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It is therefore worth considering whether negotiations for compensations
after fights in the Íslendingasögur are best understood as manifestations of narra-
tive prostheses, given their ostensible purpose of making up for a physical loss or
a killing, through which the members of saga society attempt to restore a former
condition that cannot be fully recovered. In Bourdieu’s terms, the paying out of
such compensations is a transfer of capital across different forms, as physical and
especially social and symbolic forms of capital are turned into economic capital
– the only form of capital that the offending party can return to the aggrieved
party and that is of some use to them, albeit not one that provides any substantial
emotional or physical redress. From a narratological perspective, the payment of
compensation acts as a narrative prosthesis because it shifts the focus of attention
away from the discomfort and loss caused by the presence of dis/ability, and
instead emphasises – or at least attempts to emphasise – that the pending case
has come to a close with the final payment.
The narrative silence continues, however, in the sense that the Íslendingasögur
generally do not revisit cases of dis/ability and show little interest in a saga char-
acter’s well-being or dis/ability later in life. Indeed, many characters who experi-
ence traumatic physical injuries either vanish from the saga narrative or, if they
make another appearance, the texts do not make any further reference to their
previous injury or impairment. Apparently, dis/ability is out of sight and out of
mind once a juridical agreement has been accepted, and all parties involved have
little choice other than to accept the situation. Even in the case of saga characters
whose nickname reveals their impairment, the impairment itself is in most cases
not relevant for the plot.
Hence, the Þorbrandssynir vanish from Eyrbyggja saga shortly after their
stay at Helgafell, with Þorleifr kimbi and Snorri dropping out of the story
a few chapters later. Both move to Greenland, with Snorri eventually sail-
ing to Vínland where he dies in a battle against the skrælingjar, the native
inhabitants. Þóroddr stays in Iceland and makes another appearance in the
last chapters of the saga in fighting the monstrous bull Glæsir, but not even
in this last stand does the saga point to the injuries that Þóroddr suffered
earlier in the narrative. Auðr also disappears from the text a few chapters
has with representatives of monstrosity and alterity, see Rebecca Merkelbach, Monsters
in society: Alterity, transgression, and the Use of the Past in Medieval Iceland, The Northern
Medieval World: On the Margins of Europe (Kalamazoo / Berlin: Medieval Institute
Publications / Walter de Gruyter, 2019).
THE SILENCED TRAUMA IN THE Í sLEnDInGAsÖGUR