Justice for Brak
How the Saga of the People of Laxardal (Also) Shows Us Why We Should Care About Medieval Literature
Why should we care about medieval literature?
This question is not a new one for me: I posed it in my second Substack, shockingly entitled "Why Should We Care About Medieval Literature?" I will revisit this question today while talking about The Saga of the People of Laxardal, an Icelandic saga that briefly includes Egil (as in Egil’s Saga). It’s a tale that is as much concerned about the daily lives of the people of Laxardal as it is about women in particular.
Welcome to another week on The Whale-Road, weary traveler! Taking a break from cycles (for now), I’m going to revisit the question of why medieval literature matters by adding The Saga of the People of Laxardal to the mix.
So…why should we care about medieval literature, and what does that have to do with Laxardal? Well, first, let me return to a line I wrote in the previously linked Substack: “If we can actively deconstruct the ways that our thoughts and thought processes predispose us to certain understandings but also certain practices, then I think we can arrive at an answer to why we read and should care about medieval literature.” And that’s so relevant to this week’s saga!
For example, Unn, Olaf’s grandmother, seems to have considerable power that women tend to lack in other medieval tales I’ve discussed so far. The saga explains that “Unn was fonder of [Olaf] than anyone else and let it be known that she intended to leave all her property at Hvamm to Olaf after her death” (Chapter 7, pp. 8). So Unn owns property, and she’s deciding who it goes to after her death. But then she also says to Olaf, “It has occurred to me, my dear grandson, that you should think of settling down and marrying,” to which “Olaf agreed and said he was ready to follow [Unn’s] advice on the matter” (Chapter 7, pp. 8). Her advice is being heeded by Olaf! Unn says some more things, and then Olaf adds, “The only wife I take will be one who will rob you of neither your property nor your authority” (Chapter 8, pp. 9). So Olaf doesn’t just heed his grandmother’s advice: he also shows her a level of respect that one might owe in these medieval tales to the patriarch of their family and acknowledges that she owns property and has authority.
And this moment is in chapter seven, near the start of the tale!
Contrast this moment to, say, Brak in Egil’s Saga, another Icelandic saga. According to that saga, “Skallagrim had a servant woman named Thorgerd Brak, who had fostered Egil when he was a child. She was an imposing woman, as strong as a man and well versed in the magic arts” (Chapter 40, pp. 68-9). I briefly explored this moment in "Women and Rocks and Saving Lives, Oh My!" in another context, and I’ll revisit it now. Brak, though “a servant woman,” is a motherly figure who “fostered Egil.” But when she so much as dares to suggest that maybe Egil’s father Skallagrim shouldn’t kill Egil just because he’s mad, she flees from Skallagrim’s now re-focused anger and jumps into the water, at which point he throws a rock at her and kills her. She survives a very short period of time, unable to apply any of her authority as Egil’s foster mother to her situation with Egil’s violent father (although she does, of course, save Egil’s life in her sacrifice). Additionally, no amount of power that she possesses in being “as strong as a man and well versed in the magic arts” can save her life, and in her death, this power is totally squandered by the story (and the storyteller).
(Justice for Brak!)
These sagas take place during the same time period, and even Egil is present in Laxardal, if only for a moment. They are linked. Yet they paint such different pictures of women, and Laxardal not only names its women—a point that I also make about Egil in the “Women and Rocks”—but allows them moments of authority. Maybe it’s important that Olaf agrees, language that suggests that maybe he has a choice, but the language of the story (at least in this translation) still suggests that Unn is an autonomous, land-owning, decision-making woman. And this power is not in magic or physical strength—not that either one seemed to help Brak either.
That’s another reason we should care about medieval literature: the lived experiences of people during the medieval period were no more monolithic than the lived experiences of people today, and medieval literature offers us a window into that world. For instance, while women still generally lacked an autonomy that has grown and expanded considerably in the last thousand or so years, there are still moments where we can see that questions of autonomy were not so black and white, such as by comparing Brak and Unn.
Thanks for enduring this week’s line of thinking! Until next time!
Works Cited
The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale. Translated by Keneva Kunz, edited by Bergljót Kristiánsdóttir, Penguin Books, 2008.
Hi Jeremy! I find that Unn is a very interesting figure in The Saga of The People of Laxardal. When speaking of medieval literature, I find that the representation of women is something that is sorely lacking in many of the works that I have been taught previously in high school. Unn and Olaf's respect of Unn as an autonomous figure in history is a factor of medieval literature that I have previously thought was lacking.
Well Written!
Hi, Jeremy! Nice post here. I like your take on why we should consider medieval literature important as you tackle it through the lense of the treatment of women. As all literature is, medieval literature is a look into the past that provides readers with the opportunity to study history and see how it relates to the present. Laxardal certainly promotes a more autonomous reality for women, however this is mostly seen in the domestic space. But, this is better than nothing, no?