„?redniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne” 2016, T. 8 (12) ISSN 2080-492X (wersja drukowana) ISSN 2353-9720 (wersja elektroniczna) Santiago Barreiro Imhicihu-Conicet The Role of Honour in Egils saga The aim of this article is to assess the role played by honour in an ex- tensive prose text composed in Iceland c. 1220-1240 AD. The text repre- sents a type of saga, the Íslendingasögur, that discusses the life and deeds of the first generations of people who inhabited that insular country. Egils saga Skalla-Grimssonar1 ("The saga of Egill, the son of Grímr the Bald") focuses on a family of settlers who migrate to Iceland from Norway during the 9th century. The first third of the story gives an account of the rise and fall of Þórólfr Kveld-Ulfsson, an ambitious man who becomes powerful in the service of the Norwegian king. His nephew, Egill, is the main character of the remain- ing part of the saga. Egill is a poet, adventurer and Viking, but later in his life he becomes a wealthy farmer and chieftain. However, unlike his uncle and his brother, he remains fiercely independent during most of his life. Unusually for this type of saga, the narrative takes place in many locations around the North Atlantic and the Baltic. The last part of Egla depicts Egill as an old man, and it is the only section of the text that is focused on what happens in Iceland. It is generally acknowledged that matters of honour play a prominent role in the Islendingasögur.2 Moreover, it is highly likely that in this aspect lit- 1 References to the saga in the Íslenzk Fornrit edition: Egils saga Skalla-Grimssonar. Ed. S. Nordal. Reykjavík 1933. I list references by chapter and page number. All translations are my own. 2 Romantic scholars of the early 20th century (such as Walther Gehl and Vilhelm Grønbech) insisted on this point, and portrayed honour as one of the characteristic marks of heathen society. A later generation of scholars (influenced by the Icelandic school) focu- sed on the way in which medieval saga authors criticised these ideas from a Christian per- spective. Following a sociological (or anthropological) perspective, Vilhjálmur Árnason argues that the saga emphasis on honour does not stem from religion, but from the social structure, in a line of thought similar to that represented by Preben Meulengracht-Sørensen.
76 Santiago Barreiro erature reflects a main concern of medieval Icelanders, at least those of some social standing. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen's influential Fortælling og Ære defines honour as a social norm, a system of unwritten rules which channels social conflict and penalises antisocial behaviour through its opposite, shame.3 This position stands in marked contrast with the earlier ideas of the German scholar Walther Gehl,4 who saw the overbearing ójafnaarmaðr ("man of in- equity") as the embodiment of the competitive honour of "Germanic" peoples. Instead, Meulengracht Sørensen's view is akin to the stance held by the British anthropologist Julien Pitt-Rivers, who studied honour in Mediterranean socie- ties. Their view presented honour as a stabilising