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.
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.
