Women and Rocks and Saving Lives, Oh My!

We were so close, Egil's Saga! So close!

Welcome back, dear reader!

No cycles this week. (Not for a lack of content, to be sure.) Instead, I’d like to muse a little on gender in medieval literature through Beowulf (briefly) and Egil’s Saga, an Icelandic saga.

Unsurprisingly, women during this period, like other periods, were typically not afforded the same autonomy and freedom as men. As a result, the center of focus is usually men: Beowulf, for instance, and the many kings and warriors and even the unnamed thief who awakens the dragon; Egil, his brother, their family, more warriors, and so on.

Yet the differences between these two tales are still noteworthy. In Beowulf, women are scarcely mentioned, and never in great detail. For instance, the first female character to be mentioned is the daughter of Beow, son of Shield Sheafson: “[Beow] was four times a father [. . .] Heorogar, Hrothgar, the good Halga, / and a daughter, I have heard, who was Onela’s queen, / a balm in bed to the battle-scarred Swede” (lines 59-63).

Really? That’s what we’re going with? Not even a name like her other three siblings? She’s a “balm in bed.” Got it. Moving on.

In Egil’s Saga, meanwhile, the very first line introduces us to a woman (albeit in passing) who is given a name: “There was a man named Ulf, the son of Bjalfi and of Hallbera, the daughter of Ulf the fearless. She was the sister of…” and so on (Chapter I, or page 3 in my edition). While her being the sister of someone or other is clearly one of the most important things about her, because God forbid she stand on her own right, she is at least named, and named early on, which is more than can be said of the first female character in Beowulf.

In the introduction to my edition, editor Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir points out that “the author of Egil’s Saga, in general, pays little attention to women and their situation, which reflects the fact that women in thirteenth-century Scandinavia had little control over their lives” (xxvii). But Óskarsdóttir also adds, “Nonetheless, women play an important role in Egil’s Saga” (xxvii) and provides some examples.

For now, I want to focus on the surface here, as a lead-in to the next couple of weeks, but I will turn to one example that Óskarsdóttir provides: “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). Once again, the woman can’t stand in her own right—but on the terms of this time period and the story, not so bad for her either. She can hold her own against any man. (Until she dies to one, of course.) She’s given a sort of authorial role over Egil, albeit also a motherly one. And she’s merely a servant who, as Óskarsdóttir summarizes quite well, stands up to Egil’s father when the latter attacks Egil, saving Egil.

At the cost of her own. Exit Brak, pursued by frenzied father, who throws a rock at her in the water. They both sink rather anticlimactically (and also a bit frustratingly, but anyway).

Women constantly give their lives for others, in the real world and in literature, yet the “savior” figure in literature, especially in fantasy literature and especially under the trope of “the chosen one,” is most often male or masculine by our standards. (Most often, of course, meaning not always.) But we tend to accept that without batting an eye. Aslan is Jesus, right? Harry Potter? Various characters in Star Wars? Frodo? And so on and so forth?

When Hermione teaches others how to properly do magic, they have to come to her rescue later, because somehow she’s suddenly incapable of it. (She didn’t have her wand when that troll attacked. Convenient timing for a girl who’s really quite frankly obsessed with magic.)

So Brak…had to die, I guess? Because she’s a woman and stood up to a man. She sacrificed her life for someone else. But there was no resurrection, no last-minute McGuffin to give her a second chance, no glory. God forbid.

So what do we make of this? Why does Brak have to die, despite being as strong as any man and being able to dissuade Egil’s father from attacking—and quite possibly killing—Egil? Why bother including Brak at all if the story wasn’t going to give her glory like the men she’s just as strong as?

Does it even matter that a woman is given a name in the opening sentence of the story?

These questions I leave to you, dear reader, because I’m still mulling them over. Thanks for reading, and see you next time as we dive more into Egil’s Saga!

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Works Cited

Donoghue, Daniel, editor. Beowulf: A Verse Translation. Translated by 
Seamus Heaney, W.W. Norton and Company, 2019.

Óskarsdóttir, Svanhildur, editor. Egil’s Saga. Translated by Bernard Scudder. Penguin Group, 2004.