Festering Wounds on Heroic Bodies: Depictions of Leprosy and Infection in the riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur
2023; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 95; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/21638195.95.4.03
ISSN2163-8195
Autores Tópico(s)History of Medicine Studies
ResumoLeprosy is one of the most common medical conditions to appear in medieval literature, and it has long held symbolic significance in the literary imagination as a disease that set its sufferers apart from society.1 Though "leprosy" as it appeared in medieval texts was likely a variety of different skins conditions, the disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium leprae is now known as Hansen's disease and still affects millions worldwide today.2 This essay examines the condition líkþrá, commonly translated as "leprosy," primarily as it is portrayed in the riddarasögur ("sagas of knights" or chivalric sagas) and fornaldarsögur ("sagas of ancient times" or legendary sagas), demonstrating that the disease took on a unique literary character as it entered the worlds of these sagas. I argue that the authors of several of these sagas did not depict leprosy as a divine punishment or an opportunity for penance for the sufferer, but rather as a temporary affliction imposed upon male bodies by maleficent women with magical abilities. The líkþrá (leprosy) of these sagas is a disease that performs in highly gendered ways that reflect both the ethos of heroic literature and the influence of medieval romance, specifically the latter genre's depictions of the wounded or diseased male body.Scholarship on leprosy as it appears in the medieval texts produced across Europe has been largely divided between those who argue that medieval people interpreted leprosy predominantly as a marker of sin,3 particularly sexual sin, and those who emphasize the diversity of roles that the leprous body played in the medieval imaginary.4 Yet literary depictions of leprosy from medieval Scandinavia have gone unnoticed as scholars continue to reassess the role of the "leper" in medieval society. Scholarship on Hansen's disease in medieval Scandinavia has been primarily limited to osteological studies,5 and the only book-length study on "lepers" in Scandinavia does not utilize medieval Scandinavian literary sources.6 While the present article cannot survey every appearance of líkþrá (leprosy) and related conditions in the entire Old Norse-Icelandic corpus, it is my hope that this study will be the first of many that takes a careful look at how the disease appeared in the literary imagination of medieval Scandinavia. It is significant, I think, that líkþrá assumes a peculiar character as it was imagined in the original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur, one that is quite distinct from the discourses surrounding the disease in other contemporary literatures. While leprosy itself has not been examined in medieval Scandinavian literature, recent decades have seen increased interest in depictions of disability in the sagas (Michelson-Ambelang 2015; Anderson 2016; Sexton 2010; Bragg 1994; 1997; 2000; 2005; Byock 1993).7 A new article on the application of Disability Studies to the medieval sagas observes that Disability Studies counters interpretations of disability as an "individual deficit" and instead views disability as a "social phenomenon embedded in social arrangements and cultural conventions" (Ármann Jakobsson et al. 2020, 441). The present article examines the cultural conventions surrounding líkþrá, arguing that the leprosy imagined by medieval Icelandic authors in the original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur combined convention and innovation in its depiction as a special danger to the male body.8 The role of the leprous body in several Old Norse-Icelandic works significantly differs from the prevailing models offered in continental and insular literatures—both models that emphasize the leprous body as a sinful one and those that interpret lepers as bearers of purgative suffering.9As several studies on medieval depictions of leprosy from the continent and British Isles have underlined, the alterity of the leprous body could be symbolically associated with other non-normative, marginalized bodies in medieval thinking. Susan Zimmerman has argued that leprosy was "perceived as a challenge to the fundamental framework of Christian belief," and further, that "the leper, the female, and the Jew were connected in the medieval imaginary through problematic relationships of contaminated blood."10 The association of the leper with religious alterity was not unique to medieval Christianity, however; Ephraim Shoham-Steiner has expressed that within medieval Jewish texts themselves, "one finds the image of the heretic whose soul is leprous" (2014, 40). Amy Mulligan has examined gendered depictions of the disease in medieval Irish literature, arguing that the "haggish appearance" of the sovereignty figure of the Irish kingship tale Echtra mac nEchach Muigmedóin "suggests the disease of leprosy," and further, that "Sovereignty is no typical leper but is likened to the supreme Christian deity, who appears to test his subjects" (Eichorn-Mulligan 2006, 1016, 1053). In his well-known and oft-discussed survey of leprosy in medical, religious, and literary medieval works, Saul Nathaniel Brody concluded that medieval authors "surely understood that leprosy was not simply an illness" and that it was "the dreadful manifestation of an inner disease, a disease of the soul" (Brody 1979, 147, 148).11 Brody examined a number of German, Anglo-Norman, and English literary works that present leprosy as a punishment inflicted upon a sinner by God (1979, 147–97). The role of leprosy in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, however, has gone unexamined in Brody's work as well as in more recent scholarship.12 Contrasting the attitudes analyzed by the scholars cited above, I argue that the riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur discussed here present líkþrá as something that afflicted the most normative and appealing of masculine bodies, and further, that their infection with the disease bore no moral stigma whatsoever. This article engages with líkþrá as it was imagined by authors in fictional accounts and does not pretend to advance our understanding of the lived experiences of those who suffered with Hansen's disease or other conditions designated as "leprosy" during the medieval period. It does, however, explore the cultural conventions surrounding the disease as it appears in the literature of medieval Scandinavia.Despite its absence in scholarship, leprosy appeared in a number of texts, both translated and original, that were produced in medieval Scandinavia and written in Old Norse/Old Icelandic. Leprosy is translated into Old Norse-Icelandic texts by the term líkþrá,13 which may be a rendering of the Old English term licþrowere (body-sufferer), a compound of lic (body) and þrowere (sufferer), from the verb þrowian ("to suffer" or "to endure").14 The corresponding Old Norse verb to the Old English þrowian would be þrá, which can mean "to struggle" as well as "to desire."15 In Modern Icelandic, the verb þrá has come to mean "to lust," as well as "to yearn," the noun þrá in Old Norse conveying "a hard struggle," "obstinacy," "longing," or "decay."16 To a Norse-speaking audience, líkþrá could potentially appear to be a compound of lík ("body" or "corpse") and þrá (longing), though the þrá is more likely the þrá related to the adjective þrár, which can mean "decomposed" along with its more common use of "obstinate" or "stubborn."17 While it is interesting to consider that the term itself may have had connotations linked to lust or other moral qualities to a medieval Scandinavian audience, the examples assessed in this article do not consistently suggest that this was the case.While this essay is focused on depictions of leprosy in the riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur, I will briefly note here that líkþrá has not yet been examined as it appears in Old Norse-Icelandic religious works such as homilies and saints' lives, nor in other literary genres, including in the historically most celebrated genre of sagas known as the Íslendingasögur ("Sagas of Icelanders," also known as Family Sagas). To my knowledge, a case of líkþrá appears once in the Íslendingasögur, in the þáttr (tale) called Þórhalls þáttr knapps (The Tale of Þórhallr Knapp), which relates that a heathen Icelander named Þórhallr "var miok tekinn ok þyngðr af lik þraa" (Þórhalls þáttr knapps1961, 184) [was much afflicted and encumbered by leprosy]. The þáttr is essentially a conversion narrative, explaining that an angel visits Þórhallr in a dream and tells him that he will be healed of his affliction if he builds a house for the Christian God. When Þórhallr heeds the advice of the angel, he finds that his sickness gradually improves until he receives baptism, at which point he becomes entirely healed. This þáttr may be partially modeled after the healing of Emperor Constantine in Silvesters saga, in which the adoption of the Christian faith through baptism similarly heals Constantine's disease.18As is common to hagiography across linguistic traditions, the heilagra manna sögur ("sagas of holy people" or saints' lives) and biskupasögur (bishops' sagas) refer to líkþrár (lepers) as recipients of miraculous healing; however, these texts, with the exception of Silvesters saga, do not relate how the affected individuals came to contract the disease. The healing of lepers was a standard type of miracle performed by saints in their vitae, and Old Icelandic saints' lives contain many instances of such healings, including two miracles of Saint Magnús of Orkney.19 The healing of lepers often appears in the saints' lives as part of a list of holy miracles rather than being described in detail, as in the translated Antonius saga: "Hann gaf syn blindvm, en heyrnn davfvm, havlltvm gavngv, en hreinsaði þaa er likþrair vorv, þvrrvm fotvm geck hann yfvir sió, hreinsaði hann diofvloða, en lifgaði davða, ok eptir sinn likamligan davða leysti hann andir sinna vina fra helvitis kvavlvm, navð ok pining" (Antonius saga1877, 1:104) [He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, walking to the cripple, and cleansed those who were lepers, with dry feet he walked over the sea, he cleansed the possessed, gave life to the dead, and after his bodily death he released the souls of his friends from the torments, distresses, and sufferings of hell].20 The terms líkþrá and líkþrár (leper) most often appear in the saints' lives in similar constructions that list the types of illness the saints were most likely to heal. These miracles were clearly modeled on those performed by Christ.The etiology of leprosy, however, is primarily left to the riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur, and so it is not surprising that the cause of the disease in these sagas is likewise infused with supernatural or magical elements.21 Some fictional depictions of leprosy from the continent and the British Isles emphasize how the lepers' supposed moral decrepitude has contributed to their condition, and the Old Norse-Icelandic works discussed here strikingly diverge from the approach adopted elsewhere in Western Europe.22 I argue that leprosy, as imagined by the several original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur in which it appears, is a disease that afflicts the most accomplished heroes and paragons of masculine prowess, a disease that thus eats away at masculine identity itself. In the first section of the article, I assess depictions of líkþrá in several translated works, concluding that most of them, with the exception of Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar (2012; The Saga of Tristram and Ísönd) did not influence líkþrá as it appears in original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur. In the second section, I demonstrate how several original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur adapted a paradigm of injured male hero similar to that found in the translated romance Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. These sagas present líkþrá as a disease suffered by the most renowned of heroes who, despite their condition, are not totally marginalized from society.Contrary to the brief and generally formulaic attention given to leprosy in the heilagra manna sögur and the biskupasögur, depictions of líkþrá and infection in medieval romances are anything but matter-of-fact. Leprosy in these texts plays distinct roles, specifically as a temporary punishment for bad behavior or as a disguise. Faking leprosy, as we shall see, is one of the ploys famously used by the romance hero Tristram to gain momentary access to his beloved.23 It is also important to note that when leprosy is mentioned in the romances, it is almost always a temporary condition. This is the mark of leprosy as it was imagined by authors, a literary trope that did not reflect the reality of the disease or of those suffering from it. The narratives discussed below present leprosy as a disease that will be healed. This section of the essay considers the transmission of líkþrá to Old Norse/Old Icelandic from Latin, English, and French non-hagiographic sources, beginning with Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar and ending with sources that ostensibly did not influence the depiction of líkþrá in non-translated sagas.In my view, the text that most likely influenced depictions of líkþrá in the original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur is Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, the Old Norse translation of the Thomas branch of the well-known legend of Tristan and Iseult.24 The wounded, male body takes a central role in the romance, where disease and infection contribute to Tristram's triumphs and failures alike. The saga's depiction of male woundedness, if not of leprosy per se, influenced several original romances and legendary sagas that will be discussed at length in the following section, and so I offer a detailed account of Tristram's wounds here.Tristram represents the quintessential wounded hero, one whose woundedness is seemingly inextricable from his identity, his name itself stemming from sorrow. It may be argued that the wounds Tristram suffers in the flesh symbolize the destructive, and ultimately fatal, love he shares with Ísönd, his uncle's wife. Indeed, from the moment of conception, Tristram is associated with woundedness; his father Kanelangres and his mother Blensinbil make love and conceive Tristram while Kanelangres is sorely wounded: "En hann þegar í því angri ok meinlæti sinna sorga faðmaði hana með ástar þokka, svá at í sorg sinnar ástar fekk sú hin fríða frú getnað" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 44) ["And he, despite the pain and sorrow of his wounds, embraced her with love's desire, so that in a love bittersweet, this beautiful woman conceived a child" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 45)]. It is also woundedness that creates Tristram's intimacy with the Irish court and begins his fateful relationship with the Irish princess Ísönd, though the Irish are the enemies of his uncle King Markis, whom the saga identifies as King of Cornwall and of England more broadly. After he has defended his uncle's kingdom by killing Morhold, the Irish Queen Ísodd's brother, Tristram suffers from the wounds of Morhold's poisoned sword. None of his doctors can cure him, and Tristram suffers enormous pain that prevents him from sleeping. But the infection also causes profound isolation: "Ok leiðiz þá svá mjök öllum frændum ok vinum yfir honum at sitja fyrir sakir daun þess, sem af honum var" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 84) ["Because of the stench emanating from him, his relatives and friends were reluctant to be near him" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 85)]. Tristram, disguised as a talented harpist named Trantris, is taken to the queen's chamber, where "mátti ekki inni þola sakir dauns, er stóð af sari hans" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 86) ["no one could endure being inside because of the stench coming from his wound" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 87)]. The wound here is not only a threat to Tristram's life, but also a marker of physical difference that isolates him from society. Even those closest to him avoid his company because of the reeking wound. Yet, ironically, it is this position of utter vulnerability that grants him entrance to his enemies' court and thereby access to the healing the queen can provide.25 Only as the weakened male body, as Trantris, does Tristram avoid recognition.This cycle of woundedness and healing is soon repeated when Tristram journeys back to Ireland to secure Ísönd as a bride for his Uncle Markis. The King of Ireland has declared that anyone who kills the dragon that has been ravaging the country will receive Ísönd as his wife. Tristram slays the dragon but receives a terrible, poisonous wound and is incapacitated for a time. The King's steward takes credit for the slaying, but Queen Ísodd and her daughter Ísönd find this unlikely, and when they investigate, they discover the severely poisoned Tristram. Now in the guise of a Flemish merchant, Tristram is again treated by the queen and Ísönd. However, this time, Ísönd discovers his true identity when she matches a notch in his sword to the metal scrap retrieved from her uncle Morhold's skull. After some deliberation in the Irish royal family, Tristram receives mercy, safe conduct, and Ísönd's hand for his uncle. At this stage in the romance, Tristram's wounds have allowed him private access to Ísodd and Ísönd. It is, in part, his vulnerability as a patient that convinces the women not to kill him when they discover his identity. Wounds testify to his bravery and prowess, marking him as a most valiant and worthy man, but the temporary impairment of his normally hale body also enables him to spend time alone with these women in a more intimate manner than he would at the peak of health.Wounds are also closely associated with deception and disguise in the romance. Later in the saga, after he has fled his uncle's court and married Ísodd of Brittany, Tristram pretends to have a wound to avoid consummating his marriage. He uses the wound to create a desired isolation from his wife, adopting a false persona of emasculation.26 On the wedding night, he tells his wife: "Ek hefi eina sótt undir minni siðu hægra megin, er mik hefir lengi kvalit, ok hefir þessi sótt þvingat mik þetta kveld. En af mörgum vásum ok vökum, er ek hefi haft þá sturlar hún nú alla limu mína, ok þar af þori ek varla at liggja við þik" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 170) ["On the lower, right side of my body I have an ailment that has plagued me for a long time, and this malady is causing me discomfort tonight. Due to the many hardships and wakeful nights that I have suffered, all of my limbs have been affected. For this reason I scarcely dare to lie with you" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 171)]. Tristram assures her that they will have plenty of time for such things in the future, although that never comes to fruition. The text concludes the scene with the following clarification: "Ekki var önnr sótt Tristrams en um aðra Ísönd dróttningu" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 170) ["Tristram's illness was nothing but the other Queen Ísönd" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 171)]. Feigned illness here serves to ensure Tristram's loyalty to Ísönd, a bond more important than matrimony in his eyes. He would rather appear impotent than virile, underlining his willing to manipulate others by shrouding his intact masculine body with woundedness.27 His failure to cultivate his marriage will famously result in his own death, when he succumbs to a real wound in despair because his wife Ísodd does not tell him that his beloved Ísönd approaches to heal him.Near the end of the saga, Tristram feigns illness again to achieve his ends, now disguising himself as a líkþrár (leper) by ingesting an herb (gras) that causes some of the physical symptoms of leprosy: "Ok tók hann þá gras eitt ok át, ok þrútnaði hann af því í andliti sem sá, er sjúkr er. Bæði hendr ok fætr sortnuðu, ok rödd hans hæstiz, sem hann væri líkþrár, ok því var han eigi kendr" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 206) ["He found an herb and ate it, and his face swelled up like someone who is sick. His hands as well as his feet turned black, and his voice became hoarse, as if he were a leper. Because of this, he couldn't be recognized" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 207)]. Using disease as his disguise, Tristram waits by the king's gate to hear news of Ísönd. When she passes by, he follows her and aggressively begs for alms. Eventually, he gets her attention, and she recognizes him by the goblet he carries. The saga relates that her serving-woman Bringvet "kenndi hann at vexti" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 206) ["recognized him by his stature" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 207)]. Even the mantle of disease cannot shroud Tristram's idealized body.Tristram's choice of leper as a disguise is an interesting and paradoxical one. The diseased body is meant to contrast and utterly obscure Tristram's essential nature as the most handsome and physically able of men, though his ideal physicality can only be partially disguised. But in a moment of striking irony, it is a leper's body, not Tristram's, that can experience proximity to his beloved. While the leper may often have been a marginalized and isolated figure, here, the leper becomes an identity that grants access to that which Tristram values most.28 The use of leprosy as a disguise in the text signals that the leper is, in this particular respect, less marginalized than Tristram himself.These other episodes in which Tristram experiences or feigns woundedness foreshadow Tristram's demise from a poisonous wound. Not long after his adventure in disguise, Tristram suffers a blow from a poisoned sword during a tournament, resulting in a terrible wound that befuddles every doctor. Tristram dies not only from the wound but also from a broken heart; when he learns that Ísönd will not come to heal him, he exclaims dejectedly: "Nú ertu, Ísönd, mik hatandi. Ek em nú syrgjandi, er þú vill ekki til mín koma, en ek sakir þín deyjandi, er þú vildir ekki miskunna sótt minni. Ek em nú syrgjandi sótt mína ok harmandi, er þú vildir ekki koma at hugga mik" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 220) ["Ísönd, you hate me now. My heart aches, because you do not want to come to me, and because of you I will die, for you did not wish to take pity on me in my illness. Now I am suffering from my sickness and grieving, because you do not want to come to comfort me" (Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar 2012, 221)]. A physical wound precipitates his demise, but Tristram also dies from the invisible wounds of grief.I have devoted much space to recounting Tristram's wounds because they provide a template for masculine woundedness that was incorporated into the original sagas discussed in the following section. This model presents wounds both as proof of bravery and as a source of vulnerability. Woundedness and feigned woundedness grant Tristram access first to the Irish court and then to Ísönd at King Markis's court. In addition, Tristram's woundedness is highly dependent on female intervention; only skilled female healers can save him. As we shall see in the following section, the use of leprosy as a disguise, the prevalence of female healing, and the stinking, wounded male body would likewise appear in original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur. Before analyzing these original sagas, I turn to some other examples of líkþrá in translated works.Another translated text that may have influenced the depictions of leprosy and disease in original Icelandic compositions is Jónatas Ævintýri, an exemplum which was likely translated into Old Icelandic from Middle English.29 The exemplum is included in the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of Latin tales that exerted considerable influence on the late medieval and early modern literature of a variety of languages. Jónatas Ævintýri relates how his lover steals three priceless and magical objects from Jónatas, the Emperor's son (Jónatas Ævintýri1997).30 The main theme of the exemplum is the treachery of women, and the tale ends with Jónatas regaining his treasures and his lover dying a horrific death when Jónatas infects her both with leprosy and a terrible skin-eating condition. The exemplum's depiction of leprosy is unusual. Jónatas and his lover ride on a magical cloth to the edge of the world, where she leaves him as he sleeps. When Jónatas awakens, he begins a journey, first traveling through water that removes one's skin from the bones. After somehow surviving this, Jónatas eats an apple from a tree, and finds that he has become a líkþrár (Jónatas Ævintýri1997, 31). He is healed of both conditions, the first when he passes through another body of water and the second when he eats from another apple tree. When he eventually returns to his own country, he disguises himself as a doctor and heals many, including a king, with the restoring water and apples. After some time, he is called to heal his former lover, and instead gives her some of the flesh-eating water and an infecting apple, resulting in her gruesome death. The tale depicts leprosy as a condition that can be both caused and cured through ingesting magical fruit, although the initial cause of the king's leprosy is unspecified. The main function of the disease in the text, however, is to provide the opportunity to punish Jónatas's ex-lover. The text displays the misogyny common to many medieval exempla and stories.31The infection of Jónatas's former mistress with leprosy did not influence any original Icelandic works in my opinion, though it has been argued that Jónatas Ævintýri influenced the riddarasaga entitled Viktors saga ok Blávus (Jorgensen 1972, 316–9). However, the romance does not depict a leprous female body, and the main similarity between the two accounts is that we have a woman summoning a man, in disguise, to heal her. In Viktors saga ok Blávus, a diseased female suffers from a skin condition with the characteristics of a sexually transmitted infection. The text relates: "Fulgida dro(ttning) tok uanheilsu mikla en uilldi þo aungum til segja huat at heilsubrigdi þat war. . . . Hon hafi þa meinsemi at haurundssuidi h(eiter)" (Viktors saga ok Blávus1962, 41) [Queen Fulgida came down with a great sickness but she did not want to say what kind of condition that was. . . . She had the disease called skin-burning]. The disease appears in an intimate part of the body: millum fotanna (Viktors saga ok Blávus1962, 42) ("between the feet" or "between the legs"), perhaps suggesting a venereal condition.32 Fulgida, however, is cured of her condition and goes on to marry one of the saga's major characters, so the stain of sexual promiscuity does not appear to have been especially concerning to the saga-author.A third secular text that brought literary depictions of leprosy to medieval Iceland is Vincent de Beauvais's account from the Speculum historiale concerning the friendship of Amis and Amiles, called Amícus ok Amilíus saga in its Old Norse-Icelandic version.33 Unlike the examples discussed above, the infection with líkþrá is explicitly linked to sinfulness in this text (Amícus ok Amilíus saga1874), and its cure is miraculous. Amícus is struck with leprosy because he deceitfully performs an ordeal, in disguise, on behalf of his friend Amilíus. His sin of deceit is punished by the disease in accordance with the will of God: "Ok litlu síðar kastaði guð bardaga á hann ok barði hann með líkþrá, svá at ekki mátti hann þá ur rekkju rísa" (Amícus ok Amilíus saga 1874, 187) [A little while later God cast a scourge upon him and smote him with leprosy so that he could not get out of bed]. As in Silvesters saga, which recounts the Emperor Constantine's healing, the blood of children is suggested as a cure for leprosy in this account, though in this case, it must be the blood of Amilíus's sons. Even more disturbingly, it is an angel of the Lord who reveals that only the blood of the two boys can cure Amícus.The healing of leprosy in this text is a divinely sanctioned and miraculous event, but it highlights the strength of friendship rather than the sanctity of an individual. The price of true friendship is a steep one, causing one man to lose his health and the other his sons. Both sons, to be sure, are restored to life at the end. To my knowledge, this paradigm of divine punishment, infection, and healing appears nowhere else in the sagas and did not influence depictions of leprosy in any extant original Icelandic sagas. Líkþrá here serves the distinct purpose of demonstrating how self-sacrifice (in the form of familial blood sacrifice) for friendship's sake can wash away the punishment of God inflected upon the flesh because of a trespass.The depiction of Tristram's wounded body in the translated saga Tristrams saga ok Ísondar helped construct a paradigm of male woundedness that appears in a number of original romances and legendary sagas; here, the wounded or rotting male body is not in essence a marginalized one, but rather a body that testifies to its owner's exemplary martial and, in some cases, moral qualities. It is not Tristram's time as a leper specifically, but rather the saga's depiction of woundedness as a whole that influenced depictions of líkþrá in these works. The term líkþrá rarely appears in the original riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur, occurring only in the legendary sagas Sturlaugs saga starfsama (c. 1300) and Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar (c. 1300) and in the original romance Mírmans saga (c. 1400). It is also my contention that depictions of leprosy influenced portrayals of male woundedness in another saga: a disease described with similar symptoms appears in the original Icelandic romance Ála flekks saga (c. 1400). In these sagas, every example of leprosy and similar conditions afflict men who epitomize masculine prowess. As it was imagined by these authors, leprosy is a disease particular to male sufferers. While this may be the case in part because these Icelandic works contain more male than female characters, the way that these authors imagine líkþrá nevertheless underlines their interest in how the disease interacts with constructs of masculinity.I will briefly begin with the one
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