The Early Icelandic Moral Economy According to the Major Poems of Egill Skallagrímsson

Abstract

A major issue with studies of morality in Iceland that concentrate on the period before the land's official conversion to Christianity is that they are almost entirely based on the analysis of sagas, in particular the Íslendingasögur.1 As valuable as that group of texts is for modern researchers’ knowledge of the Viking Age and medieval North, the Íslendingasögur were recorded by Christians many hundreds of years after the histories they relate, leaving the relationship between them and the realities of pre-conversion Iceland in question even after many years of debate.2 Moreover, sagas themselves rarely directly comment on the morality of actions,3 which forces researchers to infer moral valuations through actions’ structural, tonal, and thematic contextualization. Given that many of these works maintain multiple competing perspectives on their protagonists’ conduct, and that conclusions are frequently made based on comparisons across the saga corpora as a whole, a diffuse body of criticism has been the natural result.4 When scholars of morality do turn to another text, it is to the poem Hávamál, sections of which are commonly cited as among the oldest verses of the Poetic Edda.5 However, the dating and provenance of any part of Hávamál has not been ascertained with any sureness, and the poem is less concerned with moral action than a pragmatism often styled as wisdom.6To overcome the problems created by this shallow pool of materials, further sources must be added, above all those with a claim to being contemporary—even if they must be approached carefully. Even the most pristine-looking Old Norse text is “contaminated,” to borrow a term from Russell Poole,7 and that assessment must include the body of work that is my focus here, the poetry attributed to the pre-conversion skald Egill Skallagrímsson, principally his Arinbjarnarkviða, Hǫfuðlausn, and Sonatorrek. Concerns over their authenticity do exist (the specifics will be discussed below), and yet these poems offer a coherence of voice and philosophical leaning that, out of the corpus of early skaldic poems, makes them attractive for this case study. Joseph Harris describes Egill's Sonatorrek, a soulful lament for departed offspring, as “an amazingly fruitful source of that elusive thing, the pre-Christian mentality.”8 This assessment could be extended to many works credited to Egill, the poetry revealing an interiority to its putative composer that is at variance with the caricatured protagonist of sections of the prose of Egill's eponymous saga. While the verses are often conventional in their choice of imagery,9 from that standardized conceptual lexicon are built clearly defined and highly individual views of poetic accomplishment, the rights and wrongs of behavior, and how one person's action can impact a wider community. The poetry's commentary is not so ever-present as to make up by itself for the rareness of moral judgements in Old Norse literature, but by illuminating the poet's individual perspective on morality, I hope that future studies may build on this article more easily than would be possible with an investigation that sought to encompass Egill's entire society.My approach begins by isolating the key moral values Egill espouses in familiar spheres like interpersonal conflict and gift exchange: what does he perceive as socially mandated? Promoted or castigated? Following the data collection phase, I tease out some of the implications for Egill's worldview, how he believes individuals in society should relate to one another, and the kind of system(s) that, explicitly or implicitly, he discerns underpinning social order. Adopting the reasoning set out by Bernard Gert and Joshua Gert, I will use the term morality descriptively, which entails that it signifies “certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behaviour” (as opposed to a normative code that an onlooker might assume all rational individuals would hold to).10 Among its benefits, this is the starting point that most acknowledges my position as an external observer on Old Norse society.Influenced by comments imputed to Egill's thirteenth-century descendent Snorri Sturluson, skaldic poetry is often viewed as possessing greater reliability as a historical source than other Old Norse literary genres.11 Snorri assumed that a poem correctly recited would be passed on correctly; modern scholars might add that the elaborate rules governing skaldic poetry's composition should make texts more resistant to modification during transmission than prose or eddic poetry were. Nonetheless, some of Egill's poetry certainly was modified as it was handed down, whether in oral or manuscript form, and the events described therein might have been heavily transformed even in the process of becoming text (whether for artistic reasons or simply to flatter a protagonist or their social group).12Another concern is more pressing still. Not all skaldic poems are the products of the composers to whom they are ascribed,13 and this is true of some of Egill's output as well. For example, and for obvious reasons, the verses he supposedly wrote as a three-year-old are not normally accepted as genuine;14 a third juvenile lausavísa (Lausavísur, 1) is typically received as Egill's, largely on the basis of its greater simplicity.15 While this partitioning of authentic and inauthentic verses may be correct, the distinction demonstrates the extent to which the canon of Egill is partly the creation of later scholars and the manuscripts that accredit work to him.16 Various scholars have cast doubt on Egill's lausavísur—some, like Poole, going so far as to mistrust the whole corpus—on grounds ranging from linguistics to their subject matter and structures.17 Others are more open in their allotment of stanzas and half-stanzas to Egill, on the same bases and on that of recurrent features in his poetry,18 but, nevertheless, lausavísur could have been created to fit circulating narratives of Egill's life or the saga, Egill's resistance to Norwegian imperialism chiming with a dominant political theme of the age in which the saga is supposed to have been manufactured.19Of Arinbjarnarkviða, Hǫfuðlausn, and Sonatorrek, the major poems attributed to Egill that survive to any length and the chief focus here, critical opinion tends to be more generous, especially regarding Arinbjarnarkviða and Sonatorrek.20 We have not much external evidence of that poetry's earliness. However, besides manuscripts of Egils saga (our main witnesses for these poems), Snorri Sturluson's Edda and, in some cases, Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskáld's Third Grammatical Treatise do declare Egill's responsibility for these texts (or parts thereof). Adding to Snorri and Óláfr's belief in Egill's authorship, Skáldatal lists Egill among the poets of Eiríkr blóðøx and Arinbjǫrn Þórisson, the subjects of Hǫfuðlausn and Arinbjarnarkviða respectively, as well as of several lausavísur.21The paucity of medieval witnesses to the poems likewise leaves question marks over their authenticity. Hǫfuðlausn appears in two redactions of Egils saga, yet the relationship between the two is difficult. The Wolfenbüttel codex, Herzog August Bibliothek 9. 10. Aug. 4to often offers better readings of the poem than manuscripts in the other redaction (chiefly AM 162 A fol.), but its text is less complete.22Arinbjarnarkviða only survives in one redaction of Egils saga and once in a medieval manuscript (AM 132 fol., better known as Möðruvallabók), where it has been added, probably later, at the end of the saga. Even then, the poem becomes gradually illegible and may be incomplete (though compare Þorgeir Sigurðsson's work with multispectral images).23 Because so much of the page containing Arinbjarnarkviða is now difficult to read, scholars rely on later transcriptions and especially ÍB 169 4to, a postmedieval compendium of poetry and prose that also contains Sonatorrek.24Sonatorrek itself has at once the simplest and most problematic of manuscript histories, being only found in full (at least, to the fullest extent that we know it) in postmedieval manuscripts (AM 453 4to, AM 462 4to, and the anthology ÍB 169 4to). Even these witnesses, while coherent overall, are afflicted with lacunae, corruption, and passages that are readable but challenge comprehension.25 All three poems fit awkwardly into manuscripts of the saga, though this may count for their relative earliness, if not their authenticity—they could have been composed by another tenth-century poet and attributed to Egill in the tradition received by later literary authorities like Snorri Sturluson. Neither Sonatorrek nor Arinbjarnarkviða is recorded in a medieval document in their entirety at the place where they fit into the events of the saga, though the first stanza of Sonatorrek and a space for the first stanza of Arinbjarnarkviða have been provided in Möðruvallabók. As Poole notes, the most natural explanation for this arrangement is that the poems did not have to be written into the manuscripts as they were already well enough known by the saga's audiences (and not, for example, created for the saga).26 The prose and poetry dovetail poorly even then27—not as poorly, however, as Hǫfuðlausn does with both its prose and its historical context (Egils saga, chaps. 61–63).28According to the saga, Hǫfuðlausn was composed for Eiríkr blóðøx in York as a ransom for Egill's life, supposedly ending a long feud between the king and poet. Yet whereas the prose claims this occurred during the reign of Aðalsteinn in England, an Eiríkr did not take control of York until after Aðalsteinn's death.29 Moreover, Clare Downham has scrupulously marshaled evidence from across northern Europe to impugn the possibility of that Eiríkr being blóðøx.30 Eiríkr of York is identified with the nickname blóðøx in a manuscript of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle shortly postdating Eiríkr's probable reign, but nevertheless Downham's argument must be kept in mind.31 It may be a different Eiríkr that, according to Hǫfuðlausn's first stanza, Egill has come to visit, and that would make sense of how easily a single poem of flattery smooths over a relationship that has long been rancorous, according to the saga and some lausavísur, reaching its nadir with Egill's killing of Rǫgnvaldr, one of Eiríkr's sons.32Hǫfuðlausn does give the impression of a strained relationship between its poet and recipient if read with that background in mind, the poem's praise too vague to seem sincere and shading into the ironic.33 It is still not enough, though, to make the saga's account of the relationship between Egill and Eiríkr plausible in connection to the poem. Therefore, the poem's Eiríkr is not blóðøx and/or the circumstances reported in the saga and other poetry about their personal history are false. The claims Hǫfuðlausn makes are far less grand than those of the the prose, missing, for instance, the curse Gunnhildr places on Egill;34 in that context and given the contradictions with other poetry (Lausavísur, 24, for example, makes Egill's visit to York his own choice, which the prose does not), the saga's story should be much more in doubt than the poem's.35 History (and perhaps Egill) may have made claims about the poet's enmity with a king that did not match reality and a poem was enough to see him well received in York, even if its recipient was nicknamed blóðøx. Linguistic arguments against Hǫfuðlausn being a tenth-century composition, put forward by Jón Helgason in 1969, were largely refuted four years later by Dietrich Hofmann; Old English influence on the text would seem to position linguistics as an argument for rather than against it having been produced in England,36 and the most recent assessment of Egill's poetry, by Mikael Males, is very positive about the case for Egill's authorship of this poem, in part for reasons of historical circumstance.37 Several scholars have also pointed to similarities of theme and language that unite Hǫfuðlausn, Sonatorrek, and Arinbjarnarkviða as the products of a single poetic mind.38 If we are dealing with likelihoods and probabilities rather than certainties when we ascribe work to any poet in this era, there is enough material to make it plausible that Hǫfuðlausn was Egill's as much as Sonatorrek and Arinbjarnarkviða were.On that basis, I proceed with the following methodology: I examine chiefly Arinbjarnarkviða, Hǫfuðlausn, and Sonatorrek, the texts that are most likely to have been composed by Egill.To counter suspicions over the derivation of any individual piece, I supply as far-reaching a range of textual support from the Egill corpus as possible.The lausavísur are assessed on a case-by-case basis, with the least plausible avoided entirely and the rest largely present to corroborate the information of the longer poems.I am not aiming to establish definitively a corpus of poetic texts attributable to Egill; on that score, scholars are unlikely to ever reach a consensus. Instead, I am electing to work with a provisional set of texts and attempting to apply a close lens to that material while maintaining an awareness that it may have been composed or altered later by other poets and scribes. That appears to me a better proposition than dismissing any text credited to Egill and its potential to reveal new aspects of tenth-century Iceland. In doing so, I follow a long tradition of scholars analyzing these poems (including Hǫfuðlausn and the lausavísur) in relation to the adventures and perspectives of the tenth-century Egill Skallagrímsson.39Unlike any of the scholars of Old Norse poetry I know personally, the Egill of the poetry of Egils saga has experienced how it feels to kill someone. Few of us can be familiar with the level of messy, desperate violence described in Egill's most furious battle verses or with its psychological and emotional consequences, and yet, as Margaret Clunies Ross recognizes, Egill exhibits no regret for his actions.40 Bloody violence is described throughout Egill's extant works, from Aðalsteinsdrápa to (above all) Hǫfuðlausn without apologizing for glorifying it or partaking in it (e.g. Aðalsteinsdrápa, st. 1; Lausavísur, 9, 12, 18; Sonatorrek, st. 14; and much of Hǫfuðlausn). Egill does not seek to distance himself from violence nor does he seem horrified by it; brutality can be an expression and proof of masculinity and competence, a means of protection and revenge, creative and a source of sorrow, an array of reactions that implies that violence is not itself inherently positive or negative for the poet. It is rather usage that determines moral valuation. On the face of it, this should seem remarkable, given that real lives were ending or being impaired (though it is not very different from the indiscriminate but popular mayhem of, say, a Jack Reacher book or Quentin Tarantino film).Could an act be glorified or depicted positively while still being morally wrong in the opinion of the depicter? Egill does allow the negatives of battle to inhabit his poetry, expressing sorrow, for example, at the loss of those close to him, although rarely in his major poems (metaphorically in Sonatorrek, sts. 6 and 7, where death by drowning is conceived as violence to his family line; otherwise, e.g., Lausavísur, 10, 13).41 Equally, violence can be the means for achieving redress for offenses against Egill or his kin group (e.g., Sonatorrek, st. 8; Lausavísur, 21). In encomia for figures like Arinbjǫrn and Eiríkr, it is presented alongside acts that are more easily parsed as moral, such as gift giving (see below), although, because those acts are committed outside of Iceland and against largely anonymous individuals, they have no impact on Egill's own social sphere in Iceland and as such are unlikely to be regretted by the poet. Certainly, violence was a means for Egill to attain personal satisfaction, but such verses imply that it was not without moral valence for Egill. When directed outwards, and in the artificial reality of poetic contrivance, at least, it could be a moral good for Egill.The virtues of violence are most easily distinguished in poetry that takes a macroscopic scale, in which battle is an important means of maintaining authority and social stability. With its focus on kingship, Hǫfuðlausn makes for a fertile case study in this. Bloodletting is consistently linked with Eiríkr throughout the text and is the foundation of his reputation (sts. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14).42 Those acts, moreover, have been the source of Eiríkr's wealth and thereby his ability to dole out rewards to followers (particularly sts. 14, 16–18), propping up their commitment. In this way, the breaking of peace (a formulation used in st. 13) is paradoxically held up as a means of reaffirming social order, confirming a rigid network of relations with Eiríkr at its top. The poem's initial audience would presumably have been mainly composed of Eiríkr's retinue and thus have been open to such claims.The eighteenth stanza, as it stands in AM 162 A fol., is arguably Hǫfuðlausn at its most categorical about this connection between violence and social order. The stanza identifies Eiríkr through a progression of complementary images: 1)through his association with homicide and as the figure who organizes fólk (a term that can signify both “people” and “army,” a duality that hardly damages my argument) and, therefore, as responsible for maintaining social stability;432)in the act of dispersing financial rewards to his followers—again, a reflection of the proper functioning of society and a means of ensuring that functioning;443)and keeping his lands in a hornklofi, “horn-clutch,” another difficult to interpret term though connotations of tight control are inescapable (if possibly ironic, given that Eiríkr blóðøx's rule in Norway was short-lived).45The stanza ends with the bald statement “hann er næstr lofi” (he is most entitled to praise), a summing up that lays a heavy emphasis on the desirability of Eiríkr's nexus of violence and reward.Violence may, though, be at its most positive when applied in analogy for poetic production—not surprisingly, given Egill's profession, his habitual self-reflexiveness, and the rich Old Norse literary tradition of the mead of poetry, which incorporates grisly acts of murder into an etiology of poetic inspiration.46 It is hard to disagree with Clunies Ross's comment that “aggression and poetic creativity are linked in Egil's psyche,”47 although, despite many allusions to the mead story across Egill's work, specific references to the murders that occur within it are rare (perhaps only in Lausavísur, 15). Rather, the significance of bloodshed to composition extends beyond the mediating sphere of intoxication, and this is particularly clear from Egill's representation of Óðinnic activity, which ties violence to poetry, inspiration, and artistic production. Poetry, conceived of as a liquid, is in Óðinn's ownership (e.g., Arinbjarnarkviða, st. 13; Hǫfuðlausn, sts. 1, 19; Sonatorrek, st. 1), and this trope is further made explicit at the end of Sonatorrek, where the art form is the god's to grant (Sonatorrek, sts. 23–24). Battle, similarly, is an Óðinnic property for Egill: directly in Lausavísur, 10;48 its participants are Óðinn's forest (Hǫfuðlausn, st. 8); and he is the lord of spears and chooser of victors (Sonatorrek, st. 22). Lausavísur, 4, a formative stanza for Clunies Ross's discussion of aggression and poetic creation, offers up a duality that seems to confirm the entanglement of poetry, Óðinn, and warfare in Egill's mind, depicting as rain both combat (coming from an oddský, “cloud of the weapon-point”) and poetry (regn / . . . Háars þegna, “the rain of the retainers of Hárr [ = Óðinn], i.e. the liquid of poets”) and in lines of poetry that are syntactically intermingled.49 The doubling of rain imagery ties battle, poetry, and Óðinn together in conceptual consonance, intimating poetry as a curiously aggressive act and recognizing the extent to which Egill relies on and is inspired by violence. His poetry is dominated, not atypically for the work of a skald, by praise for acts of aggression. Much as the destruction of life is the tool through which the mead of poetry is created in mythology, it is a valuable and formative component of Egill's poetry.Egill's attitudes to vengeance and compensation warrant special consideration, given the sophistication of his perspective and self-presentation in Sonatorrek. Even if this poem's argument is not so straightforward as first appears, it is a striking moment when Egill affects revulsion for any “niflgóðr / niðja steypir” (darkness-pleased overthrower of kin) who “bróður hrør / við baugum selr” (sells their brother's corpse for rings) (st. 15). The tautology of using the action being critiqued—niðja steypir, “overthrower of kin”—as the person's descriptor underscores here the notoriety of that action, and its negativity is further heightened by the melodramatic niflgóðr, “darkness-pleased.” The verb selja, “to give, to hand over, to sell,” can have legal connotations or even undertones of sacrifice, but its combination here with baugar, “rings,” codes the behavior as a market transaction or, more precisely, a selling out, both of the kinsman in question and of principles.50 Other stanzas from Sonatorrek reinforce this impression and convey an urgency to achieving revenge for the murder of kinsmen (sts. 8–9, 19). A death for a death, violence for violence. Egill adopts this posture so thoroughly for the majority of the poem that even an ennobling afterlife for his son—the consummation of motifs of creation and revivification related to trees and wood developed over the course of the poem—is not sufficient payback for the end of that son's life (sts. 21–22).51 It does not plug the “hlið, / . . . ófult / ok opit . . . / skarð” (wide gap . . . space unfilled and open) (st. 6), left by a son's passing.Stanza 17 of Sonatorrek considers the possibility that such a rupture may be closed up by begetting another son. However, Egill distances himself from this proposition from the first words of the stanza, introducing it with the phrase “þat's ok mælt, / at” (it is also said that) to give ownership of the idea over to the amorphous entity that is received opinion. Indeed, Egill carefully separates his own evaluation of correct behavior from that of the rest of society (sts. 9, 12, 15, 18), although this could in part reflect how unsupported he feels in periods of bereavement (cf. the backing he feels he did receive from now-departed family members in sts. 12–14). For Egill, vengeance is a matter of socially correct conduct, and the tone of these verses, in particular stanza 15’s complaint about anyone who would sell out a sibling, implies that he perceives himself, rightly or wrongly, to be isolated in his moral standards (Sonatorrek, st. 15, partially quoted above). It is tough to get away here from a sense of Egill as a curmudgeon, the early Icelandic equivalent of an old griper, creaking back and forward in a rocking chair while complaining that things are not the way they used to be. People just are not killing each other enough anymore.Yet, to the poet's credit, he is more self-conscious than is first apparent. Among the most interesting aspects of Sonatorrek is its volte-face, which complicates the ostensible emotional and intellectual simplicity of Egill's sentiments on revenge and ultimately reveals the poem as a whole to be an adopted posture. Although Egill spends the bulk of the poem grumbling about the intervention of supernatural forces in his family's life—or, conversely, a lack of intervention by Óðinn—he abruptly forgives Óðinn in the twenty-third of the surviving twenty-five stanzas. Noting that it is from his absentee guardian that he receives his gift of poetry, Egill decides that Óðinn has “mér of fengnar / bǫlva bœtr, / es et betra telk” (gotten me compensation for my disasters, when I count the better).52 While ambiguous, the notion of “counting the better” seems to me a confession: Óðinn has not taken additional action to repair their relationship but rather Egill has made a choice and, placing his finger on the scales, weighed the compensation Óðinn had supposedly already given him, that gift of poetry, more heavily than before.Egill's acceptance of compensation rather than revenge is a curious shift at the climax of a poem in which he has previously been so unequivocal in his attitudes. Is he indulging in self-loathing? Hypocrisy? Simply recognizing poetry as a superior—purer, perhaps—form of compensation? The last idea has the most to recommend it. In stanza 24, poetry is an “íþrótt . . . / vammi firða” (art without blemish) that seems to offer poets the unusual faculty of seeing through falsehood (similarly, Arinbjarnarkviða, st. 2).53 The evolving imagery of wood's revivification in Sonatorrek has recently culminated in the spiritual and poetic raising up of his son, “upp of hóf / í Goðheim . . . / ættar ask” (an ash tree of the ancestors lifted up into God-land) (st. 21). Certainly a measure of celebration for poetry's worth is intended in the conclusion of the poem. Yet Sonatorrek is concerned above all with the process by which Egill comes to self-awareness and works through his grief (in which poetry plays a part). His children's deaths and the value of poetry are subplots, the tree imagery not appearing between stanzas 5 and 21 and contemplation of poetry's purity being scarcer still. Moreover, the proposed solution ignores the deliberateness with which Egill reevaluates the compensation offered by Óðinn in stanza 23, which twists the estimation of poetry's purity in the following stanza into an act of self-justification.Instead, the answer may lie in the poem's twenty-fifth and final stanza (or at least the last that is extant and which makes most sense in that position). Egill follows the preceding stanzas’ tolerance for poetry as compensation by emphasizing his advancing years, opening the stanza “nú erum torvelt” (now it is difficult for me) and going on, quite bluntly, to welcome death: “glaðr / góðum vilja / ok ó-hryggr” (cheerful, with good disposition and unperturbed) (he previously complains about old age in sts. 4 and 9). Egill builds consciousness of his weakness into a statement of strength, an auto-elevation, by vocalizing his growing awareness of the falseness of the dignity his poetic self has cultivated. Egill's disgust in earlier stanzas of Sonatorrek at compensation is in keeping with his consistent endorsement of violence and related masculine-coded qualities across his poetry, and must to an extent reflect his prevailing opinion. Yet that attitude in Sonatorrek is also partly poetic stance, overdeveloped so that it can be undercut at the poem's climax. The agency he displays in reevaluating Óðinn's gift of poetry, that finger on the scales, is actually an admission of his lack of agency in transactions with his divine patron. The god acts and Egill can only approve of that or not. The volte-face in stanza 23 is an epiphany; stanza 25 describes the poet coming to terms with his new self-knowledge. He remains isolated from society but having arrived at a more generous assessment of those with greater moral flexibility and at a realization that his application of his moral standards was flawed and that his moral theorizing does not always suffice when it meets reality. Harris analyzes these stanzas and finds a shameful exchange,54 yet for me that shame is transformed by Egill's depiction of his own awakening, culminating in the true dignity of Sonatorrek's final stanza.Alongside violence, gift-giving stands out in Egill's work as a morally inflected behavior. A recurrent target of accolades for generosity is Egill's friend Arinbjǫrn (e.g., Arinbjarnarkviða, sts. 10, 16–18, 20; Lausavísur, 34). Stanza 22 of the poem dedicated to him, Arinbjarnarkviða, offers a particularly clear example of how lauded this quality is and how it functions as a marker of social standing, contributing a sustained depiction of “fégrimmr” (ferocity to wealth), of a “hoddvegandi” (hoard-slayer), and “sǫkunautr / Sónar hvinna” (enemy of the pilferers of Són [ = Óðinn and Baugi, with the latter standing for baugr, “ring”]).55 By contrast, Egill seems to strain to assign the virtue of gift-giving to Eiríkr blóðøx but can only go so far; it is offered on several occasions in Hǫfuðlausn but Egill rarely dwells on it (it appears in sts. 14, 16, 17, 18 but is only sustained in st. 17), instead quickly reverting to more savage themes.Of course, in attributing gift-giving to anyone at all, Egill is using a universal poetic trope; he did not invent kennings related to the sharing out of hoards and is quite typical for his society in noting the worth of a gift-giver.56 More idiosyncratic is the impression from this poetry that generosity was a trait that was expected to be ascribed to Eiríkr, no matter how difficult it was (notwithstanding that our sense of Egill struggling to praise Eiríkr is guided by the king's disparagement in other poetry and Egils saga). Lausavísur, 41 could provide a useful guide to that reading of Hǫfuðlausn: it seems that Egill supposed there to be at least two parts to the makeup of a respectable man.57 Reportedly composed following the death of Arinbjǫrn (Egils saga, chap. 80) and devised as a lament for the passing of a golden age, the lausavísa lauds “þingbirtingar Ingva” (the bright ones of the assembly of Ingvi [i.e. warriors]) and those who distribute “máreitar dag” (the day of the seagull-path [i.e. gold]), though its second half is more precise, taking as the subject of its mourning those generous people who might reward Egill for his poetry. Defining a respectable person in these terms (and in a possible eulogy for his dead friend), Egill may as well be setting out a manifesto