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sumption that, due to narrative convention, the Íslendingasögur are always
concerned with the building and breaking of relationships between mem-
bers of Icelandic society. reading the outlaw as monster makes visible the
particular significance in this joint occurrence of monstrous, broken, dis-
rupted families and monstrous, breaking, disruptive outlaws. through the
outlaws’ close connection with their families, because of the way families
impact the marginalisation of the outlaw and the way the outlaw creates,
intensifies, heightens the loyalties, duties and conflicts inside their families,
this is what they point to: the concerns and anxieties medieval Icelanders
– as a society relying on kinship ties as its core stabilising element,114 its
foundation and “the spine […] of many kinds of social relationships”115 –
must have felt about the problems and instabilities inherent in the kinship
system,116 and about the ensuing potential breakdown of this fundamental
social structure.
the presence of the outlaw in these narratives, through his monstros-
ity, lends itself particularly aptly to such an exploration. outlawry was sup-
posed to cut a man loose from all social ties, including the ties of friendship
and kinship. However, as can be seen from the sagas themselves, this was
not regularly put into practice: an outlaw did not cease to be a kinsman.
Yet his family members were not legally allowed to interact with him, and
his presence was therefore dangerous and disruptive as well as potentially
contagious: if caught, his kinsmen would have had to join him in his out-
lawry. this constant danger therefore heightens the pressure that kinship
ties were already subjected to. the conflicts presented in these sagas,
because of the way they involve the outlaw’s closest kin, become com-
pletely irresolvable. family ties and tensions are always at the heart of the
Íslendingasögur, but it emerges that the outlaw sagas use them to particular-
ly striking effect, depicting how closely tied up the individual, the outlaw,
is with his particular kin group, and highlighting what mutual destruction
the family and the individual within it can cause to one another.
114 Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Saga and Society: An Introduction to Old Norse Literature,
transl. John tucker (odense: odense university Press, 1993), 28 and 73.
115 Victor turner, “an anthropological approach to the Icelandic Saga,” The Translation
of Culture: Essays to E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ed. t. o. Beidelman (London: travistock
Publications, 1971), 361.
116 On these inherent issues, see William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law,
and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1990), 155.