Undir borðum

The present study examines food and meals in the Icelandic Family
Sagas. While often inconspicuous, references to the production,
distribution and consumption of food and drink can be shown to
fulfil crucial functions in this body of mediaeval texts. As a
starting point, the food sources and eating habits of Icelanders in
the Viking and Middle Ages are examined in the light of
archaeological, historical and ethnographic research. When the
results are compared to the economy of food as visible in the
Family Sagas, the latter can be demonstrated to carry a distinctive
bias for those forms of agriculture that translated most easily
into wealth and status and/or lay in the responsibility of men,
while being less concerned with the economic reality of the
poor(er) or women. It is further observed that the Family Sagas
avoid the picturing of food and eating in most of their numerous
meal and feast scenes. This is argued to reflect a distinction
between the social institution of eating (together) and the
physical act of (individual) eating, which, as a basically
egotistic bodily activity, is at odds with the social implications
of a shared meal. Meals, feasts and the hosting of guests are means
of status policy as well as of the establishment and maintenance of
social bonds, while the potential of both humour and aggression
inherent to themes of food and eating is put to use in the context
of conflict, insult and battle. In the final chapter, some
conspicuous alimentary imagery of Eiríks saga rauða and Njáls saga
is shown to carry strong intertextual references to the Bible and
clerical writings, aiding a religiously informed reading of some
central passages in these sagas.