Kin-Work and King Harald's Saga: A Feminist Analysis

Genealogical dynamics are open, interpretive, and defined, as in Bergljot's case, by both the work and the memory of women. A relatively straightforward example of this is Snorri's account of Hall Kodran's-Killer (p.127). Thormod Eindridason, chancing to overhear this name in casual conversation, takes off immediately, without reflection, to murder the man named. Kodran, his mother's cousin, had been killed by Hall only a year after Thormod himself was born. Yet the wound left by Hall's infraction, nursed these years by Thormod's maternal line, had evidently been passed to Thormod by his mother Jorunn (or perhaps by another member of her line) to the extent that the opportunity for vengeance was baldly recognized.

Despite the difficulty involved in eliciting the role of women in politics from King Harald's Saga, one can clearly make out traces of kin work in the patterns of confrontation. Political breaks tend to occur along the front of female ties. King Harald and King Svein Ulfsson of Denmark, for instance, broke when Harald's ties to Magnus through his mother Queen Asta interfered with his ties to Svein through wife Elizabeth (p.65). Harald broke as well with his niece's father-in-law Einar Paunch-Shaker and husband Eindridi (p.92). Along yet another front, Harald had poor relations with his niece Bergljiot's husband Finn Arneson, who also happens to be the uncle of Harald's mistress Thora (p.102). All of this is not to say that political strife necessarily followed marriage relations, for we can see that Harald asserted his friendship with Ulf Ospaksson by giving him Thora's sister Jorunn in marriage (p.88). What I am suggesting, rather, is that power relationships were being negotiated on several different levels. Because generosity (and by implication, power and prestige) is at once a central virtue and an intrinsic characteristic of domestic hospitality, its expression occurs simultaneously across gender boundaries. The same is true for its transgressions. While Snorri Sturluson seems rarely to make these explicit, the strategic juxtaposition of relationship and situation makes a point in itself - that of perceived relevance. As the saga begins, "Harald Sigurdsson was a half-brother of King Olaf the Saint; they had the same mother" (p.45).

Finally, women appear repeatedly as primary symbolic figures in their association with the breakdown of political relationships. Harold's daughter Maria, engaged to Eystein Orri, was so closely identified with Harold's political power that she "died suddenly on the very day and

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4