Gripla - 20.12.2017, Qupperneq 44

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response to Gestr’s foreboding words because Gestr is established as a
seer elsewhere.15 It matters little whether Gestr’s involvement in Gísli’s
story is authorial invention or “imagination”, or whether in the thirteenth
century he was considered to be part of an accurate historical tradition: he
has a role in the society depicted that translates to a narrative function. He
is narratively useful.
Yet, even as a supporting character, Þorsteinn does not always appear
relevant to the plots in which he appears. He is not a chieftain or a seer, he
is never explicitly said to be a lawyer, and not all his appearances concern
legal cases. Is Þorsteinn “narratively useful” in some other way? or, like a
rounded character such as the immanently present Hallr and Guðmundr, did
the perception of Þorsteinn’s role in the events of the early eleventh century
transcend the need for him to be useful to the telling of a particular story?
Characterisation in the sagas is a vexed issue; the stories were large-
ly meant to be historically plausible to their medieval audiences, con-
cerning the accomplishments of their forebears. But the stories are also
clearly shaped by traditional conventions and narrative demands.16 The
Íslendingasögur perfectly exemplify the struggle to reconcile character and
characterisation with narrative structure, as articulated in relation to the
modern novel:
the literary character is itself divided, always emerging at the
juncture between structure and reference. In other words, a liter-
ary dialectic that operates dynamically within the narrative text gets
transformed into a theoretical contradiction, presenting students of
literature with an unpalatable choice: language or reference, struct-
ure or individuality.17
When Jesch explained Þorsteinn’s appearances in Laxdœla saga and
Grettis saga as the result of authorial imagination, she emphasised Þorsteinn’s
usefulness to the narratives. But she claimed that he is useful only because
15 Gísla saga Súrssonar, in Vestfirðingasögur, eds. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson,
Íslenzk fornrit, vol. 6 (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943), 20–22.
16 See Joanne Shortt Butler, “narrative Structure and the Individual in the Íslendingasögur:
Motivation, Provocation and Characterisation” (PhD diss., university of Cambridge,
2016), esp. 125–29.
17 Alex Woloch, The One Vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the
Novel (Princeton, nJ: Princeton university Press, 2003), 17.