Learning to Feel in the Old Norse Camelot?

Author(s): Carolyne Larrington

Source: Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 74-94
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Society for the Advancement
of Scandinavian Study
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/scanstud.87.1.0074
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 Learning to Feel
in the Old Norse Camelot?

Carolyne Larrington
St John’s College, Oxford

“W
hat were the consequences, for instance, of having
Middle English feelings, as distinct from Anglo-
Norman, Welsh, French, or Latin ones?” asks Sarah
McNamer (2007, 248). Or, indeed, Old Norse feelings? These surely
existed, even if we can map neither the modern nor the Middle English
word onto an Old Norse equivalent. If, as McNamer suggests, language-
specific emotional systems exist, then that of Old Norse can seem hard
to locate, for the famously objective narrators of the Íslendingasögur are
reluctant to speak directly about love, anger, fear, or disgust, and other
saga genres are equally reticent.1 The translated Arthurian romances do,
however, depict a range of emotional situations that are often intensely
experienced by their protagonists. Here, then, we can begin both to
map Old Norse emotional lexis and to probe its cultural uniqueness.
In my chapter on the translated lais in The Arthur of the North (Lar-
rington 2011), I briefly examined the language of feeling in the two
thirteenth-century Strengleikar translations, Geitarlauf and Januals
ljóð, and explored how Marie de France’s subtle emotional calibrations
were mediated from verse into prose and from Anglo-Norman into
Norse. The recent work of Suzanne Marti (2012, 2013), Stefka Eriksen

1. Work on emotions in Old Norse has mainly concentrated on the sagas: see, for
example, Miller (1992); Larrington (2001); Andersson (2003); and now Sif Rikhardsdottir
(forthcoming). Specifically on eddic poetry, see Sävborg (1997) (to which Andersson
2003 functions as a response). There is a growing body of work on specific emotional
manifestations in Norse, for example, on weeping: Lindow (2002); Mills (2014); on
laughter: Le Goff (1992); Low (1996); Wolf (2000).

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 Learning to Feel 75

(Johansson and Eriksen 2012; Eriksen 2013), and Sif Rikhardsdottir

(2008, 2012, forthcoming) has highlighted the importance of recogniz-
ing how translation must always involve the adaptation of the source
text’s signifying systems, in order to signify for the target audience a
move that often lays bare the ideological processes at work in both
texts. As Sif Rikhardsdottir observes, “the negotiation of the separate
semiotic systems of the French text and its Norse translation, evident
in the diverse behavioural patterns that manifest the innate ideological
principles, underscores elements that define the cultural conceptualis-
ing of self and social environment” (2012, 74).
What is true of ideological systems is also true of emotional systems.
In the terminology of psychologists such as Keith Oatley (1994, 1999;
see also Mar et al. 2011) and Ed Tan (1994), literary texts provide
models of “emotion simulation,” which, if effectively implemented in
terms of characters, behavior, and situation, will elicit both empathy
and aesthetic appreciation in the listening audience. As the listening
audience runs the “simulation,” appropriate and congruent emotional
reactions should be produced.2 Norse audiences for the translated texts
would thus be required to process the different “emotion scripts”
(individual components of the text’s simulation) contained in the emo-
tion-episodes narrated to them, if they were to engage and empathize
with the plot and its characters. Translation requires the adaptation of
source “emotion scripts” in order to arouse the emotions of the target
culture. The changes between source texts and translations illuminate
cultural differences in “emotion simulations” and also, crucially, over
time will come to affect the development of emotion simulations and
scripts in the target culture’s signifying system.
In this article, I focus on some key emotional episodes in Parcevals
saga, the Norse translation of the French poet Chrétien de Troyes’s
romance Le Conte de Graal (ca. 1180), in order to investigate how the
Norse translator depicts both basic emotions (such as anger, fear, joy,
sorrow) and complex emotions (such as resentment), adapting his emo-
tion scripts for his audience.3 Cognition, performativity, behavior, and
2. See also Larrington (forthcoming) on “emotion simulation,” audience empathy,
and the figure of Sir Gawain.
3. The saga’s preservation and transmission is complicated; the earliest manuscript
preserving the whole saga is an Icelandic one, Stockholm Perg. 6 4to (ca. 1400). Most
scholars assume, on the basis of its stylistic similarities to Tristrams saga, Möttuls saga, and
Ívens saga, that the text was originally translated into Norwegian in the milieu of King
Hákon IV’s court in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. My shorthand usage
“the Norse translator” denotes the original Norwegian translator, although self-evidently,
the manuscripts are not holographs. See Bornholdt (2011, 101–2); and Psaki (2002, 202).

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 76 Scandinavian Studies

somatic effects are verbalized in ways that differ from the source that
the Norse translator had before him; these scripts open up comparisons
with similar emotion episodes in native Norse texts, primarily sagas.
This analysis will in turn illuminate the extent to which the “emotion
simulations” of Parcevals saga cohere with the simulations intended
to evoke audience empathy in other genres. Finally, a brief comparison
with the lexis of emotion in representative examples of texts from other
Norse genres will explore how Old Icelandic literary language already
had a well-developed emotional range before the transmission of the
translated Arthurian sagas to Iceland. As Sif Rikhardsdottir (forthcom-
ing) has noted, in saga, “interiority must be masked and projected into
action,” while in romance, emotionality “propels the action,” and thus
I conclude by asking whether the translated sagas have any significant
impact on the native genres, in terms of teaching audiences both how
to feel and how to recognize feeling in literary characters.

The Death of Parceval’s Mother

The first major emotional episode of the saga illustrates profound,
indeed fatal, maternal grief, occasioned by Parceval’s announcement
to his mother that he intends to leave home for Arthur’s court. Chré-
tien prepares for the mother’s collapse by noting her intense anxiety
when Perceval returns home late after his encounter with the knights
in the forest: “Car come fame qui molt aime / Cort contre lui et si lo
claime / ‘Biaus filz, biax filz’ plus de. C. foiz” (Méla 1994, ll. 345–7)
[for as a woman who loves greatly she ran to him crying “Dear son,
dear son,” more than a hundred times].4 The heart of Perceval’s mother,
Chrétien relates, has been afolee (maddened) by doel (grief), her fears
have made her almost die; she faints when she hears whom Perceval
has met and remains correciee (grief-stricken) when she recovers. Once
Perceval has been equipped for his departure, she falls into a doel
estrange (strange grief); she kisses and embraces him while weeping.
Finally, after many further references to her doel, she instructs him at
length about Christianity and gives him advice, which turns out to be
less than apposite. When he actually departs, she is plorant (weeping)
as she kisses him farewell and wishes him the joie (joy) that will now be
lost to her. As Perceval looks back, he sees her lying in a swoon: “con
c’ele fust chaüe mort” (l.589) [as if she were dead]. And away he goes.

4. Further citations identified in-text with line numbers from this edition. All transla-
tions from both French and Old Norse are mine unless otherwise noted.

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 Learning to Feel 77

In the Old Norse translation, Parceval’s mother seems to be con-

siderably more robust. Her son does not return home late from his
forest encounter; thus his mother does not become agitated until he
announces his intention to seek Arthur. Her anxieties, she explains,
stem from the boy’s lack of courtly education and the opprobrium that
he may be exposed to at court, “uggir mik at ferð þín sé farleysi, en
eigi farvísi” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 110) [“I fear that your journey
will be a foolish venture, rather than a wise undertaking” (Wolf and
Maclean 1999, 111)].5 Unlike the French mother, whose complicated
backstory explains her hostility to chivalric culture, the Norse mother
does not regard knighthood as innately perilous. She simply observes,
as she equips and advises her son, that he is causing her sorrow “ógleðr
nú þú móður þína” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 110) [now you are
making your mother unhappy]. The lady is quite clear that Parceval
is following the ineluctable call of his knightly blood, and she seems
resigned to his departure; as he leaves, she accompanies him with a
hryggju hjarta (sorrowful heart) and with harmsfullan trega (grief-filled
sadness). As Perceval casts a glance backward, he observes that she is
lying unconscious (í óviti), but, brutally, “hann gaf ekki gaum at því”
(Wolf and Maclean 1999, 110) [he paid no attention to that].
In comparison to the French source, the Norse offers a much more
limited and restrained emotional display. The mother’s appraisal of
the situation is quite different in the later, Norse version: she does not
connect her son’s wish with her own unhappy past and the tragic loss
of her husband, but rather she shows a proleptic, entirely rational, and
indeed justifiable apprehension that her son is unfit for courtly life.
Nor does she instance markedly emotional behavior: there are no kisses
or embraces, nor outbursts about lateness. The translator substitutes
a quietly observational tone and a clear linkage of the mother’s sad-
ness with a strong social anxiety produced by fear that the boy will be
ridiculed. A distinctly cognitive explanation for the mother’s reaction
is thus offered. At the same time, Parceval’s mother seems to draw
comfort from a genetic explanation of her son’s behavior; indeed,
she warmly endorses his decision to become a knight (Barnes 2007,
380–1; Psaki 2002, 205–9). Consequently, her advice equips him with
“a highly practical code of conduct” (Barnes 1984, 51), drawing on
the Old Norse translation of the Disticha Catonis (Distichs of Cato)
as well as Konungs skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror), and thus it is very

5. All citations from Parcevals saga (Wolf and Maclean 1999). Further citations identi-
fied in-text with page numbers from this edition; translations mine, apart from here.

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 78 Scandinavian Studies

much to the point. Sadness is, as in the French, localized in the heart,
a concept widely attested in both Old English and Old Norse (Lock-
ett 2011; Mackenzie 2014, 116–34). The lexicon of emotion listed
above—ógleði, hryggju hjarta, harmsfullan trega—is quite limited,
though not noticeably more so than the comparable French terms:
doel, correciee. Importantly, though, there is no suggestion in the saga
that the mother’s swoon might be fatal; when Parceval and the saga’s
audience learn of it later in the text, the revelation that she has in fact
died of grief is all the more surprising (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 152).
Although the somatic effects of intense sorrow imagined here
diverge considerably from native—or, at least, saga—norms, there is
good evidence for a Norse cultural belief that women can die of grief.
In the Poetic Edda, Guðrún Gjúkadóttir’s life is feared for when she
seems unable to express her grief at Sigurðr’s death (see Hill 2013).
Laxdœla saga, a text that is profoundly interested in emotion both as
analyzed by the narrator and as expressed and repressed by its char-
acters, asserts that Hrefna is “mjǫk harmþrungin” [very oppressed
with grief] after Kjartan’s death, and that, by many people’s accounts,
“hon hafi sprungit af stríði” (Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1934, 158) [she died
of sorrow]. Whether the fear that sorrow can prove fatal to women,
as evinced in Guðrúnarkviða II and Laxdœla saga, was influenced
by European romance norms is a moot point (Sävborg 2013, 86–90;
Kramarz-Bein 1994, 436–7), but it is worth noting that the modes of
grief through which women mourn their dead lovers in, for instance,
Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu and Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa are very
differently elaborated.6
Parceval’s mother’s relative restraint, her acceptance of her son’s
decision, and, in particular, her reconfiguration as a practical advice-
giver suggest that she has been partly reconceptualized according to
native emotion scripts for an anxious mother. As Frigg (in Gylfagin-
ning) strives to save Baldur from his fate, or as Svipdagr’s dead mother
emerges from her burial mound to impart protective spells to aid her
son on his perilous journey (Robinson 1990, 62–6), so Parceval’s mother
6. In Gunnlaugs saga, chap. 13, Helga expresses her sorrow by bringing out and gazing
for a long time at the cloak her dead lover gave her; she dies of sickness with her eyes
fixed on it. In Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa, chap. 33, Oddný “mornaði ǫll ok þornaði”
(Sigurður Nordal 1938, 206) [mourns and withers away] and, if we accept the emenda-
tion, “hon . . . tjáði aldri síðan tanna” (Sigurður Nordal 1938, 206) [never unclenched
her teeth] after Bjǫrn is killed. Kirsten Wolf suggests that the withering away and the
clenched teeth are related; Oddný slowly starves herself (Wolf 2010). Both sagas can
be found in Borgfirðinga sögur (Sigurður Nordal 1938).

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 Learning to Feel 79

displays a practical concern for her son’s new career as a knight, which
juxtaposes oddly with her subsequent emotional collapse and death. A
Norse audience would likely have found it difficult to empathize with
Parceval’s mother’s unhappy death; her collapse is quite contrary to
native norms, and the delay in communicating her death in the trans-
lation sunders the connection between the emotion and its somatic
effect for the audience.

King Arthur’s Demeanor

In medieval literature, kings tend to behave in the court setting
according to well-established schemas, staging emotions that they
do not necessarily feel but which are expected of them. The rituals
of greeting and welcoming an arrival are highly conventional, yet on
arriving at Arthur’s court, our young hero finds the king preoccupied
and inattentive, even when Perceval/Parceval rides his horse right up
to the throne and knocks the king’s hat off. Chrétien depicts the king
as untypically pansis (l. 866) (pensive) and silent, to the extent that the
knights are anxiously asking one another “Qu’a li rois, qu’est pensis
et muz?” [What’s up with the king, who is pensive and silent?]. The
“molt .  .  . cortois” [very courteous] Ivonet kindly identifies the king for
Perceval, but Artu nevertheless remains lost in thought: “li rois pensa,
qu’il ne dit mot . . . li rois pansa et mot ne sone” (ll. 882, 884) [the
king was thinking, he did not say a word . . . the king thinks and does
not utter a word]. Only when his hat falls off is Artu roused from his
introspection. He apologizes, blaming his behavior on the Chevalier
Vermaus, who “plus me het et plus m’esmaie” (l. 904) [who greatly
hates me and greatly disturbs me]. It is not the Chevalier Vermaus’s
challenge in itself that has upset Arthur: “ne m’aüst guaires correcié”
(l. 914) [he has scarcely aggrieved me]; of more pressing concern to
the king is the emotional condition of the queen, who has retreated
to her room “de dol et d’ire enflamee” (l. 922) [inflamed with sorrow
and rage]. Whether she will survive the humiliation of the Chevalier
Vermaus tipping wine over her is uncertain, Artu reports; he does not
know whether she will recover “ou ele s’ocit” (l. 923) [or if she will
die]. Artu himself does not believe that she can survive her shame:
“Ne ne cuit pas, que Dex m’aït / Que ja en puise eschaper vive” (ll.
924–5) [I don’t think, God help me, that she can escape it alive].
Young Perceval is quite unmoved, however, either by the king’s doel
(grief) or the queen’s honte (shame); his attention is solely focused on

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 80 Scandinavian Studies

demanding that Artu knight him immediately, so that he can pursue

the Chevalier Vermaus.
The saga makes more precise the cognitive and emotional content
of the king’s preoccupation. He is “angraðr” and “áhyggjufullr” (Wolf
and Maclean 1999, 114) [upset and anxious]. Íonet, “inn kurteisasti
maðr” [the most courteous of men]—note the loanword here—points
out the king to the newcomer. At first, Arthur remains áhyggjufullr
and silent (“þagði hann”) in response to Parceval’s greetings, but then
he puts aside his preoccupation, and apologizes, blaming his failure
to answer the young man on his anxiety and the fact that he is reiðr
(angry). The king would scarcely have been upset (lítt angrat) by
the claims of the Red Knight, he maintains, except that the latter had
emptied a wine goblet over the queen in order to increase the king’s
(significantly, not the queen’s) humiliation (til svívirðingar). Now
the king fears that the queen may not be quite heil (well) when next
he sees her. Parceval cares nothing, says the narrator, for the king’s
svívirðing (humiliation) nor for his harm (grief), but rather demands
to be knighted immediately (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 114).
The Norse King Artús is more visibly upset than his French forerun-
ner. Artu’s emotional state is concealed by his apparent thoughtfulness,
encouraging the audience to take at face value the claim that his sole
anxiety is for the well-being of the queen. Her reaction to her drench-
ing is reported as excessively emotional, to the point of threatening
her life; Artu must find some way of righting the wrong done to her.
The anxiety of the Norse Arthur and the fact that he is upset by what
has happened is written more clearly upon him; the quadruple repeti-
tion of terms derived from áhyggja (to worry, literally “to think about
something”) points to the significant cognitive element of Arthur’s
distress. How is he to respond to the disgrace, the svívirðing that he
has suffered? In this predominantly honor-oriented social milieu, the
king has suffered an enormous loss of face, for it was indeed he, not
the queen, who was humiliated, and he must find a way to avenge his
insult on the offender. Consequently, his emotional state encompasses
both grief and loss: harmr contains both semantic components. While
Chrétien employs hyperbole for comic effect, the Norse queen is not
deemed likely to die in consequence of her vinous drenching. French
Artu keeps his cool, distinguishing himself from the chattering court
by his thoughtful silence—the king is thinking, but about what? The
Norse narrator, by contrast, foregrounds the emotional content and
complexities of Arthur’s pensiveness.

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 Learning to Feel 81

The king’s silence and his withdrawal from the court’s activities
differ slightly from the native Norse script for a king’s expression of
displeasure, in which the king’s silence is a performance that tends to
be directed at a particular individual. Thus, in Egils saga, chapter 13,
the king, who has been listening to slander about Þórólfr Kveldúlfsson,
does not respond to the news that Þórólfr has arrived at court with the
tax he had been sent to collect: “Konungr sá til hans ok svarar engu,
ok sá menn, at hann var reiðr” (Sigurður Nordal 1933, 34) [The king
looked at him and did not answer, and men saw that he was angry].
We can also compare Jarl Hákon expressing his displeasure with Þráinn
Sigfússon in Njáls saga, chapter 88: “Þráinn kvaddi vel jarl; Jarl tók
kveðju hans ok ekki skjótt, ok sá þeir, at hann var reiðr mjǫk” (Einar Ól.
Sveinsson 1954, 218) [Þráinn greeted the jarl. The jarl did not respond
quickly to his greeting and they saw that he was very angry], or King
Sigurðr Jorsalafari’s curt refusal of his brother’s suggestion that they
try to make a poorly catered feast more cheerful (Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson
1941–1951, III: 259).7 The Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (Diction-
ary of Old Norse Prose) has nineteen entries for fátalaðr (untalkative);
although these citations are mostly rather late, it is notable that nine
of these concern interactions between kings and other men. It seems
then to be a royal prerogative to signal displeasure by responding briefly
or hesitantly to greetings when the king is annoyed with an individual
or vexed by a situation (Orning 2008).8 Artu, by contrast, has simply
withdrawn from courtly interaction because he is preoccupied with his
own emotions; he is not staging a performance as Norse kings tend
to do.

Blanchefleur’s Behavior
Fear is a basic emotion much more likely to be associated with women
than men in chivalric literature; consequently, poor, distraught Blanche-
fleur shows a good range of fear-related behavior when Perceval arrives
at her castle. She hopes that her visitor may be able to assist her against
her enemies, Aguingueron and Clamadieu, who are besieging her castle.

7. Thanks to Ilya Sverdlov and Ármann Jakobsson for suggesting these examples.
Cf. also Óláfs saga ins helga, chap. 102, in Heimskringla (Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson 1979,
2:171).
8. Compare also fámálugr (taciturn) and fámæltr (untalkative) as, for example, in
Saga Ólafs konungs ins helga, chaps. 81 and 152, in Heimskringla (Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson
1941, 2:118, 280).

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 82 Scandinavian Studies

The night of his arrival, Perceval is sleeping soundly in his chamber while
she is sleepless and solitary: “Cil dort a aise et cele panse” (l. 1905) [He
sleeps at ease and she is thinking]. Blanchefleur’s anxiety and misery
are expressed through clear somatic indices: “Molt se trestorne et molt
tressaute / molt se giete, molt se demaine” (l1. 1908–9) [she keeps
walking up and down and she trembles / she flings herself about and
she is very upset]. Suddenly, she decides to act: wearing only a cloak
over her shift, hardie (bold) and courageuse (courageous), she sets off
for Perceval’s chamber. Yet her resolution does not last for long: by the
time she arrives, she is weeping (plorant) and feels such fear (paour) that
all her limbs are trembling and she is sweating. Weeping and sighing,
she kneels by the bed and leans over the sleeping knight. As her tears
wet his face, he awakens in surprise. Blanchefleur embraces him estroit
(tightly) around the neck, so Perceval responds with cortoisie (courtesy)
by taking her in his arms. Blanchefleur explains her situation, assuring
him that despite her scanty clothing, she has no malvoistié (ill will) or
vilenie (wickedness) in mind, for no one is as dolante (grief-stricken) or
chaitive (unhappy) as she is. Mal (wrong) and malheur (unhappiness)
are frequently invoked in her plea for help. Perceval gallantly offers her
comfort and bids her weep no longer, suggesting that she should lie
down in bed with him. Blanchefleur readily accedes to his suggestion,
“Se vos plaissoit, / Si feroie” (ll. 2015–16) [if it pleases you, I will do
it], and they spend a pleasant night “boche et boche, braz a braz” (l.
2026) [mouth to mouth and arm in arm] until dawn comes.
Nor can the Norse maiden Blankiflúr fall asleep, but rather than
pacing up and down, she gives loud voice to her misery: “kærir sik
. . . með miklum harmi” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 131) [laments . . .
with great grief]. On her own initiative and unafraid, “óhrædd í sjálfrar
sinnar ábyrgð,” she decides to visit Parceval’s room because, the nar-
rator tells us, she was bold and strong-minded, “djörf ok hugsterk.”
Yet despite her intrepidness in leaving her quarters, Blankiflúr is in just
as much emotional turmoil as her French equivalent by the time she
reaches Parceval’s chamber; she enters “með mikilli hræzlu ok skjálfta
ok lágum gráti” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 132) [with a great deal of
fear and trembling and weeping quietly]. Blankiflúr, however, does
not sweat. She, too, kneels by the bed and weeps over her guest’s face.
Unlike Perceval, who was astonished by his hostess’s behavior, Parceval
demonstrates his growing emotional literacy. He immediately identifies
the girl’s emotional state and asks her why she is so “harmsfull, öngruð
ok óglöð” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 132) [grief-stricken, troubled, and

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 Learning to Feel 83

unhappy]. Blankiflúr asks him not to view her behavior as shameful (til
svívirðingar). She explains her plight more briefly than Blanchefleur,
but she reiterates her misery: she is the sorgfullastr (most sorrowful)
of all women, and she intends to kill herself. Her enemies cause her
sorg, harmr, and hryggleikr (sorrow, grief, and misery), and she is
particularly sorgfull (sorrowful) at the death of so many of her men.
When she will be obliged to surrender the castle the next day, she will
be harmsfullari and hörmuligri (more grief-stricken and more miser-
able) than any other woman: Blankiflúr’s marked use of comparatives
echo Blanchefleur’s claim that no one in the world is more miserable
than she.
Parceval reads the situation accurately, realizing that the girl has
come to shed tears over him because she wants him to fight for her.
Addressing her as his beloved (unnasta) and using her own language
of sadness, he suggests that she put aside her sorg and hryggleik (sorrow
and distress) for the night and climb into bed with him (Wolf and
Maclean 1999, 134). Virtuous Blankiflúr declares that she would rather
leave. Nevertheless, Parceval draws her hæverskliga (gently/courteously)
into bed, and they spend the night kissing and embracing, but, the
narrator is at pains to emphasize, all without sin (án synd).
The girl’s physical indices of anxiety are scaled back in the Norse
text; her conventional speech act of lament substitutes for the French
maiden’s pacing up and down. It is not until Blankiflúr finds herself in
Parceval’s room that she considers the social shame (svivirðing) that
her immodest behavior is risking; consequently, she begins to display
clear somatic emotionality. The Norse lexis of sadness is restricted
and repetitive, centering on harmr and sorg. In the most striking
contrast to Chrétien’s account, Blankiflúr shows a distinct resistance
to getting into bed with Parceval. Parceval has, however gently, to
draw her under the covers, while the French Perceval initiates kissing
and embracing before the lady gets into bed with him. Once in bed,
however, the girls enjoy the kisses and caresses of the young men who,
they hope, will change their fortunes and avert the suicides that they
have threatened.
The women’s emotional displays are performative in that, in Kathryn
Starkey’s words, they “function to affect socially recognized states of
affairs, changing the status of someone or something,” although they are
at the same time “spontaneous, affective, and possibly even unintended
or unconscious” (2007, 257–8). At the same time, the girls’ behavior
also constitutes a “performance,” “[a] display of emotion as political

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statement” (Starkey 2007, 256, 257).9 Parceval understands very clearly

that Blankiflúr’s lamentations are intended to elicit a promise to fight
as her champion the next day. He willingly accedes to her unspoken
request; his response recasts him as the girl’s lover, anticipating that
his reward for victory will encompass both sexual pleasure and the
opportunity to marry this high-status lady. Like any other saga hero,
Parceval recognizes that overt female emotional display is usually not
simply a spontaneous reaction to circumstances (or else Blankiflúr
might as well have remained lamenting in her room). By staging her
emotions, Blankiflúr is able not only to harness chivalric conventions,
which demand that a woman in distress be assisted, but also to invoke
the native saga convention in which female lament shades into hvöt
(instigation), sorrow slides into a demand for vengeance. In Njáls saga,
Hildigunnr’s display to Flosi of grief for her murdered husband func-
tions similarly as both performative and, in its highly theatrical staging,
as a performance (Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1954, 289–93; Clover 2002).
Often saga women do not weep when there is good cause for sorrow,
as Sif Rikhardsdottir (forthcoming) notes, aptly contrasting Guðrún
Ósvífrsdóttir’s reaction to the death of her husband Bolli in Laxdæla
saga with that of Laudine to losing her husband in Ívens saga. But
when they do weep, their performative intentions cannot be ignored:
compare Hamðir’s response to Guðrún’s display in Hamðismál, stanza
9: “hvers biðr þú nú, Guðrún, er þú at gráti né færat?” (Neckel 1983)
[What do you ask for now, Guðrún, what lack makes you weep?].

Keu/Kaei’s Nastiness
Keu is a thoroughly unpleasant character in Norse, as in French. Chré-
tien shows him parading through the court at the Pentecost feast at
which Clamadieu is to surrender himself to Arthur and observes that
Keu’s handsome appearance is ruined by his “felon gap” (ll. 2731–56)
[nasty speech]. Everyone in the court gets out of his way because
they fear his felons guas, sa laingue male (nasty remarks, evil tongue).
His felenies (nastinesses) are plain for all to see; his felons guas (nasty
remarks), whether joking or serious, make everyone avoid him. The
Norse Kæi has just as sharp a tongue—everyone avoids him because
of his “háð” and “spott” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 142) [scoffing and

9. For insightful discussions of performativity and performance, particularly in relation

to gender, see Tennant (1999) and Starkey (2007).

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 Learning to Feel 85

mockery]. Chrétien contents himself with asserting the felon (nasty)

nature of Keu’s utterances, implying that the seneschal’s character is
so well known that it needs no explanation. In contrast, the Norse
translator ascribes Kæi’s uncourtly behavior and verbal performance
to his innate qualities: his illgirnd, öfund, and undirhyggja (ill will,
envy, and deceit). Kæi’s personality thus drives his behavior; the differ-
ent (alliterating) elements identified by the poet belong to a semantic
domain of psychological motivation that, although most frequently
encountered in Christian didactic texts, could also be deployed in
non-religious contexts.
Spott and háð collocate strikingly in Njáls saga, chapter 44, where
Gunnarr remonstrates with Sigmundr Lambason (introduced as spott-
samr [rude] on his first appearance in chapter 41). Gunnarr observes
that Sigmundr’s tendency to behave with “spott ok háð . . . er ekki
mitt skap” (Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1954, 111) [mockery and scoffing . . .
is not my temperament], but this skap does, however, match that of
Hallgerðr. Such behavior is regarded as antisocial in the sagas and often
has, as in Sigmundr’s case, fatal consequences (Einar Ól. Sveinsson
1954, 117). Strikingly, spott and háð are also to be found in close prox-
imity in Konungs skuggsjá (Holm-Olsen 1945, 9, 44) and in Hirðskrá
as occurring in courtly contexts or as the responses of a retinue to a
newcomer.10 Kæi’s unpleasant attitude toward other knights, strangers,
and even ladies would have been recognizable to Norse audiences,
even to those unfamiliar with the competition for status inherent in
the courtly environment (Jaeger 1985), as deliberate, provocative, and
quite uncourtly.

Further Emotional Lexis in Parcevals saga

The emotional lexis in the rest of the saga also encompasses adjec-
tives that describe the characters’ happiness: glaðr, feginn, blíðr (glad,
joyful, happy) and the love between Parceval and Blankiflúr, expressed
through ást, kærr, tryggr elskari (love, dear, faithful lover). The basic
negative emotions are expressed by the lexemes already surveyed;
sadness is mediated by hryggr, angr, áhyggjufullr, harmr, sorg, and
vesöld (wretched), a term applied to the Haughty Knight’s unfortunate
lady. Anger is typically expressed by óðr (furious), reiðr (angry); shame

10. See Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (Dictionary of Old Norse Prose), s.v. “spott”
for many further examples.

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 86 Scandinavian Studies

is most frequently depicted with svívirðing (humiliation) or skömm

(shame); fear is generally indicated with hræddr (afraid) or the verb
hræddiz. Complex emotions, such as those declared by the narrator as
underlying Kæi’s behavior, are rarer. However, it is evident that Old
Norse already possessed a full lexis of emotion at this stage in the early
thirteenth century, one capable not only of expressing basic emotions,
but also of rendering more complex feelings such as illgirnd (ill will,
envy), or the state of being skammfullr (shy, ashamed). Nor are these
essential emotion-terms loanwords: only kurteisi and its derivatives
are directly borrowed from Old French in order to express a specific
notion of courtesy as characteristic of royal courts. Native terms for
what is fitting, makligt, or gentle/decent, hæverskt, are frequently
used synonyms for kurteisi and kurteis. Emotion words in Parcevals
saga often collocate in alliterating pairs, typical of the courtly or high
style that we find in other Arthurian translations and which Marianne
Kalinke discusses at length (1979; and more generally in Kalinke 1981,
133–77), though their use here is less intensive than in, for example,
Möttuls saga (Kalinke 1999).

Emotion Lexis in Other Norse Genres

Parcevals saga’s vocabulary of emotion is thus a native one, evidenced
by the many cognates for key simplex terms (harmr, angr, sorg,
glaðr, blíðr, spott, feginn, skömm) occurring both in Old and modern
English, and in modern German. The saga’s author draws on a well-
evidenced—and perhaps an already well-mapped—semantic domain
of emotion for his basic terminology. Does the saga share its emotion
lexis with Old Norse saga and other genres? A preliminary analysis
of emotion lexis indicates that more intensive lexical investigation
would be fruitful. I used the emotional lexicon of Parcevals saga as the
basis for comparison with a sample of other texts, of varying lengths
and generic affiliations. Njáls saga and Laxdœla saga were chosen
as comparators within the Íslendingasögur, Njáls saga because of its
status as a prototypical Íslendingasaga, and Laxdæla saga because it
has been characterized as taking an unusual interest in the characters’
emotional lives (Kramarz-Bein 1994, 421–2).11 A word-search was
also conducted on electronic texts of the Poetic Edda, the probably

11. The lexical analysis of Njáls saga and Laxdœla saga was undertaken using the
searchable corpus of saga texts at http://malfong.is/index.php?lang=en&pg=fornritin.

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 Learning to Feel 87

thirteenth-century translation of the Distichs of Cato, Hugsvinnsmál,

and the twelfth-century Christian poem Harmsól.12
None of the target emotion lexemes is unique to Parcevals saga,
though it is striking that kurteisi and its derivatives occur otherwise
only in Laxdæla saga. Of the words denoting sadness, harmr is notice-
ably preferred to sorg in the two sagas (nineteen occurrences versus
only one occurrence in the verb-form syrgja). The Poetic Edda has
almost twice as many examples of harmr (twenty-eight) as sorg (fif-
teen). Harmsól, unsurprisingly, given its title, has two occurrences of
harmr, while Hugsvinnsmál contains neither harmr nor sorg. Áhyggja
occurs once each in the two sagas and indeed collocates with reiði in
Njáls saga, but is absent from the poetry. Angr is found once in Njáls
saga, is absent from Laxdœla saga, but is present in the poetry, with
seven occurrences in the Poetic Edda and two and four, respectively,
in Hugsvinnsmál and Harmsól. Reiði is the preferred term for anger
across all the sample texts. Óðr is found in the Poetic Edda and once in
the sagas. Hryggr is absent from the sagas, but present in the poems;
tregi occurs twice each in the sagas, against sixteen occurrences in the
Poetic Edda, and two in Hugsvinnsmál.
The more complex emotions represented by illgjarn (malevolence)
and öfund (envy) are evinced in the two sagas (though Laxdœla has no
instances of illgjarn or its derivatives); öfund also occurs three times
in Hugsvinnsmál, a poem noticeably interested in emotion in a social
context (compare also its ten instances of reiði, anger). Humiliation
and shame are well represented in the two sagas: svívirðing (occur-
ring seven times in Njáls saga and eleven in Laxdœla saga) and skömm
(ten in Njáls saga and three in Laxdœla saga). Neither term occurs
in the Poetic Edda nor in the two other poems. For happiness, glaðr,
feginn, and blíðr are widely employed across the texts, with Laxdœla
saga showing a strong preference for blíðr (which occurs twenty-one
times). Spott and háð (mockery and scoffing) are particularly frequent
in Njáls saga (spott is used eight times, háð three, once collocating with
spott), while Laxdœla saga has only spott, and that only once. Makligt,
along with kurteisi and its derivatives, is frequent in Laxdœla saga. For
love, ást is preferred to the verb elska. Ást occurs sixteen times in both

12. Poetic Edda: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/germ/anord/edda/edda

.htm; Hugsvinnsmál, Wills and Gropper (2007); https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db
.php?id=1018&if=default&table=text&val=&view; Harmsól, ed. Katrina Attwood;
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php?id=1196&if=default&table=text&val=&view.

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 88 Scandinavian Studies

Laxdœla saga and the Poetic Edda against four occurrences in Njáls
saga, six in Hugsvinnsmál, and four in Harmsól.
Drawing conclusions from this preliminary survey is difficult. The
distribution of emotion lexemes confirms Kramarz-Bein’s (1994) read-
ing of Laxdœla saga as particularly interested in love and courtliness,
while Njáls saga focuses on negative emotions, ranging from skǫmm
and hræðsla (shame and fear) through reiði and harmr (anger and
sorrow). Both sagas explore humiliation (svivirðing) and its social
consequences. The interest of Hugsvinnsmál in emotions elicited in
distinct social contexts—anger, envy, malevolence, fear, and love—is
evident from lexical analysis, while Harmsól’s penitential inclination
is signaled by words such as harmr (sorrow), angr (grief), and hræddr
(afraid), with the promise of consolation in ást (love) and the adjective
glaðr (joyful). The emotion lexis of the Poetic Edda encompasses a
very wide range of terms; strikingly absent are terms for more complex
emotions such as humiliation, shame, malevolence, and envy, while
anger and grief outweigh love and happiness. Reiði, tregi, harmr, and
sorg are the most frequent eddic lexemes.

Emotion and Innovation in Parcevals saga

The “diverse behavioural patterns . . . underscor[ing] elements that
define the cultural conceptualising of self and social environment,”
mooted by Sif Rikhardsdottir (2012, 74), are skillfully negotiated by
the translator/author of Parcevals saga. He exercises a degree of judg-
ment and of caution in his translation of emotional events. He excises
the hyperbole from Chrétien’s descriptions of Parceval’s mother and
Arthur’s fears for his queen; such exaggeration has no place in the kinds
of emotion script with which his audience was familiar. He furnishes
Parceval’s mother with a good stock of useful advice, drawn from
didactic texts that, when not direct translations, strongly depend on
European wisdom tradition. He offers new explanations and extenuat-
ing circumstances, rehabilitating Blankiflúr (whose French counterpart
fails to show proper maidenly reticence when it comes to getting into
bed with Perceval), and he strongly emphasizes the lack of sinfulness
in the young people’s embraces. The emotions themselves, namely
sorrow, anger, anxiety, and envy, all exhibited in the passages analyzed
above, were not unfamiliar to Norse audiences, but the situations in
which they are elicited and the behavior they produce are subject to
cultural inflection and to some ethical probing.

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 Learning to Feel 89

What did prove innovative for Norse prose is the opportunity that
Parcevals saga and the other Arthurian translations offered for the
extension of emotion from the characters’ interior (and therefore
largely hidden) processes into physical performances of emotion, the
deployment of somatic indices in the text’s emotion scripts. Thus,
Parceval’s mother, quite unexpectedly, given her relative resignedness
to her son’s departure, is suddenly overcome by a surge of misery and
despair as the young man crosses the drawbridge and collapses in a
fatal óvit. Blankiflúr may not have paced her chamber like her French
counterpart, but when she enters her young guest’s chamber, despite
her integral qualities of being djörf and hugsterk (bold and strong-
minded), she becomes terribly afraid. Her internal state communicates
itself through trembling and gentle weeping as she performs her harmr
at Parceval’s bedside. When he awakens, the girl gains an audience for
her lament, a harmtal or discourse of grief, which more than matches
those performed by such eddic heroines as Guðrún and Brynhildr, and
which is intended to elicit a satisfactory result.
These characters—Parceval’s mother and Blankiflúr—are, of course,
female, and we might profitably contrast their openly emotional suffer-
ing to the often stoic and restrained behavior of female saga characters.
Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir smiles when the man who has just killed her
husband wipes his bloody sword on her apron (see Sif Rikhardsdottir,
forthcoming). Although Sigrún, a former valkyrie, eventually dies of
grief after the death of her husband, she does not fear to enter his burial
mound and lie one last night with him, a course of action that would
be unlikely for the tremulous Blankiflúr. Arthur’s silence, caused by his
interior reflections on his loss of face, the cognitive processing of his
complex emotional response of anger and sadness, is a behavior that
Norse audiences would have recognized; they might have construed
it as a performative, markedly out of place in the normal greeting
schema. Kæi’s idiosyncratic nastiness finds its equivalent in characters
like Sigmundr Lambason in Njáls saga; his spott and háð climaxes in
his composition of verses that preserve Hallgerðr’s scurrilous remarks
about the Njálssons as taðskegglingar (little dung-beards). Sigmundr’s
spott is rightly regarded by his victims as níð (defamation), requiring
vengeance. Thus Skarpheðinn explicitly avenges Sigmundr’s insult
on him, sending his head back to Hallgerðr with a request that she
consider “hvárt þat hǫfuð hefði kveðit níð um þá” (Einar Ól. Sveins-
son 1954, 117) [whether that head had uttered níð about them]. Kæi’s
unpleasant comments usually skirt the kinds of gendered insults that

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 90 Scandinavian Studies

constitute níð, and he enjoys Arthur’s protection. Nevertheless, we

might surmise that a character with his nasty tongue would not have
lasted long in the cultural conditions of pre-conversion Iceland.
Parceval himself learns how to feel by the end of the saga. He has
been taught a series of emotional lessons—lessons that his mother
failed to impart to him, an omission signaled perhaps by his unfeel-
ing reaction to her swoon. He does not empathize with the complex
emotions at stake in Arthur’s situation when they first meet, a lack of
understanding that foreshadows his failure at the Grail Castle. But
he does acquire chivalric emotions: he sympathizes with Blankiflúr’s
plight, becomes angered by unchivalric behavior when he encounters
it, falls in love, and finally, driven by emotion, he comes to a right
relationship with God. Having utterly forgotten Him and having given
himself up totally to the practice of chivalry, he is recalled to Christian-
ity on Good Friday. In conversation with some passing pilgrims, he
is reminded what day it is, and the news strikes him with the force of
a thunderbolt, at an emotional rather than cognitive level. “Þá komz
hann við mjök í hjarta sínu . . . hversu ferliga hann hafði lifat” (Wolf
and Maclean 1999, 180) [Then it came very much into his heart . . .
how perilously he had lived]. Entering the hermitage to which he has
been directed, he begs for mercy, externalizing his emotions through
clear somatic indices: “með knéföllum ok tárum” (180) [by falling on
his knees and with tears]. These actions match his internal condition
of “fullkominni iðran” (180) [complete repentance].13 And having
received forgiveness and having learned a few useful prayers, Parceval
recovers enough social and individual feeling to be able to reintegrate
himself into the social world; he achieves a kind of emotional hygiene.
And in the very next paragraph, without troubling himself to revisit
the Grail Castle, Parceval finds himself back in Fagraborg and marrying
Blankiflúr. His adventures and his emotional education are at an end.

Conclusion
All translations have to adapt the signifying systems of their sources
in order to communicate in the target language; the adaptation of

13. Absent from Parceval’s repentance, as Stefka Eriksen noted in a recent unpublished
paper, is any religiously oriented joy at returning to the embrace of the Church; any
expression of happiness is delayed until the reunion with Blankiflúr: “varð Blankiflúr
unnasta hans honum harðla fegin” (Wolf and Maclean 1999, 182) [Blankiflúr his beloved
was very joyful indeed to see him].

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 Learning to Feel 91

emotional schemas, entailing presuppositions about bodies, minds,

social contexts, and behavior, presents a particular challenge to the
translator. Emotion must be integrated into the ideology of the trans-
lated text and, just as importantly, into the interpretative strategies of
the audience. While Parceval must learn to feel during the course of the
saga, the audience must also learn that, in this new genre, characters
feel—and express their feelings—like this.
I have sketched some of the implications that Parcevals saga has for
the hypothesis that the translated sagas taught Icelandic saga-writers how
to deal with emotional expression, display, and performance. Skaldic
poetry had, from the earliest period, engaged with a range of basic emo-
tions: joy, anger, fear, shame, and so forth, through highly specialized
poetic convention. The lexis of emotion was already well developed in
eddic poetry and Norse prose by the first half of the thirteenth century,
but the strong conventions of narratorial objectivity and reticence in
exploring saga characters’ interiority had inhibited the development
of ideas about emotional performance in secular prose. Characters
rarely exhibit their emotions physically in the Íslendingasögur, even at
moments of high emotion; changing color is the most frequent somatic
indicator, although it is not always clear to onlookers how to interpret
it (Larrington 2001, 255). The translated sagas, however, give freer rein
to narratorial discussion of characters’ feelings and readily display the
somatic effects of extreme emotion in both men and women. In native
poetry, particularly in eddic poetry, emotion is more freely explored.
The various speech acts that form the basis for some of the heroic
poems of the Edda—the hvöt (whetting) or the grátr (lament), for
example—provide a context in which emotions are publicly performed.
Did the translated romances influence the emotional style of the
native sagas? It seems clear that some works, such as Laxdœla saga and,
most strikingly, the later Víglundar saga and Friðþjófs saga, adapted and
modified the innovative emotion scripts of the Arthurian translations,
discussing love in ways that differ markedly from the mediations of
heterosexual desire at stake in, for example, some of the poets’ sagas.
The riddarasögur, the romances newly composed to meet the changing
tastes of fourteenth-century Icelandic audiences, would build on and
develop the emotional norms introduced in the translated Arthurian
romances (see Barnes 2014). The lexical study I have presented here,
I hope, has laid some basis for the establishment of lexicons and tax-
onomies of emotion in specific generic contexts in Old Norse. This
allows us to begin to gauge the impact of Arthurian romance on the

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 92 Scandinavian Studies

native genre system and to enhance our understanding of “emotion

simulations” in medieval Scandinavian texts.

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