Gripla - 2020, Page 234

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ANNA KATHARINA HEINIGER
THE SILENCED TRAUMA
IN THE ÍsLEnDInGAsÖGUR1
1. Introduction
‘bændur flugust á’, or ‘farmers fighting each other’: this is Jón ólafs-
son of Grunnavík’s description of the Íslendingasögur, the ‘family sagas’.
Despite its apparent cynicism, Jón’s impression is accurate in that it seems
true that saga characters release social tension by seizing every opportunity
to initiate fights, duels, and skirmishes, which often turn into long-lasting
feuds.2 It would be only logical, then, for the narratives to feature countless
descriptions of injuries and of impairments; yet, the Íslendingasögur refrain
from dealing at length with injuries, wounds, chopped-off legs, or other
physical or mental traumas. In contrast to the modern-day culture of inten-
sive discussion of physical and mental well-being, the Íslendingasögur follow
a different path by remaining silent about impairments. One cannot help but
develop the impression that such incidents are not considered relevant either
for the plot or for the character concerned.3
Nonetheless, dis/ability4 does not go unnoticed in the saga world, even
though it is not often verbally expressed and addressed. This article aims
1 This publication is part of the interdisciplinary project Disability before Disability (dbd.hi.is),
based at the University of Iceland and chaired by Prof. Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir. The
research is funded by the Icelandic Research Fund, Grant of Excellence, no. 173655-051. My
thanks go to Sólveig ólafsdóttir for very helpful discussions when preparing this article.
I am also indebted to Ármann Jakobsson, Stefanie Gropper, Rebecca Merkelbach, Eva
Þórdís Ebenezersdóttir, and Alexander Wilson for very valuable and inspiring feedback on
previous drafts of this article.
2 In this article, the terms saga world, saga character, and saga society refer exclusively to ob-
servations made in context of the genre of the Íslendingasögur.
3 See John P. Sexton, “Difference and Disability: On the Logic of Naming in the Icelandic
Sagas,” Disability in the Middle Ages. Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. by Joshua R.
Eyler (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 149–150; and Lois Bragg “From the Mute God to the
Lesser God: Disability in Medieval Celtic and Old Norse Literature,” Disability & society
12.2 (1997): 172–173.
4 On dis/ability studies, the spelling of dis/ability with a slash, and the differentiation be-
tween impairment and disability, see below.
Gripla XXXI (2020): 233–265