The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2006, Qupperneq 33

Vol. 60 #1
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
31
typed victim in our model who is doing the
violence and the person typed violator who
is finally humiliated and victimized."26
Here is where we may be closer to the saga
Icelander interpretation of vengeance than
perhaps most people would like to admit.
It is true that we do not generally kill for
revenge, yet the desire to even up the score
remains. "Although a system of blood -
vendettas and other such forms of revenge
are no longer part of our social conven-
tions, private revenge for injuries and
insults frequently occurs. It is considered
natural for people to want to hit back and
is by no means always frowned upon."27
Why is certain violent behaviour accept-
able (to some extent, of course) and other
behaviour completely unacceptable? The
answer has already been discussed above—
it seems to depend on whether or not the
violent act is in self-defence or defence of
others; on whether it is "justified":
Violence is understood to be disorder-
ing and hence disruptive of established
boundaries and established orders. This is
perhaps the most consistent intuition we
have about violence. We are thus less likely
to perceive violence when we believe for
whatever reason that it is merely the coer-
cion necessary to make things the way they
ought to be.28
We do start to run into some philo-
sophical problems here. I do not propose
to be able to do much more than touch on
the moral, ethical, spiritual, or psychologi-
cal debates which are raised as soon as we
start giving permission to act on what
would seem to be justifiable vengeance.
I only mean to show that the concept
of vengeance is still alive and well, and does
not deviate all that much from saga
Iceland's model. The difference is in the
degree to which we act upon these impuls-
es, if we do at all.
Violence for the sake of vengeance,
then, is prominent theme in the Icelandic
sagas, and presumably was an important
part of the early Icelandic society as well.
As a whole, Icelandic society during the
soguold was probably not an overly violent
society in most ways. The violence that did
occur is thought to have been somewhat
exaggerated in the family sagas, and can be
understood with respect to ideals of hon-
our and revenge; underlying the desire for
revenge was the constant need to defend or
prove one's honour to the rest of the com-
munity. Furthermore, love (or lack there-
of), and sexual relationships provided pas-
sion for disputes which lead to feud and
violence. It is not difficult to find similari-
ties between the underlying events of the
sagas and some of our own contemporary
notions of vengeance, although the deci-
sion to not act on them is a fundamental
difference. So although it would seem that
violence and vengeance are viewed and
acted upon very differently in either cul-
ture, I would suggest that the rift is not as
large as most readers would initially sus-
pect.
1. Heather O'Donoghue, Old Norse-
Icelandic Literature: A Short
Introduction. (Malden: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004), 23.
2. O'Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic
Literature, 19.
3. O'Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic
Literature, 40.
4. O'Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic
Literature, 36.
5. William Ian Miller, Humiliation.
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993),
94-5.
6. Vesteinn Olason, ed., Gisli Sursson's
Saga and The Saga of the People of Eyri.
(London: Penguin Books, 2003), 67.
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