Gripla - 20.12.2004, Page 104

GRIPLA102
4.2 King’s men: konungs gestir
But there are still more sides to the concept of the gestr, and some of them call
into question just the things that had made hospitality and its consequences so
practical as frames for the dangerous stuff of the past or charters for its pres-
ervation in the present. Gestir are mentioned in the flulur among the mannaheiti,
grouped specifically with king’s men:
EN erv eptir
aldar heiti
hir› ok gestir
ok hvrskarlar (Skj. A I: 661).7
Gestir were members of a specific rank in the king’s hir›. The duties of the
konungs gestir are described both in Hir›skrá and in Konungs skuggsjá; they
play the role of the secret police or domestic security force. Cipolla charac-
terizes the gestir as a sort of ‘untouchable’ class of hir›menn, whose ‘dis-
honorable duties’ account for their relegation to the outer benches in hall
(Cipolla 1996:15–16). Untouchable is perhaps a little strong for these men,
but they do have a curious status, handgengnir but not bor›fastir, and as will
be shown, they have a complicated relationship with hospitality both at court
and in private homes. As for their physical place at court, their seating is not
mentioned in the laws as far as I can tell. It seems to have been read out from
Nornagests fláttr, in which the protagonist is skipat útar frá gestum on the
gestabekkr. It may well be correct, given that they receive less pay, half that of
hir›menn: ‘flessir menn ... taka hálfan hir›manna mála’ (KS: 41). Still, a little
caution on this point seems prudent, given that the word gestabekkr appears,
according to Fritzner and the AMKO, only in Nornagests fláttr.
Cipolla places the konungs gestir and, by association, Nornagestr in the
context of what we might presume to have been the prehistory of the rank.
Cipolla wishes to see in Nornagests fláttr an echo of prehistoric Germanic so-
ciety, in which travellers possessed of great traditional knowledge wandered
the European continent from chief to chief, orally transmitting the great poetic
patrimony of the Germanic peoples (Cipolla 1996:54–55). That background,
resting as much behind sense of gestr as ‘stranger’ as behind gestr as húskarl,
7 Finnur Jónsson normalized this as follows: Enn eru eptir / aldar heiti. / Hir› ok gestir / ok
húskarlar (Skj. B I:662).