Gripla - 2022, Síða 96

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vitir, hvárt nǫkkut er undir mínum þokka, ok mætti setjask ofmetnaðr
þinn” (… but it is clear that you and your kinsmen intended to put an end
to me. It would be good for you, Steinarr, to recognize whether my good
will counts for anything; then your arrogance might be kept in bounds).50
In turn, Steinarr states that he and his kinsmen do not seek Bersi’s death,
only his dishonor, and continues: “Ekki vinnu vér þér bana en vel þœtti
oss at þú kynnir at meta þik” (We will not cause your death, but it would
sit well with us if you could take a proper measure of yourself). Here, after
the motif of mál has referenced measure against external standards in ways
significant to the saga public, if not always the principals, very close to the
exact mid-point of the saga the concept is suddenly interiorized and lent
weight by two mature, deliberative Icelanders through appeals to subjec-
tive assessment – not absolute measurement – even to self-assessment, as
Steinarr urges on Bersi. Illustrative of the various kinds of indirection in the
saga, the measure motif is never explicitly associated with Kormákr (save in
the sausage episode) yet underlies his saga as a whole. In Old English, metod
‘fate’ survived the pagan period and was used by Ælfric of the Christian god
as ‘creator’.51 In Old Norse, however, the root retained its association with
fate, i.e., the mete outcome, e.g., mjǫt ‘right measure’, mjǫtuðr ‘dispenser of
fate, bane’, the mjǫtviðr ‘fate tree’ (= Yggdrasill) of Vǫluspá.52
In the following discussion, saga events will be treated in briefer fash-
ion. Kormákr acts as Steinarr’s second in the ensuing duel. After a number
of shields have been damaged, one of Steinarr’s blows glances off Bersi’s
shield rim and takes the unexpected trajectory of running down his back,
slicing into his buttocks and the back of his knee. The resulting injury
is symbolically tantamount to a male rape or emasculation, and the knee
wound to an interruption in the family line, since the knee symbolized
consanguinity and generational descent. The resulting loss of social status
to Bersi, if one chooses this symbolic interpretation, includes Steingerðr’s
divorce of the famous dueler, whom she now labels Arse-Bersi.53 Kormákr
50 Kormáks saga, ch. 12, 249.
51 An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. by Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller (London,
Oxford University Press, 1882, 1954), s.v. metod.
52 Vǫluspá, in Eddukvæði, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, 2 vols. (Reykjavík:
Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2014), 1:291, st. 2.
53 See Sayers, “Steingerðr’s Nicknames for Bersi (Kormáks saga): Implications for Gender,
Politics and Poetics,” Florilegium 12 (1993): 33–54.