Gripla - 2022, Page 71

69
WILLIAM SAYERS
RINGING CHANGES
On Old Norse-Icelandic mál in Kormáks saga
Introduction
one of the determinative conventions of the sagas of
Icelanders is that introductory chapters name the ancestors of its prin-
cipals and through capsule accounts of their deeds establish motifs that
will later be developed to thematic status in the saga proper, albeit in new
combinations, with inversions, negations, etc.1 Kormáks saga is exemplary
in this respect.2 Chapters 1 and 2 introduce (1) the saga hero’s grandfather
and namesake, the Norwegian Kormákr (an Irish name), and his son,
Ǫgmundr; (2) further Irish onomastics, associations, and possible herit-
age; (3) successful Viking raids and intra-Viking conflict; (4) hólmganga
with questionable procedure; (5) hesitation, here parental, over a proposed
marriage; (6) “wise women”; (7) the apparatus and techniques of magic;
and (8) irregularities in measuring the lot for a building. In more analytical
terms, the essay explores the measure of man against man, man against
social standards (including in sexual matters), the complementarity of
eros and thanatos in human life, and, on the level of detail, the differing
valences of human body parts, ritual behavior, and apotropaic readings
and interventions, which include charms, curses, supernaturally endowed
weapons and their temperamentality, and other apparently common yet
magical acts, both causing and preventing human intention and efforts.
1 See Theodore M. Andersson, “The Rhetoric of the Saga,” The Icelandic Family Saga
(Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 31-37. A recent general study of the saga
is Daniel Sävborg, “Kormáks saga – en norrön kärlekssaga på vers och prosa,” Scripta
Islandica 56 (2005): 65–99.
2 Kormáks saga, in Vatnsdœla saga, ed. by Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka
forn ritafélag, 1939), 201–302. All quotations are from this edition, referenced by chapter,
page, and stanza or note number. English translations are adapted from Kormak’s Saga,
trans. by Rory McTurk, in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, ed. by Viðar Hreinsson, 5 vols.
(Reykjavík: Leifur Eiríksson Publishing, 1997), 3:179–224.
Gripla XXXIII (2022): 69–113