Medieval Icelandic literature includes a number of female characters who can be considered
“remembering heathen women” in a dual sense. First, women are depicted in the act
of recalling and transmitting
memories of the heathen past or past heathenism. Second, the portrayals of these women
in Icelandic texts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries indicate how these female
mediators of memory were themselves remembered by a later Christian society. For this
audience, the heathen knowledge that women are depicted as retaining would have been
perceived as antiquated but also potentially transgressive. As I will argue, the perceived
antiquity of the narrative affects how these women are represented: as the time of
the events described approaches the medieval Christian present, the women depicted
as remembering, transmitting, or deploying old, heathen knowledge are portrayed both
more negatively and less frequently.
At issue here is not when or whether a given event may have occurred in a historical
sense, nor when a given work was first recorded or “originally” composed. Instead,
what matters is when events are
represented to have occurred. As Jan Assmann emphasizes:
Not the past as such, as it is investigated and reconstructed by archaeologists and
historians, counts for the cultural memory, but only the past as it is remembered.
(113)
Pernille Hermann argues that cultural memory is particularly concerned with managing
“historical ruptures,” which she defines as crises or dramatic cultural changes that
disrupt efforts to
view the present as simply a continuation of the past. According to Hermann, the transmission
of a continuous tradition differs from the construction of cultural memory in that
the latter has an “ability to deal with ruptures by means of adaptation and selectivity”
(2009, 302). This creative process enables people to continue to find meaning in past
events
“in spite of historical breaks or changed ideological circumstances” (302). For medieval
Iceland in particular, Hermann identifies three such historical ruptures:
emigration to Iceland in the decades before and after 900 CE; the conversion to Christianity
around the turn of the first millennium; and the subjugation of Iceland to Norway
in 1262–1264 (302).
In medieval Icelandic literature, different genres express cultural memory associated
with different past eras. These genres also reflect different orientations toward
the past events they depict. The deepest stratum of this constructed past is that
inscribed in eddic poetry. As Brittany Schorn observes:
Eddic poets normally sought to channel the voices of the ancient past, and the effectiveness
of their poems rested in part on how successfully they distanced themselves from their
immediate audiences. (2016, 233)
With regard to prose texts, Margaret Clunies Ross demonstrates that the genres of
fornaldarsögur [legendary sagas],
Íslendingasögur [sagas of Icelanders], and
samtíðarsögur [contemporary sagas] correspond, respectively, to “the prehistoric, legendary past”;
the Age of Settlement; and the contemporary present or recent past (1998, 93). Thus,
the domain of the fornaldarsögur overlaps with that of eddic poetry: both
genres describe a mythical / legendary time preceding the first “rupture” of Iceland’s
settlement. In contrast, the ostensibly more realistic mode of the Íslendingasögur
reflects a past that, though still beyond living memory, is more securely rooted in
Icelandic “history.” Within the Íslendingasögur, Clunies Ross further notes that “the
far past before conversion [is represented as] different … from the period after
the Icelanders had accepted Christianity” (1998, 93); that is, this genre spans the
second “rupture” and describes events before, during, and shortly after Iceland’s
conversion. Finally,
the samtíðarsögur are concerned with the present or near-past of their thirteenth-century
compilers. As such, they express individual and communicative memory, not the cultural
memory encoded in the other genres.
In this article, I consider a selection of “remembering heathen women” to assess how
their representation evolves as the events depicted draw closer to
the medieval present. The focus here is specifically on women for a number of reasons.
First, depictions of heathen men are more complex and varied than portrayals of heathen
women, and an analysis of “remembering heathen men” would require a more comprehensive
treatment than is possible here. For example,
some heathen men are depicted as “Noble Heathens” in an Icelandic version of Christian
typology (Lönnroth 1969; Grønlie 2017, 119–33). Others, however, are portrayed very
negatively, especially if they actively oppose
Christianity. In addition, the sagas portray magical practices as “socially acceptable”
for women in the heathen period (Price 175). When men engage in some of the same
practices, however, these men are considered
argr [effeminate] and elicit “horrified disgust” (175). A number of scholars have also
noted the relative exclusion of women from power
and influence after the conversion. In Iceland, Christianity first took hold in what Siân Grønlie calls the “public and
legal sphere, perceived as male and secular,” whereas the “domestic sphere [was] perceived
as female and the focus of pagan cult” (2006, 298). The men who functioned as memory
specialists before the conversion seem to have
adjusted readily to the new situation. For example, Agnes Arnórsdóttir has shown that
Icelandic lawspeakers played a leading role in committing the old laws to writing,
and this group of men soon became experts in the new medium as well as the old (219).
Another class of memory specialist, the court skald, adroitly shifted from praising
the victories of heathen chieftains to lauding the Christian accomplishments of kings
(Fidjestøl; Clunies Ross 2005, 121). Meanwhile, women seem to have been left behind
in the transition. Compared to men,
women had far less access to the new literary culture centred in monastic institutions
(Mundal 12–13; Sawyer and Sawyer 200). Gro Steinsland notes that women were also “excluded
from all cult functions [because] the hierarchically organized professional
priesthood of the Church consisted exclusively of men” (129). These factors help to
explain the persistent association between women and heathenism
throughout medieval Icelandic literature.
Icelandic literature contains many vivid portrayals of heathen women. Space precludes
discussing them all, so the analysis here is limited to female characters who are
involved with “remembering” in some capacity. First, eddic poetry and fornaldarsögur
are examined to assess how
female characters associated with the oldest level of cultural memory are represented.
Next, a consideration of heathen women in the Íslendingasögur shows how their characterization
shifts as the events described come closer in time to Iceland’s formal conversion
to Christianity. Incidents connected to the conversion itself demonstrate how these
texts respond when the heathen past threatens to intrude on a newly Christian present.
Finally, the near-total absence of heathen women from the samtíðarsögur is interpreted
in light of the shift from cultural to individual and communicative memory at the
time that these texts were committed to writing.
The
Codex Regius text of the poetic
Edda opens with the powerful voice of a woman:
Hjlóðs bið ek allar
helgar kindir,
meiri ok minni
mǫgu Heimdalar;
vildu at ek, Valfǫðr,
vel fram telja
forn spjǫll fira,
þau er fremst um man. (Vǫluspá 1)
[I ask a hearing from all hallowed peoples, the greater and lesser of Heimdallr’s
sons;
you want me, Father of the Slain, fully to recount ancient tales of beings, which
I remember from the beginning.]
The speaker is a
vǫlva [seeress], and her words serve to establish her status, her audience, and the setting.
According
to John McKinnell,
Vǫluspá is likely to have been composed by a heathen poet between c. 925–965 and c. 1065
(7–9). Although the poem does show signs of Christian influence (9–11), the presence
of Óðinn, and the multiple references to heathen cosmology and mythology,
clearly situate it in deep, mythic—in other words, heathen—time.
The emphasis on memory in the opening of Vǫluspá is striking. The vǫlva concludes her speech in the first stanza with “man” [[I] remember].
She begins the second stanza with the same formulation, “ek man jǫtna” [I remember
giants], and repeats it in the fifth line, “níu man ek heima” [I remember nine worlds].
This first part of the poem is sometimes viewed as subordinate to the apocalyptic
vision that follows: in this interpretation, the opening serves as a preamble in which
the vǫlva “establishes her credentials” to predict the future by first speaking knowledgeably
about the past (Schorn 2017, 99; see also Lönnroth 2002, 14; Jochens 347). However,
the distinction between memory and prophecy is unduly limiting here. As
John Lindow observes, for the medieval Christian audience, the whole of Norse mythology
belonged to “a social world set long in the past, with its own past and future” (41).
He further argues that descriptions of future events by mythological figures, including
the vǫlva’s prophecy in Vǫluspá, in effect represent memories of those future events (50).
In the first stanza of
Vǫluspá, the vǫlva addresses Valfǫðr (Óðinn), who has evidently requested her performance.
Later in the poem, he rewards her richly with rings, necklaces, and other gifts (
Vǫluspá 29). Thus, the transmission of cultural memory in
Vǫluspá is mediated by a female figure who passes on her ancient knowledge to a grateful,
male querent. The seeress participates in a wider cultural tradition that viewed women
situated in the distant, heathen past as sources of wisdom and counsel (Clark and
Friðriksdóttir 342–44; Schjødt 2008, 415). Stephen Mitchell notes that this old, heathen
knowledge includes the magical arts:
Non-Christian magic is typified by its relation to the supernatural or the old religion
[and is connected to] the world of the past, with expressions such as Old Icelandic
fornspjǫll “old lore” and fornfrœði “old learning.” (45–46)
Such
forn spjǫll is precisely what the seeress in
Vǫluspá remembers and relates (1.7).
Vǫluspá both relies on and contributes to medieval Icelanders’ cultural memory of an ancient
time when, as Assmann says, “the distinction between myth and history vanishes” (113).
The fact that versions of the poem appear, not only in the Codex Regius, but also in Hauksbók and in Snorri Sturluson’s prose Edda, demonstrates that this poem was in circulation in medieval Iceland. As Lönnroth points out, “the audience had to know its way around the Old Norse mythological
cosmos and its
cast of characters” to make sense of the text (2002, 11). Vǫluspá therefore draws from a pool of cultural memory shared by its creator, transcribers,
and audiences.
That same pool of memory was evidently available to the composer of
Grógaldr. The earliest surviving texts of this poem are in paper manuscripts of the poetic
Edda dating to c. 1700 (Ólason, 188–90).
Grógaldr is generally agreed to have been composed no earlier than the beginning of the thirteenth
century (202), and this “neo-eddic” poem is likely to have been composed by a Christian
poet making deliberate use of
a traditional form (Schorn 2017, 142–47). Despite its relatively late date, however,
Grógaldr’s eddic meter and list of magical spells clearly situate the poem
for the audience in the remote heathen past. Like
Vǫluspá, it depicts a powerful woman transmitting arcane knowledge to a male recipient. The
sorceress Gróa is summoned from the grave by her son, who asks her to grant him magical
protection. Her last word to her son—and the poem’s last word to the audience—is an
injunction to
remember what she has said:
Móður orð
berr þú, mǫgr, heðan
ok lát þér í brjósti búa,
því nóga heill
skaltu of aldr hafa,
meðan þú mín orð of mant. (Grógaldr 16)
[[Your] mother’s words, son, carry from here, and let them abide in your breast; for
you shall have enough luck all your life, as long as you remember my words.]
That
Vǫluspá and
Grógaldr are likely to have been composed centuries apart is irrelevant from the perspective
of cultural memory: both represent the same primordial era, a time associated with
heathen myth and magic, and both depict women as mediators of ancient knowledge that
is sought by male figures.
In the poetic Edda, women’s transmission of memory may also be associated with a magically-charged alcoholic
drink. As Judy Quinn points out, consuming such a drink is a “metaphorical description
of drawing knowledge into the self” (2010, 186). Words and drink are offered together;
indeed, the drink “can only be offered by the speaker of the information that needs
to be remembered” (186). Two eddic poems provide unambiguous examples of this complex. In Sigrdrífumál, the hero Sigurðr awakens the valkyrie Sigrdrífa. In the prose following the third
stanza, she “gaf honum minnisveig” [gave him memory-drink]. Schjødt (2008, 294) identifies
this memory-drink with the “bjór … / magni blandinn / ok megintíri” [beer … compounded
with power and great glory] that Sigrdrífa gives the hero shortly afterwards (Sigrdrífumál 6.1, 3–4). In the stanzas that follow, she instructs him in runic and gnomic wisdom.
The implication
is that the function of the “memory-drink” is to help him retain these teachings.
In Hyndluljóð, the goddess Freyja asks the giantess Hyndla to give minnisǫl [memory-ale] to Freyja’s lover Óttarr (45.1). Hyndla has just recounted Óttarr’s
lineage, which he needs to claim his paternal
inheritance. The purpose of the “memory-ale” is to help him retain this critical information.
Hyndla is reluctant to provide the
drink, but Freyja appears to prevail: the closing stanza says that “Óttarr skal drekka
/ dýrar veigar” [shall drink [the] precious liquids] (50.5–6). In Hyndluljóð, two female figures together mediate Óttarr’s acquisition of knowledge: by compelling
Hyndla to give him the memory-ale, Freyja ensures that Óttarr will assimilate what
Hyndla has told him.
The liquor usually called the “mead of poetry” can be interpreted as a third example
of a memory-drink. The eddic poem Hávamál describes how Óðinn receives the mead from the giantess Gunnlǫð: “Gunnlǫð mér um
gaf / … / drykk ins dýra mjaðar” [Gunnlǫð gave me … a drink of the precious mead]
(105.1, 3). The god refers back to this drink in virtually the same language later
in the poem:
“ek drykk of gat / ins dýra mjaðar” [I got a drink of the precious mead] (140.4–5).
These words are immediately followed by Óðinn’s statement that “þá nam ek frævask
/ ok fróða vera” [then I began to flourish and to become wise] (141.1–2). The poem
then continues with Óðinn’s extended boast about his runic knowledge and
spellcraft. Thus, the process of gaining wisdom that begins with Óðinn’s self-sacrifice
on the world-tree (138) is not complete until he drinks the mead that Gunnlǫð has
provided. As Svava Jakobsdóttir
observes, the idea that Óðinn manipulates Gunnlǫð through seduction or trickery is
based solely on Snorri’s account in the prose Edda; the notion finds no direct support in eddic poetry (30–33). Admittedly, Gunnlǫð
does not speak to Óðinn in Hávamál. The stanzas are, however, clearly meant to allude to a more complete myth that would
have been known to the audience. This would not necessarily have been the version
of the story provided by Snorri in his artistic reworking; as Pernille Hermann notes,
Snorri “re-created and transformed memories into something else” (2009, 297). It is
conceivable that, at the time that these stanzas were composed, cultural memory
retained a version of the myth in which Gunnlǫð acts as Óðinn’s teacher. Such a scenario
would be consistent with Brittany Schorn’s conclusion that “an oral milieu was … crucial”
for the transmission of traditional knowledge in Norse wisdom poetry (2017, 148).
What women give, they can also take, and the drinks they serve can erase memory as
well as enhance it. In Völsunga saga, Queen Grímhildr, mother of the Gjúkings, twice prepares and deploys such a forgetfulness-drink.
First, she gives Sigurðr a drink that causes him to forget his previous commitment
to Brynhildr; the result is that he then agrees to marry Grímhildr’s daughter Guðrún.
Grímhildr later gives a second forgetfulness-drink to Guðrún after Sigurðr is killed;
Grímhildr’s purpose this time is to reconcile Gúðrún to her brothers despite their
role in her husband’s death. In both cases, the queen advances the interests of her family by inducing a highly
specific form of amnesia. Though these episodes do not involve the same kind of forn fræði associated with memory-drinks, they do demonstrate one woman’s precise and effective
control over human memory.
The events of
Völsunga saga are still in the realm of myth and legend, but this fornaldarsaga focuses primarily
on (supposedly) historical human beings rather than on goddesses and giantesses. We
are thus moving closer in time to the “historical rupture” of Iceland’s settlement,
and Grímhildr manipulates social, rather than numinous,
memories. This shift from the godly to the mortal realm is not as momentous as a modern
reader might suppose. In a comprehensive semantic analysis, Brittany Schorn demonstrates
that the difference between god and man in Norse myth is one of degree rather than
kind:
The gods were . . . conceived of as essentially similar to human beings, inhabiting
more or less the same space and governed by the same basic conditions of life. Even
when belief in their divinity became absolutely disallowed, the rationalization of
the gods as fully human allowed them to be preserved in literature as human archetypes.
(2017, 37)
As Schorn points out, this attitude toward the gods is profoundly different from the
Christian view: the God of the Bible “is fundamentally distinct from [humanity] by
virtue of His divine nature” (59). Stories and poems that depict the heathen gods
as relatively human-like may have
survived in part because this concept posed less of a challenge to the divine perfection
of the Christian God.
As the events described approach more closely in time to the medieval present, the
focus continues to narrow from the cosmic to the local. The Íslendingasögur are rich
with examples of women who possess arcane knowledge, but this knowledge is now deployed
in situations that relate to everyday concerns and relationships. The discussion below
focuses specifically on women in these sagas who are described as remembering or teaching
heathen magic, or who use it to affect another’s memory.
In the early days of Iceland’s settlement, the second “historical rupture” of the
conversion to Christianity still lies several generations in the future. In
sagas set in this early period, fornfrœði—old, and therefore heathen, knowledge—is not necessarily treated as evil in itself.
Instead, a given text’s view of a woman who knows, uses, or teaches magic is determined
primarily by her role in the story. The narrative possibilities available to the compilers
of these sagas would have been determined by cultural memory, which, as Astrid Erll
and Ansgar Nünning observe, establishes the “repertoires of forms” for a literary
tradition (273). Evidently, positive conceptions of heathen, magic-working women
were still part
of the saga-writer’s repertoire in the thirteenth century. An example is Geirríðr,
who teaches magic to her neighbour’s son Gunnlaugr. The events are described in both
Landnámabók and Eyrbyggja saga. In the former, Gunnlaugr visits Geirríðr “at nema fróðleik” [to obtain knowledge]
(S79); in the latter, he “nam kunnáttu at Geirríði Þórólfsdóttir, því at hon var margkunnig” [obtained
instruction from Geirríðr Þórólfsdóttir, because she was very knowledgeable] (28).
In both narratives, the context makes clear that the “knowledge” that Geirríðr teaches
is magical lore. The old woman is presented in a favourable
light, especially in contrast to her neighbour and rival Katla, who is ultimately
stoned to death for harmful sorcery (Eyrbyggja saga 54). Yet, there are hints that the knowledge that Geirríðr possesses and teaches
is already
starting to become suspect: she is charged at the local assembly with harming her
protégé through witchcraft. Geirríðr is fully acquitted, however, and her accusers
are dishonoured (29–30). The differing fates of Geirríðr and Katla are unrelated
to the essential nature
of the knowledge they possess: both are skilled in heathen magic, and Eyrbyggja saga implies that Geirríðr’s skill is the greater. Rather, the two women are presented
as occupying different social roles. As Joyce Tally Lionarons points out, Geirríðr’s
relationship with Gunnlaugr is the socially acceptable one of mentor to student, whereas
Katla’s interest in the young man is primarily, and transgressively, sexual (307).
Geirríðr is also the sister of the powerful chieftain Arnkell goði, whereas the
sources identify no family connections for Katla beyond her childless son Oddr. The
most fundamental difference between these two witches is evidently not what they know, but who they know, and what those relationships imply about their integration into the social
fabric. As Gísli Pálsson observes, the whole episode is concerned with “the micro-politics
of the community” (163). Within that community, Geirríðr’s transmission of heathen
knowledge is evidently
sanctioned.
Another wise woman in the pre-conversion era, Þórdís spákona [prophetess], is portrayed more ambivalently. In Vatnsdœla saga, the compiler’s sympathies evidently lie with the Vatnsdaler clan, and Þórdís assists
one of their allies, a man named Þorkell. In this context, the saga portrays Þórdís
in a highly positive light: “hun var forvitra ok framsýn ok var tekin til þess at
gera um stórmál” [she was very wise and foresighted and on account of this was engaged
to act in major
legal cases] (120). In one such lawsuit, Þórdís gives Þorkell precise and detailed
instructions about
how to magically prevent his opponent Guðmundr from appearing in court against him.
Afterwards, Þorkell reverses the spell, again at Þórdís’s direction. The charm specifically
targets Guðmundr’s memory: once the spell is lifted, “tók Guðmundr minnit ok þótti
kynligt, at þat hafði frá honum horfit” [Guðmundr got [his] memory back and thought
it strange that it had been lost to him] (121). Though she works through a male agent
here, it is Þórdís’s arcane knowledge that,
like Grímhildr’s in the Vǫlsung legends, makes possible the manipulation of human
memory. In contrast, Kormáks saga describes the same Þórdís somewhat negatively. This saga appears to reflect the viewpoint
of the eponymous hero: even though Þórdís has helped him on other occasions, Kormákr
complains about her magic when she assists his opponent in a duel (290). Even in
Kormáks saga, however, Þórdís is depicted as an important and capable figure who is involved in
the life of her community. Whether Þórdís is viewed positively or negatively in a
saga depends on whose side she is on: her knowledge of heathen magic becomes problematic
only when she is regarded as an adversary.
As the dates of events described in the Íslendingasögur approach the date of the conversion,
however, an increasing sense of disquiet with women’s role as keepers of old, heathen
knowledge becomes evident. In
Eiríks saga rauða, an incident around the time of the conversion illustrates this tension between the
old ways and the new religion. A woman named Þorbjǫrg is known as
lítil-vǫlva [little seeress] and is also called a spákona [prophetess] (206). She visits a farmstead
in Greenland in the middle of a famine and is asked to predict
when conditions will improve. To summon the spirits who help her know the future,
Þorbjǫrg needs someone to sing the old chants known as
Varðlokur (208). Guðríðr, a young woman staying at the farm, admits to knowing the songs but is reluctant
to perform them:
Hvárki em ek fjǫlkunnig né vísindakona, en þó kenndi Halldís, fóstra mín, mér á Íslandi
þat kvæði, er hon kallaði Varðlokur. … Þetta er þat eitt atferli, er ek ætla í engum
atbeina at vera, því at ek em kristin kona. (207–8)
[I am neither skilled in magic nor a wise woman, but even so, Halldís, my foster-mother,
taught me in Iceland the chants that she called Varðlokur. … This is one proceeding in which I intend to be of no help, because I am a Christian
woman.]
A generation previously, Guðríðr’s foster-mother apparently taught her the old songs
in the old way. As a new convert, however, Guðríðr is deeply uncomfortable with this
knowledge. She vigorously denies any expertise in pre-Christian magic, asserts her
fidelity to her new faith, and is persuaded to sing the heathen songs only at the
sharp insistence of her host. There is nonetheless a certain ambiguity in how events
play out. The depiction of the heathen vǫlva is generally positive: she is treated
with deference by the community she visits, she accurately foretells a bright future
for Guðríðr and her descendants, and her auspicious prediction that the local famine
will soon lift proves true. Nonetheless, the uneasiness voiced by Guðríðr perhaps
reflects a similar unease felt by the saga’s audience. The Greenlandic setting may
have served to create additional psychological distance between the saga-audience
and the heathen ritual. As Helga Kress puts it, the rite “has moved from the sphere
of acceptance from an Icelandic viewpoint out to the margins” (1990, 291).
Fóstbræðra saga reflects a similar ambivalence. The action is set shortly after Iceland’s conversion,
when “kristni var ung ok vangǫr” [Christianity was new and imperfect] (161). The saga
describes two sorceresses, each named Gríma. The first performs a weather-spell
to help her slave leave Iceland. Like Guðríðr in Eiríks saga, Gríma was taught the old ways in her youth, before the arrival of Christianity:
to work her weather-charm, Gríma “minnisk á þau in fornu kvæði, er hon hafði í barnœsku
sinni numit” [recalled to mind the old chants, which she had learned in her childhood]
(169). The saga reflects some sympathy for this Gríma, and it gives her the excuse
that
her knowledge is a holdover from her childhood at a time when people still did not
clearly understand the new religion. The second Gríma, like the prophetess in Eiríks saga, is located out in Greenland. Compared to her namesake, this Gríma is more heathen
in her behaviour but also better informed about Christianity. She possesses a chair
carved with an image of Þórr and his hammer, and the saga implies that she still honours
the old gods. When challenged on this point, however, she disingenuously replies that
she only keeps the chair to remind her that idols can be burned and broken. She then
praises the Christian God, “er skapat hefir himin ok jǫrð ok alla hluti sýniliga ok
ósýniliga” [who has made Heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible] (247).
As Siân Grønlie points out, Gríma’s pious words are ironic: the sorceress lauds
God’s creation of “invisible” things at the very moment that her own heathen magic
has made the saga’s protagonist,
Þormóðr, invisible to his enemies (2006, 104). At the same time, however, her cynical
words serve to remind the saga’s audience
of God’s omnipotence. In a further twist, Þormóðr, who owes his life to Gríma’s spell,
later becomes a devoted, Christian follower of King (later Saint) Óláfr Haraldsson.
Despite the impressive magical skills displayed by the two Grímas, the old religion
is evidently on the way out in Fóstbrœðra saga.
For events set a generation or two after the conversion, the “repertoires of forms”
no longer include the possibility of positive depictions of heathen knowledge.
Grettis saga provides an instructive example. An old woman named Þuríðr is the foster-mother of
Grettir’s arch-enemy Þorbjǫrn, and after Þorbjǫrn’s efforts to capture or kill Grettir
have failed, Þuríðr brings about his downfall through sorcery. Þuríðr’s magical art
is represented as dark and dangerous knowledge that, the saga suggests uneasily, should
have been forgotten by now:
Þuríðr … var mjǫk gǫmul ok til lítils fœr, at því er mǫnnum þótti. Hon hafði verit
fjǫlkunnig mjók ok margkunnig mjók, þá er hon var ung ok menn váru heiðnir; nú þótti
sem hon myndi ǫllu týnt hafa. En þó at kristni væri á landinu, þá váru þó margir gneistar
heiðninnar eptir. (245)
[Þuríðr … was very old and could do little, or so it seemed to people. She had been
very skilled in magic and greatly knowledgeable about it, when she was young and people
were heathen; now it seemed as if she must have lost all that. But, though Christianity
had been established in the country, even so there were many heathen embers left.]
As Helga Kress points out, the saga even suggests that, in what can be viewed as a
metaphysical battle for Grettir’s life, “baráttan stendur milli Krists og kerlingar” [the
struggle is between Christ and the old woman] (1996, 196). Þorbjǫrn is sharply criticized
for resorting to witchcraft. The saga says that he
has committed a
níðingsverk, an utterly contemptible act, for accepting his foster-mother’s magical aid against
Grettir (
Grettis saga 265). In a Christian world, the old knowledge—fornspjǫll, fornfrœði—that is remembered
and passed on by women is now reviled.
A few narratives bring the old heathen world and the new Christian one into explicit
conflict. The usual context is the conversion itself, and the champions of Christianity
in these texts are invariably male. Ruth Mazo Karras remarks on this “curious silence”
(110). She notes that royal wives and similar figures are effective proponents of
Christianity
in conversion narratives for most of Europe, yet “there are no women” in thirteenth-century
accounts of conversion in Scandinavia (110). Of course, women may indeed have played a historical role in the Christianization
of the Nordic world, but what is significant here is that they were not remembered as having done so. In the same thirteenth-century accounts that are silent about
female proponents of the new faith, women are vividly portrayed as active defenders
of the old ways. In Kristni saga, for example, a woman named Friðgerðr conducts a heathen ritual while the missionary
Þorvaldr is preaching nearby, and the encounter is represented as a kind of shouting
match between the representatives of the two religions (9–10). The same saga preserves
a version of a poem by Steinunn—a female, heathen skald—that
praises Thor’s destruction of a missionary’s ship and mocks the impotence of the Christian
god (24). That both of these incidents are preserved in skaldic verse suggests that the stereotype
of female resistance to Christianity may have some basis in reality, but it is also
significant that these particular stanzas were selected for preservation and transmission
and so reinforced the association of women with heathenism in Icelanders’ cultural
memory. Though men are also depicted as staunch heathens in sagas that describe the
conversion, this portrayal is counterbalanced by numerous descriptions of other men
who actively advance the Christian cause. The sagas’ representations of women are
distinctly one-sided in comparison.
For the present purpose, the most telling example of a conversion narrative that opposes
female heathenism to male Christianity is
Sörla þáttr. Like
Hyndluljóð, this tale gives the goddess Freyja a role in the mediation of memory, but the implicit
judgement of the text on her actions is very different. Joseph Harris identifies
Sörla þáttr as one of a group of fornaldarsögur that, rather than simply using a past setting
as “an excuse to tell about the ancient heroes,” have a more ideological function.
These
þættir, he argues, represent “a symbolic burying of the heathen past by the Christian king”
(165).
Sörla þáttr is preserved only in
Flateyjarbók in the context of that manuscript’s near-hagiographic treatment of Óláfr Tryggvason,
the king credited by Icelanders with bringing Christianity to their country. Indeed,
Elizabeth Ashman Rowe suggests that the only point of including heathen deities in
the story at all is to magnify the accomplishments of Óláfr and his follower as champions
of Christianity (38, 63). Freyja’s role in the
þáttr is to instigate an “eternal battle” between the sworn brothers Heðinn and Hogni.
In her campaign to estrange the sworn
brothers from each other, Freyja gives Heðinn a drink that obliterates his memory
of his relationship with Hogni:
Svá var Heðinn fanginn í illsku ok óminni af öli því, er hann hafði drukkit, at honum
sýndist ekki annat ráð en þetta, ok ekki mundi hann til, at þeir Högni væri fóstbræðr.
(376)
[Heðinn was so seized by wickedness and forgetfulness from the ale that he had drunk
that no other course seemed right to him [than what she suggested], and he did not
remember that he and Högni were sworn brothers.]
Heðinn recovers his memory later, but only after he has committed a series of unforgiveable
offences against Högni. Battle inevitably ensues. Only after 143 years of endless
combat is the spell finally broken by one of Óláfr’s Christian followers.
Like Grímhildr in the Vǫlsung legends, Freyja employs the device of a forgetfulness-drink
to accomplish her aims in Sörla þáttr, but here there are no mitigating factors to explain or excuse its use. In contrast
to Grímhildr’s goals of protecting and strengthening her family, Freyja’s only motivation
is greed to recover her necklace from Óðinn, whose own motivation appears to be a
desire to incite suffering and strife solely for their own sakes. The wholly negative
portrayal of Freyja’s manipulation of memory in Sörla þáttr is the last stage in the decline in status of the “old knowledge” remembered by women,
and it is embedded in a context that deliberately brings two
temporal levels into direct confrontation. Though the story begins in the old heathen
age, it carries the reader forward to the triumphant dawn of the new Christian era,
when the superior power of the Christian God can be unambiguously demonstrated by
having His favourites overcome the evil workings of the heathen gods.
Iceland underwent its third historical “rupture” in 1262–1264, when the island became
subject to the Norwegian crown. Not coincidentally,
this was also the great age of saga-writing. Strengthening a sense of their own past
was one way that Icelanders responded to their pending and actual loss of political
independence. As Pernille Hermann observes, the production of sagas and genealogies
that recorded Iceland’s national and pre-national past acted to “confirm cultural
stability and permanence” at this time of social disruption (2010, 75). Jürg Glauser
further argues that the retrospective project of compiling the Íslendingasögur
was in itself a response to the contemporary crisis (211–12).
Coming to terms with the heathenism of their ancestors was part of this effort to
construct a past that affirmed Icelanders’ identity. By this time, Christianity was
fully entrenched, and witchcraft and heathenism alike were banned by law. The medieval
Icelandic legal code Grágás is preserved in manuscripts from the middle of the thirteenth century. This law-code explicitly prohibits the worship of heathen deities. Immediately afterwards
in the same section, lesser outlawry is specified as the penalty for practicing magic.
Grágás explains that someone “ferr … með fiolkyngi. ef hann queðr þat eþa kennir. eþa lætr
queða. at ser eþa at
fe sinv” [performs … magic if he speaks it or teaches it or has it spoken over himself
or his
livestock] (22). The law thus forbids some of the precise activities—reciting spells
and teaching
them to others—that are ascribed to heathen women in the Íslendingasögur. Grágás goes on to prescribe full outlawry for fordæs skap, black magic that causes illness or death (23). It follows that the earlier prohibition
on fjǫlkyngi applies to magic in general, regardless of its intention or effects. That the laws
against heathenism and magic are grouped together in Grágás suggests that the two concepts remain connected in cultural memory.
Consistent with these legal prohibitions, there is a near-total absence of heathens
or witches in the samtíðasögur, which reflect contemporary concerns rather than the
cultural memory of an ancestral past. Gísli Pálsson analyzes mentions of magic and
witchcraft in different saga genres. For the Íslendingasögur, he finds 116 references to magical practices (164). For
the contemporary Sturlung sagas, on the other hand, he finds only two. Sturla
Þórðarson’s
Íslendinga saga contains the only appearance of an unambiguously heathen woman in a contemporary
saga. Over the span of a few weeks, a young woman named Jóreiðr dreams three times that
Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, heroine of the Vǫlsung legends, appears to her. In the dream-world,
Guðrún is an imposing figure: “Mikill var hestrinn ok svá konan” [great was the horse,
and so too the woman] (519). Jóreiðr is alarmed by this apparition and asks, “Hví
fara heiðnir menn hér?” [why are heathen people coming here?] (521). Guðrún reassures
her, tells her the outcome of a recent battle, and foretells the
future. Guðrún has something of the aspect of a vǫlva here, but her parting words
affirm Christian values:
Nú hefir þetta þrisvar borit fyrir þik, enda verðr þrisvar allt forðum. Þat er ok
eigi síðr, at góð er guðs þrenning. (521)
[Now this has been shown to you three times, and indeed all good things come in threes.
It is also no less the case that God’s Trinity is good.]
The saga thus uses three devices to insulate the Christian present from this frightening
incursion of a heathen woman: Guðrún is a mythical figure from ages long past, she
is encountered only in dream, and her words endorse a Christian worldview. She nonetheless
remains a powerful figure in cultural memory, and her appearance in the narrative
enhances the significance and drama of Jóreiðr’s dreams.
In mythological poems set in the distant and mythical past, women and goddesses are
represented as powerful keepers and mediators of numinous wisdom. The prophetesses
who speak in Vǫluspá and Grógaldr transmit arcane knowledge that is eagerly sought by male querents. In Sigrdrífumál, Hyndluljóð, and perhaps Hávamál, supernatural women not only recite knowledge to male beneficiaries, they also provide
magical drinks to ensure that the information they speak of will be remembered. The
fornaldarsögur and the heroic poems of the Edda start to approach more closely to the medieval present in terms of setting and scope,
and magical drinks now interfere with memory rather than enhancing it. All these poems
and tales about the legendary past are represented as occurring before the “historical
rupture” of emigration to Iceland.
In contrast, the Íslendingasögur lie on the near side of that rupture and portray
Iceland’s past in apparently realistic terms. In narratives about the early days of
Iceland’s settlement, women’s occult knowledge can still be viewed as respected and
respectable: Eyrbyggja saga expresses no disapproval of Geirríðr’s instruction of a young man in magic, and Vatnsdœla saga depicts Þórdís spákona as an esteemed figure in her community. As the second rupture
of the conversion approaches, however, the heathen knowledge that women preserve and
transmit becomes suspect. Women like Friðgerðr and Steinunn, who actively resist Christianity
in the conversion narratives, are depicted as enemies of the true faith. In Eiríks saga rauða, Guðríðr as a recent convert is careful to distance herself from the heathen past.
In Fóstbræðra saga, the magic of the two Grímas is still potent but is overshadowed by the ascendance
of Christianity. Once the new faith has fully taken root, women who remember the old
ways, like Þuríðr in Grettis saga, are degraded to evil witches, and the same fate befalls the goddess Freyja in Sörla þáttr.
By the time of the recent events recorded in the samtíðarsögur, heathen women and
witches have virtually disappeared from the written accounts. Such women now exist
only in cultural memory. Ironically, however, the very preservation and transmission
of eddic poetry and Icelandic sagas acted to keep the memory of fornfrœði—the old
learning—alive. It seems that, as long as this material was sequestered in the distant
past at a safe psychological distance from the audience, stories of generous women
passing on their knowledge to specially favoured men could be remembered and enjoyed.
As is literally the case in Grógaldr and Íslendinga saga, however, the voices of heathen women are—or at least ought to be—the voices of the
dead.