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go geyja: the limits of humour in Old Norse-
Icelandic paganism
Richard North
University College London
Laughing at religion was easy for medieval Christians, whose Twelfth Night
and Shrovetide revels seasonally encouraged the parody of God's priests and
scriptures (Screech, pp. 220-61). Here it is presumably the worshipper's, not the
agnostic's, familiarity with the divine which 'breeds innocent humour within
groups who share common knowledge and common assumptions' (ibid., p.
228). Within religious groups the humour is innocent even when propriety is
transgressed, for 'without the veneration there would be no joke' (ibid., p. 232),
and the common set of beliefs amplifies a shared response to jokes, be they ever
so irreverent (cf. Cohen, pp. 25-9). The joker elicits the knowledge of others,
who then find themselves contributing the background that will make the joke
work; if it works (even tastelessly), the audience joins him in its response (even
unwillingly) and both find themselves 'a community, a community of
amusement' (ibid., p. 40). And yet there are some who fail to see the joke, who
might regard religious irreverence as blasphemous. To what extent heathen
jokers could blaspheme is a question I shall face here
But I shall start with a Christian humourist, Hjalti Skeggjason, whose
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brother-in-law, sleifr Gizurarson, became the first bishop of Sklholt. In his
slendingabk (c. 1125), Ari says that Hjalti was sentenced in the Alfling to the
lesser outlawry of gog. En flat vas til fless haft, at hann kva at lgbergi
kviling flenna ('for blasphemy. And it was held as grounds, that he had recited
this ditty at the law-rock'):
Vil ek eigi go geyja: grey flykki mr Freyja.
I don't want to mock the gods (/the gods to bark); to me Freyja seems to be a bitch (F 1,
15; cf. Skj B I 131)
Hjalti would have made his joke in 998, a year before Iceland became Christian
by an act of the same parliament. Ari's word gog, which occurs only here and
in the same story in Njls saga, ch.