Orð og tunga - 2023, Page 10

Orð og tunga 25 (2023), 1–12, https://doi.org/10.33112/ordogtunga.25.2
© höfundar cc by-nc-sa 4.0.
Ármann Jakobsson
Cursing with trolls in Njáls saga.
Taking Hallgerðr seriously
1
When I was a child, I felt uncomfortable when adults cursed (some­
times violently) in my vicinity, even invoking the devil and hell.1 Un­
like the adults, I took heaven and hell seriously and felt that their
names should not be bandied about. Even when told that the profan­
ity was meaningless, I was not convinced, found it hard to accept that
vacuity and still felt that any mention of these two might have sinister
consequences. Perhaps people who study languages are somewhat
childlike in their refusal to accept that parole is meaningless; perhaps
being a scholar in itself constitutes a stubborn refusal to accept the
essential inanity of discourse, of society, and even of the universe.
Nevertheless, as an author and professor of literature, I still cling to
the belief that words, including curses, do indeed mean something,
although the meaning is more variable than I would probably have
imagined as a child.
For one thing, many of us were taught that profanity was vulgar
and unsophisticated. But when studying profanities, the conclu­
sion, highlighted by many contributions to this special issue, is that
they are often highly sophisticated and immersed in culture. Many
1 This article originated as a keynote lecture at the conference SwiSca 7: Swearing
and Society, in Reykjavík, 2 December 2021. As a study of Njáls saga, its scope is
narrow, but it does serve a different purpose as a case study of how the meaning
of words can be better understood by examining each attestation in detail.
tunga25.indb 1 08.06.2023 15:47:14