Gripla - 01.01.2003, Side 79

INTERPRETATION OR OVER-INTERPRETATION
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gerðr’s egging is necessary to move the story forward, since it is the spur
which prompts her sons to take revenge. They are caught up in the complex
web of family loyalties constructed by the saga; to sting them into overriding
the peaceable instincts of their father, and moreover into attacking their cousin
and foster-brother Bolli, Þorgerðr takes the extreme and unfeminine course of
riding with them, ‘því at ek veit gprst um yðr sonu mína, at þurfi þér brýn-
ingina’ (Laxdœla saga, 164) [for I know this very well about you, my sons,
that there is a need to whet you]. The similar words of Þuríðr as she
accompanies her sons on their joumey, ‘fyrir því at eigi skal skorta til áeggjun,
fyrir því at þess þarf við’ (Borgfirðinga SQgur, 279) [because there must be no
shortage of urging, for there is a need for it], are less well motivated. In
Heiðarvíga saga the whetting scene is logically redundant, for it takes place on
the very eve of a revenge expedition that has been steadfastly planned over a
long narrative sequence. Bjami Guðnason acknowledges that its function is in
fact not strictly that of the conventional whetting: ‘Það er ... eftirtektarvert, að
eggjun Þuríðar er í raun og vem herhvöt mælt fyrir fylktu liði en ekki venjuleg
frýja’ [It is noteworthy that Þuríðr’s whetting is in fact an urging to battle
spoken before a marshalled army, not a customary challenge].22 Þuríðr’s
words, in his opinion, ‘em ekki felld að innviðum Heiðarvígasögu, heldur em
þau að öllum líkindum eftirlíking af ummælum Þorgerðar, móður hennar’ (82)
[are not fitted to the framework of Heiðarvíga saga, rather they are in all
probability an imitation of the speech of her mother Þorgerðr]. But the only
verbal similarity in the two declarations is the repetition of þaif/ þwfi, and
literary borrowing is hardly necessary to explain the coincidence that the
inciter in each case is convinced of the need for her intervention. Whereas
Þorgerðr’s belief is ratified by her sons’ acting on her word, the unseating of
Þuríðr, like the redundancy of her egging, shows her to be out of step with the
predominant, male, direction of events in the saga.
Bjami’s argument is not just about literary priority, but also an essential
plank in his contention that Heiðarvíga saga, rather than being an erindislaus
22 1993, 81. The same point is made by Martínez-Pizarro (1986): 'Þuríðr is made to speak as if
she were actually driving her sons to violent action ... In fact, however, she behaves this way
only because she has understood that they are setting out that moming to attack the
Borgfirðingar ... She has waited three years for this moment; her performance on this
particular moming is determined by the men’s decision to fight’ (1986, 232). He argues that
this, like other dramatic but inconsequential scenes involving women in the saga, represents
an attempt to compensate for the ‘exclusively masculine cast of the narrative’.