February 5: Random Master of Hestviken Thoughts

[kinetic_elaboration]

For some reason I decided to have middle of the night thoughts about Master of Hestviken again. I just love these books so much. (And I’m going to keep calling them by their first translation name even though I do plan to read the new translation, I just need a spare year or two…)

I know I’ve said this and possibly also written this before, but I think Olav and Ingunn really exemplify why incest is a social taboo even when people aren’t blood related. Even though their romantic relationship isn’t taboo for their time/place/circumstances–other than the sex before marriage thing–and it doesn’t have the gloss of the forbidden on it in the way that explicitly incestuous or incest-coded narratives do, much that is fucked up about them is also what is fucked up about incestuous relationships, even outside of genetic incompatibility and power imbalances. It is a really screwed up thing to introduce two children to each other and tell them that they’ll be siblings when they’re young and spouses when they’re grown. It’s basically asking them to be codependent. This other person will never leave you. You will always be making your life with this one person. Two trees that grew together both by the roots and the branches. It doesn’t matter if they’re compatible or if they like each other or if they’re happy together; they are just necessary to each other. And it’s because they’re fulfilling more than one role to each other and this dynamic wasn’t even chosen by them, it was foisted upon them.

I remember being weirded out by the scene where Olav addresses Ingunn as sister years into their marriage, and it is weird and screwed up, but in a way… he’s using this word to connect them back to their childhoods, and there’s a weird sort of innocence and simplicity in what their relationship was by that time. But also a great tragedy because the disparity in their respective health has separated them.

Anyway. It’s so late again, I am full of self loathing about this, and I still need to shower.