Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga

Abstract

Abstract This book is the first study to investigate both the relation between gender and violence in the Old Norse Poetic Edda and key family and contemporary sagas, and the interrelated nature of these genres. Beginning with an analysis of Eddaic attitudes to heroic violence and its gendered nature through the figures of Guðrún and Helgi, the study broadens out to the whole poetic compilation and how the past (and particularly the mythological past) inflects the heroic present. This paves the way for a consideration of the comparable relationship between the heroic poems themselves and later reworkings of them or allusions to them in the family and contemporary sagas. Accordingly, the study moves on to consider the use of Eddaic allusion in Gísla saga’s meditation on violent masculinity and sexuality, assesses the impact of the Church on attitudes to revenge in family and contemporary sagas, and finally explores the scapegoating of women for male violence in the contemporary sagas. Although the Eddaic poems themselves present a complex and conflicting attitude to vengeance, revenge and other forms of violence are in later texts regularly associated with the past, often represented by Eddaic figures. Moreover, saga authors often attempt to construct a national narrative which shows moderation and peace-making as the only viable alternative to what is seen as the traditional destructive model of vengeance. Nevertheless, the picture the sagas present is far from uniform, rather being one of conflicting voices as the attractions of heroic violence for many prove difficult to resist. The book’s thematic concentration on gender/sexuality and violence, and its generic concentration on Poetic Edda and later texts which rework or allude to it, enable a diverse but coherent exploration of both key and neglected Norse texts and the way in which their authors display a dual fascination with and rejection of heroic vengeance

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