Encounters at the Mound in Old Norse Literature: Dialogues between Landscape and Narrative

Abstract

In Old Norse literature, landscape is a significant component of the grammar of a text. To take just three examples, consider Drangey in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar: a sheer and unassailable island described as a “vígi” (Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar 1936, 218) [stronghold], where the outlaw Grettir makes his last stand. This “vígi” represents the ultimate topographical expression of Grettir’s progressive dislocation from society, a locus “symbolic of an incarcerated psyche” (Damico 1986, 11). Consider the body of water across which two hostile interlocutors hurl insults and negotiate identities in the eddic poem Hárbarðsljóð: “‘Hverr er sá karl karla / er kallar um váginn?’” (Hárbarðsljóð 2014, 389) [Who is that churl of churls who calls across the gulf?].2 This spatial threshold is structural to the speech-act that ensues, since it enforces verbal rather than martial combat. And consider the dynamic seascape of cliff, rock, and wave, conjured through cumulative kennings