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very fine and transgressible”.29 What this line depends on, according to
asa Simon Mittman, is an external dimension: “a monster is not really
known through observation; how could it be? How could the viewer dis-
tinguish between ‘normally’ terrifying phenomena and abnormally terri-
fying monstrosity? rather, I submit, the monster is known through its
effect, its impact.”30 thus, the impact a potential monster’s actions have
on those affected by them determines whether it fulfils its potential and
becomes fully monstrous, and in this, both the quality and the quantity of
its interaction with society assume special significance.31 If monstrosity
depends on the monster’s impact, however, and on how this impact is as-
sessed, then it emerges as a less fixed and more fluid concept than previous
scholarship has assumed, and this observation will be especially important
for the discussion of the often ambiguously monstrous outlaws of the
Íslendingasögur.
It is important to note that acts that qualify as monstrous behaviour
disrupt and endanger society on a fundamental level: “monsters do not
threaten individuals only, but society as a whole.”32 Thus, one has to look
out for markers that acts of a societally threatening nature have been per-
formed, for they might aid in identifying the social monster. neville draws
attention to one such act, namely stealing: being a thief equals being a
threat, and for that reason she states – concerning the closeness of the thief
and the þyrs in the old English poem “Maxims II”33 – that “the þyrs […]
may merely be another miserable exile, in fact. The thief may be another
monster.”34 This is the economic dimension of monstrosity already dis-
29 neville, “Monsters and Criminals,” 118.
30 asa Simon Mittman, “Introduction: the Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies,” The
Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, eds. Asa Simon Mittman and
Peter J. Dendle (farnham: ashgate, 2012), 6; emphasis original.
31 on interaction and perception in the construction of social monstrosity, see Merkelbach,
“Volkes Stimme: Interaktion als Dialog in der Konstruktion sozialer Monstrosität in
den Isländersagas,” Stimme und Performanz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, eds. Monika
unzeitig, angela Schrott and nine Miedema (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 251–75.
32 neville, “Monsters and Criminals,” 112.
33 Þeof sceal gangan þystrum wederum. Þyrs sceal on fenne gewunian, / ana innan lande [The
thief must go in dark weather. the þyrs [giant] must live in the fen, alone in the land],
“Maxims II”, ll. 43–44, in tom Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976), 78. on the disruptive nature of stealing, see also theo-
dore M. andersson, “the thief in Beowulf,” Speculum 59 (1984): 493–508.
34 neville, “Monsters and Criminals,” 119.
“HE HaS LonG forfEItED aLL KInSHIP tIES”