Orð og tunga - 2023, Page 13

4 Orð og tunga
ing feud provides a compelling narrative for various reasons but of
main interest to those interested in cursing is its very beginning, or
preamble, which is the curse itself: “Troll hafi þína vini”.
What sort of speech act is Hallgerðr committing with this curse?
Her most obvious gain by the outburst would seem to be a release.
Hallgerðr is full of frustration and disappointment; the marriage is
not going as planned, and thus she vents her anger with this retort.
Furthermore, she is conveying her hostility to Gunnarr. She is not
only angry but wants him to know it and to take her anger seriously.4
He does not react but should perhaps have done so, since one may see
Hallgerðr’s profanity as a sign that she is not going to settle for words.
Her words are, however, pithy and quite elegant, in the style of
Njáls saga itself, perhaps the best written of all the sagas and noted
in particular for the elegant dialogue of the characters. Hallgerðr’s
riposte is forceful in its brevity. Hallgerðr could have launched into a
lengthy diatribe about her reasons for hating Gunnarr’s friends, but
she wastes no time on it; she simply curses them by invoking the troll
or trolls. Given that the singular and the plural forms are the same, it
remains unclear if it is one or more trolls she is calling upon to seize
Gunnarr’s friends.5
Obviously, as is characteristic of all conversation, she could have
said many things, but this is as good a statement as any. Her curse
is not only cathartic but clearly dysphemistic and abusive as well.
Hallgerðr sees no need to plan to make peace with anyone or indeed
to behave as her husband would have wished. This is one of the
things she makes clear when she calls upon the trolls to come and
take Gunnarr’s friends. We later learn she is ready to follow her curse
into action as well, but at first it is only her will that is clear.
But why trolls, and what is a troll? In my original study of the
word (Ármann Jakobsson 2008), I listed thirteen meanings. Of course,
4 Hallgerðr’s anger was analysed masterfully some years ago by Einar Ólafur
Sveins son (1943:94–112). There is no paranormal dimension to his analysis since
Icelandic scholars of the mid­twentieth century were interested in the ‘realism’ of
the sagas and, although they acknowledged their paranormal incidents, hardly
ever discussed them at length. Lönnroth (1999) was among the first scholars to
draw attention to the fundamental role of the paranormal in the medieval sagas.
5 The comment was made at the conference from which this paper stems that it
must be singular. This seems likely, as in most such invocations, the singular is
used rather than the plural, but I remain somewhat unsure. The actual structure of
the sentence does not make it entirely clear since ‘troll’ is the same in the singular
and the plural.
tunga25.indb 4 08.06.2023 15:47:14