Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders

Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders is the first book-length study on this subject. A handful of articles and parts of books have previously addressed the topic, and scholarship about Old Norse women and femininities has a long history, but this sustained study of masculinity is a long-overdue contribution to a field often resistant to the importance of masculinity in Old Norse sources, and perhaps also to acknowledging it as a factor that affects the critic's subject position. (Preben Meulengracht Sørensen's 1980 Norrønt nid is, of course, cited and used, but that study was more narrowly focused on the interlocked concepts argr/ragr/níð rather than forming an understanding of the full spectrum of masculinity.) This book clearly lays out how the values and behavior of male saga characters are conditioned by dominant models of Old Norse masculinities (there was more than one) which were ranked in a hierarchy depending on their perceived superiority or lack thereof. The sober view that men in the sagas are as much prisoners of patriarchy as women runs through the entire book, and Evans carefully traces and fleshes out how male characters—despite their often powerful status in society—operate within a system that oppresses every individual in some way or another. A great deal of attention is given to women who goad men into action, but Evans stresses how male characters police each other's masculinity just as, if not more, brutally, showing how the sagas depict a society in which men internalized a rigid idea of hegemonic masculinity which was difficult or impossible for anyone to live up to. This is crucial to understanding the ways in which the social world depicted in the sagas operates, and this book thus fills an important gap.Men and Masculinities starts with an introduction and a first chapter which concisely lay out the book's methodology and argument along with a brief discussion of the sources. Evans summarizes the state of the art in Old Norse Studies and spells out how gender and queer theory, especially the concepts “hegemonic masculinity” and “homosociality,” are productive tools for interpreting the sagas. The first chapter ends with a summary of what it is—according to the Íslendingasögur—to inhabit hegemonic masculinity, working backwards from the insults routinely leveled at allegedly unmanly men. Later on, the fundamental building blocks of hegemonic masculinity are reiterated as “fine physical appearance, the ability to show martial prowess, being able to exact due vengeance, and being able to take the penetrative role in sexual relations” (p. 79). These sections are enormously useful for different readers with various levels of experience in working on this topic. On that point, Evans's writing is exquisitely clear, pedagogical, and effective, with helpful signposting and elegant linking sections. These are qualities which make this book ideal for assigning to students or comparative scholars looking for a good introduction to the sagas. Experts will, however, find a great deal to think about as well.The second chapter, “Homosocial Masculinities,” and the third, “Intersectional Masculinities,” continue to explore these aspects in more detail, often illustrating the analysis with examples from lesser-known sagas or characters previously not discussed much, which is very much in line with recent developments in Íslendingasögur studies and which adds even more value to this book's contribution to the field. In chapter two, a great deal of work is done to break down exactly what is meant by hegemonic masculinity. Here, Evans marshalls a variety of recurring tropes that show the means by which masculinity is enacted (e.g., being loyal to one's lord and giving gifts) and also examines the threats invoked by characters which they use to police each other's behavior, and the way they police themselves. The threats reveal what men in saga society most fear—being talked about disparagingly and even laughed at—but perhaps it could be highlighted even more that this is not just a matter of wounded pride but of survival in a cutthroat society where some men will stop at nothing to dominate their fellow humans (one might, e.g., think of Þórarinn in Eyrbyggja saga). Chapter three looks at factors that complicate a character's status as a man and contribute to their (in)ability to achieve hegemonic masculinity. These variables are youth, old age, race, disability/impairment, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and religion; some of these themes have been explored in depth previously while others are newer. Here, Evans also casts the spotlight on episodes which are rich in meaning but which have often escaped scholars, and he further illuminates the nuances of others, establishing the nature of masculinity as being in constant flux throughout a character's life.The fourth and last chapter builds on the achievements of the rest of the book, but narrows to focus on one character, Grettir Ásmundarson, in his eponymous saga. The chapter looks in detail at his childhood and the dynamics between him and his parents, building on studies that use psychoanalytic theory to explain why Grettir turns out the way he does. Here, the analysis of his mother Ásdís as a woman who embodies female masculinity and possesses the phallus herself (rather than being some kind of vessel for it) is particularly innovative, but the chapter provides other many astute insights into the saga. Evans argues that the scholarly discussion about luck and Grettir's lack of it has been too focused on the arbitrariness of life and one's inability to control all aspects of it. Instead, he puts forward the intriguing and persuasive interpretation that the saga author understands true lucklessness as being Grettir's hypermasculinity, especially his consequent inability to form the homosocial relationships which are crucial for integrating into society.The analysis of Grettis saga enables Evans to reach the conclusion that the saga “consistently open[s] up new conceptual spaces from which the reader may start to recognize the social burden of masculinity and may begin to imagine how society—textualized or otherwise—would look if it were not subject to masculinity's tyrrany” (p. 143). This view will no doubt also open up new ways into thinking about other texts, and all serious critics of Old Norse literature, whatever their thematic interests, ought to read and think about this book. Evans's innovative preface, where he sets out the identity markers that condition his own subjectivity (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, educational background, etc.), is a strong statement on the idea that any reading position can be neutral. Because of his book, it is no longer possible to discuss familiar concepts from Saga studies such as honor, the heroic ethic, feud, friendship, luck/fate, and so forth without integrating them with a discussion of masculinity and acknowledging how inextricably bound up with each other these themes are.This is a compact book, both in terms of length and style, and I found myself wishing for a fuller discussion in places. I wondered—for instance following on from the conclusion about Grettis saga—what kind of people wrote these sagas, in Evans's view, what audiences they were writing for, and how they might have reacted to their works. The evidence is perhaps scant, but could some texts or characters have been responses to/critiques of others—consciously or not—and if so, would audiences have picked up on that? These thoughts are also connected to the question of whether the Íslendingasögur are a coherent genre, which here mainly rests on the sagas’ chronotope but is not interrogated much. Admittedly, these are issues which were probably beyond the scope of the book, given that it is aimed at a range of readers, and the succinct conclusion does indeed gesture to the fruit ripe for picking for future scholars, that is, to the many genres and texts that have yet to be scrutinized in the same way. However, the field of Old Norse studies owes Evans a great debt for laying the foundation for future work. He has shown which methodologies are productive, which models of masculinity prevail in the Íslendingasögur, and how to analyze texts from this perspective. Work done in the early 1990s—when there was less knowledge than now about both gender as well as the primary sources—is still sometimes taken as the point of departure in discussions about gender in Old Norse texts, but Men and Masculinities will be the new go-to source on Old Norse masculinity

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