Applications 31. Inventing Iceland's Heroic Age, Part I.

Applications 31. Inventing Iceland's Heroic Age, Part I. Presented at the 12th Annual Fiske
Conference on Medieval Icelandic Studies. [Norsestock 12] Cornell University 1-4 June 2017.
Richard L. Harris, University of Saskatchewan                     heorot@sasktel.net

            “Many peoples,” writes C.M.Bowra, “cherish the legend of an age which, in the splendour and the scope of its achievements and in the prodigious qualities of the men who took part in them, is thought to eclipse all that comes after it.” [“Meaning”, 63] Now, it is commonly accepted that several of the Íslendingasögur indicate an awareness of what we call the Germanic Heroic Age, a concept inspired by a period of migration and extensive martial conflict among the continental tribes in the early Christian era memorialized over a very long time through oral transmission in narrative and lyric entertainment. Volsunga saga and the legendary poems of the Elder Edda, for instance, bear witness to this long tradition, and it is to the figures of these stories that 13th-century sagamen sometimes allude or explicitly refer, seeming to imbue their plots and characters with ideologically informed associative value that has been reconsidered in recent decades.

            My purpose here is to begin discussion of the possibilities and literary critical implications of another, much later heroic age in the minds of medieval Icelanders. We could call this Iceland’s Heroic Age, and it would be comprised of traditonal memories of the dispersal of those farmers, ejected from their lands in southwest Norway by the depredations of Harald Fairhair in the latter decades of the 9th century. Homeless, they made their way around the North Atlantic, seeking a replacement for that heritage of which they had felt deprived by his forceful centralization of power. Within the resultant diaspora flourished those robust figures who eventually decided to make Iceland their new home. Directly witnessed moments in this chaotic period of migration might be sought in passages in the sagas of early Norwegian kings, in skaldic verse, in Landnámabók. And, more importantly for my own purposes, its distant memories, its indirect yet more powerful witness, may be found, as a literary construct, describing an idea of an earlier heroic world, fancifully recorded in the preludic material of some of the Family Sagas and reflected in some episodes and scenes and specific characters in the main narratives of that genre.

            Today we are well beyond considering any Heroic Age as a real and distinct, definable period in history. Rather, it might be said that a Heroic Age, whatever else might be true of the semi-historical figures with which it is peopled, is in the first place a construct of the human mind, an archetypal complex, its narrative witness arising within a culture at a particular stage of its development, most often much later than the figures and events its tales describe. Although it may be peopled with a few historical figures, its narratives are not especially historical; they are rather stories in which we find ideas, accompanied if not supported by a set of ethical ideals, of which the heroic figures themselves act as positive or negative examples, if not intentional proponents. And although this Heroic Age is not of the divine world, gods may interact with its heroic figures, may intervene on their behalf, or obstruct their way and purposes on that larger than life stage which provides for the Heroic Landscape.

            The Heroic Age which I contemplate here is less distant, much less distant than its Common Germanic counterpart, from the lives and imaginations of those medieval Christian Icelandic farmers in whose world the sagas found the written page. For the 13th-century sagamen and their contemporary audience there is a rather painful intimacy, an uncomfortable closeness to these difficult recent ancestors with their animal names and harsh and often impulsive behaviour—for the most part safely dead, but only recently so. Although they may be revered as national ancestors, there are by this time insuperable ideological conflicts between the respective cultures of the settlers and of their medieval descendants. 1. Pagans and unbaptized, however valued their bravery combatting King Harald and their initiative in seeking a new world for their families, they could have no place in Heaven. 2. And while their feats of courage and strength made good sources of entertainment, for Iceland’s Christian farmers there was little contemporary need for their talents or daring—indeed, as our very late version of Grettis saga makes clear, the unrestrainedly robust behaviour of these sometime Viking ancestors was by this time pointlessly disruptive, indeed potentially criminal.

            Bowra at one point asks “what this belief in a heroic age really means, why and how it comes into existence, and what significance it has for the peoples who believe in it.” [63] Of what significance, then, was the concept of Iceland’s Heroic Age to the thirteenth-century audience of the Íslendingasögur? We might find the answer in a rather unexpected place, not as had been the case earlier, discovering the behaviour of these recent heroes as exemplary of conduct among the admired and respected leaders of the Saga World, but rather reflected in that of their adversaries.

            The antagonistic narrative element of the Íslendingasögur is of oddly limited diversity. The ideological backgrounds of its motivations were partially categorized by such writers as Theodore M. Andersson and Paul Schach, in the 1970s. They were questioning, in turn, earlier views like those of Vilhelm Grønbech and Walther Gehl, that honor, its acquisition and maintenance at all costs, constituted the primary value in these stories. Writing in earlier times and for quite different sets of readers than those of our recent decades, both of the latter had believed that conflicts and protagonists derived their definition in circumstances where honor and its preservation were threatened, or its augmentation challenged. The hero for these earlier scholars had been an ójafnaðarmaðr, difficult to deal with, and inflexibly aggressive in the inexorable pursuit of his goal, since the assertion of his own dominance was all that counted in the Saga World these critics envisioned.

            Andersson, in his 1970 study of the “Displacement of the Heroic Ideal” first questioned this assumption, demonstrating that it was not supported by careful reading of the stories themselves, where in fact the ójafnaðarmaðr was never an admired figure.  Using his notion of integral rather than episodic analysis, Andersson showed how, over the long run of a saga’s telling, the admired protagonists were those who practiced moderation and conciliation to subdue conflicts and keep the peace. To them accrued an honor founded upon more mature and socially sensitive standards of behaviour, and for this they were admired by their inventors, as well as, presumably, their 13th-century audience. We could even think of these less martial figures as Commonwealth Heroes, thus reinventing the definition of hero, or rather inventing a new one for this more pacific post-Settlement context.

            Further reversing Gehl’s reading, Andersson observed how it was the saga antagonist more generally who valued personal honor over the stasis of the community and the welfare of its members. Seeking ethical definition of this now displaced but once positively regarded mode of behaviour in the Norse literary background he went to Hávamál. But here he found, where others before him felt they had seen some delineation of the traditional heroic ideal, “not a formulation of self interest. . . . rather . . . the values of the middle way and social accommodation  . . . very close to the spirit which moves the authors of the sagas.” [592] Rather, instead of Hávamál, then, readers might find models of that earlier, pre-Commonwealth heroic ideal in the legendary Eddic poems, where “it is not the life of the community but the stature of the individual which is important.” Andersson continues, “The difference between the heroic ethic and the morality of the family sagas is perhaps to be explained by the supposition that the heroic lays reflect the values of a warrior class while the sagas reflect [those of] Icelandic society at large.” [593]

            Thus, literary representation of the spirit in which the takers of the new land pursued their destiny is seen as more compatible with orally transmitted remnants celebrating the distant Germanic Heroic Age, the period of migrations in the 4th-6th centuries that gave rise to several heroic narrative cycles, chief among them that of the Volsungs or Niflungs: “It has long been remembered and highly spoken of that the descendants of Volsung were exceptionally ambitious. They surpassed most men named in old sagas in both knowledge and accompllishments and in the desire to win.” [Vols. c. 2.]

            The mindset of those who became Iceland’s settlers was necessarily acquisitive, their behaviour aggressive, and their concern for the welfare of a social community limited, where existent. This was good enough for people who had found themselves at such violent odds with Harald Fairhair that eventually, out of necessity, they had left their ancestral homeland in favour of a new, relatively unknown, and not quite hospitable place to live. In his preludic episodes the composer of Grettirs saga attempts to recall the traumatic circumstances in which Norway’s farmers turned warriors as they first engaged in conflict with Harald Fairhair subsequently becoming ocean-going adventurers before they succeeded in finding safer and more secure homes in Iceland: Gathering in the Hebrides, “a close friendship developed among them, because all the people who met up again after being in Norway at the height of the warfare there felt as though they had got one another back from the dead.” [Gr. c. 3.]

            Paul Schach, in 1977, also refuting the voices of such readers as Grønbech and Gehl while refining Andersson’s interpretation of that heroic ideal discarded in the Íslendingasögur, saw the recently identified antagonist arising from two areas where earlier ideologies would have been at conflict with the preferred values of Commonwealth Iceland, the first of which was exemplified in the Generation-Gap he observed between Iceland’s settlers and their sons: “Father and son are the perfect embodiments of two basically antagonistic, completely incompatible cultures, that of the savage, destructive marauder and that of the peaceful, constructive farmer.” [365] Schach demonstrates how the country’s settlers are represented in saga narrative as displaying such ethics as those of Andersson’s displaced heroic ideal, embracing an edgy aggressiveness whose successful mastery might, in former times, have earned them wary respect as ójafnaðarmenn, whereas their offspring tend to recognize as preferable a code of conduct which takes into account the responsibilities of living with one’s neighbors. Schach finds in the Íslendingasögur “the theme of the unbridgeable gap between representatives of two generations who embody two antagonistic, diametrically opposed, irreconcilably conflicting cultures.” [367] Schach concludes, “The use of the generation-gap theme to portray the clash of antagonistic cultures . . . is . . . evidence that the sagas are . . . manifestations of the gradual transvaluation of the heroic ideal that took place in Iceland during the Age of the Commonwealth, largely under the influence of Christianity. The theme becomes most meaningful within the cultural milieu in which the sagas were composed: the almost incredibly savage, creative Age of the Sturlungs.” [381]

            I think a re-examination of what it was that Andersson saw displaced in his seminal article and what Schach, in his generation-gap, found revealed about the development of society in the Icelandic Commonwealth might turn us in a more productive direction as we attempt to understand 1. the sources and immediate nature of the harsh behaviours of Iceland’s settler class and their immediate precedents, and 2. how their descendants distanced themselves from this way of living. That is, I think that what preceded and led to the establishment of a new society on that isolated island in the North Atlantic, roughly during the years 870-930, eventually constituted in the collective psyche of its citizens over the next centuries another Heroic Age, Iceland’s Heroic Age, a concept which I hope to study further in the near future.

            An awareness of this phenomenon and an attempt to clarify its structure could lead to deeper understanding of the Íslendingasögur not so much as an indulgence in nostalgia for a courageous but violent past but rather as a narrative primarily supportive of Commonwealth Iceland’s status quo—what, precisely, were the parameters of the darkness from which the succeeding generations of the inhabitants felt they had been delivered, and how did they still feel threatened by those earlier forces? And how did these insecurities move them in the direction of a conservative, conciliatory ethical standard that earlier readers missed? I think and hope to pursue the likelihood that [whatever the historical situations of Iceland’s Heroic Age,] 1. their later interpretation in post-settlement Iceland, and 2. their subsequent expression in literature find specific ethical clarification in those phraseologically marked texts which accompany their narratives or which are discernible in their underlying paroemial cognitive patterning.

Applications 31. Handout. Inventing Iceland's Heroic Age, Part I. Presented at the 12th Annual Fiske

“Fjarlægð gerir fjöllin blá og mennina mikla.”
Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Fjalla-Eyvindur.

A. The more immediate context of this paper:
Conflicting ethical systems:
1. T. M. Andersson, “Displacement”:
The dangers of episodic as opposed to integral reading: to single out scenes from various sagas in which personal honor appears in a positive and admirable light . . . involves a neglect of episodes which depict personal honor in  a less favorable light, . . . takes the episodes it does interpret out of context . . . the commentators have skewed the moral by disregarding the larger context and interpreting episodically. . . . The perspective changes if we substitute an integral reading for an episodic reading and interpret the sagas as a whole. [576]
In the legendary Eddic poems, . . . it is not the life of the community but the stature of the individual which is important.
The difference between the heroic ethic and the morality of the family sagas is perhaps to be explained by the supposition that the heroic lays reflect the values of a warrior class while the sagas reflect [those of] Icelandic society at large.
The heroic lay regularly ends on a note of individual grandeur while the saga, from its social vantage point, always ends with conciliation and with the restoration of social balance. [593]
The displacement: The family sagas, despite all the heroic modes and gestures borrowed from tradition, portray a normal society. They tell stories of strong individuals who disrupt the social fabric, but despite the respect paid many of these strong personalities, the sagas are ultimately opposed to social disruption. This is why the heroic lay regularly ends on a note of individual grandeur while the saga, from its social vantage point, always ends with conciliation and with the restoration of social balance. [593]

2. Paul Schach, “Generation-Gap”:
Father and son are the perfect embodiments of two basically antagonistic, completely incompatible cultures, that of the savage, destructive marauder and that of the peaceful, constructive farmer. [365]
The father-son conflict . . . is a variant of a basic theme in saga literature, the theme of the unbridgeable gap between representatives of two generations who embody two antagonistic, diametrically opposed, irreconcilably conflicting cultures.” [367]
“No less fascinating than the transition from the savage culture of the Viking Age to the farming community of the Icelandic Commonwealth is the conversion from paganism to Christianity. . . . The cultural break is frequently portrayed in terms of the generation-gap motive. [373]
The use of the generation-gap theme to portray the clash of antagonistic cultures is further evidence that the sagas are not “adaptations of heroic models”, but manifestations of the gradual transvaluation of the heroic ideal that took place in Iceland during the Age of the Commonwealth, largely under the influence of Christianity. The theme becomes doubly meaningful when understood within the cultural milieu in which the sagas were composed: the almost incredibly savage, creative Age of the Sturlungs. [381]

B. Some Whimsical Ideas of Heroic Ages from Days of Yore:
From John Murray A Handbook for Travellers in Denmark.  London: J. Murray 1839:
The author of the article on Iceland in the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, tabulates the Literary History of the island into
four periods :—The Commonwealth, extending between 870 and 1284, which is subdivided into the Heroic Age (870-1030) ; Saga telling (1030-1100) ; and the Literary Age (1100-1284). During the latter the principal sagas were written ; Snorri and his school and Sturla flourished. In the second period, Medievalism, extending from 1284 to 1530, Continental influence, chiefly Norse, prevailed ; new Mediaeval poetry was introduced, the old traditions died out, and in the latter portion or dark-age period (1413-1530) only mediaeval poetry flourished. The third great period commenced with the Reformation, and the introduction of printing (1530-1575) was followed by the Renaissance (1575-1700) ; which was succeeded by the gradual decay of literature (1700-1850). In the fourth period is placed the partial recovery of Iceland, the introduction of modern thought and learning, the collection and propagation of learning by Icelandic scholars abroad, and the assumption of an Independence.

Charles Sprague Smith. Second Lecture on “Icelandic Saga”. November 28, 1891. From the Harvard Crimson:
In introduction Professor Smith spoke of the isolated character of the development of Icelandic life and literature. The barreness of Iceland's soil and climate compelled the hardy Norseman to a life upon the sea, but this struggle for bare existence did not claim the best of Iceland's great men. The Icelandic Sagas differ from European literature both in their style and in the circumstances which prompted their composition. Iceland, during her development lived in peace. The Icelanders were proud of their traditions and thus old tales were preserved in their integrity. Consequently the Sagas impress the reader with a belief in their truthfulnes. . . . Iceland's Heroic Age extends from the settlement of the island to 1067. Ari, Iceland's greatest scholar and historian, possessed in a marked degree abilities for historical writing. He was a priest-chief, and was a devout Christian, but he cherished none the less the traditions of his country. He was more than a mere chronicler, he was an historian, possessing an appreciation of the true relations of events one to the other. He was the father of Icelandic letters.

William Newnham Chattin Carlton. The Icelandic Sagas Their Origin and Character Chicago: Chicago Literary Club 1912 p. 18:
The four hundred years following the colonization of the island form the Heroic or Golden Age of Iceland. During these years occurred most of the stirring events and notable deeds which men later looked back upon with intense racial and family pride. And, before the last years of this time-cycle had rolled away, gifted but unknown men had shaped the record of their heroic age in immortal words, and ensured the preservation of its memory for all time by casting that record in a special form of prose narrative called the Saga — at once the most original and the most beautiful product of the Icelandic genius.

William Paton Ker. Epic and Romance. Essays on Medieval Literature. London: MacMillan, 1896. pp. 66-7:
The ideas that took the Northern colonists to Iceland were the ideas of Germania,—the love of an independent life, the ideal of the old-fashioned Northern gentleman, who was accustomed to consideration and respect from the freemen, his neighbours, who had authority by his birth and fortune to look after the affairs of his countryside, who would not make himself the tenant, vassal, or steward of any king. In the new country these ideas were intensified and defined. The ideal of the Icelandic Commonwealth was something more than a vague motive, it was present to the minds of the first settlers in a clear and definite form. The most singular thing in the heroic age of Iceland is that the heroes knew what they were about. The heroic age of Iceland begins in a commonwealth
founded by a social contract. The society that is established there is an association of individuals coming to an agreement with one another to invent a set of laws and observe them. Thus while Iceland on the one hand is a reactionary state, founded by men who were turning their backs on the only possible means of political progress, cutting themselves off from the world, and adhering obstinately to forms of life with no future before them, on the other hand this reactionary commonwealth, this fanatical repre sentative of early Germanic use and wont, is possessed of a clearness of self- consciousness, a hard and positive clearness of understanding, such as is to be found nowhere else in the Middle Ages and very rarely at all in any polity.

C. Making sense of it all. C. M Bowra, “Meaning”: 
Many peoples cherish the legend of an age which, in the splendour and the scope of its achievements and in the prodigious qualiti4es of the men who took part in them, is thought to eclipse all that comes after it. . . . 
The question before us is to ask what this belief in a heroic age really means, why and how it comes into existence, and what signficance it has for the peoples who believe in it. [63]
. . . through the songs or sagas which tell of it . . . the quality of the men who compose it. . . . superior . . . in their physical sttrength, their courage, their endurance, their control of their bodies, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for honour and fame.
. . .  the essence of a heroic age is that it fosters a whole generation which is unusually equipped by nature for war and finds its satisfaction and its reward in it. [64]
. . .  ample evidence that the connection of a heroic age with war is justified by fact. [65]
The difference between heroic ages as they are presented in legend and as we reconstruct them from historical documents indicates a real difference of approach and outlook. History is concerned . . . political situations . . . parts of a general process of human change.
Legend . . . their dominant personalities and their more sensational events . . . a few highlights . . . to thrill and exalt audiences. [66-7]
. . . a most unusual self-reliance, a belief that almost nothing is impossible for men who have the courage and the will to what they want. [67]
. . . a crucial and dramatic stage in the emergence of the individual from the mass. The hero relies on himself. . . .  what counts is his essential human nature and his full use of it. [68]
Legend . . . heroic age . . . primarily concerned with war, not as a means to mere survival but as a field in which certain qualities may be realized to the full and win their proper reward of honour and glory. [70]
A heroic age is one in which the ruler is surrounded by remarkable men . . . go their own ways . . . remain under his command. [71]
Heroic socieites . . . organized for war . . . their own aristocracy of valour. [72]
How a conception of a heroic age comes into existence: 1. Conquest of a society. . . . turned the minds of the defeated to a time when they had been free and victorious. 2. When a people leaves its familiar home and moves to distant lands. 3. . . . when a political system, which seemed to be firmly and strongly built, disintegrates. 4. Psychological . . . the heroic vision of existence has been concemned by a priestly caste, but has survived in wilful defiance of it and even been strengthened by it.
In these different ways, and for these different reasons, the legend of a heroic age is established and takes place in a national tradition. . . .  The belief in glory as an end of life is implicit in any belief in a heroic age . . . [80]
The power of a belief in a heroic age may be seen from the indirect but undeniable influence which it has on men and events, even when it has become a distant memory. . . . The notion of it is so vivid and so firm that the imagination instinctively feeds on it and is unconsciously moved by its spirit and its example. [82]
The ways by which man has emerged from primaeval savagery are indeed devious and strange, but he would hardly have emerged at all if he had not at some time seen that he can perform more than is expected of him, and rise above his circumstances, and almost above his nature, by a discharge of forces hitherto unrecognized and unused. [84]

D. Echoes of Commonwealth Iceland’s Conflict with the Heroic Age:
Conservative restraint vs (violent and) impulsive action.        
1a. “No less fascinating than the transition from the savage culture of the Viking Age to the farming community of the Icelandic Commonwealth is the conversion from paganism to Christianity,” Schach observes, noticing symbolic cultural recognition of the impact of this change upon the old order in a passage of Eyrbyggja saga in the remark that Þrándr Stígandi, “was thought to be a werewolf while he was still a pagan, but most men lost their troll nature when they were baptized.” “The cultural break is frequently portrayed in terms of the generation-gap motive,” he writes, citing the case of Snorri Goði, whom he terms a nominally Christian father, and his peaceable Christian son, Guðlaugr, who declines to participate in what turns out to be an especially bloody revenge expedition, saying that “he much preferred to remain at home.” Later, Guðlaugr goes to England and enters a monastery where he spends his life.

1b. We could also recall a humorous version of this religion-based gap in Njáls saga in the example of Valgarðr inn grái and his evil son, Mörðr, recently converted before his father’s return from abroad. Having agreed to plot the deaths of Njál’s sons and Höskuld Hvítanesgoði, he says, “I wish, father, that you would accept the faith . . . you are an old man.” “I would like you to renounce the faith and then see what happens,” his father replies. [381]

2a. In Laxdœla saga, when Olaf Peacock attempts to still Kjartan’s violent anger at the disappearance of Hrefna’s headdress, he calls upon proverbial admonition, “whole flesh is easier to dress than wounds,” eager to avoid physical confrontation in conflicts he hopes will eventually resolve themselves. The imagery of the proverb suggests, too, the greater task of settlement, the likely increase in the number of wounds, if the grievances result in nearly inevitable escalating acts of violence in the absence of restraint. Interestingly, as with the next example, the father is the more conservatively minded of the two.
TPMA 4.  444.  GESUND/sain/healthy 2. Regeln zur Bewahrung und Wiederherstellung der Gesundheit. 2.2. Man beuge vor durch Verbinden. 2.2.1. Allg. 78 Nord. Þykki mer bezt um heilt at binda Es scheint mir am besten, das Gesunde zu verbinden HÁKONAR SAGA HERÐIBREIÐS 9 (→FMS VII, 263 [=GERING S. 8]). Ok er um heilt bezt at búa Und es ist am besten, sich um das Gesunde zu kümmern GROSSE ÓLAFS SAGA TRYGGVASONAR 215 ( →FMS II, 194 [=GERING S. 7]). Þykki mér bezt um heilt at binda Übers. wie 78 SNORRI, HEIMSKRINGLA 602, 18 (Hákonar saga herðibreiðs 9). Er um heilt bezt at binda Es ist am besten, das Gesunde zu verbinden LAXDŒLA SAGA 46, 27 (=JÓNSSON, ARKIV 168. JÓNSSON).5    5Sinn des Sprw.: Man soll sich aus der Gefahr heraushalten. Vgl. BAETKE 240 s. v. heill.
FJ Proverb word 168. Page 93. heill (adj.) – er um heilt bezt at binda Laxd. 177. 'Det er bedst at forbinde helt (usåret)' (?: det er bedst at der intet sår er). GJ: um heilt er bezt at binda (jfr búa).

2b. When Egil Skalla-Grímsson wants to travel abroad again his father tries to discourage him, reminding him that “‘it is better to ride a whole wagon home.’ Certainly you have made an illustrious journey," he said, “but there’s a saying, ‘the more journeys you make, the more directions they take.’ You can take over as much wealth here as you think you need to show your stature.”
FJ Proverb word 428. Page 196. vagn – gott (bezt) heilum vagni heim at aka Eg 119, Icels I 219, Flat II 282, Fas II 115, Karl. 388. ‘Det er godt (bedst) at køre hjem med en hel vogn’ (hel = ubeskadiget).
TPMA 12.   311. WAGEN (Subst.)/voiture/waggon 2. Fahren mit dem Wagen 2.1. Es ist gut, mit ganzem Wagen heimzufahren   Mlat. 24   . . . utile referens, rebus integris incolumni redire curru  Indem er darlegte, es sei von Nutzen, dann zurückzukehren, wenn die Verhältnisse noch gut stünden und der Wagen noch unbeschädigt sei SAXO GRAMM. 141, 16.   Nord. 25-27 Ok er gott heilum vagni heim at aka Und es ist gut, mit unbeschädigtem Wagen heimzufahren SVERRIS SAGA 76 (→FMS VIII, 186).  SNORRI, ÓLÁFS SAGA HELGA 147 (→FMS IV, 364).  SNORRI, HEIMSKRINGLA 345, 29 (Óláfs saga helga 151). 28 Ok er nú gott heilum vagni heim at aka Und es ist nun gut . . . HARALDS SAGA HARÐRÁÐA 8 (→FMS VI, 151). 29 Er nu gott heilum vagni heim at aka Es ist nun gut .. . . ORKNEYINGA SAGA 106. S. 318, 19.  30 Þá var gott heilum vagni heim at aka Damals sei es gut gewesen, dass er mit unbeschädigtem Wagen heimgefahren sei EGILS SAGA 38, 7 (=JÓNSSON, ARKIV 428. JÓNSSON 173). 31 Þvíat betra er heilum vagne heim at aka . . .Denn es ist besser, mit unbeschädigtem Wagen heimzufahren ALEXANDERS SAGA 61. 32 Ok kvað gott heilum vagni heim at aka Und er sagte, es sei gut . . . KETILS SAGA HÆNGS 2 (→FAS II, 115 [=JÓNSSON, ARKIV 428]).
FJ Proverb word 469. Page 202. ýmiss – . . . ýmsar verðr ef margar ferr Eg 119. ‘Rejser bliver forskellige, når man foretager mange’. (snart er de gode, snart uheldige). = GJ (verða farir).

3a. Such proverbial advice is found in several other saga episodes where good men are interested in the peaceful security of their world. In Grettis saga, as the hero, heading for Norway in his first outlawry, clashes with the merchants on Hafliði’s ship, the owner expresses a concern common to all on board, “Things won’t turn out well for us if this is the way you and the crew are going to behave.” It is interesting to consider how life on tiny Iceland, in the middle of the ocean, must also have seemed precarious, like life on a ship!

3b. This sentiment echoes a line in Fóstbrœðra saga, when Skúfr demands that Þorgeirr and a character with whom he is in a state of feud [‘Gestr’] keep the peace on his ship as they sail to Greenland: “‘On board a trading vessel in the middle of the ocean is not the right place for men to have differences. Indeed, it may cause much harm, for seldom will a voyage go well if the men are at odds. Now, I’m going to require both of you to refrain from fighting while you are at sea.’ They both complied.”
TPMA 10.   86. SCHIFF/bateau/ship    10. Verschiedenes  Nord. 60 Nauta prorsus ebet (lies mit Druck B: hebet) nauem dans nec sigi prebet. – Then ær een daare som giffwer saa skijbet (lies mit Druck B: skib at) han liggher selff vppa landhet Der Schiffer, der das Schiff weggibt, ist ganz stumpfsinnig und erweist sich keinen Dienst. – Der ist ein Narr, der sein Schiff so weggibt, dass er selbst auf dem Lande liegt LÅLE 632. 61 Sialldan mun þeim skipum uel faraz, er menn erv osattir innanbordz Selten werden diejenigen Schiffe eine gute Fahrt haben, deren Männer an Bord uneinig sind FÓSTBRŒÐRA SAGA 143, 9 (vgl. EINIGKEIT 1.1., KAMPF 2.3.1., 3.1., LAND 1.2.2.1.).

3c. Applying this same wisdom to a much broader scene, we might consider how the stasis of the ship of Iceland itself was threatened at the Alþing the discussion of adopting Christianity progressed there in the summer of 1000. The pagan Þorgeirr Tjörvason emerged from under his cloak with a message of conciliation which reaches symbolic proportions as it makes its way into the pages of Njáls saga: “It seems advisable to me that we do not let their will prevail who are most strongly opposed to one another, but so compromise . . . and let us have one law and one faith. It will prove true that if we sunder the law we will also sunder the peace.”

3d. The same recognition of reliance upon the law for protection of the ship of state is found elsewhere in Njáls saga as well: “Many people will say,” said Mord, “that they didn’t act without cause, since Gunnar broke a settlement with the Thorgeirs.” “It’s not breaking a settlement,” said Njal, “if a man deals lawfully with another – with law our land shall rise, but it will perish with lawlessness.”
FJ Proverb word 268. Page 111. lög – með lögum skal land várt byggja en (eigi tf. v. l.) með ólögum eyða Nj 324. ‘Med lov skal vort land bygges, men (ikke) med ulov edes’. Det samme findes i Norges gml. Love I 128 (at lögum . . . en eigi at . . .). Dette er en fælles-nordisk sætning (gmlda. Mæth logh skal land bygiæs Jyske lov, förtalen; jfr Aasen: “Med log skal ein land byggja”).
TPMA 4.   428. GESETZ/loi/law 4. Mit Gesetzen soll (wird) das Land bebaut werden Nord. 15 Mœth logh skal land bygiœs Mit Gesetzen soll das Land bebaut werden VALDEMARS JÜT. GESETZE (→NJÁLS SAGA 70, 7 Anm. [= JÓNSSON, ARKIV 268]). 16 At lögum skal land várt byggja, en eigi at ólögum eyða Mit Gesetzen soll man unser Land bebauen und nicht mit Gesetzeswidrigkeiten veröden FROSTAÞINGS LÖG I, 6 (→NJÁLS SAGA 70, 7 Anm. [= JÓNSSON ARKIV 268]). 17 Því at með lögum skal land várt byggja, en með ólögum eyða Denn mit Gesetzen wird man unser Land bebauen, aber mit Gesetzeswidrigkeiten wird man es veröden NJÁLS SAGA 70, 7 (= JÓNSSON, ARKIV 268. JÓNSSON 112). 18 A methodo legis terre status heret et egis. – Meth laaw scal man landh bygghæ An der Art des Gesetzes und der Schutzwehr hängt der Zustand des Landes. – Mit Gesetzen soll man das Land bebauen LÅLE 1.

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