Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 265

Umsagnir um bœkur
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authors concern for gender equality. The problem, which unfortunately has not
been solved, is how to arrive at the literary term from the legal background. Helga
also interprets a woman’s loose and open hair as a symbol of freedom (152). In
the context of the sagas of Icelanders flowing locks indicate merely that the
woman was unmarried, whereas a married woman tied her hair up and hid under
the headdress.
Readers may question Helga’s assumption that the Eddic poems represent
female points of view. The oldest emotion credited to women in these poems is
that of revenge, a feeling not unknown to Norse men. It is true that some of the
later poems credit women with lament, but since this emotion seems to have been
articulated first by men, it is equally plausible that when male poets reified these
sentiments they attributed them to female voices. (For further developments of
these ideas, see my Old Norse Images ofWomen, University of Pennsylvania Press,
1996. See also Gísli Sigurðsson in Islenskþjóðmenning, Reykjavík 1986, 6:310-
13.)
Helga’s second theme, that of female rebellion, is even more questionable than
poetic creation and it does not fit well neither in NK nor in MM. It would be
hard to argue that women’s struggle against patriarchy is one of the main themes
of medieval Icelandic literature, as she asserts (12). For a long time Helga has read
Laxdœla saga as the chief evidence of this struggle in which she sees the hvöt as
women’s best weapon. Helga interprets this genre not as sign ofwomen’s strength,
however, but of their subjugation. In fact, her conviction increases when the
version in NK (66) is compared to MM (146). It is difficult, however, not to agree
with Robert Cook who argues in an important article published in this journal
that it is anachronistic to read Laxdœla saga ‘as a protest against the limited social
role assigned to women’ (1992, 42). Given Helga’s long preoccupation with this
text and the centrality of the theme of rebellion to her thinking, it is regrettable
that she has not taken up Cook’s challenge. A minor annoyance is the fact that
the footnotes in chapters 4 and 5 are out of alignment with the text.
Although there is much to admire in this work by Helga, especially in its essay
form in NK, the book should be read with discretion. If it is intended for
undergraduate classes, her students should realize that her book shares a compara-
ble bias, but in the opposite direction, as the works by male colleagues which
Helga so vigorously criticizes. The irony of this situation surely must capture
Helga’s attention since it is precisely because of her previous work and that of
other scholars that women’s studies by now have matured sufficiently to render
this approach no longer necessary.
Jenny Jochens