was
blauður
—weak, womanish, effeminate, cowardly, powerless, and craven. A loser.
And when Chieftain Snorri praised Gudrun the Fair as a
skörungur,
and a better one than both himself and Thorkel Eyjolfsson, he was locating her far out on the male end of the power spectrum. He was calling her a winner.
“This is a world,” says Carol Clover, “in which ‘masculinity’ always has a plus value, even (or perhaps especially) when it is enacted by a woman.” There was only one standard, only one way to judge a person adequate or inadequate. “The frantic machismo” of the men in the Icelandic sagas, Clover concludes, suggests “a society in which being born male precisely did
not
confer automatic superiority, a society in which distinction had to be acquired, and constantly reacquired, by wresting it away from others.”
The women who are mentioned in the sagas, the ones who are admired as
skörungur,
are the ones who have acquired that distinction. And Gudrid the Far-Traveler is one of them.
One of the delights in reading the sagas comes from untangling the connections among them. Gudrid the Far-Traveler would have known Gudrun the Fair—they were born about five years apart, and Gudrid’s cousin Yngvild was married to a son of Chieftain Snorri of Helgafell, Gudrun the Fair’s adviser.
At about the time of Gudrid’s birth on the south side of Snow Mountain’s Glacier, Thurid was “talking” with Bjorn (to the dismay of her fat merchant husband) on the north side. Next door, the two witches were competing for the same young man. In the south of Iceland, Hallgerd Long-Legs had just refused Gunnar two locks of her hair to twist into a bowstring, consigning him to his death. Eirik the Red had been outlawed for killing a neighbor (although Gudrid’s father and Chieftain Snorri’s foster-brothers had tried to negotiate a settlement for him), and had set off to find Greenland. And the parents of Grettir the Strong had just wed.
Gudrid’s adventures—moving to Greenland, marrying twice, exploring the New World, and settling down to raise her sons at Glaumbaer in northern Iceland—took ten or twelve years, from the year 1000 to about 1012. Just before Gudrid arrived in Greenland, Leif Eiriksson was in the Hebrides, acting like a cad with pregnant Thorgunna. While Gudrid was in Vinland, Grettir the Strong was outlawed for the first time. The year Gudrid settled at Glaumbaer, Njal and Bergthora and all their sons were burned to death in their house.
The sagas are silent about Gudrid’s years at Glaumbaer. We don’t know when her husband Karlsefni died, only that Snorri, their son born in Vinland, was still young. But during the last few years of Snorri’s minority, Grettir the Strong found a haven in a cave on the lands of Bjorn, lover of Oddny Island-Candle. (Bjorn encouraged him to eat Oddny’s husband’s sheep.) And Gudrun the Fair married for the fourth time, proving herself a
skörungur
at her wedding.
What had Gudrid done to earn that title? The harrowing voyage to Greenland proved her spirit, and both Vinland sagas illustrate she had a mind of her own. The seance in
The Saga of Eirik the Red
is one example. Gudrid’s father denounced it as pagan nonsense, we’re told, and refused to stay in the house while the ritual was going on. Fifteen-year-old Gudrid did not leave with him. When she alone of the women in the house was found to know the ritual songs, learned as nursery rhymes from her foster-mother, she had second thoughts about playing so prominent a role. She was Christian, and it would be against her religion to sing them in this context. The wise woman in charge gave her another way of looking at her dilemma: It would be un-Christian of her to refuse. She said, “You could be some help to the people here. You’d be no worse a woman for that.” Gudrid thought about it and made up her mind, without consulting her father.
She is similarly strong-minded following the death of her
blauður
—weak, womanish, effeminate, cowardly, powerless, and craven. A loser.
And when Chieftain Snorri praised Gudrun the Fair as a
skörungur,
and a better one than both himself and Thorkel Eyjolfsson, he was locating her far out on the male end of the power spectrum. He was calling her a winner.
“This is a world,” says Carol Clover, “in which ‘masculinity’ always has a plus value, even (or perhaps especially) when it is enacted by a woman.” There was only one standard, only one way to judge a person adequate or inadequate. “The frantic machismo” of the men in the Icelandic sagas, Clover concludes, suggests “a society in which being born male precisely did
not
confer automatic superiority, a society in which distinction had to be acquired, and constantly reacquired, by wresting it away from others.”
The women who are mentioned in the sagas, the ones who are admired as
skörungur,
are the ones who have acquired that distinction. And Gudrid the Far-Traveler is one of them.
One of the delights in reading the sagas comes from untangling the connections among them. Gudrid the Far-Traveler would have known Gudrun the Fair—they were born about five years apart, and Gudrid’s cousin Yngvild was married to a son of Chieftain Snorri of Helgafell, Gudrun the Fair’s adviser.
At about the time of Gudrid’s birth on the south side of Snow Mountain’s Glacier, Thurid was “talking” with Bjorn (to the dismay of her fat merchant husband) on the north side. Next door, the two witches were competing for the same young man. In the south of Iceland, Hallgerd Long-Legs had just refused Gunnar two locks of her hair to twist into a bowstring, consigning him to his death. Eirik the Red had been outlawed for killing a neighbor (although Gudrid’s father and Chieftain Snorri’s foster-brothers had tried to negotiate a settlement for him), and had set off to find Greenland. And the parents of Grettir the Strong had just wed.
Gudrid’s adventures—moving to Greenland, marrying twice, exploring the New World, and settling down to raise her sons at Glaumbaer in northern Iceland—took ten or twelve years, from the year 1000 to about 1012. Just before Gudrid arrived in Greenland, Leif Eiriksson was in the Hebrides, acting like a cad with pregnant Thorgunna. While Gudrid was in Vinland, Grettir the Strong was outlawed for the first time. The year Gudrid settled at Glaumbaer, Njal and Bergthora and all their sons were burned to death in their house.
The sagas are silent about Gudrid’s years at Glaumbaer. We don’t know when her husband Karlsefni died, only that Snorri, their son born in Vinland, was still young. But during the last few years of Snorri’s minority, Grettir the Strong found a haven in a cave on the lands of Bjorn, lover of Oddny Island-Candle. (Bjorn encouraged him to eat Oddny’s husband’s sheep.) And Gudrun the Fair married for the fourth time, proving herself a
skörungur
at her wedding.
What had Gudrid done to earn that title? The harrowing voyage to Greenland proved her spirit, and both Vinland sagas illustrate she had a mind of her own. The seance in
The Saga of Eirik the Red
is one example. Gudrid’s father denounced it as pagan nonsense, we’re told, and refused to stay in the house while the ritual was going on. Fifteen-year-old Gudrid did not leave with him. When she alone of the women in the house was found to know the ritual songs, learned as nursery rhymes from her foster-mother, she had second thoughts about playing so prominent a role. She was Christian, and it would be against her religion to sing them in this context. The wise woman in charge gave her another way of looking at her dilemma: It would be un-Christian of her to refuse. She said, “You could be some help to the people here. You’d be no worse a woman for that.” Gudrid thought about it and made up her mind, without consulting her father.
She is similarly strong-minded following the death of her
Similar Books
