Foreword

Summary

In chapter 32 of Laxdœla saga, a thirteenth-century Icelandic narrative purporting to retell to us events from several centuries earlier, we are introduced to one Auðr of Hóll in Saurbœr (Breiðafjǫrðr), a farmer in Viking-Age Iceland. Her very name means Treasure, or Wealth; perhaps this is not an accident, since she is that rare thing in early-medieval Europe, namely, a woman owning land in her own right. She is introduced not in the traditional way as ‘the fairest of women’ (‘allra kvenna vænst’), but uniquely as ‘neither good-looking nor hard-working’ (‘ekki væn né gǫrvilig’). But we readers are expected to like her. It is clear that the narrator likes her. Shortly after we meet her, we learn that her husband, Þórðr Ingunnarson, is desired by the man-hungry Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, who is already a well-known character in the saga. Guðrún has convinced Þórðr to divorce Auðr on the perfectly legal grounds that she wears men’s breeches. There must be some reason, argues Guðrún, that the neighbors keep calling Þórðr’s wife ‘Bróka-Auðr’ (‘Breeches-Auðr’). (Do they, in fact, call her that? We are never told.)

When Auðr hears that Þórðr has cast her out, she behaves as Icelandic saga-heroes often do at moments of high drama, spitting out a line of urgent poetry, cited later on in these pages. She then does the second thing that Icelandic saga-heroes often do, namely, go to ground for the winter and make plans.

In the following summer Auðr steps on stage again, stealing secretly into her ex-husband’s new residence one night while Guðrún is out. At this moment, the saga-author chooses to point out to us – seemingly with a wink to the audience – that Auðr is wearing men’s breeches. (Whether or not she has ever actually worn them in the past is left nicely ambiguous, and irrelevant.) She finds Þórðr asleep in bed; she draws her sword on him, striking not to kill, but only to cripple. She gashes him across the nipples, successfully puts his sword-arm out of commission, and leaves him pinned in the bed with the blade. Then she rides away, presumably feeling the score to be now even.