Gripla - 20.12.2009, Síða 226

GRIPLA226
Interpretations of the complex concept of honour in the sagas require a
careful contextual reading.34 Honour has both personal and social dimen­
sions and must not be reduced to either. Moreover, the distinction between
the personal and the social cannot always be clearly drawn in this context,
especially in the cases of powerful men who could bring conflicts to a reso­
lution. Byock writes: “The goðar early became political entrepreneurs
adept at forming ad hoc interest groups of often unrelated backers. they
specialized in advocating client’s interests through arbitration both in and
out of courts, and found it honourable and profitable to engage in resolv­
ing moderately mature, that is ‘court ready’, conflicts.”35 Byock argues
convincingly that in order to succeed in playing the role of an advocate, the
individual had to be “a hófsmaðr, a person of justice and temperance”.36 It
is hard to imagine a person reaching that kind of moral maturity without
engaging in the efforts of self­improvement and self­restraint characteristic
of personal honour. At the same time, these elements are preconditions for
gaining the social capital of increased estimation among the public. In this
way, the personal and social aspects of honour seem to be interwoven.
This relates to the question dealt with by both of the aforementioned
Icelandic philosophers kristján kristjánsson and Þorsteinn Gylfason,
whether “honour and shame essentially depend on the received opinion of
a community,”37 or whether they reside in the self-conception of the indi­
vidual, independent of received opinion. If the former, sometimes seen as
characteristic of shame cultures, honour is in effect reduced to a social
product, leaving little room for genuine moral excellence. this must not be
too sharply stated: the question is not about the personal or the social, in
the sense that personal virtues can be independent of social reputation.
Since socialization is individualization the two are obviously interrelated.
A more interesting question in this context concerns the nature of
moral thinking and whether it is primarily a strategic or instrumental skill
of those who are clever readers of the social landscape of praise and blame,
or whether moral prudence is of a more distinctive nature. Sociological
34 excellent examples of such a reading are found in vésteinn ólason, Samræður við söguöld
(Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1998).
35 Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 218.
36 Ibid., 190.
37 Þorsteinn Gylfason, ”Introduction” to Njal’s Saga, xxx.