Hrafnkel’s Saga is an anonymously written Icelandic Family Saga from roughly the late 13th century. The central focus of its plot is a blood feud between a prominent chieftain Hrafnkel and a poorer farmer Thorbjorn’s family, initiated when Hrafnkel kills Thorbjorn’s son, Einar. The passage selected is earlier in the saga and is the first chapter directly related to the blood feud.
Lines 1-3 introduce two critical characters of the saga. Einar, the first death of the feud, and Thorbjorn, his father, who later seeks compensation from Hrafnkel for Einar’s death. Line 3 Einar is described as ‘tall and very accomplished’ and later, line 6, Thorbjorn notes Einar is his favorite child. These two lines establish Einar and Thorbjorn’s close relationship …show more content…
Using the feud as the narrative backbone is not only distinctive of Family Sagas in general, but also reflects the historical context under which the Family Sagas, and Hrafnkel’s Saga, were written. The Family Sagas were written by a Christianized culture, but were set in the pagan Icelandic past. This creates a problem of whether to consider Hrafnkel from a pagan or Christian perspective. However, independent of this contextual issue, the feud trope found in sagas can be considered from a sociological view, as disruptions of a social equilibrium, with the rest of the plot seeking to rectify that disturbance. This disturbance in social equilibrium is also reflected in the historical context under which the sagas were written. By the late 13th century the King of Norway had brought Iceland under his rule, greatly disrupting a, somewhat, static agricultural society. This reasoning is more compelling when considering the historiographical style of Hrafnkel’s Saga, perhaps the author was trying to falsely reconstruct the Icelanders’ past with a story of a disturbance to social equilibrium that is rectified with idealized concepts of honor and
Lines 1-3 introduce two critical characters of the saga. Einar, the first death of the feud, and Thorbjorn, his father, who later seeks compensation from Hrafnkel for Einar’s death. Line 3 Einar is described as ‘tall and very accomplished’ and later, line 6, Thorbjorn notes Einar is his favorite child. These two lines establish Einar and Thorbjorn’s close relationship …show more content…
Using the feud as the narrative backbone is not only distinctive of Family Sagas in general, but also reflects the historical context under which the Family Sagas, and Hrafnkel’s Saga, were written. The Family Sagas were written by a Christianized culture, but were set in the pagan Icelandic past. This creates a problem of whether to consider Hrafnkel from a pagan or Christian perspective. However, independent of this contextual issue, the feud trope found in sagas can be considered from a sociological view, as disruptions of a social equilibrium, with the rest of the plot seeking to rectify that disturbance. This disturbance in social equilibrium is also reflected in the historical context under which the sagas were written. By the late 13th century the King of Norway had brought Iceland under his rule, greatly disrupting a, somewhat, static agricultural society. This reasoning is more compelling when considering the historiographical style of Hrafnkel’s Saga, perhaps the author was trying to falsely reconstruct the Icelanders’ past with a story of a disturbance to social equilibrium that is rectified with idealized concepts of honor and