Unlike Icelanders today, the early settlers during the Viking Age were not known for being the most peaceful people in the world. On the contrary, as outlined in the sagas of Icelanders, the early settlers were often to be found in conflict with each other. It did not take an insulted man much energy to swing his ax towards the insulter, who in return, as the sagas so stoically reiterated, met death ‘immediately’. But what triggered this seemingly never-ending violence that is the core of the Icelandic sagas? While the absence of the executive branch in government and the somewhat anarchic cultural heritage of the Icelanders contributed to the violence, I argue in this essay that the culture of masculinity of Viking-age Icelanders, reinforced by their legal system, facilitated destabilizing conflict. First, I will look at how Icelanders understood the concept of masculinity through the Njal’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi as well as how their culture of hyper-masculinity was connected to insults. Next, I will examine how the legal system of Iceland at the time failed to prevent violence. Finally, I will consider how the Vikings’ conversion to Christianity affected medieval Icelanders’ perception of masculinity and societal order over time.
Masculinity in Njál’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi
Two prose narratives, Njál’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi, feature protagonists with fundamentally different attitudes towards masculinity in medieval Iceland. The time of action in the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi is between 925 and 950, making Hrafnkel a representative of an older generation of Icelanders that valued and power of the individual over law and order. Njál’s Saga, on the other hand, takes place between 960 and 1020. Thus, Njál represent a newer generation that looked to the law for settling disputes. Despite these different perspectives on what defines what being a man is and his place in society, the sagas reach a strikingly similar conclusions — the law alone can only take you so far. Furthermore, the sagas convey the message that one’s success in society ultimately hinges on one’s masculinity and social standing. The ideal of masculinity seems to be a driving force behind many of the actions of the sagas’ characters. Men had to act in a certain way to maintain their manliness as they were compared to each other, especially by their wives. However, it is important to note that the Viking-age Icelanders’ understanding of masculinity differs a great deal from how the concept is understood today. While sagas do not explicitly describe what constitutes a man or how to define masculinity, the conversations and actions of their characters reveal cultural patterns of the time. More specifically, medieval Icelanders’ use of níð (defamation) to point out unmanliness is perhaps the best way to gauge the general understanding of masculine ideals at the time. Níð can be described as a social stigma that implies the loss of honor. The laws of the Icelandic Commonwealth, collectively known as Grágás (Gray Goose), prohibit the use of níð in various articles and distinguishes between tungunið (verbal insults) and trenið (written/carved insults). The extensive coverage of insults in the law shows not just how serious they were to Icelanders at the time, but also implies that they viewed their masculinity as fragile. I will return to Grágás and earlier legal heritage later in this essay. A word often related to níð, as observed by Erik Noreen, is ergi, a term carrying the connotation of unmanliness by engaging in sexual relation with another man. The seminal work on sexual defamation in medieval Iceland is Preben Sørensen’s The Unmanly Man, and Njal’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel will exemplify in the following passages what he meant by claiming that, “… mere suggestions of a charge of effeminacy can become deadly insults in the literal sense.”
The themes of masculinity and defamation are more present in Njal’s Saga than any other prose narratives of the time. In its description of one of the many blood feuds in the Icelandic Commonwealth, the saga returns to the question of manhood several times. The feuds would often start by mannjafnaðr (man-evening), when people would gather for a feast and start comparing men. This would usually end up with “… people not [being] in accord, as is often the case whenever people engage in comparison of men.” This is well-illustrated in chapter 35 when Hallgerd questions Njal’s manhood for his lack of a beard and similarly in chapter 44 when she suggests Sigmund should, “… call [Njal] ‘Old Beardless’, and his sons ‘Dung-beardlings’ …” Sigmund then goes on to make a poem and in the last two lines he confirms the link between unmanliness and the lack of a beard: “Call we now with outburst common, / Him, that churl, the beardless carle.” Furthermore, the saga gives another description of the expected male aesthetic at the time in chapter 123 when Njal adds a silk robe and a pair of boots to a gift for a settlement — a gesture that Flosi finds extremely insulting. Taking it to be an accusation of ergi, he refuses to accept the settlement and claims that the robe was probably added by “… Old Beardless, for there are many who can’t tell by looking at him whether he’s a man or a woman.” In order to defend his insulted father, Skarphedin hits back asserting that Flosi is being used as a woman every ninth night by the troll at Svinafjell. I will return to this insult in the legal section of the essay.
To compare a man to a woman was not only a stinging insult, but also prohibited. This, however, did not mean that women could not be compared to men. As noted by Carol Clover, “… because the strong woman was not inhibited by a theoretical ceiling above which she could not rise and the weak man not protected by a theoretical floor below which he could not fall, the potential for sexual overlap in the social hierarchy was always present.” In practice, this meant that men who were characterized as women were not just equal to them, but also beneath them. There are several women in the sagas who are praised and have their social standing elevated for showing traditionally masculine personality traits in their actions. In other words, medieval Iceland contained a culture where physical women could become social men, and the physical men could become social women.
While the expected masculine aesthetic explains why men were insulted, one has to look at the expected behavior of a man in order to understand how Icelandic masculinity could encourage violence. On one hand, men were not supposed be thin-skinned and easily enraged. This is apparent following Hallgerd’s comments of ‘Old Beardless’ and ‘Dung-beardless’. When Skarphedin, Njal’s son, is told about these remarks, he replies to his mother that, “We’re not made like women, that we become furious over everything.” Bergthora, comparing these derogatory remarks to a gift, says that, “[…] you’re not real men unless you repay them,” and replies to Skarphedin’s comment by claiming that, “If you don’t avenge this, you’ll never avenge any shame.”
Bergthora’s message is clear — if a man does not avenge an insult to his manhood, he simply cannot be a man. It is important to keep in mind that an insult to one’s manhood was just as much an insult to one’s honor. Many of these insults may seem inconsequential to a modern-day reader, but the honor and social standing of an Icelandic man at the time hinged on others’ perception of his manhood. For this reason Ármann Jakobsson argues that, “[i]t turns out to be difficult to find a man whose manhood is not vulnerable.” Because of this vulnerability, men had to go to great, sometimes even extreme, lengths in order to restore their honor in society. In practice this meant to take revenge, naturally in public as this honor depended on others’ perception. This is often shown to include killing, as displayed in the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi. Hrafnkel, a powerful man of West Iceland, loses all the wealth he has acquired for himself after being outlawed by the Thing for killing Einar, one of his shepherds, who rode Freyfaxi, his special stallion. Hrafnkel claims that he had to kill Einar because he had already swore an oath to kill whoever rode his horse and that, “… nothing goes well for people when the words of an oath come down on them.” (Perhaps, in addition to the expected behavior of a man to keep his oath, having another man ride his special horse was an insult to his masculinity and authority in society?) Years go by and Hrafnkel builds a new farm, acquires a greater fortune and more political power than he had before he lost it all. Nevertheless, he kills the brother of Sam, the lawyer who instigated and led the legal proceedings against him. The unexpected ending where Hrafnkel regains his position in society after being outlawed has made the saga subject to a wealth of interpretations. For instance, the saga has been interpreted as a Christian parable with a moral of ‘pride coming before a fall’ and as a heathen tale discussing moderation and exhortation to tolerance. However, most would agree that one of the main topics the saga explores is the nature of power and authority and to what extent taking control of one’s own honor will ultimately be more successful than taking legal action.
Njál and Hrafnkel’s sagas beg the questions of what qualities that are needed for a man to be a leader and to keep, reclaim and elevate his social standing. The ending of Njál’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel share a surprisingly similar moral despite the different fates of the two protagonists. While Hrafnkel regains his wealth after being outlawed, Njál burns to death in his house after attempting to settle the conflict with Flosi by arbitration. Sam from the Saga of Hrafnkel experiences a fate similar to that of Njál when he loses his honor but keeps his life (for better or worse in medieval Iceland). A moral allowing the idea of individual power to trump any optimism or in faith in law and justice may come across as despotic to the modern-day reader as he may find it hard to understand why these stories had to be written down in the first place. Perhaps the sagas never intended to be moralizing and had the sole purpose of giving solemn account of events that took place in Iceland. Regardless of their intentionality, Njál’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel outline a masculine society with gender roles so solidified they were practically impossible to diverge from without the risk of being ostracized.
Legal Proceeding and the Law
Some will point to a It is easy to point to the lack of an executive branch on Viking-age Iceland to try and explain how all this violence, often legally inconsequential, could take place. However, today’s Iceland still lacks part of its executive branch having been without a standing army since 1860, but at the same time considered perhaps the most peaceful country on earth. While the lack of an executive branch undoubtedly played a role in undermining the stability and peace, my thesis points to the culture of masculinity described above and a legal system reflecting this culture as major contributors to the turmoil in Iceland at the time. In order to describe what is meant by a ‘legal system reflecting the masculine culture’ I will first take a look at legal proceedings as they play out in the sagas and then examine the individual laws and their place in society.
Legal proceedings were no simple task in medieval Iceland. The fact that the only paid officeholder in the system of governance in Iceland at the time was a lawspeaker underlines how the lack of an executive branch could make it difficult to take legal action. However, as observed by Posner in his article “Medieval Iceland and Modern Scholarship”, Icelanders were “great amateur lawyers” and It was up to the litigants themselves to organize legal hearings, maintain order and to make sure that the verdict was enforced. One does not need to look beyond the Saga of Hrafnkel to see how legal proceedings could be problematic. Used to no one daring to take legal action against him, Hrafnkel goes to discourage those who opposed him from prosecuting cases against him. However, when the court convened Hrafnkel physically could not get into the court (which was based outside in nature) because “there was such a crowd in the way …” and he was thus “… forced back by the sheer weight of numbers so he did not manage to hear the case of those who were prosecuting him.” The last line suggests that the number of other men stopped Hrafnkel from delivering his defense in court. On top of this insult to his masculinity, he is finally sentenced to greater outlawry at the Thing meeting. This episode is a good example of what Miller means in his observation that, “[s]aga sources … suggest that the elegant and symmetrical construct of Things … was an ideal whose actualization was often compromised by accommodations to political realities.” The ‘political realities’ undermining the law are probably what prompted Hranfnkel to acquire greater wealth and power than he had ever had before until he could avenge Sam’s lawsuit and kill his brother without the fear of having cases prosecuted against him later. Furthermore, these political realities are most likely what prevented Sam from instigating new legal hearings against Hrafnkel following the killing of his brother. The end of the saga reveals that “Sam settled back down on his farm, and lived there into his old age,” and “… never improved his position nor got any redress from Hrafnkel as long as he lived.” Once an ambitious lawyer who would boldly apply the law to restore justice, Sam seems to have conformed to the despotic idea that everyone is not equal under law and that one should not instigate legal hearings against a person who is more powerful than oneself.
Unlike Hrafnkel, Njál refuses to abide by this type of lawlessness. In chapter 70 Njál tells Mord that, “… with law our land shall rise, but it will perish with lawlessness.” Despite Njál’s wish for a more lawful society, all the conflicts in the saga end up unsettled. Arguably, the saga is a critique of the ideal of masculinity of a lawless society where everyone is not equal under the law. This is substantiated by the fact that the events in the saga take place between 960 and 1020, a time of considerable cultural changes following the conversion to Christianity in 999/1000. Compared to Hrafnkel, who lived between 925 and 950, Njál represents a newer generation of Icelanders valuing law of the country above the social standing of individuals. Nevertheless, the message of Njál’s Saga is clear: a complex law code is simply not enough to control the violence in medieval Iceland.
In addition to a legal system dependent on physical strength and social standing, the phrasing of the individual laws cannot be praised for encouraging peace and diplomacy. While the early settlers of Iceland had the opportunity to create a society with a new set of values, the cultural heritage from Norway is evident both in the sagas as well as the laws. For instance, this cultural heritage is apparent in the aforementioned insult of Skarphedin claiming that the troll at Svinafell using Flosi “as a woman every ninth night.” An accusation like this was considered such an insult to one’s manhood that it is directly covered in the Old Norwegian Gulathing law §138:
Engi maðr scal gera tungu nið um annan, ne trenið. En ef han verðr at þvi kunnr oc sannr, at han gerir þat, þa liggr hanom utlegð við….Engi skal gera yki um annan, æða fiolmæle. Þat heitir yki ef maðr mælir um annan þat er eigi ma væra, ne verða oc eigi hever verit. Kveðr hann væra kono niundu nott hveria, oc hever barn boret, oc kallar gylvin, þa er hann utlagr.
No man shall make a verbal nið about another, nor a sculpted nið. And if he is discovered and found guilty to have done so, he is liable to outlawry…He shall not carry out ýki (exaggeration) against another, or fjölmæli (slander). That is called ýki if a man says about another something that cannot be, will not be and has not been. If he says that he is a woman every ninth night, or has borne children, or calls him a gylfinn, he will be outlawed.
Forbidding emasculating slurs like that of Skarphedin is a recurring theme in both old Norwegian law and the Grágás laws of Iceland. For instance, Gulathing law §196 covers words that guarantee the insulted man full atonement:
Orð ero þau er fullrettis orð heita. Þat er eitt ef maðr kveðr at karlmanne oðrom, at hann have barn boret. Þat er annat, ef maðr kveðr hann væra sannsorðenn. Þat er hit þriðia, ef hann iamnar hanom við meri, æða kallar hann grey, æða portkono, æða iamnar hanom við berende eitthvert. Þa scal hann bota hanom fullum rette firi. Þar ma hann oc viga um…Þat er oc fullrettes orð ef maðr þrælar karlmann frialsan, æða kallar hann troll æða forðæðo. Þat er oc fullrettes orð kono ef maðr vener hana hore, oc kallar hana horo, þar er hon velldr eigi.
There are words which are called words of full atonement. That is one, if a man says to another man that he has borne a child. That is another, if a man says to him that he is sannsorðenn (‘truly buggered’). That is the third, if he compares him with a mare, or calls him a bitch, or a whore, or compares him with anything that bears children. For that a man shall offer full atonement. For that one may also kill…That is also a word of full atonement if a man calls a free man a serf, or calls him a troll or a witch. That is also a word of full atonement for a woman if a man accuses her of adultery, and calls her adulteress, even though she has not done anything wrong.
Furthermore, Grágás §114 warrants full outlawry when calling another man a ragr (coward) or stroðinn (sexually used by another man):
Þau eru orð þrjú, ef svo mjög versna málsendar manna, er skóggang varða öll, ef maður kallar mann ragan eða stroðinn eða sorðinn, og skal svo sækja sen önnur fullrettisorð, enda á maður vígt í gegn þeim orðum þrimur.
There are three words, if the conversation between men deteriorates so much, which all warrant full outlawry: if a man calls another man ragr or stroðinn or sorðinn, and they shall be prosecuted as other words of full atonement, and because of these three words a man is also entitled to kill.
The three articles above first and foremost contributed, and arguably encouraged, violence by condoning the killing of the insulter. What makes the law of the Gulathing and Grágás different from the legal codes we are used to today is the preciseness in its articulation. For instance, the laws concerning moving a churchyard made the process quite an intricate job for those who wished to do so:
… They are to have spades and shovels with the; he himself is to provide hides in which to carry the bones and draught animals to move them. He is to call the neighbors who live nearest the place where the bones are to be dug up and is to have called them seven nights or more before they need to come. They are to be there at midmorning…
As exemplified above in Grágás §114, the same preciseness is used when covering nið. Today, words like ragr or stroðinn would not show up in a specific legal article, but be encapsulated in catch-all terms like defamation. In the long run, the preciseness of the law of Icelandic Commonwealth undoubtedly sustained an uncompromising conservative understanding of masculinity.
While precise, the medieval Icelandic law certainly knew its own limits. Most likely, lawmakers did not entitle an insulted man to kill (Grágás § 114) because they believed the insulter deserved to die, but because they recognized its limits in the face of extenuating circumstances, such as blood feuds. These limitations may also have been “… clearer to [Icelanders] than they are to us, because they would not have been tempted to confuse the category of law with the category of the state.”
Cultural and Legal Transition in Iceland
As aforementioned, Hrafnkel and Njál display a medieval Iceland in transition. With the conversion to Christianity in Iceland came new values and new means of consolidating power. In the early and mid-twelfth century, many goðis (chieftains) had taken the role of Christian priests and owned churches. Orri Vésteinsson argues that chieftains being Christian priests and owning churches were ways for the chieftains to “… consolidate their power.” This approach differs greatly from the violent ways Hrafnkel and some of the characters in Njál’s Saga would consolidate their position in society. Whether or not the sagas of Njál and Hrafnkel were written down and reiterated from a Christian perspective critical of the lawlessness in medieval Iceland, they both reveal a culture where display of physical strength and masculinity were means of consolidating power and social standing. However, Njál’s optimism and reverence for the law work as a portent of the coming transition from a society idolizing masculinity to one that puts knowledge and lawfulness on a (higher) pedestal. As Halldór Laxness observed, Njál’s Saga stands as a testament to a society with a “mjög sterkur heiðinglegur andi (very strong heathen spirit),” irreconcilable with the Christian values present in twelfth and thirteenth-century Iceland. Besides the Icelanders’ genuine interest in documenting their own history, it is not unlikely that priests would refer to the sagas to track the country’s progress towards a more lawful and peaceful nation.
The Christianization itself turned out to be remarkably peaceful. Although the degree to which Njál can be deemed a Christian man is still contested today, he states in chapter 100 that, “[i]t seems to me that this new faith is much better, and that he who accepts it will be happy. If the men who preach this religion come out here, I will speak in favor of it.” In the meeting at the Althing the following summer, the Commonwealth’s governing assembly was to decide whether to replace all pagan religions with Christianity. The lawspeaker and goði (at the time pagan priest) of Ljósavatn, Thorgeir Thorkelsson, was accepted as the mediator by both the Christians the pagans. After a day and a night spent contemplating this decision under a fur blanket, Thorkelsson returns to the Althing introducing his conclusion with the following thoughts: “[i]t appears to me that our affairs will reach an impasse if we don’t all have the same law, for if the law is split asunder, so also will peace be split asunder, and we cannot live with that.” Thorkelsson goes on suggesting that, “… all men in this land are to be Christians and believe in one God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and give up worship of false idols, the exposure of children, and the eating of horse meat.” This was accepted by both parties. It is important to note that the banning of exposure of infants and eating horse meat are only mentioned in the Njal’s Saga. Other accounts of Christian laws in Iceland, such as chapter 7 of The Book of Icelanders, suggest that only the worship of pagan gods became prohibited right after the conversion and that horse meat and infanticide were not banned before the Church was firmly in control in Iceland. Regardless, this peaceful compromise was a remarkable achievement compared to the decades of bitter disagreement and violent feuds in Norway that were instigated by the question of conversion to Christianity.
This cultural transition may also have had an impact on how the Icelandic Commonwealth came to an end. The early settlers did not see the need of one king to rule them all, partly because their ideas of autonomy and manhood were closely tied together. In post-christianized Iceland, however, the idea of manliness changed along with the new faith in one almighty God. This is apparent in Njal’s Saga when Thangbrand rebukes Steinunn’s heathenism by claiming that, “… Thor would be mere dust and ashes if God didn’t want him to live.” Everyone, even the Norse gods, had to submit themselves to this new God. This must have made it easier for the Icelanders to swear oath to the Norwegian king, since he also worshipped and was theoretically beneath this God. Naturally, the tension between Icelanders and pressure from the King of Norway on the chieftains were more important to the downfall of the Icelandic Commonwealth. However, it is not unlikely that the new idea of submission while keeping one’s manliness at the same time facilitated this process.
Conclusion
In brief, both the Njál’s Saga and the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi portray a medieval Iceland dominated by a culture of masculinity. This culture of masculinity was closely tied to insults, known as nið. Emasculating insults were not just considered bad manners, but were insults to a man’s honor and even punishable by law. As revealed by several characters’ reactions to níð in the two sagas, insults to their manhood had to be revenged in order to restore their honor. The sagas’ two protagonists, Njál and Hrafnkel, deal with these insults quite differently, and Njál seems to draw the shortest straw by refusing to take revenge and pursuing a more diplomatic approach to make amends. The legal system and codes were respected and complex, but they were undermined by the political realities of social standing and vengeance. Hrafnkel’s power is the reason why he could take back his farm without fearing new legal proceedings against him. In other words, individuals could, in a sense, be more powerful than the legal system. The desire to avenge emasculating insults in lieu of settling cases peacefully disrupted legal proceedings throughout Njál’s Saga. Furthermore, the legal codes did not exactly discourage violence. Rather the opposite, some articles awarded full atonement and gave permission to kill the offender for his use of níð. The specificity of such articles would often recite common emasculating insults, such as accusing a man of having borne a child. These articles reinforced a very conservative and inflexible understanding of masculinity over time. The two sagas juxtaposed display the cultural shift that took place in Iceland following the conversion to Christianity. Hrafnkel represents the older heroic ideals of masculinity and power while Njál is of a newer generation that looked to the law in hope for a more peaceful country. In Njál’s Saga, the characters holding the same values as Hrafnkel seem to end up with greater success. Nevertheless, Njál still comes across as an honorable man due to his devotion to law and diplomacy. Similar to Njál’s belief that the land ‘shall rise’ with the law, Thorkelsson, the man who converted Iceland to Christianity, claims that peace will ‘split asunder’ when the law does. In other words, Iceland transitioned to a society where respect for the law and for societal order eventually became more important than avenging personal honor.
In the end, the sagas and laws solidified a culture of masculinity with fixed gender roles that were so restrictive that they, as Jakobsson puts it, “… [were] almost impossible not to deviate from,” and limited men’s agency immensely. This is not to say that it was harder to be a man than being a woman, but the restrictiveness of the man’s role would often force him to engage in violence in order to maintain his status as an honorable man. I will now return to Hrafnkel’s announcement of having killed Einar, the man who rode his horse Freyfaxi without permission. In addition to his comment that nothing goes well for people when they do not commit to their promises, he also acknowledges that, “… we often have cause to regret having said too much, and we would more rarely have cause for regret if we spoke less rather than more.” Hrafnkel’s choice of words can be interpreted as a subtle criticism of the world he is trapped in — a world in which actions may be unfortunate and worthy of regret, but nonetheless actions that had to be performed in order to maintain one’s status as an honorable man.