Van Deusen, Natalie. Sworn Sisterhood? On the (Near-) Absence of Female Friendship from the Íslendingasogur

• Author: Van Deusen, Natalie
• Title: Sworn Sisterhood? On the (Near-) Absence of Female Friendship from the Íslendingasogur
• Published in: Scandinavian Studies 86/1
• Year: 2014
• Pages: 52-71
• E-text: ProQuest
• Reference: Van Deusen, Natalie. "Sworn Sisterhood? On the (Near-) Absence of Female Friendship from the Íslendingasogur." Scandinavian Studies 86/1 (2014): 52-71.

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Annotation

In this article, Van Deusen discusses female friendships within the Sagas of Early Icelanders. She explains that these texts, while conveying many examples of male-male friendships (like Njáll and Gunnar in Njáls Saga), present a dearth of female-female friendships. She attributes the lack of examples to two factors: friendship being a political tool between men, and that the writers of the texts in question simply chose not to focus on female friendship. Van Deusen describes the Aristotelian models of friendship and how they apply to all friendships seen in the sagas under analysis. According to Aristotle, she argues, only men are capable of a “perfect” friendship; that is, a mutual relationship between equals. Saga writers were heavily influenced by classical literature, which supported Aristotelian friendship models (which did not include women), and thus continued the tradition of literature friendships being mainly for men. She concludes by saying that the scribes who wrote the sagas under analysis were pushing a narrative that maintained a political and social gender divide, as well as preserved their own ideals of kinship and friendship.

Lýsing

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References

Chapter 35: fyrir vináttu sakir : “But nowhere is perfect friendship better exhibited than in the epic Njáls saga, which details the virtuous friendship between Njáll Þorgeirsson and Gunnarr Hámundarson á Hlíðarendi, the two Icelandic farmers whose bond withstood numerous trials and was ‚stronger than the relationship of either man to his wife‘.” (p. 56-7)

Links

• Written by: Trevor Kieser
• Icelandic/English translation: