Assignment #1: Essay about Viking honor.

The opening quote is the one she gave us to respond to, from our textbook Viking Sagas in Translation.  I think the real title of it is The Sagas of the Icelanders: A Selection, edited by Ornolfur Thorsson and published by Viking Penguin (boy that brings an image to mind) in 2000.  Basically we just had to say what we thought of the concept of honor in the sagas we'd read.

Grade: A+
Comment: "This is an excellent paper!  You write very well and present you[r] argument very clearly and convincingly!" You guys are going to think I do nothing but sit around bragging about my grades all day...well, I don't, but I don't have any exclamation-point-filled quotes to attest to that fact, so why should you believe me?  Think of my "Comments" reprints like that.

"Honour (sæmd) is to the conception of character in the sagas as feud is to the plot. Honour does not consist merely of avoiding shame or disgrace. It is the more powerful desire for approbation, good reputation, distinction. Its social function is to forge and maintain bonds of kinship, marriage, friendship and political alliances. Its narrative function is to keep the saga moving forward, in accordance with ethical rules that give the feud plot a sense of heroic inevitability" (Robert Kellogg, pp. xxxix-xl).

In the early days of Iceland, a strong code of honor must have been one of the few things that kept society from dissolving into anarchy. Without a body legally empowered to keep the peace or a strong ruler to settle disputes, the Icelanders used the social pressure of a man's friends, family, and neighbors to encourage him to follow the law, provide for his dependents, and treat even his enemies with a measure of respect. To describe a man as "honorable" or "dishonorable" summed up a vast amount of information about his character, his past, and whether or not he should be given anyone else's support--and a man needed the support of others to acquire and maintain his power. If he lost his honor, and thus the respect of the public, he had little choice but to avenge himself successfully or spend the rest of his life in varying degrees of disgrace. Honor in this society was almost solely a function of reputation, of known characteristics and deeds, and did not depend as much on a person's internal integrity and moral satisfaction as our concept of honor does today. However, as important as honor was in Viking society, I think that Kellogg overstates its necessity to the characters of the sagas and tales we have read; in many of these stories, honor does not seem to be the highest consideration of every hero, as evidenced by the number of times they resist, circumvent, or outright ignore the accepted code of honor without punishment.

The demands of honor sometimes--even often--conflict with one's personal wishes, opening our heroes up to the censure of those around them. Viking honor, it seems, consists of following set rules, regardless of the reasons behind any objections to those rules. For example, in The Tale of Thorstein Staff-Struck, Bjarni is reluctant to take his "honorable" revenge on Thorstein, who has killed three of his men. Bjarni is a powerful man who was once known as "Killer-Bjarni," so it isn't fear that makes him hesitant; rather, he's probably trying to be compassionate, since he knows Thorstein's blind father and all his dependents rely almost solely on Thorstein's labor to support them (679). In addition, Bjarni doesn't feel as though Thorstein is a great threat to him; the three employees he lost to Thorstein were people who had attacked him first, one unprovoked and two with orders to kill--"'few innocent men,'" as Bjarni tells his wife (680). The rules of honor in this society, however, do not leave much room for compassion when a farmer has been permanently deprived of the good labor of three men, and his decision to ignore Thorstein's behavior is criticized by both his employees and his wife, who notes that his "'thingmen do not think they can count on [him] for support as long as this goes unavenged;'" finally he is put under enough pressure to challenge Thorstein to a duel (680). In The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi, Hrafnkel must also be urged by another person to avenge his honor by killing the brother of Sam, the man who dishonored him. In the six years since the dishonor took place, Hrafnkel has amassed even more money and power than he had previously, and in addition he has changed his rough, totalitarian manners to become "more gentle...more restrained in all ways" and "much more popular than before" (456). We might think that Hrafnkel would be content with all that, that he would realize he was still more important in society than Sam and that he might even be glad the whole incident had happened, since he had actually benefitted from it so much, and it does seem that way at first. After all, in the course of their leadership duties, Hrafnkel and Sam often crossed paths "but they never mentioned their dealings with each other," suggesting they were eager to put it behind them (456). It isn't until an anonymous servant woman spots Sam's brother Eyvind, a wealthy adventurer newly returned from his worldwide travels, and harasses her employer about his reputation that Hrafnkel seems inclined to do anything at all. "'The respect a man receives early in life isn't worth much,'" she tells him, "'if he later loses it through dishonor and hasn't got the self-confidence to go off and rescue his rights'" (457). Hrafnkel isn't pleased to be reminded of this--he says that she "'deserve[s] to suffer more hardship'" for having said it--but he understands that "'much of what [she] say[s] is true" and begins gathering men for the attack on Eyvind (457).

Hrafnkel actually kills Eyvind and deposes Sam, forcing him to return (alive) to his life as a humble farmer, in order to increase his humiliation and dishonor; however, other heroes of the sagas find "loopholes" in the code of honor in order to achieve their own goals. In Thorstein Staff-Struck, Bjarni really does not want to kill Thorstein; he has every right to do so according to the system of honor and has in fact been strongly encouraged to do so, but he still considers the needs of all the people dependent on Thorstein and thinks it would be a waste to kill a hard-working man who has at every opportunity tried to avoid hostilities. Bjarni engages Thorstein in single combat and despite hacking through several shields each, both seem reluctant to seriously injure the other; Thorstein even states outright that he "'will not strike eagerly'" (681). After fighting for a while, Bjarni announces that he "'will consider [himself] fully compensated for [his] three farmhands'" if Thorstein agrees to work for him (682). Bjarni has been testing what we might consider Thorstein's more personal sense of honor during this time, for example by putting aside his sword and turning his back on Thorstein in order to get a drink or tie his shoelace, and has found him to be trustworthy, fair, and considerate--qualities we would count as "honorable" today (681-2). Bjarni fights just long enough to satisfy his friends' and family's requirements for his honor, but stops short of killing a good worker. Instead he has Thorstein apply his labor and skills for Bjarni's benefit, a decision that is both compassionate and shrewd. This intriguing twist seems to recognize that "honor" is not the only measure of a man's worth, even in a society that counts it so highly. Thorstein had, after all, been outlawed for an illegal killing and then he defied that ruling by continuing to live on his land instead of leaving the country. Despite that, Bjarni realized that he would make a valuable addition to his workforce and engineered a way "around" the honor system so he could accept Thorstein into his household without a loss of honor for either one.

Some Viking heroes, however, do not seem to be concerned with fulfilling the demands of honor at all; for example, Halli, the protagonist of The Tale of Sarcastic Halli, seems to be exactly the opposite of an honorable Viking warrior. Although he travels to the court of the Norwegian king, Harald--international travel and adventure being a popular way to accumulate honor--he doesn't even kill anyone throughout the entire story, which must be a rarity in Viking sagas. Instead, he makes his living as a poet (still a valued profession in this society)--a poet who mocks his patron's habits and harasses his rival, the king's chief poet, Thjodolf (699, 703). He makes impudent, often obscene but clever replies to the king's questions and even insults the queen with lewd poetry (711). Halli fakes sea-sickness to give Thjodolf all the work of cooking and serving on one of the king's ocean voyages and cheats a Danish man, Raud, out of a golden arm ring by deliberately misinterpreting a bet (710, 708). In perhaps his most shocking display of what we might by now regard as "dishonorable" behavior for a Viking, Halli demands compensation for the death of his brother at the hands of one of the king's tribute collectors, Einar Fly, whom he has just heard relate a story about slaughtering a crew of Icelandic smugglers (704-7). Halli even goes so far as to threaten Einar Fly with a slanderous poem--a very powerful means of insulting someone, perhaps akin to a scandalous tabloid article today--until the man who "paid no compensation for his killings or robberies" to anyone is forced to give in and reimburse him for his brother's death (706, 704). Then Halli returns to his seat and tells his friend Sigurd that he "'was not related to this man whom Einar killed, but [he] wanted to see if [he] could get money out of him'" (707). Given the seriousness of the Viking blood feud and the often fatal measures taken to avenge the death of one's family members, this seems to me like a very tasteless and underhanded deception on Halli's part, even if Einar Fly was generally disliked by the court. This is, after all, a society where killing someone during broad daylight and announcing the death is considered preferable to attacking at night and trying to conceal the crime--clearly duplicity was frowned upon. Yet King Harald can't seem to get enough of Halli, constantly finding amusement in his disrespectful sarcasm, which of course no one else around the king would dare attempt. When Halli departs for Denmark, the king tells him to "'come back soon because [they] find good entertainment in [his] company'" and frequently rewards him with treasures like a gold and silver axe (707, 711). Halli, the impudent Viking? Perhaps he doesn't achieve the lasting power and fame of other saga heroes, but his characteristics are definitely meant to be positive in this story, even though they would seem to be the opposite of good, "honorable" Viking traits such as battle-ready aggression, forthrightness, hard work, and respect for one's superiors, suggesting that the same code of honor did not apply to everyone equally, or that certain people were able to be successful despite a lack of "typical" honor.

The drive for honor, for a positive reputation in the eyes of the public, was a powerful desire in Viking society; it began and continued bloody feuds, prompted travel abroad, and helped to keep some semblance of order in a country with a highly developed legal system but no means to enforce it. Despite this, not every hero of the sagas and tales we've read was obsessed with keeping his honor spotless, as Kellogg's comment seems to imply. Some, such as Hrafnkel and Bjarni, seemed content to live with a little dishonor for their own personal reasons, and even if they were later compelled to act by the pressure of society, they sometimes managed to manipulate the honor system to their own ends (The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi, 438; The Tale of Thorstein Staff-Struck, 677). Other heroes, like Halli, were almost completely outside the code of honor, successful despite their apparently "dishonorable" qualities (The Tale of Sarcastic Halli, 694). Honor may have been one of the most important motivators in Viking society and thus in the plots of the sagas, but in my opinion it was not the only value of the citizens or of the characters.