The Classical Barbarian in the Íslendingasögur
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Faculty of English (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic) The Classical Barbarian in the Íslendingasögur William Hereward Norman St Catharine’s College University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, November 2017 The Classical Barbarian in the Íslendingasögur William Hereward Norman Abstract The Íslendingasögur, written in Iceland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, primarily describe the lives of Icelanders during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Many of these lives involve encounters with foreign peoples, both abroad and in Iceland, who are portrayed according to stereotypes which vary depending on the origins of those people. Notably, inhabitants of the places identified in the sagas as Írland, Skotland and Vínland are portrayed as being less civilized than the Icelanders themselves. This thesis explores the ways in which the Íslendingasögur emphasize this relative barbarity through descriptions of diet, material culture, style of warfare, and character. These characteristics are discussed in relation to parallel descriptions of Icelandic characters and lifestyle within the Íslendingasögur, and also in the context of a tradition in contemporary European literature which portrayed the Icelanders themselves as barbaric. Innovatively, comparisons are made with descriptions of barbarians in classical Roman texts, primarily Sallust, but also Caesar and Tacitus. Taking into account the availability and significance of classical learning in medieval Iceland, the comparison with Roman texts yields striking similarities between Roman and Icelandic ideas about barbarians. It is argued that the depiction of foreigners in the Íslendingasögur is almost identical to that of ancient Roman authors, and that the medieval Icelanders had both means and motive to use Roman ideas for inspiration in their own portrayal of the world. Ultimately it is argued that when the medieval Icelanders contemplated the peoples their Viking Age ancestors encountered around the world, they drew on classical ideas of the barbarian to complement the mix of oral tradition, literary inspiration and contemporary circumstance that otherwise form the Íslendingasögur. PREFACE This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. This dissertation does not exceed the regulation length, including footnotes, references and appendices but excluding the bibliography and translations of quoted texts. Signed: William Hereward Norman CONTENTS Acknowledgements 2 INTRODUCTION 3 The Barbarian 3 Sources 6 Íslendingasögur 6 Classical Learning 11 Contemporary Latin Works 17 Barbarians 22 Skotar 22 Írar 28 Skrælingar 36 Finnar 40 Other Theory 41 Icelanders and the Other 43 Icelanders as the Other 45 CHAPTER ONE: DIET AND FOOD PRODUCTION 49 Iceland 49 Vínland 55 Eiríks saga rauða 55 Grœnlendinga saga 59 Classical and Medieval Europe 62 CHAPTER TWO: MATERIAL CULTURE 72 Clothing 72 Weaponry 80 Housing 90 CHAPTER THREE: IN BATTLE 105 Advantage in numbers 106 Surprise attacks 113 Flight 118 Classical barbarians in battle 124 CHAPTER FOUR: CHARACTER 143 Appearance 144 Language 153 Behaviour 171 CONCLUSION 190 BIBLIOGRAPHY 194 "2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, for taking me and my project on, for guiding my research, for offering encouragement at all times, for reading every draft with dedicated attention to detail, and overall for helping me turn this mammoth task into a manageable and even enjoyable experience. Without her guidance and support this thesis would have been a far different and inferior work; needless to say, any remaining errors are entirely my own. Secondly I would like to thank my dear Aunt Alison, whose inspiring belief in higher education together with her generosity and foresight some twenty-five years ago made it possible for me to embark on this PhD in the first place. My thanks also to all my other family and friends, for your various support, interest and distractions – you know who you are and which you provided; and to St Catharine’s College, the ASNC department and the EFL and UL for hosting me. Special thanks to the Boat Club for a work-life balance in which it was not always clear which was work and which leisure, and to Test Match Special for an ever-engaging soundtrack to accompany my writing, between them ensuring that in the course of this PhD I have gained two new passions as well as retaining the one that made me embark upon it. For that a final thank you, to the writers of the Íslendingasögur. At last, after three years, I can meet you again as friends rather than subjects: I can’t wait. Fǫgr er hlíðin. "3 INTRODUCTION The Barbarian The idea of the barbarian is a universal one throughout history and across cultures. The word itself is of Greek origin and onomatopoeic, from the incomprehensible ‘bar-bar’ sound of a foreign language to the Greek ear, but was adopted into Latin by the early Romans, and over the course of the last two thousand years has insinuated itself into every European language and language group. Icelandic adopted it fairly late, however, not until the eighteenth century, and as a result it is not used in the literature of medieval Iceland; even when directly faced with the word, as in translations of Sallust, medieval Icelandic writers found alternative ways of phrasing it, typically by using a proper noun instead.1 The popularity of the word speaks to the universality of its meaning, which is vague enough that it can be applied to almost any meeting of cultures, but at the same time sufficiently powerful that it appeals to all cultures. This is partly because the word ‘barbarian’ has a range of associations that allows it to adapt its meaning to many contexts. Etymologically speaking it indicates ‘a foreigner, one whose language and culture differs from [that of] the speakers’, but it also commonly has connotations of roughness, wildness and a lack of civilization, as well as an absence of culture, literary or otherwise. Historically it was used by the Greeks to refer, without necessarily any negative connotation, to non-Greeks. It was the Romans who first added a pejorative 1 ‘Barbari’, Íslensk Orðsifjabók, p. 41, though barbarismus is referred to as a Latin word and explained by Óláfr #ór$arson in a translation of Donatus’ text Barbarismus in the Third Grammatical Treatise, written around 1250, Dritte Grammatische Abhandlung, ch. 11 (ed. Krömmelbein, pp. 98–102), Males, ‘Applied Grammatica’, p. 267; see McDougall, ‘Foreigners and Foreign Languages’, p. 207; Santini, ‘Kenningar Donati’, pp. 39–40). By comparison, forms of the word were used in Old French and Middle English at least as early as the fourteenth century, Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, p. 76; there is only one equivalent generic term used in the Íslendingasögur, óþjóðarfólk (‘un-people-people’) in Þorsteins saga Síðu-Hallssonar, ch. 1 (Austfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, p. 300), translated as ‘savages’ in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders IV (ed. Vi$ar Hreinsson, p. 448), though ‘barbarians’ would also be a fair figurative translation. Examples of barbaros being omitted or replaced with a proper noun occur in Rómverja saga, AM 595, ch. 31, and AM 226, ch. 28 (ed. #orbjörg Helgadóttir, p. 148 [compare with Bellum Jugurthinum 102.15 (ed. Comber and Balmaceda, p. 176)]), in Breta sögur, chs. 25–6 (Hauksbók, ed. Finnur Jónsson, pp. 269–70 [compare with De gestis Britonum 6.291 and 6.400 (Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Reeve, pp. 127 and 131)]) and in Alexanders saga, chs. 41, 49 (ed. Finnur Jónsson, pp. 41 and 49 [compare with Alexandreis 3.122 and 3.350 (ed. Colker, pp. 70 and 81)]); in other genres of Old Norse literature the adjective barbarus is often translated as heiðinn (‘heathen’), McDougall, ‘Foreigners and Foreign Languages’, p. 208; Sverrir Jakobsson, ‘Saracen Sensibilities’, p. 216. "4 element by specifically associating it with people who they perceived as being of a lower level of civilization than themselves; in Christian societies it has been used with similar intent for non-Christian societies.2 Although the word itself did not exist in Old Icelandic, it is apparent that every single one of these interpretations would have had meaning in a medieval Icelandic context, and that many of them would naturally have featured in any description of Icelanders encountering foreigners. Therefore, apart from the fact that the Latin word certainly was known, it follows that even without the word ‘barbarian’, the idea of the barbarian must nonetheless have existed in medieval Iceland. Examples of barbarian characterization are indeed a feature of the Íslendingasögur, as this thesis will show, it is just that they are not signposted with that label. Instead, each foreign people is labelled on almost every occasion with their own distinctive name, some of them, like Írar and Skotar the equivalent of the same names the people under discussion used, while names such as Skrælingar and Finnar were not identifications used by those peoples themselves.3 It follows from this refusal to generalize in the nomenclature that there is a limit to how far the authors of the sagas generalize in their portrayal of foreign others.