title: Frauenfiguren in Abenteuersagas
Creators: name: Wolfram, Michaela
Publisher: name: :none
Year: 2013

description: Abenteuersaga als – wie auch immer definierter – Teil der Fornaldarsögur, einem Begriff, der erst im 19. Jahrhundert durch Carl Christian Rafn für seine Ausgabe von altnordischen Sagas der „Vorzeit“ geprägt wurde, ist eine im deutschen Sprachraum gebräuchliche Bezeichnung für Sagas, die in vor allem phantasiereicher, märchenhafter Weise von Helden erzählen, die in einer nordischen Vorzeit, jedenfalls vor der Besiedlung Islands, Abenteuer bestehen und Frauen erobern. Sie werden häufig gemeinsam mit Riddarasögur und Märchensagas, jedenfalls Texten jüngeren Datums, zusammengefasst. Bei einer Untersuchung über Frauenfiguren in Abenteuersagas muss die Frage, wie Fornaldarsögur allgemein zu charakterisieren sind und ob und, wenn ja, in welche Gruppen sie aufgeteilt werden können, geklärt werden. Die Untersuchung der Frauenfiguren baut neben den Kriterien der Abenteuersagas auch auf Themen der Romance auf. Die Untersuchung der fünf Abenteuersagas hat gezeigt, dass es zwar Gemeinsamkeiten gibt, diese jedoch eher allgemein-struktureller Natur zu sein scheinen, als tatsächliche (Stereo-)Typen. Es hat sich, mit aller Unsicherheit die aus dem kleinen Textkorpus resultiert, gezeigt, dass die Sagas in vielerlei Hinsicht Unterschiede aufweisen, die auf allgemeine Züge, und somit vermutlich auch Züge des Sub-Genres Abenteuersagas, hinweisen: Die Zeichnung der Königstöchter ist, bei allen festgestellten Unterschieden, jedenfalls ähnlich, wobei Genealogie und Schönheit eindeutig im Vordergrund stehen. Ebenso kann man in den hilfreichen Trollfrauen etliche Gemeinsamkeiten finden. Berücksichtigt man die Ausführungen in der Sekundärliteratur gerade zu den hilfreichen Trollfrauen, so verstärkt sich dieser Eindruck nur noch. Auffällig ist auch der Frauentyp „Statisten“, also jene Kategorie frauen, die im Grunde genommen nicht charakterisiert wird, durch die eine höfische Welt entsteht – oder zumindest das, was sich ein mittelalterlicher isländischer Autor darunter vorstellte. Es lässt sich zudem feststellen, dass das Vokabular, sowohl Substantive als auch Adjektive, die Unterschiede in den Charakterzeichnungen unterstützen. Es ist grundsätzlich nicht möglich, aufgrund der Länge einer Saga auf die Anzahl oder Varianz der verwendeten Wörter zu schließen. Erst durch die detaillierte Betrachtung der Beschreibungen ergibt sich ein Gesamtbild für jede einzelne Saga, die einen Rückschluss auf Einfluss durch höfische Literatur, heroische Dichtung oder Isländersagas erlaubt. Die Charaktere selbst, also die Frauenfiguren, ihre Handlungsrelevanz , ebenso wie die Handlung einer Saga geben hierüber nur bedingt Aufschluss. Dass es einen Einfluss auf das Wortinventar gibt, die auf die höfische Dichtung zurückzuführen ist, steht außer Zweifel, das Ausmaß ist in den untersuchten Sagas jedoch sehr unterschiedlich. Selbst in diesem kurzen Überblick zeigt sich, dass einzelne Aspekte häufiger in den Sagas zu finden sind, dazu zählen Paarbeziehungen, Brautwerbung sowie Hilfestellung durch Trollfrauen/Riesen. Diese Elemente scheinen tatsächlich eine Gemeinsamkeit der Texte darzustellen. Die Frauenfiguren der Abenteuersagas sind jedenfalls ein Schlüssel zum Verständnis der Texte und deren mögliche Aussage und/oder dahinterstehende Ideologie.
description: The focus of this thesis lies on women in Fornaldarsögur (sagas of the pre-history, legendary fiction), in particular on women in the so-called Abenteuersagas which constitutes, at least in the opinion of some authors, a sub-genre of the Fornaldarsögur. The Fornaldarsögur, the name of a genre which was coined only in the 19th century by C.C. Rafn, were among the texts having been rejected as minderwertige literature for decades, and only recently became subject of several studies. Beginning in the 1960s, the interest in younger old Norse and old Icelandic texts began to increase. Today, the Fornaldarsögur are regarded equal texts to the famous Icelandic family sagas or the Edda. The studies with respect to Fornaldarsögur tend to focus on the most famous sagas, in particular the so-called heroic sagas (Heldensagas) including prominent texts as the Völsunga saga or Hervarar saga ok Heidreks. However, there are also other Fornaldarsögur which are well-known for their special themes and characters, such as Örvar-Odds saga, Frithjólfs saga, Göngu-Hrólfs saga, Gautreks saga or Bósa saga. The reasons for these sagas being so popular among critics are, among others, poems in the eddic style, popular motifs like viking quests, bridal quests, supernatural beings (trolls, giants, dwarfs) as well as the search for Märchen motifs and comparative studies in an European context. Female characters, however, have been neglected to a large extent so far, except for supernatural figures, e.g. giantesses and troll women. Another aspect of female life in Fornaldarsögur often discussed is the bridal quest scheme, frequently including Riddarasögur. The main aim of the present work is to concentrate on all women in certain Abenteuersagas, a sub-genre of which only some sagas have been discussed in detail so far. Due to the fact, that the present thesis is a diploma thesis, the text corpus had to be limited to five works, including Bósa saga, Egils saga einhenda, Gautreks saga, Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar (two versions) and Sturlaugs saga starfsama. The sample intends to mirror the variety of this sub-genre in order to allow not only an in-depth, but also an in-broath analyisis of the texts and their comparison. The texts are analysed on the basis of their wording, therefore the structure of the texts does not constitute a part of this analysis. The first part of the analysis is to record all appearances of women in the texts and to simple list them. The second part is to identify main characteristics of the sagas by analysing the number of women mentioned, the way they are addressed (name, pronom, substantive) and characterised (adjectives) and the frequence of the respective elements. The third part is to compare the sagas and to summarise the results in order to provide an overview of, firstly, the statistic data, and secondly, of the implications regarding women as figures or even stereotypical figures of Abenteuersagas. The questions whether there are such stereotypical female figures and whether the sagas subject of this analysis show similar characteristics with regard to women shall be answered. Since there have been no similar studies of female characters in Abenteuersagas so far to the author’s knowledge, this analysis can only refer to general studies regarding certain figures (in particular supernatural beings) and motifs (espacially with regard to the bridal quest scheme), as well as to some studies of Riddarasögur and Íslendingasögur which either concentrate on other features but women, or which concentrate on women, but not on a text-immanent basis, but only with respect to general motifs or prominent women. The results of this study are quite a surprise, also to the author’s. Instead of finding proper types of women and thus being able to clearly lable female figures, the sagas subject of this analysis proved to be rather different. This does, however, not mean that they cannot be compared, but that they are not comparable in a way which was to be expected with regard to the fact that all texts are part of the same sub-genre. Yet the analysis proved some critics right which argumented that each saga should be taken for itself before being subsumed under a genre, because especially the Fornaldarsögur show features of several literary genres, including, but not limited to, eddic poetry, Íslendingasögur, Riddarasögur, French romance or German epics, not to forget learned lore. This becomes true also for female figures which may be, nevertheless, compared to a certain extent. Despite having analyised only five sagas, there is some evidence that female types may be identified. The main types include princesses who are wooed and, after no or several obstacles to be taken, won by the saga’s hero; the helping women, in particular women having some special knowledge and/or perform magic of some kind; the trollwomen and/or magical women (e.g. in a temple far away in Bjarmaland) are to be overcome in order to gain a special object, weapon or to just acquire treasures; the „genealogical women“ who serve the only function within a saga to complete the genealogy of a (usually male) person, often the hero or one of his companions; and the „statists“ who have the function to complete a scene or the impression of a certain event (e.g. women sitting on the women’s bench in the great hall of a king). However, these types are just an outline of the outcome of the anlysis which is may only be further veryfied by including more sagas, ideally all Abenteuersagas, in order to be able to argue types or even stereotypes fort he sub-genre Abenteuersagas or even the Fornaldarsögur. The results are to a certain extent surprising, since in the literature it is often argued that Fornaldarsögur, and Abenteuersagas in particular, have much in common with Riddarasögur. This seems, except maybe Sturlaugs saga starfsama, not to bet rue, taken into account the motifs and the way the motifs are included in the narration, and the vocabulary, especially the adjectives. Compared to an analysis made by Hallberg for seven Riddarasögur, the vocabulary shows clear differences, which already Hallberg pointed out. The so-called „courtly“ vocabulary is hardly found in the Fornaldarsögur analysed in this work. There are, of course, words which clearly originate from outside Scandinavia, e.g. kurteis or jómfrú, but the major part of the vocabulary analysed here can be called either common language (e.g. kona, dóttur, væn, vítr) or particularly Old Norse/Icelandic (e.g. flagdkonu, kerling/kelling, ....). This thesis gives just a small insight into a topic hardly analysed yet. The present work gives an impression of how much is to be found by analysing the texts itself and taking into account all female figures instead of focussing on only one motif complex or special female characters. This does by no way mean that any of the previos studies failed to analyse the texts, but that it is highly desirable to provide comprehensive analyses of the texts, both with regard to female characters and with regard to the textcorpus of Abenteuersagas, including also neighbouring sub-genres and genres. Any definition of features of a genre like the Fornaldarsögur which is in any way hard to define at all, may only be advanced by focusing on the texts itself and all texts. However, this may only be realised by studying not only general saga editions, but critical editions and the different versions of several sagas which show, at least in part, great differences. The problem lies here, as for many other questions regarding the Fornaldarsögur, that some sagas have not yet been critically edited. The female figures of the Abenteuersagas provide an impression of the view medieval authors had on women in general, how they thought women should behave or must not behave, and sometimes, it is to be guessed, also just as the authors dreamed women to be. A step towards grasping the authors’ intention, but also to get an idea of the textual structure is to start with the texts itself. The present study was intended to provide such little step towards better understanding of these really interesting, and quite often also entertaining and funny, texts and to present new questions to these sagas.