Beihefte zur Mediaevistik: Band 29 2016

Andrea Grafetstätter / Sieglinde Hartmann / James Ogier (eds.) 2016

, Islands · and Cities in Medieval Myth, Literature, and History. Papers Delivered at the International Medieval Congress, Univer-sity of Leeds, in 2005, 2006, and 2007 (2011) Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung

Olaf Wagener (Hrsg.), „vmbringt mit starcken turnen, murn“. Ortsbefesti- Band 29 gungen im Mittelalter (2010)

Hiram Kümper (Hrsg.), eLearning & Mediävistik. Mittelalter lehren und lernen im neumedialen Zeitalter (2011)

Olaf Wagener (Hrsg.), Symbole der Macht? Aspekte mittelalterlicher und frühneuzeitlicher Architektur (2012)

N. Peter Joosse, The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. The Book of the Two Pieces of Advice or Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn by cAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī (1162–1231) (2013)

Meike Pfefferkorn, Zur Semantik von rike in der Sächsischen Weltchronik. Reden über Herrschaft in der frühen deutschen Chronistik - Transforma- tionen eines politischen Schlüsselwortes (2014)

Eva Spinazzè, La luce nell'architettura sacra: spazio e orientazione nelle chiese del X-XII secolo tra Romandie e Toscana. Including an English summary. Con una introduzione di Xavier Barral i Altet e di Manuela Incerti (2016)

Christa Agnes Tuczay (Hrsg.), Jenseits. Eine mittelalterliche und mediävis- tische Imagination. Interdisziplinäre Ansätze zur Analyse des Unerklär- lichen (2016)

Begründet von Peter Dinzelbacher Herausgegeben von Albrecht Classen LANG MEDIAEVISTIK

MEDI 29-2016 271583-160x230 Br-AM PLE.indd 1 24.01.17 KW 04 09:06 Beihefte zur Mediaevistik: Band 29 2016

Andrea Grafetstätter / Sieglinde Hartmann / James Ogier (eds.) 2016

, Islands · and Cities in Medieval Myth, Literature, and History. Papers Delivered at the International Medieval Congress, Univer-sity of Leeds, in 2005, 2006, and 2007 (2011) Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung

Olaf Wagener (Hrsg.), „vmbringt mit starcken turnen, murn“. Ortsbefesti- Band 29 gungen im Mittelalter (2010)

Hiram Kümper (Hrsg.), eLearning & Mediävistik. Mittelalter lehren und lernen im neumedialen Zeitalter (2011)

Olaf Wagener (Hrsg.), Symbole der Macht? Aspekte mittelalterlicher und frühneuzeitlicher Architektur (2012)

N. Peter Joosse, The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. The Book of the Two Pieces of Advice or Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn by cAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī (1162–1231) (2013)

Meike Pfefferkorn, Zur Semantik von rike in der Sächsischen Weltchronik. Reden über Herrschaft in der frühen deutschen Chronistik - Transforma- tionen eines politischen Schlüsselwortes (2014)

Eva Spinazzè, La luce nell'architettura sacra: spazio e orientazione nelle chiese del X-XII secolo tra Romandie e Toscana. Including an English summary. Con una introduzione di Xavier Barral i Altet e di Manuela Incerti (2016)

Christa Agnes Tuczay (Hrsg.), Jenseits. Eine mittelalterliche und mediävis- tische Imagination. Interdisziplinäre Ansätze zur Analyse des Unerklär- lichen (2016)

Begründet von Peter Dinzelbacher Herausgegeben von Albrecht Classen LANG MEDIAEVISTIK

MEDI 29-2016 271583-160x230 Br-AM PLE.indd 1 24.01.17 KW 04 09:06 Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung

Begründet von Peter Dinzelbacher Herausgegeben von Albrecht Classen

Band 29 · 2016 Stabskirche in Heddal, Notodden, Telemark, in Norwegen (Bild Peter Dinzelbacher)

ISSN 0934-7453 ISSN-Internet: 2199-806X © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2017 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Peter Lang Edition ist ein Imprint der Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. www.peterlang.com Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 1

Inhalt

Aufsätze

John M. Jeep, Das Rolandslied: Stabreimende Wortpaare im Frühmittelhochdeutschen______11 Werner Schäfke, Auf den Leib geschriebene Rollen und eingefleischte Eigenschaften. Körpersymbolik und soziale Rollensysteme in altnordischer Dichtung und Prosa______39 Jan Alexander van Nahl, The Medieval Mood of Contingency. Chance as a Shaping Factor in Hákonar saga góða and Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar______81 Jalal abd Alghani, Medieval Readership, the Loving Poet and the Creation of the Exquisite Ode: A Note on Ibn Zaydūn’s Nūniyya and the Poetic Visualization of Love______99 Deborah Fraioli, Heloise’s First Letter as a Response to the Historia Calamitatum_ 119 Masza Siltek, The Threefold Movement of St. Adalbert’s Head______143 Albrecht Classen, The Transnational and the Transcultural in Medieval German Literature: Spatial Identity and Pre-Modern Concepts of Nationhood in the Works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Straßburg, Rudolf von Ems, and Konrad von Würzburg______175 Juan Carlos Bayo, El dilema de la resolución del signo tironiano en el Cantar de Mio Cid______195 Inti Athanasios Yanes-Fernandez, Poetics of Dreams: The Narrative Meaning of the Dream-Chronotope in The House of Fame and La Vida es Sueño______207 Werner Heinz, Heilige Längen. Zu den Maßen des Christus- und des Mariengrabes in Bebenhausen______245 Teodoro Patera, Signes du corps, corps du récit : les traces corporelles dans le Roman de Tristan de Béroul______269 Huw Grange, In Praise of Fragments. A Manuscript of the Prose Tristan in Châlons-en-Champagne______287 2 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

Rezensionen

Gesamtes Mittelalter

Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives, ed. Markus Stock (A. CLASSEN)______307 Gerd Althoff, Kontrolle der Macht. Formen und Regeln politischer Beratung im Mittelalter (J. A. VAN NAHL)______308 Oliver Auge, Christiane Witthöft, Hg., Ambiguität im Mittelalter. Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption (J. A. VAN NAHL)__ 310 Sverre Bagge, Cross & Scepter. The Rise of the Scandiavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation (J. A. VAN NAHL)______311 János M. Bak and Ivan Jurković, ed., Chronicon: Medieval Narrative Sources. A Chronological Guide with Introductory Essays (G. VERCAMER)______313 Keagan Brewer, compiler and translator, Prester John: The Legend and its Sources (R. J. CORMIER)______314 Byzantine Images and their Afterlives: Essays in Honour of Annemarie Weyl Carr (G. W. TROMPF)______316 The Character of Christian-Muslim Encounter. Essays in Honour of David Thomas, ed. (J. JAKOB)______318 Albrecht Classen, ed., Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture (H. HARTMANN)______320 Albrecht Classen, Reading Medieval European Women Writers. Strong Literary Witnesses from the Past (B. LUNDT)______323 Albrecht Classen, ed., Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death (C. STANFORD)__ 325 Giuseppe Di Stefano, ed., Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique des Locutions: Ancien Français – Moyen Français – Renaissance (W. SAYERS)______329 The World of St. Francis of Assisi. Essays in Honor of William R. Cook, ed. (K. PANSTERS)______330 Sandra Hindman with Scott Miller, Intro. by Diana Scarisbrick, Take this Ring: Medieval and Renaissance Rings from the Griffin Collection (A. CLASSEN)____ 332 Katalog der lateinischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München. Die Handschriften aus den Klöstern Altenhohenau und Altomünster: Clm 2901–2966 sowie Streubestände gleicher Provenienz (J. M. JEEP)______333 Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn beschrieben von Jürgen Geiß (J. M. JEEP)______336 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 3

Patricia Clare Ingham, The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation. The Middle Ages Series (R. J. CORMIER)______339 Madeline Jeay, Póétique de la nomination dans la lyrique médiévale. “Mult volentiers me numerai (W. PFEFFER)______340 Richard W. Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry (A. CLASSEN)______344 Klaus Krack und Gustav Oberholzer, Die Ostausrichtung der mittelalterlichen Kirchen und Gräber (T. HORST)______346 Lexikon der regionalen Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters: Ungarn und Rumänien. Hrsg. Von Cora Dietl und Anna-Lena Liebermann (A. CLASSEN)___ 348 Emily Lyle, Ten Gods: A New Approach to Defining the Mythological Structures of the Indo-Europeans (W. SAYERS)______350 Magia daemoniaca, magia naturalis, zouber: Schreibweisen von Magie und Alchemie in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, hrsg. Peter-André Alt, Jutta Eming, Tilo Renz und Volkhard Wels (A. CLASSEN)______351 Bert Roest, Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220–1650 (R. LÜTZELSCHWAB)______353 Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Geschichte der Stadt und ihres Umlandes, ed. Horst F. Rupp and Karl Borchardt (D. NICHOLAS)______356 Irmgard Rüsenberg, Liebe und Leid, Kampf und Grimm: Gefühlswelten in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (A. CLASSEN)______358 Sacred Histories: A Festschrift for Máire Herbert, ed. John Carey (W. SAYERS)__ 359 Rüdiger Schnell, Haben Gefühle eine Geschichte? Aporien einer History of emotions (A. CLASSEN)______361 Schaumburg im Mittelalter. Hrsg. von Stefan Brüdermann (A. WOLF)______365 Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe. Dynamic Interactions, ed. Alexis Wilkin (D. NICHOLAS)______370 Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Baltic Sea, ed. Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder (R. SCHMITZ-ESSER)______371 E. R. Truitt, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (C. M. CUSACK)______373 Verstellung und Betrug im Mittelalter und in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, hrsg. Matthias Meyer und Alexander Sager (A. CLASSEN)______375 Welterfahrung und Welterschließung in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, hrsg. Anna Kathrin Bleuler (A. CLASSEN)______379 Helmut Zander, „Europäische“ Religionsgeschichte (M. J. ORTUZAR ESCUDERO)______381 4 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

Zwischen Rom und Santiago: Festschrift für Klaus Herbers zum 65. Geburtstag, hrsg. Claudia Alraum, Andreas Holndonner, Hans-Christian Lehner, et al. (A. CLASSEN)______384

Frühmittelalter

Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch; Elmar Seebold. Chronologisches Wörterbuch des deutschen Wortschatzes. Der Wortschatz des 8. Jahrhunderts (und frühere Quellen) (Titelabkürzung: ChWdW8); Zweiter Band. Der Wortschatz des 9. Jahrhunderts (Titelabkürzung ChWdW9) (J. M. JEEP)______387 Ava: Geistliche Dichtungen, hrsg. Maike Claußnitzer und Kassandra Sperl (A. CLASSEN)______391 Calcidius, On Plato’s Timaeus (R. J. CORMIER)______392 Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, Coire Sois, The Cauldron of Knowledge: A Companion to Early Irish Saga (R. J. CORMIER)______394 Alice Jorgensen, Frances McCormack, and Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Anglo-Saxon Emotions: Reading the Heart in Old English Language, Literature and Culture (C. M. CUSACK)______396 Albert Derolez, The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript, Ghent, University Library MS 92 (S. G. BRUCE)______399 Ekkehart IV. von St. Gallen. Hg. von Norbert Kössinger, Elke Krotz und Stephan Müller (J. M. JEEP)______400 Joel Kalvesmaki and Robin Darling Young, ed., Evagrius and His Legacy (T. FARMER)______403 Achim Thomas Hack, Karolinger Kaiser als Sportler: Ein Beitrag zur frühmittelalterlichen Körpergeschichte (A. CLASSEN)______405 Akihiro Hamano. Die frühmittelhochdeutsche Genesis. Synoptische Ausgabe nach der Wiener, Millstätter und Vorauer Handschrift (J. M. JEEP)______406 Gerald Kapfhammer, Die Evangelienharmonie Tatian. Studien zum Codex Sangallensis 56 (H. HARTMANN)______409 Bernard Pouderon, ed., Les Romans grecs et latins et leurs réécritures modernes: Études sur la réception de l’ancien roman, du Moyen Age à la fin du XIXe siècle (R. J. CORMIER)______411 Dieter Geuenich and Uwe Ludwig, ed., Libri vitae: Gebetsgedenken in der Gesellschaft des Frühen Mittelalters (S. G. BRUCE)______413 The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. Martin Brett and David A. Woodman (A. BREEZE)______414 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 5

Megan Cavell, Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: The Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature (J. M. HILL)______415 Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora. The Medieval World Series (A. SAUCKEL)__ 417 Carla Harder, Pseudoisidor und das Papsttum. Funktion und Bedeutung des apostolischen Stuhls in den pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen (A. RAFFEINER)______418 John F. Romano, Liturgy and Society in Early Medieval Rome (S. G. BRUCE)___ 419 Christer Lindqvist, Norn im keltischen Kontext (W. SAYERS)______421 Renate Schipke, Das Buch in der Spätantike: Herstellung, Form, Ausstattung und Verbreitung in der westlichen Reichshälfte des Imperium Romanum (J. FÜHRER)______423 Stefan J. Schustereder, Strategies of Identity Construction: The Writings of Gildas, Aneirin and Bede (A. BREEZE)______425 M. J. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter (S. G. BRUCE)______427 Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike, Vikings at War (A. CLASSEN)______428 Niamh Wycherley, The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland (R. LÜTZELSCHWAB)______430

Hochmittelalter

Anna Kathrin Bleuler, Essen – Trinken – Liebe: Kultursemiotische Untersuchungen zur Poetik des Alimentären in Wolframs ‘Parzival’ (A. CLASSEN)______435 Scott G. Bruce, Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe (A. CLASSEN)______437 Iris Bunte, Der “Tristan” Gottfrieds von Straßburg und die Tradition der lateinischen Rhetorik: Tropen, Figuren und Topoi im höfischen Roman (A. CLASSEN)______438 Die Grafen von Lauffen am mittleren und unteren Neckar, hg. Christian Burkhart und Jörg Kreutz (A. WOLF)______440 Jutta Eming, Emotionen im ‘Tristan’: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Paradigmatik (A. CLASSEN)______442 Das Gerresheimer Evangeliar: eine spätottonische Prachthandschrift als Geschichtsquelle, hrsg. Klaus Gereon Beuckers, Beate Johlen-Budnik (C. M. GRAFINGER)______443 Christine Grieb, Schlachtenschilderungen in Historiographie und Literatur (1150–1230) (A. CLASSEN)______446 6 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

Philip Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre (S. LUCHITSKAYA)______447 A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges, Part III: France, ed. D. Jackson, N. Morgan, and S. Panayotova (S. G. BRUCE)______449 Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200: Practice, Morality and Thought, ed. Giles E.M. Gasper and Svein H. Gulbekk (H. KÜMPER)______450 Barbara Newman, Making Love in the Twelfth Century: “Letters of Two Lovers” in Context (R. J. CORMIER)______452 Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient (A. BREEZE)__ 454 Dietmar Peschel, Wie soll ich das verstehen? Neun Vorträge über Verstehen, Edieren, Übersetzen mittelalterlicher Literatur (A. CLASSEN)______455 Pierre Monnet, ed., Bouvines 1214–2014: Histoire et mémoire d’une bataille / Eine Schlacht zwischen Geschichte und Erinnerung – Approches et comparaisons franco-allemandes / Deutsch-französische Ansätze und Vergleiche (W. C. JORDAN)______456 Julia Richter, Spiegelungen: Paradigmatisches Erzählen in Wolframs >Parzival< (A. CLASSEN)______458 The Second Crusade: Holy War on the Periphery of Latin Christendom (R. J. CORMIER)______460 Nancy Marie Brown, Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them (W. SAYER)______463 Regina D. Schiewer (Hg.), Die Millstätter Predigten (R. LÜTZELSCHWAB)____ 464 Philipp Sutner, Stephan Köhler, Andreas Obenaus (Hgg.), Gott will es. Der Erste Kreuzzug – Akteure und Aspekte (P. GORIDIS)______467 Frauke Thielert, Paarformeln in mittelalterlichen Stadtrechtstexten (J. M. JEEP)__ 468 Benjamin van Well, Mir troumt hinaht ein troum: Untersuchungen zur Erzählweise von Träumen in mittelhochdeutscher Epik (A. CLASSEN)______471 Walter Map, Die unterhaltsamen Gespräche am englischen Königshof (A. CLASSEN)______472 Stephen Wheeler, ed., trans., Accessus ad auctores: Medieval Introductions to the Authors (Codex latinus monacensis 19475) (R. J. CORMIER)______474 Friedrich Wolfzettel, La poésie lyrique du Moyen Âge au Nord de la France (W. PFEFFER)______475 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 7

Spätmittelalter

700 Jahre Boccaccio: Traditionslinien vom Trecento bis in die Moderne, hg. Christa Bertelsmeier-Kierst und Rainer Stillers (A. CLASSEN)______477 Rolf Kießling, Frank Konersmann, and Werner Troßbach, Grundzüge der Agrargeschichte. Band 1. Vom Spätmittelalter bis zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg (1350–1650). Mit einem Beitrag von Dorothee Rippmann (D. NICHOLAS)_____ 478 Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Reading As the Angels Read: Speculation and Politics in Dante’s Banquet (F. ALFIE)______480 Arnaut de Vilanova, Über den Antichrist und die Reform der Christenheit (A. CLASSEN)______482 Andrew Colin Gow, Robert B. Desjardins, and François V. Pageau, ed. and trans., The Arras Witch Treatises (T. WILLARD)______483 Mittelenglische Artusromanzen; Sir Percyvell of Gales, The Awntyrs off Arthure, The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell (A. BREEZE)______485 Die Autobiographie Karls IV. Vita Caroli Quarti (A. CLASSEN)______486 Gertrud Beck, Trojasummen: Das „Elsässische Trojabuch“ und die gedruckten Trojakompilationen (A. CLASSEN)______487 Bettina Full, Passio und Bild: Ästhetische Erfahrung in der italienischen Lyrik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (A. CLASSEN)______488 Péter Bokody, Images-within-Images in Italian Painting (1250–1350): Reality and Reflexivity (A. SAND)______490 Stefan Fischer, Im Irrgarten der Bilder: Die Welt des Hieronymus Bosch (A. CLASSEN)______492 Christine Boßmeyer, Visuelle Geschichte in den Zeichnungen und Holzschnitten zum „Weißkunig“ Kaiser Maximilians I (C. M. GRAFINGER)______493 James M. Dean and Harriet Spiegel, eds., Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Crisyede (J. M. HILL)______494 Pascal Vuillemin, Une itinérance prophétique: Le voyage en Perse d’Ambrogio Contarini (1474–1477) (A. CLASSEN)______496 The Vulgate Commentary on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” Book 1, ed. and translated by Frank T. Coulson (R. J. CORMIER)______498 Wiebke Deimann and David Juste, ed., Astrologers and their Clients in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (T. WILLARD)______499 Demetrios Kydones, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica in Greek Language, editio princeps, vol. XIX, ed. A. Glykofrydi-Leontsini and I. D. Spyralatos (G. ARABATZIS)______501 8 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

Andreas Kablitz, Ursula Peters (Hgg.), Mittelalterliche Literatur als Retextualisierung (R. LÜTZELSCHWAB)______503 Franziskus von Assissi, Sämtliche Schriften. Lateinisch/Deutsch (A. CLASSEN)_ 505 Guillebert De Mets, La description de la ville de Paris 1434: Medieval French Text with English Translation (M. SIZER)______506 Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg (R. LÜTZELSCHWAB)______508 Gewalt und Widerstand in der politischen Kultur des späten Mittelalters (D. NICHOLAS)______511 Lena Glassmann, Die Berliner Herpin-Handschrift in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Ms. Germ. Fol. 464): Ein illustrierter Prosaroman des 15. Jahrhunderts (A. CLASSEN)______512 Milena Svec Goetschi, Klosterflucht und Bittgang. Apostasie und monastische Mobilität im 15. Jahrhundert (C. M. GRAFINGER)______514 Elisabeth Gruber, Raittung und außgab zum gepew: Kommunale Rechnungspraxis im oberösterreichischen Freistadt (G. JARITZ)______516 John of Morigny, Liber florum celestis doctrine / The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching (P. DINZELBACHER)______517 Katalog der Handschriften der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol in Innsbruck. Teil 9 (R. SCHMITZ-ESSER)______519 The King of Tars, ed. John H. Chandler (A. CLASSEN)______520 Philip Knäble, Eine tanzende Kirche. Initiation, Ritual und Liturgie im spätmittelalterlichen Frankreich (C. M. GRAFINGER)______521 Sebastian Kolditz, Johannes VIII. Palaiologos und das Konzil von Ferrara–Florenz (1438/39). Das byzantinische Kaisertum im Dialog mit dem Westen (U. ROTH)______524 Konrad von Würzburg, ‘Trojanerkrieg’ und die anonym überlieferte Fortsetzung (A. CLASSEN)______526 June L. Mecham, Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany, ed. Alison Beach, Constance Berman, and Lisa Bitel (D. L. STOUDT)______527 Michelina di Cesare, Studien zu Paulinus Venetus. De Mapa mundi (T. HORST)_ 530 Annekathrin Miegel, Kooperation, Vernetzung, Erneuerung. Das benediktinische Verbrüderungs- und Memorialwesen vom 12. bis 15. Jahrhundert (H. HARTMANN)______532 Gregory Moule, Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris: 1200–1400 (E. KUEHN)______533 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 9

Natalino Sapegno, A Literary History of the Fourteenth Century: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. A Study of Their Times and Works (Storia Letteraria del Trecento (A. CLASSEN)______536 Neidhart: Selected Songs from the Riedegg Manuscript (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. germ. fol. 1062) (A. CLASSEN)______536 Tom Nickson, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (C. A. STANFORD)______537 Nürnberg: Zur Diversifikation städtischen Lebens in Texten und Bildern des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, hrsg. Heike Sahm and Monika Schausten (A. CLASSEN)__ 540 Emily O’Brien, The Commentaries of Pope Pius II (1458–1464) and the Crisis of the Fifteenth-Century Papacy (A. CLASSEN)______542 William of Ockham, Dialogus (K. F. JOHANNES)______544 Die Lieder Oswalds von Wolkenstein (A. CLASSEN)______545 Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death, ed. Monica H. Green (F. ALFIE)______546 Bettina Pfotenhauer, Nürnberg und Venedig im Austausch: Menschen, Güter und Wissen an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (A. CLASSEN)______549 Regesten Kaiser Friedrichs III. (J. KEMPER)______551 Vincent Petitjean, Vies de Gilles de Rais (L. ROSS)______552 Bert Roest and Johanneke Uphoff, eds., Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, ca. 1420–1620 (R. LÜTZELSCHWAB)______554 Luisa Rubini Messerli, Boccaccio deutsch: Die Dekameron-Rezeption in der deutschen Literatur (15.-17. Jahrhundert) (A. CLASSEN)______557 Ralph A. Ruch, Kartographie und Konflikt im Spätmittelalter: Manuskriptkarten aus dem oberrheinischen und schweizerischen Raum (T. HORST)______559 Papier im mittelalterlichen Europa. Herstellung und Gebrauch (H. BERWINKEL)_ 561 Reichtum im späten Mittelalter. Politische Theorie- Ethische Norm-Soziale Akzeptanz (B. LUNDT)______564 Katharina Seidel, Textvarianz und Textstabilität. Studien zur Transmission der Ívens saga, Erex saga und Parcevals saga (W. SCHÄFKE)______566 Karl-Heinz Spieß, Familie und Verwandtschaft im deutschen Hochadel des Spätmittelalters (D. NICHOLAS)______568 Elisabeth Sulzer, Darmgesundheit im Mittelalter: Analyse ausgewählter deutschsprachiger Kochrezepte aus dem Münchener Arzneibuch Cgm 415 vor dem Hintergrund der Humoralmedizin und Versuch einer kritischen Bewertung im Lichte moderner pharmakologischer Erkenntnisse (A. CLASSEN)______571 10 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

Petrus W. Tax, Der Münchener Psalter aus dem 14. Jahrhundert. Eine Bearbeitung von Notkers Psalter (H. HARTMANN)______572 Die Handschriften der Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena. Band III: Die mittelalterlichen französischen Handschriften der Electoralis- Gruppe; mittelalterliche Handschriften weiterer Signaturreihen (Abschluss) (J. FÜHRER)______573 Universität und Kloster: Melk als Hort der Wissenschaftspflege im Bannkreis der Universität Wien – fruchtbarer Austausch seit 650 Jahren, hg. Meta Niederkorn- Bruck (A. CLASSEN)______575 Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Nigel F. Palmer, The Prayer Book of Ursula Begerin: Art-Historical and Literary Introduction (A. CLASSEN)______576 Alberto Varvaro. La tragédie de l’histoire: la dernière œuvre de Froissart (C. BRATU)______578 Venezia e la nuova oikoumene Cartografia del Quattrocento. Venedig und die neue Oikoumene Karthographie im 15. Jahrhundert, hrsg. von Ingrid Baumgärtner und Pietro Falchetta (C. M. GRAFINGER)______580 Olaf Wagener, Eva Cichy und Martin Vomhof, Hrsg., Grenze, Landwehr, Burgen. Das nördliche Siegerland im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (C. GALLE)__ 582 Laura Weigert, French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater (M. CRUSE)______585 Antje Willing, ed., Das ‚Konventsbuch‘ und das ‚Schwesternbuch‘ aus St. Katharina in St. Gallen. Kritische Edition und Kommentar (H. KÜMPER)____ 588 Birgit Zacke, Wie Tristan sich einmal in einer Wildnis verirrte: Bild-Text- Beziehungen im ‘Brüsseler Tristan’ (A. CLASSEN)______589 Die Zunft zwischen historischer Forschung und musealer Repräsentation. Beiträge der Tagung im Germanischen Nationalmuseum 30 (H. KÜMPER)______591 10.3726/271583_81 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 81

Jan Alexander van Nahl

The Medieval Mood of Contingency

Chance as a Shaping Factor in Hákonar saga góða and Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar

0. Preface1

Not only in recent times has the investigation of “the phantom of chance”2 in human culture been acknowledged as a task regarding which “every human being has to come to some conclusion, if only to decide that life is, or is not, worth living, and that on the whole he is willing to ‘take a chance’”.3 Given the frequent experience of what is “not controlled, secured, or necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence”,4 human attempts to restrain the fear of the unexpected through narration may be considered an anthropological constant.5 The narratological examination of chance, therefore, has been called a cornerstone in a theory of the world-modelling­ functions of narration.6 However, within the field of literary studies, vast territory has been left untouched so far, including large parts of pre-modern­ literature. Only recently, with the focus on medieval German lore,7 have scholars started to focus on the matter more deliberately.8 The present paper aims at contributing to the emerging debate by focusing on medieval Icelandic literature. The Old Icelandic Kings’ sagas appear as a particularly interesting corpus for further exploration. Composed in the context of political and societal struggle in thirteenth-century­ Iceland, the so-called­ Sturlungaǫld, the formation of this corpus is intimately linked to a time of destabilisation of order, which arguably entailed an in- creased awareness of the unpredictability of historical development. My examination of narrative traces of such an awareness in a selection of Kings’ sagas is threefold. The ex- position centres on theoretical and methodological issues. The second chapter provides a case study, with the focus, first, on the saga of King Hákon ‘góði’ Haraldsson (who was the first to try to introduce Christianity into Norway) and, second, the saga of King Har- aldr ‘harðráði’ Sigurðarson (whose death in 1066 is usually considered the end of the Vik- ing Age). The final section elaborates on significant similarities and differences between these two sagas and assesses them against the sociopolitical background of thirteenth-­ century Iceland. 82 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

1. Exposition

“Chance does not belong to a specific discipline. It belongs to nobody at all. […] Chance is everywhere and has always been”.9 Given the omnipresence of chance in human history, it does not come as a surprise that outstanding thinkers in the Western world have always striven to get a grip on the matter; Peter Vogt’s recent 700-page outline of the concept’s development since Greek antiquity gives a slight impression of the stupendous amount of written sources.10 Attempts at a narratological theorisation can already be found in Aris- totle’s Poetics, in which he emphasises the crucial function of a skilled narrator to arrange events according to poetological rather than historiographical demands in order to appeal to his audience: happenings such as the fall of King Mitys’s statue on the king’s murderer seem non-credible­ at first sight, yet their randomness stimulates audience reflection upon causes and reasons for things to happen.11 It was, however, Boethius who, in specifying Aristotelian ideas of necessity and possibility, introduced the Latinised term ‘contingency’ (contingere) to the Middle Ages—the­ concept that “the past and the present are fixed, but some events in the future are open”.12 Boethius’s uttermost concern was the question of how to relate contingency with God’s foreknowledge: “How can what is infinite, necessary and eternal come to know the finite, the contingent and the temporal?”13 As of the twelfth century, this question was taken up by a range of scholastic scholars, with the result being that world order was increasingly acknowledged as “a complicated and semiautonomous chain of secondary causes that depended distantly, but only distantly, on the First Cause, God”.14 Recently, Richard Utz even claimed that the late Middle Ages had been characte- rised by a “central mood of contingency”, the feeling of being at the mercy of chance rather than divine foreknowledge.15 Peter Dendle emphasised the possible impact of the Crusades on this feeling: “Medieval Christians could never rest blithely or unthinkingly entrenched in their worldview as a matter of course but were forced to continuously reassert beliefs in the face of sometimes powerful, and always threatening, alternatives”.16 Medieval Scandinavian scholars’ participation in this intellectual mood has, however, hardly been discussed at all. This neglect becomes all the more strange when one considers that we are well informed about a considerable number of Scandinavians who travelled to continental centres of learning as of the eleventh century.17 Only recently, Christian Etheridge argued that in the twelfth century even Islamic scientific knowledge (possibly including Aristotelian thought) reached Iceland.18 Given this range of intellectual ties, there is “special reason to consider medieval Icelandic literature in the light of the humanistic interest in language, poetry and philosophy which has come to be called the twelfth-century­ Renaissance”.19 Scholars have established that literature in thirteenth-century­ Iceland, a crucible for textual production in Europe at that time, was increasingly recognised as a powerful tool in political struggle, intrinsically related to the questioning of the ideological foundation of the social system.20 The emerging power of literature to create ‘alternative worlds’ has been claimed for the Middle Ages in general as a response to “the feeling of contingency, the feeling that things could easily be otherwise”.21 It is not far-fetched­ to as- sume that the experience of betrayal and violence among former allies, friends or family Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 83 members in Sturlungaǫld added to the feeling of a chaotic succession of events,22 and thus contributed to a rather sober view on human history—an­ “apotheosis of reason”, as Alex- ander Murray once put it.23 Hans Jacob Orning recently stated that particularly the Old Icelandic Kings’ sagas—­ largely composed in Sturlungaǫld—demonstrate­ a significant “uncertainty as to whether a conflict would result in violence or not”, the result being that “even a minor incident could be sufficient to set the whole train of insults and counterattacks in motion”.24 Given this ambiguity, the Kings’ sagas’ regular depiction of potentates seeking advice from pru- dent followers emerges as a central theme. These counsels, however, do not necessarily disambiguate a situation in suspense. Rather, as Gerd Althoff concluded, any advice, be it taken or not, develops a life of its own, possibly entailing the unintended irritation or even subversion of existing order.25 In the context of this interrelation of ambiguity and decision-­ making, scholars have repeatedly argued in favour of a political subtext of the Kings’ sagas, which would establish patterns regarding rules of politics26—the more so because the most extensive medieval collection of Kings’ sagas, Heimskringla (c. 1230), is ascribed to one of the most powerful Icelandic chieftains, Snorri Sturluson (†1241).27 It is impossible to determine to which extent Snorri was involved in its development,28 but it is reasonable to assume that Heimskringla was primarily intended for the Norwegian court. Given a royal audience, the Kings’ sagas’ focus on high-ranking­ people’s skills in planning and luck in battle (particularly their so-called­ hamingja) hardly comes as a surprise. The situation becomes more intricate, however, as soon as one tries to specify these con- cepts with regard to individual episodes in the Kings’ sagas. This is, not least, a termino- logical problem: Heinrich Beck pointed out that Old Norse literary sources would allow for the distinction between at least six different concepts of hamingja.29 Only recently, William Sayers likewise indicated the problem of how to grasp “happenstance, fortune, fate, super- natural malevolence, or however they [i.e. the saga protagonists] or we might choose to label effects whose causality seems beyond understanding”.30 Given this spectrum of con- notations, Sverre Bagge’s generally accepted assessment that in Heimskringla Snorri had emphasised “the connection between luck and intelligence and other qualities that normally lead to success in the game [of politics]” remains vague.31 And so does Vésteinn Ólason’s recent confirmation: “Kongene er individer som har forskjellige egenskaper, og disse egen- skapene, i samspill med omstendighetene, gjør at deres skjebner blir forskjellige”—Kings are individuals with different qualities, and these qualities, in their interaction with specific circumstances, determine their fates.32 Acknowledging the Kings’ sagas as multi-levelled­ narratives, we rather have to ask how these ‘effects beyond understanding’ and these ‘specific circumstances’ actually come into play within the story world. Whereas chance, as Bagge stated, “is not very popular with historians, as it does not allow explanations”,33 it can be located at the centre of a narratological debate. In the present paper, I build on Werner Wolf’s recent argument that chance in narration “applies to occurrences within diegetic (or hypodiegetic) worlds that on a first reading do not appear to be plausibly caused or motivated by anything within these worlds”—chance, therefore, “is not only a plot feature, but also a thematic element 84 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 and therefore especially relevant to the implied worldview”.34 Following Wolf, with the focus on the diegetic level, we can distinguish between an overall state of indetermination on the one hand and accidental events on the other. Contingency, in this sense, is typically characterised by the indication of alternative developments of the story, any one of which has its own justification. This state of ambiguity not only demands deliberate choices of the protagonists, but also opens the story up for unexpected happenings, being either lucky or unlucky for the protagonists.35 These latter occurrences are, of course, purposefully applied to the story world but are unexpected for the protagonists—and,­ on a first reading, for the audience as well.36 In what follows, I explore to which extent and in which ways these concepts are possibly incorporated into two Kings’ sagas, namely Hákonar saga góða and Haralds saga Sigurð- arsonar. With that said, the focus is on Heimskringla (Hkr), but on various occasions, the contemporary compilations Morkinskinna (Msk) and Fagrskinna (Fsk) are taken into ac- count for a comparative reading.37 I argue that the reviewed sagas’ narrative development cannot be explained by following the well-planned­ actions of skilful people only. Rather, I suggest that these narratives draw upon insight into a contingent, undetermined element in Norwegian history,38 one which is beyond human control, and thus repeatedly proves the protagonists’ attempts at controlling the future insufficient.

2. Two Case Studies

The saga of King Hákon Haraldsson When the legendary king Haraldr ‘hárfagri’ Hálfdanarson died in 933, he left behind a considerable number of sons, with Eiríkr ‘blóðøx’ Haraldsson being his favourite. Thus no- body would have expected that of all things Haraldr’s bastard son Hákon soon succeeded in banishing Eiríkr and following his father on the throne. Begot with a maidservant and born at the liminal edge of his father’s realm, Haraldr’s arguably youngest offspring had been sent to the English king Æthelstan as an infant, in order to humiliate a royal opponent; the Fagrskinna account even raises doubt as to whether Hákon is Haraldr’s son at all (Fsk 4). It would not have taken much for the insulted Æthelstan to kill Hákon—the­ more so because Haraldr’s messenger claimed that the Norwegian king would take this loss: máttu myrða hann, ef þú vill, en ekki mantu með því eyða ǫllum sonum Haralds konungs, ‘you may kill him, if you want, yet you will not be able to thereby kill all the sons of King Haraldr’ (Haralds saga ins hárfagra, Hkr 39). Having made it through this early childhood full of imponderabilities, Hákon, as a grown-up,­ returns to Norway to enforce his claim to power. Due to his Christian upbringing in England, he soon takes amiss the people of Trondheim’s reluctance to abjure their pagan rituals. To be sure, he is warned by his adviser Sigurðr ‘hlaðajarl’ Hákonarson that it might be unwise to threaten his own people, but: konungr var svá reiðr, at ekki mátti orðum við hann koma, ‘the king was so angry that he would not take any advice’ (Hákonar saga goða, Hkr 18). However, on the eve of Hákon’s planned raid Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 85 against the tenacious heathens, suddenly, the sons of the expelled Eiríkr return to Norway, forcing the two quarrelling parties to settle their conflict. Due to the support by his former opponents, Hákon successfully fights back the intruders, but in order to prevent similar dilemmas in future, he enacts a number of laws and introduces balefires as a quick way of communicating the arrival of enemies henceforth (Hkr 20). The saga takes a leap over twenty years; Sverre Bagge rightly states that Snorri’s de- piction of Hákon’s conversion politics is “not quite convincing” in the context of such large gaps.39 We may, therefore, rather consider the saga’s regular leaps in time a narrative device—in­ the present case allowing for the immediate testing of Hákon’s depicted regu- lations the very day that the sons of Eiríkr return to Norway with a huge armada (Hkr 22). Due to extraordinarily fair wind (hraðbyr mikit), the invaders advance very fast, the more so because the weather conditions allow them to sail day and night—the­ Norwegian guards do not even recognise their enemies’ sudden arrival. Second, Hákon’s eager attempts at controlling any eventuality now turns out to be counterproductive: the king had announced severe punishment (viðrlǫg mikil) to those who light the balefires overhastily, in case he would get to know the culprit. Although this addendum opens up a certain latitude for the guards—maybe­ the king would never get to know the culprits—, Hákon’s adamant regulations hinder them from taking action. Thus, the invasion’s initial success is doubly motivated: even if the guards had recognised the ships in due time, they would still have been reluctant to react due to a contingent state regarding their punishment. Uncontrollable external conditions on the one hand, all too rigid rules on the other—both­ moments prove Hákon’s strategy insufficient. Fagrskinna does not provide any such account at all, but simply states that Hákon was taken by surprise: ok var Hákon eigi fyrr varr við […], ‘and Hákon did not become aware of this until […]’ (Fsk 11). Due to his willingness to take ad- vice this time—­þá lét hann kalla til sín þá menn, er þar váru vitrastir, ok leitaði ráðs við þá, ‘then he convoked the wisest men and consulted with them’ (Hkr 23)—Hákon manages to fight back his opponents once again (Hkr 26). It is, however, only due to an accident that his oldest archenemy Gamli Eiríksson loses his life. Whereas external conditions had proven helpful for Eiríkr’s sons to invade Norway, they turn out to be a disadvantage to escape. Due to low tide, several ships run aground: sum skipin váru þá uppi fjǫruð (Hkr 26)— Gamli jumps overboard and drowns. Hákon is depicted as victorious also in Fagrskinna, but there we read nothing about his initial doubt as to how to proceed; on the contrary, Fagrskinna states that the sons of Eiríkr did not offer any option but battle (var einig kostr annars af Eiríkssonum en berjask), and that Hákon did not hesitate to call to arms: Hákon konungr lét sik ok eigi dvelja (Fsk 11). Fagrskinna also restrains from incorporating any ex- ternal conditions into the story about Gamli’s death but simply states that he was wounded and drowned (Fsk 11). The saga takes another leap of several years, allowing for the introduction of a similar event yet again (Hkr 28). One day, while Hákon is still at breakfast, it happens that (verða til tíðenda) the guards recognise an approaching armada: þá mælti hverr við annan, […] en þat þótti engum dælt at segja konungi hersǫgu, því at hann hafði þar mikit við lagt hverjum, er þat gerði, ‘then they discussed the matter with one another, […] but nobody 86 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 considered it safe to inform the king about the fleet, as he had threatened everybody who would do this’—Hákon has not learned his lesson, so to speak. Only now, also Fagrskinna gives an account regarding Hákon’s legislation, thereby explaining the guards’ reluctance (Fsk 12). In both versions, Hákon, then, asks his followers for advice again (mælti þá til manna sinna, hvert ráð taka skyldi), the result being that he calls to arms. However, only in Heimskringla we are told about the rising sun that causes reflections on the king’s golden helmet at that moment (lýsti ok af hjálminum, er sólin skein á), immediately attracting the enemy (Hkr 30). From this point of view, the skald Eyvindr ‘skáldaspillir’ Finnson’s stanza—­lék við ljóðmǫgu, | skyldi land verja | gramr enn glaðværi, | stóð und gullhjálmi, ‘he entertained his many followers, he should defend the country; yet in good humour stood the king under the golden helmet’—appears to be almost ironic, and the adverb enn, ‘yet’, foreshadows a bad end. Consequently, the golden helmet turns out to be a moment of insecurity (similar to an episode in Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar, which I discuss below). Fargrskinna (Fsk 12) quotes Eyvindr’s stanza too, but only states that Hákon set his helmet in place (setr upp hjálm sinn). The risk depicted in Heimskringla, however, is averted by one of the king’s followers who simply puts a hat over the helmet. From that moment on, similar to Hákon’s earlier encounters, the king’s situation seems to take a turn for the better, and he successfully fights back his fleeing opponents. Þá flaug ǫr ein, er fleinn er kallaðr, ok kom í hǫnd Hákoni konungi upp í músina fyrir neðan ǫxl, ‘in that very moment, an arrow of the fleinn-type­ flew about and hit King Hákon’s arm in the biceps below the armpit’ (Hkr 31). Hákon does not recover from this severe wound, inflicted upon him through a mere accident just when he seemed to be victorious once again. The randomness of Hákon’s death is emphasised all the more as Heimskringla states that many people claimed (er þat margra manna sǫgn) a farm hand called Kispingr to be the killer, whereas others said that nobody could name the offender for sure (sumir segja, at engi viti, hverr skaut). Significantly, the narrator argues in favour of the latter option, stating that arrows, spears, and other projectiles flew as densely as in a snowstorm that day (má þat ok vera, því at ǫrvar ok spjót ok alls konar skotvápn flugu svá þykkt sem drífa)—an erratic arrow is preferred to a planned assassination. As the examination of Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar will suggest, Hákon’s unexpected death seems to follow a narrative pattern—somewhat­ earlier, Hákonar saga states that the king had al- ready discarded his armour (konungr steypði af sér brynjunni) when the arrow happens to hit him; the armpit area as a weakly protected spot while wearing a byrnie thus loses its logical implication. Significantly, the whole episode surrounding Hákon’s death is not to be found in Fagrskinna (Fsk 13): We are only informed that the king had been wounded in the course of the battle (hann hafði fengit sár). The saga of King Haraldr Sigurðarson Scholars tend to portray Haraldr Sigurðarson—offspring­ of Haraldr inn hárfagri too—­as the prototype of “an exceptionally intelligent man, who is always able to find a solution in a difficult situation”.40 To be sure, throughout the first chapters of Haralds saga Sigurð- arsonar, the frequency of events that prove the later king a clever man seems to establish a Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 87 pattern regarding his intelligence: be it with the help of some birds carrying fire into a castle (Hkr 6) or a nearby river allowing him to undermine a castle’s wall (Hkr 7), Haraldr knows how to make the best of the given conditions. In Morkinskinna (Msk 14), his conquest of the fourth and most heavily fortified castle seems to be the ultimate proof of this rule: a long passage informs us about Haraldr’s making up of the plan of his fake death—­þá skuldu þér segja mik sjúkan […] ok segja þá andlát mitt, ‘then you shall say that I am sick […] and so report my death’. This eventually allows him to enter the castle during his own fake burial ceremony, at which point he rises from his coffin and incites a victorious battle. The same story, somewhat shorter, is found in Fagrskinna (Fsk 51). However, Shami Ghosh’s recent claim that the Heimskringla account was also nothing but “a greatly condensed form” of Morkinskinna falls short41—the situation is different (Hkr 10): after a state of siege, Har- aldr becomes severely ill indeed and is eventually said to have died—­er þeir hǫfðu litla hríð dvalzk, þá fekk Haraldr sjúkleik […]. Þar kom, at svá þrøngði sótt Haraldi, at andlát hans var sagt, ‘having been there awhile, Haraldr became ill […]. Finally, Haraldr’s illness became so severe so that there went rumours about his death’. It is explicitly stated that the king’s bad condition made his men feel distressed (hugsjúkr) and sad (dapr)—a heavy disadvantage for an upcoming battle. Attending his following burial ceremony in the castle, they nevertheless start a raid, yet without Haraldr participating in the fight. The reader is not provided with any resolution as to Haraldr’s condition. In Heimskringla, the successful conquest of the final fortress is not the result of a clever plan but of a mere accident, namely Haraldr’s severe illness at the time, which, in retrospect, turns from an unlucky into a lucky happening. Aside from these episodes, the central theme of Haralds saga is the king’s repeated struggle with high-ranking­ individuals, similar to Hákonar saga góða. An encounter be- tween Haraldr, commanding a squad of elite warriors, and Gyrgir, royal leader of the Greek army, is the first such event told in detail (Hkr 4). Significantly, this encounter already evidences the impact of uncontrollable circumstances on human planning. One day, hav- ing fought many battles side by side, Haraldr’s troops happen to arrive at a suitable place for pitching tents prior to the Greeks but are harshly asked by Gyrgir to move to another location at once. In all versions of the saga, this early arrival is displayed as an accident: þat var eitt hvert sinn, ‘one day it happened that’. Haraldr explicitly states that the Greeks might very well have been early, too: ef þér komið fyrri til náttbóls, þá takið þér yðr nátt- stað, þá munu vér þar tjalda í ǫðrum stað, ‘had you been the first to arrive at night-quarters,­ then you would have chosen your pitch, and we would have tented at another location’ (Hkr 4). In Morkinskinna (Msk 12) and Fagrskinna (Fsk 51), the emerging struggle is declared as a typical example for the question of hierarchy among Northmen and Greeks. This may also hold true for Heimskringla, but here the encounter is placed within a different frame- work: þar er svá háttat, at land er blautt, ok þegar er regn koma þar, þá er illt at búa þar, er lágt liggr, ‘the land [in that area in Greece] is of that kind that it is wet, and when it starts to rain it is uncomfortable to tent on low grounds’. The train of struggles is not depicted as simply being set into motion by two competing hotheads; rather, the area they happen to choose for tenting that day is emphasised as the initial cause for trouble. Significantly, 88 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 given the possibility of rainfall—the­ feeling that something unfavourable may happen—, the leaders’ aggressiveness (illustrated by words such as kappmæli, ‘quarrel’, and vápnask, ‘to arm oneself’) is rendered as almost inevitable. Facing the risk of an armed conflict, demanding the choice as to how to proceed, in all saga versions the best and wisest men (inir beztu menn ok inir vitrustu) come by to ease the situation; at first sight, counselling is established as the ultimate means in the face of unexpected happenings. However, this saga-typical­ device is promptly cancelled: the accidental encounter and the unpredictability of the weather conditions prove any attempt at finding a solution through unemotional debate impossible—the­ wise thus decide to leave any further decision to a toss-up­ (hluti), meeting chance with chance. This prejudicial impact of uncontrollable climatic and geographical conditions is repeat- edly underlined throughout Haraldr’s life, another prominent example being the encounter with the Danish king Sveinn Úlfsson at sea (Hkr 35). First due to severe weather (veðr), then due to dense fog (mjǫrkva sælægja), Haraldr’s troops cannot proceed as planned. By contrast, the fog seems to prove helpful for Sveinn to approach his enemy Haraldr unseen. However, this does not work out either: Sveinn only arrives at daybreak when the fog starts to vanish; at that moment, the rising sun causes reflections on the golden ornamentation of Sveinn’s ship that alert Haraldr. We feel reminded of Hákonar saga góða and the reflections on Hákon’s golden helmet; whereas Hákon’s follower quickly defused this danger, no such option is available to Sveinn. Somewhat later (Hkr 60), Haraldr, now having summoned an armada of battleships, plans to start a counterattack. However, due to heavy headwind (andviðri stórt), they cannot go ashore in Denmark as planned: the sheer size of the ships, intended to intimidate the enemy, makes it impossible to anchor them. Sveinn—reluctant­ to go to battle this time (Sveinn konungr vildi eigi halda […] orrostu [við Harald], ‘King Sveinn did not want to fight with Haraldr’ (Hkr 61))—thus detects the offshore fleet in due time and manages to escape. All strategies are repeatedly overthrown by uncontrollable circumstances. By accident, Haraldr also gets into trouble with his powerful ally, the Norwegian king Magnús ‘inn góði’ Óláfsson. One day, Haraldr happens (þatt bar at eitt sinn) to arrive at the royal moorage first and is threatened by Magnús who arrives a little later (Hkr 27). There had been an agreement between the kings assuring Magnús of the best harbouring conditions, and the encounter might thus be interpreted as a kind of misunderstanding.42 We are told that Haraldr was the first to depart in the morning var( Haraldr fyrri búinn, ok sigldi hann þegar), which remark may render his early return a possible, yet not necessary, consequence; no further explanation is given. Despite all agreements as to eventualities, however, the incidence has a strong negative impact on the story’s development. Although the kings manage to settle the imminent conflict —Haraldr gives way to Magnús—, their breakup in Heimskringla is inevitable due to another unforeseen happening: foolish fol- lowers of the kings start to babble about the matter among one another. Við slíkar greinir­ gerðisk brátt umrœða óvitra manna til þess, at konungum varð sundrþykki at, ‘such mat- ters were disputed by imprudent men so much so that the kings were disunited’ (Hkr 27). Whereas the episode can also be found in Morkinskinna (Msk 16) and Fagrskinna (Fsk Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 89

53), the closing scene is significantly different: both last-named­ versions refer to a dispute as well, but the kings’ final breakup is not mentioned at all—on­ the contrary, Morkinskin- na concludes: ok heldu nú landinu um vetrinn, ok var friðr ok mikil gœzka í landinu fyr árferðar sakir ok annarra hluta, ‘and now they governed the land through the winter, and it was a mood of peace and great benevolence in the country due to large crops and other things’; Fagrskinna simply states: réðu þeir landinu um vetrinn báðir saman, ‘they jointly ruled over the country through the winter’. Consequently, the following episode is only to be found in Heimskringla. One night, King Magnús dreams of his dead father, Óláfr ‘inn helgi’ Haraldsson, who asks him whether he would rather become the mightiest of all kings but commit a major crime or whether he would prefer to die (Hkr 28); in the context of the preceding breakup, the crime is likely to be the murder of Magnús’s co-ruler­ Haraldr. Significantly, Magnús is displayed as incapable of making the decision: ek vil, at þú kjósir fyrir mína hǫnd, ‘I want you to make the decision for me, father’. As Magnús saga góða in Heimskringla describes in detail, Magnús owes his kingship to nothing but a lucky accident, namely his several riv- als’ death caused by illness—he­ is not experienced in political matters, but is evidentially in need of an adviser. Eventually, Magnús dies on decision of Óláfr,43 so to speak, but this decision is a short-sighted­ solution—in­ actuality, the king’s sudden death leaves behind a power vacuum that provokes the emergence of massive conflicts. The lack of an apparent reason for Óláfr’s choice raises doubt as to whether or not the killing of the boisterous Haraldr might have turned out to be more justified than the following killing of many. In Heimskringla, a turning point in Norwegian history is displayed as the result of, first, a chain of accidents, and, second, a human lack of ability to bring about a reasonable decision in the face of these occurrences. Significantly, inHeimskringla , Haraldr himself is also portrayed as incapable of making a decision, and he is explicitly accused of this lack of ability when consulting with his inti- mate follower Finnr Árnason (Hkr 45): þú gerir hvatvetna illt, en síðan ertu svá hræddur, at þú veizt eigi, hvar þú hefir þik, ‘you commit all kinds of evil deeds, but then you are so anxious that you do not know what to do about it’. Somewhat later (Hkr 66), Finnr will turn against Haraldr, accusing him of his bad decisions once again: mart verða Norðmenn illt að gera ok þat verst allt, er þú býðr, ‘much evil will the Norwegians commit, and most evil is what you command’. Being confronted with this harsh criticism regarding his person- ality and decision-making­ authority, Haraldr’s first reaction is laughterhlæja ( ), a com- mon literary motif in thirteenth-century­ Europe, recognised as compensation for the loss of orientation. Jacques Le Goff once ascribed to the laughing Skarpheðinn in thirteenth-­ century Brennu-­Njáls saga the “incomprehension of the misfortune awaiting him”44—he and his kinsmen will be burned in their house. Likewise we feel reminded of Eyvindr’s cited stanza on King Hákon (Hákonar saga góða, Hkr 30), depicting a blithe king (leika), who is unaware of his imminent death; Fargskinna even uses the word hlæja (Fsk 12). In actuality what lies ahead also for Haraldr Sigurðarson is not the glorious victory pre- dicted by his followers (at honum mundi ekki ófœrt vera, ‘that he would not face any dif- ficulties’ (Hkr 79)) but death by accident. In the course of a fierce fight an arrow happens 90 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 to hit him in the mouth/throat—a­ usually unprotected spot while wearing a byrnie, similar to Hákonar saga góða in Heimskringla. However, as was the case with Hákon, Haraldr had discarded his legendary byrnie Emma—­svá sterk, at aldri hafði vápn á fest, ‘so strong that never a weapon had bitten’ (Hkr 91)—before he entered the battle; the saga even provides a rational explanation: var veðr forkunnliga gott ok heitt skin. Menn lǫgðu eptir brynjur sínar, ‘the weather was particularly fine and hot. The men discarded their armour’ (Hkr 87). Again, the rendering of the fatal wounding—the­ motif loses its logical implication in the actual context—appears­ to be owed to nothing but the narrator’s ambition to depict the killing as an unlucky accident.

4. Concluding thoughts

The observations made so far allow for interpretations on different levels. Evidently, both sagas’ repeated indication of imponderabilities and rendering of accidental encounters are deeply interwoven with the story’s development, thus the kings’ careers, and, eventually, the overall depiction of Norwegian history. As far as the two kings’ characterisation is con- cerned, both King Hákon and King Haraldr share common features in being easily upset and ready to take up arms. However, whereas both are repeatedly challenged by unexpected encounters, they tend to face these moments by different means. Hákon, particularly in his later years, is willing to take advice from his followers, whereas Haraldr is depicted as increasingly taking any advice amiss: Haraldr konungr var ríklundaðr, ok óx þat, sem hann festistk í landinu, ok kom svá, at flestum mǫnnum dugði illa at mæla móti honum eða draga fram annat mál en þat, er hann vildi vera láta, ‘King Haraldr was a domineering man, and this trait grew as he consolidated his power in the country, and eventually most people would fare badly if they disagreed with him or promoted other things than he want- ed to have supported’ (Hkr 42). Significantly, Haraldr even has one of his most powerful negotiants, the Norwegian chief Einarr ‘þambarskelfir’ Eindriðason, killed during a fake counsel (Hkr 44)—despite his formal calling of a meeting, he has no intention to come to amicable terms at all. Given this discrepancy, Hákon also seems to be more interested in long-term­ planning—not­ least emphasised by Hákonar saga’s repeated leaps in time, and the mortally-injured­ king’s instructions as to how to govern his realm after his death—, whereas Haraldr, in a given situation, improvises according to his mood. Eventually, how- ever, none of these ways of dealing with imponderabilities is future-proof.­ Hákon’s strat- egies at a forward-looking­ guarding against any threat to his realm repeatedly turn against him, and on his deathbed he thus finally decides to cede his kingdom to his archenemy Haraldr ‘gráfeldr’ Eiríksson. Haraldr Sigurðarson, for his part, is killed because he does not stick to any strategy at all. He had asked for advice earlier, to be sure, yet he rejected his jarl’s suggestion to first return to the ships in order to prepare for battle thoroughly: þá svaraði Haraldr konungr: ‘annat ráð vil ek hafa […]’. Þá segir jarl, bað konung ráða þessu sem ǫðru, ‘then King Haraldr answered: ‘I want different advice […]’. Then the jarl said that the King should decide this like always’ (Hkr 88, Msk 54, Fsk 65). Neither does Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 91

Haraldr’s thought-out­ battle formation endure: blinded by rage, the king throws over any tactic—and­ is hit by the arrow. The comparison of two Kings’ sagas in their different versions hardly allows for general conclusions regarding the compilations’ relation to each other and their respective pur- poses.45 As far as the narratives of Hákon Haraldsson and Haraldr Sigurðarson are con- cerned, however, Heimskringla’s frequent accentuation of imponderabilites is remarkable. More than is the case with Fagrskinna or Morkinskinna, Heimskringla draws our aware- ness to the repeated collision of human strategies and circumstances beyond any planning. We feel reminded of Aristotle’s claim that a skilled narrator ought to arrange events in an arousing way: seemingly random occurrences can invite audience reflection, potentially entailing the insight that certain events in the course of history are simply beyond human reasoning. Against this background, however, the two kings’ reluctance to simply resign in the face of the unexpected is emphasised all the more. We may, therefore, argue that in Heimskringla unexpected occurrences are a kind of narrative trigger, in order to put the high-ranking­ protagonists’ skills to the test. The repeated failure of the kings’ efforts, however, opens the story up for a reading on another level. To return to the initially rendered context of thirteenth-century­ Iceland, it has repeatedly been pointed out that learned medieval Icelanders were well aware of the fact that political authority could be established and maintained by controlling textual culture. Despite an element of uncertainty as to Snorri Sturluson’s actual share in Heimskringla, a number of Old Icelandic sources count him among the most powerful and learned Iceland- ers of his era. For all we know, Snorri’s endeavour to further the Norwegian claim to power in Iceland (as he had promised the Norwegian king on the occasion of a visit) was reluctant. Given the premise that Snorri participated in the compilation of Heimskringla—­which is, as indicated, not a far-fetched­ assumption—, and that Heimskringla was primarily intended for the Norwegian court—for­ which conviction there is every indication—, he may thus have pursued two objectives. First, his repeated indication of alternative developments and emphasis of mere accidents allowed him to underline human limits in dealing with the future as well as the danger of unpredictable side effects of any attempt at enforcing claims against all odds. From this point of view, uncontrollable moments throughout Norwegian history could serve as an excuse for things not working out (as fast) as planned: even the most skilled potentate cannot control everything. Second, more than is the case with other versions of the sagas in question, Heimskringla emphasises the necessity of (political) decisions in the face of the unexpected. In the context of this demand, contingency can be understood as symbolising the struggle of bringing about a decision in the face of differing opinions and personalities.46 Would it be bold to assume that one of Iceland’s most eloquent potentates, Snorri, wanted to suggest himself as one among few people capable of bringing the Norwegian claim to power in Iceland to a satisfying conclusion?47 Elaborating on this thought, I want to draw attention to the usage of skaldic poetry in both sagas. Although King Hákon does not compose poetry himself, he is repeatedly depicted as an appreciator of situation-specific­ stanzas, not least on the eve of his death in battle: hraustliga er þetta mælt ok nær skaplyndi mínu, ‘that is bravely spoken and suits 92 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 me fine’ Hákonar( saga góða, Hkr 28). King Haraldr, for his part, is displayed as a man capable of composing stanzas by himself, and he immediately recognises them as fitting or non-­fitting, in the latter case asking for an instant modification: þetta er illa kveðit, ok mun verða at gera aðra vísu betri, ‘that was badly spoken, and I will make a better stanza’ (Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar, Hkr 91), as he states on the verge of his death. From this point of view, we might read Haraldr’s deathblow in the throat as metaphorical; losing the ability to speak, all skills are once and for all eliminated—a­ situation that brings to my mind the famous killing of Hector by Achilles, being both similar and different: The rest of his [i.e. Hector’s] body was covered in bronze; in only one spot could the flesh be seen: on his throat […]. At this spot, as Hector attacked, Achilles thrust, and the spear drove into the tender flesh of the neck and pushed all the way through, though it did not sever his windpipe. (He could still make sounds, and he was just able to speak).48 To return to the introductory thought, the ability and capability to use language in the face of threatening encounters is a fundamental human trait, ennobling those who are particularly skilled in these matters. Thus we may draw a connecting line between poetic skills and a more general ability to face imponderabilities successfully—a­ “cultural capital in the form of artistic/literary/poetic skill”, to borrow an expression from Kevin Wanner:49 the skill to place any encounter into a narrative framework that allows for the vivid run-­through of dif- ferent possible developments, without being dependent on either inflexible regulations (as in the case of Hákon) or mood swings (as is the case with the boisterous Haraldr). To put it somewhat pointedly, given his experience in analysing world order through literature, a skilled narrator such as Snorri has always a solution at his fingertips—a­ powerful conflation of literary and political skills. Potentially a coincidence, it is nevertheless noteworthy that the Norwegian king started to draw Snorri’s loyalty into doubt briefly after the composition of Heimskringla around 1230: In 1233/34, the king instructed other high-ranking­ Icelanders to take over Snorri’s political task.50 Did he consider Snorri’s ambiguous rendering of Norwegian history all too seditious? Despite his excelling in literary worlds, Snorri’s attempts to gain control of the situation in real life eventually turned out to be beyond his capability. Although the Norwegian king, for all we know, had not given the explicit order to assassinate Snorri, chance turned against the Icelander: as is well-known,­ in 1241, Snorri, of all things, was taken by surprise and killed in the cellar of his own estate, sharing the sudden death of many a king in Heimskringla.

Endnotes

1 I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for helpful remarks as well as to Ian J. Kirby, Lausanne, for his thorough comments on my English. 2 Cf. John D. Lyons, The Phantom of Chance. From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-­ Century French Literature. Edinburgh 2012. Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 93

3 Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature. New York 1967 [1927], here p. 5. 4 William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy – Human Immor- tality, Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. New York 1956 [1897/98], here p. 154. 5 Cf. Odo Marquard, “Entlastung vom Absoluten. In memoriam Hans Blumenberg”. In: Konting- enz, ed. by Gerhart von Graevenitz and Odo Marquard. München 1998 (Poetik und Hermeneutik 17), pp. xvii–xxv;­ Walter Haug, “Historische Semantik im Widerspruch mit sich selbst”. In: Walter Haug. Positivierung von Negativität. Letzte kleine Schriften, ed. by Ulrich Barton. Tüb- ingen 2008, pp. 31–44, here p. 35. 6 Cf. Werner Wolf, “Chance in Fiction as a Privileged Index of Implied Worldviews: A Con- tribution to the Study of the World-Modelling­ Functions of Narrative Fiction”. In: Theorizing Narrativity, ed. by John Pier and José Á. G. Landa. Berlin, New York 2008 (Narratologia 12), pp. 165–210. 7 On the peculiar relation of German Studies and Scandinavian Studies, cf. Jan Alexander van Nahl, “Verwehter Traum? Ältere Skandinavistik zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts”. In: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 172 (2013), pp. 139–142. 8 Cf. Cornelia Herberichs and Susanne Reichlin (eds.), Kein Zufall. Konzeptionen von Kontingenz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur. Göttingen 2010 (Historische Semantik 13); Florian Kragl and Christian Schneider (eds.), Erzähllogiken in der Literatur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neu- zeit. Heidelberg 2013 (Studien zur historischen Poetik 13). 9 Hartmut Böhme, “Contingentia. Transformationen des Zufall”. In: Contingentia. Transforma- tionen des Zufalls, ed. by Hartmut Böhme, Werner Röcke, and Ulrike Stephan. Berlin, Boston 2016 (Transformationen der Antike 38), pp. 1–38, here p. 4. 10 Cf. Peter Vogt, Kontingenz und Zufall. Eine Ideen- und Begriffsgeschichte. Berlin 2011. 11 Cf. Gerrit Kloss, “Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit im 9. Kapitel der Aristotelischen Poetik”. In: Rheinisches Museum 146 (2003), pp. 160–183. 12 John Marenbon, “Divine Prescience and Contingency in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy”. In: Rivista di storia della filosofia 1 (2013), pp. 9–21, here p. 13; cf. Jerold C. Frakes, The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages. The Boethian Tradition. Leiden 1988 (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 23). 13 Pascal Massie, Contingency, Time, and Possibility: An Essay on Aristotle and Duns Scotus. Lanham et al. 2011, here p. 217; cf. further Vogt, Kontingenz, pp. 43 ff. and 546 ff. 14 Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750. New York 1998, here pp. 109 f.; cf. Peter Dendle, “‘The Age of Faith’: Everyone in the Middle Ages Be- lieved in God”. In: Misconceptions about the Middle Ages, ed. by Stephen J. Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby. New York, London 2008 (Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture 7), pp. 49–53, here p. 51: “Every age is an age of ‘faith’ in something or other—every­ culture relies on a matrix of mutually supporting premises that form the silent foundation for other, more publicly disputed claims—but­ for the literate community, belief in the existence, nature, and goodness of God was by no means such an unspoken, implicit premise underlying medieval thought. It was not the ‘bedrock’ […] but a vibrant, swirling eddy within the current itself”. Cf. further Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. Oxford 1978, pp. 6 ff.; Charles M. Radding, “Superstition to Science: Nature, Fortune, and the Passing of the Medie- val Ordeal”. In: The American Historical Review 84/4 (1979), pp. 945–969; Charles M. Rad- ding, “Fortune and her wheel: the meaning of a medieval symbol”. In: Mediaevistik 5 (1992), pp. 127–138; Jerome Taylor and Lester Little (eds.), Marie-­Dominique Chenu. Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century. Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West. To- ronto, Buffalo, London 1997, here pp. 162–201; Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle 94 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

Ages. Cambridge et al. 2001; John H. Arnold, Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe. London 2005; Peter Dinzelbacher, Unglaube im ‘Zeitalter des Glaubens’. Atheismus und Skeptizismus im Mittelalter. Badenweiler 2009. 15 Richard Utz, “Writing Alternative Worlds. Rituals of Authorship and Authority in Late Medieval Theological and Literary Discourse”. In: Creations. Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation, ed. by Sven Rune Havsteen et al. Turnhout 2007 (Ritus et artes 2), pp. 121–138, here p. 126. 16 Dendle, “Age of Faith”, p. 50; cf. Jan Alexander van Nahl, Snorri Sturlusons Mythologie und die mittelalterliche Theologie. Berlin, Boston 2013 (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Ger- manischen Altertumskunde 81), here pp. 60 f. and 67 ff. 17 Cf. Dominik Waßenhoven, Skandinavier unterwegs in Europa (1000–1250). Untersuchungen zu Mobilität und Kulturtransfer auf prosopographischer Grundlage. Berlin 2006 (Europa im Mittelalter 8); Arne Odd Johnsen, “Les relations intellectuelles entre la France et la Norvège (1160–1214)”. In: Moyen Age 57 (1951), pp. 247–268. 18 Cf. Christian Etheridge, “The Evidence for Islamic Scientific Works in Medieval Iceland”. In: Fear and Loathing in the North, ed. by Cordelia Heß and Jonathan Adams. Berlin, Boston 2015, pp. 49–74; cf. further Rega Wood, “The Influence of Arabic Aristotelianism on Scholastic Natu- ral Philosophy”. In: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, ed. by Robert Pasnau. Cambridge 2014, pp. 247–266. To be sure, Anthony Faulkes claimed some twenty years ago that there is “no likelihood that Aristotle was available in Iceland in the thirteenth century”, and this assessment seems to have contributed to modern scholars’ general neglect of poss- ible philosophical discourse in medieval Icelandic literature (Anthony Faulkes, “The Sources of Skáldskaparmál: Snorri’s Intellectual Background”. In: Snorri Sturluson. Kolloquium anläßlich der 750. Wiederkehr seines Todestages, ed. by Alois Wolf. Tübingen 1993 (ScriptOralia 51), pp. 59–76, here p. 64). However, Aristotle’s treatises incited harsh debate at the University of Paris around 1210 (cf. Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy. Oxford 2012, here p. 300), a time during which the archbishop of Niðarós, Tore Gudmundsson (†1214), stayed at the abbey of St Victor. This is not to speak of the famous Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, on the occasion of which Tore’s successor, Guttorm (†1224), was consecrated archbishop; Old Icelandic annals report that, shortly after his return to Norway, Guttorm arranged a meeting with high-­ranking Icelanders (cf. Jan Alexander van Nahl, “The Skilled Narrator. Myth and Scholarship in the Prose Edda”. In: Scripta Islandica 66 (2015), pp. 123–141, here p. 129). In the context of such verifiable contacts, an assumed lack of availability of specific writings in Iceland does not necessarily entail ignorance of surrounding discourse—not­ to mention the fact that the twelfth century in particular has been acknowledged as “the age of the lost works” in Iceland (Ármann Jakobsson, “Inventing a Saga Form: The Development of the Kings’ Sagas”. In: Filologia Germanica – Germanic Philology 4 (2012), pp. 1–22, here p. 7). 19 Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, “Social Institutions and Belief Systems of Medieval Iceland (c. 870–1400) and Their Relation to Literary Production”. In: Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross. Cambridge 2000 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 42), pp. 8–29, here pp. 10 f.; cf. Ursula Dronke and Peter Dronke, “The Prologue of the Prose Edda: Exploration of a Latin Background”. In Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni, ed. by Einar G. Pétursson. Reykjavík 1977, pp. 153–176, here p. 173. 20 Among many studies, cf. e.g. Else Mundal (ed.), Medieval Nordic Literature in Its European Context. Oslo 2015; Torfi H. Tulinius, “The ‘Matter of the North’: Fiction and Uncertain Iden- tities in Thirteenth-Century­ Iceland”. In: Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross. Cambridge 2000 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 42), pp. 242–265, here pp. 260 f.; Ármann Jakobsson, “Snorri and His Death. Youth, Violence, and Autobiography in Medieval Iceland”. In: Scandinavian Studies 75/3 (2003), pp. 317–340. Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 95

21 Utz, “Alternative Worlds”, p. 126; cf. further p. 138: “The ritualistic and often formulaic dis- course of poetic creation in the Middle Ages may not be explained by simply enumerating state- ments in lists of topoi that suggest an unbroken chain of tradition from the Classical to the early modern western world. Rather, each of these creative writings of alternative fictional worlds deserve specific historicizing attention and detailed epistemological contextualization”. As early as 1982, Carol Clover likewise indicated a shift away from classical narratological demands in late medieval Iceland (cf. Carol Clover, The Medieval Saga. Ithaca (NY) 1982, here p. 24). Cf. further Walter Haug, “Die mittelalterliche Literatur im kulturhistorischen Rationalisierung- prozeß”. In: Walter Haug. Positivierung von Negativität. Letzte kleine Schriften, ed. by Ulrich Barton. Tübingen 2008, pp. 14–30; Fritz P. Knapp, “Kausallogisches Erzählen unter den weltan- schaulichen und pragmatischen Bedingungen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts”. In: Erzähllogiken in der Literatur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Florian Kragl and Christian Schneider. Heidelberg 2013 (Studien zur historischen Poetik 13), pp. 187–205. 22 Cf. Jan Alexander van Nahl, “Krise und Kontingenz. Zu einem literaturwissenschaftlichen Potenzial am Beispiel Islands”. In: Vom Eigenwert der Literatur. Reflexionen zu Funktion und Relevanz­ literarischer Texte, ed. by Andrea Bartl and Marta Famula. Würzburg 2017 (Konnex – Studien im Schnittbereich von Literatur, Kultur und Natur 21), pp. 327–350; Úlfar Bragason, Ætt og saga. Um frásagnarfræði Sturlungu eða Íslendinga sǫgu hinnar miklu. Reykjavík 2010, here pp. 296 f. 23 Murray, Reason, pp. 19 ff. 24 Hans J. Orning, “Conflict and Social (Dis)Order in Norway, c. 1030–1160”. In:Disputing Strat- egies in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. by Kim Esmark, Lars Hermanson, Hans Jacob Orning, and Helle Vogt. Leiden 2013 (Medieval Law and Its Practice 16), pp. 45–82, here p. 51. 25 Cf. Gerd Althoff, Kontrolle der Macht. Formen und Regeln politischer Beratung im Mittelalter. Darmstadt 2016, here p. 336. 26 Cf. Sverre Bagge, Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla. Berkeley, Los Ange- les, Oxford 1991, here pp. 64 ff.; Shami Ghosh, Kings’ Sagas and Norwegian History. Problems and Perspectives. Leiden 2011 (The Northern World 54), here pp. 177 ff.; Magnús Fjalldal, “Be- ware of Norwegian Kings: Heimskringla as Propaganda”. In: Scandinavian Studies 85/4 (2013), pp. 455–468; cf. the critical remarks in Ármann Jakobsson, “Saga Form”, pp. 18 f. 27 For a general introduction to Snorri’s life and work, cf. Snorri Sturluson – Historiker, Dichter, Politiker, ed. by Heinrich Beck, Wilhelm Heizmann, and Jan Alexander van Nahl. Berlin, Bos- ton 2013 (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 85). 28 Cf. van Nahl, Mythologie, pp. 10 ff. Concepts of ‘medieval authorship’ have led to harsh dispute. However, given the fact that medieval literature has long been recognised as acts of communi- cation tied to specific historic constellations, any attempt at a narratological assessment with- out consideration of the actual texts’ coming-into-being­ within a sociocultural framework falls short; not for nothing, Ansgar Nünning recently claimed that it is “high time that narratologists made more sustained efforts to contextualize the texts that they subject to such close scrutiny” (Ansgar Nünning, “Surveying Contextualist and Cultural Narratologies: Towards an Outline of Approaches, Concepts and Potentials”. In: Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary­ Narrative Research, ed. by Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer. Berlin 2009 (Narratologia 20), pp. 48–70, here p. 65. Cf. Guðrún Nordal, “The Contemporary Sagas and Their Social Context”. In: Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by Margaret Clunies Ross. Cambridge 2000 (Cam- bridge Studies in Medieval Literature 42), pp. 221–241. 29 Cf. Heinrich Beck, “Hamingja”. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 13 (1999), pp. 478–480. 30 William Sayers, “Ethics or Pragmatics; Fate or Chance; Heathen, Christian, or Godless World (Hrafnkels saga)”. In: Scandinavian Studies 79/4 (2007), pp. 385–404, here p. 401. 96 Mediaevistik 29 · 2016

31 Bagge, Society, p. 224. 32 Vésteinn Ólason, “Snorri Sturluson – tiden, manne og verket”. In: Høvdingen. Om Snorre Stur- lasons liv og virke, ed. by John Ole Askedal. Oslo 2008, pp. 21–40, here p. 36. 33 Bagge, Society, p. 22. Cf., however, the recent assessment by Arnd Hoffmann, “Kontingenzer- fahrung und Kontingenzbewusstsein aus historischer Perspektive”. In: Politik und Kontingenz, ed. by Katrin Toens and Ulrich Willems. Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 49–64. 34 Wolf, “Chance”, pp. 180 and 187; for a narratological introduction, cf. Doris Boden, “Zufall”. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens 14 (2014), col. 1403–08. 35 Cf. Walter Haug, “Kontingenz als Spiel und das Spiel mit der Kontingenz. Zufall, literarisch, im Mittelalter und der Frühen Neuzeit”. In: Kontingenz, ed. by Gerhart von Graevenitz and Odo Marquard. München 1998 (Poetik und Hermeneutik 17), pp. 151–172, here p. 151: “Ich unter- scheide Kontingenz und Zufall also in der Weise, daß ich unter Kontingenz einen Raum offener Möglichkeiten verstehe, unter Zufall aber das, was sich in diesem Raum unter der Prämisse völliger Willkür (mag diese auch nur scheinbar sein) ereignet. Kontingenz ist also Potentialität, der Zufall ist die Aktualisierung von Möglichkeiten in ihrem Rahmen, wobei ‘in ihrem Rahmen’ meint, daß die Vorgänge eben keiner (erkennbaren) Notwendigkeit gehorchen”. On the concept of ambiguity in medieval literature, cf. Oliver Auge and Christiane Witthöft (eds.), Ambiguität im Mittelalter. Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption. Berlin, Bo- ston 2016 (Trends in Medieval Philology 30). 36 Cf. Harald Haferland, “Kontingenz und Finalität.” In: Kein Zufall. Konzeptionen von Kontin- genz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. by Cornelia Herberichs and Susanne Reichlin. Göt- tingen 2010 (Historische Semantik 13), pp. 337–363. 37 Citations and chapter numbers according to Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum. Fagrskinna – Nóregs konunga tal, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Reykjavík 1985 (Íslenzk Fornrit 29); Morkin- skinna, ed. by Ármann Jakobsson and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, 2 vols. Reykjavík 2011 (Íslenzk Fornrit 23–24); Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 3 vols. Reykjavík 1941–51 (Íslenzk Fornrit 26–28). 38 Cf. Jörn Rüsen, Rekonstruktion der Vergangenheit. Grundzüge einer Historik 2: Die Prinzipien der historischen Forschung. Göttingen 1986, pp. 37 ff. 39 Bagge, Society, p. 45. 40 Bagge, Society, p. 154. 41 Ghosh, Kings’ sagas, pp. 155 ff. 42 Cf. Orning, “Conflict”, pp. 50 f. 43 In Morkinskinna and Fagrskinna, the circumstances of Magnús’s death are less accentuated than in Heimskringla, yet characterised by unpredictability too: similar to his earlier rivals, Magnús dies of sudden illness. 44 Jacques Le Goff, “Laughter in Brennu-Njáls­ Saga”. In: From Sagas to Society: Comparative Ap- proaches to Early Iceland, ed. by Gísli Pálsson. London 1992, pp. 161–165, here p. 163; cf. Ste- fan Bießenecker, “A Small History of Laughter, or When Laughter Has to Be Reasonable”. In: Behaving Like Fools. Voice, Gesture, and Laughter in Texts, Manuscripts, and Early Books, ed. by Lucy Perry and Alexander Schwarz. Turnhout 2010 (International Medieval Research 17), pp. 193–221, here pp. 196 f.: “The damned are laughing. […] They seem confused, perhaps not understanding what lies ahead of them”; the reference is the ‘The Last Judgment’-tympanum at Bamberg Cathedral, dating around 1235. For a comprehensive introduction, cf. Albrecht Classen (ed.), Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, its Meaning, and Consequences. Berlin, Boston 2010 (Fundamentals of Medi- eval and Early Modern Culture 5). Mediaevistik 29 · 2016 97

45 Reviewing scholars’ attempts at establishing relations, Alison Finlay rightly evoked “an astron- omer’s chart of the heavens, so plentiful are the stars designating works known or surmised to have existed, but of which no text now survives” (Fagrskinna. A Catalogue of the Kings of Norway. A Translation with Introduction and Notes, trans. by Alison Finlay. Leiden 2004, here p. 3). 46 Cf. Hans Joas, “Das Zeitalter der Kontingenz”. In: Politik und Kontingenz, ed. by Katrin Toens and Ulrich Willems. Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 23–37. 47 On the possible relation of eloquence and power in medieval Iceland, cf. van Nahl, “Krise”. 48 Homer. The Iliad, trans. by Stephen Mitchell. New York 2011, here p. 361. 49 Kevin J. Wanner, Snorri Sturluson and the Edda. The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medi- eval Scandinavia. Toronto 2008 (Toronto Old Norse-­Icelandic Series 4), here p. 51. 50 Cf. Dieter Strauch, “Snorri Sturluson und der isländische Weg zum Schatzland Norwegen”. In: Snorri Sturluson – Historiker, Dichter, Politiker, ed. by Heinrich Beck, Wilhelm Heizmann, and Jan Alexander van Nahl. Berlin, Boston 2013 (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Ger- manischen Altertumskunde 85), pp. 267–302, here pp. 279 f.