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to conclude that the peace agreements during the aftermath of animosities
therefore qualify as a kind of narrative prosthesis, because they reinforce
a pretence that nothing of lasting significance has happened – or at least
nothing significant enough that it could not be compensated with money.
Based on the psychological premise that life is a continuous narrative
that is disrupted by traumatic experiences which cannot be verbalised, it
is reasonable to consider whether saga society itself is too traumatised to
discuss such dramatic experiences of dis/ability. The sagas mostly resort
to brief statements that record the more factual aspects of dis/ability,
fragmentary details that remain isolated and are not turned into a cohesive
narrative strand. I have argued that the reason for this silence, which ne-
cessitates a narrative prosthesis, may lie in the potential damage that could
be done to one’s social standing because of one’s potential dis/ability and
the dependence on others that it can engender. This threat is especially
pressing in saga society, which attributes great importance to the notion
of honour – that is, the need to maintain one’s symbolic capital, and the
anxieties that go along with that of losing such capital through the loss of
one’s able-bodiedness.
It goes without saying that the discussion of dis/ability, trauma, and
narrative prosthesis in the Old Norse saga literature calls for further
research, both regarding the Íslendingasögur and other literary genres.
Furthermore, it is an enticing prospect to follow up this research by in-
vestigating the question of whether, and to what extent, the individual
traumatic experiences of saga characters – that is, instances of psycho-
logical trauma – may relate to potential communal traumas more deeply
rooted in historical Icelandic society and the literature it produced – that
is, a kind of cultural trauma. It may be revealing to consider the corpus
of sturlunga saga for further research on this particular aspect, given the
temporal closeness of the narrative material to the historical individuals
who compiled it.
At this stage, however, it should be clear that by reading the Íslendinga-
sögur through the lens of traumatology, as well as by applying to the texts
the conceptual frameworks of narrative prosthesis and Bourdieu’s theories
of capital, we can open up new perspectives in regard to dis/ability itself
and the social perception and response to this multi-faceted topic. This ar-
ticle has demonstrated how such concepts are useful for unlocking the os-
THE SILENCED TRAUMA IN THE Í sLEnDInGAsÖGUR