Langeslag, Paul. Tröll and Ethnicity in Egils saga

• Author: Langeslag, Paul
• Title: Trǫll and Ethnicity in Egils saga
• Published in: Á austrvega: Saga and East Scandinavia. Preprint Papers of the 14th International Saga Conference, Uppsala, 9th–15th August 2009. Vol. 2
• Editors: Agneta Ney, Henrik Williams, and Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist
• Series: Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskaps skriftserie 14
• Place, Publisher: Gävle: Gävle UP
• Year: 2009
• Pages: 560-67
• E-text:
• Reference: Langeslag, Paul. "Trǫll and Ethnicity in Egils saga." Á austrvega: Saga and East Scandinavia. Preprint Papers of the 14th International Saga Conference, Uppsala, 9th–15th August 2009. Vol. 2, pp. 560-67. Eds. Agneta Ney, Henrik Williams, and Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist. Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskaps skriftserie 14. Gävle: Gävle UP, 2009.

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• Key words: literary elements, characterization (bókmenntaleg einkenni, persónulýsingar)

Annotation

One of the more conspicuous literary devices structurally employed throughout Egils saga resides in the depiction of the central family. Those of its members who receive focal attention are typically characterised as either dark, ugly, and unruly, or handsome, cheerful, and popular. However, a unifying characterisation of the family may also be discerned, in which all of its members are tall, strong, and proud, an identity that wins the family a mixture of success and trouble. While these two aspects of the family, its division and its unity, have received some deal of individual attention, their interplay merits a study of its own: it is where the two meet that the compiler’s purpose may be most clearly discerned. This paper examines the author’s aims in the juxtaposition, proposing that it represents an attempt to explain differences within the family with reference to a mixed ethnicity, signalled by the association of the darker half with tröll. This divided ancestry enabled the compiler to draw on a heroic past while salvaging a proto-Christian heritage for the Mýramenn of his own age.

Links

• Written by: Paul Langeslag
• Icelandic translation: