“Introduction: Dialogues with a “Head of Destiny””

Abstract

This introduction describes the volume’s organization, surveys its contributions, and explains how they fit together in the context of medievalism. It considers Halldór Laxness’s medievalism in the novel Gerpla (1952), but observes not a “hero’s journey” but rather the strange journey of a hero’s severed head. This “Head of Destiny” shapes many events, as the dead hero’s sworn brother pursues his killers to the edge of the known world in the remote ivory colonies of medieval Greenland. While some of this plot is drawn from sources such as Fóstbræðra saga, Halldór’s version of the story questions this mission. Two “Dream-Women” interpret the head’s ominous significance with prophecies of light and darkness, thus revealing the fate of this would-be avenger as he passes from life to the abyss.