In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

60 C H A P T E R T H R E E Creating Personalities The Saga Age Icelanders King Olaf Tryggvason and King Olaf Haraldsson were remembered as great promoters of the faith and men of heroic dimensions, but it is difficult for a reader of their sagas to assess their personal qualities beyond the accomplishments required by their roles. They occasionally interact with their wives or their followers, though almost never in a way that is revealing about these relationships. Neither thoughts, reflections, principles, nor motivations are developed in such a way as to explain their actions. The reader is not invited to see them as characters impelled by a particular style or inner conviction. And yet, when the Icelanders began to write sagas about their ancestors, it is precisely this personal perspective that we find in some of the earliest texts, in which the actions of the protagonists are consistently viewed as expressions of their personalities. This chapter will deal with five of these sagas: Víga-Glúms saga, Reykdœla saga, Fóstbrœ›ra saga, Hei›arvíga saga, and Gísla saga Súrssonar . Each of these stories is predicated on the personal idiosyncrasies of one or more characters. Whereas the sagas of the two Olafs were clearly construed as biographies, the first sagas about Icelanders might better be understood as portraiture. In each case it is the profile of the man that focuses our attention and centers the action. We may not remember episodes in much detail, but the personalities stay with us. Víga-Glúms saga At the conclusion of Víga-Glúms saga the protagonist earns one of the most unambiguous memorials conferred on a saga hero: “People agree that Glúm was the greatest chieftain in Eyjafjord for twenty years, and for another twenty years none was more than his equal. People also agree that Glúm was the most outstanding among all warriors in this country” (chapter 28; ÍF 9:98). The task confronting the saga author was therefore to justify this reputation and account for Glúm’s record in Eyjafjord, a task that does not appear to differ greatly from the mission undertaken by Odd Snorrason and the author of The Oldest Saga of Saint Olaf. The approaches nonetheless diverge widely. Whereas the lives of the two Olafs are chronicled in straightforward and extensive detail, the men themselves remain opaque. Glúm Eyjólfsson, by contrast , is primarily a personality and only secondarily a political figure. We learn relatively little about his leadership style but a great deal about his innate qualities. It is therefore clear that at some point in early saga writing the art of characterization came to the fore, a development that is most likely to have been promoted by native storytelling conventions . This hypothesis would account for the fact that characterization is so sparse in the kings’ sagas and so conspicuous in the native sagas, with a first great culmination in Egils saga (see Chapter 5 below). In Víga-Glúms saga, characterization emerges at the very outset in a testy exchange between Glúm’s grandfather Ingjald (son of one of the great colonists in the north, Helgi the Thin) and his son Eyjólf. Ingjald is described as “cantankerous, taciturn, quarrelsome, and stubborn” (chapter 1; ÍF 9:4), and he confirms these traits when his more open and sociable son invites a Norwegian merchant to stay with them. The author seems intent not so much on what happened as on letting the readers know what sort of people we are dealing with. The scene is less an action unit than a psychological moment. The initial friction is immediately succeeded by a second collision of personalities. Eyjólf is eager to accompany his Norwegian guest Hreidar on his return voyage, but Hreidar is oddly reluctant. It turns out that he has a brother Ívar back in Norway who makes a special point of disparaging Icelanders. Hreidar is therefore afraid that Eyjólf’s presence in his house will cause dissension and place him in an awkward crossfire between his brother and a good friend. That is exactly what comes to pass, but the author conceives of the situation as a testing ground for Eyjólf’s character. Eyjólf indeed refuses to be drawn into a quarrel and placidly accepts the malicious nickname hrúga (heap). His imperturbable good nature eventually wins over the hostile brother Ívar, and he...

Share