(All of this is according to the saga writer: From here on I am not going to be that concerned with history except as filtered either by this writer or by Egil himself.)Įgil is certainly no prototype of the kind of poet we think of in our post-romantic age. Also involved was Eirik's oversexed and witch-like queen Gunnhild, whose feelings towards Egil were evidently those of a woman scorned. Egil's own dealings were mainly with Harald's son, also for a while king of Norway, who went by the ominous name of Eirik Bloodaxe. He was originally known as Harald Shaggyhair because he had vowed not to cut his hair until he had performed this consolidation as things turned out, he had a fine head of fair hair.Įgil's father, Skallagrim, was the one who had to deal with Harald, and who eventually decided the family had best depart for Iceland. Harald was a once petty king who violently consolidated Norway's several power bases into a single kingdom-sometimes, it seems, by simply hacking people's arms and legs off ( Egil's Saga, ch. His family, like very many described in the sagas, had been forced to emigrate from Norway because of an ongoing feud with the family of Harald Finehair. We mainly know of Egil through an Icelandic saga bearing his name, Egil's Saga, again one of the very finest of the sagas. But because it is so concerned with praise, it can tell us a great deal about the qualities the Vikings themselves held dear. ![]() ![]() ![]() It is extremely complex metrically and it uses a highly ornate metaphoric language-its complexity presumably helped ensure that it would be remembered even in an age that was for all intents and purposes without writing. But it also often treats exploits of the poet himself, this time in extempore single verses commenting on specific situations, and always in a highly self-congratulatory tone. The poetry that Egil and his peers specialized in-scaldic poetry, as it is now termed-is most importantly praise poetry, designed to commemorate kings and other prominent people, often in the form of quite long poems. I will confine myself to what is generally considered the very best of this poetry, which comes from an outstandingly successful Viking by the name of Egil Skallagrimsson (ca. In what follows I will accordingly start thinking about how the Vikings wanted to be perceived by referring to some of this poetry. But they also often contain poetry they claim their heroes actually composed, and there usually seems little reason to doubt the claim. In themselves, these sagas wouldn't be able to help us much, for although they surely drew from traditions that were passed down orally over the centuries, they are also products of their late-medieval writers' interests and preoccupations. These are mainly contained in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century prose sagas composed in Iceland. Our fullest information about how the Vikings wanted to be remembered probably comes from later medieval Scandinavian accounts that saw them as inhabiting a kind of heroic age. But the question is surely worth pondering, and it has the advantage of making us take a new look at our medieval sources. Ow did the Vikings want to be perceived-by other members of their own culture, and by posterity? It is not an altogether easy question to answer, for unlike many of the peoples they traumatized they were still pagan in the early stages of their story and therefore to all intents and purposes illiterate-in the Europe of the early Middle Ages writing was an accomplishment that came with Christianity. ![]() Egil Skallagrimsson and the Viking Ideal by Christina von Nolcken
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |