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Humans, Animals and the ‘Intimate Caesura’: Transgression and Transformation in the Sigurðr-Cycle
[E]ru oll kuikendi manninum undir lagin, eigi fyrir likamsins skylld utan helldr fyrir þá skynsemd ok skilning sem uęr hỏfum ok þau hafa eigi.
1 Stjórn (ed. Unger), ch. 7 (pp. 21–2). Stjórn is an Old Norse translation of Old Testament material from the fourteenth century.[All living things are laid beneath humans, not because of the body but rather because of the capacity for rational thought and understanding which we have but they do not.]
Western concepts of human identity have long centred on questions of
difference – what attributes define humanity and set it apart from the rest of the natural world? In the above excerpt from
Stjórn, human exceptionalism, according to Christian doctrine, inheres in intellectual rather than physical superiority, with
skynsemð (reason) and
skilning (intellect) marking the divide between humans and animals.
2 This approach to the human is also evinced in Óláfur Þórðarson’s discussion of metaphors in his thirteenth-century Third Grammatical Treatise. Óláfur gives an example from skaldic verse, in which a woman is described as a beast, and comments ‘Úeignlig liking er þat millum dýrs ok konu, þvíat dýrit er skynlaust kvikendi en maðrinn skynsamligt’ (‘This is an incongruous comparison between the animal and woman, because the animal is an irrational creature but a human is rational’). Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tillige med de grammatiske afhalndlingers prolog, ed. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (Copenhagen, 1884), pp. 102–3. Christian teachings significantly shaped medieval constructions of identity, but contradictions were nonetheless common in medieval thought,
3 See Karl Steel, How Not to Make a Human: Pets, Feral Children, Worms, Sky Burials, Oysters (Minneapolis, MN, 2019), p. 10. and many literary genres (bestiaries, for example) both articulate and challenge orthodox ideas of human–animal difference.
4 S. Kay, Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chicago, IL, 2017), p. 16. Bestiaries are among the earliest texts preserved in medieval Iceland (see the fragmentary Physiologus in AM 673 a I–II 4to, c. 1200).These debates intensified across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (through the Neoplatonic renaissance and Aristotelian revolution), giving rise to increasingly complex, and at times discordant, accounts of animality and humanity. Such questions did not remain confined to theological or philosophical discourse either: vernacular literature also engaged in the debate, staging conflicts between human and animal identities as bodily, social and narrative crises.
One work attending incisively to these themes is the Sigurðr-cycle, a corpus of interwoven stories centring on the hero Sigurðr Sigmundsson, and the downfall of the Gjúkungar and Buðlungar dynasties. The literary reworking of these narratives in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries attests to their enduring cultural resonance; as Snorri tells us in
Skáldskaparmál, ‘Eptir þessum sǫgum hafa flest skáld ort ok tekit ymsa þáttu’ (‘Most poets have composed poems based on these stories and have taken various strands from them’).
5 Skm., ch. 42 (p. 50). The cycle’s sustained popularity may lie in part in its ability to weave together a matrix of social concerns, from the fragility of alliances, to the pull of desire and the cost of betrayal.
There are three chief textual witnesses to the cycle in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland: the Codex Regius of the
Poetic Edda, the latter half of which deals quasi-chronologically with legendary material;
6 Though the manuscript was compiled c. 1270, many of its poems were likely transmitted orally for generations before they were written down. They are therefore notoriously difficult to date (Quinn, ‘Endless Triangles’, p. 304). the
fornaldarsaga Vǫlsunga saga, a prose adaptation of eddic poems concerning Sigurðr and the Gjúkungar, which quotes from and paraphrases fifteen of the eddic poems also preserved in the
Poetic Edda;
7 Vǫlsunga saga is extant in NKS 1824 b 4to (c. 1400), and scholars date this version of the story to c. 1260–70 (Torfi Tulinius, Matter of the North, p. 26). The overlapping material shared by Vǫlsunga saga and the Poetic Edda suggests that the saga-compiler had access to a manuscript similar to the Codex Regius (H. F. Leslie-Jacobsen, ‘Prose Contexts of Eddic Poetry, Primarily in the fornaldarsǫgur’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bergen, 2013), p. 263). and chapters 39–42 of Snorri’s
Skáldskaparmál.
8 The story of Sigurðr and the Gjúkungar is narrated in manuscripts R and T of Snorra Edda but not in W and U, though the summary in U of gold-kennings derived from the Sigurðr-narratives suggests the U-compiler’s familiarity with these stories (Faulkes, Skm., pp. 186–7). The compiler of Snorra Edda probably knew an earlier version of Vǫlsunga saga than the one that has been preserved and was likely familiar with the heroic poems and prose linkages in the Codex Regius Poetic Edda (ibid., p. xxiv). While each differs significantly in discursive mode, character portrayal and thematic emphasis, all nonetheless explore social transgressions, with oath-breaking – despite its moral condemnation in eddic lore
9 See Sd. 24 (Eddukvæði II, 318): ‘Þat ræð ek þér annat/ at þú eið né sverir,/ nema þann er saðr sé’ (‘This I advise you secondly, that you do not swear an oath unless it can be kept’). – becoming a bitter refrain:
‘it munuð alla
eiða vinna
fullfastliga,
fá munuð halda’.
10 Grp. 31 (Eddukvæði II, 291). Cp. Br 2, HHI 31, Hlr. 5.[‘you two will swear all oaths, very bindingly; few will you hold to’.]
These stories dramatise how desires and obligations drive people to violate social contracts and behave in
óskapligr (unnatural, monstrous)
11 Vǫls., ch. 1 (p. 2). ways, exploring the ethical and emotional fallout for both transgressor
12 See Grp. 40 (p. 293): ‘Verst hyggjum því,/ vándr munk heitinn,/ Sigurðr, með seggjum/ at sógǫru’ (‘This is the worst, I think, that I, Sigurðr, will be called vile by men for this’). and transgressed against.
13 See Sg. 57 (Eddukvæði II, 347): ‘Margs á ek minnask,/ hvé við mik fóru,/ þá er mik sára/ svikna hǫfðuð’ (‘Much I remember, how things went against me, how you all sorely deceived me’). The tension between blood-bonds and artificial kinship (marriage, blood-brotherhood, fostership), enacted through oath-swearing, propels the narrative and becomes a catalyst for kin-slaying.
14 Children kill parents (Vǫls., chs 5, 14, 20; HHII 26); parents kill children (Vǫls., chs 6, 10, 42; Am. 84); nephews kill uncles (Vǫls., ch. 8); uncles kill nephews (Am 12), brothers kill brothers (Vǫls., chs 1, 8, 15, 32, 39, 41; HHII 30, Hm. 14–17), husbands kill wives (Vǫls., ch. 42), wives kill husbands (Akv. 44). While the cycle’s social dimensions have been well studied by scholars,
15 C. Larrington, ‘Sibling Drama: Laterality in the Heroic Poems of the Edda’, in Myths, Legends and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature, ed. D. Anlezark (Toronto, 2018), pp. 169–87; J. C. Hancock, ‘‘“That Which a Hand Gives a Hand or a Foot Gives a Foot”: Male Kinship Obligations in the Heroic Poetic Edda and Völsunga saga’, in Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, ed. Evans and Hancock, pp. 217–35; J. Quinn, ‘Precarious Ties. The Social Critique of Dynastic Networking in Eddic Heroic Poetry’, in Applications of Network Theories to Medieval and Modern European Literary and Cultural Traditions, ed. S. Kramarz-Bein and B. Hilsmann (Münster, 2014), pp. 35–70 and ‘The Realisation of Mythological Design: The Early Generations of the Völsung Dynasty’, in Fornaldarsagaerne, ed. Ney, Ármann Jakobsson and Lassen, pp. 123–42. the body remains underexamined in these texts. Here, human beings are not only social but somatic: indeed, social and bodily transgressions often intersect, with physical transformations shadowing violations of cultural norms..
16 For example, it is by exchanging appearances with the sorceress that Signý commits incest with Sigmundr, while the transformation of Fáfnir into a dragon occurs after he kills his father.Two visions of the body contend within the cycle. In one, the body bears the impress of lineage, with character traits, whether praised
17 E.g., the ‘kapp Vǫlsunga’ (Vǫls., ch. 8 (p. 9): ‘zeal of the Vǫlsungs’). or condemned,
18 E.g., the treachery in Hreiðmarr’s family: Vǫls., ch. 15 (p. 27): ‘þú munt líkr vera inum fyrrum frændum þínum ok vera ótrúr’ (‘you are like your forefathers – untrustworthy’). portrayed as inhering in the flesh itself, anchoring identity in bloodline: a sort of ‘genealogical’ body. In the other, the body is viewed as a threshold between the self and outside world, porous and mutable: the ‘permeable’ body. The genealogical body is developed most fully in
Vǫlsunga saga, which foregrounds the mythic origins of the Vǫlsungs, stressing their significance through repeated use of the phrase
ætt Vǫlsunga (the lineage of the Vǫlsungs).
19 Vǫls., chs 8, 13 (pp. 9, 14, 24). This emphasis reaches its peak in Signý’s incestuous stratagem: to beget a child capable of avenging her father Vǫlsung, she deceives her brother into fathering her son: ‘ok ek fór í skóg til þín í vǫlvulíki, ok er Sinfjǫtli okkar sonr. Hefir hann af því mikit kapp at hann er bæði sonarsonr ok dóttursonr Vǫlsungs konungs’ (‘and I came in the forest to you in the form of a sorceress and Sinfjǫtli is our son. He has such great zeal because he is King Vǫlsung’s grandson on both his father’s and his mother’s side’).
20 Vǫls., ch. 8 (p. 13). Signý ensures her son inherits
mikit kapp (great zeal) through a doubled Vǫlsung lineage, priming him for vengeance and intensifying his duty to avenge the death of the man who is his grandfather on both sides.
21 The saga’s portrayal of the genealogical body extends beyond human kinship, with Sigurðr’s horse Grani descended from Óðinn’s horse, Sleipnir: excellence is transmitted through bloodlines, whether human or animal (Vǫls., ch. 13 (p. 24)). Yet inheritance is not always depicted as immutable, and some traits attenuate over generations: for instance, Sigmundr can touch and consume poison, whereas his sons can only tolerate it externally.
22 Frá (Eddukvæði II, 284).At the same time as character traits are rooted in the body, this body is mutable and interconnected with its environment. The body misbehaves and exceeds its limits: wounds gape and hiss,
23 Vǫls., ch. 33 (p. 61). chests swell to the point of bursting,
24 Vǫls., ch. 31 (p. 56). This episode of emotional swelling has been linked to learned medical theories (Lönnroth, ‘Kroppen’, pp. 49–59). blood soaks garments,
25 Hm. 7 (Eddukvæði II, 408). and bodies are cut into.
26 Ghv. 17 (Eddukvæði II, 406): ‘kvikvan skáru’ (‘they sliced into the living man’). Organs are extracted from animals and humans, inspected for their post-mortem behaviours (e.g., Hǫgni’s heart),
27 Akv. 25 (Eddukvæði II, 377): ‘er lítt bifask/ er á bjóði liggr;/ bifðisk svági mjǫk/ þá er í brjósti lá’ (‘it barely trembles, lying on the plate; just so, it did not tremble much when it lay in the breast’). The association between specific organs and cognitive and emotional faculties in learned traditions is discussed further Chapter 6. or roasted and eaten to confer special capabilities (e.g., Fáfnir’s heart, discussed below). Bodies also merge with objects: Signý sews her sons’ sleeves to their skin to test their mettle,
28 Vǫls., ch. 7 (p. 14). and Brynhildr/Sigrdrífa’s armour melds with her skin, ‘sem hon væri holdgróin’ (‘as if it were flesh-grown’).
29 Vǫls., ch. 21 (p. 35). For a discussion of the evocative term holdgróinn, see Chapter 3. Such mergers can challenge species boundaries too: Sinfjǫtli and Sigmundr become trapped in wolf-skins, while Sigurðr and his horse Grani become a kind of operative circuit, since Grani ‘vildi eigi fram ganga fyrr en Sigurðr steig á bak honum’ (‘would not move until Sigurðr climbed onto his back’).
30 Fm. (Eddukvæði II, 312). Cp. Vǫls., ch. 20. This operative unit is reminiscent of the Sleipnir-Óðinn riddle, discussed in Chapter 1.The genealogical and the permeable body intersect in motifs of injury, kinship and identity, with the fractured body becoming a metaphor for familial disintegration, particularly in the closing poems of the Poetic Edda. In Hamðismál, this interplay between symbolic and literal bodies begins with Guðrún’s arboreal image, in which she is
‘sem osp í holti
fallin at frœndom
sem fura at qvisti,
vaðin at vilja
sem viðr at laufi’.
31 Hm. 5 (p. 408).[‘like an aspen in the wood, my kinsmen felled like a fir’s branches, stripped of joy, like a tree of its leaves’.]
This visual play is deepened in Erpr’s riddling offer of aid to his half-brothers:
Svaraði inn sundrmœðri,
svá kvazk veita myndu
fullting frændum
sem fótr ǫðrum.
32 Hm. 14 (p. 409).[The son of a different mother replied, he said that he would give help to his kinsmen, as one foot does another.]
Katherine Olley observes how these images evoke a ‘transpersonal’ understanding of the self in the context of mutual kinship – a self that encompasses one’s kinsmen.
33 ‘Co-Presence and Consumption: Eating Kin(ship) in Old Norse Myth and Legend’, JEGP 120.4 (2021), 490–515 (p. 497). Though Hamðir and Sǫrli misinterpret Erpr’s words and kill their half-brother, the meaning behind Erpr’s statement is underscored by the poet, who comments that the brothers ‘þverrðu þeir þrótt sinn/ at þriðjungi’ (‘diminished their might by a third’).
34 Hm. 14 (p. 410). As the poem closes, the significance of Erpr’s simile is brought into full focus. The brothers cut off Jǫrmunrekkr’s hands and feet, but are unable to decapitate him without their half-brother’s help: ‘“Af væri nú hǫfuð/ ef Erpr lifði”’ (‘“Off his head would be now, if Erpr were alive”’).
35 Hm. 28 (p. 412). Erpr’s riddle frames kinship as a single body sustained by its parts; in murdering him, Hamðir and Sǫrli mutilate that body from within.
The susceptibility of the body to injury, coupled with the relationship developed between body and lineage, gives rise to its rich symbolic potential as a visual metaphor for the familial whole. In the prose of
Skáldskaparmál and
Vǫlsunga saga, this symbolism of bodily dismemberment becomes strikingly literal: both texts supplement Erpr’s riddle with an ‘explanatory’ episode in which, shortly after killing their half-brother, Hamðir and Sǫrli trip and catch themselves with a hand or leg as they fall, pronouncing that, ‘“Erpr mun satt hafa sagt. Ek munda falla nú ef eigi styddumk ek við hǫndina”’ (‘“Erpr must have told the truth. I would have fallen now if I had not steadied myself with my hand”’).
36 Vǫls., ch. 44 (p. 77). Cp. Skm., ch. 42. Figurative language in the eddic tradition is transmuted into material event in the prose renditions of the narrative.
While the genealogical and permeable models of the body converge in the visual metaphor of dynastic collapse, at other times, they stand in tension: the former roots identity in bloodlines, while the latter opens up the self to environmental influence. Building on the previous chapter’s discussion of object–human relations, this chapter examines the blurring of human and animal identities through two case studies. The first explores how animals both symbolise and take on human traits in the cycle, as well as how humans who violate social norms are depicted as wolves, metaphorically and literally. The second investigates consumption in the cycle – anthropophagy (humans eating humans), and the ingestion of animal and plant matter that alters the mind of the consumer – as another site of ontological ambiguity. While these stories register a cultural desire to define humanity against the animal ‘other’, the boundary between these categories is shown to be unstable: the human is constituted, both materially and conceptually, through the animal it seeks to exclude.
The cycle’s textual witnesses rework this problem of the human and the animal in distinct ways, resulting in the transformation of motifs between texts: in particular, figurative imagery in eddic verse is developed into a kind of corporeal literalism in Vǫlsunga saga’s prose. The eddic mode, polyvocal and dialogic, sustains ambiguity in plot and characterisation and favours reaction over action, while the saga mode offers a single, linear narrative in which narratorial interpretation is more evident. Where eddic poetry foregrounds the moral weight and inconsistency of human action (presenting a world in which people, for better or for worse, act of their own accord), Vǫlsunga saga often dissolves autonomy, depicting characters who unwittingly transgress under magical or material compulsion (for instance, by consuming mind-altering potions and meats). This shift reflects not only the narrator-compiler’s impulse to absolve characters of perceived flaws but also a broader thematic concern with the permeability of the human.