Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Page 41

Women and Men in Laxdœla saga
39
leads to Kjartan and Bolli, the slayings of Kjartan and Bolli, and much more.
Without these female doings, there would be no saga. When men kill, they
do so as the instruments of women. One gets a sense of great female power
from the sagas in general, but especially from Laxdœla, beginning with
Unnur djúpúðga. It is significant that the saga begins with the picture of this
commanding woman and her accomplishments. She does all of the things
that are usually associated with powerful patriarchs: she marries off six
grand-daughters, brings a family to Iceland, throws high-seat pillars
overboard and settles where they wash ashore, frees slaves, grants land to
followers, chooses a wife for her grandson and holds a splendid wedding-
feast, and is finally buried in a ship filled with treasure and placed in a
mound.
There are, however, two ways to react to the presence of Unnur at the
opening of the saga, and they have been dramatized for me in discussion that
followed orally delivered versions of some of these ideas. In Berkeley in
April 1988, Carol Clover remarked that the story of Unnur prepares the
reader to believe that anything is possible for women; Unnur sets the tone
for a saga in which women’s potential for action will be exhibited to the
utmost. In Reykjavík in November 1990, Helga Kress expressed the
opposite view, pointing to the author’s comment on Unnur’s flight from
Katanes after the fall of her son Þorsteinn:
... og þykjast menn varla dæmi til finna að einn kvenmaður hafi komist í brott
úr þvílíkum ófriði með jafnmiklu fé og föruneyti. Má af því marka að hún var
mikið afbragð annarra kvenna. (4:1538-39)
Helga argues that the phrase “mikið afbragð annarra kvenna” means that
Unnur is an exception to all other women and therefore an illustration of
what is not possible for ordinary women. While it is true that Unnur
benefits from being a wealthy widow of prominent ancestry, I incline to the
view of Carol Clover. Although it is an issue which every reader must judge
for himself, the view of Helga Kress (shared also by George Thomas
1952-53:323) seems to me to run counter to the experience of reading the
saga: few readers of Laxdæla will come to the end of the story of Unnur in
chapter 7 and feel that they are moving into a story about the limitations of
the feminine role.
That Unnur serves as the pattern for what follows and not as a unique
exception - and hence that “mikið afbragð annarra kvenna” should be
understood simply as “a very outstanding woman” or even “a superior
woman,” but not “a woman different from other women”2 - seems justified
2 The Concordance to the Icelandic Family Sagas (Orðstöðulykill íslendinga sagna)
yields nineteen occurrences of afbragð, and the contexts seem to confirm my view
that the meaning is not “in a separate class or category from” but simply “superior
to”. Gunnlaugur ormstunga, for example, goes to a feast on his return to Iceland and