Monsters in Society: Alterity, Transgression and the Use of the Past in Medieval Iceland by Rebecca Merkelbach (review)

The ambitious aim of Monsters in Society is to build "a theory of social monstrosity" (10). Merkelbach carefully analyzes "human monsters and monstrous humanness" in the Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders) genre written between the early thirteenth and late fourteenth centuries, including creatures that exhibit a dual nature or that exist on the borders of humanity (1). At the heart of the book lies the question of whether ghosts, berserkers, magicians, and outlaws can be read as primarily social monsters born of anxieties rooted in Icelandic culture and society. Unfortunately, Merkelbach's extensive research and interesting insights are overshadowed by the fact that social monstrosity is a largely anachronistic and inaccurate category for these figures in medieval Iceland.

Monsters in Society conceptualizes monstrosity as social and relational rather than physical. The social monster is a type of character or character type that stands "on the border between the natural and the supernatural," partaking "both of the human and the paranormal" (3). This generalizing definition of monsters is largely unsuitable for the medieval Icelandic context because it suppresses the diversity of beings appearing in the sagas and creates ontological confusion. Part of the issue is the fact that in the sagas, monstrosity typically refers to abnormality in shape, when it is used at all; the English word "monster" corresponds roughly to Icelandic words such as "skrímsli" (which never appears in the Sagas of Icelanders) and "óvættur" (a word that is used, but rarely), but neither term is applied to humans or human society. Conversely, Merkelbach applies monstrosity to people appearing inhuman due to their behavior. This is, as she notes, a meaning that emerged in early sixteenth-century English to refer "to (former) human beings whose actions against and interactions with society have led them to be perceived as monstrous by this society" (6). In other words, society's othering turns deviant humans (who are sometimes little more than misbehaving boys such as the kolbítur, or "coal biter" character) into social monsters and combines them with more conventionally monstrous figures such as magicians, revenants, and berserkers. Instead of enabling us "to find a way into the medieval" (6), this approach channels various characters and behaviors into a reductive framework that does not take into account how the saga-genre evolved and expanded in response to various social, political, and literary trends over its 200-year period of development.

Monsters in Society contains seven chapters and a conclusion. Following a contextualization of monsters in her opening chapter, Merkelbach devotes the subsequent four chapters to examining distinct figures from the sagas: revenants, outlaws, berserkers, and magic users. Taking each in turn, she assesses these figures in terms of their "hybridity and transgression" and the "contagion" of their monstrosity, as well as the "economic impact" of the monsters on Icelandic society. This analysis underpins the in-depth discussion of the social and cultural aspects of these beings' assumed monstrosity in the last two chapters. The book is thoroughly researched, revealing extensive knowledge of the Íslendingasögur and the relevant secondary literature. Merkelbach's framing of monstrosity, however, violates the chronological and literary diversity of the sagas. It would be more fruitful to search for dynamic aspects of these beings in their specific contexts rather than impose fixed taxonomies such as "the monstrous is only a sub-category of the 'Other,' just as it is also only a sub-category of the 'Strange.'" (13). Such modern impositions hardly enhance an understanding of the medieval mindset of the sagas; instead, they locate monsters where there probably are none.

In chapter 3, for example, Merkelbach argues that outlaw figures in the sagas are made monsters by "their condition as antisocial, disruptive characters" (52). In this framework, an individual's "disruptive interactions" with his relatives are sufficient to expel him from family and society and turn...