Women and Subversion in Eddic Heroic Poetry
Eddic heroic poetry is known for its striking women: many are formidable, scheming, disobedient, and uncompromising female characters who frequently manage to create and succeed in their own agendas rather than those thrust on them by men. Brynhildr is the primary example, and Guðrún’s character develops in a subversive direction in the latter part of her life. Characters who have received less attention, such as Oddrún and Borgný of Oddrúnargrátr, and especially Sváva of the Helgi poems, deviate in other ways, pursuing covert premarital sexual relationships. Principally, women use language rather than actions to carve out their roles and to subvert gender norms; speech acts (as defined by J. L. Austin and developed by John Searle and others) such as oaths, laments, prophecies, and incitements, uttered by women and mainly directed at men—although sometimes seen as literary devices—are, as I will argue, used to claim female subjectivity and autonomy. Previous criticism has illuminated whetting (i.e., incitement) and lament, the traditional speech acts available to women in Eddic and saga literature, and their place in the Germanic male honor system.1 Brynhildr, typically viewed in terms of whetting, is the archetypal “speaker,” and her identity is constructed through her speech throughout the Edda. Less attention has been devoted to oath-taking, a form of speech usually associated with male-coded activities and identities, and curses, which grant women agency to some extent. Rather than subscribing to a notion of female solidarity, women often quarrel about, even police, appropriate female conduct and accuse each other of inappropriate behavior. In her laments, Guðrún more subtly calls attention to the grief her family have caused her, and her failure to act or speak after Sigurðr’s death as well as her attempts to resist the machinations of her deceitful family signal her later deviance. Thus, speech acts appear in a subversive light in the poems, enabling women to shirk and critique the traditional, passive roles they are expected to fulfill.
The poems of the Edda are likely to have been composed at different times and in different contexts for varying audiences, and by poets who emphasized different aspects of the Völsung narrative, perhaps twisting them to suit their aims. These poems were then preserved orally over generations before they were recorded in the Codex Regius. I do not therefore work from the idea of a reconstructed ur-text, a unified representation of the characters, or “original” vs. “contaminated” or “late” versions of the narrative. All that can be said for certain is that there was a thirteenth-century audience in Iceland for which the Codex Regius was compiled and who was the reception group for the poems.2 In what follows, female characters will be examined as figures representing appropriate and subversive behavior in a thirteenth-century Icelandic context: women’s words are seen as an outlet for social critique with the potential to subvert the dominant order and express anxieties about female power. This analysis will thus illuminate the extent and limits of female subversion in speech and action in Eddic heroic poetry, often by reading “against the grain” to reveal the gender roles the poets portray as normative.3
Brynhildr Buðladóttir can be characterized as primarily a speaker in Eddic poetry. Her identity is constructed by her utterances rather than by her actions, from her first appearance in Sigrdrífumál where, as Sigrdrífa, she teaches the young Sigurðr valuable practical knowledge as well as gnomic advice, until her last defence in Helreið Brynhildar. In addition to her spatial freedom away from the royal halls and bowers in which other women appear, and her independence of action during her early life as a valkyrie, what marks Brynhildr as subversive is her deliberate and (self-)conscious use of language, often intended by her to function as speech acts. She takes oaths that she makes every effort to fulfill, as well as holding others to their word, reproaching and blaming them with ferocity when, in her view, they have gone back on their promises. Furthermore, she utters a number of prophecies, especially so in Sigurðarkviða in skamma’s many strophes devoted to her prediction of future events, and in Völsunga saga (ed. Finch), where Brynhildr’s first social interaction with Guðrún sees her as a harbinger of doom, prophecying about Guðrún’s misfortunes.
Many women in the Edda are marked by their refusal to speak and act as they ought, at least in the eyes of some of the poems’ male characters, and thus probably the hegemonic thirteenth-century reading position. This transgression can appear in both excessive and inappropriate verbosity, and the pronouncement and performance of speech acts, such as vows, curses, and even prophecies, which threaten to disrupt the status quo. This type of heightened speech functions as an “event” or act according to J. L. Austin’s definition: words that are not a statement, true or false, or the pronouncement of an opinion, but instead, they transform a state of being such as a person’s status or the relationship between parties. A verbal utterance is thereby an act. Austin’s taxonomy of speech acts further categorizes the oath as “commissive,” meaning that it commits the speaker to what he or she promises to do in the oath (156–157). As John R. Searle outlines, there is a difference between the utterances “I intend to do X,” on the one hand, and “I swear to do X” on the other; the latter example implies the existence of a so-called “illocutionary force” behind the utterance that binds the speaker to it while the former only expresses someone’s plan without any obligation.4 Certain conditions need to be fulfilled for the speech act to be “felicitous.”5 First, speakers must be qualified to perform the speech act (e.g., by virtue of their legitimate authority or social status), and second, the speech act must have been heard and understood by someone; if these conditions are not fulfilled, it may be considered void (Austin 22). This understanding underpins Elaine Tennant’s definition of the performative as a culturally conditioned act that is understood as such if it follows conventions to a sufficient extent for members of the community to recognize it (273–316). In the next section, I will contextualize Brynhildr’s utterances within speech act theory and examine their relationship with the gender and honor systems at work in the world depicted in the Edda.
Eddic poems consistently portray vows as most important to Brynhildr, not only other people’s, but also her own, hence her recurrent references to them (e.g., in Skamma 39; Helreið st. 5; Völsunga saga ch. 31). Peter Habbe defines an oath as “speech which possesses the quality of a ritual act,” an utterance (often performed in conjunction with certain physical actions and props, such as hand gestures or relics) understood as a serious undertaking.6 In Old Norse sources, oaths appear in many contexts, both public and private, establishing reciprocal bonds between men, in the hall at feasts, and in assemblies and legal proceedings, where an oath solemnly sworn by a party to a case has evidentiary weight (Páll Sigurðsson 8). Although oaths still have gravitas in modern Western culture, they were particularly important in a preliterate culture such as medieval Iceland, where written legal documents such as tracts and charters, which to some extent supplanted the need for witnesses, were not yet in widespread use. Oaths are inextricably bound up with honor, and although oath-takers appeal to their god(s) as witness, Habbe argues that the fear of God was not what drove people to keep their oaths in the society depicted in the Íslendingasögur, but rather the threat of losing personal honor. Thus, oaths entail socio-political as well as religious and legal dimensions (2005, 157).7 Oaths can be regarded as a commitment with social validity: communities demand that their members fulfill their oaths in order to prevent social disintegration. Thus, oaths are not to be undertaken lightly, for they imply a sacred and solemn duty to oneself and one’s honor, the community, and, in cases where they involve a bond with the recipient, another person.
When oaths are performed by male characters in the Edda, such as Sigurðr and the Gjúkungs, the context is relatively straightforward and conventional: in this instance, the oath-takers become sworn-brothers who vow allegiance to each other.8 Oaths between men can also be undertaken with the aim to prevent feud, as we can see from Dagr’s oath of allegiance to the Völsungs after the battle against the sons of Granmar (HH II prose after st. 18) or Atli’s similar oath to Gunnarr (Atlakviða st. 30); significantly, neither of these oaths hold. The full account of Sigurðr’s oath-taking with the Gjúkungs—briefly alluded to in Skamma 1—was presumably narrated in the lost poems of the “great lacuna” (the gathering physically lost from the manuscript); Völsunga saga relates how Sigurðr was received into the Gjúkung clan at the urging of Grímhildr (Larrington 2011, 178). These oaths, which the raven in Brot st. 5 predicts will be the destruction of the Gjúkungs, are broken when Högni and Gunnarr plot Sigurðr’s murder (even though in some versions they do not carry it out themselves). Thus, in Brot sts. 16–17, Brynhildr reproaches the Gjúkungs for breaking their oaths with Sigurðr and predicts their consequent downfall: “Svá mun öll yðor ætt Niflunga / afli gengin—eroð eiðrofa!” [so from all of you of the Niflung line / your strength will pass away: you are oath-breakers].9
Following the heroic ethical code is the foremost social imperative in this culture. Yet, despite the gravity of oaths as a central tenet in the maintenance of personal honor, as a speech act they must yield to another threat to men’s honor: Brynhildr’s whetting (cf. Brot st. 3; Skamma sts. 10–11) and its subtext, the accusation of unmanliness.10 The Norse tradition (represented in Skamma st. 20; Gkv II st. 7) tries to circumvent this result by employing Guttormr as the instrument of Gunnarr and Högni—since he was not party to the oath-taking ceremony between the Gjúkungs and Sigurðr—but his brothers are considered accessory to murder even if they did not technically take part in the killing.11 Gunnarr’s reaction to Brynhildr’s accusations of oath-breaking—pleading with her and attempting to bribe her with riches, so as to calm her down and prevent her immediately from committing suicide (Völsunga saga ch. 29)—is opposite to that of Dagr in a similar situation vis-à-vis Helgi in HH II st. 34. Sigrún’s wrath at her brother’s murder of Helgi, and her curses, shock Dagr, not because he is embarrassed by his oath-breaking, but he is aghast that Sigrún would respond to it so violently and dare to reproach her brother for his arguably immoral actions. Helgi summarily dismisses Sigrún’s curses and accusations by calling her insane (st. 34). Skamma also shows Gunnarr deflecting the blame for Sigurðr’s murder onto Brynhildr, branding her heiptgjörn “eager for revenge” and saying she deserves to see her brother executed before her eyes (sts. 31–32).12 Two different views toward oath-buttressed obligation are expressed in these poems: when faced with choosing between the two, male characters privilege the demand for avenging one’s kinsman and maintaining untainted masculinity over keeping oaths to one’s sworn-brothers, whereas the women place greater emphasis on the latter, although Gunnarr’s flustered attempts to silence Brynhildr seem to be a tacit acknowledgment of his betrayal of Sigurðr and the community at large. These poems underscore the difficulty of upholding oaths when they are in tension with other bonds, so their failure is a result of their operation within a complex network of competing social and familial ties and obligations (Andersson 72; Quinn 2012a).
Brynhildr’s own oaths vis-à-vis Sigurðr are a more complex matter. First, two distinct Eddic traditions of the betrothal are formed between Brynhildr and Sigurðr (Andersson 28–34, 47–49; Quinn 2012b). One version of the Völsung narrative assumes that Brynhildr and Sigurðr were betrothed prior to his arrival at the court of the Gjúkungs, when they first met on the mountain (if Brynhildr is to be identified with Sigrdrífa) and then that they later repeated these vows to one another when Sigurðr next sought Brynhildr out at her brother-in-law Heimir’s abode.13 The lacuna in the Codex Regius prevents us from knowing exactly what course of events Eddic material would have preserved, but Völsunga saga ch. 22 relates the following when Sigurðr has received Sigrdrífa’s wisdom on the mountain:
Sigurðr mælti, “Engi finnsk þér vitrari maðr, ok þess sver ek at
þik skal ek eiga, ok þú ert við mitt œði.”
Hon svarar, “Þik vil ek helzt eiga, þótt ek kjósa um alla menn.” Ok
þetta bundu þau eiðum með sér. (ed. Finch 40)
[Sigurðr said: “No one is wiser than you and I swear that I will marry you and you are a good match to my nature.” She replies: “I would most want to marry you even if I could choose from all other men.” And they made a commitment to one other with oaths.]
In the absence of Eddic evidence, this passage suggests that, at least according to the tradition to which the author-compiler of Völsunga saga had access—or the one that he chose to follow—the couple each swore an oath to the other on the mountain in the tradition of a verba de futuro formula, supported by the alliterative quality of eiga and œði in Sigurðr’s speech.14 These oaths are alluded to later on by Brynhildr in conversations with Heimir (Völsunga saga ch. 29) and Sigurðr (ch. 31), and both she and Guðrún refer to Sigurðr as Brynhildr’s frumverr “first lover” (chs. 27–28). Völsunga saga ch. 25, set in Heimir’s court, then explicitly states that the pair exchanged oaths:
Sigurðr svarar … “þess sver ek við guðin at ek skal þik eiga eða enga konu ella.”
Hon mælti slíkt. Sigurðr þakkar henni þessi ummæli ok gaf henni gullhring, ok svörðu nú eiða af nýju. (ed. Finch 43–44)
[Sigurðr replies: … “I swear by the gods that I shall marry you or else no other woman”. She spoke to the same effect. Sigurðr thanks her for this speech and gave her a gold ring. And then they swore oaths again.]
Despite these exchanges between Sigurðr and Brynhildr, Sigurðr is subsequently betrothed to Guðrún (according to Völsunga saga ch. 24, because of the drink of forgetfulness administered by Grímhildr), and he then woos Brynhildr, in disguise, on behalf of Gunnarr, placing a sword between them for the three nights they sleep together on the mountain.15 This deception and betrayal, discovered too late by Brynhildr, is what ultimately leads to her demand for Sigurðr to be killed.
It is clear that a betrothal—an exchange of mutual oaths—existed between the two, but there is the additional question of Brynhildr’s independent oath sworn to herself. In Skamma st. 6, Brynhildr declares that she will marry Sigurðr or else die: “Hafa scal ec Sigurð—eða þó svelti!—/ mög frumungan, mér á armi” [I will have Sigurd—or I shall die—/ that young man I’ll have in my arms], an utterance that may not appear to be an oath in context. However, it seems retrospectively clear from her use of the verb hétumk [I vowed] in Skamma st. 39, “Þeim hétomc þá / er með gulli sat á Grana bógom” [To him I’d betrothed myself / when he sat on Grani’s back with his gold], that she regards herself as having uttered a valid oath, and her commitment to herself and her honor are the driving force behind her demand that Sigurðr be killed.16 The power of these words is hinted at by the poem when Brynhildr states that she will regret them in the future, although in the same breath she claims that their result is inevitable, a fate decreed by the norns (Skamma st. 7).
Discussing the goddess Frigg’s obtaining of the oaths after Baldr’s death, John Lindow notes that it is extremely rare for women to be involved in oath-taking whether in private or in ritual (49). Brynhildr’s oaths, as a defining and consistent feature of her characterization in the Edda, open up the question of women’s eligibility to swear oaths, whether alone or with another person. In which circumstances, if any, could women swear oaths with legal and/or social efficacy in the eyes of the medieval Icelandic audience, and within the constructed reality of Old Norse literature? If Brynhildr’s oaths transgress her female role, then could they still be seen as valid, due to her exceptional nature as a former valkyrie, or is she doing the impossible: claiming a masculine subject position and thus subverting, even abandoning, her gender role? Keeping in mind the condition that a valid oath needs to be heard and culturally accepted within the constructed world of the narrative (see above), can she legitimately accuse the Gjúkungs of making her eiðrofa “oath-torn” if she was never eligible to swear this type of oath in the first place?
There are few examples of other female characters uttering oaths in Old Norse sources, whether literary or historical, especially in contrast with the plethora of male-performed oaths.17 Snorri Sturluson mentions the goddess Vár in his list of twelve female deities in his prose Edda, noting that she listens to people’s oaths (ed. Faulkes ch. 35). Apart from Þrymskviða, his likely source, little more is known of Vár; she is unattested elsewhere, and there are no stories about her so she may be invented by Snorri from the abstract noun várar, denoting private agreements between men and women.18 It is noteworthy that she is the goddess of marriage vows, denoting a connection with, perhaps personification of, fidelity in marriage, whether in Snorri’s mind or real pagan belief. According to medieval Icelandic law codes, however, women did not swear an oath at their weddings, which was an exchange between father and groom.19 In the scarce examples from the saga corpus where women do perform oaths, they predominantly relate to a woman’s relationship to her husband or lover. The most distinctive female-coded oath is when the woman must prove her fidelity (reminiscent of Vár’s role); this ordeal ceremony normally has a religious context, in that God adjudges the truth by preventing the oath-taker from suffering serious burning.20 Another occurrence appears in Oddrúnargrátr st. 33 where Oddrún, Brynhildr’s sister, is said to have vowed always to give aid to royal families; again, a woman’s duty to others is privileged over her own self-determination, and in Atlamál st. 81, Guðrún lies awake at night following the death of her brothers, vowing to punish Atli: “Svaf ec miöc sialdan, síðans þeir fello, / hét ec þér hörðo, hefi ec þic nú mintan” [I’ve hardly slept since they died, / I promised you a grim reward, now I’m reminding you of it]. She takes revenge by killing her own children by Atli. In Helreið st. 6, Brynhildr states that at the age of twelve, she vowed to bestow victory in battle on the young warrior Auðo bróðir [the brother of Auða] fighting against Hjálm-Gunnarr; thus Sigurðr is not the first man to be the object of Brynhildr’s oaths. However, this battle-related oath is likely socially sanctioned since Brynhildr is performing her duty as a valkyrie.
Regardless of these rare occurrences of women performing oaths, the central issue at stake is that Brynhildr’s oath to marry only the man who knows no fear seems to correspond to none of the above examples but rather a male-coded speech act, the heitstrenging [solemn vow], which may not have been available to women. It is possible that such an oath is understood to be open to valkyries, as they are supernatural beings that do not submit to human laws, but marriage and a valkyrie life-style seem to be mutually exclusive (Quinn 2012a). In Sigrdrífumál, Óðinn’s punishment for Sigrdrífa going against his wishes is that she would never have another victory in battle and she must be married; Sigrdrífa counter-vows that she will only marry the man who knew no fear: “ec strengðac heit þar í mót at giptaz ongum þeim manni, er hrœðaz kynni” [I vowed in return never to marry any man who knew fear] (prose before st. 5). The irate Brynhildr refers to this oath in her conversations after the river quarrel, first to Gunnarr in Völsunga saga ch. 31:
ek hétumsk þeim er riði hestinum Grana með Fáfnis arfi ok riði minn vafrloga ok dræpi þá menn er ek kvað á. Nú treystisk engi at ríða nema Sigurðr einn. … Og þess strengða ek heit heima að feðr míns, at ek munda þeim einum unna, er ágæztr væri alinn, en þat er Sigurðr. (ed. Finch 53)
[I vowed to marry the man who would ride the horse Grani with Fáfnir’s inheritance, and who would ride through the leaping flames and kill those men I named. Now no one dared ride except Sigurðr alone. … And I swore the oath at my father’s home that I would love only the most outstanding man, who is Sigurðr.]
and then to Sigurðr: “Ek vann eið at eiga þann mann er riði minn vafrloga, en þann eið vilda ek halda eða deyja ella” [I swore an oath to marry the man who rode through my leaping flames, and I would keep that oath or else die] (ed. Finch 56).21
The illocutionary force of Sigrdrífa/Brynhildr’s vow is not a reciprocal pledge to marry made to another person (cf. verba de futuro) or to follow certain duties (as in Oddrún’s case), but rather her promise to herself regarding a future act. It is a solemn pledge she is portrayed as considering binding and irrevocable. The female performance of such an oath is as far as I know unparalleled in the Old Norse corpus, suggesting that it was not considered an appropriate female speech act. Support of this view appears in Hrólfs saga kraka ch. 17, where Yrsa pledges never to be loyal to King Aðils, and to try to hurt his men, in return for his betrayal of her husband Helgi. Aðils “bað hana at heitast ekki við sik né berserki sína—‘því at þat skal þér eigi duga’” [told her not to make a vow about him nor his berserks—“for it will not help you”] (ed. Guðni Jónsson 1950 1.32) and offers Yrsa compensation for Helgi. Aðils’s words that it will be no use for her to heitask [make a vow] could suggest that Yrsa has illegitimately performed an oath, since Aðils declares it ineffective (eigi duga), again prompting the question of women’s eligibility to perform oaths other than those concerned with duty and faithfulness to their lovers or members of their (high) social rank.22 Later in the saga, Yrsa assists her son Hrólfr kraki defeat Aðils by giving him battle gear and gold rings belonging to Aðils, items that prove instrumental in his defeat. Both women’s vows are addressed to their antagonist: the latter is spoken to Aðils in his presence and the former is Sigrdrífa/Brynhildr’s riposte to Óðinn’s punishment, but his reaction is not made known—yet her modification of his curse seems to remain in force in the narrator’s eyes. Given the socially dependent relationship between oaths and honor, and the fact that Yrsa’s oath is challenged in the text, it seems possible, even likely, that the validity of these female oaths to perform a future action in which the recipient is involved would be questioned by the thirteenth-century audience, rendering the oaths, however solemnly performed (within the context of the narrative), infelicitous.
After Sigurðr’s murder, Brynhildr harshly accuses the Gjúkungs of breaking their oaths to Sigurðr, but she also complains that she has been made to renege on her own oaths because of the betrayal of others (e.g., in Skamma st. 57), where she complains: “Margs á ec minnaz, hvé við mic fóro / þá er mic sára svicna höfðot; / vaðin at vilia varc, meðan ec lifðac” [Much I remember: how they acted against me, / those who betrayed me, caused me pain; deprived of joy was I while I lived]. Brynhildr’s accusation of betrayal regarding her betrothal to Sigurðr is also stated in Völsunga saga ch. 31: “[hon] minnisk nú á þat er þau fundusk á fjallinu ok sórusk eiða,—‘En nú er því öllu brugðit, ok vil ek eigi lifa”’ [she now reminisces about the time when they met on the mountain and swore oaths,—“but now it has all been betrayed and I do not wish to live”] (ed. Finch 56). Helreið st. 5, where the poignant outburst “gorðu mic Giúca arfar/ ástalausa oc eiðrofa” [the heirs of Gjúki deprived me of love and caused me to break my oaths] is her final statement about her dealings with the Gjúkungs, she refutes the giantess’s accusations of her immorality with the claim that she and Sigurðr had been betrothed—bound by a mutual oath. Oath-breaking is clearly a serious and dishonorable offense in Old Norse sources; those who commit this crime receive a horrid punishment in Norse myth, and it is a term of abuse in some saga examples.23 Sigrdrífumál st. 23, particularly apposite as it is spoken by Sigrdrífa, warns against treating oaths lightly: “Þat ræð ec þér annat, at þú eið né sverir / nema þann er saðr sé; / grimmir símar ganga at trygðrofi, / armr er vára vargr” [do not swear an oath / unless it is truly kept; / terrible fate-bonds attach to the oath-tearer / wretched is the pledge-criminal].24 This view is echoed in law codes: Grágás states that if someone breaks a truce (grið), a form of oath to keep the peace between feuding parties, they shall be driven off like wolves; elsewhere, truce-breaking is punishable by skóggangr “full outlawry,” which entailed the complete severance of the culprit’s ties to society.25 As Judy Quinn notes, both sisters, Brynhildr and Oddrún, are faithful in their oaths (as far as possible), further underscoring the inherent difference between Buðli’s female offspring (although clearly not true of Atli) and the oath-breaking Gjúkungs.26 Perhaps the weight that Brynhildr is shown to place on oaths, and her anger at the Gjúkungs for being oath-breakers and for making her into one, is not surprising in this context, reflecting the moral value placed on oath-taking and oath-keeping in medieval Iceland. Brynhildr’s subversive performance of male-coded oaths reflects a patriarchal anxiety toward women appropriating male roles and thus claiming agency and self-determination against their families’ will.
At the end of Guðrúnarkviða I, when Brynhildr has assertively refuted the accusations lodged against her that she is to blame for Sigurðr’s death, and in turn has blamed Atli and his greed for the evil that has befallen her (as a result of his forcing her to marry against her will), she is ultimately, if perhaps metaphorically, transformed into a dragon-like creature, emitting poison and fire: “brann Brynhildi, … / eldr ór augom, eitri fnæsti” [fire burned from Brynhildr’s eyes, she spewed poison]. The last and enduring image of her in this poem—one that shows the interactions of women almost exclusively—is that of a woman out of control, seething with rage and despair. One might also think of Högni’s characterizations of Brynhildr in Skamma st. 45, where he implies that she enters this world cursed, not only because she causes harm to others—her very shape evokes a creature born with some kind of congenital disease: “Hon kröng of komz fyr kné móður / hon æ borin óvilia til, / mörgom manni at möðtrega” [From her mother’s womb she was born awkward, / she was ever born to misery / and to cause grief of heart to many a man]. Jeffrey Cohen describes the monster as a social construct: “The monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy (ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an uncanny independence” (4). It is clearly unfeminine for a woman to be as verbally dominating, insistent, and aggressive as Brynhildr is in these poems. Therefore, her monstrous transformation here embodies a social fear of the woman who uses words to criticize the dominant order, to interrogate the value of masculine vows as a guide to proper behavior—when they so easily yield to other desires, and who pursues her own agenda, separate from what the male characters have in mind, with words. Women who use language to challenge and subvert the social order are punished by being made monstrous.
A second speech act in which women engage on several occasions is cursing, often invoked as a direct result of the violation of an oath; the two speech acts thus interact, since being the object of a curse hinges on failure to fulfill one’s oath. Once Sigrún’s brother Dagr has killed Helgi for his slaying of Högni, their father, she has a heated argument with him in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, and she curses him in no uncertain terms, declaring that various tools associated with masculine warfare activities (the sword, the ship, the horse) will fail him.27 By killing Helgi, Dagr had followed the heroic code in accordance with the social norms of the legendary medieval North, and he cannot grasp that his sister would object to his actions so strongly. This prompts him to brand her as insane (st. 34): “Œr ertu, … ok ørvita” [You are insane … and out of your wits]. Yet since Dagr had sworn an oath to the Völsung clan (see above) of which Helgi is a member, Sigrún’s statement that Dagr is an oath-breaker (st. 31) rings true and her curse seems justified, if not approved of by the male order. As Larrington notes, “one speech act (the oath) triggers another”: Dagr has broken his oath, and since Sigrún and Helgi were betrothed, Dagr cannot expect his sister to receive the news of Helgi’s slaying by him with anything other than an unfavorable reaction (2011, 173). As stated above, male and female characters generally value oaths differently, and if an oath and personal honor are in conflict, men break their oaths, whereas women’s sense of honor—with the exception of Brynhildr—is invested in the idea of unswerving loyalty to one’s sworn-brother.
Guðrún similarly curses her brother Högni in Gkv II st. 9 for killing her husband and his sworn-brother Sigurðr: “þitt scyli hiarta hrafnar slíta / víð lönd yfir” [May ravens tear apart your heart over wide lands], evoking the macabre image of a slain warrior’s corpse being torn apart by beasts of battle. In Gkv I st. 21, she predicts Gunnarr’s misfortune, stating that he will never enjoy the gold for which he slay Sigurðr but that “þeir muno þér baugar at bana verða” [the rings will be the death of you]. In both of these examples, the curse appears after brothers have killed their sisters’ lovers, much to their sorrow and anger. When read against the grain, the curse as speech act may be represented as efficacious, granted in compensation for women’s lack of formal power and thus their inability to exact revenge on their own behalf.
Curses are thus one of the speech acts available to women in Eddic poetry to further their own agenda; Brynhildr appears in at least two scenes with elements of cursing, the first of which involves her reaction to Gullrönd’s prompting Guðrún to mourn in Gkv I st. 23. In the final part of Skamma (sts. 53–65), Brynhildr issues pronouncements on the fate of the Gjúkungs and given their calamitous nature, these constitute curses as well as prophecies.28 In this extended speech, she predicts the birth of Svanhildr, the daughter of Guðrún and Sigurðr, Guðrún’s unhappy marriage to Atli, Gunnarr and Oddrún’s covert, loving relationship—and Atli putting an end to it, Gunnarr’s death in a snake-pit, the murder of Atli and his sons by Guðrún, and Guðrún’s fate at Iörmunrekkr’s court. All these events foretold by Brynhildr materialize after her death, unfolding in the succeeding poems in the Codex Regius, and onlookers, at least Guðrún, seem to take heed of Brynhildr’s warnings. Later in the narrative cycle, Guðrún reminds her mother Grímhildr of her brothers’ terrible prospects in a quarrel between them in Gkv II st. 31, in which Guðrún attempts to resist her mother’s machinations to marry her to Atli. Brynhildr’s knowledge of the future, and her speech aimed at the Gjúkungs, work not just as a foreshadowing device and summary of events narrated later in the Codex Regius, but they also produce a sense of inevitable doom in an already disastrous situation, alerting the audience to the fact, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the entire cast of characters—apart from Guðrún—will meet an untimely and gruesome death. As Brynhildr’s whetting led to Sigurðr’s death, just so her pronouncements after his death further contribute to the Gjúkungs’s misfortunes; there is a blurred line between prophesying misfortune and causing it with curses. Brynhildr’s prophecy does not perhaps cause the Gjúkungs’s subsequent downfall, but it calls attention to the inherent workings of a society governed by the heroic ethic and its honor code, and it accurately describes how it will eventually fail and self-destruct (Clark 2005, 173–200; 2007, 21–41).
Guðrún is shorn of all her male relatives (although partly as a result of her own actions); poems such as Guðrúnarhvöt and Hamðismál, set late in Guðrún’s career, emphasize her isolation, as well as her lamentations about her fate. Critics have mostly come to the consensus that lament and whetting are typical female speech acts that were most likely legitimately available to (some) women during the medieval period, although when and to what extent is not clear; historically, the two forms may have been socially sanctioned female speech acts, either formally or covertly. Lament and whetting appear in direct relation to some of the most important aspects of Guðrún’s experience. When she employs the former speech act, it yields scant results since it does not have any effect on her family’s behavior nor does it lead to vengeance exacted for Sigurðr. Guðrún eventually becomes consumed by the pursuit of revenge, leading to the destruction of all her descendants, and she exits the story as a hard-minded and lone woman, clinging on to her notion of personal honor as achieved by vengeance. Brynhildr and Guðrún end their lives in similar circumstances, isolated in their subversion of their gender role: the one cursing and making ominous prophecies, the other vacillating between lamenting and demanding revenge, both refusing to compromise on upholding their honor.
Guðrún emerges as a complex character throughout her Eddic biography, by turns a sympathetic victim of her kin’s ambition and greed (Guðrúnarkviða I–II), defiant and proud in the face of accusations of adultery (Guðrúnarkviða III) and a cold-hearted matriarch, egging her sons to their death (Guðrúnarhvöt and Hamðismál). At the beginning of Guðrúnarkviða I, she goes in the opposite direction from the verbal excesses of Brynhildr and refuses to say or do anything at all that is expected of her. She does not “act as other women” after the loss of a loved one: “gerðit hon hiúfra né höndom slá, / né qveina um sem konor aðrar” [she did not weep or strike her hands together / or lament like other women] (st. 1). The poem contrasts Guðrún’s behavior strongly with other women’s; she does not engage in the regular actions of mourning women—wailing, lamenting, and physical gestures and movements—clearly regarded as the norm. This ritual seems to be not only expected of, but also reserved for, the widow of the deceased, since when Brynhildr prepares to launch into a lament for Sigurðr, she is met with a marked, embarrassed silence from onlookers (Brot sts. 18–19). Although the poem relates that Guðrún is so full of grief as to be incapable of lamenting, the phrase that “she did not … do as other women,” with the added fact that after the other women’s laments she is described as harðhuguð “hard-hearted” (Gkv I sts. 5, 11) and her harðr hugr “severe, implacable mind” (st. 2), which the jarlar “earls” try to mollify, suggests some degree of volition on Guðrún’s part. It could be seen as a determined refusal, rather than an incapability, to go through the motions of the public display and expression of grief expected of widows, to fulfill her duty to lament, and this is scandalous to onlookers (for a different reading of this scene, see Hill, Chapter 5, this volume).
Guðrún’s sister, Gullrönd, finds this departure from the norm worrying, and this is a turning point for Guðrún and the beginning of her deviance. Gullrönd acts as a regulator: she dramatically forces her young sister to look on Sigurðr’s body and follow the customary grieving rituals, at the same time pushing her back into her conventional social role and making her conform. Sigurðr’s body is bloody, the shining eyes open but lifeless; the physical realism is overwhelming, and Guðrún collapses, performing the lament expected of a woman of her position (Gkv I st. 15). In the Eddic scene, the loose hair certainly symbolizes a violent loss of emotional control, but Guðrún has also perhaps lost control over herself: she has been forced to adhere to society’s norms, to conform to her gender role, by enacting the lament. Clover argues that the lament has historical grounding as a tool for disenfranchised women to influence, and indeed challenge, their male relatives to take blood-revenge, but here Guðrún’s own brothers are the culprits, and she cannot demand their death (Clover 167). Although she is compelled by her sister to perform the lament, Guðrún recovers some verbal autonomy, using it to call attention to the way her kin have let her down and caused her grief: “valda megir Giúca / míno bölvi” [the kin of Gjúki caused my grief] (st. 20). After praising Sigurðr, Guðrún’s lament shifts the focus to the Gjúkungs’s shameful killing of Sigurðr: “þeir munu þér baugar at bana verða, er þú Sigurði svarðir eiða” [the rings will be the death of you, since you swore oaths to Sigurðr] (st. 21), reverberating with Brynhildr’s earlier accusations of oath-breaking, but Guðrún’s subversion in this lament is more subtle than Brynhildr’s shocking statements.
In Guðrúnarkviða I, Guðrún is still a young woman, encountering her first sorrow of many in her life, and she has not yet developed her later autonomous identity. In contrast to Guðrún’s self-perception as weak in her earlier scenes, the image of her in Hamðismál st. 5, after her dispatch of her two last sons to avenge their sister (see Larrington, Chapter 7, this volume), is much stronger, and she states: “Einstœð em ec orðin sem ösp í holti, / fallin at frœndom sem fura at qvisti” [I have become alone, as an aspen-tree on the rocky hill / in the forest, my kin cut off as a fir-tree’s branches]. The imagery echoes her lament in Gkv I: the young widow as small as a leaf, whose identity was defined by her family and her attachment to a man, has now emerged as a sorrow-weary woman and an independent matriarch, likening herself to a full-grown tree. She is uncompromising and powerful, in control of her own life and others, but has eliminated her male-kindred by her consuming vengeance. As Larrington has noted, Guðrún’s self-perception is reminiscent of that of Egill in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar: following the death of his sons, he composes the grief-poem Sonatorrek, in which he laments the fact that the gods have stripped him of his family members, and he emphasizes in similar terms how he stands alone (1993, 174–181). In contrast to Egill, whose sons drowned, it is Guðrún herself, with her incitement speeches, who—as Hamðir reminds her—has caused the death of her sons and her own unhappiness. Ironically, the hvöt, a speech act normally considered appropriate for women, has been taken too far by Guðrún, since she is aware of the cost: the death of her last living relatives, her sons Hamðir and Sörli, as they indeed point out before embarking on their revenge mission. Guðrún first subverts the female lament role and then the inciter role, highlighting its destructive consequences on a monstrous scale.
Many of the heroic poems in the Edda are preoccupied with women. They explore their roles and power, revealing distinct attitudes and anxieties about women’s functions, while they largely construct images of subversive women who contrast with ideal ones. Such images can be assumed to have been under debate both during the period of composition and manuscript compilation. I have analyzed some of the strategies that women use to maintain subjectivity and autonomy, and to subvert their gender roles in the legendary-heroic society depicted in the poetry. The poems show women’s autonomy and an independent subjectivity as crucial to them; women have the ability to use their voice to declare their own intentions by vows, very likely unavailable to them in the eyes of the constructed society of the poems as well as the real one that formed the audience, criticism of their family members and society at large through cursing or accusation, or indeed to refuse to speak when expected to, to remain silent when they ought to lament. My analysis has shown that many women in Eddic heroic poetry do not “act as other women” but use various strategies to assert their autonomy and independence, subverting traditional female gender roles and challenging the patriarchal order by taking power for themselves.29
1. For discussions of lament, see Sävborg ch. 6; Clover 152–153; Harris 1983, 2000. For discussion about whetting, see Heller 98–122; Jochens 1996, chs. 7–8; Mundal 1994b, 3–11; Miller 1990, 212–213; 1983, 179–181; Anderson 421–440; Tolmie, 294–297; Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir 55–76.
2. On the problem of dating Eddic poetry, see Quinn 2012a, 2012b. In this chapter, I will follow Quinn’s view that “[i]solating the historical period during which each poem may have been composed and first recited is … of less importance than the vitality of the tradition across the generations, the earliest renderings of the heroic feats of the past apparently being memorized and performed again and again to new audiences, giving rise to new versions of events by new poets in succeeding generations, as well as the conservation of older poems through re-performance, probably within the same milieu” (2).
3. Reading “against the grain” is an approach, originally advanced by feminist literary theorists in the 1970s and ‘80s, which entails deconstructing the fundamental ideology, in this instance, a patriarchal social organization, that the narrator or text presents as normative (see e.g. Fetterley).
4. Searle 9. Austin actually categorized “intend” as a commissive, but as Searle, who refined and developed Austin’s theories, points out, the illocutionary force of the utterance “I intend” is “to express intention” rather than “to intend.”
5. Austin 14–24, in particular condition A.2 (14–15, 34–35). Also see Austin 40–47 for insincerities, which make speech acts “unhappy” (but not void).
6. “[T]al som besitter en rituell handlings kvaliteter” (italics in original). Habbe 2005, 121–122.
7. Habbe 2005, 157.
8. See e.g., Skamma st. 1 and Brot st. 2. A few Íslendingasögur depict the sworn-brotherhood ritual (fóstbræðralag) in which the participants go under a strip of turf and mix their blood in the dirt. According to Miller, this practice, which the sagas represent as a formal “fictive”—as opposed to familial or blood—bond between two men, involving the vow to avenge the death of the other like real brothers, is nowhere present in contemporary sagas or Commonwealth law codes, suggesting that it was obsolete by that time (see 1990, 173). Another homosocial bond strengthened with a vow, the lord-retainer bond, derives from the Germanic comitatus. This practice, which Miller describes as carrying great symbolic and sacred weight, appears in both konungasögur and Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál ch. 53 and is described in detail in a medieval Norwegian law code (see 1990, 23–24; Snorri Sturluson, Edda ch. 80; “Hirðskrá,” ed. Keyser 422–423).
9. The word eiðrofa is also attributed to Brynhildr in Völsunga saga ch. 32: “Öll ætt yður mun illa fara er þér eruð eiðrofa, ok munðir þú þat ógløggt er þit blönduðuð blóði saman, Sigurðr ok þú” [your entire family will fare badly for you are oath-breakers, and you did not remember clearly that you and Sigurðr mixed blood].
10. A frequent feature of female incitement speeches is the woman threatening to take the man’s position, relegating him to the female role (see e.g. Steinvör’s hvöt in Þórðar saga kakala) in Sturlunga saga, ed. Jón Jóhanesson 6), where she says her husband might as well take the keys to the pantry: “ek mun taka vápnin ok vita, ef nökkurir menn vili fylgja mér, en ek mun fá þér af hendi búrluklana” [I will take the weapons and see if anyone will follow me, but I will hand the keys to the pantry over to you]. It is worth noting that Brot depicts Brynhildr as the culprit for Sigurðr’s murder while Skamma emphasizes the Gjúkungs’s greed for gold as their main motivation.
11. In Brot st. 4, Guttormr seems to be magically impelled to commit the murder as he is given specially prepared food to fortify him enough to carry out the killing, but Högni confesses the murder to Guðrún in st. 6. At the end of the poem, the prose narrator reflects on the different narrative traditions about who murdered Sigurðr, but asserts that whichever version is true, everyone agrees that “þeir svico hann í tryggð ok vógo at honum liggjanda ok óbúnom” [they treacherously betrayed him and attacked him when he was lying down and unarmed].
12. All Eddic citations are from ed. Neckel and Kuhn 1962.
13. This would then be when Sigurðr took from her the ring Andvaranautr, which he had first given her, and which later turns up on Guðrún’s finger in the river quarrel. Andersson terms this version the Norse tradition while, according to him, the German versions of the narrative either do not contain, or suppress, a prior betrothal (see Andersson 29, 48–49). For a recent discussion about narrative variation in the Völsung/Gjúkung legend, see Quinn 2012b.
14. From the twelfth century onward, a union was legal according to canon law if the two conditions of verba de futuro (a couple’s pledge to each other to marry) followed by intercourse were fulfilled. According to Bjørn Bandlien, Völsunga saga’s representation of Brynhildr and Sigurðr’s vows of fidelity to each other followed by sexual congress constitutes a legally binding bond, making their daughter Áslaug legitimate (and Sigurðr a bigamist); this interpretation is supported by Skamma 68. For discussion, see Bandlien, 154–155, 253.
15. In Völsunga saga, Brynhildr and the disguised Sigurðr only share a bed, but in Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál, they actually marry (ch. 48).
16. Andersson discusses the possibility that hétumk is “a wish rather than an act.” Given, however, that the verb heita means ‘to promise’ or ‘to vow’, and the noun heit means ‘a solemn promise’ or ‘a vow’—as in the fixed phrase strengja heit ‘to make a solemn vow’—Brynhildr’s intention, and thus the illocutionary force of her utterance, must be to make an oath when she promises she will have Sigurðr (cf. Sperberg-McQueen).
17. Else Mundal argues that in Norway women acted as witnesses (eiðkonor) for other women as a general rule, but the evidence seems inconclusive, and there is little indication that women enjoyed such privileges in Iceland (see 1994a, 598–599). Mundal’s argument is based on a law code from 1313, but it is not clear whether this was also an Icelandic practice or how old it was by the time it was recorded.
18. de Vries 327. Bandlien notes that the sources mentioning Vár or várar (the two mentioned above as well as Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar) are dated to ca. 1200 onward and argues that “the concept of the significance of mutual vows in love and betrothal may have been revived after courtly ideals became more widely known” (214).
19. See e.g., Grágás, Festaþáttr §9 (ed. Finsen); see overview of betrothal and wedding proceedings in Ricketts 67–71. The idea of female consent in marriage was known in Iceland since at least the late twelfth century, but it first entered in law codes in 1275; thus it seems logical to infer that it might have been a contentious issue in the thirteenth century. The two ideas promoted by the Church, on the one hand, and secular authorities, on the other, might have affected the way the thirteenth-century audience interpreted the import of the betrothal and consummation in that tradition, Völsunga saga’s author advancing the latter’s agenda. For discussion about verba de futuro and the struggle between the Church and secular authorities with regard to parental vs. spousal consent and control over unions, see Bandlien 69–86. According to Agnes Arnórsdóttir (107–109) and Jenny Jochens, the practice of paternal/parental control continued long after the idea of female consent had been adopted into the legal framework; the two ideas were not mutually exclusive, and female consent did not mean that a woman was free to marry whomever she chose (see Jochens 1986, 142–176).
20. See e.g., Guðrún’s skírsla [ordeal] to prove she has not cheated on her husband Atli with Þjóðrekr in Guðrúnarkviða III; for discussion, see Quinn 2013. This finds a historical parallel in Hákonar saga Hákonarsaga ch. 16 (Sturla Þórðarson 14), where Hákon’s mother Inga successfully proves his royal paternity (she had been the deceased king’s concubine), as well as Magnússona saga ch. 26 in Snorri’s Heimskringla. A similar example is found in the Spesar þáttr of Grettis saga (ed. Guðni Jónsson), where Spes swears the “ambiguous oath”; most critics consider this scene to be borrowed from the Tristan legend. The ordeal is a form of oath also performed by men, for example, in Grettis saga ch. 39 (although in the end Grettir does not perform the ordeal).
21. Fredrik Heinemann argues that when Brynhildr utters this vow, she knows that Sigurðr is already engaged to Guðrún and is thus unavailable; he regards this as a misogamous trick to stay single. Whether one agrees with this interpretation, the illocutionary force of the utterance is some form of binding pledge to her own will.
22. Although the two terms at heitask [to make a vow] and at sverja eið [to swear an oath] are separate terms, their illocutionary force is the same.
23. In Völuspá st. 26, the gods break their vows with the giants, one of the main reasons for the onset of ragnarök; Vsp st. 39 describes Náströnd, where murderers, adulterers, and oath-breakers (menn meinsvarna) keep company with dragons and wolves and must wade through heavy streams, also recorded in Snorri’s Gylfaginning ch. 52. Gunnlaugr Leifsson’s Merlínusspá II.18 predicts the fall of a city due to its inhabitants’ oath-breaking. For eiðrofi as a term of abuse, see e.g., Grœnlendinga þáttr ch. 4 (ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson 281), Árna saga biskups (ed. Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir 108), and Sverris saga (ed. Þorleifur Hauksson 159, 244).
24. Kristinréttur Árna Þorlákssonar 22–23 (adopted in 1275) warns against eiðrof, punishable with a fine (ed. Haraldur Bernharðsson). A similar code is found in Frostaþingslög and King Sverrir’s Christenret (ed. Keyser 1:152, 429). In Thomas saga erkibyskups ch. 32, Henry IV accuses Thomas à Becket of treason: “konungs eiðrofa oc sannprovaðan suikara” [oath-breaker to the king and proven traitor] (ed. Unger 208). The Latin original reads periurum ac proditorem archipræsulem iucidarunt; thus the word eiðrofi is here used to translate periurum [perjury].
25. Grágás, Baugatal §2–3, Vígslóði §15 (ed. Finsen).
26. See Quinn 2012a, 2012b, and Oddrúnargrátr 10: “hét ek ok efndak” [I vowed and I kept it].
27. “Þic skyli allir bíta … Scríðiat þat skip, er und þér scríði … rennia sá marr, er und þér renni … Bítia þér þat sverð, er þú bregðir” [May all oaths sting you, … May the ship you sail not glide forth, … May the horse you ride not run, … May the sword you wield not bite] (sts. 31–33).
28. In Völsunga saga ch. 24, Brynhildr also predicts future events with regard to Sigurðr’s marriage to Guðrún, but this scene is not preserved in Eddic poetry.
29. I would like to thank Carolyne Larrington for her support in the writing of this chapter. Many thanks are also due to Judy Quinn, Grégory Cattaneo, Merrill Kaplan, Viðar Pálsson, and Dario Bullitta for their helpful and insightful comments.
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