Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements and Dedication
- Introduction: Female Fury and the Masculine Spirit of Vengeance
- Part I The Gendering of Revenge
- Part II Friends and Family – ‘Revenging Home’
- Part III Women’s Weapons
- Part IV Women Transmogrified
- Part V Lamentation, Gender Roles and Vengeance
- List of Contributors
- Index
3 - Vengeance and Male Devotion in Laxdæla saga and Njáls saga
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements and Dedication
- Introduction: Female Fury and the Masculine Spirit of Vengeance
- Part I The Gendering of Revenge
- Part II Friends and Family – ‘Revenging Home’
- Part III Women’s Weapons
- Part IV Women Transmogrified
- Part V Lamentation, Gender Roles and Vengeance
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
At a climactic moment in Laxdala saga, one of the most popular of the sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), the hero Kjartan Óláfsson challenges his beloved foster-brother and cousin Bolli .orleiksson to decide whether or not to attempt to kill him in vengeance. The moment is the culmination of a feud that has developed between the kinsmen after Bolli steals Kjartan's lover Gu.rún Ósvífrsdóttir from him. Following a series of increasingly humiliating slights, the two men finally stand before each other:
Then Bolli drew Fótbítr [his sword] and now turned towards Kjartan. Kjartan then said to Bolli, ‘You are now, kinsman, certainly going to do a deed of a níðingr [shameful man], but it seems far better to me to receive my deathblow from you, kinsman, than deal one to you’. Then Kjartan threw his weapons down and did not want to defend himself at all … Bolli gave no answer to Kjartan's words but instead dealt him his deathblow. Bolli at once placed himself under Kjartan's shoulders and Kjartan died in Bolli's lap; Bolli mourned the act immediately.
The choreography of Bolli's act dramatically illustrates how the necessity for vengeance conflicts with homosocial bonds in the saga. Though Kjartan initially encourages Bolli to enter the fight (while addressing him as frændi, ‘kinsman’), he throws down his weapon as soon as he turns on him. Bolli, for his part, strikes Kjartan's deathblow before immediately sweeping him up, possibly in a single movement, so that his determination to kill his cousin and the love that he demonstrates by holding him as he dies appear almost concurrent. Bolli's oscillation makes visible the scene's central dilemma: whether it is a greater níðingsverk (deed of a shameful man) for a man to restore his manhood by killing his kinsman or to forbear vengeance for the sake of their kinship while enduring tarnished masculinity. In throwing down his weapons, Kjartan chooses forbearance at the risk of emasculation, while Bolli chooses the restitution of manliness at the cost of kin slaying.
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- Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018