Hon stóð ok starði: Vision, Love, and Gender in Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu

Abstract

The Icelandic sagas are famous for their female characters: they are often memorable, vividly drawn, with an independence and individuality unusual among women in medieval literature. (1) They might express their opinions forthrightly, run their own farms, even engage in batde. Helga infagra (the fair), the romantic interest of Gunnlaugr in Gunnlaugs ormstungu, appears to be the opposite of this. She known for beauty, not wits or deeds; she does not take up a sword or urge others to do so. Though the story of Gunnlaugr and Helga's star-crossed love well known and popular, Helga herself tends to be quickly passed over in scholarship. Compared to characters such as Gudrun Osvifrsdottir of Laxdl she has only a single line of dialogue in the entire saga. Her main action looking at unattainable love. Critical reception has focused on this aspect of character. Theodore M. Andersson dismisses as sad-eyed and futile (1967, 129), Vesteinn Olason calls completely (1983,16), and Bjorn Magnusson Olsen states that she uden Initiativ, en Bold i Skaebnens Haand (1911, 32) [without initiative, a ball in the hands of fate]. Furthering Olsen's opinion, Laurence de Looze sees Helga as virtually without subjectivity: she serves largely as an excuse for composing poetry and is viewed almost as an artistic object by those in the saga; in fact, our last glimpse of of a Helga translated into poetry: Porkell's verse on death (1986, 491-3). Even Else Mundal, who perhaps the most generous of critics, writes that ikkje i alle islendingesoger er kvinnene like passive som Helga i Gunnlaugs saga (1980, 18) [nowhere in all the sagas of Icelanders are the women as passive as Helga in Gunnlaugs saga]. For some scholars, such as Andersson, this characterization due to an authorial inability to create three-dimensional characters, or three-dimensional female characters. For others, Helga's complete lack of agency due to influence from continental romances: she more closely kin to Isond than to Hallgerdr (Andersson 1967, 129). (2) Though the primary assessment of Helga's character one of passivity--even to the point of being boring--it not the sole attitude toward her. Several scholars have noted that the in fact organized around her: it opens with the lineage of family, followed by a dream that father Lorsteinn has before birth that pre-figures the events of life and the saga. (3) The story then takes up with Gunnlaugr and his romantic rival Hrafn, but once they are killed, the returns to Helga and ends with death. Vesteinn writes that Helga exceptionally human and memorable in the few scenes which give us a close-up of her (Vesteinn Olason 1983, 17), an assessment with which Mundal agrees. Furthermore, she makes a case for Helga's importance to the saga. She follows Robert Cook's assessment of Gunnlaugr as deeply flawed, but argues that he becomes a hero in Helga's eyes: det er hennar kjaerleik og hennar sorg som har gjort Gunnlaugr til ein av dei mest popultere heltar i den norrone sagalitteraturen (Mundal 1980, 27) [it love and sorrow which have made Gunnlaugr one of the most popular heroes in Old Norse literature]. (4) Daniel Savborg goes even further, arguing that Helga's love for Gunnlaugr in fact the main theme of the (Savborg 2007, 387-8). What has also on occasion received comment are moments of looking at Gunnlaugr (or, in one instance, at the cloak that he gave her) at multiple points in the saga. Most notable Preben Meulengracht Sorensen's argument that Helga's straying gaze the driving force behind the saga's action. For him, vision a tool that Helga employs to rectify the undesirable situation in which she finds herself (Meulengracht Sorensen 1988, 257-8). …