlubók, Hauksbók) stellt Geirmundr als Herrscher über ein Reich in Rogaland vor, zugleich als “Heerkönig” [herkonungr], dessen Wikingerzüge nach Westen orientiert waren [í vestrvíking]. Der Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka sind die Wikingerzüge der Brüder, somit die Zeit vor der Landnahme auf Island, hingegen keiner Erwähnung wert. In Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns ist Geirmundr zwar von königlicher Abstammung, selbst aber kein König in Rogaland, das laut Landnámabók von König Haraldr während seiner Abwesenheit unterworfen wird, wobei der König auch vor dem óðal-Besitz der Bauern nicht haltmacht: “ok [hafði] tekit þar marga menn af óðulum sínum” [und hatte dort viele Männer von ihrem Erbbesitz vertrieben] (Benediktsson 1968, 152). In Landnámabók kehrt Geirmundr in das von Haraldr eroberte Rogaland zurück, muß aber der Gewalt Haraldrs weichen: “Sá þá Geirmundr øngvan annan sinn kost en ráðask brutt, því at hann fekk þar øngvar sœmðir. Hann tók þá þat ráð at leita Íslands” [Geirmundr sah da keine andere Möglichkeit für sich, als aus der Gegend wegzuziehen, denn hier konnte er keine Ehre gewinnen. Daraufhin beschloß er, Island aufzusuchen] (Benediktsson 1968, 152). Während in Landnámabók für das Verlassen Norwegens der übliche Topos, Haraldrs Tyrannei, angeführt wird, erörtert der Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns–Verfasser respektive der Sturlunga saga–Kompilator mit einem demonstrativen “ek hefi þat heyrt” [ich habe das gehört] eine alternative Möglichkeit. Die Eindeutigkeit der Aussage in Landnámabók (Melabók) “Geirmundr fór til Íslands fyrir ofríki Haralds konungs hins hárfagra” [Geirmundr fuhr nach Island wegen der Gewaltherrschaft von König Harald Schönhaar] (Benediktsson 1968, 152) weicht einer abwägenden Beurteilung, die die Perspektive von Norwegen auf Island verlagert; die Herausforderung einer Fahrt nach Island stellt die größte Ruhmestat dar: En ek hefi þat heyrt, at í þann tíma, er þeir bræðr kómu ór vestrvíking, væri sem mest orð á, at engi þætti vera frægðarfor meiri en fara til Íslands. Ok af því inu sama vildi

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Thomas Krömmelbein Geirmundr sigla burt þegar um sumarit, er þeir kómu við Nóreg, því at þá var hallat sumri (Kålund 1906–11, 1:4) [Aber ich habe gehört, daß damals, als die Brüder von den Wikingerzügen im Westen zurückkamen, am meisten darüber gesprochen wurde, daß keine Fahrt ruhmvoller war, als nach Island zu fahren. Und aus diesem selben Grund wollte Geirmundr in dem Sommer, als sie nach Norwegen kamen, sogleich absegeln; denn der Sommer neigte sich seinem Ende zu]

Mit dieser Begründung werden alle anderen möglichen Beweggründe aufgehoben. Die Fahrt nach Island bildet den krönenden Abschluß der Wikingerkarriere: Mehr an Ruhm ist nicht zu gewinnen. Mit der Landnahme wird aus dem norwegischen “herkonungr” ein isländischer “Geirmundr bóndi” (Kålund 1906–11, 1:4). Neben dem Hauptsitz Geirmundarstaðir besitzt Geirmundr vier weitere Höfe, die von vier Knechten verwaltet werden, die wiederum Knechte unter sich haben. Geirmundr wird als ein Großbauer mit vielen Abhängigen vorgestellt, die auf den vier Höfen arbeiten müssen, um das große Gefolge auf seinem Hof Geirmundarstaðir zu unterhalten: Geirmundr umgibt sich mit achtzig bewaffneten Männern [vígir karlar]; in Landnámabók (Sturlubók, Hauksbók) wird dieses Motiv unterstrichen: “átta tigu frelsingja” [achtzig freigelassene Sklaven] (Benediktsson 1968, 153). Gezeichnet wird das eher zwielichtige Bild eines Landnehmers und Landverteilers in geradezu feudalistisch anmutenden Verhältnissen, die keineswegs ideal, sondern sozioökonomisch dysfunktional erscheinen. Geirmundr ist zwar ein Mann von “vornehmer Abkunft, mächtig und großmütig“ [Geirmundr bóndi var stórmenni mikit] (Kålund 1906– 11, 1:4), doch zugleich wird sein Verhalten durch ein Prestigedenken bestimmt, das auf seine Wikingerzeit zurückweist; dabei fällt auf, daß die achtzig Krieger Geirmundrs Zeichen einer Macht sind, die nicht eingesetzt wird. (In den Íslendingasögur kommen solch hohe Zahlen nicht vor, wenn es aber zu einer größeren Ansammlung von Männern kommt, beeinflußt sie die Dynamik des Geschehens.) In der Sturlungenzeit, wie bereits in der dem Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns nachfolgenden Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, werden sich die streitenden Parteien zu Hunderten gegenüberstehen. Der vierte Abschnitt, der mit episodischem Material aus Landnámabók übereinstimmt (Benediktsson 1968, 189–90), erzählt vom Norweger Vébjorn und seinen Angehörigen, die wegen der Feindschaft von Jarl Hákon Grjótgarðsson Norwegen verlassen müssen und auf Island von Geirmundrs Knecht Atli gastfreundlich aufgenommen werden. Vébjorns Vater Geirr wird als “großer Heide und Opferer” vorgestellt [hann var blótmaðr mikill ok var af því kallaðr Végeirr] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:4), und die Namen all seiner Kinder beginnen mit Vé-, was ihr Heidentum betont.9 Zwei heidnische Gruppen kommen in dieser Geschichte

9. Vé bedeutet “heiliger Ort”, auch “Gerichtsstätte”. Zahlreiche Personen und Ortsnamen sind mit vé gebildet (vgl. Vries 1962, s.v.).

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zusammen, denn auch Atli ist mit einer dämonisierenden Charakterisierung als “ódæll” [schwierig im Umgang] und “hamrammr” [fähig zum Wechseln der Gestalt] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:5) diesem Glauben zuzuordnen. Doch scheint das Heidentum nicht eigentlich Thema des Abschnitts zu sein, sondern das Verhalten des Verwalters Atli, der sich als Knecht [þræll] anmaßt, gegenüber mit der Krone verfeindeten Norwegern selbständig und großzügig wie ein Herr zu handeln. Auf Geirmundrs Frage nach den Gründen für sein unangemessenes Verhalten antwortet er: ek vilda þann veg syna, huersu mikid gaufug-menni ok stor-menni sa madr uar, er þann þrel atti, er slik storredi þordi a hendr at takaz (Kålund 1906–11, 1:5) [Ich wollte auf diese Weise zeigen, wie überaus vornehm, mächtig und großmütig der Mann ist, der einen Knecht besitzt, der so große Taten zu unternehmen wagt.]

Atli interpretiert seinen Übergriff als Steigerung von Geirmundrs Rang: Entsprechend belohnt Geirmundr seinen Knecht mit der Freiheit und schenkt dem Freien mit der Großzügigkeit eines Herrschers Land.10 Nicht nur Atli, auch andere beschenkt Geirmundr fürstlich mit Land, und dieses Motiv des Landverschenkens wird fortgesetzt mit Hrólfr Kjallaksson, dem einzigen mit Land bedachten NichtSklaven, dessen Geschlecht an dieser Stelle bis hinunter zu Páll prestr (gest. 1185) geführt wird. In Landnámabók wird diese Schenkung nicht erwähnt, dafür aber der Streit mit Hrólfrs Vater Kjallakr über ein Landstück, der friedlich beigelegt wird, entsprechend der Charakteristik Geirmundrs in Landnámabók: “En lítt átti hann hér deilur við menn, því at hann kom heldr gamall út” [Aber er stritt sich hier wenig mit Leuten, da er ziemlich alt war, als er nach Island kam] (Benediktsson 1968, 155). Der Streit mit Kjallakr fehlt bezeichnenderweise im Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns: Das große Thema der friedlichen Konfliktlösung unter isländischen Häuptlingen bleibt der Þorgils saga ok Hafliða vorbehalten (vgl. unten, S. 46). Der Vébjorn/Atli–Abschnitt geht über in die enigmatische Geschichte vom leuchtenden Ebereschenhain. Auf seinem Alterssitz Geirmundarstaðir befindet sich eine Mulde oder Talsenke, die Geirmundr lieber nicht in seinem Besitz hätte. In dieser Talsenke ist ein Ebereschenhain, von dem Geirmundr sagt, daß er jedesmal, wenn er dort hinsieht, von einem Licht geblendet werde [þa skramir þat lios firir augu mer, at mér verðr ecki at skapi] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:5). Die Milch der Kühe, die dort zufälligerweise grasen, läßt er unberührt. Als eines Tages ein Knecht aus Unachtsamkeit die Kühe mit einer Ebereschenrute [reynivondr] vom Hain zurücktreibt, wird er von Geirmundr schwer gezüchtigt: hann hleypr at smalamanninum ok hýðir ákafliga mjok ok bidr hann alldri gera optarr at beria fe hans med þeim uidi, er i þeim huammi er uaxin, en þó einna sizt or reynirunninum . . . Geirmundr lét taka vondinn ok brenna í eldi (Kålund 1906–11, 1:6)

10. Dies erinnert an die Bragi-Geschichte und das Auftreten der Kinder: Leifr wollte und konnte den Goldring nicht aus der Hand geben und verhielt sich damit nicht “königlich”. Er war ein Knecht und würde seine Sklavenart immer behalten, wie Bragi in der Erzählung richtig erkannte.

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Thomas Krömmelbein [Er geht auf den Hirten los und schlägt ihn sehr heftig und befiehlt ihm, niemals wieder sein Vieh mit dem Holz zu treiben, das in dieser Talsenke gewachsen ist, aber am allerwenigsten aus dem Ebereschenhain . . . Geirmund ließ den Zweig nehmen und im Feuer verbrennen]

Einem Zweig, dem Rohrstengel [reyrsproti], mit dem Bragi die Königin anstieß, als er den Rücktausch einleitete, verdankte Geirmundr sozusagen die Wiedereinsetzung in sein eigentliches Leben, und ein Zweig, eine Ebereschenrute, steht am Ende seines Lebens. Die Eberesche wird als Baum mit magischen Kräften besonders mit Thor in Verbindung gebracht, dem ein Ebereschenzweig bei der Überquerung des anschwellenden Vimurflusses zur Rettung wurde: “reynir er biorg Þórs” [die Eberesche ist die Rettung Thors] (Geirrøðr-Mythe in Skáldskaparmál; Jónsson 1931, 106). Geirmundrs Hain könnte eine dem Gott Thor geweihte Stätte gewesen sein. Doch nichts scheint in dieser Episode eindeutig: Das Verbot, die Tiere an einem heiligen Ort grasen zu lassen, wirkt nicht ungewöhnlich, andererseits wünscht sich Geirmundr diese Stätte fort [brott or landinu] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:5) und schüttet die Milch der Kühe, die doch gerade an dieser Stelle vor Unheil bewahrt sein sollten, weg. Und auch das Licht, das die vermeintliche Thorsstätte okkupiert, wird von Geirmundr als Bedrohung empfunden. Mit Ciklamini läßt sich das Licht als Vorzeichen des kommenden Christentums deuten (1981, 82).11 So gesehen empfindet Geirmundr das Christentum als Bedrohung, als eine negative Macht, der er sich zu entziehen sucht. Geirmundr lebt in einer Zeit, in der das Heidentum unter einem “umgekehrten” Vorzeichen steht: Der Ebereschenhain Thors wird abgelöst durch den weißen Christ, was Geirmundr natürlich noch nicht wissen kann, wohl aber der Verfasser des þáttr respektive der Kompilator der Sturlunga saga. Am Ende des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns führt der Autor das erste epochale Ereignis der isländischen Geschichte, die Landnahmezeit, an das zweite Ereignis, die Einführung des Christentums im Jahr 1000, heran, freilich ohne es zu thematisieren. Der þáttrErzähler weiß, vom Standpunkt des 13. Jahrhunderts aus, daß an der Stelle des Ebereschenhains die Kirche von Skarð errichtet worden ist: “i þeim sama stad er nu stendr kirkia að Skarði, at því er vér hofum heyrt sannfroda menn fra segia” [an der Stelle, wo jetzt die Kirche von Skarð steht, wie wir es von gut informierten Männern gehört haben] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:6).12 Der Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns endet so mit einem Vorzeichen der Heraufkunft einer neuen Religion und einer neuen Ordnung, die das Heidentum und seine soziale Ordnung ablösen wird. Geirmundr heljarskinn erfährt dieses Neue als die Verkehrung einer schützenden Macht in eine bedrohliche.

11. Das Licht ist zugleich ein erstes christliches Zeichen in der Sturlunga saga–Kompilation, wie sie vor allem in Guðmundar saga góða zu finden sind. 12. Hierbei handelt es sich um einen Vorgang, der besonders aus der Zeit des Übergangs von der Antike zum Christentum bekannt ist: Auf der Stätte eines ehemaligen griechischen oder römischen heidnischen Tempels wird die christliche Kirche errichtet.

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Die “Biographie” des Geirmundr heljarskinn zu Beginn der Kompilation Sturlunga saga stellt einen berühmten Isländer des neunten Jahrhunderts vor, der seine Karriere als norwegischer Königssohn und Wikinger begann und als hochangesehener Landnehmer beschloß. Dabei zeichnet der þáttr kein eindeutiges Bild eines idealen landnámsmaðr in einem “goldenen Zeitalter” Islands, wie teilweise in der Forschung angenommen wird:13 Dann stünde der Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns mit einem positiven Gegenbild in scharfem Kontrast zur Sturlungenzeit und ihren dysfunktionalen Ereignissen, wie sie in den Sturlunga sögur der Kompilation vorgeführt werden. Eine genauere Betrachtung des þáttr entdeckt vielmehr ein zwiespältiges Bild des Landnehmers Geirmundr heljarskinn, dessen wechselhafter Lebensweg die Bruchstellen einer ins Wanken geratenen Gesellschaftsordnung nachzeichnet. In diesem Sinne weist der Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns auf das im Umbruch befindliche, instabile isländische Gemeinwesen der Sturlungenzeit voraus.

Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns innerhalb der Großstruktur Sturlunga saga Was mit Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns und einem norwegischen Königssohn und Landnehmer Geirmundr begann, endet mit Sturlu þáttr und mit einem bezeichnenden Schauplatzwechsel Island → Norwegen → Island. Was mit der Landnahme Geirmundrs seinen Anfang nahm (Norwegen → Island), sich in der friðaröld des Freistaates fortsetzte, dann aber in einem schleichenden Prozeß umkippte und zur Unterwerfung unter die norwegische Krone nach bürgerkriegsähnlichen Unruhen führte (Island → Norwegen), findet einen Neuanfang auf Island, ausgehend vom einstigen Mutterland Norwegen: Die Rückkehr Sturlas nach Island als logmaðr des norwegischen Königs löst den logsogumaðr der Freistaatzeit ab (Norwegen → Island).14 Am Ende der gewalttätigen Sturlungaöld steht ein aus der Sicht des Sturlunga saga–Kompilators wahrer Repräsentant der Sturlungenzeit, vorgestellt als Friedensstifter und Vermittler in Zwistigkeiten (damit anknüpfend an Þorgils saga ok Hafliða), zugleich ein Sagamann (Verfasser von Íslendinga saga und Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar) und Skalde, der durch seine literarische

13. “Geirmund fulfills the role of the idealized settler” (Tranter 1987, 240). “All in all Geirmundar þáttr portrays the protagonist as a born chieftain, enterprising, magnanimous, wise and peaceful — a model to be followed” (Bragason 1991, 320). 14. Auch die Genealogie am Schluß von Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns vollzieht diesen Bogen. Sie umspannt Raum (Norwegen → Island) und Zeit (Vor-Landnahmezeit in Norwegen, Landnahme auf Island) mit einer eindrucksvollen Reihe von hochbedeutenden norwegischen Stammvätern (Rognvaldr jarl á Mæri, Hrólfr hersir af Ogðum, Hjorr konungr Hálfssonar), von denen erste vornehme Landnehmer abstammen (Ingólfr Arnarson, Steinólfr hinn lági, Geirmundr heljarskinn). Die Stammtafel führt über bedeutende Repräsentanten des Freistaates (Sæmundr hinn fróði, Bischof Magnús von Skálholt) zur Gegenwart des Kompilators und zu Sturla Þórðarson (vgl. Thorsson et. al. 1988b, 73 [Tafel 1], 74 [Tafel 2]).

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Kunst den norwegischen König für sich zu gewinnen weiß (Erzählinhalt des Sturlu þáttr). Sturla erweist sich als würdiger Nachfolger Snorri Sturlusons; wie sein Onkel war er Skalde, Sagaverfasser, Historiker, Politiker, und er wurde logmaðr des norwegischen Königs auf Island — ein Ziel, das Snorri anstrebte, aber nicht verwirklichen konnte. Sturla kehrte 1271 mit dem neuen Gesetzbuch nach Island zurück, in gewisser Weise als ein “Jarl von Island”. Dies kann als Überbietung Snorris durch seinen Neffen gesehen werden: Der Sturlu þáttr wird zur Hommage des Sturlunga saga–Kompilators an den Verfasser der Íslendinga saga. Die Plazierung von Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns und Sturlu þáttr am Anfang und Ende der Sammlung läßt auf eine bewußte Rahmenbildung schließen. Im Zentrum der Kompilation stehen die eigentlichen Sturlunga sögur mit dem Zeitrahmen der Sturlungaöld, eingeleitet mit einem Formáli. Der Kompilator hat die Sturlunga sögur / Sturlungaöld in einen größeren geschichtlichen Rahmen hineingestellt, indem er den Zyklus mit Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns, der über Ereignisse zwischen ca. 840 und 900 berichtet, beginnen und mit Sturlu þáttr — erzählte Zeit: 1263/64 bis 1284 — enden ließ (siehe Tafel 1). 15 Die eigentlichen Sturlunga sögur sind geschichtlich eingerüstet, beginnend mit Landnahmezeit und friðaröld (1030 bis 1180) und endend mit Sturla Þórðarsons Jahren am norwegischen Königshof. Zu dieser erweiterten Konzeption über Sturlungaöld hinaus paßt der Titel Sturlunga saga inn mikla in einigen Papierhandschriften weitaus besser als der geläufige Titel Sturlunga saga, der ebenfalls erst aus dem 17. Jahrhundert stammt (in beiden Pergamentcodices Króksfjarðarbók und Reykjarfjarðarbók fehlt der Anfang mit einem möglichen Hinweis auf einen mittelalterlichen Titel). Árni Magnússons Bezeichnung Islendinga Sagan mikla für AM 114 fol. (Kålund 1889, 78–79), die älteste der von Jón Gissursson um 1630–40 erstellten Abschriften, von der viele weitere Handschriften abstammen, macht somit nicht nur Sinn als Abgrenzung von der umfangreichsten “Hauptsaga” der Kompilation, Sturla

15. Kein Bestandteil der Kompilation Sturlunga saga ist die Áróns saga Hjorleifssonar, die weder in Króksfjarðarbók (AM 122a fol., aus der Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts) noch in Reykjarfjarðarbók (AM 122b fol., um 1400) überliefert ist und erst in jüngerer Zeit in Sturlunga saga–Editionen aufgenommen wurde. Durch die Einbeziehung der Áróns saga wurde der Blick auf die eigentliche Großform Sturlunga saga verstellt. Möglicherweise wurde Áróns saga Hjorleifssonar deswegen nicht in die ursprüngliche Sturlunga saga–Kompilation integriert, weil sich der behandelte Zeitraum und zum Teil auch die geschilderten Ereignisse mit denen der Íslendinga saga decken (Áróns saga: um 1220 bis 1255; Íslendinga saga: 1183 bis 1255/1262). Árna saga biskups, die Lebensgeschichte Árni Þorlákssons, Bischof von Skálholt 1269–1298, fand Aufnahme in moderne Sturlunga saga–Editionen (so in Thorsson et al. 1988b). Árna saga biskups ist in über vierzig Handschriften und Handschriftenfragmenten überliefert, unter anderen mit drei Blättern in Reykjarfjarðarbók im Anschluß an Sturlu þáttr. Sie ist hier Fortsetzung des Sturlu þáttr insofern, als in Árna saga biskups das Verhältnis zwischen den norwegischen Königen und Island ein zentrales Thema bildet. Sie knüpft somit an die norwegisch-isländische Perspektive des Sturlu þáttr an und setzt die isländische Geschichte chronologisch bis zum Jahr 1290 fort. Reykjarfjarðarbók zeigt sich als eine erweiterte Redaktion der Sturlunga saga, die durch ihre Zusätze den größeren geographisch-chronologischen Rahmen der Kompilation verdeutlicht.

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Tafel 1. Aufbau der Kompilation Sturlunga saga Einleitungsteil N → IS

1. 2. 3. 4.

Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns (ca. 840–900) Þorgils saga ok Hafliða (1117–1121) Ættartolur Sturlu saga (1148–1187)

cap. 1–7

5. Formáli

cap. 81

cap. 8–36 cap. 37–43 cap. 44–80

Sturlunga sögur 6. Guðmundar saga góða (1161–1203) 7. Guðmundar saga dýra (1185–1200) 8. Íslendinga saga (1183–1255) 9. Haukdœla þáttr (1000–1090) 10. Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar (1203–1213) 11. Þórðar saga kakala (1242–1249) 12. Svínfellinga saga (1248–1253) 13. Þorgils saga skarða (1252–1258)

cap. 82–96, 121–22, 125–27, 144–53 cap. 97–120, 123–24 cap. 128–37, 143, 154–71, 182–308, 372–75, 476–78, 480–81, 485–91 cap. 138–42 cap. 172–81 cap. 309–57, 477 cap. 358–71 cap. 376–406, 407–35 (= Íslendinga saga), 436–75, 479, 482–84

Schlußteil IS → N → IS

14. Sturlu þáttr (1264–1284)

cap. 492–94

Anmerkung: N=Norwegen; IS=Island. Kapitelzählung nach Thorsson et al. 1988a.

Þórðarsons Íslendinga saga, sondern trifft auch die umfassende Intention des Kompilators.16 Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns bildet zusammen mit Þorgils saga ok Hafliða und Sturlu saga einen Einleitungsteil vor dem Kernbereich der “eigentlichen” Sturlunga sögur. Während Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns und Sturlu saga den

16. Die älteste Edition der Sturlunga saga von Bjarni Þorsteinsson (København 1817–20) trägt mit ihrem Titel dieser Überlieferung Rechnung: Sturlúnga Saga edr Islendínga-Saga hin mikla.

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geographisch-chronologischen Rahmen des Einleitungsteils ziehen, identifiziert die Þorgils saga ok Hafliða das Thema der Kompilation, vergleichbar der Themensetzung der Eiríks saga víðforla für die Flateyjarbók.17 Die Vorstellung von Hafliði Másson und Þorgils Oddason entwickelt sich aus der Genealogie des Geirmundar þattr heljarskinns. Þorgils ist mit Geirmundr verwandt (“Þorgils uar sonr Odda Sneris sonar, Þoroddz sonar. Modir Sneris uar Fridgerdr Hyrnings dottir. Hyrningur atti Arndisi dottur Geirmundar heliar-skinz” [Kålund 1906–11, 1:8]) und wird Geirmundr an die Seite gestellt: “hann hafdi mann-mart med ser, ok rausn mikil uar þar i morgum hlutum. Han uar stor-fengr ok audigr” [Er führte viele Leute mit sich und es herrschte dort in vielen Dingen eine große Pracht. Er war großzügig und wohlhabend] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:8). Fünf Generationen nach einem angesehenen Landnehmer Geirmundr werden mit Þorgils und seinem späteren Gegner Hafliði —“[Hafliði] var bæði foruitri ok godgiarn ok inn mesti haufdingi” [(Hafliði) war ein weiser und zugleich umgänglicher Mann und ein höchst angesehener Häuptling] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:8) — die beiden bedeutendsten und scheinbar vorbildhaften Repräsentanten der frühen Phase des isländischen Freistaates vorgestellt. Die Entstehung, Eskalation und Lösung des Konfliktes zwischen den mächtigen Protagonisten ist das zentrale Thema der Þorgils saga ok Hafliða: “an exemplum demonstrating how disputes should be solved without bloodshed” (Kristjánsson 1988, 189).18 Die Saga ist ein Lehrstück über Mächtige, die sich ihrer Stellung nicht adäquat verhalten und mit unangemessenem Handeln die geltende Ordnung (fast) zerstören. Hafliði handelt beispielsweise im Widerspruch zu seinem üblichen Auftreten als “inn mesti haufdingi”, wenn er während des Things eine Axt zum Gericht mitnimmt. Ein solches Verhalten verstößt gegen die geschriebenen und ungeschriebenen Normen der Gesellschaft und führt letztlich zum Untergang des Freistaates, wie dann in der Íslendinga saga dargestellt wird.

17. Der Einleitungsteil der Flateyjarbók mit einer Abfolge Geisli → Óláfsríma Haraldssonar → Hyndluljóð → Or Kristnisogu meistari Adams → Þáttr frá Sigurði konungi slefu → Hversu Nóregr byggðisk → Ættartolur → Eiríks saga víðforla weist, wie Tranter gezeigt hat (1987, 27–31), Parallelen zum Einleitungsteil der Sturlunga saga–Kompilation auf, doch wäre es meines Erachtens verfehlt, von einer weitgehenden “Flateyjarbók analogy” zu sprechen, wie dies Tranter tut. Die Unterschiede überwiegen und betreffen nicht nur die “Textarten” in Flateyjarbók — eddische und skaldische Dichtung, rímur, sogur und Genealogien —, die in die Kompilation aufgenommen wurden und nebeneinanderstehen. Dabei fällt der Sigurðar þáttr slefu thematisch aus dem Einleitungsteil heraus, da die hier erzählte Geschichte sich nicht in einen Bezug zu den nachfolgenden Óláfs sogur setzen läßt. Die dróttkvætt-Dichtung Geisli von Einarr Skúlason und die Óláfsríma Haraldssonar von Einarr Gilsson weisen thematisch auf die beiden Kernstücke der Kompilation voraus: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (der erste Bekehrerkönig 995–1000 als Vorläufer des heiligen Óláfr) und Óláfs saga helga. Am Ende des Einleitungsteils steht die kurze fornaldarsaga vom weitgereisten Eiríkr, die als didaktisch-religiöse Exempeldichtung (Jónsson 1927, 150) die Einführungsfunktion übernimmt: Eiríkr víðforla ist in seiner Suche nach dem christlichen Paradies und der wahren Religion ein Vorläufer des heiligen Óláfr. 18. So auch Tranter in seiner Analyse dieser Saga mit der Kapitelüberschrift “The Triumph of Reconciliation” (1987, 54–88).

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Þa tekr Haflidi oxi i hond ser, adr hann gengr fra bvd sinni til doma. En þat hafdi ecki verit vandi hans fyr at gera þat, þvi at Haflidi var bedi fiolmennr ok frend-gofvgr. Þa mellti kona hans Rannveig: “hvat er i þesso Haflidi”, sagdi hon, “at bera nv vapn helldr en fyr ertv vanr at gera, ok hallt þv hattvm þinvm.” Hon var vitr kona ok vel at ser vm mart. Hann svaradi nockvt stygliga ok kvad þat ecki til hennar koma ok kastadi at henne nockvrvm ordvm. (Kålund 1906–11, 1:28) [Da nimmt Hafliði eine Axt in die Hand, ehe er von seiner Thingbude zum Gericht geht. Doch es war früher nicht seine Gewohnheit gewesen, dies zu tun, denn Hafliði hatte viele Anhänger und war vornehm. Da sprach seine Frau Rannveig: “Was soll das, Hafliði”, sagte sie, “jetzt Waffen zu tragen, anders als du bisher gewohnt warst zu tun, und bleibe bei deinem üblichen Verhalten.” Sie war eine kluge und in vieler Hinsicht hervorragende Frau. Er antwortete kurz angebunden und sagte, daß sie das nichts angehe, und beschimpfte sie.]

Während des Things träumt Þórðr Magnússon in Reykholt von einem Mann, der vom Thing kommt und auf die Frage nach Prozessen, die “Streitigkeiten nach sich ziehen können” [ef nockvr deiluvænlig mal væri fram hofd a þinginu], die Antwort gibt: “daß ein Mann sich vorgenommen habe, in allen Buden tätig zu werden, der Þórir dritloki heißt” [at einn maðr hefir tekiz á hendr at vina i ollvm bvdum, sa er heitir Þórir dritloki] (Kålund 1906–11, 1:28). Þórðr deutet den Traum dahingehend, “daß nicht alle Streitfälle gütlich beigelegt werden, bevor das Thing zu Ende geht” [at eigi mundu þar oll mal vel lukaz adr sliti þinginu] (Kålund 1906– 11, 1:28). Diese Traumerzählung, die erste von vielen in der Kompilation, verweist mit einem Þórir dritloki (Scheiß-Loki) auf den Ränkeschmied unter den Asen, der immer wieder in seiner Außenseiterrolle Unruhe und Verwirrung unter den Asengöttern stiftet. Einst mit Odin in Blutsbrüderschaft verbunden (Locasenna 9), entfernt sich Loki von der Asengemeinschaft bis zur offenen Feindschaft mit den Asen als Anführer der Útgarðr-Dämonen bei Ragnarok (Volospá 51). Der Sagaverfasser thematisiert hier auch auf der mythologischen Ebene die Destruktion von Ordnung. An dem Ringen um diese Ordnung ist eine Vielzahl von Kräften und Personen beteiligt: einerseits falsche Ratgeber, die die Protagonisten zum Kampf aufstacheln und den jeweiligen Vorteil suchen, und andererseits gerechte Vermittler, die sie beschwichtigen und einen dauerhaften Ausgleich zwischen den Parteien anstreben. Hier, anders als in den nachfolgenden Sturlunga sögur, gelingt noch die ordnungserhaltende Konfliktlösung. In einer Strophe am Schluß der Þorgils saga ok Hafliða heißt es: mal dragaz liot til bota, geigr vard viþ svað (Kålund 1906–11, 1:45). [Eine schlimme Auseinandersetzung wird beigelegt, schwere Gefahr drohte.]

Kernstück der Kompilation ist die Íslendinga saga von Sturla Þórðarson, welche die wesentlichen Jahrzehnte der eigentlichen Sturlungaöld abdeckt. Der mögliche Kompilator Þórðr Narfason kannte nach Ausweis des Sturlu þáttr, der von ihm selbst verfaßt sein könnte, Sturla persönlich (“Þann vetr var með Sturlu

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Þórðr Narfason”, Kålund 1906–11, 2:328; die Narfissöhne waren Vettern von Sturlas Frau Helga, vgl. Thorsson et al. 1988b, 119, Tafel 79). Als einer der literarisch hochaktiven Neffen Snorris war Sturla mit Snorris Werk vertraut. Die Sturlungen tauschten sich in ihren literarischen Arbeiten aus, wie Sturla Sighvatsson, der 1230 in Reykjaholt Manuskripte Snorris abschreiben ließ, oder Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskáld, der als Verfasser der Dritten grammatischen Abhandlung bewußt in Konkurrenz zu Snorris ars poetica trat. Verfasser-, Schreiber-, respektive Kompilatorentätigkeit sind oft nicht voneinander zu trennen. Bekannt ist, daß Sturla Þórðarson die Landnámabók-Fassung, die seinen Namen (Sturlubók) trägt, und die Kristni saga bearbeitet hat. Vermutlich beabsichtigte er mit seiner Íslendinga saga [Geschichte der Isländer], die als nicht abgeschlossen in die Sturlunga saga– Kompilation integriert wurde, eine umfassende Darstellung der isländischen Geschichte von der Landnahmezeit über die Sturlungaöld bis zur norwegischen Herrschaft über Island (siehe Jóhannesson 1946, xxxv–xxxviii). Der Kompilator — wenn es nicht Þórðr Narfason war, so doch jemand, der an dem intensiven literarisch-historiographischen Diskurs seiner Zeit teilnahm — hat die Absicht Sturlas aufgegriffen, eine Geschichte der Isländer zusammenzustellen. Mit dem Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns an der Spitze seiner Sturlunga saga hat er eine Eröffnung verfaßt, die die Sturlungenzeit nicht nur in einen weiten geographischen und zeitlichen Kontext stellt: Die Kompilation führt die Geschichte der Isländer, die in Norwegen begann, im Sturlu þáttr schließlich zum “Mutterland” zurück. Der Kompilator interpretiert das Ende des isländischen Sonderweges — ein Gemeinwesen, dessen labiles Ordnungssystem ohne zentrale Regierung und Exekutive in der Sturlungenzeit unwirksam geworden war — als Integration in die herrschende, feudalistische Ordnung seiner Zeit. Die Kontinuität der Geschichte der Isländer bleibt gewahrt, indem sie zyklisch an ihren Ausgangspunkt zurückgebunden wird durch die Spitzenstellung des Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns.

Bibliographie Benediktsson, Jakob, Hg. 1968. Íslendingabók, Landnámabók. Íslenzk fornrit 1. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Bragason, Úlfar. 1986. “On the Poetics of Sturlunga.” Diss. Univ. of California at Berkeley. ———. 1991. “Sturlunga: A Political Statement.” In “The Audience of the Sagas” (preprints from the Eighth International Saga Conference, Gothenburg University, August 11–17, 1991), 2:315–22. Ciklamini, Marlene. 1981. “Divine Will and the Guises of Truth in Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns.” Skandinavistik 11:81–88. Jóhannesson, Jón. 1941. Gerðir Landnámabókar. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag. ———. 1946. “Um Sturlunga sögu.” In Sturlunga saga, hg. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason und Kristján Eldjárn, 2:vii–lvi. Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan.

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Jónsson, Finnur. 1923. Den oldnorske og islandske litteraturs historie. Bd. 2. Zweite Auflage. København: Gad. ———. 1927. “Flateyjarbók.” Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie, tredje række, 17:139–90. København: Gyldendal. ———, Hg. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. København: Gyldendal. Kålund, Kristian. 1889. Katalog over den arnamagæanske håndskriftsamling. Bd. 1. København: Gyldendal. ———, Hg. 1906–11. Sturlunga Saga efter membranen Króksfjarðarbók udfyldt efter Reykjarfjarðarbók. 2 Bde. København: Gyldendal. Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1988. Eddas and Sagas: Iceland’s Medieval Literature. Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag. See, Klaus von. 1964. Altnordische Rechtswörter: Philologische Studien zur Rechtsauffassung und Rechtsgesinnung der Germanen. Hermaea: Germanistische Forschungen, neue Folge, Bd. 16. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Seelow, Hubert. 1994. “Der Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns in der Sturlunga saga.” In “Samtíðarsögur” (preprints from the Ninth International Saga Conference, Akureyri, Iceland, 31.7. – 6.8. 1994), 698–711. Thorsson, Örnólfur, et al., Hg. 1988a. Sturlunga saga, Árna saga biskups, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar hin sérstaka. Reykjavík: Svart á hvítu. Thorsson, Örnólfur, et al., Hg. 1988b. Skýringar og fræði: Íslendingabók, Veraldar saga, Leiðarvísir Nikuláss Bergssonar, samþykktir og sáttmálar, ættir og átök, kort, töflur, orðasafn, nafnaskrá, staðanafnaskrá. Reykjavík: Svart á hvítu. Tranter, Stephen Norman. 1987. “Sturlunga Saga”: The Rôle of the Creative Compiler. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Vilmundarson, Þórhallur, und Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, Hg. 1991. Harðar saga. Íslenzk fornrit 13. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2. Aufl. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Summary The Sturlunga saga compilation opens with an enigmatic text, Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns, which has not been dealt with adequately in scholarly literature. In this article I examine the narrative content of the þáttr and speculate on the possible intentions of its author, who may have been the compiler of the Króksfjarðarbók-redaction of Sturlunga saga, logmaðr Þórðr Narfason á Skarði (died 1308). The þáttr, and thus the compilation, opens with the story of how the “ugly,” dark-skinned royal twins Geirmundr and Hámundr are exchanged at birth by their mother with the “beautiful” thrall’s son Leifr and then three years later are reexchanged through the intervention of Bragi skáld and accepted by King Hjorr as his legitimate offspring. The byname which the twins receive from their father (heljarskinn ‘hell/Hel-skin’) conveys mythological connotations of the netherworld and helps to articulate a tone-setting ambiguity of “above” and “below.” Disequilibrium and change characterize the social world depicted in the þáttr. Geirmundr’s career as a landnámsmaðr is portrayed as the logical extension of his Viking career. Four farms run by slaves all contribute to support Geirmundr’s chief farm Geirmundarstaðir, where the old Viking resides with a force of eighty armed men, although there are no enemies to fight. All in all, the portrait presented in the þáttr of Geirmundr

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the landnámsmaðr is not fully positive, nor is a golden age depicted, as some scholars have maintained. The noble landnámsmaðr seems anachronistic in his ways, and his slave Atli practices the sort of upward mobility whose structural possibility was delineated in the Bragi-story. Many ambiguities converge in the story of the shining rowan grove. The light which distresses Geirmundr can be construed as portending the advent of Christianity in Iceland and a final transformation of the religious and social order which Geirmundr has known. By illustrating change in the cultural order from several perspectives, Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns serves as a propaedeutic for interpreting later upheavals in the body politic as portrayed in the central texts of the compilation. Contents and narrative point of view are not the only possible reasons why privilege of position has been accorded to Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns within the Sturlunga saga compilation. With Geirmundar þáttr at the beginning and Sturlu þáttr at the end, two þættir bracket the compilation which establish a historical-chronological frame extending from the settlement period until the union with Norway and a geographic frame embracing both Norway and Iceland. The central text of the compilation, Íslendinga saga by Sturla Þórðarson, may have been intended by its author to be incorporated into a projected history of the Icelandic people from the settlement period until 1262/64. If so, then the compiler, in carrying out this project, has extended the time frame to include Sturla’s “apotheosis” and return to Iceland from Norway as the king’s logmaðr in Sturlu þáttr. By placing Geirmundar þáttr at the beginning and Sturlu þáttr at the end of Sturlunga saga, it would seem that the compiler implicitly regards the loss of Icelandic independence not as a break in cultural continuity, but rather as a reintegration of the Icelandic body politic into the prevailing, feudalistic order of the “mother country.”

John Lindow

Bloodfeud and Scandinavian Mythology The public history of Iceland lies all in the lives of private characters; it is the life of a municipality, very much spread out, it is true, but much more like the life of a country town or a group of country neighbours, than the society of a complex state of any kind that has ever existed in Europe. — Ker 1908, 251

M

edieval Iceland was hardly unique in possessing a stateless society, one in which individuals were responsible for resolving disputes without executive aid, with or without the law, and decisions reached at law had to be enforced by the plaintiffs. Such societies typically practice a variety of methods to resolve disputes, and these methods clearly work, or the societies would perish. Some legal anthropologists use the term “self-help” (Middleton and Tait 1958, 19–22; Bohannan 1977, 293–94) to describe what happens: people take the law into their own hands, as we might say, but under a highly developed if sometimes unexpressed and always unwritten set of rules. One of the means of doing so involves homicide or the threat of homicide and is called the bloodfeud or simply feuding.1 That Icelandic society used feud is evident first and foremost from the contemporary sagas and especially the íslendingasögur, which are as much about feuding and other processes of dispute resolution as they are about heroic deeds and attitudes of epic proportion. The anthropologist Victor Turner recognized this fact and suggested “An Anthropological Approach to the Icelandic Saga” (1971), using the ideas he was then developing to describe the process of “social dramas,” or rents in the fabric of society and the efforts undertaken by individuals to repair them; Turner used the same framework for a later study of Eyrbyggja saga, written 1. Evans-Pritchard (1940, 150) distinguishes feud, a vague situation of discord, from bloodfeud, which involves kin groups and homicides. This distinction no longer seems tenable, given the recognition that homicide is only one possible strategy in the larger process of dispute resolution encompassed by feuding, but it is helpful in pointing up the recognition that feud societies themselves seem to make of the qualitative as well as quantitative distinction that homicide possesses over compensation and other forms of redress. The choice of the first word of my title is intended to stress the importance of homicide in the mythology and of blood as a symbol. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 51–68

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in 1980 but only published posthumously (1985). These essays were the products of a nonspecialist writing for an audience of other nonspecialists and had therefore little influence on research in the medieval Scandinavian field, although they bristle with sharp insights. However, they represent something wholly new, for Turner’s analyses are founded on a knowledge of the actual processes undertaken by real people in societies he himself had observed and those which others had observed. This comparative perspective informed several subsequent studies of the sagas and culminated in William Ian Miller’s Bloodtaking and Peacemaking (1990). No study of medieval Scandinavian society can be undertaken without it (see, e.g., Bagge 1991, 76–77). At the same time, formal studies of bloodfeud were accumulating, and Christopher Boehm (1987) offered a comparative survey based on fieldwork in Montenegro. The parallels between medieval Iceland, especially as it is portrayed in the íslendingasögur, and the feud society of Montenegro are eerily striking even in many particulars outside of their statelessness and means of managing conflict.2 Both were peripheral cultures (even in 1964, the isolated valley studied by Boehm was accessible only by a half day’s walk), focused necessarily on local events; Boehm’s valley had a local school, just as medieval Iceland had the cathedral school at Skálholt, but the centers of education were in both instances very distant from much of the population. Both cultures practiced herding and transhumance, and both were located in areas lacking variety of vegetation. Each was extensively concerned with its past and maintained heroic traditions. Indeed, Boehm found in the 1960s a people still obsessed with feuding, even though it had theoretically ended a century earlier; this sounds strikingly like a people recounting longish narratives (or episodes; Clover 1986b) about disputes their forefathers had engaged in centuries earlier. Verbal dueling was characteristic of both cultures, and gossip apparently functioned as an important sanction and impetus for behavior. Many of these characteristics can be found wherever people feud. Appalachian feuding, whose most famous manifestation, the Hatfield-McCoy feud, remains part of American consciousness and popular culture, took place “in a largely illiterate culture that was virtually without police, jails, or other forms of coercion” (Waller 1988, 96); in other words, in a culture lacking an executive branch and relying on a consensual form of local authority emphasizing litigation and courts that played both judicial and legislative roles. During the sixteenth-century “crisis” in Scotland, “the tensions in local society were all potential feuds. Most were resolved peacefully, in arbitration and compromise, but almost every lord and a great many lairds participated in at least one feud in their lifetime” (Brown 1986, 79). [Peace was obtained by] the persuading of those within the community who sought to replace conflict with co-operation, and to a limited extent by the crown as it tried to rein2. Gehl (1937) adduced a few Montenegrin parallels to ancient Iceland and the Germanic society out of which he thought the sagas grew, but he seems to treat the parallels as no more relevant or compelling than those he adduced from ancient Greece.

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force those pressures. The crown’s role was decidedly secondary, and amounted to little more than imposing, where it could, limited periods of non-violence, offering to act as a mediator, persuading men to talk to one another, occasionally serving as an arbitrator or oversman, and adjudicating in broken agreements. In none of these roles, however, was its position institutionalized. The greater part of persuasion was done by the combined voices of local kinsmen, friends, lords and dependants who wanted peace in their community. (Brown 1986, 59)

Steps involved were assurance (of cease fire) or caution (with surety of kinsmen), mediation or arbitration leading to assythment, usually using cash. All these feuds took place in a context of ideological uncertainty, where the Reformation was revitalizing religious thinking, just as the íslendingasögur tell us (whether truthfully or not) that the feuds of the Icelandic settlers were played out against the background of a major religious paradigm shift, the conversion from paganism to Christianity, and the contemporary sagas take place during a period of extensive structural realignments in society. Feuding seems to be particularly suited to ecologies in which people compete for limited resources, as in the mountains of Montenegro and Appalachia, the highlands of Scotland, or the hills and lava fields of Iceland — anywhere, as Boehm put it, where “groups regularly came into contact in situations where avoidance could not easily resolve intergroup conflicts” (Boehm 1987, 240). Perhaps, as some observers have suggested, feuding serves not only to manage and limit conflict through its force as a latent social sanction (Evans-Pritchard 1940), to promote social cohesion (Black-Michaud 1975), to bring out dualities in otherwise amorphous societies (Knudsen 1985), and to keep warriors’ skills sharp, but also functions as a form of population control (Boehm 1987, 175–80). Definitions of bloodfeud range greatly. Boehm (1987, 218–20) constructs an elaborate twelve-point scheme of elements, which is similar to the list of “distinctive features” of feuding adduced by Miller preparatory to his discussion of the medieval Icelandic situation (1990, 180–81). I summarize Miller’s list. (1) Feud is a relationship between two groups that (2) are recruited according to various principles, with (3) occasional musterings for purposes of controlled violence. (4) Liability is collective within the groups, which (5) take turns exacting vengeance and (6) keep score. (7) Feud is associated with honor. (8) The class of possible expiators is limited. (9) Hostility may be terminated temporarily or permanently. To this list I would add the observation that as processes of dispute management, feuds follow a roughly predictable course from start to potential finish. Boehm treats this course as a “trajectory” from an Opening Move (the first homicide, which often follows an escalating series of mostly verbal, honor-related disputes) through a lengthy and complicated Middle Game (to which Miller’s list would apply) to an Endgame in which the conflict is finally resolved. It is important to note that decisions are taken by individuals involved and that at nearly every point of decision an option may exist to end the feud; the full trajectory may therefore be more a theoretical construct than something actually completed with any regularity.

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How fundamentally bloodfeud was rooted in Icelandic consciousness is indicated by the fifth chapter of the Íslendingabók of Ari Þorgilsson fróði, the informal written charter for Icelandic history. The chapter bears the title “Frá fjórðungadeild” [On the division into quarters] and is situated between chapters on the establishment of the calendar and the settlement of Greenland. Thus, in Ari’s mythologizing of the origin of his land and people, which begins with the settlement of Iceland and runs through its conversion to Christianity and first native bishops, this chapter initiates the marking out of space following the systematization of time. According to Ari, a great “thing quarrel” (þingadeild mikil) arose between Þórðr gellir, the son of Óláfr feilan of Breiðafjörður, and Tungu-Oddr from Borgarfjörður. His son Þorvaldr had been present at the burning of Þorkell Blund-Ketilsson with Hen-Þórir in Örnólfsdalur. It fell to Þórðr gellir to prosecute the case because Hersteinn Þorkelsson, the grandson of Blund-Ketill, was married to Þórunn, the daughter of his sister. Thus far the elements of this feud (which are enumerated in somewhat different form and at far greater length in Hœnsa-Þóris saga), fit the mold that can generally be extracted both from ethnographic models and from the íslendingasögur. The feud has escalated to the level of the most powerful men in Iceland and has acquired something of a territorial aspect (Byock 1982), which in turn is connected with local geopolitics. The lead plaintiff has been drawn into the affair because of a family relationship, in this case through a marriage with a niece related to him through his sister. Although she will play no larger role in this particular account, Ari nevertheless gives additional information about the niece’s genealogy, linking her through her sister with another important and powerful family. What Ari goes on to recount, and the ostensible reason for mentioning this feud at all, is that it revealed a flaw in the then-prevailing legal system and led to change. Þórðr had to prosecute the case at the local thing in Borgarfjörður, where apparently he could not receive a fair hearing and where the parties came to blows and one man was killed. Þórðr then addressed the case to the Althing, but again fighting broke out. Ari has Þórðr ascend the law hill at the Althing and complain about the difficulties of obtaining a fair hearing at an unfamiliar thing; he finishes by adding that some improvement must be found. Then, Ari tells us, the country was divided into quarters in such a way that there were three things in each quarter, except the North, where geographical disputes led men to establish four things. Quarter courts were also set up at the Althing. Bloodfeud, therefore, was fundamental to the spatial organization of Iceland into four jurisdictional quarters, based on the cardinal points. Though hardly identical with the cardinal points on a map, these divisions are conceptually valid and significant (Hastrup 1985, 52–57; Lindow 1994), and they held up throughout the free state. Later the Church was to embed its own organization in the geographic lexicon, since it established episcopal sees for the south and north.

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At the end of his description of the foundation of the quarter system following the feud between Óláfr feilan and Þórðr gellir, Ari takes care to note that his source for this information was Úlfheðinn Gunnarsson, the law speaker. Since there is very little fat in Ari’s Libellus, and since he verifies his source carefully, we may infer that the story was of considerable importance to Ari and presumably also to other intellectually and historically inclined Icelanders in the early part of the twelfth century. Bloodfeud was therefore, in effect, a part of the social charter, and therefore myth in a Malinowskian sense. Armed dispute and feud were social givens that had functioned to make Iceland look as it did to Ari and his contemporaries. We may be justified in assuming that Ari’s story was known to his followers during the next century, who recorded the mythology, and that it held similar importance. The fact that Þórðr gellir’s speech at the Althing is included (according to many scholars, interpolated) in Hœnsa-Þóris saga certainly suggests that people had not lost sight of the story.3 Like the pithy accounts of early Icelanders recounted by Ari, the texts of Scandinavian mythology were set in the past, and through the mechanism of the “learned prehistory” they could also be understood (and manipulated; Klingenberg 1992, 1993, 1994) as explanations of the foundation of the world in which medieval Icelanders lived. The distant world in which the æsir and jotnar played out their struggles resembled that of the consumers of the mythology, especially conceptually (Hastrup 1985), and the hostilities between groups, the raids undertaken, can hardly have been unfamiliar in their general forms even though the actual details were exotic. Thus, even if the fit between the mythology and bloodfeud as described both ethnographically and in the sagas may be far from perfect, the relationship is worth considering. It is also possible that feuding may have characterized the culture(s) in which the mythology or individual parts of it were created, but here discretion is certainly required. If we take a fairly conservative stance and accept the evidence of skaldic poetry that the later Viking Age knew Scandinavian mythology, we can only infer the existence of feuding; resources were presumably scarce, and feuding is attested in contemporary (ninth-century) Germany among

3. The account of the feud given in Ari involves two large groups headed by powerful men and had earlier included an attack in which Þorkell Blund-Ketilsson had died in a fire. Just before the quarter system is established, armed battles have occurred in judicial contexts and at least one additional fatality has occurred. Þórðr gellir’s lawsuit represents a reaction to the burning and will neatly illustrate two important aspects of feud when viewed from a comparative perspective: actions can be of a violent or legal nature, and the two sides take turns. Thus Þórðr is now on the offensive, and Tungu-Oddr is on the defensive. Þórðr might optionally have pursued a violent course from the first and slain someone from the opposing camp, and in opting for a legal solution he was still playing fully by the rules. Anthropologists insist that homicide, compensation, and settlement are all parts of feuding (e.g., Boehm 1987, passim), a fact recognized in the feuds of the Icelandic sagas just after the turn of the century by Andreas Heusler, who conjoined homicide, lawsuit, and informal arbitration in his discussion of the phenomenon (Heusler 1911, 1912; cf. Miller 1990, 180).

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the nobility over land fragmentation caused by inheritance laws (Leyser 1968). To the extent that one is willing to make this inference, feuding must be considered important within the context of the formation of the mythology as well as in the society that recorded it. Whether one assigns feuding to the Viking Age or not — Bagge’s analysis (1991) of Snorri’s treatment of royal history in Heimskringla shows that feud is a useful concept at least in treating the medieval reception of the Viking Age —, it remains a fact that the mythology is about conflict, specifically intergroup conflict, and although medieval Iceland and the sagas evidently had several strategies for dealing with conflict, feud was the most noteworthy. It seems to me that we are therefore also obliged to consider the norms of feuding in the mythology and account for departure from them and the privileging of other forms of engaging in and managing intergroup conflict. Viewed from a distance, the whole sweep of Scandinavian mythology — the “saga” of the æsir — looks quite a lot like a feud. It is set in motion by a killing, the slaying of Ymir by Odin and his brothers, which may be regarded as an Opening Move in Boehm’s terminology. To be sure, it does not proceed from any smaller honor-related disputes of which we are aware, but in fact no explanation is given. Margaret Clunies Ross (1994a, 235–36) points out that the “first period” of the mythology, which preceded the construction of the cosmos by the sons of Borr, was marked by physical reality and a social stability among the jotnar that manifested itself in a demonstrable patrilineal system and the ability of the race to nurture its young. Since Borr’s sons are themselves the third generation in the line descended from Búri, the possibility for social intercourse and hence discord between jotnar and æsir existed before the attack on Ymir; the comparative analysis of bloodfeud would predict it. In any case, like many such homicides in the ethnographic record, the Opening Move killing of Ymir is morally justifiable from the point of view of those who carried it out. As with, for example, the slaying of Helgi in Hœnsa-Þóris saga,4 we must infer the moral justification, here primarily in the fact of the creation of the cosmos. Ymir’s unnatural procreation also adds to the moral justification of his slaying, for natural sexuality now must permanently replace the reproductive activity of Ymir’s limbs. Furthermore, by the logic of bloodfeud, the dismemberment of Ymir’s body and consequent impossibility for his kin to dispose properly of his remains would represent a particularly potent Opening Move. Not only would the giants’ honor be sullied, but also the head of their family is peremptorily removed. Finally, according to Snorri’s account of creation, the flood that ensued from Ymir’s blood nearly drowned the entire family of hrímþursar. Whether the term is to be understood literally as designating a subset of

4. I use Hœnsa-Þóris saga as an example here because of its presentation of Ari’s “founding feud,” discussed above. The moral justification of Orn’s shot, retaliation for the recent insult to his host, is clear, although obviously the random choice of the victim cannot be compared to the situation of the æsir and Ymir.

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jotnar or metonymically as designating all of them is unclear, but in either case the motif could be read as part of a peremptory strike, a potent strategy within the Opening Move. Much of the rest of the mythology, the apparent mythological present,5 appears to be a Middle Game of attack and counterattack, with some of the feuding rules extrapolated from comparative evidence in effect, some not. The points to stress here begin with the first of Miller’s distinctive features: the two groups, æsir and jotnar, are in a relatively stable hostile relationship. When feuds begin in most cultures, it would appear that they immediately actualize latent social polarizations: by definition, feuds operate between factors and therefore require two groups, even though in most cases a sizeable segment of the population is outside either group and therefore remains outside the conflict. The feuding groups must, like the gods and giants, inhabit the same environment and be capable of social intercourse, and they should be of roughly the same power or size (Boehm 1987, 165). The two groups share an ancestor, Bolþorn according to Gylfaginning, and Ymir and Borr were nurtured together and might therefore even be regarded as foster brothers (Oosten 1985, 37; Ross 1994a, 158). Somehow, the two groups fell out, and in the mythological present these groups are now understood as two races. The conception of two races locked in terrible enmity is a reality of feud, and the same metaphor has been used elsewhere in early modern Europe. Sir Robert Gordon wrote of the feud between the MacDonald and MacLean clans: “This warr, whilk fell furth at this tyme between those two races of people . . . was prosecuted to the destruction almost of both their families.” Such language betrayed a very profound sense of the distinctiveness a lineage and its surname bestowed on people. In Napier’s A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation he paraphrases ‘peoples’ of the earth with ‘kindreds’, so Scotsmen of one kindred would look on those of another as virtual foreigners. (Brown 1986, 15–16)6

Here we may have, or so it seems to me, one of the factors contributing to the very strong dualism of the recorded mythology, as against a reconstructed Germanic religion of more diverse structure. Feud requires an absolute if temporary dualism (Knudsen 1985), and if Snorri and the redactors of eddic poetry lived in a feud society, they would have had every reason to conceive of conflict in this way. Although these groups are not recruited, a point to which I will return, they do engage in occasional musterings for limited purposes when various groups of æsir 5. In the five-part time scheme proposed by Clunies Ross (1994a, 235–36), the mythic present is preceded by the first period and the “past of active creativity” and followed by the near and distant future (Ragnarok and its aftermath). The mythic present comprises “the period of time in which the gods lived with other kinds of beings, giants, dwarves, elves and humans, in the world they had attempted to maintain in a state of order. This mythic present is the period during which most of the exchanges between gods and giants on the horizontal plane take place but it does not constitute a single point in time” (Ross 1994a, 237). The incorporation of æsir and vanir occurred toward the beginning of this period and the death of Baldr toward its end. 6.

The lineage and attendant surname Brown discusses are agnatic kin groups.

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set off to Jotunheimar (the slaying of Ymir might even be placed under this rubric), and their liability appears to be collective; as victims, the jotnar are roughly interchangeable, and the murder of Baldr affects all of the æsir. The armed hostility between æsir and jotnar does not overtly take the usual form in feuding of alternate manslaughters and the keeping of score. One may infer that the slaying of Ymir initiated or encouraged the enmity of the jotnar toward the æsir, but as a rule single actions of any kind are not embedded in a motivated sequence of events. A simultaneity of actions may typify myth in its religious context (Hubert and Mauss 1909; Eliade 1954; Zadra 1987) and if so would mitigate against the kind of turn-taking and scorekeeping ethnographers report for bloodfeud in the field, but the religious context of Scandinavian myth is not recoverable. What may be more to the point is the tendency of Snorri to link events and motivate them in his systematizations of the mythology. Thus after hearing the story of the humiliations of Thor and his companions in the hall of Útgarðaloki, Gylfi/ Gangleri asks whether Thor did not obtain vengeance, and Hárr responds with the story of Thor’s journey to Hymir. And after learning of the failed attempt to weep Baldr away from the realm of Hel, Gylfi/Gangleri allows himself an editorial comment (“Allmiklu kom Loki á leið, er hann olli fyrst því er Baldr var veginn, ok svá því, er hann varð eigi leystr frá Helju” [normalized from Jónsson 1931, 68]) before asking whether vengeance was not extracted on him. Hárr begins his response by saying that Loki will long remember this vengeance. Snorri, then, seems to have regarded a thirst for vengeance as a plausible motivation for some of the acts of the æsir, and in this he takes a step toward the regular exchange of attacks that frequently characterize bloodfeud. As for the tendency toward a careful keeping of score — which Boehm admits is sometimes lacking in certain long-term feuds (1987, 220) — it is lacking in the mythology.7 Since, however, the gods are immortal until Baldr dies — a moment I take as the beginning of the end —, only the gods can use homicide, and the keeping of score is not possible. The giants must content themselves with raiding and other sorts of harassment. That they understand the rules of feud, however, is suggested when Skaði, who evidently has no male kin, sets off dressed as a warrior to demand compensation from the gods for the slaying of her father Þjazi. Such an action is fully in accord with both the ethnographic and the Icelandic saga evidence (Clover 1986c). This story is known only to Snorri, and it would not be surprising if he created it as a means of explaining Skaði’s marriage to Njorðr.8 Snorri did not have access to theories of fertility cult and divine marriages known to the

7. Perhaps a reflection of such score-keeping is to be glimpsed in the matching of the opponents who slay one another at Ragnarok. Here again Snorri’s somewhat fuller account is worth noting: to the three pairs of opponents in Voluspá, Snorri adds two more, Týr vs. Garmr and Loki vs. Heimdallr. These encounters might, however, equally be read as duels. 8. In Lindow 1992 I argue that the details of the encounter between Loki and Skaði may reflect a relatively late origin.

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historians of religion who explain the marriage today, but he did have access to unwritten theories and practices of appropriate feuding behavior. Although the æsir avoid being killed throughout most of the mythic present, they are hard at work with one important aspect of feud, namely protecting their honor. As Clunies Ross has recently shown (1994b), much of what motivates Thor in several of his myths is a desire to protect his women and in so doing his honor. His reputation is also clearly at stake in his duel with Hrungnir, and as I have already noted, Snorri understood the treatment he received at the hands of Útgarðaloki as humiliating enough to require some redress. Honor is certainly also an issue for other figures, as Loki’s insults (and the retorts aimed at him) in Lokasenna clearly show. The mythic future is Ragnarok. Just as the Opening Move created the cosmos, so Ragnarok will end it, at least in its current form, and with this it will end the “feud” between gods and giants. Indeed, the new world described by Voluspá and Snorri lacks the discord of the mythic present, if only because it lacks giants; thus the feud is by definition at an end. But the reconciliation of Baldr and Hoðr is also significant in this context, for Hoðr was the killer of his brother. Continuing the examination of mythology as feud, then, we are surely justified in taking Ragnarok as the a spectacularly realized and horribly final End Game. Lacking as it does the “Court of Good Men” which Boehm found typical of Montenegro and extrapolated to the theoretical level, the catastrophic conflagration of Ragnarok, in which nearly all the actors in the drama perish, clearly belongs more to the realm of imagination than that of social reality. It does, however, enable the mythology to complete the trajectory of a feud. Thus both the plan and the detail of the mythology find grounding in the background of feud. Many of the central symbols of the mythology also find parallels in the ethnographic and historical evidence regarding feuding. Of these the most obvious is blood, which is so central to feuding in general that it has almost become part of the technical vocabulary: bloodfeud, blood revenge, and so forth — and not just in English. The main title of Boehm’s book is Blood Revenge, and he devotes a few pages to the Montenegrin vocabulary of vengeance, much of which finds expression, in the semantic realm, through blood imagery: clans are u krvi ‘in blood’ when a state of hostility exists between them in which krvna osveta ‘blood vengeance’ is an expectation. A participant in such a state of affairs was the other clan’s krvnik ‘blood revenge enemy’, and the various tactics of feud were commonly expressed through the symbol of blood: one owed blood, pacified blood, paid blood money, and so forth (Boehm 1987, 51–52). 9 Boehm summarizes:

9. As Boehm indicates (1987, 52), there was no general term for bloodfeud or feuding, as opposed to raids or war. The situation was the same in Old Norse–Icelandic; indeed, the vocabulary of feuding in medieval Scandinavia seems poorer than that of recent Montenegro. There is, however, no justification for regarding the lexical absence as significant of anything other than the possibility that the participants “did

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John Lindow In ending this discussion of the psychology of revenge killing, it is apparent that a number of different relationships were connected through the single symbol of blood, or krv. It was krv that was lost from the clan; it was krv that was owed; it was krv that was “pacified” by a blood court. As my own modern consultants demonstrated so clearly in their definitions, the concepts of revenge and blood were so closely connected that frequently it was not even necessary to ask them to define blood revenge: when they began to think about osveta, the idea of krv just naturally tended to come to mind as well. (Boehm 1987, 52)

Parallels abound, and not just from the Balkans. Corsican feud revolves around the proverb “blood is not for sale” (Knudsen 1985, 84). Brown reports the importance of blood symbolism in sixteenth-century Scottish feuding, in part because blood could stand for a man’s life, in part because it could stand for the bonds of kinship (1986, 28). Blood also had a highly effective visual impact in a society where symbol and ritual were important means of communication. In 1593 some poor women from Nithsdale travelled up to Edinburgh with the bloody shirts of their husbands, sons and servants who had been slain in a raid by the Johnstones. Carrying these gory objects, they paraded through the burgh exposing the king’s inadequacy in providing protection or justice. (Brown 1986, 29)

Brown goes on to add that bloodstained clothes were sometimes even brought before courts. The context of this Scottish example comes across clearly, as do the power and reality of such symbols, in the case of a Montenegrin mother who “repeatedly showed a container of her dead husband’s blood to her young sons to remind them, as they grew up, that since there was no one else to do the job, they must avenge him” (Boehm 1987, 63). Those familiar with the sagas will immediately recall the scene in which Hildigunnr flings the murdered Hoskuldr’s bloody cloak in the face of Flosi, in order to incite him to vengeance (Njáls saga chap. 116). Clover (1986a) has convincingly associated this scene with the mechanisms of feud and is able to cite a striking Albanian parallel, in which a widow kept a piece of bloody piece of her slain husband’s clothing. Clover’s argument has to do with the possible (probable) sociohistorical background of the lament, within known parameters of feuding behavior, and these include the centrality of blood as symbol. What, then, of blood and related symbolism in the mythology? We have already briefly considered the slaying of Ymir in the context of feuding. Here we may add that the construction of the cosmos from his remains would have the effect in a feuding society of keeping forever visible the fact of his murder and the imperative to his kin for vengeance on his killers. Clover points out the importance of one of Albania’s unwritten laws, namely the practice of constructing for a murder

not perceive feud as being a single entity in the same sense that a military engagement [war, battle, or raid] was a discrete event deserving a name of its own” (Boehm 1987, 52). See also Miller 1990, 181–82.

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victim buried elsewhere a mock grave or cairn on a thoroughfare on which passersby were expected to throw a leaf, blade of grass, or pebble while expressing a wish on behalf of the victim’s soul.10 “Such memorials may have had the ostensible aim of honoring the dead, but their real function, explicitly intended and collectively understood, was to keep alive the idea of revenge” (Clover 1986a, 173). How more strongly could the idea be kept than for the victim to be embodied — literally — in the cosmos, with his precious life’s blood transformed into the sea? A feuding society, therefore, would find the constant enmity of the jotnar toward the æsir quite comprehensible, through the symbolic medium of Ymir’s body parts and blood. From the point of view of both parties the blood is a particularly loaded symbol. For the giants, Ymir’s blood was nearly the downfall of them all, as indeed it would be symbolically in a real feud, since Ymir remains unavenged through much of the mythology. For the gods the blood is dangerous in the constant mnemonic it provides the giants. Indeed, the mythology makes Ymir’s transformed blood dangerous in fact by locating the Midgard serpent within it. That Odin was responsible for putting the Midgard serpent in the sea — Ymir’s blood — is one of the many wonderful ambiguities of the mythology. The gods, too, have a precious token in which blood is involved, and its operation too is quite complex: the mead of poetry. Originally a symbol of the unity of the aesir and vanir, it began and ended as liquid: first as spittle, then as mead fermented from the blood of Kvasir. The intermediate part of the story is well known; as Snorri puts it, the gods created or fashioned Kvasir because “they did not wish that token of the settlement to perish” (Jónsson 1931, 82). While he is traveling the world dispensing wisdom — he can answer any question — Kvasir is slain by the dwarfs Fjalarr and Galarr. When this murderous pair dispatches the giant Gillingr and his wife, a feud is set in motion. The giant Suttungr transports the dwarfs to a tidal island — as dwarfs they would be particularly vulnerable to the rising waters — and extracts from them the mead as compensation for his father. He then delivers the mead into the safekeeping of his daughter Gunnloð, and, in a complex series of events in Snorri’s recounting, Odin later succeeds in sleeping three nights with Gunnloð and thus obtaining three sips of the mead, with which he escapes in the form of an eagle, pursued by Suttungr in like form. As we all know, Odin gets most of the mead home to the gods, and Suttungr goes down in flames. Kvasir’s blood is a red flag, indicating the presence of feud. The mead was a wergild passed from one group to another,11 and in this instance it terminates 10. The phenomenon is also attested in more recent Scandinavia (Erixon 1917), although since accident victims were also commemorated, the underlying notion seems to be that the death of the person in question was untimely. 11. It is worth emphasizing that Snorri reports the transfer of the mead from dwarfs to giants as being “í foður-gjold” (Jónsson 1931, 83), a notion he may or may not have picked up from the kenning “Gillings gjold” [Gillingr’s wergild] in the first stanza of the poem Háleygjatal, attributed to the tenth-century Norwegian skald Eyvindr Finnsson skáldaspillir. The kenning “sættir Áms ok Austra” [settlement of Ámr

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the feud before the Middle Game can get going, as is in accordance with any model of feuding. Gillingr’s wife doesn’t count for much in this scheme (as would be appropriate if giants and gods relied on an agnatic system; see below). So much is obvious. What is perhaps less clear is that the gods have a claim on the dwarfs too. Although Kvasir cannot be traced agnatically to them in any ordinary way, he was their creation, he dispenses wisdom, which is their possession, and, quite simply, he was a member of their household and therefore, like the Norwegian merchant Orn in Hœnsa-Þóris saga, a symbolic member of their kin group for the purposes of feuding. Thus, in the context of feud, the gods would wish to obtain Kvasir’s remains — the mead of poetry; in other words, Odin had some justification besides his thirst for wisdom and his sex drive when he set off to visit Suttungr and Gunnloð. And, since the mead passed as wergild between dwarfs and giants, the gods could presumably have made a prior claim on it as wergild for the murdered Kvasir, which might justify recovering it from Suttungr. A consideration of versions of the story other than that of Snorri, which I have been following up to this point, suggests precisely that Snorri’s version, outside of its strange details, functions narratively and achieves causality as a feud story. The eddic poem Hávamál is the other main source of this myth, outside of the skaldic kennings. In stanzas 104–10 it tells, very allusively, a somewhat different version, one that focuses exclusively on Odin’s exploits in acquiring the mead, taking advantage of Gunnloð to cheat Suttungr. It lacks the causality of Snorri’s version because of the complete absence of Kvasir and the dwarfs.12 If the dwarfs’ secret murder of Kvasir indeed may legitimately be read in terms of feud, perhaps another other moment in the mythology may be relevant, namely the story recounted in Alvíssmál, the unlikely contest of wisdom between Thor and a dwarf. Why should Thor keep the dwarf up all night until he bursts in the sun’s first rays? The immediate answer is that a marriage between dwarf and goddess is inappropriate, as indeed, we may infer according to the rules of negative reciprocity that obtain in the mythology (Vestergaard 1991; Ross 1994a, 103–43), might be any marriage between a goddess and some other kind of being. But if the feud is still in place, we can understand the dwarf’s proposal as an attempt at (a giant) and Austri (a dwarf)], used in an occasional verse by the eleventh-century Icelandic poet Ófeigr Skíðason, probably alludes to the same story, and a few others relate to other aspects of it (Turville-Petre 1964, 39). 12. The latter may have appeared earlier in the poem, when the speaker, presumably Odin, reports that he was drunk when he visited the wise Fjalarr (st. 14); in the previous stanza, the speaker has reported being fettered in the feathers of the heron of oblivion — an unclear kenning, perhaps to be understood in the context of stanza 14 as intoxication — in the dwelling of Gunnloð. If this Fjalarr is indeed the dwarf, we find Odin implicated more deeply and from the start in the story of the mead of poetry. That is hardly surprising, since Hávamál offers yet a third explanation for Odin’s possession of the mead: he obtained it, with other precious wisdom attributes, while hanging on the windswept tree (st. 140). In the face of these conflicting variants, we may accept that Snorri followed his customary practice in imposing order on the story and in this case did so in part by allowing it to follow the trajectory of feud.

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reconciliation through marriage, and we can take Thor’s actions as a rejection of the offer and instead as his side’s turn in the feud. Thor would be acting quite rightly in killing Alvíss, even in a dwarfish way — the punishment suits the crime. More generally, if the feud between gods and dwarfs still simmers, the dwarfs must be classified, like the giants, as enemies of the gods, a classification which contributes to the dualistic nature of the extant mythology.13 In trajectory, actions, and symbols, then, Scandinavian mythology draws on aspects of bloodfeud as they are to be seen both in Icelandic sagas and the ethnographic and historical record. Such similarities indicate only that imaginative narratives can imitate reality. The key to extracting meaning, however, is to be found in the differences. Medieval Iceland reckoned kin bilaterally, with privileging of agnatic connections in some contexts (Hastrup 1985, 70–104; Miller 1990, 139–78), and the old assumption that a unilineal, clan system of Germanic times gave way to a later bilateral system has been disputed by David Gaunt (1983, 186–210) and Alexander C. Murray (1983); Gaunt calls it “the myth of the kindred society,” and Murray too argues that the system was bilateral from the start (cf. Meinhard 1975). In fact, probably several systems obtained for different purposes: “Early Scandinavian kinship was patrilineal as well as matrilineal and cognatic in a well-structured and non-contradictory way” (Vestergaard 1988, 190). Indeed, it is apparent that Icelandic (Scandinavian?) kinship, insofar as it was bilateral, was open to recreation, that is, might be traced in many different ways, at least with respect to lines more than a generation or two old. This is rather like what Marshall Sahlins punningly calls “performative kinship” when discussing sexual alliances in ancient Hawaii (1985, 1–31). Extending this, we might speak of “performed structures.” James Boon discusses the situation in Bali: Everything in Bali is tinged with rank: male/female, elder/younger, wife receivers/wife providers, and so on. Yet Bali’s plentiful Machineries of status symbols do not simply stack up; nor should we presume that they ever did. Rather, they seem made for contradiction and variable constructions to satisfy different parties, each interpreting to its own advantage. What rivals share is a set of hierarchical principles that form the ground rules for the ongoing cultural argument. (Boon 1986, 246)

13. The mythology focuses only one major conflict, that between æsir and jotnar, and the relationship between æsir and dwarfs, unlike that of the principal conflict, is not constant. On the whole, the presence of the dwarfs is favorable to the æsir, for it is they and not the jotnar who profit from the craftsmanship of the dwarfs. Still, Snorri has Thor kick the dwarf Litr into the fire at Baldr’s funeral, and this slaying is perhaps also alluded to in the version of Þorbjorn dísarskáld’s encomium to Thor found in the Uppsala codex of Snorra Edda (Lindow 1988, 122), in which one of Thor’s victims is called Litr, not Lútr as in the other manuscripts. The issue is complicated by the appearance of the name Litr in a kenning in Bragi gamli’s Ragnarsdrápa 18, “fangboði flotna forns Litar” (“grasp-offerer of the men of old Litr,” that is, one who offers opportunities to grapple) for Thor. Since it hardly seems possible that Thor would wrestle with dwarfs, the men of Litr must be giants, and this Litr presumably also would be a giant. Indeed, all the other victims about whom we know anything in Þorbjorn’s stanza are jotnar (Lindow 1988).

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In fact, Landnámabók and the genealogies of the sagas show a bent toward such creation, and disagreement among genealogies would positively show that genealogies are constructed (that is, performed in a given context for a given purpose) rather than passed unchanged as though for antiquarian purposes. One example of a “performed” genealogy might be Ari’s discussion of his oral sources; by tracing them directly, he authenticates his version of the origin of the Icelanders. The best examples, however, are forthcoming in the feuding in the sagas, for there the recruitment of the action-groups depends precisely on the “performance” of kinship and other relationships. There is a certain apparent lack of fit here between the Icelandic and other feuding situations; Boehm reports that the Montenegrin clans shared the same surname and addressed each other as “brother,” which is consistent with the agnatic group that made up the bratstvo ‘brotherhood’, and accords with the general contours of nearly all the ethnographies of feuding elsewhere in the world: African, Balkan, Scottish feuding — all depend on agnatic kindreds that can quickly be mobilized. However, if such kindreds do not exist in reality, feud may itself, according to Knudsen (1985), function as a means of creating groups in opposition and may give individuals an opportunity to define their membership in the dualistic groups thus temporarily formed. Such a formulation would appear to agree with Icelandic performative kinship. Against this social reality, insofar as it can be reconstructed from the saga evidence, stands the mythology. There the system is wholly agnatic,14 and the existence of the (in mythic time) permanent groups of the æsir and jotnar obviates the question of recruitment and makes clear the lines of feud. Odin sires Víðarr and Váli on giant females,15 but the two figures are clearly æsir and they enact vengeance on behalf of Odin.16 Furthermore, the affinal relationships created by these couplings, or more important, the marriages between Njorðr and Skaði and Freyr and Gerðr, are of no real importance. Even if the kinship structures at work in the mythology were unclear, membership in the feuding groups certainly could not be. Thus there is an interesting question: the basically cognatic society of medieval Iceland apparently consumed (retained, reinterpreted, [re-]created?) a 14. The only agnatic systems Icelanders knew centered on royal or other groups with important inherited functions (Hastrup 1985, 102, citing Sørensen 1977, 35). Thus the mythology has an inherent connection with kingship. Although the possibility of a move toward a conceptual unilateral agnatic system in the mythology might possibly reflect the effect of European notions of kingship, especially given the role of “King Odin” in the Learned Prehistory, such a move would be extremely difficult to recover. 15. It should also be recalled that he sires Thor on Jorð or earth, a chthonic figure not connected with the æsir, and that Thor’s relationship with his mother was apparently far more important to the skalds who used it for kennings that it was to Thor himself. 16. That Váli takes vengeance on Hoðr, also a son of Odin, is by nature contradictory and in my view close to the center of the entire mythology, but the textual tradition does not suggest it as inherently problematic; for example, Snorri calls Váli happskeytr, and kin-slaying is just the sort of thing that one would ordinarily regard as indicating óhapp. It is, however, perhaps significant that Snorri has little to say about the details of Váli’s vengeance on Hoðr.

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mythology on agnatic principles. In considering conflicts that took place in the more distant past than those of the first settlers of Iceland and among beings with superhuman powers, medieval Icelanders might well have translated the generally transitory nature of their own feuding groups, which like other groups within their culture were assembled for specific purposes, into a more permanent structure. In other words, the mythology could have served as a fantasy literature in which group membership based on kinship was forever clear, unlike the Icelandic situation. The burden of ethnographic evidence is that persons’ sense of group membership is indeed more complex than the intuitively reasonable description of simple in- and out-groups would suggest; in many if not most cases individuals are members of several groups, groups which in turn have varying relations with numerous other groups. Thus people’s lives are more complex than simple models. Faced with actual dilemmas, whether potentially violent or not, individuals may choose to activate various of their group memberships and therefore to behave in various differing ways. Individuals in such situations are in conflict, however, if they belong to two groups that are at odds, and in such cases they may tend to work for peace; thus matrilocal societies, in which males are dispersed, tend to have less feud than patrilocal societies (example in Colson 1953), where “fraternal interest groups” may arise. Icelandic performative kinship, however, assured that men would be placed precisely in such situations of choice, and creation of vengeance groups was specific to each feud — perhaps each slaying. In this light the mythology could have offered the projection of a far simpler world, where enemies were always enemies and friends were always friends — except for Loki. More generally, some other aspects of the mythology may make sense as projections of a culture circumscribed by the rules of feuding and interested in probing the boundaries. Elsewhere in the world, feuding offers a means of limiting homicidal conflict and in that sense is to be contrasted with war; where war is fought at close quarters and limits are necessary so that daily life must go on, it takes on feudlike aspects. This leads me to wonder whether one function of the mythology for Iceland might not have been as a kind of wish fulfillment, an alternative to the limitations of a feud society, in which it was imagined that one could attempt genocide on one’s opponents without worrying about keeping score. Indeed, one striking aspect of the behavior of the two principal æsir is precisely that they break the rules of feuding, each in his own way. Odin frequently behaves unmanfully and shamefully,17 and his conduct of the “feud” with the giants involves magic and manipulation from afar, as well, of course, as raiding and seduction close up. Thor kills women, who are ordinarily exempted from the class of expiators, and his

17. A case that relates directly to bloodfeud is the siring of Bous according to Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum Book 3). The gods (euhemerized to Byzantium) find his rape of Rinda (or the crossdressing it involved?) so repellent that they banish Othinus for it.

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worshippers celebrated these killings (Lindow 1988). Indeed, the killing of Ymir can and probably should be regarded as a kin-slaying (Ross 1994a, 158). However, even if the mythology appears to simplify the rules of bloodfeud, it still worries a central issue of performative kinship, in the identity of the prime mover of the mythology: Loki, áss or jotunn? When Snorri writes that Loki is “also numbered among the æsir” (Jónsson 1931, 34), he must mean that somehow Loki is not a true áss or once was not an áss, and the explanation is forthcoming in his genealogy: Loki is the son of the jotunn Fárbauti, and no other member of the æsir has a jotunn father.18 In my view, the only plausible explanation for the inclusion of Loki among the æsir despite his jotunn parentage is the ritual of bloodbrotherhood he enacted with Odin at the dawn of time, and it must be recalled that according to the extant accounts of that ritual in Gísla saga and Fóstbrœðra saga the participants vow to avenge one another; in other words, fictive kinship is created in the context of the bloodfeud. In the sagas the efficacy of such rituals is, like much else about bloodfeud recruitment, a more or less open question, but the mythology again offers a wholly clear interpretation: bloodbrotherhood is a failure. When push comes to shove, Loki enlists with the members of his agnatic kin group. The mythology is equally clear on the last issue of “performative kinship”: no amount of “performance” will solve the problem of a brother killing a brother, of a slaying within the family, for the class of expiators is identical to the class of avengers. As I noted above, up to the point of Baldr’s death, only the æsir are fully successful in conducting bloodfeud, for only they kill their opponents. Thereafter the rules are changed, and æsir can perish. A sign of this is perhaps the unwillingness or inability of the æsir to take Loki’s life in exchange for that of Baldr; killing Hoðr, another of the æsir, is no real solution. Only an extraordinary event can end a feud situated among relationships as close as those joining Baldr, Hoðr, and Váli, and the mythology provides Ragnarok.

18. Concerning Loki’s mother, too, the evidence is difficult. Laufey, or Nál, is a figure (or figures) with no role other than bearing Loki. The author of Sorla þáttr in the great saga of Saint Óláfr in Flateyjarbók makes no distinction between Fárbauti and Laufey, simply calling them karl and kerling respectively, and this would suggest that both were jotnar. E. N. Setälä (1912, 210–64) derives from Laufey the crone Louhi, who in Kalevala presides over Pohjola, a spatial equivalent to Jotunheimar in Scandinavian mythology, and who works against the interests of the Karelian heroes; Axel Olrik (1912) agreed with this derivation. However, none of the proposed etymologies for Laufey makes her sound threatening, and all seem to be more applicable to a goddess than to a creature of chaos (cf. Vries 1962, 347 s.v.; Simek 1984, 229 s.v.). Loki’s use of the matronymic Laufeyjarson instead of the perhaps expected patronymic Fárbautason is suggestive, for such usage ordinarily indicates an absent or irredeemable father. Laufey may just have been less threatening (not likely, given the misogyny of the æsir) than her mate, or she may have been one of the æsir.

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Bibliography Bagge, Sverre. 1991. Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s “Heimskringla.” Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Black-Michaud, Jacob. 1975. Cohesive Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. New York: St. Martin’s. Boehm, Christopher. 1987. Blood Revenge: The Enactment and Management of Conflict in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. Bohannan, Paul J. 1977. “Anthropology and the Law.” In Horizons of Anthropology, ed. Sol Tax and Leslie G. Freeman, 290–99. 2d ed. Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Boon, James A. 1986. “Symbols, Sylphs, and Siwa: Allegorical Machineries in the Text of Balinese Culture.” In The Anthropology of Experience, ed. Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, 239–60. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. Brown, Keith M. 1986. Bloodfeud in Scotland 1573–1625: Violence, Justice and Politics in an Early Modern Society. Edinburgh: John Donald. Byock, Jesse. 1982. Feud in the Icelandic Sagas. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Clover, Carol J. 1986a. “Hildigunnr’s Lament.” In Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, ed. John Lindow, Lars Lönnroth, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber, 141–83. Odense: Odense Univ. Press. ———. 1986b. “The Long Prose Form.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 101:10–39. ———. 1986c. “Maiden Warriors and Other Sons.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 85:35–49. Colson, Elizabeth. 1953. “Social Control and Vengeance in Plateau Tonga Society.” Africa 23:199–212. Eliade, Mircea. 1954. The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series 46. New York: Pantheon Books. Erixon, Sigurd. 1917. “Offerkasten i Skedevi sockenallmänning samt något om offerkastar i allmänhet.” Västmanlands fornminnesförenings årsskrift 9:1–10. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, Clarendon Press. Gaunt, David. 1983. Familjeliv i Norden. Stockholm: Gidlund. Gehl, Walther. 1937. Ruhm und Ehre bei den Nordgermanen. Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt. Hastrup, Kirsten. 1985. Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, Clarendon Press. Heusler, Andreas. 1911. Das Strafrecht der Isländersagas. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. ———. 1912. Zum isländischen Fehdewesen in der Sturlungenzeit. Aus den Abhandlungen der königl. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse. Berlin: Georg Reimer. Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss. 1909. “La répresentation du temps dans la religion et la magie.” In iidem, Mélanges d’histoire des religions, 189–229. Paris: F. Alcan. Jónsson, Finnur, ed. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. København: Gyldendal. Ker, W. P. 1908. Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature. 2d ed. London: Macmillan. Klingenberg, Heinz. 1992. “Trór-Þórr (Thor) wie Tro¯s Aeneas: Snorra Edda Prolog, VergilRezeption und Altisländische Gelehrte Urgeschichte.” alvíssmál 1:17–54. ———. 1993. “Odin und die Seinen: Altisländischer Gelehrter Urgeschichte anderer Teil.” alvíssmál 2:31–80. ———. 1994. “Odins Wanderzug nach Schweden: Altisländische Gelehrte Urgeschichte und mittelalterliche Geographie.” alvíssmál 3:19–42.

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Knudsen, Anne. 1985. “Internal Unrest: Corsican Vendetta — a Structured Catastrophe.” Folk 27:65–87. Leyser, K. 1968 “The German Aristocracy from the Ninth to the Early Twelfth Century: A Historical and Cultural Sketch.’’ Past and Present 41:25–33. Lindow, John. 1988. “Addressing Thor.” Scandinavian Studies 60:119–36. ———. 1992. “Loki and Skaði.” In Snorrastefna, 25. – 27. júlí 1990, ed. Úlfar Bragason, 130–42. Rit Stofnunar Sigurðar Nordals 1. Reykjavík: Stofnun Sigurðar Nordals. ———. 1994. “The Social Semantics of Cardinal Directions in Medieval Scandinavia.” The Mankind Quarterly 34:209–24. Meinhard, H. H. 1975. “The Patrilineal Principle in Early Teutonic Kinship.” In Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ed. J. H. M. Beattie and R. G. Lienhardt, 1–29. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, Clarendon Press. Middleton, John, and David Tait, eds. 1958. Tribes without Rulers: Studies in African Segmentary Systems. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Miller, William Ian. 1990. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Murray, Alexander C. 1983. Germanic Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Antiquity and in the Early Middle Ages. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Olrik, Axel. 1912. “Efterslæt til Loke-myterne, III: Lukki og Laviatar i finske trylleformler.” Danske studier 9:95–101. Oosten, Jarich G. 1985. The War of the Gods: The Social Code in Indoeuropean Mythology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ross, Margaret Clunies. 1994a. Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Icelandic Society. Vol. 1, The Myths. The Viking Collection 7. Odense: Odense Univ. Press. ———. 1994b. “Þórr’s Honour.” In Studien zum Altgermanischen: Festschrift für Heinrich Beck, ed. Heiko Uecker, 48–76. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Setälä, E[mil] N[estor]. 1912. “Aus dem Gebiet der Lehnbeziehungen.” In Festgabe für Vilhelm Thomsen, Part 1, 161–289. Helsingfors. Simek, Rudolf. 1984. Lexikon der germanischen Mythologie. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner. Sørensen, Preben Meulengracht. 1977. Saga og samfund: En indføring i oldislandsk litteratur. Berlingske leksikonbibliotek 116. København: Berling. Turner, Victor. 1971. “An Anthropological Approach to the Icelandic Saga.” In The Translation of Culture: Essays to E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ed. T. O. Beidelman, 349–74. London: Tavistock Publications. ———. 1985. “The Icelandic Family Saga as a Genre of Meaning-Assignment.” In On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, ed. Edith L. B. Turner, 95–118. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press. Turville-Petre, E[dward] O[swald] G[abriel]. 1964. Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Vestergaard, Torben Anders. 1988. “The System of Kinship in Early Norwegian Law.” Mediaeval Scandinavia 12:160–93. ———. 1991. “Marriage Exchange and Social Structure in Old Norse Mythology.” In Social Approaches to Viking Studies, ed. Ross Samson, 21–34. Glasgow: Cruithne Press. Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2d ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Waller, Altina L. 1988. Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860–1900. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. Zadra, Dario. 1987. “Symbolic Time.” Encyclopedia of Religion 14:193–98.

Judy Quinn

Eddu list: The Emergence of Skaldic Pedagogy in Medieval Iceland

F

rom the mid–twelfth century, when the metrical showpiece Háttalykill is said to have been composed, to the mid–fourteenth century, when Codex Wormianus was compiled, literary records enable us to trace the transformation of the oral art of skaldic composition into a literary ars poetica in which the parameters of the art form were progressively defined and described, and the rules of composition systematically set forth.1 Halfway through this period, Snorri Sturluson composed his own key to metres, Háttatal, and wrote a treatise on skaldic diction (Skáldskaparmál), followed a generation later by his nephew, Óláfr Þórðarson, who wrote a treatise on rhetoric (the second part of which is known as Málskrúðsfræði) which sought to prove the underlying identity of Norse skáldskapr with Latin poetics. Together, and in their differences, Snorri’s and Óláfr’s works illuminate the way the discourse of poetics was being constituted during this dynamic period of Icelandic literary history, and how the pedagogic impulse of Latin textbooks was being taken up within the vernacular tradition. Little is known about the traditional training of skalds or the theoretical discourse that enabled the cultivation and oral transmission of vernacular poetics. An abundance of vernacular technical terms describing traditional poetry appears to have sprung to the pens of both Snorri and Óláfr when they wrote their treatises, suggesting that the metalanguage of poetics was an established oral discourse. But it is only in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when skaldic pedagogy moved into the schoolroom and explicit and sustained theorizing about the art of traditional poetry was written down that this lexical heritage surfaced. During the preceding centuries when the corpus of skaldic poetry was orally transmitted, new styles of composition would have been incorporated into the tradition, influenced by various foreign fashions. One example of this is the innovative adaptation of

1. A version of this article was first presented as a paper at the Ninth International Saga Conference in Akureyri in August 1994. In reworking it I have benefitted from suggestions made by Margaret Clunies Ross, Judith Jesch, Thomas Krömmelbein, Vésteinn Ólason, Gísli Sigurðsson, and Stephen Tranter, and I thank them for their generosity. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 69–92

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Continental rhythm in the hrynhendr háttr (Foote [1982] 1984, 252), which seems to have taken place during the eleventh century, probably under the influence of hymns and devotional verse (Turville-Petre 1976, xxxiii). Although it is the aim of both Snorri and Óláfr to promote the vernacular tradition of versification, the influence of Continental learning is fundamental to both their works, more transparently so in Óláfr’s work because of his declared dependence on the auctores of Latin scholarship. It was the developed models of learned literate discourse to which the Icelanders turned to theorize about their own vernacular tradition because it was this conceptual framework, instilled by literacy, that enabled the systematic setting out of metrical and rhetorical types and their detailed documentation and explication. In both theorists, however, a tension is evident between the description of oral tradition and the prescription inherent in an ars poetica. As they work to make the skaldic art literary, they both find themselves espousing a poetics that is often at odds with the corpus on which they draw for their demonstration of the traditional verbal art form (Ross 1987, 77). This is because the motivation for both Snorri and Óláfr is as much pedagogic as it is antiquarian, as a passage in Skáldskaparmál, addressed to young skalds, makes clear: En þetta er nv at segia vngvm skaldvm, þeim er girnaz at nema mal skaldskapar ok heyia ser orþfiolþa með fornvm heitvm eþa girnaz þeir at kvna skilia þat, er hvlit er qveþit, þa skili hann þesa bok til froþleiks ok skemtvnar, en ecki er at gleyma eþa osana sva þesar frasagnir, at taka or skaldskapinvm fornar kenningar, þær at hafvtskald hafa ser lika latit (Jónsson 1931, 86) [But these things have now to be told to young poets who desire to learn the language of poetry and to furnish themselves with a wide vocabulary using traditional terms; or else they desire to be able to understand what is expressed obscurely. Then let such a one take this book as scholarly inquiry and entertainment. But these stories are not to be consigned to oblivion or demonstrated to be false, so as to deprive poetry of ancient kennings which major poets have been happy to use.] (Faulkes 1987, 64)

Through this statement (and in his elaboration of its theological aspects in the Prologue to the Edda), Snorri attempts to set up an intellectual environment for the continuing development of learned vernacular composition drawing on the tradition of skaldic diction, as well as for the continued appreciation of the traditional corpus. Both Snorri and Óláfr appear to have been directly involved in the schooling of Icelanders in this new, literary, ars poetica. Óláfr’s treatise adapts the pedagogic tradition of Donatus and Priscian to an Icelandic environment, possibly to the school that he himself is mentioned as conducting (Tómasson 1988, 35). The beginnings of the pedagogic current in skaldic poetics can be apprehended a century earlier in Háttalykill, whose name itself is a calque on the Latin clavis metrica, a didactic genre of the Latin classroom. A number of the verseforms demonstrated in Háttalykill are modelled on foreign metres rather than on traditional Norse forms (Helgason and Holtsmark 1941, 118), and although the work is a demonstration of the sophistication of the traditional skaldic art, it

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attempts to modernize it, and to show how the stylistic finesse of Latin poetry was not incompatible with the vernacular tradition (Holtsmark 1961, 243). By the time the commentary to Háttatal was written, the process of adapting native poetics to a Latin protocol was significantly advanced, as is evidenced by the insistence on consistency of verseform throughout a stanza, the setting out of rules and licences, and the identification of metrical faults. Although both works champion the indigenous tradition, they also indicate the way in which native experiment went hand in hand with learned acquisition in the formulation of a Norse ars poetica (Foote [1982] 1984, 254). Háttalykill (which is only extant in two late paper copies) is believed to have been composed in the 1140s by the Orkney earl Rognvaldr and the Icelandic poet Hallr Þórarinsson. According to the description in chapter 81 of Orkneyinga saga, it was a joint composition and had five verses to demonstrate each metre, but being overlong, was cut down to a pair of verses per metre (though two later postmedieval texts of the saga say three). As the poem survives in later paper manuscripts, only two verses exist to demonstrate each of 41 metres. The matter of the poem, the enumeration of heroes from legendary figures to historic kings, is thoroughly vernacular, as the opening of the poem makes clear: “forn frœði lætk / framm of borin” [I shall present ancient knowledge] (Jónsson 1912–15, B1:487). Nevertheless, in its scheme, and in some of its elaborations, Háttalykill was clearly inspired by Latin models. The cultural milieu in which Háttalykill was composed appears to have been that of an enterprising and cosmopolitan court (Bibire 1988, 217), with a new aristocratic interest in ancient Norse culture developed in the context of the contemporary intellectual fashions of Continental Europe (Sørensen 1992, 279). It is also evidence of a new literate orientation in skaldic composition (Fidjestøl 1991, 63–69; Sørensen 1993, 35–36), towards a literary formulation of synthesized historical material, which involved abstracting traditional lore and reworking it with a new emphasis on metrical and literary form. The incidental comment in Orkneyinga saga “en þá þótti of langt kveðit” (Guðmundsson 1965, 185) is intriguing in this regard. If the poem originally demonstrated 41 metres, perhaps its length of 200 stanzas represented a literary achievement well suited to a literate milieu (in which the Latin centimetrum was an emulated genre), but did not prove conducive to memorization, which must still have been a significant (if not the principal) means of transmitting poetry in Scandinavia in the mid–twelfth century. Snorri Sturluson would have been familiar with the new intellectual spirit of Háttalykill through his upbringing at Oddi, which was an important centre of learning in Iceland and had links with the Orkneys (Fidjestøl 1993, 48; Faulkes 1991, xviii–xix). His metrical tour de force, Háttatal, contains 102 stanzas and has been preserved in the four medieval manuscripts of his Edda intercalated with prose commentary presenting his theory of Norse versification. It is not clear when the commentary was added to the poem, though it is generally agreed that Hátta-

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tal was the first part of the Edda to have been composed. That there is some disjunction between the verseforms and the poetic theory of the commentary is outlined by Faulkes (1991, x). Within the verse itself, there is mention of three praise poems followed by a fourth at stanza 69: “bjó ek kvæði . . . þrenn . . . fram skal in fjórða” [I made . . . three poems . . . Forward shall step the fourth] (Faulkes 1991, 69.1–5; trans. Faulkes 1987, 206), which is reiterated at stanza 95: “fluttak fjogur kvæði” [I delivered four poems] (Faulkes 1991, 95.3; trans. Faulkes 1987, 218). The prose commentary, however, refers to only three poems within Háttatal marked at stanza 31: “Nú hefr upp annat kvæði” [Here begins the second poem] (Faulkes 1991, 30.11; trans. Faulkes 1987, 186), and stanza 68: “Nú skal upp hefja it þriðja kvæði” [Now we shall begin the third poem] (Faulkes 1991, 67.14; trans. Faulkes 1987, 205). Although Snorri was almost certainly impressed by the Latin model of the centimetrum in his composition, it is interesting that his learned tal consists of three poems of 30, 35, and 37 stanzas respectively, perhaps indicating that this was the appropriate length for the ethnic category of the kvæði in Snorri’s view. The early reception of the work suggests that the poem was regarded as a praise poem in its own right, though as a eulogy for Earl Skúli more so than for King Hákon (Nordal 1992, 62). Óláfr Þórðarson refers to Háttatal as a poem which Snorri had composed (Ólsen 1884, 96) as does the Uppsala manuscript: · “háta tal er xnorri hevir ort um hak[on] konvng ok xkvla hertug[a]” (Grape et al. 1962–77, 2:1). It may be that the introduction into Norse letters of the clavis metrica genre by Rognvaldr and Hallr provided Snorri with the initial inspiration to compose such a poem, but that the complex nature of the poetic tradition prompted him in the rest of the Edda to a fuller elaboration of its rhythms, diction, and mythological world of reference once it was complete. It is interesting to note — if the received chronology of the composition of Snorri’s Edda is correct — that the first phase of his work on traditional poetry depended entirely on his own compositions, and that the apparent intention of the verse composition of Háttatal was that of bravura performance rather than antiquarian documentation. In the writing of the prose commentary there is some inclination to quote others’ compositions but the impulse is weak,2 in line with the thrust of the work towards renovation of the metrical tradition (and the specific injunction against regarding certain traditional metres as models) and, to some extent, innovation, in the form of new metres (for example, st. 73 — “nýi háttr”). In Skáldskaparmál, however, the mode of argumentation is predicated on the citation of traditional poetic expressions, and quotation is the prevailing style. It appears, then, that the shift in focus from metrical form (Háttatal) to diction (Skáldskaparmál) involved a significant change in attitude towards tradition 2. Quotation occurs in the enumeration of poetic licences, with brief quotations from the verse of Þórarinn máhlíðingr (8.22–3) and Refr (8.34–7), and in the discussion of alhent with reference to a verse by Bishop Klœingr (44.15–8). Ascription of metres to their inventors (skjálfhenda to Veili 35.11) or to celebrated poets who used them (Ragnarr loðbrók st. 54, Torf-Einarr st. 55, Egill st. 56, Fleinn st. 57, Bragi st. 58, Hoðr st. 79, Bálkr [?] st. 97, Starkaðr st. 98) is also found.

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on Snorri’s part. The new literary stage on which the skaldic art was being presented seems to have inspired a need to formalize and make consistent its metrical structure, but not to overhaul its mode of expression nor its traditional sphere of semantic reference, which Snorri saw as inscribing the world view of pre-Christian Scandinavian culture (Ross 1987, 174). The diction of skaldic poetry needed classification and interpretation — a kind of systemization that made it intelligible to thirteenth-century Icelanders — but Snorri was insistent that the semantic and cultural value of the ancient poetic diction not be taken away from the skaldic art. If, as I am arguing, an important impact of literacy on the reworkings of traditional verbal art forms was their systemization, we may see in Snorri’s work systemization of formal structure on one hand, with the aim of providing prescriptive models in line with foreign literate genres, and, on the other, of semantic reference with the aim of rendering poetic diction intelligible and therefore generative of new compositions. Having begun his ars poetica with the dialectic proposition — “Hvat eru hættir skáldskapar? . . . Setning, leyfi, fyrirboðning” [What kinds of verse-form are there in poetry? . . . Those that are in accordance with rule, or licence, or prohibition] (Faulkes 1991, 0.4–7; trans. Faulkes 1987, 165) — Snorri seems to have moved beyond the rigid paradigms of the Latin schoolroom to explore the nature of the vernacular tradition in a more heuristic manner. In Skáldskaparmál, the memorized stock of oral poetry provided Snorri with copious examples to describe and explain the language of skaldic poetry, and he was not moved to censure or prescription in relation to traditional praxis. On the contrary, precedent is of fundamental importance in Snorri’s figuring of the skaldic art in Skáldskaparmál, with ancient poets accorded authority and more recent poets expected to make judicious use of innovation: En þesi heiti hafa sva farit sem anvr ok keningar, at hin yngri skald hafa ort eptir dæmvm hina gomlv skalda, sva sem stoð iþeira qvæþvm, en sett siþan vt i halfor þær, er þeim þotto likar við þat, er fyr var ort, sva sem vatnit er sænvm, en ain vatninv, en lækr ani. Þvi er þat kallat nygervingar allt, er vt er sett heiti lengra, en fyr finz, ok þickir þat vel allt, er með likindvm ferr ok eþli. (Jónsson 1931, 121) [But it has happened with these terms and kennings as with others, that the more recent poets have composed in imitation of the ancient poets, as things were in their poems, and then extended into areas that they thought similar to what had earlier been included in poetry, as lake is to sea, and river to lake, and stream to river. This is therefore called allegory when terminology is extended further in meaning than there are earlier examples of, and this is all considered acceptable when it is in accordance with probability and the nature of things.] (Faulkes 1987, 95)

When the same rhetorical features are discussed in Háttatal (6.9–16), nýgorvingar are not defined with reference to historical precedent, but formally, in terms of metaphorical consistency within the unit of the stanza. The emphasis is on the identification of rhetorical faults and their proscription rather than on the traditional pattern of kenning formation according to which new poetic expressions may be generated.

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Judy Quinn Þat eru nýgjorvingar at kalla sverðit orm ok kenna rétt . . . Þá þykkja nýgjorvingar vel kveðnar ef þat mál er upp er tekit haldi of alla vísulengð. En ef sverð er ormr kallaðr, en síðan fiskr eða vondr eða annan veg breytt, þat kalla menn nykrat, ok þykkir þat spilla. (Faulkes 1991, 6.9–16) [This is allegory to call a sword a worm and use an appropriate determinant . . . Allegory is held to be well composed if the idea that is taken up is maintained throughout the stanza. But if a sword is called a worm, and then a fish or a wand or varied in some other way, this is called a monstrosity, and it is considered a defect.] (Faulkes 1987, 170]

A similar shift from proscription to description between Háttatal and Skáldskaparmál is apparent in the treatment of kenning construction. In Háttatal Snorri identifies the ninth licence in the new ars poetica as follows: Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. (Faulkes 1991, 8.29–31) [The ninth is extending a kenning to a fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it.] (Faulkes 1987, 172)

In Háttatal, Snorri’s prescriptions are predominantly concerned with quantity and proportion, and it is in this context that he passes judgement on kenning formation. The degree to which Snorri aimed to formalize the skaldic tradition and fix its limits in Háttatal is indicated by his curious definition of number at the beginning of the commentary: Hvat er tala setningar háttanna? Þrenn. Hver? Sú er ein tala, hversu margir hættir hafa fundizk í kveðskap hofuðskálda. Onnur tala er þat, hversu morg vísuorð standa í einu eyrindi í hverjum hætti. In þriðia tala er sú, hversu margar samstofur eru settar í hvert vísuorð í hverjum hætti. (Faulkes 1991, 0.16– 22) [What kinds of number are there in the rule for verse-forms? Three. What are they? One kind of number is how many verse-forms are found in the poetry of major poets. The second is how many lines there are in one stanza in each verse-form. The third is how many syllables are put in each line in each verse-form.] (Faulkes 1987, 165)

The first number, which relates to enumerating historical precedents, is of a very different kind to the latter two, which simply count structural features. It is presumably only after Snorri has devised his own tal of Norse metrical forms that the first number can be fixed. In Skáldskaparmál, on the other hand, Snorri’s approach is to exemplify the multitude of ways poets have expressed themselves, rather than the limited number of ways in which he asserts rhythm can be correctly composed. Nv skal lata heyra dæmin, hvernig hafvðskaldin hafa latit ser lika at yrkia eptir þesvm heitvm ok keningvm (Jónsson 1931, 88)

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[We shall present further examples of how major poets have found it fitting to compose using these kinds of terms and kennings] (Faulkes 1987, 66)

Snorri’s positive attitude to tradition and his lack of prescription in Skáldskaparmál is underlined by the formulation: “Avllvm þesvm keningvm er marga lvnd breytt” [All these kennings are varied in many ways] (Jónsson 1931, 150, 126; trans. Faulkes 1987, 118, 99). His enthusiasm for traditional diction implies a wellversed interpretor of kennings, one who tolerates, and even enjoys, ambiguity: Þar koma saman keningar, ok verþr sa at skilia af stoð, er ræðr skaldskapinn, vm hvarn qveþit er konvngin . . . En sv kening . . . at kalla Krist konvng manna, þa kening ma eiga hverr konvngr. (Jónsson 1931, 160) [Here kennings become ambiguous, and the person interpreting the poetry has to distinguish from the context which king is being referred to . . . And the kenning . . . calling Christ king of men, this kenning can be applied to any king.] (Faulkes 1987, 127–28)

It is the ambiguous and recondite nature of skaldic diction that will sound discordantly for clerical poets of the next century, who, as we shall see, followed the vogue for metrical rules that Snorri promoted, but moved away from the tradition of skaldic circumlocution in their own praxis. If we read between the lines of Snorri’s Edda, we might paraphrase his poetic manifesto thus: to practise the skaldic art a poet needed to have an extensive repertoire of poetic circumlocutions and an understanding of the myths they referred to as well as a knowledge of dróttkvætt and its approved variants, to be employed in the standardized versions set out in the first part of Háttatal and with regard to the list of licences enumerated there. Metrical competence, then, depended on mastering a prescribed pattern and its modulations, whereas lexical competence required the assimilation of an extensive store of kenningar, heiti, and the mythic narratives that gave rise to them. Knowledge of the rhythms and verseforms used in previous compositions was a strand in the new skaldic syllabus, but Snorri explicitly marks the sixty types which may be followed as models: “ok eru þessir hættir allir vel fallnir til at yrkja kvæði eptir ef vill” [and all these verse-forms are very suitable for composing poems in if desired] (Faulkes 1991, 67.12–13; trans. Faulkes 1987, 205), and specifies those that must not be: “ok má eigi yrkja eptir því þó at þat þykki eigi spilla í fornkvæðum” [and this ought not to be imitated though it is not considered a fault in early poems] (Faulkes 1991, 58.15–16; trans. Faulkes 1987, 200). To those who knew old poetry by heart, verseform and diction would have been inseparable, and both aspects of the tradition would have been transmitted in tandem. To the skald of the thirteenth-century classroom, who may have depended on book-learning to a greater extent for a knowledge of poetic diction, the systematic collection of lists of kenningar and heiti according to referent would necessarily have diminished the rhythmic variation inherent in the poetic tradition. Within Skáldskaparmál kennings are grouped together in answer to the question “Hvernig skal kenna X” [How shall X be referred to?], and while quotation of

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verse examples is copious, many kennings are instantiated only in prosified lists. The latter manner of documentation also accounts for many of the heiti listed in Skáldskaparmál. Snorri was mindful of the potential of an academic written tradition to generate its own stock of diction in isolation from the corpus of ancient skaldic poetry, and at one point attempts to establish the precedence of orally transmitted instances over written examples by invoking a canon of “major poets” against whose diction new phrasings should be measured. Þesi nofn himins erv ritvð, en eigi hofvm vær fvndit iqvæðvm all þesi heiti; en þesi skaldskapar heiti sem avnvr þicki mer oskyllt at hafa iskaldskap, nema aðr fiNi hann iverka hafvtskalda þvilik heiti (Jónsson 1931, 166) [The following names for the heavens are written down, but we have not found all these terms in poems. But these poetical terms like others seem to me not proper to include in poetry unless one finds similar terms already in the work of major poets] (Faulkes 1987, 133)

No such principle is at work in Háttatal, however, unless “þvilik” is interpreted very broadly to include echoes of rhythms in lines of old poems that Snorri takes up and turns into metres used consistently throughout a stanza. In Háttatal Snorri is more concerned with formulating his own hierarchy of forms than he is with justifying forms by establishing historical precedents. A comparison of the organization of Háttatal with its predecessor, Háttalykill makes this particularly clear. In its extant form, the commentary of Háttalykill consists only of the names of verseforms added as headings before each pair of verses. Whereas Háttalykill begins in ljóðaháttr, the metre characteristic of eddic didactic poems, and proceeds through a variety of metrical forms with no apparent system, Snorri’s poem is a model of systematic categorization and hierarchical order, beginning with dróttkvætt and its variants, followed by the verseforms “er fornskáld hafa kveðit” [which early poets have used in composition] (stanzas 54–67) and finally, verses composed “eptir inum smærum háttum” [in the lesser verse-forms] (stanzas 68– 102), with ljóðaháttr coming in third from last. While many of the names of verseforms are common to both works, many of the correspondences between verse types are only approximate (Faulkes 1991, xvii), and in the case of rekit the name denotes completely different forms (Helgason and Holtsmark 1941, 65). In addition, Snorri’s systemic account appears to generate new terms according to his hierarchical scheme: “in mestu refhvorf” (sts. 17–19), “in minni refhvorf” (st. 20), “in minztu refhvorf” (st. 22), “refhvarfa bróður” (st. 23), “meiri stúfr” (st. 50), “hinn mesti stúfr” (st. 51), “minni runhenda” (st. 81), “minzta runhenda” (st. 82), and the use of these same terms (minni and minztr) within five separate subclasses of runhent (sts. 83–93). As Stephen Tranter has pointed out (1993), such a practice of subdivision is likely to have been derived from patterns set by Latin authors in grammatical and metrical tracts. Although the ostensible subject of Snorri’s treatise is “hættir skáldskapar,” it is apparent from the prose commentary that his focus is on “lofkvæði” (67.15) and

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both the hierarchy of verseforms and the judgements voiced in his commentary make clear his view of dróttkvætt as the pre-eminent form of skáldskapr: Þetta er dróttkvæðr háttr. Með þeima hætti er flest ort þat er vandat er. Þessi er upphaf allra hátta sem málrúnar eru fyrir oðrum rúnum. (Faulkes 1991, 1.41–43) [This is dróttkvætt form. This is the form most often used for elaborate poetry. This is the foundation of all verse-forms just as speech-runes are the principal sort of runes.] (Faulkes 1987, 167)

Snorri’s definition of the acceptable forms of dróttkvætt is strict and prescriptive, and it is informed by a principle of metrical consistency that is not at the heart of much of the native poetic tradition, even within the encomium genre. The poetic theory articulated in the prose commentary to Háttatal therefore strikes out on a new path — acknowledging the aesthetic of the past, but remaking it according to contemporary notions of literary refinement, without what he terms the metrical faults of earlier compositions. en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. (Faulkes 1991, 8.30–31) [Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it.] (Faulkes 1987, 172) Nú skal rita þá háttu er fornskáld hafa kveðit ok eru nú settir saman, þótt þeir hafi ort sumt með háttafollum, ok eru þessir hættir dróttkvæðir kallaðir í fornum kvæðum, en sumir finnask í lausum vísum (Faulkes 1991, 53.11–14) [Now shall be exemplified those variations of form which early poets have used in composition and which are now made into consistent verse-forms, though these poets have in some cases composed with metrical inconsistencies, and these variations in early poems are called dróttkvætt, and some of them are found in single-stanza poems] (Faulkes 1987, 198) Víða er þat í fornskálda verka er í einni vísu eru ymsir hættir eða háttafoll, ok má eigi yrkja eptir því þó at þat þykki eigi spilla í fornkvæðum. (Faulkes 1991, 58.14–16) [It often happens in the work of early poets that there are several variations or metrical inconsistencies in a single stanza, and this ought not be imitated though it is not considered a fault in early poems.] (Faulkes 1987, 200)

In his survey of the verseforms in Háttatal and the extant corpus of skaldic poetry, Anthony Faulkes has found that there are clear precedents for just over thirty of Snorri’s metres — just over thirty have no precedents at all except in some cases in Háttalykill — and the rest have “partial precedents, that is to say the features of the verse-forms are found in individual lines of earlier verse, but not used consistently throughout a stanza or poem” (1991, xviii). The foreign fashion that most influenced the metrical inventiveness of Háttalykill and Háttatal was rhyme. Both works acknowledge the prestige of rhyme (both internal rhyme and endrhyme) in their names for verseforms: “draughent” (Háttalykill 4 and Háttatal 65), “náhent” (Háttalykill 15 — where it is written “háhent” — and Háttatal 75), “hrynhenda” (Háttalykill 16 — where it is written “rynhent” — and Háttatal 62– 64), “detthendr” (Háttalykill 18 and Háttatal 29), “runhenda” (Háttalykill 24

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and Háttatal 80–92), “dunhent” (Háttalykill 33 and Háttatal 24) and “skjálfhenda” (Háttalykill 41 and Háttatal 35). In addition, Háttatal 36 preserves the term þríhent for a verseform also found in Háttalykill 6, and adds the term hnugghent (Háttatal 76) which clearly expresses the positive valuation of hendingar. This point is underscored by the term háttlausa (Háttalykill 26 and Háttatal 67) which in fact denotes verse composed without hendingar rather than without any other constituent of rhythmic form such as alliteration. In Háttatal, Snorri composes 80 stanzas that involve internal rhyme, a further fourteen with end-rhyme, and only eight without a consistent rhyme scheme at all. Of the 41 verseforms of Háttalykill, five are without hendingar, though one of these, greppaminni, is required to have hendingar according to Snorri’s ars metrica (Ólason 1969, 198). Snorri describes the form alhent, which has two aðalhendingar in each line, as the finest of metres if used well: Þessi þykkir vera fegrstr ok vandastr, ef vel er ortr, þeira hátta er kvæði eru ort eptir (Faulkes 1991, 44.9–10) [This is considered to be the most beautiful and choicest, if it is composed well, of the verse-forms that poems are composed in] (Faulkes 1987, 192)

He distinguishes his own demonstration of the metre (described as “full alhending”) from an earlier example by Bishop Klœingr where at, ek, and en were used without being part of the rhyme scheme.3 As with many other verseforms he demonstrates, Snorri’s model is stricter and without internal variation compared to such earlier examples as may be found in the extant corpus (Kuhn 1983, 305–6). The preservation of the skaldic corpus is clearly not the object of the verses or the commentary of Háttatal, which, as a whole, is directed to promoting Snorri’s own ars metrica and recommending it as a guide to praxis for contemporary skalds. As Snorri makes his metrical century, his masterly performance is not without its moments of swagger: Hvar viti áðr orta með œðra hætti mærð of menglotuð maðr und himins skautum? (Faulkes 1991, 95.5–8) [Where does one know of praise previously composed with more splendid verse-forms about a necklace-destroyer (giver of jewels) beneath the sky’s expanse?] (Faulkes 1987, 218)

Earlier, Snorri makes clear his role as innovator: Mitt er of mœti mart lag bragar

3. The opposition between syllables marked by rhyme, alliteration and prosodic length and unmarked syllables (see Gade 1989) is probably another aspect of traditional dróttkvætt composition that Snorri is consciously aiming to systematize in his theory of poetics.

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áðr ókveðit oddbraks spakan (Faulkes 1991, 70.1–4) [Many a poetic metre of mine has never before been composed in about a wise pointclash meeter (warrior).] (Faulkes 1987, 207)

Snorri calls the verseform of stanza 70 hagmælt ‘skilfully spoken’, a term not elsewhere attested, which may well be an expression of his self-conscious play both with metrical variation and with poetic nomenclature. In elaborating skaldic metrics in Háttatal, Snorri’s sights are set on the prestigious count of a hundred verseforms and the glory of his achievement, perhaps to the point of overshadowing the ostensible focus of a praise poem, its addressee. Bjarne Fidjestøl (1982, 255) described Háttatal as a “metadikting som er i ferd med å bli rein form,” a consequence, perhaps, of his judgement of it as “eit skrivebordsdikt” (246), in which the exigencies of political interaction between skald and patron begin to give way to literary experimentation at some remove in time and place from its occasion. In medieval sources, Snorri is attributed with two other praise poems for Earl Skúli, one of which was a drápa with a klofastef featuring alhendr.4 The identification of aðalhendingar as the quintessential attribute of Norse poetry is expressed elsewhere in Snorri’s work. In chapter 6 of Ynglinga saga, Snorri describes the speech of the god Óðinn in the following way: “Mælti hann allt hendingum, svá sem nú er þat kveðit, er skáldskapr heitir” [He always spoke with rhyme, in the manner of composition that is now called poetry] (Aðalbjarnarson 1941–51, 1:17). None of Óðinn’s poetry is quoted by Snorri in Ynglinga saga though when the god is quoted in Gylfaginning 5 he speaks in ljóðaháttr or fornyrðislag rhythm without hendingar.6 It is clear from his poetic theory, his attribution of hendingar-composition to Óðinn, the god of poetry, as well as his own practices as a poet, that Snorri viewed dróttkvætt praise poetry as the pre-eminent form of traditional Norse versification, and that in his writings, he aimed to promote this view. In Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar chap. 91, for instance, he represents King Harald declaiming a verse in simple eddic measure as he goes burnie-less into his final battle, only to 4. Íslendinga saga chap. 38: “Snorri hafði ort um jarl tvau kvæði. Alhend váru klofastef í drápunni: Harðmúlaðr vas Skúli . . . ” (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:278). 5. For example “svá sem hér er sagt at Óðinn mælir sjálfr við þann Ás er Loki heitir: ‘Œrr ertu Loki / ok ørviti, / hví ne legskaþu, Loki? / Ørlog Frigg / hygg ek at oll viti / þótt hon sjálfgi segi’” [as it says here that Odin himself spoke to the As called Loki: “Mad you are Loki, and out of your wits; why will you not be silent, Loki? All fates I believe Frigg knows, though she herself does not pronounce”] and “ok enn hefir hann [Óðinn] nefnzk á fleiri vega þá er hann var kominn til Geirrøðar konungs: ‘Heitumsk Grímr / ok Ganglari, / Herjan, Hjálmberi, / Þekkr, Þriði’” [and he called himself by various other names on his visit to King Geirrod: “I call myself Grim and Ganglari, Herian, Hialmberi, Thekk, Third”] (Faulkes 1982, 21; trans. Faulkes 1987, 21). 6. All of the 32 stanzas of poetry Snorri quotes in Ynglinga saga are by historical skalds, and only one, by Bragi inn gamli, uses hendingar as a structuring principle of the verseform. He quotes 28 stanzas by Þjóðolfr inn hvinverski from Ynglingatal and three from Háleygjatal by Eyvindr skáldaspillir.

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pull himself up in a moment of poetic quality-assurance to better commemorate the occasion with a dróttkvætt composition. Þá mælti Haraldr konungr Sigurðarson: “Þetta er illa kveðit, ok mun verða at gera aðra vísu betri.” Þá kvað hann þetta (Aðalbjarnarson 1941–51, 3:188) [Then King Harald Sigurdson said: “That verse is badly composed and I will need to make another better one.” Then he composed this]

As Roberta Frank has observed, by making Harald recite a dróttkvætt stanza to replace his eddic verse, “thirteenth-century literary criticism . . . touted the superiority of what was difficult, their own trobar clus” (1978, 28). That Snorri’s views on poetry were not just academic, and that he took dróttkvætt composition very seriously indeed, is apparent from his nephew’s account in Íslendinga saga. Far from being an ornamental commentary on contemporary Icelandic events, the composition of dróttkvætt verse could sometimes be a political act of great significance (Nordal 1992). Sturla also reports in chapters 38–39 of his saga that Snorri’s praise poetry (which must have been orally transmitted and recited far and wide) was scorned and parodied in the south of Iceland. The parody hinges on the description of Skúli as hard-nosed (“harðmúlaðr es Skúli”) but turns harshly against Snorri as both politician and poet: Oss lízk illr at kyssa jarl, sás ræðr fyr hjarli, vörr es til hvöss á harra, harðmúlaðr es Skúli. Hefr fyr horska jöfra hrægamms komit sævar, — þjóð finnr löst á ljóðum —, leir aldrigi meira. (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1946, 1:278–79) [We think ill of kissing the jarl who rules over the land, the lip of the lord is too sharp, hard-snouted is Skúli. Never has there been more mud of the carrion-sea vulture — people find fault with the verse — brought before noble princes.]

The defamatory words of the poem no doubt found their mark. The kenning “hræsævar gamms leir” refers to the mythic narrative in which Óðinn, disguised as an eagle, obtains the mead of poetry from the giant Suttungr and delivers it to the gods, which Snorri tells in chapter 6 of Skáldskaparmál.7 Ousted from the company of those skilled in the art of poetry, Snorri is ranked among those who were not recipients of Óðinn’s gift but who took for themselves a portion of eagleshit. In the learned, literate sphere, Snorri is able to make pronouncements as self-appointed arbiter of poetic quality and self-made auctor in the new syllabus of

7. “þa spytti hann vpp miþinvm ikerin, en honvm var þa sva nær komit, at Svttvngr mvndi na honvm, at hann sendi aptr svman mioþinn, ok var þes ecki gætt; hafþi þat hverr, er vildi, ok kollvm ver þat skaldfifla lvt. En Svttvnga-mioð gaf Oþin asvnvm ok þeim monnvm, er yrkia kvnv” [he spat out the mead into the containers, but it was such a close thing for him that Suttung might have caught him that he sent

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skáldskapr. In the everyday world of the living oral tradition Snorri is more open to challenge. While the literate tradition was championing lofkvæði and the composition of poetry to please an aristocratic social order, the oral tradition continued to celebrate its age-old practice of defamation of character. As well as the composition of three praise poems for Earl Skúli, Sturla Þórðarson mentions that Snorri also composed poems for King Sverrir and Earl Hákon galinn. While we know that letters were frequently used as the mode of communication in Icelandic/Norwegian diplomatic exchange, it is not stated how Snorri delivered his poetic tributes. Whether it first existed as document or not, the verses of Háttatal are likely to have been orally transmitted along with other praise poetry within the charged debate about Icelandic sovereignty in relation to the Norwegian crown, as well as within the less dramatic but culturally significant debate about the parameters of traditional versification in relation to Continental conventions. As prosimetrum, Háttatal gives voice to two contemporary, but dissimilar, traditions: the oral tradition of virtuoso skaldic composition, in which innovation was an inherent form of display which Snorri clearly delights in practising, and the written tradition of pedagogy, in which the definition and naming of types was paramount. Within the verses, Snorri is mindful of the mnemonics necessary for teaching: in stanza 67 he refers to the sixty metres he has composed: “Ortak . . . með sex tøgum hátta” [I have composed . . . with sixty verse-forms], and in stanza 100 he refers to the tally again: “svá er tírœtt hundrað talit” [so that ten tens are told]. The lesson is reiterated in Snorri’s prose. After having initally established the pattern of didactic dialogue between magister and discipulus that was a convention of Continental pedagogy (Krömmelbein 1992, 118), Snorri continually refers to numbers in his systematic analysis of types: “Sjá háttr er nú skal rita er hinn fjórði þeira er breyttir eru, en hinn fimti at háttatali” [The verse-form that will be written next is the fourth of those that have variation, but the fifth in the number of verse-types] (Faulkes 1991, 11.9–10; trans. Faulkes 1987, 175); “Þessi er hinn tíundi háttr” [Next is the tenth verse-form] (Faulkes 1991, 16.11; trans. Faulkes 1987, 177); “Tólpta [leyfi] er” [The twelfth (licence) is] (Faulkes 1991, 8.40; trans. Faulkes 1987, 173). Written only a generation later, Óláfr Þórðarson’s treatise is evidence of the rising tide of learned Latin scholarship that would carry the new skaldic pedagogy into the next century. The degree to which Snorri’s metrical treatise is a singular presentation of traditional poetry according to particular aesthetic and cultural values can be assessed by comparing it to Óláfr’s treatment of traditional Norse poetics within his grammatical treatise. Óláfr’s frame of reference is quite different from Snorri’s, determined as it is by the theoretical orientation and procedures of Continental rhetorical scholarship. Óláfr follows Snorri’s argument in the some of the mead out backwards, and this was disregarded. Anyone took it that wanted it, and it is what we call the rhymester’s share. But Odin gave Suttung’s mead to the Æsir and to those people who are skilled at composing poetry] (Jónsson 1931, 85; trans. Faulkes 1987, 64).

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Prologue to his Edda in predicating Norse poetry as a branch of the same ancient poetics practised around the Mediterranean and brought north to Scandinavia: oll ær æin listin skalld skapr sa, ær romverskir spækingar namv iathænis borg a griklandi ok snerv siþan i latinv mal, ok sa lioða háttr æða skalldskapr, ær oðinn ok aðrir asia menn flvttv norðr higat i norðr halfv heimsins (Ólsen 1884, 60) [the art of speech which the Roman orators learnt in Athens in Greece and then transferred into the Latin language is the same as the metre or poetry which Odin and other men of Asia brought northwards when they settled the northern hemisphere] (Collings 1967, 74)

While Óláfr is overt in his general adherence to the procedures of Continental rhetorical scholarship, throughout his treatise he maintains a clear distinction between “diktvð vers ritin í latinv skalldskap” (Ólsen 1884, 51) and “norrænn skalldskapr” noting when particular formations are “litt geymt” [little observed] in Norse poetry or a classical figure “finz sialldan” [is seldom found] in traditional verse (Ólsen 1884, 52, 93).8 Nor does he suppress the need to discourse at some length about the particularities of Norse poetry when it is significantly different from classical forms. Snorri’s emphasis on the role of hendingar in dróttkvætt and its variations takes for granted the fundamental structural role of alliteration.9 In his consideration of paronomasia Óláfr echoes Snorri’s judgement, and refers explicitly to Háttatal, to Snorri’s detailed demonstration of the manner in which internal rhyme can be varied in dróttkvætt composition. þetta kollvm ver aðalhændingar iskálldskap, ok taka af þessi figvrv vpphaf þeir hættir, ær með hændingvm ærv saman sættir, ok breytiz þat amarga vega, sæm finnaz man ihatta tali þvi, ær snorri hæfir ort. (Ólsen 1884, 96) [We call that aðalhending (“full internal rhyme”) in poetry, and this figure is the origin of all those metres which are composed with rhyme, and whose many variants may be found in the Háttatal which Snorri composed.] (Collings 1967, 97)

But as he moves to the next category of schema lexeos, paranomeon, the divergence between Óláfr’s focus and Snorri’s becomes plain. Once vernacular poetry is considered in the context of Latin poetics, where alliteration serves only an ornamental role, the fundamental nature of alliteration in the Norse tradition needs to be brought to the fore: Þæssi figvra ær miok hofð i mals snilldar list, ær rethorica hæitir, oc ær hon vphaf til kvæðanndi þeirrar, ær saman helldr norænvm skalldskap, sva sæm naglar hallda skipi 8. In other places the distinction is expressed simply by the opposition vers and skálldskap (Ólsen 1884, 89). Note too the clarification “ok ær sv figvra [elipsis] miok i versvm, ænn ækci finnvm ver hana inorænvm skálldskap” [This figure frequently occurs in (Latin) verses, but we do not find it in Norse poetry] (Ólsen 1884, 90; trans. Collings 1967, 94). 9. “Hér er stafasetning sú er hætti ræðr ok kveðandi gerir, þat eru tólf stafir í eyrindi, ok eru þrír settir í hvern fjórðung . . . Sá stafr ræðr kveðandi” [Here there is one aspect of spelling that determines the verse-form and creates the poetical effect, that there are twelve staves (alliterating sounds) in the stanza, and three are put in each quarter-stanza . . . This stave determines the alliteration.] (Faulkes 1991, 1.9–13; trans. Faulkes 1987, 166).

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saman, ær smiðr gerir, ok ferr svndrlast ælla borð fra borði. sva hælldr ok þæssi figvra saman kveðandi iskalldskap með stofvm þeim ær stvðlar hæita ok hofvðstafir. hin fyrri figvra gerir fægrð með lioðs greinvm iskalld skap, sva sæm fælling skips borða. Ænn þo ærv fastir viðir saman, þeir sem negldir ærv, at æigi sæ væl fælldir, sæm kvæðandi hællz i hændingarlavsvm hattvm. (Ólsen 1884, 96–97) [This figure is much used in the art of eloquence known as Rhetorica, and it forms the origin of the alliteration that holds together Norse poetry. Just as the nails hold together a ship made by a builder, in which otherwise the boards would fall asunder, likewise this figure holds together the alliteration of poetry, by means of the letters which are called stuðlar (“supporters”) and hofuðstafir (“head staves”). The former figure (paronomasia) embellishes poetry by means of a variety of sounds, and can be compared to the joining of the ship’s boards. And yet boards that are nailed together are fast, even though not joined by tongue and groove, just as alliteration is maintained in rhymeless metres.] (Collings 1967, 98)

The structural integrity of Norse poetry — from ljóðaháttr to dróttkvætt — depends on the system of alliteration, and the alliterating staves are described by Óláfr as analogous to the nails that hold the planks of a ship together: without nails the planks fall apart and there is no ship; without alliterating staves the lines fall apart and there is no poem. Hendingar take their place in this structural analogy as perfectly fitted planks — something that makes for a better finish but is not structurally essential. As Óláfr makes clear, kveðandi10 still obtains in metres that are hendingarlaus. Óláfr’s theory of traditional Norse versification is articulated in chapter 15 of his treatise (“de scemalexeo”): “Scema ær kollvð agirzkv ænn skrv´ð a norenv” [Schema is the Greek word and skrúð (“embellishment”) is the Norse word]. According to Óláfr, schema is widely used “þviat hon þikcir iafnan fegra iskálldskap” [because it is considered to embellish poetry] (Ólsen 1884, 91; trans. Collings 1967, 95). In this chapter, Óláfr ranges freely across the corpus of vernacular poetry in his selection of examples, beginning with a quotation from an otherwise unknown eddic poem about Óðinn’s ravens Huginn and Muninn, and later choosing another pair of lines from the eddic Grímnismál. As schema is the category of classical rhetoric that most pertains to poetic structure,11 it is noteworthy that of the twenty-two poetic quotations Óláfr chooses as illustrations, ten are composed without hendingar. In the treatise as a whole the proportion is less than one-fifth; 10. The word kveðandi denotes the sound of poetry, or the general concept of language structured as poetry. In both Snorri’s use and Óláfr’s, it most often refers to alliterative structure, but in certain contexts it can also incorporate hendingar as a constituent of structure (see Faulkes 1991, 123–24). 11. The overlap between Snorri’s work and the final chapter of Óláfr’s treatise, “De tropo et metaphorae,” involves Skáldskaparmál more than Háttatal, though sannkenningar are discussed in both works. Óláfr again draws attention to the greater significance particular figures have for Norse versification: “Með þessi figvrv [metaphora] ærv saman settar allar kenningar i norrænvm skalldskap, ok hon ær miok sva vpphaf til skalldskaparmals” [All kennings of Norse poetry are composed of this figure, which is virtually the origin of all poetic diction] (Ólsen 1884, 104; trans. Collings 1967, 104), and the aesthetic importance of sannkenningar “ok þikcir þessi figvra mest pryða skalldskap” [and this figure . . . is considered to be the greatest embellishment of poetry] (Ólsen 1884, 108; trans. Collings 1967, 106–7).

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nevertheless Óláfr’s selections demonstrate a different sense of the scope of skáldskapr from Snorri’s. Neither treatise aims to document the full poetic tradition as it had survived into the thirteenth century, yet within their different projects both authors show knowledge of a vast corpus of orally transmitted verse, and give expression to judgements about how that heritage can be transformed into a literary canon. It is beyond the scope of Óláfr’s treatise to make explicit judgements about the hierarchy of metrical forms, or the pre-eminence of dróttkvætt praise poetry, though his commentary on the figure of ironia is worthy of note: “her er oæiginlig framfæring ok liking, þviat lof ær fyrir háði sætt. Þæssi figvra ær iafnan sætt i skalldskap” [Here there is an improper transfer and comparison, since praise is used for mockery. This figure frequently occurs in poetry] (Ólsen 1884, 113–14; trans. Collings 1967, 110). Óláfr was himself an accomplished poet in the dróttkvætt tradition, having composed poems on King Hákon and Thomas à Becket, Árónsdrápa, and a twelve-stanza poem in hrynhent metre (Jónsson 1912–15, A2: 92–98). Mention is also made in Íslendinga saga (chapter 121) of a drápa Óláfr composed about Bishop Þórlakr. In all probability, his own poetic praxis accorded fairly well with the ars poetica Snorri articulated in Háttatal. While the ambit of Óláfr’s treatise is broader than Snorri’s, he nevertheless seems to be mindful of the recently defined prescriptive tradition of dróttkvætt composition outlined by Snorri. In his explanation of antonomasia in chapter 16, Óláfr says: “Þæssa figvrv kollv ver niarðarvott i skalldskap, ok ær hon þo æigi með læyfvm talit” [We call that figure njarðar-vottr (“Njord’s glove” = “sponge”) in poetry, but it is not numbered among the poetical licences] (Ólsen 1884, 107; trans. Collings 1967, 106) — apparently referring to the licences enumerated by Snorri in Háttatal (Collings 1967, 71), though niarðarvottr does not seem to involve a metrical licence.12 In his discussion of end-rhyme and its analogous role in Latin and Norse poetics, Óláfr first quotes a Latin couplet and then turns to Snorri for a parallel metrical example: Þessar somu hendingar ærv ok settar i norrænv skalldskap i þeim hætti, er ver kollvm rvnhendv, sem snorri kvað: Orms ær glatt galla með gumna spjalla. (Ólsen 1884, 52) [These same hendingar are positioned in Norse poetry in that verseform we call runhent, as Snorri said:

12. Óláfr only uses the word leyfi on one other occasion to explain the appropriateness of schema lexeos in poetry: “ænn þo ær scema miklv meir i læyfi sætt, þviat hon þikcir iafnan fegra iskálldskap” [Schema however is used with much more licence because it is considered to embellish poetry] (Ólsen 1884, 91; trans. Collings 1967, 95). Snorri, however, uses it frequently, both in the methodological outline of his work (Faulkes 1991, 0.7) and in his enumeration of twelve metrical licences (Faulkes 1991, 6.22, 8.15, 8.17, 8.18, 8.24, 8.25).

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It is a joy to be in the company of the friend of men during the snake’s harm (winter)] (verse trans. Faulkes 1987, 213)

The verse he quotes is from Háttatal 83, which is there described as composed “með fullri runhending” with all eight lines rhyming on -alla. Although there is abundant evidence of end-rhyme used in Norse poetry, there seem to be no examples of full runhenda before Snorri’s time, and the exact metrical pattern of Háttatal 83 is not elsewhere attested. In such a case, Snorri’s poetics may be seen as laying the foundations on which Óláfr can subsequently build his theory of commonality between the classical and vernacular traditions. Similarly, Óláfr’s identification of homoeoteleuton with the Norse form nýi háttr depends on Snorri for a poetic demonstration (Háttatal 73), and it is likely that Snorri is responsible for the innovation of both verseform and terminology, since this metrical name does not occur in Háttalykill. In all, Óláfr quotes eight excerpts of poetry by Snorri, six of which are from Háttatal.13 In other instances, Snorri is appealed to not as an authority on particular metrical forms, but as a canonical poet in the native tradition. For example, the second pair of lines from verse 28 of Háttatal which exemplifies the metre in which only one syllable separates the alliterating staves in the first line of each pair (termed tvískelft by Snorri), is quoted by Óláfr to demonstrate cacemphaton — “æf sa ær niðr lags stafr i æinni sogn, ær fyrstr ær sættr i þvi orði, ær eptir kemr” [the juxtaposition of the same letter at the end of one word and at the beginning of the following word] (Ólsen 1884, 79; trans. Collings 1967, 85) — an altogether different phonic phenomenon. Óláfr gives the native term for this stylistic feature þræskolld ‘threshold’, a poetic term not elsewhere recorded.14 In many cases, Óláfr’s terminology accords with Snorri’s usage. Bragarmál is used in both works to denote the elision of vowels to contract two syllables into one — indicating either a traditional poetic term in common use (though it is not elsewhere recorded) or direct scholarly influence. At the level of lexis, the vagaries of textual transmission and preservation do not permit confident assertions of originality of terminology or water-tight claims of intellectual dependence between earlier and later works. The metrical term kviðuháttr, for instance, occurs in Háttalykill 2 and Óláfr’s work (Ólsen 1884, 63), but not in Háttatal, although the verseform it describes is the final one to be demonstrated by Snorri. In some cases, such as niarðarvottr, the mention is unique in the written record. In his understanding of the terms nýgervingar ‘new creations’ and nykrat ‘monstrous’, Óláfr appears to be following Snorri’s distinction (Ross 1987, 76), although Óláfr adds

13. Ólsen 1884, 52 (Háttatal 83.5–6), 76 (source not extant), 79 (Háttatal 28.3–4), 94 (Háttatal 15.7– 16.1), 94–95 (Háttatal 40.1–4, though Óláfr introduces the quotation simply “sem her”), 98 (Háttatal 73.1–4), 107 (Háttatal 5.3–6), and 116–17 (see Jónsson 1912–15, A2:78). 14. I am indebted to the Arnamagnaean Dictionary card file for this and other observations on the occurrence of technical terms in medieval prose works.

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another native term, finngálknat ‘centaur-like’, as an alternative to nykrat (Ólsen 1884, 80). In other cases, Háttalykill and Háttatal preserve intriguingly different names for the same verseform. What in Háttalykill is termed konungslag (st. 37) is called trollsháttr by Snorri (st. 63), perhaps reflecting Snorri’s distaste for metrical excess. The related hryniandi verseform, draughent (st. 65), is described by Snorri in terms of the dróttkvætt stanza perceptible within it (“Svá má ok af taka í oðru ok hinu fjórða vísuorði ina somu samstofun ok er þá þat dróttkvætt” [Similarly the same syllable can be subtracted in the second and fourth lines and then they are dróttkvætt]) and he ends his description with the judgement “ok verðr sumt eigi mjúkt” [and in some ways this is not all that smooth] (Faulkes 1991, 65.12–14; trans. Faulkes 1987, 204). This negative evaluation is expressed in another native term, flagðaháttr (flagðalag at Háttalykill 32), which also seems to be conceived by Snorri as dróttkvætt disfigured, with true dróttkvætt perceptible behind it: “er hér aukit bæði samstofu ok fullnat orðtak sem framast, ok eptir þá samstofun eru þrjár samstofur ok er rétt dróttkvætt ef hon er ór tekin” [here there is both a syllable added and the word is extended to the superlative degree, and three syllables come after this extra syllable and it is normal dróttkvætt if it is taken out] (Faulkes 1991, 34.9–11; trans. Faulkes 1987, 188). A comparative study of the technical terminology of Háttalykill, Háttatal, and Óláfr’s Málskrúðsfræði reveals a complex pattern of relations: all of the works draw from a rich source of vernacular nomenclature, yet the metrical and stylistic attributes described by some of these terms do not always appear to have been definitively fixed. In the desire to keep abreast of foreign literary fashions and to demonstrate the sophistication of the skaldic art in relation to classical Latin poetry, coinage of vernacular terms must also have played a significant part in the emergent ars poetica. A comment made by Óláfr suggests that he and Snorri were not alone in their consideration of Norse poetics and its relation to Continental models. Óláfr’s discussion of pronunciation and intonation patterns in Latin verse concludes: Enn með þvi at þesskonar greinir heyra litt norrænv skalldskap at flestra manna ætlan, þa tala ek þar vm ekki fleira at sinni. (Ólsen 1884, 56) [But because these kinds of distinctions are hardly relevant to Norse poetry in most people’s opinion, I will deal with it no further at this time.]

Who the other members of this literary circle are is left unsaid, but it is presumably the same group Óláfr has in mind when he says “okþat hyggivm ver fornt mal vera. ænn nv ær þat kallað vindandin forna i skalldskap, þviat þat ær nv ekci haft i norenv mali” [However we consider that archaic speech, and that practice is now called old vinðandi in poetry because it is no longer customary in Norse speech] (Ólsen 1884, 87; trans. Collings 1967, 91). We might also suppose that many of the terms introduced by Óláfr with “ok kollum vér þat” were current among members of this community, just as those used by Snorri with the formulation “Þenna hátt kalla menn” in Háttatal. While these phrases probably do service as stylistic

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clichés in both treatises, they are also likely to reflect an intellectual milieu in which the parameters of poetic innovation and skrúð were discussed and assessed, and where a vernacular terminology with which to theorize native poetics within the context of learned Continental rhetoric would have been defined and expanded. The manuscripts of Snorra Edda provide evidence of a continuing industry in poetic nomenclature into the next century. The Codex Regius of Snorra Edda preserves a text of Háttatal written around the middle of the first half of the fourteenth century. A second, apparently contemporary hand (Jónsson 1892) has added the following technical terms: “mala háttr” (st. 95), “stakarþar lag” (st. 98 — the prose text has “stikkalag”), and “galldra lag” (st. 101). The Utrecht manuscript dubs the verseform of stanza 54 (which in the prose is ascribed to the poet king Ragnarr lóðbrok) “Ragnarsháttr” and that of stanza 11 “fjórðungalok.” The latter name is also preserved in the Uppsala manuscript of Snorra Edda but not within the text of Háttatal itself. Háttatal, as we know it from other manuscripts, begins on the verso side of a leaf within the second-last gathering of the manuscript. The recto side of that leaf preserves 22 lines that constitute an enumeration of the names and first lines of verses 1 to 34 and verse 36 of Háttatal,15 and although spaces have been left for headings within the text of the treatise, they have not always been written (see especially p. 99, where generous spaces have been left before verses 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15). Other metrical names in the summary list in the Uppsala manuscript are “bragarháttr” (st. 31) and “langlokum,” the latter term also written into the Regius text by the second hand, and used by the author of the so-called Fourth Grammatical Treatise preserved in Codex Wormianus of Snorra Edda. It is the pedagogic aspect of Snorri’s work that seems to have been at the forefront of later compilers’ minds, as they assiduously numbered types of verseforms for ease of reference16 and, in the Uppsala Codex, provided the table of names and first lines of stanzas set out in memorable form. While the manuscript evidence of the transmission of Snorra Edda in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries indicates a continuing interest in vernacular poetics, the Prologue to the grammatical treatises in Codex Wormianus opens a window onto a rather different picture of poetics from Snorri’s or Óláfr’s time. By the mid–fourteenth century when the writer of the Prologue identifies the contemporary audience for skaldic poetics, it had become a thoroughly literate one. Literary poetics has created “ny skáld” who, along with learned men and especially clerics (“fræði menn, ok æinkannlega klerkarner”), constituted the practitioners of the new skaldic art (Ólsen 1884, 153). While its roots in ancient native tradition are acknowledged, the art of composition is now cultivated in a different intellectual spirit, one informed by an explicit Christian ideology, and an overtly literate

15.

See Grape et al. 1962–77 for the facsimile and transcription of p. 93.

16.

The numbering system varies between manuscripts. See the textual notes in Faulkes 1991, 41–47.

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mind-set. In contrast to Snorri’s careful balancing of the value of oral and written sources, recourse is now recommended to books of exemplar rather than memorized poems, with authority vested in the written rather than the spoken word. The new skaldic art is to be practised according to the tradition of ancient poets “vtan þat xem klerklegar bækr banna, þviat þat er nattvrvligt at menn xe nv xmaxmvglarí xem fræði bækrnar dreifaz nv viðara” [except where clerical books sanction against it, for it is only natural that men have become more pedantic now that learned books are distributed more widely] (Ólsen 1884, 153). Books have become not only the essential guide to skaldic praxis, but the reason why the traditional oral art is now considered inferior to the new literary one: þviat vandara var þeim að tala, xem ekki hofðv fyrer ser, enn þeim, xem nv hafa ymixligar freði bekr (Ólsen 1884, 155) [because it was more difficult for them to compose, who did not have in front of them the various learned books that (poets) now have]

Throughout the Prologue its writer emphasizes the newness of both the practitioner (“ny xkalld” [Ólsen 1884, 152, 153]) and the art — “epter ny fvndinni letr lixt” [according to the newly articulated ars poetica] (Ólsen 1884, 155) — in which the rules for practice, including the new verseforms for poetry, have been set out. Following Snorri’s example in his Edda, a distinction is encouraged between knowledge of certain aspects of traditional poetics that enable ancient poems to be understood, and proficiency in the rules of the new ars poetica (Ólsen 1884, 153, 155), a theme which is reiterated in a passage of the Fourth Grammatical Treatise (Ólsen 1884, 136), a work contemporary with the Prologue which may in fact have been by the same author (Raschellà 1993, 237). The Prologue writer defines the new ars poetica according to what Snorri permits (Ólsen 1884, 155), and it is clear from references outside scholarly treatises that the Edda had become canonized by the fourteenth century as a textbook on native poetics. As a new term in circulation, eddu list, makes clear, poetics had come to be defined by the book, and the new ars poetica was conceived in the idiom of Latin learning, as reglur eddu. But those using these terms used them disparagingly, to characterize a poetics that clashed with the changing taste of some members of Iceland’s literati. Yfirmeisturum mun Eddu listar allstirður sjá hróður virðaz þeim er vilja svá grafa ok geyma grein klókasta fræðibóka; lofi heilagra líz mér hæfa ljós ritninga sætra vitni, en kenningar auka monnum engan styrk en fagnað myrkva. Guðmundar drápa 78 (Jónsson 1912–15, B2:461) [This praise poem will be considered very rigid by the headmasters of the Eddic art, to those who wish to seek out and pay heed to learned books’ esoteric rules; the clear

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testimony of sweet writings seems to me fitting for holy men’s praise, for kennings increase no man’s strength but darken joy.] Rædda ek lítt við reglur Eddu ráðin mín, ok kvað ek sem bráðast vísur þær, er vil ek ei hrósa, verkinn erat sjá mjúkr i kverkum; stirða hefir ek ár til orða, ekki má af slíku þekkjaz, arnar leir hefig yðr at færa, emka ek fróðr hjá skáldum góðum. Guðmundar kvæði byskups 2 (Jónsson 1912–15, B2:372) [I cared little for the Eddic rules in my design, and as soon as possible I composed my verses, which I do not want to boast about, my poem is not soft in the throat; my oar of words (tongue) is stiff, such a thing won’t be pleasing, I have only the eagle’s mud to offer you, I’m not clever in the company of good poets.] varðar mest til allra orða, undirstaðan sé réttlig fundin, eigi glogg þóat eddu regla undan hljóti at víkja stundum. Sá, er óðinn skal vandan velja, velr svá morg í kvæði at selja hulin fornyrðin, at trautt má telja, tel ek þenna svá skilning dvelja; vel því at hér má skýr orð skilja, skili þjóðir minn ljósan vilja, tal óbreytiligt veitt af vilja, vil ek at kvæðit heiti Lilja. Lilja 97–98 (Jónsson 1912–15, B2:415–16) [it is most important that the true sense be rightly understood, though the rule of the Edda, quite unclear, might sometimes have been disregarded. Whoever chooses to compose elaborate poetry chooses to present in the poem so many obscure old expressions that may scarcely be counted: I declare this hinders understanding; because one can understand well the plain words here, people will apprehend my clear will — familiar words, given with joy — I wish this poem to be called Lily.]

To the Abbots Árni Jónsson and Arngrímr Brandsson, authors of the two poems in honour of Bishop Guðmundr, and to Lilja’s poet Eysteinn Ásgrímsson, the ars poetica of the Edda is associated with schoolroom learning and the clever display of difficulty. It is regarded as inimical to claritas, the goal of Christian devotional composition, because of its use of kennings. Whereas Snorri delighted in the play of meanings such intricate diction could create, these poets eschew it, relishing instead the modesty topos of referring to themselves as unlearned poets (“emka ek fróðr”) and to their poetry as the dregs of the poetic mead (“arnar leir”) so valued by the skalds of the old tradition. One of Snorri’s declared aims in his

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Edda, to illuminate “þat er hulit var” so that the skaldic tradition would be neither forgotten nor deprived of its rich field of reference, is directly countered by the new ethos of Christian poets. This ethos appears to have stemmed not from the Icelandic milieu of learned antiquarianism but from that of “det norske atlantimperium” to quote Stefán Karlsson’s phrase (1979, 13), from the circle of powerful clerics who held sway in Norway and Iceland in the first half of the fourteenth century (Foote [1982] 1984, 267) and whose Icelandic members may have emulated the tastes of Norway rather than Iceland. There were some rules of the Edda, however, that these poets clearly followed to the letter. They composed in hrynhent, the eight-syllable variation of dróttkvætt that centuries earlier had incorporated the trochaic beat of Latin verse, and which Snorri included in his models for composition (st. 64). While espousing a poetics of semantic clarity in stanza 97, Eysteinn flambuoyantly displays the metrical sophistication of his verse by composing in dunhent (where, in Snorri’s definition, there are the same words at the beginning of the second and fourth lines as are at the end of the first and third) as well as with end-rhyme (Foote [1982] 1984, 266). In so doing, he reveals the line of cleavage between metrical form and diction that had developed in the vernacular tradition once it was conceived in terms of a literary ars poetica. The formal division between mál and hættir that forms the basis for Snorri’s organization of the Edda is enunciated in Skáldskaparmál: Þa mælti Bragi: Tven erv kyn þa, er greina skaldskap allan. Ægir spyr: Hver tven? Bragi s(egir): Mal ok hættir. (Jónsson 1931, 85) [Then spoke Bragi: There are two categories into which all poetry is divided. Ægir asked: Which two? Bragi said: Language and verse-forms.] (Faulkes 1987, 64)

During the early centuries of literary production in Iceland, the verseforms of the Norse vernacular tradition remained resilient partly because of their capacity to incorporate influences from Latin poetics and to be turned to new generic purposes, both devotional and antiquarian. The traditional art of poetic circumlocution, however, was so deeply rooted in the culture of pre-Christian myth and so dependent on a taste for word-play that its reception in learned circles was more problematic, particularly considering the influence the Christian church had on schooling and textual production during this period. The fact that Snorri’s Edda continued to be copied in the fourteenth century suggests that some members of the scholarly community in Iceland appreciated both the mál and hættir of traditional poetics, and considered eddu list worthy of at least secular canonization.

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In memoriam Bjarne Fidjestøl 30 September 1937 – 9 February 1994 Colleague and Friend I cannot remember exactly when I first met Bjarne Fidjestøl, but I do remember the first impression he made on me. It was of a man both gentle and charming, and someone whose interests in skaldic poetry were as keen as mine, and probably much more firmly based. I had been reading his scholarly works for a long time before I met him, and in my estimation in the early 1980s (the time when we probably did meet) he was asking the interesting questions about skaldic verse and writing the most interesting articles and books of anyone in the field at that time. I had already read and admired his article on skaldic style (“Kenningsystemet,” Maal og minne 1974, 7–50) while I was starting to think about my own approach to skaldic poetics in the late 1970s and early 80s. His work in this article, so obviously informed by linguistic theory and so rigorous in its approach, was very exciting to me and at the same time gave me a basis from which to move towards a position on the nature of skaldic poetics as presented in Snorri’s Edda. Then, in 1982, Bjarne published his doctoral dissertation as Det norrøne fyrstediktet, an important work in which he addressed a number of vital questions regarding the relationship between kings’ sagas from the perspective of a scholar of the skaldic verse they contain. This I also admired, because it seemed to me that the way forward in skaldic studies was and still is to consider the corpus of skaldic verse as it has come down to us in coherent manuscript and generic groups, to edit it paying attention to these groupings and to their relationships. Bjarne had made a beginning for the kings’ sagas, and I thought this was very much a step in the right direction. My first definite memory of Bjarne was at the Sixth International Saga Conference at Helsingør in 1985. I was so pleased that he wanted to get together a group of those present who were interested in skaldic poetry to consider re-editing the corpus in order to get over, once and for all, the chicken-and-egg problem posed by the existence of Finnur Jónsson’s edition of Skjaldedigtning and his re-edition of the Lexicon poeticum — how the one feeds into the other and makes it impossible for the scholar to get at the manuscript evidence for the poetry, unless he or she goes to the manuscripts themselves on every occasion. I remember a small group of us met in some underground bunker at LO-skolen to devise a plan for the great new edition and talked a long way into the night. We needed an anchor-man, as they say in the media, someone who could take control of a world-wide operation to re-edit the corpus of skaldic verse. Although Bjarne had proposed the grand plan, with characteristic modesty he did not put himself forward to coordinate it. We needed someone with a computer base (we thought in terms of mainframes in those days), and there really wasn’t anyone of the group able at the time to take on that anchor-man position. So, unfortunately, the grand plan for a re-edition of the skaldic corpus is no nearer fulfilment now than it was in 1985, but it is worth putting on record that the plan was Bjarne’s and that it was typical of him to think big. Bjarne’s research and writing were characterized by elegant theory, intellectual adventurousness, an interest in methodologies both within and beyond literary boundaries, and a fine literary sensitivity to the texts he wrote and talked about. His edition of Sólarljóð (1979) demonstrates all his qualities of philological exactness, intellectual daring, and interpretative sensitivity. The fact that he died giving a lecture is somehow characteristic of him too and shows the intellectual and academic engagement of the man, as well as his intellectual

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altruism. One of his last scholarly acts was to post an e-mail message on oldnorsenet on the morning of 9 February, again showing his deep involvement with his subject, his use of new technologies, and his desire to communicate his ideas to all who were interested in Old Norse studies, to senior scholars and beginners alike. There were many other sides to Bjarne that I was not privileged to know. Odd Einar Haugen evokes some of them in the obituary he wrote for Bergens Tidende and Aftenposten and posted on oldnorsenet on 22 February 1994. He refers there to the unfinished work Bjarne was preparing on eddic poetry and the new Norwegian literary history which appeared only a few weeks before he died. Among many other things one might mention, it should be placed on record here that Bjarne was a great supporter of alvíssmál. All of us who work in Old Norse studies and who knew Bjarne have been both shocked and saddened by his death, but we shall remember him, and his writings and personal influence will keep his memory green. Margaret Clunies Ross

alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 93–94

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nthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins, editors. Viking Revaluations: Viking Society Centenary Symposium, 14– 15 May 1992. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1993. 204 pages. Although ostensibly the reassessments of a century of scholarship, these fourteen, generally brief, articles better illustrate the ongoing adjustments and occasional new directions that contribute to the incremental growth in knowledge in the various disciplines that can, more or less adequately, be subsumed under the heading Viking Studies. The volume has three main sections, “Centenary Revaluations,” “Current Problems (1): Pagan Beliefs and Christian Impact,” and “Current Problems (2): Scandinavian Society 800–1100.” Guidance from the Viking Society for Northern Research in the interests of a balanced volume seems to have determined the subjects for consideration, with several of the contributors, particularly those not resident in Great Britain, having their topics designed for, as Gunnar Karlsson recalls it, “a sweepingly authoritative review” (23). Other, British members of the Society may well have worked within the constraints of a similar invitation. Thus, not all readers and perhaps not all writers would prefer to see studies of the Icelandic family sagas the object of a retrospective, while eddic studies enjoy the slightly more prestigious situation of “problem area,” albeit chiefly as concerns the less than straightforward advance from heathendom to Christendom. Centenary celebrations are by nature self-congratulatory, but to the credit of the contributors the first section — with the most explicit revaluations — does not succumb to an easy condescension toward past scholarly achievements nor does it exhibit too great a respect, in terms of either temporal or topical parameters, for the “Viking” qualifier of the volume’s title. Throughout we find less concern for weaknesses of earlier methodology or erroneous conclusions on the basis of inadequate evidence than a desire to identify the ideological positions from which such scholarship was undertaken. But for this reviewer at least, retrospectives genalvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 95–99

95 erally have something of the after-dinner speech about them: informed, witty, entertaining, and thankfully without the compulsion to take notes. Knut Helle opens the section with “Norway, 800–1200” (1–14). His summary observation applies equally well to the volume’s broader range of subjects: “Medieval society has increasingly been studied as a totality in which there is a functional connection between all occurrences — including economic and social as well as political and cultural phenomena. At the same time there has been a movement away from the study of political events to research into structural and institutional aspects of society” (4). Helle reviews various explanations of the Viking phenomenon but chooses to emphasize the consequences for domestic society, the opening of Norway to the greater European world. Helle’s review leads him to conclude that “it is difficult today to maintain the view that the starting point of Norwegian social history was a society of more or less equal freeholders” (9), although only in the thirteenth century was there sufficient social and political organization, and the associated ideology, to bind the kingdom of Norway together. In this the lay magnates are to be seen as furthering more than checking royal aspirations. While ecclesiastical organization also served monarchical ends, functional royal authority could not be maintained without the well-being and support of the agrarian population. Here, a word on the media of communication among these groups, e.g., via royal functionaries, residence at court, the judicial process, would have been a welcome complement. Despite the king’s assumption of the judicial power apparatus and his ideological position as source and enforcer of justice, Helle generally concurs with Ernst Sars’ position of a century ago that Norway until 1200 was “a not particularly aristocratic society” (13). Gunnar Karlsson’s “A Century of Research on Early Icelandic Society” (15–25) deals with the dissociation, after the nationalist period, of literary and historical studies with the bookprose theory as chief culprit (17), although blame also attaches to historians reluctant to approach the sagas in innovative ways, ways that have now resulted in the vogue for social history. With reference

96 to the fathers of such history, Karl Polanyi’s seven years as professor of economics at Columbia University hardly qualify him as an “American anthropologist” (20). Nor do the University of Iceland and, more recently, contemporary scholars indifferent to research in Icelandic escape Karlsson’s critical eye. He does, however, give full credit to the novelty of recent, broadly speaking, anthropological scholarship on Iceland, while stating reservations as to some of its theoretical base. Optimistically he claims that the sagas and lawbooks “are far from exhausted as sources for history” (24). This is a diplomat’s paper, ostensibly observing all proprieties but not devoid, I suspect, of delicious touches for the informed insider. In “The Sagas of Icelanders” (26–42), Vésteinn Ólason selects the concepts of “appreciation” and “interpretation” in his review of a century’s study of individual saga voices and the voice of the genre as a whole. Succinct analyses are offered of the ideological vantage points of Ker, Heusler, and the lesser known Vilhelm Grønbech, whose historical and philosophical interests enjoy the author’s critical sympathy. A consideration of the Icelandic school (Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Sigurður Nordal) leads abroad again to the work of contributors such as Liestøl, Andersson, Lönnroth, Harris, Byock, Miller, and approaches variously termed European, formalist, and sociological. After the description of a century’s scholarship, Vésteinn turns prescriptive with regard to the welcome addition of audience and reception to saga studies. Consideration here must include “(1) the forming of tradition in the centuries prior to saga writing and its nature in that early society, (2) the development of a literary tradition from the introduction of Christianity onwards, (3) the rise and development of the writing of Íslendingasögur in the 13th century, and (4) the conditions of reception at the time of writing” (38). A rather different approach to the task of survey is taken by Diana Whaley in her consideration of the “The Kings’ Sagas” (43–64). A synthesis of accumulated knowledge is provided in sections dealing rewardingly with definition, the place of Heimskringla in the corpus, and five aspects central to past and likely future research: alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 95–99

Rezensionen earliness, Norwegian connections, clerical influences, literary affiliations, and historical basis. This article, too, closes with a look to the future and the promise of further investigations of the ideology of the konungasögur and their place in the development of sagawriting generally. The volume turns to certain of the Viking Society’s founders in Michael Barnes’ “Norse in the British Isles” (65–84). Here, too, the requisite survey of past achievement has not kept the author from providing a most useful overview of the many contested questions — definitional, methodological, quantitative, especially demographical — that still figure prominently in efforts to assess the impact of Norse on the languages of the British Isles. The discussion, which Barnes characterizes as “from a Scandinavian point of view” (81), moves through mutual intelligibility, pidgins and creoles, the status of native and imported languages in given communities, the modes of language fusion, and the pathology of language death. The discussion of Norse and Irish is particularly welcome in this context, providing a further vantage point from which to address the more vigorously debated question of the role of Norse and Anglo-Norse in the development of English. The retreat of Norse, more exactly Norn, in Orkney and Shetland in the face of Scots turns the tables yet again, to the article’s profit. In this last context, it would be useful in the discussion of language eclipse to consider not just phonology, morphology, and lexicon, but also language functions and the shrinking of occasions when one language might be pertinently used, in the case of Norn to the fishing boat, the rural farm, and its elderly inhabitants. In Barnes’ view, the scanty nature of the evidence makes even more desirable clear definitions and rigorous adherence to them, and the judicious, even sceptical, application of theories and models. Christine Fell’s “Norse Studies: Then, Now, and Hereafter” (85–99) is perhaps the contribution that best recalls, to my mind, its possible original oral presentation. And, to judge from the title, this contributor may have been given the freest hand. Here we find equal parts: fact, scholarly opinion, and personal tastes — and no little hint of

Rezensionen cliquishness. Following Barnes’ article, this presentation continues with an insular focus as a survey of the British contribution to Norse studies, and not just that of the last hundred years. Like several other contributors Fell calls attention to continuing imbalances in what we would hope were interdisciplinary studies and in international scholarly cooperation. She includes cautionary words on the temptation to cross other frontiers into the world of the “coffeetable book” and, with even greater seriousness in this era of financial constraint, on the image of the scholar: “The media image of our profession is deeply injurious to us . . . We must not only be committed to being professionals but to being seen as professionals” (98). Part Two, one of a pair on the problematics of the Christian impact on pagan belief, is opened by Bjarne Fidjestøl with “The Contribution of Scaldic Studies” (100–20). As might be expected, this is a solidly based study on the level of the difficult detail of skaldic verse composed in honour of princes, with the probe here intended to reach “the more unconscious level of [the skalds’] poetic diction” (100), specifically in the occurrence of names of divine beings (including the Christian God) in kennings in the period from about 950 to 1274. The rewarding insights are many, e.g., “These [expressions with sem goð] are the earliest examples of the idea of something like ‘king by the grace of God’ in Old Norse literature, and it is worthwhile noticing that, with one relatively untypical exception . . . all refer to English or Dano-English kings, namely Ethelred and Canute” (106). The author is sensitive to the compositional constraints of the skalds, the fact that a highly stylized, formal language cannot be changed overnight. Fidjestøl notes restraint in the skalds’ use of religious motifs for political purposes, but nonetheless traces the emergence of the representation of King Óláfr as Norway’s eternal king as “one of the most salient ideological themes in the medieval history of the Norwegian monarchy” (108). Closer examination of two representatives of the transitional period, Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld and Sigvatr Þórðarson, closes the article. Conclusions, briefly, are that the court skalds took to the new religion alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 95–99

97 quickly, perhaps as a dimension of their allegiance to their lord, and that real syncretism is hard to detect. Ursula Dronke’s parallel piece on “The Contribution of Eddic Studies” (121–27) is brief and is devoted to the thesis that Voluspá and Rígsþula are poems “designed under Christian intellectual influence [but] . . . for pagan, not for Christian ends” (122). Yet the immediately following statement (“The poet adapted Christian genres and Christian theological subtleties to give finer articulation to pagan material” [122]) does not necessarily lead to that conclusion, since the use of pagan material and pagan ends are not necessarily coincident. This important issue recurs in Roesdahl’s consideration of royal burial practices (infra). Dronke promises a fuller exposition of this argument in forthcoming editions of the two poems. The present synopsis gives little indication of what religious, social, or political ends could have been pursued in this kind of reversal of the conventional pattern of pagan-Christian syncretism. Else Roesdahl’s résumé of currently available information on the Jelling burial site illustrates advances made in interdisciplinary studies originating in archaeological evidence (“Pagan Beliefs, Christian Impact, and Archaeology — a Danish View” [128– 36]). Crossing disciplines also encourages crossing borders, and the author notes that “the seemingly enormous mixture and variation in Scandinavian Viking-Age burialcustoms begin to make sense when it is realized that certain burial-types mainly belong to particular regions within Scandinavia and differ from those found elsewhere and at other times . . . Moreover, in interpreting their material, archaeologists have become much more aware that the various Scandinavian regions had different external connections and were influenced by different parts of the world” (130). In the remainder of the article Roesdahl pursues selected topics related to burial customs and cult sites; of particular interest are the problematics of the relocation of Christian churches in response to growing needs, in contrast to the simplistic notion of Christian building on pagan foundations. But when a specific burial is identified as “an expression of a late pagan

98 religious and cultural revival” (132, my emphasis) it seems to me that religious motifs are too readily being taken at face value as expressions of personal belief or a realignment in state religion. Like genealogies, other trappings of the past could be exploited to provide historical depth and legitimacy to a ruling house or prominent family without entailing any resurgence of paganism or active obstruction of the advancing Christianization of an emergent state. Roesdahl speaks for several contributors in concluding that “archaeological sources, supported by written ones, also point increasingly to the tenth and eleventh centuries (the conversion period in Scandinavia) as a period of general turmoil and development, political, social, and artistic” (134). On balance, however, the transition from paganism to Christianity seems to have been relatively peaceful — unless our evidence too exclusively reflects outcome rather than process. Peter Foote concludes this section with the important theoretical distinction for historical studies between “Historical Studies: Conversion Moment and Conversion Period” (137–44) and a profession of interest in “that obscure interim period between the time of official conversion and the age of Church consolidation” (137). Foote announces “hearty overstatements” (137), but his contribution is most useful for its acute reposing of still intractable questions concerning the adjustment of external attitudes, personal and communal, that followed conversion; the assimilation of Christian ideas in ethics; perspectives on the past and future; the mingling of past and present, of pagan and Christian, in men’s minds. Several brief case histories lead him to conclude of some “influential men of cool, unfanatical mind . . . that they represented intellectually uncommitted attitudes, ranging perhaps from welldeveloped cynicism to active free-thinking.” Accepting this, we may find “the obscurity of the atmosphere in which pre-Christian poetry and mythology survived the conversion . . . perceptibly lightened” (143). The third section, “Scandinavian Society 800–1100,” while purporting to pick up the thread from Karlsson and Helle, is in truth more of a mixed bag. R. I. Page’s “The Contribution of Runic Studies” (145–59) alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 95–99

Rezensionen offers a retrospective of its own, albeit a dark one. Then, turning from historians who dismissed rune-stones because patrons and those honoured could not be identified to contemporary scholarship, he states: “Questions of land ownership and inheritance of wealth are central in any study of the runic evidence for Viking society” (149) and invites consideration of some stones as legal documents. He also anticipates Jesch’s contribution (infra) in questioning accepted definitions of terms such as drengr, þegn, búmaðr on memorial stones. Reviewing the most recent finds from Bergen and Dublin, Page offers for the latter a welcome complement to Barnes’ exposition on language contact in Ireland and sounds a cautionary note on the assumption of widespread use of the runic alphabet for commercial purposes. Lastly, identified as current problems are the credibility of runic inscriptions for historical purposes, the statistical background of our scant evidence, comparative studies (e.g., the relevance of Swedish evidence for the Norwegian situation), the validity and usefulness of a concept of palaeography, the hermeneutics of this elliptical discourse (my phrasing). Judith Jesch, in her introduction to “Skaldic Verse and Viking Semantics” (160– 71), also usefully provides a set of methodological desiderata. However sound these appear, I must take odds with the statement regarding the special problems of skaldic diction: “The skalds needed many synonyms for and variations on terms for men of high rank and warrior status, and the exigencies of skaldic metre would not have allowed them to be too fastidious about their choice of word” (162). I would hazard the speculation that the skalds would find this a rather mean-spirited description of the metonymical movement between function- or statusspecific words (e.g., ekkja ‘widow’) and universalized meaning (“woman”), when the very thrust of encomiastic skaldic verse is to raise the particular to the archetypal and to exploit the tension between the topical and the universal. Jesch turns then to an examination of skaldic meanings for drengr and þegn. These are revealed to “belong to a semantic sphere that demonstrates the workings of the society that produced and consumed skaldic verse” rather than “technical

Rezensionen terms of rank” or “general terms of approbation” (164). Preben Meulengracht Sørensen returns to the concerns of section one of the volume in “Historical Reality and Literary Form” (172–81), although his review is mostly of contemporary saga scholarship as illustrated in the work of Hastrup, Miller, Bagge, and Steinsland. Deploring most of the past century’s lack of a “firm hermeneutic base” (173) on which to found studies of saga ethics or historicity, for example, Meulengracht Sørensen’s concern for the “revaluations” of the collection’s title turns out to be an agenda for future work, rather than a new synthesis of work to date. The merit of his essay is to recall forcefully how much remains to be done with the sagas as essentially literary texts. In terms of evidence reviewed, Bjørn Myhre’s “The Beginning of the Viking Age — Some Current Archaeological Problems” (182–204 plus 12 pages of illustrations) is the richest contribution to the collection and a fitting close. His “main hypothesis is that the archaeological material from the 8th and 9th centuries should be read and interpreted as a corpus of symbolic expressions of economic, ideological and political negotiation” and not simply “as functional and thus as an objective source that could be used to state quite directly what the Viking Period involved” (198). The importance of the notion of human dynamics introduced by the term “negotiation” should not be minimized, especially as this applies to the economic and political network that developed around the southern shores of the North Sea about 700. Norwegian rulers’ keen awareness of AngloSaxon and Carolingian expansionist aspirations was the stimulus, and supplied in part a model, for strengthening Norwegian polity. The Church’s missionary activity accompanied this increasing pressure on southern Norway. What we see as Viking raids, supplanting the earlier trading venture, is in part a response to this political, economical, religious, and cultural encroachment. This essay, too, ties into Barnes’ concerns when Myhre writes of Norse activity beyond Scandinavia proper: “Only during the stressed and competitive phase of the 8th century was a distinct ethnic identity alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 95–99

99 symbolically expressed by the Norse on the islands [Northern and Western Isles], principally in burial practice, costume, jewellery and art-styles. As the Scandinavians gradually took political control in the North [of the British Isles] the situation reversed, and many of the local population adjusted their material culture to the Norse, symbolically becoming Norse” (197). Intended or not, this neatly closes the circle whose inscription started in the volume’s opening pages with the foundation of the Viking Society for Northern Research, whose centenary is celebrated well, if at times a bit quirkily and repetitiously, in this collection. William Sayers

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jarni Guðnason. Túlkun Heiðarvígasögu. Studia Islandica 50. Reykjavík: Bókmenntafræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands, 1993. 287 pages.

In approaching Bjarni Guðnason’s Túlkun Heiðarvígasögu it should be borne in mind that it is a late product of the Icelandic school, which for the last sixty years or so has focused on the written record, assumed that literate “authors” consciously shaped each of the extant Íslendingasögur, and ignored the claim (and its growing significance) that they developed out of an oral culture. What this suggests about the book under review is that — even aside from the language in which it is written — no experienced scholar would doubt its author’s nationality nor his generation. What this does not mean, on the other hand, is that it ought to be met with measured indifference, for in some ways it breaks with the school’s approach and will stimulate specific discussion of this much-neglected but fascinating saga as well as of the sagas in general. Bjarni disagrees with the traditional view of Heiðarvíga saga as a clumsy narrative account of feuding and reads it instead as a subtle Christian allegory. Bjarni argues that the author was less interested in history than in propagating an idea: killing, whether the thirty-three twisted acts of the psychopathic Víga-Styrr or the revenge exploits of Barði, violates God’s law, results from the strong hold paganism exerted on saga characters and even thirteenth-century Icelanders, and threatens the perpetrators with eternal damnation unless their evil deeds are expiated. Everything in the saga — events; characters; their names, words, and deeds; even place-names — serves the saga’s allegorical ends. Like any literary code, allegory disguises its message, and Bjarni’s major contribution to an understanding of the saga is his attempt to crack the code. First, he stresses the importance of King Óláfr’s rejection of Barði because of his forneskja, by which Óláfr means neither the practice of paganism as such (Barði is, after all, a Christian) nor individual acts of black magic (Bjarni convincingly refutes this alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 100–102

Rezensionen charge), but rather Barði’s revenge killings and his belief in his “own might and main” (59). St. Óláfr condemns these acts because he himself no longer practices them (“vér hofum þat [i.e., forneskja] svá mjok frá oss skilit”). Aside from specific arguments, all of them worthy of debate, one problem with this interpretation is the importance placed on Óláfr’s words, which might seem to some readers a late accretion to the saga (see, e.g., Sigurður Nordal in his edition of Borgfirðinga sogur [Íslenzk fornrit 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1933), cxxxvi]). For Bjarni they echo the author’s own convictions, voice the thematic core of the saga, and represent its final judgment towards which the author’s crafting inevitably points. Bjarni avers that the author regarded St. Óláfr as God’s proxy on earth (49) — and thus the most powerful Nordic spokesman for Christian doctrine — but, if so, one might wonder what dogma the king would be expressing when in Fóstbrœðra saga chap. 24 (Íslenzk fornrit 6:259) he chastizes Þormóðr for excessive bloodtaking, only then to approve his killings after Þormóðr misleadingly claims that such revenge had been taken on those who had compared him to a mare among stallions. Bjarni cites this analogue but does not explore its implications (56). Even if Bjarni correctly interprets authorial intention, where does the king’s hypocritical stance — saint or not, he repudiates violence without relinquishing its fruits — leave us? Shouldn’t God be more careful about his choice of proxies? Bjarni then turns to a discussion of Þuríðr’s hvöt (incitement) and her ofanför (an allusion to God’s descent to earth and her plunge into the brook). Regarding Þuríðr and St. Óláfr as thematic opposites, Bjarni adds an important chapter to the recent literature on the hvöt topos (Clover, Jochens, Miller, none of which he mentions). The similarities to and differences from other types are meant to show that Þuríðr’s whetting characterizes her as a heroine of pagan cast bent on revenge at any cost (77). Likewise, his discussion of Þuríðr’s ofanför stresses her manic revenge ethic. But in his glossing of names and his choice of alleged parallels (83–91) — especially that drawn between Þuríðr’s falling into the brook and

Rezensionen Þórr’s crossing the river Vimr — Bjarni expands the parameters of ingenuity to the breaking point. I am sceptical of his glossing of “symbolic” names on the grounds that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; Bjarni’s choice of “parallels” at various stages of his book is uneven, and on occasion they undercut his points. Nevertheless, he makes the sensible observation that Þuríðr’s whetting is largely superfluous: Barði and his brothers had long since completed their preparations for their journey of revenge before she launches her attack. The whetting’s significance remains a problem, but one that Bjarni deserves credit for highlighting. From Þuríðr Bjarni turns to the Christian figurations and their opposites. He points out that Guðlaugr Snorrason, as a man of God, is exempted from revenge-taking. The case for Gestr as a Christian figure, on the other hand, rests on the putative analogical character of the biblical David’s saga. Both figures are favored by God: Gestr’s killing of Víga-Styrr can be excused on the same grounds as David’s slaying of Goliath (some men’s enemies are God’s enemies); Gestr enjoys God’s protective hand during Þorsteinn Styrsson’s three attacks as does David when under threat from Saul; Gestr’s mildness towards Þorsteinn demonstrates the saga’s main theme, the superiority of forgiveness over revenge in achieving peace. I can think of two or three objections — for some saga figures killing them is the only answer; David is a type of kolbítr; showing mercy to an enemy with your foot on his neck may be a sign of pride (think of Sámr and Hrafnkell); forgiving an enemy is easier when he has been thrice reduced to grovelling. However, in expanding Theodore M. Andersson’s point about ójafnaðarmenn in general and VígaStyrr in particular (“The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family sagas,” Speculum 45 [1970]: 580–81), Bjarni’s discussion verges on staving in unlocked doors, and his contention that the posthumous Víga-Styrr’s soul is in the snares of the devil (134) smacks of the fundamentalist preacher. Bjarni’s characterization of Barði (“the Beater”) Guðmundarson as a man of excess in opposition to Andersson’s view of him as a man of moderation will prove controversial, but Bjarni makes his case with gusto. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 100–102

101 He sees Barði as not very bright, deceptive, unethical, and hypocritical in conducting his lawsuit (he is, on the other hand, prosecuting a lawsuit against recalcitrant opponents); his divorcing Guðrún (his first wife) signifies that revenge is often visited upon the innocent and shows that Barði’s temperament prevents his settling the lawsuit peacefully; his second divorce demonstrates that gratitude, consideration, tolerance, forbearance, and love are foreign to his nature. But Bjarni does recognize that Barði “is two men in the saga”: on the one hand, heedful in following his mentor’s advice, but on the other mocking and vindictive in his dealings with Þórðr melrakki, so that neither his brother’s death, nor his father-in-law’s parsimony, nor a considerate or aggressive wife is necessary to drive him to revenge (149). Barði is a fighter in peace and war (151), but he differs from Víga-Styrr, who kills for the love of it, whereas Barði in following the laws of men breaks the laws of God. God refuses VígaStyrr a place in his court, just as St. Óláfr rejects Barði (153). Thus, Barði is a warning to Christian men, whereas Gestr is a “guiding star” (158). In my view this interpretation attributes to saga characterization an anachronistic psychological dimension. Víga-Styrr would be objectionable in any society and condemned by all ethical systems. Moreover, the Gestr episode shows how power in the right hands, not mercy, preserves peace. Finally, perhaps two traditional Barðis have been crudely stitched together — as if the bad Hrútr from Laxdœla saga and the good Hrútr from Njáls saga appeared as one in a *Breiðafjarðarvíga saga. In order finally to demonstrate the saga’s advocacy of peace Bjarni touches on three apparently unrelated features (159–74): griðamál ‘truce formulations’, the character Eiðr Skeggjason, and the place-name Gullteigr ‘Peace-Meadow’ (172). The griðamál, rather than an unaesthetic intrusion, is the author’s clearest formulation of his theme; Eiðr, Þuríðr’s thematic opposite, is the author’s spokesman for peace; the meadow of peace is where the peace-breaker, Barði, kills Gísli (a type of hostage) according to the pattern established by Víga-Styrr. Bjarni rounds off his discussion of the saga per se by establishing a saga trinity of ages: (1) the

102 first is one of paganism and strife; (2) the second a period of Christianity in which Barði, a backslider, ruptures the peace; (3) the third is the future, a time in which peace reigns and people follow God’s law and live in harmony (174). If the meaning Bjarni teases out of Heiðarvíga saga was intended, then I wish the saga author had not been quite so subtle. I do not read Gestr as one of the chosen nor Víga-Styrr and Barði as God’s enemies; nor am I persuaded by many of the other elaborate attempts to interpret parts of the saga in this mold. (Not even all parts of an allegory are allegorical.) I understand how a cleric might have wished to Christianize the saga without being persuaded that one has in fact done so. I can also imagine how a medieval cleric might have used the saga as a text for a sermon whose message was the one Bjarni sees in the saga. But at issue here is where sermonizing ends and literary scholarship begins. The rest of Bjarni’s deliberations are the Icelandic school at its least useful: determining cross-current influences of one saga upon another in order to date the saga. Collectively, the members of the Icelandic school have said enough dubious things about the “age” of the sagas to qualify them as the used-car salesmen of the field. Bjarni is good at poking holes in the arguments of those who date the saga to about 1200, but then goes on to offer a later date; he is still wedded to the idea — for good reason virtually abandoned by scholars in other branches of medieval literature — that stylistic elegance tells us something about a work’s date (the literary-tradition-as-tulip theory; sagas bud, bloom, blast). And he still practices the this-is-like-this and that-is-like-that brand of comparison of saga bits, a method which, as Andersson pointed out thirty years ago, often fails to identify significant similarities (The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1964], 96–103). Sagas resemble each other not because of direct borrowing but because, as Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg have argued (The Nature of Narrative [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966], 43), they are the product of an oral tradition where authorship in the modern sense plays a secondary alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 100–102

Rezensionen role. (A saga author would no more have created an original saga than Bjarni could have made up an original Icelandic language in which to write his book; in both cases, though, something different and never before achieved was the happy result.) Bjarni’s discussion of direct speech (195–98) is wonderfully instructive, and it is a pity that he did not use his sensitivity to the language to discuss style as such rather than bending his insights to fit a tendentious dating of the saga. Rather than disagreeing with Nordal and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Bjarni might have confronted the mountain of evidence gathered from living oral traditions that tells us so much about the habits of oral storytellers. So many things might then have taken a different direction. Predictions are risky, but I nevertheless wager that Bjarni’s conclusions will receive mixed reactions: I can see many scholars of his generation flatly rejecting his interpretation, while the encroaching generation will love his treatment of the saga as allegory even while disagreeing at various points; many of those stuck in the middle (as well as in their ways), for whom the Íslenzk fornrit editions and the writings of Turville-Petre represent the Old and the New Testaments of literary theory, respectively, will be fleeing reading rooms everywhere, convinced a 7.9 Richter-scale earthquake is upon them. Cooler heads should read it in disbelieving joy and then reread all the Íslendingasögur with it in mind. Here is that rare book, written by a man who has forgotten more about the sagas than most of us will ever know, that teaches and delights by going over the top. Bjarni’s approach, insights, conclusions, and general implications for saga scholarship deserve to be widely debated and made part of the ongoing discourse. Fredrik J. Heinemann

Rezensionen

C

arolyne Larrington. A Store of Common Sense: Gnomic Theme and Style in Old Icelandic and Old English Wisdom Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 254 pages.

The title comes from Hávamál 10–11 (manvit mikit), which appears in English translations as — for example — “much good sense” (Thorpe), “mother wit” (Bray, Phillpotts), and “a good store of common sense” (Martin Clarke). To my ear the formulation sounds characteristically British and in any case declares Carolyne Larrington’s allegiances in a surprisingly turbulent field where “common sense” has become both an accusation and a banner. The focal point of this book, revised from a 1988 Oxford D. Phil. thesis, and of the controversy generally is Hávamál, especially the first, sapiential part of the poem; the extreme points of view are represented by D. A. H. Evans, in his 1986 edition and a series of subsequent debate pieces, and Klaus von See, who may be said to have inaugurated the modern phase of the debate in 1972. At stake is the cultural nature of Hávamál and, by extension, much Norse wisdom literature: native or classical-Christian? I reviewed the debate just before Evans’s edition (in Old Norse–Icelandic Literature [1985]), coming down on the native side, but the most recent survey is probably Bjarne Fidjestøl’s “Håvamål og den klassiske humanismen,” Maal og Minne 1992. Larrington’s account is bibliographically less complete than Fidjestøl’s, lacking especially the extensive contributions of Hermann Pálsson, including his major statement, Heimur Hávamála (1990). (She cites only Hermann’s work on the influence of Hugsvinnsmál — a monograph of 146 pages, rather than an article as it appears to be in Larrington.) This is understandable and probably partly due to the lag time necessary to digest such work and to book-production itself, but it does mean that despite Larrington (and another recent English book partly covering this terrain, Richard North, Pagan Words and Christian Meanings [1991]), Hermann Pálsson’s contributions have not been widely evaluated. A future stock-taking should include Heinz alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 103–7

103 Klingenberg’s version of a Christian writer (in Arbeiten zur Skandinavistik, ed. Otmar Werner [1989]). For the time being I remain of the “common sense” school with Evans and Larrington, but a middle position along Hermann Pálsson’s lines begins to seem less implausible. Less than thirty percent of Larrington’s book is occupied with Hávamál, but its first chapter, a sequential commentary on this “primary Norse text” (11), is the most detailed and thorough part of the book. The centrality of this poem constitutes an element of unity; as a whole, however, the book is a rapid, ground-covering introduction to Old Germanic gnomic poetry — wisdom poetry in Old English and Old Norse in comparative perspective. The central themes of the book are laid out on p. 11 as (1) the question of cultural origins (pagan, Christian, etc.) and reception, (2) poetic values and structures, and (3) the gnomic mode in other than gnomic genres (arguably an aspect of “validity” or reception). Larrington leaves implicit the justification for choosing just these two traditions to compare; but it must be that “there was a body of folk-wisdom, not yet in metrical form, a body which can be sensed as a living, pulsing, gnomic background to all Germanic poetry” (18). This vision of Old Germanic wisdom poetry speaks strongly to me, and her book has a liberal sprinkling of valuable literary insights. As a whole, however, it partakes of the loose forms of gnomic poetry itself; there are threads, valuable observations, and intertextual assumptions contributing toward an ideological unity, but not much of an integrating argument. Larrington’s understanding of Hávamál rejects Christian sources but does adopt (perhaps principally from von See) a series of poets and a final shaping, a “composite ‘author’ . . . ‘Both one and many . . . Both intimate and unidentifiable’” (19) — lines by Eliot that are proving useful in Norse studies. Her reading “illuminate[s] the major thematic movements, and demonstrate[s] the development of thought through verbal and logical links” (19). The commentary is especially good on the shifting first and third person voices of the poem (e.g., p. 33, where there is an original comparison to The Wan-

104 derer; developed at p. 192), on connections between thematic groupings (as at p. 34), and on the poem’s attitude toward women; there are missed opportunities for deepening the commentary (as when Lars Lönnroth’s “double scene” is not cited in connection with the “identity of locus and text” [20]), but rarely are readings pushed too hard for the sake of a thesis or a cross-grained cleverness. The overall trajectory of Hávamál is well analyzed; it is awkward that Larrington must register the transition from a worldly scene to a “transfigured hall” three times, not as stages (42, 48, 50), but this is true to the poem. Chapter 2 is an exposition of Grípisspá, Reginsmál, Fáfnismál, and Sigrdrífumál as complementary, not overlapping, sapiential lessons in the initiation of a hero, an oblique speculum principis. But the Young Sigurðr complex is traditionally regarded as somewhat arbitrarily segmented and based on a saga-like source, itself already a composite of parallel poems. How Larrington’s complementarity might comport with this older view of historical layers is not discussed. (A fresh approach is that of Judy Quinn in “Verseform and Voice in Eddic Poems: The Discourses of Fáfnismál,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 107 [1992]: 100–130.) I disagree with Larrington occasionally on details: in Fáfnismál 22 the “prophecy which is not fulfilled” (83) is not that “Reginn will prove as treacherous to Sigurðr as he has to his brother” — the dwarf has been and will remain treacherous by nature — but rather the specific “hann mun ocr verða báðom at bana.” The idea that the “attack and parry” of earlier dragon-fight schemas are preserved in the dramatic “ebb and flow” of talk in Fáfnismál, despite development to the pit-ambush version at the level of story, is striking but gains no support from Sigmund’s dragon-killing in Beowulf 884b– 897 (pp. 82, 86), an attack without parry. But again, Larrington provides a skillful general reading. Chapter 3 is something of an excursus, a specialized argument centering on von See’s reinterpretation of the relationship between Hugsvinnsmál and Hávamál making Hávamál the borrower. Larrington builds convincingly on Evans’s refutation of von See, but I think prior scholarship could have been alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 103–7

Rezensionen better integrated. Maria Elena Ruggerini’s learned “La ricezione dei Disticha Catonis nell’Islanda medievale,” in Cultura classica e cultura germanica settentrionale (Macerata 1985) is not mentioned though it covers much the same ground as Hermann Pálsson’s book of the same year. I agree that Sonatorrek 24.5–8 (“ok þat geð / es ek gerða mér / vísa fjandr / af [ms. at] vélondum”) is probably somehow the lender at Hugsvinnsmál 51.1–3 (“af gæzku þeiri / mátt þú gera þér / vísa fjándr at vinum”); but Larrington’s detailed treatment seems confused: “One suspects that ‘vélondum’ . . . is a corruption — we would wish for a word such as ‘velviljondum’ (well-wisher), which would fit the alliteration equally well” (113). But this would give double alliteration in a b-line, and the word, which would be a late formation, does not appear in Lexicon poeticum, CleasbyVigfusson, or Fritzner. Footnote 42 struggles with manuscript “at” here, but von See (in “Sonatorrek und Hávamál”) had already justified it satisfactorily. Whatever the relationship to Hugsvinnsmál, emendation need not be part of the explanation. With Chapter 4 the highroad is resumed in a presentation of the “range and themes” of Old English wisdom poetry. A good discussion of Maxims I and II accounts for juxtapositions and structures in a fashion similar to the treatment of Hávamál, but is itself abrupt in some transitions (e.g., from Jill Mann’s interesting thought to its contextualization, p. 125). Of Cotton Maxims 42–46 Larrington points out that the “gloomy weather provides good cover for the thief’s illicit activities, just as Grendel the þyrs stalks ‘under mist hleoþum’ [recte misthleoþum] . . . and ‘under wolcnum’ . . . Metaphorically the weather suggests the dark state of the man’s soul and that of the monster . . . The woman’s behaviour is less easy to account for” (133). The author could have tried a little harder with the famous crux of the woman’s actions, with the parallel of þeof, þyrs, and ides, and with the transition from þyrs to ides (cf. “þurs er kvenna kvöl”). The reading of the Rune Poem offers rewarding points, but in contrasting the “man” stanza of the Icelandic and OE poems Larrington finds the Icelandic “celebratory,” whereas moldar auki seems to me to be parallel in

Rezensionen sense to the OE “þæt earme flæsc eorþan betæcan” (135); Fortunes of Men and Precepts are treated to fruitful readings, with comparisons especially to Disticha Catonis and Hávamál, while the pages on Solomon and Saturn II focus on the poem’s balance between classical-Christian, especially Boethian, wisdom and Germanic background. Chapter 5 breaks with the commentary form in a wide-ranging essay linking man and nature, first through magic, then through a more abstract type of control through wisdom. The extra-Germanic gnomic material on nature is illuminating, but in Chapter 6 on “Gnomes in Elegy” the application of Greek lament genres is handled loosely: “lament and praise-poem” (174) is apparently meant to correspond to góos and thrênos, but “praise-poem” has a prior technical commitment in Germanic (cf. 185); on the next page both Greek forms seem to be “types of lament.” Discussion of Old Norse elegy is limited chiefly to a brief reading of the conclusion of Oddrúnargrátr and more technical treatments of Sonatorrek and Hákonarmál, both of which have some relationship to Hávamál. (Sonatorrek 25 does not have Egill mustering courage “to wait for Hel on the headland” [178]; instead she stands menacingly on the headland, but [þó] he will wait for her unafraid. And Larrington’s alternative — “rather than rush headlong towards her by starving himself to death” — conflates the prose with the poem.) Several good observations on Eyvindr’s poem lead to a vindication, against von See, of the traditional view of the relation of the last stanza with Hávamál 76–77 and The Wanderer 108–10 (The discussion in Leslie’s edition of The Wanderer, not cited, is well worth consulting.) But I am particularly struck by her interpretation of slíkan sefa in Hákonarmál 19: it is sefi that is “gotten” here in a significant substitution for the orztírr or dómr of Hávamál 76–77, which Eyvindr obviously had in his ear near the close of his poem. Larrington says that sefi “may be referring to some kind of spiritual development in Hákon, in learning the value of compromise in the matter of Christianizing Norway. This interpretation is borne out by the use of ‘slíkan’, referring back to the preceding verse alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 103–7

105 [st. 18], hence a spirit which was wise enough to preserve the pagan sanctuaries” (183). This is new, but finally I must disagree. Stanza 19 refers instead to the idea of rebirth and associates Hákon the Good with Baldr the Good, but the reference is obscured by Larrington’s translation: “On a good day will the prince be born [not ‘is . . . born’] who will inherit [‘get’, but not ‘can get’] such a soul; his life will always be mentioned as good.” (Cf. the uncited Magnus Olsen, “Om Balder-digtning og Balderkultus,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 40 [1924] and “En iakttagelse vedkommende Balderdiktningen,” in Studier tillägnade Axel Kock [Lund 1929].) Among the OE elegies the treatment of Wulf and Eadwacer is very general and shows little awareness of the complexity of the secondary literature; I am naturally partial to my own effort (in Heldensage und Heldendichtung im Germanischen, ed. Heinrich Beck [1988]), which is not cited. Larrington’s point concerns only the “gnomic conclusion” (18–19), but no reason is given to consider this twist on Matthew 19.6 a “gnome.” Assuming it really is developed from “quod ergo deus coniunxit, homo non separet,” it could at most be called a sententia, but here I feel that the predecessors who proposed the biblical source (P. J. Frankis, Medium Ævum 31 [1962]: 173; James Spamer, Neophilologus 62 [1978]: 143–44) really should have been noticed — or was this independent discovery? Gnome continues to be used in loose senses in a brief discussion of The Wife’s Lament and in fuller and finer readings of The Wanderer and The Seafarer. The section on Deor is woefully inadequate (seven lines), cites no secondary literature beyond Bruce Mitchell’s Old English Syntax, and does not discuss the nature of the presumed gnome, the refrain. An article of mine, specifically an investigation of the refrain’s proverbial stature (Traditio 43 [1987]), may have appeared too late to be considered; but there is a massive older literature on the poem and even on the refrain itself. Chapter 7, on gnomes in narrative poetry, opens with an interesting survey showing that such speech acts are rare in OE epic. Organized under the headings fortitudo, sapientia, and narrative

106 voice, the discussion musters past many “gnomic” passages of OE and ON heroic narrative, including such secondary heroic poetry as Andreas; much of the material is quarried from Beowulf, which forms the exclusive focus of the last section on the relationship between gnomes and narrative voice. There is a preference for literary paraphrase over analysis here, especially potentially tiresome analysis involving technical applications of gnome and related vocabulary. Despite a sense of fatigue, the Conclusion manages to pull together various strands of the book with some memorable phrasing. The venerable Clarendon Press did not distinguish itself in the production of this book, which is marred by many forms of carelessness, involving writing and punctuation as well as proof-reading errors. Just a few examples of different types: “poems” for “poem” (212) and “The poets . . . his” (172); “wa¯” for “swa¯” (208); “Andreas” for “Andreas’” (205); p. 105 typesetting; p. 104 “unkown.” (The many slips in punctuation, spacing, and word-division are not worth illustrating.) The text of Hákonarmál is supposed to be from the Íslenzk fornrit Heimskringla (p. 198, n. 20), but st. 21 on p. 184 is obviously not; for example, Larrington gives its last line as “morg es þjóðum [sic] þjeuð”; Íslenzk fornrit gives “morg es þjóð of þéuð,” Jón Helgason, “morg er þióð um þiáð.” On p. 181 “the two poems of Egill” must be a vestige of an earlier draft since only one is mentioned near this reference; and the identity of Sigurðr’s “three instructors” varies from p. 74 to p. 76. For “three half-lines” on p. 164 I count two, and on the same page, Beowulf’s dragon is not “terrible”? (What about “egeslic eorðdraca” [2825a]? etc.) On p. 136 we hear of the ge¯r-stanza of the Rune Poem as “cited above”; but it is not to be found. On p. 24 “the fuller account of Óðinn’s adventure with Gunnloð in 103–6 ” probably should read “104–10”; on p. 33 for “251 and 261 ” read “243 and 253.” On p. 99 a reference to a word as attested in “Fornmanna sogur and Íslendinga Þjóðssaga” gives pause; the sources must come straight from Cleasby-Vigfusson, which is not cited here. Page 93, n. 7: The composition of Volsunga saga “is normally put in the last half of the fourteenth century” — read “thiralvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 103–7

Rezensionen teenth.” On p. 111 something has gone wrong with the OE; Larrington has silently supplied macrons to Cox’s text, which she is citing (n. 33), except that “swi¯ ðe” and “þe¯ah” lack theirs; the “and” abbreviation is expanded, “forþam” appears as “for þa¯m,” “hie” as “he¯ ” with consequent loss of verb agreement, and the verb as “behelian” instead of “behelien”; further down the page Cox’s “forþam þa” is reproduced as “for þa¯m þe.” I noticed a few erroneous translations: p. 65 (Hávamál 164.6) “Heill sá er kann!” not “who has known,” but “who knows”; p. 81 (Fáfnismál 12.2) “allz þik fróðan kveða,” not “you are said to be wise in all things,” but “because you are said to be wise”; p. 128 (Maxims I 149b) “nales þæt he¯afe bewindeð,” not “in no way does he circle the head” but “in no way does he circle it [the grave; græf in 148b] with lamentation.” Minor omissions in translations occur on pp. 135 and 143, and small or debatable problems on p. 168 (“swylce blis,” not “then this joy,” but “likewise joy”) and p. 187 (Wife’s Lament 47b þæt rendered “where” with the emendation in n. 35; but “that” and the whole interpretation of Leslie, Three Old English Elegies, is superior). In Hávamál 117.10 “giold ens góða hugar,” “repayment from a well-meaning mind” (53), I would interpret the gen. as “for” (so Sijmons-Gering: “für die gute meinung, die du von ihm hast”); and the strange interpretation of Sonatorrek 1.3–4 “loftvætt (ljóðpundara)” as “the weight of air (of the songmeasurer)” (176) cannot be accepted without argument in place of Nordal’s. Common Sense, then, yields mixed results, strong in incidental literary insights, but not in workmanship. The book shows little patience for a close analysis of its own major concepts (gnome, etc.), which are presented on pp. 2–9 but applied rather indiscriminately, and the treatment of previous scholarship is highly selective. It may be that these good and bad characteristics are equally products of an audience problem: usually a general reader is implied here, and selective introductory survey with aperçus is the dominant mode; but in the Hávamál commentary (and occasionally elsewhere) one wants to have a text in hand, and the disputes with von See and a few other

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Rezensionen passages are more narrowly focused. This audience problem, especially as applied to that summum bonum, “the critical book,” is deeply rooted in the contemporary anglophone academic world where institutional necessity often transcends common sense.

G

unnar Karlsson, Kristján Sveinsson og Mörður Árnason, útgefendur. Grágás: Lagasafn íslenska þjóðveldisins. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1992. 600 blaðsíður.

Joseph Harris Hin vandaða útgáfa Vilhjálms Finsens á þeim lögum sem lengi hafa kallast einu nafni Grágás markaði tímamót í þekkingu manna á lögum Íslendinga á þjóðveldistíma (Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid, udgivet efter det kongelige bibliotheks haandskrift, 2 bd. [Kh. 1852]; Grágás efter det arnamagnæanske haandskrift nr. 334 fol., Staðarhólsbók [Kh. 1879]; Grágás: Stykker, som findes i det arnamagnæanske haandskrift nr. 351 fol., Skálholtsbók, og en række andre haandskrifter [Kh. 1883]; Grágás: Oversættelse, 2 bd. [Kh. 1870]; öll útgáfan nema danska þýðingin var ljósprentuð í Odense 1974). Í kjölfar útgáfu Finsens hófust rannsóknir fræðimanna á stjórnskipan íslenska þjóðveldisins sem lesin var úr lagatextum Grágásar. Í fararbroddi fór Konrad Maurer sem skrifaði feikn um fornan norrænan og germanskan rétt, en fleiri fræðimenn fylgdu á eftir, nefna má Andreas Heusler sem þýddi Grágás á þýsku (Isländisches Recht: Die Graugans, Germanenrechte 9 [Weimar 1937]). Af íslenskum mönnum, eftir Vilhjálm Finsen, lagði Ólafur Lárusson drýgstan skerf til vitneskju um hin fornu lög og ber þar hæst samanburð hans á Grágás og lögbókunum, Járnsíðu og Jónsbók, sem birtist í ritgerðinni “Grágás og lögbækurnar” (Árbók Háskóla Íslands 1922, Fylgirit [Rvk. 1923]). Ólafur skrifaði einnig formála fyrir ljósprenti á útgáfu Vilhjálms Finsens á Konungsbók Grágásar, sem ljósprentuð var í Lithoprent og kom út í Reykjavík árið 1945 og var það í fyrsta sinn sem Grágás var gefin út á Íslandi. Sjálfstæðisbarátta þjóða í Evrópu, Íslendinga jafnt sem annarra, á ofanverðri 19. öld og öndverðri 20. öld setti mark sitt á viðhorf manna til Grágásarlaga, flestum var í mun að láta þau sýna sem glæstasta mynd af íslenskum þjóðveldistíma og þeim frumkrafti sem þá hafði ríkt og skóp Íslendingum sérstæðar bókmenntir og einstætt stjórnarform. Aðalhandritin sem varðveita lagatextann, alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 103–7

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Rezensionen passages are more narrowly focused. This audience problem, especially as applied to that summum bonum, “the critical book,” is deeply rooted in the contemporary anglophone academic world where institutional necessity often transcends common sense.

G

unnar Karlsson, Kristján Sveinsson og Mörður Árnason, útgefendur. Grágás: Lagasafn íslenska þjóðveldisins. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1992. 600 blaðsíður.

Joseph Harris Hin vandaða útgáfa Vilhjálms Finsens á þeim lögum sem lengi hafa kallast einu nafni Grágás markaði tímamót í þekkingu manna á lögum Íslendinga á þjóðveldistíma (Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid, udgivet efter det kongelige bibliotheks haandskrift, 2 bd. [Kh. 1852]; Grágás efter det arnamagnæanske haandskrift nr. 334 fol., Staðarhólsbók [Kh. 1879]; Grágás: Stykker, som findes i det arnamagnæanske haandskrift nr. 351 fol., Skálholtsbók, og en række andre haandskrifter [Kh. 1883]; Grágás: Oversættelse, 2 bd. [Kh. 1870]; öll útgáfan nema danska þýðingin var ljósprentuð í Odense 1974). Í kjölfar útgáfu Finsens hófust rannsóknir fræðimanna á stjórnskipan íslenska þjóðveldisins sem lesin var úr lagatextum Grágásar. Í fararbroddi fór Konrad Maurer sem skrifaði feikn um fornan norrænan og germanskan rétt, en fleiri fræðimenn fylgdu á eftir, nefna má Andreas Heusler sem þýddi Grágás á þýsku (Isländisches Recht: Die Graugans, Germanenrechte 9 [Weimar 1937]). Af íslenskum mönnum, eftir Vilhjálm Finsen, lagði Ólafur Lárusson drýgstan skerf til vitneskju um hin fornu lög og ber þar hæst samanburð hans á Grágás og lögbókunum, Járnsíðu og Jónsbók, sem birtist í ritgerðinni “Grágás og lögbækurnar” (Árbók Háskóla Íslands 1922, Fylgirit [Rvk. 1923]). Ólafur skrifaði einnig formála fyrir ljósprenti á útgáfu Vilhjálms Finsens á Konungsbók Grágásar, sem ljósprentuð var í Lithoprent og kom út í Reykjavík árið 1945 og var það í fyrsta sinn sem Grágás var gefin út á Íslandi. Sjálfstæðisbarátta þjóða í Evrópu, Íslendinga jafnt sem annarra, á ofanverðri 19. öld og öndverðri 20. öld setti mark sitt á viðhorf manna til Grágásarlaga, flestum var í mun að láta þau sýna sem glæstasta mynd af íslenskum þjóðveldistíma og þeim frumkrafti sem þá hafði ríkt og skóp Íslendingum sérstæðar bókmenntir og einstætt stjórnarform. Aðalhandritin sem varðveita lagatextann, alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

108 Konungsbók og Staðarhólsbók, eru talin skrifuð að meginhluta af sama skrifara á tímabilinu 1250–1280, en um það leyti fór fram undanfari að og umsköpun íslenskra laga og stjórnarhátta. Því liggur nærri að ætla að handritin séu skrifuð í tengslum við lagabreytingar, og textinn sem þau varðveita hvort með sínu móti hlýtur að bera þess merki, en uppruni, tilurð og hlutverk lagatextanna eru í mörgum atriðum óráðin gáta og lausnir fræðimanna oft fundnar með trú fremur en vissu. Á síðustu áratugum hafa áherslur breyst í athugunum á Grágásarlögum og sviðið víkkað; sumir rannsóknarmenn hafa leitað að fyrirmyndum og hliðstæðum norrænna laga á miðöldum í lagasöfnum sunnar í Evrópu og orðið nokkuð ágengt, aðrir hafa beint sjónum að innri gerð íslensks samfélags á miðöldum, valdaskiptingu, siðareglum manna og hugarfari, og stuðst að drjúgum hluta við Grágás auk fornsagna. Búast má við að haldið verði áfram á þessum miðum og því er brýnt að þær útgáfur Grágásar, sem fyrir hendi eru, séu trúar texta og framsetningu handritanna sem varðveita hin fornu lög, en handritin sjálf hljóta ávallt að vera grundvöllur þess sem um lögin er hægt að segja og úr þeim má lesa. Sú lestrarútgáfa eða alþýðuútgáfa Grágásar sem hér verður fjallað um og verður á eftir nefnd Grágás 1992, er gerð eftir vísindalegri útgáfu Vilhjálms Finsens. Grágásarlögin eru nú sett á snotra lesbók, sem er trú hinum forna texta að því er varðar orðmyndir og sagnbeygingar og er það mikil framför frá þeirri stefnu sem haldið var við lestrarútgáfur Íslendinga sagna (Rvk. 1985–86 og 1987), Sturlunga sögu (Rvk. 1988) og Heimskringlu (Rvk. 1991), þar sem fornar sagnbeygingar voru látnar víkja fyrir nútíðarbeygingarháttum. Að þessu leyti er Grágás 1992 vel til þess fallin að vera fyrirmynd að útgáfu fornra texta í framtíðinni. Í hvívetna er vandað til frágangs textans og hefir það ekki verið auðunnið verk en tekist með ágætum. Textinn hefir verið vandlega samlesinn við útgáfu Finsens og leiðréttingum hans við útgáfu sína er flestum til skila haldið, undantekningu má þó sjá í Grágás 1992, 451, þar sem láðst hefir að færa setningu í línum 30–31 á undan setningu í línum 21–22 (sbr. Grágás 1883, 489). alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

Rezensionen Útlit bókarinnar er bjart og stílhreint, pappírinn lætur vel að fingurgómum og letrið er ákjósanlegt fyrir augað. Útgefendum hefir tekist markmið sitt að gera aðlaðandi lestrarútgáfu sem heldur efnislegu inntaki varðveittra texta Grágásar. Yfirbragð bókarinnar er í senn fornt og nýtt, textinn heldur fornlegum blæ, en er stafsettur á nútíðarvísu og með því gengið til móts við þá sem fælst hafa nær stafrétta útgáfu Finsens og ljósprent beggja aðalhandrita Grágásar, Konungsbókar (Gks 1157 fol.) og Staðarhólsbókar (AM 334 fol.), sem gerð voru á vegum Levin & Munksgaard í Kaupmannahöfn 1932 og 1936 í ritröðinni Corpus codicum Islandicorum medii aevi, vol. 3 og 9. Neðanmáls við textann í Grágás 1992 eru skýringar á merkingu fjölmargra orða og hugtaka auk skýringa á fornlegum orðmyndum og beygingamyndum sagna. Auk þess er aftast í bókinni (515–67) löng skrá með skýringum atriðisorða. Sjö nútímalegar skýringamyndir eru bls. 509–14 til skilningsauka á textanum. Meginkostir atriðisorðaskrárinnar eru annarsvegar að vísað er á blaðsíður þar sem orðin koma fyrir í textanum og skipta máli, og hinsvegar að skráin heldur mun fleiri uppflettiorð en orðalisti (“Ordregister”) í útgáfu Vilhjálms Finsens (Grágás 1883, 579–714). Atriðisorðaskrá Grágásar 1992 veitir gott yfirlit um orðanotkun í lögunum og eykur því geysilega notagildi útgáfunnar. Orðskýringar útgefenda eru ljósar og svo vel fyrir komið að hinn fornyrti og oft torskildi lagatexti verður næstum barnameðfæri. Skýringar og skýringamyndir eru auðsjáanlega sniðnar að þörfum borgara í upplýsingasamfélagi sem hefir ávallt hratt á hæli og þarf skjót og skýr svör. Hinsvegar örlar á því að skýringatextar hafi ekki tengsl við fortíðina sem skyldi. Í lokakafla í Inngangi eru nefnd þau rit sem skýringar voru sóttar í og er þar vitanlega fyrst talinn fyrrnefndur orðalisti Vilhjálms Finsens og því næst Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog eftir Johan Fritzner. En á óvart kemur að sjá ekki nefnt Glossarium eftir Ebbe Hertzberg sem prentað er í Norges gamle love indtil 1387, bd. 5 (Christiania 1895) og er grundvallarrit fyrir þá sem reyna að átta sig á norrænum lögum frá miðöldum, og er ómissandi við samanburð á orðfæri og inntaki norskra laga

Rezensionen og Grágásarlaga. Slíkur samanburður gæti skilað merkilegum niðurstöðum ef gerður væri að marki, en bent hefir verið á einstök orð og greinar í Grágás sem virðast fremur endurspegla norskan rétt en íslenskan (sjá Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, þýðing eftir Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote og Richard Perkins [Winnipeg 1980], 10; Peter Foote “Reflections on Landabrigðisþáttr and Rekaþáttr in Grágás”, í Tradition og historieskrivning, útg. Kirsten Hastrup og Preben Meulengracht Sørensen [Århus 1987], 55). Ekki er heldur nefnt, og því líklega látið ónotað, ritið Skýríngar yfir fornyrði lögbókar sem Páll Vídalín lögmaður (d. 1727) samdi og kom seinast út í Reykjavík 1854. Þetta rit birtir umfram allt skilning 17. og 18. aldar Íslendinga á fornu lagaefni, en Páll notar víða ritgerðir fyrri manna um einstakar greinar og skýringar á torskildum lagaorðum. Með því að ganga framhjá skýringum Páls lögmanns hefir verið rofin aldalöng hefð íslenskra lögskýringa og kunna einhverjar skýringar í Grágás 1992 að gjalda þess. Nefna má dæmi af orðinu skýlihögg sem skýrt er “mikið högg (e.t.v.) skáhögg” og virðist stuðst við skýringu Fritzners “saadant hug, hvorved Øxen drives ind i Træet paa skraa eller under en skjæv Vinkel” sem reyndar er sótt í Lexicon poeticum eftir Sveinbjörn Egilsson (Hafniae 1860). Páll Vídalín skýrir hinsvegar orðið svo: “Það högg, er lestir skjól eður skýlu á yfirhúðinni á viðnum, eður bikið eður hefilhúðina, þ.e. slétthefilsfarið á innviðum skipsins” (Vídalín 501) og virðist sú skýring eiga mun betur við þar sem orðið kemur fyrir í Grágás. Í annan stað gætir þess stundum að skýringar eru einfaldaðar og hallast að nútímaháttum frá orðskýringum Vilhjálms Finsens. Útgefendur fara sínar eigin leiðir og er þá ekki ætíð samræmi í skýringum í atriðisorðaskrá og neðanmáls. Dæmi má taka af skýringu á orðinu skóggangur sem skýrt er í atriðisorðaskrá: “ævilöng útlegð úr landi” en neðanmáls við textann “ævilöng útlegð úr samfélaginu”. Finsen skýrir orðið með “Fredløshed” en refsingin fólst í því að hinn seki átti ekki fritt, var óalandi, óferjandi, réttdræpur, óheilagur og friðlaus á Íslandi og í Noregi og átti ekki afturkvæmt þangað, kæmist hann úr landi. Hugtakið “skóggangur” hlýtur að eiga ævafornar rætur alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

109 í þeim tíma þegar hugtakið samfélag var ekki til og óbyggð lönd víðari en nú og því ekki þörf á að vísa sekum mönnum í útlönd heldur voru þeir reknir úr byggðum og fóru friðlausir um mannauða skóga. Orðskýringarnar í Grágás 1992 taka langt fram þeim ófullkomnu orðalistum sem fylgdu fyrrnefndum lestrarútgáfum á Sturlunga sögu og Heimskringlu, en í þeim listum er hvergi vísað í blaðsíðutöl þar sem orðin koma fyrir. Hinsvegar taka þær útgáfur Grágás 1992 fram í því að þeim fylgja allgóðar ritaskrár yfir útgáfur, rit og ritgerðir sem efnið varða. Skrá yfir helstu rit sem varða forn norsk og íslensk lög birti Halldór Hermannsson í Islandica 4 (Ithaca, New York 1911) og hefði mátt styðjast við hana við ritaskrá í Grágás 1992, en framhaldið hefði líklega orðið frumvinna sem til muna hefði aukið gildi útgáfunnar. Skrá yfir úrval þess helsta sem um Grágásarlög hefir verið ritað hefði verið ómetanlegt hjálpargagn þeim sem lesa Grágás í fyrsta sinn í þessari útgáfu og þekkja ekki sögu textans. Í Inngangi er til dæmis hvergi minnst á fyrrnefnda rannsókn Ólafs Lárussonar sem sýnir að Jónsbók hefir þegið fjölmörg ákvæði úr Grágás, nefna má til dæmis að framundir þetta hefir hreppaskipan á Íslandi verið grundvölluð á ákvæðum Grágásar um hreppa sem gengu aftur í Jónsbók og ennfremur að Rekaþáttur í Grágás er nánast hinn sami og Rekabálkur í Jónsbók og er efnislega að mestu enn í fullu gildi. Grágás hafði því veruleg áhrif á mótun íslensks samfélags löngu eftir að Íslendingar gengu Noregskonungi á hönd og með því að nefna hvergi í Grágás 1992 samhengi Grágásar og Jónsbókar slitnar þráður sem hefir haldið Grágás við Íslandsbyggð á seinni öldum. Í Inngangi (xxvi–xxviii) gera útgefendur grein fyrir því hvernig staðið var að vali textans. Útgáfan “er samsteypa”, segja þeir. Til grundvallar var lagður texti Staðarhólsbókar, en úr Konungsbók teknir þættir, efnisatriði og lesbrigði sem ekki eru í Staðarhólsbók. Að auki eru tekin upp einstök efnisatriði úr öðrum gerðum sem ekki eru í aðalhandritunum og í viðauka er birt elsta varðveitta brot Grágásartexta. Sú leið að leggja Staðarhólsbók til grundvallar útgáfunni er áreiðanlega hin farsælasta þar sem markmið útgefenda var að

110 koma sem mestu efni til skila. Aðferðin er raunar að hætti 17. aldar manna sem til að mynda skrifuðu upp Landnámu eftir fleiri en einu mismunandi handriti og völdu ávallt þann texta sem lengra mál sagði og við það urðu til nýjar gerðir Landnámu. Konungsbók og Staðarhólsbók geyma óumdeilanlega samstofna lagatexta að efniskjarna og anda, handritin eru nær orðrétt samhljóða í mörgum greinum en allólík í mörgum öðrum greinum. Það sem helst ber á milli er að niðurskipun ákvæða er ólík, í öðru lagi eru nokkrir þættir í Konungsbók sem ekki eru í Staðarhólsbók, og í þriðja lagi eru einstök ákvæði í Staðarhólsbók sem ekki eru í Konungsbók og auk þessa inniheldur Staðarhólsbók fjölmörg ákvæði mun ítarlegri og fyllri en samsvarandi ákvæði í Konungsbók. Með aðferð útgefenda Grágásar 1992 hverfa úr sýn að mestu ofantalin sérkenni í texta og efnisskipan hvorrar bókar um sig, en úr verður safnrit sem í heildarbyggingu á ekki sinn líka í varðveittum Grágásartextum. Vilhjálmur Finsen áleit að lagasöfnin í Konungsbók og Staðarhólsbók væru hvort um sig sjálfstæð söfn sem einstakir menn hefðu tekið saman af lagaákvæðum sem samþykkt höfðu verið af lögréttu og voru í gildi á þeirra tíð; flestir hafa víst fallist á þessa skoðun Finsens (Grágás 1870, 219–20; Grágás 1879, iii, xxix; Grágás 1992, xxiii). Með því að steypa textunum saman á þann hátt sem gert er í Grágás 1992 og með undirtitlinum “Lagasafn íslenska þjóðveldisins” á titilblaði og kjalþrykkingunni “Lög Íslendinga”, er því gefið undir fótinn að til hafi verið heildarsafn laga á þjóðveldisöld, en vafasamt er að slíkt safn hafi nokkru sinni verið til — og hafi það verið til er sýnt að hvorugt aðalhandritið sem varðveitt er geymir slíkan texta. Af þessum sökum gefur samsteypa eins og þessi annarlega mynd af því efni sem aðalhandritin geyma. Í Formála Grágásar 1992 segjast útgefendur fylgja ákvæðum Grágásar sjálfrar, sem eru í Lögréttuþætti Konungsbókar og segja fyrir um að ef skrár biskupa skilji á skuli “sú hafa sitt mál er lengra segir þeim orðum er máli skipta með mönnum” (viii). Framhaldið: “En ef þær segja jafn langt og þó sitt hvár, þá skal sú hafa sitt mál er í Skálaholti er” (Grágás 1852, 213) tekur af öll tvímæli um að gildi lagasafnsins er ekki alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

Rezensionen komið undir orðafjölda heldur valdi safnandans. Þessi ákvæði í Lögréttuþætti ættu því að vera gildur vitnisburður þess að enginn vegur er að steypa í eitt mót varðveittum lagatextum frá þjóðveldistíma, heldur verður að gefa út texta hvers handrits fyrir sig með sínu móti eins og Vilhjálmur Finsen lagði grunn að fyrir um það bil einni og hálfri öld. Árið 1829 kom Grágás út ásamt latneskri þýðingu á vegum Árnanefndar í Kaupmannahöfn og sá Þórður Sveinbjörnsson um þá útgáfu. Staðarhólsbók var þar lögð til grundvallar, en hinir sérstöku þættir Konungsbókar teknir upp og skipað sem næst í þá röð sem fylgt er í Konungsbók sjálfri, ennfremur voru lesbrigði úr Konungsbók birt neðanmáls. Vilhjálmur Finsen segir um þessa útgáfuaðferð að hún hafi “vist sig aldeles ufyldestgjörende” og eru rök hans þau að of mikill munur sé á textum og niðurskipan ákvæða í aðalhandritunum til þess að hægt sé að fara þannig að (Grágás 1870, 221). Sama sinnis eru Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote og Richard Perkins sem völdu Konungsbók Grágásar sem aðaltexta enskrar þýðingar vegna þess að “K[onungsbók] has important sections that are lacking in St[aðarhólsbók], the overall preference must go to the former, and consequently the main text of the present translation follows the text of K[onungsbók] as it stands . . . The reader of the translation will thus get to know K[onungsbók] as it is, with all its faults and puzzles, its unfinished articles and defects of arrangement” (Laws of Early Iceland 17). Vilhjálmur Finsen og þýðendur Grágásar á ensku miðuðu við vísindalega útgáfu, en hér skiptir máli sú spurning, hvort ekki verði að gera þá kröfu til alþýðlegrar lestrarútgáfu að hún lúti sömu grundvallarreglum um textaval og settar eru vísindalegri útgáfu? Einn megintilgangur vísindalegrar textaútgáfu hlýtur að vera að greiða götu textans til almennings og verða þannig undanfari lestrarútgáfu. En sú lestrarútgáfa sem sneiðir hjá þeirri slóð sem rudd er með vísindaútgáfu, getur ekki að öllu talist trúverðug, þótt vel sé frá textanum gengið og ábendingar og yfirlitstöflur um mismun og samkenni handrita fylgi útgáfunni (sbr. xix, xxii–xxiii, 488– 508). Skal nú bent á örfá atriði sem skilja að Konungsbók og Staðarhólsbók og mæla gegn því að steypa þeim saman í eitt mót.

Rezensionen Textamunur aðalhandritanna fer með nokkurri leynd í Grágás 1992, en sem fyrr segir er niðurskipan ákvæða ólík og í Staðarhólsbók eru víða mun ítarlegri ákvæði en í Konungsbók og eru mörg slík merkt á spássíur Staðarhólsbókar sem nýmæli. Af því er að ætla að Staðarhólsbók geymi yngra stig lagaákvæða en Konungsbók. Í Grágás 1992 kemur yfirleitt skýrt fram hvaða greinar í köflum eru teknar úr Konungsbók, en á hinn bóginn kemur ekki fram hvar Staðarhólsbók hefir texta umfram Konungsbók. Af handahófi má benda á kaflann um voðaverk (Grágás 1992, 235–36; sbr. Grágás 1852, 166–67; Grágás 1879, 334). Umframgrein Konungsbókar er þar vandlega merkt en að öðru leyti koma ólíkindi handritanna ekki fram. Í Efnisskrá þátta sem prentuð er á bls. 488–508 er yfirlit yfir samsvaranir með textum Konungsbókar og Staðarhólsbókar. Yfirlitið er að mestu sótt í neðanmálsgreinar í útgáfu Finsens. Í Grágás 1992 segir að Finsen vísi “oftast ítarlegar” milli hliðstæðra texta og eru það orð að sönnu, því að í neðanmálsgreinunum hefir Finsen millivísanir milli bókanna í kapítulatölum og auk þess í blaðsíðu- og línutölum. Í yfirlitinu, Efnisskrá þátta, í Grágás 1992 er hinsvegar einungis vísað á milli samsvarandi texta í kapítulatölum sem getur reynst fullgróft þar sem til dæmis er um að ræða kapítula í Staðarhólsbók sem ekki eiga samsvörun í Konungsbók utan í broti úr einni og einni línu (t.d. kap. 66 og 95, Grágás 1879). Því eru takmörkuð not af skránni og lesandi sem ætlar að kryfja textann til mergjar er hjálparlaus nema fylgja alfarið útgáfu Finsens. Þeir þættir sem Konungsbók hefir umfram Staðarhólsbók eru: Þingskapaþáttur, Baugatal, Lögsögumanns- og Lögréttuþáttur og Rannsóknarþáttur. Í Konungsbók sjálfri koma fjórir fyrsttöldu þættirnir ásamt Vígslóða og Baugatali milli Kristinna laga þáttar og Arfaþáttar. Samsvarandi þáttaskipan er að þessu leyti í AM 125a 4º, sem er pappírsuppskrift frá því um 1600 með útdráttum úr Járnsíðu og Grágás og fara útdrættir úr þingskapaþætti fremstir meðal efnis úr Grágás, en að öðru leyti er hliðstæð niðurskipan þátta og í Staðarhólsbók. Vilhjálmur Finsen taldi útdrættina í AM 125a 4º fulltrúa glataðs skinnhandrits sem hefði verið sjálfstætt lagasafn, hliðstætt hinum varðveittu gerðum, og alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

111 hefði geymt Járnsíðu eins og Staðarhólsbók (Grágás 1883, ix–xiv). Þess má og geta hér að Finsen nefnir þann möguleika, sem hann slær þó frá sér aftur, að þinghaldsþættirnir kunni upphaflega að hafa verið í Staðarhólsbók í sömu náttúrlegu röð og í Konungsbók, þ.e. milli Kristinna laga þáttar og Arfaþáttar en þar sem þeir mætast eru kveraskipti í handritinu og gæti eitthvað hafa fallið brott í milli (Grágás 1879, xiv–xvi). Í Grágás 1992 er öllum þáttum sem Konungsbók hefir umfram Staðarhólsbók skipað aftast í bókina og ekki haft fyrir að merkja sérstaklega á auða vinstri síðu (370) að texti Konungsbókar taki þar við. Þessi skipan rýfur heildarbyggingu lagatextans og hina eðlilegu þáttaröð, sem er í Konungsbók og hefir líklega verið í forriti AM 125a 4º. Að sínu leyti samsvara þinghaldsþættirnir í Konungsbók þingfararbálki Jónsbókar, og Vígslóði og Baugatal samsvara á sama hátt að sínu leyti kapítulum í lögbókunum Járnsíðu og Jónsbók um konungs þegnskyldu og mannhelgi, en í hinum fjölmörgu uppskriftum Jónsbókarlaga er sú skipan algengust að kaflar um þinghald, þegnskyldu og mannhelgi fari fremstir. Annað sérkenni Konungsbókar er að blöðin eru að jafnaði drifhvít líkt og ósnert, ólík flestöllum öðrum íslenskum skinnhandritum sem eru blökk og lúð. Konungsbók virðist því ekki hafa verið oft handleikin á fyrri tíð sem ef til vill skýrist af því sérkenni hennar að mörg ákvæðin eru ekki skrifuð til fulls heldur einungis upphaf ákvæðis og oft sett sérstök merki á spássíu á útjaðri línu ellegar að ritað er á eftir upphafsorðum: “usque” eða “usque in finem”. Finsen skýrði þetta svo að með þessu væri vísað til annars handrits þar sem ákvæðin hefðu verið fullskrifuð og birti skrá yfir 74 slíka staði í Grágás 1883, 474–80. Útgefendur Grágásar 1992 gera heldur lítið úr þessu atriði í Inngangi (xxii) og nefna hvorki né láta koma fram í útgáfunni þar sem við á enn eitt sérkenni Konungsbókar, sem er fjöldi tákna á spássíum sem Finsen tilgreinir í Grágás 1883, 481–89. Enginn hefir farið í saumana á merkingu þessara tákna en tilgátur eru uppi um að þau muni vera tilvísanamerki ellegar paragrafmerki (sjá Kristian Kålund, Katalog over de oldnorsk-islandske håndskrifter i det store kongelige bibliotek og i universitetsbiblioteket [Kh. 1900], 31; Sveinbjörn

112 Rafnsson, “Digesta Iustinianum”, í Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni, 20. júlí 1977, útg. Einar G. Pétursson og Jónas Kristjánsson [Rvk. 1977], 728). Á móti Konungsbók hefir Staðarhólsbók, auk ítarlegri ákvæða sem fyrr getur, það sérkenni að efnisskrár eru framan við Festaþátt, Um fjárleigur, Vígslóða og Landabrigðisþátt og eru upphafsstafir orða í efnisskránum ýmist í rauðum, grænum eða bláum lit. Útgefendur Grágásar 1992 segja að kaflafyrirsagnir séu flestar úr Staðarhólsbók “enda hefur hún þær miklu fleiri” (xxvii–xxviii). Þetta á hinsvegar einungis við ef með eru talin kaflaheiti í efnisskránum, en efnisskrárnar koma ekki fram í heilu líki á sínum stöðum í Grágás 1992, en úr þeim eru einungis teknar kaflafyrirsagnir þar sem engar eru fyrir. Í þeim þáttum sem hafa efnisskrár á undan sér eru jafnframt sérstakar fyrirsagnir fyrir stöku köflum eða greinum, skrifaðar í rauðum lit, og eru flestar í Rekaþætti Landabrigðisþáttar. Efnisskrár fara hinsvegar ekki fyrir Erfðaþætti og Ómagabálki, en í þeim þáttum eru sérstakar fyrirsagnir fyrir flestum köflum. Í norskum lögum, t.d. Frostaþingslögum eldri og Landslögum Magnúsar lagabætis, er svipað fyrirkomulag, þ.e. bæði efnisskrár og sérstök kaflaheiti sem ýmist eru samhljóða eða ekki. Efnisskrárnar í Staðarhólsbók virðast hafa verið skrifaðar eftir að megintextinn var skrifaður — til þess bendir að þar sem Kristinna laga þætti lýkur með sjö línum efst á bl. 11v er blaðsíðan skilin eftir auð og hefir líklega átt að skrifa þar efnisskrá Erfðaþáttar. Svipað háttar til um síðuna þar sem Erfðaþætti lýkur, þar er skilin eftir eyða í rúmlega hálfum dálki sem nægja mætti til þess að skrifa efnisskrá Ómagabálks sem á eftir fer. Fremsta síðan í Staðarhólsbók, þar sem nú er skrifaður Dómakapítuli Járnsíðu, hefir í upphafi verið skilin eftir auð og kann það rými í öndverðu að hafa verið ætlað til þess að skrifa á efnisskrá Kristinna laga þáttar sem skiptist í fimmtíu og fimm greinar og hefði efnisyfirlit hans því orðið rúmfrekt. Víðast er nokkur munur á orðalagi í efnisskránum í Staðarhólsbók og samsvarandi fyrirsögnum greina þar sem þeim er til að dreifa, en meginmunurinn er sá að í efnisskránum er ævinlega notuð forsetningin of, til dæmis stendur í efnisskrá: “Of gelld fiar alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

Rezensionen samnað” þar sem í fyrirsögn greinar stendur: “Vm gelld fiar safnað.” Undantekning er þó efnisskráin fyrir Vígslóða þar sem allstaðar er höfð forsetningin um sem kann að koma á óvart sökum þess að Vígslóði er talinn með eldri hlutum lagasafnsins og orðmyndin of í þessari merkingu tilheyrir eldra málstigi en um. Hinsvegar er forsetningin um nær alltaf notuð í fyrirsögnum þar sem þær fara fyrir greinum í Staðarhólsbók (undantekning er þó t.d. of í kafla í Landabrigðisþætti [Grágás 1879, 504] en minnst af honum er til í öðrum handritum) og hið sama gildir um fyrirsagnir greina í Konungsbók, þar er ævinlega forsetningin um. Ljóst er að efnisskrár Staðarhólsbókar hafa sjálfstætt textagildi og er því skaði að þær skuli ekki koma fram í Grágás 1992. Án efa bera þær svipmót af hugarþeli safnanda laganna í Staðarhólsbók eða skrifara hennar á sama hátt og fyrirsagnir þátta og kafla í hinum fjölmörgu Jónsbókarhandritum sem eru mjög með ýmsu móti. Fyrirsagnir þátta í Grágás 1992 eru svipaður hræringur og kaflafyrirsagnir; í Inngangi (xxvii) segir að þær séu flestar úr Konungsbók — sem auðvitað er vegna þess að Konungsbók geymir fleiri þætti en Staðarhólsbók. En í Grágás 1992 eru fyrirsagnir þeirra sjö þátta, sem eru sameiginlegir báðum bókunum, sóttar í Staðarhólsbók utan ein (Um fjárleigur) sem sótt er í Konungsbók. Einungis tvær fyrirsagnir (Ómagabálkur og Festaþáttur) eru eiginlegar fyrirsagnir þátta í Staðarhólsbók, aðrar þrjár (Kristinna laga þáttur, Erfðaþáttur og Landabrigðisþáttur) eru sóttar í meginmál bókarinnar að dæmi Vilhjálms Finsens, en hvorug bókin hefir beinlínis fyrirsögn á Vígslóða. Skýrar hefði því mátt taka til orða um þáttafyrirsagnir á fyrrgreindum stað í Inngangi. Sum atriði sem hér voru talin sýna að Grágás 1992 veitir ófullkomna mynd af mismun varðveittra aðalhandrita sem skiptir miklu máli vegna þess að þau eru skrifuð að mestu leyti af sama skrifara og ekki fyrr en undir lok þess tíma sem ætlað er að lagaákvæðin hafi haft gildi á Íslandi og á þeim tíma sem endurskoðun laga á vegum Noregskonungs tók við. Vissulega er stofn og andi hinn sami í báðum handritum, en frábrigði í niðurskipan ákvæða og orðafari ásamt umframþáttunum í Konungsbók ráða úrslitum um að aðgæta þarf orðalag beggja handrita

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Rezensionen hvenær sem leitað er að vitnisburði Grágásarlaga og því er óvarlegt að steypa textana í sama mót í útgáfu. Að öllu samanlögðu taldi Vilhjálmur Finsen að eftir handritum og leifum handrita mætti greina fimm aðalgerðir Grágásarlaga (Grágás 1883, xxx– xxii). Enginn veit hvernig háttað hefir verið þeim gerðum sem glataðar eru, en sem fyrr segir er giska margt óljóst um uppruna, eðli og hlutverk Grágásarlaga og einmitt þess vegna er áríðandi að gefa þau út með sama heildaryfirbragði og er í varðveittum handritum. Sýnist þá einu mega gilda hvort útgáfa er ætluð útvöldum sérfræðingum ellegar alþýðu. Grágás 1992 þjónar vel sem handhæg lesbók og til þess að skemmta nútímamönnum við orðin ein, en í þessum búningi vantar nokkuð á að Grágás sé ákjósanlegt baksvið fornsagna okkar og svo búin er hún takmörkuð sem “ómetanleg heimild um réttarvitund, siðferðiskennd, atvinnuvegi, þjóðhætti og daglegt líf á Íslandi á fyrstu öldum Íslandsbyggðar” (vii). Útgefendur hafa nostrað við stafsetningu og skýringar og framkallað fallega hillubók með sérstæðum texta. Og þess er að vænta að Grágás 1992 verði til þess að framvegis, eins og í reynd hefir verið um langan aldur, verði “lögin höfð á takteinum þegar rætt er um íslenskar miðaldabókmenntir” eins og Guðrún Nordal kemst að orði í ungri hugleiðingu um útgáfuna í tímaritinu Ný saga (1993, 18). En í samsteypu Grágásarlaga sem birt er í Grágás 1992 og með þögninni um endingu þeirra slitna þau úr samhengi við þá tíma sem þau héldu einhverju gildi í bændasamfélaginu sem skóp þau og gaf þeim hlutverk. Það er hinsvegar ókannað mál að hve miklu leyti lagasköpun og lagaritun kveiktu sagnalist með Íslendingum á þeim tíma þegar Grágásarlög runnu saman við lög úr Noregsríki, og að hvaða leyti bókmenntasköpun Íslendinga á seinni hluta þrettándu aldar er flækt í umsköpun landslaga. Skilyrði frjórrar umræðu um þessi efni í framtíðinni væru líklega ekki síst lestrarútgáfur Járnsíðu og Jónsbókar sem unnar væru af sömu kostgæfni og Grágás 1992 að því er lýtur að laganna orðum og flestum skýringum. Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir

alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 107–13

J

ohn McKinnell. Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism. With an Appendix by Maria Elena Ruggerini. Philologia 1. Roma: Il Calamo, 1994. 208 pages. Among the major branches of Norse literature eddic poetry is certainly most in need of critical innovation. The traditional contributions to dating, localizing, metrics, textual explication, editorial policy, formulaic classification, and so forth have slowed to a trickle, and new approaches have been sporadic. Of the two major subgroupings, mythological and heroic, the former seems to have fallen even further behind than the latter, which is at least nurtured by a larger Germanic context. In addressing the mythological corpus, John McKinnell has therefore chosen the harder task and has renewed where renewal is most needed. At the same time he discusses the problems in a straightforward and unpretentious manner that underplays the significance of his argument. The argument lies in the title words “One and Many” and “Variety and Change.” McKinnell tries to destabilize the unity suggested by transmission (largely) in a single manuscript, implied by broad generic terms such as “eddic” and “mythological,” and reinforced by the assumption that the mythological poems are codifications of a uniform religious and narrative system. The approach is modern to the extent that it assumes that the poems are individual arabesques on a common but infinitely variable stock of stories. This outlook gives the individual poet and the individual poem much more autonomy in the overall tradition, and it offers the reader more freedom in reflecting on individual poetic formulations. A few key quotations may serve to illustrate McKinnell’s angle of vision. “It is essential to an understanding of Norse mythology that this was a religion (or group of cults) in which there was no such stability [scil. as in the Christian system], and for which the idea of orthodoxy was meaningless” (21). “In this situation of free choice, there was no reason why poets should not change the details of the stories they inher-

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Rezensionen hvenær sem leitað er að vitnisburði Grágásarlaga og því er óvarlegt að steypa textana í sama mót í útgáfu. Að öllu samanlögðu taldi Vilhjálmur Finsen að eftir handritum og leifum handrita mætti greina fimm aðalgerðir Grágásarlaga (Grágás 1883, xxx– xxii). Enginn veit hvernig háttað hefir verið þeim gerðum sem glataðar eru, en sem fyrr segir er giska margt óljóst um uppruna, eðli og hlutverk Grágásarlaga og einmitt þess vegna er áríðandi að gefa þau út með sama heildaryfirbragði og er í varðveittum handritum. Sýnist þá einu mega gilda hvort útgáfa er ætluð útvöldum sérfræðingum ellegar alþýðu. Grágás 1992 þjónar vel sem handhæg lesbók og til þess að skemmta nútímamönnum við orðin ein, en í þessum búningi vantar nokkuð á að Grágás sé ákjósanlegt baksvið fornsagna okkar og svo búin er hún takmörkuð sem “ómetanleg heimild um réttarvitund, siðferðiskennd, atvinnuvegi, þjóðhætti og daglegt líf á Íslandi á fyrstu öldum Íslandsbyggðar” (vii). Útgefendur hafa nostrað við stafsetningu og skýringar og framkallað fallega hillubók með sérstæðum texta. Og þess er að vænta að Grágás 1992 verði til þess að framvegis, eins og í reynd hefir verið um langan aldur, verði “lögin höfð á takteinum þegar rætt er um íslenskar miðaldabókmenntir” eins og Guðrún Nordal kemst að orði í ungri hugleiðingu um útgáfuna í tímaritinu Ný saga (1993, 18). En í samsteypu Grágásarlaga sem birt er í Grágás 1992 og með þögninni um endingu þeirra slitna þau úr samhengi við þá tíma sem þau héldu einhverju gildi í bændasamfélaginu sem skóp þau og gaf þeim hlutverk. Það er hinsvegar ókannað mál að hve miklu leyti lagasköpun og lagaritun kveiktu sagnalist með Íslendingum á þeim tíma þegar Grágásarlög runnu saman við lög úr Noregsríki, og að hvaða leyti bókmenntasköpun Íslendinga á seinni hluta þrettándu aldar er flækt í umsköpun landslaga. Skilyrði frjórrar umræðu um þessi efni í framtíðinni væru líklega ekki síst lestrarútgáfur Járnsíðu og Jónsbókar sem unnar væru af sömu kostgæfni og Grágás 1992 að því er lýtur að laganna orðum og flestum skýringum. Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir

alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 113–15

J

ohn McKinnell. Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism. With an Appendix by Maria Elena Ruggerini. Philologia 1. Roma: Il Calamo, 1994. 208 pages. Among the major branches of Norse literature eddic poetry is certainly most in need of critical innovation. The traditional contributions to dating, localizing, metrics, textual explication, editorial policy, formulaic classification, and so forth have slowed to a trickle, and new approaches have been sporadic. Of the two major subgroupings, mythological and heroic, the former seems to have fallen even further behind than the latter, which is at least nurtured by a larger Germanic context. In addressing the mythological corpus, John McKinnell has therefore chosen the harder task and has renewed where renewal is most needed. At the same time he discusses the problems in a straightforward and unpretentious manner that underplays the significance of his argument. The argument lies in the title words “One and Many” and “Variety and Change.” McKinnell tries to destabilize the unity suggested by transmission (largely) in a single manuscript, implied by broad generic terms such as “eddic” and “mythological,” and reinforced by the assumption that the mythological poems are codifications of a uniform religious and narrative system. The approach is modern to the extent that it assumes that the poems are individual arabesques on a common but infinitely variable stock of stories. This outlook gives the individual poet and the individual poem much more autonomy in the overall tradition, and it offers the reader more freedom in reflecting on individual poetic formulations. A few key quotations may serve to illustrate McKinnell’s angle of vision. “It is essential to an understanding of Norse mythology that this was a religion (or group of cults) in which there was no such stability [scil. as in the Christian system], and for which the idea of orthodoxy was meaningless” (21). “In this situation of free choice, there was no reason why poets should not change the details of the stories they inher-

114 ited, or even make up new motifs of their own” (22). (McKinnell exemplifies this sort of mutability from the varying accounts of Thor’s fishing for the Midgard Serpent.) “If the whole system was liable both to gradual change and to variation based on personal choice, it cannot be safe to draw conclusions about what it was like in the remote past, to assume (as some mythologists have done) that it remained largely unchanged for a thousand years or more, or to compare it with mythology in Greek or Sanskrit in order to elucidate its supposed primitive form or social meaning” (25). McKinnell pursues this thesis by exploring the myths of Loki and Thor. In the former he finds “three faces,” Loki the trickster, Loki the traitor, and Loki the accuser. The trickster (in the stories of Þjazi and the Giant Builder) is ambiguous and amoral, moving easily between giants and gods and engaging in a sort of unpredictable brinksmanship, which can be beneficial or perilous for giants, gods, and humans alike. At this stage he embodies universal insecurity. The traitor figure (in the stories of Geirrøðr and Baldr) is far less ambiguous and has become demonized. He stands against order and civilization, and may owe something to the Christian distinction between good and evil. Finally, the accuser, who convicts the other gods of moral crimes, is a kind of devil figure and seems securely embedded in medieval Christianity. Chapter 3 singles out the story of Thor and Geirrøðr in its several manifestations and differentiates three types not on a religious scale of relative proximity to heathen and Christian paradigms but on a social scale. By discriminating authorial emphases McKinnell establishes an aristocratic or heroic viewpoint (e.g., Þórsdrápa), a popular viewpoint (e.g., Hymiskviða), and a satiric viewpoint (e.g., the tale in Gylfaginning). This separation of social attitudes serves as a further demonstration of how divergent representations of the same story can be. Chapters 4 and 5 pass beyond variation in individual stories and treat the contrasting views of Norse eschatology in Vafþrúðnismál and Voluspá. The chapter on Vafþrúðnismál provides a narrative context by comparing it to the riddling of Gestumblindi alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 113–15

Rezensionen in Hervarar saga. McKinnell then deals with the dramatic contradiction involved in Odin’s entering a head-ransom contest when he (and everyone else) knows that he is fated to die not at the hands of Vafþrúðnir but at ragnarok. We cannot therefore imagine that Odin is exploring his own fate. He is rather “testing whether Fate is as immutable as it seems” (102). From this situation McKinnell deduces the irony that as long as Vafþrúðnir gives predictable answers, Odin is safe in the contest at hand but condemned to suffer his fate at ragnarok. As a whole the poem therefore serves to reinforce the idea of ineluctable fate. There are nonetheless a few survivors after ragnarok: the daughter of Alfroðull (the sun), who stands for the power of renewal, Líf and Lífþrasir (also suggesting the persistence of life), Odin’s sons Víðarr and Váli, one destined to avenge his father and the other to avenge Baldr, and Thor’s sons Móði and Magni, who suggest the survival of courage and strength. Basing himself on the nature of these survivors, McKinnell suggests that those qualities which will resist fate and continue to live are “nature, the stubborn will to live in human beings, and on the highest level courage, strength and the taking of just revenge for one’s close relatives” (106). A separate chapter on Voluspá finds some narrative and structural similarities to Vafþrúðnismál but an altogether different ideology. Here there are no survivors in the sequence of combats at ragnarok, hence no “admiration for endurance, strength, courage and justified revenge” (121). Instead Hœnir, who has been surrendered to the Vanir as a hostage, and Baldr and Hoðr, who are consigned to Hel, all figure as survivors. These gods are characterized not by survival instincts but by innocence. They are moral survivors, suggesting a Christian streak in the poet’s thinking. The Christian features of Voluspá have of course been clearly recognized since Olrik’s ragnarok studies, but McKinnell recapitulates them convincingly, and they acquire new profile through the comparison of the heathen runic memorial at Glavendrup with the Christian rune site at Jelling. In his “Conclusions” McKinnell is slightly apologetic for the randomness inher-

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Rezensionen ent in a book devoted to diversity and he suggests that his chapters be taken as a series of experiments. But there is no need for modesty. The essay is an appropriate vehicle for mythological interpretations, although the number of first-rate essays in the field is rather small. This book assembles four excellent ones that are at once independent of each other but still linked by a common point of view. All are characterized by revealing comparisons and clearly formulated distinctions. It is no mean feat to extract a plausible ideology for Vafþrúðnismál or to extract a typology from the many faces of Loki. McKinnell carries off these experiments with great acuity, and his book will do much to revitalize the study of Norse mythology. Theodore M. Andersson

alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 113–15

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oss Samson, editor. Social Approaches to Viking Studies. Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1991. 254 pages.

These twenty-one essays stem from a seminar, “New Perspectives on Viking Studies,” held in Glasgow in 1988, and are grouped under the headings “Literacy” (1–17), “Gender and Sexual Relations” (19–83), “Exchange and Society” (85–133), “Political and Social Power” (135–88), and “Ancient Ethnicity and Modern Nationalism” (189–219). Section 1, “Literacy,” opens with “Sponsors, Writers, and Readers of Early Norse Literature” (3–10) by Lars Lönnroth, who fine-tunes earlier statements on Latin and vernacular literacy, sponsorship, and access to sources. Here he outlines a vision not of “two separate literatures or literary production systems, one clerical and one secular, but rather . . . overlapping and peacefully coexisting cultures jointly promoted by the Church and secular chieftains, one dominated by native oral tradition, the runic alphabet, Old Norse feud stories, Eddic and skaldic poetry, the other dominated by the Latin alphabet, clerical education, and foreign literary genres” (10). For this reviewer, the dynamic engagement of Icelandic clergy in secular matters, furthered by a non-celibate priesthood and bishops elected by landholders, suggests that the “overlap” was in the very same agents acting in both arenas, although one would stop short of ascribing translations from Latin to the chieftains. In “The Icelandic Sagas as Totemic Artefacts” (11–20) E. Paul Durrenberger examines Icelandic family sagas as closed, self-referential systems in which everything is explained not as the consequence of linear causality but, as in myth, simply as the way things are and always have been. Durrenberger would see in “the writing of sagas . . . an attempt to interpret contemporary events and situations in the thirteenth century in terms of an image of an unchanging society, and to indicate the differences between the contemporary realities and the culturally assumed stasis” (14). But in the matter of stasis, I would contend that the ambivalent relationship in the family sagas of

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Rezensionen ent in a book devoted to diversity and he suggests that his chapters be taken as a series of experiments. But there is no need for modesty. The essay is an appropriate vehicle for mythological interpretations, although the number of first-rate essays in the field is rather small. This book assembles four excellent ones that are at once independent of each other but still linked by a common point of view. All are characterized by revealing comparisons and clearly formulated distinctions. It is no mean feat to extract a plausible ideology for Vafþrúðnismál or to extract a typology from the many faces of Loki. McKinnell carries off these experiments with great acuity, and his book will do much to revitalize the study of Norse mythology. Theodore M. Andersson

alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 115–19

R

oss Samson, editor. Social Approaches to Viking Studies. Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1991. 254 pages.

These twenty-one essays stem from a seminar, “New Perspectives on Viking Studies,” held in Glasgow in 1988, and are grouped under the headings “Literacy” (1–17), “Gender and Sexual Relations” (19–83), “Exchange and Society” (85–133), “Political and Social Power” (135–88), and “Ancient Ethnicity and Modern Nationalism” (189–219). Section 1, “Literacy,” opens with “Sponsors, Writers, and Readers of Early Norse Literature” (3–10) by Lars Lönnroth, who fine-tunes earlier statements on Latin and vernacular literacy, sponsorship, and access to sources. Here he outlines a vision not of “two separate literatures or literary production systems, one clerical and one secular, but rather . . . overlapping and peacefully coexisting cultures jointly promoted by the Church and secular chieftains, one dominated by native oral tradition, the runic alphabet, Old Norse feud stories, Eddic and skaldic poetry, the other dominated by the Latin alphabet, clerical education, and foreign literary genres” (10). For this reviewer, the dynamic engagement of Icelandic clergy in secular matters, furthered by a non-celibate priesthood and bishops elected by landholders, suggests that the “overlap” was in the very same agents acting in both arenas, although one would stop short of ascribing translations from Latin to the chieftains. In “The Icelandic Sagas as Totemic Artefacts” (11–20) E. Paul Durrenberger examines Icelandic family sagas as closed, self-referential systems in which everything is explained not as the consequence of linear causality but, as in myth, simply as the way things are and always have been. Durrenberger would see in “the writing of sagas . . . an attempt to interpret contemporary events and situations in the thirteenth century in terms of an image of an unchanging society, and to indicate the differences between the contemporary realities and the culturally assumed stasis” (14). But in the matter of stasis, I would contend that the ambivalent relationship in the family sagas of

116 Icelanders to Norwegian royal favours and gifts, few of which work in Iceland for the communal good or measure up to local criteria of responsible utility, is a thematically weighty proleptic device, signalling change. Like the simpler dreams and portents affecting individual destinies, it transfers back to the Saga Age the dynamics of the subsequent Age of the Sturlungs. Only in the end, after feud has run its course, do the family sagas show these nefarious effects as successfully contained within the early Icelandic community, even though quite different outcomes were being experienced in the era of their composition, with local issues of landholding and feud now inflated to territorial and dynastic dimensions. The second section, “Gender and Sexual Relations,” is the largest of the collection. The first contribution, “Marriage Exchange and Social Structure” by Torben A. Vestergaard, is a textbook application of elementary and complex kinship theory to the Norse pantheon, viewing the couple-forming outcome as an expression of reciprocity. A nuanced picture emerges, where patrilinearity is in the foreground but cognatic descent is always available as an expedient in matters of influence-brokering, succession, and claims to land. When circuits of reciprocity break down, when movement becomes exclusively linear (as in hypergamy, women marrying upward) so that advantage accrues to the gods, the inherent force breaks from the circle of moderated exchange with destructive results. “Thus,” according to Vestergaard, “what happened to the world at the end of the Golden Age was that the closed overall structure of generalised reciprocity fell apart because of broken obligations of reciprocity, leaving the world with an open structure troubled by greed; timeless cyclic harmony gave way to time, history and then eventually the end of the world: Ragnarok” (30). But Vestergaard fails to note that Golden Ages are always a priori lost, and such ostensible statements on origins harness causality (the storylines of myth) to provide a rationale for the imperfect world we all know. I cannot then concur with his conclusion that “Scandinavian mythology mourns the loss of an overall, harmonious structure of reciprocity” (32, my emphasis). alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 115–19

Rezensionen Indeed, the very idea of “harmony,” either in a remote past or in illo tempore, the dimension of myth, is open to doubt. Margaret Clunies Ross’s essay, “PseudoProcreation Myths in Old Norse: An Anthropological Approach” (35–44) is a radical reinterpretation of familiar elements of Old Norse cosmography. Clunies Ross identifies pseudo-procreation in the mythological ascription of natural female powers to male creator deities (36). Natural procreation by females ends only in natural death; spiritual procreation — of males by males — gives enduring life and is the ordering principle for society and culture. Yet the female, like the giant and troll a reflex of the Other, is the locus of inchoate power. Clunies Ross concludes: “The Old Norse myth of the origin of the gods acknowledges the essential importance of the giant and feminine, while asserting the social and cultural superiority of the patriline of Æsir” (42). In “Some Aspects of Christianisation in Central Sweden” (45–52) Anne-Sofie Gräslund considers the evidence of rune-stones and calls attention to the mutual support between missionary activity and coalescing royal authority. One of the new religion’s chief attractions was the practical model of effective organization that it offered political leaders. The author also considers the appeal of the new faith to women, noting that the erection of rune-stones, on which women’s names are relatively frequent, coincides with the period of most intense contact between the two belief systems. Again we have evidence of “creative chafing” elsewhere documented in the early northern Middle Ages. Successive appropriations of the image of Viking Age women for social ends by the Swedish bourgeoisie in the period 1850 to 1920 are considered by Elisabeth ArwillNordbladh. She notes how stereotyped thinking on gender inserted itself into the scholarly agenda of archaeology (“The Swedish Image of Viking Women: Stereotype, Generalisation and Beyond” [53–64]). In “Women, Kinship, and the Basis of Power in the Norwegian Viking Age” (65– 74), Liv Helga Dommasnes interprets the quality of grave-goods as indicative of some women’s high social status. One cannot, however, dismiss the possibility that a

Rezensionen woman is not being recognized for her inherent worth but only as a leader’s wife or the representative of an important family with which he allied himself. Typical of Dommasnes’s projection of evidence is the following: “Perhaps the men’s absence [on military expeditions] paved the way for women’s economic power, for they had to take over full responsibility for what went on at home, which may be reflected in the growing percentage of female graves during the Viking period” (67). Yet it is a long jump from legal possession through inheritance of an Icelandic goðord to its practical exercise and the “full religious authority” (71) assumed to be inherent in this function in the pagan period. In the same vein Anne Stalsberg argues on the basis of small folding scales found among female grave-goods that women were active commercial agents (“Women as Actors in North European Viking Age Trade” [75–88]). She paints the attractive picture of the astute wife minding the shop and scales in Rus emporia along the Volga while her husband is away on business in the Slavic outback. While this scene cannot be rejected out of hand, one might suggest that the scales, rather like the keys borne in life as insignia of authority, may in fact be symbols of effective management and economy in large households, the judicious weighing and allocation of resources, and do not indicate regular occupation in money matters. In its attempt to fill in blank chapters of women’s history, the article, like others in the volume, overvalues archaeological evidence that might expose various occupations and functions as less monolithically male than the viricentric discourse of extant sources would have us believe. The essays contained in the third section, under the heading “Exchange and Society,” are introduced by the editor Ross Samson in the first of his two contributions, “Economic Anthropology and Vikings” (87– 96). For authors of this section dealing with transfers of various kinds, the canonical texts are Marcel Mauss’s “Essai sur le don” (L’Année sociologique 1 [1923–24]: 30– 186) and Aron Gurevic’s “Wealth and GiftBestowal Among the Ancient Scandinavians” (Scandinavica 7 [1968]: 126–38). alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 115–19

117 Against this older picture of equilibrium as an objective or outcome, I would call attention to recent theoretical advances in the study of gift-exchange that emphasize social inequalities, coercive giving and receiving, and subtle but stressful imbalances, along with the important if often only ideal category of “inalienable possessions.” But often lacking in the contributions of this section is an awareness of the exploitative potential and coercive effects of social distinctions. Elisabeth Vestergaard’s “Gift-Giving, Hoarding, and Outdoings” (97–104) is, in terms of theoretical exposition, the most stimulating piece in this section. In examples from myth, wisdom literature, and mythoheroic saga she finds a similarly consequential “disintegration of social communication — that is, exchange according to the norms of society” (101), leading to the collapse of the community. Her discussion of the asocial nature of outdoing, straying from the moderated norm, is of particular interest and recalls the Icelandic family sagas’ praise of hóf ‘moderation’ as the socially most effective ethical stance. “Gift Exchange in Early Iron Age Norse Society” (105–12) by Åsa Dahlin Hauken is a welcome complement to the foregoing essay, with concrete examples in the movement of large cauldrons of Roman provenance in the Early Iron Age. Dahlin Hauken sees the prestigious gift as a facilitator for on-going relations between the parties in more practical spheres. The gift of a cauldron also provided the recipient with the means for further generosity in the form of feasts with socially cohesive effects. “Gift-exchange appears to be the best model to explain the peculiarities in the archaeologically preserved imported material, considering both the distribution and the types of object imported” (111). In “Money and Media in Viking Age Scandinavia” (113–22), Märit Gaimster charts the complex interplay of factors accompanying the introduction of a depersonalized currency (my term, not hers) — rings, then hack silver, finally coin. Over “older models which viewed economy as an independent component of society” she favours “a more political model which presents social stratification, power, and control as primary incentives” (115).

118 Thematically attuned is Samson’s second contribution, “Fighting with Silver: Rethinking Trading, Raiding and Hoarding” (123–33). Although hoarding — taking a commodity out of circulation — is proscribed in myth (“all those who come into contact with the hoard become socially and morally defective because of their violations of social exchange obligations” [E. Vestergaard 101]), it is now generally accepted that hoards do not represent valuables buried in moments of hurried crisis, but were rather in the nature of insurance policies, contingency funds that perhaps could not otherwise be successfully invested in the immediate community. In two essays that open the fourth section, by Carl Löfving (“Who Ruled the Region East of the Skagerrak in the Eleventh Century?” [157–68]) and by Thomas Lindkvist (“Social and Political Power in Sweden 1000–1300: Predatory Incursions, Royal Taxation, and the Formation of the Feudal State” [147–56]), socioeconomic forces are shown to play a decisive role in stabilizing and expanding royal authority. Löfving notes the following requirements for state formation: “(a) necessary information about the governmental area; (b) means to store and process this information; (c) instruments of enforcement for the permanent realisation of rulers’ aspirations” (149). With fine Machiavellian understatement he observes: “A necessary qualification for a state society is, at least theoretically, a monopoly on violence in order to exercise justice” (149). These two articles are among the most detailed and richly documented in the volume, although their conclusions differ somewhat. Löfving finds less evidence for effective central power in his arena and period than Lindkvist in more northern Svealand, where discontinuity and medieval invention are more evident than a slow, continuous evolution of proto–state forms. In “The Name of the Witch: Sagas, Sorcery, and Social Context” (157–68) Gísli Pálsson claims that “in Iceland accusations of witchcraft disappeared as a result of increased social distance, that is, with the development of increasingly asymmetrical power relations” (157). One must question, however, how narrative evidence — family sagas (íslendinga sögur) on the one hand, alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 115–19

Rezensionen contemporary sagas (Sturlunga saga) on the other — relates to actual social conditions, when it is recognized that witchcraft is not central to the thematics of either genre and is, at best, only a plot facilitator and source of “pre-conversion colour” in the former. Legal charges of witchcraft (galdr) continued in Iceland into the nineteenth century. Yet it is plausible that the Age of the Sturlungs marginalized reliance on sorcery in the prosecution of dynastic feud, as Gísli argues. John M. Hill’s essay, “Hrothgar’s Noble Rule: Love and the Great Legislator” (169– 78) is unconvincing, because too panoptic, in adducing mythological archetypes in the analysis of later ethical and societal conceptions. With Dumézil and social tripartition providing the theoretical framework, Hill discusses Hrothgar and Beowulf under the sign of a Norse Týr with considerably expanded functional attributes. Yet evidence is decidedly slim for restoring Týr with original billing as “All-Father and Sky-King, father of gods and goddesses, legislator and war-god, heaven’s guardian” (177). On a point of detail, Unferth’s role is less “the venting of destructive feelings toward the would-be saviour-hero” (172) than that of the conventional doorkeeper and interpellator. On the threshold of the hall, symbol of ranked society, this type character puts the stranger at a social “square one” from which the newcomer must validate himself with accounts of past deeds and boasts of future ones. A more rigorous methodology is found in a treatment of those on the bottom social rung. David Pelteret’s essay, “Slavery in the Danelaw” (179–88), fulfils the promise of the volume’s title and combines such evidence as settlement patterns in England, records of land ownership, legal terminology, and literary imagery derived from the Old English and Norse languages in contact on the dayto-day level in order to chart the likely course of slavery and subsequent manumission as elements of landowners’ expansionist policy in the East Midlands. Opening the book’s final section, Inger Zachrisson’s contribution, “The South Saami Culture in Archaeological Finds and West Nordic Written Sources from A.D. 800– 1300” (191–99) focuses on exchanges in which the cultural insignia of the materially

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Rezensionen and militarily superior Norsemen are transferred to the political elite of the commercially tributary Saami. These prestige items are better preserved at grave-sites than many organic Saami artifacts. Borrowing in the other direction took the form of the literary motifs of the Saami sorcerer, skier, and hunter. Finally, from the periphery of the Viking world, two essays on the use and misuse of the past. Birgitta Linderoth Wallace (“The Vikings in North America: Myth and Reality” [207–20]) writes entertainingly of the exploitation of the Viking past in North America in a review of various frauds such as the Kensington Stone and then provides a concise update on what can be known and surmised from the Viking station at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Thomas S. Noonan (“The Vikings and Russia: Some New Directions and Approaches to an Old Problem” [201–6]) lays out the route that future inquiry into the Viking presence in early Russia might take, if nationalist sentiment and control of the relevant sites do not revive the Normanist controversy over the relative importance of foreign and native factors in regularizing long-distance trade through the Slavic lands and in the emergence of the early Russian state. This volume, although marred by typographical errors and the editor’s self-indulgent preface, features a single collective bibliography and a serviceable index. Cross-referencing essay to essay is rather limited, as is cross-fertilization in transforming the oral presentations for publication. Indeed, the majority of contributions seem, in terms of theoretical and factual density, historical reach, length and so on, to have progressed little beyond the state of conference papers. Despite the ambitious title of the volume, several contributions lack the requisite interdisciplinary rigour, the Icelandic family sagas, for example, still being uncritically exploited as an inventory of handy props for historical arguments. Although welcome for their diversity, few of these Social Approaches to Viking Studies bring us over familiar ground by a bold new route or deep into unexplored territory. William Sayers alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 115–19

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verre Bagge. Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s “Heimskringla.” Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991. 339 Seiten. Die Heimskringla des isländischen Gelehrten und Historikers Snorri Sturluson (1179– 1241) — so benannt von ihrem ersten Herausgeber Peringskjöld 1697 nach den beiden ersten Wörtern des Prologs kringla heimsins (was einem lateinischen orbis mundi entspricht) — hat als Geschichte der norwegischen Könige vom fiktiven trojanischen Ursprung der Dynastie in grauer Vorzeit an bis auf das Jahr 1177 (in dem Sverris saga anschließt, die Snorri wohl als bereits vorhandene Fortsetzung der norwegischen Königsgeschichte ansah) wie kein zweites Werk nicht zuletzt auch das neuzeitliche Bild der norwegischen Geschichte geformt, seit sie der norwegische Historiker Gerhard Schøning als Hauptquelle für seine eigene Norges riiges historie (1771–81) herangezogen und zusammen mit Skúli Þórðarson Thorlacius auch separat in København herausgegeben hat (1777–1826). Auch heute noch kann ihre Bedeutung für das norwegische Selbstverständnis und für die Kenntnis der frühmittelalterlichen norwegischen Geschichte gar nicht hoch genug veranschlagt werden. Dabei war es nicht zuletzt ihr ästhetischer Rang als “erzählte Geschichte”, der dem positivistischen 19. und rationalistischen 20. Jahrhundert den Eindruck vermittelte, es hier mit einer von Kausalitätsdenken und rationalem Geschichtsbild getragenen “modernen” Geschichtsauffassung zu tun zu haben, was Snorris Werk von ca. 1230 in der früh- und hochmittelalterlichen europäischen Historiographie als nahezu einzigartig dastehen ließ. 750 Jahre nach Snorris Tod hat jetzt mit Sverre Bagge, Professor für Geschichte an der Universität Bergen und daselbst Leiter eines “Center for European Cultural Studies”, wieder ein norwegischer Historiker eine gewichtige Neuanalyse dieser auf Island entstandenen mittelalterlichen Darstellung norwegischer Geschichte vorgelegt, die Rang und Eigenart der Heimskringla neu zu definieren und vor einem europäischen Hintergrund neu zu erklären und

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Rezensionen and militarily superior Norsemen are transferred to the political elite of the commercially tributary Saami. These prestige items are better preserved at grave-sites than many organic Saami artifacts. Borrowing in the other direction took the form of the literary motifs of the Saami sorcerer, skier, and hunter. Finally, from the periphery of the Viking world, two essays on the use and misuse of the past. Birgitta Linderoth Wallace (“The Vikings in North America: Myth and Reality” [207–20]) writes entertainingly of the exploitation of the Viking past in North America in a review of various frauds such as the Kensington Stone and then provides a concise update on what can be known and surmised from the Viking station at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Thomas S. Noonan (“The Vikings and Russia: Some New Directions and Approaches to an Old Problem” [201–6]) lays out the route that future inquiry into the Viking presence in early Russia might take, if nationalist sentiment and control of the relevant sites do not revive the Normanist controversy over the relative importance of foreign and native factors in regularizing long-distance trade through the Slavic lands and in the emergence of the early Russian state. This volume, although marred by typographical errors and the editor’s self-indulgent preface, features a single collective bibliography and a serviceable index. Cross-referencing essay to essay is rather limited, as is cross-fertilization in transforming the oral presentations for publication. Indeed, the majority of contributions seem, in terms of theoretical and factual density, historical reach, length and so on, to have progressed little beyond the state of conference papers. Despite the ambitious title of the volume, several contributions lack the requisite interdisciplinary rigour, the Icelandic family sagas, for example, still being uncritically exploited as an inventory of handy props for historical arguments. Although welcome for their diversity, few of these Social Approaches to Viking Studies bring us over familiar ground by a bold new route or deep into unexplored territory. William Sayers alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 119–24

S

verre Bagge. Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s “Heimskringla.” Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991. 339 Seiten. Die Heimskringla des isländischen Gelehrten und Historikers Snorri Sturluson (1179– 1241) — so benannt von ihrem ersten Herausgeber Peringskjöld 1697 nach den beiden ersten Wörtern des Prologs kringla heimsins (was einem lateinischen orbis mundi entspricht) — hat als Geschichte der norwegischen Könige vom fiktiven trojanischen Ursprung der Dynastie in grauer Vorzeit an bis auf das Jahr 1177 (in dem Sverris saga anschließt, die Snorri wohl als bereits vorhandene Fortsetzung der norwegischen Königsgeschichte ansah) wie kein zweites Werk nicht zuletzt auch das neuzeitliche Bild der norwegischen Geschichte geformt, seit sie der norwegische Historiker Gerhard Schøning als Hauptquelle für seine eigene Norges riiges historie (1771–81) herangezogen und zusammen mit Skúli Þórðarson Thorlacius auch separat in København herausgegeben hat (1777–1826). Auch heute noch kann ihre Bedeutung für das norwegische Selbstverständnis und für die Kenntnis der frühmittelalterlichen norwegischen Geschichte gar nicht hoch genug veranschlagt werden. Dabei war es nicht zuletzt ihr ästhetischer Rang als “erzählte Geschichte”, der dem positivistischen 19. und rationalistischen 20. Jahrhundert den Eindruck vermittelte, es hier mit einer von Kausalitätsdenken und rationalem Geschichtsbild getragenen “modernen” Geschichtsauffassung zu tun zu haben, was Snorris Werk von ca. 1230 in der früh- und hochmittelalterlichen europäischen Historiographie als nahezu einzigartig dastehen ließ. 750 Jahre nach Snorris Tod hat jetzt mit Sverre Bagge, Professor für Geschichte an der Universität Bergen und daselbst Leiter eines “Center for European Cultural Studies”, wieder ein norwegischer Historiker eine gewichtige Neuanalyse dieser auf Island entstandenen mittelalterlichen Darstellung norwegischer Geschichte vorgelegt, die Rang und Eigenart der Heimskringla neu zu definieren und vor einem europäischen Hintergrund neu zu erklären und

120 zu bestätigen sucht. Dabei steht, wie der Titel Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s “Heimskringla” ausdrücklich andeutet, weniger das Werk und weniger die aus ihm abzuleitende Rekonstruierbarkeit der “tatsächlichen” historischen Verhältnisse im norwegischen Frühmittelalter im Vordergrund, als vielmehr der Verfasser der Heimskringla selbst und dessen “Bild von” dieser norwegischen Realität, das er in Heimskringla entworfen hat. Es geht Bagge mithin in erster Linie um eine geschichtsphilosophische Perspektive, um Snorris Geschichtsbild, um mentalitätsgeschichtliche Fragen, u.ä.: “The purpose . . . is partly to characterize Snorri as a historian, partly to analyze ideas about society and politics in early thirteenth-century Norway and Iceland, and to some extent even to contribute to our knowledge of Snorri’s society as it actually was” (“Introduction”, 1). Schon die Gliederung der gesamten Untersuchung macht dieses auf den Historiographen Snorri zielende Erkenntnisinteresse Bagges deutlich: Kap. 1 “The Author” und Kap. 6 “The Context”, in denen Snorri als Politiker und Historiograph im Vergleich mit der übrigen europäischen Historiographie seiner Zeit im Mittelpunkt steht, umschließen wie eine Klammer den Kern des Buches, der in Kapitel 2 “The Conflicts” (64–110), Kap. 3 “The Society” (111–45) und Kap. 4 “Morality and Human Character” (146–91) Snorris zentrale Kategorie des Konflikts, über die sich für ihn Geschichte manifestiert, sowie sein Gesellschaftsmodell und seinen Menschenbegriff abbildet: “The clue to understanding Snorri’s society, as well as his ideas of political behavior, is his conflicts. To Snorri, as to most medieval historians, history is history of events, and the events that are most relevant to history are conflicts. My analysis of the composition and chronology of Heimskringla has shown that the conflicts form the main theme of the work, whereas most other events have a subordinate position. In some way or another most of Heimskringla deals with conflicts. When there are none, as in the long reign of King Óláfr kyrri (the quiet/peaceful) (1066–1093), Snorri confines himself to a few pages” (64). alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 119–124

Rezensionen Diese Beobachtung war es wohl, die Bagge zu seiner Kernthese veranlaßt hat, Snorri schildere die norwegische Geschichte nach dem Muster der isländischen, mit deren machtpolitischen Mechanismen der Politiker Snorri vertraut war. Die politischen Vorgänge, wie sie im Erfolg und im Scheitern der norwegischen Könige sich niederschlagen, die beide wiederum im “militärisch” entschiedenen Konflikt abgebildet werden, sind entsprechend dem Konflikt-Modell der isländischen Saga begriffen. Dies führt auf die Frage des ersten Unterkapitels: “What Are the Conflicts About?” (64–75). Knüpft Bagge mit seinem Interesse am Geschichtsbild Snorris zwar einerseits über sieben Jahrzehnte hinweg ausdrücklich an den Ansatz von Halvdan Koht (“Die Geschichtsauffassung der norwegischen König-Sagas”, Die Geisteswissenschaften 1 [1913–14]: 593–96) an, insoweit dieser nach Snorris übergreifender Geschichtskonzeption und den sein Gesamtbild der norwegischen Gesellschaft und den gesellschaftlichen Wandel tragenden Ideen gefragt hatte, so wird schon hier deutlich (S. 2), daß er diese Frage ganz anders als Koht beantworten wird. Während für den Marxisten Koht Snorris Schilderung der norwegischen Geschichte und vornehmlich ihrer Bürgerkriegsphasen (z.B. 960–975, 1025–1030, 1130–1184) vom Gedanken des “modernen” Machtkampfes zwischen Gottesgnadenkönigtum und Aristokratie getragen war, vermag Bagge in Heimskringla einen derartigen “konstitutionellen” Gegensatz und grundsätzlichen Interessendissenz zwischen König und Aristokraten (“Fürsten”) als Idee und Organisationsprinzip nicht zu erkennen. Sah Koht den “modernen” staatsrechtlichen und politischen Antagonismus Monarchie vs. Aristokraten (als Kaste) beispielsweise in Snorris Darstellung der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Olaf dem Heiligen und seinen norwegischen aristokratischen Gegnern oder in den Machtkämpfen der konkurrierenden Fraktionen nach dem Tod König Sigurds des Jerusalemfahrers 1130 bis hin zur Festigung der Macht der SverrirDynastie gegen Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts als tragende Idee am Werk, so ergibt Bagges Analyse demgegenüber, daß nichts in Snorris Darstellung darauf hindeute, daß es um konstitutionelle Konflikte geht. Snorri verstehe

Rezensionen diese Konflikte vielmehr als “Fehden”, also als Interessenkonflikte einzelner Magnaten untereinander, in denen entweder langfristige politische Ambitionen Einzelner miteinander kollidieren oder konkrete Anlässe wie Verwandtenrache, enttäuschte politische Ambitionen, etc. die Auslöser sind. Auch die Könige sind als ihre Partikularinteressen verfolgende Magnaten dargestellt, wie Bagge an Olaf dem Heiligen zeigt, vgl. die Unterabschnitte “The Fall of St. Óláfr” und “Óláfr’s Conflicts with the Magnates” (66–70). Gerade die durchaus häufigen Frontenwechsel dieser einzelnen Aristokraten bezeugten, daß sie jeweils ganz eigene Interessen und nicht etwa nationale, religiöse oder “konstitutionelle” Konfliktziele verfolgen. Das ist wohl richtig. Auch die Ergebnisse der weiteren Untersuchung dieser als Fehden begriffenen Konflikte in Unterkapiteln wie “The Feud” (75–90), “Snorri’s Politicians” (82–85), “The Game of Politics” (85–90), “Success and Failure” (90–100), die wiederum an König Olaf dem Heiligen gewonnen werden, korroborieren Bagges Befund, der darauf hinausläuft, daß Snorri die geschichtlichen Abläufe aus dem Konfliktpotential der politischen Gegensätze heraus und nicht mit ideologischen Gegensätzen motiviert: “Power politics and human character are a more important aspect of the conflicts between the king and the magnates than the ideology or principles of division of power within society” (110). Snorris Vertrautheit mit dem politischen Machtspiel auf Island dient ihm also als Verstehensmodell, mittels dessen er die norwegische Geschichte überhaupt erst darzustellen vermag. Wie muß der Mensch beschaffen sein, der innerhalb einer relativ unstrukturierten, also nicht hierarchisch in gegeneinander abgeschottete Kasten gegliederten (scil. feudalen) Gesellschaft wie der isländischen seine persönlichen langfristigen politischen Interessen erfolgreich durchsetzt? Das politische Machtspiel einer solchen Gesellschaft ist allein im Wege politischer Allianz und Sicherung von Unterstützung durch andere zu gewinnen. Snorris idealer homo politicus ist, wer auf dem Thing mit seinen rhetorischen Fähigkeiten das Thingvolk für sich einzunehmen und durch geschickten Appell an die Interessen der analvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 119–124

121 deren Magnaten diese sich zu alliieren und durch Geschenke, Heiraten etc. zu verbinden und verpflichten weiß. Dies gilt auch für die norwegischen Könige. Tyrannische Könige sind nicht lange erfolgreich. Dies ist, wenn es darum geht, Snorris Begriff von Geschichte, ihren Kausalitäten und “Gesetzen” zu erfassen, ein wichtiges Ergebnis, aus dem sich weitere Einsichten in Snorris Verstehenshorizont ergeben: Kapitel 3 “The Society” und Kapitel 4 “Morality and Human Character”. Konfligierende Interessen einzelner Magnaten führen zu bewaffneten Konflikten (Fehden), deren Beilegung durch Vermittlung und Interessenausgleich im Sinne eines gesamtgesellschaftlichen Gleichgewichts der Gleichen den gesellschaftlichen Frieden wieder herbeiführt. Im Grunde ist das isländische Konflikt-Modell der Gesellschaft ein “Konsens-Modell” (wie Theodore M. Andersson seinerzeit in einem wichtigen Aufsatz gezeigt hat: “The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family Sagas”, Speculum 45 [1970]: 575–93). Voraussetzung hierfür ist eine Gesellschaftsform, die Bagge als relativ unorganisiert (“loosely organized” [222]) und statisch bezeichnet und in der die Akteure mehr oder weniger gut begründete Rechtsansprüche gegeneinander geltend machen können (“a relatively loosely structured, . . . ‘democratic’ . . . society without a state in the real sense, and . . . the political maneuvering takes place between persons with certain more or less well-founded legal claims within a rather static system” [“Conclusion”, 249–50]). Auch die norwegische Gesellschaft ist von Snorri als in diesem Sinne statisch gezeichnet, so daß auch die Monarchie in Snorris Schilderung ebenfalls die gesamte Heimskringla hindurch “remains largely the same” (97). Zumindest, was die “Oberfläche” des Snorrischen Textes angeht, ist Bagges Analyse des Gesellschaftsmodells, wie es Snorri für Norwegen zugrundelegt, sicherlich zutreffend (“The Society”, 111–45) Spätestens hier ist klar, daß das Kap. 4 “Morality and Human Character” (146–91) als Snorris idealen Menschentypus ebenfalls einen “statischen” Charakter — Bagge relativiert auch den Ausdruck Charakter mit Recht als moderne Vorstellung, die Snorris

122 Menschenbild nicht gerecht werden kann — haben wird: “The Ideal Man” (146–61). Grundsätzlich unterscheiden sich die Könige von den übrigen Protagonisten nur darin, daß sie deren positive Eigenschaften in besonderem Maße auf sich vereinigen: Zu den üblichen “heroischen” Tugenden wie “ansprechendes Äußere, Schönheit, z.B. langes blondes Haar”, “Mut”, “Geschick im Umgang mit Waffen”, “körperliche Tüchtigkeit” müssen jedoch andere “innere” wie “Großzügigkeit”, da man sich mit ihr Freunde und Alliierte gewinnt, vor allem aber “hohe intellektuelle Fähigkeiten” hinzukommen. Letzteres ist für Snorri das alles entscheidende Kriterium für politischen Erfolg oder Mißerfolg eines Königs (151, 161 und passim). Es ist die Garantie für den Erfolg im politischen Machtspiel. Und am Erfolg allein mißt sich der Rang des Königs: “A Good King is a Successful King” (156– 58). Der diesem nahezu machiavellistisch anmutenden Credo Snorris scheinbar widersprechende letztendliche politische Mißerfolg König Olafs des Heiligen wird durch dessen Märtyrertod und seine Rolle als rex perpetuus Norwegiae doch zum Erfolg, allerdings auf einer anderen, höheren Ebene, stört also die Grundsätze des weltlichen politischen Machtspiels nicht (159–60). Damit steht die Frage des moralischen Verhaltens, die in der klerikal geprägten Historiographie des übrigen Europa eine wichtige Rolle spielt, bei Snorri weniger im Vordergrund. Auch hierin wird Bagge sicherlich Snorri gerecht. Dennoch bewegt er sich in diesem Kapitel 4 gelegentlich auf schwankem Grund, so im Unterkapitel “Dignity, Self-Control, and the Code of Honor” (161– 73). Bagge meint, das Gewähren von Pardon an einen im Kampf besiegten Gegner, altn. grið genannt, binde diesen durch Dankbarkeit an seinen Bezwinger ähnlich, wie Geschenke dies tun (167). “Grið schwören” beinhaltete jedoch einen Urfehdeschwur, hatte also ausgesprochenen Rechtscharakter: Bruch dieses Schwurs war mit Ächtung bedroht, der Vertragsbrecher wurde zum griðníðingr (vgl. klassisch zu grið Klaus von See, Altnordische Rechtswörter [Tübingen 1964], 166–73, 210–12). — Ähnlich verschwommen ist seine Diskussion des Ehrbegriffs generell. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 119–124

Rezensionen Bagge neigt hier — wie auch sonst, übrigens — zu pointierten Formulierungen: “Whether a particular course of action is honorable or not ultimately depends on its success” (165). Damit sucht er auch den Ehrbegriff bei Snorri als politischen Kriterien unterworfen darzustellen und so gegen den “ideologischen” rigorosen ritterlichen Ehrbegriff der aristokratischen Kaste des europäischen Kontinents abzugrenzen, ja aus dem Kontrast zu diesem erst eigentlich zu gewinnen, also ex negativo. Eine positive Definition des Ehrbegriffs der isländischen Gesellschaft und ihrer Normen fehlt, war in diesem Rahmen wohl auch nicht zu leisten. — Recht unscharf und summarisch bleibt auch Bagges Behandlung solcher Themen wie “Modern and Medieval Ideas of the Personality” (174–91). Er grenzt Snorris Beschreibung des menschlichen Charakters sowohl gegen den individualistischen Charaktertypus neuzeitlicher Psychologie wie auch gegen Versuche, die antike Temperamentenlehre auf Snorris Protagonisten anzuwenden (so Lars Lönnroth 1963–64, 1965), ab, indem er auf seine “nominalistische” Vorstellung vom Menschen als der Summe seiner Handlungen, also wiederum ein “äußerliches” Kriterium, und seinen statischen Menschenbegriff verweist, der charakterlichen Wandel nicht kenne. Dies macht er nochmals an Olaf dem Heiligen fest, der vom Wiking zum christlichen König und schließlich zum Märtyrer und Heiligen wird (“The Biography of St. Óláfr” [181–86]): “Snorri does not describe a development. He describes three successive characters with no real link between them” (182). Damit sucht Bagge nüchtern Snorri von dem modernen Mißverständnis zu befreien, mit seiner Óláfs saga helga “his greatest achievement as a psychologist” erreicht zu haben, wie die ältere Forschung meinte (Storm, Paasche, Nordal). Statt einer Charakterentwicklung sieht Bagge Kontinuität in allen drei Stadien, indem er auf die sich gleichbleibenden “heroischen” Qualitäten Olafs in Snorris Schilderung aller drei Lebensstadien verweist: “What occurs, is not strictly speaking a change in character, but only a change in the circumstances of life” (183). Und: “After all, the qualities Snorri decribes in his initial presentation of the young Viking chief

Rezensionen remain throughout the three successive ‘lives’” (185). Wiederum ist Bagges Befund an der “Oberfläche” des Snorrischen Textes richtig und besser, als die bloße Applikation von Verständniskategorien der modernen Charakterpsychologie es war. Indessen, das höfische und christliche Modell des der Wandlung fähigen Charakters und die Fähigkeit der höfischen Literatur zur Schilderung seelischer Vorgänge, die er als Kontrastfolie heranzieht, um Snorris statische Charaktere davon abzusetzen, sind ein Feld, das äußerst differenziert zu handhaben ist: Auch Wolfram von Eschenbachs Parzival — Musterbeispiel der Charakterentwicklung — ist in seiner unbeirrbaren Gralssuche “against the odds” seiner art treu. Hier greift Bagge auch bei Snorri vielleicht etwas kurz. Als Historiker ist Bagge mit dem Paradigmenwandel in Geschichtswissenschaft und Geisteswissenschaften hin zum Studium der “historiography as part of intellectual history” vertraut (3). Seine Einleitung nennt die Namen Bernheim, Spörl, Lammers, Koch, Beumann, Ehlers, Brandt, Southern, Green, Smalley und last but not least Duby. Für Neuansätze speziell in der Heimskringla-Forschung nennt er Aufsätze von Gurevic (“Saga and History: The ‘Historical Conception’ of Snorri Sturluson”, Mediaeval Scandinavia 4 [1971]: 42–53), Lönnroth (“Ideology and Structure in Heimskringla”, Parergon 15 [1976]: 16–29) und Weber (“Intellegere historiam: Typological perspectives of Nordic prehistory [in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind and others]”, in Tradition og historieskrivning, hg. Kirsten Hastrup und Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Acta Jutlandica 63.2 [Århus 1987], 95–141). Dies jedoch nicht nur, um den Paradigmenwechsel zu dokumentieren, sondern, um sich von diesen neuen Ansätzen (Strukturanalysen gemäß dem augustinischen Geschichtsbild, geschichtstypologische Forschungsperspektive, etc.) auch wieder abzusetzen, indem er diese als Versuch wertet, Snorris Historiographie zu “theologisieren”, wogegen er gerade den weltlichen Charakter der Heimskringla und Snorris Desinteresse an “übernatürlichen” Erklärungen der geschichtlichen Ereignisse und an einer weltgeschichtlichen Anbindung seiner Darstellung betont. alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 119–124

123 Hier nun wird ein Defizit in Bagges Sichtweise deutlich, das ihn bei aller moderner Methodik und Vertrautheit mit anthropologischen und soziologischen Ansätzen paradoxerweise doch wieder in die Nähe des allem Strukturalismus abholden kritischen Rationalismus bringt und zum Gefangenen seines Kontrastmodells macht. Denn indem er die doch ganz selbstverständlich und unbestritten mundane “politische” Geschichtsschreibung Snorris mit durchgängig heilsgeschichtlich ausgerichteten Chroniken wie der des Bischofs Otto von Freising rigoros kontrastiert, gerade um den Sonderstatus der Snorrischen Historiographie sichtbar zu machen, geraten ihm dabei Sinnschichten der Heimskringla aus dem Blick, die im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert längst universell und in die “weltliche” Geschichtsschreibung eingegangen sind, ohne daß diese damit notwendig “theologisches” Gepräge erhielte. So ist die Auslegung der Geschichte nach dem mehrfachen Wortsinne im Zeitalter Hugos von St. Victor längst zum allgemeinen Rüstzeug geworden. Bagge begreift — sicherlich zu Recht — die Heimskringla gerade mit ihrem machtpolitisch an society and politics orientierten Bild der norwegischen Geschichte als Weiterführung der humanistischen Tradition des 12. Jahrhunderts im abgelegenen Norden Europas, zu der die ihrem Charakter nach vergleichbare gleichzeitige Historiographie im von der Scholastik ebenfalls noch unberührten Italien eine Parallele biete. Ein zwar sehr spekulativer, aber geradezu genialer soziologischer und wissenschaftshistorischer Erklärungsansatz für das Auftreten solcher “moderner” Werke am Rande Europas, während in dessen Zentrum Frankreich, England und Deutschland im 13. Jahrhundert die Scholastik triumphierte und die humanistische Geschichtsschreibungstradition verkümmern ließ, so daß hier Werke wie Snorris Heimskringla fehlen und Geschichte nach altem theologischen Muster weitergeschrieben werde (Kapitel 6 “The Context” [232–47], “Snorri and Contemporary Europe: Culture, Society, and Political Analysis” [240–47]). Wenn das richtig ist: Soll dann das im 12. Jahrhundert Allgemeingut gewordene typologische Verständnis von Mythologie, antiker Vorgeschichte und christlicher historia (siehe Peter Dronke,

124 Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism [Leiden 1974]) als einziges Element dieser humanistischen Tradition doch wieder verschwunden sein? Soll das symbolische Begreifen geschichtlicher Vorgänge und deren entsprechende Stilisierung wieder abgestorben und nur der neue Sinn für das Politische bewahrt worden sein? In Abwehr einer vermeintlichen Theologisierung der Heimskringla verfällt Bagge selbst in den Fehler, den er den “Theologen” attestieren möchte: den der einseitigen Interpretation. Ein, zwei Beispiele nur: Die Chronologie Snorris sei “relativ”, die theologische Weltchronologie spiele keine Rolle, Snorri schreibe nicht unter weltgeschichtlicher Perspektive, wie dies die theologischen Historiographen tun. Das ist nicht richtig. Richtig wäre, daß hinter Snorris Darstellung der konkreten Vorgänge die weltgeschichtlichen Bezüge zurücktreten. In der Gesamtstruktur des Werks sind sie jedoch manifest: Was ist die Ynglinga saga samt ihrer Einwanderungssage anderes als weltgeschichtliche Anbindung? — Die translatio der Alleinherrschaft (einvaldshöfðingjadómr), die Óðinn aus Asien nach Schweden bringt und die über Hálfdan svarti und dann Haraldr hárfagri schließlich nach Norwegen kommt (Weber 109–15), erklärt auf der Großstrukturebene der Heimskringla die norwegische Reichseinigung, zu der die anekdotische frýja der Frau als Bewußtmachung dieses Harald vorgegebenen Ziels hinzutritt. — Wenn Snorri das politische Scheitern des heidnischen blótjarls Hákon ausdrücklich mit dem jetzt (kurz vor 1000) in der Zeit herangekommenen Ende des Heidentums begründet, dann ist das nicht, wie Bagge diesen Satz mißversteht, ein vereinzeltes “Eingreifen Gottes” in die historia, sondern ganz im Sinne des Natur-, Zeit- und Schöpfungsbegriffs sowohl des heiligen Augustinus wie der St. Victor–Schule der vorbestimmte Zeitverlauf der Weltgeschichte, an den die norwegische Geschichte und damit Snorris Darstellung nunmehr herangerückt ist. — Die Rückkehr des heiligen Olaf nach Norwegen wird ihm im Traum anbefohlen. Snorri, so Bagge, schildere die auf Umwegen erfolgende Rückkehr aber nicht als Folge dieses übernatürlichen Eingriffs Gottes, sondern als politisches Kalkül, da Olaf alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 119–124

Rezensionen schließlich nicht sofort den Befehl ausführe (183). Bagge verkennt die spezifische Semiotik von Träumen in der historia: Sie liefern die “Legitimation” entscheidender Wendepunkte, nicht aber detaillierte Anweisungen für deren politische Ausführung; diese nimmt der König kraft seiner ihm von Gott verliehenen ratio selbst vor so, wie sie Snorri beschreibt. So wirken übernatürliches und menschliches Handeln zusammen. —Auch die Träume Ragnhildrs und Hálfdans sowie die Träume König Sigurds tut Bagge als “rein dynastisches” und nicht auf die norwegische Geschichte als solche bezogenes übernatürliches Eingreifen ab, um die Rolle der “übernatürlichen” Geschichtsperspektive in Heimskringla auf Details zu begrenzen. Dabei übersieht er seinen eigenen Basissatz: daß Snorri norwegische Geschichte eben als dynastische Geschichte schildert. — Das Königsglück (die hamingja) ist ein weiterer Punkt, bei dem Bagges einfacher Anschluß an Peter Hallbergs These von der einheimisch-paganen Herkunft dieser Vorstellung ein sehr differenziert zu betrachtendes Problem eskamotiert: hamingja oder felicitas und fortuna? Auch hier denkt der Rezensent an eine typologische Interpretation, die den einen Begriff (hamingja) mit dem anderen (felicitas) hermeneutisch deutet. — Solche Kritik im Detail kann und will Bagges Buch indessen keinen Abbruch tun: Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s “Heimskringla” ist ein überaus anregendes Buch, das unsere Einschätzung Snorris als Historiograph auf festere Füße stellt, als dies bisher der Fall war. Es ist auf weite Strecken ein außerordentlich erhellender Kommentar zu Snorris Vorstellung von Machtpolitik und Geschichte, der zugleich mit Heimskringla uns auch, wie es Bagges Absicht war, seine isländische Gesellschaft über ihre Repräsentanten, die homines politici der Saga- wie auch der Sturlungenzeit, in Snorris norwegischen Gegenstücken, den Magnaten wie Erlingr Skjálgsson, Erlingr skakki, Kálfr Árnason u.a., angemessener begreifbar macht. Und es öffnet uns den Horizont auf Europa, indem es zeigt, was diesem fehlt und warum. Gerd Wolfgang Weber

Rezensionen

W

illiam Ian Miller. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. 419 pages.

William Miller opens his book with a story from Sturlunga saga of the cleric Skæringr Hróaldsson, who had his hand cut off by some Norwegians in Iceland in the late twelfth century and was beheaded a few years later. And he closes it by envisioning himself in Skæringr’s footsteps, had he lived in medieval Iceland: “it would have been my luck to have lived as poor Skæring Hroaldsson did, . . . for a while without hand, and finally without head” (308). It may seem that I am playing the part of the executioner here, cutting a hand and the head off an American scholar who ventures into my own cultural heritage using the methods of relatively generalizing social history. It naturally looks strange to a native Icelander to read about such famous saga figures as Þorvaldr Gizurarson in Hruni and Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld as “a certain Thorvald” (146) and “a certain Thormod” (203), and that may well influence my reaction to the book. Anyway, I shall discuss it mainly from the viewpoint of an Icelandic historian and dwell mostly on its use and treatment of the sources. Before I start the amputation, let me say that Miller has written an impressive book, comprehensive in scope and based on a careful study of the entire corpus of saga literature and the law code, Grágás. It includes an immense number of references to instances which offer information on social life in early Iceland. It also abounds in clever observations. To mention only one of these, what Miller states about genealogy is revealing and exactly to the point: “The most important thing was to be able to get where you wanted to go. No one spurned a distinguished ancestor because of the sex of the links connecting them” (143). Apart from putting one-fifth of the text in notes at the back of the book, the presentation is attractive. Individualized descriptions of the sources and the more general findings of the author are nicely balanced. Skæringr’s story alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 125–28

125 in the Prologue provides occasion to discuss a number of questions which must heighten the interest of many readers. In a chapter on the sources the author presents the text of a short saga, Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs, and analyzes it, which must be a great help to readers who come to the book with a vague idea of what a saga is, or none at all. The comprehensiveness of the book is certainly its strength, but it is also one of its weaknesses. On one hand, it is too much an in-depth study of individual social ties, customs, and attitudes to be a general social history of what the author calls “Saga Iceland.” On the other hand, its approach is too broad to form a coherent thesis. In the Introduction the author starts an interesting discussion about the economy of honor in Icelandic society: “honor was a precious commodity in very short supply. The amount of honor in the Icelandic universe was perceived to be constant at best, and over the long run, it seemed to be diminishing . . . Honor was thus, as a matter of social mathematics, acquired at someone else’s expense” (30). When I first read the book I expected this bold assertion, and its many implications, to be the theme of the book. The “Concluding Observations” also indicate that this was the author’s aim. But in between, it seems as if the author was distracted by too many other things, like householding patterns and bonds of kinship. (Distraction from the right path of life, by the way, was also the ill fortune of Skæringr Hróaldsson.) The author reveals his boldness in using the sources mostly in the original language and quoting his own translations of them (xi). I have not found any serious misunderstandings or distortions of the texts, but inaccurate translations of words and phrases can be pointed out: “He was not very skilled at bearing weapons or in dressing himself” (10); “ósiðvandr at vápnaburði ok klæðnaði,” Sturlunga says, which refers not to skills, but propriety (Sturlunga saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn [Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946], 1:246). “They said . . . that there were many stranded whales” (14) implies that the whales were lying around on the coast. The

126 original says: “kolluðu vera hvalrétt mikinn” (Laxdœla saga, ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson [Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1934], 5), which A. Margaret Arent has translated better as: “There was frequent stranding of whales” (The Laxdoela Saga [Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1964], 4). “Owing to this great increase in population there was great famine in many districts” (16). “Við þat óx svá mikill mannfjöldi á Íslandi, at þat var mikill óáransauki í mörgum héruðum” (Hungrvaka, in Biskupa sögur, ed. Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Jón Sigurðsson, vol. 1 [København: Möller, 1858], 71). Óáran is hardly more than a bad season, óáransauki an increase of that. “Kitchen” (19) is probably misleading as a translation of “eldhús” in Grágás’ provision on fire insurance (Grágás efter det arnamagnæanske haandskrift nr. 334 fol., Staðarhólsbók, ed. Vilhjálmur Finsen [København: Gyldendal, 1879], 260). The stipulation that a man could choose whether he had his “eldhús” or “skáli” insured, if he owned both, seems to indicate that eldhús refers to a house with a function similar to a skáli, a hall with an open fire. “I am able to understand the archbishop’s message” (38) is the translation of Jón Loftsson’s freqently quoted phrase: “heyra má ek erkibiskups boðskap” (Oddaverja þáttr [Vigfússon and Sigurðsson 283]). Heyra does not mean “understand” but simply “hear” or “listen to.” “hús skal hjóna fá — ‘a house shall have a married couple’ ” (126). Here the author has chosen the meaning hjón has in modern Icelandic, not the more likely one that he gives for the word (in the form hjú[n]) on page 115: “servants, the entire household membership” (cf. Johan Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog, s.v. “hjón”). The words of Páll Sölvason, after his wife has stabbed Hvamm-Sturla, are surely misinterpreted: “it seems worth mentioning that as it happens things are taking a turn for the better” (158). On the contrary, things were taking a turn for the worse for Páll, and therefore he calls it “umræðuvert, sem nú hefir í gerzt, at snúa nökkut áleiðis” [worth discussing — given what has happened — to try and arrange something] alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 125–28

Rezensionen (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1:110). Páll offers to retreat in his dispute with Böðvar in return for the offence of his wife against Sturla. Some errors also occur in retellings of texts. Thus the author has misunderstood Kolbeinn Tumason’s command about the lodging of foreign sailors: “Þat var vili hans, at bændr skyldi eigi taka minni forgift þar í heraði en hann kvað á ok lagði fé við” (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1:161). Kolbeinn decided on a minimum charge for accomodation under threat of fine, but Miller thinks that he “claimed a portion of the price he ordered the farmers . . . to charge” (25). On page 194 the words reiði ‘implements of a ship’ and/ or föng ‘provisions’ seem to be understood as “animals.” A story in Sturlunga saga (Jóhannesson, Finnbogason, and Eldjárn 1:266) where the bravery of two herdsmen is contrasted loses its point in Miller’s retelling (32), apparently because one of them, Þorsteinn, Eyjólfr’s herdsman, has gone unnoticed by him. The amount “hundrað” is rendered as “100” (277), where it almost certainly refers to a “long hundred,” 120, here as elsewhere in Sturlunga. It is not easy to point out omissions in the extensive collection of instances from the sagas. Still, when the author states that “in the entire saga corpus there is no . . . fratricide” (160), he has left out Ari’s story of Þorvaldr kroppinskeggi, who went to the East Fjords and burned his brother Gunnar to death in his house (Íslendingabók chap. 3). Other minor factual errors can be mentioned. For instance, ash trees have not grown in Iceland in historical times, as the author maintains (15). But let us turn to more important subjects. Any scholar who uses the family sagas as sources for history must face the problem of their truth value. Miller is somewhat hesitant in his attitude to the sagas. In a note on page 318 (45n10) he seems to resort to the “nihilistic” attitude, which might be credited to narratology or postmodernism, that all narratives are fictional anyway. There he refers, without reservation, to Úlfar Bragason’s and Carol Clover’s view that the contemporary sagas are also guided by conventions of style and basically unverifiable. This is a

Rezensionen view which is easy to expound in literary studies but hard to adhere to in historical research, and Miller does not do so. He proceeds with a discussion of the truth value of the sagas and admits that “the family sagas present special problems not as seriously present in the contemporary sagas. There is reason to believe some amount of idealization has occurred in the presentation of the events of the Saga Age” (48). His conclusion in this section is “that the society of the family sagas is the society that the author knew by experience, idealized somewhat to advance his narrative agenda. He presented his own world adjusted in certain ways difficult to pinpoint to reflect the knowledge acquired from his parents’ and grandparents’ generations. To this there might also occasionally be added genuine information preserved from the time in which the narrative is set” (50). Thus the family sagas are applicable as sources about social arrangements from “roughly around the first decades of the twelfth century and continuing through the end of the commonwealth period” (51). And now: “Fortunately some control is provided by Sturlunga saga” (50). Still later, after the analysis of Þorsteins þáttr stangarhoggs, the author offers to his more sceptical readers a weaker and more narratological claim, that “we are at least recovering the world of the sagas and the laws,” and he proceeds with a comment of which a more thorough discussion would have aided his book: “a world that, furthermore, has the virtue of looking very much like some worlds that we can prove to have existed and in fact have been carefully studied” (76). This only shows the author’s difficulties in reaching a conclusion that he finds satisfactory himself. But, on the whole, I find his solution a clever one. Of course we all have serious doubts about the reliability of the sagas, but it is possible to live with these doubts and reach any conclusion based on the sagas with a (usually tacit) reservation about its truth value. Even if we resort to the weaker claim, there seems to be nothing necessarily wrong or futile about studying the social history of a fictional society, documented in medieval narrative. The author’s use of the law code presents a greater problem. It is his program to alvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 125–28

127 compare law and sagas, to let one of the two types of sources confirm and criticize the other. Sometimes however, he seems to forget his reservations about the validity of the laws, for instance in his discussion of the so-called churchpriests (kirkjuprestar), who according to the law were only slightly freer than slaves. Miller publishes half a page of provisions about these priests from the Christian law section of Grágás and concludes: “If slavery was a dead letter by the thirteenth century, its ghost was still stalking about in the Icelandic church” (28). A little later he talks about “the church and . . . its indentured priest” (36) and asserts that the “churchpriest’s education was usually in the hands of the man whom he was schooled to replace” (37). But, firstly, no unfree churchpriest is recognizable in the entire saga corpus, and therefore no one can say how they were “usually” educated. Secondly, even if we believe that the provisions about the churchpriests were more than a plan, conceived by the authors of the Christian law section in the early twelfth century, this is hardly reason to assume that they were still walking around in the thirteenth century. Miller is of the opinion that the reluctance of scholars to use the family sagas as sources has seriously hindered the progress of social history of early Iceland “since the first decades of this century” (45). This would have been perfectly correct twenty years ago, but it was hardly true in 1990. Miller underestimates the contributions to social history made by both his and my fellow countrymen. He classifies the studies of all American scholars, with the exception of Jenny Jochens and “perhaps” himself, as literary rather than sociological (45n10 [on page 317]). I find it especially strange to see Jesse Byock’s book Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988) listed as a literary study, and I can add that I expected much more discussion of the many similar points already named by Byock in his book. On Icelandic historiography Miller admits that it “has become more socially oriented” recently, “but has never really broken with the biographical, political, and institutional orientation of the native historical style” (45n10 [on page 318]). To exemplify

128 this statement he refers to five articles. Four of them were written by myself and Helgi Þorláksson in our long dispute about the power and wealth of Icelandic chieftains and “big” farmers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (The last article in the dispute, with contributions from both of us, published in Saga in 1983, is missing here and from the list of sources also.) The fifth article mentioned by Miller is Helgi Þorláksson’s “Óvelkomin börn?” [Unwelcome children?], Saga 24 (1986): 79–120. Whatever may be said about the nature of our articles on power and wealth, I find very little but pure social history in Helgi’s study of the attitude towards children. A much larger source of Miller’s underestimation of social history in Iceland, though, seems to lie in his disregard or ignorance of what has been written about history in this country during the 1980s. His list of secondary literature includes only twenty-three Icelandic titles. In order not to be accused of undue modesty I can mention four articles by myself alone, which I would have expected to find there (not all of them strictly social history, but nonetheless touching on subjects which Miller deals with in his book): “Dyggðir og lestir í þjóðfélagi Íslendingasagna,” Tímarit Máls og menningar 46 (1985): 9–19; “Kenningin um fornt kvenfrelsi á Íslandi,” Saga 24 (1986): 45–77; “Siðamat Íslendingasögu,” in Sturlustefna: Ráðstefna haldin á sjö alda ártíð Sturlu Þórðarsonar sagnaritara, 1984, ed. Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir and Jónas Kristjánsson (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1988), 204–21; “Upphaf þjóðar á Íslandi,” in Saga og kirkja: Afmælisrit Magnúsar Más Lárussonar, ed. Gunnar Karlsson, Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, and Jónas Gíslason (Reykjavík: Sögufélag, 1988), 21–32. This is not because the author has ignored my works more than other scholars’. To mention only a few, he has not used the study of slavery by Anna Agnarsdóttir and Ragnar Árnason (“Þrælahald á þjóðveldisöld,” Saga 21 [1983]: 5–26), not Vilhjálmur Árnason’s article on the ethics of the sagas (“Saga og siðferði: Hugleiðingar um túlkun á siðfræði Íslendingasagna,” Tímarit Máls og menningar 46 [1985]: 21–37), not Ólafía Einarsdóttir’s study of the status of women (“Staða kvenna á þjóðveldisöld: Hugleiðalvíssmál 4 (1994 [1995]): 125–28

Rezensionen ingar í ljósi samfélagsgerðar og efnahagskerfis,” Saga 22 [1984]: 7–30), not Auður G. Magnúsdóttir’s study of concubinage (“Ástir og völd: Frillulífi á Íslandi á þjóðveldisöld,” Ný saga 2 [1988]: 4–12), not Helgi Þorláksson’s review-article of social-historical studies on medieval Iceland (“Að vita sann á sögunum: Hvaða vitneskju geta Íslendingasögurnar veitt um íslenskt þjóðfélag fyrir 1200?”, Ný saga 1 [1987]: 87–96), nor his book Gamlar götur og goðavald (Reykjavík: Sagnfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands, 1989). Finally, I shall take up briefly the question of whether it was a remarkable characteristic of Saga Iceland that honor was in limited supply. Was it really only possible to gain honor at someone else’s expense, as the author maintains (30)? Miller admits himself that it was possible to settle disputes in such a way that both parties gained honor. But in such cases their honor was funded by the envy of other people (30–31). Now I find it rather difficult to calculate honor in terms of envy, but another aspect is more interesting here. Consider the unlikely possibility that more and more people had started to settle their disputes in a peaceful and generous manner which, according to the sagas, increased honor. The total amount of honor would not increase, because the value of peaceful settlements would diminish as they grew more common. But this is exactly what happens with any status-forming value. If I buy a Renault to replace my Lada, my status increases. But if my neighbour buys a BMW my status diminishes again. Is there any difference between honor and commodities in the way they elevate people’s status? Gunnar Karlsson