14 - The Dead Lover's Return

Summary

I'll do as much for my true love

As any young woman may;

I'll sit and mourn upon his grave

A twelvemonth and a day.

The Unquiet Grave, Hb2, Child IV, 475

1. Gender and grief

So far, I have considered stories of raising the dead that are typically based on a mother–son relationship. Only in Hervararkviða does a daughter raise her dead father, and this poem clearly uses deliberate gender reversal, perhaps partly to warn women not to usurp masculine roles. Norse daughters doubtless grieved as much for their fathers as sons did for their mothers; the scarcity of such tales therefore demands some explanation.

Perhaps young women found it difficult to gain a hearing as poets. Most verses attributed to female skalds are by older women of high birth or magical abilities, such as Hildr Hrólfsdóttir, Queen Gunnhildr or Steinunn Refsdóttir, the antagonist of the missionary Þangbrandr. Occasionally, a young woman responds to a verse addressed to her by a would-be lover, as in Kormáks saga ch. 6. But even the longest sequence of early skaldic verse attributed to a woman, the Sendibítr of Jórunn skáldmær, runs to only five stanzas. Yet any poet, female or male, might be interested in female bereavement as a subject (see, for example, Guðrúnarkviða I), so it is unlikely that the scarcity of father–daughter encounters with the dead is due simply to young women failing to gain a hearing.

Another explanation might be in terms of social need. Stories about calling up one's dead mother might often influence a young man who was already shouldering major responsibilities. If his own mother was alive, they would encourage him to heed her advice, and allow the family the benefit of her greater experience. If she was already dead, such tales might strengthen her son's authority by suggesting that he still enjoyed her magical help. Young women were unlikely to be in positions of such authority, so there would be less need for the community to devote imaginative attention to their personal grief.