Gripla - 2020, Page 286

285
counter, the younger Þorsteinn adopted an entirely different approach to
that of his former partner Einarr when confronted with the vulnerability
of a potential adversary and chose not only to avoid taking advantage of the
“blind old” Þorsteinn but agreed to take over the management of his farm
in order to atone for the killing of Þorgils. Yet, the elder Þorsteinn is not
depicted as only a physically vulnerable figure even if his vision loss is an
indelible part of his character. Þorsteinn hvíti’s blindness and his ability to
recognize what many others cannot appreciate, namely the apparent flaws
inherent in the traditional methods by which disputes are managed in the
society depicted in the saga, appear to be intimately entwined within the
narrative. The construction of the poignant encounter between the two
men and the emphasis placed on the elder Þorsteinn’s atypical sensory
experience of the event, from its outset, lingers over the scene. Yet, rather
than pity, the narrative method of the saga’s writer directs the reader into
an empathetic position, providing a fine psychological portrait of Þorstein
hvíti as he deftly resolves the situation. In so approximating life experi-
ences otherwise inaccessible to sighted people, Þorsteins saga subtly con-
fronts the hegemonic status of sightedness, not only as the principal seat
of knowledge motivation and generation, but also as an essential or at least
normalized condition for narrative itself.
If understood as a reflection of actual attitudes toward embodied dif-
ferences, either during the period the saga describes or that during which it
is thought to have been written, Þorsteins saga never seems to depict blind-
ness as inevitably disabling. Yet, as in Þorsteinn hvíti’s case, this would
naturally be contingent upon being a part of a social network that is able
and willing to adapt to the new reality such a change brings about and to
provide suitable support. It is also important to note that Þorsteinn’s blind-
ness, unlike that of the aforementioned Ámundi, is not congenital but that
his vision loss comes well after he has accumulated wealth and achieved a
high-ranking social status in a society in which the foundations of leader-
ship were structured around reciprocity and support.57 Yet, the saga and
the story of Þorsteinn’s blindness, when regarded against the backdrop
of ocularcentrism and the hegemonic status of sight, seems to reveal even
more. The story of Þorsteinn’s blindness is not that of an empty other,
57 See Sverrir Jakobsson, “From Reciprocity to Manorialism: On the peasant mode of produc-
tion in Medieval Iceland,” scandinavian journal of History 38 (2013): 273–95.
NARRATING BLINDNESS