Kormak’s Saga

(ca. 1200–1250)

   Kormak (or Cormac) Ogmundarson was an Old Icelandic SKALDIC poet who lived from about 930 to 970. Kormak is known to have worked as a court poet for both Earl Sigurd Hakonson (d. 962) and for Harald Gráfeldr (Harald Graycloak), king of Norway from 960 to 970, and he was respected enough as a poet that some of his official court verses survived and were included by SNORRI STURLUSON in his handbook of skaldic poetry, the PROSE EDDA (ca. 1225).However, Kormak’s Saga, an early Icelandic family SAGA that focuses on the life of the poet, essentially ignores Kormak’s official public life to concentrate on his lifelong obsession for the woman Steingerd. The saga, which survives in a single vellum manuscript called the Mo´?ruvallabók (ca. 1340) plus a later fragment, is a prose narrative like all sagas, but contains nearly 80 skaldic poems as well, more verse than any other surviving saga (nearly a third of the entire text). The plot of the saga focuses on Kormak’s jealousy and his conflicts with Steingerd’s two husbands, Bersi and Thorvald. Kormak loves Steingerd from the first time he sees her, catching a glimpse of her ankles. But while he is wooing her, he is cursed by a witch, who prophesies that he will never have any joy of her. The curse begins to manifest itself in his life, as he cannot quite bring himself to take the important step of marrying her—in fact, he fails to show up on the day of his wedding, and Steingerd’s kinsmen marry her, against her will, to the widower Bersi.He loses a formal duel (a Holmgang or “battle-wager”) with Bersi on a technicality (the details of the duel make fascinating reading for those interested in the early history of Iceland). But in a second duel Bersi is badly wounded in the thigh by Kormak’s friend Steinar. Steingerd takes the opportunity to divorce the crippled Bersi, but rather than return to Kormak, she weds Thorvald (“the Tinsmith”) instead. Now Kormak goes out of his way to insult and provoke Thorvald, attacking him with satiric verses, publicly humiliating him through open misconduct with Steingerd, and even striking him with a tiller. But Thorvald does nothing until Kormak rescues Steingerd from pirates, after which Thorvald offers to give up his wife as a reward for Kormak’s rescue of her. Freed from her husbands, Steingerd is now available to marry Kormak, but instead she rebuffs him completely. The rejected Kormak admits that fate is unlikely to allow the two of them to live together, and throws himself into a Viking expedition, only to be killed in Scotland fighting a giant, who falls upon him after Kormak has killed him. One of the questions debated by scholars is the relationship between the poetry and the prose in the text. Most scholars have felt that the poetry in the text is Kormak’s genuine verse, preserved in the oral tradition from the 10th century. There is some debate as to whether the romantic narrative was a tradition surviving from Kormak’s life, or the imaginative creation of the saga writer. Some have suggested that both the poetry and the prose are creations of the saga writer; however, since there are a number of places in the text where the prose writer seems to misunderstand the point of the poem he quotes, this last suggestion seems unlikely. But there is a possibility that the narrative, and the poetry as well, was influenced by the story of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE, a love story that had been retold in an Old Norse version in 1226. Certainly Kormak betrays some of the typical characteristics of the courtly lover, including melancholy and inability to sleep.

   Most of the poems in Kormak’s Saga are in the form called dróttvoett, one of the most difficult skaldic verse forms, which used both alliteration and complex rhyme. In the saga, Kormak is depicted reciting 64 stanzas of poetry,much of it love poetry. Bersi, also a poet, recites 14 poems, and Steingerd herself recites one expressing her determination to have Kormak. But Kormak himself is no prize. Not unlike the hero of EGIL’S SAGA, another skaldic poet,Kormak is quarrelsome and uncouth, rash and perverse, and not a particularly likable character—though his hopeless devotion to his beloved Steingerd does arouse some sympathy. But the narrative remains an unusually romantic family saga, containing a significant collection of memorable skaldic poetry.

   Bibliography

   ■ Andersson, Theodore M. The Icelandic Family Saga: An Analytic Reading. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 28. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

   ■ Hollander, Lee M., trans. The Sagas of Kormak and the Sworn Brothers. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949.

   ■ Morris,William, and Eiríkr Magnússon. The Story of Korkak, the Son of Ogmund. Introduction by Grace J. Calder, and a note on the manuscript work of William Morris by Alfred Fairbank. London: William Morris Society, 1970.

   ■ O’Donaghue, Heather. The Genesis of a Saga Narrative: Verse and Prose in Kormaks Saga. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.