Scandinavian-Canadian Studies Études scandinaves au Canada

Volume 26 2019

Guest Editor/Rédacteur invité DUSTIN GEERAERT Journal Editor/Rédactrice du journal HELGA THORSON

AASSC-AAESC Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada L’Association pour l’avancement des études scandinaves au Canada GUEST EDITOR/RÉDACTEUR INVITÉ Dustin Geeraert, University of Manitoba. JOURNAL EDITOR/RÉDACTRICE DU JOURNAL Helga Thorson, University of Victoria. EDITORIAL BOARD/COMITÉ DE RÉDACTION Errol Durbach, University of British Columbia. Daisy Neijmann, University of Iceland. Russell Poole, University of Western Ontario. Peter Stenberg, University of British Columbia. John Tucker, University of Victoria. Börje Vähämäki, University of Toronto. Gurli Woods, Carleton University. Henning Wærp, University of Tromsø. FRENCH TRANSLATION Valérie Duro. TECHNICAL EDITOR Martin Holmes, University of Victoria.

Scandinavian-Canadian Studies is the official publication of the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada; membership in the Association entitles members to a printed version of the journal. Members wishing to be sent a printed version should write to Helga Thorson, the Editor of the journal, at [email protected] or by conventional mail at the Editor's university address given below. To find the online version of the journal go to http://scancan. net/. For Association membership information visit the Association's website: http://aassc. com/.

Those wishing to purchase individual printed issues of volumes 1-19 of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies should write to the Editor at [email protected] or by conventional mail at the Editor's university address given below. For printed copies of volumes 20 and higher go to https://www. uvicbookstore.ca/general/search?q=scandinavian%20canadian%20studies.

We invite submission of scholarly editions and translations as well as articles. These submissions should be sent to the Editor: Dr. Helga Thorson at [email protected] or Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria, PO Box 1700, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 2Y2, fax 250-721-7319. Articles may be written in English or French and should include endnotes and a bibliography. Their length should normally not exceed 25 double-spaced pages; their format should conform to that used in this issue. For details see the “Notes for Contributors” on the journal’s website http://scancan.net. Translations, into English or French, should conform to the “Translation Guidelines” to be found on the journal’s website. Books for review should be sent to the Book Review Editor: Dr. Natalie Van Deusen, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E6.

Scandinavian-Canadian Studies wishes to thank the Humanities Computing and Media Centre of the University of Victoria for technical assistance.

Études scandinaves au Canada est l’organe officiel de l’Association pour l’avancement des études scandinaves au Canada; l’adhésion à l’Association donne droit à une version imprimée de la revue. Les membres souhaitant recevoir une version imprimée de la revue devraient écrire à Helga Thorson, la rédactrice en chef de la revue, à [email protected] ou par courrier postal à l’adresse universitaire de la rédactrice en chef indiquée ci-dessous. Pour trouver la version en ligne de la revue rendez-vous sur http://scancan.net. Pour toute information concernant l’adhésion à l’Association, veuillez visiter le site internet de l’Association : http://aassc.com/.)

Ceux et celles qui désirent acheter des numéros imprimés individuels des volumes 1 à 19 d’Études scandinaves au Canada devraient écrire à la rédactrice en chef, à [email protected] ou par courrier postal à l’adresse universitaire de rédactrice en chef indiquée ci-dessous. Pour obtenir des copies imprimées des volumes 20 et plus haut, rendez-vous sur http://www.uvicbookstore.ca/general/ journals.php.

Nous invitons la soumission d'éditions et de traductions professionnelles ainsi que d’articles. Ces soumissions devraient être adressées à la rédactrice en chef : Dr Helga Thorson à [email protected] ou au Département d’Études germaniques et slaves, Université de Victoria, PO Box 1700, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 2Y2, télécopie 250-721-7319. Les articles peuvent être rédigés en français ou en anglais et devraient inclure des notes de fin et une bibliographie. Leur longueur ne devrait normalement pas dépasser 25 pages à double interligne; leur format devrait se conformer à celui utilisé dans ce numéro. Pour plus de détails voir les « Notes aux auteurs » sur le site internet de la revue http://scancan.net. Les traductions, en anglais ou en français, devraient se conformer aux « Lignes directrices concernant la traduction » se trouvant sur le site de la revue. Les livres pour comptes rendus devraient être adressés à la rédactrice des compte-rendus de livres : Dr Natalie Van Deusen, Département des Langues modernes et des Études culturelles de l’Université d’Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E6.

Études scandinaves au Canada tient à remercier le Humanities Computing and Media Centre de l’université de Victoria pour son soutien technique.

Printed in Canada/Publié au Canada. ISSN 0823-1796. ©Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada/L’Association pour l’avancement des études scandinaves au Canada

Scandinavian-Canadian Studies Études scandinaves au Canada Volume 26: 2019

Contributors 7

Dedication 13

Acknowledgements and Permissions 15 VISION

Foreword: Companions on the Edge of Iceland Andrew McGillivray 18 Avant-propos: Compagnons à la lisière de l’Islande Andrew McGillivray 22 Introduction : Dialogues with a “Head of Destiny” Dustin Geeraert 26 CREATION

From Manuscript(s) to Print: Editorial Practices Susanne M. Arthur 44 through the Ages and the Case of Konráð Gíslason’s (Incomplete) Edition of Fóstbræðra saga The Culture of the Grotesque in Old Icelandic Helga Kress 70 Literature: The Saga of the Sworn Brothers Old Norse in Italy: From Francesco Saverio Quadrio Fulvio Ferrari 88 to Fóstbræðra saga PRESERVATION

Guardian of Memory: Halldór Laxness, Saga Editor Christopher Crocker 110 Is Halldór Laxness the Author of Fóstbræðra saga? Ástráður Eysteinsson 132 On the Author Function, Intertextuality, Translation, and a Modern Writer’s Relationship with the Icelandic Sagas Of Heroes and Cods’ Heads: Saga Meets Film in Bergljót Soffía 156 Gerpla Kristjánsdóttir A Modern-Day Saga in Fancy Dress: Contemporary Kristinn E. Andrésson 182 Social Critique in Halldór Laxnessʼs Gerpla DESTRUCTION

Cold-War Confrontations: Gerpla and its Early Shaun F. D. Hughes 208 Reviewers “In the Shadow of Greater Events in the World”: Dustin Geeraert 240 The Northern Epic in the Wake of World War II Wayward Heroes: Vagabonds in World Literature Birna Bjarnadóttir 276 REBIRTH

Afterword: Whatever Happened to the Sagas? Ármann Jakobsson 304 From the Westfjords to World Literature: A Ryan E. Johnson 312 Bibliography on Fostbræðra saga “The lore of skalds, warrior ideals, and tales of Alec Shaw 320 ancient kings”: A Bibliography on Gerpla

Index of Keywords 326 Contributors

Andrésson, Kristinn E. Kristinn E. Andrésson (1901-1973) was an Icelandic literary scholar, publisher, and socialist parliamentarian. While co-editor of Tímarit Máls og menningu (with Jakob Benediktsson) in 1952 he wrote a review of Gerpla which was published in 1972, and which Larissa Kyzer has translated for this volume (see also Section III of Shaun Hughes’ article “Gerpla: Laudations from the Left”, p. 215). Arthur, Susanne M. Susanne M. Arthur received her PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2015. The native German worked on a postdoctoral project on the so-called *Gullskinna branch of Njáls saga at the University of Iceland from 2016–2018. Her main interests include Old Norse-Icelandic literature and medieval and post-medieval manuscript studies (codicology and paleography). She currently works as an editor for Healthline Media, Inc. Bjarnadóttir, Birna Birna Bjarnadóttir is a researcher and project manager at the University of Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute, and Former Chair of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba (2003-2015). Among other projects, she is the editor of the forthcoming Heiman og heim [Home and Exile], a collection of essays on Guðbergur Bergsson’s work, which will be published by the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institue and The Icelandic Literature Society. She is also leading The Expedition to the Magic Mountain (2013-2020), a project which can be found online at: http://www.nylo.is/en/events/expedition-to- the-magic-mountain/. Crocker, Christopher Christopher Crocker (PhD University of Iceland 2016) is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Iceland in the multidisciplinary research project “Disability before disability.” He is preparing Paranormal Dreams in the Medieval Icelandic Sagas for publication with Medieval Institute Publications, and is also co-translator of Guttormur J. Guttormsson’s Tíu Leikrit – Ten Plays (2015). He has extensive experience contributing to projects such as The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (2017) and publishing in academic journals such as Viator (2015) and Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2015). Eysteinsson, Ástráður Ástráður Eysteinsson was born in Akranes, Iceland, in 1957. He studied at the universities of Iceland, Warwick, and Cologne, before completing a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. He is Professor of Comparative Literature and former Dean of Humanities at the University of Iceland, and has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Iowa, Copenhagen, and Victoria, BC. He has been a practising translator since 1981. Ferrari, Fulvio Fulvio Ferrari is full professor of Germanic philology at the Department of Humanities, University of Trento (Italy). His major research interests and publications are in the areas of Old Norse studies, Dutch chivalric literature, and the modern reception of medieval literature, in particular of Old Norse mythology and of the Nibelungen legend. He has translated Örvar-Odds saga and Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana into Italian. He is currently working at a book on the adaptation of the Nibelungen legend into different semiotic systems.

Geeraert, Dustin Dustin Geeraert (PhD 2016) teaches in the Department of Icelandic Language and Literature and in the Department of English, Film, Theatre, and Media at the University of Manitoba. He is the editor of The Shadow Over Portage and Main: Weird Fictions (2016, with Keith Cadieux) and the forthcoming A Scholar or a Skald: Metamorphosis and the History of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature (2020, with Christopher Crocker). His articles have appeared in Journal of the William Morris Society (2012), The Lovecraft Annual (2014), and Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2018), and are forthcoming in The Middle Ages in the Modern Era IV and From Iceland to the Americas: Vinland and Historical Imagination. Hughes, Shaun F. D. Shaun F. D. Hughes is Professor of English, Linguistics, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Comparative Literature at Purdue University. His most recent publications are: “Hallgrímur Pétursson and the Icelandic Baroque,” JEGP 117.2 (April, 2018); “The Fortunes of a Fornaldarsaga Manuscript,” The Legendary Legacy, ed. Matthew Driscoll et al. (2018); “Halldór Jakobsson on Truth and Fiction in the Sagas (1789),” Gripla 27 (2016); and “The Evolution of Monster Fights: From Beowulf versus Grendel to Jón Guðmundsson lærði versus the Snæfjalladraugur and Beyond,” Telling Tales and Crafting Books, a volume of which he was one of the co-editors (2016). Jakobsson, Ármann Ármann Jakobsson is a Professor in the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. He is a renowned scholar of medieval Icelandic literature, and has also published scholarship on medievalism. Among his extensive publishing record, he is the author of Tolkien og hringurinn (2003) [Tolkien and the Ring], Nine Saga Studies: The Critical Interpretation of the Icelandic Sagas (2013), A Sense of Belonging: Morkinskinna and Icelandic Identity c.1220 (2014), and The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North (2017). He is also editor of a monograph critical Icelandic edition of Tolkien’s famous essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Bjólfskviða: Forynjurnar og fræðimennirnir (2013), and author of two novels inspired by the medieval Icelandic sagas, Glæsir (2011) and Síðasti galdrameistarinn (2014). Johnson, Ryan E. Ryan E. Johnson is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Iceland. His doctoral research revolves around the medieval canon house of Helgafell between the 12th and 16th centuries. He is also a co-researcher with the Fragile Heritage Project (Í fótsporum Árna Magnússonar) out of the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. Knútsson, Pétur Pétur Knútsson is Senior Lecturer (retired, 1978-2012) in English Language at the Faculty of ‎Foreign Languages, School of Humanities, University of Iceland. He graduated from ‎Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, England, in 1964, and received a PhD. from the School of ‎Humanities, University of Copenhagen, in 2004. He has published some thirty articles, ‎mostly on translation and textual hermeneutics. Kress, Helga Helga Kress is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland. She has published widely on women and gender in Icelandic literary history, especially medieval literature, including Máttugar meyjar (1993), Fyrir dyrum fóstru (1996), Speglanir (2000), and Óþarfar unnustur (2009). For further information, see her website: https://hi.academia.edu/HelgaKress. Kristjánsdóttir, Bergljót Soffía Kristjánsdóttir (1950) is Professor of Bergljót Soffía Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. She has been an active editor (e.g. medieval sagas and translations of modern theoretical texts) and has written about medieval and modern literature, not the least poetry, but is specialized in the novel Gerpla. The last decade she has mostly dedicated herself to cognitive literary studies and modern Icelandic literature, has written a book on the subject (hug/raun 2015), and has directed research on empathy in language, literature, and society. She is now working on a book about literary theory.

Kyzer, Larissa Larissa Kyzer is a writer and translator who was awarded a 2012 Fulbright grant to Iceland, where she lived for five years. Her translations include a collection of horror stories written by six to eight-year-old Icelandic schoolchildren, as well as the forthcoming Birds, which won the 2017 Icelandic Bookseller’s prize for Best Children’s Book. Her fiction and poetry translations have also appeared in CV2, Gutter, Ós — The Journal, Words and Worlds, Lunch Ticket, Exchanges and Quiddity. Larissa earned her Master’s degree in Translation Studies from the University of Iceland in 2017 and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. McGillivray, Andrew Andrew McGillivray is Assistant Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. His current research interests include medieval Icelandic literature, representations of Nordic culture in North America, and settler-Indigenous communication in Manitobaʼs Interlake region. His first book, Influences of Pre-Christian Mythology and Christianity on Old Norse Poetry, was recently published with Medieval Institute Publications, of Western Michigan University. Mendoza, Julian Julian Mendoza (Brynjarr Eyjólfsson) recently graduated from the University of Manitoba’s Department of English, Film, Theatre, and Media and Department of Icelandic, which included an exchange program at the University of Iceland. During his time there he worked on multiple translations, including one for Gyrðir Elíasson’s The Paper Boat Rains (Bréfbátarigningin). His current research interests deal with Beowulf and its relationship with Old Norse-Icelandic literature. Richardson, Paul Paul Richardson is an Icelandic<->English State Accredited Translator and Court Interpreter, with a Teacher's Certificate from St. Mary's College (now St Mary's University, Twickenham) and a Bacc.Philol.Isl. from the University of Iceland. Shaw, Alec Alec Shaw is an MA student in linguistics at the University of Iceland. He is interested in interdisciplinary research concerning language processing, drawing on linguistics, neuroscience, and mathematics. His current projects include studies of agreement and long-distance dependencies, compound processing, and the use of syntactic and prosodic cues, all in Icelandic. When he is not in the lab, he learns languages and reads as often as he can.

The Modern Reception of the Medieval Saga of the Sworn Brothers (Fóstbræðra saga)

Dedicated to Birna Bjarnadóttir, Chair, Department of Icelandic Language and Literature (Winnipeg) 2003-2015

Acknowledgements and Permissions

This project began with an event entitled Medieval and Modern: An Interdisciplinary Symposium. The idea for it was first suggested by Birna Bjarnadóttir, who envisioned a discussion of Halldór Laxness’s medievalist novel Gerpla (1952) over the course of a snowy Winnipeg afternoon in March of 2015. The original event was sponsored by the Icelandic Department and the English Department (now DEFTM), along with the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities (UMIH). The symposium seemed to expand of its own accord, leading to further events including one in March of 2016 in which Fóstbræðra saga was the topic of Ármann Jakobsson’s keynote address, with support from additional sponsors like the U of M’s Arts Endowment Fund, Distinguished Visiting Lecturer Series, and Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal. I owe thanks to my fellow organizers for these events, the members of the UMIH research group Circle of Premodern Students (CoPS). I held a term as UMIH Research Affiliate while working on this project; particular thanks are due to David Watt and Paul Jenkins. The Icelandic Department’s support was similarly crucial from start to finish; I would like to thank P. J. Buchan and Catari Macaulay Gauthier, and note the support of the Grettir Eggertson fund. When it came to the possibility of publications coming out of the symposiums, I noted that there was potential in continuing the discussions on Fóstbræðrasaga and Gerpla; I am grateful to Christopher Crocker for suggesting Scandinavian-Canadian Studies as a venue for this project, among other inspired suggestions. The Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada (AASSC) offered an incredibly welcoming forum for discussion of work related to the special volume at its 2017 and 2018 annual meetings in Toronto and Regina respectively, and I would like to thank the many members of AASSC who contributed to ensuring the success of those events. The final discussion of this research occurred in Ísafjörður in October of 2018, at a symposium entitled Lesið í sköpunarkraft Vestfjarða [The Creative Power of the West Fjords], organized by Birna Bjarnadóttir and Ingi Björn Guðnason, at which point this project may have in some sense come full circle. The support of the University of Iceland, and of Jón Atli Benediktsson and Guðmundur Hálfdánarson in particular, is hereby gratefully acknowledged. I would like to thank Elin Thordarson and P. J. Buchan for their invaluable translation assistance on this project, as well as the other translators whose work appears here: Julian Mendoza, Pétur Knútsson, Larissa Kyzer, and Paul Richardson. I am grateful to all of the contributors for both their inspiring work and their patience with the editing process; it has been an incredible learning experience. 16 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Thanks are due to Stephen Cowdery of the website Laxness in Translation for his help in providing information and obtaining materials. I am grateful to Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir for her help with permissions for Kristinn Andrésson’s article. Much of the research undertaken in Winnipeg was enabled by The Icelandic Collection of the Elizabeth Dafoe Library, curated by the late Sigrid Johnson. Sigrid and many other wonderful librarians helped make this project possible; please see each article’s notes for details. Finally, I would like to thank Helga Thorson for her guidance, Martin Holmes for his patience, and the many scholars on both sides of the Atlantic who responded helpfully and humbly to requests for contributions, comments, and suggestions.

Translations

Helga Kress’s “The Culture of the Grotesque in Old Icelandic Literature,” Ástráður Eysteinsson’s “Is Halldór Laxness the Author of Fóstbræðra saga?” and Kristinn E. Andrésson’s “A Modern-Day Saga in Fancy Dress” are English translations of articles previously published in Icelandic. Citations of the original Icelandic publications are followed by appropriate Acknowledgements and Permissions for these translations below. Andrésson, Kristinn E. 1972. “Gerpla.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 33 (3–4): 273–91. *This translation appears by permission of the journal, as the author (1901-1973) is deceased. The translation is by Larissa Kyzer (see page 183 for details). Eysteinsson, Ástráður. 1990. “Er Halldór Laxness höfundur Fóstbræðrasögu? Um höfundarvirkni, textatengsl og þýðingu í sambandi Laxness við fornsögurnar.” Skáldskaparmál: Tímarit um íslenskar bókmenntir fyrri alda 1: 171–88. *This translation appears by permission of the author; the translation is by Julian Mendoza, in collaboration with the author (see page 132 for details). Kress, Helga. 1987. “Bróklindi Falgeirs: Fóstbræðra saga og hláturmenning miðalda.” Skírnir 161 (2): 271–86. *This translation appears by permission of the author; the translation is by the author, with assistance by Elin Thordarson and P. J. Buchan (see page 85 for details).

Figures

• Page 13. “Seeress’s Prophecy” (November 2018). Credit: Jenna Glidden (Courtesy of the artist). • Page 118. A leaf from the early fourteenth-century manuscript AM132 fol.(170r) or Möðruvallabók (Courtesy of handrit.is). VISION Foreword Companions on the Edge of Iceland

ANDREW MCGILLIVRAY

he recent publication of Wayward Heroes, translated by Philip Roughton, marks a significant event for world literature, the first direct translation from Icelandic to English of Halldór Laxness’s T masterpiece novel Gerpla. It is also a landmark event that a special volume of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies is now dedicated to criticism related to the epic novel, its formidable author, and the medieval literature from which the novel draws inspiration. Both demonstrate the continuing importance and influence of the medieval Icelandic sagas and of the works of Halldór Laxness, who notably won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. The medieval Icelandic Fóstbræðra saga [The Saga of the Sworn Brothers] and the modern Icelandic Gerpla [Wayward Heroes] both tell us about the lives of two main protagonists, the titular “sworn brothers” or “wayward heroes.” They are Þorgeir Hávarsson, a warrior who is committed to the glory of armed combat, and Þormóður Bersason, a warrior-poet who, while pursuing glory in battle, also finds comfort in the company of at least two women in the West Fjords region of Iceland, the area in which early sections of both the saga and the novel are set. These companions are childhood friends who in their later lives dedicate themselves to the Norwegian King Ólafur helgi (Saint Olaf, who reigned from 1015–1028), referred to often as Olaf the Stout. The sworn brothers are never in the king’s retinue at the same time, however, which might strike us as odd, since they are “sworn brothers.” The everlasting bond of friendship between these two main characters is a theme that is shared by the medieval saga and the modern novel, and this Foreword takes up a key moment in the friendship as we find it in the saga and as it is recreated by Laxness. Even though they are so close, the sworn brothers must part company midway through the story, after only a few years of marauding in the West Fjords as feared bandits. They enter into a verbal conflict and their lives are changed forever. We will now look at two versions (and their translations) of this important and life-changing moment. The saga version relays the scene as follows:

Andrew McGillivray is Assistant Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 Þorgeirr mælti: “Hvat ætlar þú, hvárr okkarr myndi af ǫðrum bera, ef vit reyndim með okkr?” Þormóðr svarar: “Þat veit ek eigi, en hitt veit ek, at sjá spurning þín mun skilja okkra samvistu ok fǫruneyti, svá at vit munum eigi lǫngum ásamt vera.” Þorgeirr segir: “Ekki var mér þetta alhugat, at ek vilda, at vit reyndim með okkr harðfengi.” Þormóðr mælti: “Í hug kom þér, meðan þú mæltir, ok munu vit skilja félagit.” Þeir gerðu svá … (150–51)

[Thorgeir said, “Which of us do you think would win if we confronted each other?” Thormod answered, “I don’t know, but I do know that this question of yours will divide us and end our companionship. We cannot stay together.” Thorgeir said, “I wasn’t really speaking my mind — saying that I wanted us to fight each other.” Thormod said, “It came into your mind as you spoke it and we shall go our separate ways.” And that is what they did … ] (344)

Halldór Laxness recreates this scene, presented below, to which I have added ellipses and omitted some text for brevity:

Þorgeir segir af hljóði: Þótt þú sért maður elskur að konum, Þormóður, er eigi við það að dyljast að allra manna ertu vopnfimastur þeirra er eg þekki … og leiði eg tíðum hug minn að því, hvor okkar fóstbræðra mundi af öðrum bera ef við reyndim með okkur. Þormóður segir þá: Eg hef vakað við hlið þér um nætur oftsinnis þá er þú svafst, Þorgeir, og horft á brjóst þitt bifast við slátt þess hjarta sem eg veit öllum hjörtum prúðara, og virt fyrir mér háls þinn er aldregi hefur styrkri súla borið höfuð manns. Þorgeir mælti: Hví hjóstu mig eigi þá? Þarflaust er þess að spyrja vinur, mælti Þormóður … Eg veit eigi hvor okkar mundi af öðrum bera í einvígi; en þeim orðum hefur þú mælt sem nú munu skilja vorar samvistir og föruneyti … Mér vóru þau orð eigi alhugað, kallaði Þorgeir Hávarsson. Í hug kom þér meðan mæltir, svaraði Þormóður; og að vísu oft fyrr; og mun skilja með okkur fyrst að sinni, og far heill og vel. (137–39)

[Þorgeir said, quietly: “Although you are a man who loves women, Þormóður, you are clearly the most skilled with weapons of any man that I know … and at times I find myself pondering which of us sworn brothers would be the victor if we tried our strength against each other.” 20 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Þormóður then said: “I have often lain awake by your side as you slept, Þorgeir, and watched your chest move to the beating of the heart that I know to be braver than all others, and gazed at your neck, knowing that no stronger pillar has ever borne a man’s head.” Þorgeir said: “Why did you not behead me then?” “You have no need to ask, friend,” said Þormóður … “I do not know which of us would win in single combat with the other, but the words you have spoken now will divide our company and fellowship … ” “I did not mean all that I said!” shouted Þorgeir Hávarsson. “You said what you were thinking,” replied Þormóður, “and what you no doubt have thought oft times before. And now we shall part for the time being. Fare you well.”] (157–58)

The significance of Þorgeir’s words as they are spoken is emphasized in both the saga and the novel, for the words and what they represent cause the companions to part. The saga version is short and direct, the point quickly made that the two must split because of the question Þorgeir has asked about which one of the two would overcome the other in physical combat. Þormóður interprets this question to represent what his companion has thought, even though Þorgeir tries to backtrack and insists he spoke something that is not sincere. In Laxness’s version the scene is made more complex. Þorgeir says that he has repeatedly wondered which of the two would be victorious over the other, and among Þormóður’s final words to Þorgeir is the vocalized confirmation that his companion has likely thought about which of the two would overpower the other many times before, which for the warrior-poet is too difficult to accept, even though, as in the saga, Þorgeir denies his words after he learns Þormóður is upset by them. This unwelcome knowledge breaks the trust that the two share, even if the trust has already been strained. The verbal conflict in the saga is immediate and unfortunate, but in the novel it represents an accumulation of doubt that lingers for too long. Shortly after the confrontation Þorgeir travels abroad to search for glory. For the warrior there is more honour to be gained in the service of foreign kings than in the West Fjords, and, for that matter, he has been outlawed for his behaviour in Iceland and has little choice but to leave the country. When Þorgeir meets an early death, one that an audience might expect due to his character’s violent impulses, Þormóður in turn leaves the West Fjords behind, dedicating his own life to avenging that of his sworn brother, even though the two parted ways earlier in the story in the scene cited above. Made official in the sworn oath of their youth, their bond remains so strong that even though they could no longer continue on side by side Þormóður is no less dedicated to his lost companion. Their separation is exactly what preserves their friendship, and their spectacular bond draws our attention to the bond that exists between a writer and his subject FOREWORD: COMPANIONS ON THE EDGE OF ICELAND 21 matter, the unbreakable connection between creation and destruction, and not least the relationship a reader develops with a great work of literature. Readers of the saga and those of the novel follow the sworn brothers, these wayward heroes, through their adventures together and apart, their travels in Iceland and abroad. What follows in this special volume is sure to add to our knowledge of the saga, the novel, and the illustrious Halldór Laxness, enriching our appreciation for world literature, translation, and the various arts of criticism. This reader, for one, eagerly follows the path set out by the volume’s guest editor, which celebrates the many versions of this story, among others, and challenges contemporary readers to think about the words we read and the meanings behind them. The story of Þorgeir and Þormóður illustrates many qualities of great literature, one of which is to transform that which is familiar, another to remind us of what we might forget.

REFERENCES Fóstbrœðra saga. 1943. Edited by Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 119–276. Íslenzk fornrit 6. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Laxness, Halldór. 1952. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Vaka-Helgafell. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. Brooklyn: Archipelago Books. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. 1997. Translated by Martin S. Regal. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. Avant-propos Compagnons à la lisière de l’Islande

ANDREW MCGILLIVRAY

a récente publication de Wayward Heroes, traduite par Philip Roughton, constitue un événement marquant pour la littérature mondiale. Il s’agit de la première traduction directe de l’islandais à anglais du L roman Gerpla de Halldór Laxness. Qu’un volume spécial d’Études scandinaves au Canada soit désormais consacré aux critiques se rapportant au roman épique, à son auteur impressionnant et à la littérature médiévale dont le roman tire son inspiration, est également un événement marquant. De telles étapes-clé témoignent de l’importance et de l’influence persistantes des sagas médiévales islandaises et des œuvres de Halldór Laxness, qui a notamment remporté le prix Nobel de littérature en 1955. La Fóstbræðra saga médiévale islandaise [la Saga des frères jurés] et le roman islandais moderne Gerpla [en français « La Saga des fiers-à-bras », traduit récemment en anglais par « Wayward Heroes »] nous parlent tous deux de la vie de deux protagonistes principaux, les « frères jurés » ou « fiers à bras ». Il s’agit de Þorgeir Hávarsson, un guerrier dédié à la gloire du combat armé, et Þormóður Bersason, un poète guerrier qui, tout en cherchant la gloire au combat, se console également en compagnie d’au moins deux femmes dans la région des Fjords occidentaux de l’Islande, région dans laquelle les premiers passages tant de la saga et que du roman sont situés. Ces compagnons sont des amis d’enfance qui se consacrent plus tard au roi norvégien Ólafur helgi (Saint Olaf, qui a régné de 1015 à 1028), souvent appelé Olaf le Gros. Les frères jurés ne font toutefois jamais partie de la suite du roi en même temps, ce qui peut nous paraître étrange, puisque ce sont des « frères jurés ». Le lien éternel d’amitié entre ces deux personnages principaux est un thème que partagent la saga médiévale et le roman moderne, et cette préface reprend un moment clé de cette amitié tel qu’il se trouve dans la saga et tel que recréé par Laxness. Même s’ils sont très proches, les frères jurés doivent se séparer au milieu de l’histoire, après seulement quelques années de maraudage dans les fjords occidentaux en tant que bandits redoutés. Ils entrent en conflit verbal et leur vie en est changée à jamais. Nous allons désormais nous pencher sur les deux versions (et leurs traductions) de ce moment important qui changera leur vie.

Andrew McGillivray est professeur adjoint au department de Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications à lʼUniversité de Winnipeg.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 La version de la saga décrit la scène comme suit :

Þorgeirr mælti: “Hvat ætlar þú, hvárr okkarr myndi af ǫðrum bera, ef vit reyndim með okkr?” Þormóðr svarar: “Þat veit ek eigi, en hitt veit ek, at sjá spurning þín mun skilja okkra samvistu ok fǫruneyti, svá at vit munum eigi lǫngum ásamt vera.” Þorgeirr segir: “Ekki var mér þetta alhugat, at ek vilda, at vit reyndim með okkr harðfengi.” Þormóðr mælti: “Í hug kom þér, meðan þú mæltir, ok munu vit skilja félagit.” Þeir gerðu svá … (150–51)

[Thorgeir dit: « Lequel d’entre nous, à ton avis, gagnerait si nous nous affrontions » ? Thormod répondit: « Je ne sais, mais je sais que cette question que tu poses nous divisera et mettra fin à notre compagnie. Nous ne pouvons demeurer ensemble ». Thorgeir déclara: « Je n’exprimais pas vraiment mes pensées, pour signifier que je désirais que nous nous combattions ». Thormod dit: « Cela t’es venu à l’esprit alors que tu l’exprimais et nous devons désormais nous séparer ». Et c’est ce qu’ils firent …] (344)

Halldór Laxness recrée cette scène, présentée ci-dessous, à laquelle j’ai ajouté des ellipses et omis du texte par souci de brièveté :

Þorgeir segir af hljóði: Þótt þú sért maður elskur að konum, Þormóður, er eigi við það að dyljast að allra manna ertu vopnfimastur þeirra er eg þekki … og leiði eg tíðum hug minn að því, hvor okkar fóstbræðra mundi af öðrum bera ef við reyndim með okkur. Þormóður segir þá: Eg hef vakað við hlið þér um nætur oftsinnis þá er þú svafst, Þorgeir, og horft á brjóst þitt bifast við slátt þess hjarta sem eg veit öllum hjörtum prúðara, og virt fyrir mér háls þinn er aldregi hefur styrkri súla borið höfuð manns. Þorgeir mælti: Hví hjóstu mig eigi þá? Þarflaust er þess að spyrja vinur, mælti Þormóður … Eg veit eigi hvor okkar mundi af öðrum bera í einvígi; en þeim orðum hefur þú mælt sem nú munu skilja vorar samvistir og föruneyti … Mér vóru þau orð eigi alhugað, kallaði Þorgeir Hávarsson. Í hug kom þér meðan mæltir, svaraði Þormóður; og að vísu oft fyrr; og mun skilja með okkur fyrst að sinni, og far heill og vel. (137–39)

[Þorgeir dit calmement : « Bien que tu sois un homme qui aime les femmes, Þormóður, tu es clairement le plus doué pour les armes parmi tous les hommes que je connaisse … et parfois je me trouve à me demander lequel d’entre nous, frères jurés, serait le vainqueur si nous essayions notre force l’un contre l’autre ». 24 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Þormóður déclara ensuite : « Je me suis souvent tenu éveillé à tes côtés pendant que tu dormais, Þorgeir, et ai regardé ta poitrine bouger au rythme du cœur battant que je sais être plus courageux que tout autre, et regardé ton cou, sachant qu’aucun pilier plus fort ne porta jamais la tête d’un homme ». Irorgeir dit: « Pourquoi ne me décapitas-tu pas alors »? « Il n’est point raison de demander, mon ami », dit Þormóður … « Je ne sais lequel d’entre nous gagnerait en combat singulier avec l’autre, mais les mots que tu prononças diviseront désormais notre compagnie et notre camaraderie … » « Je ne pensais pas tout ce que je dis » ! s’écria Þorgeir Hávarsson. « Tu dis ce que tu pensais », répondit Þormóður, « et ce, sans aucun doute, à quoi tu pensas souvent déjà. Et désormais nous nous séparerons pour le moment. Porte-toi bien ».] (157–58)

La saga et le roman mettent tous deux l’accent sur la signification des mots de Þorgeir tels qu’ils sont prononcés, car les mots et ce qu’ils représentent font que les compagnons se séparent. La version de la saga est courte et directe. Elle indique clairement que tous deux doivent se séparer à cause de la question posée par Þorgeir à savoir lequel des deux l’emporterait dans un combat physique. Þormóður interprète cette question comme représentant ce que son compagnon a pensé, même si Þorgeir tente de revenir en arrière et insiste sur le fait qu’il a exprimé quelque chose qui n’était pas sincère. Dans la version de Laxness, la scène est rendue plus complexe. Þorgeir dit qu’il s’est demandé à plusieurs reprises lequel des deux serait victorieux sur l’autre, et parmi les derniers mots de Þormóður à Þorgeir, se trouve la confirmation vocale que son compagnon a probablement pensé auquel des deux l’emporterait sur l’autre, à maintes reprises auparavant; ce qui est trop difficile à accepter pour le poète-guerrier, même si, comme dans la saga, Þorgeir revient sur ses paroles après avoir appris que Þormóður en est bouleversé. Cette connaissance importune brise la confiance que tous deux partagent, même si cette confiance a déjà été mise à rude épreuve. Le conflit verbal dans la saga est immédiat et regrettable, mais dans le roman, il représente une accumulation de doutes qui dure trop longtemps. Peu de temps après la confrontation, Þorgeir se rend à lʼétranger pour chercher la gloire. Pour le guerrier, il y a plus d’honneur à gagner au service des rois étrangers que dans les fjords occidentaux et, de fait, il a été déclaré hors-la-loi pour son comportement en Islande et n’a d’autre choix que de quitter le pays. Lorsque Þorgeir rencontre une mort prématurée, qui est peut-être attendue par le public en raison des impulsions violentes de son personnage, Þormóður laisse à son tour les fjords de l’ouest derrière lui, pour consacrer sa vie à venger celle de son frère juré, bien que tous deux se soient séparés plus tôt dans l’histoire, dans la scène citée ci-dessus. Rendu officiel par le serment juré de leur jeunesse, AVANT-PROPOS : COMPAGNONS À LA LISIÈRE DE L’ISLANDE 25 leur lien demeure si fort que même s’ils ne peuvent plus continuer côte-à-côte, Þormóður n’en est pas moins dévoué à son compagnon disparu. Leur séparation est exactement ce qui préserve leur amitié, et leur lien spectaculaire attire notre attention sur le lien qui existe entre un écrivain et son sujet, sur le lien indissoluble entre création et destruction, et, non des moindres, sur la relation qu’un lecteur développe avec une grande œuvre de littérature. Les lecteurs de la saga et ceux du roman suivent les frères jurés, ces fiers à bras, à travers leurs aventures communes et séparées, leurs voyages en Islande et à l’étranger. Ce qui suit dans ce volume spécial ajoutera sans aucun doute à notre connaissance de la saga, du roman et de l’illustre Halldór Laxness, en enrichissant notre compréhension de la littérature mondiale, de la traduction et des arts de la critique. Ce lecteur, pour sa part, suit avec empressement la voie tracée par l’éditeur invité du volume, qui célèbre les nombreuses versions de cette histoire, entre autres, et met au défi les lecteurs contemporains de réfléchir aux mots que nous lisons et à leur signification. L’histoire de Þorgeir et de Þormóður illustre de nombreuses qualités de la grande littérature, dont l’une d’entre elles consiste à transformer ce qui est familier et une autre à nous rappeler ce que nous pourrions oublier.

REFERENCES Fóstbrœðra saga. 1943. Édition de Björn K. Þórólfsson et Guðni Jónsson, 119–276. Íslenzk fornrit 6. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Laxness, Halldór. 1952. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Vaka-Helgafell. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Traduit par Philip Roughton. Brooklyn: Archipelago Books. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. [La sage des frères jurés] 1997. Dans The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Traduit par Martin S. Regal, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson Publishing. Introduction Dialogues with a “Head of Destiny”

DUSTIN GEERAERT

ABSTRACT: This introduction describes the volume’s organization, surveys its contributions, and explains how they fit together in the context of medievalism. It considers Halldór Laxness’s medievalism in the novel Gerpla (1952), but observes not a “hero’s journey” but rather the strange journey of a hero’s severed head. This “Head of Destiny” shapes many events, as the dead hero’s sworn brother pursues his killers to the edge of the known world in the remote ivory colonies of medieval Greenland. While some of this plot is drawn from sources such as Fóstbræðra saga, Halldór’s version of the story questions this mission. Two “Dream-Women” interpret the head’s ominous significance with prophecies of light and darkness, thus revealing the fate of this would-be avenger as he passes from life to the abyss.

RÉSUMÉ: Cette introduction décrit l’organisation du volume, examine ses contributions et explique comment elles s’harmonisent dans le contexte du médiévalisme. Elle aborde le médiévalisme de Halldór Laxness dans le roman Gerpla (1952), mais plutôt que d’observer le « voyage du héros », elle observe le voyage étrange de la tête coupée du héros. Cette « tête du destin » façonne de nombreux événements, alors que le frère juré du héros décédé poursuit ses assassins jusqu’au bout du monde connu dans les lointaines colonies d’ivoire du Groenland médiéval. Bien qu’une partie de cette intrigue soit tirée de sources telles que la Fóstbræðra saga, la version du récit d’Halldór remet en question cette mission. Deux « femmes oniriques » interprètent la sinistre signification de la tête par des prophéties de lumière et de ténèbres, qui révèlent ainsi le destin de ce vengeur potentiel lorsqu’il passe de la vie à l’abîme.

Dustin Geeraert teaches in the Department of Icelandic and in the English Department (DEFTM) at the University of Manitoba.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 his volume organizes itself around the thirteenth-century Icelandic literary work, Fóstbræðra saga [The Saga of the Sworn Brothers].1 It is a case study in medievalism, the reception of the Middle Ages in all T its aspects, since it is especially concerned with this saga’s “Afterlife.”2 It considers both the scholarly and creative aspects of reception; as Oren Falk observes in The Bare-Sarked Warrior: A Brief Cultural History of Battlefield Exposure (2015), “the porous nature of the boundary between scholarly analysis and popular retelling should itself be leveraged as a source of understanding” (5). In this case, the post-medieval journey of a single saga involves the work not only of textual scholars, editors, and philologists, but also of translators, writers, and critics. Indeed, the boundary between scholarly and creative engagement with the medieval sagas is difficult to draw in Halldór Laxness’s postwar retelling of the sworn brothers’ story, the novel Gerpla (1952), recently translated by Philip Roughton as Wayward Heroes (2016). One reviewer related, “I have heard from a leading historian that Gerpla is the best source he has read about the middle ages in Iceland.”3 Interdisciplinary consideration of the many-faceted reception of one medieval story may cast light on the meaning of the legacy of medieval Iceland in the modern age, but this introduction has more modest aims: first to survey the volume’s articles, and then to explore one major episode as interpreted in Gerpla. The articles examine the saga’s “Afterlife” in five sections, an organization which is mythical in its inspiration and thus both chronological and thematic. The present section, “Vision,” previews the special issue’s concept, topics, and approaches, while the next section, “Creation,” discusses the foundations of saga reception. Any medieval literary work’s journey through modernity begins with the work of textual scholars, as Susanne Arthur discusses in “From Manuscript(s) to Print: Editorial Practices through the Ages and the Case of Konráð Gíslason’s (Incomplete) Edition of Fóstbræðra saga.” Editions curate our understanding of the sagas and generate possibilities for everything that follows. How have scholars classified this saga, and how should we view its ideas of heroism? Helga Kress considers the saga’s composition, narrative perspective, and genre in “The Culture of the Grotesque in Old Icelandic Literature: The Saga of the Sworn Brothers.” The section closes by considering how sagas have been interpreted abroad. In “Old Norse in Italy: From Francesco Saverio Quadrio to Fóstbræðra saga,” Fulvio Ferrari considers the many boundaries that literature crosses through the often ideological process of translation. I am pleased to note that this special volume itself contains three articles making their first appearances in English translation, often with the active guidance of the original authors. The second section, “Preservation,” considers twentieth-century engagement with the saga in question in Iceland. It focuses on the figure of Halldór Laxness who, while perhaps best known internationally as an author, was also a translator, 28 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA critic, and editor. As Christopher Crocker discusses in “Guardian of Memory: Halldór Laxness, Saga Editor,” Halldór’s attitude toward Iceland’s literary legacy changed significantly over the course of his life; and some argued that he was not preserving the sagas but hastening the demise of his country’s culture. Moving from producing saga editions to writing saga-inspired literary works introduces metafictional considerations; Ástráður Eysteinsson’s article asks “Is Halldór Laxness the Author of Fóstbræðra saga?” Its subtitle lists key considerations: “On the Author Function, Intertextuality, Translation, and a Modern Writer’s Relationship with the Icelandic Sagas.” In his reinterpretation Halldór even blends medieval narrative with modern cinema, as Bergljót Kristjánsdóttir discusses in “Of Heroes and Cods’ Heads: Saga Meets Film in Gerpla.” Finally, Kristinn E. Andrésson’s article, “A Modern-Day Saga in Fancy Dress: Contemporary Social Critique in Halldór Laxness’s Gerpla” enshrines one of the appreciative responses Halldór received. In this article, originally written shortly after the novel’s publication and first published in 1972 on the occasion of Halldór’s 70th birthday, Kristinn welcomes Halldór’s unique contribution, but recognizes that Gerpla’s stark and startling use of the past to criticize the present will be provocative in a polarized world. The fourth section, “Destruction,” examines the troubled reception of Gerpla, in which the cultural tensions of postwar Iceland and the ideological clashes of civilization more generally led to polemical interpretations. In “Cold-War Confrontations: Gerpla and its Early Reviewers,” Shaun F. D. Hughes discusses both the praise and the denunciation that Halldór received from his fellow Icelanders—and examines the controversy that results when rival visions of medieval heritage clash. In “‘In the Shadow of Greater Events in the World’: The Northern Epic in the Wake of World War II,” I consider Gerpla as part of a wave of postwar medievalist novels that critically examine militant ideologies for common features. How do Halldór’s observations on ideological justifications for violence compare to those of medievalist writers of his generation in other countries? Finally, Birna Bjarnadóttir’s “Wayward Heroes: Vagabonds in World Literature” considers Halldór’s critique of western narrative traditions and the place of his work in European literature. While some were shocked by the iconoclasm of Gerpla, it can also be said to belong to a living tradition with deep roots: from the medieval period to the twentieth century, many similarly provocative masterpieces have radically questioned the role of literature in life and society, even if this makes their own foundations tremble. The final section, “Rebirth,” assesses the current position of saga literature and the inspiration that sagas continue to provide to writers. In “Afterword: Whatever Happened to the Sagas?” Ármann Jakobsson considers the ways in which contemporary writers have responded to the saga legacy, including the cases of his own works Glæsir (2011) [Bull] and Síðasti galdrameistarinn (2014) [The Last Magician]. Ryan Eric Johnson’s “From the Westfjords to World Literature: A INTRODUCTION 29

Bibliography on Fóstbræðra saga” and Alex Shaw’s “‘The Lore of Skalds, Warrior Ideals, and Tales of Ancient Kings’: A Bibliography on Gerpla” close the volume by summarizing research on the various versions of this volume’s central story. As this account makes clear, Halldór Laxness is an important figure in this volume in many ways; he is relevant whether one is discussing editions of the sagas, the place of the sagas in modern Icelandic culture, the global export of Icelandic literature (both medieval and modern), or literary responses to the saga legacy. In the remainder of this introduction I wish to consider a possible representation of Halldór’s interaction with the saga legacy in Gerpla. Like many an author or compiler before him, from Snorri Sturluson to William Shakespeare, Halldór looked on old Northern narratives with new eyes. Saga reception has often been mediated by literary comparisons and a search for connections. As Ian Felce notes in “In Search of Amlóða saga: The Saga of Hamlet the Icelander” (2016), interest in a potential saga source for Shakespeare’s famous play has reflected enthusiasm out of proportion to the evidence available for examination (203). There is, however, an important way in which Halldór’s literary project with Gerpla is akin to Shakespeare’s with Hamlet (1602); both reinterpret a traditional Nordic revenge story in light of a later genre with a quite different moral ethos and narrative consciousness. What happens when one imports a saga hero into a Renaissance play or a modern novel? Perhaps the clash of cultures will be captured not only in the story, but also within the psychology of individual characters. Felce distinguishes between the medieval version of Hamlet, a ruthless avenger whose cunning manifests itself in riddles and grotesque behaviour, and the early modern version of Hamlet, a “tormented Renaissance intellectual” undergoing an existential crisis (119). In Gerpla, Halldór’s “modern” version of the skald [poet] Þormóður Bessason seems unwittingly to transform from the former to the latter. Perhaps like Hamlet, Þormóður becomes a metafictional figure—one who reflects Halldór’s troubled interaction with his literary predecessors in the saga tradition.4 Like Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet, Halldór’s Skald Þormóður finds himself in dialogue with a departed friend’s head at a very vexed point in his life. While Hamlet interrupts the gravedigger by chance and thus discovers Yorick’s skull in the graveyard, Þormóður finds himself the recipient of a sinister delivery when a malicious vagrant, Lús-Oddi [Louse-Oddi], places his sworn brother Þorgeir’s rotting head on a stake at Þormóður’s farm. Shakespeare’s memento mori scene certainly captures a gothic atmosphere, but Halldór’s version is even more ominous. Hamlet famously laments, “Alas, poor Yorick!” (V.i.10) and foresees his own forthcoming death, but Halldór makes Þormóður’s morbid obsession clear by extending the dialogue for months, indeed over the course of the entire process of decay of the head in question. One might argue that there is a foreboding of this process while Þorgeir’ is still alive when, as Andrew McGillivray discusses in the Foreword, Þorgeir asks Þormóður if he has ever considered beheading 30 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA him—and thus creates great discord between them. It is noteworthy that one of Þorgeir’s most gruesome and pointless killings is a totally unprovoked beheading,5 and in time this does indeed prove to be the manner of his own death. When people at Þormóður’s farm at Djúp discover Þorgeir’s head, Halldór says that it is “mjög saurgað með gamalli blóðstorku” [filthy with old, crusted blood and gore] and even “tröllslegt” [ogrish] (Gerpla 317; Wayward Heroes 296). Halldór uses the “afterlife” of Þorgeir’s head as a ghastly symbol of how the past haunts the present; it provokes Þormóður to recall his oath to avenge Þorgeir, blood for blood.6 The heroic ideology seems impervious to criticism no matter how catastrophic its failings prove to be. By placing the rotting head in public sight, Lús-Oddi mocks Þormóður’s ideas and challenges him to live up to them. The first one to see the head, however, is the Irish slave Kolbakur, who realizes that Þormóður will seek vengeance and that this will destroy his marriage with Þórdís Kötludóttir. Since Kolbakur is devoted to Þórdís and wishes to please her, he offers to bury Þorgeir’s head out of sight. Her response shows that she believes this event has the significance of fate:

Húsfreyja [Þórdís] hlær við og segir að ef þetta var örlagahöfuð, þá var eigi hún til sköpt að fyrirkoma slíku höfði, tjóar og lítt þótt eg grafa, enda skal manna hver það höfuð fyrir hitta einhvern dag. (318)

[Þórdís laughs and says that if this is a head of destiny, then it is not for her to do away with it. “It is of little use for me to bury it, for some day, every man will encounter that same head.”] (297)

The above description of the head as “tröllslegt” may be significant in this context; indeed, a troll may be identified more with a haunting or an omen than with any particular unnatural creature.7 Þorgeir’s head does seem to haunt the farm in a decidedly “trollish” manner. Þormóður tries to preserve his friend’s head by salting it; it slowly captures his attention more and more, and he himself begins to withdraw from the living:

Hann reikar örendisleysu úti og inni en sinnir aungu starfi, og hefur upp fyrir sér í hálfum hljóðum kveðskap myrkvan. Marga nátt þá er aðrir menn sofa, rís hann úr rekkju hljóðlega og geingur til skemmu, og mælir við höfuð Þorgeirs Hávarssonar leingi nætur. (325–26)

[He meanders aimlessly both outdoors and in and does no work, but mutters dark verses to himself, in low tones. Many a night, while others sleep, he rises quietly INTRODUCTION 31

from his bed and goes to the storehouse, where he spends hours speaking to Þorgeir Hávarsson’s head.] (305)

Although readers of Gerpla are not provided with any details of these dialogues, subsequent events in the novel make it clear that the main subject under consideration was the obligation of blood vengeance. The relationship between Þormóður and Þorgeir has this mutual vow, of each to avenge the other’s death, at its core, and Halldór uses his retelling of Þormóður’s quest for vengeance for his sworn brother to reconsider the whole Northern warrior culture. The inability to let go of the past takes Þormóður away from Þórdís of Djúp, who is always associated with life and light in the novel, and to the ends of the earth in the arctic wastes of Greenland, where the exiled witch Kolbrún, Þórdís’s rival for the poet’s affections, dwells. This is actually a nickname which refers to her dark looks, as she is known as Þórbjorg Kolbrún [Thorbjorg Coal-brow] in The Saga of the Sworn Brothers, but she is only ever referred to as Kolbrún in Wayward Heroes. As in Fóstbræðra saga, Þormóður receives the nickname Kolbrúnarskáld [Kolbrún’s poet] after reciting rude verses about her, but Halldór hugely expands on the meaning of this. Unlike Þorgeir’s head, Kolbrún does not require proximity to haunt Þormóður. This Kolbrún is a seeress of the abyss; the fact that Þormóður simply is her poet whether he wishes to be or not thus carries an almost metaphysical sense of darkness. The monstrous “hero” Þorgeir, who still desolates farms even in death, is perhaps only Kolbrún’s pawn; even the delivery of his head to Djúp may be the result of her influence, which in Gerpla stretches across the Northern world. Behind her is Nature’s abyss, a heartless lineage of violent competition for survival stretching back beyond memory; in comparison the domestic prosperity of the farm at Djúp is tiny, limited, and local. Although from Þormóður’s perspective he is travelling to Greenland to avenge Þorgeir (as in the original saga), there are other ways of interpreting the manner in which this “Head of Destiny” lures him to Greenland; indeed, upon his arrival he acknowledges that Kolbrún has in some way caused this situation.8 Upon his departure, Þorgeir’s head is the last thing Þormóður leaves to his family. They find that it has been “fáða af mikilli list” [polished with great art]; it becomes an heirloom of heroism and inspiration to the community: “var það hinn besti gripur. Af höfði þessu feingu menn allgóða skemtan við Djúp leingi síðan, og dróst úr hömlu að klerkar sýngi yfir” [it was the finest of treasures. Folk in Djúp were much amused by this head for a long time afterward, and a proper burial for it was constantly postponed] (339; 317). It is venerated for generations—until a fire destroys the entire settlement (thus the possible sense of the object as a troll in the sense of an ill omen). One interpretation is that Skald Þormóður represents the author Halldór, and that polishing the skull represents a kind of mad, aesthetic death-worship. Perhaps what the community takes for 32 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA an heirloom or even a tourist attraction, Þorgeir’s head, is actually an evil talisman, a revenant that refuses to rest. For better or worse, every ideology has its relics, notes the writer whose journey took him through Catholicism and Communism.9 In Gerpla, polishing skulls does seem to represent the creation of a curated version of the past, one thoroughly worked over so as to shape or control the present. King Olaf Haraldsson, a silver-tongued opportunist and master propagandist, takes on this task in a monastery in Kiev. In a speech justifying his conquest, Olaf displays a distinct understanding of the prestige value of relics:

Vér munum reisa kirkju Heilagri Visku í Niðarósi svo að hvergi bíði veglegri er sjálfa Ægisif líður, og skulu þar á ölturum í gyldum skrínum dýrlíngshöfuð hebergð meiri og betri en annarsstaðar í kristni. (488)

[We shall erect cathedrals of Holy Wisdom in Nidaros, as glorious as the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and on its altars display golden shrines holding the skulls of saints, bigger and better than elsewhere in Christendom.] (458)

Þormóður’s own attempt to enforce the heroic code, whose symbol he has left to the community in Djúp, proves very different in Halldór’s version of the Greenland episode. The difference between Þormóður’s demonstration of prowess and dedication through his vengeance in Greenland in Fóstbræðra saga and his deluded journey in Gerpla reveals Halldór’s interrogation of the saga ethos. The medieval Skald Þormóður of Fóstbræðra saga avenges his sworn brother with a ruthlessness that would impress Macbeth: “I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none” (I.vii.47-48).10 Grímur Thomsen, the Icelander in Denmark who wrote essays placing the sagas in a European context, notes that even Shakespeare’s Hamlet still echoes the Northern hero who “plays the fool, while he broods over revenge” (50).11 Yet unlike the heroic medieval Þormóður, and indeed more like Shakespeare’s famous depiction of Hamlet as a man in the midst of a crisis of doubt, Halldór’s Þormóður finds himself staring straight into the abyss. Like Hamlet, Skald Þormóður begins to wonder whether meaning can be found in any such primitive notion as murdering one man to avenge the death of another, as his appetite for blood and glory wavers in the faltering Norse colony in Greenland. In Fóstbræðra saga Greenland is the home of powerful Norse settlers, and the same rules of honour and kin obligation apply there as in Iceland or Scandinavia. In Gerpla the Norse settlements in Greenland are depicted with archaeological hindsight; they are dwindling outposts of sickness and starvation, foreshadowing the collapse of Norse colonialism. Yet Kolbrún seems well at home in this most abyss-like of landscapes. In the midst of this vast and indifferent INTRODUCTION 33 wilderness, Þormóður’s belief in his mission dissipates. Detached from his previous ideals and even his own identity, he undergoes a profound disillusionment:

Hin skömmu sumur Grænalands virðast skemri orðin eða farast fyrir með öllu; og bóndi sá er áður bygði við Djúp þar sem hamínga þróast með blómi, heyrir rödd sína spyrja í meðal kaldra kletta í Ánavík, þar sem ekki blóm mun vaxa um aldur og ævi: hví em eg hér? (358)

[Greenland’s short summers appear to have grown shorter or even to have dwindled to nothing, and the farmer who once lived in Djúp, where good fortune grows with the flowers, hears his own voice ask amidst the cold crags of Ánavík, where no flower will ever grow: “Why am I here?”] (335–36)

Prominent critics asked this very question of medievalist literary works throughout the twentieth century, with varying degrees of hostility.12 But within such works the question has to do with larger themes of meaning and emptiness, life and death. Þormóður can no longer give himself an answer he believes in, and Nature provides only a silent witness.13 Nevertheless Halldór may have been mistaken about one thing: as a matter of fact, flowers may one day grow “amidst the cold crags of Ánavík,” as the Danish explorers in Greenland point out in Daniel Dencik’s stunning ecological documentary Expedition to the End of the World (2014). Marine biologist Katrine Worsaae explains the changing conditions in Greenland thus: “It’s so beautiful here, and it may become even more beautiful. There will be a lot of trees on the coastline. But that will be change, and many of us dislike that. It’s like getting back to your childhood home, and someone else lives there” (1:59). Few places on earth are simultaneously so beautiful and so inhospitable to human habitation as Greenland; the ruins of the Norse colony there offer a poignant reminder of the fragility of civilization. Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (1997), uses the colony as an example of “Why Societies Collapse” (2003). He points out that over-exploitation of natural resources and the behaviour of political elites according to short-term interests that conflict with the long-term interests of the society are common elements between the Norse colony in Greenland and many industrialized societies today (11:48). In “The Lost Norse: Why did Greenland’s Vikings disappear?” (2016), Eli Kintisch points out that climate change, which contributed to the original colony’s collapse, now poses a threat to the evidence of that collapse: “Organic artifacts like clothing and animal bones, preserved for centuries in the deep freeze of the permafrost, are decaying rapidly as rising temperatures thaw the soil” (1). Newer research suggests that the settlements were driven by the search for ivory rather 34 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA than farmland, an element which plays a significant role in Gerpla, as it gives Kolbrún power and allows her to travel from Greenland to Norway in order to be close by for Þormóður’s last battle and ensure his fate.14 In fact, while the Norse sought ivory from walruses rather than elephants, one could read the Greenland section of Gerpla as a sort of Heart of Darkness (1899) for the atomic age, with Kolbrún in the role of the rogue ivory trader Kurtz. Like Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, she takes on some of the ways of the local peoples, in this case the Inuit (Gerpla 356–57; Wayward Heroes 335), yet also manifests a sinister persona of colonial conquest. Conrad’s Marlowe tries to understand the paradoxes of Kurtz thus:

I think it [the wilderness] had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception until he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. (95)

In spite of himself, Þormóður similarly finds himself drawn to Kolbrún’s foreboding wisdom:

Fúsari hlýðir Þormóður hennar merkilegum orðræðum sem hann býr við hana leingur, og koma honum rúnar hennar á Grænalandi hinu myrkva í gæsku stað flestrar er hann áður naut, sælumaður hjá hinu bjarta Djúpi. (357)

[The longer Þormóður dwelt with her, the more eager he was to learn her wondrous discourses—for him, her runic lore in Greenland the Dark filled the place of the bounties he formerly enjoyed as a man blessed by kind fortune in bright Djúp.] (334–35)

Marlowe considers colonialism a “sordid farce acted in front of a sinister backcloth” (30), a description that could equally apply to Gerpla. By contrasting the Norse and Inuit cultures in Greenland, Halldór exposes the madness of war and genocide, of humans slaughtering one another when Nature already presents continual threats to human survival. For Conrad, organized violence in the pursuit of wealth, land, and resources, in the context of a clash of cultures and worldviews, must be viewed in an evolutionary context that is profoundly amoral, and even more destructive than it is creative, as extinction is its invariable result. Conrad’s Marlowe sees the Congo River as like the beginning and the end of the world (59), and speaking to Þormóður, Kolbrún similarly takes upon herself an apocalyptic mantle: INTRODUCTION 35

Em eg fyrir víst sú kona er byggir undirjúpin: skulu fyrir mér ekkjur verða allar skjaldmeyar yðar bjartar, og falla konúngar þeir er þér trúðuð best; og þóttú farir á endi heims skaltu mig hitta eina. (361)

[I am the woman who inhabits the Abyss. Through me, all your bright shieldmaidens shall be made widows, and the kings in whom you placed greatest faith shall fall. Though you were to journey to the world’s end, there you would meet only me.] (339)

Kolbrún’s vision of Greenland as a place prophetic of the world’s end receives a compelling visual parallel in Expedition to End of the World, with its striking imagery of tiny human figures wandering vast fjords. Conrad placed the “scramble for loot” (xxiii) of the ivory trade in the larger context of Nature, in which it is tiny: settlements are “no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background” (29), and even the life-cycles of empires are as ephemeral as candle-light: “We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday” (19). Similarly, in Dencik’s film one of the explorers makes the following observation on humanity’s place in nature: “We will only rule for a short time, and then it’s back to the spider. But as far as we know, the spider doesn’t write poems” (40:25). What sets us homo sapiens apart from other life forms, then, may be our imaginative capacity, even though this often involves self-deception. As Robert Trivers notes in The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (2011), our minds are systemically biased because self-deception offers an evolutionary advantage in the arms race between deception and deception-detection; it is thus a Sisyphean task to disentangle ourselves from the web of delusions within which we dwell (1). Conrad’s Marlowe refers to instincts and passions that drive people to self-destruction as devils, noting that none is so dangerous as the “devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly” (34). Perhaps this is the devil that Þormóður is truly beguiled by.15 For Halldór’s Þormóður there will be no vengeance for Þorgeir in Greenland; the situation is in fact much better described as Kolbrún’s vengeance upon him. Perhaps what is true of Þormóður and Kolbrún is true of Halldór and the saga tradition as well: “Skaltu æ og ævinlega í minn stað koma, hverja för sem þú fer, og þó aldrei nær mér en þá er þú stefndir mér first” [you shall ever and always be drawn to me, wherever you go, yet shall never be nearer than when you set your course farthest] (23; 21). Gerpla presents Kolbrún’s ivory-trading hut in Greenland as a place where mythologies meet in the context of Norse colonization in the West Atlantic,16 taking into account a vast geographical scope including not only Iceland and Scandinavia, but also Europe and the wider Northern and Atlantic worlds. Throughout his long journey Þormóður has always found a way 36 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA to adapt his craft to the needs of the moment, yet the world is too small for him to escape Kolbrún’s influence; he is her poet, and when he finally refuses to recite poetry, he is not far from death. Shakespeare’s Hamlet dies upon completing his mission of vengeance and wants his story to live on; Conrad’s Marlowe tells Kurtz’s story to his fellow sailors but refuses to tell the truth to Kurtz’s beloved. Halldór’s Þormóður dies for nothing and deliberately falls silent. Thus despite its wry humour and ingenious sense of absurdity, Gerpla presents a story that seems at times radically pessimistic: the cycle of killings only pauses long enough for deluded propagandists to praise its heroism. This broken poet finally regrets glorifying Þorgeir as a hero, realizing that the one cannot exist without the other. In Frygt og Bæven (1843) [Fear and Trembling] the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, writing as the fictional author Johannes de silentio [John of the Silence], interprets the respective roles of the hero and the poet in terms of mythic transfiguration:

Dersom der ingen evig Bevidsthed var i et Menneske, dersom der til Grund for Alt kun laae en vildt gjærende Magt, der vridende sig i dunkle Lidenskaber frembragte Alt, hvad der var stort og hvad der var ubetydeligt, dersom en bundløs Tomhed, aldrig mættet, skjulte sig under Alt, hvad var da Livet Andet end Fortvivlelse? Dersom det forholdt sig saaledes, dersom der intet helligt Baand var, der sammenknyttede Menneskeheden, dersom den ene Slægt stod op efter den anden som Løvet i Skoven, dersom den ene Slægt afløste den anden som Fuglesangen i Skoven, dersom Slægten gik gjennem Verden, som Skibet gaaer gjennem Havet, som Veiret gjennem Ørkenen, en tankeløs og ufrugtbar Gjerning, dersom en evig Glemsel altid hungrig lurede paa sit Bytte, og der var ingen Magt stærk nok til at frarive den det – hvor var da Livet tomt og trøstesløst! Men derfor er det ikke saaledes, og som Gud skabte Mand og Qvinde, saa dannede han Helten og Digteren eller Taleren. Denne kan Intet gjøre af hvad hiin gjør, han kan kun beundre, elske, glæde sig ved Helten. Dog er ogsaa han lykkelig, ikke mindre end denne; thi Helten er ligesom hans bedre Væsen, i hvilket han er forelsket, glad ved, at det dog ikke er ham selv at hans Kjærlighed kan være Beundring. Han er Erindringens Genius, kan Intet gjøre uden minde om, hvad der er gjort, Intet gjøre uden beundre, hvad der er gjort. (35)

[If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what then would life be but despair? If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds in the forest, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked hungrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches – how empty and devoid of comfort life would INTRODUCTION 37

be! But for that reason it is not so, and as God created man and woman, so too he shaped the hero and the poet or speech-maker. The latter has none of the skills of the former, he can only admire, love, take pleasure in the hero. Yet he, too, no less than the hero, is happy; for the hero is so to speak that better nature of his in which he is enamoured, though happy that it is not himself, that his love can indeed be admiration. He is the spirit of remembrance, can only bring to mind what has been done, do nothing but admire what has been done.] (49)

While admitting that misunderstanding may threaten the legacy of poets and heroes, Kierkegaard’s rhapsody over the poet’s transfiguration of the hero employs religious language; and indeed Kierkegaard seems to see in this transfiguration a means of transcending death, so that “Derfor skal Ingen være glemt” [Therefore no one who was great will be forgotten] (36; 50). A skeptic might object to Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” in the phrase for that reason, but whether we accept this reasoning or not, this passage makes it clear that the hero-worship of romantic interpreters like Kierkegaard himself, Grímur Thomsen, and Thomas Carlyle—author of On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841)—was really an attempt to find in literary traditions a replacement for the loss of religious faith so deeply felt by many nineteenth-century thinkers. Friedrich Nietzsche famously predicted that in the twentieth century this search for a replacement metaphysics and mythology would lead to drastic cultural shifts, radical political revolutions, and unprecedented wars.17 Reading Halldor’s novel in this way, whether we take the writer’s religion to be Catholicism, Communism, or literature itself, it is especially important to be careful with what one worships; attempts to transcend oblivion may in the end only hasten it. Discussing the divisive nature of political ideology in a Cold War context, James Baldwin observed in The Fire Next Time (1963):

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. (90–91)

Ideological narratives, which often appeal to human aesthetic and psychological sensibilities, including desires for certainty, moral status, and identity, can have devastating consequences. In this way they can become more dangerous than the starkest realities. In Gerpla, those with extravagant beliefs (or unhealthy imaginations) chase phantoms and risk everything on foolish crusades. As Halldór Guðmundsson notes, “since his Catholic period Halldór had often expressed the 38 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA opinion that ideals were of greater significance than people” (180). In Þormóður’s misguided quest, and particularly in his realization of how he has been a fool only when it is too late, we can perhaps see Halldór’s guilt over his defense of the “heroes” of communist totalitarianism. Even Kierkegaard, with his leap of faith, admits that the hero-worship of poets could, as a kind of replacement religion, be replete with all the same dangers; and elsewhere in Fear and Trembling he quotes the French poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux to the following effect: “Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot, qui l’admire” [A fool can always find a greater fool who admires him].18 Halldór does not give readers a single word of Þormóður’s dialogues with the “Head of Destiny,” the skull he polishes when he prefers the company of the dead. The contents of this dialogue have to be inferred from the context, and from the disastrous journey on which these dialogues send Þormóður. However we diagnose this disaster, Þormóður’s self-examination proves too little, too late. Perhaps what is truly timeless about Gerpla is its critical concern with how our ideals themselves can lure us away from the light of Djúp and toward the outer darkness of Anavík. Gerpla’s parodic medievalism, which mocks apparently archaic delusions, may be why from the first appearance of Halldór’s novel to the present, it has been compared to Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605-1615). Yet the connection may run much deeper than that; whatever else it may be, in the case of Gerpla, medievalism is also a kind of confession.19

NOTES

1. See discussion of the dating of manuscript witnesses of the saga in Susanne Arthur’s “From Manuscript(s) to Print: Editorial Practices through the Ages and the Case of Konráð Gíslason’s (Incomplete) Edition of Fóstbræðra saga” (47). 2. Jón Karl Helgason develops the idea of the reception as a given work as its “Afterlife” in Echoes of Valhalla: The Afterlife of Eddas and Sagas (2017). 3. See Andrésson in this volume for discussion of this comment (185); see Hughes in this volume for discussion of this and other reviews of Gerpla. 4. Skald Þormóður, like Halldór himself, was raised on traditional Icelandic lore. Halldór states that his grandmother “sang me ancient songs before I could talk, told me stories from heathen times” (Hallberg 3), while Wayward Heroes describes Þormóður’s upbringing thus: “From his father he learned poetry and other arts, and even at an early age could relate much lore of the Northern kings and jarls most intrepid in war and other noble pursuits, as well as of the Æsir, the Völsungar, the Ylfingar, and the renowned heroes who wrestled with ogresses. … What is more, he was fluent in the uncanny lore predicting the end of the peopled world and the twilight of the Gods” (16). 5. This is in contrast to beheadings “provoked” by slander as in Njál’s Saga. See discussion of this killing in this volume: Eysteinsson (144) and Geeraert (256). INTRODUCTION 39

6. See related discussions in this volume: of the description of Þorgeir’s head in the saga (Kress 81), of the effect that the head has on Þormóður in Gerpla (Andrésson 188, Hughes 225, and Bjarnadóttir 280), and of the symbolic importance of beheading in Gerpla (Kristjánsdóttir 173). 7. Ármann Jakobsson, The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North (2017), 17. 8. He says that she has caused birds on his farm to make noise and keep him awake; although this could be considered a joke, it could also be a reference to beliefs about witches’ familiars, and indeed Halldór often relays folkloristic materials in a wry and humorous manner—a well-established practice in Icelandic literature. 9. Halldór Laxness travelled to Moscow in 1932, where Lenin’s body was on display. Halldór Guðmundson notes that Halldór Laxness admired the Soviet Union even many years later: “Here Lenin takes the place on the pedestal of the man in Halldór’s mind when he was twenty: a man born approximately two thousand years earlier” (260). 10. In On the Character of the Old Northern Poetry (1867) Grímur Thomsen remarks that “Shakespeare, when conceiving such characters as Macbeth and Richard III, undoubtedly was rather a Northern poet” (45), thus assessing ambitious men who live and die by the sword as characteristic of the spirit of the Old North. 11. For discussion of Grímur Thomsen see Bjarnadóttir in this volume (283). For discussion of Shakespeare and the sagas, see Eysteinsson in this volume (133) as well as Heather O’Donoghue’s From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths (2007), which discusses Norse traditions in relation to Macbeth and Hamlet (101), and Jón Karl Helgason’s Echoes of Valhalla: The Afterlife of Eddas and Sagas (2017), particularly chapter 3. 12. For discussion of the critical reception of medievalist literature see Geeraert 2016, 9-51. 13. In a similarly iconoclastic medievalist novel, John Gardner’s Grendel (1971), the same question occurs in the same context of a confrontation with ancient and silent Nature, when the titular character asks his mother amidst the stalactites of dripping caves, “Why are we here?” (28). She can no longer speak or remember; thus cut off from cultural memory or traditions of his ancestors, Gardner’s Grendel finds himself separated from any mythological system that might bestow meaning upon his actions or provide any sense of identity. Like in Halldór’s novel, Nature provides no answers. Gardner’s dragon, whose intelligence perfectly and identically models the laws of Nature, rejects the question itself: “Why? Ridiculous question. Why anything?” (73). 14. It is likely that Kólbrun is directly responsible for Þormóður’s final fate, as she sends her slave Lóðin to kill him just before the battle (although the battle and its aftermath are not depicted in Halldór’s novel). Moreover in Gerpla Kolbakur, the slave of Kólbrun’s rival for Þormóður’s affections, Þórdís of Djúp, specifically refuses to kill Þormóður to please her. This is another example of how Þórdís and Kólbrun mirror one another as the Light and Dark aspects of nature and fate, who are even depicted in a dream sequence fighting over the soul of Þormóður. 15. Of course, Þormóður refers to the Norse Hel rather than to the Christian Hell. Later in Wayward Heroes, Þormóður gives his own account of his journey: “When at last I escaped 40 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

that cruel woman, after being constantly confounded by her sorcery in the darkest of places, I determined to make my way north to the farthest reaches containing any seeds of human life, to see whether I might be fortunate enough to carry out my revenge, and I joined the company of men who gather narwhal tusks and slaughter trolls. Yet after the trolls that we had gone to slaughter saved my life, and cured my broken leg and frostbite, and elevated me to the rank of their dogs, I felt as if those two churls, Well-Pisser and Louse-Crop, were nothing but the offspring of my delirium—once I had come north of Northern Seat, I forgot the purpose of my journey. It seems rather likely to me that Þorgeir’s slayers now occupy a place below Niflheimur, in the ninth and worst world” (384–85). 16. Here Gerpla seems to anticipate a genre of novels and films that has since developed that depict the contact between European and First Nations populations in the West Atlantic and North America in terms of the meeting of disparate mythologies, and which often include elements of supernatural horror. Examples include novels such as Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1988), William Vollman’s The Ice-Shirt (1990), and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (2001), and films like Ravenous (1999), Valhalla Rising (2009), and The Revenant (2015); one finds similar elements in The Terror (Dan Simmons novel 2007, film series 2018) and in Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), the Inuktitut epic film. 17. On how these shifts affected the reception of Norse literature, see Julie Zernack, “Old Norse Myths and the Poetic Edda as Tools of Political Propaganda” (239). 18. French quotation and English translation from Alistair Hannay’s translation of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (84). Hannay’s footnote there gives Boileau’s L’art poétique (I. 232) as Kierkegaard’s source. The corresponding discussion in Kierkegaard’s original Frygt og Bæven is on page 82. 19. One might consider many of the works herein discussed as confessions in some sense: not only Don Quixote, which Cervantes admitted was in some sense autobiographical, but also Hamlet, Fear and Trembling, and Heart of Darkness. Don Quixote, of course, eccentrically imagines himself a knight errant in the age of gunpowder. His attempt to act out an archaic heroic role reveals his compulsive self-deception. Comparing Cervantes’ novel to Halldór’s Gerpla, Peter Hallberg writes, “In an anachronistic manner, like Don Quixote, they [the Sworn Brothers] adopt in all seriousness extremely old-fashioned ideas and attitudes, and are firmly resolved to realize the Viking style in their own lives” (14). Others compared Halldór’s literary project to that described in Jorge Luis Borges’s story “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote” (1939) [Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote]. With characteristic humour, Borges describes Menard’s writing plan as a kind of method acting: to “Learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor or Turk, forget the history of Europe from 1602-1918 … to be Miguel de Cervantes” (91). Of course, a modern author could never be a medieval one, but explaining why requires a theory of authorship. In Borges the Unacknowledged Medievalist: Old English and Old Norse in His Life and Work (2014), M. J. Toswell calls this story “a tour-de-force investigating the notion of originality and authorship in ways both clever and profound” (70). See Eysteinsson in this volume, “Is Halldór Laxness the Author of Fóstbræðra saga?” (141); comparisons to Don Quixote are also discussed in this volume by Crocker (114), Hughes (215), and Bjarnadóttir (278). INTRODUCTION 41

REFERENCES Baldwin, James. 1995. The Fire Next Time. New York: Random House. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1998. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” In Collected Fictions. Translated by Andrew Hurley, 88–95. New York: Penguin. Carlyle, Thomas. 1897. On Heroes, Hero–Worship and the Heroic in History. New York: MacMillan. Cervantes, Miguel. 2002. Don Quixote. Translated by John Rutherford. New York: Penguin. Conrad, Joseph. 2000. Heart of Darkness. Toronto: Penguin. Dencik, Daniel. 2014. Expedition to the End of the World. Copenhagen: Dencik Entertainment. Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton. ⸻. 2003. “Why Societies Collapse.” Vancouver: TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). Accessed 13 August 2019. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=IESYMFtLIis. Falk, Oren. 2015. The Bare–Sarked Warrior: A Brief Cultural History of Battlefield Exposure. Tempe: Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Felce, Ian. 2016. “In Search of Amlóða saga: The Saga of Hamlet the Icelander.” In Studies in the Transmission and Reception of Old Norse Literature: The Hyperborean Muse in European Culture. Edited by Judy Quinn and Adele Cipolla, 101–22. Turnhout: Brepols. Gardner, John. 1989. Grendel. New York: Vintage Books. Geeraert, Dustin. 2016. “Medievalism and the Shocks of Modernity: Rewriting Northern Legend from Darwin to World War II.” PhD Diss., University of Manitoba. Guðmundsson, Halldór. 2008. The Islander: A Biography of Halldór Laxness. Translated by Philip Roughton. London: Maclehouse Press. Hallberg, Peter. 1982. “Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic Sagas.” Leeds Studies in English 13: 1–22. Helgason, Jón Karl. 2017. Echoes of Valhalla: The Afterlife of Eddas and Sagas. Translated by Jane Appleton. London: Reaktion Books. Jakobsson, Ármann. 2011. Glæsir [Bull]. Reykjavik: JVP. ⸻. 2014. Síðasti galdrameistarinn [The Last Magician]. Reykjavik: JVP. 42 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

⸻. 2017. The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North. New York: Punctum Books. Jónsson, Guðni, and Björn K. Þórólfsson, eds. 1943. “Fóstbræðra saga.” In Vestfirðinga sögur. Íslenzk fornrit 6. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Kintisch, Eli. 2016. “The Lost Norse: Why did Greenland’s Vikings Disappear?” Science Magazine 354 (6313): 696–701. Accessed 12 April 2019. https://www. sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear. Kierkegaard, Søren. 2003. Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de silentio. Translated by Alistair Hannay. New York: Penguin. ⸻. 1961. Frygt og Bæven. Introduction and Notes by Niels Thustrup. Copenhagen: Gyldendals Uglebørger. Laxness, Halldór. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books. ⸻. 1952. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Helgafell. O’Donoghue, Heather. 2007. From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths. London: I. B. Tauris. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. 1997. Translated by Martin S. Regal. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. Shakespeare, William. 2015. Macbeth. Edited by George Hunter. New York: Penguin. ⸻. 2015. Hamlet. Edited by T. J. B. Spencer. New York: Penguin. Thomsen, Grímur. 1972. On the Character of the Old Northern Poetry. Edited by Edward J. Cowan and Hermann Pásson. Reykjavik: Studia Islandica 31. Toswell, M. J. 2014. Borges the Unacknowledged Medievalist: Old English and Old Norse in His Life and Work. London: Palgrave. Trivers, Robert. 2011. The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self–Deception in Human Life. New York: Basic Books. Zernack, Julie. 2016. “Old Norse Myths and the Poetic Edda as Tools of Political Propaganda.” Translated by Matthias Ammon. In Studies in the Transmission and Reception of Old Norse Literature: The Hyperborean Muse in European Culture. Edited by Judy Quinn and Adele Cipolla, 239–76. Turnhout: Brepols. CREATION From Manuscript(s) to Print: Editorial Practices through the Ages and the Case of Konráð Gíslason’s (Incomplete) Edition of Fóstbræðra saga

SUSANNE M. ARTHUR

ABSTRACT: The nineteenth-century Icelandic manuscript Lbs 220 fol. contains transcriptions of Fóstbræðra saga copied from Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.) and Hauksbók (AM 544 4to), stanzas from the saga based on various manuscripts, and comments on the text. It was written by Konráð Gíslason and later used as the basis for his printed edition of the saga, published in 1852. This article explores Konráð Gíslason’s criticism of Gunnlaugur Oddssonʼs edition and examines the methods Konráð used to produce what he considered a better edition of the text in his 1852 Fóstbræðra saga—taking into account that manuscript evidence, extant letters, and printed sources all indicate that the volume as it exists today was incomplete, and not what Konráð had envisioned. Yet Konráð Gíslason’s edition illustrates how ideologies—editorial, philosophical, and political—influence the works of editors and publishers, from the eighteenth century to this very day.

RÉSUMÉ: Le manuscrit islandais du XIXe siècle Lbs 220, fol., contient des transcriptions de la Fóstbræðra saga copiées de Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol.) et de Hauksbók (AM 544 4to), des strophes de la saga basées sur divers manuscrits et des commentaires sur le texte. Il fut écrit par Konráð Gíslason et servit ensuite de base à son édition imprimée de la saga, publiée en 1852. Cet article explore la critique de Konráð Gíslason de l’édition de Gunnlaugur Oddsson et examine les méthodes utilisées par Konráð pour produire ce qu’il considérait être une meilleure édition du texte dans sa Fóstbræðra saga de 1852, en tenant compte du fait que les preuves manuscrites, les lettres qui subsistent et les sources imprimées indiquent toutes que le volume tel qu’il existe aujourd’hui était incomplet et non ce que Konráð avait envisagé. L’édition de Konráð Gíslason illustre toutefois la façon dont les idéologies—éditoriales, philosophiques et politiques—influencent les œuvres des rédacteurs en chef et éditeurs, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours.

Susanne M. Arthur recently completed a postdoctoral research project at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 On the Importance of Manuscript Studies and the Editorial Process

hose interested in Old Norse-Icelandic literature have at their disposal a plethora of printed editions, translations in various languages, as well as adaptations in literature and other art forms. T While the basis for translations and related works are generally printed editions, these editions, in turn, rely on manuscripts, written on both parchment and paper, ranging in date from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth. The texts in these Icelandic manuscripts have been passed down for centuries; the same story sometimes being told in two significantly differing ways. None of the texts represents the archetype, and each manuscript, presumably even the oldest extant fragment, is nothing more than a copy (of a copy of a copy). Editors of the sagas are thus faced with the task of deciding how to deal with their textual sources. The type of edition—scholarly or popular, hard copy or digital—is generally dependent on the intended readership. Moreover, editors and publishers can often be driven by philosophical and political views. Thus two parties, despite sharing certain goals, can disagree greatly on the best approach. Using Konráð Gíslason’s 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga, this article looks behind the curtain of nineteenth-century text editions and editorial practices, which generally—but not always—began with the medieval codices, and often produced manuscripts in their own right before the final product landed in the hands of printers, publishers, and eventually readers. The article follows Konráð Gíslason’s process from studying the medieval codex, transcribing the text, collaborating with other scholars, all the way to completing, or in this case not quite completing, the desired finished product. At the same time, the scholarly, philosophical, and political environments driving publication efforts in nineteenth-century Scandinavia forward are taken into account as well, illustrating how Konráð’s edition was a reaction to the editio princeps of Fóstbræðra saga. Lastly, the article goes on to demonstrate that just as every extant manuscript is in a sense a reaction to a handwritten (and sometimes printed) predecessor, so can virtually all editions be understood as reactions to a previously published work, which for one reason or another was deemed insufficient.

Old Norse-Icelandic Literature during the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Konráð Gíslason and Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund

Interest in Old Norse-Icelandic literature rose in Scandinavia during the seventeenth century. Denmark’s and Sweden’s desire to establish their respective 46 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA nation’s supremacy over the other brought the Icelandic manuscripts into the spotlight, leading to a race on both sides to collect the codices (see e.g. Malm 101). The Romantic era in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meant a new wave of interest in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture, not only in Scandinavia but also in Germany, Britain, North America, Normandy, and even parts of Russia and Spain (Wawn 328–33). Simultaneously, Icelanders used their literary legacy to revive national consciousness in Iceland and promote their efforts for more independence from Denmark. The so-called Fjölnismenn [men of Fjölnir], four Denmark-educated Icelanders who established the journal Fjölnir (named after a legendary king from Norse mythology and one of the names for Óðinn; published between 1835 to 1847), were on the forefront of Iceland’s independence movement (see e.g. Wawn 332). One of these Fjölnismenn was Konráð Gíslason (1808-1891), who was educated at the Lærði skólinn [Learned School] at Bessastaðir in Iceland before studying law and, later, Nordic and Icelandic philology in Copenhagen.1 In 1846, he published Um frum-parta íslenzkrar túngu í fornöld [On the origin of the Icelandic language in ancient times], a seminal work and the first to distinguish between Old Norse and Modern Icelandic. According to Björn M. Ólsen (66), it rang in a new age for Icelandic language studies and the publication of Old Norse-Icelandic literature. Konráð Gíslason’s desire to advance knowledge and the study of Iceland’s literary heritage and language was, moreover, evident in his involvement with Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund [The Scandinavian Literature Society] in Copenhagen, of which he was a founding member. The society was established in 1847 to promote and publish Scandinavia’s medieval literature in Denmark. According to the initial bylaws—printed in its first publication, an edition of Hrafnkels saga (1847) by Konráð Gíslason—the editions produced by the society were to be prepared “paa en med Almenhedens Tarv overenstemmende Maade” [in a way that is in the best interest of the general public] (n.p.), and to be accompanied by a Danish translation as well as additional information needed to fully understand the text. As Springborg (231) points out, however, “general public” primarily referred to (male-dominated) university and scholastic circles. Konráð Gíslason prepared numerous text editions for Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund and throughout his career approached the editing and publishing of Old-Norse Icelandic texts with precision (see e.g. Finnur Jónsson 296). Konráð followed the so-called Lachmannian method of editing, which attempts to reconstruct a work’s archetype by comparing different versions and choosing the presumed most original variants, thus producing a mixed text.2 As a grammarian and philologist, Konráð Gíslason’s editing practices were clearly influenced by his special interests. His intention was not only to produce a readable text, but also to ensure that his editions would be useful for linguistic studies to the greatest degree possible, thus emphasizing the learned background of his intended readership. In his introduction to Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni [Two sagas FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 47 of Gísli Súrsson 1849], Konráð Gíslason (II-III) discusses seven possibilities of how to present a text edition, such as facsimile, diplomatic, or normalized.3 Moreover, he points out which type of edition is useful for what kind of work (e.g. linguistic studies, literary studies).4 Konráð Gíslason (1849, III) concludes that—despite having their merits—facsimile and diplomatic editions reach a smaller readership. After going over the pros and cons of each type of edition, Konráð states that he utilizes the fifth approach for his edition of Gísla saga, namely to reproduce the orthography of his exemplar, a practice that he followed in all his editions for Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund (see also Gunnlaugsson 217–18), including his edition of Fóstbræðra saga, which was published in Copenhagen in 1852.

Manuscripts of Fóstbræðra saga and its editio princeps: A Complex Matter

Fóstbræðra saga survives in three well-known medieval manuscripts:5 Hauksbók (AM 544 4to, c1290-1360), Möðruvallabók (AM 132 fol., c1330-1370), and Flateyjarbók (GKS 1005 fol., 1387–94). The redactions in these manuscripts “differ substantially in content, structure, and style” (Bragason 268). Both Hauksbók and Möðruvallabók only preserve parts of the saga. In Hauksbók, approximately the first third of the text is missing, while Möðruvallabók lacks roughly one third at the end. The text in the two manuscripts overlaps to some degree. Two eighteenth-century paper copies of Möðruvallabók exist—AM 566 b 4to and NKS 1149 fol.—which were made when the medieval manuscript was more complete than it is today. Editors (including Konráð Gíslason) have, therefore, used these manuscripts to supplement missing parts of Möðruvallabók. In Flateyjarbók, Fóstbræðra saga “is incorporated in four separate sections into the saga of King Ólafr the Saint” (Bragason 268). In the latter part of the saga, the two texts are interwoven in such a complex manner “that it is difficult to determine which sections originate from Fóstbræðra saga” (Bragason 268). In addition to the three major medieval codices, two eighteenth-century paper manuscripts, AM 142 fol. and AM 566 a 4to, are copies of a now lost parchment codex, referred to as Konungsbók or Membrana Regia (J. Kristjánsson 14, 18–25). For this reason, they are considered of high significance, similar to the medieval codices (Þórólfsson III). Gunnlaugur Oddsson (1786-1835) published the first printed edition of Fóstbræðra saga in 1822. The basis for his edition was NKS 1176 a fol., a late-eighteenth-century manuscript prepared for the Danish collector Peter Frederik Suhm (1728-1798). Suhm was a member of the Arnamagnæan Commission (see e.g. Bratberg), which had been established in 1772 to oversee the publication of Old Norse-Icelandic texts preserved in Árni Magnússon’s manuscript collection, among other things (Malm 107). Suhm likely had NKS 1176 a fol. produced with the intention of using it as a printer’s copy to publish Fóstbræðra saga (Þórólfsson 48 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

XL; J. Kristjánsson 27). The manuscript is a copy of AM 141 fol., with variant readings from other manuscripts (Oddsson, Formáli).6 AM 141 fol. was written at the end of the seventeenth century, and for the most part contains the Flateyjarbók version of Fóstbræðra saga, but also five stanzas attributed to Þormóðr kolbrúnarskáld (c998-1030) not included in Flateyjarbók. Towards the end of the manuscript, the text seems to be conflated with the text from the now-lost Konungsbók (Þórólfsson e.g. III). Björn K. Þórólfsson (XXI) points out that AM 141 fol.’s exemplar was not Flateyjarbók itself. In addition to the text of AM 141 fol., NKS 1176 a fol. also contains an extensive variant apparatus in Latin, which Gunnlaugur Oddsson translated into Icelandic for his printed edition (Þórólfsson XL).

Konráð Gíslason’s Edition of Fóstbræðra saga: A Reaction to the editio princeps

In a letter to his father, dated 26 September 1850, Konráð Gíslason mentions working on a new edition of Fóstbræðra saga. He points out that “hún er gefin út einu sinni áður, í Kaupmannahöfn, 1822; en ekki vel gefin út, og orðin þar á ofan ófáanleg” [it has been published once before, in Copenhagen, 1822; but it is not edited well, and moreover has become unavailable] (A. Kristjánsson 150). While Konráð Gíslason does not go into detail about why he considers Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s edition inferior, it may have been due to the fact that Gunnlaugur based his edition on a paper manuscript which itself did not follow a single medieval text. Moreover, Gunnlaugur’s exemplar was textually primarily related to the Flateyjarbók version, which has been shown to be the furthest removed from the original (see J. Kristjánsson 27–53). Konráð Gíslason believed that the medieval manuscripts were the foundation on which any study of Old Norse-Icelandic texts must be built and that any edition which neglects this “er óhæf og ónóg til málfræðislegra rannsókna” [is unsuitable and inadequate for the purpose of linguistic studies] (Ólsen 67). Konráð Gíslason was, thus, aware of the importance of beginning the editorial process by first consulting the medieval codices and giving preference to the presumed eldest version of the text; two things Gunnlaugur Oddsson neglected to do. Moreover, even though Konráð usually followed the Lachmannian method, he decided to print each version of Fóstbræðra saga separately, rather than constructing a mixed text, likely because the three textual versions are incomplete and differ significantly. Konráð Gíslason’s 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga bears the subtitle “Förste Hefte” [first volume], indicating that a two-part edition was his original intent, which was in line with the philosophy of Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund. The brief “midlertidigt forord” [preliminary introduction] to Konráð’s Fóstbræðra saga edition mentions that the current issue contains two redactions of the saga: FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 49

Möðruvallabók and Hauksbók. Regarding the Möðruvallabók text, Konráð Gíslason’s points out that “Skindbogen er naturligviis (sic) benytted saa langt den naar” [the parchment manuscript is obviously used as far as possible]. The pointed addition of “naturligvis” [obviously] is quite possibly a subtle criticism of Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s edition. However, Konráð Gíslason notes that he uses AM 566 b 4to—which, as mentioned above, was produced when Möðruvallabók was still more complete—to supplement missing text. According to Konráð’s introduction to the first volume, the rest of the edition, i.e. the second volume, was to include

sagaen efter Flateyjarbók; Anmærkninger; Forklaring over Qvadene, ved afdöde Dr. Svb. Egilsson; en dansk Oversættelse, ved Hr. Registrator S. Thorlacius; samt Titelblad og Forerindring til det Hele.

[the saga as it is preserved in Flateyjarbók; annotations; explanatory notes regarding the stanzas by the late Dr. Sveinbjörn Egilsson; a Danish translation by Mr. Registrar Skúli Thorlacius; as well as a title page and any corrigenda for the edition overall.]

Since the introduction indicates that Sveinbjörn Egilsson had passed away, the first volume must have been finalized and published after 17 August 1852, Sveinbjörn’s day of death.7 This second volume was, however, never completed or published. Benedikt Sveinsson (III-IV) assumes that the remaining edition was dropped, since Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Carl Richard Unger were preparing a multi-volume edition of Flateyjarbók (published 1860-1868), making Konráð Gíslason’s Fóstbræðra saga edition according to the medieval codex obsolete. Konráð may also have wanted additional time to prepare and publish the Flateyjarbók text, due to the complicated nature of Fóstbræðra saga being interwoven with Óláfs saga helga in the medieval manuscript. Financial reasons may have been contributing factors as well. Moreover, Björn M. Ólsen (74) points out that due to other projects and for personal reasons, Konráð Gíslason’s publication efforts slowed down for a few years following 1852. Even though the second volume was never published, personal records—such as letters and manuscripts by Konráð Gíslason and his collaborators—prove his continued efforts to finish and revise his 1852 edition. These records allow for a reconstruction of what Konráð had envisioned as the end product for his edition of Fóstbræðra saga, which he had hoped would be a significant improvement over the only available printed rendition of the saga, Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s 1822 editio princeps. 50 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

For the General Public or Educated Circles? Reconstructing Konráð Gíslason’s Intended Edition of Fóstbræðra saga

The National Library of Iceland (Landsbókasafn Íslands) houses the manuscript Lbs 220 fol. With the exception of one small slip of paper8 and some annotations, the manuscript is written in Konráð Gíslason’s hand. According to its catalogue description (Ólason 74), Lbs 220 fol. was used as the basis for Konráð Gíslason’s 1853 edition of Fóstbræðra saga, i.e. the Icelandic reprint of his 1852 publication (see n. 7). It is far more plausible, however, that the transcriptions and additional materials in the manuscript were produced for the original Danish edition. Manuscript evidence suggests, furthermore, that Konráð still utilized Lbs 220 fol. and added notes after the Danish and Icelandic editions had been published (see below). Using Lbs 220 fol. as a starting point, and adding evidence from other manuscript sources as well as letter correspondence, it is possible to follow Konráð Gíslason’s timeline for producing his 1852 edition, reconstruct his editorial process, and determine what the intended second volume may have looked like. Lbs 220 fol. contains the two versions of Fóstbræðra saga, which Konráð Gíslason published in 1852. The manuscript begins with a transcription of Fóstbræðra saga according to Möðruvallabók on fols. 1r-22v. This transcription is semi-diplomatic (see n. 3) for the most part, i.e. Konráð indicates expanded abbreviations by underlining the supplemented letters. Konráð clearly used AM 566 b 4to to fill lacunae in Möðruvallabók, which conforms with his statement in the introduction to the 1852 edition.9 The Fóstbræðra saga text from Hauksbók—partly in semi-diplomatic, partly in normalized form (in accordance with Hauksbók’s orthography)—follows on fols. 23r-39v. Konráð Gíslason also transcribes parts of the Hauksbók text in facsimile (fols. 40r-43r), imitating letterforms from his exemplar to a certain extent,10 and writing rubrics as well as decorated letters and initials in red, thus mimicking the design of the medieval codex. This facsimile transcription corresponds to folios 77r-v, 78r-v, and the top-half of fol. 79v in Hauksbók.11 These folios in the medieval codex are particularly difficult to read, which may have been the reason why Konráð Gíslason copied them separately in facsimile.12 The methods with which Konráð transcribes the saga show great variation. He not only alternates between facsimile, diplomatic, and normalized transcriptions, but also switches from a two-column layout to long lines within his Möðruvallabók text, occasionally adds line numbers (sometimes in accordance with the line numbers in Lbs 220 fol. itself, sometimes corresponding with line numbers in the medieval codices), and at times adds folio numbers from Hauksbók. In some cases, the reasons behind these changes can be reconstructed (such as when Konráð switches from Möðruvallabók to AM 566 b 4to), but most often Konráð Gíslason’s perceived inconsistencies cannot be explained. Since his printed FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 51 edition was to be normalized, it may simply not have mattered to Konráð to be consistent in his transcription. The focus was obviously on the text itself, where comparison between Möðruvallabók and Lbs 220 fol. as well as Hauksbók and Lbs 220 fol. show that he worked with great precision.13 In addition to the texts from Möðruvallabók and Hauksbók, Konráð Gíslason also transcribes some of the stanzas from Fóstbræðra saga from three different manuscripts on folios 44r-46v of Lbs 220 fol., with some marginal comments written by Sveinbjörn Egilsson.14 The final section of Lbs 220 fol. (fols. 47r-75v) consists of “Anmærkninger” [annotations]. That the transcriptions of Möðruvallabók and Hauksbók in Lbs 220 fol. were the basis for Konráð Gíslason’s Fóstbræðra saga edition, as its catalogue description suggests, seems certain, although there were clearly—and unsurprisingly—several steps between Konráð’s initial transcriptions and the final print, i.e. proofs to be corrected.15 The transcriptions as well as the 1852 edition also bear witness to Konráð Gíslason’s conservative and perfectionistic work as an editor and his practice to adhere closely to the language form of his exemplar. In the top-left corner on fol. 32r in Lbs 220 fol., for example, Konráð adds “enn overalt hvor Mbr. har det!” [enn everywhere where the manuscript has it!]. It can be observed that Konráð Gíslason adds a second n to several en [but] on this page (e.g. l. 1, 2, 4). An examination of the 1852 edition reveals that Konráð initially spells en as it would be expected with one n, but later uses two n, as the marginal note in Lbs 220 fol. suggests.16 The first instance in the printed edition occurs within the Hauksbók text (“enn þat er þeir máttu af sjá” (80, l. 23)), slightly earlier than the marginal note in Lbs 220 fol. According to Jón Sigurðsson (JS 19 fol., fol. 108r) a new scribe takes over in Hauksbók, beginning with the chapter where Konráð Gíslason begins to make the switch from en to enn (which in Hauksbók is written “En̅”). Konráð Gíslason thus follows the orthography of his exemplar, even to the point of differentiating the spelling conventions of different scribes.17 While it is possible that the 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga does not contain any variant readings to reach a wider, more general audience, as suggested in the bylaws of Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund, the annotations preserved in Lbs 220 fol. (fols. 47r-75v) may indicate instead that Konráð Gíslason was planning on adding annotations and variant readings in footnotes in his revision of the first volume. This is a possible indication that Springborg’s (231) assumption is correct and the “general public” referred to in the bylaws of the literary society in truth primarily refers to an educated elite. In his annotations in Lbs 220 fol., Konráð Gíslason points out special features in the manuscripts, for example, the use of red ink.18 He also makes references to additions to AM 566 b 4to in the hand of Finnur Magnússon,19 who had published parts of Fóstbræðra saga in Volume 2 of Grønlands historiske mindesmærker [Greenland’s historical memorials], and explains his editorial choices, such as conjectured readings of illegible or erroneous 52 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA phrases.20 The annotations in Lbs 220 fol. resemble those in other text editions by Konráð Gíslason, such as in his edition of Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni. As was mentioned, Lbs 220 fol. also provides proof that Konráð Gíslason used the manuscript after his edition had been published. The unbound leaves of Lbs 220 fol. are, for example, wrapped in a large piece of sturdy paper. A handwritten note on this cover indicates that the contents of the manuscript were to be used “til framhalds útgáfunnar á Fóstbræðra sögu” [for the continuation of the Fóstbræðra saga edition]. At the bottom of the same page, Konráð adds, “Skýring Svb. Egilssonar á vísunum er hjá Skúla Thorl. (9/8 54)” [Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s explanatory notes regarding the stanzas are in Skúli Thorlacius’ possession, 9 August 1854]. The date indicates that Konráð Gíslason was still using Lbs 220 fol. and working on the second volume to his edition a year after the Icelandic reprint had been published. As noted above, Konráð mentions in his preliminary introduction to the 1852 edition that the second volume was to contain Fóstbræðra saga according to Flateyjarbók, explanatory notes to the stanzas by Sveinbjörn Egilsson, and a Danish translation of the text by Skúli Thorlacius.

Accuracy or Accessibility? Konráð Gíslason and Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s Collaboration on the Fóstbræðra saga stanzas

No written evidence survives of how or when Sveinbjörn Egilsson agreed to assist Konráð Gíslason with his Fóstbræðra saga edition, particularly the stanzas. Nonetheless, several letters and documents give insight into their collaboration. In a letter to Sveinbjörn Egilsson, dated 30 September 1850, Konráð Gíslason informs Sveinbjörn that he intends to send him the Flateyjarbók version of Fóstbræðra saga as well as the stanzas “með fyrstu vorskipum” [with the first spring ships] (A. Kristjánsson 152).21 Presumably in response to this letter, Sveinbjörn writes to Konráð Gíslason on 27 February 1851, asking him for clear instructions on how to edit the stanzas, “því mér er grunar á að hér sé nokkuð ábótavant” [because I suspect that there will be scope for improvement] (KG 32 LIII No. 416). Konráð’s communication with Sveinbjörn Egilsson in these letters indicates that he had a timeline in mind for preparing the Flateyjarbók version of Fóstbræðra saga for the second volume.22 Between February 1851 and March 1852, Konráð Gíslason and Sveinbjörn Egilsson exchanged additional letters, which, however, are either not preserved or do not discuss their collaboration on the Fóstbræðra saga edition. The next time Fóstbræðra saga is mentioned in their correspondence is in a letter by Sveinbjörn Egilsson, dated to 5 March 1852. Here, Sveinbjörn says, “En um alt þetta vona eg að geta talað við yður sjálfan að sumri. Þá býst eg við, að við fáum Fóstbræðra söguna yðar” [but I hope to talk with you about all of this in person in the summer. I suspect that we will then get your Fóstbræðra saga] (KG 32 LIII No. 418), suggesting that Sveinbjörn was aware that the first volume was close to being printed.23 FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 53

While work on the Flateyjarbók text may have delayed the second volume, Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s explanatory notes regarding the stanzas were well on their way.24 In a letter dated 10 September 1850 (KG 32 LIII No. 415), Sveinbjörn writes to Konráð Gíslason regarding the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga, admitting that some of them are highly obscure. Konráð also discusses the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga in the aforementioned letter, dated 30 September 1850. The letter mentions that Konráð sent along proofs of twenty-four pages of his text edition as well as some stanzas “sem Þjer voruð ekki búnir með” [which you (i.e. Sveinbjörn Egilsson) had not finished yet] (A. Kristjánsson 152). Konráð Gíslason apologizes for not having been able to compare the stanzas with those found in Flateyjarbók, admitting that their interpretation may be quite challenging. Sveinbjörn Egilsson replied to Konráð on 27 February 1851 (KG 32 LIII No. 416):

Eg læt nú fylgja Vísurnar úr Fóstbrs. með upplausnarmynd einhverri, sem eg bið yður vel að virða og færa til betra vegar, ef þér annars getið fundið eitthvað í þeim nýtilegt. Þær eru mér víða mjög óljósar. Eg fer nú að gerast leiður á þessháttar, og held bezt sé að sleppa öllum vísum, og fara að eins og þeir á Hólum í Gíslasögu Súrssonar, og setja stjörnur í staðinn. Þesskonar stjörnur þurfa ekki að óprýða útgáfurnar. Einginn maður, hvort heldur er, les vísurnar, og af þeim er, held eg lítið að læra nú á tíðum, þegar öll hugsun hefir tekið aðra stefnu, eins og betur fer og alténd mátti við búast að verða mundi. ætla það væri ekki viðkunnanlegast fyrir almenning og alla, að prenta sögurnar, eins og nú er talað, þar sem því verður við komið?

[I am now attaching the stanzas from Fóstbræðra saga including with the word order rendered in prose, which I ask you to treat with kindness and improve, if you can find anything useful in them. I find them very unclear in many places. I am getting a bit frustrated with this task now and consider it the best course of action to leave out the stanzas completely and go about it as in the Hólar edition of Gísla saga Súrssonar25 and print asterisks instead. These kinds of asterisks do not have to deface the editions. No one reads the stanzas anyway, and I do not think one can learn much from them at this point in time where all thinking focuses on other things, and luckily so, as we could have expected. Would it not be best for the general public and everyone to print the sagas as we speak today wherever possible?]

Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s phrasing of “fyrir almenning og alla” [for the general public and everyone] is interesting, quite possibly implying that—much like Konráð Gíslason and Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund—“general public” may have referred to an educated elite, whereas “everyone” may include those less educated. Since Konráð Gíslason’s edition of Fóstbræðra saga contains all stanzas, it is clear that he rejected Sveinbjörn’s proposal to drop (some of) the stanzas altogether, likely because it would have gone against Konráð’s conviction to provide an edition that resembles the medieval text as closely as possible. Konráð was certainly 54 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA aware of the complicated nature of skaldic poetry, but he considered it an artform that needed to be preserved and appreciated. Konráð argued (1872, 314) that the skalds wrote for kings, earls, and other important political figures, and that the audience was expected to have the knowledge and skill to decipher even the most complicated stanzas. In short, the stanzas were not supposed to be easily understood; as Konráð Gíslason states quite pointedly, they “ere ikke for eenfoldige eller uforstandige Hørere eller Læsere” [are not meant for simple-minded or inept listeners or readers] (1872, 314). Even though the general readership may have had little interest in the complicated stanzas or understanding thereof, from a scholarly point of view, these stanzas remained important for linguistic, literary, and even historical studies. Saga writers used the stanzas—in the case of Fóstbræðra saga those attributed to Þormóðr kolbrúnarskáld—to give the stories the appearance of historicity, and it was not until the early twentieth century that more and more scholars doubted the reliability of the sagas as historical sources (see e.g. Cormack 13 n. 1). To Konráð Gíslason, Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s suggestion to leave out the stanzas, therefore, must have seemed entirely unreasonable and went against his own scholarly convictions. Moreover, considering Konráðʼs aforementioned belief that the stanzas were not meant to be easy, the inclusion of the stanzas serves as further proof that Konráð produced his edition for an educated elite rather than the general public. Despite their disagreement regarding the inclusion or exclusion of the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga, Konráð Gíslason relied on Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s assistance and the explanatory notes Sveinbjörn provided for his edition. In a chapter dealing with stanzas in dróttkvæði meter published in Njála II (1889), Konráð Gíslason (119) comments that he follows Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s redactions of the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga in all instances. However, while the first eight stanzas in Konráð’s edition of Möðruvallabók and all of the stanzas in the Hauksbók section are presented in normalized form, like the main text, the remaining stanzas in Möðruvallabók have been left in facsimile.26 It can be noted that Konráð Gíslason follows the same pattern in his transcription of Möðruvallabók in Lbs 220 fol., where in the first case (fol. 14r) he corrects the stanza from normalized to facsimile. The stanzas that Konráð Gíslason provides in facsimile in the Möðruvallabók text are also preserved in Hauksbók. Konráð’s reason for transcribing these stanzas in facsimile in the Möðruvallabók version may, therefore, have been related to the fact that both medieval codices preserve the same stanzas, with slight textual variation.27 Despite Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s obvious occasional frustration, the collaboration between him and Konráð Gíslason regarding the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga remained close and long-lasting.28 As was already noted, Konráð Gíslason transcribes a small number of stanzas from three manuscripts (Möðruvallabók, AM 566 b 4to, and AM 153 fol.) in Lbs 220 fol. These pages contain annotations in Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s hand, indicating that Konráð must have sent them to Iceland FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 55 for Sveinbjörn to work with (as the letter correspondence cited above also implies). The same was the case with transcriptions of stanzas in Konráð Gíslason’s hand preserved in Lbs 459 4to, containing documents owned by Sveinbjörn Egilsson. Here, Konráð transcribes the stanzas either in accordance with AM 566 b 4to or Hauksbók and adds variant readings from other manuscripts below each stanza.29 He also makes reference to the page numbers containing these stanzas in Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s 1822 edition of Fóstbræðra saga and indicates which stanzas do not occur in the Möðruvallabók or Hauksbók versions. In addition to Konráð Gíslason’s transcriptions, Lbs 459 4to also contains various transcriptions and clean copies of the stanzas in Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s hand, partly already with explanatory notes added. Sveinbjörn appears to have used the various transcriptions in Lbs 459 4to to later produce a final clean copy, which he then sent to Konráð Gíslason. This copy is preserved in KG 29 I 1, and could very well be the document Sveinbjörn Egilsson refers to in his letter dated 27 February 1851. In KG 29 I 1, Sveinbjörn Egilsson transcribes all stanzas from Fóstbræðra saga in normalized form, including stanzas preserved in neither Hauksbók nor Möðruvallabók. Underneath each stanza, he renders the text again, changing the word order to prose to make the stanzas more intelligible. Then he adds explanatory notes regarding the meaning of phrases, kennings, and heiti in footnotes. Sveinbjörn Egilsson also provides references to printed editions, such as the 1822 edition of Fóstbræðra saga or Finnur Magnússon’s Grønlands historiske mindesmærker. This section of KG 29 I 1 was likely intended as the exemplar to be used for the second volume of Konráð Gíslason’s Fóstbræðra saga edition and is extremely similar to Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s explanatory notes to the stanzas in Konráð’s 1849 edition of Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni (169–80). This corroborates that Konráð Gíslason had an edition of Fóstbræðra saga in mind that strongly resembled his Gísla saga edition, conforming to the ideas of Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund to promote the Old Scandinavian literature for the “educated public” in Denmark. On the final pages of KG 29 I 1, Sveinbjörn Egilsson provides a Danish translation of the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga. This, again, mirrors the set-up of Konráð Gíslason’s edition of Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni, where Sveinbjörn provided a Danish translation of the stanzas (182–88). It seems likely that KG 29 I 1 was the document Konráð Gíslason refers to on the cover of Lbs 220 fol., containing explanatory notes by Sveinbjörn Egilsson about the stanzas from Fóstbræðra saga and in 1854 in the possession of Skúli Thorlacius. Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s Danish translation of the stanzas may have been the primary reason why Skúli Thorlacius received the document. As the preliminary introduction of the 1852 Fóstbræðra saga edition mentions, Thorlacius was responsible for translating Fóstbræðra saga into Danish for the second volume. Due to the complicated nature of Icelandic stanzas, Thorlacius may have appreciated Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s pre-translation 56 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA of the stanzas into Danish, or Konráð Gíslason may have asked Thorlacius to see if Egilsson’s translations needed revising. However, no such translation survives and it is impossible to tell to what extant—if at all—Thorlacius had completed the task.30

The Many Editions of Fóstbræðra saga: An (Incomplete) Summary

The editio princeps of Fóstbræðra saga was published by Gunnlaugur Oddsson in 1822. It is based on a conflated text preserved in a paper copy of a seventeenth-century copy of a manuscript related to, but not directly derived from, the medieval codex Flateyjarbók. In Flateyjarbók, the text of Fóstbræðra saga is interwoven with that of the saga of King Óláfr the Saint. This version of Fóstbræðra saga has been shown to be the furthest removed from the original text (see J. Kristjánsson 27–53). Konráð Gíslason’s letter to his father from the fall of 1850 demonstrates that it was Konráð’s intention to improve on Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s edition. Even though it is not stated explicitly, it seems plausible that Konráð Gíslason’s main criticism of Gunnlaugur’s edition was Gunnlaugur’s choice of an exemplar several stages removed from the original text. While Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s intention may have been to simply provide a readable, complete version of Fóstbræðra saga, Konráð Gíslason clearly had an edition in mind that appealed to a more educated audience. As the preliminary introduction to Konráð Gíslason’s 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga indicates, Konráð wanted to publish the text according to Möðruvallabók, Hauksbók, and Flateyjarbók, thus providing readers with separate text editions of all major medieval manuscripts preserving the saga. Jónas Kristjánsson (28) concludes that Hauksbók and Möðruvallabók were the focal points of Konráð Gíslason’s edition because they are the two eldest codices. The preliminary introduction to Konráð’s edition, moreover, shows that he also wished to provide readers with a detailed analysis and explanatory notes regarding the stanzas of Fóstbræðra saga, as well as a translation for the Danish readership. The various manuscripts and letters discussed in this article bear witness to Konráð Gíslason’s ongoing efforts to revise and complete the Fóstbræðra saga edition he had envisioned. This edition was likely to resemble that of Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni. In this edition, Konráð Gíslason writes a detailed introduction of twenty-two pages, which includes, for example, a discussion of palaeographic and orthographic features (1849, IV-XIII). Some of Konráð Gíslason’s notes in the last section of Lbs 220 fol. (fols. 47r-75r) suggest that Konráð had similar intentions for a revised longer introduction for his Fóstbræðra saga edition.31 The annotations preserved on folios 47r-75v in Lbs 220 fol., moreover, include in many ways topics Konráð Gíslason discusses in footnotes to Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni, suggesting that he not only had a more detailed introduction but also annotations and a FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 57 variant apparatus planned for Fóstbræðra saga. Like the edition of Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni, Fóstbræðra saga was to contain explanatory notes regarding the stanzas of the saga, as well as a Danish translation of the stanzas by Sveinbjörn Egilsson. Lastly, the preliminary introduction to the 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga mentions an intended Danish translation by Skúli Thorlacius, thus going one step further than the edition of Gísla saga Súrssonar. The intended two-volume edition of Fóstbræðra saga, as it can be reconstructed, was most certainly in line with the philosophy set forth by Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund to publish Old Norse-Icelandic literature—which played a crucial role in the wake of nineteenth-century national Romanticism in Scandinavia—in a way most suitable for university and scholastic circles. It is undeniable that for Konráð Gíslason and other scholars his 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga represented an improvement over Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s editio princeps, providing readers and scholars with precise copies of the two primary sources of the saga text. Nonetheless, the unfinished and preliminary nature of Konráð’s 1852 edition—lacking the Flateyjarbók version, an introduction, variant readings, a translation, everything that would raise its status to that of a true scholarly edition (disguised as being created for the “general public”)—meant that an edition comprising all major manuscript branches was still lacking. The text of Flateyjarbók was not printed in its entirety until the 1860s (see Vigfússon and Unger), and Björn K. Þórólfsson’s scholarly edition of Fóstbræðra saga, the first to incorporate almost all significant manuscripts (and as such likely a reaction to Konráð Gíslason’s incomplete edition), was not published until 1925-1927. Konráð Gíslason’s Fóstbræðra saga was succeeded not only by scholarly editions. Popular editions, designed to reach a broader audience in Iceland rather than merely an educated elite (primarily in Denmark), emerged as well. In 1899, Valdimar Ásmundarson published Fóstbræðra saga as part of the Íslendinga sögur series established by the bookseller Sigurður Kristjánsson. Sigurður lamented that no one in Iceland truly knew the sagas since the texts were not available for the general public, only in expensive scholarly editions. He thus created the Íslendinga sögur series with the aim of producing affordable text editions for everyone (Ásmundarson 1891, III; Skúlason 5).32 Valdimar Ásmundarson (1899, I) based his Fóstbræðra saga edition on that of Konráð Gíslason, following Möðruvallabók in as far as possible and only switching to Hauksbók once the Möðruvallabók text breaks off, even though Valdimar assumes that Hauksbók presents the more original text. Valdimar also publishes excerpts from Fóstbræðra saga according to Flateyjarbók following the main part of the edition. Valdimar Ásmundarson (1891, VI) states in his initial guidelines for the Íslendinga sögur series that he intends to follow the orthography of the medieval codices (much like Konráð Gíslason had done in his editions). His Fóstbræðra saga as well as other editions in the series are, however, printed in the so-called standardized old spelling (samræmd stafsetning forn), an artificially created orthography based on 58 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA that of the oldest Icelandic manuscripts, indicating that Valdimar changed his editorial practice at some point.33 As a reaction to Valdimar Ásmundarson’s edition, Benedikt Sveinsson published the saga anew in 1925, again using the standardized old spelling. In his introduction, Benedikt Sveinsson (XIV) points out that Björn K. Þórólfsson’s scholarly edition was forthcoming, but that his popular edition—which like Valdimar’s was financed by Sigurður Kristjánsson—could not wait until Björn K. Þórólfsson’s had been finalized, since Valdimar Ásmundarson’s edition was completely sold out. Benedikt Sveinsson (XIV) goes on to say that it was necessary to compare all previous editions and correct the most obvious mistakes, suggesting that he considered Valdimar Ásmundarson’s and quite possibly also Gunnlaugur Oddsson’s and Konráð Gíslason’s editions insufficient and lacking in quality. Unlike Konráð Gíslason and Valdimar Ásmundarson, Benedikt Sveinsson focused on Hauksbók—the oldest (though not necessarily most original) text—in those instances where Möðruvallabók and Hauksbók overlap. Like Valdimar Ásmundarson, Benedikt Sveinsson prints excerpts from Flateyjarbók at the end of his edition. In 1943, Fóstbræðra saga was published in the Íslenzk fornrit series, the standard scholarly editions most frequently cited today. Three years later, in 1946—and thus after Iceland had been declared an independent republic—Guðni Jónsson published a reading copy of Fóstbræðra saga for the general public as part of his Íslendinga sögur series 1946b. In the preface to the first volume of the series (also published in 1946), Guðni Jónsson (1946a, XXVI) explains that the books—“árgjöf til Íslendinga á morgni hins endurreista lýðveldis” [a gift to the Icelanders in light of the re-established republic]—are suitable for educational as well as entertainment purposes, and are to ensure that the Icelandic people are able to pass their literary heritage on to the next generation. The editions were meant as a way for Icelanders to learn about themselves, their history, and their place amongst the nations of this world (G. Jónsson 1946a, XXVI).34

Conclusion: Every Edition is Based on Both Manuscripts and Ideology

The Old Norse-Icelandic manuscripts and sagas played an important role during the seventeenth century, when Denmark and Sweden battled for supremacy over each other and for their place amongst the world’s most powerful nations. The same remained true during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Urged on by the ideas of national Romanticism, not only Denmark and Sweden but also other nations around the globe, and the Icelandic people themselves, used the sagas to justify their historical and political importance. This trend continued (and continues) during the nineteenth, twentieth, and even twenty-first centuries. Because the Old Norse-Icelandic texts were (and are) such an important source, FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 59 text editions and translations of the sagas were (and remain) in high demand during the time periods in question. It is evident that editions of Old Norse-Icelandic texts—Fóstbræðra saga and other sagas alike—vary greatly, ranging from facsimile, to scholarly, to popular, from imitating the orthography of the exemplar, following an artificial old standard, to adhering to modern spelling, written in the original or reproduced in adaptations and translations. The possibilities are endless, one might say, always depending on the philosophy and often political views of those producing the printed works; and each possibility comes with its own sets of problems. Valdimar Ásmundarson, for example, laments in his preface to the first volume of the Íslendinga sögur series (1891, iii-iv) that publishing an edition for the general public is problematic, because, unlike scholarly editions, popular editions provide a mixed text void of variant readings and most annotations. The reader thus loses sight of the fact that manuscripts can vary greatly. At the same time, he—like his publisher Sigurður Kristjánsson—understood the need for affordable popular editions. The debate between proponents of scholarly editions on one hand and popular editions on the other continued throughout the twentieth century. During the early 1940s, Halldór Laxness and other likeminded Icelanders proposed to publish the sagas with Modern Icelandic orthography (see Crocker in this volume), arguing that the artificial standardized old spelling “repel[led] ordinary readers” (J. K. Helgason 150).35 The scholarly community, however, feared for the future of Icelandic culture, which was deeply rooted in Iceland’s literary heritage (which was traditionally published in the standardized archaic norm). In fact, as a reaction to Laxness’ proposal, the Icelandic parliament attempted—but ultimately failed—to make the artificial orthography the law and give Hið íslenzka fornritafélag [The Icelandic Texts Society] unlimited authorization to publish Old Norse-Icelandic literature (J. K. Helgason 145). The vehemence of this clash over the past obscures the fact that both parties appear to have had the same goal: “to preserve native traditions and establish continuity between past and future, the rural and the urban” (J. K. Helgason 145), during a time in which foreign influences and urbanization rapidly and dramatically changed Icelandic society. However, “the best way to establish such a continuity was fiercely disputed” (J. K. Helgason 145). Even today, scholars still frequently disagree on the best approach for editing and publishing the Old Norse-Icelandic texts. While some remain rooted in the traditional ways of producing standard scholarly editions with variant apparati, others explore new ways of bringing medieval literature to the public, such as interactive digital editions, allowing the reader, for example, to choose between facsimile, diplomatic, and normalized. What has been revealed throughout this article’s discussion is that no edition (and no manuscript for that matter) can ever be considered perfect, and 60 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA some—such as Konráð Gíslason’s 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga—remain incomplete or even unpublished. Perhaps it is best to think along the lines of Sigfús Sigurhjartarson, one of the founders and Deputy Chairman of Iceland’s Socialist Party, who on 13 April 1943 held a passionate speech in front of the lower chamber of the Icelandic Althing in light of the criticism of other members of parliament against Halldór Laxness’ proposed Modern Icelandic edition of Njáls saga. Sigfús Sigurhjartarson (46) defended Halldór’s endeavour, arguing that the best way to honour the Icelandic sagas is to publish academic editions with detailed introductions and variant apparati for the scholarly community, quality editions in Modern Icelandic for the general public, as well as summaries and excerpts for children.36 As Sigfús Sigurhjartarson implies, each edition, each adaptation, and translation has merit. And no matter their motifs or philosophies, the work of editors, translators, and adaptors alike is—at its core—based on the Icelandic manuscripts, both medieval and post-medieval, which—much like the printed works—can be seen as reactions to, and sometimes criticisms of, a previously established text and/or milieu.

NOTES

1. For more on Konráð Gíslason’s life and legacy, see, for example, Björn M. Ólsen 1891 and Finnur Jónsson 1891. 2. In contrast, the second major approach to editing a text, according to Bediér, focuses on choosing the text of one manuscript as the best text rather than producing a mixed text (for more general information on Lachmann and Bediér, see, for example, Trovato). 3. A facsimile edition is a more or less exact reproduction of the manuscript exemplar, including letter shapes, abbreviation signs, headings, rubrics, and so forth. In a diplomatic edition, the text of the manuscript is followed closely, but abbreviations have generally been expanded and expanded letters highlighted, usually through italicization. Normalized editions reproduce the text in a standardized form, such as, for example, in accordance with the orthography of the manuscript, a pre-defined standard of Old Norse, or in Modern Icelandic. For more information, see, e.g. Guðvarður M. Gunnlaugsson; Haugen 112–13, 115. 4. Konráð Gíslason discusses the same topic in Um frum-parta íslenzkrar túngu í fornöld (1846). 5. It would go beyond the premise of this article to provide a detailed account of the manuscript transmission of Fóstbræðra saga. Only those manuscripts relevant to printed editions discussed in this article will be mentioned. For a detailed discussion of manuscripts containing Fóstbræðra saga and their relationships, see, for example, Björn K. Þórólfsson III-XL and Jónas Kristjánsson 13–96. 6. The variants are taken from Möðruvallabók, AM 142 fol., AM 566 a 4to, AM 566 b 4to, and AM 566 c 4to. According to Björn K. Þórólfsson (XXVIII), AM 566 c 4to (written 1705) is related to Stockh. papp. fol. 4, 4to, a close relative of the Flateyjarbók text. FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 61

Jónas Kristjánsson (15) suggests with regard to Stockh. papp. fol. 4, 4to (=Hólmsbók) that the first part of the manuscript is derived from Möðruvallabók, whereas the second part is related to but not a direct copy of Flateyjarbók. 7. In 1853, Konráð Gíslason released his 1852 edition with an Icelandic title page and introduction, leaving the text editions of Möðruvallabók and Hauksbók unchanged. The Icelandic introduction is slightly abbreviated, but still mentions that the Flateyjarbók version will be printed separately. 8. A small slip of paper, foliated as fol. 45 bis, preserves a stanza from Gísla saga Súrssonar. The stanza is written in Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s hand and it seems likely that Konráð Gíslason—or another person handling Konráð’s manuscripts and notes—accidentally added the leaf to Lbs 220 fol. Konráð Gíslason published two versions of Gísla saga for Det nordiske Literatur-Samfund in 1849, and the title page to the edition indicates that Sveinbjörn Egilsson was involved in the project. 9. Comparison between Möðruvallabók, AM 566 b 4to, and Lbs 220 fol. suggests that Konráð Gíslason indeed copied the text available in Möðruvallabók from Möðruvallabók itself where possible and only used AM 566 b 4to when a lacuna occurred in the medieval codex. Abbreviations in Möðruvallabók and AM 566 b 4to do not always coincide and where they differ, Konráð Gíslason utilizes the same abbreviations as in Möðruvallabók. 10. Konráð Gíslason preserves, for example, tall s (ſ), insular f (ꝼ), uncial d (ꝺ), ð, v (including in places where it is used for u), r rotunda (ꝛ), and small capital r (ʀ) in accordance with Hauksbók. 11. The folio numbers given correspond with the folio numbers in Jón Helgason’s 1960 facsimile edition of Hauksbók. In the medieval codex itself, three sets of folio numbers have been written at the top of each recto page (see Jón Helgason 1960, XXIX-XXX for details). 12. See, for example, Jón Helgason (1960, XXV), who mentions that during the late 1830s, Jón Sigurðsson applied “a tincture of gall” to certain passages in Hauksbók—including the three folios in Fóstbræðra saga—to enhance the legibility of faded text while transcribing the manuscript. 13. For the purpose of this article, the comparison between the various manuscripts and text editions had to be restricted to only a few pages in each manuscript. The only inconsistencies noticeable are instances where Konráð Gíslason forgets to underline letters, which in the parchment codices are abbreviated, and very rarely instances where he underlines something that is not actually abbreviated in the medieval manuscripts. 14. The stanzas in question are stanzas 3 to 7 according to Möðruvallabók, 2 to 9 according to AM 153 fol., and 2, 8, 9, and 10 according to AM 566 b 4to. The stanza numbers given here correspond with those in the Íslenzk Fornrit edition of Fóstbræðra saga (see Þórólfsson and Jónsson). 15. Naturally, the publishing process would have required various stages of proofs. Manuscript evidence in Lbs 220 fol. and letter correspondence with Sveinbjörn Egilsson confirm this. On fol. 47r in Lbs 220 fol., for example, Konráð Gíslason mentions in his annotations regarding a passage in Möðruvallabók (fol. 198r, l. 28) that “efter det förste kallaði synes til at mangle, hvis þó ikke er glemt foran at, saa staaer dette for þó at” [til 62 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

seems to be missing after the first kallaði; if þó has not been accidentally left out before at, then this (i.e. at) stands for þó at]. Konráð Gíslason later crosses out this comment and writes instead “har jeg tilføiet til og þó” [I have added til and þó], which corresponds with what he prints in the 1852 edition (cf. Konráð Gíslason 1852, 3). A marginal note on fol. 9v of Lbs 220 fol. (seemingly not written by Konráð) states “Dette Blad bedes tilbage med Correcturen” [Please return this sheet with the proofs]. Other markings in Lbs 220 fol. and occasional references to page numbers that match or almost match the printed edition also suggest that at some point Konráð Gíslason and his collaborators used Lbs 220 fol. in combination with printed proofs. In letter correspondence between Konráð Gíslason and Sveinbjörn Egilsson, who assisted Konráð with the stanzas in Fóstbræðra saga, both scholars make references to specific page and occasionally line numbers that match the printed edition. Since Sveinbjörn Egilsson died before the 1852 edition was published, it is certain that Konráð Gíslason and Sveinbjörn are referring to printed proofs in these cases. 16. In all these cases en refers to the conjunction “but” rather than to the adverbial enn [again/still]. 17. Similarly, it can be observed that while Konráð Gíslason transcribes fyrir [for] with a y in his transcriptions of Möðruvallabók and Hauksbók in Lbs 220 fol., the printed edition spells the word firir in the Möðruvallabók text and fyri in the Hauksbók text instead, once again differentiating the orthography of the two medieval codices in accordance with Konráð Gíslason’s editorial practices. The spelling fyrir sneaks into the 1852 edition of Fóstbræðra saga only four times, on pages 17 (line 21) and 33 (line 26) within the Möðruvallabók text, and on pages 100 (line 29) and 108 (line 23), preserving parts of the Hauksbók text. Lastly, the verb form sé is, for example, spelled both sè and sje in Konráð Gíslason’s edition, which—upon closer examination—is due to the fact that the word is sometimes spelled out in the medieval codices, but abbreviated in other instances. Konráð Gíslason used the spelling according to the manuscripts where words are unabbreviated, but expanded abbreviations according to a clearly defined system in all other cases. 18. See, for example, Lbs 220 fol., fol. 58v “Capitlets Begyndelsesbogstav er rödt” [The initial to the chapter is red]. 19. References to Finnur Magnússon occur, for example, several times on fol. 51r of Lbs 220 fol. 20. See, for example, Lbs 220 fol., fol. 52r “þeim Gisning for Hskrs ħm” [þeim conjecture for ħm in the manuscript]. 21. The original letter is preserved in Lbs 135 fol., a collection of private documents owned by Sveinbjörn Egilsson and letters he received. 22. Since not all of Konráð Gíslason’s letters to Sveinbjörn Egilsson are preserved, it is impossible to infer whether he sent Sveinbjörn a transcription of the stanzas (and quite possibly text) from Flateyjarbók as he had originally intended. No transcription of the Flateyjarbók text in Konráð Gíslason’s hand is extant (though that does not necessarily mean that he had not begun such a task), nor is there evidence that he possessed a transcription of Flateyjarbók. FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 63

23. Since Sveinbjörn Egilsson died before Konráð Gíslason’s edition was published, it seems likely that the personal meeting that Sveinbjörn had hoped to have with Konráð never happened. 24. Finnur Jónsson (296) points out that Sveinbjörn Egilsson was often consulted for his expertise regarding stanzas. 25. Sveinbjörn Egilsson refers to the 1756 edition of Gísla saga by Björn Markússon (see Ágætar fornmanna sögur). Here, asterisks occasionally replace stanzas, for example, on pages 157 and 170. 26. These are the stanzas on pages 39-40, 42, 45, 47, 52, 53, 55-59 of Konráð Gíslason’s 1852 edition. The corresponding stanzas in Lbs 220 fol. appear on fols. 14r-16r, 17r, 18v, 19r, 20r-21r. 27. In his edition of Gísla saga Súrssonar, Konráð Gíslason takes the same approach. He normalizes the stanzas in the so-called Saga Gísla Súrssonar (hin) minni [The shorter version of Gísla saga Súrssonar], but leaves the same stanzas in Saga Gísla Súrssonar (hin) meiri [The longer version of Gísla saga Súrssonar] in facsimile, with three exceptions. He does not provide an explanation in his introduction to the edition. 28. The working relationship between Konráð Gíslason and Sveinbjörn Egilsson (as well as other scholars) may not always have been unproblematic. Björn M. Ólsen (80–81) gives several examples in his short biography of Konráð Gíslason of heated written discourses between Konráð and other scholars, including Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s son, Benedikt Gröndal, who in 1866 angrily replied to Konráð Gíslason’s implied criticism of Sveinbjörn’s work as an interpreter of stanzas (see also Gíslason 1866; Gröndal). 29. The variants stem from Möðruvallabók, AM 153 fol., AM 163 e fol., AM 142 fol., AM 566 a 4to, AM 566 c 4to. According to Björn K. Þórólfsson (XXVIII), AM 163 e fol. is related to Stockh. papp. fol. 4, 4to (see n. 6). 30. Letters preserved in Thorlacius’ hand and written to Konráð Gíslason (KG 32 L) are generally personal in content and do not mention his professional collaboration with Konráð Gíslason. Since both lived in Denmark, they may have discussed most of their work-related matters in person rather than in writing. 31. In the introduction to Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni, Konráð Gíslason (IV-V) discusses, for example, which letters are used in the exemplar (e.g. é, éé, ee) to represent Modern Icelandic é, which Konráð renders è (the norm during the nineteenth century). In Lbs 220 fol. (fol. 74r) Konráð Gíslason adds a comment, indicating that in the Fóstbræðra saga edition è will be printed everywhere with the exception of íe, which should be printed je. This suggests that Konráð Gíslason may have intended to discuss the matter in a revised introduction to his Fóstbræðra saga edition. 32. The volumes of the Íslendinga sögur series cost eighty-five aurar (100 aurar = 1 Icelandic króna). Sigurður Kristjánsson admits in an interview that many considered it ludicrous from a business point of view to sell the books this cheaply, but that he saw it as the only way to ensure that knowledge of Iceland’s medieval literary heritage would not be lost (Skúlason 5). 33. This standardized old spelling had been developed by Icelandic and foreign scholars during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (J. K. Helgason 146). 64 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

34. In 1960, Agnete Loth reconstructed the medieval text of the lost Konungsbók (Membrana Regia), thus filling a scholarly gap in Fóstbræðra saga research. The first time Fóstbræðra saga was published with Modern Icelandic spelling was in 1970, in volume four of Íslendinga sögur, edited by Grímur M. Helgason and Vésteinn Ólason in the Íslenzkar fornsögur series. In 1996, the saga appeared as an audio book on cassette tapes (read by Erlingur Gíslason), which later was reproduced on CD; and in 1997, Netútgáfan [the online edition]—hosted by Snerpa.is and seeking to make Icelandic literature and other writings available online—made Fóstbræðra saga available in digital form with Modern Icelandic spelling. Another audiobook was produced in 2010, read by Ingólfur B. Kristjánsson, and available on Hlusta.is. Various other printed editions of the saga have been published or reprinted, but it would go beyond the scope of this article to list them all. 35. Jón Helgason (1958, 23–24)—like Laxness earlier—criticized the standardized old spelling as well, arguing that ever since the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas had been written down, scribes copied the texts in the orthography and language with which they and their readers were most familiar. To Jón Helgason, printing the sagas in Modern Icelandic spelling, thus, was really just a return to old traditions. 36. Sigfús Sigurhjartarson (47–48) also strongly criticizes the argument put forth by Halldór’s opponents that an edition of Njáls saga in Modern Icelandic spelling were to drag the saga’s good name into the dirt. He points out that no one would argue the same if a painter create a painting inspired by the sagas, and goes on to say that it is important that the medieval stories inspire artists in literary as well as other art forms.

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KG 32 L. KG 32 LIII. Lbs 135 fol. Lbs 220 fol. Lbs 459 4to. NKS 1149 fol. NKS 1176 a fol. Stock. papp. fol. 4, 4to.

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Fóstbræðra saga [audio book]. 2010. Perform. Ingólfur Kristjánsson. Hlusta.is. http:// hlusta.is/stafsrofsrod/fóstbræðra-saga. Fóstbrædra–Saga, edr Sagan af Þorgeiri Havarssyni ok Þormódi Bersasyni Kolbrúnarskalldi. 1822. Edited by Gunnlaugur Oddsson. Copenhagen: Thiele. http://baekur.is/is/bok/000123303/Fostbraedra-saga__edr_Sagan_af. Fóstbræðra saga eptir tveimur skinnbókum og einni pappírsbók. 1853. Edited by Konráð Gíslason. Copenhagen: Prentað hjá Berlingum. Fóstbræðrasaga, udgivet for Det Nordiske Literatur–Samfund. 1852. Edited by Konrad Gislason. Copenhagen: Det Berlingske bogtrykkeri. Fóstbræðrasaga, udgivet for Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur. 1925–1927. Edited by Björn K. Þórólfsson. Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur 49. Copenhagen: Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur. Gislason, Konrad. 1849. “Fortale.” In Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni. Edited by Konrad Gislason, I–XXII. Copenhagen: Brödrene Berlings Bogtrykkeri. ⸻. 1866. “Strøbemærkninger til oldnordiske digte.” Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie, 188–97. ⸻. 1872. “Nogle bemærkninger om Skjaldedigtenes beskaffenhed i formel henseende.” Vidensk. Selsk. Skr. Historisk og philosophisk Afd. Series 5, 4 (VII): 285–315. ⸻. 1889. “Njáll eller Níall? En undersögelse om femstavelsede verslinier i sædvanlig ‘dróttkvæðr háttr.’” In Njála udgivet efter gamle håndskrifter. Edited by Konráð Gíslason and Eiríkur Jónsson, 2: 1–329. Copenhagen: Thieles bogtr. Gíslason, Konráð. 1846. Um frum–parta íslenzkrar túngu í fornöld. Copenhagen: S. Trier. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hx5ji9. Gröndal, Benedict. 1866. Svar for Sveinbjörn Egilsson til Professor Konrad Gislason. Copenhagen: Brödrene Berlings Bogtrykkeri. Grønlands historiske mindesmærker. 1838–1845. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift-Selskab. Gunnlaugsson, Guðvarður Már. 2003. “Stafrétt eða samræmt? Um fræðilegar útgáfur og notendur þeirra.” Gripla 14: 197–235. Haugen, Odd Einar. 2007. “Textkritik und Textphilologie.” In Altnordische Philologie: Norwegen und Island. Edited by Odd Einar Haugen, 99–145. De Gruyter Lexikon. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Helgason, Grímur M., and Vésteinn Ólason, eds. 1970. Íslendinga sögur 4. Íslenzkar fornsögur. Hafnarfjörður: Skuggsjá. Helgason, Jón. 1958. Handritaspjall. Reykjavik: Mál og menning. FROM MANUSCRIPT(S) TO PRINT 67

⸻, ed. 1960. Hauksbók. The Arna–Magnæan Manuscripts 371, 4to, 544, 4to, and 675, 4to. Manuscripta Islandica 5. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard. Helgason, Jón Karl. 2004. “Parliament, Sagas and the Twentieth Century.” In The Manuscripts of Iceland. Edited by Gísli Sigurðsson and Vésteinn Ólason, 145–55. Reykjavik: Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland. Jónsson, Finnur. 1891. “Nekrolog över Konráð Gíslason.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 7 ny följd (3): 293–303. Jónsson, Guðni. 1946a. “Formáli.” In Landssaga og landnám. Edited by Guðni Jónsson, VII–XXXII. Íslendinga sögur 1. Reykjavik: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan. ⸻, ed. 1946b. Vestfirðinga sögur. Íslendinga sögur 5. Reykjavik: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan. Kristjánsson, Aðalgeir, ed. 1984. Bréf Konráðs Gíslasonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi Rit 27. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1972. Um Fóstbræðrasögu. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi Rit 1. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Loth, Agnete. 1960. Membrana regia deperdita. Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A 5. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Malm, Mats. 2004. “The Nordic Demand for Medieval Icelandic Manuscripts.” In The Manuscripts of Iceland. Edited by Gísli Sigurðsson and Vésteinn Ólason, 101–107. Reykjavik: Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland. Oddsson, Gunnlaugur. 1822. “Formáli.” In Fóstbrædra–Saga, edr Sagan af Þorgeiri Havarssyni ok Þormódi Bersasyni Kolbrúnarskalldi. Edited by Gunnlaugur Oddsson. Copenhagen: Thiele. http://baekur.is/is/bok/000123303/Fostbraedra- saga__edr_Sagan_af. Ólason, Páll Eggert, ed. 1918. Skrá um handritasöfn Landsbókasafnsins. Vol. 1. Reykjavik: Landsbókasafn Íslands. Ólsen, Björn M. 1891. Konráð Gíslason. Reykjavik: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja. Sagan af Hrafnkeli Freysgoða. Anden Udgave. 1847. Edited by Konrad Gislason. Translated by Niels Ludwig Westergaard. Copenhagen: Nordiske Literatur–Samfund. Sigurhjartarson, Sigfús. 1953. “Til varnar Njáls sögu.” In Sigurbraut De Gruyter Lexikonfólksins. Greinar og ræður eftir Sigfús Sigurhjartarson. Edited by Sigurður Guðmundsson, 43–52. Reykjavik: Heimskringla. Skúlason, Skúli. 1934. “Sigurður Kristjánsson áttræður.” Fálkinn, September 22. Springborg, Peter. 1977. “Dægradvöl á Vesturbrú. Et Konradianum.” Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 25, Opuscula 2 (2): 221–44. 68 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Sveinsson, Benedikt. 1924. “Formáli.” In Fóstbræðra saga. Edited by Benedikt Sveinsson, III–XV. Íslendinga Sögur 26. Reykjavik: Sigurður Kristjánsson. Trovato, Paolo. 2014. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann’s Method: A Non–Standard Handbook of Genealogical Textual Criticism in the Age of Post-Structuralism, Cladistics, and Copy-Text. Storie E Linguaggi. Padova: libreriauniversitariait edizioni. Tvær sögur af Gísla Súrssyni. 1849. Edited by Konrad Gislason. Copenhagen: Brödrene Berlings Bogtrykkeri. Vigfússon, Guðbrandur, and Carl Richard Unger, eds. 1860–1868. Flateyjarbok : en samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Oslo [Christiania]: Malling. Wawn, Andrew. 2007. “The Post–Medieval Reception of Old Norse and Old Icelandic Literature.” In A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture. Edited by Rory McTurk, 320–37. Oxford: Blackwell Pub. Þórólfsson, Björn K. 1925–1927. “Indledning.” In Fóstbræðrasaga, udgivet for Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur. Edited by Björn K. Þórólfsson, III–XLIII. Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur 49. Copenhagen: Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur. Þórólfsson, Björn K., and Guðni Jónsson, eds. 1943. Vestfirðinga sǫgur. Íslenzk Fornrit 6. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.

The Culture of the Grotesque in Old Icelandic Literature: The Saga of the Sworn Brothers

HELGA KRESS

ABSTRACT: According to scholarly consensus on the development of Old Icelandic literature, The Saga of the Sworn Brothers (Fóstbræðra saga) is an example of the earliest sagas. Such archaic sagas can be distinguished by their repetitious and fragmented or episodic narrations; they are negatively characterized by authorial digressions. Yet in the case of The Saga of the Sworn Brothers the digressions are actually key to understanding the saga itself. Full of irony and grotesque bodily imagery, they represent a medieval society’s culture of the carnival or “grotesque realism.” They function as a parody of heroes and heroic ideals in hierarchical and patriarchal societies.

RÉSUMÉ: Selon le consensus de la littérature savante sur le développement de la littérature islandaise ancienne, La saga des frères jurés (Fóstbræðra saga) est un exemple des plus anciennes sagas. Ces sagas archaïques se distinguent par leurs narrations répétitives et fragmentées ou épisodiques; elles sont négativement caractérisées par des digressions de l’auteur. Toutefois, dans le cas de La saga des frères jurés, les digressions sont en réalité essentielles pour comprendre la saga elle-même. Remplies d’ironie et d’images corporelles grotesques, elles représentent la culture du carnaval ou le « réalisme grotesque » d’une société médiévale. Elles fonctionnent comme une parodie des héros et des idéaux héroïques dans les sociétés hiérarchiques et patriarcales.

Helga Kress is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 I

raditionally the Sagas of the Icelanders have been defined as a genre of heroic literature that depicts the heroism of Icelandic chieftains, noble farmers, and wise men, as manifested in their feuds and T subsequent battles over estates, their travels in Iceland and abroad, and the fame bestowed upon them by foreign kings. The concept behind all of this is honour.1 One of the standard works on the sagas is Sigurður Nordal´s “Sagalitteraturen” in Nordisk kultur (1953). In this work he puts forward a general thesis about the development of Old Icelandic literature, a thesis that has served as the basis for all later research. Nordal sees the development of the Icelandic sagas as a curving line. This curve begins in what he calls “frumstæð frásagnarlist” [primitive narrative style] in sagas such as Heiðarvíga saga (The Saga of the Slayings on the Heath), Fóstbræðra saga (The Saga of the Sworn Brothers), and Egils saga (Egil’s Saga). From there the curve climbs upwards through sagas that are more conscious in style like Gísla saga (Gisli Sursson’s Saga), Laxdæla saga (The Saga of the People of Laxardal), and Eyrbyggja saga (The Saga of the People of Eyri). The genre reaches its artistic zenith with the realism and objectivity of Hrafnkels saga (The Saga of Hrafnkell Frey’s Godi) and Njáls saga (Njal’s Saga). After that the curve declines toward sagas such as Hávarðar saga (The Saga of Havard of Isafjord) and Grettis saga (The Saga of Grettir the Strong), which Nordal sees as younger and more fantastical versions of their older and better ancestors. The curve finally dwindles into watered-down and incredible fantasies. The very same approach can be seen in Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s definition of the sagas in his article, “Íslendingasögur” in Kulturhistorisk leksikon from 1962. Instead of Nordal’s five categories, Einar has three: the archaic sagas, the classic sagas, and the post-classic sagas. In his chapter on the artistry of the sagas he only discusses the category of the classic sagas, and they turn out to be the same as those at the top of Nordals’s curve. The characteristics of the classic sagas, Einar says, are “objectivity” and “heroic realism,” and those are the values that make a good saga. The many sagas that do not fit into these ideals are relegated to the categories of either archaic or fantasy. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson considers Fóstbræðra saga (The Saga of the Sworn Brothers) to be an archaic saga, as Sigurður Nordal did, and thereby to be one of the oldest. This group of sagas suffers, among other things, from repetitions and digressions, and the narration is fragmented and episodic. The style is rough, and often the authors break the artistic illusion, the objectivity, by interrupting the narration with their own commentaries and explanations (Sveinsson 495–594). 72 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

II

The Saga of the Sworn Brothers has been placed among the archaic sagas mainly because of some peculiarities in its style, which scholars have negatively called digressions (“útúrdúrar” or “klausur”). The most obvious feature of the digressions is that they clash with the objectivity of the saga style with lofty comments on, and appraisals of, the manliness, courage, and heroic deeds of the saga’s main characters, the sworn brothers Thorgeir (Þorgeir) and Thormod (Þormóður). A good example is the famous and amusing passage about the heroes’ trip to the highest and most perilous cliff in Iceland, Hornbjarg, to gather angelica:

Það bar til um vorið eftir, að þeir Þorgeir og Þormóður fóru norður á Strandir og allt norður til Horns. Og einn dag fóru þeir í bjarg að sækja sér hvannir, og í einni tó, er síðan er kölluð Þorgeirstó, skáru þeir miklar hvannir; skyldi Þormóður þá upp bera, en Þorgeir var eftir. Þá brast aurskriða undan fótum hans. Honum varð þá það fyrir, að hann greip um einn hvannnjóla með grasinu og hélt þar niðri allt við rótina, ella hefði hann ofan fallið. Þar var sextugt ofan á fjörugrjót. Hann gat þó eigi upp komist og hékk þar þann veg og vildi þó með engu móti kalla á Þormóð sér til bjargar, þó að hann félli ofan á annað borð, og var þá bani vís, sem vita mátti. Þormóður beið uppi á hömrunum, því að hann ætlaði, að Þorgeir myndi upp koma, en er honum þótti Þorgeir dveljast svo miklu lengur en von var að, þá gengur hann ofan í skriðuhjallana. Hann kallar þá og spyr, hví hann komist aldrei eða hvort hann hefir enn eigi nógar hvannirnar. Þorgeir svarar þá með óskelfdri röddu og óttalausu brjósti. ”Eg ætla,” segir hann, “að eg hafi þá nógar, að þessi er uppi, er eg held um.” Þormóður grunar þá, að honum muni eigi sjálfrátt um; fer þá ofan í tóna og sér vegs ummerki, að Þorgeir er kominn að ofanfalli. Tekur hann þá til hans og kippir honum upp, enda var þá hvönnin nær öll upp tognuð. Fara þeir þá til fanga sinna. En það má skilja í þessum hlut, að Þorgeir var óskelfdur og ólífhræddur, og flestir hlutir hafa honum verið karlmannlega gefnir sakar afls og hreysti og allrar atgjörvi. (Fóstbræðra saga 1953, 189–91. Orthography adapted to modern Icelandic spelling.)

[The following spring Thorgeir and Thormod set out north for Strandir as far as Horn. One day they went to the cliffs to gather angelica, and on one grassy ledge, known since as Thorgeir’s Ledge, they cut a large bundle. Thormod carried it up to the top while Thorgeir remained where he was. Suddenly the loose ground began to give way under Thorgeir’s feet and he grabbed at the base of one of the angelica plants close to the roots to prevent himself from falling. It was some sixty fathoms down to the rocky beach below. He could not make his way back up, so he hung there and refused to make any attempt to call out to Thormod even at the risk of falling to certain death below. Thormod waited up on the cliff top, thinking that Thorgeir was bound to get himself back onto the ledge. When it seemed to him that Thorgeir was hanging there much longer than could be expected he went down onto the ledge and called out to him, asking him if he had enough angelica now and when, if ever, he was coming back up. Thorgeir replied, his voice THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 73

unwavering and no trace of fear in his heart. “I reckon,” he said, “I’ll have enough once I’ve uprooted this piece I’m holding.” It then occurred to Thormod that Thorgeir could not make it up alone and he stepped down onto the ledge and saw that Thorgeir was in great peril of falling. So he grabbed hold of him and pulled him up sharply, by which time the angelica plant was almost completely uprooted. After that they returned to their hoard. One may conclude from this incident that Thorgeir was unafraid as far as his own life was concerned, and that he proved his courage and manliness in whatever dangers he encountered, either to his body or his mind.] (The Saga of the Sworn Brothers 1997, 360–61)

Another good example of “klausur” is in the description of Thordis’ change of mind, when she felt insulted by her lover, the poet Thormod, when he went to see another woman and had composed a poem about her:

Og er vetra tók og ísa lagði, þá minntist Þormóður þess vinfengis, er honum hafði verið til Þórdísar, dóttur Grímu í Ögri; gerir hann þá heiman för sína og leggur leið í Ögur. Gríma tók við honum með miklu gleðibragði, en Þórdís reigðist nokkuð svo við honum og skaut öxl við Þormóði, sem konur eru jafnan vanar, þá er þeim líkar eigi allt við karla. Það finnur Þormóður skjótt og sá þó, að hún skaut í skjálg augunum stundum og sá nokkuð um öxl til Þormóðar; kom honum í hug, að vera mætti svo, að dælla væri að draga, ef hálft hleypti, minnir hana á hið forna vinfengi, hvert verið hafði. Þórdís mælti: “Það hefi eg spurt, að þú hefir fengið þér nýja unnustu og hafir ort lofkvæði um hana.” Þormóður svarar: “Hver er sú unnusta mín, er þú talar til, að eg hafi um ort?” Þórdís svarar: “Sú er Þorbjörg út í Arnardal.” Þormóður svarar: “Engu gegnir það, að eg hafi kvæði ort um Þorbjörgu; en hitt er satt, að eg orti um þig lofkvæði, þá er eg var í Arnardal, því að mér kom í hug, hversu langt var í milli fríðleiks þíns og Þorbjargar og svo hið sama kurteisi; em eg nú til þess hér kominn, að eg vil nú færa þér kvæðið.” Þormóður kvað nú Kolbrúnarvísur og snýr þeim erindum til lofs við Þórdísi, er mest voru á kveðin orð, að hann hafði um Þorbjörgu ort. Gefur hann nú Þórdísi kvæðið til heilla sátta og heils hugar hennar og ásta við sig. Og svo sem myrkva dregur upp úr hafi og leiðir af með litlu myrkri, og kemur eftir bjart sólskin með blíðu veðri, svo dró kvæðið allan óræktar þokka og myrkva af hug Þórdísar, og renndi hugarljós hennar heitu ástar gjörvalla til Þormóðar með varmri blíðu. (172–74)

[When winter arrived and the lakes, rivers and streams were covered again with ice, Thormod remembered his relationship with Grima’s daughter, Thordis, and he set out for the farm at Ogur. Grima received him joyfully, but Thordis was stiff and haughty and held him at a distance, as women do with men whom they dislike. Thormod quickly saw how she looked away and treated him coldly, so he thought he might try to draw her in a little by reminding her of how close they had once been. Thordis said, “I’ve heard that you have a new love and that you have composed a poem of praise for her.” Thormod replied, “Who is this love of mine 74 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

for whom you say I have composed a poem?” Thordis answered, “Thorbjorg at Arnardalur.” Thormod said, “It’s a lie that I composed poetry about Thorbjorg. The truth is that I composed a poem in praise of you while I was staying in Arnardalur because I realised how much more beautiful and courteous you are than she. And that’s why I came here – to present those verses to you.” Thormod recited now the Dark-brow verses, turning most of what he had composed about Thorbjorg into praise for Thordis. Then he gave the poem to Thordis so that they might be fully reconciled and that her affection and love for him be re-established. And like the dark mists that are drawn up out of the ocean, dispersing slowly to sunshine and gentle weather, so did these verses draw all reserve and darkness from Thordis’ mind and Thormod was once again bathed in all the brightness of her warm and gentle love.] (354–55)

Comments like that are unique in the Icelandic sagas, and they have greatly displeased the scholars who have dealt with the saga. They also seem to have displeased the literary establishment of the fourteenth century.

III

The Saga of the Sworn Brothers is mainly preserved in three different manuscripts: Flateyjarbók, Möðruvallabók (M), and Hauksbók (Hb). The younger versions, in Möðruvallabók, and especially in Hauksbók, show a clear tendency to erase the digressions from the oldest version in Flateyjarbók.2 Until Sigurður Nordal argued for the theory that the digressions in Flateyjarbók were original to the saga, it was a common view that they were later interpolations from the time of the saga decline. It was impossible for this “row of stupidities” as the seventeenth century philologist Árni Magnússon put it (Íslenzk fornrit VI, Introduction, LXXL), to have belonged to the saga from the beginning. The later philologist Finnur Jónsson calls them romantic, theological, and anatomical nonsense (LXXL), and the saga scholar Björn M. Ólsen is quite sure when he states:

Það væri blindur maður, sem ekki sæi, að þessar málalengingjar í M eru ekki annað en klerklegar hugleiðingar (“reflexionir”) út af hinu einfalda efni, sem stendur í Hb. Slíkar hugleiðingar ríða algerlega í bága við hinn einfalda, hlutlausa íslenzka sögustíl. (LXXIII)

[One would have to be blind not to see that these verbosities in the manuscript M are nothing more than clerical reflections around the plain and simple subject matter in the manuscript Hb. Such reflections are in a clear disagreement with the simple, neutral, and Icelandic saga style.]3 THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 75

In the introduction to the saga in its standard edition, Íslensk fornrit, the editor Guðni Jónsson calls its style as clear and polished as the style of the best sagas, “að undanskildum fáeinum mærðarfullum hugleiðingum eða fróðleiksgreinum, sem stinga mjög í stúf við stíl sögunnar að öðru leyti” [apart from some sentimental reflections or learned paragraphs that jar seriously with the genuine style of the saga] (Íslenzk fornrit VI, Introduction, LIII). Sigurður Nordal has a chapter in this introduction where he groups the digressions in three categories according to subject matter, as “‘skáldlegir’ sprettir” [poetical escapades], “guðrækilegar hugleiðingar og lærdómsklausur” [theological reflections and learned paragraphs] and “ýmiss konar athugasemdir um líffræði og lífeðlisfræði, oft næsta fáránlegar” [various comments on organs and biology, most often quite absurd], all of them irrelevant to the saga itself (LXXI). In his dissertation Um Fóstbræðrasögu from 1972, Jónas Kristjánsson supports Nordals’s view about the digressions as original to the saga: a hard conclusion, he says, that one only regrets. He explains the digressions as a consequence of influence. The author of the saga was, according to Jónas, so impressed by the elaborate style of the legends of bishops and holy men, that he simply lost control of himself in his admiration for the heroes. Contrary to Nordal, he therefore dates the saga as one of the latest (Kristjánsson 238 ff.).

IV

The digressions in The Saga of the Sworn Brothers clash so clearly with the unheroic deeds in the saga, as well as its disguised objectivity, that they cause a high degree of irony, an underestimated concept in the scholarship and interpretation of the Icelandic sagas. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers is not a heroic saga, and was never meant to be. It is a comic tale that parodies the heroic ideal as well as the literary genres that support it. The same is certainly the case with other sagas that have been defined as minor. They have been placed in the wrong genre. In reality they belong to the genre of carnival and the grotesque, the medieval culture of laughter. The sworn brothers, Thorgeir and Thormod, are not the embodiments of the heroic and courageous manhood, “ímynd hinnar hugdjörfu og óbilandi karlmennsku,” as stated in the introduction to the standard edition of the saga (Íslenzk fornrit VI, Introduction, LIII). They are the exact opposite of it. The saga does not admire them, it mocks them. These heroes live in quite another world from most people around them, people who—apart from some unruly gangsters—are described as peaceful and hardworking farmers. Their opinion of themselves differs not only from other people’s opinions, but also from the saga, the text itself. This is expressed in the disharmony between the subject matter and form caused by the digressions; the saga is full of both irony and grotesque bodily imagery. 76 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

V

In his classic work on the renaissance writer Rabelais, the Russian formalist Mikhail Bakhtin discusses two different cultures during the period with roots in the European Middle Ages. His theories are very useful in the understanding of the literary culture of Medieval Iceland. On the one hand, Bakhtin says, we have the classical, serious, and acknowledged high culture, and on the other the lower culture of carnival, which is characterized by laughter and joy. The classical culture is exclusive and belongs to the upper class. The culture of carnival is common to everybody, with roots in medieval plays and feasts. The main characteristic of carnival is the grotesque. The aim of the grotesque is to lower—or in more modern terms to deconstruct—everything that is elaborate or high, spiritual or abstract, and drag it down to domestic everyday life, to the earth and the body. The core of the grotesque is laughter, that is, a liberating form of laughter that is shared by all. Everyone has a body, has to sleep, eat and defecate, can be sick and feel pain. And everyone dies, no matter how high in society they are. Therefore grotesque imagery shows a great interest in body parts and bodily functions, such as bottoms and noses, eating, drinking and digesting, but also what happens to the body, such as beatings, amputations, and all kinds of suffering and pain. Often people are compared to animals. One of the most common scenes in grotesque literature, as well as painting, is a feast with all kinds of people who sit at the same table, eating, drinking, and enjoying themselves. A description of a feast of this sort is found in the celebrated account of the historical Sturlunga about the wedding at Reykhólar in the year 1119, one of the most reliable sources of story-telling in Medieval Iceland.4 This feast turns out to be a very grotesque one, with descriptions of the guests’ bad breath and other bodily functions associated with bellies and too much eating. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers replaces Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s “heroic realism” with Bakhtin’s “grotesque realism.” This appears in many ways. The sworn brothers themselves are a typical comic couple similar, for instance, to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The one, Thorgeir, is big and strong, and likes neither women nor fun:

Svo er sagt, að Þorgeir væri lítill kvennamaður; sagði hann það vera svívirðing síns krafts, að hokra að konum. Sjaldan hló hann. (128)

[It is said that Thorgeir was not much of a ladies’ man. He said it was demeaning to his strength to stoop to women. He seldom laughed.] (333) THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 77

This fellow pursues battles and is said to be generally unfriendly with people. The other, Thormod, is a poet and womanizer; he is rather small, and not strong, is often bored, seeks amusement, and introduces himself as peculiar looking:

“Auðkenndur maður em eg,” segir Þormóður, “svartur maður og hrokkinhærður og málhaltur.” (236)

[“I’m an easy man to recognise,” Thormod said, “a black man, with my curly hair and my stammer.”] (379)

A stammer is an unexpected characteristic for a poet and not very practical in those days of oral culture.

VI

The biological digressions of the saga are hardly the result of the author’s great interest in medicine, but rather the saga’s sense of merriment and fun, which casts a grotesque light on heroes and heroic deeds by reducing them to mere anatomy. In this respect the blunt physical descriptions of the differing hearts of the sworn brothers are remarkable, beyond the metaphorical references to hearts as “a place of fear.” The heart of Thorgeir is taken out of him after his death, slain in a battle in the northern and most isolated part of Iceland. It is examined and turns out to be surprisingly small:

Svo segja sumir menn, að þeir klyfðu hann til hjarta og vildu sjá, hvílíkt væri, svo hugprúður sem hann var, en menn segja, að hjartað væri harla lítið, og höfðu sumir menn það fyrir satt, að minni séu hugprúðra manna hjörtu en huglausra, því að menn kalla minna blóð í litlu hjarta en miklu, en kalla hjartablóði hræðslu fylgja, og segja menn því detta hjarta manna í brjóstinu, að þá hræðist hjartablóðið og hjartað í manninum. (210–11)

[Some people say, that he had shown so much courage that they cut him open to see what kind of heart lay there, and that it had been very small. Some hold it true that a brave man’s heart is smaller than that of a coward, for a small heart has less blood than a large one and is therefore less prone to fear. If a man’s heart sinks in his breast and fails him, they say it is because his heart’s blood and his heart have become afraid.] (368) 78 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Thormod, at the king’s court in Norway, pulls out bits of his own heart from his dying body, with a funny remark. Unlike Thorgeir’s heart, Thormodʼs is big and fat:

Síðan tók Þormóður töngina og kippti á burt örinni, en á örinni voru krókar, og lágu þar á tágar af hjartanu, sumar rauðar, en sumar hvítar, gular og grænar. Og er það sá Þormóður, þá mælti hann: “Vel hefir konungurinn alið oss, hvítt er þessum karli um hjartarætur.” (276)

[Then Thormod took the tongs and pulled at the arrowhead, but it was barbed and on the barbs lay tissues of his heart, some of which were red and others white, yellow and green. And when Thormod saw this, he said, “The king has nourished us well. White are the roots around this old manʼs heart.”] (402)

He then composes a poem and dies in a heroic standing position as his sworn brother had done before him. Another good example of a biological digression is the description of “Fífl-Egill” (229), Egil the Fool, Thormod’s companion in Greenland. He is followed by a group of men and thinks he is in great danger:

Egill varð stórum hræddur, er hann sá manna för eftir sér og með vopnum. Og er hann var handtekinn, þá skalf á honum leggur og liður sakir hræðslu. Öll bein hans skulfu, þau sem í voru hans líkama, en það voru tvö hundruð beina og fjórtán bein; tennur hans nötruðu, þær voru þrír tigir; allar æðar í hans hörundi pipruðu fyrir hræðslu sakir, þær voru fjögur hundruð og fimmtán. (233)

[Egil was terrified when he saw them chasing after him, armed, and when they caught him, he shook from head to foot with fear. Every bone in his body shook, all two hundred and fourteen of them. All his teeth chattered, and there were thirty of them. And all the veins in his skin trembled with fear, and there were four hundred and fifteen of them.] (378)

There is great humour in this description. Yet in his dissertation, Jónas Kristjánsson took the time to compare this biological description with some medical writings from the Middle Ages, and noted that the saga did not have the number of teeth right. Two were missing! He sees two possible explanations for this; it could either be a “classic scribal error” or that the author had “counted teeth in the mouth of a person who did not have a full set” (Kristjánsson 245). THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 79

This is a perfect example of scholars’ tendency to take the accounts in the Icelandic sagas literally and miss their humorous point. Another of Thormod’s companions in Greenland carries the honourable name “Lúsa-Oddi” (238), Oddi Louse. Their first meeting is described in this way:

Þormóði þótti dauflegt í hellinum, því að þar var fátt til skemmtunar. Einn góðan veðurdag ræðst Þormóður brott frá hellinum. Hann klífur upp hamrana og hafði öxi sína með sér. Og er hann er skammt kominn frá hellinum, þá mætti hann manni á leið. Sá var mikill vexti og ósinnilegur, ljótur og eigi góður yfirbragðs. Hann hafði yfir sér verju saumaða saman af mörgum tötrum, hún var feljótt sem laki og höttur á upp með slíkri gjörð; hún var öll lúsug. Því að þá er sólskin var heitt, þá gengu verkfákar frá fóðri hans hörunds á hinar ystu trefur sinna herbergja og létu þar þá við sólu síður við blika. (238)

[Thormod found the cave dull for there was little for him to do to pass the time and one fine day he left. He climbed up the cliff face, taking his axe with him, and when he had come a short distance from the cave he met a man journeying there. He was a large man with an unpleasant and off-putting appearance, one who would have been hard-pressed to find a companion. He wore a cloak sewn from all sorts of rags and tatters, which overlapped each other like the folds in a sheep’s stomach. On his head, he wore a hood made in the same way, and it was covered with lice. Since the sun shone hotly, the fully-fed lice kept their distance from him and nested not in his skin. Instead they bedded down in the reaches of his tatters and baked themselves there in the sunshine.] (380)

The translation misses the sense of insufficient amusement implied by “fátt til skemmtunar,” while “eigi góður yfirbragðs” would be better captured by a more active sense of ugliness. The lice are not baking so much as sunbathing, so some of the saga’s grotesque imagery is lost in translation. Still, a grotesque rather than heroic tone is set when Thormod exchanges clothes with this person covered in lice, and takes off for further deeds.

VII

The slayings committed by the sworn brothers generally take place in darkness or in ambush, or as the saga words it, “when least expected.” Most often the victims are quite innocent, as for example the tired shepherd at the farm Hvassafell:

Þorgeir hafði riðið undan suður, og er hann kom til Hvassafells, stóðu þar menn úti. Sauðamaður var þá heim kominn frá fé sínu og stóð þar í túninu og studdist fram á staf sinn og talaði við aðra menn. Stafurinn var lágur, en maðurinn móður, 80 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

og var hann nokkuð bjúgur, steyldur á hæli og lengdi hálsinn. En er Þorgeir sá það, reiddi hann upp öxina og lét detta á hálsinn. Öxin beit vel og fauk af höfuðið og kom víðs fjarri niður. Þorgeir reið síðan í brott, en þeim féllust öllum hendur, er í túninu höfðu verið. Litlu síðar komu þeir frændur eftir; voru þeim þá sögð þessi tíðendi, og þótti þeim þetta eiga hafa vel til borið. Er svo sagt, að þeir frændur bættu víg þetta fyrir Þorgeir. Riðu þeir síðan til móts við Þorgeir. Hann fagnar þeim vel. Þeir spurðu, hví Þorgeir hefði þetta víg vegið eða hvað Þorgeir fyndi til um mann þenna. Þorgeir svarar: “Eigi hafði hann nokkrar sakir til móts við mig, en hitt var satt, að eg mátti eigi við bindast, er hann stóð svo vel til höggsins.” (156–57)

[Thorgeir had ridden south ahead of the others and when he came to Hvassafell there were some men there standing outside. The shepherd had just come home from the herd and stood in the hayfield, leaning forward on his staff, talking to the other men. It was a short staff and the shepherd was tired. Thus he was rather hunched over, with his tired legs bent and his neck sticking out. When Thorgeir saw this he drew his axe in the air and let it fall on the man’s neck. The axe bit well and the head went flying off and landed some distance away. Then Thorgeir rode off and the rest of the men in the field stood there amazed. Shortly afterwards, Illugi and Thorgils came by. They were told what happened and were not pleased. It is said that they provided compensation for Thorgeir´s deed and then rode on to meet him. He greeted them warmly. They asked him why he had slain the man and what possible fault he had found with him. Thorgeir replied, “He had committed no wrong against me. If you want the truth, I couldn’t resist the temptation – he stood so well poised for the blow.”] (347)

In Greenland Thormod fights with three brothers, and he kills them all. The first of them he kills in ambush, chopping him with both hands so that his head is cleaved in two. In the chase that follows and ends on the edge of a high cliff, the second brother happens to fall prone. Thormod strikes him immediately between the shoulders so that the axe sinks in up to the shaft. Before he can pull the axe out, the third brother Falgeir arrives and gives Thormod a blow. As he is now without his weapon he turns his thoughts to the holy King Olaf, asking for help:

Fellur þá öxin úr hendi Falgeiri niður fyrir hamrana ofan á sjóinn; þykir honum þá nokkru vænna, er hvorttveggi var slyppur. Og því næst falla þeir báðir fyrir hamrana ofan á sjóinn; reyna þeir þá sundið með sér og færast niður ýmsir; finnur Þormóður, að hann mæddist af miklu sári og blóðrás. En fyrir því að Þormóði varð eigi dauði ætlaður, þá slitnaði bróklindi Falgeirs; rak Þormóður þá ofan um hann brækurnar. Falgeiri daprast þá sundið; fer hann þá í kaf að öðru hverju og drekkur nú ómælt; skýtur þá upp þjónum og herðunum og við andlátið skaut upp andlitinu; var þá opinn munnurinn og augun, og var þá því líkast að sjá í andlitið, sem þá er maður glottir að nokkru. Svo lýkur með þeim, að Falgeir drukknar þar. (240) THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 81

[At that moment, the axe fell from Falgeir’s hand down over the rocks and into the sea. Thormod was encouraged since neither of them had a weapon now. Then both fell from the cliff into the sea below, and tried to swim and push each other under. Thormod felt his strength waning. He was badly wounded and had lost a good deal of blood, but he was not fated to die then. Suddenly, Falgeir´s belt snapped and Thormod pulled at his breeches, making it difficult for him to swim. Falgeir kept going under and swallowed a good deal of water. His buttocks and back rose up out of the water, and then his face suddenly turned upward. He was dead. His mouth and eyes were open and from the look on his face it seemed as if he was grinning at something. Thus their struggle ended with Falgeir drowning there.] (381–82)

King Olaf really is a great help, as he even pulls down the enemy’s breeches! Here again elements of comedy, irony, and even absurdity are lost in translation; the saga implies that Falgeir’s belt snaps, enabling Thormod to pull down his breeches, as a result of fate. The description of Falgeir’s dead face parallels the description of Thorgeir’s dismembered head, which his slayers carry with them as a token:

Það var skemmtan þeirra á áföngum, at þeir tóku höfuð Þorgeirs úr belgnum og settu þar á þúfur upp og hlógu að. En er þeir komu í Eyjafjörð, þá áðu þeir. … Þeir tóku þá höfuð Þorgeirs og settu það upp á þúfu eina, sem þeir voru vanir. Þeim sýndist þá höfuðið ógurlegt, augun opin og munnurinn, en úti tungan og blaðraði. (212)

[Whenever they stopped to rest, they would amuse themselves by taking the head out of the bag, putting it on a mound and laughing at it. When they came to Eyjafjord, they stopped … and as usual they took out Thorgeir’s head and set it on a mound there. But now the head seemed ghastly with its eyes and mouth open and its tongue hanging out.] (369)

Thormod composes a highly graphic verse about his fight with Falgeir describing his enemy’s “gínandi rassaklof” [gaping arsehole] (242) rising from the sea. And this verse is thought by Icelandic scholars to be one of the most reliable and genuine scaldic verses attributed to Thormod! As it says in the introduction to the standard edition: “Vart er annað hugsanlegt en lýsingin á drukknun Falgeirs (27 v.) sé eftir sjónarvott, svo sérstök er hún og lifandi” [The description of Falgeir’s death is certainly made by an eyewitness, given how extraordinary and vivid it is] (Íslenzk fornrit VI, LX). The same type of grotesque humour characterizes almost all episodes in the saga. Thormod bandages one of his many wounds with his breeches, and in the barley barn at Stiklestad he hews the buttocks off a boastful and cowardly farmer, 82 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA who lets out a loud scream and grabs both buttocks with his hands (“kvað við hátt með miklum skræk og þreif til þjóhnappanna báðum höndum,” 273).

VIII

A grotesque feast and a grotesque killing, a comic carnival of eating and slaying, is described in the conflict between Thorgeir and the villain Butraldi. Visiting the cowardly farmer at Gervidalur, Butraldi is introduced thus:

Hann var einhleypingur, mikill maður vexti, rammur að afli, ljótur í ásjónu, harðfengur í skaplyndi, vígamaður mikill, nasbráður og heiftúðugur. (142–43)

[He was a loner of no fixed abode, a large powerfully-built man, with an ugly face, quick tempered and vengeful, and he was a great slayer of men.] (340)

A relative of the chieftain Vermund, Butraldi wanders about with two companions frightening people. The reactions of the farmer show that to him Butraldi and the hero Thorgeir are of the same type. His heart “drepur stall” [skips a beat] (144) at the unexpected arrival of both of them. He invites them to sit at the same table, and the feast can begin:

Frá verðgetum er sagt vandlega: Tveir diskar voru fram bornir; þar var eitt skammrifsstykki fornt á diskinum hvorum og forn ostur til gnættar. Butrildi signdi skamma stund, tekur upp skammrifið og sker og neytir og leggur eigi niður, fyrr en allt var rutt af rifjum. Þorgeir tók upp ostinn og skar af slíkt er honum sýndist; var hann harður og torsóttur. Hvorgi þeirra vildi deila við annan kníf né kjötstykki. En þó að þeim væri lítt verður vandaður, þá fóru þeir þó eigi til sjálfir að skepja sér mat, því að þeim þótti það skömm sinnar karlmennsku. (144–45)

[There is a detailed report of what they ate. Two platters were brought in; on one of them was some old short-rib mutton and on the other a large quantity of old cheese. Butraldi made a brief sign of the cross, then picked up the mutton ribs, carved off the meat and continued to eat until the bones were picked clean. Thorgeir took the cheese and cut off as much as he wanted, though it was hard and difficult to pare. Neither of them would share either the knife or the food with the other. Though the meal was not good, they did not bring out their own provision for fear that it should be seen as a lack of manliness.] (341) THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 83

The following day Thorgeir got the short ribs and Butraldi the cheese. When they had eaten their fill they left the farm and walked out into the snow, seeking more adventures. The way was tough. Butraldi takes a shortcut and cuts steps in the hard crusted snow with his axe. Thorgeir has chosen another way; he climbs a ridge where he can watch Butraldi working his way through the snow. Butraldi challenges him, asking if he has fled. That starts a contest of manliness, one of many in the saga:

Butraldi mælti þá: “Rann kappinn nú?” Þorgeir segir: “Eigi rann eg; því fór eg aðra leið, að eg þurfti eigi að skora fönn fyrir mér, en nú mun eg eigi renna undan yður.” Þorgeir stendur þá á brekkubrúninni, en Butraldi skorar fönnina. Og er hann kom í miðja brekkuna, þá setur Þorgeir spjótskefti sitt undir sig og snýr fram oddinum, en hefir öxina reidda um öxl, rennir fönnina ofan að Butralda. Hann heyrir hvininn af för Þorgeirs og lítur upp og finnur eigi fyrr en Þorgeir hjó framan í fang honum og þar á hol: fellur hann á bak aftur. En Þorgeir rennir fram yfir hann, til þess að hann kemur á jöfnu, svo hart, að förunautar Butralda hrjóta frá í brott. (146)

[Then Butraldi said, “So the hero ran off, did he?” Thorgeir said, “I didn’t run off. I simply took a different route so as not to have to cut my way through the snow. There’ll be no running away from you now, though.” Thorgeir stood at the edge of the ridge while Butraldi continued to cut his way through the snow. When Butraldi was about halfway up, Thorgeir placed his spear underneath him, with the spearhead facing forwards, raised his axe to shoulder height and slid down the snow towards Butraldi. He heard the sound of Thorgeir whizzing down and looked up, but before he knew what was happening Thorgeir struck him full on the chest with his axe and cut right through him and he fell back down the slope. Thorgeir continued down over him until he reached flat ground, and moved with such speed that Butraldi’s companions rushed off.] (342)

This is hardly the act of a hero. Thorgeir slides down the hill with his bottom on the spear and over the stooping enemy, using him as a springboard, and he does not stop until he is safe on level ground.

IX

The grotesqueries in The Saga of the Sworn Brothers are interestingly enough connected with the saga’s descriptions of women. They all have a similar function, that is to deconstruct the heroic manhood of the main male characters. Thorgeir does not meddle with women, but Thormod does, and he has great trouble with his competing sweethearts. When he gives the poem he had originally composed about Thorbjorg Kolbrún in Arnardalur to Thordis in Ogur, Thorbjorg appears to him in a dream and asks if he has given her poem to another woman. 84 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

He lies and denies this. She knows better and threatens him with such pain that his eyes will pop out of his head unless he confesses to all the world that the poem is hers. Thormod wakes up in great pain and concedes. He takes the poem from Thordis and gives it back to Thorbjorg.5 Thorbjorg is the only woman in the saga whose appearance is described, in a peculiar description full of understatements. She is “kurteis kona og eigi einkar væn” (170) [a courteous woman but hardly a beauty] (353), slim and well proportioned, and “útfætt og eigi alllág” (170) [toes out and hardly very low] (353). All the same, Thormod gazes at her and finds her beautiful. It is characteristic for the women in this saga to be completely indispensable to the male heroes. They give them good advice and often they save them from death. Most of them are single and run their own farms, as do the mothers of both Thordis and Thorbjorg. One of these single women is Sigurfljod. The name means a woman of victory, a name that does not occur in other sagas, and perhaps is meant to be symbolic. The same could be the case with the other names in the saga. For instance the names of the sworn brothers themselves: Þor-móður, Þor-geir. “Þor” meaning courage, “móður” mood, and “geir” a spear. Sigurfljod has the sworn brothers kill two harassing gangsters for her, who are under the protection of the chieftain Vermund. She takes all responsibility for the killings, and in the reckoning she has to make with the objecting chieftain, we see a remarkable criticism against chieftains who lack control over anything. She says:

Það er sem von er, að yður sé svo um gefið, en það munu sumir menn mæla, að þeir hafi eigi þessa menn fyrir yður drepið, heldur má hinn veg að kveða, að þeir hafi þessi víg fyrir yður unnið. En hver skal hegna ósiðu, rán eða hernað, ef eigi viljið þér, er stjórnarmenn eru kallaðir héraða? (140–41)

[It was to be expected that you would react like this, though some would say that they have not killed your men but done this slaying for you. Who else should punish ill deeds such as plundering and robbery if you do not who are called chieftain of the district?] (340)

This social criticism, placed here in the mouth of Sigurfljod, runs through the whole saga and often comes from a woman’s point of view. It is expressed both directly and indirectly. For instance, the saga does not forget working people who are often the victims of Thorgeir’s violence, and the frequent harsh descriptions of nature and weather show an awareness of the hard struggle for life. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers is not as preoccupied with genealogies as many other sagas. The only person with a genealogy worth mentioning is Thorgeir. THE CULTURE OF THE GROTESQUE 85

That itself could be a facet of the criticism: it is because of his rich and powerful relatives that he can behave as he does and get away with it. Thus there is clearly a connection between the grotesque realism in The Saga of the Sworn Brothers and its social satire. The saga is not only a parody of heroes and heroic ideals, it is also a commentary on a hierarchial and patriarchal society.

NOTES

1. This article is based on a paper given at the Félag íslenskra fræða [Society for Icelandic Studies] in December 1980, originally printed as “Bróklindi Falgeirs: Fóstbræðra saga og hláturmenning miðalda,” in Skírnir 1987, and is reprinted here with permission of the author. The translation was done by the author, who would like thank Elin Thordarson and P. J. Buchan for their help translating certain passages. 2. In the standard edition, Íslenzk fornrit VI, as well as in the English translation, the text from Flateyjarbók is printed in petit, as irrelevant interpolations. 3. All English translations of Icelandic works quoted are those of the author, with the exception of The Saga of the Sworn Brothers translated by Martin Regal. 4. See Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, chapter 10, 23–27. 5. For a more detailed analysis about the connection between womanizing and manliness, see Kress 2009.

REFERENCES Bakhtin, Mikael. 1968. Rabelais and his World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky . Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press. Fóstbræðra saga. 1943. In Vestfirðingasögur. Íslenzk fornrit VI. Edited by Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 119–276. Reykjavik: Hið Íslenzka fornritafélag. Íslenzk fornrit VI. See Fóstbræðra saga. Kress, Helga. 1987. “Bróklindi Falgeirs: Fóstbræðra saga og hláturmenning miðalda.” Skírnir 161 (2): 271–86; reprinted in Helga Kress Fyrir dyrum fóstru: Konur og kynferði í íslenskum fornbókmenntum. Reykjavik: Rannsóknastofa í kvennafræðum, Háskóli Íslands. ⸻. 2009. “Óþarfar unnustur: Um samband fjölkynngi, kvennafars og karlmennsku í Íslendingasögum.” In Óþarfar unnustur og aðrar greinar um íslenskar bókmenntir, 3–29. Reykjavik: Bókmennta– og listfræðastofnun Háskóla Íslands. Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1972. Um Fóstbræðrasögu. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. Nordal, Sigurður. 1953. “Sagalitteraturen.” In Nordisk kultur VIII: B, 235–66. Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo: J. H. Schutz, Albert Bonniers, H. Aschehoug. 86 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. 1997. Translated by Martin S. Regal . In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. Sveinsson, Einar Ólafur. 1962. “Íslendingasögur.” In Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder VI: 495–514. Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo: : Rosenkilde og Bagger. Þorgils saga ok Hafliða. 1946. In Sturlunga saga I. Edited by Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 12–50. Reykjavik: Sturlunguútgáfan.

Old Norse in Italy: From Francesco Saverio Quadrio to Fóstbræðra saga

FULVIO FERRARI

ABSTRACT: Old Norse texts and literary motifs have been circulating in Italian literature since an early period of its history. Already in the second half of the eighteenth century, we find evidence of the interest of some Italian intellectual circles in the cultural tradition of ancient Scandinavia. The aim of this article is to show how and why Italian culture “imported” Old Norse texts during the last two centuries, especially how the mandates of different projects determined which texts to translate, how to translate them, and how to present them to an Italian readership. In keeping with the theme of this special volume, particular attention is paid to the case of Fóstbræðra saga and the context of its appearance in Italian translation, including associated references to the twentieth-century rewriting of this saga by the Icelandic writer Halldór Kiljan Laxness.

RÉSUMÉ: Les textes et motifs littéraires en vieux nordique circulent dans la littérature italienne depuis le début de son histoire. Déjà dans la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle, nous trouvons des preuves de l’intérêt de certains cercles intellectuels italiens pour la tradition culturelle de la Scandinavie antique. Le but de cet article est de montrer comment et pourquoi la culture italienne a « importé » des textes en vieux nordique au cours des deux derniers siècles, en particulier comment les mandats de différents projets ont déterminé quels textes traduire, comment les traduire et comment les présenter à un lectorat italien. Conformément au thème de ce volume spécial, une attention particulière est accordée au cas de La saga Fóstbræðra et au contexte de son apparition dans la traduction italienne, y compris des références associées à la réécriture de cette saga par l’écrivain islandais Halldór Kiljan Laxness.

Fulvio Ferrari is Professor of Germanic philology at the Department of Humanities, University of Trento (Italy).

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 A Brief Introduction

he history of the reception of Old Norse literature and culture in Italy presents specific features that make it very different from, for example, the developments in Germany or in the English-speaking T world. As a matter of fact, until recent times the Italian cultural milieu has conceived of itself as rooted in the Classical tradition and, more specifically, as a direct heir to the Latin culture. Consequently, in Italy there has hardly been any attempt at appropriating the Old Norse heritage as an identity factor. Nonetheless, despite the “exotic alienness” of the Old Norse culture—or perhaps thanks to it—medieval Norse texts or literary motifs have been circulating in Italian literature since an early period of its history. Even if we do not take into account free rewrites of Latin sources, such as Torquato Tasso’s tragedy Re Torrismondo (1587) [King Turismod] and Orazio Ariosto’s epic Alfeo, which both drew their figures and plots from Johannes and Olaus Magnus’ Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555) [A Description of the Northern Peoples],1 we find already in the second half of the eighteenth and at the very beginning of the nineteenth century some remarkable evidence of the interest of at least some Italian intellectual circles in the cultural tradition of ancient Scandinavia. Since then, different factors have influenced the activities of translating, studying, and rewriting Old Norse texts in Italy, due to both the development of the Italian literary system, and the different agendas—cultural, political, religious—of the individual and institutional actors involved. The aim of this article is to show how and why Italian culture “imported” Old Norse texts during the last two centuries. It is particularly concerned with how different—and sometimes opposite—projects determined which texts to translate, how to translate them, and how to present them to an Italian readership. Due to the heterogeneity of such projects, it will prove impossible to bring back all such operations to one and the same field of interest. The decision to translate one or more Norse texts has sometimes been made according to an academic, scientific project; other times in order to promote specific ethical values, such as heroism, individualism, or bravery and the disregard of death (and in such cases the decision to translate a Norse text is very often connected to political biases). Finally, in more recent times, both the increased interest in fantasy literature and the spread of new religious cults such as Odinism and Wotanism have contributed to enhancing the diffusion of Old Norse topics in Italian popular culture. As this article has been submitted to a special journal issue concerned with Fóstbræðra saga and its rewrite by Halldór Kiljan Laxness, more space will be dedicated to the Italian translation of this saga. This very translation, moreover, 90 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA serves as an interesting example of how specific political biases can influence the translation and the diffusion of an Old Norse saga in Italian contemporary culture.

From Pre-Romanticism to WWII: The Predominance of Eddic Translations

The first signs that the Italian cultural elites were interested in the old literature of Scandinavia date back to the second half of the eighteenth century. That Italian scholars already in this period took interest in the literary traditions of Scandinavia is demonstrated by a strange poem published by Francesco Saverio Quadrio in 1751. Entitled “Versi in lingua runica” [Verses in the runic language], it may only be a joke, a muddle of words deprived of any meaning; yet as Andrea Meregalli points out, “it is quite easy to recognise single words, inflected forms, and expressions of the Old Norse language” (58). Quadrio had certainly some acquaintance with the works on Old Norse literature published abroad, as is revealed by his Indice universale della storia, e ragione d’ogni poesia (1752) [Universal index of the history and reason of all poetry], where he concisely refers to Snorri Sturluson as well as to antiquarians and scholars in the field, such as Thomas Bartholin, Johann Georg Keißler, Olof Rudbeck, Henry Spelman, and Ole Worm (Meregalli 60). Some decades later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, an important role in spreading information about the international debate on the history and culture of ancient Scandinavia was played by a Swedish immigrant, Jakob Gråberg. Gråberg was a man of many interests, and his most important scientific contributions are within the fields of Statistics and Geography. Besides his many scientific essays he published a little book about Old Norse poetry in 1811: Saggio istorico sugli scaldi o antichi poeti scandinavi [Historical essay about the skalds, or the ancient Scandinavian poets]. In this book, Gråberg presents and translates some eddic and skaldic verses and poems—mainly from the French translations by Pier Henri Mallet, from the Latin by Johan Isaakszon Pontanus and by Thomas Bartholin, and from the Swedish by Eric Julius Biörner. Moreover, he also quotes from previously unpublished translations by other Italian poets, such as the Somascan Father Bernardo Laviosa and the renowned librettist Felice Romani.2 Gråberg’s book thus attests to a certain knowledge of Old Norse literature within Italian intellectual circles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Following in Gråberg’s footsteps, the abbot Francesco Venini included translations of four Old Norse poems in his anthology of world poetry Saggi della poesia lirica antica e moderna [Essays of ancient and modern lyric poetry], published in Milan in 1818. In the third part of the anthology, Poesia lirica de’ Caledonj e degli Scandinavi [Lyric poetry of the Scots and of the Scandinavians], Venini republished some stanzas attributed to King Haraldr Harðráði and already printed in Gråberg’s Saggio istorico. Moreover, he published translations of Asbjörn’s death-song from OLD NORSE IN ITALY 91

Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar [The Tale of Orm Stórólfsson]; Krákumál [The Lay of Kraka], and Eyvindr Skáldaspillir’s Hákonsdrápa [Hákon’s Poem].3 All three new translations were done on the basis of the Latin translations of Thomas Bartholin, as Francesco Venini himself explains in the comments that precede each of them. Thus it seems that the Italian intellectuals during the second half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century were exclusively interested in the poetic genres of Old Norse literature, and widely ignored prose literature. The important exception was the texts that were regarded as historical sources: Snorri’s tale about the migration of the ancient Æsir, for example, or the sagas about the origins of the Scandinavian peoples. It should be noted, however, that such texts did not belong, according to the Italian cultural circles of that period, to “literature proper” but rather to historiography. Yet the sagas were considered untrustworthy as historical sources, since legends and myths played too great a role in them. In the words of the historian Virginio Soncini, who in 1825 published a Storia della Scandinavia ossia Svezia, Danimarca e Norvegia [History of Scandinavia, that is Sweden, Denmark, and Norway]:

Niente altro che cose incerte ed oscure ci presenta la parte antica di quest’istoria, la quale è sì intrecciata colle favole, che più veramente potrebbe dirsi mitologia. So che la favola è la culla di tutte le istorie, e che ogni popolo ha collocato i suoi fondatori tra gli Dei, o almeno tra i Semidei, e vestita la propria origine di favoloso splendore; ma le altre nazioni hanno relegati quei prodigi fanciulleschi ne’ più remoti secoli, gli hanno ristretti in brevi cenni, sì che lo storico non v’impiega che poche pagine: laddove nell’istoria degli Scandinavi noi troviamo dappertutto le favole a piene mani e i portenti; e insomma l’infanzia di quella nazione durò tanto, che fin nel mille e dugento dell’Era nostra vediamo collocati i racconti fanciulleschi delle Valchirie e delle altre deità appartenenti alla mitologia scandinava. (8)

[The ancient part of this history shows nothing but uncertain and murky things: it is so much intertwined with fairy stories that we should more properly define it as mythology. I know that fairy tales are the cradle of history, and that every nation has put its founders among the gods, or at least among the demigods, and has enveloped its own origins in fabulous magnificence. The other nations, however, have confined those childish marvels into their very first centuries and have limited themselves to some short mentions, so that the historian needs only to write a few pages about that. In the history of the Scandinavians, on the contrary, we find everywhere a profusion of fairy tales and marvels. In conclusion, the childhood of that nation lasted so long that still in the thirteenth century of our era we find the childish tales about Valkyries and other deities of Scandinavian mythology.]4

The relative lack of interest that the Italian scholars had in Old Norse prose literature may be explained by the particular Italian literary system of the time. Before the extraordinary success of Alessandro Manzoni’s historical novel I 92 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA promessi sposi (1840-42) [The betrothed], which rapidly rose to the status of a modern classic of Italian literature, prose works occupied a relatively marginal position in the literary system, at whose centre stood poetry and dramatic literature. Indirect evidence of this marginalization of prose genres is also provided by Melchiorre Cesarotti’s translation of James MacPherson’s Poems of Ossian (1772). As a matter of fact, whilst Macpherson’s pretended translations from Gaelic Scottish are written in an archaizing, biblical prose, Cesarotti transposes them into blank hendecasyllables.5 Even such a radical restructuring of the Italian literary system6 as was produced by the breakthrough of the novel (and in particular of the “historical novel” genre) around the middle of the nineteenth century did not, however, seem to affect the attitude of the Italian translators of Old Norse texts, and Icelandic sagas continued to be neglected also in the second half of the nineteenth and in the first half of the twentieth century. A survey of the Italian translations of Old Norse literature from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 1997 (Radici) shows that only one saga was completely translated into Italian before World War II: the Vǫlsunga saga was translated into Italian for the first time in 1927 under the title La saga dei Volsunghi e dei Nibelunghi [The saga of the Volsungs and the Nibelungs]. The addition of the reference to the Nibelungs clearly reveals the reason for this choice: the huge popularity of the Wagnerian version of the legend had aroused an interest in all its sources, Norse as well as German. After Venini and Soncini’s works and up until 1917, only eddic poems and short excerpts from the Vǫlsunga saga were translated into Italian. The interest in skaldic poetry seems to have completely vanished after the first decades of the nineteenth century. This should probably be understood as a consequence of the dominant interest of the Romantics in what they considered as genuine “popular” poetry, a concept which hardly was applicable to the refined and complicated art of the skalds. In the period from 1874 to 1911, we find two different, partial translations of Hávamál (1874, 1911), three versions of the Vǫluspá (1887, 1906, 1908), and some other eddic poems: Atlakviða (1876, 1883), Sigurðarkviða (1883), Brot af Sigurðarkviðu (1903), and Þrymskviða (1906).7 A broader interest in all genres of Old Norse literature is manifest only in Guido Fornelli’s book L’Islanda antica (1917) [Ancient Iceland], in which the author collects translations of Egill Skallagrímsson’s Hǫfudlausn [Head’s Ransom] and Sonatorrek [Loss of Sons], of some stanzas of Hávamál, and of excerpts from Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar [The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason]. The period between the wars does not see a growth of interest in Old Norse literature. On the contrary, in the years 1918-1945 we find—besides the translation of the Vǫlsunga saga cited above—only a translation of Vǫluspá published in Guido Manacorda’s book La selva e il tempio (1933) [The forest and the temple] and some translations of eddic and skaldic poetry contained in a survey of world literature, edited by Ugo Dèttore (Radici 16–17). OLD NORSE IN ITALY 93

From the Fifties to the Eighties: The Philological Turn

The first decades after WWII did not witness a radical change in the interest that Italian intellectuals had in Old Norse literature. Up to the beginning of the Sixties there were no translations of an entire saga, but several translations of eddic and skaldic poetry and excerpts from different sagas and from Snorra Edda (1220), The “Prose Edda” attributed to Snorri Sturluson, were published. What does change is the type of intellectuals involved in the translations and in the debate on Old Norse literature more generally. Previously, the Italian translators used as source texts translations from Old Norse into other languages: Latin or French at first, then also German. These translators were often men of wide erudition, sometimes writers, but always amateurs. In the period between the end of WWII and the beginning of the Sixties, the studies of Old Norse literature and culture were taken over by university professors who could read the original texts and were aware of the international scientific discussion (Tagliavini 183–216). The first philologically reliable translation of all eddic poems—including the so-called Eddica minora—was thus published in 1951 by the linguist Carlo Alberto Mastrelli, and in 1962 the Professor of Scandinavian Literatures Mario Gabrieli published an anthology of skaldic poetry with parallel original texts. The figures of Mario Gabrieli and of the Germanic philologist Marco Scovazzi dominated the field of Old Norse studies in Italy during the Sixties and the Seventies. A rather strange phenomenon in this sphere is that the Italian scholars passionately participated in the international discussion on the origins of the Icelandic sagas before any Icelandic saga—with the exception of Vǫlsunga saga, as we have seen—was available in an Italian translation. Scovazzi, in fact, published his book La saga di Hrafnkell e il problema delle saghe islandesi [Hrafnkell’s saga and the question of Icelandic sagas] in 1960, three years before the first edition of his translation of a collection of sagas and long before a translation of Hrafnkels saga was published in Italian (which happened only in 1997). Since the book was written in Italian, it did not have a wide international circulation, and the Italian readership was limited to scholars and students. Notwithstanding this, the book is particularly interesting as it clarifies Scovazzi’s interpretation of the sagas as cultural products, an interpretation that deeply influenced his later presentation of his collection of translated sagas. First of all, according to Scovazzi, the original Germanic tradition had been preserved more or less intact in Scandinavia until the days of King Harald Fairhair. Secondly, Iceland was colonized by refugees who did not accept the innovations of the new king and who restored the ancient political and legal institutions in the new fatherland. Speaking of Hrafnkels saga, Scovazzi writes:

nel fondo del suo spirito, l’autore, o rielaboratore, non si è staccato dalla tradizione, se per tradizione intendiamo il rispetto di tutto un mondo spirituale, che gli Islandesi 94 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

avevano difeso tenacemente, che avevano salvato dalle insidie della tirannide e che avevano voluto ricostruire intatto nella nuova patria ricercata e trovata dopo un’avventurosa migrazione. I caratteri, i contrasti fra gli animi dei vari personaggi, la loro ansia di primeggiare, la lotta fra l’individuo e la collettività, sono tutti elementi che dobbiamo far risalire alla più arcaica manifestazione dello spirito germanico. (56)

[Deep in his spirit, the author, or rewriter, did not move away from tradition, if we understand tradition as respect for a whole spiritual world that the Icelanders had tenaciously defended and saved from the snares of tyranny and that they wanted to reconstruct intact in the new fatherland they had looked for and found after an audacious migration. The personalities, the conflicts between the characters’ souls, their anxiety to excel, the struggle between the individual and the community: we have to derive all these elements from the most archaic manifestation of the Germanic spirit.]

On this ideological basis, it is fully understandable that Scovazzi was a passionate opponent of the so-called Buchprosatheorie and that Sigurður Nordal and Walter Bætke were his main targets.8 What is more relevant to our discussion, however, is that Scovazzi’s interpretation of the sagas as faithful testimonies to the most archaic Germanic culture is clearly expressed in the para-text surrounding his translation of four Icelandic sagas: Eyrbyggja saga [The Saga of the People of Eyri], Eiríks saga rauða [The Saga of Eric the Red], Vatnsdœla saga [The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal], and Hallfreds saga [The Saga of Hallfred]. This collection was first published in 1964 by Multa Paucis, a minor publishing house based in Varese, and then reprinted in 1973 by the publisher Giulio Einaudi in the very prestigious series I Millenni. The series started in 1947 with the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s tales, and since then it has published modern as well as ancient and medieval classics of world literature.9 The publication of Scovazzi’s translation in the series thus implies the acceptance of sagas within the Italian literary canon. It is all the more significant, then, that Scovazzi, in his introduction to the book, presents the sagas not so much as literary works, but as testimonies to the historical period they describe:

Le saghe islandesi non possono essere valutate esclusivamente quali fenomeni letterari; costituiscono anche una testimonianza cospicua della fase storica, che contraddistinse la società nordica medievale. (VII)

[The Icelandic sagas cannot be exclusively considered as literary phenomena; they are also a remarkable testimony to the historical period the medieval Norse society went through.] OLD NORSE IN ITALY 95

These words not only open Scovazzi’s introduction, but they are also printed on the book-jacket and are thus the first hints the reader gets about the contents of the volume. Moreover, as in his book on Hrafnkels saga, Scovazzi reaffirms the unbroken continuity from archaic Germanic society to Icelandic medieval culture. He explains that Icelanders consciously preserved this legacy:

Essi intesero salvare … quel patrimonio ideale arcaico, che manteneva ancora, pressoché inalterati, i valori più schietti, di cui si era alimentata la società nordica e germanica, trasferendolo – per quanto possibile – in una sede nuova e destinandolo a una nuova vita. Le saghe islandesi non sono che la testimonianza e il ricordo, fedeli e appassionati, di questa trasmigrazione, materiale e spirituale, dalla Norvegia all’Islanda, e del rinascere, dopo l’avventuroso trapianto, di un mondo arcaico che non voleva perire. (VIII)

[They wanted to salvage … that ideal archaic heritage that still preserved, almost intact, the most genuine values that had nourished the Norse and the Germanic society; they wanted to transfer it – as far as possible – into a new land and to revitalize it. The Icelandic sagas are nothing but the faithful and passionate testimony to and memory of this material and spiritual migration from Norway to Iceland, and of the rebirth, after the adventurous transplantation, of an archaic world that refused to die.]

Much more cautious and up to date with the international developments in the field is the other Italian grand old man of Scandinavian studies of this period: Mario Gabrieli. In his handbook Le letterature della Scandinavia [The literatures of Scandinavia], published in 1969, Gabrieli takes an intermediate position between Freiprosatheorie and Buchprosatheorie.10 Indeed, he recognizes the role played by oral tradition in creating the corpus of sagas, but he also acknowledges the contribution of the different saga writers, and he underlines how Old Norse literature developed from the encounter of local oral traditions with an international, Latin, and Christian culture.11 In spite of Gabrieli’s balanced contribution to the discussion, however, Scovazzi’s opinions continued to be very influential in the Italian field of Old Norse studies. In the introduction to her new translations of Eiríks saga rauða [The Saga of Eric the Red] and Grœnlendinga saga [The Saga of the Greenlanders] in 1995, Rita Caprini advances pretty much the same theses expressed by Scovazzi thirty-five years before (La saga di Eirik il rosso, 9, 20). The remarkable increase in the number of courses in Germanic Philology in Italian universities during the Seventies and the Eighties meant not only a clear upward trend in the number of publications on Old Germanic texts and cultures, but also a growth in the number of translations from Old Norse into Italian. Hence, in 1977, another major publishing house, Rusconi, published the volume edited 96 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA by Gianna Chiesa Isnardi Storie e leggende del Nord [Stories and legends of the north] containing the translations of Ynglinga saga and Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka.12 In 1982 Alessandro Mari Catani edited a book that was a collection of excerpts from sagas. The title of the book is I vichinghi di Jomsborg e altre saghe del Nord [The Jomsvikings and other sagas from the North], and it contains chapters from Jómsvikinga saga, Grettis saga, Njáls saga, Fóstbræðra saga, Laxdœla saga, and Egils saga Skallagrímssonar.13 This volume was published by a major publishing house, Sansoni, and thus had a relatively wide circulation. A different case in point is Vittoria Grazi’s translation of Grettis saga (1983),14 which was published by an academic institution, the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples. The length of the introduction, 100 pages, suggests that the intended readership was scholars. In it, Vittoria Grazi discusses the sources of the saga, its textual tradition and structure, the history of the research, and the different critical approaches. Moreover, quotations by foreign scholars are never translated, even though they may be in languages, such as Icelandic and Norwegian, that very few Italian readers were presumably able to understand. The book in general conveys a different opinion of sagas than Scovazzi’s collection. In the prefatory remarks by the editorial board of the series in which the saga is published, what is pointed out is the “profonda, e spesso raffinata, consapevolezza d’autore” [the deep and often sophisticated authorial awareness] that distinguishes the saga, and more generally the “qualità strettamente letteraria delle saghe famose” [the strictly literary quality of the famous sagas] (7). Vittoria Grazi acknowledges her debt to Marco Scovazzi (10), but she also emphasizes the “innegabile letterarietà” [undeniable literary character] of Icelandic sagas (22). Vittoria Grazi’s translation highlights an issue of paramount importance concerning the reception of Old Norse literature in Italy. In spite of the fascinating plot of the saga and the accurate translation, in fact, the book had almost no circulation at all due to its academic character and to the irrelevant presence of its publisher in the Italian editorial market. The same problem cropped up over and over again in the following years: the circulation of translated sagas, in fact, was largely determined by the ability of the publishing houses to distribute them. It was only the success of online booksellers during the Nineties that considerably changed the terms of the question. Before the end of the Eighties, yet another Icelandic saga was translated into Italian: in 1985 Jaca Book published La saga di Gísli figlio di Súrr, a translation of Gísla saga Súrsonar by Gianna Chiesa Isnardi.15 Jaca Book is a medium-sized publishing house, whose fields of interest range from theology, anthropology, and literature, to economics and politics. For such a company it is much easier to let its own books circulate than for an academic publishing house; thus Gianna Chiesa’s translation was able to reach a broader readership than Vittoria Grazi’s. Between 1975 and 1990 several important Old Norse texts other than the sagas mentioned above were published. In 1975, two different (partial) translations OLD NORSE IN ITALY 97 of the Snorra Edda appeared in Italian: one by Gianna Chiesa Isnardi and one by Giorgio Dolfini. As in the case of Storie e leggende del Nord, Chiesa Isnardi’s translation was published by Rusconi, whilst Dolfini’s translation was published by Adelphi, one of the leading Italian publishers. In 1982, another leading Italian publishing house, Garzanti, published a new and less academic translation of the eddic poems in a volume edited by Piergiuseppe Scardigli and Marcello Meli. A new choice of skaldic poetry was translated and edited by Ludovica Koch and published by Einaudi in 1984. What may appear more surprising is that learned texts, such as the Leiðarvísir, the First Grammatical Treatise, and a selection from the Icelandic Physiologus, were also published in Italian translation in 1967, 1975, and 1985-1986.16 Almost all translators and editors mentioned here were (or would later become) university professors.

The Explosion of the Nineties: Scholarly Translations, Pop Culture, and Heathenism

Due to the consolidation of Old Norse studies at Italian universities and to the consequent increasing number of potential translators from Old Norse into Italian, we have witnessed an explosion of translations of Icelandic sagas since the beginning of the Nineties. It is impossible of course to analyze and discuss each of these translations here, and thus I will limit myself to making a list of the translated sagas and to pointing out how different editorial strategies have contributed to the spread of saga literature within the Italian cultural context. The list is chronologically organized and does not take into account the subsequent reprints of the same translation.17 The names of the translators are provided in parentheses: 1990 Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (Marcello Meli) 1993 Völsunga saga (Marcello Meli) Ragnars saga loðbrókar (Marcello Meli) 1994 Ǫrvar Odds saga (Fulvio Ferrari) Völsunga saga (Annalisa Febbraro, Ludovica Koch) 1995 Laxdœla saga (Guðrún Sigurðardóttir) Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana (Fulvio Ferrari) Eiríks saga rauða (Rita Caprini) 1996 Nornagests þáttr (Adele Cipolla) 1997 Hrafnkels saga (Maria Cristina Lombardi) Okneyinga saga (Marcello Meli) Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (Marcello Meli) Njáls saga (Marcello Meli) 98 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

1999 Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu (Gianna Chiesa Isnardi) 2001 Parcevals saga / Valvers þáttr (Massimo Panza) 2004 Reykjahólabók: Frá Sancto Nicholao (Simonetta Battista) Gautreks saga (Massimiliano Bampi) Bjarnar saga hítdœlakappa (Marusca Francini) 2008 Kristni saga (Agata Ermelinda Gangemi) 2009 Bósa saga ok Herrauðs (Giovanni Fort) 2010 Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss (Lorenzo Lozzi Gallo) 2011 Íslendingabók (Agata Ermelinda Gangemi) 2012 Fóstbræðra saga (Antonio Costanzo) 2013 Heimskringla: Halfdanar saga svarta, Haralds saga ins Hárfagra (Francesco Sangriso) 2014 Heimskringla: Hákonar saga góða (Francesco Sangriso) 2015 Heimskringla: Haralds saga gráfeldar (Francesco Sangriso) Laxdœla saga (Silvia Cosimini) Friðþjófs saga ins frækna (Maria Cristina Lombardi) 2016 Ynglinga saga (Vidofnir 14) Hrólfs saga kraka ok kappa hans (Vidofnir 14) 2017 Ragnars saga loðbrókar (Gabriele Giorgi) Völsunga saga (Serena Fiandro) Völsunga saga (Vidofnir 14) Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (Vidofnir 14) Auðunar þáttr vestfirzka (Carla Cucina)

As one can observe from this list, two of the translators who were already active in the previous decades (Gianna Chiesa Isnardi and, above all, Marcello Meli) still play a pivotal role in the scene of Italian translations from Old Norse. It is also interesting to note that the majority of the translators who entered the scene after 1990 belong to the academic world: Massimiliano Bampi, Adele Cipolla, Fulvio Ferrari, Marusca Francini, and Lorenzo Lozzi Gallo, are all professors of Germanic Philology; Maria Cristina Lombardi is professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literatures, whilst Rita Caprini is a professor of Linguistics. Giovanni Fort and Francesco Sangriso, though not employed in academic positions, have each earned a PhD in Germanic Philology; whilst Simonetta Battista regularly works at the Arnamagnæanske Kommission in Copenhagen. The academic training of nearly all the translators explains why the translations are preceded or followed OLD NORSE IN ITALY 99 by introductions, afterwords, critical essays, and bibliographies, which, in general, show awareness of international research and discussion. It is also manifest that the Italian interest in Icelandic sagas has greatly expanded during this period and, besides Family sagas, several other subgenres of saga literature are represented in the list of translations. Many Legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur) have been translated for the first time or retranslated (e.g. Völsunga saga), but we also find the translation of a chivalric saga, of an hagiographic saga, and a partial translation of the Heimskringla.18 Not all of these sagas, of course, have had a wide circulation. In this regard, the size and profile of the publishing houses have been decisive: an editorial giant like Mondadori (Njáls saga, Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, Orkneyinga saga) is obviously able to ensure a wide circulation in the bookshops. Yet even small but specialized publishers can be successful in reaching interested readers: Ragnars saga loðbrókar, Ǫrvar Odds saga, Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana, Hrafnkels saga, Gautreks saga, and Laxdœla saga (in Silvia Cosimini’s translation) have been published by Iperborea, a relatively small publishing house founded in 1987 and specializing in Northern European literatures, which can count on a faithful readership of enthusiasts of Scandinavian literatures.19 Völsunga saga (in Annalisa Febbraro and Ludovica Koch’s translation), Eiríks saga rauða (in Rita Caprini’s translation), and Bósa saga ok Herrauðs (in Giovanni Fortʼs translation) were published instead in the “Biblioteca medievale” series, which addresses a readership of students and scholars interested in the different literary traditions of the Middle Ages.20 It is interesting to note that Marcello Meli’s translations of Völsunga saga and Hervarar saga were first published by academic publishers but were both reprinted by Mondadori in 1997, together with Njáls saga, Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, and Okneyinga saga, in a two-volume edition under the title Antiche saghe nordiche [Old Norse sagas]. Though most translations have been made by scholars in the field, in the last few years a new phenomenon also seems to have emerged: the popularity of Old Norse literature and mythology in popular culture. The increasing interest of the Italian readership in fantasy literature—which more often than not makes use of mythological and heroic motifs—and the growth of interest in Northern heathenism have caused some amateurs (Serena Fiandro, Vidofnir 14) with no specific professional training to publish translations that can easily circulate thanks to the existence of online bookstores. The wotanist known under the pseudonym Vidofnir 14, for example, has so far published four sagas.21

The Fóstbræðra saga in Italy: Translation and Political Appropriation

As already mentioned, part of the Fóstbræðra saga was translated by Alessandro Mari Catani in his anthology I vichinghi di Jomsborg e altre saghe del Nord, published in 1982. The book opens with a rather long introduction (5–51) that 100 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA clearly addresses a readership of non-experts. In the introduction, Mari Catani concisely summarizes the history of Iceland and of its literature, discusses the main stylistic traits of the sagas, and comments on the presence of supernatural phenomena in saga narratives. As for the debate concerning the literariness of saga literature, he clearly takes sides with Sigurður Nordal against the Freiprosatheorie (21). In other aspects, however, Mari Catani proves to be more conservative: he agrees with the mainstream scholarship of the 19th and of the first half of the twentieth century by accepting a hierarchization of the saga subgenres that no doubt puts the Family sagas at the top of the hierarchy (19). Moreover, Mari Catani agrees with Marco Scovazzi in considering the Christian faith of the saga writers as superficial and conventional: “il Cristianesimo era appena una sottile mano di vernice passata su un paganesimo quasi fisiologico” [Christianity was only a thin coat of paint on an almost physiological paganism] (35). Each excerpt in Alessandro Mari Catani’s anthology is preceded by a short presentation of the saga from which it is taken. In the very concise presentation of Fóstbræðra saga, Mari Catani argues that the work was written at an early date, around 1200, and he praises its narrative vivacity. Furthermore, he explains that he has chosen two passages from the Flateyjarbók redaction as edited by Guðni Jónsson in the 6th volume of Íslenzk Fornrít, and finally he refers to Halldór Laxness’s parodic rewriting of the saga.22 The first translated episode is contained only in the Flateyjarbók and narrates how Þorgeirr and Þormóðr go to the cliffs to gather angelica together, and Þorgeirr risks falling into the void. He delays the fall by grabbing at the base of one of the angelica plants, but refuses to call his friend for help (chapter XIII in Guðni Jónsson’s edition). The second passage is the final part of the saga, from the arrival of King Óláfr and Þormóðr at the Veradal to the very end of the saga (chapter XXIV). Although the translated part of the saga is rather short (little more than nine pages in translation), the general translation strategy is quite evident. On the one hand, Mari Catani makes use of an archaic and elevated style when he translates skaldic verses: in stanza 38, he translates Old Norse magn (strength) not with the usual Italian word forza but with the antiquated term possanza; in the same way he translates Old Norse hættligr not with the modern Italian form pericoloso, but with the archaic periglioso. In the dialogues, on the other hand, the translator often makes use of a low, sometimes even vulgar register. He translates the Old Norse word fýlur with the Italian stronzi, the colloquial equivalent to English assholes, and the Old Norse word þjóhnappana with the Italian chiappe [butts]. The title Fóstbræðra saga is translated by Mari Catani as La saga dei fratelli giurati [The saga of the sworn brothers]. Antonio Costanzo, in his new translation of the saga published in 2012, chooses, instead, the title La saga dei fratelli di sangue [The saga of the blood brothers]. Each translation is born out of a cultural project OLD NORSE IN ITALY 101 and, as a cultural product, shares a worldview. As Edwin Gentzler rightly points out:

the translator has never been a neutral party in the translation process but, rather, an individual with linguistic and cultural skills and her or his own agenda. Ideology works in funny ways—some of it conscious and some of it unconscious. … Translation does not simply offer a window onto some unified, exotic Other; it participates in its very construction. (216)

The case of Antonio Costanzo’s translation of Fóstbræðra saga, however, is quite extreme: the ideological dimension is already made clear by all of the para-texts. The biographical note on the book-jacket informs the readers that Costanzo lives in Reykjavík, that he is one of the organizers of the cultural centre Nostra Romanitas (something like “Our Roman spirit and traditions”), and that he is responsible for the Sunna series of books published by the publishing house Diana Edizioni. Nostra Romanitas is an organization located in Frattamaggiore, in the province of Naples, and is connected with the scene of far-right-wing cultural and political organizations. Another organizer of Nostra Romanitas is Gianfranco Della Rossa, founder of Diana Edizioni and author of a book interview with Rutilio Sermonti, one of the founders of the Italian neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano, which Sermonti later left as he judged it too moderate. Gianfranco Della Rossa is also the author of a foreword to La saga dei fratelli di sangue, and Antonio Costanzo has dedicated the book to him. In the colophon on the verso of the title page, Costanzo writes: “Dedicato al fratello di sangue Gianfranco Della Rossa” [Dedicated to my blood brother Gianfranco Della Rossa]. In the Sunna series, three books have been published so far, all by Antonio Costanzo: in 2010, Hávamál. La voce di Odino [Hávamál. The voice of Odin], an annotated translation of the eddic poem with a foreword by Gísli Sigurðsson; in 2012, the aforementioned translation of Fóstbræðra saga; and in 2014, Il sacrificio di Odino. Tracce sciamaniche tra i vichinghi [Odin’s sacrifice. Traces of shamanism among the Vikings], an attempt at the interpretation of Hávamál in the light of the comparison between different religious traditions, above all Old Norse paganism and Buddhism. In this analysis, Costanzo adopts the traditionalist approach of the repeatedly quoted fascist philosopher Julius Evola.23 In Antonio Costanzo’s words: “Nella nostra analisi abbiamo avuto in vista soprattutto il carattere universale degli elementi tradizionali comuni alle diverse culture che di volta in volta abbiamo ravvicinato” [In our analysis we have especially taken into consideration the universal character of the traditional elements that the different cultures that we have successively considered have in common] (47). The text of the translated saga is accompanied by an unusual number of para-texts, which deserve to be taken into consideration. The book-jacket contains 102 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA a brief description of the translator, a concise account of the text, and a completely new subheading: “Una leggendaria epopea di fratellanza vichinga” [A legendary epic of Viking brotherhood]. The book opens with a “Presentazione” [Presentation] by the renowned historian Franco Cardini (VII-IX). Cardini is quite a peculiar personality in the Italian cultural scene. His studies on medieval history, in particular on chivalry and the crusades, are unanimously considered as fundamental. However, the political role he played during his life is more controversial. Although he refuses to be considered as a right-wing intellectual, he was a militant in the Movimento Sociale Italiano and in Jean-François Thiriart’s Jeune Europe. Yet, during the 2003 Iraq war, he resolutely opposed the invasion, and afterwards he repeatedly took positions against the hate campaign directed towards Muslims. In his short “Presentation” of the book, he points out some parallels between the pair of warriors Þorgeirr/Þormóðr in the saga and mythical pairs of heroes, such as Gilgamesh/Enkidu, Indra/Arjuna, Ajax/Diomedes, and so on. He then wonders about the reasons that induced the Icelanders to preserve the memory of their pagan past and concludes:“A queste domande non sappiamo rispondere” [To such questions we have no answers]. Cardini’s cautious presentation, together with his reputation as an historian and as a nonconforming, right-wing intellectual clearly serves as a legitimation for Costanzo’s cultural operation. Cardini’s “Presentation” is followed by Gianfranco Della Rossa’s much more explicit Foreword (XI-XIV). In Della Rossa’s style and formulations, the cultural and ideological roots of the publishing house come clearly to light. According to him, “una natura indomita e bellicosa infiamma i cuori” [an indomitable and martial nature inflames the hearts] of the blood brothers (XI), and for them death is an “ospite sempre atteso” [an always awaited guest] (XI). He writes the words Onore [Honour], Coraggio [Courage], and Temerarietà [Recklessness] with capital letters (XII); in his opinion, the society depicted in the saga is “non ancora contaminata dalla cultura cristiana” [not yet contaminated by Christian culture] (XIII), and he concludes by quoting Oswald Spengler: “Una civiltà, per dirla con Oswald Spengler, in piena fase di Kultur, non priva quindi di una certa barbarie” [A civilization, as Oswald Spenger would say, which was still in its phase of Kultur, and therefore not devoid of a certain barbarism] (XIV). Following Della Rossa’s foreword, a longer “Introduzione filologica” [Philological introduction] by the translator accounts for the scholarly debate about the saga and presents its textual tradition. Furthermore, Costanzo explains that he has chosen the version of the Flateyjarbók as the basis for his translation, then he describes the difficulties faced in translating the saga, and makes a list of culture-bound terms that have not been translated (XV-XXIX). After the translated text of the saga (which also includes the Þormódar þáttr)24 and before the two appendices in which Costanzo comments on the stanzas contained respectively in Fóstbræðra saga and Þormódar þáttr, yet another para-text is printed: an afterword by the former chairman of OLD NORSE IN ITALY 103 the Icelandic Social Democratic Party, Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, who limits himself to making some very general reflections about medieval Icelandic society and to evoking the memory of an encounter, in his childhood, with Halldór Kiljan Laxness (147–51). With regard to the translation itself, it is first of all interesting to observe the alternating use of archaizing words and words belonging to a low register. Examples of archaizing words are tenebrore (18) instead of tenebra/oscurità/buio for myrkvi [darkness]; venusta (52) instead of bella/avvenente for væn [beautiful]; and saziaronsi (63, in stanza 11) instead of si saziarono for sǫddusk [satisfied their hunger]. In contrast, examples of colloquial use are “Parecchio si stanno allargando, i fratelli giurati” (24) for “Mjǫk ganga þeir fóstbrœðr nú af sér” [They go too far, the sworn brothers], and “Ci sono delle rogne dietro … ?” (70) for “Eru þér nǫkkur vandræði á hǫndum … ?” [Are there any troubles … ?]. Whereas in Mari Catani’s translation the different linguistic registers were used to point out the distance between the highly sophisticated language of poetry and the ordinary language of daily life, Costanzo’s translation gives the impression of a linguistic chaos, where archaisms, anachronisms, and slang expressions follow each other without any apparent reason. Only the conscious intention to reconnect to the Latin cultural tradition can explain the use of the archaic and very unusual term viro (from Latin vir, man) in the translations of stanzas 13, 14, 15, and 16. Even more disconcerting, however, is the use of the Italian term duce in order to translate the Icelandic word hǫfdingi (98, 111). The word duce, in fact, has been used in the past as an archaism derived from the Latin term dux [commander, leader], but after the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini proclaimed himself “duce del fascismo,” the term connotes far-right-wing policy and culture. In general terms, we can say that the language of Antonio Costanzo’s translation is quite distant from the language(s) of the Italian literary tradition. The odd lexical choices and the peculiar syntactic organization produced by the effort not to stray too far from the original text result in a strongly alienating language, which sometimes comes close to incomprehensibility. If it is true, as André Lefevere maintains, that the translation of literature takes place “not in a vacuum in which two languages meet but, rather, in the context of all the traditions of the two literatures” (6), then it is impossible to consider Antonio Costanzo’s translation as successful. Furthermore, the choice to have it published by a small publishing house with deep political connotations makes it difficult for the translation to reach a wide readership.

Concluding Remarks

To conclude this concise survey of the history of the translations of Old Norse texts into Italian, it can be useful to summarize the development observed from 104 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA the second half of the eighteenth century until today. Although the Italian scholars did not have the necessary linguistic knowledge to read the Old Norse texts in the original language in the very first period of this development (from the middle of the eighteenth to the first decades of the nineteenth century), they had the possibility to read them in translation, and the curious poem by Francesco Saverio Quadrio, “Versi in lingua runica,” demonstrates that at least some of them actually did so. Moreover, the Swedish immigrant Jakob Gråberg played a pioneering role in spreading the knowledge of Old Norse tradition and literature in Italy. Consistently with the state of the Italian literary system of that period, the Italian intellectual circles showed interest in essentially two genres: poetry and historiography, whereas as good as no attention was paid to other narrative prose genres. Even the interest in skaldic poetry vanished quite soon due to the nearly exclusive interest of the Romantics in the supposed folk-poetry. Basically, this attitude persisted until WWII, despite the evolution of the Italian literary system. In the long period comprised between the beginning of the Romantic movement in Italy and WWII, the only major factor that affected the reception of Old Norse culture in Italy was the great popularity of Richard Wagner’s operas, which aroused the interest in at least one Norse saga: the Vǫlsunga saga. The situation changed gradually after WWII, principally in connection with the evolution of the Italian academic system. The progressive integration into the curricula of disciplines such as Germanic philology, Scandinavian studies, and Linguistics created the conditions to develop a new generation of scholars, able both to study the original texts and to translate them. This development resulted, on the one hand, in a broadening of the interests of the Italian scholars who began to actively participate in the scientific international debate, and on the other hand in a closer collaboration between the academic and the editorial worlds. This collaboration, however, did not lead to major, comprehensive projects comparable to the translation of all the Sagas of Icelanders into English (published by the Leifur Eiriksson Publishing in 1997) or to the vast project of translating as good as the whole of Old Norse literature carried out in the first half of the twentieth century by the German Thule Sammlung [Thule book series]. The different translation projects, instead, have been largely determined by the personal contacts of each single scholar/translator with some publishing houses. The success in spreading knowledge about each specific Old Norse text has thus been mainly conditioned by the sales force of each publishing house and by its cultural prestige. Furthermore, particularly during the last decades some new cultural factors have contributed to modifying the overall picture of the translations from Old Norse into Italian. The huge popularity of fantasy literature—consistently increased after Peter Jackson’s Tolkienian trilogy The Lord of the Rings at the beginning of the century (2003–2005)—has induced many fans to go in search of the primary sources of the literary worlds of which they are so fond, thus OLD NORSE IN ITALY 105 promoting non-professional translations and rewritings. Additionally, TV series such as Michael Hirst’s Vikings (2013–2018) have contributed to enhance the popularity of some sagas: it is worth noting that in 2017 not only Marcello Meli’s translation of Ragnars saga loðbrókar was reprinted by the publishing house Iperborea, but also a totally new translation was published under the telling title Vikings: la saga di Ragnar Lodbrok [Vikings: The saga of Ragnar Lodbrok] by Fanucci, a publishing house specializing in fantasy, horror, and science fiction literature.25

NOTES

1. Both Orazio Ariosto (a grandnephew of the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto) and Torquato Tasso belonged to the literary milieu of Ferrara and knew each other. Ariosto’s epic, unfinished, was published only in 1982 by Giuseppe Venturini. 2. The “previously unpublished” assertion is to the best of the author’s knowledge. For a fuller discussion of Gråberg’s relationship to Scandinavian culture see Ferrari 1996. 3. This article provides publication dates for scholarly works, translations, and other modern texts relevant to the reception of Old Norse literature in Italy, but does not enter into discussion of the dating of Old Norse works themselves. In cases where lists of many Norse literary works appear, titles in translation are often supplied in notes. 4. This author’s translation. Subsequent English translations of Italian works are also those of the present author. 5. James MacPherson published between 1761 and 1765 a series of prose poems that he presented as translations of the poems by the legendary Scottish bard Ossian. The existence of Ossian’s poems has been questioned soon after the publication of MacPherson’s collection and the discussion about the forgery is still ongoing. In any case, The Poems of Ossian enjoyed huge popularity in the last decades of the eighteenth and in the first decades of the nineteenth century. For a survey of MacPherson’s influence on European literatures see Gaskill. 6. For a discussion of the concept of “literary system” see Even Zohar. 7. For the sake of simplicity of presentation , English language translations of the titles of these Eddic poems are provided here: Hávamál [Sayings of the High One], Vǫluspá [Seeress’s prophecy], Atlakviða [The Lay of Atli], Sigurðarkviða [The Lay of Sigurd], Brot af Sigurðarkviðu [Fragment of a Lay of Sigurd], Þrymskviða [Thrym’s Poem]. 8. Supporters of the so-called Buchprosatheorie (book prose theory) “assumed that the origin of the Icelandic saga, although based originally upon oral sources, was fundamentally in written sources and that saga authors crafted their narratives from a variety of written works that were available to them, including, in some cases, works in Latin or foreign vernaculars” (Clunies Ross 40). The Buchprosatheorie was opposed by the supporters of the so-called Freiprosatheorie (free prose theory), who traced the origins of the sagas exclusively to a supposed long and reliable oral tradition: “many of the early advocates of a largely oral development of the Icelandic saga had also insisted that the oral traditions upon which the sagas were based were historically true and had been passed down without change from one generation to the next” (Clunies Ross 41). 106 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

9. For example, the series includes versions of the Iliad, Beowulf, and the Nibelungenlied. 10. That is, the “free prose theory” as opposed to the “book prose theory”; see note 7. 11. Gabrieli’s handbook was first published in 1958 under the title Storia delle letterature della Scandinavia [History of the literatures of Scandinavia], but it is the second, revised, and much enlarged edition of 1969 that became for a long time the Italian reference book on Scandinavian literatures. 12. These saga titles have been translated as The Saga of the Ynglings and as The Saga of Hálf and His Heroes. This “northern stories” volume was then republished in 1989 under the new and more captivating title Leggende e miti vichinghi [Viking legends and myths]. 13. These titles of these famous sagas have been translated as: The Saga of the Jómsvikings, Grettir’s Saga, Njál’s Saga, The Saga of the Sworn Brothers, The Saga of the People of Laxardale, and Egil’s Saga. 14. Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar is a late outlaw saga with significant supernatural elements and has been translated as, for example, The Story of Grettir the Strong (1869) by William Morris and Eiríkur Magnúson. 15. This famous outlaw saga’s title is often translated into English as simply Gisli’s Saga. 16. Leiðarvísir was translated by Marco Scovazzi and published in the Journal Nuova rivista storica, 51 (1967): 359–62; the First Grammatical Treatise was translated by Federico Albano Leoni and published by the academic publisher Il Mulino; the choice of the Physiologus was translated by Vittoria Dolcetti Corazza and published in the journal AION-Filologia germanica, 30–31 (1985-1986): 141–68. Both fragments A and B of the Physiologus were then printed and translated by Vittoria Dolcetti Corazza in her book Il Fisiologo nella tradizione letteraria germanica (Physiologus in the Germanic literary tradition), published in 1992 by the academic publishing house Edizioni dell’Orso. A new translation by Carla del Zotto was published in the same year by the publisher Giardini. 17. For the sake of simplicity of presentation, this list presents only the title of the Icelandic source work, the name of the translator, and the year of publication. English language titles for the sagas listed are provided here on first mention: Hervör’s Saga, The Saga of the Volsungs, The Saga of Ragnar Shaggy-Breeches, The Saga of the People of Laxardale, Egil’s Saga, The Saga of Eric the Red, The Saga of Orkney, Egil’s Saga, Njal’s Saga, The Saga of Gunnlaug Wormtongue, Perceval’s Saga, The Book of Reykjaholar, Gautrek’s Saga, The Saga of Bjorn of Hitardal, The Book of Christianity, The Saga of Bard the Snowfell God, The Book of Icelanders, The Saga of the Sworn Brothers, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway, The Saga of Frithiof the Bold, The Saga of the Ynglings, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki and His Champions, The Tale of Auðn of the Westfjords. For more information on translations see Johnson in this volume (313), “From the Westfjords to World Literature: A Bibliography on Fóstbræðra saga.” 18. Heimskringla (c. 1220), attributed to Snorri Sturluson, has been translated into English as Lives of the Norse Kings or History of the Kings of Norway, although the title has been more literally translated as Orb of the World. 19. English language titles for these sagas include The Saga of Ragnar Shaggy-Breeches, Arrow-Odd’s Saga, The Saga of Egil One-Hand and Asmund Berserk-Slayer, Hrafnkel’s Saga, Gautrek’s Saga, and The Saga of the People of Laxardale. OLD NORSE IN ITALY 107

20. The series “Biblioteca medievale” was founded in 1987 and first published by Pratiche. It was then taken over by the small publishing house Luni and finally, in 2001, by the academic publishing house Carocci. 21. For more on the activities of Vidofnir 14, see his webpage at https://vidofnir14.com/ tag/vidofnir-14/. 22. Mari Catani writes, “Un rifacimento moderno di questa saga è opera dello scrittore islandese Halldor Kiljan Laxness, premio Nobel per la letteratura del 1955, che nel 1952 scrisse Gerpla, un romanzo che in stile di saga antica riprende e reinterpreta in maniera critica e a tratti irriverente la trama della Saga dei Fratelli Giurati” [A modern rewrite of this saga has been done by the Icelandic writer Halldór Kiljan Laxness – Nobel prize winner for literature in 1955 – who in 1952 wrote Gerpla, a novel that in the style of an ancient saga retells the Saga of the Sworn Brothers in a critical and sometimes irreverent way, and by so doing confers a new meaning upon it] (166). 23. For a concise presentation of Julius Evola’s biography and thought in English see Goodrick-Clarke (52-71). 24. A tale about Þormódr, one of the Sworn Brothers, is included in English translation with The Saga of the Sworn Brothers in the Leifur Eriksson Complete Sagas of Icelanders, Including 49 Tales. On the editorial consideration of whether to include related materials with sagas, see Arthur’s discussion of verses attributed to Þormódr in this volume. 25. This translation, however, was not made from the original Old Norse, but from Ben Waggoner’s English translation.

REFERENCES Antiche saghe islandesi. 1973. Edited by Marco Scovazzi. Torino: Einaudi. Clunies Ross, Margaret. 2010. The Cambridge Introduction to The Old Norse–Icelandic Saga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Costanzo, Antonio. 2014. Il sacrificio di Odino. Tracce sciamaniche tra i vichinghi. Frattamaggiore: Diana Edizioni. Even Zohar, Itamar. 2005. Papers in Culture Research. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. Ferrari, Fulvio. 1996. “Jakob Gråberg e la Svezia.” Medioevo e Rinascimento. Annuario del Dipartimento di Studi sul Medioevo e il Rinascimento dell’Università di Firenze 10 (n.s. 7): 241–52. Fóstbrǿðrasaga. La saga dei fratelli di sangue. 2012. Edited by Antonio Costanzo. Frattamaggiore: Diana Edizioni. Gabrieli, Mario. 1969. Le letterature della Scandinavia. Milan and Florence: Sansoni-Accademia. Gaskill, Howard, ed. 2004. The Reception of Ossian in Europe. London and New York: Thoemmes. 108 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Gentzler, Edwin. 2002. “Translation, Poststructuralism, and Power.” In Translation and Power. Edited by Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler, 195–218. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Goodrick–Clarke, Nicholas. 2002. Black Sun. Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York and London: New York University Press. Gråberg di Hemsö, Jacopo. 1811. Saggio istorico su gli scaldi o antichi poeti scandinavi. Pisa: Molini, Landi e comp. Hávamál. La voce di Odino. 2010. Edited by Antonio Costanzo. Frattamaggiore: Diana Edizioni. La saga di Eirik il rosso. 1995. Edited by Rita Caprini. Parma: Pratiche. La saga di Grettir. 1983. Edited by Vittoria Grazi. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translating Literature. Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Mari Catani, Alessandro. 1982. I vichinghi di Jomsborg e altre saghe del Nord. Florence: Sansoni. Meregalli, Andrea. 2016. “A Mock Old Norse Poem in Eighteenth–Century Milan: Francesco Saverio Quadrio’s.” In Bridges to Scandinavia. Edited by Andrea Meregalli and Camilla Storskog, 53–70. Milan: di/segni. Radici, Marta. 1998. “Bibliografia delle traduzioni italiane di testi in antico nordico.” Linguistica e Filologia 7: 7–28. Scovazzi, Marco. 1960. La saga di Hrafnkell e il problema delle saghe islandesi. Arona: Paideia. Soncini, Virginio. 1825. Storia della Scandinavia ossia Svezia, Danimarca e Norvegia. Milan: Antonio Fortunato Stella. Tagliavini, Carlo. 1968. Panorama di storia della Filologia germanica. Bologna: Riccardo Pàtron. Venini, Francesco. 1818. Saggi della poesia lirica antica e moderna. Milan: Giovanni Silvestri. Vikings: la saga di Ragnar Lodbrok. 2017. Edited by Gabriele Giorgi. Rome: Fanucci. PRESERVATION Guardian of Memory: Halldór Laxness, Saga Editor

CHRISTOPHER CROCKER

ABSTRACT: During the 1940s the Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness embarked on a project to oversee the publication of five medieval sagas. The project emerged as a response to certain editorial practices common to the time and, like many of Halldór’s endeavours, invited no small measure of controversy. In fact, Halldór’s publication venture resulted in a legal battle with the Icelandic government, from which he ultimately emerged victorious. An examination of his editorial project and its background demonstrates much about Halldór’s own understanding of the medieval sagas and the wider significance of the saga heritage in the context of modern Icelandic society and culture. Moreover, this project was also intimately connected to Halldór’s own artistic pursuits at the time and in the years that followed, and thus provides important insight into the writer he was and the writer he was yet to become.

RÉSUMÉ: Au cours des années 1940, le romancier islandais Halldór Laxness s’est lancé dans un projet qui visait à superviser la publication de cinq sagas médiévales. Le projet survenait en réponse à certaines pratiques éditoriales communes à l’époque et, à l’instar de nombreuses entreprises de Halldór, suscita une controverse qui ne fut pas des moindres. De fait, la publication de Halldór entraîna une bataille juridique contre le gouvernement islandais, dont il sorti finalement victorieux. L’examen de son projet éditorial et de son contexte en dit beaucoup sur la propre compréhension de Halldór à l’égard des sagas médiévales et sur la portée plus large du patrimoine de la saga dans le contexte de la société et de la culture islandaises modernes. De plus, ce projet était intimement lié aux activités artistiques de Halldór à l’époque et pendant les années qui suivirent, et fournit ainsi un aperçu important de l’écrivain qu’il était et de celui qu’il était encore à devenir.

Christopher Crocker is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 n June of 1916, a letter from Iceland written by H. Guðjónsson frá Laxnesi appeared in the children’s newspaper Sólskin, a supplement to the weekly North-American Icelandic-language newspaper Lögberg. The letter was I addressed to the Sólskinsbörn [Sunshine children]—the publication’s presumed audience—the children of Icelandic immigrants to North America. Assuming a paternal tone, the writer described to his western friends how during the summer every young fellow living in the Icelandic countryside strolled amongst the sheep, with a dog at his side, carrying books in his pack to read. The writer explained that he often read “Islendingasögurnar sem segja frá hreystiverkum og dugnaði forfeðra vorra á gullöldinni” [the Icelandic sagas which tell of the courageous deeds and drive of our forefathers from the golden age] and went on to claim that he had read all of the sagas by the time he was eleven years old. The writer finally informed his readers that:

Ef að mann langar að elska landið sitt en gerir það ekki beinlinis, þá er meðalið þetta: Lestu Islendingasögurnar, með þeim drekkurðu í þig ættjarðarást. – Ekki get eg fullkomlega gert mér grein fyrir hvernig ást min til landsins hefir aukist við lestur þeirra sagna, en það er vist: Aukist hefir hún og það einmitt við lestur íslendingasagna; og þessvegna vil eg segja ykkur að meðalið er einhlýtt. (5–6)

[If one longs to love his country but cannot do it directly, then this is the medicine: Read the Icelandic sagas, with them you will lap up patriotism.—I’m not able to fully clarify how my love for the country has grown from reading these sagas, but it is certain: It has obviously grown exactly by way of reading the Icelandic sagas; and so I want to tell you that the medicine does the trick.]1

When this letter first appeared in print its author, H. Guðjónsson frá Laxnesi, was only fourteen years old. Only much later did he gain international renown as Halldór Kiljan Laxness (1902–98), Icelandic novelist and eventual Nobel laureate.2 Knowing who this young Icelander eventually became, his reverence for Iceland’s medieval sagas is perhaps not all that surprising. However, just a few years after having written the aforementioned letter and having published his first novel, Halldór expressed a considerably different attitude, appearing rather keen to distance his own literary efforts and ambitions from the sagas and the traditions they were understood to represent. A letter that he had sent to his friend Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (1899–1984) during his early twenties provides an interesting perspective on this formative stage of the young novelist’s artistic and intellectual development. Living abroad and in response to having received a copy of Snorri Sturluson’s medieval kings’ saga Heimskringla (c. 1230) from Einar Ólafur, Halldór writes, 112 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Ég get ekkert lært af þeim. Þessir gömlu karlar leggja mesta áhersluna einmitt á það sem nútíðarhöfundar leggja minsta á - nfl. að búa til kontúrur. Þeir eru allir í því að tína saman einhver hundleiðinleg facta, sem einga skepnu geta interesserað … Málið hjá þessum Snorra er sennilega ekki óviturlegt, það sem það nær, og góð í íslenska. (Víða verður hann þó að grípa til erlendra orða.) En sem sagt, það liggur á alt öðrum sviðum en okkar mál, og maðurinn hugsar með alt öðruvísi innréttuðum heila en nútíðarmenn, og interesserar sig fyrir alt öðrum atburðum og hlutum en við (t.d. er hann mjög interesseraður firir því ef einhver konúngur gefur manni frakka eða hríng). Ég held ifirleitt að ekki sá hægt að læra að skrifa níja íslensku af gamalli íslensku. Það þarf eitthvað annað. (Quoted in Hallberg 18)

[I can’t learn anything from them. These old men place the greatest stress upon exactly that which contemporary authors place the least upon—i.e. producing contours. They are always gathering together some dead boring facts, which no creature could be interested in … Snorri’s language is probably not foolish, as far as it goes, and good Icelandic. (Though he often resorts to foreign words.) But as I’ve said, it lay in an altogether different field than our language, and the man thinks with an altogether different brain than contemporary men, and interests himself in altogether different events and things than we (e.g. he is very interested in whether some king gives a man a cloak or a ring). I generally think it impossible to learn to write modern Icelandic from Old Icelandic. It requires something else.]

The young novelist’s polemic letter was just one part of a larger response to what he perceived to be the many backward-looking political, social, and cultural tendencies in Iceland during the 1920s and 30s. Indeed, during this time, Halldór and some of his contemporaries ushered in modern Icelandic literature “as a reaction against traditional prose fiction and a society based on farming,” with the result that “Icelandic prose was opened up to completely new dimensions” (H. Guðmundsson 2008, 97; see also Hallberg 3–5). Although echoes of the saga heritage can be detected in some of Halldór’s early novels, his adolescent admiration for medieval Icelandic writing appears to have been forfeited or at least relegated as a cost of his modernist ambitions and his longing to escape from long-established traditions. During the late 1930s and the early 1940s, however, and concurrent with the period during which he published his most important early novels—particularly Sjálfstætt folk [Independent People] (1934–35) and Heimsljós [World Light] (1937–40)—Halldór’s attention was again drawn towards Iceland’s medieval saga traditions, the shadow of which he had once seemed so determined to escape. In HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 113 fact, during an interview conducted around this time, Halldór recalled the same occasion when his friend had sent him a copy of Snorri’s Heimskringla:

Ég hef alltaf lesið íslenzkar fornbókmenntir, það er ekkert tímabil í lífi mínu sem ég hef ekki lesið þær. Og ég hef aldrei haft áhuga fyrir’ því sagnfræðilega í þeim. Þegar ég var strákur hjá munkum suður í Evrópu í tvö ár og heyrði ekki annað en rómönsk mál, lét ég vin minn Einar Ólaf Sveinsson senda mér Heimskringlu … það var eina íslenzka bókin sem ég hafði og ég las hana miskunnarlaust. Á þessum árum var ég mjög með hugann við aðra hluti, en mig grunaði snemma, að við ættum miklu meiri grundvöll en við vitum, skiljum og skynjum í skáldskap íslendinga frá, fornu fari. (S. Guðmundsson 4–5)

[I have always read Old Icelandic literature; there is no period in my life in which I have not read it. And I have never had historical interest in it. When I was a lad with the monks in southern Europe for two years and heard nothing but romance languages, I had my friend Einar Ólafur Sveinsson send me Heimskringla … it was the only Icelandic book that I had and I read it mercilessly. During these years I was much occupied with other things, but I suspected early on that we had a much greater foundation than we knew, understood, and perceived from the poetics of Icelanders from ages past.]

Demonstrating that remembrance can be a many-textured thing, Halldór here advocates for the profound artistic—rather than directly historical—value of medieval saga writing, remarkably by invoking the same event that had spurred his earlier derisive remarks concerning these same literary traditions. From a young age, medieval Icelandic saga traditions exercised a profound influence upon Halldór’s life, though his attitude towards these traditions was far from static as he began to develop as a young writer and sought to escape from the long shadow they cast over modern Icelandic literature. Yet, after asserting the importance of his voice within contemporary Icelandic letters during the 1930s, Halldór embarked upon a profound engagement with Iceland’s medieval saga heritage, perhaps most frequently perceived in his novels Íslandsklukkan [Iceland’s Bell] (1943–46) and Gerpla [Wayward Heroes] (1952). However, during the same period Halldór also pursued an editorial project resulting in published editions of five medieval sagas, each controversially adapted to modern Icelandic spelling. As a result, Halldór became embroiled in an intense public battle over how to best preserve, protect, and properly understand the significance of Iceland’s medieval saga heritage. Through this editorial project and the ensuing battle, Halldór further established his position as a formidable cultural, political, and social critic in Iceland while continuing to develop and refine his own artistic methods, drawing profound inspiration and influence from Iceland’s medieval saga heritage. 114 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

“… another kind of Esperanto”

In a brief essay dated to 1935 but first published in 1937, “Um stafsetningu á fornsögum” [On spelling in the medieval sagas], Halldór delivered a prelude of what was to come in the battle over Iceland’s medieval saga heritage. Here Halldór swiftly dismissed what had, since at least the late nineteenth century, become common practice when publishing modern editions of medieval sagas, which was the use of normalized orthography. Important evidence survives from medieval Iceland attesting to an early concern for establishing a common system of writing to represent the language Icelanders spoke (The First Grammatical Treatise 206–11). However, such efforts were perhaps more prescriptive than descriptive, and, in any case, the surviving manuscripts of medieval Icelandic display a varied rather than a universal, uniform system of orthography. Early Icelandic writing exhibits variance in terms of spelling conventions as well as the use of different glyphs, diacritical marks, and abbreviations across different manuscripts, and sometimes even within a single manuscript (see Figure 1). These variations might reflect not only personal or regional differences, but also the considerable changes both the Icelandic language and its orthography underwent during the Middle Ages (Benediktsson 55–96). By the late nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century editors and scholars had, however, arrived at a largely unified system of normalized orthography customarily used to represent Old Icelandic texts in print. Drawing on the same early evidence referred to above attesting to a concern for the development of early Icelandic writing during the Middle Ages, this normalized system was thought to better reflect the pronunciation of Old Icelandic as it was spoken during the Middle Ages than the surviving manuscript witnesses of the texts. Thus, an underlying assumption was that the written sagas always represented orally transmitted traditions that pre-dated the arrival of writing in medieval Iceland. The use of normalized orthography was a practice maintained by Hið íslenzka fornritafélag [The Old Icelandic Text Society] and its editors in their Íslenzk fornrit series of medieval saga editions—launched in 1933—whose work Halldór was doubtlessly aware of and likely responding to in some way (Helgason 1996, 112–13). In his brief essay on the subject, Halldór contended that “Samræmdur” [normalized] orthography was not reflective of the original manuscripts and that “hann er nokkurskonar esperantó, sem málfræðingar hafa fundið upp sér til dundurs” [it is another kind of Esperanto, which linguists have invented to keep themselves busy], going on to dismiss what he calls the “menntafjandsamlega ritháttar málfræðihetjanna” [anti-intellectual spellings of the heroic linguists] (1937, 156, 160). Halldór would also later compare normalization to “þegar Don Quijote tók sápuskál rakarans og skírði hana með mikill viðhöfn Riddarahjálm” [when Don Quixote took the barber’s soap basin and christened it, with much pomp, a knight’s helmet] (1942, 333). In his short essay from 1935, HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 115

Halldór went on to maintain that there was also a certain kind of hostility in reproducing Old Icelandic texts using a language that lies outside of the “lifandi ritmál þjóðarinnar” [living written language of the nation] as the sagas had consistently followed those changes in the language in which they were written and rewritten for centuries. Halldór later elaborated on this same point, noting that the sagas “eru til í handritum með stafsetningum allra alda, síðan þær voru samdar, hver öld skráði þær með sínum rithætti, af því þær voru lifandi og sígild eign þjóðarinnar” [exist in manuscripts with spellings of all ages since they were composed, each age writing them down with their own spellings, since they were living and classical property of the people] (1942, 336). Thus, he argued, reproducing the sagas in print using normalized orthography, developed only during the nineteenth century, contradicts the traditions through which the sagas had always been preserved. For Halldór, the use of normalized orthography ultimately rendered the medieval sagas lifeless and unnecessarily distanced the audience from the texts. More than this, he supposed that using more natural language would allow modern Icelandic readers to recognize that the language of the sagas is in fact “okkar eigið mál, sem vér notum þann dag í dag, fagurt og lifandi nútímamál” [our own language, the one that we use today, a beautiful and vibrant contemporary language] (1937, 156–57). He thus contended that the medieval sagas should be published in facsimile or diplomatic editions for the use of trained scholars, who could then explore the texts “orð fyrir orð, teikn fyrir teikn” [word for word, symbol for symbol], and adapted to modern Icelandic for the benefit of the reading public, concluding that editions using normalized spelling served no functional purpose (156). The central idea of this short essay is directly reflected in the publishing venture that Halldór took on some few years later, which provoked considerable political and public outcry. Between 1941 and 1946, Halldór oversaw the publication of five medieval sagas and, in concordance with the philosophy he had laid out in his brief essay a few years earlier, each of the sagas was reproduced using modern Icelandic spelling, that which Halldór referred to as “lögboðinni stafsetningu íslenzka ríkins” [the official spelling of the Icelandic state] (Laxdælasaga 3; see also Alexanderssaga 5, Brennunjálssaga 415–16, Hrafnkatla 3, 5, Grettissaga 288), referring to modern Icelandic spelling according to school curricula at the time. In anticipation of the appearance of the first of Halldór’s editions in 1941, a brief notification appeared in the daily newspaper Vísir in October of that same year announcing a forthcoming publication of Laxdæla saga “færast í búning nútíma stafsetningar” [dressed in the fabric of contemporary spelling] and with “þurrum ættartölulanglokum sleppt” [dry, tediously long genealogies omitted] (“Bækur á næstunni,” 2). The notification, over which Halldór doubtlessly exercised some influence, also reiterated the claim that an edition of the saga using modern spelling and omitting certain parts of the text would prove palatable to the reading 116 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA public, losing neither the meaning nor the style of its original source. The text also suggested that the sagas might yet be published in other editions using “gamalli stafsetningu” [the old spelling] and including the genealogies, which aligns with Halldór’s earlier contention that the hitherto customary use of normalized spelling served little purpose (“Bækur á næstunni”), and is interesting in light of the publication of the Íslenzk fornrit edition of Laxdæla saga in 1934, notably edited by his old friend Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and reproduced using normalized orthography. The promised edition of Laxdæla saga appeared in print just a few weeks later and included a foreword in which Halldór briefly described certain of the literary aspects of the saga. He underlined, for example, the narrative’s “rétta blanda hámenningar og frumstæðis, sem til þarf að skapa stórfengilega, ódauðlega list” [correct blend of high-culture and the primitive, which is necessary to create colossal, timeless art], and certain of the saga’s author’s methods, namely his lack of hesitation—differing from some of his medieval Icelandic contemporaries—to shed or to augment historical events or persons according to the laws of the narrative itself, “ekki frábrugðin aðferðum beztu sagnaskálda seinni tíma” [differing not from the methods of the best novelists of later times] (5–6). Halldór goes on to admit that he has omitted certain parts of the saga that wander far from its primary substance and whose significance to the narrative may be difficult for the reading public to clearly understand. He comments that overall his edition follows laws other than the “vísindalegu, þar sem mikið veltur á, að engum stafkrók fornra handrita sé breytt í prentum” [scholarly, wherein much depends on no syllable of the old manuscripts being changed in print] (6). Interestingly, Halldór notes that the text of his edition is in fact based on Einar’s earlier edition of the saga in the Íslenzk fornrit series, which had followed the series’ editorial standard of reproducing the saga using normalized orthography, the same practice Halldór implicitly rejects in his reference to the requirements of a proper “scholarly” approach. In addition to the use of modern Icelandic spelling, the most obvious difference between his and Einar’s Íslenzk fornrit edition is the omission in Halldór’s edition of some of the so-called dry and tedious genealogies. For example, in the Íslenzk fornrit edition of the saga, using normalized spelling, Guðrún Ósvifrsdóttir, whom—along with her lovers—Halldór describes as the “meginkjarni” [primary nucleus] of the saga (5), is introduced as follows, using typical generic formulations:

Ósvífr hét maðr ok var Helgason, Óttars sonar, Bjarnar sonar ins autsrœna, Ketils sonar flatnefs, Bjarnar sonar bunu. Móðir Ósvífrs hét Niðbjǫrg, hennar móðir Kaðlín, dóttir Gǫngu-Hrólfs, Øxna-Þórissonar; hann var hersir ágætr austr í Vík. Því var hann svá kallaðr, at hann átti eyjar þrjár ok átta tigu yxna í hverri; hann gaf eina eyna ok yxnina með Hákoni konungi, ok varð sú gjǫf allfræg. Ósvífr var spekingr HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 117

mikill; hann bjó at Laugum í Sælingsdal. Laugabœr stendr fyrir sunnan Sælingsdalsá, gegnt Tungu. Kona hans hét Þórdís, dóttir Þjóðólfs lága. Óspakr hét sonr þeira, annarr Helgi, þriði Vandráðr, fjórði Torráðr, fimmti Þórólfr; allir váru þeir vígligir menn. Guðrún hét dóttir þeira; hon var kvenna vænst, er upp óxu á Íslandi, bæði at ásjánu ok vitsmunum. Guðrún var kurteis kona, svá at í þann tíma þóttu allt barnavípur, þat er aðrar konur hǫfðu í skarti hjá henna. Allra kvenna var hon kœnst ok bezt orði farin; hon var ǫrlynd kona. (85–86)

[There was a man called Ósvífr, son of Helgi, son of Óttarr, son of Bjǫrn the Easterner, son of Ketill Flat-nose, son of Bjǫrn buna. Ósvífr’s mother was called Niðbjǫrg, her mother Kaðlín, daughter of Gǫngu-Hrólfr, son of Oxen-Þórir; he was a famous chieftain east in Vík. He was called so because he had three islands and had eighty oxen on each; he gave one island and its oxen to king Hákon, and that gift became very famous. Ósvífr was very wise; he lived at Laugar in Sælingsdalr. The farm at Laugar stands to the south of the Sælingsdalr-river, opposite Tunga. His wife was called Þórdís, daughter of Þjóðólfr the short. Their son was called Óspakr, another Helgi, a third Vandráðr, a fourth Torráðr, a fifth Þórólfr; they were all valiant men. Their daughter was called Guðrún; she was the finest woman who grew up in Iceland, both in beauty and intelligence. Guðrún was a courteous woman, such that at the time everything seemed childish, which other women had in finery next to her. Of all women she was wisest and most well-spoken; she was a generous woman.]

In Halldór’s edition, on the other hand, the same passage appears as follows:

Ósvífur hét maður og var Helgason. Hann var spekingur mikill; hann bjó að Laugum í Sælingsdal. Laugabær stendur fyrir sunnan Sælingsdalsá, gegnt Tungu. Kona hans hét Þórdís, dóttir Þjóðólfs lága. Óspakur hét sonur þeirra, annar Helgi, þriðji Vandráður, fjórði Torráður, fimmti Þórólfur; allir voru þeir víglegir menn. Guðrún hét dóttir þeirra; hún var kvenna vænst, er upp óxu á Íslandi, bæði að ásjónu og vitsmunum. Guðrún var kurteis kona, svo að í þann tíma þóttu allt barnavípur, það er aðrar konur höfðu í skarti hjá henna. Allra kvenna var hún kænst og bezt orði farin; hún var örlynd kona. (88)

[There was a man called Ósvífr, son of Helgi. He was very wise; he lived at Laugar in Sælingsdalr. The farm at Laugar stands to the south of the Sælingsdálr-river, opposite Tunga. His wife was called Þórdís, daughter of Þjóðólfr the short. Their son was called Óspakr, another Helgi, a third Vandráðr, a fourth Torráðr, a fifth Þórólfr; they were all valiant men. Their daughter was called Guðrún; she was the finest woman who grew up in Iceland, both in beauty and intelligence. Guðrún was a courteous woman, such that at the time everything seemed childish, which other women had in finery 118 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

next to her. Of all women she was wisest and most well-spoken; she was a generous woman.]

In addition to spelling differences and some slight adjustments in certain of the words, Halldór has notably omitted the lengthy genealogy of Guðrún’s father Ósvífr from the text, including the remarkable anecdote about her great-great-great grandfather Þórir and his oxen. The reader thus reaches the information directly related to Guðrún and her character more rapidly and is perhaps more overtly signalled to her central role in the subsequent narrative. However, one might also argue that generic conventions indicate that the exposition of Guðrún’s rich genealogy is no less crucial in signalling the reader not only to her noble character but also to her importance in the overall narrative. In his essay from 1935, Halldór had claimed that the normalized spelling typically used by modern editors was at least as far removed from the language of the sagas as preserved in their medieval manuscripts as was modern Icelandic. Observing the same normalized passage from Sveinsson’s edition of the text cited above and its original manuscript witness, the fourteenth-century manuscript AM 132 fol. or Möðruvallabók (see Figure 1 below), several significant changes are evident, including expanded abbreviations and certain glyphs, replaced numerals and other characters, and otherwise standardized orthography.

Figure 1, (left) a leaf from the early fourteenth-century manuscript AM 132 fol. (170r) or Möðruvallabók, courtesy of handrit.is, and (right) the same passage from a type-facsimile edition of the manuscript, Möðruvallabók (AM 132 Fol.), 170r, each containing the passage from Laxdæla saga cited above. The portion of the text contained within the box is the passage Halldór omits in his edition of the saga, as discussed above. HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 119

When comparing the passages introducing Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir in both Einar’s and Halldór’s editions of Laxdæla Saga to the original manuscript in Figure 1, it is difficult to dismiss Halldór’s claim that Einar’s normalized orthography differs at least as much from the original written text as Halldórʼs own modern spelling edition Icelandic does. While the Icelandic language has perhaps experienced relatively few substantial changes since the eleventh or twelfth century—when compared to the English language, for example—editions such as Einar’s clearly fail to accurately represent their original manuscript sources on an orthographic level. Yet, given the relative stability of the Icelandic language since the Middle Ages, Halldór’s edition cannot be considered an “Interlingual” or translation proper. In fact, both editions can be regarded as “unmistakably intralingual translations,” which is to say, that each is “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language” (Jakobson 233; Helgason 1999, 122–23, 127). Like all translations, complete equivalence is impossible here, and the end product of this process always actively functions within its own cultural context or contexts (Bassnett 25–26). Though not working with the language of translation theory, Halldór demonstrated a keen awareness of this phenomenon, and the response that his editorial project inspired provides further evidence of the high stakes and profound cultural impact such work might entail. Much of the uproar in response to Halldór’s work, however, came not from scholars or other editors whose own work he was criticizing but rather from public and political officials, themselves deeply invested in guiding the development of modern Icelandic society and culture at this pivotal moment in Iceland’s history.

War of the Words

Following the appearance of the notification alerting the public to Halldór’s forthcoming edition of Laxdæla saga in 1941, Icelandic parliamentarian Jónas Jónsson from Hrifla drafted a bill in the hope of preventing the publication of the edition, citing the perceived damage that it would inflict upon Icelandic society and culture. Jónas wrote an impassioned editorial in the Icelandic newspaper Tíminn, wherein he framed the proposed volume as the product of a wider communist plot, referring to Old Icelandic writing as “hellubjarg, sem andleg menning þjóðarinnar hvílir á” [the cornerstone, on which the spiritual culture of the nation rests]. He concluded by claiming that the edition, “getur aldrei orðið annað en skrípamynd af fornritunum … gefin[n] út á háðulegan hátt, eíngöngu í þeim tilgangi að storka þeim, sem þykir vænt um þær bækur, sem grundvalla menningu þjóðarinnar” [could never become anything but a caricature of the old writings … published in a contemptuous way, only with the goal to provoke those, who love those books, which established the culture of the nation] (426).3 Much of the negative criticism Halldór’s editorial project faced at this stage concerned 120 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA the omission of certain genealogical and geographical information, which was particularly perverse to those who considered the sagas to be reliable historical documents, threatening “the way in which these people identified … with the sagas and their characters” (Helgason 1999, 130). Under the proposed legislation the Icelandic government would retain the exclusive privilege to grant publishing rights for those Icelandic works composed prior to the year 1400, a year which closely coincided—and largely still does—with the perceived ending of the golden age of medieval saga writing (H. Guðmundsson 2008, 286; Helgason 1999, 121–22). The law notably included an exemption for those editions published by Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, whose custom was to follow the convention of using normalized orthography (Helgason 1996, 116). However, with Jónas’s bill awaiting approval, Halldór’s edition was published before any legal action could be taken. In the foreword to his edition, Halldór responds directly to the “skopfrumvarpi” [ridiculous parliamentary bill], repeating his claim that using normalized orthography makes little sense when reproducing a saga in print since normalized spelling “er ekki til eldri en frá nítjándu öld” [did not exist before the nineteenth century] (7). Befitting the early reaction to his new publishing venture, Halldór assumes a firm political stance concerning the preservation of medieval Icelandic culture, arguing that his edition constitutes an “íslenzkt landvarnarmál” [a national defense of the Icelandic language]. Icelanders would understand, through his adaptation of the saga into modern Icelandic, that “þrettándualdar-ritin séu í meginatriðum á því máli, sem vér notum nútímamenn” [thirteenth-century writings are on the whole in that language, which we use today]. He argued that those who regarded the language of these works as something other than Old Icelandic, namely “gammelnorsk” or “oldnordisk,” were “vísvituðum eða launvituðum, að afsanna, að fornbókmenntir vorar væru ritaðar á íslenzka tungu; það var tilraun til að slíta fornbókmenntir vorar úr tengslum við Ísland og – einkum – íslenzka siðmenning” [openly or surreptitiously refuting that our old literature was written in the Icelandic language; it was an attempt to sever the connection between our old literature and Iceland and—particularly—Icelandic civilization] (7). Interestingly, there is a striking agreement in the historical, cultural, and contemporary significance that Halldór and Jónas each ascribe to the medieval saga heritage, and they seem only to differ in their respective politics and their ideas as to “how the sagas’ relevance could be best maintained” (Helgason 1999, 143). Despite Halldór’s efforts, the parliamentary bill passed into law. During the following year, however, Halldór and his publishing partners directly defied the new law when they published an edition of Hrafnkels saga (Hrafnkatla) without having gained the required permission from the Icelandic government. He and his partners—Ragnar Jónsson and Stefán Ögmundsson—were subsequently charged under the new law and quickly sentenced each to pay a fine of 1.000 Icelandic kronur or face 45 days of prison confinement (Helgason 1999, 122). Halldór HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 121 confronted the new law directly in his rather brief foreword to his edition of Hrafnkels saga, where he provided no literary, historical, or philological context but rather only a provocative reproach. Halldór first acknowledges that his text mostly follows that of Konráð Gíslason’s earlier edition of the same saga, but notes that his edition “færð til lögboðinnar stafsetningar íslenzka ríkisins” [follows the statutory spelling of the Icelandic state]. Halldór next explains that he has taken this approach,

í sérstakri minningu um stjórnarskrárbrot það, sem þjóðfífli Íslendinga tókst að fá Alþingi til að drýgja í fyrra með setningu skoplaga þeirra gegn prentfrelsi á Íslandi, þar sem Íslendingum var gert að skyldu að nota danska nítjándualdar-stafsetningu, kennda við Wimmer, á íslenzkum fornritum. (5)

[in particular recognition of the constitutional violation, which Iceland’s village idiot managed to get the Alþing to commit to last year in establishing their ridiculous law against the freedom of the press in Iceland, whereby Icelanders were made by law to use nineteenth-century Danish spelling, attributed to Wimmer, in Old Icelandic writings.]4

Halldór eschews all but the political aspect of his editorial project, here dispelling any notion that he would yield to his opponents, alluding also to the earlier politicization of the distribution of state grants to writers and other artists. Halldór saw his own grant from the Icelandic government decrease significantly in 1940 and claimed that the reduced grant was “straff og aðvörun, mér til auðmýkingar” [a punishment and warning, to humiliate me]. Rather than quietly accepting the reduced grant, or simply refusing it, Halldór instead used it to establish a fund to “vernda skáld, hvaða skoðanir sem þeir hafa, fyrir því” [protect poets, whatever views they have] (“Halldór Kiljan Laxness leggur Menntamálaráðsstyrkinn í sjóð,” 183; H. Guðmundsson 2008, 273) . In publishing his edition of Hrafnkels saga, Halldór’s brazen violation of what he considered to be the government’s “ridiculous law” was much in line with the recent history of his conflicts with certain Icelandic politicians. Refusing to admit defeat, Halldór and his publishing partners quickly appealed their conviction on the grounds that, as Halldór had opined in his foreword to Hrafnkatla, the law was unconstitutional since it violated previous laws permitting freedom of the press. When the case was heard the following year, a government commission produced a report detailing the findings of three professors from the University of Iceland, including Sigurður Nordal, who together concluded that in his edition of Laxdæla saga Halldór had distorted the saga in several ways, not only in modernizing some of the language of the text but also in omitting and reorganizing certain parts of the narrative. Unlike his earlier 122 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA edition of Laxdæla saga, no lengthy passages of the original text were omitted in Halldór’s edition of Hrafnkels saga, though he did relocate a passage describing the famous horse Freyfaxi to a slightly earlier part of the text (9). The professors, however, expressed their own opposition to the new publishing law on the grounds that no wholly consistent spelling system could accurately reflect the original language of the sagas. They also conceded, as Halldór had contended, that modern Icelandic could in some ways be considered more closely related to the origins of the Icelandic language than the normalized orthography customarily used in modern editions of the sagas. The professors went on to undermine the notion that government officials were best suited to oversee the publication of the medieval Icelandic sagas and suggested that such responsibility would be better placed in the hands of scholars and writers. Halldór and his publishing partners were eventually acquitted of all charges when the law itself was finally deemed to violate constitutional rights concerning the freedom of the press, as Halldór had already argued (H. Guðmundsson 2008, 286; Helgason 1999, 122–23, 127–28, 134; 1996, 119–20). The intense battle spurred by Halldór’s editorial project was much more than a clash over a few letters, reflecting an ongoing conflict stemming from the profound chasm between Halldór’s political views and those of his opponents, most prominently Jónas Jónsson (Helgason 1999, 133). Both parties indeed maintained that the medieval saga heritage represented a crucial and constitutive element of modern Icelandic culture and identity, an extremely pressing matter in light of Iceland’s struggle for political independence during this period (Hastrup 69–135). The battle on this front was thus waged not over whether but rather how and by whom the medieval saga heritage should be preserved and protected, and how its relevance might be best maintained within the now rapidly modernizing Icelandic society of the mid-twentieth century.

The Art of the Saga

Halldór’s interest in the sagas during this period was never purely political, and he continued to nurture his deep and multifaceted engagement with Iceland’s medieval saga heritage not only through his ongoing editorial project, but also by way of his closely allied artistic pursuits. Halldór’s editorial venture indeed did not come to an end following his legal victory in 1943, and the greatest share of the output from this project appeared during the years that followed. In 1945 Halldór published editions of both Alexanders saga mikla and Njáls saga, and his edition of Grettis saga followed in 1946. During these years, though still facing criticism from certain of his political opponents, Halldór appears to have devoted more attention to the medieval narratives themselves and to their literary qualities, rather than to the political concerns that had more explicitly framed the publication of the earlier editions. HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 123

In the foreword to his edition of Alexanders saga, Halldór again shows concern for language, noting his desire to make the saga accessible for a modern audience, adapting the text to the language “sem Íslendingar skrifa nú” [which Icelanders write today]. He also claims that in Alexanders saga one can hear “niðinn af uppsprettum tungunnar” [the murmur of the origins of the language] (5), the familiar philosophy informing Halldór’s use of modern spelling now requiring no explicit explanation. As Halldór notes, the medieval Icelandic Alexanders saga is a translation of Walter of Châtillon’s medieval Latin epic poem Alexandreis (c. 1170). The translation is thought to have been compiled during the second half of the thirteenth century and is attributed to the Abbott Brandr Jónsson, later the Bishop of Hólar (d. 1264). In his foreword Halldór refers to the Abbott as a wise and learned man from whom “geta Íslendingar allra tíma lært fleira en eitt um það, hvernig útlenda hluti skal um ganga á Íslandi” [Icelanders of all times could learn more than one thing about how foreign things should be treated in Iceland], noting that all “sem ritar á íslenzku, jafnvel á vorum dögum, ætti að verða til eftirdæmis sá hreinleiki og tignarbragur norræns máls” [who write in Icelandic, even in our day, should follow the example of the tidiness and grand character of the Nordic language] (5). While Halldór goes on to discuss the Latin poem and its author in some detail, he ultimately claims that the original work may have lost some of its spark since only very few learned individuals could now fully appreciate it. Yet, again drawing a connection between modern and Old Icelandic, Halldór asserts that “við Íslendingar getum verið stoltir af því að hafa smíðað upp úr hinu forna verki íslenzkan skartgrip, og eiga hann enn sem nýjan á tuttugustu öld, jafngildan eða gildari en hann var í fyrstu, jafnfagran eði fegri” [we Icelanders can be proud to have fashioned out of the ancient work an Icelandic jewel, and have it still as good as new in the twentieth century, as valuable or more valuable than it first was, as beautiful or more beautiful] (6). Halldór also contended that because Alexanders saga was probably never “almenningseign til forna” [public property in days of old] as were some of the more well-known sagas, it had likely undergone fewer rewritings and its language fewer changes than other medieval sagas. Thus, for Halldór, Alexanders saga’s greatest value rested in its apparent proximity to the apparent origins of the Icelandic language. Near the end of the foreword, Halldór also mentions the eighteenth-century Icelandic antiquarian, scholar, and manuscript collector Árni Magnússon (1663–1730) who had worked on his own edition of the saga, though his work was lost in the Copenhagen Fire of 1728. Interestingly, Halldór’s curiosity with Árni’s life and work extended beyond the pair’s shared interest in Alexanders saga. In fact, Árni Magnússon served as the model for the manuscript collector Arnas Arnæus, one of the central characters of Halldór’s novel Íslandsklukkan, which was published in three volumes during 1943–46. Though the genesis of the novel might be traced to the early 1920s (S. Guðmundsson 4–5), it was notably completed 124 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA amidst the execution of Halldór’s editorial project. In preserving and protecting the medieval saga heritage in his own way through his editorial project, one may wonder whether Halldór would have seen in his own work a reflection of Árni’s efforts to preserve the original manuscript witnesses of the texts several hundred years earlier. In any case, it seems impossible to regard Halldór’s editorial work and his work as a novelist during these years as anything other than complementary. The two other central figures of Halldór’s novel Íslandsklukkan, Snæfriður Íslandssól and Jón Hreggviðsson, are also based on historical figures from the eighteenth century. However, in fleshing out these two characters, Halldór also seems to draw upon several typical aspects, specific figures, and important events appearing in certain of the medieval sagas. This includes, for example, Halldór drawing inspiration from the story of the aforementioned Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir of Laxdæla saga, and women from other sagas, in shaping the character of Snæfriður Íslandssól (E. Jónsson 20–21, 91–93, 157, 221, 309–10; Jakobsson 31–33, 38, 42). Moreover, somewhat in contrast to his earlier novels, Halldór took a more direct approach here, employing little psychological or emotional description and focusing instead on action, physical reaction, and dialogue. This allowed Halldór to remove the obvious presence of the author from the narrative and was a conscious move “closer to the old style of the Icelandic sagas” (H. Guðmundsson 2003, 38; see also G. Nordal 49–51; Hallberg 9–13; and S. Guðmundsson 4–5). Though a complex work with myriad dimensions, Íslandsklukkan is largely concerned with the persistent vitality and significance of native Icelandic culture amidst what has been considered one of the most dismal periods of Iceland’s history, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It has frequently been interpreted as primarily a nationalistic work closely tied to the Independence movement of the 1940s. However, it retains many of the same hallmark subtleties of Halldór’s wider artistic output despite the nationalistic and political frameworks scholars have commonly used to interpret the novel (Jakobsson 33–34). Halldór’s edition of Njáls saga also appeared in print in 1945. It was preceded by (and met with) not only political uproar but also the publication of a competing edition of the saga sponsored by the Icelandic state (Helgason 1999, 119–36). With his legal victory in hand, Halldór, however, used the occasion not to linger on the familiar political battle but to express a more elaborate view of his understanding of the significance of the medieval saga heritage and the art of the saga narratives (Helgason 1996, 117). In the afterword to his edition of Njáls saga, Halldór highlights, for example, what he considers to be the primary essence of the work, which is its interest in the “örlagatrú norrænnar heiðni” [fatalistic belief of Nordic paganism] and the narrative’s relative amorality within the context of medieval Christendom. He claims that the narrative, and the doctrine of fate that it appears to advocate, constitutes a rejection of the Christian notion of free will such that in the saga “beztu mennirnir vinna ævinlega verstu verkin” [the best men always HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 125 perform the worst deeds] (416). Halldór maintains that Njáls saga and some others like it, presenting this doctrine in such a highly learned form, are thus a singular phenomenon in the cultural history of medieval Europe, writing “á Íslandi hefur á þessari öld lifað mjög sterkur heiðinglegur andi, óþekktur annarsstaðar í kristnum löndum … leifar – eða endurvakning – forns hugarfars norræns” [in Iceland during these centuries a very strong heathen spirit survived, unknown elsewhere in Christian lands, remnants—or a revival—of the old Nordic temperament] (416–17). Halldór expressed similar ideas in the afterword to his edition of Grettis saga, which was published the following year. Here he notes, for example, that the narrative works to valorize an overwhelmingly pagan hero, Grettir Ásmundarson, particularly in the saga’s concluding passage, which describes the reasons why the thirteenth-century politician and saga-writer Sturla Þórðarson (1214–84) considered Grettir to be the most distinguished of outlaws (281). Thus, for Halldór Grettis saga is “fjarri kristinni hyggju” [far from the Christian mind] and reveals “innsti kjarni íslenzku hetjusögunnar, sem á … rætur sínar djúpt í heiðni og miðri siðblindu víkinglegs hugsunarháttar” [the innermost core of the Icelandic heroic saga, which has its roots deep in paganism and amidst the amoral Viking mentality] (287). However, as noted above, Halldór continued to regard the sagas not as reliable historical sources of the period they purport to describe but rather as literary products of the time, the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, during which they were first written down. He describes Grettis saga, for example, as “fjórtándu aldar skáldverk” [a fourteenth-century work of fiction], noting that it is “að því leyti sérkennilegt verk, að hún er í senn safn þjóðsagna og skáldverk eins höfundar” [in some ways a peculiar work, in that it is at once a collection of folk stories and a work of fiction of a single author], one who “leitast við vitandi vits að fá hið sundurleita efni sitt til að loða saman” [consciously seeks to get his diverse materials to stick together] (283). Halldór’s profound interest in the artistry of the sagas, rather than the history that they purport to represent, coincides with certain ideas he had more briefly expressed in the earlier foreword to his edition of Laxdæla saga; for example, he emphasized the role of the “author” in gathering materials together to suit the “laws” of the narrative, emphasizing the fictional and even somewhat novelistic qualities of the medieval sagas. In his afterword to Njáls saga Halldór is, however, somewhat equivocal in remarking that “sá tími er liðinn, að menn rugla þessu skáldverki saman við sagnfræði” [the time has passed, that people confuse this work of fiction for history] (415), while also noting that scholars have mostly “ekki áttað sig á, hverskonar bókmenntir þetta voru, og flestir sem sagt byggt skoðanir sínar á þeim misskilningi, að Brennunjálssaga væri sagnfræðirit” [not understood what sort of literature this was, and most claim to build their view on the misunderstanding that Njáls saga is a work of history] (416). He goes on to mention a singular exception to this rule, namely his old friend Einar Ólafur 126 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Sveinsson and his then recently published study of the saga, Á Njálsbúð, bók um mikið listaverk (1943). Interestingly, Einar, who had also edited three volumes in the Íslenzk fornrit series by this time, would also later serve as editor of the series’ edition of Njáls saga (1954). Despite some of Halldór’s concerns for the editorial practices of those involved with the Íslenzk fornrit series, particularly their use of normalized orthography, his understanding of the nature of the medieval sagas as literary rather than strictly historical sources closely coincided with many of the ideas proposed by these same editors. In addition to Einar Ólafur, this group also counted the aforementioned Sigurður Nordal amongst its “members,” and came to be known as the “Icelandic school,” gathered under the collective understanding that, though certainly relying upon history and inherited oral traditions in some ways, the medieval sagas are more properly understood and interpreted as artistic works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Andersson 65–119; Helgason 1996, 111–25). For example, in highlighting the role of the author, as opposed to the copyist or scribe, Halldór’s emphasis on the artistic and even novelistic qualities of the sagas bears a striking resemblance to Sigurður’s momentous declaration that “Hrafnkatla er … ein hin fullkomnasta stutta bóksaga … sem til er í heimsbókmenntunum” [Hrafnkels saga is one of the most perfect short novels that exists in world literature] (66; Helgason 1999, 148).5 Like the members of the “Icelandic school,” Halldór was also interested establishing a place for the sagas within the context of world literature, comparing both Njáls saga and Grettis saga with the works of medieval Italian writers Dante (1265–1321) and Boccaccio (1313–75) respectively.6 Despite several points of agreement, Halldór remained as steadfast in his contempt for certain aspects of the work of modern editors as he was now certain of the timeless literary value of the sagas and the genius of their medieval authors. In the afterword to his edition of Grettis saga, for example, he particularly rebuked Guðni Jónsson, whose edition of Grettis saga had been published in 1936 as part of the Íslenzk fornrit series. Halldór claimed that Guðni “brigzla hinum forna snillingi næstum á hverri síðu Grettluútgáfu sinnar um einhverja vömm” [reproaches the old master on nearly every page of his edition of Grettis saga about some disgrace] (288), specifically referring to Guðni’s use of footnotes in describing what he perceived to be errors or inconsistences in the text. Halldór compared this aspect of Guðni’s editorial work to “drukkinn fóla, sem stöðugt æpir ókvæðisorð fram í fyrir söngvara í áheyrendasal” [the drunken brute, who constantly screams forth abuse before the singer in the auditorium] (288), asserting above all else the brilliance of the medieval saga writers. Halldór’s spirited reproach perhaps betrays a sense of solidarity or kinship he, as a novelist facing his own critics, may have felt with the medieval saga writers he seemed to regard as his own predecessors. HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 127

Arguably Halldór’s most direct artistic engagement with the medieval saga heritage, his novel Gerpla (1952), could be considered a manifestation of this sense of kinship. The novel is largely a retelling of the medieval Fóstbræðra saga, though drawing also upon parts of Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, the latter a particularly remarkable source in light of the aforementioned attitude Halldór expressed towards this work as a young writer. Though in some ways celebrating Iceland’s medieval saga heritage, in Gerpla Halldór clearly subjects “the old heroic ideal to caustic satire,” while simultaneously reflecting the life and culture, anxieties, fears, ideals, and ideas of the mid-twentieth century (Hallberg 13–15; see also Geeraert in this volume). This aspect of the novel interestingly parallels Halldór’s fundamental contention that the medieval sagas themselves are most revelatory not as historical sources of the culture and society they purport to represent, Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, but as products of Iceland’s thirteenth and fourteenth century literary culture. By this time, for Halldór the great heroes of Iceland’s medieval sagas were not the famous figures populating the narratives themselves such as Egill Skalla-Grímsson, Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, or Grettir Ásmundarson, but rather the anonymous authors of these “meistaraverkum bókmenntanna” [masterpieces of literature] (Grettissaga 288; see also Helgason 1999, 145–53). While Halldór infuses Gerpla with an overall caustic critique of the old heroic ideal (Hallberg 15), his artistic response to the medieval saga heritage does not contradict but rather closely echoes the perspective that informed his editorial project, which was further developed during that project’s execution.

Conclusion: The Impenetrable Fortress

In his lengthy essay, “Minnisgreinar um fornsögur” (1945), Halldór expanded upon many of the ideas expressed in the afterword to his edition of Njáls saga, claiming that “íslenskur rithöfundur getur ekki lifað án þess að vera síhugsandi um hinar gömlu bækur” [an Icelandic writer cannot live without continually being mindful of the old books] (13). From his earliest writings and consistently throughout his life such a mindfulness is apparent in Halldór’s work even if his attitude towards Iceland’s medieval saga heritage—these “old books”—was not always the same. As a young writer, for example, Halldór appears to have shed his adolescent reverence for the medieval sagas and sought to emerge from the long shadow they continued to cast over modern Icelandic literature in the early twentieth century. Later, as an established novelist and cultural critic Halldór began to exhibit growing interest and self-confidence in facing the medieval saga heritage, which he later acknowledged shaped and nurtured much of (if not his entire) writing career (G. Nordal 45). Though this was perhaps most prominently manifested in the novels Íslandsklukkan and Gerpla, Halldór’s editorial project, including both the public and political conflict that it inspired and the important 128 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA victory that Halldór earned from that conflict, was a crucial part of his engagement with the medieval saga heritage, deeply connected to his artistic struggles and the successes that followed. At its conclusion Halldór himself acknowledged that the conflict emerging from his editorial project “var ekki first og fremst um stafsetningu, heldur var barist um lífræna menningu og almennt siðgæði á Íslandi” [was not first and foremost about spelling, but was fought over the living culture and common morals in Iceland] (1946, 245). It is difficult to overestimate the continuing significance of Iceland’s medieval cultural heritage, particularly with respect to Iceland’s Independence movement and the establishment of the Icelandic republic in 1944 (Hastrup 69–135). According to Halldór, for Icelanders during the “myrkur lángra alda” [long dark centuries] characterized by foreign rule in Iceland, “fornsagan var okkar óvinnanlega borg, og það er hennar verk að við erum sjálfstæð þjóð í dag” [the medieval saga was our impenetrable fortress, and because of it we are an independent nation today] (1945, 55–56). It has been said that during this time, through his multifaceted engagement with Iceland’s medieval saga heritage, Halldór established himself as a modern equivalent to Iceland’s medieval saga writers or had perhaps even managed to assume their place as Iceland’s national and cultural hero (Helgason 1998, 185–97; see also Eysteinsson in this volume). While his work as a novelist was perhaps paramount in allowing Halldór to reach these great heights, his editorial project and his involvement in the accompanying intense battle over how to best preserve, protect, and properly understand the significance of Iceland’s medieval saga heritage forms a crucial part of the foundation for understanding the writer he was, and the writer he was yet to become.

NOTES

1. All translations are my own, though I wish to thank Ármann Jakobsson for his help with certain challenging passages. 2. Halldór’s first novel, Barn náttúrunnar, was published under the name Halldór frá Laxnesi in 1919. However, by the time he had published his controversial and ground-breaking novel Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír in 1927, he had assumed the name Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Having converted to Catholicism in 1923, he adopted the middle name Kiljan from the seventh-century Irish Saint Cillian (Kilian) and had replaced the patronym Guðjónsson with the surname Laxness, the name of the farm at which he had grown up. 3. On Halldór’s complex ties to the socialist movement, see H. Guðmundsson 2008, 269–369. 4. Halldór is referring here to the Danish scholar Ludvig F. A. Wimmer (1839–1920) whose instructional Oldnordisk formlære til brug ved undervisning og selvstudium (1870) formed the basis for much of the subsequent normalized orthography used to represent medieval saga writing in print during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 129

as discussed above; see also Brennunjálssaga 416; Halldór Kiljan Laxness 1942, 333, 336, and 1946, 242–45. 5. Furthermore, Halldór’s edition of Hrafnkels saga actually borrows its title, Hrafnkatla, from Sigurður Nordal’s monograph on the saga published two years prior to Halldór’s edition. 6. An important aspect of these final two editions, but which cannot be addressed in any detail presently, concerns the works of several contemporary and modernist Icelandic artists who were commissed for and used to illustrate Halldór’s editions of Njáls saga and Grettis saga, making the volumes beautiful objects in their own right in addition to containers for the invaluable texts (Helgason 1999, 152–53). Interestingly, the notification promoting his earlier edition of Laxdæla saga promises that the volume will be “prýdd myndum eftir Gunnlaug Blöndal listmálara” [decorated with pictures by the painter Gunnlaugur Blöndal]. No such illustrations appeared in the final printed edition and it is not clear what might have become of them. Víkingsprent did later release a small book of illustrations by Gunnlaugur O. Scheving bearing the title Myndir í Laxdælu og Hrafnkötlu úr útgáfu Halldórs Kiljan Laxness (1942).

REFERENCES Alexandreis, það er Alexanders saga mikla. 1945. Edited by Halldór Laxness. Reykjavik: Heimskringla. Andersson, Theodore M. 1964. The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins: A Historical Survey. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bassnett, Susan. 2014. Translation Studies. 4th ed. London: Routledge. Benediktsson, Hreinn. 1965. Early Icelandic Script as Illustrated in Vernacular Texts from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Reykjavik: Manuscript Institute of Iceland. Brennunjálssaga. 1945. Edited by Halldór Laxness. Reykjavik: Helgafell. “Bækur á næstunni: Edda Þórbergs Þórðarsonar. Ný útgáfa Islendingasagna á nútíma máli. Heildarútgáfa íslenzkra úrvalshöfunda.” 1941. Vísir 229 (Oct. 9): 2. The First Grammatical Treatise. 1972. Edited by Hreinn Benediktsson. Reykjavik: Institute of Nordic Linguistics. Grettissaga. 1946. Edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Reykjavik: Helgafell. Guðjónsson, H. frá Laxnesi: see Laxness, Halldór Kiljan. Guðmundsson, Halldór. 2003. “In Search of the Most Precious Pearl: On the Life and Works of Halldór Laxness.” Scandinavica 42: 29–46. ⸻. 2008. The Islander. Translated by Philip Roughton. London: MacLehose Press. 130 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Guðmundsson, Sigurður. 1944. “Íslendingar eiga stórfenglegri skáldsagnageymd en nokkur önnur Evrópuþjóð: Viðtal við Halldór Kiljan Laxness.” Þjóðvilljinn (23. desember): 4–5. Hallberg, Peter. 1982. “Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic Sagas,” Leeds Studies in English 13: 1–22. “Halldór Kiljan Laxness leggur Menntamálaráðsstyrkinn í sjóð.” 1940. Tímarit Máls og menningar 3: 183–84. Hastrup, Kirtsen. 1990. Island of Anthropology: Studies in Past and Present in Iceland. Odense: Odense University Press. Helgason, Jón Karl. 1996. “Halldór Laxness og íslenski skólinn.” Andvari 121: 111–25. ⸻. 1998. Hetjan og höfundurinn. Brot úr íslenskri menningarsögu. Reykjavik: Heimskringla. ⸻. 1999. The Rewriting of Njáls saga: Translation, Ideology, and Icelandic Sagas. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hrafnkatla. 1942. Edited by Halldór Laxness. Reykjavik: Ragnar Jónsson, Stefán Ögmundsson. Jakobsson, Ármann. 2001. “Fjallkona með unglingaveikina: Óþjóðlegt túlkun á Íslandsklukkuni.” In Heimur skáldsögunnar. Edited by Ástráður Eysteinsson, 31–42. Reykjavik: Bókmenntafræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation. Edited by Reuben Arthur Brower, 232–39. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jónsson, Eiríkur. 1981. Rætur Íslandsklukkunnar. Reykjavik: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag. Jónsson, Jónas. 1941. “Innsta virkið.” Tíminn 107: 426. Laxdælasaga. 1941. Edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Reykjavik: Ragnar Jónsson, Stefán Ögmundsson. Laxness, Halldór Kiljan. 1916. “Sólskinsbörn: Kveðusending frá landa ykkar og vini austur a Íslandi.” Lögberg (June 15): 5–6. ⸻. 1937. “Um stafsetningu á fornsögum.” In Dagleið á fjöllum: Greinar, 156–60. Reykjavik: Bókaútgáfan Heimskringla. ⸻. 1942. Vettvangur Dagsins: Ritgerðir. Reykjavik: Heimskringla. ⸻. 1945. “Minnisgreinar um fornsögur.” Tímarit máls og menningar 6: 12–56. ⸻. 1946. Sjálfsagðir hlutir: Ritgerðir. Reykjavik: Helgafell. HALLDÓR LAXNESS, SAGA EDITOR 131

Möðruvallabók(AM 132 Fol.). 1987. Edited by Andrea van Arkel-de Leeuw van Weenen, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill. Nordal, Guðrún. 1993. “Með viðspyrnu í fornöldinni.” In Halldórsstefna 12.–14. júni 1992. Edited by Elín Bára Magnúsdóttir and Úlfar Bragason, 44–54. Reykjavik Stofnun Sigurðar Nordals. Nordal, Sigurður. 1940. Hrafnkatla. Reykjavik: Ísafoldarprentsmiðja. Wimmer, Ludvig F. A. 1870. Oldnordisk formlære til brug ved undervisning og selvstudium. Copenhagen: Chr. Steen and Söns forlag. Is Halldór Laxness the Author of Fóstbræðra saga? On the Author Function, Intertextuality, Translation, and a Modern Writer’s Relationship with the Icelandic Sagas

ÁSTRÁÐUR EYSTEINSSON TRANSLATED BY JULIAN MENDOZA

ABSTRACT: Asking the titular question entails considering different concepts of authorship, from the modern sense of the term to Michel Foucault’s idea of the “author function,” as well as considering Halldór Laxness’s connection with the Icelandic sagas, in terms of his reception, editing, and rewriting/translation of them. The context of Halldór’s contemporary Iceland is also important, specifically the prevailing perceptions of the sagas. This article explores the interrelationship between Fóstbræðra saga and Halldór’s Gerpla through intertextuality and, ultimately, Halldór’s role in the contemporary reception of Fóstbræðra saga. The article was originally published in the journal Skáldskaparmál: Tímarit um íslenskar bókmenntir fyrri alda (1990). It has been slightly revised for republication in the author’s book, Orðaskil: Í heimi þýðinga (2017) and for this translation, which has been produced in collaboration with the author.

RÉSUMÉ: Poser la question en titre implique de considérer différents concepts de la parternité littéraire, du sens moderne de l’expression à l’idée de la « fonction d’auteur » de Michel Foucault, ainsi que de considérer le lien de Halldór Laxness avec les sagas islandaises, en termes de sa réception, son édition et sa réécriture/traduction à leur sujet. Le contexte de l’Islande contemporaine de Halldór est également important, en particulier les perceptions prédominantes des sagas. Cet article explore les interrelations entre la Fóstbræðra saga et Gerpla de Halldór à travers l’intertextualité et, finalement, le rôle de Halldór dans la réception contemporaine de la Fóstbræðra saga. L’article fut publié à l’origine dans la revue Skáldskaparmál: Tímarit um íslenskar bókmenntir fyrri alda (1990). Il a été légèrement révisé aux fins d’être republié dans le livre de l’auteur, Orðaskil: Í heimi þýðinga (2017) et de cette traduction, qui a été réalisée en collaboration avec l’auteur.

Ástráður Eysteinsson is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 Gunnar of Hliðarendi … now who is that?1

t is only right to warn readers that, like most articles with a title in the form of a question, this piece of writing will answer my question neither affirmatively nor negatively. I will, however, attempt to examine to some I extent the dynamics constituted by the reciprocal connections between literary works, authorship, worlds of ideas, and the conditions of cultural transfer.

I

Few things are more important for modern explorers of creative works than being able to mention their authors by name. The name of the author is a mainstay; we use the name as a guarantee that the author’s work possesses a definite gestalt that we grasp onto. We know little to nothing about the man Sophocles, but his name is of great importance in the dissemination of his plays, and from them we may perhaps try to draw some outlines of the person. Many literary scholars have found it deeply regrettable to be unable to get a clearer image of the man who conjoins several British plays of the Elizabethan period that are still widely read and are deemed crucial to literary history. But we have at least the name “William Shakespeare”; and if we cannot be bothered to gather unreliable tales about his life, we can at least attempt to “construct” the man through a consideration of his works, just as, for example, the Danish scholar Georg Brandes did in his study of Shakespeare. The researchers of Old Icelandic literature have generously done the same—that is to say, they have by no means always been stuck in philology as we are sometimes led to believe: the search for the authors is, for example, a central factor in the methodology of Sigurður Nordal, who even sketches an image of the poet who composed Völuspá [Seeressʼs Prophecy]. The methods of Hermann Pálsson, as much as they focus on the origin and pathways of words and ideas, still presuppose the figure of a definite author. I mention this because I think that Icelanders have often experienced it as a tragedy not to possess authors for their sagas, especially the Sagas of Icelanders. Many have tried to find them. I shudder at the thought of all the work that has gone into pursuing these ghosts, the author of Njal’s saga and his colleagues. But, of course, such toil is the result of a strong desire to get closer to the work, or rather to the source of its meaning. We long to see the individual behind the work, and often we think we are able to perceive that person. Jónas Kristjánsson cannot be counted amongst the most eager participants in the aforementioned pursuit, but in the foreword to his doctoral dissertation Um Fóstbræðrasögu [On the Saga of the Sworn Brothers] there is an interesting comment on his scholarly endeavour: 134 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

We may furthermore approach the Icelandic sagas from another direction and observe them as literary works of art. This is especially worthwhile if we have previously picked apart the sagas as far as their factuality and their value as reference material are concerned; it may come as a blessing, then, if instead it may be shown that they are literary works of genius. But if an inquiry into hereditary legends and factuality is not an urgent matter in this book, its main concern is even farther removed from the artistic and literary value of Fóstbræðra saga. However, it cannot be denied that during these years of my involvement with the saga, my mind has wandered to its various artistic features, and sometimes it has seemed to me that I was standing very close to the old man who recorded it on vellum a long time ago. (10–11)

In these words there are various things of interest. Jónas envisions the scribe as an old man; he is a kind of father-figure, if not a grandfather-figure (it so happens that Jónas dedicates his doctoral dissertation to the memory of his grandfather with these words: “Hann sagði mér ungum fornar sögur” [He told me ancient tales when I was young]. Jónas Kristjánsson is not the only one to see the “author” of an Old Icelandic work as an old man.2 In the poem “Til höfundar Hungurvöku” [To the author of Hungurvaka], Jón Helgason addresses the author in the closing line with the words “gamli maður í jörðu” [old man in the ground] (15). Why should they who brought the ancient literature of Iceland to vellum necessarily be old men? The explanation perhaps is that it is the vellum that is old—which in turn makes the grandfather-figure double-edged. It entails that this is our tradition, our family connection with the past. But at the same time, the works have drifted into a gray-haired distance. It is no less interesting that Jónas Kristjánsson does not miss the “author” so much as someone who could help locate the work in time, space, and matters of factuality. The author is primarily placed in connection with the “artistic and literary worth” of the work, i.e. with elements that have to do with language and the expressive forms of the text.

II

The harmony of work and author that Jónas Kristjánsson perceives is in fact a variant of the harmony between human beings and language. The human being resides in language, commanding its discourses, and is able to lay “claims” to certain domains within it. But as the French scholar Michel Foucault pointed out so thoroughly in his writings, there is nothing self-evident about this state of affairs, and it is, to some extent, a delusion that characterizes a certain period in the history of this cognitive being of language, homo sapiens. What Jónas does—and other scholars have done with much rambling and energetic search for the author—is to “humanize” the work, thus turning it into a work of literature IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 135 in the sense that it is seen as a product of a particular author and not just a manifestation of some discourse that may be called literature. At the same time, the poet is elevated as an individual. What we have here is, in a nutshell, the fusion of humanism and Romanticism, a fusion that constitutes the foundation of our concept of the author in the past couple of centuries. And if we do not immediately fall in line with this view, it may be because the text in question is not at all from that period, but rather comes to us from an entirely different society and after a journey through several centuries. It is not certain that any “authors” existed then in our sense; perhaps rather a variety of scribes. We may ask, however, whether our understanding is not always inevitably shaped by present-day mindsets.3 The biographical research methods that developed during the nineteenth century were widely prevalent well into the twentieth century, for instance in Iceland. And though we look to other countries and see that the literary scholarship of the twentieth century is far from being dominated by biographical methods, we are still sitting cheek by jowl with the “author” of humanism and Romanticism despite repeated attempts to get rid of him. During the twentieth century, the advocates of Formalism and New Criticism repeatedly attempted to banish the author from the artistic process of the literary work. And Post-structuralists have given him an even harder time (where he then becomes a kind of representative of the classical “subject”), as attested by the works of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes; in fact, one of Barthes’ best-known essays is famously called “The Death of the Author” (1967). In the essay “What is an Author?” (1969), Michel Foucault considers why the author is, despite all this, still alive. He points to the fact that we find the author not just in the text, since “the text apparently points to this figure who is outside and precedes it” (115). According to this, the author is an indispensable father, one who is bound to beget the text and in a certain sense also begets the reader, who gathers meaning from the text. Let us look at the beginning of the essay “Forneskjutaut” [Ancient Chatter] by Halldór Laxness:

The descriptions of social life in Eyrbyggja Saga manifest clearly that the author is thoroughly familiar with labour practices at sea and on land; he describes the same methods of haymaking as people were accustomed to in this country in the early twentieth century, and he looks to the sky and forecasts the weather as old farmers still do. He is well versed in stories of the past and in the laws of the land. (15)

Heidegger taught us that it is language that speaks and not the individual; and that he only speaks by corresponding to language—as Heidegger expresses it in his word play4—yet our worldview prevents us from obtaining an active understanding of this. It is an urgent necessity for us to understand substantial parts of language as the expressions of individuals and thus attribute an 136 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

“ownership” of language to them. To be sure, there are various forms of discourse that we attribute to institutions rather than individuals—and according to Foucault’s theories, this is approximately how we put the author on a stage in our minds.

III

The author is an “institution” in the sense that his or her name refers to a certain centre of meaning; it is a warranty for all kinds of regulation, for the ownership of certain things, for an impact on others; it is a crucial element of comparison—a comment such as “here comes a new Halldór Laxness” would elicit a strong reaction from many. Thus the name is important when an explanation is needed for the practices of lesser-known authors. The names of well-known authors are often key coordinates or reference points in literary canons, and a well-known author can shape the way various works fare in the literary system—for example, as a translator, publisher, or as a propagandist for or against certain authors or works. Such works, then, are consequently connected to the “author function” of this author; and as Foucault indicates, that function can be decisive even though the author is in a supporting role. We are constantly trying to garner something from such author-institutions in order to strengthen our own discourses, whether we admit it or not; just as I am now appropriating the “authority” of Michel Foucault. Among Icelandic authors in the twentieth century, Halldór Laxness is the most obvious example of such an institution; in Icelandic scholarship it is presumably Sigurður Nordal. “Stofnun Sigurðar Nordals” [“The Sigurður Nordal Institute”] had existed for many years before an institution with that name was formally established.5 But I am getting ahead of myself. I was talking about the Sagas of Icelanders—and their authors are dead—in name at least. How can we explain their function if we lack, to this end, their author function? Attempts are made to create a nameless author on the basis of the work in question, just as Halldór does in the text previously cited, and as several scholars have done, for example in their introductions to the various volumes of the Íslenzk fornrit series. There have also been attempts to assign one or more Sagas of Icelanders to Snorri Sturluson, whose name carries the greatest authority among the known bards and writers of medieval Iceland. I think, however, that two other elements play an even weightier role here: the awareness that an individual saga is a “work,” and even a “masterpiece,” has often replaced the author function, as it were; and, moreover, the name of the genre, “Íslendingasögur” [Sagas of Icelanders], has received increased importance. As a name for a particular “oeuvre” as well as a canon, it has in some ways operated like the name “Shakespeare,” which I touched on above (and such a brand name is indeed a hallmark). But “The Sagas of Icelanders” is at the same time a more open concept and (as the word IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 137

Íslendingasögur indicates) presents itself to Icelandic readers in a way that enables them, at any given time, to imagine the nation as an “author,” with themselves as both the offspring of, and heirs to, these works. When the Sagas of Icelanders become a pillar of a particular institution and a strong current in ideological waters—and here I have especially in mind the Icelandic struggle for independence from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century—then their world of ideas is bridled in a fashion similar to how the author function of literary works lends them an overall appearance (that is to say, serves as an anchor for how a work is seen as forming a convincing whole).

IV

As we move into the twentieth century, circumstances relevant to the dissemination of The Sagas of Icelanders change significantly, especially as regards the relationship between readers and works. The centre for saga research moves to Iceland, and the so-called “Icelandic school” shapes to a certain degree the way in which the Icelandic reading public receives and perceives the sagas. I shall not dwell here on the conflict between literary manifestation and oral tradition (“bókfesta” vs “sagnfesta”) nor on the publishing efforts of the “Icelandic school.” Since I am venturing into generalizations, I am more tempted to generalize about the connection of the sagas with modern literary history and then especially with the major “adventures” that set their mark on that history. Among them are, first, the disintegration of the age-old rural society and the concurrent urban development; these changes happen slowly and surely in the early decades of the twentieth century but take a leap during the Second World War, and are duly reflected and processed in the domain of literature; second, the career of Halldór Laxness; third, the modernist upheaval and the revolt against the literary tradition; fourth, the salient presence of women writers in Icelandic literature from the middle of the twentieth century; and, last but not least, the significant force of translation itself in Icelandic literary culture.6 All these factors connect in one way or another. As a young author, Halldór Laxness was for some time quite a radical modernist, inclined towards the strife and experimentation evinced in some contemporary foreign literature, and during this period he addressed in highly critical terms both the Icelandic rural society and the ancient saga legacy—these two being closely interwoven threads of the national tradition.7 But he soon changed his mind and became hostile towards modernism and remained so for a long while—at least until 1957 he wrote zealously against the “bourgeois novel,” which, he claims, wastes its energy by diving into the depths of the souls of twisted individuals. His own response as an author is to look for ways of developing further the Icelandic narrative tradition already in existence and—while symbolically offering his nation the informal mode of address—to relate new views of life with prevalent conditions in the country. The 138 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA scene of his works is generally Icelandic rural districts or fishing villages—and this is important, even though his novels also point far beyond the place of events, just like any other works of consequence. The endeavour of Halldór Laxness to fight against the stagnation of national traditions and to develop them continuously along certain routes, to energize them, extends beyond his fiction and appears clearly in his position vis-à-vis the Old Icelandic sagas. And here the “Institute” of Halldór Laxness is highly relevant, an institute that of course was in an adversarial position to begin with, though it was later to move to centre stage and become a powerful player in the Icelandic literary system. In the forties Halldór begins to attend to the Icelandic sagas with enthusiasm; in fact, he becomes at once a centre of reception and of distribution—as important as it was disputed—for Old Icelandic literature in the twentieth century. At the same time, he is composing the novel Iceland’s Bell, where the cultural value of the ancient literature is a focal point (Þorsteinsson 12). Halldór underlines his intertextual connections with Old Icelandic literature when he asserts in an important essay, “Minnisgreinar um fornsögur” [Memoranda on Icelandic Sagas], that “Icelandic authors cannot live without being always mindful of the old books” (9).8 He then takes a big and provocative step towards creating a new connection between the sagas and Icelandic readers when he ventures to publish them with the accepted contemporary orthography, the first person to do so in the twentieth century. In the years 1942-1946 he thus edits and puts forth Njáls saga, Grettis saga, Laxdæla saga, Hrafnkels saga, and Alexanders saga. In some ways he is there not just in the role of an editor but also that of a rewriter or translator.9

V

The scholar Sverrir Tómasson, in an article in Skírnir, has mentioned how he once came across Færeyingasaga with modern orthography in a German library. This was in itself barely worth a comment, except that the book was classified with translations of Old Norse literature. Tómasson points out that although this is a misunderstanding, the Germans have a point; modern Icelandic spelling is a product of a different level of language development than that in which the works are written, and a publication with this spelling “is a kind of interpretation, and Old Icelandic literature is written in a language that is in important ways different from Icelandic as it is spoken today, even though limited changes in the structure of the language and conservative spelling help diminish the difference, so that for most readers nowadays it is not all that clear, except where the meaning of words has changed” (130–31).10 If we wish, in this context, to make use of the concept of “translation,” we are certainly applying it in a wide sense, and the ongoing discussion about spelling and other norms in publishing the sagas can then be seen as a kind of translation debate. IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 139

This broad sense of the concept of translation is in itself nothing new. It is concisely discussed in a well-known essay by Roman Jakobson from 1959, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” where he divides translations into three groups. The first is that of “intralingual translation,” or rewording of signs in the same language; the second group is “interlingual translation” or translation proper, that is to say, the common transfer of signs between languages; and the third is “intersemiotic translation,” or transfer between sign systems or media of representation, for instance when narrative texts are translated into visual presentations (233). The sagas are, in this respect, unusual in that they do not exist as original texts or manuscripts; but if we use the extant manuscript versions as points of reference, then printed editions with contemporary orthography are obviously translations in the sense of Roman Jakobson’s first category. But they also overlap with the second category because the contemporary orthography entails signs of a sphere of language significantly different from that of the manuscripts. That classification also reminds us that this is a case of transfer of texts between different worlds of meaning. Indeed, the contemporary orthography involves an attempt to reconcile us as far as possible with the distant, indeed in some sense foreign, world that the sagas manifest and contain (irrespective of how one regards such mediation). In this context it should be mentioned that certain currents in translation studies—I have here in mind the writings of translation scholars such as André Lefevere (1983; 1985) and Itamar Even-Zohar (1981)—tend decisively toward using a hermeneutic point-of-view of translation in exploring various kinds of representation and rewriting of texts in altered forms. In this broad sense, translation can encompass many ways of adapting works to any number of new and different circumstances.

VI

When Halldór Laxness translated the Icelandic sagas over to modern orthography, he met strident reactions. He was deemed to be abusing national tradition as well as distorting the sagas. At the same time, many were bound to think that he was “claiming” for himself writings of which the nation itself was the author. And certainly he was not just finding for these texts a new ratification, moving them closer to many readers, feeding new life into them, but also putting them in close connection with his own author function. Thus, while Halldór is carving out a niche for himself as a “poet of Icelandic consciousness” in the middle of the twentieth century, he does so in part by assuming a certain paternal and authorial attitude towards the Icelandic sagas—but from another point-of-view it is possible to see him as the prodigal son who now demands his inheritance in a radical way. He communicates the heritage to readers in new terms, showing with some bravura how these sagas are a “modern” reading matter. 140 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

But this endeavour certainly reached new heights when he composed Gerpla, which came out in 1952. The very method of this novel entails a statement that Halldór Laxness is a master of the semiotics of Icelandic sagas, someone whose firm hold in the wrestling match with this central Icelandic tradition enables him to translate the world of the sagas on his own terms and into his own language. The world saw the birth of a new Icelandic saga, and it is under an undisputed name of an author. At the same time, it includes a significant connection with another important author function. For in Gerpla, Halldór has translated freely; that is to say, re-written, “corrected,” and “fathered” not only the anonymous Fóstbræðra saga, but also a work by the other great prose author in Icelandic literary history: Ólafs saga helga by Snorri Sturluson. According to Harold Bloom’s well-known theory, Halldór has here sought for himself creativity through “the anxiety of influence,” and he writes his way around this grand predecessor, Snorri Sturluson, by “misunderstanding” him in a creative way—the big steps in literary history being made through such conflicts, in Bloom’s estimation.11 In that way, we may say that Halldór initiates a dialogue over the ocean of time, doing business with Snorri on equal footing. And the reception follows suit. Although some saw in Gerpla a debasement of Icelandic literary heritage, Halldór came to receive an ever-growing recognition as exactly the author who rises to the challenge of the old and exalted tradition. Three years after Gerpla was published, Halldór Laxness received the Nobel Prize, among other things for resurrecting the Icelandic epic tradition, as stated in the Swedish academy’s prize announcement. Halldór was not averse to this connection in his Nobel speech: “The most important thing I care about at this moment is that the Swedish Academy, which has been lent great authority, has named me in connection with the unknown masters of the old Icelandic sagas” (quoted in Þorsteinsson 1962, 19).12

VII

But if Gerpla is Halldór’s “translation” of the world and narrative material of the old Icelandic sagas, people may be prone to see it first and foremost as a radical parody, as a grotesque inversion of the heroic features of the saga world. According to the article “Bróklindi Falgeirs” by Helga Kress, which was published in 1987 and was a formidable and innovative contribution to saga research at the time, such a parody already exists in the very saga that seemed to be the main butt of Halldór’s parody in Gerpla, that is to say, Fóstbræðra saga. Helga Kress sees in Fóstbræðra saga a certain discrepancy of substance and form, and thus an ironic stance towards the heroic subject matter. She argues that it is “narrated from the point-of-view of the common people,” that it makes fun of “the heroic ideal and the literature that worships it,” and that the saga is characterized on the whole by what Kress calls “grotesque realism,” a trait neglected in saga IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 141 scholarship, but one that in her view is a current within saga writing that opposes “heroic realism” (271).13 This raises the question whether Halldór Laxness is a latecomer on this scene; whether the “author” of Fóstbræðra saga, this remarkable ghost, has already achieved what Halldór undertook to do. Or perhaps Halldór Laxness is a translator more akin to “Pierre Menard, the author of the Quixote” of whom we learn in the eponymous short story by Jorge Luis Borges. Menard undertakes to translate Don Quixote by Cervantes. With much tenacity he reaches an ever-closer understanding of the work and its author, moving toward the original until the translation has become the original text, word for word, line for line. But his creations are of course not the same work; Don Quixote by Cervantes has the classic ambience of a seventeenth century tale, whereas Don Quixote by the twentieth-century writer Pierre Menard is a text that surprises, for example with its ancient appearance and its bountiful “defamiliarization.” As far as this is concerned, however, Gerpla may also be seen as contradicting the historical distance that supposedly sharpens our view; in this “Fóstbræðra saga by Halldór Laxness,” we read the work with eyes wide-open, because it is held right against our nose, in a translation that refuses to adapt to circumstances of reception that we are used to—which includes the custom of reading the Sagas of Icelanders as ancient narratives and not as new works. If, however, such a saga is absorbed as a new work, we may conclude, as the Dadaist Tristan Tzara does in his manifesto: “I appreciate an old work for its novelty” (7). Then we may also ask whether Halldór has in Gerpla perhaps instituted a new mode of reading the Icelandic sagas. In other words: Is it possible that we are now reading the Icelandic sagas under the influence of Gerpla?

VIII

Easy now, someone is likely to say. Gerpla is, to begin with, not a translation in the spirit of Borges’s Menard; Halldór Laxness allows himself all kinds of freedom in his treatment of the original text. True enough; if we examine the harvesting of angelica by the sworn brothers in Hornbjarg, a scene which is one of Helga Kress’s examples of grotesque realism of Fóstbræðra saga, we note that Halldór exaggerates the incident. Fóstbræðra saga says of Þormóður, while Þorgeir is silently hanging from a cliff, holding on to an angelica stalk: “Þormóðr beið uppi á hǫmrunum, því at hann ætlaði, at Þorgeirr myndi upp koma, en er honum þótti Þorgeirr dveljask svá miklu lengr en ván var at, þá gengr hann ofan í skriðuhjallana” (Fóstbræðra saga, edited by Þórólfsson and Jonsson, 1943, 190). Lee Hollander translates, “Thormód waited on top of the cliff, thinking that Thorgeir would be coming up; but when it seemed to him that Thorgeir was taking so much longer time than could be expected he climbed down to the ledge where the slide had occurred” (The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers, trans. Hollander, 1949, 179). Halldór allows himself a great deal of freedom in translating this passage, 142 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA lengthening it significantly, and he even lets Þormóður sleep for most of the day close to where Þorgeir is dangling from the angelica plant. It is equally true that Halldór more or less records word-for-word other parts of Fóstbræðra saga, as for example Þorgeir’s famous answer about how the angelica collection is going: “Eg ætla að ég hafi þá nógar að þessi er uppi er eg held um” [I think that I will be finished when the one in my hand comes out] (Gerpla 157; Wayward Heroes 147). It is interesting that with the contemporary Icelandic orthography in the publication of Fóstbræðra saga by Svart á hvítu in 1985, these words come out exactly as they do in Halldór’s text in Gerpla, to the letter—as if they had been taken directly from the novel. But frequently, Halldór Laxness has “misread” the text of Fóstbræðra saga crudely. Of Butraldi, who is killed by Þorgeir Hávarsson, it is said in Fóstbræðra saga: “He was a bachelor, without house or home, a fellow of great size and strength, ugly, pugnacious—a man who had committed many murders, hot-headed and vengeful” (The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers, trans. Hollander, 1949, 100). In Gerpla (Wayward Heroes) however: “Butraldi Brúsason was unimposing in appearance, but very band-legged. He was past his youth and had thin, grey down on his jowls, shallow bug-eyes, a broad jaw and a wide mouth” (111). It is interesting that instead of the grotesque killing of Butraldi, which Helga Kress discusses in her article, he is made to disappear in Gerpla while Þorgeir is sleeping, and Butraldi sends him and their mutual host his regards by pissing into the water well as “payment” for his lodging.14 In such scenes there is still strong affinity between the saga and the novel—but perhaps Halldór sometimes does not find himself capable of effectively reiterating or amplifying the grotesque characteristics of the “original text,” and he attempts instead to create a different mismatch of heroism and reality. The fact, though, is that if one reads saga and novel together, roaming back and forth between them, various passages may start to intermingle, and thus the reader is not always sure where he/she stands (for readers of Icelandic this is of course particularly true if Fóstbræðra saga is read with contemporary orthography). For example, where does the following scene occur?

Snýr bóndi þá utar eftir hlöðunni og ætlaði út að ganga. Í því höggur Þórmóður eftir honum. Það högg kom á bakið og hjó hann af honum báða þjóhnappana. “Styn þú eigi nú,” kvað Þormóður. Bóndi kvað við hátt með miklum skræk og þreif til þjóhnappanna báðum höndum. (849)

Martin Regal translates this violent description as follows: IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 143

Then the yeoman turned and was about to leave the barn, and as he did, Thormod struck at him. The blow caught him on the back and cut off both of his buttocks. “Let’s hear no groaning from you now.” The man screamed out loudly and felt for his buttocks with both hands. (Saga of the Sworn Brothers, trans. Regal, 1997, 400)

It is as if he is trying to pull his buttocks back into place. Those who know the works well may be quick to refresh their memory that this grotesque scene is in Fóstbræðra saga and not in Gerpla. Others may find it very much at home in Halldór’s text, and in general I think that Gerpla can confuse readers as they travel between works, between historical paradigms, and, finally, between different literary worlds. Such confusion and such “anachronism” have sometimes been associated with a postmodernism that playfully reworks traditional forms in ironic ways. We could even ask whether Fóstbræðra saga is postmodernist, if we read it with Helga Kress. However, Gerpla is more conscious of its place as a reworked form, particularly as regards its interplay with two timeframes. Not only does the text at one point refer to the very author writing the text, “Kiljan skáld” [Kilian the skald] (89; 83),15 but the characters in the novel are also sometimes like Quixote-figures, trying to act according to ancient epic formulas. Þorgeir says: “Where does it say in the old tales that a man saved himself by pretending to be blind and deaf when men of might rode by?” (155)—and there he could be referring to himself as a man of might in Fóstbræðra saga. In Gerpla (Wayward Heroes), he attacks a “deaf” and completely innocent man, throws him off his feet “and started hacking at the man’s neck to take his head off, though the task went incredibly slowly due to the dullness of his weapon, despite the champion’s firm intent. Finally, however, the head came off its trunk” (155–56).

IX

The question was raised above whether we possibly read the Icelandic sagas under the influence of Gerpla. Now we may also ask whether we need to re-evaluate the connection of Gerpla with the sagas in light of Helga Kressʼs hermeneutic approach to the Icelandic sagas. The literary scholar Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson saw in Gerpla an example of a “savage” contemporary work: “There the author advances upon the holy icons of national history and thrusts a spear through Icelandic identity. His spear: an exposing style” (79). Let us keep in mind this image of Halldór Laxness armed with a spear, in an attacking position. According to this understanding, Halldór breaks in Gerpla the mirror of heroic images and the ancient society of greatness that has long served Icelanders seeking strength and comfort. Now, however, it appears that the mirror was broken all the time; that the ancient storytellers, 144 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA from early on, smashed it with their weapons of style, in Fóstbræðra saga and doubtless various other works. According to Helga Kress’s interpretation, it also seems that the perspective of the common people, which is quite prominent in Gerpla, is already employed in Fóstbræðra saga.16 As far as such matters are concerned, one may conclude that Gerpla “repeats” Fóstbræðra saga, while also re-emphasizing and fleshing it out in a modern context—contrary to a tradition of reception where parodies and a common folk point-of-view have not been foregrounded saga elements. This alone would suffice to lend Gerpla a sure and special place amongst the modern novels that try to “repeat” the sagas (their settings and human interaction)—this being generally carried out according to traditional ideas about heroism and other (laudable) Icelandic qualities. But the above example from Gerpla—of Þorgeir working like a madman on the neck of the poor wretch until his head is finally severed from his body—raises speculations about the differences between Gerpla and Fóstbræðra saga. So absurd is the sight of the victim who seems to wait patiently while the “hero” hacks away at him with a dull blade, that one finds this scene to surpass the parodical borders of Fóstbræðra saga. From the perspective of a Gerpla reader, it may thus seem as if Fóstbræðra saga is not totally subsumed by what Helga Kress calls “grotesque realism.” Can we perhaps see in the saga’s challenging and unpolished structure a manifestation of conflicting views within the significatory world of the Icelandic sagas? It may be that Gerpla’s “translation variant” helps us come to grips with such conflicts within the ancient world of meanings. In the description of one of Þorgeir’s pointless murders, Halldór gives an account of how the warrior for little or no reason attacks the young son of a farmer, a boy holding a short spear for prodding bulls. The narrative unfolds thus:

Þorgeir sækir á eftir honum. Heytótt stóð að baki lambhúsinu, og var tóm að öndverðu sumri, leitar bóndasonur þángað. Tóttardyrnar innan úr lambhúsinu voru of þraungvar og lágar svo miklum manni sem Þorgeir var vexti, enda var hann ófús að beygja sig, hann hverfur nú á það ráð sem leingst hefur dugað í fornsögum, að rjúfa þekjuna, en þar lágu á stoðum torfur er skýlt höfðu heyum um veturinn. Stendur Þorgeir Hávarsson á vegginum en bóndasonur niðrí kumlinu og etjast á spjótum gegnum torfið. Halda þeir áfram þessum starfa uns spjót bóndasonar brotnar af skafti, Þorgeir hleypur þá ofanum raufina niður í tóttina og hefur uppi öxi sína við sveininn, og tekur að höggva hann svo að þar sýndust sjö á lofti, hné sveinninn þar niður við moldarvegginum og dreyrði úr fjölda sára, lét hann þar líf sitt. (164–65)

[Þorgeir pursues him. Behind the lamb shed is an enclosure for hay, empty now at the start of the summer, and the farmer’s son retreats there. The doorway IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 145

from the lamb shed into the enclosure is too narrow and low for so big a man as Þorgeir, and he is disinclined to bend down. Instead, he adopts the plan that always seems to work in old stories: to tear his way in through the roof—which, in this case, is patches of turf laid over posts, to shield the hay ricks in winter. Þorgeir Hávarsson stands on the wall and the farmer’s son crouches in the enclosure, and both jab their spears at each other through the turf. They keep this up until the shaft of the farmer’s son’s spear breaks, at which point Þorgeir jumps into the enclosure through a gap in the turf, hoists his ax over the lad, and starts hacking at him so furiously that it looks as if seven axes are whirling in the air. The lad slumps against the earthen wall, bleeding from innumerable wounds—before giving up the ghost.] (153–54)

If we look for the model of this passage in Fóstbræðra saga, we find a different scene altogether. There, Þorgeir goes against three fully-capable men, a strong and unpopular farmer and his two farmhands:

Þorgeir verst þeim með miklum mjúkleik en sækir að þeim með miklu afli og öruggleik sem hið óarga dýr. Húskarlarnir verða brátt sárir af Þorgeiri því að þeir höfðu skammskeftar öxar en Þorgeir lagði spjótinu hart og tíðum. Hrukku þeir Snorri inn í lambhúsið. Dyrnar voru lágar og þröngvar á húsinu og var illt þar inn að sækja eftir þeim. Þorgeir hleypur upp á húsið og rýfur til. Þar sem húsið raufaðist leggur Snorri spjótinu út í móti. Þorgeir verður sár af því nokkuð og þó lítt. Kastar Þorgeir þá spjótinu en tekur exina í hægri hönd. Sækir Snorri þá að Þorgeiri með hörðum hug þar sem húsið var rofið. En Þorgeir varðist með skildi og exi og leitar eigi annars en höggva spjót Snorra af skaftinu. Létti eigi þeim leik fyrr en Þorgeir hjó spjót Snorra af skaftinu. Og þegar jafnskjótt hljóp Þorgeir inn í húsið um glugg þann er á var rofinn með skjöld og exi og hjó þegar í höfuð Snorra svo hart að hann klýfur hausinn allan. Fær Snorri af því sári þegar bana. Þá snýr Þorgeir að húskörlum Snorra og sækir þá fimlega, hlífandi með skildi, höggvandi með exi þeirri er vön var að fá mörgum manni náttstaðar. Lauk svo þeirri atsókn að Þorgeir vó þá báða. (803)

Hollander translates this battle scene thus:

Þorgeir warded them off with great dexterity and then attacked them with the strength and fearlessness of a lion. They were wounded soon because their axes had short hafts and Þorgeir thrust at them hard and often. So Snorri and his men retired into the lamb shed. Its doors were low and narrow, so that it was difficult for Þorgeir to get at them there. So he leaped upon the roof and began to rip it up; but Snorri thrust at him with his spear as soon as he had made a hole, and Þorgeir was slightly wounded by him. He laid his spear aside and took his axe in his right hand. Snorri thrust at him furiously through the hole, but Þorgeir fought him off with shield and battle-axe and tried to lop off Snorri’s spear from its shaft, and he finally succeeded in doing so. In the same moment Þorgeir jumped down into the 146 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

shed through the hole and split Snorri’s head with a blow of his axe so that he fell down dead. Then Þorgeir turned to Snorri’s men, attacked them nimbly, protecting himself with his shield, and levelled blows at them with that axe of his which was wont to give many a man his last night’s rest. It ended with his slaying both of them. (The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers, trans. Hollander 1949, 123)

From the perspective of the grotesque excesses of Gerpla, it may seem that the discourse of heroic realism is still operative in passages such as this one in Fóstbræðra saga. However, if the saga text is read from the perspective that Helga Kress argues for, we may notice a persistent inconsistency in the description; in wording that is alliterative and has a clichéd ring to it: “miklum mjúkleik” [great dexterity], “hörðum hug” [furiousness], as well as in other topoi that can be seen as characteristic of Fóstbræðra saga: “hið óarga dýr” [wild beast or lion]. And this little lamb shed is hardly a worthy example of the strongholds that heroes long to break open. Is the text making fun of Þorgeir? But an example like this may also be shifted around, for instance in the case of Þormóður’s fight against the three champions in Greenland, a fight that ends with a particularly humorous scene, where Falgeir drowns because his belt is torn and he gets tangled in his trousers, which Þormóður, himself exhausted, was able to pull down. Þormóður’s victory is incontestably “grotesque,” as Helga Kress argues in her analysis, yet must we not deem his tenacity “heroic,” both in the context of Fóstbræðra saga and in the wider context of the Icelandic sagas? A similar double-edged heroic/humorous effect may be seen in Þorgeir’s final battle where he defends himself staunchly, so much so that when Þórir Austmaður thrusts his spear into him, Þorgeir uses the last of his strength to push his advantage further down the spear until Þórir is within the deadly reach of his sword. In any case, Fóstbræðra saga is not grotesque in the same way as Gerpla; rather, we may detect a double-edged strain running through the saga, possibly caused by the struggle of different symbolic or semiotic systems. The saga depicts images of heroic endeavours that, however, are also shown in a parodic light. In Gerpla, the “heroic realism” is first and foremost a well-worn norm that is fiercely and ceaselessly parodied and satirized in the novel; the narrative appears to reject this norm clearly and unquestionably and to stand outside it (although there is a twist to this). Fóstbræðra saga, conversely, undermines the norm “from the inside”; the saga narrative is conscious of itself within the imaginary world of the Icelandic sagas and it opens itself up to be “read apart.” As a result, we may ask whether such “duplicity,” such inner conflict of different symbolic systems, is not to be found in other works, including the most famous Icelandic sagas. IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 147

X

It may not be all that easy, however, to get a firm hold of the world out of which Fóstbræðra saga emerges. Halldór Laxness translates the saga in various respects into the conceptual world of modernity, but he does not exempt the readers of Fóstbræðra saga (and perhaps not the readers of Gerpla either) from the problems and challenges of interpreting this medieval narrative, facing the world of ideas of a society that is unlike our modern one in some basic terms, in no small part because it is not a state in the modern (or even ancient) sense, and is not under the sway of an executive power that we know as a natural part of the social apparatus and which as such shapes our understanding of human relations. We cannot let go of our modern conceptions, and thus the fusion of horizons, which hermeneuticians often see as the basis of communication with older texts, is bound to be characterized by ideational and linguistic conflicts. As a translation, Gerpla is exactly a manifestation of such a conflict, an image that is fascinating not least because it does not level out irregularities and disjunctions. It also finds disjunctions where we least expect them. We experience the constant conflict in Icelandic sagas as a natural element in these works and in the society they describe. In Gerpla, Halldór robs the conflict and the violence of their normality and unveils them as a constant outlet of dread.17 It is one of the distinctive features of Gerpla that its various events, just as Þorgeir’s neck-hacking mentioned before, are at once jocular and gruesome. We may find that Fóstbræðra saga already has indications of such material treatment, as in the famous scene where Þorgeir lets his axe drop to the neck of a shepherd who supports himself on a staff, unwitting and innocent, but “he stood so well poised for the blow” that Þorgeir could not resist seeing his head get whisked away (Saga of the Sworn Brothers, trans. Regal, 1997, 347). It is interesting that Halldór chooses not to repeat this scene in Gerpla. Halldór takes such dread to the cruellest extremes; Gerpla is a book that is literally aflame with violence and foul deeds. Warfare in Gerpla reveals itself as a threat to humanity as a whole; this is an apocalyptic novel. We may wonder whether this is a modern aspect of Halldór’s “translation”—whether he is using the symbolic order and discourse of Icelandic sagas primarily to pass a severe judgement on modern warfare, which has the capacity to destroy the whole world, while simultaneously critiquing universal embodiments of power and use of violent force, the worship of leaders, and acts of inhumanity that erupt in the course of war. Thus Peter Hallberg sees the “thrust of the novel” in the “sharp, universal criticism of war which is to be found underneath the humour” (176). Certainly the critique of war may be counted as one of the main components of Gerpla. But the implied author of the novel is far from being a unilateral peacekeeper. Violence and battles are not just the subjects of Gerpla but also, in various ways, the life force of the work. In his showdown with the old and great 148 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA heroic literature, in his tussle with material that is embodied in words alone, the art of words, which are, nonetheless, Iceland’s major national legacy, Halldór Laxness is a fierce guerrilla fighter. Perhaps this can be seen most clearly in the manner in which the implied author identifies with the guerrilla warfare of the common folk against the vicious viking raiders. And then the dread, the horror, is not without a trace of cheerfulness:

En sérhver víkingur sem náði að komast yfir múrinn, þá var hann umkríngdur og þraungdur af múginum og lostinn margskyns ógöfuglegum bareflum, eða lagður tálguhnífum og borðknífum, þélum og ölum, nálum og prjónum og skærum, ellegar bitinn til bana af borgarmönnum og slitinn sundur kvikur og gefinn hundum. (203)

[Every Viking that did manage to make it over the wall was surrounded and thronged by the crowd and pummelled with all sorts of base bludgeons, or stabbed with carving knives and table knives, files and awls, pins and knitting-needles and shears, or bitten to death by the inhabitants and ripped to living shreds and thrown to the dogs.] (189)

The unceasing strife that characterizes Gerpla expresses not only the implied author’s censure of warfare but is also a manifestation of his warlike encounter with his subject—a subject with which he feels strong kinship and which stands in a paternal relation to his pen. From this contradiction stem the reactions of scholars who find that Gerpla to some degree perverts the heroic ideals of the Icelandic sagas. Steingrímur Þorsteinsson writes that it weighs in against “their outlook on life with their own weapons” (16), while Kristinn E. Andrésson suggests that Gerpla’s author even finds himself “in a mental sense in the skin of a viking and then no less akin to Þorgeir than to Þormóður, so that when he advances a cause, and has come to a definite conclusion, he hews hard and fast, relentless in his passionate fervor” (42). Halldór Laxness, when it comes down to it, is an armed viking who moves boldly against the prevalent native force. The implied author of his novel is thus a sworn brother of the heroic image, which he seems bent on overthrowing. Gerpla is therefore a sworn-brothers’ saga in more than one sense. And the sworn-brotherhood of the author and the ancient warriors rests on the confluence of the elements that I have discussed: author function, intertextuality, and translation.

XI

The scene most crucial for this sworn-brotherhood, harbouring its yearnings, all its mutual insurance, all its conflicts and inconsistencies, is the battlefield of IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 149 language. In an interview with Matthías Johannessen, Halldór relates that while he was working on Gerpla, four years of his life were spent learning the Old Icelandic language (22).18 But he did not just have a hard time mastering the old language, for the language struggle—to stay with the battle imagery—also involves translating the old language into a new one. For, as Jakob Benediktsson points out, Gerpla is not at all written in Old Icelandic; “if a novel were to be written nowadays in a language that would be a precise imitation of that of the sagas, it would inevitably become a dead letter, not literature at all”; yet, the language of Gerpla is not the prevalent contemporary language either: “It is a language full of life, with a special, charming, and seductive tension between old attributes and a modern style” (42–43).19 This sworn-brotherhood is characterized, among other things, by a fusion of features that are “marked” variously as old language, modern language, or Halldór’s own personal usage. Readers may even try to pick apart these characteristics in individual sentences: “Eg em kelling afgömul í Rúðu og þú ýngismaður af Norðurlöndum, og má vera að eg kynni sögu að segja þínum fóla í tómi” [I am an old woman from Rouen and you a young lad from the North—but it may be time that I tell you a tale, you simpleton] (258; 242). But in its totality this new language is one continuous deception; a language that does not exist except in this book. This book, however, admits to “recycling” other books. Garðar Baldvinsson has pointed to this open textual awareness in Gerpla, how it is “conscious of being a book, of being a truth while also being a fiction” (23). He also mentions how the self-conscious interplay of images, truths, and fictions make the work multi-faceted. The truth of the old heroic image is disclosed as fiction, and yet the author also has doubts about the truths of this disclosure, as it is carried out through fiction, which is inescapably a new image. Behind this multiplicity, in this labyrinth, there stands in the end “the old image of the author who has the appearance of a world builder, he who keeps all threads in his hand and pulls them as needed” (26). In light of the author function, this image of the author harbours a truth about the achievement of the writer Halldór Laxness, an achievement of which Gerpla itself is quite conscious and refers to with its title. “Gerpla” [Warrior tale] is not just an ironic word referring to the delusion of the heroic ideal, nor simply an allusion to the warrior lay that Þormóður cannot honour the king with, at the end of the novel, since he says he cannot recall it. “Gerpla” also refers to the fact that contrary to Þormóður, Halldór Laxness has brought forth his tale, composed his heroic lay. He is the creator who becomes a master of the old and silent world, making it speak anew, giving it a new language. The author as the viking of language. But this viking is also a master of deception, and though he ruptures his verisimilitude by letting us into the dressing room, his language, as already noted, is a whole web of deception, and “Gerpla” a halfway ironic nickname. This web’s 150 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA intertextual connections with the old language and the Icelandic sagas is chimeric and fluid. Sometimes he translates “verbatim,” i.e. repeats the “original text” like Pierre Menard, but he also moves away from the older works with stories that are not to be found there. And despite the (old) Icelandic language, we sometimes find ourselves in a world of language that seems to have little to do with the world of the Icelandic sagas. This is true, for example, of a paragraph that Halldór himself has stated is his favourite one (Laxness and Johannessen 26–28). It is in the part of the novel that is about Þormóður’s stay with the Inuit in Greenland and manifests the contradictory desire of an author who is enchanted by the linguistic legacy of the sagas but chooses, at the same time, to take it elsewhere and use it to create a “new classicism,” which here is at once Laxnessesque and Homeric inasmuch as it is Greenlandic and Icelandic:

Nú líður af þessi vetur sem aðrir er eigi vóru skemri, og tekur brestum að slá í nóttina, og þefvísir menn segja tíðendi, að þá andaði móðir sjóskepnunnar þey að landi úr hinum firstum höfum þar sem hún á soðníngarstað. Og nær sól ekur sínum björtum himinhundum sunnan jökulinn, og túnglbóndinn, vörður lágnættis, er sofa genginn, þá vekja menn hunda sína jarðneska og bursta af meiðum snjó, og fara að vitja þeirra gjafa er kona hin einhenda hefur upp látnar á ísskörina. (379)

[That winter passes like others that are no shorter, until cracking sounds begin to red the night, and those in the know announce the tidings, that the Mother of Sea Creatures is breathing a warm breath toward the land from the farthest seas where she has her abode. When the sun drives its bright celestial dogs south of the glacier, and the Moon Man, the guardian of midnight, returns to his bed, men wake their earthly dogs, brush snow off their sled-runners, and go to see what gifts the one-handed woman has left on the rim of the ice.] (357)

This is an epic realm, but one that is neither the world of Icelandic sagas nor the world of the modern reader. It points both ways, it is a translation but also a mirage spun in the space between two worlds. Not least in this respect is Gerpla a book about language and fictional creation while it is also a grotesque anthropological study of the world of Icelandic sagas and our connection with it. The literary act, the art of fiction, comes closest to admitting that language is a deceptive web, something that has been spun and yet turns out meaning, albeit sometime only halfway. Meanings that we imagine watch over us from all around, but have always come from somewhere else and from another time. When Icelanders say that their medieval literature is a main pillar of their national consciousness and even the existential foundation of Icelandic culture, they are referring to a nearness which is full of distance. They are referring to the activity of translation, to a search for meaning, under the auspices of exile and IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 151 anachronism, at least when people have passed beyond the most staid laws of national heritage—and Gerpla goes beyond those limits. The method of Gerpla and its intertextual links to the sagas rhyme in their own way with creative paths of translation; the pursuit of such paths has been described in trailblazing writings as a mode that resists conformity with the language into which the translated work is brought. The translator swims against the current, taking risks and working in between ideological realms and thus forming his work in a melting pot that is located at the dynamic borders between linguistic worlds.20 Such a translation moves us forward to lost times, vanished worlds; it carries surprising news of what we thought was old.

NOTES

1. This is a translation of a remark Helga Kress made, “Gunnar á Hlíðarenda … hver er nú það?” in a discussion following her public lecture on love and male domination in Steinunn Sigurðardóttir’s novel Tímaþjófurinn [The thief of time] at the University of Iceland (October 31, 1987). This article includes translations of Icelandic sources quoted in the original version; see Eysteinsson 1990 and 2017. In the case of quotations from literature rather than scholarship, this translation provides corresponding passages from published English translations such as Lee Hollander’s The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers (1949), Martin Regal’s The Saga of the Sworn Brothers (1997), and Philip Roughton’s Wayward Heroes (2016). In short, all translations are those of the present translator except where otherwise noted. 2. Helgi Þorláksson gives an overview of the connection of scholars with their grandfathers in the article “Um hollan missi feðra, fræðayl mjúkra afa og mannbætandi konur.” 3. On the hermeneutic connections between Icelandic sagas and contemporary attitudes, see Vilhjálmur Árnason’s article “Morality and Social Structure in the Icelandic Sagas.” 4. In “Die Sprache” Heidegger writes, “Die Sprache spricht. / Der Mensch spricht, insofern er der Sprache entspricht” (32–33). 5. The name of the Sigurður Nordal Institute has actually changed since this article was originally published; it is now called “Stofa Sigurðar Nordals” [The Sigurður Nordal Centre] and is a part of the Árni Magnússon Institute of Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík. 6. Cf. Eysteinsson, “Halldór Laxness and the Narrative of the Icelandic Novel” (2003) and “Halldór Laxness og aðrir höfundar” (1999) [Halldór Laxness and other authors]. 7. In the article “Af íslensku menníngarástandi” [On the condition of Icelandic culture] which Halldór wrote in 1925 (and which was republished in 1986), he lets on that “Icelanders have arrived at the truth of recognition, that very few sagas are more important writings than much of what is now composed within the country and elsewhere” (46). We may also point to a similar provocative point of view he advances in another of his writings in the twenties: Heiman eg fór: “I personally have not had a more boring work in my hands than Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson. I find the thriller about Alfred Dreyfus more notable than the bone-dry descriptions of lawsuits in the Icelandic sagas. … Maria Grubbe by J.P. Jacobsen is a much better work than Njáls saga, 152 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

one in which a much deeper and more artistic spirit administers content and form” (63–64). Cf. Þorsteinsson, 10–11. 8. This essay was first published in Tímarit Máls og menningar in 1945, then in Sjálfsagðir hlutir in 1962. 9. See also Crocker in this volume. 10. In fact, it may be said that we only have recourse to “translations” of sagas, since there are no “original manuscripts,” only copies that also vary among themselves. But this is especially true in the case of publications with regularized spelling. Thus, the standardized spelling used in the Íslensk fornrit series is in its own way a translation variant, no less than the publications that use the accepted orthography of their time. The latter are generally meant to be as accessible to the general reading public; the text itself is meant to be as self-explanatory as possible, so that readers need not have misgivings about the meaning of individual words or be overly conscious of different textual variants. Cf. Crocker in this volume. 11. Cf. Bloomʼs book, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973). Although Bloom’s theory may be applicable here, I have serious doubts about its general explanatory value for the various traits of literary history. 12. In this excellent article, Steingrímur discusses, among other things, the “filial role” of Halldór as he faces the sagas: how it can be problematic “for a man of talents and excellence to have a world-famous parent” (18). 13. Helga Kress’s interpretation implicitly suggests that a revision of saga groupings may be in order, as she has in fact pointed out in a description of her own research, cf. Rannsóknir við Háskóla Íslands (1985–1986) 47–48. See also Helga Kress’s subsequent studies of Old Icelandic literature in her books Máttugar meyjar. Íslensk fornbókmenntasaga (1993), Fyrir dyrum fóstru. Greinar um konur og kynferði í íslenskum fornbókmenntum (1996), and her article in this volume. 14. This episode occupies Gerpla 118–23 and Wayward Heroes 111–16; see Kress in this volume for discussion of the grotesque and the character of Butraldi. 15. “Kiljan” was Halldór Laxness’s Catholic middle name. 16. On “the victory of the common people” in Gerpla, see both Andrésson and Bergljót Kristjánsdóttir in this volume, and both of their works listed in the References. In the article “Um beinfætta menn og bjúgfætta, kiðfætta, kringilfætta og tindilfætta” (1988) for example, Bergljót Kristjánsdóttir also touches on the modern aesthetics in Gerpla, such as Brechtian material articulation and the editing technology in film style. 17. On the horror in Gerpla, see also Dagný Kristjánsdóttir, “Aldrei gerði Kristur sálu Þórelfi, vorri móður” (1988). 18. In the same interview, Halldór adds: “Of course, I sorely regret not having learnt Chinese instead!” (22). 19. Jakob Benediktsson’s “Um Gerplu” was first published in Tímarit Máls og menningar in 1952 and later included in Lærdómslistir. Afmælisrit in 1987. 20. See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “On Translations,” trans. André Lefevere (2006) and Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” trans. James Hynd and E.M. Valk, IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 153

both in Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader (2006), and also George Steiner’s After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (1998).

REFERENCES Andrésson, Kristinn E. 1979. “Gerpla.” In Um íslenskar bókmenntir. Ritgerðir II, 32–53. Reykjavik: Mál og menning. Árnason, Vilhjálmur. 1991. “Morality and Social Structure in the Icelandic Sagas.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 90: 157–74. Baldvinsson, Garðar. 1989. “Aðsteðjandi blöskrun.” In Sögur af háaloftinu (sagðar Helgu Kress 21. september 1989). Edited by Ragnhildur Richter, 23–28. Reykjavik: n.p. Benediktsson, Jakob. 1987. “Um Gerplu.” Lærdómslistir. Afmælisrit (July 20). Edited by Halldór Guðmundsson, Sverrir Tómasson, and Örnólfur Thorsson, 41–46. Reykjavik: Mál og menning and Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Benjamin, Walter. 2006. “The Task of the Translator.” Translated by James Hynd and E. M. Valk. In Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader. Edited by Ástráður Eysteinsson and Daniel Weissbort, 298–307. New York: Oxford University Press. Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. Borges, Jorge Luis. 2006. “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote.” Translated by Anthony Bonner. In Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader. Edited by Ástráður Eysteinsson and Daniel Weissbort, 323–29. New York: Oxford University Press. Brandes, Georg. 2011. William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. Translated by William Archer. Rockville: Wildside. Even–Zohar, Itamar. 1981. “Translation Theory Today: A Call for Transfer Theory.” Poetics Today 2 (4): 1–7. Eysteinsson, Ástráður. 1990. “Er Halldór Laxness höfundur Fóstbræðrasögu? Um höfundarvirkni, textatengsl og þýðingu í sambandi Laxness við fornsögurnar.” Skáldskaparmál: Tímarit um íslenskar bókmenntir fyrri alda 1: 171–88. ⸻. 1999. “Halldór Laxness og aðrir höfundar” [Halldór Laxness and other authors]. In Umbrot:Bókmennntirog nútími, 13–29. Reykjavik: Háskólaútgáfan. ⸻. 2003. “Halldór Laxness and the Narrative of the Icelandic Novel.” Scandinavica 42 (1): 47–66. 154 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

⸻. 2017. Orðaskil: Í heimi þýðinga. Reykjavik: Bókmennta– og listfræðastofnun Háskóla Íslands / Háskólaútgáfan. Foucault, Michel. 1977. “What is an Author?” Translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Language, Counter–Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Edited by Donald F. Bouchard, 133–40. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Fóstbræðra saga. Vestfirðingasǫgur. 1943. Íslenzk fornrit 6. Edited by Björn Karel Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 119–276. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. “Fóstbræðra saga.” 1985. In Íslendingasögur. Edited by Jón Torfason, Sverrir Tómasson, and Örnólfur Thorsson. Volume I, 775–851. Reykjavik: Svart á hvítu. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 2006. “On Translations.” Translated by André Lefevere. In Translation – Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader. Edited by Ástráður Eysteinsson and Daniel Weissbort, 199–202. New York: Oxford University Press. Hallberg, Peter. 1971. Hús skáldsins, vol 2. Translated by Helgi J. Halldórsson. Reykjavik: Mál og menning. Heidegger, Martin. 1959. “Die Sprache.” In Unterwegs zur Sprache, 9–33. Pfullingen: Neske. Helgason, Jón. 1986. Kvæðabók. Reykjavik: Mál og menning. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation. Edited by R. A. Brower, 232–39. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kress, Helga. 1987. “Bróklindi Falgeirs. Fóstbræðrasaga og hláturmenning miðalda.” Skírnir 161 (2): 271–86. ⸻. 1993. Máttugar meyjar. Íslensk fornbókmenntasaga. Reykjavik: Háskólaútgáfan. ⸻. 1996. Fyrir dyrum fóstru. Greinar um konur og kynferði í íslenskum fornbókmenntum. Reykjavik: Rannsóknastofa í kvennafræðum við Háskóla Íslands. Kristjánsdóttir, Bergljót. 1988. “Um beinfætta menn og bjúgfætta, kiðfætta, kringilfætta og tindilfætta.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 49 (3): 283–300. Kristjánsdóttir, Dagný. 1988. “Aldrei gerði Kristur sálu Þórelfi, vorri móður …” Tímarit Máls og menningar 49 (3): 301–21. Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1972. Um Fóstbræðrasögu. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Laxness, Halldór. 1952. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Helgafell. IS HALLDÓR LAXNESS THE AUTHOR OF FÓSTBRÆÐRA SAGA? 155

⸻. 1956. Heiman eg fór. 2nd edition. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1962. “Minnisgreinar um fornsögur.” In Sjálfsagðir hlutir, 2nd edition, 9–58. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1974. “Forneskjutaut.” In Þjóðhátíðarrolla, 15–74. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1986. “Af íslensku menníngarástandi.” In Af menningarástandi, 9–50. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books. Laxness, Halldór, and Matthías Johannessen. 1972. Skeggræður gegnum tíðina. Reykjavik: Helgafell. Lefevere, André. 1983. “Literature, Comparative and Translated.” Babel 34 (2): 70–75. ⸻. 1985. “Why Waste Our Time on Rewrites?: The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm.” In The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation. Edited by Theo Hermans, 215–43. New York: St. Martinʼs Press. Sæmundsson, Matthías Viðar. 1984. “Þyrrkingur og frjósemi.” Storð 2 (1): 79–80. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. 1997. Translated by Martin S. Regal. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers. 1949. Translated by Lee M. Hollander. New York: Princeton University Press. Steiner, George. 1998. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Þorláksson, Helgi. 1989. “Um hollan missi feðra, fræðayl mjúkra afa og mannbætandi konur.” In Véfréttir (sagðar Vésteini Ólasyni fimmtugum, 14. febrúar 1989). Edited by Svavar Sigmundsson, 51–54. Reykjavik: n.p. Þorsteinsson, Steingrímur J. 1962. “Halldór Kiljan Laxness og fornsögurnar.” In Afmæliskveðjur heiman og handan. Til Halldórs Kiljans Laxness sextugs. Reykjavik: Helgafell–Ragnar Jónsson. Tómasson, Sverrir. 1983. “Helgisögur, mælskufræði og forn frásagnarlist.” Skírnir 157: 130–162. Tzara, Tristan. 1981. “Dada Manifesto 1918.” In Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. Translated by Barbara Wright, 3–13. London: John Calder; New York: Riverrun Press. Of Heroes and Cods’ Heads: Saga Meets Film in Gerpla

BERGLJÓT SOFFÍA KRISTJÁNSDÓTTIR TRANSLATED BY PAUL RICHARDSON AND PÉTUR KNÚTSSON

ABSTRACT: Halldór Laxness’s satirical novel Gerpla (1952) is a socially analytic work that lays bare various misconceptions about Icelandic medieval literature celebrated by the Nazis as well as many Icelanders in the first half of the twentieth century. When it first appeared it was considered by many to have been written in medieval Icelandic and some argued that Halldór Laxness had become “the most conservative” of Icelandic writers (Pétursson 40). In reality, the language of the novel is Halldór’s own creation. This article reviews the narrative construction of Gerpla, considering changes in Halldór’s literary career as he began to address the ancient Icelandic narrative tradition (Íslandsklukkan) as well as film (Atomstöðin) in the nineteen forties. This reveals how Gerpla uses methods of both modern film and medieval literature, such as quotation, montage, and shock effect, to present readers with a defamiliarized saga world.

RÉSUMÉ: Gerpla, le roman satirique de Halldór Laxness (1952), est un ouvrage d’analyse sociale qui révèle diverses idées fausses sur la littérature médiévale islandaise célébrée par les nazis et de nombreux Islandais au cours de la première moitié du XXe siècle. À ses débuts, beaucoup pensaient qu’il avait été écrit en islandais médiéval et certains affirmaient que Halldór Laxness était devenu « le plus conservateur » des écrivains islandais (Pétursson 40). En réalité, la langue du roman est la création de Halldór lui-même. Cet article passe en revue la construction narrative de Gerpla, en prenant en compte les changements survenus dans la carrière littéraire de Halldór, alors qu’il commençait à aborder l’ancienne tradition narrative islandaise (Íslandsklukkan) et les films (Atomstöðin) dans les années 1940. Cela révèle comment Gerpla utilise des méthodes du film moderne et de la littérature médiévale, telles que la citation, le montage et l’effet de choc, pour présenter au lecteur un monde de saga dé-familiarisé.

Bergljót Soffía Kristjánsdóttir is Professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 Cods’ Heads for Heroes and Skalds

Þorskhaus merkir, svo sem kunnugt er, annars vegar höfuðið á fiski þeim er þorskur nefnist, hins vegar heimskan mann, asna, aulabárð … Öll meðferð þjóðarinnar á þorskhausunum og hugarþel til þeirra ber séreðli hennar og menningu óræk vitni. (Finnbogason 191, emphasis added)

[The term cods’ head, as we know, refers on the one hand to the head of the fish known as a cod, and on the other to a stupid man, an ass, a blockhead. … The nation’s whole approach to, and use of, cods’ heads is an incontrovertible demonstration of her idiosyncratic cultural identity.]1

uch were the words of a nationalistic Icelandic academic in the fifth decade of the last century, followed by speculation on whether consumption of cods’ heads had had an invigorating effect on the S nation’s intelligence and poetic talent. Cods’ heads were in fact up for discussion in Icelandic papers and journals of the time; in 1950, for instance, it was reported that many complaints had arisen as to the fact that cods’ heads, for centuries a staple of the Icelandic diet, particularly in the countryside, were no longer available in Icelandic shops (“Af hverju fást ekki hausar og lifur?” 7). Two years later Halldór Laxness’s novel Gerpla was published, recounting amongst other things the story of the early eleventh century heroes and sworn brothers Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Bersason, characters who feature in medieval Icelandic sagas, particularly Fóstbræðra saga. Gerpla brings a sharp social analysis to parts of the story, including a particular critique of militarism. At the same time the novel exposes various odd aspects of the reception accorded to ‎ancient Icelandic literature during the first half of the twentieth century, by the Nazis no less than ‎by Icelanders themselves: in Icelandic schoolbooks it was predominantly interpreted in the ‎spirit of romantic nationalism (e.g. Jónsson 34–73). In Gerpla, we encounter cods’ heads again when Þorgeir and Þormóður descend on a poor farmer after one of their “Viking raids” on an outlying Icelandic district, and demand shelter for the night. They are served with hard cods’ heads:

Þeim þótti lítil matarfurða í þorskahöfðunum og tók Þormóður að kveða vísur blautlegar meðan hann reif en Þorgeir kastaði af afli höfuðbeinum og tálknum í gólfið svo að hrukku upp um veggi og rjáfur. (163) 158 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

[They saw little sustenance in the cods’ heads. Þormóður sang lewd verses as he picked at them while Þorgeir flung the head-bones and gills violently to the floor so they bespattered the walls and the rafters.]2

The next day Þorgeir comes upon the farmer’s son, a young boy, setting his dogs on the heroes’ horses, which were busy stripping the farmer’s small hayfield. The champion chases the unarmed boy and challenges him to a duel, finally hewing him repeatedly with his axe until he dies of “fjölda sára” [many wounds] (163). Subsequently Þorgeir gives notice of the manslaughter, adding the following surprising explanation:

Og er þeir voru stignir á bak hestum sínum lýsir Þorgeir vígi bóndasonar á hendur sér fyrir bæardurum, kvað fylgjufogla kappa, hrafn og örn, hafa fengið örgáta sinn, og var hefnt þess er hetjur og skáld vóru til settir í gærkveldi að rífa þorskahöfuð. (165)

[When they had mounted their horses Þorgeir turns to the farm door and announces responsibility for the death of the farmer’s son, declaring that the raven and the eagle, birds that wait on heroes, had had their fill, and retribution taken for heroes and skalds having been made to pick last night at heads of cod.]

The episode at the farm with the cods’ heads does not occur in Fóstbræðra saga, although the description of the farmer’s son is reminiscent of the death of Hækil-Snorri in the same saga (802–803). The account of these events is one of a number of occasions in Gerpla where readers’ minds are directed simultaneously to the past, the present, and to an interpretation of the past in the present, thus encouraging them to take creative part in the work. At the same time it bears witness to the level of precision, often at the single word level, that occurs continuously in the novel. The ambiguity of the word þorskhaus [cod’s head] exploited so that the reader is left in no doubt that the real cods’ heads (i.e. blockheads) are the sworn brothers, as is everyone who practices manslaughter or who acclaims it as heroism. To drive the point home, a more formal and non-colloquial term, þorskhöfuð instead of þorskhaus,3 is used to underline the bitter satire: Þorgeir intends to sound stern and imposing but instead becomes ridiculous. Although the language of Gerpla is Halldór Laxness’s own innovation, when the novel first appeared it was assumed by many to be written in the ancient saga language (e.g. Velvakandi 6). In the same way there were few who recognized the ambitiously innovative agenda of the novel in its bid to synthesize the structures of traditional Icelandic narrative art and the techniques of narrative art in the age of “its technological reproducibility”—to draw on Walter Benjamin (251–83). It was even affirmed that Halldór Laxness had, with Gerpla, become in some ways SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 159

“Iceland’s most conservative author” in that he was the only one who “upheld the art forms that their ancestors” had established (Pétursson 40). Here I shall describe some of the characteristics of the narrative form and construction of Gerpla, such as the way language is used to draw the readers’ attention to certain aspects of the medieval sagas no less than of contemporary reality. I shall touch on the changes of direction in Halldór’s literary career in the 1940s, when he turned to traditional Icelandic narrative and at the same time modern cinema. Placing the Gerpla narrative in its contemporary context will reveal striking parallels to several Western novelists who, in the first half of the twentieth century, turned to the cinema to enhance their writing. Considering Gerpla as satire and parody—with their concomitant irony and defamiliarization—I shall examine how certain of its characteristics may be seen as comparable with both the cinema and the modern novel rather than with medieval Icelandic literature. Finally, I shall conclude my survey of Gerpla’s narrative features with a few examples of the way in which Halldór works with material from Fóstbræðra saga and other sagas.

The Literary and Social Context of Gerpla: Changes in Halldór Laxness’s Storytelling

In his early years of writing, Halldór was not greatly enamoured of medieval Icelandic literature; during the twenties he was mainly preoccupied by the psychological novel. In Heiman eg fór: sjálfsmynd æskumanns (written in 1924, published in 1952), he declared that he had nothing to learn from authors like Snorri Sturluson and described medieval sagas such that their style was “sem hiksti bút[að]i sundur frásögnina” [as if a hiccup had chopped the narration into parts] (65–66).4 But two decades down the line his tone had changed. Íslandsklukkan [Icelandʼs Bell] was published in the years 1943–1946, or around the time Iceland gained independence (1944). It is a historical novel set in the eighteenth century when Iceland was ruled by the Danes, although it alludes to contemporary reality and evokes, among other things, questions about the oppressor and oppressed, colonies and colonial powers, contemporary superpowers and the responses they provoke from small nations. In Íslandsklukkan, the narrator follows the example of his various ancient predecessors in narrating characters and events from a distance and generally avoiding personal involvement. This narration is fundamentally different from that to which readers of Halldór’s previous novel were accustomed. Political developments in Europe, including both the rise of fascism and the resistance to it, play a role in directing Halldór’s attention to Icelandic history and narrative tradition, not to mention the impending independence of the Icelandic nation.5 In the forties, however, when Icelandic society took the final steps to technological capitalism, the question inevitably arose as to how the 160 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA novel could appeal to readers in the new order where cinema appeared to be the medium of the future. It was then hardly surprising that Halldór’s focus was not solely on the Icelandic narrative tradition but also on the works of foreign authors, both contemporary authors and innovators in novel writing. In 1941, for example, both his translation of A Farewell to Arms [Vopnin kvödd] by Ernest Hemingway and his edition of Laxdæla Saga [The Saga of the People of Laxardal] were published, as were his translation of Voltaire’s Candide ou lʼOptimisme [Birtíngur], and his edition of Brennu-Njáls Saga [Njal’s saga] in 1945. Hemingway belonged to a group of writers—e.g. John Dos Passos, Alfred Döblin, and Bertolt Brecht—who employed cinematic techniques in their narration in the first half of the twentieth century (Vondrak 257–79). When Atómstöðin [The Atom Station] was published—a contemporary story in the first person that Halldór wrote immediately after Íslandsklukkan, dealing among other things with the reaction of the Icelandic authorities to a request from the USA to establish a military base in Iceland—it was also said that “its technique [is] cinematic in nature” (Benediktsson 77). One can concur with this view, not least since the Atómstöðin narration is characterized by frequent changes of scene.6 However, while Halldór was writing Gerpla he informed his readers himself that he “owed a great debt of ‎gratitude” to the German author Bertolt Brecht, who had been “an organic part” of his thoughts for many years, adding that he had been unable to repay this debt in any ‎way other than by translating the poem “Von der Kindesmörderin Marie Farrar” as “Barnamorðínginn María Farrar” some twenty years previously (1955, 23–24). Those who are in some way familiar with Brecht’s work and have read Gerpla will be hardly surprised that Halldór saw the need to particularly mention the German author while writing Gerpla. Since around 1930 both had the objective of writing works that would change the world (Wizila 7; Guðmundsson 247–49). In Gerpla, Halldór endeavours among other things to set up parallels with medieval history, with events leading up to the Second World War, and with the War itself and its consequences; in this way he is already grappling with a theme often used by Brecht.7 In his renovation of narrative, the Icelandic author also treads similar paths to those followed by Brecht in his novels, such as in the satire and “crime novel” (Benjamin 8–9) Der Dreigrosschenroman [The Threepenny Novel] and in the historical novel Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar [The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar]—not to mention his short stories and plays. In these stories Brecht endeavours to adapt cinematic techniques to the aesthetic demands of literature and uses the montage technique, as he considers this to be the principal characteristic of modern literature in contrast to traditional literature of the nineteenth century (Mueller 473). At the same time as Halldór deals with narrative innovations in Gerpla, he embarks on a review of specific aspects of the “context in Icelandic literature” and history—to use the words of a nationalistic and in some ways conservative essay by Professor Sigurður Nordal (ix-xxxi), which became the final word on SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 161

Icelandic literature until well beyond the middle of the twentieth century. The new language created by Halldór Laxness in his novel and the ancient texture with which he endows the narrative are among the characteristics that reveal how innovative his approach is—and how different it became from Brecht’s.

Narration and Construction in Gerpla

Gerpla can be classified as complex satire, openly borrowing structures from various sources, not least from well-known works of fiction and historical writing. The novel recreates such structures in a new context and merges them into a new whole, presenting its criticism of society and culture with irony as a weapon. The meaning of the irony is mainly decided by two criteria: on the one hand by the interaction between the said and the unsaid and on the other hand by the relationship between the satirist, the interpreter, and the target of the satire. The impact of the irony is rooted in the fact that it is both what it says and also something quite different. It is variously good-natured and teasing, or cutting and offensive (cf. Hutcheon 1994, 57–66). Units are furthermore organized in Gerpla in such a manner that the same unit can be ironic or not, depending on the context in which it is viewed. This results in the meaning of the irony being multiple, fluid, and to some degree dependent on the reader (Griffin 64–70). But the key issue is of course that the irony is particularly suitable in social criticism as “the opposite to common sense” (Rorty 74). As is the case with a number of satires, Gerpla shows that the object of its satire is dangerous, or at least has the potential to become so (Guilhamet 7–9). To this end, Gerpla more often than not uses parody (cf. Guilhamet 13–14; Griffin 102–109). The parody has been called “repetition with difference,” as one can describe it as one text imitating another with the “imitation characterized by an ironic inversion, not always at the expense of the parodied text” (Hutcheon 1985, 6). It has also been pointed out that there are three main variations of parody: banging, binding, and blending—depending on whether the differing materials brought together seem at odds with each other, whether they are locked together despite the contrasts, or whether they are smoothly married despite their obvious differences (Chambers 7).8 The companion of parody is defamiliarization, which shows common things or situations in a new light, thus making them strange and remarkable. The narrator of Gerpla is a nameless twentieth-century man who speaks like a medieval author or scribe when he appears at the beginning of the story.9 He uses the first person plural, known as the majestic plural; his language is tailored to the style of the old sagas; and he has a prologue to his story, just as Ari fróði to Íslendingabók and Snorri Sturluson to Heimskringla. The narrator says in the prologue that he wishes to relate the story of the sworn brothers Þormóður Bessason and Þorgeir Hávarsson, as many interesting tales about them have not 162 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA yet been written down. He also itemizes a number of his sources, including Fóstbræðrasaga hin meiri—i.e. one of a number of main versions of the Fóstbræðra saga that is preserved in the manuscript of Flateyjarbók (Kristjánsson 1–16)—thus following the practice of medieval men who wished to enhance the credibility of their stories. The narrator never speaks of the story as a modern novel but rather uses the wording of those who did not know the concept of the author as used in later centuries; he says he wishes to “revise” accounts, assemble them in “one place,” and suchlike (7). This medieval tone is consistent through to the end of the story and contributes to its being a parody. Among other important aspects that recall narrative practices from previous centuries, one could mention references to sources—cf. various poems in medieval sagas that serve the function of confirming the “veracity” of the narration, as well as references to other sagas10—and the two kinds of status of Gerpla’s narrator. On the one hand, he narrates using the general practice in the Icelandic sagas of letting the story mostly explain itself. Here he is unobtrusive, describing characters and events as if at a distance and adducing common knowledge of foreign and local books when providing information. On the other hand, he is a most important character in the novel. He not only links various parts of the narration together and bridges gaps in time but also provides explanations of circumstances and situations at the story time. His comments cast light on characters, draw political parallels between narrated time and narrating time, and he even makes long speeches. In this respect he is reminiscent of narrators in the riddarasögur [Chivalric Sagas], though mostly of his predecessor, the effusive narrator of Fóstbræðra saga in the Flateyjarbók manuscript.11 It has been maintained that Fóstbræðra saga parodies the Sagas of Icelanders (cf. Kress 1987, and in this volume). If one assumes this to be the case, the style in Gerpla, and some aspects of the narrator’s stance regarding the content of the novel, not only indicates a link to medieval methods but also in part to the parody itself, i.e. to the extent to which the parody is directed at medieval sagas and their world view. In fact, one could say similar things about the montage technique. It constitutes, in its simplest form, the organization of narrative units—each with its own specific meaning—in such a manner that a new meaning emerges, the meaning of the whole. Each unit states to some extent a specific truth, although the whole truth does not appear until there is an understanding of which units belong together and how they are connected to form a whole—which they can do in a variety of ways. The film director Sergei Eisenstein traced visual montage techniques back through the ages and was, for example, particularly impressed by them in the works of Leonardo da Vinci (Eisenstein 2010, 305–309). His ideas have been followed up, e.g. in discussion on myths, montage, and visuality in late medieval manuscript culture (Desmond and Sheingorn). The Flateyjarbók version of Fóstbræða saga contains what are called “clauses,” short passages that were SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 163 long thought to be additions to the “original” Fóstbræða saga (Kristjánsson 82–87). Some of the clauses are characterized by metaphors and are thus figurative, marking breaks in the narration. They are therefore candidates for interpretation in the manner of Eisenstein as montage technique—and the same also actually applies to a number of other aspects of the story. Shock effects that have been linked to montage (e.g. Eisenstein 1969, 230–31; Benjamin 267) may also be included. It is indeed not difficult to indicate examples in the Flateyjarbók version of Fóstbræðra saga that can be said to perform the function of shocking, for example when Þorgeir kills the shepherd “af því að hann stendur vel til höggsins” [because he stood so well poised for the blow] (793; The Saga of the Sworn Brothers 347). Halldór Laxness first establishes in his own mind what might ‎reasonably be seen as similarities between medieval times and the twentieth century, and uses them in Gerpla to ‎draw parallels between the past and present and furnish the story with the corresponding ‎atmosphere. By using the Sagas of the Icelanders and the King’s Sagas, seen as the canon in what is often called the Icelandic School of saga research, he not only goads readers into feeling themselves in the world of medieval narration but also parodies prevailing ideas on medieval sagas and the Age of Commonwealth. Simultaneously he positions himself firmly against various ideas Icelanders have of themselves and their society. Yet despite its medieval style, Gerpla has most characteristics of novels that have been designated, rightly or wrongly, filmic or cinematic (cf. Kellman). Three characteristics of Gerpla that can be linked to the cinema will be discussed here. First is the technique of external descriptions—a kind of narration that has been simply characterized as camera eye. In Gerpla the narration attests to opposition to the psychological novel; it is directed at maintaining a certain distance between the readers and the characters so that they do not become lost in “tómum einkamálaskáldskap” [pure private affairs’ fiction] (Laxness 1955, 90), but rather look at everything in the context of the whole and learn lessons from it. Second, the Gerpla narrator continuously knits sources into the text and names them explicitly, a technique that, in addition to the medieval sagas, can be related to the view that movies and photographs have a “documentary quality” which enables them to depict the truth more successfully than literature (Kracauer 302, 306).12 The variety of quotations—without quotation marks!—and references to sources in Gerpla tend especially to widen the scope of the novel. Readers are steered away from experiencing the world into which they have entered as a closed unit without connections to the outside world. At the same time the fiction is brought home to them. Around the time Gerpla was published, Halldór had serious concerns that a deep rift had opened between ordinary people and Western authors, many of whom had become self-centred and had turned their backs on life and whatever could be called “alþýðlegt, blátt áfram og áþreifanlegt” [popular, unaffected, and tangible] (Laxness 1955, 199). Various comments from the Gerpla 164 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA narrator on the situation and circumstances in the eleventh and twentieth centuries, which at first sight seem to be simply an endeavour to achieve the style of medieval sagas, often prove to be based on medieval chronicles, or on the writings of anthropologists or historians on the Middle Ages. The same can most often be said about his references to various books, though there are instances where such references serve the parody and are clearly comic devices to draw attention to some of the issues that conflict with the reader’s prior experience. In addition, references are often woven into the text in places other than the narrator’s comments and in those instances modern history is no less predominant, particularly the history of fascism and the Cold War. Yet, the references to various books and sources often serve the parody more overtly, comically drawing attention to the issues that conflict with the readers’ prior assumptions. The third and most significant characteristic that can be linked to the cinema is the montage technique. It characterizes the construction of Gerpla to such an extent that one might call it a montage novel, in the words of Walter Allen on cinematic texts during the fourth decade of the last century (cf. Feigel 3). Defamiliarization accompanies the montage technique no less than parody does, but the technique aims more than anything at making the readers active participants in the process of creation of the fiction. The arrangement of the material means that they themselves need to connect the units, to consider interactions between them, and to draw conclusions. The creation of meaning, in other words, stands or falls with them. Montage occurs in several forms in Gerpla. Rather than only attributing the aforementioned two roles of the narrator to medieval sagas, one can also say that two domains of narrative have been cut together, i.e. the actual events on the one hand and the comments and explanations of the narrator on the other. In addition there is the fact that the narrator is dialectic, enjoys contradictions, and mediates a socialist worldview—which one can hardly say are the primary characteristics of medieval Icelandic sagas. Many stories take place concurrently in the book, and the narrative switches between them with frequent cuts. This characterizes the plot as a whole no less than small narrative units. Small sections sometimes prove to be structured in such a manner that each sentence or paragraph is carefully thought out within a unit, which is in turn also a well-thought unit in a larger whole. Use of the montage technique makes the construction of Gerpla quite different from the structures of narratives where only one story takes place, where events follow one after the other with clear causal relationships, and where one or a few characters are in focus until the end. The novel is not first and foremost about certain characters, but rather an illusion is created such that each person is allocated similar space to that which they would have in the world we call reality. However, Gerpla makes greater demands on readers, particularly for readers to SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 165 actively seek continuity themselves, than Icelandic novels generally did around the middle of the twentieth century. The widely varying interpretations of Gerpla during the decades following its publication may doubtless be attributed to how unaccustomed readers were to a novel of this kind (cf. Hughes in this volume). There is also the fact that the novel is “crime fiction” no less than Brecht’s Dreigroschenroman. It shows that Halldór, just as in Alþýðubókin, is still preoccupied with the relationship between crime and the nature of the society. In Alþýðubókin he says: “Hið borgaralega þjóðfélag, með ójöfnuði sínum, lögvernd ranglætisins og hervernd, er ekki aðeins móðir allra glæpa, heldur skorar það á menn til allra glæpa” [The bourgeois society, with its inequality, legal protection of injustice and military protection, is not only the mother of all crimes, but also challenges men to commit all crimes] (Laxness 1929, 255). There were many who found such a stance difficult to tolerate—not least when it was related to the Icelandic Sagas and Kings’ Sagas (e.g. Haraldsson 8). Halldór himself later (1965) suggested that we should not interpret Gerpla as a socialist novel, but rather as a settling of accounts with Stalinism and Nazism as well as a criticism of militarism and the arms race (cf. Hallberg 1975, 136). In what follows, I shall examine some prior interpretations of the novel and adduce examples.

Chieftains and Paupers

One can read Fóstbræðra saga in such a way that it constitutes a parody of a specific literary tradition where the targets of the parody are not least heroic ideas about the obligation for revenge and Icelanders’ dreams of being honoured by foreign dignitaries. The saga, for example, shows that on the strength of family connections with chieftains, scoundrels get away with more than the common people (e.g. 786), but doubt is not cast on the fabric of the society itself. In Gerpla, however, the society is the base cause of those events that take place. Some believe that the parties in conflict in the novel are not the common people and the property owners but rather the nation and those ruling the country. In support of this view, it has been mentioned that some prosperous farmers in the story were spokesmen of peace. The farmer most often mentioned as the messenger for peace is Þorgils Arason (Pétursson 40; Hallberg 1956, 502) but there are also examples of Vermundur in Vatnsfjörður being included in this group (Sønderholm 249–50). Both chieftains are introduced immediately at the beginning of the story, and this presents an excellent example of sections that are carefully planned montage constructions. They also jointly show varying interests of property owners, both in saga times and at the time of narration, but for the sake of brevity, only Halldór’s introduction of Þorgils will be dealt with here. With the montage technique in mind, one can interpret his introduction such that it constitutes six montage units as follows: 166 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

1. Í þann tíð réð fyrir Vestfjörðum breiðafjarðarmegin Þorgils Arason; hann sat á höfuðbóli á Reykjahólum. [At that time Þorgils Arason ruled the West Fjords on the Breiðafjörður side; he lived at his estate at Reykjahólar.] 2. Þorgils hafði á úngum aldri stundað farmensku og kaupskap og æxlað fé úr öreigð; [As a young man Þorgils worked as a seafarer and in commerce and went from rags to riches;] 3. þótti honum friður ábatavænlegri en hernaður; [he believed that peace was more profitable than war;] 4. hafði hann keypta við silfri staðfestu sína og svo mannaforráð. [he had paid for his position and his authority with silver.] 5. Lítill var hann blótmaður, sem títt er um þá menn er fjöld hafa farið og kynst við mart guða; [He was not a stickler for heathen sacrifice, which is common with men who have travelled widely and encountered many gods;] 6. en þá er kristni kom á land tók hann fram tvo gripi úr kistum sínum, kross góðan með Kristi hinum kórónaða áföstum, vini kaupmanna, og svo líkneski móður hans, en hún er stjarna mikil farmönnum. [when Christianity came to the country he took two statues from his chest, a good cross with a crowned Christ, the friend of merchants, and the other of the mother of Christ, who is a splendid guiding star for sailors.] (8–9)

The first unit describes only the area controlled by Þorgils and where he lived. The second unit tells how he became prosperous, and one can expect readers to have very differing perceptions about “self-made men.” The third unit observes, in an insinuating manner, that Þorgils considered his interests to be better served by peace than war, which can have a positive impact in isolation. The fourth unit names his currency and how he gained his current position. This is a logical progression from the third unit, regardless of how readers have understood it. Those reasonably acquainted with general history will probably have been struck by the fact that it is specifically mentioned that Þorgils’s currency is metal. He is a representative of the merchants who are coming to power side-by-side with incumbent rulers such as Vermundur, who traces “kyn sitt til norrænna höfðíngjaætta” [his lineage to Nordic nobility] (9). Þorgils is a man of new times in trading—silver instead of barter (cf. Gullbekk)—and thus he represents important changes in society. The fifth unit appears at first sight to indicate indifference or impartiality in religious matters, but when the sixth unit is added it gains a new dimension. This perfectly “mundane” personal characteristic, indifference to religion, becomes instantaneously very special: Þorgils proves to SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 167 have little interest in heathen traditions not only because of tolerance or indifference, but also because he values everything in terms of money; he is heathen when society and profit require, but is ready with a Christian statue in his chest the minute that Christianity is enshrined in law. It is clear that this unit is placed at the end to defamiliarize all that precedes it so that it now appears in a new light. The pursuit of profit is made Þorgils’s most salient characteristic. He uses wealth equally as a measure of war, peace, and religion, and sees everything as a source of profit. By comparison, one should note that in Fóstbræðra saga he is deemed “mikill höfðingi, vitur og vinsæll, ríkur og ráðvandur” [a great chieftain—powerful, honest, wise and well-liked] (776; The Saga of the Sworn Brothers 331) and nowhere is he connected with seafaring, while his brother Illugi is the merchant. Neither is Þorgils described in the saga as “ættlaus” [without kin], as in Gerpla, for his kin is traced back through settlers to Sigurður Fáfnisbani. The montage technique in Gerpla not only manifests itself in carefully structured sections, it also provides information in fragments, so that readers must be constantly on their toes. Later in Gerpla, Þorgils reveals his own position on wealth and human life when he says “eg hefi auðgast mest af hinu, að drepa eigi menn” [I have prospered most from the practice of not killing people] (324). These words relate to comments previously made by the narrator in the story. He reveals that Þorgils owns a share in a ship with merchants and sees reason to add:

Þeir vóru svo kaupmenn að þá keyptu þeir við menn ef þess var kostur, en ræntu að norrænum sið þar sem eigi vóru menn fyrir líklegir að verja eigur sínar. (171)

[They were such merchants as traded with people where possible, but robbed in Nordic fashion where there were no men likely to fight for their property.]

The irony is cutting in these words and refers both forwards and backwards in time. The reader who knows Egils Saga [Egilʼs Saga] can smile at how they echo the description of Þórólfur, Egill, and their companions when they waited in their boats outside Lund to decide if they should raid, since they might expect “viðtaka er bæjarmenn væru” [resistance from the townspeople] (425; 87). If the reader is interested in history, it is more than likely that the imperialism of the last century—and contemporary globalization (cf. Petras and Veltmeyer)—will spring to mind, and consequently the manifold relationships between commerce and violence (Findlay and OʼRourke xx, 330–45). Here one should also consider the description of Vermundur, who represents the old bartering society in Gerpla—taking his wealth in kind from tenancies and thus having a well-stocked larder (10). Taking this into account, the description of Þorgils gives readers reason to deliberate on those wealthy Icelanders who profited in trading during 168 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

World War II. With their advent it became easier to see two distinct factions among wealthy Icelanders, who sometimes had—and still have—distinct interests. In the twentieth century and up to the present day they have been linked to commerce and fisheries. The owners of the fisheries were also merchants until World War II and sometimes paid their seamen with credit in the shops. In this light, the silver and butter of the Icelandic chieftains in Gerpla becomes quite amusing. Accounts of common people in Gerpla reveal the structure of society no less than the depiction of chieftains. A key example is the account of Hávar, the father of the hero Þorgeir Hávarsson, which functions as an Icelandic miniature version of major events that are later related as taking place in southern Europe. In Fóstbræðra saga Hávar is said to be “mikill vígamaður og hávaðamaður og ódæll” [a great warrior, raucous and unruly] (776), and we are told that he had been driven out of Akranes to the West Fjords for killing. There Vermundur, the local Godi (chieftain), tells him: “Ertu, Hávar, utanhéraðsmaður … og hefir sest hér niður að engis manns leyfi” [You are not a local person, Hávar … and you have settled here, with no one’s permission] (777). Vermundur later drives Hávar out because he feels that his son Þorgeir emanated “órói og stormur” [disruption and storm] (777). Gerpla differs in this account. Hávar comes from Viking raids without money and fame and becomes a tenant of Vermundur. The story also explicitly demonstrates that his is a world of heroic literature and that he feels that working in the soil and at sea is menial compared to “vega menn” [killing men] (10). His dealings with his neighbours are described as follows:

Hávar bóndi þótti snemma óeirinn í nábýli, sló í rot ágángspeníng fyrir mönnum og hjó hænsn þeirra eða gögl ef því um náði, en hafði á lofti kylfu sína er menn andæfðu honum; runnu þá flestir undan og forðuðu svo lífi sínu, en margir leituðu á fund Vermundar og báru sig upp við hann. (11)

[Hávar the farmer was quickly deemed a troublemaking neighbour, clubbing people’s stray cattle and killing their hens, or geese if he could catch them, and raising his club aloft if objections were raised; most ran off to save their lives but many went to Vermundur and lodged complaints.]

Readers have ample opportunity to smirk and come to their own conclusions when faced with binding and blending of the ancient and the new in this passage. An instant parallel can be drawn between the slaying of the geese and Grettis saga [The Saga of Grettir the Strong] (968; 64). It is also obvious that the description of neighbours encountering Hávar’s club is tailored to descriptions of battles in the Sagas of the Icelanders. However other references to medieval sagas or quotes from them do not as clearly indicate a specific place or places. The term “óeirinn” SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 169

[troublemaking] may for example be found in Gísla saga Súrssonar [Gisli Surssonʼs saga] in the description of Snorri the Godi (871). In Laxdæla saga [The Saga of the People of Laxardal] there is also an account of the killing of Þorgils Hölluson (1637-38; 103). Thus the collision between the ancient and the new can become more severe in readers’ minds if they envisage, side-by-side with beheaded hens and geese, the body of Þorgils Hölluson—whose head has been severed at the instigation of Snorri the Godi. In the account of Hávar, much fun is made of the prevailing attitudes toward various primary characteristics of society as manifested in general language use, and references are made no less to medieval sagas than to the years in which Gerpla was written. When Hávar is introduced, the narrator makes, for example, the following comment on Viking raids: “eigi urðu slíkar ferðir flestum mönnum févænleg atvinna um þær mundir” [for most, such trips showed no profit at that time] (10; emphasis added). In Gerpla Vikings play a comparable role to the criminal gangs in many of Brecht’s works, such as the aforementioned Dreigrosschenroman and Die Geschichte vom Herrn Julius Caesar, as well as the play Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui [The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui]. Both thugs and Vikings are presented as parallel actors to the ruling propertied class, thus warning against the extortive nature of a particular social order. We could therefore assume that in the middle of the last century the comment on Viking raids would have a broad implication in the novel’s historical context: its readers might either have thought of the many Icelanders who profited from the war, talking of the “blessed war” and worrying about peace (cf. “Útrýming atvinuuleysisins,” 1945, 3)—or turned their minds to conflict in distant countries such as Korea. Few who have written about Hávar in Gerpla have dealt to any significant degree with the social revelations of the narration. They discuss his dream of being a hero and sometimes the formative influence his life has on his son Þorgeir. But they seldom note that by killing poultry and cattle Hávar breaches an important social precept: Thou shalt not steal. This is in fact a key issue. Hávar’s neighbours complain so much to Vermundur that he later recommends to Þorgils Arason that he find a place for Hávar to live outside the West Fjords, as Hávar is related by marriage to Þorgils. On that occasion the Godi from Vatnsfjörður says the following words:

Er það mikil óhamíngja, segir hann, er menn koma slyppir úr hernaði og setjast í friðgott hérað og taka að höggva hænsn manna til að bæta sér þau frægðarverk er þeim varð eigi auðið að vinna á öðrum löndum. (12)

[It is a great misfortune, he says, that people come empty-handed from war and settle in a peaceful district and then turn to killing people’s poultry to make up for the heroic deeds they were not able to perform in other countries.] 170 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

The parodic reference here is cutting, as the words “mikil óhamíngja” [great misfortune] are not least used in the Sagas of the Icelanders, in Heimskringla and in Ólafs saga helga in the case of a person being killed. But this is not all. The banging of the parody occurs when the readers realize that the words “frægðarverk” [heroic deeds] mean killing. In the Godi’s opinion, it is fine to kill people abroad, but evil to steal and kill poultry in your own neighbourhood. If it has previously occurred to readers that Hávar the tenant would probably not get away with subjecting poultry to the fate that Snorri the Godi afforded Þorgils Hölluson, they can now consider who stands to gain from the laws and injunctions of society. Gerpla’s account of the treatment of Hávar by Þorgils (and other chieftains) is particularly shrewd. When Þorgils gives Hávar livestock and has a house built for him in Borgarfjörður, it is because he feels “eigi … örugt” [not … safe] having him “í ríki sínu við Breiðafjörð” [in his domain at Breiðafjörð] (12). As an isolated montage unit, the chieftain’s behaviour may at first glance appear to be somewhat noble. Yet this conceals a toxic irony: Þorgils simply wishes to move the problem away from himself, by expelling Hávar from his territory. The narrator states that Þorgils placed Hávar precisely in the Borgarfjörður of the saga world, a “blómganlegt” [flourishing] district where there are, quite notably, “mart ríkismanna” [many rich men] (13). The wealthy and powerful men of Borgarfjörður, it turns out, also consider Hávar a poor addition to their district. The narrator relates:

Höfðu þeir ráðagerð með sér um það hversu bægja mætti frá svo ágætu héraði ódæmum sem þeim er stefnt var híngað skillitlu fólki eða vændismönnum af öðrum landshlutum. (13)

[They schemed as to how they could avoid, in such an excellent district, the misdeed of sending here rogues and worthless rabble from other parts of the country.]

The scheme is not mentioned again. There is, however, a related reference in the text that strikes an extremely strange note: Hávar’s arrival in Borgarfjörður is called “ódæmi” [a misdeed]. This word is used among other places in Grettis saga, about the conduct of the revenant Glámur when he simultaneously breaks the back of a farm worker and drives a bull crazy in the byre (1007). In addition, the word “skillítill” [of little worth] is a reference to words spoken by Jón Loftsson in Íslendinga saga [Sagas of the Icelanders]. The circumstances of the case are that the chieftain Einar Þorgilsson intends to steal from a widow and is beaten so thoroughly by her sons that he dies. When Jón gets the news he says: “þó þykir mér í óvænt efni komið ef það skal eigi rétta er skillitlir menn drepa niður höfðingja” [I consider however that a strange situation has arisen if the case is SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 171 not brought when worthless rabble kill chieftains] (182). As before, class distinction is the target of the parody; moreover, the attitude of the chieftains toward Hávar is defamiliarized, with unexpected and dismal ironic connotations. The irony is not lessened when Jöður Klængsson, who lives in Borgarfjörður, is introduced. Similar to Hávar, he finds little joy in farming, but his position in the society is quite different:

Var hann lítill jafnaðarmaður við marga menn, vígamaður góður og bætti menn sjaldan fé en neytti höfðíngjafylgis. Bú átti hann lítið og óduglegt, og vissu menn eigi gjörla hvaðan honum komu bitlíngar. (13; emphasis added)

[He had little respect for parity with many men, was a good warrior and rarely paid compensation, but enjoyed support of chieftains. His farm was small and feeble, and people had little notion of where he got his favours.]

The narrator underlines the difference in status between Jöður and Hávar when he mentions that Jöður owned a “graðhest forkunnlegan” [remarkable stallion] while Hávar had a “garðjálk … rauðan” [red packhorse] (13). This also prepares for the coming conflict between them about the horses. When Jöður is a short distance from Hávar’s farm on his way to Akranes, Hávar shakes his “skellu” [rattle] (13) in the farmyard, with the result that Jöður’s stallion bolts up the mountain. In response Jöður seizes Hávar’s packhorse. Hávar demands the return of the horse when Jöður is on his way home and cuts him loose from the packhorse train, complete with harness. Jöður does not stand for this and their altercation ends with him and his son killing Hávar. In the account of Jöður and Hávar there is a mocking reference to the law-book Grágás [Grey Goose]. In the chapter entitled “Of hrossreiðir og hrossarásir” [On horseback riding and horse racing] it says, among other things:

Ef menn reka hross frá mönnum þar sem þeir hafa áð eða skaka hrossabrest að þeim í þingför eða brúðkaupsför og tefja hann, varðar það þriggja ára útlegð frá landinu en fjársekt ef um aðrar farir er að ræða. (179)

[If anyone should drive horses away from others where they are resting, or shake a rattle at them on the way to parliament or to a wedding and so hinder their journey, the penalty shall be three years’ exile from the land, or fines in the case of any other sort of journey.]

It is, however, possible to steal in many ways. If Hávar is guilty of stealing a horse then Jöður is hardly less guilty. Grágás says that the penalty for riding another 172 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA man’s horse past three farms is lifelong exile, but to have another man’s horse follow him past two farms to the third is three years’ exile (175, 179). If one considers Jöður to be a thief, then the comment that he enjoyed “support from chieftains” may gain new significance. It echoes the continuous egging on by the Organist in Atómstöðin [The Atom Station]: “ef þú ætlar að drýgja glæp þá verðurðu fyrst að ná þér í miljónung, annars ertu hlægileg persóna” [if you’re going to commit a crime then you must make sure to find yourself a millionaire, or otherwise you are ridiculous] (256–57). Few have recognized such references in the exchanges between Hávar and Jöður: these references are implicit, among other things, in single words that are inconspicuous, and some are even mostly decided by syntax. When Hávar demands the packhorse from Jöður, he says for example:

Nú er að skila aftur hestinum, og eruð þér djarfir menn að taka gripi bónda uppí opin augu þeim bónlaust og án umræðu. Var eg slíku gamni óvanur þá er eg var vestrí fjörðum. (14; emphasis added)

[Now is the time to return the horse, and you are audacious men to take a farmer’s animals in front of his eyes without leave or deliberation. I was not used to such games when I lived in the West Fjords.]

Hávar speaks as haughtily as Eiríkur blood-axe does to Egill Skallagrímsson at York: “Hví varstu svo djarfur Egill að þú þorðir að fara á fund minn?” [Why were you so audacious Egill that you dared to present yourself to me?] (456; emphasis added). But Hávar is also reminiscent of the main hero of Njáls saga [Njalʼs Saga], Gunnar á Hlíðarenda, at Rangá: “Nú er að verja sig. Er hér nú atgeirinn” [It’s time to defend yourselves. My halberd is here] (189; 65; emphasis added). In other words, Hávar talks like a king or hero—and reveals the implicit fantasy with his final sentence which refers to circumstances and events with which readers should be familiar, namely the hopeless lot of the tenant and his forced removal from one district to another. Jöður is no less haughty than Hávar when he responds to his address:

Meir höfum vér þó heyrt að þér væri bægt að vestan fyrir illverka sakar og hænsnaþjófnaðar, og eru býsn mikil er aðkomumenn í Borgarfirði, slíkir sem þú ert, digrast svo mjög við oss heimamenn. (14)

[We have however, heard further about how you were driven out of the West for wrongdoing and theft of poultry and it is intolerable that newcomers to Borgarfjörður, such that you are, should behave so insolently with us local people.] SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 173

Jöður speaks like a ruler and chieftain. He is their mouthpiece and is in reality the person that Hávar dreamed of becoming when he went on Viking raids. Within the story, Jöður’s response echoes discussions among the powerful men of Borgarfjörður about “rogues from other parts of the country”; outside the story, among other things, it plays on the words of Vermundur in Fóstbræðra saga: “Ertu, Hávar, utanhéraðsmaður … og hefir sest hér niður að engis manns leyfi” [You are, Hávar, not a local person … and have settled here, with no one’s permission] (777). Moreover, the contrast between “locals” and “outsiders” is an almost waggish allusion to Icelandic reality in the middle of the last century and up to the present day. One can say that for many decades news of mischief from the countryside has often been accompanied by the comment that outsiders were responsible. Many people reacted strongly when Gerpla was published (e.g. Haraldsson 8; Drangsnes 2). When one considers the account of Hávar, one has a sneaking suspicion that the exposure of society and culture as manifested in the story—with attendant shock effects—cut too close to the quick of Icelanders’ self-image. One could for example interpret the exchanges between Hávar and Jöður such that Icelanders’ image of themselves as small chieftains is lampooned; two common men imitate that which is most reprehensible in the wealthy class—each in his own manner. Nor can one come to any other conclusion than that Icelanders’ parochial thinking, which always allows for evil coming from the outside, is treated in the same way. The imagined community, to use the words of Benedict Anderson (1983) to describe Icelanders’ perception of themselves as a nation, relies on the stories they have told about themselves for centuries; the myths they have built up about their characteristics. Yet in Gerpla such myths are, in short, lampooned and ridiculed. The killing of Hávar can be seen as the beheading of this self-image—where readers who most resolutely participate in the exposure in the story can be both in the role of the killer and the killed. With Jöður and his son they inflict one wound after another on Hávar and even hew him “ótt og títt” [repeatedly] (15), while he is fallen and unconscious. They themselves then lie in their last spasms as the boy Þorgeir takes a look at his father:

Blóð og heili vall út sem grautur þar sem brotinn var hausinn, en öll mynd var af andlitinu eftir höggin, skrapp til annar armleggur í axlarliðnum um leið og maðurinn linaðist í andlátinu, og var það kvik hans hinst. (16)

[Blood and brains leaked out like gruel where his skull was broken and his face was obliterated by the blows, one arm jerked at the shoulder as the man relaxed into death and this was his last movement.] 174 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Here we might maintain that more than one sense is being played on. Only the head is in focus—and there is an arm that one can not only see but also hear in its spasm. This is a direct appeal to people’s conception—at least that of those in the West (Classen 135–38, e.g.)—of themselves as having a large head, long limbs and small torso; to the basic conception manifested in children’s stick-drawings (Ackerman 95–96). In addition to this the face has gone, the main manifestation of what we feel distinguishes us from each other. And in an instant the stories of the past that constitute our identities—stories of heroics and honour and human dignity—all evaporate. Yet perhaps the most difficult challenge for readers in the middle of the last century was that Gerpla confronted them with context in Icelandic culture. One example of this must suffice. Þorgeir Hávarsson is seven years old when his father is killed. He is a teenager when he avenges him. On this occasion Þorgils Arason says: “Laungu var sæst á það mál og bætur teknar” [That case was long since settled and compensation taken] (51). The chieftain chooses his words like modern politicians when they wash their hands of deeds that the public does not like; he speaks impersonally and uses the passive voice—as though the settlement and compensation are no business of his. Yet who should have been responsible for them, if not he? There is every likelihood that Þorgils set a trap for Hávar and for the men of Borgarfjörður; he had got rid of his relative, who is “óeirinn í nábýli” [a troublemaking neighbour] (11), under the pretext that he was helping him; but had trusted that the Borgarfjörður chieftains would have him killed—and would subsequently have to pay. It is at least clear that the demise of the poultry-thief and the resulting compensation covered Þorgils’ prior “outlaid costs” for the small farmhouse and cattle.

Final Words

I have attempted here to show how Halldór Laxness in his novel Gerpla makes use of Fóstbræðra saga and other medieval sources, while at the same time he innovates on the structure of the novel. Various conclusions can be drawn from the examples I have given, but my final focus must be the dealings between Þorgils and Hávar. They show amongst other things that it is not only possible to steal in more ways than one; it is also possible to be “peaceful” in many ways. If one deliberates further on these matters, comparing past and present, the following question may confront us: Is context in Icelandic culture simply implicit in a continuum of domestic sagas and poetic art, as people often maintain? Is it not rather decided by how the language through the centuries has been used to mould people’s ideas, for example ideas on what kind of theft, and what kind of peace, should be considered exemplary? SAGA MEETS FILM IN GERPLA 175

NOTES

1. All translations are those of the author, except where a separate citation is provided. Because specific wording is often important to the argument, particularly in the case of Gerpla, this article often employs italics. Wherever italics occur within quotations, the emphasis has been added. 2. This article provides its own translations of passages from Gerpla. 3. Höfuð is the formal Icelandic word for head, while haus is used of animals or colloquially/pejoratively of humans (Blöndal 305). 4. See discussion of the 1924 manuscript of Heiman eg fór on page 5 of the 1952 print version. 5. In the Independence Agreement from 1918 there was a provision for its review after 22 years (Þorleifsson 174–75). 6. It should be noted that Halldór had shown interest in cinema since the twenties, see the chapter “Kvikmyndin ameríska 1928” in his collection of essays Alþýðubókin (1929, 199–243). He also tried to promote himself in Hollywood in the thirties (cf. Hallberg 1956, 56–73; Guðmundsson 215–33). 7. We could note for instance that Hitler’s rise to power was achieved with the help of several wealthy individuals in Germany and abroad who profited from their support (it has transpired that their support was far greater than has previously been assumed, cf. Ferguson and Voth)—and Ólafur digri [Olaf the Stout] came to power in Norway by virtue of the fact that a section of the Norwegian propertied class profited from his accession: Sigurður sýr offers these people bribes. Hitler got away with killing, jailing, and torturing people in Germany without the propertied class lifting a finger as long as they saw no threat to their own interests. The accounts of German exiles regarding attitudes in the countries to which they had fled are useful in this connection (Wagner 36). Ólafur digri gets away with murder and torture in Norway in the same way as Hitler, until King Knútur [Cnut] comes to hear that the Norwegian peasantry is about to take matters into their own hands. It is also worth noting that Nazi phraseology finds its way into descriptions of Þorgeir Hávarsson: he is for instance “more fond of iron than butter”—cf. the slogan “Kanonen statt Butter” (Corni and Gies 359). 8. It could also be helpful to use the theory of conceptual integration or blending (Fauconnier and Turner) to define the satirical, parodic, and ironic characteristics of Gerpla, not least if one were specifically examining the reception of the novel. 9. We assume here that Halldór Kiljan Laxness is himself in the role of the narrator. In Chapter 52 of Gerpla the narrator and the actual author become one and the same: “Og þá er vér sem saman tíndum kómum í Veradal einn dag þúsund ára síðar … lifði af Ólafs konúngs sögu eigi utan þytur í laufi.” [And when we the compiler came to Veradal one day a thousand years later … nothing remained of the saga of King Olaf but the rustling leaves] (473–74). 10. The Gerpla narrator often refers to “English books” or “English annals” (e.g. 185, 189, 195, 204, 301) and it is clear that he makes use of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He also quotes from Icelandic medieval poetry and refers to the medieval sagas (e.g. 7, 221, 287, 297, 302). 176 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

11. Examples could be Vilmundar saga viðutan [The Saga of Vilmund the Outsider] (1951, e.g. 31) where the narrator combines the narrating time and narrated time; while in Elís saga og Rósamundu [Elye of Saint-Gilles] the narrator adds comments to explain the characters’ actions and provides information for the reader (1951, 35, 71–72). 12. Here one might also use the term “intertextuality” in a broad sense (cf. Johansen and Larsen 126).

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Kress, Helga. 1987. “Bróklindi Falgeirs: Fóstbræðrasaga og hláturmenning miðalda.” Skírnir 161 (autumn): 271–86. Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1972. Um Fóstbræðrasögu. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Laxdæla saga. 1941. Edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Reykjavik: Ragnar Jónsson and Stefán Ögmundsson. Laxness, Halldór Kiljan. 1929. Alþýðubókin. Reykjavik: Jafnaðarmannafélag Íslands. ⸻. 1943–1946. Íslandsklukkan. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1948. Atómstöðin. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1952a. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1952b. Heiman eg fór: sjálfsmynd æskumanns. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1955. “Skáldskaparhugleiðíngar um jólin 1950.” In Dagur í senn, 19–26. Reykjavik: Helgafell. Mueller, Roswitha. 1987. “Montage in Brecht.” Theatre Journal 39 (4): 473–86. “Njalʼs Saga.” 1997. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders III. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 1–220. Translated by Robert Cook. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. Nordal, Sigurður. 1924. “Samhengið í íslenzkum bókmenntum.” In Íslenzk lestrarbók 1400–1900, ix–xxxii. Reykjavik: Bókaverzlun Sigfúsar Eymundssonar. Petras, James, and Henry Veltmeyer. 2011. Beyond Neoliberalism: A World to Win. Farmham and Burlington: Ashgate. Pétursson, Hannes. 1957. “Þorgeir Hávarsson í Fóstbræðra sögu og Gerplu.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 18 (1): 23–41. Rorty, Richard. 1993. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “The Saga of Grettir the Strong.” 1997. Translated by Bernard Scudder. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 49–191. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. “The Saga of the People of Laxardal.” 1997. Translated by Keneva Kunz. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 1–120. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. 1997. Translated by Martin S. Regal. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. “The Saga of Vilmund the Outsider.” 2018. In Sagas of Imagination: A Medieval Icelandic Reader. Edited by Ben Waggoner, 285–316. Philadelphia: The Troth. 180 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

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A Modern-Day Saga in Fancy Dress: Contemporary Social Critique in Halldór Laxnessʼs Gerpla

KRISTINN E. ANDRÉSSON TRANSLATED BY LARISSA KYZER

ABSTRACT: This article was written by literary scholar, publisher, and socialist parliamentarian Kristinn E. Andrésson (1901–1973) shortly after Gerpla’s publication in 1952. However, it was only published nearly twenty years later, on the occasion of Halldór Laxness’s 70th birthday. It situates the novel within its sociohistorical context and reads it as an incisive critique of its contemporary milieu, rather than simply a brilliant reimagining of the sagas. “A reevaluation of the past is a stipulation of the book, but not its goal,” Kristinn writes. Rather, by casting the romanticized heroes and ideals of the Viking age in a harsher light, Halldór not only reclaims the sagas, “allowing Icelandic literature to stand for peace instead of war, for life instead of death,” but also consolidates his longstanding role as a vocal opponent of the American military presence in Iceland and global nuclear proliferation.

RÉSUMÉ: Cet article fut écrit par Kristinn E. Andrésson (1901-1973), érudit littéraire, éditeur et parlementaire socialiste, peu après la publication de Gerpla en 1952. Toutefois, il ne fut publié que vingt ans plus tard, à l’occasion du 70e anniversaire de Halldór Laxness. Il situe le roman dans son contexte sociohistorique et le lit comme une critique incisive de son milieu contemporain, plutôt que comme une réinvention brillante des sagas. « Une réévaluation du passé est une stipulation du livre, mais non son objectif », écrit Kristinn. Plutôt, en peignant les héros et idéaux romancés de l’ère viking dans une lumière plus crue, Halldór se réapproprie non seulement les sagas, « permettant à la littérature islandaise de représenter la paix plutôt que la guerre, la vie plutôt que la mort », mais consolide également son rôle d’opposant de longue date à la présence militaire américaine en Islande et à la prolifération nucléaire mondiale.

Larissa Kyzer is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn, New York.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 TRANSLATORʼS NOTE: In his original article, Kristinn Andrésson was addressing a readership well-versed in contemporary Icelandic history, as well as the country’s rich literary tradition.1 As such, he sometimes makes offhand references with which contemporary English-speaking readers may not be familiar. I have, therefore, added several contextual footnotes, each of which is marked with “TN,” or Translator’s Note. Kristinn himself included one note in the original text; this is marked as an “Author’s Note.” Kristinn’s somewhat ornate writing style—peppered as it is with idiomatic phrases and unexpectedly metaphorical descriptions—is certainly unique, and is atypical of the academic writing that many readers will likely be used to. As such, although I attempted to retain the author’s style, cadence, and sometimes colourful word choice in this translation, I did make some adjustments to the English text in the interest of clarity. I have, for instance, occasionally opted to employ an active voice—more common to English writing—where Kristinn used passive sentence constructions. I also broke up some of Kristinn’s longer and wordier sentences, as well as divided his paragraphs—some of which run for over a page in the original—into multiple, more easily parsed segments. Finally, all of the novel quotations cited in this article have been taken from Wayward Heroes, Philip Roughton’s 2016 English translation of Gerpla. For ease of reference, I have included page citations for this work after each quote. Moreover, in addition to using Roughton’s translations for the novel quotes, I have also adopted the same character names and spellings that he uses throughout Wayward Heroes: for example, Cnut Sweynsson for Knút Sveinsson, King Æthelred of England for Áðalráður Englandskonungur, and King Thorkell the Tall for Þórkell hinn hávi.

The Ornamental Cloak

alldór has come a long way since he finished The Atom Station, a modern-day story set in Reykjavík, five years ago. This author is as irascible as the loon, and one never knows where he’s going to H surface next. With his new novel, Gerpla, he’s leapt many centuries back into the ancient era of the Vikings and from thence taken his inspiration, fashioning a great, ornamental cloak for the work from the ancient fabric of the golden age of the Icelandic language. I shall not spend much time describing the external attire of this work. It is clear to every Icelander who reads Gerpla what an astonishing achievement it is to have, as Halldór does, such a great command over the expressions, vocabulary, style, and tenets of the sagas that he is able to create from these elements the unadorned language that is characteristic of the classical form that Gerpla embodies. Halldór has shown yet again, and never to better effect, that his way 184 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA with words and talent for linguistic inventiveness have no fixed limits. In Gerpla, he’s plumbed the deepest waters of the Icelandic language and hauled up great wealth for the modern reader. For those who are accustomed to reading medieval texts, the language of Gerpla will feel familiar, as if one were reading a brand-new Icelandic saga, albeit one with a more challenging style—wordier and transformed by a defter hand. For those who have little familiarity with medieval texts, Gerpla will doubtless seem impenetrable at first; these readers will find the story to be a very heavy read, although neither the beauty of its language nor the force of its style will escape anyone. Gerpla is explicitly written in the style and spirit of the Icelandic sagas. One of the Sagas of Icelanders, Fóstbræðra saga, provides, so far as it is possible, the basis for the novel. At the start of the novel, Halldór is completely faithful to the plot of Fóstbræðra saga and to its main characters, for whom Gerpla keeps the same names—Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Bessason Kolbrúnarskáld—as it does indeed for many other characters. The author makes it very clear where he stands in the beginning. He has taken it upon himself to compose a new book about these two West Fjords men, having “drawn from numerous obscure sources information that seems to us no less credible than the tales that people know better from books” (8).2 In this way, Gerpla has the authentic form and framework of the Icelandic sagas, but at the same time the author also has the opportunity to periodically interject events from the present day into the narrative, such as when he says of Ringsaker: “I passed by there one morning in late spring” (293) or explains that the skulls of saints “were preserved in the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Kiev down to the days of Bishop Sigurgeir, and were seen by us, who, in our great poverty, have put together this little book” (412). Gerpla also takes after the Icelandic sagas in its structure, which is very different from Halldór’s earlier novels. This is an event-driven story, rather than a character-driven story. Neither Þorgeir nor Þormóður sustain the narrative as much as Bjartur of Summerhouses in Independent People, for instance. One might recall how restricted the sphere of action is in Independent People—it mainly takes place at one small croft. Here, the setting encompasses the better part of the world as it was known at the time of the sworn brothers. Outside of Iceland—that is, in the West Fjords and Borgarfjörður—the book takes place in Ireland and England, in Normandy in France, in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, in Kiev in Garðaríki,3 in Greenland, and at the Apostolic Palace in Rome. It is divided into 54 chapters, each with its own unique style, but many of them with multiple settings. The author imbues each place and every nation that he introduces with distinct characteristics so that behind even minor chapters in Gerpla there’s always a terrific amount of research into the national history and social customs of the time that the story takes place. The author has taken pains to base everything in his fiction on historically accurate grounds—he’s even been to most of the places he describes. He went to “take a closer look” at Greenland (as he said in a 1952 CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 185 interview with Tíminn) and “tried to soak up the local atmosphere and get in touch with the events’ original setting.” And although there are but few descriptions of nature—and those just to set the scene, highlight events, and reflect them in a more complex light—they have a memorable effect and affirm the author’s remarks. The quantity of the book’s material, along with the vast distances that it covers, make its reading more difficult and eat away at the simplicity of the plot. The main characters are not always at the fore. Early on, Þorgeir and Þormóður are usually together, but later they go their own ways and the story follows Þorgeir for a time, and then Olaf the Stout, until Þorgeir is no longer part of the story and Þormóður becomes the main character. Neither of them are present at the Apostolic Palace, but rather it is Bishop Grímkell, one of the novel’s secondary characters, who appears there. One of the primary challenges in Gerpla is to maintain suspense and balance across a complex, global narrative set in various countries and to channel countless competing narratives into a single stream. Most of what Halldór does in Gerpla is done in order to give it ancient ballast, as well as an ancient appearance. It should be as if it were an ancient saga. There’s no doubt that the author has intensively studied the period in which the novel takes place and familiarized himself with the latest scholarly writing so that the story can stand on a trustworthy foundation, introduce new perspectives, and act as a re-evaluation of the past. I have heard from a leading historian that Gerpla is the best source he has read about the middle ages in Iceland. Nevertheless, scholars will be able to identify a variety of perspectives put forth by the author of Gerpla. It is worth keeping in mind that Halldór is not writing a historical text here, but a novel, and so he must make use of different methods. In some instances, he diverges from Fóstbræðra saga, the Saga of St. Olaf, and other ancient texts when availing himself of source material, taking then a free hand and using them according to his needs, occasionally changing place names, events, and so on. At any rate, he would surely have seen little point in simply rewriting these texts. What is the author’s intention in writing Gerpla? Is he having a go at writing a new Icelandic saga, pitting himself against the medieval skalds, measuring himself against them or testing his mettle in a new battle, that is, mastering a new style and enriching his own language? It would be difficult to deny that there’s a little of each in this work, but the author’s object is something different, something greater. Halldór takes great pleasure in being playful, in fiction as sport, and he often goes at it full tilt, leaving in his wake various amusements or provocations for his readers. But producing art for art’s sake is still one of his lesser traits or aims. He sees his role as being much bigger than that of a novelist. Halldór doesn’t start writing a novel except out of the deepest passion—out of a compelling social and cultural necessity. In each of his books, he has wrestled with major issues. When he goes back in history with his subject matter or settings, 186 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA he does so in order to gain a better vantage of the present day and to strike a more enduring and severe blow against it. In Iceland’s Bell, he bore the historical burden of avenging Iceland’s debasement under foreign rule. In this novel, he also has a duty to discharge against the present, one greater and more sweeping than he has undertaken before. Of course, it is important in itself to want to master a bygone style and language and to compose a work on the level of the Icelandic sagas, but in reality all of this has simply been done because the author has also set out with a greater goal, that is to say, not a purely personal or artistic one, but rather a social one that applies to the present day. At first glance, it may seem when reading Gerpla that Halldór is tearing down the ideological world of the heroic sagas, and this obviously cuts many Icelanders to the quick. But one only needs to understand a little of the novel before it becomes clear that it is, in its entirety, a modern-day story and a critique of the present, and that the medieval attire that it dons is fancy dress and nothing more. But Halldór’s critique is quite radical and complex, and therefore, the story requires considerable concentration from the reader. The book is both so intricate and exacting that breaking it down to its most basic parts is no easy task, and certainly not one that can be done succinctly. There is much in it that relates to poetry and love, and exalting and celebrating its beauty is best left undone—each reader should take pleasure from that which speaks to him most in the novel. This article will just touch on the main ideas of the work, as well as its obvious objective and the incisive critique that it sets forth.

The Heroes’ Ideals and Aspirations

As the title indicates, Gerpla is a story about champions,4 a heroic saga—or else, its reversed image. The titular heroes are the sworn brothers Þorgeir and Þormóður, as well as Olaf the Stout. Hero, skald, and king are the three pillars of the heroic ideal. Þorgeir defines heroes and skalds thusly:

A hero is one who fears neither man nor god nor beast, neither sorcerer nor ogre, neither himself nor his fate, and challenges one and all to fight until he is laid out in the grass by his enemy’s weapons. And only he is a skald who swells such a man’s praise. (184)

Their shared aspirations are to gain the friendship of a great king, fight at his side in battle, and compose for him an immortal lay. Each one depends upon the other. The boyhood dreams of the sworn brothers came to life in the world of the sagas and poetry: CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 187

More than once, while sitting outdoors, they bandied visions of ancient kings consecrated to the gods: Jörmunrekur, King of the Goths, Helgi Hundingsbani and Sigurður Fáfnisbani, King Hálfur’s champions, and other outstanding men. At times, Norns flew by in swan dress, stretching their necks and singing, and they heeded their songs, feeling as if some were sung precisely to them. Eagles flew by as well. (65)

Þorgeir is a hero of the classic mold, the archetype that appears in their imaginations and dreams—he drank the heroic ideal with his mother’s milk. He constantly quotes his mother Þórelfur, who taught her son that words “are entirely worthless but for the praise befitting kings, swords, and battle” (24), and that “the only persuasions capable of solving a dispute are the truths spoken by swords. A man’s doughtiness in conflict, his valour and cunning, prove his worth. Whether his life is long or short, whether he stands or falls in battle, makes no difference, if his deeds are resplendent with glory” (24). Moreover, “she never burdened him with chores, instead teaching him that farm work was for beggarly folk and fishing was for slaves” (25). Þorgeir lives according to these dictums and always follows them to the letter. Women want to placate him and his patrons conjure up for him images of a tranquil life, but none of this has an effect on him, for, as he reproaches Þormóður, “he who truckles to a woman is lowest laid” (68). He continues straight ahead, invariably, his only thought to find someone to fight and to attain glory in battle, never admitting defeat nor wavering from the commandments of his mother, and chided by many for his stupidity. Nevertheless, “Þorgeir says that as far as his stupidity is concerned—as with anything else—weapons alone would be the true judge” (133). Þorgeir is of one world, Þormóður of two. The latter is introduced as follows:

From his father he learned poetry and other arts, and even at an early age could relate much lore of the Northern kings and jarls most intrepid in war and other noble pursuits, as well as of the Æsir, the Völsungar, the Ylfingar, and the renowned heroes who wrestled with ogresses. In addition, the lad had excellent knowledge of the great passions men shared with women in the world’s first days, when Brynhildur slept on the mountain, and he knew stories of the swans that flew from the south and alighted on the headlands, cast off their dresses, and spun men’s fates. What is more, he was fluent in the uncanny lore predicting the end of the peopled world and the twilight of the Gods. (16)

Þormóður has the same heroic ideals as Þorgeir and knows that the skald’s sovereign duty is to “swell [the] praise” (144) of the hero, but the powerful forces of life and love pull him away from these ideals. He even forgets them for a long time, and would perhaps have given them up entirely, if Þorgeir had not so harshly reminded him of them and thereby shaped his destiny no less than the ogress 188 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA and the Valkyrie that toss his life-egg between them. When Þorgeir’s “head of destiny” (297) fetches Þormóður at home, he heeds the call undaunted, walking away from his manor at Djúp, which was “more bounteous and brighter than any other place in the world” (447), and from “a swan whose like has never been seen among queens” (447), in order to embark on a journey to avenge Þorgeir. As he says:

I handed it all over to a foreign slave for the sake of the glory that is superior to every other possession, and the praise that the skald is elected to offer to a mighty king and his champions, so that he may live among gods and men throughout the ages. (447)

The Palace of Dreams Collapses

Throughout the course of the novel, the ideals of these sworn brothers take a considerable beating. In reality, their heroic deeds are entirely different from what they were in their words and fantasies, not yielding them the least bit of glory. Þorgeir’s crusade around the West Fjords consists of slaughtering crofters and robbing them, or slaying the defenseless and blind. But most ignominious are his dealings with Butraldi, “the champion” (109), who Þorgeir intended to slay, but then didn’t dare to, leading Gils Másson to taunt him, saying, “right now, folk all over Iceland are laughing at how the hero let a measly wretch make a fool of him” (133). Even less glory awaits him abroad. After the ship that brought him from Iceland wrecks on the coast of Ireland, he’s cast, wretched and penniless, into a band of Vikings and is witness to more “murderous deeds” (243) than honorable and heroic ones, as kings take turns using these mercenaries to supress the peasantry. Standing alone at the end of a battle after the others have fled, Þorgeir is cornered by a mob that makes him a laughingstock, strips him of all his weapons, breaks these in front of him, and bids him “to scram like a stray dog” (235). Þorgeir then has “no idea what destiny awaits him, because he cannot hear the din of wings of those women who fly in swan-dress to determine heroes’ fates” (235). He wanders into a large, thorny thicket where “an adder coils round his foot and bites him” (235) and “he finds it quite ludicrous to be laid low by an adder’s bite rather than a weapon” (236). A shepherd boy leads him to the home of a solitary housewife, who attends to him and dresses his wounds. But Vikings killed her husband and Þorgeir finds that “here Norsemen have had little glory” (238). An old crone is then brought to his bedside to speak with him in the Norse tongue. She rebukes him, saying, CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 189

Trolls take your valour and your warrior fashion. … And as for your murderous deeds, they are worthy of praise by none but the fools who sniff along after you, whom you call your skalds. (243)

When Þorgeir doesn’t agree to marry the widow, “to sit here and grow soft, squandering [his] manhood in love games” (243), then

The housewife flung a broom at him as he limped out the door, while the old woman remarked that there went a leper who would assuredly suffer an inglorious death someday, detested by all and succorless. (244)

No less are Þormóður’s defeats when he travels “westward to Greenland, and then far north of the world of men for three-and-a-half years” (453) without managing to avenge his sworn brother and idol. After great hardships, he finally makes it to Norway to seek an audience with Olaf the Stout, to whom he believes Þorgeir Hávarsson, who had been the king’s greatest champion, had pledged his fealty. He composes a lay for the king. But the most distressing truth still awaits Þormóður when, finally, the foundation is yanked out from under the sworn brothers’ palace of dreams. The king they considered “the greatest in the North and all the world” (382) displayed none of that magnificence that, in their eyes, surpassed all others, nor did they attain through him the glory they had dreamed of. When Þormóður’s ship arrives in Norway, the crew members “were told of the changes that had taken place there: King Olaf Haraldsson had been toppled and driven to the East by his enemies, and most of his friends had turned against him” (376). King Olaf began his campaign in Norway in the ancient Viking manner, with burnings and murders; and when chieftains and petty kings conspired against him, as at Ringsaker, he takes them by surprise, expels several of them from the country, and has others hanged or maimed. Halldór relays a gruesome account:

There, as is told in Icelandic books, Olaf Haraldsson blinded King Hrorek of Hedmarken, then pulled the tongue from the mouth of King Gudrod of Gudbrandsdalen and clipped it in two at the roots. (292)

Finally, after seven years, farmers reduce his forces so greatly that he must “flee with his household by the shortest route out of Norway, eastward over the mountains” (374). When Skald Þormóður goes to an inn at Nidaros to sing the praises of King Olaf Haraldsson and his champions, saying “King Olaf Haraldsson’s warriors were my closest kin, and he who had the noblest heart was closest of 190 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA all” (378), the townsfolk answer: “King Olaf the Stout’s army was made up of none but cowards and moochers, and here in Trøndelag you are better off never speaking the names of firebugs and thieves” (378). The next blow comes when Þormóður hears from the lips of skald Sigvatur Þórðarson, who had been this king’s “marshal and faithful friend for no less than ten years” (382), that he did “not recall ever having heard the king mention” (378) Þorgeir Hávarsson. The story goes, however, “that when the hero displeased the king, the king sent him on a perilous mission to Iceland, to kill Icelanders” (387). To this, Þormóður says: “I would have been better off losing my life in the arms of a wicked mistress, or among trolls, than to have to listen, weaponless and defenseless, to such malicious slander” (387). Yet again, Olaf gathers forces and returns to campaign again in Norway. Before this, Bishop Grímkell, his most trusted missionary, went to seek an audience with the Pope in Rome, to plead King Olaf’s case and ask the Pope to consider the king’s achievements in Christianizing Norway, while Grímkell himself requested to be conferred “the same rank and authority as the bishops of Bremen in Norway” (432). The Pope then says:5

This Olaf belonged to a band of Scandinavian pirates that foreign kings hired to fight for them. He was among those enlisted by the Duke of Normandy to burn Chartres Cathedral. Then he brought fire and destruction to Norway for a long time, but fled to a tributary of the Emperor in Constantinople and the Patriarch, our enemy, to consort with heretics. For his conduct, he is excommunicated by the laws of God. (434)

Grímkell succeeds, however, in placating the Pope with tributes of gold and silver. Regarding Þormóður, it may be said that no less significant defeats await him in Norway than those that Þorgeir experienced with the peasants of Rouen. Icelanders in Nidaros

fetch an aged peasant woman, an expert healer, to treat [Þormóður], and he remains bedridden on a farm for the rest of the summer. … When he is finally able to return to his feet, he is, of course, quite unsteady, since both of his legs are lame, and neither his hair nor his teeth grow back, nor the fingers or toes that frostbite had taken. His youthful beauty can never be reborn. (397)

Once recovered, “Þormóður’s only option now was to go from door to door and earn his living in such labor as tends to extend one’s days rather than one’s fame, for instance, mucking out peasants’ pigsties and leading their goats to and from pasture” (398). Being “scarred by sickness and decrepitude” (398), it is said that “the skald’s mind wandered to the power and authority of Cnut Sweynsson” (399) CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 191 to the point that he “persuaded himself to rework his lay for King Olaf in praise of King Cnut Sweynsson” (399). Then he journeys to Denmark, but he is dismissed from Cnut the Mighty’s palace gates as a beggar, while skald Sigvatur Þórðarson sits “arrayed in precious velvet” (402) at the feast within. So Þormóður returns to Norway to seek an audience with Olaf the Stout. He hears the talk of labourers and farmers on their way to Stikelstad, where they are gathering to battle and expel the king’s band of ruffians. Meeting these men,

Þormóður grips one of the peasant’s clubs, laughs, and says: “What do you think you wretches can do with your staves against the king’s men’s storm of steel?” The peasant replies: “In war, those get the worst of it who put faith in steel.” (442)

Finally, there comes that great moment when Þormóður stands before King Olaf Haraldsson:

he steps forward and addresses him, speaking loudly and clearly: “I am the skald Þormóður Bessason from Iceland, your champion Þorgeir Hávarsson’s sworn brother. Pray listen, my lord, while I sing you a lay.” (452)

To this, the king replies:

“This wretch must be mad. … We certainly do not recall having ever heard that name—though some Icelandic imbecile by that name may have stumbled his way into our band back in our Viking days.” (452)

Later that night, before the battle at Stiklestad, Þormóður sees the king groveling in the grass and overhears his anguish when he addresses a cairn and then meekly asks after the Icelandic skald:

“Ease your king’s mind awhile now, skald,” says Olaf Haraldsson, “and deliver me your Lay of Heroes by this cairn tonight.” After some hesitation, the skald replies: “I can no longer recall that lay,” says he, and he stands up slowly and hobbles away, leaning on his cudgel, and disappears behind the cairn. (463) 192 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

A Reevaluation of the Viking Age

It was noted earlier that the author makes a point of giving his fiction historically reliable footing. Gerpla was written in light of recent research on the Viking era, and it is specifically in order to reveal the novel’s origins that the narrative has been allowed to occupy so much space and the story allowed to expand to so many places. Above all, it is a tale of war with much rattling of sabers and descriptions of weaponry, militarism, and the murderous exploits of warrior kings and their mercenaries, the Norse Vikings. There are enough examples of their savagery and combat methods in the book that it could be called an uninterrupted indictment. Of King Thorkell the Tall and his sacking of Canterbury, it says:

Having a rather scanty population, particularly for mounting a defense against a Viking fleet of two hundred and forty ships, the town is taken without a fight. The Vikings seize everything of value within it and burn the town’s churches and monasteries, as well as the king’s castle, to cinders. … English books record that the Norsemen then burnt every house in the town to cinders, and cut down any person unable to escape. Droves of dead bodies floated down the Stour River, says one book, and the town’s soil and water both ran red with blood. Women and youths they loaded onto ships, calling them their cargo. (175–76)

On the treatment of the hostages, it says:

These were disfigured in various ways: some had their hands and feet severed, others had their noses or ears chopped off. People mutilated in this way were nicknamed “nubsy” or “stubsy” by the Vikings. No small number had their eyes gouged out. (178)

In this way, the novel is undeniably a reevaluation of the Viking Era, evoking an altogether different image than the heroic ideal that has long existed, not least in Icelandic medieval texts and fiction—court poetry in particular was composed about the glorious works and largesse of kings. Gerpla critiques the true value of medieval texts, which to Icelanders is a sensitive issue. As it says:

Although some books state that the Norsemen had axes so sharp that they could cleave men from head to toe, the way wooden rafters are split, or cut men’s heads off and slice their limbs off their bodies without needing a chopping-block, or halve a fleeing enemy with one blow, making him fall to the ground in two parts, we CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 193

believe all this to have been dreamed up by people who actually wielded blunt weapons. (135)

During Þormóður’s argument with the townsfolk over who is greater, Norwegians or Icelanders, he says:

We took no possessions from Norway apart from the lore of skalds, warrior ideals, and tales of ancient kings. To Iceland, we brought Mímir’s head, and Boðn, the vessel of the mead of poetry, yet here you remain, dull-witted, bereft of skalds, and speaking a corrupt language, with no glory of your own making. Norway will never have any glory, apart from what Icelanders bestow on it. (379)

To this, the townsfolk reply:

it is high time to have done with the glory bestowed on Norway by Icelanders. Icelanders had never portrayed Norwegians in poetry or sagas as anything but bullies and crooks, mustered by their rulers to ride roughshod over the populace and trample it underfoot. Icelanders consider none to be men apart from those who kill people en masse. (379)

Similarly, when Þorgeir Hávarsson hears Skald Þórður from Apavatn, a Jomsviking, recite a lay praising the exploits of King Thorkell the Tall and his triumph when he wasted Canterbury and conquered London, he remarks:

I am tired of listening to your twaddle. What a liar you are—and a feeble skald—when you say that we sacked London (210) … yet you know better than anyone that in London, piss and pitch were poured on us, and we were sliced with table knives like cured shark, and those who did these deeds were women and decrepit, helpless old men. (212)

Snorri Sturluson trod softly when he assessed the value of praise poems as sources. But while there is an uncompromising historical core to Gerpla’s reevaluation of the Viking Era, one must also keep in mind that the author is writing a piece of fiction in a polemical style, and that he renders everything in hyperbole, as he is wont to do. Thus does he achieve an intellectual understanding of the Viking frame of mind, and he emulates Þorgeir no less than Þormóður: no sooner has he presented a perspective and reached a definitive conclusion than he hacks at it over and over again with a fiery aggression. This style of Halldór’s has never been more exacting than in Gerpla. 194 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

In and of itself, the historical reevaluation of the Viking Era in Gerpla provides no simple explanation nor qualification. The author would not so harshly assault the hero worship of the ancient skalds that Þorgeir and Þormóður embody if he didn’t know that these same ideas characterize Western history and are alive in even more ghastly forms in the present day. A reevaluation of the past is a stipulation of the book, but not its goal. The author is creating for himself a platform from which to aim a long-range missile at our time. In all aspects, even in its word choice, the novel reveals that its goal is to critique the present day—and only this can account for the intensity of its style.

A Genuine Critique of the Present Day

Gerpla has been written at a critical point in the history of the Icelandic nation, and few have taken this fate more to heart than Halldór, as is best evidenced by The Atom Station. But these are also times in which the terrifying danger of a new world war that would make use of nuclear weapons hangs over all mankind; and the capitalist lords in the United States threaten the world’s inhabitants with a plan for the annihilation of whole cities to scare petty kings into falling in line. And yet, there is also the widespread mobilization of the masses in defense of world peace. Clashes over war and peace have moved into an international arena. Gerpla reflects these clashes—they are the undercurrent of the book and anchor it. It has been a feature of Halldór’s novels that they bear the likenesses of their times, and they have always been connected to those social conflicts and battles that he himself has waged. To see this, one need do nothing more than look at his works side by side—his novels and those articles that he wrote at the same time. Gerpla has been in the works for the last four years and is an explicit continuation of The Atom Station. The conflict over the military base, NATO, and military occupation no longer concerns the fate of Iceland alone, but rather that of all mankind, and Halldór has taken an active role in this struggle. He has written numerous articles about the years that are paralleled in Gerpla. Many actual events show up in the novel in some form: the sayings of contemporary war heroes have been inserted practically unchanged, the self-defense of the common people in Gerpla bears a clear resemblance to guerilla warfare against fascism, and I have the word of the author himself that in one instance in Gerpla, he has staged an incident from the Korean War. Varnarlið, or “defense force,”6 is also a common term throughout the novel. Invariably, the sense in which contemporary warmongers use it is the same as that of the rulers in the novel, signifying them as traitors to their own countries, like modern-day plutocrats. Countless such examples from the book are supported through comparison with Halldór’s articles from the last few years. In a speech given at Þingvellir on Iceland’s National Day, June 17, in 1952, Halldór said of the military occupation: CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 195

Some of the spin doctors who hold themselves as the guarantors of this conquest have taken to calling this foreign army “The Iceland Defense Force” and in so doing, no one has noticed or heard about several attacks that the defense force has made here. On the contrary, it seems that this christening of the foreign army signifies but one thing, that by “defense force,” they mean troops that are supposed to protect the country from Icelanders, and prevent Icelanders’ self-determination in their own land and country.

In Gerpla, rulers and kings frequently call on a foreign Viking army to supress the peasantry at home, calling that army a varnarlið. As Þorgeir says: “Vórum vér til keyptir af stjórnarmönnum yðrum að gerast þeirra varnarlið í Normandi” [We were hired by your masters to defend them in Normandy] ([1952] 2011, 211, emphasis added; 2016, 241). King Æthelred of England is safest in his country when he has a foreign army: “He considered hostile foreign armies less of a threat than his own subjects” (174). Therefore, he offers to “láta opna þeim sérhverjar dyr í Lundúnaborg, og skuli þeir heita varnarlið borgarinnar” [open every door in London to the Vikings, and to designate them protectors of the city] ([1952] 2011, 167, emphasis added; 2016, 190, emphasis added). When the Cold War was at its height in 1950 and every capitalist pawn stooped to the whims of the United States government under the threat of the atomic bomb, instructions were issued in Denmark that reveal how close to madness politicians in the West were. A war against Russia was thought to be imminent. Copenhagen would be razed to the ground in the event of a nuclear explosion and a large proportion of its citizens would be killed. All surviving Danes would carry a card with their names and a measurement of how much radiation each of them had undergone in the bombing raid. These instructions appeared in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Aftenavis (May 17, 1950) among other places, given by the national defense advisor, a man by the name of Christensen. A year later, the national defense secretary, Petersen, issued a decree that amounted to the deposition of the Danish king, government, and the army general once nuclear war began, in as much as any safeguards would be useless. Another incident should be mentioned: when a hundred million people from around the world signed the Stockholm Appeal regarding a ban on nuclear weapons, Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, urged his clergy not to sign it and offered various justifications by way of excuse, all of which Halldór tore apart in one of three articles he wrote in 1950. Halldór combines the current events mentioned above and inserts them in Gerpla, as may be observed in the following passage:

It is also the greatest of heresies for people to believe that Christ ever stated, in carne or in spiritu, or that the Holy Spirit ever decreed in synodo, that churches and holy relics, clergymen, women and children or other defenseless folk are to be spared, de facto, from destruction by fire. … In such a case, a swift verdict shall be 196 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

rendered: when Satan rears his head, no decree issued by a king or alderman or lawgiver or warlord shall apply. (217–18)

These words are put in the mouth of Robert, Bishop of Rouen, and Bishop Grímkell delivers the same message:

But as long as that peace remains unestablished, we have the words of all the eminent bishops and Church fathers and holy doctors, as well as the decrees of the Lord Pope. And Christ himself, who rules over Judgement Day and the world’s end, says, when he preaches the sword, that it is neither prudent nor sensible to enact and unreservedly observe laws that prohibit the slaying of men or the destruction of settlements that deny the redemption of the soul.7 (290 )

Halldór has not only waged his battle in words, but also in deeds. While the shackles of military occupation were being forged around Icelanders, the lie that they were in danger of an attack from Russia was harped upon every day. All of a sudden, the republic in the east that had saved mankind from fascism and lay wounded after the Second World War supposedly wanted to threaten the United States and wage atomic war on it. Many here in Iceland were appalled by these attempts to deceive the nation, and Halldór was one of the agitators who founded MÍR, the Russian-Icelandic Cultural Alliance, and became its president. At the same time, he took the initiative to found an Icelandic Peace Committee that made an effort to promote, among other things, a more widespread signing of the Stockholm Appeal and to take an active part in the work of the global peace movement. After Iceland had been turned into a stronghold and ensnared in a military alliance with capitalist nations, it was equally vital to increase an understanding of the U.S.S.R. through direct cultural links and also to make it known on an international stage, and from within the global peace movement, that it was not the will of the Icelandic people that shame and mortal danger be brought upon them by living alongside a foreign military power’s base of terror. In the 1950 introduction of the first issue of Tímarit MÍR, the magazine of the Russian-Icelandic Cultural Alliance, Halldór names examples of “the unhealthy blindness that governs the judgement of public media outlets regarding the culture of the Soviet Union.” He says that MÍR was established to “overcome this unhealthy blindness,” and goes on to state that:

I am thus certain that a more intimate understanding of the mindset of the Soviet people would be good for us. For my own part, I’ll say that in the young nation that I have become acquainted with, optimism reigns equally alongside a youthful faith in the world we live in, in man himself, in culture as the truly redemptive force of mankind, and in peace as the basis and origin of human life on earth. CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 197

He proceeds by saying:

What is important for us to know about that superpower with the other prevailing worldview is not gossip, slanderous speech, and invective, and not all kinds of half-truths, misrepresentations, and distortions of issues, but rather facts, and facts alone.

In an article that appeared in Tímarit máls og menningar with the title “Ísland og samsærið gegn heimsfriðnum” [Iceland and the conspiracy against world peace], Halldór said: “I cannot understand that man who wants to be called an Icelander, but would turn Iceland into the military base of a foreign nation. The day that Iceland hands itself over to a foreign power as a military base, it is no longer Iceland and we no longer Icelanders.” Later, at the Nordic Peace Conference in Stockholm in 1951, he said:

Remember, I come from a Nordic country that has received, on top of imported warmongering, the honour of an imported army, and this army is now building an enormous military stronghold that shall pit my peaceful motherland against nations and countries that it is unthinkable that Icelanders should have ever taken issue with. The establishment of this foreign military base in Iceland is, in itself, a hostile action against the Icelandic nation.

This heated battle of words and deeds against the present-day forces of war is the beating heart of Gerpla. It is about the fate of Iceland and of the whole world, and that alone explains the ardency and fire of its style.

The Common Man as Hero

It was stated earlier that Gerpla is a heroic saga, or else, the reversed image of one. What was meant by that is that the novel’s three “heroes” do not sustain the work, that each endures the others’ shame, and that none of them carry out heroic deeds the likes of which were celebrated in ancient books or live in their imaginations. And the main hero, Þorgeir, is not by any means allowed to receive a death befitting a hero:

Yet on one point all the authorities agree, and not a book has been written nor a tale told that holds this in doubt: that Þorgeir Hávarsson was killed in his sleep, not cut down in battle, and what is more, that he lost his life not to the weapons of a hero or indeed of an honorable man who had earned distinction or a good name. (301) 198 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

The sworn brothers are not, in reality, the heroes of Gerpla, and even less so is Olaf the Stout. Rather, these men are the novel’s targets. The heroes and victors in Gerpla are neither the warriors nor warrior kings, but rather the common man, the peaceable masses that halt these men’s encroachments, exhaust their resources, and knock the weapons from their hands. As the novel says:

Books on the art of war state that nothing is more perilous for a valiant warrior wielding a sword or other noble weapon than to find himself pitted against a peasant armed with a post or a tree stump, and indeed, learned men believe that Þórr’s hammer Mjölnir was made of wood. (232)

Throughout Gerpla, warrior kings and renowned heroes meet with failure and suffer defeat at the hands of the masses; it is unnecessary to name examples. The concerns of the masses are asserted everywhere. In the sworn brother’s altercation with Jörundur the priest (a semi-literate commoner), the latter’s final response makes just such an assertion:

Then it was that Christ displayed his full munificence and authority, when, with his overflowing wealth, he ransomed both king and slave at the same price, lifting and straightening the infirm and the bent, teaching them many a bloom-bearing hymn. (60)

And later, during Þorgeir’s quarrel with an elderly Irish monk, the latter says, “you shall be granted no relief as long as you pride yourselves on your name and rank above those who have nothing” (168), after which, the old man adds:

I will now answer your previous question, concerning how we returned here, despite having been either beheaded or bartered. In brief: the same men who buy us tonight, we shall sell tomorrow—and the poor men whom you behead at sundown, each and every one shall rise again with two heads at dawn. Those men whom you shackle now shall shortly be borne on wings. (170)

Halldór consistently shows complete faith in the common man and his triumph. The role of slaves in Gerpla is interesting. Þormóður’s wife, Þórdís of Ögur, considers her slave Kolbakur an equal to him, takes Kolbakur as a lover, and, in reality, trusts him more than she does Þormóður. In Iceland’s Bell, Halldór writes: “A fat servant is not much of a man. A beaten servant is a great man, because in his breast freedom has its home” (388).8 Slaves in Gerpla are great men and wiser than others. As a young maid, Þórdís asks Kolbakur: “How can a man as comely as you … be a slave, for others to beat at will?” The passage continues: “‘Heroes CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 199 and skalds came to my home in Ireland,’ said he. ‘Why do you not cry when you are beaten?’ asked the girl” (36). Kolbakur then enumerates all that he has already endured and experienced and explains, “that is why, young woman, I do not cry” (36). After Þorgeir’s head visits Þormóður where he lives in bliss with Þórdís at Djúp, she wants to enable him to undertake his bound duty to avenge his friend. And so she sleeps with their slave Kolbakur and has by him a beautiful baby boy,

fiery-haired and squint-eyed. Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld comes to see the boy, and after looking him over for several long moments, greets him, bidding him welcome to rule lands, Iceland as well as Ireland. (316)

At first, after having discovered the situation, Þormóður intended to kill the slave. Kolbakur tells him: “my life has seldom been less precious to me than now, and I will not beg for it if you are intent upon killing me” (311), and lays his head on the chopping block under Þormóður’s ax. However, “Þormóður flings his ax aside and tells Kolbakur to stand up” (312) and the slave returns to his work. The passage continues:

Þormóður sits watching him work for some time, without saying a word. Finally he stands up. “It may be,” he says, “that you speak the truth: that slaves will inherit this land when we heroes and skalds have fallen into oblivion, and my children will learn your wisdom—that only cowards put faith in steel.” (312)

Many times after this does Þormóður repeat that he laid everything in the hands of the slave, even his “swan-winged Valkyrie” (383). The author of Gerpla is, therefore, certain that it is the downtrodden who will inherit the earth, although Þormóður is also allowed to say: “I look forward to being dead when your Irish wisdom prevails in the world” (312).

The Danger of Fictional Revenge

It is in keeping with Gerpla’s historical-as-contemporary objective that King Olaf Haraldsson is made the novel’s target and receives its most pitiless treatment. This is not without grounds. He was the first Norwegian king to trespass upon Iceland and his demands regarding the establishment of a military outpost on the island of Grímsey are quite applicable to recent history. Einar Þveræingur’s speech,9 which saved Iceland on that occasion, is still today the most forceful appeal to Icelandic patriots to defend themselves against the military base demands of the American government, and it is quoted many times in the novel. 200 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

In the wake of the previous demand for a military base, there came a loss of independence, also brought about by the Norwegian king, under whom the Icelandic nation suffered for seven years. There was then an excess of reasons to bring the Norwegian king to account in Gerpla, no less than there had been with the Danes in Iceland’s Bell, but rather more, as Norwegian rulers continued to tread the same paths and bear no little responsibility for Iceland being seduced into joining NATO. In an article entitled “Atlantshafsbandalagið” [NATO] that Halldór published in Tímarit máls og menningar in March 1949—after, of course, he had already started thinking about writing Gerpla—he has severe words for Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs:

Halvard Lange broke with Nordic society and invited in the American cartel, almost exactly like Vidkun Quisling wanted to invite in, and did invite, the German cartel—all in order to triumph over the world’s radical working-class movement.

And:

Is his crusading spirit against the liberators of Northern Norway so strong that he would work, on top of everything else, to hand over the remainder of Norway’s wealth and Norway’s sovereignty, in the hope of getting to knock about the Soviet Union in a war that his soulmates in North America hope to wage against them? Through the steps he took just the other day, he succeeded in tricking half of Scandinavia into a military alliance and now it is ever more likely that three Nordic nations will get tied to the back of this war machine that has nothing to do with us, and which the residents of Wall Street want more than anything to drive into the Kremlin, the same way Hitler did. It is said that those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.

This is still the only thing that explains the intensity of style when Halldór, in his description of Olaf the Stout, cuts the sainted king down to size and plucks him of all his feathers. Svá skal hersis hefnd við hilmi efnd—thus, the warrior’s revenge is repaid to the king.10 Another important aspect of Gerpla’s goal bears mentioning. It’s a well-known fact that Nazi leaders in Germany exploited ancient Icelandic literature and the heroic poems of the Edda in order to add some lustre to their militarism and slayings. In Gerpla, Halldór wants to do away with this abuse of the dead. He thinks the time has come for ancient Icelandic texts and Icelandic skaldic genius to no longer support warmongering heroes. He is again defending Iceland and upholding the nation’s honour. He does this in Gerpla by allowing Icelandic literature to stand for peace instead of war, for life instead of death. And here we arrive at one of the main explanations for the author choosing a medieval basis and medieval dress for the novel. If a work written on Iceland’s behalf had to be able to triumph over ancient Viking worship CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 201 forever, then it had to stand on the same footing and be composed with the same genius. The author of Gerpla refuses to recite his lay for the gods of war.

Coded Messages

Coded messages are a part of fiction. One such message in Gerpla has to do with how the author makes perfidy a universal trait of women and poets, although such psychology can be found in ancient texts. Women “always break their vows” (315), play their lovers against one another, and determine their deaths: “All their oaths are vanity, hollow and pointless” (315). Likewise, all skalds are treacherous and easily bought with fame and money, in every instance singing praises to that king who is perched the highest. When Þorgeir reprimands Þórður, the skald from Apavatn, for his flattery of King Thorkell, Þórður answers: “It goes ever for kings as for vicious dogs: they lie on their spines when their bellies are scratched. That is the lot of skalds” (212). Sigvatur Þórðarson is described as a “finely-dressed man” (278). At first, he is the skald of Jarl Haakon Ericsson, but once Olaf Haraldsson has captured him, skald Sigvatur wastes no time stepping onto the ship of King Olaf and asking if he might recite a lay for him: “Jarl Haakon Ericsson sits at the helm of his vessel, his fur cloak wrapped about him, and watches silently as the skald changes ships” (280). Later, when Sigvatur sees that Olaf’s star has faded, he changes vessels yet again and seeks fresh fame for himself in the court of Cnut the Mighty. Þormóður and Sigvatur have a conversation during which Þormóður recites “the great lay that he composed with a fiery heart for King Olaf Haraldsson” (385). Sigvatur says that poem is genuinely very good,

yet it has one drawback. A good lay is of little worth if it is composed too late. Praise bestowed on a king other than the one that now rules the land is worse than silence, however well-worded it may be. A lay for a fallen king is no lay. A lay for a victorious king, who now rules the land—that alone is a lay. (386)

To this, Þormóður replies:

When in Iceland I heard tell of Sigvatur Þórðarson, I never imagined that he, when his luck waned, would be first to betray his troth to his king—who, through the valour of his champions, conquered Norway. In the old lore that I learned from my father, a far different kind of gallantry is extolled. (388) 202 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

And here is honour in its true sense. Later, however, Þormóður doesn’t withstand temptation when, thirsting for fame and fortune, he goes, admittedly with some shame, to seek an audience with Cnut the Mighty. In Gerpla, there is no leniency for heroes, kings, or skalds. But these three pillars of the heroic ideal must also contend with something else. Women create peaceful or pleasure-filled lives for men that, for a while, are filled with a happiness that repels great heroes, but attracts skalds. And so the mysterious contradictions that the author brings together shine through. Without heroes and skalds, there would be no story.

An Ancient Tree Bears New Fruit

Many people who see Gerpla solely as a critique of antiquity think that the author is unreasonable, or even that he wants to diminish the worth of ancient Icelandic texts. But in reality, this is far from the truth. The author’s accusations are only leveled at these texts’ notions of heroism, their idolization of kings, their reliability as sources about the Viking age, and their romanticism—not the texts themselves, their genius, nor their artistic value. No one has sung higher praises of the ancient texts than Halldór did in Iceland’s Bell, and he calls them “ljós yfir Norðurlöndum” [lights over the Nordic lands]. Much about the word choice in Gerpla is, indeed, cutting—the way in which honour and valour, for example, are continually made to coincide with brutality—but these usages have their true origins in Fóstbræðra saga, which the author relies on. But the novel works to challenge the beautiful examples of true honour and friendship in the Icelandic sagas, lest it be blinded by partiality. Antiquity is not really Halldór’s specialty, which is instead, first and foremost, the present day. And with regards to antiquity, and even those notions of heroism that appear in the sagas and ancient poetry that the critique opposes, Gerpla is not at all advocating for its destruction. The sworn brothers, the heroes of the novel and agents of aggression and acts of violence throughout the West Fjords, stand isolated so that peaceful farmers, such as Þórdís and Vermundur and other people from Djúp, look upon them with disapproval and as objects of ridicule. And of course the peaceful way of life at Djúp is cast in a bright and lovely light that contrasts with the saber rattling of the sworn brothers. And when these Icelandic heroes, with their ideals about valour and heroism, leave home and become acquainted with the marauding of warrior kings and Vikings abroad, their ideals suffer bitter setbacks. Appalled by these men’s murderous deeds and other terribly unheroic combat methods, the heroes keep themselves apart and even refuse to participate when their ideals are attacked. A good example of this is when Þorgeir is in battle with the peasants of Rouen when the other Nordic Vikings have fled: CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 203

As for Þorgeir Hávarsson, there is this to tell: when the chieftains bid each man save himself, and most take to their heels and vanish, he alone stands his ground, calmly, in Icelandic fashion. After standing there for a time, he observes folk approaching him with lighted lanterns. These men holler something in the Frankish tongue at him …

At which, he yells back:

“I am an Icelander,” says he, “and I do not recall old tales ever mentioning valiant fighters fleeing from battle. It has always been the vow and war cry of us Vikings that, when we enter the fray, we shall fight to the end and never desist as long as any man of our company remains standing. Others may do as they will, but I will never be made to belie what I learned from my mother in my childhood, and from my sworn brother Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld and other good skalds in the North.” (234)

And when the Vikings amuse themselves by throwing children onto spear points, Þorgeir refuses, saying: “Nor will I ever lay a weapon to an unspeaking infant or any man that lacks the manhood to defend what is his” (222). In comparison with modern military methods, the author of Gerpla knows that ancient warrior’s ideas about warfare were entirely different. In his speech at Þingvellir in June 1952, which was referenced earlier, Halldór said:

We Icelanders are peaceful farmers and fishermen, and those heroes whom we idolize in ancient poetry have nothing in common with the heroes in modern armies, the most powerful of which kill defenseless people with nuclear blasts, napalm bombs, and other weapons of mass destruction, but are not otherwise fit for warfare.

There are clear examples of Icelandic aspirations in Gerpla, as there are in other books of Halldór’s. The ancient foundation that he co-opts for his vehement critique of the militaristic agenda of the modern era, and of all eras, is his battleground. And the author himself is clearly in a fighting mood—one might even say he’s taken inspiration from the heroic spirit of the Icelandic sagas and ancient poetry, the spirit of which takes flight in Gerpla. Every epoch exploits its heritage in accordance with its needs and perspective. Ancient Icelandic texts have been a constant wellspring of inspiration for Icelanders. Their romantic idealizations have given the nation life. In times of distress and oppression, they kept courage alive in the nation’s breast. In its battle for freedom, they have been life-savers and sources of strength, they’ve incited love of country, self-confidence, and a hope for the future. In Gerpla, they have been transformed as forces for peace and challenge the world about peace. The author calls upon their strength in his masterpiece. Gerpla is inspired by their 204 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA spirit. Much of what is at the heart of the novel or takes it to its greatest heights can be attributed to these ancient role models. The author has studied and absorbed their language, which gives Gerpla, among other things, its captivating beauty.

NOTES

1. This is a translation of an article originally written by Kristinn E. Andrésson, published in 1972 as “Gerpla” in Tímarit Máls og menningar 33 (3–4): 273–91, and published here with permission. 2. Translatorʼs Note (TN): All novel quotations cited in this article have been taken from Wayward Heroes, Philip Roughton’s 2016 English translation of Gerpla. While passages from Wayward Heroes are provided here for simplicityʼs sake, the corresponding Gerpla passages may be found in the original article. Unless otherwise noted, all page citations refer to this work (see References). 3. TN: Garðaríki is the Old Norse name for the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus’, which today is part of Western Russia. 4. TN: Derived from the Icelandic word garpur, meaning “hero” or “champion,” Gerpla literally means “a saga about heroes.” 5. TN: Kristinn attributes this quote to the Pope, but it is actually said by a German monk who is an advisor in the Pope’s household. 6. TN: Varnarlið Íslands, or the Iceland Defense Force (IDF), was the name given to the American troops stationed in Keflavík from 1956–2006. The IDF was created through a NATO-sanctioned agreement between Iceland and the United States. Its stated mission was to protect Iceland, a country without a military of its own, from foreign incursion, although securing a base from which to conduct airspace and naval missions in the Northern Atlantic was undoubtedly a more primary concern for Americans during the Cold War era. Halldór makes use of the word varnarlið nine times in Gerpla, but the phrase “defense force” does not appear in Wayward Heroes. Rather, varnarlið is translated as “protectors of the city” (190), “defenders” (194), and “army” (371). As such, in this section, the original Gerpla quotes that use the word varnarlið appear alongside Roughton’s English translations, so that readers may see Halldór’s original wording and understand it in context. 7. Author’s Note: The articles that are referenced above have been reprinted in Halldór’s essay collection Dagur í senn [One Day at a Time] (1955): “Fisher í Kantaraborg: hugarfarsbreytíng nauðsynleg - en atómbomban lifi” [Fisher in Canterbury: change of heart required—while the atom bomb exists] / “Fisher biður um atómspreingju - með skilyrði” [Fisher asks for the atomic bomb—with conditions] / and “Trúarbrögð og friðarhreyfíng” [Religion and the peace movement]. There’s also the essay “Æfintýri frá blómaskeiði kalda stríðsins” [Fairytale from the heyday of the Cold War], wherein Christensen and Petersen’s “agendas” are outlined. 8. TN: Quote taken from Philip Roughton’s 2003 translation of Iceland’s Bell. See References. 9. TN: This speech is found in chapter 134 of Ólafs saga helga [St. Olaf’s Saga], part of the Heimskringla. The speech is as follows: CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL CRITIQUE IN HALLDÓR LAXNESSʼS GERPLA 205

if I may give my opinion, our countrymen might just as well make themselves at once liable to land-scatt to King Olaf, and submit to all his exactions as he has them among his people in Norway; and this heavy burden we will lay not only upon ourselves, but on our sons, and their sons, and all our race, and on all the community dwelling and living in this land, which never after will be free from this slavery. Now although this king is a good man, as I well believe him to be, yet it must be hereafter, when kings succeed each other, that some will be good, and some bad. Therefore if the people of this country will preserve the freedom they have enjoyed since the land was first inhabited, it is not advisable to give the king the smallest spot to fasten himself upon the country by, and not to give him any kind of scatt or service that can have the appearance of a duty. On the other hand, I think it very proper that the people send the king such friendly presents of hawks or horses, tents or sails, or such things which are suitable gifts; and these are well applied if they are repaid with friendship. But as to Grimsö, I have to say, that if nothing that serves as food were ever shipped away, a whole army could find food there. And if a foreign army were there and were sallying out in long-ships, then I should think poor peasants would find trouble at their door. (263) 10. TN: Here, Kristinn paraphrases the first line from a poem delivered by Skallagrímur in chapter 27 of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar [Egil’s Saga]. I have adopted Bernard Scudder’s translation of the verse, as is found in the collection The Sagas of Icelanders (see References.) The original line reads: “Nús hersis hefnd / við hilmi efnd” [The warriorʼs revenge / is repaid to the king] (47).

REFERENCES Egil’s Saga. 2001. In The Sagas of Icelanders. Translated by Bernard Scudder. New York: Penguin. Laxness, Halldór. 1946. “Ísland og samsærið gegn heimsfriðnum.” Tímarit mals og menningar 9a (2): 124–29. ⸻. 1949. “Atlantshafsbandalagið.” Tímarit mals og menningar 10b (1): 4–10. ⸻. 1950. “Inngángsorð.” Tímarit MÍR 1: 3–4. ⸻. [1952] 2011. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. [1955] 1986. Dagur í senn: ræða og rit. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 2003. Iceland’s Bell. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Vintage International. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. Brooklyn: Archipelago Books. 206 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Sturluson, Snorri. 1964. Heimskringla, Part One: The Olaf Sagas, Vol. 2. Translated by Samuel Laing, and revised by Jacqueline Simpson. New York: Dutton. “Viðtal við Halldór Kiljan Laxness: Gerpla, hin nýja bók Halldórs Kiljans Laxness, kemur út í dag.” 1952. Tíminn 277 (December 5): 2. DESTRUCTION Cold-War Confrontations: Gerpla and its Early Reviewers

SHAUN F. D. HUGHES

ABSTRACT: Halldór Laxness wrote Gerpla during tumultuous times in Icelandic history. In 1944 the country had gained its independence after 682 years of rule from the Scandinavian mainland, and in June 1946 the Alþingi (Parliament) agreed that the United States would have continued use of the Keflavík airbase for six and a half years. There was considerable social unrest at this, which increased in 1949 when the Alþingi voted to join NATO and a large crowd tried to storm the parliament building. Gerpla was published on December 5, 1952. This article focuses on early reviews of the novel, illustrating how these reviews were often less about the novel per se, and more about contemporary events and personalities.

RÉSUMÉ: Halldór Laxness écrivit Gerpla à des moments tumultueux de l’histoire islandaise. En 1944, le pays avait acquis son indépendance après 682 années de règne scandinave et, en juin 1946, l’Alþingi (parlement) décida que les États-Unis disposerait d’un accès continu pendant six ans et demi pour utiliser la base aérienne de Keflavík. Cela provoqua une agitation sociale considérable, qui augmenta en 1949 lorsque l’ Alþingi vota en faveur de l’adhésion à l’OTAN et qu’une foule nombreuse tenta de prendre d’assaut le bâtiment du parlement. Gerpla fut publié le 5 décembre 1952. Cet article se concentre sur les premières critiques du roman, illustrant en quoi ces critiques portaient souvent moins sur le roman en tant que tel, mais davantage sur les événements et les personnalités contemporains.

Shaun F. D. Hughes is Professor of English, Linguistics, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Comparative Literature at Purdue University.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 A Contextual Note: Political Milestones in Icelandic History during the 1940s

n the tumultuous twentieth century, the 1940s were for Iceland the most tumultuous decade of all. Iceland went from being the poorest country in Europe, largely ignored by the major European powers, to being one of I the most prosperous regions and a major player in the international chess game of the Cold War. Among the major events, one may single out: April 10, 1940. The Alþingi, responding to the German occupation of Denmark, votes unanimously to assume the governmental responsibilities of the crown, in particular foreign affairs and defense.1 May 10, 1940. A British force of ultimately 25,000 troops occupies Iceland to protect British interests in the north-west Atlantic. The Alþingi protests to no avail. Numerous naval and air-force bases are established throughout the country. June 17, 1941. The Alþingi chooses Sveinn Björnsson as regent (ríkisstjóri) of Iceland. July 7, 1941. American troops take over the occupation of Iceland at the request of the Alþingi after British troops are withdrawn for service in other theatres of war. The Americans numbered 50,000 by the end of 1942 (the population of Iceland had numbered 121,474 in the census of December 2, 1940 (Jónsson and Magnússon 1997, 49). May 20-23, In a national referendum in which 98.4% of eligible voters 1944. participated, 71,122 voted for independence from Denmark and 377 were opposed (Jónsson and Magnússon 1997, 877, 889). June 17, 1944. Iceland declares itself an independent nation, ending 682 years of foreign rule by first the Norwegian and then the Danish Crown. Sveinn Björnsson is declared the first president of the republic. July 25, 1946. The Alþingi votes 36 to 6 in favour of Iceland joining the United Nations. 210 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

October 5, The Alþingi votes 32 to 19 to permit American forces to 1946. remain in Keflavík for six and a half years. The political left is outraged that Icelandic independence so dearly won, should be thus squandered by permitting the country to be occupied by a foreign military power.2 In September a mob had attacked the Prime Minister, who was attending a meeting of his party. July 3, 1948. Despite protests from the left, Iceland signs a five-year agreement to take part in the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. March 30, The Alþingi votes 37 to 13 to join NATO. During the 1949. parliamentary debate a large crowd of people opposed to this agreement gathered before parliament and tried to storm the building. A large-scale riot broke out. Police and auxiliaries responded with tear-gas and baton charges. Those who voted in favour of this agreement are accused of treason (landráð) by their opponents. May 7, 1951. American troops begin arriving in Keflavík. The government announces that, in accordance with the NATO agreement, the United States had taken over Iceland’s defense and had been given permission to station troops at Keflavík. This was confirmed by the Alþingi on December 11.

The appearance of a new novel by Halldór Kiljan Laxness was always a literary event, but few could have predicted the furor that was to be generated by the appearance of Gerpla [Wayward Heroes] in 1952. But this reaction did not arise out of nowhere; the roots of the controversy include academic challenges to traditional understandings of the significance of the Íslendinga sögur [Sagas of Icelanders], the controversy surrounding Halldór’s plan to produce editions of these sagas in modern spelling, and the mixed reception of his novel Atómstöðin [The Atom Station]–which reflected deep divisions in Icelandic society over membership in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the establishment of an American base at Keflavík. When Gerpla appeared the initial response, especially from the left, was extremely positive, although at least one critic demurred. However, in February and March 1953, two extremely hostile reviews were published in two of the leading newspapers, which garnered a great deal of attention despite valiant attempts to negate their influence. Each of the reviews, positive or negative, from the period December 1952 to mid-1953 are here summarized and discussed in order to give a sense of how the various authors, representing various political factions, presented their arguments. Given the constraints of space involved with GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 211 discussing numerous lengthy reviews and other publication-related documents, I have chosen to summarize the Icelandic text; once I have mentioned the venue and author, a summary of the argument usually follows in English. All translations from the Icelandic in the body of the text and References as well as the paraphrases are solely my responsibility unless otherwise indicated. In the context of particular reviews, those who are interested in the original Icelandic will find complete bibliographical information cited in the References.

I. Who Owns the Sagas?

Between 1933 and 1935, Hið íslenzka fornritafélag [The Icelandic Early Text Society] published the first three volumes of what was to become the standard edition of medieval Icelandic texts. This was part of a process aimed at re-claiming Iceland’s medieval literary heritage for Iceland rather than sharing it as part of a pan-Scandinavian “Old Norse” culture. Thus, the society and its publications challenged the authority vested in the publications of the Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur [The Society for the Publication of Old Norse Literature] based in Copenhagen,3 and the Altnordische Saga-Bibliothek, headquartered in Halle, Germany.4 The Íslenzk fornrit volumes also asserted their independence by printing the saga texts in the Society’s own normalized spelling convention.5 In 1935 Halldór wrote an essay condemning this approach, insisting that any edition of the sagas intended for an Icelandic audience should be printed using modern spelling conventions (Laxness 1935).6 In the years following this article, 1937–1940, Halldór was at work on his major novel now known as Heimsljós [Light of the world] (first published 1955, later editions 1957 and 1967). Then on October 9, 1941, there appeared an article in the afternoon newspaper, Visir, headlined in heavy type: “Bækur á næstunni … Ný útgáfa Íslendingasagna á nútíma máli” [Forthcoming Books … New edition of the Íslendingasögur in Modern Icelandic] (“Bækur á næstunni,” 2). There was some confusion about what Laxness intended, for initially it was assumed that he was going to translate the sagas into some kind of modern Icelandic. But whatever was intended, this announcement set off alarm bells in conservative quarters. In an editorial published in Tíminn two days later,7 Jónas Jónsson frá Hriflu, who had self-assumed the role of guardian of Iceland’s national culture against modern trends (especially those of the leftist variety), attacked the competency of Halldór Laxness as a translator. Jónas said that a “málfróður maður” [language expert] had examined Halldór’s translation of A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway 1941) and was of the opinion that there were at least 4000 errors of translation in it.8 Furthermore, so far as Jónas was concerned, this translation was so vulgar that it clearly disqualified Halldór as someone competent enough to have anything to do with translating the sagas (Jónsson 1941a, 402).9 In a long follow-up article published a fortnight later, Jónas warned again of the dire 212 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA consequences of Halldór and the communists having a free hand with the “helgur dómur” [sacred relics] of the sagas. The result would be nothing less than the denigration of the ideals of Icelandic womanhood: “Halldór Laxness ætti að ríða á vaðið með því að klæða Guðrúnu Ósvífsdóttur og Þorbjörgu Egilsdóttur í þann skrúða sem forleggjari kommúnistanna á Íslandi þætti bezt henta” [Halldór Laxness intends to begin by clothing Guðrún Ósvífsdóttir and Þorbjörg Egilsdóttir in that finery that seems to best suit the publishing house of the Icelandic communists] (1941b, 426).10 Such was the uproar that three members of parliament introduced a law into the Alþingi that the copyright of all Icelandic works written before 1400 was to be invested in the state, and that any individual or entity apart from the Fornritafélag would have to get the permission and approval of the Menntamálaráðherra [Minister for Education] before publishing any such work. After a contentious debate the law was passed in December. As the debate in the Alþingi loomed, Laxdæla saga was rushed into print before the new law could take effect (Laxness 1941a).11 As a result the edition is flawed despite being based on the Fornrit text established by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson (Laxdæla saga 1934). In August of the following year an edition of Hrafnkatla með lögboðinn stafsetningu íslenzka ríkisins [Hrafnkels saga with the legally prescribed spelling of the Icelandic nation] appeared, carefully edited, using the text established by Konráð Gíslason and published as a challenge to the new law (Laxness 1942; Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða 1847).12 The response was not long in coming. On November 17, 1942, Halldór and his publisher and printer, all of whom were named on the title page, were fined 1000 krónur each or sentenced to 45 days in prison in the event of the fine not being paid. They immediately appealed the decision, and on July 9, 1943, the Hæstaréttur [Supreme Court] announced its decision.13 The majority ruled that the defendants had not broken the law and that the law itself was an infringement of the constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of the press although it was for the Alþingi to repeal it.14 Halldór and his publishers secured permission from Einar Arnórsson, the new dóms- og menntamálaráðherra [Justice and Education Minister] (and Halldór’s father-in-law, 1930–1940), for a new edition of Njáls saga. As soon as this news came out three of the more ardent cultural nationalists in the Alþingi proposed that the state should itself undertake a new edition of the saga and distribute it at the taxpayers’ expense to all households in the country in order to head off the imagined baleful influence of an edition prepared by Halldór Laxness. In this they had an ally in Jónas frá Hriflu, the chairman of the Menntamálaráð [Educational Commission].15 As might be expected there was a considerable furor about all of this, and Halldór found himself in the thick of it, characterizing the state edition as a “hatursútgáfa” [spiteful edition] before it appeared in 1944 (Laxness 1943c).16 Halldór’s own edition of Njála appeared during the following year in a large and handsome volume, complete with an index and 71 specially commissioned woodcuts by Gunnlaugur Scheving, Snorri Arinbjarnarson, and GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 213

Þorvaldur Skúlason (Laxness 1945a).17 Furthermore Halldór seems to have learned from the criticisms levelled against his Laxdæla saga edition. On this occasion no chapters or genealogies are omitted and again the text follows that established by Finnur Jónsson (Brennu-Njáls saga (Njála) 1908).18 At the same time as he was involved in editing the sagas and coping with the controversies that ensued, Halldór was also working on Íslandsklukkan [Iceland’s Bell], a novel many consider to be his finest work (Laxness 1943a, 1944a, 1946a, 1957).19 Certainly, he was by this time not only the best-known Icelandic author but also the most divisive. The controversies surrounding his work continued with the publication in 1948 of Atómstöðin,20 a novel-length exposé of the rootlessness of the newly wealthy urban middle class, as seen through the eyes of a simple country girl. The backdrop to the novel is the political intrigue leading up to the vote in parliament on October 5, 1946, which permitted American forces to remain in Keflavík, and also the bizarre story surrounding the repatriation of the mortal remains (perhaps) of Jónas Hallgrímsson—and the intervention of the government to have them interred at Þingvellir on November 16, 1946, rather than his home farm of Bakki in Öxnadalur.21 In Atómstöðin it seems as if it is only the heroes of the Íslendingasögur—and the communists—who have Iceland’s best interests at heart. As might be expected this novel was not accorded the unanimous praise that Íslandsklukkan had received, and there remains no real critical consensus on how to interpret the work. Earlier in 1945, Halldór published an important essay outlining his views about the family sagas (Laxness 1945b).22 He refers warmly to the work of Sigurður Nordal and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and particularly approves of suggestions that episodes in the sagas can be traced to similar ones in Continental Latin works. His discussion of Egla, Njála, and Gretla leads him to conclude that the Íslendinga sögur are priceless resources concerning Icelandic culture in the thirteenth century and that they say more about the time in which they were written than the time about which they were writing. They are not reliable history, even if they feature elements such as genealogies and supposed eye-witness accounts. He then singles out those “frumstæður” [primitive] or child-like individuals such as Finnur Jónsson, professor in Copenhagen, who are unable to distinguish between sagnlist [narrative skill] and sagnfræði [history]. The sagas nourished the nation in the times of greatest hardship; their language and style were jewels owned by all. They reminded Icelanders that they too were heroes and had a pedigree.23 When it became known that Halldór’s next novel was going to be set in saga-age Iceland, both his supporters and opponents eagerly awaited its appearance, given that in the decade before the publication of this work, Halldór had been heavily involved in literary and political controversies involving the Íslendingasögur. That Halldór chose Fóstbræðra saga as the basis for this novel should not perhaps have been a surprise, as it appears to have been a work about which he was thinking. In chapter 19 of Atómstöðin, Geiri í Miðhúsum says: 214 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Mín hetjan er og verður Þorgeir Hávarsson. … Og af hverju? Það er af því hann hafði minst hjarta í öllum fornsögum samanlögðum. Þegar þeir skáru úr honum þetta hjarta sem aldrei kent ótta, ekki einusinni á Grænlandi, þá var það ekki stærra en fóarn í titling. (162–63)

[My hero is and will be Þorgeir Hávarsson. … And why? It is because he had the smallest heart in all the early sagas combined. When they cut from him that heart which never knew fear, not even once in Greenland, then it was not larger than the gizzard in a sparrow.]24

II. Gerpla: Initial Responses

After a four-year wait, on December 5, 1952, Gerpla25 appeared in the bookstores (Laxness 1952). On the day of publication, Þjóðviljinn introduced the novel on its front page as one that takes place in the eleventh century all over the place in Europe. In the beginning of the story several episodes are borrowed from Fóstbræðra saga, but subsequently a new and unknown story is told (“Gerpla, hin nýja skaldsaga,” 1).26 Tíminn made the publication of the novel major front page news: “This book which is written in the spirit and with the language appropriate to former centuries, is an innovation in Icelandic literature, and it will be interesting for many to see how the author faces the challenges that the great subject matter has placed on his shoulders” (“Skáldsaga Kiljans,” 1).27 Halldór Laxness says that this is not a novel to be read on the kitchen steps or during a bout of flu, and not a novel with which to while away the time, but a work of art that many will lose themselves in as they read it. Later that same month, Tíminn published a long review by Halldór Kristjánsson frá Kirkjubóli (1910–2000), which is one of the few contemporary reviews to take a hard look at Gerpla as a work of literature and not to get side-tracked by personal animosities or ideological quarrels. The book is introduced as a satire and an attack on hero-worship and the misuse of religion in the service of war mongering. The language is a combination of the style of the Icelandic medieval romances [riddarasögur], mixed in with the author’s own innovations. After describing how the three main characters are presented, Halldór frá Kirkjubóli points out that Laxness is following in the footsteps of poets such as Matthías Jochumsson (1835–1920) who likewise attacked hero-worship. Laxness has also chosen to go his own way in his spelling of Icelandic.28 His obsession with lice is discussed and the possibility raised that some time in the future there will be a doctoral dissertation on this subject. Furthermore, the book is not written to describe individuals but rather symptoms, and the tropes employed by the author will begin to wear on some before the book is finished, GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 215 as most practical jokes tire people in the long run (Kristjánsson 1952, 5). Because Laxness chooses to present his protagonists as caricatures, he fails to engage the sympathy and compassion of his readers. While he has composed a great book with great skill, it would have been all the more remarkable if he had sought to show human destiny in peace and war; to show how various kinds of war propaganda sometimes overwhelm good souls. This happens despite the fact that this propaganda incites people to kill others in the name of peace (Kristjánsson 1952, 7). Morgunblaðið, the country’s most read newspaper, noted that the novel had been published (“Gerpla—ný bók Kiljans,” 2),29 while Alþýðublaðið held its report over to the back page (“Gerpla, ný skáldsaga,” 8).30 The discussion focuses on the secrecy surrounding the publication of the volume, which is longer than Íslandsklukkan, and on how it employs the written conventions and vocabulary of the medieval sagas. It notes the author’s claim that this was such a difficult task that it took him four years to complete the novel (8). The following week “Hannes á horninu” (Vilhjálmur S. Vilhjálmsson, 1903–1966) in his regular column reported that the book was already controversial, but that one person whom he had met who was on the other side of the political spectrum from Halldór Laxness had found the book excellent, with its caricature of the medieval Icelandic sagas recalling the spirit of Don Quixote (Hannes á horninu 3).31 Two weeks later, in the column “Brottnir Pennar” [Broken Pens], the newspaper published a letter from Filipus Bessason hreppstjóri, who looks forward to Halldór Laxness rewriting other sagas, especially Njála. For example, he could make the scene where Njáll and Bergþóra place themselves under the ox-hide at the burning of Bergþórshvoll much more accessible and memorable by having Bergþóra say to her husband: “Legg þú koll þinn í skaut mér, Njáll bóndi minn, og skal ég nú leita þér lúsa í hinzta sinn!” [Put your head on my lap, Njáll dear, and I shall now for the last time check you for lice!] (Bessason 6).32 He could also make the saga more artistic and raise it to a higher literary level, by calling Hallgerður “Hallinrassa” [lack-arse] or “Langrassa” [long arse], just in the same way he called Kolbrún, “Kolrassa” [black arse] (Bessason 6).33

III. Gerpla: Laudations from the Left

The first periodical review also appeared in December in the journal Tímarit Máls og menningar. This final number of the year normally would have appeared on December 1, but it appears to have been held up so that it could include the text of the public lecture on the novel by one of the journal’s editors, Jakob Benediktsson (1907–1999).34 “Gerpla er komin út” [Gerpla has been published], it announces. However, the review itself is quite remarkable for how little is says about the content of the novel. Jakob emphasizes how each one of Halldór’s novels is different from the one before, and Gerpla is no exception. Noting that the novel 216 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA draws its material from the medieval sagas, Jakob raises the question as to whether any modern writer can improve upon that which Icelanders already consider sacred relics [helga dómur] and a national treasure. This is certainly an issue on which other authors have found themselves in difficulty. The key to success is language and style: how does the matter stand with Gerpla? Jakob rejects those who claim that it is written in Old Icelandic. It is true that much of the vocabulary is found only in earlier literature, as is some of the morphology. But the language in Gerpla is very much a living language, with distinct, charming, and alluring tension between the old quality and modern style (Benediktsson 1987, 43).35 Then there is the humour that one has come to expect from Halldór’s works. Of all of his novels, Gerpla is probably the one that is composed with the greatest skill in terms of language and style. But what about the characters and the events? It is as if they are reflected in a spéspegill [funhouse-mirror]. But Halldór has pointed out that the medieval sagas are founded on imaginative art, rather than historical reality, and Gerpla abounds with unforgettable scenes and descriptions. Jakob mentions some of the more memorable and then briefly discusses the three main characters, Þorgeir, Þormóður, and Ólafur. He notes that some people are going to be upset because several of the book’s other characters are described very differently compared to the medieval sources. But Halldór’s characters have to live the life he gives them, whatever the source texts may have to say about them, for they contribute to delivering the message of the novel—although Jakob excuses himself from addressing what that might be. Even so he continues by claiming that the novel is about the stupidity of the heroic ideal that trusts in the sword alone and measures an individual’s accomplishments in terms of killings. This position is contrasted to the lives of those people who are content and peaceful, such as the inhabitants of Hornstrandir or the Inuit, people whose way of life is threatened by the values represented by the heroic code. But this is not done to criticize the historicity of the sagas or to deprive them of their romantic veil of glory.36 No, argues Jakob, it is to remind us today that we still struggle with the same problems, even though there is a difference between the blunt blade of an axe and an atomic bomb. Industrial warfare may have dramatically increased the kill ratio that was possible in the Viking age, but the belief in power and violence has not changed. This message concerns all of us, especially now, which is why Gerpla is a book about the present despite its setting. Also in December 1952, the linguist Sveinn Bergsveinsson (1907–1988) published a review of Gerpla in Menn og menntir, the short-lived periodical of the Menningar- og fræðslusamband alþýðu [M.F.A. Workers Educational Association] edited by Tómas Guðmundsson.37 As in the review by Halldór Kristjánsson frá Kirkjubóli, Sveinn attempts to evaluate Gerpla on its own terms, and he finds it to be a novel about futile heroics. He outlines what he considers to be the lesser of the two plots in the novel involving Þorgeir Hávarsson, a man whose most sought-after pastime is to learn how to use weapons and kill people, a man who GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 217 never chooses peace if there is the possibility of war, and Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld, a poet and womanizer who finds it a noble occupation to compose poetry about Þorgeir’s feats so that they may live forever. The problem is that Iceland is a country poorly provided with weapons and a land where the inhabitants are more concerned with farming than killing people. Their exploits on Strandir and the encounter with Bútraldi Brúsason end unsatisfactorily. Eventually Þormóður finds himself stranded in Greenland in his futile attempt to avenge Þorgeir’s death—a situation not conducive to poetry. Finally at the Battle of Stiklastaðir, he is unable to recite to King Ólafur the long poem he had composed celebrating him. For Sveinn, the more important plotline follows Þorgeir overseas, although he is hardly the focus of the narrative. Powerful people interact wth him, but Þorgeir, the Don Quixote of the novel, as might be expected, does not understand these people. Sveinn observes that when the Northmen made themselves Icelandic farmers, not because of the persecution of Haraldur háfagri, but because they wanted more space for themselves, they brought with them the social structure they knew best, that of the independent farmer. In Norway a monarchical system developed with royal officials. Killing someone was no longer an heroic exploit, but rather a part of lawful royal rule. Sveinn argues that this was something the Icelanders did not understand. Their custom was: one against one unless timidity intervened. Þorgeir becomes tired of the king’s mass murders. He tries to obtain a modicum of fame for himself, but is able to achieve little more than his own disgrace. The kings however were only interested in fighting each other, burning settlements and farms, killing farmers, women and children, and oppressing the people with taxes to pay for wars or their own ransom. And they behaved worst of all towards their own retainers. Gerpla is not only a book about the vanity of heroism but also about the crimes of humanity. This for Sveinn is the main theme of the novel. The language of Gerpla, Sveinn states, is new. That is, old. Not old as in the family sagas, but rather with their literary tinge and structure. Archaic words abound, most of them from medieval literature or similar sources. The author has called it an experiment, and it is an experiment that would be impossible to repeat. Gerpla is a devastating book, full of magical power. If anyone is going to read it, then that individual needs to read it closely. And it is not a book for Icelanders, but rather for all those people who do not have war as their god. But unfortunately the book is not translatable into other languages (Bergsveinsson 104–07). After a six year hiatus, the journal Helgafell was revived in 1953. The first issue included a review of Gerpla attributed to “Crassus”38 who in this instance was Sverrir Kristjánsson (1908–1976). The review opens by claiming that Halldór’s new novel is a masterpiece [dvergasmíður] in every respect. Gerpla—a heroic saga in the heroic style—has been published. Yet the book review columns of some 218 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA newspapers keep quiet about the book, while the most popular newspaper in the country summons some kind of bændaferð [rural attack]39 on the author. Inevitably, the reviews of these bookish individuals create an atmosphere similar to when the dogs are set on a guest who rides into the yard. Such is Icelandic hospitality when one should welcome into Bragi’s yard40 a new novel by Halldór Kiljan Laxness.41 No living writer except Halldór Laxness, Sverrir argues, could have taken the enormous leap in language and style that he did with such apparent ease when he began writing Gerpla after Atómstöðin. But for Halldór, delving into the past is not abandoning those themes that he addressed in Atómstöðin, his novel of the war years. In Gerpla he is getting to the core of a number of contemporary problems. His subject matter is war and peace, subjects that loom large in the modern world, and yet that are as old as humanity itself. He could have set out to create a highly moral “historical novel” in a contemporary style, but he elected not to do so. He chose rather to let the burning problems of the past illuminate the personal life and events of the present, to dress them up and interpret them in a linguistic style that, in terms of the choice of words and ideas, was tied to Old Icelandic literature. The review makes it clear that while Gerpla is not “historical fiction,” it is the result of a great deal of historical research. Gerpla is similar to other Halldór Laxness novels in that it is exaggerated, ornamented, and embossed. But Halldór always tells the truth. When he ceases to tell the truth, he will cease to be a poet. Sverrir then analyzes the events of the novel in some detail. He notes that Þormóður’s story differs quite considerably from its sources, although Halldór changes Þorgeir’s narrative very little. Together, the narratives are reminiscent of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. The love story involving Þormóður, Kolbrún, and Þordís is also examined before the exploits of Þorgeir in Normandy and England are discussed. If his exploits on Hornstrandir had not brought Þorgeir much glory, being on the Continent is hardly an improvement. The guerilla warfare of the citizens of London defeats the much better equipped Viking army. Halldór sets up nameless peasant forces against the famous generals and heroes of the Viking armies and rewards them with victories. The working farmer is the representative of this social morality that grows in the soil of peace. And alongside the farmers are their women. As Sverrir observes, some may find that perhaps no individual in the novel is dealt with more disgracefully than saint Ólafur. But he is a Viking. He conquers Norway with fire and sword. This is the kind of king whom the foster brothers want to serve. Those who are upset about Halldór’s treatment of Ólafur should go back and read Ólafs saga in Heimskringla where they will find that Snorri comes very close to blaspheming the Saint. The description of Ólafur in Gerpla comes from Snorri himself. GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 219

For Sverrir, it cannot be said too often that Gerpla is Halldór’s greatest achievement. It is true that it is difficult to draw distinctions between his many books. But, for most readers, the greatest source of wonder will be Halldór’s ability to master the narrative voice that was necessary for the creation of a work such as Gerpla. The perennial literary argument over the content and form of any work of art seems to have been solved a long time ago, at least so far as Halldór is concerned. The argument about which should be given priority is in reality an argument over which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Halldór has always found in each work a stylistic form appropriate to the content. He took the greatest risk when he developed the style for Gerpla, but he has succeeded magnificently in avoiding all pitfalls. As to how he achieved this—that is the secret of genius that people will probably never understand, even if it were shown to them. It is the secret that Halldór Laxness alone knows, along with the muse of fiction (“Crassus” 91–102; Sverrir Kristjánsson 4: 171–88).

IV. Gerpla: A More Measured Response

But not everyone was quite so positive or as rapturous as these reviewers. The novel was reviewed in the first issue of Eimreiðin for 1953 by Þorsteinn Jónsson (1885–1970), who usually wrote under the pseudonym Þórir Bergsson. He opens his review by noting that Halldór Laxness is in the first rank of Icelandic authors, although Atómstöðin, his most recent work, was the source of some disappointment. But everyone has to stumble sometimes. Gerpla has now arrived, and Þorsteinn notes the peculiar vocabulary deriving from both medieval and modern works and from who knows where. The novel is a mixture of the style of the riddarasögur, the glibness of children’s books, the romanticism of the medieval sagas, and modern language—a peculiar style without parallel in Icelandic literature. The novel is a sharp satire [háðsrit] of the medieval sagas, casting a dim shadow over their brightness. For its subject matter, it takes one of the most improbable [óhugnanlegusta] of the sagas, Fóstbræðra saga, an ugly and unlikely story about a murder-sick man and a half-crazy poet. The novel also attacks chivalry and the people of the period. Not that Halldór does not have many true and important things to say, but everything is painted in the most garish colours and most often it is the worst things that receive the most emphasis. All periods have their dark corners, the Middle Ages no less than the present, and many nations seem not to have advanced since those days. Barbarity and brutality still predominate in the world, especially where “nýir siðir” [new faiths] are proclaimed, and some of those missionaries are grimmer than ever Ólafur Haraldsson may have been.42 But it is unpleasant to know that the gentle faith of Christ is preached with such ferocity and in such a discreditable fashion. Ólafur is presented as a monster and Þorsteinn is sure that little of this will stand up to scholarly scrutiny. It is clear that Halldór intends to attack Christian missionary activity, rather than give a 220 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA neutral description of it. He does this in the most scathing and ludicrous fashion, utilizing the style of stories about knights and robbers. The novel is a kind of resurrection or rebirth of a medieval prose style, mixed with the new, and presented in a masterly, although not always comprehensible, way. Worst of all is the prospect that there will be a horde of imitators of this style in future years, and Þorsteinn warns writers against trying to follow in the footsteps of the master. As a novel, Gerpla does not come up to the level of Halldór’s masterpieces. Nevertheless, it resonates with power and is an amazing book, although in many respects unfair and full of extremes, like the knightly romances and religious books. The review concludes by complaining about Halldór’s idiosyncratic spelling, noting that it is a bad state of affairs when people cannot agree on a single, consistent spelling system for Modern Icelandic.

V. Gerpla: Rural Wrath

But the real controversy only began with a long review in Tíminn by Helgi Haraldsson á Hrafnkelsstöðum (1891–1984) (1953; text quoted from 1971 printing).43 Helgi had crossed swords with Halldór Laxness before, and this time there was no holding back.44 For him the medieval sagas are stock market shares underwritten by gold, whatever turmoil there might be in the storm-tossed world market. Every good Icelander would agree that it should be a sacred matter of high seriousness for each of them to ensure that the gold standard of the medieval sagas remains unchanged through the ages. But there appears to be one exception, because Halldór has taken it upon himself the noble [veglegur] task of cataloging this literature in terms of a different and debased rate of exchange. He has begun with Fóstbræðra saga and his rehash is twice as long. Helgi admits that he was among those who looked forward with apprehension to the much advertised appearance of the novel because of its subject matter. No one can deny that when he wants to, Halldór can write elegantly and well, but it is equally clear that his puerile disposition gets in the way. Helgi suspected that the approach might be playful and bought the book immediately, reading it from cover to cover. Never before had he needed to exercise such strength of mind in reading through to the end of the novel. In brief, he had never before encountered “önnur eins uppgrip af bulli í einni og sömu bók” [another such overwhelming amount of drivel in one and the same book] (151–52). Either Halldór is mocking himself or the Icelandic nation, or perhaps both at the same time. The principal components in the book are pornography and blasphemy: it is among the most disgusting of its kind to be read. Woven into the narrative is a kind of grotesque vocabulary that the author has cobbled together. Yet, there are the phrases stolen from the medieval sagas, which shine like gems in this mudslide [leirskríða]. In short, that which is good in this book is not new, and that which is new is not good. Then Helgi tackles the vocabulary and outlandish terms such as prinsípissa [princess]. GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 221

And while everyone knows what frilla [mistress] means, it is apparently not vulgar enough for Halldór who comes up with fuðflagi.45 Nor has Helgi ever heard of vændismenn [male prostitutes, but here probably just a term of abuse], another of Halldór’s vulgarities.46 Neither of these words appear to have been used in Old Icelandic and to introduce them to the language would not be to clothe it in any kind of Sunday best. The novel begins by following Fóstbræðra saga; as an example of how Halldór describes his characters Helgi takes the example of Butraldi Brúsason from chapter 14 (Laxness 1952, 118–20; Laxness 2016, 111–12). There is nothing like this in Njála or Heimskringla. There is no point in referring to Gerpla with the intention of identifying the most stupid element in the narrative, because this book is superior to all the other Halldór Laxness books that Helgi has read; unlike the author’s other works, this one is far from stupid in a number of respects [misvitlaus]. As for the latter part of the book, it is as if Vellýgni-Bjarni [Bjarni the big-liar]47 has taken over, so completely is the narrative turned inside out, in the sense that none of the events described have anything to do with the medieval sources, and Helgi spends some time putting Halldór right. In Lúsa-Oddi, Halldór encountered someone in the medieval sagas who was to his taste, and thus Halldór gives him a significant role in the latter part of the novel. But there he is called Lúsoddi, because it is apparent that one should rape [nauðga] the language whenever possible. Nor do things improve with Þormóður. He follows Lúsoddi to Greenland, never meets him, and ends up involved in the most preposterous adventures before returning to Norway as a cripple incapable of doing anything. Then Helgi poses the question to the older generation of readers, those who grew up with and adored the medieval sagas: how do they like Halldór’s description of one of the chief champions of medieval saga literature?48 What kind of message does this send to the younger generation, given this description and with no mention of Þormóður’s heroic death after the battle of Stiklastaðir? If the Icelandic nation had the manhood it had a hundred years ago, it would say in one voice: “Vér mótmælum allir” [we protest all of it].49 Has Halldór Laxness ever thanked his Creator for that indispensable attribute, which has been granted to him, to not know how to be ashamed? Or has he taken out a patent to lie regarding all kinds of crimes and shameful behaviour involving long-dead people of distinction as he does in this singular book? Was he so short of names for his characters that he had to reach back to the medieval sagas when he set out to write such balderdash [þvætting]? Instead of Þorgeir and Þormóður, why did he not call his protagonists Halldór and Kiljan? Had they been so called they would be able to behave as klauffættir grasbítar [cloven-hooved grass-grazer(s)] (Laxness 1952, 119; Laxness 2016, 112) to use one of his witticisms. So far as Helgi is concerned, Halldór sets out to sell counterfeit goods under a trustworthy label. He knows that especially in the countryside, medieval literature has still such a hold on people that they thirst for whatever is based upon it, and any new book on such subject 222 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA matter will sell well. It is evident to Halldór that he over-played his hand with Atómstoðin,50 and it was not clear that people would care much for more of the same. He must have then thought to cover his bare arse by taking names from the middle ages.51 Then Helgi takes up what he sees as Halldór’s obsession with lice. It is as if he has lice on the brain. They are all over the place in Gerpla. Two new sports have been added to those enumerated in Íþóttir fornmanna (Bjarnason 1950), to kill lice and to kill fleas. Even Haraldur hárfagri is not exempt: “Hann gat að visu börn við ambáttum og gaungukonum af endilangan Noreg um sjö tigu vetra, en lítt gerðust tignarkonur til lags við svo lúsugan mann” [In fact, he begat children with maidservants and vagrant women from one end of Norway to the other for seventy years, since noble women had little desire to take such a louse-ridden man to their beds].52 Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–1845) completely forgot to mention that he found lice in his beloved’s hair when he combed her locks by Galtará.53 Helgi has sufficient faith in the Icelandic people to believe that any work that tries to turn their golden age literature into a huge rubbish heap will never be popular. Halldór would be considered a treasure east of the Iron Curtain, in helping the communists rewrite the history of humankind. It would not be entirely useless for the imperial aims of the Russians and for world literatures were Halldór Laxness to describe, in his incomparably copious vocabulary, how communists go about hanging an individual in the presence of Saint Stalin. However, the loud-mouthed Reykjavík Reds will discover that neither Kiljan’s lice nor communism will thrive in the country districts of this land. While Morgunblaðið had acknowledged the publication of Gerpla in December, 1952, it was not until after Helgi’s review in late February 1953, that the country’s most widely-read newspaper paid any further attention to it. On March 3, an article appeared under the by-line “Fræðavinur” [Friend of knowledge] that warned that the communists wish to tear down everthing that the nation cherishes and values so that their own views can start to prevail. It is particularly dangerous when they attack spiritual and cultural institutions. The most recent example of this is Kiljan’s book, which was published before Christmas. His goal with this work is obviously to destroy the value of medieval Icelandic culture in the minds of young people. The family sagas and our medieval literature in general are one of the building blocks of Icelandic nationality and without this cultural achievement it is unlikely that we would have managed to regain our independence. For this reason it seems to the communists that the time has now come to demean it. Nothing may remain standing and no bonds are to connect the current generation to the past. When everything has been torn down, victory for these miscreants will be the more likely. There is a large Norse Studies Department at the University of Iceland and one might have hoped that they would have been at the forefront in warning people about Halldór’s cunning assault. But nothing has been heard from these people except for a few who have GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 223 heaped praise on this disgraceful work. It has taken a farmer from Hrunamannahreppur to boldly defend the Icelandic cause. Shame on all the others who have been asleep at their watch and forgotten to defend Icelandic culture when a blow is aimed at its heart (“Fræðavinur” 1953, 9). Eventually, on March 17, Morgunblaðið published its own review of the novel in the form of a letter to the newspaper dated February 20, 1953, written by Þorbjörn Björnsson (1886–1970), a farmer at Geitaskarð in Langidalur.54 Þorbjörn begins by positioning himself as a reader. Some works do not affect him at all while others give him the greatest pleasure. On one occasion while in hospital in Reykjavík he read everything he could lay his hands on including four of the very first works by Halldór Laxness, and he found them delightful. Gerpla, however, is hideous and needs to be handled with gloves. It shows the difference between a long-winded literary work and a good one. It goes without saying that Gerpla is a unique phenomenon on the Icelandic literary scene. There are many reasons for this assertion and there is no need to go into them here. Almost everywhere the choice of words and style is vulgar and disgusting, and the dialect is such that a clear understanding of various words and whole sentences is possible only for those highly educated scholars of language with a pile of dictionaries at hand. Þorbjörn does not see the point of all this in a modern work. It is also clear to any reader of Fóstbræðra saga that the foster-brothers are hardly model citizens. But in Gerpla, all of the personal descriptions of individuals are unrelentingly negative. Although the novelist is sympathetic to peasants and fishermen, he pays so little attention to them, that their characters remain undeveloped, unlike those of the warrriors. Þorbjörn declares that no Icelandic writer now or in the past has been as hostile to the rural class as Halldór Laxness. He then quotes passages to demonstrate the mindset of the novel and its character descriptions. What does the author think he is doing with such an approach? There are two possibilities. The first is that he is attempting a feeble attack on hero-worship and our nation’s medieval literature, and it will not be long before he tries his hand at other works such as Njála and Laxdæla saga. Secondly, it seems to be part of the novelist’s efforts, now as before, to put the blame for violence on Christianity. Some people have maintained that the point of the novel is to attack prevailing military policies, atrocities, and violence. This seems doubtful, because Halldór is said to be a great supporter of communist imperialist policies, which now have half the world in the iron grip of bullying, repression, and terrorism, to such an extent that they terrify the peace- and freedom-loving other half of the world. It is also strange that Halldór, who is said to be dapper and fastidious, should take such an inexhaustible delight in describing the worst and the ugliest things in human experience, past or present. Not content with just narrating ugly reality, he seems to revel in doing so. Þorbjörn concludes by asserting that it is the responsibility of Halldór Laxness and others blessed with literary talent to bring us together around the fires that once warmed and enlightened us, to the fires that live now 224 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA and will always live, to the spiritual fires that make humankind’s future brighter and better (Björnsson, 11).

VI. Gerpla: To the Barricades!

Attacks of this nature in the country’s leading newspapers were not going to go unanswered. In the Wednesday edition of Þjóðviljinn, March 11, a news item appeared under the by-line “Svipall” [i.e. Óðin] (1953, 11), which opened with a reference to a stanza in a set of old rímur55 that mentions a farmer who in the distant past lived at Hrafnkelsstaðir and who spewed fire and poison. Helgi does not spew fire, but rather stupidity and ignorance, which have for a long time been one of the greatest poisons in the world. It is evident that he does not get the point of Gerpla. He does not understand this great work of art, neither its artistic relevance nor its spirit. He takes words and phrases out of context and pays no heed to the fact that Halldór is a master at breathing new life into old words. If he were really to think about this, he would have to admit that Vikings were pirates and rowdies who went from land to land killing innocent people. The greatest among them were those who could both steal and kill the most. The modern day Vikings are the industrialists who wage war against innocent peoples, as is now happening in Korea. The spirit is the same, and it is this spirit of war that Halldór takes issue with in Gerpla. That is the question posed to Icelanders in this perilous time. Are you for or against war, for or against the Vikings? The writer was of the opinion that people in the country were good, peace-loving folk, but the final part of the review calls that into question. We must hope his is a solitary, anomalous voice. History will prove that, even though it may take a long time, these “loudmouthed Reds,” as Helgi calls them, will save Icelandic culture, if this is at all possible, rather than those who think the same as Helgi Haraldsson (“Svipall,” 11). Readers had to wait until the middle of April before Þjóðviljinn mounted a full-scale defense of Gerpla from the pen of Helgi Jósep Halldórsson (1915–1987).56 He begins by comparing stormy weather with the critical “storms” surrounding a work like Gerpla. In particular the novel has been attacked by two farmers who, it appears, have more in common with the rascal Butraldi Brúsason than with the laudable Þorgils Arason or Vermundur í Vestfirði.57 He then goes on to talk about the varying relationships Icelanders have with their ancient literature. Some hold it for a fact that everything that is good in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Icelandic literature bases its phrasing and vocabulary on the older literature. The present hails the past and communicates with it concerning the problems of life and art. This is surely what Halldór has in mind in writing Gerpla. But he chose to work as a novelist rather than as a scholar, although he has combined the two roles in the depiction of his characters, simultaneously showing both the old and the new. Helgi then indicates that he intends to review GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 225 the book from a literary rather than an historical perspective or through an analysis of sources—that would take as long as the novel itself. Under the heading “Samsetning” [Composition] he summarizes the plot of the novel before turning to “Persónusköpun” [Character Creation]. The characters of Gerpla are all recognizable types from the medieval sagas, albeit updated. As the title of the book indicates, particular attention is paid to the kind of man now known as “hero.” The chief among these is Þorgeir Hávarsson, the personification of the medieval concept of “hero” and a Viking with no interest in women. This is based directly on Fóstbræðra saga. Even so he refuses to take part in the sport of tossing infants around on spear points (Laxness 1952, 235; Laxness 2016, 221) and yet he refuses to extinguish the hero in him in the arms of the women of Rouen and become the successor to a farmer the Vikings had killed (Laxness 1952, 256–60; Laxness 2016, 240–44). And he dies at home in Iceland. In contrast, there are three parts to Þormóður’s character. The first derives from Fóstbræðra saga, as he is the foster brother of Þorgeir and accompanied him on various escapades in Iceland. He is a poet and is fond of women. But there is tension between these three traits. He is torn between the physical attraction he feels for Kolbrún and his love for Þordís, who inspires him intellectually and spiritually. For a while it looks as if he will settle down with Þordís, with whom he has two daughters. But the arrival of the salted head of Þorgeir reminds him of what it was to be a hero and to compose poetry for a king. He abandons his life with his wife and heads off to Greenland in search of Þorgeir’s killers. There he encounters Kolbrún again. But things do not work out. Þorgeir’s killers elude him, and when he goes to Norway and meets up with King Ólafur, he ultimately finds himself unable to remember the poem he has composed in praise of the king. The reviewer then turns to consider the women characters. They are the heirs of Brynhildur Buðladóttir and Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir who get their lovers to kill each other and take the victor. This is certainly the case with Kolbrún and Geirríður, although somewhat less so with Þordís. The devoted love of Lúka and Mamúka is always valued the least. The old crone in Normandy is a realistic character drawn from experience (Laxness 1952, 273–84, 257–60; Laxness 2016, 351–62, 241–44). The second part of the review opens with Helgi Halldórsson leaving it up to the historians to pronounce on the historical interpretation of the novel. Instead he turns to some elements that are essential in understanding the work. In Iceland there are those opposed to the behaviour of the foster brothers, namely Þorgils and Vermundur. In England Þorgeir encounters the hopeless government of Æthelred the Unready, who caved in to the Vikings and tried to buy them off with Danegeld. (This section is illustrated with long quotes from the novel.) The episode involving Ríkarður í Rúðu is described in great detail. But even though the novel is set in the eleventh century, it is not merely about recounting the history of that time. The book is also written to sharpen our understanding of 226 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA twentieth-century history. Despite technology having made it possible to provide everyone with the necessities of life, the old struggles over wealth and power continue. Colonial politics are merely a continuation of the Viking depredations though in a different form. There are still leaders who are like Æthelred, more afraid of their own people than of the “Vikings,” as with the British in Greece, let alone the Korean War, which is the greatest crime [glæpur] in the history of the world.58 What causes such enormities? Halldór’s answer is that the head lags behind the advances of technology. In order to prevent this happening, there needs to be a complete reassessment of core values. Gerpla is the first step in this direction. First one has to see through the deception [blekking], as when Þorgils tells Þormóður to go home to his farm, advice Þormóður does not take. Þormóður as a poet contributes to the deception by writing poetry in praise of unpraiseworthy deeds. Helgi á Hrafnkelsstöðum criticizes the way Halldór describes the appearance of Þormóður when he arrives in Norway from Greenland. For his part, Helgi Haraldsson could not but be amazed if he were to find himself in say Hamburg and see those individuals, one-legged, missing an arm, with crutches under their stumps, begging for food with one eye in a burnt face, who in the last World War travelled the same path as Þormóður did of old. The review continues by asserting that many will say that Gerpla is a critique of hero worship in general, but such is a misunderstanding of the basic issues. There are more heroes than those who bear weapons. The stewards of life are also heroes, whether they till the earth, haul in fish, or are occupied with other tasks. Perhaps the greatest act of heroism today is “þora að vera maður” [to dare to be a man].59 In this, too, medieval literature can be a source of inspiration. There are more poets than those who write poetry praising the deeds of the Vikings. There are also Hávamál, Völuspá, and Sólarljóð. Nobody now writes poetry in praise of war. And hopefully women nowadays and in the future will refuse to exchange their happiness for the head of Þorgeir Hávarsson. The fact is that the hideous head, which gapes at the world today, brutish on the cowardly torso of the beast of war that the rulers now spur on with hellish bombs in their hands, should be eliminated so that peace-loving peoples might be able to live with their blessings in a fair and generous world. Despite the length of the review, the author apologizes for not having discussed the style and narrative techniques of the novel that will perhaps be its enduring legacy rather than its message. Each reading will reveal something new. Most Icelanders probably do not realize the incredible amount of work that lies behind such a novel. And even though Helgi recognizes that not all his contemporaries will agree with him, he claims, based on his knowledge of Icelandic literature ancient and modern, that since Njáls saga, no Icelandic book has been composed with more skill than Gerpla—unless one makes an exception for Íslandsklukkan (Halldórsson 1953). GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 227

VII. Conclusion

The immediate controversy over Gerpla is now over, although it was not forgotten and continued to flare up from time to time, as in a little booklet by Pétur Magnússon from Vallanes (1893–1979).60 This argues that Halldór Laxness did not deserve the Nobel Prize for literature and that there were others equally deserving such as Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889–1975). From Atómstöðin onwards, Pétur claims, Halldór’s work had rapidly deteriorated—not least as represented in the strangest object in recent literature, Gerpla. Pétur considers the mudslinging in Gerpla as directed at the family sagas and Heimskringla, and in particular at Ólafur, the patron saint of Norway (23). The Icelandic public greeted this work with silence, but it was Peter Hallberg, from 1943–1947 lector in Swedish at the University of Iceland, who pushed Halldór Laxness’s case with the Swedish Academy. It is ironic that a novel so clearly grounded in a message of peace should have unleashed such a war of words. But this response was as time sensitive as the novel’s other topical illusions. In 1952 there were still many Icelanders for whom the sagas were a living entity, an essential part of their national and individual identity. This is less so today. Even when Gerpla was published, readers had difficulty with its language. No matter how lavishly some reviewers may have praised its innovative style, those difficulties have only increased with time. It is nearly 35 years since the school edition of Gerpla appeared, with the vocabulary lightly annotated. A new edition is now needed with full scholarly apparatus. Sveinn Bergsveinsson was prophetic when he wrote in 1952 that Gerpla was an experiment that could not be repeated. He was not quite so perspicacious in his comment that the novel was untranslatable. It certainly presents a major challenge to any translator, and this probably explains why Gerpla has had to wait until 2016 for Philip Roughton’s full English translation directly from the Icelandic (Laxness 2016).61 Roughton has wisely concentrated on translating and made no sustained attempt to imitate the archaic vocabulary of the original. I would not be surprised if Wayward Heroes not only introduces a new generation of English readers to the richness of the novel, but also makes Gerpla accessible to Icelandic readers who may still read Njáls saga unaided, but find this work by their Nobel laureate impenetrable.

NOTES

1. For this and the following events see Pétur Hrafn Árnason and Sigurður Líndal, eds. 2016, 68–118. 2. In a bitter denunciation (one of several) published in 1946, Halldór characterized those who voted in favour of this bill as “föðurlandssvikarar, saurugir og 228 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

ósnerttanlegir” [traitors to their country, filthy, and untouchable] (Laxness 1946c, 78). The tone of the debate would not improve over the years. 3. The STUAGNL published 64 volumes from 1880–1953, mostly Old Icelandic texts, but also including works in Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Faroese. 4. The ATB published 18 volumes of exclusively Icelandic texts, from 1892–1929. 5. This was based on the normalization developed by the Danish philologist, Ludvig Wimmer (1839–1920) (Wimmer 1879) and familiar to Icelandic scholars from a translation made from the third edition of 1881 and long used in the schools (Wimmer 1885). The translator, Valtýr Guðmundsson (1860–1928), a prominent politician and subsequently Professor of History at the University of Iceland, called the language “Old Icelandic” and not “Old Norse.” Halldór was to subsequently characterize this adherence to Wimmer’s formulations as a “þrælsmerki” [sign of servitude] (Laxness 1943b, 248). 6. See also Crocker in this volume. 7. Tíminn (1917–1996) was the newspaper of the Framsóknarflokkur [Progressive Party] to which Jónas Jónsson frá Hriflu (1885–1968) belonged. He was member of the Alþingi representing Suður-Þingeyjarsýsla (1924–1949) and an arch cultural nationalist. 8. Two days later on October 13, Árni Jónsson frá Múla (1891–1947), Sjálfstæðisflokkur [Independence Party] member for Norður-Múlasýsla 1937–1942, attacked the announced project in Vísir (Árni Jónsson 1941). The next day, in response to these attacks, Halldór and his publisher printed a “Leiðrétting” [Correction] in Vísir which tried to clear up the confusion. Halldór stated Laxdæla saga would be printed in the legally established, official government spelling. Otherwise, the wording of the text, style, and language, would remain unchanged (“Leiðrétting” 1941, 4). 9. Tómas Guðmundsson (1901–1983) followed an edition of his pieces for the column “Léttara hjal” [Chit-chat on the Lighter Side] (1942–1946), which had appeared in Helgafell, an up-scale literary magazine published by Halldór Laxness’s publisher, with a postscript in which he characterized Jónas frá Hriflu as someone well known for characterizing as communists all those who were not of his disposition or might not share his views (Tómas Guðmundsson 1981b, 162). 10. The title of this piece, “Innsta virkið” [The innermost keep], suggests that Jónas sees himself as a chivalric knight defending the castle of Icelandic culture against the barbarian hordes. Jónas manages to get wrong the name of both the major female characters of Laxdæla saga, Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir and Þorgerður Egilsdóttir. 11. In the second edition (Laxness 1973), the text is based on Laxdœla saga 1896 with the passages omitted in the 1941 edition restored in smaller type. A feature of this new edition are the well-executed line drawings by Þorbjörg Höskuldsdóttir, Hringur Jóhannesson, Guðrún Svava Svavarsdóttir, and Gylfi Gíslason. 12. The choice of this saga (apart from its brevity) was probably a homage to Sigurður Nordal whose study of Hrafnkels saga (Nordal 1940) is one of the manifestos of the Íslenski skólinn [Icelandic school] of saga criticism. These scholars were intent on demonstrating that the sagas were not historical documents, but marvelously crafted works of historical fiction. Halldór Laxness’s editorial work and other writings on the medieval sagas lead Jón Karl Helgason to claim him as the most outspoken member of GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 229

this school (1998b). Even though the position of the Icelandic School has become the dominant view in twenty-first century saga criticism, in the 1940s it was still a very radical point of view and perhaps out of step with majority opinion at the time. For an introduction to the debate over truth and fiction in the sagas, see Hughes 2016. 13. While the case was being heard, the Alþingi appointed a commission to review the law. The commission asked three professors from the University to examine Halldór’s Laxdæla edition. The professors reported that the edition, by modernizing the vocabulary, often reorganizing the syntax, and by omitting passages, “distorted the substance and character of the saga.” See Jón Karl Helgason 1999, 122 and 2005, 79–80. In contrast, Kristján Karlsson in his afterword to the second edition praises the 1941 version with its omissions as establishing the novelistic credentials of the saga (Laxness 1973, 219–20). 14. For the prefaces to both editions and some related essays, see Laxness 1941b. On the legal case see Jón Karl Helgason 1998c and 2002. 15. Ironically, Jónas was replaced as Chair of the Menntamálaráð two months before the parliamentary debate on governmental support for the state edition of Njála (Jón Karl Helgason 2002, 158), but his influence was nonetheless discernable. The edition was to be published by the Menningarsjóður [Cultural fund], an organization with which Jónas was also closely connected, and which had been established in 1939 to counter Mál og Menning, the publishing arm of the socialists. See also Laxness 1946d. 16. See Njáls saga 1944. The text of the saga is based on Brennu-Njáls saga (Njála), 1908, with a few changes. The spelling is modernized and the edition is illustrated with maps, pen and ink line drawings and photographs, elucidation of the verses, notes, and an index. For Halldór’s review of the edition see 1944b. “The Spirit” mentioned in the title is Halldór Laxness’s long-time antagonist, Jónas frá Hriflu, who is held responsible for the book’s publication, even though he was not actually one of the volume’s editors. 17. Gunnlaugur Scheving and Þorvaldur Skúlason were two of the five artists singled out by Jónas frá Hriflu as being a “klessumálari” [dauber] and their work exhibited in the Alþingishús [Parliament Building]. Tómas Gúðmundsson responded with an opinion piece in which he reminded readers of the 1937 Nazi exhibition in Munich of “Entartete Kunst” [Úrkynjaðri list, Degenerate Art], and states that it was remarkable that, just seven years after such an event in Hitler’s Germany, a similar exhibition should be held in Parliament Building in Reykjavík (1942, 89). 18. It was common knowledge that the Fornritafélag was also preparing an edition of the saga, although this did not appear until nine years later (Brennu-Njáls saga, 1954). Still the question was raised as to whether the nation could absorb so many editions of this one saga without someone suffering financial losses. See Jón Karl Helgason 1994 and 1999 (particularly 119-36 and 141-53). 19. On Halldór’s incorporation of historical sources into this novel, see Eiríkur Jónsson 1981, a work which in 1984 was considered inadequate as a doctoral dissertation by the University of Iceland. The ensuing lawsuit concluded with the court vacating the assessment of the examining committee whose members included the Swede, Peter Hallberg (1916–1995), who had played a pivotal role in promoting Halldór Laxness for 230 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book is now considered one of the key texts in understanding how Halldór Laxness worked. 20. Laxness 1948; English translation Laxness 1961. The title reference is clearly to the NATO base at Keflavík. A better translation might have been “The Atomic Base,” i.e. a military base where atomic weapons are stored: “Iceland shall never be sold nor the nation betrayed, no atomic base built, which would cause the Icelanders to be killed in a single day; at the very most a rest and recreation point permitted south there on Reykjanes [i.e. at Keflavík] for foreign charitable organizations” (Laxness 1948, 170). 21. See Jón Karl Helgason 2003. On October 5, the Þingvallanefnd [Þingvellir Commission] under the directorship of Jónas frá Hriflu obtained an order forbidding internment of Jónas Hallgrímsson’s remains at Bakki, the same day as the contentious vote permitting the Americans to stay. 22. See Crocker in this volume. 23. See Jón Karl Helgason 2005, 64–65. 24. This mish-mash of misinformation is based on Fóstbræðra saga 1943, chap. 2, 128, where it is said that Þorgeir’s heart is not like “fóarn í fugli” [the gizzard in a bird] and chap.17, 206–11 at 210–11 where Þorgeir’s heart when cut from his body is found to be extremely small. Furthermore, Þorgeir never went to Greenland; that was his foster brother, Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld. But it is correct to say that Þorgeir never knew fear; see chapter 13, 191. 25. The word gerpla is first recorded in the proverb collection of Guðmundur Ólafsson (c, 1652–1695). Entry 3774 reads: “Þier þyker gaman ad Gerplu” [‘Gerpla’ seems fun to you] (172). The Swedish editor of the work finds the word puzzling, reporting the suggestion of a native Icelander that the word refers to an otherwise unknown book(!), but tentatively preferring to see the word as a clipped form of gerpilegur [heroic] (186). But the form is nominal and the consensus is that the word refers to a book containing heroic stories. Laxness’s use is ironical. 26. Þjóðviljinn (1936–1992) was a newspaper established by the Communist Party of Iceland, but from 1938–1968 run by the Sameiningarflokkur alþýðu—Sósialistaflokkurinn [People’s Unity Party—Socialist Party]. In a special issue of Lesbók Morgunblaðsins published April 20, 2002, to celebrate the centenary of Laxness’s birth (April 23, 1902), Jónas Ragnarsson prepared a list enumerating when each of Laxness’s 22 novels was published and providing a summary of the initial critical reactions to each work. For Gerpla see Ragnarsson 20. 27. Page 2 has a lengthy interview touching on various aspects of the novel between Laxness and “I. G. Þ.,” that is, the novelist Indriði G. Þorsteinsson (1926–2000) (1952, 2). 28. Given his concern over the spelling of medieval texts, it is ironical that recently voices have been raised arguing that Halldór Laxness’s idiosyncratic spelling is proving a hindrance to younger readers and there has been a call to republish his works in the official modern spelling. 29. Morgunblaðið (1913–) is the most widely-read newspaper in Iceland and one that has a close relationship with the centre-right Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn [The Independence Party]. GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 231

30. Alþýðublaðið (1919–1998) was the newspaper of Alþýðuflokurinn [The Social Democratic Party]. 31. To compare Gerpla to Don Quixote soon becomes commonplace. 32. “Filipus Bessason” is possibly a pseudonym. 33. Hallgerður’s nick-name was “langbrók” (long-pants). See the folktale “Kolrassa krókríðandi” (Black-arse hook-rider) in Jón Árnason 1954–1961, 2: 432–37 (as collected from Guðný Einarsdóttir [1828–1885] of Akureyri). Kolrassa is also a name sometimes given to a mare or a female dog. See Laxness 1952, 79; Laxness 2016, 74 (Coal-Rump). 34. The other editor of Tímarit Máls og menningar, Kristinn E. Andrésson (1901–1973), an old-time Marxist and a firm believer in Soviet-style “socialist realism,” also wrote a review of Gerpla at around the same time although it was not published until later (Kristinn E. Andrésson, 1972, 1976–1979). See Larissa Kyzer’s translation in this volume. 35. First published in 1952, but the quotations are from the republished text of 1987 (both listed under References). 36. Although it is possible to argue that this is exactly what the novel is doing. 37. Menn og menntir appeared in April 1951 and ceased publication with the double issue of December 1952. The M.F.A. was founded in 1937 by the Alþýðusamband Íslands [ASÍ, Icelandic Confederation of Labour]. From 1953 until his retirement in 1974, Sveinn Bergsveinsson taught at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, German Democratic Republic. 38. “Crassus is the pseudonym for all those who write reviews in Helgafell” (Friðríka Benónýs, 12). Crassus was the family name of several famous Roman orators and the use of the name here probably represents no more than a claim for the “well-spokeness” of the reviews. 39. The reference is to 1905, when hundreds of farmers streamed into Reykjavík to protest against the government’s intention to establish telegraph communication with the outside world. The word suggests an unwillingness to accept progress. 40. Bragi is the god of poetry, but here used of literature in general. 41. The references here are probably to Morgunblaðið, which waited until three months after the publication of Gerpla before publishing two hostile reviews. 42. I take the “new faiths” referred to here to be National Socialism and Soviet and Chinese communism. 43. On Helgi see Þorsteinn Jónsson, ed. 1999 2: 499–501. He is best known for his speculations of the authorship of Njála (Haraldsson 1948). 44. His first published article (Haraldsson 1944) begins with a strong-worded response to Laxness 1943d, one of a series of polemical articles about the need to diversify and modernize agricultural production and to make food less expensive. See Laxness 1946b. This article is omitted from the later second edition (Laxness 1980). 45. Haraldsson 1971, 152. Fuðflagi is a misprint. Laxness 1952, 136 uses the term fuðflogi, an Old Norwegian legal term (“one who flees the female sex organ”) for a man who refuses to consummate his wedding vows. Laxness 2016, 128 translates the term as “fugitive.” Helgi clearly misunderstands the passage. 232 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

46. Laxness 1952, 13, 78, 320; Laxness 2016, 13 [disputable riff-raff]; 73 [horrible miscreant]; 300 [miscreant]. Again Helgi does not seem to understand the use of the word, or he is interpreting it too literally. Helgi furthermore states that he has never heard it mentioned that males pursued the same kind of occupation as prostitutes, which reveals a certain kind of rural innocence. 47. There is a collection of stories about this Bjarni who was from Bjarg in Miðfjörður, Vestur-Húnavatnssýsla, in Ólafur Davíðsson 1978–1980, 4: 181–87. 48. Had they been asked, the answers might have surprised Helgi. See the comments culled from two surveys on attitudes to the family sagas made in 1927–1930 and 1994 in Jón Karl Helgason 2005, 65–78. 49. This refers to the oft recounted episode that occurred when a National Assembly convened in Reykjavík on August 9, 1851, to discuss constitutional relations between Iceland and Denmark. Jón Sigurðsson had drafted an alternative proposal, which, in effect, granted Icelandic independence. The Governor, Frederick Christopher Trampe, declared that the assembly had no authority to discuss such a proposal and dissolved the meeting. Jón Sigurðsson protested at this to no avail. Jón protested again, and then the entire assembly is reported to have said in one voice, “Vér mótmælum allir” [we protest all of it] as the Governor left the room. 50. Helgi Haraldsson 1953, 155: he “Spilaði rassinn úr buxanum” [played the arse out of his trousers], that is he made a bad decision from a position of strength (here Íslandsklukkan). 51. The imagery here plays on the idiom explained in the previous note. 52. Helgi Haraldsson 1953, 155 (slightly altered from Laxness 1952, 291); Laxness 2016, 275. Ingi Freyr Vilhjálmsson (2013) reports that Anders Österling, a member of the Selection Committee for the Nobel Prize in Literature at the time, has revealed that this description of King Haraldur cost Halldór Laxness the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, which went to Ernest Hemingway instead. Halldór had to wait for his accolade until 1955. 53. The reference is to Jónas’ poem, “Ferðalok” (Jónas Hallgrímsson 95–97 at 97, lines 49–50; “Journey’s End” (Ringler 282–83): “Beside the bank / of Boar River / I carefully combed your hair.” 54. The date “February 20” is likely to be fictitious as it would place it before Helgi Haraldsson’s review, which appeared in Tíminn nearly a month earlier. I suspect that the letter was written after “Fræðavinur,” 1953. 55. Rímur were metrical romances, probably the most popular form of literature among ordinary people from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. I am not aware of any such work with a fire-breathing farmer from Hrafnkelsstaðir. 56. The greater part of Helgi’s review from April 14 reappears as the “Eftirmæli” [Postscript], dated 1983, to an annotated school edition of Gerpla (Laxness 1983, 494–506). The volume’s cover in addition to being blood red is decorated by the woodcut “Hann hljóp upp á skip Hrúts” [He leapt aboard Hrut’s ship] by Þorvaldur Skúlason, commissioned to illustrate an episode in chapter 2 of Laxness 1945a, 18–19, and having no particular relevance to Gerpla. Helgi also translated Hallberg 1956 as Hallberg GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 233

1970–1971. Hallberg 1971 is a summary version of this work with three short chapters dealing with publications before Laxness 1951 (1931–1932). 57. The reference is to the reviews by Helgi from Hrafnkelsstaðir in Tíminn and Þorbjörn from Geitaskarð in Morgunblaðið. 58. The Greek Civil War (1946–1949) was fought between the army of the Greek government (supported by the United States and Britain) and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military wing of the Greek Communist Party. The Soviet Union had declared war against Japan in August 1945 and moved troops down to the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula. The United States moved troops for a time into the south and a tense situation developed with both North and South claiming to be the legitimate government. On June 25, 1950, Northern forces crossed the 38th parallel. The United Nation declared the same day that this was an invasion and two days later authorized forces to resist. Chinese forces entered the conflict in 1951. Fighting eventually stabilized around the 38th parallel and on July 27, 1934, an armistice was signed which is still in effect. 59. This sentence is in bold in the original. 60. Pétur was pastor at Vallarnes in Suður-Múlasýsla 1939–1960. In 1970 he published a volume of plays that may explain why much of this little booklet is devoted to exposing what he sees as Halldór Laxness’s incompetence as a playwright. 61. Earlier he had translated Laxness 1957 as Laxness 2003.

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Kristjánsson, Sverrir. 1981–1987. “Harmleikur hetjuskaparins” [The tragedy of heroic valour]. In Ritsafn. Edited by Aðalgeir Kristjánsson et al. (4 volumes), 4: 171–88. Reykjavik: Mál og menning. Laxdœla saga. 1896. Edited by Kristian Kålund. Altnordische Text–Bibliothek 4. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Laxdæla saga. 1934. Edited by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, 1–248. Íslenzk fornrit 5. Reykjavik Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Laxness, Halldór Kiljan. 1935. “Um stafsetníngu á fornsögum” [Concerning the spelling in the medieval sagas]. Laxness 1962, 122–25. ⸻. 1941a. Laxdæla saga. Edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Reykjavik: Ragnar Jónsson, Stefán Ögmundsson. ⸻. 1941b. “Laxdælumáðið: Sex greinar” [The Laxdæla saga affair: Six essays]. Laxness 1979a 191–203. ⸻. 1942. Hrafnkels saga. Edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Reykjavik: Ragnar Jónsson, Stefán Ögmundsson. ⸻. 1943a. Íslandsklukkan. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1943b. “Þrælsmerki sem verður að afmást” [A sign of servitude which needs to be erased]. Laxness 1980, 243–49. ⸻. 1943c. “Hatursútgáfa af Njálu” [A spiteful Edition of Njála]. Laxness 1980, 250–52. ⸻. 1943d. “Ómyndarskapurinn í landbúnaðarmálum” [Stupidity in agricultural affairs]. Tímarit Máls og menningar 6 (2): 116–18. ⸻. 1944a. Hið ljósa man. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1944b. “‘Hinn andinn’ gefur út fornrit” [‘The Spirit’ publishes a medieval text]. Laxness 1980, 253–63. ⸻. 1945a. Njáls saga. Edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1945b. “Minnisgreinar um fornsögur” [Notes on the medieval sagas]. Tímarit Máls og menningar 8 (1): 13–56. Reprinted (with additions) in Laxness 1980, 7–74. ⸻. 1946a. Eldur in Kaupinhafn. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1946b. Sjálfsagðir hlutir. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. (1946c) 1963. “Baráttan sem nú er hafin” [The struggle which has now begun]. In Reisubókakorn [A little travel book], 75–80. Second edition. Reykjavik: Helgafell. 238 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

⸻. 1946d. “Stórkostleg bókaútgáfa” [Magnificent piece of publishing]. In Laxness 1979, 96–105. ⸻. (1948) 1961. Atómsstöðin. Second edition (1961). Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1951. Salka Valka. Reykjavik: Helgafell. (A one volume edition of Þu vínviður hreini [You, pure vine], 1931, and Fuglinn í fjörunni [The bird on the foreshore], 1932.) ⸻. 1952. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1955. Heimsljós. Second edition (2 volumes). Reykjavik: Helgafell. (A two volume edition of Ljós heimsins [The light of the world], 1937; Höll sumarlandsins [The jalls of the summer country], 1938; Hús skáldsins [The poet’s house], 1939; Fegurð himinsins [The sky’s beauty], 1940.) ⸻. 1957. Íslandsklukkan. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1961. The Atom Station. Translated by Magnús Magnússon Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1962. Dagleið á fjöllum [A day’s journey in the mountains]. Second edition. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1967. Heimsljós. Third edition. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1973. Laxdæla saga, edited by Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Second edition. Edited by Sverrir Tómasson. Afterword by Kristján Karlsson. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1979. Vettvangar dagsins [The daily scene]. Third edition. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1980. Sjálfsagðir hlutir [Self-evident matters]. Third edition. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1983. Gerpla. Edited by Helgi Jósep Halldórsson. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 2003. Iceland’s Bell. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Vintage. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books. “Leiðrétting” [Correction]. 1941. Vísir 31 (233, October 14): 4. Magnússon, Pétur. 1962. Nóbelsskáld í nýju ljósi. Reykjavik: n.p. Njáls saga. 1944. Edited by Magnús Finnbogason. Reykjavik: Menningasjóður. Nordal, Sigurður. 1940. Hrafnkatla. Íslenzk fræði 7. Reykjavik: Ísafold. Ólafsson, Guðmundur. 1930. Gudmundi Olaui Thesaurus Adagiorum linguæ septentrionalis antiquæ et modernæ. Edited by Gottfried Kallstenius. Skrifter utgivna av Vettenskaps–societeten i Lund 12. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup. GERPLA AND ITS EARLY REVIEWERS 239

Ragnarsson, Jónas. 2002. “Lífsins skáld: Hvenær komu skáldsögur Halldórs Laxness út og hvernig var þeim tekið?” [The novelist of life: When was each of Laxness’s novels published and how was it received?] Lesbók Morgunblaðsins (April 20): 18–20. Ringer, Dick. 2002. Bard of Iceland: Jónas Hallgrímsson, Poet and Scientist. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. “Skáldsaga Kiljans um garpa fornaldarinnar komin út” [Kiljan’s novel about medieval heroes is published]. 1952. Tíminn 36 (277, December 5): 1. Svipall [pseud.]. 1953. “Furðulegur ritdómur” [An incredible book-review]. Þjóðviljinn 18 (58, March 11): 11. Vilhjálmsson, Ingi Freyr. 2013. “Hatursfullur og umdeildur” [Full of hate and controversial]. Dagblaðið–Vísir 103 (79, June 28-30): 35. Wimmer, Ludwig. (1879) 1905. Oldnordisk Formlære til Skolebrug [Old Norse morphology for school use]. Sixth edition. Copenhagen: C. Steen. ⸻. 1885. Forníslenzk málmyndalýsing [A description of Old Icelandic morphology]. Translated by Valtýr Guðmundsson. Reykjavik: Kristján Ó. Þorgrímsson. Þorsteinsson, Indriði G. 1952. “Viðtal við Halldór Kiljan Laxness” [An interview with Halldór Kiljan Laxness]. Tíminn 36 (277, December 5): 2. “In the Shadow of Greater Events in the World” The Northern Epic in the Wake of World War II

DUSTIN GEERAERT

ABSTRACT: World War II was marked by widespread use of heroic narratives, national legacies, and grand ideas about destiny or the “arc of history.” These topics have a firm foundation in medieval literature, particularly in northern traditions. While literary medievalism had been in the limelight during the nineteenth century, during the early twentieth century it had been dismissed as a quaint curiosity; suitable for the benighted souls of the reading public, perhaps, but not to be taken seriously by avant-garde intellectuals. In the mid-twentieth century, however, literary medievalism returned with a vengeance. Questioning the critical narrative of twentieth-century literary history, this article examines iconoclastic works by Halldór Laxness (Iceland), T. H. White (England), John Gardner (America), and the Strugatsky brothers (Arkady and Boris, Russia), in order to compare perspectives on medievalism from different countries in the aftermath of the bloodiest conflict of all time.

RÉSUMÉ: La Seconde Guerre mondiale fut marquée par le recours généralisé à des récits héroïques, aux legs nationaux et à de grandes idées sur le destin ou « le cours de l’histoire ». Ces sujets sont fermement ancrés dans la littérature médiévale, en particulier dans les traditions nordiques. Bien que le médiévalisme littéraire ait été à l’honneur au XIXe siècle, il était considéré au début du XXe siècle comme une curiosité pittoresque, peut-être approprié pour les âmes ignorantes du lectorat publique, mais que les intellectuels d’avant-garde ne devraient certes pas prendre au sérieux. Toutefois, au milieu du XXe siècle, le médiévalisme littéraire revint en force. En interrogeant des récits critiques précédemment établis sur l’histoire littéraire du XXe siècle, cet article examine les œuvres iconoclastes de Halldór Laxness (Islande), TH White (Angleterre), John Gardner (Amérique) et des frères Strugatsky (Arkady et Boris, Russie), afin de comparer les perspectives sur le médiévisme de différents pays à la suite du conflit le plus sanglant de tous les temps.

Dustin Geeraert teaches in the Department of Icelandic and in the English Department (DEFTM) at the University of Manitoba.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 he Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic T bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. (J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to L. W. Forster, December 1960)1

This book will not recount the stories of Olaf the Stout’s burnings and murders in Norway, nor attempt to retell the Saga of King Olaf the Saint any more than is needed to elucidate how the fates of our two heroes from the Vestfirðir, whose tale we began to narrate quite some time ago, played out in the shadow of greater events in the world. (Halldór Laxness, Wayward Heroes, 2016 translation of the 1952 novel Gerpla)2

J. R. R. Tolkien denied allegorical content in his literary works; he particularly denied that the “One Ring” was a symbol for nuclear weaponry, although readers sometimes interpreted it in this light. Tolkien preferred for his medievalist fiction to be read in the context of his philological work, rather than the twentieth-century historical events of his own lifetime. Yet in The Road to Middle-earth (2003), Tom Shippey argues that both are important; despite its deep foundations in medieval literature, The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) is still a wartime work, “framed by and responding to the crisis of Western civilization, 1914-1945 (and beyond)” (3).3 In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2001), Shippey further explains that “Tolkien, as a philologist, and also as an infantry veteran, was deeply conscious of the strong continuity between that heroic world [i.e. the world of Beowulf] and the modern one” (xxviii).4 Still, Tolkien’s unironic depiction of heroism reflects a traditionalist or religious attitude that many of his peers rejected, as Kathryn Hume argues:

Tolkien is an outstanding representative of those who have turned their backs squarely on the void. In his own life, he had Christian doctrinal reasons to do so, so in a sense he is a throwback to an earlier stage of mythic thinking; but he writes during and after the horrors of World War II, and is familiar with the idea of meaningless life preached by many of his contemporaries, so his assertion of medieval values is not a simple affirming of a culture’s unchallenged ideals. His stance is much closer to … “I would rather find this true than what I see everyday.” (47)5

Despite Tolkien’s attempt to separate his medievalist literature from modernity, scholars have produced compelling research examining modern elements in his works (Jackson 44). Perhaps the most famous example is the echo of the tank warfare of the Battle of the Somme in Tolkien’s early tale, “The Fall 242 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA of Gondolin” (Garth 220–21).6 Thus even in the most conservative medievalist works anachronisms occur; to borrow a line from Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” (1842),7 in the mirror that connects fantasy and reality, “Shadows of the world appear” (II.12). Such shadows often darken medievalism with modern traumas. For example, the Russian novel Трудно быть богом (1964) [Hard to be a God] is set in a medieval world, yet a Hitler-like figure seizes power. The protagonist is aware of twentieth century history and recognizes the parallels: “Один я на всей планете вижу страшную тень, наползающую на страну, но как раз я и не могу понять, чья это тень и зачем” [I’m the only one on this whole planet who’s aware of the terrible shadow creeping over the country] (286; 40).8 The anachronism is clear at the start of this work, which features epigraphs from Pierre Abelard and Ernest Hemingway.9 Aaron Isaac Jackson notes that part of the reason for the clash between Tolkien and modernist writers was their divergent views on the value of archaic language (44). Tolkien went so far as to compose works in Old English—and even when inventing his own languages, he sought to recover the deep past.10 Jackson notes that critics thus deemed his work reactionary: “Tolkienʼs work contradicts the received view of literary history, which is that the First World War finished off the epic in any serious, non-ironic form” (54). Yet the emulation of archaic language or literary forms need not entail any reactionary stance, as Halldór Laxness’s Gerpla (1952) shows. It was modeled on its medieval sources as closely as any of Tolkien’s works, yet it represents a very different response to the northern heritage. Laxness smuggled a “modern” (or an anti-traditional, in the view of many) message into a medieval-style work—and won the Nobel Prize (1955), though his work was criticized as radical or sacrilegious.11 Wayward Heroes asserts in its inside jacket that Gerpla is “decidedly unlike any other piece of modern literature.” However, when placed in an international context Halldór’s “little book” can be seen as part of a wave of postwar medievalist works whose radical revisionism represents an under-recognized contribution to both literary medievalism and modern literature.12 The comparison between Gerpla and contemporary works will range in every direction, like the Sworn Brothers from the West Fjords of Iceland themselves: southward to the British Isles (with the English tetralogy The Once and Future King, 1939–1958), westward across the Atlantic (with the American novel Grendel, 1971), and eastward to Russia (with the Soviet-era novel Hard to be a God, 1964). Although these works have not been discussed in a comparative context before, each has had its importance recognized within its respective tradition. An account of history of these works and their authors follows, as cultural ideas of literary production will be centrally important to interpreting them. THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 243

Authors: Iconoclasts

T. H. White (1906-1964) first worked with medieval materials by writing a thesis on Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) at Cambridge. He then spent some years as a teacher, even becoming head of an English Department, before retreating to write. He wrote The Sword in the Stone (1938) as a prologue to Malory, followed by The Witch in the Wood (1939) and The Ill-Made Knight (1940). He wrote The Candle in the Wind as a play (1940) then adapted it into a novel for the tetralogy (first published 1958), also revising the other novels and retitling the second novel The Queen of Air and Darkness (Grage 33-34). White preferred rustic living; Andrew Hadfield notes that “he spent much of his life as a semi-hermit” (208). Sylvia Townsend Warner, author of T. H. White: A Biography (1967), describes White’s writing circumstances thus: “The gamekeeper’s cottage stood among woodlands – a sturdy Victorian structure without amenities. It was by lamplight that White pulled from a shelf the copy of the Morte d’Arthur he had used for the essay on Malory he submitted for the English tripos” (1977, x).13 A passionate outdoorsman who found peace fishing in the rain, White had difficulty relating to people. He was far more comfortable with animals; this is clear in his works, above all the posthumous The Book of Merlyn (1977). His problems with depression and drinking provide his novel focusing on Lancelot, The Ill-Made Knight, with an intense psychology of guilt and shame. Indeed the notion of original sin appears repeatedly throughout the tetralogy, and White was considering converting to Catholicism while writing it.14 Although he arrived at a more naturalistic (specifically evolutionary) conception of human nature, he retained an intense pessimism about humanity, which led to accusations of misanthropy (Hadfield 211). As Warner explains, “Throughout his life White was subject to fears. … Notably free from fearing God, he was basically afraid of the human race” (1977, ix). White’s tetralogy enjoyed an afterlife in adaptations such as the animated film The Sword in the Stone (1963, directed by Wolfgang Reitherman) and the musical Camelot (1960, directed by Moss Hart), later adapted into a film of the same title (1967, directed by Joshua Logan). White’s provocative vision of facades of chivalric idealism undermined by ruthless realpolitik clearly struck a chord in the era of Kennedy and Khrushchev. However, critical recognition took longer. In “T. H. White: The Fantasy of the Here and Now” (1977) John Grage remarked, “What the modern readership has generally done to writers of literary fantasy who bother to write it in this century of fantasies of other sorts is all too graphically portrayed in the career of T. H. White” (33). Yet White’s reputation grew steadily; Francois Gallix documented the critical tradition which subsequently developed in T H. White: An Annotated Bibliography (1986). More recent studies include Kurth Sprague’s special edition of Arthuriana, “T. H. White’s Troubled Heart” (2006) and Critical Essays on T. H. White (2008, edited by Davies, Malcolm, and Simons). The latter considers the place of White’s Arthurian legendarium within his literary corpus; 244 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Linden Peach notes, “White’s oeuvre includes comic, serious literary, historical and thriller/detective writing as well as non-fiction” (n.p.). The online resource England Have My Bones (1996-2007) offers many relevant documents, and The Camelot Project (1995-2019) offers a “T. H. White Glossary.” The Once and Future King is now widely considered the gold standard of modern Arthurian fantasy and White’s work is receiving more attention than ever, often focusing on autobiographical, Freudian, and environmentalist elements. The same elements of scholarly engagement with medieval materials, literary experimentation, the testing of ideals, and mentorship, occur in the career of the American writer John Gardner (1933–1982). He was perhaps even more prolific, producing an impressive variety of works, as Barry Silesky explains: “Gardner published twenty-nine books in all, including eleven fiction titles, a book-length epic poem, six books of medieval criticism, and a major biography” (back cover). One suspects that a productive comparison could be made between White’s The Sword in the Stone or The Book of Beasts (1954) and works by Gardner such as A Child’s Bestiary (1977). A professor of literature and teacher of writers, Gardner had been teaching Beowulf for twelve years when he completed Grendel in 1970 (Howell 1993, 61). However unlike White, he tended more toward fearlessness rather than fear. He was a “man of unrestrained energy and blatant contempt for convention,” as Silesky notes. “Once in the limelight, he picked public fights with his peers” (back cover). Rather than a “semi-hermit” he was, as the title of Silesky’s 2004 biography has it, a “Literary Outlaw” who became, in the decade before his tragic death, “larger than life.” Being a less rustic figure than White, Gardner lived faster, dying on a motorcycle rather than on a ship. Silesky writes, “Famous for disregarding his own safety, he rode his motorcycle at crazy speeds, incurred countless concussions, and once broke both of his arms. He survived what was diagnosed as terminal colon cancer only to resume his prodigious drinking and to die in a motorcycle accident at age forty-nine, a week before his third wedding” (n.p.). Grendel remains Gardner’s most famous novel; it was adapted into the animated film Grendel Grendel Grendel (1981, directed by Alexander Stitt) and proved a source of inspiration in music, with the progressive rock epic Grendel (1982, by Marillion), the alternative rock anthem Grendel (1994, by Sunny Day Real Estate), and the opera Grendel (2006, directed by Julie Taymor). Gardner’s legacy was consolidated by John M. Howell’s John Gardner: A Bibliographic Profile (1980) and Robert A. Morace’s John Gardner: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography (1984), with a critical tradition represented by works like David Cowart’s Arches and Light: The Fiction of John Gardner (1983) and Howell’s Understanding John Gardner (1993). Online resources include The Grendex (2011) and The Arch & The Abyss (2015). In The Art of Fiction (posthumous 1983), Gardner discusses the novels of two Russian brothers, Arkady Strugatsky (1925–1991) and Boris Strugatsky (1933–2012), noting that the literary establishment viewed science fiction with “prejudice or THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 245 ignorance” (40). The Strugatsky brothers often set their stories in the future, speculating about the direction civilization would take; a comparison might be made between their most famous novel Полдень. XXII век (1961) [Noon: 22nd Century] and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in terms of sweeping themes such as the evolution of civilizations.15 In Hard to be a God, also set in the future, humans have discovered an unknown planet which, upon closer inspection, proves to be only at a “medieval” stage of historical development.16 Thus the “medievalism” of the interpreters becomes a theme in this novel; a secret and largely non-interventionist elite of scholars studies the crusades, blunders, and wars of a backwards population in real time. Interpretations of human history, not to mention the ethics of anthropology, are crucial to the story. As the native peoples of the planet have not yet achieved the cultural, economic, and technological capacities that would lift them out of the medieval stage of history, their societies are nightmarish in both medical and political terms. Despite his abstract commitment to noninterventionism, the protagonist, when faced with a civilizational disaster, attempts to intervene—but he does not necessarily succeed in improving the overall situation. Both brothers were present at the siege of Leningrad in 1942. Although they began writing during the post-Stalin “Thaw,” they had significant difficulty with political censorship. James von Geldern writes, “If science fiction was a massively popular form of Soviet literature … one that inspired unease among literary officials and captured a readership much broader than traditional fiction, it was because it functioned as dissidence of a different sort” (n.p.). Perhaps inspired by their experience of government interference in cultural matters, the Strugatsky brothers’ model of authorship proves to be that of the dissident intellectual. Early in Hard to be a God a characteristic incident occurs: a travelling freethinker is approached by uniformed men who ask for his papers. He is immediately suspicious: “Хамьe!—стеклянным голосом произнес Румата.—Вы жe неграмотны, зачем вам подорожная?” [“Boors!” Rumata said icily. “You’re illiterate, what would you do with them?”] (275; 24). In the novel’s Afterword, which was written after the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Strugatsky explains: “We were being governed by goons and enemies of culture” (243). Thus, political oppression became a key theme: “The adventure story had to, was obliged to, become a story about the fate of the intelligentsia, submerged in the twilight of the Middle Ages” (244).17 Soviet literature in translation offered foreigners insight into a closed and censorious society. Hard to be a God was widely translated and first appeared in English in Wendayne Ackerman’s 1973 translation, itself based on a German version; the recent (2014) translation by Olena Bormashenko is the first direct translation from the original Russian.18 Two years before Arkady’s death the brothers wrote the play Человек с далёкой звезды (1989) [A Man from a Distant Star], which retold Hard to be a God. Peter Fleischmann’s film Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu 246 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA sein [Hard to be a God] appeared that year,19 and a second film adaptation was released in 2013, directed by Aleksei German.20 The “Noon Universe” novels were also reprinted in the “Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers” series with a Tolkienian touch: introductions purportedly written by scholars “within” those worlds. The literary career of Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) has been discussed elsewhere in this volume; suffice it to say here that it rivalled anything herein described in its scope, ambition, and controversies. The title of Philip Roughton’s translation of Halldór Guðmundsson’s biography, The Islander: A Biography of Halldór Laxness (2008), captures a key element of the Icelandic writer’s work, life, and career—for despite his rural roots, Halldór quickly became a world traveller. For him the model of authorship was the skald, the adventurous poet seeking prestige at a foreign court. He travelled through Europe and America; he wrote film scripts in Hollywood and travelogues about his journeys to the Soviet Union. Whereas T. H. White’s search for meaning was characterized by doubt and hesitation, Halldór committed, first to Catholicism and then to communism. In the years of his international fame he became an ambassador for Icelandic culture; his legacy includes saga editions, tales, poems, plays, essays, and memoirs, but the core of his corpus consists of novels, a growing number of which are available in translation. The Islander contains an extensive bibliography of Halldór’s works, and online resources such as Laxness in Translation provide information on new publications. Whether hermits, outlaws, dissidents, or skalds, these writers brought different cultural conceptions of authorship to literary medievalism, each with its own implicit relationship to political authority.21 The element of medievalism crosses all genre boundaries: it runs through White’s fantasy, Gardner’s existentialism,22 the science fiction of the Strugatsky brothers, and Laxness’s satire. Examining this medievalism will show how the “shockwaves” of modern history have affected literature, as interpreted from multiple cultural/geographical perspectives. The first important element of iconoclasm in these postwar medievalist works is narrative framing.

Narrators: Interrogators

We all know that Arthur, and not Edward, was on the throne in the latter half of the 15th century. … By that deliberate statement of an untruth I make it clear to any scholar who may read the book that I am writing of an imaginary world imagined in the 15th century. … I am looking through 1939 at 1489 itself looking backwards. (T. H. White, Letter to Sydney Cockerell, 1939)23 THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 247

Medievalist writers have always had to consider the relationship between their works and the medieval works to which they are responding. The Romantic tradition in literary medievalism may have culminated in Tolkien, but a more skeptical strain of satirical medievalism had occasionally also surfaced in works like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). Like Twain’s novel, postwar medievalist works revel in self-conscious anachronism. White’s narrator, for example, is an authorial persona who demonstrates awareness of the modern era and addresses readers directly: “It was not really Eton … for the College of Blessed Mary was not founded until 1440, but it was a place of the same sort” (4). The narrator even explains where the tetralogy evolves from prologue to supplement: “There is no need to give a long description of the tourney. Malory gives it” (1966, 364). White also includes an author-figure in Merlyn, who displays a metafictional awareness that extends far beyond the text he inhabits: he knows about not only Thomas Malory, but also the subsequent literary history of Arthuriana, including Mark Twain (1977, 30) and Lord Tennyson (1966, 332). This awareness is not limited to the “inside” of the various versions of King Arthur’s story; it crosses the boundary from literature to history when Merlyn mentions twentieth-century figures including Freud, Einstein, and Hitler (1966 119, 295, 274). He refers to “the book we are in” (1977, 13); he even discusses T. H. White: “What an anachronist he was!” (1977, 4). In a key passage, Merlyn explains that his “second sight” is really memory of the future: “Ordinary people are born forwards in Time. … But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have to live backwards from in front” (1966, 29). Gill Davies notes that Merlyn “shifts seamlessly between the internal narrative and an external omniscience, enabling White to postulate on a variety of subjects ranging from falconry to fascism” (2). Anachronism also occurs in character dialogue, as if the narrator is also a translator.24 Janet Montefiore assesses White’s narrative as a “double perspective,” which occurs when medieval and modern situations are described interchangeably, as when a knight complains about “lollards and communists” (1966, 199). Such examples emphasize historical parallels, in this case between the English Peasants’ Revolt and the Russian Revolution. The Strugatsky brothers likewise draw parallels between peasant revolts and their country’s revolution; the revolutionaries soon become oppressors themselves.25 White mentions dictators and concentration camps (1966, 350-51, 365), while Laxness leaves the parallels between medieval and modern warfare implicit—including forced marches, starvation in besieged cities, and the burning of settlements.26 Such parallels show that humanity faces timeless problems, which have only been exacerbated by the destructive power of modern technology. Where does the skeptical interrogation of the “double perspective” leave the sources of medievalist works? Hard to be a God is not a retelling,27 but The Once and Future King, Gerpla, and Grendel are all “supplementary” retellings; they 248 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA represent “back-handed tributes” to their respective medieval legends, as Kim Moreland terms Twain’s retelling (59). Howell observes of Grendel, “Gardner deconstructs the original epic’s characters and actions and many of its lines by placing them in an ironic context which implicitly questions the vision of the original work while saluting its literary power” (1993, 61–62). A similar comment might be made about Gerpla; Halldór’s narrator presents himself as a meticulous compiler and mentions his major sources, even though the book also contains invention and often employs irony.28 Intertextuality goes hand in hand with metafiction as the boundaries between history and fiction become increasingly difficult to detect. The protagonist of Hard to be a God, Rumata, translates Shakespeare into the local language, provoking an awed response.29 White confusingly deems Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales a cultural achievement that could only be enabled by the political achievements of King Arthur: “Where the raiding parties had once streamed along the highways … now there were merry bands of pilgrims telling each other dirty stories on the way to Canterbury” (1966, 445). White’s references to events in both medieval English fiction and history places his work in a very ambiguous “medieval” setting in “the Old England of the twelfth century, or whenever it was” (1966, 204). It is as if, for White, “medieval England” is the sum of medieval English texts, to be idiosyncratically sorted by what he found most relevant. History and myth alike are brought to bear on present-day problems as the story self-consciously separates itself from both. For example, Merlyn considers the successive invasions of the British Isles in order to examine political tribalism.30 Like White’s Merlyn, Don Rumata of Hard to be a God sees a medieval world around him, but remembers a modern one. A scientist from earth, he has come to study a planet at the feudal stage in history. His job title is Progressor, and his actions are bound by the largely non-interventionist ethics of the institution that employs him. This notion of a modern man trying to subtly “speed up” medieval history shows a remarkable similarity to a subgenre of medievalist literature, the “Time travel” romance (i.e. Morris’s A Dream of John Ball, 1886; Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, 1889). Hard to be a God might aptly be titled A Soviet Anthropologist in King Arthur’s Court: it features similarly anachronistic humour when Progressors go too far, as historians of the Middle Ages find themselves, like Twain’s Hank Morgan, opposing serfdom and leading peasant revolts (87-88; 40-41).31 The anthropologists in Hard to be a God possess a cogent big-picture theory of history; yet this does nothing to avert a crisis at any given point in history, nor does it solve problems deeply rooted in human nature. Moreover acting out the role of a medieval man in a medieval world, with only the occasional communication with colleagues from earth, places Rumata in a condition of cognitive dissonance. He finds his work surreal, as if he has spent half a decade living inside a costume drama. His audience at the Institute of Experimental History, he muses, could signal the end of this anachronistic performance at any THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 249 moment with a burst of applause (282; 35). One of Rumata’s colleagues fears that scholar and subject have become inverted:

Я, голубчик, уж и сны про землю видеть перестал. Как-то, роясь в бyмaгax, нaшел фотографию однoй женщины и долго не мог сообразить, кто же она такая. Инoгдa я вдpyг со страхом осознаю, что я уже давно не сотрyдник Института, я экспонат музея этого Института, генеральный судья торговой феодальной респyблики, и есть в музее зал, кyда меня следует поместитъ. (283)

[I’ve even stopped having dreams about Earth. One day, rummaging through my papers, I found a picture of a woman and for a long time couldn’t figure out who she was. I occasionally realize with terror that I’ve long stopped being an employee of the Institute, that I’m now an exhibit in the Institute’s museum, the chief justice of a feudal mercantile republic, and that there’s a room in the museum in which I belong.] (39)

As in Twain’s time travel romance, medieval and modern worldviews involve conflicting definitions of reality and thus of not only orthodoxy, but even sanity (33). In this novel, the concept of sanity has become ominously politicized. Michael Atkinson describes elements in Soviet science fiction that could be considered Orwellian: “[Due to] the pressures of real-life totalitarianism. … Reality itself was often under question” (n.p.). In the climax of the story, Rumata is arrested and accused of being an impostor, as worlds collide disastrously.32 Hard to be a God presents a sort of “historical determinism”: the arc of history overwhelms the actions of any individual, no matter how powerful (or godlike), as opposed to the “textual determinism” of Arthurian retellings such as those of White or Twain, where the plot must eventually arrive at the same ending as its source. Gardner, however, introduces a scheme of philosophical determinism. An omniscient dragon explains, “My knowledge of the future does not cause the future. It merely sees it, exactly as creatures at your low level recall things past. … I do not change the future, I merely do what I saw from the beginning” (63). As this dragon perceives the entire history of all universes, his vision is exponentially greater than that of Merlyn; yet knowing the future does not allow either of them to save themselves, and in all of these deterministic schemes fate seems more a matter of entropy than destiny.33 Such visionary powers, as possessed by these narrators and author-figures, enable them to warn modern readers who may naively believe that they are “outside of” or “beyond” history itself, and thus condescend toward the earlier “dark ages.” Gardner’s dragon, for example, actually corrects himself when quipping at Grendel: “It’s damned hard, you understand, confining myself to concepts familiar to a creature of the Dark Ages. Not that one age is darker than 250 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA another. Technical jargon from another dark age” (67). White’s narrator similarly protests the term “Dark Ages” as excluding the era of Hitler and Stalin: “Do you think that they, with their Battles, Famine, Black Death and Serfdom, were less enlightened than we are, with our Wars, Blockade, Influenza and Conscription?” (1966, 569). Unfortunately, these works observe, political power has manifested itself in similar ways in every age.

Kings: Usurpers

During decades defined by some of the most notoriously murderous dictatorships in history, the figure of the usurper became centrally important in medievalist literature. King Mordred of White’s The Candle in the Wind, King Olaf of Gerpla, and Don Reba of Hard to be a God are all usurpers, conspirators, and destroyers of civilization. These three characters are informed by the historical figures of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Lavrenti Beria. Moreover, there appears to be significant cultural overlap in the symbolism of the malignant usurper. All three feature similar attributes: a dubious past, a pale and ungainly physique, a deep inferiority complex, an uncanny aptitude for manipulation, and a love of power for its own sake, which inevitably leads to paranoia, torture, and murder. King Olaf the Stout is overweight, beardless, and awkward, so used to life at sea that he waddles on dry land. His crude concept of royal status reveals his roots as a raider; he wears more rings than he has fingers, as well as multiple belts and cloaks (191; 177). Yet beneath his comical exterior lurks an appetite for cruelty; he loves to torture his enemies, especially to remove eyes and tongues, which he keeps as grisly trophies (312; 292). Olaf’s “conversion” of Norway is wholly fraudulent: Christianity was well-established and people lived in peace whatever their religion, when Olaf realized that he needed an ideology to justify his desire to conquer (414; 390). Every time he refers to Christianity, it is in a folkloric sense that shows his very limited understanding (218, 485; 202, 455).34 His claim to the throne is similarly flimsy: that he is descended from Harald Tanglehair, the first King of all Norway. Few take this claim seriously; some say that even if it is true, Harald himself was no better than a tyrant. White’s Mordred, of course, stakes a claim little better—although he is Arthur’s son, he is illegitimate (being the result of incest); like Olaf, he seizes the throne unprovoked and by force, causing a civil war. Like Olaf, he is pale and beardless, drained of colour except for his strange blue eyes (1966, 454). He begins as a sort of evil dandy, who smirks and scoffs at chivalric notions of honour (1966, 548-51). As he encourages the decadence of Camelot, avant-garde fashion replaces chivalric ideals: “Mordred wore his ridiculous shoes contemptuously; they were a satire on himself. The court was modern” (1966, 505). Agravaine, his closest ally, suggests publicizing Guenevere’s infidelity and seizing power during the ensuing confusion: “If we could make a little merry mischief between Arthur and Lancelot, THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 251 because of the Queen, their power would be split. … Then would be the time for discontented people, Lollards and Communists and Nationalists and all the riff-raff” (1966, 552). A cynical opportunist, Mordred at first encourages Camelot’s decadence, and then becomes the leader of a populist party and condemns it (1966, 458). Stephanie Barczewski notes that this party is “clearly intended as an analogue to Nazism” (232); Mordred is even called “a Führer” (1977, 121). Agravaine, who plays Himmler to Mordred’s Hitler, suggests a term very similar to “National Socialism”:

You need a national grievance—something to do with politics. … You need to use the tools which are ready to hand. This man John Ball, for instance, who believes in communism: he has thousands of followers. Or there are the Saxons. We could say we were in favour of a national movement. … We could join them together and call it national communism. It has to be something broad … against large numbers of people, like the Jews or the Normans or the Saxons, so that everybody can be angry. (1966, 549)

William Morris’s “Teutonic Democracy,” as depicted for example in A Dream Of John Ball (1886), certainly looks rather different once it has been hijacked into a paramilitary movement.35 The atrocities committed in the name of various utopian ideologies during the twentieth century changed medievalism by forcing writers to scrutinize their source materials for notions of class warfare, cultural struggle, or ethnic-linguistic essentialism, as all had been revealed as possible pretexts for the deception, dispossession, starvation, and annihilation of whole populations. Where these themes occurred, they then had to be confronted in some sense. Gerpla describes racial dehumanization when the Norse encounter the Inuit (whom they call skrælingar, meaning savages or trolls): “Kölluðu norrænir menn eigi mannakyn standa að þjóð þessari og kváðu réttdræpa, sögðu spott dregið að menskum mönnum er ókindur taka á sig mannslíki með augum og nefi og öðrum skapnaði sem menn væri” [The Norsemen refused to consider skraelings as human and declared them unfit to live, calling it a mockery of human beings for monsters to take on their form, with eyes and noses and other human features] (346; 324). Similar to the chillingly dehumanizing perspective of wartime eugenicists, for the Norse colonists in Gerpla this attitude justifies the extermination of another people in a situation of intended population replacement.36 In contrast, Halldór emphasizes the universal humanity of all people with bitter sarcasm: “Svo er sagt að nafn það er þjóð þessi hefur gefið sjálfri sér haldi sömu merkíngu og þá er vér nefnum menn” [It is also said that the name this race has given itself means the same as our word for “men”] (362; 340). The closest parallels to the history of the Nazi Party in Germany, however, occur with Don Reba of Hard to be a God. An eerie figure whose sinister nature only 252 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA becomes clear once he gains power, he rapidly evolves into a fanatical dictator bent on establishing permanent control. Like Mordred and Olaf, sadism and ressentiment lurk within this usurper:

Три года назад он вынырнул из каких-то заплесневелых подвaлов дворцовой канцeлярии, мелкий, незаметный чиновник, угодливый, бледненький, даже какой-то синеватый. Потом тогдашний первый министр был вдруг арестован и казнен, погибли под пытками несколько одуревших от ужаса, ничего не понимающих сановников, и словно на их трупах вырос исполинским бледным грибом этот цепкий, беспощадный гений посредственности. (317)

[He emerged out of some musty basement of the palace bureaucracy three years ago, a petty, insignificant functionary, obsequious and pallid, with an almost bluish tint to his skin. Soon the then-First Minister was suddenly arrested and executed, a number of horror-stricken and bewildered officials died during torture, and this tenacious, ruthless genius of mediocrity grew like a pale fungus on their corpses.] (85)

If Don Rumata is another Marxist equivalent of a messiah-figure, tormented by watching the suffering of benighted mortals from the vast distance of the right side of history (as defined by Progressors), Don Reba is the equivalent of the anti-Christ, seeking to move his society out of the frying pan of feudalism and into the fire of fascism. In the hands of writers who saw their country invaded by the German war machine, the sinister Reba’s rise to power closely echoes that of Hitler, including a situation which seems intended as a direct parallel to the Reichstag fire:37

И в том, что украшение города, cвeркающaя бaшня acтрологичecкой обcepвaтоpии, тоpчaлa тeпepь в cинeм нeбe чepным гнилым зyбом, cпaлeннaя “cлyчaйным пожapoм.” (307)

[The jewel of the city, the gleaming tower of the astrological observatory, now protruded into the sky like a black rotten tooth, burned down in an “accidental fire.”] (72)

Reba claims to be protecting the king from assassination attempts, while demanding more power to deal with enemies of the state—and eliminating dissidents through paramilitary groups whose actions he can wash his hands of, until it is too late for his enemies to resist. Remembering earth, Rumata recognizes Reba’s tactics as similar to those of Hitler; thus, he suspects Reba of planning to THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 253 consolidate a coup by betraying former allies such as the gray soldiers (so called after the colour of their uniforms):

Ему было известно о тpениях между доном Рэбой и серым руководством. История коричневого капитана Эрнста Рема готова была повториться. (340)

[He was aware of the tensions between Don Reba and the gray leadership. The story of brownshirt leader Ernst Röhm was about to be repeated.] (121)

As Reba’s coup begins, Rumata already suspects a Night of the Long Knives.38 Yet although the parallels to Hitler are obvious, Reba was originally named Rebia, an anagram for Beria, the infamous head of Stalin’s secret police. Using a fascist as the primary villain would be ideologically acceptable, indeed laudable, in the censorious context of a Soviet novel; yet the Strugatsky brothers included a politically subversive message by drawing parallels between an authoritarian dictator and a supposed hero of the Soviet Union. The novel’s Afterword condemns Stalin and Beria and their “monstrous offspring … up to the elbows in the blood of innocent victims” (239). This widely successful novel, which seemed to bolster Soviet ideology, actually undermined it by advocating anti-Stalinist, anti-authoritarian views. A common feature in all of these works is consideration of the question of war from many angles, but this is perhaps especially true of T. H. White. His King Arthur is a tactical innovator who rejects the conventions of war, which he sees as tilted toward the upper classes (1966, 47). Since they profit from war and rarely get hurt as a result of their expensive armour and ability to pay ransom, they have no incentive to stop the violence, while commoners suffer (1966, 307). Yet even in conducting what he believes to be a just war, King Arthur commits atrocities: “in the effort to impose a world of peace, he found himself up to the elbows in blood” (1966, 380). Halldór Laxness’s Vikings similarly pillage the countryside and kill peasants, and all the while King Æthelred continues to pay them off—with money he gained from taxing peasants.39 War is thus simply racketeering. Indeed, when locals organize a militia to defend themselves, Æthelred makes a deal with the Vikings, since he “Þótti honum minni ógn standa af erlendum óvinaher en þegnum sínum” [considered hostile foreign armies less of a threat than his own subjects] (187; 174) ; and later on, King Olaf proves the same, only worse (393; 371). In Gerpla, the peasants who suffer the most as a result of the ambitions of great men are perfectly aware of their unlucky place in the grand and cruel scheme of things; and the same proves to be the case in Grendel (114). In the most anachronistic example of peasant class-consciousness since William Morris, a peasant explains the roots of political oppression thus: 254 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Rewards to the people who fit the system best, you know. King’s immediate thanes, the thanes’ top servants, and so on till you come to the people who don’t fit at all. No problem. Drive them to the darkest corners of the kingdom, starve them, throw them in jail or put them out to war. … Public force is the life and soul of every state: not merely army and police but prisons, judges, tax collectors. (119)40

King Olaf’s last speech in Gerpla reveals the criminal nature of those usurpers who would be dictators, who use Orwellian rhetoric and burn villages in order to save them:

Er það mín skipan að þér þyrmið aungu kykvendi er lífsanda dregur í Noregi, og gefið eigi skepnubarni grið þar til er eg hef feingið alt vald yfir landinu. Og hvar sem þér sjáð búandmann við hyski sínu á akri eða eingi, á þjóðgötu eða eikjukarfa, þá gángið þar milli bols og höfuð á; og ef þér sjáið kú, þá leggið hana; og sérhvert hús, berið eld að, og hlöðu, látið upp gánga; og kvernhús, veltið því um koll; brú, brjótið hana; brunn, mígið í hann; því að þér eruð frjálsunarmenn Noregs og landvarnarlið. (486)

[It is my command that you spare no creature that draws breath in Norway, and show no man mercy until I have once again gained complete control of the land. Wherever you see a churl with his brood in field or meadow, on the highroad, or in his punt, cut off his head. If you see a cow, slaughter it. Set each and every house ablaze, and send barns up in flames. Millhouses—topple them; bridges—break them. Wells—piss in them. You are the liberators and defenders of Norway.] (456)

Heroes: Madmen

Þorgeir Hávarsson, the kind of person inclined to follow the sort of commands just related, is the terror of farmers in every region of the world he visits. While Þorgeir’s sworn brother Þormóður praises his prowess, everyone else sees him as a thug whose character is not at all improved by his delusions of grandeur. Calling upon his sworn brother on a stormy winter night, at this fateful moment he enters the farm building with a sinister aspect, i.e. he “var líkari sjókind en manni” [looked more like a sea-monster than a man] (94; 89). The difference between heroes and monsters involves both how others see them, and how they see themselves.41 In Grendel the hero Beowulf sees himself as ascendant over nature and reality itself when he boasts of his exploits fighting sea-monsters while swimming in full armour. The passage is hyperbolic in the original poem, and upon hearing this account Gardner’s Grendel considers it “preposterous” (161). Everyone in the hall laughs—at first: “Now the Danes weren’t laughing. The THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 255 stranger said it all so calmly, so softly, that it was impossible to laugh. He believed every word he said. I understood at last the look in his eyes. He was insane” (162). In contrast to Grendel’s existentialism or the dragon’s nihilism, Beowulf seems to manifest a kind of postmodern solipsism or weaponized relativism, in which power conditions all claims and truth disappears amidst competing delusions—a competition he expects to win. In this Nietzschean nightmare, Beowulf has developed a grandiose view of himself that justifies both his ruthlessness and his messianistic pretensions, as he lies creatively and continually enacts fictions that he himself believes to be adaptive. Abandoning any rational epistemology while embracing strategic self-deception and making heroic new pronouncements about reality and the destiny of consciousness from on high,42 this Beowulf is, in the eyes of Grendel, a “fucking lunatic” (171). Yet Grendel fears that his time is over and that the age of madness has truly arrived; thus even he is intimidated by Beowulf’s “childlike yet faintly ironic smile” (154). For these self-styled heroes, the need for affronts to honour to be avenged justifies all of their acts of aggression, even though they often create a vicious circle of violence. Grendel finds their justifications absurd: “I laughed. It was outrageous: they came, they fell, howling insanity about brothers, fathers, glorious Hrothgar, and God” (81). Likewise when Þorgeir announces to Butraldi that he has come to avenge his crimes, Butraldi responds by snorting like a horse and laughing dementedly (119; 112). When Þormóður announces his mission to avenge Þorgeir in Greenland, he is similarly received with mocking laughter (352; 330). In Norway even King Olaf is surprised by how seriously Þormóður takes heroic ideas; when he announces his resolve to avenge his fallen sworn brother, Olaf assumes that the Icelander must be a madman (483; 453). The consensus among these works seems to be that those who most see themselves as heroes are often acting out precisely those dangerous delusions that are encouraged by the politically powerful. Grendel deliberately disillusions the would-be hero Unferth by refusing to fight him, preferring instead to insult him and throw apples at him. No level of heroic fanaticism will make Unferth’s performance a reality: once his “merry mask” of heroism is “torn away” he stands “reduced to what he was: a thinking animal stripped naked of former illusions, stubbornly living on, ashamed and meaningless, because killing himself would be, like his life, unheroic” (104). Similarly, Þorgeir’s father Hávar portrays himself as “einn mestur garpur á Norðurlöndum” [one of the greatest champions in the North] (16; 15) even though he is merely an arrogant oaf who prefers maiming animals to farming. He soon picks a fight over less than nothing and gets himself killed. When the seven year-old Þorgeir finds his father’s body, Halldór describes the sunny murder scene in gruesome, even shocking, detail (16; 15). As we will see, the “mask” of heroic identity alters its wearer’s perception in both directions, revealing the importance of aesthetics even to concepts of sanity. 256 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Þorgeir grows up aspiring to avenge his father and become a great warrior. As fanatical as Gardner’s Beowulf, he refuses to ever set aside the mask of the hero. He even sleeps armed: “Var það trúa hans að hetjur svæfi í þessum stellíngum en lægi eigi niður” [It was his belief that heroes slept in this position, and never lay down] (62; 57). A peaceable relative takes a dim view of Þorgeir’s heroic aspirations, commenting that, “er auðfynt að þú ert heimskra manna að faðerni, er þú hyggur þig góðan verða af manndrápum” [it is obvious that you are descended from fools on your father’s side, if you believe that manslaughter makes you more of a man] (47; 44). That Þorgeir thinks this becomes clear when he brutally attacks a man on the slightest possible pretext: simply for failing to acknowledge him. The man does not hear Þorgeir; it is windy and he is carrying a load of wood, but Þorgeir kills him. Þormóður is also present and if anything he encourages Þorgeir. Þorgeir then decapitates the man’s corpse:

Vanst furðu seinlega því að vopnið var deigt þótt hugur kappans væri góður; þó varð laust höfuðið frá bolnum um síðir, og lá maðurinn þar í tvennu lagi á grundinni hjá hrísbagga sínum og var dauður. (167)

[The task went incredibly slowly due to the dullness of his weapon, despite the champion’s firm intent. Finally, however, the head came off its trunk, and the man lay there dead on the ground in two pieces, his bundle of brushwood next to him.] (156)43

The Þorgeir of the original saga commits similar killings,44 but this senseless episode captures the psychology of Halldór’s Þorgeir: a narcissistic oversensitivity to slights real or perceived, a hunger for domination, and a blockheaded stubbornness that cannot be reasoned with. He is a disturbed individual who commits murder repeatedly; yet even he refrains from throwing infants onto spears, which other Vikings happily do (238; 222). Still others commit further war crimes: “nokkrir heingdu og við belti sér höfuð kvenna þeirra er þeir höfðu nauðgað þá um daginn” [hanging from the belts of others were the heads of the women that they had raped that day] (236; 220).45 Yet this does not convince him to defend farmers or find another life for himself; the closest Þorgeir ever comes to critical self-reflection is when he admits that

hins er eigi að dyljast að mjög hafa orustur orðið því ólíkar sem frá segir í fornum fræðum þeim er eg nam að móður minni og öðrum áætismönnum útá Íslandi. (257) THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 257

[it is no secret that the battles we have fought have been most unlike those described in the stories and lays of old that I learned from my mother and other noble persons in Iceland.] (241)

In the end, Þorgeir’s king betrays him and he dies in shameful circumstances—thus denied the heroic death of legendary characters like Beowulf or the outlaws of the Icelandic sagas.46 The worst of knights in White’s tetralogy is Agravaine, similarly a northern warrior obsessed with avenging perceived slights to his family honour. Like Þorgeir, he can erupt into brutal violence without warning. Indeed, in a saga-like scene of foreshadowing, he commits an act of cruelty while young, one which reveals his disturbed nature. First the young Agravaine recruits an innocent virgin, the kitchen maid Meg, to lure a unicorn. His brothers, including Gawaine, also accompany him into the woods. The unicorn duly appears and trustingly lays its head in Meg’s lap. Agravaine then slaughters it in one of the most brutal scenes in all of medievalism—and one which is particularly important given White’s hatred of cruelty to animals. Gilles Davies writes: “The reader of White is frequently confronted by difficult, unpalatable aspects of his work. I still remember my shock when … I encountered the death of the unicorn. … It was some time before I could continue with the narrative” (vii).47 Wanting a trophy from this grisly killing, Agravaine decides, “We must cut its head off somehow, and carry that” (1966, 269). Like Laxness, White emphasizes the difficult and disgusting task of beheading a body: “So they set to work, hating their work, at the horrid business of hacking through its neck” (1966, 268). This violence is nihilistic and senseless; it stains the souls of the perpetrators for the rest of their lives. The scene can be read as an analogy for wartime atrocities; the unhinged elder brother Agravaine exploits his position to make others, connected to him by “blood and soil,” complicit in his crimes. What value he places on life itself becomes clear from the horrific butchery of this innocent victim, just as Þorgeir beheads the man carrying wood.48 Indeed these aspiring heroes sometimes even resemble the monster Grendel, who wallows in his own monstrosity. As Agravaine butchers the unicorn in a sadistic rage and punctures its intestines, Grendel admits that the beauty and innocence of others provokes only hatred and rage in him. Thus when he sees the young queen Wealtheow he plans to rip her to pieces and “squeeze out her feces between my fists” (109). Such deliberately revolting scenes would never be found in Tolkien’s literary works, nor in many medieval ones. In scenes like these, which deliberately dwell on gruesome violence, readers encounter the aesthetics of nihilism.49 The results of this bravado are uniformly hideous. All of these postwar medievalist writers portray the misery of combat conditions: the mud and the disgusting food, the injuries and illnesses. Halldór always depicts the physical 258 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA process of dying from severe wounds in detail. He describes conditions aboard Viking ships as “seltu og tjöru, fúka og spýu, lús og ýldu, hrýfi og óþverra, skyrbjúg og kláða” [salt and tar, rotten seaweed and vomit, lice and decay, rashes and scabs, scurvy and itching] (273; 256), and mentions lice repeatedly. The Strugatsky brothers novel takes place in a barbaric world, in which parasites and diseases have free reign:

На сотни миль—от берегов Пролива и до сайвы Икающего леса—простиралась эта страна, накрытая одеялом комариныx туч, раздираемая оврагами, затопляемая болотами, пораженная лихорадками, морами и зловонным насморком. (270)

[This country extended for hundreds of miles—from the shores of the Strait until the saiva of the Hiccup Forest—blanketed with mosquito clouds, torn apart by ravines, drowning in swamps, stricken by fevers, plagues, and foul-smelling head colds.] (18)

Boris’s Afterword summarizes the desired atmosphere as “medieval piss and filth” (235), and bedbugs take the place of the lice in Gerpla: they are a constant reminder that Nature involves an ongoing transfer of blood, quite aside from any blood that may be spilled in the course of aestheticized heroics. White’s references to ants, in contrast, are meant to depict human conflicts in terms of population dynamics, with political propaganda and much else satirized by comparison with ant colonies.50 While such scenes offer a somewhat abstract overview of war, White also dwells on wartime conditions on the ground: “barns burnt, and dead men’s legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried” (1966, 234). Gardner observes the consequences of raids: burned buildings, dead livestock, and mutilated corpses. Indeed Grendel argues that since human tribes wipe one another out all the time in raids, wars, and other population-level conflicts, and do so apart from any of his actions (which were initially motivated not by malice but by hunger or at most curiosity), he is not an unusually monstrous life form.51 Through Grendel’s bleak perspective, Kathryn Hume writes, Gardner “supplies something which we know must logically have been there all the time, but has been ignored as contrary to heroic decorum,” emphasizing the book’s original publication context of 1971, during the Vietnam war (89).52 In Gerpla, the first account readers receive of a Viking raid comes from the slave Kolbakur. Although he is only a minor character with few lines in Fóstbræðra saga, Halldór’s Kolbakur shockingly describes how he was enslaved when Vikings raided his farm in Ireland: THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 259

Hetjur og skáld brendu hús mitt, þeir hjöggu föður minn á akri og lögðu afa minn spjóti, örvasa mann. Þar lá amma mín á knébeð að lofa blessaðan Kólumkilla hollvin sinn, og rotaði maður hana með öxarskalla; og því græt eg ei. Þá tóku þeir bróður minn ómálgan, undu af honum reifa og köstuðu honum nöktum milli sín á spjótum, en móður mína og systur únga drógu þeir brott hljóðandi á skip. (39)

[Heroes and skalds burned down my house. They slew my father in his field and thrust a spear through my grandfather, just a frail old man. My grandmother was on her knees praising her beloved friend, the blessed Columbkille, when a man bashed in her skull with a blow from his ax. That is why I do not cry. Then they took my infant brother, unwound his swaddling clothes, and tossed him naked between them on their spear points. My mother and my young sister they dragged away wailing to their ship.] (36)

Kolbakur is, rather understandably, opposed to what he sees as needless violence. Viking raids are never glorious in Gerpla—whether in Iceland, Ireland, England, France, Norway, Sweden, or Russia. At one point the raiders’ accomplishments are summarized as “stolið kúm og brent Evropam í sjö kynslóðir” [stealing cows and setting fire to Europe for seven generations] (222; 206). Yet the later stories are utterly different from Kolbakur’s account, being shaped instead by court poets to conform to a heroic aesthetics. W. H. Auden’s The Shield of Achilles (1955) captures a similar reevaluation of its titular hero. Inverting the traditional poetic praise of a victory, Auden gives the goddess Thetis a timeless vision in the divinely forged shield; like White’s Merlyn, Gardner’s dragon, and Don Rumata, this direct link between different stages in history proves shocking by its juxtapositions. From her mythologized world, one defined by the ancient aesthetics of heroism, Thetis is faced with direct sight of the industrial realities of modern warfare, including vast death camps and the desolation of whole countries:

The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long. (207)53

If kings have become frauds or usurpers, and heroes have become madmen, what can be said about those who glorify their acts and deeds? 260 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Poets: Propagandists

[Sometimes, the dragon tells Grendel, the people] have uneasy feelings that all they live by is nonsense. … That’s where the Shaper saves them. Provides an illusion of reality. … Mere tripe, believe me. Mere sleight-of-wits. He knows no more than they do about total reality—less, if anything: works with the same old clutter of atoms, the givens of his time and place and tongue. But he spins it all together with harp runs and hoots, and they think what they think is alive, think Heaven loves them. It keeps them going—for what that’s worth. (64–65)

Tolkien wrote that “The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it,” adding that it “always was (despite the poets) and always will be (despite the propagandists)” (quoted in Jackson 55). The medievalist writers discussed here, however, would hardly distinguish between the two. Kings and heroes never lack a poet to glorify their wars, like the Anglo-Saxon scop or the Norse skáld. Halldór emphasizes how irresponsible poets have been through Þormóður’s praise of Þorgeir and Olaf; early on a relative warns him that “ógagn eitt og hamíngjuleysi hefur jafnan af því leitt er saman kómu vígamenn og skáld” [nothing but harm and misfortune result when killers and skalds come together] (56; 52). Grendel watches Hrothgar’s court poet invent the heroic story that will become Beowulf: “The Shaper was singing the glorious deeds of the dead men, praising war. … It was all lies” (54). Like Halldór’s Skald Þormóður, Gardner’s Shaper aims to benefit directly from glorifying his king: “He would sing the glory of Hrothgar’s line and gild his wisdom and stir up his men to more daring deeds, for a price” (42). And yet, with all the cynical understanding that Grendel has, the Shaper’s art still works on him: “The man had changed the world, had torn up the past by its thick, gnarled roots and had transmuted it, and they, who knew the truth, remembered it his way—and so did I” (43). Like Winston Smith, beleaguered by party propaganda in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), Grendel worries about his memory being rewritten. Even his narrative style briefly changes to reflect the Shaper’s manipulation (44). Through aesthetics the Shaper distorts history; all of his creativity is aimed in the single direction of increasing the power and glory of his paymaster. When he dies he stops speaking mid-sentence, still prophesying future victories for his king. The Strugatsky brothers depict the degradation of literature from art to propaganda through the figure of Gur the Storyteller, who composes a masterpiece based on the lives of people he actually knew, but is forced to burn his own books because the government considers them immoral. Truth is no defense; he is forced to submit to an Orwellian maxim: “Мне объяснили, что правда … это то, что THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 261

сeйчас во благо королю … Все остальное ложь и преступление” [Truth is what currently benefits the king. Everything else is a lie and a crime] (350; 135). He soon finds himself reduced to composing abysmal praise poetry for the court. In a comic moment he poetically proclaims that the king is so wonderful and powerful that “И отступипа бесконeчностъ” [Infinity is in retreat] (351; 135) to which the king responds: “Xвaлю. Можешь кушать” [I commend you. You may eat] (351; 136). All of this is a damning judgment: poets, it appears, just glorify the nearest violent madman who offers them status and money, just like certain European intellectuals during World War II (Wolin xi).54 In the poignant conclusion of Gerpla Þormóður finally meets Olaf, the king he has glorified—and finds him truly repugnant. As Þormóður broods over what the path of the skald has cost him, Olaf asks him to recite his praise poem, the Lay of Heroes. Refusing to recite the poem, Þormóður basically burns his life’s work: “Nú kem eg eigi leingur fyrir mig því kvæði” [I can no longer recall that lay] (493; 463).55 Presumably he also refused to rouse Olaf’s army with the glorious poem on the heroic Scylding dynasty, the Bjarkamál, the next morning.56 Halldór’s Þormóður thus achieves the self-recognition that the Shaper, whom Gardner depicts as an early propagandist of this same dynasty, never did; he chooses to fall silent in condemnation of his own previous words. In Gerpla the legend that grows after King Olaf’s death legend is thus wrong and illegitimate, or at least it does not reflect Þormóður’s final understanding of Olaf. How does such an unpleasant figure as Olaf become a saint? Olaf’s corrupt collaborator, the bishop Grímkell, bribes the papacy and launches a propaganda campaign: “Og fer sem jafnan vill verða, að þeir er veita eftirmæli konúngum ráða og sögu þeirrar æfi sem var, en kjósa ölnum og óbornum dýrlínga” [Now it went as it so often does, that those who bestow posthumous glory on kings also rewrite the stories of their lives, and thereby create saints for generations present and future] (490; 460). Grímkell’s motivation is simply to advance his own power. Halldór notes that in this time the power of poets like Þormóður was fading, to be replaced by that of bishops like Grímkell (467; 439). Unfortunately, bishops prove to be no better than poets when it comes to justifying violence. When recently baptized Vikings ask a bishop whether they should burn a church in which their mutual enemies are hiding—along with numerous innocent people—they receive this reply:

Kristur heldur víst eigi loflegt né rétt af aungum sökum eld að bera að kirkjum og brenna konúnga inni, ellegar landsmúg, konur og börn og önnur vesalmenni. Á hitt ber að líta, að þó að Kristur sé mikill fiskimaður, þá verður hann eigi í sjálfs neti fánginn. (233) 262 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

[Assuredly, Christ holds it neither laudable nor just, for any reason whatsoever, to set fire to churches and burn kings inside them, or commoners, women and children, or other wretched folk. Yet it should be kept in mind that although Christ is a great fisherman, he will not be caught in his own net.] (217)

This ingenious explanation carries on at some length, and in the end entails a justification for war crimes. In Grendel clerics likewise use theology to maintain their grip on power; it is merely cynical sophistry that obscures its circular reasoning with pretentious vocabulary (131). Thus the torch of propagandist passes from shaper to priest, from poet to churchman. Halldór Laxness had once believed in Lenin as a Christ-like figure and the Soviet Union as a “Promised Land” (Guðmundsson 180). Halldór Guðmundsson writes, “One is inevitably led to ponder how Halldór, a man who truly wished the best for his countrymen and who interpreted their lives and fates with more sympathy and artistry than has ever been done since, could have become a defender of Stalin” (191). When considering the peculiar phenomenon of western intellectuals’ love of foreign dictators such as Stalin, Orwell writes that many “intelligent and sensitive people” nevertheless unleash exactly the vindictive emotions associated with tribalism in relation to whatever intellectual cause upon which they have projected (or in Orwell’s term “dislocated”) their primal psychological tendencies (n.p.). Orwell notes the association of ethics and aesthetics in utopian thinking; Halldór Guðmundsson likewise observes that Laxness himself was first interested in communism by the appeal of its dreams of ultimate liberation; and he later recognized this very appeal as dangerous (260). It is well worth noting that the Icelandic Nobel Laureate’s doubts about communism began with aesthetic ones (336). Gardner’s Grendel likewise observes that because of the power of aesthetics art shades into religion and holds within it the power to make men mad (43). This may explain why these postwar medievalists insist on depicting deliberately hideous and shocking scenes of war. In many ways, an Orwellian analysis of politics sets the works herein discussed apart from previous works of literary medievalism.57 Orwell himself fought in the Spanish Civil War and was severely wounded, which could certainly be considered heroic; yet he was skeptical enough of heroic literature to call Thomas Carlyle, author of On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), “one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism” (n.p.). Of the astounding cynicism and ruthlessness of political leaders, particularly in times of war, no writer warned more powerfully than Orwell. Yet he reserved particular scorn for the intellectuals, who “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” and who seek “to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” (1999, n.p.). Using the term “Transferred Nationalism”58 to criticize political ideology in general, Orwell argues that by THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 263 selling their souls for power, intellectuals become ideological propagandists, all the while remaining convinced of their own moral superiority:

Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also—since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself—unshakably certain of being in the right. (1999, n.p.)

Like propagandists, ideologues grant themselves a license to deceive others, justifying their actions in the here and now by appealing to the beauty of the dreams they believe in, although this sort of thinking amounts to little more than “the ends justifies the means.” It is exactly this golden haze of idealism, Orwell notes, that motivates the most militant ideological fanatics to undertake the most extreme measures: “What remains constant in the nationalist is his state of mind: the object of his feelings is changeable, and may be imaginary” (1999, n.p.). Thus Þormóður considers reworking his lay in praise of King Olaf to praise King Cnut, before finally rejecting the idea of praise poems entirely. The conclusion of Gerpla seems to express skepticism of narrative itself, at least if it is in any way linked to the exercise of power. White’s tetralogy concludes in a manner which displays striking parallels to Gerpla. Halldór’s narrative concludes on the eve of a famous battle, one in which readers already know that both Olaf and Þormóður were killed.59 Like Laxness, White does not depict his King’s last battle, but instead looks forward to it (490; 460). The night before his final defeat, White’s King Arthur considers many theories which might explain war: original sin, human nature, determinism, ambitious leaders, hateful populations, the “Deep Roots” evolutionary theory, antecedent feuds, economic inequality, and political geography (1966, 676). The tetralogy ends on a pessimistic note as Arthur realizes that these problems are beyond his understanding and he cannot save his kingdom. He knows what will happen: “Everybody was killed” (1966, 674). Yet whereas Þormóður repudiates his ideals completely, White’s King Arthur hopes that someone will keep alive the titular “Candle in the Wind” of his lost idealism; not any particular belief system or ideological solution, but simply the idea that humans can still do good and that it is possible to improve or at least preserve the world. Thus he sends his page Tom (Malory) away to preserve the dream of Camelot. Stephanie Barczewski points out that by inserting Malory as a character in the finale of his tetralogy, White crosses boundaries of history and legend, fact and fiction, authorship and story (232-35). This ending device confers unreliability on the Morte; the Malory who witnessed these events is a youth, full of just the naïve idealism that Arthur tries to dispel. Colin N. Manlove notes, “The drive of events seems to be towards the defeat of any ideal, of any attempt to make sense of human affairs” (78). 264 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Like Laxness, White provides a conclusion that is both poignant and devastating, perhaps seeking the antidote to war in a true understanding of humanity’s place in nature: “I think I can really make a comment on all those futile -isms (communism, fascism, conservatism etc.) by stepping back—right back—among the other mammals” (1977, xvi). Similarly, Gardner designed Grendel as a survey of the “Great Ideas of Western Civilization: love, heroism, the artistic ideal, piety, and so forth” (Child 113).60 Yet the Voice of Nature—in the form of the dragon—rejects them all. Gardner’s novel thus exposes the illusory nature of various “futile -isms,” even while recognizing that it may be impossible for pattern-seeking primates such as humans to avoid a certain level of “-ism” in their worldviews. It is interesting to consider that the strongest belief in the positive power of narrative, art, and culture to emancipate populations rather than justify their maltreatment comes from the Strugatsky brothers, whose novel is clearly an attack on Hitler, Stalin, and Beria alike. Still, the “basis theory of feudalism” saves no one, and villains like Reba have their own theories of history, which they use quite adeptly as ideological pretexts to persecute all those who stand in their way. Whereas Tolkien’s religious perspective entails belief in the validity of narrative in a deep sense (what Tolkein called Story), that is just what these medievalist schismatics rejected. In examining the role of the poet, these postwar medievalist writers close the loop of metafiction and account for the creation and history of their own sources. Acknowledging the profound symbolism and aesthetic inspiration of medieval literary masterpieces, they also reveal the ominous extent to which such things can prove to be a double-edged sword, especially when the strange gleam of romanticism settles upon them. For T. H. White, Halldór Laxness, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and John Gardner, medievalism could not provide a nostalgic escape to a time of honour and nobility. Instead horrible suspicions about human nature and destiny, borne of the “Midnight of the Twentieth century,” haunt their works. Rewriting their respective literary traditions from a bleak point of view, these works reconsider the nature of narrative itself, especially in the case of the cultural processes that produce heroic legends. Perhaps for generational reasons even more than for cultural or biographical ones, each of these writers arrived at an Orwellian analysis of the interrelated roles of ruler (king), enforcer (hero), and propagandist (poet); they form a sort of unholy trinity as authoritarianism and war sweep across the world. Perhaps these are the three figures who glower in Alberto Giacometti’s sketch on the cover of Wayward Heroes.61

NOTES

1. From The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (2000), 303. I am grateful to a number of colleagues who challenged me to expand my horizons in this article, and who helped make it THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 265

possible. Birna Bjarnadóttir’s guidance and inspiration was invaluable throughout, particularly regarding Gerpla. I would like to thank Sigrid Johnson for all her wonderful work at the Icelandic Collection of Elizabeth Dafoe Library, where I did the research for this article. Christopher Crocker’s suggestion of looking at Hard to be a God proved to be a very good one. I am glad to acknowledge the help of further librarians at Dafoe: Lyle Ford, who purchased the English translation for the library via the Margaret Stobie Fund, as well as James Kominowski and Nicole Boudreau, who procured the Russian novel and assisted with transcription. Thanks to Evgenia Cherkasova (Suffolk University) for checking my transcriptions, and to Julia Rochtchina (University of Victoria) for double-checking. Their generous assistance made it possible to represent a perspective from the Soviet Union in this article; any remaining errors are my own. 2. For discussion of the Vestfirðir (or West fjords region), from which these saga protagonists hail, see Bjarnadóttir in this volume (“In Nature’s Cathedral”, 285). The quotation comes from Laxness 2016 (286); see the corresponding original Icelandic passage in Laxness 1952 (305). 3. Shippey acknowledges this in the conclusion to the third edition of The Road to Middle-Earth (374), a book which is almost entirely about the connection between Tolkien’s literature and medieval European traditions through philology (first edition 1983). This conclusion to the third (2003) edition connects readers to Shippey’s second major monograph on Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2001). Here we find that Tolkien’s unique body of literature reflects the concerns of its own time while also revealing its roots in the Middle Ages. 4. Shippey also notes that aside from Tolkien, several other major twentieth century authors of fantastic literature were also military veterans, and turned to the fantastic mode of literature so as to express alienation that could not be captured by biography, journalism, or historical fiction; George Orwell is one of his main examples (viii). 5. Hume’s statement may not capture the complexity of Tolkien’s relationship to religious traditions. Tolkien was a lifelong Catholic, although his attitude toward belief did fluctuate; this ebb and flow also influenced how he understood his own creative work (see Shippey 2003, 324). 6. Another oft-discussed example of echoes of the Somme in Tolkien’s work, which Tolkien himself admitted, is the corpse-filled marshes through which Gollum leads the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings (see Shippey 2001, 217). 7. This poem was first published in 1832; I refer to the 1842 revised version (The Camelot Project includes both). 8. Henceforth the title in English translation is used to refer to the Strugatsky Brothers’ 1964 novel, and Russian quotations from the 1984 edition are followed by corresponding quotations from Olena Bormashenko’s 2014 translation. 9. See also Kristjánsdóttir in this volume for discussion of Hemingway and Halldór Laxness. 10. For further discussion see Shippey 2003 (338) and 2001 (xv). 11. See Hughes in this volume on the reception of Gerpla; see Shippey 2001 on the reception of The Lord of the Rings, whose popularity modernist critics dismissed as, in Shippey’s terms, “a kind of literary disease” (vii). 266 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

12. Halldór’s narrator uses this phrase in one of several references to the novel’s own storytelling. Quoting this comment as it occurs in Wayward Heroes, the narrator disclaims any responsibility for readerly disillusionment: “Holy Scripture says that the man who is fettered to a place by his flesh, and who feels as if everything around him is orchards and roses, will one day go walking and notice that the orchard is naught but burning desert, offering neither water nor shade, only barren rocky wastes where there is not a single blade of grass for a bunting’s beak. Whether such wisdom comes gradually, or is revealed to a person in a single moment one day, will not be debated in this little book” (335). 13. The Tripos is the English literature exam at Cambridge. 14. For White’s thoughts on conversion to Catholicism see Sprague 134. Tolkien was a lifelong Catholic, whereas Halldór Laxness’s journey led into Catholicism in the 1920s, and later into (and out of) communism. 15. The science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, directed by Stanley Kubrick) was inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” (1948); Clarke cowrote the film and published a novel version the same year. 16. This novel, while a Strugatsky Brothers science fiction novel, is not part of the set of fourteen novels that are considered canonical to the “Noon” universe (named after Noon: 22nd Century). 17. Boris Arkady’s Afterword appeared three decades after the novel’s original publication; he was only able to publicly acknowledge that Don Reba was intended as a depiction of Beria once the Soviet Union had ended. The Russian version from which I am quoting does not include this Afterword, so only passages from the Afterword as it appears in Bormashenko’s translation are given here. 18. The Afterword notes that the novel has been translated into many languages and that by the post-Soviet era there had already been nearly fifty editions. 19. This was a joint production with both German and Soviet involvement. 20. The original title of this film was The History of the Arkanar Massacre, a reference to the coup that takes place at the climax of the story. 21. Tolkien’s models of authorship included the epic poet (i.e. the Beowulf-poet) and the prose mythographer (i.e. Snorri Sturluson); on this topic see Geeraert 2018. Shippey notes that Tolkien believed that “people, and perhaps as a result of their confused linguistic heritage especially English people, could detect historical strata in language without knowing how they did it” (2001 xiv). In other words, for Tolkien the roles of poet and mythographer cannot be separated from that philologist, capturing and preserving expressions sanctified by widespread use, which thus reflect the wisdom of the crowd or even the gleam of divine inspiration. One finds in Tolkien’s legendarium a corrupted or dark parallel role in ambitious manipulators like Saruman whose industrial schemes, in aiming to establish artificial, centralized control, desecrate ancient cultures and pristine ecosystems alike. 22. Regarding Gardner’s complex views on existentialism and how these apply to Grendel, see Child 113; other articles in the same volume consider related matters of Gardner’s views on existentialist thinkers such as Sartre. THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 267

23. Quoted and discussed in Sprague 47. 24. This is of course a device that Tolkien uses (his narrator is translating from ancient sources) and indeed a device medieval authors themselves often used, claiming to be translating from an old book whether or not they actually were. M. J. Toswell writes, In the Middle Ages, it was right and proper to invoke authority, and even more right and proper to suggest that one’s own contribution to a story was slight, a matter purely of presenting it in a different language or a different form. In other words, a medieval author would emphasize the sameness of the text, would be likely to disclaim all innovation; if innovation did happen, it had to be in the spirit of the original and be presented almost as something the authority would have written if it had been possible. Innovation was bad; the best thing for any given text was a rich traditional authority. In other words, the things that make “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” subversive and theoretically aware in the modern era are precisely the same elements that make it an exactly appropriate medieval text – but in an equally subversive way since medieval writers claimed to be following their authorities exactly, often at precisely the moment they were most thoroughly departing from them. (71) 25. The protagonist Don Rumata considers this inevitable quandary of power and human nature when the idealistic revolutionary who has been born too early in history, Arata, asks him for advanced weaponry in order to accomplish his revolution at the end of Chapter Nine (Трудно быть богом, 300). Rumata notes the historical pattern that, in the wake of the overthrow of an old elite, elitism itself remains as a new elite simply takes control. 26. See King Olaf’s disastrous march through Sweden in particular: Laxness 1952, 395; 2016, 372-73. 27. The authors mention they may have had Don Quixote in mind (on this topic see the Introduction in this volume), but their story is not directly based on a medieval source text to whose plot a retelling, no matter how heretical, must be anchored. Yet there certainly may be a thematic echo of Don Quixote in Hard to be a God, as the protagonist’s assumption of heroic superiority could be construed as a kind of messiah complex—and here the Strugatsky Brothers resemble the earlier science fiction writer Evgeny Zamyatin, who satirized the Soviet messiah of “Reason” in We (written 1921, published 1924, and widely translated; Zamyatin died in exile in 1937). 28. Howell’s statement on Gardner’s narrative methods might be applied to Gerpla in many ways; on Gerpla’s complex relationship to its sources see Eysteinsson and Kristjánsdóttir in this volume. 29. In Hard to be a God, the poetry Rumata translates into the fictional language of Arkanar, Irukanian, is entitled “To be or not to be?” and is perhaps a version of Hamlet’s famous monologue. Rumata’s listener, a medieval priest, responds with admiration to this early modern text: “‘Holy Míca!’ cried the inflamed Father Hauk. ‘Whose poetry is this?’” (60). Rather than explain that other worlds exist to a medieval man (his orders prohibit this level of interference), Rumata claims that the poetry is his own (see the 268 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

corresponding passage in Трудно быть богом, 300). Placing real literary works in fictional contexts is a well-established tradition in medievalist literature and has led to remarkable developments in metafiction; writers like Borges (see Toswell 2014), Tolkien (see Shippey 2003), and E. R. Eddison (see Geeraert 2016) envision mythologies that connect the texts of many traditions. 30. The ability of opportunists to gain power by dividing populations along ethnic, religious, and cultural lines is a consistent theme throughout White’s tetralogy. For example, Merlyn states, “Neither the racial maniac nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt” (1966, 241). 31. The novel seems to take the view that history cannot be “sped up.” Even Progressors are bound by something similar to the “Prime Directive” of noninterference in premodern civilizations as outlined in the science fiction series Star Trek (1966-1969) since any interference, even if well-intentioned, could create disastrous unintended consequences. Rumata remembers several examples; here is one as it is described in Bormashenko’s translation: “Carl Rosenblum, one of the leading experts on the peasant wars in France and Germany, also known as the wool-seller Pani-Pa, led a revolt of Murissian peasants, stormed two cities, and was killed by an arrow to the back of the head while trying to stop the looting” (41). Is this tragedy or absurdity? The scene in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974) in which a historian, lecturing on medieval battles for a documentary, is struck down by an armed “knight” on horseback, also comes to mind in this context of metafictional humour (and peasant revolts). 32. In Hard to be a God, the villain Reba actually suspects that Rumata does not belong in his world: “I don’t even try to gaze into the abyss that brought you forth. My head spins and I fall into heresy” (172). 33. I discuss this dragon’s dialogue in a scientific context elsewhere (2016). On Merlyn and his sense of inevitable fate see White 1966 (228). Other writers (for example John Steinbeck) also developed Merlin’s sweeping and yet fatalistic perspective of timeless vision in parallel ways (see Geeraert 2016). 34. It would not be unfair to describe Olaf’s understanding of Christianity in Gerpla as simply that Christ is the most powerful god, and he is on Olaf’s side. 35. On William Morris and Teutonic Democracy, a Victorian interpretation of the history and literature of the Old North, which can be found in Morris’s “Germanic” romances, see Geeraert 2016 (Chapter 2). 36. In Gerpla the fact that the Norse do not take over Greenland and displace or even annihilate the Inuit is more a result of their limited ability to adapt to local conditions (a historical narrative which is now being questioned as an explanation for the failure of the Greenland Norse) rather than any kind of restraint, much less good intentions. Þormóður himself even complains that the Norse lack the ability to wipe out the Inuit population. 37. In T. H. White’s tetralogy Merlin rejects Hitler as a false messiah in what appears to be a reference to the same historical events: “Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people” (274). THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 269

38. This is the exact phrase which Bormashenko’s translation uses (Chapter six, page 149). The interpretation of Reba as Hitler is obvious through this and other parallels, and likely helped the authors conceal the fact that on a deeper level they were implying that Hitler and Beria were morally indistinguishable. 39. See Gerpla 192–93 and Wayward Heroes 178–79 on ransom payments. 40. Likely as a result of the hindsight offered by the history of the Russian Revolution leading to Stalinism, even the medievalist writers most sympathetic to communism ideologically (Halldór Laxness or the Strugatsky brothers) still display a view of communism more similar to that of George Orwell than William Morris. This speech does seem somewhat reminiscent of the analysis of power in Goldstein’s book in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. 41. Here a particular physical detail may be relevant: both Halldór’s Þorgeir and Gardner’s Beowulf are beardless. This trait is famously associated with the wise and benevolent protagonist of Njál’s Saga whose paranormal knowledge may be associated with notions of androgyny; on this topic see Ármann Jakobsson (120). However these “heroes,” while they may be uncanny or even paranormal, are not benevolent but instead take on a monstrous aspect. Notably, King Olaf of Gerpla and King Mordred of White’s tetralogy, both of whom are eerie and sickly usurpers, are also beardless. 42. Orwell used the term “doublethink” for strategic self-deception; it is at the core of Nineteen Eighty-Four. 43. See discussion of this killing in Eysteinsson in this volume (143). 44. Ármann Jakobsson argues that the Þorgeir of The Saga of the Sworn Brothers is not a realistic character but rather a symbolic literary construction (51); whereas Halldór attempts to imagine how delusional a man like this would have to be if he tried to act out such an exaggerated role in reality. 45. Halldór follows this description of the horrors of Viking war crimes with a description of how joyful the killers feel as they feast among the ruins, a juxtaposition that emphasizes their lack of empathy for their victims. 46. Regarding Þorgeir’s death and the resulting “Head of Destiny,” see the Introduction to this volume. 47. Davies also mentions Freudian interpretations of this scene; Agravaine believes his mother Morgause (who also tortures animals) will be proud of their deed. White certainly reinterprets the traditional medieval Christian symbolism of the unicorn (with its association of innocence and purity) in shocking biological terms. 48. Halldór changes this scene significantly from the saga version; for further discussion of this killing see Eysteinsson in this volume. 49. On this subject it may be worth quoting Thomas Ligotti, who in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (2011) condemns tragedy as insufficiently pessimistic because of its aesthetics of beauty: “It is as a counterweight to the blithering fatuousness of human life that tragedy as entertainment performs a crucial function – that of coating the spattered nothingness of our lives with a veneer of grandeur and style, qualities of the theatrical world and not the everyday one” (165). With a similar point of view, perhaps, these writers deliberately employ shock and disgust; White’s butchering knights 270 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

“perforate the intestines” of the unicorn’s corpse and cause an awful stench, an apt depiction of the aesthetics of nihilism this generation of medievalist writers felt compelled to employ. See also Bohrer, Felski, and Nye’s “The Tragic: A Question of Art, not Philosophy of History ”(2010). 50. Gardner’s Grendel makes the same comparison, seeing human warfare as a population level phenomenon (38). 51. Grendel makes a related point about killing to eat versus for other reasons and is shocked to see human clans wipe one another out in raids yet let meat go to waste, as he has never encountered this with any other species. 52. Of course, even an aesthetics intended to revolt readers still in some sense follows literary conventions, and many “heroic” literary works feature “anti-heroic” elements. Thus the relationship between aesthetics, authorial political alignment, and reader response may not be as simple as Hume’s statement would imply. 53. Through divine vision, Thetis looks into the Shield of Achilles and sees not the Homeric wars in which her son will fight, but rather imagery from the second World War, far in the future. Achilles seems to be a symbol of warfare itself in this poem and Thetis is taken aback by the industrial carnage to which it will one day lead (For discussion see Taylor 224). Frederick Ahl, translator of Virgil’s Aeneid, explains how the classical tradition in which prophetic visions appear in the scenery of a famous shield was already anachronistic by Virgil’s time: “Rome’s history [is] depicted through an ekphrasis [description] of the scenes on Aeneas’ shield. Homer had devoted much of Iliad 18 to the description of the scenes on the shield made by Hephaestus/Vulcan for Achilles, but these were scenes representing all of Greek life—the cities and countryside at peace and at war, harvest, and ritual dance. What Aeneas sees are episodes from his future city” (xxxvi-xxxvii). With this new vision Auden thus contributes to a long literary tradition indeed; a contemporary comparison might also be made to the visionary artifacts called Palantír in Tolkien’s mythology. 54. In Gerpla the shifting allegiances of skalds are symbolized when Sighvatur Þórðarson of Apavatn changes ships (and patrons). Sighvatur provides a very different view of the skald’s role than Þormóður; it is more self-consciously mercenary, perhaps, but also far more realistic; above all, Sighvatur never falls for his own fictions. 55. See Eysteinnson in this volume on Halldór’s self-representation as the author of Gerpla, “Kilian the Skald,” which would seem to support the idea that Þormóður’s story holds echoes of Halldór’s own (143). 56. Byock discusses these verses and their later interpretation in a pan-Germanic context in his introduction to his translation The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (xiii-xiv). See also the American science fiction writer Poul Anderson’s retelling, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (1973). In “Hrólfr kraki: from Sentimental Drama to Fantasy Fiction,” Tereza Lansing notes that Anderson’s literary traditionalism is more a matter of aesthetics than ideology: “Anderson has the most conservative approach to the material, which he not only tries to preserve but also reconstruct. … His aim is not to idealize the past; on the contrary, he brings forth an Iron Age dystopia that, written as it was at the height of the Cold War, presents a frightening image of what shaky Western civilization may once again become” (177). THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 271

57. For a comparison between White and Orwell see Glyn Salton-Cox 143. 58. Writing in an age shaped by many -isms, which nevertheless displayed similar tactics in enforcing their own orthodoxies, Orwell uses the term “Transferred Nationalism” to refer to political ideologies more generally, following the argument above, that these represent a “dislocation” of humanity’s tribal psychology. 59. Halldór implies, however, that rather than being wounded in the battle and dying in the aftermath, the skald is actually killed by the slave of Kolbrún, thus completing his descent into the abyss where she dwells. 60. Howell recounts five -isms which Susan Strehle identifies as subjects of Gardner’s critiques, and adds six more as well (1993, 78). 61. For further discussion of the connected roles of poet, king, and hero in Gerpla, see Andrésson in this volume.

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Child, Robert D. 1988. “‘Death by Book’: John Gardner’s Critical View of Language as an Interpretive Approach to Grendel.” In Thor’s Hammer: Essays on John Gardner. Edited by Jeff Henderson, 113–22. Conway: University of Central Arkansas Press. Cowart, David. 1983. Arches and Light: The Fiction of John Gardner. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Cowdery, Stephen. 2017. Laxness in Translation: A Celebration of Halldór Laxness, Icelandic Author and Nobel Laureate. Accessed 2 March 2019. https:// laxnessintranslation.blogspot.com/. Davies, Gill, David Malcolm, and John Simons. 2008. Critical Essays on T. H. White, English Writer, 1906–1964. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Gallix, Francois. 1986. T H. White: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishers. Gardner, John. 1977. A Child’s Bestiary. New York: Knopf. ⸻. 1989. Grendel. New York: Vintage Books. ⸻. 1991. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Vintage. Garth, John. 2003. Tolkien and the Great War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gaudette, G. C. 2015. The Arch and The Abyss: A John C. Gardner Resource. Accessed 2 March 2019. http://johngardner.org/. Geeraert, Dustin. 2016. “Medievalism and the Shocks of Modernity: Rewriting Northern Legend from Darwin to World War II.” PhD Diss., University of Manitoba. ⸻. 2018. “Etaynez þat hym anelede of þe heȝe felle’: Ghosts of Giants in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Comitatus 49 (Fall 2018): 71–101. von Geldern, James. 2017. “Strugatsky Brothers: Science Fiction.” In Seventeen Moments in Soviet History: An Online Archive of Primary Sources. Accessed 8 May 2019. http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1973-2/strugatsky-brothers/. Grage, John K. 1977. “T. H. White: The Fantasy of the Here and Now.” In Fantasy, Faerie, and Pseudo–Medievalia in Twentieth Century Literature. Edited by John Wortley, 33–46. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Hadfield, Andrew. 1996. “T. H. White, Pacifism, and Violence: The Once and Future Nation.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate 6 (2): 207–26. Howell, John M. 1980. John Gardner: A Bibliographic Profile. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 273

⸻. 1993. Understanding John Gardner (Understanding Contemporary American Literature Series). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Hume, Kathryn. 1983. Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature. New York: Methuen. Jackson, Aaron Isaac. 2010. “Authoring the Century: J. R. R. Tolkien, the Great War, and Modernism.” English 59 (224): 44–69. Jakobsson, Ármann. 2017. The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North. New York: Punctum Books. Lansing, Tereza. 2016. “Hrólfr kraki: from Sentimental Drama to Fantasy Fiction.” In Studies in the Transmission and Reception of Old Norse Literature: The Hyperborean Muse in European Culture (Acta Scandinavica: Aberdeen Studies in the Scandinavian World). Edited by Judy Quinn and Adele Cipolla, 165–80. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. Laxness, Halldór. 1952. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books. Ligotti, Thomas. 2011. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. New York: Hippocampus Press. Malory, Thomas. 2003. Le Morte D’Arthur (Norton Critical Edition). Edited by Stephen H. A. Shepherd. New York: W. W. Norton. Manlove, Colin N. 1977. “Flight to Aleppo: T. H. White’s The Once and Future King.” In Fantasy, Faerie, and Pseudo–Medievalia in Twentieth Century Literature. Edited by John Wortley, 65–84. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Montefiore, Janet. 2008. “Englands Ancient and Modern: T. H. White’s The Once and Future King and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them.” In Critical Essays on T. H. White, English Writer, 1906–1964. 21–38. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Morace, Robert A. 1984. John Gardner: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities). Milton Park, Oxfordshire: Taylor and Francis. Moreland, Kim. 1996. The Medievalist Impulse in American Literature: Twain, Adams, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Charlottesville: Virginia University Press. Moulder, Jason W., and Marcus Schaefer. 1996–2007. England Have My Bones: For the Reader of T. H. White. Accessed 27 April 2019. http://www2.netdoor.com/ ~moulder/thwhite/. 274 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Murphy, Tom O. 2011. The Grendex: An Index to John Gardner’s Grendel. Accessed 2 March 2019. http://brtom.org/gr/grendintro.html. Orwell, George. 1999. “Notes on Nationalism” (Digital Edition). In The Orwell Project. Accessed 26 April 2019. http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/ english/e_nat. ⸻. 2008. Nineteen Eighty–Four. New York: Penguin Classics. Peach, Linden. 2008. “Review of Critical Essays on T. H. White, English Writer, 1906–1964.” In Edwin Mellen Press Online. Accessed 26 April 2019. https:// mellenpress.com/book/Critical-Essays-on-TH-White-English-Writer-1906- 1964/7456/. Purdon, James. 2008. “Beastly Anachronisms: Youth, Atrocity, Disorder and The Once and Future King.” In Critical Essays on T. H. White, English Writer, 1906–1964. 39–54. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. The Saga of King Hraki. 1999. Translated by Jesse Byock. New York: Penguin Classics. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. 1997. Translated by Martin S. Regal. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiriksson Publishing. Salton-Cox, Glyn. 2008. “England, Whose England? The Rhetoric of Englishness in T. H. White and George Orwell.” In Critical Essays on T. H. White, English Writer, 1906-1964. 143–56. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Shippey, Tom. 2001. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. London: Harper Collins. ⸻. 2003. The Road to Middle–earth. Third Edition. London: Harper Collins. Silesky, Barry. 2004. John Gardner: Literary Outlaw. New York: Shannon Ravnel Books. Sprague, Kurth. 2007. T. H. White’s Troubled Heart: Women in The Once and Future King. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer. Strugatsky, Arkady, and Boris Strugatsky. 1984. “Трудно быть богом.” In За миллиард лет до конца света : повести. Moscow: Sovietskii pisatel. ⸻. 1978. Noon: 22nd Century. Translated by Patrick L. McGuire. New York: Macmillan. ⸻. 2014. Hard to be a God. Translated by Olena Bormashenko. Chicago: Review Press. Taylor, Paul Beekman. 2001. “Auden’s Icelandic Myth of Exile.” Journal of Modern Literature 24 (2): 213–34. THE NORTHERN EPIC IN THE WAKE OF WORLD WAR II 275

Tennyson, Alfred. 1842. “The Lady of Shalott” (Digital Edition). In The Camelot Project: A Robbins Library Digital Project. University of Rochester. Accessed 2 March 2019. https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/tennyson–shalott- comparison. Tolkien, J. R. R. 1994. The Lord of the Rings. London: HarperCollins. ⸻. 2000. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Toswell, M. J. 2014. Borges the Unacknowledged Medievalist: Old English and Old Norse in His Life and Work. London: Palgrave. Twain, Mark. 1963. A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. San Francisco: Chandler. Virgil. 2007. The Aeneid. Translated by Frederick Ahl. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Warner, Sylvia Townsend. 1977. “Prologue.” In The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King by T. H. White, xiv–xviii. Austin: Texas University Press. ⸻. 1989. T. H. White: A Biography. Oxford Lives Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, T. H. 1966. The Once and Future King (comprising The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill–Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind). New York: Berkley Medallion Books. ⸻ 1977. The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King. Prologue by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Austin: Texas University Press. ⸻. 2010. The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. New York: Dover. Wolin, Richard. 2004. The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wayward Heroes: Vagabonds in World Literature

BIRNA BJARNADÓTTIR

ABSTRACT: In Gerpla (1952), Halldór Laxness’s newly envisioned saga characters leave their native fjords and encounter different cultures on their travels abroad. They find themselves where the Greco-Roman cultural heritage meets the Northern legacy. Rewriting the saga heritage in times of civilization’s monumental decline, Halldór does not withdraw to the medieval and the remote but instead seeks the very roots of Western narrative and culture. Thus Gerpla, recently translated as Wayward Heroes (2016), can be located not only as a modern Icelandic response to the literature of the Old North, but also as a contribution to the European literature of exile; from The Odyssey to Ulysses, from Divina Commedia to Don Quixote.1

RÉSUMÉ: Dans Gerpla (1952), les personnages de saga nouvellement imaginés par Halldór Laxness quittent leurs fjords natifs et rencontrent différentes cultures lors de leurs voyages à l’étranger. Ils se retrouvent là où le patrimoine culturel gréco-romain rencontre l’héritage nordique. En réécrivant l’héritage de la saga à l’époque du déclin monumental de la civilisation, Halldór ne se retire pas dans le lointain médiéval mais cherche plutôt les racines mêmes du récit et de la culture occidentaux. Ainsi, Gerpla, récemment traduit en anglais par Wayward Heroes (2016) (traduit en français en 1979 par « La Saga des fiers-à-bras »), peut être situé non seulement comme une réponse moderne islandaise à la littérature du Vieux Nord, mais également comme une contribution à la littérature européenne de l’exil : de l’Odyssée à Ulysse, de Divina Commedia à Don Quichotte.

Birna Bjarnadóttir is a researcher and project manager at the University of Iceland

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 riginating from the edge of Europe, the sworn brothers of Halldór Laxness’s Gerpla dedicate themselves to the heroic worship of a newly Christianized Norwegian king—and in the process undergo a O profound displacement. These Icelandic saga characters, Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Bessason, are newly imagined in Halldór’s novel; their journeys ferry modern readers to a seemingly remote region of world literature, where the Classical and Northern European traditions meet. The novel’s aesthetics should thus be considered in both an Icelandic and international context.2 In responding to the crises of civilization that occurred in his lifetime, Halldór does not simply offer a sparse satire of the remote and those displaced. Instead, in his act of medievalism Halldór aims at the heart of Western narrative tradition—above all through his reinterpretation of the passage across oceans and lands, through life and literature, which the saga-hero Þorgeir and the saga-poet Þormóður pursue. In this seemingly remote region of world literature, the term flækingur [vagabond] enters the stage, a term that first appears in Old Norse after the conversion to Christianity.3 When placed next to the term hetja [hero] in the newly Christinaized Northern Europe, the flækingur can cast some light on what is both lost and gained in the process of conversion: the purposeful days of the heroic ideal have been replaced with sentiments like homelessness and existential cataclysm. This is not to imply that the gates of the city of God are thrown open at the moment of conversion in Iceland, or that Gerpla manifests such a transformation.4 The intention here is not to explore the religious conversion of Iceland and the way in which Gerpla may manifest some of its transformative aspects.5 Instead this article considers a “conversion” that is aesthetic in nature, one which is undergone by Gerpla’s Icelandic protagonists—and how this fits into the wider context of European and world literature. Whereas the original title of Gerpla is bereft of any obvious references to the story’s hero-vagabond transformation, something different occurs in the novel’s English translation. If there were an Introduction to Wayward Heroes (2016), Philip Roughton’s English translation of Gerpla, it would perhaps have included a note on The Happy Warriors, the title of the previous English translation of the novel by Katherine John.6 Published already in 1958, or only a few years after the original publication of Gerpla in 1952, John’s title-in-translation is no less captivating on the hero-vagabond front than the one introduced by Roughton more than half a century later. Despite the Happy Warriors’ underlying references to some of the consistent self-destructive features of Western civilization, in comparison with Wayward Heroes the former title does miss out on the geographical aspects of the “conversion” in the lives of the Icelandic travellers.7 To perceive the subject of heroic worship and vagabondry in Wayward Heroes, one must cross a bridge or two in terms of aesthetics, literary traditions, and 278 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA cultural heritages. The lives and travels of Þormóður and Þorgeir are shaped by geographical realities; the reader perceives a movement from their natural habitat (the edge of Europe), to (mostly) better-known regions within the more civilized areas of Europe. The heroic legacy that can be found in Norse eddic poetry shapes the sworn brothers; its amoral dimension informs their aesthetic ideas. What they find most praiseworthy is often what other characters and cultures find least moral; thus the clash of perspectives in Gerpla is related to not only the simultaneously medieval and modern style of the novel, but also to the rival worldviews that Halldór describes in contrast to the sworn brothers’ heroic worship. Raised on Northern lore, the protagonists provoke confusion when they attempt to take this legacy abroad. Like its two protagonists from the Vestfirðir [Westfjords], Gerpla itself oscillates between Iceland and the Continent. Considering both the geographical and cultural aspects of exile in European literature, I will suggest that the transition from heroic worship to the state of vagbondry in Gerpla reveals the novel’s unique position in between distinct literary traditions. In lieu of a conclusion, I will consider the migration of the Icelandic sworn brothers across the heart of Western history-making in relation to the prospects of the modern (and ongoing) migration of literature.

Don Quixote in Greenland? At the Limits of Mythic Amorality

Gerpla was published in 1952, not long after the Second World War. While rewriting an ancient heritage in a difficult and highly demanding act of medievalism, Halldór’s earlier (and voluntary) conversion to Catholicism must have served him well, not to mention his later close encounter with Stalin’s ideology and admiration of it—for a while.8 But how might these conversion experiences of Halldór’s inform the concept of heroic vagabondry in a novel like Wayward Heroes? First, many have detected an intertextual relationship between Halldór’s novel and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Halldór himself had no disagreement with the notion; however, he did distinguish Spanish chivalric romanticism from the heroic worship in medieval Icelandic literature.9 Perhaps what Don Quixote provides, then, is a chivalric parallel to the passage from hero to vagabond in the lives and travels of Þormóður and Þorgeir. Don Quixote (1605-1615) emerges from the Spanish Golden Age, and is written in a picaresque style of the late sixteenth century. Usually, Cervantes is said to have helped move beyond the literary conventions of the chivalric romance, or from a straightforward retelling of a series of acts to a “display” of the knightly virtue of the hero. However, less has been written about the fact that Cervantes was a contemporary of St. Teresa, the sixteenth-century Spanish nun, and like Kafka, compelled by her ideas and writings.10 In his introduction to his renewed translation of Don Quixote, Guðbergur Bergsson considers how Teresa’s writings stood out at the time for her passion toward the inner life of man. Don Quixote VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 279 may carry a few of her seeds as did the lives of both Cervantes’ sister, who entered the religious life and became a Carmelite nun, and his wife, who also sought Teresa’s company. For Guðbergur, Don Quixote is literature’s knight in disguise and a symbol for the writer, the theme of the book being by and large the nature of art, that is to say, the art that is human life.11 In this light, Cervantes’ novel has been viewed as the romantic book par excellence. Maurice Blanchot writes, “it reflects upon and unceasingly turns back upon itself with the fantastic, agile, ironic, and radiant mobility of a consciousness in which plentitude seizes itself as a void, and seizes the void as the infinite excess of chaos” (354). If there is a “radiant mobility of a consciousness” to speak of in the narrative of the lives and travels of Þormóður and Þorgeir in Wayward Heroes, however, it is a different one from that which readers encounter in Don Quixote; it has a specifically Icelandic character. The sworn brothers’ inner life seems to be fettered by what the Icelandic poet and scholar Grímur Thomsen (1820–1896) refers to as the “shadow side” of the otherwise silent Nordic passion (1872, 50), on the one hand, and a curiously fixed idea of poetry’s task in a displaced heroic code, on the other. In the Icelandic context, the heroic worship in question manifests in the Northern eddic poetry, which Halldór clearly draws on in his saga-inspired novel. These mythological poems describe the magic and wisdom of everyday life, particularly in the staggering “high sayings,”12 and this guidance seems to find its way into the lives and travels of the sworn brothers. One of Þorgeir’s seemingly obscure (if not stubborn) remarks, which he makes while in foreign lands, testifies to its own eddic-mythological origin:

Seint mun þau tíðendi að spyrja af Þorgeiri Hávarssyni að eg blaðra klútum fyrir mönnum, að biðjast hjálpar. Þyki mér betra að gerast skernár manna en þurfalíngur. Var mér því aldregi spáð að eg mynda í þá ógæfu hrata að þiggja grið að mönnum. Mun eg því hér deya í skerinu heldren þola minkun. (172)

[It will never be reported of Þorgeir Hávarsson that he flapped a kerchief to plead for help. I would rather be left to die on a skerry than live as a starveling. It was never fortold to me that I would suffer the misfortune of having to live off another man’s mercy. Therefore I will die here, rather than endure abasement.] (160–61)

A parallel perspective is expressed in the following stanza from Hávamál [Sayings of the High One], one of the foremost mythological eddic poems in the Poetic Edda:

Bú er betra, þótt lítit sé, halr er heima hverr; blóðugt er hjarta 280 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

þeim er biðja skal sér í mál hvert matar. (329)

[A farm of your own is better, even if small, everyone’s someone at home; a man’s heart bleeds when he has to beg for every single meal.] (19)

As distinct from chivalric romantic literature, the tradition of heroic worship in Icelandic literature already manifests what might be considered an earlier journey from heroism to vagabondry, in the secularizing transition from eddic poetry to the saga legacy. Indeed, both the eddic poetry’s mythological dimension (as above) and the epic features of the saga world are present in Wayward Heroes.13 Both are rich in complexity and thus highly challenging; the eddic heroic poetry in particular is a slippery slope for modern interpreters, not the least in the domain of morality.14 Surpassing all known structures of the concept of morality, the characters’ behaviour in the pre-Christian eddic heroic lays cannot be valued on the basis of anything accepted as exemplary morality, from medieval times to the present.15 Instead, the heroic worship encountered in Wayward Heroes draws on Icelandic ideas of amorality that are mythographic; ideas that survived from the eddic world into the world of the sagas. In its Icelandic literary character, the heroic worship encountered in Halldór’s novel determines the nature of the singular journey of the sworn brothers. These characters’ total devotion to heroic worship while on their passage from heroism to vagabondry may seem unfathomable, but it can be illuminated by considering it as an aesthetic transition comparable to the religious or political conversions (and perhaps also deconversions and disillusionments) with which Halldór was familiar. In this context, the Icelandic dimension of mythic amorality allows for an aesthetically spectacular view of that which cannot be praised in human behaviour, as manifested in the actions of the sworn brothers. They are allured by the amoral traditions of heroic worship whose roots lie in ancient poetry. If anything, this poetry’s mythic amorality casts light onto the characters’ “shadow side.” Here, at the bloody and demanding heart of Western civilization, the shadow side of literature itself comes to light. The novel’s Greenland chapter is thus especially revealing, as it explores the limits of Western civilization both culturally and geographically. What lies beyond these limits and what drives Norsemen to go to Greenland? At that moment in the lives and travels of the sworn brothers, Þorgeir’s head has washed ashore in Iceland after the hero has completed (more or less) unnoticed heroic deeds in the more civilized regions of Europe. The poet Þormóður then awakens to the VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 281 task of revenge, departs from everything he loves in Iceland and travels to Greenland, where he suspects his sworn brother’s killer resides. The paths of these two never cross, however, and there will be no glorified death to narrate in Greenland.16 Regardless of the possibility of an alleged heroic encounter, the peaceful Greenlandic fields—shrouded in icefog under a pitch dark sky—cannot respond to the spectacular demands of the heroic passions. Halldór portrays the Greenland episode as taking place at the very edge of Western civilization and finally past the limit when Þormóður’s life is saved by the Inuit. As he lives among them he begins to learn their language, but the mutual incomprehension runs far deeper than that:

En lítt skildu núítar af þessari ræðu; var þeim landskipunarbók eigi með öllu kunn og höfðu aldregi heyrt getið konúnga né garpa, eða, spurðu þeir, hvort ekur Ólafur þessi hundum betur en aðrir men? (312–13)

[The Inuit understood little of what he said. They were completely ignorant of the customs and laws of other lands and had never heard of kings or warriors. “Does this Olaf,” they asked, “drive dogs better than other men?”] (356–57)

It is not the only time that Þormóður, voicing his ideals abroad, is received as a madman;17 the Inuit are focused on the practical necessities of survival while Þormóður is obsessed, even at this extremity, with glorifying violence. With its exposure of the faltering fringes of the medieval Norse society, the Greenland episode may signify something profound on the front of Western civilization and its literature. According to Halldór Guðmundsson, it suits Halldór Laxness well “to site Utopia in a place he has never seen” (2008, 342). The Inuit certainly provide a peaceful alternative to heroic worship; they moreover demonstrate an entirely different perception of time, narration, and nature. Yet is Utopia the right word for this episode? From the writing of Wayward Heroes and onwards, Halldór appears to be departing from his conviction that a radical, social reform here on earth is a cause worth fighting for, and aiming instead for the possibilities within literature. Halldór’s remarks on this front were not clear cut, though, as for example in a letter to Peter Hallberg, the Swedish literary scholar, where he suggests that “when writing about a novel, it is advisable to keep to what’s written in the novel.”18 Nevertheless, considering Halldór’s literary projects and comments leading up to the writing of Gerpla, they can provide useful context for the Greenland chapter. At this time Halldór was mostly occupied with the “Eldur í Kaupinhafn” [Fire in Copenhagen], the final part of Íslandsklukkan (1943–1946) [Iceland’s Bell], where 282 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Snæfríður, the sun of Iceland, rides in black on her departure and casts a shadow over the reader’s eyes. Apart from writing the last part of Iceland’s Bell, Halldór was also working on several other projects. This time saw the final acts of the Second World War, and within the greater region of Western civilization other books with comparable themes to Halldór’s works were written. Two important examples are Thomas Mann’s novel Doktor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend (1947) and Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life, which was published in 1951, a year before Gerpla. During this time, Halldór had also been keeping himself occupied with the publication of editions of sagas that used modern Icelandic spelling (see Crocker in this volume). In his Eftirmáli [Epilogue] to Brennunjálssaga (1945) [Njál’s saga], Halldór considers the fatalism of Norse heathendom as the saga’s main subject matter, how it contradicts Christian religion in a fundamental way, and that there is a certain “siðblinda” [psychopathology] involved in a doctrine of this sort (416). He also writes about the saga’s unique style, thus linking aesthetics and amorality in a way that seems to anticipate Gerpla. According to the history of literature, Halldór writes, Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia is believed to have invented the individual in European literature. Prior to the arrival of Dante’s individual, however, the anonymous author of Njála had already anticipated such ideas in what should be recognized as a European context. Halldór argues that the author of Njála demonstrated a unique stylistic enterprise by giving shape to the individual in the description of characters (416–17). He then returns to the saga’s main subject matter and discusses the “lífsspeki” [wisdom] of Njála:

Þessi hugarstefna, óaðskiljanleg örlagakenningunni, er skilyrðislaus dýrkun hetjuskaparins án tillits til, hvort málsstaður manns er góður eða illur, hún er lof þess manns, sem bregður sér hvorki við sár né bana, þess manndóms, sem enginn ósigur fær snortið og er sterkastur í dauðanum. (418)

[This idealism, inseperable from the idea of fate, is an unconditional worship of the heroic personality without reference to whether a character’s position is good or evil; it is the praise of the man who reacts neither to pain nor death, the type of manhood that no defeat can touch and who is strongest in his own death.] (Guðmundsson 2008, 300)

Within the context of Western civilization’s horrific achievements in the twentieth century, and the way in which Halldór’s wayward heroes later enter the bleak scene, this saga interpretation certainly illuminates the amoral nature of heroic worship. Halldór closes the epilogue by recognizing the aesthetic or literary power of this vision, and how it finds followers quite apart from any of the moral implications of glorifying violent men. VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 283

In Wayward Heroes Halldór’s shattering Greenlandic revelation, in turn, highlights how the peaceful Inuit see time differently, as something other than a list of glorious and tragic battles, tailored to support the rise of this or that power. Thus, the fateful requirements of Western narrative tradition and history-making form a key theme in Gerpla, as Halldór himself highlights in the above-cited letter to Peter Hallberg:

[Í] Gerplu er umfram alt verið að tala um hetjur og skáld, og þar er einnig verið að tala um stríðið og um þá menn sem stjórna herjum, löndum og ríkjum, og náttúrulega einnig þjóðum; en þó framar öllu um þá sem stjórna hugmyndum manna. (Guðmundsson 2004, 569)

[The subject is first and foremost about heroes and poets. It is also about war and those men who are in charge of armies, countries and states, and of course nations. Most importantly, the novel is about those who control people’s ideas.]19

How far can such amoral heroic ideas reach and still effectively impose their own aesthetics on the world they encounter—impose literature on life—and at what cost? In Gerpla, Greenland represents the remote region where the heroic narrative, like the chivalric romance narrative of Don Quixote, shimmers like a mirage.

Heathen Romanticism: Vacillating between Iceland and the Continent

When considering the character of the wayward heroes, Icelanders on the Continent, the reflections of Grímur Thomsen can help to illuminate the scene. Grímur studied at the University of Copenhagen and was the first Icelander to receive a master’s degree in comparative literature, his subject being the poetry of Byron in a philosophical context. A few modern poets, writers, and scholars have noted the profundity of Grímur’s approach to literature, including his familiarity with the works of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), one of modernity’s major philosophers of life and literature.20 Grímur’s literary essays, which first appeared in Danish in the 1850s, consider medieval Icelandic literature within the context of the Greeco-Roman cultural heritage.21 In “What Is Romanticism?” Þórir Óskarsson calls these essays “the most ambitious literary scholarship of the nineteenth century” (112), yet they never became a model for other Icelanders. Grímur considers the special features of medieval Nordic literature by comparing its subject matter and form to what is found in ancient Greek literature. Just as Friedrich Nietzsche would later do, Grímur also inquires into the notion of specific features of literature as they appear in relation to both religion and philosophy.22 284 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Grímur asserts that a belief in the individual’s power and importance is a mainstay of Nordic people. For this reason, the Nordic person suffers alone and in silence, and never wavers. Norse literature thus depicts an image of humanity enduring a “stoic suffering,” a view that informs “the entirety of the Nordic man’s activity and life” (1972, 67). Such an introverted way of being is, in Grímur’s view, proof of the spiritual nature of his ancestors: those who sensed the incompleteness of the word. What differentiates the Nordic spirit from the Greek spirit is, therefore, not only the Nordic’s passion for quiet fortitude (or a still, smouldering anger) but also a certain unflinching and overriding will, which Grímur calls kyrrleiksástríða [passion for tranquility]. For him the main characteristic of Nordic passion is self-restraint: “Nothing is wasted of that precious passion, and instead of squandering it with words … words are much more likely to be irritants” (61). Yet the Nordic passion is not always silent. And here Grímur points to a recognized feature of the Icelandic sagas—the obligation to exact revenge. This is the “shadow side of passion,” he says, “which even we Christian men must admit has artistic merit when looked at apart from moral law.” This “shadow side” acquires a more positive sheen when we remember that “blood revenge was an obligation in the society of our forefathers” (61–62). In a number of ways, Grímur’s deep-running approach to the challenge of the saga heritage anticipates that later taken up by Halldór Laxness. Grímur’s essay “On the Character of Old Northern Poetry” begins with a critique of the philosophy of the universalist pretensions of both religious systems and the aesthetics of Hegel: “It is remarkable that Hegel, who said that the idea of a philosopher required that he knew everything, and who pretended himself ‘to know everything,’ neither makes any mention of the Northern mythology in his Philosophy of Religion, nor of Northern poetry in his Æsthetics” (45). Despite the fact that the poetry of the North has no place in Hegel’s “scientific classification of poetry,” Grímur continues, the German philosopher describes all its properties in an essay on romantic poetry. According to Grímur, these properties are “the energetic overbearing will” and the “deep reserved mind” (45). What Grímur sees are proud feelings of freedom and independence, which have their counterparts in romanticism: “Nordic literature is not, therefore, in any way rooted in classical literature; quite the contrary, it can in truth be called heathen romanticism” (85). When discussing romantic literature,23 Grímur finds it impossible to miss that it is grounded in something other than, but of equal importance to, a Christian foundation. According to Grímur, one would have to search long and hard to find a Christian spirit in Macbeth and Richard III—and Shakespeare was certainly more of a Northern poet than he was a Christian when he conceived of and developed these and similar plays. Hamlet, for example, is “much more a product of Northern reserve, with all its passion and taciturnity, with all its eloquence, than of a Christian’s struggling self-reflection” (46). VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 285

Seen from the perspective of medieval European literature and culture, the saga characters’ inner lives are shaped by a sentiment that appears to co-exist with, rather than fully belong to, the Christianized Europe. This separate poetic, religious, and aesthetic tradition presents a formidable challenge to modern interpreters, to which Halldór responds with both literary mastery and also some self-doubt. When rewriting Fóstbræðrasaga and Ólafs saga helga, Halldór questions not only the saga characters’ lack of sympathy on their passage from hero to vagabond, but also his own.24 In Halldór’s medievalism the characters’ “heathen romanticism,” and vacillation between the Icelandic and Continental traditions is not viewed as a dilemma to be mastered once and for all.25 Instead, Halldór approaches the literary challenge of reconsidering the saga legacy as a broad phenomenon in the region of European literature, which is related to the crises of modern history. This can be seen in the treatment of geography in Gerpla, which is linked to power and ambition throughout the novel.

In Nature’s Cathedral: Halldór’s Symbolic Geography of Exile

The dense opening paragraph of Gerpla ferries the reader straight to the edge of Europe, in the West Fjords of Iceland, where the stage is set for a medieval-modern spectacle:

Tveir eru garpar er einna hafa orðið nafnkunnastir á Vestfjörðum, þeir Þorgeir Hávarsson og Þormóður Bessason svarabræður, og er að vonum mart í frásögnum af þeim við Djúp, þar sem þeir hófust upp, svo og í Jökulsfjörðum og á Hornströndum; hafa þeir og í þessum stöðum öllum frægðarverk unnin. (5)

[Two are the heroes from the Vestfirðir that have gained the greatest renown: Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Bessason, sworn brothers, of whom, as we might expect, much is told in Ísafjarðardjúp, where they grew up, as well as in the Jökulfirðir and Hornstrandir. In all of these places they accomplished great feats.] (7)

In addition to Fóstbræðrasaga and Gerpla, the remote natural habitat of the sworn brothers has inspired several key works of Icelandic literature throughout the centuries. There could be many different reasons for the creative power of the Westfjords. Among the foremost may be the fact that Ísafjarðardjúp [The Deep of Icefjord] is one of the deepest fjords in Iceland and opens up into several other bays and deep fjords, which often have a dome-like feel to them.26 In other novels Halldór also begins with geographical realities, which make an immediate claim on the reader’s perception and sense of orientation. In Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír (1927) [The Great Weaver from Kashmir], for example, the story of the lives and travels of some other Icelandic characters is framed thus: 286 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Áðan flugu tveir svanir austryfir. Veröldin er einsog svið þar sem alt er í haginn búið undir mikinn saungleik: bjarkarilmur í Þíngvallarhrauni, kylja af Súlum, purpuralog á Esjuhimni, bláminn djúpur og kaldur yfir Skjaldbreið; en það kvöldar ekki meir; náttleysa og andvaka í öllum áttum. (7)

[Once two swans flew overhead, eastward. The world is like a stage where everything has been set up for an extravagant musical: the fragrance of birchwood in the lava fields at Þingvellir, cold gusts of wind from Súlur, violet light in the Esja sky, the azure deep and cold over Skjaldbreiður, but darkness no longer descends. Nightlessness and insomnia in all directions.] (9)

The scene above feels very different from the encounter that opens Wayward Heroes. Nevertheless, just as the region of the Westfjords is at some point replaced by other regions (including monuments of civilization such as Rome) in the sworn brothers’ saga, in The Great Weaver the wakeful lava fields of Þingvellir represent the edge of the world’s stage. By its conclusion, the latter novel reveals a subtle passage from modernity’s newly established secular order into a religious-based rejection of that order; this rejection takes place in Rome, Europe’s capital of Catholicism. Thus, despite some differences in their openings, there is a parallel movement to speak of in the two novels’ geographical dimensions: before the Icelandic characters are ferried over to more civilized regions of Europe, they are characterized by their natural habitat, the edge, which remains an abstruse backdrop throughout. In Halldór’s later novel Kristnihald undir jökli (1968) [Under the Glacier], the character Prof. Dr. Goodman Syngmann proposes a more cosmic view of geography: “Við búum hér í útjaðri geimsins. Það er verið að gera tilraun til að lifa hér” [We live at the edge of outer space here. An attempt is being made to live here] (162; 145).27 Considering cultures and their boundaries in such terms makes one reconsider what literature ought to be considered central or marginal, major or minor; but I will set aside the subtleties involved in any movement toward a minor literature.28 Exile is more of a state of being than a particular geographical location; this may be why Halldór transposes one of the most famous exiles in literature, Dante Alighieri, into Iceland in The Great Weaver from Kashmir. In The Great Weaver the geographical plot certainly thickens when readers encounter the presence of Dante himself at the wakeful lava fields of Þingvellir, where continents meet. As it is, Dante is right there with his Divina Commedia to welcome the reader at the novel’s gate. As explained by the translator Philip Roughton, the quotation included there is from the third part, Paradiso, and is VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 287 spoken by Dante’s ancestor Cacciaguida, who is giving Dante advice on how to act in exile:

Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna, tutta tua visïon fa manifesta; e lascia pur grattar dov´ è la rogna. Ché se la voce tua sarà molesta nel primo gusto, vital nodrimento lascerà poi, quando sarà digesta.

[But none the less, all falsehood set aside, make manisfest all that you have seen; and then let them scratch where the itch is. For if at first taste your voice be grievous, yet shall it leave thereafter vital nourishment when digested.] (XVII. 127‒32)29

While Halldór himself obviously found this advice profoundly important, there is no immediate sign of Dante in the sworn brothers’ cathedral, Icefjord’s Deep. Why should there be? A couple of Icelandic characters who reveal the passage from hero to vagabond in the newly Christianized Northern Europe, and who thereby cast some light on modernity’s catastrophies, may not have much in common with the exiled Dante and his Florence in the early thirteenth century. But what if Dante’s Commedia (1308-1321) hovers over not only the “extravagant musical” which is staged in Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír, but also the mythically amoral Gerpla? At the very least, Dante’s poem is among the definitive Western literary works when it comes to European ideas of the afterlife, of which the legendary glory sought by the wayward heroes could be considered a variety. The Commedia, of course, contains an imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife that is often considered the culmination of the medieval worldview as developed in the Western Church. Dante himself may well have contributed to this understanding of the poem; as Joan M. Ferrante notes, it is Dante who writes in the Letter to Can Grande that the poem “purports to be a description of the state of souls after death” (4).30 Dante may not be directly present in nature’s cathedral to welcome readers at the beginning of Wayward Heroes. However, Halldór’s medievalism can certainly be better understood by considering his reflections on Dante and on the author of Njál’s Saga, including the timing of these reflections. In light of Halldór’s involvement with socialism between the two world wars and his temporary approval of Stalin’s gospel in particular, the reader of Wayward Heroes may also want to explore a possible affinity between its author and Dante on the matter 288 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA of political disillusionement. Joan Ferante explains the way in which literature informs the debate over an exile’s ongoing purpose in the case of Dante himself:

Dante, a politician who was unable to continue to act directly or effectively in the political sphere, shifted his activity after his exile to the only other sphere in which he might have considerable public influence, writing, and he chose the mode in which he would have the greatest freedom and potentially the greatest force, poetry. Because neither the empire not the church was functioning as the guide God intended it to be, the poet had to fill the vacancy. To emphasize that point, Dante has himself crowned emperor and pope over himself in the Earthly Paradise by Virgil, another poet, one who had had the ear of an emperor for his political message, the only figure able to bring Dante to the home divinely ordained for mankind, as Dante is the only one who can begin to lead his audience there. (43)

Ferrante thus observes that political interests, religious sentiments, and poetry all bleed into one another in Dante’s exile. A modern writer’s equivalent predicament can be seen in the case of Halldór, although his secular circumstances are clearly of a different nature. According to the encounter between the Icelandic poet Þormóður Bessason and his Christian king Ólafur Haraldsson (who in this scene is said to resemble the heathen god Ása-Þórr) at Stiklastaðir in Norway, Þormóður’s power seems nothing like Virgil’s prophetic guidance31 either. It is worth quoting this encounter at length, in which political and poetic expectations alike are defied:

Hér em eg kominn Þormóður skáld Bessason af Íslandi, svarabróðir kappa þíns Þorgeirs Hávarssonar, og beiðumst eg af yður hljóðs, herra, að flytja yður kvæði. Konúngur spyr hver sá ölmusumaður var er þar lauk munni sundur, og hafi troll íslensk skáld, segir hann, hef eg í þeim verri haft flestum mönnum, og er mér leitt orðið skrum íslendinga. Eða, segir konúngur, hvar er sá þeirra í nótt er jafnan tók mestan af um trygð og fylgispekt við mig er eg þyrfta helst, Sigvatur apvetníngur Þórðarson? Þau tíðendi færi eg þér konúngur, af Sigvati vin yðrum, að hann fór útí Róm að skemta sér; þóttu honum vandséð úrslit orustu er nú eigu þér fyrir höndum. En eg em kominn um brattar leiðir að ná fundi yðrum. Konúngur sér til hans af bragði og spyr snögt: hverjar leiðir ertu kominn þa? Þormóður segir: Eg hef, konúngur, því til kostað að ná yðrum fundi, að eg hef geingið frá búi mínu á Íslandi og þar látinn minn varnað er eg mátta aungva stund dags né nætur augum af líta fyrir ástar sakar, og hef alt í hendur lagið útlendum þræli í vonum þeirrar frægðar er skáld ná af slíkum öðlíngi sem þú ert sagður, afli aukinn að stýra heiminum; og því fór eg fyrst vestur á Grænland og síðan allar götur norður fyrir mannheim í sjö misseri, að freista þess að hefna garps yðvars Þorgeirs Hávarssonar, er þér hafið mestan áttan í yðru ríki. VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 289

Eigi verður mér ljóst í hvern heim sá maður skjalar, segir konúngur; og er firn og endemi hve höfðingjadjarfir þér eruð íslenskir stafkarlar; eða hvern garp segir hann oss áttan hafa bestan í voru ríki? Þormóður svarar: Höfuðgarp þinn Þorgeir Hávarsson, þann er eingi maður hefur á Norðurlöndum borinn verið með svo óskelfdu hjarta. Sá mun ær, armínginn, er þar klifar, segir konúngur; og rekur oss víst eigi minni til að hafa áður heyrt þetta nafn; en þó má vera að nokkur íslenskur afglapi með því nafni hafi rekist í lið vort endur, þá er vér lágum í víkingu. Að svo mæltu snýr konúngur í braut að sinna skyldari störfum. (399–400)

[“I am the skald Þormóður Besssason from Iceland, your champion Þorgeir Hávarsson’s sworn brother. Pray listen, my lord, while I sing you a lay.” The king asks what beggar this is, daring to open his mouth in his presence. “Trolls take you Icelandic skalds!” says he. “Few have done me worse then they. I have had more than enough of these Icelandersʼ boasting. Where is that man tonight,” says the king, “who always boasted so highly of his loyalty and devotion to me when I needed them most—Sigvatur Þórðarson of Apavatn?” “Of your friend Sigvatur, my king, I can inform you that he has gone to Rome to pass the time, out of pessimism about the outcome of the battle awaiting you. But I have traveled treacherous paths to stand before you.” The king casts him a glance and asks curtly: “What paths have you traveled, then?” Þormóður says: “In order to stand before you, sire, I have given these things of myself: I abandoned my farm in Iceland and left behind the treasures of mine that I could not, for love of them, take my eyes off at any hour of day or night, and placed them all in the hands of a foreign slave, in hope of the glory that skalds reap from such noble lords as you are reputed to be, endowed with the might to rule the world. That being done, I went westward to Greenland, and then far north of the world of men for three-and-a-half years, intending to avenge Þorgeir Hávarsson, the greatest warrior you had in your kingdom.” “I cannot comprehend what this man is prattling about,” says the king. “The impertinence of you Icelander starvelings toward your lords is an unparalleled abomination. What warrior does he claim to have been best in our kingdom?” Þormóður replies: “Your glorious champion, Þorgeir Hávarsson. No man has ever been born in the North with such an unwavering heart.” “This wretch must be mad,” says the king. “We certainly do not recall having ever heard that name—though some Icelandic imbicile by that name may have stumbled his way into our band back in our Viking days.” These things being said, the king departs to attend to more pressing concerns.] (452–54)

Despite the abrupt dissimilarity this holds when compared with the genuine prestige that Dante gives to poetry, some interpreters of religious ideas in modern Europe, including key writers and poets in the first half of the twentieth century, do construct in their works a path where the lost inheritance appears in the 290 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA secular ruins. Often this involves relentless travels in the history of Christianity and Western narrative traditions more generally. This transformative act has been referred to as the making of modernist cathedrals, as Clare Cavanagh terms it in Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition (66–102). Halldór has not been referred to as a modernist, and the perceivable transformative act within the passage from hero to vagabond in Wayward Heroes can hardly be termed a modernist cathedral. Yet his act of rewriting the saga heritage within the wider context of European literature is nevertheless reminiscent of the mythio-poetic or religious transformative act of poets like T. S. Eliot and writers like James Joyce. Halldór’s wayward heroes manifest a transformation, the nature of which can be charted by considering Gerpla as a work in which the European tradition of Homer, Dante, and Cervantes meets the Icelandic tradition of the sagas and eddic poetry, in the context of modernist reconsideration of religious ideas and also ideas about the nature of literature.32 The sworn brothers’ displacement in foreign lands relates to their “conversion” in aesthetics and consciousness; these northern heroes stumble onto the well-trodden and bitter path of Dante, that of exile in European literature. The Russian modernist poet Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) considers the theme of vagabondry and Dante’s Commedia in “Conversation about Dante.” He writes of literature itself as exile: “What distinguishes poetry from automatic speech,” is that it “rouses us and shakes us into wakefulness in the middle of a word. Then it turns out that the word is much longer than we thought, and we remember that to speak means to be forever on the road” (407). On the road to exile, Dante was not only on foot; contrary to what modern readers believe, he was poor. The Divine Comedy is an act of performance by a displaced man. Mandelstam explains,

Courtesy is not at all characteristic of him, rather something distinctly the opposite. One would have to be a blind mole not to notice that throughout the Divina Commedia Dante does not know how to behave, does not know how to act, what to say, how to bow. I am not imagining this; I take it from the numerous admissions of Alighieri himself, scattered throughout the Divina Commedia. The inner anxiety and painful, troubled gaucheries which accompany each step of the diffident man, as if his upbringing were somehow insufficient, the man untutored in the ways of applying his inner experience or of objectifying it in etiquette, the tormented and downtrodden man—such are the qualities which both provide the poem with all its charm, with all its drama, and serve as its background source, its psychological foundation. (404)

Dante’s circumstances are not Halldór’s, it is true. Yet the common element of displacement certainly does relate to the notion of exile as a transition from hero to vagabond. As this relates to the far-ranging travels of the sworn brothers of VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 291

Gerpla, their encounters with cultures that possess different philosophical and psychological alignments, whether the Inuit of Greenland or the empires of Christian Europe, is related to the challenge to their identity. Gerpla illuminates the migration of literature and ideas, which it also contributes to.

On the Modern Migration of Literature

The step from poetry to vagabondry is a small one — or it was, before so much of the poetry world was institutionalized by competitions and universities.33

A couple of decades prior to the composition of Gerpla, Halldór Laxness expressed deep-seated doubts regarding modern Icelandic literature’s chance to cross over into “foreign” minds and souls. This was at least the case with the poetry of Stephan G. Stephansson (1853–1927), a farmer who emigrated from Iceland to Canada at the end of the nineteenth century and taught himself to travel in world literature and the philosophy of both man and nature, also becoming a notable disciple of Emerson in the ranks of North American poets.34 When Stephan passed away, Halldór was in Manitoba and was asked by members of the Icelandic community there to write a eulogy for the Icelandic newspaper Heimskringla in Winnipeg. It was titled “Landneminn mikli” [The great settler], and appeared on September 7, 1927. The eulogy later appeared in Halldór’s Af skáldum, a collection of essays on Icelandic poets and novelists. Here are its opening lines:

Með Stephani G. Stephanssyni er í val hniginn einn efldasti andi þeirra tíma sem vér lifum. Hvort útheimurinn muni nokkru sinni fá skygnst inní þær veraldir sem ljóð hans opna hugskotssjónum íslensks lesanda læt ég ósagt, því reynsla hefur þrásannað að hnoss íslenskrar túngu eru lítt miðlanleg erlendum huga. Hvort sem oss tekst nokkru sinni að deila gleði vorri yfir Stephani með öðrum þjóðum, þá hefur hann látið eftir sig auðæfi sem nægja mundu til framdráttar miljónum sálna. Hann hefur arfleitt okkur að stóru ríki, ýmist með hrjóstrugum fjöllum og hrikalegum eða gróðursælum sléttum og fögrum borgum. Og uppaf borgum hans gnæfa háir turnar. Yfir þetta mikla land hvelfist víður himinn fullur af spám og teiknum. Sem sagt ef erlendum sálum tekst ekki að nema land í þessum víðáttumikla ljóðheimi Stephans G. Stephanssonar, þá eigum vér hann einir íslendingar. (7‒8)

[With the death of Stephan G. Stephansson, one of the most powerful spirits of our times has passed away. I don’t know if the outer world will ever become aware of the universes this poet has created in the minds of Icelandic readers. If we are to rely on our experience, the treasures of our language are not easily translateable. Regardless of the possibility to be able to share our joy with other nations, Stephan 292 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

has handed down to us a fortune that could be shared by millions of souls. We have inherited a kingdom: On the one hand, there are the barren heaths and majestic mountains, and on the other, vast and prosperous prairies and beautiful cities. And towers rise from his cities. Above all of this, a vast sky, full of prophecy and signs. Thus, if foreign souls cannot settle in Stephan G. Stephansson’s vast poetic world, it can only mean that it is ours to keep.]35

Stephan G. only wrote in Icelandic,36 and the language he ferried across the Atlantic Ocean does not offer his poetry much chance of crossing over into “foreign” minds and souls. Different from some of Halldór’s early novels, it took a while for Stephan’s poetry to appear in English translation. Even existing translations of some of his most profound poems have only filtered through the sturdy barriers of the cultural hierarchy of the English-speaking world in small numbers and far between. Whereas Stephan G.’s poetry continues to testify to the seemingly untranslatable aspect of some of the world’s modern poetic treasures, Halldór was still a young author when he witnessed the travels of his novels across linguistic regions. According to the aforementioned eulogy, however, there are other kinds of barriers, and these appear to be universal:

Stephan G. Stephansson er einn þeirra fáu sem bera gæfu til þess að vera velgerðarmenn heillar þjóðar. Hann er einn þeirra manna sem gefa þjóð sinni tilveruréttinn, því þrátt fyrir ágæti þau er kunna að felast í verslun og vélgeingi þá er þó enn þakkarverðara hitt sem gert er fyrir mannlegar sálir, enda mat sögunnar menníngarlegt á þjóðum og sú vegin og létttvæg fundin sem ekki eignaðist snillínga í heimi andans. Það er í mikilúð snillínga sinna sem þjóðirnar sækja upphefð … í verkum þeirra skynjar hvert brjóst bergmál síns eigin andvarps og veit um leið að það var ekki ófyrirsynju. Þessir menn lyfta úr grasi mensku vorri og smæð. Fyrir tilverknað þeirra stækkum vér og eflumst. … Og vér förum að lyfta höfðinu í virðulegri reisn en áður gagnvart alheiminum. (8)

[Stephan G. Stephansson is one of the very few who becomes a benefactor for entire nations. He is one of those who provide their nations with the right to exist. Despite the significance of trade and worldly success, the goods that are allocated to the human soul are more worthy. History measures nations by their culture, if they do not foster geniuses in the world of the spirit, they do not score. Nations rise and fall with their geniuses … in their work every heart perceives the echo of existence and realizes that all is not lost. Our humanity and fragility gravitates towards these human beings, and we grow and prosper because of them … And we begin to move around in the world in a more dignified manner than before.]37

When Halldór wrote this eulogy the wounds of the First World War were soon to be made fresh again, and the Western world was about to experience its first VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 293 modern economic crash. All the more reason to take notice of Halldór’s ideas on the role of poetry, literature, and culture in the gloomy context of the interwar years: Individuals like Stephan G. Stephansson (who was a pacifist on a world’s scale and seemingly immune to the all-inclusive temptations of capitalism),38 provide their nations with “the right to exist.” Nations are not only “measured by their culture.” Nations are measured by what Halldór refers to as “geniuses,” for if they do not “foster geniuses in the world of the spirit,” no trade agreement, it seems, can save them from a bad report. It is with the geniuses that “nations rise and fall”; it is in their work where “every heart” perceives the “echo of existence and realizes that all is not lost.” Halldór’s eulogy expresses ideas both universal and tradition-specific, directed to his fellow Icelanders on both sides of the Atlantic. A sentence like “[Stephan] is one of those who provide their nations with the right to exist” has an insular air, and alludes to some of the geographical and political realites of modern migration of Icelandic literature in the wider European context. As such, Halldór’s eulogy for Stephan, like many of his writings on key modern Icelandic poets and writers, seems to anticipate Milan Kundera’s seven part essay on European literature Le Rideau (2005), translated in 2007 as The Curtain, particularly the one titled “Die Weltliteratur” [World Literature]. Setting other continents aside, including North America, Kundera reflects on the travels of European literature. After stating that the “dynamism and long life span of the history of the European arts are inconceivable without the existence of all [European] nations” and that these “diverse experiences constitute an inexhaustible reservoir of inspiration” (32), he reflects on Iceland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the saga legacy: “We should certainly ponder this thoroughly: the first great prose treasure of Europe was created in its smallest land, which even today numbers fewer than three hundred thousand inhabitants” (32). Since the publication of Kundera’s essay, the numbers of the inhabitants of Iceland have increased a bit. Other more significant aspects of his reflections remain intact, not the least within the context of the travels of both medieval and modern Icelandic literature in Europe alone. Iceland is of course not the only European country that can rely on the experience of seclusion in matters of existence and literature. In the mind of Kundera, what distinguishes the small nations from the large is something deeper than the “quantitative criterion of the number of their inhabitants” (33). For the small nations, Kundera writes, their “existence is not a self-evident certainty but always a question, a wager, a risk; they are on the defensive against History, that force which is bigger than they, that does not take them into consideration, that does not even notice them” (33). He then wonders about what the travels of the heroes of the sagas might have been like, had they been written in English: 294 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Let’s try to imagine that the Icelandic sagas had been written in English: Their heroes’ names would be as familiar to us as Tristan or Don Quixote; their singular aesthetic character, oscillating between chronicle and fiction, would have provoked all sorts of theories; people would have argued over whether they should or should not be considered the first European novels. I don’t mean to say that they have been forgotten; after centuries of indifference they are now being studied in universities throughout the world; but they belong to the “archeology of letters,” they do not influence living literature. (34)

Kundera’s interpretation of the whereabouts of the sagas and their characters in what he refers to as the “large context” of world literature thus emphasizes the sense of isolation. Of course, this notion does not exclude works like Gerpla from being recognized as a major modern testament to the living influence of the sagas.39 The same is true of a few other novels by modern Icelandic writers, the latest being Guðbergur Bergsson’s (1932–) Þrír sneru aftur [Three returned], a novel published in 2015 and nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Award in 2016. In “The Secret of the Ages of Life,” his review of Guðbergur’s novel Svanurinn (1991) [The Swan], Kundera gives the following advice: “Please do not read it as an ‘Icelandic novel,’ and an exotic oddity. Guðbergur Bergsson is a great European novelist” (28). As noted also by Kundera in “World Literature,” there is something about the way in which universities across the globe go about the subject of world literature that demands attention. Different from the art of music, for example, which moves freely in the large context among musicologists, the art of the novel is bound up with its language and in “nearly every university in the world it is studied almost exclusively in the small—national—context” (2007, 34). And what of the professors of foreign literatures? Is it not their “very natural mission to study works in the context of world literature?” Kundera asks. This is his reply: “Not a chance. In order to demonstrate their competence as experts, they make a great point of identifying with the small—national—context of whichever literature they teach” (34). Seen from the large context of world literature, the region where the Greco-Roman cultural heritage meets the Northern tradition can appear remote. If Þorgeir’s and Þormóður’s postwar medieval-modern passage from hero to vagabond is challenging for readers to understand here and now, the input of the secular age and its fanfare in academia should not be underestimated as possible causes. Even Adorno could not have foreseen rapidly expanding fields such as online media, blogging, and the digital humanites that reveal the thrilling and profitable machinery of mass-culture at work in the former headquarters of perception and reflection. But thanks to Philip Roughton’s English translation of Gerpla, readers of literature in the English-speaking world have been given an opportunity to approach the heart of Western narrative tradition through the VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 295 passage of a saga-hero and saga-poet, and to recognize Þorgeir and Þórmóður from the Vestfirðir as Northern versions of vagabond-figures in their larger context of home and exile in European and world literature.

NOTES

1. This article is shaped by my years of teaching Icelandic literature at the University of Manitoba’s Department of Icelandic Language and Literature. While serving there as the Chair of Icelandic (2003–2015), I enjoyed the good fortune to reflect on the subject in the company of highly gifted students. One of them is the guest editor of this special volume, and I would like to thank Dr. Dustin Geeraert for his immense contribution to this article. 2. This article’s policy on quoting and translation is as follows: Literature (poetry and prose) is quoted in its original language, followed by English translation. In the case of Gerpla, English translations are provided from Wayward Heroes. Quotes from Halldór Laxness’s essays and epilogues also appear in their original language, followed by English translations. All other quotes appear in English, regardless of their original language. 3. See Bergsveinn Birgisson’s Leitin að svarta víkingnum [In search of the Black Viking], 45. 4. The cultural chasm that separates the conversion to Christianity in Iceland, on the one hand, and on the European continent, on the other, is a vast subject, and may be deep enough to be called existential. As discussed in this article, Halldór Laxness’s observations in his Epilogue to his Brennunjálssaga (1945) [Njál’s saga], can provide some guidance regarding the conversion to Christianity in Iceland. Under the Cloak: A Pagan Ritual Turning Point in the Conversion of Iceland (1999) by Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson is one of the key scholarly sources on this subject. In addition to the original medieval Icelandic sources themselves, Under the Cloak reveals the absence of some of the existential ideas and cultural aspects that circulate in key texts throughout the conversion on the Continent. See Birna Bjarnadóttir, Veruleiki Krists í holdgerðri frásögn. Um fjarveru erfðasyndarinnar í Ólafs sögu helga (1994) [On the Absence of Original Sin in the Saga of Saint Olaf], which considers the concept of Original Sin as a compass in this vast field. In Gerpla, of course, Halldór draws heavily on Snorri Sturlssonʼs Ólafs saga helga, one of the key sagas in his Heimskringla, which displays a wholly different attitude toward Original Sin from that found in, for example, Saint Augustine’s City of God. 5. It should be noted that despite the combined efforts of generations of medievalists in various disciplines, the existing evidence of the impact of the Christian doctrine in the religious/cultural transformation in Iceland is limited. As can be read in a newly published monograph where a group of scholars reflect on the impact of the culture of European monasteries in medieval Iceland, even the term “culture” (as known and applied in modernity) did not exist at the time. See Gunnar Harðarson’s “Viktoríuklaustrið í París og norrænar miðaldir” [Victorines Monastery in Paris and Nordic medieval times], 142. 296 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

6. Die glücklichen Krieger (2004), Hubert Seelow’s revised German translation of Bruno Kress’s earlier translation, draws on the Happy Warriors title, and has the same instant macabre ring to it. Kress’s original translation of Gerpla, which appeared in 1977, stresses, however, the “hero” more than anything else: Gerpla. Eine Heldensage. On the Icelandic and German titles, see Hubert Seelow’s “Nachwort” [Epilogue]. 7. Similar to Halldór’s revision of the lives and travels of Þormóður and Þorgeir, James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is another modern novel from the first half of the twentieth century that reveals some captivating complexities in relation to the term hero. In fact, these two novels can be viewed as great examples of modern literature’s varieties in the expression of the heroic experience. Different from Wayward Heroes’ spectacular archaic realism, Ulysses’ modernistic style harbours a more direct approach to the complexities, it seems: “Like Stephen Dedalus, Joyce feared ‘the big words which make us so unhappy’” (See Declan Kiberd’s Introduction, Ulysses ix). 8. See discussion in Bjarnadóttir, Recesses of the Mind, 50. 9. See Matthías Jóhannessenʼs Skeggræður gegnum tíðina. Halldór Laxness og Matthías Jóhannessen [Conversing through time: Halldór Laxness and Matthías Jóhannessen], 25. See also Halldór Guðmundsson’s Halldór Laxness. Ævisaga, 567. 10. Teresa’s Interior Castle is a key source in this context. 11. See Guðbergur Bergsson’s “Formáli fyrir þýðingu mína á Don Kíkóta” [Preface for My Translation of Don Quixote], 15–27. Thomas Mann’s preface―which is titled “Homage”―for a certain English translation of Kafka’s Castle is also of great interest in this context. Cervantes and Teresa are not discussed there, but Mann introduces an equally compelling interpretation of the relation between Kafka and his novel The Castle. When discussing Kafka’s passion for writing and his melancholy, which is associated with it, Mann notes the following: “It is possible, of course, to take in a symbolic sense this passion which makes everything else a matter of indifference. … Art is not inevitably what is was to Flaubert, the product, the purpose, and the significance of a frantically ascetic denial of life. It may be an ethical expression of life itself; wherein not the work but the life itself is the main thing” (xii). Kafka’s works, Mann continues, express “the solitude, the aloneness, of the artist―and of the Jew, on top of that―among the genuine native-born of life, the villagers who settle at the foot of the ‘Castle.’ They express the inborn, self-distrustful solitariness that fights for order and regularity, civic rights, an established calling, marriage―in short, for all the ‘blisses of the commonplace.’ They express an unbounded will, forever suffering shipwreck, to live aright. The Castle is through and through an autobiographical novel” (xiii–xiv). 12. This is a reference to the eddic poem Hávamál [Sayings of the High One], an important source on Old Norse proverbs and wisdom, as well as on the god Óðinn. 13. This is a big subject, not only in Wayward Heroes, but also in a novel like Íslandsklukkan [Iceland’s Bell]. In the latter, it is the character Snæfríður Íslandssól who can be said to manifest the sad and beautiful legacy of Brynhildur; the domesticated shield-maiden. 14. Aron Gurevich (1924–2006) has written beautifully on this subject in his Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception. VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 297

15. It is not only modern interpreters of the eddic heroic lays who are faced with problems of belief and perception. For Scandinavians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the deeds of the heroes in the oldest poems had already lost their meaning (see Gurevich 169). 16. Events in Greenland in Gerpla are very different from those that take place in Greenland in Fóstbræðra saga. This is also discussed elsewhere in this volume (see Eysteinnson, Kristjánsson, and the Introduction). 17. See also King Olaf’s remark upon meeting Þormóður, “This wretch must be mad,” discussed below. 18. The letter is preserved by Kristján Hallberg. It was written in Reykjavík on November 29, 1964. See Halldór Guðmundsson’s Halldór Laxness. Ævisaga (569 and Endnote 363, 790). My translation. 19. Trans. Birna Bjarnadóttir. 20. Most of these sources are in Icelandic and have crossed over into the contemporary international dialogue only fragmentarily. Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, a poet and scholar of modern Icelandic literature, is the author of one of the key sources available on Grímur’s world-scale writings. See Arfur og umbylting [Heritage and Transformation]. A single newspaper article on Grímur’s contribution by Hannes Pétursson—who is one of the key poets of modern-day Iceland—reveals also the depth of Grímur’s aesthetics, not the least within the context of Kierkegaardʼs philosophy. As noted in this article, Kierkegaard’s Diary reveals his reading of Grímur’s thesis on Lord Byron. Whereas Grímur did not cite works by Kierkegaard in his thesis, the Danish philosopher is in no doubt about the presence there of books like Fear and Trembling and does, of course, apply some irony regarding Grímur’s oversight. As noted further by Hannes Pétursson, what is remarkable is the fact that according to his knowledge, Grímur’s thesis on Byron may be the only work Kierkegaard read by an Icelander. See “Lítið eitt um Grím” (Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, November 23, 1996, 4). 21. Some of Grímur’s essays have appeared in Icelandic. See Grímur Thomsen, Íslenskar bókmenntir og heimsskodun [Icelandic Literature and Philosophy]. 22. See discussion in Bjarnadóttir, Recesses of the Mind 43–48. 23. The term “romantic literature” here refers to Romanticism and not to medieval romances such as those parodied by Cervantes, which are referred to by the term “chivalric romantic literature.” 24. Given Halldór’s familiarity with Christianity, one can assume that he was no stranger to the idea discussed by Derrida in his Gift of Death that a writer belongs to Christianity, this “stroke of genius” as Nietzsche once called it, by questioning himself in it. See Derrida’s Gift of Death, 114-15. 25. When approaching the Sagas of Icelanders as literature with Greek, Roman, and Christian origins, the presence of the Northern heritage tends to be viewed as an isolated paradox; a dilemma to be mastered once and for all. Yet instead of gaining from such an interpretion, even if it is proposed in the name of belonging, the isolation of these characters and their region is increased. 298 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

26. The perception may, in part, be inspired by Halldór’s novel Sjálfstætt fólk (1933‒1935) [Independent People], where the narrator refers to the heath in Iceland’s Eastfjords as Bjartur’s “[andleg] móðir, hans kirkja, hans betri heimur” (2011, 134) [spiritual mother, his church, his better world] (1997, 86). It should also be noted that prior to writing Sjálfstætt fólk, Halldór travelled far and wide in the Westfjords region. His novel Heimsljós (1937–40) [World Light] is set there, too, and not too far away from Isafjord’s Deep, while the novel Kristnihald undir jökli (1968) [Under the Glacier] takes place in Breiðafjörður, Iceland’s widest fjord. 27. This phrase also appears in an intriguing context: Vol. 2 of Reiner Stachs’ biography on Franz Kafka, The Decisive Years (156). 28. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1986), by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, would be an excellent source to draw on regarding several of these subtleties. 29. These books and line numbers apply to both the Italian original and the English translation listed in References. 30. Can Grande (1291–1329), the Italian nobleman, was in his own time chiefly acclaimed as a successful warrior and autocrat, but later as the leading patron of the poet Dante. 31. Virgil is Dante’s guide through the Inferno in the first part of Divina Commedia, and although he is confined to hell for his unbelief it is clear that Dante regards the poet as a towering figure of not only aesthetic but metaphysical significance. The poet Statius is able to ascend Mount Purgatory on the theory that he was a Christian. 32. More than half a century after Gerpla’s landmark revelations on this front, Guðbergur Bergsson’s novel Þrír sneru aftur (2014) [Three Returned] was published. It likewise illuminates how the saga character’s sentiment seems to co-exist with, rather than fully belong to, Continental traditions. In Guðbergur’s novel, a young man from England appears in contemporary rural Iceland. He is travelling with two older gentlemen, Martin and Shelby, who are revisiting their beloved saga-island after a long absence; they visited Iceland for the first time before the Second World War, and again during the war itself. Martin is the father of the young man. Like his father, the young man has studied Icelandic medieval literature at Oxford and is well versed in the sagas. But his perception of the saga characters and their culture does not match with his father’s: In the sagas, there are no “hetjudáðir” [heroic deeds] to speak of, only “hrok[i], öfund, hégómlyndi og smámunasemi sem fylgir einangrun eftir að fólk af vissri þjóð hefur slitnað að mestu frá stærri evrópskri menningarheild og myndað sína eigin sögu” [arrogance, envy, vanity and pettiness which characterizes the people of those isolated nations that have created their own saga after drifting away from larger European cultural unities]. As if to coin a proverb in expression of this perception, the son also states the following: “Í þessu fátæklega þjóðlífi var allt metið til fjár” [In this impoverished nation, money was the sole measurement of everything] (208). 33. From “Vagabond Poets” in The Times Literary Supplement, January 13, 2017, 36. 34. Stephan G. was a somnabulist who worked in the field during the day and read and composed at night. In Iceland, he is still referred to as the “Mountain poet,” although the mountains in Alberta would never cast a shadow over his farm, the distance between the two being far too great. See “mountains casting imaginary shadows” in Birna Bjarnadottir’s a book of fragments. VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 299

35. Trans. Birna Bjarnadóttir. 36. On the language front, Stephan G. Stephansson is no different from other key authors of modern Icelandic literature in North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason (1866–1945), Helga Steinvör Bjarnadóttir (1858–1941), and Guttormur J. Guttormsson (1878–1966) all only wrote in Icelandic. As is the case with Stephan G. Stephansson’s poetry, some of the works of both Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason and Guttormur J. Guttormsson have appeared in English translation. 37. Trans. Birna Bjarnadóttir. 38. For a detailed discussion on Stephan G. Stephanssonʼs life and work, see Wakeful Nights (2007), Viðar Hreinsson’s biography of Stephan. 39. On Halldór’s rewriting of the saga heritage, see Eysteinsson 2003.

REFERENCES Alighieri, Dante. 1977. The Divine Comedy (Paradiso). Translated by Charles S. Singleton. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ⸻. 2008. Commedia (Paradiso, Volume terzo). Edited by Arnoldo Mondadori, Introduzione [Introduction] by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Milan: Meridiani. Augustine. 1998. The City of God Against the Pagans. Translated and edited by Robert Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aðalsteinsson, Jón Hnefill. 1999. Under the Cloak: A Pagan Ritual Turning Point in the Conversion of Iceland. Reykjavik: Háskólaútgáfan. Bergsson, Guðbergur. 2006. “Formáli fyrir þýðingu mína á Don Kíkóta” [Preface for My Translation of Don Quixote]. In Don Kíkóti. Reykjavik: JPV útgáfa, 15–27. ⸻. 2014. Þrír sneru aftur [Three Returned]. Reykjavik: JPV útgáfa. Birgisson, Bergsveinn. 2016. Leitin að svarta víkingnum [In Search of the Black Viking]. Translated by Bergsveinn Birgisson and Eva Hauksdóttir. Reykjavik: Bjartur. Bjarnadóttir, Birna. 1994. “Veruleiki Krists í holdgerðri frásögn. Um fjarveru erfðasyndarinnar í Ólafs sögu helga” [On the absence of original sin in the saga of St. Olaf]. Master’s Thesis, University of Iceland. ⸻. 2010. “mountains casting imaginary shadows.” In a book of fragments, 39. Winnipeg: Kind Publishing. ⸻. 2012. Recesses of the Mind. Aesthetics in the Work of Guðbergur Bergsson. Montréal: McGill–Queen’s University Press. Blanchot, Maurice. 1993. The Infinite Conversation. Translated by Susan Hanson. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. 300 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

C., J. 2017. “Vagabond Poets.” The Times Literary Supplement January 13, 36. Cavanagh, Clare. 1995. Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. The Gift of Death. Translated by David Willis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Eddukvæði. I. Goðakvæði. 2014. Edited by Jónas Kristjánsson, Vésteinn Ólason, and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Egilsson, Sveinn Yngvi. 1999. Arfur og umbylting: Rannsókn á íslenskri rómantík [Heritage and Upheaval: Study in Icelandic Romanticism]. Reykjavik: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag. Eysteinsson, Ástráður. 2003. “Halldór Laxness and the Narrative of the Icelandic Novel.” Scandinavica, 42 (1): 47–66. Ferrante, Joan M. 1974. The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Guðmundsson, Halldór. 2004. Halldór Laxness. Ævisaga. Reykjavik: JPV. ⸻. 2008. The Islander. A Biography of Halldór Laxness. Translated by Philip Roughton. Quercus and London: Maclehose Press. Gurevich, Aron. 1990. Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception. Translated by János M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harðarson, Gunnar. 2016. “Viktoríuklaustrið í París og norrænar miðaldir” [The Victorines Monastery in Paris and Nordic medieval times]. In Íslensk klausturmenning á miðöldum [The Culture of Monasteries in Medieval Iceland], 119–48. Reykjavik: Miðaldastofa, University of Iceland. Hreinsson, Viðar. 2012. Wakeful Nights. Stephan G. Stephansson: Icelandic–Canadian Poet. Calgary: Benson Ranch Inc. Kiberd, Declan. 1992. “Introduction.” In Ulysses by James Joyce, ix–lxxxix. New York: Penguin Books. Kierkegaard, Søren. 2007. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Sylvia Walsh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kundera, Milan. 2007. The Curtain. An Essay in Seven Parts. Translated by Linda Asher. London: Faber and Faber. VAGABONDS IN WORLD LITERATURE 301

⸻. 2010. “The Secret of the Ages of Life: Guðbergur Bergson’s The Swan.” In Encounter, 28–31. Translated by Linda Asher. New York: Harper Perennial. Jóhannessen, Matthías. 1972. Skeggræður gegnum tíðina. Halldór Laxness og Matthías Jóhannessen [Conversing through Time: Halldór Laxness and Matthías Jóhannessen]. Reykjavik: Helgafell. Laxness, Halldór. 1945. “Eftirmáli” [Epilogue]. In Njáls saga [Njalʼs Saga], 415–18. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1972. Af skáldum. Reykjavik: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs. ⸻. 1996. Under the Glacier. Translated by Magnús Magnússon. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 1997. Independent People. Translated by J. A. Thompson. New York: Vintage. ⸻. 1998. Kristnihald undir jökli. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 2006. Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 2008. The Great Weaver from Kashmir. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books. ⸻. 2011. Gerpla. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 2011. Sjálfstætt fólk. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Philip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books. Mandelstam, Osip. 1991. “Conversation about Dante.” In Osip Mandelstam: The Collected Critical Prose and Letters, 397–442. Translated by Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link. London: Collins Harvill. Mann, Thomas. 1976. “Homage.” In The Castle by Franz Kafka, ix–xvii. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Óskarsson, Þórir. 1999. “Hvað er rómantík? Hugleiðingar með vandmeðfarið orð í íslenskri bókmenntasögu?” [ What Is Romanticism? Reflections on a Tricky Term in the History of Icelandic Literature]. Andvari 124: 104–25. Pétursson, Hannes. 1996. “Lítið eitt um Grím” [A fragment on Grímur]. Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, November 23,, 4. The Poetic Edda. 2014. Translated by Carolyne Larrington. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roughton, Philip. 2008. “Endnotes.” In The Great Weaver from Kashmír by Halldór Laxness, 439–50. Translated by Philip Roghton. New York: Archipelago Books. Seelow, Hubert. 2004. “Nachwort” [Epilogue]. In Die glücklichen Krieger, 324–28. Göttingen: Steidl. 302 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Stach, Rainer. 2005. Kafka. The Decisive Years. Translated by Shelley Frisch. Orlando: Harcourt. Sturluson, Snorri. 2002. Heimskringla II. Edited by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Íslenzk fornrit XXVII. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. Teresa of Ávila. 2004. Interior Castle. Translated and edited by Allison Peers. New York: Random House. Thomsen, Grímur. 1972. On the Character of Old Northern Poetry. Studia Islandica 31. Reykjavik: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs. ⸻. 1974. “Sérkenni íslenskra bókmennta” [The character of Icelandic literature]. In Íslenskar bókmenntir og heimsskoðun [Icelandic literature and philosophy] by Grímur Thomsen, 51–82. Translated by Andrés Björnsson. Reykjavik: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs. REBIRTH Afterword Whatever Happened to the Sagas?

ÁRMANN JAKOBSSON

ABSTRACT: The author, who has himself written novels inspired by the Middle Ages, discusses the development of medievalism in Icelandic literature since Halldór Laxness’s Gerpla (1952)—with a particular eye on novels composed since 2000.

RÉSUMÉ: L’auteur, qui a lui-même écrit des romans inspirés du Moyen Âge, évoque l’évolution du médiévalisme dans la littérature islandaise depuis le Gerpla de Halldór Laxness (1952)—avec un regard particulier porté sur les romans composés depuis 2000.

Ármann Jakobsson is a Professor in the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 he publication of Halldór Laxness’s Gerpla in 1952, eight years after Iceland became a republic in 1944, coincided with the highlight of the popularity and influence of the medieval Sagas of Icelanders in T modern times. For a century before the arrival of Gerpla, the sagas had been pivotal texts for the Icelandic national identity, the “saga age” having been assigned the role of a golden age in Icelandic history by poets and scholars alike. It is also an important fact that in this period (1850–1950) all the sagas were published in popular editions in Iceland for the first time by the bookseller Sigurður Kristjánsson, who died at 97 in the same year Gerpla was published. Thus these texts were now made affordable for the masses on an unprecedented scale and now, perhaps for the first time, they became a national treasure accessible to all social classes. A part of the national myth of the sagas for most of the twentieth century was that this close relationship with the sagas was merely a continuation of an age-old love affair. To this day there is considerable belief in the notion that the sagas have always been close to the heart of the Icelandic populace, an idea that finds curiously little support from preserved documents, such as letters and registers, from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For more on the development of this view see Ármann Jakobsson, “Þörfin fyrir sanna sögu” (2018) [The Need for a True Story]. It is worthy of note that in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century there was a conservative turn in the development of the Icelandic language, with saga Icelandic becoming more accessible to an Icelander in 1952 than it would have been to an early nineteenth-century Icelander. One of the themes explored by Halldór Laxness himself in his previous three-volume novel Íslandsklukkan (1943–1946) [Iceland’s Bell] is the relationship between the sagas and the nation. This novel is partly inspired by the life of famous bibliophile Árni Magnússon (1663–1730) and his zealous quest for old Icelandic manuscripts in the early eighteenth century. While Íslandsklukkan does not present any easy truths about the relationship between the people and the sagas, it speaks clearly to the feeling of the time that the manuscripts belonged in Iceland and that their deportation was a part of the national tragedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Icelanders suffered under Danish rule. It was perhaps not wholly unexpected that Halldór Laxness’s iconoclastic treatment of the sagas in Gerpla became far more controversial. As Jón Karl Helgason has noted in Hetjan og höfundurinn. Brot úr íslenskri menningarsögu (1998) [The Hero and the Author: A Fragment of Icelandic Cultural History], the Icelandic relationship with the sagas was also changing precisely at that point in history, as the focus of the adulation shifted from the saga protagonists (Gunnar, Héðinn, and Njáll) to the unknown geniuses, represented for the most part by known genius Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), who composed the 306 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA sagas in the thirteenth century. According to Jón Karl, Halldór Laxness played a significant role in this shift, being far more interested in the sagas as works of art than sources about past events. The nucleus of the shift was that the saga events and their veracity were no longer as instrumental to the importance of the sagas to the national identity; the sagas could now be enjoyed as works of art comparable to the works of Homer and Shakespeare. This shift from history to literature may have led the way for a fruitful period in saga studies from the 1960s onwards where many of the old truths about the sagas were re-evaluated and, even more prominently, scholars of Old Norse started asking new and unexpected questions. I discuss this historiography further in “Enginn tími fyrir umræðu” (2013) [No Time for Debate]; over time, a more intellectual approach to the sagas led to them becoming less of a national treasure. The cultural capital of artistic creation did not seem to equal that of a true golden past, and it could be argued that abandoning some of the old myths concerning the sagas has ended up making them less useful to society at large. There is no doubt that, since 1952, fewer and fewer people are enjoying the sagas as free readers whereas they are still being taught in school as a part of an important cultural heritage. In 1952, Gerpla was seen as a radical and vulgar book that denigrated the sagas (see Hughes in this volume). The Marxist and pacifist criticism of the concept of heroism was seen as a major slight for the whole nation, which was supposed to be unified in its love of the sagas and represented by their genius. More than sixty years later, it is hard to imagine a new treatment of the sagas that would receive such a reaction. In between there were fifty years of literary criticism where the sagas were interpreted in various ways. Even more significant, after Iceland had been independent for decades, the need for placing “national texts” on a pedestal may have been far less acute. National unity and a golden past are less important to the new religion of capitalism and globalism, where the sagas may even seem outdated and useless. Sixty years after the publication of Gerpla, in spite of the diminished role of the sagas in modern Iceland, there is no shortage of contemporary Icelandic authors who use the sagas as inspiration. There is also no shortage of different methods for utilizing the sagas. Among the most original is Bergsveinn Birgisson who has recently published a study of the settler Geirmundur heljarskinn, Leitin að svarta víkingnum (2016) [The Quest for the Black Viking]. Moreover, he has also published his own “saga,” Geirmundar saga heljarskinns (2015) [The Saga of Geirmund Hellskin] where he not only lovingly imitates the sagas themselves but also writes a prologue as a homage to the early editors of the Íslenzk fornrit series, including Sigurður Nordal and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, both of whom influenced Halldór Laxness. Equally postmodern is Þórunn Valdimarsdóttir’s juxtaposition of the sagas and the highly popular Nordic noir genre in both Kalt er annars blóð (2007) [Cold is the Blood of Another] and Mörg eru ljónsins eyru (2010) [Many are the Ears AFTERWORD: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SAGAS? 307 of a Lion]. Bergsveinn is concerned with the gaps in the medieval narratives and trying to read behind the story while Þórunn is more concerned with her own creative interpretation of well-known saga characters, as is Bjarni Harðarson who makes the most infamous character from Njáls saga his narrator in Mörður (2014),1 somewhat in the tradition of Gregory Maguire. Vilborg Davíðsdóttir is arguably the most prolific writer of medievalist novels in Iceland today, having published seven novels with a medieval theme, including most recently a reimagination of the story of the settler Auður the Subtle, a skeletal figure in the medieval sources that Vilborg fleshes out in Auður (2009), Vígroði (2012) [Light to Kill], and Blóðug jörð (2017) [Bloody Ground]. A no less ambitious project is Einar Kárason’s four volume reinterpretation of the thirteenth-century Sturlunga saga: Óvinafagnaður (2001) [A Gathering of Foes], Ofsi (2008) [Hubris], Skáld (2012) [Poet], and Skálmöld (2014) [Age of War]. Again we see a difference in interest: while Vilborg peers past the sources, Einar is more concerned with his own interpretation of a lengthy medieval text. Both novelists have had much success and Einar has followed up his novels with theatrical renderings of Sturlunga saga itself. The reception of both projects highlights a significant shift since the 1950s: no longer are the sagas seen as sacred texts that should be left alone. On the contrary, authors are applauded for relating those inaccessible texts to the masses. The same happened with a recent radical theatrical rendering of Njála (directed by Þorleifur Örn Arnarson, 2015) in the Reykjavík City Theatre. The performance received universal adulation and won multiple awards. In 2016, no “defenders” of the sagas appear to object to their treatment. In fact, it is an almost universally acknowledged truth that the enterprise is helpful to the sagas that badly need this help to reach a modern audience, in spite of being as ubiquitous in the Icelandic school system as The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird are in English-speaking high schools. A pedagogical approach strongly informs the work of Brynhildur Þórarinsdóttir who started her career with retellings of three of the most popular sagas: Njála (2002), Egla (2004), and Laxdæla (2006). The enterprise was well received, demonstrating that in the 21st century the sagas are clearly not seen as children’s literature anymore, another significant shift from the age of Gerpla. Brynhildur followed up with Gásagatan (2009) [The Gásir Mystery], a mystery novel in the tradition of Enid Blyton (a hugely popular author in Iceland in the latter half of the twentieth century). The novel takes place in the thirteenth century to the backdrop of events of Sturlunga saga. Þórarinn Eldjárn is an author who has always worked with the history and culture of Iceland, winning considerable acclaim for his novels Kyrr kjör (1983) [Status Quo] and Brotahöfuð (1996) [The Blue Tower] where he reimagines the lives of poets and scholars from the seventeenth century. In 2012, he too turned his attention to the sagas, with Hér liggur skáld [Here Lies a Poet], his take on the fourteenth-century Þorleifs þáttr jarlaskálds [Tale of Þorleif Poet of the Earl] from 308 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA the Flateyjarbók compendium and other medieval narratives, where Þorleifr makes an appearance as a troublesome poet not afraid to defy kings and magnates. Þórarinn’s method is highly distinguishable and it could be argued that his version of the old saga is more Þórarinn than saga. Indeed all the aforementioned texts are successful precisely because the authors are more faithful to their own projects and do not see themselves as mere mediators of the sagas. The present author has also participated in the recent medievalist trend with a novel, Glæsir (2011) [Bull], and a children’s book, Síðasti galdrameistarinn (2014) [The Last Magician]. As I suspect is the case with all the authors mentioned above, my primary aim has not been to mediate the sagas, although that is a definite secondary aim, but to use them as inspiration to create compelling fiction. Glæsir is based on the events narrated in the thirteenth-century Eyrbyggja saga which is currently not as well-known as Njáls saga or Egils saga. In the saga, one of the least sympathetic and most villainous characters is Þórólfr Twistfoot whose hostility to anyone and everyone in life is superseded only by his malfeasance in death, when he becomes an undead and manages to depopulate a whole valley. Þórólfr was indeed one of the principal subjects of a scholarly article I published in 2005, “The Specter of Old Age: Nasty Old Men in the Sagas of Icelanders.” Much later, however, I wanted to interpret him in the more liberal form of the novel and that is how Glæsir was born. After his death and his hauntings, Þórólfr apparently possesses a calf called Glæsir who ends up causing misfortune. I place Þórólfr inside the mind of the calf, narrating the events of his life from his own point of view. Narrating the story from the point of view of a selfish villain gives the author multiple opportunities to reinterpret the Eyrbyggja saga narrative. Þórólfr is too selfish and blind to other people’s feelings to ever become a sympathetic or even a reliable narrator. However, when the story is related from his point of view, the hierarchy and the rules of the saga society naturally come under scrutiny. His nickname Twistfoot provides an opportunity to question the Icelandic tradition of nicknaming people, which has throughout history mostly been interpreted as innocent but can also be seen as stigmatizing and bullying. His hostility towards his son Arnkell, a hero in the saga, can also be seen as ambiguous. Even more complicated are his feelings towards Þóroddr Þorbrandsson who believes he is the rightful owner of Glæsir the bull, not knowing what spectre looms inside it. Þóroddr’s kindness has reawakened in him love that he can hardly recognize, having been so unloved throughout his own life, and yet his mission is to kill Þóroddr, in the belief that only in that way can he end his own miserable existence. My aim was to make Þórólfr emerge as no less villainous but less one-dimensional than in the original saga. His narrative also provides an opportunity to reimagine better-known saga characters such as Snorri the Magnate and Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir. The Sagas of Icelanders are as a rule not particularly critical of violence, usually relating it in a distant, matter-of-fact tone as I noted AFTERWORD: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SAGAS? 309 in one of my earliest published articles, “Sannyrði sverða” (1994) [The Authenticiy of Arms]. In Glæsir, the violence becomes more vivid and distasteful, somewhat in the tradition of Gerpla. The unreliable narrator justifies it to himself as calculated pragmatism, as a means to an end rather than something he delights in. I myself believe strongly that violence should not be defamiliarized as illogical or inexplicable, and thus instead try to demonstrate through this unreliable narrative that violence is often the logical offspring of a “solution-oriented” mindset. As this short statement above may show, authors who use the sagas as inspiration must necessarily have a purpose other than just retelling an older narrative. In my own case, my work with the sagas actually results in the impulse to educate being weakened (as I already do that in my work) and the impulse to create becoming stronger. To me the ethics of the sagas are inappropriate for today although knowledge of this literature, indeed knowledge of all good literature, has an important function in the moulding of the modern soul. Thus I find it necessary to take a critical stance towards the sagas, much as I admire them. But in the present day, this is far more accepted than in the age of Gerpla. It was not my intention to follow Glæsir with another saga-inspired novel but that nevertheless happened and Síðasti galdrameistarinn followed in 2014. As a children’s book, its tone is necessarily much lighter and it partly mimics a classical fairytale structure. Like Glæsir, Síðasti galdrameistarinn takes place within a saga, in this case Hrólfs saga kraka, a late medieval legendary saga concerning a Danish counterpart to King Arthur. Again this is a saga I have published on; see “Le Roi Chevalier: The Royal Ideology and Genre of Hrólfs saga kraka” (1999). While an entertaining read, the medieval Hrólfs saga kraka is a strongly misogynistic narrative and for me the starting point was to turn the plot around and perhaps to bring to children a plot that was absolutely contrary to the “psycho bitch” thriller plot so prominent from the 1980s onwards (with the film Fatal Attraction (1987) as an important milestone). Hrólfs saga kraka indeed has an evil female antagonist, Hrólfr’s half-sister Skuld who in the end kills him with her army of witches, zombies, and ghouls. In Síðasti galdrameistarinn, Skuld’s wickedness is presented as a story that turns out to be untrue in the end. In fact, the story mostly concerns narrative and truth and how people tend to believe everything they are told uncritically. The protagonist Kári has been hijacked to take part in a war between male and female, civilization and nature, and military power versus magic and the occult. Fortunately for him he acquires a supernatural helper in the form of a sibyl who turns out to be playing her own power game all along. He also receives important aid from his aunt Heiðr who is the real “last magician” of the story, although the reader is tricked into believing that the title applies to Kári himself right until the end of the story. Like Eyrbyggja saga, Hrólfs saga kraka is not well-known and the author decided not to make anything of the connection between the story and the older narrative, allowing the young readers to discover it themselves later in life. Thus the Old 310 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Norse origins of the text are more or less disguised, as the narrative is presented as a fantasy in the Harry Potter and Eragon vein. The reason for this is perhaps a feeling that cultural heritage should not necessarily always be thrust down people’s throat and that readers can be active and make their own discoveries. It is also my impression that readers do not need to know that the story is based on older material to make use of it. All authors working today with the sagas owe much to Halldór Laxness. At the same time they are working in a completely different environment where the sagas are respected but not seen as sacred, and authors who use the sagas are mostly regarded as showing respect rather than defiling them. It is another story that so many novels based on sagas turn out to be highly successful, not solely because of the audience’s wish to get to know the sagas, but perhaps even more importantly because the sagas have a lot to offer in terms of inspiration. They are being used because they are good and thus helpful to the modern authors who want to tell their own stories.

NOTES

1. Translations of the titles of the medieval sagas with which these modern works engage are provided here in the order they are mentioned: Njáls saga or Njála [Njal’s Saga], Egils saga or Egla [Egil’s Saga], Laxdæla saga [The Saga of the People of Laxardal], Sturlunga saga [The Saga of the Sturlungs], Eyrbyggja saga [The Saga of the People of Eyri], Hrólfs saga kraka [The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki]. English translations of the titles of modern Icelandic works are provided, except where a modern Icelandic literary work is simply named after a character in a medieval saga, as in cases like Mörður or Auður. The References below list only scholarly works.

REFERENCES Helgason, Jón Karl. 1998. Hetjan og höfundurinn. Brot úr íslenskri menningarsögu [The Hero and the Author: A Fragment of Icelandic Cultural History]. Reykjavik: Heimskringla. Jakobsson, Ármann. 1994. “Sannyrði sverða: Vígaferli í Íslendinga sögu og hugmyndafræði sögunnar” [The Authenticity of Arms: Bloodshed in the Íslendinga saga and the Ideology of the Text]. Skáldskaparmál 3: 42–78. ⸻. 1999. “Le Roi Chevalier: The Royal Ideology and Genre of Hrólfs saga kraka.” Scandinavian Studies 71: 139–66. ⸻. 2005. “The Specter of Old Age: Nasty Old Men in the Sagas of Icelanders.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104: 297–325. ⸻. 2013. “Enginn tími fyrir umræðu: Norræn fræði á 20. öld í spegli litríkrar fræðimannsævi Lars Lönnroth” [No Time for Debate: Old Norse Studies in AFTERWORD: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SAGAS? 311

the 20th Century as Illustrated by the Colourful Scholarly Life of Lars Lönnroth]. Skírnir 187: 381–93. . 2019 (Forthcoming). “Þörfin fyrir sanna sögu: Hvaða máli skiptir sannleiksgildi fornrita á borð við Landnámabók fyrir 20. aldar fræðastarf?” [The Need for a True Story: Why the Veracity of Medieval Texts Such as Landnámabók Matters to the Scholarship of the 20th Century]. In Landnám [Settlement]. Reykjavik: Háskólaútgáfan. From the Westfjords to World Literature: A Bibliography on Fostbræðra saga

RYAN E. JOHNSON

ABSTRACT: This bibliography begins with full entries for Manuscripts. The Editions section attempts to be exhaustive to provide an idea of the current scope of Translations available. The Criticism section has been created with an inclusive set of languages to be as useful to as many as possible and to provide easy access to title information in English.

RÉSUMÉ: Cette bibliographie commence par des entrées complètes pour les manuscrits. La section Éditions se veut exhaustive pour donner une idée de l’étendue actuelle des traductions disponibles. La section Critique a été créée avec un ensemble inclusif de langues afin d’être aussi utile que possible au plus grand nombre et de fournir un accès facile aux informations sur les titres en anglais.

Ryan E. Johnson is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 ull entries for manuscripts have been provided to be of most use to a wide variety of scholarship. Location does not indicate place of writing, but rather the location of the archive that contains it. The Uniform F Resource Identifier [URI] for these entries provides a catalogue entry that identifies the source and may provide images if available. Most URI information directs to the common directory of Icelandic and Nordic manuscripts preserved in the University Collection [Háskólabókasafn] at the manuscript department of the National Library of Iceland [Landsbókasafn Íslands], the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies [Árnastofnun], and the Árni Magnússon Collection in Copenhagen [Arnamagnæanske Samling] located at http://handrit. is. The Dictionary of Old Norse Prose [Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog] available at https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php is also a valuable resource for information about Icelandic manuscripts. Print editions have been separately provided. An exhaustive list has been attempted to provide an idea of the current scope of translations available. The section on criticism has been created with an inclusive set of languages to be of most use to as many as possible, and to provide easy access to title information in English. Titles alone have been translated into English where needed within square brackets. The editions, along with the criticism, reflect the current holdings of the Icelandic Collection at the University of Manitoba and the National Library of Iceland [Landsbókasafn Íslands]. University of Manitoba Libraries catalogue information is available at: http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/ Iceland libraries catalogue at: http://leitir.is/

VELLUM MANUSCRIPTS “AM 75 e V fol.” Copenhagen, ca. 1400. Den Arnamagnæanske Samling. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/view/da/AM02-0075- e-1-5. “AM 132 fol.” In Möðruvallabók. Reykjavik, ca. 1350. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 24 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/view/is/ AM02-0132. Þórðarson, Jón, and Magnús Þórhallsson. “GKS 1005 fol.” In Flateyjarbók. Reykjavik, ca. 1400. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/view/is/GKS02-1005. 314 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

PAPER MANUSCRIPTS “AM 163 e fol.” Reykjavik, ca. 1700. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit. is/en/manuscript/view/is/AM02-0163e. Egilsson, Sveinbjörn. “KG 29 I 1.” Reykjavik, ca. 1800. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/ en/manuscript/view/is/KG-0029-I-1-7. Einarsson, Magnús. “AM 76 a fol.” Copenhagen, ca. 1700. Den Arnamagnæanske Samling. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/ view/AM02-0076-a. Gíslason, Konráð. “Lbs 220 fol.” Reykjavik, ca. 1850. Handritasafn. Landsbókasafn Íslands. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/view/ is/Lbs02-0220. Guðmundsson, Gísli. “AM 566 c 4°.” Reykjavik, 1705. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/ en/manuscript/view/is/AM04-0566c. Guttormsson, Jón. “AM 153 fol.” Reykjavik, 1711. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/ manuscript/view/is/AM02-0153. Jónsson, Ásgeir. “AM 141 Fol.” Reykjavik, ca. 1700. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/ manuscript/view/is/AM02-0141. ⸻. “AM 142 Fol.” Reykjavik, ca. 1700. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/ view/is/AM02-0142. ⸻. “AM 566 a 4°.” ca. 1700. Jónsson, Björn. “Stock. papp. fol. 4, 4°.” Stockholm, ca. 1600. Stockholms kongelige bibliotek. Magnússon, Árni, and Ásgeir Jónsson. “AM 566 b 4°.” Reykjavik, ca. 1700. Safn Árna Magnússonar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/manuscript/view/is/AM04-0566b. “NKS 1149 fol.” ca. 1750. “NKS 1176 a fol.” ca. 1750. Sigurðsson, Jón. “JS 19 fol.” Reykjavik, ca. 1840. Handritasafn Jóns Sigurðssonar. Landsbókasafn Íslands. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://handrit.is/en/ manuscript/view/is/JS02-0019. Sigurðsson, Jón, and Sveinbjörn Egilsson. “Lbs 459 4°.” ca. 1850. A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FOSTBRÆÐRA SAGA 315

PRINT EDITIONS Ásmundarson, Valdimar, ed. 1899. Fóstbræðra saga. Íslendingasögur. Reykjavik: Sigurður Kristjánsson. Baetke, Walter, trans. 1924. Die Schwurbrüder [The Sworn Brothers]. Bauern und Helden 2. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. Beyschlag, Siegfried, ed. 1965. Grönländer und Färinger Geschichten [The Stories of the Greenlanders and Faroese]. Translated by Felix Niedner. Thule: Altnordische Dichtung und Prosa 13. Dusseldorf: Diederichs. Costanzo, Antonio, ed. 2012. Fóstbrǿðrasaga. La Saga Dei Fratelli Di Sangue [Fóstbræðra saga: The Saga of the Blood Brothers]. Frattamaggiore: Diana Edizioni. Gíslason, Konráð, ed. 1852. Fóstbræðrasaga. Copenhagen: Det Nordiske Literatur–Samfund. Accessed 23 February 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ hvd.32044078868957. Gíslason, Konráð, ed. 1853. Fóstbræðrasaga eptir tveimur skinnbókum og einni pappírsbók [Fóstbræðra saga according to two vellum manuscripts and one paper manuscript]. Copenhagen: Fornritafjelags Norðurlanda. Halldórsson, Bragi, and Bergljót Soffía Kristjánsdóttir, eds. 1987. “Fóstbræðra saga.” In Íslendinga sögur og þættir 2, 775–851. Reykjavik: Svart á hvítu. Helgason, Grímur M., and Vésteinn Ólason, eds. 1970. “Fóstbræðra saga.” In Íslendinga sögur 4, 1–100. Íslenskar fornsögur. Hafnarfjordur: Skuggsjá. Hollander, Lee M. 1949. The Sagas of Kormák and the Sworn Brothers. Princeton: Princeton University Press for the American–Scandinavian Foundation, New York. Holtsmark, Anne, trans. 1927. Sagaen om fosterbrødrene [The Saga of the Foster Brothers]. Islandske ættesagaer 6. Oslo: Aschehoug. Jónsson, Finnur, ed. 1892. “Fóstbrœðra saga.” In Hauksbók: udgiven efter de Arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4° samt forskellige papirshåndskrifter [Hauksbók: Published based on the Árni Magnússon Manuscripts AM 371, 544 and 675 4°, Along with a Variety of Paper Manuscripts] 2, 370–416. Copenhagen: Kongelige nordiske oldskrift–selskab. Accessed 23 February 2019. http://www.septentrionalia.net/etexts/hauksbok. pdf. Jónsson, Guðni, ed. 1946. “Fóstbræðra saga.” In Vestfirðinga sögur, 199–357. Íslendinga sögur 5. Reykjavik: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan. Jónsson, Guðni, and Björn K. Þórólfsson, eds. 1943. “Fóstbræðra saga.” In Vestfirðinga sögur, 119–276. Íslenzk fornrit 6. Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. 316 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Mendelssohn, Erich von, trans. 1912. Grönländer und Färinger Geschichten [The Stories of the Greenlanders and Faroese]. Thule: Altnordische Dichtung und Prosa 13. Jena: Diederichs. Oddsson, Gunnlaugur, ed. 1822. Fóstbrædra–saga, edr Sagan af Þorgeiri Havarssyni ok Þormódi Bersasyni Kolbrúnarskalldi, [Fóstbræðra saga: Or the Saga of Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Bersason Kolbrúnarskald.] Copenhagen: Thiele. Accessed 23 February 2019. http://baekur.is/is/bok/000123303/Fostbraedra- saga__edr_Sagan_af. Regal, Martin S., trans. 1997. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders Volume II, 329–402. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson. Sveinsson, Benedikt, ed. 1925. Fóstbræðra saga. 2nd ed. Íslendingasögur 26. Reykjavik: Sigurður Kristjánsson. Þórólfsson, Björn K., ed. 1925. Fóstbrœðra saga. S.T.U.A.G.N.L. 49. Copenhagen: Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur.

CRITICISM Angantýsson, Ásgrímur. 2001. “Um Grænlandsför Þormóðar Kolbrúnarskálds og túlkun Fóstbræðrasögu” [Regarding Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld’s Journey to Greenland and an Interpretation of Fóstbræðra saga]. Mímir 40 (49): 6–11. Bragason, Úlfar. 2000. “Fóstbræðra saga: The Flateyjarbók Version.” In Studien Zur Isländersaga: Festschrift Für Rolf Heller, 268–74. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 24. New York: De Gruyter. ⸻. 2003. “Fóstbræðra saga og munnleg geymd: Í minningu M. I. Steblin–Kamenskji,” [Fóstbræðra saga and Oral Tradition: In Memoriam M. I. Steblin-Kamensky]. Ársrit Sögufélags Ísfirðinga 43: 137–45. Ebel, Uwe. 2000. “Archaik oder Europa: Theologisches Argument und Interpretation von Gewalt in der Fóstbrœðra saga” [Archaic or Europe: Theological Argument and the Interpretation of Violence in Fóstbræðra saga]. In Studien zur Isländersaga: Festschrift für Rolf Heller. Edited by Heinrich Beck and Else Ebel, 25–50. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 24. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Einarsson, Bjarni. 1982. “Um Þormóð skáld og unnusturnar tvær” [Regarding Þormóður the Skald and his Two Lovers]. Gripla 5: 66–76. Friðriksdóttir, Jóhanna Katrín. 2009. “Women’s Weapons: A Re–Evaluation of Magic in the Íslendingasögur.” Scandinavian Studies 81 (4): 409–36. Gaertner, Kurt Hugo. 1907. “Zur Fóstbræðrasaga. I. Teil: Die Vísur” [Regarding Fóstbræðra saga. I. Part: The Verses]. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FOSTBRÆÐRA SAGA 317

und Literatur 32: 299–446. Accessed 24 February 2019. https://doi.org/10. 1515/bgsl.1907.1907.32.299. Gos, Giselle. 2009. “Women as a Source of Heilræði, ‘Sound Counsel’: Social Mediation and Community Integration in Fóstbrœðra saga.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 108 (3): 281–300. Hallberg, Peter. 1976. “Enn um aldur Fóstbræðra sögu: Nokkrar athugasemdir” [Once More About the Dating of Fóstbræðra saga: A Number of Comments]. Skírnir 150: 238–63. Hartmann, Nils. 2011. Gewaltmotivation in der Fóstbræðra saga [Motivation of Violence in Fóstbræðra saga]. Windrose 4. Berlin: SAXA. Heinemann, Fredrik. 1984. “The Hero on the Beach in Fóstbraeðra saga.” Neophilologus 68 (4): 557–61. Accessed 23 February 2019. https://doi.org/10. 1007/BF00312660. Heller, Rolf. 1976a. “Fóstbræðra saga und Laxdæla saga.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 91: 102–22. ⸻. 1976b. “Fóstbræðra saga und Víga–Glúms saga.” Acta philologica Scandinavica 31 (1): 44–57. ⸻. 1976c. “Zur Namenwahl des Verfassers der Fóstbræðra saga” [Regarding the Name of the Author of Fóstbræðra saga]. Mediaeval Scandinavia 9: 138–45. ⸻. 1977. “Zur Entstehung der Grönlandszenen der Fóstbræðra saga” [Regarding the Emergence of the Greenland Scenes in Fóstbræðra saga]. In Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. júlí 1977. Edited by Jónas Kristjánsson and Einar G. Pétursson, 326–34. Rit Árnastofnunar 12. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. Ingvarsson, Haukur. 2001. “Kynvillingur í hópi klassískra sagna: Um klausurnar í Fóstbræðrasögu” [Homosexuality in the Group of Classical Sagas: Regarding the Poetic Digressions in Fóstbræðra saga]. Mímir 40 (49): 88–96. Jeffrey, Margaret. 1934. The Discourse in Seven Icelandic Sagas: Droplaugarsona saga, Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, Víga–Glúms saga, Gísla saga Súrssonar, Fóstbræðra saga, Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings, Flóamanna saga. Menasha, WI: Bryn Mawr. Jochens, Jenny. 1991. “The Illicit Love Visit: An Archaeology of Old Norse Sexuality.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1 (3): 357–92. ⸻. 2000. “Representations of Skalds in the Sagas 2: Gender Relations.” In Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets. Edited by Russell Gilbert Poole, 309–32. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 27. Berlin: De Gruyter. 318 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Kanerva, Kirsi. 2013. “‘Eigi er sá heill, er í augun verkir.’ Eye Pain as a Literary Motif in Thirteenth– and Fourteenth-Century Íslendingasögur.” ARV: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 69: 7–35. Kratz, Henry. 1955. “The ‘Fóstbræðrasaga’ and the Oral Tradition.” Scandinavian Studies 27 (2): 121–36. Kress, Helga. 1996a. “Bróklindi Falgeirs: Fóstbræðra saga og hláturmenning miðalda.” In Fyrir Dyrum Fóstru: Greinar um konur og kynferði í íslenskum fornbókmenntum, 45–65. Reykjavik: Rannsóknastofa í kvennafræðum. ⸻. 1996b. “‘Gægur er þér í augum’: Konur í sjónmáli Íslendingasagna.” In Fyrir Dyrum Fóstru: Greinar um konur og kynferði í íslenskum fornbókmenntum, 135–56. Reykjavik: Rannsóknastofa í kvennafræðum. Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1969. “Fóstbræðravíg” [Slaying Sworn Brothers]. In Einarsbók: Afmæliskveðja til Einars Ól. Sveinssonar: 12. desember 1969, 196–204. Reykjavik: Nokkrir vinir. ⸻. 1972. Um Fóstbræðrasögu. [Regarding Fóstbræðra saga] Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. Rit Árnastofnunar 1. Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. ⸻. 1973. “Elements of Learning and Chivalry in Fóstbræðra Saga.” In The Icelandic Sagas and Western Literary Tradition. Proceedings of the First International Saga Conference, University of Edinburgh, 21–29 August, 1971. Edited by Hermann Pálsson and Desmond Slay, 259–99. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Kroesen, Jacoba M. C. 1962. Over de compositie der Fóstbræðra saga [Regarding the Composition of Fóstbræðra saga]. Leidse germanistische en anglistische reeks van de Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden 2. Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden. McDougall, David. 1984. “A Note on the Shape of Rome in Fóstbræðra saga.” Gripla 6 (1): 259–64. Meulengracht-Sørensen, Preben. 1993a. “Humor, Heroes, Morality and Anatomy in Fóstbræðra saga.” In Twenty-Eight Papers Presented to Hans Bekker-Nielsen on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 28 April 1993, 395–418. Odense: Odense University Press. ⸻. 1993b. “Humor, Heroes, Morality and Anatomy in Fóstbræðra saga.” NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution 21-22 (1): 395–418. Accessed 24 February 2019. https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.21-22.26sor. ⸻. 1999. “Modernitet og tratitionalisem: et bidrag til islændingesagaernes litteraturhistorie med en diskussion af Fóstbræðra sagas alder” [Modernity and Traditionalism: A Contribution to the History of Icelandic Literary History A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FOSTBRÆÐRA SAGA 319

with a Discussion of the Dating of Fóstbræðra saga]. In Die Aktualität der Saga: Festschrift für Hans Schottmann. Edited by Stig Toftgaard Andersen, 149–62. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 21. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Pálsson, Hermann. 1957. “Tvær vetrarmyndir” [Two Winter Images]. Tímarit Máls og menningar 18 (2): 122–25. Pétursson, Hannes. 1957. “Þorgeir Hávarsson í Fóstbræðra sögu og Gerplu” [Þorgeir Hávarsson in Fóstbræðra saga and Gerpla (Wayward Heroes)]. Tímarit Máls Og Menningar 18 (1): 23–41. Sayers, William. 2001. “Scarfing the Yard with Words (Fóstbræðra saga): Shipbuilding Imagery in Old Norse Poetics.” Scandinavian Studies 74 (1): 1–18. See, Klaus von. 1976. “Die Überlieferung der Fóstbræðra saga” [The Tradition of Fóstbræðra saga]. Skandinavistik 6 (1): 1–18. Sønderholm, Erik. 1961. “Samtíningur um Fóstbræðrasögu” [Miscellany Regarding Fóstbræðra saga]. Translated by Hjálmar Ólafsson. Skírnir 135: 99–109. “The lore of skalds, warrior ideals, and tales of ancient kings”: A Bibliography on Gerpla

ALEC SHAW

ABSTRACT: This bibliography takes its title from a passage in Gerpla, which occurs when the protagonist, Skald Þormóður, arrives in Norway after nearly freezing to death in Greenland. Bereft of wealth, health, and companions, Þormóður still proudly praises the literary traditions of Iceland, in defiance of the skeptical locals. Considering Gerpla’s editions, translations, reviews, and scholarship allows for an overview of the sizable impact of Halldór’s “little book.”

RÉSUMÉ: Cette bibliographie tire son titre d’un passage de Gerpla, lors duquel le protagoniste, le scalde Þormóður, arrive en Norvège après avoir failli mourir de froid au Groenland. Privé de richesse, de santé et de compagnons, Þormóður continue à louer fièrement les traditions littéraires de l’Islande, au mépris des habitants sceptiques. Considérer les éditions, traductions, critiques et études de Gerpla permet d’avoir un aperçu de l’impact considérable du « petit livre » de Halldór.

Alec Shaw is an MA student in linguistics at the University of Iceland.

SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES VOLUME 26 ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA 2019 öfðum vér á brott við oss úr Noregi eigi fé, heldur skáldment og garpskap og sögur fornkonúnga; vér færðum til Íslands höfuð Mímis og Boðnarker; en þér sitjið daufir eftir, skáldum sneyddir, bögumæltir H og án frægðar af sjálfum yður. Mun Noregur ekki frægð hljóta um aldur utan þá er hann þiggur að íslendíngum. (Gerpla, first edition, 379)

[We took no possession from Norway apart from the lore of skalds, warrior ideals, and tales of ancient kings. To Iceland, we brought Mímir’s head, and Boðn, the vessel of the mead of poetry, yet here you remain, dull-witted, bereft of skalds, and speaking a corrupt language, with no glory of your own making. Norway will never have any glory, apart from what Icelanders bestow on it.] (Wayward Heroes, 402)

EDITIONS Laxness, Halldór. 1952. Gerpla. 1st ed. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1952. Gerpla. 2nd ed. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1956. Gerpla. 3rd ed. With a commentary by Helgi Jósep Halldórsson. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1983. Gerpla. With a commentary by Helgi Jósep Halldórsson. Skólaútgafan. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1988a. Gerpla. 4th ed. Reykjavik: Helgafell. ⸻. 1998. Gerpla. 5th ed. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell. ⸻. 2010. Gerpla. 6th ed. Íslenskklassík. Reykjavik: Forlagið. ⸻. 2011. Gerpla. 7th ed. Reykjavik: Vaka–Helgafell.

TRANSLATIONS Laxness, Halldór. 1954. Gerpla. Translated by Ingegerd Nyberg Fries. Stockholm: Litteraturfrämjandet. ⸻. 1958. The Happy Warriors. Translated by Katherine John. London: Methuen. ⸻. 1962. Gerpla: Hrdinská sága. Translated by Nina Neklanová. Jiskry: Nová beletristická knihovna 37. Prague: Nakladatelství politické literatury. ⸻. 1977. Gerpla: Eine Heldensage. Translated by Bruno Kress. Berlin: Aufbau. 322 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

⸻. 1988b. Gerpla: Sága o hrdinoch. Translated by Jaroslav Kaňa. Bratislava: Slovenský spisovateľ. ⸻. 2016. Wayward Heroes. Translated by Phillip Roughton. New York: Archipelago Books.

REVIEWS Andrésson, Kristinn E. 1972. “Gerpla.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. Tímarit Máls og menningar 33 (3–4): 273–91. Bergsveinsson, Sveinn. 1952. “GERPLA. Halldór Kiljan Laxness. Helgafell 1952.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. Menn og menntir 2 (3): 104–7. Björnsson, Björn. 1953. “Halldór Kiljan og Gerpla hans.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. Morgunblaðið, March 17, no. 63, 11. Cowdery, Stephen, and Darien Fisher-Duke. “The Happy Warriors.” Review of The Happy Warriors, by Halldór Laxness, translated by Katherine John. In Laxness in Translation: A Celebration of Halldór Laxness, Icelandic Author and Nobel Laureate. 2010-2019. Accessed 23 July 2018. https://laxnessintranslation.blogspot.com/ 2010/07/the-happy-warriors.html. Duffy, Tyson. 2017. “The Slighted, the Neglected, the Sufferers of Injustice, and Sheep.” Review of Wayward Heroes, by Halldór Laxness, translated by Phillip Roughton. Cleaver. Accessed 20 July 2018. https://www.cleavermagazine. com/wayward–heroes-anovel-by-halldor-laxness-reviewed-by-tyson-duffy/. “Gerpla—ný bók Kiljans.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. 1952. Morgunblaðið. December 5, no. 279, 2. “Gerpla, ný skáldsaga um efni úr fornsögunum, eftir Laxness.” 1952. Alþýðublaðið. Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. December 5, no. 274, 8. Halldórsson, Helgi Jósep. 1953. “Gerpla.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. Þjoðviljinn, April 14– 15, nos. 83–84, 7, 11. Haraldsson, Helgi. 1953. “Gerpla Halldórs Kiljans.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. Tíminn, February 26–27, nos. 46–47, 4. Jónsson, Þorsteinn M. 1953. “Gerpla.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. Eimreiðin 59 (1): 73–74. Lowenstern, Beau. 2016. “Wayward Heroes, by Halldór Laxness, tr. Philip Roughton. Archipelago Books.” Review of Wayward Heroes, by Halldór Laxness, translated by Phillip Roughton. Asymptote Blog. September 8. Accessed 20 July 2018. https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2016/09/08/forthcoming–autumn- translations-inreview/. A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON GERPLA 323

“Skáldsaga Kiljans um garpa fornaldarinnar komin út.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. 1952. Tíminn. December 5, no. 277, 1. Taylor, Justin. 2016. “Flesh and Blood: The Saga of Halldór Laxness.” Review of Wayward Heroes, by Halldór Laxness, translated by Phillip Roughton. Harper’s Magazine. Accessed 20 July 2018. https://harpers.org/archive/2016/11/flesh– and-blood/. “Viðtal við Halldór Kiljan Laxness: Gerpla, hin nýja skaldsaga Halldórs Laxness, kemur út ídag.” Review of Gerpla, by Halldór Laxness. 1952. Þjóðviljinn. December 5, no. 276, 1. Whitehouse, Gary. 2016. “Halldór Laxness’s Wayward Heroes.” Review of Wayward Heroes, by Halldór Laxness, translated by Phillip Roughton. The Green Man Review. Accessed 20 July 2018. http://thegreenmanreview.com/wordpress1/ books/halldor–laxnesss-wayward-heroes/.

SCHOLARSHIP Agnarsdóttir, Hlín. 2010. “Handan við leikaraskapinn: Um látalæti og veruleika í leikhúsinu í ljósi Der Theatermacher eftir Thomas Bernhard.” Master’s thesis, University of Iceland. Benediktsson, Jakob. 1952. “Um Gerplu.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 13 (3). Bjarnardóttir, Birna. 1992. “Hinn kvenlegi lesháttur.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 53 (2). Boyer, Régis. 1972. “Essai sur la composition de Gerpla.” Scandinavica 11 (2): 5–20. Cowdery, Stephen (Administrator). 2017 Laxness in Translation: A Celebration of Halldór Laxness, Icelandic Author and Nobel Laureate. Accessed 20 July 2018. https://laxnessintranslation.blogspot.com/. Earnest, Steve. 2013. “Clash with the Vikings: Gerpla and the Struggle for National Identity in Iceland.” Theatre Symposium 21: 69–77. Fjalldal, Magnús. 2006. “Aðföng og efnistök í Englandsþætti Gerplu.” Ritið 6 (3): 131–52. Friese, Wilhelm. 1995. Halldór Laxness die Romane: Eine Einführung. Vol. 24. Basel: Helbing and Lichtenhahn. Gissurarson, Hannes Hólmsteinn. 2005. Laxness. Reykjavik: Bókafélagið. Guðmundsdóttir, Guðrún Hrefna. 1989. Halldór Laxness in Deutschland: Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Vol. 8. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Guðmundsson, Halldór. 2008. The Islander: A Biography of Halldór Laxness. Translated by Philip Roughton. Quercus: Maclehose Press. 324 SCANDINAVIAN-CANADIAN STUDIES/ÉTUDES SCANDINAVES AU CANADA

Hallberg, Peter. 1968. “Halldór Laxness’ Gerpla: Einige Bemerkungen über Sprache und Tendenz.” Scientia Islandica 1:31–40. ⸻. 1971. “Gerpla.” In Hús skáldsins: Umskáldverk Halldórs Laxness frá Sölku Völku til Gerplu, translated by Helgi Jósep Halldórsson, 2: 163–78. Reykjavik: Mál og menning. ⸻. 1982. “Halldór Laxness and the Icelandic Sagas.” Leeds Studies in English 13: 1–22. Keel, Aldo. 1981. Innovation und Restauration: Der Romancier Halldór Laxness seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Vol. 10. Basel: Helbing and Lichtenhahn. Kormákur, Baltasar. 2010. “Gerpla.” Unpublished dramatic text. Kress, Helga. 2018. “Harmþrungnasta bókin: Fóstbræðrasaga og Gerpla.” In Deutsch–isländische Beziehungen. Festschrift für Hubert Seelow zum 70. Geburtstag. Edited by Lena Rohrbach, and Sebastian Kürschner, 285–94. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Nordeuropa-Institut. Kristjánsdóttir, Bergljót Soffía. 1987. “Romantechnik und Gesellschaftsbild in dem Roman Gerpla von Halldór Laxness.” PhD diss., Ernst–Moritz-Arndt Universität. Kristjánsdóttir, Dagný. 1988. “Um beinfætta men og bjúgfætta, kiðfætta, kríngilfætta og tindilfætta.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 49 (3): 283–300. Magnússon, Sigurður A. 1992. “The World of Halldór Laxness.” World Literature Today 66 (3): 457–63. Mari Catani, Alessandro. 1982. Ivichinghi di Jomsborg e alter saghe del Nord. Firenze: Sansoni. Neijmann, Daisy L., ed. 2006. A History of Icelandic Literature. History of Scandinavian Literatures 5. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Norðfjörð, Björn Ægir. 2010. “Adapting a Literary Nation to Film: National Identity, Neoromanticism and the Anxiety of Influence.” Scandinavian Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 19: 12–40. Ólason, Vésteinn. 1992. “Halldór Laxness og íslensk hetjudýrkun.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 52 (3): 31–41. Pétursson, Hannes. 1957. “Þorgeir Hávarsson í Fóstbræðrasögu og Gerplu.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 18 (1): 23–51. Shimizu, Makoto. 2010. “Hokuou Aisurando bungaku no rekishi (3): Harudouru Rahasunesu kara 20 seikimatsu made.” Hokkaidou daigaku bungaku kenkyuuka kiyou 130: 69–124. https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/ 42726/1/ARCS130_003.pdf. A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON GERPLA 325

Stevens, Patrick J., ed. 2004. Icelandic Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography 293. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. Index of Keywords aesthetics.....18-21, 22-25, 26-38, 156-174, 182-204, 208-227, 240-264, 276-295, 304-310 Bakhtin, Mikhail.....70-85 Brecht, Bertolt.....156-174 comparative literature.....132-151, 240-264, 276-295 Conrad, Joseph.....26-38 dedication.....13 editorial practices.....44-60, 110-128, 312-313 Foucault, Michel.....132-151 Gíslason, Konráð.....44-60 Icelandic sagas.....88-105 Laxness, Halldór.....18-21, 22-25, 26-38, 110-128, 132-151, 156-174, 182-204, 208-227, 240-264, 276-295, 304-310, 320-321 literary criticism.....18-21, 22-25, 70-85, 156-174, 182-204, 208-227, 304-310, 312-313, 320-321 Nordal, Sigurður.....70-85, 110-128 Old Norse in Italy.....88-105 Orwell, George.....240-264 saga reception.....18-21, 22-25, 26-38, 44-60, 70-85, 88-105, 110-128, 132-151, 156-174, 182-204, 208-227, 276-295, 304-310, 312-313, 320-321 Shakespeare, William.....26-38 skaldic poetry.....44-60, 182-204 Sveinsson, Einar Ólafur.....70-85, 110-128 textual scholarship.....44-60, 312-313, 320-321 Thomsen, Grímur.....276-295 Tolkien, J. R. R...... 240-264 translation studies.....18-21, 22-25, 88-105, 132-151, 208-227, 304-310, 312-313, 320-321