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as something conceptualized as an absent antithesis to the fullness of
sightedness. Neither is it a story of passing, overcoming, or erasing differ-
ence. Certain elements of the narrative may seem to echo the familiar link
between visual impairment or blindness and clairvoyance or superability,
which can be found in many instances in Old Icelandic literature, includ-
ing in the well-known tale of óðinn giving one of his eyes in exchange for
knowledge at Mímir’s well.58 Yet, Þorsteins saga does not point toward this
motif in any obvious ways and there is no indication that Þorsteinn gains
any kind of paranormal knowledge or ability in conjunction with his loss
of vision. Yet, apart from his access to visual stimuli, there is no indication
that anything much is lost either. Þorsteinn’s blindness is a noteworthy
but not a principally abnormal or utterly defining quality. However, it
performs a vital role as a narrative device within the saga, providing an op-
portunity for the saga’s audience to contemplate not only the experience
of vision loss and blindness, which surely some of its members would be
familiar with firsthand, but also its potential for motivating and generating
both knowledge and narrative in its own unique ways.
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
M A N U S C R I P T S
stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, Reykjavík
AM 156 fol.
AM 496 4to
P R I M A R Y S O U R C E S
Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen and Jørgen Moe (eds.). norske Folke-eventyr, 2 vols.
Christiania: Johan Dahl, 1843–1844.
58 See, for example, Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony
Faulkes, 2nd ed. (University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research,
2005) 17, 50. On this and other associations between visual impairment or blindness and
clairvoyance or superability in Old Icelandic literature, see Bragg, Oedipus Borealis, 71–78,
107–23; Lassen, Øjet og blindheden, 56–59, 84–106; Kolfinna Jónatansdóttir, “‘Blindur er
betri en brenndur sé.’ Um norræna guði og skerðingar,” Fötlun og menning: Íslandssagan í
öðru ljósi, ed. by Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir, Ármann Jakobsson, and Kristín Björnsdóttir
(Reykjavík: Félagsvísindastofnun Háskóla íslands og Rannsóknarsetur í fötlunarfræðum,
2013), 35–38.