Poetic Justice: Law and Elegy in Egil Skalla-Grimsson's Sonatorrek

This article has a double purpose, the first being to provide a new interpretation of the most well-known and debated poem in Old Norse literature, Egil Skalla-Grimsson's elegy Sonatorrek (A Hard Loss of Sons), which, according to Egil's Saga, was composed after Egil had lost his beloved son, Bodvar, in a drowning accident around 960 AD. I would argue that the poem is structured as an indictment by which Egil first blames the gods for his loss and then weighs up the possibility of being granted revenge and compensation. The second purpose is to use the poem in order to argue for an expansion of the concept "law in literature." Egil's poem does not concern law as such, but rather an existential crisis; nonetheless, Egil thinks along legal lines when coming to terms with his loss. He utilizes an elegiac metaphor - death as a thief - when interpreting this loss and trying to derive some meaning from it. Legal conflicts are thus primarily used here as a figure of thought.