Discourse in Old Norse Literature
2023-04-01

In his monograph, Eric Shane Bryan addresses a gap in scholarship recently noted by Daniel Sävborg and Theodore Andersson: as the author himself states (p. 1), there has not been a thorough investigation of discourse as verbal exchange in the sagas since the 1930s. Given the importance of dialogue in saga literature, this is indeed surprising. Bryan's study will, however, contribute to confronting this gap and its implications, so that we may in time come to a fuller understanding of the role of discourse and verbal exchange in saga literature. Bryan focuses on the Íslendingasögur in particular, supplementing his analysis with other genres, particularly the konungasögur. The only genre he excludes from his study is the riddarasögur, so one obvious avenue for future research would include the Icelandic romances on both sides of the fornaldarsögur–riddarasögur divide. Additionally, the primary focus of the analysis is on saga prose, with poetry only playing a complementary role. Thankfully, various projects on poetry and prosimetrum, particularly in the Íslendingasögur, are currently under way and will in time supplement and enhance Bryan's findings.Bryan approaches verbal discourse in the sagas from the framework of pragmatics, a linguistic theory whose main assumption is that language operates, and thus ultimately generates meaning, in context, and that utterances therefore have to be analyzed within the cultural, social, situational, and interpersonal environment in which they are produced. The first chapter introduces this methodological framework. After a general introduction to the sagas and some recent scholarship on their background—are they based on oral traditions, continental literary influences, or both?—the author turns to this framework, but notes that despite the linguistic grounding, his work is a literary one: “the objectives of this work remain centred upon an understanding of aesthetic and cultural values and implications of the sources considered” (p. 7). Importantly, the author notes that this approach will involve an adaptation rather than an application of linguistic theory (p. 21). One thing that remains unclear is how the author defines verbal discourse and how he determines where it begins and ends. Direct speech is not marked in the manuscripts, and different editions can disagree on what to include. This is never addressed in a study that focuses on context and co-text as much as the utterances themselves, but would make for an interesting line of inquiry.The following chapters each address different aspects of discourse: conflict, conversion narratives, journeys abroad, proverbs, gender, and finally the importance of manuscript variants. Each chapter is introduced by a key verbal exchange from saga literature. Chapter one thus opens with the exchange between Kolr and Kolskeggr in Njáls saga and then turns to five foundational concepts from pragmatics which will be utilized in the remaining chapters: context; theories of face and self-worth; locution, illocution, and perlocution; implicature; and in-/underdeterminacy and levels of indirectness in speech (p. 21). At this early point, while the individual concepts all add different dimensions to the understanding of the exchange in Njáls saga, the connections between them are still somewhat vague. Things soon become clearer, however. Thus, in chapter two, the author turns to the Quarrel of the Queens in both Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, and Middle High German sources and discusses these instances of verbal contest in light of implicature, (in-)directness, and (im-)politeness, raised in chapter one, while simultaneously honoring their context in Norse-Germanic ritualized contests such as flyting, senna, and mannjafnaðr. Chapter three takes up this thread of verbal contests but suggests that they can not only be used to harm an opponent, but also to form constructive bonds between two parties. The basis of the chapter is Sneglu-Halla þáttr in which a hostile verbal exchange leads to a positive outcome. The author contextualizes this scene by drawing on both Völsunga saga and Beowulf, in which similar scenes of verbal aggression have negative or positive results, respectively. Drawing on Shippey's concept of the “conflictive principle,” Bryan suggests that it is maintaining a balance between aggression and praise, between face-threatening and face-enhancing acts, that ultimately leads to positive outcomes as in Beowulf or the þáttr. Simultaneously, in the þáttr, King Haraldr is also shown to be able to deal with indirectness and ambiguity, which enhances both his status as well as his relationship with Halli, who uses these tactics in his communication. Contextualizing these observations with further examples, Bryan suggests that the conflictive principle ultimately serves to test a stranger's status while simultaneously establishing one's own self-worth.Chapter four opens with Þorgeirr Þorkelsson's speech before the conversion of Iceland from Íslendingabók, and the author notes immediately that it is not this speech that constitutes the speech act of conversion, but that this speech act follows and is separate from it. However, while Þorgeirr's speech is quoted directly in Ari's narrative, the conversion act is not—why? And how does this speech work? To answer these questions, and turning to Austin and Searle's felicity conditions, Bryan elucidates several conversion narratives from konunga- and Íslendingasögur, choosing both positive and negative examples. In the process, Bryan aims to understand the mechanisms of conversion and the way they were perceived and remembered in later narratives. One of the examples is Þangbrandr's attempted conversion of Iceland. The author suggests that the missionary is “the right man for the job” (p. 107) but does not explain why Þangbrandr is mentioned in the context of unsuccessful conversion narratives. He later returns to this example, suggesting that felicity conditions were unmet on the local level (p. 115), but he also seems to relate this to xenophobia without further exploring the implications (p. 114).Chapter five on the language of Icelanders abroad opens with a scene—Skalla-Grímr's refusal to serve King Haraldr—that fits the context thematically, but is nonetheless problematic because Skalla-Grímr is not an Icelander yet at this point, and it is not explored whether Skalla-Grímr's speech foreshadows an independent Icelandic identity. The other examples from Víga-Glúms saga, Gunnlaugs saga, and Morkinskinna work better in this discussion of Icelanders’ verbal exchanges abroad. Ultimately, Bryan suggests that Icelanders of the settlement age considered themselves superior to the Norwegians they left behind, and that this was reflected in the later Icelandic self-image communicated in the sagas. This allows them to not only join the retinue of the Norwegian king, but also to constantly challenge his authority, resulting in nation-making discourse.Chapter six turns to proverbs and poetry, opening with a discussion of the conflicting manuscript transmission of Guðrún's response to Bolli's killing of Kjartan. Bryan discusses the importance of indirectness and implicature in several proverbs to elucidate this problematic passage, arguing that “it is really the context, not the locution itself, that dictates the meaning” (p. 154), which is why Bolli's response is stable across Laxdæla saga's transmission. These findings are then applied to instances of situational verse in Grettis saga, suggesting that these similarly draw on indirectness, implicature, and context to generate meaning, while simultaneously asserting Grettir's self-worth. This reading is complemented by an analysis of a particularly puzzling instance of indirectness in Króka-Refs saga, making this one of the few instances in which later Íslendingasögur are discussed. Sadly, Bryan seems to unquestioningly agree with the small number of previous publications on this saga when he argues that “the saga writer is parodying . . . a specific cultural and speech situational context” (p. 160). Addressing more of the “post-classical” Íslendingasögur would have been beneficial in this context. Returning to Grettis saga, the author discusses the discursive implications of drengskapr as the “spirit of self-worth” (p. 166), which could have been supplemented with recent research on saga masculinities.This, together with a discussion of the use of proverbs by female characters in Laxdæla saga to assert their agency, leads the reader into chapter seven on the pragmatics of gender. The focal scene for this chapter is the conversation between Auðr and Ásgerðr in Gísla saga, and context is, as Bryan argues, key to understanding this scene. Bryan proceeds to analyze this context in the light of Craige Roberts’ quadruple “dynamic interpretation,” drawing on research on both gender and clothing in saga literature—although references to some important recent publications like Anita Sauckel's monograph on the subject are curiously absent. The scene is then contextualized further with regard to the saga's connections to the Völsung narratives, specifically the Quarrel of the Queens that was analyzed in chapter two. The author argues that Gísla saga constructs a new gendered sphere, in addition to the private and public ones often observed in scholarship: the ideal sphere “which is typified by . . . intimacy, truthfulness, and directness in speech” (p. 186). Bryan then discusses a pivotal scene in Víglundar saga—which, unlike Króka-Refs saga, is not contextualized as a late Íslendingasaga—in which Ketilríðr laments her lack of agency as both woman and daughter through the use of extreme indirectness. Here, as well as in Njáls saga, the verb ráða becomes key to reading female agency and discursive power. This can only be understood through the speech-situational context, however: in all these examples, female characters try to assume the social and cultural currency to make their words matter, both in relation to men as well as to other women. However, not all narratives employ the same strategies: Auðr's use of directness rather than indirectness shows that the usage of pragmatics in Old Norse literature changed and developed.The eighth and final chapter extends these findings of a shift in the usage of pragmatics to the study of manuscript variants. Returning to Sneglu-Halla þáttr, Gunnlaugs saga, and Gísla saga, Bryan considers the diachronic development of discourse across different performances of the same narrative. Applying a material-philological perspective to these three examples, the author argues that the fullest understanding of pragmatic principles existed in the thirteenth century, as evidenced by manuscripts such as Morkinskinna, the earlier manuscripts of Gunnlaugs saga, or the shorter M version of Gísla saga. In the later iterations of these narratives, information is either added or altered, or indirectness changed to directness. Especially in the last example, this is taken as a reduction of sophistication, with Bryan arguing that “the discourse is crippled by omission” (p. 212). This is supplemented by once again taking recourse to the “parody” of Króka-Refs saga. Ultimately, Bryan suggests, four stages of pragmatic understanding emerge, moving from preliterate to literate, to transitional, and late. These changes go hand in hand with increasing literacy, which requires less complex pragmatic exchanges.These discussions are accompanied by a small number of mostly relevant tables, graphs, and charts that assist the reader in untangling the complexity of the information that is being presented. This is especially useful for scholars of literature who are less well-versed in linguistic theory. At the same time, Bryan writes clearly and presents his argument in a way that is easy to follow, making this study accessible to a wide variety of potential readers in various fields of historical literary and linguistic studies. Scholars of Middle High German and Old English literature will find the book particularly relevant, as these literatures are frequently used in comparison with the Icelandic saga material.Ultimately, Bryan argues, this analysis shows that saga writers were aware of the principles of pragmatics, but that this awareness waned with an increase in what he refers to as “literalization” (e.g. p. 17: the process in which a society moves from more oral to more literate forms of discourse), nation-making, and Christianization. Bryan frames this in terms of a loss, echoing Vésteinn Ólason's assertion that the Íslendingasögur are about “the loss of an entire world” (Dialogues with the Viking Age, p. 9; cited on p. 44). This “linguistic loss . . . communicative loss” (p. 44) is later attributed to the “natural way of languages” (p. 213), but the negative impression remains as this “natural way” is related to simplification and discursive leveling and waning, and Bryan looks for a “culprit” (p. 223) for these changes. This type of discourse has been widespread in Old Norse-Icelandic Studies in the past and serves to reinforce the often arbitrary divisions older scholarship has placed between “classical” and “post-classical,” early and late medieval literature. I find it incomprehensible that Bryan does not question this type of rhetoric, speaking of loss and simplification rather than the natural change one would expect a language to undergo as the culture by which it is spoken also changes, without judging this change to be negative. Later medieval and Early Modern Icelandic literature may be narratively and discursively different, but this does not need to be read as a weakening or diminishment. Nonetheless, Bryan's study will surely spark a lively debate around the uses of linguistic theory in the field, around discourse analysis and its uses for Literary Studies, and around the development of Old Norse-Icelandic prose and poetry over time.