Onomastics and destiny: Óláfr Pái Hǫskuldsson and family (Laxdæla saga)

Abstract

The Icelandic chieftain Óláfr Hǫskuldsson of Laxdæla saga is the son of an enslaved Irish princess, Melkorka, yet is still judged a candidate to succeed her father as an Irish king. His choice to return to Iceland is validated by his subsequent success as a stockman and community leader. Yet he fails to recognize that the source of his prosperity and material plenty lies in his maternal inheritance, in which Melkorka (‘Smooth-Oat’) may be identified as a Celtic sovereignty figure, the source of his irrecusable election to a rich somatic life and chieftaincy, complemented by the attention of his paternal family’s tutelary spirit or fylgja. By slaughtering his totemic ox, Harri, he calls down the vengeance of the Icelandic tutelary figure representing his father’s family’s fortunes which had concurrently assured his success. Retribution follows later in the saga with the death of his favourite son, Kjartan. From the perspective of the thirteenth century, when Iceland yielded to Norwegian hegemony, the arc of Óláfr’s career is paralleled on a greater scale by Iceland’s early medieval history.