Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland: From Farm-Settlement to Sagas 1843846438, 9781843846437, 9781800106482

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland

Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages ISSN: 2399-3804 (Print) ISSN: 2399-3812 (Online) Series Editor Michael D.J. Bintley Editorial Board Jennifer Neville Aleks Pluskowski Gillian Rudd Questions of nature, the environment and sustainability are increasingly important areas of scholarly enquiry in various fields. This exciting new series aims to provide a forum for new work throughout the medieval period broadly defined (c.400–1500), covering literature, history, archaeology and other allied disciplines in the humanities. Topics may range from studies of landscape to interaction with humans, from representations of “nature” in art to ecology, ecotheory, ecofeminism and ecocriticism; monographs and collections of essays are equally welcome. Proposals or enquiries may be sent directly to the series editor or to the publisher at the addresses given below. Dr Michael D.J. Bintley, Department of English and Humanities, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland From Farm-Settlement to Sagas

Harriet J. Evans Tang

D. S. BREWER

© Harriet J. Evans Tang 2022 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Harriet J. Evans Tang to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2022 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 643 7 (hardcover) ISBN 978 1 80010 648 2 (ePDF) ISBN 978 1 80010 649 9 (ePUB) D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

In loving memory of Jean, Roland, Desmond, and Pearl

CONTENTS List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

x

Note on Translations

xi

The Animal Acts …

1

1. An Animal-Human Settlement

23

2. Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm

60

3. The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland

106

4. Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur

140

5. The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger

184

… and the Man Responds

209

Bibliography

215

Index

239

ILLUSTRATIONS Figures Fig. 1

The Viking-Age longhouses at (a) Eiríksstaðir, (b) Granastaðir, (c) Vatnsfjörður, (d) Sveigakot, (e) Aðalstræti 14–18, and (f) Ólafsdalur. Adapted from Fig. 3.2–3.5 in Milek (‘Houses and Households’) and Fig. 6 in Lilja Björk Pálsdóttir (Ólafsdalur).  31

Fig. 2

The byres at (a) Goðatættur, (b) Gjáskógar, (c) Gröf, (d) Lundur, and (e) Bergþórshvoll. Adapted from Fig. 3, 6, 8, 10, and 15 in Berson (‘The Byres’). 

66

The Viking-Age enclosures at (a) Granastaðir, (b) Pálstóftir, and (c) Hofstaðir. After Fig. 3.42 in Lucas (‘The Structural Sequence’).

68

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Plan of the Viking-Age site at Vatnsfjörður. After Fig. 1 in Milek (‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’ [Vatnsfjörður 2010]).71

Fig. 5

The proposed animal-buildings at Vatnsfjörður: (a) S9, (b) S7, and (c) S8. Adapted from Fig. 3 and 6 in Milek (‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’ [Vatnsfjörður 2009]), and Fig. 7–8 in Daxböck et al. (‘Excavations in Area 23’). 75

Fig. 6

Plan of the Viking-Age (and medieval) site at Sveigakot. Image provided by and used with permission from Orri Vésteinsson.

79

Fig. 7

Structure 7 at Sveigakot and associated features. Adapted from Fig. 2 and 6 in Orri Vésteinsson (‘Areas S7 and SP’). 85

Fig. 8

Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Vatnsfjörður, Phase 1 (post-S10). Author’s own.90

Fig. 9

Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Vatnsfjörður, Phase 2. Author’s own.

91

Illustrations Fig. 10

Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Sveigakot, Phases 1a–2a. Author’s own.

Fig. 11

Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Sveigakot, Phase 2b. Author’s own.

92–3 94

Map Map 1

Map of Iceland showing the three main archaeological sites discussed in the work.

6

Tables Table 1

Proposed phases of occupation and use at Vatnsfjörður. 

103

Table 2

Proposed phases of occupation and use at Sveigakot.

104

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book would not have been possible without the support of the Wolfson Foundation for its beginning, and the Leverhulme Trust for its end (grant RPG-2019-258, COHABITing with Vikings: Social space in multi-­ species communities). Acknowledgements must also be given to the various people who have offered advice and clarification over the years, especially Matthew Townend, Steve Ashby, Julian D. Richards, Tom McGovern, Viðar Hreinsson, and my anonymous reader, as well as Orri Vésteinsson and Céline Dupont-Hébert for answering my questions about Sveigakot and Vatnsfjörður respectively. Profound thanks must also go to Caroline Palmer and Mike Bintley, without whom this book would never have materialised; and unmeasurable gratitude is owed to my parents and Tsz-Chiu for helping with just about everything else while I was writing.

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS All translations in the following work are those of the author unless otherwise indicated. An effort to remain true to the original text is made in all cases, though the tense is generally standardised, and some phrasing rendered more accessible for the anglophone reader.

The Animal Acts … Ok er hestrinn kemr fyrir dyrr, hneggjaði hann þá hátt.1 And when the horse came in front of the door, then he neighed loudly.

T

here is a scene in Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, famous among saga scholars, in which a horse and a man communicate, and more than one person dies as a result. It is a remarkable moment in which the horse, Freyfaxi, uses his voice and body to provoke his human into action, and alter the course of the narrative: the animal acts, and the man responds. On hearing the neigh, Hrafnkell immediately recognises the sound as that of his horse and calls on his serving woman to go to the door. When he eventually ventures out to see Freyfaxi himself, he speaks to the horse, calling him fóstri (foster-kin), acknowledging that he has been poorly treated, and vowing revenge against the perpetrator of the ill-treatment. He tells Freyfaxi to return to his followers, and Freyfaxi understands the command, returning to his pasture and his stud-mares. Although the episode may seem quite remarkable to a modern reader, the wording of the episode, Hrafnkell’s initial casual response and immediate recognition of the neigh suggests something mundane. Hrafnkell seems used to such visits, and this interspecies communication may have been nothing out of the ordinary – but scholarship has often made it out to be so. Interpretations of Freyfaxi have frequently neglected his status first and foremost as a horse, and a horse who can act for himself; and Hrafnkell’s reference to his horse as fóstri can be read simply as an expression of affection for a favoured animal. It is, however, a relationship beyond affection. Freyfaxi is a figure with whom communication and mutual understanding can take place, he is a foster-kin to Hrafnkell and is punished for his actions. In the relationship between Hrafnkell and Freyfaxi we see action and response, sociality and obligation: an animal participating in ‘human’ social networks – or perhaps the ‘human’ nature of these social obligations breaking down. Freyfaxi is loud and provocative and does more than simply provide a way for the saga compiler to demonstrate Hrafnkell’s immoderate behaviour. He is an agent, and one capable of

1



Jón Jóhannesson (ed.), ‘Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. 95–133, at p. 104.

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland forming affective relationships with the characters and places around him. He is, to put it simply, an animal. Freyfaxi’s neighing at Hrafnkell’s door was the genesis moment for this book. The episode depicts an animal-human relationship with enthusiasm and devotion to detail, and invites us to look more deeply at interspecies encounters in other sagas.2 The mixture of concern, familiarity, and kinship expressed by Hrafnkell towards Freyfaxi in this episode, and the placing of the communicative encounter at the doorway, the very point of contact between the human home and outer animal spaces, prompts an audience to consider in greater detail the places of interspecies meeting points in the social farm-scape. Focussing on such details is fruitful and, in recognition of this, the following chapters make a point of examining archaeological sites for evidence of such interspecies interactions, alongside their analysis of textual sources. The animals in this book are remarkable persons: mediators between humans and the land, co-settlers, and participants in interspecies dwelling, competition, and learning. They are not unique or special, any more than any other animal: they have just been neglected. The purpose of this book is to bring back some of that attention to the animal-ness of our animals, in sagas, laws, and archaeological remains, specifically focussed on points of meeting between animals and humans that intersect with the establishment, continuation or destruction of places of interspecies dwelling.

A Multi-disciplinary Approach to an Interdisciplinary Question3 Relationships between domestic animals and humans permeated all aspects of the agro-pastoral society of early Iceland (used here as an inclusive term to encompass the Viking-Age and high medieval periods). These

2



3

I use the phrase ‘animal-human’ throughout this book, as opposed to the more commonly used ‘human-animal’ phrasing (for example, Human-­ Animal Studies). This is a deliberate choice not only to bring the animal to the forefront of any discussions, but also to avoid confusion with the concept of the ‘human-animal’, that is, the human. What can often be lost in Animal Studies research, or indeed in the term Human-Animal Relations, is the fact that humans are animals too. A more accurate term, but less familiar to readers, might be ‘anymal-human relations’, where the term ‘anymal’, coined by Lisa Kemmerer (2006), is used to indicate animals other than the species of the speaker: Lisa Kemmerer, ‘Verbal Activism: “Anymal”’, Society & Animals, 14:1 (2006), 9–14. Multi-disciplinary, or source-pluralist, approaches draw on multiple sources of evidence. Interdisciplinary analysis develops from bringing this evidence together in a mutually beneficial discussion.

2

The Animal Acts … relationships, physical and cultural, social and economic, personal and general, cannot be investigated by one discipline alone. It is impossible, then, to discuss animal-human relationships without considering multiple datasets, and the current work therefore takes a multi-disciplinary approach to its interdisciplinary focus. It draws on a range of sources to consider different representations of early Icelandic society, examining cultural attitudes towards animals and how animal-human relationships manifested within social practice (the way persons organised their spaces and lived out their lives) and its structuring principles.4 The architectural layout of a house or a farm acts as one set of structuring principles for future practice, and stories about places similarly influence subsequent action and storytelling. Textual depictions of animal-human interactions are formed from material encounters, and such material encounters may in their turn have influenced or been influenced by legal traditions. Beginning with stories of the settlement of Iceland (both medieval and modern interpretations of a Viking-Age event), the discussion then moves through analysis of Viking-Age farm sites and early laws, before turning to some of the saga literature of medieval Iceland, forever asking: how do these sources depict animal-human relations? Textual sources Three types of textual source are consulted in this book: the Grágás lawcodes, Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), and the more literary Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders). Two redactions of Landnámabók survive from the late thirteenth (c.1275–80) and early fourteenth centuries (c.1306–8), and in this book I use the earlier of these two versions.5 The Grágás manuscripts and manuscript fragments are dated between 1150 and 1280, and are assumed to reflect the legal traditions of at least the eleventh century.6 The Íslendingasögur, a collection of around forty prose narratives, are generally accepted to have been compiled in Iceland between the 4



5



6



John C. Barrett, ‘Fields of Discourse: Reconstituting a Social Archaeology’, Critique of Anthropology, 7:3 (1988), 5–16; Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, vol. 16, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Cambridge, 1977). Jakob Benediktsson (ed.), ‘Formáli’, in Íslendingabók: Landnámabók (Reykjavík, 1968), pp. v–cliv, at p. lxxv; Jón Jóhannesson, Gerðir landnámabókar (Reykjavík, 1941), p. 18; Orri Vésteinsson and Adolf Friðriksson, ‘Creating a Past: A Historiography of the Settlement of Iceland’, in James Barrett (ed.), Contact, Continuity and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 139–62, at p. 143. Peter Foote, ‘Reflections on Landabrigðisþáttr and Rekaþáttr in Grágás’, in Kreddur: Select Studies in Early Icelandic Law and Literature (Reykjavík, 2004), pp. 90–106, at p. 98; Peter Foote, The Early Christian Laws of Iceland: Some Observations (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 102–3; Frederik Pedersen, ‘A Medieval

3

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, although in many cases they only survive in later copies. They vary considerably in length, with the shortest examples often included under the term Íslendingaþættir (Tales of Icelanders) (for example, Brandkrossa þáttr discussed in ch. 5). These cultural artefacts of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are narratives of the ‘Viking-Age’ for a medieval present, specifically focussing on the lives of the families of those men and women who settled Iceland in the ninth century.7 They are written texts drawing on oral traditions, as well as the imaginations of their medieval compilers, and priorities of subsequent copyists.8 Compiled at a time of significant changes in husbandry practices and increasing climate fluctuation, these texts relate to, and interact with, the physical landscapes in which they were composed and recorded; and throughout this book the Íslendingasögur are valued as cultural-historical documents that can show how medieval Icelanders used and embellished traditional narratives about their past.9



7



8



9

Welfare State? Welfare Provision in a Twelfth-Century Icelandic Law Code’, Northern Studies, 34 (1999), 89–112, at p. 91. For a detailed recent introduction to the Íslendingasögur, see: Carl Phelpstead, An Introduction to the Sagas of Icelanders (Florida, 2020). Theodore M. Andersson, Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180–1280) (Ithaca, 2006), pp. 4, 19, 204; Emily Lethbridge and Steven Hartman, ‘Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas and the Icelandic Saga Map’, PMLA, 131:2 (2016), 381–91; Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Historical Reality and Literary Form’, in Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins (eds), Viking Revaluations: Viking Society Centenary Symposium 14-15 May 1992 (London, 1993), pp. 172–81, at p. 180; Ralph O’Connor, ‘History and Fiction’, in Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (eds), The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (London, 2017), pp. 88–110; Margaret Cormack, ‘Fact and Fiction in the Icelandic Sagas’, History Compass, 5:1 (2007), 201–17; Pernille Hermann, ‘Saga Literature, Cultural Memory, and Storage’, Scandinavian Studies, 85:3 (2013), 332–54; Judith Jesch, ‘Diaspora’, in Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell (eds), Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Berlin, 2018), pp. 583–93. Richard C. Hoffmann, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 2014), p. 335; Astrid Ogilvie, ‘Historical Climatology, Climatic Change, and Implications for Climate Science in the Twenty-First Century’, Climatic Change, 100:1 (2010), 33–47; Astrid Ogilvie, ‘Climatic Changes in Iceland A. D. c. 865 to 1598’, Acta Archaeologica, 61 (1991), 233–51, at p. 240; Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, ‘Of Sagas and Sheep: Toward a Historical Anthropology of Social Change and Production for Market, Subsistence and Tribute in Early Iceland (10th to 13th Century)’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Arizona, 1995); Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, ‘Spinning Goods and Tales: Market, Subsistence and Literary Productions’, in Gísli Pálsson (ed.), From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland (Enfield Lock, 1992), pp. 217–30; Guðmundur Ólafsson, ‘New Evidence for the Dating of Iceland’s Settlement: A Viking-Age Discovery in the Cave Viðgelmir’, in Andras

4

The Animal Acts … Archaeology While the textual sources in this book show us how lawmakers and storytellers wanted society to be, or how the past was envisioned, our archaeological sources can tell us more about how animals and humans existed together in early Icelandic society. In a broad sense, these sites and the spatial-functional analysis deployed enable us to see how VikingAge households may have operated and how animals and humans moved around and with each other, as well as providing further weight to arguments of animal-human closeness on home sites and showing ways in which the identity of a household may be linked to its relationships with animals in specific and variable ways. The bulk of the archaeological focus in this book rests on discussion of farm organisation, both inside and outside the farmhouse, although animal-human burials and outfield turf walls are included in discussions when relevant. The methods for analysing archaeological sources in this book are twofold: first, through detailed analysis of the excavation reports, particularly regarding the animal-buildings and routeways; and second, by undertaking a spatial-functional analysis of these buildings in their contexts with other buildings on the farm. The book primarily focusses on three Viking-Age sites: Aðalstræti 14–18 in Reykjavík (ch. 1), Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords, and Sveigakot in Mývatnsveit (both ch. 2; see Map 1). Individual descriptions of the sites are included in the respective chapters, but it should be noted here that all phases examined at each site belong to ninth–eleventh century contexts. This bias towards early sites is a result of both analytical preference, and prior and current archaeological practice in Iceland. As the texts discussed in the following chapters are heavily invested in the pasts of their societies, I believe early sites are logical places on which to conduct my investigations of animal-human relations on farm sites. In addition, early sites are more easily identifiable in the Icelandic landscape, and often more likely to receive funding for the extensive excavations required to provide the data necessary for the spatial-functional analysis discussed in Chapter 2.10 I focus on these specific sites for two reasons. First, they are sites in Iceland for which evidence either of internal (Aðalstræti) or external (Vatnsfjörður, Sveigakot) organisation of space is available, with detailed information about the site plans and phasing available in their site reports, including animal areas and human dwellings. Second, multiple buildings have been excavated at Vatnsfjörður and Sveigakot with seemingly evident



10

Mortensen and Símun V. Arge (eds), Viking and Norse in the North Atlantic (Tórshavn, 2005), pp. 200–7; Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Farm Abandonment in Medieval and Post-Medieval Iceland: An Interdisciplinary Study (Oxford, 1992). Kathryn Catlin, 2017, pers. comm.

5

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland

Map 1: Map of Iceland showing the three main archaeological sites discussed in the work.

chronological cut-off points for their use. While it is not possible for us to reconstruct how a site would have definitively looked in the Viking-Age, Vatnsfjörður and Sveigakot are two sites that have recorded the detailed information necessary for us to productively broach the topic. The aim of my discussion of archaeological material in Chapter 2 is therefore not to consider a wide sample of sites and offer any quantitative analysis, but rather to propose a method that might be adopted for use with suitable sites excavated in the future, enabling greater consideration of animal-­ human relationships on archaeological sites. This method aims to enable interpretations that reconnect archaeological reports and site plans with the tactile experiences of working with these structures and the animals that dwelt within and around them.11 Such analysis should not be seen as static background to the texts discussed in this book, but rather as one thread of many that piece-by-piece make up the entangled network of relations under discussion.



11

Sue Hamilton et al., ‘Phenomenology in Practice: Towards a Methodology for a “Subjective” Approach’, European Journal of Archaeology, 9:1 (2006), 51–2.

6

The Animal Acts … Viking-Age and Medieval Iceland Iceland was settled in the late ninth century, by migrants primarily from Norway and the British Isles.12 It is generally assumed that settlement took place over several decades, though scholars disagree on the intensity of settlement stages. The various debates over settlement are discussed in Chapter 1, but one thing seems clear: by the mid-tenth century, a large part of Iceland had been settled, farmhouses built, and a society of chieftains, free farmers, tenants, and enslaved persons established who relied heavily on animal husbandry for the survival of their society. While there is much archaeological evidence for the utilisation of wild resources, and limited cultivation of barley on warmer southern Icelandic farms, the settlers adopted husbandry practices inherited from their homelands, with cattle and pigs playing a significant role in initial settlements.13 The number of pig bones found in the archaeofauna from farm sites declines over time as numbers of sheep increase, while cattle remain a key feature of how Icelanders presented and constructed their society. Pasture was therefore an important resource, and the cultivation and protection of hay was of paramount concern to Icelandic farmers.14 The Alþingi accepted

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14

The previous date of the Landnám tephra layer (871±2) has recently been revised to 877±1: Karl Grönvold et al., ‘Ash Layers from Iceland in the Greenland GRIP Ice Core Correlated with Oceanic and Land Sediments’, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 135:1–4 (1995), 149–55, at p. 152; Thomas H. McGovern et al., ‘Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale’, American Anthropologist, 109:1 (2007), 27–51; Magdalena M. Schmid et al., ‘Tephra Isochrons and Chronologies of Colonisation’, Quaternary Geochronology, 40 (2017), 56–66. Thomas Amorosi, ‘Icelandic Archaeofauna: A Preliminary Review’, Acta Archaeologica, 61 (1991), 272–84; Seth Brewington et al., ‘Islands of Change vs. Islands of Disaster: Managing Pigs and Birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic’, The Holocene, 25:10 (2015), 1676–84; Andrew J. Dugmore et al., ‘The Norse Landnám on the North Atlantic Islands: An Environmental Impact Assessment’, Polar Record, 41:1 (2005), 21–37; McGovern et al., ‘Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland’, 28; Thomas H. McGovern et al., ‘Coastal Connections, Local Fishing, and Sustainable Egg Harvesting: Patterns of Viking Age Inland Wild Resource Use in Mývatn District, Northern Iceland’, Environmental Archaeology, 11:2 (2006), 187–205; Ian A. Simpson et al., ‘Soil Limitations to Agrarian Land Production in Premodern Iceland’, Human Ecology, 30:4 (2002), 423–43. Steven Hartman, Astrid E. J. Ogilvie, and Reinhard Hennig, ‘“Viking” Ecologies: Icelandic Sagas, Local Knowledge and Environmental Memory’, in John Parham and Louise Westling (eds), A Global History of Literature and the Environment (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 125–40, at p. 129; Bernadette McCooey, ‘Farming Practices in Pre-Modern Iceland’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017).

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Christianity in c.999/1000, and by the 1260s, when Norwegian rule was adopted, the pressures on the growing numbers of tenant farmers to produce a surplus on their farms for payment of tithes, rents, and participation in overseas trading networks were increasing.15 These increased pressures were aggravated by climatic fluctuation in the thirteenth century, which resulted in unpredictable farming conditions, and increasing occurrences of sea ice.16 The care of domestic animals and the production of fodder would have been a source of anxiety in this period in which environmental stability could not be taken for granted. It is important to note that Viking-Age Iceland had no wild boars, nor wolves, and only the occasional polar bear. The only land mammal prior to settlement was the arctic fox, so Iceland quickly became a landscape dominated by the domestic animals the settlers brought with them. While not predatory, these so-called domestic animals are recognised in the textual sources as having the potential to be dangerous and disruptive to the farm, and straightforward divisions between ‘wild’ and ‘domestic’ animals may not be so useful, given that some so-called domestic animals such as horses, sheep, and pigs had a semi-wild status due to herding strategies that may have embraced leaving animals to self-forage for months at a time.17 Interpretations that consider wild animals as unfamiliar, dangerous, and anti-home, and ‘domestic’ animals as familiar, safe, features of the domus are disrupted by the ability of certain animals to fulfil both functions depending on species, age, season, and temperament.18 One feature of the following chapters is to unpick the commonalities and divisions

Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, ‘Of Sagas and Sheep’; Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, ‘Spinning Goods’; Guðmundur Ólafsson, ‘New Evidence’; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth (Odense, 1999), p. 116; Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Farm Abandonment; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘A Divided Society: Peasants and the Aristocracy in Medieval Iceland’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 3 (2007), 117–39, at p. 131. 16 Astrid Ogilvie and Trausti Jónsson, ‘“Little Ice Age” Research: A Perspective from Iceland’, Climatic Change, 48:1 (2001), 9–52; Astrid Ogilvie and Thomas McGovern, ‘Sagas and Science, Climate and Human Impact in the North Atlantic’, in William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward (eds), Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga (Washington, DC, 2000), pp. 385–93; Ogilvie, ‘Climatic Changes in Iceland’; Astrid Ogilvie, Lisa K. Barlow, and Anne E. Jennings, ‘North Atlantic Climate c. AD 1000: Millennial Reflections on the Viking Discoveries of Iceland, Greenland and North America’, Weather, 55:2 (2000), 34–45. 17 Brewington et al., ‘Islands of Change’; McCooey, ‘Farming Practices’; Thomas H. McGovern, ‘Herding Strategies at Sveigakot, N Iceland: An Interim Report’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2002 (Reykjavík, 2003), pp. 48–69. 18 Kay Anderson, ‘A Walk on the Wild Side: A Critical Geography of Domestication’, Progress in Human Geography, 21:4 (1997), 463–85, at p. 471; Ian Hodder, The Domestication of Europe: Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies 15

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The Animal Acts … contained within the category of the ‘domestic animal’ in Iceland. It may be that animal-human space operated as a continuum, in which there were graduated stages of controlled and uncontrolled spaces, with different animals placed accordingly. Cattle, for example, were ideally placed in the strictly controlled human spaces, with sheep and pigs potentially placed on the wilder end; although both sheep and pigs would have travelled along the spectrum, requiring close human care and interaction in certain seasons or at specific stages of life. Horses were likewise complex figures: often pastured at a distance from the main farm and left to breed in semiwild conditions, then to be caught when needed for riding, draught-work or fighting, and kept variously next to the farm and out in pasture. Aside from herding strategies, it is likely that religious concerns affected the ways animal-human relationships were perceived in this period. It has been suggested that domestic animals would have played an important part in the expression of pre-Christian beliefs in Iceland, and personal devotion or expression of beliefs within the household would have involved the space of the farm.19 It may also be argued that the role of domestic animals in pre-Christian ritual expression, especially horses, may have increased in a period of religious co-existence prior to official conversion.20 However, the textual sources seem to show few instances of animal-human interaction within farm spaces in which the Christian context of compilation is explicitly highlighted.21 References to pre-­Christian deities in relation to animals are not presented as a reason for conflict, for example: while Freyfaxi in Hrafnkels saga is designated as devoted to Freyr, the negativity directed towards him is due to his behaviour, and not because of his alleged pre-Christian associations. As a result, it is hard to know if we are seeing ‘Christian’ or (high medieval conceptions of) ‘pre-Christian’ attitudes to animal-human relationships in these sources, and there seems to be little difference between the interspecies relationships depicted in pre- and post-Conversion settings. In the material



19



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21

(Oxford, 1990); Terry O’Connor, Animals as Neighbors: The Past and Present of Commensal Species (East Lansing, 2013), pp. 5, 8. Luke John Murphy, ‘Paganism at Home: Pre-Christian Private Praxis and Household Religion in the Iron-Age North’, Scripta Islandica: Isländska Sällskapets Årsbok, 69 (2018), 49–97; Lara Hogg, ‘Humans and Animals in the Norse North Atlantic’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cardiff University, 2015); Bjarni F. Einarsson, ‘Blót Houses in Viking Age Farmstead Cult Practices: New Findings from South-Eastern Iceland’, Acta Archaeologica, 79 (2008), 145–84. Rúnar Leifsson, ‘Ritual Animal Killing and Burial Customs in Viking Age Iceland’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Iceland, 2018). The descriptions of animals in these texts likewise only occasionally show signs of medieval European traditions; a prominent example is the description of canine relationships with humans. This is noted in the discussions below (p. 157).

9

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland sources, things are slightly different: for example, in pre-Christian burials we find horses and dogs buried alongside humans (and occasionally on their own), a practice that falls out of use post-Conversion; but we cannot say whether or not the end of the practice represented a religiously motivated change in animal-human relations, or simply indicates that the ritual fell out of socio-political usefulness. Associations between animals and pre-Christian magic-practitioners in the Íslendingasögur are implied in episodes involving animal transformation (for example, the transformation of humans into pigs or the control of Þorgríma over her oxen in Harðar saga), but again, no negativity seems to be ascribed to the relationships depicted – we get the sense instead that these relationships were accepted ‘back then’.22 There is one exception to this, that of Þórólfr sleggja in Vatnsdæla saga (ch. 28), whose twenty cats are described in evil terms; although this may have been a result of Þórólfr’s evil disposition rather than inherent evil in a human-cat relationship. Just as pre-Conversion men and women in the sagas can be wise and noble, animal-human relationships are judged more on their constituent actions and consequences than on any religious (dis)merit. The saga-compilers present a world that was different from their own and recognise that what might not be acceptable in their own period could be plausibly seen as having been acceptable in the pre-Conversion period.

A Sense of the Field Studying animals and humans The last few decades have been productive for the study of relationships between animals and humans, with scholars from across disciplines taking various approaches to redefine or deconstruct the animal-human divide.23 Alongside this explosion of interest in postmodern discussions of the animal, an increasing level of interest in (pre)historic animal-human relations has emerged; and in the last decade, a number of approaches



22



23

For further discussion of animals and humans in ambiguous burial contexts, see: Harriet J. Evans Tang and Keith Ruiter, ‘Exploring Animals as Agents and Objects in Early Medieval Iceland and Scandinavia’, in Leszek Gardela and Kamil Kajkowski (eds), Animals and Animated Objects in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, forthcoming). See, for example: Nik Taylor and Tania Signal (eds), Theorizing Animals (Leiden, 2011); Christopher Watts, Relational Archaeologies: Humans, Animals, Things (London, 2013); and Kristin Armstrong Oma, The Sheep People: The Ontology of Making Lives, Building Homes and Forging Herds in Early Bronze Age Norway (Sheffield, 2018).

10

The Animal Acts … from archaeology and anthropology have been developed that emphasise the entanglement of animals, humans, and material remains with narratives of places and persons.24 Nick Overton and Yannis Hamilakis’ (2013) manifesto for a ‘Social Zooarchaeology’ offers an inspirational call to refute ‘anthropocentric ontologies’ and ‘reductionist epistemologies’ in our study of animals in archaeological contexts, which was instrumental in the development of the specific research agenda of this book. Both Gala Argent’s work on horses and Kristin Armstrong Oma’s research on sheep, humans, and domestic space have been equally useful in developing the approach taken in this work, particularly Armstrong Oma’s concept of ‘meeting points’, demonstrating the value of analysing animal-human relations in their spatial contexts.25 Outside of archaeology, while some scholars have explicitly discussed medieval animal-human relations in western Europe, these studies have often focussed on stories and events elsewhere from the Viking-Age and medieval north: studies of Old Norse literature have been slow to catch up, often giving limited attention to animal-human relations.26 In 1990, Simon Teuscher published a discussion of animals and men in the Íslendingasögur, although focussed narrowly

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25 26

Gala Argent, ‘Horses, Mourning: Interspecies Embodiment, Belonging, and Bereavement in the Past and Present’, in Margo DeMello (ed.), Mourning Animals: Rituals and Practices Surrounding Animal Death (East Lansing, 2016), pp. 21–30; Gala Argent, ‘Inked: Human-Horse Apprenticeship, Tattoos, and Time in the Pazyryk World’, Society & Animals, 21:2 (2013), 178–93; Kristin Armstrong Oma, ‘A Shattered Farm: Changes in Making Space from Pagan to Christian Norway’, in Liv Helga Dommasnes, Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann, and Alf Tore Hommedal (eds), The Farm as a Social Arena (Münster, 2016), pp. 171–90; Kristin Armstrong Oma, ‘Long Time – Long House’, in Frode Iversen and Håkan Petersson (eds), The Agrarian Life of the North 2000 BC–AD 1000: Studies in Rural Settlement and Farming in Norway (Kristiansand, 2016), pp. 11–26; Kristin Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points: Use of Space in the Household Arena in Past Societies’, Society & Animals, 21:2 (2013), 162–77; Kristin Armstrong Oma, ‘Between Trust and Domination: Social Contracts between Humans and Animals’, World Archaeology, 42:2 (2010), 175–87; Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London, 2011); Nick J. Overton and Yannis Hamilakis, ‘A Manifesto for a Social Zooarchaeology: Swans and Other Beings in the Mesolithic’, Archaeological Dialogues, 20:2 (2013), 111–36; Aleks Pluskowski, ‘Hares with Crossbows and Rabbit Bones: Integrating Physical and Conceptual Approaches towards Medieval Fauna’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 18 (2002), 153–82; Armstrong Oma, The Sheep People. Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’. Linda Kalof, Looking at Animals in Human History (London, 2007); Karl Steel, How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages (Columbus, 2011); Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, 2012); Susan Crane, Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia, 2013).

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland on the role of animals in insults between humans, and it was not until 2009 that an extensive study was produced (by Lena Rohrbach), looking at animal-human relations in a wide range of Old Norse-Icelandic texts.27 Rohrbach’s ‘Appendices’ are particularly valuable, providing a quick resource for further studies. A more ecocritical approach to saga literature is taken by Carl Phelpstead in ‘Ecocriticism and Eyrbyggja saga’ (2014), which, while only briefly dealing with animals, highlights key points about the role of animals in the establishment and destabilisation of boundaries in saga narrative, and the intrinsic importance of the animal-­ human community in the settlement of Iceland.28 The view from Icelandic archaeology In many respects, discussions of animals in Icelandic archaeology are anthropocentric, focussing on economic relations within households and between sites – a notable exception to this being Þóra Pétursdóttir’s engagement with the idea of animals as subjects in funerary rituals, and as co-settlers of early Icelandic communities.29 While excavation reports often provide summaries of the quantity and location of domestic animal remains on farm sites, they sometimes have little to say on the interactions between people and animals on the site, aside from theorising on herd management strategies. Where spatial dimensions of farming are

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Simon H. Teuscher, ‘Islendingenes Forhold Til Dyr i Høymiddelalderen – En Mentalitetshistorisk Analyse Av Noen Ættesagaer’, Historisk Tidskrift, 63 (1990), 311–37; Lena Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick: Mensch-Tier-Relationen in der Sagaliteratur (Tübingen, 2009). Carl Phelpstead, ‘Ecocriticism and Eyrbyggja saga’, Leeds Studies in English, 45 (2014), 1–18. See also: Timothy Bourns, ‘Between Nature and Culture: Animals and Humans in Old Norse Literature’ (Unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2018). Gavin Lucas and Thomas McGovern, ‘Bloody Slaughter: Ritual Decapitation and Display at the Viking Settlement of Hofstaðir, Iceland’, European Journal of Archaeology, 10:1 (2007), 7–30; Thomas H. McGovern, ‘The Archaeofauna’, in Gavin Lucas (ed.), Hofstaðir: Excavations of a Viking Age Feasting Hall in North-Eastern Iceland (Reykjavík, 2009), pp. 168–252; McGovern et al., ‘Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland’; Karen Milek et al., ‘Interpreting Social Space and Social Status in the Viking Age House at Hrísbrú Using Integrated Geoarchaeological and Microrefuse Analyses’, in Davide Zori and Jesse Byock (eds), Viking Archaeology in Iceland: Mosfell Archaeology Project (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 143–62; Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir et al., ‘The Palaeoecology of a High Status Icelandic Farm’, Environmental Archaeology, 12:2 (2007), 187–206. For exceptions that address animal-human interdependencies and farming practices in the Norse North Atlantic and mortuary remains from Viking-Age Iceland, see: Hogg, ‘Humans and Animals’; Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘“Deyr Fé, Deyja Frændr”: Re-Animating Mortuary Remains from Viking Age Iceland’ (Unpublished MA thesis, Tromsø, 2007).

12

The Animal Acts … considered, the focus lies on discussions of the effect of shielings and transhumance on human social relations.30 However, while cattle, sheep and pigs often appear restricted to interpretation within economic frameworks (one exception to this is the work of Gavin Lucas and Thomas McGovern on the cattle skulls at Hofstaðir), horses and dogs have been widely discussed in the context of cultural traditions in Iceland, although primarily with regards to funerary rites and burial contexts.31 In contrast to studies specifically focussed on Iceland and the North Atlantic, discussion of animals in pre-Christian cultural traditions and beliefs is widespread in scholarship on animals in Iron-age Scandinavia.32 Kristina Jennbert in particular focusses closely on domestic animals and the animal-human relations on the farm that are created and sustained



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Patrycja Kupiec and Karen Milek, ‘Roles and Perceptions of Shielings and the Mediation of Gender Identities in Viking and Medieval Iceland’, in Marianne Hem Eriksen, Unn Pedersen, Bernt Rundberget, Irmelin Axelsen, and Heidi Lund Berg (eds), Viking Worlds: Things, Spaces and Movement (Oxford, 2015), pp. 102–23; Gavin Lucas, ‘Pálstóftir: A Viking Age Shieling in Iceland’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 41:1 (2008), 85–100. Rúnar Leifsson, ‘Evolving Traditions: Horse Slaughter as Part of Viking Burial Customs in Iceland’, in Aleksander Pluskowski (ed.), The Ritual Killing and Burial of Animals: European Perspectives (Oxford, 2012), pp. 184–94; Ulla Loumand, ‘The Horse and Its Role in Icelandic Burial Practices, Mythology and Society’, in Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere (eds), Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions (Lund, 2006), pp. 130–4; Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Icelandic Viking Age Graves: Lack in Material – Lack of Interpretation?’, Archaeologia Islandica, 7 (2009), 22–40; Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’; Maeve Sikora, ‘Diversity in Viking Age Horse Burial: A Comparative Study of Norway, Iceland, Scotland and Ireland’, The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 12/13 (2003), 87–109; Rúnar Leifsson, ‘Ritual Animal Killing’; Lucas and McGovern, ‘Bloody Slaughter’. Lotte Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 (London, 2011); Lotte Hedeager, ‘Dyr Og Andre Mennesker – Mennesker Og Andre Dyr: Dyreornamentikkens Transcendentale Realitet’, in Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere (eds), Ordning Mot Kaos: Studier Av Nordisk Förkristen Kosmologi (Lund, 2004), pp. 219–87; Kristina Jennbert, Animals and Humans: Recurrent Symbiosis in Archaeology and Old Norse Religion (Lund, 2011); Kristina Jennbert, ‘The Heroized Dead: People, Animals, and Materiality in Scandinavian Death Rituals, AD 200–1000’, in Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere (eds), Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions (Lund, 2006), pp. 135–40; Kristina Jennbert, ‘Sheep and Goats in Norse Paganism’, in Barbro Santillo Frizell (ed.), PECUS: Man and Animal in Antiquity: Proceedings of the Conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9-12, 2002 (Rome, 2004), pp. 160–6; Kristina Jennbert, ‘Djuren I Nordisk Förkristen Ritual Och Myt’, in Kristina Jennbert, Anders Andrén, and Catharina Raudvere (eds), Plats Och Praxis: Studier Av Nordisk Förkristen Ritual (Lund, 2002), pp. 105–33.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland through daily practice.33 Like Jennbert, the present work explores the mentality of persons in the past through the experience of animal husbandry on the farm.34 Armstrong Oma has also explored the expression of animal-human relations in the organisation of the farm in Iron-age and Viking-Age Norway, especially regarding the period of transition between pre-Christian and Christian Scandinavia.35 For Armstrong Oma, animal husbandry practices created and maintained both the need and desire for shared life-spaces in the Iron-age longhouse and the close animal-human relations that ensued. She emphasises the intertwining of environmental, economic, and social concerns in the network of animal, human, and house, and how close relationships with animals benefited both parties on the farm. However, while Armstrong Oma suggests that pre-Christian Scandinavia was characterised by a flat ontological structure in which animals and humans co-existed, which was then changed by the introduction of a Christian belief in the hierarchy of species, such an interpretation is less complex than the impression given by the Icelandic context. Animals, environment and agency Architectural choices are meaningful decisions made for a variety of reasons, and the way spaces are organised facilitates differing experiences for persons navigating those spaces.36 Figures who are maintained or permitted within a space will have a different perception and experience of that space compared to those always outside, not permitted within, or permitted within only in certain circumstances.37 Experiences of places also change depending on gender, age, household membership, social standing, or, indeed, species; and the ability to move between places is a meaningful, identity-building activity.38

Jennbert, Animals and Humans, pp. 70–8. Ibid., pp. 139–89. 35 Armstrong Oma, ‘A Shattered Farm’; Armstrong Oma, ‘Long Time – Long House’; Kristin Armstrong Oma, ‘From Horses to Jesus: Saving Souls in the Transition from Pagan to Christian Scandinavia’, in Dona Lee Davis and Anita Maurstad (eds), The Meaning of Horses: Biosocial Encounters (London, 2016), pp. 23–38; Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’. 36 Julian Thomas, Time, Culture, and Identity: An Interpretative Archaeology (London, 1996), pp. 90, 84; Simon Unwin, Doorway (London, 2012), p. 12. 37 Alex M. Gibson, Stonehenge and Timber Circles (Stroud, 2005), p. 116; Kevin Walsh, Suzi Richer, and J. L. de Beaulieu, ‘Attitudes to Altitude: Changing Meanings and Perceptions within a “Marginal” Alpine Landscape – the Integration of Palaeoecological and Archaeological Data in a High-Altitude Landscape in the French Alps’, World Archaeology, 38:3 (2006), 436–54, at p. 437. 38 Kevin Walsh, ‘Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology: Marginality and the Culture–Nature “Divide”’, Landscape Research, 33:5 (2008), 547–64, at p. 553. 33 34

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The Animal Acts … While previous studies have been clear on the human relations that structure the organisation of space, it is only recently that animals have been considered in thinking about the organisation of space and the formation of everyday places.39 Particular places conjure up memories of animal presence, and animals act as classifying markers, tying an animal place into more general conceptions of the environment. The dwelling of both domesticated and wild animals in particular spaces constitutes in part the human experience of a location, and relations of action and reaction between animals and humans are responsible for the formation of many places in the past.40 This can be strongly seen in the place-name narratives discussed in Chapter 1, but even without accompanying stories, the wealth of animal-related place-names in the literary (and physical) landscape of Iceland acts as a constant reminder of the living, vibrant world in which these stories were formed.41 Furthermore, approaches that attempt to give both human and non-­ human agents appropriate consideration in understanding past networks of relations cannot ignore the influence of environmental conditions on the perception of place and therefore the shaping of relationships.42 Habitation within fragile or dangerous environments increases the need for

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Søren Dunhof, ‘The Issue of Infield and Outfield’, in Ingunn Holm, Sonja Innselset, and Ingvild Øye (eds), ‘Utmark’: The Outfield as Industry and Ideology in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages (Bergen, 2005), pp. 109–18, at p. 109; Arkadiusz Marciniak, Placing Animals in the Neolithic: Social Zooarchaeology of Prehistoric Farming Communities (London, 2005), pp. 10, 21; Armstrong Oma, ‘A Shattered Farm’; Armstrong Oma, ‘Long Time – Long House’; Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’; Naomi Sykes, Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues (London, 2014). Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’; Andrew Jones, ‘Where Eagles Dare: Landscape, Animals and the Neolithic of Orkney’, Journal of Material Culture, 3:3 (1998), 301–24, at p. 303; Steve Mills, ‘Sensing the Place: Sounds and Landscape Perception’, in Douglass W. Bailey, A. W. R. Whittle, and Vicki Cummings (eds), (Un)Settling the Neolithic (Oxford, 2005), pp. 79– 89; Sykes, Beastly Questions, p. 99; Jennifer Wolch, ‘Zoöpolis’, in Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (eds), Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands (London, 1998), pp. 119–38. Places such as sauðadalr ‘sheep-valley’ exist across the Íslendingasögur but are never explained. They just are. Henry P. Chapman and Benjamin R. Gearey, ‘Palaeoecology and the Perception of Prehistoric Landscapes: Some Comments on Visual Approaches to Phenomenology’, Antiquity, 74:284 (2000), 316–19; Steven Feld and Keith Basso, ‘Introduction’, in Steven Feld and Keith Basso (eds), Senses of Place (Santa Fe, 1996), pp. 3–12; Kirsten Hastrup, ‘Emotional Topographies: The Sense of Place in the Far North’, in James Davies and Dimitrina Spencer (eds), Emotions in the Field: The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience (Stanford, 2010), pp. 191–211; Ingold, Being Alive; Tim Ingold, ‘Footprints through the Weather-World: Walking, Breathing, Knowing’, The Journal of the

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland agents to be aware of the world around them, and the ways in which space is incorporated into worldviews is necessarily influenced by topography and climate.43 The experience of the environment in the Íslendingasögur is manifested through stories about the formation of places and detailed accounts of movements between places in certain conditions, and such stories often include animals as co-experiencers or interpreters. Adverse weather conditions increase the burden of care felt by humans towards domestic animals, and it will be seen in Chapter 4 that certain types of weather explicitly influence the depiction of some interspecies relations in the Íslendingasögur. The medieval Icelandic annals reinforce this link between animals and weather conditions, albeit on a much larger scale. In the early fourteenth century, bad growing seasons are often framed in terms such as rossa felliss vetr [winter of the death of horses] and fiar fellir micill [great death of livestock], and such phrases reinforce the key relationships between animals, humans, and environment in this society: relationships in which animals acted as agents.44 The agency of animals in relationships with humans is something that can no longer be disputed. Animals participate in relationships with other animals, humans, and the environments around them; and the ideas of ‘affective agency’ or ‘companion-agents’ best exemplify the sort of agency we can see represented in the sources analysed in the following chapters.45 Animal agency manifests in acts of both collaboration and resistance, and this is particularly relevant when considering depictions of dairy cattle, but also other animals around the farm such as pigs.46 Indeed, that the compiler of Brennu-Njáls saga feels the need to emphatically describe the talents of the dog Sámr in terms of understanding and nobility of nature (discussed in ch. 4, pp. 156–7) perhaps shows a recognition of cooperative agency: here was a dog who could think and act for himself, and chose to show loyalty to his human, rather than simply being a beast that served the hand that fed it in the limited ways it knew how. To better understand



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Royal Anthropological Institute, 16 (2010), 121–39; Walsh, ‘Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology’, pp. 547, 553. Hastrup, ‘Emotional Topographies’, p. 194; W. James, The Ceremonial Animal: A New Portrait of Anthropology (Oxford, 2003). Gustav Storm (ed.), Islandske Annaler Indtil 1578 (Christiania, 1888), pp. 265, 343. Vinciane Despret, ‘From Secret Agents to Interagency’, History and Theory, 52:4 (2013), 29–44; Helen Wadham, ‘Relations of Power and Nonhuman Agency: Critical Theory, Clever Hans, and Other Stories of Horses and Humans’, Sociological Perspectives, 64:1 (2021), 109–26. The collaboration or cooperation of animals has been often dismissed as passivity, and agency only recognised through resistance: see, for example: Jocelyne Porcher and Tiphaine Schmitt, ‘Dairy Cows: Workers in the Shadows?’, Society & Animals, 20 (2012), 39–60.

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The Animal Acts … the animal-human relationships within the Íslendingasögur, we need to look at the specific interactions that appear in their narratives – and the places that are vital to these encounters, both within and without our texts. A fruitful relationship: sagas and archaeology Archaeology and the literature of medieval Iceland have always had a fraught relationship. Prior to the book-prose theory that rose to prominence in Iceland in the 1930s, the Íslendingasögur had often been seen as products of authentic oral traditions passed down for hundreds of years, and therefore as more-or-less direct sources for Viking-Age society.47 As such, early archaeological activity in Iceland was focussed around identifying and excavating sites from the sagas.48 From the 1930s onwards, scholarship took a drastic turn in the opposite direction, and the Íslendingasögur were predominantly seen as works of fiction, and therefore unreliable historical sources for Viking-Age Iceland.49 As a result, Icelandic archaeologists attempted to reject any connection with textual sources, preferring instead to draw on the increasing number of scientific methods available to them to build datasets for the earlier periods of Icelandic settlement and society. Nonetheless, subsequent investigations have suggested that combining literature and archaeology can lead to productive studies of the Icelandic past.50 Indeed, in the last few decades a middle way has been adopted in which the Íslendingasögur are seen as narratives constructed by an author, but drawing on collections of pre-existing oral traditions to reconstruct stories about the past that were meaningful to medieval communities.51 Recent studies involving archaeology and the sagas have also attempted to read the Íslendingasögur for evidence of cultural responses to social, economic or environmental events, or use saga episodes as another dataset in archaeological investigations.52 The Mosfell Archaeology Project

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Phillip L. Walker et al., ‘The Axed Man of Mosfell: Skeletal Evidence of a Viking Age Homicide, the Icelandic Sagas, and Feud’, in Ann L. W. Stodder and Ann M. Palkovich (eds), The Bioarchaeology of Individuals (Gainsville, 2012), pp. 26–43. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Icelandic Farmhouse Excavations: Field Methods and Site Choices’, Archaeologia Islandica, 3 (2004), 71–100. Theodore M. Andersson, Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, p. 3; Walker et al., ‘The Axed Man of Mosfell’. Adolf Friðriksson, Sagas and Popular Antiquarianism in Icelandic Archaeology (Aldershot, 1994), pp. 190–1. Theodore M. Andersson, Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas; O’Connor, ‘History and Fiction’; Walker et al., ‘The Axed Man of Mosfell’. Jesse Byock and Davide Zori, ‘Viking Archaeology, Sagas, and Interdisciplinary Research in Iceland’s Mosfell Valley’, Backdirt: Annual Review of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA (2013), 124–41; Lethbridge and Hartman, ‘Inscribing Environmental Memory’.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland (MAP) in particular has tried in part to use archaeology to test the historicity of certain saga episodes, but a more nuanced approach is taken by a recent interdisciplinary project: Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas (IEM), which aims to understand how people in the past responded to environmental changes.53 On the one hand this involves using the sagas as sources, but also considers how environmental changes may have influenced the writing of the sagas and the preoccupations of their narratives.54 The Íslendingasögur are seen as both sources for environmental responses, and responses in their own right, and the IEM project recognises the rootedness of the sagas. This rootedness is integral to understanding the value of analysing both archaeological remains and textual narratives in this book. This book attempts to understand the positioning of domestic animals as natural-cultural beings (to paraphrase an ecocritical term) within the medieval Icelandic world, to better understand the representations of these animals and their relationships with humans in archaeological interpretations, medieval laws and the Íslendingasögur. Working with the Íslendingasögur, laws and archaeological material side by side is not to benefit one aspect of the research by using the others in a one-way exchange, but to come to more nuanced understandings of both textual and archaeological interpretations through analysis of multiple sources. The current work is not a survey of all animal-human interactions in the sagas, nor of all animal remains in Icelandic Viking-Age archaeology.55 It is a specific study, focussed on building an entangled network of threads from different datasets to examine the nature and role of animal-human relations in early Iceland, specifically in the formation and continuation of the multispecies community of the household-farm.56 It opens with discussion of the settlement of Iceland, in both archaeological and textual sources, before moving through consideration of the spaces and taskscapes of Viking-Age farms to a review of animals in the early laws Walker et al., ‘The Axed Man of Mosfell’. Hartman, Ogilvie, and Hennig, ‘“Viking” Ecologies’, 136; ‘IEM: Inscribing Environmental Memory in the Icelandic Sagas’ (n.d.) [accessed 16 May 2017]. 55 For the former, Rohrbach has done an excellent job collating many aspects of animals in the sagas; for the latter, as far as the present author is aware, no such database exists – yet. See: Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick. 56 In some cases, I have primarily ignored the larger events of individual sagas in pursuit of a deep focus on specific interactions; however, studying certain animal-human relations across a whole saga is also recommended as a productive approach to animal-human saga studies (for example, see: Harriet J. Evans Tang, ‘Grasbítar and Those Who Know Them: Sheep and Men in Brennu-Njáls Saga’, in Carl Phelpstead and Timothy Bourns (eds), Eco-Norse: Essays on Old Norse Literature and the Environment (London, forthcoming).

53

54

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The Animal Acts … of Iceland, and finally examining high medieval depictions of relations on farms in the saga literature. In places, I will discuss the ‘home’, although such a term is multi-faceted and, indeed, can be seen as stretching beyond the confines of the farm buildings and homefield that form the key focus of this book.57 The relationships investigated are overwhelmingly between animals and male householders, servants, and enslaved persons, and it is undeniably the case that the Íslendingasögur give us a very specific view of animal-human relationships from an elite (or at least literate), likely male, perspective and the interests that follow from that perspective. There are, of course, certain animals and animal-human relationships that are therefore excluded from this book. A most glaring omission is that of female interactors. While a few are included in this work (for example, pp. 160–3 below) the majority are not, due primarily to word limits, but also to the specific characteristics of such relationships: interactions between women and domestic animals almost always show the animals involved in a paranormal partnership with the woman, usually to defy male aggressors. These episodes, while briefly touched on in the mention of Þorgríma in Chapter 4 (p. 163), are not able to be sufficiently analysed in this book, but certainly deserve further scholarly attention.58 It should also be noted that the current work does not investigate animal-human relationships in mythological, mythographical, or legendary contexts, nor in skaldic poetic sources or medieval histories. Such a work would be mammoth in proportions. The following chapters instead state a case for the interdisciplinary study of domestic animals in a specific set of textual and archaeological sources focussed strongly on the place of Iceland and the Icelandic farm, considering the animals in these sources as embodied persons, not just as symbols, metaphors, economic markers, or disembodied numbers. This book is concerned with relationships. Relationships between animals and humans, with buildings and lived space, between text and the living animal, and between our view of the animal and the depictions we read in these sources. Chapter 1 considers the role of domestic animals within the establishment of Iceland as a cultural and ideological entity as well as a physically settled landmass. It analyses the representation of agro-pastoral concerns in the specific narratives of settlement in Landnámabók and the Íslendingasögur, alongside archaeological interpretations of animals and farms in the earliest Icelandic contexts. It explores the idea of animals as mediators between human settlers and the land, as well as land-spirits who could help or hinder settlement. In the process of

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Harriet J. Evans Tang, ‘Feeling at Home with Anymals in Old Norse Sources’, Home Cultures, 18:2 (2021), 83–104. It is the hope of the author to address this current neglect in future publications.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland settlement, interactions with animal places and preferences played a key role in shaping the emerging communities. This chapter also considers the domestic animals in recent research into the archaeology of settlement in Iceland and sets up the idea of Iceland as a place of co-settlement and co-dwelling that is developed through the following chapters. The analysis in Chapter 2 focusses on places and relationships on the Viking-Age household-farm. It is concerned with ‘meeting points’, moments of interaction between animals and humans, and how these can be seen shaping and being shaped by spatial organisation on VikingAge sites.59 The chapter outlines the standard expectation of an early Icelandic farm and reviews the literature so far on animal-buildings from these archaeological contexts. Two farm sites are investigated in detail: Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords and Sveigakot in the north of Iceland. While the wider locale of the farm is considered in the discussion, the homefield area and central farm complex remains the core focus, as the most accessible and measurable areas from the published interpretations of these sites. A method of analysis is deployed in this chapter that involves mapping the spatial-functional organisation of the sites in a way that better enables the multi-disciplinary researcher to consider relationships between buildings, and the experience of humans interacting with animals through these structures. Specifically, the method displays these relationships in a way that facilitates easier cross-site comparison. The chapter follows its cross-site analysis with a discussion of the relationship between animals and features of the farm in Old Norse terminology for certain spaces, objects, and animals. Chapter 3 investigates the animal-human interactions regulated in the medieval Icelandic laws known as Grágás, and analyses the framework presented in these texts of how such interactions should have taken place in the farming landscape and multispecies communities of medieval Iceland. Rules around interspecies interactions in these texts were characterised by a desire for control and awareness of the necessity of delivering compensation for accident or injury. The laws present a view of how medieval Icelanders were ideally expected to act in relation to both their animals, and the animals of others, analysing the value of animals, their work, potential for deviance, and legal methods of control. The chapter considers how the animal-human relationship relates to ideas of social and environmental responsibility in the strictly regulated space of the Icelandic communal landscape.



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Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’; Lynda Birke, ‘Meeting Points: Choreographies of Horses and Humans’, TRACE Journal for Human-­ Animal Studies, 3 (2017), 54–70.

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The Animal Acts … This discussion is continued in Chapter 4, in which the relationships between animals and humans are seen as a defining feature of the language used to describe non-human persons. The chapter investigates the use of fóstri minn ‘my foster-kin’ towards animals, as well as the relationship of these episodes to similar ones that do not explicitly use this phrase. The chapter also explores the figure of Grettir in Grettis saga, and how Grettir’s fraught relationship with the parental home-farm, and his subsequent need to belong, are mediated and developed through interactions with domestic animals. Both Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate the importance of place, environment, bodily practices, and two-way communication in animal-human relations in certain Íslendingasögur and Íslendingaþættir. Chapter 5 addresses the opposite side of the coin to Chapter 4, focussing on animal-human relationships that turn sour, notably bulls or oxen that are depicted within (initially) intensely positive relationships with their male human partners before a trigger sets them against the homefield, the hay, and in the case of Glæsir in Eyrbyggja saga, against the householder himself. The chapter is split between collective and individual acts of destruction, with the apparently paranormal associations of the latter considered in relation to the trends and patterns evident from the preceding chapters. These narratives show animals with more agency in their affective relationships than has previously been admitted, and a primary aim of this book is to advocate for ways of reading the sagas that first and foremost recognise the importance of animal agency within emplaced animal-­ human relationships in early Icelandic society. In addition, this book aims to contribute to both theoretical discussions and scientific enquiries about animals in the Old Norse world and help shed new light on the interpretations produced by archaeologists working in the north Atlantic on the processes of animal husbandry and their effect on northern environments and communities. More generally, this book contributes to studies concerning the changing relations between humans and non-humans in our own societies, especially with relation to the intensification of farming and the destruction of the environment: both situations that find a sort of microcosm in the settlement, establishment, and development of Iceland as an agro-pastoral society. Such circumstances emphasise the need to alter the way in which we relate to animals, and while this book is not a work placed explicitly within a Critical Animal Studies (CAS) framework, it does advocate for greater awareness of our animal partners in the world that we are increasingly exploiting and destroying.60 By studying historic

60

For more information on CAS, see: Margo DeMello, Animals and Society, 2nd edn (New York, 2021); John Sorenson, Critical Animal Studies: Thinking the Unthinkable (Toronto, 2014).

21

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland cultural relations between humans and domestic animals, this research provides another piece of the framework on which contemporary studies, including those in CAS, can position themselves in their call for altered ways of operating in our shared world. Animal-human relations were vital in shaping medieval Icelandic communities and environments, and these relationships were expressed in the ways the settlers in Iceland built their homes, constructed the rules for their society, and through the stories they composed and compiled about their past. The aim of this book is to draw out, map, and analyse these relationships to elevate the animal presence in these facets of social and literary life as an agentive one, and to encourage the increasing pursuit of interdisciplinary studies and projects as the most important way to address the relationships between animals, humans, and their environments in Viking-Age and medieval Iceland and beyond.61 It hopes to show the value of integrated discussion, and the value of archaeologists, literary scholars, and legal historians reading each other’s work and thinking about their sources in conjunction, not isolation.



61

The COHABIT project (https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-project-grants/ cohabiting-vikings-social-space-multispecies-communities), funded by the Leverhulme Trust and hosted by Durham University, is an example of such, bringing together archaeology, biochemistry, and textual studies to explore multispecies dwelling across the Viking world.

22

1 An Animal-Human Settlement

I

n the story of medieval Icelanders and their animals, we could do no better than to start at the beginning. The settlement of Iceland is, both materially and textually, an embodiment of human and animal relations with a new land. To properly begin to understand the ideas around and practicalities of settlement, we must consider both archaeological remains and theories, as well as later textual narratives about these settlement processes. This chapter focusses on the presentation and use of animals and space in material and literary narratives of the settlement of Iceland. Out of this drawing together of multidisciplinary sources and methods, the idea of the settlement of Iceland as a co-settlement emerges: a settlement reliant on mutual care and cooperation, and the apparent mediatory role of animals between humans and their new land. Domestic animals in Iceland occupy a distinctive place in the settlement of the island. While the island was not empty when settlers arrived in the ninth century, having pre-existing populations of arctic fox and migratory birds, all domestic animals in Viking-Age Iceland were brought over by migrants and required to work alongside their human partners in co-­ settling the landscape. The physical presence of domestic animals in the Icelandic landscape was therefore part of the Iceland constructed by these settlers and re-created by medieval writers. By building farms and boundaries, clearing land, and naming places, the settlers created homelands out of the Icelandic environment, and wrote the terms of their society: terms in which domestic animals played a formative part.

How to Access the Settlement? A multitude of narratives exist surrounding the settlement of Iceland, with previous scholarly debates having been dominated by those narratives found in Old Norse-Icelandic written sources, especially Íslendingabók (the Book of the Icelanders) and Landnámabók (the Book of Settlements), and archaeological methods have been used to confirm these narratives.1 In recent decades, however, archaeologists studying settlement-era Iceland

1



Adolf Friðriksson, Sagas and Popular Antiquarianism, pp. 13–14.

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland have questioned the dominance of medieval texts in shaping our views and, as a result, competing narratives of settlement have emerged, relying on detailed and extensive archaeological investigation. For example, some theories rely on intensive and organised ferrying of migrants to Iceland to set up farms from the earliest stages of settlement, while some emphasise the early actions of walrus-hunters in the region.2 In contrast, the textual narratives favour a rather different set of causes, approaches, and results of Icelandic settlement, focussed on farmers and their independent farmsteads often from the very moment of arrival. This chapter explores the representation and roles of domestic animals in the main narratives about the settlement of Iceland, first outlining the theories of settlement most often included in archaeological studies, before analysing the presence of domestic animals and agro-pastoral practice in Landnámabók and three examples of settlement narratives from the Íslendingasögur: Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (1220–30), Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða (1264–1300), and Gull-Þóris saga, or Þorskfirðinga saga (1300–50).3 The analysis of these narratives (both literary and archaeological) will focus on the relation between settlement, land, domestic animals, and the household or family, especially in relation to the Viking-Age house at Aðalstræti in Reykjavík, and examples of early settlements across Iceland. The chapter will demonstrate that not only are domestic animals prominent in the establishment and (re)construction of Iceland, but that this importance is reflected both in later medieval narratives and the early construction of farms. The Book of Settlements: Landnámabók Landnámabók is a textual account of the settlement of Iceland that exists in two redactions from the medieval period. Throughout this book, I use the term Landnámabók when referring to the idea of this text as a sum of all its redactions, and Sturlubók when referring to the specific redaction text used for my analysis; all quotations supplied are from Sturlubók unless otherwise specified. Although the differences between the two versions appear to be minor compared to the bulk of similar text, there are some differences in the text, though none that are relevant to our purposes here. While Landnámabók is apparently devoted to describing or recording

2



3

Orri Vésteinsson and Thomas H. McGovern, ‘The Peopling of Iceland’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 45:2 (2012), 206–18; Orri Vésteinsson et al., Reykjavík 871 ±2 (Reykjavík, 2006); Karin M. Frei et al., ‘Was It for Walrus? Viking Age Settlement and Medieval Walrus Ivory Trade in Iceland and Greenland’, World Archaeology, 47:3 (2015), 439–66. Dates after Vésteinn Ólason (2005): Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Family Sagas’, in Rory McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Oxford, 2005), pp. 101–18, at pp. 114–15.

24

An Animal-Human Settlemen individual settlements, it contains much material not explicitly linked with the initial claiming of land. Such material may rather be considered as having contributed to a wider idea of settlement: encompassing the establishment of the medieval society in which the text was compiled. In this way, the narratives contained in Landnámabók not only record stories of physical settlement, but also ideological and cultural settlement. Additionally, it was a text that was not only copied many times, but one that people were eager to adapt and alter by varying degrees since the (assumed) initial collection of information in the early twelfth century.4 Scholarship on medieval Icelandic literature and history has a long and complicated relationship with Landnámabók, with much scholarship focussing on establishing its unreliability as a historical source for the settlement by arguing for its ideological nature. It has been seen as a collection of unifying myths for a new society, a text concerned with an increasing sense of a written Icelandic identity separate from mainland Scandinavia, and a text exercising distinct political purpose for individuals and families in the thirteenth century – or some combination of all three.5 These studies have sometimes seemed to diminish the value of Landnámabók as a historical source, but it is useful to bear in mind the medieval idea of historical texts when thinking of Landnámabók: historical writing as written documents not overly concerned with the recording of genuine specifics of events and instead having a wider, more ideological function contributing to the (re)construction of society.6 The stories in Landnámabók may be considered as having their roots in oral narratives about the 4



5



6



Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Society and Literature’, in Gísli Sigurðsson and Vésteinn Ólason (eds), The Manuscripts of Iceland (Reykjavik, 2004), pp. 25–41, at p. 31; Jens Peter Ulff-Møller, ‘The Origin of Landnámabók’ (presented at The Sixteenth International Saga Conference, Universities of Zurich and Basel, 2015). Richard F. Tomasson, Iceland: The First New Society (Minneapolis, 1980); Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók: Some Remarks on Its Value as a Historical Source’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 17 (1966), 275–92; Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Society and Literature’; Magnús Stefánsson, ‘The Norse Island Communities of the Western Ocean’, in Knut Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 202–20; Diana Whaley, ‘A Useful Past: Historical Writing in Medieval Iceland’, in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Old Icelandic Literature and Society (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 161–202. Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge, 2011); Pernille Hermann, ‘Íslendingabók and History’, in Pernille Hermann, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Rasmus Tranum Kristensen (eds), Reflections on Old Norse Myths (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 17–32; John Lindow, Murder and Vengeance among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology (Helsinki, 1997); Kim McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature (Maynooth, 1990); Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985).

25

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland settlement, although their written forms have been reshaped for high medieval consumption: a history reflecting a certain set of thirteenth-century perceptions of a useful past.7 Such recording and subsequent reshaping, in which domestic animals appear to play significant parts, shows in many ways how agro-pastoral practice played a key role in certain Icelanders’ conceptualisation of their history and the historic landscape. In addition, the production of Landnámabók (and Íslendingasögur) in an atmosphere of degrading environmental conditions and a fluctuating climate suggests that ecological concerns, as well as political ones, might inform the narratives of settlement reproduced in these texts.8 It is important to acknowledge the complex relation of exchange between many of the Íslendingasögur and Landnámabók. Stories often appear in both sets of texts, but rather than an indication of the complete lack of differing settlement traditions as suggested by Orri Vésteinsson and Adolf Friðriksson (2003), this may have been the result of a concerted effort by members of the Icelandic élite to present a united myth of settlement to the modification or exclusion of varied thirteenth-century traditions.9 The narratives in Sturlubók are in places distinctly different to those found in the sagas in both style and focus, and therefore the different narratives chosen by each text must express a deliberate intention in their way of depicting the settlement of Iceland.10



7



8



9



10

Birna Lárusdóttir, ‘Settlement Organization and Farm Abandonment’, in Wendy Davies, Guy Halsall, and Andrew Reynolds (eds), People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300-1300 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 45–64; Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method, trans. Nicholas Jones (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Kevin P. Smith, ‘Landnam: The Settlement of Iceland in Archaeological and Historical Perspective’, World Archaeology, 26:3 (1995), 319–47; Orri Vésteinsson and Adolf Friðriksson, ‘Creating a Past’. Benedikt Hallgrímsson et al., ‘Composition of the Founding Population of Iceland: Biological Distance and Morphological Variation in Early Historic Atlantic Europe’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 124:3 (2004), 257–74, at p. 270; Halstad McGuire, ‘Archaeology of Iceland: Recent Developments’, Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, 16 (2006), 10–26, at p. 13; Ogilvie, ‘Climatic Changes in Iceland’. Jonas Kristjánsson, ‘Ireland and the Irish in Icelandic Tradition’, in Howard B Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Raghnall Ó Floinn (eds), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age (Dublin, 1998), pp. 259–76, at pp. 263, 268; Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Society and Literature’, p. 31; Sverir Tómasson, ‘Re-­ Creation of Literature’, in Vésteinn Ólason and Gísli Sigurðsson (eds), The Manuscripts of Iceland (Reykjavik, 2004), pp. 73–80, at p. 76. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Formáli’, lviii–lx; Carol J. Clover, ‘Icelandic Family Sagas (Íslendingasögur)’, in Carol J. Clover and John Lindow (eds), Old Norse-­ Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide (Ithaca, 1985), pp. 239–315, at p. 254.

26

An Animal-Human Settlemen Theories of settlement In the fourteenth-century Grettis saga, Ǫnundr tréfǫtr (tree-foot) considers the changing circumstances he has experienced by moving from Norway to Iceland: Krǫpp eru kaup, ef hreppik Kaldbak, en ek læt akra.11 [Narrow is the bargain if I have obtained Kaldbak mountain, but I have given up my fields.]

Although compiled many centuries after the event it describes, these lines succinctly summarise the risks of colonising a new land, especially one as ecologically marginal as Iceland. For Ǫnundr, this meant leaving his prosperous fields and farm in Norway, to be pushed to apparently hostile land in Iceland. Ǫnundr’s decision to move to Iceland was preceded by a period of occupation in the Hebrides and Ireland (before a final trip to Rogaland seems to finally prove Norway is not the place for him to stay), and scholarship on migration and colonisation has emphasised the long and ongoing nature of movements of people to new homelands: a process reliant on a number of push and pull factors.12 With regards to the settlement of Iceland, it is most likely that a range of factors acted on a range of individuals, like Ǫnundr, as well as family groups and other social units, such as villages or vocation groups; and scholars have acknowledged the likelihood of great regional variation in models of settlement.13 While the excavation of farm-sites and pre-Christian burials has demonstrated the vital importance of agro-pastoral practice and domestic animals to Viking-Age society in general in Iceland, the level of importance ascribed to farming and domestic animals in settlement has been debated. Both hypotheses of settlement focussing on farming and those focussing on trading have profound implications on the formation and value of relationships with the domestic animals brought as co-settlers to the island. The date and causes of the settlement period have been a matter of intense debate in Icelandic archaeology, and, in recent decades, archaeological interest in matters such as settlement patterns, resource exploitation,



11



12



13

Guðni Jónsson (ed.), ‘Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar’, in Grettis saga (Reykjavík, 1936), pp. 1–290, at p. 22. David W. Anthony, ‘Migration in Archaeology: The Baby and the Bathwater’, American Anthropologist, 92:4 (1990), 895–914, at pp. 905, 898; Orri Vésteinsson et al., Reykjavík 871 ±2, p. 18. Amorosi, ‘Icelandic Archaeofauna’, p. 281; Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (London, 2015); McGuire, ‘Archaeology of Iceland: Recent Developments’, p. 13.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland and anthropogenic influence on the ecology of Iceland has increased.14 Arguments over the starting point of Icelandic settlement have often gone hand in hand with criticism over the previously extensive use of textual sources to inform these arguments, and recent studies have accorded much less influence to textual sources.15 Textual sources have most heavily influenced theories of Icelandic settlement based around the idea of settler-farmers, although interpretations have been divided on whether the settlement should be considered as driven by individuals taking large tracts of land to immediately divide among dependants (enslaved persons or freedmen), or whether a more gradual filling-in of the land took place, with the land claims of initial settlers becoming divided up over generations.16 Both interpretations support archaeological interpretations of a two-stage settlement in which coastal and river valley wetland areas were likely settled first, before woodland was cleared at further inland sites controlled by first settlers.17 In these models of settlement, domestic animals were key. While excavations and archaeological surveys have

14



15



16



17

Kathryn A. Catlin, ‘Archaeology for the Anthropocene: Scale, Soil, and the Settlement of Iceland’, Anthropocene, 15 (2016), 13–21; John M. Steinberg, Douglas J. Bolender, and Brian N. Damiata, ‘The Viking Age Settlement Pattern of Langholt, North Iceland: Results of the Skagafjörður Archaeological Settlement Survey’, Journal of Field Archaeology, 41:4 (2016), 389–412; Kevin J. Edwards, ‘Was The Peopling of Iceland a Trickle, a Steady Stream or a Deluge?’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 45:2 (2012), 220–3; Guðmundur Ólafsson, ‘New Evidence’; Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, ‘The Earliest Settlement of Iceland’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 45:2 (2012), 225–7; Arny E. Sveinbjörnsdóttir, Jan Heinemeier, and Gardar Gudmundsson, ‘14C Dating of the Settlement of Iceland’, Radiocarbon, 46:1 (2007), 387–94; Pall Þeodórsson, ‘Norse Settlement of Iceland – Close to AD 700?’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 31:1 (1998), 29–38; Kathryn Catlin, ‘Sustainability and the Domestication of Inequality: Archaeology of Long-Term Human-Environment Interactions in Hegranes, North Iceland’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 2019); Xénia Keighley et al., ‘Disappearance of Icelandic Walruses Coincided with Norse Settlement’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 36:12 (2019), 2656–67. Vilhjálmur O. Vilhjálmsson, ‘The Early Settlement of Iceland: Wishful Thinking or an Archaeological Innovation?’, Acta Archaeologica, 62 (1992), 167–82; Orri Vésteinsson and Thomas H. McGovern, ‘Reply to Comments from James H. Barrett, Kevin J. Edwards, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir and Przemysław Urbańczyk’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 45:2 (2012), 230–5. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Ethnicity and Class in Settlement-Period Iceland’, in John Sheehan and Connchadh Ó Corráin (eds), The Viking Age: Ireland and the West: Papers from the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Viking Congress, Cork, 18-27 August 2005 (Dublin, 2010), pp. 494–510, at p. 501. Steinberg, Bolender, and Damiata, ‘The Viking Age Settlement Pattern of Langholt, North Iceland’; Ian A. Simpson et al., ‘Fuel Resource Utilisation in Landscapes of Settlement’, Journal of Archaeological Science, 30:11 (2002),

28

An Animal-Human Settlemen revealed settlements that appear to have been initially focussed on processes other than raising livestock and the initial role of domestic animals would of course have varied depending on the nature of the site, the animals of other farmers, and the meat and milk produced, could not have been ignored by other settlements, regardless of how potentially low the levels of animals belonging to certain households were in the initial settlement period. Excavations in the Reykjavík area have supported theories of early agro-pastoral settlement in Iceland. First undertaken from 1971–5, and then returned to between 2001 and 2003, these excavations identified multiple sites, including a tenth-century residential building at Aðalstræti 14–18, later extensions to this house, and the remains of a turf wall on an adjoining street (Grjótagata).18 The wall is part of an unroofed outside structure, perhaps a sheep shelter or boundary wall, and has been dated to before AD 877±1 on account of the Landnám tephra layer resting atop the turf.19 As such, its initial construction cannot be associated with the later house, but must belong to a nearby farmstead as yet uncovered beneath Reykjavík, though it is unclear how early this structure was constructed prior to the Landnám tephra deposition. The disturbance of the remains by previous excavations and modern development work has limited the scope of interpretation for the structure, but the significance of this wall fragment is not only its early date, but its potential for agro-pastoral associations. If such an early, unroofed structure is part of a farmstead that involved sheltering livestock, then this would suggest that the arrival and establishment of livestock in this area of Iceland occurred at an early stage of settlement. Something all the settlement hypotheses discussed above hold in common is the importance of acquiring and working the land. A strong emphasis on the places of settlement is reflected in the textual sources, as the first thing almost every settler to Iceland does in Landnámabók and the Íslendingasögur is stake out a claim to certain areas and set up a farm. However, some excavations have also suggested a more complex picture of how the settlement of Iceland may have unfolded: a settlement narrative that excludes livestock and agro-pastoral practice, at least in its initial stages.20 This interpretation focusses on the potential for the trade of walrus ivory, which would have provided a logical incentive for exploration of



18



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20

1401–20; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, ‘The Peopling of Iceland: Speculation on A Speculation’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 45:2 (2012), 223–5. Else Nordahl, Reykjavík from the Archaeological Point of View (Uppsala, 1988); Howell M. Roberts, Excavations at Aðalstræti, 2003 (Reykjavík, 2004). H. M. Roberts, ‘Archaeological Excavations at Aðalstræti 14-18, 2001: A Preliminary Report’ (Reykjavík, 2001); Schmid et al., ‘Tephra Isochrons’. Orri Vésteinsson et al., Reykjavík 871 ±2, pp. 98–100; Frei et al., ‘Was It for Walrus?’

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland and movement to the island, as opposed to the forceful political rationale given by later medieval literature that overwhelmingly focusses on the rebellion of strong, independent farmers against Norwegian kings. Some recent theories, especially about Reykjavík, have increasingly focussed on the possibilities for walrus-hunting in the area, adhering to a trading hypothesis in which such potential provided the impetus for settlement, although agro-pastoral settlement is considered the next step in the process.21 In this way, such a hypothesis does not exclude domestic animals from their role in the settlement of Iceland, but merely delays it. This tension between farming, land, and portable wealth parallels archaeological discourse on Viking-Age expansion in other areas of the north Atlantic, though it is only recently that these debates have begun to take root in discussions of migration to Iceland. Walrus remains have been found at multiple excavation sites in Iceland from Viking-Age contexts.22 At Aðalstræti 14–18 in Reykjavík (seen in Fig. 1), the walrus bones were deposited in places where they would have been visible to the human occupants of the house, as well as visitors to the dwelling, so may have acted as a display of prestige or expertise. The walrus tusks found at this site notably showed signs of having been extracted by experienced hunters or craftsmen, indicating the presence of at least one specialist worker at the site before the extinction of the walrus colonies.23 Interestingly, the choice of Reykjavík as a settlement place in Landnámabók is questioned by one of the enslaved persons in the settling party, who says, ‘Til ills fóru vér um góð heruð, er vér skulum byggja útnes þetta’ [‘It is bad we travelled over good country, when we should settle this outlying headland’], presumably on account of a perceived unsuitability of the area for agricultural settlement.24 Such sentiments, perhaps, reflect the confusion that the compilers of Landnámabók, settled into their own agro-pastoralist society but aware of an early settlement at Reykjavík, may have felt over the spot of supposed first settlement. The place Ingólfr chooses is far from the best area for seed or cattle; instead, it is perhaps the most suitable place in the area for a settlement reliant on marine resources.25 It is frustrating that excavations in the Reykjavík area 23 21 22



24



25

Frei et al., ‘Was It for Walrus?’ Keighley et al., ‘Disappearance’. Thomas H. McGovern, ‘Walrus Tusks from Aðalstraeti, Reykjavik: Zooarchaeological Report’, in H. M. Roberts (ed.), Archaeological Excavations at Aðalstræti 14-18, 2001: A Preliminary Report (Reykjavík, 2001), pp. 106–10; Natascha Mehler, ‘The Finds’, in H. M. Roberts (ed.), Archaeological Excavations at Aðalstræti 14-18, 2001: A Preliminary Report (Reykjavík, 2001), pp. 68–82. Jakob Benediktsson (ed.), ‘Landnámabók’, in Íslendingabók: Landnámabók (Reykjavík, 1968), pp. 31–397, at p. 45. Orri Vésteinsson et al., Reykjavík 871 ±2, p. 44.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen

Fig. 1: The Viking-Age longhouses at (a) Eiríksstaðir, (b) Granastaðir, (c) Vatnsfjörður, (d) Sveigakot, (e) Aðalstræti 14–18, and (f) Ólafsdalur. Adapted from Fig. 3.2–3.5 in Milek (‘Houses and Households’) and Fig. 6 in Lilja Björk Pálsdóttir (Ólafsdalur).

are most likely to occur on areas being cleared for new construction work, with sites identified through the agendas of city developers rather than archaeological researchers. The house at Aðalstræti 14–18 is evidently not part of the first phase of settlement in the Reykjavík area, but it is a site 31

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland from a period of both walrus-hunting and animal husbandry. The earlier wall fragment from Grjótagata adds additional depth to the presence of humans and animals at the site, but within the house itself we also find a likely animal stalling area. An animal-occupation area in this house is considered unusual in an Icelandic context from this period – although this might be the result of inadequate analytical methods at previous excavations and interpretations may change.26 Based on the small space of the animal stalling area at Aðalstræti 14–18, and lipid analyses of the faecal matter uncovered from the site, it has been suggested goats were likely candidates for this shared human-animal space. While remains of other herbivore dung were found within the house, namely horse and sheep, these were found in lower concentrations to those of goat, and it is likely that these reflect trodden-in dung rather than the presence of sheep or horses inside the house.27 It is also possible that a second, very small area on the SW side of the house may have also been used for stalling, perhaps of an animal that needed particular attention. The placement of this SW area adjacent to the SW doorway to the house may indicate the need for rapid movement of animals in and out of the space, and therefore a use as a milking pen. Both proposed stalling areas at Aðalstræti 14–18 could only have held a very limited number of animals, and in fairly close proximity to the human members of the household. The choice of goats for this proximity to humans is notable. It has previously been suggested that the stalls here were for display purposes to indicate the status or heritage of the migrant family, or for the keeping of select animals, such as valued fighting horses or a strong pair of oxen – it could be argued that the display of goats would not have had the same effect on visitors to the house.28 However, here we may be biased by the depictions of animals in the later textual sources, as cattle and fighting horses seem vitally important in the Íslendingasögur and are some of the most valuable animals in the medieval Icelandic laws. Goats are, on the whole, largely absent from our later medieval textual sources, but when they appear they are associated either with the farmhouse and the homefield (Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 20; Njáls saga, ch. 41; Droplaugarsona saga, ch. 14) or with settling or resettling a place (Landnámabók, discussed at p. 45 below; Hrafnkels saga, ch. 14). In addition, a notable goat is found in Eddic tradition, in which the mythological

26



27



28

Samples from sites across Iceland such as Hrísbrú in Mosfellsdalur, and the ongoing excavations at Ólafsdalur, are currently being analysed by the COHABIT project in search of faecal biomarkers that might indicate the presence of domestic animals within the human dwelling. Analysis of the faecal biomarkers from soil samples at the site is ongoing under the COHABIT project. Orri Vésteinsson et al., Reykjavík 871 ±2, p. 100.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen animal Heiðrún is placed on the roof of a hall and nourishes the hall’s inhabitants with her milk, which manifests as mead (Grímnísmál, st. 25). While a limited sample size, there are suggestions that the goat’s association with settlement, the house, and nourishment of the household remains an underlying note in later narratives. In the current absence of a separate byre comparable to other farm sites in Iceland, the stalling of animals in the house at Aðalstræti 14–18 may suggest that when the house was first constructed, the limited stall space at the end of the building was sufficient for the sheltering requirements of livestock at that time, and that no resources needed to be spent in building external structures (although it is likely that further structures lie hidden beneath Reykjavík). As mentioned above, the walrus bones deposited in various contexts in the house indicate that this migrant family may have based their prestige, or at least an equal amount of prestige, on animals other than livestock, therefore justifying a smaller stalling area. Alternatively, the stalling in the house may have been used on an intermittent basis, for example for pregnant does or kids, with most animals stalled external to the house in structures yet to be located. Regardless of the reasons for stalling animals within the house, the closeness between the animals and humans under the roof at Aðalstræti 14–18 would have developed an intense relationship, and one that was presented to the world through the development of an enhanced doorway opposite the stalling area in the later building phase of the house. Doorways are key features in the construction of a dwelling, acting as both a barrier and bridge to the outside world, and formalising the act of moving in and out of the house; elaborated doorways provide further meaning to this movement and the states of being in or out. Anna Beck (2014) associates the enhancement of doorways on Viking-Age houses in southern Denmark with the development of a ‘hospitality principle’.29 If a similar practice operated in Viking-Age Iceland, it is notable that the enhanced doorway at Aðalstræti is directly opposite the theorised animal-occupation area and would likely have been the doorway through which animals were moved on their route to the external aspects of the farm, given that it provides the shortest distance from the stalls to the outside. This addition to the original structure at Aðalstræti 14–18 belongs to the second building phase of the site, along with the addition of an annexe on the south end, which might suggest that outward displays of status were only a later



29

Anna S. Beck, ‘Opening Doors – Entering Social Understandings of the Viking Age Longhouse’, in Mette Svart Kristiansen and Kate Giles (eds), Dwellings, Identities and Homes: European Housing Culture from Viking Age to the Renaissance (Højbjerg, 2014), pp. 127–38.

33

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland consideration after more settlers had arrived in the area or the prosperity of the household had increased. The role of seasonal settlements and walrus-hunting cannot be underestimated in the emerging data from Iceland. Prepared and willing to take great risks in search of valuable products for the European market, walrus-hunters likely set up temporary camps at first and then, as Iceland proved a profitable hunting ground, took the first steps towards establishing a permanent camp on the island, necessitating the inclusion of herds of domestic animals in these more stable farmsteads. The analysis provided so far strongly suggests that cattle and pigs were a key component of these early settlements, although as we have seen, the importance of goats has yet to be sufficiently considered.30 While pigs and goats could forage for themselves in such virgin territory, cattle would have required winter fodder and shelter, forcing the walrus-hunters to cultivate meadows for hay, and construct byres. Such a camp or permanent settlement could then act as a livestock station for subsequent settlers. In this way, the trade opportunities facilitated by temporary camps develop the necessity for an agro-pastoral settlement. On the other hand, such hunters may have left pigs on the island to breed and survive by themselves in between less permanent visits: a strategy that is imagined, centuries later, in our textual sources (most often in Landnámabók as discussed below). The abandonment of pigs in this way creates a no less important relationship, but quite a different one: returning to feral pigs is a rather different experience than a constant duty of care towards animals such as cattle, requiring daily milking and seasonal foddering. In a model of settlement focussed on trade, the initial settlers in Iceland would not have been focussed on livestock, and yet animals would have swiftly become partners in the settlement process. While the establishment of a local stock of animals, from which subsequent settlers could procure livelihoods or supplement their own stocks, likely came about at a later point from initial temporary settlement, it was very much a result of the nature of these initial settlements. A group of permanent migrants, in this model, would not have come to Iceland looking for farmland until such herds were established. It is important to note, then, that the textual sources, and especially Landnámabók, focus primarily on domestic animals and the establishment of the household-farm from the outset of settlement, despite hinting at a



30

Amorosi, ‘Icelandic Archaeofauna’; Brewington et al., ‘Islands of Change’; McGovern et al., ‘Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland’, p. 28; McGovern et al., ‘Coastal Connections’; Bernadette McCooey, ‘The Forgotten Pigs and Goats of Iceland in a North Atlantic Context’, in László Bartosiewicz and Alice M. Choyke (eds), Medieval Animals on the Move: Between Body and Mind (Cham, 2021), pp. 13–39.

34

An Animal-Human Settlemen hunter tradition through the story of Hrafna-Floki and by highlighting the apparent unsuitability of the Reykjavík area for agro-pastoral success.

Settling with Animals The textual narratives of settlement from medieval Iceland clearly emphasise the vital importance of land, and often wide unmanageable tracts of it, in the settlement decisions of migrants to Iceland. The draw of land, and its associated freedoms, are considered as more important than any competing resource, and animals in these narratives are given a role in claiming, naming, and selecting the land which is eventually settled. Rather than providing a chronological narrative of settlement, Landnámabók is arranged into five sections: an introductory section concerning the initial discovery of Iceland, followed by four parts based on the cardinal points. The text moves clockwise from the western quarter to the southern and shapes its narrative therefore in terms of place rather than time. This arrangement of entries according to place means that events described far apart in the text often overlap as the chronology jumps backwards and forwards, and time is perceived through households, families, and social alliances rather than in a linear fashion.31 With emphasis strongly placed on the spaces and places of Iceland, and the establishment of rooted settlements around a farm and husbandry practices, this ideological history seems to rationalise the adoption of a uniform settlement pattern. The ideal settlement seems to involve choosing the right land, sometimes in explicit concordance with the preferences of animals, building a farm, and becoming in this specific way integrated with the new society. If the creation of Landnámabók was indeed dictated by the needs of the high medieval Icelandic cultural and political élite, the emphasis on the productive land-claims of settlers is not surprising – but the sometimes-significant role of animals in the shaping of these settlements needs to be further explored. Explorer traditions and agro-pastoral settlement Landnámabók opens with three stages of discovery for Iceland, although the first two of these (according to the account in Sturlubók) are brief encounters whose instigators praise and name the land with very few details given. Stories of these initial explorers may have been linked to or motivated by trade opportunities: motivations that Landnámabók neglects to include. These accounts of early explorations are clearly not as valuable

31

Smith, ‘Landnam’, p. 321.

35

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland to the compiler of the text as the (apparently) subsequent settlement attempts of Hrafna-Flóki and Ingólfr. The third exploration or settlement test of Iceland is attributed to the víkingr mikill (great viking) Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson, and it is at this point in the text that we are first introduced to the idea of a co-settlement involving animals and humans: ‘Með Flóka var á skipi bónda sá, er Þórólfr hét, annarr Herjólfr. Faxi hét suðreyskr maðr’ [‘With Flóki on the ship was a farmer called Þórólfr and another man called Herjólfr. A Hebridean man was called Faxi’].32 While at this stage the transportation of animals is not explicit, the presence of farmers in the party hints at an attempt at a longterm colonisation strategy beyond the exploitation of wild resources. The compiler is quick to show the (brief and ill-fated) presence of animals in this attempt, revealing: ‘Þá var fjǫrðrinn fullr af veiðiskap, ok gáðu þeir eigi fyrir veiðum at fá heyjanna, ok dó allt kvikfé þeira um vetrinn’ [‘Then the fjord was full of fish for the catching, and they did not look to the hay before gathering all the catch and all their livestock died over the winter’].33 This co-settlement was less than successful, and the easy distraction of fishing is, perhaps significantly, contrasted with the careful responsibility of animal husbandry. The reference to veiðiskap (hunting or fishing catch) may indicate walrus-hunting rather than just fishing; if so, it is doubly interesting that the compiler places this potential hunting as too distracting for successful management of the herd. This is the only reference to hunting we find in these initial settlement stories and seems to advertise the dangers of focussing solely on hunting or fishing to the detriment of the herd, no matter if the former is the easier or more lucrative option. The construction of such a narrative may act as a warning to future Icelanders who might neglect their hay and jeopardise their livestock in such a way. By setting Iceland up as a difficult land, in which settlers must be agro-­ pastorally responsible to survive, the compiler of Landnámabók emphasises the importance of such responsibility in his post-settlement society – a view that fits very well with the medieval laws that follow an equally strong line on responsible land- and animal-keeping (see Chapter 3). The conception of Iceland as a land for responsible farming, and in particular dairy farming, is further emphasised in the responses from Flóki’s party on their return to Norway, in which Flóki expresses disapproval, but the farmers have a rather more positive view: ‘Herjólfr sagði kost ok lǫst af landinu, en Þórólfr kvað drjúpa smjǫr af hverju strái á landinu’ [‘Herjólfr spoke about the good and faults of the land, and Þórólfr said butter dripped from each piece of straw in the land’].34 Here the great viking is 34 32 33

Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 36. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid.

36

An Animal-Human Settlemen reluctant to depict Iceland in a positive light, whereas the farmer provides an over-the-top commendation for the environment. Flóki’s alleged disapproval could be considered as a result of their embarrassing attempt at over-­wintering, and the farmer’s enthusiasm a sign that if the herds were cared for effectively, Iceland would be a wonderful place to settle. Rather than an attempt to present Iceland as an island akin to the Christian conception of paradise (such as we find in the twelfth-century Íslendingabók), we see Iceland presented as a paradise for agro-­pastoralists.35 The use of butter for this metaphor accurately reflects the society of post-settlement Iceland, the time and place in which Landnámabók was formed, in which dairy products were a vital part of the community and social ideology.36 While strá is most often translated as ‘blade of grass’, it also means ‘straw’, and the association is clear, especially when put into the mouth of a man emphatically listed as a farmer: butter from grass is only achievable through the cultivation of dairy herds. After Flóki’s failed mission, Landnámabók turns to the story of Ingólfr Arnarson, the famous first settler of Iceland. However, as indicated by his odd choice of settlement place, Ingólfr does not seem immediately keen on establishing an agro-pastoral homestead. Both he and his sworn-brother Hjǫrleifr are emphatically raiders, like Hrafna-Flóki, which is perhaps why Hjǫrleifr’s plan to embrace the agricultural promise of Iceland goes so badly for him: Hjǫrleifr lét þar gera skála tvá […] En um várit vildi hann sá; hann átti einn uxa, ok lét hann þrælana draga arðrinn. En er þeir Hjǫrleifr vára at skála, þá gerði Dufþakr þat ráð, at þeir skyldu drepa uxann ok segja, at skógarbjǫrn hefði drepit, en síðan skyldu þeir ráða á þá Hjǫrleif, ef þeir leitaði bjarnarins. Eptir þat sǫgðu þeir Hjǫrleifi þetta. Ok er þeir fóru at leita bjarnarins ok dreifðusk í skóginn, þá settu þrælarnir at sérhverjum þeira ok myrðu þá alla jafnmarga sér. Þeir hljópu á brutt með konur þeira ok lausafé ok bátinn.37 [Hjǫrleifr had two houses built there […]. And in the spring he wanted to sow. He owned one ox, but he let the thralls draw the plough. When Hjǫrleifr and his men were at the houses, then Dufþakr made this counsel: that they should kill the ox and say that a wood-bear had killed it, then afterwards they should attack Hjǫrleifr when the men of the settlement were seeking the bear. Then they said this to Hjǫrleifr. And when the men went to look for the bear and were dispersed throughout

35 36



37

Hermann, ‘Íslendingabók and History’, p. 24. Eljas Orrman, ‘Rural Conditions’, in Knut Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 250–311, at p. 279. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 43.

37

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland the wood, then the thralls set on each of them separately and they murdered them all equally. The previously enslaved men ran away with the women of the settlement, all the loose-property and the boat.]

Hjǫrleifr has an unorthodox approach to farm work, forcing his enslaved workers to pull the plough rather than commit his ox to hard labour, and such action leads to the failure and destruction of his settlement and theft of his property. Hjǫrleifr’s decision to only bring one ox, or to actively remove his ox from farm labour, is a choice grounded either in ignorance of farm work (in which a team of draught animals is the most efficient method of ploughing), or a significant animal-human relation in which he values his ox more highly than enslaved persons. The inclusion of this conflict in one of the founding stories of Icelandic medieval history is intriguing, as such conflicts between men who value animals too much and those who see little value in them outside of meat or labour are repeatedly emphasised throughout the Íslendingasögur. That the compiler of Landnámabók chose to include it, especially when Hjǫrleifr is not a lasting settler with descendants, suggests either that it was one of the most well-known stories about this man, or a desired story to include (or both). Animals were clearly valuable in settling the island, and the story about Hjǫrleifr might show that people needed to be careful about how these animals were used, or encourage an audience to consider making use of the labour of animals just as much as the labour of men – both are useful for different things in this new landscape, and it would be important to make sure these co-­ settlers adopted or were assigned roles suited to their nature. Animal places Alongside their role as workers, one of the most significant indicators of the co-settler status of domestic animals is their appearance in the numerous place-names throughout Landnámabók (and indeed the Íslendingasögur). Named places are locations that span three temporal aspects of the landscape: they colonise the past through the story of their naming, are reinforced in the present through everyday use of names, and influence the future by providing conceptions of utility associated with the place, encouraging its use for a specific purpose. Place-names therefore act as citations for ideas, persons, or other places. By issuing place-names, the land is immediately cultured, in contrast to the gradual enculturing of landscapes over time that build up via burial mounds and runestones. Iceland had no past for the initial settlers, and we can see the process of naming places as a way of addressing this absence. The complex relationship between spaces, animals, and humans that manifests in the formation of places can be seen in the generation of animal place-names in medieval Icelandic settlement narratives. 38

An Animal-Human Settlemen Identities, of both persons and place, are in part formed through relations with certain aspects of the environment.38 In Iceland, this is reflected in the association of different groups of people with the fjord or valley of their settlement – fjords and valleys which are often in turn associated with animals that occupy those spaces. The most famous example of this are the Laxdælers, the people of the Salmon-River-Valley, who give their name to Laxdæla saga (the story of the Laxdælers). Particular spaces convey the memory of animal presence that acts as a classifying marker, tying an animal place into more general conceptions of the environment.39 In Landnámabók we find a whole range of animal-related place-names, some with accompanying explanations, but often without. It should be noted that many animal place-names could also have been named after men with an animal name, for example Haukadalr (Hawk’s Dale) or Arnarholt (Eagle’s Wood) where Haukr and Ǫrn are both male personal names as well as animal-words. As a result, the discussion in this chapter focusses on those stories explicitly about animals or involving terms that are unlikely to have been used as human names. In Landnámabók, wild species such as swans, whales, seals, and salmon are widely represented in placenames; of domestic species, we find pigs most often, with oxen, sheep, and goats occasionally included. The presence of pigs and goats in these place-names is perhaps the most intriguing, as animals who appear least often in our saga sources, especially when we consider the high medieval compilation dates for our redactions of Landnámabók. This later landscape is assumed to be one in which pigs played a relatively small role, so their comparatively large presence in the place-names included in settlement narratives suggests both the antiquity of these names, and the much larger role of pigs in the settlements.40 The places associated with pigs through these names further emphasises quite a different landscape than one we find in later textual sources in which the presence of sheep looms large. A distinction should be made between place-names that are generated by the act of observing an animal in a place, for example, Hrútafjǫrðr (ramfjord) in Sturlubók, which is named by Ingimundr enn gamli (the Old) and his company of exploring migrants after seeing two rams in the area, and those that are formed by the active participation (including death) of an animal, or animals, in the environment.41 The Hrútafjǫrðr episode can be compared to other narratives in Sturlubók in which the naming of places after animals is an active exchange of animal, human, and landscape. Three examples of the latter are episodes in which pigs are abandoned or escape 40 41 38 39

Jones, ‘Where Eagles Dare’, p. 302. Jones, ‘Where Eagles Dare’; Sykes, Beastly Questions, p. 99. McCooey, ‘The Forgotten Pigs and Goats of Iceland’. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 218.

39

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland human control to reproduce and claim their own places on the island. These episodes take the abstract of the place-name and demonstrate at least a medieval conception of how the agency of animals could be considered to create places in the landscape. That these animals are pigs suggests either that stories about pigs were so dynamic as to survive prominently through centuries of oral storytelling, or that the compilers of Landnámabók, writing in a time of a reduced pig population in Iceland, actively desired to present pigs as a key part of these later medieval conceptions of early Icelandic settlement.42 Alternatively, these stories may have been important to specific families in Iceland, who actively preserved them. The first of these stories in Sturlubók sets the linguistic formula for such an event, relating how: ‘Steinólfi hurfu svín þrjú; þau fundusk tveim vetrum síðar í Svínadal, ok váru þau þá þrír tigir svína’ [‘three pigs turned away from Steinólfr; they were found two winters later in Pig-dale and then there were thirty pigs’].43 Here we see the pigs turning away from their human owner, multiplying in number, and being found after a certain period of time. Whether the compiler of Landnámabók is suggesting the area was called Svínadalr because of this event, or whether the pigs did well there because it was known to be an excellent area for keeping pigs, is not made explicit. What is strongly implied, though, is the productivity of these pigs in Iceland, regardless of human intervention, and through the initiative of the animals themselves. The pigs are the ones doing the losing or the turning away, so it is their actions that promote this fecundity. As we shall see in the episode discussed directly below, and the examples from SkallaGrímr’s settlement in Egils saga later in this chapter, there are a number of instances in which animals explicitly drive the success of settlement. A second episode of pig abandonment is longer, and emphasises the role of a named boar, who in turn offers his name to his place of death: ‘Ingimundi hurfu svín tíu ok fundusk annat haust í Svínadal, ok var þá hundrað svína. Gǫltr hét Beigaðr; hann hljóp á Svínavatn ok svam, þar til er af gengu klaufirnar; hann sprakk á Beigaðarhóli’ [‘ten pigs turned away from Ingimundr and they were found the next autumn in Pig-dale, and then there were a hundred pigs. A boar was called Beigaðr; he leapt into Pig-water and swam there until his cloven hoofs fell off; he died from overexertion (or grief) at Beigaðr’s-hill’].44 As in the above passage, the verb hverfa is used to indicate the action of the animals, the pigs are the subject of the verb, and they are also found at a place called Svínadalr; but this episode is more 44 42 43

McGovern, ‘The Archaeofauna’, p. 216. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 158. Ibid., p. 220. The same event is depicted in Vatnsdæla saga (ch. 15), although in the saga the episode is further elaborated upon, and the wildness or anger of the pigs is emphasised.

40

An Animal-Human Settlemen extensive – many more pigs are lost and found, perhaps highlighting the status and wealth of Ingimundr. Given the destructive tendencies pigs have towards farmland, this scenario must be viewed as having taken place in a landscape that was far from heavily settled, and the low presence of pigs in the later material and textual record is assumed to reflect the undesirability of their rooting nature.45 While Svínadalr and Svínavatn are plausible place-names based on the value of an area for pig-keeping, the naming of Beigaðarhólr after a named boar marks out this animal place as a stronger example of interaction between animals, humans, and the environment. Here, the place is depicted as being remembered and named because of the actions of this boar, who actively participated in the manner of his death in the area. That such an animal’s death should be remembered, or seem plausible to the recorder of Landnámabók to be remembered in this way, suggests that the text engages with relationships between the experience of places and events associated with animals, particularly events in which animals exercised agency. That the text doesn’t indicate Beigaðr was the only boar among the group, but simply the foremost among many, suggests an intimate relationship between the pigs and those who preserved or created the story. If one boar had a name, likely the others did too – the inclusion of an identifying name indicates a need to distinguish from a number of names – and the singling out of this animal as the rebel of the group suggests a perception of specific animals as possessing distinct personalities. The name ascribed to this boar is both appropriate to his personality, and one that does not appear as a human name in the Íslendingasögur.46 This indicates that the place may have been unlikely to have been named after a human Icelandic settler, which is a risk when animals can be seen to possess names that may just as easily have belonged to a human figure, for example, Sǫlvi. The boar Sǫlvi appears in the third episode involving the reproduction of pigs in Iceland. However, in this episode, the agency of the event rests on the human settler Helgi: ‘Helgi lendi þá við Galtarhamar; þar skaut hann á land svínum tveimr, ok hét gǫltrinn Sǫlvi. Þau fundusk þremr vetrum síðar í Sǫlvadal; váru þá saman sjau tigir svína’ [‘Helgi then landed at Boar’s crag; there he set two pigs to land and the boar was called Sǫlvi. They were found three winters later in Sǫlvi’s dale, and then there were together seventy pigs’].47 This passage is distinguished from the two discussed above in several ways: the numbers involved, the length of time the pigs are left,

45 46



47

McGovern, ‘The Archaeofauna’; and discussions in following chapters. The name elsewise appears belonging to one of the king’s warriors in Hrólfs saga kraka and can be read as ‘one who inspires fear’. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, pp. 250–2.

41

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland the lack of porcine-agency, and the placement of the pigs explicitly next to the shore. Unusually, both the landing place and the valley in which the pigs are found are named after boars rather than the apparently more common svín- place-names. It could be indicated here that this story was not associated with an area previously considered good for allowing pigs to sustain themselves and multiply, suggesting that it may belong to an earlier tradition than those seemingly better remembered episodes discussed above; alternatively, it may simply show a varied tradition of pig stories in the settlement corpus: ones in which both pigs and humans exercised agency. A third entity may be considered as influencing these episodes. As in other animal reproduction narratives in Landnámabók, the almost fabulous reproduction of these animals may be linked to the influence of landvættir (land-spirits) (discussed further below in relation to more explicit landvættr narratives, pp. 43–8). The latter episode, which shows human impetus behind the pig-colonisation of the area, may then emphasise a desire for humans, not animals, nor landvættir, to control the shaping of animal places: a tension between animal resistance or cooperation and human control that characterises the animal-human relationships depicted in our texts. It is not surprising that such tensions will come to the forefront in stories about conflict or moments of stress, as settling a new land would have undoubtedly been. An additional episode in which a place is named after an explicitly autonomous animal involves a named cow, Brynja: ‘Þórir deildi við Ref enn gamla um kú þá, er Brynja hét; við hana er dalrinn kenndr. Hon gekk þar úti með fjóra tigu nauta, ok váru ǫll frá henni komin’ [‘Þórir quarrelled with Refr the Old about that cow, which was called Brynja. The valley is named after her. She grazed there with forty cattle, and all were her offspring’].48 As in the passages above, this episode links an exchange between unsupervised animals and the reproduction of the herd with the naming of a place. However, this incident of place-naming is not the central focus of the passage, perhaps suggesting that such place-name stories were commonplace and could act as casual attachments to other stories, such as the quarrel between Þórir and Refr (alternatively, the quarrel may have come about as a result of Brynja’s occupation of the valley). The naming of places after animals is a feature that recurs throughout Sturlubók, and almost all of the stories including animals in this text include at least one place-name associated with the animal. What is emphasised in the above episodes is the Icelandic landscape in Sturlubók as a fertile resource for both animals and humans, although there is a contrast between narratives that emphasise animal agency and those that show naming as an act of human control.

48

Ibid., pp. 56, 58.

42

An Animal-Human Settlemen In Landnámabók, the enforcement of human-orientated agro-pastoral order on the land is represented through a description of Geirmundr heljarskinn (hel-skin): ‘Hann var vellauðigr at lausafé ok hafði of kvikfjár. Svá segja menn, at svín hans gengi á Svínanesi, en sauðir á Hjarðarnesi, en hann hafði selfǫr í Bitru’ [‘he was incredibly wealthy with regards to movable property and had wealth from livestock. People say that his pigs went to Pig-ness, and his sheep to Herd-ness, and he had the keeping of cattle at a shieling in Bitra’].49 This passage stands out from other place-naming episodes in Sturlubók due to its sole emphasis on human activities, and it may be suggested that this episode was included in Landnámabók to present Geirmundr in a certain way, as it certainly seems oddly out of place with the mix of animal and human agency in forming the other animal place-names of the text. Nonetheless, the compiler of Landnámabók chose to include or create these details alongside the description of Geirmundr’s settlement in Iceland. Despite his prestigious ancestry as the son of a king in mainland Scandinavia, it is Geirmundr’s wealth from livestock that is emphasised here. Geirmundr’s past status means nothing in this new land without a specific type of wealth: animals and farming-skill. By emphasising Geirmundr’s keeping of pigs, sheep, and cattle at these specific places the text implies that Geirmundr is rich in both land (and land that he can control through naming) and animals, being a producer of meat, milk, and wool. Evidently the use of animal-associated place-names in Landnámabók cannot be considered a uniform tradition; instead, such place-names are used in various ways depending on whether they are contributing to the perception of the land, an animal, or a human figure. Nonetheless, in all cases, a distinct relationship between animals, humans, and the environment is indicated, emphasising the importance of the animal-human co-settlement of Iceland. Landvættir, the herd, and animal settlements The prosperity of this co-settlement was a vital concern in these stories. As mentioned above, landvættir can appear either explicitly or implicitly in these settlement narratives, especially in relation to the productivity of animals in Iceland, and the subsequent prosperity of the settler.50 Animals have been identified as key players in Scandinavian pre-Christian beliefs,

49 50

Ibid., pp. 155–6. Such ideas were clearly pervasive: Hauksbók, the same manuscript that contains one of our redactions of Landnámabók, also contains a text describing how women would leave offerings of food for the landvættir in hope of assistance with the dairy herd: Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson, Hauksbók (Copenhagen, 1896), p. 167.

43

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland conveying knowledge of the natural world to humans and gods, and in the episodes discussed below it is clear that animals can be seen as mediators between the human settlers and the land(-spirits).51 Two episodes in Sturlubók portray paranormal animal figures prepared to assist a settler with their herds: one that shows a horse running away when abused under the agro-pastoralist’s yoke, and another in which the landvættir send a billy-goat to increase a settler’s flock. In the first of these, a hestr apalgrár (apple-grey stallion) comes to Auðunn’s studhorses from Hjarðarvatn (Herd-water) and subdues one of the mares. The name of the lake from which the horse appears strongly links the area with the prosperity of the animals, fitting with the apparent reproductive inclinations of the stallion involved. However, rather than allowing the stallion to breed with his horses, Auðunn takes the horse and: (Hann) setti fyrir tveggja yxna sleða ok ók saman alla tǫðu sína. Hestrinn var góðr meðfarar um miðdegit; en er á leið, steig hann í vǫllinn til hófskeggja; en eptir sólarfall sleit hann allan reiðing ok hljóp til vatnsins. Hann sásk aldri síðan.52 [(He) set the horse in front of a two-ox sled and ploughed all the homefield. The horse was easily managed through the middle of the day, but eventually stepped in the ground up to his fetlocks. After sunset he snapped all the harness and ran to the water, never to be seen again.]

Kirsten Wolf notes that grey animals are often indicators of unusual or paranormal animals in saga contexts, and that the horse is emphatically never seen again suggests that, rather than a stray horse from a known neighbour, this was a horse of paranormal origin, with an assumed home in the lake, Hjarðarvatn.53 The remarkable strength of the horse in pulling a two-yoke plough and stamping fiercely enough on the ground to sink into it is reminiscent of the feats of strength of the giant-horse of the jǫtunn builder in the Prose Edda: more-than-human figures in the sagas, such as Hallmundr in Grettis saga, are likewise abnormally strong.54 Clearly the horse in this story is something other than a normal horse.55 Auðunn’s

51



52 53



54 55

Lotte Hedeager, ‘Split Bodies in the Late Iron Age/Viking Age of Scandinavia’, in K. Rebay-Salisbury, M. L. Stig Sørensen, and J. Hughes (eds), Body Parts and Bodies Whole – Changing Relations and Meaning (Oxford, 2010), pp. 111–18. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 120. Kirsten Wolf, ‘The Color Grey in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 108:2 (2009), pp. 235–6. Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning (Oxford, 1982), p. 35. Matthias Egeler has argued convincingly for Irish influences on this story, and especially the grey water-horse motif: see, Matthias Egeler, ‘Horses, Lakes, and Heroes: Landnámabók S83, Vǫlsunga Saga 13, and the Grey of

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An Animal-Human Settlemen choice of how to engage with the animal is important, and his attempts to force the stallion to assist him with his farm-work rather than accepting a reproductive contract seem to lead to the animal vanishing, and nothing is said of any offspring resulting from the stallion’s visit to his studhorses. In light of other stories from Landnámabók in which landvættir are explicitly cited as willing to assist with pastoral concerns, such as maintaining and improving the herd, it seems plausible that this animal here represents a similar sort of figure, evidently more interested in the herd than the agricultural processes of arable farming represented by the ploughing. Pastoralist concerns were evidently much more appropriate to landvættir assistance. The prosperity of a man called Hafr-Bjǫrn (Billy-goat-Bjǫrn) is established through a contract made between a man and a bergbúi (rockdweller) for the purposes of livestock breeding.56 When Bjǫrn’s supply of livestock is sparse, this figure appears to him in a dream: Bjǫrn dreymði um nótt, at bergbúi kœmi at honum ok bauð at gera félag við hann, en hann þóttisk játa því. Eptir þat kom hafr til geita hans, ok tímgaðisk þá svá skjótt fé hans, at hann varð skjótt vellauðigr; síðan var hann Hafr-Bjǫrn kallaðr.57 [Bjǫrn dreamed at night that a rock-dweller came to him and offered to make a partnership with him, and it seemed to him that he agreed to this. After that a billy-goat came to his goats and his livestock rapidly thrived in such a way that he quickly became immensely rich. Afterwards he was called Billy-goat-Bjǫrn.]

Bjǫrn’s partnership with the figure manifests itself in the form of a male goat, explicitly emphasising the reproductive purpose and potential of the land(-spirit), as well as the material rewards of allowing such a contract (and indeed, sticking to the agreement). A tale similar to both of the episodes above is that of a horse, Fluga, who is impregnated by a hest fǫxóttan ok grán (a grey stallion with a different coloured mane), producing a violent and noteworthy stallion called Eiðfaxi.58 The name of Eiðfaxi (oathmane) perhaps reflects the nature of his conception through a perceived contract with one of these paranormal figures.



56



57 58

Macha’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 10 (2014), pp. 53–64; Bo Almqvist, ‘Waterhorse Legends (MLSIT 4086 & 4086B): The Case for and against a Connection between Irish and Nordic Tradition’, Béaloideas, 59 (1991), pp. 107–20. Bergbúi can also be translated ‘rock-neighbour’, which is an interesting meaning to consider in relation to the apparent closeness of such spirits to human communities in these narratives. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 330. Ibid., pp. 235–6.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland However, Hafr-Bjǫrn’s partnership with the land isn’t simply focussed on livestock-breeding, and Sturlubók describes how ófreskir men (men with second-sight) were able to see the landvættir accompanying Bjǫrn and his companions to the assembly.59 As discussed later in this chapter (pp. 51–2), animals in Landnámabók appear to play an important role in initiating and forming the structures of Icelandic society, not just its base, so it is perhaps significant that these landvættir are associated both with the increase of the herd and attendance at the þing: both vital concerns of the medieval Icelander. In addition, the use of the term félag in the Hafr-Bjǫrn episode, which is normally used to indicate a business partnership between two men, places the bergbúi, and perhaps the billy-goat, on the same social and ontological level as Bjǫrn. The man, animal, and land acting in partnership leads to social and economic, and perhaps ecological, prosperity. A fourth example of a contract made with the landvættir for agro-­ pastoral success is suggested in the story of Þorsteinn rauðnefr (red-nose) and his apparent worship of a waterfall. Þorsteinn is depicted as recognising each of his sheep individually and assessing their health, and the text implies that this success was due to his worship of the waterfall: Þorsteinn rauðnefr var blótmaðr mikill; hann blótaði forsinn, ok skyldi bera leifar allar á forsinn. Hann var ok framsýnn mjǫk. Þorsteinn lét telja sauði sína ór rétt tuttugu hundruð, en þá hljóp alla réttina þaðan af. Því var sauðrinn svá margr, at hann sá á haustum, hverir feigir váru, ok lét þá skera. En et síðasta haust, er hann lifði, þá mælti hann í sauðarétt: ‘Skeri þér nú sauði þá, er þér vilið; feigr em ek nú eða allr sauðrinn elligar, nema bæði sé.’ En þá nótt, er hann andaðisk, rak sauðinn allan í forsinn.60 [Þorsteinn red-nose was a great heathen worshipper. He worshipped the waterfall with sacrifices and instructed that the leftovers should all be carried to the waterfall. He was also possessed of great foresight. When he went around the enclosure, Þorsteinn was able to count twenty-­ hundred sheep from the common sheepfold. The sheep were so many, because in the autumn he saw those that were fated to die and let those be slaughtered. But at the last autumn that he lived, then he said in the sheepfold: ‘Now the sheep may all be slaughtered by you, if you want. Either I am fated to die or all the sheep, unless both of us are.’ Then that night, as he breathed his last, he drove all the sheep into the waterfall.]

Þorsteinn’s reputation as a blótmaðr mikill is here linked with his ability to predict which of his sheep will die that winter, an ability that seems



59 60

Ibid., p. 330. Ibid., p. 358.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen implicitly tied to his veneration of the waterfall. Þorsteinn’s bargain with a land-spirit is indicated by the words spoken before his death. He stands in the sheepfold and says to an anonymous figure that they should slaughter all the sheep if he dies, and then as he draws his last breath the sheep are driven into the waterfall. No indication is given as to who drives the sheep, and likewise there is no suggestion that there is a shepherd in the sheepfold with Þorsteinn when he made his earlier remarks. It may be suggested that Þorsteinn’s companion is one of the landvættir, like those that accompanied Hafr-Bjǫrn and his men to the assembly. If this is indeed the implication of the story, it then makes sense that the sheep are driven into the waterfall on the occasion of his death, rather than slaughtered and kept as meat for the farm. These sheep are returned to the entity that has provided them and were not to remain in human society beyond Þorsteinn’s partnership with the land. These narratives build on the impression of a co-settlement given by the presence of and stories about animal place-names. They depict agro-pastoral success in Iceland as the result of an arrangement between land(-spirits) and humans, in which animals are the mediators and vehicles of success. There is a tripartite relationship here, of animal, human, and land; and this is further emphasised by explicit depictions of animal-­ driven settlement in the text. In a few significant examples – that is, significant in not only their inclusion but their elaboration – we find settlements, on both an individual and general level, driven by the preferences of animals. The longest of these is the story of the mare Skálm, which combines the influence of the paranormal (sea-dwarf) and the natural (horse), and results in the naming of places after the animal. While fishing with his son off the coast of the north of Iceland, Grímr Ingjaldsson catches a marmennil (sea-mannikin, sea-dwarf) and asks him to foretell their futures – specifically where in Iceland they will eventually settle. The creature (perhaps to be considered a landvættr) tells him that he will soon die, but that his son ‘skal þar byggja ok land nema, er Skálm merr yður leggsk undir klyfjum’ [‘shall settle and take land where Skálm your mare lays down (her) packs’].61 This indeed comes to pass, as Þórir and his mother move away from their original settling place after Grímr drowns, and follow Skálm across the country for almost two years. Hermann Pálsson has highlighted the similarities between this story and the classical narratives of Cadmus (in which Cadmus is told to follow a cow to the location in which he should found Thebes) and Aeneas (who was told to found Rome at the location of a white sow being seen



61

Ibid., p. 96.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland suckling thirty piglets).62 Whatever the classical antecedents, however, the depiction here of a horse, specifically one bonded with the family, is, I would argue, an important detail to bear in mind in considering this as an Icelandic settlement narrative. The horse eventually sets down her load in Borgarfjǫrðr and they set up their home there – to much success. This success is a notable feature of agreements with landvættir elsewhere in Sturlubók: agreements that are mediated by or manifested through animal action. Sel-Þórir (seal-Þórir) has multiple associations with animals, and an additional story from his dotage includes his seeing (while allegedly blind) a mysterious and evil-looking man row across the bay in an iron boat, and dig at the gate of the milking pen, after which a volcanic eruption begins in the same spot, strongly suggesting the figure is to be considered as a landvættr, perhaps offering a warning to Þórir that something is about to alter his fortunes: further consolidating the link between animals, landvættir, and certain male settlers. Skálm’s death in a kelda (bog) is also notable, given the associations outlined above between paranormal figures, the animals they support, and bodies of water in these texts. Such an association might suggest an additional dimension to the apparent death of the rebellious boar, Beigaðr. As noted above (p. 40), Beigaðr dies either within or near the lake in which he exhausted himself, after he has presumably played a formative role in the reproductive success of the pigs in the valley. The presence of landvættir and their animal mediators in these stories may be more prevalent than previously considered, and more implicitly suggested in additional episodes. Despite, or perhaps through, these paranormal associations, this episode also displays a recognition of the very real importance certain domestic animals may have played in the settlement traditions of certain Icelandic families. While the text does not tell us whether Skálm was brought with the family from their homeland, or whether she was purchased on arrival in Iceland from a previous settler, the close role this animal plays in this story in which her name is recollected nonetheless suggests a close relationship with the human family (and their descendants) to whom her actions, and the creation or preservation of this settlement narrative, were vital. Even if this story was orchestrated, following a classical model, to explain the two place-names associated with Skálm (Skálmarnes [Skálm’s Headland] where the mother and son spend their first winter travelling, and Skálmarkelda [Skálm’s Bog] where Skálm dies), the inclusion of a story about deciding where to settle on the actions of a mare, a decision that would have had severe implications for the migrant household, suggests

62

Hermann Pálsson, ‘A Foundation Myth in Landnámabók’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 12 (1988), 24–8.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen that domestic animals may have been considered by thirteenth-century Icelanders as plausible companions in such decisions. It is worth noting that Skálm’s death is listed at the end of the chapter, after the descriptions of the death of Sel-Þórir and the list of his descendants and their fates or relation to other settlers. Skálm, described in this final line as mer Þóris (the mare of Þórir), is part of this interrelated social and familial group. There was a tradition in early Iceland to include horses in burials, specifically in pre-Christian inhumation burials. While not a distinctly Icelandic tradition, the circumstances surrounding these horse burials (the establishment of communities in a new land) are, I would argue, a distinct context that needs addressing. Scholars disagree on the role these horse burials would have played in the communities in Iceland, with Rúnar Leifsson proposing that the violent killing of the horses before burial indicates the practice of a socio-political act to bond communities (for example, as argued for the sacrifice of cattle at Hofstaðir), while Þóra Pétursdóttir links the presence of horses in, and alongside, human burials to the process of settlement in Iceland, suggesting that some of these animals may have come to Iceland with settler-families and struggled alongside the human colonists to carve out a place in the land.63 While Rúnar Leifsson’s incredibly comprehensive re-evaluation of the evidence strongly supports his argument in many, if not most, respects, I would suggest that there are still some burials, specifically those of animals buried alone and without (evidence for) violent deaths, which may support the idea of cooperative and familiar relationships with horses, at least within certain communities in Iceland. It cannot be denied that the cooperation between humans and non-humans that Þóra Pétursdóttir sees as indispensable to the construction of Iceland and Icelandic society is the impression given by the medieval settlement narratives that show horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs as co-creators of the Icelandic world. Similar to the episode involving Helgi and his pigs, the story of Skálm suggests a recognition on the part of the compiler of Landnámabók that there was a period in Iceland, after prospective settlers had arrived but before they selected their final settling place. Such a selection is then presented as a decision in which the advice or prophecies of landvættir, and perhaps the preferences of animals themselves, may have played a role. The introduction to the Southern Quarter settlements seems likewise to favour a view of animal-influenced settlement: ‘Sumir þeir, er fyrstir kómu út, byggðu næstir fjǫllum ok merkðu at því landskostina, at kvikféit fýstisk frá sjónum til fjallanna [‘Some of those who came out first, settled near to the mountains and marked out the best land that the livestock desired from

63

Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’; Rúnar Leifsson, ‘Ritual Animal Killing’; Lucas and McGovern, ‘Bloody Slaughter’.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland the sea to the mountains’].64 This passage does two significant things: first, it places the first settlers as far as possible from the sea; and second, it gives the impression that cattle and other livestock may have dictated the settlement patterns of Iceland for some of these first settlers, although sumir þeir, er fyrstir kómu út could be interpreted as conveying support for various scenarios. On the one hand, it could indicate a preference for interpretations of settlement that suggest that only some of those who came out first to Iceland settled in this animal-orientated way, on the other, that some of the settlers, that is, those who came out first to Iceland, settled in this way. Either way, a vital relation to the sea and marine resources seems deliberately minimalised by the compiler, who, it might be suggested, seemingly wished to boost the idea of an animal-driven settlement over the idea of settlement based on the exploitation of marine resources. While there are many different methods of selecting settlement sites highlighted in Landnámabók and the Íslendingasögur, the emphasis on the agency of cattle and other livestock in this description echoes the impressions from other episodes in Sturlubók and the Íslendingasögur in which the actions and preferences of animals are linked with the settlers’ imagined experiencing of Iceland, especially through the direction of the landvættir.65 Jonas Wellendorf has convincingly argued that narratives of settlement in which men and woman follow the directives of supernatural powers or figures, or explicitly appeal to such powers in the choosing of a settlement place, are designed to emphasise the piety of the settlers, Christian or pagan.66 In the case of Skálm discussed above, one might ask to whom piety is being shown – the water spirit, akin to the landvættir and therefore the new land of settlement, or the animal herself, in believing in her ability to choose a final place? In the opening line to the Southern Quarter settlements, negotiation with the landvættir might be implicit, or it might reflect faith in the animals themselves. The re-fashioning or highlighting of an animal-human co-settlement may have been adopted by the compilers of these texts in order to create longevity for ideas of Icelanders as responsible farmers, as we see strongly advocated in the medieval laws discussed in Chapter 3. Indeed, Sturlubók seems to value the role of animals both in successful physical settlement of

64 65



66

Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 337. For stories involving the following of high-seat pillars to settlement sites, see chapters 8, 289, and 310 in Sturlubók (ch. 85 with explicit reference to Þórr): Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, pp. 42, 124, 302, 317. For the story of Ørlygr Hrappsson, who settled where his iron church bell washed ashore, see ch. 15 in Hauksbók: Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 55. Jonas Wellendorf, ‘The Interplay of Pagan and Christian Traditions in Icelandic Settlement Myths’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 109:1 (2010), 1–21.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen the island, and in the formation of the society that will eventually become the medieval Iceland in which the compiler operated. Integrating into an animal-human community Animals appear in Sturlubók as co-actors in the establishment of Icelandic society. While in many cases such a role is enacted through their use by human settlers in forms such as meat, or symbols of wealth, these are no less representations of animal-human relationships. The exchange of livestock and meat between households in Iceland must have been a common occurrence in the establishment of settlements, and such relations between people, mediated by animals, foster bonds of obligation that are central to the formation and continuation of communities. In Sturlubók, instances of settlers sharing their food are considered noble, while refusing to trade food with others is viewed with suspicion (for example, the story of Ásólfr the Christian who refuses to trade with heathen men).67 Exchange of domestic animals as a method of integration with Icelandic society is also seen in a reference to Uni Garðarsson, who attempts to claim Iceland for the Norwegian King Haraldr. Sturlubók says that when the landsmenn (men of the land, settlers) discover his intentions, ‘tóku þeir at ýfask við hann ok vildu eigi selja honum kvikfé eða vistir, ok mátti hann eigi þar haldask’ [‘they took it upon themselves to be angry with him and did not want to sell livestock or other provisions to him, and he was not able to stay there’].68 Alongside refusal to trade, animal theft is an explicitly antisocial act in Sturlubók, especially the stealing of sheep (sauðataka). However, while the act itself is antisocial, occasions of ‘sheep-taking’ can be presented as contributing to the formation of the agro-pastoral society, and integration of settlers into such. One instance of sheep-stealing in Sturlubók describes how the taking of a sheep contributes to the creation of the land systems we recognise in later medieval texts and documentary sources. In this case, after the death of Geirmundr heljarskinn (and therefore after the initial period of settlement) an enslaved man who ran one of Geirmundr’s farms is prosecuted for stealing a sheep, and ‘af hans sekðarfé urðu almenningar’ [‘from his confiscated goods was made common pasture’].69 In this way, the antisocial act of taking sheep unlawfully from the community is rectified by the creation of more common pasture for the interests of the group. The enforcement of social order and the responsible relationship to animals here leads to the increased capacity for communal success and contributes to the creation of the medieval landscape known in later sources. 69 67 68

Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, pp. 102, 127, 234. Ibid., pp. 299–300. Ibid., p. 154.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland When Does Landnám End? Studying Landnámabók is a challenge because it plays with time. Unlike the Íslendingasögur, it does not follow a linear narrative thread focussing on one family or district, but rather focusses on the whole of Iceland, over a period that stretches beyond the settlement period. As such, it is difficult to make divisions between settlement stories and those dealing with the descendants of the initial settlers. However, perhaps such a distinction does not need to be made. All these stories are included in a text that appears to set itself the task of recording the discovery and settlement of Iceland. In such a text, perhaps these later stories were considered as much a part of the settlement of Iceland as the immediate settlement stories themselves. Perhaps we need to redefine our idea of the ‘settlement’. If we read Landnámabók as an ideological history in which multiple compilers have, over time, attempted to historicise the landscape of Iceland, we can trace a thematic line from stories of the settlement to the society in which they were recorded. The genealogical lore included in Landnámabók may reflect actual family lines, but more significantly expresses the historic ties of individuals to the physical and social landscape of Iceland.70 This tying of Icelanders to the land further reinforces the apparent desire to construct an agro-pastoral myth of settlement for Iceland, to the exclusion of traditions portraying the possible hunter origins of the very earliest settlers. Through selective descriptions of these settlements, the physical environment of Iceland is reconceptualised as a landscape in which the almost exclusively agro-pastoral society of medieval Iceland was forged – or that was forged by such a society.71 This appropriation of settlement narratives and cultural reconceptualisation of the Icelandic environment is also found expressed in variant ways in certain Íslendingasögur. Settlement narratives in the Íslendingasögur The Íslendingasögur are texts often considered to have been compiled later than Landnámabók, and while they share much of the same material, the sagas are often more effusive when material is shared, and also focus much more deeply on specific families or districts over a longer period of time. Outlined below are brief analyses of the settlement narratives used in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, and the later GullÞóris saga (or Þorskfirðinga saga). There are often clear differences in how

70 71

Whaley, ‘A Useful Past’, p. 192. Jürg Glauser, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders (Íslendinga Sögur) and Þættir as the Literary Representation of a New Social Space’, trans. John Clifton-Everest, in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Old Icelandic Literature and Society (Cambridge, 2000), pp, 203–20, at p. 209.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen animals appear in stories of settlement in the Íslendingasögur, and these three texts represent three key features of animal co-settlers that echo their depictions in Landnámabók: that of co-settlement, connection with land-spirits, and establishing a place in an agro-pastoral community. Chapters 27–9 of Egils saga relate the settlement of Skalla-Grímr Kveld-Úlfsson and his companions in Iceland. Here, we find the settlement of Skalla-Grímr used as a medium through which the family of Kveld-Úlfr is established as one closely linked to agro-pastoral success – although the success of Skalla-Grímr is not so surprising, as industriousness and farming ability are claimed as important parts of the family long before the move to Iceland: ‘Svá er sagt, at Úlfr var búsýslumaðr mikill. Var þat siðr hans at rísa upp árdegis ok ganga þá um sýslur manna eða þar, er smiðir váru ok sjá yfir fénað sinn ok akra’ [‘It is said that Úlfr was a great farmer. It was his custom to rise early in the day and then go around the men who were working or those who were smiths and oversee his livestock and fields’].72 This description of the family in Norway promotes the idea of agro-pastoral success as something natural to Kveld-Úlfr, though necessarily something that required work. It also presents him as a figure greatly involved in the workings of the farm, rather than a distant overseer. Involvement with all members of the household is also shown by his son Skalla-Grímr in this opening Norwegian episode, as Grímr is described as going fishing with the farm workers.73 Skalla-Grímr’s willingness to embrace this work, even with lower members of the household, implies that he may successfully negotiate the complex subsistence demands of settlement in Iceland. Signs of settlement success come to the fore of the narrative as SkallaGrímr begins his settlement process: Skalla-Grímr var iðjumaðr mikill; hann hafði með sér jafnan margt manna, lét sœkja mjǫk fǫng þau, er fyrir váru ok til atvinnu mǫnnum váru því at þá fyrst hǫfðu þeir fátt kvikfjár, hjá því sem þurfti til fjǫlmennis þess, sem var. En þat sem var kvikfjárins, þá gekk ǫllum vetrum sjálfala í skógum.74 [Skalla-Grímr was a very hard-working man, and he always had many people with him. He had those who were already in Iceland seek much fishing until there were means of sustenance for people, because at first they had too few livestock with them as were needed by the many men that were there. But the livestock that were there went every winter self-feeding in the woods.]

74 72 73

Sigurður Nordal (ed.), Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (Reykjavik, 1933), p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 75.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland The representation of Skalla-Grímr’s settlement seems to reflect the archaeological interpretations discussed above (p. 34), as the men focus first on fishing while their herds become established. However, what is most interesting about the depiction of these cattle herds is that the cattle establish themselves independently of the men. They look after themselves, feed themselves through the winter, and in this way are co-partners of Skalla-Grímr’s settlement rather than dependants. Not only are the cattle not a hindrance to the humans, but in establishing themselves and thus allowing the men more time to perform other activities, they are contributing to the continued survival and prosperity of the human settlement. This cattle herd grows rapidly from too few to too many animals. As Skalla-Grímr then has too many cattle to graze them near the farmstead, the text informs us that his cattle went ‘upp til fjalla allt á sumrum’ [‘up to the mountains all summer’].75 In these passages, Skalla-Grímr’s farming success and land division rely on the agency of his animals as much as himself, and the movement of the cattle is represented as something the livestock do regardless of Skalla-Grímr’s intervention. As in the Landnámabók episodes discussed above, the preferences of animals shape human settlement – a circumstance that may reflect observable animal behaviour, as cattle are very much capable of intelligently selecting the best grazing places.76 Skalla-Grímr as a farmer reacts to animal activity, realising ‘þat fé varð betra ok feitara, er á heiðum gekk’ [‘the cattle became better and fatter, those which went on the heaths’].77 Similarly, Skalla-Grímr’s sheep show their ability to self-feed in the mountain valleys all winter, and he subsequently builds a farmstead there because of the actions of the sheep.78 This settlement is one seemingly directed by the capabilities and choices of the sheep, with the continuation and prosperity of at least parts of the household reliant on animal knowledge. While the settlement narratives in Egils saga are clearly deployed to set up Egill’s family as exceptional farmers and farm-managers, the ways in which this is achieved emphasise the vital role of animal agency in agro-pastoral strategies: Skalla-Grímr is a good farmer, in part because he listens to his animals. The need to listen, this time quite literally, to a landvættr is found in the settlement narrative in Hrafnkels saga. Before Hrafnkell and Freyfaxi enter the saga, Hrafnkell’s father negotiates his settlement with a violent Ibid., p. 76. Iain J. Gordon, ‘Vegetation Community Selection by Ungulates on the Isle of Rhum. III. Determinants of Vegetation Community Selection’, Journal of Applied Ecology, 26:1 (1989), 65–79, at pp. 73–4. This mix of observable grazing behaviour and animal-as-provider is also found in the story of Harri the ox in Laxdæla saga (ch. 31). 77 Nordal, Egils saga, p. 76. 78 Ibid.

75 76

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An Animal-Human Settlemen landscape, through the mediation of both a dream-figure (likely a landvættr) and two animals.79 Hrafnkels saga tells us: Ok eina nótt dreymdi hann, at maðr kom at honum ok mælti: ‘Þar liggr þú, Hallfreðr, ok heldr óvarlega. Fœr þú á brott bú þitt ok vestr yfir Lagarfljót. Þar er heill þín ǫll.’ Eptir þat vaknar hann ok fœrir bú sitt út yfir Rangá í Tungu, þar sem síðan heitir á Hallfreðarstǫðum, ok bjó þar til elli. En honum varð þar eptir gǫltr ok hafr. Ok inn sama dag, sem Hallfreðr var í brott, hljóp skriða á húsin, ok týndusk þar þessir gripir, ok því heitir þat síðan í Geitdal.80 [One night he dreamed that a man came to him and said: ‘There you lie, Hallfreðr, and rather unsafe. You should go away from this settlement and go west over to Lagarfljót; all your luck is there.’ After that he woke up and went from his settlement out beyond Rangá in Tunga, to that place which was afterwards called Hallfreðarstaðir and he lived there until old-age. But a boar and a billy-goat were left behind by him. And in the same day as Hallfreðr left that place, a landslide suddenly came to the house, and these valuable things were lost there. Because of this, that place is afterwards called Goat-valley.]

This passage has both positive and negative connotations for Hallfreðr’s family. Firstly, the dream-figure who warns Hallfreðr of the impending landslide is not only saving his life but moving him to a replacement farmstead on which he shall be lucky; although this may simply refer to not being crushed by the landslide, rather than agro-pastoral success. However, the saga does specify that Hallfreðr lives to an old age, and this episode sets up his son, Hrafnkell, as a member of a prosperous family. In this way, the dream-figure can be linked to the land-spirits encountered in other settlement narratives. If such spirits were understood as potential associates in the settlement of Iceland, exclusively in relation to wealth from animal-breeding and socio-political success in the community, Hrafnkell’s later success in breeding such a fantastic horse as Freyfaxi may be linked to this moment in which his father listens to the dream-figure, perhaps arranges a contract with them, and thereby gains luck with animals. However, the positive connotations suggested by the advice of the dream-figure and Hallfreðr’s subsequent successful settlement are contrasted with the negativity of the destroyed household and the two animals left behind to be crushed. The destruction of the initial settlement, a place from which the land itself violently rejects him, may imply that Hallfreðr

79



80

Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 299; Jón Jóhannesson (ed.), ‘Brandkrossa þáttr’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. 181–91, at p. 183. Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, pp. 97–8.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland makes the wrong choice in his first place of settlement. The leaving behind of the gripir (valuable things) also reflects negatively on Hallfreðr (unless they are to be considered as a sacrifice to the landvættr like Þorsteinn’s sheep discussed above, pp. 46–7). While this tradition could simply record a memorable natural event, and the death of the animals indicate the speed at which the settlement had to be evacuated, the episode may also show Hallfreðr and his descendants as irresponsible farmers guilty of neglecting their livestock – a characterisation which might be reflected in Hrafnkell’s later actions in the saga that lead to the confiscation of his farmstead and the death of his horse (see Chapter 4, p. 145). The inclusion of the animal place-name grounds this story in the context of settlement narratives that showcase the naming of places through animals, and the settlement narratives in Hrafnkels saga echo those in Landnámabók, in relation to the landvættir as assistants to settlement, and the experiencing of the Icelandic environment through the actions or fates of animals. In contrast to stories closely focussed on the actions of a single figure or family, certain sagas show a greater interest in the establishment of a collective social settlement in the landscape. The opening chapters of Eyrbyggja saga, for example, use settlement narratives to tie the identity of the saga-figures to a historic sense of place that is bound up with the possession of góða landakosti (good quality land).81 While focussed on an individual settler, the settlement, or re-settlement, of Þórir in Gull-Þóris saga makes no attempt to use settlement narratives to emphasise the agro-pastoral intelligence or strength of Gull-Þórir’s family. The episode rather emphasises a clear break from Þórir’s family, given that he is returning from a long period abroad, in which time his father has passed away. He is therefore seeking out his own space: a space that requires animals and the cooperation of the community in a time long past the initial settlement of Iceland. Þórir’s animals are those that must be acquired from existing settlers: Þórir helt vestr fyrir Þorskafjǫrð skipi sínu ok lendi við Grenitrésnes. Þar fann hann Hallstein ok aðra bændr, ok buðu þeir Þóri land inn frá Grǫf milli á tveggja. Hallsteinn fekk honum búfé ok Þuríði, dóttur sína, til forráða. Gekk Þórarinn, son Hallsteins, á skip með Þóri, ok váru þeir fimmtán á skipi, en Hallsteinn fór it efra með búferli Þóris, ok váru margir saman.82



81



82

Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson (eds), ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, in Eyrbyggja saga (Reykjavík, 1935), pp. 1–184, at p. 7. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (eds), ‘Þorskfirðinga saga eða Gull-Þóris saga’, in Harðar saga (Reykjavík, 1991), pp. 173–227, at p. 194.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen [Þórir held course on his ship west to Þorskafjǫrðr and landed at Grenitrésnes. There he met Hallsteinn and other farmers and they offered Þórir land inwards from Grǫf between two rivers. Hallsteinn gave livestock to him, as well as his daughter, Þuríðr, to manage the farm. Þórarinn, Hallsteinn’s son, was on the ship with Þórir and they were fifteen on the ship, but Hallsteinn travelled along the land with the belongings of Þórir’s household, and there were many of them.]

In this passage, we see Hallsteinn and his allies offering Gull-Þórir land, livestock, and a farm manager who is familiar with Icelandic conditions. In the view of this saga-society, these are the three things necessary to succeed in Iceland. Gull-Þórir’s resources and therefore success rely on the community in which he can now place himself. In Gull-Þóris saga, settlement narratives are used in a way akin to the social integration narratives from Sturlubók, in which the language and conventions of agro-pastoral settlement are used as methods of social and, in this case perhaps, political integration within the community. This latter story emphasises also the range of the idea of settlement: when does landnám end in a society of re-settling and re-writing of the landscape and its inhabitants, both human and non-human animal?

Co-settlement and the Animal-Human Community Iceland was a place in which animals, their productivity, their relationships to the land and associated care formed a cornerstone on which the foundation of the new society was laid – or so the medieval textual sources seem to tell us. As highlighted above, scholars have argued for decades over the various redactions of Landnámabók and their purposes. I would suggest that the re-fashioning of the settlement of Iceland as evident in Sturlubók was designed, at least in part, to emphasise the relationships between animals, settlers, and the land through the formation of places and farms, especially the correct placement of the farm and its centring as the primary unit of an interspecies society. The textual sources, both Landnámabók and the Íslendingasögur, show the establishment of domestic animals and the process of setting up a farm as methods of induction into the Icelandic community, perhaps drawing on a collective memory of a formative role of animal-human relationships in the establishment of the place of Iceland, albeit one biased in favour of the domestic animals most familiar and important to the high medieval society of these texts’ compilation. Regardless of the bias depicted in these texts, the settlement of Iceland was undoubtedly a co-settlement, involving significant relationships between all sorts of animals, and thinking of it as such opens up our 57

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland sources, both textual and archaeological, to more dynamic interpretations, particularly ground-up interpretations that focus on settlement practices, and the animal-human communities involved. The concept of land in Old Norse could indicate a home, or place of rule, as well as a physical landmass; the term Landnámabók, then, can be read as ‘the book of the taking of the home-place (of Iceland)’, rather than simply a book of land-takings.83 In this way, settlement narratives can be seen not only as representations of settlement, but as part of the settlement itself. The narratives recorded in Landnámabók and the Íslendingasögur are acts of colonisation that settle ideas and concepts onto the parchment, and into the minds of compilers and copyists, readers or listeners of the texts. The ‘settlement’ of Iceland cannot then only be considered as a physical event, but as a multi-stranded cultural process in which these texts played an active role in the creation, consolidation, and maintenance of the settlement. The multiple copies and redactions of Landnámabók suggest these were narratives with a strong social value in medieval Icelandic society. The complex relationship then between the narratives formed from our archaeological interpretations of settlement and those exhibited in the textual sources, suggests these textual sources codify the material importance of livestock and the household-farm to medieval Icelandic society, while disregarding other possible features of early settlements. In this view, the ‘book of settlements’ and certain Íslendingasögur become texts dealing with the establishment of Iceland as a particular society – one that was at least partly preoccupied with presenting an agro-pastoral myth of settlement based around the establishment of the farm as opposed to the opportunities of early hunters and trade routes, and a myth that was formed through the agency of animals. Such a preoccupation may reflect what Timothy Carlisle and Karen Milek have called the ‘climate of uncertainty’ in Viking-Age Iceland.84 Early Iceland would undoubtedly have been a society under considerable stress, with communities heavily reliant on each of its members: in such societies, social relations between spaces and actors are especially significant.85 Our textual narratives may recollect such strain in their emphasis on the establishment of the farm as the primary action in settling Iceland, and

83



84



85

Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1874), p. 370. Timothy Carlisle and Karen Milek, ‘Constructing Society in Viking Age Iceland: Rituals and Power’, in Liv Helga Dommasnes, Doris GutsmiedlSchümann, and Alf Tore Hommedal (eds), The Farm as a Social Arena (Münster, 2016), pp. 245–72, at p. 262; David Stevens, ‘Trouble with the Neighbours: The Problem of Ánabrekka in Skalla-Grímr’s Land Claim’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 35 (2011), 25–38. Carlisle and Milek, ‘Constructing Society’.

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An Animal-Human Settlemen the prominence of animal places in this settlement process. The impetus behind recording such narratives in the thirteenth century may have been triggered by ecological tension that revived social memories of the time of settlement. Although the members of Icelandic society involved with the recording and redacting of these texts would have been situated in élite or ecclesiastical contexts, and therefore not those members of society most affected by the worsening climatic conditions of the thirteenth century, it cannot be said that the conditions of the tenant farmers and other lower-­ status figures would have had no impact on those of higher status. There is indeed evidence that the problems encountered by the whole of society as a result of poor seasons were of concern to saga-­compilers: the events in the thirteenth-century Hœnsa-Þóris saga, for example, which come to a head in the burning of a well-regarded chieftain, show how the economic and ecological plight of tenant farmers could trigger social conflict between chieftains. Trouble for some farmers in medieval Iceland would have been a cause of concern for all, in a society that relied on extensive cooperation and exchange for the community to survive and prosper. The construction of places and narratives formed a key part of the ways in which the first and subsequent generations of Icelanders sought to relate themselves to their environment and their animals: animals who could both help and hinder processes of settlement and the continuation of the productive community. Representations of a desire for the assistance of animals alongside recognition of the need to control them are discussed further in the examination of laws in Chapter 3, but the following chapter focusses in greater depth on the Viking-Age farm in Iceland, specifically the ways in which building farm sites would have involved and responded to interactions between animals and humans, through processes of demarcation, care, and socialisation that created interspecies meeting points.

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2 Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm

H

aving started the thread of this book with the physical and ideological settlement of Iceland, this chapter will dig deeper into the settlements themselves, to investigate the ways in which the building and development of farms might be said to influence and be influenced by animals and their relationships with humans. The act of building, and where and how one builds, codifies conscious decisions to dwell in a certain way, which create and enable meeting points: encounters between agents that can leave lasting impressions in the material record and, I would argue, in the stories of places. This chapter will focus on potential meeting points between animals and humans in the physical remains of the Viking-Age Icelandic farm, drawing on not only the more substantial animal places on sites, such as byres, but also more ambiguous features that may have been formed from the actions of animals. It aims to demonstrate the value of thinking about the experiences of animals when interpreting archaeological sites and reconstructing the ways in which humans would have experienced animals.1 Meeting points like those discussed below would have formed the roots of the literary and legal depictions of animal-­human relationships discussed in the proceeding chapters, and a grounded approach to animal-human relations in the medieval Icelandic imagination and experience necessarily requires examining the places of interaction on the physical farm. By applying spatial analysis, in conjunction with the data from careful excavation and post-excavation analyses (where available), a cycle of animal-human interactions and relationships at archaeological sites can be investigated. These sites and these relationships show us some threads of the wider multispecies communities that produced the legal ideals and regulations discussed in Chapter 3, and the saga literature analysed in Chapters 4 and 5. The space of the farm was built in a specific way, with preconceived ideas of how animals and humans should relate to each other, in turn shaped by the taskscape of the farm: that is, the daily ensemble of tasks

1

Meeting points in the wider landscape, such as between humans and horses or sheep on the mountain pastures, or cattle self-feeding in woodland, are regretfully neglected in this chapter due to its focus on the central farm area, but should certainly be explored in further research.

Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm that constituted dwelling, performed by both humans and animals as agents working together in the business of settling and subsisting within the Icelandic environment.2 This taskscape would have been characterised by specific meeting points, in which animals and humans met, acted with and reacted to each other. These interspecies meeting points, or ‘spatialised social relations’, are vital to understanding the interactions and developments in animal-human learning built into the spatial organisation of farm sites.3 The idea of meeting points emphasises the mutual engagement that creates the relationship: both animals and humans can be considered as affective agents within this meeting. Without this approach to animal-­human relations, the textual analysis that follows would not be possible. As seen in the stories of place-naming in Chapter 1, acting together in breeding, milking, herding, plucking or shearing wool, whether cooperative or not, creates meaningful places, both in the material record and in our later textual sources.4 Through detailed analysis of the spatial organisation of case study sites, this chapter focusses more deeply on animal-human interactions at places, specifically on the encounters between humans and animals that can be said to manifest within the central farm arena. It specifically highlights the thresholds of structures, the routeways across sites, and the visual, olfactory and auditory impact of human and animal presence and paths in enabling interspecies action and reaction. This chapter seeks to weave more archaeological threads with those drawn from the other datasets in this book, to understand animals as more than bones, or background or bit-parts in a larger human story. For too long, the discussion of animals at such sites has relied on zooarchaeological study of bone and other animal products. These items, on the whole, tell us about human relationships with dead animals. We learn how people ate, how they slaughtered or sacrificed, and how they disposed of animal bodies. While study of animal bone can reveal instances of healing, or special diets indicating special treatment, all too often we learn only which animals died, how they were killed, and what was done to their bones after death. These methods of analysis lead almost exclusively to narratives of exploitation: how animals were used by humans, and what happened when they were no longer useful. The purpose of this book in general, and this chapter specifically, is to propose something quite different: how were animals alive with humans? And how did they work together in the creation of the household-farm? This chapter will first 2



3



4

Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London, 2000), p. 195; Tim Ingold, ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, World Archaeology, 25:2 (1993), 152–74, at p. 158; Ingold, Being Alive, p. 63; Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’. Birke, ‘Meeting Points’, p. 55. Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’, p. 21.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland present an image of the Viking-Age Icelandic farm and household, before reviewing the evidence for animal-buildings in the Icelandic archaeological record.5 Two case studies will follow, showing the relevance and advantage of taking a spatial-functional analytical approach to Viking-Age farm sites, and how such a method may be used to provoke discussions of animal-human relationships at two specific case-study sites: Vatnsfjörður and Sveigakot. Specific attention is paid to animal-buildings from early Iceland, both in general and on the selected sites, and the theoretical concept of meeting points is applied to the experiences assumed within and without these buildings.6 The accessibility and visibility of structures on these farm sites is discussed in terms of power, care, and dependence in an ideological landscape in which animals exert affective pressure on the places and people around and with them. The ways that spaces are used and adapted have daily, seasonal, and long-term timescales, in which animal-human encounters play formative roles. An approach that considers these farm sites in light of the embodied experience of living and working in these spaces allows us to broaden our understandings of the experience of being with animals in the physical and social landscape. The questions of power and presence considered at the end of this chapter serve as a departure point for the analysis in the following chapters, in which we see further ways in which control and power relations were negotiated in and through animal-human relations.

What Made a Farm? To quote Marianne Hem Eriksen (talking about the Norwegian Late Iron Age longhouse), this chapter ‘out of necessity generalizes and synthesizes what must have been active and chaotic structures, spaces, and everyday lives’.7 Spaces, especially those inhabited and interacted with on a daily basis, are social and dynamic, and must be considered both as things, and things becoming. As the basic unit of how Viking-Age and medieval lives were organised, the farm buildings themselves are vital to investigating the routeways and relationships that would have formed and been formed by the dynamic lives unfolding in these structures. The farm structure that emerged as a dominant form in Viking-Age Iceland included a longhouse, two or three outbuildings, perhaps for storage, metal-working or animal-­ stalling, and an enclosed hayfield either near the house or enclosing 7 5 6

Armstrong Oma, ‘Human-Animal Meeting Points’. Ibid. Marianne Hem Eriksen, Architecture, Society, and Ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia: Doors, Dwellings, and Domestic Space (Cambridge, 2019), p. 42.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm the buildings. All structures would have been constructed of turf with limited amounts of stone foundations and wooden supporting beams.8 The repetitive nature of the care and attention required to maintain turf buildings would have created an intense bond between the builders and the structures, and, in the case of animal-buildings and enclosures, the animals for whom construction and maintenance were undertaken. The structures on the farm required careful attention on a day by day or season by season basis, contributing to the rituals of daily life that bound together the concept of a home-farm.9 Evidence of early variations to this way of organising the farm are apparent, but this structural form seems in many cases to have been adopted early in the establishment of communities in Iceland.10 The building style associated with the Icelandic longhouse (that of a three-aisled structure, with bowed long walls and two rows of roof-supporting posts) is a local adaptation of contemporary Norwegian houses, the adoption of which strongly suggests that this way of building held cultural meaning for certain groups of settlers, and became meaningful to almost all settlers in the first century of Icelandic settlement.11 The members of the farm household included the householder and their family, hired workers and (in the earliest stages) enslaved persons. Domestic animals such as cattle, sheep, horses, goats, pigs, and dogs would have been familiar figures around the farm at different stages in their lives. Cattle and sheep (and goats) needed to be milked daily, so would have been kept close to the farm, or at seasonal structures such as shielings, located at a distance from the main farm in the summer when mountain pasture would have been utilised as much as possible to preserve the prime hayfields for the cultivation of winter fodder. Horses were kept in mountain pastures, in stud groups with one stallion and several mares, with riding and packhorses kept either stabled at the farm, or in pastures from which they would be caught and driven home when needed. Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Farm Abandonment; Karen Milek, ‘Houses and Households in Early Icelandic Society: Geoarchaeology and the Interpretation of Social Space’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2006). 9 Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘Identity, Intimacy and Domicile – Notes on the Phenomenology of Home’, in David Benjamin (ed.), The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings, and Environments (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 131–50, at p. 133. 10 The site at Sveigakot is one example of such variation, showing quite different styles of building and use of space before adopting more traditional forms in the tenth century; see Evans (2017) for a systematic overview of the various excavations: Harriet Jean Evans, ‘Animal-Human Relations on the Household-Farm in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 2017), pp. 158–93. 11 Eriksen, Architecture, Society, and Ritual, p. 43; Milek, ‘Houses and Households’; Steffen Stummann Hansen, ‘Viking Settlement in Shetland’, Acta Archaeologica, 71:87 (2000), 87–103. 8



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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland The roles and locations of gelded horses are more difficult to ascertain. In modern herding practices, for example on the Mongolian Steppe, geldings roam in herds, and are then caught when needed for riding, before being released back into the wild again.12 A similar system seems to operate in the Íslendingasögur, with horses being caught when needed, but the only specified gelding is the named horse Inni-Krákr in Fljótsdæla saga (discussed in ch. 4, pp. 160–3), who is specifically kept inside and close to the humans. As highlighted in previous chapters, pigs were more common in the earliest settlement stages of Iceland, due to their destructive foraging tactics, and were likely either left to self-roam (in the very first stages of settlement) or kept close to the farmhouse; but other than the ambiguous features at Sveigakot (discussed below), structures or shelters possibly related to pig husbandry have not been especially highlighted in the scholarship on animals in Iceland.13 Dogs were likely utilised as guard dogs and allowed to roam the farm buildings. Evidence of dogs is seen at some sites through teeth marks on gnawed bones, but their remains are rarely found in middens, indicating they were disposed of in alternate ways, such as burial, and dogs are common companions in pre-Christian human burials in Iceland (second only to horses). It might be hoped that future analysis of faecal biomarkers in soil samples from sites will enable the activities of dogs to be more securely placed.14 The primary changes from the Viking-Age to the medieval farm were twofold. One important change would have been the rise in the numbers of sheep relative to cattle (except at wealthier sites). A second change is reflected in the expansion of the house, with the addition of side rooms to the longhouse form. Both changes in herds and living spaces would have altered the relationships enacted at different meeting points, and these are important to bear in mind when approaching the laws discussed in Chapter 3, and the Íslendingasögur and þættir in Chapters 4 and 5, as these texts would have undoubtedly been influenced by the practices contemporary to their recording. However, given the purported aim of these sagas to depict Viking-Age lives and relationships, the case studies in this chapter will focus on the possible meeting points and subsequent animal-human relationships implied by the remains of two Viking-Age farm sites.

12



13



14

Natasha Fijn, Living with Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia (Cambridge, 2011). McGovern, ‘The Archaeofauna’; McGovern, ‘Herding Strategies’; McCooey, ‘The Forgotten Pigs and Goats of Iceland’. See: Loïc Harrault et al., ‘Faecal Biomarkers Can Distinguish Specific Mammalian Species in Modern and Past Environments’, PLOS ONE, 14:2 (2019), n. pag. The map of the site at Hofstaðir highlighting the possible ‘dog-yards’ is another example of thinking about animals in spatial terms (McGovern, ‘The Archaeofauna’, p. 179).

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm Animal-buildings in early Iceland The clearest spaces occupied by animals would have been the animal-­ buildings in and around which interspecies meeting points would have developed. I use the term ‘building’ here to indicate a structure that either sheltered animals or performed a purpose related to animals: such could be roofed (byres, sheep-houses) or unroofed (herding or milking enclosures), and evidence for both types of structure has been found from Viking-Age Icelandic contexts. Bruno Berson’s comprehensive survey of the byres of medieval Iceland represents the first substantial work on animal-related structures.15 In his article, Berson reviews the byres that had up until 2002 been excavated or surveyed in Iceland and proposes a rigorous scheme of research to further increase our knowledge of animal-buildings at these sites. The decisions at Vatnsfjörður and Sveigakot to survey and excavate all archaeological structures may be seen in part as a response to such a challenge. A common structure can be suggested for the byres surveyed in Berson’s report: a three-aisled rectangular form with central pavements sloping towards a door in the gable end, examples of which can be seen in Fig. 2, demonstrating the attributes that we might expect to see when looking for more animal-buildings in an Icelandic context. However, these attributes may apply specifically to medieval cattle-byres and, so far, little attention has been paid to alternate structures that may have housed other animals, for example pigs.16 Such attributes are indeed complicated by the case studies discussed in this book, as neither the animal-buildings at Sveigakot nor Vatnsfjörður fit wholly into this model, if at all. Berson’s criteria for assessing byres therefore do not always apply and cannot be extended universally across Iceland. A second type of animal-structure has been identified at Viking-Age sites in Iceland, referred to as enclosures or animal-pens. These present as semi-circular or fully enclosed structures, without evidence for a roof or hearth, often at a distance from the other buildings in the settlement area. Examples of this type of structure have so far been identified at three sites dating from the Viking Age: Hofstaðir, Pálstóftir, and Granastaðir (see Fig. 3), and they are often interpreted (with caveats) as structures associated with dairying.17 While the enclosure at Hofstaðir has not been subject

15



16



17

Bruno Berson, ‘A Contribution to the Study of the Medieval Icelandic Farm: The Byres’, Archaeologia Islandica, 2 (2002), 37–64. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Skáli and Associated Structures: Areas S, N and P’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2003 (Reykjavík, 2004), pp. 8–24, at p. 20; McGovern, ‘Herding Strategies’. Lucas, ‘Pálstóftir’.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland

Fig. 2: The byres at (a) Goðatættur, (b) Gjáskógar, (c) Gröf, (d) Lundur, and (e) Bergþórshvoll. Adapted from Fig. 3, 6, 8, 10, and 15 in Berson (‘The Byres’).

to analysis beyond a formal comparison with these two other structures, the Pálstóftir report pays greater attention to the structure as a key feature of the animal management required by a shieling site, and shows how useful scientific techniques such as phosphate analysis may be in interpreting such structures.18 The large structure at Pálstóftir, shown in Fig. 3, has no postholes and is interpreted as an open-air animal-pen. Phosphate mapping was conducted on the interior of the pen, which

18

Ibid.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm was judged to be heavily influenced by organic phosphates suggesting the presence of animal dung. Highly concentrated levels of phosphates were also identified directly north of the enclosure, suggesting the presence of a dung heap formed by the repeated clearing out of the pen. If the phosphate mapping indications are accurate, these structures give evidence of the gathering together of large numbers of animals on a consistent basis, without the need for shelter. These enclosures show that the organisation of animals could vary depending on the animals involved, and the purposes of such management, and future analyses that refine identification of dung to the species level will be invaluable in considering animal-human spaces in greater depth.19 The evidence for such structures at both main farms (Hofstaðir and Granastaðir) and shielings (Pálstóftir) suggests that this is a type of animal-structure with a purpose that would have been useful at both sites, further supporting the claim for its use in dairying, as opposed to an enclosure used for collecting and sorting sheep. For the purposes of further understanding the animal-­ human interactions at these enclosures, especially at Hofstaðir where we know there were substantial human-cattle interactions taking place, such structures and their enclosed and surrounding environments should be investigated further.20 The contexts within and without a structure are equally important in revealing the possible meanings of, and relationships developed at, these places. As seen in Chapter 1, albeit on a larger scale, the places associated with animals shouldn’t be considered in isolation, but as strands in wider narratives. Decisions to build and use farm spaces in specific ways would have been made based on a complex set of relationships with and ideas around animals, power relations, cosmological beliefs, and awareness of environmental conditions. In addition, the social spaces of the household-farm, like those places in the landscape addressed in Chapter 1 (p. 38), were not only formed through activities undertaken by humans and animals, but memories of previous activities at these places, which would have sustained future human and animal interactions at the site.21 Time periods Harrault et al., ‘Faecal Biomarkers’. At Hofstaðir specifically, cattle seemed to hold a prominent position for the community at the site, due to the series of ritual killings performed and the public display of cattle heads on the walls of the main building (Lucas and McGovern, ‘Bloody Slaughter’). These ritual killings can be linked to the negotiation of relationships with different categories of cattle: both male cattle and mature females were involved in the ritual killings, and it might be asked whether a cow, once deprived of the ability to produce milk, would be transformed into a social male and therefore ideologically appropriate for such killings. 21 John C. Barrett, ‘Defining Domestic Space in the Bronze Age of Southern Britain’, in Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards (eds), Architecture & 19 20

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland

Fig. 3: The Viking-Age enclosures at (a) Granastaðir, (b) Pálstóftir, and (c) Hofstaðir. After Fig. 3.42 in Lucas (‘The Structural Sequence’).

and changes over time are key contexts for animal places, and it is therefore important to analyse how the structures of the farm were constructed and used over different periods of a site’s lifecycle, and not just consider the different structures as static features of one frozen moment.

Byres in Context: Vatnsfjörður Traditional approaches to studying animals and their relationships with humans tend to focus on the faunal remains found in the middens of a settlement, but such an approach would make the farm at Vatnsfjörður an odd choice for a study of domestic animal-human relations, given that the preservation of animal bones at the site is poor with a high level of fragmentation.22 Subsistence at the site has also historically tended towards the manipulation of marine resources given the site’s proximity to the shore. Nonetheless, the presence of two structures at the site interpreted as animal-­buildings prompts us to consider the domestic animals at VikingAge Vatnsfjörður. In addition, the detailed excavation of the structural remains at the site makes it particularly suited to analytical methods that



22

Order: Approaches to Social Space (London, 1997), pp. 87–97, at p. 91; Barrett, ‘Fields of Discourse’, p. 9; Bourdieu, Outline, p. 89; Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London, 1995), p. 54. Albína Pálsdóttir, Marjorie Gorsline, and Thomas McGovern, ‘The Archaeofauna from Vatnsfjörður’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2007: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS383-03097) (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 102–10.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm focus on the structural organisation of the farm rather than faunal remains as a way of engaging with past animal-human relations. The Vatnsfjörður project spanned several summers between 2003 and 2011 and focussed on forming an interpretation of how the site evolved from initial settlement to the modern day. Two main areas of excavation were identified either side of a stream: the Viking-Age area on the northern side, and a farm-mound to the south that contained mostly early modern remains.23 In the latest interpretations, the structures in the Viking-Age settlement area are largely contemporary with each other. While the other buildings on the site are stratigraphically isolated from the Viking-Age dwelling (S1), the turf used in their construction is cut from the same type of soil that underlies the construction of this dwelling (S1), therefore suggesting a similar period of construction.24 In addition, S1, and the animal-buildings S8 and S9, share a construction feature that may be another indicator of contemporary building: all three structures contain gravel between turf layers instead of foundation stones, when the usual method of building in Viking-Age Iceland was to construct a low stone wall as a basis for the turf walls.25 Such methods may imply rapid building at the time of settlement, or building prior to the area being properly explored, as there are suitable stones in the vicinity that could have been used for a stone wall instead of these gravel-reinforced turf walls; although the method used at Vatnsfjörður could also indicate a deliberate choice of building style.26 Both S8 and S9 may show evidence of having been built alongside S1, although the jarðhús (pit-house) at the site (S10,

23



24



25



26

Oddgeir Isaksen, ‘Excavations on the Vatnsfjörður Farm Mound in 2011’, in Oddgeir Isaksen (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2011 Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (Reykjavík, 2012), pp. 19–44, at pp. 39–40. While this neat chronological division of space is methodologically convenient, it may misrepresent the past use of the site. It is not unlikely that further medieval remains lie beneath the early modern area, as the Viking-Age area was abandoned in the eleventh century: Dupont-Hébert, 2016, pers. comm. Karen Milek, ‘Yfirlit Rannsókna / Project Overview (English)’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2006: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS356-003096) (Reykjavík, 2007), pp. 7–14, at p. 9; Astrid Daxböck, Ramona Harrison, and Karen Milek, ‘Excavations in Area 23’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2008: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS426-03098) (Reykjavík, 2009), pp. 68–79, at p. 73; Karen Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2009: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS449-03099) (Reykjavík, 2010), pp. 51–64, at p. 52. Karen Milek, ‘Overview’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2009: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS449-03099) (Reykjavík, 2010), pp. 13–23, at p. 16. Ragnar Edvardsson, ‘Archaeological Excavations at Vatnsfjörður 2005: Area 1 Report’, in Adolf Friðriksson, Torfi H. Tulinius, and Garðar Guðmundsson (eds), Vatnsfjörður 2005: Fornleifarannsóknir/Fieldwork at Vatnsfjörður, NW-­ Iceland 2005 (Reykjavík, 2005), pp. 35–40, at p. 37.

69

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland shown on Fig. 4) is earlier than S9, indicating the latter cannot have been built in the very earliest stages of settlement. As can be seen on Fig. 4, the site also has four other buildings, interpreted as a smithy (S3) and storehouses (S4–S6), as well as an outside activity area with fire pits. The placement and thresholds of these structures are important in analysing the potential animal-human relationships at the site and will be addressed in the cross-site comparisons below (pp. 89–100). Non-animal buildings As shown in Fig. 4, the Vatnsfjörður site contains a dwelling (S1) similar in structure to other Viking-Age houses excavated in Iceland, especially the house at Aðalstræti 14–18 (see Fig. 1, p. 31). The burning question is whether this structure shows evidence of ever having had animals stalled under its roof. Like the Aðalstræti house, S1 had curved long walls and a doorway at either end of the building. One of the thresholds was paved, and therefore may be considered as having a differing function and purpose from the second. A feature described in the excavation reports as a ‘trough’ was uncovered at the southerly boundary of the northern gable end of the house, and this is an intriguing feature, largely ignored in the published reports on the site and, to my knowledge, unique in Icelandic excavations.27 The trough may have served as a storage place for organic materials such as fuel, or food for either human or animal consumption. It is aligned with the central hearth and placed in such a way as to confront those using the northern doorway, as well as those using the northern gable end and the main room of the house. Therefore, there may be some association between the stone paving of the northern doorway, the central hearth, and the trough in the northern gable room boundary, raising further points of comparison to the house at Aðalstræti that may suggest a similar arrangement of meaningful space.28 As outlined in Chapter 1, the northern gable end of the house excavated at Aðalstræti showed possible

27



28

Similar structures may have been found on previously excavated sites but disregarded by publications. Ragnar Edvardsson implies that the inside of the trough contained mjög lífræn (richly organic) layers of deposits, and that samples from these layers were sent off for analysis but, frustratingly, no further information on these test results has been published. See: Ragnar Edvardsson, Fornleifarannsókn í Vatnsfirði Við Ísafjarðardjúp (FS249-03093) (Reykjavík, 2004), pp. 7, 10. While it has been suggested that the northern end of the house at Vatnsfjörður was used for storage, this interpretation seems to have been based on lack of evidence for other functions, rather than positive evidence for use as a storage area: Ragnar Edvardsson, ‘Archaeological Excavations at Vatnsfjörður 2005’, p. 38.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm

Fig. 4: Plan of the Viking-Age site at Vatnsfjörður. After Fig. 1 in Milek (‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’ [Vatnsfjörður 2010]).

evidence of having been used to stall animals, and the potential animal-­ stalling area was located next to the paved threshold (p. 33). Likewise, one end of the house at Hrísbrú in Mosfellsdalur has also been proposed as an animal-stalling area, though at Hrísbrú it is the gable end furthest from the elaborated entrance that has been interpreted as a space used for stalling animals. An argument that suggests an animal-related function for the northern end of the house at Vatnsfjörður, although difficult to make with the evidence currently available, would impact significantly on readings of animal-human meeting points at the site. The proximity of certain domestic animals in the house, and the distancing of others in the Viking-Age animal-buildings, could indicate a narrative of variation in the perception and care of different animals, perhaps depending on their species or their stage of life. Placement of animals in the main house could also indicate a changing relationship to animals over time, as it could be suggested that the stalling of animals in the gable end was associated with the earliest phase of settlement, followed by the two Viking-Age animal-­ buildings (S8 and S9 discussed below), and then the rebuilding of S9 into

71

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland S7 in Phase 2 of the settlement.29 However, without scientific analysis of the deposits and surrounding floor layers, the purpose of the area and the trough at Vatnsfjörður remains a mystery. The dwelling house at Vatnsfjörður was redesigned in the second phase of the site, and although the presence of animals in S1 remains a matter of speculation, the later rebuilding of this dwelling (S2) almost certainly did not house domestic animals alongside its human occupants. The rebuilding of the dwelling deviated from the boat-shaped form adopted by S1 and is shorter and more rectangular in outline. The paving from the northern entrance of S1 is still apparent in the S2 floors, but the trough is no longer associated with the occupation layers, and the decreased living space makes it unlikely that the northern end of the house could have been used for animal-stalling in this phase of occupation. Along with the house S1, the jarðhús (S10) in the west of the homefield area belongs to the earliest stage of settlement on the site. Pit-houses are a common feature of Viking-Age settlements in Iceland and often appear to belong to the earliest phases of settlement: in this way its presence at Vatnsfjörður is unsurprising. However, its later building over with animal-­ buildings is unusual in excavations to date. While seemingly common in the first century or two of Icelandic settlement, pit-houses were generally abandoned by the twelfth century, and it is common to find them backfilled and abandoned in Iceland, rather than used as the place of multiple rebuildings.30 Only in two cases have pit-houses been built over with a different type of building: here at Vatnsfjörður and at Stóraborg, where a pit-house (Hús 36) lay directly beneath the Viking-Age farmhouse; although it must be acknowledged such distinctions between sunken buildings and un-sunken buildings are less helpful at sites such as Sveigakot, where almost all the early dwellings are sunken to some degree.31 In no instances are these structures associated with animal-keeping, though they may have served a purpose in storing fodder. Therefore, although S10 was seemingly used for a specialised function (textile-working), it was not the same as the function attributed to the later buildings constructed in its place. The meaningful transformation of a structure from one type of space to another signals a reclaiming or rebranding on the part of those doing the (re)building. All rebuilding is an act of transformation, and in

29



30



31

For information about the proposed dates for these phases of settlement, see Table 1, Appendix 1 (p. 103). Karen Milek, ‘The Roles of Pit Houses and Gendered Spaces on Viking-Age Farmsteads in Iceland’, Medieval Archaeology, 56:1 (2012), 85–130, at p. 86. Paul C. Buckland et al., Insect Faunas from Stóraborg, a Farm Mound in Southern Iceland (Reykjavik, 2004); Karen Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’, in Oddgeir Isaksen (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2010: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS461-030910) (Reykjavík, 2011), pp. 30–6, at p. 32.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm the Viking Age such transformations were sometimes marked by the placing of foundation deposits under walls, in postholes, and beneath floors or hearths.32 The change from craft space to animal-building was reinforced by the deposition of ten iron cakes beneath the eastern wall of S9, and the role of the iron cakes as a foundation deposit may be linked to a perceived association of smelting with transformation in past European societies.33 The limited deposits associated with the collapse or abandonment of S10 suggests that the pit-house may have been quickly closed and built over in an urgent redevelopment of the space; and such urgent changes suggest an equally swift redevelopment of the animal-human relations at this site.34 A need to re-appropriate space for the purposes of stalling animals might indicate either increasing numbers of animals being kept at the site, changing herding strategies, or an increasingly fluctuating climate and subsequent greater need for permanent animal-shelters. The transformation of space might also be linked to the nature of the pit-house. It has been argued that the abandonment of pit-houses at Icelandic sites coincided with changing views of women’s work and pre-Christian practice.35 It may be that as these textile crafts were brought into the house, animals that might previously have been stalled inside the house were brought outside in an attempt to enforce greater proximity with textile-working and greater distance between animals and humans, abiding by a more Christian spatial organisation that may have been further emphasised by the placement of the animal-building over the space previously associated with activities linked to pre-Christian household traditions. Animal places The first animal-building to be constructed over the pit-house was S9 (shown in Fig. 5, p. 75). This structure had central paving and a raised floor level across the centre of the building, suggesting a walkway led from the

32



33



34



35

Anne Carlie, ‘Ancient Building Cults: Aspects of Ritual Traditions in Southern Scandinavia’, in Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere (eds), Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions (Lund, 2006), pp. 206–11. Lars Fogelin, ‘The Archaeology of Religious Ritual’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 36:1 (2007), 55–71, at pp. 60–1; Jakob Orri Jónsson, ‘Food, Blood and Little White Stones: A Study of Ritual in the Icelandic Viking Age Hall’ (Unpublished MA thesis, University of Iceland, 2013), p. 58; Walsh, Richer, and de Beaulieu, ‘Attitudes to Altitude’, p. 450. David Mullin, ‘Border Crossings: The Archaeology of Borders and Borderlands: An Introduction’, in David Mullin (ed.), Places in Between: The Archaeology of Social, Cultural and Geographical Borders and Borderlands (Oxford, 2011), pp. 1–12, at p. 7; Thomas, Time, Culture, and Identity, p. 89; Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’, 2011, p. 32. Milek, ‘The Roles of Pit Houses’, pp. 120–1.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland western doorway over a central drain. The central paving, lack of a hearth, and thick organic floor layer indicative of animal dung are taken here as indicators of an animal-building, which continue into the building’s redevelopment into S7, supporting the identification of the later structure also as an animal-building (see side by side in Fig. 5). As part of the rebuilding of S9 into S7, a mandible (lower jawbone) of an adult cow was placed beneath one of the walls.36 The placement of the mandible beneath the wall of a building interpreted as an animal-­building may negotiate a transformation from one sort of animal-shelter to another or re-affirm the desire for good health in the cattle. Using animal bones as foundation deposits may be seen as a distinctly Icelandic ritual activity and a method of establishing the home-place in a newly settled land, particularly if the role of cattle in assisting settlement was a potential idea in the cultural mindset, as seen in some medieval sources discussed in Chapter 1 (pp. 49–50, 54).37 However, unlike all other Icelandic examples of foundation deposits, the deposits at Vatnsfjörður are notable for not being incorporated into the human house, and are more akin to Scandinavian examples of special deposits used in the (re) building of outbuildings.38 Although the abnormal (for Iceland) placement of the mandible may represent a conservative continuation of the Scandinavian tradition of establishing new outbuildings on the farm through foundation deposits, the inclusion of these deposits in the animal-building may equally indicate a desire for the inclusion of this building within the conceptual sphere of the Icelandic home.39 Like S9, S7 had no hearth, showed evidence of paving sloping towards a central channel and rich organic deposits (grass or dung) in the occupation layers; in addition, it showed evidence of ash dumps (to keep floors dry) and floor-level holes in the walls, presumably to facilitate drainage.40 S7 had two thresholds, one on the southern side, and the other on the western end. The pavement on the southern side extended through the doorway, elongating the threshold, and was designed perhaps to reduce the trampling of the threshold into mud by the frequent movement of animals through this specific doorway.41 This threshold faces a proposed

36 37



38 39



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Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’, 2010, pp. 55–6. Timothy Carlisle, ‘Paddle Your Own Knǫrr: Agency and Place in the Viking Age’ (presented at the Nordic Research Network, Aberdeen, 2017). Ibid. Such an act may be linked with a role that animal-human relationships might have had in creating and reinforcing ‘home-feelings’ through the daily cycle of interactions within the taskscapes of the extended farm: Evans Tang, ‘Feeling at Home’. Daxböck, Harrison, and Milek, ‘Excavations in Area 23’; Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’, 2010. Karen Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area: Introduction’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2008: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS426-03098)

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm

Fig. 5: The proposed animal-buildings at Vatnsfjörður: (a) S9, (b) S7, and (c) S8. Adapted from Fig. 3 and 6 in Milek (‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’ [Vatnsfjörður 2009]), and Fig. 7–8 in Daxböck et al. (‘Excavations in Area 23’).

watercourse to the south of the site, and a well-used route between a stream and the byre is discussed below as a feature evident at my second case study, Sveigakot (p. 86). While S9 and S7 are the clearest examples of animal-buildings at Viking-Age Vatnsfjörður, they are not the only structures that have been interpreted as such and can be compared to an additional structure (S8) built on the slope east of the farmhouse. The use of this potential animal-building in the same phase of occupation as S9, but with a location on the other side of the dwelling and fire pits, and with completely opposite orientation to S9, adds further complexity to the animal-human interactions at the site.42 The site plan (Fig. 4, p. 71) shows S8 is the easternmost building in the homefield complex and, as can be seen in Fig. 5, the building itself is different in shape and structure from S9 and S7. While remains of the western wall are the only substantial part of the structure to survive, the detection of a feature interpreted as a northwest-southeast central drain supports a tentative interpretation of the building as an animal-­building.43 Like the animal-building(s) on the south-west of the site, S8 is constructed on a slope, lacks a hearth and shows possible evidence of internal paving. However, the whole structure has suffered from erosion and slippage down the slope, which has removed many features that may have helped in more effectively interpreting the space. In



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(Reykjavík, 2009), pp. 54–7, at p. 54. Milek, ‘Excavations in the Viking Age Area’, 2011, p. 30; Daxböck, Harrison, and Milek, ‘Excavations in Area 23’, p. 74. Daxböck, Harrison, and Milek, ‘Excavations in Area 23’, p. 77.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland particular, the lack of evident postholes means that the internal arrangement of space in the building cannot be reconstructed, although it has been postulated that the paving stones associated with the occupation layer may be post-pads rather than internal or threshold paving.44 It is impossible to reconstruct what the roof may have looked like, or even if the structure had one at all, although it seems unlikely that a potentially paved area with a drain would have been open to the elements: the openair enclosures at Hofstaðir and Pálstóftir showed no evidence of paving or internal manipulation of floors, only enclosure. While the north-east wall of S8 has been eroded away, if we consider the form of byres proposed by Berson, this remaining wall could represent the western gable end of a much larger building, with the floor layer having suffered from erosion along with much of the building. The organic floor layer that remains (shown in Fig. 5) poses its own questions of interpretation: in addition to churned up soil from the trampling of humans and animals, it has also been suggested this contains the decayed remains of a wooden floor, but the results of any tests on this layer have yet to be published. The suggestion of a wooden floor is based in part on the trench cut (seen in Fig. 5), but the presence of a wooden floor in a building on such a slope is unusual and may complicate the interpretation of this structure as an animal-building. However, if this structure represents the gable end of a larger building, a partial wooden floor supported by sills entrenched in this cut could match a similar feature in the animal-building at Sveigakot, the second case study in this chapter.45

Byres in Context: Sveigakot Sveigakot in Mývatnsveit is the site of a Viking-Age farm, but in quite a different locale to Vatsnfjörður, lying approximately 80km from the coast and 285m above sea level.46 The buildings are placed on a slight slope to the south-west, with the animal-building S7, and latterly the dwellings S4 and S1, placed at the head of this slope (see Fig. 6). Dwelling at this site was subject to multiple re-organisations during the Viking Age, and 46 44 45

Ibid. Ibid., p. 78. Sophia Perdikaris and Thomas H. McGovern, ‘Codfish and Kings, Seals and Subsistence: Norse Marine Resource Use in the North Atlantic’, in Torben C. Rick and Jon Erlandson (eds), Human Impacts on Ancient Marine Ecosystems: A Global Perspective (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 187–214, at p. 205; Clayton Tinsley, ‘Zooarchaeology of Sveigakot, N Iceland: A Preliminary Report on the Upper Midden Deposit’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 1998-2000 (Reykjavík, 2001), pp. 25–38, at p. 36.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm subsequent experiences of the site will have been influenced by the organisation of multiple ‘past’ Sveigakots. The focus in this discussion is on the Viking-Age phases of the site, as the main phases of occupation associated with the animal-related structures. In the post-Viking-Age phases of the site, the surviving animal spaces were largely re-written by a later dwelling (S1) and its deliberate re-alignment of the farm. While S1, constructed and used in Phase 5 of the site (c.1090–1190), is included briefly in the discussion below it is not featured on any of the illustrations provided due to their focus on the Viking-Age phases. Previous interpretations have suggested Sveigakot may have been an outpost farm or seasonal settlement, dependent on a higher status farm elsewhere in Mývatnsveit.47 What is clear is that the farm organisation at Sveigakot is complex, and significantly different from the Viking-Age farm at Vatnsfjörður. While Sveigakot exhibits some similar features to other sites, such as a curved-wall farmhouse, evidence for outside cooking pits, and a rectangular, three-aisled cattle byre of the form discussed by Berson, these features are not manifested in a manner that we might have expected, and the dating sequences present a complex lifecycle for the site and its structures. The animal-building is early (pre-AD 940), unlike many of Berson’s medieval examples with which it may formally conform; and the long farmhouse with curved walls and central hearth is a later addition to the site (post-AD 940), and not contemporary with the byre. In addition, the curved-wall farmhouse is built adjacent to the disused animal-­building, suggesting the animal-human relationships at the site were key in the (re)development of residential space. Modifications across the site appear to be more than repairs or improvements, and throughout the Viking Age primary occupation and use of the site appears to shift between defined areas, although the animal-building (S7) apparently held a consistently prominent role at the site, even into its disrepair, collapse and rebuilding.48 As can be seen from Fig. 6, excavations at Sveigakot identified a large number of small structures, as well as the larger animal-building (S7) and later Viking-Age house (S4). There was McGovern et al., ‘Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland’; Tinsley, ‘Zooarchaeology’, p. 36. 48 Orri Vésteinsson and Hildur Gestsdóttir, ‘The Colonization of Iceland in Light of Isotope Analyses’, Journal of the North Atlantic, 7 (2016), 137–45, at p. 138; Orri Vésteinsson, 2017, pers. comm. The complex phasing of the site has been extrapolated from tephra layers, stratigraphy, and radiocarbon dating, in most cases taken from the information provided in the published site reports, except for the construction, use, and disuse phases of MP1, MP2, P1, and P2, which have been revised in post-excavation analysis. As at Vatnsfjörður, further post-excavation analysis may be ongoing. See Table 2, Appendix 1 (pp. 104–5) for a summary of the occupation phases. 47

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland also a concerted effort to identify and describe outside areas, such as pavements (SP, N) and possible enclosed or sheltered areas (P2, P3). In addition to the identifying codes from the excavation reports (shown in Fig. 6), an additional area should be identified: Sub-S6, the depressions excavated beneath the remains of the S6 structure.49 Given that the most prevalent tephra at the site has been dated to around AD 940 and the short time between the deposition of the Landnám tephra and this deposition, the rate of change between structural organisation at the site is remarkable, and will form a focus of the spatial-functional analysis below.50 Non-animal buildings Contrary to the traditional picture of the Viking-Age farmstead, the long, curved-wall farmhouse with a central hearth appears to be a relatively late addition to the farm at Sveigakot, with earlier human habitation served by a series of smaller buildings. Many of these early dwellings are sunken to some degree and show a mix of permanent turf-walled buildings and more temporary wooden structures. Until the building of S4, all are interpreted as temporary or transitory dwellings that have been used as dwellings periodically with other uses, and often with changeable internal organisation. In our earlier phases then, we see a number of small dwellings seemingly focussed on a large building in which animals were stalled, and in the later phase, a large permanent dwelling with a fixed interior built over the ruins of the animal-building. Evidently relationships between animals and humans at this site were influential in the organisation of space. The pre-940 phase of settlement at Sveigakot includes evidence for a small tent-like structure (MP3, Fig. 6), and a dwelling with only timber walls and a small hearth in the centre of the floor (MP1), reminiscent of the rectangular wooden buildings constructed at Hedeby or Dublin.51 MP1 is connected to a sunken-feature, MP2, which may be either another building or an outside activity space.52 The most complex, and long-lived,

49



50



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52

I am grateful to Orri Vésteinsson for clarifying the labelling of these structures, specifically those in Area T, which are inconsistently labelled in the reports (2016, pers. comm.). Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 4–7, at p. 7. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End: Areas S, SP, N, P and MP’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2005 (Reykjavík, 2006), pp. 8–32, at p. 30; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, 2008, p. 4. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, p. 30; Holger Schmidt, Building Customs in Viking Age Denmark (Herning, 1994); Holger Schmidt, ‘Viking Age Buildings’, Journal of Danish Archaeology, 9:1 (1990),

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Fig. 6: Plan of the Viking-Age (and medieval) site at Sveigakot. Image provided by and used with permission from Orri Vésteinsson.

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland of the pre-940 dwellings at Sveigakot is a significantly sunken-featured structure (labelled P1 on Fig. 6), which had a sequence of eight stages before its abandonment.53 While almost every one of the floor layers in P1 contains evidence of a hearth, these hearths are relocated with each floor layer, and represent a changeable and transitory feature of the house.54 Considering the perceived importance of the hearth in Viking-Age and medieval Norse culture, this may indicate a rather different household presence than assumed at sites such as Vatnsfjörður, or at the later stages of Sveigakot’s occupation.55 In addition to this flexible internal organisation, over a period of sixty years P1 was structurally reorganised, with the initial entrance in the western wall being closed up and replaced with an eastern doorway and covered walkway to outside activity area P2 (seen in Figs 6–7).56 Spatial organisation at this site was subject to a series of swift alterations, presumably adapting to local concerns, whether socio-­ cultural, climatic or economic (or all three). South of areas P and MP, there is an additional area of the Sveigakot site with apparent dwelling and storage buildings (MT/T on Fig. 6). These structures also predate the V~940 tephra layer, although MT is thought to have been enlarged and used post-940. Like P1, MT has multiple occupation layers involving the reorganisation of internal structure and hearth location. These structures seem to have had both dwelling and storage functions periodically, and after the collapse of P1 prior to the V~940 tephra deposition, MT is considered the most likely dwelling to bridge the occupational phase between the collapse of P1 and the building of the longhouse (S4).57 The substantial distance (c.25m) of MT from the animal-­ building is remarkable and may reflect changing attitudes towards the initial central place. A second building, T1, was connected to MT and



53 54



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56 57

194–202; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Discussion’, in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 67–72, at p. 69; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2005 (Reykjavík, 2006), pp. 4–7, at p. 5; Orri Vésteinsson and McGovern, ‘The Peopling of Iceland’. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, 2008, p. 4. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, p. 27; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, 2008, p. 4. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Area P1’, in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 18–31, at p. 31; Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Uggi Ævarsson, ‘Area MP’, in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 40–52; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Discussion’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2005 (Reykjavík, 2006), pp. 56–8. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Area P1’, pp. 24, 28, 30–1. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Discussion’, 2006, p. 56.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm evidence of textile-working was found in its latter stages of use, fitting with the prevailing view of jarðhús in Viking-Age Iceland.58 However, this sunken building had many incarnations before this point, with a similar process of formation to P1 and MT.59 An additional sunken-featured building was found beneath T1 (T2), and this two-roomed structure extended to the south of T1, and may belong to the earliest stage of dwelling at the site, along with some of the structures in MP and P. Unfortunately, the level of erosion in Area T makes it difficult to reconstruct the spatial organisation around these structures, but we are nonetheless able to conclude that the spatial (re)organisation at Sveigakot was complex from its earliest settlement phases.60 The sunken-building beneath T1 (T2) is the furthest point from the animal-building with which it may have been contemporary, and both dwelling and storage functions have been proposed for T2, primarily the storage of organic matter, such as hay – yet if these two buildings were contemporary, it is significant that a dwelling and fodder storage are placed at such a distance from the animal-building (S7).61 An alternative interpretation may be that this dwelling (T2) is associated with a phase of the site prior to the construction of the animal-building (S7), although given the proposed function of at least one of the rooms of T2 as the storage of fodder, it would likely have been associated with some form of animal-structure. Interestingly, there is a depression to the west of the building (seen on Fig. 6), which is only briefly mentioned in the excavation reports of the site and of which analysis has yet to be published. It may be significant that both areas S and P contain similar depressions, with at least the areas in S having been suggested as possible evidence for the keeping of pigs at the site.62 After AD 940, the dwelling S4 was constructed: the most recognisable of the structures excavated at Sveigakot, adhering to the curved-wall longhouse-style of building most often associated with Viking-Age farms in Iceland.63 Despite the faunal remains showing that the agro-pastoral

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61 62



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Przemysław Urbańczyk, ‘The Southern End: Area MT’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2005 (Reykjavík, 2006), pp. 33– 46, at p. 37; Przemysław Urbańczyk, ‘Sveigakot 2001: Area T – Pit House’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2001 (Reykjavík, 2002), pp. 29–49, at p. 38; Milek, ‘The Roles of Pit Houses’. Urbańczyk, ‘The Southern End: Area MT’, p. 46. Przemysław Urbańczyk, ‘Area T – Excavation Report for 2002’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2002 (Reykjavík, 2003), pp. 34–47, at p. 34. Ibid.; Urbańczyk, ‘The Southern End: Area MT’, p. 37. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Skáli and Associated Structures’, p. 20. Karen Milek, ‘Area S Interim Report’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2002 (Reykjavík, 2003), pp. 7–33, at pp. 20, 23.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland way of life continued through all phases of occupation at Sveigakot, S4 has no associated animal-building, with S6 (an annexe to the main house) showing no indicators of zoogenic activity.64 The remains of the dwelling are also too damaged by erosion and the building of a later dwelling (S1) to facilitate analysis of the interior in such a way that may indicate whether animals were stalled under the dwelling roof.65 It is likely that an animal-building associated with this phase was located and orientated differently to the other structures on the site, no doubt having suffered from more substantial erosion than the other structures. Climatic conditions in this occupation phase would have been unlikely to be such that animals did not need to be sheltered during the winter, and the proportion of sheep kept or processed at the site steadily increased during this period of occupation, which may not have required such a substantial shelter close to the human places. The area immediately east of the site has been particularly damaged, but substantial gatherings of stones suggest this as a likely location of further structures.66 Despite the absence of an animal-building close to the house, S4 shows a clear acknowledgement of past animal-human relations at the site through its re-use of the nearby space and structural remains of S7. The long south wall of the later dwelling was constructed so as not to intrude into the floor-cut made for the earlier animal-building, and part of the S4 wall overlapped with wall remains from the earlier structure (see Fig. 6, p. 79).67 In addition, one of the thresholds of S4 was located within the southern wall, intersecting almost perfectly with the doorway in the northern wall of S7.68 While these structures are not contemporary in their main periods of use, evidently care was taken to ensure that S4 interlocked and worked alongside the ruin of S7, rather than imposing itself on these remains. While the fluctuation in dwellings constructed, used, and abandoned at Sveigakot shows a site often subject to adaptation and transition, the close links between the place of S7 and S4 show continuity between these multiple phases; unfortunately, the strong association between animal place and dwelling is diminished by the building of the south wall of the medieval house (S1) further north than its predecessor, distancing

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68

McGovern et al., ‘Coastal Connections, Local Fishing, and Sustainable Egg Harvesting’. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End: Areas S, N, P and MP’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2004 (Reykjavík, 2005), pp. 7–25, at p. 10. Orri Vésteinsson, 2017, pers. comm. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End: Areas S, N, P and MP’, p. 10. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Skáli and Associated Structures’, pp. 9, 11.

82

Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm it from the remains of S7.69 Belonging to the post-Viking-Age period of the site, S1 is not included in the diagrams in this book, but the distancing from the Viking-Age orientation of the site in this later phase (as also suggested by the laying of a new pavement from one of the thresholds of S1) is significant.70 Both thresholds postulated for S1 face away from the ruined structures of the Viking-Age buildings, so this medieval dwelling appears, as far as the current evidence can show, to suggest a rejection of the older site and its animal-human relations. Animal places So far, we have heard a lot about S7, without any details given of the structure itself. S7 can be classed as an animal-building, although there is substantial evidence for it having been used for a variety of purposes. It was one of the first buildings constructed and used at Sveigakot, showing evidence of ruin before the deposition of the V~940 tephra, and is substantially larger than all human dwellings on the site during its use. It is not until the erection of S4 in Phase 2b that a larger structure is built.71 S7 had turf-walls, a three-aisled construction with a central pavement, multiple entrances, and a further three-part division of internal space; and while there is evidence for a number of developments in the architectural fabric of the building, it is likely that the three doorways, and the internal pavements and divisions, were evident from its earliest stages of use.72 The soft, highly organic floor layer associated with the byre stage of the building is perforated with a multitude of irregular holes, interpreted as postholes, suggesting that animals were tethered rather than stalled in fixed stalls.73 Animal management through tethering, rather than the animal-stalling Berson suggests for later medieval byres, is a more flexible method of animal care, and enables the facilitation of space for more than just animal sheltering.74 S7 may therefore have been open to relatively easy transformation of function. Charcoal and iron slag deposits were also found beneath the organic animal-building occupation layer, suggesting that a range of activities were hosted in this building even during its earliest phases; such evidence may represent seasonal activity, for example

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Milek, ‘Area S Interim Report’, p. 18. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Skáli and Associated Structures’, pp. 15–16. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, p. 8. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, 2008, p. 6. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, pp. 11, 15. Berson, ‘The Byres’; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Areas S7 and SP’, in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 8–17, at pp. 10, 14.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland different activities taking place in the summer when livestock were able to graze out in pasture.75 S7 was therefore a multi-purpose building throughout its lifecycle, contrasting with the perceived single-function of the animal-buildings at Vatnsfjörður. Combined with the size of the building, its location, and use of elaborated doorways, it can be seen that a rather different organisation of animal places operated at Viking-Age Sveigakot than at Vatnsfjörður. This animal-building has played a large role in the confused interpretations of Sveigakot, given its apparently oversized nature in contrast to the small dwellings. However, while at first glance it may seem an oversized structure for the dwellings with which it is contemporary, its apparent multi-purpose nature suggests we should not place too much emphasis on its apparently large carrying capacity for animals: a big building doesn’t necessarily mean lots of animals – but it means something. The decision to build a large, multi-purpose building incorporating an animal-keeping function, rather than several smaller buildings with separate functions, is a deliberate choice of the household at the site. The preponderance of other smaller structures at Sveigakot shows that the builders were not opposed to constructing smaller buildings; therefore the size of S7 is meaningful, and was meant to dominate the site. When thinking of the purpose and use of space, it is important to carefully consider the various access points to the space, and the experience of directing animals through each. As can be seen from Fig. 7, it is suggested that S7 had three doorways contemporary with its use as an animal-­building, and not only does this make the structure the most accessible on the site, but it may also suggest a tripartite practice of access accompanying these different doorways. Both the northern and southern doorways are marked by a threshold, either wooden planks (northern) or doubled-up paving (southern). The doorway on the westernmost gable may be considered as the doorway through which the dung and hay was cleared out, as it may have been the easiest route, faced downslope, and seemed to have no step or sill to mark the threshold. Nor does this doorway face another building, unlike the southern doorway. However, there are two slot trenches in the western gable that, while not aligned with the paving and the presumed doorway, may have supported a wooden platform or a threshold marker of some kind associated with passage in and out of the building. These two slot trenches in the gable end (seen in Fig. 7) may offer an alternate view of the internal structuring of the building if these trenches are evidence for wooden floors, as suggested for Vatnsfjörður S8.76 This western doorway may also have been the one

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Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, p. 15. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Areas S7 and SP’, p. 14.

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Fig. 7: Structure 7 at Sveigakot and associated features. Adapted from Fig. 2 and 6 in Orri Vésteinsson (‘Areas S7 and SP’).

used to move animals to and from the building, based on the evidence for animal dung among the stones of pavement N (discussed further below). If this were the case, then the potential for wooden platforms or flooring at this point requires further investigation. One of the admirable features of the Sveigakot excavations is the acute attention given to outside spaces, which are vital in helping us to understand the use and position of S7 and the animal-human interactions at the site. The pavements SP and N (shown in Figs 6 and 7) were clearly important in facilitating animal-human relationships, while the depressions in Areas S, P, and T may have been directly formed by animal activity. The two pavements are directly associated with use of the animal-building: of these, N has a more complex formation than SP, but both are worth discussing in further detail. Pavement SP extends from the south-eastern doorway of S7, stretching 7.6m to the south, and marking a substantial 85

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland 2m-wide pathway from (and to) the animal-building.77 The paving of SP seems well-laid, with the stones pressed into non-anthropogenic soils, suggesting it may be an original part of the building.78 The laying of such a pavement indicates a significant investment of time and resources into emphasising this entrance, and facilitating easy access to the building. The apparently carefully laid and well-tended paving at SP stands in contrast to the second pavement (N), which has been interpreted as a hastily laid path to ease traffic to the structure; evidence suggests that N, like SP, was also in use within S7’s animal-building phase. Narrower than SP, N is approximately 1m in width, and extends 9m or so downslope to a stream or body of water to the west of the central farm area. It seems likely this pavement formed over a sustained period of use, providing a record of practice and route-making at the site between the animal-building and the wet environment to the west. The depression in which the pavement sits is both a natural and man-made feature: a path carved out either by foot traffic or deliberate cutting, which was then eroded by hydrological activity. It is plausible that an initial path, susceptible to being churned up by weather and use, would have then been laid with paving to improve the surface for passage by both humans and animals over time. This interpretation is supported both by the varied nature of the paving, and the detection of organic deposits of hay or dung beneath the paving stones. In later occupation phases of the site, N is covered with midden layers, suggesting it was a specifically ‘animal’ pathway, no longer needed once S7 was in ruins and the longhouse (S4) had been constructed (see Fig. 6, p. 79).79 Construction of such pavements between animal-areas shows care and attention paid towards the experience of animals in their environments, and active efforts taken to improve their passage between places. Aside from pavements, analysis of outside areas such as P2, P3, and Sub-S6 (all associated with activities undertaken during the pre-AD 940 phases of occupation at the site) contributes to our interpretations of potential interspecies meeting points. Outside spaces are either deliberately for animals, or susceptible to being invaded or appropriated by them, and postholes on the north-east side of the cooking pits at P2 suggest that some of these areas may have been covered, as well as potentially demarcated by either a fence or wooden superstructure, presumably to keep weather and animals at bay.80 Like S7, P2 represents some of the

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80

Ibid., p. 15. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, p. 17; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Areas S7 and SP’, p. 15. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Northern End’, pp. 18– 20. Przemysław Urbańczyk and Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Areas P2 and P3’, in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm earliest evidence for structure-building at the site, and there is a marked contrast between the permanent and substantial hearths in this outside area and the transitory hearths within the dwelling P1, with which P2 is connected. It may be suggested that the permanent hearths in P2 replace those not found in P1, therefore locating a significant proportion of household activity in this outside space that faced towards the animal-building, as seen on Fig. 7 (p. 85).81 To the south of P2 sits a depression (P3), which is likewise one of the earliest features of the site, and one of several irregular features the explanation of which has so far eluded investigators.82 This elongated depression predates the V~940 tephra deposition, and is dated earlier than P1 and P2 on stratigraphic grounds, instead being contemporary with the temporary dwelling MP3.83 Postholes considered in association with the feature have been interpreted as supporting either a fence around the structure, or a wooden frame of some kind. This frame may have supported a cloth cover, as postulated for MP3, although it has been suggested that these ‘postholes’ are simply depressions left from the removal of stones.84 In such a case it may be asked for what reason the rocks might have been removed, and whether the alignment with P3 is coincidental or designed.85 Indeed, the holes from the removal of stones may have acted as convenient natural postholes for the raising of some sort of structure. Concerning the function of this feature, it is difficult to suggest that the depression was used for the storage of fodder, with the traditional method of storing hay in Iceland being to stack it against a wall and cover it with turf.86 It may be possible that this space was used to store fuel, but given the requirement of keeping fuel dry this would have been more effectively stored inside a securely-roofed building. Alternatively, and most excitingly for the interests of this book, this depression may have been used for keeping pigs, or formed by the activities of pigs. Rather neglected by both scholarship and medieval writers, the places of pigs have seemed elusive.87 These animals may have required a less structured shelter than a full animal-building and may have only made use of such a structure at certain times of year or in particularly harsh weather. In



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84 85 86 87 82 83

Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008), pp. 32–9, at p. 37. Urbańczyk and Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Areas P2 and P3’, p. 37; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Introduction’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2004 (Reykjavík, 2005), pp. 4–6. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Area P1’, p. 18. Orri Vésteinsson, 2017, pers. comm. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Area P1’, p. 18. Urbańczyk and Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir, ‘Areas P2 and P3’, p. 39. Ibid. McCooey, ‘Farming Practices’, p. 67. See McCooey, ‘The Forgotten Pigs and Goats of Iceland’; and pp. 102–3 below.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland addition, the location of the depression between P1, P2 and the MP buildings may have also afforded a measure of shelter from adverse weather conditions. As discussed in the Introduction to this book, it has been suggested that pigs played an important role in establishing the domestic economy in early Iceland (p. 7), and the faunal remains found at Sveigakot do nothing to undermine this interpretation.88 The slaughter of pigs at the site is well-­attested from the faunal remains, and it has been proposed that the tethering of pigs may have caused the formation of the depressions in another area on the site: Sub-S6.89 Sub-S6 is the area north-east of S7, below the remains of the north-east end of the later house (labelled S6 on Fig. 6), and shows evidence of several elongated pits and various smaller depressions that were filled with turf before the construction of the later dwellings.90 Their tephrochronology dates them to the first phase of settlement at the site, alongside S7, the nearest structure to them. The interpretation of these pits as pig wallows created by the keeping of tethered pigs contrasts with McGovern’s depiction of pigs roaming semi-wild across the landscape as part of early herding strategies at Sveigakot, but some medieval texts likewise suggest that associations between pigs and the structures of the farm may have been closer than such semi-wild interpretations suggest.91 Interestingly, terms for pigs in our later textual sources, such as tǫðugǫltr (homefieldhay-boar) (Flóamanna saga, ch. 20), túngǫltr (homefield-boar) (Víga-Glúms saga, ch. 18), and túnsvín (homefield-pig) in Grágás, suggest associations between pigs and the homefield, and the only example of a resting pig in the Íslendingasögur refers to a túngǫltr lying beneath an ash-heap at the side of the house.92 While we cannot look at Sveigakot and say these are the homefield-pigs of the sagas and laws, these sources can reflect on each

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Thomas Amorosi et al., ‘Raiding the Landscape: Human Impact in the Scandinavian North Atlantic’, Human Ecology, 25:3 (1997), 491–518; Andrés Arnalds, ‘Ecosystem Disturbance in Iceland’, Arctic and Alpine Research, 19:4 (1987), 508–13; Paul C. Buckland et al., ‘Farmers, Farm Mounds, and Environmental Change’, in Johann Stötter and Friedrich Wilhelm (eds), Environmental Change in Iceland (Munich, 1994), pp. 7–30; Andrew J. Dugmore and Camilla C. Erskine, ‘Local and Regional Patterns of Soil Erosion in Southern Iceland’, in Johann Stötter and Friedrich Wilhelm (eds), Environmental Change in Iceland (Munich, 1994), pp. 63–78; McGovern, ‘Herding Strategies’; Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Farm Abandonment; Tinsley, ‘Zooarchaeology’, p. 33. Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Skáli and Associated Structures’, p. 20. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., p. 20; McGovern, ‘Herding Strategies’, p. 57. Vilhjálmur Finsen (ed.), Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid, Udgivet Efter Det Kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskrift: Text II (Copenhagen, 1852), p. 121; Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, pp. 621, 645; Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 53.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm other, and suggest that greater nuance be sought in the interpretation of each, especially in the consideration of varied relations with and attitudes to different animals on these farms and in these communities.

Animal-Human Places The construction and maintenance of animal-buildings, or the permitting of animals to adapt certain features such as ditches and depressions, are the result of deliberate human choices, showing reactions to animal needs and desires. In addition, the development of animal places outside of human construction, such as pig wallows, shows influence of animal agency on farm spaces. As an aim of this book is to examine emplaced animal-human relationships in early Icelandic communities, this section will analyse the spatial positioning of the animal-buildings on these sites, and possible animal-human meeting points in relation to four main factors: accessibility, visibility, power, and care. Drawing on a series of spatial-functional diagrams (seen in Figs 8–11), several suggestions can be made about the animal-human relations on these Viking-Age farms. Accessibility and Visibility These two sites show very different decision-making processes in their presentation of animal spaces, and therefore the accessibility of their animals. At Sveigakot, the large building associated with animals is the focus of the farm site, not only for its size, but its visibility upslope from the human dwellings. At Vatnsfjörður, we see a significantly different organisation of space, and a different relation expressed to animal places in which the potential for interspecies meeting points is significantly reduced. While the positioning of the animal-buildings on the margins of the settlement space may appear similar at both sites, the accessibility and visibility of the structures differ significantly. S7 at Sveigakot (as shown in Fig. 10) sits in direct relation to the human activity and dwelling areas, while the proposed animal-buildings at Vatnsfjörður (see Figs 8–9) seem to have been deliberately isolated from the human areas of the farm with their thresholds facing out to the highlands (S7/9) or the shore (S8), rather than inward to the human spaces. While both S7 at Sveigakot and S9/7 at Vatnsfjörður are constructed on a slope above the human dwellings, this is unlikely to indicate a similar meaning in the spatial organisation of the site, given the increased accessibility and multi-use purpose of S7 at Sveigakot, and the visual isolation of S9/7 at Vatnsfjörður. Structure 8 at Vatnsfjörður, however, seems more akin to S7 at Sveigakot in its visual

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Fig. 8: Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Vatnsfjörður, Phase 1 (post-S10). Author’s own.

Fig. 9: Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Vatnsfjörður, Phase 2. Author’s own.

Fig. 10: Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Sveigakot, Phases 1a–2a. Author’s own.

Fig. 10: Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Sveigakot, Phases 1a–2a. Author’s own.

Fig. 11: Spatial relationships between areas of functional variation at Sveigakot, Phase 2b. Author’s own.

Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm relationships to the rest of the site, highlighting how differing animal-­ human relationships could be present within sites and occupation phases. If we look at the spatial-functional analysis diagrams for the two sites (Figs 8–11), we can see that the animal-buildings at all sites are at least as accessible, if not more so, than the human activity structures, with the dwelling at Vatnsfjörður becoming less accessible over time, while the animal-buildings remain consistently so. The smithy and associated store-building at Vatnsfjörður (S3–6) are semi-inter-visually connected to the fire pits and outside activity area, while the building closest to the western animal-building (S9/7) faces decidedly away from it. The shortening of S2 in the Phase 2 diagram (Fig. 9) further increases the distance between S7 and the house. As seen in Figs 8 and 9, no built features overlook S7 (itself orientated towards a watercourse to the south of the site), while the dwelling and smithy are both (logically) associated with the outside activity areas. This association demarcates a human interaction area that excludes the animal places of S9/7 in the west and S8 in the east. Nonetheless, the thresholds of all structures at the site (except S9/7) face directly or indirectly towards S8. This might indicate that different animals were kept at the site, towards which the household held different attitudes. S8 was evidently a place to which it was valuable or necessary for the rest of the buildings to be visually connected: the associations shown in Figs 8 and 9 may indicate that the central complex of buildings at this site is a human place, but the farm looks towards a specific animal place (S8) and the fjord beyond as its focus. Nonetheless, despite their difference in inter-visual connections with other buildings, the animal-buildings at Vatnsfjörður are a linked pair of structures. In both phase diagrams these buildings, though standing on opposite ends of the occupation area, exhibit similarity of placement and orientation. They are almost equidistant from the main farmhouse, and have complete, uncut walls facing the inside of the main human activity area and thresholds facing outwards (although the entranceways to S8 cannot be known for certain, it seems clear from the structural remains excavated that the threshold was not facing into the main farm area). If we consider these structures in terms of inter-visibility analysis, it may not have been important for human figures to see the entrances of either animal-­building from the human spaces of the homefield, nor for the animals within to face the human activity and dwelling areas.93 Alternatively, or additionally, this spatial arrangement may have had an olfactory purpose: to direct the smells of the animal-buildings away from the central

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Oscar Aldred, ‘Vatnsfjörður Landscape Survey 2008’, in Karen Milek (ed.), Vatnsfjörður 2008: Framvinduskýrslur/Interim Reports (FS426-03098) (Reykjavík, 2009), pp. 17–39, at p. 28.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland farm area. The farm at Vatnsfjörður was bordered on the one side by highlands, and on the other by the shore, and the entrances to the animal-­ buildings are aligned towards these natural features. In contrast, the animal spaces at Sveigakot seem deliberately integrated into the human activity and dwelling areas, with spaces strongly linked by outside or partially covered activity areas and paved paths. As highlighted above, the initial occupation of the Sveigakot site (Phase 1a, shown in Fig. 10, p. 92) is very different from the traditional view of the Viking-Age Icelandic farm, including a small, sunken-floored building, and a wooden tent-like structure.94 Unlike Vatnsfjörður, the space of the farm is predominantly taken up with animal places: the animal-building (S7), places for fodder storage, and potentially multiple pig wallows. In this phase, S7 is the most prominent, most accessible, and most elaborated building; although the distance between the northern and southern parts of the site is notable, with roughly 25m between S7 and the MT/T structures.95 While the structures S9/7 at Vatnsfjörður may have had two entrances, and the structure of S8 is impossible to re-construct, the three thresholds at Sveigakot S7 are clearly emphasised. These can be seen on Fig. 10: Phase 1a, with extended paving elongating access to the animal-building and marking it out in contrast to the indistinct thresholds of many of the smaller buildings on the site. The building, or ruin, of S7 seems to dominate the farm area in all phases of occupation, not only by being the largest structure until Phase 2b but also by its elevated position relative to the other structures that meant it would have impacted visually on the experience of those dwelling at the site. Such visual prominence presumably influenced the construction of S4 adjacent to S7 (as seen in Fig. 11, p. 94), in addition to the ability or need to reuse the ruined north wall of S7 and a desire to rebuild close to the earliest focus of the site. Building the dwelling (S4) at Sveigakot in this animal place may have been perceived as a usurpation, an assumption, or incorporation of an animal-focussed past. Such negotiation with animals in past relationships, as well as contemporary ones, can be seen in the medieval settlement narratives discussed in Chapter 1, and the textual sources in the following chapters. Unlike our textual sources, however, the spatial-functional analysis at these farm sites has shown how these negotiations can manifest in the spatial organisation and re-organisation of sites – in the Íslendingasögur particularly, our view



94



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See Table 2 in Appendix 1 (pp. 104–5) for a summary of proposed occupation phases at Sveigakot. Catherine M. Batt, Magdalena M. E. Schmid, and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Constructing Chronologies in Viking Age Iceland: Increasing Dating Resolution Using Bayesian Approaches’, Journal of Archaeological Science, 62 (2015), 161– 74, at p. 170.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm of farm sites is often static, and while animal-buildings are mentioned, we get little sense of how these came to be.96 Power, care, and dependence in an ideological landscape There are multiple ways in which the placement and orientation of animal-­ buildings may be interpreted, and the management of human and animal places on these sites can be linked to relations of power, care, and dependence in the negotiation of an ideological landscape. One interpretation of the orientation of the buildings at Vatnsfjörður is that the animal-buildings were designed to display the animals to people approaching the farm (an extension of the possible display connotations of keeping animals next to the elaborated doorway in the house at Aðalstræti, p. 33). Such animals may have acted as expressions of power, wealth, or status, though this interpretation relies on human-human networks of relations and ignores the effect of this arrangement on the animals themselves inhabiting these buildings and the resultant animal-human relationships. From a care perspective, placing the animal-buildings on opposite far edges of the homefield distances the animals from the potentially dangerous activities of the smithy and cooking-pits in the centre of the Viking-Age area. Viewed in this way, the organisation of the animal places on the farm might have reflected management of the risks associated with certain activities, and a recognition of the duty of care towards animals and hay, which were necessary to animal and human survival and needed to be protected. However, this distance would also have restricted the contact between the livestock kept in these buildings and the household, and only the specific household figures with prescribed responsibility for these animals would have had cause to move out of the human dwelling-place to explicitly visit these buildings – though routes to and from the fjord for fishing, communication, and travel may have passed alongside S8, suggesting this structure, as indicated above, may have held animals more prominent to the identity of the household than S9/7. The placing of these animal-­buildings on the outskirts of the homefield area also creates an animal place on the edges of the human-occupation area that may mediate between the human centre of the homefield and the places beyond. This arrangement of space positions the human-centre within an encircling domestic animal place. Although the places beyond the homefield walls (the fjord and the outfield activity areas) were undoubtedly the location

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This might be simply a result of assumption on the part of a compiler that everyone would know what form and relations were referred to by specific building names. Alternatively, it may imply a recognition of variation: by leaving out details, it allowed the audience to imagine a byre or enclosure as they wanted or as was most appropriate for them on their specific farm.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland of many necessary farm activities organised by humans, they were also undisputedly wilder spaces, and less controlled than the central place of the farm buildings. The role of animals as marking the boundary of the homefield is found also in our textual sources, albeit with dogs rather than cattle or sheep.97 The organisation of space at Sveigakot is much different. Most notably, the animals, and therefore animal-human relationships, seem to have been much more closely incorporated within the human spaces of the farm. There is no encircling animal-area, but rather animal places integrated with and attached to human dwellings and activity spaces. Sveigakot is a difficult site to interpret, having suffered from significant levels of erosion between deposition and excavation, but what is clear from comparison with Vatnsfjörður is that the organisation of space is different. It can be suggested that the household at this site may have attempted to project a higher-status image through the oversized animal-building, as visitors or passers-by would have no way of knowing the byre was a multi-purpose space. As will be seen in the proceeding chapter, domestic animals, especially cattle, were indicators of wealth; therefore, a large animal-building, regardless of the unseen number of animals within the building, would have immediately provided a marker of prosperity for those passing or visiting the farm, and displayed a specific identity to the community. Small dwellings should not be assumed to indicate low status or a limitation of resources, but rather an active decision to build in a certain way. It may be argued that the large animal-building not only expressed the desired identity of the farm, but also demonstrated how the household wished to display their economic potential. It also reinforces the multitude of animal-human relations at this site. The multi-purpose S7 would have been interactively prominent, with access to the building for a variety of uses and by a variety of household members greatly increasing the contact and interactions between the sights and smells of tethered animals and humans conducting a range of activities.

In Gísla saga (ch. 3) a group of men escape from a burning hall, and their moment of safety is described as ‘kómusk svá brott ór hunda hljóðum’ [‘they came away until they could no longer hear the dogs barking’]: Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson (eds), ‘Gísla saga Súrssonar’, in Vestfirðinga sögur (Reykjavík, 1943), pp. 1–118, at p. 13. In Njáls saga also, the breaching of the homefield boundary is signalled by the howling of a dog, and an act of animal-­human communication in that the howling of Sámr indicates to Gunnarr that his enemies have arrived: Einar Ól. Sveinsson (ed.), Brennu-­ Njáls saga (Reykjavík, 1954), pp. 185–6; Harriet J. Evans Tang, ‘Reading Animal-­Human Relations: Sámr and Gunnarr in Njáls Saga’, Scandinavian Studies, forthcoming.

97

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm As highlighted in these discussions, buildings fulfil a function beyond solely that of shelter. At Sveigakot, if this farm was an outpost small-­ holding in association with a more prominent farm in the district, the animal-building may have acted as a reminder of the duty of care towards the animals it sheltered: a visual indicator that the cattle they worked with had a higher status than the humans on the site. However, this building may alternatively have acted as a projection of real, aspirational, or imagined wealth, constructed by an independent household struggling to assert their identity in a fragile frontier society. In contrast, the animal-­ buildings at Vatnsfjörður are smaller than the human dwelling at every stage of its occupation, and while the Vatnsfjörður animal-­buildings have the same amount of space available for shelter as Sveigakot, this space is divided into two, with a building on either side of the settlement. This organisation of space may reflect the stalling of different animals, or the adoption of different herding practices than those adopted at Sveigakot. Having multiple animal-buildings at the site may also have had practical or meaningful advantages, such as the ability to more effectively manure a large homefield area, or to invest the structures with a specific visual or aural impact for display purposes. When considering the wider meanings of these buildings, the dynamic nature of relations with the animals at these sites should not be viewed in isolation from other developments on the farm. At Vatnsfjörður, one of the first recorded animal places is constructed over the remains of a jarðhús, and it can be assumed that the function of the earlier building was incorporated into the main dwelling at the same time as animals were established in this outer, and visually-distanced, place (p. 73); while at Sveigakot the animal space is most likely moved eastwards away from the central building area, after the abandonment of S7. This movement of animal place at Sveigakot may have been the result of a desire to re-appropriate the space previously occupied by S7 for the large dwelling S4, as discussed above, transferring the focus of the site from animal to human dwelling (Fig. 11, p. 94). The distance developed between animals and humans at both sites may reflect the adoption of herding strategies requiring fewer close relationships between environments, animals, and humans. Alternatively, or concurrently, prestige and identity at Vatnsfjörður may have been mediated not only through the presence of animals, but through other factors, such as sea-fishing, the collection of driftwood, and iron-working, given its proximity to the fjord and smithy at the site. The most distinctive structure at early Vatnsfjörður was the human dwelling, while at Sveigakot it was S7. This suggests a marked difference in how the farm would have been perceived: from a distance, in approaching the place, and when standing among the buildings. Unlike Sveigakot, Vatnsfjörður was inter-visually connected to other farms in the 99

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland area and played a central role in the politics of the fjord; and the splitting of the animal-buildings may have been designed to make the farm appear larger from these other locations.

An Animal-Human Farm In the opening of this book, I suggested that the Viking-Age farm may have been conceived as a place at which safe, controlled space gave way in graduated stages to the uncontrolled spaces away from human interaction (p. 9). While this may have been the case, what is clear from this chapter is that the positioning of animals in this continuum is not fixed, and that domestic animals did not have a consistent expression of place on Viking-Age farms in relation to non-animal spaces. The placement of the animal-buildings at Vatnsfjörður very clearly marks out places for the animals into which only certain household members would have been required to venture, while S7 at Sveigakot was both more connected and likely accessed by a greater number of farm workers. In addition, certain key features of medieval byres as identified by Berson cannot be universally applied in Viking-Age contexts in Iceland.98 There was clearly no one way in which animal-buildings were constructed and placed at Icelandic Viking-Age farms, and if consistency developed in the medieval period, as suggested by Berson’s examples, this might reflect a codification of the animal’s place on the farm, and of specific animal-human relations at these sites. Such a codification would be intriguing in light of the variation in attitudes towards animals and animal-human relationships we find depicted in the medieval literature discussed in the final chapters of this book, although the possibility cannot be excluded that variation in the construction of byres depended on regional and topographical conditions, and that the form outlined by Berson might apply to byres at Viking-Age sites in a specific area or environment. Variation in the ways animals interacted with farm spaces is certainly found in the literary and legal material explored in the following chapters, and several terms for domestic animals suggest that methods of inclusion and exclusion operated in these multispecies communities. The terms heim- and tún- are both found compounded with terms for animals.99 The túngarðr seems to have included meanings of the homefield,

98 99

Berson, ‘The Byres’, p. 59. While the Old Norse noun bú, which can refer to a farm, the stock of the farm and the household, appears to encapsulate the key areas of animal-­human meeting points at the centre of this chapter, it seems to have been rarely compounded with words for animals, aside from the relatively common búfé

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm the physical enclosure around the field and buildings within it, in which the heimr would be situated, and a clear link between the heim and the tún is indicated by terms such as heimataða, a compound of home and -taða (hay from the manured field, from the tún). Inclusion of the term heimr in scholarly discourse has most often focussed on its presence in placenames across the north Atlantic, but heimr, heim, heima and related words are used extensively in the Íslendingasögur to indicate the household-farm and a place of dwelling, as well as in terms for those figures associated with such places.100 The difference in prominence between heim- or túncompounds and bú- compounds might be explained if we think of heim- as a more ideological term, encompassing a range of relationships tied up with the idea of home, with bú focussed much more on the physical entity of the farm, either the home-farm or a neighbouring one. In some cases, the significance of these terms has been neglected in modern translations, considered as merely part of the background representation of the sagas.101 Associations between certain domestic animals and the farm are formalised by the compounding of heim- with animal words. While heim- is never compounded with words for dog, several other animal words are joined with heim(a). In this category we find heimagriðungr (home-bull) in Þorsteins saga hvíta (ch. 8), and heim(a)gás (home-goose), in Kormaks saga (ch. 22) and Grettis saga (ch. 14). These terms suggest that certain animals were more likely to become associated with or incorporated into the concept of



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(household-livestock). The only other examples of bú- compounds referring to animals in the Íslendingasögur seem to indicate animals belonging to an outside household (for example, Laxdæla saga ch. 29 and Þorsteins saga hvíta ch. 8). Stefan Brink, ‘Home: The Term and the Concept from a Linguistic and Settlement-­Historical Viewpoint’, in David Benjamin (ed.), The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings, and Environments (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 17–24; Jesch, The Viking Diaspora, pp. 43–4; Símun V. Arge, ‘Uttangarðs: Relics in the Faeroe Outfield’, in Ingunn Holm, Sonja Innselset, and Ingvild Øye (eds), ‘Utmark’: The Outfield as Industry and Ideology in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages (Bergen, 2005), pp. 67–82; Paul Battles, ‘What Is “Middle-Earth”? Origin, Evolution, and Mythic Function’, in Andrew Wawn (ed.), Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T. A. Shippey (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 319–42; Dunhof, ‘The Issue of Infield and Outfield’; Kirsten Hastrup, Island of Anthropology: Studies in Past and Present Iceland (Odense, 1990); Jennbert, Animals and Humans; Lindow, Murder and Vengeance; Ingvild Øye, ‘Introduction’, in Ingunn Holm, Sonja Innselset, and Ingvild Øye (eds), ‘Utmark’: The Outfield as Industry and Ideology in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages (Bergen, 2005), pp. 9–20; Gro Steinsland, ‘The Late Iron Age Worldview and the Concept of Utmark’, in Ingunn Holm, Sonja Innselset, and Ingvild Øye (eds), ‘Utmark’: The Outfield as Industry and Ideology in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages (Bergen, 2005), pp. 137–48. For a more in-depth study of the Old Norse ‘home’, heimr and animals, see: Evans Tang, ‘Feeling at Home’.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland home than others: like dogs, no word for home-sheep is recorded, though a couple of sagas do provide descriptions of rams overly attached to the home-area (Heiðarvíga saga ch. 7 and Grettis saga ch. 74). Heim- animals may have been particularly useful members of the household, for example a heimahestr being a stallion prized for breeding purposes (just as heimamenn performed the vital tasks of collecting hay and maintaining walls).102 These terms are used in the Íslendingasögur to indicate animals in close proximity to the home, and therefore animals in which the humans of the farm had great investment, both economically and emotionally. In Þorsteins saga hvíta, heimagriðungr is used to indicate the bull of the farm, as opposed to a neighbour’s bull, but specifically a bull with whom a young man of the farm joins a fight against the neighbour’s bull, while heim(a) gás in Kormaks saga and Grettis saga is used to describe tame geese that are kept within the home area. In Grettis saga, Ásmundr’s reaction to the mutilation and killing of his geese by his son, Grettir, implies a close and heartfelt relationship between the man and these animals. Similarly, the terms mentioned above, tǫðugǫltr and túngǫltr, seem to be used to describe boars kept within close range of the dwelling, and especially animals with whom close interactions were practised, if only to preserve an important source of meat. The presence of pigs in farmyards is an intriguing possibility. The suggestion that Sub-S6, and the various pits across the site, may show evidence of pig-keeping at Sveigakot indicates that pigs may have been domestic animals able to traverse and permeate different spaces of the household-farm, and permitted at least partly to occupy places around the farm buildings in a casual and unsecured manner. This may fit with the idea of the túngǫltr ‘homefield-boar’ that suggests a link existed between pigs and the spaces of the farm. As mentioned above, interpretations of pigs in Iceland have often focussed on their ability to self-forage and their preference for roaming, and yet the evidence surveyed in this chapter implies a closer relationship between pigs and humans than previously considered, particularly focussed on the central home-place. As analysed in Chapter 1, Old Icelandic settlement narratives do contain stories of semi-wild pigs in Iceland, but rather than simply being permitted to roam in the Icelandic landscape, these stories always note the pigs turning away from their human owners, suggesting such roaming may have been an unwelcome act. Indeed, the story of Beigaðr’s rebellious refusal to re-­ submit to human control, particularly in the extended version of the story in Vatnsdæla saga (ch. 15), suggests uncontrolled pigs were viewed negatively by the compilers of these narratives. A concern over out-of-control, or out-of-place, pigs is certainly seen in the medieval laws discussed in the

102

Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 249.

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm proceeding chapter, but it is notable that the remains at Sveigakot (like, perhaps, those settlement narratives of pig-dales in Chapter 1, pp. 40–2) appear to show pigs as animals with influence over the creation of places, specifically the organisation of farm-space in the animal-human farm, and capable of acting as sociable agents among these structures. It is therefore unsurprising that many laws in Grágas seem to acknowledge certain domestic animals as affective agents and seek to regulate their behaviour as figures capable of taking actions and being answerable for them. This shall be seen in the following chapter, which examines how ideal relations between animals and humans were constructed and enforced in medieval Icelandic legal traditions.

Appendix 1 Proposed Occupation Phases for Vatnsfjörður and Sveigakot Table 1: Proposed phases of occupation and use at Vatnsfjörður. Phase

Date

Identifiable changes

1

c.AD 900–950

S1 built. S9 built over S10.

2

c.AD 950–1000

S1 shortened (S2). S7 built over S9.

3

c.AD 1000–1050

S2 abandonment and collapse.

Source: Data from Ragnar Edvardsson, ‘Archaeological Excavations at Vatnsfjörður 2005’, p. 37; Karen Milek, ‘Vatnsfjörður 2005: Area 2 Report’, in Adolf Friðriksson, Torfi H. Tulinius, and Garðar Guðmundsson (eds), Vatnsfjörður 2005: Fornleifarannsóknir/Fieldwork at Vatnsfjörður, NW-Iceland 2005 (Reykjavík, 2005), pp. 41–62, at pp. 47–51.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Table 2: Proposed phases of occupation and use at Sveigakot.

Phase Date 1a

c.AD 870–950

Identifiable changes MP3 in use S7 built P1 and P2 built N (pavement) built SP (pavement) built T2 built Sub-S6 depressions and hearths form (uncertain) P3 cut

1b

S7 abandoned P1 and P2 in use Lower midden (M) begins to accumulate Trenches cut into the ruins of Structure 7 Sub-S6 depressions and hearths form (uncertain)

1c

P1 and P2 abandoned T1 (T, MT1, House 1) and MT (MT2, or House II) built Upper midden (M) begins to accumulate T2 abandoned MP1 and MP2 in use

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Home, Sweet Home: Meeting Points on the Animal-Human Farm Table 2 (continued) Phase Date 2a

c.AD 950–1050

Identifiable changes MP1 and MP2 abandoned MT (MT2 or House II) rebuilt (larger) T1 abandoned Upper midden (M) continues to accumulate Midden in T1 begins to accumulate Midden dump on P3 Midden forms on N Smithy built in ruined east end of Structure 7

2b

MT abandoned Upper midden (M) ceases to accumulate S4 built S6 (activity area) in use

3

c.AD 1050

S4 abandonment and collapse

4

c.AD 1050–1090

Sporadic use of collapsed dwelling S4 for shelter

5

c.AD 1090–1190

S1, S3 and S5 constructed and used

6

c.AD 1190

Abandonment and collapse of dwelling complex and associated structures

Source: Data compiled by the present author from the Sveigakot site reports, especially the most recent detailed overview of the site in Guðrún Alda Gísladóttir and Orri Vésteinsson (eds), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2006 (Reykjavík, 2008) and earlier suggestions in: Orri Vésteinsson, ‘Discussion’, in Orri Vésteinsson (ed.), Archaeological Investigations at Sveigakot 2004 (Reykjavík, 2005), pp. 51–5, at pp. 51–2. Note that the construction, use, and disuse phases of MP1, MP2, P1, and P2 have been revised in post-excavation analysis: Orri Vésteinsson, 2017, pers. comm.

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3 The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland

A

s to be expected from a society in which domestic animals were vitally important, the earliest written laws we have surviving from Iceland contain extensive descriptions, regulations, and stipulations around the care, control, and nature of these animals. What perhaps is unexpected is the way certain animals are considered in these laws: as legal agents. Examining how these legal traditions structure the animal-human relationship and the animal-human boundary deepens our understanding of the interspecies interactions discussed in this book and can be brought together with the physical landscape of Iceland to construct the building blocks of medieval Icelandic social experience of animals. The animal-related content of Grágás has been little examined by scholars of early Iceland, and references to these laws are often used for contextualising discussion of the Icelandic sagas rather than analysed for their own sake. The value of these animal-laws, when placed alongside material and other textual evidence of animal-human interactions, has never been fully explored.1 Such is the purpose of this chapter: to unpick the representation of domestic animals in these laws, and to consider how the role of animals in the legal society and landscape of medieval Iceland can be brought into constructive dialogue with the other sources examined in this book.2 These laws offer a narrative of daily life in an agro-pastoral Christian society and enable the visualisation of the relations between people and things, structures, and animals within this daily practice. The laws present ideal interspecies relations in medieval Icelandic society, but explicitly emphasise the variation in such encounters. Domestic animals were not part of one homogenous legal category but were placed on a spectrum of rights and protections, and each animal could be subject to differing levels of legal status and permitted agency. While the laws seem designed to control both men and animals, the capability for certain animals to

Only one publication closely examines the representations of animals in medieval Icelandic law: Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick, pp. 40–50. 2 Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick. 1

The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland act outside of this control, to shape their own actions, and work with (or against) humans is recognised by the texts. The disruptive potential of domestic animals is strongly emphasised in the focus on control we find in many of these laws, and the regulations suggest that working with animals, and the responsibility for their actions, were the domains of certain skilled individuals within the household. Care of animals was vital to the successful operation of the community, and both humans and animals had their roles and their obligations towards each other. Above all, the animal-related laws recorded in these manuscripts demonstrate the importance of enforcing order on the Icelandic farming landscape and all its inhabitants, human or non-human – although the presence of such laws suggests that this striving for order required substantial effort. In the dispersed settlement structure of Iceland, the tight ordering of the farmstead may have been an attempt to secure wider society against disruption, whether through inter-farmstead conflict or the worsening of the environment. On a micro level, the manipulation of domestic animals can be linked with control over personal success. On a macro level, a community of responsible farmers results in a secure and prosperous society. The ways in which animal places in these laws are expressed and regulated can be said to reflect and have influenced wider conceptualisations of animal-human relations that we find in the other datasets drawn on in this book.

Icelandic Law and its Origins The traditional narrative of the origins of Icelandic law, according to the twelfth-century Íslendingabók, relates how a Norwegian settler in Iceland returned to his homeland and brought back a set of laws for Iceland inspired by the laws used at the Norwegian Gulaþing.3 The account in Íslendingabók tells us that these laws were then adapted with the advice of Þorleifr inn spaki (the wise), who suggested amendments, presumably to make the laws more appropriate for Icelandic society, although the reasons for Þorleifr’s amendments are not made explicit in the text.4 Such a story is difficult to verify or refute, as we have no written evidence for Norwegian or Icelandic law from this early period.5 Instead, the earliest manuscript evidence we have for the laws of the Norwegian 3



4



5

Jakob Benediktsson (ed.), ‘Íslendingabók’, in Íslendingabók: Landnámabók (Reykjavík, 1968), pp. 1–30, at p. 7. Ibid. Jenny Jochens, ‘Gender Symmetry in Law? The Case of Medieval Iceland’, Arkiv För Nordisk Filologi, 108 (1993), 46–67, at p. 47.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Gulaþing can only be dated to c.1267, and bears little resemblance to the main Grágás manuscripts. According to Íslendingabók, the laws of Iceland were written in AD 1117–18, in a showing of collective law-making instigated by the Alþingi, and the earliest fragments we have attributed to the Grágás tradition have been dated to only thirty years from this date, with many fragments of law surviving from between AD 1150 and 1250.6 Scholarship on early Icelandic law has often focussed on attempting to trace its origins to pre-Christian, oral legal traditions in mainland Scandinavia, and the specific sections of the laws that have come under the most scrutiny are those sections of Grágás dealing with Christian laws, killings, outlawry, and welfare provision.7 Despite the search for Scandinavian influences, the animal-related laws in Grágás seem to offer a way of shaping society and relations with animals in many ways distinct to Iceland, and early Iceland specifically.8 The regulations around animals in Grágás

6



7



8

Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Íslendingabók’, p. 23; Peter Foote, 1117 in Iceland and England (London, 2003); Pedersen, ‘A Medieval Welfare State?’, p. 91. Peter Foote, ‘Oral and Literary Tradition in Early Scandinavian Law: Aspects of a Problem’, in Hans Bekker-Nielsen and Vilmos Voigt (eds), Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium (Odense, 1977), pp. 47–55; Maciej Koszowski, ‘Medieval Iceland: The Influence of Culture and Tradition on Law’, Scandinavian Studies, 86: 3 (2014), 333–51; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990); Jenny Jochens, ‘Gender Symmetry in Law?’; Michael P. McGlynn, ‘Orality in the Old Icelandic Grágás: Legal Formulae in the Assembly Procedures Section’, Neophilologus, 93 (2009), 521–36; Jesse Byock, ‘Governmental Order in Early Medieval Iceland’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 17 (1986), 19–34; Sigurður Líndal, ‘Law and Legislation in the Icelandic Commonwealth’, Scandinavian Studies in Law, 37 (1993), 53–92; Foote, ‘Reflections’; Foote, The Early Christian Laws; Orri Vésteinsson, The Christianization of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change, 1000-1300 (Oxford, 2000); Jesse Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power (Berkeley, 1988); Jesse Byock, ‘Feuding in Viking-Age Iceland’s Great Village’, in Warren Brown and Piotr Górecki (eds), Conflict in Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 229–41; William Ian Miller, ‘Of Outlaws, Christians, Horsemeat, and Writing: Uniform Laws and Saga Iceland’, Michigan Law Review, 89:8 (1991), 2081–95; William Ian Miller, ‘Gift, Sale, Payment, Raid: Case Studies in the Negotiation and Classification of Exchange in Medieval Iceland’, Speculum, 61:1 (1986), 18–50; Pedersen, ‘A Medieval Welfare State?’; Joonas Ahola, ‘Arnarvatnsheiði and the Space for Outlaws’, in Natalja Gvorzdetskaja et al. (eds), Stanzas of Friendship: Studies in Honour of Tatjana N. Jackson (Moscow, 2011), pp. 35–47. Martina Stein-Wilkeshuis, ‘Laws in Medieval Iceland’, Journal of Medieval History, 12:1 (1986), 37–53; Birgir T. Runolfsson Solvason, ‘Ordered Anarchy: Evolution of the Decentralized Legal Order in the Icelandic Commonwealth’, Journal de Economistes et Des Etudes Humaines, 3:2–3 (2014), 333–52; Einar Pálsson, ‘Pythagoras and Early Icelandic Law’, in Mikael M. Karlsson and Ólafur Páll Jónsson (eds), Law, Justice and the State: Nordic Perspectives

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland appear quite different in many respects from those found in later medieval Icelandic laws and contemporary Norwegian codes – there is neither the same emphasis on careful handling of animals, nor so many regulations concerning milk in the Norwegian laws; although some interesting parallels may be found with regards to relationships between humans and dogs in the Gulaþing laws.9 Rather than one official law for Iceland, it is likely that multiple copies of the laws existed as a result of a multiplicity of oral traditions being recorded over time in an unregulated system reliant on who had the resources to make records, and individual persons or communities having distinct ideas over what constituted the law.10 The Grágás laws, then, while largely consistent across the surviving manuscripts, should be considered as collections of legal traditions rather than a single definitive law-tract, setting them in contrast with later law-books for Iceland, such as Járnsíða and Jónsbók. Indeed, the term Grágás was only applied to these collections of texts from the sixteenth century onwards and therefore gives perhaps an unrepresentative impression of unified Icelandic law in the Commonwealth period.11 Only two full manuscripts survive containing these early laws: Konungsbók (c.1260) and Staðarhólsbók (c.1280). Staðarhólsbók appears to have been a copy of a manuscript that was updated on a number of occasions; the term nýmæli (new law) is written in the margins by multiple hands to indicate where these additions are to be found, and it includes additional definitions for things that are undefined in Konungsbók.12 Clearly the exemplar for this manuscript was supposed to be kept up-to-date and relevant. Oddly, both manuscripts date from the second half of the thirteenth century, around the time that such laws would have fallen out of use after Iceland’s political union with the kingdom of Norway (c.1262–4), and it was evidently of value to copy these compilations of traditional Icelandic legal customs while these political shifts were taking place. That both old and new laws appear to have been

9



10



11



12

(Stuttgart, 1995), pp. 49–56; Lester B. Orfield, The Growth of Scandinavian Law (Philadelphia, 1953); Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth; Hans Henning Hoff, Hafliði Másson und die Einflüsse des Römischen Rechts in der Grágás (Boston, 2012). Laurence Marcellus Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and Frostathing Law (New York, 1935), p. 134; Evans Tang, ‘Reading Animal-­Human Relations’. Foote, 1117; Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 225; Stein-Wilkeshuis, ‘Laws in Medieval Iceland’. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins (eds), Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás I (Winnipeg, 1980), p. 9. Líndal, ‘Law and Legislation’, p. 73; ‘AM 334 Fol.’ (n.d.) [accessed 25 July 2017]; Foote, ‘Reflections’, p. 97.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland copied in Staðarhólsbók clearly indicates that these earlier laws in their entirety were considered valuable to late thirteenth-century society in Iceland. Based on linguistic and orthographic analysis, the inclusion of out-of-date laws, and an assumed slow rate of social change in eleventh-­ century Iceland, the laws discussed in this chapter are assumed to be dateable, in many cases, to eleventh- or twelfth-century contexts.13 That they continued to be copied into the mid-thirteenth century suggests that they played an active role in medieval Icelandic thinking about the past, and the emerging present. A keen interest in the past is evident from the works of Icelandic historiography and literature produced in this period and such texts create and sustain ideas of a collective past that were meaningful in the context of high medieval Iceland. The Grágás manuscripts may have fulfilled a similar function. The Grágás texts perhaps present both depictions of society as it had been, and an idealised image of what it should have been. To project an effective narrative, the ideas and concepts in these Grágás manuscripts would have needed to have been easily assimilated into thirteenth-century ideas of the Commonwealth and Icelandic law. Thus, the conceptualisation of animal-human relations that we find depicted in these laws should be considered as recognisable and desirable representations of society to a thirteenth-century Icelander. The laws concerning animals can be roughly divided into three sections: laws concerned with the value, and therefore protection, of animals; laws concerning animal places and the incorporation of animals into society; and laws stipulating procedures for dealing with animals who move from these spaces. These laws are distributed throughout the text, with high concentrations in the land claims and hire of property sections.14 However, the inclusion of many of the laws surrounding horses, particularly horse-lending, mistreatment, and procedures for dealing with stray horses within the betrothals section, may show these animals placed within a different legal category to other domestic animals in these laws.

Valuable Animals The term kúgildi (cow-esteem, or cow-worth) is found in these texts used as a base unit of value for legal valuations. Such a term places the cow at the centre of economic and social exchange in this legal community

13



14

Foote, ‘Reflections’, p. 98; Foote, The Early Christian Laws, pp. 102–3; Jón Jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Íslendinga Saga (Winnipeg, 1974), pp. 237–8; Pedersen, ‘A Medieval Welfare State?’, p. 91. Evans, ‘Animal-Human Relations’, pp. 87–8.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland – unsurprisingly, given the importance of milk to the medieval Icelandic economy. It calls to mind the architectural choices at Sveigakot, discussed in the preceding chapter, in which the building of the conspicuous and elaborated building (S7) and its use as a multi-purpose space in the same period as sheltering animals, suggests that this building could be seen as an architectural manifestation of the concept of kúgildi or fé (cattle, wealth), representing at once livestock, wealth, and physical property. The household at Sveigakot may have constructed their farm buildings in a defensive manner to establish their place in a society that valued cattle, especially as the evidence suggests the local area was densely settled from the earliest time of settlement.15 The largest section of the laws that makes use of this term, um fjárlag manna (about the fixed value of the property of men), lays out the values of the different domestic animals with reference to the cow.16 This section is reproduced almost exactly in the later law-book Jónsbók, and was clearly important enough to remain in Icelandic law after the events of 1262–4.17 The presence of the list in Jónsbók must have come from the Grágás texts, and not Norwegian law, as there are no similar lists existing in the Norwegian laws of this period.18 While the Gulaþing law indicates that cattle, stallions, and sheep could be used in the payment of wergild, it is only the most perfect and outstanding animals that were suitable to be used in these important exchanges, and they were not to be used for general, everyday payments.19 In these laws, both cows and ewes are listed as legal tender, but the term kúgildi suggests that the cow was the initial sole beneficiary of this status.20 The section on valuations also begins its descriptions of animal valuations with the cow: At kýr þrevetr eða ellre .x. vetra eða yngri kalbær oc miolk hyrnd oc lasta lavs. eigi verre en meðal nav́t herað ræk at fardögom oc mólke kalfs mála sv er giald geng. Þriu nav́t vetr gavmol við ku. ii. tvevetr við kú. Kyr gelld miolc oc quiga ii. vetr kálb bǽr leigo veRe eN kýr. Øxi. iiii. vetra gamall fyrir ku. gelldr еðа graðr. Gelld kýr oc öxi þrevetr iii. lutir kugildis. Öxi

17

Orri Vésteinsson and McGovern, ‘The Peopling of Iceland’. Finsen (ed.), Grágás II (Copenhagen, 1852), p. 193. Jana K. Schulman (ed.), Jónsbók: The Laws of Later Iceland; the Icelandic Text According to MS AM 351 Fol. Skálholtsbók Eldri, trans. Jana K. Schulman (Saarbrücken, 2010), pp. 302–3. 18 Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws; Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick. 19 Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws, p. 151. 20 Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins (eds), Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás II (Winnipeg, 2000), p. 155. 15 16

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland .v. vetra gamall. þriþiungr aNars kúgildis. Öxi .vi. vetra gamall fyrir .ii. kyr. oc sva þott ellre se. Arðr öxi gamall a vár þat er met fe.21 [That cow three-winters or older, ten-winters or younger, calf and milk-bearing, horned and faultless, no worse than a cow driven between districts at the moving days and yielding a calf’s measure of milk: that one is taken in legal payment. Three winter-old cows equal one cow, two two-winter-old cows equal one cow. A cow, dry of milk, and a young cow, two-winters old and calf-bearing are worth one cow, minus the hire charge. A four-winter-old ox, gelded or entire, is worth a cow.22 A dry cow and a three-winter-old ox are worth three parts of the cow-worth. A five-winter-old ox is worth a cow-worth plus a third. A six-winter-old ox is worth two cows, and so on for any ox older than that. An old plough ox in spring is a valued animal.]

As can be seen from the above passage, a legal cow is defined as þrevetr eða ellre .x. vetra eða yngri kalbær oc miolk hyrnd oc lasta lavs (three-winters or older, ten-winters or younger, calf and milk-bearing, horned and faultless).23 The valuations in this passage are specific, categorising different types of animal by age, sex, and ability to produce offspring, milk, or wool. While cows seem to hold symbolic importance, being the figure against which everything is measured, oxen are valuable animals, given that they are a type of animal that can be worth more than a cow. While the value of an ox depended on its age, the youngest ox is listed as worth one kúgildi, and the oldest worth two. The only other animal that is worth one kúgildi is a perfectly healthy stallion between three and ten winters old. Several animals in this list, like the old plough ox in the above quotation, are also considered as metfé (valued property), a specific designation suggesting that these animals were likely to be variable in quality and usefulness, and therefore required individual assessment. This section moves through each type of animal in turn, with the valuations of sheep following the cattle: Vi. aer við kú. ii. tuévetrar oc iiii. gamlar. oc ale Iömb sin oc orotnar loðnar oc lembðar. Ær viii. alsgelldar iii. vetrar oc ellre við kú. Viii. gelldingar við kv́. ii. vetrir. Viii. lambgymbrar oc ale lömb sin. vi. geldingar iii. vetrir



21 22



23

Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 193–4. This suggests that the Old Norse term uxi may refer to a bovine of either castrated or uncastrated status. It may specifically refer to a working animal, as opposed to a graðungr (bull), which may refer to an animal used for stud. This value list does not provide any values for a graðungr, indicating that bulls used for stud were not used in payments, and perhaps only kept for three years before slaughtering: McCooey, ‘Farming Practices’, pp. 87–8. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 193.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland við kv́. iiii. vetra geldingr oc aNaR .ii. vetr. fyrir ær .ii. Rutr .ii. vetr a gildr. xii. vetr gamlir savþir við kv. Allt þetta fe gillt oc i ullo. Rutr .iii. vetr oc ellri oc forosto gelldingr þat er met fe.24 [Six ewes, two two-winters old and four older, and feeding their lambs and without having lost their fleece and with lamb, are worth one cow. Eight all-barren ewes, three-winters old and older are worth one cow. Eight two-winter-old wethers are worth one cow, as are eight ewelambs able to feed their lambs. Six three-winter-old wethers are worth one cow. A four-winter-old wether and another two-winters old are worth two ewes. A ram two-winters old is worth one ewe. Twelve sheep one-winter old are worth a cow. All that livestock should be healthy and with wool. A three-winter-old ram and older, and a leader-wether, are valued animals.]

As can be seen in this passage, sheep were considered much less valuable than cattle, and a distinction is made between the more valuable ewes and wethers, and the less valuable ram. This suggests that animals that provide wool and milk are particularly valued in this system, over those animals that fulfil a purely reproductive purpose. Nonetheless, the individual valuations specified for older rams and leader-sheep may indicate that certain rams, who produced particularly excellent offspring, and the most intelligent leader-wethers, known as forystusauðr or forystugeldingr in Old Norse, may have been worth more than other sheep. After the values of sheep are listed, the section details the values for different types and combinations of goats. A pattern can be discerned in this listing when we consider that the section first considers cows, then oxen, then ewes and other sheep, then nanny-goats and other goats. The milk-producing animals of each type of domesticate are given prominence: Geitr vi. med kiðom oc sva faret sem ám. enn viii. gelldar við kv́. þrævetrar еðа ellre. viii. havðnor við kv́. oc ale kið sin. Viii. ii. vetrir hafrar við kv. oc iiii. kiarn hafrar. oc iiii. algeldir еN vi. þrevetrir við kv́. halfir hvárs alsgelldir oc kiringar. iiii. vetra gamall hafr oc aNaR ii. vetr fyrir geitr .ii. Tvevetr hafr við geít. Ef hafrar ero ellre eN nv ero talþir oc er þat met fe. ii. vetrgamlir geitsavðir við geít. hálfir höðnor еðа alsgelldingar en hálfir kiarn hafrar. еða graþ hafrar.25 [Six goats with kids and in the same condition as ewes (with fleece and milk), and eight barren goats, three-winters or older, are both worth a cow. Eight young nanny-goats able to feed their kids are worth a cow. Eight two-winter-old billy-goats are worth a cow, when four are

24 25

Ibid., pp. 193–4. Ibid.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland uncastrated billy-goats and four are all-gelded; and six three-winter billy-­goats are worth a cow when half are all-gelded and half uncastrated. A four-winter-old billy-goat, and a second two-winters old are worth two nanny-goats. A two-winter-old billy-goat is worth a nanny-­ goat. If a billy-goat is older than those already listed then that is a valued animal. Two winter-old goats are worth a nanny-goat when one is a female kid or a castrated male, and the other an uncastrated billy-goat or an entire billy-goat.]

Again, we see that an old billy-goat, presumably one that is a successful breeding goat, is an animal subject to individual assessment and therefore potentially worth more than other billy-goats (or worth less if no longer fertile). It is interesting, however, that nanny-goats with kids, fleece, and milk are worth the same as ewes in the same condition. This may suggest that the milk of sheep and goats was considered of equal importance, and it is only in the wool-producing capabilities of castrated rams that sheep are distinguished from goats. The value of eight castrated rams is one cow whereas eight two-winter billy-goats are only worth a cow when four are castrated and four not, suggesting that male goats were more valued for their reproductive powers (or deceased status as meat) than for their ability to produce wool.26 The prominent inclusion of castrated goats is notable in these lists, as unless goats were being used for wool production, it would seem counterproductive to keep male goats longer than six weeks or so, unless they were to be used for breeding. Alternatively, castrated male goats can be kept and mixed into sheep flocks, having a calming presence on the flock, but there seems to be no evidence for such husbandry practices from medieval Iceland (indeed, the development of the forystugeldingr mentioned above and discussed further in Chapter 4 may have reduced the need for castrated goats to serve such a purpose). The apparent pattern, however, of listing the value of the female animal before the male is reversed in the entry on the value of horses, which starts with the valuations of different kinds of stallions before providing values for mares of various ages: Hross ero oc lavgð. Hestr .iiii. vetra gamall еðа ellre. oc x. vetra oc yngri heill oc lasta lav́s við kv́. MeR iiii. vetra oc ellre oc x. vetra oc yngri gelld heil oc lasta lavs. fiorðungi verri еN kýr. Hestr iii. vetr iafn við mere. MeR iii. vetr ii. lutir kugilldis. Tuav hross tvé vetr. hestr oc meR við kv́. Þriu vetr gomol hross við kv́. oc er eitt hestr. Ef maðr gelldr mer hross vetr gamalt fyrir þriþiung ku gildis. Þa scal fylgia еуrir. Þetta scolo vera meðal



26

Terry O’Connor, The Archaeology of Animal Bones (Stroud, 2000), p. 148.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland hross oc eigi verre. Stoð hestr oc se verðe betri fyrir sacir vigs. oc gelldr hestr oc se verðe betri fyrir reidar sacir. oc fyl meR istóðe þat er met fe.27 [Horses are also standardly valued. A stallion four winters old or older, ten winters and younger, healthy and without fault is worth a cow. A mare four winters old and older, or ten winters old or younger, barren, healthy and without fault is worth a quarter less than a cow. A stallion three winters old is worth the same as a mare. A mare three winters old is worth two parts of a cow-worth. Two horses of two winters, stallion and mare, are worth a cow. Three winter-old horses are worth a cow, if one is a stallion. If a man has a barren mare one winter old that is worth a third of a cow-value, then shall an ounce be added. These shall be average horses and no less. A stud-stallion that is worth more for the sake of fighting and a gelded horse that is worth more for the sake of riding, and a fertile mare in stud: such are valued animals.]

The initial placing of female cattle, sheep, and goats before their male counterparts places milk-producing animals at the forefront of these lists. The reversal of this order in the list of horse values is logical, as mares were not producers of milk for human consumption in medieval Iceland. Instead, they were for breeding, riding, and traction – important jobs, but not as important as the roles seemingly performed by stallions in the formation and reinforcement of masculine identity through the prestige associated with horse-fight success and the siring of excellent offspring.28 However, horses were evidently the animals that were subject to most individual valuation on a case by case basis, as male, female, and castrated horses were capable of being placed in the metfé category, depending on their track record in either fighting, riding, or breeding. This consideration of horses on an individual basis fits with laws elsewhere in these texts that appear to offer certain horses greater legal agency, and depictions in the Íslendingasögur that often show individually-valued horses acting as intelligent companions. While cattle, sheep, goats, and horses are described in detail in this section of the laws, there is only one mention of pigs in these lists: ‘sýr ii. vetr eþa ellre oc ix. grisir með’ [‘a sow two-winters old or older with nine piglets’], which is worth one cow.29 This sow with piglets is relatively highly valued compared to the other animals in this section, perhaps suggesting that pigs were expensive animals to keep; and the single mention of pigs in this list may indicate that pigs were not generally used for payments and

27 28



29

Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 193–4. Harriet Jean Evans, ‘The Horse and His Hero in Old Norse Literature’ (Unpublished MA thesis, York, 2013); Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 194.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland were kept instead on the same farm. From the absence of boars in these valuations, it can be concluded that boars were considered unsuitable animals for exchange or use in payments. As touched on above, pigs are the animal most often combined with words for homefield, indicating a close link between these animals and the central area of the household-farm, and further supporting the idea that these animals may have been kept close to the farm (as suggested in Chapter 2, p. 88) and not traded away. If we place the polysemous term fé (property, livestock, cattle, sheep, wealth) alongside the idea of kúgildi, we see a semantic equivalence of animals and wealth underpinning the social and legal landscape of Iceland. It is therefore unsurprising to find the protection of these animals of paramount importance in Grágás.

Milk and the Animal-worker As evident from the valuation lists, milking stock were the primary animals in these laws, but this prominence does not only reflect the economic value and benefit of owning such animals. The close physical contact of milking, and protecting and caring for milking animals, creates a close bond between animals and humans. Both this close physical contact and the value of milk in the Icelandic community would have increased the mutually beneficial ties of dependence between animals and humans both close to the farm house, and at shielings further afield as suggested in Chapter 2 (p. 63).30 Indeed, the sights and sounds of milking may have evoked feelings of home, especially in shieling places.31 Milk and other dairy products were key to survival in the long Icelandic winters, and in Grágás we find the care and protection of milking-stock apparently distinguished as an important part of the work of the farm. The milking-­ stock themselves also seem characterised as farm workers who, like human farmhands, were the responsibility of the householder to feed, house, and protect. Women were permitted to undertake tasks related to milking on a Sunday, when almost all other work was to cease, and such an allowance may reflect not only the important economic value milk had to the farm, but also an awareness of the care required on the part



30



31

Kristin Armstrong Oma, ‘Sheep, Dog and Man: Multi-Species Becomings Leading to New Ways of Living in Early Bronze Age Longhouses on Jæren, Norway’, in Liv Helga Dommasnes, Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann, and Alf Tore Hommedal (eds), The Farm as a Social Arena (Münster, 2016), pp. 23–52. Evans Tang, ‘Feeling at Home’.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland of humans towards their dairy animals.32 Dairy animals may develop illnesses and certainly discomfort if they are not milked regularly in peak lactation periods, and such a requirement for careful care might reflect the possible milking pen in the Aðalstræti house hypothesised in Chapter 1 (p. 32). The Icelandic household relied on milk, not only for sustenance, but for legal definition.33 A man, even if he owned land, was not considered as a proper householder unless he had access to milk: Þat er bv er maðr hefir málnytan smala. þo scal hann segia sic i þing þótt hann hafe eigi mal nyto ef hann er landeigande. Ef hann erat lanðeigande oc hefirat málnyto oc verðr hann þar i þingi er sa boande er hann felr sec iNi vm.34 [That is a household when a man has milk-yielding animals, though he shall declare himself a householder at the assembly even if he has no milk, if he is a landowner. If he is not a landowner and has no milk, then he is to join the assembly with that farmer into whose charge he puts himself.]

It can be seen here that although milk was not vital to gaining access to legal rights, it was certainly preferable, and the mark of a proper household as opposed to a householder who simply had land. Milk added something more to a household, and milking-animals held a strong position within the legal community – it could be argued that the large byre at Sveigakot (discussed in Chapter 2 above) may have presented the idea not only of ‘cattle’, but specifically ‘milk cows’. The theft of milk is presented as one of the most serious offences in these laws, in places punishable by full outlawry (the most extreme judicial penalty in the Commonwealth period). Becoming a full outlaw meant forfeiting your legal immunity, being rejected from the community, and likely being killed sooner rather than later as a man could kill an outlaw without suffering consequences for his actions.35 The punishment of outlawry is extended even to those who might use or take milk from hired animals after the period of hiring had ended.36 Such a response might seem like an overreaction to a small

32



33 34



35 36

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 39; D. E. Gleeson et al., ‘Effect of Milking Frequency and Nutritional Level on Aspects of the Health and Welfare of Dairy Cows’, Animal: An International Journal of Animal Bioscience, 1:1 (2007), 125–32. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 132. Vilhjálmur Finsen (ed.), Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid, Udgivet Efter Det Kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskrift: Text I (Copenhagen, 1852), p. 134. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 166–7. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 152.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland infraction. It may, to the modern reader, seem as though any milk gained from an animal belongs to the household in which the animal was milked, regardless of whether that animal has subsequently moved away from that household. In the West today, milk is a product often disassociated from the animal who has produced it. In Grágás, however, milk counts as part of the hired animal, and must be returned with the animal to the initial owner. While this can be seen as a further indication of the high value of milk to the Icelandic household economy, it also suggests that the milk of an animal is integral to the value and usefulness of that animal, and that this milk, even after it has left the animal, belongs to it, and in turn to the animal’s owner. The milk is the labour of the animal, and the retention of milk produced once the labour should have stopped was perceived as keeping behind part of this animal’s labour. The ‘animal-­producer’ was a farm worker whose productivity and products needed protecting. It seems that both human and animal figures were treated as workers on the farm, and the work of animal and human farm workers was regulated and privileged in many ways. For example, farm work (such as producing milk/milking) was seemingly more important than the observance of Christian fasts: ‘SEto mavnnum er skylt at fasta vm engi verk. oc eigi verk mavNvm. Þeim er i engi verki erv. oc eigi þeim maNi er smala rekr heim. oc eigi þeim er avNvngs verc viþr. fyrir bve manz’ [‘Those men who should be fasting should do no work; but no workmen should fast, not those who work in the meadows nor those men who drive the sheep home and nor those who do labouring work for a man’s household’].37 On the one hand, this seems a very human concern, but it also demonstrates that the work of these workers, like the work of animals, was something that should not, or could not, be stopped. Farmhands needed to be disobliged from observing a fast because they needed energy for their work, just as milking-stock needed to be treated correctly to better enable them to provide for the farm and enabled to work (be milked) on a Sunday, for both their welfare and the welfare of the household. Both the work of animals and the work of humans was vital to the continuation of these multispecies communities. Nonetheless, the householder was responsible for all humans and animals that formed the household, and control of all domestic animals, not just milking-stock, is a key concern in these laws.



37

Finsen, Grágás I, p. 35.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland Controlling Animals and Humans Grágás contains many rules regulating the contact between animals, the stipulation of specific times during which animals could be moved, and the areas in which they were allowed to dwell.38 The proper treatment of animals at the proper time and place is emphasised in these laws, and the designated places of animals varied throughout the year. One example of these regulated movements is the movement of animals between households to make payments. The reception of livestock as legal payment was only permitted in a specified two-week period in the middle of summer, and such livestock were required to be promptly collected by the person who was to receive the payment. If the payee did not arrive on time, nor send anyone else to collect the animals, then the payer had three options: he was allowed to deliver the animals himself, let the animals graze on his own land, or drive the animals to a communal pasture part-owned by the man who was supposed to collect them.39 These differing options likely reflect the different types of animal exchanged: for example, cattle would be driven to a different part of the farm than sheep, hence the option of driving animals to the farm or to the communal pasture. As highlighted in the Introduction, the places of animals varied depending on species, age, and time of year (p. 9). Nonetheless, all animals were entitled to graze on their previous owner’s land in the interim. Evidently, the care of the animals was paramount, and more important than the fodder resources of either party. Strict care of individual animals was also required when using animals in payments. The system of exchange outlined in Grágás was not a straightforward transaction, but a process that involved adherence to strict regulations, demonstrating the intensive care required at every stage of animal handling. The age, condition, and productivity of an animal played a formative role in its worth, and an offering of substandard animals, which would have indicated substandard care, was not to be legally accepted. Likewise, the loan of animals was subject to the same sort of strict regulations: if a farmer were to loan animals to another man, then he could expect the animals on return to fulfil the value he had given in the first place – including attention paid to the age and condition of individual animals.40 It is therefore unsurprising that the wounding of domestic animals carried a number of penalties depending on the animal harmed



38



39 40

Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 112–14; Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 347–8, 132, 130–1. Ibid., p. 158; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 144. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 166.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland and the level of damage done.41 The most severe penalty was lesser outlawry (banishment for three years), except for the harming of sheep, which resulted in the man forfeiting his immunity.42 Such a punishment is extreme, forcing the man into full outlawry, and, as highlighted above, into a state in which he could be killed with impunity regardless of the amount of damage caused to the sheep. Clearly the careful protection of sheep was important both to the householder and to the herder, who would not want to run the risk of having outlawry pressed upon him for causing damage. Grágás depicts a view of animal-herding that relies on careful handling and skilled technique. Driving non-milking animals in a careless way that caused damage was punishable by lesser outlawry, depending on the value of the damage:43 Ef maðr rekr geld fe aNars sva at v. avra scaðe verðe á eþa meire oc er þat spellvirke at meira ос varðar þat fiorbavgs Garð oc á sa þa söc er fe á við þaN er rak feet еðа reka lét.44 [If a man drives barren livestock of another so that five ounces worth of damage or more is done, that is doing ‘major damage’ and that becomes lesser outlawry, and that one who owns the livestock [should bring the case] against he who drove the animals or allowed them to be driven.]

Here the law explicitly highlights the role of the householder in bringing the case against either the herder or a man the herder allowed to drive the animals in such a way. However, it is not just damage to the animal that the Grágás laws sought to avoid, but the loss of their work. Herding milking animals in such a way that caused them to become lost or delayed and therefore miss a milking time, whether intentional or not, could also be punishable by lesser outlawry: ‘Ef maðr recr bu fe manz aNars еða laetr reca sva at mals misir. eða hann villde máls lata missa. þat varðar fiorbaugs Garð’ [‘If a man drives milking-stock of a second man or allows them to be driven in such a way that they miss a milking time, or he wanted to let them miss a milking time, that becomes lesser outlawry’].45 In this law, we see a culmination of several points raised so far in this chapter. Firstly, we see the term bú fé used, which literally translates as ‘household-livestock’. Such a term closely links the milking-animals with the household and echoes the definition of a household only having been legally established

41 42

45 43 44

Ibid., pp. 85–6, 136. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 227; Vilhjálmur Finsen (ed.), Grágás: Efter Det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift: Nr. 334 Fol., Staðarhólsbók (Copenhagen, 1879), p. 374. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 136. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 118. Ibid., p. 112.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland once milking-animals are included in the householder’s community. It may also refer to a close association between these animals and the physical household-farm, which we saw in the preceding chapter. Secondly, the emphasis on the protection of both the milk and the milking-animal returns us to the idea of the valuable animal-worker proposed above. The penalty of lesser outlawry could also be applied to those who mishandled livestock in a way that caused their milk to fail, and these laws not only recognise the importance of care in ensuring a reliable supply of milk for the Icelandic household, but also the importance of care for the welfare of the animal.46 Careful handling may have bolstered the productivity of that animal, as stress from mishandling or trauma reduces the milk yield provided by cattle. Careful and attentive care of animals is therefore important for reducing stress to maintain milk production as well as reducing risk of disease or injury.47 The closeness and accessibility of animal spaces, for example at Aðalstræti or Sveigkot (discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 respectively), might reflect a recognition of the need for close care of animals, although the comparatively distanced animal spaces at Vatnsfjörður may indicate a more concentrated relationship between the men and women who cared for the animals away from the potential distractions of the wider household. A careful approach to animal care and management, aimed at reducing stress and working with animals in the most productive manner, relies on the human worker possessing an awareness of the moods and personalities of the animals for which they care, which could be affected by activities of the wider household. The significance of understanding (or not) the moods and personalities of animals is certainly highlighted in the Íslendingasögur, especially in the Freyfaxi episode with which this book began (see also Chapter 4, pp. 145–55). Awareness of the temperaments of different animals is reflected in Grágás through the regulations surrounding the construction and use of sveltikvíar (starving-folds).48 These enclosures, which it was lawful to construct on land bordering common pasture so long as there was no legal wall between the land and the pasture, were places in which animals straying from the common pasture could be detained until their owners collected them.49 This term is found only in law texts, and primarily in the earlier Konungsbók manuscript, perhaps suggesting that it was a practice considered unimportant

46 47



48 49

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 131; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 112–13. Jan Broucek et al., ‘Dairy Cows Produce Less Milk and Modify Their Behaviour during the Transition between Tie-Stall to Free-Stall’, Animals, 7:3 (2017), n. pag.; Brian C. Campbell, ‘“A Gentle Work Horse Would Come in Right Handy”: Animals in Ozark Agroecology’, Anthrozoös, 22:3 (2009), 239–53, at p. 246. Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 118–19. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 137, 139.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland by the redactor of Staðarhólsbók, in which it appears only once. However, while the term ‘starving-fold’ sounds cruel, there were many stipulations regulating the construction and use of these enclosures: Hann scal sva gera suellti qui at eigi drucne fe þeirra manna er þar eigo ne troþiz ос lata hlið á ос grind fyrir еðа hurð sva at upp vm luke eða aptr. Hann a lavgar dag iN at setia gelld fe þat er ór afrétt gengr fyrir non. Ef fe þat treyðz ísuellti qui þeirre isavre еðа iþrong еðа drvcnar еðа fellr garðr á. þa abyrgiz sá er iN lét setia. ef v. avra scaðe verdr á oc varðar þat fiorbavgs Garð. þoat suelti еðа stangiz i qui þeirre sua at deyi oc abyrgiz sa eigi þat er iN let.50 He shall make the starving-fold so that the animals that other men own that are there do not drown nor are trampled and let the gate or door of the pen be made so that it can open and close. On a Saturday, a man may set into the pen barren sheep that walk out of the common pasture before nones [3pm]. If the livestock in the starving pen are trampled in the dirt or are crowded in or drowned or a wall falls on them, then that one is responsible who set them in the pen. If five ounces worth of damage occurs, then that becomes lesser outlawry, although if an animal starves or is gored so that they die, then that one who set the animals in is not responsible.

It is notable that the man who places the animals within the enclosures is not responsible for their deaths via starvation or goring. Instead, the owner of the animals appears to be responsible if his animals are gored to death, and this law recognises the owner’s fault in not collecting his animals quickly enough. In this way, the law may acknowledge the essential animal nature of the occupants of the pen, the need for human restraint to correct this unrestrained animal behaviour, and the limited ability of humans to control this behaviour. Animals gore other animals. This is something that would have been known by farmers of horned animals, and any man not taking sufficient steps to ensure this does not happen (by collecting his animals as quickly as possible) deserves to lose them. The agency of certain animals to act in a certain way despite human attempts at control is recognised elsewhere in the laws (see pp. 126–9), and it also seems that certain animals were perceived as unsuitable for enclosure in these structures; for example, it was considered unlawful to enclose a horse in a starving-fold.51 The details in these laws often seem almost too extreme and obsessive over the condition of domestic animals, so that it is tempting to



50 51

Finsen, Grágás II, p. 119. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 137; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 119.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland suspect that no man would actually have bothered to adhere to all these regulations.52 If that were the case, however, it seems strange that these detailed rules would have been recorded in these manuscripts in the first place, unless these were a key feature of the ideal society presented in these texts. Specifically, there are many laws concerning the use, misuse, mutilation, and theft of horses. We see repeated here the possibility of outlawry accompanying mistreatment of animals. If a horse was taken to be unlawfully ridden, such a theft could cause all involved in the plot to be subject to full outlawry.53 The emphasis in this law on the use of the horse, as well as the theft, suggests that the harshest punishment may have been a result of the combination of theft and misuse, rather than solely the theft. Such a distinction suggests that it was not simply the loss of the economic value of the horse that mattered, but the illegal use, which had a wider range of significance in medieval Iceland, linked to riding over long distances, or working the animal in an unsuitable way. Such concerns were appropriated for narrative material in Old Norse literary sources (for example, the horse Freyfaxi, analysed in detail in Chapter 4, pp. 145–55).54 A series of nýmæli (new laws) included in Staðarhólsbók appear to show greater severity in reaction to the misuse of horses than those depicted in Konungsbók. For example, Staðarhólsbók lists full outlawry as the punishment for the ‘major use’ of a man’s horse without his permission.55 Lesser outlawry is also added as the punishment for securing a horse in such a way that it cannot graze.56 These laws further emphasise the importance attached to the welfare of domestic animals, and the relations of obligation and responsibility the householder had to protect as well as control his animals.

The Householder and the Shepherd As seen above in the multiple laws regulating animal herding, the householder is the most important figure for animal-human relationships in Grágás. Emphasis on the ultimate control a householder should have over his animals is further shown by a law that stipulates that it was unlawful Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 223. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 84; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 64. 54 Evans, ‘The Horse and His Hero’. 55 That is, if the horse would have suffered less as a result of a day of moderately hard riding to the Alþingi; Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 285; Finsen, Grágás: Staðarhólsbók, p. 247. 56 Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 285; Finsen, Grágás: Staðarhólsbók, p. 208. 52 53

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland for a woman to lend out her husband’s horse when she, or the recipient of the loan, knew that the man would not agree to the lending.57 It was also unlawful for a man to drive another man’s stock away from a fold unless he had been instructed to do so by the owner.58 Presumably the farm workers responsible for herding work would have had a regular mandate to do so by the terms of their employment, but the presence of this clause in the text suggests the requirement for permission needed to be explicitly laid out and agreed, and that the obligation of care required by the householder towards his animals needed reinforcing. The unlawful taker of the animals in this situation would have to assume responsibility for this livestock until the owner claimed it back, and these texts repeatedly emphasise the responsibility of all men to care for the animals of another as they would their own.59 Nonetheless, the householder was required to ensure that his workers, and himself, maintained this high standard of care. In cases prosecuting negligent herding practices that caused a loss of milk, the figure who caused the loss of milk could defend himself by demonstrating that the owner of the livestock could have herded the animals in such a way as to prevent the loss.60 Such a defence suggests that the householder has the responsibility to have his animals herded in the best manner, and if he is the one most capable of doing so, then he should not hire this service out to a less capable figure. As highlighted above, mishandling livestock, milking or otherwise, is presented as a serious offence in these laws, with the herding of these animals a heavily regulated and closely protected practice – and yet, it has been suggested that herding animals is depicted as a lower status activity in the Old Norse corpus.61 This emphasis on the need for correct handling of animals in Grágás, even if this means the householder should work with the animals, might indicate an effort to prevent men from deliberately hiring out their herding to less skilled figures because they did not wish to be seen herding their animals themselves, and then prosecuting the herder for damages caused. The uneasy relationships between skill and status, and animal herder and householder, are codified in the large number of regulations over herding in the laws, suggesting that while medieval Icelanders recognised the importance of animal care, some may have been less than willing to get their hands dirty. Likewise, the separation of human and animal places at Vatnsfjörður might reflect a similar anxiety, unlike the

57

60 61 58 59

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 284; Finsen, Grágás: Staðarhólsbók, p. 207. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 169; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 155–6. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 169; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 156. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 131; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 113. McCooey, ‘Farming Practices’, p. 74; Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 223.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland apparent closeness of some animals and humans at Sveigakot (Chapter 2, p. 96). The tensions between those who are skilled with animals, and those who are not, or who consider it beneath them, seem to be presented as points of contention in the Íslendingasögur (for example, Grettis saga, ch. 14 and Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings, chs 2, 4). This tension will be explored further in the proceeding chapters, as it repeatedly appears throughout the narrative sources in which animal-human interactions are depicted. Like domestic animals, the movement and emplacement of human workers was also tightly controlled in Grágás. Every person in Iceland had a responsibility and legal obligation to belong to a household, and there were only certain times of year, called the fardagar (moving days), when people could enter into the contractual arrangement of joining or leaving a household.62 Men who joined the household were obliged to accompany the householder on journeys and contribute to the functioning of the farm through specific tasks, including slaughtering, spreading dung, and repairing homefield walls.63 This homefield wall, or túngarðr, can be considered the most important wall on the farm, representing the enclosure and protection of the farm buildings, the household members, and the prime hay. This wall is often depicted as the border of the central farm area: the boundary that separates the outside from the inner space and, as such, the requirement of new male members of the household to be responsible for repairing the túngarðr may represent an initiative act of joining the household. These workers physically enclosed the household space, as they were enfolded within it. Notably for this book, such workers were excluded from obligations to undertake shepherding. This explicit exclusion could support the view that this job was too low status for this type of worker. However, I would argue it is more likely that this law simply reinforces the impression we find elsewhere in Grágás: that shepherding was a job that required a specialist skillset and was only suitable for certain people with such skills. The main proponent of the idea of shepherding as a low-status occupation is William Ian Miller, but his evidence for this negative view appears to be one reference from Hrafnkels saga (ch. 3), and a law in Konungsbók that stipulates the whole household should assist in the digging up and reburial of bodies, except the shepherd.64 Miller suggests that the shepherd is excluded from these activities on account of being too low status to touch the consecrated bodies.65 However, this passage is far from clear, and cannot be used as evidence for the derogatory opinions commonly Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 126; Finsen, Grágás I, p. 129. Finsen, Grágás I, p. 129. 64 Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 31; Finsen, Grágás I, p. 13. 65 Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 223. 62 63

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland supposed to have been held of shepherds in medieval Iceland. It may rather be argued that the animal-herder was too important a figure to waste time on non-herding activities. As seen above, handling and herding animals required care and experience to avoid causing harm (and to avoid the legal repercussions of such) and it does not follow that one of the most vital tasks on the medieval Icelandic farm would be entrusted to the lowliest of workers. Rather, the position of herder would have needed to be extended to workers that could be trusted and relied upon as capable men or women – otherwise, as we saw above, the householder laid himself open to legal consequences. While shepherds and cow-herders are ambiguously depicted in the social landscape of the Íslendingasögur, legally, they appear to have been significant figures on the farm, with valued skills. Hrafnkell’s comment in his eponymous saga that he had found men for all work, except that which ‘þú munt ekki hafa vilja’ [‘you would not want’], may reflect, rather than a recognition of the low status of shepherding, a recognition of the specific skills required for the job.66 Hrafnkell may be uncertain whether Einarr considers himself to possess these skills, or whether Einarr would wish to take on the high level of responsibility that goes along with such a post. The high value of and protective concern for domestic animals in these laws is presented in such a way that problematises traditional readings of the Old Norse-Icelandic literary sources and the theory of the despised, low-status role of animal-herder, although the value of the animal-herder may have been exaggerated in these laws precisely to combat accusations of low status or inferiority in the medieval Icelandic community. Like domestic animals themselves, it can be suggested that animal-herders were ascribed dual meanings and values in Icelandic society. They were both vitally important and possessed skills and abilities that warranted suspicion from other farm workers. The subsequent closeness to animals required on the part of those that worked with them seems to have divided contemporary opinions, especially when involving male householders, as shall be seen in Chapters 4 and 5.

Deviant Animals Although the first part of this chapter has strongly emphasised the value of domestic animals, and the care taken towards them, there is no doubt in Grágás that these animals had the capabilities to be dangerous, even deadly, to humans, both in causing harm to the human body and in causing divisions in society.

66

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 101.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland Animals and killings One way in which domestic animals were damaging for the community in medieval Iceland was their susceptibility to being used by humans to harm or kill other humans. The laws around these acts provide separate punishments depending on the type of provocation used, and the animal involved. For startling an animal into causing accidental harm, a person could be subject to lesser outlawry, whereas to deliberately attack another man with a dog, fighting stallion, or bull resulted in the outcome of the attack being considered as though the man provoking the animal had inflicted the damage himself. In this latter case, an animal being used to kill a man would result in the same penalty being given to the man using the animal as if he had killed a man himself.67 In this case, the animal becomes an extension of the human, and the crime is punished as such. However, there is a marked division made between situations in which an animal acts as an extension of human agency, and those in which the animals act by themselves. The Grágás laws include the provision that a bull, if at least three winters old, will become ‘o heilagr við averkom þegar hann viðr a monnom’ [‘without security with regards to wounds as soon as he injures a man’], so not only would the owner of the bull be subject to lesser or full outlawry for this, but the bull could also be killed without incurring any penalties.68 The bull and the man are equally liable for judicial punishment in such a case, and this lack of heilagr is the same concept used to indicate the outlawing of a man. While the laws about bulls (and dogs) as agents are found in the ‘Miscellaneous Provisions’ section of the laws, and therefore separated from the other laws about manslaughter (indicating a division perhaps between the concepts of animal and human killing), if a bull kills a man, ‘þa varðar slict sem hundr bane manne’ [‘then it becomes such as a dog killing a man’], and a dog killing a man is described as ‘víg sǫk’ [‘a manslaughter case’], just as one human killing another.69 Relations between animals and humans also became skewed when domestic animals assumed the role of meat-eaters. Men were not permitted to eat domestic animals that did so, including dogs and cats, for which the penalty was lesser outlawry, though the eating of horses was also under the same punishment.70 These laws, included in the ‘Christian Laws’ section of Grágás, have traditionally been linked to religious concerns, along with the process of cleansing a pig which has eaten horse or human flesh. 69 67

68



70

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 147; Finsen, Grágás I, p. 155–6. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 203; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 188. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 188; Kirsi Kanerva, ‘Having No Power to Return? Suicide and Posthumous Restlessness in Medieval Iceland’, Thanatos, 4:1 (2015), 57–79, at p. 65. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 49; Finsen, Grágás I, pp. 34–5.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland The procedure to cleanse a pig involved starving the animal for either three or six months, depending on whether the pig had eaten horse flesh or human flesh, and then fattening the pig before slaughter.71 These rules echo laws found in the seventh-century canons of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, suggesting they were heavily influenced by ecclesiastical tradition, and show a conceptualisation of the animal-human boundary that is more fluid and permeable than we might expect.72 The eating of a pig that had eaten horse or human flesh was taboo because, for a period of months, the pig was viewed as something more than pig, as having been infected by those meats it was forbidden for humans to eat. The act of eating meat itself may have also been considered an activity limited to humans and wild carnivores, and therefore not one to be adopted by domestic animals. Fear of the adoption of human characteristics by livestock can also be seen in the stipulation ‘þat fe er eigi ætt. er maþr veit at manz bani verþr’ [‘that livestock is not edible which a man knows has become a mansbane’].73 The penalty for such was lesser outlawry, and the law suggests that the act of killing a human was perceived as a human action that infected the animal with this human nature.74 An animal that kills a human receives the same label as a human killer: mannsbani (man’s killer). The eating of such an animal was therefore forbidden, as it may be viewed as ingesting an animal-human hybrid.75 Unlike the pig which has only eaten of human flesh, the act of killing a human evidently damaged the animal so much that it could not be eaten post-judgement. Stipulating that an animal that committed certain criminal acts was not to be eaten afterwards reinforces the serious nature of such transgressions, especially as elsewhere in Grágás the food value of animal bodies seems to be considered of vital importance. This is particularly highlighted in the procedure for dealing with rogue pigs. The procedure that a man who finds another man’s pig on his land should follow is the most detailed description in these legal texts of how and why an animal should be killed.76 Like bulls, pigs had legal immunity they would forfeit by performing certain actions, and a pig without a ring or stud in its snout could be legally killed for trespassing on another man’s land.77 Such a stipulation demonstrates on the one hand the intense value 73 74 75 71 72



76 77

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 48; Finsen, Grágás I, p. 34. Foote, The Early Christian Laws, p. 5. Finsen, Grágás I, p. 34. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 49. Such actions may be seen as altering the animal’s position on a continuum of personhood (or ‘maðr-ness’) as suggested in: Evans Tang, ‘Reading Animal-­ Human Relations’. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 139; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 121–2. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 121.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland of pigs (as a pig with a ring in its snout could trespass on another man’s land without forfeiting its immunity) and on the other hand, the recognition of the violently destructive nature of pigs without rings in their snouts, who could root up the ground, were therefore dangerous to the hayfields, and should be killed. The law clearly implies that this killing is the correct action to take, and it is not condemned so long as the correct procedure is followed. Once the animal is killed, the killer ‘scal hylia þar hræ sva at þar falle eigi á dýr ne fuglar oc gera orð þeim er svín á’ [‘must cover the dead body so that it falls not to animals nor birds and send word to those who own the pig’], and enough time must be provided that the owner of the pig can collect the body before it spoils or is destroyed by wild animals.78 Presumably the spoiling of the pig’s carcass is undesirable because the owner of the animal would wish to utilise the body for food, and because the pig had not killed anyone it could be eaten without legal consequence. However, the wording and action of this instruction seems to imitate the procedure following manslaughter committed against men, which echoes the wording almost exactly: ‘Hann scal hylia hræ ef hann gengr fra manne davðom. sva at hvarke æte fuglar ne dýr’ [‘He shall cover the body if he walks from a dead man, so that it is eatable by neither birds nor animals’].79 In the Íslendingasögur, we find the same phrasing used to describe the actions of characters after killing men, who must cover dead bodies and, like the killers of these pigs, announce the killing to neighbours.80 The more extensive Grágás manuscript, Staðarhólsbók, specifies that failure to follow the correct procedure in the slaying of a pig could be punished by full outlawry, which stands in contrast to the punishment for a man failing to cover a dead man after a killing, which only incurred lesser outlawry.81 While the value of the pig’s body for food is protected here, the extreme nature of the potential penalties for failing to follow the procedure, and the close resemblance to the procedure following a manslaughter, suggest that such violent ritualised action is based on a more-than-economic value of the pig, and may also represent the performance of important ideological work, returning a deceased deviant animal to the proper space on the household-farm of its owner: the table.

80 78 79



81

Ibid., pp. 121–2. Finsen, Grágás I, p. 154. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, pp. 142–3. For men covering bodies, see: Laxdæla saga, ch. 37; Njáls saga, ch. 17; Egils saga, chs 80, 81. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 320; Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 146.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Stray Animals If the complex procedure following the killing of a pig was a method of returning order to the household-farm after disruptive action, then the laws concerning stray animals can be seen as less violent incarnations of this process. Straying animals are a clear concern in Grágás, and the resulting instructions to men and women who encounter them are as varied as the types of domestic animals themselves.82 However, aside from the treatment of pigs discussed above, the emphasis in all cases is on careful treatment of the animals and a responsibility to avoid damage. For all other animals who stray onto inhabited land, it is the duty of the farmer whose land has been strayed upon to gather up the livestock and treat them as though they were his own until they are claimed. The man who owns the stray animals is considered at fault for allowing them to escape and must collect his animals before a month of winter passes or pay the cost of their upkeep as assessed by neighbours. If this upkeep is not paid, the original owner owes a fine of three marks as well as the upkeep cost. If this upkeep is still not paid, then the man on whose land they have dwelt may keep the animals without penalty.83 Such detailed procedures emphasise above all things the need for balance and compensation in animal-human, and human-human, relations, and the obligation of men to support animals until they can be re-established on either their initial owner’s land, or the land upon which they strayed. The ability of certain animals to travel great distances while straying is acknowledged in the protocol for dealing with a stray horse following a man. The law states that ‘Ef hross manz beisltamt rennr eptir manne a næsta bö. oc scal hann beiða menn taca hross þat ос secz hann eigi þa a þott reNi til aNars böiar’ [‘If a man’s horse, tamed to the bridle, runs after a man to the next farm, then he shall request men take that horse and he himself is not then responsible if it runs after him to a second farm’].84 Although the man has responsibility for this horse, the agency of the horse is presented differently than that of other livestock, explicitly chasing after a man rather than simply being found on someone else’s land. The responsibility of the human is also not as simple as presented in other cases: the man is not responsible for any damage the horse might cause while following him, nor for any damage that might be caused to the horse, who to a certain extent are responsible for their own actions.

82



83 84

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 83–4, 171–2; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 62–3, 157–8. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 171; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 157. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 64.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland In addition, this passage emphasises cooperation and social responsibility among the farming community. The men at the farms who are asked to catch the horse may be subject to fines or lesser outlawry for refusing to act, while the initial man is only liable for lesser outlawry once the horse has followed him over moors, from one Quarter to another, or away from farms. Horses are ascribed equal capability for action in the law governing how a man should act if a horse approaches him in uninhabited country: in this case, the horse may follow him anywhere, so long as the man tethers it at the next farm he reaches. The phrase used in this law is worth noting, as it begins: ‘Ef hross kømr at manne a obygðom’ [‘if a horse comes upon a man in the wilderness’], placing the horse securely as the subject of the clause and the instigator of the encounter.85 In addition, the man is only required to tether the horse at the next farm he reaches if the horse is beisltamt (used to the bridle), suggesting that horses could either be beisltamr, or not.86 A horse that was not bridle-tamed was perhaps conceived as too difficult for men to catch, and thus permitted to roam wherever it pleased; although it might also be the case that such horses were deliberately accorded a special legal status. As highlighted in Chapter 2, it is likely that horse husbandry in Viking-Age Iceland involved pasturing groups of horses (one stallion with several mares) at locations distant from the central farm, and only those horses used for riding or draughtwork would need to be bridle-tamed. Horses were certainly presented as capable of independent action across the Old Norse corpus; for example, in Landnámabók we find missing horses (like the rogue pigs of Ingimundr and Steinolfr, p. 40) described using the verb hverfa (to be lost by/turn away from a thing), in contrast to sheep in this text, which are stolen using taka (to take).87 These studhorses in Landnámabók are the subjects of the verb, emphasising the agency of the animals in becoming lost or refusing human control – although this contrast may have been specific to Landnámabók, as the same story is repeated in Eyrbyggja saga in a way that downplays the agency of the horses, and Vatnsdæla saga describes the loss of sheep through hverfa rather than taka.88 Depictions of animal agency evidently depended on the perception or preferences of individual scribes or compilers.

87 88 85 86

Ibid., p. 65. Ibid. Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, pp. 114, 202. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, pp. 33–4; Einar Ól. Sveinsson (ed.), ‘Vatnsdæla saga’, in Vatnsdæla saga (Reykjavík, 1939), pp. 1–131, at p. 42.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Dogs While horses are the animals about which the highest proportion of laws are written, the regulation of canine action in these laws is unlike that of any other animal. As mentioned above, men were generally expected to treat the livestock of others as they would their own and take responsibility for any livestock encountered, and, like other domestic animals, a dog is listed as the legal responsibility of the man who takes it into his care.89 However, unlike with other animals, a man has a choice whether to include or exclude the dog from his society: ‘Ef hundr kømr ifor með manne oc biðr hann mat gefa honum eða syslir vm hann er þeir coma til húss. Þa abyrgiz hann hund þótt aNaR eigi. eN eigi ef hann sciptir ser ecki af’ [‘If a dog goes along with a man and the man asks for food to be given to him or works for him when they come to a house, then the man is responsible for the dog even if another owns it; but not if he neglects the dog’].90 This is a significant deviation from the way in which other domestic animals are regulated in the laws, and the dog is not a passive figure in the exchange. Just as the stray horse in the passage quoted above, the dog is the subject of the clause, shown as approaching the man, and the two are presented as accompanying each other in a partnership. This is a partnership in which the human must work for his canine companion, as the man must procure food and see to the dog’s welfare before he is given responsibility for the animal. The mutual companionship between dogs and humans is one way in which dogs are placed apart from other domestic animals. Another is their legal status. Unlike bulls and pigs who can forfeit their immunity by their actions, dogs are classified as having eigi hælgi (no legal immunity) unless they have been correctly leashed: a dog is only a legally-protected agent when in a restrictive relationship with a human figure.91 Both men and other animals are responsible for their own actions if they are wounded after approaching a leashed dog and, while the dog is correctly leashed, neither the human owner of the dog, nor the dog itself, are responsible for its actions.92 However, if a dog is not leashed correctly, a scale of punishments is laid out, ranging from a three-mark fine to full outlawry, and if a man dies from the bite of an unleashed dog, the case is to be treated as a víg sǫk (manslaughter charge), as if the crime were committed by a man (or a bull).93 Likewise, just as it was unlawful for a man to harm another’s livestock, it was unlawful for a dog to attack or chase another man’s animals, though 91 92 93

89 90

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 167–8, 174–5. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 188. Ibid., p. 187. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 201; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 187. Finsen, Grágás II, p. 187.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland the penalty for canine violence is based on compensation rather than fines or outlawry, indicating a distinction between the violence of dogs and humans towards livestock.94 This distinction may suggest that in violence towards men the dog is considered as committing a human crime (víg sǫk), but in violence against animals this dog is acting within its nature as a carnivorous semi-wild animal. There is an implicit recognition in these laws of the blurred nature of the dog, as both carnivore and domestic animal, as figures both capable of human actions and bound by an animal nature that required human-imposed restraint (the leash) to participate in society.

The Proper Places of Animals If the procedures dealing with trespassing or stray animals were designed to return animals to their proper places on the farm, then the marking of animals with ownership marks was one method (wall-building being the other) by which this proper place was established.95 In these laws, failure to mark animals with a cut on their ear, or to alter marks promptly when animals changed hands, could leave a householder open to financial penalties; but falsifying marks, with the purpose of claiming an animal that was not your own, could result in a prosecution for full outlawry.96 These marks were important to the farm, allowing the workers to keep track of which animals belonged to which household. However, rather than solely assisting in the identification of who owned which animals, one passage in these law-texts suggests that these marks of ownership may have had a secondary association. The marking of animals branded them as figures included within the human society that valued and required ownership of them. Through this process, animals were positioned within the sphere of the known and controllable. In contrast, animals who were left unmarked were a risk. They encouraged dishonest behaviour by making it easier to commit theft and were also linked with un-Christian practice. As mentioned above (pp. 127– 8), Christian thinking has (unsurprisingly) impacted on some of the laws involving animals in Grágás. This impact is not restricted to the regulations on meat-eating or violent animals but is rather spread throughout the conceptualisation of Icelandic society at a wider level. Konungsbók provides us with a law concerning the illegal nature of so-called fé óborit 96 94

95

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 202; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 187–8. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 168–9; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 154–5. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 158, 168–9; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 144, 154–5.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland (unborn livestock): ‘Scalat maþr eiga fé öborit. ef maþr a fe oborit. oc letr omerkt ganga. til þess at hann trvir aþat heldr enn a annat fe. eþa ferr meþ hindr vitni neccvers kyns. oc varþar honvm fiorbavgs Garþ’ [‘Men must not own unborn livestock. If a man owns unborn livestock, and lets it walk about unmarked so that he has faith in that rather than in other livestock or performs idolatry of any kind, then he is punishable for that by lesser outlawry’].97 It has been assumed that the phrase fé óborit refers to those animals that required a caesarean delivery, who seem implicitly linked to pre-­Christian beliefs in these laws.98 The stipulation that allowing the animal to live unmarked would incur the risk of lesser outlawry, suggests that these animals were not automatically discarded, as the law indicates should happen, but were sometimes kept and esteemed within a value system excluded from Grágás. By being left unmarked, the animal was not tied to a specific ownership, and such practice was perceived as adherence to an alternate belief system that encouraged greater value to be placed on special, unmarked livestock, rather than those included within legal society. The link made between marked animals and included, safe animals is worth noting. The act of marking an animal may be perceived as drawing the animal into Christian society – a sort of animal-appropriate baptism – and it is not insignificant that this law is included alongside other prohibitions on heathen practice.99 The animal that is not marked represents the opposite of the ordered, natural, safe, Christian society that Grágás promotes. Regulated spaces The importance of the ordered and protected world is reflected in the Icelandic prescriptions on boundary markers, walls, and wall-building. These structures seem in Grágás to be vitally important to the operation and organisation of the medieval Icelandic farm – unsurprisingly, given the value of domestic animals, and the desire to both control and protect them demonstrated by the laws discussed in this chapter. However, the detailed prescriptions around the maintenance of walls in these laws also indicate a desire to protect the landscape, and its resources, from domestic animals. The laws refer to two types of boundary: merki (marks) and garðar (walls, enclosures), and the movement, concealment, or falsification of boundary markers was punishable by lesser outlawry.100 Three different 99 97 98



100

Finsen, Grágás I, p. 23. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 39. Ibid.; Finsen, Grágás I, p. 23. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 103; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 82.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland types of garðar are referred to in these law-texts: túngarðr (homefield wall), heygarðr (hay enclosure), and lǫg garðr (legal wall), and references both to legal walls and legal walling work (garðlag) are the most common in both Grágás manuscripts, though references to walls in general are more frequent in the earlier Konungsbók manuscript.101 The usage of these specific terms is mostly restricted to legal texts, in contrast to túngarðr, which is predominantly found used in the saga literature. While both heygarðr and garðlag appear in the same version of Svarfdæla saga (c.1450), they appear hardly, if at all, in any other literary texts of the medieval period, suggesting that different boundary or enclosure terminology belonged to different types of text. A man was legally obliged to build a lǫg garðr around haystacks, any parcels of land he owned within another man’s outfields, between communal pasture and privately-owned land, and even around hay that had been blown onto another man’s pasture.102 It was the responsibility of all men to be vigilant for damage done to their lǫg garðar, or anyone else’s, and there were legally-defined periods of time in which these turf walls were to be built and maintained.103 The laws set aside three months for this work, and Staðarhólsbók emphasises that during garð ǫnn (walling-season), male farm workers should work only on the walls, aside from driving home sheep and collecting firewood.104 Taking three months out of the year to build walls seems extraordinary, especially when the working seasons in Iceland were so short, and such dedication to wall-building, or the desire to encourage this dedication, reflects the importance of these structures to the functioning of the household-farm and the wider community in medieval Iceland. Likewise, the marking and controlling of space in these legal texts was considered important enough to demand the walls on a farm were maintained, even when there were other aspects of farming more obviously vital to survival than wall-building. These laws inform their audience that legal walls should be constructed, not only in the three months set aside for wall-building, but at any point when a wall begins to no longer function in the correct manner. It is implicit throughout these texts that the maintenance of these walls ensures the correct functioning of the farm. It ensures that animals remain where they are supposed to

101



102



103



104

Konungsbók also contains more references to boundary markers, as while both manuscripts refer to land-marks and meadow-marks, Konungsbók also refers to skógarmerki (forest-marks). Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 138, 115–16; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 121, 96. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 116, 111; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 96, 91. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 301; Finsen, Grágás: Staðarhólsbók, p. 450.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland be, that a man’s hay is reserved for his animals alone, and that other men know where their actions are restricted. The laws stipulate that a lǫg garðr was expected to be five feet thick at ground level, three feet thick at the top, and the shoulder height of a man.105 The substantial size specified for the lǫg garðr and the time and effort legally required for building and repairing them demonstrates that these were prominent structures for the organisation and conceptualisation of the Icelandic landscape in Grágás. The strict organisation and regulation of spaces in Grágás is seen also in the laws surrounding the use of the afréttr (communal pasture). The afréttr is depicted as a section of upland pasture owned by multiple farms, to which access was only permitted to certain humans and animals at certain times of the year.106 Pigs would forfeit their immunity if they accessed communal pasture, and it was only permissible for certain men to graze their animals on the land during a legally-defined period of the summer and only with the permission of all owners of the pasture.107 Often located in the highlands at a distance from the main farm complex, the communal pasture is presented as a space for certain animals to exercise their agency and provide for themselves over the summer. Shielings were prohibited, and human access was limited to the beginning and end of the grazing season. While the laws make it clear that animals would stray from the communal pasture, they also indicate that the animals themselves were not wholly at fault for this. Instead, it was the householder’s responsibility to secure their land with a lǫg garðr. If livestock strayed onto a man’s land that lay beside the communal pasture, neither the livestock nor their owner would be held responsible for any damage that occurred.108 The man who owned the land was at fault, as such straying suggests the land had been insufficiently secured with turf walls. Many collapsed turf walls from the Viking Age and medieval period are still visible in the Icelandic landscape today, and a series of projects have focussed on mapping these structures in the north-east of Iceland.109 Since 2002, over 600km of boundaries have been mapped in north-eastern

105 106



107



108 109

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 110; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 90. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 131–9, 315–19; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 113–22; Grágás: Staðarhólsbók, pp. 477–9, 486–96. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 133, 131; Finsen, Grágás II, pp. 115, 113. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 136; Finsen, Grágás II, p. 118. Árni Einarsson, ‘Viking Age Fences and Early Settlement Dynamics in Iceland’, Journal of the North Atlantic, 27 (2015), 1–21; Árni Einarsson and Oscar Aldred, ‘The Archaeological Landscape of Northeast Iceland: A Ghost of a Viking Age Society’, in David C. Cowley (ed.), Remote Sensing for Archaeological Heritage Management (Budapest, 2011), pp. 243–58; Árni Einarsson, Oddgeir Hansson, and Orri Vésteinsson, ‘An Extensive System of Medieval Earthworks in Northeast Iceland’, Archaeologia Islandica, 2 (2002), 61–73.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland Iceland and, of these, outfield boundaries are the most prominent features recorded, although they are by no means the only structures visible.110 Aerial photography has also highlighted other earthworks, which have been interpreted as homefield walls, hay storage enclosures, and animal pens: all structures defined or regulated in the Grágás laws.111 However, like the farm sites analysed in the preceding chapter, the preservation of these boundaries is biased, in these cases in favour of marginal or abandoned places, which have been the least disturbed by subsequent building and modern farming practices.112 As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, scholars have suggested that some laws in the Grágás manuscripts can be traced back to the twelfth century in their written form, and perhaps even to eleventh-century traditions.113 This would correlate with the construction of the majority of the earthworks surveyed and dated in the earthworks project, as the tephra layers visible in cross-sections of these structures suggest these outfield walls had collapsed long before c.1477, and the repair of many of them was likely to have ceased in the thirteenth century.114 This period of neglect corresponds with the production of the Staðarhólsbók and Konungsbók Grágás manuscripts, and with the introduction of Norwegian governance.115 Such neglect may be linked with a change in farming methods, as the keeping of cattle would have required a system of intensive hay production to sustain the animals throughout the winter, as well as the division of the herd into milking-stock, juvenile males, and bulls; while increased emphasis on sheep-farming for wool production may have encouraged diminished use of these walls, and a reduction in the need to maintain so many boundaries. However, the abandonment of this walling system corresponded with other major changes in the Icelandic landscape, including the abandonment of previous farm sites and the uptake of different farming practices.116 The neglect of the walls should be viewed then as part of a complex process of change and development. Relations between humans, animals, and the landscape were far from static, as seen on a smaller scale on the sites analysed in Chapter 2. In the medieval earthwork structures surveyed in Iceland, we see the physical representations of the legal walls required in the Grágás manuscripts. It is evident that both the physical structures that survive in

110

113 114 115 116 111 112

Árni Einarsson and Aldred, ‘The Archaeological Landscape’; Árni Einarsson, ‘Viking Age Fences’, p. 4. Árni Einarsson and Aldred, ‘The Archaeological Landscape’. Ibid., pp. 253, 303. Foote, ‘Reflections’, pp. 102–3. Árni Einarsson, ‘Viking Age Fences’, p. 5. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 17.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland the landscape and those discussed in these texts are significant features within the separate spaces in which they exist. The earthworks that we can see today in the archaeological landscape are remains of structures that would have taken a considerable amount of time and effort to build and maintain, and do not represent tasks lightly undertaken. The choice to use the specific term lǫg garðr in Grágás is significant. Putting a legal wall between humans and certain animals is a defining act. Árni Einarsson suggests that the terms used for certain types of walls would depend on the perspective of the person using the term: a wall between a haystack and a pasture was either a haystack-wall or a meadow-wall depending on from which position the person was viewing the wall.117 By calling walls in these texts lǫg garðar, they are marked out as something specific to these sorts of narratives: an explicitly legal demarcation of space. As mentioned above, this term is used little in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, but greatly in legal documents. Clearly, lǫg garðar were an important way of conceptualising the legal landscape of Iceland, though not always matched by the dynamism of the social landscape; and as shown by the analysis in this chapter, they were only one part of a multi-stranded effort to control animals and humans within the community.

Making Laws: Making Society Writing laws is in itself a matter of establishing boundaries, and the medieval Icelandic household-farm, as presented in these texts, was a place to be controlled. Farming in medieval Iceland involved complex legal procedures and strict adherence to regulations. Within these detailed laws nothing was to be lost or wasted, everything was to be balanced, and men were to treat animals with respect or face the consequences. From the depiction in these laws of the desired careful relationship between men, animals, and the environment, the strong association of the structured landscape with social order is emphasised. These laws depict the relationships that people were perceived as holding or encouraged to hold with each other, their animals, and the environment in which they lived, and show examples of the ways texts and the physical environment intersect. The physical landscape of medieval Iceland, considered in the preceding chapters, was subsequently shaped by such regulations, and both the land and the laws, and the places in both, combine to shape our understanding of the animal-human communities in early Iceland.



117

Árni Einarsson, ‘Viking Age Fences’, p. 13.

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The Animal-Human Community: Legal Tradition in Iceland Domestic animals were valued and cared for within this society. They had rights of protection, and immunity to forfeit. They lived within the legal walls demarcating the landscape and had their places on the legally structured household-farm. But their places and their natures were not fixed, and it was destructive for individuals and society when rules were disregarded. Concern over the spaces, structures, and closeness of animal-­ human relations is found highlighted in the Íslendingasögur and will be discussed in the following chapters.

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4 Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur

T

he importance of domestic animals in both the material and narrative settlement of Iceland, and in the way in which the Icelandic home-place physically and legally developed, is interwoven into the stories that medieval Icelanders told about their past. However, it should not be assumed that the functional importance or affectionate esteem of domestic animals automatically set them up for inclusion in these stories. The attachment of animals and animal-human interactions to these texts was dependent on their usefulness to the narrative of the saga; yet their very nature of being useful to the narrative tells us something rather poignant about the animal-human relationships rooted in these tales. Domestic animals, as co-creators of the Icelandic community, were entangled with their human partners not just as objects for consumption but in affective relationships. It has been previously argued that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to fully understand medieval Icelandic texts, although the breadth of such an interdisciplinary approach has only recently been extended to include archaeology.1 Reading animal-human relations in the sagas with a perspective enhanced by the examination of settlement narratives, spatial-functional analyses of farm sites, and the exploration of legal definitions and classifications undertaken in the preceding chapters, enables deeper understandings of these narratives to be formed in relation to the world in which they were produced and which they wished to emulate. This chapter will analyse three examples of animals in the Íslendingasögur who show recognition of the human home-farm, and whose interactions with these places form a component of their relationship(s) with human

1

Teva Vidal, ‘“Þat Var Háttr í Þann Tíma” – Representations of Viking Age and Medieval Houses in Grettis saga’, in Mette Svart Kristiansen and Kate Giles (eds), Dwellings, Identities and Homes: European Housing Culture from Viking Age to the Renaissance (Højbjerg, 2014), pp. 139–48; Teva Vidal, ‘Houses and Domestic Life in the Viking Age and Medieval Period: Material Perspectives from Sagas and Archaeology’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Nottingham, 2013); Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Historical Reality and Literary Form’; Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘Nordic Medieval Texts: Beyond “Literature” and “Sources”: Reflections on Expanding Interdisciplinary Border-Zones’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 38 (2014), 95–112.

Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur figures. It will take this discussion onwards to the figure of Grettir Ásmundarson, who is notoriously without a place to belong throughout much of his saga but for whom animals seem to become a way through which his character is developed. Grettir’s final place to belong is an island of sheep, on which he forms a multispecies flock of individuals, brought together by the need to be somewhere close to other animals.

Animals at Home in the Íslendingasögur The Íslendingasögur present many examples of animal interaction with and within the farm and homefield, and the humans interacting within these spaces. Every kind of domestic animal can be found associated with the home in these stories in formative ways, and these animals are not just depicted in (or on) the farm buildings and enclosures but can be used to symbolise the very essence of the home-place.2 As highlighted in Chapter 2, compounds combining the Old Norse words for home and homefield (heim- and tún-) with words for different domestic species reinforce the association between both the conceptual and physical spaces of the home (pp. 100–2). The association between pigs and the tún, rather than heimr, might suggest a difference in the way heim- and tún- were perceived, with some animals attached to one concept rather than the other. In the Íslendingasögur, riding horses and milk-cattle are the animals most often present in the homefield and the farm enclosure, with dogs, goats, and pigs making notable appearances in specific sagas (especially Njáls saga and Eyrbyggja saga). Nonetheless, these compounds do not appear often in the saga corpus, suggesting that they were not terms for a consistent set of animals, but rather terms that were used for specific purposes, to convey a certain meaning at a particular moment. A heimahestr might therefore not be so all the time, and indeed all horses (or any other animal) might have the potential to become a heim- animal. It may perhaps be the case that, rather than associating certain animals with specific locations, these compounds associate animals with specific actions or relationships, such as fattening for slaughter (for example, the túngǫltr in Víga-Glúms saga, ch. 18), while the heimagriðungr in Þorsteins saga hvíta (ch. 9) is the bull-of-this-household, rather than the bull of a neighbour. As riding horses would have often been prominent features in the homefield, perhaps a heimahestr may have been such, although, as mentioned above, it cannot be ruled out that this was a term for a breeding stallion. Such stallions would have been kept in a stud with a number of 2



Evans Tang, ‘Feeling at Home’.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland mares at a distance from the main farmhouse, and the emphatic heimamay have been necessary to specify ownership of such an animal in the more ambiguous spaces of the mountain pastures, as opposed to in the homefield where an association with the specific owner’s farm would have been clear. In these linguistic terms, we see the entanglement of animal and place, or rather, animal and relationship, whether to a place, a concept of ‘homeness’ and belonging, or a practice. An emphasis on belonging, and specifically belonging with a human and their farm, is further seen in some of the most famous animal-human interactions in the Íslendingasögur: the fóstri episodes involving Freyfaxi the horse (Hrafnkels saga) and Sámr the dog (Njáls saga). In both episodes, the animal is intimately connected with the human home-place and the householder.

Fóstri minn As introduced in the opening lines of this book, the term fóstri minn (my foster-kin) is used in Hrafnkels saga by the protagonist of the saga, Hrafnkell, to refer to his horse, Freyfaxi. Such a term used about animals is found only twice in the Íslendingasögur, and in both cases an animal is referred to by this term indicative of fictive kinship networks while the man is within the house and the animal on a threshold of the home. A common formula appears to accompany the use of this term in both Njáls saga and Hrafnkels saga, with the term fóstri in these cases being combined with a comment on the treatment or handling of the animal, and a remark on the consequences of the event. While fóstri in these cases can be translated as ‘fosterling’ in English, the connotation of this masculine noun in Old West Norse could be either foster-father, foster-brother, or foster-son, with the exact meaning provided by the context of the term in the saga. The term fosterling, implying as it does the sense of foster-son, is an inaccurate term to use for these episodes, as it may simplify or misrepresent the meanings of the passages, hence the translation ‘foster-kin’ used throughout this book. An episode following a similar narrative structure can be identified in Harðar saga ok Hólmverja in which a group of oxen resist captivity by Hǫrðr and his men, and instead return to their home.3 While the term fóstri is not used in the Harðar saga episode, a part of the formula is utilised, through which is implied the same level of close relationship. The gelded horse Inni-Krákr from Fljótsdæla saga also shows similarities to the tropes used in these more explicit episodes; and the interactions or

3

Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (eds), ‘Harðar saga Grímkelssonar eða Hólmverja saga’, in Harðar saga (Reykjavík, 1991), pp. 1–97, at pp. 75–6.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur events in all these extracts are entwined with the place of the farm and homefield. The discussion of this chapter focusses particularly on the location of the action(s), the communications between animals and humans, and the detailed physical descriptions of the animals involved, in some cases showing acute observations of animal behaviour. The terms used to describe these animals, including fóstri, gripr (valuable thing), and garprinn (the bold one) should be placed in their wider context, both within the individual text and the Íslendingasögur more widely, as the animal-­ human relationships depicted cannot exist in isolation from their textual and extra-textual contexts. Foster-kinship in medieval Iceland Relations of foster-kinship in medieval Iceland were an important feature of the social fabric of the community. The extended household, including blood relations, foster-relations, and employed workers, was instrumental in providing defence of the farm, the fulfilment of legal cases, and the economic success of the household. However, the kin-group, whether fictive or blood-related, was not an automatic bond of affiliation, and such alliances relied on the production of mutual benefits – benefits that came with heavy responsibilities: legal rights of vengeance in Grágás are equivalent for blood and foster-kin, indicating that people may have not only thought it appropriate to avenge their foster-kin, but actively sought (or felt obliged) to do so.4 As will be discussed in further detail below, such an attitude and apparent legal obligation towards one’s fóstri must be borne in mind when reading Hrafnkell’s response to Freyfaxi’s mistreatment in Hrafnkels saga. Nonetheless, the relationship between foster-relations was not always perceived as a positive one, and Icelandic sagas often depict the interweaving of natal and foster kinship and the problems this may cause to society.5 The practice of allegiance fosterage, that is, families fostering their social superiors to cement loyalties, may have been viewed with particular ambivalence as an artificial way of bonding different social classes, and close bonds between humans and animals are similarly often viewed ambivalently in the Íslendingasögur.6 When discussing the term fóstri in the context of these animal-episodes, it is important to consider the use of this term elsewhere in the sagas. The Íslendingasögur present a range of parenting models that appear to be

4

5 6



Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 154; Peter Parkes, ‘Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend: When Milk Was Thicker than Blood?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46:3 (2004), 587–615, at p. 603; Eric Christiansen, The Norsemen in the Viking Age (Oxford, 2002), pp. 47–8. Parkes, ‘Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend’, p. 604. Jan Bremmer, ‘Avunculate and Fosterage’, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 4:1 (1976), 65–78; Parkes, ‘Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend’, p. 607.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland placed consistently under the label of fóstri, with the emphasis on figures who care for children not biologically related to them.7 While this is not consistent with the specific legal definitions of fosterage in the laws, the wide use of this term in the sagas, often referring to a duty of care not involving the biological parents of a figure, suggests it may be suitable to refer to an animal, particularly to a close relationship with an animal that requires careful attention or is especially valued.8 The suggested attention to bonds of protection and obligation required for the maintenance of blood and foster alliances, whether between social equals, superiors, or inferiors, is not far from the care required in raising animals, and pushes the interpretation of fóstri, when used about animals, beyond that of simply a term of endearment for a favoured animal.9 In a marked contrast to surviving Old Icelandic laws, Old Swedish laws refer to fostre (fostra, f.) as hemma (född och) upp­fostrad träl (a home-born and -brought-up thrall), that is, an enslaved person that has been born and raised in the home, presumably with the family.10 However, while such a definition could conceivably have a conceptual overlap with the raising of working animals, the Old Icelandic meanings of foster-father, -son, or -brother, as highlighted above, were tied into conceptualisations instead of the socially-useful kin-group, which also acts as an appropriate conceptualisation of domestic animals in the saga-world, to certain individuals at least. It seems that the Old Swedish definition quoted above is distinct from that held by medieval Icelanders, as neither of the fóstri episodes involve animals which have been explicitly raised or brought up by their human partner, or raised for work, with animals such as the horse Inni-Krákr or the ox Brandkrossi, who have been explicitly raised by their human figures, and who might be assumed as working animals, not referred to as fóstri. Ties between foster-relations could be as strong as blood kinship, as depicted in historiographical and literary accounts, and the Íslendingasögur contain episodes in which foster-kin are avenged, or blood-kin are defied in preference of foster-bonds; though the latter are mostly depicted as a result of ‘blood-brother’ bonds formed through homosocial friendships



7



8 9



10

Anna Hansen, ‘Fosterage and Dependency in Medieval Iceland and Its Significance in Gísla Saga’, in Shannon Lewis-Simpson (ed.), Youth and Age in the Medieval North (Leiden, 2008), pp. 73–86, at pp. 73, 76. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 46. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 168. Peter Foote and David M. Wilson, The Viking Achievement: The Society and Culture of Early Medieval Scandinavia (London, 1970), p. 75; ‘Fornsvensk Lexikalisk Databas’ [accessed 8 October 2016].

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur later in life rather than foster-kin relations from childhood.11 While fóstri is not the term most often used for this sworn-brother relationship, the death and mistreatment of Sámr and Freyfaxi evoke the same strong attachment as that expressed by sworn-brothers in the sagas. Instances of fictive brotherhood are sometimes accompanied or represented by the phrase eitt skal yfir oss ganga (one fate shall go over us), a phrase that holds resonance for the deaths of both Sámr and Gunnarr, and Freyfaxi.12 The use of the term fóstri in these episodes invokes connotations of dependence, attachment, and alliance beyond that of man and favoured animals. Freyfaxi The most elaborate of the two fóstri episodes follows the unauthorised riding of Freyfaxi that results in Hrafnkell killing his shepherd, Einarr; a legal case against Hrafnkell that leads to the confiscation of his property; and the killing of Freyfaxi himself. As shown in the opening to this book, the relationship between Freyfaxi and Hrafnkell has often been interpreted in the context of religious conflict, with the figure of Freyfaxi as a beloved substitute for the pre-Christian deity, Freyr. The following analysis will suggest an alternate reading that is not only possible, but desirable in light of the intertextual associations of the language used in the description of the horse and his actions. The initial descriptions of prominent animals in these texts often emphasise their importance to their human partner, and the description of Freyfaxi is no different: Hrafnkell átti þann grip í eigu sinni, er honum þótti betri en annarr. Þat var hestr brúnmóálóttr at lit, er hann kallaði Freyfaxa sinn. Hann gaf Frey, vin sínum, þann hest hálfan. Á þessum hesti hafði hann svá mikla elsku, at hann strengði þess heit, at hann skyldi þeim manni at bana verða, sem honum riði án hans vilja.13



11



12 13

Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, pp. 14, 85; Foote and Wilson, The Viking Achievement, p. 116. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, pp. 14, 85. Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 100. Several animals in the Íslendingasögur are described as gripr, although they are often only briefly mentioned in the narratives in which they appear: an ox in Svarfdæla saga (ch. 17), the horse Svartfaxi in Harðar saga (ch. 3), a stallion in Gull-Þóris saga (ch. 9) – explicitly a Gotlandic horse fed on grain all year – and a lost horse in Heiðarviga saga (ch. 15). Bjǫrn’s three valuable animals in Bjarnar saga, including the stallion Hvítingr, are discussed at length by Rohrbach (Der tierische Blick), and are not discussed in this chapter.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Hrafnkell had that treasure in his possession, which seemed to him better than all others. It was a horse, mouse-grey in colour, with a black stripe down the back that he called his Freyfaxi. He gave his friend, Freyr, half of this horse. He had such great love for this horse that he made this vow: that he should kill that man who rode him without his willingness.

This description sets Freyfaxi alongside other treasured animals in the Íslendingasögur, such as Inni-Krákr, Hvítingr the horse in Bjarnar saga, and Brandkrossi the ox.14 While the pledging of an animal to a pre-Christian deity is found in Flóamanna saga (ch. 21), in which calves are given to Þórr, this is not a common trope and should not be considered the dominant pattern into which the Hrafnkels saga episode can be placed. Rather, domestic animals often act as agents in these sagas, outside of any divine control. The vow made by Hrafnkell, and the mikla elsku (great love) explicitly expressed by him for this horse, is unparalleled.15 Hrafnkell calls Freyfaxi Freyfaxa sinn, emphasising the relationship of the named horse with the man, and while Miller has suggested this shows Hrafnkell’s extreme affection for Freyfaxi, and this episode has often been translated and read in a way that emphasises the love between Hrafnkell and Freyr, this phrase may also be interpreted as a sign of the responsibility Hrafnkell has towards Freyfaxi, in the same way a figure would have responsibility for son sinn (his son) or other members of his household.16 The phrase án hans vilja also hints at an arrangement between man and animal based on proper treatment and understanding of the individual horse. This phrase is most often translated as ‘without his permission’, suggesting that Freyfaxi’s sacred nature makes him a forbidden animal not to be ridden without Hrafnkell’s consent.17 However, the noun vili has a secondary meaning of ‘disposition’ or ‘mind’ that may suggest that Hrafnkell forbids anyone to ride Freyfaxi without the disposition Hrafnkell would take to the task himself. While this may be taken as a contrived interpretation of the phrase when clearly the sense ‘permission’, ‘goodwill’, or ‘willingness’ works within the immediate context of the vow, this secondary meaning fits well with the later events of the saga. Hrafnkell does not tell his shepherd not to ride Freyfaxi without asking for permission, but rather tells him: ‘ek vil, at þú komir aldri á bak honum’ [‘I want

14



15



16



17

Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (eds), ‘Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa’, in Borgfirðinga Sögur (Reykjavík, 1938), pp. 108–211, at p. 136; Inni-Krákr and Brandkrossi are discussed further below. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (eds), ‘Flóamanna saga’, in Harðar saga (Reykjavík, 1991), pp. 228–327, at p. 281. William Ian Miller, Hrafnkel Or the Ambiguities: Hard Cases, Hard Choices (Oxford, 2017), p. 48. Hermann Pálsson (trans.), ‘Hrafnkel’s Saga’, in Hermann Pálsson (ed.), Hrafnkel’s Saga and Other Stories (London, 1971), pp. 35–71, at p. 38.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur that you never mount him for riding’].18 For Hrafnkell, Einarr is not of the right disposition to ride this horse. As if proving Hrafnkell’s judgement correct, when Einarr chooses to ride Freyfaxi, he does so in an emphatically excessive way: he ‘reið Freyfaxa alt frá eldingu ok til miðs aptans’ [‘rode Freyfaxi all through daybreak and until the middle of the evening’].19 While Freyfaxi is the only horse that does not run from Einarr when he seeks assistance in finding lost sheep, seemingly provoking Einarr to take advantage of his availability, it can be suggested that Einarr’s decision to ride Freyfaxi in this specific manner was an incorrect decision, as Freyfaxi ends the ride excessively sweaty and overworked, and proceeds to complain to Hrafnkell. However, before Freyfaxi’s reaction to the riding is discussed, a third meaning of the phrase án hans vilja must be considered: one that hints at a more contractual understanding between the man and the animal, and one in which the horse is permitted agency as well as the man. The line: ‘hann skyldi þeim manni at bana verða, sem honum riði án hans vilja’ [‘he should kill that man who rode him without his willingness’] is grammatically ambiguous, and it may indicate that Freyfaxi’s consent, not Hrafnkell’s, must be given before the riding may take place. In this case, Freyfaxi may appear to give consent, by allowing Einarr to approach him, but Einarr’s subsequent treatment of him violates that contract, and causes Freyfaxi to report the behaviour to Hrafnkell. As highlighted in Chapter 3 (p. 123), the mistreatment of animals, particularly horses, could be considered a serious offence, and the way you rode another man’s horse was subject to legal action if undertaken incorrectly.20 Einarr reduces Freyfaxi to a state in which he ‘var vátr allr af sveita, svá at draup ór hverju hári hans, var mjǫk leirstokkinn ok móðr mjǫk ákafliga’ [‘was wet all over with sweat so that it dripped from each of his hairs, was very splashed with mud and exceedingly exhausted’], and this was an inappropriate way to treat a horse.21 The description emphasises the excessive nature of Einarr’s use of Freyfaxi and the physical implications of the mistreatment. This is an informed description of the sensory experience of encountering an overworked horse and the physicality of descriptions of animal-human encounters in these texts should not be overlooked, as many of the episodes discussed in this chapter include descriptions that emphasise the sounds and appearance of animals. Once Einarr dismounts, Freyfaxi reacts to his poor treatment in an emphatic manner: 20 21 18 19

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 102. Hermann Pálsson, ‘Hrafnkel’s Saga’, p. 103. Finsen, Grágás: Staðarhólsbók, p. 247. Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 103.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Hann veltisk nǫkkurum tólf sinnum, ok eptir þat setr hann upp hnegg mikit. Síðan tekr hann á mikilli rás ofan eptir gǫtunum. Einarr snýr eptir honum ok vill komask fyrir hestinn ok vildi hǫndla hann ok fœra hann aptr til hrossa, en hann var svá styggr, at Einarr komsk hvergi í nándir honum.22 [The horse turned himself some twelve times and reared up, neighing greatly. Then he took off running down the path. Einarr turned after him and wanted to reach the horse and capture him so he could bring him back to the stud-horses, but Freyfaxi was so angry that Einarr could not reach him.]

Freyfaxi’s response to Einarr’s treatment is to be styggr, and while it has been suggested this adjective means ‘shy’ when referring to animals and ‘angry’ when used about men, it is appropriate to describe Freyfaxi as expressing anger and indignation at his treatment at Einarr’s hands.23 This anger is also expressed in Freyfaxi’s loud neighing, and his turning around and around, which accurately describes the behaviour of an agitated horse.24 In addition, veltisk nǫkkurum tólf sinnum may refer to rolling around on the ground, which is recognisable behaviour of an exhausted horse, as sweat drying on the body is irritating to the animal, and this irritation can be relieved by the application of dust.25 Such rolling ensures that his exhausted nature will be fully visible to Hrafnkell and demonstrates that the communication of the horse relies upon both vocalisation and appearance.26 Hrafnkell’s comments when Freyfaxi runs to the farm acknowledge this: Hestrinn hleypr ofan eptir dalnum ok nemr eigi stað, fyrri en hann kemr á Aðalból. Þá sat Hrafnkell yfir borðum. Ok er hestrinn kemr fyrir dyrr, hneggjaði hann þá hátt. Hrafnkell mælti við eina konu, þá sem þjónaði fyrir borðinu, at hon skyldi fara til duranna, því at hross hneggjaði, – ‘ok þótti mér líkt vera gnegg Freyfaxa.’ Hon gengr fram í dyrrnar ok sér Freyfaxa mjǫk ókræsiligan. Hon sagði Hrafnkeli, at Freyfaxi var fyrir durum úti, mjǫk óþokkuligr. ‘Hvat mun garprinn vilja, er hann er heim kominn?’ segir Hrafnkell. ‘Eigi mun þat góðu gegna.’ Síðan gekk hann út ok sér Freyfaxa ok mælti við hann: ‘Illa þykki mér, at þú ert þann veg til gǫrr, fóstri minn, en heima hafðir þú vit þitt, er þú sagðir mér til, Ibid., pp. 103–4. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 601. This descriptor is used of the runaway pigs in Vatnsdæla saga (ch. 15) who refuse to return to human control. 24 Catherine-Rose Hailstone, pers. comm. 2018. 25 We also find horses rolling after a hard ride in Grettis saga (ch. 16). 26 Miller, Hrafnkel Or the Ambiguities, p. 68.

22 23

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur ok skal þessa hefnt verða. Far þú til liðs þíns.’ En hann gekk þegar upp eptir dalnum til stóðs sins.27 [The horse ran down into the valley and stopped nowhere before he came to Aðalból. At that moment, Hrafnkell was sitting at a table. And when the horse came in front of the door, then he neighed loudly. Hrafnkell said to a woman who served him at the table, that she should go to the door because a horse neighed, – ‘and it seemed to me likely to be the neighing of Freyfaxi.’ She went to the door and saw Freyfaxi in a very poor state. She said to Hrafnkell, that Freyfaxi was outside the door, greatly ill-favoured (dirty). ‘What will the bold one want, that he is come home?’ said Hrafnkell. ‘It will signify nothing good.’ Then he went outside and saw Freyfaxi and said to him: ‘Bad it seems to me, that you have been treated in this way, my foster-kin, but you had your reason at home when you told this to me, and this shall be avenged. Go you to your followers.’ And he went from there up into the valley to his stud-mares.]

Freyfaxi comes right up to the door of Hrafnkell’s house (implicitly into the homefield or central farm area), and while he cannot knock, he neighs loudly to attract the attention of those within. Even though Hrafnkell appears to recognise Freyfaxi’s voice, he sends a servant to investigate the noise. Only when the woman returns does Hrafnkell go out to the doorway and speak to Freyfaxi himself. Such a performance of multi-stage greeting is reminiscent of visitation scenes in which a man comes to the house while the householder is eating, such as we find in Bjarnar saga (ch. 27). The servant Hrafnkell sends to the door reports back Freyfaxi’s ill-­ favoured condition, and Hrafnkell’s response can tell us more about how this animal is perceived by Hrafnkell in the text. Not only does he refer to Freyfaxi as garprinn (the bold one) and reinforces the impression that Freyfaxi has heim kominn (come home), but his comments suggest that Freyfaxi’s actions and appearance are to be taken as a bad omen, as he acknowledges such a visitation eigi mun […] góðu gegn (will signify nothing good). The presumption of bad omens from the presence or appearance of animals is also found in Króka-Refs saga (ch. 3), in which Þorgerðr believes the presence of cattle in her homefield illu mundi gegna (may signify something bad) and later finds her herdsman dead (as discussed further below, pp. 187–8).28 A motif of animals providing knowledge or signals of bad events may be noted across the corpus; for example, the horse Kengála in Grettis saga. Animals being out of place may have been viewed with

27 28

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 104. Jóhannes Halldórsson (ed.), ‘Króka-Refs saga’, in Kjalnesinga saga (Reykjavík, 1959), pp. 117–60, at p. 123.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland anxiety as a sign of social or environmental upheaval, but animals were also credited with the ability to communicate negative events to specific human figures in these texts. While Freyfaxi and Hrafnkell do not speak the same language, Freyfaxi understands Hrafnkell’s order to return to his herd, and Hrafnkell is able to read Freyfaxi’s appearance and behaviour to discern what has happened. Such an interaction should not be dismissed as a wholly implausible event, as modern studies have shown that familiarity with an animal enables the handler to recognise behaviours indicating different moods in that animal.29 Likewise, familiarity with human commands enables an animal to react appropriately: Freyfaxi understands Hrafnkell’s command to far þú til liðs þíns (go to your followers), which is echoed in Njáls saga when Ólafr tells Sámr to follow Gunnarr, and in Fljótsdæla saga when Inni-Krákr obeys an order to return to the farm. The noun used in this Freyfaxi episode, lið, is often translated as ‘herd’ in this specific instance but is a common noun indicating belonging or leadership, which can be translated as ‘people’, ‘troops’ or ‘followers’, or ‘family’ or ‘household’.30 Its use here is a clear indication that Freyfaxi, although close to Hrafnkell, is not resident in the same place, and belongs to his own household – but that household can be considered as conceptualised in human terms. A further similarity with Sámr is found in Hrafnkell’s remark on Freyfaxi’s intelligence in which he uses the term vit, also used in the description of the dog Sámr in Njáls saga and implying a human level of intelligence (see p. 156 below). Vit is not the only remarkable term used by Hrafnkell to describe Freyfaxi, and the horse is also described as a garpr, gripr, and fóstri. Of these, the first and last are least often found used about animals in the Íslendingasögur. The use of the term fóstri here suggests a justification for Hrafnkell’s actions in the saga. By perceiving this animal as close-kin, Hrafnkell’s killing of Einarr is placed into a social and personal context beyond that of property or religious icon: a context of affection, but also responsibility, and legal bonds. This is the impression given by Hrafnkell’s reaction to Einarr’s activities. While Hrafnkell’s oath to kill any who ride Freyfaxi can be attributed to the perceived insult to Freyr, Hrafnkell’s reaction to the unauthorised riding is not described in terms of sacrilegious activity. It may instead be perceived as a reaction to a legal transgression: both an excessive and disrespectful horse-riding, and an insult against a

29



30

Françoise Wemelsfelder, ‘Qualitative Welfare Assessment: Reading the Behavioural Expressions of Pigs’, in Malla Hovi and Michel Bouilhol (eds), Human-Animal Relationship: Stockmanship and Housing in Organic Livestock Systems: Proceedings of the Third NAHWOA Workshop Clermont-Ferrand, 21-24 October 2000 (Reading, 2001), pp. 14–20, at p. 15. Hermann Pálsson, ‘Hrafnkel’s Saga’, p. 42; Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 387.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur close relation. If Hrafnkell considers his horse as a fóstri, this provides legitimisation, in his eyes, for the punishment of Einarr; and the future actions of the saga can be seen in these terms. Freyfaxi’s communication to Hrafnkell is brief but has lasting and far-reaching consequences. As a result of Freyfaxi’s visit, Hrafnkell kills Einarr, triggering a feud that leads to the confiscation of Hrafnkell’s property and his banishment from the district over which he had previously held control. In addition, the redaction of the text included in AM 158 fol. and AM 443 4to presents Freyfaxi as possessing warrior characteristics, again similar to the presentation of Sámr in Njáls saga.31 Hrafnkell refers to Freyfaxi as a garpr, which is normally used in the Íslendingasögur to refer to men and is listed in Skáldskaparmál as a heiti (poetic synonym) for a man.32 It has also been argued that garpr is an affectionate term for a strong but rash and wilful figure, and it has been suggested the term may indicate a ‘homely’ hero-figure, likening the term to skǫrungr (prominent man or woman).33 Both garpr and skǫrungr are used often in the Íslendingasögur to introduce human characters. Here then, Hrafnkell’s use of the term to refer to Freyfaxi may indicate an affectionate admiration towards the stallion or express a mild exasperation at the horse’s interruption of his meal. Such exasperation may link into the idea of Freyfaxi as a repeated caller to Hrafnkell’s farmhouse. While home for Freyfaxi is his herd, he clearly knows the way to the farmhouse at Aðalból, and it is not implausible that readers or listeners of the saga would understand this knowledge as evidence for a route repeatedly taken. The use of garprinn offers a bold contrast to the two redactions of Hrafnkels saga in which gripr is used instead. This latter term portrays the relationship as more grounded in economic and social worth than affection. The term gripr, used for animals such as Hvítingr the horse in Bjarnar saga, and in the opening chapters of Hrafnkels saga to refer to Freyfaxi, has a primary meaning of ‘possession’ and ‘something of value’, although it also comes to be used in a manner like fé in terms such as gangandi gripir (walking treasures, livestock) and stórgripr (cattle, horse).34 However, if Freyfaxi is to be considered as an objectively valuable animal, then his killing in the saga is incongruous:



31

34 32 33

Garprinn (the bold man, warlike one), while used in AM 158 fol. and AM 443 4to, is replaced with griprinn (the valued one, treasure) in AM 156 fol. or grepprinn, a poetic term for ‘strange creature, monster’, in AM 551 c 4to: Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 104. Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Edda: Skáldskaparmál (Oxford, 1998), p. 106. E. R. Eddison, Egil’s Saga (Cambridge, 1930), p. 258. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 215.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Þjóstarssynir létu senda eptir Freyfaxa ok liði hans ok kváðusk vilja sjá gripi þessa, er svá gengu miklar sǫgur af. Þá váru hrossin heim leidd. Þeir brœðr líta á hrossin. Þorgeirr mælti: ’Þessi hross lítask mér þǫrf búinu. Er þat mitt ráð, at þau vinni slíkt, er þau megu, til gagnsmuna, þangat til er þau megu eigi betri en aðrir hestar, heldr því verri, at margt illt hefir af honum hlotizk. Vil ek eigi, at fleiri víg hljótisk af honum en áðr hafa af honum orðit. Mun þat nú makligt, at sá taki við honum, er hann á.’ Þeir leiða nú hestinn ofan eptir vellinum. Einn hamarr stendr niðr við ána, en fyrir framan hylr djúpr. Þar leiða þeir nú hestinn fram á hamarinn. Þjóstarssynir drógu fat eitt á hǫfuð hestinum, taka síðan hávar stengr ok hrinda hestinum af fram, binda stein við hálsinn ok týndu honum svá.35 [The Þjóstarssons sent for Freyfaxi and his followers and said amongst themselves they wanted to see this treasure about whom were told such great stories. Then were the horses led home. The brothers looked at the horses and Þorgeirr said: ‘These horses look to me necessary at the farmstead. It is my advice that they work such that they are able, as useful things, until they are unable to be better than other horses. In comparison that other is worse, and much ill has fallen from him. I do not wish that more killings should result from him as they have done. It will now be proper that the one who owns him [i.e. Freyr] should take him.’ They led the horse down out of the field. A certain cliff stood down by the river with a deep pool in front of it. They led the horse forwards to the cliff. The Þjóstarssons pulled a piece of clothing over the head of the horse, then took long poles and pushed the horse in front of them. They had bound a stone against his neck and he lost his life in this way.]

While Freyfaxi was beloved by Hrafnkell, his value is clearly not perceived by the Þjóstarssons. From a modern perspective, it is known that close relationships between horses and their owners can lead to behavioural issues upon separation, which may provide an additional reason for Freyfaxi’s rejection from the farm – though his behaviour prior to separation from Hrafnkell is enough justification for these men, who see him as a disruptive presence to their community.36 The usefulness and value of animals depend on human cooperation with and trust towards the animal, and if the assessment of Freyfaxi were based on an objective usefulness of the horses for working around the farm, it may be assumed that Freyfaxi should have been kept as an excellent riding horse. Earlier in the saga it is suggested that Freyfaxi would have been the most useful



35 36

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, pp. 123–4. Argent, ‘Horses, Mourning’.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur horse on the farm, as when Einarr is looking for a horse to ride to collect the sheep, the text describes how: er hann kom til hrossanna, þá elti hann þau, ok váru þau nú skjǫrr, er aldri váru vǫn at ganga undan manni, nema Freyfaxi einn. Hann var svá kyrr sem hann væri grafinn niðr.37 [when he came to the horses, then he pursued them; and they were now shy, those horses which were not accustomed to walking under a man, except Freyfaxi alone. He was so quiet as if he were rooted in the ground.]

This passage has been interpreted as showing Freyfaxi’s provocation of Einarr and is seen as an important turning point in Einarr’s decision to ride Freyfaxi, but is not usually considered in discussions of Freyfaxi’s death.38 Yet, this passage shows that Freyfaxi is the only horse among the group who is calm enough for animal-human interaction, and therefore the most useful. The timid and untrained nature of the stud-mares would have made them liabilities as working animals on the farm and reinforces the non-practical enmity the Þjóstarssons have towards Freyfaxi, implicated as he is in the killing of Einarr. His physical rejection from the home-place is explicitly emphasised, as he is led out of the field and taken to a place of execution on a boundary between earth and water. This is a careful, ritualised action, characteristic of judicial violence, and it can be argued that Freyfaxi’s actions and death code him as a legal actor, albeit an ambiguous one.39 In Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 20), persons accused of magical practices are killed with their heads covered, and in Gautreks saga figures jump off cliffs either when old and no longer useful to society, or after extraordinary events; but neither of these examples provide direct textual comparisons to the circumstances of Freyfaxi’s execution.40 Freyfaxi’s killing may be designed to bestow the most humiliation and dishonour upon Hrafnkell, or perhaps the act should be read as a dramatic destruction of the pagan elements in the narrative, given Freyfaxi’s dedication to Freyr in the text. However, this event may also be read as a responsive movement in a feud, with the Þjóstarssons acting against Freyfaxi in revenge for the killing of Einarr. Freyfaxi’s execution is the punishment of a criminal, and, as mentioned above, the covering of Freyfaxi’s head can link him to persons such as Katla in Eyrbyggja saga who exercise agency in unusual ways (in Katla’s case, sorcery). It may be suggested that Freyfaxi’s actions in provoking Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 103. Miller, Hrafnkel Or the Ambiguities. 39 Evans Tang and Ruiter, ‘Exploring Animals as Agents’. 40 James Milroy, ‘The Story of Ætternisstapi in Gautreks Saga’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 17 (1966), 206–23, at p. 211. 37 38

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Einarr and then communicating the unauthorised ride to Hrafnkell provide an example of a horse acting outside of its supposed sphere of action, which must be punished in a way that restricts capability for action by reduction of the senses prior to death. If we think of Freyfaxi’s death as the killing of a condemned figure, it should also be noted that Freyfaxi’s actions after Einarr’s dismounting follow the correct procedure following the receipt of an injury and the pursuit of a legal case.41 Like a responsible member of society, Freyfaxi returns to his householder and attempts to gather support for his cause, and it is Hrafnkell who, in line with his overbearing nature, takes the law into his own hands as he had vowed to do, and as he emphatically has done for previous wrongdoings.42 This escalates the feud, and leads to the killing of Freyfaxi in place of his troublesome fóstri, Hrafnkell. As highlighted in Chapter 1, fragments of relationships between humans and horses in Iceland can be seen in the composition of pre-­ Christian graves.43 More than 320 pre-Christian graves have been reported in Iceland and, of these, 115 involve the interment of horses. Recent work by Claire Ratican (2019), which surveyed 313 graves from Iceland, found that horses were included in 15.97 per cent of the human burials considered, and a number of these show evidence of multiple horses in single graves.44 Often, these animal remains are listed as ‘grave goods’ and analysed as objects of economic or symbolic value to the deceased and the grieving community.45 However, we do not only find horses included in human burials, but also in individual graves with grave goods of their own, such as buckles, nails, and bridle-bits.46 The burial of horses may also include canine remains, and in one example a horse burial was situated



41 42



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44



45 46

Evans Tang and Ruiter, ‘Exploring Animals as Agents’. For example, Hrafnkels saga (ch. 2) suggests Hrafnkell always dealt unfairly with men outside of his district and, in Chapter 7, Hrafnkell himself emphasises his habit of never paying compensation for killings. Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’; Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Icelandic Viking Age Graves’; Kristján Eldjárn and Adolf Friðriksson, Kuml og haugfé: úr heiðnum sið á Íslandi (Reykjavík, 2000); Lisa Yeomans, ‘Kalfskinn Animal Bone’, in Kumlfundur á Kálfskinni á Árskógsströnd: Fornleifarannsókn 2006 (Reykjavík, 2009), pp. 26–8; Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Archaeology of Landnám: Early Settlement in Iceland’, in W. F. Fitzhugh and E. I. Ward (eds), Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga (Washington, DC, 2000), pp. 164–74. Claire Ratican, ‘The Other Body: Persons in Viking Age Multiple Burials in Scandinavia and the Western Diaspora Vol. 1’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019). For further up-to-date details on animals in Icelandic burials, see also: Rúnar Leifsson, ‘Ritual Animal Killing’. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘The Archaeology of Landnám’, p. 170. Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Icelandic Viking Age Graves’, p. 28; Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’, pp. 56–7, 75.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur within an oblong of stones.47 The potential for the post-deposition removal of human bodies cannot be ignored (for example, for removing the bones of pre-Christian ancestors to churchyards), however it seems likely that, in certain cases, horses were buried without human figures.48 Research into the pre-Christian period in Scandinavia has suggested that boundaries between humans and animals were considered more fluid and ambiguous in the pre-Christian period.49 Horses were particularly viewed as creatures between human and animal states, and conceptualisation of the horse as such may be seen in the representation of figures such as Freyfaxi, in which the animal intersects with, responds to, and affects human social practice.50 Icelandic horse graves suggest that certain horses should not simply be considered as grave goods in human burials, but rather as persons in their own right, deserving, or considered suitable for, burial within the same social practices in which human persons are buried and remembered.51 In considering certain horses as involved in the same social sphere as humans, we see analogies with Freyfaxi’s participation in legal processes and his outlaw-like banishment from society. Freyfaxi is a part of human social structures in Hrafnkels saga and appears to share legal and social spaces with the human community. Sámr The sharing of spaces is more explicitly emphasised in the depiction of Sámr the dog and his relationship with Gunnarr, a key figure in Njáls saga. Given to Gunnarr as a gift of friendship from Óláfr pái (peacock), Sámr is presented as the perfect companion, possessing remarkable characteristics for a dog that blur the line between human and animal attributes and behaviour. As seen in Chapter 3, the relationship between a man and a dog in the Grágás laws was that of a mutual partnership, entered into by both man and canine – and while Óláfr explicitly gives Sámr to Gunnarr, it is Sámr’s action that places himself into partnership with Gunnarr. Óláfr says: ‘Ek vil gefa þér þrjá gripi: gullhring ok skikkju, er átt hefir Myrkjartan Írakonungr, ok hund, er mér var gefinn á Írlandi; hann er mikill ok eigi 49 47 48



50



51

Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’, p. 75. Evans Tang and Ruiter, ‘Exploring Animals as Agents’. Jennbert, ‘Djuren I Nordisk Förkristen Ritual Och Myt’, p. 118; Hedeager, ‘Dyr Og Andre Mennesker’, p. 234; Jennbert, Animals and Humans; Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality; Armstrong Oma, ‘A Shattered Farm’, p. 180. Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’, p. 73; Loumand, ‘The Horse and Its Role in Icelandic Burial Practices’; Anneli Sundkvist, ‘Herding Horses: A Model of Prehistoric Horsemanship in Scandinavia – and Elsewhere?’, in Barbro Santillo Frizell (ed.), Pecus: Man and Animal in Antiquity (Rome, 2004), pp. 241–9; Rúnar Leifsson, ‘Evolving Traditions’; Jennbert, Animals and Humans. Þóra Pétursdóttir, ‘Deyr Fé’, p. 74; Argent, ‘Horses, Mourning’, p. 23.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland verri til fylgðar en rǫskr maðr. Þat fylgir ok, at hann hefir manns vit; hann mun ok geyja at hverjum manni, þeim er hann veit, at óvinr þinn er, en aldri at vinum þínum; sér hann ok á hverjum manni, hvárt honum er til þín vel eða illa; hann mun ok lífit á leggja at vera þér trúr. Þessi hundr heitir Sámr.’52 [‘I will give to you three treasures: a gold ring and a cloak, which has been owned by Myrkjartan king of Ireland, and a dog, which was given to me in Ireland; he is great of size and not worse at support than a brave man. Indeed, he has a man’s knowledge. He will also bark at each man whom he knows is not your friend, but never at your friends. He sees in each man whether by him is wished to you well or ill, and he will lay down his life to be true to you. This dog is called Sámr.’ Afterwards he said to the dog: ‘Now you must accompany Gunnarr and be to him such as you are able.’ The dog went at once to Gunnarr and lay himself down at his feet.’]

In this passage, we see Sámr explicitly marked out as a brave warrior-like companion, just as good as a man, and as having a manns vit, that is, the intelligence or reason of a human. This term, manns vit or mannsvit, for which the Dictionary of Old Norse Prose lists only four entries, can be compared with mannvit, which is used in Eddic poetry as ‘understanding’ or ‘wisdom’, particularly as expressed by men.53 In line with this, Sámr understands Óláfr’s order that he is now to follow or accompany Gunnarr, and act in accordance with all the special abilities he is credited with possessing. Óláfr tells Sámr: ’Nú skaltú Gunnari fylgja ok vera honum slíkr sem þú mátt’ [‘Now you must accompany Gunnarr and be to him such as you are able’] and Sámr ‘gekk þegar at Gunnari ok lagðisk niðr fyrir fœtr honum’ [‘went at once to Gunnarr and lay himself down at his feet’].54 In these lines, it is Sámr’s movement from Óláfr to Gunnarr that signals the changing relationship between the men and the animal, rather than solely Óláfr’s desire to give Gunnarr a gift. Not only does Óláfr acknowledge Sámr’s remarkable attributes in this statement, but both he and Sámr indicate an understanding of human speech on the part of the dog – just as Freyfaxi understands Hrafnkell’s command to return to his herd in the episode from Hrafnkels saga discussed above. Sámr’s nature seems to go beyond that of a normal guard-dog who would defend, rather than sacrifice himself, and his ability to know the meaning of loyalty is especially emphasised. Rather than explicitly defending his human partner, Sámr will be trúr (true, faithful)

54 52 53

Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 173. For example, Hávamál sts 6, 10, 11, 79 and Hamðismál, st. 27. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 173.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur to Gunnarr.55 The behaviours and attributes attributed to Sámr in this passage echo those found in medieval encyclopaedic and bestiary texts (for example, the thirteenth-century De Proprietatibus Rerum), especially in the focus on the cleverness and loyalty of dogs, and their willingness to lay down their lives for their masters. However, the master-servant relationship depicted in the bestiary tradition, while apparently how Óláfr relates to Sámr (by ordering him to follow Gunnarr) and how Sámr, at this point, relates to his human partners (by taking a position at Gunnarr’s feet), does not withstand scrutiny in the episode of Sámr’s death, when the relationship is levelled by Gunnarr’s comments and actions.56 Unsurprisingly, given his loyalty and true nature, and his ability to know friend from foe, Sámr is perceived as a dangerous impediment to the success of the men who wish to attack and kill Gunnarr, with his enemies explicitly recognising that ‘skuluð þit Gunnar eigi heim sœkja, því at þat má engi ætla, meðan hundrinn lifir’ [‘you should not attack Gunnarr at home because that may not be considered while the dog lives’].57 Nonetheless, a plan to attack Gunnarr at home is formed – one that relies on the drawing away of Sámr from his place with Gunnarr. His enemies recognise that ‘þeir mundu eigi koma á óvart Gunnari, nema þeir tœki bónda þar á næsta bœ, er Þorkell hét, ok léti hann fara nauðgan með sér at taka hundinn Sám ok fœri hann einn heim á bœinn’ [‘they would not be able to come to Gunnarr without him knowing it, unless they were to take the farmer from the next farm, who was called Þorkell, and make him go under compulsion with them to take the dog Sámr, and he alone would go homewards onto the farm’].58 Given Sámr’s ability to judge the friendship or enmity meant towards Gunnarr on viewing a man, the attackers know that they will need a neighbouring farmer, as a friendly and familiar figure, to approach the dog. In addition, Gunnarr’s enemies know that Sámr will be watching over the home-place, and must therefore be lured away to allow them to proceed with their attack: Traðir váru fyrir ofan garðinn at Hlíðarenda, ok námu þeir þar staðar með flokkinn. Þorkell bóndi gekk heim, ok lá rakkinn á húsum uppi, ok teygir hann hundinn braut með sér í geilar nǫkkurar. Í því sér hundrinn, at þar eru menn fyrir, ok hleypr á hann Þorkel upp ok grípr í nárann;



55



56



57 58

This sets Sámr alongside the horse Kengála, who is also faithful to her human companion (in Grettis saga), and in contrast to the bull Glæsir (from Eyrbyggja saga discussed in ch. 5, pp. 171–2, 202). Evans Tang, ‘Reading Animal-Human Relations’; Richard Barber, Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764: With All the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile (Woodbridge, 1993), p. 72. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 174. Ibid., p. 185.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Ǫnundr ór Trǫllaskógi hjó með ǫxi í hǫfuð hundinum, svá at allt kom í heilann; hundrinn kvað við hátt, svá at þat þótti með ódœmum, ok féll hann dauðr niðr.59 [There were animal-pens at the top of the enclosure at Hlíðarendi, and they stopped there at that place with their band of men. Farmer Þorkell went towards the home. The dog lay up on the house and he enticed the dog away with him into a certain lane. In that moment, the dog saw that there were men in front of him and he leapt up on Þorkell and caught hold of his groin. Ǫnundr from Trǫllaskógr struck with his axe into the dog’s head, so that the blade went into the brain. The dog cried out loudly so that it seemed to them unprecedented, and he fell down dead.]

For the pair (Gunnarr and Sámr) to be ambushed, Sámr must be drawn away from the home, towards the animal-pens where the rest of the men have stopped. The focus on the place of Sámr here is explicit: Sámr’s position on the roof of the farm buildings depicts him as an integral part of Gunnarr’s household-farm and, by luring him away, the attackers not only dispatch a fearsome enemy, but also begin to deconstruct Gunnarr’s home. This deconstruction is continued in Chapter 77 of the saga, when they roll the roof from the house. Notably, Sámr is unleashed in this episode. As seen in Chapter 3 (p. 132), dogs in Grágás are considered without legal protection in such a state, and it may be suggested that the partnership between the outlawed Gunnarr and the unleashed Sámr is further emphasised by their shared lack of legal immunity. In theory, both should be removed from the place of the household-farm, and the inappropriate attachment that both man and canine have to this place in their outlawed state is perhaps the reason for the saga author’s depiction of the dissection of the home, which begins with Sámr’s removal.60 The systematic destruction of the home in these scenes emphasises the necessity of destroying both animal and human elements for the most effective attack upon the home-place (see the destruction of hay discussed in Chapter 5, pp. 185–9). Just as Freyfaxi neighs to communicate with Hrafnkell, when Sámr is killed, he ‘kvað við hátt’ [‘cried out loudly’], and Gunnarr wakes and hears this cry, knowing it is Sámr’s voice he hears. While there are verbs in Old Norse for different animal sounds, the use of kveða is normally restricted to human speech (aside from the bull-calf in Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 63, discussed on p. 199). The use of such a verb, both here and in Eyrbyggja saga, is a deliberate decision on the part of the saga-author and suggests that

59 60

Ibid., pp. 185–6. Evans Tang, ‘Reading Animal-Human Relations’.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur the line between human and animal speech may not have been considered clear-cut. Sámr does not cry out with human words, but the method of communication, and the explicit depiction of this vocalisation as communication, is conveyed in human terms. Gunnarr wakes at Sámr’s cry, and declares: ’Sárt ertú leikinn Sámr fóstri, ok búð svá sé til ætlat, at skammt skyli okkar í meðal’ [‘Painfully are you played with Sámr foster-kin, and it may be intended (to come to pass) that a short time should be between us two’].61 As with the Freyfaxi episode discussed above, the mistreatment of the animal is brought to the forefront of the interaction, and a close relationship indicated by use of the term fóstri. However, Gunnarr’s second statement, while echoing the sense of an ill omen found in multiple animal-human interaction episodes in the Íslendingasögur, also hints at a different aspect of the relationship. Unlike Hrafnkell, Gunnarr does not vow to perform the vengeance due to mistreated foster-kin, but instead alludes to the short time that he sees will lapse between Sámr’s death and his own. The two parts of his speech are not often analysed together, but it can be argued that this comment on the closeness of death and the designation of Sámr as fóstri are connected. As discussed above (pp. 144–5), sworn-brothers in the sagas are two figures who, out of great friendship or in response to a specific event, claim themselves to be bound together; and emphasis often rests on sharing the same fate: ‘eitt skal yfir oss ganga’ [‘one fate shall go over us’].62 When Gunnar says: ‘skammt skyli okkar í meðal’ [‘a short time should be between us two’], he expresses a similar attachment, reinforced by his claim of Sámr as foster-kin, and referring therefore to the obligation between himself and Sámr to share the same fate, as is the duty of sworn-brothers. However, while the Freyfaxi and Sámr episodes can be singled out as remarkable depictions of animal-human relationships, the various motifs and language used to represent the relationships between Gunnarr and Sámr, and Hrafnkell and Freyfaxi, are present in other saga episodes as well. Sámr and Freyfaxi may be the only animals explicitly labelled fóstri in the sagas, but there are other animals presented as enjoying close and communicative relationships with humans. For example, the episodes involving the horse Inni-Krákr, the ox Brandkrossi, and the bull Glæsir, also show animal-human interactions within apparently close and enduring attachments. Of these, Glæsir and Brandkrossi are discussed in the proceeding chapter, while Inni-Krákr is analysed immediately below.



61 62

Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 186. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, pp. 85, 14.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Inni-Krákr The castrated horse, Inni-Krákr, seems to share several features with the depiction of Freyfaxi in Hrafnkels saga, though the former (unsurprisingly) is a more docile animal than the stallion. Inni-Krákr is introduced in Chapter 10 of Fljótsdæla saga: Hun hafði eigi lengi búit, áðr hun ól þann grip með fé sínu, er henni þótti betri en ǫnnur eiga sín jafnmikil. Þat var hestr, er hun kallaði InniKrák, því at hann var inni hvern vetr. Hann var svartr at lit. Lét hun hann gelda snemma.63 [She (Gróa) had not been farming for a long time before she brought up that treasure within her livestock that seemed to her better than others they had equally-sized. It was a horse, which she called Inni-Krákr because he was inside each winter. He was black in colour. She had him gelded early.]64

Like Freyfaxi, Inni-Krákr is a gripr, although unlike Freyfaxi he has been raised by a human figure. The name Inni-Krákr is explained by his being kept inside all winter, although it is not specified whereabouts Inni-Krákr is considered to have dwelt. The fjós (cattle-house) is the only building identified near the farmhouse at Eyvindarár, so it is possible that InniKrákr instead shares a place within the human dwelling. The final part of Inni-Krákr’s name, krákr, meaning crow or raven, is found in the sagas used as an epithet for men, such as Þorleifr krákr in Njáls saga, and the full name of animals, for example a black horse in Ála saga flekks (ch. 18).65 Like all the individual animals named in the Íslendingasögur, Inni-Krákr seems better than any other animal, but this praise is phrased in a way that emphasises the subjective value of the animals. While seeming the best to their owners, the sagas do not state that these animals are objectively better than others, but rather emphasise the subjective nature of animal-human relationships. Close relationships between specific humans and animals seems to have been ambiguously perceived, as we will see below.

63



64



65

Jón Jóhannesson (ed.), ‘Fljótsdæla saga’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. 225–96, at pp. 237–8. Mentions of the castration of horses are rare in the corpus and may be included here to indicate Gróa’s good sense in getting the horse gelded when they were young (and therefore more manageable). It supplies a further point of contrast between Freyfaxi, a stallion who resides in the pastures with his stud-mares, and Inni-Krákr, a gelding who resides with humans within the farm enclosure, if not within the house itself. It is worth noting that the only other reference the author has come across to horse gelding is also related to women, in the mention of a woman called Hlíf hestageldir (horse-gelder) in Landnámabók. Faulkes, Edda, 1998, p. 91.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur Inni-Krákr is used in multiple episodes of Fljótsdæla saga as a riding horse or to pull a sled, which is unusual. No other gripr is used for riding or work without incurring the wrath of the owner, except in one episode from Bjarnar saga (ch. 27) in which Bjǫrn’s farmhand rides the prized stallion, Hvítingr, to get home in a storm. However, as mentioned above, Inni-Krákr’s gelded nature makes him suitable for such activities. In Fljótsdæla saga (ch. 12), Inni-Krákr is used for riding and carries two boys, and in Chapter 13 he is harnessed to a sled that Helgi takes to visit a woman:66 Þá er þeir bræðr hǫfðu tvær nætr heima verit, þá tekr Helgi Inni-Krák ok beitti fyrir sleða. Hann lætr koma húð í sleðann ok kvaddi Grím til ferðar með sér, snúa síðan ofan á ís. Þeir fara út eptir ísinum, allt fyrir Skeggjastaði, snúa til bæjar, láta þar hestinn úti í túni ok kasta heyi fyrir. Þeir bræðr ganga inn í stofu.67 [When the brothers had been two nights at home, then Helgi took InniKrákr and harnessed him in front of a sled. He put a cow hide into the sled and summoned Grímr to journey with him, and then they went over the ice. They went out over the ice all the way to Skeggjastaðr, went to the farm and there let the horse out into the homefield and threw hay in front of him. The brothers then went into the sitting room.]

Helgi takes Inni-Krákr without requesting any permission from Gróa, his owner, which should be an offence; in addition, the horse is harnessed in front of the sled like a usual beast of burden. However, Helgi appears to treat the horse well enough at this point, as when they reach their destination the horse is released from the sled into the tún and provided with hay – although this resource is used without the permission of the householder, again emphasising Helgi’s disregard for the property of others, both animal and vegetable. It is made explicit that Inni-Krákr remains outside in the snow while Helgi and Grímr are welcomed into the stofa. The horse is not permitted to rest inside as he would have done at home, and there is a clear distinction made between the horse outside in the wintry homefield and the two men entering the living room of the house. While Helgi does not ride the horse quite to exhaustion, as Einarr does Freyfaxi in Hrafnkels saga, a level of mistreatment – or less well treatment than InniKrákr would have received at home – is implied throughout the episode. When the two men leave Skeggjastaðr, they do so with Helgi sitting in the sled, and Grímr riding Inni-Krákr. Despite their being pursued, Helgi recognises Inni-Krákr’s sweating and pauses to water the horse:



66 67

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Fljótsdæla saga’, p. 247. Ibid., p. 249.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Fyrir nesit vóru allt vakar. Þar brynndi hirðir nautum sínum. Ok er þeir bræðr kómu at vǫkinni, þá segir Helgi, at þeir mundi brynna hesti sínum, því at honum var heitt. Þá var mjǫk hálfrǫkkvit. Þeir gjǫra svó. Þá mælti Helgi, at þeir munu hlaupa upp í skóginn. Þeir bregða knífum sínum ok kvista viðinn. Helgi bendi ok gjórir sýlt í neðan. Þá bindr Helgi á bak hestinum fram við silann ok niðr undir kvið. Hríslu bindr hann í tagl ok leggr upp tauma ok mælti, at hann skuli fara ofan til Eyvindarár. Hríslunni hrǫkkvir um kríka hestinum, ok hleypr hann því harðara ofan eptir ísunum. Þeir bræðr hlaupa upp í skóginn.68 [In front of the headland were everywhere holes in the ice and a herd of cattle watered themselves there. And when the brothers came to the hole in the ice, then Helgi said that they should water their horse because he was hot. By then the night was fast approaching and they watered their horse. Then Helgi said that they must run up into the wood. They drew their knives and cut a tree, and Helgi bundled the sticks and made a split in the lower end of the bundle. Then Helgi tied the bundle of sticks onto the strap of the harness so that they hung down under the belly (of Inni-Krákr). He bound the twigs into the tail of the horse, let go of the reins, and said that he (Inni-Krákr) should go over to Eyvindarár. The twigs lashed around the groin of the horse, and he ran harder over the ice because of it. The brothers ran up into the wood.]

However, once Inni-Krákr has drunk from the hole in the ice, Helgi ties branches to the horse so that the bundle of sticks hangs down through Inni-Krákr’s legs, seemingly an arrangement designed to make Inni-Krákr run fast without the encouragement of a human driver, though such treatment may be considered as mistreatment. It is in such attire that Inni-Krákr understands Helgi’s command to go to Eyvindarár and returns home: Nǫkkuru fyrri kom Inni-Krákr. En í þessu kom griðkona ór fjósi ok sagði Gró, at Inni-Krákr var kominn heim með undarligan búning. Gróa gengr út ok húskarlar með henni ok taka Inni-Krák ok beita frá sleðanum, brynna ok gefur honum. Síðan leysir hann ór sleðanum rekendina.69 [A little while before Inni-Krákr had come in. And at this moment a household-woman came out of the cow-house and said to Gróa that InniKrákr had come home with extraordinary attire. Gróa went out with the house-servants, and they took Inni-Krákr and unharnessed him from the sled, watered and fed him. Then he loosened the chains from the sled.]

Inni-Krákr knows the way home. He is welcomed, released from his outdoor attire (the sled harness and the twigs tied into his tail) and provided

68 69

Ibid., p. 252. Ibid., p. 254.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur with a meal. Such a scene of hospitality involving an animal is unique in the sagas, and nowhere else are we provided with a description of the care of a horse and the affirmation of their place in the central farm area. While Freyfaxi is also described as a gripr, he is not absorbed into the home in the same way as Inni-Krákr, and Freyfaxi is explicitly sent back to his own household after he has visited Hrafnkell.70 As it is winter at this point in Fljótsdæla saga, Inni-Krákr explicitly resides inside with these human figures, arguably as the most prominent male in Gróa’s household. This episode can be particularly contrasted with the depiction of Freyfaxi in Hrafnkels saga. Like Freyfaxi, Inni-Krákr comes into the homeplace of his own accord and with an unusual appearance. However, unlike Freyfaxi, Inni-Krákr does not announce his own presence, and is depicted as a quiet gelding as opposed to the indignant stallion. Nowhere else is such a gentle animal depicted as a gripr in an animal-human relationship. As mentioned above, it may be suggested that this is an inversion of the prized stallion motif found in many of the sagas, replacing the man and stallion with a woman and her gelding. Gróa does not react in an extreme way to the appearance of Inni-Krákr, but rather appears to accept the (mis) treatment of her animal and welcome him home. This can be compared to Þorgríma’s muted reaction in Harðar saga. When her castrated animal(s) have been mistreated, she does not vow revenge for it, but rather simply comments on events and takes no further action: ‘Þorgríma hafði sofit ok vaknaði vánu bráðara ok sá út; hon leit uxana váta ok mælti þá: “Hart hefir yðr nú boðit verit, en laust heldu garparnir nú.“’ [‘Þorgríma had been sleeping, and in a short time she woke and looked out. She sought the wet oxen. And said then: “You have now been badly treated, but the bold ones held onto you loosely now”’].71 In this way, Gróa and Þorgríma seem to provide muted or restrained versions of the male animal-human relationships presented in the sagas, perhaps indicating a specific style of depicting relationships between women and animals in these texts (although given the relative scarcity of depictions of such relationships it is difficult to draw conclusions). Primarily, women’s relationships with domestic animals are seen in a paranormal context, in which an animal, or animal form, is used to provide protective services for the household (for example in Gull-Þóris saga, chs 10, 15, 17; Harðar saga, ch. 26; and Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 20) – yet the relationship depicted here between Gróa and Inni-Krákr seems to have much more in common with the relationships of Freyfaxi and Sámr than with a paranormal context.



70 71

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Hrafnkels saga’, p. 104. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, ‘Harðar saga Grímkelssonar’, pp. 75–6.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Animal-human relationships: affective interactions Episodes such as these demonstrate that the sagas can depict close, enduring, and communicative relationships between animals and humans. However, while the textual representations of such relationships share many similar features across sagas, they do not follow a uniform pattern. Moreover, the use of fóstri, carrying connotations of fictive kinship, does not necessarily indicate the closest animal-human relationships depicted in the sagas. The animal-human relationships in the Íslendingasögur may be based on a system of value that is specific to the human figure involved. While both Hrafnkell and Gróa value their horses, an indication is given in their respective sagas that such a valuation is not universally accepted. Inni-Krákr is not treated in a markedly special way by Helgi, and Freyfaxi is killed by Hrafnkell’s enemies. In contrast, the dog Sámr seems to be universally admired, but the depiction of Sámr appears to be unique in the Íslendingasögur, and individual attachment to an animal is often presented instead as an ambivalent characteristic of a person. This ambivalence towards those who embrace close relationships with animals is perhaps most emphatically presented in Grettis saga. In this well-studied saga, we find the animal-appreciating Ásmundr pitched against his bemused and angry son, Grettir, who in his youth does not understand his father’s attachment to animals, resulting in one of the most famous and horrifying depictions of animal mutilation in the Íslendingasögur.

Grettir’s Animal Relations The final section of this chapter considers the development of Grettir Ásmundarson’s character in Grettis saga, in relation to his interactions with certain domestic animals. While Grettir originally rejects the home-place, and revolts against his father’s trust in animals through mistreatment, killing, and abuse of domestic animals, by the time of his death on Drangey he explicitly enjoys the companionship of a single ram. The apparent development of Grettir’s ability to form positive relationships with animals is emphasised alongside his increasingly ‘animal’ habitation places, suggesting that Grettir’s ability to interact positively with certain animals develops in part through establishing his home in animal places. Violence towards animals In his youth, Grettir commits four antagonistic acts towards the household: one assault of his father, and two mutilations and one round of killings of his animals. These events have been alternatively perceived as demonstrating Grettir’s cruelty of character, or as acts of deflected anger 164

Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur or feud in response to the abuse of Grettir by his father.72 Such psychological interpretations of Grettir’s character have emphasised the toxic nature of the father-son relationship presented between Ásmundr and Grettir, but have hardly focussed on the objects and implements of these violent acts.73 Grettir’s interactions with animals in general are often overlooked in discussions of the saga, and while Ranković has noted Grettir’s later interactions with sheep, this is only to note that Grettir cannot be a sadist towards animals because he does not kill the ewe or the ram. Nonetheless, Ranković suggests that the animals crippled, killed, and mutilated by Grettir in his youth should be viewed as victims in an ongoing battle between Grettir and Ásmundr in which the father vindictively attempts to wear down Grettir’s spirit with unsuitable tasks.74 As I shall demonstrate below, such an analysis does not take into account the household-farm context of Grettir’s youth. By paying close attention to the animal-­human context of these episodes, Grettir’s violence towards animals and the actions of his father, Ásmundr, can be read in an alternate way that emphasises the differences between the two men involved, their contrasting views of strength, and contrary attitudes to the animals that co-create and maintain the home-place. Until he is ten years old, Grettir has no specific role on the farm. At ten, his position in the household-farm relies on him being useful, and his father tells him he shall ‘gæta heimgása minna’ [‘guard my home-geese’].75 As we shall see in Chapter 5 (p. 186), we find the verb gæta used also to refer to guarding haystacks as well as animals, and it can also be translated as ‘look after’ or ‘attend to’, indicating relations of care and protection, explicitly associated here with the home through the heimprefix on heimgása. Unfortunately for the heimgæss, the young Grettir is inclined to offer neither care nor protection for these animals, and in an act of revolt against the farm he kills some of the birds and breaks the wings of the others:



72

75 73 74

Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘The Skald Sagas as a Genre: Definitions and Typical Features’, in Russell Poole (ed.), Skaldsagas: Text Vocation and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets (Berlin, 2001), pp. 25–49, at p. 36; Russell Poole, ‘Myth, Psychology, and Society in Grettis saga’, Alvíssmál, 11 (2004), pp. 3–16, at pp. 10, 11; Slavica Ranković, ‘Grettir the Deep: Traditional Referentiality and Characterisation in the Islendingasögur’, in Agneta Ney, Henrik Williams, and Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (eds), Á Austrvega – Saga and East Scandinavia: Preprint Papers of the 14th International Saga Conference Uppsala, 9th–15th August 2009 (Gävle, 2009), pp. 795–801, at p. 798. Poole, ‘Myth, Psychology, and Society in Grettis saga’, p. 11. Ranković, ‘Grettir the Deep’, p. 798. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 37. For discussion of heimgæss see p. 101 above.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Eigi leið langt, áðr honum þóttu þær heldr bágrækar, en kjúklingar seinfœrir. Honum gerði mjǫk hermt við þessu, því at hann var lítill skapdeildarmaðr. Nǫkkuru síðar fundu fǫrumenn kjúklinga dauða úti ok heimgæss vængbrotnar; þetta var um haustit. Ásmundi líkaði stórilla ok spurði, hvárt Grettir hefði drepit fuglana.76 [It was not long before they (the geese) seemed to him rather difficult to drive, and the chickens slow. He became very angry with them because he was a man with little mastery of his own temper. A short time later, vagrants found the chickens dead outside and the home-geese broken-­ winged. That was in the autumn. Ásmundr greatly disliked this and asked whether Grettir had killed the birds.

Grettir objects to the difficulty he finds in managing the birds, and it has been suggested that this job is a demeaning task for him, which would explain his violent reaction.77 However, the evidence for this seems to be solely Grettir’s reaction to the job. The text itself appears to cast judgement on Grettir for losing his temper with the animals, rather than Ásmundr for setting the task, and Ásmundr appears to be testing his son’s ability to undertake farm work and interact productively with animals – a test that Grettir fails and continues to fail in his youth. Inability to control his temper is explicitly marked out as a flaw in the ten-year-old Grettir. He is evidently inexperienced at effective animal-­ human relations. A similar example of a young man mutilating animals is found in Valla-Ljóts saga (ch. 1). In this episode, Halli is warned by his mother not to lose his temper with animals when he is sent to fetch a piglet from his future stepfather.78 However, when Halli reaches the farm, his mother’s suitor, Torfi, is busy, and refuses to fetch the animal for him. He gives Halli permission and encouragement to collect the piglet himself, but, like Grettir, Halli is reluctant to get close to the animals. He claims it is not formannligt (leader-like) to go í saur (through mud) to reach the sow; though Halli does clarify this unsuitability, suggesting it rests partly on this being a farm of ókunnum mǫnnum (unknown men, strangers), which may indicate that Halli would have been inclined to adopt such work had he been at home, rather than on Torfi’s farm.79 Nonetheless, Torfi goads Halli for his reluctance to encounter the sow, suggesting he does not consider himself as brave as the animal, and in reaction Halli completes the task in an excessively violent manner: ‘hann hljóp at durunum ok snaraði inn, ok þegar hjó hann af henni ranann, tók grísinn ok gekk út’ [‘he ran to the 78 76 77



79

Ibid. Poole, ‘Myth, Psychology, and Society in Grettis saga’, pp. 10–11. Jonas Kristjánsson (ed.), ‘Valla-Ljóts saga’, in Eyfirðinga Sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1956), pp. 230–60, at p. 235. Ibid.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur doorway and flung himself in, and at once he cut the snout from her, took the piglet and went out’].80 Halli’s anger seems partly at the insult Torfi gives him, and partly at the place he must venture into to get the piglet and the proximity he must experience with the sow. For Torfi, such an action does not seem problematic, though, like Ásmundr, Torfi may be testing Halli’s ability to interact with animals. If this is the case, Halli fails spectacularly, and kills Torfi for his goading. While the purpose of these episodes is clearly to show the boisterous nature of these children, the decision to do so through violence against animals is worth noting. As demonstrated throughout this book, there is a clear divide presented between figures who can interact positively with animals, and those who cannot. The apparent designation of certain animals, their actions and their spaces as hated for some and perfectly acceptable for others complicates the spatial-functional analysis conducted in Chapter 2: evidently the use and perception of space would have relied also on concepts less examinable than structural remains, such as ideas of class, capability, and individual preference. In the heimgæss episode from Grettis saga, it seems the movement of the birds, rather than their essential nature as birds, is the primary reason for Grettir’s displeasure, and the specific mutilations and killings reflect his anger at the personal agency of these animals. By breaking the wings of the geese, Grettir grounds the birds in a space that he can control, reducing their scope for activity; and he kills the chickens for being too slow. He refuses to move at the pace of the animals. Vagrants, figures who wander from farm to farm, find the birds dead and mutilated, suggesting they have been placed outside of the farm enclosure, and that Grettir wished to eject the birds from the central farm area. When Ásmundr vows that Grettir shall no longer look after the geese, Grettir responds with a proverb: ‘vinr er sá annars, er ills varnar’ [‘that one is a friend of another who withholds evil from them’].81 While one interpretation would suggest that Ásmundr is a friend of Grettir to keep this evil (the work) away from him, the line can also be interpreted in a way that positions Ásmundr into a circle of friendship with the birds: Ásmundr is a friend of the geese withholding Grettir from them. Such proverbial sayings often seem to act as expressions of ethics in the Íslendingasögur, when voiced by reputable characters.82 In contrast, when put into the mouths

80



81 82

Ibid. Oddly enough, we find the cutting of the snout in a bear-hunting episode in Víga-Glúms saga (ch. 3) in which Eyjólfr cuts the snout from a young bear and takes it as proof of his courage. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 38. Richard L. Harris, ‘In the Beginning Was the Proverb: Communal Wisdom and Individual Deeds in the Íslendingasögur’ (presented at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2013); Richard L. Harris,

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland of problematic characters, like Grettir, these sayings may be used by the compiler of the saga to provide a critique of the wisdom contained within, or at least a humorous subversion of contemporary expectations; in this case, around friendship.83 This saying, as well as the proverb used by Grettir to mock Ásmundr for his ignorance of Kengála’s mutilation (p. 175 below), may highlight contemporary humour towards animal-human friendships. The phrase, humorous or not, highlights the stark difference between Grettir’s view of animal-human interactions and his father’s; and the relationship between Ásmundr and the geese is emphatically a friendship with which Grettir does not engage. Instead, Grettir is primarily concerned with what is hentr (fitting) for him, and he does not consider the care of animals such as geese and chickens to be such an activity. The term he uses to describe such work is lǫðrmannligt verk (mean, despicable work), and this adverb is found only in Grettis saga.84 If the first component of this word is taken as lǫðr or lauðr (froth or soap), from lǫdra or lauðra (to foam, to be dripping wet), it may be suggested that this term refers to the work of dripping men, or froth-men, with an emphasis on washing; alternatively, the verb can refer to dripping with blood, perhaps with connotations of injury and defeat rather than victory.85 The former etymology, with its connotations of washing, places the action within the sphere of domestic labour, linking it with the concepts of heimaelskr (home-loving, afraid to leave home) and therefore cowardice. Grettir believes that only by moving beyond the home will he gain glory and renown, so anything that ties him too closely to the home is negatively perceived. Ásmundr’s decree that Grettir shall strjúka (brush) his back by the fire, as his next task after the mutilation of the geese, is likewise described by the boy as lǫðrmannligt (cowardly).86 Ásmundr and Grettir appear to fundamentally disagree on what constitutes strength. As Grettir kills and cripples the birds because of his inability to control his temper, the implication is given that guarding the home-geese should have been a job requiring strength of character. When Grettir shows himself incapable of exercising such strength, Ásmundr gives him the more shameful job of scratching his back by the fire. This difference of opinion provides context for Ásmundr’s fireside goading of



83 84



85 86

‘On the Paroemial Delineation of Character in Grettis saga’ (presented at the 6th Annual Fiske Conference on Medieval Icelandic Studies, Cornell University, 2011). Harris, ‘On the Paroemial Delineation of Character’. 451 The related lǫðrmenni (wretches, despicable men) is found in Sǫrla saga sterka (ch. 16), a legendary saga found only in seventeenth-century paper manuscripts. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, pp. 374, 404. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 38.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur Grettir in which he calls him mannskræfan (miserable coward) and states that there is no dugr (strength of character, virtue) in him.87 In the back-­ scratching episode, Ásmundr provokes Grettir for not having the strength to resist harming the animals previously placed into his care. While the back-scratching does not involve animals, it is placed into the context of animal-human interactions, as Grettir is to brush his father’s back in the place where the women work with wool; and on seeing a wool-comb on the bench, he ‘tekr upp kambinn ok lætr ganga ofan eptir baki Ásmundar’ [‘took up the comb and drew it down over Ásmundr’s back’].88 The scraping of his father’s skin with the wool-comb foreshadows the mutilation of the horse, Kengála, that will follow, and links Ásmundr with another animal: the sheep. In this display of hard-handed physical strength that humiliates Ásmundr, Grettir issues a challenge to his father. He shows Ásmundr the sort of strength he possesses, directing it towards the animal substitute that Ásmundr has become by his use of the wool-comb. However, despite Grettir’s antagonistic actions towards him and his animals, Ásmundr persists in providing a final animal-related task. He sets Grettir to watch over his horses, which seems a risky venture, given Grettir’s previous actions. Ásmundr’s possible motivations for this are unstated in the text, but if this action is considered within the animal contexts discussed in this book, an explanation may be proposed. The care of stallions appears to be a positive activity in the Íslendingasögur, and men are portrayed as visiting their stallions, combing their manes, and feeding them hay.89 The laws also emphasise the importance of caring for another man’s horses.90 Looking after stallions, then, may be considered a task worthy of a saga hero, and the care of horses in general was certainly a key part of the work of the household-farm. If Ásmundr is trying to instruct Grettir in appropriate animal-human relations, it would make sense to ask him to look after the horses and show Ásmundr willing to place a great amount of trust in Grettir, despite his antagonist behaviour towards farming thus far. While Grettir is not asked to associate with stallions, but primarily with the mare, Kengála, this horse has a special value to Ásmundr, belief in which he may be attempting to encourage in his son:

89 87 88



90

Ibid. Ibid. Jóhannes Halldórsson (ed.), ‘Finnboga saga’, in Kjalnesinga saga (Reykjavík, 1959), pp. 251–340, at p. 292; Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, ‘Bjarnar saga’, p. 268; Björn Sigfússon (ed.), ‘Reykdæla saga ok Víga-Skútu’, in Ljósvetninga Saga (Reykjavík, 1940), pp. 148–243, at p. 190. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 169, 202; Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás I, p. 86.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland ‘Þá skaltu svá at fara,’ sagði Ásmundr, ’sem ek býð þér. Hryssa á ek bleikálótta, er ek kalla Kengálu; hon er svá vís at um veðráttu ok vatnagang, at þat mun aldri bresta, at þá mun hríð eptir koma, ef hon vill eigi á jǫrð ganga. Þá skaltu byrgja í húsi hrossin, en halda þeim norðr á hálsinn, þegar er vetr leggr á;’91 [‘Then you shall do such,’ said Ásmundr, ‘as I bid you. I own a duncoloured horse with a dark stripe down her back, who I call Kengála. She is so wise concerning the weather and the fall of rain that a storm will never fail to come if she no longer wants to walk on the earth. Then you shall shut the horses in the stable, and keep them north of the ridge once winter sets in.’]

By setting Grettir to care for the horses, his father gives him a chance to demonstrate his strength to the farm, that is, proper virtuous strength such as he has failed to show so far. In addition, by forcing Grettir to work with Kengála, Ásmundr attempts to show Grettir how useful animals can be, as Ásmundr clearly values Kengála and her knowledge of the weather. Such careful directions given by Ásmundr to his son not only instruct Grettir in reading animals but provide the opportunity for Grettir and Kengála to bond and develop the trust that is presented between Ásmundr and Kengála. It has been suggested that the undertaking of farming-related tasks was a method by which children would be socialised into the farming community in medieval Iceland, so Ásmundr’s requests are not unreasonable, but Grettir sadly fails to take advantage of this educational opportunity.92 He is charged to geyma hrossa, which is most often translated as ‘watch the horses’, but the verb geyma also has the meaning of heeding something. While Grettir agrees to watch the horses, Ásmundr’s instructions make it very clear that he is charged instead with heeding them and respecting Kengála’s actions. Grettir is not in control in this scenario and is expected to be directed by the horses rather than herd them. Specifically, he is to be controlled by Kengála: a control that he bears with much ill-will. Kengála, like many of the individualised animals discussed in this chapter, is distinguished by her appearance and her intuition and personality. She is clearly a valued horse for both wisdom and production of outstanding stallions, as Grettir’s brother, Atli, uses Kengála’s son as his fighting stallion later in the saga (ch. 29). Kengála’s wisdom, being able to predict the weather, is of an environmental nature, incredibly

91 92

Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, pp. 39–40. Bernadette McCooey, ‘Gender, Age and Farm Labour in Medieval Iceland’ (presented at BAHS Postgraduate and Early Career Workshop, University of Nottingham, 3 May 2017).

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur valuable to farming, and especially farming in Iceland.93 The depiction of Kengála may in some ways be compared to modern discussions of specific sheep populations in Iceland: the so-called leader-sheep (ON forystusauðr, forystugeldingr), which in historical and modern Icelandic farming have been bred with specific behavioural traits advantageous to livestock management in the Icelandic environment.94 These sheep are known for their intelligence, their non-white colouring, and their ability to ‘foresee climatic events’.95 While these sheep were valued for their ability to lead their flocks homewards in inclement weather, and therefore for their possession of a sense of the home-place, it is their ability to appear to predict the weather that raises the strongest link with Kengála. This is a feature of animal behaviour mentioned nowhere else in the sagas, although it may be the implication behind Spámaðr the ox discussed below (p. 179). The association of non-white colouring with leader-sheep, while most likely a practical feature allowing them to be identified and followed in the snow, may indicate an association between coloured animals and intelligence in Icelandic agro-pastoral tradition; and it is evident from the sagas that the colouring of animals is important and almost always included in their descriptions.96 It should, however, be mentioned that the only forystugeldingr mentioned by name in the Íslendingasögur is Fleygir in Heiðarvíga saga (ch. 18), about whom neither colour nor perception is emphasised.97 The relationship presented between Ásmundr and Kengála, between man and mare, is one that benefits both parties. By correctly interpreting the changing weather, Kengála assists Ásmundr not only in caring for the horses, but in all his farming ventures. As well as ‘wise’, the term víss, used to describe Kengála, can also mean ‘certain’ and by implication



It is interesting that the ascription to animals of the ability to sense rain is included in some bestiary accounts of oxen, for example: Barber, Bestiary, p. 89. 94 Stefan Aðalsteinsson, ‘Origin and Conservation of Farm Animal Populations in Iceland’, Zeitschrift Für Tierzüchtung Und Züchtungsbiologie, 98:4 (1981), 258–64; Ólafur R. Dýrmundsson, ‘Leadersheep: The Unique Strain of Iceland Sheep’, Animal Genetic Resources Information Bulletin (d’Information Sur Les Ressources Genetiques Animales Boletin de Informacion Sobre Recursos Geneticos Animale), 32 (2002), 45–8, at p. 46. 95 Ólafur R. Dýrmundsson, ‘Leadersheep’, pp. 45, 46; Ásgeir Jónsson, Forystufé (Reykjavík, 1953), p. 336; Michael L. Ryder, Sheep and Man (London, 1983), p. 546. 96 See, for example, Freyfaxi, Brandkrossi, Hǫsmagi, Glæsir, and Mókolla in this book. Elsewhere the colour of horses is emphasised in Bjarnar saga (ch. 10), Víglundar saga (chs 8–9), and Njáls saga (ch. 52), oxen in Ljósvetninga saga (ch. 7) and Víglundar saga (ch. 8), and a bull in Bolla þáttr Bollasonar, but this list is not exhaustive. 97 Hǫrðr makes use of forystusauðar in Harðar saga (ch. 29) to transport a flock of stolen sheep through a mountain pass in the snow, but these are not named. 93

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland trustworthy.98 If Kengála is so reliable that she will always assist Ásmundr through her actions, she is valuable indeed, and can be placed alongside the trúr nature of Sámr the dog discussed above. In verse 10 in Grettis saga, responding to the mutilation of his horse, Ásmundr refers to Kengála as traustr, ‘trusty’, ‘safe’, or ‘strong’, with the specific notion of protection.99 Like Sámr, Kengála is true to her human owner, and she can be relied upon to protect Ásmundr and the farm – though from the weather, rather than intruders. It is implied that Grettir had expected something quite different from his horse-watching. He says that this work will be ‘kalt verk ok karlmannligt’ [‘cold and manly work’], which places it in direct contrast to the emasculating or cowardly lǫðrmannligt verk he perceived his earlier tasks to have been.100 However, this statement is expressed before his father provides him with the details of the assignment, and he finds the actual task to be unpalatable: Þá gerði á kulda mikla með snjóvum ok illt til jarða. Grettir var lítt settr at klæðum, en maðr lítt harðnaðr; tók hann nú at kala, en Kengála stóð á, þar sem mest var svæðit, í hverju illviðri; aldri kom hon svá snimma í haga, at hon myndi heim ganga fyrir dagsetr.101 [Then it became greatly cold with snow and bad on the earth. Grettir was poorly furnished with clothes and a little hardened man. He began to freeze, but Kengála stood out in the place where it was the most open in all the bad weather. She never came so early into the pasture that she would go home before nightfall.]

The horses explicitly reside outside of the farm enclosure, and yet while it takes him outside of the home, this job is not to Grettir’s liking, and his resentment towards Kengála quickly builds. In contrast to Óláfr in Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings, who emphatically does not feel the cold and always wears only a shirt, Grettir’s inexperience of inclement weather and lack of substantial attire causes him to freeze.102 Kengála appears to have little regard for her human watcher, though it may be suggested that she, like Ásmundr, is attempting to educate or test Grettir. Perhaps, like Freyfaxi, Kengála is being deliberately provocative. In both cases, it



98 99

102 100 101

Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 718. Ibid., p. 639; Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 41. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 39. Ibid., p. 40. Paul Durrenberger and Dorothy Durrenberger (trans.), The Saga of Hávarður of Ísafjörður (Enfield Lock, Middlesex, 1996), p. 45. Óláfr Hávarðsson is also a skilled sheep-herder.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur can be suggested that the horse is aware of the human activity around them and actively responsive to it. As in the episode involving the heimgæss, Grettir is placed at the disposal of the animal, forced to match the pace of his living to their movements. Just as with the geese, Kengála’s movements and actions are the source of Grettir’s anger towards her, and her body pays the price for her agency: Grettir hugsar þá, at hann skal gera eitthvert þat bellibragð, at Kengálu yrði goldit fyrir útiganginn. Þat var einn morgun snimma, at Grettir kom til hrossahúss, lýkr upp, ok stóð Kengála fyrir stalli, því at þótt hrossum væri fóðr gefit, þeim er með henni váru, þá hafði hon þat ein. Nú fór Grettir upp á bak henni; hann hafði hvassan kníf í hendi ok rekr á um þverar herðar Kengálu ok lætr svá ganga aptr tveim megin hryggjar. Hrossit bregðr nú hart við, því at þat var feitt ok fælit, eyss svá, at hófarnir brustu í veggjunum. Grettir féll af baki, ok er hann komsk á fœtr, leitar hann til bakferðar.103 [Grettir thought then that he should do some sly trick so that Kengála was repaid for her out-goings. It was early one morning, when Grettir came to the stable, opened it, and Kengála stood in front of a stall – because even though the horses were given fodder, both Kengála and those horses who were with her, she ate it alone. Now Grettir went up on her back. He had a sharp knife in his hand and drove it around the side of Kengála’s shoulders, dragging it down the two sides of her back. Now the horse suddenly bucked hard because she was fat and fearful, and she kicked out with her hind legs in such a way that the hooves burst against the walls. Grettir fell from her back, but when he came to his feet he sought to mount her again.]

The past participle goldit, translated here as ‘repaid’, is a form of the verb gjalda often used in a legal context, meaning to make a legal payment or fulfil an obligation. Gjalda specifically suggests a payment of compensation to an injured party on the part of the wrongdoer that admits the legal culpability of the payer.104 However, if this verb is part of the language of feud and compensation, here the concept is subverted, as Kengála receives violent, rather than beneficial, compensation. On the one hand, the use of gjalda suggests that Grettir should be considered liable for blame in the interaction; on the other, the payment is given to Kengála explicitly for her actions, and not because of Grettir’s. Grettir has yet to commit an injury against her. It is uncertain in this passage who should be perceived as the wrongdoer: Grettir perceives Kengála as a frustrating figure who deserves Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 40. Miller, Hrafnkel Or the Ambiguities, p. 90; Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 326.

103 104

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland to be punished, while the reader or listener of the saga may perceive Grettir’s violence to be the wrong course of action. The subverted use of gjalda in this episode deliberately conveys a sense of uncertainty in the correct behaviour in this exchange, which may permit the saga episode to appeal both to those receivers of the saga who agree with Grettir, and to those who disapprove of his actions. There was certainly no one way to interact with domestic animals in medieval Iceland, so it is plausible that a storyteller would attempt to appeal to multiple attitudes. In either case, the use of gjalda pushes the episode into the legal sphere of human social interactions, just as Freyfaxi’s actions and death discussed above can be read as inclusion within and engagement with human legal practice on the part of the horse.105 Descriptions of acts of violence in the Íslendingasögur are often detailed and precise, whether involving humans or animals. As previously discussed in this chapter, the deaths of Sámr and Freyfaxi are physically elaborate, and such detailed descriptions are also found in acts of mutilation or injury in horse-fights.106 In this episode, after ‘viðreign in snarpasta’ [‘the roughest dealings’], Grettir ‘flær af henni alla baklengjuna aptr á lend’ [‘flays from her all the back strip of her hide back to the rump’] and drives the horses out into the pasture.107 Such mutilation causes Kengála to return to the shelter of the hús before midday, signalling a victory for Grettir, as he has gained the control over Kengála that had previously been denied him. After her mutilation, the saga states that ‘eigi vildi Kengála bíta nema til baksins’ [‘Kengála wanted nothing but to bite at her back’]: a description of a distressed and helpless animal rooted in observable animal behaviour.108 Such a detail included in this description suggests the saga-author had a careful intention to depict the animal in a recognisable way, which is notable when placed alongside the description of Kengála’s wisdom: perhaps both were seen as plausible features to find in a horse, just as the detailed description of Freyfaxi’s angry behaviour is placed alongside his visit to and communication with Hrafnkell. When Kengála returns to the stable early, Ásmundr assumes ‘at þá myndi skammt til hríðar, er hrossin vildu eigi á standa í þvílíku veðri’ [‘there would shortly be a storm because the horse wanted not to stand in such weather’], causing Grettir to gloat over what he sees as Ásmundr’s

105 106



107 108

Evans Tang and Ruiter, ‘Exploring Animals as Agents’. Jóhannes Halldórsson (ed.), ‘Víglundar saga’, in Kjalnesinga saga (Reykjavík, 1959), pp. 63–116, at pp. 79–80; Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Brennu-Njáls saga, pp. 150–1. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, pp. 40–1. Ibid. Animals, when in pain, often turn their head from side to side as if looking at their back: Andrew F. Fraser, Farm Animal Behaviour (London, 1974), p. 169.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur misplaced faith, telling his father: ’Skýzk þeim mǫrgum vísdómrinn, er betri ván er at’ [‘the wisdom is overlooked by the many, when better is expected’].109 Grettir laughs at Ásmundr’s expectation of Kengála’s ability that has caused him to overlook the truth of the matter: that the horse has returned because of her injury.110 Grettir’s words may suggest that his father overlooks the intelligent course of action because he believes it is better to trust in Kengála than other forms of knowledge, and use of the proverb indicates Grettir believes this to be a wider failing of his society, with ‘many’ overlooking the wisest courses of action as a result of their faith in animals.111 Believing Ásmundr deceived by belief in Kengála’s paranormal skill, Grettir may attempt through this trick to expose the wisdom of animals as reliant on their bodies. As Grettir is explicitly not a knowledgeable man about animals, it may have seemed initially to him that Kengála’s skill in determining the weather was a paranormal ability, which had since been revealed to him as a more mundane skill rooted in her body and awareness of her environment. However, the animal body seems to be understood by Ásmundr as the source of the wisdom or intelligence of animals, as he says to Kengála: ’þú munt sízt bregðask at bakinu, Bleikála’ [‘you will least fail with regards to your back, Bleikála’], firmly placing his faith in the body of the horse as the medium through which she determines the weather (as we have no references to Kengála being used for riding).112 However, for Grettir, relying on a horse is a terrible idea. He does not believe that animals are worth listening to, and Ásmundr is presented as a strange figure for doing so. Like many of the animal-human interactions discussed above, the value of the animal is subjective to a specific human figure. There is also a likely gender dimension to Grettir’s violence. His assertation that: ‘en illt þykki mér at treysta merinni, því at þat veit ek engan fyrr gǫrt hafa’ [‘it seems bad to me to trust in the mare, because I know none who have previously done so’] suggests that his mistrust of his father’s practice is partly a response to Ásmundr’s specific trust in a mare, rather than a stallion.113 Grettir’s sense 111 109 110



112



113

Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 41. Harris, ‘On the Paroemial Delineation of Character’. See Chapter 3 (pp. 133–4) for the prohibition of the apparently pre-Christian habit of putting more faith in some livestock than others. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 41. The name Bleikála, given here instead of Kengála, is a colour-name combining bleikr (dun-coloured) with áll, the coloured stripe on the back of a horse: Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 43; Jan de Vries, Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Leiden, 1977). Kingála or Kengála can be translated as ‘bent-striped’, from kengr (bent, arch, horseshoe-bent metal): Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 335; ‘kengála’, n.d. [accessed 24 February 2017]. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 39.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland of masculine worth might have been placated had he been charged with attending to a fighting stallion. Remorse However, despite Grettir’s violence towards female animals in his youth, his encounter with a ewe in Chapter 61 is conducted rather differently. At this point in the narrative, Grettir is an outlaw. He has been forced to seek a home outside of society and survives by stealing the animals of others. Unsurprisingly then, the outlaw Grettir’s discovery of the hidden valley Þórisdalr is distinguished by the superlative quality of the sheep available for the taking: Á lítil féll eptir dalnum ok sléttar eyrar báðum megin. Lítill var þar sólargangr, en þat þótti honum ótal, hvé margr sauðr þar var í dalnum; þat fé var miklu betra ok feitara en hann hefði þvílíkt sét. Grettir bjósk nú þar um ok gerði sér skála af þeim viði, sem hann fekk þar til. Tók hann sér nú sauði til matar; var þar betri einn sauðr til niðrlags en tveir annars staðar.114 [A little river fell through the valley and there were flat islands on either side. It was early in the day when it seemed to him uncountable how many sheep there were in the valley, and these sheep were greatly better and fatter than he had ever seen. Grettir now dwelt around there and made his house from the wood that he procured. He slaughtered many sheep. In this place, one sheep was better in the slaughtering than two from another place.]

For an outlaw, this constitutes a good place. Grettir can make his own dwelling from the wood and has his pick of the best sheep he has ever seen. However, while the sheep are initially described in terms of their tasty appearance, and the bountiful composition of their bodies, it is here that Grettir appears to develop empathy for the mother of a lamb he has slaughtered: En ær mókollótt var þar með dilki, sú er honum þótti mest afbragð í vera fyrir vaxtar sakar. Var honum forvitni á at taka dilkinn, ok svá gerði hann ok skar síðan dilkinn; hálf vætt mǫrs var í dilkinum, en hann var þó ǫllu betri. En er Mókolla missti dilks síns, fór hon upp á skála Grettis hverja nótt ok jarmaði, svá at hann mátti enga nótt sofa; þess iðraðisk hann mest, er hann hafði dilkinn skorit, fyrir ónáðum hennar.115



114 115

Ibid., pp. 199–200. Ibid.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur [But a ewe with a dusky head was there with a sucking-lamb, and that ewe seemed to him most excellent with respect to stature. It was to him a matter of curiosity to take the lamb, and so he did and afterwards slaughtered the lamb: half of the weight of the lamb was suet, and it was even better than all the others. But when Mókolla missed her lamb, she went up on the roof of Grettir’s hut each night and bleated so that he was unable to sleep. This he repented most, that he had slaughtered the lamb, because of her unrest.]

In this passage, we see Grettir regretting an act of violence towards an animal. While the lamb is described with eating in mind, this stands in direct contrast to the introduction of the ewe, Mókolla, who is introduced like other valuable animals in the sagas, with her colouring and outer appearance emphasised. The text refers to her as Mókolla (dark-head) and describes her vǫxtr (stature); the opening descriptions of male characters in sagas often contain vǫxtr used in the same way.116 While the saga does not show Grettir communicating with the ewe, and he is not explicitly depicted bestowing the name upon the animal, the use of a name by the saga-author echoes the relationship between Ásmundr and Kengála demonstrated earlier in the saga and may indicate Grettir’s developing capacity for positive relationships with certain animals. The ewe elicits a specific emotional response from Grettir. The verb iðrask (to rue, repent of something), used of Grettir’s feelings towards the killing of the lamb, is the reflexive form of iðra, which means ‘to be inwardly moved by something’ – a verb suggestive of deep feeling, used often in the Icelandic homilies, the Icelandic Old Testament book Stjórn, Biskupasögur, and the Old Norse saints’ lives.117 Such usage suggests it may be strongly associated with repentance on a spiritual level, rather than simply regret for an action that has caused inconvenience to a person, and shows Grettir experiencing a moment of self-reflection, and consideration of his actions. The distress of the ewe may remind Grettir of his own mother, who has lost her son to outlawry. Viewed from the perspective of expected animal behaviour, the actions of the ewe may be considered as plausible but embellished. When separated from the rest of their flock, ewes will emit a high-pitched bleating, and when unable to visually connect with their lamb such vocalisation will become more intense.118 However, it has been suggested that such

116



117 118

For example, see descriptions of Gunnlaugr (ch. 11) and Þorsteinn Egilsson (ch. 1) in Gunnlaugs saga; and the description of Skalla-Grímr (ch. 20) in Egils saga. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 313. Andrew Fisher and Lindsey Matthews, ‘The Social Behaviour of Sheep’, in L. J. Keeling and H. W. Gonyou (eds), Social Behaviour in Farm Animals (Wallingford, 2001), pp. 211–46, at pp. 218, 227.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland bleating will decline after four hours of continuous separation, so the nightly disruption of Grettir’s sleep suggests the naturalistic observation in this episode is exaggerated.119 The actions of Mókolla are therefore portrayed as deliberate. She acts beyond the scope of the maternal instinct of a ewe, and instead consciously tries to disturb the man she knows has taken her child from her. She here becomes a paranormal figure, participating in an educational interaction with Grettir that takes place literally on the roof of Grettir’s makeshift home. In this episode, Grettir is positioned on the outside of society, on the border of the wood and the valley. It is a place of sheep, and by standing on the roof of Grettir’s shelter to express her grief, Mókolla reminds Grettir that he has placed himself into this animal-­realm.120 While the Mókolla-Grettir interaction is a brief episode in the saga, it demonstrates a different sort of animal-human relationship than those Grettir is depicted as experiencing in his youth and indicates the development of Grettir’s ability to interact positively with certain animals. An episode of intense interaction with a sheep also occurs later in the saga, in the last stage of Grettir’s life. This final interaction between Grettir and a domestic animal depicts the ram on Drangey solely in terms of his personality rather than the value of his flesh. Enjoyment Grettir’s occupation of Drangey (ch. 74), a small island off the northern coast of Iceland, sees the outlaws slaughter all but one of the sheep dwelling on the island. Although Grettir’s relationship with animals in general evidently does not change, the sparing of one ram in an otherwise comprehensive slaughtering reaffirms the impression that Grettir does not relate to all sheep purely on a culinary level: Svá er sagt, at þá er Grettir hafði tvá vetr verit í Drangey, þá hǫfðu þeir skorit flest allt sauðfé þat, sem þar hafði verit; en einn hrút létu þeir lifa, svá at getit sé; hann var hǫsmǫgóttr at lit ok hyrndr mjǫk. At honum hendu þeir mikit gaman, því at hann var svá spakr, at hann stóð fyrir úti ok rann eptir þeim, þar sem þeir gengu. Hann gekk heim til skála á kveldin ok gneri hornum sínum við hurðina.121



119 120



121

Fraser, Farm Animal Behaviour, p. 64. The motif of the animal-on-the-roof is sometimes found in negative contexts in the sagas, indicating a concern over the positioning of animals on the home that perhaps reminds humans they have carved their dwelling places out of an environment that is the domain (and food) of these animals. In Njáls saga, the eating of the roof is of particular concern: Einar Ól. Sveinsson, Brennu-­ Njáls saga, p. 195; Evans Tang, ‘Grasbítar’. Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 273.

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur [So it is said, that when Grettir had been two winters on Drangey, then they had slaughtered almost all the sheep that had been there. But they let one ram live, as is spoken of: he was grey-bellied and greatly horned. They took great delight in games with him because he was so wise, and he stood outside of the door and ran after them as they walked about. He went home to the hut in the evening and rubbed his horns against the door.]

Several features of this extract indicate this animal-human relationship is unusual. This ram is allowed to live, when all the other sheep on the island have been slaughtered, and his grey colour and large horns place him alongside paranormally-associated animals in the Íslendingasögur.122 Such a description suggests that this animal should possess special features, and that the use of spakr (wise, tame or gentle) to describe him may be more significant than previous translators have acknowledged. The meaning of spakr as ‘tame’ or ‘gentle’, which is often used in translations of this passage, appears otherwise restricted to religious or biblical texts, only found in Stjórn and Ceciliu saga.123 In the latter, spakr sauðr (gentle sheep) is used as a simile for a servant of God, while Stjórn relates the Old Testament parable of the poor man’s lamb (2 Samuel 12:3), in which ‘þersi alisauðr uar sua spakr at hann aat brauð ok drakk af keri hins fateka mannz’ [‘this home-reared sheep was so gentle that he ate bread and drank from the cup of the poor man’].124 In the Íslendingasögur, spakr is used to mean ‘prophetically wise’, and while it most often describes people of visionary abilities, it is also used about an ox in Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls: ‘ek a uxa æinn xij uetra gamlan þann er ek kalla spamann þuiat hann er spakare en huert naut annat’ [‘I have one ox that is twelve-winters old that I call Spámaðr (prophet) because he is wiser than all other cattle’].125 Here, however, it is likely to pun on the double meaning, as this line follows a dream-vision from one character that suggests a spámaðr will be killed at an upcoming feast: the host attempts to assuage the dreamer’s fears by calling up an ox

122



123 124



125

The Drangey ram is called Hǫsmagi by Grettir’s brother Illugi, a name based on his colouring, like Kengála/Bleikála and Mókolla. Bernard Scudder (trans.), The Saga of Grettir the Strong (London, 2005), p. 168. Carl R. Unger (ed.), ‘Ceciliu saga Meyjur’, in Heilagra Manna Søgur: Fortaellinger Og Legender Om Hellige Maend Og Kvinder (Christiania, 1877), pp. 276–97, at p. 278; Carl R. Unger (ed.), Stjórn. Gammelnorsk Bibelhistorie (Christiania, 1862), p. 516. The full Cecilíu saga line reads ‘ambatt þin þionar þer sem spakr sauðr’ [‘your handmaid serves you as a gentle sheep’]. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 580; Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Carl R. Unger (eds), ‘Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls’, in Flateyjarbok: En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler (Christiania, 1860), pp. 418–21, at p. 419.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland called Spámaðr who can then be slaughtered at the feast.126 However, the idea of a wise animal should not be dismissed completely: this chapter has shown the plausibility of animals possessing intelligence and wisdom in these texts. Just like Mókolla and Kengála, aspects of this ram’s description appear rooted in observable animal behaviour. Sheep are gregarious social animals who become anxious when separated from their flock and the ram’s constant following of the men may show the ram, in the absence of a flock, forming social bonds with these humans.127 This passage presents the ram as a companion to the outlaws, particularly focussed on movement to and from their shelter. Such desire for companionship may be an aspect of human-sheep interaction based in experienced animal behaviour and, by following the outlaws around in a notably subservient role, the ram seems to adopt the outlaws as dominant members of his new flock.128 However, the rubbing of his horns on the door of the outlaws’ shelter is difficult to explain in a similar way, and here we may see an exaggeration of animal behaviour, just as Mókolla’s bleating for a lost lamb was extended beyond its expected duration. The rubbing or knocking of the horns on the door depicts the ram’s desire for inclusion within the home-place of the outlaws.129 It places the ram firmly in contact with the centre of this makeshift home and can be compared to Mókolla’s presence on the roof of Grettir’s shelter. If Mókolla’s rooftop presence emphasises the sheep-place Grettir inhabits at that point in the saga, a similar emphasis may be demonstrated here: Drangey is emphatically an island of sheep that the outlaws have adapted for their own purposes.130 In addition to the rubbing of the horns, the calmness of the ram is an unexpected feature of this animal. While sheep are social creatures, rams are seasonally aggressive animals with whom humans should be careful:

Merrill Kaplan, ‘Prefiguration and the Writing of History in “Þáttr Þiðranda Ok Þórhalls”’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 99: 3 (2000), 379– 94. 127 Fisher and Matthews, ‘The Social Behaviour of Sheep’, p. 218; Fraser, Farm Animal Behaviour, p. 64; Jeffrey Rushen et al., ‘People as Social Actors in the World of Farm Animals’, in L. J. Keeling and H. W. Gonyou (eds), Social Behaviour in Farm Animals (Wallingford, 2001), pp. 353–73, at p. 356. 128 Dale F. Lott and Benjamin L. Hart, ‘Applied Ethology in a Nomadic Cattle Culture’, Applied Animal Ethology, 5:4 (1979), 309–19; Rushen et al., ‘People as Social Actors in the World of Farm Animals’, p. 354. 129 Although rubbing horns against walls or posts is, however, an observable feature of bull behaviour: Fraser, Farm Animal Behaviour, p. 108. 130 The association of outlaw spaces with animal places is seen also in Harðar saga, as Hǫrðr describes Hólm as ‘víðr sem mikit stǫðulgerði’ [‘as wide as a great fence around a milking pen’]: Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, ‘Harðar saga’, p. 64. 126

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Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur farming advice today emphasises the importance of never turning your back on them, and of treating them with proper respect.131 The dangerous nature of rams is shown in an episode from Fljótsdæla saga (ch. 3) in which Þiðrandi hinn gamli (the old) has his thigh bone broken by a ram after going into the ram-house alone.132 If the episode from Fljótsdæla saga warns people of the danger of dealing with a ram, then the games of the outlaws with the ram on Drangey present a very different image of ram-human interaction. Here the ram explicitly follows the men around, suggesting that the outlaws have no fear of turning their backs on him; and by playing games with the ram, the outlaws act contrary to an expected response. The line: ‘at honum hendu þeir mikit gaman, því at hann var svá spakr’ [‘they took great delight in games with him, because he was so wise/gentle’] not only reflects abnormal behaviour adopted by a ram, but also abnormal behaviour on the part of the humans, at least in farming contexts. It emphasises and exaggerates the social co-existence between the outlaws and the last sheep on the island.133 By making the ram a partner in gaman (play), which may be perceived as a particularly human activity, this phrase suggests that not only is the ram latching onto the men as a substitute flock, but that the outlaws are extending their human sociability to the ram. Grettir: changing relations? Although the arguably unnatural depiction of ram behaviour analysed above may suggest that this episode was written by a person unfamiliar with the danger of associating with rams, the interactions between the outlaws and the ram may rather be deliberately presented in an exaggerated way. This episode may show Grettir as an extreme example of the animal-friend, as he not only manages to have positive relations with a sheep but also such positive interactions with a ram that he can be the dominant figure in the flock and engage in play with this potentially dangerous animal. A wish to keep the ram alive is apparently a key feature of Grettir’s last home-place on Drangey. He has had no qualms over killing animals before, either for eating or to make a point. For some reason, however, this ram is special, as was Mókolla. Perhaps it is the relationship the ram forms with the men that makes him unsuitable for slaughter, and this can Laurie Ball-Gisch, ‘Are Rams Dangerous? Not With Proper Management’ (2016) [accessed 27 Jan. 2017]; L. A. Murray and S. Sivaloganathan, ‘Rambutt – the Killer Sheep’, Medicine, Science, and the Law, 27:2 (1987), 95–7; ‘Suggestions for Ram Management’ (n.d.) [accessed 27 Jan. 2017]. 132 Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Fljótsdæla saga’, p. 219. 133 500Guðni Jónsson, ‘Grettis saga’, p. 273. 131

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland be compared to Grettir not killing the bleating ewe despite her keeping him awake. While Mókolla begins as a figure of punishment for Grettir, she may also be presented as a partner in his loneliness. Grettir is without companions, she is without family, and both are distressed at being alone. Likewise, the ram on Drangey is perhaps an animal to whom Grettir can relate. Hǫsmagi is an impressive animal, with large horns and distinct, paranormally suggestive colouring: the ovine representation of Grettir’s infamous, almost superhuman strength and stature perhaps, just as the sorrowful bleating ewe was the suitable companion for Grettir’s isolation in the wild. However, the ram is not the wild and dangerous figure we would expect. Like a heimamaðr, the ram goes out with the men, follows them as if offering assistance, and returns to their home in the evening after the activities of the day. He is subservient and powerless, as, it can be argued, is Grettir at this point in the saga, and for both Grettir and the ram, Drangey is simultaneously a haven and a prison. In the larger narrative of the saga, this Drangey episode may seem insignificant, and yet the saga explicitly states that the story is known and is told by people about Grettir’s time on Drangey. By using the markers Svá er sagt (so it is said) and svá at getit sé (as is spoken of), the lines: ‘svá er sagt, at þá er Grettir hafði tvá vetr verit í Drangey, þá hǫfðu þeir skorit flest allt sauðfé þat, sem þar hafði verit; en einn hrút létu þeir lifa, svá at getit sé’ [‘so it is said, that when Grettir had been two winters on Drangey, then they had slaughtered almost all the sheep that had been there. But they let one ram live, as is spoken of’] reinforce the alleged fame of this relationship. The inclusion of the story, and the self-conscious comment on its reputation, suggests this may have been perceived as an important episode in the Grettir tradition, included and emphasised in the saga as a companion episode to Grettir’s interaction with the ewe Mókolla, and in contrast to his earlier mutilation of animals. By referring to an outstanding tradition of this ram and Grettir’s refusal to kill him, whether this was an established tradition or a fabrication by the compiler of the saga, the text suggests we should understand Grettir’s interactions with animals as an important feature of his life. Animal-human companions Animal-human interactions are closely linked with the place of the farm or makeshift home in these texts. While no specific type of animal is consistently depicted as particularly close to the farm and the householder in these narratives, and each animal-human relationship should be analysed on its own terms, it is evident that each of the relationships or interactions discussed in this chapter demonstrate multiple common features. Animals can be depicted as close companions, and worthy or beloved members of the household. They can direct the action of the saga and act 182

Fostering Relations: The Animal-Human Home in the Íslendingasögur for themselves. They can take part in feud, invoke specific emotions in their human interactors, and understand the responsibilities required of them as partners to human figures. The language of fóstri is the language of male homosociality, and by extending these relations to Freyfaxi and Sámr, the compilers of these sagas suggest that this is a plausible extension to make. Such animals are not so unlike humans, and the descriptions of the appearance and behaviours of certain animals in the sagas seem to emphasise commonalities perceived between these animals and humans, drawing on characteristics ascribed to men in these texts. Hǫsmagi is a companion to Grettir, and Mókolla an educator; Freyfaxi actively engages with human social networks, while Sámr follows his master into outlawry and lands the first blow in his final battle; Inni-Krákr is a favoured and trusted worker, just as Kengála is vitally important to the operation of her human’s farm. As highlighted above, however, not all humans trusted and valued these animals in the same way, and the sagas often depict ambiguous, if not hostile, reactions to close animal-human relationships – with good reason, as both the Grágás laws and the Íslendingasögur suggest that domestic animals had the potential to be dangerous and untrustworthy characters, capable of betrayal and directed violence.

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5 The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger

W

e have seen in the preceding chapters that animal-human interactions in the Íslendingasögur are closely entangled with the formation and continuation of the household-farm. The farm is represented as a place of status and productivity for both humans and animals; and animals can be depicted as guardians, respected visitors, and valued members of the human household. They can also be agents of destruction that need to be vigorously controlled, and the attempted integration of animals into the home-place is often viewed with suspicion or leads to a dramatic change of circumstances (for better or worse). This chapter examines the destructive nature of animals (particularly cattle as the largest of the domesticates), and focusses specifically on actions of cattle against haystacks, home, and householder. In all cases the agency of the animals is considered, competing with human and paranormal influences. Positive relationships between domestic animals and humans in medieval Icelandic society were of vital importance. When something is relied on for survival and economic prosperity, disruption to that relationship would cause serious issues for a household. In the Íslendingasögur, conflicts between animals and humans range from causing the mildest inconvenience to resulting in the death of the householder. In some sagas it is animal deviance from human control that causes the conflict; in some it is the over-attachment of a figure to their animal(s). Lesser consequences are applied to less personal conflicts, for example when an anonymous herd of cattle are driven to cause chaos in the homefield, while the more intense and personal the animal-human relationship, the more significant the consequences for the community in the saga – and perhaps the more judgement passed on the relationship by the storyteller or compiler of the saga. It is often the case that close animal-human relationships appear to be viewed with ambivalence if not downright condemnation by the saga. The story of Freyfaxi and Hrafnkell (pp. 145–55) might be included among these cautionary tales: Hrafnkell’s devotion to his horse leads to serious trouble, though he is permitted to survive his misjudgement. As we will see, Þóroddr in Eyrbyggja saga is not afforded the same luxury. This chapter first examines the motif of the ‘out of place animal’ and the disastrous consequences this has for the household, before focussing

The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger in detail on two case studies: that of the ox Brandkrossi in Brandkrossa þáttr, and the bull Glæsir in Eyrbyggja saga. Both animals are involved in close and caring animal-human relationships before their transformation into destructive figures, and both destabilise the household before exiting the farm and disappearing from human view into a body of water. The antagonistic movement of animals to and from the home-place was evidently a concern for the compilers of these texts, who seem keenly aware of the destructive potential of animals, and the danger of close relationships with them. While the damaging effect of stray cattle on a farmer’s hayfields is acknowledged and warned against in the laws discussed in Chapter 3 (pp. 134–6), in the saga episodes discussed in this chapter we see straying transformed into active aggression. Likewise, the behavioural changes in the animal that lead to the disruption of the farm and the death or injury of the householder in Brandkrossa þáttr and Eyrbyggja saga show examples of naturalistic animal behaviour transformed into acts of deviance seemingly supported by paranormal events. This chapter explores this blending of naturalistic description with paranormal ascription in the context of animal-human relations in the sagas, and in the wider context of medieval Iceland demonstrated and discussed in the preceding chapters.

Attacking the Homefield A herd of cattle, especially those with horns, can be very difficult to deal with. It is no surprise, then, that cattle out of place, and disturbing meadows and haystacks, are seen as a distinct problem in the medieval Icelandic laws and viewed as an aggression in the Íslendingasögur. In Víga-Glúms saga (ch. 7) we see a herd of cattle from a neighbouring farmer invading Glúmr’s homefield: Einn morgin vakti Ástríðr Glúm ok sagði, at nautafjǫldi Sigmundar var kominn í tún ok vildi brjóta andvirki: [… Glúmr] barði þau mjǫk þar til er þau koma í tún Þorkels ok Sigmundar; lætr þau þar spilla, sem þau vildu. Þorkell gætti heima andvirkis um morgna, en Sigmundr fylgdi húskǫrlum.1 [One morning, Ástriðr woke Glúmr and said that Sigmundr’s herd of cattle had come into the homefield and wanted to destroy the haystacks [… Glúmr] beat them very much until they arrived at the homefield of Þorkell and Sigmundr; and he let them wreak as much havoc there

1



Gabriel Turville-Petre (ed.), Víga-Glúms saga (Oxford, 1960), p. 13.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland as they wanted. Þorkell guarded the haystacks there that morning and Sigmundr accompanied the house-servants.]

The cattle are perceived as a threat and are returned forcibly to their owner’s farm. Notably, they are impartial agents of destruction with no sense of loyalty, as they desire to destroy haystacks regardless of whose resources they damage. Glúmr’s response (to violently eject the animals from his homefield) is appropriate to an attack, but distinctly not the behaviour that the medieval laws indicate should be shown towards stray cattle, which should rather have been returned carefully to their owner’s farm.2 In the exchange that follows the above interaction, Þorkell compares Glúmr’s conduct against the cattle with his famous exploits abroad, highlighting both the violence involved, and the honourable nature of overseas adventures compared to the dishonourable abuse of domestic animals; yet Glúmr vows to do exactly the same if the cattle continue to trespass into his homefield.3 Evidently these cattle are perceived by Glúmr as dangerous adversaries to be discouraged in the most effective way he knows how – although it could also be suggested that Glúmr’s threat of excessive violence against the animals is also designed to discourage his enemies from encouraging such behaviour on the part of the cattle: if they want to keep their property safe, they need to respect his. Nonetheless, the dangerous potential of the animals is apparent throughout the episode – and the tension of the potential of animals to turn against their human partners can be said to underlie the animal-human relationships discussed in this book. These animals were perceived not only as figures to be protected, but also creatures against which things (hay, other animals, humans) required protection. Without proper herding and the construction of legal walls, animals would be dangerous members of society; and Þorkell’s role as guardian of the haystacks clearly anticipates the destructive tendencies to be defended against.4 While this saga does not specify the homeward movement of the cattle, the sense of heimr (home) is emphasised in the term for the hay that Þorkell is charged to protect: heima andvirkis, the (haystacks of home). In this way, the invading cattle are set in opposition to the home-place indicated by these stacks of hay, even though the cattle technically belong to this home-place.

4 2 3

Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, pp. 83–4, 169–71; see Chapter 3, p. 130. Turville-Petre, Víga-Glúms saga, p. 13. This verb gæta is used both to mean guarding, for example, hay, but also tending or looking after animals, suggesting that the care of both may have been semantically as well as practically linked. It is also the most common term used for watching hay and animals, further reinforcing the recognition of the close care needed towards these constituent parts of the household-farm.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger In all the episodes discussed in this chapter, hay is explicitly associated with the home, and is a recipient of violence against it and its members. Hay was clearly a large part of the experience of living and working with animals in Iceland, and its harvest, stacking, and consumption in these narratives emphasises just one of the ways the farmscape would change over the seasons. In descriptions of violent bulls found in Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 63), Harðar saga (ch. 26), Finnboga saga (ch. 7), Þorsteins saga hvíta (ch. 8), Vápnfirðinga saga (ch. 1), and Bolla þáttr Bollasonar (ch. 1), the violence of these animals is most often directed against haystacks, as well as causing disruption to milk cows. As previously discussed in Chapter 3, upsetting livestock to such an extent that their ability to provide milk is compromised is listed in Grágás as an offence with a penalty of lesser outlawry for the man who has caused it, and the actions of certain animals in these texts seem to echo the unruly behaviour regulated against in these laws. It may be suggested that certain crimes may have been perceived as crossing the species divide and being understood as committed by animals on their own terms: for example, if bulls and dogs were considered responsible for their actions if they committed manslaughter, why not animals for disrupting the milk or damaging property?5 As seen in this episode from Víga-Glúms saga, the destruction caused by the cattle is not solely aligned with their owner’s desires, as they spoil Þorkell and Sigmundr’s homefield as well as Glúmr’s. Instead, the animals are a force unto themselves, and prepared to harm each homefield equally. While employed here in a narrative role furthering the conflict between two opposing households, such an agentive depiction of a herd of cattle provides a clear representation of the risks of keeping these animals, and specifically keeping them close to the home-place. In addition, it further reinforces the impression of great trust on the part of humans towards the animals that are permitted into the homefield in these narratives, such as Glæsir and Brandkrossi in the episodes discussed below (pp. 192, 201). Nonetheless, cattle were also depicted as malleable agents of destruction, with loyalty and awareness of whose land should be targeted. In Króka-Refs saga (ch. 3), domestic animals are utilised as a weapon against Þorgerðr following the killing of her herdsman, and the emphasis in this passage rests on the almost simultaneous destruction of both herdsman and hay. After the death of Barði, his killer, Þorbjǫrn, rides home to his wife, who suggests that he should drive their livestock onto Þorgerðr’s land. Her reasoning? Such an act would complete the devastation of the household, perhaps in a similar way to that we see with the de-construction of Gunnarr’s house(hold) in Njáls saga highlighted in the previous chapter (p. 158). Here in Króka-Refs saga, the presence of cattle in the farmyard and 5



See Chapter 3, p. 127.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland the destruction of the home haystacks alerts Þorgerðr to the absence of her herdsman, who in the absence of Þorgerðr´s husband, it is perhaps suggested should have been the protector of the home (like Glúmr above): Gengr féit heim í túnit ok brýtr ofan sætit hennar ok gerir mart illt. Hon kemr út ok sér nautin standa um allan garðinn. Þóttist hon vita, at illu mundi gegna, sendir til at reka í burt fénaðinn, ok finna Barða veginn í skálanum.6 [The livestock went homewards into the homefield and destroyed [Þorgerðr’s] haystacks and caused bad damage. She came out and saw the cattle standing all around the enclosure. She seemed to know that something bad must be signified, so she sent people to drive away the cattle and found Barði slain in the hut.]

As in the account discussed above, cattle enter the home-place and destroy the haystacks, which is taken as a sign for further bad happenings. As in the episode from Hrafnkels saga in which Freyfaxi’s presence at the doorway suggests something is amiss, the movement and presence of animals in the wrong place is perceived as a bad omen, indicating something wrong or divergent in both the specific household and on a community-wide level, as these homefield invasions are not anonymous crimes. Using your own herd of cattle to destroy another’s property sets a signature on the event that at best indicates negligence, and at worst malicious intent, both towards your enemy and your animals, as there is no guarantee that the victim in this case won’t beat back the animals like Glúmr, thereby causing them damage and distress. Unsurprisingly, driving animals onto another’s land is a feature of an unsavoury character in these sagas: just as close relationships with animals may have been viewed with suspicion within and without the saga, neglect or malice towards animals and their fodder was equally problematic to society.7 An elaborated version of this motif is found in Gull-Þóris saga (ch. 14), in which a herd of cattle returns to a specific homefield over and over: Hey mikit lá á vellinum um daginn, er hirða skyldi, en naut Helga af Hjǫllum gengu í. Gunnarr spurði, hví eigi skyldi reka nautin ór vellinum. ’Ekki þykkir oss þat tjóa,’ segir Eyjúlfr, ’því at jafnskjótt eru aptr rekin nautin sem vér rekum í brott’.8



6 7



8

Jóhannes Halldórsson, ‘Króka-Refs saga’, p. 123. For example, in Egils saga we find Steinar Önundsson, who is described as uppivǫzlumaðr mikill (a greatly turbulent man) and keeps driving his cattle onto the land of Þorsteinn Egilsson: Nordal, Egils Saga, p. 277. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, ‘Gull-Þóris saga’, p. 206.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger [A great amount of hay lay about the field that day, which should have been gathered, and the cattle of Helgi from Hjallar walked in. Gunnarr asked why the cattle should not be driven from the field. ‘That seems of no use to us,’ said Eyjólfr, ‘because the cattle return as soon as we have driven them away.’]

Compared to the excessively violent episodes discussed elsewhere in this section, the cattle in this episode are presented in relatively calm terms. While clearly a common and disruptive presence preventing the collection of hay, no direct damage is emphasised, and the cattle seem to simply stroll in. While this episode may seem more about men than cattle, it uses the motif of animal invasion of the homefield to present the cattle as active participants in a feud. While no direct human input to this occasion of trespass is depicted, the saga elsewhere states: ‘með þeim Eyjúlfi í Múla ok Helga á Hjǫllum var fjandskapr mikill um beiting, ok beittu Hjallamenn fyrir Eyjúlfi bæði tún ok eng’ [‘between Eyjólfr of Múla and Helgi of Hjallar was a great feud about grazing, and the men of Hjallar grazed animals on both the homefield and meadow of Eyjólfr’], clearly showing that the Hjallamenn had previously encouraged the cattle to breach their enemy’s fields.9 The locating of this specific event within the homefield, when the ongoing feud takes place in both the homefield and the meadow, clearly centres an association with the home. An attack on the tún and the hay of the homefield shows the example of greatest injury for narrative effect. Eyjólfr’s saviour in this episode from Gull-Þóris saga comes in the form of Gunnarr, a man from the Eastfjords who presents a clear contrast to the farmers and farmhands busy with the haymaking: Þat var einn veðrdag góðan, at menn váru at heyverki í Múla, at þeir sá, hvar maðr reið sunnan yfir Þorskafjǫrð, ok at garði í Múla. En því var þessa við getit, at þessi maðr var ǫðruvís búinn en þeir menn, er þar riðu hversdagliga. Hann hafði hjálm á hǫfði, en skjǫld á hlið gylltan: hann reið í steindum sǫðli ok hafði ǫxi rekna á ǫxl, nær álnar fyrir munn. Hann reið ákafa mikinn, ok var hestrinn mjǫk móðr. Ok er hestrinn kom í garðshliðit, var hann staðþrotinn. Þá hljóp maðrinn af baki ok setti ǫxina í hǫfuð hestinum, ok var hann þegar dauðr. Hann tók ekki af sǫðulinn ok gekk heim eptir þat. Eyjúlfr bóndi spurði hann at nafni. Hann kveðst Gunnarr heita, austfirzkr maðr at ætt, en kveðst Þóri finna vilja.10 [One fine day men were haymaking at Múli, when they saw a man ride from the south over Þorskafjǫrðr, and to the enclosure at Múli. But this was how it was told: that this man was otherwise attired than those men who rode there daily. He had a helmet on his head and a gilded shield 9





10

Ibid., p. 205. Ibid., p. 205–6.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland at his side, he rode in a painted saddle and had an inlaid axe over his shoulder, nearly an ell-wide at its mouth. He rode very impetuously, and the horse was very weary. And when the horse came to the side of the enclosure, he was quite exhausted. Then the man leapt from its back and set the axe into the head of the horse, and it was at once dead. He took nothing from the saddle and went then towards the home. Farmer Eyjólfr asked him his name. He said of himself that he was called Gunnarr, a man whose family was from the Eastfjorðs, and said he wanted to find Þórir.]

Gunnar is depicted as a well-equipped warrior, emphatically different from the local farmers and with an alarmingly negative relationship to animals. His horse is weary, he has not ridden it well, and he unceremoniously kills it on dismounting at the farm wall.11 Unfortunately, Eyjólfr, by his own admission, is not capable of effectively driving away the cattle, and therefore Gunnarr, an emphatically violent man towards animals, must resolve the conflict. It seems that Eyjólfr’s nature as a farmer hinders his ability to express sufficient violence towards the cattle, in contrast to Gunnarr’s warrior identity. While violence towards animals may have been undesirable, it seems, at least in the sagas, that both warriors and farmers were necessary to defend the household against human and animal foes.12 Violence against domestic animals was also a feature of a specific characterisation in the sagas, for example as seen in the figures of Brodd-Helgi (Spike-)Helgi in Þorsteins saga hvíta (ch. 8) and Vápnfirðinga saga (ch. 1), Halli in Valla-Ljóts saga (ch. 1), and Þórðr melrakki (arctic fox) in Heiðarvíga saga (ch. 19); as seen above, Glúmr’s violence towards cattle is worthy of comment in Víga-Glúms saga.13 The contrast between people portrayed as capable of forming close bonds with animals, and those who are excessively violent towards them, is blurred in Grettis saga, as we have seen in the preceding chapter (pp. 181–2). It also crops up as a theme in the two episodes to be discussed below: in Brandkrossa þáttr we find a man overly attached to his ox set in contrast to a figure who will kill it just to possess it; and in Eyrbyggja saga Þóroddr must reluctantly turn to violence after his relationship with Glæsir the bull breaks down. However, Þóroddr’s actions against Glæsir are necessary to defend the home and



11



12 13

The horses of such visitors usually seem to be baited within the homefield, with or without the permission of the householder. It seems Gunnarr either cares nothing for his horse or especially values the hayfield. Dennis, Foote, and Perkins, Grágás II, p. 86; see Chapter 3, pp. 119–21. It should be noted that Brodd-Helgi’s violence towards animals is specifically violence towards a neighbour’s bull on behalf of his household’s bull, rather than indiscriminate violence against animals.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger the resources of the household. Close relationships between a man and his animal(s) does not preclude the potential for destruction.

Brandkrossa þáttr As we have seen, another farmer’s animals rampaging into the homefield was represented as causing significant damage. In the case of Brandkrossi the ox, the damage is caused by the farmer’s own animal, who destroys their home before swimming out to sea. Brandkrossi’s skin is later found in a cave in Norway. The cave’s occupant, Geitir, is an ontologically ambiguous figure who asserts that he sent his servant to fetch Brandkrossi because he was covetous of such a fine animal. Such a comment highlights the apparently paranormal nature of both Geitir and Brandkrossi’s departure from Iceland, as the ox ran madly into the sea. However, the relationship between Grímr and Brandkrossi is initially presented as a perfectly mundane affair, exceptional only in the intense favour bestowed on this animal, and the story is as much about an animal-human relationship as it is about paranormal events. Indeed, the apparent link between close animal-human relationships and the paranormal is a potential feature of several depictions in these texts, perhaps enforcing the suspicious nature of such relationships and a need for fear towards them, or a limited understanding on the part of the storytellers towards such relationships. Many of the relationships depicted between humans and animals in saga texts (both those addressed in this book and others from, for example, more legendary sagas) show paranormal elements, particularly in relationships with bulls or oxen, pigs, and goats.14 While Brandkrossa þáttr survives only in paper manuscripts from the seventeenth century, it is assumed to have travelled alongside Droplaugarsona saga from the late thirteenth century; and all manuscripts preserve the heading: ‘Þáttr af Brandkrossa ok um uppruna Droplaugarsona’ [‘the tale of Brandkrossi and about the origins of the sons of Droplaug’], suggesting that the tale of this ox is a key part of the narrative tradition handed down from parchment copies of these two texts (the þáttr and Droplaugarsona saga): part of a family tradition associated with a social group, like the story of the mare Skálm in Landnámabók.15



14



15

Arguably on account of these animals being those most associated with Old Norse mythological thinking (as we know it from our medieval sources). Jón Jóhannesson (ed.), ‘Formáli’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. i–cxx, at p. lxxxvi; Alison Finlay, ‘Brandkrossa þáttr’, in Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf (eds), Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1993), p. 56.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland The opening of the second chapter of the þáttr demonstrates the close relationship between Brandkrossi and Grímr, in which the areas of the farm, specifically the homefield, are notable features: Maðr hét Grímr, er bjó í Vápnafirði í Vík inni innri. Hann var ungr maðr ok kvángaðr ok vellauðigr at fé. Hann ól upp uxa þann, er brandkrossóttr var at lit ok ágætanaut at hlutum ok vexti. Honum þótti hann betri en allt annat, þat er hann átti í kvikfé. Hann gekk í túnum á sumrum ok drakk mjólk bæði vetr ok sumar.16 [A man was called Grímr who lived in Vápnafjǫrðr in the innermost part of Vík. He was a young man and married, and very rich with regards to livestock. He brought up that ox, which was brindled [brownish] in colour with a white cross on its forehead; it was a highly-praised ox with regards to parts and stature. It seemed to him better than all the other animals that he owned. He went in the homefield in the summer and drank milk both winter and summer.]

Although Grímr is generally rich in livestock, Brandkrossi is singled out as the most important feature of his success. Having raised Brandkrossi from a calf, the relationship between Grímr and the ox has not only spanned ten years, but seemingly entailed close and intimate involvement. It can also be assumed that at no time in this long relationship did Brandkrossi show violent tendencies, and in recognition of this, the ox’s dwelling-place is firmly located within the home-place.17 Animals were most likely to be resident near the farm in the winter, which may be why the storyteller feels inclined to highlight his presence in the homefield in the summer too. The consumption of milk all-year-round also suggests a dwelling close to the human place, as well as indicating the enjoyment of either a prolonged state of infancy, or inclusion within the human sphere of eating and drinking. While adult cattle and oxen would have ordinarily relied on water for refreshment, adult cattle enjoy drinking milk and will take every opportunity to do so.18 Yet milk was an important commodity in Icelandic society, and for a medieval audience to be told so

16 17



18

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Brandkrossa þáttr’, p. 186. This stands in contrast to the many representations of bulls in the Íslendingasögur, who are portrayed as violent personalities, for example in Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 63), Harðar saga (ch. 26), Finnboga saga (ch. 7), Þorsteins saga hvíta (ch. 8), and Vápnfirðinga saga (ch. 1). The initial part of the narrative of Bolla þáttr Bollasonar is also based around the excessively violent actions of a bull and the feud that results from his killing. M. H. French, ‘The Importance of Water in the Management of Cattle’, The East African Agricultural Journal, 21:3 (1956), 171–81; Michael R. Murphy, ‘Water Metabolism of Dairy Cattle’, Journal of Dairy Science, 75:1 (1992), 326–33; Jennifer Harland, 2017, pers. comm.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger much milk was lavished on Brandkrossi may have indicated that Grímr indulged the animal to the extreme. Considering his closeness to the home, and knowing how the risks of animals near the home are presented in our sources, it is unsurprising that Brandkrossi’s departure from Iceland is portrayed as a series of violent acts against the farm: Þat bar við um sumarit, þá er uxinn var tíu vetra gamall, en taðan stóð úti umhverfis húsin í stórsæti, at uxinn hljóp út ok inn ok kastaði sátunum ór stað. Þá vildu menn taka hann ok gátu eigi, ok gerði hann þá engan mun, ok var kominn þó fjǫlði manna til, en hann hljóp á leið fram ok allt um síðir í ina ýtri Krossavík ok þar á sjá út ok synti allt út í haf, meðan menn máttu sjá.19 [It happened that in the summer, when the ox was ten winters old and the hay from the manured field stood all around the house in large haystacks, that the ox ran in and out and cast the stacks out of place. Then men wanted to catch him, but they could not, and they could not even though a multitude of men had come out to do so; and he ran away, all the way to the outermost part of Krossavík and there went out into the sea and swam out into the sea as far as men were able to see.]

Brandkrossi runs amok through the home-enclosure (as if possessed by a violent force) and destroys the haystacks: symbols of the productivity and sustainability of the home-place. Like Beigaðr, the rebellious boar in Landnámabók and Vatnsdæla saga, Brandkrossi resists capture and flees beyond the farm to wilder and uncontrollable places, as shown both by his escape via water, and his vanishing from the men’s view. When Brandkrossi swims away from Iceland, Grímr’s grief at the loss of his ox is dramatically extreme. His brother, Þorsteinn, arrives to comfort him but quickly becomes exasperated at his attitude. The text tells us that Grímr ‘unði nú stórilla við skaða sinn’ [‘now felt his loss very badly’], but has a distinct lack of concern for the economic and even social value of Brandkrossi.20 Þorsteinn tries to console his brother by suggesting that ‘hann kynni eigi svá illa skaða sínum þessum, sagði enn margt í bœtr bera, en fé var nógt, en eigi ørvænt, at hann œli upp annan uxa eigi verra, en sagði vera virðing mikla, at víkr þær báðar myndi síðan vera kenndar við uxa hans’ [‘he knew no such great loss as this, his loss, but said that life may bear much in consolations as livestock was ample, and it would be not without hope that Grímr might bring up another ox no worse. Þorsteinn said it would also be of great reputation that both of the bays would be known later by



19 20

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Brandkrossa þáttr’, p. 186. Ibid.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Grímr’s ox’].21 Þorsteinn sees Brandkrossi as simply a valuable object. He had no personal connection with the animal, and so sees the creature as replaceable. Grímr, however, does not hear his brother’s remarks. They mean nothing to him, distracted as he is by what he perceives as the greatest loss he could have suffered. Grímr’s immense grief is used as the reason for the brothers’ trip to Norway, acting as a catalyst for the events of the rest of the þáttr. However, Brandkrossi is not out of the story for very long before they see his skin hanging in a cave-dwelling in Norway. Their host, Geitir, explains that he sent his thrall to retrieve Brandkrossi from Iceland, because he was jealous of Grímr owning the ‘bezt naut […] á ǫllu Íslandi’ [‘best ox […] in all of Iceland’].22 A clear contrast is provided, however, between Geitir’s desire to own Brandkrossi, and the close care Grímr showed towards the ox. Geitir’s desire has resulted in the death of the ox, while for Grímr nothing could lessen the blow of Brandkrossi not being alive and part of his home. While part-folktale and part-family origin legend, the relationship between Brandkrossi and Grímr is presented in a similar way to other close relationships in the Old Norse corpus. It is also worth noting that a caring and intimate relationship with a domestic animal seems to be depicted as a specifically Icelandic trait when contrasted with the stuffed skin displayed by Geitir in Norway. Indeed, I have yet to encounter any similar domestic animal-human relationships in Norwegian settings, other than perhaps King Ólafr Tryggvason and Víg the dog in Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar – although even then the relationship originates in a trip outside of Norway (to Ireland).23 For Geitir, Brandkrossi’s skin is the enviable feature of the animal; for Grímr, the animal was valued as a living creature. Were Grímr interested mainly in the prestige associated with having raised such an ox, rather than the physical ox itself, it would have been some consolation that the bays were named after Brandkrossi, as his brother suggests. A further note must be made on the nature of Grímr’s grief – especially remarkable when we compare it with other instances in the sagas when an animal is lost or must be killed. Hrafnkell’s response to the death of Freyfaxi in Hrafnkels saga (ch. 7) is particularly strong in its contrasting 23 21 22

Ibid. Ibid., p. 189. This absence or reduced presence of certain animals is likely a result of the different sorts of stories told about Norwegian settings in this corpus. When men are in Norway, they are more often dealing with kings and adventurous exploits than farming. Likewise, the stories in Heimskringla are concerned with greater events than herding sheep, while the denizens of the legendary sagas have whole other ways of relating to animals that I do not have the room to explore here.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger nonchalance, while the responses of Gunnarr to the death of Sámr, and Ásmundr to the necessary termination of Kengála, are more heartfelt and meaningful comments on a valued relationship. Grímr’s grief, however, takes it further. His grief is described in terms of physical effects on the body, as he becomes mjǫk óárligan (greatly unwell-looking), sleeps little, and disregards food.24 The description of Grímr’s grief stands in stark contrast to the descriptions of Brandkrossi earlier in the chapter: while Brandkrossi was excellent in form and stature, Grímr becomes ill-­looking; and while Brandkrossi was indulged with unusual food, Grímr now makes little use of provisions. The loss of Brandkrossi may even be interpreted as an emasculating loss for Grímr, as his grief is presented in a similar way to the pining melancholy of lovesick women in Old Norse tradition. In the romance narratives from Gunnlaugs and Kormaks saga, as well as Brynhildr and Guðrún in Vǫlsunga saga, similar physical manifestations of loss are presented; in addition, Þorsteinn’s attempts to rouse Grímr from his melancholy and distract him with a trip to Norway finds analogues in attempts to distract the grieving women in Vǫlsunga saga – although it might also show an attempt to encourage Grímr to take part in ‘manly’ activities such as overseas journeys and adventures.25 Aside from his similarities to lovesick women in Old Norse-Icelandic sources, these descriptions echo the lovelorn men characterised by distinctive withdrawals from the masculine social world.26 Grímr’s attachment to the animal, then, and his reaction to Brandkrossi going away, aligns him with abandoned figures and their attachment to their love interest. It is odd that the opening introduction of Grímr calls him kvángaðr (married) when there is no mention of his wife, and he later marries Droplaug (Geitir’s daughter). Instead, prior to travelling to Norway, the most significant attachment Grímr has is to his ox. Brandkrossi, then, is presented both as a child brought up by Grímr, and as a substitute love interest over whom, grief-stricken, he succumbs to melancholia. When Grímr agrees to go abroad with his brother and move forward from his grief, he acquires a wife and returns to Icelandic society involved in a more appropriate social

24 25



26

Jón Jóhannesson, ‘Brandkrossa þáttr’, p. 186. Theodore M. Andersson, ‘The Native Romance of Gunnlaugr and Helga the Fair’, in Kirsten Wolf and Johanna Denzin (eds), Romance and Love in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iceland: Essays in Honor of Marianne Kalinke (Ithaca, 2008), pp. 33–64, at p. 57, 59; Margrét Eggertsdóttir, ‘The Anomalous Pursuit of Love in Kormaks Saga’, in Kirsten Wolf and Johanna Denzin (eds), Romance and Love in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iceland: Essays in Honor of Marianne Kalinke (Ithaca, 2008), pp. 81–110; Ronald G. Finch (ed.), The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Ronald G. Finch (London, 1965), pp. 53–4, 62. Margrét Eggertsdóttir, ‘The Anomalous Pursuit of Love in Kormaks Saga’, p. 97.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland attachment. While Geitir takes the animal from Grímr, he provides him in return with his daughter, allowing Grímr to establish a more suitable legacy. This acquisition of a wife solves Grímr’s apparent lovesickness over the loss of his ox. The þáttr emphasises both the re-acquiring of masculine social identity through gaining a woman, and a suspicious attitude towards too great a reliance on animal-human relationships.

Eyrbyggja saga The relationship between Þóroddr and Glæsir in Eyrbyggja saga offers another example of an animal-human relationship, the interactions of which are placed firmly within the farm, and that involves the destruction of the homefield. However, unlike Brandkrossa þáttr there is nothing redemptive about the aftermath of this relationship, which ends in the death of both the householder and the animal. The events of Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 63) are remarkable not only for the detail provided in depicting a bovine-human relationship, but specifically for the naturalistic elements of these depictions that are included alongside overt paranormal happenings. The story of Glæsir begins with his conception, and it is mentioned that the cow has been seen with a mysterious grey bull. This grey bull can be compared with the grey stallions found in Landnámabók and may indicate an aspect of the original story involved a landvættr and a contract in order to produce such a fantastic bull as Glæsir; such a story may have been adapted to fit with a story of the haunting of Þórólfr. The bull’s association with previous hauntings in the saga arises from his mother having licked the ashes of Þórólfr bægifótr (lame-foot), whose bodily ghost had been previously restless and haunting the community. The saga implies that Glæsir has been somehow sent to kill Þóroddr, having been possessed by the spirit of Þórólfr through the mother’s licking of the rocks on which his ashes fell. While the events of this chapter have been extensively studied, the figure of the bull, Glæsir, is most often discussed solely in terms of these paranormal happenings and not as an animal in his own right.27 In contrast, the analysis conducted here considers

27

Ármann Jakobsson, ‘Íslenskir Draugar Frá Landnámi Til Lúterstrúar: Inngangur Að Draugafræðum’, Skírnir, 184 (2010), 187–210, at p. 205; Kirsi Kanerva, ‘Rituals for the Restless Dead: The Authority of the Deceased in Medieval Iceland’, in Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, and Tuija Ainonen (eds), Authorities in the Middle Ages: Influence, Legitimacy and Power in Medieval Society (Boston: 2013), pp. 205–27, at p. 222; Kirsi Kanerva, ‘The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of Eyrbyggja saga’, Collegium Medievale, 24:0 (2011), 23–49;

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger the animal behind the paranormal overlay. Given the existence of close animal-­human relationships depicted in other sagas, and the detailed descriptions of naturalistic interactions in this specific relationship, I find it surprising that the animal-ness of Glæsir has escaped detailed scholarly attention for so long: where studies have explored the animal-human relationship depicted, it has been in investigating the expression of the paranormal theme.28 Paranormal implications aside, this is the only example we have in the sagas of seeing an animal from birth to death. Paranormal entity, object, or promising member of the household? The two features of Glæsir’s conception (the ashes and the grey bull), along with his abnormal growth, his apple-grey colouring, and his ‘hideous’ bellowing, may all explain the violence enacted by the bull later in the chapter. The remarkable nature of the calf is emphasised from birth: En um várit, er lítit var af sumri, þá bar kýrin kálf; þat var kvíga; nǫkkuru síðar bar hon kálf annan, ok var þat griðungr, ok komst hon nauðuliga frá, svá var hann mikill; ok litlu síðar dó kýrin. Kálfr þessi inn mikli var borinn inn í stofu; var hann apalgrár at lit ok alleiguligr; var þá hvárrtveggi kálfrinn í stofunni ok sá, er fyrr var borinn.29 [And in the spring just before summer the cow bore a heifer calf, and then sometime later she bore another calf and it was a bull. This was a difficult birth because he was large, and a little while later the cow died. The large calf was carried into the sitting room. He was apple-grey in colour and very worth having. Then both calves were in the stofa, including that one which was born first.]

Like other paranormal or special animals in the Íslendingasögur, the bull-calf is apple-grey, and the text repeatedly emphasises his fast and dramatic growth.30 However, the description of the calf as alleiguligr (very worth having, or all-precious) uses a compound only found elsewhere in Svarfdæla saga to describe a sword and may emphasise the social capital associated with having the best-looking animals. The apparent desire to keep this animal causes Þóroddr to ignore the old woman at the farm



28



29 30

John D. Martin, ‘Law and the (Un)Dead: Medieval Models for Understanding the Hauntings in Eyrbyggja saga’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research, 29 (2005), 67–82; Vésteinn Ólason, ‘The Un/Grateful Dead – from Baldr to Bægifótr’, in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society (Odense, 2003), pp. 153–71. Arnved Nedkvitne, Møtet Med Døden i Norrøn Middelalder: En Mentalitetshistorisk Studie (Oslo, 1997), p. 40; Vésteinn Ólason, ‘The Un/Grateful Dead’, p. 166. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 171. Ibid., p. 172; Wolf, ‘The Color Grey’.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland who demands that the calf be killed.31 Þóroddr orders the heifer-calf killed instead, seemingly to trick the old woman into thinking the bull-calf has been slaughtered. A few more words, however, must be said on the description of this calving and Þóroddr’s subsequent actions. This is the only extensive description of calving and new-born calves we have in the sagas, with one other brief mention of such in Bjarnar saga (ch. 16). However, unlike Bjarnar saga, in which the calf is kept in the byre, here the calves are brought into the central room of the house.32 Nowhere else in the sagas are animals brought this far into the human spaces of the house, but the bringing of new-born animals into a warm place is a sensible farming practice in response to a traumatic birth and the death of the mother. Specifically calves born in the spring, as Glæsir is, may suffer from cold stress (hypothermia) and require warming post-birth.33 It is also likely, when twin calves are born, that one will be significantly larger than the other, as is the case with Glæsir, and this comparison with a smaller, weaker heifer-calf might have caused the bull-calf to look monstrous in stature.34 Furthermore, a heifer-calf born with a bull-calf is very likely to be sterile, so Þóroddr’s decision to kill the heifer-calf might have been rooted in practical farming sense in a farm set up for dairying, with a need to trick the old woman an embellishment of a logical decision.35 Indeed, the very instance of calving twins may be seen as a negative development regardless of any paranormal reasons: the death of the mother and the unproductivity of the heifer-calf proving a blow to the dairy herd.36 All aspects of the birth then seem rooted in naturalistic farming experience, especially the death of the mother. It is rare that cattle birth twins, and such a development comes with greater risk of complications.37 The level of detail in this story that corresponds with what we know of calving, albeit from modern contexts, is remarkable, and is continued throughout the chapter in the interactive behaviour between Glæsir and Þóroddr.

33 31 32



34



35



36



37

Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 171. Vidal, ‘Houses and Domestic Life’, p. 49. Butler Lanette, Russ Daly, and Cody Wright, ‘Cold Stress and Newborn Calves’, SDSU Extension Extra Archives, Paper 73 (2006), n. pag. Rachel Gabel, ‘Seeing Double: Calving Twins’ (2020) [accessed 1 March 2021]. Donald Stotts, ‘Got Twin Calves? Make Sure You Write It Down’ (2018) [accessed 1 March 2021]. N. Ghavi Hossein-Zadeh et al., ‘An Observational Analysis of Twin Births, Calf Stillbirth, Calf Sex Ratio, and Abortion in Iranian Holsteins’, Journal of Dairy Science, 91:11 (2008), 4198–4205. Ibid.; Gabel, ‘Seeing Double’.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger In addition to paranormal and naturalistic features, the descriptions of Glæsir’s growth and accelerated maturity also link him to certain saga heroes, such as Egill and Gunnlaugr, who are both recorded as growing quicker than other children (Egils saga, ch. 40; Gunnlaugs saga, ch. 4). Glæsir’s impressive appearance is repeatedly emphasised, and the description ‘hann var hyrndr vel ok allra nauta fríðastr at sjá’ [‘he was well-horned and of all the cattle the most beautiful to see’] reinforces a connection with heroes such as Gunnlaugr, Gunnarr, and Óláfr pái who are emphatically handsome young men (Gunnlaugs saga, ch. 4; Njáls saga, ch. 19; Laxdæla saga, ch. 16).38 It is after such descriptions that the bull is provided with his name. The act of naming indicates the development and continuation of a relationship, and specifically a relationship mediated through communication with language – and an additional feature of Glæsir’s characterisation may be his shouting. When the calves are bound on the floor of the stofa, the new-born bull-calf cries out twice using the same verbal phrase used by Sámr in Njáls saga highlighted above (p. 158).39 Such vocalisation is seen as antagonistic to the old woman at the house, who sees the cry as a sign of the bull’s paranormal nature: ’þetta eru trolls læti, en eigi annars kvikendis’ [‘those are the sounds of a troll, not a living creature’].40 Notably, kvikvendi (living creature) can also refer specifically to an animal as opposed to a human figure, which may align with the saga’s description of Glæsir’s cry using the verb kveða, which is otherwise used for human speech (as highlighted above in the discussion of Sámr, p. 158). While the old woman describes the calf as a troll, which in the Íslendingasögur seems to include both magic-users and their conjurations, and always in a pejorative sense, the use of kvikvendi and kveða might suggest that the trolls læti (troll sounds) here, rather than acting as a marker of paranormality, could be taken to mean unnatural in a specifically un-­ animal sense that foreshadows the close relationship between Þóroddr and the bull.41 In this way, the cry and Glæsir’s subsequent bellowing might be seen as features of bull-human interaction mistrusted by the storyteller or compiler, and therefore coded as malicious. While the similar cry of Sámr

38

41 39 40

Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 172. The similarity of Glæsir’s description with that of young men in certain sagas may also be extended to those saga characters who experience difficult father/son relationships, for example Egill and Skalla-Grímr (Egils saga), and Grettir and Ásmundr (Grettis saga), as Glæsir becomes an antagonistic character towards his father-figure. Ibid., p. 171. Ibid. For an in-depth discussion of the general pejorative uses of troll descriptors across Old Norse literary sources, see: Ármann Jakobsson, ‘The Trollish Acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: The Meanings of Troll and Ergi in Medieval Iceland’, Saga-Book, 32 (2008), 39–68.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland discussed in the preceding chapter seems heroic rather than evil, it may be considered that dogs might have been afforded liberties in animal-human relationships not accorded to other animals given their differing treatment in the laws (ch. 3, pp. 132–3). Glæsir’s vocalisations through the verb belja (to bellow) are increasingly emphasised throughout the chapter, and these vocalisations emphasise his proximity to the farmhouse, as he ‘beljaði hátt, sem griðungr gylli, svá at gǫrla heyrði í hús inn’ [‘bellowed loudly, like a shrieking bull, so that he was fully heard in the house’].42 The sounds of animals seem an important feature of many of these relationships – unsurprising given that noise would have been a key feature of living with animals, as considered in Chapter 2 (p. 61). Here the auditory effect of the bull is to threaten, and the bellowing seems to infuse all spaces of the narrative, making the bull seem larger and more ominous than simply his physical presence. It has been suggested that full-grown bulls vocalise more than any other type of cattle, which is perhaps why the young calf is likened to a ‘shrieking bull’. While such hideous bellowing is portrayed as an unnatural feature of the bull’s presence, read from a naturalistic perspective, such bellowing could have indicated pain, frustration, or stress likely to lead to later violent behaviour.43 Like Freyfaxi neighing outside Hrafnkell’s door, Glæsir’s bellowing may be read as an effort to communicate, which stands sadly in contrast with the two-way communications we find between Sámr and Gunnarr and Freyfaxi and Hrafnkell: Glæsir’s cries are not understood by Þóroddr, and the only time Þóroddr tries to speak to the bull (at their final encounter), the communication fails. This persistent bellowing seems incongruous as it contrasts so strongly with the bull’s otherwise remarkably calm nature. The text compares him to a sheep: ‘hógværr var hann bæði við menn ok fé sem sauðr’ [‘he was as calm in mind as a sheep both with men and cattle’], and, as mentioned above, such calmness of spirit sets him in direct contrast to the many other depictions of bulls in the Íslendingasögur.44 Despite seemingly living

42



43



44

Gylli here is from gjalla (to scream, shriek). Different manuscripts have different words: gyldi (AM 448, 4to), and gildr (AM 442, 4to) perhaps from gylla (to gild); Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 172. Marie-France Bouissou et al., ‘The Social Behaviour of Cattle’, in L. J. Keeling and H. W. Gonyou (eds), Social Behaviour in Farm Animals (Wallingford, 2001), pp. 113–45, at p. 116; John Moran and Rebecca Doyle, Cow Talk: Understanding Dairy Cow Behaviour to Improve Their Welfare on Asian Farms (Clayton, 2015), pp. 53, 45. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 172. Like Glæsir’s links to handsome and promising young men, by emphasising his easy-going nature towards both humans and animals the saga-author may implicitly draw a comparison between the bull in this stage of his life and men in the sagas who are described as hógværr (calm in mind) (Þorsteinn

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger in harmony with the whole farm, Glæsir’s most explicitly positive interactions are with Þóroddr. Whenever Þóroddr visits the milking pen, ‘gekk Glæsir at honum ok daunsaði um hann ok sleikði um klæði hans, en Þóroddr klappaði um hann’ [‘Glæsir went to him and sniffed at him and sniffed at his clothes, and Þóroddr patted him’].45 The relationship between Glæsir and Þóroddr is depicted in sensory and visceral terms, with Þóroddr explicitly encouraging the close physical contact. Sniffing is a method by which a bull greets another animal; and stroking, rubbing, or resting a hand on the animal’s back can be read as a set of positive interactions on the part of a human figure designed to calm the young bull.46 Glæsir’s peaceful nature extends both to the cows on the farm and those humans involved in the dairying process – the milking pen is repeatedly emphasised as the site of his interactions, and his natural state is ‘heima með kúneytum’ [‘at home with the milk-cows’].47 It might be wondered whether Glæsir, like Brandkrossi, could be imagined as drinking milk. Like Brandkrossi, Glæsir is explicitly permitted to run around the homefield, and his closeness with the homefield and the milking pen demonstrates the great trust placed in the bull.48 It seems from this passage that Glæsir is the only animal permitted in the most valuable of fields, and by placing the bull in the homefield and the milking pen, the narrative places him at the centre of the home: directly alongside the resources on which the household would have depended. For a medieval reader or listener however, allowing the bull near the milking-cows and the haystacks may have suggested that Þóroddr was asking for trouble. Glæsir’s presence in the homefield, and his closeness to the dairying, can be compared to a ram in Heiðarvíga saga (ch. 7) who is explicitly raised at home and grazes in the homefield rather than with the other sheep. However, unlike Glæsir’s apparent peaceful relationship with the human members of the farm, this ram ‘var glettinn við vinnukonur’ [‘was bantering with the work-women’], and ‘spillti opt mjólk þeira’ [‘often destroyed their milk’].49 A key change in Glæsir’s positive interactions with the farm and household occurs when he reaches four winters old and becomes temperamental in nature practically overnight. This change in behaviour is demonstrated by a bodily removal from certain places and certain relationships:

47 48 49 45 46

Egilsson, ch. 1, Gunnlaugs saga) and vinsæll (popular) (Þorsteinn Egilsson in Gunnlaugs saga, ch. 1; Þórólfr Kveld-Úlfsson in Egils saga, ch. 1, and Þórólfr Skalla-Grímsson, ch. 31). Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 172. Moran and Doyle, Cow Talk, p. 58. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 172. Ibid. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson (eds), ‘Heiðarvíga saga’, in Borgfirðinga Sögur (Reykjavík, 1938), pp. 212–328, at p. 226.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland Þá er Glæsir var fjǫgurra vetra gamall, gekk hann eigi undan konum, bǫrnum eða ungmennum, en ef karlar gengu at honum, reigðisk hann við ok lét ótrúliga, en gekk undan þeim í þraut. Þat var einn dag, er Glæsir kom heim á stǫðul, at hann gall ákafliga hátt, at svá gǫrla heyrði inn í húsin, sem hjá væri. Þóroddr var í stofu ok svá kerling.50 [When Glæsir was four winters old, he went away from the women, children and young men, and if old men went to him, he showed his displeasure and became unfaithful, and eventually escaped from them. One day, when Glæsir came home to the milking pen, he shrieked vehemently loudly, so that he was fully heard in the house as it was nearby. Þóroddr was in the stofa and so was the old woman.]

In this passage, we see Glæsir turning away from the human members of the household with whom he had previously shared company. The term ótrúliga (unfaithful, unsafe, untrustworthy) may suggest not only that Glæsir has become dangerous and unpredictable, but that he has somehow betrayed the trust of his human partners. Unlike Sámr, who was faithful until the end, Glæsir is ótrúr, and the close animal-human relationship has been compromised by his change of behaviour. While the story of Glæsir and his relationship with Þóroddr shares many similar features with the close animal-human relationships discussed elsewhere in this book, unlike the other relationships presented, the loyalty and affection apparently demonstrated in the interactions between these two figures are inverted when Glæsir’s behaviour changes and he ends up killing Þóroddr. This stands in a direct reversal of animals such as Freyfaxi, Sámr, and Brandkrossi, who end up being killed by men who are antagonistic, either directly or indirectly, to their human partners. Glæsir’s anger in the above passage, indicated by the throwing back or stiffening in displeasure of his body, may be compared to Freyfaxi’s anger at being ridden by Einarr; however, in this case, the animal does not appeal to his human partner for justice. Rather than a problem with a specific person, Glæsir has seemingly developed an issue with all humans.51 The final confrontation between human and animal in this episode fits into the destruction of hay motif discussed above, occurring at the end of the summer, just after the hay has been cut and raked into stacks: Þat var um sumarit, at Þóroddr hafði látit raka tǫðu sína alla í stórsæti, at þá kom á regn mikit; en um morguninn, er menn komu út, sá þeir, at Glæsir var kominn í tún, ok var stokkrinn af hornum hans, er á hafði felldr verit, er hann tók at ýgjask; hann hafði týnt venju sinni, því at hann var aldri vanr at granda heyvinu, þó at hann gengi í tǫðunni; en nú

50 51

Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, pp. 172–3. Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, Dictionary, p. 490.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger hljóp hann at sátunum ok stakk hornunum undir botnana ok hóf upp sætit ok dreifði svá um vǫllinn; tók hann þegar aðra, er ǫnnur var brotin, ok fór svá beljandi um vǫllinn ok lét ǫskrliga.52 [It was in the summer that Þóroddr had the hay from his manured field all raked into large haystacks, and then a great rain came. And in the morning when men came out, they saw that Glæsir had come into the homefield and had taken the stock off his horns, which had been fitted on when he took to fierceness. He had lost his habits, because he was never previously accustomed to injuring the hay when he would go into the homefield, but now he ran at the stacks, and with his horns under the bottom of the haystack lifted the stack and scattered it around the field. He took at once another one when the other was broken and went so bellowing around the field in a hideous manner.]

Glæsir is now a malevolent presence among the hay and whatever follows in this passage will be damaging to the household. While he used to dwell alongside or within the home, he now ‘injures’ the hay – and yet, despite this, none of Þóroddr’s heimamenn attempt to drive him off. This perhaps suggests their lack of courage, or an expectation that it is Þóroddr’s responsibility to confront the figure with whom he had previously been close, or indeed as the householder to confront any attacker of the home (as seen in the discussions of the hay-trampling motif above, p. 187). Whether responsible or not, when Þóroddr hears about Glæsir’s actions, he runs out at once, selecting a weapon (of sorts) as he goes: ‘viðarbulungr stóð fyrir durum úti, ok tók hann þar af birkirapt mikinn ok reiddi um ǫxl, svá at hann helt um skálmirnar, ok hljóp ofan á vǫllinn at griðunginum’ [‘a pile of wood stood outside in front of the doorway and he took a birch-branch from there and carried it on his shoulder so that he held the tip, and ran over to the field to the bull’].53 Þóroddr’s actions correspond to the advice given by modern-day livestock manuals on how to approach bulls: to carry a large stick or equivalent in order to appear larger and attempt to present a more imposing figure to the animal.54 When Glæsir sees Þóroddr enter his space, ‘nam hann staðar ok snerisk við honum’ [‘he stopped and turned towards him’], confronting the threat head on, perhaps as a reaction to Þóroddr’s invasion of his flight zone.55 In this respect, and in Þóroddr’s wielding of the birch-branch, this episode may show signs of a 54 52 53



55

Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, pp. 174–5. Ibid. Jack Albright, ‘Why and How to Read a Cow or Bull’ (2004) [accessed 30 Dec. 2016]. Ibid.; Bouissou et al., ‘The Social Behaviour of Cattle’, p. 121; Katherine A. Houpt, Domestic Behaviour for Veterinarians and Animal Scientists (Ames, 1998); Moran and Doyle, Cow Talk, pp. 48–9; Clive J. C. Phillips, Cattle Behaviour

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland real-world encounter with a threatened or threatening bull. While Grágás contains little information on the keeping of bulls, their dangerous nature is emphasised, and the number of violent bulls described in the sagas suggests such large aggressive animals were a prominent part of the medieval Icelandic imagination. This final encounter emphasises the prior intense connection between the two figures and potential human understanding of Glæsir, as Þóroddr attempts to reason with the bull, speaking harshly to him. As seen above, communication with animals is not out of place in the sagas, and Sámr, Freyfaxi, and Inni-Krákr respond positively to such interaction; but Þóroddr is unsuccessful, as ‘griðungrinn gekk eigi undan at heldr’ [‘the bull did not go away from him even then’].56 Glæsir may have been expected to respond like Freyfaxi and Inni-Krákr, and listen to his human partner, but now the animal-human relationship is broken, and Þóroddr has no choice but to fight. The head-to-head fighting described between these two figures is full of movement. Rather than backing away slowly, Þóroddr strikes the bull between the horns with his stick, provoking Glæsir to run at him, his head lowered.57 The description of the fight remains solidly aware of the bodily presence of the bull, and echoes descriptions of bull behaviour in modern times.58 Þóroddr ‘fekk tekit hornin ok veik honum hjá sér’ [‘grasped hold of the bull’s horns and moved Glæsir closer to him’], and the subsequent jostling for position may have been an image familiar to those who had experienced fighting between bulls.59 The two figures are presented as equally matched opponents until: er Þóroddr tók at mœðask, þá hljóp hann upp á háls griðunginum ok spennti hǫndum niðr undir kverkina, en lá fram á hǫfuð griðunginum milli hornanna ok ætlar svá at mœða hann. En griðungrinn hljóp aptr ok fram um vǫllinn með hann.60 [when Þóroddr became wearied, he leapt up onto the neck of the bull and clasped his hands down under Glæsir’s throat. He lay forward on the head of the bull between the horns and intended so to weary him. But the bull ran backwards and forwards around the field with him.]

58 59 56 57



60

(Ipswich, 1993); Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 175. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 175. Ibid. Fraser, Farm Animal Behaviour, pp. 107–8. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 175; Bouissou et al., ‘The Social Behaviour of Cattle’, p. 121. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 175.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger It is at this point, perhaps inspired by the sight of their householder clinging to the neck and back of the bull, that Þóroddr’s home-men decide to gather their weapons and join the battle; but the addition of further men to the fight appears to provoke Glæsir to more drastic action. Notably, Glæsir’s method of killing Þóroddr, ripping into his stomach with his horns, is the same method employed by bulls against other bulls: En er griðungrinn sá þat, rak hann hǫfuðit niðr milli fóta sér ok snaraðisk við, svá at hann fekk komit ǫðru horninu undir hann Þórodd; síðan brá hann upp hǫfðinu svá snart, at fótahlutinum Þórodds sló á lopt, svá at hann stóð nær á hǫfði á hálsi griðunginum. En er Þóroddi sveif ofan, vatt Glæsir undir hann hǫfðinu, ok kom annat hornit á kviðinn, svá at þegar stóð á kafi; lét Þóroddr þá laust hǫndunum, en griðungrinn rak við skræk mikinn ok hljóp ofan til árinnar eptir vellinum.61 [When the bull saw that, he drove his head down between his feet and turned himself quickly, so that he got one of his horns under Þóroddr. Then Glæsir moved his head up so swiftly that the nether part of Þóroddr’s body swung into the air, so that his head was close to the neck of the bull. And when Þóroddr fell from above, Glæsir swung his head under him, and a second horn went into his stomach in such a way that it sank deep at once. Þóroddr then let his hands fall loose, and the bull uttered a great shriek and ran over to the river from the field.]

The shriek with which Glæsir leaves the homefield can be interpreted in multiple ways. It is perhaps a reminder of the trollishness of the bull, as interpreted by the old woman, or may indicate one final mark of dominance over the home, as he has, by killing the householder, damaged the home in the most irrevocable manner. Alternatively, this could be the hideous shriek of an angry bull, perhaps one who is frustrated that he has been made the instrument of such violence, forced to kill a human figure with whom he had previously been affectionate. Likely it is all three. It should be noted that Glæsir’s most severe change in behaviour comes after Þóroddr has declared the bull will be slaughtered at the end of the summer, indicating perhaps an angry response from a spurned landvættr.62 Like paranormal-presenting animals such as the grey horse in Landnámabók, Glæsir disappears into water, ‘svá at hann kom aldri upp síðan’ [‘so that he never came up again’]; and this may also be linked with the death of the violently rebellious boar Beigaðr, who swims away from Ingimundr in Landnámabók and Vatnsdæla saga, and the mare Skálm in Landnámabók,



61 62

Ibid. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 172.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland who met her death in a marsh (see ch. 1, pp. 40, 48).63 The disappearance of these animals into waterscapes, aside from the much-discussed folkloric connotations, may also represent a movement out of society and into the wilder, less tamed spaces of the Icelandic environment.64 By fleeing the homefield, Glæsir effectively outlaws himself for the killing of Þóroddr. As seen in Chapter 3 (p. 127), the medieval laws suggested that a bull should lose his legal security after killing a man, just as human outlaws. It cannot be denied that Glæsir’s sudden change of behaviour is foreshadowed in the narrative by the isolation of his mother, his fathering by the mysterious grey bull, and the large troublesome nature of the calf at birth. However, the intensely positive relationships described between Glæsir and all members of the farm stand in stark contrast to the earlier seemingly ominous events and the later violence. While Glæsir’s character and interactions with Þóroddr are clearly integrated into a wider narrative about the haunting of Þórólfr and the killing of Arnkell, the descriptions of both the farm and the animal-human relationship are the most detailed of such in the sagas. This part of the narrative has evidently been formed from experience of farmscapes and animals. In particular, sudden changes in behaviour are one of the risks of keeping dairy bulls, which are considered more difficult to keep and more likely to attack humans than bulls kept for beef, and advice for modern farmers stresses how even seemingly tame and docile animals may undergo sudden changes in temperament.65 In addition, it has been suggested that size in bulls has an effect on how rank is perceived, so, as Glæsir’s abnormal growth set him aside from other animals, he might also have felt the need to challenge Þóroddr’s dominance in their relationship.66 The story of Glæsir’s birth, his abnormal growth, friendship with Þóroddr, and subsequent sudden change in behaviour appears to be a naturalistic account of bovine-human interactions interwoven with paranormal elements. Like Brandkrossa þáttr, it shows that close relationships between humans and animals held their risks, not only for a man’s character but for his life. It has been suggested that Eyrbyggja saga includes multiple narratives concerned with the creation and enforcement of



63



64 65



66

Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 120; Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 176; Einar Ól. Sveinsson, ‘Vatnsdæla saga’, p. 43; Jakob Benediktsson, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 96. Like Beigaðr, Glæsir is chased into the water by his pursuers. Almqvist, ‘Waterhorse Legends (MLSIT 4086 & 4086B)’. Albright, ‘Why and How to Read a Cow or Bull’; Moran and Doyle, Cow Talk, p. 63. Viktor Reinhardt and Annie Reinhardt, ‘Dynamics of Social Hierarchy in a Dairy Herd’, Zeitschrift Für Tierpsychologie, 38 (1975), 315–23.

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The Negative Animal: Absence, Precarity, and Danger boundaries in the establishment of a secure community in a new land.67 I would argue that in warning against such close and indulgent interactions with animals, the story of Glæsir seeks to contribute to the enforcement of an animal-human boundary and the importance of human control over the natural world, at the expense of perhaps earlier narratives focussed on the assistance of landvættir. The story of this relationship highlights the dangers involved in animal husbandry, the fragile line between the animal friend and foe, and their very real ability to destroy the home and destabilise society.

Animals and the Sagas Rohrbach’s cross-genre study of animals in Old Norse-Icelandic literature places the Íslendingasögur into a system alongside the samtíðarsögur and konungasögur based on their use and representation of animal-human relations. Unlike the Íslendingasögur, the other saga genres do not often depict animals exercising agency, and do not show so many occasions of humans interacting with individual animals.68 A particular contrast can be drawn between the Íslendingasögur and Sturlunga saga, which, having been recorded in similar periods, have nonetheless dissimilar representations of animal-human relations.69 The Íslendingasögur are set in a mythologised Viking-Age past, in contrast to the contemporary or near-contemporary setting of Sturlunga saga, and it may be that the projection of a Viking-Age past enables relationships and interactions to be emphatically portrayed that would otherwise be unsuitable for depiction. It has been suggested that the Icelandic sagas, despite their different foci and style, are each part of the same narrative and conceptual system, with active interaction between the different genres of sagas within a shared continuum of meaning.70 The Íslendingasögur can be seen as occupying a particularly significant place within this continuum, being involved with the negotiation of shifting ideas of religious, paranormal, and social events in the texts in relation to the contemporary events of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland.71 The desire of thirteenth-century Icelanders Phelpstead, ‘Ecocriticism and Eyrbyggja saga’, pp. 16–17. Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick, p. 292. 69 Ibid., p. 293. 70 Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society. Vol. 2: The Receptions of Norse Myths in Medieval Iceland (Odense, 1998), pp. 100–2; Torfi H. Tulinius, ‘Saga as a Myth: The Family Sagas and Social Reality in 13th-Century Iceland’, in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society (Odense, 2003), pp. 526–39, at p. 526. 71 Tulinius, ‘Saga as a Myth’, p. 527. 67 68

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland to redefine their origins in relation to heroic, legendary, or royal Norwegian ancestors may have triggered the recording and compilation of the Íslendingasögur, although these texts also display anxiety towards the ideological basis for this redefinition, and an appropriate outlet for such social anxiety or tension would have been the stories closest to the place and identity of the saga compilers, writers, readers, or listeners.72 Like the stories of settlement discussed in Chapter 1, the tales in the Íslendingasögur can be interpreted as narratives produced by a set of people making sense of their society and their world, and the ancestors who formed them (ancestors such as those who constructed the sites analysed in Chapters 1 and 2). Such ancestors, and their descendants, were people for whom animal-­ human interactions were a vital and daily occurrence, so we should not simply look for the redefinition of human society, and anxieties around such in the production of these texts, but also repeated negotiation of the animal-human community.73 These sagas explicitly show an awareness of the importance of, and risks around, close animal-human relationships, particularly in light of changing economic and environmental conditions in medieval Iceland.74 An analysis of the domestic animal-human interactions in the Íslendingasögur that focusses on the role of place and animal behaviour in these descriptions deepens our understanding of the animal-human relations in these texts. Rather than simply foils for masculinity or indicators of human-human relations, certain animals are represented as active players in networks of exchange, honour, and kinship in these texts, and echo human social organisation. They are attributed human characteristics, at the same time as expressing naturalistic animal behaviours. Such representations of certain animals echo the ambiguities found in the Grágás laws discussed in Chapter 3, in which pigs, horses, and dogs seem to occupy a legal space that cannot be called ‘human’, but not entirely ‘animal’. Such ambiguities might be further linked to the blurring of animal and human places on the farm, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. The depictions in the Íslendingasögur are a key part of the ‘saga-world’ espoused by earlier studies, but demonstrate not the difference between animals and humans, as Rohrbach suggests, but commonalities between the two. By understanding how these animal-human interactions work within the texts, we can expand our understanding of how the storytellers and scribes behind these works engaged with the idea of the animal and the animal role in the multispecies communities of an imagined Viking-Age Iceland. 74 72 73

Ibid., pp. 527, 536–7. Hartman, Ogilvie, and Hennig, ‘“Viking” Ecologies’, p. 134. Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, ‘Of Sagas and Sheep’; Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, ‘Spinning Goods’.

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… And the Man Responds

T

his book opened with a horse making himself known to a man, and the man responding. In this case, it was a specific example from a specific saga, but such an action and response, such an act of apparent interspecies understanding brought forth from learning, can rest as a metaphor for the ways in which animal-human relations are depicted in this book, and beyond. The animal-human interactions seen in the settlement narratives, organisation of farm sites, laws, and Íslendingasögur are reactions to the affective agency of animals in the early Icelandic world; our study and translation of them a further reaction to these co-creators. This book examined the various representations of domestic animals and their interactions with humans in relation to the establishment and continuation of early Icelandic communities, focussed on the central space of the household-farm. It has done so through analysis and discussion of selected texts, and features of the built environment of Iceland, focussing on the organisation and demarcation of human and animal places in these sources, and the animal-human relations that would have informed, and been informed by, these constructions of cultural space. The findings of the chapters are as follows: 1. Settlement spaces matter

Both medieval texts and interpretations of archaeological material indicate that the settlement of Iceland involved close interactions between domestic animals, humans, and the environment, albeit to different degrees. In all cases, the locations and manifestation of settlement (the construction of the farmstead) are shown to be spaces of multispecies dwelling, and negotiation of complex animal-human relationships. The settlement narratives compiled in the thirteenth century are particularly pertinent to the aim of this book, given that they show an active interest in encouraging the role of animals in settlement processes, and as mediators between the new settlers and the land. It can be said then that part of the ideological framework of these settlement narratives was to develop ideas of a joint animal-human settlement, which seems likewise utilised in certain sagas focussed on specific families or individuals. The depiction of the management of, or cooperation with, animals as a process concurrent to the setting up of the farm would have had little relevance or interest to medieval society in Iceland unless these narratives were representative of

Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland a contemporary collective view of the importance of domestic animals in shaping the Icelandic community. 2. Icelandic farmers built their homes for and with animals Animal places in the archaeological remains of Iceland should be more than just middens. Before the dead animal was deposited, the living animal roamed, and our understanding of their interactions with landscapes and humans can only be taken so far without analysis of their shelters, their dwelling places, and their relationships with other places and pathways on the farm. While reconstructing lived experience from the physical remains of Viking-Age Icelandic farm sites is a challenge, and the speculative investigation of animal-human relations reliant on extensive and detailed excavation work of a kind only undertaken at a few sites in Iceland so far, we should continue to strive towards this goal in our studies of relationships between persons, both animals and humans, and their places. Chapter 2 demonstrated that meeting points at a site are dependent on spatial organisation that directs not only movement, but audio-visual engagement with animal places; the animals on a site can be considered as affective agents, capable of responding to human spaces and pathways; and that the placement of and subsequent interactions with animals may hold meaning on a personal, social, political, and religious level. 3. Animals have a place and a responsibility in law Domestic animals in the earliest recorded Icelandic law are both objects and agents. The laws regulate the care and protections these animals require, but also the behaviour of the animals themselves, which seems often to fall short of the most desirable outcomes. A strictly demarcated legal landscape is laid out, in which the reliance of households on the animal-producer meant that domestic animals were to be controlled, protected, and punished in defined ways. The recording of laws represents an attempt at codifying an ideal set of social relations and encouraging a specific outcome or process, and while there is no way of knowing which laws were respected, their very existence tells us two things: first, that there were specific actions that would lead to a well-controlled and socially-­useful animal-human relationship; and second, that these relationships were important enough to justify the time and effort invested by scribes in recording ‘animal’ laws in such compilations. The laws also demonstrate that domestic animals were not a homogenous category in either valuation or legal status, and therefore belonged to different places, and possessed different responsibilities – leading to differential treatment, particularly for the transgressing of boundaries. 210

… And the Man Responds 4. Animal persons in the Íslendingasögur are active characters (for better and for worse) Reading the sagas alongside detailed analyses of archaeological sites encourages us to pay more attention to the spatial and sensory aspect of animal-human relationships in these texts and read the Viking-Age household-farm as a place that these sagas seek to emulate and re-­create. In their emulations analysed in Chapters 4 and 5, we find depictions of animals in affective relationships with humans, capable of interacting with both humans and their places of meaning. Indeed, meaningful places are created and co-created by animals in these narratives and are to some extent understood as such. While the dangerous and deviant potential of domestic animals is recognised in many parts of these narratives, both positive and negative experiences with animals lead to the formation and remembrance of these meaningful places and stories told about them. Animals such as Freyfaxi and Sámr understand the value of the home and the obligations of the household, operating within human male homosocial networks of obligation and comradeship. Further connecting certain animals to human actors in the social networks of the saga-world are descriptions such as those of Sámr, Glæsir, Brandkrossi, and even Mókolla, which echo descriptions of esteemed men. Yet these animals are not anthropomorphised. They are emphatically animals, with some saga-authors describing animal encounters and interactions with a high level of detail rooted in knowledge of animal behaviour and the sensory experiences of being with animals. These figures are animal persons capable of being and acting in a similar manner to human persons. It is important to recognise that the animals with whom humans interact or fight in the sagas, and from whom they even learn, are presented as real animals. Evidently, as Susan Crane has argued for medieval literature from the British Isles, the authors of the sagas did not forget the living animal, and these animals were in some cases presented as capable of changing the development of human characters.1 However, remembering is not the same as trusting, and the sagas show a wide range of variable attitudes to the ambiguity of animal-human relations, taking into account status, capability, and individual preferences of those involved. Relationships between animals and humans in these stories were causes for both celebration and concern.

1

Crane, Animal Encounters, p. 171.

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Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland ‘Freyfaxi isn’t a real horse, is he’ At a roundtable discussion on ‘New Directions in Medieval Animal Studies’ at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, one attendee declared: ‘Freyfaxi isn’t a real horse, is he.’ It was exactly that, a declaration. In a way, this book is a response to that statement. Such beliefs are short-sighted and leave little room for debate. Whatever their reasons, for my anonymous attendee Freyfaxi was not a ‘real’ horse, and certainly not a person. Of course, to the extent that Freyfaxi is a character in a specific saga, he is not a ‘real’ horse. However, the idea of Freyfaxi came from somewhere, and the idea of a horse capable of playing an active role in a community, and in a close, communicative relationship with a human figure, would not have been implausible to a medieval Icelandic audience, having been drawn from interactions with, and experiences of, real horses, and stories told across farms and across generations about these animals. In an oral society such as Viking-Age Iceland, animals can act as holders of mnemonic function, enabling the formation and continued re-telling of narratives involving animals, their relations with humans, and the places and structures around which these narratives took place. Everyday association with domestic animals would have enabled the remembering and re-telling of stories about other animals, particularly if the behaviour of the animal in the story is like that expressed by the animals with whom the receiver and re-teller of the story is familiar. A defiant bull or ox may conjure up a story of a similarly problematic creature, a useful horse prompt the memory of other supremely valued equines. Animals with whom work was undertaken are especially likely to encourage this sort of storytelling: the small frustrations and victories of day-to-day activity on the farm being rife with tellable and teachable moments for the next generation, shaping their own beliefs around, relations towards, and stories about, animals.

The Medieval and Beyond The medieval world is not a bounded entity, and the animal-human relations expressed in this culture were the foundations of later traditions. Unfortunately, such a long-term view of these relationships could not be undertaken in this book, but it is clear that as the gangabærinn (passage-house) became the dominant method of structuring the Icelandic home in the late medieval and early modern periods, animal-human relations in these places would have developed through experiences of these different ways of living; indeed, domestic animals and the farmstead are 212

… And the Man Responds key features of many of the folktales collected in the nineteenth century, and a study of these in relation to later communities is worthy of a book in itself.2 Elements of modern Icelandic culture also show an evident and, at times, obscene frankness in their interest in animal-human relationships, for example in films such as Hross í oss (2013) and Hrútar (2015).3 In these two films, we see the entanglement of human-human and animal-human relationships in the negotiation of everyday interactions: relationships that become heightened in times of social crisis. The Icelandic title of the earlier film, Hross í oss (horse(s) in us), emphasises the commonality between humans and horses in narratives based around the animal-­human relationships in Icelandic communities. While this book is defined by its rootedness in the Icelandic world, I believe that closer analytical attention on animals as animals could, and should, continue to be applied across medieval studies and medieval archaeology; specifically, analysis of animals as embodied agents acting and interacting in the social and physical worlds of, for example, medieval builders, farmers, and traders, as well as the authors and consumers of literary and legal texts. Such an approach requires an active shifting of the researcher’s perspective, and the re-aligning of research objectives to embrace, not necessarily a zoocentric view, but an inclusive one that considers both human and animal perspectives and, most importantly, the relationships between them. Animal-human relations on the early Icelandic household-farm were a complex matter. Such relationships were not just between animals and humans, but between animals, humans, and the structures humans constructed around themselves, such as built space, legal traditions, and literary narratives. This would be the case across the medieval world and beyond. As such structures increase in number, or become more entangled, or as certain animals fade from our everyday view, so our relationships with animals and their relationships with us will have changed, and will change further, but they will not disappear. Drawing evidence from across disciplinary boundaries enables more nuanced and grounded understandings to be reached of how such relationships were perceived, constructed, and enshrined in past cultures, and how they continue to be perceived, constructed, and enshrined today.

2



3



Milek, ‘Houses and Households’, pp. 46–7; Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales & Legends (Stroud, 2004). A further example, although as yet unwatched by the author, is Dýrið (2021) – a film released with the title Lamb in English, but that literally translates as ‘The Animal’.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Icelandic authors with patronymics are listed by their first name, as per Icelandic scholarship convention.

Primary Sources Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson (eds), ‘Gísla saga Súrssonar’, in Vestfirðinga sögur (Reykjavík, 1943), pp. 1–118. Björn Sigfússon (ed.), ‘Reykdæla saga ok Víga-Skútu’, in Ljósvetninga Saga (Reykjavík, 1940), pp. 148–243. Cleasby, Richard and Guðbrandur Vigfússon, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1874). Dennis, Andrew, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins (eds), Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás I (Winnipeg, 1980). —— (eds), Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás II (Winnipeg, 2000). Durrenberger, Paul and Dorothy Durrenberger (trans), The Saga of Hávarður of Ísafjörður (Enfield Lock, 1996). Eddison, Eric R., Egil’s Saga (Cambridge, 1930). Einar Ól. Sveinsson (ed.), Brennu-Njáls saga (Reykjavík, 1954). —— (ed.), ‘Vatnsdæla saga’, in Vatnsdæla saga (Reykjavík, 1939), pp. 1–131. Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson (eds), ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, in Eyrbyggja saga (Reykjavík, 1935), pp. 1–184. Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson (eds), Hauksbók (Copenhagen, 1896). Faulkes, Anthony (ed.), Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning (Oxford, 1982). —— (ed.), Edda: Skáldskaparmál (Oxford, 1998). Finch, Ronald G. (ed.), The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. R. G. Finch (London, 1965). Finsen, Vilhjálmur (ed.), Grágás: Efter Det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift: Nr. 334 Fol., Staðarhólsbók (Copenhagen, 1879). —— (ed.), Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid, Udgivet Efter Det Kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskrift: Text I (Copenhagen, 1852). —— (ed.), Grágás: Islændernes Lovbog i Fristatens Tid, Udgivet Efter Det Kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskrift: Text II (Copenhagen, 1852).

Bibliography Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Carl R. Unger (eds), ‘Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls’, in Flateyjarbok: En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler (Christiania, 1860), pp. 418–21. Guðni Jónsson (ed.), ‘Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar’, in Grettis saga (Reykjavík, 1936), pp. 1–290. Hermann Pálsson (trans.), ‘Hrafnkel’s Saga’, in Hermann Pálsson (ed.), Hrafnkel’s Saga and Other Stories (London, 1971), pp. 35–71. Jakob Benediktsson (ed.), ‘Íslendingabók’, in Íslendingabók: Landnámabók (Reykjavík, 1968), pp. 1–30. —— (ed.), ‘Landnámabók’, in Íslendingabók: Landnámabók (Reykjavík, 1968), pp. 31–397. Jóhannes Halldórsson (ed.), ‘Finnboga saga’, in Kjalnesinga saga (Reykjavík, 1959), pp. 251–340. —— (ed.), ‘Króka-Refs saga’, in Kjalnesinga saga (Reykjavík, 1959), pp. 117–60. —— (ed.), ‘Víglundar saga’, in Kjalnesinga saga (Reykjavík, 1959), pp. 63–116. Jón Jóhannesson (ed.), ‘Brandkrossa Þáttr’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. 181–91. —— (ed.), ‘Fljótsdæla saga’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. 225–96. —— (ed.), ‘Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða’, in Austfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1950), pp. 95–133. Jonas Kristjánsson (ed.), ‘Valla-Ljóts saga’, in Eyfirðinga sǫgur (Reykjavík, 1956), pp. 230–60. Larson, Laurence Marcellus, The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and Frostathing Law (New York, 1935). Nordal, Sigurður (ed.), Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (Reykjavik, 1933). Nordal, Sigurður and Guðni Jónsson (eds), ‘Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa’, in Borgfirðinga sögur (Reykjavík, 1938), pp. 108–211. —— (eds), ‘Heiðarvíga saga’, in Borgfirðinga sögur (Reykjavík, 1938), pp. 212–328. Schulman, Jana K. (ed.), Jónsbók: The Laws of Later Iceland; the Icelandic Text According to MS AM 351 Fol. Skálholtsbók Eldri, trans. Jana K. Schulman (Saarbrücken, 2010). Scudder, Bernard (trans.), The Saga of Grettir the Strong (London, 2005). Simpson, Jacqueline, Icelandic Folktales & Legends (Stroud, 2004). Storm, Gustav (ed.), Islandske Annaler Indtil 1578 (Christiania, 1888). Turville-Petre, Gabriel (ed.), Víga-Glúms saga (Oxford, 1960). Unger, Carl R. (ed.), ‘Ceciliu saga Meyjur’, in Heilagra Manna Søgur: Fortaellinger Og Legender Om Hellige Maend Og Kvinder (Christiania, 1877), pp. 276–97. —— (ed.), Stjórn. Gammelnorsk Bibelhistorie (Christiania, 1862). 216

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238

INDEX Page numbers in bold type refer to illustrations and their captions. Aðalstræti 5, 24, 29–33, 70, 97, 117, 121 agency of animals 14–17, 21, 40–3, 50, 54, 58, 89, 106, 115, 122, 127, 130–1, 136, 147, 153, 167, 173, 207, 209 Animal Studies 2 n.2 annals, Old Icelandic 16 archaeology method 5–6 relationship with texts 17–22 zooarchaeology 7, 30, 61, 64 Social Zooarchaeology 11 arctic fox 8, 23 Ásmundr Þorgrímsson 102, 164–9, 199 n.38 relationship with Kengála 169–72, 174–5, 177, 195 Auðunn stoti Válason 44–5 bear 37, 167 n.80 polar bear 8 Beigaðr 40–1, 48, 102, 193, 205, 206 n.63 bestiary tradition 157, 171 n.93 Bleikála see Kengála Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa 145, n.13, 146, 149, 151, 161, 171, n.96, 198 Bjǫrn Hítdœlakappa 145 n.13, 161 Bolla þáttr Bollasonar 171 n.96, 187, 192, n.17 Brandkrossa þáttr 4, 185, 190, 191–6, 206 Brandkrossi 144, 146, 191–6, 211 comparison with Glæsir 159, 171 n.96, 185, 187, 201, 202 destruction of the homefield 193

Brennu-Njáls saga 16, 32, 98 n.97, 129 n.80, 141, 142, 150, 151, 155–9, 160, 171 n.96, 178 n.120, 187, 199 Brodd-Helgi Þorgilsson 190 Brynja 42 burial 10, 13, 27, 38 of dogs 64 of horses 49, 154–5 care of animals 23, 59, 62, 71, 86, 97–9, 144, 162–3, 186 n.4, 194 laws about 107, 116–17, 119–21, 124, 126, 130, 132, 210 seasonal care 9, 34, 36, 83 as a source of anxiety 8, 16, 36–7, 38, 97 as a source of conflict 165, 168–70 see also mistreatment of animals of turf buildings 63 castration 64, 111–12, 112 n.22, 113–15, 142, 160–1, 163 cats 10, 127 cattle 9, 13, 32, 49, 60 n.1, 63, 64, 67, 98–9, 115, 119, 137, 151, 162, 179, 192, 198, 199, 200 bull 21, 112 n.22, 137, 141, 171 n.96, 180 n.129, 191, 197, 200 heimagriðungr 101, 102, 141, 190 n.13 laws about 127, 128, 132 violence of 102, 127, 132, 187, 190 n.13, 192 n.17, 212 see also Glæsir calf 112, 158, 192, 197–200, 206 cow 47, 117, 120, 141, 187, 196, 201

Index anger 40 n.44, 148, 164, 166–7, 173, 174, 202, 205 attachment 145–6, 159, 164, 184, 195–6 grief 40, 178, 193–5 environmental fluctuation 7–8, 16, 20, 26, 107, 149–50, 170–1, 208 Eyjólfr í Múla (Gull-Þóris saga) 188–90 Eyrbyggja saga 32, 131, 141, 153, 163, 187, 190, 192 n.17 see also Glæsir settlement 56

cattle, cow (continued) cooperation with humans 16 as foundation deposit 74 killing of 67 n.20 kúgildi (cow-worth) 110–13, 116 see also Brynja as destructive force 149, 184, 185–90 ox 32, 39, 54 n.76, 142, 171 n.93, 212 as treasures 145 n.13, 146 killing of 37–8, 194 value of 111–12, 113 see also Brandkrossi, Spámaðr, Þorgríma smíðkonu in settlement processes 7, 34, 42, 43, 50, 54 Ceciliu saga 179 chickens 166–8 Christianity 50, 51, 73, 108, 118, 127–8, 133–4 conversion to 8–10, 14 communal pasture 51, 119, 121–2, 135–6 communication between animals and humans see under interactions, animal-human Critical Animal Studies (CAS) 21

farm structures byre 33, 34, 60, 65, 66, 75, 76, 77, 83, 97 n.96, 98, 100, 117, 198 enclosures 65–7, 68, 76 house 3, 5, 14, 37, 55, 62–3, 64, 116, 132, 142, 160, 161, 176, 193, 212 at Aðalstræti 29–33 animals interacting with 32–4, 64, 73, 160, 163, 148–9, 151, 157–8, 160, 198–200, 202 legal definition of household 117 stofa (stove room, sitting room) 161, 197, 199, 202 at Sveigakot 78–83, 86, 88, 104 at Vatnsfjörður 70–3, 74, 75, 95, 97, 103–5 milking pen 32, 48, 65, 117, 180 n.130, 201–2 outside activity areas at Sveigakot 78–80, 96–7 at Vatnsfjörður 70, 95 pavements 65, 74, 78, 83, 85–6, 104 pit-house 69, 72–3, 81, 99 sheep shelter 29 smithy 70, 95, 97, 99, 105 storehouse 70, 95 Finnboga saga 187, 192 n.17 Fljótsdœla saga 150, 160–3 Fleygir 171 Flóamanna saga 88, 146 Fluga 45 forn siðr see pre-Christian beliefs fóstri (foster-kin) 1, 21, 142–5, 148–51, 154, 159, 164, 183

dogs 101, 102, 157, 208 burial of 10, 13, laws about 109, 127, 132–3, 187 places of 63, 64, 98 n.97, 141 see also Sámr, Víg Drangey 164, 178–82 Droplaugarsona saga 32, 191 dung 32, 67, 74, 84, 85, 86 laws concerning 125 Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar: 129 n.80, 177 n.116, 188 n.7, 199, 201 n.44 Skalla-Grímr’s settlement 24, 40, 52–4 Eiðfaxi 45 Einarr Þorbjarnarson 126, 145, 147–8, 150–4, 161, 202 emotions 102, 177, 183

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Index Grettis saga 21, 44, 148, n.25, 149, 199 n.38 depiction of animal-human relationships 102, 125, 157 n.55, 164, 164–83 settlement narrative within 27 Grímr (Brandkrossa þáttr) 191–6 gripr (valuable thing) 55, 56, 143, 145, 150, 151, 152, 155, 160, 161, 163 Gróa Þiðrandadóttir 160–4 Gulaþing laws 107–9, 111 Gull-Þórir Oddsson 56–7 Gull-Þóris saga 24, 56–7, 145 n.13, 163, 188–9 Gunnarr (Gull-Þóris saga) 188–90 Gunnarr Hámundarson 98 n.97, 145, 150, 155–9, 187, 195, 199, 200 death 157–9 receiving Sámr 155–7 Gunnlaugr ormstunga Illugason 177 n.116, 199 Gunnlaugs saga ormstunga 177 n.116, 199, 201 n.44

foundation deposits 73–4 Freyfaxi 9, 121, 171 n.96, 172, 188, 211, 212 see also fóstri communicating with Hrafnkell 1–2, 148–51 comparison with Glæsir 200, 202, 204 comparison with Inni-Krákr 160, 161, 163 comparison with Sámr 156, 158 death 152–4, 164, 174, 194–5, 202 as legal actor 150–1, 153–5, 174, 183 relationship with Hrafnkell 146–7, 159, 184 as treasure 55, 146–6, 151, 159 unauthorised riding 123, 143, 146–7 garprinn (the bold one) 143, 148–9, 150, 151 geese 101, 102, 165–8, 173 Geirmundr heljarskinn 43, 51 Geitir (Brandkrossa þáttr) 191, 194–6 gender 14, 19, 163, 175 gifts, animals as 155–6 Gísla saga Súrsonnar 98 n.97 Glæsir 21, 157 n.55, 159, 171 n.96, 185, 187, 190, 211 conception 196 birth 197–8 fight with Þóroddr 202–5 tactile relationship with human 201 vocalisation 199–200, 205 goats 32–4, 39, 63, 113–15, 141, 191 billy-goat 44, 45–6, 55, in the house 32 nanny-goat  32–3 Granastaðir  31, 65, 67, 68 Grágás 3, 20, 88, 103, 106–39, 143, 155, 158, 183, 187, 204, 208 eating animals 127–8, 133 metfé (valued property) 112, 115 stray animals 121–2, 128–9, 130–3 values of animals 110–16 Grettir Ásmundarson 21, 102, 141, 164–83, 199 n.38

Hafr-Bjǫrn 45–7 Hallfreðr (Hrafnkels saga) 55–6 Halli Sigurðsson 166–7, 190 Harðar saga Grímkelssonar 10, 145 n.13, 180, 187, 192 n.17 see also Þorgríma smíðkona animal theft 142, 163, 171 n.97 Harri 54 n.76 haystacks 135, 138, 201 destruction of 184, 185–8, 193, 202–3 guarding of 165, Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings 125, 172 Heiðarvíga saga 102, 145 n.13, 171, 190, 201 Heiðrún 32–3 herding 8, 61, 73, 88, 99, 120, 124–6 cattle 186–9 horses 64 Hjǫrleifr Hróðmarsson 37–8 Hœnsa-Þóris saga 59 Hofstaðir dogs at 64 n.14 enclosure at 65, 67, 68, 76 ritual killings at 13, 49, 67 n.20

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Index Ingólfr Arnarson 30, 36, 37 Inni-Krákr 64, 142, 144, 146, 150, 159, 160–3, 164, 183, 204 intelligence of animals 54, 113, 115, 150, 156, 162, 171, 175, 180 interactions, animal-human birthing 197–8 communication 1–2, 21, 98 n.97, 143, 148–51, 154, 156, 158–9, 174, 177, 199–200, 204, 212 grooming 169 killing of animals 37, 46–7, 49, 61, 67 n.20, 102, 128–9, 151–4, 157–8, 164–8, 176–7, 179, 181–2, 189–90, 192, 194–5, 198 of men 37–8, 127–8, 145, 150–1, 152, 167, 187–8, 202, 205–6 milking 34, 61, 63, 187 laws about 116–18, 120–1, 124 naming 40, 41, 42, 45, 146, 156, 160, 179 n.122, 180, 199 riding 9, 63, 64, 141, 145, 146–7, 148 n.25, 150–1, 152, 153–4, 161, 175, 187, 189–90 laws involving riding horses 114–15, 123, 131 Íslendingabók 23, 37, 107–8

homefield 20, 32, 44, 72, 75, 88, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100–1, 116, 141–2, 143, 149, 161, 192, 201, 205–6 destruction of 21, 185–91, 193, 196, 202–3 homefield walls 125, 135, 137 Hǫsmagi 102, 171 n.96, 179 n.122, 178–81, 183 horses 8, 9–10, 11, 13, 16, 32, 60 n.1, 63–4, 169–70, 172–3, 190, 208, 209, 212, 213 fighting horse 9, 32, 115, 127, 170, 176 gelding 64, 160 n.64, 115, 160, 163 see also Inni-Krákr laws concerning 110, 114–15, 122, 123–4, 127–8, 130–1, 132 mare 1, 44, 47–9, 63, 114–15, 131, 141–2, 149, 153, 160 n.64, 169–76, 191, 205 see also Kengála riding see under interactions, animal-human in settlement 44–9 stallion 44–5, 63, 102, 111, 112, 114–15, 127, 131, 141–2, 145 n.13, 151, 160, 161, 163, 169, 170, 175–6, 196 see also Freyfaxi heimahestr (home-horse) 102, 141–2 Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson 35, 36–7 Hrafnkell Freysgoði Hallfreðarson 1–2, 55–6, 126, 142, 143, 145–54, 156, 159, 163, 164, 184, 194–5 communication with Freyfaxi 1–2, 148–50, 154, 156, 158, 174, 200 Hrafnkell’s oath 145–7, 150 Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða 125 depiction of pre-Christian behaviour 9 Freyfaxi episode 1, 142, 143, 145–55, 156, 160, 161, 162–3, 188, 194–5 see also Freyfaxi settlement narrative 24, 32, 54–6 Hrísbrú 32 n.26, 71 Hvítingr 145 n.13, 146, 151, 161

Járnsíða 109 Jónsbók 109, 111 Katla (Eyrbyggja saga) 153 Kengála 149, 157 n.55, 168–75, 177, 179 n.122, 180, 183, 195 killing see under interactions, animal-human konungasögur 194, 207 Konungsbók 109, 121, 123, 125, 133, 135, 137 Kormáks saga 101, 102, 195 Króka-Refs saga 149, 187 Kveld-Úlfr Bjálfason 53 Landnámabók 131, 160 n.64 animal-driven settlement 34, 49–51, 54 first settlers 29, 30, 37–8 initial discovery of Iceland 35–7

Ingimundr enn gamli Þorsteinsson 39, 40–1, 131, 205

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Index homefield-boar 88, 102, 141 see also Beigaðr homefield-pig 88 in settlement 7, 34, 39–43, 148 n.23 laws concerning 127–9, 132, 136, 208 piglet 47–8, 115–16, 166–7 sow 47–8, 115–16, 166–7 value of 13, 115–16 polar bear see under bear pre-Christian beliefs 9–10, 13, 14, 43–4, 49, 73, 134, 155 inhumation graves see under burials pledging an animal to a deity 145–6 proverbs 167–8, 174

placenames 38–43, 48 society-building 51–2 as a source 3, 23–6 socio-political purpose 57–9 landvættir (land-spirits)  43 n.50, 44–50, 56, 196, 205, 207 accompanying men 46 assisting with animal care 46–7 assisting with animal reproduction 42, 44–5, 48 prophecies of 47, 48, 54–5 Laxdæla saga 39, 101 n.99, 199 Ljósvetninga saga 171 n.96 meeting points 2, 11, 20, 59, 60–2, 64, 65, 71, 86, 89, 100 n.99, 210 mistreatment of animals 110, 123, 143, 147, 159, 161–2, 163, 164, 165–7, 168, 173–4, 185–6, 189–90 Mókolla 171 n.96, 176–8, 179 n.122, 180, 181–3

Reykdæla saga ok Víga-Skútu 169 Reykjavík 29–31, 33, 35 Sámr 16, 142, 150, 151, 155–9, 163, 164, 172, 183, 202, 204, 211 death 145, 158–9, 174, 195 voice 98 n.97, 158–9, 199–200 samtíðarsögur 207 biskupasögur 177 Sturlunga saga 207 secondary products milk 29, 33, 43, 67 n.20, 187, 192–3, 201 cattle drinking 192–3, 201 laws about 109, 116–18, 124 milking pen see under farm structures value of milk-producing animals 111–15 traction 44–5, 115, 161–2 wool 43, 112 plucking or shearing 61, 112–14, 137, 169 self-feeding animals 8, 53–4, 60 n.1, 64, 102 Sel-Þórir Grímsson 48–9 shapeshifting see under transformation sheep 7, 32, 39, 46–7, 49, 54, 56, 64, 67, 82, 102, 169, 200, 201 ewe 63, 111, 112–13, 114, 165, 211 see also Mókolla forystusauðr 113, 114, 171

Njáls saga see Brennu-Njáls saga Norway 14, 27, 191, 194–5 Óláfr pái 155, 199 Ólafr Tryggvason 194 Old Norse religion see pre-Christian beliefs outlawry 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 158, 176, 177, 183, as punishment for injuries against animals 117–18, 120–3, 127, 187 paranormal 19, 21, 44–8, 163, 175, 178, 179, 182, 184–5, 191, 196–9, 205–6, 207 see also supernatural pasture 7, 9, 60 n.1, 63, 84, 135, 142, 160 n.64, 172, 174 see also communal pasture payments, animals as 111–12, 115–16, 119 personhood 19, 128 n.75, 155, 211 pigs 7, 8, 9, 10, 49, 63, 64, 65, 191 around the farm buildings 16, 81, 87–8, 102–3 boar 40–2, 48, 55, 102, 116, 193, 205

243

Index taskscapes 60–1, 74 n.39 transformation 10, 163

sheep (continued) grazing 176 harming of 120 lamb 112–13, 176–7, 179, 180 place of 8–9, 11, 15 n.41, 43, 60 n.1, 119, 141 ram 39, 102, 112–14, 164, 165, 178–82, 201 shepherding 118, 123–6, 135, 145–6, 172 n.102, 147, 153, 172 n.102 slaughtering 176, 178 stealing 51, 131, 171 n.97 values of 112–13, 114, 115 as wealth 13, 116 wether 112–13, 114, 122 shepherding see under sheep shielings 13, 43, 63, 116, 136 Pálstóftir 65–8, 76 Skalla-Grímr Kveldúlfsson 53–4, 177 n.116, 199 n.38 Skálm 47–50, 191, 205 Spámaðr 171, 179–80 spatial-functional analysis 5, 20, 62, 89–100, 167 diagrams 90–4 discussion of Vatnsfjörður see under Vatnsfjörður discussion of Sveigakot see under Sveigakot Staðarhólsbók 109–10, 122, 123, 129, 135, 137 Stjórn 177, 179 Stóraborg 72 Sturlubók 24, 26, 35, 39–40, 42–4, 46, 48, 50, 51, 57 see also Landnámabók supernatural 50 see also paranormal Svarfdæla saga 135, 145 n.13, 197 Sveigakot 5–6, 31, 63 n.10, 64–5, 72, 75, 100, 102, 103, 104–5, 111, 117, 125 description of site 76–89 spatial-functional analysis 89–100 sveltikvíar (starving-folds) 121–2

Valla-Ljóts saga 166–7, 190 Vápnfirðinga saga 187, 190, 192 n.17 Vatnsdæla saga 10, 40 n.44, 102, 131, 148 n.23, 193, 205 Vatnsfjörður 5–6, 31, 65, 103, 121, 124 description of site 68–76 spatial-functional analysis 89–100 Víg 194 Víga-Glúm Eyjólfsson 185–7, 188, 190 Víga-Glúms saga 88, 141, 167 n.80, 185–7, 190 walls 29, 32, 67 n.20, 102, 122, 125, 190 legal walls 121, 134–8, 186 walrus 24, 29–30, 32–4, 36 warrior characteristics 41 n.46, 151, 156, 190 water 75, 86, 95 animals associated with bodies of 40, 44, 46–8, 153, 185, 193, 205–6 watering animals 161–2, 192 see also care wealth 41, 43, 51, 55, 97–9, 111, 116 Þiðranda þáttr ok Þórhalls 179–80 Þórðr melrakki 190 Þorgerðr Oddleifsdóttir 149, 187–8 Þorgríma smíðkonu 10, 19, 163 Þórisdalr 176 Þóroddr (Eyrbyggja saga) 184, 190, 196–206 Þórólfr bægifótr 196, 206 Þórólfr sleggja 10 Þorskfirðinga saga see Gull-Þóris saga Þorsteinn rauðnefr 46–7 Þorsteins saga hvíta 101, 102, 141, 187, 190, 192 n.17 Ǫnundr tréfǫtr 27

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Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages Previously published: 1: The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles, Corinne Dale 2: Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations, Michael J. Warren 3: Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac, Britton Elliott Brooks 4: The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary, Liz Herbert McAvoy 5: Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts, Liam Lewis 6: Wolves in ‘Beowulf’ and Other Old English Texts, Elizabeth Marshall