Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 14
GRIPLA14
The next two authors are Icelandic philosophers, and both wrestle with
the problem of defining the moral attitudes of the Icelandic sagas, thereby
relating medieval Icelandic literary culture to more general philosophical
debate. They each choose a narrow perspective from which to approach
the study of Icelandic civilisation—texts which, as a matter of fact, are
often regarded as kinds of cultural signifiers or symbols. they then analyse
these texts with reference to debates on general philosophical problems or
issues. First, Vilhjálmur Árnason deals with the concept of honour in the
Icelandic sagas and critiques the different ways in which scholars have
gone about approaching this concept. vilhjálmur comes to the conclusion
that two perspectives or viewpoints are at odds with each other in the
sagas: an unconditional requirement for vengeance, and the community’s
need for peace. His article draws on Njáls saga, which shows how social
order is doomed to failure because no means of release from this conflict
exists. Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson compares ideas about honour and shame
in medieval Icelandic texts with ancient Greek ideas. He sides with the
philosophy that has criticised “the well known formulation of the distinc
tion made by the anthropologist Ruth Benedict in 1947: “true shame cul
tures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cul
tures do, on an internalized conviction of sin. Shame is a reaction to other
people‘s criticism””; it has frequently been claimed that the ethics of the
Icelandic sagas are characterised by the attitudes of a shame culture. Svavar
argues that the concepts of ‘moral thickness’ and ‘thinness’ are useful in
shedding light on the relation between society and ethics in the world of
the Íslendingasögur, and on how conceptual values therein became estab
lished as facts.
Joseph Harris’s article, which is last in the volume, expands the focus of
the area under discussion since the text on which he concentrates is the
runic inscription on the Swedish Rök stone, dated to the first part of the
ninth century. this lengthy (for a runic inscription) and complex text is an
example of an early attempt to conjoin ancient skills or knowledge of texts
with a newer technology, “an early stage in the battle of literacy with oral
ity where, clearly, orality won out”. The form and medium of expression
of the Rök stone are certainly distinct from the Icelandic texts most fre
quently referred to in the preceding articles in this collection. yet both in
the text’s content and in its form of expression, unequivocal signs of kin