Gripla - 20.12.2004, Page 97

THE PAST AS GUEST 95
Water is needful for one who comes to a meal,
a towel and a proper invitation in,
a good reception, if he can get it,
opportunity to speak and a hearing in return.
Háv. 2 indicates that the guest is expected to prove himself through perfor-
mance:
Gefendr heilir! gestr er inn kominn,
hvar scal sitia siá?
miƒc er brá›r, sá er á brƒndum scal
síns um freista frama (Neckel and Kuhn 1983:17).
Hail to the givers! A stranger has come in,
where shall he sit?
He is very eager, this one who will try his luck
from the floor.3
As Adele Cipolla notes, the visiting guest as a bearer of information is a
recurring motif elsewhere in the literature and particularly in the stereotyped
plot of the episodes Joseph Harris has termed Íslendingaflættir (Harris 1972),
in which the Icelander who visits the King is portrayed as particularly clever,
often a poet and a transmitter of valuable intellectual goods (Cipolla 1996:52–
3). The social implications are just as significant as the literary ones: narration
involves the guest in a reciprocal social relationship, and the creation and
maintenance of such reciprocal relationships is a large part of what a func-
tioning and well-ordered society is.
The implications of hospitality and the status of the guest thus work to
create and fortify the distinction between the stuff of the past and the realm of
the present. The guest exists in a social frame that keeps him separate from the
household in which he is temporarily welcome. The speech of the guest,
3 Here I take brandr as meaning a length of wood and á brƒndum as ‘on the floor(boards)’, that
is, still standing waiting to be offered a seat, like Ó›inn (Gagnrá›r) speaking á gólfi in Vaf-
flrú›nismál 9–17. Alternately one might follow Finnur Jónsson’s interpretation of á brƒndum
as an expression borrowed from the language of maritime warfare, in which the most daring
men fought in the bow of the ship (Lex. Poet.:60). Indeed, Finnur Jónsson’s reading accounts
better for the sense of eagerness in the word brá›r.