Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 118

GRIPLA116
3. Conclusion
The uncanny voices of the Íslendingasögur dramatise the shifting ground
between embodied performance and disembodied text, the old and the
new medium, in medieval Iceland. It is no coincidence that they tend to
issue from supernatural beings, whether troll-wives, as in Bárðar saga,
revenants, as in Svarfdæla saga and Eyrbyggja saga, or cave-dwelling giants,
as in Bergbúa þáttr, as the supernatural and fantastical are key elements in
the sagas’ cultural work of demarcating the present from the past (Clunies
Ross 2002). But the acousmatic voice trope is also used in at least one
instance to dramatise the clash between forneskja versus inn nýi sið in a
non-supernatural context, in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta’s description
of Þorvaldr and the pagan woman Friðgerðr performing their religious
observances: Þorvalldr taldi þar tru fyrir mỏnnum. en Friðgerðr blotaði meþan
inni. ok heyrði huart þeira aNars orð (‘Þorvaldr preached the faith there
before the people, and Friðgerðr sacrificed inside at the same time, and
each of them heard the words of the other’) (ÓT I, 290).23 And as I hope to
have shown, the charisma of these voices is not merely due to their being
placed in the mouths of supernatural speakers. Rather, the poetic effect of
sonority and the narrative strategy of acousmatism jointly establish these
voices as uncanny, and keep the audience hovering in a state of uncertainty
as to their origins, suspended between the mana of performance and the
absence of the performer.
Uncertainty over authorship and authority and the play of presence
and absence also characterise the written text in the environment of vocal-
ity. Thanks to their copious quotation of skaldic verse, the Íslendingasögur
include many depictions of performance. However, they have a blind spot,
as Stefanie Würth (2007, 267) has pointed out: if the idea of oral trans-
mission is to have any credibility, ‘rhapsodic’ performances must have
taken place in medieval Iceland. But depictions of skalds performing other
people’s verses are absent from the sagas. Some evidence indicates that
this kind of activity was frowned upon. Eyvindr’s nickname skáldaspillir is
23 In this context it is interesting to note that both the Hetta episode in Bárðar saga and
Klaufi’s appearance carrying his own severed head appear to be repurposings of hagi-
ographic motifs: Bárðr Snæfellsáss rescues Ingjaldr from the storm conjured up by Hetta
in a manner reminiscent of a miracle of St Þórlakr (cf. Ólafur Lárusson 1944, 176), while
decapitated saints carrying their heads, such as St Denis (Heilagra manna drápa st. 13; SkP
7, 881–2), are common in medieval Christian iconography.