Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 116

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Alison Finlay
guardian of the traditional values of vengeance and honour. This model is
acknowledged to be particularly influential in Laxdœla saga, in which the central
‘love-triangle’ story of Guðrún, who loves Kjartan but marries his pallid shadow,
his cousin and foster-brother Bolli, is often said to be inspired by the Edda’s
account of the competition of two women, one of them another Guðrún, for the
love of Sigurðr fáfnisbani.n The strong woman of the sagas leaves her mark on
the narrative indirectly, by guiding or inspiring the actions of men (for instance,
in the well-known ‘egging’ modf), or by manipulating, in ways I will go on to
suggest, social institutions dominated by men — as they were in those of the
thirteenth century on which the Islendingasögur were modelled. Thus, although
the strong women of the sagas are not empowered to overturn the social codes
operating in their world, it is not surprising that authors felt the need to express
the contrast between their forceful personalities and their lack of autonomy.
Carol Clover, commenting specifically on examples of masculine behaviour
appropriated by women in the Islendingasögur, cites some of the same examples
of strong female behaviour as does Jochens, but finds more congruence between
literary and historical evidence. Bringing into play the argument established by
Preben Meulengracht Sorensen and William Ian Miller that the social norms
exhibited by the sagas, if not historically correct in detail, present at least our
strongest evidence for the structures actually obtaining in pre-thirteenth-century
society,12 she also cites considerable evidence from historical texts such as the laws,
of women being licensed, in admittedly exceptional circumstances, to take on
masculine rights and duties.13
Clover’s aim is to suggest that the presentation of women taking on explicitly
masculine roles in the sagas is the obverse of the feminisation of the male found,
for instance, in the complex of insults known as níð, and other associations of
shame with the feminine and/or passive. While this association with the female
is exclusively condemnatory, Clover argues that its converse, the adoption of
masculinity by a woman, is automatically approved.11 Ultimately, her argument
is that norms of behaviour were not based on a fixed opposition of masculine and
feminine roles and values, but on:
astructure in which women no less than men were held in contempt forwomanishness
and were admired - and mentioned - only to the extent that they showed some ‘pride’
” For instance, Einar Ól. Sveinsson: ‘Sigurður kvænist Guðrúnu Giúkadóttur, Kjartan Hrefnu,
það geta þær Brynhildur og Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir ekki þolað, og því æsa þær bændur sína,
skuggana, til að drepa þá menn, er þær hafa elskað’ (ÍF 5, xlvi; see further xlv-xlvii, and the
earlier critics cited on xlv, n. 3.).
12 Preben Meulengracht Sorensen, Fortœlling og xre: Studier i Islandingesagaerne (Aarhus, 1993);
William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland
(Chicago and London, 1990).
13 Carol J. Clover, ‘Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe’,
Speculum, 68 (1993), 363-87.
14 Such counter-examples as Hallgerðr in Njálssaga, whose assertive behaviour is treated negatively,
are noted by Clover and explained by the intrusion of Christian values.