Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 121

Betrothal and Women s Autonomy
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of the propordon of conjugal property which belonged to a married woman, and
could be claimed by her, together with the bride-price, on divorce.18 Thus, a
unique economic independence was accorded to a married woman, perhaps
explaining the emphasis on marriage as status in both laws and sagas, and
contributing to the authority and power of the assertive female characters
described by Jochens.
It has been argued that the point of view of the íslendmgasögur is overwhel-
mingly masculine:
íslendingasögur eru karlbókmenntir sem lýsa mönnum og atburðum frá sjónarhóli
karlveldis og ríkjandi menningar ... Innan þessarar hefðar er lítið svigrúm fyrir konur.
Þeim er sjaldnast lýst vegna þeirra sjálfra, heldur sem viðföngum karlhetjanna, og
viðhorf til þeirra fara oft eftir því hvernig þær samræmast hugmyndum sagnahefðarin-
nar um hetjuskap og karlmennsku.19
The Islendingasögur are male literature which present men and events from a patriar-
chal and aristocratic point of view . . . Within this culture there is little elbow-room
for women. They are very seldom presented in their own right, but as dependents of
the male heroes, and attitudes to them depend on the extent to which they conform
with the saga’s prescriptions concerning heroism and masculinity.
Certainly the official framework and procedures for taking action, in the
arrangement of marriages as in other respects, are male preserves in the íslendin-
gasögur as in Grágás and Sturlunga saga. Where these sagas differ is in offering -
perhaps in deference to a large female presence in the audience20 — an insight into
the responses of women to their subjection to this male power structure, and
examples ofwomen, on aless official level, manipulating the system for theirown
18 Grágás Ib, 43, 44—47. Admittedly, she was dependent on male relatives to claim this on her
behalf, like Unnr in Njáls saga, who has to enlist Gunnarr’s help to retrieve her property from
Hrútr (ÍF 12, 58-70), and Steingerðr in Kormaks saga (ÍF 8, 254).
19 Helga Kress, Máttugar meyjar, 136. This is a modified version of material first appearing in
‘“Mjök mun þér samstaft þykkja” - Um sagnahefð og kvenlega reynslu í Laxdæla sögu’, Konur
skrifa, til heiðurs Önnu Sigurðardóttur (Reykjavík, 1980), 97-109 (p. 97), translated by Birna
Arnbjörnsdóttir in ‘“You will fmd it all rather monotonous”: on literary tradition and the
feminine experience in Laxdala sagd, in The Nordic Mind: Current Trends in Scandinavian
Literary Criticism, ed. Frank Egholm Andersen and John Weinstock (Lanham, NY and London,
1986), 181-95.
20 It has been suggested that conditions in Iceland probably led to a degree of feminine influence
in shaping the Islendingasögur, see Robert Kellogg, ‘Sex and the Vernacular in Medieval Iceland’,
Proceedings ofthe First International Saga Conference, edited by Peter Foote, Hermann Pálsson
and Desmond Slay (London, 1973), 244-58. This is considered with particular reference to
Laxdcela saga by Judith Jesch, Women in the VikingAge (Woodbridge, 1991), 198-200; her
account of women in the saga also anticipates many of the observations in this paper. Helga
Kress puts forward the suggestion that the author of Laxdœla saga was a woman (1980, 107),
which Loren Auerbach examines fúrther in ‘Female Experience and Authorial Intention in
Laxdala sagd (forthcoming).