Sverris saga, the royal biography of King Sverrir of Norway [1151
(1177(84)- 1202], is oddly mixed in content. Born in Norway,
to one Gunnhildr and a comb-maker or smith, around 1150 and coming at age 5
to the Faroes to be fostered by his paternal uncle, Hrói, bishop of Kirkjunes,
Sverrir Unásson, [or Uni, from Latin source?]
as he was first known, was clerically educated and ordained to the priesthood
before his mother supposedly told him of his royal parentage as a son of King
Sigurðr munn. His journey to the throne, beginning after this revelation
in 1176 and finally accomplished in 1184 with the death of King Magnús
Erlingsson, was succeeded by the almost immediate challenges of other claimants,
and when these were quelled his energies were taken up with the defense of the
crown's rights of power against the encroachments of the church, an endeavour
in which Sverrir, as a son also of that institution, made an unusually knowledgeable
and articulate royal opponent. At his death, he remarked, "The kingdom
has brought me labour and unrest and trouble rather than peace and a quiet life.
But so it is that many have envied me my rank, and have let their envy grow
to full enmity. May God forgive them all; and let my Lord now judge between
me and them, and decide all my cause." [Sephton,
231-2. "Hefi ei meira starf, ófrið ok vandræði haft
í ríkinu en kyrrsæti eðr mikit hóglífi.
Er svá at minni virðingu sem margir hafi verit mínir öfundarmenn,
þeir er þat hafa látit ganga fyrir fullan fjándskap
við mik, sem nú fyrirgefi Guð þeim þat öllum.
Ok dæmi Guð milli vár ok allt mitt mál."]
The extant narrative of his life is preserved in four parchment manuscripts
and some fragments [See Handout].
It is a chaotic assortment of episodes: prophetic dreams, political manouvres,
but mostly action--strenuous marches through Norway seeking support to the throne,
naval expeditions, battles on sea and on land against his royal opponents, the
building and subsequent loss of ships and fleets and fortresses. His clerical
background is stressed in scenes where the biographer shows his Christian magnanimity
with defeated enemies, and his speeches, attributed by its most recent editor
to the invention of the saga's primary composer, are so authentic in tone and
incisive in argument that some scholars have taken them for interpolations of
the king's own writing. The Prologue to Sverris saga in AM 327 4to, a Norwegian
manuscript from around 1300, leaves no doubt as to its partial authorship by
Abbot Karl Jónsson of Þingeyraklaustur, nor of the fact that the
subject himself oversaw its composition – "which Abbot Karl Jónsson
first wrote but King Sverrir himself sat over him and decided what should be
written" [“er fyrst ritaði Karl ábóti
Jónsson, en yfir sat sjálfr Sverrir konungr ok réð
fyrir hvat rita skyldi”]. Since both men were educated
ecclesiastics in the first place, it is not surprising that the king's purported
speeches demonstrate remarkable rhetorical skill and training which, on Sverri's
part, should have promised a good future in the church if he had not chosen
his secular career instead.
Responsibility for the whole extant text is another matter, however, since the
first part of the saga, about Sverri´r's ascent to power, composed under
the king's eye, they called Grýla after the Norse monster of that name.
[ “kölluðu þeir þann hlut
bóku fyrir því Grýlu” ]. and
the prologue adds, "That portion was not brought along far -- [
“er sú frásögn eigi langt fram komin.” [ÍF
XXX, Reykjavík, 2007, 3] ] The composer of the
remainder is not specifically identified in this earlier manuscript –
nor, however, does the wording preclude its also having been written by the
Abbot. Its sources are said to be derived from "the relation of those who
remembered what happened, having actually seen or heard it, and some of them
had been with King Sverrir in battles. Some of these stories were fixed in memory,
having been written down directly the events occurred, and they have not been
altered since." [Sephton 1]
While the intention of this earlier account is obviously to affirm the accuracy
of the narrative, a more detailed passage in the Prologue to Sverris saga in
the late 14th-century Flateyjarbók expands upon the saga's composition:
"Priest Styrmir, the historian, followed that book [Karl's] when he wrote,
and Priest Magnus Thorhallsson [one of the writers of
Flateyjarbók] wrote this Saga of Sverrir following that
book [of Styrmir's]" [239] [
“eftir þeira manna frásögn er minni höfðu til
svá at þeir sjálfir höfðu sét ok heyrt þessi
tíðendi, ok þeir menn sumir höfðu verit í orrostum
með Sverri konungi.” [ÍF XXX, 285]] Ironically,
these details are included with the explicit intention of further authenticating
the text: "The narrative therefore cannot have become corrupted by passing
from mouth to mouth." [[Sephton, 239] “Má
því eigi þetta mál í munni gengizk hafa.”
[IF, 285]]
Much of the scholarship of Sverris saga has thus been concerned with the extent
of Abbot Karl’s composition and of the subsequent hand of Styrmir inn
fróði or perhaps others in its production. From an early textual
perspective, the abbot’s part ended with the conclusion of Grýla,
that point in the text then also debated, but in any case with Styrmir writing
the continuation to the end of the saga. Guðbrandur Vigfússon, however,
proposed another view, that the entire work was Abbot Karl's. “The whole
saga is of one cast, precluding any reasonable thought of a double authorship,
least of all by men so far removed as were Karl and Styrmir.”
[Prolegomena to Sturlunga saga, Oxford, 1878, I, lxxi] This
view, with some variations among succeeding textual critics, has become the
dominant one, with general but not unanimous agreement that Grýla
ends with chapter 100, following the death of King Magnús and its aftermath.
Today I will consider a few points of phraseological evidence regarding this
puzzle of composition – proverbial allusions, humorous phrases of an almost
formulaic nature, proverb clustering at some critical locations in the text,
as well as repeated proverbs. In agreement with Vigfússon’s pronouncement,
these items indicate a single hand at work, at least intermittently, through
the entire text, but with the voice of the king intruding upon or combining
with that of the abbot. In this collaborative process a narrative was created
whose depths have yet to be analyzed definitively.
The combative rhetoric with which Sverrir was execrated by his enemies, particularly
those emanating from the church, identifies in political terms that institution´s
objection to his reign. Calling him a guðníðingr, a perpetrator
of sacrilege, because as an ordained priest he should never have undertaken
the secular office of kingship, let alone given up his sacerdotal duties, they
made it clear that, whatever his claim to the Norwegian throne, he had discarded
prior and more urgent spiritual commitments. It is in the light of such ideological
opposition that the polemical intent of his dreams, as he and his biographer
have constructed them, becomes more clear. Thus chapter 42 reports a complex
dream Sverrir had before the Battle of Nidaros, where Erlingr Jarl was killed.
A man leads him to a roasted male corpse and tells him to eat. Regarding the
meal as unclean, the hero demures, but his dream man commands him to obey, for
it is God's will: "You will eat and you shall eat; thus wills he who decides/governs
all." [ "Þú vilt eta ok þú
skalt eta; svá vill sá er öllu ræðr." ] Finding
the meal unexpectedly enjoyable as he comes to the head of the corpse, he is
admonished by his guide to stop, "and thus he had to leave off " says
the Old Norse text. [ "ok varð þá við at skiljask."
[IF 30. 42. 66.] ] Sverrir's interpretation of his dream included
the death in battle of Erlingr Jarl and his most powerful barons, but also the
escape of King Magnús, the leftover roasted head, in this instance. The
import of this passage for the audience, however, is best understood in the
context of a proverbial allusion established in the reference to God as one
who rules, or decides, all. The traditional Old Norse proverb, with its origins
in the wisdom of feud interactions, "Jafnan segir enn ríkri ráð"
(die Beschlüsse) MÁLSHÁTTAKVÆÐI 23, 1 [R.Cook,
"Sagas as dramas of the will"] is operative here and
is invoked to emphasize Sverrir's contention throughout his biography that he
has undertaken the pursuit of monarchy in deference to God's will rather than
following his own. The sensitivity of the English translator to this situation
is apparent in his loose rendering of "varð þá við
at skiljask." with an explicit allusion to this proverb: "the stronger
man had his way." Thus, at the same time as this dream engagingly admits
Sverri's joy in conquest, it supports his contention that he was not in fact
a guðningr but an initially reluctant follower of God's overwhelming will,
a point which is made often in the course of the narrative.
The biography, or autobiography, of King Sverrir emphasizes consistently the
monarch's adherence to the principles of his ecclesiastical background. He prays
on his knees before battle--and in the midst of one where the results are crucial
but uncertain he ceases fighting, falls on his knees and prays heroically for
divine intervention. To the defeated and to those who throw themselves voluntarily
upon his mercy he is unfailingly forgiving. Concomitant with what were meant
to be viewed as signs of respect for his training and faith, however, critics
for almost two centuries have remarked the presence of a dark and malicious
humour, whether exercised by the nebulous biographer or represented by him as
coming from the king's own mouth, or resulting from the collaborative dynamic
of king and abbot in recounting the adventure. The very idea of titling the
account of his ascent to power Grýla, after a monster -- a traditional
personified embodiment of that which threatens accepted social order, perhaps
even the order of the universe -- casts a viciously humorous light upon his
long journey to power.
Aggressive humor at the expense of his enemies emerges with impressive frequency
and rhetorical flourish at some points in the text, most notably in his speech
following the death of Erlingr Jarl at the battle of Nidaros. He sneers at the
promises of Archbishop Eystein to King Magnus's men that "all who die fighting
for [him] , their souls will enter Paradise before their blood is cold upon
the ground." He acknowledges that battle survivors who stand in sorrow
now would have been happy had they been attending his own funeral instead! Senseless
to grieve, given the promises of the Archbishop! "Rejoice!" he encourages
his defeated enemies at their master's grave, for the "abundance of glorified
saints in the town at this moment." --although, he thoughtfully adds, the
newly deceased have as yet to perform any miracles. However, and his tone changes
from ironic to admonitory, if "as my heart tells me" "all the
fine promises . . . are unfulfilled" then "better to pray for the
souls of those departed, and also for Erlingr jarl whose arrogance caused him
to have the title of king given to his son." [Sephton
50-51.]
In numerous other places this jubilantly vicious humor is exercised, often adorned
with proverbial support. On three occasions, the narrative proverbially compares
the threat of the Birkibeins to "trolls", "at the door",
or "between outhouse and home" humorously emphasizing the powerfully
destructive potential of the insurgent forces. The narrator allows both sides
to use such expressions of one another's situations, at several points likening
the Birkibeins at disadvantage to "sheep in pens" awaiting slaughter,
and their foiled pursuit of Erlingr Jarl leaves them "whistling after his
track". But Sverrir's men fight so aggressively that "the sooner a
man got away the happier he was" And when rebelling peasants' are disappointed
in their attack, they are said to have discovered "they had a smaller steak
on their spit than if they had had the king on it." "A hungry louse
bites hard," exclaims King Sverrir in victory over Magnús, ironically
comparing the desperate aggression of his finally successful warfare to the
proverbial ferocity of the hungry wolf. No illusions trouble him in this victory--on
two occasions the narrator speaks proverbially of his unpopular dominance with
sharp irony: "Many a man kisses the hand that he would like to see chopped
off." And yet, whatever his right to the throne, his hard-won de facto
possession of it is presented always as the will of God, who decides all things
-- among many examples, his pre-emptive attack on Thorgrim of Heidmork who was
planning to ambush him is explained "their meeting was of another kind
than Thorgrim had expected. For God ordered between them that the nobler man
had the upper hand." And it is this appeal to God's ultimate power, surely
the means to power for the upstart from the Faroes, that rings through his epic
quest for Norway's throne. Any arguments de jure must be in defensive response
to criticism that only his mother's word supported his royal descent, and that
it had never been tried by ordeal--a process which was in any case officially
abandoned by the church in 1215, a few years after the pretender's death.
This uncannily effective reliance upon inspiration, whether or not it comes
from God, seems depicted in Sverrir's speech to his men before the battle of
Íluveller in 1180: there he admits they face overwhelming odds--"the
task of hewing timber in the woods is not like yours". But he then shares
with them the advice of a farmer sending his son to battle. "Renown lives
longest after one," says the farmer, quoting the pre-Christian wisdom of
Hávamál, "Nought may send a man to his grave if his time
is not come" and "if he is doomed to die, nought may save him."
"To die in flight is the worst death of all." When the chips were
down, Sverrir appealed to his soldiers with rhetoric of an earlier, heroic era,
a rhetoric with which they remained familiar, despite the incursions of southerly,
Christian ideologies. The Íslendingasögur also celebrate this proverbial
wisdom, using it to recall the worldviews of a pre-Christian age. This whetting
speech was truly a work of genius, whether from the teller or the king, nevertheless
presenting the latter as an inspired leader, easily able to strike resonant
heroic cords in the hearts of his warriors.
P. E Mueller remarks that the composer "does not avoid various episodes
which for the attentive reader may cast a large shadow over the king's character."
[Sagabibliothek, III, 424.] The king
who prayed during battles and seemed to show Christian charity in giving quarter
to all repentent enemies reveals flaws not only in that humor which must be
attributed in part to him. Mueller remarks "It is certain that Sverrir
permitted fraud in the falsification of a papal bull, and there are strong grounds
for suspicion that he was the instigator of the murder of Eirik the King's brother,
his family and the returning emissaries from Rome." [Sagabibliothek,
III, 425.] Whatever this troublesome Grýla may really
have believed of his own paternity, it is clear that his right to the throne
stemmed practically from his competence in military and political strategy,
his skill in showmanship, his gifted rhetorical accomplishments. His primary
response to aspersions cast by King Magnus and his party on Sverrir's royal
paternity was to insist that Magnus himself had claims only of maternal descent--a
logical conclusion could be drawn from this that, if neither of them had ancestral
right to the crown, then its possession was ultimately a matter of which contender
had power to seize and maintain it. If the description of his death speech is
accurate, then even at that moment he must have continued to embrace the ultimately
persuasive Old Norse adage, Jafnan segir enn ríkri ráð.
Practically speaking that was all that ever mattered in his career.
The biography of King Sverrir, explicitly a project of collaboration in its
inception and early stages, contains a voice difficult to distinguish as belonging
either to the writer or to the teller who sat over him. The Flateyjarbók
Prologue attempts to explain the title Grýla from the fact that
"Many declared that fear and dread did their full work in the war and great
strife, since all probability seemed to point to the quick downfall and utter
annihilation [of Sverrir], because of the strength and overwhelming odds against
him." [240] This opinion of the
title's origin and meaning was stated at the end of the 14th century, and the
writer adds that Sverrir could never have succeeded without divine intervention
in his long and harsh campaign. The persistent voice of Sverris saga, however,
reinforced by the tone of its phraseology, seems to revel in the fear which
the Grýla-like intruder and his army struck among the Norwegians. Abbot
Karl and his king present his great undertaking as a threat to established society,
but one justified (1) by his success, unexpected and brilliant, as if from God,
and (2) by his accomplishments in the position he took with cunning force from
the family of Sigurðr Jorsalafari, Magnússon. The large shadow which
Mueller perceived in 1820 is as clear in the language of this saga as it is
in those crimes of Sverrir's to which the teller alludes, but upon which he
does not elaborate. The collaborative voice of Sverris Saga described a starkly
practical king, not overly scrupulous of conscience, yet a diversely skill leader.
the God who rules all would seem to have chosen his royal servant wisely.
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