The Old Icelandic story of “Audun and the Polar Bear” (“Auðunar Þáttr vestfirzka”) is both a very brief story (six pages in Miller’s translation) and an odd one. The story tells about the adventures of Audun (I follow Miller in using an Anglicized version of the name), an Icelander who sells what he has to buy a polar bear in order to give it to king Svein of Denmark. Although “Auðunar Þáttr vestfirzka” has sometimes been treated as a relatively simple story, Miller shows in his book that though brief, the story of Audun and his bear is nonetheless a complex story whose meanings rest in the social relations among and between different social classes in medieval Scandinavia, and that to understand the actions of Audun and others in the story a substantial knowledge about medieval Icelandic folk law and custom is required.
Though the story seems to rest on an absurdity—why would anyone sell their belongings in order to buy a bear just to give it away to the king of Denmark?—Miller’s close reading of the story in the context of medieval Icelandic folk law and folk custom shows that Audun’s seemingly irrational action is actually rational behavior grounded in a solid knowledge of these laws and customs. Two things especially are foregrounded in Miller’s reading of Audun’s story: first, Audun’s effort to do something “saga-worthy,” that is to say, to do something memorable; and second, the role of the gift economy in medieval Scandinavia. And, though Audun is sometimes imagined as something of a fool or innocent by modern readers, Miller shows that his actions are not those of a simpleton; indeed, through his manipulation of folk law and custom he not only accomplishes his saga-worthy behavior, but also returns home to Iceland a well-to-do man.
Miller opens his book with a translation of the story from the fourteenth-century manuscript called Flateyjarbók. His choice of this version makes sense as it is the fullest version of the story, preserving significant details lost in the other extant versions. He follows this translation with two sections of commentary: the first, “The Close Commentary,” focuses on the story itself; the second, “Extended Themes,” focuses more on the broader cultural contexts of the story. Audun’s actions and those of other character, are carefully contextualized, and through his analysis of these actions Miller shows how they reveal an extraordinary amount of information about social relations, law, and custom in medieval Iceland and Scandinavia. The topics Miller covers are very broad, including such areas as the nature of market transactions and middlemen, gift-exchange, ideas about humor, and the meaning of luck in medieval Icelandic and Scandinavian society. Yet, as he shows, each of the topics must be considered in order to understand Audun’s story. Through the close examination of each of these specific and general topics, Miller makes plain to modern readers the cultural rules that guide Audun’s behavior. Miller’s reading of the story is very convincing, and one agrees with him in the end that this brief story is not the simple story it has been taken to be, but rather a very sophisticated and artistically polished one. But his book also makes the important point that medieval Icelandic literature, so often treated as though it is readily accessible to modern readers, requires a substantial knowledge of the folk culture of the time in order to fully understand the actions of the characters.
Audun and the Polar Bear is an excellent book that shows how a deep knowledge of folk culture can explain a literary text. It should be read by anyone with an interest in the study of folklore and literature, folk law, folk custom, or medieval Iceland and Scandinavia.
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[Review length: 620 words • Review posted on March 23, 2010]