Audun and the Polar Bear

Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-04-16811-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 1, 156 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 408 g

Reihe: Medieval Law and Its Practice

Audun’s Story is the tale of an Icelandic farmhand who buys a polar bear in Greenland for no other reason than to give it to the Danish king, half a world away. It can justly be listed among the finest pieces of short fiction in world literature. Terse in the best saga style, it spins a story of complex competitive social action, revealing the cool wit and finely-calibrated reticence of its three main characters: Audun, Harald Hardradi, and King Svein. The tale should have much to engage legal and cultural historians, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and students of literature. The story’s treatment of gift-exchange is worthy of the fine anthropological and historical writing on gift-exchange; its treatment of face-to-face interaction a match for Erving Goffman.

Zielgruppe

The book is meant to interest those outside saga studies and mean to engage legal and cultural historians, anthropologists, social theorists, economists, and even philosophers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miller, William I

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Skandinavische Literaturen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Kultureller Wandel, Kulturkontakt, Akkulturation
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction

The Story of Audum from the Westfjords (Audun’s Story)

Part One The Close Commentary

The Commitment to Plausibility
Helping Thorir and Buying the Bear
Dealing with King Harald
Giving the Bear to Svein: The Interests in the Bear
Saying No to Kings
Eggs in One Basket and Market Value
Rome: Self-Impoverishment and Self-Confidence
Repaying the Bear
Back to Harald: The Yielding of Accounts

Part Two Extended Themes

Audun’s Luck
Richness and Risk
Motives
Gaming the System: Gift-Ref
Regiving and Reclaiming Gifts
Gifts Upward: Repaying by Receiving and Funny money
Of Free and Closing Gifts
Coda: The Whiteness of the Bear

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

William Ian Miller is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. In addition to books on the bloodfeud in the Icelandic sagas and on the lex talionis, he has also published several books on the risks, miseries and triumphs of routine social interaction, among which are The Anatomy of Disgust (1997), The Mystery of Courage (2000), and Faking It (2003).