Gripla - 2020, Blaðsíða 91

GRIPLA90
or Latin tradition (notably Pliny).67 The specific explanation that a small
heart has little room for blood in which fear may reside seems to be the au-
thor’s own, but the fact that the amount of blood is decisive for Þorgeirr’s
character probably draws its inspiration from humoural theory, since the
fundamental parameters of that theory are the excess or lack of humours,
heat or moisture.68 This theory became commonplace with the spread of
Salernian medicine in the twelfth century, and it envisioned four types of
blood (black and yellow bile, phlegm and actual blood), which in conjunc-
tion with the parameters hot and cold, wet and dry were decisive for the
character and well-being of the individual. In the Norse area, aspects of
this theory (heat and moisture) are found already in Theodoricus mona-
chus, c. 1180, in his discussion of how men’s bodies have become smaller
over time:
Cuncta namque in terra ex calore et humore procreantur; in quibus
calor abundat, fiunt exiliora, graciliora et subtiliora; et ubi preualet
humor, sunt grossiora, proceriora et magis corpulenta.
Everything in the world is generated from heat and moisture; where
heat is preponderant, creatures are made thinner, leaner and more
delicate; where moisture has the advantage, they are thicker, taller
and fleshier.69
General knowledge of humoural theory is thus attested at an early date.
Interestingly enough, it is here found in a Latin kings’ saga, and one that
makes ample use of digressions, like Fóstbrœðra saga.70 It should be noted,
however, that the theory is also found in the Old Norse translation of
Honorius Augustodunensis’ Elucidarius, before 1200.71
67 Jónas Kristjánsson, Um ‘Fóstbræðrasögu’, 246–47; Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda 7, ed.
von See et al., 285–86.
68 Lars Lönnroth, ‘Kroppen som själens spegel – ett motiv i de isländska sagorna’, Lychnos
(1963–64): 24–61 (at 46–48).
69 Theodoricus, De antiquitate regum norwagiensium. On the Old norwegian Kings, ed. and
trans. by Egil Kraggerud (Oslo: Novus forlag, 2018), 66–67; cf. Lönnroth, ‘Kroppen som
själens spegel’, 35.
70 For a recent discussion, see Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, ‘Humoral Theory in the Medieval North.
An Old Norse Translation of Epistula vindicani in Hauksbók’, Gripla 29 (2018): 35–66.
71 Honorius Augustodunensis, the Old norse ‘Elucidarius’. Original text and English transla-
tion, ed. and trans. by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow (Columbia: Camden House, 1992), 14.