Gripla - 01.01.1995, Blaðsíða 125
,1236: ÓRÆKJA MEIDDR OK HEILL GQRR'*
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ef hann mætti. Sturla var optliga með konungi um vetrinn, ok
tgluðu þeir þetta mál.
The same episode is quoted in íslendinga saga, where Sturla again
mentions King Hákon’s warning to Sturla Sighvatsson not to increase
manslaughter in Iceland; rather, he must force people to go abroad.20
In light of these circumstances, the rationale behind Sturla Sighvats-
son’s actions the subsequent year becomes clear. In his conversation
with Sturla Þórðarson at Reykjaholt prior to the Surtshellir incident,
he declares that he intends for Órækja to go north to Skagafjörðr and
leave for Norway from there. Thus Sturla’s sole intention with the
capture of Órækja was, in keeping with the king’s command, to force
him to leave Iceland and to „divest him of his power by other means;“
the „other means“ being the alleged castration and blinding. What is
not clear, however, is why Sturla devised such an elaborate scheme to
force Órækja to go abroad, and why blinding and castration loomed so
large in that scheme.
III. Blinding and Emasculation in Old Norse Literature and Society
Although the literature shows that blinding and emasculation of po-
werful enemies was not entirely unknown in medieval Scandinavia, the
most famous example being the maiming of King Magnús Sigurðarson
by the Irish Haraldr gilli in 1135, these types of corporal injuries are
seldom mentioned in the Icelandic family sagas and, with two excep-
tions, no episodes of castration and blinding are recorded in twelfth-
and thirteenth-century Iceland.21 However, if we turn to other pro-
20 ísl, p. 439.
21 Heimskringla, p. 560. Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (ed. Sigurður Nordal, íslenzk
fornrit II, Reykjavík, 1933, 228) describes how Egill poked out the eye of Ármóðr with
his finger; in Hallfreðar saga (ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, íslenzk fornrit VIII, Reykja-
vík, 1939,166-67), Hallfreðr deprived both Þorleifr spaki and Kálfr of one eye; in Har-
alds saga Itarðráða, Haraldr is said to have blinded the Greek emperor (Heimskringla,
pp. 455-56), and Óláfr Haraldsson blinded his rival, King Hrœrekr (ibid., p. 235). Aside
from the Órækja episode, íslendinga saga reports one instance of castration, namely,
when Sturla Sighvatsson castrated two priests, Snorri and Knútr. in retaliation for the
slaying of his brother Tumi (p. 292). For episodes of castration and blinding in other
genres of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, see Inger Boberg, Motif-Index of Early Ice-
landic Literature (Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 27, Copenhagen, 1966), 238-39.