Gripla - 2022, Page 146

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the pouch from its hilt suggests not only that the sword is perceived as
animate161 but that the stone is an essential part of the sword, since its
removal is experienced by the sword as a kind of personal injury. Secondly,
when Kormákr is injured by Bersi’s sword Hvítingr (which is also accom-
panied by a lyfsteinn), Bersi later offers to “grœða” (heal/cure) Kormákr,
presumably with the lyfsteinn. Kormákr refuses, and has his mother heal
his hand instead. The wound soon swells and becomes infected, suggesting
that it cannot be healed properly without access to the sword’s lyfsteinn.162
Mayburd has written persuasively on artefact contagion in Old
Norse narratives, focusing on how the personhood of previous owners
of an object is transferred into that object, and how this transferral can
result in “loaded” or haunted artefacts (as, e.g., in Kumlbúa þáttr).163 In
addition to this understanding of objects becoming extensions of the
owner’s self, the case of swords and their lyfsteinar suggests that arte-
fact contagion could operate not just between humans and objects but
also between objects and other objects. Lyfsteinar, kept on or near the
hilt of their swords, are able to cure wounds inflicted by their swords
due to a process of contact contamination. Agency is distributed across
a reciprocal network of objects and humans (sword, stone and human):
the human is therefore just one actant within a wider material network.
Though this intimate relationship between lyfsteinn and sword is pre-
served in Laxdæla saga and Kormáks saga, in the latter there is more flex-
ibility in the narrator’s treatment of the lyfsteinn. The narrator initially
presents the lyfsteinn as a stone that is associated with and kept on or near
a sword and that is capable of curing wounds inflicted by that sword.
However, in a later episode, the lyfsteinn appears in a more general,
amuletic role. Bersi competes at swimming with Steinarr, and the prose
narration tells us that he wore his lyfsteinn (which was first introduced in
association with his sword, Hvítingr) in a pouch around his neck. Steinarr
161 The sword’s vocality may be taken from verse 32, which zoomorphises the sword as a
howling bear. This presentation of swords as vocal agents chimes with the skaldic kenning
pattern in which battle is framed as a verbal dispute between weapons, using base words
that refer to speech/song and determinants that refer to weaponry (e.g., “the song of
swords”). Sköfnungr also groans (“gnísta”) and speaks (“kveða”) loudly when it cuts
through flesh in Hrólfs saga kraka, ed. by Desmond Slay, Editiones Arnamagnæanæ B 1
(Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1960), 115–16.
162 Kormáks saga, 241.
163 Mayburd, “Objects and Agency,” 56–57.