Old Irish Curad-Mír and Old Norse Mannjafnađr: Two Forms of Literary Man-Comparison in Early Medieval Literature

Verbal contests for superiority between warriors in a maledominated heroic society exist in a number of cultures and literary traditions. In the literature of early medieval Iceland and Ireland these man-comparisons have been formalized to a point where they appear as instances of what looks like an autonomous literary genre. The Old Icelandic mannjafnađr occurs in the Norse sagas both as a legal procedure and as a popular form of entertainment at feasts, the most notable example being the poetry-and-drinking contest in Ôrvar-Odds saga. The early medieval Irish narrative tradition of the Ulster cycle knows two instances of the contest for the curad-mír, the Champion’s Portion, in Fled Bricrenn and Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó. Comparing the two traditions as to their origins, context, content, function, and style, this paper once again takes up the question of possible direct literary influences between Irish and Norse medieval literary culture.