Applications 30. The Phraseological Place of Bandamannasaga among the Sagas of Wealth and Power. Presented at the 11th Annual Fiske
Conference on Medieval Icelandic Studies. [Norsestock 11] Cornell University 2-5 June 2016.
Richard L. Harris, University of Saskatchewan heorot@sasktel.net
It is still true today, as when observed by Sigurður Nordal in his commentary to the 1938 Íslenzk fornrit edition of Bandamanna saga, that little attention has been given specifically to this work and its place among the Íslendingasögur from a literary critical point of view. Aside from Magerøy’s 1957 Studiar and a few essays on its humor and approaches to its conflicts by students of socio-economic theory, most discussion occurs in introductions to, and accompanying commmentaries upon, its editions and translations. Nordal pointed out episodes in it which seem derived from passages in Ljósvetninga saga and Vatnsdœla saga, and subsequent editors and translators have noticed its narrative affinities with Hœnsa-Þóris saga and Hrafnkels saga. As well, the bias of editorial selection has placed it, with these latter two works, among the Sagas of Wealth and Power in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, along with Eyrbyggja saga, Hávarðar saga and some þættir. Bandamanna, Hrafnkatla and Hœnsa-Þórir are treated together by Theodore M. Andersson in his Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Saga under the chapter heading “Pondering Justice,” and although the settings of all three are some centuries earlier than their composition, they are viewed here and elsewhere as owing their inspiration to contemporary conflicts over power between the traditional leaders of the Commonwealth days and those who succeeded them as Iceland came under Norwegian rule.
These three sagas pursue agendas variously critical of the old and decadent chieftain class, its heedless aristocratic arrogance on the one hand, and on the other, its unscrupulous greed, exacerbated by the gradual erosion of its traditional sources of power and wealth. While there is little doubt of such common ideological interests in the origins of all three [of these sagas], they differentiate themselves from one another respectively regarding the ethics of survival amidst the local tyranny and lethal hubris that each studies in pursuing its narrative purpose. Hrafnkatla, as I have shown elsewhere, warns of associations with foolish men, and Hœnsa-Þóris saga, with men who are bad. Both these sagas thus consider kinds of people with whom it is disadvantageous to have dealings. Both sorts of people are tainted by ógæfa, a trait of lucklessness recognized in the Saga World as harmful to its possessors and to those who take up with them. Bandamanna saga, no less than the former two, shares such concerns but, in particular with Hrafnkatla, considers the dangers of the goðorð when held by those who are naïve, politically inexperienced or otherwise unskilled.
In contrast with Hœnsa-Þóris saga, whose subject is a socially ill-disposed and innately vicious self-made man, Bandamanna’s hero, Oddr Ófeigsson, though also amassing his own fortune, comes from faded and impoverished aristocratic stock, his father “a great sage and an excellent counsellor . . . in every way an outstanding person” yet “short of funds, though he owned plenty of land.” Lavish in hospitality, Ófeigr “always kept open house,” despite the “struggle he had to lay in enough supplies for the household.” It is presumably this negligence of good husbandry in the interests of financially crippling aristocratic sociability, and the honor its attendance imbues, that runs against the grain of his son, Oddr, “a promising lad” who “showed plenty of ability at an early age,” but with “little inclination for work” on the farm, the produce of which was in any case insufficient for Ófeigr’s generous style of living. This alienation of father and son, superficially much different from that generation-gap noticed by Paul Schach, nevertheless may also be intended by this saga’s composer as the primary signal of their respectively differing values. While Oddr seems conscious and heedful of traditional social obligations, he is never said to incur upon himself financial hardship to please others. Starting poor, like the subject of Hœnsa-Þóris saga, with his personal character and family respectability he enjoys enough social support to raise capital for his business, to become wealthy, . . . wealthy enough to buy a farm at Mel, in Miðfjörðr, at the urging of his friends there who want him to settle among them. While the unpleasant Hœnsa-Þórir incurs social resentment with his success, which is the result of his individual efforts at peddling between districts, Oddr clearly comes from and flourishes in the embrace of the old wealthy aristocratic class, redeeming the fortune his father or those before him lost as changing economic realities depleted their wealth. In this state, while some might consider him vulnerable in his neglect of his father’s approval and company, no shadows fall upon the brilliance of his honor.
But then one day, Óspakr Glúmsson, a nephew of Grettir Ásmundarson, says to him, “I’d like to join your household.” The composers of these sagas of Wealth and Power allow their significant figures to be explicitly inveigled into granting protection or otherwise taking responsibility for association with people of disadvantagous if not lethally harmful character—especially in Hœnsa-Þóris saga, those of the chieftain class, seduced by money, the temptation which proves their weakness also in Bandamanna. Oddr wisely moves to decline: “No one seems to praise you or like you, . . . You’re said to be a wily man, just like the rest of your family.” The audience here would recall the sort of wisdom operative in Hœnsa-Þóris saga, that bad things come from bad people. Saga readers will also think of a proverb used by Grettir when he realized that blame for an accidental conflagration, caused when he fetched fire for some merchants while stranded in a storm one night in Norway, would bring him harm, “it now turned out, as he feared, that they would repay him ill . . ., and he says it is bad to give help to unworthy people.”
Óspakr moves to defend himself from Oddr’s encomplimentary observations by referring to the background of another area of traditional communal wisdom, using a cluster of proverbs about the dangers of unfairly biased social opinion: “Trust your own experience, and never the gossip of others, . . . things are seldom said to be better than they actually are.” While there are obviously contexts where such proverbs have positive value, here the composer puts them in the mouth of a bad person, making their use ironic in the narrative, coming as he does from a family with fairly troublesome members: stories about Óspakr are presumably true, and he is likely as bad as people say he is. Óspakr insists he only wants to stay with Oddr. He will provide his own food and presumably intends to work. Like other dupes of bad men in the Sagas of Wealth and Power, Oddr caves in here to the power of paroemially based rhetoric, though still vocally reluctant to do so: “You and your kinsmen can be stubborn and arrogant once you’ve made up your minds . . . but since you’re pressing me so hard to take you in, we might as well give it a try for one winter.” Óspakr is on his best behavior, a good, reliable worker, and Oddr comes to trust him, eventually much more than he should.
Now, though no one is better off than Oddr, one thing still detracts from his honor: his lack of a goðorð, which he supplies by buying one and gathering supporters. In this transaction, his second mistake after Óspakr, he places himself in the same foolishly vulnerable position as Sámr in Hrafnkatla, undertaking a chieftaincy for which he has no preparation. The audience would recall that it is bad to elevate the positions of the foolish, and true to its common background of wisdom, this is the second step to his crisis, though not immediately apparent. The third occurs soon after when, deciding to go abroad, he chooses to leave his farm in the hands of Óspakr. Though the latter pretends reluctance, Oddr “said that he knew now from his own experience that no-one could or would look after his property better,” naively recalling Óspakr’s ironic earlier proverbial references to the value of experience over hearsay, and so it is agreed. Then in the moments of departure, Oddr leaves the goðorð in Óspakr’s care. Here the latter not only objects but offers wise advice, which he knows Oddr won’t take: “There’s nobody better fitted for the task than your father. He’s a very shrewd man, and a great lawyer.” “One should always take good advice, . . . no matter where it comes from,” says one of the less despicable chieftains later in the story, and in Bandamanna saga this proverb has applicability well beyond the immediate environment of its utterance. Oddr should take Óspakr’s advice, though insincerely meant, and rather than rejecting Ófeigr he should nurture his relationship with his crafty old father, far more skilled in traditional political wisdom than he is himself. Excellent in business, considerate in social relations, Oddr behaved unwisely in his association with, and delegation of, authority to Óspakr, and his neglect of his father’s value leaves him weakly positioned, in the event of legal conflict. The composer reinforces his view using the consensus of public opinion: “There was a great deal of talk about the new arrangement, and people thought that Odd had entrusted this man with too much power.” By this time, then, Oddr Ófeigsson, enterprising, popular and innately fortunate in the way of kings and some saga figures, has neglected the proverbially enforced wisdom of his society by taking up a goðorð for which he lacks the necessary skills if not also the requisite temperament, by associating himself with a bad man about whom there is thus an aura of ógæfa, that contagious quality of ill luck which is best avoided in the Saga World, and worst of all by leaving his farm and office in the hands of this unfortunate person during his absence from Iceland.
The predictable results are dramatised first in the scene when he retrieves his goðorð at the edge of an axe blade raised over Óspakr’s and then when the latter steals forty of his sheep. Then the villain’s accidental killing of Oddr’s friend Váli, like the coincidental killing of Helgi Árngrímsson by Ǫrn the Norwegian in Hœnsa-Þóris saga, leads to Óspakr’s eventual death. Much of the saga’s humor, which is not my concern in this paper, lies in the complex proceedings by which Oddr ineptly seeks legal redress for the killing and in Ófeigr’s cunning plans and manipulations which save his son’s life and fortune, leading to his marriage to one of the most eligible women in the country, Ragnheiðr Gellisdóttir, granddaughter of Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir. And the composer’s humorous descriptions of Ófeigr’s astonishingly skilled arguments and dealings with the eight wily chieftains who would take advantage of his son’s vulnerable situation and legal naivete to grab his wealth provide unparallelled entertainment as they lead to the reconciliation of the improvident old aristocrat with his enterprising son. Where Sámr of Hrafnkatla is ultimately left unattend by the Þjóstarsynir when they determine that his lack of character for leadership makes further association subject to ógæfa for them, Oddr will continue to benefit from his goðorð because of support from his father.
Hallvard Magerøy makes the point, which should in any case be obvious, that despite the insulting rhetoric of the saga’s flytings, and blunt revelations of the weaknesses of the conspiring goðar, Bandamannashould be taken as a “mocking attack not so much on the chieftain class in general as on unscrupulous and dishonest chieftains, and not so much on the procedures of justice in general as on naive and corrupt leaders.” (xxx.) As Ófeigr proceeds in his skewering of the conspiring goðar, awaiting his decision as to which of them will make self-judgement against his son and having discarded all of them but the reasonably honorable Gellir Þorkelsson, he comes last upon Egill Skúlason, “even less fair-minded than any of the others” he observes. “The same has happened to me as to the wolves, they devour one another and don’t know it till they come to the tail. I’ve had the choice of several chieftains. The only one left is generally thought to be a wicked man . . . he doesn’t care what he does for money, as long as he gets it.” As he laments the poverty of good choices among the great men in whose integrity Icelanders would ideally need to trust, his lupine imagery reminds readers of a passage in Hœnsa-Þóris saga where Gunnarr admits to having duped the chieftain Þórðr Gellir into joining the campaign against the burners of Blund-Ketill, “It’s a great thing now if you chieftains can test which of you is strongest, for you’ve long been at each other’s throats like wolves.” The confederated goðar of this saga, [like those of the other Sagas of Wealth and Power as well as of later 13th-century Iceland], are people whose badness and greed make them as dangerous of association as Óspakr proved to be, and the world of wolves suggested by this phraseology is not far from that described by the legal terms of Norse outlawry—in fact, Ófeigr uses the term vargr rather than úlfr as he laments the paucity of trustworthy choices of goðar, making the composer’s implications more pointed.
This sagas of this group share common skeptical concerns, as Andersson noticed, about governance, specifically about the reliability of chieftains, since all three focus on the demise of chieftains.” [162] While the composer of Hrafnkatla seems more subdued in his criticism, through his protagonist’s behavior, of their blunt brutality and self-destructive arrogance, the composers of Bandamanna and Hœnsa-Þóris saga allow voices of their narratives to become desperately strident in their condemnation of excesses in leadership. 1. The phraseology of Bandamanna saga, and in particular the 2. paroemial background upon which it builds its characters and their story, 3. the proverbs it uses to signal explicitly its intended moral, that especially those who would lead, as well as maintaining compassionate integrity, must practice care in forming associations burdened with obligations which might affect their leadership, places it clearly within this group. Shared character and incident types, as well as shared paroemial inventory, would lead us to consider further the extent of connections in their respective backgrounds of composition.
HANDOUT. The Phraseological Place of Bandamannasaga among the Sagas of Wealth and Power. Presented at the 11th Annual Fiske
Conference on Medieval Icelandic Studies. [Norsestock 11] Cornell University 2-5 June 2016.
Richard L. Harris, University of Saskatchewan heorot@sasktel.net
1. Óspakr’s proposal:
a. Drawbacks, and Oddr’s first inclination:
ÍF 7.299-300, ch. 2. K. “Oddr segir: ‘Ekki ertu mjǫk logaðr né vinsæll, ok þykkir þú hafa brǫgð undir.’” M. “Oddr svarir: ‘Ekki ertu mjǫk lofaðr af mǫnnum, ok eigi ertu vinsæll; þykkir þú hafa brǫgð undir brúnum, svá sem þú ert ættborinn til.’”
b. Proverbial support of Oddr’s first inclination:
TPMA 10.138: Opt hlýtr illt af illum.
ÍF 7.131, ch. 38. Grettir kvað nú þat fram komit, er hann grunaði, at þeir myndi honum illa eldsóknina launa, ok segir illt ódrengjum lið at veita. Grettis saga
c. Óspakr’s proverbially based response (used ironically by the composer) to Oddr’s wise but rhetorically overcome reluctance:
ÍF 7.299-300, ch. 2. M. 299. Óspakr svarar: “Haf við raun þína, en eigi sögn annarra, því at fátt er betr látit en efni eru til. Hávamál 8. TPMA 1.122.
2. What is lacking to Oddr’s honor:
ÍF 7.300-1, ch. 2. K. “Einn hlutr þykkir mǫnnum á skorta um virðing hans, er hann var goðorðslauss.” M. “Einn hlut þykkir mǫnnum at skorta, at eigi sé ráð hans með allri sœmð, at hann er maðr goðorðslauss.”
a. But, Oddr’s eventually proven insufficiency for office:
Illt er að setja heimskum hátt. Guðmundur Jónsson, Safn af íslenzkum orðskviðum, fornmælum, heilræðum, snilliyrðum, sannmælum og málsgreinum, samanlesið of í stafrófsröð sett af Guðmundi Jónssyni prófasti í Snæfellsnessýslu og presti í Staðarstaðarsókn. (Copenhagen, 1830), 181.
3. Oddr’s unwise delegation of authority in the goðorð transaction.
a. Óspakr’s insincerely offered advice: ÍF 7. 303, ch. 3. K. “‘Er þar engi maðr jafnvel til fallinn sem faðir þinn, skilamaðr in mesti ok forvitri.’” M. “‘Er þar engi maðr jafnvell til fallin sem faðir þinn; er hann inn mesti málamaðr ok forvitri.’”
b. Proverbial support ofÓspakr’s insincerely offered advice:
ÍF 7.355, ch. 10. K. passage is lacking. M. Þórarinn svarar: “Hafa skal heil ráð, hvaðan sem koma,” sezk niðr ok þagnar. TPMA 9.191.
FJ Proverb word 321. Page 179. ráð – ... hafa skal heil ráð hvaðan sem koma Band 38, Bisk I 623. ‘Følge skal man gode råd, hvorfa de end kommer’. GJ haf varianten: þó heimskr kenni. Aasen: ‘Ei god råd skal ein fylgja, kvar so ho kjem infrå’.
Saxo (Kallstenius) 28.66. Verum prudencie monitor, tametsi despicabilis uideatur, respuendus non est.
c. Community opinion of Oddr’s foolish decision in favor of Óspakr:
ÍF 7. 304, ch. 3. K. “Tíðrœtt var um þetta; þykkir Oddr mikit vald þessum manni í hendr hafa fengit.” M. “. . . ok var margtalat um þetta mál; þykkir Oddr mikit vald hafa þessum manni í hendr fengit.”
4. Ófeigr’s wisdom:
Ófeigr is obviously of traditional leader class, his farm associated with an earlier goðorð. Impractical, his residual wealth remains in land, but not in goods. Yet he practices the traditional honor-based largesse of the aristocratic class. Oddr is a good person, lucky, practical, with new values: entrepreneurial, popular, trusted, flourishes as a merchant. However, negligence of precautionary traditional values proves dangerous for him:
5. Oddr’s mistakes:
a. Associates with a Óspakr, a bad man.
b. By buying goðorð as a condition of his honor, he neglects or ignores the pre-requisite skills of traditional leadership.
c. By not taking good advice wherever it comes from—that is, by relying upon Óspakr, the bad man himself for leadership of the goðorð —he by-passes his father as the sensible choice of goðorð caretaker.
d. He later fumbles the legal skills when prosecuting. In addition, in litigation and the traditional social behavior of leadership he is naive. His father supplies the lack.
6. Wolves and the political world of Bandamanna and Hœnsa-Þóris saga.
ÍF 7.350, ch. 10. M: including Verse 4, ll. 5-8: áttak næsta vǫl / nýttra drengja; / nús ulf’s hali / einn á króki. “Ok hefir mér farit sem varginum; þeir etask, þar til er at halanum kemr, ok finna eigi fyrr. Ek hefi átt at velja um marga hǫfðingja, en nú er sá einn aptir, er ǫllum mun þykkja ills at ván ok sannr er at því, at meir er ójafnaðarmaðr en hverr annarra . . .” Ófeigr, speaking insultingly of Egill Skúlason á Borg, of whom “ǫllum er ills at ván”.
ÍF 3.33, ch. 11. “. . . nú er vel, at þér reynið eitt sinn, hverr yðar drjúgastr er hǫfðingjanna, því at þér hafið lengi úlfsmunni af etizk.” Gunnarr Hlífarson, telling Þórðr Gellir what he thinks of the lupine voracity behavior of the goðar.
Studies of the dangers of ógæfa.
Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Njáls saga: A Literary Masterpiece, tr. Paul Schach (Lincoln, Nebr.: UNPr, 1971), 192:
“We come closest to the essence of ógæfa if we call it mein (hurt, harm, damage, disease, sore), a word which encompasses every aspect of this complex of ideas, including the connotation of sin in the Christian sense of the word, although, of course, its basic sense is originally different. Ógæfa is like an infectious disease, which is carried from one individual to another. It lives in men and in their deeds, spreading poison and infection in all directions. It is a natural phenomenon, and natural phenomena are oblivious to justice, guilt or innocence. Ógæfa infects and corrupts everyone who crosses its path and does not possess a sufficient power of resistance to it.”
The gæfa/ógæfa dichotomy in the definition of character in the Íslendingasögur is an unresolved matter of continuing interest:
Peter Hallberg, “The Concept of gipta-gæfa-hamingja in Old Norse Literature.” Papers published in Proceedings of the First International Saga Conference [Edinburgh August 21–29, 1971], ed. Peter G. Foote, et al.. (London, 1973).
Hermann Pálsson, “Um gæfumenn og ógæfu í íslenzkum fornsögum,” in Afmælisrit Björns Sigfússonar. (Reykjavík, 1975) 135-153.
Bettina Sejbjerg Sommer, “The Norse Concept of Luck,” Scandinavian Studies 79 (2007) 275–294.
Kirsi Kanerva, “Ógæfa (misfortune) as an Emotion in Thirteenth-Century Iceland,” Scandinavian Studies 84 2012 1-26.
Socio-Economics and Icelandic Law.
Vésteinn Ólason. Dialogues with the Viking Age. Narration and Representation in the Sagas of the Icelanders. Tr. Andrew Wawn. (Reykjavík, 1998).
E. Paul Durrenberger, Dorothy Durrenberger, and Ástráður Eysteinsson, “Economic Representation and Narrative Structure in Hœnsa-Þóris saga” Saga-Book 1987-1988; 22 (3-4) 143-164.
Helgi Þorláksson, “Social Ideals and the Concept of Profit in Thirteenth-Century Iceland, in From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland , ed. Gísli Pálsson (Enfield Lock, 1992), 241 of 231-241.
Helgi Þorláksson, “Historical Background: Iceland 870-1400,” in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford, 2005), especially 148-152.
Uwe Ebel, Der Untergang des isländischen Freistaats als historischer Kontext der Verschriftlichung der Isländersaga: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der “Hœnsa-Þóris saga”, Wissenschaftliche Reihe 2 (Metelen, 1989).
And a useful Appendix with excerpts from texts of historical pertinence to these issues is found in Ebel’s edition, Hœnsa-Þóris saga. Mit Anhang, Skizzen und Nachwort (Metelen, 1989) 63-78.
Bandamanna saga bibliography.
Bandamanna saga, ed. Hallvard Magerøy. (Oslo: Dreyers forlag, 1981).
Clover, Carol J. “The Germanic Context of the Unferþ Episode,” Speculum 55 (1980) 444-68. (the central flyting motif)
Karlsson, Gunnar. “Goðar og bændur,” Saga 10 (1972) 5-57.
Lindow, Jon. “A Mythic Model in Bandamanna saga and Its Significance,” Michigan Germanic Studies 3 (1977) 1-12.
Magerøy, Hallvard. “Eventyrvariantar og saga-versjonar,” Einarsbók. Afmæliskveðja til Einars Ól Sveinssonar (1969) 233-254.
Magerøy, Hallvard. “The Literary Background of the Account of Óspakr’s Revenge in Bandamanna saga,” in Proceedings of the First International Saga Conference 1971, ed. P. foote and Hermann Pálsson (Edinburgh 1973) 300-334.
Magerøy, Hallvard. Studiar i Bandamanna saga. Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 18. (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1957).
Tómasson, Sverrir “Bandamanna saga og áheyrendur á 14. og 15. öld,” Skírnir 151 (1977) 97-117.
Wilson, R, M. “Comedy of Character in the Icelandic Family Sagas,” in Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G.N. Garmonsway. Eds. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) 100-128.