Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 117

Betrothal and, Women ’s Autonomy 115
(as their aggressive self-interest is repeatedly characterized in modern commentaries).
(Clover 1993, 379)
While Clover is right to emphasize that the behaviour of the women in Laxdœla
saga is not merely strong but a pointed inversion of masculine norms, it seems to
me too simple to suggest that the attitude of the saga, or the society receiving it,
towards these incidents is a straightforward admiration of the womens assertive-
ness.
Jochens’ emphasis on the significance of women’s consent in marriage is
overstated, given that, on her own showing, it is only ‘occasionally’ found in the
Islendingasögur, and when it is, ‘most often ... girls yielded to their father’s wishes’
(1995, 47). Moreover, her evidence of ‘strong’ female behaviour is skewed by the
disproportionate number of examples found in Laxdœla saga, reflecting the
questioning of the reality of women’s autonomy which is a particular concern of
this text. As Clover stresses repeatedly, such behaviour is seen as exceptional, even
in what may have been the more liberated sphere of the sagas.
In the Islendingasógur as a whole, the picture is rather less dramatic. The
following observations are based largely on the poets’ sagas, a group in which
betrothal is foregrounded as an important element of the main theme, a theme
which, I would suggest, the author of Laxdœla saga took up and elaborated for
his own purposes. The presentation of betrothal in the poets’ sagas, more typically
of the Islendingasógur, broadly corresponds to the laws, in several respects:
(i) Betrothal is a contract between the prospective husband and the male
relatives of the prospective bride. The usual scenario - overwhelmingly prevalent
if we include summary accounts in which we are told only that ‘x married his
daughter to y’ - makes no reference to the woman’s preference. The betrothal of
Þorgerðr and Óláfr, so dramatically related in Laxdœla saga, receives a more
conventional treatment in Egils saga:
Óláfr bað Þorgerðar, dóttur Egils; Þorgerðr var væn kona ok kvenna mest, vitr ok heldr
skapstór, en hversdagliga kyrrlát. Egill kunni <,»ll deili á Óláfi ok vissi, at þat gjaforð var
gpfugt, ok fyrir því var Þorgerðr gipt Óláfi . . . (IF 2, 242)
Óláfr asked to marry Egill’s daughter Þorgerðr. Þorgerðr was a beautiful woman of
great qualities, intelligent and rather strong-minded, though calm about everyday
things. Egill knew all about Óláfr and knew that it was a fortunate match, and so
Þorgerðr was married to Óláfr.
The author of Egils saga has every reason to make the most of Þorgerðr’s
strong-mindedness at this juncture, since the account of her marriage forms the
preamble to the saga’s account of her resourceful manipulation of her grief-stric-
ken father into poetic expression of his anguish at the death of his son Bpðvarr,
which gives him the strength to go on living. But there is no reference to her