Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Qupperneq 43

Women and Men in Laxdœla saga
41
this is her doing, and she caps it by divorcing herself from the wretched
Þórður goddi. The fact that she and the killer Þórólfur and the aggrieved
brother Ingjaldur are never heard from again in the saga indicates the
gratuitousness of this episode: it is there simply as another demonstration of
feminine power.
It is unnecessary to continue sequentially through the saga in this fashion,
showing how one impressive woman after another - Melkorka, Auður,
Þuríður, Þorgerður, Guðrún - uses the various means at her disposal (e.g. the
promise of marriage, the threat of divorce, persuasion, whetting, stealing,
giving orders to followers, even striking blows) to wield a great amount of
power and bring about the shaping events catalogued above. If a woman’s
social role in medieval Iceland or even the world of the sagas is a constricted
one, it doesn’t inhibit the women in Laxdæla from calling the shots.
M. Schildknecht-Burri (1945:53) has hinted - and the idea bears further
development - that there is a pattern in the saga whereby the various women
characters prepare us for the character of Guðrún, e.g. Unnur in her
“stórmennska”, Vigdís in affirming the right of a guest to the extent of
jeopardizing her marriage, Melkorka in her thoughts of vengeance against
the man who has wronged her. If this is true and the women in the saga
exhibit power in parallel and complementary ways, it is even less likely that
Unnur stands alone. She is one of many.
Rather than develop that idea, however, I would like to pursue a valuable
insight put forth by Helga Kress:
Að áliti [Theodore M.] Anderssons standa átök sögunnar - og þau sem hrinda
atburðum af stað - á milli Kjartans og Bolla, þ.e.a.s. á milli tveggja karlmanna
eins og venjan er í íslendingasögum. Og þannig séð má segja að draumarnir falli
utan við efnið. En eins og reynt hefur verið að færa rök fyrir, sýnir bygging
sögunnar annað. Það sérstaka við Laxdæla sögu, og það sem skilur hana frá
öðrum íslendingasögum sem fjalla um ástarþríhyrninginn, er að átökin fara ekki
fram á milli tveggja karlmanna sem elska sömu konuna, heldur milli elskendanna
sjálfra. (1980:102)
This is an important truth about Laxdæla saga, and confirmed by
Kjartan’s confident statement shortly before his death: “Eigi mun Bolli
frændi minn slá banaráðum við mig” (48:1613). He knows who his enemy is,
and it is not Bolli; it is the Ósvífurssynir, prodded by Guðrún. Much has
been written about the patterns of feud in the sagas, but in the events
following Kjartan’s return from Norway and leading to his death we have a
feud of a special kind: a feud between the sexes, with a pattern of escalation
as deliberate as in male feuding. For her part, Guðrún takes action of a
shameful sort against Kjartan, but an action open to women: theft. She steals
Kjartan’s sword and then takes the headdress which Kjartan gave to Hrefna.
Kjartan, in retaliation, takes actions of the non-violent sort that can be