<i>Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross Randi Eldevik Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross. Edited by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007. Pp. xiv + 456; 6 illustrations. $116. This collection of essays by twenty scholars active in Old Norse studies quickly announces its ambition to be something more coherent and organized than the random mélange one ordinarily expects a Festschrift to be. Divided thematically into sections ("Theoretical Frameworks for Understanding Old Norse Literature"; "Old Norse Myth and Society"; "Oral Traditions in Performance and Text"; "Vernacular and Latin Theories of Language"; "Prolonged Traditions") and commencing with an introduction that provides a rationale for the choice of topics and for the significance of "Learning and Understanding" as the overall theme that links the essays together, this book clearly is the consequence of considerable thought and attention from its editors. It is a pity that, having gone as far as they did, the editors' efforts did not extend just a bit further. One of the most striking features of this collection is the frequency with which writers talk past one another. By that I do not mean "disagree with one another," for disagreeing implies a modicum of engagement with another scholar's ideas, if only to dispute them. What I mean is that quite a few of the contributors to this volume often seem totally oblivious to what other contributors have written-either works that would be helpful in clinching a particular argument, or works that contradict it and therefore must be refuted. The editors of this collection, with their comprehensive grasp of what the collection contains, could easily have nudged certain contributors in the right direction by pointing out writings of other contributors that needed be taken into account if the essays by the negligent contributors were to be watertight. For example, in one of this book's outstanding essays, "Structuralist Approaches to Saga Literature," Lars Lönnroth has occasion to refer to an earlier work of his own, the illuminating Njáls saga: A Critical Introduction, with which anybody working in Old Norse studies should be familiar. Mats Malm's contribution to the "Vernacular and Latin" section of the Festschrift, a rather weak essay called "The Notion of Effeminate Language in Old Norse Literature," would have been greatly enriched and rectified by consulting the discussion of elaborate descriptive language (which is what Malm means by "effeminate language") in Lönnroth's book, but Malm and/or the editors evidently overlooked it. A comparable situation involves two essays found side by side in the "Oral Traditions" section, Edith Marold's meager and disappointing "Mansǫngr-a Phantom Genre?" and the far superior "The Art of Poetry and the Sagas of Icelanders" by Gudrún Nordal. Nordal's essay frequently mentions the poetry found in Grettis saga, yet Marold never mentions Grettis saga in the part of her essay that is concerned with obscene poetry, which is one of the possible meanings of mansǫngr. [End Page 267] Marold claims that verses of this kind existed orally but were legally suppressed and thus cannot be found in any extant Old Norse texts; but the salacious verses occasioned by the encounter between the lusty wench and the saga's protagonist Grettir certainly seem to fill the bill. If for some reason these verses do not qualify as mansǫngr, it would be nice to have an explanation of why. Likewise, Vésteinn Ólason's relatively weak essay "The Icelandic Saga as a Kind of Literature with Special Reference to its Representation of Reality" would have benefited greatly from consultation of works by the two scholars whose contributions immediately follow his in the "Theoretical Frameworks" section of the Festschrift. These two are Lars Lönnroth, whose essay has already been mentioned, and Torfi Tulinius, who contributed an essay on Eyrbyggja saga that shows, by means of a structural analysis, the enduring value and usefulness of Lévi-Strauss's approach. Mimesis and historical change, not structuralism, are the issues taken up by Vésteinn Ólason-specifically, the question of...