The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2010, Blaðsíða 24

22
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
Vol. 63 #1
Snaefnbur has seemed to have fulfilled
her prophesy, and has indeed married the
worst, the reader, again, hears the women
of the sagas - perhaps Gubrtin once more
- channeled in her voice, when the
Reverend Sigurbur tells her husband
Magnus that she - Snaefrfbur - had said
that “she loved the man who would sell
her for nothing more deeply than the man
who would give everything to have her.”
Considering only these short, powerful
phrases, it may be difficult to see that
Snrefribur’s voice recalls the sagas not
only in what she says, but also equally in
how she speaks. It is when Snasfribur
speaks in a less-riddled, more emotional
fashion that the reader is more objective-
ly able to see her character’s true heredi-
ty. In perhaps her most emotionally
fueled sentiment, Snaefnbur implores the
Baron of Marselisborg to,
“Do as you please, take my foremoth-
ers’ silver ... take all of it. Sell us like
livestock. Send us to the heaths of Jylland
where the heather grows. Or, if it suits
you, keep beating us with your whips
back at home in our own country.
Hopefully we have done enough to
deserve it. A Danish ax rests upon Bishop
Jon Arason’s neck throughout eternity,
and that is fine ... We Icelanders are truly
not too good to die. And life has meant
nothing to us for a long time.”
This passage, with its simple mea-
sured style and short sentence structure,
use of common conjunctions, and the use
of the full stops where half-stops would
seem more suitable, certainly recalls the
common saga-style. This style, which in
the sagas, seems to direct the reader away
from the presentation of plot, rather
directly to the plot itself, only draws more
attention to itself in a modern novel, in
Iceland’s Bell, especially, in this particu-
lar instance, when contrasted with the
florid, and redundant language of the
Baron:
“... as far as justice is concerned, ma
chere, it is clear to me that the Icelanders
have chosen their man, the man whom
they consider the best. And from what I
have heard, it was this very galant homme
who deprived the honorable old magis-
trate, your father, of his estates and
honor.”
Where the baron decorates his words
with foreign phrases and repetitive pro-
nouns, Snaefribur - though under
immense emotional duress - shows great
self-control in speaking with both econo-
my and precision, thus adhering to the
saga-characteristic of Northern restraint.
It is in this characteristic of northern
restraint where Halldor again displays
Snaefrf bur’s roots in the Old Icelandic
sagas. Looking at the emotional world of
the sagas in general the modern reader
would likely find in the emotional dis-
plays of many of the characters “a kind of
nonchalance that borders on insensibili-
ty.” This is not to say that the saga char-
acters are bereft of emotional displays,
but rather that their emotional lexicon is
quite disparate from that of the modern
reader. In Njdls Saga, after Hallgerd’s
sees her foster-father’s - Thjostolf -
bloody axe, and realizes that he has killed
her husband, she greets him only with
laughter. The uninitiated modern reader is
dumb-struck at this emotional display,
and may only later realize that there is a
possibility that this was a strategic move
on Hallgerd’s part to disarm and to
deceive Thjostolf - though one can never
be sure. In much the same way, the read-
er, along with her fellow characters, are
led astray by Snasfribur’s emotional
responses, the most striking of which