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Insult and Insight: Skarpheðinn’s Performance at the Alþingi
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This volume assembles 13 essays as the result of a workshop for international doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in Old Norse studies, which was held at the Institute for Nordic Philology at LMU in Munich in December 2015. The contributions’ focus lies on different aspects of ›bad‹ or ›evil‹ characters in saga literature, and they give testimony to the broad literary variety such figures display in Old Norse texts. The “Antagonists and Troublemakers in Old Norse Literature” are here explored in their diversity, ranging from their literary psychology to their characteristics which often challenge gender norms. The contributions discuss the narrative strategies of presenting these characters to the audience, both positively and negatively. Furthermore, they analyse how the central paradox of evil and its dependence on context is realised in various ways in Old Norse literature.
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Münchner Nordistische Studien - Band 27
Since the 19th century it has been a common notion that the Icelandic family sagas are strongly influenced by the idea of fate. Although the subject of “fate” is mentioned quite often in connection with Old Norse-Icelandic literature in general as well as with the Icelandic sagas in particular, there has not been a lot of research done during the last decades. Most of the studies on fate have focused on religious or philosophical aspects. There is very little to be found on the literary function of “fate” within the sagas because most of the evidence used in scholarship is found in Eddic lays. A closer look at the texts reveals that there is very scarce verbal evidence for a concept of fate in the sagas. Among the different words for fate, gafa/gipta and hamingja are considered to be the most important. These three words are almost synonymous, denominating aspects of luck and fortune as well as a man’s positive mental and physical abilities. But when we look at the evidence for these words in the Icelandic sagas, the subject of honour is much more important than fate, which seems to dominate Eddic poetry.
The subject of this study is how masculinity is problematized in Njáls Saga (ca. 1280), with the characters constantly accusing each other of not being manly. The author argues that the obsession of the saga characters with masculinity actually undermines the manly/unmanly-binary, since almost every character in the saga is subjected to ridicule about lack of manliness. While these allegations are often unfounded, sometimes they do have some foundation in reality; but even when the protagonists are indeed unmanly, they remain the most impressive characters in the saga. Thus it is possible to read the saga's treatment of gender as critical of the norms of a misogynist society, showing how the ideal of masculinity may become so exaggerated that it becomes uncompromising and oppressive and leads to failed marriages and to outpourings of an aggressive heroism that thrives on the uneasiness of males, who know that everything may be used against them.
This paper comprises a study of the somatic vocabulary associated with particular emotions (especially anger, shame and love) as they appear in Old Norse texts. Through a detailed analysis of the occurrences of these emotion expressions in different textual genres and periods, we investigate the way in which certain physiological manifestations were linked to a specific emotion in a certain type of text and period, and how certain changes in the usage of vocabulary came into being. We conclude that changes in the conceptualization of emotions in Old Norse written texts were mediated by new metaphors and metonymies imported into medieval Icelandic culture in the form of translated texts, both religious and secular.
Njáls saga is acknowledged as the greatest of the Icelandic sagas, and it rightly deserves acclaim as one of the great masterpieces of all time. The author’s reading reveals not only the saga’s sublime artistry, but also its pragmatic and tough-minded analysis of the complex tactics and strategies that inform feud and law. Unforgettable fully-rounded characters abound—their motives, their inner lives subtly revealed by a narrator who describes motive and psychology in a way that mirrors how we understand them in our own lives: not by magical access into a person’s head, but by close observation of what they do, says, and how and when they do or say it. Nothing previously written even approaches the nuances of thought and action that the author shows to be right there in the text. His book makes the law accessible, and demonstrates how the saga reveals the economic constraints that limit or finance conflict. The author’s writing style entertains as well as instructs.
An accessible guide to and description of the medieval poetic tradition in Scandinavia.
A close reading of one of the best known of the Icelandic sagas, showing its moral, political, and psychological sophistication. The saga tells of a fairly simple feud in which a man rises, falls, and rises again with a vengeance, so to speak. The saga deals with complex issues with finely layered irony: who can one justifiably hit, when, and by what means? It does this with cool nuance, also taking on matters of torture and pain-infliction as a means of generating fellow-feeling. How does one measure pain and humiliation so as to get even, to get back to equal? People are forced to set prices on things we tell ourselves soporifically are priceless, such as esteem, dignity, and life itself. Morality no less than legal remedy involves price-setting. This book flies in the face of all the previous critical literature which, with maybe one or two exceptions, imposes simplistic or just plain inadequate readings on the saga, torturing it. I am hoping to let the saga have its revenge against a critical industry that has done it wrong. A translation of the saga is provided as an appendix.
This text collects all Austin’s published articles plus a new one, ch. 13, hitherto unpublished. The analysis of the ordinary language to clarify philosophical questions is the common element of the 13 papers. Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the nature of knowledge, focusing on ‘performative utterances’. The doctrine of ‘speech acts’, i.e. a statement may be the pragmatic use of language, is discussed in Chs 6 and 10. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 reflect on the problems the language encounters in discussing actions and consider the cases of excuses, accusations, and freedom. The ‘correspondence theory’, i.e. a statement is truth when it corresponds to a fact, is presented in Chs 5 and 6. Finally, Chs 1 and 3 study how a word may have different but related senses considering Aristotle’s view. Chapters 11 and 13 illustrate the meaning of ‘pretending’ and a Plato’s text respectively.
This article was presented as a talk at the conference Remakes: A Symposium in Honor of Carol J. Clover on October 27, 2006, at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley./REPRESENTATIONS 100. Fall 2007 (c) 2007 The Regents of the University of California.
- Tirosh Yoav