Sarah Christensen
Sep 9, 2018 · 6 min read

‘Fake News’ and Feminism in Viking Age Iceland

We live in an era of ‘fake news’. Named the 2017 Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary (conceding the debate about what should be allowed to constitute a word of the year), fake news is defined as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting”. According to Collins, use of the phrase has skyrocketed in the past two years, experiencing a 365% increase in usage since 2016. The term seems to get a rise out of just about everyone these days, used to describe everything from anti-vaccine invective to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Is fake news purely a symptom of today’s divisive politics and the unregulated wilderness of the internet? The women of Viking Age Iceland might beg to differ.

What scholars know about the lives of Icelandic woman before the turn of the first millennium comes from archaeological sources and from the sagas, texts written in Old Norse vernacular two or three hundred years after the settlement of the island in the tenth century CE. The sagas relay legends of Icelandic settlement, tales of clever heroes and anti-heroes, and details of great family feuds. These stories have defined Icelandic identity up to the present. Like other regions of the west, medieval Icelandic legal treatises give women little de jure authority. Yet the sagas are comparatively rich with depictions of outspoken and intimidating female characters wielding de facto power within the family and in society at large.

Laxdælasaga, or the Saga of the Laxdalers, is so sensitive to the female experience that some scholars have gone so far as to suggest it may have been written by a woman. Whether or not it comes from a female hand, Laxdælasaga revolves around a host of complex female characters. Many episodes detail their frustration at navigating social, legal, and physical structures created by and for men. One of these obstacles is the process of seeking out and obtaining information, a relatively tedious and time-consuming project for everyone in the medieval world, but particularly so for women in one of the farthest-flung corners of the western world. (News traveled only as fast as the fastest Icelandic pony could tölt.) Generally confined to the home and discouraged from travelling on their own, women most often relied on male visitors to relay news from the outside world. Middle-men controlling women’s access to information results in some notable openings for modern buzzwords: gaslighting, alternative facts, and, you guessed it, fake news.

Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir is one of the protagonists of Laxdælasaga, an exceptionally beautiful and sharply intelligent farmer’s daughter. A prophetic dream hints at the four different men she will marry over her lifetime. Her first marriage to Þorvaldr is brief, unhappy, and ends in divorce (one of the few ways in which Icelandic women had it better than their sisters in mainland Europe). Her second husband, Þord, drowns at sea. Next, Guðrún meets the saga hero Kjartan Óláfsson. They meet each other in secret and fall passionately in love, but before they marry Kjartan tells Guðrún he wants to seek his fortune in Norway. Angry that he would leave her behind despite their budding romance, Guðrún demands that Kjartan take her with him on the voyage:

“Guðrún said: ‘I want to go with you this summer. Then I could forgive you for arranging this trip so suddenly. After all, it isn’t Iceland I’m in love with.’ ‘It can’t happen,’ said Kjartan. ‘Your brothers are young and your father is old, and there won’t be anyone to take care of them if you leave home. Wait for me for three winters.’”

Kjartan’s decision to sail to Norway alone, despite Guðrún’s request, is the crucial catalyst for the tragic conflict that occurs later in the saga. Like all good romantic dramas, Laxdælasaga involves a love triangle. Guðrún loves Kjartan, Kjartan loves Guðrún, and Kjartan’s closest childhood friend Bolli also loves Guðrún. Because of their friendship, Bolli accompanies Kjartan on the journey to Norway, but he doesn’t forget about Guðrún.

Though Kjartan doesn’t explicitly point to Guðrún’s gender as the reason for his refusal, his dismissal of her desire to travel highlights a clear division between gendered spaces in medieval Iceland: women rule the home, while men rule everywhere else. Kjartan reminds Guðrún of her responsibility towards her younger brothers and elderly father, who will be left unprotected if she were to pursue her desire and leave home.

Emphasis on a woman’s domestic role as grounds for impeding her movement appears in many modern studies of female migration. According to a case study by Erin Hoffman and Cynthia Buckley, women who emigrated from the country of Georgia in the 1990s were vilified for leaving behind their families and communities. “Referring to the feminization of migration,” they write, “most respondents described it as unnatural, challenging the male role as breadwinner and female responsibilities for childcare and eldercare.” The clear delineation of gendered occupations is deployed as a barrier to women’s movement outside the home as much today as it was a thousand years ago.

The knowledge and experience gained from travel abroad are also traditionally available only to men. The first thing Kjartan and his followers do when they arrive in Norway is ask other men for tíðindi, or tidings. They catch up on the gossip, such as it was in northern Norway in the 1000s. As the saga continues, Kjartan cozies up to the Norwegian king and starts to make a name for himself as a competent warrior and all-around Icelandic heartthrob.

Bolli returns early to Iceland, leaving Kjartan at the Norwegian court. He heads straight for Guðrún, armed with all the instruments of modern psychological warfare. Bolli deliberately turns Guðrún against her former lover. He describes how Kjartan is enjoying his newfound fame in Norway. He insinuates that Kjartan’s wonderful qualities have caught the eye of the king’s marriageable sister, and implies that Kjartan has forgotten Guðrún and their old attachment. Guðrún at first refuses to believe him, but Bolli enlists the help of her father and brothers, encouraging them to follow his lead in undermining Guðrún’s convictions. Together they spin stories about Kjartan’s reprehensible behavior, until Guðrún begins to believe that she imagined their attachment and that Kjartan is not the man she thought he was. Without any way of communicating with Kjartan, and unable to travel to Norway to ascertain the truth for herself, Guðrún is coerced into marrying Bolli instead.

When Kjartan returns to Iceland a few months later, he is distraught to discover that Guðrún is married to his best friend. News of his arrival and the truth about his stay in Norway reaches Guðrún. She confronts her husband about his campaign of misinformation: “Bolli declared that he had said what he knew to be the truth.” One can almost imagine the deafening shrug.

Resentment rages between the three characters. After a series of greater and greater offenses, Bolli, egged on by his brothers, takes up the sword against his friend. Kjartan, refusing to fight, casts away his weapons and allows himself to be fatally stabbed. Bolli takes the dying Kjartan in his arms and pours out his remorse at being driven to such a terrible act. Soon after, Kjartan’s sons avenge their father by killing Bolli.

The tragic conclusion hints at a powerful medieval moral. A great deal of grief originates from Bolli’s decision to modify facts, and from Guðrún’s isolation. If she had accompanied Kjartan on his journey, or if she had been supplied with all available information, the saga’s tragic conclusion might have been avoided. The author of Laxdælasaga apparently regarded the obstruction of a woman’s rights to movement and information as inappropriate and potentially dangerous. Manipulation of facts and deliberate misinformation leads to two deaths and an unhappy ending for everyone involved.

In this modern era of fake news, gaslighting, and alternative facts, we might do well to remember some of the simpler lessons of history. Honesty, as a medieval Icelander would probably tell you, is the best policy. Trying to obscure the truth leads only to blood feud and bitter regret.

Sarah Christensen

Written by

medieval historian / writer / feminist

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