Was anxiety at the root of conflict in medieval society? 

Torfi H. Tulinius is usually immersed in Icelandic medieval literature, in particular the Icelandic sagas. He has a passion for Iceland's literary heritage and the many different sides of the sagas that can reveal themselves depending on how you read them. What is more, the sagas are his livelihood. Torfi is a professor of Icelandic medieval literature at the University of Iceland, so spends most of his days poring over these texts. He researches Icelandic medieval history by considering the sources through different lenses. Sometimes he is a literary scholar, looking at the narrative, the texts themselves and the symbolism, critical reception of the sagas at different points in history, or sociological factors. Sometimes he takes a more historical approach, looking at the reality behind the narrative and contemporary events. Sometimes Torfi focuses on the characters, their psychological motivations and the complex relationships between them. Besides all this, Torfi also teaches a range of courses on medieval literature at the University of Iceland and the UI Continuing Education Institute. 

His current research explores the link between social inequality and anxiety, as it appears in the sagas. Torfi knows that the Icelandic sagas are open to endless interpretations and at the moment is reading Laxdæla saga with the aim of finding out whether anxiety about losing social status could lead to violence. 

Conflict between a slave-woman and a wife in Laxdæla saga

"I was reading Laxdæla saga, specifically the chapter about the arrival of the slave Melkorka in the household of Höskuldur Dala-Kollsson. He had bought her on a trip to Norway and took her into his bed on the journey," explains Torfi. 
"What I became interested in was the reaction of Jórunn, Höskuldur's wife, and how the author describes that. At first, she doesn't appear that bothered, since her husband sleeps with her after arriving home, not his new concubine. Jórunn's treatment of Melkorka becomes colder when Melkorka's son is born, since he is a handsome child and Höskuldur loves him dearly. A few years later it transpires that the concubine is an Irish princess, meaning that the boy is of royal blood. This is the last straw for Jórunn and she violently attacks Melkorka, who fights back," says Torfi. 

Laxdæla saga describes the incident, which would no doubt be defined as domestic violence nowadays. 

"A little later, when Jórunn was going to bed, Melkorka helped her off with her shoes and stockings and laid them on the floor; Jórunn picked up the stockings and started beating her about the head with them. Melkorka flew into a rage and struck her on the nose with her fist, drawing blood. Höskuldur came in and separated them."

At one point the narratives of the sagas were described rather flippantly as "farmers fighting", but as Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, professor of medieval Icelandic literature, says on the Web of Science, women often play a significant role in the sagas. This is certainly the case for Laxdæla saga, as the above example shows. Aðalheiður explains that the women in the sagas either urge the men to take revenge or act as mediators, thereby directly influencing the course of events. Many of the heroines of the Icelandic sagas have become symbols of exceptional Icelandic women and Laxdæla saga provides excellent examples.

Torfi believes that it makes most sense to think of Jórunn's behaviour as an anxiety-driven reaction to what she experiences as a threat to her own status and the status of her children from their illegitimate but noble-born half brother. He prefers this interpretation to the idea that the conflict stems from jealousy between two women in a relationship with the same man. 

Torfi generally considers the psychological motivations of saga characters in the context of the period in which they were written, focusing particularly on societal structures and the contradictions and tensions within them. He has been interested in the relationship between society and the human psyche and how it appears in literature, for example in the violent incident described above when two women literally came to blows.