Spennufall kvíðans

Seinustu mánuði hef ég verið að vinna að bók um aukapersónur í Íslendingasögunum og bókmenntum yfirleitt. Líkt og The Troll Inside You er þessari bók ætlað að hafa almennt gildi og sýna með dæmum fram á hvernig bókmenntir virka og fornsögurnar sérstaklega, hvers konar samband ríkir þar milli höfunda, texta og lesenda og hvaða ljósi fyrirbærið aukapersóna varpar á frásagnir og lífið sjálft. Mér hefur fundist vinnan skemmtileg og margt koma á óvart þó að áhugi minn á efninu sé gamall. Mig langar til að deila með ykkur einum kafla í þeim drögum sem nú eru til (engin ábyrgð tekin á að hann verði gefinn út óbreyttur) þó að bókin sé sannarlega samin til að vera lesin sem heild og lesendum ætlað að leggja saman niðurstöðu hvers kafla og fá úr nýtt heildarsamhengi.

The Anticlimax of Anxiety

In Laxdæla saga (from c. 1250), the sprawling story of a majestic family of royal descent that dominated the region of Dalir in the West of Iceland between the settlement in the late 9th century until the late 11th century,[i] there is an interesting instance of unnamed characters suddenly emerging at a pivotal point in the narrative,[ii] indeed a single sentence, and even though these people are often overlooked by audiences and critics alike, they are still present and even have feelings. This example is engaging not least because of its very subtlety and the nebulous presence of unnamed secondary characters. 

Close to the climax of the saga, the heroic and glamourous Kjartan Ólafsson — who was actually the maternal grandson of the aforementioned Egill Skalla-Grímsson who only figures marginally and amiably in Laxdæla saga — has been delayed in Norway as the hostage of King Óláfr Tryggvason when the latter wishes to pressure noble Icelanders into adopting Christianity as their official religion, although Kjartan has actually been treated as an honoured royal guest and even a prospective brother-in-law of the king himself. His cousin, best friend and fosterbrother Bolli Þorleiksson, who was not one of the hostages, had retured home a year earlier and asked for the hand in marriage of Kjartan’s unofficial fiancée, Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir. She had promised to wait three years for Kjartan but those had passed so technically she was no longer obligated.[iii]

Guðrún and Bolli do get married during Kjartan’s absence, even though she is reluctant at first, and not knowing any of this, Kjartan still elects to return to Iceland, to gently reject the king’s sister and essentially return mainly in order to marry Guðrún. When he returns, in Ch. 44, we are introduced to our minor characters, their anxieties and expectations, and their reactions to Kjartan’s reaction to the situation he finds himself in: “Hann spyrr nú gjaforð Guðrúnar ok brá sér ekki við það; en mǫrgum var á því kvíðustaðr áðr” (he now learns of Guðrún’s nuptials and did not react; but many had been worried that he would) (ÍF V, 132).

While the main emphasis is on Kjartan’s non-expression of his feelings, the punctum of this scene is provided by the “many” who are now relieved but had previously been anxious that his reaction might be violent or excessive in some way. To those “many”, his composure in the face of the news is an immense relief. Of course, as any viewer of a suspense film knows, the sigh of relief should never come too soon, and in this case, the initial lack of anger, or whatever emotions Kjartan might have been likely to express, is a false harbinger of a peaceful conclusion.

This eerie calm demonstrated by Kjartan is the mere beginning of the dreadful events that eventually lead first to the death of Kjartan and then to the killing of Bolli in revenge.[iv] While Kjartan has initially shown the exemplary self-control that one would expect from a descendant of several royals when the moment of truth comes, the lack of expression of emotions clearly masks the turmoil of his hidden and non-expressed feelings.[v] Thus the anxiety, while anti-climactic in this particular hour, as anxiety fortunately so often is,[vi] is, in fact, fully justified and only momentarily relieved.

But who are these “many” people? They are not named at all and yet they still have feelings, indeed more clearly indicated emotions than many named saga characters. When one reflects upon it, their empathy is exemplary. These are people who care and who do not want Kjartan to be hurt or for him to do something drastic in response to it. Are they related to the people in question, or somehow involved with the events? We are not told. Possibly the “many” includes such people but also people who have no stake in this matter, only a benign antipathy to suffering and chaos.

Actually, that part of the “many” might be closely tied to the imagined feelings of the implied original audience of the saga. Maybe that audience, and possibly even us much later readers, are meant to share in the sigh of relief felt by these empathetic “many” mentioned in the saga. Surely many in the original audience would have felt the trepidation of the unnamed well-wishers of Kjartan and Guðrún.

Their plight would also have been the plight of the audience and their temporary relief as well, although unlike in real life, the audience of a narrative would tend to expect the worst. In fiction, things must happen. This is similar to some of the feelings demonstrated in the many crime podcasts one listens to nowadays where the hosts are perplexed and baffled by the actual people involved in the crime who acted casually and innocently, as if it was normal not to expect being killed everyday.[vii] This is one of many fundamental but sometimes overlooked differences between a narrative and real life.

The unsupported relief the unnamed empathisers of Laxdæla saga feel may not be unrealistic because in real life, there is no need for escalation and climax. When one is listening to a story, even though some of the audience would perhaps not have known that it ends in Kjartan’s death, escalation and climax are however always to be anticipated. There would be no story if Kjartan could move on, and hence our anxiety cannot be as easily relieved as that of the unnamed people in the region who cared about Kjartan and Guðrún. While their ease cannot be the ease of the audience, their investment in the affair must on the other hand have been keenly felt by all who heard the story.

[i] Laxdœla saga is one of the few Sagas of Icelanders that can be firmly dated to the 13th century, existing in the old manuscript fragment 162 D 2. There are indications that the saga is inspired by events happening in 1240s Iceland, so it is presumably composed in the middle of the 13th century. It exists in six medieval vellum manuscripts so presumably it was always among the more respected and popular sagas.

[ii] On the structural intricacies of this narrative, see A. Margaret Arent Madelung, The Laxdœla saga: Its Structural Patterns (Chapel Hill, 1972).

[iii] So much has been written about Kjartan Ólafsson and Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir (who were particularly popular with intellectuals during the age of romanticism), that it is impossible to list here. Among my own contributions are: Ármann Jakobsson, “Konungasagan Laxdæla,” Skírnir 172 (1998), 357–83; Ármann Jakobsson, “Laxdæla Dreaming: A Saga Heroine Invents Her Own Life,” Leeds Studies in English new ser. 39 (2008), 33–51. Also of particular note is a narratological study by Ursula Dronke, “Narrative Insight in Laxdœla saga,” J.R.R. Tolkien: Scholar and Storyteller, ed. by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca 1979), 120–37.

[iv] For an analysis of how the events unfold later on and how an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust is created through narrative elements and intertextualization, see Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, 1180-1280 (Ithaca 2006), 137–141.

[v] Although I have not often used the word “emotions” much in the titles of my articles (apart from  “Egils saga and Empathy: Emotions and Moral Issues in a Dysfunctional Saga Family,” Scandinavian Studies 80 (2008), 1–18), I have actually written about them in most of my larger studies (including the present one) and if I were less humble I might even consider myself a pioneer in that aspect of Old Norse studies, although not about the language and vocabulary of emotions which seems to be the current main interest of projects concerning emotions within medieval studies. On emotion studies in Old Norse, see e.g. Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, Emotion in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts (Cambridge 2017).

[vi] Though I would hate to be accused of “pop psychology”, I have been an anxious person all my life and have frequently experienced this anticlimax of which I speak. The relief that anxious people are afraid to feel is also quite well-known to me, even though I will not quote any physiological studies of it here.

[vii] This is so common in true crime podcasts that I refrain from mentioning specific examples, also because they are wont to disappear from the internet. I do particularly enjoy it when hosts of podcasts about serial killers that have spent hours researching said modern ogres then go on to mention in blithe unawareness that any person interested in the doings of a serial killer must be regarded as a very suspicious character.