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Disability & Society

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From the Mute God to the Lesser God: Disability in Medieval Celtic and Old Norse literature
LOIS BRAGG
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Department of English, Gallaudet University, Kendall Green, 800 Florida Ave NE, Washington DC, 20002, USA Version of record first published: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: LOIS BRAGG (1997): From the Mute God to the Lesser God: Disability in Medieval Celtic and Old Norse literature, Disability & Society, 12:2, 165-178 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599727317

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Disability & Society, Vol. 12, N o. 2, 1997, pp. 165 177

From the M ute God to the Lesser God: disability in M edieval Celtic and Old Norse literature
LOIS BRAGG
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Department of English, Gallaudet U niversity, K endall G reen, 800 Florida Ave NE, W ashington DC 20002, U SA

A BST RAC T The oldest Norse and C eltic literature is likely to treat of exceptionalities, including those that we would call disabilities, in a fashion quite unlike that to which we are accustomed to nd in modern literature. In the archaic literature, we nd mythologica l motifs about contact with the supernatural and the related notion of a trade-off of a body part for superhum an abilities, and at the same time we notice a general disinterest in impairments as they might affect a character s competence. W hile there does seem to be some concern for dangers an individual s impairm ent might pose to society and some desire for cures, there is no evidence for the later disabling notion of d monic possession, little recognition that impairm ents might be medical conditions or personal tragedies, and no hint of marginalizing pity or consequent charity.

D isability in Premodern Literatu res Scholars in the em erging eld of D isability Studies rarely address prem odern literatures, but when they do, the rst order of business must be to discern exactly what constitutes a disability for the work s intended audience. W hile a scholar of A merican dram a working with the Tennessee W illiam s play The Glass M enagerie , for exam ple, can undertake an analysis of Laura s m argin alizatio n as a marriage partner, and her m other s avoidance of the pejorative lab el `cripp led , with con dence as to exactly what the word `crippled would have m eant to W illiam s and his intended audience, this is far from true for scholars in medieval and R enaissance studies. W hile m any conditions that resulted in disability 10 0 years ago nearsightedness, epilepsy, harelip no longer do so, it would not be true to say that disabilities were m ore numerous or onerous in the M iddle A ges than they are today. On the contrary, present day expectations of competence in using the technologie s of literacy and the autom obile so disable people who are blind that despite their educations and abilitie s m ost obtain gain ful em ploym ent only with dif culty. In contrast, archaic oral societies found such people ideally suited to be central repositories of the society s relative ly static tradition its mythology, religio n, history and literature. G iven the careful econom y of resources characteristic of archaic societies, we may im agin e these societies selecting m em bers who exhibited physical exceptionalitie s
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such as blindness for roles as singers, priests or shamans, not only because such m embers were ineligib le to become, for exam ple, warrio rs, and would otherwise devolve into burdens on the comm unity, but also, m ore positively, because archaic societies exploited the special suitability of such m em bers to ll these im portant social positions. Thus, as we have seen in the case of the blind, who were pushed increasingly to the m argin s as world societies becam e ever m ore m obile, the pattern of change in the de nition of disabilities, cultural attitudes toward them , and lived experience with them is not always and everyw here, or even m ostly, one of chronologically progressive am elioration from m argin ality. As an illu stration of the need for extrem e caution in determining how a culture far distant from us m igh t have view ed what we would call a disability we m ay take this passage from the thirteenth century Icelandic Sturlu saga (cap. 6). The narrato r is describin g the powerful twelfth-century chieftain Einarr p orgilsson: Han skorti ok eigi kapp ne a r D i. Engi var hann lagum a D r, ok blestr m a li. (Jo n Jo hannesson et al. , 1946, Vol. 1, p. 68.) A very literal translation would be: He lacked neither zeal nor courage. H e was no law man, and [he was] lisping in speech. G iven that Old Norse syntax is typically additive rather than subordinative, how is one to understand the relationship among Einarr s boldness, his being no lawm an and his speech im pairm ent? Based on what we know of the saga world, we might understand it thus: Einarr has a lisp, which m akes him unable to plead effectively in a law case, since he could be faulted procedurally by his opponent for failure to articulate properly. Therefore, he resolves his disputes out of court and has cultivated an im age of boldness to bring about such extra-legal resolutions in his favor. H owever, if one were to read this passage by retrojecting the sort of notions current today about a lisp that is, a param edical condition requirin g intervention by professionally trained and certi ed speech pathologists and, at the sam e time, a sign of effeminacy (and therefore, in m ales, of hom osexuality) one m igh t seriously m isread this passage, as has the translator of the only Englis h version currently in print: He did not lack courage or daring even though he was not a m an of law , and lisped som ewhat when speaking (M cGrew & Thom as 1970, Vol. 1, p. 65; em phasis m ine). T he translator s `even though im plies that a lisp would indeed indicate a lack of (m anly) courage , while her `somewhat attem pts to soften what she understands to be an em barras sing defect. The text, however, indicates that such assum ptions are wholly unfounded. Disabilitie s, then, are individually de ned by the culture in question and it is our task, as unintended readers of archaic texts, to suspend our own cultural notions and to determ ine, in so far as possible, the view of the culture at hand.

Disability in Medieval Celtic and O ld Norse Literature Changing M odels of Disability in the M iddle Ages and R enaissance

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A lthough one should expect a great deal of variatio n, depending on m any factors including the cachet that a particular exceptionality m ay enjoy in a particular genre or type charac ter, one can nevertheless discern a pattern of sequential rede nition during the M iddle A ges and Renaissance. This sequence is well illu strated with lycanthropy, which now, havin g been rede ned in medical terms, is a psychological disability: according to one case study, `chronic pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia (O tten, 1986, p. 3). I have chosen the werewolf not only because de nitions of and attitudes toward it have gone neatly through all the stages of rede nition that I posit, and thus it serves as a good illu stration of the progression, but also because a survey of lycanthropy m ay serve to rem ind us that what we call disabilitie s are perhap s alw ays and everyw here exceptionalities , but not always disabilitie s.

The Pagan M odel In the extant texts of m edieval northern Europe, the earliest m odel of exceptionalitie s is what m ay be called the pagan m odel and by `pagan I mean nothing m ore than the m odel that was in place before the society in question becam e effectively, rather than nom inally, Christian. This pagan model generally saw exceptionality, in theory, as evidence of supernatural contact and, in practical term s, not particularly disabling. T o illu strate, here follow s a description of a fam ous N orse werewolf, lfr, the grandfather of Egill Skallagr msson. This passage is taken from the Kveld-U rst chapter of Egils saga : lfr, the son of Bjal . U lfr was a m an so big and There was a man called U strong that no one was his equal, and as a young m an he used to go avikin g lfr married [Salbjo and harryin g . He was a berserker. U rg Ka rado ttir] and lfr was a rich man in both land and m oney. He settled down on his farm . U took on the rank of a landed m an, which his ancestors had held, and lfr was a very good m anager of became a powerful m an. It was said that U his farm and household. It was his custom to rise early and go about as a overseer, or to where the smiths were working and to see about his stock and elds, and som etimes he talked with the m en who needed his advice he could give good advice on all m atters because he was very knowledgeable. But every day at dusk, he becam e so m oody that no one could speak with him he was sleepy. It was the talk am ong m en that he had an exceptional ability to change shape [ at hann v ri m jo k hamram mr ]; he was calle d `Evening-W olf . (N ordal, 1933, pp. 3 4; trans. by the present author.) lfr is characterized positively in every way he is bold, In this passage Kveld-U virile, competent, hard-working, rich, well m arrie d and noble and his lycanthropy is m entioned at the end of this charac ter sketch as though it were an amusing eccentricity, although, of course, the intended reader was surely to see the social and lfr s class. To be mjo personal advantages of this exceptionality to a m an of U k

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hamram mr , to have an exceptional ability to change shape, in fact, heigh tens one s lfr, as a berserker, m ade his m oney perform ance as a vikin g, the arena in which U lfr s lycanthropy becomes important later, as the narrative proand reputation. U ceeds from this genealogical introduction to the story proper of his grandson Egill, who is subject to bouts of ham remi , `shape-shifting , himself, as well as to bouts of skaldship. Both Egill s tendency to becom e hamramm r , which he inherits, and his skaldship, which is his own gift, are transforming activities often linked in N orse and Celtic tradition. Here, as in the N orse m aterial in general, these linked exception D inn, the shape-shifting god of both war alitie s suggest contact or association with O and poetry. A lthough the intended Icelandic reader certainly would have recognized the linkage and assumed the divine association without further narrativ e com ment, the saga does indeed go on to m ake the entire m atter explicit, m ost notably in Egill s poem Sonatorrek (cap. 78). This `Lam ent for Sons was composed on the occasion of his son Bo D varr s death by drowning. W hen he recovers Bo D varr s corpse and buries it in his own father s barro w, Egill swells up so that his clothes tear from his body. He then retires to his bed-closet where he declines food, drink and talk in a protracted suicide. W hen his daughter persuades him to live long enough to D inn explicitly as the com pose a poem on Bo D varr s death, Egill begins by invoking O god who acquired the skaldic m ead, that is, poetic inspiration, from the gian ts. In D inn, rst by remarkin g bitterly that he, the last stanzas (21 25), Egill returns to O Egill s divine patron, in his role as lord of the dead, has now taken Egill s son from D inn has given him not only the skaldic him and then by observing the irony that O inspiratio n with which to compose the present poem, but also warlike hatred, which Egill now directs again st his divine double. In this episode and its em bedded poem, considered Egill s nest, the m otif of shape-shifting typically is clustered with the D inn. pervasive presence of O The Christian Model Egils saga was written around 1230, but, lik e all the sagas set in the 10th century, it is an antiquarian work, not least in its treatment of exceptionalitie s. M eanwhile, in Plantagenet Englan d, we nd a new and very different m odel emergin g, a m odel that accompanied the spread of Christianity from the south. In Bisclavret, a lay of M arie de France (Rychner, 1966; O tten, 1986), we nd pity for the werewolf as m otivato r for the plot. In this story, the unfortunate protagonist, who is depicted as suffering from lycanthropy and notice that we aren t likely to use the word `suffer of lfr is doom ed to perpetual wolf status when his wife steals his clothes, Kveld-U which are his way of reverting to human form , in order to carry on an affair with her lover. He is eventually recognized as no ordinary wolf, however, and protected out of pity by a lord until the guilty wife is discovered and poetic justice served. In Bisclavret, as in Egils saga , no m ention is m ade of the cause of lycanthropy and the wife appears as the antagonist merely because she interferes with what is apparently an innate character trait, probably to be understood as inherited, as with the older view. However, in sources contemporary with M arie and continuing well into the R enaissance, we nd an emergin g concern to identify the cause of

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lycanthropy. As with m any other physical and m ental exceptionalities , this cause was com m only identi ed as a sort of demonic possession. This notion clearly has its roots in the Gospels, where Jesus of N azareth is portrayed as an exorcist of the `unclean spirits that are taken to be the cause of psychological and other disabilities, and is well known to us through the abundant documentation of the witch trials. M ost of the exam ples do cluster around 1600, though as early as c. 118 7 we nd G irald us Cam brensis reporting a werewolf who attrib uted his condition to a curse (O tten, 198 6, p. 57). Clearly, these notions are as out of place in our reading of Egils saga as is M arie s pity for the werewolf. It is im possible to overemphasize the point that in the pagan Norse saga world, `shapeshifting is not an illn ess and O D inn is not its cause.

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The M edical M odel Looking for causes of exceptionalities, even in the wrong places, is a practice to be associated with the R enaissance and one that also led to the m odel of disability that prevails today am ong the general public: the m edical m odel. A lthough the m edical m odel had been artic ulated by classical authors, and one seventh century physician did, in fact, apply it to lycanthropy when he attribu ted this condition to `brain m alfunction, hum oral pathology, and hallucinogenic drugs (quoted in Otten, 1986, p. 13), the rst Renaissance appearance of this view was in the 1597 D m onology of then Jam es VI of Scotland, who denied that Satan actually could turn people into wolves and asserted, instead, that people who think they are wolves suffer from a `natural superabundance of M elancholie (quoted in O tten, 1986, p. 103). It is this sam e m edical m odel that persists to this day: `werewolves , when apprehended for m otiveless and grisly serial m urders, can take the insanity plea and be treated into docility with m edication because the condition has been rede ned in m edical term s. Yet the present view of lycanthropy, as of other exceptionalities, retains many traces of archaic notions in that werewolves continue to be as sensational as ever, and are associated in the popular m ind with such tabloid fodder as Satanism and sado-m asochism. The m edical model is doubtless a vast im provem ent over the older `Christian m odel that was m anifested in the givin g of alm s or the burning at the stake, both actions being predicated on charity, but it is well to rem em ber that the medicalization of disabilities can result in social m argin alizatio n lfr established and m aintained an integrated position of just as profound. Kveld-U honor and m aterial wealth in the saga world not despite his partic ular condition, but because of it. Today, of course, he would be institutionalized. D isability and the Divine A few brief illu strations from the literatu re of m edieval Irelan d, W ales and Iceland will serve to sharpen the archaic pagan m odel, and to encourage us to lay aside the accretions that led to our m odern medical m odel in order to determ ine to what extent exceptionalities m igh t have been disabling. A gain the operative view for attitudes towards im pairm ent and other exceptionalities that appear in the literature

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of the early, northern European M iddle Ages is, in general, that they are a sign of contact with the superhum an. In fact, the literatu re prominently features deities who are themselves im paire d or m utilate d. M ac Datho , a re ex of the Irish Lord of the D ead from the U lster Cycle of tales, bears a nam e that suggested `Son of Two M utes to later m edieval antiquarian s. A lthough a m ute god is not separately recognized in Irish tradition, the extant literature features very m any m utilated euhemerized deities and m ythological heroes. In Sce la M ucce M eic Datho ( The Tale of M ac Datho s Pig ), to take just one exam ple at random , we see a series of such gures: the rst one-handed, the second one-eyed, the third one-footed, the fourth castrated and the last m ute (Thurneysen, 1935; Gantz, 1981, pp. 180 187). The m utilated god is well attested in N orse m ythology, which has at the head of its D inn and the one-handed Ty pantheon the one-eyed O r, of whom more below. W hether or not the deity in question is him self physically exceptional in this m anner, the notion that contact with the divine results in (temporary) loss of a faculty is widespread and hardly unique to pagan ism. One thinks readily, for exam ple, of Saul of Tarsus and his 3 days of blindness following his encounter with the godhead on the road to Dam ascus. The Celtic literatu re evinces this motif m ost unequivocally. In Serglige Con Chulainn ( The W asting Sickness of Cu Chulainn ), an Irish story concerning an illn ess that features m uteness, Cu Chulainn is visited in a dream by two Otherworld wom en who beat him in turn with horsewhips. The Ulaid perceived the state he was in, and they attem pted to rouse him . But Fergus said `No! Do not disturb him it is a vision. Then Cu Chulainn awoke. `W ho did this to you? asked the U laid, but he was unable to speak [ n ro fe t arom a n-acallaim ]. He was taken to his sickbed in an Te te brecc, and he rem ained there a year without speaking to anyone. (D illo n, 1953, p. 3; Gantz, 1981 , p. 157.) In the Pedeir K einc y Mabinogi ( Four Branches of the Mabinogi: Evans & R hy s, 18 87; Ford, 1977 ), we nd further exam ples of m uteness, as well now as of paralysis, resulting from contact with the Otherw orld. In M anawydan m ab Lly r ( M anawydan, Son of Lly r ), Pryderi, havin g entered the O therw orld through a mound (m ounds being typical lim ina in the W elsh m aterial), discovers a golden bowl: He was enraptured by the neness of the gold and by how well-w rought the basin was. He cam e to where the basin was and took hold of it. As soon as he did so, his hands stuck to it and his feet to the slab he was standing on; his power of speech went from him , so that he was not able to utter a single word. Thus he stood. (Ford, 19 77, p. 80.) R hiannon is likew ise m uted and paralysed when she comes looking for Pryderi. In Branwen uerch Lly r ( Branwen, Daughter of Lly r ), we nd a variatio n of this m otif. Bra n, an antecedent of the later Arthurian Fisher King, possesses `a cauldron with a special property: should a man of yours be killed today, cast him into the cauldron, and by tom orrow he will be as good as ever but he will be without speech (Ford, 19 77, p. 63).

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In the last instance above, we nd that the faculty of speech is traded off in return for m iraculous revival just as Cu Chulainn survives his near-death experience in return for the loss of his speech. Since the faculty of speech is universally (though not valid ly, of course) recognized as the faculty that m akes us uniquely hum an, it is not surprising that it is this faculty that is traded off for revival. In fact, one might say that any sort of im pairm ent is seen as the result, as W illiam Sayers writes, of a `body part havin g been traded in return for [a] special ability (1990 , p. 65). For other exam ples, one need look no further than the blind seer m entioned above, the stock oxym oron of so many and diverse mythologies and literatu res. To put it the other way around, one could say, quoting Jean-M ichel Picard, that `the speci c power or function of a give n m ythological character is con rm ed or stressed by the loss of the organ which is norm ally the instrum ent of this function (1989, p. 369 ). Patrick Ford (1990) cites several exam ples of this notion from the Irish m aterial, am ong them the follow ing paradox: `Finn tells of a deaf m an among the Fianna, and there never was a lay or poem com posed on Fenian subjects which he has not stored up in his m em ory (p. 37). Thus, as Ford writes, `eloquence is born of dum bness, vision of blindness, and radiance of loathsom eness (p. 27), to which he m ight have added auditory m em ory of deafness. W hether it is, as Ford here would have it, that the defective or m issing hum an faculty gives birth to the superhuman ability or, as Sayers here would have it, that the hum an faculty is sacri ced for superhuman ability, doesn t m atter at bottom. W hat is im portant is the linkage of these two m otifs, the stories that seek to establish cause and effect being later rationalizatio ns. T o illu strate, we m ay look at an analogous gure from Greek mythology (relatively m uch better attested than the Celtic or N orse) about whom there are con icting traditions concerning cause and effect: the blind seer Teiresias. According to one tradition, Teiresias was a congenital seer who was later blinded for the m isuse of his gift in revealing secrets of the gods, while according to other traditions he was rst blinded as a punishm ent for sexual knowledge and then given the gift of prophecy as a com pensation. A gain , the key point is the linkage and co-existence of the disability and the super-ability. In the N orse literature, we nd this linkage embodied in what is perhaps its locus classicus , the story in Chapter 15 of Snorri s Edda (Jo nsson, 1931; Faulkes, 1987) of D inn s acquisition of wisdom. Under the roots of the W orld Ash lies O the spring of M mir, in which is hidden wisdom and understanding. M m ir is the name of the owner of the spring. He is full of wisdom because he D inn] came drinks from the spring out of the Gjallarho rn. A ll-F ather [i.e., O there and asked for a single drink from the spring, but he did not get it until he had given one of his eyes as a pledge. (Faulkes, 1987, p. 17) T he Eddic poem Vo luspa (N eckel & Kuhn, 1962; T erry, 1990) m akes reference to this story as well, im m ediately following reference to a similar story about the god sgar D r. Heim dallr depends for his ef cacy as sentry upon H eim dallr, the sentry in A D inn drank as a trum pet his acute hearing, and uses the sam e horn from which O

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D inn, left a body part or faculty with which to sound a warning. Heim dallr, like O (his ear or his hearing) in M mir s spring. In the case of the god Ty r, we nd not so D inn and Heim dallr, but m uch a ritual sacri ce of a body part or faculty, as with O rather a practical sacri ce. As we read in Chapter 34 of Snorri s Edda , Loki fathered the wolf Fenrir, who was prophesied to play a role in the fall of the gods at D inn. W hen the gods attem pt to bind Fenrir with a R agnaro k, speci cally, to kill O m agical silken thread that they represent as harm less, the wolf asks that one of them put his hand in its m outh as a pledge that they are not deceiving him. Only Ty r, the deity associated by Snorri with bravery and victory, offers to do so and, of course, loses his hand when the wolf nds itself bound. A gain , we see the linkage between a lost body part and the faculty ordinarily m anifested by it: in this case, brave ry and prowess m anifested by the lost righ t hand. It is interesting to note that in all three cases, the sacri ces or pledges have some connection with the events of R agnaro k, when Heimdallr will sound the G jallarho rn and O D inn will return to the well to consult M m ir before being swallow ed up by Fenrir unbound. Clearly, these m utilations are far from incidental, striking as they do at the very hearts of these deities and their cosmic roles. As a nal exam ple of a m utilated gure from Norse myth, we may look brie y at the smith Vo lundr, known in Englis h tradition as W eland or W aylan d. A s in the case of Teiresias, varyin g and con icting traditions are extant to dem onstrate later ratio nalizatio ns of his lam ing. In the Eddic poem V o lundarkvi Da (Neckel & Kuhn, 19 66; Terry, 1990), Vo lundr is ham strung to prevent his escape, which he later effects by ying away, while in p i Dreks saga af Bern (Jo nsson, 1954; The Saga of Thidrek of Bern : Haym es, 1988), his lam ing is just punishm ent for an attem pted poisoning and his ight from im prisonm ent is effected by m eans of arti cial wings. A s with Teiresias, again , what matters is the linkage between Vo lundr s ability to y, whether through D aedalus-like craft or through his el n nature, and his quite literal lam eness, in icted, paradoxically, in an attem pt to imm obilize him (Grim stad, 19 83). It is im possible to say with any certainty how these m yths and legends concerning the gods and superhum an heroes would have affected day-to-day attitudes of the pagan N orse and Celts towards their kinfolk and neigh bours who were blind, deaf or lam e. T o what extent such associations between disabilitie s and super-abilitie s would have given the disabled som e sort of cachet in these cultures we cannot know. H owever, the survival to the present day among educated W esterners of folk beliefs that certain disabilities, such as blindness and epilepsy, endow one with a sixth sense or special insigh t suggests a palim psest on which what was previously erased by the pervasive m edicalization of exceptionality yet shows beneath the new writin g. Im pairm ent No Disability In the prosaic world of the quasi-historical Icelandic fam ily sagas we nd little evidence of any disability m ystique that m ay have been operative due to association with the supernatural. Instead, we nd many exam ples of im pairm ents that are little m ore than m entioned by the narrato r and draw little or no com ment from the

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charac ters. In Laxd la saga (Sveinsson, 193 4; M agnusson & Hermann Pa lsson, 19 69), set in the 10th century, Ho skuldr buys a beautiful slave for three tim es the going price. W hen the astonishingly honest merchant informs him that the girl is m ute, Ho skuldr has no second thoughts, nor indeed any response at all. W hile this exam ple appears to be sui generis (the girl is the Irish princess M elkorka, and she really isn t `deaf and dum b as she pretends to be), a second exam ple, this again from Sturlu saga and concerning the 13th century chieftain Einarr p orgilsson, introduced above, also illu strates the typical saga attitude. As mentioned earlier, Einarr is a chieftain of no little stature, so in Chapter 11 the m odern reader is surprised to read the follow ing episode in an on-going feud. Having selected his next victim , a certain Loftr, and arran ged for one of his m en, p orgeirr, to do the actual killin g for him , Einarr sets off for Tunga, where Loftr is resident, with p orgeirr and a party of m en. W hen they reached Tunga they went into the m ain room where they were greeted and asked for news. T hey sat down but when Einar saw that p orgeir showed no signs of attacking he got up and strode across the oor. He was near-sighted and so couldn t distinguish where Loft was sitting [ H ann var n rsy nn ok pekkti eigi , hvar Loftr sat ]; he struck a m an named po ro lf and his spear penetrated his thigh (Jo nsson et al., 1946, Vol. 1, p. 77; M cGrew & Thom as, 1970, Vol. 1, pp. 74 75 .) T o be myopic to the extent that one cannot distinguish one m an from another at the distance of a few paces (the width of an Icelandic hall) is, today, to be legally blind, a condition we would certainly expect to see m entioned upon the introduction of the charac ter. Y et this im pairm ent seems not to have been of m uch im port for Einarr or his neighb ours or for our narrato r, who has had no occasion to mention it until he needs to account for the wrong m an being kille d (Bragg, 1994). T his relative unconcern with im pairm ents that we nd in the saga literature m ay be explain ed som ewhat by the following stanza (p. 71), which needs no com m ent here, from the Eddic poem H a vama l: The lam e ride horseback, the handless drive herds, the deaf m ay be dauntless in battle; better to be blind than burned on a pyre, dead m en do no deeds. (Terry, 1990, p. 20.)

Im pairm ents as Undesirable O ne would hardly wish to suggest, however, that the early M iddle A ges were any kind of Golden Age for the people with disabilitie s. On the contrary, m any passages in the literatu re suggest that society then, as now, saw exceptionalities as undesirable. The association between impairm ent and uglin ess, for example, is widely attested in both Irish and N orse literature. Egill him self, for example, is consum m ately ugly, as are the many lim inal, dis gured Irish charac ters described by Ford in `The blind, the dum b, and the ugly (1990) . References in the Icelandic sagas to

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the exposure of infants in pagan tim es, even though they were healthy, indicate that the practice of exposing infants with readily apparent congenital impairm ents was quite usual until it was effectively stopped by the Church. Another kind of indirect evidence for the recognition that exceptionalitie s were undesirable is the myth m otif of tricking a blind man into an unwitting killin g. In the Irish tale Aided Fergusa M eic Ro ig ( The Violent Death of Fergus mac Ro ich , M eyer, 19 06) when A ilill, the consort of Queen M edb, is stricken with jealousy at the sight of M edb disporting herself with Fergus in a lake, he tells his blind brother Lugaid , who had never missed his m ark, that a hart and doe are in the lake and hands him a spear. Lugaid thus unwittingly kills Fergus, his own foster-brother. In a better known N orse analogue from Snorri s Edda , the supposedly invincible god Baldr is entertaining his fellow gods by allow ing them to shoot, strike or stone him . Since only the m istletoe, of all things on earth, had omitted to vow not to harm Baldr, Loki, in his jealousy of the honor Baldr is winning, tricks the blind Ho d r into shooting a dart of m istletoe at Baldr, thus killin g him in `the unluckiest deed ever done am ong gods and men (Faulkes, 1987, p. 49). W hile the undesirability of exceptionalities such as blindness will look familiar to us in this evidence, it is im portant to observe that it illu strates a very great difference between the archaic societies that produced this literatu re and our own society. In archaic societies the focus is on the comm unity rather than the individual. W hereas today disabilitie s are com m only seen as so m any personal tragedies, the Irish and Norse m aterial suggests that insofar as blindness, for exam ple, was undesirable , it was so not because it was pitiable to be blind, but rather because of the danger that one individual s blindness posed to the comm unity, a point that the deaths of Fergus and Baldr, as well as the historical anecdote concerning Einarr p orgilsson, neatly illu strate. By far the m ost comm on kind of evidence for the undesirability of im pairm ents, however, is the cure, either miraculous or scienti c. In the Irish tale Orguin Denna R g (Stokes, 1899; The Destruction of Dind R g , D illo n, 1946 , p. 4ff.), we learn of the oxym oronic mute singer M oen O llam , later called M oen Labraid, `The M ute, H e Speaks , and his m iraculous cure by means of a wom an s love and a magical harp. In the Icelandic p orsteins p a ttr uxafo ts (Vilm undarson & Vilhja lm sson, 1991, p. 341ff.; The Tale of p orsteinnn O x-Leg , Simpson, 1965, p. 212ff.) we read of the restoratio n of speech to a m ute woman, O ddny , by m eans of supernatural gold, a gift from a barrow -wigh t. The attribu tion of such m iraculous cures to the Christian god, however, is rare in the quasi-historical Icelandic fam ily sagas, the best known m undi `the Blind in chapter 106 of N ja exam ple being the episode concerning A ls saga (Sveinsson, 1954; M agnusson & Hermann Pa lsson 1960), who is granted his sigh t in order to kill his father s kille r. N aturally, this m otif is m ore generally to be associated with, and was doubtless encouraged elsewhere by, Christian hagio graphy. T he Icelandic bishops lives are no exception: Gudm undr the Good, bishop of Holar (d. 1237), for exam ple, was said to have cured the `crippled hand of a wom an by kicking her and the `withered hand of a man who inserted it within the ligh t that shone on the saintly bishop (Prests saga G u Dmundar go Da , cap. 19, Jo nsson et al., 19 54; The Saga of Gu Dm und Arason the Priest , M cGrew & Thom as, 1970, Vol. 2,

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pp. 124 25). Finally it is also possible to locate scienti c medical cures, as in p orgils saga skar Da (chapter 7, Jo nsson et al., 1954; The saga of p orgils skar Di, M cGrew & T homas, 1970, Vol. 2, pp. 358 359). In this rem arkable piece from the Sturlunga com pilatio n, the Icelander p orgils, born with a harelip, and grown up handsome and m anly, visits the relative ly m ore sophisticated N orw egian court of King Ha kon the O ld, who recom m ends plastic surgery. The episode even includes discussion of physician referral and fees, all for an exceptionality that went unrem arked back hom e in Iceland (Bragg, 1994). But m edical cures, like Christian miracle cures, are rare. Conclusions T he oldest N orse and Celtic literatu re is likely to treat of exceptionalities, including those that we could call disabilities, in a fashion quite unlike that to which we are accustomed to nd in m odern literatu re. W e nd the mythological view s about contact with the supernatural and the related notion of a trade-off of a body part for superhum an abilities, and at the same tim e we notice a general disinterest in im pairm ents as they m ight affect a character s competence, though there does seem to be some concern for dangers to society and some desire for cures. Certainly, there is no evidence for the later disablin g notion of daem onic possession, very little recognition that impairm ents m igh t be m edical conditions or personal trage dies, and alm ost no hint of m argin alizin g pity or consequent charity anywhere to be found. W hen G sli Su rsson, for exam ple, is instructed in a dream to abandon the old religio n, avoid m agic and witchcraft, and be kind to the deaf, lam e, poor and helpless ( p o ro lfsson & Jo nsson, 1943, p. 70; Johnston, 1963, p. 33, who am azingly m istranslates daufr `deaf as `blind ), we are struck by the new taxonom y that would place powerful and dangerous retired vikings like p o ro lfr b gifo tr , `Lam e-Leg , or nundr tre O fo tr `W ooden-Leg , or resourceful, intellige nt deaf-mutes like the literate and articulate O ddny on charity, a margin alizin g device as powerful as its m ale cent opposites. There is m uch that we still do not know about these archaic societies, not the least of which is how far the extant literature and law codes re ect actual social practices. Given what we do understand about settlem ent patterns and econom ics, however, it seem s safe to say that people with disabilities were integrate d into com m unities to a far greater extent than they have been at any tim e since. That archaic societies sim ply could not afford to support unproductive mem bers, and that they had no ethical mandate to do so, m eant that infanticide m ay have been used to elim inate some individuals with congenital im pairm ents who would have been lifelong burdens on the family or comm unity, but it also m eant that individ uals with adventitious or late-onset im pairm ents were kept in social integratio n. That the technology was relatively sim ple made possible what the straitened econom y m ade im perative : the blind, deaf, lam e, the elderly and frail, the psychologically and developm entally im paire d, and the chronically ill live d at hom e and contrib uted to the welfare of the fam ily and com m unity by doing valued work. Christianity not so m uch the religion itself as the culture in which it came ensconced changed all that

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by introducing new concepts in ethics and in practical livin g arran gem ents. The ethics are com plex, but the changes in practical livin g arran gem ents were sim ple, for no sooner had Christianity introduced the monastic life as an alternative to social integration than the m onastery was exploited as a dumping ground for people with im pairm ents. The m edical model of im pairm ent and chronic illn ess, which seeks to identify the cause and provide a cure, and the practice of institutionalizin g and otherw ise margin alizin g people with incurable impairm ents or chronic illn esses both developed naturally from the Christian m odel, aided by ever m ore com plex technology. The title of M ark M edoff s play about a speech pathologist who falls frustratingly in love with a deaf woman, Children of a Lesser G od , re ects precisely the effects that the disablin g m edical m odel has had on the deaf. T he deaf wom an, intellige nt and articulate in Am erican Sign Language, is alienated and isolated from her fam ily and the larger comm unity by the m edical model of deafness, that it is a defect to be cured by speech therapy and high -tech gadgets. Her refusal to submit to the `cure has meant that she stays on at the state residential school for the deaf after graduation, working as a janitor under the hearing `experts who run the school for the `children of a lesser god , and believe them selves to be benefactors of the unfortunate deaf. The newly hired speech therapist m ust then abandon the m edical m odel of deafness if he is to appreciate the deaf wom an for what she is. W e, too, m ust abandon the medical m odel if we are to appreciate the rather large and very different role that disabilities play in archaic myth and literatu re [1].
NOT E [1] A version of this essay was read at the 1993 conference of the Center for M edieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Binghamton, New York.

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