From Sinner to Saint: Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir,<i>Laxdæla saga</i>, and the Lives of Women Penitents

In 1953, Gabriel Turville-Petre wrote that the lives of the saints “did not teach the Icelanders what to think or what to say, but it taught them how to say it” (142). Traditionally, it has been assumed that, just as Turville-Petre concluded, the translated lives of the saints were the narrative starting point for the “vernacular” sagas that developed in Iceland during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This notion has carried through to more recent years; in his Eddas and Sagas: Iceland's Medieval Literature, Jónas Kristjánsson (1988) emphasized that the so-called heilagra manna sǫgur (sagas of saints) hold an important place within Iceland's literary history, since they “doubtless served in many ways as models for native authors” and “played some part in bringing the genre of Íslendinga sǫgur into the world and had some influence on their form and composition” (136). In her 2017 monograph The Saint and the Saga Hero: Hagiography and Early Icelandic Literature, Siân Grønlie (2017) challenged this long-assumed “model of linear development from saint's life to saga” (31). Grønlie, who was influenced by Massimiliano Bampi's examination of the influence of translated romance on other genres of Old Norse-Icelandic literature,1 argued for a new and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between translated hagiographic and vernacular saga literature. Using Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem theory,2 Grønlie (2017) demonstrates “the ways in which sagas engaged creatively with saints’ lives over the medieval period,” and has illustrated the various means by which saga literature adapts, challenges, and interferes with the saint's life, specifically with regard to the male saga hero (36). Indeed, as Grønlie points out, the sagas of saints and the sagas of Icelanders were often produced in the same scriptoria, by the same scribes, and for overlapping audiences; as such, the genres had important influences on one another that an application of Even-Zohar's polysystem theory brings to light (23).However, Grønlie was not the first to argue that the secular sagas interacted with hagiographic literature; in 2007, Shannon Godlove made an argument for the “‘hagiographic’ endings” for the main characters of both Njáls saga and Laxdæla saga, which were notably written in the mid- to late thirteenth century, around the same time as the “florid style” sagas of saints. With regard to Laxdæla saga, composed between 1250–1270, Godlove (2007) argues that “Guðrún's grief at the deaths of her husbands and remorse for her past sins turn her to a life of contrition and penance in her final years” (112). Godlove (2007) notes that while Guðrún's conversion may seem abrupt and even disingenuous, it is in line with hagiographic motifs that would have been well-known to the saga writer, and effectively “replaces demonized pagan femininity with an appropriate expression of thirteenth-century Christian female devotion through penance, compunction, and affective piety” (112). Godlove's observations on the character of Guðrún as a secular saint are, I believe, compelling and convincing, and signal the need to examine the character more closely within the context of those hagiographies circulating contemporaneously with the saga, and specifically those structural models and character motifs that could have influenced how Guðrún's story was written.This article draws upon Godlove's observations on how Guðrún was a kind of “secular saint” and uses Grønlie's comparative model in order to demonstrate the specific ways in which Laxdæla saga adopts the structure and rhetoric of hagiography through the character of Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir. I argue that Guðrún is not only a “secular saint” whose saga writer drew on hagiographic motifs, as Godlove concludes, but more specifically that her life may be said to reflect important elements from the lives of the four women penitents represented in Old Norse-Icelandic translated hagiographic literature, namely, Mary Magdalen, Pelagia, Thaïs, and Mary of Egypt. By demonstrating the themes, motifs, and structure common to both Guðrún's story line and those of the four women penitents by bringing these works into conversation with one another, it argues that Laxdæla saga—a vernacular, secular tale of a woman who sinned and, later, repented—can be argued to have adopted key elements from and to have served a similar function as specific works of hagiographic literature known to both the saga's author and its audience.Prior to turning to Guðrún and the ways in which she can be argued to have been modeled on a certain type of saint, it is important to outline clearly the type of saint her life's trajectory reflects: that of the penitent, and more specifically, the female penitent. The earliest of the Christian saints were the martyrs, who imitated the example of Christ and his crucifixion by dying often gruesome deaths in defense of their faith. After Constantine (c. 272–337) converted to Christianity in 312 and ended the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, holy men and women began to demonstrate their devotion to God and attempted to re-create the passion of Christ in new ways. In the early fifth century, a new kind of saint emerged. Unlike the men and women who died violent deaths at the hands of pagan rulers, these new kinds of holy men and women engaged in strict asceticism, for which there were ample biblical models. As Lynda Coon (1997) writes, these models included Jesus, who “like Elijah and Moses before him, purifies himself in the terrifying desert, and the wasteland of Palestine provides the battleground for Christ's warfare with Satan”; Moses, who “sojourns in the deserts of Sinai in order to receive God's written revelation to the Israelites (Exodus 34.28)”; Elijah, who “renews his spiritual potency in the wilderness around Mount Horeb, where angels nourish him while he rests under a broom tree (I Kings 19.4–8)”; and “John the Baptist, who dresses in the charismatic garb of the prophet Elijah, [and] preaches the urgency of repentance in the remote Jordan Valley before the looming eschaton (Matthew 3.1–17)” (Coon 1997, 71).The lives of the fourth- and fifth-century male ascetics, as Coon (1997) notes, tend to take on a militant tone, with the desert fathers “acting as militant guardians of humankind” who “purge the world of demonic influence” (71). Many of the so-called desert fathers imitated Christ by retreating to the wilderness and returning symbolically to the landscape described in Genesis before the Fall; in these ascetic dwellings (askesis) on hills, in caves, and in some instances, in constructed sepulchers, these holy men were corporeally and spiritually transformed through practices of militant self-abnegation and crucifixion (Coon 1997, 72–3). While they, too, might inhabit structures like the desert fathers and engage in similar practices of self-denial, the lives of women who aspired to this type of sanctity tended to focus less on supernatural spirituality and imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ) and more on penance; through their enshrinement, they atone for the sins of Eve on behalf of all humans. Coon (1997) writes that “the lives of desert men therefore reflect the supernatural spirituality of Christ and the prophets, while women's vitae humanize the militancy of desert asceticism and preach the necessity for universal repentance” (72). Coon (1997) also notes that “most holy women live in human-made structures, not in the open desert” as men did, and argues that, in general, “the hallowed lives of mournful women personify repentance and submission. They convey that female flesh can evolve allegorically from the fallen Eve to the immaculate Virgin” her Grønlie (2017) how the lives of desert saints may have the sagas of Icelanders through of the as a for as a of with and as a for the of specifically by at from saga saga, and saga After he is an to the like the desert saint, he has and at the of Using from hagiographic and literature known within the literary world of medieval Grønlie (2017) demonstrates how the and women who can be the of literature, in which and angels for Christian saga's in the wilderness in a desert of and where is a and in this wasteland he a of and in which he hold to his Christian his and in the Grønlie (2017) story is to the of his be as an imitatio Christi The wilderness is also place of demonic and the of in saga where the of the hero which Grønlie (2017) as to his at the of Grønlie (2017) demonstrates how the of these male saga characters with and influence from the lives of male ascetics, and specifically the who to the wilderness in order to atone for the sins of and to engage in an between and demonic in what Coon (1997) to as the spirituality of Christ and the (72). as Coon notes, the lives of women in important ways from those of their male in regard to the of their sins and the penance with which they to atone for symbolically from Eve to the of the women known from hagiographic who converted to a life of self-abnegation to atone for their past four whose lives or in Old who can all be described in this The first of these is Mary The Old Norse-Icelandic of Mary was not composed the century, by but to Saga which may be a and saga from the of Mary and saga The medieval of Mary as it was known in Iceland that she was the of of that she of her sins at that were from and that in the she converted the before retreating to the wilderness to atone for her which also included The saga was on a of and vernacular but upon Old Norse-Icelandic life of Mary of saga whose story had 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this of those she in her life is but not in the and of contrition at the point of conversion another key of the lives of all of the women saints represented in Old Norse-Icelandic to the Old Norse-Icelandic of and Mary Magdalen, the for her sins of and she the of the where she with her and them with her in an of a manna and his with those which in her from the repentance of her and which from her and them with her and the with her in the same saga, Mary to the wilderness to atone for God by to the of and in of Pelagia, too, is described as to the of in a that models Mary saga the woman to where the and to his it was like the woman Mary Magdalen, for the of her also to the of and she is by who had the to and the is described like Mary and Pelagia, to the of the who her an for spiritual saga she these she and and her from a and she to his with and of symbolically at the of Christ by to her before the where too, of a or manna I before the I I of the too, Guðrún with her all of whose contrition is described with and to the of holy a in which she and his the at Guðrún and saga by these and by of the of 1997, saga of the of 1997, and first at saga the first Icelandic woman to the and in the at of the of 1997, of a during this her had a of a who was under the which Guðrún as a kind of revelation or The had to be from the place in which Guðrún in what Godlove (2007) as a kind of of the Guðrún at where she her upon his to Iceland from is in the that who in her saga with her of the of 1997, which her to saga first woman in Iceland to a and of the of 1997, Godlove points out, is an important in which the is Guðrún's for her past Godlove (2007) that “the saga that Guðrún as and turning to Christian repentance” The specific models to the saga writer would have served as important points and models for how Guðrún's to life in might be and also it was The too, would have been with some of these within the context of where the would have been on the saints’ as was Icelanders of the time would have been to the between Guðrún and her from to holy woman and the of the female penitents they were writes, of the of late was to that saints’ lives not just and spirituality but also and and that what their have to say on these is to be and saints’ to or to of saints’ lives can be as of through which to both convey and reflect and lives may for this be as of for medieval notes that which focus on women and which with the of women both in the and in as a both as as of As such, saints’ lives an and not its through which to medieval of women as as various of women's and In this Laxdæla saga like a of hagiography and as a kind of through which could be by the author to his is also that Guðrún's place in where she had a the of her has of a place of and even Guðrún's is with as has and as also in an article the Icelandic of (2007) notes that Guðrún was model of the life for and that Laxdæla saga a for to and turn Christ in their I would take this a and argue that in the saga, the author not only Guðrún as a model of Christian but drew from the specific in the hagiographies of the four woman saints known within Old Norse-Icelandic from and to contrition and Guðrún therefore the of Mary Magdalen, Pelagia, Thaïs, and Mary of by the same function as these hagiographic models who would have been known to both saga author and and whose lives of from past how they the saga author adopted these motifs or not of but as Grønlie has the and of motifs between secular and hagiographic sagas was by means and the example of Guðrún another in which the interacted with and drew upon the rhetoric of the heilagra manna

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