Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family SagasAuthor(s): Kathryn HumeSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 593-606Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3724996 .Accessed: 16/01/2011 19:25

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BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS IN THE ICELANDIC FAMILY SAGAS

The difficulties inherent in starting and ending a narrative increase with the degree of mimetic accuracy sought, since absolutely first causes or utterly final effects are not found in real life. The family sagas derive their matter from Icelandic history (however much the true course of events is reshaped or mangled), and hence impose on their creators special technical problems. Neither those problems nor the Icelanders' solution, their patterns of beginning and ending, have received attention. Yet those introductions and conclusions are not only illuminatingly consonant with the impulses behind saga creation, they also deserve respect as a highly novel method of spanning the gap between art - necessarily finite - and the continuum of human experience.

Recent criticism has done much to increase our sensitivity to some areas of saga aesthetics like ethos and plot structure,1 but disparagement of the sagas' extremities remains the standard attitude. Scholarly discussions of individual sagas often ignore such material; many translators omit it without bothering even to acknowledge the cuts; and reference works like Einarsson's History apologetically deprecate 'the weakness for genealogy and personal history'.2 The fundamental problem is well put by Theodore M. Andersson, who recognizes some functions of the long introductions, but observes that they 'apparently give information for information's sake and are not integral in the sense that they contribute something vital to the later story. They could be dropped without depriving the reader of any hints about things to come' (p. 9). He is, of course, perfectly correct. What the modern reader finds wanting is organic unity, logical and causal bonds uniting every portion of a work from first word to last. We are conditioned to expect this aesthetic by most of western literature, and the sagas do not conform to our expectations. Such a unified action can be found in most of them, as Andersson's brilliant plot scheme demonstrates, but the conflict pattern he traces is not the whole of these works. Almost all of the sagas contain material which we instinctively feel to be 'pre- beginning' and 'post-ending'; not integral in the sense of not contributing to the conflict story, and yet apparently considered necessary according to saga aesthetic, and hence integral to the form, if not to that portion we call the plot. The nature and function of this material are the concerns of the present study.

That we may approach the family saga beginnings and endings afresh, with renewed sense of their uniqueness, we might glance first at the sagas with forms

1 Some interesting work has been done on saga narrative mode by Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in The Nature of Narrative (New York, 1966). Problems relating to ethos in the sagas have been dealt with illuminatingly by M. C. van den Toorn in Ethics and Moral in Icelandic Saga Literature (Assen, 1955); Lars Lonnroth in 'The Noble Heathen: A Theme in the Sagas', Scandinavian Studies, 4I (1969), I-29; and Theodore M. Andersson, 'The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family Sagas', Speculum, 45 (1970), 575-93. Our understanding of plot structure has been greatly advanced by Andersson's The Icelandic Family Saga (Cambridge, Massachusetts, I967). Citations of Andersson's ideas are from the book, not the article.

2 Stefan Einarsson, A History of Icelandic Literature (New York, I957), p. 134, italics added. W. P. Ker, whose comments are still influential, remarks that 'the local history, the pedigrees of notable families, are felt as a hindrance, in a greater or less degree, by all readers of the Sagas; as a pre- liminary obstacle to clear comprehension'. See his Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature (1897; reprinted New York, I957), p. I85.

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Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

more in line with European tradition, known variously as sagas of kings, bishops, saints, and knights, as well as lying sagas and sagas of the legendary past.' Examples of each, though not then differentiated as they are now with separate generic names, were available for imitation throughout the period in which the family sagas were written, and the family sagas do indeed show their influence: one notes the many informed allusions to Norwegian history, or the obvious knowledge of the heroes described in the legendary sagas; the Spesar pdittr (an episode in Grettis saga) and the romantic impulse behind several plots seem to derive from European chivalric romance; dreams and marvels often prove familiarity with hagiography.2 Almost all of the works belonging to these other types of sagas conform to one of two structural patterns, vita and romance. Since these two forms were imported, the European patterns most likely to have influenced the family saga writers can be taken into account at the same time.

The vita pattern is, as its name implies, biographical, and derives its organiza- tional unity from the subject's life span. But modifications of the pure form, especially at outset and conclusion, had become conventional: a saint's birth was often accompanied by pre-natal portents of sanctity, his corpse was almost invariably the occasion of further marvels to confirm that sanctity, and it became customary to list the miracles he had performed as a kind of finale to the vita. The accretion of such details, inorganic to the subject's life (the plot) but relevant to its religious significance (an interest extrinsic to aesthetic concerns), is common among hagiographies, and also among such derivative forms as the bishops' and kings' sagas. Thus the birth of Sverrir is heralded by a portentous dream, as are the nativities of many saints. And while the sagas of canonized bishops and kings might end with a list of miracles, those of the less blessed substituted alterna- tives to round out the literary formula: a 'secular miracle' (6Oafr Tryggvason's hound killing itself at the news of his death); a list of public works (Hdkonar saga gamla); a list of famous men who died during the subject's episcopate (Pals saga byskups); a cluster of verses (both Hdkonar saga goda and Olafs saga Tryggvasonar in Heimskringla). This tendency to sprout list-like codas beyond the hero's death probably influenced saga aesthetics. In addition to this overlap, there are two other features shared with the family sagas which should be noted: the practice of dating stories with Norwegian regnal allusions, and the fascination with genealogy. So strong are the alignment in terms of Norway and the interest in pedigree that they intrude even into the early, imitative, latinate vitae like Porlaks saga byskups and Jons saga helga (older version), and these features are extensively developed in such pieces as Gu6mundar saga Arasonar.

Knights' sagas and a substantial number of lying and legendary sagas exhibit the structure variously known as the romance or folktale pattern. This form was

1 That these are all known as sagas is, of course, no indication of generic kinship. As Lars Lonnroth has argued in European Sources of Icelandic Saga-Writing (Stockholm, I965), p. 6, saga is not a technical name for a separate genre, but only the Icelandic equivalent to historia or narratio, terms to designate narrative as opposed to hortatory or instructional works.

2 The essential Christianity of many dreams and marvels is only beginning to be recognized. See Dag Str6mbick, 'Some Remarks on Learned and Novelistic Elements in the Icelandic Sagas', in Nordica et Anglica: Studies in Honor of Stefdn Einarsson, edited by Allan H. Orrick (The Hague, 1968), pp. I40-7, and Paul Schach, 'Symbolic Dreams of Future Renown in Old Icelandic Literature', Mosaic, 4 (I970-I), 5I-73?

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KATHRYN HUME 595

immensely popular throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, and is notable for its tidy, organic form. Typically, a single hero undertakes a quest or series of tests, and ends by succeeding, marrying, and assuming power.' At the outset, we are told his homeland, parentage, and rank, but nothing more unless it is relevant to his adventures. At the end, the author may remark that he had heirs, and may even refer to his eventual death, but the terminal mood in such a work is festively celebratory, for the hero has successfully developed from untried youth to seasoned warrior and leader.2 This pattern seems to have exerted less influence than that of the vita over the family sagas. However, lurking among the conventional knightly and legendary works are a few pieces which deviate from this romance formula, and these strongly resemble the family sagas.

Among the knights' sagas and among European romances generally, Tristrams saga stands out as unusual; we are told far more about his parents' ill-fated love than is necessary to explain Tristram's sad name and natural gentility.3 The tragic finale is also exceptional. Anecdotes about prior generations, the unseasonable death of the hero, and (if the hero is of northern extraction) lengthy genealogies, are common among the legendary sagas. We even find disregard for the neat folk- tale formula of one hero; sometimes the emphasis so shifts between two or more men that we are left to wonder just whom the story is meant to be about. Vilsunga saga, for instance, is arguably about Sigur6r, yet he occupies the stage for fewer than half the chapters, and the detailed, anecdotal account of his heroic ancestors

1 The fundamental economy and clarity of romance beginnings and conclusions are demonstrated by Valdimars saga:

Filipus hefer kongr heitet. hann red fyrir Saxlandj. hann atte vid sinnj drottnjngu tuau baurn. son hans het Ualldjmar en Marmoria dotter. Valldjmar var stor ok sterkr ok vann ok aungum likr at j1rottum eigi at eins um Saxland helldr fannzt eigi hans likj j nordrhallfunj. hann kunnj allar tungur at tala ok suo listir at eingi uar honum jafn. There was a king named Filipus and he ruled Saxland. He had by his wife two children. His son was named Valdimar, his daughter Marmoria. Valdimar was large and strong and handsome and had no match in accomplishment, not only in Saxland but indeed none his like was to be found in all Europe. He knew all arts and could speak all languages so that no one was his equal. siglir herra Ualldjmar nu heim til Saxlandz ok hans drottnjng. Filipus kongvr tok sott ok anndadizt. sitja 1au herra Ualldjmar ok Florida nu med sinum heidri ok attu maurg baurn. en la lyktz her letta afintyr. hafj sa laukk er las ok sa er skrifadj ok heir er til hlyddu en hinir skamm er ohliod gerdu. Sir Valdimar and his wife sail home now to Saxland. King Filipus took sick and died. Sir Valdimar and Florida rule now with all honor and have many children. Thus ends their adventure. Thanks be to the one who read aloud and the one who copied, and to those who listened, but shame on those who made noise.

This example can stand for many; though neat, it is not unusually so. The text is that edited by Agnete Loth in Late Medieval Icelandic Romances I, Editiones Arnamagnazane, series B, Vol. 20 (Copenhagen, 1962), pp. 53-78.

2 For different analyses of this archetypal pattern, see Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, New Jersey, 1957), pp. I86 ff., and Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, translated by Laurence Scott, second edition (original Russian edition I928; translation, Austin, Texas, 1968). Some structural differences between this kind of romance and hagiography are discussed in my 'Structure and Perspective: Romance and Hagiographic Features in the Amicus and Amelius Story', JEGP, 69 (1970), 89-I07.

3 One wonders to what extent family saga aesthetics may have been influenced by the peculiar structure of this a-typical romance, with its long inorganic treatment of the previous generation. It was the first European romance to be translated into Norse (I226), and Paul V. Rubow has in fact argued that it was the foundation of 'Norse prose fiction', that no family sagas were written prior to its appearance. See 'The Icelandic Sagas: The Icelandic Family-Novel', in Two Essays (Copenhagen, 1949), pp. 30-64 (p. 50)-

596 Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

and his descendants keeps him from being a focal hero of the sort found in most romances. Such diffuseness of subject affects Egils saga (to some extent), Njdls saga, Eyrbyggja, and Laxdaela. Indeed Laxdoela resembles Vilsunga saga precisely in its most problematical features: a family is traced through several generations; the memorable heroic figure (Kjartan O(lafsson) is killed tragically young and cannot be called focal; and both Guorun Gjukad6ttir and Guruin Osvifrsd6ttir are present throughout much of their respective sagas, yet neither seems central enough to be called the heroine. But if these sagas seem oddly constructed by modern standards, what about Gautreks saga? That starts with a comic experience of King Gauti's. Though Gautrek is born as a result, the anecdote is related for our delectation, not to impart needed information about the hero. To perplex us further, much of the saga is not about Gautrek at all, but rather Gjafa-Refr, a character straight from folktale. Even if we use the alternative title Gjafa-Refs saga, our usual critical constructs are unable to account for this distribution of emphasis. Introductory episodes as inorganic as Gauti's occur in Droplaugarsona saga, Fostbra?ra saga, and Vatnsdcla, to name but three. Vita-form sagas offer a few parallels to the family sagas, and most types display interest in genealogy and alignment with Norway, but only among these exceptional knightly and legendary tales do we find equiva- lent structures. Regrettably, the structures are no more easily understood here than in the family sagas themselves.

If we turn now to the family sagas, and keep these rival forms in mind, we find many differences. No family saga has completely organic structuring. A few have very spare introductions, consisting of a list of dramatispersonae followed immediately by the story - Porsteins saga stangarhdggs, Hdvardar saga Isfirdings, and Valla Ljots saga - and a few have economical finales, but no saga I can find possesses both. Though few attain the length of the introduction of Laxdola, most at least start with pedigrees, and concerning these, two features should be noted. First, over three- quarters of the sagas trace at least one genealogy back to the settlement generation or before, thus connecting Icelandic and Norwegian history directly or implicitly. Second, the genealogies traced are not necessarily those of the sagas' central characters; the fame of forebears outweighs logical consideration of relevance. A clear demonstration of the force of ancestral fame is seen in Fostbraodra saga: after the curious Grettir episode, the heroes Dorgeirr and Dorm6or are identified by parentage but nothing more. A relative of Dorgeirr's is mentioned however, apparently because the author wished to trace his pedigree; the man himself plays no real part in the story, but he is descended from SigurSr Fafnisbani.

Concern with fame may even affect the layout of some sagas: both Gunnlaugs saga and JVjals saga start with lesser characters. Had the former been a European romance, it would have begun either with 'Gunnlaugr het ma6r...' or with a statement on Illugi inn svarti, giving his name, rank, and the fact that he had a son named Gunnlaugr. Instead, we hear about Dorsteinn Egilsson. His dream, which gives this saga a kind of unity beyond the merely biographical, is one justification for his preceding the others. Another however is the fact that he is important in his own right (despite Gunnlaugr's slighting valuation) and blessed with an extra- ordinarily famous father, Egill Skalla-Grimsson. The antecedents of Gunnarr and Njall are obscure, but those of Hoskuldr Dala-Kollsson, one of the first men to be shown in action in Njdls saga, are so illustrious that it would be difficult to dream up better, for he is descended both from Siguror ormr-f-auga (and hence from

KATHRYN HUME 597

Ragnarr lo6br6k and SigurOr Fafnisbani) and from Bj6rn Buna, progenitor of the single most distinguished settlement family. Perhaps even the disturbingly in- organic Grettir episode in F6stbradra saga can best be explained as an extreme example of this concern with fame.l Vermundr appears little in the saga, and his wife less, yet Porbj6rg in digra had had dealings with one of Iceland's most famous heroes, so the episode is recounted because it sheds lustre upon everyone connected to Dorbj6rg, including the characters in this saga. That Icelanders enjoyed hearing about the famous men from their past scarcely needs repeating, and my doing so at such length may seem naive. Interest in past heroes is a well-documented charac- teristic of Icelandic culture, and, indeed, of early Germanic peoples generally. But, I would argue, critics are mistaken when they dismiss the 'digressions' on famous heroes and the illustrious genealogies of very minor characters merely as unshapely manifestations of this cultural phenomenon. The logic of good story- telling is too egregiously violated by many of the aberrations for this explanation to be satisfying. Anyone attempting to illuminate saga construction must try to find a better.

When we consider the inorganic matter other than genealogies in the opening passages, we find two basic types: one is the colourful anecdote recounted for its own charm or interest; the other is the historical survey like that in Laxdala, usually from settlement to the saga generation. Since neither pattern appears to be more relevant or organic than the other, it is likely that both were once considered equally attractive. The human-interest anecdotes still entertain, but intervening centuries have made the family history boring or even repellent. Nevertheless, we cannot hope to understand the principles on which sagas were constructed unless we recognize the kind of effect the history could have had, and attempt to deter- mine the reasons for its appeal.

As a way of double-checking the opening pattern principles I have postulated, I would like to call attention to two sagas which share the unusual property of

possessing alternative beginnings. When a writer wishes to see a piece changed, we can logically hope to be able to deduce a good deal from the contrasting versions, and that is the case with these two. Droplaugarsona saga and Vdpnfirdinga saga both exist in a standard form, but each inspired a later writer to try his hand at a different introit, the results being the Brandkrossa dattr and Porsteins saga hvita. Vdpnfirdinga saga has a very spare preface, and disposes of preliminary genealogies and family history in about ten sentences. Porsteins saga hvita takes the story hinted at in those sentences and expands it to short saga length. Evidently the later author felt it in keeping with saga aesthetics thus to elaborate, even though the story he tells has no bearing on that of VdpnfirJinga saga; and his assumption is justified by the practices of the authors of Grettis saga and Egils saga. The story of Dorsteinn inn

fagri is attractive, and because it concerns Brodd-Helgi's ancestor Dorsteinn inn hviti, it may be worked in at the beginning of Brodd-Helgi's saga.

The original opening of Droplaugarsona saga is a tale about the great-grandfather of Droplaug's sons, Ketill lrymr, and about Arnei6r, the unusual servant girl he married. It is entirely irrelevant to the main feud; its inclusion can be justified only

1 This episode is not found in all manuscripts and has been called an interpolation, but even if it is, critics have still to explain why the interpolator did not feel that his contribution violated saga aesthetics.

598 Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

if the rules one is judging by state that colourful family anecdotes may be related for their intrinsic interest or fame. This saga has, in fact, a typically perplexing inorganic commencement. The Brandkrossa pdttr however begins with a helpful statement of authorial intention: Dar hefjum vdr upp Helganna sggu, er Ketill Drymr er, bvi at ver vitum hann kynsaelstan verit hafa leira manna, er i bessari sQgu er fra sagt. Eru fra honum komnir Si6umenn ok sva Krossvikingar ok sva beir Droplaugarsynir. Dat viljum vdr ok segja, hversu Helgi Asbjar- narson er kominn af landnamsmQnnum, er g9fgastr ma6r er i lessari sggu at vitra manna vir6ingu. (xi, i83)1

The author mentions tracing a family to the settlement generation, and also descendants, some of whom may have been among his audience. More important however, he acknowledges that the standard commencement is orthodox in con-

centrating on the family of Helgi Droplaugarson because it is the most

distinguished; ancestral fame does seem to be the primary criterion for deciding whose family shall be traced. But the author wishes to deviate from what he con- siders standard practice and tell also of the ancestors of Helgi Asbjarnarson because that Helgi is the man in the saga he respects most. Then follows an anecdote about Helgi Asbjarnarson's antecedents, which is no more organic than that about Arnei6r and Ketill. The importance of ancestral fame and the settlement

generation, and the type of inorganic episode considered proper are all thus indicated by these two unusual sagas.

When we turn from beginnings to endings, we find no equivalent to the romance

pattern finish. This may seem strange, considering that form's popularity elsewhere, until we remember that the joyful romantic connotations attaching to marriage and assumption of power do not fit the normal saga subject matter. Saga writers knew all too well that marriage did not mean 'he lived happily ever after'. At the end of a feud, with its revenges and counter-revenges, the most one could realistically hope for was weary equilibrium, not jubilant festivity. The triangular love situation in Dorsteins saga hvita is good romance material: the hero wins his love after treachery and suffering, and makes honourable settlement with Dorsteinn inn hviti, father to Porgils, his enemy Einarr's closest ally. With Einarr and Porgils dead and this settlement made, we would expect the hero to be able to sit back and live happily in peace. And he does, but only until Dorgils's son becomes old enough to seek

vengeance. Marriage figures in the finale of this saga, and also in Hwensa-Pdris saga, Bandamanna saga, and Njals saga, but more as social event than as hieros gamos, symbolic expression of cosmic harmony.

The vita form of ending finds some equivalents if only because some sagas con- clude with the hero's death. Hallfredar saga ends with a 'miracle'; his beloved lord 61Oafr Tryggvason gives directions in a dream to the man who can seek out and bury Hallfrebr's body. The termination of Egils saga is adorned with a secularized corpse miracle: when Egill's bones are translated, his skull is seen to be extraordinarily

We begin the saga of the two Helgis with Ketill prymr because we consider him to have been the most blessed with famous kin of those men mentioned in the saga. From him are descended the men of Si6a and Krossavik, and also Droplaug's sons. But we also wish to tell how Helgi Asbjarnarson is descended from the settlers, because he is the most worthy man in this story, according to the opinion of wise men.

All quotations from the family sagas are from the fslenzk Fornrit editions, identified by volume number and page.

KATHRYN HUME

thick, and proves so indestructible that even after years in the ground, a vigorously wielded axe cannot split it. Eyrbyggja and Viga-Glums saga end essentially at their protagonists' deaths, but remarks follow on others involved in the feuds, and descendants. In Egils saga, after the miracle, we learn much about his later kin; that they perpetuate the dark/fair genetic contrast, that many are skalds, that Helga in fagra is of his line and exerted fatal attraction on two skalds, Gunnlaugr and Hrafn. We saw the list of miracles adapted to secular uses in the kings' and bishops' sagas. In the family sagas, the most common equivalent is a listing or discussion of descendants, a device we might have anticipated from the concerns displayed in the opening passages. Though not organic, such an ending is compre- hensible.

When the hero dies in the course of the feud, the need for revenge takes us, of necessity, beyond the natural biographical end. Once beyond that logical terminus, the author has to find some arbitrary method of finishing the story. He may end when the feud is finally settled (Bandamanna saga, Njals saga). But frequently authors traced the avenger to his death: in Droplaugarsona saga, Grimr Droplaugarson avenges his brother Helgi, but we then follow him to Scotland, where he dies of sorcery and an infected wound, after a fight unconnected to the main story. He does leave descendants though, and they are named (supposedly) right down to the writer of the tale. In Grettis saga, one of the most extreme examples of this solution, the author follows the avenger Porsteinn as he weathers a dangerous love affair in Constantinople, marries the woman, takes her back north, lives to old age; then the two leave their property to their grown children and retire to Rome to become anchorites that they may atone for the trick they played on God with their Tristram- and-Isolt oath. The final words are on Grettir, but the Spesar bdttr, as this afterpiece is sometimes called, does seem untidily trailing. Perhaps one might classify as a variant of the avenger-ending the finale which just follows one other person close to the hero up to that person's death, even if he or she is not an avenger. Helga in fagra in Gunnlaugs saga and Gu6run Osvifrsd6ttir are such figures.

In almost all the family saga closures, descendants are mentioned, and again the claims of fame outweigh relevance to the main characters. Thus Porsteins saga stangarhiggs ends not with Porsteinn and his family but with his more famous overlord Bjarni. We are told that Iorsteinn followed Bjarni until his own death, but then the narrator regales us with details about Bjarni, his pilgrimage to Rome, and his illustrious descendants. In Vdpnfirdinga saga, the later kin of a rather ineffectual would-be avenger are listed because they number famous bishops among them, not because the man himself deserved any respect or attention. In Laxdoela, we learn, albeit sketchily, about two or three generations after Gu6run Osvifrsd6ttir, much as we follow several prior generations during that saga's commencement. Descend- ants may have seemed so much a part of the saga aesthetic to some writers that they invented them to fit literary need: the existence of Ari, Glsli's brother, is apparently considered 'extremely doubtful; nothing is known otherwise of any settlement by him or of any men who trace their descent from him'.1 Yet the closing words assure us that he had many descendants. But after reading these

1 See the note by Peter Foote to George Johnston's translation The Saga of Gisli (London, 1963), p. 85.

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6oo Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

endings, we rarely leave the works thinking, 'yes, it had to end here. This is the only logical place'.

We have now seen the nature of opening and closing material. Whether expressed in brief or at length, the saga writers' concerns at those two junctures were essen- tially the same: distinction of kin and placement of the conflict within the span of Icelandic history - first to the past with references to famous Icelanders, indica- tions of time elapsed since settlement, and references to Norwegian kings; then to the future, with discussion of famous friends, relatives, and descendants of the saga's characters. In their various ways, these concerns are all social, and all seem unnecessary additions to something which strikes us as already complete. Some prologues actually hinder our grasping the plot, and many epilogues leave us feeling stranded, cheated, deprived of the pleasing sensation that the story is over.1 A reader's sense of finality is governed by formal expectations, and the sagas neither arouse nor gratify our expectations because we are conditioned to respond to literature controlled by other conventions. For a start, they possess a different type of plot, one which does not fit our pigeonholes of romance, comedy, or tragedy. Gunnlaugr's troubles stem from flaws of character, but we do not think of the saga as the tragedy of Gunnlaugr. Nor do we feel Njdls saga to be Njall's tragedy, even if we feel his death to be a 'tragic' loss to his country. Nor is Porsteins saga hvita a comedy or romance, though it resembles them superficially. The conven- tional terms do not apply because conflict is the usual subject of the sagas, as Andersson has shown; our engagement with the action is such that we wonder how the feud will end, not whether a certain character will survive. Occasionally we can guess: Brodd-Helgi's personality, and the outlawed state of Grettir and Gisli lead us to anticipate their demise; but then Egill's temper is such that we might well expect him to be wiped out, yet he lives to cantankerous old age. From the begin- ning of any saga, we can expect the ultimate return of social equilibrium, but whether any one character will be left alive or not does not become clear from the story's form.

The sagas' concern with social conflict rather than an individual means that we may find no focal figure, and their laudable avoidance of idealization often leaves those figures who do emerge so far from ideal that we are disconcerted; we expect a hero, defined by both morals and placement, in tales of blood and violence. And because equilibrium at the end is social rather than personal, we sometimes feel at a loss to accept as final the state in which some characters are left: in comedy or tragedy, the hero either obtains happiness, or is killed off and thus freed from misery. But saga personages may realistically live unhappily for many years until natural and unclimactic death. Helga in fagra, Kormakr, Samr (in Hrafnkels saga), and to a lesser extent Gu6ruin (svlfrsd6ttir all live on in a state of unresolved tension. Egill's life, as he advances in years, is far from happy. The sagas do not provide us with the emotional simplicities we are used to.

Given the sagas' historical and social concerns, we can see why they might require different beginnings and endings from the romance-form works

1 Barbara Herrnstein Smith comments on this sense of finality, saying 'the occurrence of the terminal event is a confirmation of expectations that have been established by the structure of the sequence, and is usually distinctly gratifying. The sense of stable conclusiveness, finality, or "clinch" which we experience at that point is.. . closure'. See her Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago, I968), p. 2.

KATHRYN HUME 6oi

current elsewhere at the time sagas were committed to writing. But treating the

sagas as history or biography does not offer a really satisfactory explanation either. Andersson indeed has suggested biography as an analogue: In most cases, however, this introductory matter has no proleptic function and seems rather to spring from the author's historical or antiquarian interest. It is a kind of scholarly preface. Just as the modern biography inevitably begins with a sketch of what the author has been able to unearth about his hero's forebears, so the saga author sketches in the family history and gives whatever information he can about the genealogy, prowess, and especially the colonization of his hero's ancestors. (pp. 8-9)

This seems good as far as it goes, but the introductory material in Laxdela or Egils saga or Eyrbyggja is so extensive that no modern biographer's preface is likely to resemble it: such material seems more important to saga writers than to us. Nor does this analogy justify the family trees of very minor characters, especially when those of the main characters are truncated. Furthermore, the sagas very clearly are neither biography nor history as we know these forms. The regularity of Anders- son's own conflict scheme bespeaks literary shaping, and other research confirms that characters were freely altered for aesthetic reasons.l

I would like to suggest that the opening and closing patterns can best be under- stood as a method of satisfying one of the cravings which brought the sagas forth, but in a different mode from that in which the conflict-plots operate. The modern reader's apperception of the sagas is an aesthetic response only; we cannot relate to the history they concern. The continuity between plot and extremities however is not in the aesthetic plane at all (and hence not organic to the story) but in affective function. The commencement and ending are part of the historical

impulse behind saga writing, and they have a definite purpose mediative between

saga and audience on the historical level, but do not contribute directly to the aesthetic effect of the main story except in isolated instances.

Consider the historical forces at work during the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries, one of the ugliest periods in Icelandic history. European pressures, both secular and ecclesiastical, so exacerbated local power struggles that Norwegian governance seemed to offer more likelihood of peace than the crumbling and destructive remnants of the native institutions. The Church, by granting easy absolutions for treacheries men would have hesitated to commit when constrained

by the old notions of drengskapr, weakened the indigenous customs. Political contests were now fought with armies rather than words at the alpingi, and though most of the quarrels were ostensibly over matters of regional concern, Norwegian fomenta- tion and claims to sovereignty were usually present. Snorri Sturluson, one of the most active politicians in the land, was enjoined by the king in I220 to make Iceland submit to Norway. That pressure may have influenced his writing, for

during the following decade he penned the stirring speech delivered by Einarr

Dveraeingr in (lafs saga helga which refuses Olafr any foothold in Iceland; friend-

ship and dealings as between equal nations he could have, but no dominion, no

1 Artistic shaping of saga personalities is discussed by Einar 01. Sveinsson (in 'The Icelandic Family Sagas and the Period in which their Authors Lived', Acta Philologica Scandinavica, I2 (I 937-8), 7I-90, especially pp. 82-3) and Lonnroth (in his 'Noble Heathen' article (see page 593, note I), p. 28). The best known example of the creative side to saga writing is Hrafnkels saga; once considered the most historically accurate of the sagas, it was shown to be almost pure fiction by E. V. Gordon (Medium /Evum, 8 (I939), 1-32) and Sigurour Nordal (Hrafnkatla, Studia Islandica, 7 (Reykjavik, 1940) ).

Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

matter how minor.1 We should remember too that Snorri may have written Egils saga, a saga whose main concern, after biography of a skald, was bitter indictment of royal tyranny. The period after I264 was superficially quieter than what had gone before (though discontent swelled to rebellion in I300), but remained emotionally unsettled. The remaining shreds of the once-strong social fabric disintegrated as reciprocity between chieftains and farmers died; because chief- tains now received their power from the king rather than from their followers, they could mistreat their subordinates with impunity. Taxes and loss of independence in various fields gradually strangled Icelandic commonwealth culture, and eventually the writing of family sagas.2

The sagas are the product of this age, and, I suggest, partly owe their existence to the historical conditions. Time and vellum were indeed necessary to their production, but those commodities were not new acquisitions.3 What brought sagas forth was a combination of contributing forces: the accessibility of writing materials; the presence of literate men with secular tastes, whether in or out of the Church; discontent with the contemporary age because it seemed less heroically admirable than the past; desire to keep alive memory of that past - Snorri's Prose Edda is another document from the saga-writing period which was composed to preserve knowledge of the superior practices of the past; and, finally, fears and discontents related to Norwegian rule. In addition to all of the sagas' literary merits, whether measured in terms of style, characterization, thematic richness, plot structuring, psychology, or story-telling, the sagas are an affirmation of national heroic identity in a time of pressure and crisis. Men wanted to be reminded that theirs was a country deserving respect, capable of governing itself. Anxieties about the future and nostalgic longing for those times which had been free of Norwegian and ecclesiastical influence seem to me important in the sagas. I would argue that the sagas were not received only as good stories, though of course they are that too. In their historical capacities, they satisfied psychological cravings extrinsic to aesthetic appreciation of a well-shaped plot, and the opening and closing patterns were designed to help satisfy those same desires.

Consider the tendency to go back to the settlement generation for a starting point. Though some settlers came to Iceland with the current king's good will- Ingi- mundr Porsteinsson in Vatnsdela is one - many came as the result of what they considered royal tyranny. Any saga mentioning the descendants by blood or marriage of Kveld-Ulfr or Bj6rn Buna automatically reminds its audience of Norwegian tyranny; sagas of this sort include Eyrbyggja, Gunnlaugs saga, Kjalnesinga saga, Laxdcla, Njdls saga, and Viga-Glums saga. Sometimes a saga merely starts 'Iat var a dogum Haralds konungs ins harfagra . . .' and we are expected to know what he was famed for. Kormdks saga, Hrafnkels saga, and Grettis saga use Haraldr in this fashion. Occasionally the sagas are very explicit. The younger version of

1 The speech occurs in Chapter I25 of Snorri's 6ldfs saga helga in Heimskringla. There are similar instances in some family sagas where contemporary rather than saga-age events seem to have been uppermost in the writers' minds - the satire on the goJar in Bandamanna saga is one such.

2 For information on the political problems of this period, I am indebted to Sigurbur Nordal's fslenzk Menning I (Reykjavik, 1942); to Einar 61. Sveinsson's The Age of the Sturlungs, translated by J6hann S. Hannesson (Ithaca, New York, 1953); and to R. George Thomas's 'The Sturlung Age as an Age of Saga Writing', Germanic Review, 25 (I950), 50-66.

3 SigurBur Nordal, 'Time and Vellum', his MHRA presidential address, published in the MHRA Annual Bulletin for 1952, pp. 15-26.

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KATHRYN HUME 603

Gisla saga starts almost belligerently: 'bat er upphaf a sggu pessi, at Haraldr inn harfagri re6 fyrir N6regi. Hann var fyrstr einvaldskonungr um allan Noreg, - af hans ett hafa allir si6an h9f6ingjar verit i N6regi, - ok ur6u margir landflotta fyrir honum til ymissa landa, ok varu hat meir st6rmenni, fyrir Pvi at Peir vildu eigi yfirgang hans hola, en h6ttusk eigi hafa styrk til m6tstQ6u vi6 hann' (vI, 3).1 The manner of most future Icelanders' leavetaking was actually considered insult- ing to the royal power, as Haraldr tartly indicates in Vatnsdoela: 'en pat hygg ek, at Dangat munir pu' koma, ok er pat uggligt, hvart Pu' ferr i lofi minu e6a leynisk Pui, sem nu tekr mjQk at ti6kask' (vIII, 34).2 Not only is Norwegian royalty implicitly twitted at the commencement of most sagas, Norwegians in general come out distinctly inferior to Icelanders whenever an Icelander travels to visit the king's court. As skalds and warriors, the Icelandic travellers are always portrayed as superior.3 Icelanders of the saga-writing period could be proud of their Norwegian ancestors, and retained a close interest in that country, but the saga writers did not let their audience forget why men had left the country. The reason was still a living one.

The ancestor lists going back to settlement then are not just antiquarian (as Andersson and others label them), with the connotations that word has of dry, bloodless, academic interest. Rather, most of them carry an implicit comment on relations with Norway, historical and contemporary. But that is not their only function. We who rarely know our forebears before great-grandfather fail to realize how real past kin can be to a man, or how great a role kinship played in Icelandic history. Nordal performs a valuable service when, working from the Landndmabdk comment 'Fra Birni er naer allt stormenni komit a fslandi', he traces Bjorn Buna's descendants down to the time the commonwealth was established, and shows that an amazing percentage of the magnates then were of Bjorn's blood.4 According to the law of geometric progression, the four centuries between A.D. 900 and A.D. I300 would have provided Bjorn with something like eight thousand descendants living at the close of the thirteenth century, even if no member of the family ever had more than two children who succeeded in having children of their own. That statistic suggests that any member of a Sturlung-age audience would be

1 This story begins with Haraldr inn harfagri ruling over Norway. He was the first monarch to govern the whole country - from his line come all later princes of the realm - and many men became emigrants because of him, going to various other lands, and most were important men who would not tolerate his tyranny but did not have the strength to oppose him.

A similar comment appears at the beginning of Fareyinga saga, which is technically not a family saga because its action is not laid in Iceland, but which resembles the Icelanders' sagas in structure and concerns:

Maor er nefndr Grimr kamban; hann bygg6i fyrstr Faereyjar a dQgum Haralds hins harfagra. Da fly6u fyrir hans ofriki fjQl6i manna, settuz sumir i Faereyjum ok bygg6u par, en sumir leituou til annarra ey6ilanda. There was a man named Grimr kamban; he was the first settler in the Faeroes in the days of Haraldr inn harfagri. A great many men fled because of his tyranny; some came to the Faeroes and settled there, but some sought out other empty lands.

The edition cited is that of Finnur Jonsson (Copenhagen, 1927), p. i. 2 This I believe, that you will go there [Iceland]; the question is whether you will go with my

leave, or sneak away as is now the fashion. 3 A. Margaret Arent discusses this manifestation of wishful thinking in the introduction to her

translation of Laxd&ela (Seattle, Washington, I964), p. xxvii. 4 Islenzk Menning I, pp. I 1-20.

604 Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

related to at least one of the principal settlers, and we might expect them to be aware of this. Indeed, elaborate kinship reckoning is still common in Iceland today, especially in country districts.1 A thirteenth-century listener would have known at the very least whether, according to family tradition, he was related to any of the heroes of the saga age. The leisurely study of Ketill flatnefr's descendants at the beginning of Laxdela is more readily understandable when we remember the direct personal interest the audience would have felt in the people described; a good many listeners may actually have counted Ketill among their kinsmen.

Local and national conditions were so unpleasantly changed, and so destructive of cultural identity that men looked to their nation's past for reassurance. The saga plot satisfied this need at one level by telling of the great men of the heroic past whose excellence in various fields of endeavour made them a heritage to be proud of, and one which in some sense reflected glory on their present descendants. The opening and closing passages served to anchor the tale firmly in historical reality and offer members of the audience various channels through which to relate the events to their personal history. The prelude might well supply the name of some settler from whom they could trace their own lineage, thus making the main characters collateral relatives, as it were, and the plot and its heroics a family experience. The coda, by mentioning famous friends, relatives, and descendants of the saga's characters, provided more possible family ties. Thus both plot and extremities share the affective function of helping the listeners relate present to past.

If most commencements and endings work on the historical plane alone, what do they do to the aesthetic? Non-Icelandic readers, even sensitive ones like W. P. Ker, have always felt that at the very least that element is thrown off balance, and at worst seriously mutilated. Even the exceptional Egils saga whose historical introduc- tion can be said to contribute aesthetically with its plot foreshadowings and genetic characterization, seems to modern readers ill-proportioned. Organic unity is still flouted. A work may be laid out to follow a mechanical pattern however, and for an audience familiar with that form's conventions, expectations will be duly aroused and gratified. References to descendants in the sagas, for instance, surely function as a conventional indicator of closure. Moreover, symmetry may play a part in our sense of beginning and end; genealogical and historical references at both ends of a saga may give the properly conditioned audience a sense of rounding off and completeness. Writing of this kind makes active demands on the listeners, who have to know the conventions for them to work, but given that knowledge, the conventions should be effective. Frank Kermode, in The Sense of an Ending, defines literary form (and the saga, albeit oral and traditional by background, may be called a literary form) as 'humanly needed order', and works of art as 'things ... designed, in collaboration more or less close between producer and consumer, to accommodate, confirm, and extend that order'.2 That statement is particularly illuminating when applied to saga form and subject matter, for in both the colla-

1 My thanks to Vilhjalmur Bjarnar and Pardee Lowe of Cornell University for this information about modern Iceland; thanks also to them and to Thomas D. Hill of Cornell for other helpful comments and criticisms.

2 Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (London, I966; paperback edition, New York, 1968), p. 123.

KATHRYN HUME 605

boration between author and audience to produce the desired ordering of ex- perience - relating past to present - is particularly close.

I started this article by stating that saga beginnings and endings are a novel answer to a technical problem which faces any writer, but especially one using historical material, the difficulty being that 'relations [meaning the interconnected- ness of events and people] stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle in which they shall happily appear to do so'.1 Human experience is a continuum, but the artist, even one writing fiction, must artificially separate his material from all that is continuous with it or would be were the story true. He has to give tidy endings to experiences which have no endings at all in real life. Looked at in this fashion, there is something dreadfully arbitrary about lovers walking off through the sunset to live happily ever after. In human affairs, marriage is not a terminus at all; treating it as such is merely a literary technique, one involving considerable (if pleasing) falsification of experience. Organic works assume that there can be a terminal effect, and hence by definition are cut off from the flow of life. Though we know that the organic method can succeed, we should also be able to see that the solution cannot be called ideal. There ought to be other ways of relating literature to the continuum, and it is this, I believe, that most of the family sagas do.

Saga narrative technique suggests that writers worked by looking at the span of Icelandic history from settlement to their own times, and composed by running an eye along the whole length, usually along one blood line. A writer documented pre-plot material genetically rather than logically, pausing occasionally to mention some interesting incident which befell the hero's grandfather; sometimes he would dilate upon the incident if it were unusually colourful or particularly satisfying politically. Or if the hero's family were obscure, minor characters might be able to provide a colourful historical background for the story among their more famous ancestors. Then, reaching the main action chronologically, the writer deals with it, trying (in so far as that is possible) to trace the action to the return of social equili- brium. Then he looks at other people, either contemporaries of the hero or descen- dants; in either case he is widening his perspective beyond one focal figure and one point in history, and thus works outward from the plot back into the historical continuum which, by common knowledge, comes down genetically to his own audience.

The particular nature of the total saga structure can perhaps be made clearer with a couple of similes. Icelandic history can be viewed as the warp on a loom, the individual threads being families seen as unbroken lines from beginning to present. A saga writer may select a thread and pull it slightly outward to inspect it at some point (the conflict portion), but the thread remains fastened at either end to the frame, whose one end is the settlement and whose other is, by implication, the writer's audience. Or picture IUtgar6a-Loki's 'cat'. o6rr strains to lift it, and we see it with its muscles knotted and back arched, but its feet (except one) remain firmly planted to the floor; indeed, though the phenomenon is invisible on the physical plane, the feet really go long past the floor and encircle the world. The saga writer, like Iorr, raises one section of artistically shaped history for our delectation - the conflict plot. The opening and closing passages however ensure

1 Kermode, p. 176.

606 Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas

the connexion of that piece of history to the continuum - they are the cat's legs, and on the physical plane, they lead us back to whichever ancestor mentioned is earliest, and forward to whichever descendant mentioned is closest to the audience. And invisibly, beyond what is actually mentioned, they lead back to Norway and the tyranny which sent men to Iceland, and forward to each member of the audience. As modern readers, we react negatively to saga beginnings and endings because we are neither conditioned to respond to the conventions of this form nor aware of personal genetic connexion to the actors. Seen in light of this analysis though, perhaps future readers will recognize the original function opening and closing material performed, and value its intrinsic significance as a highly original attempt to relate art to the continuum of human experience.

ITHACA, NEW YORK KATHRYN HUME

Article Contentsp.[593]p.594p.595p.596p.597p.598p.599p.600p.601p.602p.603p.604p.605p.606

Issue Table of ContentsThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. i-viii+481-720Front Matter [pp.i-viii]Juvenal and Restoration Modes of Translation [pp.481-493]"King Lear" in the Eighteenth Century [pp.494-506]Some Wordsworthian Transparencies [pp.507-520]The Lament of Edward II [pp.521-529]Machiavellism in Etienne Pasquier's "Pourparler du Prince" [pp.530-544]"La Revue des Deux Mondes" in Transition: From the Death of Naturalism to the Early Debate on Literary Cosmopolitanism [pp.545-550]Proust's Novel in a Novel: "Un Amour de Swann" [pp.551-558]Cervantes's "El Licenciado Vidriera": Meaning and Structure [pp.559-568]Salomon Gessner's Idylls as Prose Poems [pp.569-576]From the "Neue Gedichte" to the "Duineser Elegien": Rilke's Chandos Crisis [pp.577-592]Beginnings and Endings in the Icelandic Family Sagas [pp.593-606]The Rag with Ambition: The Problem of Self-Will in Dostoevsky's "Bednyye Lyudi" and "Dvoynik" [pp.607-618]Reviewsuntitled [pp.619-621]untitled [pp.621-622]untitled [pp.622-623]untitled [pp.623-625]untitled [pp.626-628]untitled [pp.628-629]untitled [pp.629-630]untitled [pp.630-634]untitled [pp.634-636]untitled [pp.636-637]untitled [pp.637-638]untitled [pp.638-639]untitled [pp.639-641]untitled [pp.641-643]untitled [pp.643-644]untitled [pp.645-646]untitled [pp.646-647]untitled [pp.647-649]untitled [pp.649-650]untitled [pp.650-651]untitled [pp.651-652]untitled [p.653]untitled [pp.654-655]untitled [pp.655-656]untitled [pp.656-657]untitled [pp.657-659]untitled [p.659]untitled [pp.659-661]untitled [pp.661-662]untitled [pp.662-663]untitled [pp.663-664]untitled [pp.664-665]untitled [pp.665-666]untitled [pp.666-668]untitled [pp.668-670]untitled [pp.670-671]untitled [pp.671-672]untitled [pp.672-673]untitled [pp.673-675]untitled [pp.675-676]untitled [pp.676-677]untitled [pp.677-678]untitled [pp.679-680]untitled [pp.680-682]untitled [pp.682-683]untitled [pp.683-685]untitled [pp.685-687]untitled [pp.687-688]untitled [pp.688-689]untitled [pp.689-690]untitled [pp.690-691]untitled [pp.691-692]untitled [pp.692-693]untitled [pp.693-695]untitled [pp.695-696]untitled [pp.696-697]untitled [pp.697-698]untitled [pp.698-699]untitled [pp.699-700]untitled [pp.700-701]untitled [p.701]untitled [p.702]untitled [pp.702-703]untitled [p.703]untitled [pp.704-705]untitled [pp.706-707]untitled [pp.707-711]untitled [p.711]untitled [pp.711-712]untitled [pp.712-713]untitled [p.713]untitled [pp.714-715]untitled [pp.715-717]untitled [pp.717-720]

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