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powerful chieftain Guðmundr Eyjólfsson.25 Yet, for both men, blindness
remains an indelible part of their identity.
From a socio-cultural perspective, the question of whether Þorsteinn’s
blindness – as well as Hlenni’s – should be viewed as a disability, carry-
ing with it any social disadvantages, even if the same kind of thing can be
regarded as a disability, for example, for Egill and perhaps Ingimundr,
if not for Bjǫrn and Ǫnundr as well, remains unclear.26 Such a question,
however, may imply that the representation of Þorsteinn’s visual impair-
ment should be viewed primarily as a reflection of real, lived experience
during the Middle Ages in Iceland. In this regard, it has been pointed out,
for example, that the augnaverkr that he and several others in the sagas
experience, as mentioned above, might reflect traditions stemming from a
widespread historical vitamin A deficiency during the Middle Ages due to
shortages of green and yellow vegetables.27 Yet, the Þorsteinn hvíti found
in the narrative of the saga bearing his name cannot be simply equated
with the historical figure from which this depiction, in all likelihood, ulti-
mately derives. The text does not provide a physical body through which
something like a vitamin deficiency can be detected. There are, indeed, no
contemporary documentary sources or physical evidence against which this
aspect of the literary Þorsteinn, who postdates his living counterpart by at
least several centuries, can be measured. This also happens to be the case
for those other figures mentioned above. Although it may be a compelling
prospect, particularly in light of the possibility of applying certain diag-
noses using the sagas alongside other historical evidence, these figures –
like all other literary characters – cannot be read simply as representations
25 Björn Sigfússon, Ljósvetninga saga, 54–57; Yoav Tirosh, On the Receiving End: the Role of
scholarship, Memory, and Genre in Constructing Ljósvetninga saga (PhD diss., University of
Iceland, 2019), 143–45. The same Hlenni also appears or is mentioned in Brennu-njáls saga,
Kristni saga, Landnámabók, and víga-Glúms saga. He is referred to as Hlenni inn gamli [the
old] in each of these sources.
26 On the socio-cultural distinction between an impairment and a disability in a medieval
context, rooted in the so-called “social model of disability” developed by disability activists
in the 1970s and 80s, see Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: thinking about
physical impairment during the high Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London: Routledge, 2006),
1–37. For a general criticism of both the social model as well as a strictly cultural model of
disability, see Tom Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited (London: Routledge,
2014).
27 Bernadine McCreesh, the Weather in the Icelandic sagas: the Enemy Without (Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), 55.