The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2006, Síða 32

30
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 60 #1
now, when the humiliations visited on
characters include an erotic dimension, the
danger becomes unavoidable, even though
Olaf tries harder to forestall it than at any
other time in the saga. Peace makers can
deal with boundary disputes and inheri-
tance squabbles; confronted with erotic
outrages their powers fail them.23
When we talk about love as it is depict-
ed in the sagas, it is important to remember
that "the saga does not care about quiet
languishment; what the saga cares about are
social consequences."24 And more often
than not, the consequences can be vengeful
feud, carried on for generations.
And what of our own generation? I
suggested earlier that our own society may
be more closely related to the Icelandic
attitudes of vengeance, and to some extent
violence, than many people might be will-
ing to recognize. As far as violence is con-
cerned, I suspect I do not need to go very
far with a description of the excessive
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amounts of violence permeating our own
contemporary society to prove my point.
Half an hour of watching television, play-
ing first person shooter videogames, check-
ing out the latest action film, or truly lis-
tening to certain music lyrics will reveal
much about the way in which the Western
world is obsessed with violent behaviour. I
do not mean to pass judgement on any of
these things; my intentions are merely to
remind the reader that there is some unde-
niable fascination with violence in today's
culture. But obviously there is a difference
between one who admits that they enjoy
watching violent movies, and a person who
is willing and able to kill another human
being over a dispute of any kind. I do not
wish to suggest that these are the same
thing. What I am interested in determining
is just how much we share the desire to
defend honour or exact vengeance, in
whatever way it now manifests.
Consider the following situation. You
greet an old friend at a Christmas party.
They have brought you a thoughtful and
expensive gift, and you have nothing to
give in return. Even if your friend claims
they neither want or need anything in
return, I suspect many of us would feel
obligated to get that person a gift regard-
less:
The official discourse of commerce and
the ideology of the free gift are two sides of
the same anti-honour coin. Yet the norm of
reciprocity persists, almost with a
vengeance. We still feel, even as we refuse
to understand it or admit it, that gifts
oblige us and that wrongs oblige us to
make return and even up accounts. We still
feel bound to return kindness and we feel
frustrated when we are prevented from
returning wrongs.25
The situation with gift giving is not
unfamiliar to readers of the family sagas.
That is one way in which we share a simi-
lar sense of honour and reciprocity. It is the
same with our sense of 'payback.' Most
people do not condone violence, and yet
there is always a part of us that believes it is
okay to hurt someone if they have threat-
ened or hurt us or our loved ones first:
"The morally and emotionally satisfying
feature of revenge is that it is the person