The unwelcome suitor: patriarchal norms, masculine inefficiency, and negative modelling in the Old Icelandic Kormáks Saga

The unwelcome suitor: patriarchal norms, masculine inefficiency, and negative modelling in the Old Icelandic Kormdks Saga The irony is that the object of the competition, whether it be sexual, material, intellectual or even spiritual, is virtually irrelevant. The 'winner' will usually spend all his time protecting his prize and never enjoy it—or he will discover that he does not want it after all. What he wanted, in fact needed, in order to construct himself as a masculine subject was the competition itself. Anne Cranney-Francis, Engendered Fictions (1992), p. 91 Kormdks Saga seems to pivot around the strangest tale of unrequited love in Old Icelandic literature. At the beginning of the saga, Korm&kr and Steingerdr share a mutual desire; when a marriage between them is ananged, Kormaicr fails to turn up; as the saga unfolds, he remains apparendy obsessed whde Steingerdr, in time manied twice elsewhere, cools somewhat; andfinally,when given a chance to be together at the end of the saga both decline. A simple story explanation is offered in chapters 5 and 6, namely that a witch's curse prevents them from ever consummating their mutual desire ('bau skyldi eigi njdtask mega'—'njdta' meaning 'enjoy' in both a general and sexual sense).1 But what does all this actually mean? Sagas are notorious for their absence of thematic statements. A contrast can be drawn with such a nanative as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, which opens with two answers to a reader's initial question, 'What is thistextabout?': one a 'story' answer, that a particular character underwent particular experiences; the other a 'theme' answer, to do with a cycle in human hfe from sonow to joy and back to sonow again.2 The themes of sagas are more covertly inscribed, and much less certainly attributable to an authorial, or even narratorial, presence. Rather, they are an implicit product of thirteenth-century socio-cultural ideology. In Kormdks Saga traditional and pseudo-traditional materials, when appliedtoa love story, disclose the social construction of sexuality, locating this within a strongly normative mascuUne frame, with theresultthat deviance from approved modes of behaviour alienates the deviating person not just from normal society 1 Islenzk Fornrit 8, ed. Einar Ol. Sveinsson, Reykjavik, 1939, p. 223. All references are to this edition. The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the kyng Priamus sone of Troye, In lovynge, how his aventures fellen Fro w o to wele, and after out ofjoie, M y purpos is, er that I parte fro ye . . . (1-5) The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson, Oxford, 1988, p. 473. P A R E R G O N ns 10.2, December 1992 156 J. Stephens but even from normal sexual capacity or function. In these terms, Kormdks Saga functions as a negative example rather than as the story of an exemplary forebear. If considered as a framing structure, the beginning of Kormdks Saga is as thematically potent as the beginning of Troilus and Criseyde. The main function of the beginning of virtuaUy any saga is to set out its spatio-temporal frame of reference and to introduce some of the major characters, but Kormdks Saga presents this in the form of a set of implicit ideological paradigms expressed in the career of Qgmundr, Kormakr's father. Chapter 1 may be summarized thus: Qgmundr was an exemplary hero, who spent his summers as a viking and his winters at the royal court, and gained for himself a good reputation and a lot of wealth (that is, two of the things any typical saga hero seeks; the third is an advantageous marriage). O n one of his viking trips Qgmundr fought against a certain Asmundr, a daunting figure of great military reputation, w h o m he put to flight after a four-day battle. W h e n he returned home, his father told him that he would not increase his reputation with more viking trips, and added: 'mun ek fa" p6r konu, Helgu d6ttur Fr66a jarls' ('I will get you a wife, Helga, daughter ofjarl Fr66T: p. 203. They paid Fr66i a visit to ask for Helga, and he agreed, even though he felt there was still some...