Gripla - 2022, Page 82

GRIPLA80
Kormákr is obliged to reply but does so in such a controlled way so
that he seems barely to rise to Narfi’s bait. This could be seen as a first in-
stance of hóf ‘moderation’, otherwise not expected of his impulsive nature.
Yet his understated reply is more aggressive than superficially evident.
Kormákr replicates each item in Narfi’s question but with a distancing ef-
fect and affect, in which Narfi’s homologies are not replicated or imitated.
He does not mention Narfi’s name, nor even his own or a first personal
pronoun. Instead his father’s son is referred to in the third person, but
not as an agent, not actively involved. The father’s status as a famous
Viking is brought to the fore but this patronymic construction is not
qualified through rhyme or alliteration and is thus kept distant from the
subject matter. The key verb þykkja is repeated. The kettle worms are not
referenced as such, nor sausages even named. Instead, a somewhat more
abstract term is used: mǫrr ‘suet, animal fat’. Góðr ‘good’, and nothing
more, is the essential answer to Narfi’s question. Kormákr does, however,
introduce a new lexical item, soðinn ‘boiled’, past participle of the verb soð-
na, ‘to be boiled’ (cf. English seethe), reflected earlier in the saga in soðhús,
literally ‘boiling hut’. Kormákr has capped Narfi’s verses, has retreated
personally from the matter, has refrained from adding anything new. He
has not accepted the challenge of abusive verse-capping, and abstains from
graphic imagery, word play, and, most significantly, Narfi’s register. Or is
this abstention feigned?
The earlier discussed name encryption in skaldic verse that relies on
substitutions in both sound and meaning illustrates the developed taste
of Icelandic poets for what might too simply be called word play. Mǫrr
figures in the compound mǫr-landi ‘suet-lander’, and was used mockingly
by Norwegians of Icelanders and of their reliance on animal fat in their
diet. Let us imagine that the mǫrr of Kormákr’s couplet is a reference to
Narfi as Icelander, both occupied with, and dependent on, suet. The suet
is soðinn (boiled) but in the present circumstances soðinn may sound dan-
gerously close to the word sorðinn. This, under Icelandic law, was among
a number of legally actionable words that referred to the passive role of a
man in same-sex activities: argr, ragr, stroðinn, and sorðinn.24 The inventive
24 On the possibility of speech itself being judged unmanly, see Mats Malm, “The Notion
of Effeminate Language in Old Norse Literature,” in Learning and Understanding in the
Old Norse World, ed. by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills (Turnhout: Brepols,
2007), 305–20.