Gripla - 20.12.2004, Qupperneq 96

GRIPLA94
situation that is inherently disordered. The word means guest as well as
stranger. This makes good sense exactly because guests are a kind of alien
matter maintained in a socially sanctioned frame. A guest is a stranger who is
inside. Hospitality is a social charter that allows for a stranger to be brought
into the house in a non-disruptive manner, just as a narrative frame may allow
foreign material to be embedded in the story with a minimum of conflict —
and such narrative frames are a dominant device in all these tales. Mainte-
nance of the frame in both the narratological and the social case preserves the
strangeness of the embedded material. The guest is still a stranger. Hospitality
does not permanently incorporate the guest into the household in the way that
marriage incorporates a stranger into the family. In fact Háv. 35 makes a point
of the temporariness of the guest-host relationship, though from the point of
view of the guest, who does not feel himself quite at home annars fletiom á
(Neckel and Kuhn 1983:22). Later in the poem, Loddfáfnir is exhorted to re-
frain from mocking or driving off gestr and gangandi (Háv. 132 and 135,
Neckel and Kuhn 1983:38, 39). Though 135 at least may concern beggars more
than other sorts of guests, and though both stanzas imply that good hospitality
did not come naturally to all hosts, Háv. 132 and 135 reflect a societal norm
that demanded that visiting strangers be afforded at least minimal respect. As
a result, the past as guest would have been a good metaphor for the idea of
tolerating the presence of the past without losing the ability to distinguish
oneself from it.
The place of the guest within the social frame of hospitality is significant
for another reason. It is part of what permits the existence of narratological
frames, not just in these stories but in the Old Norse cultural context in gen-
eral. That is, part of the custom of offering hospitality to strangers is asking
them for news. Their narration provides entertainment for the members of the
household and repays them for food, drink, and shelter. According to st. 4 of
Hávamál, a traveller needs not only water and other basic necessities but, if
possible, an attentive audience for his speech:
Vatz er flƒrf, fleim er til ver›ar kømr,
flerro oc flió›la›ar,
gó›s um œ›is, ef sér geta mætti,
or›z oc endrflƒgu (Neckel and Kuhn 1983:17).