Gripla - 2020, Síða 246

245
left the farm and he sees a woman’s hand lying in the yard. Þórarinn looks
for his wife and finds her lying in bed; she does not positively confirm
his suspicion that it is she who lost the hand, but merely asks him not to
worry about her (‘Auðr bað hann ekki um þat hirða,’38 [Auðr asked him to
pay no mind to it]). Her behaviour is a sure sign for her husband that it is
her hand that he found in the yard, however, and he rushes off to pursue
the attackers in order to avenge Auðr’s impairment. While Auðr plays
her injury down, potentially to stop Þórarinn from any further actions, it
seems that Auðr’s impairment is ultimately less disturbing for Þórarinn
than the potential social damage that he and his wife experience because
of the incident. This reading is reinforced later on when rumours spread
that Þórarinn himself cut off Auðr’s hand, a claim later disproven, which
suggests the damage to one’s reputation that could emerge from such situ-
ations if not dealt with quickly.
In all the aforementioned cases, the sagas remain silent as to how
wounds are taken care of, how long the injured take to recover, and, even
more importantly, how they feel after having been injured, as well as the
impacts that injuries and impairments have on everyday life. Despite po-
tentially serious and life-changing consequences arising from injuries and
impairments, the Íslendingasögur refrain from assuming the perspectives of
the impaired. The narratives display little to no interest in the well-being
of individual characters or how they deal with the medical issues and con-
sequences of their physical ailments, and personal experience is given less
importance than the social implications – that is, the disability that can be
caused by the impairment.39
The silence is also underlined by the lack of the patient perspectives
and saga characters who do not express or complain about physical discom-
fort or pain even when they have ample reason for doing so, at least from
a modern perspective. As Stefan Buntrock puts it, ‘man würde in diesem
Umfeld [der altnordischen Sagaliteratur] nur allzu selbstverständlich er-
warten, dem Thema Schmerz auf Schritt und Tritt zu begegnen. Doch die
38 Eyrbyggja saga, 36.
39 One of the few cases in which an impaired person’s perspective is shown in the sagas is
that of Önundr tréfótr in Grettis saga. For an excellent analysis of this character, see Sexton,
“Difference and Disability.”
THE SILENCED TRAUMA IN THE Í sLEnDInGAsÖGUR