Afkár dis

This contribution analyses how an Old Norse poem such as Atlakviða can be read as a »construction site« within which various social tensions are explored. It argues that the poem is intensely concerned with behavioural norms, kinship ties, and the role of women in a feud culture, concerns which would have spoken to the 13th-century audience of the text as it survives in the Codex Regius, and which eventually come to a head in the character of Guðrún. The contribution posits that each of these concerns is a source of irresolvable tension that reaches breaking point during Guðrún’s revenge, where the careful choice of words, specifically afkár(r) and níð , signals a collapse of society.