Is There a Doctor on Vopnafjord?
Disability, Health, and Embodied Difference in Vápnfirðinga saga
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/scancan285Keywords:
Disability studies, disability history, disability, Old Norse literature, Icelandic Sagas, íslendingasögur, embodied differenceAbstract
This article focuses on Vápnfirðinga saga (The saga of the people of Weapons’ Fjord), a somewhat less discussed member of the so-called Íslendingasögur. It will be argued that disability, health and embodied difference are in fact not only of interest to the author, but an organizing theme for the narrative as a whole. The article is structured around the plot’s advancement rather than thematically, a choice meant to show the discursive and practical development of attitudes towards embodied difference within the text.
References
Baldursdóttir, Sigríður. 2002. “Hugmyndaheimur Vopnfirðinga sögu.” Gripla 13: 61—105.
Bourns, Timothy. 2023. “Trees in the Dreamscape,” In Ecocriticism and Old Norse Studies. Edited by Reinhard Hennig, Emily Lethbridge, and Michael Schulte. Turnhout: Brepols.
Bragason, Úlfar. 1988. “The Structure and Meaning of Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar.” Scandinavian Studies. 60: 267—92.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203828274.
Byock, Jesse L. 1982. Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2354078.
—. 1994. “Narrating Saga Feud: Deconstructing the Fundamental Oral Progression.” In Sagnaþing: Helgað Jónasi Kristjánssyni sjötugum 10. apríl 1994. Edited by Gísli Sigurðsson, Guðrún Kvaran, and Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, 97—106. Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag.
Cleasby, Richard, and Guðbrandur Vigfússon. 1874. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Crocker, Christopher. 2020. “Narrating Blindness and Seeing Ocularcentrism in Þorsteins saga hvíta.” Gripla 31: 267—92. https://doi.org/10.33112/gripla.31.9.
Crocker, Christopher and Yoav Tirosh. 2021. “Health, Healing, and the Social Body in Medieval Iceland.” In Understanding Disability Throughout History: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Iceland from Settlement to 1936. Edited by Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir and James G. Rice, 113—27. New York: Routledge. https://doi.og/10.4324/9781003180180-8.
Einarsson, Bjarni. 1993. “Íslendingadrápa.” In Medieval Scandinavia, an Encyclopedia. Edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf, 52—53. Garland Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages 1. New York: Garland Publishing.
Gropper Stefanie. 2023. “Authorship and auctoritas in Sagas of Early Icelanders: The Example of Reykdœla Saga.” In Germanisches Altertum und Europäisches Mittelalter: Gedenkband für Heinrich Beck. Edited by Wilhelm Heizmann and Jan Alexander van Nahl, 139—56. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Heiniger, Anna Katharina. 2020. “The Silenced Trauma in the Íslendingasögur.” Gripla 31: 233—65. https://doi.org/10.33112/gripla.31.8.
Heller, Rolf. 1963. “Studien zu Aufbau und Stil der Vápnfirðinga saga.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 78: 170—89.
Hollander, Lee M. 1961. Review of Saga. Untersuchungen zur nordischen Literatur-und Sprachgeschichte, hrsg. Walther Baetke. Heft I: Ernst Walter, Studien zur Vapnfirðinga Saga. Halle, 1956. Heft II: Rolf Heller, Die literarische Darstellung der Frau in den Isländersagas. Halle, 1958. Heft III: Rolf Heller, Literarisches Schaffen in der Laxdæla Saga. Halle, 1960. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 36(2): 154—57.
ÍF 11 = Austfirðinga sögur. Edited by Jón Jóhannesson. Íslenzk fornrit 11. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka Fornritafélag, 1950.
Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri. Vol. 5. Edited by Jón Árnason, with Árni Böðvarsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. 2nd ed. Reykjavík: Þjóðsaga, 1958.
Jónsson, Finnur. 1907 (1908). Tilnavne I den islandske oldlitteratur. Copenhagen: H.H. Thiele.
Kristjánsson, Jónas. 1975. “Íslendingadráða and Oral Tradition.” Gripla 1: 76—91.
Künzler, Sarah. 2016. Flesh and Word: Reading Bodies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Early Irish Literature. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110455878.
Michelson-Ambelang, Todd. 2015. “Outsiders on the Inside: Conception of Disability in Medieval Western Scandinavia.” Doctoral thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://asset.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/UB4LRRNUOPOFA8F/R/file-3a222.pdf.
Orel, Vladimir E. 2003. A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Leiden: Brill.
Patzuk-Russell, Ryder C., and Yoav Tirosh. 2024. “Icelandic Hospitals, Disabled Clergy, and the Saga of Bishop Lárentíus.” Mirator 24.1: 1–17. https://doi.org/10.54334/mirator.v24i1.141618
Peterson, Paul. 2015. “Old Norse Nicknames.” Doctoral thesis, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/172669
Poilvez, Marion. 2022. “Food and Exclusion: Beer, Chicken and Social Mobility in the Saga World.” In Food Culture in Medieval Scandinavia. Edited by Viktoria Gyonki and Andrea Maraschi, 99–116. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9789048540235.005
Ranković, Slavica. 2007. “Who is Speaking in Traditional Texts? On the Distributed Author of the Sagas of Icelanders and Serbian Epic Poetry.” New Literary History 38.2: 239¬–307. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20058004
Ranković, Slavica, and Miloš Ranković. 2012. “The Talent of the Distributed Author” in Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages. Edited by Slavica Ranković et al., 52–75. Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press, 2012.
“The Saga of the People of Vopnafjord.” Translated by John Tucker. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, Including 49 Tales. Vol. 4. Edited by Viðar Hreinsson, Robert Cook, Terry Gunnell, Keneva Kunz, and Bernard Scudder, 313–34. Reykjavík: Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.
Sayers, Edna Edith [published as Bragg, Lois]. 1997. “From the Mute God to the Lesser God: Disability in Medieval Celtic and Old Norse Literature” Disability & Society 12(2): 165—78. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599727317.
Sexton, John. 2010. “Difference and Disability: On the Logic of Naming in the Icelandic Sagas.” In Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations. Edited by Joshua R. Eyler, 149–63. London and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315577388
Sigurðsson, Gísli. 2004. The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition, a Discourse on Method. Translated by Nicholas Jones. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature 2. Cambridge, MA: Milman Parry Collection. https://chs.harvard.edu/book/sigurdsson-gisli-the-medieval-icelandic-saga-and-oral-tradition-a-discourse-on-method/
Spray, Thomas. 2022. “‘Grei þetta er fullt flaerdar og falskleita’: The Many Ghosts of Hamlet in Sagas and Folklore.” In Pre-Print Papers of the 18th International Saga Conference: Sagas and the Circum-Baltic Arena: Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022. Edited by Frog, Joonas Ahola, Jesse Barber, and Karoliina Kouvola, 311–318. Helsinki: Folklore Studies, Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki.
“Syv Sagablade (AM 162 C fol, bl. 1–7).” 1975. Edited by Jón Helgason. Opuscula 5: 1–97.
Tirosh, Yoav. 2014. “Víga-Njáll: A New Approach Toward Njáls saga.” Scandinavian Studies 86.2: 208–26. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/144/article/553841
—. 2019. “On the Receiving End: The Role of Scholarship, Memory, and Genre in Constructing Ljósvetninga saga.” Doctoral thesis, University of Iceland. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/1305
—. 2025. “The Storyworld/s of AM 162 c fol.: How Manuscripts Govern Icelandic Saga Worldbuilding.” In Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Old Norse‑Icelandic Literature. Edited by Rebecca Merkelbach, 221–24, Turnhout: Brepols. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.143717.
Wheatley, Edward. 2010. Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.915892
Zoëga, Geir T. 1961 [1910]. A Concise Dictionary of Icelandic. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Dearest
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
