Howson, George. The death of Gunnar

• Author: George Howson
• Title: The Death of Gunnar. A tribute to Ian Ramsay Maxwell.
• Published in: Treasures of the Elder Tongue, fifty years of Old Norse in Melbourne,

The Proceedings of the Symposium to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Old Norse at the University of Melbourne, 14th May 1994

• Place, Publisher: University of Melbourne, Katrina Burge (ed.), John Stanley Martin

(general ed.)

• Year: 1995
• Pages: 115-126
• E-text:
• Reference: Howson, George. “The Death of Gunnar: A Tribute to Ian Ramsay Maxwell” In: Treasures of the Elder Tongue, fifty years of Old Norse in Melbourne, The Proceedings of the Symposium to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Old Norse at the University of Melbourne, 14th May 1994, p. 115-126, Melbourne: Dept. Of Germanic and Russian Studies, University of Melbourne, 1995.

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• Key words: semantics, Hlíðarendi, Gunnar's return, outlawry, word-order analysis, metaphor

Annotation

This article is a complementary approach to Ian Maxwell's “Patterns in Njáls saga” (SagaBook of the Viking Society, London, 1957-1961) with a narrow focus on a small section of the saga, namely the 6 lines enclosing Gunnar's decision to return to his homestead at Hlíðarendi in spite of his sentence of outlawry (ch.75: 182, lines 116-122). The author states that this famous section had been misunderstood, and argues, through a close analysis of semantics and word-order, that the scene of Gunnar's getting on his horse is a metaphor of his inner battle and frustration, a no-win he had been backed into repeatedly in the same way as Njál and Skarpheðinn had been. However, this tragic position is precisely what allows these characters to enter into the saga, and not being out of it as others non-memorable characters.

See also

Maxwell, Ian Ramsay, “Patterns in Njáls saga”, Saga-Book of the Viking Society, London: 1957-1961.

References

Chapter 54 “Gunnar [...] stakk niðr atgeirinum ok varp sér í söðulinn [...]” “...the clang of battle in this scene echoes with the deeper, although more distant reverberation of an almost identical image from an earlier scene in the saga [...] The similarity is unmistakable” p.199

Chapter 54 “We are asked to remember what Gunnar was thinking about at the end of that fateful ride, the ride that encompassed what Njál called “the beginning of [Gunnar's] manslayings,” and in particular, the still unanswered question that Gunnar ut to Kolskegg: “I would like to know [...] whether I am more cowardly than others because I think more of killing men than they do”. p.122-123

Chapter 75: “Hann stingr niðr... ok fara hvergi”: “Inlaid this renowned episode lies an insight into the pattern of the inner life of Gunnar's character, and of the dilemma he faces in the saga” p. 117-118

Links

• Written by: Marion Poilvez
• Icelandic/English translation: