The Blood in the Feud

This chapter focuses on the staple form of violence in the sagas: feud. Feud was medieval Iceland’s most important organizing metaphor, at whose core lay individuated enforcement of the social contract through tit-for-tat reciprocity. The chapter examines two paradigmatic feuding episodes, one from the Family Sagas (Þorsteins þáttr stangarhǫggs), the other from the Contemporary Sagas (Íslendinga saga’s account of events centred around Sæmundr Jónsson, c.1215–22). Interlacing these case studies sheds light on how textual strategies converge and diverge across the two genres (and in other, related genres, such as Iceland’s law code, Grágás). Accident is central to both episodes, as is the violent response to it, underscoring the intimate involvement of violence with risk. When misfortune struck, Icelanders faced, first, uncertainty about how to understand what had just happened. Their choices tended to read the past as violent. Second, they needed to decide what do to next. Again, their inclination was towards responding violently. Finally, hard times provided opportunities for social engineering: costs and burdens had to be shared, avoided, or redirected among allies and onto adversaries. Feud, whose logic was well established and widely embraced, proved a versatile solution for channelling such social risks and opportunities, whether through opting into elective affinities (redefining one’s own group boundaries) or by enforcing passive solidarity on others. Icelanders distinguished drengir, ‘gentlemen’, from ójafnaðarmenn, ‘bullies’, by the skill with which they did or did not make their feuding claims seem plausible