Gripla - 01.01.1984, Blaðsíða 102

98
GRIPLA
his power could be severely curtailed by loss of wealth and/or the
banishment of valued supporters. Full outlawry and lifetime banish-
ment were the Icelandic equivalents of a death sentence. A person sub-
ject to such a verdict usually lost all his property and his social position,
the two identifying marks of one’s existence. Lesser outlawry, normally
banishment for three years, gave the outlaw and members of the
community time to cool their tempers and to reevaluate bonds and
obligations.
REJECTED RESOLUTION
One type of resolution could prompt another, and many of the high
points in the sagas are centered on the convoluted, though plausible,
means through which feuds are brought to closure. A character’s rejec-
tion of resolution plays an important narrative role in many small saga
feuds. Sometimes parties to a dispute refuse to honor a settlement al-
ready arrived at or to negotiate or adjudicate any agreement. I regard
rejected resolution as a separate category because it was not simply a
failed resolution, for any resolution could eventually end in failure; it
was, rather, a specific type of action which affected the progress of feud
in a particular way. Structurally, as saga feud proceeds in the face of
such a rejection, the narrative slot that would have been filled by an
arbitrated or a direct resolution is replaced by an active refusal to settle
by at least one of the feudants. A conscious decision to bypass the other
categories of resolution has a distinct place in saga narrative, ending the
expectation of direct or arbitrated settlement and channeling the action
toward violence. In a famous scene from Njáls saga (ch. 123), for ex-
ample, Flosi Þórðarson at first accepts an arbitrated settlement between
himself and the sons of Njáll. Later Flosi, detecting an insult, rejects the
resolution, and from that point on he refuses to consider any further
offer of terms. The feud then follows the only path available, that of
violence—the burning of Bergþórshváll, killing most of Njáll’s family.
In other instances of rejected resolution one party would go to the
extreme of preventing the implementation of a court resolution. One
way of achieving that objective was to bar one’s opponent in a dispute
from entering the court to present his case. In Vápnfirðinga saga Brodd-
nis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press,
1980), pp. 7-8.