Royal blood: Social rank and status in Laxdæla Saga 

Author: W.D. Valgardson, Victoria, BC

A day after we saw the film The Day Iceland Stood Still, we went to the University of Victoria to Torfi Tulinius’s lecture, “Mixed Emotions: The Trouble with Royal Blood in Laxdæla Saga,” on Sunday, February 9. And after the lecture, we attended a get-together with Torfi and his wife, Guðbjorg Vilhjálmsdóttir. This was all a replication of times past in Victoria, when the local Icelandic community was centered in Fernwood, with its own church and grocery store, when on Sundays there were talks and poetry readings and music. I sort of hoped my friend, Ben Sivertz, and his mother and father and brothers were able to look down and say, they’re still keeping up the good work we did when we made the great journey. 

I had the privilege of knowing Ben when I first came to Victoria. His father, Christian, first went to New Iceland, then to Victoria. He met his future wife, Elinborg Samuelson, who had come from Iceland with her family. They married and had four sons. The sons were born on the top floor of a house in Fernwood. Their lives and the lives of the Icelanders who travelled from Iceland to Quebec, from there to New Iceland, on to Victoria, some on to Hunter and Smith Island, to Prince Rupert, to Bellingham and Blaine, were like the lives of the saga people. They travelled great distances to foreign lands, often at great peril, and suffered and overcame great hardships. In spite of all they faced, they kept their love of language and literature. The Beck Lectures are a continuation of that.

In this lecture, Torfi argued that when we look at the actions of the Vikings in the sagas, it is not just adventuring, not just raiding, or even trading, that motivates their behaviour, but a constant anxiety about their social and political positions. Social rank and status mattered, and it was constantly under threat.

If you were a chieftain in Iceland and the Norwegian king started getting involved and started supporting some of the many chieftains and not others, it wouldn’t be surprising if you had many anxious nights.

Torfi focused on the most famous of the Icelandic sagas, Laxdæla Saga. He started by showing a picture of the killing of Kjartan by his cousin Bolli. This conflict is central to the saga. This saga is among the Íslendingasögur, or sagas about early Icelanders. Something, perhaps surprising, is that this saga is famous for the many remarkable women who play important parts in the narrative. It begins by telling about Unn the Deep-Minded (also known as Auður the Deep-Minded). She’s married to a Norse king of Dublin and has a son who rules over Scotland until he is killed. Unn orders a ship built so she can escape. She comes to Iceland and manages her family and politics well until she dies of old age.

Then Torfi told us something surprising. He said that of all the sagas, Laxdæla Saga is the one that scholars think might have been written by a woman. This is because of the imposing figure of Unn but also because of the great number of important female characters.

There is Jórunn who marries Höskuldur. Höskuldur goes to Norway to buy wood, sees a beautiful young woman who is being sold as a slave, buys her, and, in spite of being married, makes her his concubine. Later, back in Iceland, his wife strikes Melkorka, the slave, and Melkorka strikes back. In spite of being a slave, Melkorka is a princess. Her presence has made Jórunn anxious, and she is afraid of losing her social status. Höskuldur favors Melkorka’s son over those he’s had with Jórunn. It’s not hard to see how jealousy motivates people in that situation.

The major female figure of the next generation is Guðrún Ósvifursdóttir who is considered to be the most beautiful and accomplished woman in Iceland. She has already been married two times before she is courted by Kjartan. However, Kjartan goes off to Norway to meet the king. He refuses to take her with him but gets her to promise that she won’t marry anyone else. There are lies, rumours; it is said that Kjartan will marry the king’s sister. Guðrún breaks her vow and marries Kjartan’s best friend, Bolli, before Kjartan returns. How’s that for disappointment, resentment, and jealousy? It all goes wrong and Bolli, Kjartan’s best friend, helps kill him. This is an honour-based society. Somebody insults you, you need to get vengeance. The author of Laxdæla Saga obviously understands the emotional volatility of people. 

Torfi asked the audience to consider the narrative as a whole over its six or seven generations. A high-status family of Norwegian origin, led by a former Norse queen of Scotland, comes to Iceland. However, Höskuldur’s desire for the slave girl brings royal blood into the family. The son of the slave woman, Ólafur, takes precedence over his legitimate half-brothers. That situation in modern days could well lead to murder.

The underlying theme of the saga is therefore that royal blood is both desirable and disruptive. The opportunities created for its dominant class by incorporating Iceland into the royal state are also part of the theme.

By the time this saga was written, social conditions had changed. Medieval society was developing monarchies. The church encouraged and supported this. The church conferred legitimacy on kings, making them different from others. Their blood was special.

But Iceland did not have a king until 1262. By the middle of the thirteenth century, Icelandic society was undergoing radical changes. There had been a long period of civil war in Norway. With peace, the monarch could turn his attention to Iceland and Greenland. Through his relationship with Snorri Sturluson, the king was able to claim ownership of Snorri’s property when he died. Between 1220 and 1262, the Icelanders agreed to become subjects of the king and promised to pay him taxes. When that happened, the previous government had been replaced by another. 

Although men participate in the physical conflict created by the changes in society, women also have a major part to play. Women intervene to preserve the honour and status of the family. In this saga, the women play such a large part, representing the emotional turmoil of the times, and they are portrayed so well that it may well be that a woman may have written the saga. Through this analysis of the plot of Laxdæla Saga, especially in its relationship to the competition between overlords in Iceland during the Age of the Sturlungs (in the mid-thirteenth century), Torfi Tulinius has proposed a new reading of the saga based on medieval ideas of royal blood.