Emotion in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts by Sif Rikhardsdottir (review)

As a corpus, the Old Icelandic literature is often characterized by an economy of expression. It is a literary style that can provide a narrative with a sense of detachment from its material, establishing characters who seem dispassionate and inexpressive. Indeed, the paucity of passages that verbalize the feelings and emotions of saga characters make those few that can be found remarkable within the corpus. However, readers familiar with the style of the sagas know that this apparent objectivity is merely a veneer. The sagas may not preference dramatic displays of emotion, yet the laconic exchanges and tersely described interactions of saga characters are imbued with subtle indicators of emotional engagement. When these narratives are understood within the cultural contexts of both setting and authorship, it becomes evident that the characters operate within a rich emotional landscape. It is this emotional landscape that Sif Rikhardsdottir seeks to explore in this volume, identifying both the literary formulas through which it finds expression, and the emotive and behavioural codes that inform its parameters.

The book is comprised of five chapters, each taking a literary case study (or studies) as its framework for discussing a different aspect of emotion in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. It is not an unusual approach for such thematic examinations of Old Norse texts, and serves to make manageable a topic as broad as that which Rikhardsdottir has undertaken to explore. Yet this does mean that the book cannot be considered a comprehensive survey of emotion in Old Norse literature. Rikhardsdottir limits herself to three 'genres', putting forward two chapters framed around the Íslendingasögur, two focused on the adoption and adaption of romance literature into Old Norse, and one on Eddic poetry. Moreover, as Rikhardsdottir herself notes, the volume deals nearly exclusively with Old West Norse dialects, limiting the study to Iceland, with occasional shifts to Norway (p. 2). But these are minor criticisms and, at worst, it could be said that the volume title— Emotion in Old Norse Literature—is somewhat misleading. Rikhardsdottir makes the parameters of her study immediately accessible in the introduction, and her reasons for limiting the book to the selected 'genres' and regions are justifiable on the basis of what is representative of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Scandinavian literary production.

Chapter 1 uses as its texts Ívens sagaand Tristrams saga ok Ísödar—Old Norse translations of Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lionand Tristan. Here Rikhardsdottir introduces two terms: 'emotive literary identities' and 'emotive scripts'. The former is defined as the cultural framework of values that guides a text's intended audience in how to interpret a character's emotive motivations. The latter refers to the more generic codes of behaviour that are recognizable to the audience as literary tropes and thus inform the reading of emotions through generic formulas. These terms and their underlying theories are the foundation of the book. Rikhardsdottir tests them against the process of narrative transmission in the translation of courtly romance from one culture to another. By comparing the Old French texts with their Old Norse translations, she is able to demonstrate that the expression of emotion within the narratives also undergoes a process of translation. Gone are the overt concerns with courtly love and feudal society present in Yvainand Tristanas these emotive scripts are rejected and the literary identities of Ívenand Tristramare modified to adhere to Icelandic literary norms.

The next four chapters shift to native literary traditions. Chapter 2 approaches Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, using it as a platform to explore emotional interiority and how to read emotion in a literary tradition that eschews outward display of internal emotion. Of particular interest is Rikhardsdottir's assertion that the scarcity of emotive words lends those that are there deeper meaning and greater complexity, while also lending non-emotive words a degree of emotive content. Chapter 3 looks at Eddic poetry and the...