The performative face in "Egils saga Skallagrímssonar"

In the early thirteenth-century Icelandic saga of the Viking Egill Skallagrímsson, the narrative recounts the events of his brother’s death in the Battle of Brunanburh, when fighting on behalf of King Athelstan of England. In the story it is told how Egill seeks out his brother’s corpse among the slain, buries him along with his weapons and two golden armlets and then returns to join the celebratory feast at King Athelstan’s. Upon his arrival he is placed facing the King across the fire pit. The narrator then pauses to describe the face of Egill in great detail, finishing with a peculiar description of a facial gesture that is presumably intended as a performative communicative gesticulation - one that the King (and seemingly his cohort) immediately understand. Egill is said to lift one eyebrow while bringing the other one down, alternating between moving them up and down, while they sit in silence across from each other. In the end the King rises from his seat, takes one of his own golden armlets, puts it on the point of his sword and extends the sword across the fire. Egill receives the golden armlet, his eyebrows return to their rightful place, the tension is broken, and he recites a poem describing in metaphoric language the gestural manipulation of the brows as emotive somatic reactions and, furthermore, how the King’s actions have righted them. This essay will address the performative use of facial expressions in the Icelandic saga and the complex interplay between somatic reactions, the social function of facial gestures and their intersubjective role in the saga. The aforementioned scene is unusual in the generic saga context both in its expressivity and its attention to embodiment and facial features. Moreover, it foregrounds the interconnectivity between somatic (particularly facial) gestures and internal emotionality. The deliberate dramatic narrative staging of the scene moreover calls attention to the social function of such gestures and the role they might have played for medieval audiences. Finally, the essay will consider the significance of the embedded poetic verses that contextualise the performance and, significantly, reenact the facial gestures through ekphrastic poetic metaphors, expanding on their figurative, performative, and emotive potential.