When people say that the Icelandic sagas are "precociously fresh, clear and objective" in style, they are usually referring only to a score or so of classic or family sagas (or to the works of Snorri), and not to the hundreds of other, structurally similar but relatively neglected works such as the early sagas of the kings, the legendary sagas (fornaldar sögur) and the romantic "lying sagas" (lygi sögur). The family sagas are unique; other peoples have created mythologies, heroic literatures, or highly technical and subtle forms of poetry. But these sagas are a thoroughly idiosyncratic achievement of the Icelanders. While the virtues of the classic sagas may be appreciated without knowing much about the others, a broader knowledge of the genre is helpful to an understanding of how the much admired works were developed and how widespread among the population was the viewpoint they reflect. [1]
When the Icelanders acquired the art of writing (ca. 1100), they were accustomed to listening to long prose tales that recounted the adventures of legendary or living heroes. The tellers of such tales seem to have had relatively little status or prestige as compared to the skalds. This being so, it is not surprising that the men of good families who had acquired the foreign and prestigious art of writing first devoted themselves to the preparation of pious churchly works or to straightforward technical works in astronomy, calendrical reform, Latin grammar, rhetoric, and linguistics. Between 1140 and 1180 one of them produced a perfect phonological orthography for the Icelandic language.
Among the most notable of these technical and scholarly works are those of Ari Thorgilsson the Learned (1067/8-1148). Ari wrote a short history of Iceland (Islendingabök) remarkable for its accurate dating and respect for fact, as well as for its character sketches and dramatic incidents. He also may have written or helped write The Book of the Settlements (Landnámabók), which enumerates about 400 settlers, their land claims and their genealogies in a manner "astoundingly minute and correct" (Einarsson 1957:108). Though Ari had only an oral tradition to work with, he conscientiously named his informants so that his readers might form their own conclusions about the reliability of his assertions. For example (Vigfusson and Power 1905:288), he names his foster-father Teitr, "the wisest man whom I knew"; Thorgils Gellir's son, "who could remember far back"; and Thúriðr Snorradottir (Snorri goði's daughter), who "was both wise in many things and a truthful narrator" and who, besides, was eighty-seven years old. This is how Ari described the colonization of Greenland: [2]
"The country which is called Greenland was discovered and settled from Iceland.
"Eiríkr rauði was the name of a man from the Breiðafjöður District, who sailed out there and took possession of land at the place which since then has been called Eirífksfjöður. He gave a name to the land and called it Greenland, for he said that people would want to go to that place if the country had a good name. They found there traces of human habitation both in the east and the west of the country and fragments of kayaks and stone implements, from which one can see that the same kind of people had traveled about here who inhabited Vinland and whom the Greenlanders call Skraelings. Eiríkr rauði began to colonize the country fourteen or fifteen years before Christianity came to Iceland, according to what a man who himself accompanied Eiríkr rauði out there told Thorkell Gellisson in Greenland."
Meanwhile, other Icelanders had begun to translate saints' lives, homilies, and other devotional works from the Latin into their native tongue and also to write the sagas of those Norwegian kings who had come to be regarded as saints. Most of these works were strongly influenced by the hagiographical tradition of the church, which is to say that they tended to be more edifying than accurate. But the style set by Ari was carried on and expanded by Snorri Sturluson (1172-1241), who produced "the best history written in the Middle Ages" (Hollander 1945:23), relating the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings from the beginnings down to nearly his own time.
Snorri used both oral and written sources, studied the works of predecessors like Ari, collected material from diverse quarters, and exercised a marked critical judgment in the selection of his data. His argument that the Skaldic verse was accurately descriptive of expeditions and battles is frequently quoted (Hollander 1964:4):
"At the court of King Harald there were skalds, and men still remember their poems and the poems about all the kings who have since his time ruled in Norway; and we gathered most of our information from what we are told in those poems which were recited before the chieftains themselves or their sons. We regard all that to be true which is found in those poems about their expeditions and battles. It is (to be sure) the habit of poets to give highest praise to those princes in whose presence they are; but no one would have dared to tell them to their faces about deeds which all who listened, as well as the prince himself, knew were only falsehoods and fabrications. That would have been mockery, still not praise."
On the other hand, Snorri departed from the sober, concentrated, factual reporting of Ari in many respects. He loved to tell a good story, and his accounts of great battles or significant encounters between historical personages are as much fine literature as prosaic history. With the impartiality of the man of reason, he tended to cut both the sentimentally pious, Christian, miracle tales and the heathen "old wives' superstitions" from his earlier Scandinavian sources. Moreover, and here he truly reflects the stylistic spirit of the Sturlung period: "He cannot refrain from making a muddled account intelligible, nor from putting events into a chronological order, and he likes to trace cause and effect" (Phillpotts 1931:228).
The first of the classic sagas were likely to have been written about 1200 to 1220 and took the form of fairly extensive biographies of famous skalds who had lived circa 950-1000. Shortly thereafter appeared the family sagas, focussing on the "history" of a particular family, or several families, or, in some cases, an entire district. Among the more noted of these are Egil's saga, the biography of the greatest of the skalds; Gísli's saga, the tragic story of a heroic but unlucky outlaw; Eyrbyggja, a kind of community history of a particular district; Laxdoela saga, a long work which mixes history, romance, and heroism and has a strong-minded woman as a major character; Bandamanna saga, a satire relating how a young merchant, with the help of his father, outwits the greedy chieftains who plan to get his money through a legal technicality; Gunnlaug's saga, a mournful tale of ill-fated love; Njál's saga, a very long, elaborately structured work which tells three stories in one; Hrafnkel's saga, a short but artful tale about a feud between a chieftain and a common man; and the late Grettis saga, a strange work full of trolls and gloomy fatalism. All of these works relate events which occurred or were supposed to have occurred during the tenth or the early eleventh century.
About 1300 a man of meager talent collected and compiled various sagas dealing with contemporary or nearly contemporary Icelandic history. This compilation is called Sturlunga saga and it comprises our major source of information about the disintegration of the Icelandic Commonwealth. At about the same time, the Icelanders began to write down the legendary sagas (until then neglected by the learned men) that related the stories of Sigurð, Helgi, and other heroes in prose. They also began to produce the lygi sögur or lying sagas, fabulous tales based on romances from the courts of Europe and Asia, and differing markedly from the classic type in their emphasis on extravagant adventures and superhuman feats of arms. These imported tales frequently use a motif that is very rare in the classic sagas—a mysterious illness caused by magic and cured by the efforts of the hero.
The classic sagas vary in size, form, and content. They may be a dozen or a hundred pages long. The emphasis may be on family history, biography, tragedy, satire, adventure, romance, or a mixture of these elements. For the most part the stories are told in neighborly fashion, with emphasis on the intimate details of everyday life, so that a missing cheese, a stranded whale, a woman's thoughtless words, an unsuccessful trading venture, a sudden thunderstorm, a stolen cow, a young man's stubbornness or an old man's foolishness are given as much weight as the words or deeds of people of great account. Whether great or small, all events, words, and deeds, are arranged and presented in strict chronological order, so that as the story unfolds they are seen to be significant causal elements in the plot.
Every reader who comes freshly to the sagas is immediately struck by their objective and unbiased style. It is not so much that the authors had no moral or political axes to grind (for indeed they did), but that they were masters in writing as if they had none, and so their style emerges as amazingly fair, lucid, accurate-sounding, and restrained. The sagas report as fact only what could reasonably have been seen or heard by a witness, and at their most typical, they do not even state that a man was angry or depressed, but record his words and acts, letting the reader draw his own conclusions. They studiously avoid expressing a personal judgment on any matter whatever. If a character in a saga has committed an atrocity, they may say, "Folk thought that deed ill done." They do not even, as Einarsson (1957:133) points out, permit themselves an ornamental adjective: "He grasped his fine sword" would not be saga style; it should be: "He grasped his sword, it was a fine weapon."
So violent are some of the events in the sagas that we today may overlook the intense interest of the writers in the process by which the conflict was resolved, just as we may overlook the paradox that the conflict itself was viewed as a deliberate effort on the part of the antagonists to restore a just and honorable balance among themselves. Fundamentally, most of the sagas are detailed accounts of how trouble developed and how the differences between individuals or groups were worked out. The writers begin by telling us how the balance of relationships between two individuals or households came to be disturbed. Next they describe the long and complicated series of acts by which both parties attempted to right the balance, and finally, they give us an equally detailed account of the eventual resolution. Indeed, if one were obliged to describe many of the finest sagas in one phrase, one could do worse than call them skillfully narrated legal case histories.
The focus of the saga writers is so broad that a social scientist accustomed to making distinctions between the "individual" and the "society" may at first conclude that these writers had turned their attention away from the individual toward the society or the nation. But this is not the case. The saga writers are interested first and foremost in the notable man or woman. They differ from the composers of the heroic lays, not by virtue of the fact that they reduce or diminish the value or stature of a man, but by the complexity of the background against which they present him. As Einarsson (1957:125) aptly puts it: in Iceland "the individual could never get lost in the crowd.... Indeed, the Icelanders might be accused of never discovering the woods because of the prominence of the trees." In the delineation of the character of these individuals the skill of the saga writers is uncanny. Even persons who play minor roles, poor men, loquacious serving women, or sharptongued housekeepers are portrayed via simple but telling actions as individuals rather than types. Typical of this portraiture is the tenant farmer whose condition and soul are baldly revealed by his response to threats intended to force him to betray a friend, for he says, "My clothes are bad, and it is of no concern of mine whether I wear them a shorter or a longer time—but I would rather die than fail to help my friend in any way I can" (Gísli's saga, quoted by Einarsson 1957:133).
For half a century scholars have disagreed over the issue of whether (a) the classic or family sagas represented an older oral tradition which was accurately recorded by the literate Icelanders of the early 13th century or whether (b) they were created at that late date as written compositions, having a partial basis in oral tales or earlier written works. If the former, they would contain unparalleled data on the world view and values of the men of the late heathen age. If the latter, they would throw an equally valuable light on the values and interests of the literate laymen of the 13th century, men who were acutely conscious that the world of their ancestors had vanished and that their own ways and values were shifting. Recent research has tended to support the latter view, which is to say that most of the sagas seem to have been more or less skillfully constructed by literate men out of a variety of materials from a number of sources.
Scholars have also long assumed that the saga writers (or recorders) put down only what they believed to be fact and that if they were not always able historians they were, at least, fairly reliable reporters. Ari and Snorri had been true historians and because the saga writers imitated their style they had thereby set themselves off from the writers of the fantastic "lying" works. But in 1940, Nordal demonstrated that Hrafnkel freysgoði, long considered one of the oldest and most heathen of the sagas, was an artful fiction. Today, the tendency is to judge each of the "classic" sagas on its own characteristics. As Nordal (1941) puts it:
"There are primitive sagas, chronicling oral traditions without mastering the material (Bjarnar saga Hítdoelakappa) [3], there are well-composed sagas, stressing the historical and antiquarian element (Egils saga), there are novels, often perfect works of art, either completely heroic-Icelandic in spirit (Hoensa-Thóris saga, Hrafnkatla) or suffused with the foreign romantic element (Gunnlaugs saga, Laxdaela, Njála). There are sagas based on native folklore (Grettla), troll sagas, adventure and lying stories influenced by the fornaldar sagas and the sagas of romantic chivalry. There are rewritten sagas where the old and the new is often inextricably mixed."
Before discussing the degree of sophistication reached by the writers of the classic sagas, it might be well to present a short version of one of them. The following sketch of Hrafnkel freysgoði's saga is adapted from the translation by Jones (1935):
Hrafnkel is introduced to us as a proud, powerful goði, "a very overbearing but talented man. He forced under him the men of Glacierdale as thingmen... took part in many single combats, and paid wergeld to no man, so that no one got any redress from him whatever he did." He built a great temple to Frey and dedicated to Frey his most prized possession, a beautiful stallion, making "a mighty vow that he would be the death of that man that rode him against his will."
One of his hired men, an honest and able fellow, disregards Hrafnkel's warning and rides the stallion in order to find some lost sheep. When Hrafnkel questions him, he admits his misdeed. Hrafnkel is obviously torn in mind. " 'I would have let you off this once,' he says, 'had I not sworn so deeply about it. All the same, you have owned up like a man.' ...But in the belief that nothing goes well for those men who draw down on them the curse for a broken oath," he kills his hired man.
The slain man's father, a poor farmer called Thorbjörn, "took these tidings hard." He rides to Hrafnkel's estate and demands "pay for the slaying of his son." And now, faced by the father of the man he has killed, Hrafnkel albeit stiffly and proudly admits that he is sorry and that his oath was ill-considered:
"It is not unknown to you that I will pay no man redress and people have to put up with it all the same. Even so, I grant that this deed of mine seems to me among the worst slayings I have done. You have been my neighbor for a long time, and I have liked you well, and each of us the other... We must now regret that we were too wordy, and seldom would we have to be sorry that we spoke less than we meant rather than more."
Then, in lordly style, he offers a generous payment; he will furnish Thorbjörn with everything he needs, forward his numerous sons and daughters so that they make good matches, and look after him until the day of his death. To this he adds the most important point in the payment of the slaying, "many men will say the man was full dear."
"I will not take this offer," said Thorbjörn.
"What do you want then? "
"I wish that we have men to arbitrate between us."
"Then you think yourself as good as I," Hrafnkel answered, "and we shall not be atoned on these terms."
(Arbitration implied equality of status, and the chieftain, who is quite willing to be overgenerous in a voluntary compensation, will not demean himself to meet a mere farmer on equal terms.)
Thorbjörn then tries to rally his kin to support him in a lawsuit against Hrafnkel. But they are all relatively poor men of little influence, and they sensibly point out the impossibility of prevailing against a chieftain like Hrafnkel and urge him to take the generous wergeld. Finally, Thorbjörn seeks out his brother's son, Sámr, a spunky young man and "keen at law." On hearing of the terms Hrafnkel has offered for the slaying, Sámr immediately suggests that he and Thorbjörn ride to Hrafnkel's manor, "treat humbly with him and find out whether he will hold to the same offer." Thorbjörn, bent on getting what he considers honorable vengeance, says:
"It seems to me the height of meanness in a man like you, who think yourself keen at law and are eager in petty suits, but will not take up this case, which touches you so near. It will be a reproach to you, as is fitting, for you are the biggest braggart of our family...... "What better off are you than before," Sam answered, "though I do take up this case, and we both come to griefs " "All the same," said Thorbjörn, "it will be a great comfort to me that you do take it up, come of it what may." "It is unwillingly I go into this," said Sam. "I do it rather for kinship's sake, but you ought to know that as matters stand with you, nothing can avail." Then Sam stretched forth his hand and took over the case from Thorbjörn.
Sámr then begins formal legal action and gives public notice of the slaying against Hrafnkel. Hrafnkel laughs. Sámr summons his witnesses and, at the proper time, summons Hrafnkel to the Thing. Hrafnkel rides to the Thing with seventy well-armed followers. Sámr, the saga tells us, mostly got tramps and vagabonds to ride with him. At the Thing, Sámr does his best to interest some of the chieftains in his case. But though Hrafnkel is not a popular man, the chieftains hang back, pointing out "that it had gone one way with most of those that had Thing-dealings with Hrafnkel."
Thorbjörn becomes so discouraged that he begs Sánr to give over the case. "Let us make ready for home," says he. "It is now easy to see that there is nothing for us but dishonor." But now Sámr, though he does not belong to one of the "first families" of Iceland, shows a flash of the heroic spirit. he says, "I shall never give up until I think it past hope that I get something done." At that Thorbjörn was so moved that he wept.
Then, by good luck, Sámr comes upon a chieftain newly returned to Iceland from a journey to Byzantium and manages to win his support. We are not told specifically just why this chieftain is willing to help Sámr, but he is presented as a boisterous and jovial fellow who loves a good fight and, as he himself says, a man who takes up a blood-suit for a near kinsman deserves help. This chieftain enlists the aid of his brother who has seventy followers with him and the party proceeds to Hill of Laws. Sámr pleads his case skillfully and "the applause was great." Meanwhile, men hurry to tell Hrafnkel what is afoot.
"He stirred himself quickly, called up his men, and went to the court, reckoning that there would be little defense there. He had it in mind to put an end to the bringing of lawsuits against him by petty folk, and meant to wreck the court for Sam and drive him from his case. But of this there was now no chance. There was such a press in front of him that Hrafnkel could get nowhere near, and he was crowded away by sheer force, so that he could not hear their case against him, and was therefore unable to bring forward a legal defense for himself. But Sam carried his suit the full length of the law, until Hrafnkel was outlawed at this Thing."
(Legally, those present at the Thing could do nothing else, because a man who did not contest a case, lost it.) Thereupon, Hrafnkel rides home "making as if nothing had happened." But Sámr stayed behind at the Thing, and "went about with a swagger." Then, with fine irony, the saga tells us: "Many men thought it well although it had turned out that Hrafnkel had been put to shame, and they now called to mind that he had shown injustice to many."
After the adjournment of the Thing, Hrafnkel has two weeks in which to leave Iceland. But being a powerful chieftain, he pays no attention to the sentence. According to law, Sámr is the executor of the sentence and Hrafnkel has little to fear from him. But Hrafnkel reckons without Sámr's new friends, the chieftains. They offer to help Sámr finish the job, make up a company of men, and fall upon Hrafnkel's household. They bind the proud Hrafnkel and his men, pierce holes behind their heels and string them from the wash line. This, according to the customs of the day, was a dishonorable deed which, though it shamed Hrafnkel terribly, did not reflect any particular honor upon the doers.
Sámr, however, is not a ruthless man. Because Hrafnkel has many dependents, he offers him his life, providing he will promise that he and his heirs will never lay claim to the property, all of which now belongs to Sánr. Hrafnkel then again deviates from the rigid heroic ideal and says: "To most a swift death would seem better than such disgrace ... but it will fare with me as with many others that life is the choice if choice there be. I do it chiefly for the sake of my sons, for poor will be their upbringing if I die and leave them." Sámr's powerful friends protest at this, pointing out that Sámr will regret giving his enemy his life. But Sámr will not change his mind.
In describing the plight of the destitute Hrafnkel, the saga tells us: "Many now called to mind the old proverb—Pride comes before a fall."
But Hrafnkel buys a farm on credit, works very hard, and rapidly rebuilds both his wealth and his power. Now we are told: "A change had now come over his temper. The man was much better loved than before. He had the same mind for readiness to help and for hospitality, but was much quieter and gentler than before in every way."
Sámr takes over Hrafnkel's position and becomes well-liked by the thingmen, being "quiet and gentle and good at easing troubles." He is also, however, a "great man for show." On the advice of his chieftain friends, he has the unlucky stallion killed, plunders the temple Hrafnkel built, and burns it. When Hrafnkel hears of this, he swears another oath "that from then on he would never have faith in a god." Thereafter, he never sacrificed.
Now, however, fate gives Hrafnkel the opportunity for revenge. Sámr's brother Eyvindr, who has been abroad, returns to Iceland. He is described as "a most gallant man," who possesses the rare virtue of charity, having taken a destitute lad into his service "and kept him as himself." Hrafnkel is told of Eyvindr's arrival and determines to ambush and slay him on the route to Sámr's house. Eyvindr is repeatedly warned that he is in danger, but refuses to turn back, pointing out that Sámr and Hrafnkel had come to terms and adding, "I will not flee from men to whom I have done no wrong." (Eyvindr's stubborn faith in the good intent of the man whom his brother has humiliated makes him sound, incidentally, as if he had derived his conception of human nature from romance rather than from accurate observation of what his fellow Icelanders were like.) Hrafnkel and his followers overtake Eyvindr and after a brave defense, the young man is slain.
Before Sámr can rally his followers, Hrafnkel rides to the manor (where Sámr now resides) and takes him in bed and leads him out. Hrafnkel thereupon gives Sámr much the same choice that Sámr had given him: to die or give Hrafnkel self-doom, i.e., the right to dictate the "price." Sámr chooses to live and Hrafnkel lays down the judgment that he shall remove himself from the homestead, taking with him only the property he brought.
"No wergeld shall come for Eyvind your brother, because you followed up the bloodsuit too ruthlessly for your former kinsman, and in any case you have redress enough... in that you have had power and property six winters... You shall be my underling as long as both of us live; and you can think this, too, that you shall fare the worse, the worse we get on together."
Sámr makes one more effort to enlist the assistance of the two chieftains who had previously helped him, but they point out that he did not follow their advice to kill Hrafnkel when he had the chance, and though they invite him to come and live with them, they will give him no more aid. Sámr goes to his original home and resigns himself to his fate.
Many of the basic ideas of western civilization—including the notion of progress—rest on a linear conception of time, a perspective in which time is seen as a stern dimension along which action moves in an irreversible sequence of events. Once this perspective is adopted, it enables human beings to arrange acts, events, accomplishments, or material objects in an orderly chronological sequence. We today take this linear perspective so much for granted that we find it difficult to think in terms of any other, and unless we are specialists in the study of temporal concepts, we are usually not aware that until a few centuries ago it had been adopted and rigorously applied only by a few peoples, notably the Ancient Hebrew and the Icelandic saga writers.
While the Hebrew Pentateuch is a collection of several kinds of materials, it is most evidently a history. The twin sources for its account, titled long ago by the Germanic students of the Old Testament as J and E from their manner of referring to the deity, each integrated into his narrative a variety of traditional and mythic materials to emerge with a chronological ordering that was a history of Israel. So J, whose labors are usually placed in the 10th century B.C., narrates a historical drama that incorporates the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the captivity in Egypt, the Covenant on Mount Sinai, the promised land and the glories of its conquest. He does this, not out of a simple urge to array events in their temporal order, but because his very account is a statement of the historic existence of Israel and of its divine mandate to occupy the holy land. Necessarily, Israel cannot be portrayed in primitive fashion as having existed timelessly, but rather its existence and its might is the outgrowth of a historical sequence, a religious drama, that manifests the activity of the one God (Burrows 1955:128-129).
"The basic, distinctive presupposition of all ancient Hebrew ideas about history is the conviction that in human history the one eternal, living God is working out his own sovereign purpose for the good of his creatures, first for his chosen people, and through them for the rest of mankind. History therefore cannot matter of undeviating, automatic, and irresistible progress in civilization. It is the work of a personal divine will.... One generation after another may fail and be excluded from the promised reward of obedience, but the promise still stands, and through all the vicissitudes and changes of human history the purpose of God moves toward its ultimate consummation."
The Icelandic saga writers also arranged their legends, poems, and other oral and written materials in what they thought was a correct chronological sequence. But more than this, for them, the idea of linear temporal arrangement became the basic paradigm of literary style. One might say that for the Hebrews, the linear time perspective was the means by which they expressed a great religious drama in which they and Yahweh were the two major participants; for the Icelandic saga writers the linear perspective became a tool for ordering events in causal sequence so as to produce a work of narrative art in what was defined as the style of learned men.
Before enlarging further on the linear perspective of the Icelandic litterateurs, it might be useful to compare it with that of other peoples. Most people with a magical or "primitive" world view conceive of time in cyclic rather than linear terms. They do not visualize themselves or the universe as progressing or regressing, but rather as passing through a series of cycles or repetitions: night and day, winter and summer, misfortune and blessings, poverty and wealth, death and life (Evans-Pritchard 1940; M. Wax 1962). With increasing sophistication and civilization, this cyclical orientation may be elaborated into a complex cosmic or metaphysical system, as among the Mayan or ancient Greek philosophers. Plato (The Politicus), for example, "developed the cosmology that the world is like a spinning top, put into motion by the deity." Initially bountiful and harmonious, it gradually runs down until the Creator is obliged to whirl it once more into vigorous motion. Lucretius and the Stoics also held that the world passes through repetitive cycles of youth, fruitfulness, age, and sterility (Oates 1940; M. Wax 1959).
Though the Völuspá presents a picture of the destruction and renewal of the cosmos, most of the preliterate works of Old Scandinavia seem relatively unsophisticated with regard to time perspective. Like the folk tales of certain American Indian tribes, they conceive of what we term "the past" not as a linear or even a cyclic progression, but as a multiplicity of images and events, or, as Dunbar (1882) put it in describing the Pawnee, as a "timeless" storehouse of tradition. When, as in certain of the cosmological poems, the Old Scandinavian poets feel the need of an organizational device, they use place, space and distance rather than time. [4] Indeed, some of the mythic poems are so place and space oriented that they sound like an atlas of the cosmos. In The Lay of Grímnir (Bellows 1957), we are told:
Three roots there are that three ways run
'Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
'Neath the first lives Hel, 'neath the second the
frost-giants,
Neath the last are the lands of men. (vs. 31)
Eikthyrnir is the hart who stands by Heerfather's hall
And the branches of Laerath he bits;
From his horns a stream into Hvergelmir drops,
Thence all the rivers run. (vs. 26)
Twenty of these rivers are named and we are told that they flow through the fields of the gods. Then we are given the names of seventeen additional rivers and are told that these "go among men and hence they fall to Hel." Another Eddic poem, The Lay of Vafthrúðnir also begins geographically, telling us about the river that flows between the realm of the gods and giants and giving us the exact dimensions of the field on which the gods will fight their last battle. Next, we are told that "in earliest time" the earth was made from the body of Ymir. Casually, the poet then tells us about numerous events that must have occurred before this "earliest time." We learn that Ymir had a long line of ancestors, the first of whom arose from the venom which dropped from the river Élivágar and that he begot his offspring from beneath his arms.
How thoroughly this three-dimensional map-like orientation of the mythological poems differs from the linear orientation of the sagas, the reader can best perceive for himself. The first is like an image in the round, with moving parts—the second like a long knitted mural, in which each stitch is an essential part of the pattern.
Why the saga writers of the thirteenth century should have adopted this perspective with such enthusiasm and used it with such peerless skill is difficult to say. The older mythological poems and Skaldic verse are not oriented toward linear time. On the other hand, the heroic lays, with their emphasis on predestination and their interest in the hero's inevitable progression toward his doom are linear in their general orientation, but lack the meticulous detailed causality of the sagas.
The possibility of selective acculturation should not be overlooked. Turville-Petre (1953:87) remarks that some of the young Icelanders from prominent families were studying in Paris at precisely the time when the established medieval systems of dating were being vigorously attacked, and new and more accurate systems of astronomy and chronology were being proposed. Whether the educated Icelanders were exposed to these radical and revolutionary ideas, we may never know, but there can be no doubt that Ari the Learned was phenomenally scrupulous in the accuracy of his dating. The young Icelanders would also have been exposed to the reigning intellectual ideal of the Medieval philosophers, the exemplification of general principles through detailed occurrences, each of which was supposed to be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly detailed manner. To the grand general principles and final ends of their mentors, the empirically minded Icelanders seemed to have been indifferent. But correlating events with antecedents in a perfectly detailed manner is exactly what they did in their sagas.
That the family sagas and the histories of Ari and Snorri reflect a fresh, clear, and hard-minded outlook and an extraordinary interest in the "material" world is a truism. Set beside such contemporaries as Summa Theologica or The Divine Comedy, the sagas sound as if they had been written by Benjamin Franklin. For example, consider the following passages from the work of a thirteenth century Norwegion (Larson 1917: 79-81), written for the isntruction of young men of good family:
"The man who is to be a trader will have to brave many perils, sometimes at sea and sometimes in heathen lands, but nearly always among alien peoples; and it must be his constant purpose to act discreetly wherever he happens to be. On the sea, he must be alert and fearless.
"When you are in a market town, or wherever you are, be polite and agreeable; then you will secure the friendship of all good men. Make it a habit to rise early in the morning, and go first and immediately to church wherever it seems most convenient to hear the canonical hours, and hear all the hours and mass from matins on. Join in the worship, repeating such psalms and prayers as you have learned. When the services are over, go out and look after your business affairs. If you are unacquainted with the traffic of the town, observe carefully how those who are reputed the best and most prominent merchants conduct their business. You must also be careful to examine the wares that you buy before the purchase is finally made to make sure that they are sound and flawless. And whenever you make a purchase, call in a few trusty men to serve as witnesses as to how the bargain was made.
"You should keep occupied with your business till breakfast or, if necessity demands it, till midday; after that you should eat your meal. Keep your table well provided and set with a white cloth, clean victuals, and good drinks. Serve enjoyable meals, if you can afford it. After the meal you may either take a nap or stroll about a little while for pastime and to see what other good merchants are employed with, or whether any new wares have come to the borough which you ought to buy. On returning to your lodgings examine your wares, lest they suffer damage after coming into your hands. If they are found to be injured and you are about to dispose of them, do not conceal the flaws from the purchaser; show him what the defects are and make such a bargain as you can; then you cannot be called a deceiver. Also put a good price on your wares, though not too high, and yet very near what you can see can be obtained; then you cannot be called a foister."
As we have remarked (R. and M. Wax 1955:3):
"The remainder of the work is in the same spirit. The author again resembles Franklin in his disposition to give plentiful moral advice and in the character of the morality he advocates. He lauds forethought, prudence, 'a rational outlook,' and 'a temperate mind" and advises young men to observe 'carefully the activities of the ant,' since he 'will derive much profit from them.' Would-be merchants are counseled to avoid undue risk and danger rather than lose all profit through 'obstinate contriving.' For, 'first of all a man must have a care for his own person; for he can have no further profit, if it fares so ill that he himself goes under.' Sober prudence is applied even to blood revenge, a moral imperative of traditional Germanic culture."
It is to be expected that we, as members of western civilization, would place a high value on the objectivity and accurate observation of historians like Ari and Snorri and on the general hardmindedness and pragmatic good sense with which many of the Scandinavian writers of this period viewed life. It is also to be expected that we would judge them (as did Olrik and Toynbee) to be precociously sophisticated and "astonishingly free from tradition and superstition." Indeed, if we favor Weber's views we might wonder whether the Scandinavian elite of the 12th and 13th centuries, with their scorn of magic, general hard-mindedness, and their emphasis on implacable fate, had not achieved a kind of super-Protestant ethos some three centuries before the appearance of Calvin and Knox.
Here and now, however, I would like to suggest that some of the very traits for which we admire Ari and his emulators are not necessarily characteristic of a highly sophisticated or a disenchanted people. Indeed, that a people can be extremely urbanized, sophisticated, civilized, disenchanted—or whatever one wishes to call them—and still have relatively little interest in, or respect for, the external concrete world is so obvious a fact that one hesitates to state it. [5] On the other hand, many ethnographers and social anthropologists have remarked that the so-called non-urban, tribal, or folk peoples are often thoroughly pragmatic in their outlook on life, that their knowledge of concrete matters, contracts, ownership of property, genealogies, and degrees of relationships may be extremely accurate and that they are, more often than not, peerless observers of the world about them (Lévi-Strauss 1966:1-16). Similarly, field investigators, (myself included), have been impressed by the scrupulous accuracy of certain native informants and by their skill and efficiency in gathering data (Lowie 1960). Moreover, ethnographers who have worked among the warrior peoples of the North American Indians have reported that scouts sent to spy on the enemy or young men announcing their war exploits before the assembled people were expected to be absolutely factual in their statements.
In view of the above, it seems reasonable to suggest that Ari's phenomenal accuracy and concern with the external world were indigenous traits, and that when the bishops encouraged him to write down historical and topographic facts they were asking him to apply himself to an endeavor in which he was already highly skilled. In pointing to this possibility, I am not, of course, suggesting that the Icelanders were a "primitive" people. Rather, I suggest that the competence which a particular people show in the accurate observation of and interest in the world outside of man, may not be related to their sophistication or disenchantment.
I am also inclined to see the saga writers' impartial and objective literary style as rooted in a relatively ancient and indigenous aspect of the Icelandic culture. As we have already remarked, the family sagas are studded with tales about cases at law so that Njál's saga may well be described as a series of three, grand, legal, case histories. The narrators strove always to present events with scrupulous fairness, favoring neither side, and limited their observations only to what might have been observed by a reliable eye-witness. Moreover, as in the case of Hrafnkel they strove to give the impression of scrupulous fairness and objectivity. Many sagas are filled with blow-by-blow accounts of quarrels and fights. We are told exactly what was said and done, what kind of blow was struck, who struck it, and how much damage was done. When a moral judgment is expressed, it is put into the mouths of the people of the community. Thus, we may be told, "Folk thought that deed ill done," or, "Gunnar gained great fame by that."
These facts suggest that when Ari the Learned, Snorri Sturluson, and their successors and imitators took pen in hand, they may have adopted the role or stance of the respected Icelandic chieftain acting as umpire or arbiter—or, in the case of Snorri—as Lawspeaker. These men, if they fulfilled the expectations of their office, submerged their personal interest and sentiments and disdained to consider any but the most objective and factual evidence. While, like all men of law, they were interested in the mechanics of winning a case, their ultimate aim was a fair decisioin. In short, what I am suggesting is that the historians and saga writers wrote down events in the discourse employed by learned and respected men of law, and that their successors adopted and developed this stylistic pattern of expression. Whether the later saga writers, whose fiction bears such an air of veracity, consciously saw themselves as wise men of law trying to influence the course of events we do not know. We have only the terse statement in Njál's saga (Bayerschmidt and Hollander 1955:352) which tells us how when Flosi, who had unwillingly led the party that burnt Njál in his house, was telling the story of the burning, "he told it without bias, and so they believed him."
I further suggest that much of old Icelandic legal procedure was a relatively sophisticated but limited folk phenomenon roughly comparable, perhaps, to the kind of sophistication Paul Radin saw in the Midéwinin of the Winnebago, or early travellers saw in the ceremonials of the Samoans. On the other hand, the late thirteenth century writers' ability to write fiction which expert scholars Jong accepted as accurate history is something else again. To produce so artful and self-conscious an imitation of a vanished way of life is sophistication of a more disenchanted variety. Moreover, this phenomenon may tell us as much about the world view of the scholars who let themselves be deceived as about the world of the men who, unwittingly, deceived them.
Difficult as it is to grasp the fact that people of another age or culture conceived of identity or the "self" in terms very different from ours, it is even more difficult to make comprehensible exactly how these people did conceive of the "self," of their own identity or that of other beings. Accordingly, I do not expect here to do more than call attention to certain of the more interesting phenomena regarding the Northmen's notion of the self.
So that we have some patterns for comparison, let us begin by contrasting two very different systems of self-conception: that of nineteenth century Western man and that of the Trobriand Islanders. For us, and perhaps, even more for our grandfathers, man's self, his personality, or his character were by definition malleable—subject not only to change but to development. At birth, man's character—if it were there at all—was plastic and unformed. Our grandfathers "built" their own characters and they expected their children and their pupils to do the same. They insisted that "man makes himself." Ambitious and enterprising young men and women subjected themselves to methodical disciplinary exercises, designed systematically to change their "selves" for the better. The notion was widely accepted that anything a person did or achieved contributed ineradicably to the forming of his individual being (e.g. children allowed to be idle would develop an idle character and be irredeemably lazy). Thus, any act, "good" or "evil," was something a man could never lose or shake off. The statement, "I'll never be the same again," was taken literally, whether one had experienced first love or committed a murder. And yet, and this is the most important point of all, this incessant and sometimes even catastrophic process of self-change was seen as producing no change in the individual's identity. Or, to put it another way, Western man somehow developed the ability to keep his identity while his "self" kept changing from day to day.
For the Trobriander (Lee 1959:89-104) the man who changes any important attribute becomes something else—a quite different variety of being. Trobrianders have no word for become. All objects, including man, are recognized by what they are, not by what they might be like or unlike, or by what they might become. "Being is (seen as) a fixed point in a single changeless whole." If an object changes an attribute, it does not "become" something; rather, it loses its identity and is another being. This means, if I understand Lee correctly, that for Trobrianders, a man's identity involves only being that which he is; if he changes an important attribute, he is no longer his "self." For him, the statement, "I'll never be the same again," would have no meaning.
I have found no convincing evidence that the Northmen ever conceived of "being" in quite the same fixed fashion as the Trobrianders nor have I found that even the most sophisticated of the saga writers conceived of man's character in the crescive fashion, say, of Benjamin Franklin or certain of the Puritans (Perry 1950).
This much I say with conviction: One section of the Old Scandinavian literature (the mythological) resembles the literature of tribal peoples in that it pays very little attention to identity or personality. Another and even larger section (the older lays and the sagas) places an extreme emphasis on "character" (here seen not only as individuality but as resolution) on self-reliance, and on certain types of self-restraint—or, as the Northmen called it, self-rule. Snorri's Heimskringla offers excellent evidence that the poems which ignore character or personality represent the magical view. The Saga of the Ynglings (derived from a ninth century Skaldic poem) has no "characters," but only kings or queens who for the most part are remembered for their magical experiences: King Sveigðir is lured underground by a dwarf; his son, Vanlandi, and his grandson, Vísbur, are slain through sorcery; Dómaldi, Vísbur's son, is sacrificed by the people to relieve a famine. King Önund, however, does clear land and build roads. We are told an interesting tale of the lad, Ingiald (Hollander 1964,37), who was fed the heart of a wolf and become "the most cruel and most ill-natured or men," but whether eating the wolf's heart gave Ingiald a new identity or merely added cruelty to his innate personality, I cannot say.
With the Saga of Harald Fairhair (lived 850-933) we enter another dimension, for Harald, despite his luck and his occasional encounters with sorcerers, is an individual, a "character" whom the reader of the saga is unlikely to forget. The same thing !nay be said even more emphatically for the portraits of King Olafr Tryggvason (lived 968-1000) and King Olaf the Saint (died 1030).
Accompanying this interest in character is an interest—equally unmagical—in what the Northmen called self-rule or self-mastery. Many of the saga writers seem to relish telling anecdotes about notable people who were able to check their reckless impulses and master their passions. For example, Snorri (Hollander 1964:92) relates that when King Harald Fairhair was being mocked by an ambassador of King Athelstane of England, he bore in mind:
"as was his habit..... to control his temper whenever rage or fury would overcome him, and thus let his anger blow off and look at matters dispassionately. So he did also now. He brought this up before his friends, and they all agreed on what to do; and first of all they decided to let the emissary fare home unharmed."
A similar emphasis on self-restraint appears in the Hávamál (Hollander 1962:14-41) where a man is advised to avoid excesses in eating, drinking, speech, sex, and sometimes even in fighting, not because overindulgence is considered evil, offensive to the gods, or contrary to tradition or custom, but because it may lead him into situations harmful to his self-interest. Trouble and sorrow are seen not as the result of unseemly or offensive conduct toward Beings and Power, but as the logical outcome of an individual's foolis and naive conduct:
Better burden bearest thou nowise
than shrewd head on thy shoulders;
but with worser food farest thou never
than an overmuch of mead (vs. 11).
For good is not, though good it is thought,
mead for the sons of men;
the deeper he drinks, the dimmer grows
the mind of many a man (vs. 12).
The greedy guest gainsays his head
and eats until he is ill;
his bellow oft maketh a butt of a man,
on bench 'midst the sage when he sits (vs. 20).
In heroic anecdotes, self mastery is used as a device for adding dramatic power to an eventual outburst of violence. For example, when Eyólf offers Auðr money to betray her husband (Gísli's saga, Johnston 1963:51), she seems to agree, and calmly lets him count the silver. Then she asks him, "You will think now that I have the right to do with it as I please? " Eyólf gladly agrees, whereupon Auðr puts the silver into a moneybag and strikes Eyólf in the face so violently that "the blood spurts out all over him."
Similarly, in Njál's saga (Bayerschmidt and Hollander 1955:100, 196-197), we are told that Njál told Skarpheðin and his other sons to keep the peace. Thereafter, when Njál's family is insulted we are told that Skarpheðin "smiled scornfully ... and yet the sweat broke out on his brow and red spots appeared on his cheeks." His brothers are even more controlled. They are silent and bite their lips or do not change their expression at all. But when Skarpheðin lets himself go, he slays Thráin with a dazzling speed and ferocity:
"Skarpheðin took a running start and leaped over the river from one icy bank to the other, landed on his feet, and continued to rush forward on the impetus of his slide. The ice floe was so slippery that he shot forward with the speed of a bird. Thráin was just about to put on his helmet as Skarpheðin bore down on him and struck him with his axe, 'Battle-Troll.' The axe came down upon his head and split it right down to the jaw, so that his jaw teeth dropped out on the ice. This happened so continued to glide along on the ice sheet at great speed."
Finally, in the Saga of Saint Ólaf there is a curious tale involving penance and self-discipline. In the earlier variant of the saga, an Icelandic churchman relates how the king, on learning that he had neglected to observe a holy day, filled his hand with wood shavings and set them alight. All present were awed when the fire did not burn the saintly king. Snorri Sturluson (Hollander 1964:485) deliberately turns this miracle tale into an edifying example of self-discipline. The king puts the shavings into his hand, lights them, and lets them burn his palm, "from which one could gather that from that time on he would strictly observe the laws and commandments, nor do anything but what he knew was right."
If one sets the shrewd saws of the Hávamál and the stylized pictures of self-rule narrated by the saga writers against the maxims of the nineteenth century self-builders, one sees that there are some quite fundamental differences. When a Northman keeps a tight reign on his passions, it is not with the hope or expectation of becoming something but an assertion that he is something. He is not improving himself, rather, he is holding to a standard. When Auðr smashes Eyólf in the nose it is an emphatic assertion that she is a true and loyal wife. When Sigurð sleeps with his sword between himself and Brynhild (whom he has promised to another man), he does this because he is a man of honor and not because he hopes to become one. Again, when Ólafr holds the burning chips in his hands, I suspect that he is reminding himself that he is a man who keeps his word and not that he expects, step by step, to build himself into a good Christian. The notion that character or personality is something one possesses and defends (rather than something one builds or develops) likely is related to an assumption stressed in many of the sagas, namely that a man is born with his personality and his talents and maintains them unchanged until the day he dies.[6] For example, in the saga of Egil Skallagrímsson (Eddison 1930), the author seems to take satisfaction in the fact that Egil, as a child, was aggressive, stubborn, greedy, powerful, and poetically gifted and that he remained so until death. Similarly, in the Sagas of the Kings, children of noble birth, reared in exile and poverty, usually exhibit signs of their innate "high-born" nature in their flashing eyes, hardihood, and pride.
The notion that a man may change his "nature" or his "personality" and still remain himself,appears only in the classic sagas and then very rarely. Snorri has King Ólaf the Saint turn from a merciless Viking into a saintly (but warlike) Christian, and thereby reconciles in an ingenious way the fact that some early sources on Ólaf had painted him as a saint and others as the very opposite (Einarsson 1957:118-119). The saga of Hrafnkel Freysgoði (Jones 1935:38, 55) contains unequivocal statements about changing personality. At the beginning of the saga the chieftain Hrafnkel is described as:
"a very overbearing but talented man. He forced under him the men of Glacierdale as thingmen. [He] was gentle and blith with his own men, but harsh and stubborn toward those of Glacierdale, and men got no fair play from him. [He] took part in many single combats, and paid wergeld to no man, so that no one got any redress from him whatever he did."
But after his humiliating defeat and his remarkably speedy return to wealth and prominence, the saga tells us:
"A change had now come over his temper. The man was much better loved than before. He had the same mind for readiness to help and for hospitality, but was now much quieter and gentler than before in every way."
Hrafnkel is also depicted as changing his attitude toward the gods. He is introduced as a particularly pious man who dedicates half his goods to Frey, including his stallion, Freyfaxi. His troubles begin when he keeps his oath to slay anyone who rides this stallion (in whom Frey owns a half interest) without permission. But when he finds himself utterly defeated and hears that Sámr and his friends have burnt his temple and killed the stallion, he says, " 'I think it folly to believe in a god...... and he kept to what he said, so that he never sacrificed."
The character of Sámr, the farmer's son who pits himself against Hrafnkel, may also have changed with his good fortune, for he is described, at the beginning of the saga, as "a very contentious man and keen at law" and, at the height of his power, as "quiet and gentle and good at easing troubles, and ... a great man for show."
It is probably no accident that Hrafnkel with its clear conception of changing character also lays an unusually heavy emphasis on changing fortunes and changing times. Hrafnkel begins the saga as a powerful chieftain, loses all his property through Sámr's persistence and good luck, and regains all through effort and ability. Sámr begins the saga as a young man of modest means, takes over Hrafnkel's goods and social position, and then loses all that he has gained. It should be noted that Hrafnkel's author introduces the notion of man's changing "temper" without abandoning the traditional idea that unchanging steadfastness is essential to manly excellence. Thus, Hrafnkel is as stubborn as a hero of old when he keeps to his oath and regretfully kills the man who rode his horse. Eyvindr, Sámr's brother, likewise seems to exhibit an exaggerated and naive heroism when he goes to his death insisting that he will not flee from men to whom he has done no wrong. On the other hand, Sámr's stalwart resolution to stick with his hopeless seeming case at law and Hrafnkel's unbroken determination to rebuild his fortunes are also examples of a resolute character, and, so far as I can judge, they are presented in a fashion which makes them wholly admirable.
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Last Modified 4 May 2000
Comments to Manny Olds, oldsma@pobox.com