Laxdaela Saga, The

(The Saga of the People of Laxardal)

(ca. 1245)

   The Laxdaela Saga (Saga of the people of Salmon River Valley) is a 13th-century Icelandic saga telling the tragic story of eight generations of the descendents of Ketill Flatnose. Set in Norway, Scotland, and Iceland, the saga covers the period from the settlement of Iceland in the ninth century through the country’s acceptance of Christianity in 1000. The saga is remarkable in its emphasis on strong woman protagonists, which has led to speculation that the anonymous author was a woman. Laxdaela Saga begins as Ketill Flatnose flees Norway to escape the tyrannical policies of King Harald Fairhair. He settles in Scotland. His daughter, Unn the Deep-Minded, leaves Scotland for Iceland with her grandchildren a generation later, and there becomes established as matriarch of a large family and holds sway over a significant portion of land at Breidafjord in western Iceland. She dispenses land to her kinsmen and to others,who later quarrel over boundaries as Iceland becomes more settled. The main action of the saga concerns three of Ketill’s descendants in the seventh generation: Gudrun Osvifsdottir, Kjartan Olafsson, and Bolli Thorleiksson, whose love triangle has been compared with that of Brynhild, Sigurd, and Gunnar in the heroic tradition recounted in the Elder Edda and elsewhere. Gudrun loves Kjartan, but like Brynhild, she is denied his love. She marries Kjartan’s foster brother Bolli, and (once again like Brynhild) plots vengeance on her former love with her new husband. Bolli ambushes Kjartan and kills him. Bolli himself is killed later in retribution for Kjartan’s murder, and Gudrun ultimately urges her sons to take vengeance for their father’s death. After this is accomplished, she marries again. In her old age, after the advent of Christianity in Iceland, Gudrun becomes the first nun and anchoress in the country. The saga ends with her death. Laxdaela Saga is clearly based on historical events, as evidenced by the records in the 12thcentury Icelandic Landnamabok (Book of settlements). However, the author’s sense of chronology and historic detail is flawed. Still, the appeal of the saga is not its historicity but its presentation of Gudrun, the most memorable of all saga heroines, and the tragic conflicts that lead to familial enmity and a seemingly endless cycle of vengeance. These things are conventional in Icelandic family sagas. Less conventional are the author’s interest in physical appearances, dress, and manners (suggesting an acquaintance with courtly ROMANCE), and the author’s focus on strong female characters who are at the center of the action both in the opening chapters (with Unn) and the main body of the text (with Gudrun). Indeed the saga could be called the first biography of a secular woman in medieval Europe. For this reason some scholars have suggested a woman author. Others, because of the scholastic learning evident in the text, have suggested a clerical author. In either case the turbulence and internecine feuds that form the subject matter of the saga may be intended to mirror the political situation of the author’s own time, Iceland’s infamous Sturlung Age (1230–64), a period of turbulence, treachery, and civil war.

   Bibliography

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