Gripla - 2020, Page 273

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the farmstead at Hof.17 Yet, there is no mention of Þorsteinn giving up, for
example, his goðorð [chieftainship]. Although Þorsteinn’s vision loss makes
it difficult or perhaps impossible for him to perform certain physical tasks
associated with looking after a farm, his ability to fulfill other important
responsibilities expected of someone in his position is not affected by this
change. He evidently also continues fulfilling his role as a patriarch by ad-
vising and helping arrange Þorgils’s marriage to Ásvǫr Þórisdóttir. In con-
trast, the once heroic Egill Skalla-Grímsson becomes an object of ridicule
and scorn when, as an old man, he has lost his vision and hearing. Even the
matseljan [housekeeper] derides the elderly Egill for getting in the way as
he warms himself by the fire on a cold winter day. It might be noted that
of Egill, having now reached his ninth decade, the saga’s narrator neverthe-
less contends “var hann þá hress maðr fyrir annars sakar en sjónleysis” [he
was still a hearty man but for the sake of his vision loss].18 Yet, the narra-
tive construction of this final act of Egill’s life appears to be at great odds
with, and perhaps even undermines the saga’s account of his earlier years,
even if its portrayal of the aged hero may ultimately be a sympathetic one.19
Annette Lassen has demonstrated that keen eyesight is frequently depicted
as a symbol of masculine strength in medieval saga writing and the act of
blinding was concurrently regarded as a symbolic equivalent to the act of
castration, particularly when brought about through violence or torture.20
17 Cf. vápnfirðinga saga, in Austfirðinga sǫgur, ed. by Jón Jóhannesson, íslenzk fornrit XI
(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950), 23.
18 Sigurður Nordal (ed.), Egils saga skalla-Grímssonar, íslenzk fornrit II (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 1933), 294–96; see also Todd Michelson-Ambelang, Outsiders on
the Inside: Conception of Disability in Medieval Western scandinavia (PhD diss., University
of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015), 111–13. Based on these and other “symptoms,” cases have
been made for retroactively diagnosing Egill with either Paget’s disease or Van Buchem
disease; see Þórður Harðarson, “Sjúkdómur Egils Skallagrímssonar,” skírnir 158 (1984):
245–48; Jesse L. Byock, “The Skull and Bones in Egil’s saga: A Viking, a Grave, and Paget’s
disease,” viator 24 (1993): 23–50; and Peter Stride, “Egill Skallagrímsson: The First case of
Van Buchem disease?” the journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 41 (2011):
169–73.
19 Morcom, “After Adulthood,” 44–48; Ármann Jakobsson, “The Spectre of Old Age,” 316.
20 Lassen, Øjet og blindheden, 24–25, 43–52. On deliberate acts of blinding and symbolic
castration in saga writing, see also Sean Lawing, Perspectives on Disfigurement in Medieval
Iceland: A Cultural study based on Old norse Laws and Icelandic sagas (PhD diss., University
of Iceland, 2016), 164–66.