Gripla - 2022, Blaðsíða 76
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Ǫgmundr in his second marriage in Iceland to a daughter, Dalla ‘the blind’,
of Ǫnundr sjóna ‘the sighted’. This detail illustrates the Norse concept
of the loss or absence of a physical faculty that is compensated for by its
enhanced spiritual or mental version.11 We return to this concept below.
This suggests a zero-sum conception of human existence and is consonant
with the present narrative, which will be devoted to comparison, competi-
tion, and various forms of exchange. Kormákr is characterized as “svartr á
hár ok sveipr í hárinu, hǫrundljóss ok nǫkkut líkr móður sinni, mikill ok
sterkr, áhlaupamaðr í skapi” (black hair with curls, with a fair complexion,
rather like his mother, big and strong, impetuous in temperament).12 This,
the mixed heritage of Norse and ostensibly some Irish along both paternal
and maternal lines, second sight and blindness/insightfulness all predict
complexity and even irresolution. In the study that follows, Kormákr’s
life trajectory will be assessed in and against both absolute and relative
measures/measurements, the mál (measure) as instantiated in the opening
chapters and informing this essay’s intentionally overdetermined title. The
relevant vocabulary and its deployment in the narrative are reminiscent
of the encryption of familiar names that figures elsewhere in the saga
(Steingerðr) and in Egill Skallagrímsson (Ásgerðr, Arinbjǫrn, and Bǫðvarr).13
In this riddling exercise a compound personal name is masked by one
component being replaced by a homophone (retention of sound but sub-
stitution of meaning) and the other by a synonym (retention of meaning
but substitution of sound).14 Name encryption, with its substitutions and
allusions, can be grouped among other tropes that exemplify homological
or typological thinking, as when the motif of beer-drinking that we find
11 See Lois Bragg, “Impaired and Inspired: The Makings of a Medieval Icelandic Poet,”
Madness, Disability and Social Exclusion: The Archaeology and Anthropology of “Difference”, ed.
by Jane Hubert (London: Routledge, 2000), 128–43; and Sayers, “Guilt, Grief, Grievance,
and the Encrypted Name in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek,” Scandinavian Studies 92
(2020): 229–46.
12 Kormáks saga, ch. 2, 206.
13 Sayers, “Onomastic Paronomasia in Old Norse-Icelandic: Technique, Context, and
Parallels,” TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 27 (2006): 91–127; and Sayers, “Guilt, Grief,
Grievance.”
14 Bergsveinn Birgisson writes of such crafting of metaphor and meta-metaphor, the “likeness
[between referents] in the context of kennings is only valued if it is surrounded by tensions
or clashes of elements that represent contrastive categories or semantic frames” (“Skaldic
Blends Out of Joint: Blending Theory and Aesthetic Conventions,” Metaphor and Symbol
27.4 (2012): 283–98, at 289.