»Hvør sum í míni fótspor stígur, lær ikki allan stund!« Søga og undirsøga í Gongu Rólvs kvæði: Heroism and incest in the ballad of Gongu Rólvur

Abstract

The Faroese medieval heroic ballad poetry has hardly ever been subject to scholarly interpretation and content analysis. In this article I shall present an interpretation of the heroic ballad of Gongu Rólvs kvæði, where I demonstrate that beneath the heroic ballad story it is possible to read yet another story, the subject of which proves to be far from any usual heroic ballad theme. The subject of this underlying story is that of incest. Previous researchers have described the ballad as a rather loosely compiled genuine heroic ballad with some random folk tale motives, but analyzed as a story of incest, it proves to be a precisely composed harmonic poem told in the codes of a genuine folk tale.