Gripla - 20.12.2007, Blaðsíða 56

GRIPLA54
as athleticism and prophecy (70, 104-105), with a particularly Old Norse idea
of ‘the other.’ Characters describe him as slightly uncanny and troll-like (298-
299), which matches with Levinas’s connection of the ‘idea of the other’ to an
essential, and essentially human, inability to know another person’s nature
completely.15
Critics have proposed just this kind of emotional/communicative connec-
tion that Kári and Skarpheðinn experience as one of the basic attributes of
heroic fame in general. Roberta Frank says that the kind of ‘self-praise’ that is
likely to exist in a conventional hero’s mind at the moment of a typical ac-
complishment (usually of athletic prowess, often in battle), is ‘a rhetoric priz-
ed as empowering and strength-enhancing’ by anyone in a society that values
oral-heroic tradition (1991:199). So, a fellow-warrior like Kári would not only
appreciate a comrade’s achievement but also want to share in it. His comment
can substitute for the immediate thoughts on the slaying of Þráinn that Skarp-
heðinn omits to utter, and it thus confirms that bystanders — and here is how
the moment of transfer becomes an ethical concept, that is, an idea that affects
an entire community — can partake in and express for themselves the ‘mo-
ments of high emotion’ that people like Skarpheðinn, Grettir, and Illugi feel
through the performance of their deeds (Opland 1980:262). Of course a
character’s emotion is most intense at the death of a rival in heroic works,
especially if that character has contributed to the killing, because the victor
then possesses the reputation of his slain adversary almost physically (Vƒls-
unga saga:17, 40; Opland 1975:187).
The broader context for Kári’s phrase supports the idea that it amounts to
virtual self-praise by Skarpheðinn. In other sagas, great deeds are often cele-
brated through skaldic poetry, which frequently acts as the vehicle by which
news of these events gets disseminated (Grettis saga:156, 197-198, 216-217;
Poole 1991:3-23; Whaley 2001). Skarpheðinn’s actions in almost any other
saga might well have inspired a stanza from either himself or an onlooker.16
But Njáls saga does not follow this tradition. A comparison with Egils saga
demonstrates that not only does Egill constantly praise himself in poetry, often
15 See also Levinas 1987:39-44, 93-100; 1981:13-27, 51-56, 115, and the volume edited by
Peperzak (1995). The theme of what one might call heroic empathy continues in the saga.
Flosi Þórðarson, Kári’s greatest enemy, admits that ok þann veg vilda ek helzt skapfarinn vera
sem hann er (422), ‘I would want most to have a temperament like his [Kári’s.]’
16 In some manuscripts, verses by Skarpheðinn duly appear at this juncture (Njáls saga:479-
480).