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Article Excerpt
PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS
THIS MAY WELL be the unhappiest home in Iceland. With two dominating characters, both men, one in his late fifties, the other on the brink of adolescence, both extremely large, their behavior extravagant, other members of the household must be overwhelmed by this psychological dictatorship. The two men are not speaking to each other. Their silence is neither good nor meaningless and harmless. It is, in fact, pregnant with ill feelings and fueled by the cruel and senseless crimes that each has perpetuated against the other. The mother of the house is absent, we do not know why. No one else has the social status or the strenght of character to mediate between the two; these extras hardly even matter. Then, enters this miserable house a happy, vibrant, handsome, buoyant, young man. He has been travelling in the world, has befriended princes and enjoyed a brilliant social life among the aristocrats and most capable men of the age. His old family home in rural Iceland would perhaps seem claustrophobic, even if it were filled with mirth and laughter. It most assuredly is not.
The Sagas of Icelanders, composed in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and perhaps some in the fifteenth century, are psychological dramas. This trait has been long acknowledged, and yet there are surprisingly few recent scholarly analyses of characters, emotions, and personal relationships in the sagas (with notable exceptions: Miller, Hoyersten, and Poole). That situation may well be partially explained by the fact that saga scholars are typically trained in philology, language, and history, but not, for example, in psychology. One might even sometimes get the feeling that a majority of philologists regard such concerns as too "modern" and perhaps slightly frivolous, but the situation may also have a mundane explanation. Although Freud is separated from Grimm and Rask by a mere seventy years, these years were formative for the the development of humanistic scholarship. Psychology, thus, remains the new, trendy, and slightly suspect cousin of philology. Trained in philology myself, I understand the wariness. However, not analyzing the personal relationships in the Sagas of Icelanders is doing them a disservice since they are very much dramas of character. Character depiction is a vital component of the art of the sagas and one of the reasons they are still read and enjoyed. Whenever the sagas are taught at university level, one of the first questions with which the student reader wrestles pertains to the characters in the sagas. Psychology is, thus, an area of serious scholarship that should not be abandoned. And one of my aims in this experimental article is to try to say something serious about character depiction in a well-known saga.
Egils saga is one of the longest of the sagas encompassing the long life of Egill Skalla-Grimsson--chieftain, warrior, and poet--and his biography is preceded by a long narrative about the previous generation of his family, his father Skalla-Grimr and his brother. (1) I will mostly concern myself with one of about ninety chapters--i.e. chapter 40--which takes place during Egill's childhood at Borg, (2) I believe that not only psychological readings, but also close readings of the sagas, which take relatively small narratives segment and pay close attention to detail, are far too few and far-between (although there are some significant exceptions, see Cook). This focalization is in my opinion justified by the fact, which should be plain at the end of this article, that this earlier chapter just described along with chapter 78 in which Egill, late in his life, mourns for his two sons are essential to any study of the family relationships in the saga and the emotional life of Egill Skalla-Grimsson.
THE FAMILY AT BORG
Chapter 40 of Egils saga consists of two linked narratives, accounts of Egill's assassinations. The first--when he is seven years old involves his killing of a slightly older boy, Grim Heggsson, after having been treated roughly in a game. This death causes a bloody quarrel among the relatives of the dead boy and some of Skalla-Grimr's friends and allies in the region, but the Borg household mysteriously rakes no part. In the second narrative, Egill is twelve years old and kills his father's cherished foreman and paymaster as revenge for the death of his only two friends in the world, whom his father had slain. This reprisal results in father and son breaking off relations while nevertheless remaining in the same house: "peir fedgar roeddusk pa ekki vid, hvarki gott ne illt, ok for sva fram pann vetr" (102) [Father and son did not speak to each other, neither good nor ill, and for the whole winter]. Nothing is said about how this tension affected the household: that has to be imagined. Borg was a farmstead, but any Icelandic farm during the Middle Ages would be a constricted space, especially during the bleak winters. The atmosphere would have been claustrophobic, even if it were not dominated by two large men with overwhelming personalities vigourously ignoring each other. After all, three people are dead, and these deaths remain present in the heavy silence.
Skalla-Grimr is introduced at the beginning of the saga as a "svartr madr ok ljotr" (5) [black and ugly man], and he is "likr fedr sinum, baedi yfirlits ok at skaplyndi" (5) [like Iris father, both in appearance and temperment] (see also 50). His father, Ulfr, had already been introduced as a big, strong man. Although his wife is "kvenna vanst" (4) [good-looking], be, presumably, is not. And although Ulfr is a devoted farmer, who rises early and takes a keen interest in every small and menial task his men perform, he is also "styggr" (4) [hostile] in the evening and thus is nicknamed Kveld-Ulfr. Ulfr is not just any first name, but it means "wolf." It is, moreover, suggested in Egils saga that Kveld-Ulfr and his family are actually shape-shifters although the saga never makes this point quite clear (see Sorensen, "Starkadr" 766; Hermann Palsson 60-3; and Bergljot Kristjansdottir 75-81). It is as if the saga author challenges those who would like to do so to believe them shapeshifters, whereas others can see the constant references to wolves as metaphors.
Grimr (as Skalla-Grimr is called in his youth) is a carpenter and is often seen fishing with the farmhands (Sigurdur Nordal 5). When invited to join the service of King Haraldr of Norway, he refuses, whereas his brother Porolfr eagerly accepts (13-14). Grimr stays at home but goes to see the King after Porolfr's death even though he claims he is not "ordsnjallr" (61) [witty] enough to speak to the King. As it turns out, Skalla-Grimr's only visit to a royal court is not a success. He takes with him eleven men, most of whom have strange nicknames, and they are said to be more like trolls than ordinary humans (63). As unsuitable as his companions are at court, Skalla-Grimr himself does not feel at home there either, and his feelings never change. When facing the King, he again refuses to enter his service and goes as far as to express a treasonous desire to kill King Haraldr. After this ugly confrontation, Kveld-Ulfr and Skalla-Grimr do the sensible thing and immediately leave Norway for Iceland. Kveld-Ulfr dies on...
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