In the Icelandic Sagas and Old Norse Myth, people routinely get so mad, over who gets to strip a beached whale, say, that they maim and kill each other. Occasionally, they demonstrate an odd kind of restraint, limiting the exchange to wounding words. It's obvious why medieval authors would have chosen to include these rich skeins of dialogue. They are entertaining.
The stylized battle of words is called flyting. Literary scholars recognize it as a compositional unit in Old Norse and also Celtic texts. In a flyting, combatants exchange boasts, threats, insults, and challenges the way they might exchange blows in a physical battle. Some have described flyting as more like a duel, a symmetrical back and forth between two speakers. But this is inessential and inaccurate in medieval Icelandic writing. I cite three examples of flyting (also called senna) where at least three people sling words and more spectate. In Lokasenna, Loki bandies words with many Aesir. In Njal’s Saga, Skarphedin trades insults and threats with various chieftains. In Bandamanna Saga, Odleif excoriates the scheming chieftains then passes off the responsibility to Egil Skulason, though some scholars see these as two separate flyting.
Carol Clover traces the linguistic, historical, and literary origins of the flyting into the muddy waters of senna, which she calls “quarrel” and encompassed the threats and insults traded, and Mannjafnaðr, which means “man-comparison” and was a social process of matching two men’s reputations, and so captures boasting. Senna is specifically a kind of medieval trash talk, whereas the proud words and phrases of Mannjafnaðr are like modern braggadocio. According to Clover, while there may have at some point been basis for delineating between senna and Mannjafnaðr, by the time Norse writings appear, they have mixed into one event we call the flyting. Clover adds a third ingredient to the flyting, nið, “the vague but spectacular category of sexual defamation for which Norse literature is rightly famous.” Each flyting is unique, although they all pull on the literary cliches and conventions of the type, to more or less degree, including nið.
The flyting can stand alone as it does to some degree in Lokasenna, or be embedded in a larger work. Embedded, it can move narrative forward. In the flyting in Njal’s Saga, Skarphedin bandies barbed words with the chieftains he and his kin are courting for support in their Althing case over Hoskuld’s killing. Skarphedin’s very presence seems inimical to recruiting when each chieftain formulaically ask the band leader Asgrim who he is, describing him as “big and frightening,” “pale-looking,” “sharp-featured,” “wicked,” “luckless,” “fierce but troll-like” and “as if he had come out of a sea-cliff.” If Skarphedin’s presence is bad for the cause, his words are worse. He calls Haf the Wealthy a “milksop.” His remarks repeatedly destroy their chance of winning support to the point that Asgrim orders him to tone it down before their meeting with Thorkel Bully. Skarphedin just grins. He then threatens Thorkel Bully with his axe, saying, “I’ve never lifted a weapon against any man without hitting my mark,” and forces Thorkel to stand down. When Gudmund the Powerful hears about the exchange, he decides to support the Njalssons after all.
The voluble verbal dialogue of the flyting flies in the face of the stereotype some have of the sagas as stark and laconic in a particularly Scandinavian way.
Flyting feels gratuitous in the sense of being not strictly necessary to the plot development. But that does not hold up. In the case of Skarphedin and the chieftains, the flyting leads Gudmund the Powerful to raise his hand in the Njalssons’ favor, and his hand falls heavy on the rest of the saga. In Bandamanna Saga, Egil’s roasting of the other chieftains feels a bit more gratuitous. But it still enriches the theme of dishonor among the chieftains, as I will further explain below. Furthermore, the idea of certain material being strictly necessary to plot is pretty, because art is about entertainment.
In medieval Iceland, flyting would have operated both in the story and its oral telling. Flyting lets characters and orators show off their detailed recall and inventive turn of phrase. Loki, Skarphedin, and Ofeig and Egil demonstrate superior, detailed recall of past indecencies. When Skafti Thoroddsson asks who he is, Skarphedin says, “You have often seen me here at the Thing, but I must be smarter than you because I don’t need to ask your name.” He goes on to adumbrate an unmanly story when Skafti is shaved, smeared in tar, and smuggled abroad in flour sacks. It would have been exhilarating to watch a talented story-teller declaim flyting, something like a watching a contemporary comedian’s roast or a rap battle. Flyting would also have served to recall other stories to listeners, like the story of Skafti, which is not recorded elsewhere, but may very well have been well known at the time.
Flyting is a spectacle of violent speech as a battle is a spectacle of physical violence. In the sagas, people kill and injure each other outside battle, just as they trade tough talk outside flyting. For example, Njal’s Saga includes many threats and nið-style taunts outside flyting. When Kari and the Njalssons confront Thrain, Halgerd, Helgi, and Killer-Hrapp at Thrain’s house, the short exchange that follows does not rise to the level of flyting, though Skarphedin tells Halgerd “Your words don’t count, for you’re either a cast-off hag or a whore”; Thrain says “I never thought that you brothers would try to get money out of your manhood”; Halgerd calls the Njalssons “Dung-beardlings” and their father “Old Beardless”; and threats are traded back and forth. This exchange is less drawn out, less spectacular, less lingering and episodic. The remarks are concise and calculated, less elaborate and allusive than those delivered by Skarphedin to the chieftains later in the saga, or the remarks delivered by Loki to the Aesir in Lokasenna, or Egil to the chieftains in Bandamanna Saga. Clover rightly excludes this exchange from her list of flyting in the classical sagas, but does include the exchange between Halgerd and Bergthora in Chapter 35, which doesn’t make sense to me, because it has the same flavor.
Physical violence hovers at the edge of flyting and threatens to spill into the middle; it is implicit in insults, explicit in threats, and the rational result of escalating exchange. When Loki calls Bragi a coward, Bragi says, “If only I were outside / I’d have your head held in my hand.” Skarphedin and Thorkel rise and raise weapons but are halted, appropriately enough, by Skarphedin’s verbal threat and daunting physicality, described in great detail just before their encounter. Threats often materialize as the rational next step when the stylized rules, or the ‘spell’ of the flyting, recede. In the autumn after the assembly flyting in Bandamanna Saga, the chieftain Hermund, who has accused Egil of cheating him, sets out “intending to go to Borg and burn Egil in his house.” In Lokasenna, Skadi, speaking for all, threatens, “on a sword-point, with the guts of your son, ice-cold, the gods will bind you.” This is carried out in the succeeding narrative fragment Frá Loka.
Each flyting is as unique as each saga and relates uniquely to the narrative in which it is embedded.
In Njal’s Saga, the flyting stands as a ritual of the old school where power is gained by reputation, word, and physical force, and in contrast to the force of law. The flyting happens before the case over Hoskuld’s killing. Asgrim and the Njalssons must traipse around seeking support, underscoring the importance of personality politics and the power of numbers, in contrast to the procedural authority of the law. The result of the arbitration, paired with a effusive speech by Njal, is that Njal and his sons and Kari have to pay two hundred ounces of silver. When Njal adds a unisex robe and a pair of boots to the money pile, it seems that the flyting is unfinished after all. Whether or not Njal intended offense, Flosi finds offense, and insults fly between Flosi and Skarphedin. The legal arbitration is undermined and the rational next step is the attack on Njal and Bergthora’s farm when the family is burned, except Kari.
The flyting in Bandamanna Saga highlights that there is no honor among thieves. Egil Skulason is one of the chieftains seeking to delegitimize and defraud Odd. Odd’s father Ofeik convinces him with cajolery, veiled threats, evidence he’s been outfoxed, and “a well-rounded money bag” to “see which is the better choice, getting money and honor, or losing money and being shamed.” When Ofeik goes to talk to Gellir, perhaps he reveals his real feelings about Egil when he calls him “the worst of the whole bunch,” but this may just be a negotiating strategy. When Egil mocks the chieftains, he adds elaborate insult to financial injury, as if he relishes the opportunity to roast his former co-conspirators. The episode highlights the avarice and dishonor of the chieftains and their code of mutual support.
Loki’s behavior in Lokasenna as put down in Codex Regius is hard to interpret without resorting to an argument about Loki’s essence or character. The dispute begins when Loki kills Aegir’s servant Fimafeng (Quick-Service) for whom “everyone had much praise,” because “Loki couldn’t stand that.” The Aesir drive Loki off, but he returns, appealing to Odin’s pledge of blood brotherhood not to drink without him. He is granted hospitality, but proceeds to ridicule everyone present despite olive branches extended by Odin, Idunn, Heimdall, and Sif. The story may be a cautionary tale about the perils of overdrinking as Heimdall says, “You’re drunk, Loki, and out of your mind / Why won’t you leave off, Loki? / Too much to drink makes every man / Not mind how much he speaks.” Whether it is drink or Loki’s troublesome and wicked character that spurs his abusive tirade, the flyting ends with Loki fleeing, captured and then tortured until Ragnarok. If this is the primeval flyting, it emphasizes the link with physical violence.
Academic sources:
Joseph Harris, “The Senna: From Description to Literary Theory,” Michigan Germanic Studies 5.1 (1979)
Carol Clover, “Germanic Context of the Unferth Episode,” Speculum 55 (3) (July 1980)
The stylized battle of words is called flyting. Literary scholars recognize it as a compositional unit in Old Norse and also Celtic texts. In a flyting, combatants exchange boasts, threats, insults, and challenges the way they might exchange blows in a physical battle. Some have described flyting as more like a duel, a symmetrical back and forth between two speakers. But this is inessential and inaccurate in medieval Icelandic writing. I cite three examples of flyting (also called senna) where at least three people sling words and more spectate. In Lokasenna, Loki bandies words with many Aesir. In Njal’s Saga, Skarphedin trades insults and threats with various chieftains. In Bandamanna Saga, Odleif excoriates the scheming chieftains then passes off the responsibility to Egil Skulason, though some scholars see these as two separate flyting.
Carol Clover traces the linguistic, historical, and literary origins of the flyting into the muddy waters of senna, which she calls “quarrel” and encompassed the threats and insults traded, and Mannjafnaðr, which means “man-comparison” and was a social process of matching two men’s reputations, and so captures boasting. Senna is specifically a kind of medieval trash talk, whereas the proud words and phrases of Mannjafnaðr are like modern braggadocio. According to Clover, while there may have at some point been basis for delineating between senna and Mannjafnaðr, by the time Norse writings appear, they have mixed into one event we call the flyting. Clover adds a third ingredient to the flyting, nið, “the vague but spectacular category of sexual defamation for which Norse literature is rightly famous.” Each flyting is unique, although they all pull on the literary cliches and conventions of the type, to more or less degree, including nið.
The flyting can stand alone as it does to some degree in Lokasenna, or be embedded in a larger work. Embedded, it can move narrative forward. In the flyting in Njal’s Saga, Skarphedin bandies barbed words with the chieftains he and his kin are courting for support in their Althing case over Hoskuld’s killing. Skarphedin’s very presence seems inimical to recruiting when each chieftain formulaically ask the band leader Asgrim who he is, describing him as “big and frightening,” “pale-looking,” “sharp-featured,” “wicked,” “luckless,” “fierce but troll-like” and “as if he had come out of a sea-cliff.” If Skarphedin’s presence is bad for the cause, his words are worse. He calls Haf the Wealthy a “milksop.” His remarks repeatedly destroy their chance of winning support to the point that Asgrim orders him to tone it down before their meeting with Thorkel Bully. Skarphedin just grins. He then threatens Thorkel Bully with his axe, saying, “I’ve never lifted a weapon against any man without hitting my mark,” and forces Thorkel to stand down. When Gudmund the Powerful hears about the exchange, he decides to support the Njalssons after all.
The voluble verbal dialogue of the flyting flies in the face of the stereotype some have of the sagas as stark and laconic in a particularly Scandinavian way.
Flyting feels gratuitous in the sense of being not strictly necessary to the plot development. But that does not hold up. In the case of Skarphedin and the chieftains, the flyting leads Gudmund the Powerful to raise his hand in the Njalssons’ favor, and his hand falls heavy on the rest of the saga. In Bandamanna Saga, Egil’s roasting of the other chieftains feels a bit more gratuitous. But it still enriches the theme of dishonor among the chieftains, as I will further explain below. Furthermore, the idea of certain material being strictly necessary to plot is pretty, because art is about entertainment.
In medieval Iceland, flyting would have operated both in the story and its oral telling. Flyting lets characters and orators show off their detailed recall and inventive turn of phrase. Loki, Skarphedin, and Ofeig and Egil demonstrate superior, detailed recall of past indecencies. When Skafti Thoroddsson asks who he is, Skarphedin says, “You have often seen me here at the Thing, but I must be smarter than you because I don’t need to ask your name.” He goes on to adumbrate an unmanly story when Skafti is shaved, smeared in tar, and smuggled abroad in flour sacks. It would have been exhilarating to watch a talented story-teller declaim flyting, something like a watching a contemporary comedian’s roast or a rap battle. Flyting would also have served to recall other stories to listeners, like the story of Skafti, which is not recorded elsewhere, but may very well have been well known at the time.
Flyting is a spectacle of violent speech as a battle is a spectacle of physical violence. In the sagas, people kill and injure each other outside battle, just as they trade tough talk outside flyting. For example, Njal’s Saga includes many threats and nið-style taunts outside flyting. When Kari and the Njalssons confront Thrain, Halgerd, Helgi, and Killer-Hrapp at Thrain’s house, the short exchange that follows does not rise to the level of flyting, though Skarphedin tells Halgerd “Your words don’t count, for you’re either a cast-off hag or a whore”; Thrain says “I never thought that you brothers would try to get money out of your manhood”; Halgerd calls the Njalssons “Dung-beardlings” and their father “Old Beardless”; and threats are traded back and forth. This exchange is less drawn out, less spectacular, less lingering and episodic. The remarks are concise and calculated, less elaborate and allusive than those delivered by Skarphedin to the chieftains later in the saga, or the remarks delivered by Loki to the Aesir in Lokasenna, or Egil to the chieftains in Bandamanna Saga. Clover rightly excludes this exchange from her list of flyting in the classical sagas, but does include the exchange between Halgerd and Bergthora in Chapter 35, which doesn’t make sense to me, because it has the same flavor.
Physical violence hovers at the edge of flyting and threatens to spill into the middle; it is implicit in insults, explicit in threats, and the rational result of escalating exchange. When Loki calls Bragi a coward, Bragi says, “If only I were outside / I’d have your head held in my hand.” Skarphedin and Thorkel rise and raise weapons but are halted, appropriately enough, by Skarphedin’s verbal threat and daunting physicality, described in great detail just before their encounter. Threats often materialize as the rational next step when the stylized rules, or the ‘spell’ of the flyting, recede. In the autumn after the assembly flyting in Bandamanna Saga, the chieftain Hermund, who has accused Egil of cheating him, sets out “intending to go to Borg and burn Egil in his house.” In Lokasenna, Skadi, speaking for all, threatens, “on a sword-point, with the guts of your son, ice-cold, the gods will bind you.” This is carried out in the succeeding narrative fragment Frá Loka.
Each flyting is as unique as each saga and relates uniquely to the narrative in which it is embedded.
In Njal’s Saga, the flyting stands as a ritual of the old school where power is gained by reputation, word, and physical force, and in contrast to the force of law. The flyting happens before the case over Hoskuld’s killing. Asgrim and the Njalssons must traipse around seeking support, underscoring the importance of personality politics and the power of numbers, in contrast to the procedural authority of the law. The result of the arbitration, paired with a effusive speech by Njal, is that Njal and his sons and Kari have to pay two hundred ounces of silver. When Njal adds a unisex robe and a pair of boots to the money pile, it seems that the flyting is unfinished after all. Whether or not Njal intended offense, Flosi finds offense, and insults fly between Flosi and Skarphedin. The legal arbitration is undermined and the rational next step is the attack on Njal and Bergthora’s farm when the family is burned, except Kari.
The flyting in Bandamanna Saga highlights that there is no honor among thieves. Egil Skulason is one of the chieftains seeking to delegitimize and defraud Odd. Odd’s father Ofeik convinces him with cajolery, veiled threats, evidence he’s been outfoxed, and “a well-rounded money bag” to “see which is the better choice, getting money and honor, or losing money and being shamed.” When Ofeik goes to talk to Gellir, perhaps he reveals his real feelings about Egil when he calls him “the worst of the whole bunch,” but this may just be a negotiating strategy. When Egil mocks the chieftains, he adds elaborate insult to financial injury, as if he relishes the opportunity to roast his former co-conspirators. The episode highlights the avarice and dishonor of the chieftains and their code of mutual support.
Loki’s behavior in Lokasenna as put down in Codex Regius is hard to interpret without resorting to an argument about Loki’s essence or character. The dispute begins when Loki kills Aegir’s servant Fimafeng (Quick-Service) for whom “everyone had much praise,” because “Loki couldn’t stand that.” The Aesir drive Loki off, but he returns, appealing to Odin’s pledge of blood brotherhood not to drink without him. He is granted hospitality, but proceeds to ridicule everyone present despite olive branches extended by Odin, Idunn, Heimdall, and Sif. The story may be a cautionary tale about the perils of overdrinking as Heimdall says, “You’re drunk, Loki, and out of your mind / Why won’t you leave off, Loki? / Too much to drink makes every man / Not mind how much he speaks.” Whether it is drink or Loki’s troublesome and wicked character that spurs his abusive tirade, the flyting ends with Loki fleeing, captured and then tortured until Ragnarok. If this is the primeval flyting, it emphasizes the link with physical violence.
Academic sources:
Joseph Harris, “The Senna: From Description to Literary Theory,” Michigan Germanic Studies 5.1 (1979)
Carol Clover, “Germanic Context of the Unferth Episode,” Speculum 55 (3) (July 1980)
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