Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 122

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Alison Finlay
ends. Carol Clover has remarked, ‘These anecdotes . . . turn on the discrepancy
between what women ought to do and what tliey really do. Remove the discre-
pancy and you have no story.’21
Especially in Laxdœla saga, women use marriage or a promise to marry for their
own ends; for instance, as already outlined, Guðrún engineers her own second
marriage, and later tricks Þorgils Hplluson into leading the attack against Helgi
Harðbeinsson with an ambiguous promise to marry (ÍF 5, 180-81). Melkorka
agrees to marry Þorbjprn skrjiípr on condition that he finance her son Óláfr’s
expedition to Ireland — with the added advantage, she comments, that it will
annoy his father Hgskuldr (50). But men retain the initiative: in the only one of
these cases where the negotiations are not carried out by male relatives — Guðrún’s
agreement to marry Þorgils — the scheme is proposed to her by Snorri goði. In
cases where women’s consent to betrothals is sought, in this and in other sagas,
the reference to a woman’s opinion is a transparent means of registering her
response to a situation where the decision actually rests with her father and, as
Jochens observes, she frequently passively returns the initiative to him.
Jochens misreads the irony of many instances of apparent female choice in
Laxdœla saga, which is unique among the sagas for its concern with women’s
autonomy, explored through frequent but ambivalent reference to the arrange-
ment of marriages.22 For instance, when Bolli Þorleiksson asks to marry the
unwilling Guðrún, her father Ósvífr replies acknowledging her right to freedom
of choice: ‘Guðrún er ekkja, ok á hon sjálf svgr fyrir sér . . .’ (129) [Guðrún is a
widow, and has the right to answer for herself], a right not supported by Grágás,
which allows it only to a fatherless widow.23 But this ostentatious disclaimer is
followed by Ósvífr’s insistence, supported by his sons, on his daughter’s reluctant
marriage; moreover, when Bolli seeks Ósvífr’s permission he has already approa-
ched Guðrún directly, and been turned down. Ósvífr’s referral of the matter to
Guðrún can be read as a means of publicly avoiding responsibility for a match
which he expects to lead to trouble when Kjartan Óláfsson, the man Guðrún
really wants to marry, returns from abroad.
By contrast, the formula of the woman’s acquiescence in a paternally arranged
marriage is ironically used on the earlier occasion when Þórðr Ingunnarson asks
to marry Guðrún, though she has in effect already arranged the marriage by
contriving his divorce: ‘var honum þat mál auðsótt við Ósvífr, en Guðrún mælti
21 ‘The politics of scarcity: notes on the sex ratio in early Scandinavia’, Scandinavian Studies, 60
(1988), 146-88 (148).
22 Robert Cook considers and rejects the view that the actions of strong female characters in
Laxdœla saga are ironically treated; in his view, ‘it is a woman-centered saga in a positive sense,
exhibiting in rich abundance the ways that women can live and control their destinies’ (1992,
57).
23 ‘Þar er ekkja er fpstnuð manni þá skal hennar ráð fylgja nema faðir fastni; þá skal hann ráða’
(Grágás Ib, 29) [Where a widow is betrothed to someone, her consent must be obtained unless
her father gives her in betrothal; then he is to decide].