Gripla - 2022, Blaðsíða 108

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to have died unheroically in bed, without either widow or offspring. The
generational line then stops here. The saga has an uroboros effect, return-
ing as it began to Viking activity beyond Scandinavia. Ásmundr’s son even
makes an appearance.
The Measure of the Saga: Conclusion
Kormáks saga was crafted with the aid of familiar compositional conven-
tions. These include the prosimetric form, with its tacit acceptance of
Icelandic poets’ ability to extemporize complex verse; the establishment
of motifs in generation-oriented introductory chapters that will be re-
called and recast in successive episodes; capsule portraits that will steer
audience interpretation in lieu of ongoing psychological insights into a
character’s thoughts and action; a complex causality in human affairs that
combines the effects of destiny, personality, luck, and actions, at times
the magic­working of other characters. Like his father Ǫgmundr, who
is successful only before emigrating to Iceland, the precipitous Kormákr
achieves a full measure of male competency over the narrative arc of the
saga only when abroad, beyond what he experiences as the situational
confines in which he reached manhood in Iceland. In this wider world he
ceases to be an immoderate threat – legal/martial or poetic – to Icelandic
social order, a threat most manifest in his amorous attention to a married
woman. Kormákr’s life – in the saga ranging from kitchen to court – may
be viewed against the background of the putative Norse zero-sum view of
the world, in which a human faculty, such as an eye, may be sacrificed for
enhanced ability in its abstract sense, such as wisdom or foresight (Óðinn),
or the loss of a son may, with tragic irony, be compensated for by the abil-
ity to compose an elegiac poem, e.g., Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek. In
these often involuntary transactions, the relative worth of the properties
lost and gained is balanced, present in equal measure. Kormákr is deliber-
ate, skilled, and fortunate in poetry (in terms of audience reception, if not
his beloved’s) but impulsive, gauche, and unlucky in love, as he recognizes
in his final verses. For the enamored verbal artist, the preferred trade-off
may be unsatisfied desire and high art over satiety and silence. From this
perspective, Þórveig’s curse that he would never enjoy Steingerðr may be
seen as an enablement. But in important respects, Þórveig has queered