Parergon

Though appearing in a series ‘founded by the Australian Research Council Network for Early European Research, and now directed by The University of Western Australia Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies’, this is very much a Scandinavian volume. With the exception of Joanna Skórzewska, who obtained a PhD from the University of Oslo, all the contributors are said to have an ongoing association with a university in Denmark, Iceland, Norway, or Sweden, and all the contributions focus on these countries (and usually on just one of them). All, however, are written in excellent English, and only one, that by Nanna Damsholt, is said to be a translation.

Following an Introduction in which the editors consider previous scholarship on friendship and its relation to power structures, and briefly outline the achievement of each contributor to the volume, there are twelve essays, arranged with one striking exception in basically chronological order. Up to nine might be broadly regarded as dealing with Old Norse subject matter, though in many of these the focus is not the traditional Old Norse one [End Page 248] on Iceland. When saga literature is considered, the emphasis is on what it tells us about the society in which it was created, and about the original audiences.

Lars Hermanson in ‘Holy Unbreakable Bonds: Oaths and Friendship in Nordic and Western European Societies c. 900–1200’ ranges over a geographically wide area but focuses on oaths. His attention to sociological theory is far from unique in the volume, but seems greater than average. In contrast, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (‘The Changing Role of Friendship in Iceland, c. 900–1300’) focuses on the chieftains of the medieval Icelandic Commonwealth and the period immediately following, aiming, as he puts it, ‘to pull together some of my main conclusions and ideas’ (p. 43) from previous work. Joanna A. Skórzewska (‘The Motif of Friendship in Vernacular Icelandic Hagiography’) devotes considerable attention to the remarkable Guðmundr Arason (Bishop of Holar in Iceland 1203–37) and his friends (including the saints). In the volume’s fourth essay, Randi Bjørshol Wærdahl (‘Friends or Patrons? Powerful Go-Betweens in the Norwegian Realm in the High Middle Ages’) deals with Icelanders but focuses on the Norwegian court.

‘The Reception and Adaptation of Courtly Culture in Old Norse Society: Changing Conceptions of Hierarchy and Networks in Two Versions of Tristrams saga’ by Hans Jacob Orning is mainly a study of the Norwegian Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, dated to 1226, and the Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, usually dated to the fourteenth century. Mia Münster-Swendsen’s ‘Educating the Danes: Anglo-Danish Connections in the Formative Period of the Danish Church, c. 1000–1150’ is perhaps more an interesting piece of historical detective work than a study of friendship. It is followed by Nanna Damsholt’s ‘Masculinities and Friendship’, which employs the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus and the letters of Abbot Vilhelm of Æbelholt to explore understandings of gender and friendship in Denmark around 1200. Thomas Småberg (‘The Language of Masculine Friendship: Idealism and Political Realism in a Swedish Fourteenth-Century Rhyming Chronicle’) focuses on friendship and chivalry in Erikskrönikan, a work that, he suggests, ‘played a role in the transformation of the Swedish magnate group into the emerging Swedish nobility of the early fourteenth century’ (p. 208).

Three essays with a focus on the early modern period follow. Gunner Lind (‘The Friendship of Kings: Friendship and Clientelism around the Kings of Denmark, 1600–1750’) considers the kings’ relationship with various groups of friends who were mostly also their servants, and how these varied over time. Both Ola Teige (‘Friends, Brokers and the King: A Norwegian Merchant’s Informal Political Networks in Copenhagen in the Early Eighteenth Century’) and Bård Frydenlund (‘The Value...