5 - Modulating Emotion Sigurðar saga þõgla and the Maiden-King Romance

Summary

IN THIS CHAPTER we return to the world of romance and its re-invention within the Norse cultural realm. The so-called riddarasögur (literally ‘stories of knights’) is a modern generic denominator intended to encapsulate a group of stories whose main generic features are on the one hand thematic and on the other geographic; i.e. they are composed of stories that focus on adventures beyond the borders of the Nordic world. They are distinguished from the fornaldarsögur (legendary sagas) and the Icelandic sagas by the place of action (outside the borders of Scandinavia) and the characters’ places of origin, and from other genres by their romance-oriented thematic and episodic structure. Regardless of the legitimacy of the generic distinction (which has been questioned) the stories form an assorted collection. While they vary greatly in their narrative emphasis and functionality, the stories are bound together (generically speaking) by a common generic functionality that derives ultimately from romance.

While the translated romances have garnered some interest, particularly in the larger context of trans-continental transmission patterns and the diffusion of the romance across Europe, the indigenous riddarasögur have attracted less attention. They have historically been dismissed as frivolous, intentionally fanciful and often incoherent. Geraldine Barnes has, however, recently sought to demonstrate that the riddarasögur adopted the generic form of romance as a framework for their own engagement with historiography and that their authors drew on a learned tradition of world history and geography to frame their narratives. The diversity of the indigenous romance material, ranging from fabliaux-like comedies to hagiographical accounts, reveals the plasticity of romance as a generic framework and its capacity to encompass a multitude of narrative goals. The representational force and capacity of the Norse romance lies, as before, within the emotive script provided by the generic framework of the romance and the particular adaptation of that script to the authors’ narrative objectives.

This chapter focuses on one of these indigenous romances, Sigur ðar saga þogla (The Story of Sigurd the Silent). The process of adaptation of the emotive functionality of romance in Sigur ðar saga þogla is analysed as a way to probe the underlying social anxieties in the saga. In particular the focus is upon the underlying narrative tensions related to gender and social status. The romance queries gendered categorisations and female autonomy through a fabliau-like staging of gendered dichotomies.