Flesh and Word: Reading Bodies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Early Irish Literature (Trends in Medieval Philology)
Author: Künzler, Sarah
Date: 2016-08-22
Publisher: De Gruyter
Rights: &#169; 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Sarah Künzler

Flesh and Word

Trends in Medieval Philology

Edited by

Ingrid Kasten, Niklaus Largier
and Mireille Schnyder

Editorial Board

Ingrid Bennewitz, John Greenfield,

Christian Kiening, Theo Kobusch,

Peter von Moos, Uta Störmer-Caysa

Volume 31

Gedruckt mit Unterstützung des Doktoratsprogramms

„Medialität – Historische Perspektiven“
des Deutschen Seminars der Universität Zürich.

This work was accepted as a PhD thesis by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Zurich in the spring semester 2015 on the recommendation of the Doctoral Committee: Prof. Dr. Jürg Glauser (main supervisor), Dr. Geraldine Parsons.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen

Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

ISBN 978-3-11-045538-0
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-045587-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-045542-7

ISSN 1612-443X

© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
www.degruyter.com

Contents

Preface

1Introduction

1.1Bodies and Mediality: Mapping Horizons

1.2Research Questions

1.3Studying Bodies in Medieval Literature: Some Remarks on Concepts and Terminology

1.3.1Studying Texts as Texts

1.3.2Looking Beyond Literature: Adjusting Methodology

1.3.3Minor Matters

1.4Texts

2Speak for Yourself! Expressive Mediality and the Self

2.1Bodies that Speak

2.2Expressive Mediality and Social Identity

2.2.1Early Irish Literature: Reading Cú Chulainn with(in) The Politics of Anatomy

2.2.2A Remarkable Presence or an Unmarked Presence? Bodies and Social Status from Rígsþula to Saga

2.3How (not) to Be a Proper Man: Reading Beardless Faces

2.3.1Beating a Boy? The Beardless Cú Chulainn in TBC

2.3.2Female or No-Male? A Study of the Beardless Njál in Brennu-Njáls saga

3I am the Other – Who are You? Expressive Mediality and the Other

3.1Ideas of Otherness in Medieval Literature

3.2Reading Encounters with the Other

3.2.1Original riddarasögur: Male Heroes and Female Others

3.2.2‘What Manner of Man,’ asked Ailill, ‘is this Hound?’: Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad

3.3Hamhleypa and Metamorphosis: Reading the Unfixed Body

3.3.1Revisiting Cú Chulainn’s Shifting Body

3.3.2Crossing Boundaries: Hamhleypa in a fornaldarsaga Norðurlanda

3.4Expressing Categories, Categories of Expression

4Scratching the Surface: Reading Bodies in Transmissive Mediality

4.1The Transmissive Nature of Inscribed Skin

4.2Show Me Your Skin and I’ll Tell You Who You Are: Reading Scars and Wounds in Ásmundar saga kappabani and Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó

4.3And the Flesh Was Made Word: Cethern, Tuán and the Body Bearing (His‐)story

4.4And the Flesh Was Made Shame: Mutilated Bodies in Sigurðar saga þǫgla

4.5Inscribed Bodies before Tattoo-Theory

5The Need to Need: Natural Bodily Matters in Mediality Discourse

5.1Writing with Faeces, Writing about Faeces

5.2What’s the Matter with the Matter? Urinating, Defecating and Social Space

5.2.1Nature and Bodily Matters: The Early Irish Tradition

5.2.2Culture and Bodily Matters: The Old Norse-Icelandic Tradition

5.3Bloody Women, Bleeding Men? A New Reading of Fúal Medba

5.4‘Human’ Waste

6Concluding Matters

6.1Reading Bodies as Texts, Reading Bodies in Texts

6.2Revisiting Ideas

6.3Situating the Findings

7List of Abbreviations

8Bibliography

8.1Primary Sources

8.2Secondary Sources

8.3Electronic Sources

Index

Endnotes

Preface

I write about bodies because I am surrounded by bodies, bodies that communicate. I also write about bodies because I have a body, a body that bears my personal history. It was perhaps this awareness of the gazes of others on my own body that I felt gave me the permission to openly gaze back at other bodies, both medieval and modern, literary and real. What I discovered was that although I too looked at other people’s bodies as marked by discourses of identity and social affiliation, the fact that I had consciously and visibly modified my own body seemed to give people permission to voice their judgement about it in various contexts. Some people – usually but not exclusively the ones sharing similar ideas of beauty – freely expressed their appreciation. Others needed to voice their disapproval or their opinion that this could not possibly be seen as desirable.

The constant classification of my own body, and the increasing interest in classifying the bodies of others, led to the conclusion that bodies are always assessed, whether consciously or unconsciously, in public or in private (or in secret). Over the years, it became clear that I was not the only person to consciously invite but at the same time also guide the looks of other people on my body. This realisation in turn made me ponder if this idea of ‘look at me, but look at this!’, of controlling what other people perceived (first or most vividly) about me, could also be observed in other contexts. Eventually, it was a chance encounter towards the end of the research project which put my ideas in a new perspective. It taught me that one and the same body can be looked at and read very differently. Its reading can depend on who reads it with what kind of knowledge and in what context. Only at the end of the research did I therefore finally grasp the full scale of what I was talking about: I realised that through these prolonged gazes, each body begins to unfold its own identity and position within the world it inhabits (and shapes) in relation to a particular gaze (and observer). As a medievalist, it was therefore only a matter of time before I started asking how bodies in medieval texts are shaped and perceived, gazed at and spoken about. Did those texts share my interest in reading bodies and, if so, in what contexts can bodies be read?

In reading through medieval literature as widely as possible, it quickly became clear that by no means all texts focus on bodies. Yet some offer deep insights into how bodies can be used to express matters far beyond their corporeal being. It also emerged that, in some particular cases, the texts are as mesmerized by bodies as I am. This study zooms in on such moments, but it does so by trying to understand the concepts of the past and how bodies are created in a particular text rather than by presenting my own, post-modern ideas. Of course, one can never leave one’s own eyes in observing but, as CAROLYNE WALKER BYNUM suggests, ‘awareness of our individual situations and perspectives can be freeing rather than limiting, for it removes the burden of trying to see everything.’1I hope that through my gaze, an initial appreciation of the extent to which bodies contribute to the fascination of medieval literature may be achieved, even if, ultimately, everybody has to look for him- or herself.

In looking back on the process of research, I look back not only on countless hours spent in libraries and at my desk, but first and foremost on the many wonderful encounters I had over these years. It is the nature of a preface that one cannot thank everybody who helped along the way. Yet some people I cannot help but thank, as they became hugely involved with this PhD thesis in one way or another. Most importantly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Jürg Glauser, for letting me read the texts in my own way but directing my gaze to where it was most needed. An inexpressibly big go raibh maith agat also goes to my second supervisor, Dr Geraldine Parsons, for guiding me through these years by always encouraging me to keep going but pointing me in the right direction; and for introducing me to many medievalists in Scotland. To the doctoral programme Mediality. Historical Perspectives at the Universität Zürich I am indebted for its extremely generous financial support. The programme allowed me to visit many conferences and also to organise two workshops at the Universität Zürich and it was also very generous in assisting with the printing of this PhD thesis. The doctoral programme, together with the Oskar Bandle Stiftung, also made a research stay at the University of Glasgow possible.

A special thanks also goes to the many people who passed on valuable advice on the individual chapters. Prof. Erich Poppe kindly read drafts and sent me important articles that I could not have obtained in Switzerland. A hearty thanks also goes to my fellow skin-enthusiast, Dr Nicole Nyffenegger, who at a critical point reminded me to show the readers the bodies above all else. I am also indebted to Prof. Gísli Sigurðsson, who spent some of his time at Zürich reading through an early draft, and my colleague and mellon, Dr Gerard Hynes, for his time and companionship. Prof. Ralph O’Connor kindly let me look at one of his articles before publication and this, together with his many comments on my own work, greatly sharpened my gaze. Other people shared their thoughts with me in conversation or personal correspondence: Prof. (em.) Hildegard L. C. Tristram, Dr Katherine Forsythe, Dr Kate Louise Mathis, Prof. (em.) Doris Edel, Dr Cherie Peters and Dr des. Ute Kühlmann. I am also grateful to Dr Patricia Ronan, for giving me the rare opportunity to present papers in my home country. Dr Franz Andres Morrissey deserves mention for his help with translating some of the secondary quotes, while MA Sandra Schneeberger kindly looked over my translations of Old Norse primary texts. Ragnheiður M. Hafstað also helped me with the Old Norse texts. Special thanks goes to Prof. Damian McManus, whose constant support over the years was crucial in keeping my passion alive, and for his valuable advice on one chapter in particular. In the final stages of bringing this work to publication I would like to thank Maria Zucker from De Gruyter who competently guided me through the whole process. M. Phil. Aoife Condit de Espino, M. Phil. Jane Seely and Dr Chantal Kobel I would like to thank for their proofreading, as well as for their friendship. I alone am responsible for all remaining shortcomings and imperfections.

This PhD thesis could not have been written without the sustenance of coffee and conversation. Both my many friends in Dublin and the reading group of the Department of Celtic and Gaelic at the University of Glasgow were vital in surviving this project. M. Phil. Fearghal Duffy and M. Phil. Martina Ni Mheahair deserve thanks for philosophy sessions in the Roost and for sending me material which was inaccessible in Switzerland respectively. I also ought to thank my friends in Luzern for providing a world outside the thesis, especially the one person who helped me protect my computer and my sanity. Nora Lin Mahnig, Karin Zinas and Anna Winz deserve a special mention for helping me prepare this manuscript for publication – Danke! My German friend and colleague M. Phil. (Cantab) Rebecca Merkelbach constantly teaches me how far our passion for medieval texts can take us and for this I am especially grateful. Calen Paris I thank for teaching me much more about skin and people that I could ever have learned from books. During these years, my families – by blood and marriage – constantly reminded me that, every once in a while, not only bodies matter. And every so often, they were right. My husband Phil I thank for sharing me with a world so different from his own, for being who he is and for loving me as I am. Le chéile.

In loving memory of Peter Künzler (1950 –2013).

Für meine Grossmutter Maria Andenmatten, die mir beigebracht hat, Geschichten zu lieben.

1Introduction

Kein Bild, damit das Bild über die Sprache entstehen kann.2

1.1Bodies and Mediality: Mapping Horizons

Bringing together bodies and mediality in the study of medieval texts is perhaps comparable to the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (‘The Voyage of St Brendan’), an Irish hagiographical text that in content and structure resembles the Immrama, the Irish voyage tales. In search of the Terra Repromissionis, Saint Brendan and his companions navigate (somehow) biblical yet still distinctly Irish scenery in a small boat. Throughout their journey, they visit various islands, never quite sure what awaits them there, how this microcosm might function, what the inhabitants will look like and what surprises and challenges lie ahead. Discussing broad concepts such as bodies and mediality in literary criticism is similar to exploring these islands, as the concepts can relate differently in each text and in their plurality exhibit almost unlimited potential for creating meaning. This project, therefore, permits a variety of possible approaches. Selecting a focus, the islands to visit, so to speak, is crucial to avoid getting lost in the sea of bodies in medieval texts. On the other hand, the various possible glances on bodies allow a researcher to navigate new routes, to focus on hitherto unnoticed or overlooked particularities. This is what this study seeks to offer.

Because terms such as mediality and body are used so broadly in contemporary research, there arises a need to critically engage with one’s own understanding of the concepts before the individual textual analyses and to continuously reassess and develop this understanding. This introduction attempts to delineate an overview of the two concepts at the heart of this study. It also outlines the general approach to the texts and briefly introduces the genres and texts discussed in the individual chapters.

Bodies are the focus of a large number of studies on contemporary subjects in the humanities. Yet to discuss bodies in medieval texts in relation to their function in mediality discourse is a comparatively new approach. It may surprise my own generation of students and scholars that until relatively recently, bodies had gone somewhat unnoticed in humanities research in relation to any such concepts – they seem to have been quite simply overlooked. It is only in the past two decades that bodies have started to appear more and more in humanities research as the prime focus of attention. While in 1994 ELIZABETH GROSZ still found that the body ‘has remained a conceptual blind spot’3 in various fields, the last decade in particular has seen bodies being studied and explored from countless perspectives. As a researcher in this area, one is aware that critical voices may even bemoan that the body is creeping in everywhere: in every academic field, every period and also in every library and curriculum. A possible response to this statement is that bodies, far from creeping in, were always already there. The body’s former ‘absent presence’4, as CHRIS SHILLING terms it, has simply been replaced by an ever-present presence; where they had been overlooked before, bodies were now inspected from various angles. This eventually led to an interdisciplinary field of research in the humanities, often referred to as body criticism.

What has changed with the emergence of body criticism is that bodies are now understood and observed as complex semiotic entities. CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM emphasises that in previous research it was often accepted that ‘[f]rom Plato to Descartes, the Western tradition was […] dualist’5, that is, adhering to theories which propose a (however rigid) distinction between mind (soul, spirit) and matter (the body). Until the second half of the twentieth century, the body was often perceived as belonging entirely to nature, as being merely a material container of the soul. This philosophical dualism is not reflected in all medieval sources and its prevalence in Western thought has also been challenged. In relation to medieval eschatological literature, BYNUM finds that ‘theorists […] tended to talk of the person not as soul but as soul and body’ and that ‘a number of scholars have established [that] Platonic definitions of the person as the soul were explicitly rejected by the middle of the twelfth century’6, a period from and after which the majority of the texts discussed here stem. BYNUM’S findings suggest that, in some areas of medieval thought, bodies were not as removed from the construction of identity as previous research had claimed.

In the humanities, however, bodies were seen as rooted in biological discourse(s) for a considerable time. JACQUES Le GOFF and NICOLAS TRUONG, for instance, remark that ‘[d]ans la discipline historique, longtemps a régné l’idée que le corpse appartenait á la nature, et non la culture.’7 The proclamation that the body is part of and shaped by culture was first articulated in the second half of the twentieth century. As MAKIKO KUWAHARA summarises: ‘Adopting and developing the phenomenological approaches of Husserl (1889) and Merleau-Ponty (1962), which are out of historical and social context, Foucault (1973, 1978 and 1979) and Bourdieu (1977) demonstrate that the body is socially and historically constructed.’8 Useful detailed summaries of the history of body criticism have already been provided, for instance by BERNADETTE WEGENSTEIN.9 It therefore suffices to note that these researchers were particularly interested in the importance assigned to bodies in the processes of forming identity and social relations.

Subsequent studies by feminists such as JUDITH BUTLER and SUSAN BORDO have further ‘challenged understandings of the body as biologically given and fixed, and argued that the human body is both culturally and historically specific […]’10, as MARY EVANS sums up. While BUTLER views bodies in a ‘wholly social’ instead of a ‘wholly natural’ discourse11, in Unbearable Weight BORDO acknowledges that there exists a discourse of the natural, biological body, as well – an idea that implies that a dualistic perspective on the body is (also) possible.12 The benefit of these works lies in that they initiated a growing interest in these subjects across academic disciplines and made it possible to study bodies as semiotic systems of social significance in various sources – such as medieval literature.

It is of course useful to at least initially engage with such fundamental approaches if one seeks to examine bodies in any particular context. However, these studies cannot readily be applied onto a medieval corpus for various reasons. For one, they deal with real, lived bodies and their conclusions are of little importance in relation to bodies in literary texts, and medieval literary texts in particular.13 Furthermore, these studies are primarily concerned with modern phenomena (such as eating disorders), or they examine topics solely from an (often post‐)modern perspective (in the case of body modification). In many cases, they deal explicitly with ‘marked bodies’ or ‘body inscriptions’, that is, with bodies that are consciously altered within a social discourse that the person is part of, and with the person’s consent. Most importantly, bodies in literary texts lack the physical materiality that for so long had clearly placed real, lived bodies in a purely anatomical-physiological discourse. The characters in secular medieval literature also generally (but not always) lack the self-awareness and body-issues of modern subjects. With the exception of grooming, they (generally) do not consciously alter their own bodies to express themselves or their social and/or cultural belonging (or at least this is not narrated in the texts), a practice found in many aboriginal cultures as well as in modern body modification.14

The fundamental differences between bodies in the post-modern world and in medieval texts instigated an awareness of another critical point in body criticism: the nature of the subject. Although, or rather because bodies are familiar to us all, some preliminary remarks as to how they are understood in the following analyses are in order. This is especially important since there is no single definition of the nature of ‘a body’ provided in body criticism. Individual studies have either taken their subject for granted and not engaged with questions of how bodies are constructed, represented and/ or perceived, or they have offered a variety of individual characterisations and classifications. The need to engage with the nature of the subject may have been overlooked in many previous studies because, until recently, ‘the body’ has never been questioned as a concept. Even if placed in a social discourse, it seems to have been presumed that ‘the body’ was somehow ‘naturally’ fixed and pre-given, whether it appeared as a real, physical entity or within literary, legal or theological texts.

One of the most comprehensive monographs about medieval bodies, LE GOFF and TRUONG’S Une histoire du corps au Moyen Âge (‘A History of the Body in the Middle Ages’), still employs this view of the tension-loaded but somehow ‘singular’ body. The authors express the opinion that ‘[a]u Moyen Âge, le corps est […] le lieu d’un paradoxe’ and that ‘[l]a conception du corps, sa place dans la société, sa présence dans l’imaginaire et dans la réalité, dans la vie quotidienne et dans les moments exceptionnels ont changé dans toutes les sociétés historiques.’15 LE GOFF and TRUONG plainly acknowledge the various forms in which bodies can appear and hence, by extension, the various bodyconcepts or ideas of bodies (a term explained below) extant in medieval sources. Yet throughout their study they continue to work with the concept of ‘The Body’, a practice grounded perhaps in the perceived stable physical reality of their own (real, lived) bodies.

JEFFREY JEROME COHEN and GAIL WEISS, on the other hand, argue against the use of the capitalised singular: ‘The Body’ to them (as to me) ‘suggests a bounded and autonomous entity, universal but at the same time singular, atemporal, and therefore unmarked by history.’16 In order to foreground the fluid concepts also acknowledged by LE GOFF and TRUONG and to emphasise the various manifestations of bodies in medieval texts, the present study proposes to use the term bodies as a shorthand in the sense of ideas of bodies.17 This stresses that in medieval texts bodies can be variously shaped and developed according to different cultural concepts, in relation to the time in which a text was produced, compiled, edited, re-produced or translated but also according to the narrative concerns within which the bodies are discursively constructed. All of these factors combine to shape a particular idea of a body and these ideas are manifest in individual texts.18 The need to acknowledge these underlying ideas about bodies and embodiment has been wittily phrased by BYNUM:

it would be no more correct to say that medieval doctors, rabbis, alchemists, prostitutes, wet nurses, preachers, and theologians had ‘a’ concept of ‘the body’ than it would be to say that Charles Darwin, Beatrix Potter, a poacher, and the village butcher had ‘a’ concept of ‘the rabbit’.19

BYNUM’s comment underlines that the various concepts are always dependent on context and that different observers may arrive at very different interpretations. It therefore introduces, if only implicitly, the notion of a point of view from which a body is approached, the ideas that a reader or observer may implicitly or explicitly project onto a body.20

In using the term ideas rather than concept, this study seeks to foreground the subtle and creative individual manifestations of bodies over somehow (pre‐)fixed, rigidly defined (or definable) concepts. The recognition of both the ideas of bodies behind the creation of a literary body (i.e. the aims and context(s) which create and shape a particular body) as well as the thoughts an observer might bring to it is important to keep in mind. This is especially important in relation to medieval texts that were transmitted over various centuries. The understanding of the compilers and/ or redactors of a particular manifestation of a text may have been rather different from those of the audience, and they may also have differed from the concepts of the compilers/redactors of earlier or later versions of the same text. Ideas of bodies is a term that draws attention to these multiple perspectives and emphasises the complex nature of representations of bodies in medieval texts.

Throughout the analyses, bodies (i.e. the use of the plural) corresponds to these ideas of bodies and likewise emphasises the plurality of these manifestations. The use of the singular, body, is reserved for occasions where a particular body is discussed in its unique appearance. Despite the call for acknowledging the plural manifestations of bodies, it is with these individual, concrete representations of underlying ideas that this study is concerned. Scholars are increasingly focusing on these ‘nuanced representations of the body that inhabit virtually every level of medieval discourse’21, as SUZANNE CONKLIN AKBARI and JILL ROSS phrase it, and it is important to draw attention to the processes which shape and form these nuanced representations of bodies in medieval texts. This of course also entails that observations made about a ‘body’ in a ‘text’ may not readily be transferred onto other bodies and texts and that similarities and differences need to be discussed carefully. As NICOLE NYFFENEGGER and KATRIN RUPP proclaim, ‘there is not one medieval body, but a plethora of medieval bodies’.22 Or, perhaps more precisely, there is a plethora of ideas of bodies and bodily discourses that create and reflect on particular manifestations of bodies in medieval texts.

However, it is not the aim of this study to try to group these individual ideas of bodies into fixed concepts. Previous research has attempted to express the multifaceted appearance of bodies through various (sub‐)categorisations. THOMAS J. CSORDAS conveniently summarises such concepts of the multiple body in past research. He contends that MARY DOUGLAS distinguished two bodies, while NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES and MARGARET LOCK proposed three and JOHN O’NEILL even argued for five bodies to be discerned.23 They all of course argue not for different material entities but for different mental concepts of bodies, generally posing the natural body against the social body and thus creating and/or reinforcing a dichotomous perception.

Other classifications are concerned with how to approach bodies. One example is the historian ROY PORTER’s scheme of seven different perspectives from which bodies in ‘historical sources’ – which are as much textual constructs as bodies in literary texts – can be considered.24 Such approaches, although interesting to consider in relation to their grounds for argumentation, can be said to present ‘a somewhat fragmented view of the body parcelled off into artificially discrete sections’25, as CONKLIN AKBARI and ROSS conclude in relation to PORTER’s heuristically driven categorisation. These classifications focus solely on the various aspects that distinguish (literary or real, lived) bodies from each other rather than on the plurality of their appearance. This reinforces a notion of bodies as something that can be categorised by strict boundaries. By working with ideas of bodies and studying the gazes (a term introduced below) on particular bodies, the present study hopes to acknowledge the complex plurality of depictions and experiences of bodies without having to think about categorising them along rigid lines. The representations of the bodies thus take centre stage and the analyses foreground a body’s individuality by examining its peculiarities and its position within a text.

The present approach sees the bodies in the individual examples not as fictional yet stable entities, but as open to embodying various (medial and other) concerns through their contextual nature and discursive construction. This echoes an understanding of bodies voiced in relation to real, lived bodies. ZOE DETSI-DIAMANTI, KATERINA KITSI-MITAKOU and EFFIE YIANNOPOULOU believe that the body ‘is never divorced from thought processes, cultural production, historical developments, ideological and material interests.’26 In relation to the at times deliberate but always culturally and historically contingent construction of bodies in medieval literary texts, their statement gains even more significance. Although (some) bodies may at first appear static (as fixed, stereotypical entities) in texts, they appear astatic when engaged with. This is, of course, rather challenging as for each body it needs to be individually examined how it is created and how it relates to other bodies within the text and to other manuscript version or recensions, as well as to the time and place of the compilation/redaction of a text.

In order to emphasise this connection between the depictions of bodies in medieval texts and their various contexts it is beneficial to contend that these bodies are discursively constructed. The present use of the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘discursively’ is indebted to FOUCAULT, for whom discourses are ‘mediale Wissensformationen’27 and as such inherently tied to mediality, yet they can also be said to manifest particular ideas. ROBERT GUGUTZER explains this as follows:

Diskurs bestimmt Foucault als eine „Menge von Aussagen, die einem gleichen Formationssystem zugehören […]“. Als geregelte Verknüpfungen oder Formationen von sprachlichen Aussagen – so genannten „diskursiven Formationen“ […] – sind Diskurse gewissermaßen die Materialisierung dessen, was in einer Gesellschaft oder Kultur zu einer bestimmten Zeit gesagt und gedacht wird […].28

Foucault defines discourse as ‘a group of utterances which belong to the same formation-system […]’. As regulated connections or formations of linguistic utterances – so-called ‘discursive formations’ […] – discourse appears as the materialisation of what is said and thought in a particular culture at a particular time.

Discourses do not simply transfer reality into language, they are integral in producing what they signify, such as ideas about the normative or the abnormal or about beautiful and ugly bodies.29

In the present case it will therefore be proposed that the discursive manifestations of bodies in texts are reflections of particular ideas of bodies. In relation to bodies it follows that, as ANNE WALDSCHMIDT finds:

Diskurse regulieren und beschränken das Wissen vom Körper, sie konstruieren Körperbilder und beeinflußen Körpererfahrung, gleichzeitig generieren sie […] immer auch Neues, beispielsweise neuartige Grenzziehungen zwischen dem, was als ›ganz normal‹, als ›noch normal‹ oder als ›anormal‹ zu gelten hat.30

Discourses both regulate and limit the knowledge about the body, they constitute ideas of bodies and influence the experiences of bodies. At the same time they generate […] new ideas, for instance in redefining the borders between what is perceived as ‘truly normal’, ‘still normal’ or ‘abnormal.’

It is the discursive construction of bodies that can shape different contexts for mediality, i.e. many possible grounds on which the conditions for potential mediality rest. In the use of the term discourse in the individual analyses it will become clear that the present approach resembles more the English Critical Discourse Analysis with its interdisciplinary method than the intra-disciplinary concepts of the Diskursanalysen used in German scholarship.31

This implies that the discourses that continuously shape literary bodies are themselves subject to individual contexts. JEFFREY JEROME COHEN expresses this as follows: ‘[t]he bodies that populate these medieval texts are discursively constructed in ways that are inescapably specific to histories behind their production and dissemination, serving particular and often readily identifiable cultural needs.’32 Underlying such approaches is a (post-modernist) idea of bodies as text in that, as GAIL WEISS asserts, ‘to say that the body is a text in turn means that it is not outside of or opposed to discourse, but is itself discursively constructed.’33 The following analyses of course deal with bodies that are constructed only on a textual level. Yet the analyses will show that these bodies are not only texts in that they are discursively constructed, but also in that they are read much like a text in many instances. To outline these observations on discursive practices is important for the present understanding of bodies in texts and allows one to establish the underlying potential for mediality inherent in – and visible on – these bodies.

These observations closely reflect MARGRIT SHILDRICK’s dictum that ‘[t]he body […] is not a pre-discursive reality, but rather a locus of production, the site of contested meaning, and as such fluid and unstable […]’.34 The present approach also argues that the bodies in these literary texts are products of deliberate discursive construction rather than ‘given’ in the sense that they merely represent stereotypes – a stigma which has long hindered a deeper engagement with depictions of bodies in medieval texts.35 In her study on modern-day, Western body modification, VICTORIA PITTS explains the advantages of a post-structuralist approach to bodies. PITTS asserts:

Post-structuralism emphasizes the historicity of such forces, their contingency on history, sociality, and politics, and explores the ongoing politics of the shaping of selves, bodies, desires, and pleasure though language, representation, and ‘discourse’, to use Foucalt’s term.36

Allowing for the crucial difference that in medieval literature it is the texts as well as their compilers and redactors that are subject to the historicity of these forces (and the latter account for the politics of shaping bodies), the comment is a useful one to bear in mind as it draws much needed attention to the processes of production (‘politics of the shaping’).

The following analyses are guided by an interest in ‘the discursive models of how such bodies can and should be imagined, with the body as a sign within a text’37, as BETTINA BILDHAUER characterises her own approach. For the present corpus, it can also be proposed that the bodies are fashioned with the purpose of being read as signs as well as imagined as bodies. BILDHAUER proposes a similar point of view when she argues that when
in the following, I speak of bodies being constructed, like BUTLER, I am not implying that they are ‘made up’ and do not really exist, but simply that they are fashioned in a certain way so that they become accessible to our understanding, in the sense of ‘conceptualized’ or ‘conceived’.38

In order to emphasise that in the texts and episodes presented here bodies may be consciously ‘fashioned’ in a certain way to openly exhibit their potential for mediality, the term to install will be used in the following analyses in the sense of ‘to set up’ or ‘to stage’. It implies that in these special and often exceptional cases, bodies are deliberately created and used as mediators. It also presupposes that various narrative strategies are employed in order to draw attention to the bodies to be read, a term which denotes the interpretation of an installation and is explained in the following subchapter (1.3.). As such, the bodies can never be seen as purely passive carriers: they are always already actively constructed within the text.

This outline has shown that in the wake of the Platonic preference of spirit over matter, current scholarship increasingly engages with the social position of bodies and with their role as signs. This recent shift towards viewing the body as ‘all culture’ instead of ‘all nature’ and as such as solely defined by discourse has, however, not gone unchallenged. Of course, a study of bodies in literary texts works with bodies that do not have concrete material form outside the text; they are created by textual discourse and narrative strategies and imagined beyond the text. Thus such arguments as, for instance, GROSZ’S denial ‘that there is the “real”, material body on the one hand and its various cultural and historical representations on the other’39 are of no concern, since there simply is no ‘real, material’ body extant in texts. Yet a close observation of the texts suggest that there may nevertheless be an imagined materiality, although this aspect has seldom been addressed in literary criticism.

TERENCE TURNER in fact observes a prevalent ‘propensity to ignore the primary character of the body as material activity in favour of an emphasis on the body as a conceptual object of discourse.’40 His comment initiated a profound engagement with the texts discussed in this study in order to examine how they perceive the relation of social significance and materiality and whether the bodies in these texts are indeed truly devoid of all fleshly matters (beyond the oft-cited sexual ones). While TERENCE TURNER is right in pointing out that FOUCAULT’s category of the body ‘has no flesh’41, could the same be said for these medieval sources? It therefore needed to be determined whether such a discourse of the biological body, or of aspects reflecting the concept of biological bodies, was evident in the texts under consideration, and whether bodies are also perceived as materiality within the texts.

A careful analysis of the medieval texts showed that the product of the discourses that form bodies is (often but by no means always) perceived as physical reality within the texts. This led to the necessity of acknowledging and discussing both aspects and again following the individual texts in their representation of bodies. As WEISS suggests in her claim for viewing the body outside this limiting dichotomy, ‘[b]y rejecting this dualistic model, we avoid the intractable problem of determining exactly how two allegedly distinct phenomena – the natural and the cultural – interact to comprise a unified sense of self.’42 Asking how discourses of natural and cultural aspects may contribute and relate to the bodies provided an interesting point to consider (and eventually resulted in chapter five). While BRYAN S. TURNER insists that ultimately, it is not possible to write about the body without avoiding its contradictory nature, the following analyses will show that the two discourses need not be contradictory in all cases.43 In following the sources in their assessment of ‘their’ bodies (and these assessments can be contradictory in themselves), it is possible to examine such issues through the actual texts. This is preferable to avoiding them or over-theorising them.

While in scholarly circles there is a general agreement that bodies matter, the present study also engages with the more recent call to bring the matter (the fleshness) back into body criticism. In some texts, the bodies discussed can appear as matter not just in that they are inscribable and suffer incisions into their surface but also because they are perceived as living, breathing, bleeding and defecating entities. One of the most striking areas in which this becomes apparent is when the bodies’ surface, the skin, is foregrounded by being wounded and permanently altered. Other characters are taunted for flaws that lie in the perceived physicality of their bodies (being unable to grow a beard, for instance) and are outside their control. This shows that even such apparently biological aspects (to the modern mind) were thought about and developed in the creation of literary characters. To disregard these perceptions of physical materiality and physical flaws would mean overlooking many aspects of the bodies’ inherent mediality that are tied to these issues. In the present analyses, the physical matter is therefore allowed to matter, to be of importance but also to be perceived as matter. Yet it is clearly stated that such ‘imaginings of materiality’ are rooted in cultural perceptions and not in biological ones: they are imagined flesh.

This leads to a distinction between how something is constructed – textual discourse and narrative techniques – and what the result of this construction is – a body perceived as flesh within the text. CHRISTIAN KIENING notes that medieval texts are somehow oscillating zwischen Körper und Schrift (‘between body and writing’).44 The title of this study, Flesh and Word, expresses a similar view of medieval texts (and the bodies therein) but stresses a more inclusive angle. It highlights that from the perspective of modern researchers, and perhaps even from that of the medieval audience and the compilers/redactors of the texts, there is always a double perspective on the creating word and the resulting fleshly body. Or in other words: the bodies are composed of writing but this evokes organic materiality. In many literary representations of bodies, the two are irrevocably intertwined, with the bodies oscillating between both concepts. It is important to acknowledge the processes by which imagined flesh(ness) could be turned into words and writing by the compilers/redactors of the texts, how it could be perceived through spoken words and/or silent reading to in turn become imagined flesh again in the mind of the audience. In relation to mediality discourse, it is important to outline both the construction of a body within a text and the experience of this body within the world depicted by the text. This study is therefore a call to examine both the construction/portrayals of bodies and their perception within and without the textual universe, to determine how they are created and read.

BRYAN S. TURNER also recognises the complex nature of bodies, albeit in a different context when he states that the body
is a material organism, but also a metaphor; it is the trunk apart from head and limbs, but also the person […]. The body is at once the most solid, the most elusive, illusory, concrete, metaphorical, ever present and ever distant thing – a site, an instrument, an environment, a singularity and a multiplicity.45

BRYAN S. TURNER talks about modern and real, lived bodies, yet it will be argued that in certain medieval texts, bodies are depicted in very similar vein. This suggests that they must have been imagined by medieval compilers/redactors and audiences in much the same way. An interest in how bodies are constructed and perceived in medieval texts as both material and socially meaningful entities is evident also in the research questions (see 1.2.), which aim to include not merely talk about bodies but communication from them as well.

The title Flesh and Word reflects the call to consider the fleshness of bodies as an integral part of their representation. Such a focus is unusual but by no means unique. In relation to (modern) real, lived bodies SHILDRICK asserts that
rather than being material and graspable from the start, [bodies] are materialised through a set of discursive practices. It is over a period of time that the process comes to instantiate the effects of the solidity, surfaces and boundaries that mark out the material.46

In her comment SHILDRICK acknowledges that the discursive production of bodies can result in something material and graspable, at least within a text. To highlight the imaginative engagement with this process of production and the narrative artistry that leads to the bodies’ materialisation is one of the proclaimed aims of this study. In the examples discussed here (but by no means in all medieval texts), the perception of bodies as materiality is a vital prerequisite for medial processes to function successfully. The approach hopes to delineate the texts’ engagement with these ideas and their artistic creation of bodies, as well as their imaginative engagement with human flesh on pages made of animal skin.

Like body criticism, mediality has enjoyed considerable academic interest in various disciplines of the humanities in recent years (especially in Germanspeaking areas). Despite its growing popularity the term mediality still requires introduction, especially but not exclusively for an English-speaking audience. Mediality denotes a multi-dimensional concept, at the heart of which lies an interest in processes of transmission. Because these processes are in themselves diverse, DIETER MERSCH claims that mediality ‘selber nicht “Eines” ist, das eine bestimmbare Identität aufwiese, sondern sich als Pluralismus entpuppt, der von Fall zu Fall dechiffriert werden muss.’47 On the most basic and also on an etymological level, MERSCH stresses, ‘media’ stand between two entities and become ‘Instanzen der Übermittlung, Darstellung, Verbreitung, des Austausches und der Wiederholung […]’.48 While to a modern mind media are often inextricably linked to mass media such as newspapers and television, academic opinion holds that anything can function as a medium as long as it can be recognised as a medium in a particular context. Branded clothes, roses or raised middle fingers can thus all function as transmitters of intended messages, but only if the recipient views them as media and understands their intended meaning.

The capacity to (however briefly) store and transmit meaning and the potential for being recognised as a medium are broadly defined requirements of media, yet recent scholarship stresses that media are much more than simple transmitters. As ŁUKAS KUMIEGA asserts, media ‘erscheinen als Produkte einer komplexen Maschinerie, als gesellschaftlich oder kulturell grundlegende Wahrnehmungsanordnungen und nicht als bloße Kommunikationskanäle oder Distributoren von Inhalten.’49 In this understanding, a medium is inextricably linked to perception and to social and cultural practices. Media thus occupy an important position in social discourse, yet they also link sender, message and recipient in a process of communication. Media materialise this connection and the process of transmission because for the recipient of a message, it is the medium that is tangible and somehow embodies its message. Through this process a medium may itself become invested with an aura. It can thus draw attention to itself and, by extension, to the various ways in which transmission and perception can operate.

The idea that media draw attention to the cultural forms of perception that underlie particular, successful acts of transmission is a central thought in mediality studies. KIENING proposes that mediality can be understood ‘als ein formales “Dazwischen” […], das nicht das Reale verbirgt oder verstellt, sondern Bedingung der Möglichkeit von deßen Erscheinen ist – insofern mit diesem untrennbar verknüpft und doch nicht identisch.’50 KIENING’s proposition of the medium as not identical with what it mediates will have to be carefully reflected on in relation to bodies in medieval texts, especially with regards to bodies expressing identity. Still, KIENING’s call for attention to the conditions that need to be fulfilled to make a process of transmission possible (‘Bedingung der Möglichkeit des Medialen’ in KIENING’s terminology)51 is an appropriate starting point for considering questions of mediality. Reflecting on these conditions on a very general level allows for a first, tentative characterisation of mediality. For the present purpose, mediality designates the study of a) processes of transmission; b) the relation of medium, message and recipient to each other; and c) the conditions that need to be fulfilled for something to function as a medium and hence for successful transmission to take place.

The present understanding of the concept of mediality is highly indebted to the doctoral programme Mediality. Historical Perspectives at the Universität Zürich. The doctoral programme promotes an appreciation of mediality’s multifaceted appearance and an interest in the underlying conditions for transmission. As KIENING asserts, mediality is ‘nicht einfach das Prinzip von Vermittlung und Übertragung, sie zeigt sich vielmehr an dem Prozess, der zwei Entitäten aufeinander bezieht.’52 In the case of bodies in medieval literature, these processes connect not just characters within a text but also the text with its audience, as bodies can signify both intra- and extra-diegetically.53 Not only do the bodies within a text send messages to both entities, both characters and audience also have their own bodies (fictional and real, respectively) and as such can be said to relate to the medium through their own being. Despite this universal presence of corporeal mediality, the following analyses will show that in many instances the ways in which literary bodies are installed as mediators are very specific and cannot be satisfactorily explained by general theories. Medial functions of bodies in medieval literature can also appear as fundamentally different from the mediality discourse proposed for modern bodies, both literary and real.

To adequately describe these manifestations of mediality, specific emphases will need to be chosen in the individual chapters and subchapters. KIENING stresses the importance of focusing on the ‘Prozesse, Situationen und Semantiken, aus denen partiellere, aber auch tiefenschärfere Bilder vormoderner Medialität hervorgehen können.’54 These, KIENING argues, are both vital and interesting for a ‘Beschreibung der historischen Bedingungen der Möglichkeit des Medialen.’55 In the present case this entails engaging with the questions of how and under which circumstances bodies can function as media. KIENING’s comment also calls for detailed and systematic analyses of individual examples, thus advocating studies of mediality that are founded on example-based yet contextualising analyses rather than on (however rigidly) applied broad theoretical frameworks.

MARTINA STERCKEN and KIENING formulate some thought-provoking questions for analysing the conditions that facilitate medial processes:

[s]ichtbar wird dabei aber immerhin, daß die Frage, was Medien seien, nicht zu trennen ist von anderen Fragen: Was kann in welchen Situationen unter welchen historischen Gegebenheiten als Medium fungieren? Wie sind die Stellen, die Orte, die Konstellationen beschaffen, an denen Medialität beobachtbar wird? Wie lässt sich das Funktionieren von Vermittlung beschreiben?56

It at least becomes apparent that the question what media are cannot be separated from another question: what can, under which circumstances and under which historical conditions, fulfil the function of a medium? What is the nature of the loci, the places and the patterns on and in which mediality can be observed? How can the functional aspects of transmission be described?

It follows that the question of what media are may be rephrased to ‘what can function as a medium under which conditions?’57 STERCKEN and KIENING assert that media are products of a complex interplay of social and cultural perceptions and that individual manifestations of mediality are deeply rooted in the time, space and culture that produced them. Studying these perceptions together with the (material) media can lead to better insights into medial processes and their individuality. The idea of context is central to all of STERCKEN and KIENING’s questions, and hence this issue will also be raised in the following chapters.

Since all texts discussed can be said to be medieval (although some are preserved in manuscripts of later date) they exhibit a temporal and cultural alterity to modern texts and modern audiences. It is important to fully acknowledge their difference to appreciate the texts in their particularities. It is equally important to apprehend that because of this alterity, modern media theories (formulated on contemporary sources) cannot readily be applied to medieval texts. While modern media theories can present possible ways of approaching medial processes by asking inspiring and challenging questions, they cannot adequately describe the processes of mediality in medieval literature. STERCKEN and KIENING again offer useful suggestions.

Weder in einem Absehen von den Kategorien der Moderne noch in deren Applikationen auf die Vergangenheit wird eine solche Präzisierung [medialer Prozesse in mittelalterlichen Texten] erfolgen können. Auszuloten sind vielmehr spannungsvolle und wechselnde Relationen, mit deren Einfaltung sich der Anspruch verbinden könnte, nicht einfach Medientheorien zu historisieren, sondern die historischen wie systemischen Bedingungen der Möglichkeit des Medialen ans Licht zu bringen […].58

Neither a complete disregard for nor an application of modern theories to the past will explain these matters conclusively. Instead, it is more fruitful to focus on tension-loaded and changing relations. By examining these there emerges a demand not just to historicise media theories but to reveal the historical and methodical conditions of the potential for mediality […].

This study seeks to draw attention to the particularities of the systematic conditions that allow medial processes to function successfully in medieval texts. It does so by examining extraordinary and particularly interesting moments in medieval narratives in which the processes of and conditions for mediality become visible. As will become apparent in the research questions formulated below, an acknowledgement of the multifaceted appearance of medial processes opens the field to consider hitherto overlooked examples. It also emphasises that although mediality is a convenient umbrella term for such occurrences of auralised transmission, it is the plurality of the phenomenon that needs to be foregrounded if the question concerning the underlying conditions for medial processes is to be addressed.

Acknowledging the alterity of medieval texts is a vital starting point for considering the questions posed by STERCKEN and KIENING.59 This alterity entails that in medieval texts the researcher’s attention might have to be directed to different places and different structures. STERCKEN and KIENING argue that while in (post‐)modern media theories aesthetic and technical aspects are most frequently described, medieval texts may exhibit different interests. Therefore
hat eine genuin historische Betrachtung überhaupt erst einmal zu bestimmen, in welchen Modellen im Mittelalter Mediales gedacht und gestaltet, imaginiert und inszeniert worden ist. In den Blick zu nehmen sind Konstellationen und Situationen mittelalterlicher Kultur, in denen Sinngefüge entworfen werden die medialen Phänomenen eine paradigmatische, anschlussfähige Form geben. Zu analysieren sind Momente, in denen der Umgang mit den Eigenarten und Strategien von Vermittlung mit einer expliziten oder impliziten Reflexion über deren Charakter einhergeht. Zu untersuchen sind die je spezifischen Bedingungen, die es medialen Grundmustern ermöglichen, Sinn zu generieren […].60

A genuinely historical reading has to determine the ideas through which medial matters were thought and formed, imagined and installed in the Middle Ages. The focus will need to lie on constellations and situations in medieval culture in which systems of meaning are created and in which medial phenomena are given paradigmatic, relatable form. It is therefore important to analyse instances in which an engagement with the peculiarities and strategies of transmission is combined with an explicit or implicit reflexion of their character. It is also important to analyse the specific prerequisites that enable basic medial patterns to generate meaning […].

These prerogatives can be seen as the underlying incentive for the following chapters and many of the chosen foci reflect these concerns about studying individual manifestations of mediality. The subsequent chapters attempt to follow the texts in their own generation of meaning and to describe their individual structures, contexts and agendas.

In this respect it is useful to consider a concept which STERCKEN and KIENING have termed ‘Modelle des Medialen’ (‘models of mediality’). ‘Modelle’, KIENING and STERCKEN propose, ‘können als mittlere Grössen zwischen der Ebene der Phänomene und jener der Theorien verstanden werden.’61 The term emphasises the relationship between the actual manifestations of medial processes in a specific case (here texts) and the underlying structures which facilitate this particular transmission. Although this study is not explicitly concerned with theoretical approaches, the individual chapters show that, just as is the case with bodies, there are different conceptual ideas discernible in the examples. The chapters are attempts to group such related ideas of mediality, a term which is to be understood analogous to ideas of bodies. Yet this does not mean that the chapters argue for unified structures. Rather, the ideas should be understood as reflecting the varying interests the texts exhibit in relation to medial constructions. The chapters also serve as suitable umbrella-structures to classify certain ideas about the medial potential of bodies through which related modes of transmission may be explored. In order to present a coherent study it was helpful to group the examples along these shared interests, yet these by no means exhaust the mediality discourses observable in medieval texts.

By and large, medieval texts do not seem to exhibit the same (frequently explicit) self-awareness of mediality as many modern texts do. In their own engagement with processes of reading bodies they nevertheless exhibit a considerable ingenuity in presenting and developing the subject.62 According to STERCKEN and KIENING it is not unusual for medieval (literary) texts to show ‘Formen, in denen kein systematisch durchdachtes, aber ein explizites Wissen über Medien und Medialität zum Ausdruck kommt […]’.63 Applying rigid theoretical models (especially before carefully regarding the texts) would have risked missing these specifically medieval concepts of mediality, as they may lack the systematic nature on which modern theories are based. Through critical close readings of particular episodes it is surprisingly often revealed that in and through bodies the texts do show a reflective engagement with mediality, albeit on various levels and to different degrees.

1.2Research Questions

There are many questions that could be asked, many points of departure that could be chosen, in relation to bodies in medieval literature. To present a coherent analysis it is therefore beneficial to limit one’s focus. The present study consequently considers only two – often related – questions. On the one hand, it is important to determine what it is that bodies (can and do) mediate. What is the nature of the ‘information’ that is transmitted and/or expressed through the body, and how does what is transmitted relate to and function within the world portrayed in a text? In addition, it will also be critically discussed how bodies fulfil a medial function. How does a body function as a mediator, how is it installed as a mediator and how does an individual process of mediality (inscription – transmission – deciphering) work?

Throughout the following chapters the second set of questions takes precedence over the first, mainly because it highlights a more interesting side of mediality discourse. The question draws attention to KIENING’s ‘Bedingung(en) der Möglichkeit des Medialen’64 and thus offers an insight into how medial processes were imagined and presented in medieval texts. However, to focus solely on these technical aspects and wholly disregard what it is that bodies mediate would mean to deny them their actual purpose – to study a process and neglect its aim. It would also mean overlooking the, at times message-specific, processes of transmission and the complexity and ingenuity of these narratives. In fact, the two points of departure often intersect and overlap, and hence the questions are not always strictly divisible but are sometimes addressed together. However, for the purpose of this introduction, an attempt will be made to elucidate their importance individually.

In order to engage with these questions it is vital to address some general observations about medial functions first. On the most basic level, a process of transmission may be reduced to the following components: i) a message or information which is ii) inscribed or already inherent in a (possible) medium and is iii) retained there long enough to be iv) deciphered by another entity that is capable of deciphering and understanding the semiotic code of the message. The inscriber of the message may or may not be identical to the medium (one can inscribe oneself with a message), but if communication should take place, the position of the reader/decipherer needs to be filled by one or more external entities.

The first characteristic, the possible message to be mediated, largely correlates with the question of what it is that bodies mediate. The nature of the information they mediate often appears rather trivial – identity being the simple answer in many cases. The nuanced concepts of identity that can be mediated may, nonetheless, be seen as connected to the medial processes themselves. This suggests that the two matters are related. The concept of identity that is mediated through bodies in literary texts will be defined in chapter two. It suffices to say here that in addition to the simple expression of a literary character’s disposition and narrative role, bodies can also mediate concerns about (and/or a critical engagement with) such modes of identity construction. They thus engage with the social system of their narrated world and the paradigms that constitute it. This shows that, through bodies, systems cannot just be created and confirmed but also reassessed, criticised and transgressed. In relation to shape-shifting, when the unity of body and self appear disturbed by a Carthesian divide and a fear that the body might be changed while the substance remains the same, the texts actually express considerable unease with the medial potential of bodies: in these cases, bodies may even come to mediate anxieties about unfixed boundaries and transgressions of categories.

Two further points that bodies can mediate in medieval texts are addressed in chapters four and five: memory and/or history and social organisation. The former is addressed in chapter four primarily through depictions of marked skin and/or flesh, creating a strong parallel with the vellum on which the texts themselves are inscribed. The second point is explored through the depiction of natural bodily matters – urination, defecation and menstruation – and their role in mediating human culture and social and geographic organisation, as is discussed in chapter five. Urination and menstruation can also become an indicator of femininity and are thus mediators of gender in relation to medieval theories about the female body. These short comments demonstrate that bodies can mediate in a variety of discourses and carry a range of meanings.

The second point in fact covers two aspects: that of identifying a possible medium and of inscribing/infusing it with a message (if the message is not already inherent in the medium). As for the first aspect, the understanding of bodies as social entities has led to the awareness that bodies (literary or real) are read almost universally and are meaningful at all times. DOUGLAS’ studies, for instance, propose that bodies carry meaning in all known cultures.65 Bodies thus appear as something like the ‘ultimate mediator’. However, this universality of making sense of the human body is paralleled with highly culture- and time-specific mechanisms of reading bodies (i.e. of the cognitive processes that lead to information being extrapolated from a body), and of installing them as mediators. Or, as DOUGLAS phrases it in advancing her argument, ‘[t]he scope of the body acting as a medium is restricted by the demands of the social system to be expressed.’66 The messages that bodies provide can be read only within a social system and this system needs to be examined if one seeks to know how bodies can (and do) function as media.

GUGUTZER expands on a very similar point by outlining that, from a sociological perspective, the interest lies in how a body can be used as a social system.67 GUGUTZER also acknowledges that the manner in which bodies are used as medial entities is dependent on individual cultures. He adds: ‘[e]ntsprechend ist hier die Beziehung zwischen dem Sozialsystem (Gesellschaft, Kultur) und dem Symbolsystem (Körper als Ausdrucksmedium) und insbesondere der Einfluss des ersteren auf das zweite von Relevanz.’68 Only a detailed analysis of both the individual bodies – the sign systems expressing mediality – and their position within a society in the textual universe (i.e. the narrated world, a term explained below and here corresponding to GUGUTZER’s Sozialsystem) can reveal comprehensive results from a mediality perspective. It should be noted that changing an entity into a medium by charging it with meaning (from the outside) is not a necessary part of a medial transmission related to bodies in medieval texts. The idea of being inscribed or invested with meaning at a fixed moment of inscription is, in fact, the only aspect that may be absent. It will be argued that bodies in and of themselves are perceived as mediators, that they appear as always already charged with social meaning (referring back to the point that bodies are read in all known cultures).69 This is one of the most notable but also most crucial peculiarities to consider in the discussion of bodies in mediality discourse.

The second point, needing to retain the information for some time until it can be read – or for a whole lifetime in the case of bodies expressing identity –, is related to the bodies’ discursively constructed physical materiality. The texts often show that only because bodies are matter, and because they retain what is inscribed in their flesh, can they begin to mediate between a character and society or between an act of inscription (like wounding) and its deciphering. The ability to bear such signs is one of the central conditions ‘unter denen etwas als Dazwischen, Vermittlung oder Übertragung dienen kann.’70 The way in which the retaining qualities of bodies are installed in medieval texts differs considerably, depending on the information they bear.

The processes of reading bodies are specific to a narrated world (both terms will be explained shortly) and show bodies as totally embedded in culture, albeit a culture which is created and tangible solely through the text (and hence through literary discourse). In some cases, the reading is a fairly straightforward one-to-one deciphering of symbol and related meaning, but in other cases bodies present highly multifaceted signs exhibiting almost inexhaustible potential for meaning. It needs to be noted that even in medieval texts bodies are not singular symbolic manifestations but occur within other symbolic systems in the text. As KIENING asserts: ‘Körper sind, wo sie in schriftlicher und bildlicher Überlieferung begegnen, von Zeichen umgeben und fungieren selbst als Zeichen […]’.71 Even for the other characters inhabiting the world created by the text, the reading of bodies is a complex process of relating a specific body to other signs within the text (including their own bodies).

These factors can be discerned as the general conditions under which a body may be installed as a medium. The question of along which lines bodies do mediate in certain (con‐)texts still needs to be addressed. Of course, the possibilities are almost endless and this study can only present three ideas of mediality developed in (and on) the selection of literary texts: expressive mediality, transmissive mediality and the mediality discourse of natural bodily matters. It is along these ideas that the chapters are grouped. Chapters two and three are concerned with expressive mediality. The term denotes that bodies express the identity of a character and therefore enable social identification. Bodies thus function as a visible expression of identity and hence as a mediator between an individual character and the society (or societies) in a text. ANKE ABRAHAM also discerns a wide-spread ‘Verwendung des Körpers als soziale[s] Zeichen, das Prestige, Zugehörigkeit und Abgrenzung […] ausdrücken kann’72– all factors which are here conflated into the term expressive mediality.

The term expressive mediality stresses that the information is made visible, i.e. expressed, on the outside through the body. In the present context, the term is limited to the God-given (i.e. bequeathed and unaltered) form of bodies and does not include any deliberate alterations (grooming etc.). What is mediated is perceived in the narrated world as always already inscribed in the body and there is no external or specific moment of inscription. It is important to stress that this does not suggest that the body is an outer shell that simply mediates inner disposition. In the examples presented body and character are perceived very much as one, and the body is merely what makes this holistic understanding of an individual visible and tangible. The majority of the medieval secular texts discussed in this publication present a recognisable, normative system of correspondence between bodily appearance and aptitude or narrative role.73 Expressive mediality can thus be said to create and reflect a system in which bodies, identity and/ or narrative roles are inextricably linked. Furthermore, they stand in open relation to what is normal or abnormal, social or anti-social in a particular text.

In chapter four it will be argued that there are various examples in which bodies are not simply read as a whole and in terms of identity construction but that they also carry signs or inscriptions which are meaningful in their own right. In these narratives or episodes, bodies can be said to mediate primarily through signs on their skin or in their flesh (such as scars or wounds), or more broadly, through alterations to the surface of the body. Since these bodies are viewed in the texts as transmitters of signs, their inherent mediality has been termed transmissive. Ultimately, these signs are also part of the idea of expressive mediality and identity in that they are always read in relation to the character that bears them. What calls for a separate idea of mediality is the focus of the texts or episodes. On the one hand, these signs are subject to a certain moment of inscription, an act that may carry significant meaning in itself. In certain episodes these signs are read under special circumstances and are seen as transmitting a very particular meaning. Finally, the deciphering of the signs is often artfully installed. The idea of a body carrying specific signs or marks is widespread in medieval literature and also occurs frequently outside early Irish and Old Norse-Icelandic literature.74

CLAUDIA ÖHLSCHLÄGER and BIRGIT WIENS propose that bodies can be a ‘Medium der Erinnerung, der Einschreibung, Speicherung und Transformation kultureller Zeichen […]’75 in relation to alterations of the surface of the body, the skin. Skin is a boundary between the self and the world, and thus visually displays these signs to observers. PITTS notes that in indigenous cultures ‘the body, especially the skin, often appears as a surface upon which social hierarchies, such as age, status, and clan, are inscribed or codified. […]’.76 These signs, PITTS concludes, ‘can mark the body to indicate social position.’77 Medieval texts can develop similar concerns about social positioning through the topos of the ‘marked skin’.

Chapter five deals with the representation of natural bodily matters in mediality discourse. This idea differs considerably from the previous chapters on various grounds. For one, very specific aspects of a body are foregrounded: the natural processes of defecation, urination and menstruation. Encountering these matters in other studies was a vital reminder that, although admittedly very rarely, aspects of the natural, physiological body are also discernible in literary texts. The related questions of why these matters are only mentioned so scarcely and (more importantly) why they are mentioned precisely in the cases in which they are led to surprising insights. Nonetheless, it must be noted that these particular cases significantly depart from the system of mediality initially proposed. For one, what is read is quite literally already ‘within’ the bodies, but it is meaningful only when it leaves the body and becomes visible to (and can be smelled by) other characters. Through the act of passing physical matter, that matter’s position(ing) within society is foregrounded. Still, meaning may be mediated through these acts and unearthing and describing these unusual processes proved a rewarding challenge.

Expressive mediality, transmissive mediality and the mediality discourse of natural bodily matters are the three ideas of mediality that will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. Many more ideas could have been presented and, as so often happens, a clear distinction between such ideas is at times difficult to argue. It is hoped that grouping ideas of mediality along the lines of their individual processes of transmission draws attention to the multitude of mediality discourses found in medieval texts. The categories are to be seen as frames of thought emerging from the texts themselves. They are fit for further revision and expansion rather than being rigid classifications, and future studies may discern many more ideas of mediality in medieval texts.

Most importantly, these ideas should not be seen as universal concepts. They may or may not be reflected in texts not considered here, or the existing categories may be revised and expanded in the discussion of other narratives. The main aim of formulating such ideas is to draw attention to similar or related ways of thinking about bodies as mediators and to guide the reader through the many examples to follow. This detailed introduction to the research questions and the chapters is perhaps a bold move since it seems to give away many of the conclusions up front. On closer examination this is not the case, as the full scope of the conclusions is by no means revealed. But this short overview allows for the underlying structures, peculiarities and individual developments to become more clearly foregrounded in the chapters. It also allows for time to reflect on such general assumptions and, most importantly, to examine the individual structures and processes of mediality that led to or question them.

1.3Studying Bodies in Medieval Literature: Some Remarks on Concepts and Terminology

Two main theoretical points must be outlined in order to clarify the present approach to the texts, while less central concerns may also be introduced here to contextualise the following chapters and leave more time for the actual close readings of the texts. The two main points that need to be discussed are the methodology applied and the terminology employed in the individual discussions.

1.3.1Studying Texts as Texts

In terms of methodological approaches, the analyses are first and foremost close, critical and contextualised readings. The methodology of critical or close readings is ‘indebted methodologically to post-structuralism [and critical readings] traverse the text homing in upon a few elements and exposing the text’s rhetorical complexity and semantic inexhaustibility […]’78, as JÜRG GLAUSER summarises. They also consciously acknowledge that what they present is one possible reading, not the (conclusive or exhaustive) one. This is in line with the medieval sources treated here. For, as RALPH O’CONNOR also asserts in relation to early Irish literature, ‘the concept of a single, “correct” meaning is alien to the purposes of this literature (not merely its later readers) […]’.79 The present readings therefore present what ECKART CONRAD LUTZ calls ‘[ein] aus bestimmten historischen, allgemeinen und besonderen Bedingungen heraus sich entwickelnder Erkenntnisprozess.’80 This process in itself is valued as highly as possible conclusions. The analyses thus stress the importance of differences over a perceived unity of bodies and acknowledge multiple possible meanings over universalising approaches. Ultimately, it is the actual texts that are foregrounded and, with them, ‘their’ bodies. Because a very similar cognitive process can be observed in relation to the characters in a narrated world, the term reading will henceforth denote the intradiegetic as well as the extradiegetic reading, yet the two will be readily distinguishable by context.

These readings are contextualised on four different levels. This attempt chimes with O’CONNOR’s concern that ‘close attention to form and technique – to the “effects” created by a text – can and should be combined with close attention to its content and especially to its social and historical contexts.’81 The first level of contextualisation indicates that the individual close readings of episodes are placed in the wider context of the whole text and its genre, which is often important for understanding a particular portrayal of a body. For instance, the different worlds portrayed in the original riddarasögur and the Íslendingasögur generate bodies on which very different concerns are observable. Likewise, neglecting the focus on everlasting fame and its proper transmission in Táin Bó Cúailnge would lead to a lack of appreciation of the episode Caladgleó Cethirn. It follows that these bodies have to be discussed against the textual universe in which they occur, and this can only be undertaken if one acknowledges the particularities of the genre. As GEORGES DUMÉZIL declares,

[b]efore asking which features, great or small, he [the historian of religions] can extract from to support his thesis, he must read and reread them, immerse himself in them passively and receptively, being extremely careful to leave all features in their places, both those that support him and those that resist him [… ] one must understand their internal structure, which justifies the ordering of their elements, even the strangest and most bizarre.82

Such a broad overview of all features of a text is important for understanding the relation of bodies to other signs (and sign systems) in a text.

Bodies must therefore be read in relation to other signs (and other bodies in the text), yet they also must be read against the context (genre, time and culture) that produced them (and the texts), even if defining this context is no easy task. The second level of contextualisation is, therefore, concerned with establishing and assessing the cultural and temporal peculiarities that produced and/or altered a text. Although this introduction emphasises that the texts and their bodies are viewed as highly culture-specific products, the analyses do not argue that the texts simply reflect the historical world that produced them. This is because, as KIENING emphasises, texts ‘spiegeln nicht einfach Wirklichkeit, sie bilden eigene Formen symbolischer Ordnungen.’83 In other words, the expressive merit of texts can be acknowledged in their own right. As CHRISTIAN BARMES notes,

Texte als expressive Gestaltungsformen zu begreifen bedeutet […] sie zur Aussprache ihres eigenen Sinnes zu bringen. Handelt es sich doch auch um die – wiederum als Kulturfaktum zu betrachtende – Einsicht, dass Texte, wie Cassirer betont, nicht schlicht eine Wirklichkeit spiegeln oder abbilden, dass sie aber auch nicht unabhängig von jeder Wirklichkeit beschrieben werden können. Doch die eigentliche Wirklichkeit ist nun die eigene Wirklichkeit der Sinngestaltung selbst, des Sinnes im Werden.84

To see texts as expressive modes of formation means […] to make them express their own, individual meaning. This reflects the – albeit culturally determined – realisation that, as Cassirer emphasises, texts do not simply reflect or represent (a) reality but that they also cannot be described as independent of reality. But their true realism lies in their own reality, in generating meaning, and thus in becoming meaning.

While of course the bodily discourses of the societies and times that produced the texts are not completely detached from them, the present approach merely examines the text-internal mediality of bodies and disregards their possible intended text-external value ‘specifically’ for the historical audience.

The question of the transmission and the context of individual texts will be briefly addressed when a text is introduced, even though this is not the main focus of this study. It is nevertheless an important point to address, since all of the narratives discussed in the following chapters were transmitted over several centuries and the bodies within them are shaped by the processes of transmission and the changing historical environment.85 How bodies are installed and perceived in a text also depends on such contexts, as will become clear, for example, in the discussion of Cú Chulainn’s body, a body which might have been deliberately developed by an interpolator (or interpolators). In the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition, courtly standards might be combined with Norse ideas of bodies, and the resulting characters are complex figures full of cultural meaning and literary imagination.

Although this study examines concrete appearances of bodies within a single manifestation of a narrative, it clearly acknowledges that, as EDGAR SLOTKIN emphasises for early Irish texts, scribes ‘did not treat saga texts as fixed texts in the way in which we think of fixed texts’ and hence every saga ‘must be evaluated, and each manuscript of each saga, separately.’86 This is, of course, not possible for a study with such a broad focus, but at least it is made clear in each case which edition, manuscript and/or recension is referred to. I will also be attempting to outline my own view of the texts, even though this too is no easy task. For instance, Old Norse-Icelandic sagas can be viewed from a variety of angles.87 The present study sees the Íslendingasögur (largely) as imagining a past through the present (of the writing down/compiling) but the imagination of the various scribes/compilers/redactors (and hence also their understanding of and attitudes towards bodies) may have considerably changed through the transmission of a narrative or text. The original riddarasögur, on the other hand, combine Norse ideas with courtly ones, and in this respect their bodies are the products of merging cultural perceptions. Such issues will be addressed only marginally in the analyses, but they are addressed where they do become important.

Contextualised of course also means contextualised with reference to earlier research. The ardent reader will notice that despite the novelty of the approach larger amounts of secondary literature could have been included or more fundamental theories might have been discussed. The decision to limit the secondary material presented (although a lot more was studied during the research process) stresses that ultimately my own critical close readings take centre stage. Finally, the individual representations of bodies are contextualised in relation to narrative techniques. This means that the narrative contexts in which bodies are described should also be considered. It is important to ask the following questions: in what place/ environment and at what point in a text is a body presented/described, who presents and observes this body and how is its medial function installed and deciphered according to particular concerns and agendas?

In this respect it is imperative to properly introduce a central term of this study: narrated world.88 Drawing attention to this concept is vital because, as ARMIN SCHULZ maintains, every literary text designs the structure (and, one may add, appearance) of ‘a’ world, and it does so through descriptions as well as through metaphorical systems.89 As bodies are part of this textual world, their assessment should be based on a close observation of this fictional reality and its individual manifestation in terms of time, space and social norms.90 The term to denote this concept, narrated world, designates what has so far been called the textual universe or the world depicted in a text. It is modelled on (but not completely congruent with) the German term erzählte Welt. In short, narrated world denotes the fictional world created by and thus depicted in the text, the world that the literary characters inhabit.91 On one level, this includes aspects such as the geography and topography of a text’s natural world, its flora and fauna, but also social aspects such as the nature of settlements and architecture. On a more abstract level, narrated world also refers to the fictional setting in time and space, the structure and values of the text’s society (or societies), the appearance and customs of characters, how they interact with each other and many other factors. The narrated world thus creates a tangible and perceptible space within the text and a meaningful sphere in which the literary characters, as the inhabitants of this world are called here, (inter‐)act.

LUBOMÍR DOLEŽEL distinguishes six characteristics of what he calls fictional worlds (a term largely congruent with the present use of narrated world) and these are conveniently summarised by FOTIS JANNIDIS.92 While DOLEŽEL’s theory is based upon studying modern literature and its finer points reflect this basis, his main points also provide a helpful incentive for thinking about narrated worlds in medieval texts. Two of his points provide particularly thought-provoking ideas. These are the concepts of being created as a meaningful structure that adheres to other prerogatives than the real, extradiegetic world and the idea of incompleteness in that the audience can know only what is being narrated about this world (although their imagination may fill in various gaps).93

The first point has already been addressed implicitly in relation to KIENING’s comment that texts can be said to create their own symbolic order.94 In relation to the second point, ARMIN SCHULZ likewise emphasises that narrated worlds are never presented in their entirety but only in fragments and thus imply rather than fully show a model of a fictional world.95 It is therefore especially important to assess what information is provided and for what reason it may be given, as this may offer vital clues about the structure that a text wants to foreground in its narrated world (or on a body). If nose and eyes go unmentioned in the description of a literary character but his hair and beard and various scars are described, this does not mean that this particular character lacks the undescribed features. Rather, it is assumed that the text wants to focus on certain aspects for a particular reason (or reasons) and that the audience is free to imagine the remaining, unmarked details by themselves.

In order to express that each narrated world exhibits its own system of making sense of this world, the term semiotic system is introduced. Like narrated world, it is a working definition for this study and in this case the term is only loosely based on previous terminology (KIENING’s symbolic order, for instance).96 As it is used here, semiotic system denotes a socially constructed system of (an) organisation of meaning. The system thus expresses what is meaningful and which meaning these factors are associated with. The concept of a semiotic system is inspired by the German term Sinnsystem and hence loosely modelled on NIKLAS LUHMANN’s idea of Sinn. The German Sinn has a semantic range of both ‘sense’ as well as ‘meaning’, yet in English translations the former is preferred in denoting LUHMANN’s concept. HANS-GEORG MOELLER classifies LUHMANN’s sense as completely rooted in culture, as the ‘“universal medium” […]. Society and minds are continuously “making sense” – they are “sense-constituting systems”. Minds make sense of the world and themselves, and so do social systems.’97

In stressing the importance of such a system, SARAH KAY and MIRI RUBIN determine an (almost?) universal desire for a ‘dialectically related process of ordered division, through schemes of knowledge and systematic hierarchies […]’.98 The distinct terminology employed in this analysis therefore proposes not a new concept but merely a convenient way of referring to these matters in English. It follows that a semiotic system is a vital factor in constituting human culture and can be expressed on many different levels, from the arrangement of the cosmos to the reading of bodies in texts. The consideration of semiotic systems allows for contextualising the meaningful factors and paradigms (on a specific body or in general) of a particular narrated world or even in the development of a particular episode. Therefore, a careful and contextualised analysis of what makes what sense, and to whom, is undertaken in relation to each of the narrated worlds discussed here.

A short example from a medieval text should help to outline how reflectively and imaginatively medieval texts can engage with this issue. In Vilmundar saga Viðutan, the main character Vilmund grows up very isolated, living on a farm with his reclusive parents, who (having seemingly retired from a life at court) teach him courtly things but do not allow contact with the outside world.99 When Vilmund finally leaves his home to look for a stray goat, he encounters a princess living in what appears to him to be a mountain (which a medieval audience perhaps readily identified as a castle).100 While the identity of the princess and the surroundings (which provide a vital clue to this identity) are soon clear for the audience, Vilmund seems baffled because he has never seen anything like this before. He bluntly asks the woman if she is human, a troll or an elf. The rather amused princess in turn asks whether she looks like a troll to him, showing that in her view, such matters may be discerned by appearance. To this Vilmund replies that he cannot say because he has seen neither troll nor elf nor humans other than his parents. Even compared to his parents, one may suspect, the princess looks different enough to make Vilmund question whether they do in fact belong to the same category, human.101

Vilmund’s inexperience with the world outside his farm means that he lacks a semiotic system in which to firmly place the appearance of this ‘creature’. He may have an abstract idea of a princess as his parents may have told him about such a woman.102 Yet because he has never seen one, Vilmund fails to identify ‘this woman’ as ‘a princess’. To him the paradigms she embodies – beautiful body, female, noble, lives in a castle – are simply not enough to relate to this concept. This demonstrates that in medieval texts, social identity is as much based on being recognised by others as it is on the expression of that identity through, for instance, a beautiful body or regal attire. This brief encounter consequently reveals as much about successful instalments of mediality as it does about Vilmund and his position in the narrated world he inhabits.

One of the main aims of this study is to examine the texts as texts – that is, as independent literary creations. It follows that to determine the strategies that create a fictional world it is beneficial to approach them from narratological viewpoints. The idea of considering narratological objectives in the study of bodies in medieval texts is justified because, quite simply, it is the texts that create the bodies. JANNIDIS in particular draws attention to questions of how literary characters are ‘shaped’. Although his comments arose from the study of modern literature, they can still provide important questions for examining bodily representations in medieval texts.

JANNIDIS proposes to ask for how long (in relation to the length of the text) a character is described, how much (homogenous or varying) information is presented, on which narrative level(s) the information is presented, where in a text and in what context and with what aim the character is described and in what relation his or her description stands to descriptions of other characters within the narrated world.103 These questions can help to determine if a body is a continuous mediator of identity throughout the text or if it only mediates that identity once, perhaps at a particular point in the narrative. Furthermore, it is important to discuss on what narrative level(s) the process of mediation is installed and how these levels influence the medial process. Does a body mediate particular issues at a particular point in a text and for a specific reason? By connecting the process of mediality with the narrative techniques creating a character, the interrelatedness of body and process is suitably and consciously foregrounded.

Attention also has to be paid to how bodies are presented and made tangible within a text, i.e. by what narrative techniques the bodies are made visible. JANNIDIS expresses the opinion that the meaning of signs (linguistic signs in his case) can only be analysed if the communicative events and the relevant contexts are likewise considered in the analysis.104 His judgement provided the incentive to also draw attention to the contexts and events in which bodies are presented as signs. In this respect, it is imperative to also determine how and by whom information about a body is presented and how this relates to other pieces of information provided.

Two such ‘voices’ may be determined in medieval texts: the narrative voice and the words spoken by other characters who are also part of the narrated world. This study understands narrative voice as the fictional entity that (generally in an omniscient way) provides information about a narrated world through the voice of the text. The narrative voice is independent of any characters in the text and therefore provides a point of view independent of their subjective knowledge.105 As will become obvious in the following chapters, some narrative voices consciously evaluate a character or tell the audience how to assess certain pieces of information, while others appear content to deliver the information without interpretative guidance. In the case of other characters relating information about a body, it must be noted that this has always already been perceived in the text before it is perceived by the audience (or researcher).

A difference is also observable in how the audience comes to view and hence to imagine the bodies. While the narrative voice can apparently offer untainted information for the audience (but can also evaluate), the comments by other characters (implicitly) contain a double perspective: what the audience perceives has already gone through the perception of and is shaped by the words of a character. Discussing this perspective also means engaging with questions about who is doing the looking (or often the conscious gazing), who talks about a body and what kind of body is displayed. These strategies help to consider how a text may stage the process(es) of visual perception. Listening to who is speaking is important in discerning the narrative levels of construction as well as the evaluations of both bodies and (by extension) characters. In both cases, an examination of which descriptive paradigms are mentioned, foregrounded or absent can offer valuable information about what impression of the body should linger and how the body should be visualised by the audience.

The fact that both the visualisation by the audience as well as the observers in the text (other characters) are important may be grounded in the central role visual observance held in medieval thought. Theories about vision as extramissive (going back to Plato and Galen), that is, of the eyes emitting light and hence turning observing into an interactive process, were known in medieval Ireland at least.106 This theory may therefore have provided the fundamental structure for the very developed visualisations of bodies in these texts, as SARAH SHEEHAN contends.107 From Augustine to Roger Bacon, vision has often been classified as the most trusted of senses.108 This has led JAN-DIRK MÜLLER to the conclusion that ‘[m]edievalists agree that the eye is the privileged sense organ in medieval culture.’109 STEPHEN G. NICHOLS declares that during the Middle Ages, sight and hearing
constitute the chief vehicles for cognition, crucial conduits linking the external world to the soul and to reason. As the senses most intimately linked to soul and mind, they played a key role in forming the individual morally [and] intellectually […].110

This point is also argued by PERNILLE HERMANN in a forthcoming article.111 While these two senses are indeed the most foregrounded in the examples presented later, future research may indeed question this pre-eminence and draw attention to other sensory perceptions hitherto neglected. The present study does not argue for one or the other sense’s preference in medieval thought. It simply acknowledges that in the majority of its examples, sight and hearing, seeing bodies and talking about bodies, are the main aids to cognition.

Description is the most important narrative strategy to shape characters in the following chapters since they allow a visual image to form in the mind: descriptions flesh out a particular body. BAL declares that description ‘is a privileged site of focalization, and as such it has great impact on the ideological and aesthetic effect of the text.’112 The prominence of descriptions in the texts may be traced to the importance of visuality in medieval culture at large. MÜLLER declares that ‘[m]edieval society is represented by visual signs; understanding the signs means understanding its order.’113 The same can be said for the societies depicted in the medieval texts discussed in this study, and description is the narrative strategy by which this order is visualised.

The term description is used in line with RANKO MATASOVIĆ’S definition and refers to those passages in a text that explain how somebody looks.114 In short, descriptions depict characters by visualising their appearance. In some of the early Irish examples presented this visualisation goes against ARMIN SCHULZ’S general statement that, in medieval texts, appearance is generally presented in parts that stand for the whole.115 While there certainly are cultural aspects at play here, it nevertheless needs to be asked why such incredibly detailed descriptions may be favoured. In some cases (especially in relation to the Irish hero Cú Chulainn), the descriptions are in fact so detailed that they could be classified as ekphrasis.

While the term ekphrasis is often used narrowly in the sense that it visualises a non-existent painting or another visual work of art, O’CONNOR also argues for a ‘broader classical and mediaeval sense of “ekphrasis” as a detailed and vivid description which makes the object described seem to appear before the mind’s eye of the reader or listener.’116 The rhetorical vividness with which some bodies are described in the examples discussed in the following chapters certainly fits this understanding. Ekphrasis often quite literally conjures a gaze on a body. As MÜLLER, also arguing for a somewhat broader understanding of the term, emphasises: ‘[e]kphrasis is the literary equivalent of sight in a culture of visuality.’117 Again, context and narrative placement of ekphrasis will also prove interesting to consider. Therefore questions of ‘who sees’ will also be continuously asked in the individual chapters, especially in relation to instances where bodies are assessed or evaluated.

Bodies can also be talked about by other characters in a dialogue (or, less frequently, a monologue) and truly appear as part of the social structure of the narrated world. These instances often (but again not always) offer no concise description but generally mention certain noteworthy features. Hearing about bodies (at least in the texts presented here) thus seldom results in a ‘full picture’ (to create an analogy with paintings) of a body or character but presents individual aspects that are foregrounded at a particular moment. Often, this mode of presenting a body is installed as somehow more subjective and is used, for instance, to openly point out flaws. In this case, an unfavourable aspect of a body is mentioned malignantly, with the open intent to insult. On the other hand, texts may use a fictive communal opinion to underline a single character’s judgement of a body. O’CONNOR also briefly comments on this narrative device. He asserts that for
interpretative guidance it is worth looking at how the saga’s [Togail Bruidne da Derga] internal audiences respond to the protagonists’ choices. In mediaeval sagas, as in the chorus of Greek tragedy, internal audiences help to modulate the real audience’s interpretation of events.118

The same may also be said about other characters’ interpretation of a body in a narrated world. Although this communal voice is only inferred by the text but no individual speech acts are presented, in the examples discussed below it most often serves a positive, affirmative function.

In arguing that literary bodies are conscious compositions, it will simply be stated that the ‘text’ guides a gaze or interpretation on both levels, i.e. through the narrative voice and the voice of other characters. Of course, the text was written down/composed/worked on by one or more human beings; it itself is a product. Yet to determine the exact aims of medieval compilers/redactors and their individual contributions to a particular text is a difficult enterprise (and one that will not be undertaken here). Since the words of the text are the medium through which an audience (medieval or modern) observes these aims at consciously guiding perception – and because the words have been deliberately chosen to do so by the auctorial entity – the active role will be assigned to the text itself. By granting the text this active part as medium, questions of authorship can be bypassed and the focus remains on the actual text, its intradiegetic world and the perception(s) thereof and therein.

1.3.2Looking Beyond Literature: Adjusting Methodology

Although the main focus of the discussions will lie on the texts and the individual close readings, other theoretical frameworks are necessary to understand the bodies and their mediative context more accurately. It has already been briefly remarked that in this respect this study presents an eclectic approach, drawing on various theories and multiple academic fields. This, as JEFFREY JEROME COHEN asserts in defending his very similar methodology in Medieval Identity Machines, ‘enables an investigation of the medieval as a site of infinite possibility.’119 The plurality of ideas expressed in these examples simply cannot be studied and appreciated with one single theoretical framework. It is the aim of this research to present a new angle on the material and deliberately focus on the manifold ideas that can be discerned in relation to medieval bodies. Applying a theory to the texts simply would have led to too much limitation. Therefore it was thought more beneficial to allow the discussions to be guided by the individual texts in order to see which theoretical approaches help best to understand them. In this respect, the present approach echoes CLAUDIA BENTHIEN’s declaration that she ‘prefer[s] a method that proceeds from the singular and takes great care in generalizing the insights it derives.’120 The approach also reflects CSORDAS’ opinion that if it is true that the body, in having been de-naturalised and de-stabilised by recent theory, ‘is passing through a critical historical moment, this moment also offers a critical methodological opportunity to reformulate theories of culture, self, and experience, with the body at the center of the analysis.’121

Even though this study is a literary one and refrains from linking the texts with extra-textual reality, sociological and anthropological studies will be quoted throughout the analyses. This is by no means contradictory, as the study of corporeal mediality is much more advanced in these fields than in literary criticism. Although formulated in a very different context, GUGUTZER’s Soziologie des Körpers, for instance, proved a valuable source of questions to ask and points to consider, even if both had to be carefully reformulated in relation to medieval sources. Such studies are sources for possible questions rather than for theories or conclusions to be applied uncritically. Yet while these analyses cannot offer conclusions, they can direct a researcher’s gaze towards possible underlying structures of meaning and, in turn, towards possible processes of mediality. As CLARE A. LEES justifies a similar approach in Medieval Men’s Studies, examining contemporary theories allows medievalists to interrogate ‘the assumptions of these theories against the “alterity” of the period.’122 STERCKEN and KIENING have likewise highlighted the need to critically consider (rather than strictly apply) modern theories for medieval texts in order to formulate new theories based on the medieval sources123, and an attempt at this will be made here.

Despite these observations, there are many studies, such as the collection of essays presented in Framing Medieval Bodies, which ‘rely on modern theoretical frames such as Marxism, feminism, race and gender theory, deconstruction, and phenomenology to organize the specific textual and historical soundings of medieval bodies’124, as CONKLIN AKBARI and ROSS find. While such approaches can be undertaken, this study promotes the opposite way of theorisation: to work from the texts themselves, to first discover a text’s representations of bodies and their ‘potential medialities’ rather than applying theoretical frames onto them from the start.

It is also imperative to relate sociological observations not to the text-producing societies but to the narrated world and its intradiegetic society. For example, many of the thoughts that GUGUTZER proposes in sociology about bodies being both producers and products of society can also be observed in medieval texts.125 Within the texts, bodies and society appear inextricably linked and reflect each other: ideas of bodies are generated through social concerns and prerogatives (society produces a particular manifestation of a body) yet social interaction is only possible through – and hence always related to – bodies. Corporeal mediality depends precisely on this interplay between individual and society that has long been acknowledged in sociological works and is also depicted in medieval texts in its very own way.

1.3.3Minor Matters

The considerations underlying this research, its aims and also its form should also be briefly mentioned. For instance, the eclectic appearance of the study not just in terms of methodologies but also in relation to the examples that are discussed should be explained briefly. The discussion of individual texts and episodes, not of general trends or theories, is a central point of this study. It was nevertheless necessary to choose wisely amongst the multitude of texts and bodies that could have been discussed here in order not to have to introduce too many genres (to use a modern term), and this was no easy task. The selection of examples aims to present interesting, strange, noteworthy or extraordinary representations of bodies. The texts presented were not chosen because they can be said to be representative of their genre or literary tradition’s engagement with bodies but quite the opposite, because they feature highly unusual and therefore probably conscious and reflective depictions of bodies. They also show a heightened interest in the medial potential of bodies and demonstrate hitherto neglected aspects of mediality.

However, while the texts offer an insight into what can be done with bodies in literary texts, they do not show what usually was done. Awareness that within these literary traditions not all texts use bodies in such an elaborate way is therefore called for. Because of this, the study also refrains from any general statements about bodies in medieval literature. This echoes ATKINSON’s persuasion that the
cultural critic therefore ‘reads’ bodies in much the same way as s/he might read a literary text: not in the hope of revealing an essential truth about embodiment, but precisely to expose how various ‘truths’ and norms are constructed and broadcast as bodies are discussed, represented and managed […].126

Even if the bodies have to be deconstructed somewhat in the process, ATKINSON’s approach can be seen as a leading dogma of the following analyses. For it is felt that body criticism reveals that there is no truth about ‘the body’ to be unveiled, but various stories about bodies to be told.

The inclusion of two literary traditions should also be briefly explained. It needs to be clearly pointed out that the aim is not to present a comparative study which addresses the literary traditions primarily through their relation to each other (even though they are both early vernacular literary traditions at the fringe of Europe).127 As time progressed, it emerged that many points were indeed shared by the two traditions – although they may have been developed very differently – and this led to interesting and at times unexpected insights. Ultimately, this sharpened the eye for their possible differences in treating a literary motif and therefore for another aim of this study: to present each literary tradition in its own right and with its own understanding(s) of the bodies.

This study also does not seek to present generalised (or generalising) concepts of bodies in Norse or Irish literature or to trace individual motifs to either of the two traditions. Rather, it seeks to present the motifs and bodies as they were developed in each particular case. The strength of the argument lies precisely in outlining how the processes of mediality can differ in each tradition, in each genre and text, and how the medial value and (re‐)presentation of bodies also (but not exclusively) depends on the cultural specifics inherent in a text. In order to achieve this, similar motifs or instalments of bodies are discussed in both literary traditions, with a strong focus on how the processes of mediality are presented.

What made the examination of these literary traditions so interesting is that the application of scholarly methodologies, such as mediality studies or body criticism, is still relatively young in these fields. The (rather) blank sheet this provided for many of the examples was greatly appreciated. Yet it also meant that, for example in the discussion of Dámusta saga, I had to rely predominantly on my own understanding of the text. This is the reason why this study also considers secondary literature discussing medieval German or English texts. Considering (if not applying) ideas about mediality devised in relation to, for instance, medieval German literature emphasises not only the alterity of each literary tradition, but also the need to discover different possibilities of reading bodies. This study may initially appear somewhat unusual because it is written in English but cites large amounts of German scholarship, but this novel angle facilitated interesting new ways of looking at the texts. Ultimately, it is hoped that this unusual combination is a strength rather than a weakness of the approach.

It is also worth mentioning that each chapter is headed by a short quote. These quotes present ideas that proved stimulating in the process of thinking about the bodies discussed in each particular chapter. Hopefully, their relation to the chapter is obvious enough, but the quotes will be discussed in short conclusive comments at the end of each chapter. The quote heading this introduction indicates a very important quality asked of the reader: a willingness to be startled out of conventions and into new conceptualisations. This is similar to MIREILLE SCHNYDER’s analysis of a unique horse in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec:

[d]ie Blindheit durch das blendende Weiss des Pferdes ist die radikale Umsetzung der Aufforderung an die Zuhörer, alle bisherigen Pferdebilder zu vergessen, um die Schilderung dieses Pferdes mit offenem Ohr, aber leerem Auge anzunehmen; kein Bild, damit das Bild über die Sprache entstehen kann.128

The blindness caused by the dazzlingly white horse is the radical expression of the request to the audience to abandon all previous ideas of horses in order to perceive the depiction of this horse with an open ear but an empty eye. To have no image so that the image can be formed by language.

It certainly benefits the study of the texts discussed here to open up to these wonderful and intriguing descriptions of bodies and not be tied back by logical (or, worse even, anatomical) concerns. Instead, readers should allow their gaze to be directed by the text and its descriptions and acknowledge that perhaps the bodies are rugged rocks that turn into sparkling diamonds if one choses to look inside them. Perhaps then scholarship can begin to appreciate aspects that have been overlooked thus far. These bodies are an expression not just of the artistic merit of medieval culture but also of the ingenuity by which something as basic as a human body may be installed in a text. This is ample ground for ‘yet another study on the body’, because there remains a lot more to be seen if one chooses to look.

1.4Texts

Because of the vast number of texts and genres that could have been examined for this study, and because an understanding of a text’s position in medieval literature is vital for contextualising its bodies, it was imperative to consciously limit the focus in order to discuss certain aspects more fully. On the most basic level, the focus lies on literary texts and therefore on what is commonly referred to as medieval ‘literature’. Yet while the term medieval literature is still in common use, recent scholarship in both disciplines as well as literary criticism as a whole have critically engaged with its meaning. TERRY EAGLETON states that concepts of literature are always historically conditioned and as such a post-modern understanding cannot be applied in the study of medieval texts.129 As early as 1958, SEÁN MAC AIRT has argued that the early Irish filid ‘regarded the sagas not primarily as literary entertainment but as historical evidence’130, a statement which includes the perception of the compilers/ redactors of the texts into modern literary criticism. The difficulties in defining medieval ‘literature’ in Irish Studies have recently been addressed by ERICH POPPE while GREGORY TONER opened a very fruitful debate on whether the Ulster Cycle (to which most of the early Irish texts discussed here belong) is to be classified as historiography or fiction.131 In Old Norse Studies, GLAUSER was influential in rethinking the Íslendingasögur as texts which ‘imagine’ the settlement era and as such create memory through a fictitious historical discourse.132 These comments sparked a very similar awareness across Scandinavian studies. The problem may lie in that it is hard to draw a firm definition of literature in both literary traditions. This is because, as O’CONNOR phrases it,
today’s sharp pseudo-generic distinction between ʻliteraryʼ, and ʻnon-literaryʻ narratives, or between ʻhistoryʼ, ʻpseudo-historyʼ and ʻfictionʼ, would not have made sense to mediaeval authors who recognized different levels of truth-value and function within a single text.133

It is important to stress these differences between modern categorisations and medieval perceptions. The compilers/redactors of the Íslendingasögur may have thought themselves to be writing down (their) history, as the compilers/redactors of Lebor Gabála Érenn may have aimed to write Irish history into Christian world history. They were not thinking of themselves as creative artists making up good stories (and as such certainly did not comply with TONER’s use of the word fiction) but as producing historical narratives, even if their work cannot be taken as historical evidence today and the outcome of their efforts is entertaining and does show aspects of literary discourses. POPPE says about early Irish texts that ‘this is literature as history – or history as literature’134 and this observation begins to blur the (modern) boundaries between the two concepts. O’CONNOR takes a more fluent approach to the issue when he states that ‘sagas in medieaeval Ireland (as in Iceland) were presented and used as a form of historiography, in the broad sense of textualized memory.’135 O’CONNOR stressed these and related points in a recent paper and also drew much needed attention to the fact that history writing in the medieval period was not based on any (one) strict theory but that texts can feature a variety of signals of historicity.136

The crux lies in that, as MARTIN IRVINE remarks,

[l]iterature in the modern sense did not exist in classical and medieval culture. There was no separate category of writings designated as literary, that is, no set of linguistic objects valued exclusively for their aesthetic, imaginative, or artistic worth.137

As such, TONER’s use of the term fiction in itself proves anachronistic. His attempts to defend the value of early Irish texts by arguing that, for instance, Táin Bó Cúailnge’s (perceived) literary shortcomings are to be explained in that the compilers/redactors sought to present history and not literature would need a more substantial discussion than is possible here.138 In a more productive light, IRVINE’s comment stresses an important point for consideration: that in the time in which the texts discussed here were compiled texts were not aimed exclusively at entertainment but were always also part of other discourses (historical, educational, etc.).

Such an understanding of medieval texts necessitates a profound rethinking of a literary criticism aimed at medieval texts and perhaps even a defence for using the term literature in the title of this study. The present study acknowledges that – with the notable exception of the original riddarasögur – its texts are, just like the ‘vast majority of medieval Irish prose narrative composed up to about the twelfth century […] considered by authors and audiences alike to belong to a genre of medieval historia […] rather than to “literature” with all the problematic modern connotations of this concept’139, to quote POPPE. Nevertheless, they can also be valued for their aesthetic, imaginative or artistic worth, even if particularly the Irish texts have long been perceived as deficient in this respect. Hopefully the following chapters can contribute to the appreciation of both aspects – historiographical agenda and literary merit – by highlighting the at times startlingly artistic and reflective composition of the texts.

For the present purpose it might be easier to work by exclusion in trying to define what is meant by medieval literature: this analysis excludes legal, administrative, hagiographical or historical documents and texts that focus on educational issues or theological matters.140 These texts have either a clearly stated aim of influencing the audience (in the last two cases), recording social habits (in the case of legal texts) or simply ‘listing’ historical or other data (historical charters, administrative correspondence, etc.). Such texts may also engage with bodies but, with the notable exception of hagiographical material, they (generally) do not use them as literary devices to convey meaning on a symbolic level. Like KIENING, I will use the term literature to denote that these texts develop ‘Formen des Imaginären […], die in pragmatischer Schriftlichkeit (Urkunden, Formelsammlungen, Annalen) fehlen.’141 The texts classified here as literature do use aesthetic, imaginative or artistic devices and at times even show an awareness that they use them.

All texts discussed are therefore granted literary merit and show a conscious engagement with developing both narrative and characters. They are, as HELEN FULTON proposes for the Irish Ulster Cycle material,
conscious literary creations – ʻliteraryʼ not in the sense of aspiring to a place in ʻgreat literatureʼ but in the sense of conforming to contemporary conventions of written texts […]. We must, therefore, assume that their textual realizations of discourse, structure, and content are not random, accidental, or corrupt, but fully motivated and, therefore, semiotically significant.142

The same may be said about all the texts in the following chapters. And as ‘our understanding of Irish saga as literature is still in its adolescence’143, to employ O’CONNOR’s words, perhaps the following analyses will contribute to the appreciation of medieval texts through the joint focus of body criticism and mediality studies. Like POPPE, I too admit to ‘prioritiz[ing] one aspect of their functional make-up […] over other aspects’, and in the present case I favour ʻthe texts’ intention to entertain and their rhetorical and aesthetic dimensions’ over their ʻclaim to transmitting historical information’.144 I hope thus to make a contribution not to a somehow distinct field of medieval literary criticism but to the understanding of medieval texts at large, as TONER has rightly stated that texts should be evaluated within a historical discourse and as literary artefacts.145 The focus on the narrative artistry and literary compositional techniques also implies that vernacular texts such as the Irish sagas and the Norse Íslendingasögur do not simply ‘write down’ history but that they create historicity, grapple with the past, explore and negotiate it. Like literature, historiography may become an increasingly multifaceted concept in future academic discourse in both disciplines, with a focus on the historiographic component of the writing of medieval texts. This awareness of historiographical practices in texts should perhaps receive as much attention as the term literary has done in recent years, as O’CONNOR’s recent plenary talk suggested.146

In terms of the selection of texts presented, it must be stressed that it is by no means comprehensive. It offers a small corpus of texts in focusing largely (but not exclusively) on two Old Norse-Icelandic saga genres, the Íslendingasögur and the original riddarasögur, excluding whole other genres such as the konungasögur (‘Kings’ sagas’) or the translated riddarasögur. In its discussion of early Irish literature, it focuses mainly on Ulster Cycle texts and on Táin Bó Cúailnge in particular. Within these limitations, the selection of texts was guided on the one hand by interesting and unusual instalments of bodies, and on the other hand by the aim of presenting similar concerns in both traditions. Especially in the final stages of writing, the study was also guided by personal preference in choosing examples which were deemed especially worthy of presenting, either for their literary ingenuity and narrative artistry or because little scholarly attention had been paid to the texts to date. Many other examples could also have been discussed and many more were originally considered during research. It is hoped nevertheless that the selected texts present a balanced and coherent picture, if not an all-inclusive one.

In order not to break the flow of analysis in the individual chapters it is useful to introduce the individual genres studied in this introduction and leave only the individual texts to be (briefly) contextualised later. The aim of these introductions and contextualisations is to give an overview of the age and transmission of the texts discussed and to refer the eager reader to further information. The short introductory comments are therefore designed to help readers unfamiliar with one or both of the literary traditions to follow the subsequent analyses. Yet to maintain the focus on bodies and mediality it was decided to give only as much information as is needed, since these matters have for the most part already been addressed by other scholars. In this respect, only the characteristics of each genre which are important for contextualising its bodies will be related here. In the few cases where the corpus diverts from the three genres outlined above – Íslendingasögur, original riddarasögur and the Ulster Cycle – the wider context will also be briefly introduced before the analysis.

The term Íslendingasögur (‘Sagas of the Icelanders’ or ‘Family Sagas’) refers to a group of about forty sagas, which are critically discussed by KURT SCHIER.147 VÉSTEINN ÓLASON concisely summarises their characteristics:

Sagas about Icelanders from a certain period and written by anonymous authors are known as Íslendingasögur, ‘sagas of Icelanders’, or, as they are frequently referred to in English, ‘family sagas’ […]. [The label] is used only about tales of considerable length which centre on the lives of people from a relatively small group of Icelandic families. The important part of the action in such tales takes place during the first century of the Icelandic Commonwealth, from c.930 to c.1030.148

Although the narratives themselves deal with the history of the settlement-period (broadly speaking late ninth until early eleventh century), GLAUSER maintains that ‘they were composed in their surviving forms between 1220/1230 and 1400 […]’.149 GLAUSER emphasises the fact that many of these sagas are preserved in parchment manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century and paper manuscripts from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, a fact which testifies to their continuous popularity.150

ÓLASON sees the texts as part ‘of a larger project aimed precisely at creating a history for the Icelanders.’151 They are ‘narrated as if they were history’ and thus ‘participate in the textualization of Icelandic history.’152 As such, these texts are prime examples of the historiographic and literary aspects of medieval texts introduced above. In acknowledging the texts’ relation to history, a distinction proposed by GLAUSER is useful to bear in mind. GLAUSER posits three periods: the ‘saga era’ (ninth to eleventh centuries), the period of the fictional events; the ‘writing era’ (thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries), the time of the initial recording in writing of individual texts and of the formation of genres; and the ‘era of memory’ (fourteenth to early twentieth century), also the time of the transmission of the texts.153 GLAUSER further asserts that a ‘central aspect of all the Íslendinga sögur […] is this coming to terms with the past, this construction, and therefore interpretation, of history and cultural memory.’154 This inherent historisation led earlier researchers to believe that the narratives themselves were historical, an opinion that is no longer held.155 Instead it is acknowledged that ‘[t]he texts present the ideas and attitudes prevalent at the time of writing about a past that was in many ways different from that time.’156 Or, to paraphrase: the Íslendingasögur show how their writers imagined their own past and how they thought their ancestors to have lived and looked like.

In terms of narrative content, JULIA ZERNACK states that these sagas tell how the first settlers had to create social structures and organise their own social and communal matters as well as define their relationship with the Norwegian king.157 ZERNACK also sees the texts as revealing how power, influence and wealth were thought to have been distributed and how the Icelandic legal system was thought to have been established.158 She further emphasises that in these sagas, the establishment of an Icelandic identity (as separate from that of their country of origin) is an integral part of these sagas.159 ÓLASON raises another central issue of the narrated worlds of these sagas when he draws attention to the importance of feuding:

[a]t the heart of the plots which form the backbone of the Íslendingasögur lie feuds in which honour and even life itself are at stake. Whatever the origins of feuds, they come to exercise a fundamental influence on a character’s honour and status in society.160

Establishing, defending and continuously reaffirming one’s honour and identity are integral parts of these narratives, as are issues of history and society formation. These issues relate to bodies in various ways, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

The sagas commonly classified as original (or ‘indigenous’ or ‘independent’) riddarasögur, also called ‘Romances’, ‘Chivalric sagas’ or lygisögur in English scholarship, are much less studied in Norse scholarship than the Íslen dingasögur.161 The group of sagas referred to as riddarasögur includes two subcategories, which GERALDINE BARNES characterises as follows: ‘[t]he translated riddarasögur comprise Old Norse prose versions of French epic and romance’162 and are distinguished from the independent (or original, as they will be called here) riddarasögur. The texts of the second subgroup are not based on translations of earlier (mostly continental) sources but emerged in Iceland around 1300 as ‘eine Art Mischform aus Rittersaga und Vorzeitsaga.’163 Despite being indigenous Norse texts they may also include narrative motives and concepts from Byzantine or oriental sources.164 GLAUSER asserts: ‘[a]us klassisch-antiker Tradition, aus einheimisch-nordischen Vorzeitsagas und vornehmlich aus höfisch-kontinentalem Ritterroman entstand in Island die Märchensaga.’165 These sagas present ‘eine Abwendung von einem vorwiegend ˂realistischen˃ hin zu einem ˂phantastischen˃ Erzählen’166 and are thus sharply distinguished from the Íslendingasögur in style and narrated worlds as well as in their non-historical outlook. The original riddarasögur are a genre ‘des freien, imaginativen Spiels und des erzählerischen Experiments’167, as LAMBERTUS finds, and narrate events common in medieval (European) courtly literature. Their focus lies on royal courts and knightly matters, and on the conflicts associated with them but they do not participate in a historical discourse in relation to medieval Iceland or its settlement. As such, they will present a suitable contrast to the Íslendingasögur as their bodies are much more amenable to free literary imagination and exhibit much more phantastical and imaginative creativity.

A brief introduction to issues of geography and space in these sagas is also in order. These matters are not only central elements in establishing the narrated worlds of the original riddarasögur, they also assume special importance in relation to corporeal mediality. MATTHEW DRISCOLL shows that in terms of the narrated world’s geographical organisation, these narratives often ‘take place in an exotic (non-Scandinavian), vaguely courtly milieu […]’.168 In terms of narrative geography and space, LAMBERTUS asserts,
scheint der Erzählkosmos dieser Gattung das entworfene Modell von Kultur und Konflikt zunächst zu bestätigen: Die Welt dieser Sagas gruppiert sich um einen zentralen Bereich der höfischen Kultur herum, dem der ritterliche Held in aller Regel entstammt, und setzt ihm einen Aussenbereich jenseits dieser Kultur entgegen, der durch den Helden bereist wird und letztendlich von ihm bezwungen werden muss.169

The narrative cosmos of this genre initially seems to confirm the prevalent model of culture and conflict: the world of the sagas is grouped around a central area of courtly culture, from which the knightly hero stems, and opposes to this an outer space beyond this cultured area. The hero travels through this outer space and eventually has to conquer it.

The short quote above underlines that even within one narrated world there can be different regions or areas connoting different social systems or cultures, as MATÍAS MARTINEZ and MICHAEL SCHEFFEL phrase it.170

Both KARIN M. BOKLUND and GLAUSER argue for a dichotomy between the main court, representing culture, and wilderness, representing chaos and natural forces (an inhuman and often negatively connoted place).171 Although the two categories (initially) appear as geographically separate(d) and represent individual (non‐)cultural space, the present close readings will show that the bodies associated with them may not always be as rigidly opposed and divided as previous research has claimed. The close readings will draw on recent suggestions by WERNER SCHÄFKE, who argues that the characters in these texts are always rooted in topological space and can ‘als von ihrer Umgebung determiniert gedacht werden.’172 Bodies are seen as integral in linking characters with(in) their environment, although my readings do not completely deny them individual identity as SCHÄFKE has done.

In her discussion of how the spaces of court and nature are narratively created BOKLUND claims that ‘the space of corteisie “courtliness” is an internal, closed space: mathematically because it contains a limited number of elements whereas the area of non-courtly space is conceived of as unlimited and indeterminate […]’.173 On a first reading of many original riddarasögur the court thus appears as ordered and meaningful while the space outside it may seem chaotic and, in its perceived nonsensical nature, unsettling. When applying close readings with a focus on bodies it emerges that the construction of a courtly identity (i.e. of heroes, kings and maidens) in these sagas is indeed achieved against a relatively small number of paradigms, whereas the monstrous others show much greater variation because they can be recognisable as others simply by the lack of (some or all of) the courtly signifiers. Yet in certain cases this dichotomal creation does not hold true and the texts appear to play with the usual prerogatives and engage with the medial potential of bodies in a critical manner.

A group of sagas that is at times difficult to (fully) distinguish from the original riddarasögur are the fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda. In English-speaking areas the genre is most commonly referred to as ‘Legendary sagas’ or ‘Mythic-heroic sagas’.174 It comprises about 30 sagas in ULRIKE STRERATH-BOLZ’S175 view, with TORFI TULINIUS176 arguing for 25 extant works and SCHIER17776 arriving at about three-dozen in his estimate. Although, as TULINIUS remarks, the oldest manuscript containing a fornaldarsaga Norðurlanda is dated to c. 1300 (the Hauksbók), these texts are preserved largely in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts.178 The genre is distinguished from the Íslendingasögur by their often light and non-realistic narrative style and from the riddarasögur by their focus on Viking or ancient Germanic themes.

Fornaldarsögur are characterised by their setting in ‘olden days’ (forn aldar) and in Nordic lands.179 TULINIUS states that in these two paradigms, time and space, they are easily categorised, yet on other matters they are often not clearly distinguishable from the original riddarasögur.180 SCHIER finds that it must ‘dem persönlichen Urteil überlassen bleiben, welcher Werkgruppe man sie jeweils zurechnet’181, a comment which eased the inclusion of a fornaldarsaga into this study in relation to original riddarasögur. HERMANN PÁLSSON further divides the genre into ‘hero legends’ and ‘adventure tales’182, to which SCHIER added ‘Wikingersagas’ (‘Viking sagas’).183 Although difficult to argue, these classifications provide a useful reminder that in terms of narrative setting and narrated worlds, these sagas present a heroic (rather than a historical-realistic or courtly) worldview. Whether they are perceived as entertaining (with TULINIUS) or serious and tragic (as SCHIER maintains), their focus on heroic ideals and behaviour is characteristic of these texts. Since Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers, the fornaldarsaga discussed here, shows considerable concern for appropriate courtly behaviour, it will be discussed in relation to original riddarasögur regardless of SCHIER’s classification.

In the case of early Irish literature, the grouping of texts is not in terms of (modern) genres but instead texts are commonly classified into cycles (also a modern concept): the Ulster Cycle, the Finn Cycle, the Mythological Cycle and the Kings Cycle. Since most of the examples that are treated in detail below are from the same narrative, it is necessary to introduce only this work, Táin Bó Cúailnge (TBC, ‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’). The Táin’s narrative is set in what is nowadays Ulster and northern Leinster. All of its characters are heroes associated with the courts of King Conchobor of Ulster or his adversaries, Queen Medb and King Ailill of Connacht. The Táin lies at the heart of the Ulster Cycle and is an integral text for understanding the heroic narrated worlds of early Irish narrative literature, although (as will be argued below) it may engage far more critically with the foundations of these worlds than previous critics have acknowledged.

The Táin is also the most famous of the tána (pl. of táin), a group of tales concerned with the driving away of (enemy) cattle. The story itself is quickly summarised. Queen Medb and King Ailill from the province of Connacht seek to drive away the Donn Cúailgne, the Brown Bull, from the province of Ulster. As the Ulster King Conchobar and his men suffer from a mysterious debility at the time, the task of defending both land and bull falls entirely to the hero Cú Chulainn. In a series of single-combat fights and guerrilla attacks Cú Chulainn defends his land until the men of Ulster are fit to join him, driving the aggressors back across the border. The bull, however, is lost and dies in a fight with his Connacht counterpart, Findbennach, at the tragic end to the narrative. The countless single-combat encounters (many of which may have been independent narratives later incorporated into TBC) provide ample opportunity to outline Cú Chulainn’s heroic character and martial prowess. These encounters may be repetitive, yet they provide an opportunity to foreground various heroic traits such as control of weapons, physical strength or noble conduct.

According to RUDOLF THURNEYSEN TBC is preserved in four different versions, three of which contain a more or less complete narrative, while the fourth presents an independent development of one episode only.184 Recensions I and II (henceforth referred to as TBC I and II respectively) are both likely to derive from earlier material.185 CECILE O’RAHILLY views the earliest recension of the tale as ‘a conflation of two 9 th-century versions’186 but dates the story itself to the first half of the eighth century.187 The main manuscripts these recensions are preserved in are dated to the twelfth century: Recension I in Lebor na hUidre (LU, ‘The Book of the Dun Cow’ c. 1100) and Recension II in the Book of Leinster (LL, also twelfth century).188 TBC I is extant in three other manuscripts, the Yellow Book of Lecan (late fourteenth century), Egerton 1782 (early sixteenth century) and O’Curry Ms 1 (a late sixteenth century paper manuscript).189 In addition to the LL version, TBC II is also extant in RIA Ms. Cvi 3, a text also known as the Stowe version.190 Recension III is extant in two later manuscripts, British Museum Egerton 93 (fifteenth to sixteenth century) and Trinity College H 2.17 (fifteenth century) but as it presents a fragmentary acephalous, it will not be considered here.191 In the present study the term narrative will be used in referring to the cattle-raid story itself, while the individual recensions will be referred to as texts to foreground their individual presentation of the narrative, but this does not imply that these texts were fixed structures.192 CECILE O’RAHILLY presented the standard editions and translations of TBC I and II and these are also employed in the present readings.

THURNEYSEN sees TBC as the centrepiece of Irish heroic epic, both for its length and its literary merit, and more recent scholarship has reinforced this assessment.193 However, some profound differences in style and literary merit have been noted in relation to the two most often cited recensions, TBC I and II. These are distinguished in that Recension II presents a less contradictory and repetitive but a more elaborate and expanded version of the narrative.194 HILDEGARD TRISTRAM summarises the character of the second recension as follows: ‘[d]er Grad der Schriftlichkeit ist […] wesentlich größer’ and ‘der ästhetische Anspruch auf Literarisierung ist unübersehbar.’195 For these reasons, Recension II has been drawn on more often than Recension I in criticism, a fact which is not always discussed openly. In many studies references to TBC are therefore to TBC II only, since it is often claimed that TBC II presents a more coherent, unified and homogenous narrative, as ARTHUR GRIBBEN asserts.196

Yet as DORIS EDEL rightly points out, although ‘the critics of Recension I still dominate the scene, there is a new willingness to consider it on its own terms […]’197, something which is also attempted here. Thus although at first glance at stylistics, Recension II may be given precedence because it shows fewer inconsistencies and repetitions, the present study considers both recensions equally. And at least in relation to bodies, TBC I is not lacking. Throughout the analyses, it will be made clear which recension is discussed. Where they are almost exact in their wording or development of an episode sometimes only one recension will be quoted, with the relevant divergences mentioned in footnotes.

While in the past the epic has been subject to some harsh criticism in terms of its literary merit, modern scholars are perhaps slightly more sympathetic. For instance, the many single-combat encounters which DAVID GREENE found wearisome were later appreciated and studied.198 Despite their repetitive nature the skill with which the encounters are varied in detail is remarkable, and the use of repetition as a narrative device was first outlined by CECILE O’RAHILLY.199 DOOLEY also argues that there is ‘plenty of evidence that the medieval scholars responsible for the forms of the Táin as we have them intended to keep a careful control of their narrative and sought out specific effects in their presentation of the saga.’200 This assessment proposes careful and conscious engagement with both the individual narrative episodes and their underlying issues. FULTON provides one of the rare studies focusing on how the texts develop the narrative and her work has led to an increased appreciation of the narrative structures of TBC.201 O’CONNOR also asserts that medieval Irish sagas such as the Táin explore ‘themes of warfare, honour, appropriate royal behaviour and tragic conflicts amongst foster-kin’202, thus assigning the texts a potentially reflective engagement with these topics.

One prominent and recurrent issue in TBC is that of historiography, that is, questions about the correct transmission of history and knowledge.203 To add to the previous debate about the literary and historiogaphic components of early Irish sagas, RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN maintains that TBC is strongly influenced by the learned historiographical tradition and was written down by ecclesiastics filled with a desire to preserve Irish secular learning.204 GREGORY TONER asserts that the aim of the learned-class compilers of TBC was ‘to construct a history of the cattle-raid of Cooley following normal medieval historiographical practices.’205 TRISTRAM even sees TBC in the context of a more general concern of Irish literati during the Middle Ages: ‘[d]ie mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen irischen Handschriften weisen auf ein starkes gesellschaftliches Interesse an der irischen Geschichte und Vergangenheit hin […]’206, an interest which TBC clearly reflects also in its individual episodes.

POPPE characterises medieval Irish narratives as
a massive project of learned, collective memoria intended to preserve their country’s past as narrated history, within the textual genre of historia – which must be kept strictly separate from modern notions of historical veracity and documentation, but must also be distinguished from a detached antiquarian interest in a remote past.207

JAMES CARNEY also emphasises the focus on history in TBC when he writes that it is ‘neither fiction nor history, but an amalgam of both.’208 POPPE chimes with CARNEY’s statement when he argues that TBC is ‘a retrospective narrative which develops its own view of specific events in early Irish history.’209 In order to allow the text to function in this manner, compilers/redactors did (had to!) put flesh on the bones of the various anecdotes they recounted. They thus created vellum tigers210, as DOOLEY terms the characters, whose ‘only reality is textual’211 but who may be deliberately installed to mediate the central concerns of a text. Because of this complex interplay, the narrative construction of the heroic society (and its prerogatives) as well as issues connected to memory studies will be discussed in relation to this extraordinary epic.

These brief comments should enable the reader to understand the context of the texts and with it the ideas that are observable in relation to bodies. It must be kept in mind, however, that this study does not argue that each genre shows a one-dimensional understanding of bodies and their potential for mediality, yet it does appear that the concerns of the genres (historiography, courtliness, etc.) do have an influence on what and how bodies may mediate. Because the texts also often use genre-typical ways of creating these bodies through narrative strategies, their context is important to bear in mind.

A short note regarding citations is also in order, as different modes of referring to the texts are used in the scholarship of each tradition. As is usual in Scandinavian studies, the sagas will be referred to by their full title, except for Njála, which is often adoringly abbreviated. In early Irish scholarship it is customary to abbreviate the names of texts by the first letter of each word. Hence Táin Bó Cúailnge becomes TBC and Togail Bruidne Da Derga is shortened to TBDD. I will follow this custom wherever a text is discussed at length and thus becomes familiar to readers. In the case where texts are mentioned only in passing (even if they are mentioned repeatedly) the full title will be given in order to help the reader unfamiliar with the text. A full list of all abbreviations is provided at the end (7.). It also includes reference to journals that are commonly abbreviated in Irish studies. In primary quotes from the texts, the edition used will be clearly stated, and the same is the case for the translations used. Where no English translation is available, I have myself attempted to translate, and this too is marked in the footnotes. In order to facilitate a thorough understanding of the arguments for readers unfamiliar with German and French, I have also attempted to translate the quotations from secondary literature. Like the translations from the primary sources, these are pragmatic attempts at translating meaning and by no means echo the ingenuity of expression of the original.

2Speak for Yourself!
Expressive Mediality and the Self

Bodies are not matter in the world, individualized
as representing the unique boundary of the self:
they are the world and are part of what makes
social relations meaningful.212

2.1Bodies that Speak

‘Embodiment is a key dimension of identity […]’.213 This polemic statement by KATH WOODWARD can be understood as the quintessence of contemporary body criticism. Bodies embody identity, they are identity in physical form, but they also simultaneously mediate this identity to the world. In medieval literature, bodies connect an individual to the society s/he inhabits by being perceived as a visual expression of the character as a whole. Thus, while of course (most) bodies speak in terms of voice, recent scholarship is unanimous in that they speak through themselves, too.214 It might be argued that because the characters discussed here are the product of narrative imagination, their bodies are consciously and deliberately fashioned and installed in relation to their disposition or role in the text. These bodies map out personal and social space and thus create room for identity.

In relation to medieval literature, the concept of identity first needs to be defined in order to form a coherent argument. That the idea of personal, individual identity in the post-modern sense is problematic in a medieval context (both literary and historical) does not need to be stressed at length. This is the reason why the term identity is preferred here over subject. One of the major differences, ARMIN SCHULZ asserts, is that identities in medieval texts are not consistent or fixed but ‘uneinheitlich und brüchig’.215 By noting their particularities ARMIN SCHULZ (although he too asserts the fundamental differences to modern concepts of identity) affirms that he bases his observations on a concept of identity and thus also presupposes such a category in relation to medieval texts. Of course all identities discussed in this study are entirely fictional and tangible only within the texts, even if they cannot be seen as completely independent of medieval ideas about identity (and bodies) in a larger context.

In order to argue for a concept of identity in medieval texts it first needs to be briefly determined who may exhibit such a concept. In the present study, this entity is referred to as a (literary) character. A character may best be defined by BAL’s concept in that it ‘has no real psyche, personality, ideology, or competence to act, but it does possess characteristics that make readers assume it does […]’.216 Because of these ‘character effects’ which enable the audience to perceive a figure composed of words, it will be argued that literary characters also evoke their own identity, and that this is vital for situating them in the narrated world.217 Even within literary texts characters exhibit certain features (beautiful, noble, female, young), a certain social status (royal) and occupy a certain place in the narrated world (castle) that can be said to create an identity (princess). Or in other words: identity is ‘die Summe aller im Text gegebenen binären Oppositionen zu anderen Figuren […]’218, as JURIJ LOTMANN summarises.

ARMIN SCHULZ asserts that characters in medieval texts are defined by their social connections (status), genre-typical actions and motivations but also by the individual aims and needs of each narrative and/or text.219 Characters are thus bound to the narrated world and its semiotic system, as well as to the individual narratological concerns of a text. The distinction between a modern-individual-individualistic and a medieval-social-communal (in the sense of stressing the position within a community) understanding of identity has also been noted by LUHMANN220 and reflects a wider medieval thought pattern. In order to discuss and examine identity in literary texts, ARMIN SCHULZ further suggests considering both the various qualities that other characters and/or the narrative voice attribute to a character and the qualities expressed by the character him-/herself through performative aspects.221 This issue will be addressed in some detail in the following chapter.

KLAUS HÖDL also argues that identity (or ‘identification’ in his terminology) can
als eine Positionierung eines Subjekts zu seiner Umgebung verstanden werden. Im Zuge dessen wird ein Verhältnis zu einem anderen Subjekt hergestellt. Die Bezugssetzung ist ein ambiger Akt, weil es neben dem Identifizieren immer auch eine Abgrenzung gibt […].222

Identification can be understood as a positioning of a subject in its environment. In the course of this process a relationship with another subject is established. Establishing this relationship is a reciprocal act because identification always also entails demarcation […].

In HÖDL’s understanding, the identity of literary characters can only be understood and defined within the context of the narrated world in which they appear. Thus one may speak of royal or slave identity, or of a courtly or monstrous one as depicted in a particular text. All of these identities are often intimately related to the bodies of characters but they are seldom perceived as entirely fixed. HÖDL further argues that ‘Identitätsartikulation bedeutet nicht, daß eine vorhandene Identität erkennbar gemacht wird. Da Identität prozesshaft ist, kann sie nicht als etwas bereits Bestehendes aufgefasst werden, dass bloss zum Vorschein gebracht wird […]’.223 On closer observation and by disregarding the common assumption that all characters in medieval literature are mere stereotypes, it can be shown that identity construction is a continuous and continuously fascinating process that, at least in part, is mapped out on the body.224

It must be stressed that in most of the literary texts discussed here body and identity are to be thought as one: the body is identity, and identity is the body. This proposes a willingness to abandon a strict Carthesian mind-body division in literary (and hence non-philosophical and non-theological) texts. Instead, it is fruitful to see characters from a phenomenological viewpoint and notice that what appears cannot be separated from how it appears, ‘daß also Seinsgehalt und Zugangsart der Erfahrung unzertrennlich zusammengehören.’225 LE GOFF and TRUONG also argue for an inextricable link between body and social position in their sources. The three estates – oratores, bellatores and laboratores – LE GOFF and TRUONG proclaim, ‘sont en partie définis par leur rapport au corps. Corps sains des prêtres qui ne doivent être ni mutilés ni estropiés; corps des guerriers ennoblis par leurs prouesses guerrières; corps des travailleurs accablés par le labeur.’226 Although this correspondence (or the tripartite social system) is by no means universal, the distinction is indeed observable in many sources exhibiting this particular stratification of society. Bodies thus fulfil a double role of generating and mediating identity – and in certain examples it becomes clear that they are consciously installed to do so.

The proposed link between bodies and identity construction in medieval texts is justifiable simply by observing the texts. Many texts exhibit a great interest in the acts of displaying and looking at bodies and there are numerous examples in which bodies are consciously observed and examined in order to gain information about a character. AMY MULLIGAN observes that in ‘Old Norse-Icelandic sources, literary and legal, the body is expressive and the message it communicates is valued’227, a conclusion which she reaches also in her studies of early Irish texts.228 Certain texts, like the Eddic poem Rígsþula and the Ulster Cycle text Togail Bruidne Da Derga (both discussed by MULLIGAN)229, feature a wealth of descriptive detail which especially in the Norse text is consciously related to the establishing of social stratification and, in extension, social identity. These texts are so remarkably clear in linking identity and appearance that it may be proposed that they consciously reflect on an underlying system of relating identity and appearance with the aim of demonstrating how these bodies should be read.

MULLIGAN’S observations on these texts reveal that processes of reading and/ or assessing bodies according to certain standards help to create and affirm a character’s position in the narrated world.230 This is evident both within the text, for other characters, as well as for the audience, which seeks to equate characters with narrative roles. This dual way of speaking should be kept in mind: to an audience or researcher it is the text that creates the speaking body; to other characters within this text (i.e. in the narrated world) it is indeed the bodies that speak. By acknowledging both levels of identity construction this study can examine literary bodies as media on two interrelated levels and draw attention to the process of how such identities are constructed and transmitted. This dual approach to speaking about and speaking through bodies is only possible because of the methodology of close readings, a methodology which shows bodies not as fixed signifiers but as constructed and read through different words and gazes and in varying contexts.

The term reading is used in this and the following chapter primarily to denote the extraction of meaning from the symbolic system that is the body, regardless of whether this act is an unconscious one or not.231 The term conveys a conviction that just like words, bodies are also perceived as cultural yet arbitrary signifiers that incorporate a multitude of (possible) meanings that gain sense through a discursive engagement with them. The idea of combining certain signs (bodily features or letters) and hence of creating body-words (or a bodytext) is also important.232 As mentioned above, ARMIN SCHULZ claims that in literary texts it is hardly ever the whole body of a character that is described and hence perceived by the audience. Rather, certain details are pointed out by the text and these stand in a synecdoche-like or metonymic relationship to this character.233 Such signs or descriptive paradigms, as they are called in the present analysis, are details such as the colour of hair or the size of body parts. The paradigms are perceived as individual features by the reader of the body but eventually they (unconsciously but) effectively combine into a meaningful whole: a body but also abstract concepts such as beauty or monstrosity.

Particular descriptive paradigms can convey positive, negative or neutral connotations in a narrated world, and these are then transferred to the character as a whole. The connotation or meaning of these descriptive paradigms is not rigidly fixed across texts, genres or literary traditions. While certain associations seem widespread, each text discussed must still be examined individually for how the bodies of particular characters ought to look. By selecting or excluding descriptive paradigms which are part of its semiotic system (or consciously playing with this system’s limits), or by openly stating their meaning, the texts sometimes show the underlying processes which facilitate this transmission of meaning and hence mediality. These are the places and constellations which, to refer back to STERCKEN and KIENING, make mediality and its processes of transmission visible.234

The proposed link between (social) identity and appearance that underlies this process of identity construction is what constitutes expressive mediality: the idea that appearance mediates a perceptible manifestation of a character and thus enables identification on a personal or social level, or in relation to narrative roles. This idea has been addressed more openly outside literary criticism. BRYAN S. TURNER claims that every society is concerned with ‘the representation of the “exterior” body in social space’235, that is, with contextualising the outwardly signifying function of the body with (a form of) identity. In this context BYNUM argues that at least in the later Middle Ages there was a ‘conception of body as integral to person – indeed of body as being the conveyor of personal specificity […]’.236 Medieval secular literature shows a similar interest in situating characters within the narrated world through their bodies. As suggested above, the question of what bodies mediate can therefore be answered boldly with ‘identity’ in relation to expressive mediality, at least in most cases. Nevertheless, what kinds of identity – social position, familial ties, etc. – are mediated can be determined only through close readings.

This chapter and the next focus on bodies in their natural, God-given form. By concentrating the discussion (predominantly) on unaltered (or unalterable) descriptive paradigms and excluding other aspects that are also integral to mediating literary identity, such as performative aspects and cultural modifications of the body (grooming), this and the following chapter can present a more detailed analysis of the role of natural appearance. The two chapters therefore foreground aspects of the body which are unmodified, such as hair colour, colour of the eyes, size of the nose, etc.237 Alterations which occur later in life, such as scars or wounds, or which are deliberately installed, modified or enhanced to reflect identity (hairstyle, grooming, etc.) will be absent from these analyses. This does not imply that these bodies do not exhibit such traits or that they are not important for identity construction (quite the opposite is the case), but merely that the focus of the texts and/or the analyses lie on different matters.

The distinction is legitimate because in many medieval texts, the aspects described in relation to the God-given body appear largely outside the control of the individual character and are perceived as unalterable. The limitation of focus is important here because it allows the researcher to examine how a text, not a character, ‘creates’ an expressive body. The approach was stimulated by LE GOFF and TRUONG’s assessment that, in medieval texts, a character’s rank and identity are not just expressed in habitus but also imprinted on the body and hence social differences may also be communicated in a text through physical contrasts.238 The examples presented here show that medieval literature, sometimes with blatant disregard for the anatomical concerns of real, lived bodies, took a great interest in developing bodies along such lines and according to different concerns. It may even be argued that the bodies discussed in these extraordinary examples are depicted first and foremost as medial vehicles whose primary aim is to express not only social position but also certain concerns about the systematic reading of bodies. The focus of this study on presenting interesting case studies did not allow for a concise discussion of how individual features may be connoted across each literary tradition, or how concepts like beauty and ugliness are expressed in individual genres. Underlying the following analyses is nevertheless a broad (if unwritten) study of both literary traditions in which their cultural peculiarities in terms of descriptions were noted and which presents the background for the close readings.

Because expressive mediality occurs so broadly and is apparent in so many different contexts, it was decided to devote two chapters to it. This chapter examines how bodies construct identities within or on the border of the narrated world’s ‘normative society’. This is the society that reflects the (main) semiotic system of a text and is perceived as human and culturally and socially organised. It hence exhibits and continuously re-establishes the norms of the narrated world. In the present concept of identity as determined mostly by the relationship of a literary character to other characters and his/her positioning within the social structure of the narrated world, belonging to this society can be said to express the status human and civilised. Additional aspects then give rise to specific identities based on social position (king, farmer, slave).

The term self will be used to denote that a character belongs to this society. Although the idea of a self is used widely in monster theory, sociological and gender studies, it is hardly ever explained. For instance, LAMBERTUS’ study about monstrous heroes and heroic monsters engages deeply with the figure of the other but leaves its counterpart (the self) largely undefined.239 It is indeed difficult to propose such a category for medieval texts and distinguish it from (post‐)modern theories.240 Yet although the task of engaging with the nature of the self is difficult, it must not and cannot be avoided. For the present purpose, self denotes a ‘normative human being’, a character that is clearly human and adheres to the laws and standards of his/her society.241 This society in turn is the normative society of a narrated world: it is the society from whose viewpoint the world is described and structured. The concrete manifestation of this concept is of course determined by individual texts, yet proposing it as a broad category is still beneficial to the following arguments. As with all definitions proposed here, this must be seen as a working definition that was derived through the study of the examples presented. It does not, and does not seek to, cover all eventualities or to be applied to other medieval texts.

The idea of a self not as a psychological but more as a social entity, conforming to and continuously enforcing the semiotic system of the main, normative society of a text, is, however, found elsewhere. ARMIN SCHULZ voices a similar opinion when he asserts that medieval ‘Identität bestimmt sich nicht dadurch, daß man anders ist als alle anderen Menschen […] sondern im Gegenteil an der Teilhabe an Kräften, Mächten und Eigenschaften, die die einzelne Person überschreiten.’242 The same may be said about self (and other), both of which can be determined by belonging or not belonging to the normative society of a narrated world. A self can be said to embody this society in that it represents the semiotic system and hence the structure and values on which this society is built.

Although, in general, the self appears largely as a stable entity in medieval texts, it will be shown that it’s identity needs to be (re‐)affirmed continuously if its social position is to be maintained. This reflects the idea that identity is perceived as a continuous process of construction. This (re‐)affirmation takes place largely within the collective structures to which a self belongs and to which it adheres. These structures may be courtly ideals (for instance, the regulation of violence towards women), Christian ideals (chastity, for example) or a system of social hierarchy (in a royal retinue, etc.). All of these categories ultimately represent human culture. These structures serve an affirming function by creating a social unity but they often also include a distinguishing function by promoting an ‘us versus others’ dichotomy. Remarkably, some characters may even exhibit self-awareness as they reflect on their position within society, their social status and the precarious boundaries defining this status. While the subsequent chapter will also discuss narrative topographical space in relation to others, the present one is primarily concerned with social space, that is, with showing how the self’s society is segregated and how characters ascertain their position within it.

In examining those issues the present chapter will start by discussing texts that appear consciously concerned with establishing norms along which bodies are both constructed and read. These norms will then be compared to other texts in which such issues do not seem to be openly addressed but which nevertheless create remarkable selves in very specific contexts. Finally, a very problematic topic will be discussed: the male who cannot grow a beard.243 This will be examined in relation to two of the most prominent heroes in these literary traditions, the Norse Njál and the Irish Cú Chulainn.244 This last discussion in particular draws attention to how important descriptive paradigms can be in constructing particular identities and how a character’s social status is constructed but can also be deconstructed in relation to his (or her) body.

2.2Expressive Mediality and Social Identity

2.2.1Early Irish Literature: Reading Cú Chulainn with(in) The Politics of Anatomy

As briefly mentioned above, there are not many studies of early Irish texts that focus exclusively or even primarily on the body. Points of reference and comparison are therefore relatively rare. A notable exception is MULLIGAN’S study ‘Togail Bruidne Da Derga and The Politics of Anatomy’.245 The article focuses on a single early Irish text, the eleventh-century Togail Bruidne Da Derga (TBDD, ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’). MULLIGAN argues that ‘the bodies in the text produce a kind of discourse, and can be read as a semiotic code that signifies, or speaks clearly, if we learn to read it’246, and she terms this discourse the Politics of Anatomy. The Politics of Anatomy are exceptionally noticeable in TBDD because the text exhibits not only ‘a heightened awareness of bodily appearance and physical form’ but ‘devotes almost sixty percent of textual space to physical description’247, describing two hundred and seventy-seven separate bodies. The shift away from narrative development towards ekphrasis as well as the detailed presentation of the individual bodies suggest to MULLIGAN that the often lengthy descriptions do not serve only aesthetic purposes but may help to establish a framework within which bodies signify the social standing of a character in King Conaire’s retinue (itself perceived as the ‘royal body’).

In summarising this descriptive system, it may be remarked that royal bodies, and the bodies of noble warriors and heroes, are often characterised by their (comparatively) fair and beautiful appearance: they have long and often curling blond hair, clear or blue eyes and a generally colourful but fair countenance. More brutish warriors are dark and scruffy, with ‘blackened, ruddy skin and dark, spiky, scruffy hair’248; they appear monochrome and are generally reduced to their brute physical strength, with a focus on their torso rather than on their facial features. Social outsiders and malevolent characters often sport monstrous or abnormal bodies: they are ‘not just ugly but extreme, often on account of a multiplication of deformities or disintegrated bodily structure.’249 The individual dispositions and narrative roles of the characters are remarkably clearly defined in TBDD and show a systematic link between status and appearance.

MULLIGAN emphatically stresses that her conclusions should not be readily applied to other texts and TBC therefore should not uncritically be assumed to show these correspondences also. MULLIGAN’S comment is a valuable cautioning against over-eager application of conclusions from one text to another. Instead, a careful assessment of the individual descriptive paradigms and the way in which bodies are installed as mediators must be undertaken in each separate textual analysis. The value of MULLIGAN’S findings lies in that she directs a researcher’s gaze towards potential paradigms in other texts and towards the interrelatedness between those descriptive features and identity. For instance, MULLIGAN discerns that certain paradigms such as the colour and texture of hair, the complexion of the skin or the evenness (or asymmetry) of features are used repeatedly and systematically while others are only rarely mentioned.250 Subsequent studies therefore must ask if these general paradigms are also always described, if they are similarly evaluated, or if the focus of a text lies on other descriptive paradigms entirely and if so, why this might be the case.

The importance of beauty in establishing a positively evaluated royal or heroic identity has recently been discussed by DAMIAN MCMANUS in relation to Old and Middle Irish poetry and saga literature.251 MCMANUS proposes that there may ‘have been a regulatory system governing the description of personal, and, given the genre [early Irish saga], for the most part male, beauty.’252 MCMANUS further remarks that ‘[t]ogether with martial prowess and mental agility, a beautifully formed, perfectly balanced, unblemished body distinguished the king and set him apart from others.’253 The body is a valuable indicator of royal identity. It is therefore not surprising that female characters in the narrated worlds often appear fascinated by the regal splendour of a king but also by that of noble warriors. Both categories of males at times consciously display their bodies to incite such admiration and hence exploit such communal gazes to confirm their social position. MCMANUS demonstrates that in terms of bodily appearance, the two figures, king and noble hero, ‘overlap to a considerable extent in the literature’254, not least because every king must also be a hero. Like MULLIGAN, MCMANUS thus (implicitly) proposes a category of noble warrior, a figure who is more refined than brute fighters and in descent, conduct and most importantly looks is aligned with royal figures. Cú Chulainn, being the son of King Conchobor’s sister, fits this category admirably and so it is small wonder that his body is ‘described with as much extravagance as in any king’s case.’255

The worth of MCMANUS’ study also lies in his broad selection of sources. He demonstrates that such descriptions of royal and warrior beauty occur widely in Old and Middle Irish poetry and saga literature. This in turn suggests that these descriptions held a considerable significance in early Irish texts. Together, MULLIGAN’S and MCMANUS’ studies show that nobleness and (physical) beauty were aligned in early Irish sagas and that a fair complexion (white skin and golden hair), unblemished and even features, together with occasional multi-coloured elements, signified such noble beauty. For the present chapter the figure of the noble, but not necessarily royal, warrior will be argued to represent the self in TBC. Ultimately, it is the adherence to noble fighting strategies such as (fír fer ‘the truth of men’, i.e. ‘fair play’) as well as human nature that are the standard prerogatives on which the concept is founded.

SHEEHAN claims that Irish sagas in general ‘grant greater prominence to descriptions of male beauty’256, a conclusion also reached by MATASOVIĆ for his corpus.257 SHEEHAN adds that ‘while beauty was not gendered in early Irish culture, specularity was primarily a masculine domain.’258 SHEEHAN’s term specularity, which she defines as ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’, as ‘a naturalized imperative to function as a spectacle’259 links the act of looking and/or gazing to the notion of an openly visible and somehow public spectacle. Her term is useful for the following discussion especially in relation to Cú Chulainn. In terms of descriptive paradigms, it is often through the mention of hair, eyes and facial symmetry that these characters are visualised, as MATASOVICć notes.260

By contextualising these mentions, MATASOVIĆ finds that such descriptions in the Ulster Cycle are there mainly to ‘halt the narrative and add emphasis to a major and dramatically important event which follows.’261 The present chapter will examine whether in TBC this is indeed the only reason, or whether other reasons connected to expressive mediality may also be discerned. MATASOVIĆ’S comment that ‘many characters and things are left undescribed, even when they are important to the plot of a particular story’ and that there is ‘no correlation between the importance of a character and the probability that he or she will be described’262 are especially interesting to consider. If descriptions are not exclusively affixed to narratively important characters could they also reflect a text’s conscious engagement with issues of mediality which are affixed to certain (but not simply to narratively important) characters?

TBC I and II also show a focus on descriptions of heroic male bodies. These are at times consciously displayed to a public gaze, as whole troops as well as individual warriors are identified by ekphrastic descriptions.263 In fact it may be suggested that the texts deliberately and perhaps even playfully engage with establishing such noble bodies. However, in limiting the scope of this chapter and linking it to the following one, it was decided not to present a multitude of examples but to examine in what way the main hero of TBC, Cú Chulainn, partakes in the discourse of a beautiful, noble warrior. The discussion in this and the next chapter will therefore focus solely on his appearance within the first two recensions of TBC. Yet even this comparatively small corpus provides ample ground for study.

Amongst the many noble warriors described in TBC, Cú Chulainn mac Sualtaim’s body is perhaps the most spectacular but certainly the most polyvalent example. The hero’s three faults are listed in Tochmarc Emire (‘The Wooing of Emer’) as follows: a bith ro-ócc, a bith ro-dánae, a bith ro-álainn.264 Given the strong focus on visualising (and looking at) the hero in various texts it is rather surprising that there appear to be no extant medieval depictions of the hero in any manuscripts.265 A possible reason for this is the perceived polysemous nature of both the hero and his body. Although he reflects the idea of a noble hero (as formulated by MULLIGAN and MCMANUS), in some ways he paces its boundaries and transgresses it.

Although he has often been used to define the concept of hero in early Irish texts, Cú Chulainn is a figure that unites heroic behaviour (martial prowess and defence of his people and province) with more problematic aspects like his ríastrad (‘battle-frenzy’, ‘warp-spasm’). This polyvalent nature of the character is also mapped out on his body. What is immediately striking in TBC is the duality inherent in the hero: he is beautiful and single-handedly defends his land and people at one moment but at the next his ríastrad comes upon him and turns him into an ugly, monstrous being that (as we are told) could even lose the ability to distinguish friend from foe. Even though no such event features in the main cattle-raid narrative of TBC, one such incident is described in the macgnímrada (‘The Boyhood Deeds’, an narrative insertion into the main cattle-raid story which outlines his achievements as a boy).266 This issue will be discussed at length in the following chapter (3.2.2.) and for now it suffices to note that Cú Chulainn can be seen as a heroic but unreliable figure.

Furthermore, Cú Chulainn is said to have both supernatural and divine parentage, as he is descendent from both the god Lug and his human father, Sualtaim. In addition, Cú Chulainn also incorporates strong canine associations, a subject which will also be examined at length in the next chapter (3.2.2.) in relation to his name (translating as ‘Hound of Culann’) and his turning into a reason-less, animal-like attacker during his ríastrad. Cú Chulainn thus moves between different realms (fír fer and possible kin-slaying, the world of supernatural beings and of men) as both a beautiful man and a distorted menace. He also moves between different literary discourses such as the heroic and the monstrous, the human and the canine. His body, too, seems plural, polyvalent and polysemous and appears to be shifting between these – and perhaps even additional – categories.

In the light of the studies cited above, one may identify his beauty as an integral feature of styling Cú Chulainn as a noble hero in the role of protecting his society and their bull. Although his beauty is admired by his own people as well as his enemies throughout the texts, lengthy descriptions of him in this state are relatively rare in both recensions. This strengthens MATASOVIĆ’s observation that narrative importance does not correspond to descriptive attention.267 In fact, there is no concise introduction to the hero’s appearance when he first enters the main narrative (or even before) and for the most part his good looks are presented as but one part of his polysemous heroic body, but not visualised through ekphrasis. However, they are mentioned repeatedly later in the narrative and these references are provided by the narrative voice as well as by other characters. The analysis will divide these two categories and starts with examining the latter. Since the characters involved are all Connachtmen and therefore Cú Chulainn’s enemies, it is especially interesting to examine how they perceive their opponent. In a second step, the four detailed descriptions offered by the narrative voice will be examined to see if its assessment matches with the perceptions of his foes.

One of the most elaborate single-combat encounters in TBC is that with the youthful but proud Etarcomol. Etarcomol is so eager to see and visually evaluate his opponent that he visits the Ulster hero on the night before their (scheduled) encounter under the protection of the Ulster exile Fergus mac Roích, Cú Chulainn’s foster-father. Because he may have heard so much about the Ulster champion (through Feidelm’s prophecies, discussed in the following chapter, and Fergus’ recounting of the macgnímrada), Etarcomol seems to expect a super-human hero and appears somewhat disappointed when he first sets eyes on Cú Chulainn.

In Recension II the idea of firmly setting his eyes on Cú Chulainn and of expecting visual markers of the latter’s greatness is developed through Etarcomol’s lingering gaze. Cú Chulainn, somewhat annoyed with the contemplative stare, remarks: ʻ[n]í fota in rodarc ém duit-siu ón,ʼ ar Cú Chulaind, ʻimmonderca súil i sodain duit. Acht dia festa-su, is andíaraid in míl bec ḟégai-siu.ʼ268 The comment is telling because Cú Chulainn not only feels Etarcomol’s gaze on his own body but threatens him that, should Etarcomol not avert his gaze, the staring will have a negative impact on his eyes. This is either a sarcastic comment (designating that Cú Chulainn wishes to hurt his eyes) or it shows that in early Irish literature, gazes can connect the observer with the object s/he observes. As will become clear, Cú Chulainn is no stranger to inviting other characters’ gazes onto his body. Yet at this private moment he is annoyed rather than pleased with the attention, perhaps because he himself does not consciously invite it: he does not have the same control over the gaze that specularity often implies, and hence the assessment is a different one.

Despite belittling himself as a míl bec (‘little creature’) and threatening Etarcomol with his anger, Cú Chulainn still asks his opponent for an evaluation of what he sees: ‘[o]cus cinnas atú-sa acut frim ḟégad didiu?ʼ269 Etarcomol is quick to reply. In doing so, Etarcomol offers one of the rare instances in medieval literature where a character’s body is described to this character through the eyes of another: ʻ[i]s maith lim ataí immorro. Maccáem tucta amra álaind tú co clessaib ána imḟacsi ilarda. Mad t’árim immorro bail i mbiat daglaích nó dagoíc nó láith gaile nó ord essoirgne, nít áirmem itir 7 nít imrádem.’270 The short passage contains a description (of Cú Chulainn’s appearance and bodily capacity) as well as an assessment. It results in a denial of a categorisation as noble hero, intended most likely to offend and taunt Cú Chulainn. That Cú Chulainn referred to himself as míl bec only shortly before may have prefigured this assessment as a boy rather than a hero, but this does not dampen Etarcomol’s taunt.

In TBC I Cú Chulainn also asks Etarcomol what he is looking at and, when Etarcomol answers that it is him, replies: ʻ[m]ós tairchella ém súil tar sodain,ʼ or Cú Chulaind.271 Etarcomol confirms that this is true and offers an assessment of what he is perceiving: ʻ[n]í fetar ní ar[n]dott áighte do neoch. Ní acim di gráin ná herúath ná forlond líno latt. Maccáem tuchtach amne co ngaisciud do [ḟ]id 7 co clesaib ségdaib atotchomnaic.ʼ272 Etarcomol clearly classifies Cú Chulainn as a youth and not as a grown warrior, and youths (i.e. non-adults) were not honourable opponents to fight in noble combat (see also 2.3.1.).

In stating that he ‘sees’ no reason – on Cú Chulainn’s body, alas – why someone should be afraid of him, Etarcomol also undermines what the audience has heard about Cú Chulainn in the macgnímrada and in Feidelm’s prophecy. He thus calls attention to a discrepancy in the text: what the audience has heard about this warrior and what Etarcomol himself sees do not appear to match. This discrepancy is, in fact, a recurring topos in relation to Cú Chulainn, as will be argued below. This short episode thus introduces various important points about looking at a hero’s body. It shows that bodies might be looked and even gazed at outside the discourse of specularity that SHEEHAN proposes. They nevertheless constantly exhibit something that will be referred to as visuality. The term denotes the displaying of something, i.e. a body, in order to be looked at. It therefore incorporates the abstract notions of ‘being able to be visually perceived’ and of ‘being made visible by the text’. The term gazing is used to refer to conscious, prolonged looks of other characters within the texts and these gazes often lead to an assessment of a body, like in the case of Etarcomol.

In both recensions Cú Chulainn’s appearance is not described by Etarcomol, is not visualised for the audience, but is tangible merely through Etarcomol’s assessment. It is Cú Chulainn’s youthful look that deceives Etarcomol into believing that the stories that he (may have) heard about the Ulster warrior’s martial prowess may have been exaggerated. His subsequent labelling of the hero as [m]accáem tuchtach amne in TBC I and [m]accáem tucta amra álaind tú co clessaib ána imḟacsi ilarda in TBC II proves that he himself has firmly categorised his opponent based on what ‘he’ sees.273 Etarcomol acknowledges that Cú Chulainn’s appearance reflects his status as a noble, perhaps even royal warrior. But within this category he additionally categorises him as boyish, subsuming his status as martial hero (a problem from which Cú Chulainn suffers throughout TBC). It might also imply that Etarcomol’s category of hero reflects not the noble, kingly hero but more the brutish, fear-evoking warriors of the base category of MULLIGAN’S spectrum in the Politics of Anatomy274(as his comment about horror and fearfulness suggest). This is striking, both in relation to Etarcomol’s own expectations but also in relation to the ríastrad discussed in the next chapter (3.2.2.).

The martial side of Cú Chulainn’s character is evoked by another assessment of his appearance towards the end of the narrative, when the recovered Ulstermen come to Cú Chulainn’s aid. The Connachtman Mac Roth is sent to spy on the approaching Ulster troops and Cú Chulainn. Unsure if the man he has just seen is really Cú Chulainn, in TBC II he reports: ʻ[f]uar-sa ém gilla grúamda ferggach n-úathmar n-anniaraid […] Ní ḟetar ém inn é in Cú Chulaind.ʼ275 Mac Roth’s description in TBC I is strikingly similar: ʻ[ó]cláech isin charpat sin, cetherlethan corcaineach. Súasmáel cas círdub fair co ticci áth a dá ghualand.ʼ276 These descriptions are indeed reminiscent more of MULLIGAN’S base warrior277 rather than of a noble hero and reflect many other descriptions of warriors that are not part of the royal family in the Ulster Cycle. They also somewhat contradict Etarcomol’s earlier assessment as it is hard to see what is described here as a handsome youth. This chimes with EDEL’s comment about the characters of TBC in that the ‘protagonists of the Táin are not woodcut figures; they are not static. They change not only from one version to another; they even assume conflicting attitudes, express conflicting opinions, within one and the same version.’278 To this we may safely add conflicting (or rather diverging) physical form(s) in the case of Cú Chulainn.

These textual excerpts also suggest that not just the characters are not static, but that the perception of Cú Chulainn by others may depend on context: if he should be taunted for his appearance he is termed youthful and beautiful, if he is identified as a great, angry fighter he can also appear as fierce and surely. Alternatively, the perception of him may also be guided by the somehow ‘personalised’ gaze of the character who is looking. This would naturally lead the proud youth Etarcomol and the warrior Mac Roth to different conclusions, conclusions that somehow reflect their own identity. In juxtaposing the assessments, it becomes clear how polyvalent the discourse constructing Cú Chulainn’s body and the resulting assessments of him can be, a fact that draws further attention to the polysemous construction of his body. Of course, these differences may also be explained by the fact that Cú Chulainn can change his shape. In the second case he could be in his ríastrad, even though this is not mentioned explicitly. Examining the gazes on Cú Chulainn’s body, it seems, opens rather than closes various possibilities for interpretation, a sure sign that the polyvalent hero is artfully constructed in the texts.

There is a third description of Cú Chulainn by another character but this is only found in TBC I. The description is provided by the charioteer of his foster-brother, Fer Diad. Fer Diad fights Cú Chulainn because of heroic prerogatives but still feels emotionally tied to his foster-brother. He is asleep when Cú Chulainn approaches in his chariot for the fight. His charioteer wakes him and Fer Diad asks for a description of his opponent: ʻ[c]indus adchí Coin Culaind? ʼ, ar sé ar Fer Diad fria araid.279 The charioteer introduces the following description with atchíu (ʻI seeʼ). This draws attention to the moment of visual observance but also to the personal act of looking: the description is given (to both Fer Diad and the audience) through the eyes of the charioteer. After describing the approaching chariot, the charioteer moves on to the hero, ready for combat:

ʻ[f]il fer findchas foltlebar i n-airinach in charpait sin. Fil didiu imbi-sidi brat gorm crúanchorcra. Laigen .i. gaí co n-eitib, 7 sé derg daigerdai ina durnn ar derglasad. Faircsi trí folt fair .i. folt dond fri toind a chind, folt cróderg iar n-airmedón, mind n-óir dotuiget[h]ar in tres folt. Caín cocorus ind [ḟ]uilt sin co cuirend teóra imṡrotha ʼma ḟormna síar sell sechtair. Samalta leam fri hórṡnáth iar ndénam a datha dar or n-indeóna nó re buidi mbech frisa taitnend grían i llaithi samrata taitnem cach óenḟinda don [ḟ]ult sin. Secht meóir for cach cois dó 7 secht me[ó]ir ar cach láim. Ruithnigud tened rómóiri ima rusc.ʼ280

‘In the chief place in that chariot is a man with long curling hair. He wears a dark purple mantle and in his hand he grasps a broad-headed spear, blood-stained, fiery, flaming. It seems as if he has three heads of hair, to wit, dark hair next to the skin of his head, blood-red hair in the middle and the third head of hair covering him like a crown of gold. Beautifully is that hair arranged, with three coils flowing down over his shoulders. Like golden thread whose colour has been hammered out on an anvil or like the yellow of bees in the sunshine of a summer day seems to me the gleam of each separate hair. Seven toes on each of his feet; seven fingers on each of his hands. In his eyes the blazing of a huge fire.’

The significance of the individual features (i.e. the descriptive paradigms) will be discussed at length below. It is important to note that this description emphasises Cú Chulainn’s beauty (his long and free flowing hair and his blazing eyes) but also incorporates some more remarkable elements like the supernumerary fingers and toes (discussed in the next chapter, see 3.2.2.).

At this moment Cú Chulainn is displaying his martial side and exploits the process of specularity: it is the grand entrance of a hero to a honourable single-combat fight. However, the description is perhaps aimed more at the audience than at Fer Diad. The latter clearly knows how Cú Chulainn looks when he is readied for a fight, and he knows that it is Cú Chulainn who is approaching. The description does not facilitate recognition but helps the audience, and Fer Diad, to visualise the great hero on his approach to the tragic single-combat fight. In contextualising the description with the rest of the text, such an assertion of Cú Chulainn’s beauty through the eyes of a character can be seen to echo a main concern of the text in view of the former’s possible flaws (such as his beardlessness, see 2.3.1.). Only a few lines later Fer Diad indeed refers to such a possible blemish on his foster-brother’s body (as the narrative voice explains):

ʻ[c]an tici-siu, a Chúa?ʼ ar sé. Dáig cúa ainm na claíne isin tsengaidilc, 7 secht meic imleasan bátar i rígrosc Con Culaind, dá mac imleasan díb-sidi 7 siat cláena, 7 nocho mó a domaisi dó iná [a] maisi dó-som, 7 dá mbeith ainib bad mó for Choin Culaind, is ed rothuibébad fris.281

‘Where do you come from Cúa?ʼ For cúa is the word for squinting in old Irish and Cú Chulainn had seven pupils in his royal eyes, two of which were asquint. But this was more an adornment than a disfigurement to Cú Chulainn, and if he had had a greater bodily blemish, Fer Diad would undoubtedly have taunted him with that.

The comment is telling for it suggests that Cú Chulainn incorporates extraordinary features that defy other, (more) standard descriptions of noble warriors’ beauty.282 MCMANUS draws repeated attention to the importance of a ‘beautifully formed, perfectly balanced, unblemished body’283 and symmetry is an integral part of this, a symmetry that could have been challenged even by two squinting pupils. A squinting, asymmetric eye is also an integral part of his body during battle-frenzy, which he enters shortly afterwards when fighting Fer Diad. The detailed description of his beauty thus occurs only lines before his deformity and the hint at the squinting eye may point towards this inherent asymmetry of the character.

The interplay between the assessment by Fer Diad and the quick comment by the narrative voice is worth noting. It is likely that Fer Diad’s comment was not malignant but either neutral or at best meant to tease, as the foster-brothers appear very close to each other throughout the episode. The fact that Fer Diad, possibly by means of a nickname, voices a flaw is made clear only by the comment of the narrative voice which states that it is an imperfection, if only a minor one. The narrative voice first points towards a possible destabilising moment but then quickly influences the assessment of the audience in favour of Cú Chulainn. The construction of Cú Chulainn’s body in the texts also implies various tensions: on the body itself, in terms of reading it and in terms of the varying assessments.

In addition to these descriptions by other characters, which allow the audience to follow their individual gazes, Cú Chulainn is also described by the narrative voice. It is worth noting that the descriptions also do not serve to introduce the hero at the beginning. They are dispersed throughout the texts and even though they do not occupy much textual space in the long narrative of TBC, they are nevertheless remarkably particular. The descriptive passages exploit visuality, they offer a clear idea of how to imagine the hero and they also (at times quite obviously) guide the perception of the audience towards specific features. Interestingly, the descriptive paradigms that are foregrounded appear to present somewhat of a contrast to the descriptions provided by other characters. Throughout both recensions, the reading of Cú Chulainn’s body appears as an obvious concern not just of the texts but also of Cú Chulainn himself.

The first detailed description by the narrative voice in TBC II is found in the macgnímrada.When Cú Chulainn returns home after his first outing as an armed warrior he is exceptionally agitated. In his ríastrad, he threatens to overturn his own court and needs to be subdued and cooled in vats. This apparently helps to let his ‘heroic heat’ evaporate. After he has cooled down he is bathed and clothed and

[t]áncatar a delba dó| & doriṅgni rothmól corcra de ó mulluch co talmain. Secht meóir cechtar a dá choss 7 secht meóir cechtar a dá lám, 7 secht meic imlessan cechtar a dá rígrosc iarum 7 secht ṅgemma de ruthin ruisc fo leith cech mac imlesan díb. Cethri tibri cechtar a dá grúad: tibri gorm, tibri corcra, tibri úane, tibri buide. Coíca urla fégbuide ón chlúais go ʼcheile dó amal chír ṁbethi nó amal bretnasa bánóir fri taul ṅgréne. Máel glé find fair mar bó ataslilad.284

His comely appearance was restored, and he blushed crimson from head to foot. He had seven toes on each of his feet and seven fingers on each of his hands. He had seven pupils in each of his royal eyes and seven gems sparkling in each pupil. Four dimples in each cheek, a blue dimple, a purple, a green and a yellow. Fifty tresses of hair he had between one ear and the other, bright yellow like the top of a birch-tree or like brooches of pale gold shining in the sun. He had a high crest of hair, bright, fair, as if a cow had licked it.

Two things are especially striking in this passage. First, the audience is told how to evaluate the following description at the start of the passage and thus even before the description is presented. According to the DIL delb (singular of delba) has a primary meaning of ‘form, figure, appearance, shape’ and ‘likeness, image, statue’ but can also mean ‘becoming, seemly’ or even ‘poor, miserable’. In fact, the description is clear in stating that this is a comely appearance (as CECILE O’RAHILLY translates), i.e. his socially acceptable appearance, that was restored. What follows therefore is an image of good looks, albeit an exceptional one. Secondly, it is worth noting that the description starts with Cú Chulainn’s feet and finishes with his hair. This bottom to top description reverses the order that SWARTZ argues was advised by twelfth-century rhetoricians.285 To the compilers/ redactors and the medieval audience, the description might therefore have given the impression of being upside down. Yet from the point of narrative focus, this allows the text to finish on perhaps the most prominent feature in descriptions of Cú Chulainn, his hair, rather than on the potentially problematic supernumerary toes. It may be a question of focus, of which descriptive paradigm the text wants to foreground and to linger in the mind of the audience, that could explain the unusual order.

In terms of narrative placement, the description again occurs in immediate vicinity to the mention of Cú Chulainn’s battle-frenzy. The physical transformation during the ríastrad is left undescribed at this point but since his comely appearance is restored, it might be implied that it had changed before. The absence of a description of the warp-spasm allows for the reintegration and the comely form to be foregrounded. The episode presents the first description of the ríastrad and it clearly suggests that the boy Cú Chulainn does not have any power over changing his body. He also cannot influence his (and his body’s) perception at Conchobor’s court: he appears passive in relation to his bodily change and powerless about what others do to it and see in it.286

The adult Cú Chulainn makes various attempts to control both his body’s transformation and its reading in the narrated world. This is made explicit in that Cú Chulainn very openly displays his beauty. The episode Túarascbáil Delba Con Culandind (‘The Description of Cú Chulainn’)287, in which he reveals himself to the Connacht retinue, is found in both recensions and the texts use almost the exact same wording to describe Cú Chulainn. The narrative placement of this episode reflects the previously noted juxtaposition of descriptions of beauty and the ríastrad. In both recensions, Cú Chulainn had appeared to the Connacht army in his ríastrad the previous night and now returns to counteract this impression by displaying himself. TBC II offers the following account:

[d]otháeth Cú Chulaind arnabárach do thaidbriud in tslóig 7 do thasbénad a chrotha álgin álaind do mnáib 7 bantrochtaib 7 andrib 7 ingenaib 7 ḟiledaib 7 áes dána, uair nír miad ná mais leis in dúaburdelb druídechta tárfás dóib [fair] in adaig sin riam reme. Is aire sin dano tánic do thasselbad a chrotha álgin álaind in lá sin.288

Cú Chulainn came on the morrow to survey the host and to display his gentle, beautiful appearance to women and girls and maidens, to poets and men of art, for he held not as honour or dignity the dark form of wizardry in which he had appeared to them the previous night. Therefore he came on that day to display his gentle, beautiful appearance.

Cú Chulainn’s beautiful body is set in direct opposition to his distorted one not just in the text but also for the Connacht host that observes him.

The description reflects SHEEHAN’s idea of specularity as ‘an index of power, fame, and vulnerability.’289 Cú Chulainn exerts power over the reading of his body (in displaying his beautiful appearance) and generates fame. This suggests that the hero himself is painfully aware that the (negative) assessment of his ríastrad-appearance the night before could question or undermine his heroic identity and shows his vulnerability to public assessment. Cú Chulainn consequently seeks to contradict, perhaps even to replace this impression with a more favourable one. And he is successful: [á]r rap iṅgnad leó-som in delb álaind álgen atchondcatar in lá sin fair ic athḟéscain na duabordelbi dóescairi druídechta ra condcas fair inn adaig ríam reme.290 In light of the narrative placement of these two descriptions of his beauty in direct chronological vicinity to this very problematic appearance of the hero, it may be proposed that they serve a particular purpose: they emphasise the momentary categorisation of Cú Chulainn as a noble hero and show both the hero’s reliance on public assessment and his and the texts’ attempts to control it. O’CONNOR interprets this display as follows: ‘his monstrosity is a “necessary evil” which has to be quickly overlaid, even in his enemies’ eyes, with a more socially appropriate visualization of his role.’291

Cú Chulainn seems aware that within the narrated world his body is read at all times and he seeks to exploit this fact in his favour. POPPE also remarks that in this scene Cú Chulainn consciously and successfully invites the other characters’ gazes onto his body.292 The importance of consciously displaying himself, of generating specularity, is also apparent in the lexical richness in the description of the self-display. SHEEHAN sees this expressed in the use of three different verbs: do-aisféna, do-adbat, do-aissilbi.293 In analysing this almost theatrically installed act of specularity it is interesting to consider that, as MCMANUS points out, the two kings Conchobor and Níall Noígiallach also display their bodies in similar fashion.294 Both are, however, fatally wounded in the act because an assassin (who asked for this naked display) hides amongst the admiring women.295

In his discussion of these displays MCMANUS also notes the ‘fascination of the women with the regal splendour of the king’296 and the king’s willingness to display himself naked in front of these women to verify his status. Cú Chulainn, on the other hand, is admired by all kinds of people: males, married and unmarried females and specifically by poets and men of art, professionals who are integral in transferring heroic and regal beauty into poetry. Yet the two genders differ in their reaction to what they see. Of the women it is said: [i]s and sin ra attchetar in ingenrad ḟiru Hérend ’ma tócbáil bar lébennaib scíath ás gúallib feróclách do thaidbriud chrotha Con Culaind.297 In contrast, of the Connachtman Dubthach Dáel Ulad it is noted that concerning his wife: [i]s and sin ra gab ét 7 elcmaire 7 immḟarmat.298 As SHEEHAN states, ‘[t]he principle behind the politics of saga visuality is not gender but fame; ambivalence about fame translates to ambivalence about specularity, so that heroes must embrace specularity even as these heroic spectacles emerge as sites of anxiety.’299 This may be precisely what this episode demonstrates. In his beauty and its appreciation, Cú Chulainn appears to set extraordinary standards. Yet this might reflect his own anxiety about the assessment of his body, as well as the anxiety of other male figures in relation to the effect Cú Chulainn’s body may have on women (and the men’s wives in particular).300

In probing further into the installation of this display DOOLEY stresses that it takes place in a ‘formal arena’301, as an open display in front of the whole army. This is indeed significant because public visibility and communal sanctioning are important for acknowledging and establishing, and hence for mediating, heroic identities. DOOLEY maintains that this episode ‘carries a later medieval courtly charge: it implies […] a courtly setting in which the hero displays himself and is displayed to an audience of women who must be included in the scene, even in the incongruous context of a battle-field.’302 Immediately after this comment, DOOLEY asserts that ‘the description of the beautiful hero has always been a feature of Irish saga writing generally, but here the presence of poets provides the extra contextualising framing of the scene in the art of eulogy.’303 POPPE criticises DOOLEY’s assumption that this episode bears a courtly charge in light of the lack of research on the amount of influence courtly literature bears on early Irish texts.304 Both DOOLEY and POPPE, however, acknowledge the importance of the public space, and hence of a public display, in this act of specularity.

Both recensions again use almost the exact same wording for the description and it is clearly stated that this is a beautiful young man. TBC II asserts:

[á]laind ém in mac tánic and sin do t[h]aisselbad a chrotha dona slúagaib .i. Cú Chulaind mac Sualtaim. Trí fuilt bátar fair: dond fri toinn, cróderg ar medón, mind órbuide ardatuigethar. Caín cocáirisi ind ḟuilt sin concuirend teóra imṡrotha im chlaiss a chúlaid combo samalta 7 snáth órṡnáith cach finna faithmainech forscaílte forórda dígrais dúalḟolta derscaigthech dathálaind dara formna síar sell sechtair. Cét cairches corcorglan do derggór órlasrach imma bráigit. Cét snáthéicne do charrmocul chummascda i timthacht fria chend. Cethri tibri cechtar a dá grúad .i. tibre buide 7 tibre úane 7 tibre gorm 7 tibre corcra. Secht ṅgemma de ruithin ruisc cechtar a dá rígrosc. Secht meóir cechtar a dá choss. Secht meóir cechtar a dá lám co ṅgabáil iṅgni sebaicc, co forgabáil iṅgne griúin ar cach n-aí fo leith díb.305

Beautiful indeed was the youth who came thus to display his form to the hosts, Cú Chulainn mac Sualtaim. Three kinds of hair he had, dark next to the skin, blood-red in the middle and (hair like) a crown of red-gold covering them. Fair was the arrangement of that hair with three coils in the hollow at the back of his head, and like gold thread was every fine hair, loose-flowing, golden and excellent, long-tressed, distinguished and of beautiful colour, as it fell back over his shoulders. A hundred bright crimson twists of red-gold redflaming about his neck. A hundred strings with mixed carbuncles around his head. Four dimples in each of his two cheeks, a yellow dimple and a green, a blue dimple and a purple. Seven gems of brilliance of an eye in each of his royal eyes. Seven toes on each of his feet, seven fingers on each of his hands, with the grasp of a hawk’s claws and the grip of a hedgehog’s claws in every separate one of them.

In terms of descriptive details this is one of the most stunning and precise descriptions of a hero’s actual body. The first things to be described are not his clothes, not his royal attire or his weapons (they only receive attention later) but the hero’s unaltered, physical body, his bare essence so to speak. Yet the description’s descriptive paradigms are also unlike any other in early Irish literature and clearly do not fit within the paradigms outlined in the Politics of Anatomy. The description does, however, exhibit the strong focus on the head, which MULLIGAN associates with noble heroes306, a possible pointer that Cú Chulainn should be placed in this category. This reflects SWARTZ’S finding that ‘twelfth-century rhetoricians emphasized the description of persons and provided examples supporting the theory that the correct sequence in listing physical characteristics was from head to feet.’307 Unlike the previously discussed description from the macgnímrada, here this order is adhered to. It will become apparent that the descriptions of Cú Chulainn usually (but not always) follow this arrangement, a fact which may suggest a conscious engagement with ekphrasis on the part of the compilers/redactors.

SHEEHAN contextualises this episode in a slightly different way. ‘The Táin’, she argues, ‘consequently dramatizes its main description of Cú Chulainn by showing the hero engaging in a narcissistic public display, allaying his anxiety about the ríastrad by performing as the object of a desiring, collective gaze.’308 The present reading certainly agrees with two of her points: that Cú Chulainn’s display makes him the object of a deliberate, positive gaze and that this display is caused by his concern, if perhaps not anxiety, about the earlier gazing at his distorted body. SHEEHAN’s idea of it being narcissistic is, on the other hand, somewhat problematic, or even contradictory. If Cú Chulainn’s display is indeed caused by hubris, can it then also, at the same time, incorporate his anxieties in relation to specularity? Instead, it may be suggested that this is not a display caused by personal vanity but with a more social aim: to direct the gazes of others towards his socially acceptable appearance in order to confirm his identity as a noble warrior within society at this particular moment. In this line of argumentation, it may not be an anxiety about self-image which drives Cú Chulainn but more a concern about the (anti‐)social image he presented the night before. It is a re-categorisation that he seeks to instigate through his display.

The descriptive paradigms mentioned in each of the two descriptions just presented are strikingly similar. All of these features are also assigned to other beautiful characters in early Irish literature. This strengthens the assumption that they are meaningful and recognisable paradigms in a Politics of Anatomy observable even beyond TBDD. In relation to other characters, however, they occur in isolation or at least not in such density. This indicates that in this respect too, Cú Chulainn is drawn somewhat over the top, he stands outside of (or above) ordinary standards. Like the descriptions, the analysis will follow the top-to-bottom approach in terms of physiognomy that SWARTZ argues reflects the arrangement advocated by twelfth-century rhetoricians, and hence it will start with Cú Chulainn’s hair.309

Just like beards, which will be discussed in 2.3., hair is perceived as a marker of gender, status and innate qualities in medieval literature. WILLIAM SAYERS sees in the importance of hair in early Irish literature both reflexes of Indo-European mythology as well as of an Ancient Celtic cult of the head.310 One may also refrain from such broad observations and instead focus solely on the appearance and evaluation of hair in literary texts. CECILE O’RAHILLY finds that in Middle Irish texts, portrayals of hair commonly include the paradigms of colour, texture, cut and length.311 In relation to narrative placement, SAYERS emphasises the importance of hair in the narrative technique usually referred to as the watchman device (see 4.3.), remarking that for instance when Mac Roth describes the advancing Ulstermen,
in the some twenty vignettes, hair goes unmentioned in only two instances […] In only three other cases is the colour of the hair not stated. Consistently, the description of the warrior’s hair immediately follows a mention of his stature and general appearance […].312

It can be concluded that it is the frequency with which hair is described in early Irish texts, rather than the development of the actual descriptions, which indicates its importance.

In the description by Fer Diad and in those by the narrative voice, Cú Chulainn’s hair is described in great detail. Two main points are stressed in connection with Cú Chulainn’s hair: that it is of multiple colours and that it flows freely over his shoulders. Together, these can be said to give a clear picture of the hair’s appearance, its colour, haircut and length. The colour of the hair is mentioned only implicitly in the macgnímrada description, where it simply appears as find and fair (‘bright’ and ‘fair’), terms which suggest a blond(ish) colour.313 Somewhat contradictory, in other descriptions Cú Chulainn’s hair is said to be multi-coloured. Although this may seem unusual at first, multi-coloured hair does appear in other early Irish texts and is associated with the figure of the outstanding (as opposed to the ordinary) hero by CECILE O’RAHILLY.314 In Fled Bricrenn (‘Bricriu’s Feast’, a text preserved in manuscripts from the twelfth century onwards), it is said of King Laegaire that [f]olt dualach trí ndath fair. Folt dond fri toind cind. Croderg a medon. Mind n-oír budi in folt fordatuigithar.315 In TBDD, Conaire’s son Lé Fer Flaith is described similarly: [n]í indóig lim cid trú ág na n-ilgnae do-chuirethar in folt fair.316 The arrangement of dark hair next to the skin, blood-red hair in the middle and fair, golden-coloured hair at the end is the same in all descriptions which assign Cú Chulainn three colours of hair. The arrangement is also shared by King Laegaire.

SAYERS interprets this motif as a reflex of ancient Indo-European social organisation:

[t]his tripartite hair can be plausibly referred to the earlier mentioned colour code of the Indo-Europeans. The progression from inside to outside, top to bottom, and the three colours, black, red and gold, may be equated with the three estates of agriculturalists and herdsmen, warriors, and priests and kings. Cu [sic] Chulainn’s semi-divine origin and responsibility to defend all Ulster during the debility of its king and hosts account for his subsuming all three functions, as does, in other instances, the king.317

It is also possible to propose a reading of the colours more closely related to the particularities of early Irish literature. There are several promising ways in which Cú Chulainn’s hair may be probed for meaning. For one, the idea that multiple colours (both in terms of complexion and in terms of garments) seem openly associated with beautiful figures in early Irish literature seems widely acknowledged and is echoed in Cú Chulainn’s multi-coloured dimples also.318 That achieving maximum contrast may have played a role in the arrangement of multicoloured features is possible. The three colours of hair may thus be interpreted as a sign of beauty simply by virtue of their multiple colours, with the three most common and/ or distinctive hair colours (black, red and blond) selected to create maximum colour-contrast.

Yet this is not the only possible explanation for the particular colours shared by Cú Chulainn and Laegaire. Alternatively, it could also be argued that Cú Chulainn’s hair represents the tension on his body and reinforces and mediates his polysemous character on a visual level. One may, for instance, contextualise the colours with their connotations in TBDD as presented by MULLIGAN. The golden, fair hair, which MULLIGAN associates with noble and royal figures319, may then epitomise Cú Chulainn’s body in times of display and represent his actions as a noble, magnanimous hero within the tribe. It may also stress his royal parentage in line with one of SAYERS’ observations320, as golden hair is perhaps the most common feature associated with noble figures in early Irish literature. SAYERS remarks that in the more than twenty descriptions of the approaching Ulstermen by Mac Roth in TBC, ‘[w]hile the terminology varies slightly, golden hair is associated only with King Conchobar, his sons and grandsons.’321 The colour strengthens Cú Chulainn’s link with his royal family and draws attention to his lineage on his mother’s side.

In TBDD MULLIGAN finds that dark hair is associated with base (even brutish) warriors.322 SAYERS sees this less as a degrading but more as a distinguishing feature. He finds that in his corpus, ‘brown and black hair [is] attributed to chieftains and heroes in nine cases […]’.323 These figures may, however, still be noble warriors. SAYERS argues that even the heroes closest to the king exhibit some features that (physically) distinguish them from the truly royal ideal of fair hair, blue eyes, white skin and a styled beard.324 The dark hair may thus be a hint at Cú Chulainn’s innate warrior disposition and his ugly, distorted and uncontrollable side during his battle-frenzy, when he at times succumbs to brute onslaughts instead of using noble heroic feats and thus resembles MULLIGAN’S brutish, strength-based warrior325 in his actions also.

Red hair is not mentioned by MULLIGAN in her study of TBDD. SAYERS, however, argues that it is associated with the liminal figure of the hospitaller Da Derga and several men from the Áes Síde.326 The feature may therefore point towards an otherworldly quality, similar to the otherworldly, red-eared cows. Since Cú Chulainn is of partly divine parentage, the colour may signify his supernatural lineage, again stressing both his relation to a certain category (supernatural) as well as his familial ties. Alternatively (or additionally), the colour also evokes notions of blood and battle and thus visualises a martial element. This reading is strengthened by the term used to describe Cú Chulainn’s hair in TBC: cróderg (‘blood-red’) replaces the more usual term for reddish complexion and hair, rúad.327 The three colours also peculiarly correspond to a beautiful, an ugly and a wounded – or wounding – body, all aspects which Cú Chulainn embodies in TBC.

This inconclusive meaning of the individual colours reflects the multiple possibilities for mediality relating to this descriptive paradigm. It also reflects the uncertain readings of the hero by other characters and the audience: what other characters see in passing and what the text deliberately stresses in opposition to his ríastrad does not always present a homogenous picture. In comparing the descriptions, however, it is the hero’s golden hair that is foregrounded and gives the most prominent and lasting impression. In the macgnímrada description it is the only colour mentioned and even if all three colours are described, attention is clearly drawn towards the golden, fair hair. While, in contrast, Mac Roth’s description only briefly alludes to the dark hair, the golden hair is subject to repetitive mention and poetic description, both of which contribute to its prominence. It is, as the narrative voice stresses, like gold thread: [c]ét cairches corcorglan do derggór órlasrach imma bráigit.328 Or even, as TBC I states: [s]amalta leam fri hórṡnáth iar ndénam a datha dar or n-indeóna nó re buidi mbech frisa taitnend grían i llaithi samrata taitnem […].329 This is the colour the texts foreground in relation to Cú Chulainn’s beautiful body and perhaps the colour the audience should remember most vividly.

In addition to its colour, the material quality of Cú Chulainn’s hair is also described: it is long, fine and loosely falling over his shoulders. With the single exception of the macgnímrada description, all mentions feature the same details. Only in the TBC I macgnímrada is there a mention of it appearing mar bó ataslilad, presumably referring to its smooth appearance.330 The descriptions are again reminiscent of other Irish warriors whose long hair is an oft-cited mark of status. Conall Cernach’s hair is described as follows in TBDD: [m]éit clíab búana a ndosbili find forórda fil fair … Is caisithir reithi copad.331

At the other end of the scale, the shaming aspect associated with shorn hair is discussed at length by SAYERS, who presumes that in literary texts it may have been the mark of inferiors or slaves.332 SAYERS remarks that in Fíanaigecht literature, the men (or boys) changed their hairstyle when they took up their place in the fianna and again changed the hairstyle when they were reintegrated into society.333 In this context hair comes to signify age and male identity as well as in- or exclusion from a particular society at a particular time in life.

In relation to social boundaries, the element of time admirably corresponds to the reading of Cú Chulainn’s body proposed here, as his battle-frenzy makes him appear a social outsider for a limited period of time. In the case of Cú Chulainn, however, there may be an added interest in the detailed description of his hair as long and free flowing. This is because his hair changes considerably during the warp-spasm and all of the descriptive paradigms denoting its material quality in the descriptions of his beautiful appearance are inverted. In stressing the beauty associated with it in Cú Chulainn’s normal state, the texts securely place Cú Chulainn in the society of warriors sporting an excellent head of long, soft, free flowing hair, but they also emphasise the contrast.

Also very prominent in the visualisation of the hero are the symmetrically (!) distributed four dimples on his cheeks. These are coloured buide, úane, gorm and corcra (‘yellow’, ‘green’, ‘blue’ and ‘purple’).334 The dimples evoke a sense of balance on the face, a crucial point given the importance of symmetry MCMANUS proposes in relation to concepts of beauty.335 Moreover, their multi-coloured appearance is also worth noting. This implies that it is not an ordinary, natural, physical body which is described but rather one exhibiting literary conventions of expressing beauty. Stark colour contrasts are observable on other noble heroes’ faces in early Irish saga literature also. In TBDD the noble warrior Conall Cernach – who is introduced as [a]s caime di laechaib Hérenn – is said to feature two differently coloured cheeks: [g]ilithir sneachta indala grúadh dó, breicdergithir sían a ngrúad n-aile.336 In addition to his cheeks, Conall also exhibits a striking colour contrast in his eyes. This supports the previously stated assumption that multi-coloured facial features and the contrast the colours evoke are an expression of beauty in many early Irish texts.337

In terms of imagining Cú Chulainn’s face as a whole it is likely that, even given that colour terms are a challenging area in early Irish scholarship, the terms used here do not paint a fair hero: his hair is probably two thirds dark (dond (‘dark’) and cróderg (‘blood-red’)), with the remaining third presumably fair like a crown of red gold (mind órbuide).338 Furthermore, on his face the only openly bright colour is buide (‘yellow’). Úaine (‘green’) is somewhat problematic, as according to STEFAN ZIMMER the term covers various shades of green339 but here most likely expresses a vibrant colour. Corcra is rendered as ‘crimson’ or ‘purple’. Gorm is has a semantic range of ‘blue, deep blue’ and is apparently often opposed to glass ‘green’, or ‘grue’ (‘green-blue’), a distinction giving gorm a connotation of ‘dark, black’ also. Cú Chulainn may therefore not be particularly fair in appearance but rather incorporates rich, dark and saturated colours and maximum colour-contrast.340

The description of Cú Chulainn’s eyes is unique for a warrior in assigning him seven pupils, two of which, as Fer Diad’s nickname reveals, were squinting.341 This may hint at Cú Chulainn’s supernatural ability to see beyond the visual, the ‘gift of sight’. Other figures in early Irish saga also exhibit excess pupils, such as Cormac mac Airt (seven pupils) or the giant Ingcél in TBDD (who variously has three or seven pupils). FERGUS KELLY and JACQUELINE BORSJE discuss the fact that the prophetess Feidelm, who describes Cú Chulainn in a prophecy, is said to have three pupils herself.342 The excess pupils may therefore hold various connotations: they may be (simply?) a sign of beauty for Cormac, but the latter two figures are associated rather with extraordinary visual gifts, whether in the narrated world (as clairvoyance and a quick, penetrating gaze) or in relation to a more mystical sight (Feidelm’s prophecies).343 Ingcél is described as particularly rough, even ugly, suggesting that in his case the additional pupils are not part of a discourse of beauty but related solely to his extraordinary vision. These polyvalent appearances of the motif lead BORSJE to the conclusion that multiple pupils are not entirely clear in their meaning.344 In the case of Cú Chulainn, the feature may be connected to sight beyond the purely visual, that is, his gift of sight, or may be a signifier of excessiveness, drawing attention to the superlative nature of the hero, and of beauty.

The larger than usual number of fingers and toes may likewise point towards an over-the-top nature in a metaphorical sense. DAVID D. GILMORE proposes that in the Classical period it was thought that ‘anatomical superfluity denot[es] superhuman powers.’345 There are no other characters in early Irish saga literature who exhibit such traits but THURNEYSEN argues that in Tochmarc Émire (‘The Wooing of Emer’), all women are in love with Cú Chulainn ‘because’ of his supernumerary pupils, fingers and toes.346 A truly positive evaluation of the motif is therefore possible, but it could also be contextualised differently. In the wider context, CONNELL MONETTE draws attention to the Norse Starkað (as portrayed in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum) and the Indian Sisulpa, who are born with extra arms and eyes respectively.347 A reading of the excess limbs and pupils in this context corresponds to the ‘too much’ of Cú Chulainn’s strength and also of heroic heat (in TBC II). More problematically, it is also possible that this moves Cú Chulainn’s body towards the monstrous even in its beautiful state.

Supernumerary features are a symbol of the monstrous in Isidore’s Etymologiae, which may have provided inspiration for such descriptions.348 DANA OSWALD’S first category in her classification of a monstrous body in medieval thought is that it is somehow more than human, i.e. characterised by excess size, hairiness or supernumerary features.349 If such a connotation was intended in the depiction of Cú Chulainn, it would raise highly problematic points even though, as the assessment of the narrative voice in the encounter with Fer Diad proves, the narrative voice wants it to be read within a discourse of beauty.350

There is also the possibility that the two motifs may have arisen in different contexts but were then developed by analogy. If a connection between the seven pupils and Cú Chulainn’s gift of sight is assumed, the excess members on his hands and feet may express a similarly enhancing function. It is stated that Cú Chulainn has hands co forgabáil iṅgne griúin ar cach n-aí fo leith díb351, and this may well be associated with the excess digits. In relation to his hands, CECILE O’RAHILLY cites an (explanatory?) gloss in TBC I on the mention of his excess fingers which she translates as ‘a warrior’s grasp in his hands’.352 In relation to the hero’s toes, it is worth noting that although the gae bolga is only ever employed when Cú Chulainn is in his ríastrad, since only Cú Chulainn is able to use this weapon it may also be somehow connected to his supernumerary toes (and not just to his training).

It can be concluded that these portrayals are unique in early Irish Literature not in the individual features but in their combination. While most of the separate descriptive paradigms are found elsewhere, their arrangement in (or on) Cú Chulainn’s body is startlingly exceptional and serves to create a unique hero. Ultimately, his body not only mediates his position as a noble warrior within society, but also a strangely personal identity as his extraordinary nature is expressed by exceptional (and even by potentially problematic) descriptive paradigms. In discussing such abnormal (and extraordinary) physical traits, BETTINA BILDHAUER and ROBERT MILLS argue that in monster theory, ‘[t]he category of “normal” is thus always already unthinkable without the idea of “abnormal”, and it always already has a “trace” of “abnormal” in it.’353 This is expressed in Cú Chulainn’s body on another level: that even his social, heroic body cannot be imagined as completely unmarked by his excessive distinction. The ‘threat to structure, to order, and even to meaning’354 which LOWE sees in his ríastrad may therefore be foreshadowed even in his beauty.

Unusually for medieval literature, Cú Chulainn himself demonstrates a moment of self-awareness. PHILIP O’LEARY draws attention to the fact that ‘Cú Chulainn’s own sensitivity to public assessment of his appearance or achievement is keenly developed’355 within TBC. This is a rare example of a hero struggling with (his) body issues. This is also why Cú Chulainn is careful to exhibit himself to the Connacht retinue at the right time, ‘lest they fail to appreciate his proper splendour through awe at his previous distortions.’356 If he was ugly, or even if there was a rumour that he was ugly, his reputation could be blemished and his status as noble hero questioned. As such, Cú Chulainn’s beautiful body can be interpreted as a body constructed to mediate his position within society, although the hero himself at times struggles to keep it (and himself) within these boundaries.

2.2.2A Remarkable Presence or an Unmarked Presence? Bodies and Social Status from Rígsþula to Saga

In studying related topics in Old Norse-Icelandic literature it was first asked if comparable studies to that of TBDD as well as comparable texts exhibiting such an interest in a systematic and detailed description of bodies could be found. In the case of the former, help was again provided by MULLIGAN.357 In the case of the second, one text in particular showed a comparable interest: the Eddic poem Rígsþula (‘The Lay of Rígr’). Although its descriptions are not as detailed as the ones in TBDD, Rígsþula’s interest in relating specific social identities to bodies is more clearly pronounced: the characters are described unmistakeably in relation to their social status. The social organisation Rígsþula portrays is a threefold division between nobles, free farmers and slaves. The text provides many interesting points to note and it clearly stands out in the Old Norse-Icelandic corpus in its unambiguous use of bodies as signifiers.

In examining if similar concerns to those of TBDD could be found in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature it also quickly became clear that in the scholarly acclaimed genre of the Íslendingasögur such concerns were expressed only rarely and in specific contexts, a matter which had to be addressed in its own right. There are nevertheless some very interesting examples to be presented from the saga corpus, as in another genre, the original riddarasögur, ideas of expressive mediality are developed frequently and openly. In their instalment of bodies, in how and on what level they mediate, both saga genres are, however, so decidedly different from the early Irish examples just discussed that addressing the question of how bodies can become mediators in literary texts through individual case-studies gained a new momentum. These discussions will be presented in the second part of this subchapter, but first Rígsþula must take centre stage.

Rígsþula offers perhaps the most remarkable system of bodily descriptions of all Old Norse-Icelandic texts. The text is an incomplete poem of 48 stanzas and characterised by SIMEK as a learned pseudo-mythological work.358 As THOMAS D. HILL remarks, ‘[b]ased on its style and subject matter […] it is usually allowed into the canon of Eddic mythological poems […]’359 although it is found in the Codex Wormianus (AM 242, fol, “W”), dated to c. 1350, and not in the thirteenth-century Codex Regius (which contains most of the Eddic material). Although its inclusion in the Codex Wormianus together with Snorra Edda and the First, Second, Third and Fourth Grammatical Treatises suggests a deliberate association of the text with scholastic learning, as a text Rígsþula seems difficult to place in Old Norse-Icelandic literature.360 JENNY JOCHENS states that the text’s ‘possible origin in time spans most of the half millennium from the end of the ninth to the middle of the thirteenth century, and its geographic roots encompass the space between Ireland and Norway.’361 JOCHENS further asserts that Rígsþula is ‘the only Old Norse source that provides an explanation of the origin of the social classes.’362 This is to be understood most likely only in a literary, not a historical sense as no such structuring of society can be proposed for medieval northern Europe from extant sources.

RUDOLPH MEISSNER maintains that the text does not contain myth but a scholarly invention which is expressed through mythological means.363 This argument would strengthen the idea of the text consciously engaging with literary techniques, perhaps also in relation to its bodies. It is also commonly assumed that the poem shows signs of Celtic influence. Possible Irish parallels have been discussed by AMORY amongst others, while URSULA DRONKE argues for several other influences and even proposes Indo-European reflexes.364 As has become evident, previous research has largely focused on the societal structure that the poem portrays as well as on its possible origin(s) in myths.365 These matters do not concern the present reading of the text ‘as text’, which presents a relatively new approach to the poem.

In terms of narrative plot the poem is quickly summarised: it describes how the god Ríg (who is otherwise unknown but a short prose introduction identifies him with the Norse god Heimdal) visits three households on three different nights. Each household is inhabited by a married couple of a different social rank: slaves, freemen and nobles. Ríg eats with the occupants and offers advice before finally sleeping between them in their marital bed. Nine month after his visit, a boy child is born in every household. The boys are presented as ‘clear class representative[s] in terms of body, form, function and name’366, as they are named Þræll, Karl and Jarl (‘Slave’, ‘Free-Man’ and ‘Earl’) respectively. For each household it is narrated how the boys later find spouses that mirror them in both looks and social status. The couples in turn have children of their own from whom the races of slaves, free-men and earls descend. At the end of the poem Jarl’s son, Kin, is about to become king, suggesting that even the origin of a royal gens (emerging from nobility) would have been explained had this part of the poem been transmitted.

Rígsþula explains the structuring of this intradiegetic society and describes how different social strata emerge from different progenitors and are from the very beginning characterised and recognisable by a distinctive appearance. Through the mention of physical features the distinction between the ‘three estates’ (to use an analogy) is consequently presented not simply as socially arbitrary but, as HILL also claims, as quite literally inbred.367 AMORY sees the poem’s purpose ‘to “explain” the origin of the three social estates in medieval Scandinavia, and to characterize their chief representatives’ as ‘it [Rígsþula] embodied popular curiosity about the causes or origins of society and social division.’368 However, HILL points out that the social division delineated in Rígsþula is not reflected in the historical picture of early Icelandic society.369 As such, the text does not hold any practical value for its readers in their everyday life but instead is a guide to exploring bodies in literary texts.

This point is reflected in MULLIGAN’S affirmation that in relation to its bodies the text deliberately draws attention to ‘the features the poem teaches its audience to look for in the description of the different classes.’370 MULLIGAN thus assigns Rígsþula some didactic value and characterises the poem as a ‘confident and unusually thorough guide to bodies’ which ‘provides an arguably meaningful juxtaposition of corporality and […] access to social, economic or political power.’371 MULLIGAN strengthens her argument by pointing out that in the codex, the ‘literary lesson in taxonomy provided by Rígsþula is followed by a brief examination of the anatomical interpretive strategies suggested by codes regarding the exposure of deformed infants […]’.372 Further proof that the text is a catalogue of perception is the fact that it does not advocate a distinction between self and other through its narrative set up or argue its case from the point of view of one or the other social strata. In this point at least, all social strata all equal, and they are described with the same attention to detail by the narrative voice.

Rígsþula begins with Ríg entering the first house in which Ai and Edda (‘great-grandfather’ and ‘great-grandmother’) live. The couple is introduced as follows: hión sátu þar, | hár at arni.373 The meal Ríg receives consists of broth and økkvinn [h]leif, | þungan ok þykkan,| þrunginn sáðum.374 The bread Ríg is offered is peasant food and gives a first hint at the social status of the old couple. Yet despite their low standard of life, F.-X. DILLMANN rightly points out their independence in terms of food and living quarters: ‘[h]äßlich und deformiert, erfüllen die Sklaven ihre niederen, oft sogar widerlichen Aufgaben, doch wohnen sie unabhängig und können dem Gast eine substantielle Mahlzeit anbieten.’375 Nine months later Edda gives birth to a boy who is black-skinned and they name him Thrall. When Thrall has grown into a man he is described as follows: [v]ar þar á hǫndum | hrokkit skinn, | kropner knúar, | [kartnegl,]| fingr digrer – | fúlligt andlit, | lotr hryggr, | langer hælar.376 Here, the whole of the body is described and ‘all of the details point to internal, skeletal disfigurement – the body is not simply superficially ugly, but twisted and bent at the core’377, as MULLIGAN concludes. This implicit link between the inside and the outside of the body may draw attention to the extent to which the deformity is inbred, a detail which promotes a truly holistic view of body and identity. The description does also, as DRONKE points out, evoke the impression of old age (as well as an unrefined nature) through the mention of wrinkled skin, bent back and gnarled limbs.378 The slaves thus exhibit, as DRONKE concludes, the features of early, unpolished man.379

A very similar description is given of Thrall’s future wife, although here the idea of internal deformation is absent. Instead, her body shows signs of everyday wear and tear: [þ]ar kom at garði | gengilbeina. |Aurr var á ilium, |armr sólbrunninn,| niðrbiúgt ° nef – | nefndiz Þír.380 Both descriptions include details from all parts of the body (head and torso), and both also contain bent or crooked features (knuckles, back and nose), unsmooth or damaged skin and unusually large limbs.381 The density of descriptive paradigms is a characteristic of the text. DILLMANN lists the colour of skin, eyebrows and hair, expression of the eyes, the form of the nose, fingers, hands, legs and back as recurring features in the descriptions of the characters.382 Rígsþula thus provides an ekphrastic picture of its characters and leaves no doubt how the audience should imagine them.

Although Thrall and his future wife can both be imagined as somewhat repulsive, only Thrall is openly evaluated as ugly by the narrative voice (unless a bent nose signifies ugliness in its own right to a medieval Norse audience). It is perhaps more a lack of cleanliness that characterises his wife. Her body appears as dark in skin tone, it is inherently dark, so to speak. Yet it is also darkened by the outdoor life through the sunburn as well as the muddy feet (which also point to a lack of shoes). Her skin tone and the staining with mud will provide a stark contrast to the aristocratic Móðir described later in the text, and the picture is evoked vividly enough to linger with the audience. Thrall and his wife, having been introduced in such detailed terms regarding deformity and lack of hygiene, now set the standard against which the other social strata may be described.

Yet first the text makes it clear that from this couple, all future slaves descend. AMORY even sees the couple and their misshapen brood as ‘an example for all time of the slavishness and repulsiveness of thralls.’383 Supporting this assessment are the names given to their offspring, many of which reflect undesirable bodily features. MULLIGAN mentions the following names of boys: Hreimr (‘Yelper’, suggesting a deformity in terms of voice?), Leggialdi (‘Layabout?’ ‘Long-legs?’), Klúrr (‘Ugly One’), Kleggi (‘Sticky-lump’), Fúlnir (‘Stinker’), Drumbr (‘Stumpy’), Digraldi (‘Fatty’), Drǫttr (‘Limper’), Hǫsvir (‘Grey-one’) and Lútr (‘Stooper’).384 For the daughters MULLIGAN lists Drumba (‘Stumpy’), Kumba (‘Dumpy’), Økkvinkálfa (‘Thick-Calf’), Arinnefia (‘Eagle-beak/Hearth-nose’), Tǫtrughypia (‘Tattered-Dress/Raggedy-hips’) and Trǫnobeina (‘Crane-legs’).385 The others are named after their social function or character, but both corporeal aspects and behavioural traits combine to present a clear picture of how the descendant race of slaves is to be imagined: as undesirable beings grounded in (and defined by) physical aspects. As MULLIGAN concludes:

[d]epending slightly on how the occasionally uncertain names are translated, of the twenty-one names at least fourteen contain reference to degraded physical appearance. Instead of being named for their social roles, most slave children are recognized for negative characteristics highlighting ugly form.386

In short, slaves’ bodies are subject to ‘disease, age and work’ and are characterised by ‘a kind of compromising, mundane corporality.’387 For these unrefined people, an unrefined body rooted in the physicality of the flesh is the central expression of their identity.

In moving on to the second house, Ríg finds a more sophisticated couple, Afi and Amma (‘Grandfather’ and ‘Grandmother’). They offer him a meal of boiled veal and a yeasty, brown barley loaf. Afi is described as sporting trimmed hair (ending above his brows) and well-fitting clothes. Amma in no way lacks her husband’s style, as she is adorned with a headdress, brooches, a smock and a kerchief around her neck. The description of the couple is even more detailed than that of the previous house-owners. Yet it focuses solely on style, or on aspects of grooming such as trimmed beards and fashionably cut hair. Ultimately, MULLIGAN contends, these ‘status-symbol accoutrements or the effects of grooming are the focus rather than anatomy.’388 This emphasises that the couple are wealthy enough to buy such accessories and sophisticated enough to partake in acts of grooming, an observation that is mirrored in the tasks they are engaged in when Ríg appears (whittling wood for a cross-beam and spinning with a distaff). These activities further reinforce the notion of finery and, in turn, refinement. When their baby Karl (‘Farmer’) is born he is described as rauð[r] ok rióð[r], showing a ‘vigour that contrasts Þræll’s blackness’.389 As Karl grows he fulfils all the tasks of a successful farmer and these performative traits again seem to substitute for a bodily description.

The same is true for his future bride, who is introduced solely through her possessions. She is said to be a hanginlukl[a], | geitakyrtl[a].390 Even the names of their children, from whom the race of farmers descends, are strikingly lacking corporeal aspects, except for three of their sons: Bundinskeggi (‘Boundbeard’), Brattskeggr (‘Steepbeard’) and Breiðr (‘Broad Fellow’).391 It may be argued that the lack of corporeal description and reference to bodily traits in their names means that a good farmer is defined by his skills and his actions rather than by a particular appearance. ‘Exalted to a role rather than degraded by virtue of their flesh’, MULLIGAN insists, ‘the labouring class has successfully broken outside of the bounds of the body and Rígsþula privileges the message that this class is to be read primarily as socially productive, not corporeal people.’392 Their bodies appear as less important and defining except on a performative level – as a tool to be productive with – and as such present more a functionally than a visually expressive entity.

Yet another angle on expressive mediality is found in relation to the last couple, Faðir and Móðir (‘Father’ and ‘Mother’), from whom the nobles descend. Here, visual aspects again become more important as high or royal status is reflected on the body as well as through possessions. When Ríg enters the hall of his last hosts, [s]átu hión, | sáz í augu, […] fingrum at leika.393 The mutual gazing at each other may be mentioned deliberately to stress the importance of observing noble bodies: visuality, specularity and especially gazing now become important. The contemplative gaze the text evokes is quickly broken as attention is directed towards one particular body part: the busy, moving fingers of the male. For the couple is by no means passive and unoccupied: father twists bowstrings, bends elm and shapes arrows, while the lady of the house is busy admiring her own luxurious garments.

Her appearance is described in great detail, and MULLIGAN suggests that ‘[b]y following Móðir’s own example [of examining her appearance], Rígsþula legitimates a reading of her as a physical object.’394 These signs of wealth are enumerated: [k]eisti fald, | kinga var á bringu – | síðar sloeður, |serk bláfán.395 In addition, Móðir is also said to be incredibly fair in appearance: brún biartari,| brióst liósara, | háls hvítari, |hreinni mjǫllu.396 The food she serves mirrors her body, as it is white and noble: [h]ón tók at þat | hleifa þunna, | hvíta af hveiti […] Fram foerði hón |† fulla † skutla, |silfri varða, |[setti] á bióð: | fan[g] ok fleski| ok fugla steikta. |Vín var í kǫnnu, | varðer kálkar.397 Not surprisingly, the child that Móðir bears, Jarl (‘Earl’), is also of desirable appearance: [b]leikt var hár, | biarter vangar, | ǫtul vóru augu | sem yrmlingi.398 Fair appearance and a light colour of hair are also commonly employed features to denote nobility in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The description of piercing eyes is found frequently in Old Norse-Icelandic texts and it appears exclusively in positive contexts. AMORY, for instance, refers to the Icelandic skalds Bjǫrn Hítdoelakappi and Bjǫrn Breiðvíkingakappi, who ‘both composed similar lausavísur about young male offspring of theirs, born of their mistresses, and these boys are claimed by their fathers as true sons because of the fearsomeness of their boyish gaze […]’.399 Jarl grows up in the hall and studies martial feats until Ríg returns and teaches him runes and advises him to claim his ancestral property. This results in Jarl claiming eighteen settlements in a bloody war. After this violent acquisition, he then turns into a generous ruler.

The girl he is to marry is introduced as mjófingr[uð], |hvít[…] ok horsk[…].400 In these three features she embodies essential predispositions for a royal wife: she is well equipped for courtly activities such as embroidering because of her slender fingers, her beauty may be gazed at as an outward expression of her noble nature and her wisdom guarantees a gentle and impeccably behaved queen. In these three terms all necessary prerequisites for a female noble are outlined, and two of these are explicitly connected with her appearance.401Their children’s names all reflect familial bonds and draw attention to the importance of keeping a clear line of descendants. But yet again no physical traits are mentioned. MULLIGAN concludes that ‘[t]heir appellations indicate that male physicality has been bred out of importance as far as aristocratic identity is concerned. Noble female children are absent from the poem, perhaps due to the copyist’s mistake […]’.402 The poem then breaks off with young Kin on the verge of becoming king. Yet he too is not described in physical terms. At this stage, the focus on visualising the bodies is small but pronounced, not overly important but present.

The relationship between appearance and status is readily observable not just in the couples but also in the three boy children at birth: dark for the slave boy, red and rosy for the farmer and blond and bright with piercing eyes for the noble offspring. DRONKE relates this difference in complexion to ‘an archaic form of Indo-European class symbolism: namely the changing colour of the human complexion with the social class […]’.403 She proceeds to link this to DUMÉZIL’S analysis of colour hierarchy in her discussion of Rígsþula and colours in Indian caste systems.404 These parallels are indeed observable and mirror the three colours of hair which Cú Chulainn is assigned in some descriptions. Nevertheless, the choice of colours in both cases may also simply generate a dark-light dichotomy, with a middle colour (red) that naturally occurs in human hair. After all, dark (whether brown or black), red and blond are all natural colours of hair amongst Caucasian peoples.

What is interesting to note is that in terms of biological concerns, JOCHENS remarks that ‘since Rígr provided the sperm with which the three women conceived, the striking differences in the looks of the three baby boys must be due mainly to their maternal inheritance.’405 However, it is not entirely clear from the text whether Ríg is indeed the supplier of sperm. Yet the focus on the maternal influence on diversity may reflect medieval theories about dividing the genders in terms of providing form and matter for offspring. In a narrative so concerned with mapping social borders, the distinction between the three groups appears as very clearly delineated. It is possible that such a generic assessment is part of a much more widespread systematic ordering of literary characters. JOCHENS, on the other hand, argues that the ‘color schemes do not refer to racial differences […] but to the effects of physical work, apparently understood to be inherited.’406 In the present reading, it is argued that the bodies of the characters show both truly inheritable features as well as traits gained through their activities and ‘profession’. From the point of the medieval text, both eventually appear as inbred and inheritable and thus become trusted signifiers of expressive mediality.

It is worth stressing that although each social rank is given its unique colour and each child is briefly described, the attention given to their bodily appearance varies greatly in the three households. Slaves are most clearly and prominently defined through their bodily features: they are ugly, deformed or asymmetrical. RUTH MAZO KARRAS, in talking about slaves in Scandinavian history, interprets this need to distinguish slaves as a clearly definable group as follows: ‘[t]hat justification came largely through labelling slaves as inferior by birth, whether for reasons of race or of character […]. The stereotypical slave was small and dark and therefore of a different ethnic background from the tall, ruddy Norse.’407 In Rígsþula as well as in the wider context of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, slaves are likewise defined by their bodies and hence their social identity is perceived as something which they have no control over and can never change.

Farmers, on the other hand, are described almost exclusively through their accessories and disposition. It seems that in denoting the slave body as ugly, enough difference has been created between the two classes on a physical level. The good farmer is defined primarily by his skills and work ethic, with his physical appearance contributing far less to his identity. Nobles are characterised through their skills and knowledge as well as their proper disposition, yet their fair appearance sets them physically apart from the farmers and strengthens the element of descent, as noble physical features could never be achieved by social risers. In the narrated world of Rígsþula social identity thus appears reflected in behaviour and status symbols, as well as in the body. Although bodies do signify along the lines of expressive mediality, this strengthens the argument that in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, the body is but one level on which identity can be constructed and mediated.

To outline this complex interrelatedness of bodies and other signs in the text, the food the couples serve was mentioned in the quotations alongside the bodies. On a symbolic level, the food is installed as a mirror image of the bodies, which echoes KIENING’s observation about bodies always being related to other signs in a text.408 While the meat can be said to designate status (none for the slave, veal for the farmer and pig and game for the nobles) the bread cunningly mirrors its producers in appearance: dark, thick, weighty and grainy (i.e. non-refined) in the case of the slaves, brown, high-risen and yeasty (i.e. cultured) for the farmers and white, slim wheat loaves for the nobles. In the house of the nobles, even food and serving vessels equal each other, mirroring the close fit of clothes and body. Content and outer appearance give a sense of complete congruency, just as the bodies express a specific social identity. This reflects ARMIN SCHULZ’S argument that noble status should be observable at all times, not only in the deeds (and clothes, possessions and food, one may add) but also through the body.409

Rígsþula presents its bodies as part of a visible organisation of society according to (vertical) social strata and the physical appearance expresses this readily recognisable division of society. In terms of narrative construction, the bodies are simply described and evaluated by the text’s narrative voice but not commented on by other characters; they are not part of discursive re-creation. This may be explained by the nature of the poem, which consists of mere auctorial narrative description and no dialogue. It is through this one-dimensional focus of fictive objectivity that Rígsþula gains both the confidence as well as the authority to so openly place bodies in the discourse of expressive mediality and to so consciously use them to fulfil its proposed goal: teaching the audience how to view literary bodies in relation to their social identity.

After discussing this extraordinary example, it is desirable to outline the research on which the following analyses are based but which could not be included in the final version of this study. The aim is to contextualise the unique nature of Rígsþula and offer some other views about expressive mediality in Old Norse-Icelandic sagas. While reading through the sagas after having worked on the early Irish material, it was immediately striking that, especially in the well-known and academically favoured Íslendingasögur, detailed bodily descriptions are comparatively rare. This is the case not just for the number of descriptions in the texts but also occasioned by their relative brevity when they do occur. In the original riddarasögur, on the other hand, very different ideas about expressive mediality can be found, which is why this genre was favoured in the close readings to follow.

Yet first a brief look at the Íslendingasögur is in order to present some tentative suggestions as to why this genre shows so little interest in expressive mediality. To contextualise expressive mediality with the idea of a self, the understanding of this term in relation to the Íslendingasögur must be briefly stated. In short, a self is a free farmer who participates in the societal structures of the narrated world, as a farmer, a law-speaker, an avenger, etc. As such, the term covers the vast majority of characters and only excludes slaves, social outsiders (having been made lawless) or draugar (human revenants). Given that there appears to be little (finer) social structuring of this society and the majority of characters falls into this category, it is interesting to examine how this everprevailing status is expressed through the characters’ bodies.

The Íslendingasögur characteristically present a multitude of characters – and hence bodies. Yet ÓLASON finds that, regrettably, ‘[s]cholarly analysis of characterisation has mostly confined itself to celebrated works such as Njál’s saga, Laxdoela saga and Egils saga, or Hrafnkels saga and Grettis saga.’410 Apossible reason for this lack of academic interest may be that the bodies of the Íslendingasögur appear as very realistic (i.e. as representing real, lived bodies in detail). The texts portray an (of course fictional) ordinary, personal body that is grounded in the every-day setting of the narrated worlds. It was this reality-evoking portrayal of life and people that led earlier scholars so see these sagas as accurate historical depictions, a view no longer held. JÓHANNA KATRÍN FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR addresses this issue: ‘[i]t should be kept in mind that despite the illusion of social, historical, and topographical reality, the world of the Íslendingasögur is an imagined space and as such obeys the laws of literary creations.’411 This of course also holds true for their bodies, which likewise have been somewhat overlooked as literary creations in scholarship. In contextualising the bodies with the fictional realism of the Íslendingasögur, FRANZ B. SEEWALD concludes that ‘[m]an begegnet hier [in den Isländer Sagas] dem bis dahin kaum bekannten Phänomen eines mittelalterlichen Realismus – vor allem in der Menschendarstellung –, der überdies nicht durch antike oder festlandeuropäische Muster vorgeprägt ist.’412 This may be the reason why in the Íslendingasögur bodies show very different instalments of expressive mediality than in other sources. And this may well be a conscious decision.

In general, descriptions appear most frequently as part of introducing a character. In these instances, descriptions are provided alongside other information such as progeny, disposition and wealth. ÓLASON observes that

[i]mportant figures are usually introduced by a statement outlining the character’s outward appearance, abilities and underlying nature. Character portraits can be introduced at crucial moments in the narrative, and some of the greatest heroes are accorded a kind of valedictory tribute.413

For instance, in Brennu-Njáls saga, Eyjólf son of Bolverk is introduced as follows:

Eyjólfr hét maðr; hann var Bǫlverksson, Eyjólfs sonar ins grá ór Otradal, Þórðar sonar gellis, Óleifs sonar feilans; […]. Eyjólfr var virðingamaðr mikill ok allra manna lǫgkoenastr, svá at hann var inn þriði mestr lǫgmaðr á Íslandi. Hann var allra manna fríðastr sýnum, mikill ok sterkr ok it bezta hǫfðingjaefni; hann var fégjarn sem aðrir frændr hans.414

There was a man called Eyjólf. He was the son of Bolverk, the son of Eyjólf the Grey of Otradale, the son of Thord Bellower, the son of Olaf Feilan […]. Eyjólf was held in great respect and was so clever in the law that he was one of the three greatest lawyers in Iceland. He was an unusually handsome man, big and strong, and with every promise of becoming a good chieftain.415

This introduction of a character provides a suitable example to outline a general concern about identity in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature. Through its stock use of tropes (genealogy, personal traits such as cleverness or knowledge and physical characteristics such as height, strength or good looks) the short passage tells the audience where to situate the character in the narrated world: within the honourable society of Icelanders. Eyjólf’s social position and identity are indicated and simultaneously confirmed. This, rather than creating an individual, personal character, is what the description wants to achieve.

In terms of physical features only three aspects are briefly enumerated: Eyjólf’s exceptional height, his strength and his good looks. The first two are stock descriptive features that can be said to physically predestine a man for great achievements in battle and single combat. In fact, they appear in a large number of such introductions. The mention of good looks can be seen as primarily social in its importance. After all, there is no real reason why a strong or able man should be good-looking, but this feature too is frequently described in such passages. Yet even a promising character like Eyólf is not distinguished further by a more detailed description of his body in terms of hair colour or the appearance of individual features.

In terms of asking JANNIDIS’ questions of when, by whom, how detailed and by how much narrative space a character is described416, the Íslendingasögur show surprisingly little interest in bodies. Bodies are usually only described once, when a character is introduced; they are described by the narrative voice and through stock features (with more personalising details mentioned occasionally); in the often lengthy sagas they do not take up more than a few lines of manuscript text. Furthermore, in terms of descriptive paradigms the texts seem remarkably reluctant to found general concepts such as beauty on specific physical traits. A character is often simply said to be beautiful or not, with no additional information as to how this should be visualised. JOCHENS confirms that the sources are somewhat ‘reticent on founding beauty on specific bodily of facial features.’417 In view of this lack of guidance of how to imagine a character, MULLIGAN almost regrets that ‘the reader typically leaves the texts with largely abstract impressions of the physical identity of the featured characters […]’.418 That such details were not needed by a medieval audience may be assumed. Yet in relation to other literary traditions, it is nevertheless remarkable that these texts simply show no interest in developing such a concept even for entertainment or literary effect.

There are, however, some exceptional cases in which descriptions offered by one character facilitate an identification of other characters. One such episode may even be described as a Norse instalment of the Celtic watchman device (already mentioned and introduced more fully in 4.3.). The episode is part of Laxdoela saga, a text dated to c. 1250 by HEINRICH BECK419 and to c. 1230 by KRISTIAN KÅLUND.420 The saga is found in various manuscripts, the earliest of which dates back to the late thirteenth century. In Laxdoela saga, Helgi Harðbeinsson sends his servant to be a lookout after he dreams of being attacked. The servant indeed notices a group of men sitting on their horses close to their home. He returns to Helgi and describes each one of them to his master, who is able to identify them immediately.421 The episode shows that in certain cases, bodies do become the focus of attention from various angles – they are observed and talked about. In this particular case, bodies need to express personal, individual identity. Based on his observations of the narrated world he inhabits, Helgi is able to name his equals while the servant, who is part of a different social stratum, is not. The episode in Laxdoela saga shows that bodies can mediate on a social and a personal level simultaneously: the men are placed in the category ‘free farmers’ but they are also identifiable as individuals within the social structure (feuding) of the saga’s narrative plot. In these respects their bodies do participate in the discourse of expressive mediality, even if the process is tangible only through the gaze of the servant.

Such concerns are, however, by and large absent from most other Íslendingasögur. Possible reasons for this lack of a developed system of equating social identity with appearance may be found in the nature of the narrated worlds of the Íslendingasögur. It appears that in their world of feuding, establishing settlements and surviving on the newly populated island, physical appearance is not valued (or, better, evaluated) much. Since these sagas portray a society with very little social stratification (except for the distinction between farmers and slaves, which is at times marked on the body), there simply is no need to install bodies as mediators along these lines.422 Another possible reason for the comparatively small interest in bodily descriptions is that perhaps the most important personal virtue in the Íslendingasögur, honour, does not appear as tied to appearance. Honour is portrayed primarily as a performative virtue of a character, as a combination of personal choices, noble behaviour and righteous conduct. Individual characters can thus appear as both honourable and despicable, depending on their actions in a particular conflict.

ÓLASON reaches a similar conclusion when he argues that in Íslendingasögur the narrative roles such as villain and hero are rather unfixed but depend on the individual context of an episode.423 LARS LÖNNROTH’s analysis of Njáls saga implicitly connects this with expressive mediality when he stresses that one narrative role can be occupied by characters of a decidedly different look.424 The Íslendingasögur even question ARMIN SCHULZ’S comment that in European medieval literature it is unthinkable that it is unimportant how someone looks.425 This is a sharp reminder that even such generally observable paradigms can be inverted in certain genres and in relation to certain narrated worlds. The idea that there are no fixed narrative roles entails that there is no need for a ‘standard look’ designating such roles either. As ÓLASON concludes, the character portraits are ‘generally clearly drawn but by no means straightforward. Very different types of individual [sic] can perfom similar roles in a saga, and individuals can conform to type in very different ways.’426

This often (but not always) observable impartiality of characters in terms of birth and social rank has not gone unnoticed in scholarly circles. ÓLASON suggests that we might imagine the characters of the saga to look all rather alike, yet then acknowledges closer examination does reveals noticeable variation.427 What ÓLASON calls variation is, on a corporeal level, expressed by descriptive paradigms. In the Íslendingasögur these appear at times randomly selected to (re‐)present a character. Yet they may still be consciously selected and installed by the compilers/redactors of the texts to personalise the characters, even if the underlying aim is to create characters of different looks rather than meaningful evaluations of one descriptive paradigm. Hence the underlying concern is variation, not a systematic ordering of appearance according to narrative roles or identity.

A further point to consider is that unlike the konungasögur (‘Kings’ sagas’), which are at least partly modelled on the European chronicles of kings, or the riddarasögur (influenced by courtly literature), the Íslendingasögur were not modelled on any continental genre.428 They are therefore most likely uninfluenced (or at least less influenced) by commonly found correspondences between bodies and identity and their compilers/redactors show little or no interest in incorporating and developing such concepts into their texts. Since the social structure of the narrated worlds did not demand such distinctions to be displayed they may have simply relegated this possible function of bodies to the back of their minds. It is of course also possible that the authors of the Íslendingasögur consciously distanced themselves and their works from such influence(s) to claim literary independence, an explanation that would explain why bodies are not developed for aesthetic enjoyment either. What is clear is that the bodies in these sagas, precisely because of the lack of a normative descriptive system, contribute greatly to the ‘Suggestion von Wirklichkeit’429 in which BÖLDL claims the compilers of the sagas reached admirable mastery. Despite the rare individual descriptions ÓLASON even concludes that ‘an individual’s looks are certainly part of his or her personality, and saga writers are skilled in exploiting this.’430 Bodies thus do mediate in these texts, but they do so along very different lines than in many other genres.

There is again one notable exception to be mentioned and it is once more found in Laxdoela saga. SVERRIR TÓMASSON argues that Laxdoela saga preserves sources about the settlement of Iceland431 but it also appears to be unusually influenced by courtly literature in its descriptions of customs, costumes and weapons. The proposition that the compilers/redactors of the extant versions of Laxdoela saga may have deliberately used romantic ideals may also be argued with reference to some of the lengthy descriptions of characters which at times seem to be leaning towards the original riddarasögur.

One of its most noteworthy portrayals in which a body mediates an inherent, but presently hidden, social identity is found in the episodes featuring the Irish princess Melkorka, whom the noble farmer Höskuld brings to Iceland as a slave. KÅLUND contends that the compiler of Laxdoela saga has a passion for developing female figures432 and Melkorka is no doubt one of the characters that led to this conclusion. Höskuld is unaware of Melkorka’s true heritage when he buys her but her body already prefigures that there may be an (underlying) issue concerning her status as slave.433 When Höskuld first sets eyes on her [h]ann sá, at kona sat út við tjaldskǫrina; sú var illa klædd. Hǫskuldi leiz konan fríð sýnum, ef nǫkkut mátti á sjá.434 A guiding prerogative of courtly literature as voiced by ARMIN SCHULZ is evident in this brief comment: that innate noble beauty even shines through the ragged clothes of social inferiors.435 Although the slave-merchant tells Höskuld that Melkorka is dumb, Höskuld pays a higher price to obtain this particular woman. Even apparent physical debilities cannot counteract the positive assessment through visual observance. Höskuld’s judgement may at this point be guided by a subjective liking of her appearance but it is precisely this assessment that stands in sharp contrast to the slaves outlined in Rígsþula. The same may be said about descriptions of slaves in other sagas, as even in the impartial Íslendingasögur there appear to be no descriptions of beautiful slaves (who truly are slaves). The text thus outlines an inherent discordance between the woman’s momentary social status and her appearance. Through this it introduces the possibility of a future reassessment either of Melkorka or of Höskuld’s judgement.

Shortly after this intriguing encounter Höskuld provides Melkorka with noble clothes to wear. People at the Þing (the ‘general Assembly’) immediately acknowledge that these fit her appearance much better than the ragged ones she had worn before: [s]íðan lauk Hǫskuldr upp kistu eina ok tók upp góð kvenmannsklæði ok seldi henni; var þat ok allra manna mál, at henni semði góð klæði.436 To these unspecified and impersonal spectators, it appears that the congruency of body and clothes has been restored. Both Melkorka’s beauty and her body’s suitability for noble garments are thus ascertained by these unnamed spectators. This increases the tension of the woman’s innate beauty with her momentary state as ordinary slave girl. As ANITA SAUCKEL phrases it: ‘[d]ie Erwähnung ihrer körperlichen Schönheit und die Tatsache, daß schöne Gewänder ihr gut zu Gesicht stehen, sind Zeichen ihrer königlichen Abstammung.’437 In Melkorka’s case, royal identity is mediated through the body on two different levels: beauty and aptness for noble garments. The assertion by the people at the Þing not only strengthens Höskuld’s previous judgement, it also implies that even the bodies of slaves are read within the narrated world – at least in such exceptional, noteworthy circumstances.

Despite these noticeable indicators by the text, Melkorka’s true heritage is not revealed for some time, even though the people at Höskuld’s farm also feel an air of distinction about her. At his farm, Melkorka becomes Höskuld’s concubine and bears him a son, Ólaf. When Ólaf is born, his body also foreshadows his yet-to-be-revealed royal lineage. Everybody at the farm agrees with Höskuld in his judgement of the boy: [s]íðan var Hǫskuldr þangat kallaðr, ok var honum sýnt barnit; sýndiz honum sem ǫðrum, at hann þóttiz eigi sét hafa vænna barn né stórmannligra.438 The text again stages a general opinion through the unspoken voices of the people at the farm. The assertion strengthens the truth-value of Höskuld’s assessment and perhaps even guides the audience to follow Höskuld’s judgement.

For Höskuld and these unnamed but keen observers, the boy’s good looks may prefigure his future greatness, as many great saga heroes are introduced as exceptionally beautiful children. It must be noted, however, that their assessment of Ólaf’s body is not based on him consciously displaying his body; it functions outside the specularity observed in connection with Cú Chulainn or royal figures in early Irish literature (and beyond). It is an assessment of the body of a newborn within the every-day life of the narrated world which is portrayed. Through this brief description the text not only introduces Ólaf but also creates narrative tension: through the people at Höskuld’s farm, and their gazes, it is ascertained that this body is that of an exceptional individual, even though it was born (and party shaped!) by a slave woman. Yet on the meta-level of the text there are two possible levels on which expressive mediality could function: innate greatness or royal descent.

Not long after this scene, the narrative indeed reveals the royal lineage of mother and son.439 When the boy is two years old Höskuld hears Melkorka speak to him in Irish. He quickly realises that she is not deaf and dumb as she has formerly claimed to be but has simply refused to speak up to this point. The revelation of her voice is followed by the revelation of her true identity: she tells him that her father is King Mýrkjartan of Ireland and that she had been kidnapped from there aged fifteen. While her body had hinted at noble heritage in the previously discussed episode, it is only because she finally begins to speak that the mystery of her identity can be resolved. Melkorka herself finally resolves the enigma of her beauty, she herself affirms her identity.

Such acts of self-proclamation are relatively rare in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and they certainly need to be confirmed by other means. Melkorka’s appearance alone was not enough of a signifier to be read and truly trusted in the narrated world of Laxdoela saga, maybe because her beauty cannot be meaningfully related to her momentary state as slave. The human voice finally resolves this enigma and both Melkorka’s and Ólaf’s bodies eventually fall into place. But Melkorka’s social position remains the same despite her revelation; she remains Höskuld’s concubine.440

Ólaf, however, is given the possibility to fully assert his identity. When he reaches manhood and has grown into the best-looking man of the district he demands a ship and sails to Ireland to meet his relatives. After a disastrous journey he and his men land in Ireland and are surrounded by hostile Irishmen who claim their goods; yet Ólaf refuses their demand. The Irish call for their king to attend to the matter and, auspiciously, this king is Ólaf’s grandfather, Mýrkjartan. As Melkorka taught her son her native language, the two men converse for a while in Irish. Just like his mother had been assessed on her appearance by Höskuld, Ólaf gains the king’s approval as a foreign but noble traveller því at konungr fann, at þessi maðr var ríklátr ok vildi eigi segja lengra en hann spurði.441

This assessment of appearance prompts the king to ask Ólaf about family relations. Only when so explicitly asked does Ólaf mention that he is Melkorka’s son. It follows a prolonged episode of familial recognition that again plays on and bounces off perceptions of expressive mediality. First, Mýrkjartan takes council with his men and concludes that ‘auðsætt er þat á Óláfi þessum, at hann er stórættaðr maðr, hvárt sem hann er várr frændi eða eigi […]’.442 Ólaf’s noble identity is visible on his body and recognised by the king well before his familial identity is fully acknowledged, although the mention of such ties in this comment may be a deliberate hint by the text. Noble appearance seems recognisable across the Scandinavian-Irish divide, implying either that Ólaf (perhaps because of his family relations) also reflects Irish perceptions of noble beauty or that in the narrated world of the Íslendingasögur, the concept is comprehensible even cross-culturally and thus imagined as somehow universal.

After his noble identity has been established, Ólaf presents a ring that his mother had given him as a token of recognition. This object now leads to the personal likeness being acknowledged. Mýrkjartan concludes: ‘[s]annar eru jartegnir, en fyrir engan mun eru þær ómerkiligri, er þú hefir svá mikit ættarbragð af móður þinni, at vel má þik þar af kenna.’443 Finally, and with a little help from the token, Ólaf’s body does not only testify to his great character but also to his familial ties, even if the realisation is a prolonged one and his body is but one of many signs to be read. In both his and his mother’s case, the nobility mediated through the body needs to be confirmed by other means such as language or a token. Remarkably, their bodies eventually mediate on two different levels by expressing noble status and blood relations. The latter idea is found much more pronounced in Old Norse-Icelandic literature than in early Irish texts, yet in the Íslendingasögur it is relatively rare.

That such and comparable topics are developed in Old Norse-Icelandic sagas outside the demands of narrative development can be argued by examining texts from a different group of sagas. If the bodies in the Íslendingasögur occupy somewhat of an unmarked presence, in the original riddarasögur they can be said to assume a remarkable presence. At first, this is perhaps surprising even to scholars of Old Norse-Icelandic literature. Yet if this is the case, it is only the scarcity of interest from scholars in this genre that has prevented these bodies from being discussed more fully. From the point of view of expressive mediality the original riddarasögur provide a very fruitful ground for study.

This is due to the nature of the genre, which freely combines courtly ideas – expressing identity through visual aspects – with genuinely Norse concepts of description. In relation to the self and its body, it must be recapitulated that the court and its nobles stand at the centre of (the majority of) these sagas. For the present purpose a self can thus be defined as a noble human figure at the main court, or at a comparable court, of a particular text. In general, it can be claimed that these courtly bodies are characterised by adjectives such as beautiful, strong and well proportioned, as the following close readings demonstrate. BOKLUND contends that in courtly Romance in general, there is an absolutising tendency ‘that appearance must always and necessarily correspond to essence’ and that which is ‘beautiful is also by necessity good, wise, brave, noble, elegant etc. Any breach in the sequence of corrrespondences […] is a scandal and a source of danger.’444 That such a general system underlies also the narrated worlds of original riddarasögur can be proposed at the outset of this analysis, although certain texts may reflectively engage with such structures in certain episodes.

A particularly interesting saga for the present discussion is Dámusta saga, a text which is extant in ‘unzusammenhängenden Fragmentteilen (drei Blätter) einer isländischen Pergamenthandschrift aus dem 15. Jahrhundert (Handschrift AM 577 4 to) sowie einer Anzahl isländischer Papierhandschriften aus dem 17.– 19. Jhr. […]’.445 GLAUSER remarks that with a total of only seventeen preserved manuscripts Dámusta saga is one of the most sparsely transmitted riddarasögur446, yet even so it is extant in several redactions. The earliest manuscript lacks more than half of the text, prompting GLAUSER to follow JS 27 fol (dated to c. 1670) in his translation.447 Despite the saga’s late attestation GLAUSER expects its origins to be as early as the late fourteenth century.448 The saga is characterised by its strong interest in religious topics but, as SCHLAUCH demonstrates, on the other hand also employs motifs from French literature.449 GLAUSER has shown that at least two sequences show the influence of the Eddic Hávamál and Alvíssmál but also asserts that ‘the religious and moral elements of the saga make the work difficult to classify’, which is why it has been called a ‘pseudo-legend of Mary’450 also. Dámusta saga thus incorporates diverse influences and engages with various topics.

At the beginning of the saga, the audience is introduced to Damusti, a trusted but not royal figure at the court of emperor Catalachus, and to the emperor’s daughter, Gratiana. When a foreign suitor, King Jón, arrives at the court to ask for Gratiana’s hand, Damusti has to arrange the meeting of the two prospective spouses. When the marriage is agreed upon and Jón departs to return to his kingdom, events take a rather unusual turn. Damusti kills his rival because he is secretly in love with the emperor’s daughter, but soon after the murder Gratiana falls ill and dies. One night, the grieving Damusti visits her grave after praying to the Virgin Mary and is met there by a giant. It is revealed that the giant had Gratiana poisoned in order to feign her death and now returns to revive her and claim her as his own. Damusti fights and kills the giant and because of this act of valour, he is now in a position to claim Gratiana despite his inferior social status. He marries her and, after a long and happy life, they both retire into monastic retreat. The very unusual plot raises questions about the nature of love and whom to marry in relation to the idea of two people being predestined for each other.

The saga also features some of the most remarkable descriptions of noble bodies in original riddarasögur. With the exception of the evil giant at the end of the saga (who is described only by being excessively tall), all the people involved in the love-and-marriage theme are clearly situated in the courtly world through their appearance. In terms of narrative sequence, it is Gratiana who is first introduced. The initial focus lies on her abilities: she is more learned than all the sages in the realm and speaks all known languages. She is also exceptionally skilled at needlework. Yet despite all of these admirable traits, the text devotes the longest passage, and with it the greatest emphasis, to a description of her body:

[[a]f hennar fegurd er þad at seigia ok ijferlitumm, at [henne samtijda var einginn frijdare nee jafnnfrijd […]. Enn siá var en þó lutur, er hun bar af huors manns ásiónu, ad af hennar birtte er suo sagt, ad hun sigrade ad biarttleijk þad gras, er lilia heiter; enn þá er þad bar nockud til ad hun feinge litaskiptte, þá kom suo skiótt rodme j andlit hennar, ad þad var ei med minna móte edr afbragde enn biarttleijkur hennar, þui lijkast sem sól er hun rennur upp j skijru heide.451

Of her beauty and her appearance it is told that at this time no other was more or equally beautiful […]. But still there was something about her appearance which distinguished her from all others, namely that she was more shiningly fair than the plant called lily. But when something occurred and she changed her colour, a redness quickly appeared on her complexion, which was no less than her fairness and like the sun when it rises on a clear, bright morning.452

The passage stresses Gratiana’s fair appearance, an integral paradigm in constructing courtly identity in original riddarasögur, not just in connection with female characters. The truly positive evaluation of the emperor’s daughter suggests that even her extreme state of whiteness, akin to a lily, is to be understood positively. The same can be said in relation to her changing colour when agitated, a rather unusual trope in these sagas.453 However, the description makes it unmistakably clear that Gratiana embodies a royal identity and her beautiful appearance is the visual expression and guarantee of her virtues.

Damusti is described next. He is introduced as the son of one of the emperor’s wise advisors and therefore as a character that is not of royal standing. As this distinction in terms of noble rank is of great importance in the saga it is not surprising that it is immediately observable on his body. Damusti is a trusted figure at the court and equals Gratiana in being exceptionally accomplished but his appearance underlines that he is not of royal lineage. On the one hand, he is said to be væn j bols vexte.454 Yet it is also made clear that Damusti is an average man in terms of looks: [e]inginn var hann [afburdarmadur ad frijdleijk, enn [þó sæmilegr, ok liós á hárid, [miukhærdr ok fór vel, liós ok riódr j andlite.455 Several things are worth noting here. The description echoes but one of the commonly described standards of noble beauty, namely that of fair and free-flowing hair. Even though he is described as ‘OK looking’, Damusti lacks the beauty associated with royal characters and no further individual features are noted in this introduction. Interestingly, his complexion is described as both fair and red at the same time, a strange combination that presents not only a colour contrast but also echoes the colours associated with Gratiana. However, as Damusti incorporates them at the same time he can be characterised as a near but somehow incomplete match.

The last major character to be introduced by a physical description is King Jón, and he is presented at the moment he arrives at the court. Just like Gratiana’s, his appearance is integral to constructing his identity but in his case, it is only revealed in prolonged dialogue. Rather than merely describing the royal suitor, the text raises tension and first introduces him through the eyes of (the perhaps jealous) Damusti. Damusti is sent to visit King Jón and his retinue on their ships and reports back to the emperor what he has seen. When the emperor asks how he likes this man, Damusti truthfully answers:

‘[a]llvel,’ seiger Dámuste, ‘þui hann er [allfrijdr madr sijnumm, suo ad ek hef alldre sied [jafnn frijdann mann. [Ok einn hlut hefur hann mest til, ad hár ok hŏrund hefur hann suo biartt, ad ek sá alldre hanns maka, nema dotter ijdar, þar má einginn manna mun á giŏra umm birttu þeira. Þar eptter er allur hanns vŏxtr til bols ok lima, ok munde huor sig kiósa sem hann er; [ei er hann allstór madr, enn fijlger enu meira medalmenne; eijgdr manna best, huass eijgdr ok snar eijgdr; ok mon vera [hinn meste fullhauge.’456

‘Very well’, says Damusti, ‘for he is such a fine-looking man that I have never seen such a handsome man before. One thing is very special about him, that his hair and his skin are so fair that, except for your daughter, I have never seen anything like their shining splendour. No one will be able to observe a difference in their fairness. And likewise are his stature of body and the shape of his limbs remarkable, and every man would wish to be like him. He is not a tall man, slightly above the average of most men; he has the best eyes of all which are both quick and splendid, and he must be very courageous.’

Damusti stresses the exceptionally fair complexion of the king and is also quick to link this to Gratiana’s beauty, thus equating the two figures. The possible flaw of average height (rather than exceptional height, a more usual signifier of a leading or royal character in these sagas) does not seem to hinder his positive assessment, which is further underlined in Damusti’s comment that everybody would desire to have a body like this.

Damusti’s assertion that every man would like to look like this raises a possibility that Damusti may (consciously or subconsciously) be talking about himself. At this point of the text it has not yet been revealed that he loves Gratiana or that he plans to kill King Jón but this comment may be a first hint at the problematic turn of events. Yet for the moment Damusti remains an authoritative observer who is trusted to relate exactly what he has seen because of his position at court. As JANNIDIS contends, the authority of such descriptions by other characters depends on the rules of the narrated world 457, and hence the trusted Damusti can lend his eyes to the king and to the audience. Unbeknownst to them, however, his are both eyes of a courtly observer and of a jealous rival – and King Jón’s body is most likely assessed on both levels.

In terms of narrative strategy, it is worth noting that the narrative voice describes Damusti and Gratiana, the two characters belonging to the splendid court of the emperor. King Jón, who enters the court from the outside, is introduced by a prolonged dialogue and by the communal gazes of the court as well as, initially, by Damusti’s description. It is therefore only the newly arriving character, a possible suitor, who is assessed within the narrated world. For the audience he is constructed solely through the eyes of the (normative) semiotic code of the main court. This may be because only the foreign suitor has to be classified as self or other (and as a possible spouse or enemy), and it is with this assessment that the text appears particularly concerned. Yet no concept of specularity that is similar to the one found in the early Irish examples can be discerned: King Jón does not display his royal body on purpose to enhance his chances with the emperor’s daughter. The absence of such a conscious self-display in such a distinctly courtly setting suggests that in this case, royal appearance is to be seen not as an intentional affirmation of identity but rather as inherent and independent of the characters’ own agenda. It is the gazing at the bodies, rather than the displaying of them, which the text puts centre stage.

Another act of visual observation, gazing, is staged in the text when Jón is invited to court. In this scene, his body is openly gazed at by the people of the court: the gazing is a public and publicly staged one. One character is, however, not able to look at him in person. On Jón’s first visit Gratiana is absent. Since Emperor Catalachus leaves the decision of whom she wants to marry to her, Jón returns to his ships. The initial act of mutual observance of the two spouses fails, so to speak, but at this point the observing gazes at the court are installed in detail. When King Jón leaves the royal hall people and ruler seem similarly taken by his beauty: [[f]annst ŏllumm mŏnnum mikid umm frijdleijka þessa manns ok alla curteijse, [ok so Catalacus keijsara.458 Afterwards, the emperor describes the suitor to his daughter. Like Damusti, he too relates Jón’s status and nobility but also aligns his appearance with Gratiana’s. Asked by Gratiana how he himself likes King Jón, Catalachus answers: ‘[a]llvel […] þuiat hann er suo frijdr madr, ad ek hefe aunguann sied hanns lijka, ok þar epttir er hanns curteijse […]’.459 Gratiana in turn hopes to also like this suitor, a concern apparently based primarily on appearance, since she had not liked any previous ones. ARMIN SCHULZ observes that in courtly literature the opinion of the collective (court) is usually enough to persuade an individual.460 The divergence from this general topos may perhaps be a reminder that although original riddarasögur like Dámusta saga use courtly tropes, they can differ from their standard development in certain aspects.

Gratiana’s concerns are somewhat overridden when, during King Jón’s second visit, his beauty can finally be juxtaposed with her own, not through words but physically, in the real time of the narrative. At table they exchange gazes and are themselves gazed at by the people of the court: [þ]ad var nijmǣle, ad [alldre hefdu þeir sied [biarttare menn, enn [þá mátte siá, þar er þau voru, Jón kongr ok Gratiana keijsara dotter, [mátte þar ei misjafnna fegurd med þeim.461 The characters appear to mirror each other: their bodies are ‘seen’ to express not only their royal status but also their suitability as spouses. As ARMIN SCHULZ remarks, medieval texts often show lovers and relatives affirm their common ‘nature’ not by showing character-based similarities but by exhibiting physiological, corporeal ones.462 In siblings and other relations this can of course be interpreted as an expression of their genetic ties. In the case of two potential spouses like Gratiana and King Jón, on the other hand, it is clearly a literary motif used to express their likeness and suitability. This, ARMIN SCHULZ further argues, means that couples who show a predisposition for each other share certain traits, like beauty and nobility, because it is important that their suitability is seen, experience and finally sanctioned in the social space which they inhabit: the court.463

The mirror trope is further developed on a narrative level by them sitting opposite each other at the table. This arrangement also allows a joint observation of them in terms of communal gazing and a subsequently communal assertion of their likeness. Interestingly, the mention of the two future spouses observing each other at table is brief and the focus clearly lies on the public’s gaze. In this scene, the bodies are installed to signify and to be read rather than to act as active spectators themselves. Nevertheless, it is Gratiana’s observation of King Jón that finally leads her to respond positively to his proposal. Neither Damusti’s description (which she may or may not have heard) nor her father’s assertions were enough for her to decide: she had to see the king with her own eyes to acknowledge his superiority over previous suitors.

Gratiana immediately agrees to marry King Jón, stating that if she is to marry a man from outside her father’s realm, it will be him. King Jón’s reaction to this somewhat awkward assertion again proves their likeness, at least on a physical level. King Jón immediately turns red as blood because he suspects that there may in fact be someone from within her father’s realm whom Gratiana favours: [e]nn vid þesse suŏr brá Jóne konge suo, ad hann setti raudan sem blód […].464 In view of the events to unfold, the comment it telling, yet as no concrete indication is given that Gratiana also loves Damusti, this may be a peculiar hint by the text rather than a deliberate comment by Gratiana. The emperor is quick to dismiss this possible play with words and Gratiana adds that she has never seen a man whom she found as pleasing to the eye as King Jón. As she was saying this, [h]afde hun þá tekid lita skiptte, ok var raud sem rósa; mátte þá ei misjafnna med þeim Jóne konge.465 Just like before, the two prospective spouses completely mirror each other in their complexion. Strikingly, this requires a complete change from both of them, a fact which implies that the text consciously engages with this motif to enforce their likeness.466

In a dramatic turn of events, King Jón is killed by the jealous Damusti soon after this meeting. In this narrative shift, the saga departs drastically from what ARMIN SCHULZ sees as the main aim of developing such mirror-appearances in courtly literature: to guarantee that ‘zusammenkommt, was zusammenkommen muß.’467 Either the text does not understand the motif fully or it has an alternative agenda. In its recurrent reference to Christian ideas, the text may disclose such an alternative agenda: it presents Christian values and concerns in a courtly setting. Even though he kills King Jón, Damusti is associated with Christian values throughout the saga and the spouses’ spiritual retreat later in life further enforces a Christian undertone. In this respect Gratiana’s ambiguous comment may have pointed towards Damusti after all, as she seems content with her socially inferior husband ever after.

In this reading of the text, Christian love is shown as independent of social status or appearance. In first developing the courtly trope of gazing at bodies through the mirror image, the text highlights the importance appearance held in courtly texts only to then make it clear that a suitability of spouses in a Christian sense is not reflected on bodies, neither in their noble nature nor in mirroring other (human) bodies. It may be argued that the text consciously inverts a courtly trope in order to present a different idea(l) about love. That its bodies show considerable tension in their medial value and oscillate between Norse, Christian and courtly ideas may be occasioned by the late attestation of the saga (and its origins in the late fourteenth century, if one follows GLAUSER).468 In Dámusta saga, bodies may therefore be seen as transmission phenomena on which various concepts and concerns of a particular time can be mapped out.

What it striking in both this and the previous example is that bodies are developed in relation to expressive mediality on two separate levels: in Dámusta saga, they express royal blood in their beauty but also social equality or a social suitability of spouses for each other. The bodies may therefore be seen as meaningful on a social as well as a more personal level, a fact that calls attention to the complex nature of expressive mediality in medieval texts.

2.3How (not) to Be a Proper Man: Reading Beardless Faces

In order to highlight that individual descriptive paradigms can also be installed in relation to expressive mediality, a rather unique motif will be discussed: that of the male who cannot grow a beard. This subchapter will show how fragile the boundaries of identity construction are and how even a single feature can lead to a character’s social status being questioned. A lack of a beard can present a grave challenge for the identity of an ‘adult male hero’, and thus to the male normative human beings in Old Norse-Icelandic and early Irish sagas. Beardlessness does not draw these characters towards the monstrous; it does not challenge the position of the self within human society. These characters can still be firmly categorised as a self. Yet their flaw is problematic for their position within society because it questions either their male or adult nature. The following readings will demonstrate that bodies can signify on a much more nuanced level than perhaps hitherto thought and also that such motifs can be deliberately included in a narrative to destabilise a character.

That the trope of the beardless male is found throughout medieval literature and often carries considerable meaning is not surprising if one acknowledges the importance of beards in medieval literature (and beyond). ROBERT BARTLETT argues that throughout the European Middle Ages, ‘the most important biological differentia were that adults and not children had body hair and that only adult males had facial hair.’469 That facial hair marked an important biological divide both in terms of gender as well as age certainly was a prerogative for it to become a vital visual marker of male identity. Not surprisingly, concerns about this identity in the case of male characters lacking a beard are found in both literary traditions.

2.3.1Beating a Boy? The Beardless Cú Chulainn in TBC

Perhaps the most narratively developed (but by no means the only) example of the stigma of the beardless face in early Irish literature is found in relation to Cú Chulainn.470 In the main cattle-raid narrative of both recensions of TBC, Cú Chulainn is seventeen years old, has completed his fosterage and his fíana and is sexually active. He thus fulfils many important prerogatives for being classified as an adult man and could be perceived as such in the narrated worlds, even though the concept of adulthood is rather difficult to establish in early Irish sources.471 In fact, the tension between his age and actions on the one hand and the perception of his body as youthful (even boyish) on the other hand is enforced throughout the texts. Cú Chulainn is at various times referred to as a ‘little lad’ or boy and the reason for this, his lack of a beard, is repeatedly pointed out. It is clear that the perceived physical flaw makes Cú Chulainn unique in the narrative as, apart from truly juvenile males such as the boy-troop, no other beardless males are mentioned. That Cú Chulainn is exceptional in many other respects does not need to be stressed further, but his beardless face sets him apart from other warriors in a much more problematic way: he is repeatedly taunted for not being a proper man and combat opponent. As SAYERS phrases it: ‘[t]he characters in the Táin make repeated reference to Cú Chulainn’s beardlessness, and thereby to his youth and unsuitability as a warrior and opponent.’472

In the narrated world of the Táin, a warrior’s body is perceived as a trusted outward sign of heroic identity. A possibly subsuming factor like beardlessness can thus be meaningful on different narrative levels. On the one hand, the term amulchach (‘beardless’) is employed to refer to Cú Chulainn and defines him much like the epithet in ríastharta (‘the distorted one’). Secondly, the motif is developed within the narrative: other warriors refuse to fight Cú Chulainn because of his appearance or mock and humiliate him. In this context it is central to establish the social significance of this perceived flaw in the narrated world and examine exactly why it allows other warriors to briefly destabilise Cú Chulainn’s heroic identity based solely on their visual assessment. The full scope of Cú Chulainn’s beardless face, however, only becomes apparent when discussed in relation to issues of heroic manhood as propagated in TBC, and the categories by which it is established and, at times, questioned.

On the first level, Cú Chulainn’s beardless appearance is simply mentioned by other characters. Through this it becomes an identifying epithet of the hero: amongst all the other warriors, Cú Chulainn is mac nach allulach or níach n-amaulach.473 In Recension I, the issue is mentioned in a speech made by Ailill before he himself has even seen Cú Chulainn. Basing his assessment solely on what he has heard about him, Ailill says that ʻ[t]ofil mórglond ar bélaib mórslúaig fri Cruind […]. sceó mórfer taurcbat iltonna fri níach n-amaulach di Ultaib ticfa.ʼ474 Shortly afterwards, Fergus holds back Mane mac Ailella from approaching Cú Chulainn: ʻ[n]a téig a meic mórglonnaig ni bad chomarli berat co ticfa dit chend dit muníul berthair la gilla n-amulach […]ʼ.475 In the same recension, towards the end of the narrative, in a lay, Fergus remarks that ʻ[b]id olc la longais nUlad / guin a meic nád lánulach […]ʼ.476 Recension II also features this remark: ʻ [n]í maith ra loṅgis Ulad / guin a meic nach allulach.’477 In addition to this brief reference, in Recension II Medb calls him in serriti óc amulchach sain when referring to his apparent flight from Nad Crantail.478 In these instances the physical marker of beardlessness is clearly indicated in speech and the boyish looks that it evokes are unmistakably identifying the hero. In the lengthy descriptions of Cú Chulainn’s beauty this feature was never mentioned, neither by other characters nor by the narrative voice. The motif is thus installed ‘separately’ and solely in relation to other characters’ assessments and talk, a fact that makes it more likely that it was included and developed in a specific context. These brief comments do not (except for the last one cited) explicitly entail a humiliating or shaming function, an aspect which is much more apparent in the narrative development of the motif.

The beardlessness is (albeit implicitly) introduced together with the first physical appearance of the hero to the Connacht army. Cú Chulainn physically reveals himself to his opponents quite late in the texts. For a considerable portion of the narrative, he is only spoken about in their presence. Cú Chulainn’s body thus appears as part of spoken discourse before it is visually present(ed) in the narrated world in real time. The spoken introductions are presented either by the prophetess Feidelm (TBC I also features a prophecy by the Connacht prophet, Dubthach) or by Fergus mac Róich, an Ulster exile and Cú Chulainn’s foster-father.

From a stylistic point of view it is worth noting that Feidelm’s prophecy continuously juxtaposes and interweaves the different bodily aspects rather than introducing them separately (the poem is discussed also in 3.1.1.). In stanza three of her poem, for instance, his beautiful form (álaind dath) and his dragon-like shape in battle (deilb ṅdracuin don chath) are juxtaposed.479 Apparent opposites are thus combined into one body and this leaves one to wonder how a single character might physically incorporate all of these traits. Visually imagining the hero through the prophecy is difficult, but this creates excitement about how such a contradictory appearance may be given physical form.

Fergus’ recounting is a more realistic portrayal, probably because he intimately knows Cú Chulainn and is a warrior rather than a prophetess. His description of the hero focuses on Cú Chulainn’s abilities and strength rather than on his physical appearance. It leaves no doubt that the man in question is human and part of the Ulster royal retinue. Still, Fergus clearly stresses that Cú Chulainn is unique amongst all his equals. In TBC I he says:

ʻ[n]í fuircéba-su and fer rosasad a áes 7 a ás 7 a erriud 7 a erúath, a erlabra, a áinius, a irdarcus, a guth, a c[h]ruth, a chumachta, a c[h]rúas, a chless, a gaisced, a béim, a bruth, a barand, a búaid, a bráth, a búadrisi, a ḟoraim, a ḟómsigi, a ḟíanchoscur, a déni, a t[h]arptigi, , a dec[h]rad co cliuss nónbair for cach rind amal Choin Culaind.ʼ480

‘You will not find there any man his equal in age like unto Cú Chulainn in growth, in dress, in fearsomeness, in speech, in splendour, in voice and appearance, in power and harshness, in feats, in valour, in striking power, in rage and in anger, in victory and in doomdealing and in violence, in stalking, in sureness of aim and in game-killing, in swiftness and boldness and rage, with the feat of nine men on every spear-point.’

In both Feidelm’s prophecy and the recounting of his deeds by Fergus, Cú Chulainn’s heroic identity is stressed to the extreme. Yet no beard is mentioned. This is a first pointer that it may, in fact, be absent. In Fergus’ account, the discrepancy between age and abilities is explicitly developed. Queen Medb is quick to point to his physical age after Fergus’ recital, by adding that ʻ[n]í móu gabáil, lasanní is áes ingini macdacht insin 7 ní thángatár a ḟergníma beus.ʼ481 While the queen is of course right, Fergus immediately puts his earlier comment into perspective, assuring Medb that ʻar cid in tan ba sóo-som, batir ferdai a gníma.ʼ482 Even when he was a boy, Cú Chulainn’s deeds were those of a man. He had thus achieved this identity on a performative scale before his body could catch up in age.

The discrepancy between Cú Chulainn’s age and his deeds and abilities is present also when Cú Chulainn is first introduced in person.483 Before he reveals himself to the invading Connacht force he leaves some extraordinary signs for them to decipher, such as a withe cut with one stroke and driven into the earth with one hand. Because the Connachtmen now imagine an exceptionally strong hero, and perhaps an exceptionally tall and muscular one too, the first Connachtman to encounter Cú Chulainn outside combat fails to properly identify him.484 This is also because, where one might expect a grand entrance of the hero as hinted at in the prophecy, it is a rather understated but quite comic affair in both recensions.

Cú Chulainn meets the charioteer of the royal Connacht warrior Órlám, whom he mistakes for a fellow Ulsterman. The charioteer is busy cutting chariot poles in the woods when he is approached by Cú Chulainn and the mutual nonrecognition is made clear in his request to Cú Chulainn in Recension II: ʻar bíth t’óclachais-[s]iu, a óclaích, coṅgain lim-sa nacham thair in Cú Chulaind urdairc sin.ʼ485 One can imagine Cú Chulainn’s amusement at this remark as he realises that he is facing a Connachtman.486 The episode implies that Cú Chulainn is not recognised as the great hero he is because of his appearance. The charioteer does address him as a ócláich (ʻ(you) warrior’) but takes him as an ordinary warrior because his extraordinary heroic abilities are not reflected, not immediately visible, on Cú Chulainn’s body. The first entrance of him as extraordinary hero rather than warrior initially fails so to speak, a perhaps slightly comic anti-climax to the way he had been styled and introduced so far.

Yet as soon as Cú Chulainn starts to help the charioteer with the wood for the broken chariot his extraordinary physical strength betrays his true identity. In TBC II,

[f]orrópart Cú Chulaind fora n-imscothad, 7 nos tairṅged tria ladraib a choss 7 a lám i n-agid a fíar 7 a fadb co ndénad a féth 7 a snass 7 a slemnugud 7 a cermad. Nos bláthiged conná tairised cuil forru tráth nos léiced úad.487

Cú Chulainn began to strip the poles, and he would draw them between his toes and between his fingers against their bends and knots until he made them smooth and polished and slippery and trimmed. He would make them so smooth that a fly could not stay on them by the time he cast them from him.

This startling way to strip wood with his toes and fingers rather than with tools clearly demonstrates the extraordinary physical abilities Cú Chulainn embodies. Yet as a whole, this encounter clearly creates a deconstructive momentum in terms of heroic identity, as it makes clear that Cú Chulainn’s appearance does not reflect his true heroic potential. This discrepancy between appearance – beautiful or ugly, pristine or wounded – and his at all times excessively martial body will feature as a major theme throughout the narrative. The texts may consciously use the apparent failure of the body to mediate his true identity to highlight the process of reading bodies in terms of expressive mediality. The polysemous nature of Cú Chulainn’s body, as well as the stressing of different aspects at different points in the narrative, may be so carefully introduced at the beginning because these aspects direct the gaze towards the body as a signifier of identity.

The following analysis of Cú Chulainn’s beardless face focuses only on instances where his lack of a beard is explicitly mentioned and excludes examples where he is merely belittled as a lad or boy.488 To contextualise the examples it needs to be noted that throughout the narrative Cú Chulainn fights the Connacht army either with guerrilla tactics, when many warriors attack him at once or, after a truce has been reached, (mostly but not always) in single combat. Only in the last instance, in the context of fír fer (fair combat or proper heroic fighting) is the motif of the beardless face narratively developed. As O’LEARY shows, fír fer is the ‘single most powerful element in the early Irish honour code’489 and hence a contributing factor for ascertaining heroic identity. Some of these fír fer episodes show a conscious engagement with the idea of fighting only suitable opponents, i.e. only grown men, and it is precisely in these instances that the motif of Cú Chulainn’s beardlessness is developed. The motif thus occurs in places where the ethics of heroic behaviour are traditional, external and public and in which unequal fights are condemned490, as O’LEARY summarises, although they do occur throughout TBC. In the other fights (and that is the vast majority of encounters), this simply is not an issue. One encounter which does foreground the motif is the fight against Cúr in TBC I.491 At the beginning of the episode, the text makes Cúr’s attitude to the fight unmistakeably clear:

[n]írbo maith les-side íarom techt for cend siriti amulaig. ʻNí gó ém,ʼ ol sé, ʻis cert in bríg doberid dún. Má rofesind combad ar cend ind ḟir se nom faíte, ním foglúasfind féin día ṡaigid. Ropad leór lem gilla a chomadais dom muntir ʼna agid.’492

But he disliked going to encounter a beardless whipper-snapper of a boy. ‘In truth’ said he, ‘ye make little account of me. Had I known that I was sent against this man, I should not have stirred to meet him. I should think it enough to send a boy of his own age from my followers to encounter him.’

The term Cúr uses to describe Cú Chulainn, siriti amulaig, openly evokes his beardless appearance (amulaig).

The term siriti is used very frequently in conjunction with amulaig. CECILE O’RAHILLY translates it as ‘whipper-snapper’ or ‘sprite’. Since the term appears to have connotations with nature spirits rather than with youthfulness, it does not have any direct relation to the topic discussed here but it will be discussed again in the following chapter dealing with Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad (3.2.2.). For the present it suffices to remark that it is mildly contemptuous and also used in connection with other shape-shifting characters, implying that Cú Chulainn is seen as a man of many shapes (a point elaborated on shortly).493 The insult expressed by this term is mirrored in Cúr’s reluctance to fight a beardless and unworthy opponent. His comment suggests that during the fight, Cú Chulainn’s appearance questions Cúr’s heroic status as much as his own. A possible explanation is that in the ever present pursuit of honour in the Táin, as O’LEARY finds, there ‘simply is not much glory in slaughtering a pre-pubescent opponent’494, a problem which Cúr faces because Cú Chulainn’s beardlessness makes him look pre-pubescent (and which other characters pointedly ignore).

A very similar concern about fair heroic combat is raised in the fight against Mand Muresci. When he goes to the fight, Mand declares: ʻ[r]agat-sa 7 mé anarma, 7 conmél eter mo lámaib hé, ar ní míad nó mas lem arm d’imbirt for siriti n-amulach amne.ʼ495 The term siriti n-amulach is again prominently used, and Cú Chulainn’s beardlessness is again the openly stated reason for refusing him the status of honourable opponent. Mand’s refusal to even bear arms against Cú Chulainn suggests that proper weapons are reserved for appropriate fír fer and are not to be used against boys. Cú Chulainn of course took up arms at a very early age, as narrated in the macgnímrada. But the present visual assessment of his physical maturity by Mand overrides this social maturity. The discrepancy created here emphasises that while Cú Chulainn is very (too?) advanced in terms of social maturity, he is seen as tragically deficient in his biological development.

A related and very interesting narrative development of the motif is found earlier in the narrative in the fight against Lóch mac mo Femis. In TBC I, Lóch refuses to fight Cú Chulainn because, nírbo fíu laiss comrac fri gilla.496 When his brother Long takes his place he is killed: [g]ontai Cú Culaind co tobrad a marb ar beólu a bráthar .i. Lóich. Asbert-side dano dá fessed acht combad fer ulc[h]ach nod ngonad, no mairfed-som hé ind.497 Lóch’s comment makes it clear that because Cú Chulainn does not comply with the category of ʻbearded manʼ, i.e. fully grown warrior, Lóch is faced with a problem in avenging his brother. The same reasoning is found in TBC II. Lóch remarks: ʻ[n]í rac[h]-sa don turas sin úair ní miedh nó maisi liom móethmaccóemh óg gan ulchain gan fhésóig d’ionnsaige 7 ní do bém aisge fair, acht atá agam fer a ionnsaighthe .i. Long mac Emónis […]ʼ.498 When Long is killed there also arises the question of how Lóch can be honourably avenged within the conventions of fír fer. This creates a tension in the narrated world, a sign that TBC develops the trope in order to explore very specific issues.

Astonishingly, Cú Chulainn can outwit other characters by their own standards. Because the texts place such great importance on the visual perception of heroes, Cú Chulainn can simply smear on a beard and appear bearded to temporarily resolve the issue.499 In the fight against Lóch in TBC II, Queen Medb goads some women to persuade Cú Chulainn to smear on a beard. They tell him that no great warrior in the Connacht retinue is willing to fight him while he is beardless. Cú Chulainn smears on a beard of blackberry-juice and táinic arin tulaigh ós cionn bfer nÉrenn 7 taisbénais in ulcha sin dóib uile i ccoitc[h]inne.500 Thereafter, [a]tchonnairc Lóch mac Mo Febhis sin 7 is edh adubairt: ʻUlc[h]a sút ar Coin Culainn.ʼ ʻAs edh ón atchíu,ʼ ar Medp.501 In TBC I, it is also women who tell Cú Chulainn to resort to a false beard in order to be able to fight as a worthy opponent: íarom Cú C[h]ulaind d lán duirnd dind ḟeór 7 dichac[h]ain fair, combo hed domuined cách combo ulc[h]a baí lais.502 It is worth noting that, although again both male and female characters look at Cú Chulainn, it is always the assertion of female characters that affirms this new reality. Together with the communal perception of both sexes, this assertion is enough to ‘turn’ Cú Chulainn into a worthy opponent.

A comparable scene is found in the encounter with Nad Crantail. In both recensions, Nad Crantail attacks Cú Chulainn while the Ulster hero is fowling and does not even notice that he is being attacked – a sure insult to Nad Crantail. However, while he unconsciously averts the attack Cú Chulainn gives the impression of fleeing. Upon hearing this, Medb is quick to comment on this unheroic conduct. In TBC II she asserts: ‘[r]aḟetammar,’ ar Medb, ‘rapad ḟír, acht con[d]arístaís daglaích 7 dagóic, ní gébad fri féta in serriti óc amulchach sain, ár in am dosfarraid dagláech, ní riss ra gabastar acht is riam reme ro madmastar.ʼ503 This clear mention of the beardless face (note again the term serriti óc amulchach) is absent in her comment in TBC I but there the topic is developed instead in the subsequent fight.

In this recension Nad Crantail returns the following morning to fight Cú Chulainn. This time, he encounters him when, accidentally, the Ulster warrior’s cloak is wrapped around a pillar stone. This gives him a changed, i.e. much larger, appearance and Nad Crantail is startled and unsure whether this huge warrior is Cú Chulainn. Yet even if he was, Nad Crantail assures him that ʻnoco rucaim-se cend úain bic don dúnud, ní bér do chend ngillai n-amulaigʼ.504 This comment suggests that even an extra-large appearance of the body cannot override the beardless face. The failed recognition may suggest that Nad Crantail did not see Cú Chulainn properly and hence did not notice that he was beardless the night before, perhaps because he attacked him from afar. Yet given the high visibility of beards – or of no beards – on the human body, this is somewhat unlikely. The issue of the beardless face is perhaps introduced here for another reason: to present a manipulation of the body in order to comply with ideals of heroic manhood. Because he knows that he will not be granted heroic combat like this, Cú Chulainn pretends to be someone else and sends Nad Crantail around the hill to look for the ‘real Cú Chulainn’. He then orders Láeg, his charioteer: ʻ[c]ommail uilchi smerthain dam-sa latt. Ní hétar | forsin trénḟer comrac frim cen ulchi.ʼ505 When Nad Crantail returns he ‘thinks this’ (i.e. Cú Chulainn’s new appearance) much better and asks him to grant him a fight amongst equals.

In the encounters with Nad Crantail and Lóch the same solution to the problem of beardlessness is presented: manipulating the body by smearing on a false beard either of blackberry juice or of enchanted grass. The flaw of the physical body, which apparently cannot be remedied from within, is corrected from the outside. This does not solve the problem permanently, but it allows for a new perception of Cú Chulainn within the heroic code of the narrated world. What appears important in the narrated world is that the false beard allows Cú Chulainn to appear bearded, which in turn allows others to see him as bearded. It is the publicly visible mediality that seems of prime importance, as communal seeing in particular appears vital in the assessment of an opponent’s identity and honour. Strengthening this argument is the fact that these classifications of Cú Chulainn do not rely on his merits but solely on a visual assessment, and it is only through another visual assessment after his act of deception that a recategorisation can take place.

Lóch, for instance, may well know that the beard is but deception, both because a beard of blackberry juice can hardly appear very convincing but is more ‘boys’ play’ and because the hero’s beardlessness is freely mentioned throughout the narrative. It is therefore also hard to argue that Nad Crantail is unable to properly perceive and recognise Cú Chulainn in the encounter – too obvious are the other bodily features so often mentioned, like the supernumerary fingers (and toes), the tri-coloured hair and the multi-coloured dimples. Perhaps it is more likely that Nad Crantail deliberately partakes in Cú Chulainn’s ploy for the mutual benefit of an appropriate, heroic fight. Nad Crantail’s comment that he thinks it better that Cú Chulainn has a beard would clearly support this reading, as does the subsequent request for being granted fair play now. His walk around the hill conveniently prevents him from observing the process of change and hence the act of deceit. That Cú Chulainn’s act of deception does not carry any problematic associations for him can be explained by ‘the easy acceptance of deceit in the service of honour’506 in early Irish literature, as O’LEARY phrases it. If he can subsequently gain honour in the fight, how he achieved the combat in the first place is of little importance. Manipulating the body, it seems, is preferable to diverting from fír fer.

Yet why is a new, communal perception so important? O’LEARY provides a vital clue in his assessment of the Nad Crantail episode. He maintains that ‘much of the comedy in the nad [sic] Crantail episode has its origin in nad [sic] Crandtail’s abstruse and persistent inability to distinguish between shadow and substance, appearance and ability, in his dealings with Cú Chulainn.’507 In this comment O’LEARY raises the central crux that Cú Chulainn’s appearance and ability do not match. His opponents’ adherence to the usual categories of heroic identity – looks mediating identity and abilities – thus leads to a fatally wrong assessment. Categorising Cú Chulainn by the usual gaze destabilises his heroic identity, an identity that can only be affirmed again by displaying his manipulated body.

In the wider context, it becomes clear why beards serve such an important function in relation to expressive mediality. The importance of beards in medieval European literature has already been mentioned briefly, and similar concerns are observable in Celtic literatures also. SHEEHAN summarises that in ‘medieval Celtic literature, beards – aside from the whiskers of loathly ladies – are the preserve of male characters. Beards were a sign of adult masculinity in medieval Wales: at least one medieval Welsh legal text links adult male status with having a beard.’508 In the early Irish tradition there are many references to facial hair which testify to a ‘central importance attached to hair and beards as social and legal indicators’509, as SAYERS asserts. In addition, they also express and visualise the distinction between male and female characters.510 MCCONE also draws attention to ‘the importance attached in early Irish literature to the beard as a sign of full manhood.’511 SAYERS finds that a beard was ‘the symbol and metonym of the adult warrior.’512 The connection was so central that beards even became synonymous with adult warriors. In the legal text Geisi Ulchai (‘The Law of Beards’) a reference states that it is a geis (a ‘taboo’) ‘for it [the beard, i.e. the generic hero] to strike woman or boy.’513 In short, beards affirm both male identity and adult age, signifying on both a gender and an age axis and expressing legal maturity.514

The lack of growth of facial hair cannot be controlled by an individual but is determined solely by anatomical factors (hormones). This natural, anatomical nature of beards is perhaps what points to a deeper, underlying problem if they are absent. It is therefore not surprising that in early Irish texts male figures lacking a beard are often somewhat problematic.515 One obscure reference is found in a legal text, Críth Gablach (‘Branched Purchase’). MCCONE, in a brief discussion of this text, argues that the junior grade of fer midboth extends ‘from fourteen years to twenty, to beard-encirclement. Even though he acquire the estate of a bóaire before he have an encircling beard, his oath does not avail beyond the oath of a fer midboth […]’.516 The lack of a beard thus clearly counteracts any other merits. SAYERS explains that literary as well as legal texts infer that the
absence of a beard also prohibited the early Irish male from acceding to other social stations as well. […] A beardless man cannot function as ollam. While ulchach meant ‘bearded’, cuairtulchach meant ‘beardencircled’ and was the legal term for one who had attained the age of maturity.517

Just like a beard is a trusted sign of maturity, the absence of a beard likewise became a sign: of immaturity (at least in legal terms) and boyish nature.

In turning to literary texts, King Conaire in TBDD is perhaps the best-known beardless figure in early Irish literature. It is explicitly stated that he is beardless when he travels to Tara to take up the kingship and it has been suggested by JOSEPH FALAKY NAGY that this detail hints at his being unfit to rule.518 A similar problem in relation to assuming social roles is presented in Immaccallam in dá Thúarad (‘The Colloquy of the Two Elders’), where the poet Néde mac Adnai likewise has to enchant some grass to appear bearded in order to be allowed to even compete for the position of ollam (the highest-ranking poet), as a beardless man cannot hold this position of honour.519 Beardless youths are regularly denied combat in heroic literature. Yet, as O’LEARY rightly points out, ultimately this relies on aptitude not age: ‘[a] beardless youth could earn the right to be fought as an adult as does Cormac Connlonges in Togail Bruidne Da Derga, Connla in Aided Óenfir Aífe, the Emain boy-troop in the Táin, and, of course, Cú Chulainn himself.’520 Despite these exceptions, on a general basis a beardless face nevertheless can be said to lead to a denial of full manhood as well as the inability to fulfil social roles. The fact that taunting directed towards the gender axis is also possible (if far less frequent) within early Irish literature is demonstrated by SAYERS. He mentions the case of Ailill Inbanna (‘Ailill the womanly’) who was so called because of his inability to grow a beard.521 That Cú Chulainn’s male identity is never questioned in TBC provides another indicator that the text is developing the motif of the beardless youth consciously and in a particular discourse: that of heroic combat.

Supporting this reading is the fact that Cú Chulainn’s beardless appearance does not appear to be a problem in the assessment of his body in terms of beauty. It is not mentioned when he displays himself to the Connacht army and it is repeatedly stated at other points that he is commonly perceived as very handsome.522 In terms of narrative placement, the problematic lack of a beard appears only when Cú Chulainn is to fight other warriors and in relation to fír fer in particular. The problem may lie in that, to refer back to O’LEARY’s quote, there ‘simply is not much glory in slaughtering a pre-pubescent opponent.’523 In the ever-present pursuit of glory in TBC, Cú Chulainn’s beardless appearance is not a physical problem but a social one, because it makes him appear like a pre-pubescent boy and thus like an unworthy opponent. The narrative crux lies in that the Connacht army needs to fight him to advance in their quest, but some men at least cannot do so heroically because he has no beard.524 The Táin thus shows a (perhaps humorous) tension of heroic prerogatives and the need to advance, an added challenge for the Connacht warriors besides the single combats (although, as pointed out already, most of them seem little concerned with his boyish appearance).

This simultaneous challenge to the heroic behaviour of the Connacht army is connected to the humiliation of the opponents who fight Cú Chulainn so reluctantly. For despite being belittled, taunted and refused combat in the examples discussed here, Cú Chulainn remains victorious in every fight. Nad Crantail visits the Connacht camp with a spear vertically lodged in his body before returning to the distorted Cú Chulainn to be slain. Before he dies he openly proclaims and even shows his opponent’s superiority on his own body. Mand manages to throw Cú Chulainn three times before the latter, urged on by his charioteer, enters his ríastrad: [t]ic a ḟerg niad 7 atraig a bruth míled cor trascair Mand fón corthi coro scor i mminágib.525 On a physical level, there is no greater deconstruction of a hero than shattering his body into pieces, and it is telling that Mand receives from the otherwise martially refined Cú Chulainn exactly the treatment he had proposed to give the Ulster hero himself. That in doing so Cú Chulainn diverts from proper heroic combat might be occasioned by the idea of serving back to Mand what he had wanted to deal, or in that Mand himself does not seem a particularly refined warrior.526

The unpleasant Cúr suffers even greater humiliation. When he meets Cú Chulainn for the fight, the Ulster hero is practising feats and does not even realise that he is being attacked, even though Cúr plies him with weapons for a third of a day. When Cú Chulainn is told about the attack he briefly diverts from practice and kills Cúr with a swift Ball-throw. Cúr thus cannot keep his promise of a swift victory but again this idea is inverted. Moreover, Cúr is killed by a BALl, something associated with boyish play and practising heroic feats. This denies Cúr a heroic death of dying by a weapon. Cú Chulainn thus simultaneously destroys his opponent, his honour and his fama. In the case of the more honourable Lóch, Cú Chulainn grants him his dying wish and retreats from him so that his dead body does not suggest (presumably to the people encountering it later) that he fled from the Ulster hero.527 Cú Chulainn establishes his heroic superiority both through his fighting skills and his noble conduct. Even though his opponents failed to grant him the basic status of warrior based on his looks, he now proves himself more noble and able than they are.

Cú Chulainn’s actions can also be seen to humiliate the whole Connacht army. Of course it is already shameful that a single warrior can withstand them all. That it is a beardless single warrior who can do so is particularly shameful, as in their perception they are being repelled by a single Ulster youth.528 The texts thus suggest that ultimately it is not the hero but their perception of him that appears flawed and their constant refusal to acknowledge Fergus’ recital of his previous deeds shows their pride and/ or inability to adjust to this unusual warrior. Cú Chulainn stands quite simply outside ‘their’ category of hero and rather than adjust their categorisation some warriors continue to taunt him for his physical flaw. In their defence it has to be said that, in a literary tradition that places such great emphasis on the descriptive construction of bodies and being able to deduce their status and identity from their appearance, it is telling that such a prominent hero evades this simple equation.529 In order to fully grasp his exceptional heroic identity, those categories of perception commonly employed must be abandoned or at least stretched. Whether this questioning and reassessment of the paradigms which construct heroic male identity is a deliberate and perhaps even critical engagement with such concepts cannot be conclusively determined here but the reflective treatment of other subjects in TBC would at least make this a possibility.

A careful reading of these episodes suggests that despite at first appearing as an open flaw on his otherwise heroic body, the lack of a beard ultimately greatly contributes to Cú Chulainn’s heroic identity. He appears as the greatest of heroes despite this common flaw and his heroic body seems to compensate for the lack by appearing even more extreme. This is the case even if at times he has to exploit the standard reading of bodies and trick his opponents: Cú Chulainn cannot control his physical body to sprout a beard, but he can influence how his body is perceived within the narrated world; he can appear bearded and be fought nobly. On a more serious note, the detail is not just a marker of his extraordinary nature but points at some underlying ‘body issues’. Cú Chulainn is unable to control certain aspects of his body but, whenever he can, he seeks to (re‐)gain control by controlling its reading – a theme which is also connected to his beautiful appearance and his ríastrad.

2.3.2Female or No-Male? A Study of the Beardless Njál in Brennu-Njáls saga

Old Norse-Icelandic literature also features a very prominent beardless figure and he too suffers grave humiliation because of this flaw. This is the beardless Njál in Brennu-Njáls saga, a lengthy saga dated to the late thirteenth century (between 1280 and 1285 by SVEINSSON530). Njála, as the saga is often adoringly called, is ‘the longest and most widely acclaimed of the Íslendingasögur’531 according to ÓLASON.WILLIAM PENCAK also asserts that the ‘characters, situations and institutions it portrays embody the great ethical questions which perpetually vex humankind.’532 The text is preserved in over sixty manuscripts, twenty-one of which are medieval. The eponymous Njál is a man of great honour, wise, versed in law like no other and valued as a giver of advice. The saga outlines the conflicts Njál and his best friend, Gunnar, the ‘bravest and noblest man in Iceland’533, find themselves unwillingly entrenched in. Throughout the saga, Njál is highly esteemed in his society and many of his sons and foster-sons likewise become great men. Even though his advice often causes catastrophe rather than resolution, Njál is portrayed as an exceptional figure in his society.534 He thus fulfils the definition of a hero as an outstanding and esteemed individual even if he is not a martial hero but a man of the law. The saga clearly stresses that Njál is situated not only within but at the head of his society, a fact which provides a striking parallel to Cú Chulainn.

The treatment Njál receives within the saga for what DRONKE calls his ‘effeminate visage’535 is a clear indicator that his beardlessness is perceived as a shame. Although no such ‘opprobrium is attached to any of these beardless men except Njál’ and even in his case ‘we are not told that he was mocked for his physical eccentricity until Hallgerðr […] began to do so’536 the theme is prominently developed in the few instances in which it occurs. In the familial feud with his best friend Gunnar, Njál is ridiculed and humiliated by Hallgerð, Gunnar’s wife, at various points in the text. This in turn causes a string of revenge actions that ultimately lead to Njál’s death.

Yet Hallgerð is not the one to announce this physiological detail to the audience. Instead, the lack of a beard is revealed very prominently when Njál is first introduced in the saga by the narrative voice:

Njáll hét maðr; hann var son Þorgeirs gollnis, Þórólfssonar. Móðir Njáls hét Ásgerðr ok var dóttir Áskels hersis ins ómálga; […]. Hann var vel auðigr at fé ok vænn at áliti, en sá hlutr var á ráði hans, at honum óx eigi skegg. Hann var lǫgmaðr svá mikill, at engi fannsk hans jafningi, vitr var hann ok forspár, heilráðr ok góðgjarn, ok varð allt at ráði, þat er hann réð mǫnnum, hógværr ok drenglyndr, langsýnn ok langminnigr; hann leysti hvers manns vandræði, er á hans fund kom.537

There was a man named Njal; he was the son of Thorgeir Gollnir, the son of Thorolf. Njal’s mother was Asgerd, the daughter of the Norwegian hersir Askel the Silent; […]. He was well off for property and handsome to look at, but there was one thing about him: no beard grew on him. He was so well versed in the law that he had no equal, and he was wise and prophetic, sound of advice and well-intentioned, and whatever course he counselled turned out well. He was modest and noble-spirited, able to see far into the future and remember far into the past, and he solved the problems of whoever turned to him.538

In this prominent description, Njál’s excellent character is paired with standard good looks. Strikingly, his beardless face is introduced at the very first opportunity and becomes an integral feature in identifying and imagining him as an individual. The lack of a beard would also be immediately obvious to other characters encountering Njál. That ‘hair and facial hair surrounds the face, the part of the body with the most concentrated and diverse communicative functions. […]’539, as BARTLETT points out, means that there would be plenty of opportunities for other characters to comment on such an unusual appearance.

ELSE EBEL provides one of the few assessments of the idea of beardlessness in Germanic tradition. EBEL finds that ‘[s]tärker als die meisten Elemente, die das Individuum auszeichnen, sind Haar und Bart in ihren vielfältigen natürlichen wie auch artifiziellen Formen Anzeiger für altermässige, rechtliche, soziale und relig[iöse] Wertigkeit […]’.540 To recall BARTLETT’s comment, ‘[i]n the populations discussed here, those of medieval Europe, the most important biological differentia were that adults and not children had body hair and that only adult males had facial hair.’541 In Njál’s case too, the negative assessment and subsequent ridicule of his beardless face are openly based on the opinion that a man lacking a beard cannot be a proper man at all. However, while Cú Chulainn is ridiculed for being a boy rather than a man, Njál is assessed along the male-female dichotomy.

The problematic nature of the flaw is not outlined in the first descriptive mention by the narrative voice, quoted above. It is only revealed later in the narrative when Njál’s beardless face is talked about by other characters in a specific context. As mentioned above, the humiliation takes place in relation to his feuding with his friend Gunnar. The conflict arises when their wives, Bergthóra and Hallgerð, fall out over seating orders during a friendly visit. While the men remain firm friends after the dispute has been settled, the women instigate their servants to kill each other. This results in a long chain of slayings and retributions until the matter is finally settled at the Þing.

In a turn of ill luck, some beggar-women visit Gunnar’s farm shortly after the Þing meeting. Hallgerð is keen to rekindle the conflict and asks them what they had observed at Njál’s farm, where they had stayed the previous night. One of the beggar women relates that one of Njál’s servants was carting manure to the hillside to make the land more fertile and in this Hallgerð sees her chance to scorn Njál. She replies: ‘[þ]at mun ek til finna, sem satt er’, segir Hallgerðr, ‘er hann ók eigi í skegg sér, at hann væri sem aðrir karlmenn, ok kǫllum hann nú karl inn skegglausa, en sonu hans taðskegglinga […]’.542 Hallgerð immediately asks the Skald Sigmund to compose a verse about this matter. These verses are níðvísur (‘defamatory poetry’), a well-known and very effective medium for shaming in sagas. Hallgerð intentionally wants the term inn skegglausi to become a nickname and thus identifying for Njál. It is also worth pointing out that the clearly positive figure Njál is shamed not because of something he has done (or neglected to do) but because of an anatomical detail that stands outside his control but here assumes a remarkable social importance. This is reminiscent of Cú Chulainn’s dilemma and shows that the body as an ostensibly natural entity appears beyond the control even of such great characters: even they are not omnipotent but may carry the very sign of human limitations inscribed on them.

The linking of Njál’s non-beard to the growing of grass may reflect SAWYERs’ proposition of an Indo-European connection between hair and greenery543 and similar connections are known also from skaldic verse. GUÐRÚN NORDAL refers to the Snorra Edda and to Skáldskaparmál where of head hair it is said: ‘[h]air is referred to by calling it forest, or by some tree-name or other, describing it in terms of skull or brainpan or head, [and] the beard by referring to it in terms of chin or cheek or throat.’544 In Litla Skálda it is also said that ‘[h]uman hair may be called all kinds of tree-names and that which grows on the earth […]’.545 NORDAL notes that ‘the skaldic corpus contains a number of body-kennings that refer to flora for head, hair, eyelashes, tongue, chest, arms, and toes.’546 She further adds that although ‘[w]e would expect flora to provide the most common base words for the hair’547, there are only three examples of this in the thirteenth-century corpus, suggesting that although the connection was known, it was not wide-spread at this time. There is a (perhaps interpolated) Eddic stanza in Gylfaginning (Grímnismál 40) in which it is said that when the world was created from the body of the giant Ymir, the trees were made from his hair.548 This chimes with SAYERS’ proposition that in the ‘reconstructed Proto-Indo-European myth of the creation of the cosmos, hair finds its macrocosmic homologue in grass and trees that like the heavens, earth and sea, are created through the sacrifice and dismemberment of a giant primal being.’549 These parallels are not exact but an underlying connection between hair and greenery is evident nevertheless.550

Although these examples refer to the hair of the head and not beards, the connection between human hair and vegetal entities seems well enough established for a re-interpretation according to the specific needs of Brennu-Njáls saga. In Njála, this comparison also plays on the added insult that Njál in his wisdom knows how to make nature fertile but he cannot apply the same procedure to his own face. The mention of grass may simply be a stepping-stone from which Hallgerð can conveniently resume her feuding, but on a larger scale it may also prefigure that Njál himself is doomed even if he continuously nourishes the community with (some of) his advice.

Njál’s sons are also included in the shaming. On the most basic level this indicates that Hallgerð’s comment cannot successfully imply a correspondence between barren face and barrenness or unmanliness in a sexual sense, as Njál clearly has male offspring. Yet even though they all have beards, they are still shamed because they are the descendants of a beardless man. Their own hair, Hallgerð suggests, sprouted because of dung, a comment that again implicitly links hair with vegetation. The remark may have arisen somewhat spontaneously in relation to the beggar woman’s mention of dung, but it in itself is humiliating because it evokes a picture of the sons (or Njál) smearing their faces with animal faeces in order to escape their father’s fate. The insult thus functions on various levels and is clearly designed to point towards the only flaw that is readily observable on Njál.

The far-reaching negative implications these spoken words of insult may have are quickly counteracted by Njál’s friend Gunnar, who prohibits the verses from being recited in public. However, this authorised prohibition (spoken by a man) does not prevent the beggar-women from visiting Njál’s farm again to tell his wife Bergthóra about the humiliation her family has suffered.With the exception of Sigmund, who uses the formal medium of skaldic verse, the insult travels exclusively along female lines. On these lines Gunnar’s (male) prohibition is futile and so the insult is successfully passed on.

At the other end it is again a woman, Bergthóra, who receives the news and goads her husband and sons to be ‘proper men’ and avenge the insult. Bergthóra here fulfils the typical female role of a whetter, a woman who goads a man (or men) into action (usually revenge). Yet she does so only implicitly by remarking on proper male behaviour. At table she proclaims that a great gift has been given to her household: ‘[þ]ér synir mínir eiguð allir eina gjǫf saman: þér eruð kallaðir taðskegglingar, en bóndi minn karl inn skegglausi.’551 Njál and his sons, however, do not immediately react to these insults. In an incredibly well-situated twist – since Njál’s lack of a beard questions his manhood – his son Skarphedin plays on the idea of typical male and female reactions to such insults. Skarphedin replies: ‘[e]kki hǫfu vér kvenna skap,’ segir Skarpheðinn, ‘at vér reiðimsk við ǫllu’.552 This suggests that in his view, a possible male response to such an insult in Íslendingasögur is not brute physical force but reluctance.

The episode also features an ingenious instalment of expressive mediality on the level of body language. Although all three brothers remain silent, their bodily reactions are described in detail. Skarphedin glotti við, en þó spratt honum sveiti í enni, ok kómu rauðir flekkar í kinnr honum, en því var ekki vant. Grímr var hljóðr ok beit á vǫrrinni. Helga brá ekki við.553 Helgi is apparently unfazed by this insult, while Grim has to chastise his own body, his lip, in order to remain silent. Skarphedin, on the other hand, appears the victim of an involuntary bodily change. He exhibits a suddenly rubicated appearance accompanied by dynamic, energetic elements in his sweat. Many Íslendingasögur suggest that rage is expressed through such uncontrollable physical changes and this motif is discussed at length by ISABELLE RAVIZZA.554 The proud and haughty Skarphedin shows the strongest bodily reaction and this is not the last time that a body’s instinctive response is foregrounded in Njála.

Hallgerð again mentions the nicknames when Njál’s sons visit her farm on business and are involved in a verbal quarrel with Hrapp, another farmer. EBEL draws attention to the fact that such nicknames based on the lack of a beard are found elsewhere in the Íslendingasögur555 (Ásmund skegglauss in Grettis saga, for instance), which shows that beardless appearance was rare enough to be able to function as an identifier. In Njála, however, the nickname is specifically used to insult and not to identify Njál. In the presence of Hrapp, Hallgerð openly repeats her humiliating remarks: ‘[f]arið heim, taðskegglingar’, segir Hallgerðr, ‘ok munu vér svá jafnan kalla yðr heðan af, en fǫður yðvarn karl inn skegglausa.’556 Both the speech act in itself (in being presented in front of an external party, Hrapp) as well as the naming are reminiscent of judgements spoken at Assemblies in the Íslendingasögur. It may therefore be assumed that Hallgerð’s words are not mere gossip anymore but have assumed an official aura, even though they are still spoken in the private space of her home.

There is a third mention of the insulting nickname and this time it is uttered outside of Gunnar’s farm, at a Þing. There it features in an episode that presents a complex interplay of (actual and possible) insults. This begins with a rather typical resolution of a conflict. After a lengthy quarrel, several men contribute to a wergild to be paid to the farmer Flosi as compensation for the death of his son. In addition to much silver, Njál also puts a valuable silken cloak and a pair of boots on top of the heap of goods. Flosi arrives to collect his wergild but takes offence at the cloak, which could be worn either by a man or a woman. In a literary tradition in which ‘Gewänder die Geschlechtsordnung [definieren]’557, this reaction emphasises the problematic status of the garment and points to divergent evaluations of it.

For Njál, it is most likely the material of the cloak that defines its worth, as in the world of the Íslendingasögur ‘seidene Stoffe und Gewänder von unermesslichem Wert waren.’558 For Flosi ‘scheint die feine Seide jedoch mit der weiblichen Sphäre in Verbindung zu stehen, weshalb er diese Dreingabe zur Sohnesbusse als Beleidigung auffasst und Njáll als effeminiert beschimpft.’559 In addition, the garment may remind Flosi of the cloak the woman ‘Hildigunn had flung when she attacked his masculinity’560 shortly before. CARL F. BAYERSCHMIDT and LEE M. HOLLANDER also affirm that the cloak could be seen as a sign of effeminacy, in their view the deadliest insult in Northern culture.561 Scholarly opinion seems firm in this assessment, as SVEINSSON likewise argues that it is an ‘insinuation of unmanliness […] and at the same time he [Flosi] recalled Höskuld’s bloody cloak […] and Hildigunn’s adamant demand for blood vengeance.’562 The piece of clothing thus epitomises a complex interplay between personal insult and goading for revenge, with the lack of revenge in turn leading to further insult and humiliation.

But first it has to be publicly revealed who contributed the cloak. When no one answers Flosi’s question, Skarphedin challenges him to make a guess. Flosi answers: ‘[e]f þú vill þat vita, þá mun ek segja þér, hvat ek ætla: þat er mín ætlan, at til hafi gefit faðir þinn, karl inn skegglausi – því at margir vitu eigi, er hann sjá, hvárt hann er karlmaðr eða kona.’563 Flosi’s statement, which openly states that looking at Njál’s face causes confusion, implies that a gender-ambivalent cloak could only be given by a gender-ambivalent character. The comment clearly connects Njál’s body with the garment even though it is not clear if Njál has previously worn the cloak or not. Flosi thus returns the insult that he thinks has been aimed at him by openly challenging Njál’s status as a male along the paradigm of male-female division. In this context, Flosi calls on the practice of visually observing bodies to determine male or female identity, and thus evokes a public perspective on Njál’s body.

It is clear that the epithet inn skegglausi (‘the beardless one’) is to be understood along these lines and not along the man/boy divide. In Old Norse-Icelandic literature, such an insult is tremendously offensive. PREBEN MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN discusses such gender-based insults in relation to the Norse concept of nið. He asserts that
in the world of the sagas nothing hits a man harder than the allegation that he is no man. Affronts to honour such as those now under discussion are time and again denoted in Old Icelandic by the word níð […]. It is difficult to give a precise definition of Old Icelandic níð, but accusations with sexual import form the core of the meaning […].564

The at first seemingly unimportant anatomical detail of Njál’s beardless face has by now been turned into a nickname and ultimately provides a stepping stone for the worst possible insult in the narrated world of the Íslendingasögur.

It is perhaps no coincidence that it is in the public setting of the Þing that the aspect of visually observing such a flaw, and of determining whether a character is male or female by the presence of a beard, is mentioned for the first time. Skarphedin again replies to this insult. He cunningly turns the focus away from looking at his father towards looking at himself and his brothers: ‘[i]lla er slíkt gǫrt at sneiða honum afgǫmlum, er engi hefir áðr til orðit dugandi maðr. Meguð þér þat vita, at hann er karlmaðr, því at hann hefir sonu getit við konu sinni. Hafa fáir várir frændr legit óboettir hjá garði, svá at vér hafim eigi hefnt.’565 MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN finds that even if the concept of nið commonly plays on homosexual insults (which is does not do here), its essence is to deny full manhood to the person so accused: ‘[t]he man attacked must show that he is fit to remain in the community, by behaving as a man in the system of Norse ethics […]’.566 While this usually means martial action and/or revenge killings, in this case proof of Njál’s manhood is delivered by his sons. This may be because Njál himself, being an old man now and a reluctant fighter even when he was in his prime, does not immediately respond to the insult. Skarphedin installs himself and his brothers as visible proof of Njál’s manhood when he declares their prowess and honour. Njál has to be an able male because, as medieval theories of male virility suggest, only adult males had the physical prerequisites to produce sperm (and hence children).567 His beardless face may distinguish Njál visibly from other men, but his deeds place him firmly in the role of an honoured, adult male.

It remains to be asked why, on the level of expressive mediality, the text would include such a problematic detail as a beardless face in relation to so central a character. Why is Njál physically distinguished from other men, and why may it be the lack of a beard that signifies this distinction? On the most basic level, one may of course relate the anatomical distinction with his distinguished status in society. Njál is, quite simply, an extraordinary man. That the narrative voice only describes but does not evaluate the feature may strengthen this point. In the course of the narrative, when Njál’s beardlessness is talked about by other characters, it becomes a social stigma, at first only in certain contexts and with particular (ill-disposed) people but later also in the public arena of the Þing. The inability to grow a beard and the resulting beardless face are convenient markers on which insults may be based.

One possible reason for this is that beardlessness is an undebatable feature, as a beard is either present or not.While good looks or even righteous behaviour seem much more unfixed categories in the Íslendingasögur, a beardless face is always noticeable. In Njála this descriptive paradigm is charged with evaluative meaning in terms of gender division and seen as an unmanly feature. This possibility of either understanding the beardless face as a social signifier or of simply seeing in it an extraordinary physical feature is alluded to in the saga as well, as outside the group of people who deliberately seek to insult Njál the flaw does not impair him, physically or socially.

The development of Njál’s beardless face suitably demonstrates how a single descriptive paradigm may be both disregarded as unimportant (by the narrative voice) and evaluated socially. One and the same body, in fact one and the same descriptive paradigm, may be left unevaluated or read in terms of expressive mediality. This implies that even in the Íslendingasögur, in texts generally unconcerned with developing bodies in mediality discourse, some bodies can still appear as highly developed signifiers within a specific social discourse. Njála also tells about the tragic fate which Njál and his whole family suffer because of this anatomical flaw and stresses that it is not Njál’s physical body which causes problems, but the talk about his body. Such talk can create a potentially precarious position for a character within his society and he needs to affirm his identity through performative actions or with the help of his sons, as his face he cannot change.

A brief reference to another well-known beardless figure in Old Norse-Icelandic literature will help to demonstrate that it is indeed the evaluation of the body along social norms in a specific narrated world that is important. The character in question is Þiðrek af Bern. Þiðrek apparently also never grew a beard, even though he has the stature of a giant in most sources. Þiðreks saga af Bern is the most widely known of these works. It presents the longest medieval biography of Þiðrek/Dieterich568, as ROSWITHA WISNIEWSKI argues. The saga has been classified as both a riddarasaga and a fornaldarsaga and may have been written at the court of Bergen around 1250 under King Hákon Hákonarson.569 Þiðreks saga af Bern presents an interesting conflation of older (Low German) sources and genuinely Norse ideas, and the bodies that it portrays, among them that of the main hero, often seem to reflect this tension.

Þiðrek is the son of King Thetmar and Queen Odilia of Bern. He is first introduced by a lengthy ekphrasis that provides a clear picture of the hero: Þiðrek is broad-shouldered, has long and fine hair, an even face and a fair complexion. Within this description, it is also mentioned that no beard grew on him, no matter what age.570 It may be argued with CLAUDIA BORNHOLDT that Þiðrek’s body combines noble, courtly features (fair complexion, golden hair, beautiful hands) with Norse characteristics of a giant (exceptional height, strong and thick limbs).571 BORNHOLDT in fact discerns a general tendency of Norse literature to merge the giant figure of old with the ‘new man’ of European courtly literature, with the latter being characterised most frequently by a slender body and general lightness.572 ‘Þiðrek’s awkward shape, on which the saga explicitly comments’, BORNHOLDT concludes, ‘must be understood as an outward sign of the merged cultures of the heroic age and the new chivalric culture found in the saga and in the riddarasögur in general.’573 Yet how does the mention of his beardlessness fit into this highly complex body?

Þiðrek’s beardlessness is clearly mentioned in the text but it is not developed in any narrative context. Þiðrek is never taunted for it, nor is the feature explicitly read or commented on by the text or other characters. The only medial value that it may hold is that it makes Þiðrek unique as a leader. Since a beard is a standard feature in this saga, and one which many kingly and noble warriors proudly display, Þiðrek’s beardless appearance visibly distinguishes him from other men; it makes him stand out and helps other characters to identify him. The motif also separates Þiðrek from his giantish ancestors who were often portrayed as excessively hairy. His grandfather Samson, for instance, is described in equally detailed terms, yet he is of dark complexion, with long and bushy hair and a large beard, and also with black eyebrows so prominent they sit on his face like two crows.574 The contrast to his grandson is striking: even though Þiðrek incorporates giantish features, the ekphrasis produces a very different impression.

These must remain tentative conclusions since the text does not discuss the social importance of the beardless face but shows a lack of interest in the feature. The text’s own lack of attention is the reason why this example is only mentioned briefly here, as a reminder that the texts themselves direct the gaze of this study. If a text does not install a descriptive paradigm in mediality discourse through narrative development or open assessement, it is very difficult to determine its meaning. Another reason for discussing Njál over Þiðrek is that Njála complements the discussion of Cú Chulainn in developing the gender axis of beardlessness. The mention of Þiðreks saga af Bern nevertheless helped to show the diversity, but also the limitations, of mediality discourse in medieval texts in relation to a single descriptive paradigm.

In discussing the beardless Cú Chulainn and the beardless Njál it has been shown that in both cases the lack of a beard is a highly developed signifier in terms of expressive mediality. Even in the varying developments of the motif, beardlessness mediates a body that does not comply with the standards that signify adult male identity in these narrated worlds. The descriptive paradigm undermines the characters’ status as warrior and law-speaker respectively. They may be excluded from the more abstract category of adult male as defined in the narrated worlds. Although neither of the men is hindered in fulfilling their roles physically, the perception of their bodies in society clearly points towards a problematic reading of their bodies and thus towards a subsumed status in certain contexts. ARMIN SCHULZ claims that such remarkably individualist traits of characters are generally not connoted positively in medieval texts but are presented as precarious or downright negative.575 This is apparently true regardless of whether they are seen as reflecting an exorbitant nature or are employed as a sign of extraordinary distinctiveness somehow akin to modern perceptions of (individual) identity.576 ARMIN SCHULZ concludes: ‘Individualität im heutigen Sinn bleibt für die Vormoderne eine Bedrohung, eine Abweichung, die zu sozialer Exklusion und damit zur Gefährdung der Identität führt.’577 The different ways in which the trope can be developed, age and gender, reveal how ingeniously medieval texts may utilise such a motif. Yet ultimately, it is the individual hero who has to deal with the perceived shortcomings of his body in his own way.

In order to avoid repetition, conclusive remarks about expressive mediality are presented at the end of the next chapter, when the related issue of the other has also been considered. However, a few brief remarks on the quotation at the beginning of this chapter are in order to sum up the previous discussions. As the quote implies, bodies in medieval texts can be perceived as matter in the narrated world, as being a consciously created part of a textual universe. Yet the previous close readings suggest that in relation to literary texts, bodies can also shape the narrated world. Bodies, in fact, are not only the boundaries of the self but, because they are vital for shaping a narrated world’s culture, they are also the boundaries of the self’s society: they make the social stratification of the narrated world meaningful for the audience. Only because bodies are (quite literally) seen to relate to the world and to other bodies within this world can their identity be mediated and understood. The many observing gazes that have been outlined so far establish a close relation between bodies within the framework of specularity and visuality but also within spoken discourse. This shows that, in order to signify, bodies must be – and are – seen and/or talked about in the narrated world, an idea that will also be important in relation to the bodies in the next chapter.

3I am the Other – Who are You?
Expressive Mediality and the Other

In short, what is at stake is not simply the status
of those bodies which might be termed monstrous,
but the being in the body of us all.578

3.1Ideas of Otherness in Medieval Literature

The previous chapter discussed how expressive mediality can situate a body within a (normative) society or within a specific stratum of this society. It also probed the boundaries of adult male identity by discussing a single descriptive paradigm, beardlessness. The following close readings will examine how expressive mediality can not only shape a self but also an other, an identity which does not comply with or openly contradicts that of the self and thus unsettles the narrated world in various respects. The following analyses are concerned with constructions and perceptions of the abnormal or even the monstrous and investigate these in their relation to what is perceived as normal. The chapter will examine and outline how these concepts are given corporeal form in medieval texts. It presupposes that these particular literary characters are not an amorphous mass but that their appearance is meaningfully and purposefully structured. In distinguishing self from other, the idea of placing bodies (and characters) in a semiotic system becomes particularly important. Yet the related issues of placement and spatialisation will also be addressed in relation to the concrete spatial location of others in the narrated world.

As was the case with the term self, it is difficult to define the concept of an other. LAMBERTUS, by means of an explanation, grounds our (apparent) inability to define the concept in that something which is so radically different from one’s own categories simply cannot be categorised by them.579 Alternatively, it may also be proposed that the category of other is simply too vast and too fluid to be conclusively defined and instead needs redefinition in each particular case. This approach best captures the fluidity not just of the concept but also of concrete manifestations of others, for instance in medieval texts. The definition offered here is therefore a broad one and leaves room for adjustment in the individual analyses. For the present purpose, an other is a ‘figure of difference’580, to use SHILDRICK’s words.

The figure embodying this difference may be a human of a different culture and/or religion, an animal or a monstrous creature, a merging of (all or some of) these categories or a different being altogether (god, troll, giant, etc.). In all of these cases the other presents a picture of alterity in that it differs from the self in appearance, behaviour, morals and/or many other aspects. In this chapter the discussion will be limited to non-human creatures in the Old Norse-Icelandic examples and to a human changing into an abject manifestation of martial energy in the discussion of early Irish literature. In both cases, the other may be referred to as monstrous (albeit on different levels), a matter briefly explained below. The other also presents a different structure to the self with regard to descriptive paradigms and it may challenge and even threaten the order of the narrated world.

Despite its apparently categorical difference from a self, LAMBERTUS notes that the other is most meaningful in relation to a self.581 LAMBERTUS refers to JAN and ALEIDA ASSMANN’s idea of the relationship between a self and an other. ASSMANN and ASSMANN assert that

Erzeugung von Identität bedeutet notwendig zugleich Erzeugung von Alterität. Das eine ist nur die Kehrseite des anderen. […] Eine solche [historische] Xenologie geht von der Prämisse aus, daß jede Kultur, schon um überhaupt tradierbar zu sein, eine Grenze ziehen muß zwischen dem Eigenen und dem Fremden.582

The construction of identity necessarily leads to a production of alterity. One is only the downside of the other. […] Such a [historical] xenology works from the assumption that in order to be recorded every culture has to draw a border between what is perceived as ‘own’ and ‘foreign.’

ASSMANN and ASSMANN’s comment emphasises that the paradigms along which these categories are drawn and along which their boundaries are situated are specific to a particular culture. A similar point is formulated by WALDENFELS, who thinks that ‘jede Kultur, Gesellschaft, Lebenswelt oder Lebensform sich in bestimmten Grenzen bewegt, daß aber der Umgang mit den Grenzen […] erheblich variiert.’583 An engagement with and apprehension of such boundaries can be proposed for all of the texts discussed in this chapter, especially (but not exclusively) in relation to bodies.

In focusing solely on others that are non-human or abject and are situated within the discourse of monstrosity, the present study can focus on bodies which are noticeably different from the bodies of a self. Amongst all the other possible boundaries along which a self may be drawn in medieval texts, bodies emerge as a locus of fear because it is often through their bodies that characters are classified as either self or other, at least at first glance. In addressing these boundaries, ELISABETH SCHMID concludes that the monstrous has always prompted questions about what makes humans human and about the factors by which humans, animals, monsters or other others may be divided.584 These comments assert that, in discursive identity construction, the other (quite simply?) occupies a position in opposition to the self and thus creates a space in which boundaries can be negotiated. BILDHAUER and MILLS propose a more complex dichotomy: ‘the monstrous is constitutive, producing the contours of both bodies that matter (humans, Christians, saints, historical figures, gendered subjects and Christ) and, ostensibly, bodies that do not (animals, non-Christians, demons, fantastical creatures and portentous freaks).’585 While these observations may be valid in relation to BILDHAUER and MILLS’ sources, this chapter will argue that in some texts, monstrous bodies can also matter: both in themselves and in their relation to a self, but also because of the materiality which they assume in the texts.

To comprehend the nature of otherness, it must be asked what meaning might be assigned to others in medieval texts. While Irish studies seems to have neglected such topics (perhaps occasioned by the nature of the sources), this question has been asked in relation to Old Norse-Icelandic texts by researchers such as JOHN LINDOW586, JOHN MCKINNELL587, KATJA SCHULZ588, SIRPA AALTO589 and, most recently, HENDRIK LAMBERTUS590, who have all studied manifestations of ‘ab-normality’. Their studies prove that the categories or paradigms defining this ‘ab-’ vary from text to text, from self to self and from other to other. They may include the court-nature divide, gender issues or issues of favourable or unfavourable appearance (beauty and ugliness). The other may therefore appear in a sexual, racial or cultural discourse (and context), and it is important to acknowledge this context when assessing it.

LAMBERTUS assumes that the individual appearances of the other in original riddarasögur are due to the artistic skills and licence (and narrative needs, one might add) of individual compilers/redactors.591 As there appears to be no single, genre-typical appearance of the other in original riddarasögur, the sagas can playfully engage with the issue from various angles. The benefit of using the term other so broadly lies in that it leaves room for the individual paradigms which construct and mediate both self and other to be examined anew in each case. This also draws attention to the descriptive paradigms that give shape to a self in a text. For instance, it may be examined if an other is shaped in relation to a particular self (which encounters it) or rather in relation to general concepts such as ‘human nature’ or ‘courtliness’.

In an attempt to present a coherent chapter only two ways in which expressive mediality is employed in the shaping of an other will be discussed from each literary tradition. First, the focus lies on the direct opposition of a hero’s body with that of a monstrous creature. In relating these oppositions to monster theory it will asked how, even if the human, male, distinctly noble and/or courtly and beautiful body of a hero is not described in great detail, the body of the self can still provide a meaningful contrast to the bodies of others,which in turn are often described and thus marked. In talking about such encounters and oppositions in medieval German heroic literature, WALTER HAUG remarks that ‘[d]as Fremde, das Unverständlich-Gewaltsame manifestiert sich als hybride, verzerrte Gestalt. Der Gegner ist monströs und drückt damit die gefährliche Sinn- und Ordnungslosigkeit jener Welt aus, die er repräsentiert.’592 It will be analysed if in the examples discussed here the lack of sense and order that HAUG proposes for the German texts is indeed so categorically observable on bodies. Do the bodies of others present a complete contrast to an ordered and meaningful but often unmarked body of the hero? Or do they relate to the self in another way, a way which would allow them to be meaningful in their own right? These questions will help to determine whether the bodies (of self and other) really relate to each other only in total opposition or if perhaps they are in some way compatible with, or even appear as mirror images of, each other.

The second subchapter will briefly discuss cases of unstable appearances, of shape-shifting and metamorphosis. Through these tropes the texts repeatedly challenge the system of placing a body in a fixed semiotic system or social category based on its appearance. The challenge here lies not in that the semiotic system fails but in that bodily appearance seems changeable and deceiving and thus a character cannot be positioned securely. This may lead to false assessments of characters or later re-evaluation(s), a point that lays bare the unstable boundaries of the semiotic system on which the hero and other characters rely.

Before the analyses proper it is important to explain why all the others in these examples are seen as ‘somehow monstrous’. Most importantly, this does not mean that they are ‘monsters’, creatures that in the modern mind are irrevocably shaped by alien movies or children’s stories. It also does not mean that the others – especially trolls – would have been classified as monsters in medieval thought.593 Rather, they can be understood as exhibiting ‘some marks of the monstrous’ as imagined in medieval sources. For instance, in De Secretis Mulierum (‘Of the Secrets of Women’), a medieval treatise on natural philosophy, it is suggested that monsters can be formed from too much or too little matter; they might be too big or too small, possess too many or too few body parts, have parts relocated, or combine characteristics of more than one species.594 SIMEK also lists missing, hyperthrophic, somehow dislocated, animal- or supernumerary body parts, difference in size and colour or the material quality of the skin as the main designators of the monstrous in medieval sources, such as Isidore’s Etymologiae.595 Monstrous creatures are therefore not totally removed from the normal, human form but they show certain aspects on their bodies that diverge from that norm and thus come to signify a monstrous nature.

The characters discussed here also correspond to DOUGLAS’ general categorisation of the monstrous as creatures that (along with organic deformities or anomalous but harmless animal species) exist outside of or in contrast to the normally perceived categories.596 Finally, the creatures also fulfil a psychological function of the monstrous. GILMORE polemically proclaims that ‘[t]he mind needs monsters. Monsters embody all that is dangerous and horrible in the human imagination.’597 That such points may have influenced how the others in these texts are imagined is very likely, since they all clearly incorporate aspects of danger and horror. It can therefore be summarised that these others in their often striking visual bizarreness, their positioning in relation to the self and their psychological function are marked as (somehow) monstrous. By considering all of these areas, the discussions aim to show how all of these ideas matter in relation to bodies, how they creat ideas of bodies. This eclectic approach to monster theory reflects WILLIAMS’ idea that ‘the ubiquity of the monster dictates that its analysis will draw upon a wide variety of subject areas […]’598, much like many medieval representations of monstrous creatures also draw on a wide variety of sources.

In terms of the genres and texts selected for this chapter, the Íslendingasögur simply do not offer suitable examples for these concerns, as their characters are (almost?) exclusively human, with the possible exception of the occasional draugr, a human revenant. This is why only the original riddarasögur will be discussed further. The genre proves especially interesting for such discussions because these sagas frequently feature encounters with non-human adversaries. The heroes’ categorisation of them as malevolent monster or possible helper is based to a large extent on looking at and categorising their bodies. Two sagas will be discussed to examine the expressive mediality inherent in such encounters. These are Sigurðar saga þǫgla and Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers. Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers will also provide the sole focus in the second subchapter in relation to hamhleypa (‘shape-shifting’). In early Irish literature it is again the figure of Cú Chulainn as depicted in TBC that is analysed. Of course, there are other examples that could be discussed. But the striking change of this beautiful hero into a distorted, ugly figure during his ríastrad is an example too fascinating to be ignored, and too complex to relegate to the back of a chapter. In conjunction with the previous chapter, the renewed focus on Cú Chulainn allows for the rare opportunity to discuss self and other in relation to the same character and to address the boundaries between the two categories in the extreme. This is why this change will again be discussed in the second subchapter in relation to its perception as a metamorphosis.

The focus on the narrative construction of bodies will be applied much as it was in the previous chapter. Both subchapters will, however, also address the issue of geographic space to determine how and where the body of the other is situated in the narrated world. JEFFREY JEROME COHEN also addresses the importance of situating the monster in imagined space. He argues that ‘[t]he monster is difference made flesh, come to dwell among us’ and that it is ‘an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond – of all those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within.’599 COHEN’s understanding of space is complex: the other originates from categories of the self (within) but is initially imagined as distant (without) only to somehow return to the self (within). With regards to space it comes full circle, so to speak. As complex as this categorisation appears at first, it is fitting for the encounters with others discussed here.

The original riddarasögur often reflect this spatial categorisation of the other. In many sagas, a royal court is surrounded by wild, uncivilised regions outside it. These regions are inhabited by others who, by attack or deceit, may enter the courtly realm and threaten its people and social order. In TBC such a spatial distinction between court and outside is observable only in the macgnímrada, when Cú Chulainn threatens the stability of the court as he returns in his ríastrad after his first outing as a warrior. In the main cattle-raid narrative Cú Chulainn does encounter divine figures (and thus potential others like the goddess Morrígan and the Áes Síde) but these encounters can take place apparently everywhere and the figures are not approached as others by the hero.600 Yet an other(ness) is always already located inside Cú Chulainn through his battle-frenzy and Cú Chulainn actively seeks to contain it there in order not to let it break out and become visible. The issue of space and its relation to the meaningful creation of monstrous bodies will therefore be discussed from two rather different angles, even though in both cases bodies are central in drawing and reassessing boundaries on various levels.

3.2Reading Encounters with the Other

3.2.1Original riddarasögur: Male Heroes and Female Others

As was briefly outlined in the introduction, the original riddarasögur are characterised by an (apparent) opposition between the courtly world of the hero and the realm of nature outside it, in which animals and monstrous creatures dwell. These texts are thus often seen to consist of (however rigid) binaries such as court and wilderness, inside and outside, the human and the monstrous, civilisation and nature, the homely-friendly and the foreign-hostile. KARIN BOKLUND601, GLAUSER602 and, more recently, WALTER SCHÄFKE603 and LAMBERTUS604 have all engaged with these dichotomies. LAMBERTUS605, AALTO606, KATJA SCHULZ607, MCKINNELL608 and LINDOW609 have examined conceptions of the other in Norse literature and their role in such binaries. Their conclusions will provide valuable stepping stones to link such ideas about otherness and narrative topology to bodies and determine the role of (some) bodies in the construction of these categories.

Since in many respects the original riddarasögur reflect aspects of continental Romance, the construction of corteisie often incorporates continental motifs. In constructing others, however, the sagas often draw on Norse perceptions of the inhabitants of the wilderness, at times paired with Classical thoughts on the monstrous. GLAUSER emphasises that on a narrative level there are various oppositions that may separate the hero from the non-courtly adversary:

[d]ie Gegner des Märchensagahelden können mehrere, müßen jedoch mindestens eines der Merkmale „nicht-männlich“, „nicht-christlich“, „nicht-ritterlich“, „nicht-schön“, „nicht-gut“, „nicht-menschlich“ besitzen. Durch das Gegenbild, das die Opponenten aufzeigen, definieren sie den Helden. Alles, was nicht die Heldenmerkmale trägt, ist Bereich des Gegners, neutrale Zonen und Werte gibt es nicht. Die Personalisierung und Isolierung alles Bösen in einer Figur ermöglicht es, mit dem Gegner das Problem zu beseitigen, da es allein in diesem angelegt ist.610

The opponents of a riddarasaga-hero commonly include one or more of these characteristics: ‘non-male’, ‘non-Christian’, ‘non-courtly’, ‘non-beautiful’, ‘non-good’, ‘non-human’. The hero is defined by the difference that these features create. Everything that does not bear the marks of a hero belongs to the realm of the opponent as there are no neutral characteristics. The personalisation and subsequent isolation of everything perceived as bad on a character allows for destroying the problem together with the enemy, because the problem is located solely within the enemy.

GLAUSER thus proposes a strict dichotomy and argues that the hero is simply defined in opposition to his opponent, or vice versa. Yet quite often the hero only implicitly exhibits characteristics (they often go unmentioned) that the other openly negates (these are described). Such a strict dichotomy has been repeatedly questioned in recent scholarship, for instance by LAMBERTUS611 and SCHÄFKE.612 GLAUSER’s dichotomal thought model will also be reassessed in the following close readings, as will his subsequent comment that others personify evil and undesirable aspects.

However, since on the surface structure many original riddarasögur seem to adhere to this division of space and qualities, acknowledging such possible dichotomies is still a suitable starting point from which to explore these texts. For one, the arrangement of the narrated worlds often clearly reflects a division into court and nature. This may suggest that the sagas want the encounters to be read within such a dual narrative space, however much this space is questioned or redefined within the narrative. Nonetheless, there are texts that see the boundaries separating these poles as fluid rather than rigid. Some texts may even engage with the very foundations of the boundaries that define the poles and hence with the delineation of culture. SCHÄFKE’s ‘abstrakte[…] semantische[…] Räume der moralischen Werte’613, another important thought pertaining to this saga genre, which contends that space may be viewed as areas of shared moral values (usually also within the court-nature-dichotomy), do not always coincide with geographical space. For the present purpose it was decided to present two examples in which a hero enters the geographical realm of the other and thus encounters others in a place that is removed from his own both geographically and socially.

As encounters with others in the original riddarasögur are developed in relation to a wide variety of creatures such as dwarves, trolls, giants, dragons or serpents, it was further seen as beneficial to thematically limit the scope to others that are humanoid in appearance and thus may question the boundaries between human and non-human characters.614 In discussing female trolls, this study will therefore examine only one particular sub-category of anthropomorphic others (trolls) and one gender (female). KATHRYN HUME addresses such issues and argues that ‘monstrous beings’ are often ‘used to define a man as hero (both in the abstract and in relation to society), to define a hero as man (through comic deflation), and to comment on the nature of heroism.’615 By limiting the analyses to these particular others all of these points can be discussed simultaneously since the others are defined in opposition to the hero by both their troll nature and their female gender.

Two of these aspects of opposition to the hero coincide in the first category. Trolls are non-human according to common Norse categorisation and they are non-courtly because they live outside the court in forests and caves and do not adhere to courtly standards of behaviour.616 The sagas and mythological literature use various terms like jǫtunn, risi or troll which often overlap and are not clearly distinguished (or distinguishable) in the texts, as KATJA SCHULZ concludes.617 SIMEK contends that in the medieval mind, trolls would not have been counted amongst monsters (or monstrous races),618 yet they still exhibit various traits of the monstrous other (within the definition presented above) that make them interesting to consider here. Descriptions of trolls can be rather vague or unsystematic in the sources, which led LOTTE MOTZ to propose that previously there ‘existed various kinds of superhuman beings, of various designations, which had coalesced at the time of the recording of the texts.’619 In saga genres and the literature of the High Middle Ages in particular, as SIMEK remarks, ‘trolls take on more of the meaning of “fiend” so that they become a being in their own right among the beings of lower mythology.’620 Hauksbók (dated to the early fourteenth century) offers one of the only medieval attempts to define giants (a synonym for trolls, according to KATJA SCHULZ).621 Hauksbók states that they are called giants, they are the strongest of races and some of them are like humans in their manners but others are not.622 From this KATJA SCHULZ concludes that to medieval audiences, trolls were humanoid in appearance (sem aðrer menn, ‘like other men’), exceptionally strong (sercaster, ‘the strongest’) and distinguished from humans by terms like jǫtunn, risi or troll, although not always by their manners and behaviour.623

In focusing (however briefly) on female figures in the original riddarasögur it may be proposed that they often appear as subordinate to male figures and are hardly ever truly developed characters. Only in the stereotypical figure of the meykóngr (‘maiden-king’), a young and noble female ruler with often problematically aggressive qualities, are they assigned some importance in the texts.624 These female rulers often exhibit considerable hostility towards male suitors and thus break with the usual gender norms of original riddarasögur, which by and large propagate male supremacy. As will be briefly argued below, even though she inhabits a courtly space and is human, the meykóngr could also be classified as an other on the grounds of her behaviour, as she often openly transgresses gender roles and thus embodies a dangerous and disturbing inversion of the usual order of the narrated world.625

Except for these remarkable characters, female figures are hardly ever narratively developed or ‘fleshed out’ in these texts. In original riddarasögur, male and female figures seldom appear in the context of courtly love. LAMBERTUS sees this as evidence that in this group of texts ‘höfische Liebe als Ideal […] keinen konstitutiven Stellenwert […] einnimmt […]’.626 In this context, male heroes therefore cannot enforce their status as both male and hero against female figures, yet male identity still has to be reinforced continuously. As JUDY QUINN stresses, in the Norse world, social and sexual impotence are synonymous with effeminacy and therefore categorically opposed to a heroic and knightly identity.627 Male heroic identity has to be displayed and reinforced constantly, in relation to male or female adversaries.

The topic of male-female interaction in relation to identity construction and expressive mediality becomes more complex in relation to female trolls and giants. This may be because trolls and giants are ‘eine Chiffre für Verunsicherung […], eine Verunsicherung hinsichtlich des Rollenverhältnisses zwischen Mann und Frau.’628 KATJA SCHULZ argues for a clear distinction between human women and female trolls:

[e]ine schöne weibliche Gestalt stellt eine gute (Menschen‐)Frau dar, eine hässliche in der Regel eine Riesin. […] Interessant wird die Geschichte zum einen bei den hässlichen weiblichen Gestalten: Sie können positiv, indifferent oder negativ gezeichnet sein, es gibt also einen Grund genauer hinzuschauen.629

A beautiful female figure generally denotes a respectable (human) woman, an ugly one generally a giantess. […] Things get more interesting when ugly female figures are involved: these can be marked positively, indifferently or negatively, so there is a reason to take a closer look.

KATJA SCHULZ’S call for looking more closely at these figures is important especially in cases where there appears to be no conclusive system of how to successfully categorise such a being. In looking, and looking at the body in particular, only a first step is made in identifying these creatures as an other. Yet this initial categorisation does not foretell how a hero might relate to the creature afterwards. The encounters discussed here take place in the wilderness and when the hero is alone. He therefore relies solely on his own judgement of how to categorise and interact with a being that is non-human, non-courtly and female (that is, non-male).

Sigurðar saga þǫgla (‘The saga of Sigurð the Silent’) is one of the oldest riddarasögur. SIMEK argues that this well-preserved saga is extant in two recensions, the older and shorter redaction reaching back to c. 1350.630 DRISCOLL states that there are two early vellums: ‘AM 152 fol., dating from the early sixteenth century and preserving the saga in its entirety, and the fragmentary AM 596 4 to which comprises two separate fragments, the first from the middle of the second half of the fourteenth century, the second somewhat later.’631 All in all, there are about sixty manuscripts that preserve the saga, but these are defective to various degrees and for the most part date rather late, from the fourteenth well into the nineteenth century.632 The present analysis will focus on the longer redaction of the saga which is preserved in AM 152 fol. and is dated by DRISCOLL to the early sixteenth century.633

Although the saga is often linked to the fornaldarsögur in scholarship, it is representative of the original riddarasögur in that it combines courtly ideas with motifs of Norse progeny, as LAMBERTUS affirms.634 It can be characterised as both a bridal-quest and a maiden-king romance as the aim of the narrative plot is for Sigurð to avenge the mistreatment of his brothers at the hands of the meykóngr Sedentiana, subsequently conquering and marrying her himself.635 In narrating both his brothers’ and Sigurð’s many travels, the saga features a variety of encounters with non-human creatures, some of which are described in great detail. The prominent issue of gender opposition in the text has recently been discussed by LAMBERTUS, who also finds the saga an especially interesting text for examining corporeal identity construction in relation to the court-nature dichotomy.636

This discussion will focus on a relatively small number of bodies in the text. It will discuss the courtly and royal bodies of Sigurð and his brothers, Halfdan and Vilhjalm (whose maimed bodies will be discussed at length in the next chapter 4.4), and those of two troll-women, Fála and Flegða. A sixth important character, the meykóngr Sedentiana, will be mentioned only in passing. This may raise the expectation that the three male bodies belong to the courtly realm, while those of the troll-women are immediately associated with the nonhuman, the non-courtly and the wild. The close readings will, however, follow the saga and critically engage with these categories by discussing the bodies in their geographic space but also as something that can create social space, and, with it, identity. Sigurðar saga þǫgla at various points draws attention to the fact that descriptions of bodies help to categorise a character according to various paradigms, such as human/non-human, courtly/non-courtly, etc., even if the text at times seems to question these categories.

The relationship between space and body is prominently developed at the very beginning of the saga. While Halfdan and Vilhjalm are ordinary king’s sons and grow up at court, their brother Sigurð is excluded from his family because of a bodily flaw: his lack of speech. The narrative voice introduces Sigurð and makes it clear how he is evaluated by other characters:

Sigurdr þotti ecki bradger j vppuexti sinum. þotti monnum sem hann munde fatt skynia þath er menn | hofduzt ath. þaa er hann var .uij. uetra gamall hafdi eingi þa heyrt hann tala. þui virde kongr og adrir menn vt j fraa hann eitt fol þat er huorcki mundi faa mal ne minne. og lagde kongr aa hann mikla wræct.637

Sigurð was not thought an early developer in his youth. It seemed to people that he could only comprehend little about people’s affairs. Even when he was seven years old nobody had heard him speak. This is why the king and other men thought him a fool who could neither speak nor think, and the king gravely neglected (or expelled) him.638

The narrative voice relates only how Sigurð is assessed by his environment but refrains from conclusive comments: Sigurð is not said to be mute but is said to be perceived as mute by others.639 This leaves open the possibility that their assessment may be flawed, an ingenious pointer to the limits of subjective perception. Yet at the beginning of the saga this subsequent re-categorisation of the eponymous character is not hinted at, as the audience follows the eyes and assessments of other characters (as presented by the narrative voice).

Sigurð’s slow development clearly contravenes the usual trope of the early developer. The idea that a future hero is gifted well beyond his age is found in Norse saga as well as in courtly literature. Yet Sigurð is characterised by the opposite trope: he corresponds to what is called a kolbítr (‘coalbiter’) in Norse sagas, a name deriving from their ‘fondness for lying idly by the fire in the kitchen.’640 The name stresses that these figures are primarily associated with the domestic (and hence female) sphere and reveal their heroic abilities only when they enter adult age, as SCHÄFKE remarks.641 Before that, SCHÄFKE adds, they ‘erscheinen […] defizitär und werden zum Teil sogar für schwachsinnig gehalten.’642 HERBERT WÄCKERLIN also classifies Sigurð as a kolbítr, as ʻa “male Cinderella” sitting close to the hearth, showing all the symptoms of a simpleton not worthy of heroic distinction, which of course turns out to be a faulty conclusion […] later in the narrative […]ʼ.643 DRISCOLL clearly links this to the perception of the hero in the saga when he asserts: ‘Sigurðr derives his nickname (‘the silent’) from the fact that for the first seven years of his life he is not heard to speak, for which reason he is regarded as an idiot by his family.’644 Being a kolbítr also distinguishes Sigurð from his two brothers, Halfdan and Vilhjalm, who comply with the stereotype of active, precocious heroic youths. While they are well integrated at court, Sigurð’s silence alienates him both socially and geographically from his family and from court (he is raised by count Lafranz of Lixion and not with his brothers). Sigurð is also clearly distinguished in spoken discourse, as his silence earns him the nickname enn þogle, ‘the silent’.

The hero’s perceived inability to speak is by no means an inconspicuous detail but assumes major importance if contextualised with medieval theories of the human voice. Articulated voice is what in medieval thought separates humans from animals. As SCHNYDER finds, ‘[d]ie nicht in Sprache gegliederte Stimme gilt […] als natürlicher Ausdruck, als unwillkürlich […]. Dadurch ist die Stimme kein signum datum, vom Menschen gesetztes Zeichen, sondern ein natürliches Zeichen (signum naturalium) […]’.645 Human identity is ascertained through the systematic ordering of sounds, and young Sigurð seems unable to do this. SCHNYDER adds: ‘[e]ntsprechend können die ungegliederte Stimme, die nicht verständliche Stimme und die Sprachlosigkeit Zeichen von einem Verstandesdefizit sein.’646 WÄCKERLIN presents a similar argument: ‘according to medieval authorities like Priscian, Remigius of Auxerre, and other influential and widely read grammarians, what is at stake in Sigurðar saga þǫgla is nothing less than the human nature of the main protagonist.’647 WÄCKERLIN adds that because of his lack of speech ‘Sigurðr’s humanness is explicitly doubted and he is moved towards the domain of the monstrously deficient. He does not speak, therefore he cannot understand human speech, therefore he is not man at all.’648 It is remarkable that the human nature of the eponymous character is questioned so openly at the very beginning of the narrative through the noncompliance with a paradigm that signifies ‘human’.

Sigurð’s borderline position as a human being is mirrored by his borderline position in social and geographical terms. In terms of space, Sigurð grows up outside the centre of his court, but still in the civilised, courtly world. In addition to this spatial removal from the centre, one can also propose a social removal, as Sigurð is excluded from his family and the society at court and thus also, presumably, from his social role as a king’s son. All of these factors show that at the beginning, Sigurð is not perceived as a ‘normative human being’ by the court but as a borderline figure. If one follows GLAUSER and assumes that at the beginning of every original riddarsaga, the order of the world is defined by the binaries ‘within-homely-courtly-good’ and ‘without-foreign-non-courtly-bad’, the saga places this hero in a very problematic position, as he is excluded from many of the paradigms that constitute a courtly male in original riddarasögur.649 In presenting Sigurð as silent, the text utilises a bodily feature to create a complex and by no means standard character. It also raises expectations as to if (and how) this character could possibly be integrated into courtly society and fulfil the social role of a king.

As a grown man Sigurð discovers that his brothers have been tortured and disfigured by the meykóngr Sedentiana. Just when his brothers’ bodies are revealed as maimed, as no longer corresponding to the paradigms of courtly beauty and hence as problematic for their identity, Sigurð’s body is described from new angles. Shortly afterwards it is revealed that Sigurð can speak and in fact speaks several learned languages.650 This highlights an important and continually reoccurring topic in the saga: the idea of assessing and reassessing characters in relation to their (own) bodies but also in relation to other bodies in the narrated world. The character of Sigurð shows that an initial assessment may be deficient, either because other characters do not know how to place what they observe in a semiotic system compliant with what is being observed or because certain traits may seem to create an other where in fact there is merely another (perhaps even a superior and hence extraordinary) self.

Immediately after this reassessment, which points towards a possible future inclusion of Sigurð at his father’s court, the hero bids leave to find Sedentiana and avenge his brothers. Yet Sigurð is not eager to display himself at other courts but travels through the wilderness. He thus enters a landscape where, according to the original riddarasögur, trolls and other creatures dwell in caves. This provides a stark contrast to the civilised world Sigurð has inhabited so far. And it is not long before two troll-women sneak up to his tent during the night and try to steal his horse to eat it for breakfast. The trolls thus pose a threat to Sigurð’s horse, to a symbol of his courtly identity, but not to his life: they want to eat the horse, not Sigurð. GILMORE claims that ‘eating human beings is as critical an aspect of monstrosity as bigness, physical grotesqueness, and malice’651 and trolls eating human flesh are depicted in various original riddarasögur. These two troll-women, however, are monstrous concerning the three other points, but this most disquieting aspect is absent. In fact, if viewed pragmatically, a horse is as much ‘meat’ as a cow or a pig. The only reason why it is not seen as a human source of food in the original riddarasögur is because it has a social value attached to it in courtly culture.652 The text thus draws attention to a diverging (cultural versus natural?) understanding of the animal but also shows that these particular trolls are no threat to Sigurð’s life and integrity.

That the two characters are trolls is made obvious when they refer to each other as Fála and Flegða. KATJA SCHULZ notes that Fála is only attested in poetic texts where it denotes most likely a giantish maid and thus implies a trollnature.653 Flegða is not attributed as an expression for a giantess but SCHULZ suggests that it may have been developed as phonetically aligned with flagð, a term which denotes a being of human appearance but of great strength and size.654 Although the names clearly indicate the sisters’ trollish nature, the fact that they have names and speak a language they share with Sigurð makes it possible to interact with them. In view of the negative assessment of Sigurð due to his lack of human speech before, this is a telling detail.

On the other hand, their appearance clearly separates the troll-sisters from the women Sigurð may have encountered at court. The text briefly describes Fála: Fala war miog storskoren svort aasynis mikil vextj sem trollum til heyrde.655 More information about her body is given in relation to her actions. Fála grabs the horse with her storum hremsum (‘long claws’), displaying a typical physical feature of trolls in Old Norse Literature.656 Later in the text, the sisters’ ability to serve Sigurð is juxtaposed with a clear mention of their unfavourable, ugly and coarse appearance: og þo at flagdkonur þessar være liotar og storskornar þaa kunnu þær fulluel at þionna S(igurdi).657 The subsequent comment by the text that these looks are usual for trolls has led LAMBERTUS to conclude that these attributes are integral in denoting troll-bodies and thus place the two figures firmly in a category entirely separate from that of courtly women.658 While for the audience these descriptions are vital for assigning an identity to the two female characters, these aspects do not deter Sigurð from engaging with them once they have been martially subdued.

However, it is not Sigurð who physically subdues them. Fála is kicked in the head by the horse when she grabs its tail and Flegða is scalped by Sigurð’s faithful lion. Sigurð does draw his sword to defend himself but no martial action is required on his part: he merely has to grant them their lives and ask the lion to withdraw. After the usual order of male domination has been established in this fashion, Sigurð indeed allows for closer contact. This unusual move may be possible because the troll-women did not attack Sigurð, but it may also be undertaken because Sigurð hopes that they will help him in his quest against Sedentiana. The text clearly states that it is only because Sigurð knows that trolls often handsomely reward any favour that is done to them that he grants them their lives.659 This is a noticeable concern in the saga as Sigurð repeatedly finds that non-human creatures are helpful when treated kindly.660 By granting Fála and Flegða their lives after their unsuccessful attack on his horse, the hero can be said to ‘embrace […] the ambiguity and unpredictability of an openness towards the monstrous other’661, as SHILDRICK characterises her own approach and her call to undo the singular category of the monster.

Sigurð embraces this openness so much, he even allows the sisters to take him to their dwelling place which, as LAMBERTUS remarks, as a skard (‘crevice in the rock’) is clearly located in the realm of nature.662 Immediately before the encounter with the troll-sisters the text remarks that og eru þau vijda med storum hellum og holum. og j þeim hellum og holum war þann tijma vijda bygt af ymsum jllkykuenndum e(dur) jŏtnum þeim er eckj *aattv edli wid veralldarmenn.663 As LAMBERTUS concludes about this passage, ‘die örtliche Ungeheuer-Population wird explizit als nicht-zugehörig zum Bereich des Menschlichen und somit als fremd charakterisiert.’664 Sigurð lets himself be taken into the very heart of the other’s realm; a place which, after the previous remark by the text, alerts the audience to possible danger. MARTIN ARNOLD proposes that trolls often live ‘in a sinister otherworld’665 and if that holds true in this case also, Sigurð may willingly place himself in great danger. If one adheres to the strict dichotomy that for instance BOKLUND666 (in general) and GLAUSER667 (at least at the outset of the riddarasögur-narratives) draw between positively connoted court and negatively connoted nature, Sigurð has now reached the complete reverse place to his own world.

Sigurðar saga þǫgla subverts such general categories, as Sigurð finds that at least geographically, non-courtly does not necessarily equal non-cultured. This becomes clear as soon as the cave is described. The interior of the cave is separated by an entry door (a sure indicator of the conscious separation of space) and resembles the inside of a court: a hall to entertain guests, a room with various seating arrangements and beds. As LAMBERTUS acknowledges: ‘[i]n den Naturraum einer Felsspalte ist eine […] Tür eingelassen, hinter der sich der Kulturraum der luxuriös ausgestatteten Trollbehausung verbirgt.’668 There the sisters host a private feast for Sigurð, a feast that is reminiscent of a (human) kingly banquet. What Sigurð has found here is not a complete opposite to his own space; it is not chaos and it is not wild nature but rather a parallel world to the courtly realm. And even though Sigurð was excluded from his paternal court until now, in the cave he is attended to like a royal character. Surely, the actual proportions of this court do not fit the hero entirely, but structurally this world closely resembles his own.

Although the bodies of the troll-women are not mentioned at this stage, they are inscribed and reflected in their habitat. The seats are suo stor ath uel mattu .iij. men sitja <ij> hueriu.669 Another piece of furniture, the bed, is also described: þar war og einn stor sænng vel buinn sem hæfde vexti þeirra systrana.670 The human Sigurð, on the other hand, is given a little table when they bring him food, a detail which draws attention to their discrepancy in size. His own body reflects his identity as much as the sisters’ bodies reflect theirs, only that in this case it is the main hero who appears to be somewhat out of proportion. Both the hero and the troll-women are thus drawn not just against each other but also against the space that they (even only momentarily) inhabit.

While the hero apparently feels quite content in his surroundings, LAMBERTUS draws attention to a problematic and potentially threatening idea: that he dwells with female aggressors.671 LAMBERTUS argues that this category, and hence Fála and Flegða, upsets the system of gender roles in Old Norse-Icelandic literature.672 This system has been explained by CAROL J. CLOVER as scaled between blauðr (‘soft, weak, womanly’) and hvatr (‘bold, active, vigorous, male’).673 CLOVER adds that the two adjectives are at opposite ends of the spectrum that characterises the (or an) medieval Norse gender system but that they are not fixed concepts.674 Therefore it is the task of the hero (or indeed any man) to continuously re-ascertain his hvatr state, especially if females like Fála and Flegða threaten it by assuming hvatr characteristics like physical aggression.675 In the Íslendingasögur and in skaldic poetry hvatr females usually appear in narrative roles such as ‘shield-maidens, warrior women, troublemakers, sorceresses, avengers and inciters’676, as QUINN enumerates, but in the original riddarasögur such figures are rare. The only narrative role that they commonly occupy is that of a meykóngr. Generally a male hero has to overcome these aggressive and independent figures and restore male domination. If Fála and Flegða (who do live on their own after the death of their father) are seen as trollish meykóngr-figures, the usual plot-structure is only partially fulfilled: they are briefly dominated at the beginning but do not present a continuous threat and after the encounter the sisters continue their lives unchanged and independently.

Despite this observable difference, LAMBERTUS maintains that their attack on Sigurð presents a threat to the hero’s hvatr and challenges his heroic manhood.677 LAMBERTUS further argues that the sisters represent uncontrolled (meaning not controlled by a male, alas!) female energy and as such also present a threat to the order of the world by transgressing their usual position as females. He concludes:

[i]hre Fremdartigkeit beruht nicht nur auf ihrer monströsen Natur als Geschöpfe der Riesenwelt, sondern wird insbesondere auch durch ihr Geschlecht getragen, das im Widerspruch zu ihrem Verhalten als Aggressorinnen steht. Vor de[m] Hintergrund der von CLOVER postulierten gender-Verhältnisse in der altnordischen Literatur lässt sich die Szene so deuten, dass die Trollinnen als hvartr [sic] aufzutreten und den Helden in eine blauðr-Position zu drängen versuchen […]’.678

Their difference rests not only on their monstrous nature as creatures of the race of giants but is embodied especially in their gender, which presents a stark contradiction to their aggressive behaviour. In view of the gender concept of Old Norse literature, as postulated by CLOVER, the scene may be interpreted as the troll-women trying to appear as hvartr [sic] and pushing the hero into a blauðr position.

This notion is also enforced in that the sisters are in charge of their household and therefore transgress the natural gender-order of CLOVER’s system on various levels.

The present study aims to re-evaluate LAMBERTUS’ finding and presents a different reading of the episode. It has already been argued above that the aim of the troll-sisters is to carry off Sigurð’s horse for breakfast, not to attack or kill Sigurð. They thus present a threat only to a representative of his courtly identity, his horse. Yet even if the attack on the horse is seen as inherently aggressive rather than as a simple hunting-theme, in the original riddarasögur it is not unusual for female trolls to appear in such a context. Certainly, human aggressors whom a hero encounters on his travels are by and large male, but the same cannot be said about trolls. In fact, the discussion of Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers will also demonstrate that it is not unusual for troll-women to attack human men. In this reading, the sisters are not transgressing any perceived gender boundaries for trolls but in fact comply with a common image of female trolls. As Sigurð (likely) classifies them as trolls – based on their appearance and their names– it is unlikely that for him, or for the audience, their behaviour would embody a transgression of gender boundaries.

Also, in the original riddarasögur it is not unusual for female trolls to live alone without male supervision or company, or at least no such company is mentioned in the texts. It may also be reasoned that the sisters do not represent challenging female energy as they willingly, competently and with almost courtly gestures serve Sigurð in their cave. LAMBERTUS does not comment on this detail but it may be proposed that this draws a strange, even grotesque parallel to courtly, human females. LAMBERTUS’ failure to categorise Fála and Flegða as both female and troll leads him to interpretations inconsistent with the genre.679 Because of all the information provided about the sisters, it is unlikely that either Sigurð or the audience would place them in the discourse of human woman. They therefore would not expect the sisters to reflect human female standards of behaviour, either. In the present close reading, the encounter leads to an engagement with the peculiarities of the other and hence perhaps to a re-evaluation of the boundaries which define this other from the point of view of the self. The troll-sisters differ from human females in both looks and behaviour, but they are not too far removed for social interaction.

A further detail positioning the bodies of Sigurð and the trolls against each other is again linked to gender: their typical troll clothing of a short goatskin coat. BILDHAUER and MILLS find that clothing, together with speech and weapons, is an oft-cited area in which monsters show deficiencies and oddities and thus diverge visibly from courtly standards.680 In his discussion of Fála and Flegða LAMBERTUS maintains that this detail serves to emphasise the cultural remove of the sisters, as they do not know how to dress according to courtly customs. To this convincing argument he adds a further point to note, namely that

[i]n Verbindung mit ihren weiblichen Trägerinnen geht mit den gewagten Kleidungsstücken eine Kette wertender Assoziationen einher: Zuerst einmal ist die offen zur Schau gestellte Freizügigkeit natürlich als Hinweis auf eine entsprechend normwidrige Sexualmoral zu deuten […].681

In relation to the females wearing them, these daring pieces of clothing instigate a chain of evaluative associations: first of all the openly displayed promiscuity is an indicator for the depravity of sexual norms […].

Although LAMBERTUS’ comment may delineate general perceptions of the original riddarasögur, he again fails to account for the fact that Sigurðar saga þǫgla may deviate from the genre-typical standards. The short skirts that expose their most private parts do affirm their troll identity and as such help Sigurð and the audience to categorise them. In this saga, however, there is not enough textual evidence to link such clothing to promiscuous or sexually threatening behaviour.

Even though Fála and Flegða wear typical troll-women’s clothes, they do not exhibit immoral behaviour. Neither of them makes any aggressive sexual advances towards Sigurð, although they do invite him to stay with them. When he is eating his meal, Flegða in fact acknowledges that to her, too, Sigurð would be an unusual (sexual) partner. Flegða asserts that: ‘at þat mun eckj samfært edli uort trŏlla e(dur) þuijlijkramanna mennskra sem þier erut […].’682 However, this comment is followed immediately by an invitation to transgress the usual boundaries: ‘enn gjarna villdum uit systur at þu dueldiz hier. ef þier maatti þat at nockuru gagni uerda.’683 Despite his assertions that Fála and Flegða are not as forceful as other troll-women in their advances, and even though no indication of sexualised behaviour is evident in the text, LAMBERTUS still proposes that the sisters are as promiscuous and impudent as others of their kind.684 He thus again neglects to notice that in this episode Sigurðar saga þǫgla addresses the possibility that such threatening behaviour is not universally found in trolls and that peaceful interaction with these creatures is, in fact, possible.

If Fála and Flegða’s clothing does not indicate promiscuous behaviour, it can be seen to simply express their identity as female trolls. It clearly separates them from courtly women and suggests that they live in a part of the narrated world where primary sexual organs may be freely shown without feelings of shame. SANDRA BALLIF STRAUBHAAR proposes a similar reading of troll-women’s clothes in the fornaldarsögur.685 She believes that garments symbolise a categorical difference between humans and trolls: ‘this trollwoman is not a woman of our kind. She does not know how to dress modestly, according to our kind’s dress code.’686 This presents a noticeable contrast to the almost-courtly setting of Fála and Flegða’s cave, as through their clothes, their bodies carry the divergent moral order into a grotesquely court-like setting. The image enforces their trollish identity, an identity in which the body is perhaps more rooted in its physicality and does not carry the (sexual) shame so prominently attached to it in courtly (and Christian) contexts.

It can be concluded that the bodies of the troll-sisters occupy a contradictory position to Sigurð’s on various levels. In terms of appearance, they are dark, ugly and uncouth and their female body parts are revealed through clothing that is very short. Sigurð, on the other hand, is fair and courtly in appearance; he is undeniably male and presumably adequately dressed to deny any sense of impropriety. This complete bodily opposition in descriptive terms, however, does not justify LAMBERTUS’ assessment of the trolls as kulturferne Wesen687, as beings removed from culture. Beyond their looks lies a world that is closer to that of courtly humans than one might think: the sisters are shown to have a culture, and a culture that is not categorically opposed to Sigurð’s.

The text thus shows them as belonging to a space that, in the words of ASSMANN and ASSMANN, is drawn against another culture rather than against chaos.688 Sigurð may expect to find the second when he first sets foot into their home, but he is quick enough to realise that he is facing the first when he comes into proper contact with them. By juxtaposing Sigurð with two trolls instead of with human women, the text can confirm his identity as human, male and heroic even though the troll-women do not explicitly threaten any of these categories. His and the troll-women’s bodies are only implicitly present, yet they are a key factor in positioning them in their very unique narrative roles and in their respective parts of the narrated world. This episode would also challenge BOKLUND’s general assumption that in Romance, all space outside the court ‘is characterised principally by a lack of corteisie’.689 While Fála and Flegða are not courtly beings, their environment and their behaviour certainly allude to corteisie, even if only in a grotesque or amusing sense.

In this respect, a brief excursion to assess the meykóngr Sedentiana (whom the hero encounters later) may be allowed. Although Sedentiana clearly complies with the standard of a courtly lady in terms of her body, her culture and her royal background, in terms of behaviour she is further removed from these standards than Fála and Flegða. LAMBERTUS also draws attention to the possibility of reading Sedentiana as an other, as a female who stands outside courtly norms until she is overcome.690 It is therefore interesting to briefly juxtapose these female characters that are separated by the human/troll and the courtly/non-courtly divide. These dichotomies are openly reflected on their bodies because their looks mediate their position within or without the human and courtly sphere. In their behaviour, however, the troll-women seem more compliant with this system than the meykóngr, and are thus approachable for the male hero without the need to permanently subdue them. Sedentiana, on the other hand, because she is human and her actions thus upset the gender system of the narrated world, proves an incompatible other, an other which threatens the life, bodily integrity and status of Sigurð’s brothers and thus must be subdued, and subdued permanently. In briefly adding the category of behaviour to the focus of this study it can be shown that bodies are but one part of identity construction in literary texts, and that the gaze presented here is open for expansion.

It may then be asked if, in the present reading, the two trolls Fála and Flegða are no threat at all. In original riddarasögur, the vast majority of such creatures in one way or another threaten a court or its inhabitants and therefore must be killed or expelled. Since the troll-women do not threaten Sigurð’s court or his life, the hero simply subdues, visits and then leaves them. Yet these trolls can be said to threaten on an even more disquieting level by showing that courtliness is by no means limited to the spatial realm of the court.691 If one follows BOKLUND in arguing that only ‘the courtly space is semiotically marked’ and ‘all remaining space is characterized principally by an absence of corteisie’692, do Fála and Flegða not threaten the very structure of the narrated world? They can be said to embody the idea that some of the fundamental characteristics of courtly identity such as being human, living at court or exhibiting noble behaviour maybe questioned. BOKLUND lists the characteristics of the courtly world: beauty, youth, elegance, courage, luxury, generosity, refinement in behaviour, and sagesse, i.e. knowledge of how to counduct oneself in courtly activities.693 The last four of these eight points could be attributed to the troll-sisters once they are in their cave, although the points relating to their bodies (beauty, elegance) tellingly are not shared by them. While the corporeal markers of courtliness cannot be assumed by trolls even non-human creatures can appear as courtly in their behaviour and build dwellings reminiscent of courtly halls. In this case the borders of the basic dichotomous structure of the narrated world are questioned and/or weakened.

SCHÄFKE has recently drawn attention to related problems in remarking that wilde Räume (‘wild spaces’), places in which courtly ideals have no validity, are by no means (only) reflected in geographical space within the narrative but can also be tied to social space via a central character.694 Is it therefore possible that the reverse may also be observed, that non-courtly geographical places may become invested with certain courtly values? In relation to the position of troll-women in such semantic spaces, SCHÄFKE further remarks that no alternative Wertesysteme (‘value systems’) are constructed in the sagas he examines and that the monstrous spaces and bodies may signify a ‘Gegenraum, in dem Invertierung der Werte und Normen einer Kultur gelten.’695 While this is true with regard to the sisters’ bodies (being too large, ugly and sexually revealing), the space they inhabit does not reflect these judgements. This stresses the importance of assessing the relation of body and inhabited space anew in each case.

It also means reassessing Sigurð as the extraordinary hero that he has come to be. Perhaps because of his delayed development, Sigurð is aware that the boundaries between self and other maybe fluid, or that they maybe assessed wrongly at the start. He does not seek to reinforce these boundaries by immediately killing the troll-sisters. Instead, he demonstrates his superiority in another way: by proving that he can interact with the other in its own space and still walk away as human, male and courtly. Sigurðar saga þǫgla clearly engages with the paradigms that can be said to construct (male) courtly identity: humanness, residing at court, human speech, noble behaviour, a beautiful body, etc. and it does so by closely juxtaposing a self with others.

A saga which raises similar issues is Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers, a text which O’CONNOR finds sits ‘on the borderline between „legendary sagas“ and „knights’ sagas“ […]’.696 The text is classified as a fornaldarsaga by SCHIER, although he too acknowledges the fluid boundaries of that genre with the original riddarasögur, a matter which has been introduced in 1.4.697 The saga in its uncut present form is dated to the fifteenth century by O’CONNOR and is extant in over thirty manuscripts from the seventeenth century onwards, all showing considerable variation.698 Although DRISCOLL sees the origins of the narrative much earlier, around 1300, the primary manuscript, AM109 a III 8 vo, is a paper book produced in the seventeenth century.699 RICHARD HARRIS has compiled a critical discussion of the sources and an edition and translation of the saga.700 More recently, O’CONNOR presented a much-appreciated new translation into English based solely on AM109 a III 8 vo.701

The basic plot shows the main hero lifting a curse on himself and, unknowingly, also on three siblings of another royal family which had been enchanted to live in changed shape or as a servant.702 At the beginning of the narrative it is recounted how the widowed King Ingi marries a beautiful queen from a far-away land who one day arrives on his shores by boat, accompanied only by a male servant named Hord. Soon after her mysterious entrance, a man starts disappearing from King Ingi’s court every night, a threat that the king seems to ignore. His son, Hjálmþer, usually resides outside court, and he and his sworn-brother, Olvir, gain fame and glory abroad. When Hjálmþer grows suspicious of the queen she curses him so that he will have no peace of mind until he lays eyes on Hervor, daugther of King Hunding. As during one of his adventures Hjálmþer was advised by a fingálkn (a creature discussed below) to take the queen’s servant, Hord, with him on every quest, Hjálmþér,Olvir and Hord traverse the narrated world until they reach Hervor. Only when Hord dies at the end of the saga is the full truth revealed: Hord is an enchanted emperor. He and his two sisters were turned into a servant and two monstrous creatures, among them the fingálkn mentioned above, by King Ingi’s new queen,who is in fact an evil troll.When the sworn-brothers return home the queen is destroyed, the threat to King Ingi’s kingdom resolved and everyone regains their true, human form.

O’CONNOR emphasises the saga’s borderline position in terms of genre.703 This borderline nature may be echoed in the saga’s own engagement with the borders and boundaries of bodies. This matter will be discussed in the next subchapter in relation to shape-shifting but the text also offers considerable ground for study in other respects. O’CONNOR suggests that the compiler of the text was no Homer and that the saga is high in entertainment value but less self-consciously artful, even if it does show occasional seriousness.704 O’CONNOR is certainly right in assigning the text a high entertainment value, but it is possible that at least in some ways it may also show a certain profound, reflective engagement with its characters in relation to bodies. Such a tendency is also tentatively voiced by O’CONNOR who points out that the compiler/redactor combines traditional plot-devices in new and effective ways and asserts that ‘certain themes run through the whole saga’.705 One such theme is the categorisation of bodies as Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers presents various and varying encouters with others and often raises the joint concepts of incongruity (in appearance and behaviour) and illusion.

Throughout the text, Hjálmþér is assigned a male, human and courtly identity. When Hjálmþér is introduced by the narrative voice as King Ingi and Queen Marsibil’s son, it is said that hann var værnn, stör og sterkur, og fimur vid allar jþrötter, og manna færastur þegar ä ÿnga alldre […].706 Unlike Sigurð, Hjálmþér thus fulfils the standard role of a riddarasaga hero from the very beginning: he is of noble heritage, strong and appears accomplished in courtly pursuits. This information is enough to position him firmly inside the courtly sphere. Hjálmþers saga ok Ölvers depicts various and varying encounters of the hero with others, as Hjálmþér travels through the narrated world and meets many non-human creatures. One meeting with an other is particularly developed: his encounter with a troll-woman and her nine sisters.707 FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR proposes a pronounced similarity of the scene with the French Mélusine romance and thus argues for a strong Continental influence on this episode in particular.708 According to BALLIF STRAUBHAAR’S categorisation, the narrative structure of this episode depicts a typical troll-encounter in the fornaldarsögur.709 The episode is thus a good example of the amalgamation of various influences at play in these sagas, and its content is quickly recounted. One night, Hjálmþér wanders away from his tent during a campaign. He comes across a troll-woman who is washing her hair. Hjálmþér first engages in a verbal exchange with her (in poetry) but, after she demands sexual favours, finally cuts off her hand. After this, Hjálmþér and his men are attacked by the troll-girl’s nine sisters, who come to her aid. The trolls are quickly defeated and the men continue their search for Hervor.

In contrast to the episode in Sigurðar saga þǫgla, the troll-woman does not initially appear as a threat or as categorically uncouth. Instead, she is washing her hair, minding her own business until Hjálmþér disturbs her. The text introduces her as participating in a characteristically female activity, and such grooming is clearly a cultural act. While female trolls are regularly depicted as washing their hair in these sagas, the mention of her using a golden towel to dry her hair is unusual and evokes a courtly air. The non-threatening nature of the encounter, as well as the reference to cultured behaviour, allow the two characters to approach each other outside the discourse of martial aggression.710

Hjálmþér instantly categorises the troll-woman in terms of her appearance as he promptly insults her on the basis of her looks. Interestingly, he uses the neutral term barn (‘child’) to refer to her, but openly comments on her ugliness, a first (possible) indicator of her otherness: ‘[h]uort er þad barn, er i berge situr, og sier of konung, óngua veit eg þier, ämätlegre, alda firer, jórd ofann.’711 The troll woman responds with a gesture, a gesture that allows them to properly look at and see each other: hun greidde häred fra augum sier […].712 After this, the troll-woman answers that she will dry her bright locks with a gold-woven cloth. This places her body in a courtly discourse, and Hjálmþér is quick to point out the discrepancy. He asserts: ‘jlla er sä dükur kominn, er þitt här þerrer, og ad þijnum glyrnum gengur. s(eiger) H(iälmþer).’713 As no description is provided by the narrative voice, Ýma, as the troll-woman is called, is only perceived and introduced through Hjálmþér’s eyes: once in relation to his harsh judgement, once in relation to a courtly object.714 His immediate reference to her ugly and unfavourable appearance distinguishes her from courtly women. By openly violating courtly customs of addressing maidens, Hjálmþér demonstrates that he thinks that Ýma stands outside this realm and thus sees her as unworthyof proper courtly handling. The idea of gazing at bodies is mentioned reciprocally, and is perhaps even inverted, as another of Hjálmþér’s comments implies that the troll-woman is looking down at the men in his camp. This places the bodies not just next to each other physically, but also links them to each other through their gazes, each being evaluated by the – respective – other.

Ýma’s initial comment on Hjlámþer is not about his body but concerns the manner in which he addresses her, as she chastises him for using such bad language in talking to ÿnga pijku, og hreinlega.715 In her self-categorisation, she places herself in a courtly discourse and thus on one level with Hjálmþer, even though he bluntly denies her this status. Ýma in turn wants Hjálmþer to display his own identity as a noble prince and address her in courtly manner. Her plan fails because, as KATJA SCHULZ remarks, in such encounters ‘vertuschen auch höfische Utensilien wie ein goldener Kamm und ein goldgewebtes Handtuch nicht, daß es sich bei ihr um eine „ungeschlachte Trollfrau“ handelt […]’.716 While Fála and Felgða appeared to have courtly manners quite naturally, this deliberate, almost forceful pretence of a courtly identity in the wilderness leaves a very different picture for the hero to assess. Luckily, because of Ýma’s looks and her sexual advances, there is little possibility that she might be mistaken for a maiden.

The troll-woman displays her ignorance of courtly customs and her trollish nature in her reply to the hero’s unfavourable assessment. She rebukes him with the threat that she will cook him in a cauldron should he fail to address her as she wishes. Ýma alludes to the monstrous behaviour of eating human flesh, the importance of which is outlined by GILMORE.717 In contrast to her earlier pretences, Ýma now places herself in a monstrous discourse through her threat. Her words enforce the categorisation of her identity as other, a categorisation which was begun through Hjálmþér’s eyes. No matter how much she pretends and uses courtly utensils, in her appearance and her taste for human flesh Ýma is clearly identifiable as a troll. Her remark also threatens the noble and courtly body of Hjálmþér, as she wants to reduce it to food, to simple flesh. If Hjálmþér fails (or refuses) to assess her in a courtly manner, she will strip him naked, eat and ingest him, and hence grotesquely incorporate his courtly identity into herself.

This is not the only way in which Ýma relates Hjálmþér’s body to her own in her speech. After having threatened him with violence, Ýma resorts to promiscuous remarks. In this she again reverts to a courtly discourse, as she asks Hjálmþér to perform his role as a male hero and seduce her as a maiden. She tells him that

‘være hitt tilheijrelegramannslegum manne, ad hafaadra vidleijtne vid ÿngapijku, og hreinlega, enn tala jlla, þycker mier þü efnelegur madur, enn mier være foruitnne ä ad pröfa vngan mann, og missa minn meijdom. og läta þenia ä mier magaskinnid, þui nu giorest ei ovijst ad þad grä dijrid sem eg hefe ä mille fötanna, take nu til ad geijspa, og villde läta handtera sig.’718

‘It would be more appropriate for a manly \man to have other dealings with a young, pure girl than to speak evilly. You seem to me to be a promising man, and I would be curious to try out a young man, and lose my virginity and let my stomach skin be stretched, for now it becomes not uncertain that that gray beast which I have between my legs begins to yawn and would like to have itself fondled.’

The discourses of the courtly maiden and the promiscuous troll-woman are juxtaposed in her speech. At first, Ýma styles herself as a virgin and implies that she wants sexual intercourse not for pleasure but to conceive, a comment strangely in line with Christian ideas. On the other hand, she then refers to her pubic area with a kenning and openly states that her awakening sexual desire must be satisfied. In her description of her body and its needs, she herself writes her contradictory nature quite literally on and through her body.

Despite these courtly pretences, in her narrative role Ýma clearly corresponds to the type of promiscuous female troll as she offers Hjálmþér immediate sexual favours. GLAUSER finds this type of sexuality typical of trolls and the non-courtly sphere: it is demonised and the courtly knight is forbidden to yield to it.719 In encountering this threat in the figure of Ýma, Hjálmþér is tested not so much as a virile male but as a courtly figure. FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR observes that ‘[o]ne of the components of ideal male behaviour endorsed in romance was sexual restraint towards noble maidens.’720 Even if the troll-woman was a maid, Hjálmþér should not approach her freely. In her comment, Ýma betrays both her trollish nature and her ignorance of courtly ideals and thus enforces her otherness.721

By stressing the female nature of her body, Ýma tries to install herself not as an other – as troll – but as a possible sexual partner – a woman. She (deliberately?) completely neglects one of their dividing paradigms: that the hero is human but she is not. It may be summarised that Ýma is removed from Hjálmþér in terms of space (where she lives), courtly behaviour, human nature, beauty (or lack of it) and gender. In this episode, these dividing lines appear as fixed and Hjálmþér relies on these boundaries without questioning them. Ýma’s ugliness and Hjálmþér’s repulsion are clear indicators that help the audience to categorise her and understand why Hjálmþér uses martial aggression to overcome her. Ýma’s attempt to bridge the gap and be seen not as an other in terms of human nature and gender but simply in terms of gender has failed, and Hjálmþér enforces this failure by treating her like the troll adversary she truly is.

The threat Ýma and her kind pose to Hjálmþér is by no means overcome by the cutting off of her hand. Ýma’s screeches call her nine sisters to her aid. The narrative voice describes the approaching trolls:

H(iälmþer) sä nu ä siöenn ÿt, og leit ix. tróllkonur, so störar, og jllelegar, ad ónguar þöttist hann sied hafa þeim lijkar, […] þær hietu so. Hergunnur, Hremsa, Näl, Nefia, Raun, Trana, Greijp, Glyrnna, og Margerdur hin ix. hun hafde krippu störaäherdum, og bar hana hærraenn hófuded, hun hafde og eitt auga, og stöd þad i midiu enne, og var kella ei hreinleg yferlits, hun gieck firer þeim systrum, hun hafde nef af järne, og klær, og ij. tennur älnar längar stödu framm ÿr kiafte hennar, enn vórin hin nedre, tök ofan ä bringu, þad sä H(jälmþer) ad hun munde meiga kunna ad gefa gilldan koss, ef hun kinne so firer sig ad koma vórinne, sem hun var stör til, þær voru stuttklæddar pijkurnar, og góftu kióftunum […].722

Now Hjálmþér looked out on the sea and saw nine troll women so large and hideous that he thought he had seen none like them. […] They were named thus: Hergunnur, Hremsa, Nál, Nefia, Raun, Trana, Greyp, Glyrnna and Margerður the ninth. She had a large hump on the upper part of her back, and it was higher than her head. She also had one eye, which stood in the middle of her forehead. She was not a woman of pure countenance. She went before the sisters. She had a beak of iron and claws and two teeth, grown long, protruded from her chops, and her lower lip came down to her chest. Hjálmþér saw that she would be able to know how to give a stout kiss if her ability to handle her lip was as great as it was itself. The girls were clad in short mantles, and their chops gaped open and they shook their heads.

This passage contains one of the most detailed descriptions of female trolls in the original riddarasögur. It imposes a stark opposition not just to the beautiful body of the hero encountering them but also to the human women at court.723 Although the description itself is presented by the narrative voice, the audience again follows the hero’s eyes in observing the trolls. What is described by the narrative voice is experienced in real time within the narrated world and thus gains immediacy, not least because the audience also follows Hjálmþér’s thoughts.

This passage also incorporates a strong sexual theme. Interestingly, however, in the case of Margerður the reading of her body as sexual(ised) depends entirely on Hjálmþér’s thoughts. Since the hero had rebuked an advance of his astonishingly beautiful stepmother earlier, he can be said to be in control of his sexual drives and supress them enough to comply with knightly virtues.724 He nevertheless immediately makes an association between Margerður’s lip and a kiss. This may reflect the astonishment he feels at this image, but it clearly also sexualises her body for the audience. In this description, civilised control over the body is juxtaposed with promiscuity. The bodies quite literally embody a divide, but it is briefly destabilised in the fantasy of the main hero.

The defining characteristic, ugliness, is described with great prominence in relation to Margerður. The detailed description by the narrative voice initially comments on her great height and then immediately adds that she is ‘not a good-looking lady’. This clear, and clearly evaluating, reference to ugliness is enforced in the following description. In remarking on the individual descriptive paradigms, the amalgamation of metallic elements – her nose and claws of iron – with the otherwise organic body is most striking. KATJA SCHULZ argues that animal-human hybrids are found rather frequently in descriptions of giants, yet the inclusion of non-organic material is quite unique and creates a much more pronounced opposition.725 BILDHAUER and MILLS identify ‘[c]ollapsing the distinctions that create meaning by combining a thing and its opposite in one body’726 as one of the most prominent paradigms in the medieval imagination of monstrous nature. Such an underlying idea could suitably explain Margerður’s unusual metallic body parts. Moreover, ordinary claws are frequently mentioned in descriptions of trolls and make them dangerous opponents. The mention of metal may align Margerður’s claws with human weapons. Her body not only predestines her for martial encounters with knights but her claws also mirror the hero’s sword along the culture-nature divide. The hero uses a cultural artefact but this monstrous troll-woman’s body is naturally equipped to oppose him.

Another rare feature, perhaps borrowed from Classical ideas about monsters, is Margerður’s huge, single eye. It is located in the middle of her head just like a Cyclops’. This motif also appears regularly in the original riddarasögur and is associated both with giants and members of exotic armies sourced from foreign lands. Of course, one-eyedness is also found in the Nordic mythological corpus, with Odin being perhaps the most prominent example to mention. However, since many of the references in the original riddarasögur are accompanied by a remark that in the learned sources such creatures were called cyclopes, it is perhaps more apt to place this descriptive paradigm in the Classical discourse of monstrosity.727

Margerður’s body is also characterised by a huge hump and her protruding teeth. Both are common descriptive paradigms in the Norse imagination of the other and are listed by KATJA SCHULZ as being regularly associated with giants and trolls in the fornaldarsögur.728 The large hump-back is also reminiscent of the deformed bodies of slaves as portrayed inRígsþula, suggesting that such deformity was an integral marker of ugliness and degenerate nature across the Old Norse-Icelandic corpus. No matter what gender, trolls are frequently portrayed as huge and fearsome but more specific features are seldom described in detail. This allows the audience to imagine them simply as ugly and overgrown humanoids. Margerður’s single eye, as well as the inversion of her back reaching over her head, challenge human form on very basic levels. On a visual level these features evoke the image of a body that challenges humanoid appearance by being an affront to natural proportion. Her body enforces the idea that Margerður should be understood as a truly monstrous creature, not simply a large humanoid.

Moreover, the gaping jaws and hanging lips emphasise the mouth as a natural opening (discussed further below). What draws particular attention to this blank space is the mention of very prominent and ugly teeth. These direct the gaze towards this boundary-less part of the body, especially since teeth should ideally be hidden within a closed mouth. LORENZ AGGERMANN parallels mouth and anus as bodily signifiers in this respect: ‘Öffnungen des Körpers, zuvorderst der Mund und der After, bringen jene organische und reale Basis [des Körpers] jedoch immer wieder in Erinnerung.’729 Margerður’s mouth may be a visual parallel not for her anus but perhaps rather for the female sexual organ, which the text infers is also visible through her scanty clothes. The troll-woman’s body is thus depicted as an open body, with orifices marking the permeability of inside and outside at both ends.

In medieval thought, such permeable, open bodies were generally categorised as female. PEGGY MCCRACKEN points out that in medical and theological discourses of the Middle Ages, ‘the female body is usually described as unruly, uncontained and permeable. […]’730, either by emerging fluids or through prominent openings. MCCRACKEN ’s subsequent remark that this is not (necessarily) the case in Romance literature only underlines the notion that Margerður’s body is not simply the product of Romance tradition but incorporates other influences also. She is a hybrid of genuinely Norse, courtly and perhaps even learned ideas about the monstrous (female) body and a prime example on which to trace the discursive and multifaceted construction of bodies in original riddarasögur and their potential for mediality. Likemany other monstrous creatures that, as SARAH ALLISON MILLER argues, exhibit a ‘transgression of categories of nature and categories of knowledge’731, Margerður poses a challenge not just to Hjálmþér but also to categories of otherness and to the imagination of the audience.

This unusually detailed description is a wonderful example of a text imagining the body of an other. In examining the narrative level on which it is constructed, it is telling that the hero’s body is also implicitly written into the discursive construction of Margerður’s body. In addition to the description provided by the narrative voice, the audience also comes to share Hjálmþér’s point of view as he observes the troll-women coming over the sea. The audience is also privy to Hjálmþér’s thoughts about the sexual power of Margerður’s lip. In his contemplation, Hjálmþér puts the troll-woman’s body in a fictive relation to his own. In her study on otherness in Heimskringla, AALTO draws much-needed attention to the issue of perspective: because ‘otherness is always a relative term and bound to the observer, we have to define from whose viewpoint it is being examined.’732 In describing Margerður through the narrative voice but at the same time including the hero’s own assessment, the text offers a double perspective on the other: one objective-descriptive, the other (apparently) subjective-inferring. The troll-woman’s body is constructed on two different levels, yet the two combine to give a coherent picture of ugliness and threatening monstrosity.

The narrative continues but inverts the sexual theme by including the bodies of Hjálmþér’s companions. When the troll-women attack, Hjálmþér tries to warn Olvir and Hord about the impending danger. One of the troll-sisters answers his calls, and the verses of the ensuing dialogue contain an explicitly sexual subtext. Hjlálmþér wakes Olvir to see women (using a term, vijf, which could also denote human females), and adds that Olvir is usually very generous to women with his kisses.733 To this the latter replies that if Hjálmþér had found some women on his nightly wanderings, he would surely want them all to himself. This comment implies that Hjálmþér can occupy an active sexual role, a thought that had been absent from the narrative so far as Hjálmþér has never approached a female figure with sexual intent. Furthermore, Hjálmþér has so far also appeared to shun any sexual advances from females, even from the beautiful Queen Lúðá. The text also raises the possibility that a sexual liaison with a non-courtly but human woman may be acceptable during a hero’s adventures. This may introduce an implicit distinction between ordinary females and courtly women (or the women at his father’s court) and suggests that Hjálmþér assumes an active sexual role only in relation to certain (suitable, i.e. non-courtly and/or foreign and human) women.

At this point in the narrative, a third troll-sister is introduced. Hergunnur inverts the sexual theme introduced by Ýma in the context of their revenge. She addresses the hero as follows: ‘[h]elld eg vpp hrómmum, hier mätt jófur lijta, hendur Hergunnar, hef eg negl öskorna, rifna mun þijn ölpa, ef vid jófur finnumst, þier skal ei kirt klappa, köngur enn sudræne.’734 Only shortly before, Hjálmþér had responded with violence to Ýma’s sexual advances. Both of them thus conformed to the gender-roles usually associated with their identity. Now the mention of sexual advances is first made by Hjálmþér (knowingly twisting the subject) and Olvir (based on a misunderstanding). The troll-woman Hergunnur answers them with the threat of violence, albeit with a twist on sexual themes. Instead of stroking Hjálmþér’s body softly she intends to tear it open with her untrimmed claws, a sure sign of aggression. It is striking that Margerður’s body had been described as characteristically open shortly before and now Hergunnur wants to inflict the same openness on Hjálmþér, not through sexual advances but by sheer force. She wants to inflict a permeability for bodily fluids (blood) by penetrating the protective layer of the body, the skin. Yet again, the sexual theme serves to relate the bodies of troll-woman and hero, even if Hergunnur’s threats are not realised.

Yet how does the episode as a whole reflect on Hjálmþér’s corporeal identity and on his male status in particular? First, he answers Ýma’s sexual advances with blunt aggression. The hero thus demonstrates his ability to defend himself even against a threat uttered by a female. He is further able to defend himself against the attack of Hergunnur, whom he wounds so severely that she is said to be gaping apart all over. This of course again reinforces the notion of the female body as open and permeable for fluids, even though in this case this state is imposed by a male’s martial aggression. In his assault Hjálmþér also inflicts on her what she had threatened to inflict on him. In relation to his female opponents, Hjálmþér can thus ascertain his heroic, male status. Yet the same cannot be said in relation to his male companions, as Hjálmþér relies on Hord to kill or wound most of the trollsisters.735 Hjálmþér thus clearly only reinforces male heroic identity in relation to non-human females but in relation to his male and human companion he appears subordinate. Or in other words: he is successful in creating a male, heroic and knightly identity in relation to others, but not in relation to another self, even if this is a ‘social other’, a servant.736 Hord’s superiority creates an unsettling reversal of the usual order of original riddarasögur, a reversal that will only be explained at the end of the saga.

A brief comment on Hjálmþér’s and the text’s method of installing and reading the troll-women’s bodies is also in order. The narrative voice offers the lengthy description of Margerður and gives a clear indication of how to imagine this creature. Yet it is through the eyes of the hero that the audience first and most lastingly relates to them: through his gaze and assessment, a relationship with the other is created on a corporeal level, even if this only leads to martial aggression (and no other interaction) in this episode. The descriptions of Hjálmþér and the narrative voice combine to give an image of females that can clearly be categorised as other, both in terms of appearance and in terms of behaviour. The latter may even be more important in enforcing the decision to meet them with martial onslaught. The category of behaviour will also be important in the next subchapter on shape-shifting (3.3.2.). It is vital in this episode also because if Hjálmþér had encountered in Ýma not a genuine troll-woman but an enchanted princess, he would have reacted fatally wrong. It was Ýma’s sexual promiscuity that provided a safe indicator to classify her as other, as her ugly appearance could have been the result of a spell.

In quickly summarising the findings from these two sagas, it can be concluded that, just as FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR has argued for female giants, female trolls are by no means standardised characters reduced to simple, stereotypical functions.737 They can either be malevolently threatening on a sexual level, or they can mirror courtly customs in habitat and behaviour. The discussion has shown that in both cases the body of the hero and the body of the other relate on various levels. Even if their bodies are not explicitly described, their being in the world and the implied contrast to each other provide enough ground on which the characters can establish relationships with their respective other, and begin to categorise their inherent otherness from a closer perspective. By also considering gender it was shown that bodies can construct an other through a paradigm which is not dependent on the human/non-human divide but which nevertheless also embodies this divide, through promiscuous behaviour and scanty clothing.

BALLIF STRAUBHAAR states that in the fornaldarsögur, ‘humanness vis-á-vis monstrousness can be seen as inhabiting a sliding continuum of male identity rather than being situated on opposite sides of a relatively clear line of demarcation of both gender and species.’738 Yet even in the case of Fála and Flegða, where the other appears as much more like the self than initially expected, the border between human and non-human nature is never questioned. In WALDENFELS’ view, encounters with the other always destabilise the borders between self and other, especially if we allow the other to come close.739 SHILDRICK also draws attention to this disquieting aspect when she affirms that ‘[i]f we know what we are by what we are not, then the other, in its apparent separation and distinction, serves a positive function of securing the boundaries of the self.’740 In the two examples discussed here, neither hero subsequently questions his own identity. Even for the complex borderline figure of Sigurð, it is not his human identity that is questioned and reassessed in this encounter but the idea of the (categorically uncourtly) wilderness. SCHÄFKE concludes that the authority of the value and norm system is limited to the social space of a particular society in a saga.741 Fála and Flegða may be seen to at least question this assumption: they inhabit a space reminiscent of a courtly hall, serve Sigurð noble food and speak his language. Yet their bodies clearly separate them from courtly women and this makes it possible to categorise them as trolls.

Experiencing the other in these examples therefore functions more as a confirmation of the self. By experiencing themselves in a semiosphere outside the court, the heroes must draw their own borders in their perception of self and other, and it is this perception (which the audience comes to share) that ultimately places them in a position (still) removed from the other. As WALDENFELS suggests, during encounters with the other it is often the subject’s own being that is the authority for distinguishing friend from foe.742 Such processes imply that in these cases the other is not a manifestation of chaos and disorder but is imagined through the categories which also denote human identity. In the texts discussed here it is borders, not categorical oppositions, which are explored.

3.2.2 ‘What Manner of Man,’ asked Ailill, ‘is this Hound?’743: Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad

In TBC there are no similar non-human (or semi-human) foes to prompt classificationas self or other.744 Combat takes place between men (with the exceptions of Queen Medb or the boy-troop joining in on a few occasions) and even the Morrígan, a goddess of war, is securely identified within the text’s semiotic system.745 The idea that an other which questions the boundaries of the self may nevertheless appear in the text can be argued in a renewed discussion of the main hero, Cú Chulainn. It has been explained before that Cú Chulainn is a liminal figure of both human and divine parentage and that in his name he embodies a strong canine component. His divine origin and canine associations led ERIK LARSEN to suggest that ‘the writers [of TBC] delivered a hero as tripartite’746, i.e. a hero incorporating man, god and animal. This in turn leads to the question of how these ‘identities’ may be expressed and distinguished and how they are evaluated both within the narrated world and by the audience.

To briefly recapitulate the previous argument: Cú Chulainn’s human and heroic side is expressed by a beautiful body and reflected in his role as protector of his land and people. These aspects prompted MARIE-LOUISE SJOESTEDT to categorise him as the ‘hero within the tribe’747, an assertion which has most prominently been challenged by NAGY.748 At others times, namely during his ríastrad, Cú Chulainn appears to stand outside this categorisation and becomes ugly. In his dual nature, Cú Chulainn destabilises the boundaries of categories such as hero and human. During his frenzy, he consequently poses a threat ‘to order on both an individual and a social level’749 through the change in his body and his behaviour. It will be argued that the ríastrad also threatens the Politics of Anatomy in succumbing the body to the unfixed and to monstrous pluralism. In these respects, Cú Chulainn fulfils many of the functions attributed to monstrous creatures in the Middle Ages and hence presents a fitting example for comparison, even if in his case self and other are part of the same character.

Modern scholarship has voiced rather diverging assessments of the ríastrad.750 ALAN BRUFORD suggests that perhaps Cú Chulainn is ‘a forerunner of the comic book „Super-hero“’, an inflated figure reflecting the tendency of Irish literature to ‘exaggerate for effect.’751 On the other end of the evaluative scale, LOWE foregrounds the moments in which the hero becomes abject and consequently asks how a true hero can be ‘such a monster’.752 In his question, LOWE touches on the somehow contradictory nature of Cú Chulainn but still seeks to place him in the category of true hero, a category that this figure has, strangely, helped to define in Irish studies.While it is difficult to see Cú Chulainn as the ‘pre-eminent hero of the tribe’, it is nevertheless beneficial to read this character as a ‘defender of the tribe’753 and hence as fulfilling a heroic function throughout TBC. The following close readings will instigate a reflection on the very concept of hero, its relation to looks and violence and the hero’s position in society by exploring the boundaries which (apparently) define these concepts. In opposition to his beautiful body discussed in the previous chapter, both Cú Chulainn’s ‘tendency towards antisocial behaviour’754 as well as his monstrous appearance have repeatedly been the subject of scholarly attention. It should nevertheless be remarked that with the exception of O’CONNOR (forthcoming)755 and ELIZABETH MOORE756, no scholars have yet undertaken to study the motif from a perspective similar to that of expressive mediality.

Since the ríastrad is not a widespread motif in early Irish literature, some introductory remarks on the phenomenon are helpful. The motif is also found in relation to Troilus in the twelfth-century text Togail Troí (‘The Destruction of Troy’, an adaptation of the Classical text), where a very similar change of appearance is described.757 Interestingly, battle-frenzy is also associated with an Irish saint, the seventh-century St Findchú of Brí-Gobann.758 The two figures may be closely modelled on each other (note also the shared element cú in their names) but the saint does not incorporate the problematic physical transformation. A similar state, albeit again without a change in appearance, is found in the case of the Norse berserks, a parallel which NAGY759, MCCONE760 and PATRICK LEO HENRY761 have pointed out and which O’CONNOR762 discusses at length. As the aim of this study is to present one particular manifestation of the motif in its relation to expressive mediality, these parallels are not explored further.

Modern scholarship seems to interpret Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad as a fleeting excess of the always-extant martial energy of the hero. SJOESTEDT sees in the physical metamorphosis a ‘terrible contortion, the manifestation of his warlike valour.’763 DOOLEY terms it a ‘supreme manifestation of heroic energy […]’764 and HILDA ELLIS DAVIDSON notes that this ‘rage of battle transformed the hero into something monstrous and inhuman.’765 HENRY interprets Cú Chulainn’s distortion as ‘[p]erhaps the most primitive form in which the fighting warrior is seen to function’ and clearly sees it as expressing the hero’s readiness for battle: ‘[w]hat we find in these descriptions is obviously possession of the warrior by a martial fury so intense as to change his whole form.’766 In his forthcoming article, O’CONNOR discusses the ríastrad as ‘a grotesque physical transformation as a prelude to dramatic displays of martial aggression’767 although he rightly does not limit the occurrences of the ríastrad to moments (just) before displays of martial aggression. To summarise, it appears that the hero is temporarily engulfed by his own martial fury and his metamorphosis is as much an expression of his state of mind as of his heroic valour.

The ríastrad occurs when Cú Chulainn is particularly enraged and/ or in heightened mode for battle. MCCONE describes this as follows: ‘[w]hen angered by maltreatment, CúChulainn is liable to undergo a horrendous transformation of his features before launching a frenzied attack on the perpetrators.’768 Stunningly, Cú Chulainn sometimes deliberately seeks to reach this state. In the Comrac Fir Diad (‘The Fight against Fer Diad’) section of TBC I, Cú Chulainn asks his charioteer to goad him into the ríastrad so that he can win the difficult fight.769 What is somewhat of a hindrance in studying this phenomenon is that the ríastrad is described to various degrees in the text and it is sometimes disputable whether Cú Chulainn has entered it. In some instances the texts explicitly refer to the battle- frenzy. In TBC II it may be said that dofáncatar a ḟerga laiss.770 Or it may be stated that: [i]s and sin cétríastarda im Choin Culaind co nderna úathbásach n-ilrechtach n-iṅgantach n-anachnid de.771 In TBC I it is told that [t]ic a ḟerg niad 7 atraig.772 Reference is also made to the lúan láith (‘warrior’s moon’), a strange apparition that rises from Cú Chulainn’s head when he enters his state of enragement.

In other instances there is no clear mention of the frenzy or of physical distortion and it is only implied that Cú Chulainn has undergone the process of change. In the Breslech Mór Maige Muirthemne episode in TBC I, it is said that [d]ofánic ferg 7 luinni mór ic aicsin in tslóig re hilara bidbad [7] re himad a námat.773 Emotional despair is clearly a trigger for his fury, yet here no clear indication of his ríastrad is provided. A mention in TBC I in Comrac Fir Diad that [r]a lín at 7 infisi amail anáil i llés. Forbrid a méd co mba móam oltás Fer Diad774 may be enough for the audience to assume battle-frenzy, but it is not described further in the text. The present study may discuss instances that were excluded in previous research because they lack a clear mention of the frenzy but Cú Chulainn’s behaviour and his bodily changes suggest that he has entered it.

To contextualise how Cú Chulainn’s other self is constructed in TBC, it is vital to point out that early Irish literature has an understanding of the hero as an ambiguous, (sometimes) even precarious figure. MOORE underlines that in a general (interdisciplinary) understanding, the hero should be ‘a practitioner of controlled violence. His are a series of functional and protective actions that are not threatening to social order precisely because they are normally contained within a set of restraining rules.’775 Yet in practice, early Irish texts often address the problematic definition of controlled, justified violence through their characters. MCCONE states that the
early Irish tradition regarded the warrior as a potentially unstable combination of devotion and menace to his own people, in other words as a Jekyll and Hyde figure, and […] this ambivalence could be given literary expression in a number of different ways.776

LOWE notes that Cú Chulainn ‘embodies a contradiction inherent in the warrior figure’777, which suggests a culture aware of the fact that warlike action remains difficult for any society to assimilate. In many medieval Irish texts, there thus appears ‘a simultaneous awareness of [the] defensive and destructive potential’778 of warriors, as MCCONE summarises.

This ambiguity is often also metaphorically related to the figure of the hound, a topos which has already received considerable attention in scholarship and needs only a brief introduction here.779 When Ailill asks the question quoted in the title of this subchapter, he already hints not just at the particular warrior he enquires about but also at a more general understanding of the warrior figure in early Irish literature. Far from suggesting that Cú Chulainn is an animal in a literal sense, Ailill evokes the common paralleling of heroes with hounds. The kind of dogs meant here is referred to as árchú (‘blood-hound’) in the sources and is not to be confused with hunting dogs (for instance of the Finn Cycle). An árchú is a watchdog, a protector of land and people and thus, as FERGUS KELLY observes, ‘bred and trained to kill’780 intruders and enemies. JOHN CAREY finds that

[c]anine metaphors, in poetry and elsewhere, indicate that the hound-like qualities to which such naming laid implicit claim were the traits of a warrior: loyalty, bravery, fierce protectiveness. […] But a fighter’s formidable abilities have a double edge: what if he becomes a threat to the community, rather than its protector?781

CAREY’s comment shows that the dilemma inherent in the ríastrad is reflected elsewhere in early Irish literature. MCCONE adds that

[p]roper behaviour on the part of hound or warrior consists, of course, in loyal defence of his own people and aggressive hostility towards their enemies, the two often coinciding. […] True malignity in martial figures of this type, whether hounds or human warriors, consists in their breaking faith without good reason and turning upon their own people.782

Both dog and warrior thus incorporate a potential danger, a danger which may have become embodied in the mightiest hound of early Irish literature, Cú Chulainn. The issue is addressed directly in the episode where the boy Sétanta kills the árchú of Culann the smith and assumes his adult name, Cú Chulainn (‘the Hound of Culann’). The hound attacks the boy because it has been released to protect its people and their guests during a feast, and Cú Chulainn arrives late for this feast. The dog cannot guess that this is not an intruder but a mere latecomer because it lacks reason. Moreover, it is so powerful and independent that it cannot be restrained once released. If it is argued that Cú Chulainn comes to personify this dog as a representative of its kind, it is reasonable to propose that he too comes to embody its dual nature of protector and possible threat, a subject which I pursued elsewhere.783

Both recensions hint at the possibility of encounters in which Cú Chulainn attacks his own people in their descriptions of the ríastrad. Yet during the main cattle-raid narrative this is never described (in itself a point for consideration elsewhere). However, the macgnímrada feature an attention-grabbing moment when Cú Chulainn returns agitated from his first outing as a warrior, an episode briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. When the boy Cú Chulainn approaches King Conchobar’s fort in Emain in TBC I, the watchman cries out that ‘[a]rdáilfe fuil laiss cach dune fil isind lis mani foichlither 7 mani dichset mná ernochta friss.’784 In TBC II it is King Ailill who utters the same thought.785 The episode is significant for two reasons. First, it is part of the very earliest stratum of texts currently included within the Táin, as O’CONNOR affirmed in correspondence.786 This means that the idea of aggressive behaviour towards his own people during the ríastrad was part of the textual tradition of TBC from the very start, even if no bodily change is (explicitly) described.787 Second, the episode is telling because Cú Chulainn was just shown to be conversing with his charioteer. He was agitated but capable of making conversation. Discussing the description of the ríastrad in Breslech Mór Maige Muirthemne (‘The Great Rout of Mag Muirthemne’), O’CONNOR asserts that Cú Chulainn is ‘a warrior in full control of his actions’788, a point which he also stresses in his subsequent discussion of Cú Chulainn’s fight against Fer Diad. This suggests that Cú Chulainn appears by no means mentally out of control, but only martially, by being so engulfed by martial energy that he cannot stop himself from attacking even his own people. Cú Chulainn thus briefly loses reason in the sense that he can no longer distinguish between friend and foe, but he does not lose his control of speech and movement. Because he is able to speak, perform martial feats and use the gae bolga even during the ríastrad, arguing for a loss of reason instead of a complete loss of control might open new approaches to the frenzy.

That a momentary failure to categorise and thus distinguish his own people from those he ought to (or is allowed to) attack may be the core problematic aspect of the ríastrad is supported by another reference. In the main narrative of TBC I, in an account of the ríastrad, it is mentioned that [n]í aithgnéad cóemu ná cairdiu. Cumma no slaided ríam 7 íarma.789 This sentence, O’CONNOR argues, is part of a leaf interpolated into Lebor na hUidre and no other texts of TBC I contain it.790 In terms of narrative technique it is worth pointing out that this very negative trait is presented exclusively through the eyes of the hostile Connacht army. It is interesting to ponder why that explanation has been interpolated, and why it has been interpolated precisely at the point at which it occurs. These issues will be addressed briefly below. It may be argued that the interpolation reflects the underlying discussion of controlled versus uncontrolled violence as advocated by MOORE for TBC I.791

These performative issues are important for understanding Cú Chulainn as an other. The temporary loss of reason in the sense that he loses his understanding, his ability to distinguish friend from foe, helps to associate Cú Chulainn further with canine and thus with non-human figures. JOYCE A. SALISBURY claims that ‘the main principle defining animals was their perceived lack of intellect, „reason“.’792 JAN ZIOLKOWSKI demonstrates the difficulty in clearly distinguishing human from beast, concluding that ‘[t]he line between human and animal in the Middle Ages was at once sharply drawn and porous.’793 From Augustine onwards, the idea of a human as animal rationale mortale (‘a mortal animal possessing reason’) was one of the apparently secure distinctions.794 However, as DANA OSWALD rightly points out, ‘[i]f the line between animal and human was problematic for medieval thinkers, despite the oft-cited Augustinian injunction concerning rationality, then the divisions among animals, monsters, and humans were considerably more troubling.’795

Dogs in early Irish texts may also undergo a sudden and apparently unprovoked change in character from protector to menace, attacking people they were meant to defend. This of course provides a further strong parallel with Cú Chulainn. All of these aspects raise questions about the nature of this hero. LOWE posits that

[t]he terrifying bodily upheaval that is the ríastrad or warp-spasm, the almost supernatural display of aggression, and the very immediate physical danger that Cú Chulainn poses to all those around him (including those from his own society), all undermine his status as the preeminent hero of the tribe. How can a hero be such a monster?796

For LOWE, Cú Chulainn is ‘kicking over the traces’797, the traces which define and constrict a perhaps more standard idea of the hero. The point that perhaps the hero himself is ‘kicked over the traces’ could be argued by a closer look at the term ríastrad. SAYERS states that ríastrad (with the preposition imm) is used as an impersonal passive, deriving from a root *reig- with a basic meaning ‘to twist’.798 He sees this as evidence that the transformation is ‘seemingly imposed externally without the hero’s volition.’799 O’CONNOR also argues that the ‘ríastrad is clearly something which comes over Cú Chulainn rather than something he brings about of his own free will.’800 Although Cú Chulainn at times asks his charioteer, Láeg, to goad him in order to incite the ríastrad, it still appears that the distortion itself takes hold of him rather than the other way around.

This brief discussion of the ríastrad is important for arguing that Cú Chulainn can be said to become an other during his battle-frenzy, that he destabilises the boundaries between hero and menace and between human and animal. If he suddenly lacks reason, a defining feature of human identity, can he still be said to be truly and fully human? And if he loses control of his body’s appearance and turns into something ugly and disfigured, can he still be seen as a true hero within the prerogatives of early Irish literature? Or does this too hint at some inherent otherness? Given all of these problematic aspects it is suitable to propose that Cú Chulainn does become other, even monstrous, in the sense of monsters as disquieting, ‘hybrid creatures’. He thus participates in the ‘growth of the idea (and fear) of the blurring of the lines between animal and human.’801 Campbell’s definition of a monster as ‘some horrendous presence or apparition that explodes all of your standards for harmony, order, and ethical condition’802 strangely befits Cú Chulainn’s otherness. The fact that these issues are visible on and mediated through Cú Chulainn’s distorted body will now be argued by investigating the texts and asking what exactly his body changes into during his ríastrad.

Just as with his beardless appearance, the ríastrad is tangible in both recensions as a means of identifying the hero and by being narratively developed. On the first level, a mere mention of in ríastartha (‘the distorted one’) identifies (or evokes) Cú Chulainn in TBC. The epithet is used by various other characters throughout the cattle-raid narrative when they refer to Cú Chulainn. For instance, in TBC I Ailill offers his daughter in marriage to Láiríne mac Nóis if Láiríne brings him cend ind ríastairthe.803 When the mortally wounded Nad Crantail returns to the Connacht camp after fighting Cú Chulainn, the people in the camp want to see proof that Cú Chulainn is dead: ʻ[c]ate cend in riastarthi lat?ʼ or cách.804 In view of Nad Crantail’s comment that he would not bring back the beardless head of Cú Chulainn, it is telling that at least when Cú Chulainn is identified as the distorted one, the head seems to be an appropriate trophy.805 The prophet Dubthach also alludes to Cú Chulainn as in ríatarthe in his prophecy in TBC I.806 These mentions are by no means insulting: like the spoken references to his beardlessness, they do not evaluate the hero but merely serve to identify him in conversation.

Although the descriptions of the ríastrad in TBC have been examined in past scholarship, the individual features that make this change visible have not received much attention, with the exception of MOORE’s recent analysis.807 Cú Chulainn’s distorted shape presents a challenge in many respects, not least to modern imagination. Also, if one tries to apply the principle of the Politics of Anatomy to this appearance, it quickly becomes clear that the picture presents not a normal human being but instead (at first glance) a wild assemblage of various motifs from countless possible sources. It is a body in pieces that, through these individual pieces, evokes various discourses, yet in its entirety creates a new discourse specifically for the hero. In order to fully see this body, it is necessary to isolate the individual features and see where else in Irish literature they occur and what connotations (i.e. medial value) they (may) bear in these (con‐)texts.

Cú Chulainn’s distorted body is described in much more detail than his beautiful appearance.808 Yet the ríastrad descriptions are all introduced by the narrative voice. They are found at various points in the texts, either to describe Cú Chulainn’s distortion in real time or within a prophecy. As both recensions appear fairly consistent in their longer descriptions only TBC I will be cited here. There is, however, one description in Comrac Ḟir Dead in TBC II which deserves mention. There, Cú Chulainn’s transformation is described as follows: [i]s and sin ra chétríastrad im Choin Culaind goros lín att 7 infithsi mar anáil i llés co nderna thúaig n-úathma[i]r n-acbéil n-ildathaig n-ingantaig de, gomba métithir ra fomóir ná ra fer mara inmílid mórchalma ós chind Ḟir Diad i certarddi.809 The increase in size seems the most noticeable change here and because of this Cú Chulainn is openly associated with unfavourable figures such as the giant Fomóri or pirates. This passage portrays the hero as a large, rainbow-like figure and it provides far less descriptive detail than many other accounts in TBC.

It is convenient to label the ekphrastic portrayals as the first, second and third description. MOORE lists the occurrence of ríastarde in TBC I as follows:

[t]he first is in the Aided na Macraide section of the Macgnimrada, and the second, most-likely H-interpolated [H1-interpolated], occurs in a second Aided na Macraidi section after Cú Chulainn’s long sleep and Lug’s healing. The third occurs in Breslech Mór Maige Muirthemne, a section which Rudolf Thurneysen considered a later addition to LU and on which SAYERS also remarked that this ‘description of fury and its aftermath [is] generally thought to be a freestanding piece interpolated in the Táin.810

That two out of three descriptions are either interpolations or later additions only supports the assumption that Cú Chulainn’s body, and perhaps especially his battle-spasm, was consciously developed by the compilers/redactors of TBC.811 O’CONNOR makes the related point that several of H1 s interpolations ‘dwell […] on Cú Chulainn’s furor’812, although not all of these include bodily distortion. The descriptions may therefore include a conscious critical engagement with matters such as the control of violence, but also with the medial value of the hero’s body. However, it should also be kept in mind that most of the extant text of TBC consists of interpolations and (later) additions after centuries of compilation, as O’CONNOR kindly clarified.813 Nevertheless, this does not necessarily contradict the argument that certain ideas (that, as was argued above, were present already in the oldest stratum of the macgnímrada)may have been consciously and poetically developed over time.

This becomes even more likely if one follows GEARÓID MAC EOIN’s understanding of the manuscript history of Recension I.814 There has been a long-running debate over when H lived and worked (the different views are summarised by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN) and (more recently) over how many hands are actually labelled H.815 In terms of dating, MAC EOIN summarises that THURNEYSEN suggests the thirteenth century, FRANÇOISE HENRY a date before 1178 and TOMÁS Ó CONCHEANAINN that he died in 1106.816 MAC EOIN himself places H firmly in the twelfth century on linguistic grounds817, a conclusion reached also by LIAM BREATNACH.818 Yet regardless of which dating is favoured, his lifetime falls within a period that BYNUM characterises as particularly obsessed with physical change.819 This makes it possible that H perhaps also engaged with these questions in his development of the ríastrad.

Yet H had a considerable influence on the whole manuscript of Lebor na hUidre, not just on TBC I.820 ELIZABETH DUNCAN recently proposed that what earlier scholarship has seen as H’s contributions to Lebor na hUidre is the work of no less than six different scribes.821 While her argument appears very convincing and calls for extensive reassessments, the H interpolations in TBC seem all to stem from the same hand, labelled H1 by DUNCAN, and thus this ground-breaking thesis does not affect the following arguments. MAC EOIN earlier stated that in general across Lebor na hUidre, the ‘fact that H’s material recurs in independent copies of his texts shows that he was not composing but merely transcribing’.822 In a recent paper, CAREY proposes that H was interested mainly in ‘lore concerning the Irish past’ and that, in fact, he had ‘a mainly literary interest in the Irish past’823– an interest that could, of course, well be shared by several scribes. While these broad statements will need to be reassessed carefully in the light of DUNCAN’S contribution, it is of course possible that the six Hs shared such an interest in lore and used earlier material to develop the texts they worked on. However this may be, these comments certainly befit the scribe H1 who worked on TBC I.

Many of the foregoing remarks focus on Lebor na hUidre as a whole, and it must be asked how they relate to the H1 interpolations in TBC I and to the ones connected with the ríastrad in particular. Since the ríastrad appears to be part of the earliest stratum of TBC, it is likely that H1 developed it in the second Aided na Macraidi (‘The Death of the Youths’) section. It is clear that the two interpolations greatly contribute to the picture of Cú Chulainn in the extant version of TBC. Therefore, unless one’s aim is to propose an Urtyp of the hero in which the visualisation of the ríastrad plays no part, one should acknowledge the impact of these extraordinary passages on the figure of the hero.

DOOLEY suggests that H was also ‘a close, one might almost say an obsessive, reader’824, a point further supporting a conscious engagement of H with certain issues like the warp-spasm. CAREY cautions against DOOLEY’s reading, but he too acknowledges that H ‘had a taste for antiquarian narratives knitted together from pre-existing materials, and enlivened by poetic interludes; in this respect […] he seems to have been a man of his time.’825 While CAREY’s comment is formulated for Lebor na hUidre as a whole (and both assessments were voiced before DUNCAN’S analysis), it can be safely assumed that this characterisation also befits the scribe working on TBC I, H1. It is therefore possible that in the interpolations concerning the ríastrad, the focus may lie on a typical twelfth-century interest in metamorphosis and change together with an assemblage of motifs found in other sources which ultimately give the impression of hybridity.

The first, non-interpolated, description of Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad occurs in the Aided na Macraidi section in the macgnímrada, when Cú Chulainn first enters King Conchobor’s court and fights the boys on the playing-field. The narrative voice gives a detailed picture of the bodily change:

[r]íastartha immi-seom i sudiu. Indar lat ba tinnarcan asnort cach foltne ina chend lasa comérge conérracht. Indar lat bá hoíbell tened boí for cach óenḟinnu de. Iadais indara súil dó conárbo lethiu indás cró snáithaiti. Asoilgg alaile combo móir beólu midchúaich. Doérig dia glainíni co rici a hóu. Asoilg a beólu coa inairddriuch combo écna a inchróes. Atreacht in lúan láith assa mulluch.826

Thereupon he became distorted. His hair stood on end so that it seemed as if each separate hair on his head had been hammered into it. Youwould have thought that there was a spark of fire on each single hair. He closed one eye so that it was no wider than the eye of a needle; he opened the other until it was as large as the mouth of a mead-goblet. He laid bare from his jaw to his ear and opened his mouth rib-wide (?) so that his internal organs were visible. The champion’s light rose above his head.

The second detailed description of his changed appearance is also found in the Aided na Macraidi section and is the interpolation commonly attributed to H1. It is not a description in real time but is intended as an explanation for Ailill’s preceding comment that none will escape from Cú Chulainn now that he is in his battle-frenzy. The narrative voice states that

[ a]r bá bés dó-som in tan no linged a lón láith ind, imréditis a t[h]raigthi iarma 7 a escata remi 7 muil a orcan fora lurgnib, 7 indala súil ina chend 7 araili fria chend anechtair. Docoised ferchend fora beólu. Nach findae bíd fair ba háthithir delc sciach 7 banna fola for cach finnu. Ní aithgnéad cóemu ná cairdiu. Cumma no slaided ríam 7 íarma. Is de sin doratsat Fir Ól nÉcmacht in ríastartha do anmaim do C[h]oin C[h]ulaind.827

For it was usual with him that when his hero’s flame sprang forth his feet would turn to the back and his hams turn to the front and the round muscles of his calves would come on to his shins, while one eye sank into his head and the other protruded. A man’s head would go into his mouth. Every hair on him would be as sharp as a spike of hawthorn and there would be a drop of blood on every hair. He would recognise neither comrades nor friends. He would attack alike before him and behind him. Hence the men of Connacht named Cú Chulainn the Distorted One.

While the first description follows the order hair–eyes–mouth–champion’s light, the second presents a different order of feet/shins–eyes–mouth–hair, a fact that will be briefly discussed below. In this interpolation H1 not only introduces the new aspect of the backwards feet and shins, he also includes the most disquieting element of the ríastrad: that Cú Chulainn suddenly becomes unable to distinguish between friend and foe. This was mentioned already in the battle-frenzy description in the macgnímrada when Cú Chulainn takes up arms, although there it is not made explicit that he has changed in form (but this could be implied).828

The third description, also interpolated and the most detailed of the three, occurs in the Breslech Mór Maige Muirthemne section. It is again the narrative voice which relates it:

[ i]s and so cétríastartha im Choin Culaind co nderna úathbásach n-ílrechtach n-ingantach n-anaichnid de. Crithnaigset a charíni imbi imar crand re sruth nó imar bocṡimin fri sruth cach mball 7 cach n-alt 7 cach n-ind 7 cach n-áge de ó mulluch co talmain. Ro láe sáebglés díberge dá churp i mmedón a chrocind. Táncatára t[ h]raigthe 7 a luirgne 7 a glúne co mbátár dá éis. Táncatár a ṡála 7 a orcni 7 a escata co mbátár ríam remi. Táncatár tulḟéthi a orcan co mbátár for tul a lurgan combá métithir muldor[n]d míled cech mecon dermár díbide. Srengtha tollḟéthe a mullaich co mbátár for cóich a muineóil combá métithir cend meic mís cach mulchnoc dímór dírím dírecra dímesraigthe díbide. And sin dorigni cúach cera dá gnúis 7 dá agid fair. Imslo[ i]c indara súil dó ina chend; iss ed mod dánas tairsed fíadchorr [a] tagraim do lár a grúade a hia[r]thora c[h]locaind. Sesceinga sétig co mboí fora grúad sec[h]tair. Ríastartha a bél co úrtrachta. Srengais in n-ól don ḟidba chnána comtar écnaiga ginchróes. Táncatára scoim 7 a t[ h]romma co mbátar ar etelaig ina bél 7 ina brágit. Benais béim n-ulgaib leóman don charput úachtarach fora ḟorcli comba métithirmoltchracandcech slamsrúam thened doniged | ina bél asa brágit. Roclos bloscbéimnech a chride ré chlíab imar glimnaig n-árchon hi fotha nó mar leómain ic techta fó mathgamnaib. Atchessa na coinnli bodba 7 na cithnélla neme 7 na haíble tened trichemrúaid i nnéllaib 7 i n-áeraib úasa chind re fiuchud na ferge fírgarge hitrácht úaso. Ra chasnig a ḟolt imma c[h]end imar craíbred ṅdergscíach i mbernaid at[h]álta. Ce ro crateá rígaball fó rígthorad immi iss ed mod dá rísad ubull díb dochum talman taris acht ro sesed ubull for cach óenḟinna and re frithchassad na ferge atracht dá ḟult úaso. Atraccht in lúan láith asa étun comba sithethir remithir airnem n-óclaích corbo chomfota frisin sróin coro dechrastár oc imbirt na scíath, oc brogad ind arad, oc taibleth na slóg. Ardithir immorro remithir talcithir tresithir sithidir seólc[h]rand prímlui[n]gi móri in buinne díriuch dondḟala atracht a fírchléthe a chendmullaig hi certairdi, co nderna dubchíaich ndruídechta de amal chíaig do rígbrudin in tan tic rí día tincur hi fescur lathe gemreta.829

Then a great distortion came upon Cú Chulainn so that he became horrible, many-shaped, strange and unrecognizable. All the flesh of his body quivered like a tree in a current or like a bulrush in a stream, every limb and every joint, every end and every member of him from head to foot. He performed a wild feat of contortion with his body inside his skin. His feet and his shins and his knees came to the back; his heels and his calves and his hams came to the front. The sinews of his calves came on to the front of his shins, and each huge round knot of them was as big as a warrior’s fist. The sinews of his head were stretched to the nape of his neck and every huge immeasurable, vast, incalculable round Ball of them was as big as the head of a month-old child. Then his face became a red hollow (?). He sucked one of his eyes into his head so deep that a wild crane could hardly have reached it to pluck it out from the back of his skull on to his cheek. The other eye sprang out on to his cheek. His mouth was twisted back fearsomely. He drew back his cheek from his jawbone until his inward parts were visible. His lungs and his liver fluttered in his mouth and his throat. His upper palate clashed against the lower in a mighty pincer-like movement (?) andevery stream of fiery flakes which came into his mouth from his throat was as wide as a ram’s skin. The loud beating of his heart against his ribs was heard like the baying of a bloodhound… or like a lion attacking bears. The torches of the war-goddess,virulent rain-clouds and sparks of blazing fire, were seen in the air over his head with the seething of fierce rage that rose in him.His hair curled about his head like branches of redhaw thorn used to re-fenceagap in a hedge. If a noble apple-tree weighed down with fruit had been shaken about his hair, scarcely one apple would have reached the ground through it, but an apple would have stayed impaled on each separate hair because of the fierce bristling of his hair above his head. The hero’s light rose from his forehead, as long and as thick as a hero’s fist and it was as long as his nose, and he was filled with rage as he wielded the shields and urged on the charioteer and cast sling-stones at the host. As high, as thick, as strong, as powerful and as long as the mast of a great ship was the straight stream of dark blood which rose up from the very top of his head and dissolved into a dark magical mist like the smoke of a palace when a king comes to be waited on in the evening of a winter’s day.

This passage in particular (CECILE O’RAHILLY saw it as ‘later in style and language than the rest of the tale in LU’830) evokes the image of a fearsome, scarcely human hero and is one of the most striking examples of ekphrasis in early Irish literature. It also includes the idea of the reversed feet/ shins but creates a much more detailed picture. The mention of Cú Chulainn attacking his own, presented in the second description, is absent: it is Cú Chulainn’s body, not his behaviour, which creates this disquieting figure. One may be tempted to suggest that the interpolator(s) in particular wanted to ‘show’ the audience how to imagine this character and devoted considerable time (and precious manuscript space) to evoking this image.

These descriptions also feature a noticeable amount of animal imagery. Cú Chulainn’s repeated connection with animals has been pointed out by LARSEN, who argues that

[t]he warp-spasm places him beyond the reach of the well-worn categories ‘mortal’ and ‘god.’ Predictably, the most outlandish elements of the warp-spasm received animal references. Cranes, lions, rams, watch-dogs, and bears all made the list. He is not merely shape-shifting into a monster or animal the way gods did.831

The fact that such man-animal hybrids could raise unsettling questions about human nature in theological discourse is pointed out by SIMEK.832 In fact, it is likely that such hybrids also caused considerable unease outside the theological framework. The animal references have been discussed at length by MOORE.833 Therefore, they will not be considered here again in order to focus on hitherto neglected issues. It should, however, briefly be remarked that the manner in which these animals are evoked is reminiscent of the descriptions of monsters in early Irish literature. These creatures are often a potpourri of various animal limbs and features and their jigsaw-nature is an important narrative technique for mediating their monstrosity, a technique which may have been deliberately employed here also. These monsters fit BYNUM’s category of hybridity. BYNUM argues that in medieval thought a hybrid is ‘a double being, an entity of parts, two or more. It is an inherently visual form. […] It is a way of making two-ness, and the simultaneity of two-ness, visible.’834 The detailed descriptions make it clear that, once he has undergone the physical change fully, Cú Chulainn is also a hybrid figure and thus can be seen to shake our assumptions about boundaries and our confidence in the structure of reality835, as BYNUM concludes about hybrid figures.

Similarly ekphrastic descriptions are found in relation to non-heroic figures in early Irish literature, such as the Sovereignty Goddess in her state of ugly hag, the Ulster poet Amairgen and a distinctly Irish type of the Antichrist. In order to fully argue the point that especially the third, interpolated, description develops the idea of Cú Chulainn becoming other both in his actions and through his body, these figures will be briefly introduced. The Sovereignty Goddess is a divine female figure who interacts with humans. She is most often poetically described when she approaches young prospective kings as an ugly hag. LEONIE DUIGNAN finds that ‘[a] significant characteristic of the woman/ goddess of sovereignty in the literature is that she may appear in various forms’, and when kissed by the righteous ruler undergoes a transformation ‘from ugly hag to beautiful Goddess […]’.836 The young man in question thus needs to overcome his initial revulsion at her body in order to achieve his position as king.

MULLIGAN’S discussion of the hag in female sovereignty narratives shows that ‘oversized physical stature and unusually large individual parts; an abnormal mouth; malformed limbs; dark, blackened appearance; and unruly hair’837 are recurrent features in these descriptions. All of these, she concludes, are integral in portraying ugliness838, an assessment SAYERS agrees with.839 For example, the hag in Echtrae mac nEchach Mugmedóin (‘The Adventure of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedón’) is described as follows:

[is] amlaid bui in chaillech, co mba duibithir gual cech n-alt 7 cach n-aigi di o mullach co talmain. Ba samalta fri herboll fiadeich in mong glas gaisidech bai tria cleithi a cheandmullaich. Consealgad glasgeg darach fo brith dia corran glaisḟiacla bai ʼna cind co roichead a hou. Suli duba dethaighe le, sron cham chuasach. Medon fethech brecbaindech ingalair le, 7 luirgni fiara fochama siad, adbronnach leathansluaistech si, glunmar glaisingnech. Ba grain tra tuarascbail na cailligi.840

Thus was the hag: every joint and limb of her, from the top of her head to the earth, was as black as coal. Like the tail of a wild horse was the grey bristly mane that came through the upper part of her head-crown. The green branch of an oak in bearing would be severed by the sickle of green teeth that lay in her head and reached to her ears. Dark smoky eyes she had; a nose crooked and hollow. She had a middle fibrous, spotted with pustules, diseased, and shins distorted and awry. Her ankles were thick, her shoulder blades were broad, her knees were big, and her nails were green. Loathsome and sooth was the hag’s appearance.841

This is an especially detailed description for such a figure. Its main descriptive paradigms, the dark complexion, bristly hair, green and abnormally large teeth protruding from the mouth, crooked facial features (nose and shins) and diseased skin can only lead to one assessment: that she is loathsome, ugly and unpleasant.

The two other figures whose ugliness is described at length are both male, but they also share many of these conspicuous descriptive paradigms with the Sovereignty Goddess. In fact, it seems that the expression of ugliness in early Irish literature is strikingly similar for both sexes.842 One of these remarkably ugly male figures is Amairgen as depicted in Athairne 7 Amairgen (‘Athairne and Amairgen’), a text found in the Book of Leinster. 843 The figure will be discussed more fully in 5.2.1. in relation to the faeces which are also prominently described on his body. For the present purpose it suffices to say that although he is the future chief poet of the Ulaid, Amairgen is introduced through his truly unfavourable appearance:

brú iarum combo méit adbul teig móir. & ba feithech glasremor in brúsin. & a smucli asa sróin inna beolu. Ba dub a chroccend. Batir gela a fiacla. Ba glasbán a aged. Amal da urbuinne builg goband a lurgne & a sliastai. Batir laebladracha a thraigid. Batir adbolmóra a adbronna. Batir ardda imchiana ada ngruad. Batir domna dubderga a dí súil. Ba lebormailgech anúas. Ba garb drestaide a folt. ba mellach cnámach carrgarb a druim. Nibó cáemduine samlaid.844

His belly swelled until it was the size of a great house (?); and it was sinewy, grey and corpulent. Snot flowed from his nose into his mouth. His skin was black. His teeth were white. His face was livid. His calves and thighs were like the two spouts of a blacksmith’s bellows. His feet had crooked toes. His ankles were huge. His cheeks were very long and high. His eyes were sunken and dark red. He had long eyebrows, his hair was rough and prickly. His back was knobby, bony, rough with scabs. It was not the semblance of a comely person.845

The frank assessment at the end leaves no doubt that this is an ugly, unpleasant character. The shared main features are again an unshapely appearance (crooked limbs, enlarged features), a dark complexion, prickly hair and a diseased skin. That Amairgen does not speak until later in life aligns him with the Norse hero Sigurð, and the importance of speech in relation to human identity has been pointed out in the previous sub-chapter (3.2.1.).

Many of these descriptive paradigms are also shared by the other male figure, the Antichrist of the Irish Apocryphal tradition. For the present discussion it is important to note that the figure is presented in a thoroughly Christian, not a heroic context but also in a specifically Irish one. PHILIP BERNHARDT-HOUSE finds that medieval Irish bestiaries often portray the devil as incorporating lupine characteristics.846 Even though no such characteristics are observable in the descriptions that could be included in this study, this aspect would certainly benefit from further analysis in relation to Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad. Importantly, MARTIN MCNAMARA proclaims that there is a rather distinctive tradition of the Antichrist in Irish sources and that, in his physiognomy especially, the figure of the Antichrist is wholly independent of Eastern sources, as well as of other depictions used in the West.847 This suggests that these descriptions may incorporate a thoroughly Irish idea of how to imagine such a negative being, and, strikingly, his appearance is similar to various other liminal and/or problematic figures in early Irish literature. BERNARD MCGINN suggests that the Irish figure of the Antichrist was ‘probably fuelled by bizarre descriptions of superhuman figures found in the early Irish sagas’, (a possible link to Cú Chulainn) and acknowledges that in a pan-European context it ‘is among the most unusual of the early Middle Ages.’848

To illustrate this, reference may be made to a Latin text (cited by MCNAMARA) that contains a vivid description of the Antichrist. This text is now kept in Avranches, Biliothèque municipal as MS 108. It is dated to the twelfth century and hence contemporary with H1’s time of working on TBC. Its editor, BERNHARD BISCHOFF, argues that it contains the oldest text on the Antichrist in the West.849 It offers the following description:

[s]imilia tenebatur status eius cubitorum novem. Habet capillum nigrum in tortorio sicut catena ferrea. In medio frontem habet oculum unum et lucebit sicut aurora. Labia subteriores grande habet, superiores non habet. In manus eius digitus minor longior erit. Pedes sinistro. latior erit. Status eius in similitudinem.850

His stature will be nine cubits. He will have black hair pulled up [?] like an iron chain. In his forehead he will have one eye shining like the dawn. His lower lips will be large, he will have no upper lips. On his hand the little finger will be the longer; his left foot will be wider. His stance will be similar [?].

Astrikingly similar description of the Antichrist’s appearance is found in the much later Book of Lismore (late fifteenth century), ff110 a30 –110 c20, although the text may of course be earlier:

[h]is body will be six hundred lengths high, and forty in width. He will have a single eye protruding from his forehead, with a flat-surfaced face, and a mouth extending as far as his chest. He will have no upper teeth, nor will he have knees, and the soles of his feet will be rounded like a cart-wheel. He will have fearsome black hair, and three fiery vapours from his nose and mouth which will rise in the air like flames of fire.851

Is it possible that these particular descriptive paradigms may signify general perceptions of ‘anti-’, of reversing normality, for instance in the little finger being the longest. The idea of an inversion of concepts mapped out on the body, of difference being visualised through inversion and ugliness, is visible on the figure of the Antichrist and perhaps also on Cú Chulainn. As stated above, MCGINN also presupposes that ideas about the Antichrist and hero(es) influenced each other.852 But rather than propose a one-way transfer it is also possible to assume that both, perhaps in connection with other figures, developed in mutual proximity until they came to share a considerable likeness.

Although a full discussion of all the individual features composing these characters is beyond the scope of this analysis, two points are vital to bear in mind. First, that the descriptions are strikingly similar in view of the descriptive paradigms they use: largeness, open mouth and/ or protruding teeth, grotesque shape, and bristly hair. Second, that all three of these characters are outsiders to human society and stand in opposition to beautiful and good figures either temporarily (Sovereignty Goddess and Amairgen) or in general (Antichrist). It is therefore not surprising that they are similar in appearance to the ugly and deformed social outsiders in the Politics of Anatomy proposed for TBDD.853 Lastly, certain features on the bodies of these figures seem to evoke perceptions of chaos or inversion, ideas also written on Cú Chulainn’s body.

It is time to examine the descriptive paradigms of which Cú Chulainn’s distorted body is composed and discuss in what way they relate to these figures and to the Politics of Anatomy. HELMUT BIRKHAN finds that the individual metamorphic elements of this description are of various provenances, yet they effectively combine to represent irrational and uncontrolled martial energy.854 MCCONE also notes that ‘the numerous distortions and fiery effects described […] relate primarily to the warrior hero’s legs and head.’855 Yet the two aspects, body and head, are not given equal prominence in the description, with the latter taking clear precedence in terms of descriptive detail.

Starting at the top, it can be said that the theme of bristly or erect hair is widespread and important in early Irish texts. The hair described during the ríastrad appears as a direct inversion, both visually and in its quality, of Cú Chulainn’s beautiful hair, and this aspect is prominently mentioned in all three descriptions of his ríastrad.856 In the excerpts quoted above it is evident that Cú Chulainn’s hair stands up in spikes and appears reddened, a sharp contrast to the flowing quality and three colours described in his beautiful appearance. The effect of red hair is achieved not by simply stating that his hair is (now) red but in more poetic terms: by either a drop of blood or a spark of fire or through the recurrent association with hawthorn. This poetic detail catches the attention of the audience and is integral to imagining the hero anew and in a very martial context. The change may well be mentioned to reflect Cú Chulainn’s battle-mode and could strengthen the previously voiced possibility that on him, this colour may primarily be associated with blood and bloodshed.

What is also conspicuous is that his hair seems to express the tension of the whole body: it literally stands on end.857 This in particular appears as an inversion, both of the natural quality of hair and of the description of his beauty, where it was long and flowing freely. In the ríastrad, Cú Chulainn’s hair has become hard and metaphors of metalworking and comparisons with hard natural objects are evoked. SAYERS also comments on the ‘strong graphic ties to blacksmithing’858 in the descriptions of the warp-spasm, a theme to which Cú Chulainn’s hair greatly contributes. The rigid and erect texture and the associations with metal(working) are also found in the description of the Antichrist in Ms 108 and in the portrayal of Amairgen.

Hard or erect hair is also commonly associated with monsters in early Irish literature, especially in the depiction of monsters in hagiographical texts. For example, in the Book of Lismore, the ‘Life of Senán’ contains the following reference: [o]’tchuala an peisd iat, rocraith [a chend], 7 adracht a guairi fuirre 7 a gairbhdriuch […].859 In the same manuscript the ‘Life of Brennain’ shows the sea-cat (a kind of water monster) to have [g]uaire aitenndai fair.860 Manymore such examples from hagiography and saga could be added, but the point is clear: inversion of the free-flowing nature of hair is associated primarily with the monstrous.

Such hair is also associated with canine figures. This is true for various descriptions of dogs’ fur standing erect when they attack, a naturally observable parallel that again evokes a strong martial connection in the descriptions of Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad. There is also a more poetic and more striking parallel to be observed in the third description: the motif of material objects sticking to the erect hair. An exact parallel is found in the Arthurian tale ‘The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog’.861 CAREY sees the narrative as ‘the oldest surviving version of „The Werewolf’s Tale“ in Irish’862, yet the text is preserved mainly in eighteenth-century manuscripts, making its evaluation somewhat difficult. The text is explicit in the motif of apples sticking to the fur of a dog that is later revealed to be an enchanted human being. Galahad saw the dog, agus gráin aige agus iorġail fair, ionnas go ḃfanfaḋ mion-uḃall nó móráine ar ḃárr gaċ ao-ruainne do‘nṁuing ġairḃ ġlais-leiṫ do ḃí fair.863 Asimilar motif is found in connection with King Conaire’smajor-domo in TBDD.864 It is thus likely that for the interpolator of the third description, this striking image emphasises the quality of either erect or cropped hair in the early Irish tradition.

Cú Chulainn also shares the feature of (albeit temporary) one-eyedness with the Antichrist. The fact that this descriptive paradigm is again present in all three descriptions suggests that it is an integral descriptive paradigm expressing the ríastrad.865 Of course one of Cú Chulainn’s eyes merely retracts into his body (it is not lost but simply disappears from view for a time), but if one visualises Cú Chulainn during his ríastrad, and for the other characters observing him, he still appears to be one-eyed.866 Even though the detail is mentioned in every description of his ríastrad in TBC, no function is assigned to the single eye.867 This distinguishes Cú Chulainn from other characters with an evil eye, such as Ingcél, whose single, baleful eye is used for spying and casting bad luck.868 This suggests that it may signify primarily through its appearance. Cú Chulainn’s temporary loss of an eye is achieved by one of his eyes either being closed or retreating into his head, the other expanding. A very similar act is presented in Aislinge Meic Conglinne (‘The Vision of Mac Conglinne’) where it is said that one of Mac Conglinne’s eyes jumped so far back into his head that a pet crane could not have picked it out.869 In addition, there are several other permanently one-eyed figures in early Irish literature. All of these are liminal and the motif is associated either with (negative) social outsiders or supernatural characters, and often also with an ability to see beyond the purely visual or to cast an evil eye.870 By means of a summary, BORSJE points out that ‘clearly the one-eyed motif is a multi-layered or polysemous symbol. It can be the sign of a warrior, a sign of supernatural knowledge, or both, and it can also have other meanings.’871 Early Irish literature depicts many one-eyed characters that are styled as ugly and/ or bad – associations that perfectly fit Cú Chulainn during his ríastrad. This may be because of the strong element of asymmetry that the transformation creates, another feature that the distorted Cú Chulainn shares with the Antichrist and that distinguishes him from beautiful characters.

A very prominent descriptive feature that Cú Chulainn shares with all three figures is the great emphasis on his somehow distorted mouth. This descriptive paradigm is also mentioned in every description. In fact, it is said that Cú Chulainn’s mouth opens so wide, his insides are visible. This drastically blurs the boundary between the inside and the outside of his body. It also allows other characters to see a new side of the hero, a side that is usually hidden by the physiognomy of the human body. An abnormally large mouth appears as a basic designator of the monstrous across medieval European literature, and it was also briefly discussed above in relation to troll-women. WILLIAMS states that those parts of the body identified by MICHAIL BAKHTIN as ‘going out to the world’ (the penis, for instance) or ‘ingesting the world’ (amongst them the mouth) ‘were the principal loci of monstrous deformation throughout the Middle Ages.’872 BAKHTIN saw a huge, open mouth as the most vivid expression of a body as penetrable and open, and found that gaping jaws in particular designate a visible entrance into the depths of the body.873 Centuries earlier, it is precisely this view that Cú Chulainn also offers, both within the narrated world and to the audience, and which is disquieting and grotesque at the same time. The interpolated third description even dwells on this image by including concrete anatomical details that can be seen.

In medieval Irish hagiography especially, an open, gaping mouth is a repeatedly described feature in depictions of monsters. In the ‘Life of Senán’, for example, the péist (‘monster’) approaches St Senán and the archangel Raphael, opening its mouth so wide that its entrails could be seen.874 This stresses the severity of the threat by offering a view of where the saint (if not the archangel, presumably) would soon end up. The link between an open mouth and an attack is also frequently mentioned in the description of dogs in early Irish texts, even if this at times offers a dual perspective on the function of the mouth. For instance, in the macgnímrada Cú Chulainn kills Culann the smith’s dog through its open mouth. In TBC I Cú Chulainn strangles the dog with his bare hands but after this is recounted it is remarked: [m]ad iar n-arailiu [slicht] immorro is a líat[h]róit ro lá-som inna beólu co rruc a inathar thrít.875 In TBC II the unarmed Cú Chulainn also attacks the dog through its mouth: [o]cus ní baí lasin mac cóir n-imdegla reme acht focheird róut n-urchair din liathróit conas tarla dar gincráes a brágat dond árchoin co ruc a mboí di ḟobaig inathair and dar’ iarcomlai […].876 For the dog, the open mouth signifies attack but also quickly becomes a very vulnerable point, as the hound can be wounded in its entrails without penetrating the skin.877 The assault directly into the inside of the body is, theoretically, also possible for the distorted Cú Chulainn (although he never suffers such attacks) and presents a striking contrast to his foster-brother, the horn-skinned and hence hermetically ‘closed’ Fer Diad (see also 5.2.1.).

In moving downwards on Cú Chulainn’s body it becomes obvious that a less clear description is made of his limbs. Only the second and third description include the detail of the feet and shins pointing backwards (with the third description again offering a more detailed picture). The fact that this point is only found in the interpolated passages suggests that it was not part of the original picture of the ríastrad in TBC. This then raises the question of the origin of this motif and why it was included. In this short discussion, only tentative suggestions can be offered, but again, the motif is found elsewhere in early Irish literature.

An exact parallel is found in Cath Étair (‘The Battle of Étar’), where a slave’s daughter, Leborcham, is described as very ugly, with her knees pointing backwards and her heels to the front. THURNEYSEN, who briefly discusses this figure, suggests that this imagery goes back to the idea of ‘Teufeln mit Bocksbeinen’878, a very likely parallel, which emphasises the negative disposition and/ or ugliness of such characters. That the motif is connected with ugly characters is evident also from another text, where it is again a female figure who exhibits it. In Tochmarc Émire (‘The Wooing of Emer’), Domnall’s horrible daughter, Dornoll, is described as having reversed feet.879 A mention of reversed knees is also found in the description of the Antichrist from The Book of Lismore, quoted above. Cú Chulainn and the Antichrist share this feature and this points to a possible understanding of asymmetrical or inverted limbs as reflecting an inverted character, even though the motif was most likely marginal. The fact that this motif may also have been influenced by more general concepts of monstrosity can be argued by reference to WILLIAMS, who sees ‘transformation of [the body’s] form’880 as a common means of transforming the normal into the monstrous. The motif is thus relevant both in relation to monster theory and to medieval concerns about the personification of evil, and in this light it is remarkable that such features are found on Cú Chulainn also.

It may be concluded that in his ríastrad Cú Chulainn is visually aligned with various other figures and characters that are perceived as ugly, unpleasant and even as personifications of evil. While the first description hints at such a picture, the interpolated passages clearly emphasise and develop this image. A more detailed analysis of the descriptions in individual manuscripts than can be offered here, as well as a more thorough comparison with portrayals of other characters in early Irish literature, would certainly benefit the study of the motif of Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad. The interpolations also reflect the idea that the interpolator H1 (at least) assembled motifs from other texts in his reworking of TBC, motifs which may have been further fleshed out by another interpolator (if one assumes the two descriptions to stem from different hands). Strikingly, except for Amairgen (who, as a poet, may be classified as a liminal figure), none of the other figures focused on here – ugly hag, Antichrist or dogs – are human. They maybe situated at the border of human society and interact with humans, yet they do not have (full) human identity and are not part of the normative society, the self. They are, in short, other, whether through being divine, monstrous-demonic or an animal. If one reads the descriptive paradigms of Cú Chulainn’s distorted body in TBC in the wider context of early Irish literature (including hagiographical material), it becomes evident that he too can be classified as an other, if only during his frenzy.

It is crucial that while these features are permanent in the case of the Antichrist and presumably also for Amairgen, they are transitory for Cú Chulainn and for the Sovereignty Goddess. The descriptions of Cú Chulainn during his warp-spasm may be the complete opposite of his usual beautiful appearance, yet they are still (only a) momentary expression of his inner state. In replacing Cú Chulainn’s beautiful body with a monstrous, distorted body, the texts manage to install a visual expression of his unusual state of mind. LOWE phrases this rather dramatically: ‘we see the reassuring face of the hero ripped away to reveal the body within.’881 While it is difficult to argue that Cú Chulainn is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it is possible to see in his metamorphosis an expression of his other side (or other side), the traits which stand outside the noble heroic society, like possible aggression towards his own.

To understand the potential of Cú Chulainn’s body for expressive mediality, both sides, both bodies, need to be taken into consideration. This leads to the conclusion that Cú Chulainn is not a monster in hiding but a liminal figure that can quite literally incorporate both aspects and shifts between them. The cost is a permanent tension with one aspect subduing the other at certain times. As LOWE points out, ‘he is monster and man simultaneously’.882 Reading Cú Chulainn’s body from a mediality perspective shows in what discourse the hero should be placed at any given time, but also demonstrates the complexity of heroic figures in early Irish literature. Even the main hero of a text can, as LOWE points out, become abject and in this case the other truly is ‘both defiantly Other and disquietingly close […]’.883 In this respect Cú Chulainn represents the most unsettling category of monstrous beings, as FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR states that even in medieval thought, the most ‘successful’ or unsettling monsters are the ones that share features with humans,884 a point also made by SHILDRICK in a more general context.885 Cú Chulainn not only shares features with humans, he is human. Yet at times he leans towards the monstrous and therefore challenges the, according to GILMORE, universal paradigm that monsters inhabit an ‘outside dimension’886 apart from human society. The descriptions of the ríastrad enforce and develop the picture of the hero as a ‘character of dangerous ambivalence and terrifying beauty’, whether one wants to see moral teaching in this development or pure entertainment of the grotesque.887

That Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad-appearance is exclusively constructed through descriptions by the narrative voice and not through comments by other characters could be due to the fact that, should they have commented on his appearance or individual features unfavourably, his status within the narrated world could be seriously undermined. It is nevertheless striking that except for the prophetess Feidelm no other character talks about his other-appearance; how he looks during his ríastrad seems to go unmentioned in the narrated world.888 It seems that the interpolators were content with describing the appearance themselves and did not seek to interpolate further passages in which the appearance becomes part of spoken discourse. Furthermore, there appears to be a clear lack of evaluation of this striking appearance. Even in the poetic portrayal by the narrative voice in the third description, no evaluating judgements of the appearance are observable.

One character, however, does foreground the change in the narrated world: Cú Chulainn himself. He exhibits a remarkable ‘self-awareness’ of his appearance and the social implications it entails, a ‘sensitivity to public assessment of his appearance’889, as O’LEARY terms it. The fact that he tries to counteract a negative reading of his distorted body by displaying his beautiful appearance has already been argued above,yet Cú Chulainn also seeks to control himself by containing his body. This is described when he girds himself for battle in TBC I: [b]á don c[h]atherred catha sin 7 chomraic 7 chomlaind ro gab-som immi secht cneslénti fichet cíartha clártha comdlúta bítís bá thétaib 7 rothaib 7 refedaib hi custul fri[a] gelc[ h]nes dó arnacha ndec[h]rad a chond nach a chíall ó doficed a lúth láthair.890 It is telling that he seeks to control his mind and understanding and not his bodily distortion. This precaution is mentioned only in this passage (a lengthy description of his preparation for the battle). It is not clear whether it was also employed at other occasions, particularly in the episode in the macgnímrada where he nearly attacks the Ulster court (although it can be assumed that as a boy returning from his first warrior outing, Cú Chulainn did not wear them). However this may be, Cú Chulainn enters his battle-rage soon afterwards, with his physical transformation being described in great detail. Yet since it is not clear if he attacks his own people during this battle his attempt to control his mind and understanding might have worked. The mere mention that he does seek to control this suggests that his bodily distortion and his loss of reason are two separate points to consider but are both part of the ríastrad, but also that even if the hero succeeds in controlling his mind, his bodily metamorphosis lies outside his control.

Despite this action, MONETTE could not see any ‘genuine shame or regret’ by the hero about his distorted self and argues that he ‘seems content with being who (and what) he is.’891 It seems somehow more likely that if Cú Chulainn seeks to restrict his body in shirts reminiscent of modern straitjackets he is painfully aware of his own change and, as BIRKHAN also insinuates, certainly does not like it.892Sadly for him, his attempt to control his body by mechanical means may not be as successful as the controlling of the reading of his body during his display. Yet perhaps at this point in the narrative and during the battle it is simply more important to protect his mind and understanding, i.e. his ability to distinguish friend from foe, than prevent his bodily change. The passage raises the issue that just as the threat to the Ulster court does not always come from outsiders but at times from Cú Chulainn (as depicted in the macgnímrada when he takes ups arms), Cú Chulainn himself does not always fight other men but occasionally his very own mind and body, his very nature, himself. This particular scene is not a case of a society struggling to integrate an exceptional hero, but of a man trying to control his excessive heroic nature.

3.3Hamhleypa and Metamorphosis: Reading the Unfixed Body

In opposition to Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad, the two analyses of riddarasögur have dealt with bodies whose appearance was perceived as stable in the narrated world. Even though the troll-women challenge the boundaries between the courtly and uncourtly, in their unchanging appearance they could be securely arbitrated against the semiotic system of the narrated world. With Cú Chulainn it has become clear that unstable bodies can raise concerns about the reliability of expressive mediality. If one presupposes a concept like the Politics of Anatomy and with it a (relatively) stable system of assigning meaning to bodily appearance as the norm, what unimaginable power must the idea of Cú Chulainn’s metamorphosis as an example of changes ‘inner and outer, [of] nature or substance and appearance, illusion and transformation, metamorphosis and hybridity […]’893, as BYNUM characterises (late) twelfth-century concerns, have held for the audience? LOWE also stresses the fascinating yet disquieting nature of Cú Chulainn, who embodies ‘a conflict between the normal boundaries of human physiognomy and these destabilizing forces’,with the hero quite literally ‘stretching the boundaries of his body, and with it the boundaries of human identity.’894

Various researchers have drawn attention to noticeable tensions in medieval texts (and beyond), tensions concerning the idea that bodies, as KAY and RUBIN phrase it, may ‘result from pretence or illusion.’895 In a similar vein, WILLIAMS declares that shape-shifting suggests that the ‘boundaries of natural form are insecure, that it is somehow possible for a self to slip out of the protective clothing that declares its identity and become trapped in a shape that mis-identifies and misrepresents it.’896 In their concern about unstableness, these comments prove that the idea of expressive mediality, designating the complete congruency between appearance and being, offersasense of security to both characters and audience. It is thus interesting to end the discussion of this particular idea of corporeal mediality by examining examples in which this system is inverted or questioned.

In order to highlight the complexity of the issue, some introductory comments about shape-shifting in these two literary traditions are in order. On a basic level, WILLIAMS defines shape-shifters as ‘human beings who, by their own power or that of another, change their entire appearance by adopting the body of a foreign creature.’897 In early Irish literature, LARSEN sees the ability to shape-shift voluntarily as limited to gods.898 AÐALHEIÐUR GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR concludes that in the Scandinavian tradition, the ability to change shape ‘is generally viewed negatively, and those with such powers are often sorcerers or witches.’899 In both traditions, it is therefore not ordinary human beings who can change their shape but either divine or supernatural beings or humans associated with the supernatural and/or the magical or put under a spell. As the following analysis will attest, trolls may also be added to this list.

Yet regardless of who shape-shifts, the motif is found in various manifestations. In looking at the wider medieval context, BYNUM argues that in twelfth-century Europe, there emerged a fascination with transformations in many areas, including ‘appearance, illusion and transformation, metamorphosis and hybrid’ and ‘concepts of change themselves tended to change in the years around 1200.’900 She adds that ‘two images in particular, hybrid and metamorphosis – images prominent in imaginative literature, theology, the visual arts, and natural philosophy – [were] sites of these competing and changing understandings.’901 BYNUM differentiates between metamorphosis (which she calls replacement change) and hybridity.902 These concepts helped to explore new, more fluid categories of outer form but they were also loci of fear in that they questioned a (or any) secure categorisation of human identity and form.

In relation to these fluid boundaries, BYNUM proposes that in a European context, attention‘to the specific problems twelfth-century thinkers had in understanding how the human person as a body-soul combination achieves and retains identity suggest that change was problematic in many areas of twelfth-century thought.’903 In emphasising again that, by and large, the texts discussed here see body and soul in a holistic, not a dualistic way, it is by no means surprising that shape-shifting called for a radical engagement with (if not reassessment of) this understanding. If a body can change but the inner substance designating ‘true identity’ (or however this concept may be defined) stays the same, there simply must be some distinction. It is therefore important to address the following analyses from this point of view also and examine how they address the possibility of interacting with an apparently other self that is, in fact, a hidden other (or vice versa).

3.3.1Revisiting Cú Chulainn’s Shifting Body

Because the reading of Cú Chulainn’s body ended the last sub-chapter, it is desirable to conclude this discussion before moving on to the Old Norse-Icelandic example. There are two possible strands of explanation that arise in an examination of his ability to metamorphose during his ríastrad, but ultimately they are more inclusive than contradictory. On the one hand, Cú Chulainn’s ability to change his appearance may simply be connected to his supernatural parentage. In TBC, his divine father, Lug, visits him and brings him to the Áes Síde to be healed. This makes it clear that the hero stands in close contact with the world. LARSEN’s conclusion (already cited)904 also implies that Cú Chulainn could fit the category of divine shape-shifters because of his parentage.

This supernatural connection maybe reflected also on a linguistic level as in both recensions Cú Chulainn is frequently called a siriti amulaig. The term amulchach has been discussed in relation to his bearded appearance in 2.3.1. but the other component, sirite, is slightly more problematic in its meaning. As stated above, CECILE O’RAHILLY translates it as both ‘whipper-snapper’ and ‘sprite’, with no systematic distinction apparent. SAYERS briefly discusses the term and, referring to DIL, asserts that it is ‘mildly contemptuous’.905 In fact, DIL lists a general entry for the term under (a): ‘originally some sort of supernatural being who had the power of changing shape’, while under (b) DIL notes that it is ‘usually a midely contemptuous term applied to Cú Chulainn both by friends and enemies.’906 EDEL phrases it best when she asserts that its meaning ranges ‘from mildly contemptuous […] to openly derogatory, the latter often in combination with amúlach/amúlchach […].’907 However, EDEL also stresses that the DIL’s suggestion of a ‘supernatural being with shape-shifting qualities’908 is not supported by any early examples.

The term sirite also appears in one other text, Fled Bricrenn (‘Bricriu’s Feast’). There it is used of Úath mac Imomaim: [f]er cumachta mori dano in tUath mac Imomain sin no dolbad in cach richt ba halic leis 7 no gniad druidechta 7 certa commain. Ba sé sin dano in siriti on ainmnighter Belach Muni in tSiriti. 7 is de athberthe in siriti de ara met no delbad i n-ilrechtaig.909 SAYERS postulates a connection with Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad, and he also draws attention to the fact that the term is often used in spoken discourse (i.e. mentioned by other characters) and is thus likely emotionally loaded.910 EDEL however points out that the description of Uath mac Imomain is one of the interpolations of DUNCAN’S H1 to Fled Bricrenn911, the same scribe which also interpolated in TBC I. EDEL further stresses that with the exception of Uath mac Imomain practically all other references in DIL refer to Cú Chulainn. That the term appears to be used by a single scribe, and one who may have been particularly interested in shape-shifting and metamorphosis, H1, makes the term even more difficult to evaluate.

EDEL also states that another term used for Cú Chulainn, ‘siriti síabairthe (translated by CECILE O’RAHILLY with ‘distorted sprite’) only occurs in the later versions.’912 This makes EDEL conclude that sirite ‘may have an aspect of uncanniness, but in the Táin Cú Chulainn’s uncanniness is mainly caused by awe of the Wunderkind (in many societies credited with seemingly supernatural qualities) and the adult multitalent’913 rather than by shape-shifting qualities. It is obvious that her reading of the hero differs considerably from that proposed here. For it may also be argued that what EDEL subsequently calls a more ‘demonic side’914 of Cú Chulainn, revealed in the macgnímrada of TBC I (presumably his ríastrad after taking up arms, but EDEL does not give a clear reference) is developed consciously in later versions, for instance through the use of the term sirite. In the versions of TBC that have survived, it is therefore an integral part of the main hero, and a part which may reflect the twelfth-century environemnt in which Lebor na hUidre was produced. In the present close reading of TBC I it appears that Cú Chulainn’s ability to shape-shift is a corporeal expression of his otherworldly nature, which appears embodied within him at all times but at certain moments turns him into an other.

On a more metaphorical level, it can be argued that in its instability, Cú Chulainn’s body expresses his shifting and unreliable identity and may be connected to TBC’s engagement with heroic violence. As LOWE phrases it, in presenting ‘everything that is normally stable [is] rearranged or entirely dislocated in an explosion of misdirected energy’, Cú Chulainn’s body appears as ‘almost literally inverted […]’.915 If one acknowledges that Cú Chulainn at times might turn on his own (and does do so once in the macgnímrada), the change in shape might also be seen as an expression of this misdirected energy, as a reversal of the usual role of the hero as protector of his people. In the instances where the hero becomes abject, LOWE proclaims, he ‘offers a constant threat to our certainties and stable categorizations’916 and also to the concept of a hero as usually defined, although (perhaps) not to the concept prevalent in early Irish sources.

MCMANUS stresses the extensive list of possible oppositions inherent in the hero when he asks: ‘[i]s he god or man, hound or human, Ulsterman or outsider, child or adult? To these questions we might add: is he a handsome hero or a distorted freak […]’.917 This ‘enigmatic duality’918, as MCMANUS calls it, these countless possible opposites inherent in the hero mean that Cú Chulainn often seems to defile the very categories which modern research has enlisted to define heroism in a European sense. Perhaps looking at the hero’s metamorphosis and his shifting appearance could tempt one to turn the questions around for a more inclusive assessment of this figure: he is all of the above at some point or other. In acknowledging Cú Chulainn’s polysemy and its relation to transitory states, his metamorphosis, it can be fully appreciated how Cú Chulainn often shifts between categories such as hero, man, hound and human and how through this, the text reflects on the figure of the hero.

If one follows this approach, Cú Chulainn appears truly polyvalent and this may help to explain the ‘element of restlessness in his character’ and the ‘continual movement between transgression and recuperation’919 to which he seems subjected. Acknowledging the challenge Cú Chulainn poses to strict heroic categories, it is indeed not surprising that this polyvalent and fluid nature of the hero is given a stunning expression in a polysemous body. TOMÁS Ó CATHASAIGH has recently drawn attention to the fact that while Cú Chulainn has ‘only one body, […] that has at least two very different forms’920: a beautiful and an ugly one. A closer analysis suggests that Cú Chulainn incorporates (and in times of metamorphosis quite literally switches between) several different bodies or bodily categories, each reflecting a particular aspect of his complex character. In this reading, the body at all times serves the reflective function proposed for expressive mediality: it is beautiful and manly within society, ugly and non-human when he stands outside (through possible auto-aggression).921 Cú Chulainn may shift in appearance and question various categories in the process, but if viewed in this light the underlying system of expressive mediality seems affirmed – Cú Chulainn’s body always mediates his current inner state and social position.

In TBC I the hero is introduced to the Connacht army and to the audience precisely through his shifting body. The poem Atchíu fer find firfes cles (‘I See a Fair Man Who Will Perform Weapon-Feats’), spoken by Feidelm, provides a first visualisation of the hero’s appearance. The poem is an interpolation by H1 and, just like the other interpolations discussed above, it seems particularly concerned with the appearance of the hero. DOOLEY also discusses the poem and concludes that ‘it selects certain details from the description of Cú Chulainn that appear elsewhere in the saga, while keeping an appropriate if minimal rhetorical decorum of describing the physical body in order, beginning with the head and torso.’922 However, it may be argued that the strength of the poem, and its greatest effect, lie in the way it juxtaposes these physical traits. Through its juxtaposition of beautiful and ugly qualities, the poem does not give a fixed picture of the hero but it mimics the hero’s own switching between beautiful appearance and ríastrad throughout the narrative. The poem is also unsettling in that it leads one to wonder how so many different aspects can be incorporated in a single man. As such, it challenges human imagination but also stresses the metamorphic nature of the hero. As DOOLEY finds, ‘the rhetorical trick here is to present a hero who displays a bewilderingly protean and unstable visual façade […]’.923

In one stanza Feidelm juxtaposes Cú Chulainn’s beauty and his grotesque shape during his frenzy: [d]ofil gnúis as gráto dó / dobeir mod don banc[h]ureo / duni óc is alaind dath / dofeith deib ṅdracuin don chath.924 The stanza encapsulates (or even anticipates?) the episode in which Cú Chulainn displays himself to the Connacht army after they had seen him in his battle-frenzy the night before. This introduces a temporal element to these appearances and thus, indirectly, points towards metamorphosis. Many more such juxtapositions of beauty and ríastradtraits could be discussed here, yet for the present it suffices to say that Feidelm’s prophecy stresses the multiple appearances. It provides the first hint that Cú Chulainn can undergo metamorphosis: cotagoin in ríastarthe / delb domárfas fair co se / a[t]chíu imrochlád a gné.925 Even the prophetic gaze acknowledges that Cú Chulainn changes, that the picture is multi-dimensional one. In contrast, Feidelm’s repeated assertion that she sees the Connacht army crimson and red, i.e. defeated, stresses a difference between the unfixed Cú Chulainn and the clear picture she has of his enemies. However, it is difficult to uphold DOOLEY’s conclusion that Cú Chulainn can‘show simultaneously a face of terror and a gnúis gráta (attractive face) […]’.926 The effect of simultaneousness is (deliberately) achieved by the poem’s juxtapositions, but it is not reflected in the hero, as he clearly changes between these different forms (as Feidelm also emphasises).

In this reading, the poem is not just a wide assemblage of pieces of description but, as DOOLEY also asserts, evokes the effect of ‘a carefully pointed auctorial deliberativeness in the reading and translating into significance the visual signs and behavioural markers in the performance of the envisioned hero.’927 That this highly poetic construction of the hero’s body (both in form and content) is an interpolation would further underline the assumption that Cú Chulainn’s body and its metamorphic, unfixed nature in particular, are deliberately foregrounded and developed by the compilers/redactors. The poem is found on a palimpsestic leaf in Lebor na hUidre and it is unclear if it simply replaced an earlier poem of the same form. DOOLEY also puts forward the possibility that H ‘felt an entirely new presentation was desirable. He may also have augmented the warp-spasm/beauty contrast.’928 The question of possible sources or a lost, older prototype of the poem is, however, of no concern here.Whether it is indeed a twelfth-century fascination with metamorphosis that underlies H1’s interpolations or whether this helps to stress the Irish understanding of a hero as a fundamentally unfixed figure (and relies on an understanding of H1 as a traditional scholar/antiquarian) cannot be determined here, and the two possibilities need by no means be mutually exclusive. But DOOLEY also sees in H1 s other interpolations in the Lebor na hUidre version of TBC I ‘a general interest in warp-spasm descriptions’.929

A systematic reading of Cú Chulainn’s body along those lines has been presented in this study for the first time. Such a reading may be further validated with reference to a scene in the macgnímrada, which has been mentioned repeatedly but briefly above: the episode in which Cú Chulainn takes up arms for the first time. He immediately goes on his first killing-spree in enemy territory and returns to King Conchobor’s court in his frenzy. It is imperative to note again that no description of the physical changes during his warp-spasm is presented at this point. The watchman of Emain voices the threat Cú Chulainn presents in TBC I (and Cú Chulainn confirms it), while in TBC II it is Leborcham who predicts Cú Chulainn’s attack.930 In order to appease him, the Ulster women confront Cú Chulainn with their naked bodies. In TBC II, the scene is presented as follows:

[f]oilgid in mac a gnúis forru 7 dobretha a dreich frisin carpat arná acced nochta nó náre na mban. And sain ro irgabad in mac bec isin charput. Tucad i trí dabchaib úaruscib é do díbdud a ḟerge. Ocus in chétna dabach i tucad in mac bec, ro díscaíl dá cláraib 7 dá circlaib amal chnómaidm imbi. In dabach tánaise configfed durnu di. In tres dabach fer fos foilṅged 7 fer ní foilṅged etir. […] Táncatar a delba dó […].931

All the young women came forth and discovered all their nakedness and shame to him. The boy hid his face from them and laid his countenance against the chariot that he might not see the women’s nakedness. The boy was lifted out of the chariot. He was placed in three vats of cold water to quench the ardour of his wrath. The first vat into which the boy was put burst its staves and hoops like the breaking of a nutshell about him. As for the second vat, the water would seethe several hand-breaths high in it. As for the third vat (the water grew hot in it so that) one man might endure it while another would not. […] His comely appearance was restored […].

The extraordinary heat Cú Chulainn emits is not a visible but still a perceptible proof of his highly agitated state. In this passage, he undergoes both mental and physical change, an idea which clearly reflects a holistic concept of body and mind. This connection is further emphasised when it is described how the people at the ford cool his body with cold water in order to cool his mind. MCCONE argues that the triple emersion is necessary ‘for him to be readmitted to the life of the túath [tribe]’932,while NAGY claims that ‘the immersion to which the hero is subjected as part of his rite of passage restores his memory and his connection to society.’933 Through this bathing and the subsequent clothing, the hero is reintegrated into society and finally resumes the appearance that reflects his identity as a member of this society.

The episode has been the repeated focus of academic attention, especially in connection with CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS’ idea of the ‘raw’ (the natural, extra-societal) and the ‘cooked’ (the cultural, societal). In summarising LÉVI-STRAUSS’ concept, NAGY argues that in ‘the language of myth and ritual symbolism, that which exists outside society or is not entirely social is designated „raw“, while that which exists within society and has an identifiable social function is designated „cooked.“’934 He adds that those who live outside society and those who are too young to have assumed full social status ‘are both „raw“ and must be „cooked“ – culturally transformed – before they can become full members of society.’935 This idea has given rise to the notion that Cú Chulainn has his battle-frenzy quite literally boiled out of him. Cú Chulainn would then be fully integrated into the Ulster society through this ritual, although it clearly does not succeed in boiling out all of his problematic aspects.

However tempting this connection was for past scholarship, the texts also allow for a different interpretation. In the episode Cú Chulainn is not placed into vats to be cooked, he makes the vats boil through his own warrior-ardour. Consequently, the aim of the process is not to boil him but quite the opposite: to cool him down. Viewing the episode in LÉVI-STRAUSS’ light would thus lead to the conclusion that he is over-cooked and thus over-socialised, an interpretation difficult to argue in relation to his actual state of mind. A different reading may therefore be proposed, one which sees the vats of water simply as a convenient image to cool his over-boiling heroic heat. Although an example of his inherent and ever-present heroic heat will be discussed in chapter five (5.2.1.), at this point it can already be stated that in this episode, Cú Chulainn suffers from too much martial energy to be safely (re‐)integrated into his society. Perhaps in analogy with the cooling of hot iron in a smithy – enforced by the referenes to metal and metal– working in some descriptions of his ríastrad –, Cú Chulainn is immersed into water to cool.

In discussing the idea of bodily change it is worth pointing out a hitherto overlooked detail about Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad. In complete opposition to the Old Norse-Icelandic examples discussed below, in the long description in Breslech Mór Maige Muirthemne it is clearly stated that he performs this feat of contortion i mmedón a chrocind, that is, ‘underneath his skin’. Cú Chulainn does not leave his body to become abject in another body, he does not even transgress the boundary of his own skin. BILDHAUER contends that fixing the boundaries of the body was a difficult task for medieval imagination: ‘[m]edieval authors struggled to forge integrity and boundedness from the plethora of bodily phenomena, too. Where exactly the body spatially ended, for example, caused considerable concern.’936 Her observations are reflected in many medieval texts, yet in the case of Cú Chulainn no such concern is observable. On the contrary, his body is completely and successfully bounded, capable even of retaining this new, abnormal form. In this description, the image of the monstrous being already contained underneath his skin is evoked, a perhaps even more unsettling idea after all.

It has been argued throughout this analysis that Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad can be classified as a metamorphosis and the descriptions all make it clear that there is a change in shape involved, yet that these descriptions conjure an image of a hybrid being, composed of various elements also found in other sources. BYNUM, however, argues that metamorphosis and hybridity are ‘fundamentally different images and occur in different ontological visions, as the literary critics say, they do different „cultural work.“’937 At the end of his transformation, Cú Chulainn has become a hybrid figure (as discussed above), but the change into this new appearance may have been just as unsettling for the medieval mind and clearly fits the understanding of metamorphosis which BYNUM proposes for the twelfth century. Metamorphosis, BYNUM contends, ‘expresses a labile world of flux and transformation’938 and as such destabilises categories. In short, a ‘[h]ybrid reveals a world of difference, a world that is and is multiple; metamorphosis reveals a world of stories, of things under way. Metamorphosis breaks down categories by breaching them; hybrid forces contradictory or incompatible categories to coexist and serve as a commentary each on the other.’939 The lengthy interpolated descriptions of Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad-appearance make it clear that he fits both categories. In his bodily transformation, Cú Chulainn reveals a world of flux and fluid categories,yet what he turns into is best described as a hybrid figure on which various discourses co-exist. He destabilises not just the European understanding of a hero but also the very categories that shape the world by stretching both the borders of human identity and human form as well as the imagination of the audience. In this respect, the interpolator(s) could hardly have created a more unsettling hero and use(s) the underlying mechanisms of expressive mediality – relying on a congruence of being and physical form – to achieve this.

To summarise, it can be said that his dual nature shows Cú Chulainn as a threat not just to other characters but also to ‘structure, to order, and even to meaning.’940 In a more general argument about liminality in early Irish literature NAGY adds that ‘[a] liminal figure or object offers a key to the categories between which it exists and can even mediate between other pairs of separate categories’941, a conclusion that could also be applied to Cú Chulainn. OSWALD also voices similar thoughts in relation to medieval discourses of monstrosity: ‘[t]he hybrid monster shows the instability of the categories and organizational principles that drive human societies.’942 In his ríastrad and his physical changes, Cú Chulainn presents a threat not just to his society but also to the very foundations of the narrated world.

It appears that in many cases, an ordinary reading of Cú Chulainn’s body along the established paradigms is simply not enough to appreciate this hero. As LOWE finds, he is not just an exceptionally great hero but exceeds the definition of hero as it is conventionally understood: ‘his bodily excesses push him beyond definition.’943 However, Cú Chulainn can only embody all of these issues and concerns because his body is drawn against the stable system of expressive mediality, against a system that, in the narrated world at least, is seen as the norm. His own self-awareness of the assessment of his body by other characters shows that a critical engagement with these topics can be proposed for TBC.

It can also be tentatively suggested that a more contextualised reading of his body than is possible under the present focus may reveal that Cú Chulainn’s body is part of a critical engagement with violence and warfare in TBC. MOORE draws attention to the fact that there are two kinds of violence in TBC: regulated and positively connoted and unregulated and negatively connoted violence.944 MOORE claims that the latter ‘threatens and overturns social order.’945 The ríastrad as a poetic expression of an excess of heroic personality which can lead to transgressing the usual boundaries of fír fer may be a visualisation of what happens when violence is not restrained: the beautiful face of a hero is turned into that of an ugly destroyer. If TBC indeed critically engages with the juxtaposition of restrained and unrestrained violence through the figure of the hero may be debated; the proposition would, however, certainly benefit from further research. Yet if this proves possible, Cú Chulainn is a hero in the Irish sense, a figure in which heroic identity is explored through various issues, among them the reading of bodies in a heroic discourse and through metamorphosis.

3.3.2Crossing Boundaries: Hamhleypa in a fornaldarsaga Norðurlanda

In the light of these conclusions on the early Irish material, it is time to examine some Old Norse-Icelandic ideas about (un‐)fixed appearances and identity. The motif of corporeal change, usually termed hamhleypa (‘shape-leaping’) or hamask (‘to change shape’), can be found in most genres of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, a fact which suggests that it was of considerable interest in medieval Scandinavia.946 While in the Íslendingasögur a change in appearance is most often related to emotional state (rage or sadness), some examples of human-animal shape-leaping may also be found, such as in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (‘The Saga of Egill Skalla-Grímsson’).947 Mythological and poetic sources also testify to a multitude of changes of humans into animals, as do the fornaldarsögur. For instance, as O’CONNOR describes, the ‘thirteenth- or fourteenth-century Völsunga saga (‘The Saga of the Volsungs’) contains a well-known episode of warrior-outlaws turning into werewolves by putting on enchanted wolf-pelts.’948 In the fantastic narrated worlds of the original riddarasögur, curses and magic may lead to permanent alterations of human form, while trolls may assume the shape of courtly humans at will. HARRIS briefly draws attention to what is called álög in Old Norse949, a term which can denote both an (uttered) curse and an enchantment. An álög either changes a character’s shape or brings him or her under the enchanter’s influence. Importantly, these shape-leapers also challenge categories of space. In their metamorphosis they become place-leapers as well as shape-leapers because their new shape grants them access to places they could not have entered in their ‘real’ body. Concerns about the transgression of corporeal and spatial borders and assessments of what body belongs to what space can therefore be raised together.

As argued above, for many original riddarasögur it is vital to present an initial dichotomy of court and nature, self and other, to structure the narrated world. The assumption that outer appearance and inner disposition coincide allows for this dichotomy to be upheld. Characters continuously assess other characters and identify some as self, some as other or alien when they enter the courtly realm. In the case of a troll at court, for instance, the potentially threatening intruder must be quickly spotted to maintain (or regain) the stability of the courtly society. In this context, the idea of changing appearances can appear very disturbing, as it denies secure categorisation into human and other and thus prevents a distinction between peaceful visitor and potential threat. As OSWALD states: ‘[i]f one cannot identify a monster by looking – and indeed, if a monster can appear as a man, temporarily – then anyone might be a monster.’950

Shape-shifters are different from creatures like Fála and Flegða because they do primarily relate the other to the self by exploring boundaries and, ultimately they collapse the security of boundaries between the two categories entirely, as the above discussion of BYNUM’s arguments has shown.951 The original riddarasögur are adamant in showing that this potential insecurity can work both ways. In the case where an other is in fact a hidden self (an enchanted princess, for example), the character will be humiliated but generally no permanent harm is done. In the reverse case, however, the apparently fixed borders of the court (both geographically and socially/ culturally) are at best loci of fear, at worst permeable illusion.

Despite these concerns, it is remarkable that these texts show little (if any) concern with the actual act of hamhleypa. A possible reason why the concept in itself does not cause fundamental unease in Old Norse-Icelandic sources may lie in that when it comes to hamhleypa, many texts propagate a clear separation between body and (inner) ‘person’. This entails that the body, like a garment, may, under certain circumstances, be changed without any effect on the character’s true nature. Gods like Odin, Loki or Balder also frequently change shape and the task of the observer is to recognise them despite their momentary appearance. In this particular case the unity of body and identity that is the basis of expressive mediality is quite simply irrelevant, although the primary aim of the narratives is to restore proper order. Perhaps because of the relatively old age of the motif in Nordic sources, there appears little ‘psychological’ (avant la lettre, of course) unease about such a concept of temporarily exchanging one body for another, at least not within the narrated worlds.

Yet in examining who shape-shifts, a separation between humans and others emerges, and this does give rise to concern. LINDOW characterises hamhleypa as a distinct paradigm in constructing otherness in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. He proposes that

‘others’ can change their shape; ‘we’ [humans] cannot. Altered shapes, or the corollary, human bodies where they should not be, always indicate trouble, such as haunting, illicit interaction with the supernatural, or an impending death. If we change shape or cause someone else to do so, perhaps by moving his fetch we forfeit our human rights and become ‘other’.952

No such forfeiting occurs in the saga discussed here. In fact, separation appears to be located on an entirely different level. Trolls are the main force behind changing appearances in many original riddarasögur and they may shape-leap apparently at will. Humans, on the other hand, may either be cursed by trolls (involuntary hamhleypa) or they may voluntarily change appearance with the help of magical objects, many of which have been gained through contact with trolls or dwarves.953

Interestingly, the innate nature of the characters clearly stays human or troll, whether the transition was voluntary or not. Yet despite retaining characteristic features of their true nature, they are successful in fooling most other characters, and often the proper assessment of a character despite his or her appearance is reserved for the main hero of a text. The hero can only save his society and restore order by disregarding its usual rules of assessing bodies. This is particularly remarkable because in contrast to Cú Chulainn’s metamorphosis, hamhleypa can be categorised as complete shape-shifting in that a character fully changes his or her appearance, transfers from one body into another, so to speak. The texts thus do not play with the idea of troll-human hybrids or of contortions underneath the skin, but simply with putting a troll into the body of a human or vice versa. The change of form is (apparently) instant and complete and usually no traces of the old body remain.954

These instances truly comply with BYNUM’s category of metamorphosis955, as the new body can be securely categorised and does not show any traces of hybridity. These metamorphic changes are still very unsettling in that they ‘shakeour confidence in the structure of reality, in the basic synchrony between inner an outer we tend to assume’956 in expressive mediality. They challenge the human imagination not through an assemblage of different parts but by having to acknowledge that what is perceived as normal and securely categorisable may, in fact, be something else. To aid such a recategorisation, non-corporeal elements such as character disposition, eating habits or sexual promiscuity are strongly developed in these cases in Old Norse-Icelandic literature.They still comply with the ‘real’ (i.e. original) body and thus provide a hint at the disharmony of form and content.

To outline these and related concerns, Hjámlþérs saga ok Ölvers is again a very interesting text to consider. It features hamhleypa in various contexts and noticeably plays with the idea of being and appearing. The indifference of previous scholarship towards the text has already been noted above and the present analysis again hopes to show that the saga may raise some very serious concerns, at least in parody. O’CONNOR also acknowledges a potentially reflective element in the text, in that despite presenting the common feudal prerogatives, the ‘way the plot actually works in the telling tends to undermine these feudal norms.’957 That it may also undermine the standard reading of bodies associated with such feudal norms will now be proposed. If one follows DRISCOLL and sees the saga as dating back to c.1300958, it is likely that several of the concerns outlined by BYNUM could be addressed in the text.959 Yet even if one views the saga in its uncut present form as a product of the fifteenth century, as O’CONNOR does960, it is still possible that the compilers/redactors developed ideas about changing bodily forms (perhaps from folktale patterns) because they add to the high entertainment value of the saga.

To contain the scope of the discussion, the topic of hamhleypa will be explored in relation to two figures: the queen, that is, the evil step-mother, and a princess who appears as a monstrous creature, a fingálkn. It may be pointed out again that Hjálmþér spends a great deal of his time outside his father’s court on adventure. Even when he is not travelling he prefers to reside outside the royal court and builds his own castle in the forest. His geographical position at the border of his father’s court is important for establishing a hero who is per se courtly but more often than not absent from the centre court and who often relies on his own judgement. The spatial removal is also important for the narrative development of one of the episodes discussed here, as Hjálmþér is absent from his father’s retinue when the king first meets his new queen. To recapitulate, the woman King Ingi marries is from outside his realm. She arrives by boat, accompanied only by a servant called Hord. Despite her strange entrance, she introduces herself as the queen of Greece and is thus of equal social standing to the king. She appears as a geographical other, not a social one – her beauty testifies to her royal blood – and is thus quickly integrated at court.

However, she also appears to incorporate a strange tension from the start. Unusually for female courtly characters, she encompasses a strongs exual element as she immediately asks the king to marry her. This is an early indicator for the evil stepmother motif as identified by HARRIS, yet the king is blissfully unaware of any problematic issues because he is enchanted by her beauty.961 The audience follows the king’s gaze as the queen is escorted from the boat by her servant: og bar konu eina ä hende sinne, forkunnar væna, so ad k(öngur) þöttest óngua slijka sied hafa ad allre kurteyse, og skórugleik, og rann honum þegar mikill ästarhugur til hennar […].962 The audience is introduced to this woman by the narrative voice but through the eyes of the king, and it is even privy to his immediate desire for her. In terms of narrative technique, this assessment of the other closely mirrors Hjálmþér’s assessment of the trolls discussed in the previous sub-chapter, and the text may deliberately use such narrative techniques to enforce the importance of gazing at bodies. Alas, the king’s strong sexual desire is potentially problematic for his role. The overwhelming effect the queen has on him does point to a possible magic element (sorcery) but the king is apparently too gripped by bodily lust to notice this (or care).

As soon as the initial attraction between socially equal bodies has been introduced, the king marries the queen, who is called Lúðá. After a very brief reference to the wedding, there is immediate mention of a man going missing every night. O’CONNOR connects this to the Queen being a man eater in a sexual sense (King Ingi) but also in a literal sense963,which is a first hint at a trollish nature. Just after this disquieting detail is presented, the focus of the text turns towards the servant who accompanied the new queen. He is described in rather positive terms: þræl þann sem drottningin hafde þangad flutt. liet hun geima suijna, hann var stör, og sterkur sem tróll, og þö frijdur sijnum […].964 Both figures thus introduce tension. Queen Lúðá because she is bewitchingly beautiful but strangely uncourtly in her sexual advances; the servant because he is called a slave (þræl) but is not ugly as is usually the case with such base figures but handsome and strong and in his height perhaps reminiscent of noble characters. Raising further tension is the fact that he is introduced immediately after the mention of the strange happenings, perhaps a conscious ploy of the text either to highlight the figure of the servant (which would have gone rather unnoticed otherwise) or to link the servant and the disappearances in the mind of the audience.

It is vital for the development of the narrative that during these events Hjálmþér and his sworn-brother,Olvir, are absent on nautical exploits. When Hjálmþér returns, he too does not appear to pay attention to the issue of the missing men. Shortly after his return, Queen Lúðá visits Hjálmþér in his castle in the woods. It is explicitly stated that he had never seen his new stepmother before and this lack of visual acquaintance is important. As he has not yet experienced her exceptional beauty and power to entice sexually, the queen can take full advantage of the overwhelming effect she has at their first meeting. However, it is explicitly stated that Hjálmþér has heard about her, has experienced her body through the eyes and words of other characters, and this may somewhat prepare him for her advances. She is indeed quick to try and seduce him. When the hero does not immediately succumb to her, she asks him whether he does not find her beautiful and laments:

huij mun mier so veralldarhiöled vallt orded, hälffu betur hefde ockur saman vered hendt, ÿngum og hreinlegum, og til allrar nätüru skapfelldlegum, og heijr minn sæte og kiære, þad mä eg þier satt seigia, ad þinn fader hefur mier eckj spillt, af þui ad hann er madur óruasa, og nätürulaus, og til óngra huijlubragda fær, enn eg hefer mióg breijskt lijf, og mikla näturu i mijnum kuennlegum limun, so ad þad er miked tiön verólldinne, ad suo lystelegur lijkame skal spenna so gamlann mann, sem þinn fader er, og meiga ei blömgast heiminum til vpphelldis, mættum vid helldur ockar ÿngu lijkame saman tempra, efter nätürlegre holldsins girnd […].965

‘Why should the wheel of fortune have turned so against me? It would have been better to put us together, young and handsome in nature, and my dear, that I may tell you truly, that your father has never violated me because he is a worn out man, impotent for any cohabitation, but I have very lax morals and much potency in my womanly limbs. And it is a great loss to the world that such an eager body must clasp so old a man as your father and may not flourish for the preservation of the world. We might rather blend our young flesh together, so that fair fruit might multiply […]’.966

In view of the role of women discussed above in connection with the troll-women (and Ýma’s advances in particular), it quickly becomes clear that this queen resembles trolls rather than courtly women in her sexually forceful proposal.

In the queen’s speech bodies assume medial importance on different levels, demonstrating again that in exceptional cases characters may even shape the perception of their bodies themselves. The queen verbally and physically installs her own beautiful body in order to arouse Hjálmþér. The frank offer of her flesh is clearly designed to make his body weak, to lead him into immoral transgression with his father’s wife. The queen consciously plays on the idea of a beautiful female body promising sexual pleasure and royal offspring. She thus installs her body as a perfect fit for Hjálmþér’s, as he is a virile, young, royal male. The queen also contrasts her body with that of King Ingi, who she claims is not able to fulfil his role as bedmate (despite his great desire and/or love for her). The king is again shown as unfit to perform his role successfully. In both his initial overwhelming desire and his actual sexual abilities his body is symptomatic of his shortcomings as a ruler. In contrast to Hjálmþér, the king’s body shows a disparity of ability and identity. This may be a sign that in his case, too, the two do not match, a fact that may somewhat explain his inability to see the same flaw in his wife.

Hjálmþér, however, is in control of his bodily desires and not open to courtly intrigue. Instead, he is quick to reveal a possible disharmony in relation to the queen’s appearance and behaviour. Adhering to courtly rules, he initially acknowledges her beauty. Yet although he acknowledges that her good looks cannot be denied, he immediately relates them to a moral assessment: ‘þad ætlade eg’ s(eiger) H(iälmþer) ‘ad þu munder jll vera, enn alldre so suijuirdeleg sem nu veit eg ad þu ert.’967 For Hjálmþér, beautiful appearance and acceptable behaviour do not coincide in the queen, a comment that implies that under normal circumstances he would have expected such a correlation. His comment strengthens the assumption that in this particular saga, the congruence between appearance and disposition can be assessed critically.

It is possible that, because Hjálmþér has travelled far and seen many wondrous creatures, Queen Lúðá’s behaviour could suggest to him that she is not an actual queen but may incorporate some non-human component. KATJA SCHULZ argues that both such forceful appearance and her sexual promises point towards a non-human, most likely trollish identity. ‘Solch ein Bekenntnis zu fleischlichen Lüsten und sexueller Gier’, she argues, ‘kann – im normativen Frauenbild der Fornaldarsögur – nicht menschlich sein.’968 In his brief discussion of the episode, LINDOW also concludes that while ‘[s]upernatural beings may be able to change their shapes […] they often retain some fundamental aspect of their otherness’969– an otherness which in the case of the queen is expressed in sexual promiscuity. Since promiscuity can be seen as typical troll-woman behaviour, this aspect may be consciously stressed in relation to the queen to refer to the possibility of hamhleypa. Because Hjálmþér grows suspicious of her, the queen remains unsuccessful in her quest as the hero’s reaction prevents a sexual union. Their bodies remain juxtaposed in speech rather than in action.

Instead of becoming the focus of sexual attention, the queen’s body is subjected to martial energy, as Hjálmþér resorts to physically rebuking the queen’s advances: hann hratt hennj þä framm yfer borded, og slö ä hennar naser, so blöd fiell vm hana alla.970 This reaction demonstrates either that Hjálmþér is problematic as a courtly hero because he uses violence towards noble women or that he refuses to classify the queen as belonging to this category – a somewhat more likely interpretation. If the second possibility is favoured, Hjálmþér is in fact seen as a particularly wise hero. In a general discussion of shape-shifters, WILLIAMS suggests that across medieval Europe, only ‘the wise who look beyond appearances, those who read through the signs, are able to see the true nature concealed beneath the wrong form.’971 At this stage Hjálmþér does not yet fully see through the sign that is Queen Lúðá’s body but in his reaction he calls attention to the possibility that something (or someone) may not be as it (or she) appears.

The queen’s reaction to Hjálmþér’s violent attack strongly enforces this feeling and also provides a first hint of her magical powers. After this brief but forceful reference to her physical body, the queen then vanishes in a miraculous manner: sóck hun þä þar nidur i jórdina sem hun var komin.972 This way of disappearing is not uncommon in connection with supernatural or magical beings or trolls in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, and therefore provides yet another hint at a trollish nature. This scene strengthens the feeling that two very different bodies are juxtaposed here. One is subject to sexual desire (or at least it is said to be) and physical harm, the other apparently miraculously insubstantial and inherently uncanny (or trollish). In this duality, the queen is shaped as an intrinsically unfixed character, and the audience is introduced to the idea that in this narrated world, certain characters may not be what they appear to be.

The narrative then turns to completely different matters. On one of his adventures Hjálmþér is again subject to a strange encounter with a female figure. When he keeps watch one night in the camp, he is suddenly disturbed by a strange creature approaching him:

og heijrde mikinn gnij, med störum brestum, j skögienn, so ad eijkurnar bifudust, enn limurnar hristust, og litlu sijdar kom framm ÿr mórkinne, eitt finngälkn miked, of gilldlegt, þad hafde hrossröfu, og höfa, og fax miked, augun voru huijt, enn munnurinn mikell, og hendur störar, brand hafdi hun i hende sier vænan, so ónguan hafde hann slijkann sied […].973

He heard a loud din, with great crashing noises in the woods, so that the trees trembled and their limbs shook, and a little after a huge, stout fingálkn […] came from the forest. She had a horse’s tail and hooves, and a long mane. Her eyes were white and her mouth and hands large. She had in her hand a beautiful sword, such as he had never seen.

Just like in the case of Ýma and her sisters, Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers takes great joy in describing this strange figure in detail. That the fingálkn announces its presence by the noise and tremble it creates in the forest raises a tension as to what this creature may look like. Interestingly, the description is detailed and precise even though the figure is widely known in riddara- and fornaldarsögur. O’CONNOR defines it as a ‘[l]arge, big-lipped centaur-like creature, usually hostile to humans.’974 The figure thus incorporates a particular disposition (hostile to humans) as well as physical traits and can thus be quickly placed into the semiotic system of the narrated world.

The detailed description in Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers makes it possible to imagine the fingálkn visually, particularly in its contrast to the noble, male and thoroughly human main hero. Just like the troll-sisters of the previous subchapter, the fingálkn expresses its monstrous identity through the amalgamation of human and animal features. Nevertheless, the fingálkn’s ability to speak facilitates interaction, while a courtly emblem, a sword she carries, visually links her to the main hero (who presumably also carries his sword). When Hjálmþér addresses the creature, he adheres to courtly manners. He calls her a daughter (dotter) although an elephant-tailed one (med fijls hala) and remarks that she is unlike any other woman, a comment which suggests that to him, she is a woman. Finally he asks her where she is from. The fingálkn’s answer immediately reveals that she is not as hostile as is usual for her kind: ‘Vargeijsa eg heite, heijr þu vijsers son, villtu ad eg þier […].’975 She not only offers her help but also addresses Hjálmþér with his title, showing that in her semiotic system, a king’s son is a known category and that to her, Hjálmþér reflects this category in his appearance and behaviour. Since in this case Hjálmþér does not let himself be guided by the usual norms of the narrated world and does not attack this commonly hostile creature, he discovers that she is compatible with him in both speech and manners.

Hjálmþér’s reaction again presupposes that the appearance of her body and her expected hostile disposition do not match. This yet again introduces a tension and calls attention to a possible imbalance in the character, which may point towards an instance of shape-leaping. Perhaps because the fingálkn is not aggressively hostile like others of its kind, Hjálmþér then intends to gain the sword it carries. The fingálkn proposes a trial: Hjálmþér has to kiss her on the lips and embrace her to obtain the sword, a scene reminiscent of the encounters of a prospective king with the Sovereignty Goddess in early Irish literature. Yet again, Hjálmþér’s body is put in opposition to a female that he should not engage with sexually but who openly asks for a sexual act.

The fingálkn is not part of the courtly world and hence no suitable match for the hero; moreover, she is hideous and undesirable, presenting a complete contrast to courtly ladies. Still, Hjálmþér overcomes his feelings of disgust, kisses and embraces her (something which he refused to do with the beautiful queen) and finallygains the sword. The fact that the sword rather than her body is the object of his desire may explain why in this case the union is apparently unproblematic. Yet be that as it may, the episode once again proves that encounters with the other are not always threatening or connoted negatively and that the monstrous appearance of an other does not prevent (even intimate) interaction.

The subject of changeable appearances is addressed immediately after this encounter. When Hjálmþér returns to the hall to meet his stepmother, hann sä stiüpmödur sijna gänga ä möte sier, honum leitst hun ei frijnleg, þui hun var þä bæde liöt, og leidinnleg i yferbragde, og öfógur ad äsiönu […].976 This is a sharp contrast to the previous descriptions by the narrative voice, which styled her as a gentle and beautiful woman. At this moment and through Hjálmþér’s eyes, Queen Lúðá is assessed anew, and assessed less favourably. It may be assumed that this appearance mediates her momentary disposition, as she is enraged that the fingálkn had warned Hjálmþér about her.977 It may also be that it is truly Hjálmþér’s gaze that is followed and that his strong dislike of her is reflected in that gaze. A third possibility of reading this description is that, finally, the queen’s true, trollish inner nature is shining through her human appearance.

Although all explanations are valid, the development of the narrative favours the last. For Queen Lúðá now openly uses magic to lay a spell on Hjálmþér for the punch she had received years earlier. This suggests that she may have given up her physical façade as well as her behavioural restraint. And now it becomes increasingly clear that she is anything but a noble queen. The spell she puts on her stepson is a usual plot-motor in original riddarasögur and typically leads to a bridal-quest adventure: Hjálmþér cannot find rest until he lays eyes on Hervor Hundingsdottir.978

As an experienced traveller, Hjálmþér is successful in this quest and after he, the queen’s servant Hord and Olvir have found the princess and escaped from her father’s kingdom with her (in a sea-battle featuring shape-shifted helpers), the companions set out on their journey home. When Hord dieson the journey, Hjálmþérdoes not want to leave him behind and carries him on his back for three days. He thus unknowingly lifts the curse that had lain on the servant.979 The sworn-brothers are then brought to a royal court where it is revealed to them that Hord was really a king’s son called Hring. Queen Lúðá, who is really a troll, had visited their court but Hring had refused her sexual advances. The queen thus turned Hring intoaservant and one of his sisters into the fingálkn which Hjálmþér had encountered.980 After hearing the story, the sworn-brothers return home and the queen bursts into flames when Hjálmþér first looks at her. He and Olvir marry King Hring’s sisters, Hring assumes the kingship and so, finally, order is restored on all levels.

In discussing these episodes, it becomes clear that in Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers, hamhleypa occurs in several contexts and in various directions, resulting in the final realisation that very few of the main characters really were who they appeared to be. Most of the characters that do show congruency of appearance and identity can be said to belong to the normative court – King Ingi, Hjálmþér and Olvir – although some minor troll characters also belong to this group.981 The concern about the fact that trolls can shape-shift at will and make others shape-shift shows that here too the system of expressive mediality is posed as the norm in the narrated world. It is a divergence from this system that causes danger and chaos and leads to questions about the stability of the system.

Perhaps the most disquieting aspect is that the troll Lúðá’s human and noble appearance allows her access to king and court. This is dangerous for the stability of the court as the centre of the narrated world, as it demonstrates that by simply appearing human, others can wreak destruction from within, for instance by eating humans (the most logical explanation for the disappearances). The hero cannot rely on his usual role as defender against the outside, nor on his usual categorisation of the world, to overcome this threat. However, for each shape-shifted character several hints are provided that body and behaviour do not match. Yet even Hjálmþér is (understandably) somewhat reluctant to completely abandon the usual system of expressive mediality in judging these characters. The idea of space is important to note in each of these cases since through their new, changed appearance all characters appear to be in their natural habitat. While for their true, inherent character they transgress geographical and social boundaries, they live where their temporary appearance would situate them and are thus safe.

The previous arguments show that despite the low opinion of the saga in scholarly circles, Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers may reveal a critical engagement with issues of expressive mediality. In the highly visual courtly culture portrayed in its narrated world, rigid boundaries may be assessed or even mocked by the repeated incongruity between a character’s true identity and his or her body. In the end, the saga suggests, trusting solely in appearance can be deceiving and can threaten the very core of courtly society. The saga thus inverts various idea(l)s about distinguishing court from outside, showing that character is a more reliable factor in deducing identity. It also shows that threats from within are much more difficult to spot and demand more from the main hero than the usual defence against the outside.

It might even be argued that in this text, some decisive categories in original riddarasögur are deliberately reversed: Hjálmþér is a hero residing largely outside the court, and (subsequently?) the threat to his court appears to come from within and not from without. The saga thus presents an inversion of the usual categories of space and, in the motif of hamhleypa, also of bodily order, both of which lead to a fundamental unstableness of (spatial and corporeal) borders. The task of the hero is therefore to once more stabilise these borders by finding and destroying whoever is responsible for threatening them: a task to which Hjálmþér rises admirably (albeit with a little help from his friends).

3.4Expressing Categories, Categories of Expression

The analyses in this and the previous chapter have engaged with constructions and perceptions of self and other and discussed how such hard-to-define, even elusive entities can be given concrete physical form (read: a body) in medieval texts. In this chapter, the bodies of monstrous creatures were examined as cultural bodies which stand for a moment of uncertainty, and quite ‘literally incorporate[…] fear, desire, anxiety and fantasy’.982 Yet they are also literary bodies which stand for moments of fascination and provide a vehicle for asking questions about human (and non-human) nature. The analyses have shown that the other in these texts is not composed of complete disorder but can be seen as meaningful in its own right and that it may even serve a cultural function in addressing the boundaries of society. It has been shown that because the other is often not as fixed as the self in terms of descriptive standards, it can include more varied descriptive paradigms and even draw on a bewildering and unsettling assemblage of various parts: it can be a hybrid figure in many respects.

In short, there is a multitude of forms that it might take in medieval texts. An other maybe structurally opposed to the self, such as exemplified by Cú Chulainn’s hair during his ríastrad, but it is hardly ever truly chaotic. In most cases it can be grasped within the semiotic system of the hero. What all of the examples have in common is that they openly show an ugly, unpleasing appearance to be the sign of the other. OSWALD argues that ‘because the monsters are reduced only to their bodies, and to their identity that is clearly articulated through their embodiment, we can also recognise how fundamental the body is in constructing medieval identity.’983 Whatever else (positive and negative) it may incorporate, the other can never escape the immediate assessment of its body.

MARY CARRUTHERS’ suggestion that grotesque figures demonstrate ‘what the brain must do to start thinking; it must gather, put together, conjoin by likeness and by contrast, the bits from its memory inventory, stored there in images’984 is a poetic way of summarising the chapters on expressive mediality. From these parts, new images are then created, much like the white horse quoted in the introduction.985 The monsters therefore ask for a willingness to be startled out of preconceived conceptions and to imagine things anew. Their bodies challenge not just form but also our categories of thinking form, perhaps something that also benefits the study of the self. One reason hitherto not proposed for this vivid imagination of the monsters in the texts is that ‘man is afraid of nothing more than of being touched by something for which he has no categories of experience’986, as KELLER reckons. If these categories of experience can be named and explored, for instance in literary texts, this fear may be diminished and the fascination grows.

The discussion of changing appearances demonstrated the problems this creates for the boundaries between self and other, as well as for the system of expressive mediality. SUSAN KIM claims that ‘the articulation of the fear of disintegration allows that fear to be put to rest, because as the monstrosities define the norm, they confirm it, and thus quiet the fear of its dissolution.’987 In the case of shape-shifting, this articulation in fact increases the fear, because it makes boundaries, both geographical and social, seem permeable and unstable. As MICHAEL UEBEL concludes in his study on Saracen alterity, ‘monsters expose classificatory boundaries as fragile by always threatening to dissolve the border between other and same, nature and culture, exteriority and interiority.’988 That such issues may have been explored in medieval Norse and Irish literature in relation to bodies is hardly surprising, given the important position bodies held in defining and expressing identity even beyond literature.

In terms of narrative strategies it was shown that both self and other are constructed through the narrative voice and/or through descriptions by other characters. In the examples discussed here, a self was more frequently made tangible through the assessment of other characters, a fact which may emphasise the position of the self within society: it is not just spatially located within society but also part of social discourse. Also enforcing this idea are the concepts of visuality and specularity. These showed that heroes may consciously display their appearance to others and that the assessment of the spectators is at times fundamental for their position(ing) in the narrated world. Descriptions by the narrative voice, on the other hand, may guide the audience’s perception of these characters or they may also enforce their position by emphasising their identity. In the examples presented here characters only seem to comment on others when they are talking to others. Only in the case of Hjálmþér lending his eyes to the audience was an adaptation of talking about others observable. Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers is especially noteworthy in its attentiveness to the idea of looking and of perspective. This suggests that some original riddarasögur could develop such ideas even outside the space of the court. Yet what lingers perhaps most vividly in the audience’s mind are the astonishingly detailed and vivid descriptions, no matter who provides them.

Both self and other are described along conceived norms in these texts. A self may be limited to a much smaller number of descriptive details, yet these make it clearly identifiable as human and as part of (a) human society. The other, then, must only negate these features to be recognisable, even though it may draw on a much larger number of descriptive paradigms to do so. This conclusion assumes two facts. First, that the other is always drawn not only in relation to but also from the perspective of a self. As GLAUSER also argues989, it is on its most basic level a non-self, even though the continuum signifying ‘non-’ is incredibly wide. Though the relationship between self and other which this establishes, the boundaries and borders of each category can then be explored: in this sense, the other becomes a challenge to human imagination and clear-cut categorisations. It follows that to be able to give form to the monster, the texts must know the self, but often it is only the monster which is explicitly marked and visualised by description. Second, expressive mediality proposes a clear and fixed system in which bodies are read according to individual paradigms and this system is implicitly promoted in all the narrated worlds examined. OSWALD explains this in that the ‘philosophy of the static body is reassuring. People’s bodies represent what they are; monstrosity is visible and unmistakable.’990 It is only in the transgression of these static, rigid indicators of identity that its underlying universality can be truly grasped.

SHILDRICK’s comment quoted at the beginning of this chapter suitably illustrates the connection between constructing self and other and the fact that if one category falls, the other might fall with it. The term expressive mediality can be said to denote what SHILDRICK defines as ‘being in the body’, but it also has an added emphasis on being a body. In all but the cases of shape-shifting, bodies are perceptible signs of identity; they express a character’s being, his or her status and position in the narrated world. The status of their bodies is integral in showing and reinforcing the social order of the narrated worlds. The two chapters provided an insight into the benefits of working with a system like expressive mediality. What underlies all of these examples is the simple understanding of bodies as media: as entities which are composed of meaningful paradigms which, if read with the right eye and an open mind, generate sense and make a character tangible and relatable both inside and outside the text.

4Scratching the Surface:
Reading Bodies in Transmissive Mediality

Dia mbeth nech las’ bad chuman.991

4.1The Transmissive Nature of Inscribed Skin

In addition to the construction and expression of particular identities through unaltered, God-given bodies, both literary traditions also show an interest in modified (in the sense of changed) bodies. In contrast to the previous discussions, the examples in this chapter imagine bodies as something that, much like parchment, can be inscribed or transformed from the outside. In these instances, what is read is literally on the bodies and has been put there by outside force(s). Scars, wounds or even writing are all signs that belong to this category and which medieval texts regularly use in this context. This entails that a body is consciously installed as a medium by an outside force, or by the character itself, with the aim of transmitting information. Alternatively, a body may bear the lasting signs of past events. These may have been employed not with the aim of marking the body but instead of injuring or even destroying it. In both cases, the signs can become foregrounded by the texts and are perceived as signifiers in their own right. Because of this distinctive focus of and in the texts, a separate term will denote this idea of mediality. As in these instances the focus lies on the bodies as carriers of signs and their role as transmitters, and because the signs frequently stand between a past event of inscription and the narrative present of the reading, this has been termed transmissive mediality.

Underlying transmissive mediality is an understanding of bodies as capable of receiving, retaining and exhibiting inscriptions. There is only one part of the human body that lends itself to such ideas: the skin. SARA AHMED and JACKIE STACEY underline the temporal and spatial dimensions of human skin as it materialises the passing of time through an accumulation of marks such as scars or processes of ageing.992 Yet the idea of a changing, marked skin can be developed much further in medieval texts. The bodies in these texts appear capable of fulfilling this function only because in these instances they are installed and perceived as physical materiality, as flesh and skin. It is this imagined materiality that allows the bodies to preserve the marks long enough for them to be read and transferred to a more lasting medium disconnected from the body.

HANNA EGLINGER draws attention to the perceived ‘fleshness’ of bodies in medieval texts. EGLINGER explains this fascination by a prevailing association of skin with parchment or palimpsests: ‘[a]uf diese Weise stellt der Körper, auch auf der biologischen Ebene, einen Gedächtnisspeicher dar, dessen Erinnerungen als “Einschreibungen” gewissermaßen unauslöschlich [erscheinen], aber in stetigem Wachstum beibehalten werden.’993 EGLINGER argues for a concept ‘des palimpsestischen Körpers im Rahmen einer gedächtnismetaphorischen Tradition […]’.994 In short, bodies incorporate concerns about memory through their changing and constantly re-inscribed skin. EGLINGER’s observations, although voiced in relation to modern Scandinavian literature, are also reflected in the texts discussed in this chapter. In these cases, new signs are added to the skin and particular signs are foregrounded for narrative purposes. It should, however, be made clear that with the exception of one example, the alterations to the skin and body are not received voluntarily. They therefore do not reflect the modern concept of body art or body modification and its association with self-constructing (an) identity (of course not necessarily a self). Rather, the bodies appear as palimpsests in that (in most cases) they preserve the results of martial encounters and as such become an expression of the personal history of the character. They are other-inscribed but self-reflecting, so to speak.

The underlying understanding of these bodies as physical matter runs somewhat contrary to most current poststructuralist theorisations of bodies, whether in literature or beyond. The present dual focus – on the discursive production of literary bodies and the possibility that some bodies in some texts can also be presented as fleshness – has already been explained (see 1.1.). In following the texts in their understanding of bodies, the discussions echo KARL STEEL’s call to ‘promote a materialist attentiveness to the stuff of skin […]’.995 Scholars such as TERENCE TURNER have likewise noted that in following individual sources in their perception of bodies, an interest in the body as flesh is desirable.996 The focus of the texts and episodes discussed here testifies to a strong effort to make bodies matter, in the double sense of creating them as physical matter and as important signifiers within a text.

The skin is the prime signifier in this chapter, and therefore it deserves some introductory remarks.997 Conceptions of skin as the visible surface of a body that may be consciously altered to incorporate meaning are widely attested in medieval sources. These ideas are based on an understanding of the skin as encapsulating the body. Isidore of Seville writes in his Etymologiae that ‘skin (cutis) is that which is uppermost on the body, so called because in covering the body it is the first to suffer from an incision.’998 Isidore lists the skin’s two most noticeable qualities: its position on the outside of the body and its ability to suffer incision. In addition to these basic characteristics, scholars have unearthed a wealth of meaning(s) connected to human skin. That these meanings are connected (or attached) to skin but are not inherent in skin has been pointed out by BENTHIEN.999 BENTHIEN is correct in ascertaining that as an anatomical part of the body, skin in itself has no intention to signify, even if it may express intent.1000 It is only when skin is invested with cultural meaning and thus enters mediality discourse that the skin as the surface of the body becomes meaningful.

It is both the skin’s visible position on the surface of the human body and its potential for being altered that allow it to become the bearer of meaningful inscriptions and lead to skin being read and assessed in social contexts. WILLIAM A. COHEN summarises this as follows:

[b]oth tactile membrane and enclosure, the skin is a permeable boundary that permits congress between inside and outside, whether that interior is conceived in material or metaphysical terms. The skin thus forms the border not only between bodily interior and exterior, but between psychical and physical conceptions of the self as well. As a social signifier, moreover, the color, texture, and appearance of the skin have often been presumed to testify to what resides within or beneath it. By virtue of its peculiar status as both physical embodiment and psychical envelope, both a surface projected from the inside and a mask immediately comprehensible from without, the skin has crucial, if sometimes conflicting, psychological, spiritual, and social functions.1001

ENID SCHILDKROUT asserts that because of its potential for being socially ‘charged’, skin has been of continuous interest ‘as possibly the first, and certainly the most obvious, canvas upon which human differences can be written and read […]. Skin [is] a visible way of defining individual identity and cultural difference […]’.1002 BENTHIEN presents such literary perceptions and representations from the early modern period onwards and concludes that ‘[f]rom the Renaissance onward it [the skin] has been considered the mirror of the soul and the projecting surface of the invisible inside.’1003 In BENTHIEN’s understanding, skin is the visual outer surface of an inner self, an outward expression much in the sense of expressive mediality. In view of the holistic concept of the body prevalent in the sources discussed here, it is not surprising to see BENTHIEN’s concern reflected also in medieval texts, albeit in distinctly medieval contexts.

TERENCE TURNER also stresses the universality of the skin as a mediator but draws much-needed attention to the act of deciphering. In ‘The Social Skin’, TERENCE TURNER argues that there is an almost universal perception of the surface of the body as both the boundary of the individual as a biological and psychological entity and also as the boundary of the social self.1004 In the following examples it will become clear that these frontiers (and the skin which makes them tangible) are by no means stable. They can become subject to change, and with them, the identity of a character may also become unstable. Working with the idea of transmissive mediality and foregrounding the processes of transmission enables such readings of skin, signs and identity. In examining how exactly these processes of mediality operate, the focus needs to lie on the visual nature of skin and hence on processes of visuality and specularity.

WALTER observes that in medieval culture skin is a multifarious image. It can be perceived as
both the material basis and figure for forming a sense of self [and] for understanding the relation of self to the world and to God […] it is also a powerful literary and visual image, generating a rich fabric of meanings to be woven or unpicked in medieval textual practices and hermeneutics.1005

The focus of the texts, and therefore of the present chapter, clearly reflects the idea of skin as a rich fabric inscribed with meaning. To adequately present the complex understanding medieval texts exhibit of human skin, some references to studies dealing with modern and/or non-literary subjects have to be made to contextualise the findings. In particular, AHMED and STACEY’s concept of dermographics, that is, skin writing,1006 offers an interesting parallel. Rather than limiting dermographics to the writing on skin, AHMED and STACEY examine how the skin becomes meaningful in different cultural contexts. They postulate that the skin itself ‘matters as matter’ but is simultaneously ‘an effect of such marking’ and consequently becomes ‘a writerly effect.’1007 Their insistence that if skin is always open to being read (and being read differently), the methods by ‘which these various techniques for reading produce skins in specific and determinate ways’1008 clearly reflects the present interest in the processes of mediality.

There are two distinct ways in which the texts discussed here express these general thoughts: either by inscribing the skin (presumably with quill and ink) or in that a body exhibits incisions such as scars or blemishes (the results of wounds received in combat). For both, the term ‘inscription’ is used although only the former concept features actual writing and denotes a voluntary alteration from the point of view of the character whose skin is altered. To think about such markings as inscriptions is helpful also because it is a suitable complement to the idea of reading bodies. In addition, the term is appropriate on etymological grounds. Scribe is rendered by WALTER SKEAT as deriving from an original semiotic range of ‘to scratch’ or ‘to cut slightly’.1009 Etymologically the term has a root meaning of *sker- (‘to cut, incise’) and is also associated with the act of carving marks in stone, wood or other material, while the prefix in- further emphasises the penetrating quality of the action into a surface.1010 Both the idea of deliberately penetrating a surface (albeit for various reasons) as well as of the recipient of the carving as somehow material are important points to keep in mind.1011

The complementary term reading is used somewhat differently than in the previous chapters. It denotes the process of extracting information from the inscribed signs. The act of reading takes place within a social framework (social literacy) and it may depend on special training or authority. This is the case regardless of whether a body exhibits one or several signs, and regardless of whether the signs are to be read all in the same way, separately or as a narrative. The idea of specific characters being able or allowed to read and interpret these signs presents somewhat of a contrast to the apparently universal ability to read expressive mediality. The act of extracting meaning from the signs is purposefully staged in most of the examples discussed here, which indicates that it is of great importance in and to the texts.

In following the texts and their instalment of bodies, the present study came to ask very similar questions to ÖHLSCHLÄGER and WIENS, who seek to determine ‘inwiefern der Körper als Ort der Einschreibung kulturellen Wissens, als Konstrukt sich gegenseitig anreizender Wahrheitsdiskurse zu betrachten sei.’1012 The prime interest of this chapter is to address the underlying mechanisms of these social inscriptions and readings, as these provide the basis for mediality discourses. In terms of the basic requirements of mediality, transmissive mediality involves moments of inscription, retention of meaning and an extraction of meaning. Yet the ways in which these processes are presented vary considerably in the individual texts.

To present a more coherent picture of transmissive mediality, the following analyses were divided according to how they install bodies as mediators and which concerns are foregrounded in a particular text or episode. The analysis will start with examples from both literary traditions in which scars and wounds are read in a heroic discourse, followed by two early Irish examples which show interesting concerns about the transmission of history and inscribed memory. Finally, the episode in Sigurðar saga þǫgla in which the malicious meykóngr Sedentiana mutilates the bodies of the princes Halfdan and Vilhjalm will be considered in some detail. The chapter thus covers various instalments of transmissive mediality and hopes to reflect the interest medieval texts exhibit in developing such a topos.

4.2Show Me Your Skin and I’ll Tell You Who You Are: Reading Scars and Wounds in Ásmundar saga kappabani and Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó

To show that in both literary traditions transmissive mediality can appear in very similar contexts, the discussion begins with two examples that are firmly rooted in a heroic discourse and present skin as something that is altered by combat. This is evident in the Norse Ásmundar saga kappabani (‘The saga of Ásmund the Champion-Killer’) and the Irish Scéla Muicce Meic Dathó (SMMDT, ‘Tidings of Mac Da Thó’s Pig’). Ásmundar saga kappabani is preserved in two main manuscripts, SKB 7 4 to and AM 586 4 to, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively1013, as MARLENE CIKLAMINI asserts. The saga is commonly classified as a fornaldarsaga Norðurlanda, a saga of olden times. The genre has been introduced in some depth in chapter one (see 1.4.) but one characteristic trait of these sagas shall be briefly recapitulated because it is important for contextualising the bodies in the text.1014

Ásmundar saga kappabani is classified by SCHIER as a Wikingersaga (‘Viking saga’), a subgroup of the fornaldarsögur.1015 SCHIER argues that it is a typical representative of this subgroup because of its strong focus on Viking raids and dangerous combats and its thoroughly heroic atmosphere.1016 As was common in earlier scholarship, SCHIER assumes a historical basis for these narratives and regrets that this historical core was completely buried underneath fantastical embellishment.1017 The present study takes a contemporary stance and views the narrated world of Ásmundar saga kappabani as a thoroughly literary construct. The very convincing literary imagination of the Viking Age that gave the impression of a historical grounding is, however, the background against which the narrative should be read. This is a vital point to stress in relation to the episode in question, as in this Wikingersaga a tragic conflict is played out against the Viking mentality of heroic values and loyalty.

The circumstances leading up to the tragic conflict of heroic prerogatives at the end of the saga are narrated at its very beginning and they rest on an excellent but cursed sword. One day the Swedish King Budli is visited by two mysterious blacksmiths named Olius and Alius. The king asks them to forge a knife, a gold ring and two swords that ‘do not bite’, i.e. are blunt. Unbeknownst to the king, the two blacksmiths enclose mysterious qualities in these objects: the first sword lacks the ability to harm, while the second, if paired with the first in a fight, will win even if combat ends in a draw. When testing the weapons, King Budli breaks Olius’ sword and the blacksmith returns to forge a better one. Because he was insult at the breaking of his steel, Olius curses the new sword so that it will kill the king’s grandchildren. Enraged by this prophecy, King Budli fastens a log of lead onto the sword and throws it into a lake. Shortly afterwards, his daughter marries King Helgi and they have a son, Hildibrand, a very promising youth.

When Helgi is on a mission abroad, his kingdom is usurped by the Danish king, Alf. Helgi’s queen is robbed and married again to Alf’s warrior Aki, with whom she has a second son, Ásmund. As a youth, Ásmund fully complies with heroic stereotypes: [h]ann var snemma mikill ok sterkr ok lagðiz í víking þegar hann mátti ok braut undir sik mikinn hermannaafla.1018 However, Ásmund will soon become entangled in one of the most tragic heroic themes: a fight between two valiant and excellent (half‐)brothers (foreshadowed in the text by the cursed sword). Despite this tragic background, CIKLAMINI finds the mood of the saga ‘not tragic, merely pseudo-heroic […]. Despite its ostensibly tragic theme, the reluctant slaying of a close kinsman in a duel, the saga is entertaining.’1019 The high entertainment value and the ‘lively dialogue and […] carefully structured scenes’1020, which CIKLAMINI further proposes for the saga, will be evident also in the reading of Ásmund’s skin.1021 This takes place before the fight of the two brothers and is part of a love-and-marriage subtheme also infused with Viking mentality.

Ásmundar saga kappabani is concerned with the importance of avenging one’s kin but also addresses the destructive energies that this can unleash. The theme is developed from the point of view of Hildibrand’s family but also from the perspective of the Danish kingdom. As a grown man, Hildibrand avenges his grandfather, Budli, by killing King Alf (Ásmund’s king and foster father) and becomes a renowned Viking. Simultaneously, the narrative recounts Ásmund’s successful exploits and his eagerness to win King Alf’s daughter, Aesa, in marriage. Unbeknown to Ásmund, this wish will eventually lead to the fight with his brother Hildibrand, although for most of the narrative the two are unaware of their relation.

The wooing of princess Aesa is a decisive element in the saga and the context in which skin assumes importance. Fittingly, Ásmund’s rival suitor is called Eyvind Skinnhöll (‘Eyvind Fur’) and is introduced as follows: danskr at ætt, vænn maðr, ríkr ok auðigr ok barz á mikit.1022 When Eyvind proposes to Aesa, he boasts about his noble character: kvað henni vera kunnigan mannasóma sínn ok fjáreign, ætt hans ok framkvæmd.1023 The audience thus learns about this character both from the apparently neutral perspective of the narrative voice and through his own words. And the two assessments present a coherent picture. Eyvind certainly embodies the qualities of a noble spouse in the narrated world of a Viking fornaldarsaga, but in the context of this particular text he may exhibit a lack of martial accomplishments in his biography. Because what Eyvind does not know is that Aesa is only keen to marry a man who can avenge the death of her father, Alf.

When Aesa takes counsel with her foster-brother, Ásmund, about Eyvind’s proposal, Ásmund also offers to marry her and the princess suspects she may have found a more suitable avenger in him. Yet as Ásmund’s royal lineage has not yet been revealed (his mother is explicitly said to have kept quiet about her status), Eyvind’s higher social status prevents her from freely preferring Ásmund without offending Eyvind. Aesa therefore decides to call a competition: ‘þann yckarn skal ek eiga, segir hón’, ‘er mér fær fegri hendr í haust or hernaði.’1024 Ásmund is thus placed in a position to win the princess by relying on his body’s martial abilities and by staging a very specific part of his body through specularity: the skin.

The conspicuous crux in Aesa’s request lies in the term fagr (‘beautiful’), which Aesa applies as the deciding factor in her choice. The adjective fagr has a primary meaning of ‘beautiful, fair, fine’, but according to BAETKE also has associated connotations of ‘bright’, ‘splendid, marvellous, shining’ and even ‘pleasant, agreeable’.1025 The positive semantic range of the word is undeniable, but it includes a range of at times personal assessments: what is pleasant or agreeable can, to a large degree, be defined by personal as well as social standards.

That at least the two suitors interpret the term rather differently becomes evident in their displaying of their arms after they return. Before they re-enter the court to be assessed, the narrative voice briefly recounts their exploits: ok hætti Ásmundr opt með miklum háska til stórfanga ok aflaði svá fjár ok frama, en Eyvindr var optliga hjá matgerðarmönnum ok lét eigi ganga glófa af hendi sér.1026 This sharp comment by the narrative voice prefigures their appearance before the princess:

Eyvindr geck fyrri fram ok bað konungsdóttur lita á sínar hendr. Æsa in fagra mælti: vel hafa þessar hendr varðveittar verit ok eru hvítar ok fagrar, hafa litt litat sik í blóði né ófegrðar í höggum; sjám nú, Ásmundr! Þínar hendr, segir hón. Hann rétti fram sínar hendr ok vóru þær öróttar ok heldr döckvar af blóði ok vápnabiti, ok er hann brá frá […] klæðunum, þá vóru þær hlaðnar hringum gullz til axlar.1027

Eyvind went forward and asked the princess to look at his arms. Aesa the beautiful said: ‘These arms have been well protected, and they are white and beautiful, they have neither been stained by blood nor disfigured by (hard) blows. Now let us see your arms, Ásmund!’, says she. He held out his hands and they were marked by scars and darkened by blood and weapons’ bites [wounds], and when he pulled back […] his sleeves, they were full of gold rings up to his armpits.

The discrepancy between the arms of the suitors is readily observable and the gazes of Aesa and the court are openly invited onto them in a prime instalment of specularity. The scene is constructed through a carefully balanced mixture of dialogue and narrative voice, but the audience also participates in this act of specularity through their own imagination. On a narrative level it is worth noting that at first the arms are assessed by different authorities. Aesa voices her opinion about Eyvind’s arms but the audience does not immediately know what she thinks of Ásmund, because his arms are described by the narrative voice. This ingenious technique to raise tension chimes with CIKLAMINI’s point about certain carefully constructed scenes.1028

By making their innate character visible (and hence observable) on and through the suitors’ bodies, the text makes the disparity clear for everyone to see. Eyvind appears as fair (even white) and without scars and blemishes. His arms thus reflect the meaning of ‘bright’ and ‘fair’ inherent in fagr. He represents a noble and beautiful hero, embodying a narrative stereotype that is found frequently in fornaldarsögur despite the texts’ focus on Viking exploits. His appearance affirms Eyvind’s position in the courtly and royal setting from which he stems. It is also likely that his understanding of the associated meaning of fagr reflects this identity: he sees it as demanding a bright and fair appearance. Eyvind deliberately protects his arms by abstaining from combat and by wearing gloves because he assumes that Aesa shares this interpretation of fagr and desires a beautiful spouse even after Viking adventures.

Ásmund on the other hand (or arm) differs from Eyvind both in terms of the colour and the surface structure of his skin. He appears as darkened by the blood he has shed (of others and himself, presumably) and displays the visual signs of his past combats: his scars, which permanently alter both the appearance and the surface of his body. The scars provide Aesa with visible proof that Ásmund is an apt and able fighter and not afraid of combat. Perhaps more importantly (as Aesa might know this already), they also prove this to the people present at the reading. The juxtaposition of the two stereotypical characters – courtly prince and Viking warrior – is thus brought to the very surface of their bodies and read from their skin.

For both characters, the skin signifies on the two distinct levels of colour and surface structure and the transmissive function is inherent in both paradigms. Eyvind’s skin signifies because it has retained its natural, smooth and bright quality, Ásmund’s because of the alterations it has received. Only the latter suitor thus exhibits the inscriptions that can be placed within the focus of this chapter, and only his skin can be called a palimpsest because it bears the indelible signs of past encounters. Ásmund is a typical representative of AHMED and STACEY’s concept of dermographics1029, of altered and ‘lived in’ skin. Eyvind, on the other hand, demonstrates an effort to consciously avoid such markings.

Nevertheless, both arms and their signs are quickly and confidently read by the princess to deduce the suitors’ suitability for her quest for vengeance. In a bold move of interpretation it may be argued that with the help of these descriptions the audience has by now visualised and hence also read the arms. Based on the common meaning of fagr, it probably now expects Eyvind to be chosen. In an ingenious and surprising turn of events, however, Princess Aesa utters a wholly different judgement: [þ]á mælti konungsdóttir: þat mun þó mitt atkvæði, at Ásmundar hendr sé fegri með öllu saman, ok ertu, Eyvindr! fráráðinn þessum ráðahag.1030 The decision might trigger astonishment at first reading or hearing of the saga, and it may even have surprised the other characters present at the display. Yet it appears logical if one recalls that Aesa seeks an avenger for her father. To her, Ásmund’s warrior-arms are therefore preferable to Eyvind’s royal beauty. After demonstrating that she is capable of reading Eyvind’s skin in a courtly discourse by acknowledging its beauty, Aesa then bases her decision on a secondary meaning of fagr in assessing Ásmund’s arms as more agreeable to her. The episode is remarkable in openly presenting and juxtaposing the two discourses in which the arms can be read. Even though the display is most likely public, the text clearly focuses on Aesa’s perspective. It is her gaze that is followed and it is her personal interpretation of fagr that leads to the decision.

That fagr is generally used in a courtly context may be emphasised by pointing out that Aesa is introduced as Æsa in fagra in the passage cited above. By juxtaposing the term in the description of the arms and of the princess it is possible that in this saga, an underlying connotation with ‘female courtly beauty’ is evoked. This may give Eyvind an effeminate aura and/ or make him appear as a suitable match for the princess, like King Jón’s appearance mirrors Gratiana’s in Dámusta saga. But yet again the saga inverts such seemingly courtly tropes and follows its own agenda. Thus Eyvind’s arms designate him as the complete opposite of what Aesa is looking for in a spouse: a character embodying male heroic strength that can be trusted with avenging her father.1031 The brief passage thus provides a suitable example for examining how signs on a hero’s skin can be read and interpreted positively, and also, how important the context of this reading is. It also shows that, ultimately, the signs are subject to a reading that constructs identity, not the individual martial encounters visible on Ásmund’s skin.

The Irish text Scéla Mucce Meic Da Thó (SMMDT, ‘Tidings of Mac Dathó’s Pig’) shows a similar awareness of wounds and scars expressing a warrior’s heroic identity, although the evaluation of the scars in the narrated world differs from that in Ásmundar saga kappabani. The tale is dated to c. 800 by THURNEYSEN1032 and is extant in five manuscripts, all of which are considerably later (the earliest being the twelfth-century Book of Leinster).1033 In comparison with other early Irish texts, SMMDT ‘has received a considerable amount of critical attention’1034, as POPPE points out. THURNEYSEN remarks that it is ‘one of the best told of Old Irish sagas’1035,while TOM PEETE CROSS and CLARK HARRIS SLOVER comment on its ‘remarkably picturesque narrative’, to which the vivid portrayals of bodies greatly contribute.1036

The scholarly interest is perhaps also perpetuated by the disparaging evaluations of the text. POPPE finds that ‘from a synchronic perspective it is conspicuous how recent criticism disagrees widely on the meaning and message of SMMDT’1037 and these views have been concisely summarised by MCCONE.1038 THURNEYSEN1039 and NORA K. CHADWICK1040 perceive SMMDT as a reflection of historical (heroic) conduct. SHEEHAN thinks that the text depicts ‘a heroic contest whose black humour relies on mutilation and violence.’1041 DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN understands it as a literary satire or parody on TBC1042 while CORNELIUS BUTTIMER and KIM MCCONE see it as ‘a classic lesson in the likelihood that excess will lead to futility’1043 and ‘a deadly earnest, if at times amusing moral satire in the classical tradition […] but inevitably geared by its monastic author to Christian principles’1044 respectively. SMMDT can therefore be seen either as a humorous parody of heroic ideals or as a highly moral lesson on just those values. This of course presents a challenge to any reading and necessitates an engagement with one’s own understanding of the text, a matter that will be addressed below.

The narrative plot of the tale centres on the Leinster hospitaller Mac Dathó who possesses a magnificent dog, Ailbe. The dog is so renowned that both King Chonchobor of Ulster as well as King Ailill and Queen Medb of Connacht wish to have it. Unsure about whom to give the dog to, Mac Dathó listens to his wife’s advice and promises it to both parties. When the rival armies arrive to claim the animal, he holds a great feast, at which there is much contention about the curadmír (‘the champion’s portion’). In Irish heroic literature, this prime piece of meat is given to the greatest hero present, which in SMMDT results in a heated contest among the warriors of the two provinces. Ultimately, a fight breaks out and this results not only in great carnage among the warriors but also in the death of Ailbe. The tale thus ends on a truly destructive and tragic note.

The setting of the feast may be important for understanding the text, as in early Irish literature feasts are places ‘gemeinschaftlicher Zusammenkunft und Symbol der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung’1045, as TRISTRAM summarises. TRISTRAM also contends that in literary texts feasts are a challenge for and confirmation of social order, an order that is often undergoing a crisis during the feast.1046 The crisis of social order is exemplified in SMMDT by the difficulty in assigning the curadmír (the symbol of the established order which is constantly disputed) and narratively developed through the bodies of the warriors. SAYERS argues that in this setting, ‘much conflict might be conducted in verbal form’ but nevertheless ‘real blows are struck and real wounds received’.1047 In SMMDT real blows are struck only at the very end of the narrative. During the feast, the bodies of warriors are described and evoked through the direct speech of their rival contestant, and they are evaluated solely by their appearance – an appearance that reflects their martial abilities.

The warriors of the opposing provinces are therefore juxtaposed not in combat but in direct speech. This is possible because, as SAYERS affirms, in early Irish heroic literature, ‘[s]ocial hierarchy and valorisation of the warrior class produce an honour-sensitive behavioural environment, in which members are continuously engaged in stylized contention with each other over prestige […]’.1048 In this context, the assigning of the curadmír takes prime importance, as it needs to be established who rightfully deserves this cut and whose province thus claims superiority over the other.What is at stake is not only the honour of individual heroes but also the social order of the narrated world, as one province must be superior to the other.

The verbal contest takes up a large part of the text, yet it is the heroes’ bodies that take centre stage in the verbal bout. Since the bodies are mentioned within the contest, they are all referred to in direct speech – direct speech voiced by their opponent, Cét. Moreover, it is only their flaws, their disqualifying features, which are emphasised. Early Irish texts frequently portray a narrated world in which heroic disfigurement is common and ‘martial injury is, in cognitive terms, “available” as a vehicle for the exploration of ideological issues and for the promotion of specific social, economic and political agendas’.1049 That ‘the role of wounds and scars in the wars of words’1050 in SMMDT, as SAYERS phrases it, is important in establishing who can rightfully claim the curadmír is ingenious narrative play: it transfers the destruction of one (animal) body to that of many (human) bodies in an attempt to structure the social body. Far from being mere meat, the hero’s portion is meaningful in a social context and it is within the ritualised pattern of boasting and self-defence that the human bodies likewise assume social importance.1051

The first mention of a body is made when Cét has sat down to carve the pig after triumphing in the first, general round of boasting. After this first dispute, in which no blemishes are mentioned, Oengus mac Láma Gábuid of Ulster attempts a challenge. However, the mere mention of his name to Cét is enough to spell defeat for Oengus:

‘[c]id diata Lám Gábuid for th’athair-siu?’ or Cet. ‘Cid ám?’ Ro-fetar-sa,’ or Cet. ‘Dochuadusa sair fecht and. Eigther immum; do-roich cách, do-roich dano Lám. Tarlaic urchor do gai mór dam-sa. Dos-leicim-se dano do-som in ṅ-gai cétna, co m-ben a laim de, co m-bui for lár. Cid dobérad a mac do chomram frim-sa?’1052

‘Why is your father called Lám Gábuid?’ asked Cet. ‘Well why?’ ‘I know’, said Cet. ‘I once went eastward. The alarm was raised around me. Everyone came on and Lám came too. He threw a cast of his great spear at me. I sent the same spear back to him, and it struck off his hand, so that it lay on the ground. What could bring his son to give me combat?’

In this case, explicit reference is made not to a body but to a nickname based on a bodily flaw. The flaw simultaneously visualises and verifies the accuracy of the narrated account, as Lám Gabuid is commonly translated as ‘hand-wail’. The body mentioned is not present, nor is it invoked in a description, yet the reference to the name evokes communal knowledge and communal testimony. Cét’s assault has not only maimed the body permanently but also given rise to a new name, a sure indicator of how closely body and identity are linked in SMMDT (and in early Irish literature in general). It is also clear that in the narrated world of SMMDT the blemish on a father’s body somehow transfers to the son, as Oengus’ claim to fame is dismissed solely on the grounds of his father’s martial inferiority.

After this, Cét’s superiority is established in relation to more bodies, some of which are present at the assembly but others are not. The next contender is Eogan mac Durthacht, king of Fernmag. Cét quickly mentions that he has seen this warrior before. Asked where he had encountered him he answers: ‘[i] ndorus do thaige oc tabairt tana bó uait. Ro-héged immum-sa isin tír. Tanacaisiu fon égim. Ro-thelgis gai ḟorm-sa corra-ba as mo scíath. Dollecim-se duit-siu in ṅ-gai cétna, colluid trét chend, ocus co m-bert do ṡúil as do chind.’1053 This is the first time Cét’s martial skills are inscribed on a body that is present. Cét consciously involves the gathered crowd and their observing gazes, asserting that it is communally perceptible that the king is visibly disfigured.

Cét installs the king’s body within the concept of specularity in an ingenious reversal of the motif. Usually it is the king himself who invites the gazes of a crowd onto his beautiful and unblemished body.1054 In this case it is Cét who guides their looks to prove that Eogan mac Durthacht no longer complies with this concept of a king, which generally leads to a loss of kingship.1055 Such tragic-comic reversals of the usual structure of heroic motifs may have led to SMMDT being assessed as a moral satire. Be that as it may, to have injured and blemished a king is an exceptionally destructive achievement for Cét. It is an assault not only on a person’s material body but also on the very foundation and stability of the kingdom of Fernmag. It may also be an assault on the social ideal of an unblemished king since it is implied in SMMDT that Eogan kept the kingship after his disfigurement. On Eogan mac Durthacht, the blemish would be read particularly unfavourably and entail the possible destruction of his role in society, threatening the social body as much as the physical one.

The next contestant is Munremor mac Gergind to whom Cét replies: ‘[i]s me ro-glan mo gó fo deóid a Munremur,’ or Cet. ‘Ní ḟuilet trí thráth and o thucusa tri láich-cind uait im chend do chétmic as t’ḟerund.’1056 Again, the body of the contender is not blemished. Yet Cét’s trophies, the heads, may have been observed by others, or they may even be present at the feast. It is also interesting to note that it is again a close relative’s inferiority which is transferred to the man present and participating in the boasting. This time the transference is from son to father, a fact that suggests that even as adults, parents and children are perceived as closely related through their bodies.

The next Ulster warrior to face Cét is Mend mac Sálcholcán. Cét immediately provides another reference to a father’s nickname, dishonouring the son in the process. Mend’s challenge is dismissed as follows: ‘[c]id ane’, or Cet, ‘mac na m-bachlach cusna les-anmannaib do chomram chucum; ar ba úaim-se fúair th’athair in t-ainm sin, .i. messe ra-ben a ṡail de do chlaidiub, conna ruc acht oen-chois úaim. Cid dobérad mac ind oen-choisseda chucum?’1057 Interestingly, Cét’s comment implies that being one-footed is a social blemish rather than just a physical impediment, even at the rank of a rustic. This may be because it presumably prevents Mend from fulfilling his role as both farmer and defender of his home. Cét has again wounded not only a physical body but also the very foundation and security of a livelihood and family. Ultimately, the blemish proves as destructive for Mend as it had been for King Eogan mac Durthacht, although this time the hurt lies more on a pragmatic level rather than within the discourse of social hierarchy.

The next contender, Celtchair mac Uthechair, is introduced by the narrative voice as laech líath mór forgránna do Ultaib.1058 Cét’s response to his claim is again dismissive:

‘[r]o-tanac-sa, a Cheltchair, co dorus do thigi. Foheged immum. Tánic cách. Tanacaisiu dano. Dot-luid i m-bernai ar mo chind-sa. Do-reilgis gae dam-sa. Ro-thelgiusa gai n-aill chucutsu, co n-dechaid triat [ṡ]liasait ocus tria uachtur do macraille. Atái co ṅ-galur ḟúail ond uair sin, no co rucad mac no ingen duit ond uair sin.’1059

‘I came, Celtchair, to the door of your house. The alarm was raised around me. Everyone came up. You came too. You went into the doorway in front of me. You cast a spear at me. I cast another spear at you so that it pierced your thigh and the upper part of the fork of your legs. You have had a [urinary] disease ever since. Since then neither son nor daughter has been begotten by you.’

There is no mention of Celtchair visibly displaying this blemish for he is presumably clothed. Yet it may be assumed that the lack of (further) children after the attack is commonly known and hence sufficient to verify Cét’s story. In this case, it is a destructive impact on the body, not a visibly perceptive blemish, which impairs Celtchair’s function as virile male. This may diminish Celtchair’s status in society and leave him open to ridicule but it certainly will impair his family’s future, a real concern in the heroic world of the Ulster Cycle.1060 The fact that there is a comic aspect in Cét’s narration of this particular encounter creates a tension with the underlying catastrophic destruction of a man’s reproductive function.

The last contestant is Cúscraid Mend Macha, who is introduced by the people present as follows: is adbar ríg ar deilb.1061 This open judgement by the other characters raises the stakes for Cét, as the audience might wonder what flaw this man could possibly exhibit. While the physical description voiced by the keenly observing crowd distinguishes Cúscraid from the grim Celtchair, his fate remains the same, as disqualifying blemishes are not necessarily tied to appearance. Cét recounts: ‘[i]mma-tarraid dún issin chocrich. Foracbais trian do muntire, ocus is amlaid dochuadais ocus gai triat bragit, conna hetai focul fort chend i córai, ar ro-loitt in gái féthi do braget, conid Cúscraid Mend atot-chomnaic ond uair sin.’1062 Again, it is not just the act of wounding that is mentioned but it is important that it left a lasting impediment as well as (presumably) a physical scar on the victim. In this case an inability to speak or a speech impediment may be particularly disabling for the son of a king can be inferred, although elsewhere in the Ulster Cycle this is not the case.1063 This shows that one and the same descriptive paradigm can be assessed differently, depending on the agenda of a text.

This reading of the wounded and blemished bodies in SMMDT has shown that, as SAYERS claims,
while prior physical injury might prove an inconvenience on the battlefield, it could also function as a social impediment. Both the scar and the story behind it followed the warrior and determined his relative position in every new social disfiguration, such as this meeting in a foreign banquet hall.1064

Wounding the body in these cases also entails wounding the social self and this is only possible because the bodies function on two different levels: that of wounded and scarred materiality in the context of transmissive mediality and that of expressive mediality which places the body in a social discourse.

In exhibiting the blemishes and hence the story behind them to the public gaze in Mac Dathó’s hall, or by being closely related to someone who could also fulfil this function, the warriors themselves confirm Cét’s claims. In either case, the bodies thus function within the concept of transmissive mediality, as they link the recounted (past) act of inscription to the public reading of the bodies in relation to the curadmír. Cét’s autobiographical memory, i.e. what he recalls through experience, is supported by what other characters see in the hall or in their daily lives.1065 In this respect SHEEHAN contends that

Cet mac Mágach and Conall Cernach’s use of corporeal signs as the currency of warrior competition shows an early medieval semiotics of the body at work in a literary context. The saga’s masculine, honour-based hierarchy is grounded in the public perception of bodily integrity; mere association with a deficient body renders a warrior ineligible for heroic privilege.1066

The bodies can assume this importance as signifiers because of the setting of the tale in the hospitaller’s hall, a place where words and communal gazing at bodies, or communal knowledge of bodies not present, substitute for martial deeds. The bodies that are not present are verbally evoked by Cét, showing that in SMMDT bodies can be constructed through both visual and aural aspects, with communal knowledge standing in if a body cannot be openly observed by the warriors present.

In this regard, the bodies in SMMDT are firmly placed within the social context of boasting that has been studied most conclusively by O’LEARY.1067 O’LEARY concludes that
early Irish honour is an overwhelmingly public virtue […] the Irish hero can never afford to lose sight of his ever-judging audience. Nowhere in Irish society is the hero more likely to encounter such an audience and nowhere are the onlookers more eager for a competitive performance than at the feasts […].1068

SHEEHAN points out that the related concepts of honour and shame are connected to a physical component even on a linguistic level as the
word for honour, enech, has the primary meaning ‘face’, and although the noun tár serves to convey the abstract meaning of ‘insult, disgrace, shame,’ two further terms denoting a physical blemish, ainim and on, also convey the figurative sense of ‘blot, disgrace’.1069

EDEL further draws attention to the fact that ‘the honour of an individual – or its opposite, shame – are publicly declared valuations put upon him by those who know him.’1070 This is precisely what can be observed here: Cét and his opponents participate in a public discourse of generating honour and shame. By evoking communal knowledge Cét situates himself not only before the heroes in the hall but also in other areas of the narrated world and in relation to other characters. By voicing his deeds and by pointing towards the visually observable and the commonly known consequences, Cét can thus finally claim the curadmír – for the time being.

It is hugely important that both the bodies that are talked about and those that are present somehow make Cét’s superiority visible to the ‘onlookers’, the warriors gathered in the hall. SHEEHAN finds that ‘this contest sequence constructs a masculine hierarchy that links honour directly to the (male) body; in the saga’s heroic discourse, warrior honour is specifically grounded in the materiality of the body and is consequently as vulnerable as the body itself.’1071 She adds that the heroes ‘who dominate signify their dominance in resolutely corporeal term, using mutilated male bodies to affirm their positon at the top of the warrior hierarchy’.1072 Or in other words, they inscribe their superiority into other men’s flesh. The immediacy of proof which the bodies so inscribed hold in the narrated world makes Cét’s victories publicly visible and, by extension, sanctions them in the public eye (to be understood quite literally).1073 This is explained by O’LEARY: ‘[s]ignificantly the failings of each Ulsterman – and conversely Cét’s triumph – are public in the sense that Cét can point to a visible physical handicap which he has inflicted on each or can refer to mocking nicknames carried as a result of his attacks.’1074

Cét often draws on the common knowledge of these visible handicaps rather than on an actual body present in the hall. The momentum of specularity incited here is based on collective knowledge. Thus one may argue that the importance of the bodies lies not in their actual physical presence but in the place they occupy in the society of the narrated world. Just like in Ásmundar saga kappabani, the medial value of the body is not bound to this specific occasion, but it is installed at this point for a particular purpose. SHEEHAN in fact notes that these blemishes do not disqualify the warriors from the contest ‘until mutilation is publicly proclaimed’1075 and hence it is the voicing of the blemish, together with observing it either in real time or in communal memory, which places the bodies in social discourse. The bodies mediate these issues because the inscriptions are life-long markers of shame and inferiority and, in the case of a nickname being based on them, they are disqualifying even for the following generation in the patronymic.1076

The text devotes considerable effort to establishing Cét’s position ‘in relation to’ the other warriors present. For one, Cét himself places the bodies of his opponents in relation to himself and his martial abilities through his recounting of the fights. His momentary social position is, in fact, based on past events in which the bodies directly opposed each other in combat. What is perhaps the most unexpected twist in SMMDT is the end to Cét’s boasting. The famous Ulster hero Conall Cernach enters the hall and expresses delight in finding ‘his portion’ (i.e. the curadmír) carved and ready for him. An obscure dialogue in the archaic form of Irish poetry (rosc) takes place between Cét and Conall Cernach. At the end of this, Conall’s comment affirms his own warrior status: ‘[t]oṅgu na toṅgat mo thuath, o ra-gabus gai im láim, nach menic ro-bá cen chend Connachtaig fóm chind oc cotlud, ocus cen guin duine cech oen lá ocus cech oen aidchi.’1077 This is the crucial turning point. Without questioning his opponent or demanding the same proof he had been able to deliver for his actions, Cét acknowledges defeat: ‘[i]s fir,’ or Cet, ‘at ferr do laéch andó-sa.’1078 While Cét is superior in relation to all the other heroes present, the entrance of a new contender rearranges the order of the microcosmic world of the feast and suddenly deconstructs Cét’s identity as the superior male. In the complex honour system depicted in the narrated world of SMMDT, ‘the advance of one man dictate[s] the degradation of another’1079, as O’LEARY observes on a more general basis.

SHEEHAN reaches a similar conclusion: ‘[t]o shame another was to strike a powerful blow indeed, depriving the shamed person of their previous identity.’1080 Or, as T. M. CHARLES-EDWARDS phrases it, if a warrior is shamed ‘he ceased to be the person he was.’1081 What is especially remarkable is that Conall is said to have a crooked neck in other sagas, although this is the result of him being trampled on by an irate uncle and not of a martial defeat. Either because his blemish is not a sign of martial inferiority, because Conall is said to be extremely handsome in other texts or because SMMDT for some reason does not feature this descriptive paradigm this does not impair his status – a stark reminder that the inscriptive moment may be just as important as the reading in specific contexts.1082 Cét now laments that only his brother, Anlúan, who is absent, could justly challenge Conall. At this point, in a climactic ending, Conall takes Anlúan’s head from his bealt onto his breast in a dramatic display: ocus nos-leice do Chet ar a bruinni, cor-roimid a loim fola for a beolu.1083 Because he has already been defeated, Anlúan has nothing more to say. Instead of words, only blood emerges from his mouth. The blood makes his final defeat visible as Anluan himself cannot voice it anymore; in the verbal jousting at the feasts, the blood marks the voice of the defeated.

Ultimately, it is a dead body part that proves superiority beyond all verbal jousting or blemishes. That it is the head is to be expected, given the widely attested custom (in early Irish literature) of cutting off a dead opponent’s head. SHEEHAN claims that the message of the head ‘is self-evident in its unmediated materiality.’1084 Yet it may also be argued that the head is the ultimate mediator: once it has been produced, words are no longer needed. And with this head follows the mutual slaughter; with the severed head gushing blood, the focus turns from boasting at a feast to fighting, from recounted stories to real martial combat and from live bodies to dead ones. Therefore, one may see the head as the ultimate hero’s portion as it is an equally symbolic piece of meat that stems not from a (dead) pig but from a possible fellow contestant.1085

Both SMMDT and Ásmundar saga kappabani portray the skin of warriors as a place where through wounds and scars the achievements or failures of a warrior are mapped out. Marked skin becomes a site for social memory and individual martial biographies, and it becomes meaningful in manifold contexts of mediality. In Cét’s case, the bodies of his opponents, if viewed in their entirety, combine to a chapter of his ‘martial biography’, a list of combative encounters he won. Both texts, however, show the bodies not just as bearers and transmitters of signs but also as expressing shame or glory through these signs – or through the reading of these signs, to be more precise. Because of their material quality as flesh and blood, the bodies preserve these visible marks long beyond the actual fight. As STEVEN CONNOR infers in relation to modern scarred bodies, ‘[t]he skin figures. It is what we see and know of others and ourselves, we show ourselves in and on our skins, and our skins figure out the things we are and mean: our health, youth, beauty, power, enjoyment, fatigue, embarrassment or suffering.’1086 In the medieval texts discussed here, various such factors combine to mediate the concept of a superior or inferior fighter, with the skin ultimately visualising their social standing.

This in turn is reminiscent of JAY PROSSER’s idea that skin remembers not just literally, by retaining signs, but also metaphorically, by signifying individual biographies on its surface. ‘Skin’, PROSSER finds, ‘is the body’s memory of our lives.’1087 In linking past and present, skin mediates in a literal sense in that it transmits meaning, while at the same time it also falls within the scope of expressive mediality. In their emphasis on specularity and their communal reading of the bodies, these two examples clearly reflect MULLIGAN’S finding that in Old Norse-Icelandic texts the body, and particularly the flesh, speak the truth and do not lie1088– a conclusion that can easily be extended to include early Irish literature. Bodies are therefore a guarantee for and visible proof of truth, whether in the immediacy of a staged assessment or though reference to collective gazing and collective knowledge. ELAINE SCARRY draws attention to the memorial importance of wounds by suggesting that after a war the skin ‘provides a record of its own activity. […] The location of the injuries will collectively substantiate that the war occurred and is now over.’1089 In Ásmundar saga kappabani, her conclusion is reflected in that Ásmund’s scars prove his participation in combat, but in SMMDT the element of the outcome of the battle needs to be added verbally, although it may also be clear from the context. This shows that the concept of dermographics can be easily expanded to include cases in which the skin is but one signifier in relation to others.

The two texts show an analogous understanding of scarred skin and wounds as mediators, yet they differ completely in what the surface of the bodies mediates within society. This testifies to the many possible ways in which bodies – and skin in particular – can function as mediators. In one example the scars attest successful martial engagement and heroic prowess, in the other they are lasting reminders of inferiority in a particular combative encounter. The interpretation of these signs is thus particular to the narrative concern of a text and also to the society or characters evaluating them. The different instalment of a motif according to particular contexts indicates that texts consciously install bodies to mediate certain issues and/or according to particular agendas. That similar ideas about inscribed bodies can also be subject to very different developments and concerns becomes evident in the following subchapter.

4.3And the Flesh Was Made Word: Cethern, Tuán and the Body Bearing (His‐)story

In addition to the well-established discourse of the wounded and scarred body being read in relation to heroic status, there are also texts in early Irish literature that connect transmissive mediality to very different concerns. Two of these texts will be briefly discussed here. Although one of them also foregrounds a wounded heroic body, both are exceptional in their understanding of a body as a parchment-like mediator from which whole narratives can be extrapolated. As neither of these texts has been discussed to highlight this topic in particular, they will be examined at some length in order to appreciate their unique understanding of, and surprisingly reflective engagement with, bodies as mediators. The examples are found in TBC and Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGÉ, ‘The Book of the Taking of Ireland’, often shortened to Lebor Gabála, LG), a complex pseudo-historical text. Although the texts differ in the narrated world they depict – TBC portraying a pre-Christian, secular one while LG is rooted in a Christian worldview –, both episodes are concerned with the underlying aim of presenting history.1090

The idea of bodies as books, or, more fittingly, manuscripts, is rather widespread in the Middle Ages (and even beyond). EGLINGER explains that on a pragmatic level, the body offers a base for inscription because of its physical materiality and its ability to preserve signs.1091 Even though this base is organic and changing, it nevertheless retains the signs.1092 In the present examples this idea appears closely tied to memory passing from an individual (body, autobiographical memory) to a group (future collective memory) and/or into written history. Bodies that are narratively developed in such contexts reveal a truly medial quality in that they occupy a place between these phases of transmission. On a temporal axis, they link the past in which the act recorded or the inscription took place (if these are two separate moments) with the present of the reading. On another axis, they link the inscriber or at least the moment of inscription to the reader. Despite remarkable differences in how the two texts portray this medial quality, both understand this process of transmission as something intimately related to preservation and communication and hence to key issues in mediality studies.What results from such concerns are episodes of high literary merit that demonstrate an awareness that in their medial quality, bodies can become important places on and through which memories are inscribed, preserved and read.

The story of Cethern mac Fintain is narrated in both recensions of TBC. It is commonly referred to as Caladgleó Cethirn (‘The Hard Fight of Cethern’), a title mentioned at the end of the episode in TBC II and in Dinda na Tána (‘The Chief Episodes of the Táin’) in TBC I. The subtitle Fuile Cethirn is only found in TBC II when referring to the part of the episode where Cethern’s wounds are read, but it is sometimes also employed to denote the whole episode.1093 As the two recensions show little difference in rendering the episode, only TBC II will be cited in the following analysis for reasons of space. CECILE O’RAHILLY proposes that the episode was not part of the original tale of the Táin1094, yet (as is often the case) no independently preserved versions are extant. DOOLEY1095 and HEINRICH ZIMMER1096 have devoted some time to the episode from literary and linguistic perspectives respectively, while SWARTZ1097 briefly discusses individual aspects concerning issues of corporeal mediality. Other than this, the episode has not received much thorough scholarly attention to date.

Caladgleó Cethirn is found towards the end of the cattle-raid narrative, when the Ulstermen, among them Cethern mac Fintain, have recovered from their debility and come to the aid of the wounded and exhausted Cú Chulainn. Cethern single-handedly approaches the Connacht camp and is gravely wounded in the ensuing fight.When he returns to the campsite to be healed he seeks the help of the Connacht physicians, all of whom predict his imminent death. Faced with such a grim prognosis, Cethern deals each of them a blow and kills all but one. Finally, he is examined by the Ulster seer-physician Fingin. Unlike his predecessors, Fingin inspects the wounds as a seer: rather than commenting on physical aspects Fingin, together with Cú Chulainn and Cethern, extracts from the body the narrative of Cethern’s heroic fight which led to those injuries. After this has been accomplished, Cethern is asked whether he prefers to be permanently healed but disabled or temporarily healed to make a last heroic stand yet perish after three days. He chooses the latter and dies in combat soon after.

In this summary it becomes apparent that Caladgleó Cethirn is concerned with one particular aspect of heroism: the need for heroic deeds to be properly preserved and recounted in the event of a hero’s death. The tale thus touches on concerns about everlasting fame and fama, concepts of utmost importance in Irish heroic literature, as PATRICK K. FORD’s studies prove.1098 This heroic ethos is expressed most clearly by Cethern’s willingness to die a heroic death soon after his deeds have been properly preserved for posterity. From the point of view of the text it is the act of reading his wounds, the extracting of the information, which is the main focus in Caladgleó Cethirn. This is evident also from the space the process of reading takes up in the episode. In Recension II, the reading is described in 94 of the 183 lines of the episode and in TBC I, 80 out of 166 lines are devoted to the reading.

To appreciate the importance of the reading, it must also be examined how Cethern receives his wounds, that is, how his body is inscribed with heroic marks. During the fight, Cethern inflicts considerable carnage on the Connacht camp. When he approaches,
focress in dúnad 7 in longphort foraib 7 no ṅgonand cách imme do cach aird 7 do cach airchind. Ra ṅgontar-som dano do cech aird 7 do cech airchind. Ra ṅgontar-som dano do cech aird 7 do cech airchind. Ocus tánic úadib assa aithle, a ḟobach 7 a inathar fair anechtair […].1099

The fort and encampment was overthrown (?) on them and he wounds all around him in every direction and on all sides. He too is wounded from all sides and points. Then he came from them, with his entrails and intestines hanging out […].

The actual fight is recounted with unusual brevity for TBC II: no detailed description of the assaults is provided and the Connachtmen attacking Cethern are not even named.1100 In general, both recensions tend not to dwell on graphic images of combat but they usually do convey certain pieces of information. These include the identity of the warriors involved (name and social status/ familial affiliations), the mode of attack (or feat) and sometimes even a reference to the nature of the fatal wounds inflicted.1101 These pieces of information seem to attest an encounter as historically accurate and present it as a legitimate addition to the history of the cattle raid. That this information is not recounted during Cethern’s fight would suggest that the text plays with the idea that as it stands, his actions cannot be added to the Táin. This in turn suggests that the details may be deliberately saved to be retrieved later in the reading of his body.

In discussing this reading it is best to follow the narrative as it unfolds. After the martial encounter Cethern retreats to the camp to seek treatment. In terms of space he thus leaves the heroic realm of the battlefield and enters that of the learned men, the physicians. In this realm, his body is examined solely in terms of the wounds it has suffered. That these wounds are substantial is made clear by the use of a frequent motif in descriptions of fatal wounding in early Irish literature, the mention of Cethern’s entrails hanging out.1102 The severity of his wounds is further emphasised by the assessment of the Connacht physicians. They observe the wounds only in anatomical terms and quickly reach a dead end, both in their prognosis for Cethern and in their own fate:

[c]ach fer díb mar dosroched barasfénad Cethern mac Fintain a chneda 7 a chréchta, a álta 7 a ḟuli dó. Cach fer díb atdered: ʻNíba beo. Níba hindlega,ʼ da benad Cethern mac Fintain béim dá durn dess i tulchlár a étain dó go tabrad a inchind dar senistrib a chlúas 7 dar comḟúammannaib a chind dó. Cid trá acht marbais Cethern mac Fintain go ráncatar cóic lega déc leis do legib fer ṅHérend, 7 gid in cóiced líaig déc iss ind ṁbémmi ris ránic, ac[h]t dorala-sain marb di múaid móir eter collaib na lega aile ri ré cían 7 ri remes fata.1103

As each man reached him, Cethern mac Fintain would show him his wounds and his gashes, his sores and his bleeding cuts. To each man who would say: “He will not live. He cannot be cured”, Cethern mac Fintain would deal a blow with his right fist in the middle of his forehead and drive his brains out through the orifices of his ears and the joining of his skull. However, Cethern mac Fintain slew up to fifteen of the physicians of the men of Ireland. As for the fifteenth man, only a glancing blow reached him, but he lay unconscious in a heavy swoon among the corpses of the other physicians for a long time.

It is clear from the artistically staged ‘voice of the physicians of Connacht’ that Cethern’s wounds are too severe for him to be cured. More importantly, the physicians also cannot preserve his fame through a recounting of the deeds that caused the wounds because they can only read the wounds in an anatomical context. They clearly only perceive his body as flesh, as materiality.

Cethern’s refusal to accept their assessment shows his dissatisfaction with a merely anatomical reading and is a hint that another, metaphorical, reading of his wounds may also be possible. In a wonderful juxtaposition of bodies, the despairing Cethern repays the leeches with an assault which foregrounds their own physicality and mortality. DOOLEY argues that ‘Cethern reacts with the instinctive savagery of an illiterate when the first doctors read off the brief scientific prognosis of “death” from his wounds […]’.1104 While Cethern may well be illiterate his reaction need not be savage or instinctive. In delivering to the physicians what they are predicting for him, he reinforces the purely anatomically-oriented setting and highlights the transitory nature of human bodies.

Only after inflicting considerable carnage on the Connacht physicians is Cethern granted the attention of Fingin, the seer-physician of the Ulster King Conchobor. The fact that Fingin is introduced as both seer and physician is crucial as it implies that, while he has a physician’s knowledge of anatomy, he is not limited to an anatomical verdict. In all but two instances Fingin in fact comments not on the appearance of the wound but discovers the attacker or the mode of attack. The focus thus turns away from anatomical aspects and instead links back to the heroic body of the combat scene. If thus contextualised, the reading is not a mere ‘deferr[ing] of the morbid prognosis’1105 as DOOLEY claims, but rather the main point of the episode. That Cethern is pleased with Fingin’s reading even though it too does not offer a cure is a further sign that for him, too, the aim lies in recounting the narrative rather than in healing the physical body. In view of Cethern’s desire to preserve his deeds, it is understandable that he wants (if not forces) ‘the text of the body to be read in the register of heroic discourse advertisement and not as medical exemplar’, even if in ‘doing so he cannot delay a final reading of a body about to be rendered meaningless in the physical anonymity of death.’1106 In fact, it will be argued that the episode relies heavily on the idea of Cethern’s body as a (historical) text, albeit a text which cannot be read conclusively without its own help.

Perhaps the most immediately noticeable aspects of the reading are that it follows a strict pattern and that it is presented exclusively through the voices of the three characters involved, i.e. only through spoken discourse, with no visualisation of the wounds for the audience. Out of the nine wounds described only the fifth, and middle one, shows a substantial variation of narrative order. The others follow a strict arrangement in terms of repetitive phrasing, speech order and the information related by the individual speakers.1107 The process of examining each wound may thus be summarised as follows:

1. Cethern requests a reading from Fingin

2. Fingin relates the attacker’s social status and/or family

3. Cethern confirms Fingin’s information and describes the attacker further, particularly in terms of appearance

4. Cú Chulainn is able to name the attacker and give additional information

The order of speakers (Cethern – Fingin – Cethern – Cú Chulainn) is disrupted only in the description of the fifth wound. In six of the nine reading processes each character always relates a particular piece of information (wounds four, five and eight are exceptions discussed below). This information corresponds to their individual knowledge and implies that each is an authority in this particular area. In these readings, Fingin fully refrains from an anatomical judgement but only relates the kind of attack by which the wound was inflicted. This is crucial since it allows Cethern’s body to link back to the actual battle. To illustrate the complex reading of Cethern’s body and highlight the structural composition of the episode, the analysis lists the contributions of the three participants separately.

Each analysis is preceded by a request uttered by Cethern: ʻ[f]éga latt dam in fuil seo dano, a mmo phopa Ḟíngin.ʼ1108 The request demonstrates that Cethern wants his body to be read, that in an act akin to the specularity of beautiful bodies, he openly displays his wounds to Fingin. The seer-physician then gives his verdict (exceptions marked by * and **):

Wound 1:

ʻFingal étrom indúthrachtach and so aleʼ, bar in líaig, ʻ7 nít bérad i mmucha.ʼ119
1109

| ‘This is a slight wound given unwillingly by one of your own blood.’

Wound 2:

ʻBangala banúallach and so ale,ʼ bar in líaig.120
1110

| ‘This is the deed of a proud woman,’ said the physician.

Wound 3:

ʻGalach dá ḟénned and so aleʼ, bar in líaig.121
1111

| ‘This is the attack of two champions,’ said the physician.

* Wound 4:

ʻDub ule in ḟuil seo aleʼ, ar in líaig. ʻTrí[t] chride dochúatar dait co nderna chrois díb trít chride, 7 ní ḟurchanaim-sea ícc and so. Acht dogébaind-se dait-seo do lossaib ícci 7 slánsén ní nachat bertais i mmucha.ʼ122
1112

‘This wound is all black. The spears went through your heart and crossed each other within it. And I prophesy no cure here, but I would procure for you some herbs of healing and curing so that the wounds should not carry you off prematurely.’

** Wound 5:

ʻDergrúathur dá [mac] ríg Caille and so ale,ʼ ar in líaig. […] It immaicsi na fuli dobertatar fort ale,ʼ bar in líaig. ʻIt chráes dachúatar dait co comarnecgatar renna na ṅgae inniut, & ní hassu a ícc and so. ʼ123
1113

‘This was the bloody onset of the two sons of the king of Caill.” [Cethern recounts the attack]. “Very numerous are the wounds that [they] have inflicted on you”, said the physician. “Into your gullet the spears went and their points met within you, nor is it easy to work a cure here.’

Wound 6:

ʻCoṅgas dá mbráthar and so aleʼ, ar in líaig.124
1114

| ‘This was the attack of two brothers,’ said the physician.

Wound 7:

ʻAttach dá nderbráthar and so ale,ʼ ar ín líaig.125
1115

| ‘This was the attempt of two brothers,’ said the physician.

* Wound 8:

ʻAt amainsi na fuili rabertatar fort ale,ʼ ar in líaig, ʻgo ndarubdatar féithe do chride inniut conda n-imbir do chride it chlíab immar ubull i fabull ná mar chertli i fásbulg, connach fail féith itir icá immuluṅg, & ní dergenaim-se ícc and so.ʼ126
1116

‘Severe are the wounds they have inflicted on you,’ said the physician. ‘They have severed the sinews of your heart within you so that your heart rolls about in your breast like an apple in movement (?) or like a ball of thread in an empty bag, and there is not a sinew supporting it at all, and I cannot effect a cure here.’

Wound 9:

ʻImrubad meic 7 athar and so ale,ʼ ar in líaig.127
1117

| ‘This was the thrust of a father and son,’ said the physician.

Fingin can provide valuable information about the social affiliations and/ or family of the attackers solely from looking at the wounds. It appears that in the way they attacked Cethern, the opponents left traces of themselves on his body. More importantly, these descriptive co-ordinates are hugely important for identifying a character in early Irish literature, yet they alone do not suffice to properly reconstruct Cethern’s heroic fight.

At this stage, a brief remark about the diverging readings is in order. As already stated, wounds four, five and eight are described differently. In these cases Fingin not only mentions the assailant but also comments on the appearance of the wound. In wounds four and eight (*), the typical structure of the analysis is adhered to and only the content differs, with Fingin also commenting on the exact impact the assault had on Cethern’s body. In wound five (**) the pattern of the reading is also altered as Cethern’s comment divides Fingin’s analysis in two. Yet even in this case, the description of the wound is not a gory one installed for literary effect. It describes exactly how the wound was inflicted and what damage it did to the body. This detailed anatomical analysis is typical for descriptions of wounds in TBC and betrays not only considerable anatomical knowledge but also an interest in the exact recounting of an assault. Only in these three examples where the physicality of the wounds is foregrounded does Fingin stress the severity of the wounds and accents his inability to cure Cethern. This is a well-placed reminder of Cethern’s severe state and heightens the urge to extract the narrative. It may also suggest that even though his body will still preserve the signs after his death, Cethern himself is so integral to the reading process that without his help his-story would fade with him.

Cethern’s active role in the deciphering of his wounds is evident from his important contributions to the reading process. After Fingin’s reading of the physical marks Cethern confirms the physician’s verdict: ʻ[i]s fír ám ale.ʼ1118 Only the diverging wounds four and eight do not contain this phrase. Switching from the reading to oral recounting, Cethern adds a detailed description of the attackers’ appearances:

Wound 1:

ʻDomríacht-sa óenfer and. Tuidmaíle fair. Bratt gorm i filliud imme. Delg n-argit isin brutt ása bruinne. Crommscíath go fáebur chondúalach fair. Sleg c[h]úicrind inna láim. Faga faegablaige ʼna farrad. Dobert in fuil sain. Ruc-som fuil ṁbic úaim-se ʼno.ʼ1119

‘One man came to me there. He had a crest of hair. He wore a blue cloak wrapped around him. A silver brooch in the cloak over his breast. He carried a curved shield with a scalloped edge; in his hand a five-pointed spear and beside it a small pronged spear. He dealt this wound and he got a slight wound from me too.’

Wound 2:

ʻDomríacht-sa óenben and. Ben chaín bánainech leccanḟata mór. Moṅg órbuide furri. Bratt corcra gen daithi impi. | Eó óir isin brutt ósa brunni. Sleg díriuch drumnech ar derglassad ʼna láim. Rabert in fuil sin ḟorm-sa. Ruc-si fuil ṁbic úaim-se ʼnó.ʼ1120

‘There came to me there a woman, tall, beautiful, pale and longfaced. She had flowing, golden-yellow hair. She wore a crimson, hooded cloak with a golden brooch over her breast. A straight, ridged spear blazing in her hand. She gave me that wound and she too got a slight wound from me.’

Wound 3:

ʻDamríachtatar-se días and. Dá thodmaíle foraib. Dá bratt gorma i filliud impu. Delgi argait isna brattaib ósa mbrunnib. Munchobrach argit óengil im brágit chechtar n-aí díb.ʼ1121

‘Two men came to me there. They had crests of hair. Two blue cloaks wrapped about them. Silver brooches in the cloaks above their breasts. A necklace of pure white silver round the neck of each of them.’

* Wound 4:

ʻDomríachtata-sa días óac féinne and. Coṅgraim n-án ferdaide forro. Cumaiṅg bir innium-sa cechtar n-aí díb. Cumaṅg-sa in ṁbir sa trisin dara n-aí díb-sium.ʼ1122

‘Two warriors came to me there of splendid manly appearance. Each of them thrust a spear in me and I thrust this spear through one of them.’

** Wound 5:

ʻDomríachtatar-sa dá óclách aigḟinna abratgorma móra and go mindaib óir úasu. Dá bratt úane i forcipul impu. Dá chassán gelargit isna brattaib ása mbrunnib. Dá ṡleig cúicrinni inna lámaib.ʼ1123

‘There came to me two warriors, fair-faced, dark-browed, tall, with golden crowns on their heads. Two green mantels wrapped about them. Two brooches of white silver in the mantles over their breasts. Two five-pronged spears in their hands.’

Wound 6:

ʻDomriachtatar-sa días cétríglach and. Fuilt buide forro. Bruitt dubglassa fá loss i forcipul impu. Delgi duillecha do ḟindruinu isna brattaib ósa mbrunnib. Manaísi lethanglassa ʼna lámaib.ʼ1124

‘There came to me two choice warriors. They had yellow hair. Darkgrey, fringed cloaks wrapped about them. Leaf-shaped brooches of white bronze in the mantles over their breasts. Broad, shining spears in their hands.’

Wound 7:

ʻDomríachtatar-sa días máethóclách and it íat comchosmaile díb línaib. Folt cass[dond] bar indara n-aí díb. Folt cassbuide bar aile. Dá bratt úanide i forcipul impu. Dá chassán gelargit isna brattaib ása mbrunnib. Dá léni di ṡlemainṡíta buide fria cnessaib. Claidbi gelduirn ara cressaib. Dá gelscíath co túagmílaib argit findi foraib. Dá ṡleig cúicrind go féthanaib argit óengil ina lámaib.ʼ1125

‘There came to me two youthful warriors, both alike. One had curling brown hair, the other curling yellow hair. Two green mantles were wrapped around them and two brooches of bright silver were in the mantles over their breasts. Two shirts of smooth, yellow silk next to their skin. Bright–hilted swords at their girdles. Two bright shields they carried, ornamented with animal designs in silver. Two five-pronged spears with rings of pure white silver they bore in their hands.’

* Wound 8:

ʻDomriachtatar días óac féinne and. Coṅgraim n-forro, it é erarda ferdaide. Étaige allmarda iṅgantacha impo. Cumaiṅg bir inniumsa cechtar n-aí díb. Cumaṅg-sa trí chechtar n-aí díb-sium.ʼ1126

‘Two warriors came to me there. A brilliant appearance they had and they were tall and manly. They wore strange, foreign clothes. Each of them thrust a spear into me and I thrust a spear into each of them.’

Wound 9:

ʻDomríachtatar-sa dá ḟer móra gaindelderca and go mindaib óir órlasraig úasu. Erriud rígdaidi impu. Claidbi órduirn intlassi bara cressaib go ferbolgaib argit óengil go frithathartaib óir bricc friu anechtair. ʼ1127

‘There came to me two tall men, with shining eyes, with golden diadems, flashing on their heads. They wore kingly raiment. Goldhilted, ornamented swords at their girdles with scabbards of pure white silver and rings of variegated gold outside them.’

These accounts are very similar to other descriptions of characters in TBC. They employ descriptive paradigms commonly used in descriptions of warriors’ bodies (hair, complexion) but also of their attire (dress and weapons). Such portrayals are vital in identifying a noble hero, both as a hero and as a specific character. Cethern himself thus offers crucial information for the identification of his attackers and also supplies the descriptions which were so pointedly absent during the real-time narration of the fight. As DOOLEY phrases it, Cethern provides ‘his audience with the raw descriptive data which only he has experienced.’1128 Fingin’s analysis was only beginning to separate the narrative from his body; but Cethern’s descriptions are necessary to turn the attention of the text away from his wounded body towards the fight. Consequently, the fight is viewed both through Cethern’s wounds but also, retrospectively, through Cethern’s eyes. Yet there still remains one vital component to be added to identify the attackers: their name.

Cú Chulainn knowledgeably combines Cethern’s and Fingin’s information to name the attackers by (presumably) drawing on his own experiences with them. His contributions are also introduced by a repetitive phrase, which varies according to the gender and number of the attackers: [r]atafetammar in fer sain ale/Ratafetammar in mnaí sin ale/Ratafetammar in dís sain ale.1129 CECILE O’RAHILLY views such repetitions in TBC as narrative devices and concludes that they are ‘ornamental’ and/or to exert emphasis.1130 However, these repetitive and highly formulaic utterances could also be seen to represent symbolic or ritual action. This would evoke a ritualistic atmosphere and with this perhaps a sanctioning and approval.1131 After this introductory sentence, Cú Chulainn relates more information about the attackers:

Wound 1:

ʻIlland Ilarchless mac Fergusa sain, & níba dúthracht leis do thuttimsiu dá láim. Ac[h]t rabert in ṅgúḟargam sain ḟort arná hapraitis fir Hérend rapa dá mbrath nó dá trécun muni thardad.ʼ1132

‘That was Illand Illarchless the son of Fergus, and he had no desire that you should fall by his hand but gave that mock-thrust at you lest the men of Ireland should say that he was betraying or abandoning them if he did not give it.’

Wound 2:

ʻMedb ingen Echach Feidlig, ingen ardríg Hérend, as í danríacht fán congraimmim sin. Bá búaid 7 choscor 7 commaídium lé gia dofaítheste-su dá lámaib.ʼ1133

‘It was Medb the daughter of Eochu Feidlech, the high-king of Ireland, who came in that wise. She would have deemed it victory and triumph and cause for boasting had you fallen at her hands.’

Wound 3:

ʻOll 7 Othine sain do ṡainmuntir Ailella 7 Medba. Ní thecat-sain i nnóenden acht ra hirdalta gona duine do grés. Ba búaid 7 coscur 7 commaídium leó géa dofáethaisté-su dá láimb.ʼ1134

‘They were Oll and Othine, members of the household of Ailill and Medb. They never go into battle that they are not assured of wounding a man. They would deem it victory and triumph and cause for boasting that you should fall at their hands.’

Wound 4:

ʻRatafetammar in dís sain ale,ʼ bar Cú Chulaind. ʻBun 7 Mecconn sain do ṡainmuntir Ailella 7 Medba. Ba dúthracht leó géa dofáethaiste-su dá lámaib.ʼ1135

| ‘They were Bun and Mecoonn of the household of Ailill and Medb.
| They desired that you should fall at their hands.’

Wound 5:

ʻBróen 7 Brudni sain, meic theóra soillsi, dá mac ríg Caille. Bá búaid 7 choscur 7 chommaídib leó gia dofáethaiste-su leó.ʼ1136

‘They are Bróen and Brudne the sons of three lights, the two sons of the king of Caill. They would think it victory and triumph and cause for boasting if you should fall by them.’

Wound 6:

ʻCormac Coloma ríg sain 7 Cormac mac Maele Foga do sainmuntir Ailella 7 Medba. Ba dúthracht leó géa dofáethaiste-su dá lámaib.ʼ1137

‘They are Cormac Coloma Ríg, and Cormac mac Maele Foga of the household of Ailill and Medb. They would have wished you to fall at their hands.’

Wound 7:

ʻMane Máthremail sain 7 Mane Athremail, dá mac Ailella is Medba, 7 ba búaid 7 coscur 7 commaídium leó gé rofáethaiste-su dá lámaib.ʼ1138

‘They were Maine Máithremail and Maine Aithremail, two sons of Ailill and Medb. They would deem it victory and triumph and cause for boasting if you should fall at their hands.’

Wound 8:

ʻDías sain de fénnedaib na hIrúade forróeglass d’óentoisc ó Ailill 7 ó Meidb ar dáig do gona-su, dáig ní comtig beó dá mbágaib do grés. Dáig ba dúthracht leó gé dofáethaiste-su dá lámaib.ʼ1139

‘They are two of the warriors of Irúath who were chosen expressly by Ailill and Medb that they might kill you, since not often does anyone survive their attack. For they desired that you should fall at their hands.’

Wound 9: | ʻAilill 7 a mac sain, Mane Condasgeib Ule. Ba búaid 7 coscur 7 commaídium leó géa rofáethaiste-su dia lámaib.ʼ1140

‘They were Ailill and his son Maine Condasgeib Uile. They would deem it victory and triumph and cause of congratulation if you had fallen at their hands.’

With Cú Chulainn providing the name, the family and the motif of each attacker, the identification is now complete. Once the attacks that led to the wounds are assembled and read in their entirety by knowledgeable people, the whole story of the fight can be reconstructed. The three men have assembled the name, social identity and status as well as the appearance of each attacker. These particular details give historical credence to many of the other combat narratives recounted in TBC. What was extracted from Cethern’s body is therefore vital in ascertaining the veracity of Cethern’s heroic stand within the narrated world of TBC.

Caladgleó Cethirn may also be an ingenious and novel adaptation of a very prominent narrative device in early Irish (and, indeed, in Celtic) literature: the watchman device.1141 This highly developed technique of description creates an intricate link between seeing, visualisation and understanding, even though its main ingenuity lies in presenting the processes as separate.1142 MATASOVIĆ summarises the watchman device as follows: a character ‘reports what he or she saw, and another interprets the description and recognises the described people.’1143 O’CONNOR points out that the device is based on a two-part tableaux, the act of viewing the bodies and the act of (later) recounting these bodies through ekphrasis to make them identifiable.1144 As PATRICK SIMS-WILLIAMS stresses, often ‘the knowledgeable person has to recognize them [the people described] from the ignorant watcher’s description alone, without seeing them for himself.’1145 The watchman device demonstrates that seeing does not necessarily mean identifying. Only seeing what one can make sense of leads to a successful process of reading. On the other hand, an act of recounting through ekphrasis and hence of visualisation can replace the act of seeing, something which is also apparent in the reconstruction of Cethern’s fight.

This may be achieved in Caladgleó Cethirn by installing Cethern’s body as a manuscript akin to the eyes of the watcher in the watchman device. What is remarkable is that, as O’CONNOR points out1146, the majority of watchman devices (even outside Celtic literatures) appear as a prelude to war and describe hostile armies. Cethern’s wounds also describe hostile attackers, but O’CONNOR draws attention to the different use of the motif in Caladgleó Cethirn. He claims that it is ‘the most striking departure from the norm’ in that it ‘has no watchman and occurs immediately after a battle.’1147 O’CONNOR’s subsequent arguments that in this case the device does not build up narrative tension and that Cethern simply has his ‘memory jogged by the doctor’s diagnoses’1148 shows a reading of the episode which diverges from that offered here. If the story of the fight has to be extracted before Cethern dies, there is considerable narrative tension inherent in the reading. Furthermore, the present reading will suggest that Cethern has by no means forgotten what has just happened but that he needs the other characters to sanction his-story so that it can be preserved for posterity.

It must be noted that in the reading of Cethern’s body his wounds, the inscriptions, are turned into an oral reconstruction of the fight: within the narrated world, martial action (the fight – inscribing) is preserved in/on the body (wounds) and finally transferred into spoken words, an act which is presented in the written text of TBC. This transmission is what gives such a high medial value to Cethern’s body in that it quite literally stands between martial action and its verbal recounting. It really appears as a transmissive medium in that his wounds provide ‘the graphs of Cethern’s heroic deeds’.1149 It would be unthinkable to allow them to fade away without them having been read and their meaning transferred to the lasting medium of oral transmission and even writing down.

This conscious focus on modes of transmission may be connected to TBC’s apparent concern with recording history, which may well have given rise to an interest in mechanisms of transmission. SAYERS states that ‘the importance of many episodes [in TBC] is in their relevance to central themes rather than in any contribution to the delineation of character or the progress of the narrative.’1150 Caladgleó Cethirn may be a prime example of this idea. The importance of oral transmission in the narrated world of TBC (and in early Irish literature in general) has long been noted. It is evident also on linguistic grounds. FORD notes the following etymological considerations about (heroic) fame:

[t]he concept of fame itself and the process whereby it is achieved is well represented in Greek kléos, and various compounds and (formulaic) phrases built on the word. […] The Indo-European root of Grk. kléos means ‘hear’ and its Celtic cognates include OIr. clú and cloth […]. And because fame is propagated through the ear and not through the eye, the notion is one that clearly belongs to an oral tradition. Fame must be spoken in order to be heard, in order to exist. And it is the poet who does the speaking.1151

While identity is often expressed along visual lines (through visuality and specularity), as the previous chapters have argued, fame and fama (i.e. deeds) are clearly seen as part of spoken discourse in early Irish saga literature. In this context, it is small wonder that Cethern’s wounds alone, although visually observable, do not suffice as testimony for his valiant fight but that the three men have to voice, to speak aloud, what they read from them instead, a point stressed by the frequent use of bar (‘said’) in the episode. DOOLEY also remarks that ‘in Irish heroic literature […] heroism has to be adjudicated by poets, and is thus often mediated through a complex enunciation […]’.1152 In Caladgleó Cethirn, the authoritative figures of Fingin and Cú Chulainn could be seen as substituting for the more common figure of the poet, especially since they use repetitive, ritualistic phrasing.

In their position as authoritative figures Fingin and Cú Chulainn may also substitue for an audience and hence for the public acknowledgement of the accuracy of the fight.1153 CHARLES-EDWARDS adds that in the narrated worlds of early Irish literary texts ‘[t]he pressure to make things public and well-known was general’ and ‘[p]rivate undertakings were of little worth.’1154 In this respect, the fact that Cethern faces the Connacht army on his own may have proved a real disadvantage in terms of transmission. It is possible that by voicing the fama, high profile figures like Cú Chulainn and Fingin could give it enough authority to be preserved. After this has been achieved, Cethern reflects the heroic dictum that, as FORD phrases it, ‘in the early Irish heroic tradition, as represented by the Táin, the transitory nature of life was easily traded for imperishable fame’, yet only for ‘a fame that was conferred by poets in their airscéla, and their narratives.’1155 Both the authoritative readers as well as an (implied) ritualistic reading could transfer Cethern’s autobiographical memory (what he remembers of the fight) into posterity. After all, ‘[h]istory,’ OLICK remarks, ‘is the remembered past to which we no longer have an “organic” relation […]’1156– and it is Cethern’s dying body, a profoundly organic relation, which gives this statement added tragedy in Caladgleó Cethirn.

In this process, reading and orality are not opposed to each other but rather complementary and continuous, with both modes of transmission being inherent in Fingin (reader / re-teller) and Cethern (vellum / confirmer). DOOLEY claims that the episode presents ‘the most striking virtuoso display of varieties of learned reading and heroic illiteracy’1157, a notion which has already been critically examined here. The act of reading is clearly limited to the seer-physician Fingin, yet he can only fully apprehend what he reads with the help of (the perhaps illiterate) Cethern and Cú Chulainn (whom we know to be literate in Ogam at least). Most importantly, without this specialist knowledge the wounds would remain mere physical signs, much like the letters on a parchment are simply incisions to someone untrained to read them – a point perhaps illustrated by the Connacht physicians. Only through exegesis by skilled and authoritative people who can disclose a more profound meaning can the signs be fully understood.

It is likely that Caladgleó Cethirn propagates an understanding of Cethern’s body’s materiality as akin to medieval manuscripts. This is also reflected in that both body and manuscript, skin and parchment, are subject to physical decay. EGLINGER suggests that the awareness of the destructibility of manuscripts may be linked to an understanding of its pages as material skin, not unlike that of a (human) body. She argues that concerns about the destructibility of palimpsests are immediately linked to the temporality of human bodies.1158 Caladgleó Cethirn may further develop medieval perceptions of the human body resembling a manuscript by demonstrating that Cethern’s body can bear a whole narrative, of the word being made flesh, so to speak. The trope is especially common in the later Middle Ages, but it is found already in the Bible in John 1:14, 17. If viewed in this light, Fingin’s role appears similar to that of the exegete of scripture, while Cethern’s body symbolises the deeper meaning inherent in scripture and perhaps also the truth evoked in the Gospel, as well as the intimate relationship between word and flesh.

Even though the narrated world of TBC depicts a pre-Christian setting, all recensions were written in Christian times. Contextualising Caladgleó Cethirn with Christian ideas of exegesis and scripture may reveal interesting thoughts about how a body can incorporate a dual focus on the anatomical-literal and narrative-transcendental aspects of reading. A brief look at medieval scriptural exegesis also shows that the dual idea of physical matter and profound meaning is clearly observable in medieval thought. St Augustine, for instance, ‘prefer[ed] to give both a literal and a spiritual interpretation to the same text, the one signifying or prefiguring the other.’1159 That only Fingin, being both physician and seer, could fulfil this function and see beyond the mere physicality of Cethern’s wounds seems likely to be deliberate.

It may go somewhat far to suggest that the dual nature of Cethern’s body is inspired by Christ’s body, yet BERYL SMALLEY cites a passage from Origen’s Homilies which states that ‘seeing was not understanding; all saw the flesh; knowledge of the divinity was given to a chosen few.’1160 A similar trope is found in Leviticus: ‘the letter appears as flesh; but the spiritual sense within is known as divinity.’1161 In her discussion of the Bible in the Middle Ages, SMALLEY argues that

Claudius of Turin sums up the patristic tradition as it had reached the scholars of Charlemagne’s day. The Word is incarnate in Scripture, which like man has a body and soul. The body is the words of the sacred text, the ‘letter’, and the literal meaning; the soul is the spiritual sense. To explain the literal sense is to expound litteraliter vel carnaliter; littera is almost interchangeable with corpus.1162

The parallels are so striking that one may conclude the discussion by stating that in looking at Cethern’s body ‘[w]e are invited to look not at the text, but through it’1163, as SMALLEY summarises biblical exegesis. In this particular case, this means looking through the wounds and seeing the attacks that led to them. Although all of the examples just cited appear in connection with either Christ or Holy Scripture, it is possible that medieval compilers could have developed such ideas with the help of their own technique, the watchman device, in order to reflect on their own culture’s perception of sanctioned history. This possibility is reflected in ROBERT MCNALLY’S characterisation of the medieval Irish literati as men of imagination with ‘a facility to see reality behind reality, to allegorize and spiritualize, to create what is not and to re-create what is.’1164

It is nevertheless hard to agree with DOOLEY’s assessment that Cethern himself ‘wishes to be a glorious text – which paradoxically he himself cannot read – and also to control its interpretation.’1165 In the present reading of the episode, Cethern does not want to control the reading but only contributes to it in accordance with his status as a warrior. In the pagan narrated world of TBC the skinvelum does not preserve permanently but only voiced fama is seen as reliable, at least at the beginning of the transmission process.

An analogous understanding of the body as an (at least temporarily) preserving, parchment-like entity is found also in Scél Tuáin (‘The Story of Tuán’). The narrative is preserved in the eleventh-century pseudo-historical text Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGÉ or LG, ‘The Book of the Taking of Ireland’).1166 It is also extant in five independent manuscripts, where it is commonly referred to as Scél Tuáin meic Chairill (‘The Story of Tuán mac Cairill’).1167 In order to distinguish the LG version from these better-known recensions, STLG (‘Scél Tuáin in Lebor Gabála’) will be used in this analysis when referring to the episode in LG. Both the independent attestations, as well as the version in LG, have been discussed at length by CAREY.1168 However, none of the independent versions, which CAREY dates to the second half of the ninth century, make reference to an important detail mentioned in STLG: the inscribing of pre-Christian lore on the bodies of saints. The LG version of the narrative thus installs the actual bodies of saints as mediators: they carry the native lore, visibly and irrevocably, inscribed on their skin.1169

To fully understand the significance of the motif a brief introduction to LG is in order. The text is ‘[a]n anonymous, scholarly compilation designed to provide Ireland and her inhabitants with a continuous and comprehensive history from Noah to the Norman conquest […]’1170, as MARK SCOWCROFT summarises. CAREY describes the aim of LG as follows:

[l]ate in the eleventh century, an Irish scholar brought together a collection of poems by several authors, dealing with different periods and aspects of his country’s legendary history. Fitting these compositions into a prose framework […] he created a sweeping, unified account of the origins of Ireland and of the Gaels, extending from the creation of the world down to the time of writing.1171

THURNEYSEN sees the text in its oldest form as emerging somewhat later, around 1168, but agrees that it contains the history of Ireland from Noah (later Adam) to the time of the text’s composition, although further material was added later.1172

SCOWCROFT upholds that the work as a whole consists of a multitude of earlier (verse) compositions but presents a unified text.1173 He also remarks that ‘LG and its tradition exemplify the fusion of two cultures, the literati using medieval scholarly techniques to convert native tradition into historiography and native mytho-poetic techniques to convert biblical and scholarly sources into narrative […]’.1174 THURNEYSEN describes this process in that already existing or newly emerging sagas or tales were added into biblical history.1175 He may be referring to the idea of weaving together history from different strands, expressed throughout LG by the phrase feib ro fecht is do fírad, which R. A. S. MACALISTER translates as ‘as it was woven and verified’.1176 That the story of Tuán may have been consciously developed to reflect LG’s wider interest is at least possible.1177

Both modern scholarship and the text itself appear quite clear in outlining LG’s purpose: the work was compiled to provide a single, unified and written history of Ireland from the creation of the world to the present (of the writing).1178 The enterprise expresses a central concern of the Middle Ages: linking biblical history with the individual (i.e. regional) history of certain peoples and places. CAREY elucidates:

[t]he newly converted peoples of western Europe were faced with the challenge of finding places for themselves among the progeny of Noah’s sons, and co-ordinating their own traditions with the universal system which had been elaborated on the basis of Biblical authority and Greco-Roman historiography.1179

It is therefore not surprising that LG, ‘although clearly Celtic, [is] narratively linked to the orthodox Christian view of cosmogony’1180, as SAYERS contends. Yet as TONER remarks1181, Irish historical writings were not only concerned with finding a place for the Irish among the descendants of Adam but could also be aiming to reveal God’s plan for the salvation of the people of Ireland – an idea which is also reflected in STLG. CAREY’s proposition that LG provides an interesting opportunity to study ‘the diverse strategies evolved by the Irish literati in their efforts to find room for elements of both [imported learning and native lore]’1182 is reflected also in this reading of STLG. His further comment that LG presents a ‘confrontation of the two traditions’1183 nevertheless proves somewhat problematic. In fact, it will be argued that in STLG a literal attempt at incorporation rather than confrontation is presented. In this particular reading, STLG is a prime example of how Irish historians ‘balanced the impressive corpus of imported learning’1184 with the lore they had inherited and duly combined these to shape their own history.

The Scél Tuáin episode occurs in two separate versions in LG and both contain the reference to bodily inscription. The more elaborate version is found in Poem No. CII. Before relating the story of Tuán, the text states its reason for recounting the episode. Having provided a substantial account of the reign of Óengus Olmucaid and his achievements in battle it adds: [i]s emilt trá anadh frí an aisnes seo huile cen a comḟis cia ro comet in senchus-sa.1185 The focus clearly shifts from the narration of events towards the process of transmission.1186 By doing so, the text reveals an interest in the processes of mediality, making it a prime example to be studied here. The explanation is given immediately afterwards:

[r]eraigem co réeib ro-fataib fordosfuirigh Dia do aisneis scél do cach diniu co dílinn 7 co haimsir Cesra, 7 ó Cesair co Creitim, 7 co haimsir Findtain. Ocus ro comet Findtan mac Labrada qui dicitur Mac Bochrai, bai bliadain fó dílinn, 7 ro mair in gach aimsir co táncatar na naeib.1187

The answer is, that there were patriarchs with very long lives, whom God detained to tell tidings of every generation to the Flood, and to the time of Cessair, and from Cessair to the Faith, and to the time of Fintan. And Fintan s. Labraid, qui dicitur s. Bochra, preserved it – he who was a year under the Flood, and who survived in every age till the coming of the Saints.

Despite the high status of the filid (an elite class of learned poets) in early Irish literature, LG does not argue for an oral transmission of knowledge over several generations. It advances a (biblical?) idea of patriarchs whom God grants exceptionally long life and who can thus offer an eyewitness account of many events and recount others through eyewitness accounts they themselves were told. The verbal form comet in the longer passage quoted above is important for understanding their function. DIL renders the related verbal noun coimét as the ‘act of keeping, guarding, preserving, container, case, guard, custodian’.1188 The term highlights not just the act of preserving but associates this with perceptions of the custodians as vessels, containers and guardians. The knowledge is contained in exceptional bodies for a considerable time. As such, it is the immediate, lived experience of the patriarchs, their own (immediate), lived autobiographical memory.

The main purpose of the patriarchs’ existence is to contain and preserve the information until it can be properly integrated into Christian learning. As the knowledge of past events is contained in and bound to a patriarch’s body (his memory) and needs to be recounted orally, the body is preserved in this world for an unnaturally long time.1189 Exactly how this happens is recounted when the actual moment of diffusion is foregrounded:

[o]cus asberar comba sé Túán mac Cairill meic Muiredaig Muinderg do Ulltaib íartain; 7 ro coimet-side co haimsir Patraic 7 Coluim Cille 7 Comgaill 7 Findén, co ro scríbadh for a nglúinib 7 for a sliasstaib 7 for a mbasaib-side, co fuil for lessugad i l-lámaib suadh 7 sruithe 7 senchadh, 7 atá for altoraib noeb 7 firén o sin cos andiu: co ro uaigsit an uchtair gach suithi do ṡuidiu.1190

And it is said that he was Túán mac Cairill. Muiredach Muinderg of the Ulaid afterwards, and [God] preserved him till the time of Patrick and of Colum Cille and of Comgall and of Findian; so that he wrote it upon their knees and thighs and palms, so that it is corrected in the keeping of sages and righteous men and men of learning and historians, and is upon the altars of saints and righteous men from that day to this; so that the authors of all knowledge stitched it together down to this.

Interestingly, no mention is made here of a (simultaneous) oral transmission of this knowledge. While this could also have taken place, this version of ST (perhaps deliberately) places the focus solely on the bodily inscription.

A similar if more cryptic account is found in the last stanzas (stanzas 73–76) of a poem included in LG. This refers to the inscription only in passing. Its main concern appears to be the sanctioning of the process of transmission and of the knowledge, which in this case does include an oral component. The four stanzas narrate the account as follows:

[r]ímsit rerig do náemaib
fiad cáemaib domain dúinig:

feib ro fecht is do fírad
ro scríbad for a nglúinib

Grían Gáeidel, nglúair ár cloindi
in cloth-gel Colum Cille,

Patraic fri hascnam nime,
apstal ár fine finde.

Finntan foaeirc ba hollia,
ro baí dia serc la hinnia,

Túán mac Cairill cétaig,
condohecaidh do Finnia.

Findia foroll, o ḟindtar,
ocus Colam las cumthar,
itiat persaind cus mberthar,
ni celtar ar cach n-ugdar.1191

The elders enumerated to the saints / before the scholars of the world of fortresses: / as it was woven and verified / it was written upon their knees // Sun of the Gaedil, brightness of our progeny / the famous white Colm Cille, / Patrick for the attainment of heaven, the apostle of our white family, // Finntan saw it, who was the greatest, / it was for his love with which he would relate (?) / Tuan son of Cairell of hundreds / so that Findia came to him (??). // Findia the very great, from whom it is known, / and Colum by whom it is composed, / they are the persons to whom it will be traced, / it is not concealed from every author.

This account of the inscription would hardly make sense without the other rendition in LG. The moment of inscription is briefly mentioned ([r]o scríbad for a nglúinib), yet what is inscribed is not made explicitly clear.

The stanzas do, however, present a clear idea of the transmission from older sources into history through the saints. The saints also become the sources to which the information will be traced from now on. ‘According to this reading of the passage’, CHARLES W. MACQUARRIE argues, ‘Túán’s account was literally transcribed on the bodies of the saints by the scribes.’1192 The two versions agree in these main points, yet the more developed rendering introduced first will provide the main ground for a closer examination of the processes of inscription, preservation, transmission and sanctioning of Tuán’s knowledge.

Narratives in which a (miraculously old) pagan meets a Christian saint in order to recount his ancient knowledge are no rarity in early Irish literature. However, the idea of their knowledge being written on the bodies of the saints, of a deliberate alteration of a holy (!) body in order to preserve this knowledge, is particular to STLG. Yet the text makes it explicitly clear that this is what happens during the encounter. The term ro scríbadh is used in both renderings. It derives from the verb scríbaid, ‘writes’, which is a Latin loan and has strong connotations of Christian literacy.1193 DIL includes the following semantic range: ‘writes (in a physical sense), writes down, composes (a book, letter etc.), writes to.’1194

In addition, Christian ideas about writing may also be evoked in the episode. DOOLEY suggests that in early Ireland and especially in the Christian/Latin context ‘[b]oth the act of writing – those who wrote – and what was written could and did become objects of veneration in themselves.’1195 TRISTRAM makes a similar argument by claiming that ‘Schrift und die Abfassung schriftlicher Texte nahmen unter dem Einfluß des Christentums als einer hochentwickelten Schriftreligion einen ganz besonderen Stellenwert ein. Schreiben galt als höchster Ausdruck des Gotteslobes und damit geistiger Kultur.’1196 In contrast to Caladgleó Cethirn, in STLG it is therefore the purposeful act of writing and not the ritualistic act of reading which carries the sanctioning function.

This raises a variety of interesting points for consideration. The first version especially implies that Tuán writes down the knowledge himself, that he is literate. This is perhaps only a minor detail but this skill suggests a (prolonged) contact with the saints and their Christian culture or an anticipation of their skills as well as their faith.1197 Being literate in a Christian sense certainly connects Tuán to the Christian environment.1198 After the inscription, posterity is offered the same access (in written, visual form) to Irish history as it has to Christian world- and salvation-history. In OLICK’s understanding of HALBWACHS’ ideas about biographical and historical memory, the sage turns the former into the latter by writing down what he has experienced so that it can reach future generations through historical records.1199

Much like Cethern’s wounded body, the saints’ bodies must be perceived as physical materiality in order to be able to receive and retain the inscription. Only because they are portrayed as anatomical humans (rather than ephemeral entities) and have a skin which binds the body and which can be incised by something as delicate as a quill can they be written upon.1200 The idea of bodies being inscribed with the word of God or spiritual letters is by no means unique to STLG. It is found both in the Old and New Testament where the word of God is inscribed on his faithful followers.1201 In hagiography the motif may be found in relation to St Eulalia, who in Prudentius’ Peristephanon in Liber III may have the name of God incised as a form of torture.1202 The idea of the body as a manuscript or parchment bearing actual writing is also developed in various medieval contexts in relation to Christ, with the most elaborate instalments found towards the later Middle Ages.1203 A particularly interesting iconographic parallel is found in the Book of Kells folium 291 v where the ‘portrait of Saint John’ features a head, hands and feet on a manuscript which stands for the body.1204 If the compilers/ redactors of LG were familiar with these or similar interpretations, it is possible that they adapted them for the specific need of the text.

Underlying all these examples is the idea of the skin as similar to parchment. ASTRID HERBOLD characterises this complex relationship as follows:

Text-als-Körper- und Körper-als-Text-Metaphern scheinen in ein komplexes System von Bezügen eingebunden zu sein, das sich einerseits aus der säkularisierten Form des christlichen Schrift- und Verkörperungsglaubens nährt, andererseits aus einer Jahrhunderte alten rhetorischen Tradition, die versucht, das System Sprache mit Hilfe des Körpers beschreibbar zu machen. […] Zu auffällig sind die frappierenden Ähnlichkeiten einzelner metaphorischer Analogisierungen, bei denen Schrifterzeugnisse als fleischliche Körper und Körper als papierene Schreibunterlagen imaginiert werden.1205

Body-as-text and text-as-body metaphors are bound to a complex system of relations. On the one hand, these draw on secularised forms of Christian belief in scripture and transubstantiation, on the other hand they are based on a century-old rhetoric tradition which tries to make the system that is language describable through bodies. […] Too conspicuous are the striking similarities between certain metaphorical analogisations in which written documents are imagined as fleshly bodies and bodies as papery writing pads.

In the case of Tuán and the saints, such concepts are developed in a rather literal sense. They are also developed in connection with specific concerns relating to transmission, preservation and authorisation of knowledge.

The inscribed bodies also offer the first visualisation of the knowledge. The visual component stresses the transformation from internal preservation (Tuán) to external display (saints). That vision was perceived as one of the prime senses from Aristotle onwards has already been argued in the introduction. STEPHEN TRANTER argues for its key importance in medieval Irish culture in relation to Christian concerns also.1206 Because the saints’ bodies are real, lived bodies in the narrated world and therefore offer a surface for inscription, they can transform Tuán’s knowledge into something visual and thus perhaps elevate its status in medieval sense perception. CAREY notes that medieval Irish scribes ‘bind and reveal the most insubstantial of mankind’s creations in visible permanence. And one who transcribes the Gospels gives a material being to the Word of God, fixes revelations from beyond all worlds within the finite solidity of a codex.’1207 If one allows for the substitution of knowledge (authorised by God) for Gospel and of body for codex this is precisely what Tuán’s writing implies.

Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between the internal preservation of knowledge (memory) and the inscribed skin is that the latter does not fade immediately with the death of its ‘container’. As MACQUARRIE summarises in a similar reading of the episode: ‘[t]he saints, then, like Túán, become receptacles of that knowledge but unlike Túán, their knowledge is also recorded in letters and they can convey their knowledge even after they die […]’.1208 Because their skin can be preserved after their death much like animal skin is turned into vellum, the knowledge could, theoretically, be copied and thus separated from their bodies even after their death, especially if their bodies are incorruptable. It is, however, hard to agree with MACQUARRIE’s suggestion of what happens after the saints’ deaths. MACQUARRIE proposes that after their demise their skins were placed on altars and ultimately they were bound into a manuscript containing all the individual pieces of knowledge Tuán had passed on to each saint.1209 However, there is no sound textual evidence to suggest such a treatment of the skins in LG, although it is of course possible that the texts were copied from the bodies for further diffusion and then collected in a single work, for example LG.

An interesting point to raise in relation to the physical body as an inscriptive surface is the mention of the very particular areas in which the saints are inscribed. In both versions the inscription takes place on the knee, while the mention of thighs and palms only occurs in Poem No. CII. On a general basis, SAYERS advocates that many body parts could also hold legal meaning or refer to measurements in early Irish sources.1210 He comments on the term glún (‘knee’), which he argues could also mean ‘generation, degree of consanguinity’1211 and as such incorporates elements of time and transmission. In choosing a part of the body that was associated with generational transmission STLG may deliberately enforced the underlying idea of preservation through time.

A possible parallel is found in the eighth-century text The Cauldron of Poesy, which describes Amairgen, the judge and prophet, as being gairglas (‘blueshanked’), a term which does not necessarily imply a marking but could also denote an unnatural (or at least unusual) tone of skin colour.1212 In his edition of the text, P. L. HENRY does not interpret this as a mark resembling an inscription but translates gairglas as ‘livid shanked’ or ‘cauterized shanked’.1213 BREATNACH, however, clearly interprets this as an inscribed marking when he translates ‘I being white-kneed, blue-shanked, grey-bearded Amairgen’ and the gloss to gairglas as ‘a tattooed shank, or one who has the blue tattooed shank.’1214 Regrettably, BREATNACH does not give any indication why Amairgen should be marked particularly in this spot. MACQUARRIE links the alteration to Amairgen’s high social status (linking it to the tattooing of barbarian peoples as depicted in Classical sources)1215, but he also does not offer an explanation why this body part in particular should have been marked.

In relation to other body parts, MARK W. GUSTAFSON mentions that although most Classical penal tattooing seems to have been on the head, ‘Constantine’s edict mentions tattooing on the hands or legs as an alternative to emblazonment on the face.’1216 That hands, like the face, are very visible parts of the body may explain why they are inscribed in STLG. This would suggest that the saints permanently displayed Tuán’s knowledge for all to see. In this case, visibility may have been the main concern, while the inscribed upper legs/knees may hold a more symbolic meaning. It is likely that the places of inscription mentioned in STLG are not incidental but may testify to a more profound and symbolic use of body parts, not just in literary but also in legal texts, an idea which would benefit from further study.

In discussing inscribed bodies in a material context rather than within the aural discourse of embodiment it is perhaps worth mentioning that LG also features two other references to inscribed bodies. Both of them are unique in their clear reference to deliberate inscription and both, as MACQUARRIE notes1217, were most likely transcribed from continental sources. The first explains the etymology of the place-name Poitiers (a town in France) by stating that the city was founded by Picts. The picts, LG further argues, derived their name from pictis, the Latin term denoting both ‘painted’ as well as the Picts (as a people). The second reference develops ideas about tattooing expressed by Isidore of Seville. Isidore states that ‘the Scotti (Scottus, i.e. the Irish) in their own language receive their name from their painted (picturs, dv. The Picts) bodies, because they are marked by tattoos of various figures made with iron pricks and black pigment.’1218 In another passage Isidore explains: ‘[n]or should we omit the Picts (Pictus), whose name is taken from their bodies, because an artisan, with the tiny point of a pin and the juice squeezed from a native plant, tricks them out with scars to serve as identifying marks, and their nobility are distinguished by their tattooed (pictus) limbs.’1219 Isidore describes the process by which Scots (Irish) and Picts tattoo their bodies and also relays the social function of these inscriptions. In LG, the permanent alteration of the skin through inscription is presented as a particularly Celtic custom. That others may not have commented favourably on this practice apparently did not prevent the compilers/redactors of LG from transferring it onto the saints of STLG. In fact, if the custom was perceived as decidedly Celtic, the declared aim of the text to ‘weave together’ different strands of Irish and Christian history could have favoured the inclusion of the motif.

The transition from an oral and memorial to a written and skin-deep preservation of knowledge is a prime example of transmissive mediality. Tuán himself was a medium of preservation and transmission through his memory and his ability to orally transmit his knowledge. Now his knowledge has found new transmitters and with them, new ways to be transmitted. As MACQUARRIE notes: ‘[t]he saints, then, are the vehicles through which the history of Ireland is incorporated into the Biblical tradition and translated into letters, the whole story being imprinted as a text in the minds of and on the bodies of the saints.’1220 HORST WENZEL contends that, because Christianity sees itself as a religion of the written word, it is interesting to study from a mediality perspective because it instigated a transmission from amemorial culture bound to the body to the writing of manuscripts.1221 Although STLG may epitomise the self-perception of Christianity as a religion based on the written word, the saints’ bodies suggest that in some medieval texts, memory and book culture were not seen as complete opposites. Instead, they are connected through the saintly bodies that quite literally mediate, i.e. stand between, Tuán’s oral lore and the written account found in LG.

In the meantime, the bodies themselves can be perceived as manuscripts (since they are presumably written on by hand) in their preserving function but also in that it is possible to quite literally read from them. These bodies are read, but they are read primarily (albeit not exclusively) in relation to the writing they bear. Yet because they are saintly bodies, they also evoke a literal understanding of the Christian trope of the incarnation of the word into flesh: Tuán’s knowledge is made flesh in that it is inscribed on skin and in flesh. This may be a unique rendering of the biblical idea that ‘the word was made flesh’ to bring grace and truth to the world (John 1:14). The line between (human) bodies and writing in manuscripts is blurred by their shared quality as mediators. As URBAN KÜSTERS remarks,

Körper und Schrift sind keineswegs unvereinbare Vorstellungsgrößen […]. Zwar begreifen ältere und neuere medientheoretische Ansätze seit Platon beide kontrapunktisch: Gilt der Körper als ursprünglicher Träger eines kulturellen Gedächtnisses,wirdmit dem Aufkommen der Schrift in unterschiedlichen Kulturen ein Mediatisierungsprozeß der Ablösung und Verlagerung dieses Körpergedächtnisses auf neue Aufzeichnungs- und Speicherungsformen verbunden.1222

Body and script are by no means incompatible ideas […]. Alas, both ancient and modern concepts of media theory from Plato onwards have perceived them as opposites: the body was seen as the original carrier of cultural memory but with the emergence of writing in various cultures a process of detachment and transportation of this ‘body memory’ to new forms of recording and preservation began.

KÜSTERS is adamant that such rigid boundaries are not usually observable in the sources.1223 He adds that examples in which writing is literally incorporated are indicators of an early unity of body and writing.1224 Because the body can function as a surface to be inscribed, KÜSTERS concludes1225, it became an authentic medium for revelation, memory and authentication of religious ideas and, through these processes, it gave life to the ‘dead’ letter. The aim of STLG is therefore perhaps not only to narrate the preservation and transmission of Tuán’s knowledge but also to incorporate a sanctioning function. Because they are saints, the new bearers of this knowledge can sanction the knowledge they incorporate and display.

The strong connection between bodies and manuscripts may also have been aided by a more material concern, namely by the quick associations which ISABEL DAVIES supposes medieval people made between
skins as a raw material and the things – especially clothes and writing surfaces – that were fashioned from them […]. People’s proximity to and familiarity with the treatment of and trade in skins made its associated terms and techniques ripe for figurative use.1226

Furthermore, KAY suggests that the act of reading medieval manuscripts would have revealed the organic relationship between the page and its animal origins as an expert
can tell the flesh side from the hair side of the skin; the backbone remains perceptible as a ghostly imprint, and the curve of the animal’s body persists in the natural curl of the pages; tiny veins can often be made out, as can the random discolorations, scars, and insect damage that marked the creature in life.1227

Engaging with medieval manuscripts thus always carried a reminder that the page was once a living body, if not a human one. The fact that, as KAY argues, the Latin term pellis is used in medieval sources for both human and animal skin as well as parchment1228 may further have aided this connection. That such associations could develop into conceptions about actual, living human skin being inscribed in the same manner is not unlikely.

As has been mentioned above, the saints can also be said to sanction Tuán’s knowledge. In no other way could these authoritative figures express greater approval of the transmission of ancient lore into the Christian culture than in literally incorporating it into themselves. CAREY sees this reflected also in the frequently attested interest of saints in ancient lore. He argues that in their eagerness to hear these stories the saints are ‘affirming the value of lore of the native past in the eyes of the religious hierarchy.’1229 The saints, ‘whether Patrick, Colum Cille, or Finnia – represent […] the ecclesiastical intelligentsia who become the custodians of these traditions in their written form, and serve […] to register the church’s approval of the cultivation of such knowledge.’1230 Relating this observation to ALFRED GELL’s widely quoted idea of the dual character of skin as both inside- and outside-facing and hence as ‘continually communicat[ing] the external world to the internal one, and the internal world to the external one’1231, suggests that the saints continuously affirm their approval of what is written on them. In this context, their bodies assume a whole new level of mediative qualities which is no longer connected to the transmissive mediality of the writing but again refers to more expressive concerns. Their bodies incorporate both material and transcendental qualities and develop transmissive mediality on two distinct levels.

The motif of the inscribed skin also allows for an almost bloodless inclusion of Irish history into Christian world history. CAREY draws attention to the fact that the production of vellum was a violent process, which demanded the lives of many calves.1232 He concludes that ‘even the holiest book then was inextricably enmeshed in the bloodstained mortality which it summoned its readers to transcend. Reflection on this paradox may, I think, further our understanding of the manuscripts themselves.’1233 KAY proposes a similar awareness for continental manuscripts.1234 MILLS also finds that in some medieval texts there is ‘something profoundly unsettling about this process of constructing artefacts of human culture from the skins of slaughtered livestock’ and in extension ‘interpreting medieval books as books of skin.’1235 In being written on the saints’ bodies while they are still alive, Tuán’s lore is preserved without such bloodshed. Even if the skin may have bled during and after the incision, the inscriptions were received volountarily and executed without a loss of life.

As a final point it is interesting to briefly ask whether in the wider context of early Irish literature, the saints’ altered bodies carried any problematic connotations. Other ‘inscribed’ figures (in a loose sense of the word) in early Irish literature can also exhibit ‘an indelible mark made on the skin by inserting pigments into punctures.’1236 These figures are thus marked in exactly the same way as the saints. Even in avoiding the controversial issue of whether Celtic peoples were tattooed or not, it can be stated that literary sources portray inscribed bodies as either inherently pagan or explicitly Christian.1237 MACQUARRIE summarises the contradicting assessments of these marks as follows: for one, there is ‘the tradition that tattoos are indicative of paganism, illiteracy and criminality. Second is the reading of tattoos implicit in the Tuán episode, which connects them with literacy, Christianity and civilized culture.’1238 In the first and more common instance characters are said to exhibit signa diabolica and stigmatibus malignis. In the Vita Sancta Brigitae (‘Life of St Brigit’) these characters are openly associated with pagan culture and are at times deliberately installed as vicious opponents of Christian saints.1239 In exhibiting actual writing on their body, the saints of LG are separated from those figures by being associated with ‘literacy, Christianity and civilization’1240, to repeat MACQUARRIE’S terms. In this case, it is the nature of the information and the specific way of inscribing it (letters) that is emphasised, even if the evaluation of such marked bodies is connoted very differently in other sources.

It is interesting to briefly link these observations to JAN ASSMANN’s understanding of cultural memory as a memory which ‘reaches back into the past only so far as the past can be reclaimed as “ours”.’1241 This, as POPPE points out, creates a difference between cultural memory and ‘knowledge about the past.’1242 What Tuán provides, then, is, ultimately, cultural memory: he expands ‘ours’ to reach back much further than normally possible. This ingenious move, as well as the unique form of transmission, are important for the text, which shows the ‘affective, creative approach to memories’1243, which GLAUSER sees as prominent in cultural memory. Both Caladgleó Cethirn and STLG turn history from something elusive into something which at a particular moment is visible and felt, and lasts at least as long as the bodies (or the skin) can be preserved. Within the concept of transmissive mediality it becomes evident that history and with it the being-in-the-world in a historical and/or eschatological sense is given physical reality in the texts through the human body.

CAREY characterises LG as ‘a text full of challenges but also rich in rewards: an enormous repository of tradition, speculation, and creativity which has much to tell us about the background and the dynamics of medieval Irish intellectual life.’1244 STLG shows a highly specialised and ingenious instalment of transmissive mediality, an instalment that is nevertheless based on the perception of the bodies as materiality. In both STLG and Caladgleó Cethirn bodies can be said to transmit not only signs (inscriptions or wounds) but also memory and history. In the case of Cethern, this history is his own: it is the story of a particular fight to be preserved in TBC. In STLG it is the history of the land and its people, a collective history, which becomes inscribed on bodies that sanction it so that it can be preserved in Christian times.

There is a third mention of skin remembering a particular fight and although the example does not quite fit the focus of the previous discussion, it is so similar to the instalment of skin as a mediator in the Old Norse-Icelandic literature discussed below that at least a brief mention should be made of it. The scene is found at the very end of TBDD, a text which, as MULLIGAN’S Politics of Anatomy prove1245, exhibits a heightened awareness of the medial potential of bodies. Having escaped from the battle that destroyed Da Derga’s hostel, Conall Cernach meets his father Amairgen. As O’CONNOR concludes in his brief discussion of the episode, ‘Amairgen is the last in a series of internal audiences who make moral judgements about the events of the saga’1246, and this judgement is based on his son’s body. When Amairgen accuses his son of cowardice because he escaped alive when his king was slain, Conall’s response is brief. But his real answer lies in his displaying his arms to his father in an act of specularity:

‘[n]ídat bána mo chréchda ém, a senlaích,’ for Conall. Tadbaid a láim scéith. Trí .l. créchta imorro is ed ad-comaicc furri. In scíath imorro imarro-dídnestair ind lám sin is ed rus-anacht. Ind lám des imorro imo-roprad for suidiu co rrice a dí chutramai. Ro cirrad imorro 7 ro hathchumad 7 ro créchdnaiged 7 ro chríathrad acht congaibset na féthe frisin corp cen a etarscarad innát raba in scíath oca himdedail.1247

‘My wounds are not white, truly, old warrior,’ said Conall. He shows his shield-arm. Indeed, a hundred and fifty wounds had been inflicted on it, and what had saved it was the shield which protected that arm. As for the right hand, however, that one [had] been worked over twice as much – indeed, it had been maimed and cut and wounded and pierced through, except that the sinews kept [it] joined to the body without it falling off – for the shield had not been guarding it.

Amairgen acknowledges the display and the possible conflict between father and son is resolved.

O’CONNOR catches the essence of the scene when he concludes that the
pair are left silent while the narrator describes in detail the bloodstained mess at which Amairgen is now looking. Amarigen breaks this ‘silence’, but instead of telling Conall that he is not a coward, he simply acknowledges that Conall fought vigorously.1248

The silence inherent in this scene, during which the audience follows the eyes of Amairgen through the words of the narrative voice, is an integral part of the tragic ending of TBDD. In contrast to Caladgleó Cethirn, however, Amairgen does not recount – or seek to recount – his son’s individual martial encounters during the battle. What is important is the result these combats left on his body. Although the accusation of cowardice is not strictly speaking resolved through this display, the static nature of the wounded arms testifies to Conall’s valiant fighting. At the end of the narrative, the destruction is crystallised in the destructed and mutilated arms of one warrior. That such an assessments of arms in relation to warrior status (even of arms on which there seems hardly any skin left to be inscribed) can be an integral part in a heroic context will be argued also in relation to the Old Norse-Icelandic example discussed in the following subchapter.

4.4And the Flesh Was Made Shame: Mutilated Bodies in Sigurðar saga þǫgla

No similar mention of skin endowed with text or being read like a manuscript (transmitting a whole narrative) could be found in the corpus examined for Old Norse-Icelandic literature.1249 That deliberate modifications of bodies in order to achieve lasting marks can nevertheless also be found in Old Norse-Icelandic texts can be demonstrated by discussing an episode in Sigurðar saga þǫgla, a text considered already in the previous chapter. Such action takes place in the episode where the brothers Halfdan and Vilhjalm are mistreated at the hands of the meykóngr Sedentiana. The narrative instalment of the mutilated bodies is divided into two parts, showing a clear distinction between the moment of inscription and the subsequent reading. The brothers’ mutilation is recounted in real time at Sedentiana’s castle just after Halfdan has proposed to her. Much later in the saga, the problematic nature of the mutilated bodies is openly addressed and their brother Sigurð discovers their disfigurement. The analysis follows the text and discusses the episodes separately, starting with the gruesome maiming of the princes’ bodies.

The episode describing the mutilation commences with Halfdan’s proposal. Immediately after Halfdan has uttered his proposal, Sedentiana humiliates her visitors in typical meykóngr fashion. She first degrades them (verbally) by assuring the brothers that she has no need for their riches and that more apt suitors have been rejected. Vilhjalm tries to persuade the meykóngr to change her mind by alluding to Halfdan’s martial abilities, royal lineage, courtly behaviour and extensive ownership of land. Each of these aspects stresses that Halfdan fully complies with the narrative role of a noble hero in original riddarsögur. The crux lies in that Sedentiana, although the text refers to her as a drottning (‘queen’), in lifestyle and behaviour corresponds clearly to the figure of a meykóngr, which has been introduced above (3.2.1.). It just remains to briefly recapitulate that these female rulers embody an inversion of gender roles, that they often cruelly humiliate suitors and rule without male supervision. The proud Sedentiana is quick to reject each of the aspects listed by Vilhjalm and points out that even her servants are superior to Halfdan. In her assessment of Halfdan and his brother, Sedentiana refuses to classify them as noble counterparts and hence prospective spouses and instead aligns them with lower status characters. This verbal humiliation provides an ingenious link to the following mutilation of the brothers, which leaves the verbal realm and instead inscribes the shame Sedentiana feels at their proposal onto their bodies.

In shifting the focus to a corporeal level the text first describes a change on Sedentiana’s own body: sem Wilh(ialmur) hafdi til ennda fært sitt mal. þæ matti skiott siæ og finna mikinn Reidesuip æ drott(ningu) þuiat hun blicnade oll og lijtur Re˂i˃dugliga til Vilh(ialms) […].1250 This involuntary change is soon followed by a very deliberate change Sedentiana inflicts on the bodies of the brothers. She has them bound like [r]æningia e(dur) suicara, an act which again emphasises that she has no consideration for their royal status.1251 Then she humiliates them by torture. The procedure is described in gruesome detail:

ep˂t˃ir þat tok hun sŏx og harhnif og clypti af þeim harit badum brædrum og gerde þeim koll og Rakade eptir og bar j tioru. eptir þat | let hun kalla þræla .uiij. at þeir kæmi þar med suipum og suerdum. og er þeir kuomu bad hunn hudstrykia þæ brædur suo at af þeim gengi hudin og suo gerdu þeir. og sem þeirra bac uar allt blodugt og þrælarner toku at mædazt af erfide þa let hun taka suerd og let Rijsta uglu æ bake þeim med suerdzoddunum. Her eptir let hun bera at sier glædur. og let æ setia eina munnlaug. enn er hun uar heit sem glod þæ let hun setia hana a kuidinn badum þeim brædrum. og var Half(dan) miog brenndur til ŏrkumla. enn Vilh(ialmur) þo miog.1252

Then she took scissors and a (barbering?) knife and cut off the hair of both brothers and shaved their heads and their faces. Then she smeared their heads with tar. After this she called eight servants to come with whips and swords. When they had arrived she ordered them to whip the brothers so hard that their skin fell off, and this they did. And when their backs were all bloodied and the servants began to become tired, she had them take up swords and ordered them to carve an owl into the brothers’ backs with the tip of the swords. After this she had burning coal brought to her. She had it placed in a bowl. And when the bowl was hot like embers she had it placed on the brothers’ lower abdomen. And Halfdan was burnt to complete mutilation. And Vilhjalm too was burned much [severely disfigured].

The humiliation starts with the cutting of their hair, which may be very socially demeaning, as KALINKE argues.1253 In this case, the body itself does not suffer pain, yet the characters suffer because bodies are communally read as indicators of social status; the resulting appearance thus ‘hurts’ on a metaphorical level. After this, the treatment of the brothers also entails severe physical pain. The smearing of their heads with tar is not only painful, it leads to a permanent baldness, as is explained later in the text. The flaying resulting from the prolonged flogging may even be evoking ‘a kind of absolute nudity’1254, as KARL STEEL suggests. If seen in this light, the treatment would completely expose Halfdan and Vilhjalm to the queen and enforce their physical vulnerability. This is combined with further actions designed to leave permanent marks, such as the burning and the incised owl. It must be noted that the burning also leads to a complete destruction of Halfdan’s primary sexual organs, which prevents him from producing royal (or in fact any) offspring in the future.1255 The choice of mutilation techniques can therefore be seen as designed for one thing only: to mark the brothers for life and hence to force them to always remember this encounter.

This intention is made explicitly clear by Sedentiana’s comments. Surveying the result of her actions, she declares: at þetta mune letia annann og enn þridia. at gerazt suo kynduger at forskammazt eigi at bera slic ord fyrir minn eyru.1256 On a pragmatic level, Sedentiana hopes that their disfigured looks will repel any future suitors. This may even be the case if these prospective suitors do not see the brothers but only hear about their disfigurement. By voicing this intent the meykóngr openly stresses the medial potential of bodies on both a visual and an aural level. In addition, she further shames the brothers in making sure that even at their own court the social reading of their bodies will from now on produce unfavourable results. This is possible because their bodies now resemble the blackened, bald (or shorn) and disfigured bodies that are so often associated with slaves in original riddarasögur and related genres. Sedentiana’s humiliation therefore not only strips them of their physical integrity but also impairs their courtly appearance and thus their noble identity.

This is important not only at the moment of torture but, as her comment implies, intended to last until their deaths, as their bodies are now a visible sign of her power. Such behaviour is typical for her narrative role. KALINKE remarks that with one exception ‘every maiden-king narrative […] contains an apparently undeserved humiliation of the suitor.’1257 FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR sees a meykóngr as a ‘young, noble, unmarried woman, usually depicted as haughty, cruel and, in the early tradition, armed. She rules her own kingdom, rejects all her suitors and mistreats them physically, verbally, or both.’1258 Sedentiana clearly complies with this stereotype by consciously installing her humiliation as a sign to be read in the future.

The permanent nature of the wounds is stressed when the brothers regain consciousness on their ship and call for their two most trusted doctors. These are not only selected for their medical knowledge but also because they can be trusted to keep their appearance a secret from others:

kalla þeir brædur til sijn tuo lækna er þeir trudu bezt ok lietu þæ trulofa sier at þeir segdi engum manni fra sijnum meizlum og þeirre hinne skædu skŏmm er þeir hŏfdu j kast(alanum) fengit af medferd drottn(ingar) Sed(entianu). voru þeir skiott med listum leknadir og tiara burt færd vr þeirra hŏfdi. Greru þeir snart vtann þar sem þeir hofdu brendir uerit þuiat þat war seinngroit.1259

The brothers call for their two most trusted physicians and made them swear an oath not to tell anyone of their mutilation, and neither of the great shame which they received through the actions of Queen Sedentiana at her castle. They were quickly seen to by the physicians and the tar was removed from their heads. They recovered very quickly except for the places where they had been burnt, because these only healed reluctantly.

It is imperative to note that for Halfdan and Vilhjalm it is equally important to recover from their wounds as it is to keep them hidden from others. The physicians serve the dual function of healing them and of keeping their secret, presenting a complete contrast to the seer-physician Fingin in Caladgleó Cethirn. The scene also implies that although (except for Halfdan’s sexual organs) the brothers can regain physical fitness, their scars and the incised owls can only be hidden from view, not remedied or removed. This is a sure reminder that the skills of the physicians are limited to anatomical issues and are of no use in the context of the social reading of bodies. It also shows that skin remembers, even if the characters themselves would rather forget.

In considering the permanent nature of the marks, brief reference should also be made to the unique detail of the owl. The mention is unusual in saga literature and in the original riddarasögur in particular and such a deliberate incision of an animal figure points towards a symbolic meaning. In its basic structure the idea resembles the rite of the blood-eagle, described in various sagas and skaldic verse. ROBERTA FRANK discusses its appearance in literary texts and history. She concludes that the
blood-eagle procedure varies from text to text, becoming more lurid, pagan, and time-consuming with each passing century. Saxo and the compiler of Ragnars saga [Loðbrókar, chp. 17] in NKS 1824 b merely envisage someone scratching, as deeply as possible, a picture of an eagle upon Ella’s back. For a touch of color, the saga reddens the outlined sketch with the victim’s blood, while Saxo’s version [Gesta Danorum IX v.] pours salt on the wound.1260

In Orms þattr Stórólfssonar, there is also a mention of Orm carving an eagle into the back of his opponent Brúsi, but then Orm also flaps out Brúsi’s rips and lungs to complete the humiliation.1261 No implication is made in Sigurðar saga þǫgla that the scratches are filled with ink and as such resemble notions of tattooing. When healed, simple but deep incisions can nevertheless give the impression of a reddened outline. By employing such a horrendous practice strongly associated with pagans, Sedentiana is depicted as a truly malignant figure.

The procedure may be rooted in the wider picture of Norse literature, yet the meaning of the owl emblem is somewhat elusive. It appears that the animal does not hold any specific symbolic meaning in Old Norse-Icelandic literature.1262 A possible interpretation is to contextualise it with practices of ‘tattooing’ social inferiors in order to mark them, as depicted for instance in Classical sources. GUSTAFSON remarks that in Classical sources it seems ‘customary for prisoners of war to be marked with the sign of their captors; for example, Athenians would mark their prisoners with an owl.’1263 In this context, the mark is the mark of the ruler, a signum of power and of superiority. It is possible that the compilers/redactors of the saga were familiar with this practice of the Athenians through Classical texts. However, it is much more likely that rather than the exact parallel of the symbol, it was the underlying concept that was known to them and that the owl may simply be Sedentiana’s signum of power.1264 Although no mention is made that this is her royal emblem, given the strong connection of Sigurð with a lion, it appears at least possible that his female antagonist is likewise associated with an animal symbol.

In relation to the impact the maiming has on the social identity of the brothers as royal offspring it is clear that their social status is at stake. This is why the text presents the issue of who is able to read their bodies after the incident with great care. The problem is that, because Halfdan and Vilhjalm’s bodies were installed by an enemy, they now lead to unfavourable readings. The brothers’ main aim is to prevent such a reading, to hide rather than openly display their bodies, which portrays a complete inversion of courtly ideals. They cannot change their appearance and hence the only way they can assert control over their bodies is to prevent an unfavourable assessment.

The problematic status of their bodies within the courtly discourse of visuality is, however, only possible because Sigurðar saga þǫgla imagines Halfdan and Vilhjalm’s bodies as materiality, as inscribable and even as ‘deep’ surface which retains these signs for the rest of their lives. EGLINGER draws attention to this monumental quality of scars when she argues for a distinction between superficial and shortlived writings on the body and deep, permanent inscriptions. Only in the latter case, she concludes, can the body become a lasting monument.1265 The inscriptions therefore chime with ALEIDA ASSMANN’s theory of excarnation: ‘[i]n jedem Verschriftungsakt vollzieht sich […] die Gegenbewegung zur Inkarnation: Konkret gelebte Erfahrung wird durch Transformation in Schrift abstrakt, d. h. abgezogen von den raum-zeitlichen Umständen, aus denen sie hervorging […]’.1266 Only because Sedentiana marks but does not mortally wound the brothers can they subsequently become a monument to the lived experience of the encounter. The underlying concept of lived experience being inscribed on bodies, and in the case of dermographics especially into the skin, is again presented as heroic inscribing, extant in wounds, burns and scars. This interpretation of the idea is perhaps much more prevalent in medieval literature than hitherto thought.

As has been mentioned before, since Halfdan and Vilhjalm had no control over these acts of permanent inscription they subsequently seek to control the reading of the signs – or better, prevent it altogether. This example is unique in that the bearers of the signs successfully prevent a reading for a long time. This is possible only because they can hide the parts of their bodies that are inscribed. Only a brief mention later in the narrative that they appear hairless could be seen as openly observable. This, however, offers no direct link to their humiliation but could be the result of other factors such as genetics or injuries sustained in a fire. It is in connection with their hairlessness that the text raises the idea that a physical humiliation of the brothers during their proposal was indeed expected. When they return to their father after having been healed, the king looks at his now bald sons and utters his disbelief that their proposal should not have resulted in greater shame. The king’s comment demonstrates his surprise that the encounter with Sedentiana is not more openly visible on their bodies and he concludes with the remark that he thinks it forgivable should they seek to hide their shame.1267

Within their close familial ties, he openly addresses the issue of the more public reading of bodies at court and implies that bodies can only function as transmitters if the message is visible. In terms of mediality discourse, this scene thus reveals an unusually reflective engagement with medial processes. On a narrative level, it also raises a tension as to if and how the signs may be revealed.

The episode in which the marks are disclosed is hugely important for the further development not just of the narrative, but also of their brother Sigurð. The revelation of the mutilation differs from all previous examples of reading bodies in transmissive mediality in that the reading is not a public or sanctioning one. Instead, the disclosure is depicted as a decidedly private moment. When Halfdan and Vilhjalm return to Sedentiana’s kingdom to pillage and plunder they go for a swim in a forest lake on a particularly hot day. The secluded setting of the episode enforces the secrecy in which they strip and change into their ‘swimsuits’, and no other characters seem to be present at this moment. Only in the wilderness, in a place where, temporarily, their bodies do not have the representative function they hold at court, can the brothers reveal the full extent of their blemished appearance. When they return from their swim they change back into their usual courtly attire, but at this moment of complete nakedness Halfdan remarks to his brother:

‘edur huat merkir su hinn Rauda og hinn Rosaliga krijngla med samansnerctu skinne sem syniz æ þijnum kuide. e(dur) huar fyrir ber þu suo harlost hŏfudit. edur huat merkir sáá hinn Raude Ristne fugl sem mier syniz pentadur vera æ þijnu bace. Geysi hagur hefir sæ pictur verit er suo fagurt fŏrm framde æ þijnum lijkama.’1268

‘What does this red and rosy ring which has become visible on your stomach mean? Or why do you have such a hairless head? Or what does this red, scratched bird mean, which looks as if it has been painted on your back? The painter must have been incredibly skilled if he could draw such a fine shape onto your body.’

Vilhjalm is quick to rebuke Halfdan for making fun of him. He retaliates that Halfdan suffers from the same marks and well knows their meaning. To this Halfdan replies:

‘eckj uardar nu þo at vit talim slica hluti þuiat nu mæ eingi til heyra. Enn seint mun mier fyrnazt su hinn haduliga hneykia og hinn somalausazta suijuirding sem ockur gerdi Sed(entiana) drott(ning) Treueris borgar þæ er hunn liet brenna ockarn kuid med gloande munlaug og Reist uglu æ bace ockr med oddhuŏssu jarne og let af ockr fleingia hud alla og hier æ ofan afclyppa ockart har og med hnijfe Raka og bijce æ steypa.’1269

‘It does not matter if we voice such matters, because no-one can hear it here and now. But I will only hardly forget this great disgrace and dishonourable humiliation which Queen Sedentiana of Treveris caused, when she had our lower abdomens burned with glowing hot bowls and scratched an owl into our backs with sharp iron spikes and finally had our whole skin flayed with whips and cut our hair and shaved us with a knife and had tar poured over [our heads].’

Surprisingly but importantly, Halfdan voices the exact nature of the torture. The joint revelation of both visible result (maiming/baldness) and cause (torture) of their altered bodies are both presented through spoken discourse which visualises the bodies. Instead of an external entity (another character) reading their bodies it is one of the brothers who connects the marks with their deeper meaning. This is of course logical since (apart from the physicians, who keep quiet about it) no one else appears to know about this, yet it also reveals the extent to which the characters suffer from their changed appearance.

Halfdan’s comment that the brothers should be able to freely recount the matter to each other draws attention to the contexts in which transmissive mediality is observable. At court they have to counteract Sedentiana’s aim to install them as visible reminders of her power in order to maintain their status – they have to hide the marked parts of their bodies. When (and where) no one is present to read their bodies and these signs, there is no need to worry about hiding the marks. In short, without a recipient a process of mediality is not possible and thus becomes unimportant. That this may, however, not be their only concern is made explicit in their diverging treatment of their bodies. While Halfdan seems keen to talk about what happened, Vilhjalm does not want to be reminded of the adventure. He clearly does not want the marks to become the focus of spoken discourse even in an unrepresentative setting, although he too visually discloses them when he strips naked.

What the brothers do not know is that they are observed by a noble knight hiding in a tree. This is the crux of the episode as, unbeknownst to them, the position of reader was filled after all, and precisely at the moment when their bodies have been fully disclosed as transmissive entities both physically and verbally. The verbal recounting of the humiliation is necessary if Sigurð should know everything about his brothers’ unsuccessful proposal. Yet for the brothers it is problematic because it makes the signs unambiguous. The bodies themselves could have been imprecise signifiers to the observer and only Halfdan’s words make it clear who humiliated them and for what purpose. When the brothers realise that someone had been hiding in the tree, they are therefore understandably worried. Because at first they do not know that the knight is their brother Sigurð, they immediately fear that now both their appearance and the humiliating encounter behind it will be made known.

However, their fears are quickly dismissed when they identify the knight as Sigurð because they still assume him to be too dumb to speak. The humiliation of Halfdan and Vilhjalm is thus paralleled with Sigurð’s humiliating flaw of being mute, and for a short moment it appears that all three brothers now suffer from socially impairing corporeal blemishes. In relation to mediality discourse the revelation is also telling. Even though Sigurð now knows what his brothers truly look like and why, if he were in fact unable to speak, the information would remain contained inside him. In other words, it has been transmitted from the brothers’ bodies but it could not be further transmitted from Sigurð’s. This testifies to the complex engagement with processes of mediality found in this saga, although not all of them are connected with the reading of skin; in fact, sometimes the human voice can be an equally developed motif.

Yet as has been argued above, it soon becomes clear that Sigurð is by no means dumb and mute but merely a late developer and misunderstood. Now, just as the full extent of their blemished bodies has been revealed, he assumes the role of courtly hero both on a narrative and on a physical level: he speaks, and he seeks to avenge their humiliation. Only because Sedentiana’s aim of installing the bodies as transmissive mediators has been allowed to function at this particular moment in the narrative can Sigurð avenge their maltreatment. In the end, this revelation functions as a plot motor but it also demonstrates an amazingly reflective engagement with the idea of bodies as mediators. Eventually, the inscribed message has the reverse result from what Sedentiana had intended, as Sigurð humiliates and subdues her. This shows that even though bodies may be deliberately installed as mediators, the effect of the reading lies outside the scope of the inscriber.

4.5Inscribed Bodies before Tattoo-Theory

The examples in this chapter have all dealt with marked bodies, with bodies that exhibit an imagined materiality and are read within social discourses in relation to the signs which they bear. In all of the texts these signs, for better or for worse, mark bodies for life and become an integral part in mediating either a specific event (of inscription) or a specific way of reading these bodies. The skin thus becomes subject to memory-related discourses because, as AHMED and STACEY phrase this,
skin remembers: skin surfaces record out personal biographies, however imperfectly […]. As a result, the skin is not simply in the present (in the here or the now); in so far as it has multiple histories and unimaginable futures, it is worked upon, and indeed, it is worked towards.1270

Ultimately, skin remembers ‘both literally in its material surface and metaphorically in the signification given to the surface.’1271 As has been shown, medieval texts can understand skin as incorporating very similar functions of preserving and linking past, present and future.

This idea reflects the quotation at the head of this chapter. In the original, the quote merely expresses that there is no human left to tell of a particular event because the people who knew about it have all died. By metaphorical extension this entails that memory fades with the bodies that preserve it and sometimes there is nobody who can remember simply because there is no ‘body’ left alive which contains the information – a pun which becomes clear in the English translation. On both levels, this is a sure reminder to transfer and fix knowledge to media independent of the human body or to guarantee its (correct) passing on through various bodies (i.e. in memory) over time. The first concern has been discussed in relation to Caladgleó Cethirn and STLG, where the importance of historiography, and of (fittingly) transmitting the knowledge of the past, was addressed by the conscious instalment of bodies in mediality discourse.

In the instances where bodies are linked to various ideas of memory, skin can also come to signify on the level of personal biographies, as is the case with Cethern, Ásmund or Halfdan and Vilhjalm. In other instances, these biographies in themselves become linked to a larger social context or even preserve historical information, as in the case of Tuán, or they can be related to other characters in a text, as was the case in SMMDT. In either case, the marks place a character within the larger social structures of the narrated world and they define the relationship between self and society through the skin. Ultimately, the character that bears the signs and the signs themselves function as a holistic kind of medium. Because of this position (quite literally) between an individual character and the narrated world, skin becomes ‘a sign of the subject’s interiority’1272, as AHMED and STACEY suggest. Through this complex position in terms of mediating between interior and exterior the examples discussed cannot be strictly separated from the idea of expressive mediality; they always incorporate both ideas.

Several quite specific ideas and discourses were addressed in the previous discussions. Underlying the instalment of reading skin in the examples of Tuán, Cethern and perhaps even Cét and Ásmund is an idea of the body as a piece of parchment, as something which appears as a ‘field of signs’1273, that is liable to manipulation and reconstruction but is always consciously read. By fulfilling the function of a manuscript, these bodies are ‘a support for cognitive memory-work, for […] books both in antiquity and during the Middle Ages were understood primarily as support for human re-collective work, what Latin speakers of the time quite indiscriminately called memoria.’1274 As the examples have shown, during the Middle Ages (and presumably also beyond) the concept of memory did not have to be connected solely to the human brain but could also (simultaneously) be played out on the very surface of the body. This laid memory open for everyone to see, even if in certain cases not everyone could decipher the information. WENDY HARDING argues that one of the most defining functions of writing is that it ‘can transmit a message from one person to another without the necessity of bodily contact.’1275 Writing on the body, on the other hand, is intrinsically linked to the contact between bodies. This may be because these instances narrate an experience which could not be suitably transferred by simply being written on parchment but must be inscribed in living human flesh, at least initially.

The initial removal from the spoken word that these signs present is astonishing. However, it should be noted that often the signs are then turned into spoken discourse again in the narratives. It is the body, but also the speaking about the body, which ultimately generates transmissive mediality in a text, even if only the first can be said to be truly transmissive in the present sense. Yet in particular cases, for instance in SMMDT, Cét’s words to a large degree replace the description of the actual bodies in the text. In Sigurðar saga þǫgla, it is only through the combination of the exposed bodies and the voicing of the humiliation that Sigurð can fully understand the transmissive power of the mutilated bodies. In Caladgleó Cethirn, the signifying function of the body can only be turned into more lasting media for the preservation of the fight through the communal act of deciphering, which voices the information. It appears that the reading of these bodies is connected with the spoken word in the narrative world, which presents an inclusive rather than a contrastive picture of orality and literacy.

The examples have also demonstrated the ingenuity with which medieval texts can install the conscious reading of the surface of bodies for their individual purposes. In their focus on the (often public) reading of the skin, the texts draw attention to the social dimension of skin: even inscribed skin does not simply speak but it ‘must be read, and […] it is the reader who must embody the possibility of skin as testimony’1276, as AHMED and STACEY contend. Demonstrating how differently inscribed skin is assessed and how different the processes of reading are in the texts underlines the importance of examining medieval instalments of mediality in their individual contexts.

While the material quality of skin is a prerequisite for these instalments to function, the bodies are not mere matter but situated always in a social context. As TERENCE TURNER phrases it, ‘[t]he surface of the body, as the common frontier of society, the social self, and the psycho-biological individual, becomes the symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialization is enacted […]’.1277 That the same can be said about the drama of social identity, and of concerns about communal history, has hopefully been shown here. It has hopefully also been demonstrated that the dual aspect of poetically evoked materiality and social discourse advocated in the introduction is observable in many examples in medieval literature.

Such observations about the transmissive nature of human skin and its relation to social concerns have been addressed most clearly in modern tattoo-theory. The present study consciously avoided bringing this theoretical framework to these particular texts or arguing that the bodies in these texts are marked in a similar way.1278 Too weighty are the differences: most inscriptions are wounds and scars rather than deliberate, picture-, symbol or text-like alterations to the skin and the reading of the signs is presented in specific discourses rather than within contexts which focus solely on the ‘deliberately’ tattooed body (and hence, separate modern Western tattooing from practices in Classical times). In other respects, however, the bodies discussed here are akin to tattooed skin in that they also demonstrate an element of incorporation and the conscious linking of skin with the persona, culture and history of its ‘bearer’. It is hoped that these aspects were duly addressed in the case studies and that the chapter successfully developed its own discourse of marked bodies. In assessing how skin is discursively constructed in the texts and how it is determined both by the subject it covers and the narrated world that reads it, we can begin to understand the importance marked skin may have held in medieval literature and why it appears to be so consciously read in various texts. This may be a vital step in understanding skin before modern, western tattoo-theory, a skin that is at once so similar to and so different from our own.

5The Need to Need:
Natural Bodily Matters in Mediality Discourse

If a body is a text with its own narrative structure,
what does it mean when it is written with excrement?1279

5.1Writing with Faeces, Writing about Faeces

The discussions in the previous chapters have focused to a large degree on descriptions of the appearance of bodies and their assessment by other characters and have highlighted ideas about being seen and being talked about. ‘Natural’ (i.e. anatomical) needs and functions of bodies, on the other hand, were completely absent in the episodes discussed. Yet since BRYAN S. TURNER claims that the body is ‘critically at the conjuncture of the human species between the natural order of the world and the cultural ordering of the world’1280, the question arose whether such interests were indeed completely absent from medieval literature. BRYAN S. TURNER of course talks about real, lived bodies and such concerns about biological functions do not necessarily have to be addressed in literary texts. Texts do not have to present a complete picture of their narrated world but can focus on what is important for narrative development or entertainment purposes. Yet it is apparent that both cultural and natural aspects are indeed observable in medieval literature. This chapter is concerned with the literary representation of physiological topics in the firm belief that to gain a fuller understanding of the importance of bodies in social (and medial) discourse ‘[w]e must investigate every aspect of the body, including the most unpleasant’1281 ones, and even in relation to literary texts.

MORRISON proposes that although there is a ‘plethora of medieval bodies’ (corresponding to my concept of ideas of bodies), ‘they all defecate.’1282 How MORRISON knows this (other than by sheer analogy with real, lived bodies) she does not say, because the matter is only very rarely mentioned in the depiction of narrated worlds. Subjects such as menstruation, defecation, urination, farting, vomiting or sexual intercourse are conspicuously absent in most narratives.1283 In the cases where these ‘bodily matters’1284, as TOMÁS KINSELLA has conveniently termed the sexual and excretory activities he observed in TBC, are present, they are more frequently of a sexual nature. Possible (modern) explanations for this rare mention are feelings of modesty, disgust and/ or unease that the audience and/ or the compilers/redactors might have felt at their mention. Yet since it is extremely problematic to trace pre-modern conceptions of modesty (as DOMINIQUE LAPORTE attempts)1285 or propose a universal concept of disgust in terms of moralisation (as PAUL ROZIN has endeavoured)1286, one may refrain from considering such questions further and instead focus on the actual representations in the texts. The following close readings will therefore address why and how the matters are presented when they are present, rather than try to explain why they may be absent.

Critical investigation reveals that bodily matters are also conspicuously absent from at least the early research in both Celtic and Scandinavian studies. Only in recent years, perhaps triggered by the sexual revolution and the growing interest in the sociology of sexuality in the 1970 s, have sexual matters become the focus of scholarly attention in these fields. Excretory activities or menstruation, on the other hand, are still mentioned far less frequently (in these and related disciplines). In addition to MORRISON’s recent study, LYNN THORNDIKE and ERNEST SABINE devote some time to the topic in their studies on the development of sanitation systems.1287 While studies about historical sanitation systems exist in archaeology, the subject of faeces has, by and large, evaded attention in literary criticism. One notable exception is JEFFREY HENDERSON’s monumental study on Attic Comedy and scatological humour. HENDERSON notes
that the characters involved in these contexts or the persons referred to therein are invariably lowly (rustic and/ or vulgar) or in some way worthy of harsh insult (comical foreigners or the victims of personal attack). Scatological humor in comedy is much more restricted to certain lowly types of character than sexual humor, which often appears in noble roles – for example, in the glorification of the countryside or the praises of peace. Scatological humor, on the other hand, remains quite ignoble.1288

In the later Middle Ages and in the context of the ‘carnivalseque’, these issues do indeed become prominent again, albeit in a very exaggerated discourse, testifying to NORMANDIN’s idea of the ‘satiric intensity of shit’.1289 Yet in the texts examined here, which fall in between these two better-researched periods, mentions of faeces and urine follow a rather different agenda. The initial apprehension that these issues did not relate to mediality was quickly dismissed by examining not only the texts in which they do occur but also the scholarship of other academic disciplines, especially anthropology and sociology. Thus even though this chapter differs considerably from the previous ones, it suitably demonstrates the multifaceted appearance of mediality discourses in medieval literature.

Limiting the area of discussion thematically was again necessary to present a coherent analysis. As examples of a sexual nature in early Irish literature have already been discussed at length by LISA M. BITEL and EDEL it was decided to limit this chapter to defecation, urination and menstruation.1290 The chapter is divided into two thematic parts, outlining bodily functions related to digestive activities (urination and defecation) and the female menstrual cycle respectively. In her pioneering study EDEL argues that in early Irish literature ‘bodily matters’, whether sexual or excretory, ‘are handled in an unembarrassed manner’ and ‘form an integral part of the delineation of characters.’1291 For the present purpose, the question of how these matters, these anatomical necessities, could possibly be narratively developed in such a way as to become meaningful in mediality discourse is most important. Or in other words: how do medial processes function successfully in relation to these matters, and what may they be able to mediate?

In this chapter it will be examined how individual texts depict these matters, on what narrative level they are installed and in which contexts they occur. It will also be determined whether MICHEL CAMILLE’s suggestion that, in general, ‘[m]edieval people did not problematize faecal matters as “dirt”, as Freud’s “matter out of place”’ is reflected in the texts and whether shit indeed ‘had its proper place in the scheme of things.’1292 As in the previous chapters, the intention is to present the examples in their particular development rather than arrive at broad statements about bodily functions in Old Norse-Icelandic or early Irish literature.

5.2What’s the Matter with the Matter? Urinating, Defecating and Social Space

It is perhaps more desirable to start with the related digestive activities of urination and defecation and briefly introduce them together. For one, most of the examples discussed here refer to those two categories and they are also experienced on a (hopefully) daily basis by all living human beings. This universality, this inescapability of the subject somewhat opposes its rare mention in literary texts (even modern ones), where it seems that, by and large, bodies are imagined without such urges. So rarely do these subjects occur in literary criticism, too, that if one seeks to know more about them, it is in fact beneficial to turn towards sociological and anthropological studies.1293 This entails that where these bodily functions are the focus of attention, the interest in them is mostly connected to toilet habits, that is, to the social importance of habitual cleaning rituals. What appears important is the way in which both matter and act are perceived and regulated within a particular culture, society or social group. The pitfalls of using theoretical frameworks of other disciplines in the study of medieval texts have been noted before, and here too these secondary texts will be used merely as a reference framework for directing the gaze. However, as the chapter progressed it became clear that in this case, a short introduction to some important remarks from other disciplines would help to appreciate the close readings more fully.

Both anthropology and sociology offer various assertions of the famous maxim in Les Miserables that the history of mankind is reflected in the history of the cesspits.1294 In these disciplines bodily matters are perceived as a basic assertion of humankind: toilet habits in their simultaneous universality and individuality are frequently seen as an essential ingredient in affirming both human culture and, as a logical consequence, human nature (in the sense of being opposed to animal nature). The sociologist and historian NORBERT ELIAS ‘was convinced that toilet-training was the initial stage of human civilization, and it seemed to him genuinely to explain a gradual bio-psychological refinement of human manners and habits over time’1295, as VIRGINIA SMITH summarises. This leads ELIAS to propose that humankind has undergone a considerable change towards feeling disgust and shame at such matters, together with a privatisation of the act in certain specially designated areas (toilet structures).1296 While some of ELIAS’ work on the processes of civilisation is certainly dated and his representation of the Middle Ages is at best a caricature, at worst derogatory, on the point of toilet habits some of his views are echoed in more recent scholarship.1297

For example, the observation that a sense of modesty is not a naturally occurring phenomenon but can only be understood from a cultural perspective, phrased here by DANIEL FURRER,1298 seems commonly acknowledged. Asking if and in what manner these excretory activities and other basic bodily functions are regulated is therefore vital in placing the individual within or without a particular society. In talking about the natural bodily openings of mouth and anus, AGGERMANN declares that they represent
die einfachsten Zugänge des Menschen zu seinerUmwelt, sie ermöglichen, eine Erfahrung zu machen und eine Spur zu hinterlassen. Im Umgang mit diesen grundlegenden Körperfunktionen werden daher erste kulturelle Formierungen deutlich; die hierbei entwickelten Techniken und Praktiken markieren den Anbruch von Kultur.1299

The easiest routs of access man has to his environment. They facilitate experience [of the environment] and allow him to leave a trace. Cultural formation becomes evident in how these natural bodily matters are regulated. The techniques and practices developed in this respect mark the emergence of culture.

AGGERMANN’s suggestion that by presenting a basic connection between the inside and the outside of the body and hence between human and world, excretory activities tie bodies to the world which they inhabit is worth keeping in mind. It reflects BRYAN S. TURNER’s argument about the relation of natural order and social ordering of the world1300, as certain areas like toilet houses or other places where defecation commonly takes place are assigned special status. In this respect, the use of toilet structures and social concerns about where, how and amongst whom to urinate and defecate become primary indicators for human nature and culture.

This is why leading researchers such as DOUGLAS and ELIAS have devoted considerable time to these issues, yet for reasons of space only the most relevant points will be briefly presented here.1301 In a more recent study SMITH examines the general attitudes which certain cultures at particular times exhibited towards the idea of cleanliness and consequently also towards the appropriate treatment of human waste products.1302 She observes that, for instance, Vedic toilette procedures ‘were laid down for all classes as a religious duty [and] their thoroughness (or lack of it) served as an indicator of religious status.’1303 Because of her attention to the cultural and chronological contexts that shape the social significance of faeces, SMITH’s study provides a valuable thinking-frame for the following analyses.

The brief mention of SMITH’s and AGGERMANN’s findings introduce the possibility that excretory issues were included in medieval texts in an attempt to ascertain or question the human nature of characters or to express social status and/or social prerogatives. However, the possibility that Old Norse-Icelandic and early Irish texts also depict these issues for completely different reasons, such as to shock, anger or amuse, should not be categorically excluded.1304 In order to determine how individual texts depict the matters, it is again best to let the texts speak for themselves and to try and abandon what CAMILLE calls ‘our modern, post-Freudian, notions of excrement linked [only] with decay, infection and death.’1305 Luckily for the reader, ROLAND BARTHES’ sharp remark that when written, shit does not smell1306 will hold true for the analyses – if not always for the primary text’s portrayal. This may help somewhat to open a new focus on such an old matter.

5.2.1Nature and Bodily Matters: The Early Irish Tradition

To start with the Irish tradition is useful because there exists a study which has opened the ground for a thorough investigation of the topic – EDEL’s discussion of bodily matters in early Irish narrative literature.1307 EDEL argues that the depictions of urination in early Irish sources are more than mere mentions of a bodily process and concludes that it may appear as ‘a plausible background or as an illustration of the mood of a scene.’1308 The examples discussed in this chapter further suggest that the urination theme may also motivate or initiate new narrative developments in a text. The motif may thus appear to be consciously installed in order to develop literary concerns. To my present knowledge, all examples that develop the theme of urination at any greater length in the early Irish corpus are connected with women. KICKI INGRIDSDOTTER is right when she observes that the ‘theme of urinating women is rare in Irish literature’.1309 Yet it appears that urinating male characters are at least equally rare and that their acts of passing water are recounted with much greater brevity. EDEL finds that in terms of males passing water, ‘[r]eferences to the sexual and urinary malfunctioning of male persons are quite frequent, both in literary and non-literary texts’.1310 Somewhat contrary to this observation, she cites only two examples that clearly mention urination to illustrate her point.

The first one is found in the already discussed text SMMDT where Cét mac Magach boasts about wounding Celtchar mac Uthidir in his private parts with a spear: [r]o lécus-sa gaí n-aill cucut-su co ndechaid tret shlíasait ocus tre húachtar do macraille. Ataí co ngalur fhúail ónd úair-sin, nicon rucad mac na ingen duit.1311 EDEL’s own translation of THURNEYSEN’s edition clearly states that the sickness is a urinary sickness, while in CHADWICK’s reader, the exact nature of the sickness is unspecified.1312 It is unclear whether this mention of a urinary dysfunction also implies an (additional) shaming momentum for the man so afflicted or is simply occasioned by the anatomical nature of the male body. The second reference discussed by EDEL is found in Cath Maige Tuired (CMT, ‘The Second Battle of Moytura’, discussed further below). The Túatha Dé Danann use magic in the fight against their opponents, the Fomóri. The druid Figol mac Mámois promises to rain down a shower of fire on their opponents, to extract two thirds of their valour from them and bind their urine in their bodies. This intention is clearly stated: [a]tbert dano Figol mac Mámois a ndruí […] arnenas a fúal ina corpoib fodesin 7 a corpaib a n-ech.1313 The mention is obscure since the motif is not developed further and it is unclear what exactly this spell should achieve, other than perhaps a profound unease.

Yet even if one includes such examples that mention an inability to pass water, the references to male characters urinating in literary texts are both rare and brief.1314 One of the few instances in which urinating males are mentioned (if not described in real time) is found in an episode in TBC I, commonly referred to as Córugud Aile. The urination theme illustrates the effect Cú Chulainn has on the male combatants of the hostile Connacht army. When Lugaid mac Nóis uí Lomairc Allchomaig, accompanied by thirty horsemen, comes on a fleeting visit to parley with Cú Chulainn, the Ulster hero asks if the Connacht host holds him in fear. To this Lugaid replies: ʻní laimethar óenḟer ná días úadib tabairt a ḟúail i n-imechtur in dúnaid mani bet fíchtib nó tríchtaib.’1315 The comment is remarkable in that a character openly speaks about the act of passing water, even if just to outline a fact.

Lugaid’s very brief mention suggests that during a martial campaign urinating usually takes place outside the camp. Separating the physical excrements from the social sphere thus appears as an ordinary habit in the narrated world of TBC. The remark further implies that the fear of Cú Chulainn is so great that it interferes with the socially acceptable way of taking care of this need. Because they are afraid, the men ‘dare no longer leave the camp on their own or in the sole company of their close friend to pee in relative privacy, but are forced to respond to the call of nature amidst a crowd’1316, as EDEL phrases it. It is not made clear here or anywhere else if urinating is commonly seen as a distinctly private moment in TBC, which would add an element of personal shame. The comment nonetheless makes it clear that the largeness of the group is extraordinary and occasioned only by the threat of Cú Chulainn’s attacks. Apart from these rather brief conclusions, the passage does not contain any further ground for investigation.

There is also a mention of female urination in early Irish narrative literature that does not develop the theme and thus offers no more ground for study than the male accounts just cited. Fled Bricrenn (‘Bricriu’s Feast’) is a long Ulster Cycle tale preserved in several manuscripts from the twelfth century onwards but reaching back as early as the eighth century.1317 It is primarily concerned with the honour contest between Cú Chulainn and his rivals, Conall Cernach and Lóegaire Búadach. The story receives an unusual twist when their wives suddenly get involved in the proceedings. After heavy drinking at a feast, the wives need to leave the company to urinate in the nearby field. Bricriu ‘prophecies to each of the ladies precedence over the others if she succeeds in re-entering the house first.’1318 Therefore, the wife who runs and urinates fastest (has the most powerful gush of urine) or, alternatively, the one who urinates the least amount, will win this contest. With these diverging possibilities it is not clear which trait graces the winning wife and thus it is impossible to determine the importance of the act of urination in relation to these female figures, although an analogy with Aided Derbforgaill (discussed below) would suggest the former.

There is, however, a possibility that this motif may function primarily as an incentive for the development of the narrative. As EDEL points out, the bodily need provides a legitimate reason to leave the company and hence functions as the natural motor for the contest. For the present purpose it is worth noting that the call of nature is again obeyed not alone but in small groups. Fled Bricrend also indicates that there are no toilet houses or similar constructs at hand (even in or near a hall) but that urination habitually takes place in a field, at least during this particular feast. Yet apart from the influence on the narrative plot the topic is not developed any further, and the discussion now turns to more interesting examples of female urination.

The conspicuous division of the literary development of the motif according to gender has already been noted. The motif of urination may thus be read in a gendered way by connecting it with theories of male and female roles in myth and early literature. ERICA SESSLE claims that in much of recorded myth (and early Irish literature, one might add), ‘the stories are of great deeds, battles and triumphs that have been achieved by men [and] women have been relegated to the world of nature.’1319 The world of nature, in SESSLE’s view, includes all natural bodily matters and consequently also urination. SESSLE maintains that this gendered divide reaches back to mythological subject-matter with both recorded myth and medieval texts offering reflexes of these older (oral, mythological) traditions. CHARLES BOWEN places the urination scenes of Medb in TBC in the context of the mythology of the sovereignty goddess.1320 MOTZ likewise asserts that the Irish tales in which urination occurs are cosmogonic and she therefore favours a mythological interpretation of the motif.1321 While potential mythological reflexes must be acknowledged, the following analyses propose that these are not the only possible explanations for the motif’s unequal development.

In order to argue this, the texts discussed in this subchapter will be situated within the broader understanding of gendered bodies in the Middle Ages. This approach presupposes that even if the texts did preserve mythological reflexes they were not merely fossilised inclusions but somehow adapted to comply with medieval perceptions and be meaningful for medieval audiences. This does not mean that one has to assume that across medieval literature women were solely perceived as ‘leaky creatures’, as SHAWN NORMANDIN proposes in connection with Chaucerian texts, and that thus ‘urine is a convenient sign of female debasement.’1322 It may also be argued that the gender-specific use of the topic could have been conditioned by the medieval understanding of male bodies as warm and dry and female bodies as wet and humid.

This thought refers back to Galen and seems to have been widespread in the medieval period.1323 VERN L. BULLOUGH summarises that Galen
held that the male was superior to the female because he was warmer and it was this greater body warmth that allowed his sex organs to grow outside of the body and fully develop, whereas the woman’s organs, like the eyes of the mole, could never fully develop and only remained embryonic.1324

BITEL claims that the Galenic understanding of the body was prevalent in medieval Ireland1325 and GUÐRÚN P. HELGADÓTTER seems to assume a similar familiarity for medieval Iceland.1326 These opinions suggest that the idea could have been influential in both literary traditions. In order to explain the present approach and avoid getting trapped in overly theoretical presentations, it is best to turn to the texts now.

Perhaps the most spectacular instalment of a female urinating occurs in the Irish Ulster Cycle tale Aided Derbforgaill (AD, ‘The (Violent) Death of Derbforgaill’). In her recent edition of the tale INGRIDSDOTTER dates the text to the beginning of the tenth century, a view also expressed much earlier by CARL MARSTRANDER.1327 The earliest of the three incomplete manuscript copies that preserve the tale is the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, while recensions D and H are dated to the fifteenth century and c. 1700 respectively.1328 In commenting on the narrative peculiarities of the tale, INGRIDSDOTTER finds it ‘very short and the stylistic structure is very compact with each emotionally charged theme building upon, and leading into, another, exploding in the end with what cannot be described as less than a massacre.’1329 The tale is quickly summarised. Derbforgaill, the daughter of the King of Lochlann, assumes ‘the shape of a bird to mate with Cú Chulainn [but] ends up marrying Lugaid Riab nDerg.’1330 Sometime later Derbforgaill is forced to partake in a urination contest and when she wins she is mutilated and killed by the other women participating in the contest. Lugaid dies (presumably of grief) upon seeing his dead wife and Cú Chulainn slaughters the hundred and fifty queens responsible for Derbforgaill’s death, leaving him the sole survivor of the tale. Whether Derbforgaill is killed by the rival queens or whether she dies of shame after being ‘tortured and maimed by her jealous rivals’1331 as EDEL (working with MARSTRANDER’s edition) maintains is unimportant for the present reading, as the urination contest in itself provides ample ground for study.

The contest is described as follows:

[d]o-gníat ind fir corthe mór dint shnechtu. Lotar na mná forna corthe. Ba hé a tuscurnud. ʻTabram ar mún isin coirthe dús cia as sia regas ind. In ben ó ría triit is í as fherr ergaire uainn.’ Ní röacht didiu uadib. Con-gairther Der[b] F[h]orgaill uadib. Nírbo áill lea ór nírbo báeth. Téit araí forsin corthe. Ro selaig uade co talam.1332

The men make a big pillar from the snow. The women went on the pillars. This was their device. ʻLet us make our urine upon the pillar to ascertain who will make it go into it the furthest. The woman from whom it will reach through, it is she that is the best match of us.’ It did not reach through from them, however. Derbforgaill is summoned by them. She did not desire it, because she was not foolish. Nevertheless she goes on the pillar. It slashed from her to the ground.

The text not only echoes the Galenic connection of women with fluid, it also appears to connect the act of urinating with a decidedly sexual element. BOWEN argues that the contest is situated ‘on top of a phallic symbol erected by the men’1333, the mountain made of snow. There is also ample linguistic evidence to support such a conclusion. According to DIL the term coirthe has a primary meaning of rock but is also frequently used to denote a pillar or standing stone. MIRANDA HALES proposes that coirthe is often associated with the human form or the human body and this association may be (consciously) evoked in the episode, making the women quite literally climb a ‘body’ (of snow) to express their fertility.1334

The ‘phraseology of sexual ability’1335(DOOLEY’s phrase) inherent in the two terms congaib and ergaire strengthens a sexual reading of the episode. In examining the expressions used in the episode to denote Derbforgaill’s superiority, INGRIDSDOTTER notes that where LL has congaib, D and H have ergaire, either term denoting what exactly Derbforgaill is superior in.1336 The term congaib has been variously translated as ‘keeps’ (MARSTRANDER)1337, ‘satisfies (encloses) a man’1338(THURNEYSEN) or as ‘equipment’ (BOWEN understands it to mean ‘sexual equipment’)1339. BOWEN sees it as related to the verb con-gaib (‘contains, maintains, keeps’) but on textual grounds relates it rather to the noun conga(i)b which has a primary meaning of ‘gathering’ or ‘host’ and a less frequently attested secondary meaning of ‘equipment’.1340 The term ergaire, BOWEN argues, usually means ‘the act of checking or hindering’, although in some instances it can mean ‘beinga match or an equal for something’.1341 It is also found in Scéla Chonchobair Maic Nessa in a scene describing the size of Fergus’ penis.1342 While BOWEN clearly argues that ‘both readings establish that bladder capacity is synonymous with sexual performance’1343, INGRIDSDOTTER admits that even though there is most likely a sexual meaning inherent in these terms, both are linguistically obscure.1344 However, she adds a further linguistic point in interpreting úan as foam and thus the woman who reaches through is the best carrier of foam, i.e. sperm.1345 Although this reading is again speculative, it is probable in light of the commonly acknowledged sexual content of the episode.

The ambiguous sexual references on a linguistic level are echoed also in the broader readings of the narrative. O’LEARY, in an article concerned with the honour of women in early Irish literature, interprets ‘the bizarre urination contest of the Ulsterwomen [as] clearly designed to test their sexual and reproductive capabilities.’1346 In a similar vein BOWEN concludes that

[j]ust as the phallic myth depends on the notion that a man’s potency is reflected by the size of his genitals, the corresponding female myth […] measures a woman’s sexual power by the capacity of their ‘inner space’, with the bladder undoubtedly serving as an analogue for the vagina and uterus.1347

If one follows BITEL in her assumption that in ‘early medieval theories about women’s bodies […] very little distinction was made between the bladder, the uterus and the vagina’ and that ‘urination carries sexual connotations in many cultures’1348, such a reading is by no means unjustified. EDEL also interprets the urination contest as a means to ‘establish who of them is best equipped to give sexual satisfaction’1349, again linking the competition with a deeper underlying contest of sexual abilities. In this example, urinating is clearly not a spontaneously occurring natural necessity but appears in the decidedly social context of the contest. Like the public gazing at Cú Chulainn’s body in relation to specularity, it is part of a public spectacle, deliberately looked at and assessed.

In view of these sexual connotations, AD has also been the focus of gendered readings.1350 However, in her assessment of previous research INGRIDSDOTTER voices the opinion that most of the hitherto proposed gendered readings are ‘difficult to make without at the same time being highly speculative.’1351 In fact, the main focus of these arguments has been the observation that Derb forgaill’s ability to melt snow ‘like a man’ ‘threaten[s] the gender roles of early Irish society […]’.1352 DOOLEY argues along these lines when she sees the episode as a case of ‘women who will be boys’1353, of females transgressing gender boundaries. DOOLEY bases her interpretation on a variant reading of D and H in which it could be assumed that the men had performed a similar competition before. The female urination contest would then be a ‘close mimicry of men’s games’ and be ‘enabled by the concept of the unity of all bodily fluids and the homology between sexual parts.’1354 INGRIDSDOTTER sees this point of departure as highly problematic.1355 Both D and H simply state that the women went on the mount of snow after the men (who had built it, alas), but there is no explicit mention that the men had been doing anything on the mound before. According to INGRIDSDOTTER1356 there is not sufficient evidence to assume that the men had held a similar competition and since (to my present knowledge) there appears no mention of such a competition in other early Irish texts, this foundation is a rather unstable one for subsequent arguments.

A new reading may therefore contextualise this episode with medieval theories about bodies, and female bodies in particular, without working from the uncertain assumption that the women copy the men’s behaviour. It in part echoes DOOLEY’s reading, which finds Derbforgaill’s body to be expressing her inherent ability to give sexual pleasure and her urine as the medium through which these (threatening sexual) abilities are expressed.1357 Despite this shared point of assuming a medial function for the act of urinating, DOOLEY’s interpretation leads to the conclusion that ‘[t]he violent rejection by the other women of Derbforgaill, the woman who can melt snow like a man, ultimately rests as much on the heat as the amount of urine.’1358 In DOOLEY’s view, this confounds ‘Galenic humour theories of heat as the prerogative of male bodies and moisture of women […]’.1359 DOOLEY consequently sees Derbforgaill as dangerous ‘both as the woman from outside the group’ and also as the woman ‘with the subversive body who might be capable of both giving and experiencing pleasure in sex in ways that usurp a long-standing male prerogative and disturb the standard of gender by which women themselves collectively orient their gender identity.’1360 However, why Derbforgaill’s urine should be particularly hot DOOLEY does not specify, and no such detail is mentioned in the text.

It is worth questioning if the text necessarily proposes such a transgression of gender boundaries or if Derbforgaill could assume this role by urinating ‘like a woman’ also. This line of argument departs from DOOLEY’s proposition that the dual aspects of heat and quantity could both contribute to the melting of the snow. From the point of every-day observance this is of course correct. Yet while the first aspect appears challenging for Derbforgaill’s female identity, the latter aspect can in fact easily express Derbforgaill’s extraordinary sexual abilities in view of the above-mentioned confusion of bladder, uterus and vagina, with the bladder’s capacity in terms of volume expressing sexual abilities. This chimes with the conclusion BOWEN reaches when he argues that both the size of male genitals as well as a woman’s sexual capacity in terms of her ‘inner space’ are a physical measure of sexual power.1361

The idea of Derbforgaill’s urine being hot, on the other hand, is more problematic. Of course, heat would increase the melting of the snow and this would give Derbforgaill an advantage over the other women. Increased heat would also mean that Derbforgaill indeed incorporates a gender-transgressing element, as DOOLEY finds, and this in turn would threaten gender boundaries.1362 There may, however, be ground to challenge the assumption (not reflected in the text) that Derbforgaill’s urine is exceptionally hot. If early Irish texts reflect Galenic humour theories they see female bodies as decidedly wet and cold. Consequently, heat is perceived as problematic in female bodies because it inhibits the reproductive capacity rather than enhances it – a clear contradiction to the previously proposed readings of AD by DOOLEY in which Derbforgaill embodies superior sexual energy. In drawing on other early Irish texts, BITEL observes that ‘even the most fertile of women was unable to conceive when the uncontrollable fire of lust lit her womb and boiled the seeds.’1363 If her urine (and hence also her bladder/uterus) was exceptionally hot, Derbforgaill would have been unlikely to offer enhanced reproductive abilities. This does not categorically exclude the possibility that she may have offered greater sexual pleasure yet reproductive abilities were often vital in ascertaining female status. It is unlikely that Derbforgaill would have been conceived as such a threat by the other women had she been barren. Most importantly, diminished or absent reproductive abilities would contradict the above discussion of the meaning of ergaire, congaib and especially úan, as it is at least questionable that these refer only to sexual pleasure and desire but not to sexual reproduction, as DOOLEY seems to imply.

In following the assumption that Derbforgaill’s urine expresses some superior female abilities there is another possible interpretation of the urination competition that avoids such contradictory inferences. This reading is primarily concerned with the mediality inherent in Derbforgaill’s body, and the medial value of her urine in particular. It argues that the contest is less a case of a female melting snow like a man but explicitly of a female melting snow ‘like a female’. As male urinating contests do not appear to be a common theme in early Irish literature, reference will be made instead to another instance where a man melts snow through the heroic heat that emulates from his body. In TBC the theme is prominently developed in connection with Derbforgaill’s desired man, Cú Chulainn. In Recension I this is narrated as follows: [i]s and ro boí Cú Chulaind iar [m]béim dei a léned 7 in snechta immi ina ṡudiu co rici a cris, 7 ro lega in snechta immi fercumat fri méit brotha in míled.1364 In Recension II a similar motif is found but this is developed somewhat more poetically. When it is described how the Ulster warrior takes off the twenty-seven shirts which he wears it is added:

[o]cus legais in snechta trícha traiged ar cach leth úad ra méit brotha in míled 7 ra tessaidecht cuirp Con Culaind, & ní chaemnaic in gilla bith i comḟocus dó itir ra mét na feirge 7 bruthmaire in míled 7 ra tessaidecht in chuirp.1365

And the snow melted for thirty feet around him on all sides, so great was the ardour of the warrior and so hot the body of Cú Chulainn, and the charioteer could not remain near him because of the greatness of the fury and ardour of the warrior and because of the heat of his body.

In both cases, the melting of snow is connected with the warrior’s ardour, not with any visually observable fluids leaving his body.

It appears that in Celtic literatures in general excessive heat is a common sign of the innate heroic prowess of a male warrior.1366 In his discussion of Cú Chulainn’s furor heroicus, HENRY shows that heat and valour are inextricably linked even on linguistic grounds:

[t]he OIr. verb fichid links up the meanings ‘fights’ and ‘boils’, and the associated noun gal combines the meanings ‘steam, vapour, mist’ with ‘valour’. Gal is verbal noun to fichid ‘fights’ while fi(u)chud is verbal noun to fichid ‘boils’. The association of ‘seething’ with ‘valour’ is assured by the further term bruth which combines these meanings with ‘intense heat’ and ‘fiery glow’.1367

Cú Chulainn’s inherent heroic heat is a perceptible, corporeal proof that he is capable of fulfilling his role as a male warrior. This of course leads back to the expressive mediality of chapter one as it is unlikely that the heat could be trained or improved, just as the ability to urinate large amounts is seen as a natural disposition. In view of these observations it may be argued that the motif of melting snow is included in AD to give Derbforgaill the opportunity to express her exceptional predisposition for fulfilling her female role through her body. The different context in which the motif occurs – martial campaign versus public contest – does not controvert the idea that in using heroic heat/ardour and bodily fluids, the texts may reflect on a Galenic understanding of male and female bodies.

In this respect it is important to remark that although the sexual element has been noted, little has been said about the social significance the sexual theme holds in the episode, i.e. of its medial value. Yet the natural function of the body is used to determine or express not only a natural predisposition but also social status. That women are openly assessed in terms of bearing children (and hence in terms of being useful for society) is a commonly found literary trope, and one which O’LEARY discusses at length.1368 If this is established as a basis for argumentation, it is difficult to see how the text could suggest gender transgression when it so openly asserts Derbforgaill’s female powers. BITEL also voices the possibility that Derbforgaill is killed by the other women precisely because of this exaggerated femaleness: ‘[t]he Ulsterwomen know immediately that her powers would attract all their husbands and lovers, so they attacked and mutilated her […]’.1369 O’LEARY likewise sees Derbforgaill’s death as caused by jealousy: ‘[p]lainly the vicious envy of these women has its source in their awareness that they have been excelled in what they regard as their primary function, pleasing men and providing them with offspring.’1370 Just like Cú Chulainn is at times ‘too much’ of a male warrior to be integrated safely into society, so Derbforgaill is ‘too much of a woman’ to bear for a society which is not her own. The transgression of bodily boundaries ultimately echoes a transgression of safe social boundaries, a transgression which eventually leads to Derbforgaill’s tragic demise.

Aided Derbforgaill presents the most elaborate instalment of urination in early Irish literature, yet perhaps the best-known urinating female character is Medb in TBC. Both recensions of TBC feature scenes of Medb passing liquid bodily fluids, yet the academic consensus now appears to be that this refers to urinating in TBC I but more likely to menstruating in TBC II, which is why the episode of the second recension is discussed in the following subchapter (5.3.). From the point of mediality studies, the two recensions also appear to deploy the urination/ menstruation theme to mean radically different things. While the reading of Comrac Fir Diad (CFD, ‘The Fight against Fer Diad’) in the first recension will suggest that the passing of water is connected not just to Medb herself but also to the male warrior Fer Diad, the menstruation scene in Recension II may better be discussed in an onomastic context.

In CFD in TBC I, Medb passes water when Fer Diad leaves the Connacht camp to face Cú Chulainn in single combat. When Fer Diad rides out in his chariot early in the morning, Medb is still inside the royal tent: [i]s and dorala Medb ic scriblad a fúail for urlár in pupaill. ʻIn cotlad do Ailill innosa?ʼ or Medb. ʻNad ed ámh,ʼ ar Ailill. ʻIn cluine do c[h]liamain núa ac celebrad duit?ʼ1371 In opposition to the male warriors discussed above, the queen (as a royal female) is allowed ‘the luxury to obey nature’s call in the relative privacy of the royal tent’1372, as EDEL phrases it. In assessing the scene as a whole it is easy to agree with EDEL that the ‘loneliness of the hero who is about to leave for the deadly encounter […] is accentuated by the casual character of the farewell scene.’1373 EDEL and DOOLEY agree that this scene serves to trivialise the hero’s leave-taking by deflating the heroic drama, an interpretation that seems to have become somewhat standard in the few discussions treating the episode.1374 However, there are several points that propose caution in sharing these analyses. For one, DOOLEY’s view that Medb’s behaviour is lewd and that the motif serves to ridicule the hero (from the point of the text but not of Medb) is problematic on various grounds.1375 DOOLEY bases her assumption on Medb’s ‘casually obscene physical frankness’ and sees her gesture as ‘a sexual display which is inappropriate to the mother of the bride on the morning after his agreement to marry’1376 her daughter. DOOLEY remarks further on the ‘casually obscene openness [which] trivialises the elegiac attitudinizing of Fer Diad.’1377

No comment will be passed here on a possible medieval understanding of appropriate behaviour for a (future) bride’s mother. Yet it should be pointed out that there is no mention in the scene of Medb openly, i.e. deliberately displaying herself to Fer Diad (or any other characters, including her husband) or of there being a sexual element to the scene. It merely describes Medb at a private moment early in the morning when she attends to physical needs. EDEL appears to share this restraint when she observes that ‘[t]he bodily function was too much a part of everyday life’ to be seen as lewd, and the act is ‘situated here in the relative seclusion of the royal tent.’1378 There is, however, the possibility that the text uses this unusual and striking motif to cynically point towards Fer Diad’s own (and apparently only) bodily flaw, which ultimately becomes his downfall: a natural bodily opening. In this reading the urinating would appear more as a deliberate installation by the text rather than a conscious gesture by Medb. To explain this angle on interpreting the episode it is necessary to read the passage in context and include a brief discussion of Fer Diad’s extraordinary gift, his conganchness (‘horn-skin’).

Fer Diad’s special skin is mentioned in both recensions, yet for the present purpose references to TBC I suffice.1379 In Recension I the horn-skin distinguishes Fer Diad from other warriors and it also opposes him to Cú Chulainn’s powers of attack. The horn-skin is first mentioned the night before the combat, when Fer Diad is introduced at the feast as in Conganchnesach a hIrrus Domnand.1380 The importance of the skin is explained by Fergus as follows: ‘dáig cnes congnai imbi oc comroc fri fer. Nochon nosgabaid airm ná fáebair.’1381 Fer Diad’s special skin is mentioned prominently in other contexts as well, both by the narrative voice and Fergus. The attention it receives suggests that it is of great importance for the character, as well as during the fight against his foster-brother. On the morning of the impending encounter when Medb observes how the hero leaves the camp, her own body therefore implies a stark contrast to his. The first thing to note is that while Fer Diad can be assumed to be readied, bathed and beautified, Medb has obviously just woken after a night of heavy drinking and first attends to a basic, physical need. The invulnerable (because apparently impenetrable) and highly heroic male body of Fer Diad is paired with the royal female body that, in the act of passing water, openly refers to bodily orifices.1382

Metaphorically, Medb’s body presents a stark contrast to the literary (or perhaps even mythic) concept of the impenetrable heroic male body. While this does not suggest that Fer Diad is unable to follow his physiological needs and pass water or defecate, it is possible to propose a conscious juxtaposition of a body engaged in a natural activity and a body depicted in stylised, heroic glory. This echoes MCCRACKEN ’s observation that in medieval medical and theological discourses ‘the idealized male body is usually described as sealed, intact, and conservative; by contrast, the female body is usually described as uncontained, and permeable.’1383 While this dichotomy is not always observable in medieval literature, it may be included in TBC I through the motif of the horn-skin. As Fer Diad’s body corresponds to the idea of the closed-off male body in the extreme, it is perhaps not surprising to see Medb’s body in a similarly extreme position: in the act of leaking. Medb’s passing of water gains importance by becoming an integral part of mediating her body and with it her identity, just as Fer Diad’s horn-skin in integral to his identity.

There is another text, perhaps a derivative story from a lost version of the Táin, named Táin Bó Flidaise II (TBF II, ‘The Cattle Raid of Flidais II’) that also depicts Medb as urinating. In this case it is clear that Medb’s urination shows her innate power and this has prompted BOWEN to relate her portrayal in TBF II to a divine nature, what he calls a ‘supernatural prototype’1384, a characteristic trait of the figure discussed further in the next subchapter (5.3.). For the moment it suffices to stress the effect to which the motif is prominently developed, as in this case the urination is so powerful it even changes the landscape:

neither root nor underbrush nor stick of wood was left, down to the gravel of the earth, but it was stripped bare, and the mighty stones remained afterwards. And neither root nor growth nor grass, in its pure, lovely ripeness, was left in that place forever after, so that Leacán (‘Stony Place’) and Mún Medhbhi (‘Medb’s Urine’) is the name of that place since then.1385

If this episode is indeed linked to Medb’s divine nature, she is seen as a very destructive figure who wreaks great devastation on the land. Like Derbforgaill, Medb’s potential to urinate may reflect her fertility, yet because in this case this potential is drawn outside the lines of normal capacities, a usually positive attribute causes death and destruction.

Two things are immediately obvious: Medb shapes the landscape by creating a flood (a negative change, so to speak), and in this she names the place, after its subsequent appearance and after herself. Regarding the first aspect, a thorough discussion of the connection of female figures with rivers can be found below in the analysis of the episode of the menstruating Medb in TBC II (5.3.). At this point it is sufficient to draw attention to the fact that, just as her destructive aspect is repeatedly stressed in connection with her martial campaigns, Medb’s destructive qualities are likewise inscribed in the landscape of TBF II. Whether this episode arose from thoughts about the destructive nature of female menstrual fluid (held widely in medieval thought) is of no importance here.1386 What does matter is that the fluid quite literally mediates between her body and the world, making her destructive potential clear for everyone to see.

Medb’s act of urination and the urine itself are irrevocably inscribed in the narrated world of TBF II. They thus mediate between the moment of inscription (urination) and an imagined time after, a time which incorporates the history of the cattle raid and therefore her-story too. Such onomastic concerns are often very prominently developed in early Irish literature, not just in the Dindsenchas (‘Lore of Places’), texts concerned (almost) exclusively with this issue. In TBC, for instance, KATHERINE R. FRAZIER counts over eighty such original onomastic stories in the text and concludes that ‘[p]lace-names situate stories and characters in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and the Táin’s audience, within a cultural heritage. These place-name stories cover a range of situations, but they all are defined by their commemoration of people and events.’1387 The same can also be said about other texts such as TBF II. The fact that this particular onomastic scene is tied to a urinating female might betray a gendered agenda to the episode, yet it may also be necessitated by the fact that a completely and permanently barren place can only with difficulty be explained by combat or war. Yet a flood connected with the Connacht queen herself might have seemed a suitable storyline.

If, as FRAZIER concludes, place-names can be said to ‘commemorate people and deeds’ and allow ‘people to use them as a way to connect to heroes and other incidents that occurred at that same place and, from their shared mythology, to form a sense of community’1388, what may be the underlying commemorative concern of the urinating Medb in TBF II? Quite simply, it may also ‘serve to situate people in the mythology’1389 of their own geography by linking the land to a mythical past, and this past to the present of the audience. This reinforces CHRISTOPHER TILLEY’s argument that landscape is ‘an anonymous sculptural form always already fashioned by human agency […] and the relationship between people and it is a constant dialectic and process of structuration: the landscape is both medium for and outcome of action and previous histories of action.’1390

In commenting on the frequent occurrence of such episodes narrating a changing or naming of the landscape in early Irish texts, especially in connection with mythological beings, EDEL states that ‘the Irish think of their history mythologically; and so, too, of their geography. Every strange feature of the soil of Ireland is the witness of a myth, and, as it were, its crystallization.’1391 It is therefore likely that the episode in TBF II reinforces an understanding of the figure of Medb as reflecting divine nature, and a figure which is perhaps in her very name associated with a liquid, mead.1392 A human queen, one might argue, could hardly urinate so much as to destroy a whole landscape. Therefore her urine does not only mediate onomastic concerns, it also helps to reinforce a somehow divine identity for Medb. This is yet another example in which an apparently natural bodily fluid mediates on various different levels and is consciously installed to fulfil this medial function. Even though the motif is somewhat baffling for modern readers, strikingly similar ideas can also be discerned in an example from the Prose Edda, discussed below (5.2.2.).

Descriptions of faeces and defection in early Irish texts are equally rare. There are only five references currently known to me that involve faeces, but in these instances the theme is developed with considerable care and for specific purposes. EDEL’s general conclusion that while ‘urination is to a certain extent socially acceptable in the Irish texts, defecation is always degrading’1393 is echoed in all but one of the examples discussed here. The same may be said about HENDERSON’s observation that mentioning these otherwise concealed matters is most often used to insult a character.1394 However, humiliation is hardly ever the only concern for its inclusion and often the subject is developed much further, as the individual texts will demonstrate.

One reference to faeces and to the human need to keep clean is found in the story of Athairne & Amairgen, preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster.1395 In this text, Amairgen mac Eccit, the son of a smith, whose ugly appearance has already been discussed in chapter three in relation to Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad appearance (see 3.2.2.), neither speaks nor washes himself until he is fourteen years of age. When the servant of the chief Ulster poet, Athairne, visits the smithy the youth utters a cryptic poem. The poem is so remarkable that on hearing it recited by his servant, Athairne seeks to kill the boy because he fears for his position. In a twist of events, however, he is forced to accept Amairgen as his foster-son and in time Amairgen does take over as the chief poet of Ulster.

The role of speech in establishing human identity has been outlined at length in the discussion of the Norse hero Sigurð (see 3.2.1.). What is remarkable in the case of Amairgen is that this motif is paired with a lack of self-cleaning as well as with a wholly unpleasant appearance. The description of his appearance has already been quoted at length in chapter three (3.2.2.), but two details were deliberately omitted there. For it is also stated that matter protrudes from Amairgen’s orifices: a smucli asa sróin inna beolu and [d]ia follaigthe cu ciana inna suidiu cen foglanad doacmaised a múrtraide dó cotice a di leiss.1396 While the other descriptive paradigms commonly express an unpleasant and uncouth appearance, these two are quite unique. No other description of a character currently known to me features such details. Strikingly, they involve a transgression of bodily orifices, with bodily fluids protruding from these cavities and remaining on the body. DOUGLAS contends that because all margins are dangerous, ‘[w]e should expect the orifices of the body to symbolise its specially vulnerable points. Matter issuing from them is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind.’1397 In the case of Amairgen, no such fear of transgression or of the transgressing fluids is observable. In both cases the process of transgression is perceived as natural and what draws attention is Amairgen’s neglect to take care of these processes, to clean his nose or his buttocks.

This lack of attention to his appearance even on such a basic level may portray Amairgen as aligned more with animals than humans, as these basic cleaning rituals may be assumed (through absence of evidence to the contrary) even of all the other negative or marginal figures in early Irish literature. As mentioned above, toilet habits and knowledge of how to clean oneself can be seen as an assertion of basic human civilisation: ‘[e]in sauberes Arschloch’,WERNER PIEPER finds, ‘ist die Visitenkarte des zivilisierten Menschen.’1398 The text also implies that Amairgen is removed from the process of allogrooming, the looking after the cleanliness of other group members. Allogrooming is an important step in human group and social formation, as SMITH argues at length.1399 That Amairgen is not subject to this practice assigns him a place outside ordinary human society and/or a caring family.1400

In the case of Amairgen these descriptive paradigms could express his delayed development rather than a persisting flaw. When he leaves the world of the smithy and is accepted into the society of poets, it can be assumed that these matters change. Just like with Sigurð, his first act of speaking propels him into human society and he can then assume a human role. The image of the youthful Amairgen may simply present a stark contrast to his later position of honour and high social status, where – as nothing to the contrary is mentioned – it may be assumed that he is properly cleaned around the anus (and nose). The unusual and highly attention-grabbing mention of Amairgen’s faeces-stained buttocks may then provide the sharpest possible contrast to his future. It may also express his momentary social state, as WILLIAM MILLER proposes that the anus represents ‘the essence of lowness’1401– and an unclean anus therefore an even worse position.

On another level, the mention may also contain a foreshadowing that, as a born poet, Amairgen will (eventually) allow poetry to flow out of his body as freely as his bodily effluvia. WILLIAM MILLER asserts that in Western culture, the ‘mouth and the anus bear an undeniable connection’1402, a conclusion he sees reflected in many different contexts. MILLER adds that the mouth and the anus ‘are literally connected, each one end of a tube that runs through the body. No great feat of metaphorization or cultural imagination was needed to show that what went in at one end came out at the other.’1403 In Amairgen’s case, it is the radical shift of attention from emitting faeces through his anus to emitting great poetry from his mouth that is remarkable. That Amairgen’s youthful body could perhaps also reflect associations with women (in the sense of female bodies being perceived as leaky, as has been argued above) is not mentioned or developed in the text, which is why this possibility is disregarded. In conclusion, it can be stated that this particular example uses faeces to situate a character on the border of the most basic realms of society and thus within a clearly liminal position with regards to human nature.

A further mention of excrements is found in TBC in Cú Chulainn’s encounter with Láiríne mac Nóis, brother of King Lugaid of Munster.1404 The episode occurs in both recensions but since there is little variation only TBC I will be quoted for reasons of brevity. It is important to note that the warrior Láiríne is introduced as exceedingly proud and even his brother, Lugaid, finds him boorish, foolish and arrogant.1405 Despite this thoroughly negative assessment, Lugaid begs Cú Chulainn not to kill Láiríne, which may explain why the Ulster hero faces the opponent unarmed and forcibly takes Láiríne’s own weapons from him. What follows then is just as degrading as the disarming:

[g]abaid íarom eter a dí láim 7 cotmeil 7 fochrotha con sephaind a channebor ass combo búadartha in t-áth día chacc 7 combo thrúallnethe aér na cethararda dia dendgur […] Céin robo beó ní thaudchaid a brú for cóir. Ní robai cen clíabgalar. Níro loing cen airchissecht.1406

Then he [Cú Chulainn] seized him [Láiríne] with both hands and squeezed him and shook him until he drove his excrement out of him and the water of the ford was turbid with his dung and the air of the firmament was polluted with his stench. […] As long as Láiríne lived, his inward parts never recovered. He was never without chest-disease; he never ate without pain.

In TBC II the squeezing apparently carries such force that a mist arises from the excrements.1407 EDEL also interprets the encounter as a (deliberately) humiliating response to Láirine’s arrogant character.1408 Not only does he have his insides literally turned to the outside during the encounter but his faeces also have an impact on the landscape: a river and the air in TBC I and a mist in TBC II. This makes the humiliation plain for everyone to see and, presumably, also smell. This is the only example in early Irish literature that plays on the sensory perception of faecal matters to others, visualising and (implicitly) odourising them in the process. Even if forced out of the body, faeces are not only tied to the narrated world’s landscape but also link characters to each other. The faeces also testify to Cú Chulainn’s strength. Cú Chulainn’s body mediates the total control that he exhibits in dealing with his opponent while his opponent pointedly loses control over his insides. Láiríne’s body and his faeces thus become medially charged, not just with respect to himself (and to his future ailments) but also in connection with Cú Chulainn, a fact which draws attention to the various possible ways of installing such a motif in heroic texts.

A very different mention of defecation is found in Orgguin Trí Mac Diarmata Mic Cerbaill (‘The Death of the Three Sons of Diarmait mac Cerrbeóil’). The text is included in the section of Rawlinson B 502 entitled Scélṡenchas Lagen, as GREENE explains.1409 GREENE sees the stories about Maelodrán as ‘related to historical times by the reference to Diarmait mac Cerbaill, but they are simply an account of the bravery and cunning of a popular Leinster hero […]’.1410 The tale contains a sub-plot in which faeces are prominently mentioned: the story about Maelodrán. This tells how Maelodrán makes peace with his enemy, King Diarmaid, and is readmitted into the king’s retinue after having been exiled for killing the king’s son.1411 Maelodrán goes into hiding but soon finds himself in a situation where he can ‘gain the upper hand on his seemingly far more powerful opponent’1412, as NAGY finds in his discussion of the text. The episode is short enough to be recounted in its entirety:

[l]uig-sium co mboī issint sluagh for brū Innsi Locho Gabur. Lottur in rī[g] do ōl co mbātar issin innsi. Anaid-sium chaidthi forsin phurt. Antar dono don immramh. Tēit-sium issin lestar 7 luid-sium isin n-innsi. Con-tolat in rīgh. Boī-sium fri dorus in rīgtighe. Luid dano Diarmait amach oenar do dhul for aīnsuide cen fis do neoch, co comarnaicc fri Moelodrān i nddorus ind tighi. Toboing dlaī lat dam, ar Diarmait. Tó immorro, ar Moelodrān. Do-beir tēora dlaii doo: dloī di ūrnenaigh, 7 dlaī do fomthonn 7 dlaí do athrathai luaid. Ac so at lāim mo cloigem, ar Diarmoit. Ro ngab Maelodrān. Fē frit, a gilla, ar Diarmait, rom goin dlaī, rom loisc dlaī, rom tesc dlaī. Amai, a gilla, cia h’ainm[‐siu]?1413

[Maelodrán] went to where the army was, on the edge of the island on Loch Gabur. The kings had gone to the island for a feast. Maelodrán stayed until night in a dwelling and waited to row over. He then got into a boat and went over to the island. The kings were asleep. Maelodrán waited at the door of the royal booth. Unbeknown to anyone, Diarmaid went outside alone to relieve himself. ‘Pick a wisp for me,’ said Diarmaid. ‘Right away,’ said Maelodrán. He brought three wisps to him: a wisp of fresh nettles, a wisp of thistle, and a wisp of … [?].‘Take my sword,’ said Diarmaid. Maelodrán took it. ‘Woe to you, gilla,’ said Diarmaid, ‘a wisp wounds me, another burns me, and a third cuts me. Alas gilla, what is your name?’1414

In this example only the act of defecating but no faeces are mentioned and the scene is decidedly different in its outlook from all other examples.1415 For one, it is the only reference to faeces being passed voluntarily, in an every-day setting and also to the wiping of the rear after the act, which apparently takes place in a bush. The scene shows that Diarmaid exhibits proper care after the call of nature has overtaken him and wipes himself with whatever is at hand (in his case the hand of one of his men). His demand for something to wipe himself with mediates his superior position as king, while the act itself demonstrates his familiarity with appropriate toilet habits.

The episode is unique in the present corpus in its reference to wiping the anus. According to SMITH,

[t]oilet habits apparently divide universally into ‘washers’ or ‘wipers’ – and most ancient peoples were wipers […] These words refer to how people clean themselves after they have excreted. Washers use water, wipers use some solid material like grass, leaves, paper, sticks, corncobs, mudballs, or stones.1416

King Diarmaid apparently does not have any pre-made wiping material to hand but instead relies on the commodities of nature, using whatever is available. This echoes the example quoted from Fled Bricrenn where the women went into a field to urinate during a feast. It cannot be determined here whether this arrangement of simply removing oneself from buildings is the usual toilet habit depicted in early Irish texts. Conversely, in Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin (‘The Story of Cano meic Gartnáin’), on the island of Inis Maic Uchen a toilet-house-like construction – fíaltech – is mentioned.1417 The island in Loch Gabur on which Diarmaid dwells may simply not have such a construction, but an equally valid explanation for the king’s retiring to a bush at night is the narrative plot itself. In this case, the king has to literally ‘go into the wild’ and clearly and deliberately crosses the culture-nature divide. This added reliance on nature, which does not seem to be connected with any fear on the part of the king, is what allows the text to develop the theme of the reintegration of Maelodrán. Only in these circumstances can Maelodrán’s plan work: he takes advantage of the fact that King Diarmaid relies on his retinue to present him with suitable wiping-material. It has been mentioned before that this demonstrates the King’s superior social status, but it also reveals his most dependent side.

Whether King Diarmaid is indeed ‘helpless, humiliated and sorely pressed’1418 after this simple act of defecation, as NAGY concludes, is a matter of interpretation but he certainly is at the mercy of Maelodrán. By exploiting the physical body and its weaknesses Maelodrán succeeds in re-joining the social body of the king’s retinue. It is striking that his re-entering the royal retinue, the royal body that signifies society, is based on him taking advantage of the physical body of the king. In this example metaphorical body and physical body oscillate, a theme which is also found in the Old Norse-Icelandic examples discussed below. It is also worth noting that this re-integration takes place in nature and with the help of the ‘weapons of nature’, hence in a place that is a complete opposite to where Maelodrán actually wishes to be in terms of narrative space. Yet to achieve his goal, Maelodrán needs to take a detour via nature, and maybe even via the king’s back side, so to speak. The episode shows an ingenious and perhaps even humorous awareness that at certain moments, the physical body dictates the needs even of a king – a fact that can be cunningly exploited by his inferiors.

The fourth reference to excrement occurs in the mythological text Cath Maige Tuired (CMT, ‘The Second Battle of Mag Tuired’), a text already briefly quoted above in relation to urination. In another episode, the text combines excremental with sexual spheres. In her study of this episode, EDEL remarks that although the older version of CMT is only preserved in a sixteenth-century manuscript, this episode may belong to a younger stratum of the text and it is therefore likely that in its unusual tone it reflects idea(l)s prevalent at this time.1419 Yet even so, the episode is too remarkable not to be briefly discussed here. CMT narrates how when the people of the Túatha Dé Danann seek to overthrow the unjust king Bres under the leadership of the god Dagda, Bres asks his paternal kin, the giantish Fomóri, for help. When battle is near, the Dagda is sent to the Fomóri to delay them for a while. He asks for hospitality and is granted a gigantic meal: [n]os-lintar core cóecduirn an ríog dóu a ndechotar cetri ficet sesrai do lemlacht & a cubat cétnai de men & béoil. Doberthar gabair & cóerig & mucau indtie, & nos-combruithiter lei.1420 When the Dagda has finished this meal, he falls asleep with a belly that is as big as a house cauldron and only leaves when the Fomóri laugh at him. On his way back, he (or rather his uncovered penis since his clothes are straining over his belly) leaves a deep ditch in the landscape. In this state he meets a lovely young girl and desires to lay with her despite his momentary state.

However, because of his huge belly he is impotent and the girl mocks and finally overthrows him. When he also proves unable to carry her on his back to her father’s house, the girl resorts to a physical assault: [d]uscaru aitherrach & slaithe go léir, gorolín na futhorbe imbe do caindiubur a pronn […] Is íarum gonglóisie asin derc íar telcodh a prond.1421 EDEL sees the following bodily matters in this remarkable episode:

the Dagda’s grotesque appearance and his impotence (both the result of the gigantic meal forced on him by the Fomore in the previous episode), his defeat by the young woman who beats the excrements out of him, she baring her genitals to him, followed by his regained potency and their subsequent love-making.1422

It is clear that the huge meal has impeded the Dadga in his function as a virile male, and he can only regain it through physical force and sexual promiscuity: both the beating out of his excrements as well as the girl bearing her genitals are important for the Dagda to regain his virile strength and have intercourse with her. The beating out of his excrements by a girl, although humiliating, is therefore a necessary prerequisite to return him to his ‘usual form’, both in terms of his shape as well as his sexual prowess. Here, perhaps more than in any other example discussed, we have an interpretation of faeces in a truly natural context, as the effect an excessive amount of faeces have on the body if they remain inside is described. The forceful but comic tone of the scene – or the ‘rugged strength and directness’1423 which CROSS and SLOVER have attributed to CMT – depends to a large extent also on the likewise forceful and humorous beating out of the excrements.

The fifth and last example to be briefly discussed here is found in the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland and as such stretches the boundaries of the present corpus, but it is too remarkable not to be included. The episode is discussed briefly by MORGAN T. DAVIES and LAPORTE.1424 The anecdote tells of how Áed Uaridnach, Northern Uí Néill, High King from 605 to 612, bathes in a river during a martial campaign before he becomes king. When travelling past Othan Mór, the monastery of St Muru in Donegal, Áed washes himself in the river that flows through the monastic town. As he is about to wash his face with the water, one of his men warns him not to do so. Áed asks for the reason and is told that the clergy’s privy is right above the water, with urine and faeces falling down into the river after each use. To the question of whether St Muru himself uses this privy the young man answers yes and a gleeful Áed then not only washes his face but also drinks the water with the following explanation: úair as sacarbaicc leam an t-uiscce i ttéid a imthelgun.1425 DAVIES sees this as a ‘unique display of piety in the annals’1426 and the ingestion of the cleric’s imthelgudh (‘faeces’) does testify to an attempt by Áed to incorporate some of the holiness of St Muru.1427 In this case faeces clearly mediate holiness: St Muru is so holy that even his excrement becomes desireable to the devoted Áed.

That Áed may have played a cunning game here (his act of devotion clearly impresses the saint who is helpful and supportive once Áed becomes king) is possible, but this does not distract from the medial value of the faeces. To Áed the human waste products radiate such holiness that it even spreads to the water into which they fall. The connection saintly body-faeces-water-Áed’s body ensures that the holiness is mediated to the prospective king. That to the modern mind holiness and faeces seem somewhat contradictory does not deter from the strong medial potential natural bodily matters hold in this episode.

In conclusion, it may be stated that in early Irish texts faeces do appear as matter yet they appear as matter in the discourses of society or nature rather than as matter in – or out of – place. Faeces may also be necessary in re-gaining an identity, as in the case of the Dagda or of Maelodrán but they can also have a lasting impact on nature. Even though the matter has left the body, it does not cease to speak but simply changes its position within the structure that is corporeal mediality. In the end, MORRISON is right in polemically stating that ‘[e]xcrement, disciplined by humans in both physical and symbolic ways, is crucial in understanding how a culture works and is structured.’1428 An attempt at understanding these social structures has been made in the previous readings yet the subject is by no means exhausted.

5.2.2Culture and Bodily Matters: The Old Norse-Icelandic Tradition

Parallels have at times been noted between early Irish and Old Norse-Icelandic literature in relation to bodily matters. DOOLEY, for instance, remarks that ‘women who urinate/menstruate rivers’1429 are found in both traditions, a comment which suggests a parallel to the urinating Medb in TBF II. It is unclear whether DOOLEY is aware of further examples or whether in fact she is also talking about the episode in which the giantess Gjálp threatens the male god Þórr with her urine. The episode is found in Skáldskaparmál in the Prose Edda, a work commonly attributed to Snorri Sturluson. The Prose or Snorra Edda was composed c. 1225 by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson and is extant in various manuscripts from around 1300 onwards.1430 The work contains the four parts Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal. It seems now commonly agreed that is was a handbook for Norse poets, since it contains important guidelines for composing and understanding skaldic poetry.1431

Skáldskaparmál (‘The Language of Poetry’ or ‘Poetic Diction’) provides explanations for the obscure kenningar and heiti commonly used in skaldic poetry.1432 These explanations are framed by a question and answer game played out between Ægir and the áss Bragi.1433 The episode discussed here (chapter eighteen of Skáldskaparmál) explains how Þórr came to be called jötunn Vimrar vaðs (‘the giant of Vimur’s ford’). The prelude to the urination scene is that Loki had been captured by the giants and only regained his freedom because he promised to send Þórr to the giant Geyrrǫð without his hammer, his belt of strength and his iron gloves. Loki tricks Þórr into undertaking the journey without these symbols of his divine power but on his way to Geyrrǫð, Þórr meets the helpful giantess Gríð, who replaces his tokens of strength. Soon after, Þórr faces the dangerous river Vimur as a last challenge before he finally fights Geyrrǫð, ascertaining his divine strength by prevailing over river and giant alike.

The motif of Þórr crossing a rising river or encountering hostile giantesses also appears in other sources. Amongst them is Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa, a poem dated to the tenth century by WOLFGANG MOHR and MOTZ.1434 Þórsdrápa also features a similar scene of Þórr confronting a giantess by a river but its rendering of the episode differs in various respects.1435 For one, Þórr most likely encounters more than one giantess, and it is not entirely clear if the dangerous rising of the river is triggered by these giantesses or whether it has a natural cause.1436 Because the combination of a urinating giantess and the crossing of a dangerous river is found with certainty only in Skáldskaparmál, the following discussion will be limited to this text.1437

Snorri recounts the scene as follows:

[þ]á fór Þórr til ár þeirar er Vimur heitir, allra á mest. Þá spenti hann sik megingjǫrðum ok studdi forstreymis Gríðarvǫl, en Loki helt undir megingjarðar. Ok þá er Þórr kom á miðja ána þá óx svá mjǫk áin at uppi braut á ǫxl honum.1438

Then Thor approached the river Vimur, greatest of all rivers. Then he buckled on the girdle of might and pressed down on Grid’s pole on the side away from the current, while Loki held on beneath the girdle of might. And when Thor got to the middle of the river, the river rose so much that it washed up over his shoulders.1439

But Þórr is by no means defeated by its waxing and sings the following lay: ʻ[v]axattu nú, Vimur, | alls mik þik vaða tíðir | jǫtna garða í; veiztu ef þú vex | at þá vex mér ásmegin | jafnhátt upp sem himinn.ʼ1440 Þórr challenges the river by stating that his own waxing in divine strength will help him overcome this dangerous situation. The cause of the danger is presented through Þórr’s eyes: [þ]á sér Þórr uppi í gljúfrum nokkvorum at Gjálp, dóttir Geirrøðar, stóð þar tveim megin árinnar ok gerði hon árvǫxtinn.1441 By outlining Þórr’s perspective it is made clear that it is the giantess’ urine that causes the river to swell so dangerously. This observation contradicts MOTZ’S argument that giantesses, no matter how grotesquely drawn, are ‘never seen in relation to their bodily needs and functions’1442– a comment which also needs revising in the following discussion of Lokasenna.

Snorri’s account in the Prose Edda thus ‘separates the danger to the god emanating from the river itself, which is described as large, from the additional threat posed by the urinating giantess Gjálp who straddles the stream higher up the mountain’1443, as MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS states. Yet far from being dazed by this sight, Þórr immediately seeks to stop the second of these causes of distress: [þ]á tók Þórr upp ór ánni stein mikinn ok kastaði at henni ok mælti svá: ʻAt ósi skal á stemma.ʼ Eigi misti hann þar er hann kastaði til. Ok í því bili bar hann at landi ok fekk tekit reynirunn nokkvorn ok steig svá ór ánni.1444 What is mentioned only implicitly in the text has been interpreted by modern scholarship to mean one thing: that Þórr throws the stone into Gjálp’s urinary opening or her vulva to seal the source of the flow.1445 But before commenting on this unusual ending, there are other interesting points in the episode to be discussed first.

CLUNIES ROSS’ discussion opens the possibility of seeing the narrative as a conflict of Þórr’s divine strength (ásmegin) at odds with the forces of nature represented by the giantess.1446 She bases her conclusion on the fact that the river is filled not with urine but with the menstrual flow of mother earth, Jorð, Þórr’s mother in North Germanic myth.1447 This interpretation is shared in parts by VILHELM KIIL. KIIL likewise assumes the fluid to be the outpouring menstrual blood of a giantess, although his interpretation of the kennings appears little convincing.1448 Against CLUNIES ROSS’ proposition of an ‘early Scandinavian thought-pattern which conceived rivers as essentially female features of the landscape and thus described them in terms of human female effluvia’1449, MOTZ convincingly argues that there was no specific connection between rivers and femininity in Germanic folklore, literature or myth.1450 MOTZ asserts that the ‘cosmic waters belong, on the whole, with male rather than with female beings.’1451 Nowhere in folktales or literature, she concludes, is there a similar trope to be found, making Snorri’s account an interesting ground for studying an unusual and imaginative development of a motif with a corporeal dimension.

These brief references to past scholarship demonstrate that the episode has been subject to mostly mythological interpretations. From the point of a probable mythological origin of the episode, CLUNIES ROSS argues that
it is sometimes difficult to decide whether we are dealing with an overt personification of the river as a urinating, or, as Kiil argued, menstruating giantess, Gjálp, or whether the kennings which draw a parallel between female effluvia and the rushing river are operating on the level of symbolic equation.1452

In similar vein, MOTZ proposes that the giantess causes the fury of the icy river by her powers over wind and weather, not by urinating into it1453, and MOHR divides the episode in a volkstümliche Form (‘popular form’, i.e. Þórr and the giantess) and a Hochform (‘high form’, i.e. Þórr and the river as a force of nature).1454

These approaches all draw heavily on Eddic mythology, yet they perhaps do not do justice to Snorri’s unique rendering of the river-crossing episode. Assuming that it is solely a power over watery elements which makes Vimur swell up would not suitably explain Þórr’s ingenious way of stopping the flood by stopping Gjálp urinating. The present reading proposes a parallel structure of a mythic body (personified element) and a literary imagining of this mythic body as a real body (giantess), with the two oscillating between each other and resulting in the character Gjálp. In basing the discussion solely on Snorri’s version, the analysis will therefore maintain that in this text the giantess appears as an individual character in the narrated world and not as some ephemeral entity personifying the river, and that she is urinating rather than menstruating.

In contextualising the episode with TBF II it is readily observable that although both texts connect female urine with a destructive flood, there are profound differences in the development of the motif. For one, Gjálp’s urine does not form the landscape by creating a new river and/ or destroying the fertility of the land in the process. But it does change the narrated world’s nature temporarily because the quantity of the urine makes the existing river much stronger. Gjálp’s urine can therefore be said to incorporate a destructive element (in its quantity), and also in the aim for which it is emitted: to hinder Þórr from crossing the river or even to sweep him away. In this lies the crux of assessing this episode for the present chapter. Unlike Medb’s, Gjálp’s urination is not depicted simply as a natural compulsion of the human body but the passing of urine is undertaken with a purpose in mind. This would lead to a rephrasing of MOTZ’S observation that giantesses are not drawn against bodily needs with an added point that their bodily needs may be drawn for specific narrative purposes.1455 Gjálp’s urination is installed solely to threaten Þórr and the natural bodily function thus appears as primarily bound to the narrative’s needs, not her own.

Even so, the association of a giantess with (flowing) water is rather rare in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, although the idea of giantesses incorporating untamed natural forces which threaten male supremacy and need to be conquered in order to maintain the status quo has been discussed elsewhere.1456 In relation to giants and water, MOTZ observes that while there are examples of male giants causing waterways, ponds or streams, ‘on the basis of folklore, poetry and myth we cannot ascribe cosmogonic significance to the specific effluvia of women.’1457 This means that for Snorri such a connection was not readily available but had to be created specifically for this episode.

It is therefore interesting to ponder why Snorri created the image of a urinating giantess in Skáldskaparmál, and why he decided to use this particular figure to change an ordinary river into a raging one.1458 MOTZ suggests that Snorri may have been familiar with the figure of the Morrígan squatting over a river in the Irish text CMT.1459 Although no reference is made there that the Morrígan is urinating, if this image was known to Snorri (and this is debatable) it may have provided inspiration for the development of his own narrative as it offers a ready explanation for how a river may swell quickly. If the urinating was simply a convenient explanation for a quickly waxing river, Þórr’s way of stopping it might have influenced the gender of the urinating figure. While Þórr could prevent a giantess from passing water with a well-aimed stone to seal the bodily opening (with the vagina again standing in for the urinary tract), fulfilling the same task with a male giant would have proved more difficult.

With the help of these observations it may be argued that the urination theme follows both a narrative as well as a medial agenda, even if the urine itself is perceived more as a simple fluid than a bodily excretion. On a narrative level it explains why this crossing is especially difficult even for a god like Þórr, who in Eddic mythology frequently wades through waters, usually without any major difficulties. The medial aspect of the urination theme may be observed most clearly in that the giantess’ urine serves to express her gigantic, powerful and threatening nature, which in turn allows the god to show his own divine strength and skills. It may be concluded that the theme of urination is developed in a mythical, not a social context but it is still a vital signifier in relation to a character’s identity.

In further contextualising the episode it may be argued that not only Þórr’s prowess and strength should be tested but that he also has to overcome a possibly humiliating situation. CLUNIES ROSS voices the idea that ‘Gjálp’s urination from a height upon the struggling Þórr is a type of symbolic níð, whose import is that the god is to be considered ragr if he fails to assert himself in a situation in which his female opponent has assumed a dominating posture that threatens his ásmegin.’1460 The humiliating aspect of the scene may nevertheless rest less on the fact that it is water mixed with urine in which Þórr is submersed. Rather, the humiliation is best explained by reference to the positioning of the characters in the space of the narrated world and the concept of níð. MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN defines níð as follows:

[n]íð signifies gross insult of a symbolic kind. Usually the allegation is to the effect that the person who is the object of níð is a passive homosexual or has been used in this way, thus that he is ragr. The purpose of níð is to […] isolate an opponent from society by declaring that he is unworthy to be a member. The man attacked must show that he is fit to remain in the community, by behaving as a man in the system of Norse ethics; that is to say, he must challenge his adversary to battle, or avenge himself by blood-revenge.1461

While of course Þórr is not referred to as a passive homosexual in Skáldskaparmál, his position below Gjálp and her urinating onto him clearly situate him in a problematic, passive role. Furthermore, the scene can be said to incorporate a sexual element because of the urination, which implies that the giantess is bearing (if perhaps not openly displaying) her genitals above him. Þórr now has to prove himself and he does so by hurting Gjálp in her very womanhood. While there may well also be a humorous side to the resolution, in the context of an implicit níð, Þórr’s throw (symbolically) marks out – even destroys – Gjálp’s female side and vulnerability as he ‘penetrates’ her with a stone. Yet only if one imagines Gjálp as separate to the river, and only if she has an actual physical body that is both urinating and vulnerable, does Snorri’s resolution of harming precisely this spot work.

Snorri’s inventive inclusion of this idea into his account is even more remarkable given the uniqueness of the motif in Old Norse-Icelandic texts and Eddic mythology. MOTZ draws attention to the fact that such a stone-throwing act also appears in early Irish literature.1462 In a variant version of Mesca Ulad (‘The Intoxication of the Ulstermen’, extant in twelfth-century manuscripts) the woman Richis bears her genitals to Cú Chulainn who bows his head and refuses to fight her foster-son as long as she remains in this position. Cú Chulainn’s charioteer, Láeg, then casts a stone into what is probably Richis’ vulva, shattering her back and killing her.1463 No comment will be passed here on the origin or diffusion of the motif but MOTZ’S argument that there are several other motifs in Snorri’s work that appear in the Irish tradition but are otherwise foreign to Germanic literature do point towards the introduction of non-Germanic ideas.1464 By seeing Snorri’s account as a unique and ingenious combination of motifs it might become clear why the urination motif itself defies any deeper analysis within the context of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, and Eddic mythology in particular. The motif of the urination is comprehensible only within the wider context of Nordic concepts, such as níð.

In moving on from the Prose Edda to the Poetic Edda an interesting mention of females urinating is found in Lokasenna (‘Loki’s Quarrel’). Lokasenna belongs to the mythological part of the Poetic Edda that is preserved in the Codex Regius (c. 1250).1465 PHILIP N. ANDERSON sees Lokasenna as ‘one of the masterpieces of the eddic tradition’ and the text shows a highly developed structure.1466 ANDERSON summarises that the poem ‘consists of sixty-five stanzas, written mostly in ljóðaháttr (‘chant meter’), a six-line verse form common to Eddic poems’, although in Lokasenna there is a seventh line which expresses the force of the poem and the words spoken.1467 The term senna emphasises that the text is situated in the Norse tradition of ritualised humiliation, a fact that is also evident in the largely dialogic structure of the poem which lends itself to repeated insults. SIMEK sees the text as situated between the classical tradition of the ritualised shaming poems and the Norse níð-poetry.1468 Lokasenna is set ‘just before Ragnarǫk, after Loki’s misdeeds have tainted all the gods and caused the death of Baldr’.1469 It tells of a flyting contest between Loki and the Æsir. After Loki has been thrown out of the banquet hall he marches back in and starts taunting the gods, accusing them of various (all too human?) failures, to which the gods retaliate.

The tone of the text prompts CAROLYNE LARRINGTON to ask whether it is ‘simply a Christian’s burlesque of the disreputable ways of the pagan pantheon [or whether] the poem [has] a serious meaning for a pagan poet […]’.1470 In either case, some of the individual taunts clearly depict disreputable actions, one of which is connected to bodily fluids. In stanza 34, Loki taunts the Vanir god Njǫrð with the following anecdote: [þ]egi þú, Niǫrðr, | þú vart austr heðan | gils um sendr at goðom. | Hymis meyiar | hǫfðo þik at hlandtrogi | ok þér í munn migo.1471 It lies in the nature of the text that Loki utters this insult, yet this presents the only example in the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition currently known to me in which the act of urinating is described by a character and not through the narrative voice. However, the focus lies less on the females urinating but rather on the male god being urinated on, on Niǫrðr functioning as a pissing-pot in the worst possible way: by having to provide his mouth as a vessel.

MAX HIRSCHFELD contends that this insult may be related to Þórr’s encounter with Geirrǫðr’s daughters, as both feature a male god being urinated on by a giantess, although under rather different circumstances.1472 In Lokasenna it is mentioned that the urine is directed specifically at Njǫrð’s mouth and that the act of urinating is practiced deliberately and as an insult. It may also be assumed that the act is repeated every time the daughters need to urinate, which transforms a natural need into a humiliating ritual. On a mythological level the image may have been influenced by the identity of the giant and his daughters. DRONKE remarks that the giant Hymir lives east of Élivágr, the icy primordial waves, and is a known enemy of the gods. DRONKE interprets the pissing-image in that she sees ‘the great ocean as Njǫrðr’s mouth and all rivers flowing into it like giant girls – Hymir’s daughters – pissing into a urine trough.’1473 DRONKE concludes that Njǫrð ‘is mocked as a urine-trough into which the rivers trickle as giantesses’ piss […]’.1474 This would suitably explain the underlying idea of the insult, yet it again neglects the corporeal element through which this idea is expressed.

Njǫrð being mocked as a piss-pot is not the only humiliation that may be inherent in the stanza. If one imagines the scene, the daughters of Hymir would need to squat right above the god’s face, baring their genitals while towering over the male figure. In this image may lie the second humiliating aspect of the mention and this is related to the previously discussed example from Snorra Edda. The females take an active and superior (i.e. traditionally male) role while condemning Njǫrð to a static and passive position below them. The possibly humiliating position of a male figure below a female one has already been briefly introduced in the above discussion of níð.1475 MCKINNELL argues that this ‘coarse motif is probably an instance of the god being placed in a comically embarrassing situation’ and that ‘the context there is again one of comic humiliation […] However, in this case it also contains a violent quasi-sexual element.’1476

CLUNIES ROSS likewise asserts a sexual, if not a comical element to the scene when she sees it as ‘a reversal of normal sex-roles in such encounters, according to the ethological evidence.’1477 LARRINGTON’s brief comment on the episode suggests a very different reading. She asserts that ‘Niord is a god of the sea’ and thus ‘the daughters of the giant Hymir are conceivably the rivers which flow down into the sea.’1478 LARRINGTON’s reading hence offers the same logical explanation for the positioning of the characters yet it does not explain why this incident should be so shameful as to be recounted by Loki in this particular context. It is therefore more likely that although the image may have been triggered by mythological ideas, the corporality of the scene, as well as the resulting insult, are intended and thus vital parts of the episode. There is once again a dual perspective on bodies to be observed.

In interpreting further along these lines, a reversal of the natural bodily order is also evoked by forcing bodily excrements – a waste product – back into the oral cavity. The significance of the insult can be explored by referring back to AGGERMANN’s comment on the diagonal relationship between mouth and excretory openings.1479 In the case of Njǫrð and the giantesses, excretion (‘Ausscheidung’) and incorporation (‘Einverleibung’) are juxtaposed in a reversed way, as the bodily waste product of the daughters is once again injected into Njǫrð’s body. Trying to explain this humiliating treatment of a god, LARRINGTON asks if ‘mockery of the gods [was] sanctioned as part of worship, as the medieval Church sanctioned the Feast of Fools’.1480 In this reading, the episode would shine in a very Christian light. Yet whatever context one favours, it is clear that the urinating episode presents not only a reversal of the common order (of excretion and incorporation and male and female roles), but also plays on feelings of disgust. As a whole, it mediates a picture of the narrated world as temporarily quite literally upside down, in which both natural processes and the larger order are unnaturally reversed.

In turning to urinating males in Old Norse-Icelandic texts it appears that they are both equally rare and equally unassuming as in the early Irish material.1481 One example can be found if we return to the Prose Edda and to Skáldskaparmál in particular: the story of how Þórr rides into Jǫtunheim to fight the giant Hrungnir. Since Hrungnir is the strongest of giants, his companions fear for the safety of the whole race should Þórr win the duel. For some unstated reason (concerns about fair play?) it appears that they cannot have another giant fight beside Hrungnir. But they come up with an ingenious solution: a non-giantish warrior. Before Þórr’s arrival, the giants create a figure of clay:

[þ]á gerðu jǫtnar mann á Grjótúnagǫrðum af leiri ok var hann níu rasta hár en þriggja breiðr undir hǫnd, en ekki fengu þeir hjarta svá mikit at honum sómði fyrr en þeir tóku *ór *meri *nokkvorri, ok varð honum þat eigi stǫðugt þá er Þórr kom.1482

Then the giants made a person at Griotunagardar of clay, and he was nine leagues high and three broad beneath the arms, but they could not get a heart big enough to suit him until they took one out of a certain mare, and this turned out not to be steady in him when Thor came.1483

It is interesting to parallel this figure with Hrungnir himself, who is said to have a spikey heart of solid stone, as well as a head and shield of stone. This brief description aligns the two warriors in terms of being composed of solid, static material, rather than of flesh. The text further develops the parallel image by mentioning that the giant stood next to Hrungnir as Þórr approached: [á] aðra hlið honum stóð leirjǫtunninn, er nefndr er Mǫkkurkálfi, ok var hann allhræddr.1484 However, the issue of similarity is raised only to stress the most incredible of differences: while Hrungnir has a heart of stone, Mokkurkalfi was given the heart of a mare because no other heart was big enough to fit him. However, this turns out a disadvantage since the heart is unsteady and full of fright, a detail that creates another contrast between the two characters. While Hrungnir looks forward to the duel, Mokkurkalfi is visibly scared: [s]vá er sagt at hann meig er hann sá Þórr.1485 The reference is clear in stating that out of fright, an involuntary passing of urine occurs. The phrase svá er sagt suggest that somehow, the incident is reported backwards as it can be assumed that it is the people who observed this who instigated the later recounting. The text thus indirectly affirms that the incident has passed into history but that the shameful moment was visible to all present.

What is striking in this example is that it is not a man or a giant who is afraid of Þórr, but a creature made of clay, if one follows ANTHONY FAULKES who renders Old Norse mǫkkr with ‘dust’.1486 The urination motif is transferred to an inanimate figure which would not be able to pass water in any case, yet this only strengthens the effect of the scene and multiplies the feeling of fear which Þórr evokes. It also humorously breaks the strong likeness with Hrungnir that had been evoked immediately before this mention. That it is the heart of the mare that is responsible for this shameful faux pas is to be assumed. Yet it is perhaps not in relation to the idea of female bodies being leaky or wet that this should be argued, suggesting that Mokkurkalfi is turned into a female because he bears the heart of a female creature. It is more likely that the female heart is simply responsible for the intense fear that is so great it is given visual expression through the body. The disparity of the otherwise static, rigid and impenetrable body of the clay giant is ingeniously, perhaps even humorously, countered by adding the liquid, moving and very human element of urine. On a literary level this contrast is very poetic and the medial value of the urine in expressing extreme fear of Þórr is plain to see (quite literally) in this short example. If Þórr can incite such fear even in clay figures, he truly must be a (the?) most renowned fighter.

In the discussion of the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition it is also important to examine a much more substantial matter: faeces. What is immediately striking in researching defecating in Old Norse-Icelandic literature is that often the references are not concerned with the act or the matter itself but with the socially appropriate place where the act should take place. It is therefore beneficial to recall CAMILLE’s remark and see if shit really did have its proper place in the scheme of things and if so, how this scheme was delineated and how transgressions were perceived and resolved.1487 With the absence of clear references to defecation in Old Norse-Icelandic texts it was somewhat difficult to divide the examples, as the episodes examined below do not explicitly describe defecation rather than urination. However, from a contextualised reading it can often be assumed that defecation is presented. That the matter itself takes a backseat behind the social implications of defecating echoes general observations about the culturally formative aspects of toilet habits. Having observed these varying agendas, it now remains to turn the focus once again to the individual texts.

In Old Norse-Icelandic literary texts toilet structures are mentioned in various sources. Yet such buildings are by no means newly emerging in this era. In fact, they can be traced back for a considerable time in archaeological and Classical sources. SMITH mentions that

[a]t the famous Neolithic settlement on the island of Skara Brae in the Orkneys between 3100 and 2500 BC, six small interlinked stone-built houses were erected to a remarkable standard of Stone Age convenience and comfort. Each contained […] a drop-latrine built into an outside wall […].1488

FURRER lists several other archaeological and literary examples for early toilets from Pakistan/India (2500 BC), Mesopotamia (c. 2400 BC), Egypt, Crete and Hellenic Greece, as well as the map of the medieval monastery of St Gall (dated c. 820).1489 FURRER argues that all of these examples already betray a real effort to limit defecating to certain places in the house by providing toilet systems specifically adjusted to an individual society’s needs.1490

The same concern may be proposed for the portrayal of such structures in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The only mention of toilet arrangements that does not refer to a specially built structure is found in the Prose Edda in Hávamál (‘Sayings of the High One’). In stanza 112 Óðinn offers a piece of advice to Loddfáfnir: he should not get up at night unless he is on guard or needs to seek a place to defecate or urinate outside.1491 This mention is very brief and does not give a clear picture how ‘seeking a place outside’ is to be imagined, yet it does suggest that natural bodily needs were observed in an outside space. This idea is stated clearly in the realistic setting of the Íslendingasögur. In Laxdoela saga, the location of the toilet is described in detail: [í] þann tíma var þat mikil tízka, at úti var salerni ok eigi allskamt frá boenum […].1492 Such a toilet house is described also in þorsteins þáttr skelks (discussed below), where it is said to have eleven seats on each side. In Dámusta saga it is related how Damusti lives in three rooms he carves into a rock after becoming a religious recluse: sá var einn kofe, er hann var á bænum, annar var sá, er hann suaf j, sá þridie, er hann gieck j naudsijnia vegnna.1493 The similarity of these descriptions makes it likely that toilet structures were indeed imagined as situated outside the main house of a farm even in literary texts. This is a valuable point to consider since literary depictions of toilet habits do not necessarily have to coincide with what historical or archaeological sources reveal.

The position of toilets on the edge of farms is further supported by linguistic evidence. H. KUHN argues that there is no ancient Germanic word to denote a toilet structure.1494 Words used frequently include gangr (denoting that one has to leave the company) or kamarr and salerni, both being translatable as ‘privy’ and suggesting a separate, house-like structure. In Old Norse we find several other names, including garðhús (‘yard-house’), náð-/ náða-hús (‘house of rest’), skál-/skála-hús (‘shedhouse’), heimilishús (‘home-house’) and even annat hús (‘the other house’), all confirming the notion that a separate house was built as a privy.1495

It must be remarked that such structures, and indeed the bodily needs at large, are mentioned most commonly in the realistic narrated worlds of the Íslendingasögur. While it has become clear that references are also found in both the Prose and the Poetic Edda, except for the brief mention in Dámusta saga (just cited), the original riddarasögur do not feature any such references (to my present knowledge). A possible explanation for this is the realistic tone and setting of the Íslendingasögur and their fictional portrayal of ‘real bodies’ and real, ordinary life, their literary imagining of the Icelanders’ past. This clearly distinguishes these texts from the narrated worlds (and bodies) of the original riddarasögur, in which anatomical needs are, by and large, absent. The mention of toilet structures in the Íslendingasögur may reflect the importance such structures held in the world of the sagas, which aimed to show the civilisation process of Iceland. Given BÖLDL’s observation of a general distinction between civilised inside (the farm) and uncivilised outside (nature), it becomes clear that the proper inclusion of bodily needs within the social realms becomes important especially in relation to the idea of colonising – and hence culturalising – the land.1496

Both the importance of the regulation of bodily needs as well as the problematic liminality of the subject are present in an episode in Eyrbyggja saga (‘The Saga of the People of Eyr’), where the theme of separating sacred and/or social spaces from places where defecating is appropriate is developed with considerable care. The saga is preserved in a large number of manuscripts but its dating is somewhat problematic, with R. M. PERKINS voicing the general opinion that this saga was probably compiled in the second half of the thirteenth century.1497 BERNADINE MCCREESH observes that three versions of the text survive, the best copies of the fourteenth-century codex Vatnshyrna.1498 MCCREESH further asserts that the saga was most likely composed in the area in which the narrative takes place1499, giving added weight to the issues described here.

The episode narrates a colonisation process through the erection of a Þing place and a temple by a man called Þórólf. At the beginning of the episode Þórólf is a prominent chieftain in Norway and maintains a temple to Þórr. However, he finds himself in trouble with King Harald, sacrifices to Þórr and is told to move to Iceland. When he approaches Iceland on his ship, Þórolf casts the high pillars of his old temple (which he had deconstructed and taken with him) over board and vows to settle wherever they drift ashore. The episode thus suggests that for Þórolf, Þórr himself has ordained this place as holy, an important fact to keep in mind. As soon as he lands, Þórólf has a temple built and this is described in detail, including the vessel from which the blood of live animals was sprinkled during ceremonies. In stark opposition to this contained space where blood has a ritualistic function, Þórólf is keen to keep any bodily fluids (faeces and blood) out of the place where the Þing is held:

[þ]ar sem Þórr hafði á land komit, á tanganum nessins, lét hann [Þórólfr] hafa dóma alla ok setti þar heraðsþing; þar var ok svá mikill helgistaðr, at hann vildi með engu móti láta saurga vǫllinn, hvárki í heiptarblóði, ok eigi skyldi þar álfrek ganga, ok var haft til þess sker eitt, er Dritsker var kallat.1500

Thorolf used to hold all his courts on the point of the headland where Thor had come ashore, and that was where he started the district assembly. This place was so holy that he would let no one desecrate it, either with bloodshed or with excrement, and for a privy they used a special rock in the sea which they called Dritsker.1501

This outlines a basic division of the newly settled land: the holy temple, in which blood is an integral part of rituals, the place of law (Þing place) where human and animal fluids are forbidden, and the skerry, a place in nature, where bodily needs may be observed. As an authoritative figure, Þórólf culturalises the land and the division he creates is adhered to in subsequent generations, as his descendants venerate the place where their forefather had come ashore and the name of the skerry passes into common usage.

Eyrbyggja saga thus outlines an incident where new boundaries are drawn by the first settlers and their descendants and examines the problematic aspects of this act through the organisation of natural bodily needs. Þórólf may indeed be (somewhat) overly concerned with holy places. This is evident also in relation to a mountain he calls Helgafell: [í] því nesi stendr eitt fjall; á því fjalli hafði Þórólfr svá mikinn átrúnað, at þangat skyldi enginn maðr óþveginn líta ok engu skyldi tortíma í fjallinu, hvárki fé né mǫnnum, nema sjálft gengi í brott.1502 Þórólf names the area around Helgafell Þorsnes, again linking the land to the God he venerates (most). He believes that he and his family go there when they die. Þórólf’s attempt to protect the area from everything that he perceives as unclean is thus perhaps also motivated by the wish to create a clean and holy place for himself and his kin to dwell in after death.

Þórólf’s paralleling of sacredness with cleanliness, both in relation to human faeces and blood, is remarkable in both examples. It chimes with DOUGLAS’ observation that ‘[h]oliness and impurity are at opposite poles’ and ‘sacred things and places are to be protected from defilement.’1503 DOUGLAS argues that this structuring of the world into different categories also in relation to separating the holy from the profane and allocating various degrees of (ritual or bodily) cleanliness to those categories is a frequently observed concern. ‘If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt’, DOUGLAS concludes, we are left with the ‘old definition of dirt as matter out of place. […] Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.’1504

A similar concern of separating places of co-habitation from places where faeces are passed is found in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy. There the distinction is a simple twofold matter:

Thou shalt have a place without the camp to which thou mayst go for the necessities of nature, carrying a paddle at thy girdle. And when thou sittest down, thou shalt dig round about, and with the earth that is dug up thou shalt cover that which thou art eased of.1505

The passage is clear in advocating that excrement should not be found in the place where one lives, for the reason that God may walk among the men in the camp. In Eyrbyggja saga, the matter lies somewhat differently as it is connected to the socially important (but not continuously inhabited) place of the Þing. The demand for clear boundaries to regulate where faeces may be passed is, however, exactly the same.

In Eyrbyggja saga, it is not a religious commandment that creates this separation but an authoritative figure, Þórólf. However, Þórólf’s system is not supported by or compatible with the society of his descendants other than his immediate family. It verges on the extreme and it is soon explained that this leads to serious conflict. Whether or not this is meant as a critique of individuals proclaiming such distinctions (rather than the law which, eventually, resolves this issue) cannot be determined here. Yet it is clear that people find themselves humiliated by having to go to defecate on the skerry:

[þ]at var eitt vár á Þorsnessþingi, at þeir mágar, Þorgrímr Kjallaksson ok Ásgeirr á Eyri, gerðu orð á, at þeir myndi eigi leggja drag undir ofmetnað Þórsnesinga, ok þat, at þeir myndi ganga þar ørna sinna sem annars staðar á mannfundum á grasi, þótt þeir væri svá stolz, at þeir gerði lǫnd sín helgari en aðrar jarðir í Breiðafirði; lýstu þeir þá yfir því, at þeir myndi eigi troða skó til at ganga þar í útsker til álfreka. En er Þorsteinn þorskabítr varð þessa varr, vildi hann eigi þola, at þeir saurgaði þann vǫll, er Þórólfr, faðir hans, hafði tignat umfram aðra staði í sinni landeign; heimti hann þá at sér vini sína ok ætlaði at verja þeim vígi vǫllinn, ef þeir hygðisk at saurga hann.1506

One spring at the Thorsness Assembly, Thorgrim Kjallakson and his brother-in-law Asgeir of Eyr declared publicly that they would no longer tolerate the arrogance of the Thornessings and meant to ease themselves there on the grass just as they would at any other meeting, even though the Thorsnessings, so full of their own importance, thought their land more sacred than any other in Breidafjord. The Kjalleklings let it be known that they were planning to waste no more shoe-leather on trips to any off-shore skerry whenever they felt the demands of nature. When Thorstein Cod-Biter heared about this, having no intention of allowing them to desecrate the field his father Thorolf held sacred above all his land, he gathered his friends around him with the idea of barring the Kjalleklings from the Assembly Ground by force should they attempt to desecrate it.1507

The most interesting point to note here is that although it is clear that people feel humiliated, it is not because they have to defecate amongst each other. In fact, they are quite happy to simply walk a few steps and relieve themselves on the grass, an apparently common practice during a Þing. What humiliates them is the long walk to the Dirt Skerry but also that Þórólf’s descendants impose this on them, thus proposing that they are somehow in a position to regulate other people’s ‘business’ outside the common norm.

Feelings of personal modesty and violation of proper order collide in this extreme division of land even after Þórólf has died. One evening, the Kjalleklings, after having eaten their supper, do not follow the way to the Dirt Skerry when they are going to defecate. They are attacked by Þórólf’s family, led by Þórólf’s son, Þorsteinn. Þorsteinn is particularly enraged at their threat to desecrate the field his father held sacred, and much blood is spilled in the subsequent fight. In order to resolve the conflict, friends of the two parties send for Thord Bellower, the most prominent chieftain in the area, whose task it is to reconcile them in their respective demands. The Kjalleklings clearly state their request: at þeir myndi aldrigi ganga í Dritsker ørna sinna, en Þorsteinn skilði þat til, at Kjalleklingar skyldi eigi saurga vǫllinn nú heldr en fyrr.1508 The issue is only resolved when after a complex legal assessment the now bloodied and defiled Þing place is moved to the east. This move suggests that only a re-structuring of the geographical location of this socially meaningful place can finally lay the conflict to rest.

At the heart of the problem lies the crux of where defecation is not only allowed but can also be observed securely, comfortably and in a dignified way: either a suitable construction (a toilet house) or a comfortable place like a meadow (apparently a more usual spot at a Þing). People are genuinely appalled by having to walk a considerable distance (which the phrase troða skó implies) and suffer the discomfort of the rough location. Their reaction also suggests that they feel that Þórólf’s descendants are overly proud and violate the norms of hospitality in assuming that ‘their’ Þing place is holier than others. In trying to keep the holy place clean, Þórólf and his descendants instigate the extreme of banning people’s physical needs entirely into nature. They neglect to acknowledge that these bodily needs should take place in a social or socially acceptable place (and space). The regulation of bodily needs, and of the resulting matter, is presented as being a defining part of society and culture, and a failure to acknowledge this leads to affronting people and hence to serious conflicts within society.

The issue of personal hygiene in commonly frequented places is raised again in a rather casual remark when the new Þing place and its judgement circle are described: í þeim hring stendr Þórs steinn, er þeir menn váru brotnir um, er til blóta váru hafðir, ok sér enn blóðslitinn á steininum. Var á því þingi inn mesti helgistaðr, en eigi var mǫnnum þar bannat at ganga ørna sinna.1509 The final remark that people were allowed to defecate and urinate in the Þing place even though it was highly esteemed presents a stark contrast to the first Þing place where faeces appeared as irreconcilable with holy and social structures. The new Þing place presents a normal engagement with the issue from the point of view of the narrated world. Blood and excrement do not appear to be unholy, but are (perhaps because they are natural bodily fluids) successfully integrated into the social space.

This may be related to the observation that the first Þing place was seen as inherently sacred by Þórólf because it was the place where land was first claimed, the place that Þórr ordained and that instigated the socialisation of space. The second place has no such history and thus appears practical rather than sacred in its nature. This may also be why the shedding of blood is likewise tolerated, if it occurs as part of a ritual practice, a custom to which the stones bear witness. It may well be that the two issues are interrelated, that in allowing the holy place to be stained with blood, other bodily fluids like urine or faeces are can also be integrated.1510

This implies that social space and bodily fluids are not categorically opposed to each other in the narrated world of this saga. What this example from Eyrbyggja saga shows is that the newly colonised island changes from an apparently purely geographical landscape into a social landscape. Distinctions between inner – holy or social places – and outer realms – nature – are drawn and negotiated and finally need to coincide with social expectations to avoid problems. In this episode defecating truly mediates between the characters and the world that they inhabit, yet upon it several other important concerns of the (newly instigated) society are also played out. Shit does indeed have its proper place, but this place needs to be assigned first. And the compilers/redactors of the saga show that in their view, bodies and natural bodily needs were an integral part of establishing these social systems on the newly colonised island. As is usual for a Íslendingasaga the bodies are depicted in a naturalistic manner, so much so that their very basic needs may become the focus of attention.

The episode is also found in Landnámabók (‘The Book of Settlements’), a text which describes the process of colonising Iceland. SVEINBJÖRN RAFNSSON dates its origins to c. 11001511 but PÁLSSON points out that no extant version dates from before the thirteenth century.1512 Landnámabók may therefore not be confused with a historical record of the colonisation of Iceland, but, as RAFNSSON insists, nevertheless had a profound influence on the later perception of this period in many sagas.1513 Although the issue of where to defecate is not developed to the same degree of narrative importance as in Eyrbyggja saga, the version of Landnámabók compiled by Sturla Thordarson and preserved in the thirteenth-century Sturlubók will also be quoted here, for the sake of completeness.1514 Whether Sturlubók and Eyrbyggja saga had the same compiler, as some critics propose1515, or whether the former borrowed from the saga is of no concern here. What is important is that Landnámabók presents the episode a lot more casually and with less concern for the insult and calamity inherent in the Dirt Skerry incident:

[þ]ar á nesinu, sem Þórr kom á land. hafði Þórólfr dóma alla, ok þar var sett heraðsþing með ráði allra sveitarmanna. En er menn váru þar á þinginu, þá skyldi víst eigi hafa álfreka á landi, ok var ætlat til þess sker þat, er Dritsker heitir, því at þeir vildu eigi saurga svá helgan vǫll sem þar var. En þá er Þórólfr var dauðr, en Þorsteinn son hans var ungr, þá vildu þeir Þorgrímr Kjallaksson ok Ásgeirr mágr hans eigi ganga í skerit ørna sinna. Þat þolðu eigi Þórsnesingar, er þeir vildu saurga svá helgan vǫll. Því bǫrðusk þeir Þorsteinn þorskabítr ok Þorgeirr kengr við þá Þorgrím ok Ásgeir þar á þinginu um skerit, ok fellu þar nǫkkurir menn, en margir urðu sárir, áðr þeir urðu skilðir. Þórðr gellir sætti þá; ok með því at hvárigir vildu láta af sínu máli, þá var vǫllrinn óheilagr af heiptarblódi. Þá var þat ráð tekit at foera brutt þaðan þingit ok inn í nesit, þar sem nú er; var þar þá helgistaðr mikill, ok þar stendr enn Þórssteinn, er þeir brutu þá menn um, er þeir blótuðu, […].1516

On the headland where Thor had come ashore, Thorolf used to hold all his courts, and established the district assembly there with the approval of all the people in the neighbourhood. When people attended the assembly it was agreed no one should ease himself on that piece of land, and a special rock called Dirt Skerry was set aside for it, because they didn’t want to defile such a holy place. After Thorolf’s death when his son Thorstein was still young, Thorgrim Kjallaksson and his brother-in-law Asgeir refused to go out to the rock to ease themselves. The Thorsnessings wouldn’t stand for their desecrating a place as holy as that, which is why Thorstein Cod-Biter and Thorgeir the Bent fought over the rock against Thorgrim and Asgeir at the assembly. Several men were killed there and a good many wounded before they could be separated. Thord Gellir took charge of the reconciliation, and since neither would give way, the field was considered to be defiled by the spilling of blood in enmity. So it was resolved that the assembly should be moved from there to the eastern part of the headland, where it still is. This became a very sacred place too, and Thor’s boulder, which was used for the killing of those who were to be sacrificed, still stands there.1517

In this account it appears that Þórólf did not reach the initial decision alone but that it was a communal one, yet still problems arise in later generations.

No further mention is made of where bodily needs could be observed in this new Þing place and the characteristically tense narrative style of Landnámabók is apparent in the resolution of the issues. The act of defecating is still the main motor for the events to unfold, yet it is not narratively developed: no feelings of overbearing pride or personal humiliation are mentioned, and no remarks are passed on why it may have been problematic to banish people’s physical needs to the Dirt Skerry. WALTHER HEINRICH VOGT, presuming Eyrbyggja saga to be the source for this episode, proposes that such a skipping of emotional reasons together with the shortened appearance of the narrative in Landnámabók are indicators of a revision or even a destruction of original narratives.1518 One may refrain from such harsh judgement and rather see the factual claim of Landnámabók as a reason why aspects that were developed in the saga along social lines are only quickly recounted here.

It is also important to briefly examine a term used for defecating in Landnámabók: hafa alfrek. This is a common way of expressing this bodily need, although the more frequent expression is at ganga álfrek, literally ‘to go to the elves’, used in the first passage quoted from Eyrbyggja saga. In his Religionsgeschichte, JAN DE VRIES maintains that this is a common euphemism for ‘following nature’s call’.1519 K. RANKE provides a brief reference for this euphemism and explains that faeces would have frightened the elves away.1520 RANKE refers to DE VRIES who suggests that defecating would insult the protective spirits of (that part of) the land, and he adds a further example of a Þing place where defecating is prohibited.1521 Both the saga and the passage quoted from Deuteronomy thus express a concern that favourable ‘spirits’ may be offended by faeces. The term implies that defecation took place on the open land and not within a toilet structure (i.e. a toilet house), a view somewhat contradictory to the frequent mention of such structures in saga literature.

There is a second group of prominent references to toilets in the Íslendingasögur and these too appear closely related to the above-mentioned distinction between civilised and uncivilised spaces in a narrated world. These examples develop concerns about toilets being the dwelling place of evil spirits or the dead, thus evoking apparently near-universal fears. The underlying reason for this may be found in the distinction between inner (safe) and liminal (possibly unsafe) areas on farms, which is tangible in the narrated worlds. In fact, BÖLDL notes a particular interest in such inside-outside boundaries in Old Norse-Icelandic saga tradition. He argues that there is a distinction between the farm (Hofbereich, ‘farm area’ and bebautes Land ‘land that has been built on’, i.e. the civilised human sphere) and the world without (nature), and that even the farms themselves were divided into innihús (‘inner building’) and útihús (‘outer building(s)’), to which (presumably) the toilet belonged.1522

BÖLDL argues that because in Íslendingasögur toilet houses are located at the edge of the farmstead they were perceived as on the border of cultural and natural space and as such hugely important points on the ‘psychological map’ of the characters (avant la lettre, of course).1523 This, BÖLDL concludes, may be why they ‘für andere Welten und Wirklichkeiten durchläßig zu sein scheinen.’1524 Toilet visits can thus be viewed as a daily moving away from the centre of society towards its borders, towards the realm of nature but also of spirits and draugar (‘revenants’). The nature of the toilet house as portrayed in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature could therefore have combined with universal fears, creating a powerful narrative tool in which the human body, driven by its basic natural needs, is often juxtaposed with ghostly apparitions or the bodies of draugar.

One such example in which a character is placed in considerable danger is found in Þorsteins þáttr skelks (‘The Tale of Thorsteinn Shiver’), a short narrative that O’CONNOR characterises as ‘an odd mixture of seriousness and broad comedy, ecclesiastical legend and jeu d’esprit.’1525 LINDOW contends that this short text is found only in Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar in mesta (‘The Longer Life of Olaf Tryggvason’) and is preserved in the late fourteenth-century Flateyarbók, a famous compilation of kings’ sagas and þættir.1526 LINDOW also argues that this þáttr is almost farcical in tone.1527 JOSEPH HARRIS describes it as ‘a delightful anecdote with folktale connections […] neither solemn nor heavily didactic; in form it is a farcical version of the kind of tragic encounter with evil […]’, although its ‘Christian messages and values are serious.’1528

In this þáttr, King Ólaf of Norway holds a feast during a campaign and commands that no one visit the privy alone during the night. The Icelander Þorsteinn Þorkelsson, who had joined the Norwegian king’s retinue the previous winter, disobeys and is visited by a ghostly apparition as he sits on the privy. The apparition names himself as Þorkell the Thin and recalls to Þorsteinn how his pagan ancestors suffer in hell. Þorsteinn is only able to escape this unfortunate situation by making the ghost scream. This in turn wakes the king who, apparently knowing what is happening, rings the holy bells. The sound of the church bells makes the ghost disappear through the privy. The following morning, Þorsteinn admits his transgression and peace is restored between him and King Ólaf, who names the Icelander Þorsteinn Shiver. LARRINGTON describes the text as ‘drawing […] on the familiar stereotype of the independent-minded Icelander who takes risks and disobeys the king, yet who proves his courage and devotion, and is consequently cherished by the monarch.’1529 What is unusual in Þorsteins þáttr skelks is therefore not its underlying structure or its characters, but the way in which the relationship is developed in the text: the visit to the privy.

The text cunningly incorporates elements of the supernatural and plays on apparently universal fears of the privy.1530 The scene is worth quoting in full:

[u]m kveldit, er menn sátu yfir drykkjuborðum, talaði Ólafr konungr, at engi maðr af hans mönnum skyldi einn saman fara í salerni um náttina, því at hverr, sem ganga beiddist, skyldi með sér kalla sinn rekkjufélaga, ella kvað hann eigi mundu hlýða. Drekka menn nú vel um kveldit, en er ofan váru drykkjuborð, gengu menn at sofa. Ok er á leið náttina, vaknaði Þorsteinn Íslendingr ok beiddi at ganga af sæng, en sá svaf fast, er hjá honum lá, svá at Þorsteinn vildi víst eigi vekja hann. Stendr hann þá upp ok kippir skóm á fætr sér ok tekr yfir sik einn feld þykkvan ok gengr til heimilishúss. Þat var stórt hús, svá at ellifu men máttu sitja hváru megin.1531

In the evening, while people sat at the drinking-tables, King Olaf said that none of his men were to go alone to the privy during the night, and that whoever needed to go was to take his neighbour with him, otherwise he would be disobeying him. The men drank heartily that evening; and when the drinking-tables were hung up, the men went to bed. Now in the middle of the night, Thorstein the Icelander woke up and had to go to the toilet. The man lying next to him was sleeping soundly, and Thorstein certainly did not want to wake him. So he got up, slipped his shoes on, threw on a heavy cloak and went out to the privy. The outhouse was big enough for eleven people to sit on each side of it.1532

When Þorsteinn reaches the privy he is soon reminded of the king’s words: [s]ezt hann á yztu setu, ok er hann hefir setit nokkura stund, sér hann, at púki kemr upp á innstu setu ok sat þar.1533 Despite the uncertain term for the creature, it is soon clear that he is a revenant, a dead pagan warrior.

To Þorsteinn’s question where he has just appeared from – apart from the privy, of course – the ghost replies that he has come from hell. This comment makes it immediately clear that this particular privy is a ‘gateway to hell […]: the revenant – draugr – claims to have come straight from there.’1534 WILLIAM MILLER argues that this connection is prevalent in the Middle Ages since on a metaphorical level, ‘[s]in stank; and therefore hell was imagined as an enormous privy […]’.1535 MILLER’s argument would need further support by concrete examples but at least for Þorsteins þáttr skelks it provides a fitting parallel. LARRINGTON voices the opinion that this þáttr may indeed be exemplifying the need to assign shit its proper place. She argues that here ‘the disgusting is kept firmly below the level of the seat […]’1536, in the place where hell is also imagined to be in the text. The þáttr does not raise issues about faecal matters and disgust, it uses the privy as a door to something much more problematic and disgusting. Ultimately, it is liminal not just on a horizontal axis (on the farm) but also on a vertical axis: it denotes a liminal space where the upper, inhabited world of humans and the ‘down below’, the place where demons and hell are imagined to be, connect. LARRINGTON suggests that Þorsteinn realises that it is likely that he will be ‘dragged down via the privy to join these heroes’1537, an interpretation of the episode which, if this was indeed perceived as possible, could greatly enhance more metaphorical fears.

The moment of showing hell one’s backside and thus a natural, vulnerable opening into the body could have caused considerable unease. The þáttr uses this trope of fear in or of the privy to stress the dependence of Þorsteinn on his king and, in extension, on the Christian faith to deliver him from this evil. Several points are indicative that the text evokes fear in order to stress the subsequent salvation. First, the encounter occurs when Þorsteinn is alone, and it is set in the secluded place of the toilet house, away from the social realm of the king’s retinue. At this moment of bodily and spiritual vulnerability, the hellish visitor plays precisely on these fears, thus conforming to a widespread belief of the toilet house
als Erscheinungsstätte der Geister und Teufel. Die Unheimlichkeit dieser ‘Unstätte’, die man bei Nacht kaum allein zu betreten wagte, ist begründet. Denn bei Isländern, Skandinaviern, Deutschen und Arabern gilt der A[bort] als die Erscheinungsstätte von Totengeistern und Teufeln.1538

As a place of apparition for ghosts and devils. The uncanniness of this un-place, which one hardly dared to enter on one’s own at night is in fact justified. Because in Icelandic, Scandinavian, German and Arabic tradition the privy is the place where the ghosts of the dead and devils appear.

LINDOW contends that the setting simply seems farcical to (post‐)modern individuals, but in its medieval context it presents an important and suitable place for the episode to be played out.1539 And it is perhaps no coincidence that during the act of defecating (presumably, given that Þorsteinn had been sitting on the privy for a while when he saw the creature), when he is defenceless, immobile and vulnerable, the hellish apparition tells him of the tortures and pains his ancestors suffer in hell. Þorsteinn’s momentary vulnerability is openly paralleled with a spiritual vulnerability, as he appears frightened of what will happen to both his body and soul should he himself descend into hell. LINDOW voices a similar understanding of the threat when he argues that ‘Þorsteinn’s body and soul were in mortal danger.’1540 Yet these spiritual concerns are by no means the only discourse of mediality discernible in relation to Þorsteinn’s body.

The idea of the king as a saviour becomes more important if one contextualises the narrated world of the text with the resolution. Þorsteins þáttr skelks is not a saga but belongs to a genre commonly called þættir. Like Þorsteins þáttr skelks, many of these relatively short texts are found in connection with konungasögur (‘Kings’ Sagas’) and illustrate the qualities of a particular king and the relation of an (often Icelandic) subject to him. In Þorsteins þáttr skelks the king is an exemplary Christian king and demonstrates the power of the new religion.1541 King Ólaf Tryggvason, who may be the model for the king in this particular þáttr, is known for his missionary zeal in both Norway (995–1000) and Iceland.1542 It is therefore not surprising that it is the king who saves Þorsteinn and banishes the apparition to where it belongs. A reading of the text in this light is justified also if one follows LINDOW, who classifies this þáttr as a Christian import, based not only on the subject matter but also on its position within the manuscript.1543

Þorsteins þáttr skelks clearly portrays the king as Þorsteinn’s saviour. Þorsteinn does not seek to defeat the devilish creature by himself but relies on the king and, by extension, on the Christian religion, for help. When asked the following morning why he thought making the demon scream would help, Þorsteinn replies:

‘[e]k þóttist þat vita, með því at þér höfðuð varat alla men við at fara þangat einir saman, en skelmirinn kom upp, at vit mundim eigi klaklaust skilja, en ek ætlaða, at þér mundið vakna við, herra, er hann æpti, ok þóttumst ek þá hólpinn, ef þér yrðið varir við.’ ‘Svá var ok,’ sagði konungr, ‘at ek vaknaða við, ok svá vissa ek, hvat fram fór, ok því lét ek hringja […].’1544

‘I thought that since you had warned all of us not to go out there alone and since the devil showed up, that we would not leave the place unharmed. But I reckoned that you would wake up when he cried out, my lord, and I knew I would be helped if you found out about it.’ ‘Indeed, it happened,’ said the king, ‘that I woke up to the sound, and I knew what was going on. I had the bell rung […].’1545

The king adds that he knew nothing else could help Þorsteinn and hence proves that he knows how to repel spiritual danger. LINDOW comments on these spiritual defence mechanisms and proposes that the use of church bells to defeat demons and trolls is a well-known motif in Nordic narratives, especially legend.1546 By employing the bells, King Ólaf proves not just his power as a king but also his knowledge of and faith in Christian power: he knows that, in this case, physical force would be useless and instead employs the immaterial (and superior) power of the spirit.

LARRINGTON finds that this þáttr develops a link between the pagan heroes and the disgusting. She proposes a metonymy that operates to
invest pagan heroes, indirectly, with the disgusting. Down below the privy seat from which Þorkell the demon emerges, the heroes of the past suffer unendurable torment. Excrement is effaced from the hell that Þorkell describes, but it remains present to the reader or listener’s imagination.1547

Þorsteinn’s body is juxtaposed with the bodies of pagan warriors now in hell. Their mutual position of vulnerability and subjection over their bodies may help to enforce an underlying message: that being a Christian (and placing spiritual matters over bodily ones) is integral to avoiding these tortures of hell. A message, one might conclude, which is written primarily through Þorsteinn’s backside.

Eiríks saga rauða (‘The Saga of Erik the Red’) also features an episode that plays on fears of the toilet house as place in which ghosts and fiendish creatures appear. Shortly after a mysterious illness breaks out on Þorstein’s farm, his wife Guðrið and her guest Sigrið want to visit the privy: [o]k eitt kveld fýstisk Sigríðr at ganga til náðahúss, er stóð í gegnt útidurum. Guðríðr fylgði henni, ok horfðu þær móti útidurunum. Þá kvað hon við hátt, Sigríðr.1548 Guðrið initially assumes that going out in the cold has aggravated the illness from which Sigrið already suffers and tries to usher her back into the house. But Sigrið replies that it is impossible to go back immediately. The reason why is very disquieting: ‘hér er nú liðit þat allt it dauða fyrir durunum, ok Þorsteinn, bóndi þinn, ok þar kenni ek mik; ok er slíkt hǫrmung at sjá.’1549 Sigrið’s premonition comes true and she dies before the night is over. In this case, a visit to the toilet house has deadly consequences.

Exactly the same narrative plot is found in Eyrbyggja Saga. Þórir has to follow the call of nature and meets a shepherd who had recently gone mad and died:

[þ]at var eina nótt, at Þórir viðleggr gekk út nauðsynja sinna ok frá durunum annan veg; ok er hann vildi inn ganga, sá hann, at sauðamaðr var kominn fyrir dyrrnar; vildi Þórir inn ganga, en sauðamaðr vildi þat víst eigi; þá vildi Þórir undan leita, en sauðamaðr sótti eptir ok fekk tekit hann ok kastaði honum heim at durunum; honum varð illt við þetta, ok komsk þó til rúms síns ok var víða orðinn kolblár. Af þessu tók hann sótt ok andaðisk […].1550

‘One night Thorir Wood-Leg went out to the privy to ease himself, and when he was on his way back to the house, he saw the shepherd standing in front of the door. Thorir tried to get inside, but the shepherd barred his way. Thorir began walking away, but the shepherd came after him, picked him up, and threw him hard against the door. This gave Thorir a nasty shock and a good many bruises, but he struggled back to bed. Later, he became ill, then died […].1551

This encounter is an omen of ill luck to come. It foreshadows that Þórir will be swept away by a contagious disease which subsequently also kills six other people.

The advent of this deadly illness is foretold again during a nightly toilet visit. In this case, too, the visit to the toilet house provides not just an eerie setting for the scene but also reinforces the notion of spiritual and physical vulnerability that is experienced when leaving the social sphere of the main house to observe bodily needs. In moving away from the main house of the settlement towards its border, Þórir metaphorically also appears to move towards a natural discourse of the body as vulnerable for diseases. Strikingly, the vulnerability of his body is mediated in a very physical way by the onslaught of the ghost: Þórir is hurled against the door by the dead shepherd. In opposition to the visitor from hell in Þórsteins þáttr skelks, this ghost of a recently diseased is an archetypical saga-draugr and is thus presented in much more physical terms. It is the paralleling of the two bodies that foreshadows that Þórir is about to cross the divide between life and death.

This example reinforces the idea that the liminal position of the toilet house somehow coincides not just with the boundaries of the inhabited world but also with the borders between the world of the living and the dead. ÁRMANN JAKOBSSON argues that these apparitions ‘commonly seem to dwell in a limbo between two worlds’1552 and reside in nature, outside the farmsteads. If one parallels the marginal position of the toilet house with the liminal nature of the draugr, it becomes clear why the two may be thought of as related. Both sagas focus not on the actual faecal matter but on the (dangerous) situations in which a character places him- or herself in following the unavoidable call of nature. It may therefore be argued that it is neither the matter nor the act that is important, but an issue related to the social regulation of the matter: the toilet house.

Eyrbyggja saga features another episode in which a visit to the toilet is depicted as a very vulnerable moment, although in this case the threat is a conspiracy. The freeman Vigfus tells the slave Svart how he may kill Snorri and gain his freedom. When Snorri and his men sit by the fire and eat their dinner, Svart enters their house in Helgafell and hides in a chamber underneath the floor, located near the main door. From there he wants to stab Snorri when he leaves the building. The narrative then provides a short explanation as to why Snorri and his men are leaving the house: þat var í þann tíma, er þeir Snorri sátu við málelda. Í þann tíma váru útikamrar á boejum. En er þeir Snorri gengu frá eldinum, ætluðu þeir til kamarsins, ok gekk Snorri fyrstr, ok bar undan út í dyrrnar, áðr tilræðit Svarts varð.1553 While Snorri escapes unharmed, the man following him, Már Hallvarðsson, receives a minor wound from Svart’s attack. In this encounter, the danger to the body is human and not supernatural. The saga plays not on universal fears but on blunt physical necessity. That there would not be much glory in such a killing goes without saying, but the text is not concerned with this issue (presumably because Svart is a slave) but simply with describing an unusual and perhaps slightly comical assassination-attempt.

The need to need, the location of the toilet house and the uncanny nature of privys thus offer various possibilities for Íslendingasögur and þættir to develop such encounters. In relation to their bodily needs characters are portrayed as physically and spiritually vulnerable: not only during the act of defecating or urinating, but, more frequently, on their way to the toilet house, when they move towards the liminal space of the privy. KUHN suggests that toilet visits in the sagas usually take place in groups either because of simple enjoyment of company or because leaving the house alone after dark was not desirable, not only but also because the privy was uncanny.1554 KUHN’s remark is reflected in the previous examples, but there remains one last related issue to be discussed: the danger to human modesty and honour if nature’s call cannot be adequately observed.

An example in which access to the toilet house is denied to a certain group of people is found in Laxdoela saga. This thirteenth-century text, commonly perceived as ‘one of the greatest Íslendingasögur’1555, was introduced already in chapter two. One brief episode in the lengthy saga tells of how Kjartan humiliates his enemies by denying them access to the toilet:

[í] þann tíma var þat mikil tízka, at úti var salerni ok eigi allskamt frá boenum, ok svá var at Laugum. Kjartan lét þar taka dyrr allar á húsum ok bannaði ǫllum mǫnnum útgǫngu ok dreitti þau inni þrjár nætr […] þeim Laugamǫnnum líkar illa ok þótti þetta miklu meiri svívirðing ok verri, en þótt Kjartan hefði drepit mann eða tvá fyrir þeim.1556

At this time it was fashionable to have outdoor privies some distance from the farmhouse, and such was the case at Laugar. Kjartan stationed men at each of the doors and prevented everyone from going outside so that they had to relieve themselves indoors for three whole days. […] The men of Laugar were very upset and felt that Kjartan had done them a greater offence by these actions than if he had killed one or two of their men.1557

The episode plays with excrement’s potential to punish and control, and Kjartan deliberately exploits such power structures. Yet this does not mean that Kjartan has to result to dishonourable practices. In fact, WILLIAM MILLER asserts that he ‘gets the credit for shaming others fair and square. The move may be tough, mean, comical, and hence especially humiliating to his opponents, but it is decidedly not considered perverse and sadistic behaviour […]’.1558 This assessment is based on the quasi-legal status of the practice which MILLER proposes.1559 It is therefore important to note that from the point of view of the text, the dishonour lies only with the people so treated, not with the perpetrator of the conduct.

The extent to which it is possible to humiliate the men at Laugar is evident in their reaction: they would have preferred to lose some of their men rather than all of them having to defecate indoors. A possible reason for this is that dying in a feud would procure honour, while their treatment by Kjartan results only in shame. Yet it may be suggested that the idea of the men having to defecate amongst each other was most likely not very problematic, as it has already been made clear that in the Íslendingasögur visits to the toilet (generally) were not a solitary affair.1560 The men are humiliated because they are forced to urinate and defecate in a place usually designed for living, and they are (presumably) also unable to remove the faeces. This must have created a health hazard but also a considerable stench, something that is left unmentioned in the text. The episode confirms the idea of a spatialisation of the world – in this case the farm – into areas for living and for defecating, a distinction which cannot be upheld here. And it is at this moment where faecal matter is clearly outside its proper place, that the matter itself becomes important.

The practice described here is usually referred to as dreita inni. It is mentioned only in Íslendingasögur and even there it is not described frequently. As DE VRIES explains, the second element refers to ‘within’ a house – explicitly not a toilet house – yet the first element is best translated with ‘diarrhoea’, with the causative dreita meaning ‘to make someone shit’.1561 WILLIAM MILLER argues that the phrase means something like ‘to make dirt inside, to defecate indoors’.1562 The practice itself could then be rendered as ‘to lock someone in in order to make them defecate indoors.’ MILLER further suggests that the term is ‘a technical one, a quasi-legal one of known content, that indicates a possible, even if infrequently attested, move in the feud.’1563 He concludes that

[t]his tactic suggests that disgust is there, but is so enmeshed with the politics of shame as to have no real idiom separate from shame […]. It is hedged in with rules about appropriateness as to place. And to violate those rules is a cause for disgrace and shame, so disgraceful that it is better to lose a few member of one’s group in an affray than to suffer such an indignity.1564

MILLERs’ subsequent conclusion that the mention of preferring death to this disgust is expressed by a group and that no single member would volunteer to give his life for such a purpose is, however, debatable.1565 In the narrated worlds of the Íslendingasögur it is perhaps not wholly unimaginable that an honourable death was preferred to a life tainted by such a disgraceful memory. What is clear is that this additional comment stresses the seriousness of the offence, and that this seriousness is closely linked to the shame inherent in this practice: ‘[d]isgust and shame’, MILLER concludes, ‘work in tandem here.’1566

The term dreita inni is used also in Sturlunga saga (chapter seven), but there the episode is not developed as much as in Laxdoela saga.1567 As LARRINGTON summarises: ‘all that the saga [Sturlunga saga] reports is that a certain Ketill Eyjólfsson and his son Ljótr fall out with their neighbour Markús Skeggjason, and the father and son made Markús defecate inside.’1568 STEFANIE WÜRTH sees the episode in Laxdoela saga as modelled on this brief mention, with the elaboration needed because it was an infrequent practice.1569 The expanded version in the later texts of course also suggests that such matters could be consciously developed in the sagas in certain circumstances (for instance to pair Kjartan’s vain nature with his humiliation of others). Yet the practice clearly depends ‘on having privies that one has to go outside to get to […]’1570, as WILLIAM MILLER asserts. The arrangement of the narrated world thus provides the basis for such narrative plots, even those involving less pleasant matters.

Skáldskaparmál features a somewhat different mention of the passing of faeces, as it is not a human being who defecates but Óðinn in the shape of an eagle. The reference is found in the ‘bizarre but fascinating narrative’1571 of how the mead of poetry was brought to the Æsir. Another version of the narrative is found in Hávamal (and thus also in the Poetic Edda), but this version does not contain all of the central corporeal elements extant in Skáldskaparmál.1572 Even though the version preserved in Skáldskaparmál has been the focus of repeated scholarly attention, none of the researchers has addressed the issue of natural bodily matters.1573 CLUNIES ROSS has the following to say about the episode:

[t]he first section of Skáldskaparmál, sometimes called Bragaroeður, establishes a connection between poetry as a property of divine beings and the skaldic art practised by men. This is accomplished largely through the figure of Bragi, who acts as Ægir’s informant in the frame-dialogue. He first tells the story of the origin of the mead of poetry and then sets out a definition of the three main types of skaldic diction in the chapter immediately following.1574

The topic is of central importance in Old Norse-Icelandic texts, as in ‘Norse view, the ability to compose poetry combined human skill and divine inspiration […]’.1575 The narrative recounts the diffusion of the poetic art from Gods to men. Strikingly, this transmission is imagined in very corporeal terms, with various bodily effluvia being mentioned.

At the beginning of the narrative, in the stanza entitled Upphaf Suttungamjaðar, Ægir asks from whence the art of poetry came. Bragi answers that the Aesir and the Vaenir each spat into a vat and from this spittle a man called Kvasir was formed. Since his body is made from divine essence, so to speak, Kvasir is omniscient, but he is not immortal and eventually he is killed by two malignant dwarves. The dwarves let his blood run into two vats and a kettle and in the latter they blend in honey. They thus create a kind of mead that turns everyone who drinks it into a skald or scholar.

The passing of divine bodily fluids into a cauldron and into a human body and subsequently out of this body and into a kettle again – to become a drinkable liquid – is remarkable. Through this transformation the divine essence of poetry can now be ingested into ordinary human bodies. In this recounting, Bragi’s answer gives ‘the chronological stages through which the substance passes that eventually becomes the poetic mead’1576, as CLUNIES ROSS concludes, yet it is unclear at which point the human essence (blood) turns into mead. This chain of transformations is perhaps Snorri’s main point in the episode as it explains the various kennings for poetry: ‘[b]ecause of this we call poesy Kvasir’s Blood or Dwarves’ Drink, or Fill, or any kind of liquid of Ódrerir […] or Suttungr’s Mead, or Liquor of Hnitbjörg.’1577

While kennings like these had probably ‘lived orally for two centuries and more before Snorri wrote them down’1578, as FRANK points out, it is only through the accompanying narrative that they become meaningful to Snorri’s audience. After this explanation for the poetry kennings the story proper continues, as Ægir further enquires how the Æsir came to possess this mead. The mead is contained in vats and then given to the giant Suttunger, who carries it home and conceals it in a place called Hnitbjörg, placing his daughter Gunnlǫð there to watch over it. Bragi further explains that Óðinn, seeking to steal the mead, disguises himself under the pseudonym Bǫlverkr and, in a long and complicated turn of events, he visits Suttunger with Bragi. When Suttunger blatantly refuses them the mead they try to obtain it by drilling a hole through the rock of the cave where the mead is kept. Bǫlverk then crawls through this hole in the form of a serpent. He finds Gunnlǫð guarding the mead and lies with her for three nights. She then grants him three sups from each vessel:

[f]ór Bǫlverkr þar til sem Gunnlǫð var ok *lá hjá henni þrjár nætr, ok þá lofaði hon honum at drekka af miðinum þrjá drykki. Í inum fyrsta drykk drakk hann al‹t› ór Óðreri, en í ǫðrum ór Boðn, í inu‹m› þriðja ór Són, og hafði hann þá allan mjǫðinn.1579

Bolverk went to where Gunnlod was and lay with her for three nights and then she let him drink three draughts of the mead. In the first draught he drank everything out of Odrerir, and in the second out of Bodn, in the third out of Son, and then he had all the mead.1580

Bǫlverk thus manages to empty all three vessels and stores the entire mead in his body. Now that he has ingested the substance he just needs to bring himself (rather than the mead-vessels) to the Æsir, and he does so by turning into the shape of an eagle and flying back to the gods.

On his way back he is chased by the angry Suttunger, who has also shape-shifted into an eagle. When the Æsir see the eagles approach they bring out their vats and eagle-Óðinn spits (or vomits) the mead into the vats. Nevertheless he comes so close to being caught by Suttunger that he sends some mead out backwards, i.e. through his bowls:

[e]n er Æsir sá hvar Óðinn flaug þá settu *þeir út í garðinn ker sín, en er Óðinn kom inn of Ásgarð þá spýtti hann upp miðinum í kerin, en honum var þá svá nær komit at Suttungr mundi ná honum at hann sendi aptr suman mjǫðinn, ok var þess ekki gætt.1581

And when the Æsir saw Odin flying they put their containers out in the courtyard, and when Odin came in over Asgard he spat out the mead into the containers, but it was such a close thing for him that Suttung might have caught him that he sent some of the mead out backwards, and this was disregarded.1582

The fluid from Óðinn’s bowels is thus clearly distinguished from that which comes out the front and it is to be presumed from the logic of the text that these are omitted into different vats. This is reflected also by the subsequent mention of who is allowed to drink this liquid. While the regurgitated mead is available only to real, that is, honourable, poets the mead that passed through the bowels is fit for the consumption of all: [h]afði þat hverr er vildi, ok kǫllum vér þat skáldfífla *hlut.1583 The comment implies that because of the power of this mead, anyone could become a poet, albeit not a real, honoured one but at least a second-class one.

Since Óðinn ingests mead rather than food it would also be possible to treat this account as a basis for urination rather than defecation. Yet medieval audiences – and modern scholars – seem to be firm in their assessment that Óðinn is defecating. While no clear distinguishing mention is made in Skáldskaparmál, FRANK draws attention to the fact that ‘the kenning “mud of the eagle” = (worthless) poetry occurs three times in skaldic verse, two occurrences are clearly and directly dependent on the Prose Edda and the third is likely to be a borrowing as well.’1584 This would mean that Óðinn is passing faeces rather than urine, a conclusion perhaps somewhat contradictory to the poets drinking it afterwards.

Snorri not only provides the story of how poetic inspiration reached humankind, he also explains why there is first- and second-class poetry. Only in the first case has the circle of god-spittle-cauldron-man-blood/mead-cauldron-god-spittle come full circle, and the honourable poet utters words inspired by what came out of eagle-Óðinn’s mouth. The ingestion of the fluid by the god and its passing through the bowels of eagle-Óðinn, on the other hand, did not enhance but clearly tainted the quality of the mead: it turned it into second-rate mead for second-rate poets. In complete opposition to the story of St Muru and the future king Áed Uaridnach in the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland (discussed above), Odin’s faeces are not to be ingested with pride. That there may also be a humorous implication observable in that bad poets utter what in modern terms might be called shit poetry is possible, although this suggestion must be tentative and light-hearted.

This would suggest that what is problematic in this instance is not that the fluid is being re-emitted from Óðinn’s body but that the fluid has passed through Óðinn’s (or better, the eagle’s) bowels. It may in fact be this implied transmission from bowels (or urinary tract) back into human mouths that is problematic since it reverses the natural order. However, in view of the constant switching between bodily fluid and embodied poetry, Óðinn’s vomiting or spitting out of the mead appears fully incorporated into the narrative and does not hold any debasing or explicitly disgusting connotations in Skáldskaparmál. Instead, it may be argued with CLOVER that as the substance of the poetic mead changes hands it also changes its form, but that it is not just poured from vessel to vessel but also from vessel to body and back.1585‘The narrative as Snorri tells it through the persona of Bragi’, CLUNIES ROSS observes, ‘plays on themes of containment and dispersal of the bodily fluids of various anthropomorphic beings, mediated by the processes of murder, compensation, and theft thinly veiled as reciprocity.’1586

The medial aspects of the episode are by no means limited to the narrative level but are perhaps even more openly installed in the bodies themselves. The various bodies not only transfer the fluid and thus the essence of poetry but they each contribute to its final state, perhaps most memorably in the case of the final acts of vomiting and defecation. In this example bodily fluids are mediators in that they literally transfer the essence of poetry: ‘the poetic art [is represented] as a material substance which is either produced bodily by animate beings or changed into anthropomorphic form.’1587 Something as essential to Norse culture as skaldic poetry is presented as inseparable from bodies, although the bodies that produce, reproduce and transmit it are by no means uniform. Rather, the mead of poetry can be said to have passed through the bodies of gods, the man Kvaesir and an eagle (Óðinn) as well as through the hands – metaphorically speaking – of dwarves and giants. Yet ‘[t]he metamorphic cycle here’, CLUNIES ROSS concludes, ‘begins and ends with divine body-fluids […]’.1588 It may be proposed that Snorri develops his narrative ‘materially through bodies’ just as he ‘presents poetry as divine in the frankly material sense of deriving from the body-products of deities […]’.1589 CLUNIES ROSS maintains that apart from a single reference to a kenning there is no reference outside the Prose Edda for this arrangement of the Kvaesir-episode1590, a fact which makes Snorri’s imaginative and highly medially charged use of bodies in the Snorra Edda even more remarkable.

5.3Bloody Women, Bleeding Men? A New Reading of Fúal Medba

In addition to matters connected with bowels and bladders, there is a third bodily matter which offers interesting ground for study: menstruation. It differs from the above topic in that although depictions in literary texts are rare throughout the Middle Ages, the female menstrual cycle is a recurrent focus in medical and theological discourse. Despite the general fascination with blood which BILDHAUER proposes for the medieval period, the subject of women’s blood (menstruation or parturition) has long been associated with pollution in the Judeo-Christian tradition.1591 In Classical and medieval writing menstruation was, as ALCUIN BLAMIRES argues, the most important aspect in medical and physiological discussions of women, corroborating Pliny’s claim in his Historia naturalis that ‘nothing could be found that is more remarkable/monstrous [monstrificium] than the monthly flux of women.’1592 This eerie fascination was paired with distinctly negative associations, both towards menstruation and menstruating women:

[i]f, in the realms of religion, menstruation rendered her [woman] unclean and untouchable, in the realms of physiology it signified her inability to match the fully developed human, i.e. the male, because unlike him she displayed evidence of an inefficient bodily system that had to keep on clearing itself of residual ‘bilge-water’.1593

Studying the cultural significance of menstrual blood (amongst other ‘bloods’), BILDHAUER asserts that in such contexts blood can ‘represent a violation of the boundaries of the body; it is both part of the body and at the same time leaves its confines.’1594 BOWEN contends that in many cultures menstrual blood is ‘an object of fearful taboo […] regarded as especially dangerous and destructive to men.’1595 WILLIAMS relates the monstrosity of menstrual blood to its hybrid status as chaos, as a deforming threat, an idea that reaches back to Classical thought.1596

ETIENNE VAN DER WALLE reveals similarly negative perceptions in her study of the medieval medical view of female menstruation1597, as does SARAH ALISON MILLER in her treatment of narrative texts.1598 In relation to gender concepts in medieval literature, MCCRACKEN likewise sees menstrual blood as a thoroughly negative symbol as ‘like other bodily wastes (urine or feces, for example) [it] is anomalous, “out of place”, because it escapes the natural boundaries of the body by which it is normally contained.’1599 Menstrual blood thus separates woman from man (in most cases), but it also testifies to her bodily inferiority as well as her destructive potential.

Given these thoroughly negative perceptions, it is not surprising that the motif is absent from the depiction of everyday life in medieval texts. The unease with which the topic is discussed in medical works might also explain why it is conspicuously absent in literary texts also. As no examples from Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature are known to me to date, this subchapter will focus solely on an Irish example. It offers a new reading of Fúal Medba (FM, ‘Medb’s Urination’) in TBC II, an episode that shows Medb in a helpless and inferior position to her male counterparts, Cú Chulainn and Fergus. BITEL notes that despite the widely held idea of women being inferior to men,
the only extant early medieval medical literature – two eighth-century medico-legal tracts, Bretha Dein Checht and Bretha Crolige – suggest that, although the bodies of men and women looked different, they were cast in the same mould and functioned internally according to the same principles.1600

This observation is remarkable, yet BITEL adds that in Irish Law texts, women were perceived as inferior to men.1601 This dual possibility of assessing women and their bodies should be kept in mind in the following discussion that, in concentrating solely on literature, unearths somewhat different concerns and perceptions.

On linguistic grounds it is not entirely clear whether Medb is menstruating or urinating in FM. DOOLEY proposes that FM is in fact a ‘replacement’ of the scene featured in Comrac Fir Diad in Recension I (discussed above, 5.2.1.) and that it expresses confusion ‘about the female bodily functions of menstruation/ urination.’1602 In view of this complicated categorisation, FM has received some, if limited, academic attention.1603 MCCRACKEN even includes it in her groundbreaking analysis of blood and gender, calling FM the ‘only representation of menstrual blood in the context of war in all medieval fiction.’1604 In the episode, Medb covers the retreat of the Connachtmen:

[i]s and drecgais a fúal fola for Meidb [7 itbert: ʻGeib, a Ḟerguis,ʼ bar Medb], ʻscíath díten dar éis fer ṅHérend goro ṡíblur-sa m’ḟúal úaim.ʼ ʻDar ar cubus,ʼ ar Fergus, ʻis olc in tráth 7 ní cóir a dénam.ʼ ʻGid ed ní étaim-sea chena,ʼ bar Medb, ʻdáig nída beó-sa meni ṡíblur-sa m’ḟúal úaim.ʼ Tánic Fergus 7 gebid scíath díten dar éis fer ṅHérend. Siblais Medb a fúal úathi co nderna trí tulchlassa móra de co taille munter in cach thurchlaiss. Conid Fúal Medba atberar friss.1605

Then her issue of blood came upon Medb (and she said: ʻO Fergus, cover) the retreat of the men of Ireland that I may pass my water.ʼ ʻBy my conscience,ʼ said Fergus, ʻIt is ill-timed and it is not right to do so.ʼ ʻYet I cannot but do so,ʼ said Medb, ʻfor I shall not live unless I do.ʼ Fergus came then and covered the retreat of the men of Ireland. Medb passed her water and it made three great trenches in each of which a household can fit. Hence the place is called Fúal Medba.

While the onomastic aim of the episode is clear, the interpretation of the scene leading up to the naming is anything but. One of the difficulties in interpreting the episode is the unclear term used for the bodily fluid.

MCCRACKEN argues that fúal focal – most likely a misspelling on her part of fúal fola – literally means ‘urine of blood’ and that the term can denote either urine (perhaps the urine during menstruation) or menstrual blood.1606 In the two subsequent uses of fúal in the passage, however, both MCCRACKEN and CECILE O’RAHILLY – in her translation – seem to agree that on its own, the term means urination.1607 AILÍS NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH has the following to say about the confusion between urinating and menstruating: ‘[t]he redactor initially used the term fúal fola “flow of blood” (1. 4825) and subsequently referred to Medb’s flow as fúal. Fúal fola identifies a distinctly female bodily function, whereas fúal usually translates as “urine, foul water.”’1608

While EDEL assumes that the compilers/redactors of TBC were ‘well informed about the bodily matters of either sex’ and that perhaps ‘a combination of the two processes was envisaged’1609, in a more convincing argument MCCRACKEN suggests that this confusion arises because the redactor may have had a fairly inaccurate understanding of female bodies.1610 BOWEN adds that it would hardly have mattered to the narrator (a term which he uses in an unclear sense) because either would have been appropriately ignominious for Medb.1611 What is clear is that the more usual term for menstruation, which PATRICIA KELLY argues is galar místae (‘monthly sickness’)1612, is not employed here. It may be that TBC II reflects a general understanding of the urine of menstruating women as bloody, a view later popularised by De secretis mulierum (written in the thirteenth century).1613 While it is not quite clear whether Medb is urinating or menstruating, this reading sides with the majority of scholarly interpretations and favours the latter.

Yet whatever the fluid, the effect and with it the medial value of the blood stream remains the same. The landscape is formed (i.e. permanently changed) by Medb’s body and this results in the naming of the place as Fúal Medba.1614 Importantly, the flow of blood does not cause any widespread damage to the land but simply marks it with a deep and large trench, causing less destruction than Medb’s urine does in TBF II. This is somewhat contradictory to Classical and medieval theories about the destructive potential of menstrual fluid. ‘In the first century A.D.’, SARAH ALISON MILLER summarises, ‘Pliny the Elder described in his Historia naturalis the consequences of contact with menstrual fluid: It destroys crops, kills bees, dulls the surfaces of mirrors and the edges of steel […]’.1615 Isidore’s Etymologiae also list such destructive forces for the menstrua. When touched by menstrual blood ‘crops cease to sprout, unfermented wine turns sour, plants wither, trees lose their fruit, iron is corrupted by rust, bronze turns black’, dogs may develop rabies and glue of pitch spontaneously disperses.1616 BILDHAUER asserts that throughout the Middle Ages, ‘[w]omen’s blood-flow potentially endangered not only the balance of the universe, but also, more immediately, men.’1617 Given the catastrophic effects Medb’s urine is said to have in TBF II it is somewhat surprising that this issue was not expanded for greater effect in relation to her menstruation in TBC II. It is possible that the whole point of the menstruation episode lies in mediating Medb’s female nature and inadequacy as a leader, and developing the theme for literary effect would have distracted from this.

With respect to this (particularly Irish?) ability to change the landscape, past research has conceived of Medb as a (reflex of) an earth-goddess, even proposing equine associations by linking FM with Dindsenchas in which lakes are traced to a supernatural urinating horse.1618 EDEL claims that considering ‘the resemblances between the dinnshenchas and the Táin, it is not unplausibel that Fúal Medba was at least partly inspired by the origin legends of the two lakes [Lough Neagh and Loch Ree].’1619 Strengthening this association is BOWEN’s remark that river names in Celtic languages were invariably feminine and eponyms were female1620, which suggests a deep-rooted association of rivers, springs and wells with female figures. He further argues that the connection between urination and fertility (with the bladder standing in for the uterus and vagina) perhaps ‘makes the relevance of river and urine symbolism to the figure of the fertility-sovereignty-war goddess a little clearer.’1621 ROSS likewise proposes such concepts by relating rivers to fertility deities, playing at once on the life-giving but also on the threatening aspects of riverine landscapes.1622

As before, this discussion will not focus on these possible mythical subtexts but foregrounds the text at hand. And on the level of textual interpretation there are several points worth noting. One issue that has dominated past research is connected with a gendered reading of the episode. As EDEL summarises KELLY’s arguments:

[i]t has recently been suggested that the passage was intended as a condemnation of the Connacht queen for not confining herself to traditionally female spheres of activity, and further, that her immobilization by the specifically female biological function of menstruation is a symbol of her failure to live up to the criteria of the supreme male role of king.1623

Such readings are, of course, possible, especially because the Connachtmen are defeated on a military basis, although – and this is hardly ever pointed out – Medb does succeed in her aim to drive the Donn Cúailnge away. Yet it is likely that this humiliation of the queen does play specifically on her female nature (althought perhaps via her supernatural nature). BOWEN sees the aim of the episode in depicting Medb ‘in a helpless and ridiculous position, where she will be not be simply humiliated, but humiliated specifically as a woman […]’.1624 It is therefore likely that the episode consciously installs the issue to enforce Medb’s gender and to pronounce this aspect in an otherwise (almost entirely) male dominated narrated world of TBC.

This idea is also expressed by PATRICIA KELLY who reads the episode as a condemnation of the Connacht queen for not confining herself ‘to the traditionally female spheres of activity’, which is why Medb and her behaviour are judged ‘in accordance with the traditional criteria for the male role she aspires.’1625 The episode is an example of a portrayal of a woman as ‘inadequate or out of place in battle […] through the association of women and the debilitating function of the female reproductive body’1626, as MCCRACKEN proposes. It is clear that, in opposition to the urinating scene in TBC I, in FM Medb is subject to her waters in that her life depends on obeying this natural command. She needs to retreat from the business of war temporarily as she is left helpless and depends on Fergus – on a virile man – to cover her back. DOOLEY proposes that the urination motif may be linked ‘to the topos of the humiliated ruler in battle who demands an inappropriate and incongruous request of the champion.’1627 While these are valid concerns, there may be a new way of reading the episode. This reading links Medb’s body to the landscape and also juxtaposes it with bleeding male warriors. Perhaps somewhat ironically, this suggests that even though Medb is depicted in a moment of vulnerability, the scene and her menstruation nevertheless demonstrate her inherent power.

This new reading develops thoughts voiced by EDEL1628, NÍ MHAOLDOMNAIGH1629 and NAGY1630, who have commented on the episode independently. Although they differ in their interpretation of the motif, they all contend that the creation of a river by a female body is a distinct literary motif in early Irish secular literature. EDEL argues that the redactor sought
to strengthen the mythical aspect of the work […]. The Irish thought-world tended to associate (the origins of) natural features – lakes, rivers, plains, hills and the like – with supernatural beings, particularly females ones, and Medb’s appearance in this scene may have been influenced by this.1631

In this reasoning, a capacity to form rivers expresses fertility and connects a female figure to the land.1632 These observations in terms of gender provide a valuable starting point, although the present reading will not contextualise this motif primarily with misogynistic intentions or mythological subtexts. Rather, the blood will be examined in relation to Medb’s menstrual fluid mediating between the queen and the landscape, leaving a lasting and observable mark on the narrated world. In assessing whether Medb changes the landscape in a particularly female way, the episode will be contextualised with examples of male bloodshed in TBC II, and in particular with the bloodshed caused by Cú Chulainn.

This point has already been made in part by NÍ MHAOLDOMNAIGH and expanded by NAGY.1633 In a convincing argument drawing on numerous of examples from TBC NAGY contrasts Medb’s flow of blood with the flows of blood mentioned in connection with male warriors.1634 Of FM he remarks that, in this instance, the resulting flood appears specifically connected ‘to a woman, actually her body.’1635 NAGY parallels this with
the image of Cú Chulainn, who creates waves and streams of blood, who is said to pollute the water of a river with the blood of his kills, who destroys with the fury, indiscriminateness and totality of a one-man flood […].1636

Connections between Cú Chulainn and streams are repeatedly made in TBC, not just in relation to combative encounters in/at fords. NAGY draws particular attention to the expression fuilglassa de fulib, which denotes what will flow from heroes’ necks and which both he and CECILE O’RAHILLY translate as ‘streams of blood’.1637 In the fight with Lóch, for instance, the encounter has to be taken upstream, as Lóch will only fight where the water is not polluted by the slaying of his brother, Long.1638

Perhaps the closest parallel (not discussed by NAGY) occurs in a short episode in which Cú Chulainn defeats a hundred men at once. In explaining the name of the river Áth Cró, it is remarked that the new name is fitting [d]ethbir ara méit dá crú 7 dá fuil dochúaid fo ṡruthair na haband.1639 A scene that features the same motif connected to the hero himself is found at the end of TBC II when Cú Chulainn finally reenters the battle: [r]a gabsat a ḟuli ilgremma de gorbo lána tairchlassa 7 eittrigi in talman dá ḟulib 7 dá gáeib cró.1640 NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH comments fleetingly on this episode and proposes that ‘his heroic ardour causes his wounds to flow so prodigiously that his blood fills the earth’s trenches, thus demonstrating his immense courage and fighting spirit.’1641 If one takes Medb as menstruating in FM, the parallel is striking: while the hero reddens the river with the blood of his enemies or even creates streams through his own blood flowing from battle-wounds, the queen creates rivers through the force of her own, natural, monthly blood-flow. Both kinds of blood and both characters leave marks on the landscape, whether through changing the colour of a river (Cú Chulainn) or creating lasting landscape features (Medb), and both actions lead to places being named.

In proposing this underlying significance, it should be examined how Medb’s decidedly female blood contrasts with the idea of male bloodshed and how it is so uniquely represented in a martial context, as MCCRACKEN has pointed out.1642 Cú Chulainn’s bloodshed, whether from enemies or his bursting wounds, is part of ascertaining his heroic identity. In Medb’s case, it may be argued with NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH that ‘[w]hen the same motif is applied to Medb […] it denigrates her completely.’1643 Ultimately, then, gender roles are re-ascertained through Medb’s menstruation. In a broader context MCCRACKEN claims that in medieval fiction,
only men bleed in ways that have consequences beyond their own bodies, in ways that bring about lasting change and recognition. Women’s blood is linked to the body, and to embodiment; its effects are seen to affect the body, society […].1644

In the present reading of FM, these particular gender differences are not reflected, as both Cú Chulainn and Medb bleed from their own bodies and this has a lasting effect on the landscape. The narrative instalment of their bleeding can, however, be seen as connected with their male and female bodies: while Medb equals Cú Chulainn in the shedding of her own blood, she does so within the constraints of being a female and not through wounds received in battle. Medb thus finds herself not in martial fury but in a subversive position that requires protection. Ultimately, FM shows that bleeding men are compatible with martial combat but ‘woman’s blood […] is shown to be incompatible with battle’1645, as MCCRACKEN concludes in a wider context.

Analysing the two characters within such a gendered context strangely echoes WOODWARD’S suggestion (voiced in relation to modern bodies) that ‘male bodies emphasize the control and discipline of the body (reflected in martial feats) while female bodies are subject to the whims, vagaries and cycles of the body, [and] are the scene of an unregulated excess of physicality.’1646 MCCRACKEN also argues for a clear distinction between public masculine bloodshed and hidden, private female bleeding, that is, between the positively connoted male shedding of blood in combat and the more problematic female bleeding of menstruation and childbirth.1647 Medb’s bloodshed, however, is decidedly public and probably openly gazed at, yet her body is not installed for medial purposes or specularity – it suffers it. This may be why in this case, her menstruation is particularly problematic.

Another problematic point is that, as NÍMHAOLDOMHNAIGH stresses, Medb’s blood is not pure. As menstrual blood it
may be seen as watered down by her urine and hence [is] hardly comparable to Cú Chulainn’s. Hers is perceived as a female weakness which prohibits action even in retreat, whereas his is perceived as a sign of strength, a spur for battle and a male preserve. […]. When placed beside Cú Chulainn’s heroic spectacle, Medb’s flow makes little sense as a symbol of the sexual power of a sovereignty goddess, even if the urinating motif may have originated there. The author appears to have taken this perceived symbol of female power and given it negative connotations by referring to it as menstruation.1648

In this case a gendered reading of the act of bleeding might best observe how male and female bodies interact with and change the world. It also shows that in relation to the question of what bodies mediate, male and female figures embody different concerns in relation to their blood. Medb’s menstruation is problematic in the narrated world, yet it is a valuable mediator for her own identity. It creates a character rooted in the powerful, landscape-changing quality of older mythological subtexts as well as suffering the real weakness suffered by (some) women during their menstrual flow. The scene gives rise not just to misogynistic comments (both within TBC II and in scholarship) but also helps to create an equally complex female counterpart to the text’s main hero, Cú Chulainn.

5.4 ‘Human’ Waste

In conclusion, it can be said that indeed a ‘great deal of cultural meaning can be distilled from the treatment of body products such as blood, semen, sweat, tears, faeces, urine, and saliva’1649, even if just some of these matters were considered in this chapter. It emerged that in some, remarkable cases when bodies are presented with regards to natural needs, it is not for humoral effects or to evoke feelings of disgust. Rather, the acts of passing the matters can be seen as rooted firmly within a mediality discourse, yet with vastly different concerns. Underlying such readings is the conviction that one must at times see past the matter and allow for it to transcend into literary or symbolic spheres. As CAMILLE remarks about depictions of defecation and urination in manuscript margins, ‘[i]nstead of turds being just what they are – matter – they become mysterious signs that we are unable to read, savour and enjoy with the gusto of our ancestors.’1650 The previous analyses have shown that in some medieval texts, faeces, urination and menstruation are not just mere ‘matter’ but matter bound to a social context, and that in such instances we may be able to transcend the modern unease which CAMILLE proposes and start to enjoy these references as often ingenious examples of mediality.1651 This is possible also because the examples presented here, as HENDERSON claims for Greek comedy, ‘reached a level of sophistication equal to the cleverest allusions to poetry or philosophy […]’1652, a level perhaps hitherto hidden by modern feelings of disgust.

It was the aim of this chapter to present these natural bodily matters in the ‘unembarrassed, matter-of-fact handling’1653 which EDEL finds typical for early Irish narratives, without any prejudices regarding their status in social interaction. In this way it was easier to appreciate that where they do occur they most often appear as an integral part of an episode. Yet with the exceptions of Lokasenna and Aithne & Amairgen, they can hardly be said to evoke disgust in the audience, although the dreita inni in Laxdoela saga certainly evokes disgust for the people so trapped.1654 In examining where in an episode and on what narrative level these matters occur, it emerged that with the exception of Lugaid’s recounting to Cú Chulainn in TBC, Áed’s conversation with one of his men in the Fragementary Annals of Ireland and Loki’s insult in Lokasenna, such matters are only described by the narrative voice. Except for when the narrative structure demands it, other characters do not generally speak of such issues, although in texts like Eyrbyggja saga and Landnámabók people’s concerns are voiced through the narrative voice.

In Old Norse-Icelandic literature the subject can function as a plot-motor (assassination), in connection with narrative concerns (sacred space), or by introducing an eery element to a scene (relating the privy with hell or draugar). It is the structure of the toilet house and its location on the border of the farm that allow for such developments. Only in the mythological narratives in the Eddas, in relation to the gods and in the clear context of humiliation, does the concern about where to defecate relate back to human bodies. The narrated worlds of the early Irish texts discussed here, on the other hand, generally show no such fixed structures but relegate urination and defecation simply to nature. Perhaps it is this association with going into nature (rather than into a specially constructed hut) that enforced the idea of these matters relating to and shaping nature. Queen Medb actively shapes the landscape through her urine and King Diarmaid’s vulnerable side is exposed when he too retreats into nature to defecate. In other early Irish texts, faeces and urine can also reveal something about the nature of a character: the youthful Amairgen is drawn to a large extent through his neglect to conform to social standards of sanitation; Medb is portrayed as a woman subject to her female bodily functions and Derbforgaill is shown as exceedingly female through her urination, so much so that she threatens social order. These characters become tangible through their need to need, their compulsion to follow the call of nature, and they can also be said to come especially close to real, lived bodies. No such concerns about a character’s identity are related in the Old Norse-Icelandic sources, which indicates grave differences in the two traditions, but also in the individual texts.

Curiously, none of the texts examined in the discussions revealed the more problematic aspects expressed by researchers studying other literary genres and traditions. These texts also do not reflect Douglas’ remark that urination and related matters hold (possibly universal) taboo character because any ‘[m]atter issuing from them [the bodily orifices] is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind. Spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body.’1655 Hence MCCRACKEN ’s claim that in medieval literature, the passing of urine, like defecating and menstruating, appears as anomalous, as ‘“out of place” because it transgresses the natural boundaries of the body which normally contains these fluids’1656 is perhaps too general a statement. No such unease about the transgression of bodily boundaries was observable in the texts discussed here. A possible reason for this may lie in the nature of the texts, which by and large installed the motif for narrative purposes. The act itself simply appears to be a natural function of the human body, although a narrative may place it in contexts where it becomes socially meaningful in relation to other issues, such as humiliation or identity.

In view of their relation to the narrated world, it can be said that by and large these examples reveal the link between human beings and the world that AGGERMANN proposes, albeit in connection with fictional characters and narrated worlds.1657 In terms of narrative geography the characters become somehow inscribed in the narrated world, they change its appearance through their bodies and they spatialise it for or through their needs. The examples from Landnámabók and Eyrbyggia saga have shown that the narrative world of a newly inhabited island may be shaped socially in proposing rigid divisions between holy places and those fit for defecation. Matter, it seems, is never just matter, but is always already placed in a social context. Through the matter, medieval texts can explore social concerns and thus present a holistic concept of natural and social bodies. As DOUGLAS pointedly phrases it: ‘bodily control is an expression of social control’1658, and in the present case, both can be made visible through the control of human waste.

In asking what it means when bodies in texts are written (also) with excrement, the focus now turns to mediality issues on a more general level. Apart from the separate concepts of social organisation and character delineation just discussed, it can be stated that the real importance of writing bodies through and with faeces is that the matter is not just waste, but ‘human’ waste. In fact, all of the texts discussed here reflect MORRISON’s statement that one ‘could argue that the mark of culture (from the Western point of view) is the control of excrement.’1659 This is because, as WILLIAM MILLER finds, ‘even in the midst of unpleasant sensation, of bodies and their wastes and orifices, the larger cultural and moral orderings intrude and animate the ooze with spirit.’1660 In recognising that the human body can be seen as a symbol of society, the attempt to spatialise the natural bodily matters can also come to signify the spatialisation of human culture.1661

It follows that concerns about faecal control and negative associations with menstrual fluids are integral in mediating the society of a narrated world. Control of natural bodily matters also symbolises an engagement with the borders of society, experienced and made tangible through the borders of the body. Furthermore, if one tries to abandon preconceived notions about the complete opposition of nature and culture, one can begin to appreciate the literary bodies in their entirety, as well as the literary developments of their (holistic) nature. In fact, they exemplify that these natural bodily matters are vital in the discourse of human culture(s) and integral in ascertaining a character’s status within his/ her society or humankind. Writing the body with faeces is, then, ultimately an attempt at writing human bodies, that is, bodies of humans that are part of culture as well as nature.

6Concluding Matters

Wer aber nur das zu finden erwartet, was er ohnehin
schon kennt, wird beim Lesen und Interpretieren
nicht viel dazulernen.1662

6.1Reading Bodies as Texts, Reading Bodies in Texts

In Medieval Identity Machines, JEFFREY JEROME COHEN states that ‘the anonymous author of the Voyage of Saint Brendan (Navigatio S. Brendani Abbatis) describes in this eighth- or ninth-century text how the sea-going saint managed to navigate the world without really arriving anywhere.’1663 In the introduction it was professed that this study is rather similar to Brendan’s voyage, in that it travels from text to text and discovers in awe how bodies are installed and read as mediators. On this journey the study navigated two literary traditions and diverse genres and periods; it explored texts that are vastly different from one another but still belong to the world of medieval thought. Most importantly, the study visited its texts like Brendan does his islands – as independent microcosms exhibiting their own semiotic systems that at times startle the reader out of his or her comfort zone. Sometimes it returned to a text in order to investigate further, like Brendan returns to various islands at specific times in the church year. At other times it only lingered briefly with a text and provided a first, tentative glimpse at a text that could, from other points of investigation, nevertheless prove a fruitful terrain.

In the conclusion it must be asked whether this study did arrive anywhere or whether it too, as COHEN’s statement implies, simply navigated in circles. While the study did not set out to provide broad statements about bodies in medieval literature, it did, hopefully, bring to the reader a sense of the diverse nature of bodies in medieval texts. What links the textual islands in this study is thus not that they belong to one single genre or offer one single idea of bodies, but rather the gaze with which they were approached, that is, the interest in what they themselves might have to disclose with respect to one important part of their narrated worlds: bodies. The purpose was to examine, to see and to talk about the bodies within the narrated worlds and let the individual discussions be guided by the foci of the texts or episodes. In order to facilitate this, various theoretical concepts were employed to unearth the semiotic systems and narrative strategies that create and situate these bodies, but it is hoped that the gaze on the bodies was never lost.

Moving bodies ‘from the periphery to the center of analysis’1664, as GROSZ advocates, has shown that in very exceptional cases, it really is the processes of mediality that matter most. This understanding of bodies as being able to signify through various ideas of mediality was developed in the individual chapters. It thus became clear that these bodies are, like GROSZ argues for modern, real, lived bodies,
positioned by various cultural narratives and discourses, which are themselves embodiments of culturally established canons, norms, and representational forms, so that they can be seen as living narratives […].1665

Hopefully, the complexity of this process and of body-narratives has been duly acknowledged in the previous chapters. It was shown that very often how a body is understood, installed and presented as a medium differs considerably, not just according to the modern idea of genres but also in individual texts, because individual texts create and develop their own ideas about bodies and about bodies as mediators. The manifold representations of bodies in medieval literature therefore do not simply depend on genre and/or spatial and temporal backgrounds, although these are also important factors to consider. They also depend on a particular text’s transmission, on its focus and purpose in developing a narrative and on the nature of the narrated world and the semiotic system that it creates. Ultimately, a text’s agenda explains why bodies can become literary vehicles in certain texts and are used for very specific purposes, while in others they are simply not of much interest. This in turn indicates that not only the intra- and extra-diegetic audience but also the compilers/redactors of the texts see bodies as meaningful entities that can be consciously installed in relation to mediality, but do not have to be.

One reason why bodies may be used as media is, of course, because even real, lived bodies are read in various contexts and on a daily basis, now and in medieval times. It is highly unlikely that the compilers/redactors of these texts were wholly unaware of these mechanisms in their real, historical world. Consequently, they may have thought that bodies should fulfil similar functions within narrated worlds, and may have deliberately sought to create bodies that fulfil these functions in the texts they compiled or edited. Alternatively, they may have critically engaged with the standards of reading bodies. Yet in either case they needed to adapt the mechanisms of reading to the narrated world of a literary text.

At times they also needed to imagine how the characters in a text might install bodies in their very own time and place. To achieve this, the compilers/redactors required narrated worlds with semiotic systems that allowed bodies to be read, as well as bodies that incorporated various messages. The bodies may of course also incorporate ideas beyond this narrated world, ideas rooted in Classical theories about the monstrous, in the courtly Romance tradition or in hagiographical tradition. The task the compilers/redactors faced was to blend these influences with the narrated world of a particular text (or vice versa), to translate and (quite literally) incorporate them into their texts, so to speak. This multi-layered composition of bodies is what makes them so fascinating to study with regards to how they appear and function in their own narrated world.

To make the bodies in the texts both believable and tangible, they also needed to be shaped as fictional materiality, especially if their skin was to be inscribed. The compilers/redactors thus needed to create flesh through words. The bodies in the examples discussed here can all be said to be imagined materiality, capable of expressing and retaining meaning, because they were created specifically to fulfil this purpose. Ultimately, these texts imagine that the social body is also the physical body, is always also flesh. To grasp that, contrary to post-modern theories of the body as (somehow) pure text, some medieval texts shaped bodies in which the words create flesh, has been one of the main discoveries of the journey around these texts. This study hopefully succeeded in foregrounding the narrative artistry by which words can express the compilers’/redactors’ thoughts about fleshness and thus create imagined flesh in the mind of the audience.

As the chapters already contained the conclusions of the individual discussions, these need not be repeated here. It is, however, still useful to briefly state how the study as a whole relates to the two research questions. In trying to recapitulate the significance of the first of these questions, the introduction proposed three very general but important factors which are vital for a successful process of transmission: a potential for being inscribed (whether by an act of inscription or in itself), a potential for retaining and mediating information and a potential for being read/decoded. These were developed very differently in the three ideas of mediality discussed here and it emerged that, in fact, not all factors need to be ‘staged’ or fixed to a moment in time.

In expressive mediality, for instance, the inscription is always already inherent in a body – the body contains meaning in itself. Hence there are no uninscribed bodies in a narrated world, even if the texts only foreground the instances in which the reading of a particular body becomes important (in a particular context). Bodies are able to retain this innate information simply by being alive, and, as the case of Melkorka proved, they can mediate even in problematic circumstances. In the case of transmissive mediality, the moment of inscription was always external and explained, even though it may be recounted as something that happened in the past rather than being presented in real time. In this case, all three factors were addressed in the texts, albeit to varying degrees. In relation to the medial potential of natural bodily matters, this threefold distinction was not present. In these instances, bodies can at most be said to mediate through their (exceptional) abilities (in the cases of Medb and Derbforghaill), but there is no observable inscriptive moment. Instead, the physical need is installed on a narrative level in order to address the boundaries of human nature and society through the orifices of the body. In these cases it is often strictly speaking not the bodies that mediate, or their faeces, but the social treatment or impact of the matter so emitted in the narrated world.

In general, the reading of the bodies is developed most prominently in all texts discussed here. In fact, it became clear that bodies are only meaningful in a social context because they are read continuously and under different circumstances. If one follows the texts in their assessment, this aspect is foregrounded, and it is an act that is usually tied to specific social or narrative circumstances. This justifies the focus on readings presented here, as it needed to be discovered who reads a particular body, through what paradigms and reading processes, and in what context. Bodies are not merely ‘social surfaces of inscription’1666 in the words of GROSZ, they are likewise social surfaces of reading. In ascertaining, like GROSZ, that ‘memory, social history, and cultural cohesion are branded on the flesh’1667 it must be acknowledged that this is only possible because these concepts are meaningful to the (intra- and extradiegetic) reader(s) in relation to the body which exhibits them.

To conclude the discussion about the conditions for successful mediality discourses, it can be said that the examples in chapters two to four have shown bodies as inscribed and as inscribers. Yet they have above all shown that only on the basis of a semiotic system, and thus in a social context that is perpetually recreated and reinforced, is it possible to install bodies in such contexts. In chapter five the proposition of a system of three components was of little use, leading to the assumption that either these cases stood outside mediality discourse, or that in their case, mediality may function through very different processes. As the mere inclusion of these rarely mentioned acts suggested the latter, it was further examined how and why these bodies may mediate. The subsequent discussions demonstrated the need to readjust such strict frameworks in certain circumstances and put forward new readings. Taking all the chapters together, it may be proposed that the texts discussed here do, as KIENING and STERCKEN propose1668, demonstrate explicit knowledge about medial processes, which must be appreciated in their individuality.

To let the texts show what is meaningful to them and why was an important prerequisite in reaching such conclusions. The universality of reading bodies that has been proposed in various frameworks should therefore never distract from the need to read bodies in context. Only by acknowledging the individuality of these processes can it be determined how medial processes can function through bodies. This has perhaps become most evident in the case of Ásmund, Eyvind and princess Aesa, where a common, usual reading of skin was juxtaposed with a highly subjective one rooted entirely in Aesa’s own preference and agenda.

The complex status of the body as an ever-present medium that is nevertheless highly dependent on cultural perception and contexts was addressed repeatedly throughout the study. In this the readings of medieval texts chime with GROSZ’S proclamation about real, lived bodies in that bodies
cannot be adequately understood as ahistorical, precultural, or natural objects in any simple way: they are not only inscribed, marked, engraved, by social pressures external to them but are the products, the direct effects, of the very social constitution of nature itself […].1669

It is through a careful apprehension of the semiotic systems of the narrated worlds that modern scholars can at least grasp these processes of historisation, culturalisation and inscription of bodies in medieval literature.

The term reading was used, perhaps somewhat indiscriminately, for both the intradiegetic reading of bodies by other characters as well as for my own close readings. The readings within the texts could often be observed quite clearly, showing that the texts themselves portrayed them for great effect. My own close readings were guided by the narrative strategies of, as well as by the information given by, a text; yet these readings must remain subjective. This is also because this study inadvertently followed a two-fold way of comprehending texts as formulated by LUTZ. On the one hand, meaning was intended by a medieval author/compiler/ redactor who sought to direct this meaning at the audience through various narrative strategies. On the other hand, there is the understanding of the audience, the meaning which they decode, which may or may not coincide with this intended meaning.1670 It is highly doubtful that the full magnitude of medieval literary bodies can be unearthed by modern scholars, and it is equally doubtful that all members of a medieval audience would have grasped the complete intended meaning. Yet by drawing attention to the strategies by which bodies in literary texts were created and made meaningful, at least some of the efforts of the compilers/redactors may be appreciated.

The development of this study greatly benefited from a broad understanding of mediality. Thebroad focus made it possible to consider aspects of literary bodies that had hitherto not been discussed in relation to mediality, such as beardlessness or natural bodily matters. It can be concluded that a wide variety of bodies in medieval texts exhibit key factors attributed to media by KIENING.1671 They can include various aspects such as transmission, performance, distribution and exchange, and often these factors overlap considerably on a single body. Because medial processes can include such a variety of foci, the individual close readings illustrated that mediality is a pluralistic concept that has to be deciphered and analysed according to specific contexts. Only by examining individual examples of mediality can the specific underlying structures be addressed and the question of how these processes work be accordingly, if at times tentatively, answered.

The examples presented here are particularly interesting in relation to their engagement with the processes of transmission because the texts show what KIENING has termed an ‘elaborierte[n] Mediengebrauch als auch eine nuancierte Medienreflexion.’1672 The episodes discussed (if perhaps not always the whole texts) can, as KIENING argues for medieval German texts, likewise be treated ‘als Produkte hoher Komplexität, vielfältig in den entworfenen Welten, tiefsinnig in der Variation von Strukturen, subtil im Spiel der Zeichen.’1673 This becomes especially clear in cases where certain bodies mediate on more than one level simultaneously (Cú Chulainn, Melkorka or Gratiana and King Jón), and it is a text’s play with these levels that reveals the manifold processes of mediality. These multiple perspectives are also appreciated by MÜLLER when he asserts that the function of media in medieval texts is to ‘open up mental display rooms and intensify the perspectives of different observers.’1674 In most of the cases discussed here, this is indeed the case.

All of these remarks can be said to reflect the oft-cited idea of reading bodies as text, as an inscribed surface of events, to use FOUCAULT’s terminology.1675 During research it also emerged that attention had to be drawn to how bodies can be read as the products of narrative strategies and devices. This observation echoes WEISS’ proclamation that ‘since understanding the body as a text demands that it has its own narrative structure, and any ethics that arises out of this narrative structure must itself be narratively constructed’1676, a fundamental point already quoted in the introduction. The present study is unique in examining the medial potential of bodies by also addressing their narratological construction. In order to unearth the underlying processes of mediality, the narrative techniques by which texts are constructed – narrative voice, voices of other characters – and their influence on the perception and evaluation of bodies were considered, and hopefully shown to be fascinating ground for study in their own right. For instance, it emerged that Cú Chulainn’s body is the only body that is developed throughout whole texts, TBC I and II. Cú Chulainn is also the only character on which the descriptions and assessments by the narrative voice and other characters present a polyvalent and, at least to the modern mind, contradictory picture. The otherwise limited but conscious focus on individual bodies at very particular points in a text further strengthens the argument that bodies were deliberately developed as mediators in specific contexts, and in these contexts only.

The attention to who describes a body, how narrative voice and other characters may interact in this process and how their information relates to each other has proven that in the majority of cases (with the notable exception of Cú Chulainn) the picture emerging is coherent. This angle of examination was inspired by BAL’s axiom that whenever something is presented in literary texts a certain way of seeing and hence presenting must be chosen.1677 The idea that with this may come a certain point of reading and a relation to medial processes proved worth considering. It was shown that in the case of Njál, for instance, the negative evaluation of his beardlessness appears only in relation to the malevolent Hallgerð,who succeeds in making her view public, forcing Njál and his sons to react to the insult. In the case of Cú Chulainn, it was shown that the narrative voice at times guides the audiences’ judgement of his appearance, thus reassessing, for instance, Fer Diad’s comment.

All of these observations emerged from asking how bodies can be installed as mediators and what the underlying processes of mediality are. However, it was made clear that although the other research question appears somewhat more basic, neglecting it throughout the study would have led to neglecting the actual purpose of these often elaborately installed bodies. All of the bodies discussed in chapters two, three and four can be said to mediate identity, albeit only within the present definition of identity. Yet within this framework, identity and body are perceived as inseparable entities: bodies do not just express a trans-substantial identity, they are part of this identity themselves; they generate and at the same time mediate identity. As BRYAN S. TURNER aptly summarises, ‘[humans] have bodies and they are bodies.’1678 Studying the importance of the body in the construction of literary, fictional identity attested that, as ARMIN SCHULZ also proclaims, medieval concepts of identity are very corporeal.1679 SCHILDKROUT’s observation that ‘the body, as a canvas, is not only the site where culture is inscribed but also a place where the individual is defined and inserted into the cultural landscape’1680 was also reflected in the individual texts. Some characters were even shown to exhibit what may be called self-awareness (or self-awareness): Cú Chulainn is ashamed of his bodily change during metamorphosis and the princes Halfdan and Vilhjalm bemoan their scarred bodies which show that they were gravely humiliated. This is a vital indicator that in certain medieval texts, some characters can and do engage with the very foundations of their identity, and even they acknowledge the importance of their own body in relation to this identity.

In other cases, such as Melkorka and her son Ólaf or King Jón and Gratiana, it was shown that bodies can mediate on two distinct levels: as a general expression of noble descent but also of familial ties or the (expected) suitability of spouses for each other. This is an important point to keep in mind, as bodies can and do become meaningful on various levels. Even something so minor to the modern eye as the lack of a beard can be hugely meaningful within the narrated worlds, and the identity of a character as an adult male can be severely (and deliberately) questioned by mention of this feature. The examples also indicated that identity is often not a twofold division (of inside and outside) in relation to an intradiegetic society, but that even within these spheres various identities can be created and negotiated. Thus ARMIN SCHULZ’S remark that the body is at the centre of identity yet does not denote a stable identity, but rather shows an engagement with semiotic issues1681 can be affirmed.

In addition to the process of mediating identity, chapters two and three also showed that bodies are integral in shaping culture. CATHERINE BELSEY defines culture as follows:

[c]ulture embraces the whole range of practices, customs and representations of a society. In their rituals, stories and images, societies identify what they perceive as good and evil, proper, sexually acceptable, racially other. Culture is the location of values, and the study of culture shows how values vary from one society to another, or from one historical moment to the next.1682

Yet, as BELSEY adds, ‘culture does not exist in the abstract’1683 but is tangible only through the meaningful entities which produce it. One such entity is bodies, both in literature and beyond it, and the importance of bodies in making a culture tangible within a text has been shown in relation to various medieval texts. In addressing the position of bodies within a text and their importance for the text, it can be said that even in medieval literature bodies can appear as ‘the existential ground of culture and self’1684, as THOMAS J. CSORDAS polemically phrases it in relation to real, lived bodies.

In chapter three it was shown that in the small number of texts discussed here, the identity of the other always stands in relation to the self. In these texts, both self and other are thus continuously involved in a process of assessing and negotiating the boundaries that define them. The bodies of self and other are important canvases on which their identities can be negotiated, but they are but one of the important factors, with performative aspects and space also being integral in delineating the characters. This topic was further developed in the brief discussion of metamorphic bodies and shape-shifting. In both literary traditions, these unstable bodies mediate a concern about the stability of boundaries but also about the very categorisation of bodies along the lines of stable systems (like the Politics of Anatomy). This is indicative of GROSZ’ finding that ‘[t]he body is […] a point from which to rethink the opposition between the inside and the outside, the public and the private, the self and other […]’1685, and that such processes of rethinking are also tangible in literary texts.

The discussions of inscribed skin showed another very complex engagement with the medial potential of bodies through the material quality of the skin and flesh. However, these signs are read not in isolation but in relation to the body that carries them. The bodies are never blank surfaces that only receive, bear and transmit meaning: Cét’s opponents, Cethern and Ásmund are warriors who carry wounds and Tuán inscribes his lore on the skin of saints. As such, the bodies not only mediate memory and/ or history (or, more precisely, their-story), but they are also identity. It has been shown that although ‘this metaphorics [sic] of body writing posits the body, and particularly its epidermic surface […] as corporeal surfaces’, as GROSZ claims, her subsequent conclusion that the body is thus ‘a blank page on which engraving, graffiti, tattooing, or inscription can take place’1686 is by no means applicable to these texts. This concern is clearly linked with the inscribable nature of bodies that bridges the chronological gap between the moment of inscription and the moment of reading. The fact that, in this respect, the trope of the body as a manuscript or a palimpsest was consciously developed is hardly surprising given the ready link between human skin and parchment and also the importance writing held in the Christian cultures that produced the texts. KATIE L. WALTER contends that in literature skin frequently appears as ‘the material surface for inscribing words and illuminating images in manuscript culture’1687, and she thus poses a conscious link between the manuscripts made of skin and human skin in terms of inscriptive surfaces. To focus solely on the skin and neglect these concerns about historiography and memory would, however, have meant to neglect the main interest attached to these inscribed bodies.

Chapter five is perhaps the most difficult one to consider in relation to the question of what bodies mediate, because the concerns vary so drastically. The various, and at times very serious, concerns which appeared in connection with this at first only marginal topic have shown that out of minor interests, remarkably challenging chapters can emerge; a sure reminder to turn the gaze even on such daring topics. As a whole, the chapter echoes DOUGLAS’ proposition that ‘[t]he body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious.’1688 This may be related to gender, landscape, social or behavioural boundaries (insult), which have all been observed in this chapter. In general, it can be concluded that what bodies mediate is by no means uniform or one-dimensional but very often various ideas of mediality and mediality discourses are artistically combined and oscillate between each other. Any discussion therefore needs to carefully assess the possible ways in which bodies mediate and can be read, a task that is very challenging but also incredibly rewarding.

6.2Revisiting Ideas

In order to effectively present the multitude of findings it was decided to structure this study along what has been called ideas of mediality: expressive mediality, transmissive mediality and the mediality discourse of natural bodily matters. In the conclusion it remains to ask whether the concepts were helpful to the study (at least from the point of view of the writer) and how the proposed ideas of mediality may be evaluated. It has already been stated that the concepts were drawn specifically for this study and have not been used elsewhere. Their usefulness for further research or in other fields would need to be determined through further application in close readings. Yet the concepts were not devised to have a wider impact on mediality studies but simply to provide working definitions for this particular analysis. They may be further thought out or elaborated in the future, or it may emerge that they are of no further use, yet they hopefully helped guide the reader through the wealth of examples presented here. In any case, only a small amount of such underlying thought patterns could be discussed here and it is believed that many more ideas of mediality could be discerned and proposed if the subject was studied further.

Selecting texts to represent these ideas was not always an easy task, as a multitude of examples were initially considered in the research process. Hopefully, the ones discussed in this final version helped best not just to outline the ideas of mediality but also the structures on which these ideas had been discerned. Nevertheless, many other texts could also have been examined and the selection was sometimes guided by personal preference as much as by academic interest, although my limited access to early Irish primary texts also imposed limitations. For instance, centring the discussion of Irish texts around Cú Chulainn in two chapters was a bold move. Yet it was beneficial because it allowed sustained engagement with a fascinatingly complex figure which dominates the scholarship on the Ulster Cycle but still remains puzzling. It is also justified because, from the point of view of body criticism, the hero is indeed ‘too good to be true’1689, as BRUFORD concludes about him in a very different context. On yet another level it was constructive because Cú Chulainn’s body has only relatively recently emerged as a site of interest for scholars and the present discussion perhaps incites further research on this fascinating figure. This by no means suggests that there are no other figures to also be discussed, like for instance the beautiful Étain in TBDD, who eventually had to be relegated to a mere footnote. But focus necessarily also means limitation, for better or for worse.

With regards to the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition, the selection of texts (largely but not exclusively) from the original riddarasögur and the Íslendingasögur meant that for the reader unfamiliar with this literary tradition, only two genres needed to be introduced in some detail. Hopefully enough information was provided to make the analyses accessible but it was limited to outlining the most important and relevant points so as not to distract from the actual analyses. Including two research traditions was beneficial in that it revealed the importance attached to bodily mediality in two medieval literary traditions and their very own ways of installing bodies as mediators. Hopefully, it was also shown in the process that hitherto neglected genres like the original riddarasögur prove much more amenable to literary criticism than previous scholarship had thought. These texts by all means chime with KIENING’s conclusion that medieval German texts ‘greifen soziale Praktiken auf, stellen sie aber in den Kontext imaginärer Welten und damit komplexer Sinnstiftungen. […] So wie Körper nicht einfach krude Materialität sind, sondern auch Einschreibefläche für Zeichenordnungen.’1690 The same may be concluded about the two literary traditions discussed in this study. In the exceptional examples presented, this dual understanding of bodies as materiality and place of inscription could be discerned throughout the study, albeit in different contexts, depending on the different ideas of mediality.

6.3Situating the Findings

In a conclusion one is also allowed to ponder what this study has to offer the wider field of medieval literary criticism and how it may be situated within this discipline, or within body criticism. Hence the underlying concerns of this study may be allowed to surface now, together with some thoughts on the possible worth of the preceding three-hundred-odd pages for other researchers. For one, the approach to the texts ‘as texts’ situates this discussion at the cutting edge of medieval literary criticism. The close readings can thus be seen as part of a trend in both literary traditions to (also) analyse the texts in their narrative composition and individuality, and hence to see them as (consciously) devised artefacts shaped by a multitude of influences and through their transmission. This means engaging with their artistic individualities and determining how they work and create meaningful narrated worlds. It also means engaging with their inconsistencies and peculiarities and seeing these as challenges rather than weaknesses or shortcomings on the part of the text.

Of course, it is at times difficult to appreciate their alterity from modern or Classical texts, but in many cases it just needs awillingness to divert the gaze and appreciate their narrative artistry for what it is: artistry. Or, as O’CONNOR aptly phrases it, it is not necessary to abandon philological concerns (Old and New) but there can simultaneously also be a
more concerted attempt to understand the literature we have inherited as literature: to take its aesthetic features as seriously as we do those other features of mediaeval literary texts (mythological roots, social significance, political functions, later reception, openness to further meaning).1691

This study has presented the narrated worlds of the texts with awe and admiration, wonder and interest and thus allows them to leave a similar impression as the islands do in the Navigatio. Perhaps then the previous chapters could make a small contribution to further such assessments and may incite engagement with texts that for one reason or another have been largely overlooked in scholarship, such as Dámusta saga or Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers.

Another aspect that situates this analysis at the cutting edge of medieval studies is its focus on bodies as important parts of medieval literary texts and their narrated worlds. The consciously chosen plural of the subject has demonstrated not only the plurality of bodies in medieval texts but also the need to acknowledge this plurality in their study. In a similar vein, the various discussions also confirmed that even though bodies have been examined more widely in relation to medieval texts in the last decade, there still remains a lot to be explored. It is important to analyse the bodies from the very point of view of these literary traditions before they can be linked to the wider picture of bodies in medieval European literature.

Popular works from other subject areas, such as LE GOFF and TRUONG’s Une histoire du corps au Moyen Âge are often formulated too broadly to offer anything but an initial overview. In this respect, they are valuable only in the questions they ask of their own texts, but their conclusions cannot be situated next to Old Norse-Icelandic or early Irish texts. Instead of trying to apply frameworks devised in the study of very different sources, the present discussions showed that in working from one’s own sources, the peculiarities of individual texts and their fascination with bodies can be duly outlined. Perhaps further such case-based studies of individual bodies may emerge. As KIENING finds, ‘[s]tatt einer globalen Geschichte des Körpers ergibt sich damit eine Vielzahl partikularer Geschichten […]’1692, histories written by the actual bodies.

The individual analyses also sought to contribute to the current debate as to whether bodies in literary texts are ‘mere’ text or whether they may also exhibit traits of material, organic entities. The question arose from the study of real, lived bodies, yet it has also generated some interest in literary criticism. One of the most central hypotheses in my research is the assertion that although bodies are discursively created through narrative strategies and read as text, in some texts they nevertheless also exhibit fictitious materiality. In these cases, JEFFREY JEROME COHEN’s statement that ‘[t]he body is a hybrid category, part cultural and part material, in which interior and exterior are always enfolded, always crossing into each other’1693 is perhaps the most fitting conclusion. Addressing such a controversial issue and being guided largely by how the texts appear to imagine ‘their’ bodies means exploring new ways rather than following well-trodden paths. Such an approach is possible and necessary because many fascinating aspects would have been overlooked if these bodies were denied their fictitious materiality.

It has already been stated that proposing far-reaching theories or reaching conclusive statements about the use of bodies as media in medieval texts was not the aim of this study. In fact, the value of this study lies precisely in avoiding such generalising statements. Although this monograph was based on much broader research than the examples presented here lead to suspect, it was still felt that it is too early to accumulate the findings of the individual texts to propose more farreaching tendencies. In presenting individual close readings, the study invites other researchers to evaluate the findings for themselves with ready reference to the texts and citations on which they are based.

It has further been argued (repeatedly) that the texts were not employed to enforce pre-existing assumptions or to illustrate theories. STEPHEN GREENBLATT once declared that the most successful of journeys is the one where one does not learn anything new but only affirms what one already knows.1694 In terms of journeying with GREENBLATT’s idea in mind, this study would need to acknowledge shipwreck. This is not because I knew nothing about (medieval) bodies before commencing the project but because I tried to avoid applying such pre-conceived perceptions onto the texts as much as is humanly possible, and tried to avoid only affirming what other sources and other studies had taught me. Instead, I deliberately sought to depart without a ready-made conclusion about what to find – and thus not to affirm but to explore. And this, as ARMIN SCHULZ’S quote at the beginning of this chapter outlines, lead to learning a lot.

I learned that medieval texts and their bodies speak, even if the language is at first unfamiliar, but that to learn the lingo and to listen can offer insights which may have been overlooked otherwise. The theoretical concepts that were considered, whether from sociology, anthropology, monster theory or gender studies, were discussed with care in relation to the sources and their strengths and weaknesses were duly acknowledged. As such, the aim of comparing and critically contrasting theories and texts to see how they relate to each other – rather than rigidly applying theories onto texts – was followed, even if no new theories could be proposed at this stage of research. Such a critical engagement with both sources and theories also reflects a current perspective in medieval literary criticism, and hopefully one which will prevail.

That not many studies could be cited that combine mediality and medieval literature shows that the topic has not been approached much to date, at least not systematically. Since mediality is a highly pluralistic concept, what is needed in its study is a larger number of case-based studies and close readings. These can probe deeper into the questions of how medial processes work in various instances but also examine what may have prompted medieval texts to consciously foreground mediality issues in particular episodes. In order to demonstrate the interesting and highly reflective engagement that medieval sources show in relation to mediality this research included a variety of texts to generate interest, yet in the future more detailed engagement with the individual aspects would lead to an even greater insight into the complexity of medieval literature. Finally, the analyses have also demonstrated that the two literary traditions examined are open to such contemporary strands of literary criticism. Perhaps these conclusions will lead to these extraordinary and fascinating examples being considered by researchers of other fields such as German or English studies. Their gazes, sharpened by and adjusted to their own texts, will lead to further insights into medieval literature across Europe. For only with prolonged gazing can modern researchers begin to understand the complexity of medieval texts, and only with varying readings can this complexity be truly acknowledged.

7List of Abbreviations

CMCS: | Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies
CSANA: | Celtic Studies Association of North America
DIL: | Dictionary of the Irish Language
ITS: | Irish Text Society
PMLAA: | Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
RGA: | Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde
SMMDT: | Scéla Muicce Meic Dathó
STLG: | Scel Tuán as preserved in Lebor Gabála Érenn
TBDD: | Togail Bruidne Da Derga
TBC: | Táin Bó Cúailnge
TBF II: | Táin Bó Flidaise II
ZCP: | Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie

8Bibliography

8.1Primary Sources

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‘The Cauldron of Poesy’, ed. and trans. by P. L. HENRY, Studia Celtica, 14/15 (1981), 114–128

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8.3Electronic Sources

Online Version of the Dictionary of the Irish Language: www.dil.ie

Online Etymological Dictionary: www.etymonline.com/index.ph

Index

Aesa 1, 2

Æsir 1, 2, 3

Áes Síde 1, 2, 3, 4

Aided Derbforgaill 1, 2, 3 f.

Aided na Macraidi 1, 2

Ailill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 f., 12

Aislinge Meic Conglinne 1

Alvíssmál 1, 2

Amairgen 1, 2 f., 3, 4, 5 f., 6, 7 f.

Antichrist 1, 2 f.

Ásmund 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Ásmundar saga kappabani 1, 2, 3, 4 f.

Beardlessness 1, 2, 3 f., 4, 5 f., 6 f., 7, 8 f., 9, 10, 11 f.

Berserks 1

Book of Kells 1

Book of Leinster 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 f.

Book of Lismore 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Breslech Mór Maige Muirthemne 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Caladgleó Cethirn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 f.

Cath Étair 1

Cath Maige Tuired 1, 2 f., 3

Cauldron of Poesy 1

Cethern mac Fintain 1 f., 2

Cét mac Magach 1

Codex Regius 1, 2

Codex Vatnshyrna 1

Codex Wormianus 1

Comrac Fir Diad 1, 2, 3

Conchobar 1, 2, 3, 4

Conganchness 1

Cormac mac Airt 1

Córugud Aile 1

Críth Gablach 1, 2

Cú Chulainn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 f., 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 f., 12 f., 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 f., 24, 25 f., 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 f., 31, 32, 33, 414– 416, 34 f.

Curadmír 1 f., 2

Dagda 1

Dámusta saga 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Damusti 1, 2

Defecation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 f., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 f., 13, 14 f., 15 f., 16

De Secretis Mulierum 1, 2

Deuteronomy 1, 2, 3

Diarmaid 1, 2

Dinda na Tána 1

Dindsenchas 1, 2

Draugar 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Dreita inni 1, 2

Echtrae mac nEchach Mugmedóin 1

Edda 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9., 10 f., 11 f., 12 f., 13

Egils saga 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Eiríks saga rauða 1, 2

Ekphrasis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 f., 8, 9 f., 10, 11, 12

Etarcomol 1, 2, 3

Etymologies of Isidore of Seville 1 f., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Eyjólf son of Bolverk 1

Eyrbyggja saga 1, 2, 3

Eyvind Skinnhöll 1, 2

Fála and Flegða 1, 2 f., 3, 4, 5 f., 6

Feidelm 1 f., 2, 3 f., 4, 5 f.

Fer Diad 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Fergus mac Roích 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 f., 11

Figol mac Mámois 1

Fingálkn 1 f., 2, 3

Fingin 1, 2 f., 3, 4, 5 f., 6

Finn Cycle 1, 2

Fír fer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Flateyjarbók 1 f., 2

Fled Bricrenn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Fomóri 1, 2, 3 f.

Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda 1, 2, 3

Fragmentary Annals of Ireland 1, 2

Fúal Medba 1, 2 f.

Geisi Ulchai 1

Gesta Danorum 1, 2, 3

Geyrrǫð 1

Gisli Sursson’s Saga 1

Gjálp 1

Grammatical Treatises 1

Gratiana 1, 2, 3, 4

Grettis saga 1, 2

Gunnlǫð 1

Gylfaginning 1, 2 f.

H1 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Halfdan 1 f., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Hallgerð 1, 2

Hamhleypa 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 f.

Hauksbók 1, 2

Hávamál 1, 2

Heimdal 1

Heldenschau 1

Helgi Harðbeinsson 1

Hervor Hundingsdottir 1, 2, 3

Hjálmþér 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Hjálmþérs saga ok Ölvers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Hord 1, 2 f., 3, 4

Höskuld 1, 2

Hrafnkels saga 1

Hrungnir 1 f.

Hybridity 1, 2, 3 f., 4, 5

Immaccallam in dá Thúarad 1

Ingcél 1, 2 f.

Isidore of Seville 1 f., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Íslendingasögur 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 f., 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 f., 16, 17 f., , 18, 19

Jón 1, 2, 3, 4

Jötunn Vimrar vaðs 1

King Ingi 1 f., 2 f., 3, 4

King Ólaf 1 f., 2

Kings Cycle 1

Kjalleklings 1 f.

kolbítr 1

Konungasögur 1, 2, 3

Kvasir 1

Láeg 1, 2, 3

Laegaire 1 f.

Landnámabók 1, 2, 3

Laxdoela saga 1, 2 f., 3, 4, 5, 6

Leborcham 1, 2

Lebor Gabála Érenn 1, 2, 3, 296– 300, 4

Lebor na hUidre 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Lé Fer Flaith 1

Life of Brennain 1

Life of Colm Cille 1 f.

Life of Senán 1, 2

Life of St Brigit 1

Lóch mac mo Femis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Loddfáfnir 1

Lokasenna 1, 2, 3

Loki 1, 2, 3, 4

Lúðá 1, 2, 3 f., 4

Lygisögur 1 f.

Macgnímrada 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 f., 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 f., 12, 13 f., 14, 15

Maelodrán 1, 2

Mand Muresci 1 f., 2 f.

Margerður 1

Mead of Poetry 1, 2, 3 f., 4 f.

Medb 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 5, 6 f., 7, 8, 9 f., 10, 11 f., 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Melkorka 1, 2, 3, 4

Menstruation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Mesca Ulad 1, 2

Metamorphosis 1, 2, 3 f., 4 f., 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Meykóngr 1, 2 f., 3, 4, 5 f., 6, 7 f., 8, 9

Mokkurkalfi 1

Morrígan 1, 2 f., 3

Mýrkjartan 1 f.

Mythological Cycle 1

Nad Crantail 1, 2, 3, 4

Néde mac Adnai 1

Níall Noígiallach 1

Nið 1 f.

Njál 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Njál’s saga 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 150– 152

Njǫrð 1

Óðinn 1, 2, 3

Oengus mac Láma Gábuid 1

Ólaf 1, 2, 3

Olvir 1, 2, 3, 4

Orgguin Trí Mac Diarmata Mic Cerbaill 1

Original riddarasögur 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 51– 55, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 f., 11, 12, 13 f., 14, 15 f., 188– 190, 16, 17 f., 18 f., 19, 20 f., 21 f., 22

Peristephanon 1

Poetic Edda 1 f., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Politics of Anatomy 1 f., 2 f., 3 f., 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Prose Edda 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 5, 6, 7 f.

Ríastrad 1, 2 f., 3, 4, 5, 6 f., 7, 8, 9, 10 f., 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 234– 236, 17, 18

Ríg 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Rígsþula 1, 2, 3, 4

Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar in mesta 1

Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin 1

Scéla Muicce Meic Dathó 1, 2, 3

Scél Tuáin 1 f., 2

Scél Tuáin in Lebor Gabála 1, 2, 3 f., 4, 5 f., 6, 7

Sedentiana 1 f., 2, 3, 4 f., 5, 6, 7

Sigurð 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 f., 8 f., 9, 10, 11

Sigurðar saga þǫgla 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 313– 318, 10, 11

Siriti 1 f., 2 f.

Sisulpa 1

Skáldskaparmál 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 5 f., 6, 7

Skarphedin 1, 2 f.

Skegglausi 1, 2, 3

Skirnir’s Journey 1

Snorra Edda (see Prose Edda) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Starkað 1

St Findchú of Brí-Gobann 1

St Muru 1, 2

Sualtaim 1 f., 2 f.

Suttunger 1

Þættir 1

Táin Bó Cúailnge 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 138– 141, 9 f., 10, 11, 12 f., 13 f., 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 f., 32, 33 f., 34, 35

Táin Bó Flidaise II 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 5

The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog 1

Þiðrek 1 f.

Þiðreks saga af Bern 1 f.

Þing 1 f., 2, 3, 4, 5 f.

Tochmarc Émire 1 f., 2

Togail Bruidne Da Derga 1, 2, 3, 4 f., 5, 6 f., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 f., 13, 14

Togail Troí 1

Þorkell the Thin 1

Þórólf 1, 2

Þórr 1, 2, 3 f., 4, 5

Þórsdrápa 1, 2, 3

Þorsteins þáttr skelks 1

Translated riddarasögur 1, 2 f.

Tuán 1, 2, 3 f., 4, 5, 6, 7

Túarascbáil Delba Con Culandind 1

Túatha Dé Danann 1, 2

Ulster Cycle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 f., 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 f., 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

Upphaf Suttungamjaðar 1

Urination 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 f., 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 f., 13, 14 f., 15, 16 f., 17 f., 18 f.

Vaenir 1

Vilhjalm 1 f., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Vilmund 1 f.

Vilmundar saga Viðutan 1 f.

Watchman device 1, 2, 3 f., 4

Wikingersaga 1, 2 f.

Yellow Book of Lecan 1, 2

Ýma 1, 2, 3, 4

Ymir 1, 2

Endnotes

1

CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM, ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective’, Critical Inquiry, 22/1 (1995), 1–33 (p. 31).

2

MIREILLE SCHNYDER, ‘Mittelalterliche “Audiovisualität”’, in Der unfeste Text, ed. by BARBARA SABEL and ANDRÉ BUCHER (Würzburg, 2001), pp. 132–153 (p. 142); ‘to have no image so that the image can be shaped by language.’ This and all subsequent translations from secondary literature in German are my own.

3 | ELIZABETH GROSZ, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, IN & Indianapolis, IN, 1994), p. 3.

4

CHRIS SHILLING, The Body and Social Theory (London, 1993), p. 19. A notable exception is FRIEDRICH ENGELS’ Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (Leipzig, 1845), which openly engages with bodies and their role in social discourse.

5

CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM, ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective’, Critical Inquiry, 22/1 (1995), 1–33 (p. 6).

6

BYNUM, ‘Why All the Fuss’, p. 19. Some texts may have originated much earlier but in the extant versions that are discussed here they may nevertheless reflect concepts and concerns prevalent at the time they were compiled and/or edited, an issue which is addressed below.

7

JACQUES LE GOFF and NICOLAS TRUONG, Une histoire du corps au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2006), p. 18; ‘in the field of history the idea that the body belonged to nature and not to culture prevailed for a long time.’ All translations from this work are my own.

8 | MAKIKO KUWAHARA, Tattoo: An Anthropology (Oxford, 2005), p. 3.
9 | BERNADETTE WEGENSTEIN, Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

10

MARY EVANS, ‘Real Bodies: An Introduction’, in Real Bodies, ed. by MARY EVANS and ELLIE LEE (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 1–13 (p. 1). Possible reasons for this may be the shift towards a more sociologically orientated ‘historicism’ that focuses on social structures and stratification. Furthermore, the growing awareness of the modern body as something that can be shaped according to both a sense of self and cultural prerogatives may also have instigated this shift, especially in connection with feminist theories.

11 | JUDITH BUTLER, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York, NY, 1993).
12 | SUSAN BORDO, Unbearable Weight (Berkeley, CA, 1993). See also KUWAHARA, Tattoo, p. 4.

13

As it is customary in body criticism to refer to bodies in the real world as ‘real, lived bodies’, this term will also be used here.

14 | This practice is found in various Irish hagiographical sources, a group of texts outside the present corpus.

15

LE GOFF and TRUONG, Une histoire, pp. 39 & 11; ‘during the Middle Ages, the human body was the site of paradoxes’; ‘the concepts of the body, its position within society, its presence in fantasy and reality, in every-day life and exceptional circumstances have been shaped anew in each historical society’.

16

JEFFREY JEROME COHEN and GAIL WEISS, ‘Introduction: Bodies at the Limit’, in Thinking the Limits of the Body, ed. by JEFFREY JEROME COHEN and GAIL WEISS (New York, NY, 2003), pp. 1– 10 (p. 1).

17

A comparable term in German is Körperbilder, which places the focus less on the actual bodies but instead on images that these bodies evoke. GROSZ also advocates the use of the plural (and a concept of body specifications) but since her argument is somewhat inconsistent at this point her term will not be applied here. See GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. 19.

18

The italicized use of the term idea(s) denotes my own concept whereas a more general understanding of the term, as, for instance, in Christian ideas or general thought, is marked by a lack of italics.

19 | BYNUM, ‘Why All the Fuss’, p. 8.

20

The importance of the point of view has already been mentioned in the preface and will be properly introduced in the next chapter.

21

SUZANNE CONKLIN AKBARI and JILL ROSS, ‘Introduction: Limits and Telology: The Many Ends of the Body’, in The Ends of the Body: Identity and Community in Medieval Culture, ed. by SUZANNE CONKLIN AKBARI and JILL ROSS (Toronto, 2013), pp. 3–21 (p. 8).

22

NICOLE NYFFENEGGER and KATRIN RUPP, ‘Introduction: Re-Writing the Medieval Body’, in Fleshly Things and Spiritual Matters: Studies on the Medieval Body in Honour of Margaret Bridges, ed. by NICOLE NYFFENEGGER and KATRIN RUPP (Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2011), pp. 1–10 (p. 6).

23

THOMAS J. CSORDAS, ‘Introduction’, in Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, ed. by THOMAS J. CSORDAS (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1–24 (p. 5). CSORDAS refers to MARY DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols (New York, NY, 1973); NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES and MARGARET LOCK, ‘The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work on Medical Anthropology’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1 (1987), 6–41; JOHN O’NEILL, Five Bodies: The Shape of Modern Society (Ithaca, NY, 1985).

24

ROY PORTER, ‘History of the Body Reconsidered’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. by PETER BURKE, 2 nd edn (Pennsylvania, PA, 2001), pp. 233–260.

25 | CONKLIN AKBARI and ROSS, ‘Introduction’, p. 5.

26

ZOE DETSI-DIAMANTI, KATERINA KITSI-MITAKOU and EFFIE YIANNOPOULOU, ‘The Flesh Made Text Made Flesh: An Introduction’, in The Flesh Made Text Made Flesh: Cultural and Theoretical Returns to the Body, ed. by ZOE DETSI-DIAMANTI, KATERINA KITSI-MITAKOU and EFFIE YIANNOPOULOU (New York, NY, 2007), pp. 1–10 (p. 4).

27

Quoted from PHILIPP DRESSEN, ŁUKASZ KUMIEGA and CONSTANZE SPIESS, ‘Diskurs und Dispositiv als Gegenstände interdisziplinärer Forschung. Zur Einführung in den Sammelband’, in Mediendiskursanalyse: Diskurse – Dispositive – Medien – Macht, ed. by PHILIPP DRESSEN, ŁUKASZ KUMIEGA and CONSTANZE SPIEß (Wiesbaden, 2012), pp. 9–22 (p. 9); ‘formations of knowledge in mediality discourse’.

28 | ROBERT GUGUTZER, Soziologie des Körpers (Bielefeld, 2004), p. 74.
29 | GUGUTZER, Soziologie des Körpers, p. 75.

30

ANNE WALDSCHMIDT, ‘Behinderte Körper: Stigmatheorie, Diskurtheorie und Disability Studies im Vergleich’, in Marginalisierte Körper: Zur Soziologie und Geschichte des anderen Körpers, ed. by TORSTEN JUNGE and IMKE SCHMINCKE (Münster, 2007), pp. 27–43 (p. 35).

31

For this see ŁUKASZ KUMIEGA, ‘Medien im Spannungsfeld zwischen Diskurs und Dispositiv’, in Mediendiskursanalyse: Diskurse – Dispositive – Medien – Macht, ed. by PHILIPP DRESSEN, ŁUKASZ KUMIEGA and CONSTANZE SPIEß (Wiesbaden, 2012), pp. 25–45 (p. 25).

32 | JEFFREY JEROME COHEN, Medieval Identity Machines (Minneapolis, MN, 2003), p. xviii.

33

GAIL WEISS, ‘The Body as a Narrative Horizon’, in Thinking the Limits of the Body, ed. by JEFFREY JEROME COHEN and GAIL WEISS (New York, NY, 2003), pp. 25–35 (p. 25).

34 | MARGRIT SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (London, 2002), p. 10.
35 | SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 4.
36 | VICTORIA PITTS, In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification (New York, NY, 2003), p. 29.
37 | BETTINA BILDHAUER, Medieval Blood (Cardiff, 2006), p. 8.
38 | BILDHAUER, Medieval Blood, p. 9.
39 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. x.

40

TERENCE TURNER, ‘Bodies and Anti-Bodies: Flesh and Fetish in Contemporary Social Theory’, in Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, ed. by THOMAS J. CSORDAS (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 27–47 (p. 28). See also DETSI-DIAMANTI, KITSI-MITAKOU and YIANNOPOULOU, The Flesh Made Text Made Flesh.

41

TURNER, ‘Bodies and Anti-Bodies’, p. 36. In this article, TURNER also outlines the contradiction apparent in FOUCAULT’s reasoning of this concept.

42 | WEISS, ‘Narrative Horizon’, p. 25.
43 | BRYAN S. TURNER, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (Oxford, 1984), p. 7.
44 | CHRISTIAN KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift: Texte vor dem Zeitalter der Literatur (Frankfurt a. Main, 2003).
45 | TURNER, Body and Society, pp. 7–8.
46 | SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 10.

47

DIETER MERSCH, Medientheorien zur Einführung (Hamburg, 2006), p. 10; ‘in itself is not “one”, [i.e. exhibiting a fixed, distinctive identity], but reveals itself as a pluralism which has to be deciphered on a case by case basis.’

48

MERSCH, Medientheorien, p. 9; ‘are authorities of transmission, performance, distribution, of exchange and repetition […]’.

49

KUMIEGA, ‘Medien im Spannungsfeld’, p. 36; ‘appear as products of complex collusions, as systems of perception grounded in social or cultural concepts rather than as simple channels of communication or distributors of content.’

50

CHRISTIAN KIENING, ‘Mediale Gegenwärtigkeit: Paradigmen – Semantiken – Effekte’, in Mediale Gegenwärtigkeit, ed. by CHRISTIAN KIENING (Zürich, 2007), pp. 9–70 (p. 23); ‘should be perceived as a technical “in-between” which neither hides nor distorts reality but is the underlying condition for its potential to appear – in as much as it is inextricably linked with but not identical to it.’

51 | KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 342.

52

CHRISTIAN KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, Poetica, 39 (2007), 285– 352 (p. 331); ‘not simply the idea of mediation and transmission but becomes tangible in the process of relating two entities to each other.’

53

The term audience as used here denotes any recipient of a text, whether s/ he reads it or whether it is read to him or her. The influence a literary body has outside the text will only marginally be discussed here, yet it is imperative to note that bodies are media that can and do function intra- and extradiegetically.

54

KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 342; ‘processes, situations and semantics [ideas about meaning] from which more case-bound but also profounder images of pre-modern mediality may emerge.’

55

KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 342; ‘description of the historical conditions of the potential for mediality.’

56 | CHRISTIAN KIENING and MARTINA STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, Das Mittelalter, 15 (2010–2012), 3–8 (p. 3).
57 | KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 331.
58 | KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, p. 4.
59 | KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, p. 3.
60 | KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, pp. 5–6.

61

KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, p. 5; ‘may be understood as entities in between the level of theory and its [the theory’s] manifestation in a text.’

62 | The term reading will be introduced in depth in 1.3.

63

KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, p. 5; ‘usages in which not a systematically thought out but nevertheless an explicit knowledge about media and mediality is expressed […]’.

64 | KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 342.
65 | DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols.
66 | DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols, p. 79.
67 | GUGUTZER, Soziologie des Körpers, p. 83.

68

GUGUTZER, Soziologie des Körpers, p. 83; ‘it follows that was is important is the relationship between the social system (society, culture) and the symbolic system (body as a medium for expression) and especially the influence of the former on the latter.’

69 | DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols.

70

KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 327; ‘conditions which allow something to function as an in-between, mediator or transmitter’.

71

KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 179; ‘wherever in textual or pictorial transmission bodies appear, they are surrounded by signs and simultaneously function as signs themselves […]’.

72

ANKE ABRAHAM, Der Körper im biographischen Kontext (Wiesbaden, 2002), p. 16; ‘usage of the body as a social symbol which can indicate prestige, inclusion or disassociation […]’.

73

For a brief discussion of the wider context of this dichotomy see SARAH KAY and MIRI RUBIN, ‘Introduction’, in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. by SARAH KAY and MIRI RUBIN (Manchester, 1994), pp. 1–9.

74

A very thought-provoking reading of marked saintly skin as expressing identity has recently been presented by NICOLE NYFFENEGGER, ‘Saint Margaret’s Tattoos: Empowering Marks on White Skin’, Exemplaria, 25/4 (2013), 267–283.

75

CLAUDIA ÖHLSCHLÄGER and BIRGIT WIENS, ‘Einleitung’, in Körper – Gedächtnis – Schrift: Der Körper als Medium kultureller Erinnerung, ed. by CLAUDIA ÖHLSCHLÄGER and BIRGIT WIENS (Berlin, 1987), pp. 9–22 (p. 10); ‘a medium for memory and inscription, for storing and transforming cultural signs […]’.

76 | PITTS, Flesh, p. 30.
77 | PITTS, Flesh, p. 31.

78

JÜRG GLAUSER, ‘The Speaking Bodies of Saga Texts’, in Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by JUDY QUINN, KATE HESLOP and TARRIN WILLS (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 13–26 (p. 15).

79

RALPH O’CONNOR, The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel: Kingship and Narrative Artistry in a Mediaeval Irish Saga (Oxford, 2013), p. 7.

80

ECKART CONRAD LUTZ, ‘Lesevorgänge: Vom punctus flexus zu Medialität’, in Lesevorgänge: Prozesse des Erkennens in mittelalterlichen Texten, Bildern und Handschriften, ed. by ECKART CONRAD LUTZ, MARTINA BACKES and STEFAN MATTER (Zürich, 2010), pp. 11–33 (p. 26); ‘as (a) cognitive process(es) which emerge(s) from certain historic, general and particular conditions.’

81 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 7.
82 | GEORGES DUMÉZIL, Gods of the Ancient Northmen, ed. by EINAR HAUGEN (Berkeley, CA, 1973), p. 15.

83

KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 26; ‘are not simply representations of reality but create their own forms of symbolic order.’

84

CHRISTIAN BARMES, ‘Die Kultur des Textes: Eine Einleitung’, in Die Kultur des Textes: Studien zur Textualität, ed. by CHRISTIAN BARMES, ERNST WOLFGANG ORTH and PETER WELSEN (Würzburg, 2009), pp. 9–20 (pp. 13–14).

85

The terms text and narrative relate to each other in a very similar way as MIEKE BAL proclaims. BAL sees a text as a narrative in any medium but ‘with an emphasis on the finite nature and structuredness of narratives.’ MIEKE BAL, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto, 1985), p. 6. In the present context, text thus refers to a written document that develops a narrative. A narrative, on the other hand, is an abstract idea, the ‘story’ independent of any fixing medium, thus comprising of both BAL’s story and fabula.

86 | EDGAR M. SLOTKIN, ‘Medieval Irish Scribes and Fixed Texts’, Éigse, 17 (1977–1979), 437– 450 (pp. 449–450).
87 | I thank Prof. Jürg Glauser for stressing and clarifying this point in his comments on an earlier draft.

88

In general, providing definitions for my own terminology proved a difficult enterprise and one in which BAL’s comments about definitions were repeatedly recalled. BAL argues that her own definitions ‘are not meant to hold the truth of their object; rather to make it accessible’ and that the reader should ‘fall back on such definitions, test them against analyses and interpretations, and check their consistency.’ BAL, Narratology, p. 3. It is in similar vein that the here proposed working definitions should be understood.

89 | ARMIN SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie in mediävistischer Perspektive (Berlin, 2012), p. 292.
90 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 161.

91

The term narrated world also emphasises the process of narrating a world as well as the complete cosmos presented through narrative techniques. FOTIS JANNIDIS presents a thorough theoretical introduction to the term ‘erzählte Welt’ in relation to possible worlds theory. As this study presents its own definition of the term, these concerns do not need to be related here in any depth. See further FOTIS JANNIDIS, Figur und Person: Beitrag zu einer historischen Narratologie (Berlin & New York, NY, 2004), pp. 66–70.

92 | JANNIDIS, Figur und Person, pp. 67–68.

93

This is especially important in the case of medieval literature. SCHULZ addresses the issue that many modern readers subconsciously read information into texts. What is less (but by no means un‐)problematic in the case of modern literature leads to categorically wrong assessments of medieval texts, when for instance a modern understanding of sexuality or moral behaviour are inferred. SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, pp. 8–10.

94 | KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 26.
95 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 292.
96 | KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 26.
97 | HANS-GEORG MOELLER, Luhman Explained: From Souls to Systems (Chicago, IL, 2006), p. 65.
98 | KAY and RUBIN, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.

99

The whole episode is recounted in Vilmundar saga Viðutan, chapters 8–10. The saga is extant in almost fifty manuscripts, the oldest of which date back to the fifteenth century. JÜRG GLAUSER and GERT KREUTZER, who provide a German translation, assume that the saga dates back to the fourteenth century and assert that it is difficult to assign a particular genre to this narrative. The saga is found in Isländische Märchensagas: Ritter- und Heldenerzählungen aus Islands Spätmittelalter, trans. by JÜRG GLAUSER and GERT KREUTZER (München, 1998). The text is edited by AGNETE LOTH, Late Medieval Icelandic Romances IV (Copenhagen, 1964), pp. 137–201.

100

The mention that servants are said to enter this big house with golden vessels is another clue for the audience, yet the text ingeniously adopts Vilmund’s point of view.

101

This brief mention draws attention to how such categories are defined and how the boundaries of this particular category may appear to a person totally devoid of personal experience.

102

Of course one could argue that if Vilmund’s parents had repeatedly told him about princesses as incorporating aspects such as female, beautiful, live in a castle with servants etc. this may have facilitated recognition. Yet the text does not concern itself with this possibility and instead develops a different issue: that of linking seeing with identifying.

103 | JANNIDIS, Figur und Person, pp. 220–221.
104 | JANNIDIS, Figur und Person, p. 80.
105 | The narrative voice should not be associated with the author or compiler of a text, whether medieval or modern.
106 | So far I have not been able to determine whether the same can be argued for medieval Iceland.

107

SARAH SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes: Visuality and Desire in the Ulster Cycle’, in Constructing Gender in Medieval Ireland, ed. by SARAH SHEEHAN and ANN DOOLEY (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 95–113 (pp. 96–97).

108

Roger Bacon, for instance, ‘held that vision was preeminent among all the cognitive senses because it is the most perceptive of them all, and the one that leads most inexorably to wisdom.’ Quoted from STEPHEN G. NICHOLS, ‘“The Pupil of Your Eye”: Vision, Language, and Poetry in Thirteenth-century Paris’, in Rethinking the Medieval Senses, ed. by STEPHEN G. NICHOLS, ANDREAS KABLITZ and ALISON CALHOUN (Baltimore, MD, 2008), pp. 286–307 (p. 289).

109

JAN-DIRK MÜLLER, ‘Blinding Sight: Some Observations on German Epics of the Thirteenth Century’, in Rethinking the Medieval Senses, ed. by STEPHEN G. NICHOLS, ANDREAS KABLITZ and ALISON CALHOUN (Baltimore, MD, 2008), pp. 206–217 (p. 206).

110

STEPHEN G. NICHOLS, ‘Prologue’, in Rethinking the Medieval Senses, ed. by STEPHEN G. NICHOLS, ANDREAS KABLITZ and ALISON CALHOUN (Baltimore, MD, 2008), pp. vii–x (p. vii).

111

PERNILLE HERMANN, ‘The Mind’s Eye: Old Norse Literature and the Triad of Memory, Space and the Senses’, European Journal for Scandinavian Studies (forthcoming).

112 | BAL, Narratology, p. 35.
113 | MÜLLER, ‘Blinding Sight’, p. 206.

114

RANKO MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, in Ulidia 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Maynooth, 24–27 June 2005, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN and BRIAN Ó CATHÁIN (Maigh Nuad, 2009), pp. 95–105 (p. 96).

115 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 11.
116 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 53.
117 | MÜLLER, ‘Blinding Sight’, p. 208.
118 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 102.
119 | COHEN, Medieval Identity Machines, p. xxiii.

120

CLAUDIA BENTHIEN, Skin: On the Cultural Border between Self and Other, trans. by THOMAS DUNLAP, 2 nd edn (New York, NY, 2004), pp. ix–x.

121 | CSORDAS, ‘Preface’, p. 4.

122

CLARE A. LEES, ‘Introduction’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. by CLARE A. LEES (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), pp. xv–xxv (p. xx).

123 | KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, pp. 3–8.
124 | CONKLIN AKBARI and ROSS, ‘Introduction’, p. 5.
125 | GUGUTZER, Soziologie des Körpers, pp. 6–7.
126 | TIFFANY ATKINSON, ‘Introduction’, in The Body, ed. by TIFFANY ATKINSON (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 1–11 (p. 4).

127

This matter is discussed by WILLIAM SAYERS in his joint examination of the early Irish Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó and the Icelandic Ölkofra þáttr. SAYERS seeks to justify this comparative approach and asserts that both traditions show a ‘keen but not uncritical appreciation of their pre- Christian native culture and oral traditions’ and are developed quite early as vernacular literatures. These matters, although a valid focus for special consideration, were not seen as relevant for the present approach, which focuses solely on case studies. See WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Serial Defamation in Two Medieval Tales: The Icelandic Ölkofra þáttr and The Irish Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó’, Oral Tradition, 6/1 (1991), 35–57 (p. 35).

128 | SCHNYDER, ‘Mittelalterliche „Audiovisualität“’, p. 142.
129 | TERRY EAGLETON, Literary Theory. An Introduction, 2 nd edn (Oxford, 1997)
130 | SEÁN MAC AIRT, ‘Filidecht and coimgne’, Ériu, 18 (1958), 139–152 (p. 151).

131

ERICH POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory in Medieval Ireland: Some Preliminary Thoughts’, in Medieval Irish Perspectives on Cultural Memory, ed. by JAN ERIK REKDAL and ERICH POPPE (Münster, 2014), pp. 135–176 (pp. 144–145); GREGORY TONER, ‘The Ulster Cycle: Historiography or Fiction?’, CMCS, 40 (2000), 1–20.

132

JÜRG GLAUSER, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur) and þættir as the Literary Representations of a New Social Space’, in Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 203–220.

133 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 6.
134 | POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 141.

135

O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 40; POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’; ERICH POPPE, ‘Literature as History/History as Literature: A View from Medieval Ireland’, in Literature as History/History as Literature: Fact and Fiction in Medieval to Eighteenth-century British Literature, ed. by SONJA FIELITZ (Frankfurt a. Main, 2007), pp. 13–27; TONER, ‘Historiography or Fiction?; DAGMAR SCHLÜTER, History and Fable? The Book of Leinster as a Document of Cultural Memory in Twelfth-century Ireland (Münster, 1999).

136

RALPH O’CONNOR, ‘The Ulster Cycle: history, fiction or literature’, paper presented at Ulidia 5: The Fifth International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales, Maynooth, 18–20 March 2016.

137 | MARTIN IRVINE, The Making of Textual Culture. Grammatica and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 161.
138 | TONER, ‘The Ulster Cycle: Historiography or Fiction? ’, p. 6.
139 | POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 139.

140

Although hagiographical texts show a very similar use of bodies in mediality discourse, they were excluded from the present study. This is because outlining the very different background of these texts (in addition to the secular material) would have proved too much to include in one PhD thesis.

141 | KIENING, Körper und Schrift, p. 24.

142

HELEN FULTON, ‘Magic Naturalism in the Táin bó Cúailnge’, in Narrative in Celtic Tradition: Essays in Honor of Edgar M. Slotkin, ed. by JOSEPH F. ESKA, CSANA Yearbook, 8/9 (Hamilton, NY, 2011), pp. 84–99 (p. 85).

143 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 4.
144 | POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 142.
145 | TONER, ‘The Ulster Cycle: Historiography or Fiction? ’, p. 19.

146

O’CONNOR, ‘The Ulster Cycle: history, fiction or literature’, paper presented at Ulidia 5: The Fifth International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales, Maynooth, 18–20 March 2016.

147 | KURT SCHIER, Sagaliteratur (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 34–49.

148

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by RORY MCTURK (Malden, MA, 2005), pp. 101–118 (p. 101). Most of these sagas are preserved in vellum manuscripts from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century or in paper manuscripts of more recent times. ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 102.

149 | GLAUSER, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders’, p. 203.
150 | GLAUSER, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders’, p. 203.
151 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 112.
152 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 105.
153 | GLAUSER, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders’, p. 204.
154 | GLAUSER, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders’, p. 204.

155

See KLAUS BÖLDL, ‘Die Welt der Sagas. Island und der Norden im Früh- und Hochmittelalter’, in Isländer Sagas, ed. by KLAUS BÖLDL, ANDREAS VOLLMER and JULIA ZERNACK, 5 vols (Frankfurt a. Main, 2011), v (2011) pp. 73–125 (p. 73).

156 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 102.

157

JULIA ZERNACK, ‘Die Isländersagas. Islands “Klassische” Literatur?’, in Isländer Sagas, ed. by KLAUS BÖLDL, ANDREAS VOLLMER and JULIA ZERNACK, 5 vols (Frankfurt a. Main, 2011), v (2011), pp. 9–43 (p. 9).

158 | ZERNACK, ‘Isländersagas’, p. 9.
159 | ZERNACK, ‘Isländersagas’, p. 13.
160 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 102.

161

In German scholarship, these sagas are generally called Märchensagas, with no clear distinction between original (i.e. indigenously Norse) and translated sagas. See ASTRID VAN NAHL, Originale Riddarasögur als Teil altnordischer Sagaliteratur (Frankfurt a. Main, 1981), p. 3.

162

GERALDINE BARNES, ‘Romance in Iceland’, in Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 266–286 (p. 266).

163

JÜRG GLAUSER, Isländische Märchensagas: Studien zu Prosaliteratur im spätmittelalterlichen Island (Basel, 1983), p. 11; ‘as a kind of combination of knightly saga and sagas of olden times.’ KURT SCHIER, who was influential in coining the term Märchensagas, refers to the original riddarasögur as ‘jüngere isländische Riddarasögur’, the younger Icelandic riddarasögur. SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, pp. 112–113.

164

SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 107. The point has also been argued by MARGARET SCHLAUCH in her monumental study of the genre. See MARGARET SCHLAUCH, Romance in Iceland, 2 nd edn (New York, NY, 1973). For an opposing argument see FREDERIC AMORY, ‘Things Greek in the riddarasögur’, Speculum, 59/3 (1984), 509–523.

165

GLAUSER, Isländische Märchensagas, p. 11; ‘out of classical tradition, indigenous sagas of olden times [fornaldarsögur] and above all from continental courtly, knightly Romance there emerged in Iceland the original riddarasögur.’ GERALDINE BARNES, on the other hand, largely dismisses continental models and sees the fornaldarsögur as the main source for original riddarasögur. BARNES, ‘Romance in Iceland’, p. 268. GLAUSER in turn questions the commonly held opinion that these sagas emerged at the court of the Norwegian King Hákon Hákonarson, who sought to educate the Norse audience to continental Romantic tastes. See GLAUSER, ‘Romance (Translated riddarasögur)’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by RORY MCTURK (Malden, MA, 2005), pp. 372–387 (p. 375).

166

GLAUSER, Isländische Märchensagas, p. 11; ‘a turning away from a largely “realistic” towards a “phantastic” mode of narration.’

167

HENDRIK LAMBERTUS, Von monströsen Helden und heldenhaften Monstern: Zur Darstellung und Funktion des Fremden in den originalen riddarasögur (Tübingen & Basel, 2013), p. 247.

168

MATTHEW DRISCOLL, ‘Late Prose Fiction (Lygisögur)’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by RORY MCTURK (Malden, MA, 2005), pp. 190–204 (p. 190).

169 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 15.

170

As it is used here, the term culture also includes a negative concept, i.e.what is presented as ‘no culture’ and thus as equally removed from the normative courtly culture. See MATÍAS MARTINEZ and MICHAEL SCHEFFEL, Einführung in die Erzähltheorie, 7th edn (München, 2007), p. 127.

171

KARIN M. BOKLUND, ‘On the Spatial and Cultural Characteristics of Courtly Romance’, Semiotica, 20 (1977), 1–35 (p. 2); GLAUSER, Märchensagas, p. 196.

172

WERNER SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik in den isländischen Märchen- und Abenteuersagas (Frankfurt a. Main, 2013), p. 1; ‘are to be thought as determined by their environment.’

173 | BOKLUND, ‘Spatial and Cultural Characteristics’, p. 2.

174

TORFI H. TULINIUS, ‘Sagas of Icelandic Prehistory (fornaldarsögur)’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by RORY MCTURK (Malden, MA, 2005), pp. 447–461 (p. 447).

175 | Isländische Vorzeitsagas, ed. and trans. by ULRIKE STRERATH-BOLZ (München, 1997), p. 11.
176 | TULINIUS, ‘Sagas of Icelandic Prehistory’, p. 448.
177 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 73.

178

TULINIUS, ‘Sagas of Icelandic Prehistory’, p. 449. TULINIUS cites LARS LÖNNROTH, ‘Fornaldarsagans genremässiga metamorfoser: mellan Edda-myt och riddarroman’, in Fornaldarsagornas struktur och ideologi: Handlingar från ett symposium i Uppsala 31.8.–2.9., ed. by ÁRMANN JAKOBSSON, ANNETTE LASSEN and AGNETA NEY (Uppsala, 2003), pp. 37–45 (p. 44).

179 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 17.

180

TORFI TULINIUS, ‘The Matter of the North: Fiction and Uncertain Identities in 13 th-century Iceland’, in Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. by MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 242–264 (p. 242).

181 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 72; ‘be left to personal judgement which genre these sagas are included in.’

182

HERMANN PÁLSSON, ‘Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols, ed. by JOSEPH R. STRAYER (New York, NY, 1983–89), vi (1985), pp. 137–143 (p. 138)

183 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 73.
184 | RUDOLF THURNEYSEN, Die irische Helden- und Königsage bis zum Siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Halle/Saale, 1921), p. 99.

185

For a convenient summary of the manuscripts and linguistic issues see WOLFGANG MEID, ‘Überlieferung und sprachhistorische Schichtung der Táin’, in Studien zur Táin Bó Cuailnge, ed. by HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, Scriptoralia, 52 (Tübingen, 1993), pp. 22–28.

186 | Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by CECILE O’RAHILLY, ITS, 49 (Dublin, 1967), p. ix
187 | Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by O’RAHILLY, p. ix

188

This text is complete except for the loss of one folio. For an introduction to the manuscript traditions of TBC I and II see also THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, pp. 100–101 & pp. 115–116.

189

Táin Bó Cúailnge: Recension I, ed. and trans. by CECILE O’RAHILLY (Dublin, 1976), p. vii. For an introduction to the manuscripts and scribal theories see ‘Introduction’, in Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by O’RAHILLY, pp. vii–lv; ‘Introduction’, in Táin Bó Cúailnge: Recension I, ed. and trans. by O’RAHILLY, pp. vii–xxii; THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, pp. 96–244.

190

Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by O’RAHILLY, p. xv. See also THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 115–116

191 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 117–118.
192 | For a critical analysis of texts and textual transmission see SLOTKIN, ‘Fixed Texts’.

193

THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 96; HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, ‘Die handschriftliche Überlieferung des altirischen Prosaepos über den “Rinderraub von Cuailnge” (Táin Bó Cuailnge)’, in Acta Linguistica Petropolitana / Transactions of the Institute for Linguistic Studies, ed. by N. N. KASANKY (St. Petersburg, 2011), pp. 465–507 (pp. 465–466).

194

For a valuable guide to the narrative styles of the recensions see UÁITÉAR MAC GEARAILT, ‘Über den Wechsel des narrativen Stils in den Táin-Varianten’, in Studien zur Táin Bó Cúailnge, ed. by HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM (Tübingen, 1993), pp. 60–99; See also UÁITÉAR MAC GEARAILT, ‘The Relationship of Recensions II and III of the Táin’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. by J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast & Emain Macha, 1994), pp. 55–70.

195

TRISTRAM, ‘Die handschriftliche Überlieferung’, pp. 465–466 & 470; ‘the degree of literacy is […] considerably higher’ and ‘the aesthetic claim to literarisation is unmistakeable.’ The point is also made by THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 113.

196

See ARTHUR GRIBBEN, ‘The Masks of Medb in Celtic Scholarship (A Survey of the Literature Stemming from the Táin)’, Folklore and Mythology Studies, 10 (1986), 1–19 (pp. 1–5).

197 | DORIS EDEL, Inside the Táin: Exploring Cú Chulainn, Fergus, Ailill, and Medb (Berlin, 2015), p. 17.
198 | DAVID GREENE, ‘Early Irish Literature’, in Early Irish Society, ed. by MYLES DILLON (Cork, 1954), pp. 22–35 (p. 32).
199 | CECILE O’RAHILLY, ‘Repetition: A Narrative Device in TBC’, Ériu, 30 (1979), 67–74.
200 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 40.
201 | FULTON, ‘Magic Naturalism’.
202 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 231.

203

This does by no means suggest that the text is a historical record of a cattle raid but rather that it sees and/ or styles itself in this manner.

204

RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN, ‘Zu den politischen und literarischen Hintergründen der Táin Bó Cuailnge’, in Studien zur Táin Bó Cuailnge, ed. by HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, Scriptoralia 52 (Tübingen, 1993), pp. 133–157 (p. 148).

205 | TONER, ‘Historiography or Fiction?’, p. 6.
206 | TRISTRAM, ‘Die handschriftliche Überlieferung’, p. 471.

207

ERICH POPPE, Of Cycles and Other Critical Matters: Some Issues in Medieval Irish Literary History and Criticism (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 47–56 (p. 48).

208

JAMES CARNEY, ‘The History of Early Irish Literature: The State of Research’, in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Celtic Studies, ed. by GEARÓID MAC EOIN with ANDERS AHLQVIST & DONNCHA Ó HAODHA (Dublin, 1983), pp. 113–130 (p. 116).

209 | POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 141.
210 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 6.
211 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 6.
212 | KATH WOODWARD, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity: The ‘I’ of the Tiger (New York, NY, 2007), p. 86.
213 | WOODWARD, Boxing, p. 16.
214 | This was outlined in 1.1.
215 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 90; ‘non-uniform and fragile’.
216 | BAL, Narratology, p. 113.
217 | BAL, Narratology, p. 113.

218

JURIJ M. LOTMANN, Die Struktur literarischer Texte (München, 1972), p. 356; ‘the sum of all binary oppositions provided by the text in relation to other characters.’

219 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 2.

220

NIKLAS LUHMANN, ‘Individuum, Individualität, Individualismus’, in his, Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik: Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft, 4 vols (Frankfurt a. Main, 1981–1999), iii (1989), 149–258 (pp. 165–166).

221 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 15.

222

KLAUS HÖDL, ‘Der „jüdische Körper“ in seiner Differenz. Textuelle und performative Konstruktionen’, in Marginalisierte Körper: Zur Soziologie und Geschichte des anderen Körpers, ed. by TORSTEN JUNGE and IMKE SCHMINCKE (Münster, 2007), pp. 63–77 (p. 65).

223

HÖDL, ‘Der jüdische Körper’, p. 35; ‘[the phrase] “expression of identity” does not suggest that an already existing identity is simply being made discernible. Because identity is a continuous process it cannot be understood as something pre-existing that is simply made visible. […]’.

224

An interesting example which had to be excluded from the final version of this study is that of the original riddarasaga Rémundar saga keisarasonar (‘The Saga of Reymund the Emperor’s Son’). The main hero, Rémund, gets struck by love sickness and, as a result of this, a curse. He subsequently loses not only his health but all moral indignation and interest in noble activities. The deterioration of his body is the focus through which the deterioration of his social status is visualised. And ultimately, it is through the restoration of his body that Rémund can regain his identity as a noble hero.

225

BERNHARD WALDENFELS, Topographie des Fremden: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden, 2 nd edn (Frankfurt a. Main, 1999), p. 46; ‘thus the content of being and the accessibility to experience are inseparably linked.’

226

LE GOFF and TRUONG, Une histoire, p. 40; ‘were partially defined by their relation to their bodies. The unblemished body of the priest must not be maimed or crippled; the body of a fighter was ennobled by his martial heroic deeds; and the body of the working man was bent by labour.’

227

AMY EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Contextualising Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, in The Fantastic in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: Sagas and the British Isles, 2 vols, ed. by JOHN MCKINNELL, DAVID ASHURST and DONATA KICK (Durham, 2006), i (2006), pp. 198–207 (p. 198).

228 | AMY EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Togail Bruidne Da Derga and the Politics of Anatomy’, CMCS, 49 (2005), 1–19.

229

EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’; EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’. Rígsþula will be discussed at length below, but since MULLIGAN has already provided a thorough study of TBDD, this text will be used only as a reference to engage with the bodies in TBC. That TBC and TBDD both belong to the Ulster Cycle and are extant in contemporary manuscripts strengthens a comparison.

230 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’; EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’.
231 | Where the term is used to denote my own, subjective reading of a body or a text this will be obvious.

232

This of course depends on the script used for writing, but both the textual corpora as well as the language in which this study is written use systems of writing that comply with this observation.

233 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, pp. 92–93.
234 | KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, p. 3.
235 | TURNER, Body and Society, p. 2.

236

CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM, ‘The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, in hers, Fragmentation and Redemption (New York, NY, 1991), pp. 181–238 (p. 230).

237

In relation to medieval texts, one can indeed argue that these bodies are God-given, i.e. that the body is bestowed by God, as is often implied. However, there may also be a disparity between the perception of the medieval compilers/redactors, the audience’s perception of a text and the intradiegetic perception, and this is also worth acknowledging.

238 | LE GOFF and TRUONG, Une histoire, p. 40.
239 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 11–29.

240

BERNHARD WALDENFELS proposes a distinction between Eigenes (‘own’) and Selbem (‘self’) which he pairs with Fremdem (‘foreign’) und Anderem (‘other’) respectively. The first pair suggests an overarching, incorporating system, while the latter pair denotes a complete structural opposition. BERNHARD WALDENFELS, Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden (Frankfurt a. Main, 2006), pp. 15–20; see also LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 20–22.

241

Of course not all texts exhibit one society as a standard society but the examples discussed here are all keen to establish such a concept, regardless of whether this society appears on its own or in relation to other societies.

242

SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 18; ‘identity is not determined by being different from other people […] but on the contrary by being part of forces, powers and qualities which go beyond the individual person.’

243

It has to be stressed that these male characters cannot grow a beard, they are beardless by fate, so to speak, rather than by choice (though grooming practices).

244

The term hero will be used here quite freely in line with the definition that MARCEL MAUSS, HENRI HUBERT and ROBERT HERTZ have proposed. They see a hero as ‘an individual, real or fictional, whose life and death are recalled and celebrated by some social group.’ As such, the term hero is not explicably bound to a martial figure but more to one who occupies a special place within his/her society. See MARCEL MAUSS, HENRI HUBERT and ROBERT HERTZ, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in Saints, Heroes, Myths, and Rites: Classical Durkheimian Studies of Religion and Society, ed. by MARCEL MAUSS, HENRI HUBERT and ROBERT HERTZ (Boulder, 2009), pp. 1–12 (p. 4).

245 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’.
246 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 3.
247 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 1.
248 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, pp. 8–9.
249 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 9.
250 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’.
251 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible: The Hero From Early Irish Saga to Classical Poetry’, Ériu, 59 (2009), 57–109.
252 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 57.

253

MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 58. On the kingly body in other sources see also FERGUS KELLY, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), pp. 17–21.

254 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 66.
255 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 66.
256 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 97.
257 | MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, p. 96.
258 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 97.
259 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 96.

260

MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, p. 98. Other features also – but less frequently – mentioned are arms, shoulders, eyebrows, and cheeks.

261 | MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, p. 101.
262 | MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, p. 101.

263

The German Heldenschau is a convenient term by which to refer to such instances, which sadly does not (yet) have an equally meaningful equivalent in English. It denotes textual descriptions of heroes designed to visualise them, hence the emphasis on Schau, with the double meaning of ‘to view’ and ‘to display’.

264

Quoted from MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 69; ‘his being too young, too reckless and too good-looking’. MCMANUS quotes from Compert Con Culainn and Other Stories, ed. by A. G. VAN HAMEL (Dublin, 1933), p. 22, §6. In a recent article, POPPE examines early modern gazes, termed Blicke by POPPE, on the hero, with fascinating results. See ERICH POPPE, ‘Der erotische Blick auf Cú Chulainns Körper’, in Festgabe für Hildegard L. C. Tristram, ed. by GISBERT HEMPRICH (Berlin, 2009), pp. 177–195.

265

In personal correspondence, Prof. Hildegard Tristram stated that the earliest images of Cú Chulainn are those of the Celtic Revival at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, with the very earliest appearing in the Cú Chulainn books of Standish James-O’Grady and Lady Gregory. Here, Cú Chulainn is depicted as a somewhat effeminate and mystic youth. I wish to express my thanks to her for bringing this to my attention.

266 | TBC I, ll. 398–824; TBC II, ll. 738–1216.
267 | MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, p. 101.

268

TBC II, ll. 1610–1611; ‘“You have not far to look indeed”, said Cú Chulainn. “You redden your eye with that. But if only you knew it, the little creature you are looking at, namely, myself, is wrathful.”’ This and all subsequent original texts and translations from TBC I and II refer to CECILE O’RAHILLY’s standard editions and translations (see bibliography).

269 | TBC II, ll. 1612–1613; ‘“And how do you find me as you look at me?”’

270

TBC II, ll. 1611–1616; ‘“I think you are fine indeed. You are a comely, splendid, handsome youth with brilliant, numerous, various feats of arms. But as for reckoning you among goodly heroes or warriors or champions or sledge-hammers of smiting, we do not do so nor count you at all.”’

271 | TBC I, l. 1324; ‘“An eye soon glances over that”, said Cú Chulainn.’

272

TBC I, ll. 1325–1328; ‘“I see no reason why anyone should fear you. I see no horror or fearfulness or superiority in numbers. You are merely a handsome youth with wooden weapons and fine feats of arms.”’

273

TBC I, l. 1327; ‘merely a handsome youth’; TBC II, ll. 1613–1614; ‘“You are a comely, splendid, handsome youth with brilliant, numerous, various feats of arms.”’

274 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 9.

275

TBC II, ll. 1512–1514; ‘“I found a surly, angry, fearsome, fierce fellow […] I do not know if he is the famed Cú Chulainn.”’

276

TBC I, ll. 3850–3852; ‘“There was a warrior, broad, ruddy-faced, in that chariot. He had a curly jet-black head of hair reaching to the hollow between his shoulders.”’

277 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 9.
278 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 14.
279 | TBC I, l. 2942; ‘“How does Cú Chulainn look to you?” said Fer Diad to his charioteer.’
280 | TBC I, ll. 2957–2966.
281 | TBC I, ll. 3010–3014.

282

The feature is also highly personal as no other squinting hero is described in TBC I or II. This also means that this assessment of the feature cannot be compared with other assessments in the texts.

283 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 58.
284 | TBC II, ll. 1198–1205.

285

See DOROTHY DILTS SWARTZ, ‘The Beautiful Women and the Warriors in the “LL TBC” and the Twelfth-century Neo-Classical Rhetoric’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 5 (1985), 128–146 (p. 130).

286

Other indicators of the hero’s lack of control over his body can be found when he takes up arms. In TBC II, when Cú Chulainn takes up arms, he first shatters fourteen suits of arms and then destroys seventeen chariots because only the king’s arms and chariot withstand his innate heroic power. Such episodes are vital in arguing that, at least in certain circumstances, Cú Chulainn cannot control or rein in his excessive heroic disposition and with it the destructive potential his body incorporates. See TBC II, ll. 921–977.

287 | TBC I, ll. 2335–2454; TBC II, ll. 2338–2438.
288 | TBC II, ll. 2338–2342.
289 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 98.

290

TBC II, ll. 2373–2375; ‘For they wondered at the beautiful, gentle appearance they beheld on him that day compared with the dark buffoon-like shape of magic that had been seen on him the night before.’

291

O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe: Berserk Fury, Shapeshifting and Social Dysfunction in Táin Bó Cúailnge, Egils saga and Hrólfs saga kraka’, in King and Warrior in Early North-West Europe, ed. by JAN ERIK REKDAL and CHARLES DOHERTY (Dublin, 2016, forthcoming), section 7.

292 | POPPE, ‘Der erotische Blick’, p. 11.
293 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 107.
294 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 65.

295

These death tales deserve attention in their own right and are only briefly mentioned here as a frame of reference. They are discussed by MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, pp. 65– 66. It is worth mentioning, however, that the death tale of Níall Noígialla does not belong to the Ulster Cycle, which shows that this motif occurs widely in early Irish texts.

296 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 65.

297

TBC II, ll. 2371–2373; ‘Then the women begged the men of Ireland to lift them up on platforms of shields above the warriors’ shoulders that they might see Cú Chulainn’s appearance’.

298 | TBC II, l. 2376; ‘Was seized with envy and spite and great jealousy’.
299 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 96.

300

Only one woman deliberately avoids gazing at him: Medb. Follaig immorro Medb a hainech 7 ní lámair taidbsin a gnúsi. TBC I, ll. 2368–2369; ‘Medb hid her face and dared not show her countenance.’ This may be a deliberate attempt to avoid looking at the hero in order not to succumb to his beauty.

301 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 97.
302 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 97.
303 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 97.
304 | POPPE, ‘Der erotische Blick’, p. 11.
305 | TBC II, ll. 2344–2356.
306 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 7.
307 | SWARTZ, ‘Neo-Classical Rhetoric’, p. 130.
308 | SHEEHAN, ‘Feasts for the Eyes’, p. 106.
309 | SWARTZ, ‘Neo-Classical Rhetoric’, p. 130.
310 | WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Early Irish Attitudes Towards Hair and Beards, baldness and Tonsure’, ZCP, 44 (1991), 154–189.
311 | CECILE O’RAHILLY, ‘Words Descriptive of Hair in Irish’, Éigse, 13 (1970), 177–180 (p. 177).
312 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 157. The description of the boy troop is an exception.

313

The colour may be occasioned in that Cú Chulainn is presented here as an offspring of the Ulster royal line and has just been re-integrated into this court. The hair thus stresses his royal lineage as well as his position within his society.

314 | CECILE O’RAHILLY, ‘Words Descriptive of Hair’, pp. 177–180.

315

Quoted from CECILE O’RAHILLY, ‘Words Descriptive of Hair’, p. 177; ‘He had thick hair of three colours: Brown next to the skin of his head, blood-red in the middle while the hair that covered them on the outside was like a golden diadem.’ The translation is provided by CECILE O’RAHILLY in her article.

316

TBBD, ll. 1140–1142. Quoted from EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 6; ‘It does not seem unlikely to me that he is a doomed person because of the many colours of his hair’. EICHHORN-MULLIGAN’S translation.

317 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 160.
318 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 7.
319 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 7.
320 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 160.
321 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 158.
322 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 8.
323 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 158.

324

WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Deficient Royal Rule: The King’s Proxies, Judges and the Instruments of his Fate’, in Essays on the Early Irish King’s Tales, ed. by DAN M.WILEY (Dublin, 2008), pp. 104– 126 (p. 105).

325

EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 8. There is also a possibility that the hero might have been imagined as dark haired in (older?) sources outside TBC and that the aspect was retained.

326 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 164.

327

DIL renders rúad as ‘red, of a brownish or dark red’ or ‘red-haired’ with a figurative meaning of ‘strong, mighty, formidable’. According to DIL, cróderg is used only in the sense of ‘blood-red’. These quotations refer to the online version of the DIL, www.dil.ie (accessed on 26.1. 2015). I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for drawing my attention to this.

328 | TBC II, ll. 2350–2351; ‘A hundred bright crimson twists of red-gold red-flaming about his neck.’

329

TBC I, ll. 2962–2964; ‘Like golden thread whose colour has been hammered out on an anvil or like the yellow of bees / in the sunshine of a summer day.’

330 | TBC II, l. 1205; ‘as if a cow had licked it’.

331

Quoted from EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 7; ‘His head of fair, golden hair [would fill] a reaping-basket… It was as fleecy as a bleating ram.’

332 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, pp. 162–165.
333 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, pp. 161–162.

334

All translations of colour terms provided here are referring to the online version of the DIL, www.dil.ie (accessed on 26.1.2015).

335 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 58.

336

Quoted from EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 7; ‘The handsomest of the heroes of Ériu’; ‘As bright as snow one cheek, as speckled red as foxglove his other.’

337

MULLIGAN mentions the possibility that these descriptions might have had a parallel in reality in the use of make-up or hair-dye and also refers to the codes regarding the colour of clothes. While this is of course possible, the present study focuses solely on the literary realm. See EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 7.

338

For an introduction to the topic of colours see HEIDI LAZAR-MEYN, ‘Colour Terms in Táin Bó Cúailnge’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast, 1994), pp. 202–205.

339 | STEFAN ZIMMER, ‘Irish úaine, French ognion, onion’, ZCP, 57 (2010), 173–176 (p. 173).

340

Dr Cherie Peters has pointed out to me in personal correspondence that when a basic colour term is used but not qualified by any adjective or other indication of brightness, saturation or gloss, it can be difficult to know how to interpret the use of that term.

341

It should be noted that another text, the tenth-century Tochmarc Émire (‘The Wooing of Emer’), also features a description in which Cú Chulainn has seven pupils, seven toes and fingers. These supernumerary body parts therefore seem firmly associated with the hero. See POPPE, ‘Der erotische Blick’, p. 13. POPPE translates from Compert Con Culainn, ed. by A. G. VAN HAMEL (Dublin, 1933), pp. 21–22.

342

JACQUELINE BORSJE and FERGUS KELLY, ‘The Evil Eye in Early Irish Literature and Law’, Celtica, 24 (2002), 1–39 (pp. 15–16).

343

Dr Geraldine Parsons has kindly pointed out to me that Cormac could also be perceived as prophetic because he is an anticipating theist. This is a very interesting line of thought which sadly could not be pursued further for this study, but is hopefully addressed in the future.

344

BORSJE and KELLY, ‘Evil Eye’, p. 15. BORSJE asserts that a similarly unfixed meaning of the motif is also found in Classical literature.

345

DAVID D. GILMORE, Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), p. 40.

346 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 383.

347

CONNELL MONETTE, ‘The Monstrous Hero (or Monster-as-Hero): A Celtic Motif in Contemporary Literature’, in Gablánach in scélaigecht: Celtic Studies in Honour of Ann Dooley, ed. by SARAH SHEEHAN, JOANNE FINDON and WESTLEY FOLLETT (Dublin, 2013), pp. 187–197 (p. 190). SIMEK notes that outside the Alexanderdichtung, De Civitate Dei and the Liber monstrorum, wondrous races with supernumerary arms, fingers, legs or toes are incredibly rare, a fact which makes these figures even more unique. RUDOLF SIMEK, Monster im Mittelalter: Die phantastische Welt der Wundervölker und Fabelwesen (Köln, Weimar, Wien, 2015), p. 75.

348

HILDEGARD TRISTRAM contends that the Etymologiae were known in Ireland from about the mid-seventh century onwards, an opinion that now appears commonly held amongst Celtic scholars, as Prof. ERICH POPPE has kindly confirmed in personal communication. HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, ‘Einleitung’, in Medialität und mittelalterliche insulare Literatur, ed. by HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, Scriptoralia, 43 (Tübingen, 1992), pp. 17–38 (p. 27). See also BERNHARD BISCHOFF, ‘Die europäische Verbreitung der Werke Isidors von Sevilla’ in his, Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, 3 vols (Stuttgart, 1966–81), i (1966), pp. 171–194. For a full list of these features see DAVID WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter, 2006), p. 107.

349

DANA OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature (Suffolk, 2010), p. 6. OSWALD discusses a picture in the Tiberius Manuscript of Wonders of the East, in which an inhabitant of an island has a supernumerary toe.

350

A further possibility is that this description has been influenced by the perception of monstrous races in non-Irish sources. In his Etymologiae, Isidore mentions the Antipodes, a race that lives in Libya and has the foot turned backwards. They also feature either eight toes or eight fingers, although on the first mention Isidore states that they should not be believed in, as they are not confirmed by any knowledge or history. See Etymologiae, IX.ii.133 & XI.iii.24; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by STEPHEN A. BARNEY (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 199 & 245.

351

TBC II, ll. 2355–2356; ‘With the grasp of a hawk’s claws and the grip of a hedgehog’s claws in every separate one of them.’

352 | TBC I, p. 205.

353

BETTINA BILDHAUER and ROBERT MILLS, ‘Introduction: Conceptualizing the Monstrous’, in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. by BETTINA BILDHAUER and ROBERT MILLS (Toronto, 2003), pp. 1–27 (p. 13).

354 | JEREMY LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces: The Instability of Cú Chulainn’, Studia Celtica, 34 (2000), 119–130 (p. 123).
355 | PHILIP O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct in Irish Heroic Literature’, Éigse, 25 (1991), 28– 44 (p. 42).
356 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 42.
357 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’.
358 | RUDOLF SIMEK, Die Edda (München, 2007), p. 117.

359

THOMAS D. HILL, ‘Rígsþula: Some Medieval Christian Analogues’, in The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mythology, ed. by PAUL ACKER and CAROLYNE LARRINGTON (New York, NY, & London, 2002), pp. 229–243 (p. 229). See also SIMEK, Edda, p. 24; FREDERIC AMORY, ‘The Historical Worth of Rígsþula’, Alvíssmál, 10 (2001), 3–20 (pp. 3–5). See further EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 200.

360 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 200.

361

JENNY JOCHENS, ‘Gendered Trifunctionality: The Case of Rígsþula’, in Hugur: Mélanges d’histoire, de literature et de mythologie offerts á Régis Boyer pour son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, ed. by CLAUDE LECOUTEUX, OLIVIER GOUCHET and RÉGIS BOYER (Paris, 1997), pp. 111–122 (p. 113). See also THOMAS D. HILL, ‘Rígsþula’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 535–536 (p. 535).

362

JOCHENS, ‘Gendered Trifunctionality’, p. 111. For a further discussion of the sources see also JOSEPH HARRIS, ‘Eddic Poetry’, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. by CAROL CLOVER and JOHN LINDOW (Ithaca, NY, 1985), pp. 68–156. Since this study is solely concerned with intra-diegetical matters and does not seek to link the text to a historical environment, such matters are not considered further.

363 | RUDOLPH MEISSNER, ‘Rígr’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 57 (1933), 109–130 (p. 115).

364

AMORY, ‘Historical Worth’, pp. 8–10; HILL, ‘Medieval Christian Analogues’, p. 230; Rígsþula, ed. and trans. by URSULA DRONKE, in hers, The Poetic Edda, Vol. II: The Mythological Poems, 3 vols (Oxford, 1997), i (1997), pp. 162–238.

365 | HILL, ‘Rígsþula’, p. 535.
366 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 201.
367 | HILL, ‘Medieval Christian Analogues’, p. 231.

368

AMORY, ‘Historical Worth’, p. 3. On the comment about the three estates in medieval Scandinavian literary tradition, which is a very debated issue, see below.

369

HILL raises several points worth noting, like the fact that slavery was abolished early in the Commonwealth and that Icelandic Law does not distinguish between nobles and commoners. For the full argument see HILL, ‘Medieval Christian Analogues’, p. 231.

370 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 200.
371 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 200.
372 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 200.

373

Rígsþula, ed. and trans. by URSULA DRONKE, in hers, The Poetic Edda, Vol. II: The Mythological Poems, 3 vols (Oxford, 1997), ii (1997), pp. 162–238 (p. 162, stanza 2); ‘man and wife sat there, | white haired by the hearth’. All subsequent references to original and translation refer to DRONKE.

374 | Rígsþula, p. 163, stanza 4; ‘a gross loaf, | weighty and thick, | wedged with grains.’
375 | F.-X. DILLMANN, ‘Rígsþula’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), xxiv (2003), pp. 619–628 (p. 623).

376

Rígsþula, p. 164, stanza 8; ‘There was on his hands | wrinkled skin, | gnarled knuckles, [scabbed nails,] | fingers thick | face unlovely, | bent back, | long heels.’

377 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 201.
378 | DRONKE, Poetic Edda, pp. 179–180.
379 | DRONKE, Poetic Edda, p. 180.

380

Rígsþula, p. 164, stanza 10; ‘There came to the homestead | a gadabout girl. | Soil was on the soles of her feet, | her arm sunburnt, | down-curving her nose – | her name, she said, was Thrall-woman.’ AMORY provides a brief extra-textual reference to the motif of the bent or hooked nose, which also appears in Jómsvíkinga saga (chapter 17). He argues that while in Rígsþula it denotes merely an unattractive woman and a female slave, in later texts it could be used by skalds to ridicule their subjects. See AMORY, ‘Historical Worth’, pp. 12–13.

381 | For an interesting parallel in legal sources see EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 199.
382 | DILLMANN, ‘Rígsþula’, p. 622.
383 | AMORY, ‘Historical Worth’, p. 7.
384 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 202.
385 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 202.
386 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 202.
387 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 204.
388 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 202.
389 | Rígsþula, p. 167, stanza 21; ‘the red-haired, rosy boy’. EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 203.
390 | Rígsþula, p. 167, stanza 23; ‘a dangling-keyed girl, | goatskin-kirtled.’
391 | Rígsþula, p. 167, stanza 24.
392 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 203.
393 | Rígsþula, p. 168, stanza 27; ‘Man and wife sat there, | gazed in each other’s eyes […] at finger-play.’
394 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 203.

395

Rígsþula, p. 168, stanza 29; ‘High curved her head-dress, | a coin-brooch was at her bosom, | a trailing robe she wore, / a bodice blue-dyed’.

396 | Rígsþula, p. 168, stanza 29; ‘her eyebrow brighter, | breast fairer, | throat whiter | than pure driven snow.’

397

Rígsþula, p. 169, stanzas 31–32; ‘Then she took | slim loaves, | white, of wheat-flour, […] | Out she brought | brimful dishes, | silver-mounted, | [set] them on the table: | fresh game and pig’s flesh | and fowls roasted. There was wine in a flagon, | ornamented goblets.’

398 | Rígsþula, p. 170, stanza 35; ‘Blond was his hair, | brilliant his cheeks, baleful were his eyes | as a baby snake’s.’
399 | AMORY, ‘Historical Worth’, p. 13.
400 | Rígsþula, p. 171, stanza 40; ‘a slim-fingered girl, | white-gleaming and wise.’

401

The slender fingers express not only a natural predisposition to female courtly activities but also present a visible contrast to the coarse and overly large body parts of the slave-woman.

402

EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 204. DILLMANN also remarks on the scanty transmission of the text and alludes to possible further losses of manuscripts. See DILLMANN, ‘Rígsþula’, p. 619.

403 | DRONKE, Poetic Edda, p. 185.
404 | DRONKE, Poetic Edda, pp. 186–188.
405 | JOCHENS, ‘Gendered Trifunctionality’, p. 115.
406 | JOCHENS, ‘Gendered Trifunctionality’, p. 115.

407

RUTH MAZO KARRAS, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, CT, & London, 1988), p. 56. MAZO KARRAS also comments on literary sources and quotes a saying in ‘The Saga of Ǫgmund dytt’ which indicates that slaves were classified ‘as a single group, whom they [the Icelanders] imagined as kindred, distinguished genealogically from the rest of society despite the fact that the unfree in reality did not come from a particular ethnic group.’ MAZO KARRAS, Slavery and Society, p. 50.

408 | KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 179.
409 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 97.

410

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON, Dialogues with the Viking Age: Narration and Representation in the Sagas of the Icelanders, trans. by ANDREW WAWN (Reykjavík, 1998), p. 136.

411 | JÓHANNA KATRÍN FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women in Old Norse Literature. Bodies, Words, and Power (New York, NY, 2013), p. 3.
412 | Die Saga von Gisli Sursson, trans. by FRANZ B. SEEWALD (Stuttgart, 1976), p. 3.
413 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 107.

414

Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. by EINAR ÓL. SVEINSSON, Íslenzk Fornrit, xii (Reykjavík, 1954), chapter 138, p. 363. This is the edition subsequently referred to.

415 | Njals saga, trans. by ROBERT COOK (London, 1997), p. 244. All subsequent translations from this saga refer to COOK.
416 | JANNIDIS, Figur und Person, pp. 220–221.

417

JENNY JOCHENS, ‘Before the Male Gaze: The Absence of the Female Body in Old Norse’, in Sex and the Middle Ages: A Collection of Essays, ed. by JOYCE A. SALISBURY (New York, NY, 1994), pp. 3–29 (p. 21).

418 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Contextualising Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 200.
419 | HEINRICH BECK, ‘Laxdoela saga’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), xviii (2001), 162–165 (p. 162).

420

Laxdoela saga, ed. by KRISTIAN KÅLUND (Halle, 1986), p. III. SVERRIR TÓMASSON also dates the oldest source, the fragment AM 162 D2 fol. to the last quarter of the thirteenth century. SVERRIR TÓMASSON, ‘Laxdoela saga’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 387–388 (p. 387).

421

Laxdoela saga, ed. by KÅLUND, chapter 63 (pp. 189–194); The Saga of the People of Laxardal, trans. by KENEVA KUNZ, in The Sagas of the Icelanders, ed. by ÖRNÓLFUR THORSSON (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 270–421 (pp. 393–396).

422

A study of Icelandic Þættir and of one Þáttr in particular, Hreiðars Þáttr heimska (‘The Story of Dumb Hreiðar’) had to be excluded from this publication for reasons of space and time. This text shows that bodies, and particularly acts of gazing at bodies, become hugely important in distinguishing the Icelandic fool Hreiðar from the Norwegian King Magnús the Good. In their encounter, the ugly Hreiðar is granted a lingering gaze at the king’s body and then asked to point out a flaw. He reluctantly remarks that one of the king’s eyes is a bit higher than the other – a flaw that only King Harald had hitherto noticed. When asked to find fault on Hreiðar, the king resorts to flaws of character rather than bodily ones. This is interesting since throughout the narrative, Hreiðar is ridiculed for his appearance and manner. The conscious juxtaposition of the two bodies, as well as the engagement with gazing over them and assessing them in relation to the royal retinue, show how preoccupied texts can be with the issue, especially in relation to designating social rank.

423

ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 108. This entails that a character may be the hero of one episode but appears as an unjust villain in the next conflict.

424 | LARS LÖNNROTH, Njáls saga: A Critical Introduction (Berkley, CA, 1976), pp. 61–68.
425 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 42.

426

ÓLASON, Dialogue, p. 136. See also EINAR ÓL. SVEINSSON, Njáls Saga: A Literary Masterpiece, trans. by PAUL SCHACH (Lincoln, 1971), p. 11.

427 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 108. See also ÓLASON, Dialogue, p. 136

428

ELSE MUNDAL, ‘Introduction’, in Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions, ed. by ELSE MUNDAL (Copenhagen, 2013), pp. 1–8 (p. 2).

429

KLAUS BÖLDL, ‘Die Religion in den Isländersagas’, in Isländer Sagas: Texte und Kontexte, ed. by KLAUS BÖLDL, ANDREAS VOLLMER and JULIA ZERNACK, 5 vols (Frankfurt a. Main, 2011), v (2011), pp. 138–169 (p. 168); ‘the suggestion of reality’.

430 | ÓLASON, ‘Family Sagas’, p. 108.
431 | TÓMASSON, ‘Laxdoela saga’, pp. 387–388.
432 | Laxdoela saga, ed. by KRISTIAN KÅLUND (Halle, 1986), pp. ix–xi.

433

The slave-merchant Gilli demands three times the price of an ordinary slave woman for this particular girl. Whether he knows about her origin but keeps this secret from Höskuld or whether this price is justified simply because of Melkorka’s beauty is not revealed.

434

Laxdoela saga, ed. by KÅLUND, p. 24, ll. 10–11; ‘When Hoskuld looked more closely, he noticed one of the women sitting near the outer side of the tent. She was poorly dressed, but Hoskuld thought her to be a good-looking woman, as far as he could judge.’ The Saga of the People of Laxardal, trans. by KUNZ, p. 287. All subsequent references to the edition and translation of Laxdoela saga refer to these works.

435 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 79. This again emphasises the influence of courtly idea(l)s on the text.

436

Laxdoela saga, p. 24, ll. 17–19; ‘Hoskuld then opened a chest from which he took fine women’s clothing and gave it to her. Everyone remarked on how well fine clothing suited her.’ The Saga of the People of Laxardal, p. 288.

437 | ANITA SAUCKEL, Die literarische Funktion von Kleidung in den Íslendingasǫgur und Íslendingaþættir (Berlin, 2014), p. 22.

438

Laxdoela saga, p. 27, l. 28 – p. 28, l. 2; ‘When Hoskuld was sought and the boy shown to him, he felt, as did others, that he had never seen a handsomer or more distinguished-looking child.’ The Saga of the People of Laxardal, p. 289.

439

The boy is a couple of years old at this stage, but in the narrative, the episode follows directly after Ólaf’s birth is recounted.

440

This is a reminder that, as argued in the introduction, identity construction in medieval texts is a discursive and often complex matter.

441

Laxdoela saga, p. 58, ll. 17–18; ‘As he [the king] realised that this man was both proud and careful to say no more than he was asked.’ The Saga of the People of Laxardal, p. 308. The term ríklatr is important to note here. Compounds with rík- always seem to denote a highborn, noble kin. See WALTER BAETKE, Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur (Berlin, 1983).

442

Laxdoela saga, p. 59, ll. 3–5; ‘“This Olaf is obviously a man of high birth, whether or not he is our kinsman […]”’. The Saga of the People of Laxardal, p. 309.

443

Laxdoela saga, pp. 57–58; ‘“These tokens are irrefutable, and are even more convincing because you resemble your mother so much that you could be recognised by that alone.”’ The Saga of the People of Laxardal, p. 309.

444 | BOKLUND, ‘Spatial and Cultural Characteristics’, p. 3.

445

Isländische Märchensagas, trans. by JÜRG GLAUSER and GERT KREUTZER, p. 431. See also Dámusta saga, ed. by L. F. TAN-HAVERHORST, pp. cxvii–clix.

446

JÜRG GLAUSER, ‘Dámusta saga’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), p. 119.

447 | Isländische Märchensagas, trans. by GLAUSER and KREUTZER, p. 431.
448 | GLAUSER, ‘Dámusta saga’, p. 119.

449

SCHLAUCH concludes that the saga has strong connections with Amada et Ydoine, which was written (down) between 1190 and 1229. MARGARET SCHLAUCH ‘The Dámusta saga and French Romance’, Modern Philology, 35 (1937), 1–13.

450 | GLAUSER, ‘Dámusta saga’, p. 119.

451

Dámusta saga, ed. by L. F. TAN-HAVERHORST, in his, Þjalar Jóns saga, Dámusta saga (Haarlem, 1939), pp. 51, l. 5 – p. 52, l. 3. This is the edition referred to throughout this study.

452 | All translations from this saga are my own.
453 | Another saga which features this motif is Rémundar saga kaisarasonar.
454 | Dámusta saga, p. 54, l. 14; ‘of nice stature’.

455

Dámusta saga, p. 54, ll 15–17; ‘not an exceptional man in his beauty but looked rather ok, he had fair hair which was soft and fell freely, and he had a fair and reddish complexion.’

456 | Dámusta saga, p. 64, l. 12 – p. 65, l. 8.
457 | JANNIDIS, Figur und Person, p. 203.

458

Dámusta saga, p. 69, ll. 16–18; ‘all the people [at court] and Catalachus found the beauty and courtly nature of this man very remarkable.’

459

Dámusta saga, p. 70, ll. 11–13; ‘“very well, […] because he is such a beautiful man that I have never seen anyone like him, and the same [can be said] about his courtly nature […].”’

460 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 57.

461

Dámusta saga, p. 71, l. 21 – p. 72, l. 2; ‘it was the news that people asserted that they had never seen fairer people than these two who where there, namely King Jón and Gratiana the emperor’s daughter, and they were equal [not unequal] in their beauty.’

462 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 18.
463 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 56.
464 | Dámusta saga, p. 72, ll. 16–17; ‘and this answer agitated King Jón so much that he turned red as blood […]’.

465

Dámusta saga, p. 73, ll. 14–16; ‘she had changed colour [taken another colour] and was red like a rose, nobody could perceive a difference [no indifference] to King Jón.’

466 | The motif seems to be absent from other original riddarasögur.
467 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 57; ‘whatever needs to come together shall come together.’
468 | Isländische Märchensagas, trans. by GLAUSER and KREUTZER, p. 431.

469

ROBERT BARTLETT, ‘Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4 (1994), 43–60 (p. 43). BARTLETT gives an example citing a ‘passage in the thirteenth-century lawbook, the Sachsenspiegel, which prescribes as a proof of age for a man “if he has hair in his beard and down below and beneath each arm, then one will know that he is of age.”’ BARTLETT, ‘Symbolic Meanings of Hair’, p. 44.

470

A very disputed line of interpreting Cú Chulainn is that of comparing him to Christ, yet his beardless appearance could offer another incentive to do so. As CLAUDINE A. CHAVANNES-MAZEL finds: ‘[t]he first one of these [traditions in depicting Christ] is the Hellenistic type of Jesus Christ, extant since the third century, in which Christ is the eternal youth’ and hence is commonly portrayed as beardless. CLAUDINE A. CHAVANNES-MAZEL, ‘Popular Belief and the Image of the Beardless Christ’, Visual Resources, 19/1 (2003), 27–42 (p. 28).

471

Dr des. Ute Kühlmann has kindly pointed out to me some legal texts that are of relevance and shared her own research on the matter. In the seventh-century Cáin Íarrath, fosterage ends at seventeen years of age, but the eighth-century texts Berrad Airechta and Críth Gablach have it end at fourteen. The tracts Melbretha and Bretha Crólige, however, also cite an age of seventeen years as the end of fosterage. In legal terms, the oft-cited fer midboth (‘man of the middle-huts’) denotes a male that has come out of fosterage but has not yet achieved full manhood. More information can be found in Kühlmann’s PhD thesis (forthcoming).

472 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 166.
473 | ‘The beardless boy’; ‘the beardless champion’.

474

TBC I, ll. 1106–1109; ‘“A great champion comes to face the mighty army by Cronn […]. Many waters rise up against the beardless champion who will come from Ulster to the fray.”’

475

TBC I, ll. 1129–1130; ‘“Do not go, oh valorous boy. They will give no other counsel until a beardless lad shall strike your head from your neck.”’

476 | TBC I, ll. 2405–2406; ‘“The Ulster exiles will grieve if their beardless lad is slain.‘”
477 | TBC II, ll. 2418–2419; ‘“Ulster’s exiles do not wish that their beardless boy should be killed.”’
478 | TBC II, l. 1715; ‘the young and beardless sprite’.
479 | TBC I, ll. 77–78; TBC II, ll. 244–245.
480 | TBC I, ll. 387–392.
481 | TBC I, ll. 394–395; ‘“Moreover, he is only the age of a grown girl and as yet his manly deeds have not developed.”’
482 | TBC I, l. 397; ‘“for even when he was younger [than he is now] his deeds were those of a man.”’

483

Other noteworthy instances in which this is developed are when Medb first sets eyes on Cú Chulainn and belittles him and when Etarcomol remarks that he is but a handsome lad, but not fearsome.

484

The previous encounter with the spy-troop is not described in detail, it is merely stated that Cú Chulainn killed them. The focus of the text is not directed towards this first meeting, perhaps because it should not ‘spoil’ the development in the subsequent encounter.

485 | TBC II, ll. 1228–1230; ‘“And by your valour, warrior, come to my help, lest that famous Cú Chulainn come upon me.”’

486

In Recension I, the encounter is depicted very similarly but without the charioteer’s request for help. TBC I, ll. 868–906.

487 | TBC II, ll. 1232–1235.

488

These are most likely based on Cú Chulainn’s beardless appearance and also contribute to the discrepancy that arises when his body is assessed in terms of looks and martial abilities. A telling episode is found in Recension II. It describes Queen Medb’s reaction on seeing Cú Chulainn for the second time: [d]otháet dano Medb 7 Fergus ’na chomdáil. Ocus tincais Medb ar Coin Culaind 7 cessis a menma fair in lá sain dáig ar bíth ní mó ná mod maccaím lée atacaemnaic. ‘Inn é sút in Cú Chulaind airdairc atberi-siu, a Ḟerguis?’ ar Medb. Ocus ra gab Medb ar acallaim Fergusa 7 dorigni laíd: ‘Más é ucain in Cú cain / itirid-si infar nUltaib / ní thabair a thraig fri tend / ná diṅgaib d’ḟeraib Hérend.’ TBC II, ll. 1408–1416; ʻMedb and Fergus came there too to meet him, and Medb gazed at Cú Chulainn and in her own mind she belittled him for he seemed to her no more than a boy. “Is that the famous Cú Chulainn of whom you speak, Fergus?” asked Medb. And Medb began to speak to Fergus and made the lay: “If that is the fair Hound of whom ye Ulstermen speak, no man who faces hardship but can ward him off from the men of Ireland.”ʼ

489 | O’LEARY, ‘Fír Fer: An Internalized Ethical Concept’, Éigse, 22 (1987), 1–14 (p. 13).
490 | O’LEARY, ‘Fír Fer’, p. 13.
491 | The beardlessness is not developed in this particular fight in TBC II.
492 | TBC I, ll. 1700–1704.

493

WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Airdrech, Sirite and other Battle-field Spirits’, Éigse, 25 (1991), 45–55 (p. 51). In Fled Bricrenn (‘Bricriu’s Feast’) the term is used to describe Uath son of Imoman, who ‘was called a sirite because of his capacity to form himself into a multitude of shapes’. This suggests that the term is used for supernatural shape-shifters. JOSEF BAUDIš, ‘Cú Rói and CuChulinn’, Ériu, 7 (1914), 200–209 (p. 200).

494 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 32.

495

TBC I, ll. 2530–2531; ‘“I shall go forth unarmed and crush him in my bare hands, for I scorn to use weapons against a beardless whippersnapper.”’

496 | TBC I, ll. 1877–1878; ‘he scorned to encounter a mere lad.’

497

TBC I, ll. 1880–1883; ‘Cú Chulainn killed him and he was brought back dead and set down before his brother Lóch. Then Lóch said that if he knew that it was a bearded man who killed his brother he would himself kill him in revenge.’

498

TBC II, ll. 1964–1966; ‘“I shall not go on such an errand for I deem it no honour to attack a youthful, beardless stripling, and I do not intend that as an insult to him, but I have the man to attack him, namely Long mac Emonis […]”’.

499

A similar technique of deception is found in Cath Énach Mache (‘The Battle of Ænach Macha’), in an etymology for the name Ulaid (Ulstermen). When Daball Dianbuillech arrives from Scandinavia to conquer Ireland, Conchobor and his men oppose him but are ridiculed because they are few and not bearded. Gennan Gruadṡolus mac Cathbaid urges them to bind wool around their faces to appear more frightening, and they indeed gain victory. The name Ulaid hence means ulchada liatha, ‘grey beards’, derived from the wool they wore. THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 527. This is related also in Coir Anmann, No. 245. See O’Davoren’s Glossary, ed. and trans. by WHITLEY STOKES, Archiv für celtische Lexikographie, 2 (Dublin, 1904). That this motif may thus have become associated also with the greatest of Ulster heroes (even if in a somewhat problematic rendering) is likely. Strikingly, however, in part I of Lebor Gabála Érenn it is Cain who wanders the world bearless and with lumps on his head, hands and feet as a sign that no man should slay him. See Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and trans. by R. A. S. MACALISTER, ITS 34 (London, 1938), pp. 86–87.

500

TBC II, ll. 1978–1979; ‘came on to the hillock above the men of Ireland and displayed that beard to all of them in general.’

501

TBC II, ll. 1980–1981; ‘Loch mac Mo Febis saw this and said: “That is a beard on Cú Chulainn.” “That is what I see”, said Medb.’

502

TBC I, ll. 1904–1905; ‘Then Cú Chulainn took a handful of grass and chanted a spell over it and they all thought that he had a beard.’

503

TBC II, ll. 1713–1716; ‘“We knew”, said Medb, “that this would happen, and that if only goodly heroes and warriors came to meet him, the young and beardless sprite would not withstand resolute men.”ʼ

504

TBC I, ll. 1449–1450; ‘“Until I carry the head of a little lamb to the camp, I shall not take back your head which is the head of a beardless boy.”’

505 | TBC I, ll. 1454–1455; ‘“Smear a false beard on me. The champion refuses to fight with me since I am beardless.”’
506 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 29.
507 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 32.

508

SARAH SHEEHAN, ‘Giants, Boar-hunts and Barbering: Masculinity in “Culhwch ac Olwen”’, Arthuriana, 15/3 (2005), 3–25 (p. 4).

509

SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 182. SAYERS explains that in addition to the terms ulcha and fesoc commonly used for ‘beard’ (with perhaps the occasional distinction of cheek and chin growth between them), Irish had grend ‘beard, hair, bristles’, whence the verb grendaigid, whose semantic range parallels the English ‘challenges, incites, beards’. In the phrase ulcha smerthain, the descriptive term seems associated with smertha ‘smeared’ but may derive from a plant name, smeartan ‘sweettangle, sea-belt’. The incident of the berry juice may be a late explanation of a lost custom where on occasion young men wore false beards made of the plant.

510 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 188.

511

KIM MCCONE, ‘Werewolves, Cyclopes, Díberga, and Fíanna: Juvenile Delinquency in Early Ireland’, CMCS, 12 (1986), 1–22 (p. 17).

512

SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 165. SAYERS refers to Crith Gablach, ed. by D. A. BINCHY, Medieval and Modern Irish Series, 11 (Dublin, 1941), p. 90. As mentioned above, the law texts vary with regard to this age limit: fourteen years in some, seventeen in others.

513

O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 32. O’LEARY refers to KELLY, Guide, pp. 83–84 and quotes from Tochmar Bec-fola, ed. and trans. by BRIAN O’LOONEY, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 1/1 (Dublin, 1870), 172–202 (p. 192).

514

Aperhaps related feature is the oft-cited long hair of adult warriors and the prohibitions for youths unfit for the warrior status to wear their hair long, as SAYERS suggests. SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 165. As Cú Chulainn’s long hair is repeatedly mentioned in the narrative this suggests that it is really only the anatomical lack of a beard, not the socially controlled length of headhair, which prevents him from being recognised as a full warrior.

515 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 165.
516 | MCCONE, ‘Werewolves’, p. 10.
517 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 167.

518

JOSEPH FALAKY NAGY, The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1985).

519

See THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 521. I am indebted to Dr des. Ute Kühlmann for bringing this example to my attention.

520 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 32.
521 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 167.
522 | See, for instance, Etarcomol‘s comment in TBC II, ll. 1611–1616.
523 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 32.

524

This is because they reached a truce with Cú Chulainn: a warrior would fight him each day and if the Ulster hero was victorious in this fight, the Connacht army would not advance further. Yet this agreement is often broken by the Connacht side.

525

TBC I, ll. 2544–2545; ‘So then his hero’s rage and his warrior’s fury arose in Cú Chulainn and he dashed Mand against the pillarstone and shattered him into fragments.’

526

That Mand is a somewhat coarse character is evident by how he is introduced: [ b]a fer borb brogda íarom im longud 7 im ligi in Mand. Fer dothengt[h]ach dobeóil amal Dubthach Dóel Ulad. Ba fer tailc trebur co sonairte ballraid amal Munremur mac Errcind. Trénḟer tnút[h]ach amal Triscod trénḟer tigi Conc[h]obair. TBC I, ll. 2526–2529; ‘He was a violent fellow, excessive in eating and sleeping. He was scurrilous and foul-spoken like Dubthach Dóel Ulad. He was strong and active and mighty of limb like Munremar mac Errcind. He was a fierce champion like Triscod, the strong man of Conchobar’s household.’

527

I discuss this and other heroic deaths in ‘A Spectacle of Death? Reading Dead Bodies in Táin Bó Cúailnge’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 10 (2015), 35–48.

528

There is a possibility that the idea of a single Ulster youth being sufficient to hold back the whole Connacht army could of course point to TBC promoting Ulster superiority over the rest of Ireland. Yet since it is a very exceptional – and problematic – Ulster hero who holds them back this is difficult to argue.

529

Avery different way of reading this detail is equating it with twelfth-century thoughts about manhood. JO ANN MCNAMARA proposes that the twelfth century experienced profound disturbances in the gender system, especially in terms of clerical life-style. Questions about what it meant to be a man lacking the general prerogatives (virility and offspring, and presumably also female company) and the established gender roles (sexual and domestic dominance over women) were asked repeatedly at this time. However, neither the texts nor the hero lends itself to comparison with MCNAMARA’S corpus. See JO ANN MCNAMARA, ‘The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150’, in Medieval Masculinities, ed. by CLARE A. LEES (Minneapolis, MN, & London, 1994), pp. 3–29 (pp. 5–6 & 21–22).

530 | SVEINSSON, A Literary Masterpiece, p. 60.

531

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON, ‘Njáls saga’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 432–434 (p. 432); SVERRIR TÓMASSON, ‘Njáls saga’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), xxi (2002), 231–234 (p. 231).

532 | WILLIAM PENCAK, The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas (Amsterdam, 1995), p. 15.

533

PENCAK, Law and Justice, p. 14. Both the conflict and the two male characters involved in them may, on a larger scale, be indicative of a criticism of the system of ‘Law and Justice’ portrayed in the narrated world.

534 | I thank Prof. Jürg Glauser for stressing this discrepancy between intent and result in conversation.
535 | URSULA DRONKE, The Role of Sexual Themes in Njáls saga (London, 1981), p. 11.
536 | DRONKE, Sexual Themes, p. 11.

537

Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. by EINAR ÓL. SVEINSSON (Reykjavík, 1954), p. 55, l. 2 – p. 57, l. 7. All subsequent references to the original refer to this work.

538 | Njal’s saga, trans. by COOK, p. 35.
539 | BARTLETT, ‘Symbolic Meanings of Hair’, p. 43.

540

ELSE EBEL, ‘Haar- und Barttracht’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), xiii (1999), 232–244 (p. 232); ‘more than most paradigms which characterise an individual, hair and beards are indicators of age, legal, social and religious status because of their manifold natural and cultural appearances.’

541 | BARTLETT, ‘Symbolic Meanings of Hair’, p. 43.

542

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 113, ll. 4–7; ‘“I’ll point to what’s true”, said Hallgerd, “he didn’t cart dung to his beard so that he would be like other men. Let’s call him “Old Beardless”, and his sons “Dung-beardlings” […]’. Njals saga, p. 74.

543

SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 155. Links to infertility, which this comment may be seen to contain, can quickly be dismissed. Even if Hallgerð had meant to say that Njál was not the father of his sons (a doubt which is never expressed in the saga), the link between infertility and agrarian produce is made in Germanic cultures only in connection with females. Men’s inability to produce offspring appears primarily linked with erectile dysfunction or magic. See R. KEIL, ‘Unfruchtbarkeit’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), 31 (2006), 440–444 (p. 440).

544

GUÐRÚN NORDAL, Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Toronto, 2001), p. 244.

545 | NORDAL, Tools of Literacy, p. 244.
546 | NORDAL, Tools of Literacy, p. 305.
547 | NORDAL, Tools of Literacy, p. 305.
548 | The Poetic Edda, trans. by CAROLYNE LARRINGTON (Oxford, 1996), p. 57.
549 | SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 155.
550 | NORDAL, Tools of Literacy, p. 279.

551

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 114, ll. 7–9; ʻ“You, my sons, have all received the same gift; you have been called “Dungbeardlings”, and my husband has been called “Old Beardless.”ʼ Njals saga, p. 74.

552

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 114, ll. 9–10; ‘“We’re not made like women, that we become furious over everything”, said Skarphedinn.’ Njals saga, p. 75.

553

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 114, ll. 14–17; ‘grinned, but sweat formed on his brow and red spots on his cheeks, and this was unusual for him. Grím was silent and bit his lip. Helgi showed now change.’ Njals saga, p. 75.

554

ISABELLE RAVIZZA, KörperSprache: Formen nonverbaler Kommunikation im Spiegel der Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar und der Njáls saga (Münster, 2010), pp. 113–177 & pp. 159–162.

555 | EBEL, ‘Haar- und Barttracht’, p. 242.

556

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 229, ll. 4–6; ‘“Go home, Dungbeardlings”, said Hallgerd. “We’re going to call you that from now on, and we’ll call your father Old Beardless.”’ Njals saga, p. 156.

557 | SAUCKEL, Die literarische Funktion von Kleidung, p. 97; ‘garments define the gender system’.
558 | SAUCKEL, Die literarische Funktion von Kleidung, p. 111; ‘silken cloth and garments were of immense value’.

559

SAUCKEL, Die literarische Funktion von Kleidung, p. 111; ‘the silk seems to be connected with the feminine sphere. He thus sees this contribution to the fine as an insult and calls Njáll effeminate’.

560 | PENCAK, Law and Justice, p. 28.
561 | Njál’s saga, trans. by CARL F. BAYERSCHMIDT and LEE M. HOLLANDER (Hertfordshire, 1998), p. 371.
562 | SVEINSSON, A Literary Masterpiece, p. 153.

563

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 314, ll. 1–4; ‘“If you want to know, I’ll tell you what I think – it’s my guess that your father gave it, Old Beardless, for there are many who can’t tell by looking at him whether he’s a man or a woman.”’ Njals saga, p. 210.

564

PREBEN MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society, trans. by JOAN TURVILLE-PETRE (Odense, 1983), p. 11.

565

Brennu-Njáls saga, p. 314, ll. 9; ‘“That’s a wicked thing to do, making slurs about him in his old age, and no man worthy of the name has ever done this before. You can tell he’s a man because he has had sons with his wife. And few of our kinsmen have been buried uncompensated by our wall, without our taking vengeance for them.”’ Njals saga, p. 210.

566 | MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN, The Unmanly Man, p. 33.
567 | KEIL, ‘Unfruchtbarkeit’, p. 441.
568 | ROSWITHA WISNIEWSKI, Mittelalterliche Dietrichdichtung (Stuttgart, 1986), p. 69.

569

The earliest manuscript preserving the text is Stock. Per. fol. 4 from the late twelfth century. For a detailed introduction see SUSANNE KRAMARZ-BEIN, Die Þidreks saga im Kontext der altnorwegischen Literatur (Tübingen, Basel, 2002).

570

The passage is translated by CLAUDIA BORNHOLDT. CLAUDIA BORNHOLDT, ‘Everyone Thought it very Strange how the Man had been Shaped: The Hero and his Physical Traits in the Riddarasögur’, Arthuriana, 22/1 (2012), 18–38 (p. 25). BORNHOLDT quotes from Þiðreks saga af Bern, ed. by GUÐNI JÓNSSON (Reykjavík, 1954), pp. 31–32.

571 | BORNHOLDT, ‘Physical Traits’, p. 25.
572 | BORNHOLDT, ‘Physical Traits’, p. 25.
573 | BORNHOLDT, ‘Physical Traits’, p. 25.
574 | BORNHOLDT, ‘Physical Traits’, p. 19.
575 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 92.
576 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 92.

577

SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 92; ‘individuality in a modern sense is a threat in pre-modern thought, a deviation which leads to social exclusion and thus it is a danger to identity.’

578 | SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 3.
579 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 13.

580

SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 1. The present reflection on the term other was influenced by LAMBERTUS’ category of das Fremde (‘the foreign’). Yet although the term as understood by LAMBERTUS causes much valuable reflection on ideas of otherness, it still appeared to narrow for this chapter. LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 11–28.

581 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 17.

582

ALEIDA ASSMANN and JAN ASSMANN, ‘Kultur und Konflikt: Aspekte einer Theorie des unkommunikativen Handelns’, in Kultur und Konflikt, ed. by JAN ASSMANN and DIETRICH HARTH (Frankfurt a. Main, 1990), pp. 11–48 (p. 27).

583

WALDENFELS, Phänomenologie des Fremden, p. 16; ‘that every culture, society, lived world or form of life moves within certain boundaries but that the engagement with these boundaries […] can vary greatly.’

584

ELISABETH SCHMID, ‘Die hybride Figur’, in Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses: Wien, 2000, Band 5: Mediävistik und Kulturwissenschaften – Mediävistik und Neue Philologie, ed. by HORST WENZEL and PETER STROHSCHNEIDER (Bern, 2002), pp. 141–147 (p. 141).

585 | BILDHAUER and MILLS, ‘Conceptualizing the Monstrous’, p. 2.

586

See JOHN LINDOW, ‘Supernatural Others and Ethnic Others: A Millennium of World View’, Scandinavian Studies, 67 (1995), 8–31.

587 | JOHN MCKINNELL, Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend (Cambridge, 2005).
588 | KATJA SCHULZ, Riesen. Von Wissenshütern und Wildnisbewohnern in Edda und Saga (Heidelberg, 2004).

589

SIRPA AALTO, ‘Categorising “Otherness” in Heimskringla’, in JOHN MCKINNELL, DAVID ASHURST and DONATA KICK, eds., The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature, 2 vols (Durham, 2006), i (2006), pp. 15–21.

590 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden.
591 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 247–248.

592

WALTER HAUG, ‘Die Grausamkeit der Heldensage: Neue gattungstheoretische Überlegungen zur heroischen Dichtung’, in Studien zum Altgermanischen: Festschrift für Heinrich Beck, ed. by HEIKO UECKER (Berlin, 1994), pp. 303–326 (p. 322); ‘the other, that is, the incomprehensibly violent, manifests itself as a hybrid, distorted figure. The opponent is monstrous and by this expresses the dangerous lack of sense and order of the world which it represents.’

593

In a recent study, SIMEK argues that in medieval sources, the term monster was used only for human-animal hybrids and fantastic beings such as seamonks. SIMEK, Monster im Mittelalter, pp. 17–18.

594 | Quoted from BILDHAUER and MILLS, ‘Conceptualizing the Monstrous’, p. 14.
595 | SIMEK, Monster, p. 71.

596

MARY DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966). Quoted from GILMORE, Monsters, p. 18.

597

GILMORE, Monsters, p. 1. Although GILMORE’s study is flawed in many other respects, he does present some general ideas that are rather thought provoking.

598 | WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 17.
599 | JEFFREY JEROME COHEN, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, in his, Monster Theory (Minneapolis, MN, 1996), pp. 3–25 (p. 7).

600

The Áes Síde are spatially removed from the life of ordinary humans by inhabiting locations such as mounds in the landscape or living underwater. In TBC Cú Chulainn’s divine father, Lug, enters the world of man to bring his son to the Síd (‘dwelling place of the Áes Síde’ or the Otherworld) to be healed. Yet even when Cú Chulainn enters the Síd, the trope of encountering others is not developed. This suggests that TBC does not see these characters as others in the present definition of the term.

601 | KARIN BOKLUND, ‘On the Spatial and Cultural Characteristics of Courtly Romance’, Semiotica, 20 (1977), 1–35.
602 | GLAUSER, Isländische Märchensagas.
603 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik.
604 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden.
605 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden.
606 | AALTO, ‘Categorising “Otherness”’.
607 | SCHULZ, Riesen.
608 | MCKINNELL, Meeting the Other.
609 | LINDOW, ‘Supernatural Others ’.
610 | GLAUSER, Isländische Märchensagas, p. 191.
611 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden.
612 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik.
613 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik, p. 3; ‘abstract semantic spaces of moral values’.

614

GLAUSER defines the category of non-human antagonists as consisting of trolls, giants, dwarves, and generally of all kinds of demons as well as animals such as snakes, dragons, tigers and lions. GLAUSER, Märchensagas, p. 186.

615

KATHRYN HUME, ‘From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Literature’, Studies in Philology, 77/1 (1980), 1–25 (p. 7).

616

In mythological literature they appear as ‘the persistent bane of gods and human heroes’ and are always gendered female. See MARTIN ARNOLD, ‘Hvat er tröll nema þat?: The Cultural History of the Troll,’ in The Shadow Walkers: Jakob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, ed. by TOM SHIPPEY (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 111–155 (p. 112).

617 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 36. For reasons of brevity and clarity, only the term troll will be used in the following discussion.
618 | SIMEK, Monster, p. 13.
619 | LOTTE MOTZ, ‘The Families of Giants’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 102 (1987), 216–236 (p. 217).
620 | RUDOLF SIMEK, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. by ANGELA HALL (Cambridge, 1993), p. 335.
621 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 36.
622 | Quoted from SCHULZ, Riesen, pp. 23–24.
623 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 24; See also LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 111–117.

624

See Sigurðar saga þǫgla: The Shorter Redaction, ed. by MATTHEW JAMES DRISCOLL (Reykjavík, 1992), pp. lxxviii–lxxxi. It is also interesting to remark that, as KALINKE points out, the ‘title kóngr [‘king’] is not synonymous with dróttning [‘queen’]; indeed, the emphatic use of what is ordinarily a title applied to a male ruler suggests that the word dróttning is perceived primarily as a designation for a women whose power is […] deriving from a husband who is king.’ MARIANNE KALINKE, Bridal-quest Romance in Medieval Iceland (Ithaca, NY, 1990), p. 69. The term meykóngr is therefore not only grammatically masculine, these characters also occupy the narrative space usually reserved for a male figure.

625 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 167.
626 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 158; ‘the ideal of courtly love does not occupy a constitutive position in these sagas.’

627

JUDY QUINN, ‘Women in Old Norse Poetry and Saga’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by RORY MCTURK (Malden, MA, 2005), pp. 518–535 (p. 518).

628

SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 184; ‘are a cipher for uncertainty […] an uncertainty relating to the allocation of roles between men and women.’

629 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 185.
630 | RUDOLF SIMEK, Altnordische Kosmographie (Berlin & New York, NY, 1990), p. 361.

631

M. J. DRISCOLL, ‘Sigurðar saga þǫgla’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), p. 585 (p. 585).

632 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, ed. by DRISCOLL, p. xiiv. DRISCOLL also provides a detailed manuscript history in his introduction.
633 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, ed. by DRISCOLL, p. xiiv and DRISCOLL, ‘Sigurðar saga þǫgla’, p. 585.
634 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 155.

635

HERBERT WÄCKERLIN also points out that the saga develops the theme of the lion-knight from an episode in Yvain’s tale, thus leaning towards chivalric motifs. HERBERT WÄCKERLIN, ‘The Silence of Sigurðr Þǫgli – Vox Articulata, Vox Humana and Vox Animalia in Sigurðar saga þǫgla’, in The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature: Sagas and the British Isles, ed. by JOHN MCKINNELL, 2 vols (Durham, 2006), ii (2006), pp. 1005–1014 (p. 1006).

636 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 160–181.
637 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, ed. by AGNETE LOTH, in Late Medieval Icelandic Romances, i (1963) pp. 95–259 (p. 98, ll. 1–7).
638 | All references to the original text refer to LOTH’s edition. All translations from this saga are my own.

639

No further explanation is given by the text as to why Sigurð remained mute in his early years. Perhaps his muteness is part of the trope of the unpromising hero, or it simply serves to distinguish and remove Sigurð from his family, and especially from his brothers.

640 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, ed. by DRISCOLL, p. lxxi.
641 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik, p. 196. See also pp. 191–192.
642 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik, p. 196; ‘appear as flawed and are actually thought to be mentally deficient.’
643 | WÄCKERLIN, ‘Silence’, p. 1006.
644 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, ed. by DRISCOLL, p. lxx.

645

MIREILLE SCHNYDER, ‘Gefangene Stimmen – Geordnete Körper. Die Stimme in Texten des Mittelalters. Eine Skizze’, in Balladen-Stimmen: Vokalität als theoretisches und historisches Phänomen, ed. by JÜRG GLAUSER (Tübingen & Basel, 2012), pp. 21–38 (p. 26); ‘human voice which is not structured as language is seen as […] a natural expression, as instinctive […]. Because of this, this kind of voice is not necessarily perceived as a signum datum, as a system developed by humans, but rather as a natural system (signum naturalium) […]’.

646

SCHNYDER, ‘Gefangene Stimmen’, p. 26; ‘it follows that undivided speech, not intelligible speech or lack of speech may be signs of mental deficiency.’

647 | WÄCKERLIN, ‘Silence’, p. 1007.

648

WÄCKERLIN, ‘Silence’, p. 1008.WÄCKERLIN also notes the discrepancy between the narrator subsequenlty revealing that Sigurð is indeed able to speak and the perception of the people of Saxland, who need to realise this by themselves. The text thus creates a tension between the figure and the perception of that figure in the narrated world, constructing two apparently parallel bodies in the process. SIMEK claims that in relation to the monstrous races, a lack of speech was explained at least in theological discourse through a removal from the paradisiacal, primordial state caused by original sin. Whether these associations played into Sigurðar saga þǫgla is doubtful, but the comment stresses the thoroughly negative and problematic aspects of a lack of speech. SIMEK, Monster, p. 14.

649 | GLAUSER, Märchensagas, p. 196.

650

The brothers’ later realisation that Sigurð speaks learned languages which they cannot understand raises central issues about semiotic systems: what is in fact a sign of his superiority was classified by them as a sign of inferiority (a mere babble) because they were unable to properly categorise it in their own, deficient system.

651 | GILMORE, Monsters, p. 7.

652

In relation to the importance of semiotic systems, it is telling that they plan to carry off his horse in order to eat it, thus reducing a highly priced courtly accessory to food and flesh. This enforces the notion that courtly, or even cultural, standards are of no value here. At this point in the saga, Sigurð thus finds himself in a space that is not only removed from court geographically but also differs in terms of values and social standards. Interestingly, the eating of horsemeat was an integral issue in the Christianisation of Iceland. This posits a stark contrast between these sagas and what is presented in the pre-Christian period in Iceland.

653 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 49.
654 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 49.

655

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 149, ll. 4–6; ‘Fala was very hulking great, of dark complexion, exceedingly tall, just as is normal for trolls.’

656 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 154, l. 11.

657

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 154, ll. 18–20; ‘and even though the troll-women were ugly and hulking big, they understood how to fittingly serve Sigurð.’

658 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 162.
659 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 150, ll. 13–15.

660

The most prominent example of this may be Sigurð’s lion. Shortly before encountering the troll-sisters, he rescues a lion from the claws of a dragon. The potentially dangerous animal thanks him for this deed by being loyal and a valuable companion in many adventures.

661 | SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 3.

662

LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 164; ‘the local monster population is characterised by not belonging to the realm of the human and hence as foreign.’

663

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 147, ll. 16–20; ‘in these mountains are many great caverns which in those days were inhabited by various evil beasts and giants which do not share a common nature with the humans of the world.’

664 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 160.
665 | ARNOLD, ‘Hvat er tröll nema þat?’, p. 124.
666 | BOKLUND, ‘Spatial and Cultural Characteristics’, pp. 2–6.
667 | GLAUSER, Märchensagas, p. 196.

668

LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 164; ‘The natural realm of a crevice is fitted with a […] door, behind which the cultured realm of the luxuriously equipped habitat of the trolls is hidden.’

669 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 152, ll. 9–10; ‘so big that three men can sit in it.’
670 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, pp. 152–153, ll. 20–2; ‘and another large and well-built bed of a size suitable for the sisters.’
671 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 162.
672 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 162.

673

CAROL J. CLOVER, ‘Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe’, in Studying Medieval Women, ed. by NANCY F. PARTNER (Cambridge, MA, 1993), pp. 61–85 (p. 77).

674 | CLOVER, ‘Regardless of Sex’, p. 78.
675 | CLOVER, ‘Regardless of Sex’, p. 78.
676 | QUINN, ‘Women’, p. 528.
677 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 162.
678 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 162.
679 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 161.
680 | BILDHAUER and MILLS, ‘Conceptualizing the Monstrous’, p. 11.
681 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 162–163.

682

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 154, ll. 24–25; ‘„that it is not in the nature of us trolls and such human beings as you are to live together [or to have contact] […].“’

683

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, pp. 154–155, ll. 25–26; ‘„but we sisters would like you to dwell here if you think you would benefit from this.“’

684

LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 163. That the opposite is also possible is, somewhat contradictory to his own argument, discussed by LAMBERTUS for Valdimars saga, in which Valdimar stays with the giantess Alba for several years. See LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, pp. 96– 104.

685

SANDRA BALLIF STRAUBHAAR, ‘Nasty, Brutish, and Large: Cultural Difference and Otherness in the Figuration of the Trollwomen of the Fornaldar sögur’, Scandinavian Studies, 73 (2001), 105–124.

686 | BALLIF STRAUBHAAR, ‘Nasty, Brutish, and Large’, p. 110.
687 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 163.
688 | ASSMANN and ASSMANN, ‘Kultur und Konflikt’, p. 29.
689 | BOKLUND, ‘Spatial and Cultural Characteristics’, p. 2.
690 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 147.
691 | LAMBERTUS, Monströse Helden, p. 160.
692 | BOKLUND, ‘Spatial and Cultural Characteristics’, p. 2.
693 | BOKLUND, ‘Spatial and Cultural Characteristics’, p. 2.
694 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik, p. 91.

695

SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik, p. 231; ‘an oppositional space in which an inversion of values and norms prevails.’

696 | Icelandic Histories and Romances, trans. by RALPH O’CONNOR (Stroud, 2002), p. 44.
697 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 90.
698 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 52.

699

M. J. DRISCOLL, ‘Hjalmþérs saga’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 285–286.

700 | Hjálmþérs saga: A Scientific Edition, ed. and trans. by RICHARD HARRIS (Iowa, IA, 1970), pp. v–xi;

701

Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 44. Inaddition, O’CONNOR draws attention to a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century verse romance called Hjalmther’s Rhymes (Hjálmþésrímur), which preserves a disparaging version of the story. Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 52.

702

It is not made explicitly clear if the enchanted Hord also changes in shape or whether he merely assumes the role of a servant, as this particular servant is described as handsome, tall and strong.

703 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 52.
704 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, pp. 53 & 58.
705 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, pp. 54 & 53.

706

Hjálmþérs saga, ed. by RICHARD HARRIS, p. 2, ll. 13–15 (ed.) and p. 115 (trans.); ‘he was handsome and large, strong and skilled in all accomplishments, the most capable of all men at an early age.’ All subsequent references to the original text and the translation refer to HARRIS.

707

The encounter with another creature, the fingálkn, is also discussed by BALLIF STRAUBHAAR, who classifies the saga as a fornaldarsaga. BALLIF STRAUBHAAR, ‘Nasty, Brutish, and Large’, pp. 117–119. The saga is discussed briefly and from a different angle by MCKINNELL, Meeting the Other, pp. 193–194.

708 | FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women, p. 68.

709

BALLIF STRAUBHAAR, ‘Nasty, Brutish, and Large’, p. 105. LOTTE MOTZ sees in these encounters remnants of initiation rituals, where a young male has to overcome a mother figure/older female. LOTTE MOTZ, The Beauty and the Hag: Female Figures of Germanic Faith and Myth (Wien, 1993).

710

In its structure and in the portrayal of the initial contact the scene is quite similar to one of the best-known ekphrastic descriptions in TBDD, when King Eochaid meets Étáin (a women from the Áes Síde) for the first time. She too is washing her hair at a well with a silver and gold comb. TBDD provides a description of her outstanding beauty, perhaps the most remarkable ekphrastic description of a female body in early Irish saga literature. In this case, however, it quickly becomes clear that she is a personification of the Sovereignty Goddess. Burning with desire, King Eochaid immediately consents to sleeping with her and taking her as his wife. Étain’s beauty is as sure a sign of her identity and narrative role as Ýma’s ugliness is of hers, and it is remarkable how clearly the texts outline this judgement on the part of the male observer.

711

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 30, ll. 11–13 (ed.) and p. 145 (trans.); ‘„who is that child who sits on the rock and looks down on the king? I know no men more loathsome than you on the face of the earth.“’

712 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 30, ll. 13–14 (ed.) and p. 145 (trans.); ‘she combed her hair away from her eyes […]’.

713

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 30, ll. 18–20 (ed.) and p. 145 (trans.); ‘„it’s gone badly for the cloth that dries your hair and touches your cat’s eyes,“ says Hjálmþér.’

714

The troll-woman is not named in HARRIS’ edition but since, based on his manuscript, O’CONNOR names her Ýma (‘ember’), she will be referred to by this name in the following analysis.

715 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 30, l. 25 – p. 31, l. 1 (ed.) and p. 145 (trans.); ‘a young, pure girl.’

716

SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 192; ‘not even courtly pieces of equipment such as the golden comb and the gold-woven towel can hide the fact that she is an uncouth troll-woman […]’.

717 | GILMORE, Monsters, p. 7.
718 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 30, l. 24 – p. 31, l. 6 (ed.) and pp. 145–146 (trans.).
719 | GLAUSER, Märchensagas, p. 188.
720 | FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women, p. 125.

721

It is also possible that Ýma betrays an indifference to courtly ideals, yet given her forceful pretences to be treated like a maiden and her use of courtly insignia when washing her hair this interpretation is somewhat less likely.

722 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 31, l. 16 – p. 32, l. 8 (ed.) and pp. 146–147 (trans.).

723

Strikingly, the feature of being svartr or blár, that is, dark in appearance, is absent from this description, although it is, as KATJA SCHULZ argues, one of the most frequently mentioned characteristics in descriptions of giants and trolls. See SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 148.

724

What is unclear at this point is that his beautiful stepmother is in fact an enchanted troll, so the hero’s control has unknowingly saved him not just from the immoral act of infidelity (towards his father) but also from the problematic transgression of a sexual union between man and trollwoman.

725 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 138.
726 | BILDHAUER and MILLS, ‘Conceptualizing the Monstrous’, p. 13.

727

SIMEK provides a short but useful summary of cyclopes and the wonderous race of the Arimaspi, which are also characterised by one-eyedness. See SIMEK, Monster, pp. 74–75.

728 | SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 138.

729

LORENZ AGGERMANN, Der offene Mund: Über ein zentrales Phänomen des Pathischen (Berlin, 2013), p. 16; ‘the openings of the body, first and foremost the mouth and the anus, continuously remind us of our organic and real base.’

730

PEGGY MCCRACKEN, The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender and Medieval Literature (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), p. 14.

731 | SARAH ALLISONMILLER, Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body (New York, NY&London, 2010), p. 5.
732 | AALTO, ‘Categorising Otherness’, p. 15.
733 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 32, ll. 17–18 (ed.) and p. 147 (trans.).

734

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 33, ll. 1–4 (ed.) and p. 148 (trans.); „I hold up my paws; here, warrior,you may see Hergunnur’s hands. I have uncut nails. Your outer cloak will be rent if we meet, warrior. I won’t stroke you gently, southern king.“’

735

After all, the killing of the nine troll sisters is exclusively reserved for Hord. If one shares MOTZ’S view that such troll-women encounters depict young men being initiated by overcoming threatening female guardian spirits then the episode would paint a very problematic picture for Hjálmþér. MOTZ, Beauty and the Hag.

736

This problematic position is only resolved at the end of the narrative, when it is revealed that Hord is an enchanted prince and socially superior to Hjálmþér. Prof. ERICH POPPE has kindly pointed out to me in personal correspondence the similarity of this encounter with that of the Sovereignty Goddess in early Irish literature. He also drew my attention to the fact that the difference between the two male figures is already constructed at this point but will only be resolved later, a fact which leads to considerable tension in the narrative.

737 | FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women, p. 60.

738 | BALLIF STRAUBHAAR, ‘Nasty, Brutish, and Large’, p. 106.
739 | WALDENFELS, Topographie des Fremden, p. 44.
740 | SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 17.
741 | SCHÄFKE, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik, p. 93.
742 | WALDENFELS, Topographie des Fremden, p. 46.
743 | TBC I, l. 374.

744

A very interesting investigation of the idea of monstrous races in early Irish, Welsh and Hiberno- and Anglo Latin sources is presented by ERICH POPPE, ‘Exotic and Monstrous Races in the Leabhar Breac’s Gospel History and the Transmission of Arcane Knowledge to Medieval Ireland’, in Lochlann: Festskrift til Jan Erik Rekdal på 60-Årsdagen: Aisti in ómós do Jan Erik Rekdal ar a 60ú lá breithe, ed. by CATHINKA HAMBRO and LARS IVAR WIDERØE (Oslo, 2013), pp. 39–56.

745

During the fight with Lóch mac mo Femis, Cú Chulainn fights the Morrígan in various animal forms. However, since this is a divine creature shapeshifting into (complete, i.e. non-hybrid) animal form and since the narrative merely presents this as an added opponent but does not engage with the manifestation in terms of otherness, this example falls outside the present focus. Cú Chulainn’s father, Lug, is another possible exception to this statement, as Dr Geraldine Parsons kindly pointed out to me. While he is certainly non-human,the text does not engage with his nature or explore ideas about self and other in relation to him, and hence Lug is omitted from the following discussion as well.

746

ERIK LARSEN, ‘Cú Chulainn: Man, God or Animal?’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 23 (2003), 172–183 (p. 173).

747

SJOESTEDT coined the term in opposition to Finn, who, as a member of the fíanna, stands outside tribal organisation. SJOESTEDT is, of course, correct in observing that one hero lives within the tribe, while the other does not, yet her comment misses (or disregards) the problematic issue of incorporating an exceptional hero into a tribe. MARIE-LOUISE SJOESTEDT, Gods and Heroes of the Celts, trans. by MYLES DILLON (London, 1949), pp. 57–80.

748 | JOSEPH FALAKY NAGY, ‘Heroic Destinies in the Macgnímrada of Finn and Cú Chulainn’, ZCP, 40 (1984), 23–39.
749 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 119.

750

The closest parallel in other medieval European literary traditions is doubtless that of the Norse berserkir. Although the earliest saga descriptions of berserksgangr do not show them as changing shape explicitly, later, more fantastic descriptions of these warriors do. I thank Prof. Ralph O’Connor for pointing this out to me in personal correspondence. See also O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’.

751

ALAN BRUFORD, ‘Cú Chulainn: An Ill-Made Hero?’, in Text und Zeittiefe, ed. by HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, Scriptoralia, 58 (Tübingen, 1994), pp. 185–215 (pp. 202 & 203).

752 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 121.
753 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 121.
754 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’.
755 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’.

756

ELIZABETH MOORE, ‘„In t-indellchró bodba fer talman“: A Reading of Cú Chulainn’s First Recension „ríastrad“’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 29 (2009), 154–176.

757

I am indebted to Prof. Erich Poppe for drawing my attention towards these similarities. POPPE, pers. comm. CLARKE also mentions other such bizarre transformations of the frenzied warrior, such as in Fled Dúin na nGéd and TBDD. This contortion, as well as other features, Cú Chulainn shares with Achilles in the Iliad, as the Greek hero also undergoes a terrifying metamorphosis after a visit from his divine protector (Iliad 18.203–18). Clark, however, rightly points out that there is no evidence that the Iliad was known in medieval Ireland, therefore the two developments of the motif may have arisen independently. MICHAEL CLARKE, ‘An Irish Achilles and a Greek Cú Chulainn’, Ulidia 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Maynooth 24–27 June 2005, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN and BRIAN Ó CATHÁIN (Maigh Nuad, 2009), pp. 238–251.

758

Life of Findchua of Brigown, ed. and trans. by WHITLEY STOKES in his, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (London, 1890), pp. 84–98 (ed.) and 231–246 (trans.).

759

GREGORY NAGY, ‘The Epic Hero’, in A Companion to Ancient Epic, ed. by J. M. FOLEY (Oxford, 2005), pp. 71–88 (p. 88). NAGY also briefly discusses the appearance of a similar rage in the case of the Old Norse berserk and the Greek idea of martial fury, expressed by the term lussa (wolfish rage).

760 | KIM MCCONE, ‘Werewolves’, pp. 21–22.
761 | PATRICK LEO HENRY, ‘Furor Heroicus’, ZCP, 39 (1982), 235–242 (p. 237).
762 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’.
763 | SJOESTEDT, Gods and Heroes, p. 62.
764 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 131.

765

HILDA ELLIS DAVIDSON, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions (New York, NY, 1988), p. 84.

766 | HENRY, ‘Furor Heroicus’, p. 235.
767 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 2.
768 | KIM MCCONE, ‘Aided Celtchair Maic Uthechair: Hounds, Heroes and Hospitallers’, Ériu, 35 (1984), 1–30 (p. 15).
769 | TBC I, ll. 3082–3084.
770 | TBC II, l. 1734; ‘a fit of rage came upon him’.

771

TBC II, ll. 2262–2263; ‘his first distortion came upon Cú Chulainn so that he became horrible, many-shaped, strange and unrecognisable’.

772 | TCB I, l. 2544; ‘his hero’s rage and his warrior’s fury arose in Cú Chulainn’.

773

TCB I, ll. 2079–2080; ‘Anger and rage filled him when he saw the host, because of the multitude of his foes and the great number of his enemies.’

774

TBC I, ll. 3093–3094; ‘Cú Chulainn swelled and grew big as a bladder does when inflated. His size increased so that he was bigger than Fer Diad.’

775 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’, p. 157.
776 | MCCONE, ‘Hounds, Heroes and Hospitallers’, p. 20.

777

JEREMY LOWE, ‘Contagious Violence and the Spectacle of Death in Táin Bó Cúailnge’, in Language and Tradition in Ireland: Continuities and Displacement, ed. by. MARIA TYMOCZKO and COLIN A. IRELAND (Massachusetts, MA, 2003), pp. 84–100 (p. 88).

778 | MCCONE, ‘Hounds, Heroes and Hospitallers’, p. 20.

779

MCCONE has most thoroughly discussed the subject. See MCCONE, ‘Hounds, Heroes and Hospitallers’; MCCONE, ‘Juvenile Delinquency’; MCCONE, ‘OIr. olc, luch- and IE *wĺkwos, *lúkwos „wolf“’, Ériu, 36 (1985), 171–176; MCCONE, ‘The Celtic and Indo-European origins of the fían’, in The Gaelic Finn Tradition, ed. by SHARON J. ARBUTHNOT and GERALDINE PARSONS (Dublin, 2012), pp. 15–30; See also O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’.

780

FERGUS KELLY, Early Irish Farming (Dublin, 1997), p. 115. KELLY also remarks on the necessary control and/or precautions that owners had to undertake to limit the carnage on friendly visitors. KELLY, Farming, pp. 148–149. In an interesting reading of SMMD, GREGORY TONER develops the protective and destructive aspects of Mac Dathó’s bloodhound, Ailbe,which, although a great protector, nevertheless brings destruction by being coveted by both Ulster and Connacht. See GREGORY TONER, ‘Wise Women and Wanton Warriors in Early Irish Literature’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 30 (2010), 259–272.

781

JOHN CAREY, ‘Foreword’, in PHILIP A. BERNHARDT-HOUSE, Werewolves, Magical Hounds, and Dog-Headed Men in Celtic Literature: A Typological Study of Shape-Shifting (New York, NY, 2010), pp. v–vi.

782 | MCCONE , ‘Hounds, Heroes and Hospitallers’, p. 14.

783

I have made this point at length in an article (published under my maiden-name). See SARAH ERNI, ‘Inside Out… and Upside Down: Cú Chulainn and his ríastrad’, Helden. Heroes. Héros, 1.1 (2013), 53–63.

784

TBC I, ll. 804–805; ‘He will shed the blood of every man in the fort unless heed be taken and naked women go out to meet him.’ The juxtaposition of Cú Chulainn’s boyish yet heroically overagitated body with that of naked women is striking but hitherto unexplained. For Cú Chulainn instantly turns away from these women and can thus be seized and cooled in vats of water. RAYMOND C. CORMIER asserts that past scholarship has either taken this scene to represent a Christian influence (the hiding of his face would account for an almost saintly modesty) or that pagans could be as modest as Christians. CORMIER himself puts forward two parallels (both ancient reflexes) to account for this behaviour, yet these do not appear very convincing. RAYMOND C. CORMIER, ‘Pagan Shame or Christian Modesty’, Celtica, XIV (1981), 43–46. Another possible explanation is that this is not related to his youth or (Christian or pagan) feelings of modesty but to Cú Chulainn’s just gained warrior status. If he kills everyone in the ford, this also includes killing women and boys, a highly problematic issue in noble heroic combat, fír fer. By showing their nakedness, the women can remind him that on his first dayas a warrior he would already break the heroic code. Perhaps it is this message, expressed through their bodies, rather than any Christian notion of shame that makes the hero turn away his gaze in disgust of what he is about to do (rather than of what he sees). An interpretation along this line has never been put forward and at this stage it must remain a tentative suggestion.

785 | TBC II, ll. 1182–1185.
786 | O’CONNOR, pers. comm.
787 | O’CONNOR, pers. comm.
788 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 6.

789

TBC I, ll. 1655–1656; ‘He would recognise neither comrades nor friends. He would attack alike before him and behind him.’

790 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 6.
791 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’.
792 | JOYCE A. SALISBURY, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York, NY, 1994), p. 5.

793

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI, ‘Literary Genre and Animal Symbolism’, in Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature, ed. by L. A. J. R. HOOUWEN (Groningen, 1997), pp. 1–24 (p. 22).

794 | Cited from SIMEK, Monster, p. 18.
795 | OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality, p. 4.
796 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 221.
797 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’.
798 | SAYERS, ‘Battlefield Spirits’, p. 53.
799 | SAYERS, ‘Battlefield Spirits’, p. 53.
800 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 6.
801 | SALISBURY, Beast Within, p. 145.
802 | Quoted in GILMORE, Monsters, p. 7.
803 | TBC I, l. 1814 & ll. 1822–1823; ‘the head of the Distorted One’.
804 | TBC I, l. 1473; ‘„Where is the head of the distorted one that you have brought?“ they all asked.’

805

It is not clear whether in these instances the epithet simply refers to CúChulainn, i.e. whether the people ask for Cú Chulainn’s head, or whether they specifically ask for his distorted head. I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for mentioning the second possibility in personal communication.

806 | TBC I, l. 209; ‘the distorted one’.
807 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’.

808

This may be due mainly to the interpolator H1’s interest in the subject, yet in TBC as we have it, the vivid depictions of the distorted body are integral in imagining Cú Chulainn.

809

TBC II, ll. 3317–3320; ‘It is then that Cú Chulainn underwent ríastrad for the first time. He swelled and grew as big as a bladder does when inflated and became a fearsome, terrible, manycoloured, strange arch, and then the valiant hero towered high above Fer Diad, as big as a Fomóir or a pirate.’ In TBC I, it is simply an increase in size that is mentioned. TBC I, ll. 3092–3094.

810 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’, p. 159; O’RAHILLY, TBC II, p. xvii; SAYERS, ‘Hair and Beards’, p. 159.

811

MOORE in fact mentions that scholarship has seen all three as interpolations but does not reference these studies. MOORE, ‘ríastrad’, p. 174.

812

O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 2. O’CONNOR also discusses other mentions of Cú Chulainn’s battle-frenzy that are extant in TBC I (TBC I, ll. 1478–1481; ll. 4093–4096), but since these do not feature ekphrastic descriptions of his physical change they are omitted here.

813 | O’CONNOR, pers. comm.

814

MAC EOIN sees the proportions in Lebor na hUidre (67 leaves) as follows: ‘A: 12%, M: 60%, H: 28%. A and M were the two original scribes and are generally thought to have cooperated with one another […]. At some later date the third scribe, H, revised the manuscript, removing pages of the text written by A and M and substituting pages written by himself, erasing material on the remaining pages and writing his own text in the space thus cleared, and insertingg losses on many texts. […] The question of when H worked has been debated on and off over the past seventy or so years, sincehis activities were first described by R. I. BEST.’ GEARÓID MAC EOIN, ‘The Interpolator H in Lebor na hUidre’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. by J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast, 1994), pp. 39–46 (p. 39).

815

RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN, ‘Introduction’, in Lebor na hUidre: Codices Hibernenses Eximii 1, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN (Dublin, 2015), pp. xi–xxiii (pp. xvii–xx). In a talk at the Royal Irish Academy’s Lebor na hUidre conference, ELIZABETH DUNCAN proposed that what was commonly labelled H is, in fact, the work of six different scribed. See ELIZABETH DUNCAN, ‘The Palaeography of H in Lebor na hUidre’, in Lebor na hUidre: Codices Hibernenses Eximii 1, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN (Dublin, 2015), pp. 29–52.

816 | MAC EOIN, ‘Interpolator H’, pp. 39–40.
817 | MAC EOIN, ‘Interpolator H’, p. 39.

818

LIAM BREATNACH, ‘Lebor na hUidre: Some Linguistic Aspects’, in Lebor na hUidre: Codices Hibernenses Eximii 1, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN (Dublin, 2015), pp. 53–77.

819 | CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York, NY, 2001).

820

R. I. BEST’s analysis of the manuscript is still commonly adhered to. BEST saw the manuscript of Lebor na hUidre, in which TBC I is contained, as composed by three main scribes. The third scribe, H, is responsible for inserting many notes and glosses and also for lengthy passages even on additional leaves, such as some of the descriptions discussed here. See R. I. BEST, ‘Notes on the Script of Lebor na hUidre’, Ériu, 4 (1915), 161–174.

821 | DUNCAN, ‘The Palaeography of H’, p. 29.
822 | MAC EOIN, ‘Interpolator H’, p. 40.

823

JOHN CAREY, ‘H and his World’, in Lebor na hUidre: Codices Hibernenses Eximii 1, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN (Dublin, 2015), pp. 101–113 (pp. 112 & 113).

824 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 77.
825 | CAREY, ‘H and his World’, p. 113.
826 | TBC I, ll. 428–434.
827 | TBC I, ll. 1651–1657.

828

The leaf containing this description was interpolated into Lebor na hUidre and this remark is not found in any other verion of TBC I; See O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 12.

829 | TBC I, ll. 2245–2278.
830 | TBC II, p. xvii (introduction).
831 | LARSEN, ‘Man, Dog or Animal’, p. 179.

832

SIMEK, Monster, p. 15. SIMEK also emphasises that human-animal hybrids were classified as monsters in medieval sources, a comment which underlines the precarious state of Cú Chulainn’s distorted body in the medieval mind. SIMEK, Monster, p. 17.

833

MOORE, ‘ríastrad’. For a particularly interesting discussion of the crane see ANN ROSS, Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and Tradition (London, 1967), p. 280.

834 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 30.
835 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 31.
836 | LEONIE DUIGNAN, The Echtrae as an Early Irish Literary Genre (Rahden/Westfahlen, 2010), p. 112.

837

AMY EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘The Anatomy of Power and the Miracle of Kingship: The Female Body of Sovereignty in a Medieval Irish Kingship Tale’, Speculum, 81/4 (2006), 1014–1054 (p. 1031).

838 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘The Anatomy of Power’, p. 1031.

839

WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Deployment of an Irish Loan: ON „verða at gjalti“, „to Go Mad with Terror“’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 93/2 (1994), 157–182 (p. 158).

840

The Death of Crimthann son of Fidach and the Adventures of the sons of Eochaid Muigmedón’, ed. by WHITLEY STOKES, Revue Celtique, 24 (1903), 172–207 (p. 196).

841 | DUIGNAN, Echtrae, p. 55.

842

EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Female Body of Sovereignty’, p. 1036. MULLIGAN makes a valid comparison between the body of the Sovereignty hag and that of a leper and in her convincing argument touches on many features which, incidentally, are not shared by either Cú Chulainn or the Antichrist. This suggests that these male bodies are different in some respects at least.

843

Amairgen is discussed briefly in connection with Cú Roi, another figure who is both giantlike but poetically (and magically) gifted, by PETRA S. HELLMUTH, ‘The Role of Cú Roí in Fled Bricrenn’, in Fled Bricrenn: Reassessments, ed. by PÁDRAIG Ó RIAIN (Dublin, 2000), pp. 56–69.

844

Book of Leinster, ed. by R. I. BEST, OSBORN BERGIN, M. A. O’BRIEN and ANNE O’SULLIVAN, 6 vols (Dublin, 1954–1963), vi (1963), p. 435 (MS folio 117 b). This is the edition subsequently referred to.

845

The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales, ed. and trans. by JOHN T. KOCH and JOHN CAREY, Celtic Studies Publications 1, 4th edn (Aberystwyth, 2003), pp. 65–66 (p. 66). This is the translation subsequently referred to.

846 | BERNHARDT-HOUSE, Magical Hounds, p. 92.

847

This of course leaves room to speculate whether these descriptions have influenced the portrayals of Cú Chulainn in battle-frenzy or whether native ideas gave rise to the similar features in the Antichrist’s appearance. This issue cannot be conclusively addressed here, although a minor detail would suggest the latter. Yet a careful analysis of the texts must precede such assumptions. MARTIN MCNAMARA, ‘Apocalyptical and Eschatological Texts in Irish Literature: Oriental Connections?’, in Apocalyptic and Eschatological Heritage: The Middle East and Celtic Realms, ed. by MARTIN MCNAMARA (Dublin & Portland, OR, 2003), pp. 75–97 (p. 90).

848 | BERNARD MCGINN, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York, NY, 1994), p. 99.
849 | Quoted from MCNAMARA, ‘Apocalyptical and Eschatological Texts’, p. 90.
850 | Both original and translation from MCNAMARA, ‘Apocalyptical and Eschatological Texts’, p. 91.
851 | Irish Biblical Apocrypha, ed. by MÁIRE HERBERT and MARTIN MCNAMARA (Edinburgh, 1989), p. 149.
852 | MCGINN, Antichrist, p. 99.
853 | MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, pp. 9–10.

854

HELMUT BIRKHAN, ‘Furor Heroicus’, in 8. Pöchlarner Heldenliedgespräch: Das Nibelungenlied und die europäische Heldendichtung, ed. by ALFRED EBENBAUER und JOHANNES KELLER (Wien, 2006), pp. 9–38 (p. 29).

855 | See KIM MCCONE, ‘The Cyclops in Celtic, Germanic and Indo-European Myth’, Studia Celtica, 30 (1996), 89–111 (p. 100).
856 | While the first description only mentions its metallic quality, the third description develops the motif.

857

In a note to Recension II, O’RAHILLY briefly discusses some terms for haircuts in TBC II. She argues that in the description of Cú Chulainn, it should be imagined as an ‘upstanding tuft of hair’ and asserts that it is not close cropped but still long.

858 | SAYERS, ‘Battle-field Spirits’, p. 53.

859

Life of Senán son of Gerrcen, ed. and trans. by WHITLEY STOKES, in his, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (Oxford, 1890), pp. 54–74 (ed.) and pp. 201–221 (trans.), (pp. 66 & 213); ‘When the monster heard them, it shook its head, and its hair stood up upon it, and its rough bristles […]’.

860

Life of Brennain, son of Finnlugh, ed. and trans. by WHITLEY STOKES, in his, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (Oxford, 1890), pp. 99–116 (ed.) and pp. 247–261 (trans.), (pp. 113 & 258); ‘Furzy hair upon him’.

861

For a brief discussion of the text see BERNHARDT-HOUSE, Magical Hounds, pp. 210–211; WILLIAM GILLIES, ‘Arthur in Gaelic Tradition, Part II: Romances and Learned Lore,’ CMCS, 2 (1982), 41–75 (pp. 60–61). For a discussion of the motif of the sticking apples in early Irish texts (and beyond) see CAROLINEMCGRATH, ‘The Apple in Early Irish Narrative Tradition: A Thoroughly Christian Symbol?’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 7 (2010), 18–25.

862 | JOHN CAREY, ‘Werewolves in Medieval Ireland’, CMCS, 44 (2002), 37–72 (p. 43).

863

The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog, ed. and trans. by R. A. S. MACALISTER, in his, The Story of Eagle-Boy:Two Irish Arthurian Romances (London, 1908), pp. 2–73 (p. 12); ‘With ugliness on him and full of contentiousness, so that a small apple or large sloe would stay on the top of every hair of the rough, greyish pelt that was on him.’

864

H wrote or contributed to the version of TBDD in LU, and, if the third description may be attributed to him too, this might explain the occurence of the motif there. See MAC EOIN, ‘Interpolator H’, p. 41.

865

O’CONNOR critically discusses this apparently basic feature of battle furor in relation to the portrayal of Egil in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. In a careful analysis, O’CONNOR concludes that this oft-cited passage from the saga does not, in fact, link Egil to battle-frenzy. See O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 3.

866

I thank Prof. Ralph O’CONNOR for pointing out to me that the single-eye aspect of the ríastrad is only vestigially single. O’CONNOR, pers. comm.

867

There is also no indication in the texts that, as BORSJE argues, while the evil eye has no effect on his opponents, it still allows Cú Chulainn to fight better. JACQUELINE BORSJE, The Celtic Evil Eye and Related Mythological Motifs in Medieval Ireland (Paris, 2012), p. 21.

868

O’CONNOR, pers. comm. Prof. O’Connor also kindly reminded me that Cú Chulainn does perform a spying feat which is compared to Ingcél’s early in the text of TBC I,when he reckons the number and identity of the various legions in the enemy army. However, as Prof. O’Connor added, there is no indication that Cú Chulainn uses only one eye for this feat. O’CONNOR, pers. comm.

869

Aislinge Meic Conglinne, ed. and trans. by KUNO MEYER (London, 1892), pp. 50–51. See Ancient Irish Tales, trans. by CROSS and SLOVER, p. 567.

870

For remarks on cyclopes in the Classical tradition see BERNHARD MAIER, ‘Of Celts and Cyclopes: Notes on Athenaeus IV, 36, p. 152 A and Related Passages’, Studia Celtica, 30 (1996), 83– 88 (pp. 85–86). T. F. O’RAHILLY, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946), pp. 58–60; DAVIDSON, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe, pp. 178 & 196–197. MCCONE suggests a possible connection with the legendary founder of the Spartan constitution, Lycurgus (‘Man of Wolf Deeds’) who also exhibits only one eye and canine connections. MCCONE refers to Plutarch, Lycurgus, 11, 1–2. MCCONE, ‘Werewolves’, p. 21. For the argument that the limiting of vision increases the supernatural power of the gaze, an idea apparently not observable in relation to Cú Chulainn, see MARK SCOWCROFT, ‘Abstract Narrative in Early Ireland’, Ériu, 46 (1995), 121–158 (p. 155).

871

MCCONE, ‘Cyclopes’, pp. 97–108; JACQUELINE BORSJE, ‘Approaching Danger: Togail Bruidne Da Derga and the Motif of Being One-Eyed’, in Identifying the „Celtic“ʼ, ed. by JOSEPH FALAKY NAGY (Dublin, 2002), pp. 75–99.

872 | WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 109.
873 | MICHAIL BAKHTIN, Rabelais and His World, trans. by HELENE ISWOLSKY (Cambridge, MA, 1965), p. 339.

874

Quoted in SAMANTHA J. E. RICHES, ‘Encountering the Monstrous: Saints and Dragons in Medieval Thought’, in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. by BETTINA BILDHAUER and ROBERT MILLS (Toronto, 2003), pp. 196–218 (p. 197).

875

TBC I, ll. 585–587; ‘According to another version, however, he threw his ball into the hound’s mouth and it drove his entrails out through him.’

876

TBC II, ll. 881–883; ‘The boy had no means of defence, but he made a cast of the ball and it went through the gaping mouth of the bloodhound and carried all his entrails out through the back way […]’.

877

Prof. Damian McManus kindly reminded me that in Aided Celtchair maic Uthechair (‘The Death of Celtchair maic Uthechair’), a wolf is killed in similar fashion. McManus, pers. comm.

878 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 508; ‘devils with goats-legs’.
879 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 388.

880

WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 119. It has already been pointed out that the excess fingers and toes may refer to the Antipodes (‘opposite-footed’) in Isodore’s Etymologiae. A similar argument could tentatively be made for the inversion of his legs. In the same description, Isidore mentions that the Antipodes show the following deformity: adversa pedibus nostris calcent uestigia.While this is usually depicted as the feet quite literally pointing backwards, (for instance in Cambridge, University Library MS Kk. 4.25, fol 52 r, beside Isidore’s comments on the Antipodes from Books 9 and 11; or London, Sion College Bestiary, fol. 118), the textual reference could also suggest an inversion similar to that of Cú Chulainn. JOHN BLOCK FRIEDMAN, who lists these examples, argues that this race, which is mentioned already by Pliny, grew from a misconception: they were thought to inhabit a part of the world where men walked upside down. JOHN BLOCK FRIEDMAN, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (New York, NY, 1981), p. 11.

881 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 122.
882 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 122.
883 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 120.
884 | FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women, p. 61.
885 | SHILDRICK, Embodying the Monster, p. 17.
886 | GILMORE, Monsters.
887 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 221.

888

THURNEYSEN asserts that Feidelm’s poem is an interpolation. THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 236. See also DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 66–73.

889 | O’LEARY, ‘Magnanimous Conduct’, p. 42.

890

TBC I, ll. 2215–2219; ‘Of that battle-array which he [Cú Chulainn] put on were the twenty-seven shirts, waxed, board-like, compact, which used to be bound with strings and ropes and thongs next to his fair body that his mind and understanding might not be deranged whenever his rage should come upon him.’

891 | MONETTE, ‘The Monstrous Hero’, p. 196.
892 | BIRKHAN, ‘Furor Heroicus’, p. 28.
893 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 18.
894 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 122.
895 | KAY and RUBIN, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.
896 | WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 124.
897 | WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 121.
898 | LARSEN, ‘Man, Dog or Animal’, p. 181.

899

AÐALHEIÐUR GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR, ‘The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 106/3 (2007), 277–303 (p. 277).

900 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, pp. 18 & 21.
901 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 21.

902

BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, pp. 29–30. See also OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality, p. 24. OSWALD also argues that the two categories are not completely independent of each other, but that ‘the metamorphic monster is always in some way hybrid.’ Although Cú Chulainn would by these standards fall in to the latter category, the term metamorphosis is used here to emphasis his change of physical form (which is incomplete, as has been argued above), as it cannot be argued that he completely changes his body.

903 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 78.
904 | LARSEN, ‘Man, God or Animal’, p. 181. See also pp. 172–174 for Cú Chulainn’s divine parentage.
905 | SAYERS, ‘Battle-field spirits’, p. 51.
906 | www.dil.ie (accessed 13.1.2016).
907 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 37.
908 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 37.

909

LU 9005–9009. Quoted from SAYERS, ‘Battle-field spirits’, pp. 51–52; ‘This Uath son of Imomain wasaman of great power for he could turn himself into any shape that pleased him and he could perform druidry and put pacts to right (?). He was the supernatural being after which Belach Muni in tSiriti was named, and he was called a sirite because of his capacity to form himself into a multitude of shapes.’

910 | SAYERS, ‘Battle-field spirits’, p. 52.
911 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 37.
912 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 38.
913 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 38.
914 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 38.
915 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 122.
916 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 120.
917 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 69.
918 | MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’, p. 71.
919 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 119.

920

TOMÁS Ó CATHASAIGH, ‘The Body in Táin Bó Cúailnge’, in Gablánach in scélaigecht: Celtic Studies in Honour of Ann Dooley, ed. by SARAH SHEEHAN, JOANNE FINDON and WESTLEY FOLLETT (Dublin, 2013), pp. 131–153 (p. 145).

921 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’, p. 170.
922 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 73–74.
923 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 74.

924

TBC I, ll. 75–79; ‘„His face is beautiful. He amazes women-folk. This lad of handsome countenance looks in the battle like a dragon.“’

925

TBC I, ll. 96–98; ‘„The distorted one kills them. I see that he has changed from the form in which hitherto he has appeared to me.“’

926 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 74.
927 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 74.

928

DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 77. This observation was made before DUNCAN’S theory was advanced, so it is appropriate to cite DOOLEY’s H as H as it is unclear whether DOOLEY agrees with DUNCAN’S analysis or not.

929 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 79.
930 | TBC II, l. 1182; TBC I, ll. 803–805.
931 | TBC II, ll. 1191–1199. The scene is described in very similar terms in TBC I, ll. 803–821.
932 | MCCONE, ‘Werewolves’, p. 17.

933

JOSEPH FALAKY NAGY, ‘The Rising of the River Cronn in Táin Bó Cúailnge’, in Celtica Helsingiensia. Proceedings from a Symposium on Celtic Studies, ed. by ANDERS AHLQVIST (Helsinki, 1996), pp. 129–148 (p. 142).

934 | NAGY, Outlaw, p. 132.
935 | NAGY, Outlaw, p. 132.
936 | BILDHAUER, Medieval Blood, p. 6.
937 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 29.
938 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 30.
939 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 31.
940 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 123.
941 | JOSEPH FALAKY NAGY, ‘Liminality and Knowledge in Irish Tradition’, Studia Celtica, 16/17 (1981), 135–143 (p. 136).
942 | OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality, p. 6.
943 | LOWE, ‘Kicking over the Traces’, p. 123.
944 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’, pp. 154–155.
945 | MOORE, ‘ríastrad’, p. 155.

946

O’CONNOR offers some interesting remarks on the latter term. He asserts that in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, Kveldúlfr and Skalla-Grímr are described in their shapeshifting through ‘the verb hamask (to change shape) and the adjective hamrammr (shape-strong, given to shapeshifting).These terms often connote shifts in inner disposition and capabilities, especially the periodic onset of a combination of fierce temper and unnatural strength; but they can also signify the transformation of bodily form into that of an animal, and sometimes they connote both meanings at once.’ O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’.

947

For the former see RAVIZZA, KörperSprache. For the latter see HILDA ELLIS DAVIDSON, ‘Shapeleaping in the Old Norse Sagas’, in Animals in Folklore, ed. by J. R. PORTER and W. H. S. RUSSELL (Ipswich, 1978), pp. 126–142. Perhaps the most commonly cited example in relation to emotion is that of Egil swelling up with rage at the death of his son. However, the shape changing as apparent in Egills saga Skalla-Grímssonar is different from the one described in the original riddarasögur. Although Kveldúlf and Skalla-Grím are referred to as shape-shifters, they do not leave their bodies entirely but merely express their rising temper or emotional despair.

948 | O’CONNOR, ‘Monsters of the Tribe’, section 1.
949 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. xxi.
950 | OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality, p. 125.
951 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, pp. 29–31.
952 | LINDOW, ‘Supernatural Others’, pp. 22–23.

953

In Sigurðar saga þǫgla, Sigurð acquires a mirror that can turn him into a beautiful nobleman, a swineherd, a dwarf and a troll, as well as restore his human form. He uses this gadget to insult the vicious maiden-king Sedentiana by raping her in all three unfavourable guises.

954

Only in rare instances are hints of the true, inherent identity written on the new body. In Ali Flekks saga, for instance, the main character, Prince Ali, is turned into a vicious wolf and is saved only because his foster-mother recognises his (i.e. Ali’s) eyes in the brutish creature. The saga consistently plays on the issue of (re‐)integrating Ali at his court. Having the future king attack his own kingdom in the form of a wolf is but one narrative strand in which this is played out.

955 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, pp. 29–30.
956 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity, p. 31.
957 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 55.
958 | DRISCOLL, ‘Hjalmþérs saga’, pp. 285–286.
959 | BYNUM, Metamorphosis and Identity.
960 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 55.
961 | Hjálmþérs saga, pp. xix–xxi.

962

Hjalmþérs saga, p. 6, ll. 7–10 (ed.) and p. 119 (trans.); ‘he escorted an exceedingly beautiful woman, so that the king thought he had seen none like her in all grace and nobleness, and immediately a great love for her came over him.’ It is telling that what HARRIS translates as love (ästarhugur), O’CONNOR perhaps more fittingly renders as ‘desire’ in his translation. Histories and Romances, ed. by O’CONNOR, p. 118.

963 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 53.

964

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 7, ll. 13–16 (ed.) and p. 120 (trans.); ‘The queen had the thrall whom she had brought there keep pigs. He was big and strong as a troll and handsome in appearance.’

965 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 20, ll. 9–22 (ed.) and p. 134 (trans.).

966

In his recent translation, O’CONNOR catches the potency of the scene somewhat better. He translates: ‘„Why should Fortune’swheel have turned this way for me? Better by far were you and I fit for each other, young and pure and well matched in potency. Listen, my delicious darling, I tell you truly, your father has not spoiled me, since he is a worn-out and feeble man, completely impotent, and no good at all in bed. But for me the flesh is weak, and I possess such potency in my womanly parts that it is a great loss to the world that so lusty a body would clasp so aged a man as your father and cannot blossom forth for the world’s well-being. Well, might we rather blend our two youthful bodies after our natural carnal desires, so that fair fruit might multiply from them – and we can soon get rid of that old beggar so he doesn’t get in our way. “’Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 129.

967

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 21, ll. 1–3 (ed.) and p. 134 (trans.); ‘„I expected,“ he [Hjálmþér] says, „that you would be evil, but never so disgraceful as I now know that you are.“’

968

SCHULZ, Riesen, p. 188; ‘Such a confession of bodily lust and sexual cravings cannot be human with regards to the normative concept of women in the fornaldarsögur.’

969 | LINDOW, ‘Supernatural Others’, p. 23.

970

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 21, ll. 3–5 (ed.) and p. 134 (trans.); ‘he shoved her away from the table and struck her nose, so that blood gushed all over her.’

971 | WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 124.
972 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 21, ll 7–8 (ed.) and p. 134 (trans.); ‘she sank down into the ground, whence she had come.’
973 | Hjálmþérs saga, p. 24, ll. 11–18 (ed.) and p. 138 (trans.).
974 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 302.

975

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 24, ll. 24–25 (ed.) and p. 138 (trans.); ‘„I am called Vargeysa. Listen, king’s son. Do you wish that I should be of help to you?“’

976

Hjálmþérs saga, p. 28, ll. 18–21 (ed.) and p. 143 (trans.); ‘He saw his stepmother coming to meet him. She didn’t seem affable, for she was both ugly and loathsome in outward appearance, and not fair of countenance.’

977

Because it was her who had enchanted the princess to turn into a fingálkn, it is possible that the queen knows of her meeting with Hjálmþér and its outcome, or she may recognise the sword.

978

In Rémundar saga kaisarasonar, it is the act of finding and seeing a particular body which functions as the motor of the narrative.

979

The other condition someone has to fulfil is to let the servant have his way in everything, and this had already been accomplished during their journey.

980

The sworn-brothers also encounter the second sister who is turned into a troll-woman. Yet to consider this account also lies outside the scope of this analysis. This troll-woman merely turns out to be helpful, changing the two heroes into chickens to conceal them from the malignant ‘real troll’ she is forced to live with.

981

In analysing the werewolf in Icelandic literature, EINARÓL. SVEINSSON suggests that there are two categories of shapeshifting, an older tradition in which the ability to shape-shift is innate, and a more recent one in which the change is the result of a spell, and as such caused by an ‘outer entity’ that casts the spell. EINAR ÓL. SVEINSSON, ‘Keltnesk áhrif á íslenzkar ýkjusögur’, Skírnir, 106 (1932), 118–19. SVEINSSON apparently saw the origin of the younger tradition in Celtic sources, which came to Iceland with the Romance tradition of the thirteenth century. Quoted from and discussed in GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR, ‘Werewolf’, p. 279.

982 | COHEN, Monster Culture (Seven Theses), p. 4.
983 | OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality, p. 19.

984

MARY CARRUTHERS, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 164.

985 | SCHNYDER, ‘Mittelalterliche „Audiovisualität“’, p. 142.

986

HILDEGARD ELISABETH KELLER, ‘Blinded Avengers: Making Sense of Invisibility in Courtly Epic and Legal Ritual’, in Rethinking the Medieval Senses, ed. by STEPHEN G. NICHOLS, ANDREAS KABLITZ and ALISON CALHOUN (Baltimore, MD, 2008), pp. 218–262 (p. 218).

987

SUSAN KIM, ‘Man-Eating Monsters and Ants as Big as Dogs’, in Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature, ed. by L. A. J. R. HOUWEN (Groningen, 1997), pp. 39–52 (p. 40).

988

MICHAEL UEBEL, ‘Unthinking the Monster:Twelfth-century Responses to Saracen Alterity’, in Monster Theory, ed. by JEFFREY JEROME COHEN (Minneapolis, MN, 1996), pp. 164–291 (p. 266).

989 | GLAUSER, Isländische Märchensagas, p. 191.
990 | OSWALD, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality, p. 114.

991

Metrical Dindshenchas IV, 62, quoted from POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 167; ‘If there was anybody who could remember.’ Translation also provided by POPPE.

992

SARA AHMED and JACKIE STACEY, ‘Introduction: Dermographics’, in Thinking Through the Skin, ed. by SARA AHMED and JACKIE STACEY (London, 2001), pp. 1–17 (p. 2).

993

HANNA EGLINGER, Der Körper als Palimpsest: Die poetologische Dimension des menschlichen Körpers in der skandinavischen Gegenwartsliteratur (Freiburg i. Breisgau, 2007), p. 34; ‘In this respect the body is a container for memory on a biological level. Its memories are “inscriptions” and as such seem undeletable but are constantly maintained throughout processes of growth.’ A similar idea is proposed by DIDIER ANZIEU in relation to modern psychology. In The Skin Ego, ANZIEU asserts that the skin Ego is ‘the original parchment which preserves, like a palimpsest, the erased, scratched out, written over first outlines of an “original preverbal writing” made up of traces upon the skin.’ However, since ANZIEU’s conclusions pertain only to a truly modern subject they will not be considered further here. DIDIER ANZIEU, The Skin Ego, trans. by CHRIS TURNER (New Haven, CT, 1989), pp. 61–62.

994 | EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 34; ‘Of the body as a palimpsest in relation to a tradition of memory-metaphorics.’

995

KARL STEEL, ‘Touching Back: Responding to Reading Skin’, in Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed. by KATIE L. WALTER (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 183–195 (p. 183).

996 | TURNER, ‘Bodies and Anti-Bodies’, p. 30.

997

The present chapter focuses solely on marks written onto or into the skin, and how they become meaningful in connection to the skin. This does not imply that skin cannot be meaningful through its colour or texture alone even in medieval texts. The previous two chapters on expressive mediality have marginally addressed the issue of dark versus fair skin, yet the matter would certainly benefit from more detailed scholarly attention. For a general introduction to the cultural importance of skin see BENTHIEN, Skin.

998 | Etymologiae, XI.i.78. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by STEPHEN A. BARNEY (Cambridge, 2006), p. 236.
999 | BENTHIEN, Skin, p. 12.
1000 | BENTHIEN, Skin, p. 12.

1001

WILLIAM A. COHEN, ‘Deep Skin’, in Thinking the Limits of the Body, ed. by JEFFREY JEROME COHEN and GAIL WEISS (New York, NY, 2003), pp. 63–82 (p. 63).

1002 | ENID SCHILDKROUT, ‘Inscribing the Body’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33 (2004), 319– 344 (p. 319).

1003

BENTHIEN, Skin, p. ix; See also KATIE L. WALTER, ‘Introduction’, in Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed. by KATIE L. WALTER (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 1–10 (p. 2).

1004

TERENCE TURNER, ‘The Social Skin’, in Beyond the Body Proper, ed. by MARGARET LOCK and JUDITH FARQUHAR (Durham & London, 2007), pp. 83–103.

1005

WALTER, ‘Introduction’, p. 2. Medieval literature of course lacks a modern understanding of the individual but the interest in skin as a border and container of the body is still observable in literary and scholarly sources.

1006 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, p. 1.

1007

AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, pp. 1 & 15. For a discussion or the concept of dermographics see also SCHILDKROUT, ‘Inscribing the Body’, p. 320.

1008 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, p. 1.
1009 | WALTER W. SKEAT, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Oxford, 1890), p. 420.
1010 | http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=script. (accessed on 22.12.2014).

1011

This goes somewhat against the application of the term ‘inscribed body’ common in post- structuralist scholarship. There, SCHILDKROUT argues, ‘the concept of inscription and body are approached more in a metaphorical sense than in terms of the actual material modification of flesh through cutting, piercing, painting, or tattooing.’ SCHILDKROUT, ‘Inscribing the Body’, p. 320.

1012

Quoted from EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 35; ‘In how far the body must be viewed as a place of inscription for social knowledge and hence as a construct of self-stimulating discourses of truth.’

1013

MARLENE CIKLAMINI, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 22–23 (p. 22).

1014 | For more information see TULINIUS, ‘Sagas of Icelandic Prehistory ’, p. 452.
1015 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 78.
1016 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 76.
1017 | SCHIER, Sagaliteratur, p. 76.

1018

Ásmundarsaga kappabana, ed. by FERDINAND DETTER, in his, Zwei Fornaldarsögur: Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar and Ásmundarsaga Kappabana nach cod. Holm 7.4° (Halle, 1891), p. 84, ll. 19–18; ‘He [Asmund] was soon big and strong and went on Viking adventures as soon as he could. And he brought under his command a large number of warriors.’ This is the edition subsequently referred to. All translations from this saga are my own.

1019 | CIKLAMINI, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana’, p. 22.
1020 | CIKLAMINI, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana’, p. 22.
1021 | CIKLAMINI, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana’, p. 22.

1022

Ásmundarsaga kappabana, p. 85, ll. 23–24; ‘He was of Danish descent, a good-looking man, rich and wealthy and rather proud.’

1023

Ásmundarsaga kappabana, p. 85, ll. 30–31; ‘he said that he was a famous man of honour and wealth, of good descent and efficacious.’

1024

Ásmundarsaga kappabana, p. 86, ll. 13–16; ‘“That this one of you I shall marry”, said she, “who shows me the more beautiful arms when he returns from Viking adventures next autum.”’ Where the manuscripts discussed by DETTER diverge, this analysis will quote and focus only on Ms S.

1025 | BAETKE, Wörterbuch, p. 122.

1026

Ásmundarsaga kappabana, p. 86, ll. 18–24; ‘Ásmund repeatedly faced great danger in order to gain valuable loot and accumulated both riches and fame. But Eyvind often stayed with the cooks and never took his gloves off his hands.’

1027 | Ásmundarsaga kappabana, p. 86, l. 26 – p. 87, l. 3.
1028 | CIKLAMINI, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana’, p. 22.
1029 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, pp. 1 & 15

1030

Ásmundarsaga kappabana, p. 87, ll. 3–7; ‘Then spoke the king’s daugther: “This is my decision now, that all in all Asmund’s arms are more beautiful/ agreeable and you, Eyvind, are hence excluded from this marriage.”’

1031

There is of course the added possibility that Aesa’s judgement is based also on the gold rings adorning Asmund’s arms. They clearly contribute to his heroic identity (being signs of his victories) but it is unlikely that the gold in itself has swayed her judgement. For one, she stems from a noble and wealthy family and probably possesses such rings herself. Aesa also does not ask the suitors for treasure in order to base her decision on their material gain. Instead, she deliberately wants their hands and arms to reflect their adventures, presumably because the former would have given the wealthy Eyvind an advantage.

1032 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 494.

1033

These are L: The Book of Leinster; H: Trinity College Dublin, H. 3.18, pp. 743–748; Hl: British Museum, Harley MS. 5280, fol. 40 r–42 r; R: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B 512, fol 105 v 2–108 r 2; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS: XXXVI, fol. 86 r–91 v and H.6.8 Trinity College, Dublin, pp. 37–50. With the exception of the Book of Leinster, all the manuscripts date from the fifteenth century or later. For a more detailed discussion and reference to the dating of the tale see Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, ed. by RUDOLF THURNEYSEN (Dublin, 1975).

1034 | ERICH POPPE, ‘Scéla Muicce Meic Da Thó Revisited’, Studia Celtica Japonica, 9 (1997), 1–9 (p. 1).
1035 | Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, ed. by THURNEYSEN, p. i.
1036 | Ancient Irish Tales, trans. by TOM PEETE CROSS and CLARK HARRIS SLOVER, p. 199.

1037

POPPE, ‘Revisited’, p. 1; KIM MCCONE, Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature (Maynooth, 1990), p. 77.

1038 | MCCONE, Pagan Past and Christian Present, p. 77.
1039 | Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, ed. by THURNEYSEN, p. 1.
1040 | NORA K. CHADWICK, ‘Scéla Muicce Meicc Da Thó’, in Irish Sagas, ed. by MYLES DILLON (Cork, 1968), pp. 79–93 (p. 80).

1041

SARAH SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face: Heroic Discourse and Inscription in Flesh in Scéla Mucce Meic Datho’, in The Ends of the Body: Identity and Community in Medieval Culture, ed. by SUZANNE CONKLIN AKBARI and JILL ROSS (Toronto, 2013), pp. 132–152 (p. 132).

1042

DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN, ‘Irish Origin Legends and Genealogy: Recurrent Aetiologies’, in History and Heroic Tale, ed. by TORE NYBERG (Odense, 1985), pp. 51–96 (p. 86).

1043

CORNELIUS G. BUTTIMER, ‘Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó: a Reappraisal’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 2 (1982), 61–73 (p. 65).

1044 | MCCONE, Pagan Past and Christian Present, p. 77.
1045 | TRISTRAM, ‘Einleitung’, p. 35; ‘of communal social gathering and symbol of social order.’

1046

HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, ‘Feis und Fled: Wirklichkeit und Darstellung in mittelalterlichen irischen Gastmahlserzählungen’, in Medialität und mittelalterliche insulare Literatur, ed. by HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, Scriptoralia, 43 (Tübingen, 1992), pp. 183–220 (p. 215).

1047

WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Kingship and the Hero’s Flaw: Disfigurement as Ideological Vehicle in Early Irish Literature’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 17 (1997), 263–67 (p. 263).

1048 | SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’, p. 263.
1049 | SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’, p. 263.
1050 | SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’, p. 263.

1051

In stressing the ritualistic character of the process of assigning the portion, both TRISTRAM and CHADWICK note that the scene follows a highly developed structural pattern. TRISTRAM remarks that the boasting follows a twelvefold gradatio and features various changes in narrative perspective. TRISTRAM, ‘Feis und Fled’, p. 211.Within this gradatio CHADWICK identifies four distinct ordeals. The first one features more indiscriminate boasting, with Cét prevailing over his rival contestants. The second ordeal may be summarised by Cét being challenged by the Ulster champions; in the third ordeal he loses a ‘duel of wit and words’ with Conall Cernach who, in the last ordeal, victoriously carves the pig. An Early Irish Reader, ed. and trans. by NORA KERSHAW CHADWICK (Cambridge, 1927), p. 8.

1052

Early Irish Reader, ed. and trans. by CHADWICK, p. 12 (ed.) and p. 20 (trans.). All references to primary text and translation refer to CHADWICK.

1053

Early Irish Reader, p. 12 (ed.) and p. 20 (trans.); ‘“At the door of your house, when I deprived you of a drove of cattle. The alarm was raised around me in the country-side. You came at that cry. You cast a spear at me so that it stuck out of my shield. I cast the spear at you so that it pierced your head and put out your eye. It is patent to the men of Ireland that you are one-eyed. It was I who struck out the other eye from your head.”’

1054 | For the importance of an unblemished body in early Irish Law see KELLY, Guide, pp. 17–21.
1055 | See SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’; MCMANUS, ‘Good-looking and Irresistible’; See also KELLY, Guide, pp. 17–21.

1056

Early Irish Reader, p. 12 (ed.) and p. 20 (trans.); ‘“I am the man who last cleaned my spears in Munremor,” said Cet. “It is not yet a whole day (?) since I took three heads of heroes from you out of your land, and among them the head of your eldest son.”’

1057

Early Irish Reader, p. 12 (ed.) and p. 21 (trans.); ‘“What next!”, said Cet, “sons of rustics with nick-names to contest with me! – for it was from me your father got that name. It was I who struck off his heel with my sword, so that he took away only one foot when he left me. What could encourage the son of the one-footed man to fight with me?”’

1058 | Early Irish Reader, p. 12 (ed.) and p. 21 (trans.); ‘A grey and terrible hero of Ulster’.
1059 | Early Irish Reader, pp. 12–13 (ed.) and p. 21 (trans.).

1060

As SAYERS observes, this wound may be a ‘variation on the earlier motif of a son killed’, as it likewise impairs his family line. SAYERS, ‘Serial Defamation’, p. 35.

1061 | Early Irish Reader, p. 13 (ed.) and p. 21(trans.); ‘has the making of a king to judge from his appearance.’

1062

Early Irish Reader, p. 13 (ed.) and p. 21 (trans.); ‘“There was an encounter between us in that borderland. You left a third of your people behind; and it is thus you went, with a spear through your throat, so that you have not an articulate word in your head; for the spear has injured the tendons of your throat, and that is why you have been nick-named Cúscraid the Stammerer ever since.”’

1063

In Serglige Con Culaind (‘The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn’), the women of the Ulaid who are in love with Cuscraid Mend Machae suffer a stammer to ‘imitate’ their beloved’s speech impediment. Yet despite this flaw, Cuscraid is still described as one of the most handsome youths in this text also. For a brief discussion see SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’, p. 265.

1064 | SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’, p. 264.

1065

OLICK presents a useful summary of Halbwach’s memory theories: ‘[a]utobiographical memory is memory of those events which we ourselves experience (though those experiences are shaped by group memberships) […]’. JEFFREY K. OLICK, ‘Collective Memory: The Two Cultures’, Sociological Theory, 17/3 (1999), 333–348 (p. 335).

1066 | SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face’, p. 145.

1067

PHILIP O’LEARY, ‘Contention at Feasts in Early Irish Literature’, Éigse, 20 (1984), 115–127; PHILIP O’LEARY, ‘Verbal Deceit in the Ulster Cycle’, Éigse, 21 (1986), 16–26.

1068

O’LEARY, ‘Contention at Feasts’, pp. 119 & 115. For the concept of honour in early Irish literature see also T. M. CHARLES-EDWARDS, ‘Honour and Status’, Ériu, 29 (1978), 123–141 (p. 123).

1069 | SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face’, p. 134.
1070 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 14.
1071 | SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face’, p. 132.
1072 | SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face’, p. 132.

1073

A similar motif is found in connection with biblical tropes. CATHERINE MCKENNA lists two examples where lashes from whips wielded by angels cause permanent scaring. In Fís Adomnáin, two virgins helping Uriel to guard the second gate of heaven strike the faces of the ‘sons of death’ while in Adomnan’s Vita Columbae, Columba himself is struck by the whip of an angel because he refuses to obey God’s command. See CATHERINE MCKENNA, ‘Angels and Demons in the Pages of Lebor na hUidre’, in Narrative in the Celtic Tradition: Studies in Honour of Edgar M. Slotkin, ed. by JOSEPH S. Eska, CSANA Yearbook, 8/9 (Hamilton, NY, 2011), pp. 157– 180 (p. 172).

1074 | O’LEARY, ‘Contention at Feasts’, p. 118.
1075 | SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face’, p. 137.
1076 | I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for stressing this point in conversation.

1077

Early Irish Reader, p. 14 (ed.) and p. 22 (trans.); ‘I swear what my tribe swears, that since I took a spear in my hand I have not often slept without the head of a Connaught-man under my head, and without having wounded a man every single day and every single night.’ See also CHADWICK, ‘Scéla Muicce Meicc Da Thó’, p. 86.

1078 | Early Irish Reader, p. 14 (ed.) and p. 22 (trans.); ‘“It is true,” said Cet. “You are a better hero than I am.”’
1079 | O’LEARY, ‘Fír Fer’, p. 1.
1080 | SHEEHAN, ‘Losing Face’, p. 134.
1081 | CHARLES-EDWARDS, ‘Honour and Status’, p. 130.
1082 | For a comparison of this description with that given in TBDD see SAYERS, ‘Hero’s Flaw’, pp. 264–265.

1083

Early Irish Reader, p. 14 (ed.) and p. 23 (trans.); ‘and [threw] it at Cet’s breast with such force that a gush of blood burst over his lips.’

1084 | SHEEHAN, ‘Loosing Face’, p. 144.
1085 | I am indebted to Prof. Gísli Sigurðsson for mentioning this connection in personal communication.

1086

STEVEN CONNOR, ‘Mortification’, in Thinking Through the Skin, ed. by SARA AHMED and JACKIE STACEY (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 36–51 (p. 36).

1087

JAY PROSSER, ‘Skin Memories’, in Thinking Through the Skin, ed. by SARA AHMED and JACKIE STACEY (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 52–68 (p. 52).

1088 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Old Norse-Icelandic Bodies’, p. 198.
1089 | ELAINE SCARRY, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York, NY, 1985), p. 116.

1090

According to the DIL, the terms used most frequently to denote the concepts of historiography in early Irish texts are stair (‘history, story, account, record, reputation, fame’) and scél (‘story, narrative, tale, story as a literary genre, accomplishment, story told of a particular person, hence fame, reputation’). Both terms are commonly used for what is here termed history and thus incorporate concerns about stories and fame. www.dil.ie (accessed on 21.8.2014).

1091 | EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 34.
1092 | EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 34.

1093

The passage is contained in the Yellow Book of Lecan and St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, O’Curry MS, 1, which dates from c. 1587. See MEID, ‘Überlieferung’, p. 26. See also O’RAHILLY, ‘Repetition’, p. 74. It should be noted that TBC I gives eleven wounds but in TBC II only nine are mentioned.

1094 | Táin Bó Cúailnge: Recension I, ed. and trans. by O’RAHILLY, p. 282.
1095 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 34–36.
1096 | HEINRICH ZIMMER, ‘Keltische Beiträge’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 32 (1888), 196–334.
1097 | SWARTZ, ‘Neo-Classical Rhetoric’, p. 132.

1098

For a detailed study of this concept in TBC see PATRICK K. FORD, ‘The Idea of Everlasting Fame in the Táin’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. by J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast, 1994), pp. 255–261.

1099 | TBC II, ll. 3630–3633.
1100 | The same observation can be made for TBC I.

1101

For instance, a typical description of a killing in TBC II is the death of Buide mac Ban Blaí, which is described as follows: ‘[a]nd he cast the spear at him. The spear landed in the shield above his breast and crushed three ribs in the farther side after piercing his heart, and Buide mac Bain Blai fell.’ TBC II, ll. 1781–1783.

1102 | The same description is found in Cú Chulainn’s Death-Tale.
1103 | TBC II, ll. 3645–3653.
1104 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 34–35.
1105 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 35.
1106 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 35–36.

1107

The same is true for TBC I, although the order is slightly simplified. Fingin gives his analysis, Cethern confirms and expands this by describing the attackers and Cú Chulainn finally names (and often further describes) them. Wound four departs from this pattern (Cethern – Cú Chulainn – Fingin) and is followed by the prognosis that the wounds are not curable, a statement Fingin repeats after the reading of the seventh wound. Except for another comment emphasising the severity of the wounds after the ninth wound, the pattern is adhered to rigorously in the remaining cases.

1108

TBC II, l. 3664; ‘“Examine this wound for me, master Fingin.”’ The spelling varies considerably in the other mentions. In TBC I, this request is only present at the very beginning of the analyses but not repeated for every single wound, which may suggest that the repetitive pattern of the episode was consciously developed.

1109 | TBC II, ll. 3665–3666.
1110 | TBC II, ll. 3676–3677.
1111 | TBC II, ll. 3686–3687.
1112 | TBC II, ll. 3698–3701.
1113 | TBC II, ll. 3705–3711.
1114 | TBC II, ll. 3716–3717.
1115 | TBC II, ll. 3725–3726.
1116 | TBC II, ll. 3740–3744.
1117 | TBC II, ll. 3750–3751.

1118

TBC II, l. 3666; ‘“That is true indeed.”’ This phrase occurs in seven of the example in TBC II with slight variation in spelling.

1119 | TBC II, ll. 3667–3670.
1120 | TBC II, ll. 3677–3681.
1121 | TBC II, ll. 3687–3690.
1122 | TBC II, ll. 3695–3697.
1123 | TBC II, ll. 3706–3709.
1124 | TBC II, ll. 3717–3720.
1125 | TBC II, ll. 3725–3732.
1126 | TBC II, ll. 3737–3740.
1127 | TBC II, ll. 3751–3754.
1128 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 35.
1129 | TBC II, l. 3671; l. 3681; l. 3690 with several repetitions for the first and last phrase.
1130 | O’RAHILLY, ‘Repetition’, p. 74.

1131

TBC II, l. 3671; l. 3681; ll. 3701–3702; ‘“We know that man”/“We know that woman”/ “We know those two men”’. With several repetitions for the first and last phrase.

1132 | TBC II, ll. 3671–3674.
1133 | TBC II, ll. 3682–3684.
1134 | TBC II, ll. 3691–3696.
1135 | TBC II, ll. 3702–3703.
1136 | TBC II, ll. 3712–3714.
1137 | TBC II, ll. 3721–3723.
1138 | TBC II, ll. 3733–3735.
1139 | TBC II, ll. 3745–3748.
1140 | TBC II, ll. 3755–3757.

1141

O’CONNOR provides a brief reference to non-Celtic usages of this narrative technique, listing the Greek Iliad, the Middle Persian epic Shahnameh and an unnamed Indian text. He also mentions Laxdaoela saga, which has already been discussed in this context in chapter two. O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, pp. 158–159.

1142

See also THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 61. The watchman device is also found in Welsh narratives, suggesting that it might have been of importance in a broader insular Celtic context.

1143

MATASOVIĆ, ‘Descriptions in the Ulster Cycle’, pp. 101–102. The watchman device is also used in TBC, most famously in the Tochim na mBuiden (‘The Reckoning of the Companies’) episode, which features an imaginative treatment of the ‘erroneous watchman device’. It is also found in Fled Bricrenn (‘Bricriu’s Feast’) and in Mesca Ulad (‘The Intoxication of the Ulstermen’). See O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, pp. 160–167. JAMES CARNEY proposes that the device may have been adapted from the Iliad and developed in an Irish environment. JAMES CARNEY, Studies in Early Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955), especially pp. 305–320. BRENT MILES, on the other hand, suggestes that SIMS-WILLIAMS studies show that it is part of the world of international story telling. See BRENT MILES, ‘The Literary Set Piece and the Imitatio of Latin Epic in the Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’, Ulidia 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Maynooth 24–27 June 2005, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN and BRIAN Ó CATHÁIN (Maigh Nuad, 2009), pp. 66–80 (p. 67). Whatever the origin of the motif, its popularity in early Irish literature is remarkable. See also PATRICK SIMS-WILLIAMS, Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (Oxford, 2011), p. 102.

1144 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 154.
1145 | SIMS-WILLIAMS, Irish Influence, p. 96.
1146 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 162.
1147 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 167.
1148 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 167.
1149 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 36.
1150 | WILLIAM SAYERS, ‘Fergus and the Cosmogonic Sword’, History of Religions, 25/1 (1985), 30–56 (p. 31).
1151 | FORD, ‘Everlasting Fame’, p. 257.
1152 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 28–29.

1153

The importance of witnessing (fíadnaise) in law texts may be stressed with a brief reference to Berrad Airechta, 219–220 as presented and discussed in POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 137.

1154 | CHARLES-EDWARDS, ‘Honour and Status’, p. 124.
1155 | FORD, ‘Everlasting Fame’, p. 261.
1156 | OLICK, ‘Collective Memory’, p. 335.
1157 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 34.
1158 | EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 42.
1159 | BERYL SMALLEY, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), p. 24.
1160 | SMALLEY, Study of the Bible, p. 1.
1161 | SMALLEY, Study of the Bible, p. 1.
1162 | SMALLEY, Study of the Bible, p. 1.
1163 | SMALLEY, Study of the Bible, p. 2.
1164 | R. E. MCNALLY, ‘The Imagination and Early Irish Biblical Exegesis’, Annuale Medievale, 10 (1969), 5–27 (p. 5).
1165 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 35.

1166

See further JOHN CAREY, A New Introduction to Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland (Dublin, 1993). A full discussion of the manuscripts and their stemmata is provided by R. Mark SCOWCROFT, ‘Medieval Recensions of the Lebor Gabála’, in Lebor Gabála Érenn: Textual History and Pseudohistory, ed. by JOHN CAREY (London, 2009), pp. 1–20.

1167

These are Laud Misc. 610 (L) 102 b14–103 b21; TCD H.3.18 (H) 38 a1–39 b3; an acephalous text in the Book of Fermoy (F) 155 a1–156 a24; Rawl. B 512 (R) 97 vb1–99 a3 and Lebor na hUidre (U) 15 a34–16 b41, which is by far the oldest manuscript. See Scél Tuáin meic Chairill, ed. and trans. by JOHN CAREY, Ériu, 35 (1984), 93–111 (p. 93).

1168 | Scél Tuáin meic Chairill, ed. and trans. by CAREY.

1169

JOHN CAREY, ‘Lebor Gabála and the Legendary History of Ireland’, in Medieval Celtic Literature and Society, ed. by HELEN FULTON (Dublin, 2005), pp. 32–48 (p. 38).

1170 | R. MARK SCOWCROFT, ‘Leabhar Gabála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition’, Ériu, 39 (1988), 1–66 (p. 1).
1171 | CAREY, A New Introduction, p. 1.
1172 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, pp. 47–48.
1173 | SCOWCROFT, ‘Growth’, p. 12.
1174 | SCOWCROFT, ‘Growth’, p. 12.
1175 | THURNEYSEN, Helden-und Königsage, p. 48.

1176

Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, ed. and trans. by R. A. S. MACALISTER, 5 vols, Irish Texts Society, 34, 35, 39, 41, 44 (Dublin, 1932–1942), v, ITS, 44 (1942), p. 280 (ed.) and p. 281 (trans.).

1177

To avoid confusion it should be noted that ST is not interpolated into an existing form of LG but was incorporated in this text from the start.

1178

In this it echoes concerns raised in the discussion of TBC (and especially Recension II), which also sought to compile earlier, fragmentary accounts into a cohesive whole. Yet, while TBC is concerned solely with secular events, LG is firmly situated within a Christian discourse in which such ‘comprehensive’ histories held an important place.

1179 | CAREY, A New Introduction, p. 2.
1180 | SAYERS, ‘Cosmogonic Sword’, p. 30.

1181

GREGORY TONER, ‘History and Salvation in Lebor na hUidre’, in Lebor na hUidre: Codices Hibernenses Eximii 1, ed. by RUAIRÍ Ó HUIGINN (Dublin, 2015), pp. 131–153 (p. 132).

1182 | CAREY, A New Introduction, p. 3.
1183 | CAREY, A New Introduction, p. 3.
1184 | CAREY, A New Introduction, p. 3.

1185

Lebor Gabála Érenn, v, p. 224 (ed.) and p. 225 (trans.); ‘But it is disheartening to linger over all this recital, without knowing who preserved this history.’ This and all subsequent references refer to MACALISTER’s translation and edition.

1186

This blunt reference to sources is striking. The deliberate mention of the subject makes it likely that the text consciously wants to raise and/or stress the issue in relation to Tuán.

1187 | Lebor Gabála Érenn, v, p. 224 (ed.) and p. 225 (trans.).
1188 | www.dil.ie (accessed on 22.8.2014). I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for stressing this point.

1189

In the independent manuscripts, Tuán is reincarnated several times in human or animal form. It is likely that divinely ordained patriarchs may have been more agreeable to the Christian mind, a thought which would again presuppose a conscious alteration of the material in order to interweave it with Christian ideas.

1190

Lebor Gabála Érenn, v, p. 224 (ed.) and p. 225 (trans.). Even if MACALISTER’S translation may be problematic in some respects, it will still be used here for the sake of consistency. A similar idea is found in the later tale De Shuidiguid Tellaig Temra (‘Concerning the Establishment of the Hearth of Tara’), as JOHN CAREY points out. Here the antediluvian Fintan relates the early settlements and wanderings of the Gaels to a king. He attributes much of his knowledge to a mysterious, angelic entity before dying in the odour of sanctity. For a full discussion see CAREY, ‘Legendary History’, p. 39.

1191 | Lebor Gabála Érenn, v, pp. 280 & 282 (ed.) and pp. 281 & 283 (trans.).

1192

CHARLES W. MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing: History, Myth and Metaphor’, in Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, ed. by JANE CAPLAN (London, 2000), pp. 32–46 (p. 41).

1193

For a general overview of the introduction of alphabetic, i.e. Christian, writing to Ireland see MICHAEL RICHTER, ‘The Introduction of Alphabetic Writing to Ireland: Implications and Consequences’, in A Celtic Florilegium: Studies in Memory of Brendan O Hehir, ed. by KATRYN A. KLAR, EVE S. SWEETSER and CLAIRE THOMAS (Massachusetts, MA, 1996), pp. 152–164.

1194 | www.dil.ie. (accessed on 21.8.2014).
1195 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 24.

1196

TRISTRAM, ‘Feis und Fled’, pp. 189–190; ‘script and the composition of written texts became very important under Christianity as Christianity is a highly developed religion of the written word. Writing was the highest expression of praising God and hence of spiritual culture.’

1197

I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for suggesting the latter point to me in a comment on an earlier draft of this chapter. Another possibility is, of course, that he is miraculously granted literacy by God and does not have to acquire it from the saints.

1198

In view of the oft-cited inadequacy of Ogam for writing narratives and the space that would have been required to write this information it is assumed here that the term writing refers to Christian literacy.

1199 | OLICK, ‘Collective Memory’, p. 335.

1200

EGLINGER argues that similar thoughts about inscribed bodies in memorial discourse can be traced to Plato and Aristotle. EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 17.

1201 | Deuteronomy 6.6–9 and Revelations 3.11–13.

1202

ERNST ROBERT CURTIUS, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. by WILLARD R. TRASK, 7th edn (Princeton, NJ, 1990), p. 312. In the early Irish tradition, there is another example of the motif of quite literally incorporating knowledge. This, however, plays on incorporation rather than inscriptive moments. It is found in the Life of Colm Cille from the Book of Lismore. When it is time for Colm Cille to learn how to read, a prophet arranges the following: ‘“Write an alphabet for him now.” [ordered the prophet.] The alphabet was written in a cake. And Colomb Cille consumed the cake […]’ Colm Cille is subsequently able to read and write. Life of Colm Cille, ed. and trans. by WHITLEY STOKES, in his, Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore (Oxford, 1890), pp. 20–33 (ed.) and pp. 168–181 (trans.), p.172.

1203

MARY CARRUTHERS discusses the ‘well-known manifestation of this trope, popular in later medieval piety, that likens the body of Christ to a written parchment page. One especially gory version of this idea is found in an English poem from the fifteenth century, the so-called ‘Long Charter’ of Christ, in which Christ is imagined to speak from the cross. He likens himself to a piece of vellum, ‘stretched out as parchment ought to be. The blood which runs from his wounds is the ink (both red and black) which we see on the page, and the scourges and thorns of his torture are the pens which incised those inked letters onto the surface.’ MARY CARRUTHERS, ‘Reading with Attitude, Remembering the Book’, in The Book and the Body, ed. by DOLORES WARWICK FRESE and KATHERINE O’BRIEN O’KEEFFE (Notre Dame & Indiana, IA, 1997), pp. 1–33 (p. 4). This example is considerably later and in Middle English, but it testifies to a continuing interest in such comparisons throughout the Middle Ages.

1204

The folio is reproduced in JONATHAN J. G. ALEXANDER, ‘Die künstlerische Ausstattung’, in Book of Kells Ms 58 Trinity College Library Dublin: Kommentar, ed. by ANTON VON EUW and PETER FOX (Luzern, 1990), pp. 286–326 (p. 323).

1205

ASTRID HERBOLD, Eingesaugt & Rausgepresst: Verschriftlichungen des Körpers und Verkörperungen der Schrift (Würzburg, 2004), p. 13.

1206

STEPHEN TRANTER, ‘Metrikwandel – Weltbildwandel: Die irische Metrik im Sog der Christianisierung?’, in Mündlichkeit – Schriftlichkeit – Weltbildwandel: Literarische Kommunikation und Deutungsschemata von Wirklichkeit in der Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by WERNER RÖCKE und URSULA SCHAEFER (Tübingen, 1996), pp. 38–49.

1207

JOHN CAREY, ‘The Hand and the Angel: Observations on the Holy Book in Ireland and Northumbria’, Temenos Academy Review, 2 (1999), 76–96 (p. 83).

1208 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 41.
1209 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 41.
1210 | SAYERS, ‘Cosmogonic Sword’, p. 33.
1211 | SAYERS, ‘Cosmogonic Sword’, p. 33.
1212 | I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for mentioning the similarity with Cú Chulainn’s dimples in conversation.
1213 | The Cauldron of Poesy, ed. and trans. by P. L. HENRY, Studia Celtica, 14/15 (1981), 114– 128 (p. 119).
1214 | The Cauldron of Poesy, ed. and trans. by LIAM BREATNACH, Ériu, 32 (1981), 45–93 (p. 62).

1215

MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 39. On a pragmatic level, the thigh does offer one of the largest skin surfaces for inscription or tattooing, yet from this point of view the back or the belly/chest would have been more suitable places because they lack the conic form of the tigh and would present even surfaces for inscription. I thank Calen Paris for confirming this for me.

1216

MARK W. GUSTAFSON, ‘Inscripta in fonte: Penal Tattooing in Late Antiquity’, Classical Antiquity, 16/1 (1997), 79–105 (p. 92).

1217 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 40.
1218 | Etymologiae, IX.ii.103. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by STEPHEN A. BARNEY, p. 198.
1219 | Etymologiae, XIX.xxiii.7. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by STEPHEN A. BARNEY, p. 386.
1220 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 41.

1221

HORST WENZEL, ‘Die Schrift und das Heilige’, in Die Verschriftlichung der Welt: Bild, Text und Zahl in der Kultur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by HORST WENZEL, WILFRIED SEIPEL and GOTTHART WUNBERG, Schriften des Kunsthistorischen Museums, 5 (Wien, 2000), pp. 15–57 (p. 15).

1222

URBAN KÜSTERS, ‘Der lebendige Buchstabe: Christliche Traditionen der Körperschrift im Mittelalter’, in Audiovisualität vor und nach Gutenberg, ed. by HORST WENZEL, WILFRID SEPEL and GOTTHART WUNBERG (Wien, 2001), pp. 107–117 (p. 107).

1223 | KÜSTERS, ‘Der lebendige Buchstabe’, p. 107.
1224 | KÜSTERS, ‘Der lebendige Buchstabe’, p. 107.
1225 | KÜSTERS, ‘Der lebendige Buchstabe’, p. 107.

1226

ISABEL DAVIES, ‘Cutaneous Time in the Late Medieval Literary Imagination’, in Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed. by KATIE L.WALTER (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 99–118 (p. 99).

1227

SARAH KAY, ‘Legible Skins: Animals and the Ethics of Medieval Reading’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 2/1 (2011), 13–32 (p. 14).

1228 | KAY, ‘Legible Skins’, p. 17.
1229 | CAREY, ‘Legendary History’, p. 38.
1230 | CAREY, ‘Legendary History’, p. 38.
1231 | ALFRED GELL, Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia (Oxford, 1992), p. 30.
1232 | CAREY, ‘The Hand and the Angel’, p. 86.
1233 | CAREY, ‘The Hand and the Angel,’ p. 87.
1234 | KAY, ‘Legible Skins’.

1235

ROBERT MILLS, ‘Havelok’s Bare Life and the Significance of Skin’, in Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture, ed. by KATIE L. WALTER (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 57–80 (pp. 57 & 61).

1236 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 33.

1237

For a discussion of historical evidence for tattooing among the Celts see MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’; ISABEL HENDERSON, The Picts (New York, NY, 1967); NORA K. CHADWICK, ‘The Name Pict’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, 25/2 (1958), 146–176; KENNETH JACKSON, ‘The Pictish Language’, in The Problem of the Picts, ed. by F. T. WAINWRIGHT (Westport, CT, 1956), pp. 129– 160; KUNO MEYER, ‘Tätowierung bei den Iren’, ZCP, 10 (1915), 400–401.

1238 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 42.

1239

RICHARD SHARPE proposes that the deciding feature in distinguishing between laici and díberga is, in fact, the presence and absence of tattoos. He concludes that ‘[t]here is nothing to distinguish them from the latrunculi or laici already discussed, except that we do not hear of fiana wearing signa diabolica or the like.’ RICHARD SHARPE, ‘Hiberno-Latin LAICUS, Irish LAÉCH, and the Devil’s Men’, Ériu, 30 (1979), 75–92 (p. 86).

1240 | MACQUARRIE, ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing’, p. 40.

1241

JAN ASSMANN, ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, in Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. by ASTRID ERLL and ANSGAR NÜNNING with SARA B. YOUNG (Berlin & New York, NY, 2008), pp. 109–118 (pp. 113–114). Discussed also in POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 154.

1242 | POPPE, ‘Narrative History and Cultural Memory’, p. 154.
1243 | GLAUSER, ‘Sagas of the Icelanders’, p. 211.
1244 | CAREY, A New Introduction, p. 19.
1245 | EICHHORN-MULLIGAN, ‘Politics of Anatomy’, p. 1.
1246 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 326.

1247 | Quoted from O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 326. Translation also provided by O’CONNOR.
1248 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 327.
1249 | This is not to say that it may not exist in hagiographical sources, but these lie outside the focus of this study.

1250

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 125, l. 27 – p. 126, l. 3; ‘When Vilhjalm had ended his speech one could quickly see how enraged the queen had become because she had turned very pale and looked angrily at Vilhjalm.’

1251 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 127, l. 1; ‘like robbers or traitors’.
1252 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 127, ll. 4–17.
1253 | KALINKE, Bridal-quest Romance, p. 77.
1254 | STEEL, ‘Touching Back’, p. 183.

1255

KALINKE advances the point that a shaving and tarring of the head symbolises a severe social decline of the individual. KALINKE, Bridal-quest Romance, p. 77.

1256

Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 127, ll. 22–24; ‘will prevent a second or third man to be so guileless and not ashamed when he carries such words to my ear.’

1257 | KALINKE, Bridal-quest Romance, p. 76.
1258 | FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women, p. 107.
1259 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 129, l. 19 – p. 130, l. 5.

1260

ROBERTA FRANK, ‘Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle’, English Historical Review, 99 (1984), 332–343 (p. 333).

1261

Die Erzählung von Orm Stórólfson (Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar), trans. by THOMAS ESSER, in Isländer Sagas, ed. by KLAUS BÖLDL, BETTY WAHL, MATTHIAS KRUSE and THOMAS ESSER, 5 vols (Frankfurt a. Main, 2011), i (2011), pp. 386–405 (pp. 402–403).

1262

One possible if unlikely link is that the owl, like the eagle, is seen primarily as a bird of prey and incorporates destructive qualities. In the reversed order of the meykóngr-kingdom, the symbolic bird may not be associated with battle carrion but rather with stealth and cunning, and with hunting at night and not during the day. The owl may therefore represent a disruptive alternative to the regular order, often symbolised by the eagle. However, as this interpretation is based solely on speculation it must remain a tentative suggestion.

1263 | GUSTAFSON, ‘Inscripta in fonte’, p. 95.

1264

Sedentiana rules in Frakkland and not in a part of the narrated world that resembles ancient Greece, which is why an exact parallel with Athenian customs is not very likely.

1265 | EGLINGER, Körper als Palimpsest, p. 41.

1266

ALEIDA ASSMANN, ‘Exkarnation: Gedanken zur Grenze zwischen Körper und Schrift’, in Raum und Verfahren, ed. by JÖRG HUBER (Basel, 1993), pp. 133–155 (p. 133); ‘within every act of writing there is a reverse movement towards incarnation: concrete, lived experience becomes abstracted, that is, independet of its spatial and chronological context.’

1267 | Late Medieval Icelandic Romances II, ed. by LOTH, pp. 134–135.
1268 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 131, ll. 13–19.
1269 | Sigurðar saga þǫgla, p. 131, l. 22 – p. 132, l. 8.
1270 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, p. 2.
1271 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, p. 10.
1272 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, p. 4.
1273 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 34.
1274 | CARRUTHERS, ‘Reading with Attitude’, p. 1.

1275

WENDY HARDING, ‘Body into Text: The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature, ed. by LINDA LOMPERIS and SARAH STANBURY (Philadelphia, PA, 1993), pp. 168–187 (p. 172).

1276 | AHMED and STACEY, ‘Dermographics’, p. 10.
1277 | TURNER, ‘The Social Skin’, p. 112.
1278 | Such a reading has recently been attempted by NYFFENEGGER, ‘Saint Margaret’s Tattoos’.

1279

SUSAN SIGNE MORRISON, Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics (New York, NY, 2008), p. 6.

1280 | TURNER, Body and Socitey, p. 39.
1281 | MORRISON, Excrement, p. 7.
1282 | MORRISON, Excrement, p. 2.

1283

This becomes particularly obvious if one compares the corpora discussed here with later narrative texts such as the French fabliaux or carnivalesque writings. In terms of vomiting there are some notable examples to be mentioned briefly in the Old Norse-Icelandic tradition. One is found in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, where after a drinking contest and eating copious amount of skyr (a yogurt or cottage cheese like meal), Egil vomits all over his mean host, Armod. Because the vomit even flows into Armod’s nostrils and mouth, Armod nearly chokes on it, a fact that exacerbates the moment of humiliation. A further reference is found in Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts (‘The Tale of Thorstein Oxfoot’), where Þórsteinn receives divine help when fighting the troll-woman Skjaldvörs. When Skjaldvörs is about to bite Þórsteinn’s throat, a gleaming light enters the cave and makes her vomit all over his face. So severe is the stench and foulness of the troll’s vomit that the hero nearly dies from it, and it is said that some of it must have reached into his breast because ever after he did not walk in human shape alone. In this case, reference to vomit being ingested by the person vomited on is paired with a change in the ‘victim’. The third memorable account is found in relation to the mead of poetry, recounted by Snorri in Skáldskaparmál, an episode discussed below.

1284 | The Táin: Translated from the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, trans. by TOMÁS KINSELLA (London, 1970), p. xiv.
1285 | See DOMINIQUE LAPORTE, A History of Shit (London, 1993).
1286 | PAUL ROZIN, ‘The Process of Moralization’, Psychological Science, 10/3 (1999), 218–221.

1287

MORRISON, Excrement; LYNN THORNDIKE, ‘Sanitation, Baths and Street-Cleaning in the Middle Ages and Renaissance’, Speculum, 3 (1928), 192–203; ERNEST SABINE ‘Latrines and Cesspools of Mediaeval London’, Speculum, 9 (1934), 303–321.

1288 | JEFFREY HENDERSON, The Maculate Muse. Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven, CT & London, 1975), p. 188.
1289 | SHAWN NORMANDIN, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Urinary Imagination’, Exemplaria, 20/3 (2008), 244–263 (p. 248).

1290

See LISA M. BITEL, ‘“Conceived in Sins, Born in Delights”: Stories of Procreation from Early Ireland’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3/2 (1992), 181–202; DORIS EDEL, ‘“Bodily matters” in early Irish literature’, ZCP, 55 (2007), 70–104.

1291 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 101. EDEL refers here to Scéla Conchobair maic Nessa, TBC and Meillgléo Iliach.
1292 | MICHEL CAMILLE, Image on the Edge: Margins of Medieval Art (London, 1995), p. 111.

1293

One of the few mentions is provided by KINSELLA in his translation of the Táin, where he notes that a strong element in Irish tales is ‘their directness in bodily matters: the easy references to seduction, copulation, urination, the picking of vermin […]’. The Táin, trans. by KINSELLA, p. xiv. Unfortunately, KINSELLA does not dwell further on these issues.

1294 | Quoted from DANIEL FURRER, Geschichte des stillen Örtchens (Darmstadt, 2010), p. 6.
1295 | VIRGINIA SMITH, Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity (Oxford, 2007), p. 16–17.

1296

NORBERT ELIAS, Prozesse der Zivilisation I (Basel, 1939), pp. 268 and 354. ELIAS lists many examples concerned with defecating and similar aspects, but since his examples are largely late medieval and from German and French (sometimes Italian) literature, they are not considered here.

1297

WILLIAM IAN MILLER offers a thought-provoking short discussion of ELIAS’ work in relation to medieval studies. Although he agrees that nowadays defecation and urination have become private rather than public acts, he lists valuable examples from the middle of the sixteenth century which show that even then the standards of how to deal with faeces was much lower. See WILLIAM IAN MILLER, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 153–178.

1298 | FURRER, Geschichte, p. 45.
1299 | AGGERMANN, Offene Mund, p. 16.
1300 | TURNER, Body and Socitey, p. 39.
1301 | DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger; ELIAS, Prozesse der Zivilisation.
1302 | SMITH, Clean.
1303 | SMITH, Clean, pp. 56–57.

1304

JEFFREY HENDERSON has discerned these three aspects as the main reasons for scatological mentions in Attic Comedy. See HENDERSON, Maculate Muse.

1305 | CAMILLE, Image on the Edge, p. 111.

1306

Quoted from LAPORTE, A History of Shit, p. 10. LAPORTE refers to ROLAND BARTHES, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. by MAREN SELL (Frankfurt a. Main, 1974), p. 140.

1307 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’.
1308 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 84.

1309

Aided Derbforgaill, ‘The violent death of Derbforgaill’: A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation and Textual Notes, ed. and trans. by KICKI INGRIDSDOTTER (Uppsala, 2009), p. 25.

1310 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 88.

1311

Original and translation quoted from EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 88; ‘I threw another spear at you which went through your thighs and through the upper part of your testicles. Since then you have had a sickness of urine, and no son or daughter has been born to you.’ See also THURNEYSEN, Scéla Mucce Maic Dathó, § 13.

1312

No mention is made in CHADWICK’s edition of the subsequent inability to pass water and beget children, a fact which is perhaps due to variation in the original manuscripts from wich CHADWICK and THURNEYSEN worked.

1313

Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired, ed. and trans. by ELIZABETH GRAY, ITS, 52 (Kildare, 1982), p. 44, ll. 328–331 (ed.) and p. 45 (trans.); ‘Then Fingol mac Mámois, their druid, said: […] “I will bind their urine in their own bodies and in the bodies of their horses.”’ All further references to edition and translation refer to this source.

1314

EDEL mentions monastic rules as well as magic spells preserved in Old Irish as further sources, yet since they fall outside my chosen focus these will not be discussed here. See EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 88. A further example concerning Connall Corc and the Corco Luigdhe was brought to my attention by Dr Geraldine Parsons but sadly could not be considered for this analysis due to time limitations.

1315

TBC I, ll. 1180–1181; ‘“That not one man or two dare go outside the camp to make water unless they go in companies of twenty or of thirty.”’

1316 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 85.
1317 | Ancient Irish Tales, trans. by CROSS and SLOVER, p. 254.
1318 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 86.

1319

ERICA SESSLE, ‘Mysogyny and Medb: Approaching Medb with Feminist Criticism’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. by J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast & Emain Macha, 1994), pp. 135–138 (p. 135).

1320

CHARLES BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb: Mythology and Invention in Táin bó Cúailnge’, Éire-Ireland, 10/4 (1975), 14–34 (p. 33).

1321 | LOTTE MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s River Crossing’, Saga-Book, 23 (1993), 469–487.
1322 | NORMANDIN, ‘Urinary Imagination’, p. 247.

1323

For a brief introduction see RICHARD J. DURLING, ‘The Innate Heat in Galen’, Medizinhistorisches Journal, 23:3/4 (1988), 210–212. For a more detailed study see ARMELLE DEBRU, ‘Physiology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Galen, ed. by R. J. HANKINSON (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 263–282.

1324

VERN L. BULLOUGH, ‘On Being a Male in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. by CLARE A. LEES and THELMA S. FENSTER (Minneapolis, MN, 1994), pp. 31–45 (p. 32).

1325 | BITEL, ‘Conceived in Sins’, p. 184.

1326

GUÐRÚN P. HELGADÓTTER, ‘Laukagarðr’, in Speculum Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. by. URSULA DRONKE, G. HELGADÓTTER, G. W. WEBER and H. BEKKER-NIELSEN (Odense, 1981), pp. 171–184 (p. 177).

1327 | ‘The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill’, trans. by CARL MARSTRANDER, Ériu, 5 (1911), 201– 218 (p. 201).

1328

Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 1. MARSTRANDER states that these latter two recensions are preserved in Trinity college H 3 18, fol. 728, and R.I.A. Stowe MS. D IV 2, fol. 54 bI. ‘The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill’, trans. by MARSTRANDER, p. 201.

1329 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 15.
1330 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 1.
1331 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 87.

1332

Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, ll. 20–25, p. 82 (ed.) and p. 83 (trans.). All further references to the edition or the translation are to INGRIDSDOTTER.

1333 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 27.

1334

MIRANDA HALES, ‘Standing-Stones in Medieval Irish Literature and Cultural Tradition’, unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 2012), pp. 11–16.

1335 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 179.
1336 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 24.
1337 | The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by MARSTRANDER, p. 214.
1338 | THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 428.
1339 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, pp. 27–28.
1340 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, pp. 27–28.
1341 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 27.
1342 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 28.
1343 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 28.
1344 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 24.
1345 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 25.
1346 | PHILIP O’LEARY, ‘The Honour of Women in Early Irish Literature’, Ériu, 38 (1987), 27–44 (p. 39).
1347 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 28.
1348 | BITEL, ‘Conceived in Sins’, p. 188.
1349 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 87.

1350

KATE LOUISE MATHIS examines blood-drinking and also comments on this scene. KATE MATHIS, ‘Mourning the Maic Uislenn: Blood, Death & Grief in Longes Mac n-Uislenn & “Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach”’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, 29 (2013) 1–23.

1351 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 29.

1352

Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, p. 27. See also ANN DOOLEY, ‘The Invention of Women in the Táin’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. by J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast & Emain Macha, 1994), pp. 123–133; MUIREANN NÍ BHROLCHÁIN, ‘Re Tóin Mná: In Pursuit of Troublesome Women’, in Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast and Emain Macha 8–12 April 1994, ed. by J. P. MALLORY and GERARD STOCKMAN (Belfast, 1994), pp. 115–121.

1353

DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 132. INGRIDSDOTTER sees the urination-competition of the males featured in D and H as possible later additions. Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, pp. 26–27.

1354 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, pp. 132 & 133.
1355 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, pp. 26–27.
1356 | Aided Derbforgaill, ed. and trans. by INGRIDSDOTTER, pp. 26–27.
1357 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 133.
1358 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 133.
1359 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 133.
1360 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 133.
1361 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 28.
1362 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 133.
1363 | BITEL, ‘Conceived in Sins’, p. 187.

1364

TBC I, ll. 1578–1580; ‘Cú Chulainn had taken off his shirt and was sitting in the snow up to his waist while around him the snow had melted a man’s length, so great was the ardour of the warrior.’

1365 | TBC II, ll. 1484–1487.
1366 | For a general discussion see SHEEHAN, ‘Giants, Boar-hunts and Barbering’.
1367 | HENRY, ‘Furor Heroicus’, p. 236.
1368 | O’LEARY, ‘Honour of Women’, pp. 27–44.
1369 | BITEL, ‘Conceived in Sins’, pp. 162–163.
1370 | O’LEARY, ‘Honour of Women’, p. 39.

1371

TBC I, ll. 2866–2869; ‘Medb was urinating on the floor of the tent. “Is Ailill asleep now?” asked Medb. “No indeed,” said Ailill. “Do you hear your new son-in-law bidding you farewell?”’

1372 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 85.
1373 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 85.
1374 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, pp. 176–177; DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 131; EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 86.
1375 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 131.
1376 | DOOLEY, Playing the Hero, p. 176; DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 131.
1377 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 131.
1378 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 86.

1379

In addition to Fer Diad, TBC I also features another horn-skinned warrior, Lóch mac mo Femis. The motif is also found in connection with Conganchness mac Dedad in Aided Cheltchair. For a discussion see ELLEN ETTLINGER, ‘The Invulnerable Hero in Celtic Legend’, Man, 42 (1942), 43–45. It is also worth noting that in TBC II the matter of Fer Diad’s horn-skin is treated less as a heroic, literary phenomenon but interpreted as a piece of armour. In this case a juxtaposition of the two bodies would not have rendered the same effect. This would support a medieval understanding of the episode in line with my interpretation and explain the lack of this urination in Recension II.

1380 | TBC I, ll. 2571–2572; ‘the horn-skinned man from Irrus Domnann’.

1381

TBC I, ll. 2747–2748; ‘for he has a horn-skin when he fights with an opponent, and neither weapons nor sharp points can pierce it.’

1382

For a brief discussion of an idea of the ‘narcissistic male fantasy of an invulnerable, impenetrable, phallic body’ that may be played out here see BENTHIEN, Skin, pp. 133–136.

1383 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 14.
1384 | The argument is found in BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, pp. 30–34.

1385

BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 33. Sadly the original text is unavailable to me at the moment and BOWEN refers to his own translation of a facsimile in the US but does not provide the original text.

1386 | See, for instance, SARAH ALISON MILLER, Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body (New York, NY & London, 2010).

1387

KATHERINE R. FRAZIER, ‘More than a Name: Place-Name Literature within Táin Bó Cúailnge’, in Proceedings of the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Meeting 2008, ed. by MORGAN DAVIES, CSANA Yearbook, 10 (Hamilton, NY, 2010), pp. 39–45 (p. 39).

1388 | FRAZIER, ‘Place-Name Literature’, p. 44.
1389 | FRAZIER, ‘Place-Name Literature’, p. 45.
1390 | CHRISTOPHER TILLEY, A Phenomenology of Landscape (Oxford, 1994), p. 23.

1391

DORIS EDEL, ‘Myth versus Reality: Queen Medb of Connacht and her Critics, Ancient and Modern’, in The Celtic West and Europe: Studies in Celtic Literature and the Early Irish Church, ed. by DORIS EDEL (Dublin, 2001), pp. 153–176 (p. 155).

1392 | I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for brining this possible connection to my attention.
1393 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 88.
1394 | HENDERSON, Maculate Muse, pp. 10–12.

1395

Amairgen is discussed in connection with Cú Roi, another character who is both giantlike and poetically (and magically) gifted, by HELLMUTH, ‘The Role of Cú Roí’.

1396

Book of Leinster, ed. by R. I. BEST et. al., p. 435; ‘Snot flowed from his nose into his mouth. […] He had for so long neglected to clean himself after defecating that his own excrement rose up to his buttocks.’ The Celtic Heroic Age, ed. and trans. by JOHN T. KOCH and JOHN CAREY, p. 66.

1397 | DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger, p. 150.

1398

WERNER PIEPER, Das Scheiss-Buch: Entstehung, Nutzung, Entsorgung menschlicher Fäkalien (Löhrbach, 1987), p. 74; ‘a clean asshole is the business card of a civilised human being.’

1399 | SMITH, Clean.

1400

Of course animals also allo-groom, yet this may or may not have been familiar to the compilers/redactors of medieval Irish texts. A similar character is discussed by SALISBURY in her study of the description of Aesop in the Vita Aesopi, a text describing the life and adventures of the fable-poet Aesop. The descriptions of the two figures are strikingly similar: Aesop too is mute until later in life and said to be both ugly and, somewhat remarkably given his later animal fables, characterised by animal-like looks. SALISBURY argues that all of these features move Aesop towards an animalistic sphere and hence they deny him full human identity. A similar conclusion could be reached also for Amairgen although his liminal position may perhaps be understood more in a social rather than in an animal context. SALISBURY, Beast Within, p. 107.

1401 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 100.
1402 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 96.
1403 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 96.
1404 | The reference is mentioned by Ó CATHASAIGH but not further commented on. See Ó CATHASAIGH, ‘The body’, pp. 133–134.
1405 | TBC I, ll. 1830–1831.
1406 | TBC I, ll. 1838–1843.

1407

TBC II, ll. 1951–1959; ‘Then Cú Chulainn ground and squeezed him between his hands, chastised him and clasped him, crushed him and shook him and forced all his excrement out of him until a mist arose on all sides in the place where he was. […]. However, Láiríne never (after) rose without complaint and he never ate without pain, and from that time forth he was never without abdominal weakness and constriction of the chest and cramps and diarrhoea.’

1408 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 88.
1409 | Fingal Rónáin and Other Stories, ed. by DAVID GREENE (Dublin, 1955), p. v.
1410 | Fingal Rónáin, ed. by GREENE, p. v.
1411 | The text is discussed briefly in NAGY, Outlaw, pp. 145–146. NAGY refers to GREENE’s edition.
1412 | NAGY, Outlaw, p. 145.

1413

Orgguin Trī mac Diarmata mic Cerbaill, in Fingal Rónáin and Other Stories, ed. by DAVID GREENE (Dublin, 1955), ll. 900–913 (pp. 48–54, original & pp. 49–50, trans..

1414 | NAGY, Outlaw, pp. 145–146.

1415

In its portrayal of a king being vulnerable during the act of defecation the episode is very similar to The Life of King Edward the Confessor. This text is preserved in a thirteenth-century manuscript (MS Cambridge Ed.3.59, dating c. 1250–1260) and is rather explicit in narrating how king Edward is killed by an attack through the pit of the privy. MORRISON also concludes that ‘[t]he location of the murder increases the abasement of his death’ and that ‘[i]t was committed at Edmund’s moment of vulnerability and evident filth, which reveals his (and our) base nature.’ MORRISON, Excrement, p. 33.

1416 | SMITH, Clean, p. 28.

1417

Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin, ed. by D. A. BINCHY, Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series, 18 (Dublin, 1963), l. 7. I thank Dr Geraldine Parsons for bringing this example to my attention.

1418 | NAGY, Outlaw, p. 146.

1419

EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 100. The sixteenth-century manuscript which features the episode is BM Harley 5280, the only source to preserve the text. The episode does not occur in the younger section of the tale, preserved in the seventeenth-century MS RIA 24 P 9.

1420

Cath Maige Tuired, ed. and trans. by GRAY, p. 46, ll. 378–381 (ed.) and p. 47 (trans.); ‘They filled for him the king’s cauldron, which was five fists deep, and poured four score gallons of new milk and the same quantity of meal and fat into it. They put goats and sheep and swine into it, and boiled them all together with the porridge.’

1421

Cath Maige Tuired, ed. and trans. by GRAY, p. 48, ll. 410–430 (ed.) and p. 49 (trans.); ‘She fell upon him again and beat him hard, so that the furrow around him was filled with the excrement from his belly […] then he moved out of the hole, after letting go the contents of his belly […]’.

1422 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 99.
1423 | Ancient Irish Tales, trans. by CROSS and SLOVER, p. 28.
1424 | MORGAN T. DAVIES, ‘Kings and Clerics in Some Leinster Sagas’, Ériu, 47 (1996), 45–66; LAPORTE, History of Shit, p. 109.

1425

DAVIES, ‘Kings and Clerics’, p. 45; ‘for the water his faeces go into is a sacrament to me.’ Both original and translation quoted from DAVIES.

1426 | DAVIES, ‘Kings and Clerics’, p. 45.
1427 | DIL renders imthelcud as both ‘defecation’ and ‘faeces’.
1428 | MORRISON, Excrement, p. 2.
1429 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 131.

1430

SIMEK, Edda, pp. 8 & 23. SIMEK also remarks that Ms U (Codex Upsaliensis) is the only one to name both the work and Snorri as the man who composed it. SIMEK, Edda, p. 23.

1431 | SIMEK, Edda, p. 20.

1432

SIMEK, Edda, p. 35. See also ROBERTA FRANK, ‘Snorri and the Mead of Poetry’, in Speculum Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. by URSULA DRONKE, G. HELGADÓTTER, G. W. WEBER and H. BEKKER-NIELSEN (Odense, 1981), pp. 155–170 (p. 155).

1433

For a discussion of the narrative in structural terms see MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS and B. K. MARTIN, ‘Narrative Structures and Intertextuality in Snorra Edda: The example of Þórr’s encounter with Geirrøðer’, in Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, ed. by JOHN LINDOW, LARS LÖNNROTH and GERD WOLFGANG WEBER (Odense, 1986), pp. 56–72.

1434

WOLFGANG MOHR, ‘Thorr im Fluss. Zur Form der altnordischen mythologischen Überlieferung’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Germanischen Sprache und Literatur, 64 (1940), 209–229 (p. 220); MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 469. The narrative also appears in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (VIII), Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa and in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns (chapters five to ten). Þórr’s killing of Gjálp is further recounted in a short poem by Veterliði as well as in two other short poems, the Húsdrápa by Úlfr Uggason and an anonymous stanza which also recounts Þórr’s river crossing. MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 469. For the relationship between the version in Skáldskaparmál and Eilífr Goðrunarson’s Þórsdrápa see MOHR, ‘Thorr im Fluss’, pp. 220–224.

1435

KONSTANTIN REICHARDT, who offers one of the few interpretations of Þórsdrápa as a whole, sees the problem of conclusively discussing the poem not just in its difficult language but also (or primarily) in its fragmentary attestation. KONSTANTIN REICHARDT, ‘Die Thórsdrápa des Eilífr Goðrunarson: Textinterpretation’, PMLAA, 63/2 (1948), 329–391. REICHARDT has no problems accepting the river kenning as ‘blood of the giantesses’ and sees this as a humorous development of the blood of Ymir, the giant from which the world is formed in Gylfaginning (and whose blood thus really did form rivers). REICHARDT does not offer any interpretation as to where this blood may come from and how it could make the river swell. This suggests that to REICHARDT too the mention of blood is merely a kenning, not associated with any (personified?) bleeding figure, although he later proposes that jarðar skafls hauðrs run-kykvir may be an ad-hoc kenning for ‘life-giver of the mountain-run’, which would imply at least a metonymical personification. REICHARDT, ‘Thórsdrápa’, pp. 346 & 353 & 357.

1436 | MOHR, ‘Thorr im Fluss’, p. 223.

1437

Þórsdrápa may or may not figure a menstruating and/ or urinating giantess. However, the text is so complex and scholarship differs so widely in its interpretation that it was decided to follow the most convincing argument, advocated by MOTZ, and assume that the text does not feature a menstruation and/or urination scene. MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, pp. 470–472.

1438

Skáldskaparmál, ed. and trans. by ANTHONY FAULKES, 2 vols (London, 1998), i (1998), p. 25, ll. 3–6. All subsequent references to the original text of Skáldskaparmál refer to FAULKES’ edition.

1439 | Edda, trans. by ANTHONY FAULKES (London, 1987), p. 82. All translations of Skáldskaparmál refer to this source.

1440

Skáldskaparmál, p. 25, ll. 8–13; ‘Rise not thou now, Vimur, since I desire to wade thee into the giants’ courts. Know thou that if thou risest then will rise the As-strength in me up as high as heaven.’ Edda, p. 82.

1441

Skáldskaparmál, p. 25, ll. 14–15; ‘Then Thor saw up in a certain cleft that Geirrod’s daughter Gialp was standing astride the river and she was causing it to rise.’ Edda, p. 82.

1442 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 471.

1443

MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS, ‘An Interpretation of the Myth of Þórr’s Encounter with Geirrøðr and his Daughters’, in Speculum Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. by URSULA DRONKE, G. HELGADÓTTER, G. W.WEBER and H. BEKKER-NIELSEN (Odense, 1981), pp. 370–392 (pp. 372–373).

1444

Skáldskaparmál, p. 25, ll. 16–19; ‘Then Thor took up out of the river a great stone and threw it at her and said: “At its outlet must a river be stemmed.” He did not miss what he was aiming at, and at that moment he found himself close to the bank and managed to grasp a sort of rowan-bush and thus climbed out of the river.’ Edda, p. 82.

1445 | The same conclusion regarding this kenning is found in Eilífr Goðrunarson’s Þórsdrápa in stanzas 4–9.
1446 | CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s encounter with Geirrøðr’, p. 373.

1447

CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s encounter with Geirrøðr’, pp. 376–377. Þórr’s overcoming the waxing river would then, according to CLUNIES ROSS’ interpretation, symbolise his freeing himself from his mother while his subsequent fight with the male giant Geirrǫð would symbolise his overcoming a paternal figure.

1448

VILHELM KIIL, ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarsons ðórsdrápa’, Archiv för nordisk filologi, 71 (1956), 89– 167. Discussed in MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 469. Many thanks to MA Maja Egli who made KIIL’s article accessible to me and gave her highly valued opinion on these matters.

1449 | CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s encounter with Geirrøðr’, p. 373.
1450 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 472.
1451 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 472.
1452 | CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s Encounter with Geirrøðr’, p. 373.
1453 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 471.
1454 | MOHR, ‘Thorr im Fluss’, p. 225.
1455 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 471.
1456 | HELGA KRESS’ arguments as discussed by FRIÐRIKSDÓTTIR, Women, p. 65.
1457 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 474.

1458

CLUNIES ROSS assumes that Snorri’s figure of the ‘urinating Gjálp can be seen as a natural development from an already anthropomorphic representation of the threatening river which is present in both his known sources, V1 and the Þórsdrápa.’ This assessment seems very likely in view of CLUNIES ROSS’ further discussion of these versions. CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s encounter with Geirrøðr’, p. 373.

1459 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 475. MOTZ only provides the parallel but the further suggestion is my own.
1460 | CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s Encounter with Geirrøðr’, p. 377.
1461 | MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN, Unmanly Man, p. 33.
1462 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, pp. 475–476.

1463

THURNEYSEN’s rendering (using the word Glied (‘member, penis’) for vulva) is found in THURNEYSEN, Helden- und Königsage, p. 484. STEFÁN EINARSSON clearly works on the assumption that it is her vulva. STEFÁN EINARSSON, ‘The Freydís Incident in Eiríks Saga Rauða’, in Studies in Germanic Philology, ed. by STEFÁN EINARSSON (Hamburg, 1986), pp. 138–159 (p. 145).

1464 | MOTZ, ‘Þórr’s river crossing’, p. 476.
1465 | SIMEK, Edda, p. 47.

1466

PHILIP N. ANDERSON, ‘Lokasenna’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), p 394 (p. 394).

1467 | ANDERSON, ‘Lokasenna’, p. 394.
1468 | SIMEK, Edda, p. 82.

1469

ANDERSON, ‘Lokasenna’, p. 394. For an introduction to the text, its transmission and its relation to satire, as well as an edition see The Poetic Edda, ed. and trans. by DRONKE, ii, pp. 332–372.

1470

CAROLYNE LARRINGTON, ‘Scandinavia’, in The Feminist Companion to Mythology, ed. by CAROLYNE LARRINGTON (London, 1992), pp. 137–164 (p. 151).

1471

Lokasenna, ed. and trans. by URSULA DRONKE, in hers, The Poetic Edda, Vol. II: The Mythological Poems, 3 vols (Oxford, 1969–), ii (1997) pp. 331–372 (p. 340, stanza 34); ‘Hold your tongue, Niǫrðr, | you were east from here | as a hostage sent to the gods. | Hymir’s daughters | had you as a piss-trough | and made water into your mouth.’ All subsequent references to text and translation refer to DRONKE. Njörðr is attested in the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda and in an euphemerised form as a mythological king in the Heimskringla.

1472

MAX HIRSCHFELD, ‘Untersuchungen zur Lokasenna’, Acta Germanica: Organ für Deutsche Philologie, 1 (1889), 1–62 (pp. 44–45).

1473 | Lokasenna, ed. and trans. by DRONKE, p. 364.
1474 | Lokasenna, ed. and trans. by DRONKE, p. 351.
1475 | See MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN, Unmanly Man, p. 33.
1476 | JOHN MCKINNELL, Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism (Roma, 1994), pp. 69–70.
1477 | CLUNIES ROSS, ‘Þórr’s Encounter with Geirrøðr’, p. 378.
1478 | Poetic Edda, trans. by LARRINGTON, p. 276.
1479 | AGGERMANN, Der offene Mund, p. 16.
1480 | LARRINGTON, ‘Scandinavia’, p. 151.

1481

One example not discussed here (as it refers to animal rather than human urine) is found in the Poetic Edda in Skirnir’s Journey. In stanza 35 it says: ‘Hrimgrimnir is the name of the giant who’ll have you | down below the corpse-gates, | where bondsmen will give you at the roots of the wood | goat’s piss to drink; | finer drink you will never get […]’. Skirnir’s Journey, trans. by CAROLYNE LARRINGTON, in hers, The Poetic Edda (Oxford, 1996), pp. 61–68 (p. 66).

1482 | Skáldskaparmál, p. 21, ll. 19–22.
1483 | Edda, p. 78.

1484

Skáldskaparmál, p. 21, ll. 28–29; ‘On one side of him stood the clay giant, whose name was Mokkurkalfi, and he was quite terrified […]’. Edda, p. 78.

1485 | Skáldskaparmál, p. 21, ll. 29–30; ‘They say he wet himself when he saw Thor.’ Edda, p. 78.
1486 | Skáldskaparmál, p. 493.
1487 | CAMILLE, Image on the Edge, p. 111.
1488 | SMITH, Clean, p. 26.
1489 | FURRER, Geschichte.
1490 | FURRER, Geschichte, pp. 8–11; See also PIEPER, Scheiss-Buch, p. 86.
1491 | Poetic Edda, ed. and trans. by DRONKE, iii, p. 24, stanza 112.

1492

Laxdoela saga, p. 148, ll. 15–17; ‘At this time it was fashionable to have outdoor privies some distance from the farmhouse […]’. The saga of the People of Laxardal, p. 365.

1493 | Dámusta saga, p. 107, ll. 8–9; ‘In one cell he prayed, in the other he slept, in the third he went to defecate.’
1494 | H. KUHN, ‘Abort: Sprachliches’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), i (1973), 6–17 (p. 17).
1495 | KUHN, ‘Abort’, p. 17.

1496

KLAUS BÖLDL, Eigi einhamr: Beiträge zum Weltbild der Eyrbyggja und anderer Isländersagas (Berlin & New York, NY, 2005), p. 96.

1497 | R. M. PERKINS, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), viii (1999), 49–57 (pp. 49 & 55).

1498

BERNADINE MCCREESH, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by PHILIP PULSIANO and KIRSTEN WOLF (New York, NY, 1993), pp. 174–175 (p. 174).

1499 | MCCREESH, ‘Eyrbyggja saga’, p. 174.

1500

Eyrbyggja saga, ed. by EINAR ÓL. SVEINSSON and MATTHÍ ÞÓRÐARSON, Íslenzk Fornrit, iv (Reykjavík, 1935), pp. 3–186 (p. 10, ll. 1–6). All subsequent references refer to this edition.

1501

Eyrbyggja saga, trans. by HERMANN PÁLSSON and PAUL EDWARDS (London, 1989), p. 30. All further references are made to this translation.

1502

Eyrbyggja saga, p. 9, ll. 12–15; ‘On this headland is a mountain held so sacred by Thorolf that no one was allowed even to look at it without first having washed himself, and no living creature on this mountain, neither man nor beast, was to get harmed until it left of its own accord.’ Eyrbyggja saga, p. 29.

1503 | DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger, p. 9.
1504 | DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger, p. 44.

1505

Deuteronomy 23.13–15, cited in MORRISON, Excrement, p. 26. MORRISON also draws attention to the fact that the Bible features remarks about the practical use of excrement (Luke 13.8; Psalms 83.10; Isaiah 25.10).

1506 | Eyrbyggja saga, p. 15, ll. 9–22.
1507 | Eyrbyggja saga, p. 34.

1508

Eyrbyggja saga, p. 17, ll. 5–8; ‘never again would they go out to Dritsker to ease themselves, while Thorstein demanded that no Kjalleklings should ever be allowed to defile the Assembly Ground.’ Eyrbyggja saga, p. 36.

1509

Eyrbyggja saga, p. 18, ll. 9–13; ‘The circle where the court used to sentence people to be sacrificed can still be seen, with Thor’s Stone inside it on which the victims’ backs were broken, and you can still see the blood on the stone. Though the assembly place was held to be highly sacred, people were not forbidden to ease themselves there.’ Eyrbyggja saga, p. 37.

1510 | I am indebted to Prof. Jürg Glauser for pointing this out in conversation.
1511 | SVEINBJÖRN RAFNSSON, ‘Landnámabók’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), xvii (2001), 611– 617 (p. 611).
1512 | The Book of Settlements: Landnámabók, trans. by HERMANN PÁLSSON (Winnipeg, 1972), pp. 3–4.
1513 | RAFNSSON, ‘Landnámabók’, p. 611.

1514

It is, in fact, likely that the episode was first extant in the saga, as Sturla seems to have ‘added a good deal of material from other sources, particularly the sagas […]’. The Book of Settlements, trans. by HERMANN PÁLSSON, p. 5.

1515 | For this see BÖLDL, Eigi einhamr, p. 19.

1516

Íslendingabók, Landnámabók, ed. by JAKOB BENEDIKTSSON, Íslenzk Fornrit, i (Reykjavík, 1968), p. 125, l. 11 –p. 126, l. 10.

1517 | The Book of Settlements: Landnámabók, trans. by HERMANN PÁLSSON, p. 46.

1518

WALTER HEINRICH VOGT, ‘Die frasagnir der Landnámabók’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 58:3/4 (1921), 161–204 (p. 163).

1519 | JAN DE VRIES, Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols (Berlin, 1936–37), i (1936), p. 259.
1520 | K. RANKE, ‘Abort: Volkskundliches’, in RGA, 36 vols (1973–2008), i (1973), 17–18 (p. 18).
1521 | DE VRIES, Religionsgeschichte, p. 259. See also KUHN, ‘Abort’, p. 18.
1522 | BÖLDL, Eigi einhamr, pp. 95–97.
1523 | BÖLDL, Eigi einhamr, p. 97.
1524 | BÖLDL, Eigi einhamr, p. 97; ‘appear as permeable for other “worlds” [i.e. dimensions] and realities.’
1525 | Histories and Romances, trans. by O’CONNOR, p. 61.

1526

JOHN LINDOW, ‘Þorsteins þáttr skelks and the Verisimilitude of Supernatural Experience in Saga Literature’, in Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature, ed. by JOHN LINDOW, LARS LÖNNROTH and GERD WOLFGANG WEBER (Odense, 1986), pp. 264–310 (p. 265). LINDOW also mentions that the text has not received much scholarly attention to date. For a study of these þættir and the Flateyarbók in general see STEFANIE WÜRTH, Elemente des Erzählens: Die þættir der Flateyarbók (Basel & Frankfurt a. Main, 1991).

1527 | LINDOW, ‘Þorsteins þáttr skelks’, p. 265.
1528 | JOSEPH HARRIS, ‘Theme and Genre in some Íslendinga þættir’, Scandinavian Studies, 48:1 (1976), 1–28 (p. 14).

1529

CAROLYNE LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil: Disgust and the Pagan Past’, in Medieval Obscenities, ed. by NICOLA MCDONALD (York, 2006), pp. 138–155 (p. 151).

1530 | PIEPER, Scheiss-Buch, p. 95.

1531

Flateyjarbók, ed. by PRENTVERK AKRANESS, 4 vols (Reykjavík, 1945), i (1945), p. 462, ll. 19–28. All subsequent references are to this edition.

1532

The Tale of Thorstein Shiver, trans. by ANTHONY MAXWELL, in Comic Sagas and Tales from Iceland, ed. by VIÐAR HREINSSON (London, 1997), pp. 267–270 (p. 267). All subsequent references are to this translation.

1533

Flateyjarbók, p. 462; ‘He sat on the seat nearest the door. And when he had been sitting there for a few moments, he saw a demon climb up on the furthest seat in, and sit down there.’ The Tale of Thorstein Shiver, p. 270.

1534 | LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil’, p. 153.
1535 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 151.
1536 | LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil’, p. 154.
1537 | LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil’, p. 152.
1538 | PIEPER, Scheiss-Buch, p. 95.
1539 | LINDOW, ‘Þorsteins þáttr skelks’, p. 270.
1540 | LINDOW, ‘Þorsteins þáttr skelks’, p. 270.

1541

According to the opening words of Ari Þorgilsson’s account of the Conversion of Iceland to Christianity in chapter seven of his Islendingabók, Oláf Tryggvason brought Christianity to Norway and out to Iceland. See JOHN LINDOW, ‘Akkerisfrakki: Traditions concerning Óláfr Tryggvason and Hallfreðr Óttarssonvandræðaskáld and the Problem of the Conversion’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 106/1 (2007), 64–80 (p. 64). For King Óláf and his role in the conversion see also PETER SAWYER, ‘Ethelred II, Olaf Tryggvason, and the Conversion of Norway’, Scandinavian Studies, 59/3 (1987), 299–307.

1542

SVERRE BAGGE, ‘The Making of a Missionary King: The Medieval Accounts of Olaf Tryggvason and the Conversion of Norway’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 105/4 (2006), 473–513 (p. 473).

1543 | LINDOW, ‘Þorsteins þáttr skelks’, p. 267.
1544 | Flateyjarbók, p. 464, ll. 15–21.
1545 | The Tale of Thorstein Shiver, p. 269.
1546 | LINDOW, ‘Þorsteins þáttr skelks’, pp. 271–272.
1547 | LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil’, p. 154.

1548

Eiríks saga rauða, ed. by EINAR ÓL. SVEINSSON and MATTHÍAS ÞÓRÐARSON, Íslenzk Fornrit, iv (Reykjavík, 1935), pp. 195–237 (p. 214); ‘one evening Sigrid wanted to go to the privy which stood opposite the outer door. Gudrid went with her, and they were facing this door when Sigrid uttered a loud cry.’ Eíriks saga rauða, in Eirik the Red and Other Icelandic Sagas, trans. by GWYN JONES (Oxford, 2009), pp. 126–157 (p. 141). All subsequent translations refer to these sources.

1549

Eiríks saga rauða, p. 215; ‘here is now the entire host of the dead before the door, and Thorstein your husband with them, and I recognize myself there too. How dreadful it is to see such a thing!’ Eíriks saga rauða, p. 142.

1550 | Eyrbyggja saga, p. 146, ll. 14–23.
1551 | Eyrbyggja saga, p. 136.

1552

ÁRMANN JAKOBSSON, ‘Vampires and Watchmen: Categorizing the Mediaeval Icelandic Undead’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110/3 (2011), 281–300 (p. 287).

1553

Eyrbyggja saga, p. 66, ll. 5–9; ‘In those days every farm had an outside privy. When Snorri and his men got up from the fire to go out, he was ahead of the rest, and by the time Svart made his thrust, Snorri was already through the door.’ Eyrbyggja saga, pp. 72–73.

1554 | KUHN, ‘Abort’, p. 17.
1555 | TÓMASSON, ‘Laxdoela saga’, pp. 387–388.
1556 | Laxdoela saga, p. 148, l. 17 – p. 149, l. 7 (chapter XLVII, 3–9).
1557 | The Saga of the People of Laxardal, pp. 365–366.
1558 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.
1559 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.

1560

In fact, both PIEPER and FURRER draw attention to an old German word for toilet, sprâchhûs (rendered as ‘secret meeting room’ or ‘Rathaus’ by FURRER). This suggests that visits to the toilet house may have been a communal, even social event. PIEPER actually cites a letter by an eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon monk who complained about women having fröhliche Gelage (‘merry feasts’) while sitting on the toilet. PIEPER, Scheiss-Buch, p. 95; FURRER, Geschichte, p. 29.

1561 | JAN DE VRIES, Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Leiden, 1957–60), pp. 84 & 82.
1562 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.
1563 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.
1564 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.
1565 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.
1566 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 147.

1567

LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil’, p. 146. LARRINGTON cites the phrase used as ok dreittu þeir feðgar Markús inni.

1568 | LARRINGTON, ‘Diet, Defecation and the Devil’, p. 146.

1569

STEFANIE WÜRTH, ‘Die Temporalität der Laxdoela saga’, in Sagnaheimur: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 80 th birthday, 26th May 2001, ed. by Á. EGILSDÓTTIR and R. SIMEK, Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia, 6 (Wien, 2001), pp. 295–308 (p. 297).

1570 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 283.

1571

MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS, Skáldskaparmál: Snorri Sturluson’s “ars poetica”and Medieval Theories of Language, The Viking Collection, 4 (Odense, 1987), p. 112.

1572

RENATE DOHT also discusses this version’s relation to Skáldskaparmál. RENATE DOHT, Der Rauschtrank im Germanischen Mythos, Wiener Arbeiten zur germanischen Altertumskunde und Philologie, 3 (Wien, 1974), pp. 40–45. Since DOHT’s analysis focuses largely on the tracing of mythological material in the episode is it of little further use here.

1573

A suitable example is SVAVA JAKOBSDÓTTIR’s substantial discussion, which focuses on the mythological content of the episode but completely ignores the interesting detail of bodily fluids. See SVAVA JAKOBSDÓTTIR, ‘Gunnlǫd and the Precious Mead’, in The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mythology, ed. by PAUL ACKER and CAROLYNE LARRINGTON (New York, NY, & London, 2002), pp. 30–57.

1574 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 111.
1575 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 111.

1576

CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 112. I thank Prof. Jürg Glauser for pointing this out to me in conversation.

1577

CLUNIES ROSS argues here that the Kvasir-episode may have resulted from a misinterpretation for a kenning on the part of Snorri. She refers to ROBERTA FRANK’s interpretation, which proposes that Kvasis dreyri ‘Kvasir’s blood’ could instead refer to kvasis dreyri for which she put forward ‘blood (i.e. liquid) of the ferment’. ‘Yet even if Snorri may have erred in this instance’, CLUNIES ROSS concludes, ‘the present reading of it presents Snorri’s understanding of it and with this, presumably, the prevalent understanding in post-Snorrean times of the transmission of the mead.‘ CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 114. See also FRANK, ‘Mead of Poetry’, pp. 159–160.

1578 | FRANK, ‘Mead of Poetry’, p. 156.
1579 | Skáldskaparmál, p. 4, ll. 35–38.
1580 | Edda, p. 63.
1581 | Skáldskaparmál, p. 5, ll. 1–5.
1582 | Edda, p. 64.

1583

Skáldskaparmál, p. 5, ll. 5–6; ‘anyone took it that wanted it, and it is what we call the rhymester’s share.’ Edda, p. 64.

1584

FRANK, ‘Mead of Poetry’, p. 168. FRANK subsequently argues that it is not even a kenning at all but a kend heit (‘qualified name’) since the base word leir (equivalent to the modern English crap) is plainly mentioned in the phrase. Although this matter is of no concern here it duly demonstrates the frankness of Old Norse-Icelandic literature in such matters. See FRANK, ‘Mead of Poetry’, p. 169.

1585 | CAROL CLOVER, ‘Skaldic Sensibility’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 93 (1978), 63–81 (p. 113).
1586 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 112.
1587 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 112.
1588 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 113.
1589 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 113.
1590 | CLUNIES ROSS, Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica, p. 114.

1591

BILDHAUER, Medieval Blood; MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 3. MCCRACKEN also repeatedly mentions that menstrual blood could be used in rituals and cures, where it had a positive or healing connotation. However, since these examples lie thoroughly outside the present corpus they are not relevant for this discussion.

1592

ALCUIN BLAMIRES, Women Defamed and Women Defended. An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1992), p. 38. Pliny quoted from MILLER, Medieval Monstrosity, p. 4.

1593 | BLAMIRES, Women Defamed, p. 38.

1594

BETTINA BILDHAUER, ‘Blood, Jews and the Monsters in Medieval Culture’, in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. by BETTINA BILDHAUER and ROBERT MILLS (Toronto, 2003), pp. 75–96 (p. 91).

1595 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 26.
1596 | WILLIAMS, Deformed Discourse, p. 175.

1597

ETIENNE VAN DER WALLE, ‘Flowers and Fruits: Two Thousand Years of Menstrual Regulation’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28/2 (1997), 183–203.

1598

MILLER, Medieval Monstrosity. For theological thoughts on the matter see CHARLES T. WOOD, ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought’, Speculum, 56/4 (1981), 710–727.

1599 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 5.
1600 | BITEL, ‘Conceived in Sins’, p. 184.

1601

BITEL, ‘Conceived in Sins’, p. 184. BITEL finds that women’s bodies in legal texts are part of a pronounced social hierarchy, of which gender is but one aspect. She argues that in the tracts that focus on legal compensation for injuries, women and children are accorded less medical attention than men, just like unfree people would be given less medical attention than noble patients.

1602 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 131.

1603

MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve; DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’; DOOLEY, Playing the Hero; EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’; BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’.

1604

MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 25. The episode is present in TBC I but there no reference is made to urinating. Note also that this Irish example is decidedly different from all other (non-Irish) examples discussed by MCCRACKEN .

1605 | TBC II, ll. 4824–4832.
1606 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 25.
1607 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 25.

1608

AILÍS NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH, ‘The Modus Operandi of the Author of TBC-LL as Exemplified by Mellgleó nIliach and Medb’s fúal’, Ériu, 58 (2008), 169–180 (p. 179).

1609 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 297.
1610 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 25.
1611 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 32.

1612

PATRICIA KELLY, ‘The Táin as Literature’, in Aspects of the Táin, ed. by J. P. MALLORY (Belfast, 1992), pp. 69–102 (p. 82).

1613 | See MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 63.

1614

TBC II, l. 4831; ‘Hence the place is called Fúal Medba.’ The episode is also briefly mentioned but not discussed further by KAY MUHR, ‘Queen Medb in Place-names’, in Ulidia 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. University of Ulster, Colraine, 22–25 June 2009, ed. by GREGORY TONER and SÉAMUS MAC MATHÚNA (Berlin, 2013), pp. 49–73 (p. 61).

1615 | MILLER, Medieval Monstrosity, p. 81.
1616 | Etymologiae, XI.i.140. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by STEPHEN A. BARNEY, p. 240.
1617 | BILDHAUER, Medieval Blood, p. 98.
1618 | For this see EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, pp. 97–98. See also EDEL, Inside the Táin, p. 294–295.
1619 | EDEL, Inside the Táin, pp. 294–295.
1620 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 25.
1621 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 28.
1622 | ROSS, Pagan Celtic Britain, p. 20.

1623

DORIS EDEL, ‘Caught between History and Myth? The Figures of Fergus and Medb in the Táin Bó Cúailnge and Related Matter’, ZCP, 49–50 (1997), 143–169 (p. 157). EDEL refers to KELLY’s interpretation quoted below.

1624 | BOWEN, ‘Great-bladdered Medb’, p. 32.
1625 | KELLY, ‘Táin as Literature’, p. 81.
1626 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 24.
1627 | DOOLEY, ‘Invention of Women’, p. 130.
1628 | EDEL, ‘Myth versus Reality’.
1629 | NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH, ‘Modus Operandi’, pp. 178–180.

1630

NAGY, ‘The Rising of the River Cronn in Táin Bó Cúailnge’, in Anders Alhqvist, ed., Celtica Helsingiensia. Proceedings from a Symposium on Celtic Studies (Helsinki, 1996), pp. 129–148. For an interesting discussion of NAGY’s analysis together with a more general discussion of water in early Irish sagas see JOHN CAREY, ‘The Encounter at the Ford: Warriors, Water and Women’, Éigse, 34 (2004), 10–24. An overview over water and magic is provided by SHARON PAICE MCLEOD, ‘A Confluence of Wisdom: The Symbolism of Wells, Whirlpools, Waterfalls and Rivers in Early Celtic Sources’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 26/27 (2006/ 2007), 337–355.

1631 | EDEL, ‘Myth versus Reality’, p. 168.

1632

The point is argued by RUDOLF THURNEYSEN in ‘Zu Göttin Medb’, ZCP, 18 (1929), 108–110 and TOMÁS Ó MÁILLE, ‘Medb Cruachna’, ZCP, 17 (1927), 129–146.

1633 | NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH, ‘Modus Operandi’, pp. 178–180; NAGY, ‘The Rising of the River Cronn’, pp. 141–143.

1634

NAGY, ‘Rising of the Cronn River’, p. 142. The observation that Cú Chulainn can turn whole plains red through his fighting prowess was made in the context of onomastics by FRAZIER, ‘Place-Name Literature’, p. 42.

1635 | NAGY, ‘Rising of the Cronn River’, p. 142.
1636 | NAGY, ‘Rising of the Cronn River’, p. 143.
1637 | TBC I, l. 1107; NAGY, ‘Rising of the Cronn River’, p. 135.
1638 | TBC I, ll. 1977–1978, TBC II, ll. 1985–1988.
1639 | TBC II, ll. 2119–2120; ‘Because of the great amount of their blood and gore which flowed with the current of the river.’

1640

TBC II, ll. 4791–4793; ‘His wound broke out afresh and the trenches and furrows in the earth were filled with his blood and the tents from his wounds.’

1641 | NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH, ‘Modus Operandi’, pp. 178 & 179.
1642 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 25.
1643 | NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH, ‘Modus Operandi’, p. 179.
1644 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 18.
1645 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 26.
1646 | WOODWARD, Boxing, p. 67.
1647 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. x.
1648 | NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH, ‘Modus Operandi’, p. 179.
1649 | CSORDAS, ‘Introduction’, p. 5.
1650 | CAMILLE, Image on the Edge, p. 115.
1651 | CAMILLE, Image on the Edge, p. 115.
1652 | HENDERSON, Maculate Muse, p. x.
1653 | EDEL, ‘Bodily Matters’, p. 73.

1654

This is a difficult point to argue given the above-mentioned divergence of modern and medieval feelings. Yet the examples themselves suggest that with these two notable exceptions, faeces are not installed in a way in which they deliberately served to disgust an audience.

1655 | DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger, p. 150.
1656 | MCCRACKEN, Curse of Eve, p. 5.
1657 | AGGERMANN, Offene Mund, p. 16.
1658 | DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols, p. 78.
1659 | MORRISON, Excrement, p. 136.
1660 | MILLER, Anatomy of Disgust, p. 18.
1661 | See, for instance, DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols, p. 78.

1662

SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 3; ‘If one only expects to find what one already knows, not much will be learned from reading and interpreting texts.’

1663 | COHEN, Identity Machines, p. 129.
1664 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. ix.
1665 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. 118.
1666 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. 121.
1667 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. 133.
1668 | KIENING and STERCKEN, ‘Einleitung’, p. 5.
1669 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. x.
1670 | LUTZ, ‘Lesevorgänge’, p. 11.

1671

KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 331; ‘Not merely the idea of mediation and transmission but becomes more visible through the process of relating two entities to each other.’

1672 | KIENING, ‘Medialität in mediävistischer Perspektive’, p. 292; ‘An elaborate use, and a nuanced reflection, of media.’

1673

KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 12; ‘Products of a highly complex nature, divers in their sketched worlds, profound in their variation of structure, subtle in their play with signs.’

1674 | MÜLLER, ‘Blinding Sight’, p. 217.
1675 | MICHEL FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by ALAN SHERIDAN (New York, NY, 1977), p. 148.
1676 | WEISS, ‘Narrative Horizon’, p. 25.
1677 | BAL, Narratology, p. 145.
1678 | TURNER, Body and Society, p. 1.
1679 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 93.
1680 | SCHILDKROUT, ‘Inscribing the Body’, p. 338.
1681 | SCHULZ, Erzähltheorie, p. 93.

1682

CATHERINE BELSEY, ‘General Editor’s Preface’, in The Body, ed. by TIFFANY ATKINSON (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. vii–viii (p. vii).

1683 | BELSEY, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. vii.
1684 | THOMAS J. CSORDAS, ‘Embodiment as a Paradigm in Anthropology’, Ethos, 18 (1990), 5–47 (p. 5).
1685 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. 20.
1686 | GROSZ, Volatile Bodies, p. 117.
1687 | WALTER, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.
1688 | DOUGLAS, Purity and Danger, p. 115.
1689 | BRUFORD, ‘Ill-Made Hero’, p. 202.

1690

KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 22; ‘take up social practices but place them in the context of imagined worlds and thus of complex creations of meaning. […] Just like bodies are not simply crude materiality but also places of inscription for sign-systems.’

1691 | O’CONNOR, Narrative Artistry, p. 338.

1692

KIENING, Zwischen Körper und Schrift, p. 179; ‘Rather than [proposing] a global history of the body this leads to a multitude of particular histories […]’.

1693 | JEFFREY JEROME COHEN, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, MN & London, 1999), p. xvii.

1694

STEPHEN GREENBLATT, Wunderbare Besitztümer. Die Erfindung des Fremden: Reisen und Entdecker, trans. by ROBIN CACKETT (Berlin, 1994), p. 138.